Beers Blokes & Business

Tweet Tweet I was asked a few months back to take part in a new podcast called Beers Blokes & Business. It is the Beer child of Sean Callanan aka @sportsgeek. The basic premise of the show is a bunch of blokes talking business while sampling some fine amber ale. I’ve only contributed to a few episodes so far but it has been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a few things along the way. It’s a pretty relaxed podcast and the aim for it’s length is about the time for an average commute so you can listen to it on your way to work. I’ve been involved in a lot of online shows over the years, The Internet Old Boys was my first, The F Word which was a film review show (got to interview Sean William Scott #bragging rights), The Netboat which was the world’s first online comedy series, my own weekly video and now BBB. BBB out of all the shows I can honestly say contains the most beer… the others were mainly shiraz. Some Beer from Beer Blokes Business The Beer At the start of each recor

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SEO Is Not Provided?

Tweet Tweet Amazing that you get so many hits on (not provided) huh? Back in 2011 Google stopped providing the search phrases from users that were logged into Google and in a secure https session. Last week they announced that they are extending that “security” to pretty much everyone… unless you’re an advertiser. The reason for this they say is “user protection”, however if you are using adwords you will still get the keyword search data, for some reason those users don’t need protection. There are many theories circulating about why Google is doing this but as a search marketer, what does it mean for you? For ecommerce sites it really sucks. No longer will you be able to see what keywords coming from organic search are delivering sales. You will now only see that in adwords data. Nor will you be able to see any sort of sensible volume around specific keywords. If you are not an advertiser, get to know your search queries in Webmaster Tools. Google is still providing ke

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Blogger Outreach – What Do They Think About SEOs?

Have you ever wondered why bloggers didn t reply to your last outreach email? Why they refused to link to your shiny new infographic, or what they really think about SEOs? I conducted a 26 question survey with a sample group of bloggers to help digital marketers construct better outreach pitches and give bloggers the opportunity to voice their opinions. The feedback might shock some of you; I hope you re ready. Disclaimer: Due to the nature of the questions, and in the interest of protecting the respondents, the full data set, exact sample size, and respondents blog URLs will not be made public. Survey information: There are fewer than 100 bloggers in the sample, mostly from the parenting / food niche No demographic requirements to participate, however the bloggers are largely from the UK and US Survey format: Google docs forms, with a mixture of multiple choice questions and text boxes Important: The sample is not representative of all bloggers, or bloggers within the UK, US, food or

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Comment on The Google Hummingbird Patent? by Bill Slawski

Google introduced a new algorithm by the name of Hummingbird to the world today at the garage where Google started as a business, during a celebration of Google’s 15th Birthday. Google doesn’t appear to have replaced previous signals such as PageRank or many of the other signals that they use to rank pages. The announcement of the new algorithm told us that Google actually started using Hummingbird a number of weeks ago, and that it potentially impacts around 90% of all searches. It’s being presented as a query expansion or broadening approach which can better understand longer natural language queries, like the ones that people might speak instead of shorter keyword matching queries which someone might type into a search box. For example, the kind of query where it might potentially work best upon could be something like [What is the best place to find and eat Chicago deep dish style pizza?], where Google might use synonym and substitute query rules in combination with analyzin

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Comment on The Google Hummingbird Patent? by Bill Slawski

Google introduced a new algorithm by the name of Hummingbird to the world today at the garage where Google started as a business, during a celebration of Google’s 15th Birthday. Google doesn’t appear to have replaced previous signals such as PageRank or many of the other signals that they use to rank pages. The announcement of the new algorithm told us that Google actually started using Hummingbird a number of weeks ago, and that it potentially impacts around 90% of all searches. It’s being presented as a query expansion or broadening approach which can better understand longer natural language queries, like the ones that people might speak instead of shorter keyword matching queries which someone might type into a search box. For example, the kind of query where it might potentially work best upon could be something like [What is the best place to find and eat Chicago deep dish style pizza?], where Google might use synonym and substitute query rules in combination with analyzin

http://ravensiege.com/seo/comment-on-the-google-hummingbird-patent-by-bill-slawski-3/

Comment on The Google Hummingbird Patent? by Sean

Google introduced a new algorithm by the name of Hummingbird to the world today at the garage where Google started as a business, during a celebration of Google’s 15th Birthday. Google doesn’t appear to have replaced previous signals such as PageRank or many of the other signals that they use to rank pages. The announcement of the new algorithm told us that Google actually started using Hummingbird a number of weeks ago, and that it potentially impacts around 90% of all searches. It’s being presented as a query expansion or broadening approach which can better understand longer natural language queries, like the ones that people might speak instead of shorter keyword matching queries which someone might type into a search box. For example, the kind of query where it might potentially work best upon could be something like [What is the best place to find and eat Chicago deep dish style pizza?], where Google might use synonym and substitute query rules in combination with analyzin

