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.

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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