Rachel Sprung says, “While Google keeps us on our toes with all the algorithm updates they keep rollin’ out, one thing has stayed pretty consistent for inbound marketers looking to optimize their websites for search: keyword research. Well, the need to do keyword research has stayed the same. How you actually do it hasn’t. So I’m going to lay out a keyword research process you can follow to help you come up with and narrow down a list of terms you should be targeting.That way, you’ll be able to establish and execute a strong keyword strategy that helps you get... [...]

Matthew Turner says, “If you read the headline, “Portland Entrepreneur Raises $13 Million by Enticing 62,000 People to Buy His Cooler,” which part fascinates you? How about, “7,000 Hungry Folks Raise $55,000 for Potato Salad Project?” I imagine, if you’re anything like the majority, those large amounts of money stand out. After all, $13 million is a gigantic amount of cash, as is $55,000 for potato salad. But whenever I come across crowdfunding campaigns like these, it is the crowd of people who band together that captures my attention”. How to Crowd-Publish Your Content... [...]

Brian Clark says, “What’s the reality of search engine optimization after the Google Hummingbird update? Can someone destroy your business with negative SEO? Did Google kill the concept of AuthorRank when it eliminated the Authorship initiative? For these types of questions, there’s no better person to ask than Danny Sullivan, founder of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, CMO of Third Door Media (producers of the popular SMX conferences), and a veteran search engine expert of 20 years. Today’s show is just a warmup to Danny’s presentation at Authority Rainmaker 2015, May 13-15... [...]

Martijn Scheijbeler says, “Everybody remembers being in college, writing down activities in a logbook, hoping the hours they worked on a project were enough for a sufficient grade. After two years as an online marketer/SEO, I realized what makes writing down activities so important. The intent of this post is to save you from making the same mistakes I made. If you’re working for a brand, you probably want to make sure you’re on top of all your KPIs, but few of us are able to carefully track our valued metrics 24 hours a day. So in addition to providing you with some... [...]

Samuel Scott says, “My first marketing job was in porn. After leaving my journalism career and having studied marketing in an M.B.A. program in Boston, I moved to Israel some years ago to pursue a marcom career in the so-called “Startup Nation.” My first job, however, turned out to be at a pornography website that broadcast live “shows” for $1 a minute. Yeah, it’s a little embarrassing. But I learned a lot – about what not to do. Every day, I would write fake porn stories that would be stuffed with keywords and then published on an “independent”... [...]

Lisa Furgison says, “When you’re looking for a answer, what do you do? You Google it, right? Most of us pull out our smartphone or laptop and head to Google, or a similar search engine to find answers. It’s so common that “google” is listed as a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary. Of course, as a business owner, you want your own website to come up when people are searching for your product or service. So, how do you make sure your website appears in relevant search results? Your website has to be attractive to search engines. You need all the right ingredients to earn high rankings.... [...]

Travis Bliffen says, “Most Web professionals have heard of the potential SEO benefits of including a blog on their websites and updating it regularly. After talking with countless business owners though, it became apparent that many of them do not understand why blogging helps with SEO and with that, why it fails sometimes as well. Why Do Blogs Help SEO? Whenever you add a blog post to your website, you are really just creating another page. As with any page on your website, attracting inbound links will improve the authority of that page and, through internal linking, will improve other... [...]

David Rekuc says, “Digital marketing is quite the fragmented landscape; modern marketing channels can be so complex that they often require dedicated specialists. But who is looking at the bigger picture when your team members are mono-focused on one discipline? I find this especially worrisome in the world of organic and paid search, which play in the same sandbox but rarely converse. While search engine optimization (SEO) teams are struggling to find reliable reporting tools, many don’t realize they are (figuratively or literally) sitting next to a paid search counterpart with a mound... [...]

Rand Fishkin says, “It’s been a long time since we covered one of the most fundamental building blocks of SEO—the structure of domain names and URLs—and I think it’s high time to revisit. But, an important caveat before we begin: the optimal structures and practices I’ll be describing in the tips below are NOT absolutely critical on any/every page you create. This list should serve as an “it would be great if we could,” not an “if we don’t do things this way, the search engines will never rank us well.” Google and Bing have come a long... [...]

Sam Lloyd says, “SEO marketing can be confusing. After all, when it comes to SEO there are a million things that you can do.  From link building, to promoting content on social media, to keyword research, to competitive research, to building out landing pages, to internal link building, to producing content and everything in between. With so many potential things that can be done, how do you decide what to do, and when to do it? It can be very confusing and without a certain level of clarity in your mind. Because of this, it’s useful to break down all the things that can be done for SEO into... [...]