John Doherty's Blog

09 Oct

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 7 comments

The Myth of Overnight Success

America seems to be enamored with the idea of “overnight success”. We see people who become seemingly overnight sensations, often through discovery on Youtube, and are catapulted into the limelight. We see people on TV who become hyper-successful because they were on a reality show or something of the like. These people seem like “overnight successes”. I don’t think there’s any such thing, though.

Examples

Let’s look at a few of my favorite examples. Read more about The Myth of Overnight Success …

02 Oct

John Doherty Posted in Uncategorized 18 comments

Why Google Webmaster Tools Impression Data is Worthless

One of the hardest parts of consulting, in my opinion, is figuring out which metrics matter to a business, and then reporting on those metrics to the client. Oftentimes, in my experience, businesses are not even sure which metrics to report on, so they report on as many as possible so as to not miss out on any important metrics.

Over time, I’ve better learned (though I’m admittedly still not incredible at it) to help my clients realize which metrics are important to their businesses, and more importantly often their bosses. Read more about Why Google Webmaster Tools Impression Data is Worthless …

19 Sep

John Doherty Posted in Search Engine Optimization 27 comments

The Best SEO Blogs – Custom Search Edition

I was just chatting with my good buddy Dave Minchala about a recent change I saw in Google Maps (tl;DR HotelFinder is now integrated into it for me). A big long tweet chain started that brought in the heavy hitters of Local Search. Dave said:

@dohertyjf forehead slapping moment: have a custom search engine that includes @edmontonseo @mblumenthal @nyagoslav and @adamgsteele blogs

— David C. Minchala (@daveminchala) September 19, 2012

That got me thinking – why not build it and share it? And while I’m at it, why not do it for the blogs that I know and trust and always go to for more information?

So here are two custom search engines for you to do just that. Read more about The Best SEO Blogs – Custom Search Edition …

07 Sep

John Doherty Posted in Marketing One comment

Agile Project Management

There has been a lot of buzz around agile marketing/the agile methodology in the SEO/online marketing space in the past month or so.

I blame Jonathan Colman. First he did an interview here on this site, then he spoke at Mozcon, then he did a Whiteboard Friday, and all along the way for the past couple of years he has done presentations that have shaken things up.

He’s gotten SEOs started talking and thinking about agile marketing and project management. As SEOs/marketers, we’re not able to make developers get things done faster, but we are able to optimize how quickly we get things done for our clients (and then the work is onto them), unless we are doing the work directly on their sites for them in which case we are able to affect that timing.

So where and how do agile practices intersect with marketing? What if you’re a consultant – how do you do it? I’ve worked with a good number of clients up to this point, so I’d like to share with you my methodology for it. Now remember, I’m not one of those consultants who talks to their client, then goes away and prepares a 100 page document and presents it to them, then follows up with a phone call to discuss it. Read more about Agile Project Management …

31 Aug

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 16 comments

Building Landing Pages That Rank for SEO

I’ve seen an alarming trend recently in startup websites. Most want to follow this model:

It’s not uncommon to see this sort of page on a startup’s website:

It’s super simple, just a few points, and a form (and this even asks for your phone number. Talk about asking for too much on the first date). And the reality is that it’s not going to rank for anything substantial because there is simply nothing useful on the page for the search engines to index and rank.

Today let’s talk about the difference between squeeze pages (directed towards conversion) and ranking pages (that can also convert, but will do so at a lower conversion rate). Read more about Building Landing Pages That Rank for SEO …

23 Aug

John Doherty Posted in Search Engine Optimization 9 comments

Letting Keyword Research Guide Business Decisions

The SEO community often writes about using keyword research, related searches, or analytics mining (though less often in the past few months because of rising [not provided] numbers) to inform content creation initiatives and ideas. These initiatives, of course, are meant to increase traffic to the site and validate our existence and the existence of our budgets.

But what if we took a different view on keyword research and used it to inform our business and product decisions, or at the very least our decisions to target other keywords within those areas? That’s what I want to talk about today. Read more about Letting Keyword Research Guide Business Decisions …