Education arts

People don’t just want to be educated about what you offer. They want to be seduced. Yes, seduced. Being seduced is an exhilarating experience. (If you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it.) Yes, we want to be educated and make rational decisions that optimize our goals. But we also yearn to be romanced, enchanted, in love. We seek brains and beauty. Is that an unrealistic paradox? It doesn’t have to be. First, recognize that seduction is not synonymous with deception. Being seduced is fun. Being deceived is not. It’s unfortunate that shady advertisers have conflated the two. But the world’s best brands pursue “honest seduction,” touching us emotionally as a way to begin a genuine, mutually rewarding relationship. For instance, Apple seduces consumers, and their customers love them for it. There’s plenty of educational content to be found deep in Apple’s website, but their home page, their retail stores, their emails, their … [Read more...] about The Art Of Seductive Landing Pages

You’ve been tasked with building an in-house search marketing team, and now you’re wondering where to start. It’s a daunting task, to be sure. Do you start by rousting the programmers to get the content management system (CMS) into shape? Do you grab a credit card and start up a paid search campaign? Do you start bugging the editorial team to get them to use certain words or phrases, in effect, telling them what to write? The short answer is…yes. Locating dedicated talent and building a knowledge base Your brain is what people want. They want the knowledge you possess about search marketing. But how are you with other key success areas? Like negotiating tricky situations with co-workers when you need them to do something for you? Can you speak WebDev/Programmer-ese? Do you see things in terms of the broader picture, not just the SERPs? How are your sales skills? To grow a team successfully internally, you’ll need to tap into not just SEO knowledge, but … [Read more...] about The Art Of Growing An In-House Search Marketing Team

In a recent project document floated my way, everyone’s role was listed with many sections explained in extreme detail—programmers were given explicit instructions on expected functionality, designers were shown painstakingly built visual mockups… and the section for search said, “Duane to cover SEO.” Basically, “Oh Shaman of search, work your mystical powers to great effect on traffic and revenues—and do it cheaply, please.” After years of preaching about how we need to work on projects to include search up front, I find myself wondering if my messages have been heard and understood. Now, I ask myself this question several times each day—have I explained things in a clear enough manner? It’s far too easy to spin off into my own language of keyword density, canonicalization issues, and keyword research, which is truly voodoo to those “outside.” As much as I snickered at my past encounter with the idea of … [Read more...] about Educate Your Team: SEO Isn’t Voodoo

Wikipedia’s importance as an authority site is undisputed. It’s at the point where it seems a bit ridiculous how often Wikipedia shows up in the first page of Google for just about every search imaginable. In many cases, these Wikipedia entries are extremely light on content. Oftentimes they are what are known as “stubs,” just the very beginnings of an article. Personally, I think Google is giving too much weight to Wikipedia. Take for instance a search on the word marketing in Google. The top spot has been awarded to the marketing entry on Wikipedia, yet it is not the most authoritative or comprehensive source of marketing-related information on the net by any stretch. As long as Wikipedia captures such high rankings on search result pages, there is incentive for spammers to spam Wikipedia with their links and for search engine optimizers to edit Wikipedia for their own interests. This incentive continues despite the introduction this year of a policy across … [Read more...] about The Art Of SEO For Wikipedia & 16 Tips To Gain Respect

Nowadays, there is an endless amount of information on starting and enhancing a career in online marketing and one may find it challenging to filter out what is worth reading and what is not. To save us time and make us the job easier, some of the world’s leading SEO experts shared their personal opinion on must-have skills for 2018 and gave unique advice on how they would start their SEO careers today.  They also revealed how they educate themselves and how they keep up with the ever-changing industry of search engine optimization.  I would like to express massive thanks to all the contributors and, with that being said, make sure to check their social media profiles, since those are important sources of SEO hacks, tricks, and the latest news as well. Note: The list is not based on any particular order, and if I could, I would love to put everyone in the first position. Therefore, even that the list is quite long, it is definitely worth reading all of … [Read more...] about 20 SEO Experts Share Advice on Career, Skills and Education in 2018