Steps to How To Build Your Local SEO Footprint In Google

Building a solid foundation for local search visibility in Google is essential for brick-and-mortar businesses, especially in the age of mobile. Luckily for local SEO newbies out there, columnist Chris Marentis shares his method for doing just that.

Local search visibility grows increasingly important as “near me” searches on Google continue to rise. Your future customers may be looking for you at home on their desktops, or they may be using a mobile device on the go, such as a cell phone or a tablet. In fact, Google confirmed earlier this year that mobile searches have officially overtaken desktop on its search engine.

In other words, people who use the number one search engine are looking for your business, often while mobile. Is your site number one, or is a competitor’s? Do you even show up?

Here’s how to make sure your business appears in search engine results consistently and completely.

Before You Get Started: Figure Out Where You Stand

When embarking on a local SEO campaign, you face the preliminary tasks of checking whether your business is listed at all, then making sure it shows up in a way that best represents your company. To get started, go to Google and do a quick search for your business name. In many cases, your site may already be in results.

However, this does not mean your job is done, even if all the information is correct.

Remember that Google customizes its search results on an ongoing basis in an attempt to enhance the search experience for each person. Factors that influence your personalized search results may include:

• Your location
• The device you’re searching on
• Your past search behavior
• Who you are connected to on social media

While search results originate from a common database, don’t be surprised if others see results that differ than yours.

Furthermore, when people review your business on sites like Yelp or submit your business to online local business directories, the information they enter may be all that’s available to Google if you don’t intervene. In essence, other people will be in control of how your business appears to the world instead of you.

That might be fine today, but what if someone enters the wrong phone number for your business, or an incomplete address? How can you correct it if you aren’t the verified owner?

Inaccurate representations of your business online are available to the public unless you correct them. Even if all independent reviews are perfect today, you could still lose business over something as simple as a missing or incorrect phone number tomorrow.

Luckily, you can influence these results using Google My Business. To prevent any anonymous person from going about this task, you’ll be able to verify ownership of your business during this process.

Step 1: Claim Your Local Listing In Google My Business

If your business is listed but not claimed by an official representative of your business, follow the directions from Google to claim and verify your listing.

In the process, you’ll have the opportunity to verify the data they have for you and make any corrections or changes. Be aware of Google’s guidelines for your local listing so that any updates or corrections you make are approved quickly.

If you have multiple locations, you can manage them all from one account using Google My Business local listings.

Step 2: Claim Your Other Business Listings

When your Google Local information is accurate and claimed via Google My Business, you might be tempted to stop there. However, if you have ever searched for a business in your area, you may have noticed that Google doesn’t just depend on your verified data. Some listings also highlight links to reviews on other sites.

In a recent survey conducted by Dimensional Research, 88% of respondents admitted to being influenced by online reviews. While you can’t change reviews other people have made, some sites like Yelp allow you to respond to bad reviews to ensure future satisfaction. That can leave a good impression, particularly when most of your reviews are positive.

Rich snippets from ratings on these review sites appear prominently on search engine results pages as well. Along with check-ins and local directory submissions, this also gives more information to Google about your business, which may indirectly improve your rankings.

Step 3: Find A Way To Manage Your Local Listing On An Ongoing Basis

Here’s where things get tricky.

The way your local business information appears, how it is formatted, and even what data is accepted, changes over time. Secondary directory listings which don’t even exist today may become important tomorrow.

It’s therefore critical to find a way to manage and monitor not only your Google My Business listing, but all the sites that have accurate local data about your business. You also need to know what new tools are relevant and how to use them to your benefit. Your success with online visibility may well depend on making an effort to stay informed.

How is it possible to achieve this and still have time to run your business?

For local businesses especially, it’s crucial that you find a solution that includes software tools for management and monitoring. You also need a solution that includes support to guide you through the process, and services that can assist you when successful growth makes the job unmanageable.

Step 4: Be Certain Your Site Is Mobile Friendly

If you’ve been paying attention to mobile search engine optimization news in the past few months, you may recall everyone freaking out over something called “mobilegeddon.”

This nickname was in reference to the release of Google’s new mobile ranking algorithm, released on April 21, 2015, which expanded mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This meant that, all else being equal, mobile-friendly sites would enjoy better visibility in mobile search results than their non-mobile-friendly counterparts.

At first it seemed to some site owners that Google was bluffing; over time, however, those who didn’t take the warning seriously started to see the negative effects of Google’s mobile-friendly update on their search visibility.

Whether or not you’ve noticed a change in traffic and rankings from Google, there’s one way to be certain that your site passes muster.