http://ravensiege.com/seo/comment-on-the-google-hummingbird-patent-by-sean/

Comment on The Google Hummingbird Patent? by Bill Slawski

Google introduced a new algorithm by the name of Hummingbird to the world today at the garage where Google started as a business, during a celebration of Google’s 15th Birthday. Google doesn’t appear to have replaced previous signals such as PageRank or many of the other signals that they use to rank pages. The announcement of the new algorithm told us that Google actually started using Hummingbird a number of weeks ago, and that it potentially impacts around 90% of all searches. It’s being presented as a query expansion or broadening approach which can better understand longer natural language queries, like the ones that people might speak instead of shorter keyword matching queries which someone might type into a search box. For example, the kind of query where it might potentially work best upon could be something like [What is the best place to find and eat Chicago deep dish style pizza?], where Google might use synonym and substitute query rules in combination with analyzin

http://ravensiege.com/seo/comment-on-the-google-hummingbird-patent-by-bill-slawski-2/

Comment on The Google Hummingbird Patent? by Bill Slawski

Google introduced a new algorithm by the name of Hummingbird to the world today at the garage where Google started as a business, during a celebration of Google’s 15th Birthday. Google doesn’t appear to have replaced previous signals such as PageRank or many of the other signals that they use to rank pages. The announcement of the new algorithm told us that Google actually started using Hummingbird a number of weeks ago, and that it potentially impacts around 90% of all searches. It’s being presented as a query expansion or broadening approach which can better understand longer natural language queries, like the ones that people might speak instead of shorter keyword matching queries which someone might type into a search box. For example, the kind of query where it might potentially work best upon could be something like [What is the best place to find and eat Chicago deep dish style pizza?], where Google might use synonym and substitute query rules in combination with analyzin

http://ravensiege.com/seo/comment-on-the-google-hummingbird-patent-by-bill-slawski/

SEO in Melbourne

Tweet Tweet Back in 2005 I got to no.1 for the phrase “SEO Melbourne”. It’s a pretty tough phrase as you can imagine. Since then we have stayed on page 1 but the last several months we have been below the fold. I’m fairly sure we’re the only company since 2005 that has remained on page 1 consistently *pumps chest*. Our first drop from the no.1 spot happened when we moved from our old Joomla website which launched as a Mambo site back in 2003 and I just kept upgrading because I was so petrified of losing our no.1 spot for SEO Melbourne. Don’t get me wrong I would much prefer a wordpress site to a Joomla one these days. The reason for our drop was complicated but basically I think Google recalculated where it should rank the new site and we dropped. With the Penguin and Panda updates we have always done well and moved up a spot or two. A lot of other SEOs though have not been as lucky. At the bottom for SEO Melbourne Who looks for SEO Melbourne? In my experience it’s peopl

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Solving the Sub-Domain Equation: Predicting Traffic and Value when Merging Sub-Domains

To sub-domain or not to sub-domain, that is the question. Should you keep your content on separate sub-domains or the same domain? If I do merge my sub-domains, will I gain or lose traffic? How much? Since my first days in SEO back in 2004, the sub-folder vs. sub-domain debate has echoed through nearly every site architecture discussion in which I have participated. It seems trivial in many respects that we would focus so intently on what essentially boils down to the ordering of words in a URL, especially given that www. itself is a sub-domain. However, for a long time, there has been good reason to consider the question vary carefully. Today I am writing about the problem in general, and I propose a programmatic strategy for answering the sub-domain/sub-folder debate. For the purposes of this article, let s assume there is a company named Example Business that sells baseball cards, baseball jerseys and baseball hats. They have two choices for setting up their site architecture. They

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The Google Hummingbird Patent?

Google introduced a new algorithm by the name of Hummingbird to the world today at the garage where Google started as a business, during a celebration of Google’s 15th Birthday. Google doesn’t appear to have replaced previous signals such as PageRank or many of the other signals that they use to rank pages. The announcement of the new algorithm told us that Google actually started using Hummingbird a number of weeks ago, and that it potentially impacts around 90% of all searches. It’s being presented as a query expansion or broadening approach which can better understand longer natural language queries, like the ones that people might speak instead of shorter keyword matching queries which someone might type into a search box. For example, the kind of query where it might potentially work best upon could be something like [What is the best place to find and eat Chicago deep dish style pizza?], where Google might use synonym and substitute query rules in combination with analyzin

http://ravensiege.com/seo/the-google-hummingbird-patent/

Setting Goals (Not Tools) as the Foundation of Your Marketing – Whiteboard Friday

Hey there, Moz community! I m so excited to be here with you today. I wanted to share something with you that has been really powerful for the businesses we ve been working with in the last year or so about building community. It s a concept that we call goals not tools, and it works in this pyramid format where you start with your goals, you move on to KPIs, you develop a strategy, you execute that strategy, and then you analyze your data. And this is something that has been really powerful and helped businesses really grow. So I m going to walk you through it here. We start down at the bottom with goals. So the deal with goals is that you want to make sure that you re setting goals for your entire business, not just for SEO or social media or content marketing, because you re trying to grow your whole business. So keep your focus there. Then once you develop your goals, and those goals might be to improve customer communication or you want to become a thought leader. Whatever your g

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On Our Wait-List? You Get a Moz Analytics!

