SEO News

Video content has skyrocketed over the past few years, and therefore it’s time to examine how adding SEO to your videos can impact rankings. Video is everywhere and this is both a blessing and a curse, especially if you’re trying to stand out from the rest of the crowd at the top of search engine results pages. So consider the following video SEO tips to help put you ahead of the competition… 1) Add value As common as it may sound, your content should be relevant to your audience, adding value that will convince the users to dedicate the right time to watch your video. The more quality videos, the bigger the chances to serve as an authority, build a trusting relat…

Last year, Google unleashed Mobilegeddon on the world in an effort to make the web more accessible by favoring mobile-friendly sites in the mobile SERPs. Now, Google is upping the ante by taking aim at sites that use intrusive interstitials. Starting January 10, 2017, Google will update its algorithm so that sites “where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.” In a post on the Official Google Webmaster Central blog, Google Product Manager Doantam Phan provided examples of techniques that Google isn’t a fan of: Showing a popup that covers the main content, either immediately after …

It’s been a Google heavy month and we’re only halfway through September – what with its latest mobile-first product announcements, various algorithm fluctuations and many SERP experiments. So let’s leave the big G to do its own thing for a while and check in with the second most popular search engine, Bing. What’s Bing been up to lately? How’s Bing feeling? What’s new with Bing? How does Bing like to take its tea? Let’s take a look at the latest round of announcements from the Big B over the last couple of weeks that you may have missed. Bing Network reaches 20% market share in the UK Bing has announced that it has surpassed 20% market share in the UK, accord…

Google has been successfully sued for defamation in Australia by a man who found his image associated with gangsters in search results. The man won the defamation lawsuit after showing Google's search results linked him to an underworld figure. Source: Search Engine Watch

Brands have been upping their investments in new ad products from popular social media services, but are they getting their money’s worth? Some are reportedly starting to ask that very question in the face of metrics that raise questions about their potential efficacy. Take Snapchat and its ad offerings, for instance. Snapchat is one of the most popular social platforms in the world, and brands have been eager to take advantage of the opportunities Snapchat is increasingly giving them to advertise to Snapchat users. But as detailed by AdAge’s Garett Sloane, “one top advertiser” using Snapchat video ads has revealed that the ads generate less than 3 seconds of vi…

Relevancy, relevancy, relevancy; it’s the mantra of digital marketers around the world. But when it comes to content marketing, how do you quantify this? Can you determine just how relevant you are, and how you can improve it? Relevancy is now a critical element in search marketing, but understanding and quantifying that relevancy is no easy task. It takes a combination of human and algorithmic review to really get to the bottom of what makes content suitable to answer your audience search query, but how do you know that you are looking for the right things? Content, context, timing, technical proficiency and audience targeting – these are all critical to ensurin…

Before you dive into keyword research for your site, you should know about these common mistakes that many businesses and SEO firms make. Avoiding these mistakes can save you time, help you re-think your marketing strategy, and drive the right customers to your site. 1) Picking keywords that are irrelevant to your customers People often pick keywords with high search volumes in their field, but don’t pay enough attention to the relevancy of these keywords to their target customers. You need to choose keywords that match your customer’s concerns. For example, if you’re targeting affluent families who are searching for good schools for their kids, you shouldn’t pi…

Speed can make more of a difference to the success of your online business than anything else, yet very few people talk about it. If you can increase the speed of your site, traffic can increase and conversion can double. Here I won’t just be talking about your website speed, but the overall “speed experience” of your online business. A 2015 Microsoft study that surveyed 2,000 people and monitored brain activity of 112 additional people with EEGs, revealed that the average human attention span has reduced to eight seconds, from 12 seconds in the year 2000. Interestingly, declining attention spans is affecting online transactions as well. Here are some interes…

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…

Discount vouchers can be a great lever to grow top line revenues and engage new customers. However, they can also become a highly addictive and dangerous drug for retailers, increasingly relied upon (with diminishing effects) as a reaction to three major challenges: Customers becoming conditioned to buy only with a discount; cannibalisation of organic sales; and a ‘pull forward’ effect with sales spiking artificially in the short term and declining post-promotion. As their usage becomes increasingly widespread, there’s a rush by retailers to understand the full extent of their economic impact on the customer journey and get smarter with how they’re deployed. Her…

Integration continues to be a problem, especially across organizations with a global market presence online. The solution? Focus on improving these areas in 2013 to drive online marketing integration and enable efficiency across global regions. Source: Search Engine Watch

With the big push in content marketing and the use of social media as a commonplace tactic for brands, rising above the noise is a challenge. With a little creativity, any brand can steal some inspiration from shows like "Orange is the New Black". Source: Search Engine Watch

Although Facebook now generates upwards of 80% of its revenue from mobile ads, the world’s largest social network isn’t waving the white flag on desktop ad blocking. Yesterday, it announced that it’s changing the way it delivers desktop ads in an effort to thwart ad blocking software. Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s Ads & Business Platform VP, didn’t mince words, telling the Wall Street Journal, “Facebook is ad-supported. Ads are a part of the Facebook experience; they’re not a tack on.” In a blog post, he explained Facebook’s position in slightly more diplomatic terms: We’ve designed our ad formats, ad performance and controls to address the underlying reasons p…

Schema markup is proving to be extremely important in the SEO industry. Here's some top advice and suggestions to reap the rewards of more traffic and better website representation in search engines on the international front. Source: Search Engine Watch

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…

It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for. All us mobile-first proponents have been sat patiently rubbing our hands and saying “you’ll see, just you wait and see!” to anyone within hearing distance – but now we have the proof. Mobile internet use is now more popular than desktop the whole world over. To be honest, it was an easy prediction to make. Earlier in the year Google stated that mobile searches had already surpassed desktop in 10 countries including the US and Japan. And mobile ad spend has been dominate over desktop since March. So the following research shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. StatCounter Global Stats has found that mobile and tablet devices a…

Seeking more dollars this holiday season? Meet the Digital Endcap � a display ad for a manufacturer that appears on a retailer�s website, allowing the retailer to further monetize the traffic it�s already generating, at virtually zero marginal cost. Source: Search Engine Watch

Twitter is clamping down on graphic sexual activities and provocative nudity that people post on quick clip video app Vine, making it clear that explicit sexual content is unwanted. Source: Search Engine Watch

What I really want to unwrap are a few gifts from Google. My 2013 Christmas wish list includes a few new AdWords features and new functionality. So Santa Google, here's my list � please check it twice � this year I've been mostly nice. Source: Search Engine Watch

While social PPC won't replace Google Adwords any time soon, it's become an effective source of incremental leads and sales for savvy businesses. Next time you launch and run a paid social campaign, use these 17 tips for success. Source: Search Engine Watch