Google created a mobile-friendly testing tool. Using it will tell you if a page on your site needs to be updated for better mobile performance. For a full analysis of your site’s mobile friendliness, you will want to sign up for Google Search Console and access the mobile usability report for your site.

(Source: SearachEngineLand)

Google’s Look, Evolved : Google Created its New Logo that includes the Google Dots and 'G' Icon

Google has changed a lot over the past 17 years—from the range of their products to the evolution of their look and feel. And today they’re changing things up once again:

Google's New Logo with Google Dots and 'G' Icon - 1 September 2015

Google's Official New Logo

 

 

Once upon a time, people use Google from one device: a desktop PC. Now a days, people use across many different platforms, apps and devices—sometimes all in a single day and interact with Google products. Google help you whenever and wherever you need it. Todays date, Google is on mobile phone, TV, watch, the dashboard in your car, and yes, even a desktop to search any queries. You can surf anything on Google like Movies, Singers, TV shows, English words, Newspapers and history of your India.

They’re introducing a new logo and identity family that reflects this reality and shows you when the Google magic is working for you, even on the tiniest screens. They said, they’ve taken the Google logo and branding, which were originally built for a single desktop browser page, and updated them for a world of seamless computing across an endless number of devices and different kinds of inputs (such as tap, type and talk).

They changes overall Google look and you will feel like that you're using Google, also shows you how Google is working for you. For example, new elements like a colorful Google mic help you identify and interact with Google whether you’re talking, tapping or typing. Meanwhile, they’re bidding adieu to the little blue “G” icon and replacing it with a four-color “G” that matches the logo.

But they think today’s update is a great reflection of all the ways Google works for you across Search, Maps, Gmail, Chrome and many others. They also think they’ve taken the best of Google (simple, uncluttered, colorful, friendly), and recast it not just for the Google of today, but for the Google of the future.

History of Google Logo's:

 1. Initial logo from 1997

2. Original logo in Baskerville Bold, used from September to October 1998, with a different color combination from the one in use today.

3. The logo from October 1998 to May 1999, differs from the previous version with an exclamation mark added to the end, an increased shadow, and a change in color.

4. The company logo for ten years and eleven months was used between May 31, 1999 and May 5, 2010.

 

 5. The logo from May 6, 2010 to September 18, 2013, showing a reduced distance of the projected shadow and a change in the second "o" to a different yellow hue.

 

6. The logo from September 19, 2013 to September 1, 2015, showing flattened lettering and the removal of shadows.  

 7. The new, sans-serif logo unveiled on September 1, 2015. It has softer colors and bears a resemblance to the logo of Google's parent company Alphabet Inc.

Now You’ll see the new logo design across the products. Enjoy it!

 

Android 6.0 Marshmallow with 7 most-exciting features in the soon-to-be-released OS

Google is expected to soon roll out the latest version of its Android OS, Android Marshmallow (version 6.0). While the company will list out, in further detail, the new features of Android Marshmallow once it releases to the public, we give you an overview of the soon-to-be-released OS with its 7 most-interesting features.

1. Android 6.0 Marshmallow has a new Doze power-saving feature that has motion detection which optimises battery usage. When the dozing feature is enabled, the device still continues to send notifications about priority-based activities.

2. The fingerprint functionality in Google's upcoming version of Android can be used either as a standalone feature to unlock Android devices or to authorise either Android Pay transactions, Google Play store purchases, or partner e-commerce app purchases.

3. With the Marshmallow upgrade, users will be able to summon Google Now to scan whatever content might be on a mobile device's screen so it can present pertinent information about the topic of a text, a song, a video clip or an article. The new Android feature, called "Now on Tap," will be activated by holding down the device's home button or saying, "OK Google," into the microphone. That action will prompt Now on Tap to scan the screen in attempt to figure out how to be the most helpful. Or, if speaking, users can just say what they are seeking, such as "Who sings this?" Google is hoping to provide Android users with what they need at the precise moment they need it without forcing them to hopscotch from one app to another.

4. Android 6.0 will include an alternative to the mobile payment system. Google's Android Pay, an answer to Samsung Pay and Apple Pay, will replace Google Wallet for making mobile purchases in stores and applications. Google Wallet, which came out in 2011, will still work for sending payments from one person to another. Like Apple’s system, Android Pay can be used to store major credit and debit cards in smartphones that can be used to pay merchants equipped with terminals that work with the technology. Android Pay will also work on devices running on the KitKat version of Android released last year.

5. Marshmallow also streamlines the "permissions" model for users to install and upgrade apps. Android 6.0 will make it easier for users to prevent mobile applications from grabbing their personal information. Permission will only need to be granted to each app if the access is needed for a specific action. That means Android users won't be asked to share information about their contact lists, photo rolls or locations until an app won't work without it.

