Local SEO Services | “6 SEO Predictions for 2014”

Source   : Search Engine Watch
By       : Peter Roesler
Category :  Local SEO Services, Best SEO Company

Hummingbird-Rewrite-Search-Engine

For those that thought that the digital marketing landscape would see dramatic change in 2013, the year didn’t disappoint. Last year I made 6 predictions, and it is time for me to give it another shot. But first, let’s see how I did last year!
Scoring My 2013 Predictions:

•     We’ll get confirmation that steering anchor text in links you get is bad. Score a full point for this one. Google now discusses this in their Webmaster Guidelines
•     The relevance of a linking page will carry increasing weight. Well, no proof of this one. I maintain it is true, and that belief certainly is impacting the content marketing work we do with our clients. I will take a half point here.
•     People will finally accept that +1’s aren’t treated by Google like a link. I think the proof of this one is available, but there are still more people who believe that +1’s are a ranking factor than not. With some reluctance, I will take a half point for this one, too.
•     Rel=author will become a ranking signal. Another area that people debate heartily. Many will say that I should take a full point here. However, I will take a zero instead, because I don’t think it has become a ranking signal. For people who think I gave myself too much credit on #2 or #3, we can call it even, OK?
•     Google+ will begin to show some of its true influence in search results. Definitely happening. I take a full point here.
•     The industry will start to talk about the role of landing page optimization in SEO. People have been talking about bounce rate for some time, but that isn’t what I mean here. I was talking about real management of the customer experience. Well that has in fact begun to happen. The driving factors for this one will be Semantic Search and Hummingbird. However, not as broadly as I had thought it would, so half a point.

2013 Score:: 4 out of 6
2014 Predictions

Now it’s time for six predictions again this year, and the first one sets the stage for the remaining five! Once you’re done checking these out, let me know your predictions in the comments, or argue with mine if you like!

1. Hummingbird Rising

Just ahead of their 15th birthday, Google let the world know that it had released a new platform called Hummingbird. In fact, it had been live for three months or so at that point and few people had noticed. This all changes in 2014. Hummingbird was in fact a rewrite of Google’s search engine. Note that this doesn’t mean a rewrite of all of Google’s code, just the function that executes searches. As a platform change, the near term impact was in fact quite small. The specific algorithms, such as Panda, Penguin, and basic ranking algos weren’t changed. Google restructured things so they can better bolt on new algorithms to the platform. What does this mean? It could mean new algorithms for processing links. It could mean social signals starting to carry weight. It could mean lots of things. The bottom line? In 2014 we start to see the impact of Hummingbird. It is quite possible that all of the predictions that follow are all only possible because of Hummingbird.
2. Author Rank / Publisher Rank (again)

Once bitten, twice shy! Or, older and a little wiser might be more appropriate. My 2013 prediction for Author Rank failed because I fell into that trap that is so easy for us all to do. Just because we can conceive of Google using a ranking factor doesn’t mean they will, or that it’s easy to implement:  Implementing new algorithms is hard. Google needs to do an enormous amount of testing of any changes they make, and more often than not those simple changes break something else. In 2013, Google launched in-depth articles, a feature that seemed to be more driven by Publisher Rank than Author Rank:  My 2014 prediction for this will be more cautious than I was in 2013. We will see one or more new changes to the search results related to AuthorRank and PublisherRank. We may also see the in-depth articles feature rise to more prominence.

What we won’t see however is some huge shift in the search results based on Author Rank. The use of this signal will likely come out as part of some specific features or scenarios. An example scenario might be an Author Rank specific ranking change in personalized results that shows up as some type of new presentation of authors you follow.

3. Natural Language Search

You might call this one a layup, and that would not be entirely unfair. Prior to Hummingbird, natural language search queries were specific to the Knowledge Graph. After Hummingbird you could start to see natural language queries visibly impacting other types of search results. This screenshot is part of a sequence of searches that started with the [give me pictures of Tom Brady], and ended with [when did he start playing football]. However, the types of queries that work at this point in time are pretty limited. During the course of 2014 I believe we will see significant additions in natural language search capability. One reason for this is that Google sees mobile as a dominant trend, and believes that this will increase the demand for voice searching capabilities.

4. Impact of Google+ Grows, But Not in the Way People Expect

Google+ continues to grow as a social platform, but its adoption to date has been uneven. There are many categories where the discussions are rich and vibrant, such as science, food, photography, health and fitness, and many others. But, there are also other categories where the community is not yet as vibrant. Still, haters aside, Google+ is succeeding, and that sets the stage for this prediction.  The impact of Google+ on the SERPs will increase. Once again, we should expect moderation. This won’t be some type of sweeping change. I wrote about the impact so far in this article.

The main impact we already see from Google+ on the SERPs are:

•     Personalized results. This is a big one. If you publish lots of content, people who follow you will see it often when they perform related searches in Google.
•     Google+ posts in the SERPs. This is the one that is less recognized, but also important. If you are influential on Google Plus, and you share a post that ends up being very well received on the platform, that post itself can show up in the search results, even for people that don’t follow you.

