6 Major Google Changes Reveal the Future of SEO

The last few weeks have been amazing. Google has made some big changes and they are all part of a longer term strategy that has many components.

In short, Google is doing a brilliant job of pushing people away from tactical SEO behavior and toward a more strategic approach.

You could argue that "tactical SEO is dead", but that's not quite right. And don't run around saying "SEO is dead" because that is far from the truth, and I might just scream at you.

Instead, let's take a few steps back and understand the big picture. Here's a look at the major developments, some of Google's initiatives driving this change, and the overall impact these changes will have on SEO.

Read More : 6 Major Google Changes Reveal the Future of SEO

5 Social Media Advertising Trends to Watch for in 2014

Social media advertising is what traditional search engine marketing was 5 years ago: constantly in development with major changes coming every other week. That's not to say that SEM has stagnated and development has stopped – it hasn't (enhanced campaigns anyone?).

The point is that 2013 has seen more changes and big leaps forward in social media advertising then any year before. The development boom hasn't slowed down at all this year and is propelling the entire social media space forward into 2014.

Here are five trends in social media advertising to watch out for next year.

Read More : 5 Social Media Advertising Trends to Watch for in 2014

How SEO Greed Can Ruin A Perfectly Good Linking Strategy

By now, you are likely aware of the Rap Genius “Tweet In Exchange For Anchor Text” link scheme, hencefore to be known as TieFating.

Barry Schwartz reported last week on John Marbach’s exposé of the popular music site, Rap Genius, which had started an “affiliate” program in order to get links pointing to their website. After it was exposed, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, said, “we’re aware and looking into it.” The site was then officially penalized for link schemes.

In a nutshell, the folks at Rap Genius offered to tweet a link with a URL to any blogger that linked to the Rap Genius site using specific keyword rich anchor text to the lyrics of very specific songs by very specific artists. In exchange for these keyword rich anchor text links, Rap Genius would then tweet out a link to the blogger’s site/post, and that would result in their site getting “massive traffic.”

Read More : How SEO Greed Can Ruin A Perfectly Good Linking Strategy

7 Dead Link Building Tactics in 2014

In 2008, link building was queen (or king) when it came to ranking well in search engines. Companies dumped most of their SEO budget into link building activities designed to increase link numbers, thus ranking higher in search engines over time. Link counts were closely measured, anchor text was optimized, page 1 rankings were achieved and there was much rejoicing!

What was once an effective SEO tactic that almost everyone was doing quickly backfired during the Google Penguin update in spring of 2012. Many marketers were left scratching their heads wondering if link building was still a worthwhile tactic. Some SEO firms simply abandoned link building in favor of other tactics. Rather than spending hours and hours on link requests, they began to focus on content marketing tactics to help build organic visitors. This was a positive strategy shift but a poor understanding of how link building can be used to generate results.

Read More : 7 Dead Link Building Tactics in 2014

Link Building 2013: Looking Back At This Year’s Top Link Week Columns

With each passing year, search engine algorithms grow increasingly sophisticated in their ability to identify (and penalize) spammy links. Among other things, this year marked the fourth and fifth releases of Google’s spam-filtering Penguin update (Penguin 2.0 and 2.1, respectively).

Additionally, many link building tactics that were once considered legitimate were unceremoniously moved to the “spam” column in 2013. Google updated its webmaster guidelines to provide additional guidance on what they now consider to be an unnatural link, and even Bing detailed several ways not to build links.

The launch of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm and its potential impact on link building activities was also a hot topic among the link building community. Add to that the possible death of Google Toolbar PageRank, and you have quite an eventful year for all the linkers out there!

Read More : Link Building 2013: Looking Back At This Year’s Top Link Week Columns

Google Reveals Top Searches of 2013: From Nelson Mandela to Twerking

What did you search for on Google in 2013? Were you curious about “twerking” like the many others who pushed that search query to the top of Google’s “what is” search list? Or perhaps you wanted to learn more about Nelson Mandela who garnered the No. 1 spot in Google search this year.

Whatever you searched, we lived, and Google once again made memories come alive in its end-of-year Zeitgeist video.

