Entries from September 2006 ↓

There is often a kind of desperation these days surrounding the subject of how to get technology to help us find more customers. We often tend to believe that if we somehow just use the right keywords, hire the right webmaster or buy the craftiest and cheapest Google Adwords, customers will flock to us. But, what if we were, in Paul Gandel’s words, “standing on the wrong platform, waiting for the wrong train?” Continue reading →

At last week’s Web Search University in Washington, D.C. Chris Sherman’s keynote speech predicted the future. Well, OK, he didn’t really predict the future, the whole future and nothing but the future. But, he did predict the future of Internet search engines – and that got our attention. Continue reading →

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this consciously, but when you do almost any search on Google or Yahoo or Ask.com these days, one of the first results is very likely to be from the Wikipedia. Continue reading →

Coach Karen called us up a couple of days ago. She has a client who wants to find some specific information and Karen figured we might help. And then she said the magic words, “And she doesn’t want to pay for it.” Continue reading →

If you watched Monday Night Football last night (I know, Monday Night is now Sunday Night – just another reason the world has become way too confusing) you watched one of the foremost actors in the world pitch a web site called yellowbook.com. Take a second to guess how much those spots cost… and you’ll only need a second, because they cost a bundle. It’s just another example of why two words – “local search” – are sweeping the world of online commerce and search engine optimization - and should be sweeping yours, too.
Continue reading →

I got our friend Curtis Cloutier from Webolutions (www.webolutions.com) to read our previous post called “Advertise Yourself - the Flat World Way.” I then called him up and interviewed him about SEO (that’s “Search Engine Optimization” which translates to “I want my web site to come up first when people do a Google search“) and Google Adwords (which are those little text ads on the right side of the screen). Everyone we meet these days wants their web site to be #1 on Google searches. Uh-huh. Curtis is a lot more politic than I am, but he and his company know a Google’s worth of stuff about both SEO and Adwords. Continue reading →

Thomas Friedman’s bestselling book, The World is Flat, continues to sit high atop the New York Times Bestseller List – and has for the past 71 weeks. That’s not too surprising when you realize (as thousands more do each week) that his book explains how technology and the Internet are empowering small companies to compete with, and even surpass, their bigger rivals.

But there are two Flat Worlds out there, folks. The first is Friedman’s “Flat World of Competition.” The second is the much seedier and less well documented “Flat World of Hucksterism.” Continue reading →