Friday, December 26, 2014

2015 Predictions by Search Experts

Whether you’re a prognosticator or a prediction believer, visions of the future are spellbinding. In digital marketing, and paid search specifically, the experts can see the playing field for miles and tell the rest of us what they see coming our way. We interviewed a number of search marketing experts to get their take on what 2015 holds for us.

1. We’ll Finally Have a Different Mobile Conversation: More Mobile-Friendly Please

First, we can finally stop telling advertisers they need to be using mobile:
"I hope we move away from having to tell advertisers to invest in mobile. Those who aren’t providing a good mobile experience for their visitors will be left behind, plain and simple." - Melissa Mackey (@mel66), Gyro
"We’ll finally be moving away from the tired reminders of the importance of mobile. By now, I think we are aware that a lot of people use smartphones to search for things!" - Andrew Goodman (@andrew_goodman), PageZero Media
"In 2015, mobile PPC will go mainstream because advertisers will start to see mobile traffic increases and perhaps desktop decreases as the query shares continue to shift." - Lisa Raehsler (@lisarocksSEM), Big Click Co.
But…
"Advertisers will be playing catch-up to capitalize on the huge surge in mobile searches and traffic." - David Szetela (@Szetela), FMB Media
And…
"Obstacles will be removed for advertisers that don’t have the development resources or mobile-friendly sites through additional tools like Shopify, where the transaction and presentation of product info might happen off the main site domain." - Elizabeth Marsten (@ebkendo) , Portent
"Even if your IT department tells you your site is mobile-friendly, test out your homepage and a few internal pages to make sure it works well – you’ll often find surprises like the pop-over that is impossible to close or videos that autoplay." - Jen Slegg (@jenstar), The SEMPost

2. Focus on Audience: Across Devices and With New Ads

"One of the big trends is audience marketing and audience targeting. Everything we’re doing is about understanding intent. It’s all about audience – understanding more and more about them and delivering more relevant messages. The areas of display and search are going to become very gray and come together in terms of how you think about buying search and display, and retargeting across all those audiences." – Steve Sirich, general manager, Bing Ads Product Marketing
"Ads will continue to evolve to be more interactive and engaging. Ads aren’t just about the message anymore, but rather how much space they can occupy and how aesthetically pleasing they look. Additional features will be put in place to enhance the standard ad in order to garner more clicks and provide users with a more pleasing search experience." – Matt Umbro (@Matt_Umbro), Hanapin Marketing
"Cross-device tracking is going to be huge in 2015. Bing’s launch of University Event Tracking is a harbinger of the importance of tracking across multiple devices, delivering a user experience customized to the individual, rather than to a device or browser session." – Melissa Mackey (@mel66), Gyro
"The hot play going into 2015 is going to be video advertising, and specifically mobile video advertising. However, in order for content marketing to be effective it has to be customer-centric and data-driven." – Bryan Eisenberg (@TheGrok), writer and speaker
"We’ll see shopping directly in the SERP with Bing and Google, instead of going to a vendor site. Our crazy instant gratification needs will be met and we’re going to get strangely comfortable with buying through platforms that are not the vendor’s site, like SERPs, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest." – Elizabeth Marsten (@ebkendo), Portent

Source url : http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/opinion/2387628/the-search-experts-have-spoken-2015-predictions 

Saturday, November 29, 2014

First 1000 Followers for your social media account

Quick tips: The best general strategies for growing your audience

Regardless of the social network you choose, there seem to be some similar, high-level strategies that apply to every network—Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
If you’re looking to build your profile and add new followers, here are some of the standard best practices. Lots more detail on each of these below.
  • Fill out your profile completely
  • Share a link to your profile via your other networks and via email
  • Place follow links and widgets on your blog or website
  • Add your new social profile to your email signature

