Summertime, and the livin’ is easy… and so is the learnin’ if you’re going to be in Los Angeles on July 19th. Read on for details and a 15% discount code.

BlueGlass LA is going to be an incredible conference, there is no doubt in my mind. The lineup of speakers is pretty ridiculous . I’m psyched to finally meet Dave McClure in person, who I’ve known since his PayPal days way back in the late ’90s. Dave sponsored the LED Digest right during the dot-com crash of early 2000 and it really meant a lot to me at the time. Dave, you’re good people, let me buy you a drink next week.

BlueGlass will take a bit …

AudetteMedia has been using Advanced Web Ranking & Link Manager for over 2 years. This software works exceptionally well for automating SEO reporting, gaining actionable insights into rankings, and tracking metrics such as site backlinks, link text, and indexed pages. It also has a decent keyword research tool.

The quick response time their support team has exhibited is immediately noteworthy. We’ve never had to wait for more than a day.
Advanced Web Ranking
SEO rock star Aaron Wall has recently posted an overview of Advanced Web Ranking, explaining that this software has been a re-occurring recommendation coming out of forum discussions. Rather than diving into what he has already covered, we wanted to highlight a few key features of Web Ranking …

During a marketing meeting the other day, while on a spitfire about how awesome social media is, a client interrupts to ask me “SO, what is your one favorite social site?” While I was tempted to answer with, come to be known as my ‘catch phrase’ - “it depends” - I refrained and simply answered, “Twitter.”

Part of me still wants to answer with “it depends” because it really does depend… I am not going to tell the client wanting to simply answer customer service complaints that Flickr is totally where you want to be, man. Just like I’m not going to point the client with gobs of multimedia to share singly to Twitter. But at the end of the day, …

The allure of online marketing is the ability to measure, measure and measure some more. But what’s the value of all that data without actionable items to move the needle on your company’s bottom line? Nadda.

In his latest book, Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability & Science of Customer Centricity, Avinash Kaushik makes more meaning of all that wonderful data, with perhaps hundreds of actionable items you could do right now to begin pushing that needle. Avinash starts with some of the basics – traffic sources, key failure points, click density, segmentation – and jumps off from there, with good ideas on quantifying the impact of …

The Internet has changed the marketing world.

Now, that’s hardly a revelation of any sort; in fact it is, at this point, probably common knowledge. And while it may seem, in retrospect, as though the Internet came along and immediately revolutionized traditional marketing, the truth is that the marketing industry has changed as the Internet has grown. The revolutionary nature of the Internet, then, has resulted in the evolutionary age of marketing.

While some will eagerly point out that it took traditional marketers too long to crawl up out of the primordial muck, as it were, it can also be argued that marketers simply reacted only with the urgency necessary; as the urgency increased, marketing executives around the world eventually met …

In early 2009 I was sitting at a lunch table at the SMX West conference, when I met this really smart guy named George Michie. I’d heard about the PPC expertise of The Rimm-Kaufman Group, of course, but didn’t know any of the principal players. George and I hit it off pretty much instantly. We shared many of the same perspectives on search, on agencies, on the respective challenges of SEO and PPC, and on industry pricing models. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch regularly online.

George was kind enough to conduct an interview with me recently on the RKG Blog, and I wanted to return the favor. Please find our dialogue below.

6 PPC Questions for George

At what point …

As a serial entrepreneur with a high level of risk tolerance (and severe ADD), I never thought I would write a post like this. I’m typically more Ready - Fire - Aim. But these are not typical times.

If you’re reading this you’re probably engaged in some type of internet business, perhaps ecommerce, perhaps online marketing, perhaps technology. If so, you are among some of the most fortunate people in the United States as internet business is one of the few bright spots in today’s economy. Report after report speak to the growth of internet related endeavors, while most of the economy is deep in the throes of recession.

The Wire
The perimeter of military outposts is called “the wire.” Going off …

Black Swans, Buggies, Books & Shoes, VC’s,
A Threat to Google?, AIPDA’s

Have you correctly defined what business your company is in? Do you define your company by the products you offer or by the needs you meet for your customers? Perhaps the most critical thing you can do when building a company is to properly identify your mission.

This becomes of critical importance when there is rapid and drastic change. In his book “The Black Swan”, Nassim Taleb discusses uncertainty and how dramatic and highly impactful events not only will happen - they are happening more often. As improvements in technology and especially communications gallop forward at an ever increasing rate, one of the effects is that geography, …

2009 has been a big year for social media. Many of the sites have proven, in some eyes, that they can stick around and social media won’t just be the “fanny pack” fad of the industry. Although, those were pretty cool… A purse that buckles around the waste and wait, guys can sport it too? Radical. Well, come 1997 this was pretty much obsolete. Not so much the case for social media.

Social media marketing isn’t a fad – it’s becoming an important and integral part of online marketing and a ship your business should set sail on. By rolling …

Little things matter. Star Wars Kid & luck. 4-year-old brains. Butterflies & tornadoes. Irrelevant fractals.

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
- Robert Burns, “To a Mouse”

It’s indisputable that social media has enabled effective viral marketing. There has never been greater opportunity to generate positive word of mouth about your product or service. Done properly, some level of success is more or less guaranteed. Where things get a little less certain is when the goal is to develop a viral promotion that is intended to become a huge hit - one that multiplies geometrically across …