What will Google do to increase the influence of G+? I’d expect to see more G+ posts in the SERPs (even for people not following you) at a minimum. We may even see some new search features tested. For example, if there is a breaking news item, and there is an active G+ community discussion about it, maybe we will see that discussion featured in some way in the SERPs. What we won’t see if Google Plus taking over the SERPs or remapping them in some big way. Google can’t punish people for not being on G+, because that would break search itself. But, they can do more with it, and they will.

5. Guest Posting Takes a Visible Hit

I wrote the first draft of this post back on January 12th, and low and behold 12 days later Matt Cutts writes an article about guest posting to say Stick a Form In It. Fortunately, this position softened somewhat, and the upshot of it is that guest posting that is primarily for SEO purposes is in Google’s crosshairs in a big way. And so it should be. So I could take a full point already for this, but since I did not get this post up prior to Matt’s article, I will not take the easy way out. Instead, I will offer up some thoughts on what parts of guest posting will take hits in 2014:

•     More action against rich anchor text, even if it’s in the attribution only.
•     Devaluing sites for publishers that focus on many domains vs. authoritative relationships.
•     Discounting (or punishing) low relevance posts, where relevance is defined as the relevance of the page giving the link to the page receiving the link.

Based on Cutts’ post we already know is that Google will look dimly on guest posting for SEO practices in their manual reviews of link profiles, so the above expectations relate to potential algorithmic action by Google.

6. More Weight Placed on Having a Mobile Site Experience

We live in a world where mobile (tablets plus smartphones) is going to be more important than the desktop. This has already happened in online retail. We also know that Google cares deeply about the user experience – they don’t want to send users to sites that offer a crappy experience because it’s bad for their search engine to do so. So yes, sites with no mobile implementation might take some rankings hits in 2014, at least when the user is coming from a mobile device. If mobile devices represent 20 percent or more of your traffic (and I think is pretty much every website these days!) then you need to pay attention to this. Cutts already discussed this in his keynote at Pubcon Las Vegas. In 2014, it begins to have serious implications.

Source : searchenginewatch.com/article/2325063/6-SEO-Predictions-for-2014
Media File Can be Found : searchenginewatch.com/article/2325063/6-SEO-Predictions-for-2014

Best SEO Company | “Was Expedia Targeted by ‘Negative SEO’ Campaign?”

Source   : USA Today
By       : Alistair Barr, USA TODAY
Category : Local SEO Services, Best SEO Company

Best SEO Company

Expedia may have been hit by a “negative SEO” campaign that hammered the travel website’s rankings on Google searches, according to an analysis by the firm that uncovered the problems. Expedia’s website lost 25% of its visibility in Google search between Jan. 12 and 19, after Google clamped down on efforts to boost its online traffic through paid links from other sites, third-party search analytics firm Searchmetrics said on Monday. Expedia shares fell on Tuesday on concern about the impact to its business and the stock was down again on Wednesday.

Searchmetrics Founder Marcus Tober completed a deeper analysis of the episode on Wednesday and shared the data and his conclusions with USA TODAY. The main take-away: The techniques used to increase Expedia’s search visibility were so clumsy and out-dated – and used in such high volume – that it would be very surprising if the company alone was responsible for the scheme. Instead, Tober reckons there are three possible reasons for the scheme. First, Expedia may have used artificial link building techniques years ago and the company forgot that they did this and left the links on the web. Or, some department within Expedia, or a third-party hired by the company, is still using these out-dated techniques, Tober said. Expedia is a big company, with many search engine optimization, or SEO, teams that work with different agencies, so it is possible that one one rogue department was responsible. Lastly, an Expedia competitor built these links in the past, over a long time, to hurt Expedia, Tober said. This strategy, known as “negative SEO,” has become more common in recent years, he noted.

Dave McNamee, a spokesman for Expedia, declined to comment on Wednesday.

Whatever the reason, Expedia’s rankings in important travel-related search results have been hit hard. For example, in a Google search using the word “hotels” on Wednesday, Expedia’s website appeared no where on the first few pages of results. In the past, expedia.com would have appeared in the number three spot on the first page, according to Tober. The word “hotels” was used more than 15,000 times as an anchor text on many websites to create links back to Expedia’s main website, according to the Searchmetrics analysis shared with USA TODAY. In one example –  vngarden.com/w/ – a website about traveling in Vietnam was created and at the bottom of the page it says “Designed by the Expedia Hotels Team.” The word Hotels links to the hotel section of Expedia’s main website. “This is very unusual and never done anymore in search,” Tober said. “This is completely obvious to Google’s search engine that these sites are made just for the links.”

