Webmasters Corner
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What tools do you have in your toolkit to help you find prospects? LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, an email subscription list, etc.? All of these are great, but wouldn’t it be good to automate the process, and bring in more targets? Of course it would! Basic tips to increase leads Before investing into tools, make sure you have some basic things in order: Make sure your pages are super fast. A slowly loading page is one of the most frequent reasons for a bounce. Use Page Speed tool to find what’s slowing your site down. Make sure your pages are hosted reliably. Downtime means your site will not even have a chance to convert. Use Uptime Report that monitors upt…
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A complete introduction to all the meta tags a webmaster may need when creating or optimising a webpage for SEO. Everything will be covered here, including: Title Tag, Meta Description, Alt-Text for images, Canonical Tag, Noindex, Nofollow, H1 – H6 tags, Robots Meta Tag and the various tags involved in Google News. But first, let’s answer the question… What are meta tags? Meta tags are HTML elements that provide information about a web page for search engines and website visitors. These elements must be placed as tags in the <head> section of a HTML document so therefore need to be coded in your CMS. Some are easier to implement than others, especial…
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Presenting three of the most popular and interesting talks from our ClickZ Live event in San Francisco earlier this summer. Here we grant you exclusive access in the form of three videos, showcasing the latest insight and practical learning from three leading figures in digital marketing. Sit back, relax and give a warm armchair welcome to Alex Niehenke from Scale VP, Andrew Sherrard from T-Mobile and Simon Sproule from Aston Martin. Unicorn Hunters: Uncovering the Secrets of the Unicorn Culture from their Birthplace Unicorns are still a relatively rare and increasingly sought after breed, but what is the secret to these $1billion+ beasts? What can you learn fr…
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Numerous websites outsource their SEO, but why is this so important? In this day and age, website owners realize that you cannot run a profitable internet business without optimizing their website. However, it is very expensive to hire top-tier, domestic companies to do this job for you. Starting a new website is a big financial burden as it is. So, people decide to outsource instead. What is SEO outsourcing? Outsourcing isn’t a new concept. It has been around for decades and it represents the basis of Western economy. How did outsourcing start? Salaries are the biggest cost for any company. As the USA started experiencing economic growth, living standards …
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It’s search, Jim, but not as we know it. In a search industry where most of the major players are focused on machine learning, artificial intelligence and developing increasingly sophisticated algorithms, it’s unusual to come across a company which sets out to do the exact opposite. Enter Digle, the ‘people-powered’ search platform. One part Yahoo Answers, one part classifieds, and two parts gamified search engine, Digle has set out to buck the system of search and SEO by putting the power into the hands of people, not machines, to find and deliver results. In a way, it makes a lot of sense. Search engines have definitely been developing in a direction which mean…
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Online writing has its own style and it’s even more challenging when you consider its impact on SEO. Here are 15 tips to keep in mind when writing for the web. There’s no need to think of Google every time you’re writing a new post, but it’s still useful to understand what makes a piece of content effective, both in social and search results. Here are some quick tips to consider when writing your next post. Feel free to copy-paste them, write them down, bookmark the page, or memorise them. 1. Title A title has to be descriptive, but also concise. Google only displays the first 55-60 characters of a title tag, which means that an ideal length is approximately…
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A new report from Informatica is highlighting the importance of clean contact data for marketers who want to ensure they are communicating effectively and providing the best possible experiences for their customers. The report – Contact Data Verification Strategies for Marketing and Sales [viewable here as PDF] – gives a good insight into the thoughts of US marketers leading the way with data-related strategy. For me, what really stuck out from the research was how marketers rightfully want the best possible value from the contact data they collect and keep. But it is how they verify and how often they validate that data which ensures it is the best it can be. So…
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Last week we published the fourth instalment of our complete guide to Google ranking signals. It concentrated on ‘content freshness’ and the practical ways you can ensure your webpages are recognised by Google as being relevant and up-to-date. This week we continue diving into on-page content factors, with duplicate content and syndication. What is duplicate content? Duplicate content refers to a webpage’s content that appears in more than one place on the internet. Let’s say you write an article on all the animals discovered and named after Frank Zappa. Then someone else copies and pastes your exact text into a new webpage on their own website. Then you’re b…
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Following on from our time saving Excel shortcuts, we continue offering updated advice for the time-sensitive spreadsheet enthusiast. Back in 2013 John Gagnon wrote a very popular post about VLOOKUP basics and rookie mistakes. We thought we’d update the piece to reflect some minor changes for accessing the functionality to VLOOKUP words and values in Excel 2016. An Excel VLOOKUP can be a marketer’s best friend because it can save you hours of work. Give this formula the information you have (a name) and it looks through a long list (list of names) so it can return the information you need (phone number). The problem is we often struggle to remember how to use …
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The technology industry is lagging behind many other sectors when it comes to the proportion of women taking up entry level positions. This is according to US research by McKinsey in their new report: Women in the Workplace The study surveyed 132 companies which collectively employ more than 4.6m people. It shows that while 75% of CEOs in corporate America are saying gender equality is a top ten priority – and in the wake of the high-profile Gamergate controversy – tech is still woefully behind. Women entering the tech industry are far outnumbered by men and they lose ground on every step of the ladder The McKinsey report separates out key industries in the …