6. Google has also announced support for the USB Type-C standard in Android Marshmallow, which will make your device charge faster than the usual. Also, for the Type-C port, a USB cable will be reversible which means both of its ends will be the same and you will not be required to check if you are inserting the cable in the right way. This means that the new type of USB cable can be plugged into a device in any direction. The new USB support in Android Marshmallow will also lets users use their phone to charge other devices.

7. The Direct Share feature will allow users to share content with targets, such as contacts, within other apps. For example, the direct share target might launch an activity in another social network app, which lets the user share content directly with a specific friend or community in that app.

The moniker for the 6.0 version of the dominant mobile computing system follows a tradition of using sugary treats for Android including Lollipop (5.0), KitKat (4.4), Jellybean (4.1) and Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0).

Android is used in nearly 80 per cent of smartphones worldwide, although many devices use older versions for which upgrades are not available. Android is also the leading platform for tablets, according to market surveys.

(Source)

Use These 4 Strategies to Jump-Start Your Content Marketing

You’ve probably heard this before: “Content marketing is hard…Content marketing takes a long time.”

Sorry to say, I’m not here to tell you that’s wrong: It is hard, and it does take time.

But that doesn’t mean content marketing doesn’t work. It does. It just takes consistency, dedication and yes, time, before you see results.

In the meantime, however, you’re going to be sad. You might even get mad. Hell, you may even be full-on depressed. You might offer a cry up to the heavens: “Why is my content not working!!!” And you hear no booming answers in return.

This, my friend, is called the content slog, as coined by Chris Bird of Vertical Measures (my employer) here. It’s that gap of disappointment where you’ve put in a good amount of time and effort into your content marketing strategy, and you aren’t seeing a return on your investment.

This principle rings true for other digital media, too, and is where this content slog idea originated. In particular, Moz’s Rand Fishkin and BuzzMaven Labs’ Scott Clark both talk about this idea in terms of SEO and its “lengthy period of diminishing returns” (per Fishkin).

Content marketing takes consistency, dedication and yes, time, before you see results.

Email Marketing

The oldest digital strategy in the playbook: email marketing. We’ve all been building lists since the dawn of the interwebs, so it makes sense this is where you should start while you’re waiting for your content marketing to kick in.

Take advantage of the list you already have, and start or amp up your email marketing strategies. You may need to prune your list or clean it up if it has been sitting there for a while, but these are people who have expressed interest in wanting to hear from you, so let them!

Here are some email types you can start creating right away: 

• Monthly newsletter
• Product or service updates
• Point of view/opinion pieces
• Special promotions or discounts
• Repurposed content 

Take advantage of the list you already have, and start or amp up your email marketing strategies.

Pay Per Click

PPC isn’t always uttered in the same breath as content marketing, but they can work well together. Whereas much of content development is targeted at organic traffic and rankings, PPC is a direct line to drawing in traffic, leads and possibly more business.

Plus, it’s predictable. You know how much you want to spend, where you want to spend it, and exactly what results you need for a positive ROI.

Don’t shy away from PPC; embrace it during the slog! Take advantage of AdWords if you have some keywords you can competitively bid on, and even more importantly, start to increase your budget for content promotion on social networks.

I’ve seen companies get major returns through Facebook Ads or Sponsored Tweets, so get your feet wet with optimizing your ads and audiences while you’re churning out great content that will soon be published. 

Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization, otherwise known as CRO, is a form of testing and tweaking until you see the results you want. CRO can often go hand-in-hand with your active PPC campaigns, as mentioned above, where you are optimizing your landing pages for the most completions.

Hub and Spoke Content

If you haven’t jumped on the hub-and-spoke train, welcome aboard. This is probably my favorite type of content model for a few reasons:

• Hubs drive traffic.
• Hubs drive leads.
• Hubs are great pieces of evergreen content.

This is especially true when you’re new to content marketing and working on many projects in the background, but you have yet to publish much content. If you shift your mindset to creating a hub right off the bat, you’ll see results quickly.

So what’s a hub? A hub is a larger piece of content that usually hides behind a gated form. It requires the interested visitor to provide some information to obtain that piece of content — maybe it’s a PDF download or multiple files. The visitor shows intent and interest, and you get some of his or her personal information in exchange.

And what’s a spoke? Spokes are pieces of content that point back to your hub. Oftentimes, they can be repurposed sections of your hub content or something related to the topic you cover. Spokes always link back to the hub or integrate a strong CTA.

Spokes can take the form of blog posts, press releases, videos, graphics, emails, on and on. Spokes have one singular goal: to point the content consumers back to your hub so they will then convert.

