Is Your Site At Risk? SEO Risk Assessment Infographic. Get a Free SEO Risk Assessment | Ben Norman, SEO Consultant. PPC Keyword Research: When & Why Do You Need It? Setting up and maintaining strong, high performing AdWords campaigns takes time, budget and expertise. But without keyword research both at the beginning of the project and continually throughout, you will never get the best possible return on your investment. Here’s what you need to know about keyword research at the different stages in your AdWords project and why it’s so critical to success. Budgeting and Forecasting Average Cost per Click First and foremost, without keyword research you cannot know how many clicks you can expect to get for your budget. As the average cost per click in AdWords varies dramatically from keyword-to-keyword and industry-to-industry, keyword research is the only way to estimate what your clicks might cost. Keyword research is therefore essential even at this very early stage of a campaign.
Choose Keywords Designed To Achieve Campaign Goals When you set up an AdWords search campaign, it’s important to think about what you want to achieve. Get Researching! Keyword Optimisation Techniques You Should Not Be Using. There was once a time when filling pages and Meta tags full of keywords would help you rank well for those terms.
Needless-to-say, times have changed and it’s no longer anywhere near that easy. In fact, there are a number of old-school keyword optimisation techniques which can now do you more harm than good. Here is a list of definite “don’ts” when it comes to keyword optimisation, followed by the all-important “do”. DON’T stuff your pages with keywords (Keyword Stuffing) The worst thing you can do these days when it comes to keyword “optimisation” is overuse it on your page. Make sure that you don’t use your target keyword more than half a dozen or so times on your page or up to around 5-10% of the words on your page. DON’T make your keywords bold all over your pages (Keyword Bolding) Another historical keyword optimisation technique is to make each instance of your keywords on-page bold or “strong”.
DON’T use only exact match keywords in your link anchor text. Week ending August 21st. August 21, 2013 • written by Laura Crest This week’s latest and greatest online marketing news finds the internet inching ever closer to complete monetization. Content marketers discuss spending and conversion priorities, and how to accomplish more with less. The SEO and search community discusses the commercialization of the internet and Google’s monetary chokehold on the industry. Meanwhile, social media marketers note that they too have to pay to play anymore, if they’re to effectively compete. Other highlights include a lively discussion among SEO and search professionals about the relationship between social signals (specifically Google +1 votes) and search rankings – with Matt Cutts weighing in – as well as the continued trend towards mobile dominance in content, search, and social media marketing.
And Happy 10th Birthday, SEMPO! Enjoy this week’s picks! Content Marketing Lee Odden discusses “The Future of Content on the Search and Social Web” at TopRank. Events: SEO & Search Dustin W. A Guide To Using Pinterest For Business. Since its launch in 2010, Pinterest has been somewhat of a slow burner. Fast forward to present day and the social network has become the fastest growing platform to date; reaching 10 million monthly unique visits in just 9 months. With this growth, more and more enterprises, small and large, are turning to the site as a means to strengthen the online identity and presence of their brand. In 4 easy-to-follow steps this post will show you everything you need to know to get your business up and running on Pinterest. Step One – Getting Started To begin, start by setting a series of realistic goals for your brand to achieve, whether it’s growing your Pinner following or driving x amount of traffic from your Pinterest page to your company website.
Ensure that you allocate enough time and resource to meet your goals and build a strong board profile. Once you have a handle on your business goals, it’s time to create your account. The final set-up step is to add the ‘Pin It’ button to your site. Which Factors Contribute To Your SEO Rankings? Creative Link Building Techniques For A Sustainable Strategy. Search Engine Optimisation is not the same game it was two years ago and evolves at rapid pace. Without the knowledge, skills and drive to keep informed and up-to-date, SEO’s can quickly become behind with the times. Arguably one of the biggest changes we’ve seen in SEO is the way we build links. In fact, the very idea of “building links” is becoming out of date as Google crashes down on unnatural link profiles. Think about it; if you’ve built a link, it is unlikely to be a “natural” backlink.
However, there are ways we can actively improve link profiles with quality backlinks and still fall within Google guidelines by using creative link building techniques. In this post I will discuss creative ways to build high quality, natural backlinks as part of a sustainable link building strategy. Monitor Brand Mentions With Google Trends and other similar tools, you can easily monitor each time you brand name is mentioned across the web. Internal Broken Link Building External Broken Link Building. Emma North Is Part Of Team Koozai. Essential 2013 SEO Health Check Guide.
