Sam Lloyd says, “SEO is getting tough. There’s more competition and Google is smarter than ever. So in order to get the edge over your competitors, you’ve got to be doing things right. Below, we’ve identified some toxic habits that might be holding back your SEO efforts. Rid them from your soul and increase your chances at winning top rankings for the keywords that matter most for your business. 1. Optimizing for SEO before user experience This is also known as thin crappy content, or as I call it, “aimless content.” You create a blog post that is the desired amount of words, lets... [...]

Baer says, “Recently, LinkedIn released their top 25 job skills of 2014, based on what recruiters are looking for on the LinkedIn platform. Number one was big data analyst. There were several others in the top 25 specifically related to digital marketing, such as digital marketing campaign specialist, etc. I’ve got to tell you what was not in the top 25 was Amish carpenter. That may not come as a huge surprise. But what did surprise me was that so many of the top 25 jobs such as computer programming, data analysis, and several other highly technical jobs, often tie into marketing, especially... [...]

Casey Meraz says, “Another year in search has passed. It’s now 2015 and we have seen some major changes in local ranking factors since 2014, which I also expect to change greatly throughout 2015. For some a new year means a fresh starting point and yet for others it’s a time of reflection to analyze how successful your campaign has been. Whatever boat you’re in, make sure to sit down and read this guide. In this guide we will cover how you can have a successful local SEO campaign in 2015 starting with the basics and getting down to five action items you should focus on... [...]

Sergio Aicardi says, “No longer are we in a world where building links or a ton of SEO friendly content leads to top rankings. In today’s post penguin, post panda world, one must earn their rankings and it certainly isn’t easy to do so. Fundamentally, it’s obvious that Google is trying its best to combat spammers by identifying what the black/gray hats use to make their web pages show up at the top of the SERP’s in a manipulative way. What most people fail to realize is that Google has a job to do as a search engine and that job can be summed up to “providing users with the best answers... [...]

Amy-Mae Elliott says, “Whether it’s never-ending posts from annoying “friends” with verbal diarrhea, or repetitive links to stupid survey sites, the truth is that sometimes spending time on Facebook is more irritating than productive. The bad news is that Facebook’s algorithms to determine what appears in your News Feed are a closely guarded secret. The social media giant simply says, “The stories that show in your News Feed are influenced by your connections and activity on Facebook.” But there is hope — you have the power to tweak a few settings under... [...]

Rand Fishkin says, “Marketers of all stripes are hearing more about providing unique content and value to their audiences, and how that’s what Google wants to show searchers. Unique content is straightforward enough, but what exactly does everyone mean by “unique value?” What does that actually look like? In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand illustrates the answer“. How to Provide Unique Value in Your Content – Whiteboard Friday MOZ Blog  [...]

Jason Abbruzzese says, “Google’s grip on the Internet search market loosened in December, as the search engine saw its largest drop since 2009. That loss was Yahoo’s gain, as the Marissa Mayer-helmed company added almost 2% from November to December to bring its market share back into double digits. Google’s lead remains overwhelming, with just more than three-quarters of search, according to SatCounter Global Stats. Microsoft’s Bing gained some momentum to take 12.5% of the market. Yahoo now has 10.4%. All other search engines combined to take 1.9%”. Google sees... [...]

Alan Bleiweiss says, “There are several reasons a reconsideration request might fail. But some of the most common mistakes site owners and inexperienced SEOs make when trying to lift a link-related Google penalty are entirely avoidable. Here’s a list of the top 12 most common mistakes made when submitting reconsideration requests, and how you can prevent them. 1. Insufficient link data This is one of the most common reasons why reconsideration requests fail. This mistake is readily evident each time a reconsideration request gets rejected and the example URLs provided by Google... [...]

Jonathan Long says, “A massive pay-per-click and SEO budget can deliver high-quality traffic to your website, but if you are sending that traffic to poorly optimizedlanding pages you are essentially throwing your money down the drain. If you want to convert more of your traffic into leads, sales and revenue make sure that your landing pages feature the following seven elements: 1. Attention-grabbing headline If your landing page headline doesn’t grab instant attention, you risk losing a potential conversion in mere seconds. A great headline gives the visitor a quick overview of your offer... [...]

Alan Bleiweiss says, “This past March, I was contacted by a prospective client: My site has been up since 2004. I had good traffic growth up to 2012 (doubling each year to around a million page views a month), then suffered a 40% drop in mid Feb 2012. I’ve been working on everything that I can think of since, but the traffic has never recovered. Since my primary business is performing strategic site audits, this is something I hear often. Site appears to be doing quite well, then gets slammed. Site owner struggles for years to fix it, but repeatedly comes up empty”. Case Study:... [...]