Looks Like You re Not Logged In To add a comment or give something a thumbs up/down, you must either login or sign up for a new account. Source Article from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MozBlog/~3/ME3hSo7kvfU/moz-analytics-wait-list-announcementOn Our Wait-List? You Get a Moz Analytics!http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MozBlog/~3/ME3hSo7kvfU/moz-analytics-wait-list-announcementhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/mozblogMoz BlogMoz, a Seattle-based search engine optimization company, serves as a hub for search marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services. The post On Our Wait-List? You Get a Moz Analytics! appeared first on Website, SEO and Social Media Management Company.

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Improving Search Rank by Optimizing Your Time to First Byte

Back in August, Zoompf published newly uncovered research findings examining the effect of web performance on Google s search rankings. Working with Matt Peters from Moz, we tested the performance of over 100,000 websites returned in the search results for 2000 different search queries. In that study, we found a clear correlation between a faster time to first byte (TTFB) and a higher search engine rank. While it could not be outright proven that decreasing TTFB directly caused an increasing search rank, there was enough of a correlation to at least warrant some further discussion of the topic. The TTFB metric captures how long it takes your browser to receive the first byte of a response from a web server when you request a particular website URL. In the graph captured below from our research results, you can see websites with a faster TTFB in general ranked more highly than websites with a slower one. We found this to be true not only for general searches with one or two keywords, b

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Kill It on Facebook by Being TAGFEE

Last month, I presented a Mozinar on Deconstructing a Niche Market. Much to my surprise, the Q&A session focused almost entirely on my experience using Facebook as a niche marketing channel. It s true that Facebook is a dynamic and oft-misunderstood creature, especially in marketing. When building a strategy with long-term sustainability in mind, it s important to avoid relying on any one source of traffic. Any channel can be fickle, and Facebook has certainly proven to be no exception. That being said, Facebook still represents the largest share of the social space, and is at least worth considering for businesses looking to diversify their channel marketing portfolio, be it niche-targeted or otherwise. Just 9 months after we decided to give the platform the old college try, Facebook has become a substantial traffic source for our B2B business. As I mentioned in the Mozinar, our business has spent the last nine months developing our Facebook channel. As a result, we ve seen traffic f

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SEO Starts Here

Tweet Tweet In last week’s post I discussed how I’m putting together an online SEO Course. One of the elements I mentioned was looking at webmaster tools and the index. Today I take a look at a FMCG brand’s webmaster tools and the Google index. It’s clear that I’m the only one looking at it. Their online marketers are certainly not. If they were they’d understand why they are not ranking for their own brand! I don’t care how difficult a phrase is to rank, if it’s your brand Google WANTS to rank you on page one. If you’re not, there is a problem with your site not Google. A Stable Site Is Good SEO Take a look at this graph. This is bad. It represents the number of pages on a site that Google crawls over time. SEO Starts with this graph Over the last 12 months the amount of pages this site has had in the Google index has jumped all around the place. as low as 2000 as high as 10,000. If you were doing a major redesign you may see this rise or drop sharply once depending

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#001: Our UnPodcast Adventure Begins!

#001: Our UnPodcast Adventure Begins! Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed Subscribe on iTunes For Episode 1, our UnAdventure begins with the most valuable thing an entrepreneur can have, and ends on Jug Mountain. Just the podcast ride you’ve been waiting for. Hear what Alison thinks about a customer faking the grossest product shipment ever and who Scott thinks you should never mess with online. Other topics include: Why QR codes kill kittens What is, and is not, trademark infringement The dumbest move we’ve seen on the Internet. EVER. How to handle false accusations about your brand The importance of good reviews on your site When to walk away from a problem customer How to determine the difference between a troll and a customer with a legitimate complaint When to give a refund even if the customer is wrong How we’ve scared the crap out of brands Why it’s important for the people handling social media to have authority to take care of a problem And so much more. .

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When Keyword (not provided) is 100 Percent of Organic Referrals, What Should Marketers Do? – Whiteboard Tuesday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday! Today I m going to talk about this extremely troublesome and worrisome problem that Google has expanded keyword (not provided) potentially to 100% of all organic referrals. This isn t necessarily that they ve flipped the entire switch, and everyone s going to see it this week, but certainly over the next several months, it s been suggested, we may receive no keyword data at all in referrals from Google. Very troubling and concerning, obviously, if you re a web marketer. I think it should be very troubling and concerning if you re a web user as well, because marketers don t use this data to do evil things or invade people s privacy. Marketers use this data to make the web a better place. The agreement that marketers have always had—that website creators have always had—with search engines, since their inception was, sure, we ll let you crawl our sites, you provide us with the keyword data so that we can improve t

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Google Acquires Unisys Patents Including Java API Patent

Google Acquires Unisys Patents Including Java API Patenthttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seobythesea/Tesr/~3/Pfi6iXywWAg/http://www.seobythesea.com/feed/SEO by the SeaGetting Information about Search and SEO Directly from the Search Engines The post Google Acquires Unisys Patents Including Java API Patent appeared first on Website, SEO and Social Media Management Company.

