Most Popular Posts
Categories
Oh, also
COMPETITIVE SEO AND INBOUND MARKETING
COMPETITIVE SEO AND INBOUND MARKETING
According to a study conducted by Define Media Group, websites on average have seen a decline in image search referrals of about 63 percent. The change has been devastating for some businesses, and it has hit fashion and lifestyle sites the hardest. Was the change fair, and is there anything you can do about it?
I speak only for myself when I say that I opposed SOPA and PIPA, and continue to stand against what I consider draconian approaches to copyright employed by a certain trade act called the TPP. I'm a firm believer in copyright reform because I don't believe the current laws are built to recognize the difference between informal and formal use of copyrighted material, or the structure of the internet itself.
Link building tactics have evolved over time from the mass-production of link farms to content marketing associated with outreach practices. A lot of the practice behind link building has come to rely heavily on relationships and, as mentioned before, it’s become an ethical practice that gives all users a little of what they want or need, whether it be content, exposure or links. There are, however, some very basic link building strategies that are often overlooked because we’re all very concentrating on getting high PR sites to notice us or fall in love with our content.
While everyone’s busy fraternizing further afield to build links, there’s a lot of groundwork that needs to be done at home – on your own site. Building internal links is not only a formative part of your SEO strategy, but it also holds numerous benefits:
You also have full control of the anchor text you want to use and where each link should direct. Perhaps you can have another look at your site pages and see where you can improve your internal link building tactics?
(more...)
It's happening. Facebook Exchange is bringing display ads into the feed. Facebook's most heavily used real estate will soon be opening its doors to the cost per impression community. Say goodbye to the ambiguity of Promoted Posts, and the familiarity of pay-per-click. This is a serious move that, for better or worse, is going to change the way that marketing works on Facebook. What does it mean? Let's dive in.
Now we see the real reason that Facebook was pushing the idea that impressions create more sales than clicks do. (more...)
It was often assumed that optimal user experience (UX) and SEO didn’t inhabit the same space. It was also commonly quite rare that an SEO practitioner would consider the UX of a site in line with an SEO strategy. That all seems to be changing with the way that search is evolving as user experience starts to tie in heavily with the optimized content you serve your users.
Think about blogs in particular. How often have you found yourself reading a professional blog post that spits out an overly obvious keyword every paragraph or so? It doesn’t tend to happen anymore because it’s unpleasant for the user to read.
(more...)
Still throwing money and resources at guest posts? There's no denying it works, or that it's tried and true. But is it really the best way to collaborate in order to build links, attention, traffic, and customer retention? Doubtful.
The trouble with guest posting is that it treats content as a cost. More specifically: the cost of a link. A single link. But I don't think content is a cost, I think it's an asset. An asset that should keep giving and giving for a very long time. I think content should be a golden goose for your business. And I think there's a very effective, simple, proven way to use it to attract natural links.
Pay a blogger who already earns natural links for every single post they write. (more...)
Social media, search engine optimization, content marketing, link building; what should you be focusing on in order to boost your web marketing tactics to their maximum benefit? The truth is that you don’t need to focus on one tactic alone; you can use them all in a beautiful balance provided you put the correct methods of planning in place. By finding places for the components of your marketing plan to co-exist synergistically, you can benefit from each one individually, as well as from the strategy as a whole.
You can’t deny the value in each individual tactic:
Each area has it’s own focus, game plan and benefits, but what if each benefit fed into the needs of the other tactics?
(more...)
According to US News, Google and Facebook recently wrote obituaries for the journalism industry. Google announced that “journalism and technology increasingly become one,” and Zuckerberg announced the creation of personalized social feed “newspapers.” Meanwhile, the Harvard Business Review is saying that the advertisers of the future will operate more like newsrooms. As publishers struggle to monetize their content, they increasingly eliminate their fact checking departments, and journalists that ignore pageview journalism starve.
The phrase “information wants to be free,” once the battle-cry of quasi-anarchist cyberpunks, has become a slogan used to line the pockets of search engine and social network monopolies at the expense of content creators. Journalists are payed 12 percent less in real terms today than ten years ago, and despite the Panda update, quantity is still paying better than quality. Meanwhile, content marketing is becoming the most promising road forward for online marketers.
Is content marketing journalism's savior, or its harbinger of death?
Spring is in the air, a time for reassessing our strategies and cleaning out the toolbox. As usual, this month we've been keeping a close eye on all the major happenings in SEO, content marketing, and social media. We share our favorite content throughout the month on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, but if you want to satiate your inbound marketing appetite in one sitting, here's our roundup of what we think you should know.
6 SEO Sins That’ll Put You on Google’s Naughty List
Did you know Google can make your blog disappear from its search results? One day, you’re getting a nice little trickle of traffic to a few of your posts. No, it’s nothing major, but it grows with every new post you publish, and you can see Google becoming a major source of traffic for you in the future. But then it stops. Poof, every single post and page...
This post has been contributed by Simon Phillips of Touch Logic, a mobile marketing company that creates mobile ready websites for small businesses.
Can having a website that works on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets improve your Quality Score? Any business using Google Adwords to advertise their company should be aware of the following when managing their PPC campaigns.
What is a Quality Score?
Google's definition for a Quality Score is an estimate of the relevancy of your keywords, ads and landing page to those who visit your site. The more relevant the above items are, the higher your Quality Score will be. Also, your ranking will have an impact on the cost of pay-per-click ads as well as their position. It stands to reason that the higher position your business has in Google’s result pages, the more business you can attract. You will also save money as a higher Quality Score means lower costs for you along with those better ad positions that you want for your business.
The social media train is chugging full steam ahead and those businesses on board - that are truly invested - will tell you that engagement is the key to social media success. Driving user engagement is quite tricky, though. You have to find the perfect mix of attention, without being overbearing and “in your face”. If you look at Facebook EdgeRank and the measure that’s placed on different actions, shares are certainly one of the most beneficial for enhancing engagement. So how do you encourage users to share your content?
Timing is extremely relevant when it comes to posting content. You need to look at when your users are most active. Sometimes this will take a few posts and reporting to determine, but generally speaking you should already have a good idea about your target demographics. What times are they most active? When will they be guaranteed to see your post in their newsfeed? It varies from one industry to the next, but you’ll usually find people most active during office hours, peaking once in the morning and again in the afternoon.
(more...)
