SEO News

When you’re just starting out as a business owner it’s easy to become wrapped up in the seemingly endless number of metrics you *need* to pay attention to in order to determine the success of your business. However, the problem with following a lot of metrics is that it can become very easy to not pay close attention to any of them, and isn’t the whole point of following metrics so that you know exactly what’s going on with your startup? Metrics have the potential to offer a ton of insight into your successes and failures, but only if you know which ones to track without getting overwhelmed. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of 10 important marketing metrics t…

Twitter has opened Moments to all users and is therefore taking curation to the next level. What does this mean for brands? Twitter Moments used to be a curation of the best tweets of the day; an overview of the news and the important tweets you need to check out. It may not have reached the level of adoption Twitter was hoping for, but it was still an interesting perspective on how we can consume information without leaving the platform. Now Twitter Moments is gradually expanding to all users so they can facilitate storytelling through a series of tweets. This could be Twitter’s response to Snapchat (and Instagram) Stories, but luckily it’s not directly imitati…

Social media management can become very time consuming, and that’s why we have compiled a list of some of the best tools to enhance your social efforts. Whether you’re a small business or a large corporation, these tools can be useful for everyone trying to create a consistent social presence. And many are free to use… Social scheduling Hootsuite Hootsuite is among the most popular social media management platforms, offering an overview of all your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, Instagram), along with the option to create and schedule content, analyse performance, and monitor your favorite topics and hashtags. It also features a Beta …

Visual search on the web has been around for some time. In 2008, TinEye became the first image search engine to use image identification technology, and in 2010, the Google Goggles app allowed users to search the physical world with their phone cameras. But in the last couple of years, visual search has come into new prominence, with companies like Pinterest and Bing developing into serious contenders in the visual search space, and search engines like Splash conceptualising new ways to search the web visually. We now have an impressive range of visual search methods available to us: we can search with images, with part of an image, with our cameras, with paint …

Not understanding the client's business or economics, not doing enough keyword and competitive analysis, using a generic proposal template, and lack of communication and reporting the wrong metrics will cost you future business and current clients. Source: Search Engine Watch

There’s currently a lot of discussion about how to improve your domain’s SEO. Many issues are labeled as dramatically influential and people are always sharing tips on how to deal with them. However, one topic is seldom discussed within SEO circles: internal content cannibalization. Why should we care? SEO experts and digital marketers have long been contemplating whether or not there’s such a thing as a Google penalty for duplicate content. As it turns out, it’s a myth. However, we cannot simply sit back and relax. In fact, there’s one thing worse than “duplicate content” – “too similar” content, which can be a stone around your website’s neck. Pieces of co…

The big story in streaming this past week is the anticipated arrival of Amazon’s new on-demand music service. Rumours have been floating around for a while now but sites such as The Verge are guessing that the online retailer could jump into the ring with Spotify and Apple Music etc. over the next few weeks; with a service for customers already using the Echo device. It is expected they will launch an additional $10-per-month ‘open to all’ cross-device service in early 2017. Amazon certainly have a weighty legacy to leverage from, as well as a wealth of recorded media they already offer through their Prime service which they can now bring to the table. But I thou…

One of people’s biggest fears about artificial intelligence is that machines will rise up and humanity will be obsolete, that we will give ‘them’ too much power and control, and they will take over through either benevolence or malevolence. The root of many of these science fiction horror stories is the ability for the machines to think for themselves and come to a reasoned logical conclusion. We have had a test for machine intelligence in the form of the Turing test, which sees if a machine can fool a human interrogator into thinking they are talking to another human. However, the test is not without its problems and one of my favourite criticisms of Turing’s test …

It’s easy to overlook your organic click-through rates on Google. After all, you’ve probably been lulled into believing over most of your marketing life that they’re not as important as other SEO metrics, such as inbound links. However, there are a lot of really great reasons you should work on improving your organic CTRs, not the least of which is its impact on your rankings. In fact, we’ve found evidence that if you want to move up a spot in the rankings, improving your organic CTR by 3% will do it. But even if you don’t believe that organic CTR can affect your SEO rankings, it’s a really good idea to work on increasing your click-through rate. A high organic C…

The use of virtual reality headsets is reaching a tipping point with increased opportunities for brands to exploit their growing popularity, according to new research published by ClickZ and Toluna. A poll of consumers in the United States has found that more than a third (37%) have now used either their own or someone else’s VR headset, almost double the equivalent figure of 19% in the UK. The survey of 1,000 US and 1,000 UK consumers was carried out by ClickZ Intelligence using Toluna software, the world’s leading provider of real-time digital consumer insights. Of those US consumers who have used a VR headset, the most common drivers of usage were for gaming (…