(Check Full Article @ MarketingLand)

(Source: MarketingLand)

 

Wikipedia Is Losing Traffic From Google

Google is sending less and less traffic to Wikipedia, calls this a "long-term issue."

There have been a lot of rumors about the decline in traffic Google is sending Wikipedia’s way. There have been reports from SimilarWeb that Wikipedia has shown a “sudden” and “massive” decline in traffic from Google’s organic search results.

But Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, said this week that this is not a sudden or drastic drop in traffic from Google, but rather a “long-term issue with decreasing traffic from Google.”

Wales added that the SimilarWeb article also misrepresents how Wikipedia needs those clicks from Google:

“It is also false that ‘Wikipedia thrives on clicks,’ at least as compared to ad-revenue driven sites… The relationship between ‘clicks’ and the things we care about: community health and encyclopedia quality is not nothing, but it’s not as direct as some think.”

Wales seems to be correct. Wikipedia is noticing a long-term and gradual decline from Google. SearchMetrics shows this in their “SEO visibility” charts, which don’t measure traffic, but measure how visible a website is in search results.

He noticed this decline back in March, so this has been happening for a long time now.

Back in the day, Wikipedia dominated Google’s search results. It was likely the most visible site in the Google search results.

The question is, why is there a decline in Wikipedia’s traffic from Google? Some have theorized it might have to do with the Google Answer box, others say the algorithm has changed. It is hard to say for sure, but overall, it’s clear that Wikipedia is noticing a steady decline in traffic from Google.

Postscript: Based on all the news around this, Wikipedia released a PDF document discussing the reports on their Google traffic lose. The paper tries to downplay the news, saying there is no decrease in Google traffic, depending on how you look at it. Here is what they wrote:

• Based on the data we have we can establish that the most obvious avenues for verifying or dismissing SimilarWeb’s claim show no evidence that Google traffic has declined. However, we do not have the data at our end to eliminate all avenues of possibility.
   
• Our next work should be to reach out to Google themselves and talk to them about the data we’re seeing, and to build out infrastructure to begin tracking metrics like this on a consistent and automated basis, rather than relying on costly ad-hoc analysis.

 (Original Source: SearchEngineLand)

 

Google Panda 4.2 Is Here; Slowly Rolling Out After Waiting Almost 10 Months

Google says a Panda refresh began this weekend but will take months to fully roll out.

Google tells Search Engine Land that it pushed out a Google Panda refresh this weekend.

Many of you may not have noticed because this rollout is happening incredibly slowly. In fact, Google says the update can take months to fully roll out. That means that although the Panda algorithm is still site-wide, some of your Web pages might not see a change immediately.

The last time we had an official Panda refresh was almost 10 months ago: Panda 4.1 happened on September 25, 2014. That was the 28th update, but I would coin this the 29th or 30th update, since we saw small fluctuations in October 2014.

As far as I know, very few webmasters noticed a Google update this weekend. That is how it should be, since this Panda refresh is rolling out very slowly.

Google said this affected about 2%–3% of English language queries.

New Chance For Some, New Penalty For Others

The rollout means anyone who was penalized by Panda in the last update has a chance to emerge if they made the right changes. So if you were hit by Panda, you unfortunately won’t notice the full impact immediately but you should see changes in your organic rankings gradually over time.

This is not how many of the past Panda updates rolled out, where typically you’d see a significant increase or decline in your Google traffic more quickly.

For the record, here’s the list of confirmed Panda Updates, with some of the major changes called out with their AKA (also known as) names:

1. Panda Update 1, AKA Panda 1.0, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
2. Panda Update 2, AKA Panda 2.0, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
3. Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
4. Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
5. Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
6. Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6–9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
7. Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
8. Panda Update 8 AKA Panda 3.0, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
9. Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
10. Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
11. Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
12. Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
13. Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
14. Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
15. Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
16. Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
17. Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
18. Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
19. Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
20. Panda Update 20 , Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced
21. Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
22. Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
23. Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
24. Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
25. Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)
26. Panda Update 26, July 18, 2013 (confirmed, announced)
27. Panda Update 27 AKA Panda 4.0, May 20, 2014 (7.5% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
28. Panda Update 28 AKA Panda 4.1, Sept. 25, 2014 (3–5% of queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
29. Panda Update 30 AKA Panda 4.2, July 18, 2015 (2–3% of queries were affected; confirmed, announced)

(Original Content by: SearchEngineLand)

5 SEO Problems Plaguing E-Commerce Websites

Search engine optimization (SEO) is challenging, but SEO for large e-commerce websites is a different kind of beast.

Not only are you dealing product inventory and adding new pages constantly, but you’re also not the only one responsible for the website.