How to get your first 1,000 followers on Twitter

Step one: Fill out your profile completely
This includes:
Writing an awesome bio with one or two select keywords or hashtags
Adding your URL and location—URL is great for adding context, location is great for getting found via search and geographic tools
Uploading a profile picture and cover photo. Check out the image below for what it looks like when someone clicks your username from Twitter’s desktop site.
Seeding your Twitter account with five to 10 tweets
twitter profile
If you want to get your profile even more optimized, you can use the Pinned Tweet feature to pin a tweet to the top of your profile page. Choose a tweet that embodies what your Twitter profile is all about or shows a lot of social proof, i.e. one with a lot of favorites and retweets.
Step two: Share a link to your profile via other networks and via email
Share with your Facebook friends that you’ve started a Twitter account. Add an announcement to your next company newsletter or in an email to friends.
Step three: Include a Follow button on your website or blog
Twitter offers four types of buttons that you can use to help visitors connect with you on Twitter.
  1. Share a link
  2. Follow
  3. Hashtag
  4. Mention
Source url : https://blog.bufferapp.com/first-1000-followers-twitter-facebook-social-media?utm_content=buffer05e6e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

58% Of Local Marketers Will Change Tactics After Pigeon Update

There has been much expert analysis and published research on the impact of Google’s Pigeon Update.
In this post, I am going to share the results of some recent polls we conducted with attendees on a recent InsideLocal webinar, the topic of which was “The Impact of Pigeon.” (Note: webinar recording can be watched here.)
We wanted to measure the experiences and observations of the 600+ SEOs and SMBs on the webinar to see how they compared to the published, “expert” viewpoints.
We asked 4 questions, and here is what we found out.

1. Has Pigeon Delivered Good Changes For Businesses & Searchers?

Pigeon Update - Good for Searchers and Businesses
Respondents: 402
Key Findings:
  • 69% believe that Pigeon has delivered good change for searchers
  • 53% believe that Pigeon is bad for businesses
Source url : http://searchengineland.com/58-local-marketeers-will-change-tactics-pigeon-update-208812

Monday, November 3, 2014

Google’s Amitabh Kumar Singhal plans to increase Indian Internet users to 500 million by 2017

Google search has answers to most of your questions. But not all. If Amitabh Kumar Singhal succeeds in making the 'Star Trek computer' he set out to build, it just might. At Google, the 46-year old India-born executive is the search czar. Google fields over 100-billion search queries every month, a service which generated most of its $55 billion (Rs 3.3 lakh crore) revenue in 2013.

In India, there is also another important target on his mind-—helping increase the number of internet users to 500 million by 2017. That is more than a twofold increase in less than three years, demonstrating the scale of Google's ambitions in the country.

Source url : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/how-googles-amitabh-kumar-singhal-plans-to-increase-indian-internet-users-to-500-million-by-2017/articleshow/45029819.cms

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Google Enables Multiple AdWords Account Logins

Hear that? That is the communal sigh of relief echoing throughout the paid search world. The days of having several browsers open in order to manage multiple AdWords accounts simultaneously are finally over.
Google announced a new workflow that allows you to switch between Google accounts without having to log out and log in again. Switch accounts and still stay logged into all of them.
To get started in AdWords, click on either the Customer ID or login email in AdWords to open what’s called the account selector. Managers can choose to add more accounts using the “Add Account” button.
This is an example of a seemingly small change that will make a huge difference in user experience and productivity.

Source url : http://searchengineland.com/google-enables-multiple-adwords-account-logins-207069

Friday, October 17, 2014

Best practices for XML sitemaps & RSS/Atom feeds

Submitting sitemaps can be an important part of optimizing websites. Sitemaps enable search engines to discover all pages on a site and to download them quickly when they change. This blog post explains which fields in sitemaps are important, when to use XML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds, and how to optimize them for Google.

Sitemaps and feeds

Sitemaps can be in XML sitemap, RSS, or Atom formats. The important difference between these formats is that XML sitemaps describe the whole set of URLs within a site, while RSS/Atom feeds describe recent changes. This has important implications:
  • XML sitemaps are usually large; RSS/Atom feeds are small, containing only the most recent updates to your site.
  • XML sitemaps are downloaded less frequently than RSS/Atom feeds.
For optimal crawling, we recommend using both XML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds. XML sitemaps will give Google information about all of the pages on your site. RSS/Atom feeds will provide all updates on your site, helping Google to keep your content fresher in its index. Note that submitting sitemaps or feeds does not guarantee the indexing of those URLs.