2012 was a year of change for the SEO industry and it already feels as though 2013 will be every bit as turbulent. It has never been more important to ensure your site’s SEO is healthy. This guide is intended as a comprehensive resource for carrying out a review of your site’s health and SEO performance. It is also designed to ensure that your site is not just healthy now, but will hold up against the promise of more Google algorithm updates and be protected against manual penalties. You can also download my free PDF checklist to use alongside your own SEO health review.
Proactive SEO So many sites are suffering the wrath of Google updates and manual penalties and Search Engine Roundtable even went as far as claiming that you may never recover from Google’s Penguin. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Protecting Against Google Penguin Despite all this, Google is far from finished in its fight against web-spam. However, the risk of ranking drops and de-indexing is far from over.
Link Removals. The Fine Art of Broken Link Building. Building links in a post-Penguin digital world is no easy feat and we have to be more creative than ever to generate quality backlinks that hold real value for our sites. The idea of broken link building takes existing backlinks that no longer function, due to old pages being removed or otherwise being no longer available, and reclaiming the lost value of the backlink. Here’s how. Internal Broken Link Building Ensuring that your site isn’t riddled with broken links and missing pages is an important task for general maintenance and optimisation.
However, it can also uncover some valuable backlink opportunities that you might be wasting. If a natural link from another site is pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, the value it provided to your own link profile is lost. To identify these links, start by running your site through a good link analysis tool such as Majestic SEO. A) Fixing the page, if it should still be live and available. External Broken Link Building. Top 25 Inbound Marketing Articles of the Week: October 4, 2013. Posted October 4, 2013 by John Anyasor | Each week, we scour the web to uncover valuable articles and blog posts for our readers on the topics of inbound marketing, local optimization, social media, and much more.
Welcome to the first week of October! The weather is changing and the inbound marketing news is even better than ever! Google Hummingbird changes the game with semantic search, Twitter’s Analytics platform is free to use, and hashtags are now in search results. Things are getting a lot more interesting from our perspective! Let’s get this show on the road and have a look at the top 25 inbound marketing articles of the week: Search Engine Optimization In the latest Google news, hashtags appear in SERPs. Semantic search is the hot topic this month, and people are wondering how this update changes SEO. Are you unclear about semantic search? When launching a new website, you have to take into account whether your site is search engine friendly. Social Optimization Local Optimization. 20 Years Of Web Design: From Space Jam To Kit Kat. The last 20 years has seen the internet evolve from a little understood technological breakthrough to a vital part of society and our everyday lives.
In that time, the quality and design of the websites we visit has also transformed as user expectations increased. In this post I’ve looked at the evolution of web design over the last 20 years, including a look at some at the clever features and sleek designs of some of my favourite websites. A Digital Relic Preserved There was a time when raw HTML code was the only language understood on the internet. Before the likes of Flash, JavaScript and even CSS, websites were often exceptionally basic and lacked any of the features we have come to expect today. The Space Jam website is a fantastic example of a website from the past that has been beautifully preserved on the net. Warner Bros have given a real gift to the digital community in preserving this website for us to reflect on today. New Technologies Move The Goalposts JavaScript Lego. Google Penguin SEO tips for 2013. How To Recover From A Google Ranking Penalty.
This guide is intended as a first point of reference for site owners who have suffered a Google ranking penalty or suspect they may be victims of algorithm updates. By working through the three steps below, you will be taking the first tentative steps in restoring your site’s lost value and getting your site back to its previous ranking glory. Step 1 – Diagnose 2012 was a tough year for website owners and SEOs, with new algorithm updates and ranking penalties dished out by Google like hot meals.
Many websites who suffered a ranking penalty invested a great deal of time and money into fixing the issues to regain organic traffic and many more sites simply haven’t been able to get near the rankings they once enjoyed. At this stage, consider the evidence that has led you to believe you have suffered a ranking penalty. Review your traffic over a long period of time, ideally comparing it to the same period in the previous year. Firstly, check in Google Webmaster Tools. Step 2 – Resolve. Will Google Zebra Hit Social? A Possible New Google Algorithm Update.