The larger the site, the more hands you have on it — and most of those hands will have little to no SEO knowledge. This means they won’t understand how their changes could impact organic search performance.

Even the small changes can have a big impact. Large sites are fighting tooth and nail for visibility on search engine results pages, and the minor things that help SEO — adding in ALT tags, proper structuring of your header tags, etc. — could be the difference between a No. 2 and a No. 1 ranking, which could easily be worth an extra $100,000 in revenue.

Let’s take a look at some common SEO problems plaguing e-commerce websites and how we can fix them.

Poor Product Descriptions:

Product descriptions are the bane of every e-commerce site’s existence. It’s time-consuming to create unique descriptions for each item you sell, but this is necessary if you expect your products to rank.

Users also rely on these descriptions before purchasing said product. A product image alone isn’t going to cut it for getting your users to buy a product, and search engines can’t see that image anyway.

The problem: Lots of things could be causing problems with your product descriptions. 

For example:

• You’re using the manufacturer’s product description (which is given to every retailer who sells that product).
• There is duplicate content where you have different versions of the same product.
• Your product pages have no content or very thin content.

The solution: There’s no easy way to say this, folks. Write unique product descriptions. Yes, that’s right — for every single product you carry.

Un-optimized Product Pages:

SEO is largely a top-of-funnel marketing channel. Users are still in the research phase of their purchasing cycle and tend to search as such, relying on more broad keywords (such as “TVs” or even “LED TVs”) to help them determine what specific product they want.

That means most SEOs want to drive traffic to the category or product listing pages rather than individual product pages.

While the broader terms will drive most of your traffic, you can’t forget about the users who already know what specific product they want — for example, “Samsung 55in LED TV” or even just the model number, “FH6030.”

The problem: Not only are you cutting off your traffic potential by neglecting these long-tail keywords, but you’re missing out on what could likely be an immediate conversion point. What makes an unoptimized product page:

• No product reviews
• Poor keyword targeting
• Missing image ALT tags
• Thin content

The solution: Thin content can easily be remedied by including product reviews, unique product descriptions, and detailed product specifications.

Product reviews are key here — not only do they better optimize your product pages, they also help visitors to make a purchase decision. Make sure your product reviews are SEO-friendly and can be indexed.

With your keyword targeting, make sure you frame your product pages around the specific product your users could be searching for. This means including brand name, model number, color (if applicable) and size (if applicable) in your product names.

Placement of each of these attributes matter. There’s a big search difference between “Samsung 55 inch LED TV” and “55 inch Samsung LED TV.”

Improper Internal Linking:

With so many people making changes, large e-commerce websites often have inconsistent internal linking. Copywriters, designers, project managers and social media marketers all will be grabbing site links to use in their respective projects, and they’re likely not pulling the same ones (or even the right ones).

The problem: Instead of going through the main navigation to pull a product listing link, they’ll just search for that product via internal search and pull that link, which is likely noindexed and nofollowed.

Not only are you not getting value from that internal search page, but you’re giving search engines mixed signals on the best URLs to rank.

The solution: Educate your respective teams on the importance of consistent linking and explain why it’s necessary to link to the URL that we want to rank in search engines (most of the time, the main navigation link).

If your canonical tags are set up properly, have them pull the canonical rather than the front-facing link.

Not Managing Your URL Parameters:

URL cleanliness is an overarching problem with e-commerce sites, as most have dynamically generated URLs rather than (or in addition to) static, keyword-relevant URLs.

While SEOs try to limit the URL parameters in their strings, it’s a necessary evil on large e-commerce sites. Parameters will exist, but you have to manage them correctly.

The problem: Relying solely on Google Webmaster Tools Google Search Console to configure your URL parameters, which could create handfuls of duplicate content without you even realizing it.

The solution: Google has come a long way in reading and parsing URL information, and they do it get it right sometimes, but the fact of the matter is that you know your URL structure better than a bot.

Make sure you’re configuring these parameters correctly by telling Google which parameters they need to crawl and which to ignore.

No SEO & SEM Collaboration

SEO and SEM teams just aren’t playing nicely. This isn’t just an e-commerce problem; it’s happening everywhere.

However, e-commerce websites have a lot more money on the line to lose when these two marketing channels are going at each other with battle axes rather than sharing their data and collaborating.

The problem: There are two big things happening when SEO and PPC don’t talk to each other.

• You’re missing out on a huge remarketing opportunity.
• You’re probably losing money from bidding on the wrong terms.

The solution: Simply put, make an effort to better integrate your SEO and SEM teams. SEO teams can rely on SEM teams for the keyword data that Google secure search took away. SEM teams can better spend their budgets by knowing what research-based keywords we’re already organically ranking for that have a low PPC conversion rate.

