When Google was launched back in 1998, “link popularity“ was the core factor used in evaluating a website‘s authority to give users better search results. However, when users started manipulating the system and using bad link building practices, Google was challenged to remove these websites as spam. Since then, Google has experimented and launched several updates like EMD, PMD, LSI, Penguin, and Panda with anti-spam algorithms. They even began ranking sites without backlink relevance, which Matt Cutts said caused much worse results.
Keyword research is at the core of the search marketing process. It is the absolute first item you need to address before doing anything else. But many search marketers just scratch the surface — and end up with only a few, high competition keywords. This approach is wrong, and a sure way to achieve little ROI and leave a lot of money on the table. There’s a better way. We’ll take a look at how to take your keyword research and assessment process to the next level — how to go from, “Oh, I just use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner” to creating a process that uncovers new and interesting keywords that more effectively map your customers’ intent while escaping prohibitive competition. This means better ROI on your search marketing spend and, yes, happier clients and managers. Let’s get started.
When your company is beginning to think about expanding your brand overseas, you’ll need to consider how to structure your website or websites in order to maximize your online presence overseas as well. One of the most important considerations when building new multilingual or multi-country websites is how to optimize your international website(s) for SEO.
You’ve heard it before from your parents and your employers and — as annoying as it may be — the mantra, “You only get one chance to make a first impression” isn’t going anywhere. The worst part is that the mantra is actually incredibly true. Whether you like it or not first impression really do matter. However, businesses seem to be forgetting that first impressions are not only for people — it applies to a website as well. While creating a cool-looking design is an excellent start, this shouldn’t be the stopping point if you really want to make the best impression on your readers in seconds or less. Unfortunately, this is usually where businesses do stop so they can move on to something else.
Social media has been an increasingly important part of search engine optimization. Now there’s so much competition out there when it comes to promotional posts, it’s difficult to get your brand seen. Facebook has placed restrictions on how often business page posts are shown in fan feeds. LinkedIn is full of business-to-business advertising. Twitter, too, has become more competitive and thus, more restrictive when it comes to branded posts. If you write a lot of social media posts, you could simply guess at which ones will be seen and how much engagement you’ll get. Alternatively, you could use our simply ratio of engagement to promotional posts. By using the proper ratio of when you’re catering to your fans and when you’re advertising to them, you can get a lot more out of your social media campaign.
Lots of folks think that SEO is about “gaming the system.” Well… that’s true of “black hat” SEO, but those of us who are trying to make pages easy for Google to crawl and evaluate are working towards what I like to think of as “natural” SEO. We put in all the right meta tags, make sure that your page is about what you tell search engines it’s about in your description and generally try to streamline things so that spiders won’t be caught in traps or leave pages entirely. So, let’s say that you have recently built a new website. Is it search friendly? Or more importantly, is it Google friendly? No, Google certainly doesn’t pay me and I don’t worship at the Google altar, either, but let‘s face it. Google brings the most traffic and for some reason, that traffic seems to convert. That’s why we want to please the gods of Google as much as we possibly can.
