How to Use Hosted Blog Platforms for SEO & Content Distribution

Posted by randfish

Where do you host your content? Is it on your own site, or on third-party platforms like Medium and LinkedIn? If you're not yet thinking about the ramifications of using hosted blog platforms for your content versus your own site, now's your chance to start. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explores the boons and pitfalls of using outside websites to distribute and share your content.

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Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat a little bit about blog platforms, places like Medium, Svbtle — that's Svbtle with a V instead of a U — Tumblr, LinkedIn, places where essentially you've got a hosted blog platform, a hosted content platform. It's someone else's network. You don't have to set up your own website, but at the same time you are contributing content to their site.

This has become really popular, I think. Look, Medium and LinkedIn are really the two big ones where a lot of folks are contributing these days. LinkedIn very B2B focused, Medium very startup, and new media as well as new creative-focused.

So I think, because of the rise of these things, we're seeing a lot of people ask themselves, "Should I create my own content platform? Do I need to build a WordPress hosted subfolder on my website? Or can I just use Medium because it has all these advantages, right?" Well, let me try and answer those questions for you today.

So, what do hosted platforms enable?

Well, it's really simple to sign up and start creating on them. You plug in your name, email, a password. You don't have to set up DNS. You don't have to set up hosting. You can start publishing right away. That's really easy and convenient.

It also means that, for a lot of marketers, they don't have to involve their engineering or their web development teams. That's pretty awesome, too.

There are also built in networks on a lot of these places, Medium in particular, but Svbtle as well. Tumblr quite obviously has a very, very big network. So as a result, you've got this ability to gain followers or subscribers to your content, someone that can say like, "Oh, I want to follow @randfish on Medium." I haven't published on Medium, but for some reason I seem to have thousands of followers there.

So I think this creates this idea like, "Hey, I could reach a lot more people that I wouldn't necessarily be able to reach on my own platform, because it's not like these people are all subscribed to my blog already, but they are signed up for Medium or LinkedIn, which has hundreds of millions of worldwide users."

There's also an SEO benefit here. You inherit domain authority. On Medium and on LinkedIn in particular, these can be really powerful. Medium is a domain authority 80. LinkedIn is a domain authority of 99, which is no surprise. Pretty much every website on the planet links to their LinkedIn page. So you can imagine that these pages have the potential to do really well in Google's rankings, and you don't necessarily have to point a lot of links at them in order for them to rank very well. We've seen this. Medium has been doing quite well in the rankings. LinkedIn articles are doing quite well in their niches.

This is a little different, a subtle but important difference for Svbtle itself, for Tumblr, and for WordPress. These are on subdomains. So it would be, yes, there are lots of people who are using WordPress, although that's very customizable. But you could imagine that if I got randstshirts.wordpress.com or randstshirts.tumblr.com or randstshirt.svbtle.com, that doesn't have the same ranking ability. That subdomain means that Google considers it separately from the main domain. So you're not going to inherit the ranking benefit on those. It's really Medium and LinkedIn where that happens. To be honest, Google+ as well, we've seen them ranking like a Medium or a LinkedIn too.

You also have this benefit of email digests and subscriptions, which can help grow your content's reach. For those of you who aren't subscribed to Medium, they send out a daily digest to all of the folks who are signed up. So if you are someone who is contributing Medium content, you can often expect that your subscribers through Medium may be getting your stuff through an email digest. It may even get broadcast to a much broader group, to people who aren't following you but are following them. If they've "hearted" your content on Medium, they'll see it. So you get all these network effects through email digests and email subscriptions too.

So what's the downside?

This is pretty awesome. To me, these are compelling reasons to potentially consider using these. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's talk about the downside as well. To my mind, these downsides prevent me from wanting to encourage certain types of views. I'll talk about my best advice and my tactical advice for using these in a sec.

Links authority and ranking signals that are accrued. We recognize that you put a post on Medium, a lot of times posts there do very well. They get a lot of traction, a lot of attention. They make it into news feeds. Other sites link to them. Other pages around the web link to them. It's great. Lots of social shares, lots of engagement. That is terrific.

Guess what? Those benefits accrue only to Medium.com. So every time you publish something there and it gets lots of links and ranking signals and engagement and social and all these wonderful things, that helps Medium.com rank better in the future. It doesn't help yoursite.com rank better in the future.

You might say, "But Rand, I've got a link here, and that link points right back to my site." Yes, wonderful. You now have the equivalent of one link from Medium. Good for you. It's not a bad thing. But this is nowhere near the kind of help that you would get if this piece of content had been hosted on your site to begin with. If this is hosted over here, all these links point in there, and all those ranking benefits accrue to your site and page.

In some ways, from an SEO perspective, especially if you're trying to build up that SEO flywheel of growing domain authority and growing links and being able to rank for more competitive stuff, if you're trying to build that flywheel, you'd almost say, "Hey, you know what, I'd take half the links and ranking signals if it were on my own site. That would still be worth more to me than more on Medium."

Okay. But that being said, there are all the distribution advantages, so maybe we're still at a wash here.