In another example, a German-language blog – internet-maerchen.de/blog/ – was created. At the bottom, it says “Designed by the Expedia Cheapest Flights Team.” This time, the link is to the flights section of Expedia’s main website. However, the font used for this links is white on a white background, so most visitors to the site would not see the words and the link. Tober uncovered it by highlighting the area with his computer’s cursor. “I don’t know why Expedia did this. This is a technique that stopped about 10 years ago,” Tober said. This adds to his suspicion that the episode may have been caused by negative SEO. “In the last year or two there has been a lot of movement within the black hat industry to use negative SEO to hurt rankings of companies with these kinds of techniques,” he added. “Hopefully Expedia will recover soon.”

Source : usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/01/22/expedia-negative-seo-google/4778359/

Local SEO Services |”Google Clarifies: Guest Blogging Is OK, But “Guest Blogging For SEO” Is Not”

Source   : Marketing Land
By          : Danny Sullivan
Category :  Local SEO Services, Best SEO Company

Local SEO Services Orlando

Relax, publications that use guest bloggers and contributors. Google’s not planning to penalize you under its new “guest blogging equals spam” warning put out yesterday. Rather, the company says, guest blogging is only bad if the the main reason a post is run is to gain links meant to influence rankings in Google. Yesterday, the head of Google’s web spam team Matt Cutts declared that “guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy.” As a result, some worried that having guest posts meant they could look forward to a future of being penalized by Google.

Worries That All Guest Posts Are Bad

One especially notable example was award-winning science fiction author Charles Stross, who wrote on Hacker News: I’m spending three weeks on the road in the next month, so I’ve got three hand-picked guest bloggers taking over the mike on my site, for the duration. Emphasis on hand-picked, i.e. invited because they’re interesting and I’m hoping my readers will enjoy what they’ve got to say.I get to take some time off, they get access to a new audience, and the audience get some new and thought-provoking material — because from my PoV it’s not about SEO, it’s all about the quality of the content. (Hint: I’m a novelist, one of the guests is a film-maker, the other two are other novelists. We all pretty much live or die by the quality of our writing.)

Guest Posts For More Than SEO Are OK
To deal with such concerns, Cutts updated the title of his post to add the bolded words:

The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO – He also added more explanation to stress that not all guest blogging is bad: I’m not trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future. And there are absolutely some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there. I changed the title of this post to make it more clear that I’m talking about guest blogging for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. I’m also not talking about multi-author blogs. High-quality multi-author blogs like Boing Boing have been around since the beginning of the web, and they can be compelling, wonderful, and useful. I just want to highlight that a bunch of low-quality or spam sites have latched on to “guest blogging” as their link-building strategy, and we see a lot more spammy attempts to do guest blogging. Because of that, I’d recommend skepticism (or at least caution) when someone reaches out and offers you a guest blog article. In short, the post from Cutts was a continuation of what Google’s been long saying. It wants to reward sites that have “earned” links, rather than sites that have gained links without any real effort. Places that publish anything submitted to them as “guest posts” are just one example of links that aren’t really earned.

No, There’s No Automatic Bad Guest Post Algorithm

Stross also had this comment that I’ve seen many other people echo: The question I’m asking is, how do google’s algorithmic processes figure out whether a post is a guest post? Are they doing style analysis on prose now? Or counting outbound links, or looking for anomalous keywords? Or is it just a matter of looking for spam-flavoured advertorial? The answer is that it doesn’t, and that it can’t, not easily. Nor did Cutts say that was the case, but it’s easy to see how some might assume that’s what he meant. Cutts is warning people who accept guest blog posts, or those who do a lot of guest blogging, that they might find themselves with a spam penalty that would almost certainly be applied manually, if Google’s spam police did a review. It’s similar to how Google warned against advertorials last year, following a penalty Google applied to Interflora and several UK newspapers over these. There are some cases where Google has algorithms designed to automatically detect behavior it considers spam, such as “thin content” that the Panda filter goes after or spamming that the Penguin filter attacks. Potentially, Google could try to figure out a way to tell if a guest post is done “for SEO reasons” or not. But that would be very difficult, and it’s not the case now (or else Cutts would have announced some new filter with an animal name). Rather, Cutts seems to be saying that if you’ve been accepting or doing guest blog posts solely for ranking purposes, be warned. If your site gets flagged for some reason for a closer look by the spam team, then such activity is now deemed part of the many link schemes it might decide to manually penalize you over.
Google & The Degradation Of The “Link Signal”

SOurce : marketingland.com/google-clarifies-guest-blogging-71201

Best SEO Company | “Emerging Channels Challenge SEO for Mobile Marketing Dollars”

Source    : Search Engine Journal
By             : John Boitnott
Category : Local SEO Services, Best SEO Company