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#001: Our UnAdventure Begins!

#001: Our UnAdventure Begins! Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed For Episode 1, our UnAdventure begins with the most valuable thing an entrepreneur can have, and ends on Jug Mountain. Just the podcast ride you’ve been waiting for. Hear what Alison thinks about a customer faking the grossest product shipment ever and who Scott thinks you should never mess with online.     Other topics include: Why QR codes kill kittens What is, and is not, trademark infringement The dumbest move we’ve seen on the Internet. EVER. How to handle false accusations about your brand The importance of good reviews on your site When to walk away from a problem customer How to determine the difference between a troll and a customer with a legitimate complaint When to give a refund even if the customer is wrong How we’ve scared the crap out of brands Why it’s important for the people handling social media to have authority to take care of a problem And so much more. . .   Items mentioned i

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Building Your Marketing Funnel with Google Analytics

Do you have an idea of the path a user typically takes to convert on your website? Or, are you simply building traffic from one channel (probably organic) and wondering why it s not converting better? As I ve grown up as a marketer, I ve begun to really appreciate the insights that data can provide us on how users interact with our sites, and more importantly, on how they convert and where the experience can be improved to increase our conversion rates, and thereby our top-line revenue from online channels. I ve recently been very interested in building a full marketing funnel based on Google Analytics data. While it s one thing to be able to identify where conversion discrepancies exist, such as low-converting types of visitors, it s quite another to build a full and informed funnel from your site s data. In order to do this and have an accurate view of where your conversions are actually coming from, you need to first have the following in place: Email URL tracking: Check out Annie

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Google Authorship Troubleshooting: Article Attributed to Wrong Author

One of the toughest Google Authorship troubleshooting requests we get at the Google Authorship and Author Rank community on Google+ concerns misattribution of Authorship in Google search results. Misattribution (Google Search showing an author photo of someone other than the actual author of a content piece) occurs because over the past year-and-a-half or so Google has become more aggressive in trying to attribute Authorship. In many cases, Google will take what appears to be an educated guess at the author of a piece. But sometimes, the fault of misattribution is more the site s responsibility, and that s when some careful troubleshooting (ok, outright sleuthing!) can often uncover the problem. Here s an example mystery attribution that we were able to track down and solve: Community moderator Ann Smarty asked us to look at this result for a search for Time-Saving Apps for Social Media Promotion : A very nice Google Authorship rich snippet search result, right? Only one problem. Nwos

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3 Methods Fueled by Data and Tools to Earn More (and Better) Links – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today I m going to talk a little bit about some data and tools-fueled methodologies to acquire more and better links and, in fact, some links that you may not have been able to find in other ways. So I ll start by saying what does it mean to have a better link? Well, I mean really three things. (A) Editorially given. By that I mean not a link that you go buy. Not a link that you go, sort of, acquire or leave on someone s site unbeknownst to them or get listed in a directory. I mean an editorially given link in that the person who is giving the link runs the website or at least the page where it s being given from, and they intended to link to you and want to link to you and it s out of no other desire other than to share your site or the content that you have, the work that you are doing. They have a relationship with you, they like you, they want to recommend you. Editorially given. (B) From a high-quality, trusted

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From Zero to a Million: 20 Lessons for Starting an Internet Marketing Agency

Mike s disclaimer: This is not a post about how awesome I am, or how there is only one way to build an internet marketing agency. It s a combination of stories and thoughts about what I have gone through building Nifty Marketing. When I started in 2009 there was very little information online about starting, running, or growing an Internet Marketing Agency. The ones that did exist were from superstars that charged a billion dollars an hour. I am not a superstar. My company started in Burley, Idaho. Here s a rap about my town I wrote. My hope with this post is that a few of you who are out there hustling will benefit from doing some of the things that I did, and most of the things that I didn t. Start smart I was in my final semester at BYU-Idaho and had accepted a job to be the chief marketing officer of Rove Pest Control after spending my summers during college as a door-to-door salesman for them. I thought my future was set. But, due to some changes at Rove I knew that I was going t

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Driving Directions vs. Reviews as Ranking Signals for Google Maps

In my college days, I cooked at some local restaurants (free meals made it an attractive option for a starving college student). One of the restaurants was in the center of town, at one end of Main Street, and it was a popular place for local residents who returned over and over. It had a great reputation, and word-of-mouth propelled advertising for the place. Another dining venue I worked at was outside of the center of town, nearby an interstate highway. It didn’t have a great reputation, and very few regular customers, except for people who would stop during mealtime from the busy interstate. The “food” sign from the highway attracted most of the traffic to its dining room. Funny thing is that most of the regulars that frequented the first restaurant rarely had to look up its location, because it was so well known. Most of the people who visited the second restaurant had never been there before, and relied upon the highway sign. There’s another restaurant in that location n

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How to Use Tumblr for SEO and Social Media Marketing