Google Panda and Google Penguin are two of the biggest and hardest hitting algorithm updates Google has ever released. With rankings slashed literally overnight after each update, it is clear that the search engine giant will stop at nothing in its efforts to provide the highest quality search experience for its users, in keeping with its mission statement; “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Google’s stern stance on quality now means that link building and content strategies have been completely turned on their head, with once acceptable methods of building rank becoming obsolete in an instant. To recap, Google’s mission statement, clearly accessible on the Google Company page, reads: “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” However, Google’s mission will never be complete and many speculate that another major update is already in the pipeline. Possible Target: Social Media. More Creative Link Building Techniques for a Natural Backlink Profile. Six months ago I wrote a post featuring eight Creative Link Building Techniques for a Sustainable Link Building Strategy, with the promise to write a follow-up later in 2013.
With new announcements from Google in the last six months intensifying the spotlight on unnatural links, now seemed like a good time to tackle Part 2. In this post I’m going to suggest a few more tips and techniques you should consider to build quality inbound links to your site, designed to stand the tests of both time and Google crack-downs. Create a 6-12 Month Link Building Plan The key to a strong link profile is that it should look natural and progressive. If your site gets 10 new links one month and 1,000 the next, alarm bells may start to ring at Google and you may be under scrutiny for bad practice or link schemes. Although the arrival of new natural links to your site is outside your control, any link building you partake in should be structured and regular to avoid unnatural spikes in new links.
Create Hype. Ahrefs Site Explorer. Clicks But No Conversions – Where You’re Going Wrong. Google AdWords is a tried and tested method of getting qualified leads to a website. So when you invest heavily into the advertising platform and fail to achieve conversions, it can be incredibly disappointing and frustrating. It’s easy to blame the set-up or structure of your ad campaigns, and sometimes rightly so. However in actuality the issues could be a lot closer to home, with your website and landing pages. If you’re getting clicks but no conversions, or not enough sales to break even, it’s time for campaign and site analysis. Rubbish Campaign or Rubbish Website? If you’re getting clicks into your site but no conversions, there are two main possible issues; a poorly managed ad campaign or a poor website. Now when I say “a poor website”, I don’t necessarily mean that your website looks or works badly; only that it doesn’t do everything possible to encourage conversions and install trust in your brand. 1 – Checking The Relevancy Of The Traffic Navigation Design Targeted Landing Pages.
Top Ten Tips for SEO Beginners. Entering the world of SEO as a beginner can be very daunting, making it difficult to know where to start. With so much information available about learning SEO, it can feel as though there just aren’t enough hours in the day to read and absorb it all. Here is my manageable list of top ten tips for SEO beginners to help you find your feet in the fast-paced world of Search Engine Optimisation. 1 – Read, read and read some more Anywhere you look you will see that reading up on the wide world of SEO is an essential starting point for any SEO beginner. There are countless resources to dive into but I’ve collated some of the best in my new SEO Resources section. These include news sites and blogs that I read every day. 2 – Learn Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools In SEO there are hundreds of really useful tools available, but some are more essential than others. 3 – Read through Google’s Webmaster Guidelines 4 – Use a good, comprehensive Beginners’ Guide 5 – Follow SEOs on Twitter 9 – More Tools.
Why Backlink Analysis Is Not Just For Penguin Survival. The majority of us in the industry are very familiar with the concept of backlink analysis and recognise that it is an essential part of a site audit or SEO health check. With Google Penguin updates, unnatural link warnings and manual link penalties, backlink analysis is one of the hottest topics in the SEO industry today and is a practice most of us carry out frequently.
However, the process of backlink analysis is often considered a one-time procedure, often as a response to a Google update or unnatural link warning, or simply to clean and future-proof a site’s link profile. Rarely do I hear about the necessity of carrying out backlink analysis and checks on a regular, frequent basis or the reasons for doing so. Checking For Unnatural Links Is Just The Beginning The most obvious and well-publicised purpose of checking your site’s backlinks is of course to check for unnatural links that could be harming your organic search engine performance. Identify Anomalies and Signs of Negative SEO. How To Recover From A Manual Google Penalty - Step By Step Guide.
SEO. Why Landing Page Analysis Is The New Rank Tracking. Using Social Media To Develop Your Link Building. SEO Books. The Road to Manual Penalty Recovery: An Anonymous Case Study. Using Google Analytics to Help Improve Your SEO Rankings. 3 Simple Tips For Improving Your User Experience. Tips For Creating Hummingbird Friendly Content. How To Use The Google Data Highlighter. Five Social Profiles Your Business Must Have.