Mobile Apps

As more consumers switch to smart phones, emerging channels are gaining importance in a marketing space that SEO has dominated. For years, brands have used SEO strategy to market their products, but it has become harder to find as an increasing number of search results are returning unrelated content. Also, according to one entrepreneur, in 2013 organic search results made up only 13 percent of screen space. The rest of the screen was dominated by “ads and junk.” Problems with SEO-lead strategy are only magnified as more consumers view content on mobile devices. For instance, vertical and native search on mobile is continually threatening traditional search. Google’s traditional search traffic had declined 3 percent by the end of 2012.
Emerging Channels Explained

Advertisers are turning to emerging channels for help. These are marketing pipelines that lack established ad exchanges or ad units but hold massive audiences. They include social networks and sites beyond Twitter and Facebook such as Quora, StumbleUpon and Tumblr. With a strong emphasis on data, advertisers such as Unilever, Rhino Linings, and others are testing out emerging channels too. These methods are especially strong in the mobile ecosystem. Native applications such as Pinterest, Instagram, Pheed, and Vine are designed to encourage organic sharing — even relevant brand content targeting specific age ranges and demographics.

The need for a mobile advertising solution is only becoming more paramount. Mobile advertising is growing at 61 percent year over year and will be an $18 billion market by 2015, according to an Emarketer forecast. SEO and SEM will likely remain dominant players in the near future, but mobile has a unique appeal to advertisers.
“The Next Big Thing” – Take Rhino Linings as an example. A leading manufacturer of spray on truck bed linings, Rhino was looking to engage consumers across mobile channels. Working with San Francisco based startup Buzzstarter, Rhino got consumers to share infographic content across Instagram, Pinterest, and almost 280 other channels.“Putting Rhino content in the hands of consumers is important to us,” said Russell Lewis, founder of Rhino Linings. “Looking at mobile, we are seeing great engagement at the right place and the right time.” Unilever, the global consumer products company that sells personal care and food products, has recently been exploring emerging channels like Pinterest as a means to engage mobile consumers. Working with their media agency Mindshare, Unilever is finding mobile engagement opportunities closer to the point of sale. All of these initiatives steal away dollars traditionally given to SEO and SEM.

“We are always on the lookout for the next big thing,” said Lou Paik, Shopper Marketing Manager at Unilever.
Entertainment Brands Take Notice

Rhino Linings and Unilever are not alone as entertainment brands are seeking out emerging channel marketing too. Some of the first advertisers to dive into the space are film studios like CBS Films.  They are using more nascent channels to drive shares and views of trailer content, behind the scenes information, and film specific homepage traffic.  It culminates in helping drive ticket sales for films’ opening weekends. For a field that has seen much reliance on SEM and mostly upstream marketing opportunities for new release awareness, emerging channels are a welcome and downstream driver of demographic specific marketing. “Emerging channels allow content creators the opportunity to reach specific demographic subsets at a fraction of the cost,” said Michael Tringe, the Co-Founder of CreatorUp!, a web-series and entertainment marketing firm based in Los Angeles. “Rather than casting a wide net, emerging channels allow entertainment marketers the opportunity to specialize messages and tie ROI more tightly into their marketing budgets.” Considering the cycle of entertainment offerings and output, we may see more experimentation from other entertainment brands. There is a wide array of options for doing this. In some instances, both marketing and consumption can be mixed.  Some pioneers have attempted this. One instance is “Heroes” creator Tim Kring’s online series with production firm The Company P.  Called Conspiracy for Good, the program attempted to put viewers in the show across multiple channels.  But now, the multitude of channels just starting to take hold is going to open even better possibilities. “What’s really exciting,” said Tringe, “is the opportunity to go where our audience goes.” Using these alternative platforms, creators may be able to reach people much more organically across disparate communication formats. That in turn, could tie much better into the story they are trying to tell with content products. This type of marketing experimentation also creates a potential new path for nearly all advertisers.

Source : searchenginejournal.com/emerging-channels-challenge-seo-mobile-marketing-dollars/85981/

Local SEO Services | “15 Ways Clients Can Build a Better Relationship With Their SEO Provider”

Source       : Search Engine Watch
By             : Julie Joyce
Category :  Local SEO Services, Best SEO Company

Local SEO Services Orlando

After running a link agency for the past few years, I can safely say that some clients are easy to work with and some are nightmares. I can also say that the ones who are easy and fun to work with are the ones that truly bring out my passion for the work that we do, and as I see with my own employees, being receptive to listening to someone else’s perspective is something that I highly value. It doesn’t matter if a client’s niche is exciting or if their site is so amazing that I want to spend hours on it every week. A client who is willing to view our arrangement as a give and take relationship is the client for me.

Here are 15 pieces of advice that will help you build a better relationship with your SEO provider.

1. Be Honest About What You’ve Done in the Past

This is probably the most critical piece of advice. Lots of clients have done some shady things that they might not have fully understood were being done, and many have known exactly what was being done and just chose to ignore the repercussions. Be honest about what was done. It’s rare to find someone who hasn’t done some sketchy marketing at some point. We’re not judging. If you bought networked links and spammed the heck out of forums for three years, just admit it. Don’t swear that those links were the result of a competitor trying to harm you. Lying just wastes everyone’s time and energy.Good clients will explain what they have done so their provider can find out how to fix it or counteract it faster, if needed.