An introduction to Tumblr There are so many social media platforms out there today that online marketers have to be concerned about when promoting content online, that it can be easy to overlook some of the important ones. Tumblr is one of those social networks which is often overlooked, but which has tremendous potential for SEO and social media marketing. I myself was slow to adopt Tumblr as a social media platform, but once I started using it I became hooked by its power and simplicity. Hopefully by the end of this post, you ll feel the same. In this post today I will be covering 1) What Tumblr is and how it works, 2) The benefits of Tumblr compared to other social networks, and 3) Actionable advice on how you can use Tumblr for online marketing, including specific content ideas. Sounds good? Let s get started. Why should I care about Tumblr? Before we get too far, let me provide some stats about Tumblr which should help put things into perspective: 130.5 million blogs on Tumblr, a

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Using the Correct Hreflang Tag: A New Generator Tool

One of the challenges that International SEOs face is correctly targeting the right web presence to the appropriate search audience. Let s start with a couple of scenarios with these challenges so you can see clearly what I m talking about. If I search from a Mexican IP (using a Proxy service, to simulate being in Mexico) in Google Mexico for comprar zapatos en linea, which in English means buy shoes online I get the following results: As you can see, Dafiti has a Mexican website version that is ranking no. 1, which is relevant in this case; but also has a Colombian version ranking no. 3 and an Argentinian version ranking no. 7. All of them are using ccTLDs, which should ideally give geolocation signals to Google. Additionally, there s a Spain site ranking no. 2 called Sarenza, also using a ccTLD. Here s another example, this time for a couple of branded searches, first only for the brand, edreams in this case, which is a popular travel site with a strong international presence and th

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SEO, The Fifth Element

Tweet Tweet I just got back from the Gold Coast having attended the @problogger conference. Darren Rowse opening Problogger Event where I did my SEO Session I was delivering a session on SEO for bloggers. Specifically how to do SEO for wordpress. I was asked many times if I ran SEO courses or if I had any SEO courses that were delivered online. Sadly the answer was no. I used to run SEO Workshops about 5 or 6 years ago. I stopped because I found that there were more people that wanted me to do their SEO than do it themselves. What Would You Want In An SEO Course? Having being inspired by Darren and others at the conference as well as the feedback I received from those who attended, I have decided to create an SEO course. What would you want to see in a course like that? A business owners or blogger’s SEO course would be very different to a tech SEO course. For business owners here would be my top 5 must haves. 5 Things A Business Owner Should Learn About SEO 1. Keyword research The

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12 Scalable Link-Building Tactics

Link building/earning is essential in online marketing, and not just because it improves your SEO. It also helps a website be discovered (click-through visitors), generate leads, connect with other publishers (relationships), and build a stronger online brand presence. Although establishing yourself as an authority to eventually earn links throughout the process is what search engines naturally want websites/brands to do, you still can t disregard artificial link building (link marketing). Link marketing is an initiative that should also be strongly considered, as this practice makes a brand more well known in its online space—and sets it up to genuinely earn links in the future. The tactics listed in this post are from the 4-part newsletter series that I launched a couple of weeks ago. Below are the guidelines covered by the series, mostly about implementing some of the most scalable link-building tactics today. These can be used by agencies, SMBs and enterprise-level companies. #1

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Avoiding Disaster: How to Prevent the 3 Most Common Content Marketing #Fails

During my SearchLove San Diego presentation last week, I talked about Why Your Content Marketing Initiatives are Failing (And How to Fix Them). I highlighted eight ways content marketing programs can fail or suffer, along with ways to prevent or overcome these various obstacles. I separated my presentation into three distinct sections of failure: tactical, strategic, and internal. While all sections and associated #fails are important to address, strategic failures are the ones that tend to affect the other two. For example, if the strategy is off, then how you tactically execute your content and campaigns will suffer. Likewise, if you can t prove your strategic game, you won t get the internal buy-in required to set up an optimal content marketing program. Thus, strategic is the area you really want to focus on when optimizing your content marketing initiatives. While there are many ways you can up your strategic game, there are three biggies. I ll go through each of these in more de

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SEO Presentation PBEvent 2013

Tweet Tweet This is my first year at the PBEVENT and I’m giving an SEO Presentation, naturally. I’ve known @problogger for about 10 years and have always been a big fan of his work so I was delighted to be asked to present. On the flight up to the PBEvent every second passenger seemed to be going. On the way to the PBEvENT to do SEO Presentation SEO Basics PBEVENT 2013 As I have only an hour to present I’m distilling the SEO down into the following elements. 1. Get Google Authorship setup 2. Do a site:website.com search on your site to make sure you have the right no. of pages indexed. 3. Use your keywords in title, H1, early in the article, in alt tags, filenames and captions. 4. Use a plugin like All-in-one-seo or Yoast SEO to make the above a little easier. 5. Write a series of at least three posts for a difficult phrase. 6. Get a link off your home page to the post you want to rank for. First impressions of PBEvent I’m very impressed so far. Some of the lessons that blogge

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The Kind of Video You Should Create for Your Business – Whiteboard Friday

