Picked up the new HTC EVO 4G last week and decided to test out the camera at the Minneapolis farmer’s market over the weekend. It’s an 8 megapixel camera, with autofocus, dual LED flash and a pretty good selection of manual controls (exposure comp, ISO, WB, metering modes, etc.) and surprisingly decent results.
I’m somewhat picky when it comes to cameras and usually carry either my Canon G10 or Canon 30D with some decent glass; I have never been too impressed with a camera phone camera. I would really love to have a decent camera on my phone, because the best camera is the one that you have with you. Continue reading »
One of the frustrations of helping other people market their product or service on the web is, often times, a lack of control over the way that product or service is presented on the website, the website design — or even the product/service itself.
There are some things that search marketing can accomplish, like helping your site achieve better rankings for relevant keywords and a growing channel of valuable traffic, but long term success depends on turning those new visitors into actual customers (hopefully over and over again). If the site and/or product lacks the ability to turn those new visitors into long term customers, even the best SEO isn’t going to help much.
A lot of internet marketing consultants, myself included, have begun to make site usability and conversion optimization part of our list of services. However, many companies are resistant to those suggestions when they’re coming from the “SEO guy.” I guess for a variety of reasons (which I’ll probably save for another post).
So, here are a five site issues that SEO/SEM can not fix — that will affect the long term success of your online business:
My wife and I saw Conan O’Brien at the Orpheum in Minneapolis last night. And, WOW! Even better than I expected. The energy was like going to a rock concert and Conan was hilarious. As funny as I’ve ever seen him. Highlights were Andy Richter doing a fake commercial for the infamous local Juicy Lucy; Brian Setzer, Conan and the band doing Rock This Town; and Conan’s opening monologue filled with the usual self deprecation, sarcasm and lots of local references that made us feel special.
Here are a few crappy pics from my cell phone:
Thanks, Conan!
*Update: here is a video from MPLS.TV. The wife and I are actually in the background of the opening scene, right before they cut to the marquee…
What do you get when you pay some anonymous person to “build links” for you? A big pile of crap… And no benefit to you, your company or the search engines. Forget the fact that the blogs your “link builder” is spamming are more than likely filtering out their comments and at the least are employing no follow tags; getting links from irrelevant blog comments on random sites isn’t doing you any good.
However, some of those comments that are sitting in the filtered spam list of my two blogs are a little entertaining to read. I love the way some spammers write conversational looking posts when it’s obvious the “poster” never read what they’re posing on. Here are a few of my favorites: Continue reading »
I resisted. I was one of those who just “didn’t get it” for the longest time. I signed up for Facebook a few years ago, made a few friends and nothing magical happened. So I temporarily deactivated my account, which just hides it, and forgot about it.
Then, about a year ago, in light of all the hype and the fact that I had clients I was helping build pages for, I decided I needed to reactivate my Facebook and jump in head first — be a Facebook junkie and learn all I could. This post is about some of the lessons I’ve learned. Continue reading »
I’ve mentioned that, while I provide them, I am not a huge fan of ranking reports for SEO programs. Most Recently here: The Future of SEO Services. So, I decided to come up with a pro and con list.
Pros:
Can chart progress of an SEO program over time.
Illustrates value of SEO to clients/boss.
Can track important keywords against competitors.
Tracks ranking of your brand name and its variations.
Can highlight site issues due to design changes, links, keyword changes, etc.
Can help identify pages that are not ranking for targeted keywords.
Can be a great addition to an overall report package – along with traffic and conversion data.
I just read a great article by Mike Grehan about the future of Search Engine Optimization. The question, “what is the future of search” is getting asked a lot lately. It’s changed a whole lot since I first got involved just about 10 years ago.
One key element that Grehan points out is that SEO is a really a function of marketing, which I don’t think many people outside the industry (and some inside) really understand. He says,
…even though industry leaders acknowledge that SEO is much more of a marketing process than a technical effort, there’s still a lot of fixation on crawler activity and indexing.
Picked up the new HTC EVO 4G last week and decided to test out the camera at the Minneapolis farmer’s market over the weekend. It’s an 8 megapixel camera, with autofocus, dual LED flash and a pretty good selection of manual controls (exposure comp, ISO, WB, metering modes, etc.) and surprisingly decent results.
One of the frustrations of helping other people market their product or service on the web is, often times, a lack of control over the way that product or service is presented on the website, the website design — or even the product/service itself.
What do you get when you pay some anonymous person to “build links” for you? A big pile of crap… And no benefit to you, your company or the search engines. Forget the fact that the blogs your “link builder” is spamming are more than likely filtering out their comments and at the least are employing no follow tags; getting links from irrelevant blog comments on random sites isn’t doing you any good.
I’ve mentioned that, while I provide them, I am not a huge fan of ranking reports for SEO programs. Most Recently here: 
