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Less than a year ago links were everything to the SEO industry. Whether it was guest blogging or content marketing, the sole aim of many agencies revolved purely around sourcing and acquiring links. The answer is simple. By combining knowledge on entities, associations, co-occurrence and authorship, you can build a strategy that actually solves a problem or satisfies a need for your target audience. By doing this you will increase traffic and naturally generate links. Like Hannah Smith mentioned at this year’s LinkLove conference, if you do stuff that gets links, rather than doing it for links, you are much more likely to succeed. And to save you the hassle of pooling all this together, I’ve done it for you. You’re welcome....
SEO used to be about tuning a website for optimal consumption by spiders. Today’s SEO is about earning recognition, social spread, and backlinks. Here are practical activities that need to be done every month to achieve real SEO results. Google has just rolled out Penguin 2.0, a large algorithmic update promising to go “deeper” than the 2012 Penguin release, which put a hurting on websites with number of manipulative links in their profile. This prospect creates fear for many small businesses who depend on search engine optimization (SEO) for their livelihoods. But there is also a sense of confusion as the line often shifts and the message from Google contradictory. Here's how to sort out Panda, Penguin, and Manual Actions...
Say you have a business that relies on a local customer base, you want to rank high in search engines for local users, right? SEO is going to be integral to making that happen and, by implementing the following steps, you will be well on your way to being more visible to your local customers. Local SEO isn’t about gaming the system; it’s more about convincing a robot (a search engine) that your site is the most relevant for users in a certain location who may want your products or services. Local SEO is a series of signposts that allow the robots to understand where you are in the world and what you're providing. It allows them to better rank your site according to the search terms the user enters. In designing your site, you will still want to follow general SEO practices, for example, conducting keyword research into the most relevant search terms. On a technical level, your site will still need to meet best practices for crawls. But, to target a local audience, you will need to go even further....
Do one SEO tactic incorrectly, or too frequently, and you could be facing Google punishments that remove your website from their search results. This is not a gamble that most businesses can afford, as most consumers initially find a business online. In fact, Inc.com ran a survey and found that 7 out of 10 consumers said they are more likely to use a local business if they have a social media presence and another 78% said ratings and reviews are important when deciding what to buy. Google has made some significant changes in the last couple of years when it comes to ranking your website in search results. Google Panda and Google Penguin are the two major updates you may have heard about, and many more are coming. Here are some of the major abuse tactics that were employed by SEO’s and some workarounds that you should be implementing in their place....
How are you measuring the ROI of social media? Do you measure up against your peers? Does the ROI of social media meet your expectations? Do your metrics help make better business decisions? ROI of social media ROI means return on investment and when we talk about the ROI of social media we’re looking at metrics to evaluate your increased sales as a function of expenses to drive those sales. But, that’s really hard to do since there really isn’t a direct link between social media and sales. In the infographic below, see some of the surrogates for return firms use to evaluate their social media marketing campaigns....
A video from Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, today answers some of the questions about what webmasters and SEOs should expect in the near future in regards to SEO. The question Matt asked and answered was, “What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?” Matt addressed 10 points, all summarized at the end as helping improve the search results by awarding the good sites and hurting the spammers and black hats in the search results. Here are the 10 points Matt addressed in his video, followed by the video itself....
If helping our clients be more visible is the heartbeat of public relations, then learning to integrate basic SEO skills into the work we are doing is key in keeping that heartbeat strong. SEO for PR is a “must know” skill. Every senior-level PR and content marketing professional should have a solid understanding of how SEO works and how it applies to their own work.... During the May #PRprochat on Twitter, we were lucky enough to have Ken McGaffin as our guest – former CMO of WordTracker and an expert in SEO. “The TOP 3 SEO SKILLS that PR pros should have are keyword research, link building and blogger outreach.” ~ Ken McGaffin Learning SEO for PR doesn’t have to be time consuming or intimidating; it can simply be the addition of a few new skills and tweaks to your normal processes....
For many people, ranking in Google was a lot easier a few years ago. There were many SEO tricks that could get your site on the first page of Google quickly. These SEO tricks worked great until Google changed the rules, beginning with Panda in February 2011, and followed by Penguin in April 2012. So, what works now, post-Panda and post-Penguin? This article will cover some of the popular old methods as well as what you need to know to succeed with your SEO initiative today....
