Marcus Miller says, “This may seem strange coming from an SEO guy, but there are many situations where organic search may not be the best option for a given marketing challenge. In fact, there are times when SEO is just simply not a good fit. In this article, I am going to look at a few common scenarios we see at my agency where we have been contacted for SEO and have fed back that we believe that SEO is either not aligned with their requirements or there is some other form of mismatch (speed, budget, etc.). 1. Budget This is the first and most common issue we see. The business wants to... [...]

Bridget Randolph says, “Here at Distilled NY we’ve been running a hiring cycle, and it’s really brought front and center for me the key elements that make a digital marketing (and specifically SEO) candidate stand out from the crowd. So I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned in the process. For the purpose of this post, I’m going to tackle this topic from two angles (with 5 points on each, in true “10 Things I’ve Learned…” style): Part I: 5 attributes I now look for in any new analyst or consultant hire (and what you as an employer might want to think about before... [...]

MOZ team says, “Knowing what content to create is one of a marketer’s most difficult jobs. It’s all too easy to imagine your target audience and what they already appreciate, then create more of that. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses why that’s a bit short-sighted, and we should have a broader vision“. Why It’s a Bad Idea to Only Create Content for Your Specific Target Audience MOZ  [...]

We found this infographic through the Huffington Post. Source: 99 MediaLab 99 MediaLab  [...]

Miriam Ellis says, “‘Barnacle SEO’ was a term first popularized by Will Scott in 2011 to describe the process of attaching your business to existing high-ranking entities (like major directories) and then promoting them as a means of dominating search engine results for desired terms. Today, we’re going to take that novel concept in a different direction, with the goal of increasing brand awareness for single, multi-location, and enterprise local businesses by latching onto existing influences in any given community. Up ahead: simple tips for interpreting your city, a downloadable... [...]

Andrew Choco says, “Most people view email marketing and social advertising as two separate entities, and I’ll be honest, I used to think that as well. However, I’ve discovered that combining multiple different avenues for a coherent marketing campaign yields some pretty impressive results. We’ve tried this tactic before at Directive Consulting, combining SEO and PPC; but in this blog post, I’m going to break down a few ways to combine email and social advertising for multi-channel success. More specifically, you’ll learn: How to create custom and lookalike audiences on Facebook... [...]

Eric Enge says, “There have been major studies done on this, notably by both Moz and Searchmetrics. These are groundbreaking pieces of research, and if you’re serious about SEO, you need to understand what these studies say. That said, these are too complex for most organizations to deal with. They need a simpler way of looking at things. At Stone Temple Consulting (STC) we deal with many different types of organizations, including some of the world’s largest companies, and some of the highest-traffic websites in the world. For most of these companies, understanding that there... [...]

Rachel Goodman Moore says, “When first looking to offer something new, most businesses fall in line with one of two schools of thought: Build it internally Purchase or outsource it There are pros and cons to both sides of the coin. Here’s an example: Say you’re looking to expand the selection of products your company sells. Building a new offering in-house would allow you complete control over the size and shape of the new product. The drawback? Building it yourself usually takes significant internal resources and time. If, instead, you chose to purchase a product from another organization... [...]

Stephan Spencer says, “Perhaps you believe that you already found the easy stuff, the “low-hanging fruit,” as it were: good keywords for your niche, optimized titles and body copy, an XML sitemap. Nevertheless, you can’t seem to break past your competitors in the Google SERPs for your most coveted keywords. You may not have the time or resources right now to do an expensive site overhaul or to even commit to SEO long-term. You may only want a few simple tweaks that will help move the needle. Well, look no further. You are in luck, because you won’t need years of SEO training for... [...]

Sean Falconer says, “The holy grail of content marketing and SEO is to be ranked in the top 10 on Google for a high volume search term. If you accomplish that, your site will enjoy long-lasting, inexpensive organic traffic — which is an absolutely wonderful thing. That said, SEO is very much a rich get richer game. So what happens if you are the poor in this scenario? How can you break into the top 10? Unfortunately, great content isn’t always enough. In most cases, you need links from authoritative sites pointing to your content. But how can you build these initial links... [...]