Google’s Pigeon Update, “Near Me”, Local Packs and Service Area Businesses

The recent Google update (nicknamed “Pigeon” by the search community) for local results has impacted many.. but service area businesses are thus far seemingly getting the brunt of the changes, dropping off of the local packs in search results.  The question (to be determined as of this writing) is if changing these results to standard organic…

Beyond the Inverted Pyramid for Blogging – Extending for Social, SEO, Email and Engagement

When blogging for a hurried, distracted audience, you must keep in mind that the competition for attention is ruthless. More distraction, mobile device habits and shorter attention spans force us to adapt our inbound techniques accordingly. New bloggers frequently write from the old-fashioned research paper or book report format, saving conclusions and critical points to well after the reader has departed. Graphics, images, captions and other proven eye-fixation techniques are poorly employed as well.

Top SEOs and Digital Marketers Offer Advice on Thriving in the Modern Ranking “Slog”

So as different departments, including executives, long for the simplicity of keyword lists and SERP screen shots, we must now bore them with KPIs like engagement, backlink diversity, re-query phenomena and personalized results considerations.  For many who don’t know much about SEO, this does not feel like success, and if you’re not careful, you can start to feel like a failure as well, leading to a negative feedback loop that can poison engagements.