2. Don’t Immediately Blame Links When Something Goes Wrong

disallow

Don’t immediately blame links if your SEO service provider has built one for you and you’ve just messed up your robots.txt file. Also, if your SEO provider has built some great links and your site skyrockets to the top of the rankings, generating lots of new traffic and conversions, don’t try and insist that it had nothing to do with their work.

3. No Surprise URL Changes

Don’t change URLs without 301ing them or telling your SEO provider about it. If you’ve provided some targets to work with and they are suddenly 404ing, that’s embarrassing. Webmasters start to get cranky when you have to go back and request a change.

4. Share Access to Webmaster Tools and Analytics

If your SEO provider can’t see what’s happening, it’s much harder to do a good job. Sure, we can bug you for this info, but it’s much easier if we can dig in and not have to wait for you to come back from your weeklong vacation so we can get the data we need.

5. Answer Questions

I can promise you that I have never once asked a client a question simply because I was being nosey. If I ask whether you’ve just changed 100 URLs, to go back to harping on that one, it’s because it affects my work. If I do have access to your analytics and ask if you’ve done anything on-site that could account for the sudden drop in traffic to a specific page, again, it’s not just because I have nothing better to do than ask irrelevant questions.

6. Listen to Our Advice on Risk

Not to be funny here, but if someone who doesn’t mind buying links tells you that your link buying plan is just too risky, you really, really should listen. If we stand to make more money off building more links for you but we say we shouldn’t do it, it’s because we really believe that you’re playing with fire.

7. Don’t Employ Multiple Teams or People to do the Exact Same Thing

If you do this and both (or all 10) of us wind up getting links on the same site, don’t complain about it and try and make some of us go back to the webmaster and get them removed.

8. Don’t Share Someone Else’s Confidential Information

If you send your provider something that is clearly marked as being “for your eyes only”, all your provider will think is that one day you’ll be sending their confidential information to someone else.

9. Be Clear About What You Want

Don’t start out asking for one service and then run your provider all around until you finally admit that what you actually want is something totally different. I’ve written up loads of consulting proposals for clients who asked for one specific service. Then, after spending loads of time on it, the clients admitted that they really just wanted me to go buy a bunch of links for them. If you want paid links, then say so.

10. Ask Why a Service Costs What it Does

We’d rather explain pricing to you now than receive a complaint about it later. The more you know about what we do, the better.

11. Don’t Ask About Price Matching

Don’t give us pricing information that you’ve pulled off the site of some offshore SEO firm that no one’s ever heard of and expect a provider to meet that price. If you do and your SEO provider says OK, be very nervous.

12. Be Fair About Client Examples

Don’t freak out if your provider can’t give you the example you want when you’re trying to decide if they are the right fit. Sometimes there are iron-clad nondisclosure agreements in place. However, please be receptive to ways that your provider can prove its worth without violating client confidentiality. If that’s a deal breaker, that’s fine – and honestly it might be one for me if I were in your shoes. But if your provider can’t give you client examples but can work for you and refund the cost if you’re not satisfied, either accept that offer or move on and try to refrain from sending rude emails about a lack of professionalism.

13. Any Good Link Builder Knows About More Than Just Building Links

If you’re asked to promote your new content socially to give it more attention, take that advice. Don’t just think that because you can’t immediately tie social to links, it means the advice is worthless. If you’re told to do a few things to speed up your homepage load time since it keeps timing out, listen. Link building is much easier when a site’s worth linking to, you know.

14. Don’t Focus on What Your Competitors Are Doing

Don’t continually point out what your competitor is doing that violates Google’s guidelines and ask why we don’t just mimic them.
For one thing, your site is not the same as their site. For another thing, if you build a profile based on someone else, you’re contributing to a footprint, and that’s not a good thing. Would you want them copying you? No.

15. Don’t Try to Get Something for Free

I doubt you’d be able to find a decent SEO who doesn’t end up giving away way too much for free. Many of us are actually nice people who are willing to share what we know and help people. But there is a limit. If you want to pay for an audit, then get a quote and pay for one. Don’t try and weasel out pieces of an audit for free each month. If you’re paying for a service, stick to the scope of your contract. Asking a question here and there is OK, but if you want someone to spend 2 hours on the phone walking you through how to do something, expect to pay for that time.