Click-through rates for websites depend a great deal on their position in organic search results. But to what extent are local businesses further compromised as Google pushes all organic results further and further off the bottom of the mobile screen as it prioritizes paid ads, Google My Business listings, Knowledge Graph and/or Accelerated Mobile Pages? And when directories, aggregators, articles, reviews and chains dominate the top organic slots, what hope is there that the mobile user will scroll two, three, four or more screens to find the website of the local restaurant or hotel they seek? This is the first of two columns on the state of mobile search. T…

A couple of weeks ago we published an article covering 12 high profile websites that have been hit with a Google penalty. Not all of these companies were in anyway directly to blame. For many it was a lack of education around SEO best practice. Or in some cases an errant SEO consultant earned them the punishment. In order to elucidate further on the behaviour that will lead to a penalty, let’s take a look at the ‘black hat SEO’ practices. What is Black Hat SEO? Any on-page or off-page practice that intends to falsely manipulate a website’s search position. There are many ways a website can do this, all of which are bad for your site, bad for search engines and …

Everyone who knows me knows I’m obsessed with unicorns – not just the magical beasts you’ll often find hanging out near rainbows but marketing unicorns. What’s a marketing unicorn, you ask? It’s one of those magical campaigns that’s so effective it performs in the top 1-3% of all marketing campaigns. Marketing unicorns are so special that, even though they’re rare, they end up delivering almost half of the value of your overall marketing efforts. For example, here on the WordStream blog, our top 50 articles drive as much traffic as thousands of others (the marketing donkeys) combined. I call it the Unicorn Marketing Power Law. This is why it’s so key, as a ma…

Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from the world of search marketing and beyond. This week, Amazon is wooing Prime subscribers with a new, exclusive credit card, brand interest in Snapchat may not be as high as it seems, and the privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo is on the up-and-up, reaching a record of 14 million anonymous searches in one day. Amazon unveils new credit card exclusive to Prime members Since the launch of Amazon Prime as an express shipping service in 2005, Amazon has continued to add benefits to its exclusive subscription service in a bit to retain existing subscribers and lure new ones. The latest of thes…

To date the leaders of restaurant takeaway and delivery have prospered, largely, on an open approach, that allows customers to choose between mobile web and apps. But a new breed led by UberEats and Amazon Prime won’t allow mobile web access, as they attempt to drive people download their native apps. Whether consumers want to find/order a meal to eat in, takeaway or have delivered, increasingly the tool of choice is the mobile phone. But many restaurant businesses – with a few notable exceptions – have been slow to capitalize on this shift, which has allowed third-parties to gain a foothold in the market. This is happening in many major cities worldwide, but le…

Much may have changed through the years in SEO, however the importance of the title tag can't be overstressed. Here's how to create title tags that state who you are, what you do, why anyone should bother to click, and why Google should care. Source: Search Engine Watch

It�s not too late to get your marketing ducks in a row and leverage new and old channels to generate demand for your company. Here are five trend predictions in the world of B2B marketing for 2013 and where to focus your attention. Source: Search Engine Watch

Creating content is easy. Creating great content? That’s much tougher. Just 10 short years ago, the barrier to entry was much lower for companies. Content marketing wasn’t even a thing. But once 2010 came around, it started exploding, as seen on Google Trends: In the past six years, the amount of content has grown exponentially. Everyone has bought into the now clichéd mantra: content is king. Yet, although brands, businesses, and publishers are cranking out more content every year, conversion rates aren’t increasing. Why? It goes back to the first sentence: creating great content is hard! Yet for all the changes we’ve seen, there are many basic things …

If you’re wondering what factors to consider as you build your SEO strategy for 2017, links are still the top-ranking factor for Google’s algorithm with content close behind. And high CTR is still at the core of the rankings pack as well. Earlier this year, Andrey Lipattsev, a Google Search Quality Senior Strategist, about the top ranking factors for Google. Lipattsev said, “I can tell you what they are. It is content. And it’s links pointing to your site.” Recent Study Put Links to the Ranking Factor Test A recent study by Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting put links to the ranking factor test. And links emerged as powerful as ever. Previous research by Moz…

Which conversion types best suit your business? Google now offers conversion types for nearly every business model, making it easier to attain your goals that much faster. Learn all about the many types of conversions you should be tracking and why. Source: Search Engine Watch