Also on these blogging platforms, these hosted platforms, there's no ownership of or ability to influence the UI and UX. That is a tough one too. So one of the wonderful things about blogging is — and we've seen this over the years many times at Moz. People come to Moz to read the content, they remember Moz, and they have a positive association and they say, "Yeah, you know, Moz made me feel like they were authorities, like they knew what they were talking about. So now I want to go check out Moz Local, their product, or Moz Analytics, or Open Site Explorer, or whatever it is."

That's great. But if you are on Medium or if you are on Svbtle or if you are on WordPress — well, WordPress is more customizable — but if you're on Google+, the experience is, "Oh, I had a really good experience with Medium." That's very, very different. They will not remember who you are and how you made them feel, at least certainly not to the extent that they would if you owned and controlled that UI and UX.

So you're really reducing brandability and any messaging opportunities that you might have had there. That's dramatically, dramatically reduced. I think that's very, very tough for a lot of folks.

Next up — and this speaks to the UI and UX elements — but it's impossible to add or to customize calls to action, which really inhibits using your blog as part of your funnel. Essentially, I can't say, "Hey, you know what I'd like to do? I'd like to add a button right below here, below all my blog posts that says, 'Hey, sign up to try our product for free,' or, 'Get on our new mailing list,' or, 'Subscribe to this particular piece of content.' Or I want to put something in the sidebar, or I'd like to have it in the header. Or I want to have it as a drop over when someone scrolls halfway down the page." You can't do any of those things. That sort of messaging is controlled by the platform. You're not allowed to add custom code here, and thus your ability to impact your funnel with your blog or with your content platform on these sites is severely limited. You can add a link, and yes, people can still follow you on these networks, but that is definitely not the same.

There's also, frustratingly, for a lot of paid marketers and a lot of marketers who know that they can do this, you can't put a retargeting pixel on Svbtle or on Medium. Actually, you may be able to on Svbtle now. I'm not sure if you can. But Medium for sure, LinkedIn for sure, Google+, you can't say, "Hey, all the people who come to my posts on Medium, I'd like to retarget them and remarket to them as they go around the web later, and I'll follow them around the Internet like a lost puppy dog." Well, too bad, not possible. You can't place that pixel. No custom code, that's out.

The last thing, and I think one of the most salient points, is there have been many, many platforms like this over the years. Many people use the example of GeoCities where a lot of people hosted their content and then it went away. In the early days of the web, it was very big, and a few years ago it fell apart.

It's not just that, though. The uncertain future could mean that in some time frame, in the months or years to come, Medium, or Svbtle, or LinkedIn, or Google+ could become more like Facebook, where instead of 100% of the people seeing the content that they subscribe to, maybe they only see 10% or the Facebook averages today, which are under 1%. So this means that you don't really know what might happen to your content in the future in terms of its potential visibility to the audience there. If that's the sole place you're building up your audience, that is a high amount of risk depending on what happens as the platform evolves.

This is true for all social platforms. It's not just true for these hosted blog content platforms. Many folks have talked about how Twitter in the future may not show 100% of the content there. I don't know how real that is or whether it's just a rumor, but it's one of those things to consider and keep in mind.

My best advice:

So my best advice here is, use platforms like these for reaching their audiences. I think it can be great to say, "Hey, 1 out of every 10 or 20 posts I want to put something up on Medium, or I want to test it on Google+, or I want to test it on LinkedIn because I think that those audiences have a lot of affinity with what I'm doing. I want to be able to reach out to them. I want to see how those perform. Maybe I want to contribute there once a month or once a quarter." Great. Wonderful. That can be a fine way to draw distribution there.

I think it's great for building connections. If you know that there are people on those networks who have big, powerful followings and they're very engaged there, I think using those networks like you would use a Twitter or a Facebook or like you already use LinkedIn to try and build up those connections makes total sense.

Amplifying the reach of existing content or messages. If you have a great piece of content or a really exciting message, something exciting you want to share and you've already put some content around that on your own site and now you're trying to find other channels to amplify, well, you might want to think about treating Medium just like you would treat a post on Twitter or a post on Facebook or a post on LinkedIn. You could instead create a whole piece of content around that, sort of like you would with a guest post, and use it to amplify that reach.

I think guest post-style contribution, in general, is a great way to think about these networks. So you might imagine saying, "Hey, I'd love to contribute to YouMoz," which is Moz's own guest blogging platform. That could be wonderful, but you would never make that your home. You wouldn't host all your content there. Likewise you might contribute to Forbes or Business Insider or to The Next Web or any of these sites. But you wouldn't say that's where all my content is going to be placed. It's one chance to get in front of that audience.

Last one, I think it's great to try and use these for SERP domination. So if you say, "Hey, I own one or two of the top listings of the first page of results in Google for this particular keyword, term, or phrase. I want to use Medium and LinkedIn, and I'm going to write two separate pieces targeting similar keywords or those same keywords and see if I can't own 4 slots or 5 slots out of the top 10." That's a great use of these types of platforms, just like it is with guest posting.

Don't try to use these for...

Don't try to use these as your content's primary or, God forbid, only home on the web. Like I said, uncertain future, inability to target, inability of using the funnel, just too many limitations for what I think modern marketers need to do.

