Google conspiracy theories aren’t new. Everyone likes to believe their rankings have tanked thanks to something other than poor-quality content or bad linking practices. In reality, a lot of people are guilty of less-than-great SEO. At the same time, it’s hard to ignore the fact that some businesses, no matter how “white hat” their methods, can never seem to gain traction in the SERPs. If you’re having trouble getting the traffic you want, it might just be conspiracy fact. A Small Business Problem: The Adwords Platform Isn’t Very Friendly One of the first nuggets of marketing advice you’re given, as a small business owner, is to market online using Google Adwords. It’s supposed to be a relatively predictable, and affordable, method for generating new leads. But, that train left the station years ago. Google Adwords is expensive, and it’s mostly where large corporations (or super-savvy and experienced marketers) play around with ad … [Read more...] about Does Google Discriminate Against Some Businesses?
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How to Manage International Teams with Moriah Scoble
Our next SEJ Summit will be held in the tech center of the San Francisco Bay Area in Mountain View, California. Although I won’t be attending, I did have a chance to speak with some of our awesome speakers for the event, including Moriah Scoble, Head of SEO at Ring Central. Moriah will be speaking about The 3 Pitfalls of Managing International Teams, and sharing stories of her own experience in managing teams around the world. If you’d like to see Moriah and our other seven speakers, we still have a small number of FREE tickets available for our Silicon Valley event. The SEJ Summit series is possible courtesy of our partner, Searchmetrics. Their “search experience optimization” makes digital marketing better, faster, and more profitable. Request an invite today here. Here’s my interview with Moriah: 1. In 2013, you shifted your focus from nonprofit leadership to SEO. What facilitated this change and how has your past experience helped you? My last … [Read more...] about How to Manage International Teams with Moriah Scoble
The Growing Pains of SXSW: An Interview with Brian Solis
2014 represents the 20th anniversary of SXSW Interactive. Even at the ripe age of 20, the show is still experiencing growing pains…in a good way. “In 2014, SXSW was a festival of digital camaraderie, a place where geeks, the Internet famous, celebrities, and those who are curious or who want to learn gather to celebrate and share in who they are and who they want to be.” – Brian Solis. Brian Solis is one of the preeminent thought leaders in marketing and disruptive technologies in the world, a long time SXSW attendee, and the person, along with Stephanie Agresta, in charge of the social media lounge at SXSW. While at the festival, I was able to catch-up with Brian in between his public appearances and talk to him about his experience at SXSW this year. When I asked for his thoughts on the show, Brian said that overall it was an incredible experience. In addition to all he does during SXSW, he also serves as an advising friend to the organizers of Interactive … [Read more...] about The Growing Pains of SXSW: An Interview with Brian Solis
Google’s Knol Launches: Like Wikipedia, With Moderation
After six monthsof testing, Google has formally rolled outKnol, a service designed to letpeople create pages of knowledge on any topic they choose. While Google saysKnol is not designed to compete with Wikipedia — and there are goodarguments to back this up — I still think the easiest way to describe theservice is Wikipedia with moderation. Below, more about this, the service ingeneral, and some of the issues it may raise for Google. As many are aware, Wikipedia allows anyone to create and edit pages onall types of topics. Need to know about the BS 546 electrical plug used byold houses in Britain? I once did, and the Wikipedia community has created apage about the topic. The collaborative advantage to Wikipedia is also its disadvantage. Sinceanyone cancontribute, some introduce factual errors or overtlyvandalize articles (seeGeorge WashingtonDid What According To Wikipedia???). It’s one reason that Wikipedia isconsidering moderation. Like Wikipedia, Knol (unlike many … [Read more...] about Google’s Knol Launches: Like Wikipedia, With Moderation
Google Takes First Big Bite Into Rich Snippet Search With Recipes
Food content webmasters who’ve dutifully been coding their pages with recipe rich snippets since Google announced them in April get a big reward today. Google is rolling out recipe search, taking advantage of the structured data to launch a whole category with the same prominence as image and video search. It’s playing catch-up in the sense that Bing has featured special treatment for recipe content since last January, and it added a dedicated tab for recipe search last Spring. However, Google still represents the lion’s share of searches. The project marks the first time that Google has used rich snippets to launch what’s effectively a new search engine, and one could speculate that more is in store. The company has also worked to spread the use of rich snippets for people, reviews, video and events. “This is the first time we’re using this kind of structured data and actually building a structured search on top of microdata that people are marking … [Read more...] about Google Takes First Big Bite Into Rich Snippet Search With Recipes