I was honored to be part of a LocalU Hangout with some of the web’s leaders in local SEO: Andrew Shotland & Dan Leibson of LocalSEOGuide, Alexis Gui of Sim Partners, Tim Grant of Gamma Partners, Rory Scherer ofDAC Group, and Mike Blumenthal. This recording (and transcript) includes a lot of tips related to guidelines, obstacles…
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I’ve been running some Call Only campaigns for a service industry site. Like many I’m hearing from, the performance of these campaigns is not what was expected. While it is believed that a full 20% (on in five!!) of calls from mobile phones are abandoned, we should look how this affects abandonment patterns for call-only…
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“Let’s Talk Local Search: Super Therapy Session for Advanced Local Marketers (#smx #24D)” Local search is like a problem child. One day all’s well. The next you’re facing a new crisis that threatens to complicate your relationship with clients or management. Need to talk? Join our panel of all–star local search pros for this group…
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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…
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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.
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I am proud and humbled by coverage in Lexington Herald Leader’s Business Section where we discuss ideas for breaking into social media marketing. A huge thanks to Tom Martin for the outstanding questions and giving me the opportunity to offer a bit of advice in my home city! Here are some of the questions answered:…
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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.
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After reading the article “The Death of Expertise” by Tom Nichols as reminded of an old parable. The Graybeard engineer retired and a few weeks later the Big Machine broke down, which was essential to the company’s revenue. The Manager couldn’t get the machine to work again so the company called in Graybeard as an independent…
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Happy new year to everyone! I wanted to share Google’s latest infographic, which looks back to the transformational year where online marketing’s platforms, demands and outcomes outpaced even the most optimistic projections. As the customer continues to increase their skills in avoiding low quality content, and as search engines continue their embrace of…
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Sometimes I’m forced to do a brain dump about the most important, cannot-skip, essential information about SEO in an incredibly short amount of time. I need to use that limited time to simultaneously myth-bust and set the stage for future-proof programs.. It happens fairly often… an rarely sighted executive will “pop in” to a meeting, someone will…
DetailsThis visualization shows the world using the web, over a 24 hour period. Dayparting of paid search ads is the process where we find the best day of the wee and time of day to run your ads, or switch ads. The full report is here
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Many franchises are operating their online marketing programs in a manner that gets them into trouble as they grow, or when they have turnover in franchisees. The Franchise SEO programs designed for the Internet as it was in 2005 are no longer effective. Not only have users changed, but search engines and social networks have dramatically…
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This is a throwback post I published in early 2005 about blogging. It was fun to dig it up and see how it’s holding up. Pretty well, I think! It felt a little like 1995. But instead of textual websites on our just-installed Mosaic browser we’re watching large scale social change. No longer held back with…
DetailsThe true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance – Eric Schmidt – Former Google CEO The search industry is all abuzz about the concepts around authorship markup (see postscript) and its effect on search results and content marketing. Authorship markup, introduced in 2011 and has been getting regular improvements since. Mostly applied to blog and news…
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Content marketing is the new SEO. It is centered on irresistible content and amplified by social media. It includes blog posts, articles, white papers, videos, podcasts, and infographics. 87% of marketers use social media to distribute the content. Search engines use hundreds of signals to decide who ranks for a given query. The most important…
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The blog question always comes up early in any meeting about Search with a new client. Why? Should? How? Who? An awkward moment. Everyone in the conversation is trying to imagine a blog about work, or they’re thinking of recent roadblocks. We make aluminum horse trailers. We make medical packaging. We sell accounting software. …
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I thought today I’d address those so-called content farms that are employed by many service industry sites around the country. In these cases, a small business, such as an auto repair business, will launch a site and subscribe to a content feed which updates their site every week or so. The promise is that this…
DetailsWe are a nation that carries tasks from screen to screen, using desktop PCs, laptops, TV, smartphones and tablets. According to new research from Google, 90% of people move between devices to accomplish a goal. Google’s research set out to understand this inter-device reltionship. There are 2 primary ways we “Multi Screen” “Sequential screening”…
DetailsWhere’s your share-worthy web content come from? Take a look around your company… busy people, lots of jobs, already overloaded. But they are the ones who must do the work. To say you cannot get involved in producing good content is your right… but don’t expect to compete well online with modern search engines. If…
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Most businesses I talk to have no idea that Facebook scrubs content. In fact, on average, only 16% of fans ever see posts made by brands “for various reasons, like the number of times you log on and the number of people and brands in your network” according to Facebook. This sums up this post…
DetailsI recently presented a concept called “Future Proof SEO” in Lexington which compared how well the typical website are servicing the needs of link builders and social media marketers who are trying to address major ranking factors, and wanted to post the highlights here. First, I used my minivan example again. Most websites are like…
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Just got this new study which discusses link building outreach with some very interesting take-aways. I liked this because it aligned with much advice I give my clients on internal link building activity. The key takeaways from this study are: Social-based Link Building has yet to be largely adopted and therefore continues to be…
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Today I saw an article on ReadWrite that caught my attention…”Blogging declines across Inc 500” which referred to a study from Umass called “Blogging declines as newer tools rule.” The number dropped from 50% to 37% of companies maintaining corporate blog. Facebook and Twitter, in the meantime continue to grow. This stands to reason…
DetailsToday on the Facebook and Journalism page, a really great note was released aimed at helping news organizations optimize the effectiveness of their Facebook Pages. I found that the information was probably applicable to any sort of published content, whether or not you are a news organization. I quote heavily: “Top Stories: Readers are reacting…
DetailsI’ve heard today that Google may be planning a Quora-like Q/A service (possibly named “Google Expert”) that leverages their acquisition of Aardvark and integrates with Google Plus (or Google+, however you like it.) This model of finding answers by humans fits nicely into the new social search model that seems to be making its way…
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I receive a dozen or so inquiries for services a week. Around 10-15% of those calls are made while the person is driving. Of those, only a small percent end up being effective conversations. In the study referenced in the link, drivers but not passengers in a “moving” simulator retold a smaller number of central…
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As the LinkedIn network’s capability grows in both popularity and capability, I’ve been helping more companies than ever understand the potential it offers. This cheat sheet has been the outcome, as well as the LinkedIn Lead Generation Tips “Ninja” guide, This is distinctly from an SEO point of view – you’ll notice I’ve woven in…
DetailsAs you know, search engines (especially Google and Bing) are taking Social Rank into account more than ever. Those who take the time to share awesome content and build up a reputation will have an ever-increasing influence over the SERPs in the coming years. So it pays dividends to tilt the social sharing benefit in…
DetailsHave you taken the time to consider the “reality” of your B2B customer? They are not making buying decisions on the spot – they are gathering information for meetings – and they want to look good. So how can you help them achieve this?
DetailsOther than Mobile and Local SEO explosions, Social Rank is a biggie. So many companies are still saying they have no time for “Social Media” unless it can show an immediate ROI. So, it’s been hard to explain the benefits to many because of the abstract concept – but now the reality is hitting home…
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