Source : searchenginewatch.com/article/2322361/15-Ways-Clients-Can-Build-a-Better-Relationship-With-Their-SEO-Provider

Best SEO Company | “SEO After Hummingbird”

Source      : CMS Wire
By               : Tom Murphy
Category  :  Local SEO Services, Best SEO Company

Best Orlando SEO Company

I’ve read a few articles about SEO best practices as we move into 2014, and most seem to be pretty vague and long-winded. Hopefully you can quickly read over what I have to say here, and gain some practical advice quickly. (Not Provided) Keywords
In 2013, Google withdrew Google Analytics ability to track keyword data for the user’s own website(s). Here are some quick ideas to work around this:

– Use paid search data
– Use Google Trends
– Use Bing Webmaster tools (WMT)
– You can still use the Google Keyword Planner to get search volumes etc. for KW research.
– Bing WMT also has a KW research tool

I’ve just started using Bing WMT. Unfortunately my main blog is on the free WordPress platform so I’m not able to add the required code to track it on Bing. Below is just some of the goodies that it provides. Not that “Search Keywords” are included:
Just to play with our minds, on the 7th of January, Google announced that their own WMT will begin to feature some information regarding which keywords visitors searched for, before landing on your website. It won’t be in Google Analytics, and will only show data for the last 90 days; so you can’t compare year-on-year etc. However, now that conversational search is available, keywords may start to lose some importance. Conversational search is a method of searching, by asking Google a question, verbally. e.g. “Who is Tom Cruise?”

The person searching, is able to ask follow-up questions  “Where does he live?”. Google ‘remembers’ that you initially searched for “Tom Cruise”, so this information doesn’t need to be repeated on any follow up searches. This may or may not see the increase of vague phrases bringing traffic to a website.

Social Media

Social media, and user-generated-content is making an increasingly large ‘overlap’ into SEO. Moz recently reported that +1s (shares on Google’s social media website, Google+) have an amazing correlation with search rankings.  Although I believe that Google refute this. Either way Google+ is very important; as it can help to establish an individual’s or a businesses’s identity and ‘semantic relevance’. In addition as GoogleNOW (Google’s version of “siri”) gains popularity, local-search and therefore Google+ business pages become more influential. Social media as a whole, is of course vital.  As the concept of direct-link-building tails off somewhat, social media; and sharing content with followers becomes more important for ‘natural’ link-building.

A great report from triple SEO states that there are 2 peak times to share content:
1. Between 10am and 12pm
2. Between 8pm and 10pm

Incidentally, the best time to ‘share’ via email, is 7am. Remember, people will share content that they find entertaining, that promotes some kind of emotional response, that helps define themselves to others and to support causes that they care about.

Google Authorship
It is more vital than ever to set up Google Authorship. It’s a big part about building an identity online, and in the eyes of Google. Google will look at different aspects of the content you produce to determine how influential you are within your sphere or industry. For example, it may look at your writing quality, your Google+ activity and the amount of shares and comments your content produces. Related to this, In-Depth-Articles are also very important, especially because they appear differently in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages):

Disavow
Be sure to keep a close eye on any new links that you may get in 2014. Any low quality, potentially damaging links should be Disavowed. Depending on your link velocity, this should be done on a regular basis.

Other considerations
Take it easy with guest posts (irony).  Certainly don’t rely on guest posts as your main link-building/generating method.  Still guest post, but be very specific and careful about how and where you do it. Don’t use embeddable infographics. Be careful with product-matched anchor text, use more brand anchor text on links. Make EVERYTHING mobile-optmized. Use correct mark-up and rich snippets.

Source From : business2community.com/seo/seo-hummingbird-0733685#!rMpLS

Local SEO Services | “Intel Developing Smart Bracelet, Parades Wearable Devices”

Source     : PC World
By            : Agam Shah
Category :  Local SEO Services, Best SEO Company

SD-card sized PC For Wearable Computing

Intel is developing a smart wrist device and showing a host of prototype wearable devices at this week’s International CES trade show with the hope to find the next big hit. The company has made a range of wearable device in its labs, and a smart wrist device based on an Intel reference platform will go on sale in the U.S., said Mike Bell, vice president and general manager of the New Devices Group at Intel, in an interview. He did not provide a specific date when it would be available. Bell referred to the device as a “smart bracelet” but did not elaborate if it was a smartwatch, pedometer or health monitor. Opening Ceremony is developing a product based on the reference design, which will be sold by retailer Barneys New York, Bell said.

Intel is pondering whether to sell the smart bracelet under its own brand name, but for now will let others develop products based on its reference designs, Bell said. It entered the wearable market in September last year when it announced the extremely low-power Quark processor. Intel at the time also said it was developing reference designs for wearable devices based on Quark processors, and would develop multiple wearable devices to see which ones stick. Some of the products that will be demonstrated at CES include a smart earbud, a smart headset, and infant clothing that doubles up as a health monitor. The prototype wearable devices fit naturally on the body, and match form with function, Bell said.

