Breaking up is hard to do. But, as Portent’s President says, people remember how you enter, and how you leave. So ending a business relationship on as positive a note as possible is important. Even if the company in question never hires you back, employees change jobs, and you want them to think well of [...]

Once again, I get to subject you all to my utter lack of artistic skills. I’ve been working on a simpler diagram of the internet marketing lifecycle for about six months. It’s finally ready, I think, for a public glance. This one boils it all down to a less-pretty but hopefully more clear concept. BE [...]

If you missed today’s webinar, “SEO: 50 tips in 50 minutes,” you can get the slides here: SEO: 50 tips in 50 minutes View more presentations from Ian Lurie And, if you don’t mind giving us your e-mail address (mwahahahahahahahaha) you can get the entire recording, here: http://webinar.portent.com/webinar-vid-request/ While the Portent team and myself may [...]

Thank you to everyone who voted for me in the SEMPO board election. I’m on the board, and very excited! Congratulations to all my fellow board members – I’m looking forward to working with you: Lindsay Blankenship, Director, Search Marketing, Razorfish Chris Boggs, Director Search Media and Thought Leadership, Rosetta Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, [...]

These are the annotated slides from my presentation at SEMPDX Searchfest today. I talked about social media, having a productive routine and building a powerful campaign without sucking up 4 hours a day: Your daily social media routine – stuff that matters View more presentations from Ian Lurie

So, you’re heading on your own as an SEO consultant. Welcome to our weird little club! Before you start, you might want to make sure you’ve got: Knowledge. I really, really hope I don’t have to point this out. But you need strong knowledge of SEO: Far more than you can get in a few [...]

I did a presentation a while ago about web copywriting, specifically for leads-based and professional services businesses. Today I rewrote it for a more general audience, and sharpened up a few things. Here it is – have a look-see: Writing for leads: How professionals can market themselves online View more presentations from Ian Lurie

Google Search Plus Your World (GSPYW, for short). Social media belly button lint? Or the best damned thing since chocolate? It’s a riddle. But GSPYW builds traffic a bunch of ways. The best (so far) is the ‘Plus Box’: Question is, how does Google decide which pages and profiles get that coveted spot? Also, how [...]

I’ve been unfaithful. I wrote two articles for other sites over the weekend: The Challenge of Justifying Enterprise SEO on Search Engine Land. I talk a bit about analytics and data presentation, and how to get your boss to stop looking at you like you’re a nasty toenail fungus. And Building the perfect SEO Crawler [...]

When I wrote these exam questions, I have to admit, I didn’t think about publishing the answers. It seemed kind of… wrong. But then I thought about the havoc wreaked if all kids had the teachers’ answer keys (obscure Simpsons reference there). And I smiled in a way that makes my family nervous. So, the [...]