In a post on the official Google News Blog, Google has warned publishers that publishing content that fails to clearly discriminate between editorial and advertising may harm their ranking and Google News SEO.
The decline of traditional advertising revenue has forced publishers to devise new methods of generating income from their content. One of the methods that has rapidly gained popularity in recent months is known as native advertising. Native advertising is akin to the traditional advertorial. Promotional posts are published with much of the same context as editorial content. While such articles may include a low-key notification that they are promotional content, they almost exactly resemble the other output of a site.
While bloggers are well acquainted with the promotional guest post, there is intense controversy surrounding the use of native advertising on more traditional news platforms. The Atlantic recently generated a storm when it published a glowing article about Scientology without making it clear that it had been paid for and wasn’t objective editorial. Continue reading →
Spring is on the way, and as always it’s a great time for growth, renewal, and reflection. SEO is a constantly shifting endeavor, so we need to keep on top of the newest thinking, ever ready to exchange worn out strategies for the newest and most effective techniques.
We like to help our clients keep on top of the buzz so they can adapt to changing time, so here’s our end-of-the-month roundup of the most interesting content we’ve come across.
The digital marketing world has seen more changes in the past two years than over the last 10 years combined, thanks to the release of Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates. Both have changed online marketing best practices, including everything from how sites should be built to how “backlinks” should be created. Links that go from another site to yours are called backlinks because they point back…
The face of SEO has changed, and time will tell if it’s for the better. Now it’s extremely difficult for a site to rank on the first page for moderately competitive keywords. The days of blasting the web with your backlinks in order to rank are long gone. In some ways this has leveled the playing field, but it means that webmasters must be extremely cautious with their… Continue reading →
Back in the day, SEO was all about discovering what the algorithms liked and creating sites that tickled them in just the right spot. Nothing made the algorithms happier — to indulge in a bit of anthropomorphism — than to see lots of keywords and lots of links with lots of relevant anchor text.
The natural result was sites that appealed to algorithms, but weren’t quite up to snuff for human beings. Over the years, however, Google has become better at determining what it is that human beings like in their SERPS, and many of the previously successful SEO methods have fallen by the wayside. Continue reading →
For traditional advertisers, mobile is a bit of a head-scratcher. Display advertising revenue is in decline generally, but with the restricted screen real estate on mobile devices, there’s not a lot of space for advertising. Forms of advertising that rely on spatial dimensions, like banner ads, are not well suited to mobile platforms. Temporal advertising is more successful. That is, advertising that takes advantage of a viewer’s time, using the whole of the mobile display. Examples include interstitial ads in text (as seen in apps like Flipboard), or the pre-roll advertising that has become ubiquitous in popular videos.
These forms of advertising are missing a trick. They often don’t aspire to virality; instead, they piggyback on the virality of other content, taking advantage of the popular rather than targeting popularity for themselves. However, while users will tolerate a small portion of larger screens being taken up with advertising, they are much less willing to put up with interruptive advertising. Platforms that put a barrier between consumers and the object of their desire create an instant moment of irritation in their users. Content marketing, if done well, creates the object of desire. Brands become the providers of the object of value, rather than the irritants that users have to pass through to reach their goal. For that reason, inbound marketing, and content marketing in particular, is strongly advantaged in the mobile space. Continue reading →
Many small businesses find getting to grips with social media to be a troublesome aspect of online promotion. They often oversell and alienate potential followers, go overboard with sharing to the point of spamming, or set up a Facebook page or Twitter account, send a tweet or two, and then completely forget about it.
Social media for businesses is a marketing tool, and as with all marketing tools its use has to be consonant with overarching business goals. But, it’s not as simple as filling a page with products and declaiming how awesome you and your team are.
In creative writing classes, students are often told that the number one rule is “show, don’t tell”. The same rule can be applied to social media. Brands need to demonstrate their value to potential followers and sharers, rather than declaring it in overwrought PR speak or heavy product promotion. Authenticity is key. Continue reading →
Over on Search Engine Land, the perennial discussion of the benefits and disadvantages of using subdomains vs. directories has recently been reignited.