”People shouldn’t have to adapt to the technology. It should just work, it should have a look that doesn’t shout ‘ubergeek’,” Bell said. The smart earbud measures a user’s heart rate and pulse, which the device can communicate to a smartphone to display the results. Based on the heart rate, Intel software can help the smartphone play the right music to boost a user’s motivation to exercise. Another wearable device expected to be shown is a smart headset with voice recognition technology, which can work with mobile devices and PCs to organize daily schedules or remind users of events. A complementary technology that will be shown is a smart bowl, in which the smart headset can be placed for recharging.

At CES Intel also announced its latest tiny Edison computer for wearable devices. Intel wants to put Edison in wearable products beyond just smartwatches, smart glasses and simple health monitors. Intel will show the Edison chip in baby garments from Rest Devices. The chip will monitor a baby’s health by measuring heart rate, temperature and activity. The Edison chip will also be demonstrated in Rest Devices’ smart bottle warmer, which will be able to measure liquid consumption by a baby. Intel is still exploring the opportunities in the emerging wearable market, and needs help from the wider community. The company announced the “Make It Wearable” challenge, in which it will award US$1.3 million in prizes to those who come up with innovative ideas on wearable devices. ”We have some ideas, but we’re not arrogant to say we have it all,” Bell said.

Source : pcworld.com/article/2085140/intel-developing-smart-bracelet-parades-wearable-devices.html

Local SEO Services | “The 10 Most Common On-Page SEO Gaffes”

Source     : Business 2 Community
By              : Jason Williams
Category :  Local SEO Services, Best SEO Company

On Page SEO- Web Tasks

What are some common SEO Mistakes to avoid?
That is a great question and is probably the most common question that I get asked by friends, family and clients.  First off, search engine optimization isn’t brain surgery or quantum mechanics, it’s hundreds of little details that align to make a bigger picture.  Many people spend tons of time and money into building a beautiful website that is responsive and useful to visitors but then quit fine tuning the details.

Here are some common On-Page SEO Mistakes to avoid

1. Not Having Unique Title Tags
Your title tag is the title of the page that shows up in the search results pages as well at the top of your browser.  If your website has the same title for every single page, you’re missing out on some valuable SEO real estate.  The title tag should explain to the visitor what the page will be about.  And your title tag should have your keyword phrase in it.  (If your webpage was a filing cabinet, your title tag would be on the outside explaining what’s on the inside.)

2. Having Title Tags that are too long…
On the search engine results page, there is a limit to how long your title should be.  If you have ever seen how Google truncates or cuts off titles that are too long with a simple “…” Many people say to keep it below 70 characters but search engines use pixel width to determine when to cut off words.  If your title tag is too long, its useless since the visitor won’t even be able to see it.   Best practice is to try to keep your title tag to about 65 characters so it won’t get cut off.

3. Not Having Unique Meta Descriptions

Far too often I see clients websites that use the exact same meta description for every single page.  The meta description is not a ranking factor but rather a quick sentence or two about what information the visitor will find on a page.  You might look at it as a quick sales pitch to get visitors to click on your site.  The meta description should be written in readable form with your keywords as close to beginning as possible.

4. Having Meta Descriptions that are too long

Just as the length of you title tag is important, the length of your meta description is also important.  Try to keep your meta description to about 156 characters to keep it from getting cut off.  Many websites that I work on have meta descriptions that are longer than the page content.  It does no good since the visitor will never see the part that gets cut off.

5. Not having H1 tags or having too many H1 tags

Your h1 tag is your page header tag that helps define what your page is about.  A page without an h1 tag is just like a filing cabinet without files in it.  A properly written h1 tag is one of the most important page elements to help with search optimization.  The h1 tells the visitor and search engines what the page is about.  It should support and be relevant to your title tag without saying the exact same thing.  (If your webpage was a filing cabinet, your h1 tag would be the green dividing folder that helps you find what you’re looking for.)

6. Not using h2-h6 header tags

Why should I use h2 tags?  Well, h2 tags not only help break up your page content to help a visitor skim your page to find the information they need, it also helps search engines define what your page is about.  Best practice is to use no more than six, h2 tags per page.  (If your webpage was a filing cabinet, your h2-h6 tags would be the manila folders that help you find what you’re looking for.)

7. Having links to pages that don’t exist (404 errors)

When we run our free SEO audit for clients, we crawl each page looking for broken links and 404 errors (page not found) When a search engine spider crawls your site, hitting these dead ends causes them to turn around.  Having too many 404 errors sends a signal that this site may not give visitors a good experience.  Why would these errors even exist?  Well, usually it’s because there is a link that points to a page that has been moved or deleted.  Fixing the links to point at the proper (or new) page is the first step.  Then taking the URL that no longer exists and 301 redirecting it to the proper page is ultimately what needs to be done.

8. Having poor content on your site

You’ve spent time and money building your site, making it user friendly and optimized for search engines then put up poor content that doesn’t give the visitor anything valuable.  It would be like opening a filing cabinet, finding the right folder you were looking for and there isn’t much inside.  Great content provides the visitor with a better experience.