Read More :  Google Reveals Top Searches of 2013: From Nelson Mandela to Twerking

7 CRO Lessons Learned in 2013

For this month’s series, we’re providing a little bit of perspective on the hectic events of 2013. As we’ve left Enhanced Campaigns pretty well covered this year, this week we’ll be dedicating our time to some of the other (non-Enhanced Campaigns) initiatives, tactics, strategies, and features that we used to excel in 2013 here at PPC Hero.

As Eric explained yesterday, December’s series is related to those things in 2013 that our team has found to be the most enlightening or crucial to continued PPC growth and/or performance. The list of things that have changed over the last year is much more expansive, but when presented with the opportunity to discuss what I found most effective in the last year – I was a bit caught off guard. How does one narrow that list down and pick just ONE?? Really, in our case, we had to pick just FIVE…but you get it.





Read More : 7 CRO Lessons Learned in 2013

SearchCap: The Day In Search

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:

    Retailers Spending Record Levels On Paid Search In 2013 Holiday Season

    An early look at the paid search performance this holiday season shows retailers invested at record levels, beginning earlier, and are realizing new levels of revenue from their paid search efforts this year. The record highs in paid search activity set in 2012 were surpassed this year as clicks increased 27 percent, impressions rose 12.5 […]

Read More : SearchCap: The Day In Search

6 Ways to Accelerate Your Local SEO Success in 2014

Forecasting SEO trends for local is quite difficult – primarily because I know in my heart of hearts that local SEO isn't a trend, phenomenon or fad. Local – along with personalized search – is a necessary evolution to truly optimize the search experience for users across the globe. It is a mindset that SEO professionals can't "arrive to" late.

Early adoption of best practices, voraciously reading case studies and experimenting on your own is mission critical to surviving this new era of marketing. Join me on a palatable overview on what's happened already, and what's coming up next.

This article will cover Google Hummingbird; the overlap between mobile and local; a SoLoMo case study using Pinterest, turnkey local SEO strategies; tools; and a few important infographics.

Read More :  6 Ways to Accelerate Your Local SEO Success in 2014

Google Webmaster Tools Adds Debugging Support in Structured Data Dashboard

If you utilize structured data markup on your websites, you'll be happy to know that Google has added debugging support in the Webmaster Tools console.

When people begin working with structured data for implementation on their websites, mistakes happen. It's easy to implement partially without realizing it, or simply mark it up incorrectly on the page. But other than copying from guides, there are no easy tools for effectively implementing structured data.

Google added a structured data dashboard to Webmaster Tools last year, and now will show you any errors or problems with your structured data that Google encounters while crawling the website.

This feature has been beta tested with select webmasters since June, and has been enhanced by their suggestions for improved functionality to make it into the newly launched debugging tool.

Read More : Google Webmaster Tools Adds Debugging Support in Structured Data Dashboard

Matt Cutts: Google Penalties Get More Severe for Repeat Offenders

For website owners who have been penalized by Google for violating the webmaster guidelines, it can take months to rectify issues, get back into the index, and regain rankings. However, that isn't always the case.

Many people remember when Interflora was penalized shortly before Mothering Sunday in the UK for massive amounts of native advertising spam in various UK newspapers. They were back in the index very quickly, and that is the topic of a new webmaster help video, where Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts is asked to explain the kind of penalty that Interflora was hit with and how they managed to get back in Google's good books in just 11 days.

Cutts began by saying he doesn't like to talk about specific penalties or companies; rather, he prefers to speak in generalizations so everybody can learn and benefit. Generally this is true, as Google rarely calls out specific companies, but it does happen.

Read More : Matt Cutts: Google Penalties Get More Severe for Repeat Offenders

Google+ Launches Social Ad Called +Post to Appear Across Display Network

Google+ has figured out a new way to monetize its social platform and drive more traffic back to it from across the web, with a promoted posts feature called “+Post.”

The concept of +Post is similar to what you may be used to in other social networks – a brand pays for premium placement of a post – except  instead of ads showing up within the Google+ network, they will be placed across Google’s Display Network, driving users back to the brand’s Google+ profile.

From Google:

    +Post ads amplify your brand’s content by easily turning Google+ posts into display ads that run across the web. The live, social ad format allows you to go beyond clicks to live conversations with your audience. People can join a Hangout On Air, add a comment, follow your brand or give a +1, right from an ad.

