Barry Schwartz says, “Google has added a new video to their do you need an SEO help document page. The 11-plus-minute video walks people through the process of hiring an SEO consultant or firm. It tells them what to look for, what questions to ask, what some of the red flags are and more.Maile Ohye from Google is the face of the video, and she does a very good job clearly documenting the main points one should look at during this process. She outlines the SEO hiring process in these three steps:Conduct a two-way interview with your potential SEO. Check that they seem genuinely interested... [...]

Nathan sinnott says, “Everyone wants to get a high click-through rate and a good spot in Google’s search algorithm. But, when it is generally accepted in the industry that Google uses approximately 200 ranking factors to rank websites — and some of these are proven, some are controversial and some are purely nerd-based conjecture — it can be hard to know which factors to focus on when it comes to your search engine optimization (SEO).So, what is most important to Google?“It is content,” said Google Search Quality Senior Strategist Andrey Lipattsev. “And,... [...]

Casie Gillette says, “If you’ve been working with one client or one site for a long time, you know it can be challenging to keep things fresh, both from an idea perspective and also an interest perspective. After all, it’s no secret that one of the common reasons people love this industry is the constant change.That being said, while change keeps us on our toes, there’s also an element of consistency I love. Yes, the search results change and strategies evolve, but at the end of the day, search really comes down to creating something that’s accessible, useful and important to your... [...]

Mike Le says, “Many search agencies still run search campaigns on their agency account without sharing direct access to client. They instead send a weekly or monthly report on the clicks, impressions, and ad expense. For small businesses, the clients often do not have enough understanding about search marketing to review a campaign’s setup, or are too busy to look into the campaigns. And sometimes, the client may not know they can request that direct access. For bigger clients, this way of reporting is accepted because it is similar to the way traditional marketing has been working in TV... [...]

Nikki Gilliland says, “I recently wrote an article about Pizza Express’s new customer-service chatbot.My overall opinion was that it offers a fairly standard booking system via Facebook Messenger – nothing fancy, but practical enough. One issue I failed to mention is that the brand doesn’t appear to be doing much to promote it. Which is odd, as how are people meant to use it if they don’t know it exists in the first place?Here’s a bit more info on this issue and how brands can combat it.Discovering chatbotsIn order to access the Pizza Express chatbot, I typed @PizzaExpress... [...]

Brian Childs says, “SEO training classes provide a smart, accessible way to accelerate your knowledge of our industry’s best practices, tools, and processes. For several months we’ve offered three workshops on our SEO Training page that focused on core SEO capabilities like keyword research, competitor research, and site audits.Starting now in February 2017, we’re expanding these classes to include more topics and more opportunities to help your team deliver value faster.What’s changed about our SEO training classes?There are two major changes we’ve made to our... [...]

Sarah Lively says, “TL;DRKeyword-level data isn’t gone, it’s just harder to get to. By using Google Sheets to marry the data from Search Console and Google Analytics into a sheet, you’ll have your top keywords and landing page engagement metrics together (for free!). It’s not perfect keyword-level data, but in 7 steps you can see the keywords that drove clicks to a page and the organic engagement metrics for that page, all together in one place. The Google Analytics Add-on for Google Sheets will pull organic landing page engagement metrics, and the Search Analytics for Sheets Add-on... [...]

MOZ team says, “What’s the secret to earning site traffic from competitive keywords with decent search volume? The answer could be as easy as 1, 2, 3 — or more precisely, 2, 0, 1, 7. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand lets you in on a relatively straightforward tactic that can help you compete in a tough space using very fresh content”.The Keyword + Year Content/Rankings HackMOZ [...]

Sherry Bonelli says, “If you’ve followed SEO strategies for any length of time, you know one thing: SEO changes all the time. When it comes to local SEO, it’s more important than ever that you optimize your on-site and off-site SEO strategies for clients and customers who may be searching for your local business. Local competition is heating up, and if you’re not on top of your rankings, you can bet your competitors will be.Here are five solid local SEO tactics you can use this year to help your business rank higher for local search terms.1. Title and meta description tags still matterTitle... [...]

Wesley Parker says, “Long tail keywords are widely considered to be fundamental to search marketing success due to the low-cost traffic that they generate, however should this still be the case in 2017?This article is going to analyze data from case studies conducted by Clicteq and PPC Hero that suggests that long tail keywords are now almost obsolete when it comes to AdWords.For the sake of this article we are going to classify long tail keywords as being four-words-long or more, though there is some debate with people arguing that keywords that are three or more words long should be... [...]