Key On the Groud

SEO, Content Marketing, and Social Media: The Best Of June 2013

June brought the warm weather and also warmed up the old SEO vs. content marketing debate. Throw social media into the mix and you have a real quagmire. In that spirit, we’ve gathered up the best SEO, content marketing, and social media articles from June. After you’ve taken a moment to peruse our selections, let us know where you stand on the debate in the comment section below.

SEO

Keyword Research is now a Dirty Trick?keyword-research

Since the announcement of a new Penguin Update 2.0 some people are running scare and others are shouting, “Keywords?! I don’t even know what keywords are. I just write for my audience!” What makes you think using keywords is some sort of dirty trick? Google wants you to use keywords to guide them in cataloging your content. How else would they know where to put your stuff? Continue reading

WordPress Seo Plugins

My Go-To SEO Plugins For A New WordPress Install

34520894_2b55afad90People who frequently install and configure WordPress often develop a standard set of plugins. They install these plugins on every new site. They become very familiar with the quirks and functions of their default set.

This familiarity is like knowing the back of their hands. It’s a helpful habit for increasing productivity.

I’m always happy to try out something new, but if you have a core selection of plugins, it’s easy to keep track of security issues and monitor the progress of development. It also allows me to construct a well-worn workflow so that WordPress installations can be completed quickly and efficiently.

Continue reading

Penguin Shade

Penguin 2.0: Crucial SEO Lessons for Over-Optimized Sites!

A little over a year after its introduction, the Penguin algorithm was given a major update. As many have discovered, Penguin has had sweeping effects on the way Google deals with sites it considers to be trying to game the system with over-optimization.

Since Penguin first hit the servers, there have been two significant updates. However, both were largely tweaks or minor data refreshes. Penguin 4 introduces a major update to the core algorithm and delves much deeper into sites to detect spammy tactics.

If version numbers confuse you, remember this: Google revised the Penguin spam program three times. They labeled this update Penguin 4. However, they call it Penguin 2.0 because it’s the first major algorithm revision.

Continue reading

SEO, Content Marketing, and Social Media: The Best Of May 2013

The flowers arrived as expected in May, but so did a new Penguin update from Google. Now, more than ever, it’s important to make sure your SEO is being done the right way. In that spirit, we’ve gathered up the best SEO, content marketing, and social media articles from May. Take a moment to check out this informative and interesting content for some great suggestions.

SEO

Steady your SEO Ship with the Correct Anchor Distributionanchorman-pandawatch_528_poster-300x158

By the time the Panda and Penguin updates from Google had been rolled out the internet changed almost instantly, and although my niche sites suffered dramatically as a result (as did my income) the simple fact is that these changes were for the better.

Old SEO, Meet New SEO: How to Get Buy-in for Modern Marketing

Marketing moves fast. The SEO strategies that win today – creating high-quality content, focusing on the metrics that matter to clients and investing in digital PR – are often far different than what’s come before them. Next-level marketers and SEOs know what it takes to be successful today, but convincing the powers that be within a business or organization can be challenging. Continue reading

Farm House with Silo

Breaking Business Silos For SEO Content Inspiration

Traditionally, businesses have been broken into units, each of which has a particular area of expertise and responsibility. Public relations handled interactions with the media, marketing was responsible for getting the word out, and SEO for bringing in traffic by any means. Then there’s customer service, sales, administration, manufacturing, and so on. Each a little dukedom with feudal responsibility to its C-Level royal court.

SEO is changing;

SEO’s role is changing. Indeed, it’s expanding beyond its old core functions. These traditionally involved bringing in traffic through technical site optimization and link building. Now, people more accurately refer to this broader approach as inbound marketing. Furthermore, in today’s world, a strong web presence is absolutely key for any company’s income. Furthermore, Google strictly targets disapproved tactics. Therefore, content has become the most important element. Continue reading

Analytics Screen

Google Improves Real-Time Analytics for better visitor report.

