30 years ago, I learned how IBM qualified leads for sales. All this was brought to mind as I prepared for a session I am doing Monday in Copenhagen for the IAA on using social media for sales leads. Basically, what it says is that a well-qualified lead has all of those qualities–the budget to make the purchase, the authority to do so, a proven need for what your product or service does, and a timeline in which to take action. So, what is the real way to qualify leads? am  not sure, but remember that the goal is not to qualify leads–it is to sell stuff. MORE >>

How leading organizations assess their search marketing. Google Analytics (Photo credit: Kansir). Yesterday, Rob Petersen, Tim Peter and I gave a Webinar on using analytics to make search marketing decisions.  How is your search marketing working? Are you getting the results you want? Maybe you don’t even know how to measure results. Your analytics are essential to your initial search marketing plan and improvement plans. No matter where you are starting from, understanding how to measure where you are and take it to the next level makes all the difference. MORE >>

They say, about the news, “if it bleeds it leads” — scandal and sensationalism is what people are drawn to and the way you handle any particular situation is how you’ll be remembered rather than the situation you got into in the first place. Something’s always going to go wrong. Murphy’s law demands it. It is your mandatory tithe into the Universe. This is true about everything. guess character is what shows when things go wrong. And it’s what you do when things don’t go right that defines you. And it’s never the end of the world. MORE >>

James Mathewson is the Global Search Strategy Lead for IBM and the Search Practice Lead for the IBM Design Lab. Photo credit: Wikipedia. Last time I wrote about cleaning house and freeing up Google’s index for your best content. That’s a great antidote to Panda’s negative ranking factors that punish cluttered websites. But sometimes it’s not that easy to retire pages. In large companies like IBM, there are several brands and business units that offer products or services related to top words such as analytics or cloud. No one goes looking for white papers.  MORE >>

James Mathewson is the global search strategy lead and co-author of the book Audience, Relevance and Search: Targeting Web Audiences with Relevant Content. Panda (Photo credit: Wikipedia). Post Panda (Google’s one-year-old revolutionary search ranking algorithm that has upended old-style SEO), optimizing individual pages is more difficult and less effective than it was before Panda. Google now pays more attention to overall site cleanliness and architecture. And duplicate content is ever more problematic. You do the keyword research. In short, you do everything right. Clean house. MORE >>