If you run business offline and online, it is very likely that your offline and online activities are integrated in a great measure. And I’m pretty sure that here you think: oh no, another Captain Obvious article!

But today I am speaking on a very slippery topic, which is not about emergence, or integration, or any other abstract marketing word.

Today I would like to point out some things regarding the confluence of offline and online competitor clusters and ways of analyzing them apart and altogether.

Case Study #1. Nike, or when your partners turn smarter than you

Imagine that you are a Marketing Specialist at Nike. In this case you are able to name your main competitors even if I wake you up in the middle of the night: Puma, Adidas, Reebok. Good!

I believe these brands have severe competition offline. But strong offline presence does not mean a strong online brand. So let us switch to the SERP and see the competition there.

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Using freelance copywriter's services is common practice now. Many Internet marketers are individual entrepreneurs and it is not profitable for them to have an in-house copywriter. Even SEO companies often use freelance workforce to reduce expenditure. But working with a freelance copywriter raises a very important question:

How to explain to a copywriter what you need

Yes, it is a very important question. You have a doer that has never worked for your company and hardly knows anything about it, and you assign him a task to write a perfect text for any of your business purposes.

I often hear people saying that they are not going to spend time on writing a task for a copywriter almost as big as the expected copy itself, as it is not profitable and they could have written the text themselves, unless they wouldn't turn to copywriters' services. Read more »

If you are reading this article, you probably know what a landing page is. At least we hope so, because we can't wait to share our tips with you instead of telling you boring basic things which are two clicks away from you in Google.

Well, while most marketers know what a landing page is, not all of them clearly understand what split testing is and how it can be useful for a client. I believe most of SEO folks are aware of basic landing page rules and build their pages knowing what they do. But just using these tips is not enough if you are not satisfied with conversion or want to squeeze more results from your landing page.

SEO cannot be over, it can be paused or stopped, and there is also something you can do to improve the results. Landing page split testing allows you to understand what works best. Read more »

Do you remember how scared you were when you first learned how to swim? Do you remember how exactly your body attempted to move and react to a changing surrounding? First you were probably panicking, and then you were trying to move just as if you were touching the ground. Finally you gave up and learned to do it quite the other way round. You developed a new muscle memory and realized that swimming and walking have very little in common but both activities can be equally fun.

Practically any social media strategy has a resembling life circle. Firstly you don't have a clue what's this all Twitter/Facebook/Google+ is about and want to run away to cold-calling, constant spam emails and sales pitches like my-name-is-Jeff-and-we-guarantee-you-number-one-position-in-Google-in-two-weeks-or-your-money-back. Then you're trying to do Social Media just as if it were any other old traditional type of Marketing, but the problem is that it's not old, it's not traditional and it's not straight-forward. Eventually you learn how to do, what I personally call, the right thing and become more or less decent in Social Media, but that's not what I am going to talk about.
The transition from each phase is painful, scary and soaked with sweat. The goal of this article is trying to understand what we are or were all doing wrong on the second base (I mean SMM, not love affairs).

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“In the future, fortune could well favor those who didn’t sell their good domain names too cheaply, or too boldly”

Frank Schilling

Picking a right domain for your website has been a part of SEO basics for several years now.

A website address is not only a way to reach your page using a browser. It is also a part of branding: domain explains a company’s name or product, gives some ideas about your business sector and simply is a thing to remember and associate with a brand.

Choose a superb and catchy website address, play with the company name and words that describe some essence and purpose of your page, because this is a great way to boost your brand awareness even before a detailed SEO campaign is started.

There are a lot of options you can use to make your domain work for you. But today we are not speaking of keywords, website name length and using a brand name in it. There is an important issue about your website which is a top-level domain (TLD). Simply defined, TLD is the last part of a full domain name. For google.com TLD is obviously .com. Read more »

Somehow I just can't picture Joe the marketer making bank on Pinterest. Repinning and liking pins? Sure. Making money and driving traffic to his site? Nope. Don't see it happening. Here's why.

"I want to pin!"

Meet Joe. An online marketer blogging about tech, with a decent following on Twitter, Facebook and (maybe even) Google+.

For the past few months he keeps reading about this Pinterest thing. It's making headlines all over the place. Mashable can't stop talking about these exciting Pinterest stats. A look at Compete alone is worth a million words. Joe is pumped. He is so ready to pin.

Question is how does Joe's pinning bring money for his biz? Read more »

I may get fired for writing this post but the heck with it. It’s time to vent. About SEO, online marketing, priorities, goals and, quite simply, a sense of purpose in business, and life. As you read, ponder these two short and simple words: long run. Read more »