I don't think it is wise, either, to put content on there that's what I'd call your money keywords, essentially stuff that is very close to the conversion funnel, where you know people are going to search for these things, and then when they find this content, they're very likely to make their next step a sign-up, a conversion. I would urge you to keep that on your site, because you can't own the experience. I think it's much wiser if you say, "Hey, let's look way up in the funnel when people are just getting associated with us, or when we're trying to bring in press and PR, or we're trying to bring in broad awareness." I think those are better uses.

I think it's also very unwise to make these types of platforms the home of your big content pieces, big content pieces meaning like unique research or giant visuals or interactive content. You probably won't even be able to host interactive content at most of these.

If you have content that you know is very likely to drive known, high-quality links, you've already got your outreach list, you're pretty sure that those people are going to link to you, please put that content on your own site because you'll get the maximum ranking benefits in that fashion. Then you could potentially put another piece of content, repurpose a little bit of the information or whatever it is that you've put together that's wonderful in terms of big content as another piece that you separately broadcast and amplify to these audiences.

What I'm really saying is treat these guys — Medium, Svbtle, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Google+ — treat them like these guys, like you use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and guest hosts in general. It's a place to put a little bit of content to reach a new audience. It's a way to amplify a message you already have. It's not the home of content. I think that's really what I urge for modern marketers today.

All right, everyone. Look forward to the comments, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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SearchCap: Google Penalty, Yandex Actions & Google Shopping

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

From Search Engine Land:

• For Some Broad Queries, Google Shopping Showing Top Categories On Mobile, Not PLAs
  Nov 23, 2015 by Ginny Marvin

  The new mobile experience is among the updates released before the holiday shopping surge, including Click Share reporting.

• Even If A Brand Can’t Do SEO, It Can Still Do Local SEO
  Nov 23, 2015 by Andrew Shotland

  Having trouble getting traction for your SEO campaign due to bureaucratic red tape? Columnist Andrew Shotland suggests that you consider thinking local.

• Google Received More Than 65 Million URL Takedown Requests In The Past Month
  Nov 23, 2015 by Amy Gesenhues

  The current number of weekly URL copyright removal requests is nearly double what it was this time last year.

• Our SERP Sentiment Score For A Person’s/Brand’s Online Reputation
  Nov 23, 2015 by Brian Patterson

  Having trouble showing progress when it comes to online reputation management (ORM)? Columnist Brian Patterson explains his metric for tracking ORM campaign progress over time.

• After A Year Of Transition, Microsoft Execs Say, “We’re All In On Search”
  Nov 23, 2015 by Ginny Marvin

  With Bing now at the center of Microsoft’s consumer monetization strategy, executives display a new level of confidence when sharing plans for growing the search business.

• Local Resource: 50 Top International Citation Sites
  Nov 23, 2015 by Myles Anderson

  Doing SEO for a business in another country and not sure where to start when it comes to local citations? Luckily, columnist Myles Anderson has put together this great list of sites for you as a starting point.

• Google To Penalize Sites Using Deceptive Mobile Traffic Networks
  Nov 23, 2015 by Barry Schwartz

  Google tells us they are actively working on detecting and penalizing sneaky mobile traffic networks.

• Yandex To Notify Webmasters Over Violations Of Their Webmaster Guidelines
  Nov 23, 2015 by Barry Schwartz

  Yandex, the largest search engine in Russia, now notifies webmasters when they violate their own Webmaster Guidelines.

• Search Market Share In October 2015 Looks A Lot Like It Did In October 2008
  Nov 23, 2015 by Greg Sterling

  October desktop search data from comScore came out late Friday afternoon. Google appears to have “stabilized” at roughly 64 percent market share, while Bing and Yahoo are also mostly unchanged from September. Search market share was in nearly the same place in October 2008. Google controlled roughly 64 percent of search query volume, and the […]

• 10 Ways To Calm The Chaos Of Content Marketing
  Nov 20, 2015 by Digital Marketing Depot

  The right message, in the right place, at the right time, to the right audience. Content marketing doesn’t have to be painful. Want to know more about ending the chaos of your organization’s content creation, management and measurement? This guide from Oracle will walk you through steps you can take to get your plan put […]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Lenovo’s Re-Invention Now Includes Crowdsourcing A New Video Game
• Google Goes Full-On Star Wars, Launches #ChooseYourSide Campaign
• Make It So: Google’s Voice-Search-Enabled Star Trek Communicator Pin
• Yahoo Gemini Adds Custom Audiences For In-App Actions And CPA Target Optimization
• Google Launches Compare For Mortgages In The US
• Is Google Now Becoming A News Reader Too?
• 5 Important Online Shopping Dates You May Have Left Off Your Holiday Marketing Calendar
• Google Customer Match From The Email Marketer’s Point Of View
• MarTech Today: Facebook VR, Google Analytics’ Calculated Metrics & SEO For Featured Snippets
• Holiday Email Marketing Insights: Send Emails Early, Avoid Thanksgiving Day & Segment Your Lists
• Guide To Advertising On Instagram
• Databox Launches Free App To Watch Over Your Marketing Platforms
• Acquisition Of Ad Network Fluent By “Data Fusion” Provider IDI May Create A New Marketing Powerhouse

Search News From Around The Web:

