Latest From SNC

Digital Marketing; Weekly - Issue 3

business@thelostagency.com (David Iwanow) — Thu, 16 May 2013 06:04:06 GMT

YouTube Trends Map One of the coolest new Trends tools to be rolled out is YouTube Trends which offers an interactive Map of what video in the US are getting the most Shares or Views. The platform also has the ability to filter the results by Gender Age demographics which is perfect for understand what video is appealing to which demographic. I think that some of the obvious uses for marketers could be: Use this to adapt their YouTube ads to target popular videos Focus on what videos they should be creating as parodies Focus on what video response they should be preparing Focus on what content they can adapt to ride the wave of hype Start creating a blog post or article around new popular videos For News/Media websites what "popular" clips they should be featuring The other useful feature is the Trends dashboard which allows you to compare up to 3 different groups of viewers with the geographic and demographic refinements. You can also highlight what are the...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

What Google Knows & The War Against SEOs

anthony.verre@gmail.com (Anthony Verre) — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:25:22 GMT

I don’t know how many marketers know about Google Think. Essentially, Google Think is the place where digital marketers can pick/pull consumer data insights from Google’s marketing research that spans across every major industry. It’s really one of those gems that once you stumble across, you’ll wonder how you were doing business without it. It’s jam-packed with tons of great deck-stuffers and great consumer insights. All gushing aside, it’s what Google knows about all of us as digital shoppers and consumers: how we behave, what digital channels we use when we’re purchasing, and which digital channels are most influential in the purchase journey. What Google Knows About You and Me This brings me to a piece of research on Google Think about the online purchase journey of consumers. The Consumer Journey to Online Purchase breaks down what Google knows about what digital channels are touched in the purchase journey, and how they “assist” or “drive” the purchase. Look at the...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Cyber-Security is Everyone's Gig

doc@docsheldon.com (Doc Sheldon) — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:09:52 GMT

Most of us have an idea of what cyber-security is, but our definitions probably vary quite a lot. So before we can begin to take steps to protect ourselves and our systems, we have to decide first, exactly what we're trying to protect ourselves from. Let's take a look at some of the different perspectives. The IT Manager The IT Manager probably thinks that cyber-security focuses mostly on system security, whether against DDOS attacks or downloaded malware by one of the guys in the sales department. He'll likely publish a policy against connecting any private devices or USB memory sticks, running any non-approved programs or data files or visiting any proxy or unapproved P2P sites. He knows there are plenty of nasties out there in the wild and he is bent on keeping them out in the wild. He also knows that good-hearted but naive users are often the biggest risk to security. The Collateral Duty Webmaster This individual may be one of the engineers or a salesman that just...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Matt Cutts on upcoming changes for SEO 2013

theGypsy@huomah.com (David Harry) — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:55:52 GMT

Matt Cutts had a blog post and video (made in early May) about “What to expect in SEO in the next few months”. Indeed this is likely a response to the pending-Penguin update and recent comments made via Twitter and elsewhere. It's always entertaining watching the SEO industry's response to these... I can almost hear them in my head at this point. Bring out your tin-foil! 2 Side of the SEO Coin For fun, let's have at the video and some uber-paranoid SEO thought patterns from the 'read between the lines' approach to analyzing these videos... Matt; “Make a great site that people love, tell their friends about, bookmark, come back to over and over again” SEO's response; Yea yea, heard that before. Wait, are you saying bookmarks are a ranking factor? And behavioural data? I knew it! Matt; “We're relatively close to launching the next generation of Penguin. Internally we call it 'Penguin 2.0'. An attempt to target black hat web-spam....

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Exciting times at SNC; welcome the new team members

theGypsy@huomah.com (David Harry) — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:19:27 GMT

Search News Central is pleased to welcome aboard the team of writers from Digital Always Media and Firestarter Social Media. You have already read a few pieces from a couple of the members of this team, but we would like to officially welcome them and introduce you to them. Representing Toronto-based Digital Always Media are Jim Hedger, Alan K’necht, and Bria Jordan. Most of you are already familiar with Jim by reputation. Over the years he has been a prolific content creator both in print and on air with outlets like Webmaster Radio. Jim brings years, maybe a few more than he would care to admit to at this point, of wisdom and expertise to our merry band of writers. Alan K’necht will add a wealth of insight and understanding of the analytics side of our business for both search and social. Bria Jordan is an up and coming SEO with a fresh perspective on the future of internet marketing. Representing a vantage point from inside social media marketing is Michelle Stinson...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Do All Your Actions Support your Content Strategy?

