Negative examples

We all keep hearing that any publicity is good publicity. But is it really so? And, more importantly, is it the same for SEO? We’ve all heard about the link building technique using unlinked Brand Mentions  It’s a good method and, as far as we know, it works very well. But what if the unlinked brand mention that you’re so excited about turns out to be a RipoffReport post? What if it’s a blogger complaining about your services, or a news publisher reporting on some incident regarding your brand? How Web Brand Mentions Affect SEO Today Brand Anchor Text Backlinks Unlinked Brand Mentions or Google Implied Links Branded Search Queries How Does Google Treat Negative Brand Mentions Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines How The Google Algorithm Works Will Negative Brand Mentions Affect Your Google Rankings? Is All Publicity Good Publicity? Handling Negative Mentions From a Search Point of View Handling Negative Mentions From a Backlinks … [Read more...] about Can Negative Brand Mentions Affect Your Website’s SEO & Rankings?

Every time you guess, you bring bias and risk into your conclusions.  That’s why using Search Query Reports to find inefficient spend is a surefire way to save your company $$$.  Let’s get started. How to Pull Search Query Reports Pulling search query reports is fairly easy.  In Google, go to the Keywords tab and click “Search Terms” in the top panel: Then – presto! — you can start analyzing what people are actually searching for. Depending on your industry, be ready for some crazy queries. (Also, I’m just throwing this out there, if customer service isn’t a revenue driving part of your business, add ‘customer service’ as a negative immediately. I swear I see it in every search query report.) Bing is fairly easy as well. Just head to the reports center, click “Search term” report on the left.  For unit of time, choose “summary.”  Finally, choose any other columns and settings … [Read more...] about How to Use Negative Keywords to Save on PPC Spend

Everyone wants to go viral on social media. But sometimes your brand ends up going viral for the wrong reasons. After every such social media brand fail, we experience a familiar cycle. Somebody (or multiple somebodies) instantly shames them on social media. The brand (usually) apologizes. The world moves on. Then a few days later, it happens. A respected industry publication publishes something like this: X Social Media Lessons From [Brand’s] [Social Media Update About Whatever] In 2016 – truly a year filled with disasters if there ever was one (and one best summed up by Vice in April after Prince died) – social media blunders still managed to spark swift and bitter outrage. You see, apparently there are still some lessons that social media managers, directors, and coordinators need to learn. I disagree. There’s only one lesson. But first… May the Delete Button Be With You At the end of the year we were treated to several “Top Social Media Fails of … [Read more...] about The ONLY lesson from every social media brand fail example ever

What is a title tag? How do you write one? Why are title tags important? Do they actually help with search engine optimisation? Can I see some good and bad examples? Following on from our blockbusting guide 22 SEO essentials for optimising your site, I thought I’d follow up the advice on title tags and answer all of the above questions. If you just want a quick guide to optimising title tags, click here to jump to the checklist section. For the rest of you, first lets talk about meta tags in general: What are meta tags As Kristine Schachinger described in our previous guide to tags back in 2012, meta tags are HTML elements that provide information about a web page for search engines and website visitors. These elements must be placed as tags in the section of a HTML document. These elements are: Title tag Meta description We’ve discussed how to write meta descriptions in a separate post, so for now let’s discuss title tags, the most important meta tags on your … [Read more...] about Title Tags Guide Good & Bad Examples

Back in 2007, the Harvard Business Review claimed that 70 to 80 percent of market value came from intangible items, like goodwill. A lot has changed since then. Now, when consumers want to measure goodwill or brand strength or reputation, they head to one place: Yelp. By reading through comments others have written about their real-time experiences with brands, consumers can get a good idea of how valuable a business might be. When they form opinions, they can act. And they do act on their Yelp research. In a Yelp-commissioned study conducted by Neilson, 4 Yelp users in 5 visit the site before they spend money. They check out reviews, confirm details and otherwise do their homework on Yelp before they whip out their wallets. It’s no surprise, then, that negative Yelp reviews would cause panic. You might assume that a negative review could suck all of the life, and money, out of your business, leaving you with nothing to show for all the hard work you’ve put into building up … [Read more...] about How Negative Yelp Reviews Could Help Your Rep