Read More : Google+ Launches Social Ad Called +Post to Appear Across Display Network

Majestic SEO Adds Live Rank Factors & New Link Prospecting to Search Explorer Alpha

Majestic SEO, home to the largest open link map in the world, has just released an update to their Search Explorer Alpha tool (now version 0.3). With it, they’ve introduced two new features SEOs should find quite interesting: live rank factors and a new link prospecting methodology.

Live Rank Factors Offer Greater Transparency for SEOs

Now, Search Explorer Alpha will share details into how and why it has ranked results the way it has, offering greater transparency for users. Previously, it displayed only search results when queried. Users can now see an overall search score, calculated using the search factors used to rank each result. In addition, the tool will display a relative weighting of results between InTitle, InAnchor and InURL factors.

Read More :  Majestic SEO Adds Live Rank Factors & New Link Prospecting to Search Explorer Alpha

Cyber Monday 2013: Largest Online Spend in U.S. History

Online shopping in the U.S. this holiday season was expected to be big, but many didn’t know just how substantial it would be. Data flooding in from all over shows Cyber Monday was a huge success, with comScore proclaiming it as the day with the heaviest online spend in U.S. history.

“Cyber Monday reached $1.735 billion in desktop online spending, up 18 percent versus year ago, representing the heaviest online spending day in history and the second day this season (in addition to Black Friday's $1.198 billion) to surpass $1 billion in sales,” comScore said in a report.

Read More : Cyber Monday 2013: Largest Online Spend in U.S. History

Facebook Admits: Expect Organic Reach for Pages to Continue Declining

Companies using Facebook pages have found it increasingly difficult to reach their audience through unpaid, organic promotion. Even those with thousands of fans see only a tiny fraction of their posts actually being viewed in newsfeeds. Many have suspected for some time that Facebook is pushing businesses to use Sponsored Posts, just to get them seen by people who already Like the brand.

Facebook now admits that businesses will need to pay in order to get their companies posts and information in user newsfeeds.

In a sales deck sent out to partners last month and obtained by Ad Age, Facebook plainly states:

"We expect organic distribution of an individual page's posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site."

Read More : Facebook Admits: Expect Organic Reach for Pages to Continue Declining

Google Changes the SERP – Images are King and PPC Holds the Key to the Kingdom

Oops they did it again

We know Google is constantly testing things on their SERP (Search Engine Results Page) with new products, new layouts, new colors etc. But lately it seems that Google has really been focused on not just simple changes, but dramatically changing the basic core of what as SERP looks like. Today Google changes SERP layout in a dramatic way. Check the Images below for some examples.





Read More : Google Changes the SERP – Images are King and PPC Holds the Key to the Kingdom

The most valuable SEO Strategy

One approach to search marketing is to treat the search traffic as a side-effect of a digital marketing strategy. I’m sure Google would love SEOs to think this way, although possibly not when it comes to PPC! Even if you’re taking a more direct, rankings-driven approach, the engagement and relevancy scores that come from delivering what the customer values should serve you well, too.

In this article, we’ll look at a content strategy based on value based marketing. Many of these concepts may be familiar, but bundled together, they provide an alternative search provider model to one based on technical quick fixes and rank. If you want to broaden the value of your SEO offering beyond that first click, and get a few ideas on talking about value, then this post is for you.

In any case, the days of being able to rank well without providing value beyond the click are numbered. Search is becoming more about providing meaning to visitors and less about providing keyword relevance to search engines.

Read More :  The most valuable SEO Strategy

30 day challenge update: stretching!

I like to set myself different challenges every 30 days. In October 2013, I tried to eat better and exercise more. I did alright on that, but without a specific daily goal, I had a hard time deciding how well I did. I mostly got back into the habit of exercising daily, so that was helpful.

For November 2013, I tried to do a “no work November.” I had enough vacation days built up that I was hitting the upper limit for work, so I took a bunch of vacation in November. My in-laws visited one week, then it was a family member’s birthday, so we took some time off at a resort in Arizona. Then it was back home for a week before spending the week before Thanksgiving in Kentucky with my family.

Read More :  30 day challenge update: stretching!

