Here’s what Google used to say about how to improve rankings in their search engine results: “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.” Here’s what they say today: “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites
I’m Swapping CEO Roles with Wil Reynolds of SEER
By For the last 6.5 years, I’ve had a fairly singular role as CEO of a venture-backed, software startup in Seattle. While that job has brought massive amounts of growth and learning and challenges with it, I’ve often wondered what it would be like to step into someone else’s shoes and live their life for a
Vision-Based Framework
By Some companies exist primarily (or exclusively) to make money. Others exist for a variety of non-financial (or pseudo-financial) reasons. But in much of the research about companies that have gone from startup to scale to world-changing status, observers found a common architecture. This architecture is vision-based, and mission driven. It starts with a core purpose
The Growth of Web Marketing Fields
By I’m always interested to see how the field of web marketing is changing over time and what skills, tactics, and practices are receiving particular attention. One of the ways I track this is to look at results from several sites on a semi-annual basis, including: LinkedIn’s bio searches SimplyHired’s Job Trends Indeed’s Job Trends Google’s Keyword Trends
Generosity & Entitlement
By I’ve been trying something new at Moz. I schedule 90 minutes every week or two for “office hours,” and invite anyone from any team at the company to come visit and chat about whatever’s on their mind. So far, attendance has been sparse (only 1 person the first week, ~10 the 2nd week, and 4
It Just Depends What You Want to Consider
By I know that I am among the luckiest, most blessed human beings to have ever existed on the planet since the dawn of time. I’m not in the 1% or the 0.1%, I’m in the 0.0000000000-well-you-get-the-point-001. That’s not exclusively because of finances (no debt and $26,961.98 in the bank as of tonight) or the era
Well, He’s Not Going to Get Very Far
By Company culture is incredibly fragile. It’s hard for founders/CEOs/execs to understand how little faith and trust people have in us when we stand up at a meeting and say “we believe in our culture” or “we put values first.” That skepticisim has often been built up over years or decades of being let down. People
If Management is the Only Way Up, We’re All F’d
By Geraldine used to love her job at Cranium (the board game startup in Seattle, prior to the Hasbro acquisition & layoffs). She wrote questions for the board games, and copy for the boxes and marketing materials. She was good at it. But, something weird happened – they tried to promote her. I remember her coming
We’ll Work for Peanuts. But We Won’t Work Without Meaning.
By For the first 6 years of my career, I made less than $20,000/year. For 18 months, I made more, but then I made less for another year after that, so it averaged out. It was a tough time (and I’ve written about it before so won’t rehash here), but I never stopped learning, stopped growing,
So Why Do I Have the Platform & the Recognition?
By Louis C.K. is one of the most entrepreneurial and authentic self-marketers in the entertainment world. I want to write loads about his email campaigns, his online ticket-sales, and the consistency of his persona, but tonight, it’s very late, I’ve just spent 22 hours on planes and in airports, and so this will have to do.