Monthly Archives: February 2014

How Google’s Deepmind Acquisition Is Poised To Change SEO As We Know It

image(Flickr/ninepennies)

image(Flickr/ninepennies)

As I’m certain many of you are already aware, Google recently acquired Deepmind, an artificial intelligence firm with a focus on machine learning. You’d be forgiven for thinking the corporation is looking to augment its new army of robots with better intelligence (all the better to kick off the machine uprising with?). After all, this purchase came directly on the tail end of a flurry of robotics acquisitions, of which Boston Dynamics was the capstone. And while smart robots could certainly be in Google’s future, that isn’t the reason Google bought the startup.

See, what a lot of people appear to have forgotten in light of Google’s recent innovations and inventions is that it is, at its core, about search. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first founded the company back in 1986, they set out to build a better search engine. Although their success has allowed the organization to branch out into pretty much any technological field it sees fit, the goal of building a better web remains the bread and butter of Google. Continue reading

What’s The Big Secret To WordPress SEO?

WordPress_themesSince it first exploded onto the scene back in 2003, WordPress has established itself as one of the best content management systems in the world. It’s not terribly difficult to see why, either. It’s got one of the most user-friendly interfaces around, and is equipped with excellent features and functionality for both free and paying users. Because of this immense popularity, there exists a staggering amount of plugins with which writers can optimize their blogs.

One thing I (and many others) love about the platform is that much of the SEO is already built into the blog design. Using a tool such as All-In-One SEO should truthfully be enough for even the biggest SEO newbie to properly optimize their blog posts. However, that doesn’t mean proper optimization is a cakewalk. If you aren’t taking the necessary steps to write SEO-friendly posts to begin with, you’re not tapping into the full potential of the platform. Continue reading

ASEOHosting Clarifies IP Geolocation and ccTLD Impact On International SEO

Hudson, FL, February 24, 2014 – ASEOHosting, a provider of premium multiple IP hosting, has commented on the confusion surrounding the optimal use of IP addresses for search engine ranking in specific geographic areas. Many business web masters and SEOs do not have a clear idea of the best strategy to ensure that market-specific sites have the greatest chance of ranking well in the regions they target.

Google employs over 200 signals to determine relevance, authority, and quality of content. Among the signals are country-code top-level domains and the location of the site’s server as determined by IP geolocation. Together these factors form a strong signal that a site is relevant to a region. Continue reading

Google+ and SEO: What You Need to Know

6076488268_9816a320bb_oSince its introduction in 2011, Google+ has been hailed as a ‘Facebook-killer,’ “the biggest change in communications since the interactive website,” as well as a ghost town and a ‘complete failure.’ Whatever your thoughts on Google+ on a personal level, with 540 million active users monthly, you can’t afford to ignore its ramifications on your SEO.

Google’s Changing Strategy

In years past, Google was committed to bringing you the best search results, regardless of who owned those results. As the company has expanded beyond search, Google has increasingly promoted their own Web properties in search results. Nowhere is that change so obvious as Google+. Much more than simply another social network, Google+ has become an increasingly integral part of Google’s overall strategy, including how search results are ranked. Continue reading

Why You Should Never, Ever Spin An Article

Writing ToolsWriting can be pretty rough work, and putting together a piece of quality content that’s both properly search-optimized and valuable to the reader can be a very tall order.  Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could simply take a single good piece of content and turn it into a hundred pieces or more without having to put in any extra effort? Wouldn’t it be great if, instead of having to pay a hundred writers, you could simply pay one and sell the same piece a hundred times?

Actually, that’s entirely possible – and completely inadvisable. Continue reading

SEO, Content Marketing, and Social Media: The Best of January 2014

NORTHERN LIGHTS2014 is off to an explosive start. Brands blew up social media feeds during the Super Bowl, and Matt Cutts laid down the law on guest blogging, a topic which we have already addressed in a previous post. Don’t worry though, it’s not all gloom and doom. SEO has always been a constantly evolving business, and those who succeed employ a variety of tactics that include guest blogging, social media, and content marketing. To help you out, we gathered some of the best articles on these subjects from January. Enjoy, and if you’re looking for the same great content the rest of the month, don’t forget to check in with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

SEO

International SEO Strategy Advice To Start 2014 With A Bang

Well, it’s the beginning of yet another year and we’ve seen plenty of changes in the SEO world throughout 2013 including Penguin and Panda updates, the domain crowding release, the rise and rise of mobile search and, very recently, the announcement from Yandex of the removal of links from its algorithm.

Continue reading

Bold SEO Predictions for 2014

2014The only constant in search is change. Every time you think you have Google figured out, they switch it up again. The search engine giant kept the SEO world guessing in 2013 by changing their algorithm over five hundred times, a trend that will most likely continue this year. It’s important to stay a step ahead, so in that spirit, here are five bold SEO predictions moving forward in 2014.

Conversational Search via Natural Language Processing

In 2013, Google made most keyword data private, a move that many saw as a declaration of war on keywords. As of this writing, the dreaded “Not Provided” is at a return rate of 82%, with that number expect to rise to 100% by June. The message is clear: spamming website content with keywords will no longer work. Search Engine Optimizers should continue to move away from focusing on search queries and instead create high quality content that is written to attract the attention of conversational search. Continue reading