Okay, so maybe that’s a little extreme – a murderer is likely either sitting in prison, or doing everything in his or her power to avoid being found. So, in a world where virtually everything can be found online, and once something’s posted it never really goes away, people rely on online reputation management (ORM) to help change what people see. In many cases, this presents quite an ethical dilemma. Content – More Than SEO We’ve known for a long time that our websites need to have content written for readers first and search engines second. But, since ORM is designed to generate positive results in the top of the search engines to push the negative ones down so they’re less likely to be seen – there’s a point where you have to decide if the money for the writing or SEO gig is worth helping a person or business attempt to undo some damage. A while back, I received an order from a client I’d been working with for years. In my eight … [Read more...] about How Ethics Apply in Online Reputation Management
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How do you deal with local SEO KPIs that don’t pass the smell test?
Today, let’s talk about reporting local SEO results — specifically, reporting them with the tools Google provides. While proving the value of your work has always been a thing, it seems that lately, more and more businesses are looking for ways to justify their local SEO spend. One of the challenges is that most of the time, particularly with multi-location brands, making sense of the internal and external data can be nearly impossible. My thinking about this topic started off with one of our clients expressing recently that while we appeared to be hitting our organic traffic goals, their boss wasn’t seeing it. Most of their conversions happened over the phone, but thanks to [insert favorite corporate complexities here], they couldn’t tie organic traffic back to phone leads. And so, our client’s boss was looking at Google Analytics and Google Search Console data and not really getting the whole story, even when we took pains to tell it in a very simple … [Read more...] about How do you deal with local SEO KPIs that don’t pass the smell test?
SEO Plus PPC Equals SERP Real Estate, Content Glue & ROI
Most marketers would agree that to be competitive, we do not operate in an either/or environment. It’s not a choice between either SEO or social, or SEO and PPC. It’s a requirement that we understand how these channels work together to impact one another, and a website’s ability to stay afloat in the growing search results. The surge in content marketing, including the focus on organic content and social media as a pair has perhaps taken some focus away from the synergy that SEO and PPC have together. The numbers don’t lie. Brands are still heavily investing in PPC – and many are doing so rather than adopting strategies that would employ organic and paid search together. In fact, PPC’s ROI is becoming clearer with data from Kenshoo that shows revenue is growing faster than PPC spend YoY in the Americas. And, research coming from The Search Agency shows spend was up on paid search YoY in Q1 2014, with total spend increased by 35 percent. Specifically, … [Read more...] about SEO Plus PPC Equals SERP Real Estate, Content Glue & ROI
Americans Shifting to Online News, Still Only Paying for Print
Everyone knows that print newspaper circulation is declining and consumers are increasing accessing news online. Some may wonder why newspapers are slow to move way from print, but the truth is that print still provides the bulk of newspaper revenue and at this point, print heavily subsidizes online efforts. Print, then, enables newspapers to experiment with the online medium. However, the day will come when it will cost more to print newspapers than the revenue they bring in. And at that point, the presses will stop running. The question then, is this. If consumers are increasingly getting their news online rather than in print, how can newspapers replace print revenue with online revenue? A new study by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Project for Excellence in Journalism, in partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, sought the answer to this question, as well as details about how Americans consume news. Advertising Revenue A big … [Read more...] about Americans Shifting to Online News, Still Only Paying for Print
5 Strategies for Writing Compelling Titles
Whether it's a blog post, news article, email newsletter, or social media post, one of the biggest keys to increasing page views and maximizing impressions is creating killer headlines. Unfortunately, this is something most marketers usually fail miserably at. If you want to fundamentally change your content marketing strategy in just a matter of weeks, start by paying attention to the title.Why the Title MattersIt's difficult to encapsulate the value of titles without context. For an email marketer, titles mean one thing. For bloggers, the value may be completely different. However, regardless of who you talk to, it's clear that titles and headlines have direct and tangible value. Perhaps these are the three most common benefits, though.SEO. For bloggers, titles have an enormous impact on SEO. While Google doesn't tell us exactly what it looks for in a title, case study after case study has revealed the importance of using targeted keywords in titles.Sex appeal. Honestly, titles are … [Read more...] about 5 Strategies for Writing Compelling Titles