Archive for August, 2010

Watch out for dubious domain renewal direct mail offers

I’m really busy. So when I got a domain renewal notification letter yesterday I almost renewed my blancminge.com domain without thinking twice.  Luckily something didn’t feel right and I double checked first.  According to the letter ’privatization’ means I can choose who to renew my domains with. I don’t have to stick with my original domain Registrar. Anyone and his [...]

Replace underscores and make Google happy

Are your website’s page names full of underscores? If so it’s time to replace them. Google prefers dashes to underscores. They keep life simple for people too. After all, it’s much easier to read something like freelance-copywriting-services than freelance_copywriting_services.  Once you’ve renamed your files, don’t forget to do a 301 redirect. Otherwise you’ll break all your inbound links, lose valuable link ‘juice’ and drop page rank. There [...]

webuyanycar.com… top earworm material – but poor SEO?

I heard a bloke in the supermarket queue humming the tune from WeBuyAnyCar.com‘s brilliant direct response TV advert yesterday. If I’d created it I’d be chuffed to bits. Why? because it’s obviously powerful enough to become an ‘earworm’. What’s an earworm? It’s when you get a persistent, looping tune in your head that you can’t [...]

SEO hierarchy of needs

Some things need no explanation. Here’s a case in point. Thanks to Fuzz One for  this excellent piece of infographics describing the SEO hierarchy of needs, discovered in their archives:    

EON writes perfect customer email copy

We switched to EON last year. I’ve been really impressed by their direct marketing in general – and their copywriting in particular.  Their website is written beautifully in perfect plain english. Their tone of voice is full of personality. In fact everything they’ve sent so far, whether by email or snail mail, has been a triumph in rock solid customer communications.  What’s so [...]