Paid Search Ads Paired with Facebook Ads Yield 30% More Return

In web marketing, multiple channels work together to boost return on investment. Digital marketing tech company kenshoo wanted to find out how social advertising and paid search together might impact conversion.
In what Kenshoo called the first study of its kind, the company found that when a person was exposed to a brand's Facebook ads and paid search ads together, there was a 30 percent more return on ad spend than when a person was exposed to paid search ads alone.
“The fact that Facebook advertising on its own during this study was declared a successful initiative and had such a strong impact on paid search is indicative of the power of the platform,” Kenshoo said in its report.
“If marketers only had one Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to compare media channels, the metric of choice would be ROAS [return on ad spend], which is calculated as Revenue/Cost. For example, if an advertiser spent $20 and generated $100 in sales it had a 5x ROAS. Even media with different conversion goals can be easily evaluated based on how much it returned versus how much it spent.”

Read More :  Paid Search Ads Paired with Facebook Ads Yield 30% More Return

Google's Eric Schmidt Tells iPhone Users How to Switch to Android

What do you get the Apple fanboi who has everything? If you're Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, the answer is an Android phone.

The recommendation came as part of a rare and lengthy Google+ post by Schmidt over the weekend giving the Apple community a comprehensive guide on to how to flee to his company's products.

"The latest high-end phones have better screens, are faster, and have a much more intuitive interface," Schmidt wrote. "They are a great Christmas present to an iPhone user!"

He then gave iPhone users instructions on how to transfer data.

Read More : Google's Eric Schmidt Tells iPhone Users How to Switch to Android

Create Unique Meta Descriptions for Your Most Important Pages

If you've ever skipped over filling out a meta description tag for a web page, or gotten lazy and simply use the same meta description for every single page on the site, you aren't alone.

It's no secret that meta tags are no longer as important as they were about 10 years ago, and many people have gotten lazy about doing them. But how does that impact things with Google?

Should you have an individual meta description tag for every single webpage you create? This is the topic that Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts tackled in the latest webmaster help video.

"The way I think of it is you can either have a unique meta tag description, or you can choose to have no meta tag description, but I wouldn't have duplicate meta tag descriptions," Cutts said.

Cutts also reminded us that Google does check meta description tags and will provide warnings about them in your Webmaster Tools console.

Read More : Matt Cutts: Create Unique Meta Descriptions for Your Most Important Pages

Google's Matt Cutts: Responsive Design Won't Hurt Your SEO

With mobile traffic gaining more market share over the past few years, it's more important than ever for websites to have a mobile version of their webpage, a specific version tailored to smaller screens and fast load time. And with it has come a wider adoption of using responsive design for mobile users versus the traditional mobile sites.

In the eyes of Google, does response design or traditional mobile design leverage a higher SEO value? Fortunately, Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts tackled this issue in a recent webmaster help video.

Responsive Design vs. a Mobile Site

First, a lot of people have questions about what exactly is a responsive design. It is definitely something that's newer, and many webmasters still don't have a lot of experience designing with it. However, responsive design quickly becoming the go-to format and is gaining exponential popularity because of the way it scales for any type of screen size, whether it's a desktop or an iPhone.

"Responsive design just means that the page works totally fine whether you access for site URL with a desktop browser or whether you access that URL with mobile browser," Cutts said. "Things will rescale, the page size will be taken into account."

Read More : Google's Matt Cutts: Responsive Design Won't Hurt Your SEO

3 Best Ways To Use Facebook Groups For Business

We hear a lot about Facebook Pages for business brands. Many business brands develop and nurture a Facebook Page. They assure quality content and incentives for fans.

Only occasionally we hear about brands empowering their employees and/or associates to engage socially as catalysts for the brand. But we have not heard as much about the use of Facebook Groups for business.

Yes, it is another presence to maintain. At the same time a Facebook Group could be the social tool to other social media marketing efforts and actually make things easier on several fronts.