If you see you’re losing money on a particular keyword because it’s just not converting, stop bidding on that term and funnel efforts into organic search.

This by no means is an extensive list — you’ve still got duplicate content, slow crawl rate, and local listing management issues to deal with — but this should give you a good start on getting your site optimized.

What are some of the other problems that e-commerce websites are prone to, and how can we fix them?

Content By: SearchEngineLand

Google Panda: Update is Coming in Next Few Weeks

Google says webmasters can expect a Panda refresh within the upcoming weeks.

Google’s Gary Illyes announced that the next Panda update will happen in the upcoming weeks. He said maybe in the next two, or three, or four weeks. But the Panda algorithm will be updated in the near future.

Gary said the algorithm isn’t necessarily changing but rather the data will be refreshed.

So sites that have been suffering from this algorithm may see a recovery in the near future. However, not all sites will see a recovery, some may not recover, new sites may also be hit by this data refresh.

When the data refresh is updated, we will make sure to notify you right here.

Gary also explained that it is to Google’s best interest to keep this data fresh, so the they want to keep it updates as frequently as possible. But they do require manual updates and will currently not run by itself like some of their other algorithms.

SearchEngineLand

Google are Working on Making the Penguin Updated Continuously

Penguin Update:

Google says they hope to release a new Penguin update that is updated by itself in the next several months.

Google’s Gary Illyes announced that their Penguin does currently run slowly but they are working hard to make it update literally in real time. Meaning that the algorithm will get data that is refreshed all the time, continuously. Currently, the data has to be manually refreshed to see any ranking changes for sites impacted by Penguin.

Gary explained it is hard for Google to do this right now because it requires a lot of reworking the algorithm. But that is their goal, to make the Penguin algorithm run by itself, without manually refreshing any data. Gary also said that this is not the case with Panda, they don’t see it running continuously but rather requiring a manual data refresh.

Gary said this is months and months away and didn’t give us a date for when webmasters can expect this change.

SearchEngineLand

Mobile Optimization Checklist for the Digital Marketer

Every good marketer knows that one of the key elements to success is making it as easy as possible for your audience to consume and share information. Part of creating ease of use is keeping in mind where and how your audience is spending their time.

What degree of success do you think a marketer would have if they were to plaster flyers at every Red Robin around the country, when the vast majority of their customers eat at In-N-Out in California?

So now we’re all hungry, but what does this have to do with mobile optimization? I hate to be the one to tell you, but mobile internet usage is something we need to be strategizing for now, not in the future.

According to comScore, 60% of all internet usage is made up by smartphones and tablets. Additionally, over 20% of millennials no longer even use a desktop to access information online. You read that right, they are 100% mobile.

Mobile optimization affects everything from creating a responsive website to making tweaks to your content marketing program to serve mobile users. The checklist below provides some helpful tips for staying on top of the mechanics and engagement strategies necessary for mobile optimization.

SEO

Responsive Design: Most savvy web developers and many new website templates are now including responsive website design as a standard offering. If you’ve recently updated your website and don’t want to invest in a complete overhaul to create a responsive website, you can setup a separate mobile site. However, always keep in mind that there are benefits and drawbacks to taking this path.

PageSpeed: Mobile users are searching for content on-the-go. There are some fairly simple best practices that you can implement to improve page load speed including:

• Optimize your images so that they are smaller, and therefore load faster
• Implement caching plugins
• Use JavaScript sparingly

Use the PageSpeed Insights tool to test your website’s current performance.

Local Optimization: To ensure that your business surfaces in local results, be diligent about making sure that all of your contact information is consistent across the web.

Title Tags & Meta Descriptions: Your mobile audience is working with a lot less screen than desktop users. Try to be as concise as possible when drafting title tags and meta descriptions.

Content Marketing

Think Concise, Not Shorter: Mobile users need content that is scanable and impactful. Remove the clutter and format your content in a way that makes sense for your audience. This doesn’t mean that marketers need to cut down on the length of the content that is being published, but content should be presented in bite-sized chunks that are easy to consume.

Provide Great Imagery: Visual content performs very well on mobile devices. While you may not have given much consideration to blog or long-form content images in the past, here is your opportunity. A well selected image can be the difference between a consumer engaging with your content, or quickly moving on.

Incorporate Videos: Forrester found that when marketers included a video in an email, the click-through rate increased by 200% – 300%. Additionally, eMarketer uncovered that consumers are actually spending more time watching video on mobile devices than on desktops.

Social Media

Mobile Usage: In 2015, there are approximately 1.69 billion social media accounts that are accessed via mobile. When creating and publishing social media content keep your mobile audience in mind.