Loads of companies are starting to wonder: How should I do online video? It s not enough to just say, We re going to go and do video, because it begs the question, What kind of content should we create? And so today I just want to talk through a number of the different kinds of styles of video that you should be making as a business and explain what kind of style that content looks like, where it should be hosted, and all that kind of thing. So I want to start with things that you go and make in-house. If you can go and purchase a camera, a set of lights, and a microphone like this one here, then you can go and create all these different things, and it won t cost you too much money. You just need a little bit of editing skill. If you need to hire in some freelance talent to do that, then that s absolutely fine. The first one of these is product videos. What I m talking about here is really videos that are going to help improve conversions on a specific page. Videos designed to maybe h

http://ravensiege.com/seo/the-kind-of-video-you-should-create-for-your-business-whiteboard-friday/

Five Steps to Finding (the Right) Guest-Blogging Opportunities

Guest blogging isn t just a link building tactic (that has been spammed and abused). It s an excellent way to build your credibility, your community, and your customer base. But you have to be strategic about it and put some quality effort into it. When you guest blog, you ve been provided the opportunity to leverage someone else s audience, someone else s brand, and someone else s established forum. That means, if you re doing it right, guest blogging should be some of your best work. Think of it as a speaking engagement. You wouldn t get up in front of a group of people unprepared. You would take the time to carefully craft your message in order to make the biggest impact on your audience. And when you re putting in all of that hard work, you don t just want to guest blog anywhere. You want to strategically put your effort into blogs that are a match for your values, philosophies, and company. Because ultimately, you re using guest blogging as a tactic to attract customers to your b

http://ravensiege.com/seo/five-steps-to-finding-the-right-guest-blogging-opportunities/

Forget Google’s Games – Make Social a Primary Traffic Source

For most business owners social is a toy. The marketing equivalent of that friend we all have outside our professional lives that you just don’t talk to your work colleagues about. Even though they are really the life and soul of the party. But things are changing. A recent Forrester survey unlocked some startling stats about how we are all discovering things online. Discovery is Google’s heartland. The very thing it has built its empire upon and yet it seems that a seismic shift is occurring. According to the research piece almost 50% of those in the 18 to 23 bracket used social as their primary discovery engine in the last year. Those stats should make Google think very carefully indeed about its future strategy and how to keep its users, and advertisers, happy. For a marketer such information should be impetus to think very seriously about strategy, and where to invest that budget in the next few years as we are finally given another way to access audiences at scale online. Tip

http://ravensiege.com/seo/forget-googles-games-make-social-a-primary-traffic-source-3/

The 2013 Local Search Ecosystems (and a GetListed Upgrade)

Well, it s been nearly a year since I published the last version(s) of this graphic. That s a long time in a space that evolves as quickly as Local Search, but frankly, 2013 hasn t seen quite the turmoil of 2012, in which Google+ Local, Apple Maps, and Facebook Nearby were all released within seven months of each other. We ll be adding all of these graphics to the GetListed.org Learning Center in the next few weeks, with full references and screenshots showing attribution. But while I had a bit of time before the fall conference season—I ll be speaking more about these at Local University Advanced in just a few weeks—I thought I d consolidate my thoughts and get them into a blog post. My thoughts on the U.S. ecosystem The Big Three are now the Big Four Since I first started researching the local search space back in 2006-2007, Infogroup, Localeze, and Acxiom have been the undisputed primary data suppliers in the U.S. Although multiple independent sources heard from Yelp this summe

http://ravensiege.com/seo/the-2013-local-search-ecosystems-and-a-getlisted-upgrade/

Forget Google’s Games – Make Social a Primary Traffic Source

For most business owners social is a toy. The marketing equivalent of that friend we all have outside our professional lives that you just don’t talk to your work colleagues about. Even though they are really the life and soul of the party. But things are changing. A recent Forrester survey unlocked some startling stats about how we are all discovering things online. Discovery is Google’s heartland. The very thing it has built its empire upon and yet it seems that a seismic shift is occurring. According to the research piece almost 50% of those in the 18 to 23 bracket used social as their primary discovery engine in the last year. Those stats should make Google think very carefully indeed about its future strategy and how to keep its users, and advertisers, happy. For a marketer such information should be impetus to think very seriously about strategy, and where to invest that budget in the next few years as we are finally given another way to access audiences at scale online. Tip

http://ravensiege.com/seo/forget-googles-games-make-social-a-primary-traffic-source-2/

3 Authorship Resources You Should See

Tweet Tweet As you know, when Google begins to bang on about something it is a good idea to pay attention. Usually if they spend time trying to get people to take note of a concept or idea they are implementing it into their algorithm. Now they are ramping up around authorship. Here are a few things that have happened recently that are worth paying attention too. Authorship and SEO 1. The Rel = “author” FAQ, This is a really good resource provided by Google that answers a lot of questions about Authorship. Interestingly authorship is intended for real people only. Not mascots or fictional characters. This is another example of Google wanting to connect a piece of content to an actual human, so they can tie to your “permanent record”. 2. Easy Authorship Setup. In case you haven’t seen this resource it is a simple way to setup authorship. 3. Rolling out to a platform near you If you publish on WordPress.com or Typepad .com, Google announced yesterday that they are automaticall

http://ravensiege.com/seo/3-authorship-resources-you-should-see/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday-12/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday-11/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday-10/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday-9/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday-8/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday-7/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday-6/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday-5/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday-4/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday-3/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday-2/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday/