... The words we use can change how search engines find our content and whether or not they serve that content in their search results. When it comes to search engines, the placement of words in your blog posts can be just as powerful as the choice of the word itself. Where to place words in your blog – a blog post glossary Understanding the different components of a good blog post is as important as your mechanic knowing the difference between a radiator and an engine block. When the correct terms are used, it’s easier to follow the checklist of must-haves in every post....
In a recently published Webmaster video, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, listed off the top five SEO mistakes webmasters make. Matt said these are not the most devastating mistakes, but rather, the most common mistakes....
Ever wondered how using social media can boost your search rankings? Rachel Murray from Hydrant web design reveals all in this week's top five tips... By considering the following five tips of these Social Networking techniques you can enhance the content that you are socially sharing for SEO purposes, and create effective ranking results on Google....
This article is part six of a ten part series by Wishpond. We explore the business benefits of blogging, and how it can help your online marketing efforts. When you are blogging for business, be proactive in getting the most from your blogging efforts. If you blog strategically, your keywords will be a natural part of your writing. Adding a few of these SEO tactics will boost your search engine results – getting you more successes in your social media marketing strategy. Here are 5 tactics to boost your blog SEO: Target your content Google Adwords Link to other sites Link to internal pages on your site Use alt text...
Today, I would turn that message around and say the following: Do clients know you are on social media? I would follow-up with a few other questions. Do they know where to find you? Are they interested in what you are talking about? Believe it or not, you and your company are the news. Everyday, you have the opportunity to bring the news to your clients and prospective clients. It’s time to start making quality news, not noise. There is a difference....
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The Customer Journey to Online Purchase: an interactive infographic that explores typical customer behavior to improve marketing programs. These days, the customer journey has grown more complex. Before making an online purchase decision, a customer may engage with your brand through many different media channels over several days. This tool helps you explore and understand the customer journey to improve your marketing programs....
Semantic search is changing everything. From the way traditional marketing is done to the way social media connections are now forged, the web is forcing us to create more transparent, honest connections than ever before. In the digital marketing world the words “game changer” rank right alongside “awesome” in terms of overuse. Yet, when it comes to semantic search nothing less can adequately prepare the marketer for the seismic change that’s coming. The reason for this lies more in the way digital marketing has operated to date and less on how search works. Interestingly it is the practices of the former that are forcing changes in the latter. Put a bit more simply, if your online digital marketing strategy is based upon the creation of content that is keyword stuffed, contained tightly within a website and relying solely upon the usual link spamming to help search engines discover it, you are setting yourself up to fail. The reason lies in the way search now grades websites. In the semantic web the content contained in a website, regardless of uniqueness, quality or ‘cleverness’ will fail to do much in search if it does not also engage its intended online audience. In Google’s semantic world ‘sentiment mining’ (what is being said about you), engagement (how your content is received), citation (where your website and brand are mentioned) and interaction (how your website is linked to) form the four pillars upon which your new marketing needs to be based on. The good news is that gaming search and creating ‘shortcuts’ in marketing is now so effort-intensive that it makes no real economic search any more, so you may as well do the right thing and create a digital presence that delivers real value to the online visitor, is completely engaging and works hard to clarify the character and identity of your business. ...
There is a lot of talk these days about social signals affecting Google Search Results, and many SEOs are feeling the effects for their clients, who are disconnected from the social world. The complexity of marketing your business on Google is rising as search success becomes increasingly intertwined with your social media presence and how you interact with your customers. Your website content and external links are no longer enough to gain Google’s trust. Publishing fresh content on your site means nothing if no one is reading it — and it means even less if no one is sharing it to their social networks. As a business, your primary marketing goal is always to generate leads. Leads are certainly generated from dominating search results — but what if I told you that a solid content marketing strategy could get you leads, even if it didn’t result in #1 rankings right away?...
Quick & Easy Keyword Placement Checklist This SEO Guide is for the small business owner or SEO (search engine optimization) beginner that is in the initial stages of website creation or optimization. Search engine optimization is a great marketing tactic for any type of business, but many business owners or traditional marketers are apprehensive about optimizing their company’s website. As a digital strategist who has been leading SEO campaigns for the last 7 years, I have heard a lot of excuses… “I just don’t understand” “I don’t have time” “It is too much work” “I tried for a little while, but didn’t see anything happen, so ….” Don’t worry, I am not here to chastise, just provide you with a Quick and Easy Keyword Placement Checklist for your company’s website....
