Articles
March 2006
The little engines that could
Written by Neil Patel on March 30, 2006 |
The customer is always right, right? Unfortunately, sometimes doing only what customers want will hurt their business. This is a tough situation and it is our job to ensure that our customers understand what we think they should do and why. Recently, one of our clients was insisting that we optimize only for Google because they felt that most of their customers were coming from that search engine. While this might be understandable at first, here is why that path could jeopardize their business opportunity....Google - In with the new and out with the old
Written by Neil Patel on March 29, 2006 |
It's amazing what small changes to a website can accomplish. Sometimes what seems like a trivial change in design can actually turn out to produce massive results. Remember, it isn't a serious redesign we are talking about, just some carefully considered changes that have far reaching effects. Lately there has been a ton of buzz about the new Google design and these changes are great examples of what I'm talking about. If you take a look at the screenshots you can see the old versus...Unique Vistors or Visitors, Sandals or Snowshoes
Written by Neil Patel on March 28, 2006 |
Matt Belkin from Omniture wrote a blog post the other day that gave some great information about using Visitors versus Unique Visitors for traffic analysis. He gave detailed reasons why Visitors is a far better metric, but I'd say the question isn't an "or" question but an "and" question. Let me clarify what I mean here. I would use both Unique Visitors AND Visitors in your analysis. To me, they give you different information. Trying to use one or the other is like deciding between...It's your store, treat it like one
Written by Neil Patel on March 26, 2006 |
I cannot stress enough how important design is nowadays. Many companies are so focused on content, products, and services they fail to remember the importance of how their website actually looks to potential customers. Remember, your website is your store. Treat your website design like you would treat a retail storefront that you are opening. One obvious success that comes to mind is the Apple stores. They look inviting, cool, cutting edge, and stylish. When you walk into an Apple store you WANT to buy...Ecommerce tips that make people buy
Written by Neil Patel on March 25, 2006 |
Ecommerce sites have a lot of products. This makes it very difficult to improve overall conversion however here are a couple of tips that may make improving conversion a far less daunting task: Search - Make sure people have the option to search your site. Make it easy for them to find the products they want to buy. Make sure your search results page is easy to read and clear. Make sure the product titles and descriptions are short and to the point. If you...So, you want to be a copycat
Written by Neil Patel on March 25, 2006 | 2 comments
The other day I was looking at our referrers and noticed that we were getting a lot of traffic from Extra.com. I checked out the site to see what the deal was and was rather surprised to come across an exact copy of our design! Check this out: I'll admit that I was a bit flattered at first but after thinking about this I became rather peeved. First of all, what gives here? I come across designs all the time that I admire, but copying...Beating down the cost of PPC advertising
Written by Neil Patel on March 22, 2006 |
The cost of PPC advertising is growing rapidly and people aren't making the same return on investment as they used to. In order to get the most out of your currently costly campaign, here are a few tips
The Cost of Integrity
Written by Neil Patel on March 17, 2006 |
Business is business, or is it? You have to draw a line somewhere in the sand that separates the ethical companies from the unethical ones and as an SEO we have certainly had to draw this line. We were initially concerned that it was bad business practice to turn down business, but after about a millisecond of thought we decided that operating with integrity is a key value in our business and that regardless of the opportunity cost we would hold true to that value....Taxi Cab SEO
Written by Neil Patel on March 15, 2006 |
You're probably wondering the same thing as I was, what do taxi cab driver and SEO have in common? At first glance, nothing. At second glance, still nothing. So why did the taxi cab driver that took me to the airport from the SES conference say he was an SEO?
