By Scott at Medium Blue

If you own or work with a search engine optimization company, or even if you're just hoping to better your search engine placement, then you are probably aware of the recent acquisition frenzy that took hold among the major search engines. Google......

By Scott at Medium Blue

There are many keyphrase tools out there, but any quality search engine optimization company should know that they are in no way replacements for true market research. When one is embarking on a campaign of marketing on the Internet, it is important......

By Scott at Medium Blue

There are many keyphrase tools out there, but any quality search engine optimization company should know that they are in no way replacements for true market research. When one is embarking on a campaign of marketing on the Internet, it is important......

By Scott at Medium Blue

Nearly all search engines utilize spiders (which are also known by their original name, robots) to go out and scour the web looking for web pages. These search engine spiders then bring the data back to be indexed by the engine. Since roughly......

By Scott at Medium Blue

Have you ever been surfing the web and come upon Internet advertising that provides a direct solution for something that you've been researching lately? Did you think that it might be related to your computer cookies, or did you chalk it up to......

By Scott at Medium Blue

If the buzz is to be believed, Sam's Club is now a search engine optimization company that is targeting the local search market aggressively. The fact is, this isn't something new; it's just recently come to the forefront. Sam's Club has partnered......

By Scott at Medium Blue

As any good search engine optimization company knows, in search, more so than any other medium, you have a very short window of opportunity in which to engage your prospect. The only way to get a solid competitive advantage in this arena is to......

By Scott at Medium Blue

It's a common question that companies who are considering hiring a search engine optimization company often face - is this something that we can do in-house? More importantly, can we do this in-house and get the same results that an expert search......

By Scott at Medium Blue

Until recently, there were five major players in the search engine world: Google, MSN, AOL, Ask.com, and the Yahoo! search engine. These top Internet search engines quickly could be narrowed down to four, however; AOL uses the Google algorithm and......

By Scott at Medium Blue

As of this writing, there are five top Internet search engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com, and while Google and Yahoo! get a lot of the press (particularly lately), the Ask.com search engine is a rather interesting engine that deserves a......

By Scott at Medium Blue

Roughly a year ago, local search engine optimization was all the rage - the new frontier in search engine marketing. For a while, it seemed that everyone was interested in the local search angle - even multi-national companies. However, for many......

By Scott at Medium Blue

AOL, once considered a pioneer in internet technology, has fallen on hard times over the years, unable to devise an effective branding strategy. A failed merger with Time-Warner, a non-focus on search while Google built an empire (the AOL search......

By Scott at Medium Blue

So, you are the marketing manager of your firm, and you've finally decided to pull the trigger and hire the search engine optimization company that you've been talking to for months. The budget has been cleared, the SEO firm is ready to start, and......

By Scott at Medium Blue

We often deal with clients that are planning to "revamp" their sites with Flash, with SEO having already generated tremendous gains in their sales. The thing that we most dread to hear is that they've hired an experienced "Flash designer" that will......

By Scott at Medium Blue

The most ambitious Internet retailers, hoping to emulate the style and online influence of Amazon.com and other recognized brands, tend to aim for sprawling electronic retail websites that may look pretty but accomplish little else. If all the push......

By Scott at Medium Blue

Please bear with me as I go through a brief history of basic online advertising. The evolution of targeted online advertising is interesting, because I believe the perceived harmlessness of early advertising technology and targeting tactics lulled......

By Scott at Medium Blue

Even with the cookie-type behavioral advertising technology, there was a way for users to prevent these ads from targeting them. They could set their machines not to accept any cookies at all by setting their browser security setting to high. This......

By Scott at Medium Blue

When we last left Yahoo!, Jerry Yang (CEO) and the rest of the board had just spurned Microsoft's $44.6 billion takeover bid for the supposedly greener pastures of potential deals with AOL, News Corporation, and/or Google. The rejection of......

By Scott at Medium Blue

Google Street View, a Google Maps feature that lets users see images of streets and the surrounding areas, continues to generate controversy. Since its launch in May 2007, the feature has prompted questions about whether it constitutes an invasion......

By Scott at Medium Blue

Many companies make the mistake of spending money in areas where it's not necessary. Take, for example, companies pumping marketing dollars into increasing traffic on the website. It's great to get more traffic, but that is just the first step. Now......

By Scott at Medium Blue

"I want to be number one on Google for (insert hyper-competitive keyphrase here)." It's usually the first thing we hear in terms of search engine optimization - a company wants to be in that coveted top spot on Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and MSN. No......

By Scott at Medium Blue

It's a fact of life in business that when there's an economic downturn, the first thing that's usually cut is available marketing spend, typically an unfortunate byproduct of accounting's inability to justify costs without hard data in place. While......

By Scott at Medium Blue

In the paid search world, one of the most overlooked elements of campaign success is geo-targeting. For national advertisers, PPC geo-targeting is an absolute must; however, few are utilizing this tool to its full potential. Unlike traditional......

By Scott at Medium Blue

In recent weeks, we've noticed a surge in clients calling us to ask questions like "what's up with Bing?" Or, "are you optimizing for Bing?" Even "are you taking advantage of Bing?" In other words, people want to know that their search engine......

By Scott at Medium Blue

Achieving internal buy-in, leveraging your existing assets, and understanding the unique challenges of outsourcing to a search engine optimization company The powerful capabilities of organic search engine optimization (SEO) are now a highly......

By Scott at Medium Blue

Achieving internal buy-in, leveraging your existing assets, and understanding the unique challenges of outsourcing to a search engine optimization company This is part two of the article Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix. Read Part......

By Scott at Medium Blue

As a search engine marketing company, we are often asked by clients and prospects if there's a basic philosophy when it comes to organic search engine optimization and paid search advertising. "Is one tactic more favorable than another? How do I......

By Scott at Medium Blue

Allow me to offer a pre-emptive caveat - I own a successful search engine marketing company. Like most businesses, we are constantly trying to expand our client base - primarily through using the same search engine and internet marketing methods......

By Scott at Medium Blue

As part of a comprehensive search engine optimization campaign, gaining inbound links to your website is critical. But what exactly does this entail, and how should you most effectively go about gaining these types of valuable links? When an arduous......

Prepare for Successful PPC Campaigns Before You Pay for a Single Click

By Scott at Medium Blue

As a PPC management company, we are often called upon to "fix" PPC campaigns that are not performing at an acceptable level (or are not performing, period). What we often discover is that these campaigns cannot be "tweaked" into success, because......