Traditional Retention and Recruitment Marketing split is finished

Traditional Retention and Recruitment Marketing split is finished – That’s quite a statement and one that perhaps many marketers will disagree with. However, I didn’t just make it up for fun; here is my thinking behind this: One of my first marketing roles back in 2005 was within the retention marketing team of an organisation…

PPC Bid Management in a nutshell

One thing that I have never blogged about here is the bid management part of pay per click marketing. I just did a search in Google to see what others have written about PPC bid management and the SERPs are dominated with details and reviews of PPC bid management tools. I found this surprising as..

PPC Landing Page Optimisation

About 5 years ago when working for a large retailer we put together a program of multivariate testing on the website checkout process in order to try and reduce the number of people abandoning their shopping basket. The results –  We managed to increase the conversion rate of the site by 11% over a 6..

The Google Knowledge Graph and SEO

This week Google announced their biggest change since 2007 and considering they make around 500 changes to their algorithm each year, some which have had massive impact on their search results, this change is potentially a game changer. Google have always held the dream of being able to understand peoples intentions through their searches and..

Google Display Network Targeting – a secret trick

The Google Display Network is one of the largest ad networks on the web – if not the largest. Through the Adwords interface you are able to target certain websites that you feel are relevant to and may be being used by your target audience. You can search for sites by keyword using the Placement..

Thoughts on the new “improved phrase and exact match”

As of today Google have announced that in mid May they will be making changes to the way they handle exact and phrase match keywords. Here is what Google say on the matter: “When people search for your products or services, they probably misspell a word every so often. In mid-May, we’re making improvements to..

Creating a CRM database for your SEO linkbuilding

I have found over the past few months that managing my link building from a spreadsheet, and often multiple spreadsheets has been getting a bit ridiculous as well as a touch unproductive. This led me to get more active on the hunt for useful tools to help me speed up the productivity of my link..

Why understanding customers’ real intentions is key to PPC success

I think that we can all agree that the main reason search engine advertising can be so effective is its ability to satisfy customer intent i.e. that people can find what they are looking for through using the search engine. I always use this single mantra when building keyword lists for our clients. It not..

How to use Pinterest

The initial furore over Pinterest finally seems to be simmering down a little, although they are still having to space out the memberships due to high demand. It is also still the fastest growing social network EVER. However, what use is it to the average small business? This post will take you through the basics..