Source ul : http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2014/10/best-practices-for-xml-sitemaps-rssatom.html

Monday, July 7, 2014

Semantics: Google AdWords To Replace “Delete” With “Remove”

It’s always seemed odd that choosing to “Delete” a campaign, for example, in AdWords doesn’t actually mean the campaign will be vaporized as if it never existed. It’s not possible to truly delete a campaign from an account — that historical data remains available in perpetuity. That’s good for historical records, but can be confusing for those new to AdWords.
In a semantic move that has been a long time coming, Google is replacing “Delete” in AdWords with “Remove” in most cases. The change will go into effect in roughly two weeks.
Google AdWords "Delete" Now "Remove"It’s subtle, but makes sense. As Google writes in a blog post announcing the move, “This change is designed to help advertisers better understand that removed objects are still available for future reference. For example, you can report on a removed campaign’s historical performance.”

Source url : http://searchengineland.com/semantics-google-adwords-replace-delete-remove-instances-195948

Friday, April 25, 2014

Google Plus chief Vivek Gundotra quits Google

Google's top social networking executive is leaving the Internet company after a nearly eight-year stint highlighted by an audacious challenge to Facebook.

Vivek 'Vic' Gundotra fittingly announced his departure in a post Thursday on Google Plus, a social network that debuted nearly three years ago. Gundotra had been in charge of Google Plus as the Mountain View, California, company's senior vice president of social.

Gundotra didn't explain his reasons for leaving nor did he reveal what he plans to do next.

Source url : http://ibnlive.in.com/news/google-plus-chief-vivek-gundotra-quits-google/467467-11.html

Monday, February 10, 2014

Rich Snippet Spam

If you use rich snippets on your websites, you should be aware that Google is now penalizing websites for spamming structured data markup.
The new warning was first mentioned in a forum post on the Google Webmaster Central forums from a user who is asking for clarification about the warning and what the issue could be. It is a manual action penalty based on incorrect usage of markups, regardless of whether it was deliberate spam or simply a mistake.
The warning that would appear in a user’s accounts if they have manual action taken is:
Markup on some pages on this site appears to use techniques such as marking up content that is invisible to users, marking up irrelevant or misleading content, and/or other manipulative behavior that violates Google's Rich Snippet Quality guidelines.

The writing on the wall for penalties related to rich snippets was back in October at Pubcon when Google's Matt Cutts talked about changes Google was planning in regards to rich snippets and dealing with related snippet spam.

Source url : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2327459/Google-Starts-Penalizing-Sites-for-Rich-Snippet-Spam

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Guest blogging as a linkbuilding strategy

Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.
Back in the day, guest blogging used to be a respectable thing, much like getting a coveted, respected author to write the introduction of your book. It’s not that way any more. Here’s an example unsolicited, spam email that I recently received:

My name is XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX and I work as a content marketer for a high end digital marketing agency in [a city halfway around the world]. I have been promoting high quality content in select niches for our clients.
We are always on the lookout for professional, high class sites to further promote our clients and when I came across your blog I was very impressed with the fan following that you have established.I [sic] would love to speak to you regarding the possibility of posting some guest articles on your blog. Should you be open to the idea, we can consider making suitable contribution, befitting to high standard of services that your blog offers to larger audience.

Source url : http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging  

Thursday, January 16, 2014

DuckDuckGo With More Than 4 Million Queries On January 7th

The Guardian reported yesterday DuckDuckGo, the search engine that keeps user searches private, is now up to four million queries per day, with over a billion queries performed on the anonymous search engine during 2013.

Prior to the PRISM scandal that revealed the NSA was regularly tracking searches on major search engines, DuckDuckGo averaged approximately 1.5 million queries a day says the Guardian. “In the weeks and months following the Guardian’s publication of the NSA files, the number of [DuckDuckGo] users more than doubled,” writes Guardian reporter Alex Hern.


