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Google webmaster tools + web analytics come together for a comprehensive view of how your site performs in Google unpaid search. Uncover "not provided" data, better understand your audiences, and monitor SEO and engagement metrics.
Learn More - My book Marketing in the Age of Google, has been called the “search marketing bible” and "first must-read-to-survive business book of the twenty-first century". Buy your copy today.
About Vanessa Fox
I write and speak about the search engine industry and searcher behavior and help companies with online strategy and audience engagement. I'm fascinated by our searching culture and how it's shifted the way we seek out and consume information.In 2010, I wrote Marketing in the Age of Google, which I updated and released as a second edition in 2012.
In 2008, I founded Nine By Blue and Blueprint Search Analytics, which I sold in 2013.
I spent 2013 traveling the United States in an RV, working from a different city every day.
Before all of that, I worked at Google, where I built Webmaster Central and helped launch sitemaps.org.
Now I'm CEO of Keylime Toolbox, software that generates online performance insights from Google Webmaster Tools, web analytics, and server logs for organizations of all sizes.
I also provide strategic and technical SEO consulting for organizations of all sizes.
Girl Meets Road
In 2013, I worked from a different city (or truck stop or campground) every day, traveling the country in my Roadtrek 170 and documented it all at Girl Meets Road.Archives
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Mastadon
September 10, 2011
Stop Working So Hard
Sometimes working really hard isn’t enough. Sometimes it’s even the wrong thing to move you forward. I was thinking about this the other day, not as I was running my company and pondering being the “duct tape” of my organization vs. the leader who creates a sustainable business framework, but as I was attempting to steer a three person kayak in Elliott Bay.
My sister was in the front of the kayak and my seven year old niece was in the middle. The kayak purveyor had kindly given my niece a paddle. My sister, not an experienced kayaker, but a very nice and lovely person, would become alarmed that we were heading too close to a pier or the shore or a boat and would frantically paddle in an attempt to move the kayak in another direction. Meanwhile, I would press one foot a few inches on a pedal that controlled the rudder, and the kayak would drift into the right direction. My sister would breathe a sigh of relief.
My niece jumped right in to help: paddling backwards, her paddle kicking up lots of water at me, generally having a great time. These efforts, while vast, did not actually propel the kayak where we needed to go.
What propelled us was the rudder. And more directly, my foot pressed a few inches on a pedal.
We’ve all scoffed at the ridiculous “work smarter, not harder” motivational posters because sometimes, there’s work to be done and you just have to roll up your sleeves and do it. But sometimes, you just need to make sure you’ve got the pedal hooked up to the rudder.
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