Industry

• For Star Wars fans, old and new, Official Google Blog

Local & Maps

• Discover Jordan’s past and present in Google Maps, Google LatLong

Link Building

• 5 Sure-fire Ways to Avoid a Google Penguin Penalty, ProBlogger
• Examples of the Most Powerful Links for SEO, ignitevisibility.com
• [New Feature Alert] Browse Keyword Positions In Germany And France, blog.ahrefs.com

Searching

• Microsoft helps you search for the perfect gifts and save money this holiday season, Bing Search Blog

SEO

• 12 Provably False Ideas Your SEO Should Not Be Telling You, SEO Theory
• Example ‘High Quality’ E-commerce Site From Google Search Quality Rating Guidelines 2015, hobo-web.co.uk
• Google Search Analytics Data Caught Up But App Analytics Now Dead, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google: Expert Product Descriptions Not Critical For Rankings?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google’s 2015 Unconfirmed Algorithm Updates and Their Connection to Panda and Phantom, hmtweb.com
• Prerender and You: a Case Study in AJAX Crawlability, Distilled
• Site Command Now Shows Featured Snippets In Google, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Evolution of SEO is Not the Same as Death, Overit Blog
• Why You Should Care About Google’s Crawl Budget, Renegade Search

SEM / Paid Search

• Avoid Post-Turkey Crowds and Shop YouTube’s Awesome Stuff Week Gift Grab, Inside AdWords

The post SearchCap: Google Penalty, Yandex Actions & Google Shopping appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Our SERP Sentiment Score For A Person’s/Brand’s Online Reputation

It’s something all companies fear: You Google your brand name, and right on the first page are negative Google reviews, a low Yelp score, damaging articles or — possibly worst of all — a Ripoff Report post.

The thought of this setback is enough to make any good marketer break out in a cold sweat. But for many of us, this is just another SEO challenge we face, albeit under a slightly different name: Online Reputation Management.

Imagine you are the marketing genius behind the iconic Snuggie. You Google your brand, see the following results and are rightly concerned:

In these results, you can see a few clearly negative search results from big news sites (boxed in red). There are also two blog posts that you might consider neutral (boxed in blue). These neutrals aren’t the worst things in the world, but they aren’t glowingly positive, either.

Just two negative articles appearing in the search results for a product can cost you up to 44 percent of potential customers, so this is definitely an issue to address, as it could be significantly impacting online sales.

Is It Off Page One?

As with every project, we want to start by capturing a baseline starting point and determining how we will report improvement over time.

Tracking progress for an online reputation management (ORM) project like this can be complex. Instead of tracking a single domain for a large set of keywords (as with SEO), we are tracking multiple URLs for a smaller set of branded keywords. So while SEO metrics are well established, ORM metrics are almost always custom-defined for the client and project.

The initial focus of a reputation management project with a client is almost always, “Is it off page one?”

While that is a valid question, completely cleaning the search engine results pages (SERPs) for a brand name can take months. And in that time, if you are only focused on a binary yes/no result, you miss out on how improvements or setbacks are impacting your brand.

This binary question misses some of the nuances of the search results (namely, their ranking positions). As we know, ranking position impacts user visibility and click-through rate.

Because of this challenge, we built a SERP Sentiment score to measure branded SERPs based on the number of positive, negative and neutral URLs that appear on page one, along with what positions each of those occupy.

This score helps you see and report the progress of your reputation management campaign on a daily and weekly basis — the type of progress that isn’t noticed if you focus on the binary result of, “Is it off page one?”

The 100-Point Algorithm

We researched, discussed and tested different approaches to calculate what impact negative SERPs should have on our sentiment score. We broke through when we started with 100 points and deducted points for every negative or neutral search listing on page 1.

Each ranking position has a preset value based on the (admittedly imperfect, but useful) average CTR distribution.

For a SERP with 10 results, the value of each position looks roughly like this:

Calculating The Score

Each SERP starts with 100 points. If a piece of content in a position is negative, it loses the value of that position. If the piece of content in that position is neutral, it loses half of the value of that position. And if it is positive, no points are lost for that position.

In the example above, everything is positive except for position 8. So we would start with 100 points, subtract the value of position 8 (value of 4), to give a SERP Sentiment score of 96. Not bad, Ron Popeil.

If there was a neutral result, we’d divide the value of that position in half, and subtract it out. However, in this case, there is only one negative result in the SERPs to contend with.

Let’s calculate another:

In these results, I noted the positions where we need to subtract points. Negative content is again boxed in red, neutral content in blue. We start with the 100 points, and then adjust as follows:

• -9 points for the neutral result in position 2 (This position is worth 18 points, and having a neutral result there means half of that is subtracted).
• -8 points for the negative result in position 4.
• -2 points for the neutral result in position 8.

After these adjustments, the SERP score for this query is 81.

Scoring Non-10-Blue-Link SERPs

When we built this score, 10 blue links was the rule, and Google did not vary from it. However, now the number of listings in SERPs can vary widely, with things generally settling between seven and 11. In those cases, we modify the scoring as follows:

Using the scoring for nine SERP listings, the SERP Sentiment score for Snuggie’s brand results (from the beginning of this article) is 81.5.

