Stephen Spencer says, “I’m so tired of hearing various pundits say that SEO is dead. Maybe they are merely being provocative. Perhaps they need to fill seats in their event, and so they come up with “bait” session titles like “Why SEO is fundamentally DEAD.” (Yes, that was actually a keynote title at a very popular conference last year.) Or maybe they drank their own Kool-Aid and really believe this nonsense. While SEO is NOT dead, the way that you’re doing it might be. Does the following describe your approach? You’ve optimized your H1s and meta tags and you’ve built a few... [...]

Kerry Jones says, “Are you holding your content marketing to unrealistic standards? No matter how informative your infographic about tax law may be, it’s not going to attract the same amount of attention as a BuzzFeed Tasty video. You shouldn’t expect it to. In order to determine what successful content looks like for your brand, you first need to have realistic expectations for what content can achieve in your particular niche. Our analysis of hundreds of Fractl content marketing campaigns looked at the factors which have worked for our content across all topics. Now we’ve dived... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Advertisers can now get forecasts for their existing keywords, in addition to campaigns, in Keyword Planner. If you haven’t checked out this feature in Keyword Planner, it’s worth taking a look. After clicking on the “Select from account” button shown above, there is an option to select Campaign or Keyword from a drop-down. After making your selections, the tool offers performance forecasting and various looks at search volume trends. In the performance forecast screen, you can see how changes in bids could affect performance for the campaigns or keywords selected.... [...]

Purna Virji says, “My neighbor has the most beautiful garden ever. Season after season, she grows the most exotic, gorgeous plants that I could never find in any local nursery. Slightly green with envy over her green thumb, I discovered a glimmer of hope. There are apps that will identify any plant you take a photo of. Problem solved. Now the rest of the neighborhood is getting prettied up as several houses, including mine, have sprouted exotic new blooms easily ordered online. Take a photo, get an answer. The most basic form of visual search. Visual search addresses both convenience and... [...]

Barry Levine says, “Where you are, what you buy, and your age. These are the kinds of attributes that digital marketers commonly employ for targeting. London-based Cambridge Analytica is adding an additional layer: psychology. With U.S. offices in New York City and Washington, D.C., the company is now redirecting its psychological targeting from national security and political clients — including Donald Trump — to commercial ones. Chief data officer Alex Tayler pointed out to me that most marketing employs demographics, geographics, and psychographics. Demographics include age, gender,... [...]

Amy Bishop says, “A great way to expand your PPC account is by performing keyword research in order to uncover untapped opportunities. Keyword research is a key tactic for growing an account — especially new accounts, but even mature accounts can stand to benefit from ongoing expansions. When keyword research does & does not make sense Keyword research is sometimes debated as being unnecessary, and it is fair to say that certain methods of keyword research are futile. Back in the day, it wasn’t uncommon to hear search marketers taking pride in the number of keywords managed, but... [...]

Mihai Aperghis says, “As an SEO, whether you’re working in-house or handling many clients in an agency, you’ve likely been using this tool for a bunch of reasons. Whether it’s diagnosing traffic and position changes or finding opportunities for optimizations and content ideas, Google Search Console’s Search Search Analytics has been at the core of most SEOs’ toolset. The scope of this small guide is to give you a few ideas on how to use Search Analytics together with Google Sheets to help you in your SEO work. As with the guide on how to do competitive analysis in Excel,... [...]

Tony Edward says, “Google has been testing a new content platform called “Posts with Google,” and it could have a huge impact on brand searches, for both paid and organic. We all know that Google has had its struggles with trying to develop its own social network; Google Buzz is dead, and Google Plus seems to be on its way out. This new platform seems to have some social elements to it, though it is very different from a social network. On the official site for this platform, Google states the following: Every day millions of people search on Google, many of whom are looking for information... [...]

MOZ team says, “We’re excited to announce that the MozCon 2016 Video Bundle is ready! That means no more #FOMO — you can catch up on all 27 sessions and over 15 hours of online marketing goodness from some of the brightest minds in the industry. Want to earn more featured snippets? Yup, we cover that. Looking for new tools and tactics for link acquisition? You’ll learn that, too!”. The 2016 #MozCon Video Bundle Has Arrived! MOZ  [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Every year we like to get a Googler who is close with the ranking and search quality team to give us future thinking points to relay to the search marketing community. In part two of our interview with Gary Illyes of Google, we asked him that question. After a little bit of coercion, Illyes told us three things: (1) Machine learning (2) AMP (3) Structured data He said: Well I guess you can guess that we are going to focus more and more on machine learning. Pretty much everywhere in search. But it will not take over the core algorithm. So that’s one thing. The other... [...]