It seems that competition for valuable branded keywords is reaching an all time high, with a recent report by eMarketer, “Brands Go Head-to-Head in Competition for Search Terms,” estimating that US marketers will spend a massive $14.4 billion USD this year on search advertising. Why should you care? Because it’s your brand’s keywords that they’re bidding on. The Battle of Branded Keywords We all know that search engine optimization is based on attempting to reach a top ranking position on a search engine for a given keyword or keyword phrase. We also know that the introduction of Google’s Adwords and Bing’s adCenter offered companies a major opportunity to feature on page one results for a search term without bothering with all this; they could bid on a term and grab traffic without engaging in the arduous process of link building and on and off site optimization. Recently, however, things have developed one step further and brand managers have started to – Read the full article
When you search for your favorite celebrity’s name, or the profile of the novelist behind the book you’d read and raved about, chances are that the results will include a Wikipedia entry. On Page One. You’d almost be shocked if you find it on Page Two. The web encyclopedia seems to have outraced everyone to the top, and everything seems to be pointing to any one of its many, many pages. But do you see “Adam Lambert”, or “Jonathan Franzen” on Wikipedia’s home page? Probably not. You wonder how you can optimize your own website that way, without having to barrage your preferred landing page with a hundred links. The example of Wikipedia demonstrates how SEO can be used to target not just keywords – but entire target markets. This strategy was recently discussed in SEO Design Solutions as a way to out-optimize your competitors, if you will, and have your website rank from the top 1000 to the top – Read the full article
I will be the first to admit that working in a social media department sometimes feels like a workout. You’re responsible for liking and tweeting and connecting and sharing and friending and +ing and stumbling and running and running and running. Did I say running? By the time the day is over, it feels like you were moving a mile a minute and you need a break. Whether you work in a social media department or are simply a company trying to keep up with the social media, enough is enough. What is Pinterest? However, even I will make an exception for the latest social network, Pinterest. Once you get over the groaning, you will find that this new social network is actually quite interesting. Basically, the site is a virtual board where you can “pin” visuals that interest you. Be it an infographic, video, picture, or just a color scheme you like, you can pin it onto your board for – Read the full article
When you try and use Internet marketing and blogging to bring in more business, it is essential to think about each word that you publish. Each page of your website needs to have a goal and each blog post must be aimed at achieving the following: Providing readers with information regarding your business and industry Creating a call for action Encouraging sales Working on optimizing the website Providing customer service Building brand recognition Installing trust Fitting all that into a blog post of around 300 to 500 words may seem like a lot but with the help of SEO copywriters, each of your blog posts can achieve all of those goals for you. Working on Web Copy Your website will no doubt be split up into different sections; what they are will depend upon the services and products that you provide. Most websites will have the obligatory Welcome page, About Us page, and the Contact page. These need to be – Read the full article
For your site to be noticed and to get traffic, it should have a good position in search, so that it will always land on the first page of popular search results at search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Achieving this is no miracle and is not something that can be done overnight: it takes an effective SEO strategy to move your website to the top of search engine results. In order for an SEO strategy to be successful, a website owner should monitor the different metrics of their site on a daily or weekly basis to gauge if the strategy that they are implementing is working. Here are a few metrics that any website owner should watch out for, to know if they are on the right track and if the strategy that they are implementing is improving their website’s ranking: SEO Metrics Traffic Metrics. Web traffic is the number of visitors that your site is getting. This – Read the full article
A potential pitfall for many new Adwords advertising is simply the false pretense that Google’s default Adwords settings are in the best interest for all advertisers. That’s simply not the case. Here are a handful of tips that can take just minutes but provide a significant lift in your online advertising campaign performance. 1. Review your location and language settings Google defaults each new campaign to target theUnited StatesandCanada. If you don’t ship internationally, this is a clear opportunity to narrow your targeting. If you are a localized business serving a specific area there is further opportunity to narrow in your focus by targeting a specific state, city or even specific mile radius surrounding your business location. Advanced Tip* If you are targeting multiple countries, set up separate campaigns for each country. Each geographic area will perform differently due to variances in search behavior. Separate campaigns will provide you much deeper insight into each location’s performance and allow for smarter decisions – Read the full article
You’ve spent a great deal of time and effort optimizing your website for the search engines. Why? Because a stellar search ranking is how you’re going to get visitors and ultimately, customers. SEO has been pegged as the most important – and only – way to cultivate traffic. Your SEO tactics have been successful, and you’re among the top results for your keywords. And then comes a curveball. Siri and Her Effect on SEO and Local Search For millions of Apple iPhone 4S users, and there are more of them every day, your SEO won’t matter. Meet Siri. She’s a clever little witch, and you’re going to have to reassess your current SEO tactics if you hope to please her. And please her you must, because iPhone users rely on her. Instead of opening a search engine and manually typing keywords, they’re just going to ask Siri to find them what they’re looking for. And Siri, being the intelligent voice – Read the full article
If you got a pretty good site, which shows up on the first page of Google, you ought to be cautious about some possible threats. Hacking might be a huge issue indeed, but there is another form of threat lurking on the Internet these days. This threat is not a virus or a bug or a worm, yet it is very potent and can cause chaos for you and your adored website. Beware of Page Jacking! What is Page Jacking? The attack called page jacking mainly involves copying the content on your website onto some other site, so that the user believes that the other site is your legitimate site. If proper measures are not taken to secure your content, you are bound to lose your privileged spot on the first page of the search engine. The Consequences of Page Jacking Because the page jacker uses the same keywords and the same content, with a few exceptions here and there, – Read the full article
