Keeping abreast of everything that’s happening in a vibrant and dynamic industries like SEO and inbound marketing is no easy task. So, this week, we’re pleased to offer our visitors the first of our monthly roundups of what you need to be reading in SEO, social media, hosting and web design.
We hope you learn as much from reading it as we did when we compiled it.
SEO and Inbound Marketing
- Hey White Hats, Automation Is A Good Thing…Stop Whining – I see so many SEO guides floating around that advocate manually collecting all kinds of information, from contact information to broken links, and they almost always consist of digging around the internet for the information and copying and pasting…and copying and pasting…and copying and pasting.
- Decoding Common SEO Acronyms – If you take some time to decode some of these fancy looking SEO acronyms, you may find that understanding internet marketing lingo isn’t as difficult as you think.
- Author Rank: A Step-by-Step Guide to Dominating Search with Content Marketing – If you are a content marketer, blogger or writer, you’ll be happy to hear that there have been five recent SEO changes that will play to your strengths.
- Blog Headline Writing Lessons from Mega-traffic Sites – What’s one of the most simple traffic building tools that even most top bloggers don’t use? Surprisingly, few bloggers take advantage of the ability to target a separate headline for people browsing the site and people searching via Google, Bing, etc.
- BBC Research and Development Blog: Search Engine Optimisation: Knowledge Graphs, Schema.org and the Economy of Attribution – What the BBC sees as the future of SEO.
- How Google’s Authorship Markup affects SEO – Rel=”author” is Google’s authorship markup where authors link their page content on their Google profile. Google’s authorship markup is one of the most popular on site optimization factors
- LinkedIn and SEO go hand-in-hand – When owners optimize their LinkedIn pages with keywords and important phrases, many industry veterans believe search crawlers take more notice than on other platforms.
- The Modern Marketing Triangle: 3 Keys to Success [infographic] – Many traditional marketing models now seem ancient and obsolete. New strategic models are needed – not just for text books and academics but for managers.
- 7 critical SEO blunders agencies are still making – It never ceases to amaze me when I am creating keyword competitive analysis projects the woeful Search Optimisation execution of many large advertising agencies.
- Why PR agencies should own SEO, but often don’t deserve to – The onus in order to rank highly on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is now on quality, engaging content with inbound links from authoritative and diverse sites.
- 12 Irrational SEO Biases Debunked By Rand Fishkin – Rand went through 12 irrational SEO biases which are holding marketers back and gave suggestions for what we could be doing instead.
- Consolidate Multiple Websites For Better Search Engine Ranking – Too often do I hear business owners jump to conclusions when they find that their current website is not generating the traffic that they’d expected.
Social Media
- How a Facebook Search Engine Could Change the Way People Find Your Business – People spend hours on Facebook interacting with their friends, posting pictures, “liking” companies and celebrities, and outlining their interests and hobbies. Now it appears that Facebook is in the process of building a search-related tool using the information it has collected about its users.
- Facebook social search: much ado about nothing? – When comments intimating the genesis of Facebook social search were attributed to Mark Zuckerberg this week, futurists everywhere started to lament the demise of Google and laud Facebook’s CEO for his vision.
- Top 50 Social Media Blogs to Watch in 2013 – These guys are at the forefront of social media strategy
- 25 New Social Media Conversion Resources You Shouldn’t Miss – Social media conversion – many of us are talking the talk, but do we really know what it means or how to achieve, and more importantly, measure it?
Hosting and Web Design
- PHP 5.5 should reduce password sloppiness – Version 5.5 of PHP will come with an API designed to allow administrators and developers to safely store passwords.
- Think Usability Doesn’t Effect SEO, Think Again! – As an SEO consultant, I have recently spent a lot of my time explaining usability to my clients.
- Breathe New Life into Your Home Page, Gain Loyal Readers – How many times have you closed your eyes, rubbed your temples and wondered how much easier life would be if you had a background in layout and design?
- Google Mistakenly Publish New Webmaster Guidelines? – For those who are interested, it was reported that Google updated it’s Webmaster rules for inclusion today.
- An Introduction To A/B Testing – Unfortunately, A/B Testing still remains in the dark for most online marketers and web designers. The technique is still underrated as opposed to comparably valued methods like SEO.
WordPress
- The Right Way to Use Categories and Tags in WordPress to Boost SEO – Categories and tags offer up opportunities for increased engagement and traffic that most bloggers waste.
- New Google SEO Copywriting Rules Essential for WordPress Users – If you’re a WordPress user who plans on using content anywhere on your WordPress site or your client’s WordPress sites, you need stop what you’re doing and read what Google’s Matt Cutts recently said about the “new” rules of SEO Copywriting.
- Top 10 WordPress Security Myths – WordPress Security is about as sexy as cleaning your house. And as a serious blogger, you already know that securing your site properly is not a trivial task. That makes it a fantastic topic for myth fabrication.
- WordPress Plugins Helpful for Improving Bounce Rate of Your Blog – If you have been blogging to make money online, then you must be aware of the importance of engagement metrics. You cannot do much if your blog has a higher bounce rate and lower page views per visit.
And last but not least, Matt Cutts is going to be making a new series of videos soon, and he’s asked for people to submit topics and questions. Head on over to this Google Moderator page to add your two cents’ worth.