In his post, 5 Whopping Lies That Keep SEO At Status Quo, Ian Lurie, presents as his 4th most egregious lie:
“We Can Put The Blog On A Subdomain. It’s Fine.”
The conversation on this issue has been swinging back and forth for a long time, with people on both extremes and quite a number in the middle who claim that it doesn’t matter at all for SEO. which is also Google’s stated position.
Micheal Martinez, of the excellent SEO Theory blog responds in the comments that:
“You and [Rand] Fishkin are completely wrong on the subdomain issue. It’s a shame this kind of misinformation is still being shared on major SEO Websites like Search Engine Land.” Continue reading →
February may be the shortest month of the year, but that doesn’t mean there’s any less of the awesome content marketing, social media, and SEO content that we love to share. So, for your delight and edification, here’s some of the most informative and actionable content that we’ve come across this month.
Let’s get back to basics. If I’m to be honest, flashbacks of arguments with copywriters in ad agencies turn me off to the discussion of metadata. However the reality of the situation is that as Search and Social continue to rapidly converge, it is us SEOs that are left to pick up the technical end of the stick and metadata continues to land on our plate. The most …
When people are on your website they are either skimming through content to find what they are looking for or they have found what they are looking for and want to read it as easily as possible. Either ways, having readable text will help them achieve their goal. A small change in typography can hugely impact the interpretation of your contentWhat do you …
Now-a-days, if you have a small business, you probably need a website and ideally some sort of online presence, and unfortunately for most business owners that means finding your way through a myriad of new technical challenges, including SEO and internet marketing. Internet marketing is something that you can do yourself, but it’s not an easy thing to do and there is a lot of misinformation floating around, so it’s all too easy to make mistakes. Have a look at …
If you work in the search marketing sector it’s been hard to miss the penalty that has been dumped on Interflora this week. Is was first noticed on Tuesday but it wasn’t until SearchMetrics was updated today that the true picture of the penalty starts to take shape when you see such a dramatic fall from grace. This is plain to see that …
Every year, somebody proclaims that SEO is dead simply because Google has made some changes to its algorithm. But don’t worry, this post won’t be declaring that SEO is dead, dying, or even coughing up blood. However, the days of SEO as a distinct, independent discipline are certainly numbered. SEO is fast evolving into a more creative, diverse, and challenging profession. Over the …
As is common knowledge, the vast population of over 1 billion in China paves the way for fantastic consumerism which we Westerners should become involved with. All company’s need is to be recognised in order to succeed, and the best way to do this is through Search Engine Optimisation. However, when looking to heighten your company’s SEO in China, there are a few things you need to be weary of. Although Google is a large percentage of the world’s …
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard enough about on-page optimization to last a lifetime. I don’t want to repeat the same mantras you’ve been hearing since last year. Yes, on-page SEO has become more important (I can hardly remember a time when it wasn’t), and yes, on-page SEO can make or break your chances at ranking high on Google SERPs. But what has changed is the way we …
When looking at a new site build or re-design, it’s important to build search optimisation into its development from the ground up. We are all very aware of the on page SEO optimisations such as Title tags, H Tags, Image alt tags, content and links. However, there is little value in building a website without building SEO into its design and site structure. At Gravytrain we work hard at integrating search …
The backlink within the practice of SEO is an ongoing topic of conversation for marketing, sales, delivery and reporting of SEO services. Even in a post Penguin world, SEO professionals are still asking questions such as: What’s the best way to …
The practice of SEO is a fairly results-oriented business. Increasingly, metrics dominate the focus of the SEO professional, whether rank, traffic, or conversions. While a move to more measurement is overall a good thing, it means that SEOs are increasingly head down, focused on the things—like link building, on-page optimization, and content creation—that they believe will move the metrics needle. A byproduct of a focus on tactics that can be closely tied to metrics is that activities that are …
Anyone who’s up on technology has heard of mobile web design and content marketing—two terms used with increasing frequency in the online world. Can mobile design and a great content marketing strategy be combined without sacrificing either content or design elements? Or does the content of a website suffer because of the restrictions imposed by design for small screens? The truth is that great content does not have to be sacrificed for mobile design and can even be enhanced by …
