I'm Being Outranked by a Spammer - Whiteboard Friday What do you do when you are being outranked by a spammer? It's one of the most frustrating things that an SEO can face, but before jumping to conclusions it's important to understand what exactly is happening. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand gives us helpful advice with many important steps to follow if you discover that a spammer is outranking you. Let us know your thoughts on this challenging problem in the comments below! Howdy SEOmoz fans! 120 Marketing Tactics for Blogging Success Blogging success can seem like a distant dream when you start out. You aren’t quite sure what to blog about. The choice of technology can be overwhelming. Then learning to use the features and functions of your blogging software is a maze of confusion and confronting choices. What plugins do I choose? Then you start and draft your first post. Then more doubt sets in. How do I write those awesome headlines that will draw attention? Then the killer doubt. Why would anyone want to hear what “I” have to say? So you push past the fears and you hit the publish button. Six months into your blogging journey more nagging fears arise. But world domination is felt to be more a fantasy than reality. Persistence is key This is maybe what you don’t want to hear. It is a matter of keeping the faith in yourself. Press on. My secret sauce recipe So what’s worked for me? What has sustained me and kept me ahead of the blogging curve can be summed up with three words, reading, writing and doing. Curiosity.
StumbleUpon's Mobile Growth Rockets 800%; Company Unveils Major Redesign With 250 Brand Partners StumbleUpon, the discovery engine that enables its users to "Stumble" onto personalized web content, unveiled a major redesign Monday, introducing a slew of upgrades that include a streamlined interface, recommendation improvements, and the addition of brand channels. But what's really driving the overhaul isn't some product-cycle deadline--it's StumbleUpon's mobile growth, which has rocketed 800% in the last year, becoming core to the company and its future business potential. "We're doing a complete relaunch of the site, and a lot of it is inspired by our mobile experience," says CEO Garrett Camp. "It's basically because of our mobile traction. Like Reddit and Digg, StumbleUpon helps users discover new content, but with a slight twist: a "Stumble" button adds a bit of random serendipity into the equation, allowing users to leap to unknown content with one click. "Mobile is going to be big [for us]," Camp says. "I think this will spread awareness," Camp says.
Find Your Site's Biggest Technical Flaws in 60 Minutes The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz. I've deliberately put myself in some hot water to demonstrate how I would do a technical SEO site audit in 1 hour to look for quick fixes, (and I've actually timed myself just to make it harder). For the pros out there, here's a look into a fellow SEO 's workflow; for the aspiring, here's a base set of checks you can do quickly. I've got some lovely volunteers who have kindly allowed me to audit their sites to show you what can be done in as little as 60 minutes. I'm specifically going to look for crawling, indexing and potential Panda threatening issues like: Architecture (unnecessary redirection, orphaned pages, nofollow) Indexing & Crawling (canonical, noindex, follow, nofollow, redirects, robots.txt, server errors) Duplicate content & On page SEO (repeated text, pagination, parameter based, dupe/missing titles, h1s, etc..) Let's meet our volunteers!