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google Analytics – Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I m going to talk a little bit about the ranking factors survey that we did this year and specifically some of the results from that. One of my favorite questions that we ask in our ranking factors survey, which happens every two years and goes out to a number of SEO experts. This year, 128 SEO experts responded, sort of folks who were hand chosen by us as being very, very knowledgeable in the field. We asked them, based on these sort of thematic clusters of ranking elements, things like domain level link authority versus page level keyword agnostic features, weight them for us. You know, give a percentage that you would assign if you were giving an overall assessment of the importance of this factor in Google s ranking algorithm. So this is opinion data. This is not fact. This is not actually what Google s using. This is merely the aggregated collective opinions of a lot of smart people who study this fie

http://ravensiege.com/seo/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-google-analytics-whiteboard-friday/

Why Local Businesses Don’t Need Big Budgets for Their Content Marketing

Time and again we hear the same old argument that we shouldn t be building links, but that we should be focusing on developing exciting and unique content that encourages organic linking all by itself. I completely agree with this statement, but I see businesses misinterpret this far too often. If you run a local business and have a relatively small budget for your online marketing, is spending that money on a flashy infographic going to be the best use of your resources? More often than not, it isn t. Big brands vs. local businesses The marketing goals for local business and multinational brands are often quite similar in basic principle—they want to establish their brand name as a leader within their field and the geographic areas that they serve. The big difference here is that a local business is looking for large levels of brand exposure to their customers on a micro-level (i.e. they want to reach their customers within the local area that they serve). Major brands also want ma

http://ravensiege.com/seo/why-local-businesses-dont-need-big-budgets-for-their-content-marketing-4/

Comparing Rank-Tracking Methods: Browser vs. Crawler vs. Webmaster Tools

Deep down, we all have the uncomfortable feeling that rank-tracking is unreliable at best, and possibly outright misleading. Then, we walk into our boss’s office, pick up the phone, or open our email, and hear the same question: “Why aren t we #1 yet?!” Like it or not, rank-tracking is still a fact of life for most SEOs, and ranking will be a useful signal and diagnostic for when things go very wrong (or very right) for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, there are many ways to run a search, and once you factor in localization, personalization, data centers, data removal (such as [not provided]), and transparency (or the lack thereof), it’s hard to know how any keyword really ranks. This post is an attempt to compare four common rank-tracking methods: Browser – Personalized Browser – Incognito Crawler Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) I’m going to do my best to keep this information unbiased and even academic in tone. Moz builds rank-tracking tools based in part on crawled

http://ravensiege.com/seo/comparing-rank-tracking-methods-browser-vs-crawler-vs-webmaster-tools/

Why Local Businesses Don’t Need Big Budgets for Their Content Marketing

Time and again we hear the same old argument that we shouldn t be building links, but that we should be focusing on developing exciting and unique content that encourages organic linking all by itself. I completely agree with this statement, but I see businesses misinterpret this far too often. If you run a local business and have a relatively small budget for your online marketing, is spending that money on a flashy infographic going to be the best use of your resources? More often than not, it isn t. Big brands vs. local businesses The marketing goals for local business and multinational brands are often quite similar in basic principle—they want to establish their brand name as a leader within their field and the geographic areas that they serve. The big difference here is that a local business is looking for large levels of brand exposure to their customers on a micro-level (i.e. they want to reach their customers within the local area that they serve). Major brands also want ma

http://ravensiege.com/seo/why-local-businesses-dont-need-big-budgets-for-their-content-marketing-3/

Why Local Businesses Don’t Need Big Budgets for Their Content Marketing

Time and again we hear the same old argument that we shouldn t be building links, but that we should be focusing on developing exciting and unique content that encourages organic linking all by itself. I completely agree with this statement, but I see businesses misinterpret this far too often. If you run a local business and have a relatively small budget for your online marketing, is spending that money on a flashy infographic going to be the best use of your resources? More often than not, it isn t. Big brands vs. local businesses The marketing goals for local business and multinational brands are often quite similar in basic principle—they want to establish their brand name as a leader within their field and the geographic areas that they serve. The big difference here is that a local business is looking for large levels of brand exposure to their customers on a micro-level (i.e. they want to reach their customers within the local area that they serve). Major brands also want ma

http://ravensiege.com/seo/why-local-businesses-dont-need-big-budgets-for-their-content-marketing-2/

