MOZ team says, “If you’ve ever been the victim of a Google penalty, you know how painful it can be to identify the problem and recover from the hit. Even if you’ve been penalty-free thus far, the threat of getting penalized is a source of worry. But how can you avoid it, when it seems like unnatural links lurk around every corner? In today’s Whiteboard Friday, we’re overjoyed to have Google penalty and unnatural link expert Marie Haynes share how to earn links that do comply with Google’s guidelines, that will keep your site out of trouble, and that can make... [...]

Ben Davis says, “What is marketing ops? In Ashley Friedlein’s recent 2017 digital trends essay, he identifies marketing transformation as a hot topic. Ashley says that this could include the (re)integration of digital marketing, the introduction of a CCO (chief customer officer), bringing teams back in house, assessing supplier relationships, zero-based budgeting and marketing ops. Here’s what he has to say about the latter: The area that I find most interesting is the idea of ‘marketing ops’: the operating system for marketing. This is one effective way of keeping focus but... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Google appears to be running a limited test for local inventory ads (LIA) on mobile that looks like a shopping ad-ification of the Local Pack. Spotted on mobile by Mike Blumenthal on a search for “engagement rings Buffalo,” the result shows a map with a couple of LIAs below it where local pack results would typically show. I have been able to replicate the result in the Google mobile app. Here the ads are for two different rings at two different Kohl’s locations in the area, signified by the respective shopping icons on the map above the ads. Clicking on either... [...]

Nikki Gilliland says, “As more brands turn to social media to reach and engage consumers, many naturally choose to work with influencers to front campaigns. The process isn’t always easy, of course. As highlighted in Econsultancy’s Voice of the Influencer report, there appears to be somewhat of a power struggle between brands and influencers, with the main challenges involving strategy and motivation. So, here’s a bit of insight into the biggest mistakes brands can make, and why it’s important to avoid them. Choosing influence over authenticity The natural instinct for brands is... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Gary Illyes from Google has written a blog post named What Crawl Budget Means for Googlebot. In it, he explains what crawl budget is, how crawl rate limits work, what is crawl demand and what factors impact a site’s crawl budget. First, Gary explained that for most sites, crawl budget is something they do not need to worry about. For really large sites, it becomes something that you may want to consider looking at. “Prioritizing what to crawl, when, and how much resource the server hosting the site can allocate to crawling is more important for bigger sites, or those... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “Google has been in and out of the small business (SMB) web creation and hosting business since 2006. Apparently, it’s making a renewed effort at providing a very basic website creation tool to local business owners. SMB survey data vary, but a still-meaningful percentage of SMBs don’t have websites. Mike Blumenthal has played with the tool, which is presented in Google My Business (GMB): It is essentially a super simple single page website builder with very little opportunity for customization or change. Upon access to the Website tab in the GMB, it comes up with... [...]

Jonathan Long says, “Influencer marketing is one of the hottest, and effective, ways to get your brand in front of a massive targeted audience. Why? Because it works, and works extremely well. My agency has been in the influencer marketing game since long before it was a buzzword, and it’s become such a large business that we launched a second agency, blerrp, as a stand-alone influencer marketing brand. It allows brands to connect with their audience in a more organic way, when compared to traditional forms of digital advertising. There are still some CMOs and executives that aren’t... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “A Google spokesperson has confirmed with Search Engine Land that the company’s link command is no longer functioning. Google told us the feature is no longer around, and using a link:www.domain.com will likely return irrelevant results. We saw signs of this going away a year ago, but then Google told us the link operator “is not dead.” Now, Google is telling us the link operator is essentially dead. Yesterday, Google’s John Mueller told webmasters not to use it. Of course, most webmasters already have known not to use it for years and years now. But as long as... [...]

Bryson Meunier says, “Hopefully, all of you learned from “Mobilegeddon” in 2015 and “Mobilegeddon 2” in 2016 that the updates Google makes to improve the smartphone user experience for the majority of Google searchers are not the end of the world. Not even close, in fact. Still, I have seen a lot of articles focused on this topic in relation to Google’s new mobile-first index, which will be launching finally this year — almost two years after Google’s Gary Illyes referenced it at SMX West. Here’s what you need to remember in order to fully take advantage of the opportunity... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Google has officially confirmed they have begun rolling out the intrusive mobile interstitial penalty yesterday. Google warned us that this was coming almost a six months ago, and it did start rolling out on January 10, 2017, as Google promised. Google’s John Mueller and Gary Illyes confirmed the penalty began rolling out yesterday. This penalty only impacts intrusive interstitials that happen directly after going from a Google mobile search result to a specific page. It does not impact or penalize pages after that, so if you have a intrusive interstitial that comes... [...]