Read More : 3 Best Ways To Use Facebook Groups For Business

Help with SEO when just getting started

This ShoeMoney Question was sent in by Leroy from Atlanta, Georgia. Because Leroy’s question was chosen he will receive a ShoeMoney Shirt and a signed copy of my best selling book “Nothing’s Changed but my Change – The ShoeMoney Story”. To submit your question just email questions@shoemoney.com and if yours is chosen we will ship you out a shirt and book at our expense anywhere in the world

In general SEO (search engine optimization to rank where you organically are not) is like a mystical thing. That is why there is so much money in providing these services. Everyone thinks they know what Google is doing but any theories they have are all bullshit. You really can only go off of your personal experience. The funny thing is in the Google guidelines they specifically state that if you try to make your site rank higher than it naturally should then that is in violation of their guidelines and you could be penalized for it.

Read More :  Help just getting started with SEO

Top 20 Local Search Ranking Factors: An Illustrated Guide

First published in 2008 by David Mihm, the Local Search Ranking Factors survey of Local SEOs around the globe has become a high point in the year in local search. If you eagerly await this yearly report and comb through it for new insight, then the information in this guide may not come as news to you. I wrote this guide for marketers who are new to the field of local SEO and for local business owners who are flying solo in their efforts to market their companies on the web.

Local Search Ranking Factors 2013 identified 83 foundational ranking factors. This guide takes the top 20 most important factors and offers a succinct, illustrated example of each.
By reading this guide, you will understand both the lingo and the concept of each local search ranking factor. Use this information and you will be on the road to promoting local businesses on the web from a firm and educated foundation. Sound good? Start reading!

Read More : Top 20 Local Search Ranking Factors: An Illustrated Guide

When Commenting On Blog Posts, Try To Use Your Real Name

In a recent video published by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts talks about are blog comments with links spam?

In short, most of the time, commenting and leaving links to your site or resources is not directly spam but like anything, it can be abused.

Matt offers some tips on how to make sure your comments are not considered spam by Google or the site you are leaving it on:

(1) Use your real name when commenting. When you use a company name or anchor text you want to rank for, it makes it look like you are leaving the comment for commercial marketing purposes and thus may look spammy.

(2) If your primary link building strategy is about leaving links in blog post comments and it shows that a majority of your links come from blog comments, then that might raise a red flag.

Read More :  When Commenting On Blog Posts, Try To Use Your Real Name

22 Free Social Media And SEO Tools That Will Make Your Life Easier

Alongside the big toys such as MajesticSEO, LinkRisk and Screaming Frog there are several lesser known but super useful web tools and extensions that will make your digital marketing life easier. Of course, they won’t do the job for you but they will certainly help you do it faster and in a more efficient way.
I’ve put together a list of my favourite Tools and Extensions that I seriously couldn’t live without. So whether you work in-house, for a digital agency or as a consultant, these tools can really help give you more time to focus on the serious stuff. I hope you will find them useful!

Read More :  22 Free Social Media And SEO Tools That Will Make Your Life Easier

7 NEW SEO Tips for this Month (Google Is Changing)

Yes Google is always changing so we must be on top of it all! To keep you informed about ongoing changes me and my team have put together a series of posts that will seriously help you with your SEO efforts, My favourite post is "5 New Rules of SEO"

Please email reply or comment on the posts to let me know what you think.

1. Google Places (Google+ Local) 5 SEO Tips for Small Businesses

2. Using Citations to Improve Local SEO

3. 5 Tips to Recover from Panda Algorithm Penalty

4. How Do I Get My Website to the Top of Google?

5. How To Double Your Profit and Triple Your Traffic using SEO

6. 5 New Rules of SEO

7. What You Need to Know About ‘Manipulative Links’

Read More :  7 NEW SEO Tips for this Month

How excess of online content can badly affect your online SEO

No doubt Content is King. To make your SEO plan foolproof, content does play a big role in it. But just how much the king content should really get any king-size? Is there a thin line between an optimally SEOed content and one that is excessively stuffed? When and where does one draw that line?

Most SEO analysts go by the “more is more” thumb rule. Where in reality, if the experts of the SEO field are to be believed, search engine optimization is better achieved with precise brief and a copy that is succinct. The key is in going rather objective than subjective. But objective in a way that completely suffices the purpose of your SEO plan.

The dynamics of online searching are continually changing. More and more reforms are being sought in into the online search engines to ensure authentic, spam-free search results when a user types in for a keyword or phrase. The search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. are continually upgrading their mechanisms to boost their performance and deliver the best of credible results to the online surfer or researcher.

