Graham Oakes says, “Are you doing what’s best, or simply seeking the protection of the herd? It’s an enticing idea: ‘Best practice’. It suggests a clearly defined path to success; a recipe for perfectly honed websites, trouble-free projects, delighted users; a silver bullet. But what is ‘best practice’? I don’t mean best practice for UX design, or best practice for SEO, or best practice for project execution. But the concept of ‘best practice’ itself.  Where do best practices come from? How do we recognise them? How do we adopt them?”. What is... [...]

Flora Pang says, “Google’s Hummingbird update made quite a ripple in the search engine marketing world by introducing a more conversation-focused approach to search engine, but it did not completely revoke the relevance of keywords. Conducting keyword research for SEO is still as important as ever. While there is no shortage of decent paid SEO keyword research tools out there, these tools are usually outside the budget of a startup. This guide will show you how you can painlessly conduct keyword research with free tools. Tools you will need: Microsoft Excel Google Keyword Planner (Google... [...]

Isla McKetta says, “What if I told you I could teach you to write the perfect headline? One that is so irresistible every person who sees it will click on it. But what if I then told you not one single person out of all the millions who will click on that headline will convert? And that you might lose all your credibility in the process”. Is that Mind-Blowing Title Blowing Your Credibility? You Decide MOZ Blog  [...]

Chow says, “A motto that John brings up now and then is that if you live by the Google, you die by the Google. That may be true, but for a lot of bloggers and website owners, search engine optimization is absolutely of paramount importance, because Google continues to be one of the biggest and most important traffic sources. I know that’s case for my own blog, even if it may not necessarily be the case for John Chow dot Com. Given this, whether you have a personal blog, a resource site or an e-commerce site, it’s in your best interest to rank well in the search engines for your target keywords... [...]

Everett Sizemore says, “This is Inflow’s process for doing content audits. It may not be the “best” way to do them every time, but we’ve managed to keep it fairly agile in terms of how you choose to analyze, interpret and make recommendations on the data. The fundamental parts of the process remain about the same across numerous types of websites no matter what their business goals are: Collect all of the content URLs on the site and fetch the data you need about each URL. Then analyze the data and provide recommendations for each content URL. Theoretically it’s... [...]

Isla McKetta says, “What if I told you I could teach you to write the perfect headline? One that is so irresistible every person who sees it will click on it. You’d sign up immediately and maybe even promise me your firstborn. But what if I then told you not one single person out of all the millions who will click on that headline will convert? And that you might lose all your credibility in the process. Would all the traffic generated by that “perfect” headline be worth it? Help us solve a dispute It isn’t really that bad, but with all the emphasis lately on headline... [...]

Jane Intrieri says, “Whether you’re a new business or just new to SEO, there’s a formula to making a successful SEO strategy. Curating high-quality content, understanding the basic principles of HTML, and knowing how to build relevant links are all part of the formula. But simply knowing the formula isn’t enough; SEOs must also know how to implement the elements of the SEO formula themselves. Below are the top 6 most essential SEO elements when beginning a new SEO strategy, and how to implement them. Targeted, Relevant, and Rich Content That Is Updated Frequently Incredible content marketing... [...]

Frank Spohr says, “Optimizing websites so they rank high in Google’s search engines is big business. Ranking in the number one position for a popular keyword can bring in roughly 36.4 percent of that keyword’s traffic to your website according to Optify’s 2010 CTR study. Ranking in the second position may seem like a safe bet, but study data revealed it only yields around 12 percent of the keyword’s traffic. The picture becomes grimmer as you drop into position three and below where click-thru rates drop into the low single digits with rank 10 bottoming out at 2.2 percent. With a... [...]

Cyrus Shepard says, “The folks at Groupon surprised us earlier this summer when they reported the results of an experiment that showed that up to 60% of direct traffic is organic. In order to accomplish this, Groupon de-indexed their site, effectively removing themselves from Google search results. That’s crazy talk! Of course, we knew we had to try this ourselves”. Experiment: We Removed a Major Website from Google Search, for Science! MOZ Blog  [...]

Travis Bliffen says, “If you have been working in or around SEO very long, you already know that even the best laid plans can get you into hot water. Article directories, SEO press releases, guest posting and thin content Web 2.0 sites are just a few examples of effective strategies zapped by Google. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but if you are using SEO as a marketing strategy, you have to be prepared for the day that you lose organic rankings for a while why your strategy is revised and you work to please the almighty Google SEO Gods. That being said, today we are going... [...]