Turns out Google’s in the market for an SEO Manager. Apparently, the company’s product pages – search aside, of course – don’t actually have the best SEO in the world. Who would’ve thought? Continue reading
You’ve probably been told on a few occasions that social media’s a pretty important component of content marketing – that social SEO is something that you as a content creator should understand. Maybe you paid attention to the advice, maybe you didn’t. Either way, research recently released by Pew has revealed that more Americans than ever are using Facebook and Twitter as their primary news source. Continue reading
There was a time when a website’s content didn’t matter all that much. As long as the SEO expert responsible for marketing it played nice with Google’s algorithms, it ranked high. Those days, however, are now far behind us.
Today, Google’s way more selective about what sites it allows at the top of its rankings – and far harsher on the tactics it’s identified as underhanded. What that means is that if you engage in black hat SEO, you’re going to get penalized. If you let too much spam crop up on your site, you’re going to get penalized.
And if your site consists of low-quality, ‘thin’ content, you’re going to get penalized. Continue reading
If you’re like most webmasters, you probably noticed something troubling at the beginning of last month – namely, that search engine rankings within your industry were all over the place. Some websites completely tanked, others rose straight to the top; worse still, it all happened seemingly without rhyme or reason. Not surprisingly, SEOs quickly went wild with speculation.
What was Google doing? Continue reading
It’s official: as of April 21, 2015, “mobile friendliness” is now a ranking factor. What that means is that if your site is not optimized for mobile browsing, it won’t just leave you with a bunch of dissatisfied users. It’ll also leave you with a ranking penalty.
Even if it’s a small penalty, there’s no point in getting hit with it if it’s easily avoided. Continue reading
Right now, the thing that everyone’s buzzing about is semantic search. Search engines, we’re told, are getting smarter – better at providing us with precisely what we’re looking for. The prevailing slogan of this shift, trumpeted by the likes of Google, is “things, not strings.”
It’s pretty easy to see where all this stuff came from, too. Smartphones and tablets have become more or less ubiquitous in modern society. With their spread, we’ve seen an increased focus on conversational search – on people asking questions of their devices rather than keying in a few search terms. Continue reading
I suppose there’s a certain allure to algorithm chasing, really. You’re on the bleeding edge of search engine optimization; an expert that all other marketing professionals look to for advice on how they can game the system created by Google. You’re constantly adapting, modifying, and re-working your strategies to adapt to the latest algorithmic change. Continue reading
The birth of Google’s Penguin algorithm – designed to cut down on link spam – had one rather unfortunate side effect. No, I’m not talking about all the webmasters claiming they were unjustly penalized by the algorithm. Rather, I’m talking about a new, underhanded tactic being practiced by all the black hat search engine marketers. Continue reading
In the world of content marketing, there’s a longtime misunderstanding even greater than the mislabeling of big data. I’m talking about demand generation and lead generation – two terms which are all too often used interchangeably. The truth is that they’re two very different approaches to content creation – and using the wrong one can mean a whole lot of wasted effort on your part.
Perhaps we shouldn’t get too far ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with an explanation of the difference between demand generation and lead generation. That’ll help us explain why the two are so often mixed up with one another, in addition to giving us a springboard into a discussion on optimization. Continue reading
Note: This guide assumes at least a basic knowledge of Drupal, including module installation. If you run into trouble, read through the Drupal Tutorial.
It may not be as popular as WordPress, but you’ll nevertheless find plenty of website owners who swear religiously by Drupal. It’s not hard to see why, really. There’s a lot to love about it.
It’s an incredibly secure platform and frequently updated besides. Drupal’s also easy to customize, with a bevy of both free and premium plugins available to webmasters and an intuitive web interface that makes it ideally suited to manage a large volume of content. Last but certainly not least, it’s extremely powerful from an SEO standpoint. Continue reading