Reading Time: 2 minThe idea of “the customer is always right” goes back to the early 1900’s. Among others who coined the phrase was hotelier Cesar Ritz, who said “If a diner complains about a dish or the wine, immediately remove it and replace it, no questions asked.” It’s not necessarily a bad policy, but can have a […]
Marketing
The highest isn’t always the best
Reading Time: < 1 minLast year I shared some data that showed that a rating on Amazon of between 4.2-4.5 stars was generally considered more trustworthy than a product with full five-star reviews. Some bad reviews mixed in (ideally with reasonable responses from the owner) tend to make users trust the great reviews even more. It reminded me today […]
Why did that site show up in the search results?
Reading Time: 2 minGoogle has historically been pretty quiet about what causes site to rank well in the search results. They’ll give high-level ideas (fast loading, great content, etc), but no specifics, and you can read many of my ideas from over the years in the SEO category on this blog. They’re still not opening up a bunch, […]
Email isn’t dead yet
Reading Time: 2 minEvery few years we hear that “email is finally dead”. It’s not. Social media, SEO, and digital ads can be great ways to help promote your business, but lowly email still generally has (by far) the best return on investment. According to a recent study from some top companies: The study showed that email-marketing ROI […]
Episode Zero
Reading Time: 2 minOver the past few years, it’s become popular for brand new podcasts to first publish an “Episode 0”, or something like “Introducing the xx podcast”. While introducing your podcast isn’t a bad idea, that’s not the real purpose of these initial episodes. Consistency is. The way they were built, with the exception of some shows […]
Too many internal links can be a problem
Reading Time: < 1 minWhen adding content to your website, linking from one of your pages to another can be a great thing! As I’ve mentioned before (and a great example of an internal link), Google ranks individual pages, not full sites. Internal links help Google move around your site and get a better feel for the structure of […]
Don’t lie to get the project
Reading Time: < 1 minSeth Godin recently published a blog post that ended with two great mottos: “You’ll pay a lot, but you’ll get more than you paid for.” “Our secret is that we don’t lie to get the project.” I agree wholeheartedly with both of those, though the second one is a little tricky. Back in 2016, a […]
Substack for easier subscriptions
Reading Time: < 1 minIf you subscribe to this blog via email, you may have noticed a slight change in the format you receive, as I’ve recently moved the subscription part of this site to my new page at Substack. From your end, essentially nothing should be different. However, if you have your own blog or other content that […]
Expectations Matter
Reading Time: < 1 minBack when I was around 12 years old, I was quite active in the Boy Scouts. We had a big luncheon that a bunch of Troops were going to, and the special guest was going to be Mr. Wizard! At the time, Don Herbert was “Mr. Wizard“, host of a fairly popular TV show on […]
Google launches “Search Console Insights”, and it’s excellent
Reading Time: < 1 minIf you have a website, Google has long offered two great (free!) tools to help you understand the visitors on your site. Google Analytics: Shows you information about the people on your site; how they got there, a bit about them, and what they looked at. Google Search Console: This is the view of your […]