How Did The Experts Get Their Best Backlinks?

, , ,

Now that we’ve all hopefully gotten over the “links are dead” hysteria, SEOs and webmasters are beginning to worry about their backlink profiles again. In the past it was easy. You could buy links or make enact one of the many now-banned tactics to try to artificially inflate your backlink profile and it seemed like no one was the wiser.

Of course things have changed quite drastically, as you should know by now. Backlinks need to be earned, and they need to be quality. As many analysts will tell you, building backlinks these days is more about relationship building than it is about farming as many links as possible. But how are you supposed to earn these prized high quality links?

SEOChat asked a long list of SEO experts where their most valuable links came from, and each gives an example of how you can earn links yourself by simply providing a service to your users and important figures related to your industry.

/0 Comments

Facebook Has Given You 90 Days To Shut Down Your “Like Gate”

, , , ,

New ImageCountless businesses have 90 days to make significant changes to their Facebook strategies and pages. With an update to its Platform Policy, Facebook killed the so-called “like gate” which required users to Like a Page before they could be gain access to content, apps, rewards, or be eligible for contests.

The new policy is set to take effect on Nov. 5 and any page that doesn’t comply will have the gates disabled. New apps made after the announcement will also be unable to create new like gates.

Here’s the explanation from the latest developer blog from Facebook:

You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s Page. To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.

Like gating isn’t as popular as it used to be, but it is still a relatively common Facebook fan-building strategy.

It is important to note that it is still acceptable to use incentives. You simply can’t use incentives that require a user to Like a page to gain access to content.

faceboo-like-gate-600x358

/0 Comments

8 Things Anyone Can Do To Improve Your Paid Search Marketing Efforts

, , ,

Merlin2525_Paid_Business_Stamp_2As online optimization and marketing become more and more essential to the success of smaller businesses, many small businesses are trying to manage as much online marketing on their own as they can manage with limited time and resources.

Most often, this results in the company taking on relatively small SEO responsibilities which can give a slight boost to their online visibility and performance while missing out on the larger benefits of hiring professionals. With limited resources, this may sometimes be the best option, although it doesn’t pack anywhere near the punch.

One of the biggest problems with trying to pickup SEO as a part-time strategy for your business is that SEO is only a part of the equation. These days online marketing is only truly effective when you use a holistic approach that combines social media marketing, SEO, paid search, and even traditional marketing.

Many smaller businesses employ someone savvy enough to even contribute to social media marketing efforts, but typically the do-it-yourself approach results in paid search getting neglected and you missing out on some of the most successful parts of a successful online marketing strategy.

You don’t have to leave all your pay per click (PPC) efforts to the professionals however. If you can’t afford to hire someone to take on your paid search marketing, you can still gain some humble improvements and increase your conversions with some beginner level SEO. Huffington Post shared a list of 8 things anyone can do to improve your PPC efforts, and you might be surprised at what you can accomplish by just sticking your toes into the pool.

If you are pleased with the results, it might even be the push you need to invest serious resources into a strong online presence in all areas.

/0 Comments

Give Your Rankings a Small Boost By Improving Your Site’s Security

, , , , ,

google-security-360In the past, several Google employees have suggested they would like to see site security included as a ranking factor within their search engine. Now, Google has followed through and announced that going HTTPS, or adding a SSL 2048-bit key certificate on your site, can potentially give you a small ranking boost.

Don’t expect to propel yourself to the top of the search results by adding HTTPS, as Google refers to it as “a very lightweight signal” within the larger scheme of things and only affects “fewer than 1% of global queries.” However, it was also implied that the new ranking signal may get beefed up in the future in an attempt to encourage all site owners to increase the security on their sites.

The change should come as little surprise to anyone who heard Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, publicly endorse the idea of making SSL a ranking factor just a few months ago.

Unlike many ranking changes that Google makes, the risk of drawbacks is small. Google has been saying that switching to HTTPS should not have an effect on SEO for years, so long as you take a few steps to guarantee your traffic stays steady. Mostly, such steps relate to communicating to Google so it understands how to read your site.

Google has also said they will be releasing for information and resources for webmasters deciding to adopt HTTPS, but for now all they offer are these tips:

  • Decide the kind of certificate you need: single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate
  • Use 2048-bit key certificates
  • Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain
  • Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains
  • Check out our site move article for more guidelines on how to change your website’s address
  • Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt
  • Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible. Avoid the noindex robots meta tag.
/0 Comments

What Do The Experts Think of Google’s Latest Algorithm?

, , ,

It has been a few weeks since Google caught the search world by surprise with the release of its local search algorithm which has been nicknamed “Pigeon.” Out of all of Google’s search algorithms, Pigeon was likely the most well-received at its initial roll-out, but is that still the same now that some time has passed?

PigeonWhile we at TMO still feel that Pigeon has the potential to help local businesses and searchers improve their local results, it is always good to get the opinions from other experts in the search marketing community. Thankfully, Search Engine Land did just that. They compiled the opinions of several authority figures in search marketing, and needless to say the consensus is mixed.

Much of the criticism is related to buggy issues likely to be resolved in the near future, but there is also plenty worthy of discussing and lots of room for improvement. You can find out exactly what the experts had to say here.

/0 Comments

Bing Announces New Site Safety Page

, , ,

Bing is working hard to improve user safety. But rather than censoring or blocking sites that Bing deems to be a threat, the search engine is offering extra information so that users can make informed decisions and hopefully avoid sites that may have been compromised.

