Whiz Kid Entrepreneur: Harrison Gevirtz

Earlier this year at SMX West, I met (then) 15-year-old entrepreneur Harrison Gevirtz. He was on a panel with my (then) 16-year-old daughter Chloe Spencer the owner of the Ultimate Neopets Cheats Site. Harrison blew my mind. Here’s a kid who travels the world, often times makes six figures a MONTH, and lives the high […]
Widget Best Practices

The following is from a handout I developed for my presentation on the use of widgets in online retail at the Shop.org Strategy & Innovation Forum earlier this year. It’s a checklist of widget best practices. Enjoy! (There’s also a Word doc version of this available for download: widget_checklist.doc.) Thinking of developing a widget for […]
Monitor the Back Channel

It’s hard enough presenting in front of an audience of a dozens or hundreds of your peers, let alone to be paying attention to what’s happening on Twitter at the same time. But that’s exactly what a good presenter or good moderator needs to do these days. Particularly if you’re presenting to a tech-savvy audience. […]
Bumper Sticker Wisdom

Here are some cute bumper stickers that caught my eye recently: Miracles happen. Sh*t happens. It’s a package deal. Spiritual people inspire me. Religious people frighten me. So many men, so many reasons to sleep alone. Will somebody please give George W Bush a bl**job so we can impeach him
Return a 404 When Youโre Supposed To, Or Get Dinged by Google

A friend’s website’s Google rankings have tanked after their redesign. And I think I know why. Have a look at the status codes their web server returns when you request a garbage URL (a page that couldn’t possibly exist)… #lwp-request -S www.randomcompany.com/dafsadf GET https://www.randomcompany.com/dafsadf –> 301 Moved Permanently GET https://www.randomcompany.com/search?q=dafsadf%20 –> 200 OK A 301 […]
Forrester, Retailers, and GravityStream

A new Forrester Research report came out this month, titled Retail Interactive Marketing Spend Grows Steadily. According to the report, retailers are increasing online advertising investments at a rate of 25% per year and working to get the most out of the tools in their toolkit to increase ROI in tough economic times. This includes […]
SEO Is Not Free Traffic

This article was originally published under Search Engine Land. One of the first jobs I have to do as a consultant going into an SEO engagement is to debunk the myth that SEO is โfree.โ SEO has never been, nor will it ever be, free traffic. It takes work, and that comes at a cost. […]
Redirects and SEO Best Practice

Use of the proper kind of redirects is a matter of SEO “best practice”. Every site needs to have redirects (e.g. for example, from your non-www version of your site to your www version or vice versa). And if you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table. In addition, sites evolve over time and URLs […]
Now and Then โ in photos

Ever see someone and think “Geez, that person looks totally different from how I remember him/her”? I just saw MC Hammer at the Ypulse conference last month and thought that. In fact, I didn’t even recognize him until he was introduced. Here’s a picture I snapped of him in the hallway after his session finished. […]