Mobile Friendly Apps: Many social media platforms offer mobile friendly applications and add-ons that can be easily integrated into brand profiles.

Get Visual: Incorporate visual elements as much as possible into social media campaigns across all platforms. Also, if it makes sense, utilize platforms like Instagram which present a great opportunity to incorporate images and videos into social media content.

Put Your Website to the Test!

Google provides a couple different tools that can help you determine if your website is mobile friendly, and provide access to some  applications that can help you become mobile if you aren’t currently.

• Mobile Friendly Tester
• Google Search Console

The opportunities above only scratch the surface of mobile optimization. If you can currently check five or more of the items above off your list, you’re on the right track. If not, consider it an opportunity to increase your reach and better serve your mobile audience.

What do you find most difficult about implementing digital marketing programs that are mobile friendly?

Content By: TopRankBlog

Content Tips 2015: Content Writing & Marketing Tips

Content marketing is a marketing that involves the writing and sharing the content for media and publishing content in order to acquire new and retain old customers.

Content plays an important role in your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), B2B and B2C marketing strategy.

Content marketing is already in mainstream of digital marketing, so it’s time to get competitive with your marketing strategy.

These are most extensive and detailed tips of advanced content writing and marketing that exists today.

Content Writing & Marketing Tips For 2015 :-

The C word in content marketing

C = content. What’s it all about?

Beyond thought leadership or not? The answer is yes. Not all content needs to be cutting edge, ground breaking etc. But it should provide value to the target audience.

It can help organisations cover the broad ground of their remit (or their brand) that might otherwise have not been possible due to resources. For instance, providing an insightful, helpful comment on valuable content relevant to target audiences and then sharing it can be a worthwhile activity.

By choosing some core pillars to provide original content on, then having a ‘satellite’ of secondary topics where a content curation aesthetic is applied, can offer organisations the opportunity to have their cake and eat it too.

Certainly, it can help communicate and engage with secondary target audiences where marketing and communication resources are not normally expended. A ‘reverse-flow’ positive impact on primary target audiences can be instigated, as the secondary target audiences become sharers and advocates of that curated information that received the imprimatur of the organisation.

And as word-of-mouth (WOM) now has social media through which to accelerate its ‘virality’, this momentum of sharing has even greater potential than it once did. Especially since the digital age has cultivated the behaviour of social sharing (digital gossip) amongst its netizens.

Just remember: “Your story travels further the less you mention your brand.”

Branding and positioning in content marketing

The social infinity does not seem to have canvassed the aspect of content marketing that relates to positioning and branding in great depth. Important elements in this dialectic are the sorts of content that are embraced by an organisation and who, from the organisation, does the ‘speaking’.

Further elements include what role does content (and content cu-ration) play in the broader content marketing context, are there any dimensions that are ‘off-limits’ and what is the rationale driving the content marketing plan?

Firstly, in regard to the content itself, each element of content that emanates from an organisational employee contributes to an organisation’s branding, positioning and, to a lesser but still potentially significant degree, its differentiation. Choosing these topics should be driven by the strategy; content topics should not be picked up randomly simply because they are ‘topics du jour’ and of immediate interest to target audiences (i.e. how do these topics relate to brand-target audience relationships?).

Secondly, in traditional command-and-control organisations and those that apply a similar authoritarian approach to their communication, it has been a CEO-and-damn-the-troops mentality. I don’t espouse this approach but, regardless of this, whatever approach an organisation takes will impact on how much content it can feasibly generate and curate.

From a pure practicality perspective, whilst thought leadership can be applied in a limited but still quite effective manner when adopting this antediluvian approach, it is simply not viable to apply it to content marketing:

• A primary reason for this is that content cu-ration is more than just re-tweeting or otherwise sharing. There needs to be a qualitative value-add from the organisation to some degree some of the time.

• Involving employees in content creation educates employees on their industry which, one would think, helps them contextualize their work efforts and give them information to get better at their job, increasing productivity

• Employee involvement increases commitment to their organisation – likely to increase productivity – and helps them become a stronger organisational advocate

• Utilizing normal (non-marketing Martians?) minimizes the need to hire additional marketing employees and can optimize financial investment into the program – increasing productivity.

The most interesting and challenging aspect of this dimension, however, relates back to who are those doing the curating and how is this contextualized within an organisation’s branding?

• What are they commenting on?

• What is the nature of their value add?

• Is there a comms or marketing employee facilitating all this cu-ration, or is it the relevant individual doing it solo after, perhaps, some initial briefing and some guidelines have been set? This relates to the third point I flagged above.