Why Local Businesses Don’t Need Big Budgets for Their Content Marketing

Time and again we hear the same old argument that we shouldn t be building links, but that we should be focusing on developing exciting and unique content that encourages organic linking all by itself. I completely agree with this statement, but I see businesses misinterpret this far too often. If you run a local business and have a relatively small budget for your online marketing, is spending that money on a flashy infographic going to be the best use of your resources? More often than not, it isn t. Big brands vs. local businesses The marketing goals for local business and multinational brands are often quite similar in basic principle—they want to establish their brand name as a leader within their field and the geographic areas that they serve. The big difference here is that a local business is looking for large levels of brand exposure to their customers on a micro-level (i.e. they want to reach their customers within the local area that they serve). Major brands also want ma

http://ravensiege.com/seo/why-local-businesses-dont-need-big-budgets-for-their-content-marketing/

17 Tactics for More Twitter Followers (And Two New Followerwonk Features to Help!)

Let s talk turkey! And by turkey I mean followers. And by talk I mean get more! To start, put aside those quaint olden-times notions that seeking more followers is unsavory. Heck, even Twitter promotes their tools as means to quickly get more: Of course, the early days of Twitter were very different than today. Back then, there were all sorts of spammy ways to get followers. Perhaps it is the hangover from those days that makes people queasy when thinking of techniques to get followers. Nowadays, though, Twitter has clamped down hard. Spammy techniques will get you banished quickly. And most of those old grey-hat methods don t even work: Twitter has radically limited how many people you can follow, as well as how many you can follow each hour. You might ask, why do I want more followers anyway? Twitter does little for SEO (at least not directly). And followers are just chaff that don t listen to me anyway (maybe so). Well, I don t want to get into a whole sales pitch for social media

http://ravensiege.com/seo/17-tactics-for-more-twitter-followers-and-two-new-followerwonk-features-to-help/

Pro Tips for SEO Keyword Research

Tweet Tweet In this week’s video I take a shot at predicting the outcome of Australia’s Federal Election by looking at what people are typing into Google and what they are watching on YouTube. Here are my top 4 tips for keyword research that will help you pinpoint what your customers are looking for. 1. Use Google Trends For Seasonal Changes In the search above, you can clearly see the different search spikes for these two men over the last 90 days. If you have a product or service that is seasonal you will clearly see that in Google trends. If you take a longer view you will also see the decline or increase in popularity of a certain phrase. Take SEO for instance. As more people understand what it is the search volumes grow. 2. Use Trends For Related Terms If you see a decline over time for a search phrase but you know you are in a growing market, it could be that the searches have become more sophisticated or fragmented. For instance in the search below less people are searching

http://ravensiege.com/seo/pro-tips-for-seo-keyword-research/

Joining Go Fish Digital

Something was missing, and I didn’t exactly know what it was. Around a year or so ago, I joined a big agency, and that gave me a chance to look at a lot of sites, provide in-depth consultation audits for a number of clients, perform monthly strategy reviews for others, inform the sales team on issues that might be helpful to address in proposals, and help other SEOs within the company when they asked for it. I enjoyed doing these things, but there was something missing. I enjoyed working with the crew that I worked with as well. It’s great to work with people who are excited about the Web and about learning and growing. I’m now going to be working with a new crew who are filled with excitement and energy and innovation. I’m officially making this announcement on a Google Hangout On Air, titled Link Building Algorithms with Eric Enge and Bill Slawski where we are going to be joined by David Harry, Steve Webb, Chris Countey, Pete Meyers, and David Amerland. We are going to be ta

http://ravensiege.com/seo/joining-go-fish-digital/

SEO in the Personalization Age

Driverless cars, paired with companies like Uber, will soon transport us about the city, offering us the extra time to revise our notes before an important business meeting. Leap-motion interfaces are available. Marketing has become personalized and targeted. We have experienced a loss of privacy in the name of a supposed greater safety. In many respects, we can say that the future is (almost) now. Of all the things that were presented in Minority Report, the one that most concerns us as SEOs and inbound marketers is the personalization of experiences that our potential customers have when looking for a product and/or information, when they share things online, and when they interact with our brands on our websites. Search marketing and personalization Personalization in search marketing is not something new—it was (re)launched on Google in 2005. Still, it was only with the launch of Search, plus Your World (January 2012), the rollout of the Venice Update (February 2012), and the in

http://ravensiege.com/seo/seo-in-the-personalization-age/

Planning for Success: Three Essential Consulting Project Plans

Being a consultant can be an intense experience. Every client (and every day!) presents a new challenge. In my experience that isn t a product of the ever-changing state of affairs in SEO or inbound marketing. In fact, I don t lose sleep over every algorithm change—there are plenty of smarter people from whom I can draw that sort of information. What keeps me awake at night is how I can shape my projects to make them successful. A lot of people work together with me every day: my clients, my teammates, and teams in other offices. Everyone needs to collaborate to even have a shot at success. How will we pull that off? How will they communicate? What do they need to do this week? Next month? Next quarter? In short, I focus on planning, and I focus on it in three specific scopes: Pitching (how do we estimate project size in advance?) Strategy (how do we know what we are going to do, and when?) Execution (how do we ensure that these things actually get done?) Three different tasks with

http://ravensiege.com/seo/planning-for-success-three-essential-consulting-project-plans/