Purna Virji says, “I was conned into my love of cooking by my husband.Never having set foot in the kitchen until the grand old age of 22, my husband (then boyfriend) — a former chef — said he’d teach me some simple recipes. I somewhat enjoyed the process but very much enjoyed the lavish praise he’d bestow upon me when eating whatever I whipped up.Highly encouraged that I seemingly had an innate culinary genius, I looked to grow my repertoire of recipes. As a novice, I found recipe books inspiring but confusing. For example, a recipe that called for cooked chicken made me wonder... [...]

James Perrott says, “There have been some great SEO ranking factor studies over the last year, but I thought it would be a good time to wade in with another opinion (that’s right, an opinion – not fact).To keep this as succinct as possible, I am going to look at the following areas for five different business sectors.Domain Trust – defined by MajesticNumber of referring domainsHTTPS vs HTTPMobile-friendly scoreInternal links prioritisationCanonical tagsKeyword in meta title, h1 and h2 tagsLength of on-page content for ranking pagesBrand + product term to define relevance... [...]

Britney Muller says, “I understand why content marketers may avoid SEO: it seems complicated and time-consuming.But I’ve got good news. Today, you’ll learn why content marketers like you are well-positioned to use SEO tactics — possibly even more so than *cough* an SEO like me.Keyword research doesn’t have to be a marathon. A brisk, 30-minute walk can provide incredibly useful insights.Even though keyword research benefits may not be obvious, the work you perform will help connect you to a wider audience on a deeper level.Discovering how many people (a month) search for something,... [...]

Ted Ives says, “Welcome to the second installment in my series on SEM account management. If you’re an SEM account manager and you’ve kept yourself from getting fired (see Part 1: How to avoid getting fired), you now have the opportunity and the time to focus on making your campaigns run like a top.Smoothly running and decently performing SEM campaigns require getting three things right: tracking, targeting and a good user experience. If you can master these three areas, your campaigns will “deliver the goods” and get you conversions at a decent cost per acquisition (CPA), or sales... [...]

Matt McGee says, “Good morning from day one of SMX West 2017! We’re in San Jose, Calif., where the opening keynote conversation is set to begin at 9 a.m. PT. Jason Douglas, PM Director for Actions on Google, will be talking about Google Assistant with Search Engine Land’s Chris Sherman and Greg Sterling.Douglas will be talking about the developer ecosystem that’s growing around Google Assistant, and specifically about “Actions” — Google’s term for tools and features that let brands, marketers, developers and others interact with users through Google Assistant. Think of Actions... [...]

Shannon Matthews says, “For many businesses and marketers, writing and publishing content on their own website—and guest articles and posts on others—is at the top of their priority lists.A major goal of producing great content is getting on the first page of Google search results. Unfortunately, with millions of search queries per minute, it’s not that easy. And Google is constantly changing its algorithms, which means you have to work harder to get noticed by the right people at the right time.Fortunately, search engine optimization (SEO) can help.Here are a few stats to keep... [...]

Adam Dorfman says, “A year ago, I wrote in Search Engine Land about how Google is making entities smarter. Since that time, entities have become more important to Google — which means they are more important to businesses that want to be found on Google. It’s time for brands to get better acquainted with entities and why they matter.What are entities, and how have they shaped Google search?An entity, as defined by Google in a recent patent, is:[a] thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable. For example, an entity may be a person, place, item, idea,... [...]

Julia McCoy says, “Once upon a time, search engines were robotic, mechanical, and mathematical.However, Google’s algorithm standards have since become much more focused on what those searching for information really want.As such, user intent is the key to creating the content that enhances the relevance of your pages and improves your SEO. Neil Patel describes “user intent” as the goal someone has in mind when typing a query into Google. In some cases, the intent is to purchase something. For others, it’s to find information or make a connection with a company or an individual”.Why... [...]

Jerod Morris says, “That was my initial reaction when we all agreed that March would be SEO month here at Copyblogger. At which point, of course, I knew I’d have to write about it.“Look, I just create useful content for people. Do that, get it read, get it shared, get links, have good hosting and fast page-load times … and productive search engine results will follow, right? I mean, what else is there to say?”Turns out, plenty.Keyword research is more fundamental to your content marketing strategy than you may think. Also, you may already be making fatal optimization mistakes.... [...]

Daniel Gilbert says, “In case you haven’t heard, Google has decided to ignore function words and word order for exact match keywords.If you just want to know how to fix this travesty, then scroll to the stopgap solution section where I’m sharing a script from Brainlabs (my employer) which will automatically add so-called “close variants” as negative keywords. Yippee! If you also want to hear me rant about Google’s astonishingly stoopid behavior, then read on…RantA few years ago (2014), Google eliminated advertisers’ ability to exclude close variants as part of “exact... [...]