Brands are often (rightly) told they need to move fast in order to play in the content game. But that doesn’t mean planning goes out the window. Quite the contrary. Some brand managers — and the agencies trying to win business from them — seem to think that spending a few weeks or even (gasp) a month in audit, goal-setting and research is a colossal waste of time and …
In our last interview, Steve McKee asked if Big Data was the future of marketing. In previous interviews, Doug Kessler talked about creating a content culture, Todd Wheatland predicted that content and technology would combine to drive the future of marketing. Mark Schaefer discussed culture and the future of search. Marcus Starke predicted the rise of the science of marketing. Ann Handley called for …
If content marketing is part of your strategy, be it through newsletters, social media, advertorial and the like, the challenge is in creating meaningful, effective, and relevant content. The natural inclination is to simply pass along content found in a web search, but the legal implications of …
Everywhere I go, I find marketers who are challenged with creating more content. More blog posts, more eBooks, more videos, more podcasts… more, more, more. Even our latest content marketing research found that the number one challenge for business marketers is producing enough content. I’m done with more. Here’s a little state of the industry that I’ve noticed: There are hundreds of marketing gurus out there who will tell you that …
From a marketing and advertising perspective, Facebook is a game. It may not be very fun for businesses, but just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that you don’t have to play along to be successful. On the other hand, some businesses have plenty of fun on Facebook. Whether you do or not makes absolutely no difference, though some will say that if you’re having fun with it that you’ll be more successful. I contend that fun or …
“It is contrary to etiquette to yawn in the presence of a king,” the monarch told him. “I forbid you to do so.”“I can’t help it,” replied the little prince, thoroughly embarrassed. “I have come on a long journey, and I haven’t slept…” “Ah, then,” the king said, “I order you to yawn.” Le Petit Prince, …
Do you want to make more efficient use of your time on social media? Are you looking for tools that will help you manage your social media efforts? In this article you’ll discover 3 tools to enable you to become more efficient and effective with social media. #1: Glyder – Social Media Marketing from Your iPhone Glyder is an iPhone app that allows you to share well-designed marketing messages as social media updates using predefined templates. You …
We’ll round-off this month’s round-up with a video from Matt Cutts addressing something a lot of webmasters are worried about:
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the Google search engine, their core insight was implemented as the PageRank algorithm. Put simply, PageRank determines where a page should rank in the SERPs based on the PageRank of incoming links from other sites — it’s a recursive algorithm. The higher the PageRank, the greater the assumed authority of a particular site. That authority can then be combined with a keyword analysis of a page and that combination is then to devise a ranking of pages in response to a search query.
Thus, PageRank is a proxy measure of authority. Google algorithms weren’t, and still aren’t, for the most part, capable of determining whether a page is authoritative for a particular search query by looking at the page content. PageRank, as anyone who used early search engines knows, was an enormous improvement on previous efforts, but it is far from perfect, and it opened up opportunities for gaming the system with various link-building tactics. Continue reading →
Keywords are at the heart of any SEO strategy. They are the thread that links sites to customers via their search terms. Over the years there has been a huge amount of focus and speculation about how precisely keywords should be used in on-page content to signal relevance to search engines and to rank to well.
Historically, much of the talk about keywords has been of the “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” variety: where should they be placed in the content, how many words should there be between the start of a page or heading and the keyword, what is the optimum ratio of keywords to other text, and so on. Some (not very good) SEOs strive to produce content that contains an exact percentage of keywords, often with the result of producing content that isn’t very readable to humans. And some stick to the old tactic of writing as many pages as possible stuffed with keyword variants and synonyms to cover all possible long-tail searches. Continue reading →
The first month of what promises to be a year of change in the SEO industry is drawing to a close. As usual, we have for you the content that we have found most interesting, informative, and entertaining during January.
The debate over the value of content marketing seems to be shifting away from straightforward cheerleading or naysaying towards a more nuanced dialogue. We expect that continue as the year progresses, and of course, we’ll continue to share with you the high-points in the inbound marketing landscape.
When I began my career in search marketing, organic search was often times a last minute consideration. It was more of the rule than the exception to have SEO brought in after content had been created and/or after a website had already been developed. And many times, once the cost of reverse engineering the damage was identified, stakeholders in … Continue reading →
