Blog Posts to Read for September 15, 2011
Below you will find our favorite blog posts that are related to SEO, search engine marketing and social media marketing from this past week. Please feel free to visit each, we hope you find them as helpful as we do! How Google + (Plus) Can Grow Your Online Business This post states that experts who have reviewed Google+ report that they found it to be more compelling and engaging than Facebook. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE Making your website more social (it’s not all that hard) This post provides 8 ways to “bring your website up to social snuff”. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE Skate to where the puck will be, not to where it's been You don’t want to bother going to where the social media action has been, but rather go where the social media action will be. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE Why People Share & How to Get Your Share It’s important to understand who shares in social media and why they share. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE Case Study: How Did Humphry Slocombe Get 300,000 Twitter Followers? This post includes a case study about how an ice cream shop in San Francisco is able to successfully leverage CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
More Content Doesn’t Equal Better Content
In the world of SEO, it is very easy to lose the forest for the trees. Sometimes it seems like the entire industry is only focusing on one thing and its importance for a site’s SEO. That one ranking factor gets analyzed, over-analyzed and blogged to death by the industry. One such ranking factor is content. “Content is King” is replayed over and over online, and while that is true, some sites are cutting corners because they think it’s just a numbers game; the more content they pump out, the better. That isn’t true. Contrary to SEO myth, there is no “right” amount of content the search engines are looking for to make a site rank well. It doesn’t matter how many words you have CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Download a Free Social SEO Guidebook by Brick Marketing
“The Definitive Social Media Guidebook: Ways to Integrate Your SEO and Social Media Marketing” is my attempt to develop a comprehensive social SEO guide for webmasters, business owners and marketing professionals looking to expand their knowledge of SEO and social media marketing. This guide takes a look at how social media marketing has infused itself in the world of SEO. No longer existing in separate silos, social SEO is changing the online marketplace forever. So much of your online brand reputation and presence are tied up in social networking, it is impossible to fully separate social media marketing from your SEO and link building campaigns. The Brick Marketing social media marketing guide is broken into 7 sections including: • What Social Networks Should You CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Keep Your Link Building Activities Diverse – SEO Video Lesson
If you find yourself focusing too heavily on one type of link source, you could be limiting the success of your SEO. First off, if your favorite link building tactic is ever labeled as black hat by the search engines (much like link exchanges were) then the bulk of your links are now on the wrong side of the Webmaster Guidelines! By taking a diverse approach to your link building, you are demonstrating a commitment to white hat SEO and are protecting your site from any future changes in the search engines' algorithms. Watch this week's SEO video lesson here! For more SEO video tips and lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing SEO video lesson archive . CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How to Make Facebook a Useful SEO Tool
Social media and SEO are more intertwined than ever before; just look at the creation of the latest social network, Google+. Google, the undisputed king of search, is making a viable attempt at entering into the realm of social media, solidly owned by Facebook. Meanwhile, Facebook and Bing have formed a partnership to personalize the individual SERP of every Bing searcher. What does this mean for site owners? If you want your SEO to succeed, you have to start incorporating elements of social media into the mix. Let’s start with the 800 pound gorilla of social networking—Facebook. 1. Promote your content Social media and content marketing go hand-in-hand so well, it doesn’t make sense to not use Facebook to promote your content. When a blog post/article/video goes live, CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
What’s New in SEO for September 13, 2011
We have compiled the latest news and updates from the big three, Google, Bing and Yahoo as it relates to SEO and the search engines overall. WHAT'S NEW THIS WEEK WITH GOOGLE: A fall spring-clean Google will be shutting down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features in the next few months in order to make things much simpler for its users. WHAT'S NEW THIS WEEK WITH YAHOO: Yahoo! Search Trends: Top Online Political Searches Yahoo shares information on searches related to political material that has been popular lately. WHAT'S NEW THIS WEEK WITH BING: Affordable Fall Weekend Getaways Since the months between summer and the holiday season are less popular with travelers, some cheap deals can be found CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
5 Surefire Ways to Annoy the Search Engines
The search engines don’t take kindly to sites that try to manipulate the search results in their favor. Black hat SEO firms and spammers are constantly looking for new ways to twist the ranking factors. For instance, having a lot of links pointing to your site is important for SEO, so spammers get links from low quality, spammy sites to boost their link number. Never mind that these links are coming from spam blogs, they choose quantity over quality. 1. Throwaway domains Google specifically warns against throwaway domains in their SEO Webmaster Guidelines. A throwaway domain is a domain that has very little real value, and is just used to build link popularity to a second site. Many black hat SEO firms will use throwaway domains CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
SEO Advice for New Site Owners
