The Portent Blog

Featured

(A post only an SEO or Dev could love) Not too long ago, the Portent SEO team was sitting around in a meeting when we came across a 4xx level HTTP status error and couldn’t remember the meaning. Might have been a 410 or a 418… Anyway, when you have a flock of SEOs in… Read More

SEO

According to a HubSpot survey, video is now the most popular kind of content consumed online (when text based content types are spit into categories). Users are certainly more likely to consume it thoroughly since skimming a video takes more effort than written text. They either watch it or they don’t. Companies like Google and… Read More

SEO

Here are the slides and links from “Technically, SEO,” in which I ranted, raved and talked about technical SEO for marketers. This focuses on issues I found on automotive industry sites, but it all holds true everywhere. The Deck BS: Own It – Technical SEO for Marketers from Ian Lurie Random Me, on Twitter I… Read More

Design & Development

Most of my time is dedicated to dev projects that make the lives of marketers easier. Web sites, apps, tools, scripts, etc. Today however, I’m writing for web devs in an attempt to make their lives easier. And their solutions smarter. On top of that, I need to correct the approach I wrote about a… Read More

Social Media

At SEMPDX Engage 2017 I spoke about my complete lack of experience as an influence marketer. I also discussed: How to find your biggest fans How to promote their praise using social media What not to do ever ever ever when doing this Here’s the video. My bit starts at 25 minutes. Mat Siltala’s talk… Read More

Analytics

What’s a good conversion rate? I get this question a lot, and not just about conversion rates. I always say “better than what you have now.” That earns me a glare that could sterilize cockroaches. At the same time, I shove toothpicks into my toes to dull the sharp pain this question causes in my… Read More

SEO

Big agencies throw “SEO” on their services pages the way I throw exercise clothes into my suitcase: They know there’s no way in hell they’ll use it. Another “big-time” agency just did it, and I’ve got steam coming out of my ears because this means another list of Fortune 1000 clients will get second rate… Read More

PPC

Exact match is dead; long live exact match! Last Friday, Google announced that it is “expanding close variant matching to include additional rewording and reordering for exact match keywords.” In other words: “exact match” will not exactly be exact match. If you’re not a PPC nerd, exact match types are used for keywords that the… Read More

SEO

Want to get more for your money on your next SEO audit or site review? After two years of reviewing sites offering everything from dog food to process automation, (I still have no idea what that is either), I decided to put together this half-blog-post-half-PSA covering a few of the most common SEO mistakes or… Read More

SEO

Rich snippets, rich cards, knowledge graphs and panels, schema.org, JSON-LD, featured snippets, featured features, Richie Rich, KEVIN BACON! Wait, that was more than six degrees… There’s a lot of terminology out there about the different ways search engines, Google in particular, display their search results. Two of the most oft confused are the snippets, both… Read More

Internet Marketing

This is the first edition of our annual Pi in the Face column. May many follow. Note: If you’re a marketer, this post will frustrate the hell out of you. I apologize. I needed a good rant. Plus, at a conference last week I heard a speaker say, “If it doesn’t generate ROI, we don’t… Read More

PPC

I’m going to tell you something that’s a little counterintuitive: you may be hurting your AdWords or general PPC performance by trying to do too much, too fast. This idea doesn’t get a lot of air time because a lot of under-performing AdWords accounts or campaigns trace back to under-optimization or “set it and forget… Read More

SEO

Here’s the updated deck and links from my 2017 Resonate presentation. I ranted and raved about changes to the Amazon and Google algorithms. It was fun. If you missed it, alas. But at least you can look at the slides. Remember, you can ask me questions on Twitter at @portentint Amazon and Google: The State… Read More

Random

Moving. I tried to come up with an analogy for something that incites misery, throws out your back and reduces you to a gibbering lunatic while forcing you to blog using your phone as a mobile hotspot. But, after much suffering, Portent has moved two blocks south of our old location. Our new address is:… Read More

Copywriting

Last fall, I began a 200-hour certification program to become a yoga teacher. I wanted to learn more about the philosophy of yoga, strengthen my public speaking and leadership skills, and teach one or two nights a week after finishing my day at work as a Content Specialist at Portent. During the training, we learned… Read More

Analytics

What would ya say, that ya do here? If the answer is online marketing in any way, shape or form, you know the importance of having analytics configured correctly on your site. If you need help convincing anyone, take them over to Portent’s handy Marketing Stack Explainer. But wait, there’s more! Whether you’re in direct… Read More