Tracking & Reporting

We first establish with the client what is positive, negative and neutral.  We read through each page, assess it and make a recommendation on the sentiment (but at the end of the day, it is the client’s call). We also establish which queries we are going to monitor. Generally, it is the brand name (or person’s name) and also queries such as “[brand name]+reviews” or “[brand name]+product name.”

We track weekly the search results for each query, monitoring five pages deep, so we are aware of anything moving up from deeper in the SERPs.  The SERP score, however, is only based on page 1, since the vast majority of searchers never click to page 2.

For ORM projects, we report on the ranking position of each piece of content. (We have a tool that automatically tracks ranking positions, but it can be done manually.) We also report on this SERP Sentiment score, which is a simple way to roll up these positions into a single number. We provide weekly and monthly reports, which go into detail on the work completed and its results.

Since developing this sentiment score, we’ve found our clients’ C-Suites to be more engaged and interested in incremental progress, because they can clearly see the project direction through the changes of a single number. They know that as their score gets closer to 100, things are getting better.

Furthermore, with the utility that we’ve found in this score, we’ve also built out other ways to score online sentiment that factor in online reviews (both the aggregate rating and the number of reviews), knowledge panels, Google images and more. Scores and dashboards really add value and make tracking improvement easy for even those only casually involved on the project.

Conclusion

Google changes their search result pages constantly, which makes this sentiment score a work in progress to keep up to date. I hope that by sharing this metric, others will be able to use it in their own projects and improve upon it (and ideally, share their updates).

Customer satisfaction has the Net Promoter Score. Now, online reputation management has the SERP Sentiment score.

The post Our SERP Sentiment Score For A Person’s/Brand’s Online Reputation appeared first on Search Engine Land.

When Should You Hire A SEO Company?

The solutions of a Search Engine Optimization company have been most needed in current years. Enhancing your site for internet search engine to accomplish greater placement in search results page will certainly increase website traffic into your website, boost your number of consumers and at some point boost earnings. While search engine optimization is a procedure that you can do your finest to discover, in several instances, it is most reasonable to employ a reliable Search Engine Optimization company instead. As in many other company decisions that you have to make, resorting for outdoors assistance will require you some extra investment in regards to money and time. So, the major concern to ask is: is it worth it to employ a SEO business?

There are some cons and also pros involved when you do SEO on your own, there have to do with just as much if you obtain outside aid via a Search Engine Optimization company. It is essential that you thoroughly take into consideration these factors before you go on employing a Search Engine Optimization company to aid you.

DIY SEO

Advantages

You will certainly conserve more as well as you will discover a lot regarding running a web site when you enhance your website on your own. Apart from this, you will certainly retain complete command and control over your site and also you might really feel comfortable about it.

Downsides

It takes much time and effort to find out about ways to appropriately maximize a web site. Not just that, SEO is a continuous process which needs constant upkeep and normal handling. If do not know much concerning Search Engine Optimization practices, online search engine guidelines as well as shows expertise however wish to enhance your site ranking quickly, you could be tempted to utilize spamming tactics making this take place. You stand the risk of search engines permanently banning your website when you do so.

Hiring a SEO Business

Advantages

Hiring outside help will certainly enable you to maintain your concentrate on the primary function and also core proficiency of your company. You will leave the SEO part of your site to a SEO business composed of experts that are equipped with the ideal expertise, devices and also resources that you could not have. Your Search Engine Optimization company will become your partner and it will certainly assist you to more accomplish one of the most out of your investment.

Drawbacks

Employing a SEO will cost you cash. You additionally should spend a long time in discussing your objectives and also taking part in the entire Search Engine Optimization procedure. Furthermore, you need to do your research study to locate the ideal SEO firm which will certainly have the ability to give you with trustworthy services.

Choosing a SEO Firm

It is time to look about for one when you have actually chosen to hire a SEO firm. A dependable SEO business will have a great credibility and also should have some market visibility. You could begin your search by asking colleagues, seeing preferred SEO online forums, contacting website owners of pages you frequently see completely suggestions.

Make a listing of all the Search Engine Optimization firms that turn up then do your research regarding each of them. Erase the ones which have actually used black hat or spamming techniques, the ones that do not provide all the solutions you might need, the companies which bill more than you can afford, those that cannot offer references, or those that don't reply to your question within 24 Hr. These insist which either do not suit your needs, are not reliable enough or simply also busy to offer you high quality client solution.

Consider price to be an essential factor. Choose a business that has worked with companies similar to yours in scope and also size. A SEO firm, that has actually worked with a concept like your own, could most likely offer you quality solutions that will certainly fit your spending plan. Nevertheless, expense needs to not be the single contributing factor to the choice. The reliability of the SEO company should be examined with examination. Asking referrals is commonly a simple method to know firm's reliability. The firm must be greater than delighted to offer references. The relationship you will certainly set up with your SEO business will be a lengthy term one so make certain you only collaborate with one that you are comfortable managing periodically.

The advantages and disadvantages of Do It Yourself and working with a Search Engine Optimization business for your Search Engine Optimization requirements could vary depending upon your business's ability, spending plan as well as goals. However, as long as Search Engine Optimization is done well, either by you or an excellent Search Engine Optimization business, search engine optimisation is by much one of the most effective means of promoting your company as well as producing more sales.