Bing announced the Bing Site Safety Page this week on the Bing Webmaster Blog. The safety page will show up on search results if Bing has identified a specific site as having a potential safety issue. This means users will receive a warning that a site might have problems and the webmasters will have added incentive to resolve the issues quickly.

Below you can see a screen shot of what the alert will look like and what the full Bing Site Safety Page looks like.

Bing Safety

The Bing Site Safety Page will include information such as how long the issue has existed and when the last scan took place. Webmasters will also have extended information about how to resolve the security issue within Bing Webmaster Tools.

The Bing Safety Page offers:

  • The reason the page is being marked as malicious, e.g. Malicious Javascript, DriveBy Attacks, Malware Network References, etc…
  • The date the infection was first detected
  • How often the URL has been scanned
  • The date the infection was most recently detected

Bing also said they planned on expanding the page further in the near future with more data such as:

  • The total number of URLs detected as malicious on the site
  • The types of malware found
  • The last date of suspicious activity
  • When the site was last scanned
  • Warning trigger rate/ coverage
/0 Comments

In an Increasingly Mobile World, Consumers are Learning to Trust Mobile Ads

, , , ,

The report from the 3rd Annual U.S. Mobile Path-to-Purchase Study conducted by xAd and Telmetrics shows that as consumers mobile shoppers are increasingly receptive to relevant mobile ads, reflecting the increasing trust in mobile browsing.

The report, published earlier this week, shows that nearly 50 percent of mobile shoppers reported they felt mobile ads are informative or helpful, up 113 percent from 32 percent last year.

Even more, 40 percent of those surveyed said they have clicked on ads and nearly half of those have taken secondary actions such as viewing the referring website and searching for additional product information.

Clearly, mobile advertising is a blossoming target as the internet becomes increasingly mobile. In a market where mobile use has begun outpacing desktop access, it makes sense that users would become equally interested in relevant ads for their mobile devices.

You can get more information in the infographic shared below, or you can view the report in full here.

MP2P_2014_USR2_AdReceptiveness-305x1024

/0 Comments

Google’s New Product Ratings Could Mean Big Things For Online Retailers

, , , ,

Google Product Ratings

Google has been working hard to expand their reviews and ratings systems, and yesterday they made a big step by announcing that they will be introducing product ratings for Product Listing Ads (PLAs).

The announcement, which appeared on the Inside Adwords Blog, stated:

Product reviews provide critical information to shoppers making purchase decisions. To help shoppers easily find this information when searching for products, we’re introducing product ratings on Product Listing Ads.

Shoppers browsing on Google will see the typical product listings they have become accustomed to, but beneath the listings product ratings will also be shown in the shape of stars and review counts. For now it appears the changes will only be seen on search results within the United States.

The data used for these review listings will be gathered from multiple sources, such as merchants, third party aggregators, and editorial sites.

If reviews for businesses are any indication of what this change will bring, it seems very likely that businesses offering products with largely positive reviews will be able to leverage the updated listings to not only increase their click-through rates, but to also increase conversions overall.

/0 Comments

Everything You Want to Know About Google Analytics After The iOS App Release

, , , ,

iOS MobileA few weeks ago Google finally got around to releasing the iOS version of Google Analytics. The app had been available for Android for quite some time, but the release to iOS makes website data available to webmasters at any time and it is fair to assume some business owners and webmasters may be trying to use Google Analytics for their first time.

While Analytics is without a doubt one of the most powerful tools for analyzing your website and how others are accessing it, it can also be a bit overwhelming for those who aren’t familiar with the layout and aren’t well versed in the terminology.

To help familiarize new and inexperienced webmasters with Google Analytics, Emma Barnes, who offers training on Google Analytics from Branded3, reviewed many of the most common questions she receieves and the terminology you can expect to run into when using Analytics.

Once those questions are out of the way, you may find yourself tasked with another question: “just what am I supposed to do with all this information?” For that, you may want to browse the recent article titled “11 Things You Should Be Doing With Google Analytics” from Search Engine Journal.

If you want to be in control of your website, you need all the information possible to make the right choices. Google Analytics can give you the numbers you want, but these resources will help you know what to do with it.

/0 Comments

Facebook Sees More Daily Users and Revenue Thanks To Mobile Users

, , ,

Facebook MobileThe majority of reports about Facebook this year would suggest the largest social media platform is about to crumble under its own weight. But, all the latest data from their Second Quarter 2014 Financial Summary indicates otherwise.

The report includes a ton of positive statistics for the social media leader, but the biggest findings are about how we use Facebook. Specifically, there has been a 19% increase in daily active users, suggesting that most people are including Facebook as a part of their daily lifestyle. Most likely, the ability to access Facebook on the go is responsible for a significant amount of the growth.

The total number of daily active users now sits around 829 million users.

Facebook also saw a significant jump in revenue, growing 61% compared to last year. Unsurprisingly, mobile also played a huge role in the jump, as it is responsible for 62% of overall ad revenue for the second quarter.

The report also included some other statistics which highlight the important role of mobile for Facebook.

  • Mobile daily active users were up 39% year-over-year, reaching an average of 654 million on for June 2014.
  • Monthly active users were up 14% over last year, reaching 1.32 billion as of June 30, 2014, an increase of 14% year-over-year.
  • Monthly active mobile users went up by 31% compared to last year, reaching 1.07 billion as of June 30, 2014.
/0 Comments