Of course, if the copy on your webpage is redundant, old and doesn’t exactly correspond to the recent developments of that particular field, search engines will definitely discard it or rank it lower in the search results pages. Hence, it is a good SEO practice to constantly update the content part of your page. In a similar fashion, beating around the bush won’t help you either, because when a reader lands on your page he or she will only be disappointed to know that your page does quite offer the relevant information it should. A reader-specific content approach is obligatory.

When the spiders crawl on your webpage and find excess of information that isn’t really pertaining to the intent of page, they simply move on. Move on to neglect your page and do not rank it on the related search result.

When the bots heed less to your copy you tend to rank lower, resulting in poor or nil click-through-rates (CTR). No matter how tempting it may sound to overstuff your page copy with all the relevant keywords, but that will only degrade your status with the search engine bots. Search engine like Google, doesn’t at all entertain a submission that is densely keyword populated. As a result your webpage submission will be discarded aside. So if you put two-and-two together, what you infer is that anything beyond the required material is potentially hazardous to your site’s ranking. Too much of content, can become misleading for the readers as well as the search engine crawlers.

A leading SEO company toronto suggests that less is more while drafting your online SEO content. Short, precise and concise material makes things equally intelligible for the readers as well as the search engine algorithms. Of course, your webpage’s usability, overall site’s navigability are also the standing points in discerning your webpage’s ranking.

SEO Makeover for 2014: A Practical Guide for Businesses

SEO is about attracting non-paid search traffic to your website. The idea is that a person searches the Web using Bing or Google, etc. and your site comes up in the non-paid search results. To that end, it’s important to make sure your website is easily understood by both people and machines.

           People = your target market, your ideal website visitors.
           Machines = search engines like Google and Bing.

It’s a problem if your website confuses people and they can’t easily find what they’re looking for. Or they can’t smoothly accomplish the tasks they want to complete (or you want them to complete).

But did you know it’s also a problem if your website confounds machines? It’s common for websites to have technical roadblocks that create problems for machines trying to understand or even find pages on your website.

Read More : SEO Makeover for 2014: A Practical Guide for Businesses

Social Media Sites Increase their Influence in the Search World

If your marketing strategy still doesn’t include a social media angle, the time to start looking to incorporate one is now. Search through Google and other search engines still drives a large percentage of traffic to websites, proper SEO practices are important. The emerging trend amongst the newest internet users – the ones who will have buying power soon – is using social media sites to discover new websites.

How social media is replacing search

To give a real life example, I frequently log into my Facebook and Twitter accounts to find interesting stories to read. You may say that I’m half interested in the lives of my friends and contacts, and the other half of me is interested in the content, and websites, that they are sharing with me in my feeds.
To give you more solid numbers than my own approximation, a study from Forrester found that 50% of internet users ages 18 to 23 used social networks as their primary means of discovering websites. If your target age range is higher than that it is no reason to ignore this stat as 43% of users ages 24 to 32 also used social media as their go to source for finding websites and content online.

 Read More : Social Media Sites Increase their Influence in the Search World

SEO Tools that should be used for your Business

In an interview conducted at Pubcon 2013 in Las Vegas, Brian McDowell of Conductor shares some recommendations for SEO tools that your business should be using.

If your businesses is managing its SEO in-house there are tools available to do the job more efficiently. With the sheer number of tools available it’s easy to get overwhelmed, which may leave you unsure of where to start.

Brian will help you cut through the noise by providing recommendations of tools that can help you get the most out of your SEO efforts.

Read More : SEO Tools Your Business Should Be Using

Basic PPC Tips described by pubcon 2013

Pubcon in Las Vegas is one of the most fun conferences you can attend. Obviously there are the myriad entertainment options in Las Vegas and all the awesome after-hours networking events, but I’ll focus on the main reason I was there; the conference itself.

Pubcon Day 1

The first session I attended was by Mona Elesseily and she was talking about default settings in AdWords that you need to change. My favorites were these:

• Ad rotation – Set to rotate indefinitely
• Mobile is NOT desktop – Bid down mobile appropriately. Write mobile specific ads
• Keyword matching – Do not include close variants

During a slow session time I went down to the live review room and had Kate Morris, Steve Hammer & Kate O’Neill look at a campaign I’m running right now. Many of their observations were in accordance with what we’re currently planning to do, but as I answered a few questions about the offer, they pointed out a benefit that I had been overlooking.