While search engine optimization is a procedure that you could do your ideal to discover about, in many situations, it is most sensible to hire a credible SEO business rather. The primary question to ask is: is it worth it to hire a SEO business?

You will delegate the SEO part of your website to a Search Engine Optimization business made up of specialists who are equipped with the ideal knowledge, tools as well as sources that you could not have. As soon as you have actually decided to employ a SEO company, it is time to look around for one. The relationship you will certainly set up with your Search Engine Optimization firm will certainly be a lengthy term one so make sure you only work with one that you are comfy dealing with on a routine basis.

​Keys To Enhance Your Search Engine Marketing Efforts

It is an usual concept understood among local business owners as well as business owners that obtaining customers and also buyers so as to actually get by means of the search engine advertising and marketing (SEM) is a great strategy. Doing it appropriate and also efficiently is the difficult task they all deal with. So as to be successful in this field, your internet search engine marketing campaign have to be considerately made and examined over once more. Look engine marketing is not something you could start as well as after that forget later on. You as the company owner must ensure your search engine advertising gets on the appropriate track consistently. To do this, you should take into consideration doing these important tips for your firm.
First, you must boost your site. Understanding that having a website for your business is not nearly enough any longer, you need to include some flavor in order to your business's on-line frontage. Customers are now much more likely in order to see high spending plan sites so you need to increase and also keep up with the fad. Considering that basic websites with about a couple of web pages implies that your company can not pay for great looking web pages, you can not pay for so as to be on that particular degree. If you have no suggestion where so as to start or exactly how so as to broaden, use some third event outsourcing for layouts and internet customizing.
Usage as well as pick key words very carefully. Key phrases matter in your search engine advertising and marketing so you could desire so as to use them well that one may your benefit. Do not make use of typical words or lengthy keyword phrases that will garner you only bit on sales. Choose keyword phrases that are focused on your area as well as pertinent in your business. Using "accountant for tiny business" will result so fewer sales as well as will be kind of pricey. Nevertheless, utilizing "small company bookkeeper in Florida" will certainly lead you to higher outcomes and cheaper costs. For even more help on these, you might want so as to examine Google's key phrase device.
Include in your ads keywords such as buy or market if you are doing such in your company. Post ads that are revealing promos as well as fantastic bargains that could entice clients so check out as well as watch your advertisements as well as the internet site you have connected it with.
You must have personalized landing web pages in your advertisements for your clients that one may go. There is absolutely nothing more irritating compared to seeing a quite nice advertisement only that one may be routed so as to a homepage of a website that has little so as to do with the ad. So if you post an ad, have the link from the advertisement routed so the web page where the clients can get more details concerning it and also go click on "acquire now.".
With all the things in mind, you should not neglect in order to constantly test your online search engine marketing if it is succeeding. Continue screening variants of keywords, ad copy or some keyword phrases. For one keyword variation, it might generate much more click results and the various other variant much more acquiring results. This will certainly make certain that you are on the ideal track as well as doing the advertising appropriately. With wonderful initiative as well as time given, search engine marketing will certainly provide your business better sales advantage.

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Consist of in your advertisements keywords such as buy or offer if you are doing such in your company. Post advertisements that are showing promotions and excellent deals that might entice clients so check out and see your ads as well as the site you have actually linked it with. There is nothing more frustrating than seeing a really nice ad just that one may be routed so a homepage of a site that has little that one may do with the ad. If you upload an advertisement, have the link from the ad routed so as to the web page where the customers could get even more information concerning it and also go click on "get currently.".
Keep on testing variants of keywords, ad duplicate or some phrases.

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​What SEO Services Can Do For Your Online Company

Well, you have actually surely listened to concerning the whole buzz going on concerning Search Engine Optimization solutions. SEO is brief for search engine optimization, and also Search Engine Optimization solutions are all about boosting your site's online visibility as well as to make certain search engines will effortlessly discover it. Once your website is accessible as well as search engines friendly (Search Engine Optimization Friendly), people willbe able to find it since over 90 % of online users make use of search engines to find information on the Net.

Browse engines take account numerous aspects when making a decision on search result rankings. Search Engine Optimization solutions are all about hiring somebody to do all the job to make your website ranking high in search engines.

Technically, SEO services are not the very same as on the internet marketing. SEO services allow your site to obtain seen not just by any online user but by potential clients.

SEO solutions will absolutely be a large aid in any kind of business, whatever particular niche or market it is that you satisfy. Whether you are a multi-national company, a tiny or average regional business, you should have the on-line existence and also exposure that SEO solutions could offer. There are a number of firms giving Search Engine Optimization services. They typically use various methods and also abide by various viewpoints and policies to get you the very best outcomes, so employing a seasoned Search Engine Optimization business will make a large distinction. Whether you deal with individuals from all over the world or merely have a small little edge in a little town in Arkansas, SEO services will allow individuals to obtain to you and also recognize concerning your business.

SEO solutions usually include SEO professionals who obtain your website, change around with its contents as well as style to create it more enjoyable for internet search engine indexers. They will certainly likewise boost your off-page factors or link appeal. More than any person, SEO providers are furnished with the understanding, the devices, and also the tricks to obtain you the interest of major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! or MSN.

