I know it sounds corny, but it’s true. The conference last week was a life-changing event for me. So much of what I learned from the pros (and these people are truly at the top of their professions) coincided with what I’ve learned on my own and what I’ve been espousing to my clients. The puzzle pieces fit together.

The site metrics were terrible this week. Only eighteen visitors and an average time on site of just 17 seconds.

Of the five people who came to the site through a search, only one used a keyphrase that’s appropriate for what Bolen does. That was “advertorials for insurance”. Effective advertorials are one of my strong suits. They require a rare skill set (one that combines journalistic reporting with an ability to… Continue reading Google Analytics - Week of 8/3 thru 8/9...

Heather is the chair of the Direct Marketing Association’s Search Engine Marketing Council, the author of Successful Search Engine Copywriting (the benchmark work on the subject), and a petite, caffeine-fueled spitfire.

She’s dyed her hair red since this photo was taken, so the ’spitfire’ label really fits.

Heather is one of the very… Continue reading Heather Lloyd-Martin - SEO Copywriting...

This is a critical area in leveraging a website to close business, and Andrew Palmer is a master online marketer. His sweet spot is right at the juncture between content and search engine marketing. The two overlap with each other and with search engine optimization (which is tomorrow’s topic at the conference). I really enjoyed Andrew’s presentation. He’s a no BS guy with a sense of… Continue reading Andrew Palmer - Website Conversion...

This morning’s session was very different from yesterday’s. Matt is focused on a specific kind of email marketing. I don’t think he even knows what B2B is. His session was valuable none the less… mostly from a generic copywriting perspective.

Remember he’s the Zen Master. Some of what follows is a bit out there, but I agree with most of what he had to say. Here’s my synopsis of his rules… Continue reading Matt Furey "The Zen Master"...

Nick Usborne just finished delivering an all day seminar. It was valuable, educational and fun. There’s no way I’ll have time to synopsize it all, but I’ll be using the lessons learned on my site and for clients. As I use what I learned today, I’ll blog about it.

Just a quick overview of today’s highlights:

• online copy is different from print, print copy always belonged to commerce
• online has always belonged to

I figured this past week’s analytics wouldn’t tell me much. I thought they’d be the same as the week before because I haven’t made any changes to my website yet.

Wrong!

And this taught me a valuable lesson. Actually, retaught me.

Three website related but offline occurrences were different between the two weeks. This week I had much less traffic than… Continue reading Bolen Website Analytics from 7/27 to 8/02...