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We don’t generally think of paid search as a great channel for personalisation, but increasingly, it’s becoming one. Caroline Reynolds, VP of Paid Search at iProspect, gave a presentation at the Content Marketing Association’s most recent Digital Breakfast explaining exactly how personalisation and paid search can work together. It’s never been easier to reach people through the myriad marketing channels at our disposal, and yet it’s also never been harder to make a real connection with them. Marketers are discovering that personalisation is key to this: it allows them to build an emotional connection with consumers in a way that was never possible before. “It’s …
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In the movie Her, Joaquin Pheonix plays a lonely and heartbroken man who develops strong romantic feelings for his mobile operating system. “Samantha,” as he calls it, speaks to him, listens to him, and ultimately becomes a major part of his life. As technology stands right now, we may not be at the point of making real “human” connections with our mobile devices, but we do talk to them. We talk to them a lot. Mobile technology is progressing quickly, and soon, speech recognition software will become even more advanced and far more prevalent than it is now. Ultimately, improved speech recognition software will have a significant impact on how the public uses sear…
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Back in 2013 John Gagnon wrote a very popular post detailing some of his favourite Excel tips and tricks. We thought we’d update the list of classic shortcuts with a few that reflect some new functionality in Excel 2016. New Excel tips for 2016: 1. Navigate ‘The Ribbon’ with ALT In Excel 2016 the ribbon refers to the menu of tabs (File, Home, etc.) at the top of your workbook. Simply hitting ALT will quickly highlight the related keys then used to jump to certain ribbon tabs. For instance, ALT followed by M will take you to the ‘Formulas’ tab. You can easily move between tabs by pressing ALT and using the left and right arrow keys, while CTRL + F1 toggle…
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Obviously, CTR is important in PPC marketing. A higher CTR means a higher Quality Score, which reduces your CPC and improves your ad rank. But it goes much further than that. A remarkable CTR is not only the most important thing in AdWords, but it is also extremely important for other marketing channels. These include organic search, CRO, social media, and email marketing. Here are five surprising benefits of having a remarkable, unicorn-worthy CTR across all your marketing channels. 1. Much higher ad impression share You get big discounts from having a high CTR. Namely, a lower cost per click, which really adds up as clicks accumulate. This is true not ju…
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As you’re no doubt aware, Google finally rolled out its Google 4.0 algorithm update at the end of last week. Penguin is now part of Google’s core algorithm, penalising websites that use various black-hat link schemes to manipulate search rankings. Other important changes include: Penguin data is refreshed in real time, so any changes will be made as soon as the affected page has been recrawled and reindexed. Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking of the offending page, rather than affecting the whole site. So how do these changes affect actual SEO practitioners? I asked a panel of experts and SEW contributors their views on Penguin 4.0, including: …
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We are living in a video-first world, where moving images are at the heart of all apps and services. Facebook recorded an increase of 800% in video consumption from 2015 to 2016, jumping from 1 billion views to 8 billion views in just a year. During Social Media Week, Ian Crocombe, Regional Head of Facebook’s Creative Shop presented all the opportunities that video content may offer, both for publishers and advertisers on Facebook. Moving from TV to social media Video ads on Facebook are different from the ones we knew on TV, and they also lead to a different behaviour from the audience. Moreover, users have a shorter attention span when using their mobil…
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Search traffic is of course vital for online retailers, but a new survey finds that more people use Amazon as the first port of call when looking for products. The second annual State of Amazon study by BloomReach found that 55% of consumers start their online product searches on Amazon, compared to 28% who opt for a search engine. The survey of 2,000 US consumers found that Amazon’s share of the action was up 11% year on year, and the figures down for search engines and other retailers. The retailer’s reputation for price-competitiveness, (as well as the fact that it sells just about everything) means it’s the go-to destination for comparison shopping. 9…
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Brand protection is changing. Are you keeping up? If you have a brand worth protecting, competitors are already bidding on your brand name. Some bid directly on your name, while others will bid on obvious brand-plus derivatives, such as when GEICO bids on phrases like “Progressive insurance” (and vice versa). As you can see for the keyword “geico insurance,” AIS, FreeQuotes365 and Mercury Insurance are aggressively buying that keyword, too. If you have a trademark or brand name that drives search volume, it will be one of your more profitable campaigns. Unfortunately, it is one of the important PPC campaigns for your affiliates, resellers and competitors too.…
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For executives, keeping up to date with trends and events in your industry is crucial in order to ensure that your business and its strategy remains relevant. It can be a major challenge however, with constraints on time and so many sources of information to choose from. It’s easy to see why many senior executives simply don’t have the time to perform the detailed research tasks necessary to make sense of all this information. It’s important to overcome this challenge though, as things can move so quickly and being on top of trends is key for executives. It’s also very important to ensure that the whole company is also up to date. For this, executives need to bec…
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The fast pace of business in the digital age means that businesses (and business models) are shifting more rapidly than ever. New technologies and innovations can quickly sweep away well established and seeking solid business models within just a few years. There are plenty of such examples from the digital age, Blockbusters and Kodak to name just two. In the latter case, Kodak failed to adapt to the growth of digital photography and the concurrent decline of photographic film, and a company which had traded for more than 100 years was forced to file for bankruptcy. Blockbuster, which had itself been a disruptive company which saw the growth in home video and bui…
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