Real Time Analytics

image(Flickr/Helga Weber)

Capturing real-time analytics is all the rage at the moment. Knowing exactly what’s going on at every moment is deemed an important part of site management.If you often spend hours staring at Google Analytics, watching your site visitor numbers rise and fall, you may be overstressing yourself. Too much information can be just as harmful as too little. However, there’s good news. Google has recently released a raft of improvements to its real-time features.

The productivity killing aspects of real-time data aside, it can, on occasion, be very useful to track exactly what’s happening on a site at a particular moment, rather than relying on aggregate data where useful information often falls between the cracks of statistical agglomeration. Continue reading

Egyptian hieroglyphs

The SEO Benefits Of Long Form Content is essential?

As an industry, SEOs have absorbed the message that ‘short is sweet’. We know that the attention span of surfers is limited. They don’t tend to luxuriate in the written word, enjoying writing for writing’s sake.

Instead they want short, informative, actionable content without the clutter of unnecessary verbosity. We’ve also fully taken on board the idea that content should be pitched at the lowest possible reading level, so as not to alienate potential readers and customers.

When done well, short, simple content is great.

When done badly, it results in poor content. This content is either too thin to be worth reading. Or, it appears to target an audience who has just finished reading a very simple children’s book.

Blogger lore suggests writing content simply. However, several reasons exist to add longer-form content for educated adults. SEO and content marketing both provide these reasons. In fact, including this type of content can noticeably benefit corporate blogs and websites.

Continue reading
Bulbs hanged from ceiling

SEO, Content Marketing, and Social Media: The Best Of April 2013

April may bring May flowers, but it also brings a new crop of SEO, content marketing, and social media content that we are thrilled to share with you.  So, without further ado, here’s the most informative and interesting content that we came across during the last month.

SEO

What Programming Is Teaching Me About SEO and LifePortent

Even if you have zero interest in programming or SEO, I’m convinced you’re going to be glad you decided to read this blog post.  And to make it a total no-brainer for you, I’m offering a 100% money back guarantee.  Sound good?  Keep reading.

Unnatural Links Detection – How To Guide & Case Study

Google might release the next Penguin soon. Therefore, I think it’s a good time to remember something. You can easily detect unnatural links in your sites’ profiles. You can use this detection technique for any site.

This is true even if it didn’t get a penalty or warning. It’s a good technique. You can use it to understand risk. You can also manage the risk. This is the risk you might face when the next unnatural link update comes.

Continue reading

Keyboards

SEO Hosting: Why Choosing Multiple IP Web Hosting is beneficial?

Search engine optimization is a broad field that employs a huge number of different strategies to help sites rank well in the SERPs. From producing awesome content to technical strategies like implementing caching to speed up a site, many web owners are familiar with the basic practices of SEO, but what they don’t consider is the potential benefit of using a specialist SEO host.

An SEO host provides everything regular web hosts do. However, they offer an extra service. Standard web hosts do not offer this: multiple IP hosting. Multiple IP hosting depends on a company’s control. They need a large block of C-level IPs. Unfortunately, not all companies have this control. They may not have enough different IPs. These IPs also need to be in different geographical areas. Therefore, they cannot successfully offer the benefits of multiple IP hosting.

SEO hosting companies allow their clients to make use of the large set of IPs they control, and that has a number of significant SEO benefits.

Continue reading
Content Board Planning

Five Common Small Business Content Marketing Problems And Their Solutions

Content marketing has always been with us. It has been called different things, but the creation of engaging content by brands has been a lynchpin of marketing for decades. I

n recent years, online marketers in particular have been forced by improvements to search engine algorithms, the ubiquity of social media, and users’ increasing immunity to traditional advertising methods to up their game in the content arena.

Many, however, remain to be convinced, seeing content marketing a passing fad or a distraction from the tried and true marketing and SEO tactics of the past.

Continue reading