Matthew Barby says, “Content marketing has seen a lot of changes over the past few years, in particular around the way that marketers have went about actually developing their content. A lot of this has come down to the rapidly evolving search engine landscape, as well as a huge shift in the way that people are discovering content. All that said, I still hear the same pain points coming from content producers that I did over five years ago: “I struggle to measure the ROI of the content I create.” “We create great content but we still don’t seem to rank high in Google for... [...]

Lydia Jorden says, “During the holidays, we often let a fair part of ourselves go: diet, exercise, budgets and more. But for local search engine optimization (SEO) professionals, there is something very impactful that can get away from us little by little, until it is completely out of control: Rankings. During the holiday season, we sometimes neglect a variety of strategies that help our businesses maintain positioning within the local pack during a high-traffic time. If you find yourself experiencing a case of holiday ranking drops, you may want to avoid a Scrooge-like boss muttering... [...]

Ronell Smith says, “The young man at the back of the ballroom in the Santa Monica, Calif., Loews hotel has a question he’s been burning to ask, having held it for more than an hour as I delivered a presentation on why content marketing is invaluable for search. When the time comes for Q&A, he nearly leaps out of his chair before announcing that he’s asking a question for pretty much the entire room. “How do I know what content I should create?” he asks. “I work at a small company. We have a team of content people, but we’re typically told what to write... [...]

Julie Joyce says, “Countless articles about links are written every day. Many of them are excellent, filled with some really good tips to help you do well. Some of them are awful, full of bad advice. However, the biggest thing that bugs me about link-building advice is this: a lot of it pretends to offer guarantees. People talk about how to Penguin-proof sites, how to avoid being manually penalized and so on. As an extremely paranoid link builder who has seen many examples of unfairness online, I don’t believe there are any guarantees, and below you’ll see why that is. 1. No link is... [...]

Wesley Young says, “According to a recently released white paper by the Local Search Association (LSA) on co-op advertising programs, titled, “Breaking through the Co-op Clutter,” estimates of unused or unclaimed co-op dollars range from $14 billion to $35 billion. Even on the low end of that range, that’s a lot of cash. Estimates of the total co-op dollar amount available varies between $36 billion to $70 billion, which would place unclaimed value at between 39 and 50 percent. What’s also revealing is how co-op dollars are being used. According to Brandmuscle’s State of Local... [...]

Joe Goers says, “Every SEO has heard these four words: “I need more traffic!” It seems that websites are becoming less focused on top-of-funnel content (general informational and educational materials) and more focused on bottom-of-funnel lead generation offers. In my opinion, this is a short-sighted strategy, and one that will not drive a high volume of qualified traffic. Successful SEO programs require website content designed to reach prospects across the entire buy cycle. Excuses, excuses When bringing up the idea of having more informational content on a website to better support... [...]

Russ Jones says, “Existential threats to SEO Rand called “Not Provided” the First Existential Threat to SEO in 2013. While 100% Not Providedwas certainly one of the largest and most egregious data grabs by Google, it was part of a long and continued history of Google pulling data sources which benefit search engine optimizers. I don’t intend to say that Google made any of these decisions specifically to harm SEOs, but that the decisions did harm SEO is inarguable. In our industry, like many others, data is power. Without access to SERP, keyword, and analytics data, our... [...]

Lydia Jorder says, “During the holidays, we often let a fair part of ourselves go: diet, exercise, budgets and more. But for local search engine optimization (SEO) professionals, there is something very impactful that can get away from us little by little, until it is completely out of control: Rankings. During the holiday season, we sometimes neglect a variety of strategies that help our businesses maintain positioning within the local pack during a high-traffic time. If you find yourself experiencing a case of holiday ranking drops, you may want to avoid a Scrooge-like boss muttering... [...]

Julian Connors says, “The world of e-commerce optimization is vast and complex, and it demands a particular level of attention in order to function and perform correctly. Over the last 10 years, I have had the opportunity to manage a variety of enterprise-level e-commerce websites that offer everything from athletic gear to office supplies. Regardless of the intended audience, most e-commerce sites suffer from similar optimization issues. These issues prevent them from maximizing their exposure to qualified traffic and the related revenue. Usually, these problems are connected to how business... [...]

Joy Hawkins says, “In the local SEO community, Google’s recent Possum update was a very big deal. To those of us who regularly track the search results for local businesses, it was obvious there were massive changes on September 1. The SEO community as a whole has been relatively quiet about this huge update, and I believe this is because this update primarily impacted the Local/Maps search results and not organic. SERP trackers like MozCast and Algoroo do a fabulous job of tracking changes in the search results, but this algorithm update didn’t seem to make any massive impact in... [...]