It may not come as a surprise to those who have been watching closely, but this week Twitter put the rumors to rest by officially filing for their IPO. Twitter was naturally assumed to be the next major online technology company to file for an IPO after Facebook went public.
Twitter announced their submission of an S-1 to the SEC exactly how you would expect; they tweeted the news yesterday. The announcement read: “We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.”
One of the most interesting factors of the filing is that Twitter filed a “secret” IPO, and the terms will be kept secret under new regulations from the JOBS Act, which allow small businesses to keep their financial information from the public.
According to The Verge, Twitter is the first well-known web company to file for a “secret” IPO, but it also confirms that Twitter has less than $1 billion in revenue. They will eventually have to release their financial information, but not until “the road show part of their public offering,” as Search Engine Watch explains.
We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-09-13 13:52:382013-09-13 13:52:38Twitter Announces Their Submission For IPO
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you’ve likely heard how important creating content is to your SEO strategy. For larger companies, it isn’t hard to find resources for solid content creation, but smaller businesses see a much larger hurdle. Smaller businesses means smaller budgets, but these businesses still need to find a way to market themselves.
Social media and blogs have made it easier than ever to create and share content with your audience, so small businesses have many more feasible options than in the past. This content creates a relationship with your audience and cements your brand as a trusted resource, and it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg as long as you focus on the right types of content. Phillip Thune highlighted four of the best ways small businesses can deliver quality content without destroying their budget.
Blogs
No matter what your marketing strategy, if you have on online presence (which you should) you need to have a blog. A blog is the cornerstone of any SEO or online marketing plans, and it offers you a convenient way to share new products, industry news, and interesting facts with your consumers. Not only does a blog give your company a voice, it also improves your SEO so that more people can find you. Plus, when something gets posted, it can be easily shared to all the most popular social media platforms.
Ebooks
Ebooks are digital books or publications that people can easily receive via the internet. They can then be read on your computer or any tablet or smartphone. These publications share information and establish credibility by showing your expertise to your clients. Most businesses request information such as an email address for these ebooks, so they also generate leads. These require a bit more effort on a single concentrated piece of content, but they often gain more traction than blogs so long as you create something valuable to readers and you share it enough to be seen.
Slide Presentations
You have no doubt put together a few slide presentations throughout your career, and are familiar with their easy-to-read format. They are used for sales presentations and conferences, but they can also be used to share educational content. These slideshows are easily shared on SlideShare, YouTube, or Vimeo, and will help gain trust and reputability within your field.
Press Releases
Press releases have long been the best way to spread information and establish credibility in your market and your local community. They announce information about new products or services, while also showcasing your brand’s place as a respected part of your community. Traditionally, these are shared with journalists or newswires, but they also encourage bloggers and other publications to share your story. Sharing your press releases will help small businesses establish relationships with journalists within your community, but you can also share them online to spread directly to your customers.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-09-13 12:38:202013-09-13 12:38:204 Ways Small Businesses Can Create Valuable Content
Google recently integrated their Panda algorithms into their normal indexing process, and this has sprung up a whole new batch of questions from webmasters. The most common question is specifically how site owners will know if their site has been hit by Panda. Really, it was only a matter of time before Matt Cutts, the noted Google engineer and head of Webspam, addressed the issue.
And that is what he did earlier this week, when Cutts used one of his Webmaster Help videos to respond to Nandita B.’s question, “how will a webmaster come to know whether her site is hit by Panda? And, if her site is already hit, how she will know that she has recovered from Panda?”
Now that the Panda algorithm is a part of the normal search indexing process, finding out if you’ve been affected by Panda won’t be near as easy. You can’t just compare your analytics reports with recorded dates for Panda rollouts. But, Cutts does have some suggestions if you think your site has been affected.
Cutts said, “basically, we’re looking for high quality content. So if you think you might be affected by Panda, the overriding goal is to make sure that you’ve got high quality content.”
Of course, high quality content in this context means sites that offer real value to users. It appears integrating Panda was actually one of the last steps in a shift towards a high focus on high quality content. They’ve been suggesting focusing on value for a long time, and now it is officially a large part of the normal search algorithm.
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Typography has become more important in web design than ever before. Technological advancements have made it possible and practical to use nearly any font that you want on the web.
With the rise of interesting and well-thought out typography in web design, we have also seen new trends popping up in how people are using this typography. The first and most notable instance of this is the wave of retro typography on vintage style websites that is still prevalent across the web.
A newer trend we are starting to see has been around for a while in other types of design, but it becoming very popular for websites who want to establish their brand in bold and visually interesting ways. This “Mix and Match” typography relies on the designer’s ability to choose the right fonts to complement not just the message, but the other typographic styles in use.
Some designers opt to use subtly different fonts that are only minutely unique from each other to establish a visual hierarchy of interest while maintaining cohesiveness. Others opt to go all out and harshly contrast fonts against each other to create a visual friction and energy.
