Every now and then a marketing effort hits the jackpot and the lines form and the cash register rings. Someone writes a blog that goes viral and brings in oceans of traffic. Your PR firm gets you placement in a hot pub. Oprah recommends your book.

But mostly marketing is disciplined day-to-day work on endless details, what was called in the old days, "licking stamps and envelopes." Search engine optimization¹ is just such detail work. Once you understand basic principles, it's not magic or clandestine, it's just work. But it's important work and must be done.

Gourmet Magazine just folded. Blogger and SEO¹ expert Ian Lurie takes Gourmet's management to task with the premise that maybe if the magazine had done its SEO detail work, its massive and valuable content treasury might have been revealed to the Internet and kept the magazine prosperous.

Lurie does his detail work exposing sloppy page title practices and way too many temporary redirects, among other sins. These reflect a stunning lack of attention to marketing detail.

The shareholders of Gourmet have a bone to pick with the magazine's management.