Takeaway: Get another set of eyes on your accounts & campaigns.

Hardcore PPC Tactics was the best PPC session of the conference, which is expected when you’ve got Brad Geddes, John Ellis & David Szetela on the same panel.

Read More : Pubcon PPC Tips

Jim Boykin explains link Building in a Penguin Age

It is no secret that link building times have changed. Google doesn’t want to be gamed–Google watches what SEOs are doing and then they filter and penalize trends for ranking that don’t truly benefit the user. If you rank for a commercial phrase, you are more likely to be above the radar, and the more valuable the phrase is, the more above the radar you are. Even today, there are plenty of practices that SEOs are employing that can result in ranking problems and site penalties. Google is connecting sources, influencers and industries–are your goals in line with Google’s?

Read More : http://www.pubcon.com/link-building-in-a-penguin-age-jim-boykin

Google Officially Rolls Out Vanity URLs for Google+ Profiles

In a move that has been anticipated for months now, Google has finally pulled the trigger on rolling out vanity URLs to Google+ user profiles. Previously, user profiles on Google+ included a long variation of random numbers in the URL that has detracted a bit from the personal feel that social networks like Twitter took advantage of a while ago.

Read More : http://www.location3.com/google-officially-rolls-out-vanity-urls-for-google-profiles/

Custom URLs were only available to verified accounts owned by celebrities and brands now regular users can now claim their own custom URL for public use.Google lags behind its competitors in the social networking space, namely Facebook and Twitter in terms of popularity and engagement. However, what it lacks in popularity it makes up for in terms of integration with Google services, such as Gmail and Google Search. Still, its core social networking service is not as customizable as the likes of Facebook. Even profile URLs came in long numeric form — hardly easy for anyone to memorize or share.

Read More : http://vr-zone.com/articles/google-rolls-vanity-urls-google-users/62296.html

Optimizing some basics with SEO model

SEO has always been focused on acquisition.

The marketing strategy, based on high rankings against keyword terms, is about gaining a steady flow of new visitors. If a site ranks better than competing sites, this steady stream of new visitors will advantage the top sites to the disadvantage of those sites beneath it.

The selling point of SEO is a strong one. The client gets a constant flow of new visitors and enjoys competitive advantage, just so long as they maintain rank.

Read More: http://www.seobook.com/optimizing-seo-model

Basic search engine optimization (SEO) is fundamental. And essential. SEO will help you position your website properly to be found at the most critical points in the buying process or when people need your site.

What are search engines looking for? How can you build your website in a way that will please both your visitors/customers, as well as Google, Bing, and other search engines? Most importantly, how can SEO help your web presence become more profitable?

Read More : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2259693/SEO-Basics-8-Essentials-When-Optimizing-Your-Site

Tips for designing a high converting PPC Landing Page

Blog Content:Have you ever thought about the mass amounts of web traffic that click on one of your ppc ads, view the landing page, then quickly click away before you could even realize how much money was just wasted? With average conversion rates hovering somewhere in the 3% to 5% range, a lot of your advertising dollars are not yielding a return. Every click is valuable, and increasing your conversion rates by only a few percentage points can translate into incredible things for the return on your campaigns. To help you capture more conversions here are 5 tips for creating better performing landing pages.

Read More: http://www.morevisibility.com/semblog/5-tips-for-designing-a-high-converting-ppc-landing-page.html

Most discussion of web design in companies who don’t know the power of landing pages still tends to focus on the home page. But, for companies who are running a lot of online marketing campaigns, the effectiveness of the different pages deeper within the site is vital to getting returns from these campaigns.

So this prompts the question, which factors make for the most effective landing page? Is a ‘Perfect Landing Page’ possible? This post gives a summary of my top 12 tips and places to look to find more examples.

Read More: http://www.smartinsights.com/conversion-optimisation/landing-page-optimisation/perfect-landing-page/

Hummingbird Unleashed: What to Know & What to Do

Today one of the top news about hummingbird unleashed.The important information has been given what to know and what to do when google hummingbird is unleashed.

