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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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!

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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.





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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 […]

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.





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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.

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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.

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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