There’s been a lot of talk in the search industry over the past year regarding the overlap of public relations and SEO, particularly in the area of link building. As a Public Relations major, this couldn’t make me happier — not because I feel like my college degree can finally be justified to my parents; but because, as an industry, we’re finally embracing PR and learning from it, even though it’s always been a part of SEO. Public relations professionals have spent years perfecting their outreach strategies, building relationships and finding press opportunities for their clients. Search marketers have also spent years doing outreach and finding opportunities for our clients — we just called them “links.” They weren’t always the best opportunities, but we’re getting better — and that’s where we can take a cue from our communications-minded friends in the PR industry. Here’s how....
...There’s a super-secret new ingredient in SEO. It was always a factor, but it’s become even more important recently, as the Google team relentlessly declares war on what they see as tricks and sneaky tactics. Today we’ll talk about the “new” SEO copywriting techniques you can take advantage of in a post-Panda search world. Ready for the mind-blowing “secret new ingredient”? It’s the authority, editorial focus, and relevance of your site — in other words, your site quality....
If you’re attempting to make your website findable on search engines, the keywords you use are critical to your success. Let’s say you are a dentist in Los Angeles practicing general dentistry, Invisalign teeth straightening, and dental implants. For those three services, the amount of keywords that searchers use to find you are many. Because of that, you have to carefully think through what’s good to use and what is not. Say a consumer has a cavity and he believes it may take a crown to cover the tooth. Knowing that, what would the consumer type in the search engines to find a dentist for this? Before you look at the list of possible keywords, first think of one or two keywords you would type in. Then compare to the list below and you’ll see how many possibilities there are....
This is partly because Google’s algorithm isn’t playing any games these days, and partly because there are so many businesses working on their local SEO at the same time you are. If these people are your competition it’s going to be more and more difficult to rank as time goes by. Despite all of this, there are still businesses out there that aren’t embracing the essential nature of local SEO. Some are trying to keep things on a purely social playing field by purchasing ads on Facebook and focusing their marketing efforts exclusively in these areas. Others are (seemingly) deliberately ignoring the opportunity presented by the local listing pages offered by the major search engines – Google, Bing, and Yahoo each offer pages that businesses can claim in order to increase their local exposure. And if the search engine has a result to deliver that was created with their webmaster tools, don’t you think it’s more likely than someone other content to appear when someone searches for a term relevant to your business?...
SEO is going away, at least in the way that most of us know it. What's taking its place is something exciting and better, but, like enlightenment, it can't be achieved directly.... What is the sound of one keyword clapping? Can Google itself create a site so large that it can't even be indexed? Can any marketer ever step into the same algorithm twice? These are the kinds of questions that philosophers worry over – or at least that keep those of us involved in search engine optimization up at night – but they may not matter very much going forward. That's because SEO is going away, at least in the way that most of us know it. What's taking its place is something exciting and better, but, like enlightenment, it can't be achieved directly. Does that sound confusing? Read on, because here is what you need to know about Zen and the art of improving your search rankings in 2013: 1. There is no try....
An SEO audit is a great way to determine the current optimization state of your website and see what you need to improve. It’s also shows you the SEO strategy of your competition and how you can outdo them. Much of the key information for a website SEO assessment is available for free on the web and by inspecting your site’s source code. But to make it even easier and avoid having to look through website source code, you can use Firefox Toolbars that give you all of the information you need instantly....
Have you noticed the recent proliferation of “content marketing agencies” popping up on the scene? You may be wondering why, but this trend has been building... ... I had a recent conversation with an SEO executive team, and they were seriously contemplating taking the entire company in a new direction… to content marketing. Why? Their reasoning was (besides pure SEO budgets drying up) that the value they used to provide to customers (which used to be immense) simply wasn’t there anymore. Hundreds, if not thousands, of SEO agencies are in the same position. I’ve seen a few — such as TopRank Online Marketing and Vertical Measures — make this transition incredibly well. Others have simply put the “content marketing” moniker on their SEO content production service and called it content marketing. Yes, they’ve added such services as infographics creation, video production, and blog content creation, but content production is only one small part of the content marketing process. Strategic planning aspects of mission statement creation, audience persona gathering, internal content integration, and measurement outside of content consumption metrics are often absent. The lesson for brands: A holistic content marketing strategy includes up-front planning and multiple goals, which in turn must bring in non-digital channels (such as print and in-person vehicles). SEO is just one very small part that covers a few marketing objectives. Make sure your content marketing strategy goes beyond top-funnel considerations....
Having difficulties sorting through the jargon in the SEO industry? "The Small Business Owner's Guide to Speaking SEO" will have you fluent in no time!
Via Joseph Ruiz
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Do you know your ROS - return on social?