info@level343.com (Gabriella Sannino) — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:49:41 GMT

There's an old proverb that says “He who fails to plan, plans to fail”. This is probably true in many fields, but definitely in SEO and on-line marketing. Any action you take should be according to a carefully conceived plan. And the content of your site is a perfect example of something that most definitely needs to be planned, if you want your website to be successful. So what should your plan address? Content Strategy The Plan There are a number of aspects of a viable content strategy that need to be considered. Surprisingly (or not), the basics haven't changed much in generations of marketing. Basically, you need to say: the right thing; to the right people; at the right time and place; in the right fashion. Who is the audience? The first step is to understand your audience. Know the demographic of the people you're talking to, as much as possible. Are they predominantly male or female? What level of education are they mostly comprised of? What polarizing...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

What Not to Miss at Interactivity Digital 2013

michellestinsonross@gmail.com (Michelle Stinson Ross) — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:51:49 GMT

As part of the ongoing efforts at Search News Central to bring you the latest search and social industry news and commentary from top thought leaders… I’m going to South Beach. Yes, you read that correctly. I’m going to play in the sun and sand with all the beautiful people; people like Rand Fiskin, Marty Weintraub, Victoria Edwards, and Melissa Fach. On May 15th and 16th Search News Central will be providing live access to what promises to be one of the hottest boutique conferences of the 2013 season. I will be live tweeting sessions like, Getting Down to SEO Brass Tacks: Optimizing Your Site featuring Alan Bleiweiss, John Doherty, and Carolyn Shelby. And Social Analytics – KPIs That Matter featuring Adam Singer, Jennifer Sable Lopez, and Simon Heseltine. In addition to two days of real time internet marketing GOLD, I will be interviewing many of the speakers, including Courtney Seiter of Raven Tools, Angie Schottmuller of Three Deep Marketing, and Loren...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Google Hangout - Integrated SEO 2013

theGypsy@huomah.com (David Harry) — Wed, 08 May 2013 12:51:37 GMT

Hey gang, Dave here with some exciting news! Ok, it's exciting to me at least and hopefully you'll get pumped up as we go here. As part of the never ending evolution of online media, SNC is going visual. As in LIVE! Yup that's right, starting next Thursday (May 16th) we'll be having some hangouts, live on the air, with guests and topics across the scope of online marketing. It's going to be awesome! Week 1; SEO convergence 2013. Our first episode will be about the ever changing role of SEO in the world of marketing. From the effects of social to leveraging analytics and outreach; we'll have it covered. If you're confused on what exactly SEO is in 2013, this is the place to be. Our guests will include; Dan Thies SEO Braintrust Dave Davies – Beanstalk SEO Inc Michelle Stinson Ross – Digital Always media Your hosts will be myself and the one-and-only, Jim Hedger (also from Digital Always Media). We'll be streaming live here on SNC as well as on YouTube. Just for fun we...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Link Values Simplified

jim@digitalalwaysmedia.com (Jim Hedger) — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:50:29 GMT

Earlier I read a piece on Google, press releases and link values in SearchEngineLand. The article notes an experiment conducted by Daniel Tan, founder of WordPress SEO evaluation plug-in SEOPressor. Tan set out to disprove a Christmas Day comment made by Google Quality Control Czar, Matt Cutts to a Google Forum discussion of press releases. What Matt Said Cutts wrote “I wouldn’t expect links from press release web sites to benefit your rankings…”, in response to a vague question about the pagerank value of a link in a press release. It was a one-off sentence that apparently had greater implications than it should have. I expect Cutts was really saying, “Don’t waste your time and money on bogus press releases to gain stronger Google rankings”. For the most part, that’s good advice. People have spammed search results using press releases for years. The Penguin updates were designed to destroy poor quality links and degrade the ranking of...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

How to Improve Conversions Through A/B Testing

bharnish@searchnewscentral.com (Brian Harnish) — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:12:53 GMT