The Guardian claims DuckDuckGo’s activity has continued to increase, with a record 4,452,957 searches performed on January 7 of this year, DuckDuckGo’s “biggest” day so far.

Source url : http://searchengineland.com/duckduckgo-sees-biggest-day-ever-in-2014-with-more-than-4-million-queries-in-one-day-181495 

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Ways to build a better relationship with your SEO provider

After running a link agency for the past few years, I can safely say that some clients are easy to work with and some are nightmares. I can also say that the ones who are easy and fun to work with are the ones that truly bring out my passion for the work that we do, and as I see with my own employees, being receptive to listening to someone else's perspective is something that I highly value.
It doesn't matter if a client's niche is exciting or if their site is so amazing that I want to spend hours on it every week. A client who is willing to view our arrangement as a give and take relationship is the client for me.

Here are 15 pieces of advice that will help you build a better relationship with your SEO provider.

1. Be Honest About What You've Done in the Past

2. Don't Immediately Blame Links When Something Goes Wrong

3. No Surprise URL Changes

4. Share Access to Webmaster Tools and Analytics

5. Answer Questions

6. Listen to Our Advice on Risk

7. Don't Employ Multiple Teams or People to do the Exact Same Thing

8. Don't Share Someone Else's Confidential Information

9. Be Clear About What You Want

10. Ask Why a Service Costs What it Does

Source url : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2322361/15-Ways-Clients-Can-Build-a-Better-Relationship-With-Their-SEO-Provider

Thursday, January 9, 2014

To Publish similar or duplicative stories on different URLs use rel=canonical

In a video released by Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, Matt said publishers who publish similar or duplicative stories on different URLs may use the rel=canonical tag to help consolidate the PageRank of the stories and avoid any issues with Google.

Matt Cutts did say that duplicate content won’t hurt you unless you are doing it for spam-related reasons. Cutts also did say that 25% of the web is duplicative, so you really don’t have to worry about it. But I guess in this case, to help with rankings, you may, as a publisher, want to use the rel=canonical tag to help Google know which is your primary page.

Source url : http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-publishers-with-duplicate-content-use-the-canonical-tag-181331 

Monday, January 6, 2014

Rap Genius Back Is back After 10 Day Penalty

Lyrics site Rap Genius says that is is no longer penalized within Google after taking action to correct “unnatural links” that it helped create. The site was hit with a penalty for 10 days, which meant people seeking it by name couldn’t find it. That’s been fixed, though it’s unclear how much traffic the site will regain for generic lyrics searches.

Removing Links To Remove A Penalty

The company explained in a blog post today that it received a manual action notice from Google on Christmas Day accusing it of unnatural linking, which resulted in a penalty. The Rap Genius post detailed some of the linking practices the company has done and how it tried to correct what it thought Google objected to, which included asking people to remove links as well as disavowing links. The post concluded with an apology:

To Google and our fans: we’re sorry for being such morons. We regret our foray into irrelevant unnatural linking. We’re focused on building the best site in the world for understanding lyrics, poetry, and prose and watching it naturally rise to the top of the search results.

Source url : http://searchengineland.com/rap-genius-back-in-google-181125  

Saturday, January 4, 2014

App store Optimization (ASO)

App store optimization (ASO) is the process of improving the visibility of a mobile app (such as an iPhone, iPad, Android, or Windows Phone app) in an app store (such asiTunes or Google Play for Android). App store optimization is closely related to search engine optimization. Specifically, app store optimization includes the process of ranking highly in an app store's search results and top charts rankings. ASO marketers agree that ranking higher in search results and top charts rankings will drive more downloads for an app.(As written in wikepedia).

ASO will help us to move into a new era of Search. As Google in on spree of making updates, we as a seo finding difficult to get high rankings in SERPs, i think adding ASO to the expertise will help every SEO at this phase.

Will try to write more on this topic, as i will explore.