Fourthly, and this is perhaps the most fundamental aspect, the rationales driving the strategy will determine all of those issues noted above.

The ‘personality’ of content marketing

One of the interesting questions about both content strategy and thought leadership is should it be refined and targeted to within an inch of its focus group-tested life, or should it be sprawling, multi-faceted and reflective of the tumultuous, fast moving environment in which most organisations exist – and which, in fact, mirror target audiences’ existences?

• The drivers of communication strategy

• What market research tells us what will engage target audiences and prompt them to enact required behaviour (e.g. purchase, whisper sweet reputation-enhancing nothings in their contacts’ ears et al)

• Perhaps, too, there is a unique emphasis or shading in the content that is delivered via various communication mechanisms

• Branding/positioning/differentiation

• and what of the impact on content for each organisational spokesperson due to their own interests, preferences, knowledge, passions and the customer/target audience segment they are responsible for?

Whilst it will be the organisation’s brand/personality that dictates the answers to these points and queries, in general I believe there is room for both schools of thought – the refined and the rambling (i.e. humanistic) – to work hand-in-hand.

A focus on topics and messaging that is relevant to the organisation and engaging for target audiences seems a prerequisite. But, and this is important, to rein in thought leadership or any other content to within a narrow set of parameters risks the organisation being perceived as cold, calculating, self-centered and predictable.

                                                                                                                                                                            (Content By SEOSolutionsIndia)

Top 20 SEO Tips for Google

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the main key for setting up a successful blog or website. Especially for newbies and beginners they must follow the Best SEO Tips and Tricks of 2015 to boost their blogs organic traffic and global rank.

So, for newbies today I am going to share the Top SEO Techniques of 2015 which are highly recommended by pro bloggers for newbies to establish their blog on internet.

So let’s start learning the Top SEO Tips and Tricks for 2015.

Here are Top SEO Tips for Google 2015:-

1. Website/Blogger Template: Use SEO friendly template for your website/blog which is easily available on internet for free or at low price. Use a responsive, suitable, and fast loading theme having all browsers support.

2. Quality of the Content: Content should be unique and descriptive. Don’t copy paste from other website, Google has eye on every website and blog.

3. Proper Meta Description: Write a short and unique 140-160 Characters that will explain your whole story of the article and that will help to grow better in Search Engines Results Page.

4. Maintain Keyword Density Ratio: Maintain your Keyword Density in the Safe manner. Too less will lead to less ranking and stuffing your Keyword will lead to over optimization.

5. SEO Friendly URL: Use permalink to give your post a SEO friendly URL. Use main keywords in post title in permalink. Search Engine highlight the URL Keywords, also it’s a boosting signal for the SEO.

6. Headings: Use H1, H2, and H3 in your article. Use your keyword in H2 which will help you in ranking your keyword in Search Engines.

7. Image Optimization: Use alt and title tags in all the images as this is also one of the well-known Tricks.

8. Backlinks: Never build the backlinks of your website too much fast as it can be marked as spam by Google. Always create quality backlinks on those site which are having good Page Rank, Alexa Rank, Domain Authority and Page authority.

9. Keywords: Use Keyword analysis tools to finds relative keywords for your post. Use keywords that are more searched on internet but for new blogs it’s recommended to use Less Competitive Keywords with high search Volume.

10. Post Length: Always write a post with a minimum of 300 words and recommended are 800 words which will also help you in ranking your site.

11. Choose Key Phrases: Rather than selecting a single Keyword it’s better chance to ranking more than one keyword if you chosen Key Phrases. So select Key phrases that works better compare to keywords.

12. Navigation Menu: Always choose a best place for navigation/menus of your blog/website. The best places which are recommended are below logo, above footer or at the right side of logo.

13. Social Bookmarking: Always create a Facebook page for your website and also add a Facebook on your blog/website like box in your sidebar or footer.

14. Internal Linking: Also link your older posts in newer related posts to increase page views & reduce blog bounce rate.

15. Blog/website Speed: Use Optimized images & lesser ads for your blog to load your blog/website fast.

16. Important Pages: You should create all the important pages for your blog/website like support, help, about us page, privacy policy page.

17. Keep Updating: The most important trick of SEO is to rank a website/blog in Search Engines in is to update your site regularly/daily and schedule your posts.

18. 404 Error: Redirect all the 404 links to Home Page.

19. Submit To Search Engines: Submit your site’s sitemap to Google, Bing and Yahoo. Ping Yahoo and Ask.com search engines to get huge Organic Traffic & get you post indexed by search engines.

20. Comment Section: Use Proper Commenting system for your blog/website. Comment section should be no-followed and moderated to avoid spam comments.

(Content By SEOSolutionsIndia)