Search Engine Optimization is not simply regarding the key phrases. Trusted Search Engine Optimization solutions supply your internet site the site significance that is essential for search engines to recognize just exactly how crucial it is in the on the internet world.

SEO services can give your website clicks which are way more efficient compared to advertised clicks (think about ppc advertising and marketing and also the sort). A thousand clicks from ad campaign that pulls in unenthusiastic customers could only deserve just one click from Search Engine Optimization which obtains you one who is actually interested. With Search Engine Optimization solutions, you will have better opportunities of obtaining clients that are truly considering what you have to provide.

In the on the internet world, it is claimed that your website may just be like your SEO. There is no much better means to do it compared to getting Search Engine Optimization services if you desire to optimize your success in your on-line endeavor. Make the most traffic as well as profit from your website; get excellent Search Engine Optimization services to let your target market find out about your net based company as well as get on your way to success.


SEO is brief for search engine optimization, and Search Engine Optimization solutions are all concerning enhancing your website's online visibility and to make certain search engines will effortlessly find it. SEO services allow your website to get observed not just by any kind of online customer but by prospective consumers. SEO solutions typically entail Search Engine Optimization professionals that get a hold of your site, change around with its contents and design to make it more enjoyable for search engine indexers. Reliable SEO services provide your web site the website significance that is needed for search engines to acknowledge simply how important it is in the on the internet world.

If you desire to optimize your success in your on the internet venture, there is no much better method to do it compared to getting Search Engine Optimization solutions.

What Bernie Sanders Can (Kind Of) Teach Us About SEO in 2016 & Beyond

Full disclosure: I love Bernie Sanders. I think he’s a smart, principled guy. He was also the subject of my favorite SNL skit this year; he even does his own impressions!

While Bernie Sanders hasn’t personally taught me anything about SEO, a website promoting his presidential candidacy can teach us a good lesson about how businesses can think about SEO as we move into 2016 (and beyond).

It was actually through the process of researching how I (as an independent voter) could potentially vote for Bernie that I decided to create this article. I live in Massachusetts, so I Googled “register to vote democratic primary ma” — and was surprised by the result:

A “Vote for Bernie” microsite (his main campaign site is BernieSanders.com) was outranking the state of Massachusetts’s official pages on the topic.

I wondered if this was consistent with other areas of the country. To get a cleaner look at those SERPs, I fired up the Google AdWords ad preview tool.

I find this to be a really handy tool for things like diagnosing AdWords issues for specific terms in specific areas, helping clients understand how they’re being seen by searchers in a specific area, and even (as in this case) taking a quick look at an organic search result in another area.

In this case, I wanted to see what searchers would see if they ran the same query I had from within a few different states. Here’s what I found.

This is the search result for “register to vote democratic primary ny” when searching in New York, New York:

This particular SERP actually gets more interesting as you scroll down, as well:

Ranking fifth is another Bernie Sanders microsite, this one focusing specifically on registering for the New York primary:

This is the search result for “register to vote democratic primary ca” when searching in Los Angeles, CA:

This is the search result for “register to vote democratic primary tx” from Houston, TX:

The Vote for Bernie page is outranking the official state registration pages, state Democratic party pages, and more. In New York, there’s even a page specific to that state (though time has run out for already-registered voters to switch affiliations and then vote in the Democratic primary).

The Vote for Bernie site was actually very well designed and easy to use. Here’s the experience you have going to that page if you’re trying to register to vote in the Democratic presidential primary:

You’re served an interactive map that shows you which states have which kinds of primaries, and you can sign up for updates by geography. When you click on a state to drill down, you can find more information about the process in that state:

The “Register as a democrat or undeclared” link takes users to the voter registration page for Massachusetts. Even if I weren’t specifically looking to vote for Bernie Sanders, I got the information I was after (how I can be eligible to vote in the primary) and then was directed over to the place where I can complete the process.

The second and third results when I look for “register to vote for the democratic primary ma” are generic voter registration signups. Here is the third listing:

Contrast that with the experience on the Vote for Bernie site. Here, I’m shown small text, no information about the Democratic primary (and what I need to do to vote in it) until the very bottom of the page, and a ton of information that has nothing to do with my initial query (which isn’t the fault of the state’s voter registration page, incidentally, since they didn’t build that page specifically to answer that query).

I was also curious if anyone on the Republican side of the aisle had done something similar:

No Republican attempts to rank here are in sight — and in fact, the Vote for Bernie site is ranking seventh here, too!

Based on the information on the “Vote For Bernie” site, the New York-focused “If You Want Bernie” site and a third “Feel the Bern” site that focuses on Bernie Sanders’ stances on issues, it looks like these sites weren’t built by the campaign itself, but instead were created by third-party volunteers.

Here is the footer for the Vote for Bernie site:

The site actually doesn’t even appear to be linked to anywhere on BernieSanders.com. So this is a nice site that answers a specific question created by Sanders supporters, and even if it just answered queries like the ones listed above, it would be a valuable campaign asset.

Using SEMrush, though, we can see that the site is ranking for a lot more than just specific variations of “register to vote democratic primary [State]”:

Primaries, primary voting, how to vote, vote democrat — this “Vote for Bernie” site is ranking for all kinds of interesting queries.

