Lately, I’ve been feeling like a grade schooler punished along with the rest of the class for one student’s bad behavior. With Google’s Pandas, Penguins and other pandemonium-producing updates yet to come, we’re all Bart Simpson being forced to write on the SEO chalkboard, “I will not outsource link building to third-world countries that spam [...]

A few years ago I stepped into a role as an information architect and user experience designer at a Portland ad agency. Coming from a background in search marketing, this was quite a bit of a change for me. The first thing I noticed was that SEO & UX should really be a more integrated [...]

For someone with only one head, I wear a lot of hats.  Most people have jobs they can explain in a sentence (“I’m a doctor / librarian / deep sea diver.”)  But I’m not one of those people: I’m an Account Strategist for Portent. As such, I find myself in all manner of situations, solving [...]

Pin It “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” -Mark Twain It’s been said that SEO is dead. It’s been said a lot, actually. But no, this is not another dumb, disguised, fake controversy “death of SEO” linkbait article. No. This is a fun, full-disclosure, zero-controversy death of SEO linkbait article. Now that you’re done [...]

And you thought it was kittens and porn!  (There’s plenty of that, too…) Funny people are popular people. How else can we explain an average-looking dude like Jason Sudekis scoring some of the hottest Betties in Hollywood?  But when X = funny, well, that’s another story. And as marketers – hockers of hope, deliverers of [...]

The last week of February, search marketers from around the world assembled in sometimes-sunny San Jose, CA to geek out and discuss the latest internet marketing trends. Due to massive generosity from the Portent C-Suite I had the privilege of attending. For those of you who were unable to attend SMX West 2012, this post [...]

Though not as popular as it used to be, email remains a viable component of a good marketing strategy. When designing email templates, it’s important to consider the wide array of devices and email clients available. Follow these simple tips to make sure your message is coming across clearly on every platform and not making [...]

Friends, SEOmans, eMad Men— LEND IAN YOUR EARS. Tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. (PST), Ian Lurie, CEO and Webfather of Portent, Inc., will give an exclusive webinar at SEOmoz.  His free-to-all-comers presentation “Data-Driven Content” will illuminate, educate, inform and otherwise rock your search marketing world.  (We hope.) Topics Ian will cover include: Why great content is [...]

For us in the internet marketing community, Twitter is the best way to get the latest insights from all the top minds in our field. The world of SEO is always changing, and if you’re working off old information you could be doing more harm than good to your website. In order to stay ahead [...]

When you run an ad campaign in Facebook to get more fans for your business page, you’re able to analyze your performance using Facebook Insights. Recently, Facebook completely removed the old version of Insights and made their new version mandatory. If you’re not familiar with the new Insights, they feature more in-depth and granular information [...]