Barry Schwartz says, “Data are wonderful things. Properly applied, data can provide insights into where to trim budget and where to increase it. Data will indicate what’s working versus what’s not, what’s a signal versus what’s an outlier. And, data help to determine the proper media mix for the overall campaign strategy. Data-driven, performance-based advertisers reviewing their online display metrics often find it easy to justify spend on retargeting. After all, it’s very simple to see that retargeting is a big winner when it comes to display. But beware! There’s a trap in... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Last night, Google pushed out a major local search algorithm update. The update has been pushed out to U.S. English based search results and seems to have had enough of a significant update that many SEOs, webmasters and local business owners have taken noticed. The update impacts both the organic local listings within Google Map Search and Google Web Search. We are naming this algorithm update the Pigeon update, for more on that, see our post over here. The algorithm is more tied into the traditional web search ranking signals, including search features from the knowledge... [...]

Rand Fishkin says, “By now, most of us have gotten around to doing testing of some sort on our websites, but testing specifically for SEO can be extremely difficult and requires extra vigilance. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains three major things we need to think about when performing these tests, and offers up several ideas for experiments we all can run!“. How Do I Successfully Run SEO Tests On My Website? – Whiteboard Friday MOZ Blog  [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “The volume of US Google searches about financial topics spikes in the beginning of the year; travel searches are most popular during the summer months; and retail searches start building for the holiday season in September; according to a recent report by WhosOn. The analysis examined five years of US Google Trends data for four key industries—automotive, finance, retail, and travel—to determine how search volume and topics vary from season to season. Below, key findings from the report. Search Volume Automotive: Search volume about automotive keywords traditionally... [...]

SamKusinitz says, “Trying to abide by Google’s ranking factors can often feel like trying to work with a boss who is impossible to please. No matter how hard you try to figure out exactly what the search giant wants, you can never quite right. When you finally think you’ve got it all figured out, Google always seems to change what it wants and refuses to reveal its criteria. Well, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem reasonable to expect Google to reveal its secret list of ranking factors anytime soon. However, perhaps the fact that Google’s ranking algorithm is a secret is actually an... [...]

Kelvin Newman says, “Recruiting the right talent for your team is tricky no matter what industry you’re in, but people working insearch marketing face some very particular challenges. There aren’t a lot of experienced and talented people to go around. Equally, experience doesn’t always correlate with talent. There are a lot of excellent search marketers with only a few years experience and others who’ve done the years but don’t have the skills. Lots of people are responding to this by taking on trainees, this can work a treat but does eat into one of your most precious... [...]

Neil Patel says, “Though Google gets roughly 3.5 billion searches a day, there are really only three types of searches that people perform — navigational, informational, and transactional. If you want get more people to find you in search, you need to know how to optimize your content for each of these types. In this article, I’m going to explain each of the three types of searches and give a bit of perspective on why each one is important. Then, I’ll provide you with some tactical methods for unleashing a strategy that will allow you to dominate the SERPs for that search type”. 9... [...]

Eric Schiffer says, “Digital marketing technology is rather like high fashion — trends that were acceptable and even widely emulated suddenly find themselves hopelessly passé without even a hint of warning. For the digital marketing community, innovations can fade into irrelevance as quickly as a pair of flared jeans, only the transition to the latest craze can be far more painful. Just got your Adobe Flash-based site developed? Here comes HTML5. Now you need responsive design — oh, and your obvious stock images are duplicated across the Web a thousandfold! In the case of search engine... [...]

Kelvin Newman says, “Recruiting the right talent for your team is tricky no matter what industry you’re in, but people working insearch marketing face some very particular challenges. There aren’t a lot of experienced and talented people to go around. Equally, experience doesn’t always correlate with talent. There are a lot of excellent search marketers with only a few years experience and others who’ve done the years but don’t have the skills. Lots of people are responding to this by taking on trainees, this can work a treat but does eat into one of your most precious... [...]

Joe Chierotti says, “Search engine optimization is a burgeoning industry that continues to experience a fast rise in popularity—due, in large part, to an enthusiastic effort by Google engineers to create more relevant and organic search results for users. With constant updates and tweaks to its algorithms, Google is attempting to improve how websites are created, developed, and experienced. One way Google attempts to improve the user experience is to penalize sites that knowingly or unknowingly break Google’s rules. The usual result is the devastation of the penalized company’s... [...]