Those of you who follow my writing know that I’m a bookworm. And just as I’m frequently lending books to friends (or thrusting them at their faces while ordering them to “read this,” as the case may be) I like to share great posts, resources and other items I find around the blogosphere.
Real quickly before I get into that, I’d just like to mention I’m giving away a copy of The Knack. It’s an excellent business book by Bo Burlingham and Norm Brodsky, who write for Inc magazine, and should be required reading for all the entrepreneurs, consultants and others in the web business.
Anyways, here’s some other great reading I’ve found online:
Conversion & Sales:
- How buying guides can attract new conversion-oriented traffic, with Google’s recent changes
- Track Paypal Purchases With AdWords in 5 Easy Steps (Cuz it’s a good idea to give Google more data, right? It’s not enough they’re becoming the world’s biggest affiliate thanks to all we’ve collectively fed it… :P )
- How to Get the Best Eye-Tracking Results for Your Website
- Button Balance: Using design to differentiate and prioritize buttons
- Loyalty Programs: Of Rats and Men
- Building Startup Sales Teams
Also, a miscellaneous thought on sales, for other SEO professionals. It’s longer than a tweet, but too short for its own post, hence me slipping it in here.
In poker, you have something I call the ‘threshold raise’ – the raise that hovers around the threshold where people with weaker hands will still feel comfortable with the risk. It’s not determined rationally, but it’s a function of the context – what the rest of the game’s bids are like.
In sales, you have the same threshold of risk operating for pricing. There seems to be a price range between $1000 – $3000 of acceptable risk. That’s where people are willing to try you for a test campaign, and aren’t too paranoid about the risk. Offering your first service around that range makes it easy to say yes. If you have experiences similar/different to that, feel free to chime in.
Link Building:
- OSS — Development of Psychological Warfare (via Dan Zarrella) – Useful for viral linkbait
- Link Building Ideas
- Don’t Use YouTube To Build Links
- Interview of Debra Mastaler, the Link Guru
Misc SEO:
- Ranking Factors in Google Maps – Cracking the Code @ SMX Local
- The Floating Lightbulb: Raising Prominence of Archive Pages
- How To Ask A Google Engineer For SEO Help
- Dilbert’s Boss Teaches You About UGC For Reputation Management
- What Makes A Good SEO Manager?
- Another SEO reading list… from the well-read and critically minded Branko Rihtman. I like his editing/gathering skills!
PPC:
- Changes to Google Keyword Matching Options – Anything on PPC by Dan Soha is golden. I’m a subscriber and I LOVE IT!
- Google AdWords Quality Score Factors Chart
- AdWords TM Bidding Flow Chart
- Inside AdWords: New AdWords Bidding Tutorial
- Google’s Display Ad Strategy – Giovanna’s a pretty sharp search mind, and I wish she’d share her ideas more frequently :)