What is A/B testing? A/B testing is a method of testing that allows one to see what certain design changes on their website do to their conversion numbers. In order to see what changes are effective, A/B testing is necessary so that blind changes that lead to negative results do not occur. So, what are the benefits of A/B testing? A/B testing allows you to see, with quite certain results, how changes on your website will impact your conversions. What one particular audience likes on one website is not going to be something that another audience likes. It is therefore necessary to pursue A/B tests that gauge what your audience prefers and how they are going to respond to different on page items. A/B testing gives you a clear path to higher conversions. Conversions are no accident. Using A/B testing can tell you what your audience is most likely to click on. If they hate red buttons but prefer green ones, this will show up in an A/B test. If they like animated ads but hate still...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Digital Marketing; Weekly - Issue 2

business@thelostagency.com (David Iwanow) — Fri, 03 May 2013 01:51:30 GMT

Salesforce Delivers Social.com Salesforce.com has aggressively expanded their social advertising offering with their acquisition of Buddy Media last year but have stepped up their game with their unified platform offering via Social.com. The new platform offers an integration solution that allows marketers to scale up their social ads (Twitter/Facebook), linked in with CRM data and track and optimise the campaign powered by social listening (Radian6). The idea is pretty damn powerful if you have to scale your social marketing campaigns and will likely scare some agencies that are still doing this whole process manually. Yahoo! introduce Stream Ads Yahoo has rolled out a new beta product for large advertisers which is marketed as "native" and "performance based" which will be built into the homepage and designed to compliment the news feed. The platform seems similar to Twitter Facebook ad products which are based on users interested and matched contextually to the content they...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Raven's 30 Social Metrics for Success

michellestinsonross@gmail.com (Michelle Stinson Ross) — Thu, 02 May 2013 06:25:06 GMT

We all know that social signals are providing wicked search juice to the online marketing efforts of our clients. In just a handful of years, establishing a social media presence for businesses has become almost as important as building a killer company website. And yet, clients seem more mystified with the whole social process than we have time to explain. Most are skeptical about spending hours every week to goof off on websites where teenagers congregate. When they ask the burning question about the real return on spending so much time and effort to be “social,” too many smart ass marketers have responded with “What’s the ROI of your phone line? You wouldn’t consider doing business without it.” The Guide Can the rate of real business returns on social media marketing efforts be quantified? Can we explain HOW we quantify social media activity in a way that small business owners and corporate executives can understand and appreciate? ...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Matt Cutts' latest SEO Misconceptions

theGypsy@huomah.com (David Harry) — Wed, 01 May 2013 22:31:07 GMT

Well, our fav Gooogler (distinguished no less) Matt Cutt's was back with another video today and hey, he's speaking my language!! No really, right off the top he got into patent-hounds. Being from the school of Slawski, one always talks of them with qualifiers such as “may be”, “could be” or “possibly”. Just because there's a patent awarded, “.. doesn't necessarily mean we're using that patent” as Matt states. One off the cuff examples was the “..length of time a domain was registered”. Another (mythical?) one sounded kinda' familiar; “(a mechanism) by which you could look at how people had changed their webpage after an update and basically say, 'Oh these are people who are responding to Google or they're dynamically SEO'ing their stuff. “ Any guesses what that is? No? Does TransitionRank ring a bell? Or maybe here? How making changes to your site when rankings change was some kinda spam signal? Hee...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

The world really needs another SEO browser.

ammasabhilash@gmail.com (Jonathan Schikowski) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:26:48 GMT

Here's why browseo.net is the one. Today I'd like to introduce you to browseo.net, a tool you can use to browse web pages from a search engine's perspective. It strips out all styles and scripts so you can analyze a page's text and images without distractions. At the same time, meaningful facts are displayed alongside the content and you can highlight different link types on the page. When we developed browseo.net, it was initially meant to be a tool we use internally. But as the legend goes, out of compassion with struggling webmasters, we decided to open it up to one and all, for free. Browseo.net has been publicly released in 2012, and after developing an app for Android devices in the same year, a brand new iPhone app has just been released. To be honest, I was hesitant at first. There were SEO tools out there that had been created by more experienced pros (I started SEO only in 2004) and that people have already been using for many years. Did the world REALLY need...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Digital Marketing; Weekly - Issue 1

business@thelostagency.com (David Iwanow) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:02:55 GMT

(Welcome to Digital Marketing; Weekly, our new weekly update section. It's our way of trying to bring a bit more 'news' to the site. It may evolve a little, but basically it will feature the top stories from the past week in social media, search, and digital marketing, along with any other noteworthy developments. Enjoy!) I was struggling to think of what to write for this month as there was so many things that happened just over the past 2 weeks so I thought I would focus on some of the top items that I found of most interest for SEO's and marketers, or more likely to shake up your world. Google Affiliate Network Shuts Down Google has made a surprising move in shutting down GAN which was one of the largest affiliate networks in the US but was not as successful internationally based on industry chatter on TheDrum. It's likely that Google will expand their direct affiliate programs such as UK Car Travel insurance products that have a higher margin and Read more...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Algorithm Updates vs Manual Penalties - Some People Still Don’t Get It

mwilton13@gmail.com (Mike Wilton) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:46:01 GMT

