Ben Davis says, “Technical search engine optimisation (SEO) describes the efforts of a webmaster to ensure their website is compatible with search engine guidelines, and can be indexed and ranked for keyphrase searches accordingly.Whilst marketers perhaps best understand the implications of getting SEO wrong, it is often developers that implement technical SEO decisions.Although technical SEO is not as time consuming as ongoing optimisation such as link building, get it wrong and you can scupper the search performance of your website fairly quickly (indexing issues occur upstream of quality... [...]

Kane Jamison says, “At least once or twice per month, I talk to a small e-commerce store owner who wants to invest in content marketing. Often times, I have to break it to them that they’re not ready for content marketing.You see, before you spend a bunch of time generating traffic from your target audience, it’s important to make sure those visitors get the best experience possible while browsing your store.So, in this post, I want to give store owners and e-commerce newbies a clear idea of where they can invest their time before investing in more paid and organic traffic to their... [...]

Mike Murray says, “It makes sense at times to produce content without worrying too much about the SEO aspects. (Please know it isn’t easy for me, an SEO professional, to write that.)Some SEO purists suggest that website content be optimized at all times. It’s inevitable that someone – or a team – will follow an internal process and think about the content with an everything-SEO mentality.But there are situations when you don’t need to sweat SEO – or can at least scale back the effort. Here are five occasions to consider.1. You’re writing about a new trendB2B and B2C brands... [...]

Pratik Dholakiya says, “The landscape for search engine rankings is brutally competitive where geographically relevant searches are concerned. And, increasingly, the landscape is becoming pricier and less penetrable.As a result, local SEO has become much more important to businesses across the board.Around 80 percent of consumers look to search engines to find local information. By leveraging customer reviews and producing keyword-rich content pertaining to geographic location, relevance and the targeted audience, businesses can achieve more visibility without breaking the bank.Businesses... [...]

Larry Kim says, “Look, I get it. For the longest time, PPC marketers and SEOs alike have been segmenting brand campaigns and content (those with trademarks and company names) from more generic search terms.After all, branded keywords tend to be “unicorns” — in PPC, these are keywords which generate ridiculously high CTRs (click-through rates) (40, 50 or 60 percent) and Quality Scores (9 or 10); in SEO, these are keywords that rank at the top of the SERP. Meanwhile, non-branded keywords perform like donkeys — in other words, average at best.While branded vs. non-branded is an interesting... [...]

Gini Dietrich says, “If you haven’t been responsible for media relations, earned media may seem most scary or out of reach, but it really isn’t.Earned media is one of the most cost-effective ways to raise brand awareness and — if it’s done well — increase sales. Today, though, given that word of mouth is more effective than paid media, earned media is even more crucial to gaining authority for your content efforts and improving your SEO.Of course, this can’t be done overnight. A strategic earned media program requires consistent efforts to build awareness and relationships with... [...]

Megan Hannay says, “The “why” and “how” of sourcing local talent from national HQA recent report on national-to-local marketers mentions that, with the exception of email marketing, “enterprise brands are struggling to make digital as effective as traditional tactics and media” for local branches’ ad dollars. With locally focused email newsletters, it’s generally easier to automate locally targeted sales or events. On the other hand, local content is much more essential for local SEO and social media engagement, and this is where enterprise brands have not... [...]

Jeff Eckman & Paul Benson say, “A Google search for “Holism” yields no ads, but the following definition:“the theory that parts of a whole are in intimate interconnection, such that they cannot exist independently of the whole, or cannot be understood without reference to the whole, which is thus regarded as greater than the sum of its parts.”Much of our marketing optimization effort is highly focused in discrete parts of the customer journey. We’ve created specialized roles for these discrete parts, like ad copy writing, SEO, SEM bid management, keyword optimization, web... [...]

Barb Palser says, “In case you missed it, Google has launched a new type of AMP rich card carousel in mobile search results — in addition to the Top Stories carousel we’re used to seeing. The new AMP carousels appear in the main mobile results list, showcasing related articles from a single publisher. They started appearing at the end of 2016 without fanfare from Google. Let’s call them “single-source carousels.”Single-source AMP carousels are most likely to appear in results for popular queries, particularly for news stories. A January 15 search for “Kansas City Chiefs News”... [...]

MOZ team says, “If you’ve ever been the victim of a Google penalty, you know how painful it can be to identify the problem and recover from the hit. Even if you’ve been penalty-free thus far, the threat of getting penalized is a source of worry. But how can you avoid it, when it seems like unnatural links lurk around every corner?In today’s Whiteboard Friday, we’re overjoyed to have Google penalty and unnatural link expert Marie Haynes share how to earn links that do comply with Google’s guidelines, that will keep your site out of trouble, and that can make... [...]