Sometimes I think that us SEOs could be wonderful characters for a Woody Allen movie: We are stressed, nervous, paranoid, we have a tendency for sudden changes of mood...okay, maybe I am exaggerating a little bit, but that's how we tend to (over)react whenever Google announces something.

Cases like this webmaster, who is desperately thinking he was penalized by Hummingbird, are not uncommon.

Read More: http://moz.com/blog/hummingbird-unleashed

Every time you turn around Google is changing and altering the game. This time the algorithm update is affecting 90% of global internet search traffic, so it’s a big deal and has massive implications for everybody.

Keep in mind as you read this that Hummingbird has been doing its thing for over a month already. Google just decided to announce it. Kind of makes you wonder. Especially since Google makes it perfectly clear that Hummingbird is an unprecedented overhaul, or modernization.

It’s like going from the combustion engine of algorithms to a Tesla Model S electric motor with a lithium-ion battery.

We’re talking about an entire replacement.

Read More: http://www.latestcrunchs.com/google-hummingbird-unleashed-what-to-know-and-what-to-do/

How Can SEO Help My Business?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been around for a long time, but still entrepreneurs, especially small business owners, are yet to use it to give a boost to their business. Toronto is one of the world’s biggest hubs for trade and commerce, and businesses of all sizes have their presence here. Naturally, the competition is cutthroat, and businesses compete with each other to gain more customers.

Among the numerous methods of marketing your firm, SEO is the most affordable and effective. By taking the help of a SEO Company in Toronto, you will be increasing your online visibility, which in turn, will help you in reaching out to more customers

There has been a massive change in the way people look for information. In the past, a listing on the yellow pages would have been good enough to connect your customer with you, but today, most people are armed with a smartphone which dishes out information on the move. And, to feature prominently on popular search engines such as Google, MSN, and Bing, it is important that you take the help of a reputed SEO service provider. Let us take an example to understand the importance of SEO for your business.

Suppose you are the owner of an optical store in Toronto. You have created a fabulous website, with all the information regarding the designs you have in the store, your store address, phone number, etc. Now let us suppose that Jack wants to buy a pair of new sunglasses for himself. He doesn’t have a clue on where to go, so he types the words, “Optical store in Toronto” in a search engine. Within the fraction of a second, the search engine provides Jack with hundreds of thousands of search results, with the top ten results on the first page. Jack clicks on the first couple of search results, gets the address, and proceeds to buy the sunglasses. As your website is not ranking on the first page of the search engines, Jack will not know about your store. You might have the best website, and your store might have the most extensive range of sunglasses, but if it is not ranking on the first page of the search results, it is virtually non-existent. 

As you can see from the above mentioned example, internet has evolved as one of the biggest lead generator for many businesses, especially for localized searches. Today, people have the world on their fingertips, and they make buying decisions on the move. A SEO Company can work with you to create a holistic strategy, and help you in getting the maximum traffic from the internet. Let us take a look at the other ways in which SEO can help your business.

A Stronger Online Presence

Incorporating SEO in your internet marketing strategy will boost your online presence. Your website will be visible to a greater audience, and the probability of ranking for different keywords will also increase.

Better Reach Through Social Media

SEO has been around for a long time, but in the recent years, social media websites have emerged as a powerful tool of marketing for businesses. One of the biggest advantages of social media marketing is that it facilitates two-way communication between the brand and the consumer. Also, social media provides for a better customer relationship as you get to know more about the demographics of your customers.

Higher Return on Investment (ROI)

SEO is, by far, one of the most affordable methods of marketing your products. When you compare the costs of SEO with traditional methods of marketing such as print media, billboards, newsletters, etc. you will find that SEO easily wins hands down. The ROI on SEO is also higher, which helps small businesses with limited budgets.

The SEO benefits mentioned here are not exhaustive, and there are many other intricate benefits that a SEO Company will help you with. There are a number of SEO companies in Toronto and GTA which provide efficient services to businesses. Do a bit of research on what exactly do you want to achieve by incorporating SEO as a marketing strategy, communicate effectively with a SEO Company, and let SEO work wonders for your business.