In the fallout of the last publicly announced (sorta) Panda update and as the internet prepares for Penguin: The Next Generation I find myself talking about algorithm updates and penalties a lot. Unfortunately it seems like even folks in the industry can’t differentiate the difference and I am having conversations I wish I didn’t have to have. Which is why I thought I would take the opportunity to help break down the difference between the two in hopes of educating SEO’s and webmasters alike in getting their terminology straight so that they can better address them. Algorithmic Updates Let’s start with algorithm updates since they are the most commonly misunderstood and still the most talked about. Panda and Penguin are both algorithm updates, they are not “penalties” as so many people refer to them. As Matt Cutts explained during SMX Advanced last year, “...when we use a word like “penalty,” we’re talking about a...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Search News Central Launches Google+ Community

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:18:11 GMT

Greetings! I just wanted to pop in and let everyone know that we've started a Search News Central Google+ community. You can go join it now. I'll wait... There have been whispers about new things to come at SNC, and this is just one of them. The community will be ripe with discussions, news of upcoming events, and post ideas. We hope to keep it a place of sharing ideas, rather than pimping your post links, in an attempt to maintain tidiness and stay focused on the serious talk. That being said, if you want to bring in a discussion-worthy article, etc, we encourage you to do so. Drop by any time and join the conversation, or just check out what's been happening lately in the world of search. See you there folks. We're always looking for ways the community can help/serve people better, so if you have any ideas on that, feel free to share here, or there.

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

3 Quick Fixes to Enterprise-Level Technical SEO

anthony.verre@gmail.com (Anthony Verre) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:55:12 GMT

As Google continues to transpose the idea and essence of the real world, physical marketplace through its various platforms (Google+, Shopping, Google+ Local, etc), big brands will continue to have a distinct advantage over everyone else. They can build faster, spend more, amplify their messages/reach farther through multiple channels (traditional and digital), all of which translate to "consumer trust". As Eric Schmidt said five years ago, and I have to keep going back to, "Brands are the solution, not the problem…brands are how you sort out the cesspool." It comes down to entity building, solidification, and continually establishing (re)connections to the brand from its disparate digital properties. When you think about "brand-building" in that manner, every company is a brand and has the opportunity to establish itself as such with Google by simply connecting the dots in the knowledge/entity graph. SEO is really becoming more of a technical art that is to clarify and...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

#SocialChat - The Hidden Value of Social Media Marketing

michellestinsonross@gmail.com (Michelle Stinson Ross) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 17:18:19 GMT

Welcome to the recap of the #SocialChat discussion from Monday April, 8th. For those of you already familiar with the chat and our blogging style, feel free to scroll on down the page for the highlights of the chat. For those of you who are new to #SocialChat, let me give you a little introduction. So What is #SocialChat? SocialChat is a hashtag facilitated discussion group on Twitter. For the last two years Alan K’necht and I have been organizing this opportunity for social media professionals to gather and discuss the best practices for marketing via social platforms. When we first started this adventure, the world of twitter chats still belonged to the uber geeky class of tweet-aholics. There were just a handful of organized chats, like #SEOChat, in the beginning. But we saw huge value and potential in real-time discussions like this and wanted to provide a place for people to discuss the continuous changes and shifts in social media marketing. The team with...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!

Bing says link building more important than SEO?

theGypsy@huomah.com (David Harry) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:46:57 GMT

In a world where the spectre of Penguins has made many simply run screaming from link building, it seems the fine folks at Bing aren't as stringent. In fact, it is seemingly the least important thing to be worrying about. In a recent post on the Bing Blog, they noted a list of things to focus on, in order.. they were; Create unique, in depth content Social engagement User Experience/Usability Link Building Search engine optimization Huh. For starters I have long believed in "attracting" links over building them. Yes, it's far more work, but at the end of the day there's less risk and hey, you might even build some authority. Secondly, I am a massive on-site SEO freak. It seems kinda backwards to be craftng content, promoting and garnering link equity, if it has been maximized on the site itself. Anyway, I just thought it was interesting as I doubt we'd see ol Googly advising much of anything (positive) about link building, and certainly not above actual on-site...

NOTE: This just the teaser... please drop by search news central for the full story!