I know it sounds strange—an SEO firm telling potential clients to NOT outsource their SEO? What kind of business sense does that make? Shouldn’t I be trying to get as many clients as possible? Here’s the catch, I only want to work with clients that I know I can help! Otherwise, it’s a waste of my time and their money. New site owners (even if they are lucky enough to the have the startup funding) shouldn’t be outsourcing their SEO for at least the first year of their site’s life. Here is my advice for new site owners looking to start their SEO: 1. Learn the basics of SEO for yourself There are hundreds, if not thousands, of free SEO and Internet marketing guides out there for site CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Change Keywords to Match Evolving Behavior
The most important thing to remember when it comes to conducting your keyword research is that you have to understand your user. If you don’t understand how people are searching for your product, you’ll never be able to target the right keywords. For instance, you might call your product a “workforce analytics and planning software” but your potential clients are searching for “business intelligence software.” While the two keyword phrases may mean the same thing (more or less), how is a search spider supposed to know that? That is why it is important to revisit your keyword research from time to time and make sure you are in-line with your target audience’s search behavior. Site analytics are your best friend when it comes to making CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Blog Posts to Read for September 8, 2011
Below you will find our favorite blog posts that are related to SEO, search engine marketing and social media marketing from this past week. Please feel free to visit each, we hope you find them as helpful as we do! How to write for Google’s expanded site links This post explains three ways to write for and take full advantage of Google’s expanded site links search results. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE 10 considerations when building a website in this brave new Social World Due to the rise of social media your website today performs a very different role to what it did a few years ago. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE Are We Sharing Too Much On Social Media? This post includes an infographic that CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
The Risks of Writing a Company Blog
In my 12+ years as an SEO professional, I’ve found that just about every business can benefit from publishing a company blog. It doesn’t matter if it’s B2B or B2C, or what industry your business operates in—a good business blog can be invaluable for your SEO and Internet marketing in general. There are probably hundreds of blog posts out there full of great reasons why you should start a company blog. (I have even written a few such posts myself). But are there any good reasons to NOT launch a company blog? If you think launching a blog is enough. “If you build it, they will come,” doesn’t work with business blogging. You can’t throw up a blog and hope that readers CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Tips for Redesigning Your Website
Your website is an incredibly important and powerful online tool. First off, it’s your business’s calling card. When someone arrives on your site, they way it looks will influence whether they stay or bounce out. Your brand is (at least it should be) well reflected in your website design. An outdated website creates a bad user-experience. Websites need to be fast, clean and well organized in order to convince your traffic that you are worth doing business with. We can all spot a website that hasn’t been updated since the late 90s (think scrolling banners, bad graphics, never ending pages of text, etc…), and your website at least needs to look current. Sometimes this means a major overhaul, and other times a few simple tweaks CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
What’s New in SEO for September 6, 2011
We have compiled the latest news and updates from the big three, Google, Bing and Yahoo as it relates to SEO and the search engines overall. WHAT'S NEW THIS WEEK WITH GOOGLE: Another look under the hood of search Google provides a video that gives a deeper look inside search and the work that goes into the changes and improvements that Google makes almost every day. Blogger’s fresh new look Blogger is the next product to get a makeover from Google. The entire editing and management experience has been rewritten from scratch to make the platform more efficient and easier to update and improve over time. WHAT'S NEW THIS WEEK WITH YAHOO: What’s Top of Mind This Labor Day – Yahoo! Search CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Why Are You Buying Fans, Friends and Followers?
I came across this article on PCMag.com a few weeks ago. The story focused on an SEO firm that has started selling Google +1s. “Plussems, which is owned by SEOShop.biz, is selling 50 clicks for $9.99, 250 clicks for $69.99, and was selling a bundle of 2,000 clicks.” This isn’t the first time I’ve come across an SEO or social media marketing company that was selling bundles like this. I’ve seen companies promise to get you 1,000 Twitter followers in a month and 500 Facebook Likes in two weeks, all for the low, low, price of $59.99! Are you kidding me? As a strictly white hat SEO consultant, I would never recommend to my clients that they buy fans/friends/followers/Likes and so forth. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Don’t Outsource Your Content Overseas!
There are plenty of good reasons to outsource your content writing and marketing to an SEO firm. For instance, you may not have the time or writing skills to fully invest in a managing a content marketing campaign. Since content marketing is one of the fundamental elements of inbound marketing , outsourcing it to a reputable SEO company makes sense. But when looking to outsource your content marketing, or any other part of your SEO, keep it in the U.S! The great thing about working with an SEO firm is that they don’t have to be local. The Internet is everywhere, and nothing in SEO is so time sensitive that working with an SEO company in a different time zone could become a serious issue. If CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
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