First, Happy 4th of July to all my US readers. There are many people talking about the death of SEO. Yeah, I know, you are contemplating closing this post. Stay with me. Well, if you are a seasoned search marketing veteran, you are free to go. There is nothing here that is going to be earth shattering. But I have seen too much recently to not say something. SEO is not going anywhere but it has changed. Long gone are the days of "tricks" ...

This post has been brewing for sometime but it appears I waited too long to be the first. The Huffington Post wrote about this issue and linked to the Consumerist story of the same kind. I would like to give a first hand user's point of view. I am hoping we can all learn something about email marketing, customer service, social media, and the impact of a bad idea on all of those. OKCupid Email First, I want you to see the actual email I was ...

It is no secret that I spend a good amount of my year at conferences. In the past year, I have been working on my own and needed to be at as many as possible for networking and client development. Now that I am with Distilled, I can be a little picker about what shows I attend and how often. When first approached about Blue Glass LA, I knew nothing about it, only that Chris Winfield, Brent Csutoras, and Tony Adam were behind it. That in and ...

Warning: This is entirely a personal post, but if you live in the Austin area and interested in a personal trainer, keep reading. Or if you're just curious about the randomness of my life. There is a new face in the Austin Personal Training scene, and he happens to be my brother. Brian Morris just finished his certification from PFTA here in Austin. He will soon be starting as a personal trainer on some lucky gym's staff, but is also looking ...

There is a large amount of hoopla over the Google UI change. This post was inspired by one over at WordStream asking if Google was the new Bing. I'll say what a few people have said already, but I have a little more ranting behind it as well. Google's new look is not Bing, it's Ask. [caption id="" align="alignright" width="216" caption="2006 Matt Cutts as the Zombie Jeeves"][/caption] A while ago (and we are talking years) at SMX Advanced ...

Folks in this room understand that the quality of a search engine depends heavily on the relevance of advertising, and the relevance of advertising relies on the volume of bids. Steve Ballmer, MSFT Sorry, Steve but I beg to differ. This was a quote from the SMX West show in March 2010. While I get his point, and he was speaking to a room of search marketers, there is something flawed about his logic. When Google started its upward climb, ...

We all know I love Raven Tools. I'm not shy about it, and no they don't pay me. Well sorta, my affiliate link is over there to the side. But today I am not here to talk about their reports, tools, or awesome integration with my other favorite tool, Linkscape. Today is about The Hunt. What is the hunt? Raven started this game in which they hide clues across the interwebs. The clues are on their site and other Search Marketing blogs. They did ...

Note: This is a totally personal entry and has no SEO/PPC advice or tips. I have been saying that this is the year I would travel for me, do all the things I have been meaning to do, but couldn't do while in class. I went skiing in Breckenridge in January, went to Seattle in February, and decided to make a road trip to Winnipeg, Canada in March. You see, a flight from Austin to Winnipeg is really expensive! There are few airlines that make ...

For the most part, when I come across an issue on a site, I just search for the solution and someone has previously identified the solution. Last week I came across a problem that I didn't know how to deal with and neither did anyone else. Issue: In optimizing a client's website, I came across some images that might seem unsuitable for children. Not vulgar or crude, and were there in a health care sense, but were still not suitable for ...

Click here if you just want the LiveBall Review without the background story. Background I am not a tools type of search engine marketer. Well, in terms of PPC bid management tools. I love Raven Tools and SEOmoz and some of the newer PPC tools like WordStream. (Yes, some of those are affiliate links) There are some tools developers in the PPC space that I keep hearing about but have never seen. For the most part I don't have the clients ...