One thing that I thought was particularly interesting here is that the page doesn’t seem to be actively targeting these terms for SEO purposes. Here is the site’s home page title tag:

How and when to vote for Bernie Sanders (by state)

No mention of registering, primaries, or even the Democratic Party in the page’s title. Obviously, different combinations of those terms litter the page, but this generic title tag is still dominating search results for some of the most populated states in the country.

So, how is this site achieving all these rankings?

One thing that caught my eye as I browsed the site was the share count:

Digging into the numbers with Social Site Explorer, it looks like the site has been:

• shared on Facebook 96,316 times.
• liked on Facebook 233,130 times.
• tweeted 18,233 times.
• upvoted on Reddit 2,739 times.

Sharers are primarily — as you might expect — Bernie Sanders supporters. Some of the top sharers via BuzzSumo:

And the link profile for the site is pretty similar — according to Ahrefs. The site has links from 176 unique linking domains:

The site has some authoritative links from places like Politico, but a number of the other linking sites are — like the social shares — Sanders supporters (such as the Progressive Democrats Association and several sites created by volunteers, such as Feel the Bern, Pasadena for Bernie and so on).

What Can We Learn?

So what are the takeaways for marketers and SEO practitioners here? The most obvious one is probably the value of having a passionate community and of having a product (the “product” in this case being Bernie Sanders himself) that people love and are excited about.

Hopefully, you’re already trying to cultivate that type of community and create that type of product. Still, there are also people excited about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and the rest of the candidates — but none of them are showing up in the search results I’ve outlined above. So what can you do in your own business and your own SEO efforts to replicate this ranking success?

Two elections ago, the best strategy for ranking for these terms might have been to hang a bunch of very thin “How to Register to Vote in the Democratic Primary in [State Name]” pages off of your main campaign website. (And actually, that might still work reasonably well now for one of the campaigns, and it might not even be that bad a searcher experience either: short content can win sometimes, too, like well-crafted glossary pages.)

However, this single page is dominating rankings for a variety of different phrases, because Google was able to figure out what the page was about and is likely rewarding some combination of the page’s link profile, shares and positive engagement metrics.

This page:

• understood a real-world problem that a prospect (in this case, prospective voters) had: getting information about how to vote in various state primaries.
• created a simple, valuable utility that solved that problem in a more elegant, user-friendly way than other options.
• was circulated and shared with the people who were likely to share and link to the page (supporters of Bernie Sanders).

Typical campaign candidate sites (and to a large extent, Bernie Sanders’ own campaign sites) are focused on:

• their own messages and calls to action.
• self-promotional fundraising blog posts and press releases.
• information about their own events and their own issues.

Having all these things on your website is fine. The third bullet, in particular, can lead to some valuable search traffic from folks looking for information about the candidate’s stance on issues that the candidate wouldn’t want to lose to another site.

But creating this simple utility that answers this simple question has gotten a ton of valuable search rankings for the Bernie Sanders campaign that the other campaigns are missing out on.

Large sections of your own website are like this, and there are probably lots of specific, small problems that you could be solving for your prospects if you start to focus on thinking through their purchasing journey and their day-to-day activities. From there, work on identifying the areas where you can offer the right intuitive design and succinct description at the right time — just like Bernie Sanders (kind of)!

The post What Bernie Sanders Can (Kind Of) Teach Us About SEO in 2016 & Beyond appeared first on Search Engine Land.

The Yahoo Directory Is Finally Absolutely Dead

We knew it was coming: the Yahoo Directory is now officially offline. Going to dir.yahoo.com now redirects you to aabacosmallbusiness.com.

Yahoo has closed down one of the most historic and prominent sites in the history of the internet. Once thought of as the Google of the internet, the directory is no longer to be found, in any sense.

Now when you go to the Yahoo Directory, you see this:

Before? It looked like this:

Late last year, Yahoo began redirecting sub-sections internally within the Yahoo Directory to the Aabaco site, but now even the home page of the Yahoo Directory is gone.

The post The Yahoo Directory Is Finally Absolutely Dead appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Marketing Analysis: Unlocking The Power Of Descriptive Statistics For SEM & Beyond

Let me be upfront: this post will contain statistics. Not the fun, pithy kind like “60 percent of statistics are made up on the spot,” but actual cold, hard statistical practices.

Joking aside, I’m going to run through some fairly top-level statistical analysis practices that can be employed every day to help make sense of your marketing data, allowing better strategic decisions. And it won’t be painful at all, I promise.

“But I do this already. I’m always analysing my data!” I hear you say incredulously.

This is probably very true — most users of web analytics (Google Analytics, Omniture, et al.) instinctively apply what would formally be known as “descriptive statistics.” For example, you readily identify a spike or a drop in your daily traffic by “eyeballing” a chart; you use averages to quickly assess performance; and you do all sorts of comparisons that help you understand what is happening (and importantly, what you need to do next).

Although a loose adherence to the general principles is fine and workable, I strongly believe that an element of rigour can help take your analysis to the next level. Below, I’ll run through a couple of concepts tied to real-world examples which will hopefully convince you that this is an approach you should be considering.

Read all the details in the rest of my column at Marketing Land.

The post Marketing Analysis: Unlocking The Power Of Descriptive Statistics For SEM & Beyond appeared first on Search Engine Land.