Marcin Treder collected 15 examples of this “Mix and Match” typography so you can get some inspiration to try out the style yourself. The rule of thumb for using fonts in web design has long been to never use more than three fonts in a design. It is clear that modern designers are finding ways to break that rule while creating classy and attractive designs.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-09-10 14:08:022013-09-10 14:08:02Is “Mix and Match” Typography The New Thing?
Startup companies have a lot to take care of just to get going. You have to deal with staffing your company, outreach, paperwork, testing, financing, and a thousand different things with little time. It is either sink or sail, and success relies on managing a multitude of problems.
It helps that most successful entrepreneurs are experts in their own field, and usually have at least a little bit of online business savvy. But, chances are they aren’t exactly well-versed in search engine optimization. While some of these startups might defer to a professional SEO resource or marketing team, it isn’t always required.
Getting even the most basic SEO considerations taken care of early on may seem superfluous, but SEO can take quite a while to grow. Starting early means you will start seeing the dividends later.
The most basic considerations of SEO simply ensure that searchers can find your business’s name and website fairly easily. Of course, a more comprehensive SEO plan extends that to ensuring you outrank your competitors and improve your larger web visibility, but that can be achieved after you’ve gotten yourself set up with just a little extra work.
Ashley Kemper from Search Engine Land put together a checklist for startups to get the most important SEO considerations taken care of early. Her list is a little more extensive than others you might find, but you’ll see much better rewards down the line by following her suggestions, and you’ll understand what you are actually doing much more.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-09-10 12:12:082013-09-10 12:12:08Why Should Startups Set Up Their SEO Early?
With the popularity and direct user engagement of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, many online marketers forget the potential for YouTube to improve your brand reputation and enforce your SEO efforts in a single move.
YouTube has a surprising amount of opportunity for optimization, especially for efforts focusing on local search. There is a relative lack of videos from small or local businesses aimed at informing the public and promoting themselves, leaving a wonderful widow for many local businesses to make an impact on their audience.
Of course, before you can optimize, you need to make sure you have a quality video that offers something of value to viewers beyond simply promoting yourself. Chris Silver Smith recently wrote about how local businesses can go about creating videos that will be worth their viewers time and make your audience interested in what you do.
There are plenty of options, but chances are you don’t want to just make an ad and throw it up online. A better approach would be a series of short videos exploring your industry, your brand, and what you offer to consumers. How-to videos can reinforce your reputation in regards to your skill, while explanations of your products and services can help viewers understand exactly what sets you apart from your competitors.
Smith also explored the ways you can optimize your videos to make sure they get seen, while also helping your local SEO efforts.
Link to Your Business – At the beginning of your description, always make sure to include a link to your business website. These links are automatically “nofollowed”, so don’t expect it to help your link portfolio, but there is a chance local citation value is being conveyed to Google.
Name, Address, Phone Number – Every video should include thorough contact information in multiple easy-to-find locations. Start by making it visible within the first few frames of your video. Google is able to interpret and “read” text within videos, so not only will your viewers be able to easily find you, Google will retain data contained within the video. Similarly, you may want to actually state your information out loud in the video, as spoken statements are converted into subtitle transcripts by Google’s systems.
Take Advantage of the Descriptions – YouTube has one of the most generous description fields out there. While the initial paragraph users see should clearly state what the video is about, you can also include a statement about your company or a biography so that interested viewers can find it with a simple click.
Tag Your Video – Along with including your business category name and your location names to the tags on videos, you should also include a handful of relevant tags for each video. Tags have a heavy impact on YouTube, so you’ll want to always make sure you include them, or your video will likely disappear into the ether.
Associate the Video with Google Place Listings – Business listing in Google Places allow you to associate videos easily by putting in URLs. Make sure to use the full page URL.
Associate the Video with Google+ Local Page – Adding the video to your local page allows you and any other employees to easily share the video on personal Google+ streams. The number of shares is considered indicative of popularity, so this is a good opportunity to boost your shares.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-09-09 13:05:072013-09-09 13:05:076 Ways To Use YouTube to Improve Your Local SEO
Thanks to the big brand-named algorithm updates, Google has definitely been at the forefront of the link building discussion recently, but obviously the other search engines have their own opinions as well.
As Search Engine Land reports, Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager for Bing, recently wrote a post on the Bing Webmaster Blog detailing the four worst link building techniques and why you shouldn’t do them.
Unsurprisingly, these link building strategies are largely in line with the methods Google has been fighting more publicly. Nonetheless, it is important to highlight the more spammy methods people are still using to try to boost their link profile.
Blind Requests – Links aren’t something that should just be given out. Sending mass template emails to websites is about as spammy as you can get. The only people who will respond are those who won’t give you a quality link. Buying email lists to try to send out mass requests is an even bigger waste of funds that really won’t get you far, but could likely incur some penalties.
Blog/Forum Comments – Some link builders will try to drop links almost randomly into blog comments and forum conversations, but these won’t improve your rankings a single bit. The search engines have been aware of the practice for some time now.
