Articles by Ian Lurie

If I say ‘Google Penguin’ to an SEO pro, they shudder. In the SEO world, Google’s Penguin update is the nastiest, scariest update since, I dunno, Florida? Here’s an explainer for all the marketers who are wondering what the hell just happened to their traffic: What’s an update? The engineers at Google constantly tune their [...]

I’ve written other posts about hiring SEO firms: How to hire good ones. How to hire bad ones. But an update’s in order: Questionnaire for an SEO agency Start each agency you interview with 10 points. Add or subtract as indicated. Ask yourself: How did this firm get in touch with you? They cold-called or [...]

Forbes published an article this week explaining why Google and Facebook could disappear in the next 5 years. I, uh, beg to differ. I wrote my thoughts on the subject in an article published on AllThingsD. You can read it here. Give it a read. I think Google will be around for a long, long [...]

We’re all talking a lot about content and social media these days. But visibility boils down to technical SEO: Ensuring that search engines can easily find and categorize every page of your site. These are the top 4 I look at first when I’m auditing a site: 1: Check server response codes You can use [...]

Base your campaigns on the ‘average’ customer. Only follow the data. Never follow the data. Skimp on content. Wait for perfection (hint – you’ll never get it). Leave design to designers (hint – you need to know about it, too). Leave development to developers (hint – see above). Micromanage. Use empty controversy as an outreach [...]

Who saved Middle Earth? No, not Frodo. His will shredded like wet toilet paper. Gollum took the lava bath, destroyed the ring, and saved everyone from a 36″ Dark Lord. Does he get any credit? Nooooooo. Nine-fingered Frodo is the hero. The ladies all swoon at Legolas and Aragorn. But not poor Gollum. Internet marketers, [...]

I’ve put in some time lately talking about what internet marketing is not. I thought I’d take a crack what internet marketing is, for a change. Internet marketing’s driven by three principles that are often in tension: Note that I didn’t say The three principles of internet marketing. These are principles of internet marketing. But [...]

OK, I don’t think Google is ruined, but it sure seems like they’ve become increasingly weird since their big IPO. I wrote a piece about it, and it just went live on Techcrunch. Read it here.

First off, I’m a cat person. I want to make that perfectly clear. It’s a high honor if I compare you to a cat. So saying a marketing agency’s clients are like cats is very favorable. In Portent’s proposals I compare my employees to rats. So really, clients are coming out way ahead. A quick [...]

No, Portent didn’t merge with another company. But we just finished merging my blog, Conversation Marketing, into the Portent web site. From now on, you can find all the same stuff I used to write on Conversation Marketing here, instead. Why’d I do it? Let me count the reasons: The rest of the team at [...]