Comments (1) Sixteen years ago, I received a call from someone who worked for a large computer manufacturer, which was planning to add an online direct-sales program. The caller was creating a business plan for this new division of the company, and wanted to hire me to design an affiliate program.
My first question was, “What about channel conflict?”
Comments Off on AdWords’ Dot-TK Plague & the End of Automatic Placements All year, I’ve been doing battle with a never-ending series of aggressive fraudsters who use AdSense ads across many dot-tk (.tk) domains which each generate small numbers of cheap fraudulent clicks, siphoning money from any campaign which has Automatic Placements enabled.
Why does it work? It works because Google AdWords refuses to enable exclusion of placements (web sites) based on Top Level Domain (TLD). Read more »
The “Rack Unit” is a standard measurement for server height; one rack unit (U) is 1.75 inches. Read more »
Comments Off on Google Gets Creepier – pre-filled subscribe box in search ad This just seems creepy and wrong: Google (AdWords) allows advertisers to create Search ads which pre-fill forms with Google Account data. In this example, my email was pre-filled next to a “subscribe” button which doesn’t say what I’d be subscribing to — alongside a completely meaningless “Privacy” link which doesn’t disclose how the email address would be used. Read more »
Comments Off on Google’s AdWords ‘Interest’ Targeting I’ve long wondered how Google evaluates a person’s “interests” in order to display advertising that’s not displayed “in context.”
I think Google’s algorithms need tweaking, because Google has an unreasonably long memory regarding my “interests.” Read more »
Comments Off on In Praise of GTmetrix.com GTmetrix.com is an awesome web site: it analyzes your web site and provides detailed suggestions for how to improve the page-load time; this is incredibly useful when trying to diagnose the issue, “why is my web site loading to slowly?”
Note that there are multiple tabs with information: make sure to click on the “YSlow” and “Timeline” tabs to see more information.
Here are screen shots showing the information for this site (markwelchblog.com). Read more »
While reading Internet Retailer’s December 2012 profile of its chosen “Top 100” ecommerce web sites (http://www.internetretailer.com/2012/11/30/going-extra-mile), I was confused by its “Speed” ratings for the sites. Each web site was evaluated based on its page-load time, and 33 of the 100 sites were rated “unacceptable.”
The idea that many web sites succeed despite slow load times isn’t a surprise. What confused me was the scale used by Internet Retailer in assigning its speed ratings: Read more »
Over the years, I’ve encountered lots of people who are so enamored of a tool (software or web app) that they insist that I use their chosen tool to interact with them, even at the most basic level. The most recent example I’ve encountered is Google Calendar Read more »
Comments Off on SEO: Understanding Audience and Purpose(s) I don’t write much about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), despite its importance to the success of every web business. That’s because I view SEO as an integral part of every aspect of online marketing — it just isn’t a discrete function that can be managed separately. SEO is holistic.
I’ve intentionally written only in very simplistic terms about SEO: “Be Relevant and Useful” and “Common-Sense SEO.” Today, I want to emphasize the importance of audience and purpose in SEO and web marketing.
For the past 15 years, I’ve earned most of my income from my work as an individual internet marketing consultant. This year, I must finally acknowledge that I can’t continue as a “solo” consultant.
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