Link Injection – This is a tactic used by spammers where sites are hacked and links are injected into content such as headers or footers. Some will even push links directly into the body content. Bing does encourage keeping your CMS software up to date and secure, but they also try to take precautions on their side against this tactic.
Guest Blogging – This is one of the more controversial link building strategies because it isn’t explicitly bad. The problem is, if your focus with guest blogging is to build links, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. Forrester explains, “if you’re going to guest blog, best to do it with the intention to buildyour brand, drive traffic, and create awareness. Doing it to bolster your SEO efforts is a #FAIL these days.”
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-09-09 12:31:462013-09-09 12:31:46Bing Explains The Four Biggest Link Building Mistakes
Have you ever searched for a term only to find a page that says “we have no articles for [your search term]” and a whole bunch of ads? Most people have come across these sites with auto-generated content, often called “Made for AdSense” or MFA sites. These pages are created for the sole reason of luring people in, and hoping they click an AdSense ad to leave the page instead of hitting the back button.
The majority of these types of websites use a script to automatically generate content that takes snippets from search results or web pages with those keywords. They don’t offer real content in any way and have absolutely no legitimate value. It makes many wonder why they’ve encountered these kinds of pages in the Google search results.
One user directly asked Matt Cutts, Google’s head of webspam, if the search engine is doing anything about the pages, such as penalties or removing these sites from the index. As you would expect, Google already has a policy in place, and Cutts encourages users to report any pages like this they come across. He states:
We are absolutely willing to take action against those sites. We have our rules in our guidelines about auto-generated pages that have very little value and I have put out in the past specific calls for sites where you search for a product – a VCR, a laptop, or whatever – and you think you’re going to get a review, and the first thing you see is ‘0 Reviews found for [blah blah blah].’
As Google sees it, even if these pages are from legitimate search engines, they don’t belong in the rankings. Users don’t really like searching for something and being sent to another page of search results. They want to be directed straight to real content.
There are very few times when search results snippets should be indexed. The only real time it might be considerable is if you have exclusive data that no one else has. But, there is no time when a supposed search results page with 0 results should ever be indexed.
To put it simply, Google is already trying to fight against these sites. They aim to find and penalize all they can, but they also want people to report them with a spam report if possible so that the lowest amount possible slip through the cracks.
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Keeping up with the local search ranking algorithm can often be at best confusing and at worst a complete mystery. It seems there are just as many, if not more factors involved, yet less coverage of exactly what search signals Google is using for local businesses. That can make it very difficult to know where to put your focus.
There are so many places you could put your energy too. Should you focus on the completeness of your Google Places profile? Or maybe citations and reviews are more important? Is your business hurt just because it isn’t near the center of the city? All of those are considered, and that is just skimming the surface.
While Google probably isn’t going to be delivering definitive answers about their search algorithms any time soon, David Mihm and Moz are working to find the answers with an annual survey focusing on local search ranking factors. They released their report of their findings for the year already, but Doublespark took their concise results and turned them into an infographic.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-09-03 11:02:572013-09-03 11:02:57Local Search Rank Factors for 2013: The Infographic
The time has come. As of yesterday, the Google Keyword Tool is officially dead. The sentiments are mixed as the tool has been frequently used by webmasters and SEO professionals across the world, but Google has offered a replacement called the Keyword Planner which has some advantages over the old tool. It also has some drawbacks associated with the switch.
In Google’s opinion, the Keyword Planner can accomplish all the important tasks the Keyword Tool could, as well as that of the Traffic Estimator. There are even some new features included which neither of the older tools offered. Matt Southern from Search Engine Journal broke down the pros and cons of being forced to make the change, which are shared below. Chances are in a few months you won’t even remember using the old Keyword Tool, but the transition could take some getting used to.
Positives
The Keyword Planner allows local SEO professionals and marketers to acquire keyword search volume data down to a city level with better geographic segmentation than the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator. It also has the ability to bundle geographic regions together.
SEO professionals and marketers are also able to upload up to 10,000 keywords from their own list to get performance data. The planner displays search volume by ad group, landing page, and any other categorization established by the user.
Negatives
The most common gripe I have heard about the Keyword Planner is that, unlike the Keyword Tool, the planner required users to be logged into AdWords before being able to use the tool. However, there are some functions removed from the Keyword Tool which will have a larger impact on how you view and understand the data.
The Keyword Planner does not feature match type data for search volume, device targeting, and doesn’t include global vs. local monthly searches. The ability to filter by closely related search terms is also missing, though Google has stated it will be back within the coming weeks. They explained the missing match types and device differentiation in a statement, which read:
In general, you’ll notice that the average search volume data is higher in Keyword Planner as compared to the exact match search volume data you got with the Keyword Tool. That’s because we’ll show you the average number of searches for a keyword idea on all devices (desktop and laptop computers, tablets, and mobile phones). With Keyword Tool, we showed the average search volume for desktop and laptop computers by default.
It may not come as a surprise to those who have been watching closely, but this week Twitter put the rumors to rest by officially filing for their IPO. Twitter was naturally assumed to be the next major online technology company to file for an IPO after Facebook went public.
