4 Ways To Avoid An SEO Disaster Of Monumental Proportions

I made a mistake. It was a classic SEO blunder. Don’t judge me — it was one that you (and almost every other SEO) has probably made as well. What did I do? I allowed a client to sign a contract without fully vetting them first. I didn’t ask the right questions, and I wasn’t…

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The End Of One-Size-Fits-All SEO Reporting

If your organization is like most, the process of establishing KPIs to track natural search probably looks something like this: “Put together high-level KPIs such as X and Y, and run it by a few key stakeholders.” At first glance, that process likely seems to have worked pretty well…

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Study Shows No Clear Evidence That Google Plus Drives Ranking

At SMX Advanced, I presented results from a study we had done that convinced me that links in shares from Google Plus and Facebook behave like traditional web-based links. My statements at SMX Advanced were later disputed by Matt Cutts during his keyno…

How Search Engines Work — Really!

For those of us in SEO (or aspiring to be), there are a lot of little details that fill our days. Server architecture, 301 redirects, 404 errors, title tags, and various other things. Sometimes, we forget to sit back and figure out what it all means. A…

8 SEO Cleanse & Recharge Ideas For Fall 2013

Whether you mark it by Labor Day or the Autumnal (Fall) Equinox, summer is coming to an end — which makes this a great time to give your website an SEO cleanse and recharge the old batteries. Here are 8 things you can do to strengthen quality. 1. Fix Errors Listed In Webmaster Tools Both…

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10 Reasons Why Search Is In Vogue: Hot Trends In Semantic Search

Search is strongly featured in the all-important September issue of Vogue, which includes a 10-page layout of models wearing Google Glass, along with an in-depth feature on Yahoo CEO, Marissa Meyer, looking simply stunning and chic. Google Glass and th…

SEO Reporting To Shift Your Bottom Line

PPC & CRO are heavily report-driven and have excellent data visibility, and as a result are generally better understood to be a tool rather than an end in itself. SEO, however, has often fallen into the reporting-for-reporting’s-sake trap and there have been some surprising stand-out reports…

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Future SEO: String Entity Optimization

Imagine the future of SEO — a future in which you forget about using keywords or their synonyms multiple times on a page. In the future, this will be obsolete. Search engines of the future will provide users with answers to their queries by internally verifying validated data that link to…

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SEO Checklist For Startup Websites

Startups have a lot going on. Staffing, outreach, overhead, paperwork, development, testing, financing — and that’s just before lunch. Regardless of the industry, startups are by their nature volatile businesses that are stuck bootstrapping much of the heavy lifting early on in their…

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How to Recover When Your Content Is Stolen

Last month, I shared a case study of a client I’m currently working with on a duplicate content issue. It turns out that this particular site had significantly lost rankings over the past year because of other sites “lifting” their content, often verbatim, causing the…

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SEO Ambiguity & Pattern Recognition

As search marketers, we constantly have to deal with ambiguity — whether trying to reverse engineer a Google algorithm or simply prioritize and forecast the impact of the SEO recommendations we’re making. In this article, we’re going to explore what drives SEO ambiguity. Spoiler…

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6 SEO Challenges Every Business Owner & Marketer Must Contend With In 2014

There isn’t much left of this year. Companies that haven’t started planning their marketing strategy and budgeting for 2014 must begin soon. When it comes to online marketing, most businesses rely excessively upon Web analytics to decide what was (or wasn’t) effective. What they…

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Global Issues Shift Global SEO & SEM Budgets Even Faster To Asia

It’s always interesting to contemplate how global events affect us, even in our own back yards — and turbulent times have definitely impacted online marketing budgets. An analysis of several hundred clients with online marketing initiatives spanning over 100 regions around the world…

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Penalized & Sad: When To Abandon The Sinking Ship

Sometimes the captain can’t afford to go down with the ship, no matter the temptation or emotional investment. Every few weeks, I receive another hopeless phone call from another desperate webmaster. Since Penguin, I’ve seen more ships go down than I care to count. Websites that have delved…

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