Google+ Pages, Google Direct Connect, and You – The Future | Market & Convert It’s finally true. The moment we’ve all been waiting for. That mark in internet history that shall be known forever as the day Facebook shook on its base. Lol. Back when Google+ launched in invitation-only Beta mode, tons of business, bands, and blogs rushed to create business accounts. We debated on Social Media Guerilla if Should Your Small Business Invest In Google+? Now, it’s time to get fully engaged in Google+ and dedicate as much as possible of your social media budget towards it. As you watch Bradley talk about how Google sees Plus as a way for them to learn more about their users and how to improve their experience using Google Products, which product specifically comes to mind? And, if by “improved experience” you understood “tailoring your search results based on what your friends shared/recommended/reviewed”, then you should really be part of our staff – because you’re absolutely right. But Direct Connect is just the beginning. Written by: LeoSaraceni Profile / Bio
Don’t Panic! A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Surviving SEO Changes STILL WITH US?! I hope so. Because I’M still here and trying to trick my body that I don’t need coffee! We’re going to talk about how to survive SEO changes. Up first is Mark Munroe. Sometimes its not easy to survive in this industry. How to protect yourself from algo changes: We’re told just write great content! Google’s Goals For Panda Gives people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possibleReduce rankings for low-quality sitesProvide better ranking for high-quality sites The same statements can apply to most Google updates PandaMay DayAbove the Fold Freshness. Google is always moving toward the same thing. Do not chase the algorithm. To Survive and Thrive – Think Like Google Think like a Google Product Manager. Good Search Experience User searches on Google –> User clicks through to site –> They shut down their computer and go. Poor Search Experience You have to focus on the experience because good content is not enough. Optimizing the SERP Experience Recommendations
Survey: Inbound Marketing Cost Per Lead Is 60% Lower Than Outbound So, how can your organization lower its marketing costs by 60%? Two years of data are clear: Do inbound marketing . HubSpot's 2010 State of Inbound Marketing report , being released today, shows that Inbound-dominated organizations average 60% lower cost per lead than outbound-dominated organizations! The report is based on a survey of 231 people involved with or familiar with their business' marketing strategy. We asked them to provide their average cost per lead, then compared the cost-per-lead for organizations that focus on inbound marketing ( Social media , blogs , PPC , SEO ) to the cost per lead for organization that focus on outbound marketing (direct mail, telemarketing, trade shows). This year's cost-per-lead results are remarkably consistent with the 61% lower cost per lead that we found a year ago when we conducted the same survey . Other key findings of the 2010 State of Inbound Marketing report:
10 Content Ideas To Improve Organic Visibility In the past series of articles, we focused on determining what keywords were already generating business for a web site and then optimizing your existing pages to improve organic results for those keywords. In this and some future articles, we’ll cover adding new content to a website as well as other web venues to improve organic visibility. When we work on a comprehensive marketing project for a client, we first learn about their business and then discover what marketing tactics their competitors have employed. At the same time, we learn what web venues are available to focus our marketing towards. Next, we develop a strategy that includes many tactical options including content for their site and other web venues, social marketing, referral site development and link building, etc. Together, we decide which of the tactics to begin deploying. Keyword Research Quite a bit of our content ideas for a specific client are developed as we do keyword research. 1. Tip: Sell Yourself On These Pages 2.
How Social Media Helped Kate Spade Become a Global Brand If our play-by-play coverage is any testament, Kate Spade New York ranks among the strongest brands in the online marketing space. From Twitter and Tumblr to Instagram and online video, we've been consistently impressed with the quality and strength of voice the fashion and lifestyle label has brought to each new platform. We're not alone: Luxury research and advisory firm L2 ranked Kate Spade second in its third annual Digital IQ Index in the fashion category, just behind Burberry. Four years ago, the label's future was less certain. Since then, the label has expanded aggressively into new product categories and markets, introducing a ready-to-wear line in 2009 and establishing flagships in half-a-dozen new countries. What was Kate Spade like when you came on board in 2008? What I found was really a niche brand with an amazing heritage and amazing DNA ... Can you tell me about the five-year plan you developed at the time? How has Kate Spade expanded internationally in that period?
Search Engine Marketing - Nine Questions to Ask When Hiring an SEO Expert If you're not an SEO expert, you might wonder what to ask when hiring SEO staff or consultants. How do you tell the difference between someone who knows exactly what he or she is doing and someone who just knows a lot of lingo? To help out, Rand Fishkin created an interview primer for a "Whiteboard Friday" video at the SEOmoz blog. He divides SEO-centric questions into three categories: General Knowledge. First, determine whether the candidate is well-versed in the SEO basics. What is rel=canonical? Strategy and Tactics. How would you create a site to rank for this set of keywords? → end article previewRead the Full Article Membership is required to access this how-to marketing article ... don't worry though, it's FREE!