9. Not having a XML sitemap

Of course, search engines can crawl your site link by link without the need for a sitemap, but having an XML sitemap makes it much easier for them.  Creating and submitting an XML sitemap for search engines helps them easily discover every page of your site.  There are plenty of programs to help you do this but here is an easy free XML sitemap generator to use.  www dot xml-sitemaps dot com

10. Not having social sharing buttons

Your site is awesome and people want to tell others about it but not having social sharing buttons makes sharing your site more difficult.  Adding social sharing buttons allows people to spread the word about your awesome site.

Source : business2community.com/seo/10-common-page-seo-gaffes-0728697#AklsRJcY7OtvfkZ5.99

Local SEO Services Orlando | “SEO Versus Content Marketing: What’s the Difference?”

Source     : Business 2 Community
By              : Ryan Kettler
Category : Local SEO Services Orlando, Best Orlando SEO Company

Local SEO Services Orlando

Web marketing as a whole is confusing. There’s a ton of jargon and language that the average solomarketer may have difficulty understanding. That’s a given based on the fact that if everyone understood everything about web marketing, our industry wouldn’t exist in the first place. Two common terms that I see being mentioned a lot in the same context are “SEO” and “content marketing”. Let’s get one thing straight. These are NOT the same thing. Let me explain.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for “search engine optimization”. Search Engine Land defines SEO as:
“…the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search engines. All major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing have such results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads.” SEO has recently gained a negative connotation because many business people consider it to be “gaming the system”, “keyword stuffing”, or “snake oil magic”. There is some truth to those statements, as SEO is more of a science than an art form. It’s always a cat and mouse game. The search engines release algorithm changes, we notice the differences in the search results as marketing professionals, and we report the differences en masse so you can edit your marketing strategies accordingly.

This is very different from content marketing.

What is Content Marketing?
CMI, the Content Marketing Institute, defines content marketing as: “…a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” As you can see, this definition doesn’t contain the words “search engine optimization” or “SEO” anywhere. Instead, you see words like “creating”, “distributing”, “relevant”, “valuable”, “attract”, “acquire”, “engage”, and “action”. As you can see, the definition of SEO contains the word “relevant” as well. That’s the main connection between SEO and content marketing. Using relevant keywords in your content to optimize your articles for long-tail search queries. You have to find out what the best keywords are for your unique business. So how do you do that? Now that Google has gotten rid of their free keyword tool, you have to find a different way of finding search volume and competition levels for keywords you’re interested in. Sign up for a free BoostSuite account and add your keywords to your “Keywords” interface (Boost>Keywords>Add Keywords) and they’ll analyze them for you and show you which ones have the most opportunity for SEO and content marketing.Content marketing is more of an art form than a science, but you still have to take a scientific approach to it. You have to set an editorial schedule, find your best keywords, write, test, test, and test again, then refine your strategy based on your results. Are there any other key differences between SEO and content marketing that I left out that you can think of? Let’s hear them in the comments!

Source : business2community.com/content-marketing/seo-versus-content-marketing-whats-difference-0717393#Fbf4MlHllzdt7evI.99

Best Orlando SEO Company | “4 Ways to Get Link Building Into Your Client’s DNA”

Source      : Search Engine Watch
By             : Peter van der Graaf
Category : Local SEO Services Orlando, Best Orlando SEO Company

Best Orlando SEO Company

I always try to get link building integrated into the DNA of my client’s daily activities. Links as “votes of confidence” shouldn’t be requested, but earned. Being conscious about the activities that promote linking is the most important step to improve your ranking. That doesn’t mean you can’t actively hunt for links. In heavily competitive industries you need continuous link building to maintain your current ranking and additional boosts to improve your ranking on selected topics.

The following activities should be streamlined and mixed for best results.

1. Participate in the Online Community

Any media attention for your brand can attract links as long as you have additional background information on your website. Online mentions of your name without a link should be seen as a lost opportunity, so learn what background information is needed for each mention type. You should also make someone responsible for your corporate response to relevant hot topics and create an active role for your website within your field of expertise. Participate with insightful content contributions, clear opinion pieces, and openness about the challenges your company faces. Try to communicate through many platforms and empower ambassadors to promote your brand.

2. Benefit From Regular Partnerships

Votes of confidence are logical when people are enthusiastic about your brand. Provide testimonials for the services of your business partners and request something similar in return. A clear description on what they like or dislike about your services is sure to be relevant and looks much more natural to Google than a site-wide footer link on their website. Promotional partnerships offer great link building opportunities, but most forms of advertising should be nofollowed to be safe with Google. Joint promotions and member discounts are situated somewhere between advertising and votes of confidence. That’s because bigger brands wouldn’t just risk their reputation by promoting supplemental services that they don’t fully trust. “Buy a Samsung interactive TV and get 6 months Netflix for free” will probably be accompanied with additional info on Netflix including a couple of links. Interesting joint promotions like this can be found in many industries and even bigger brands like Samsung link (dofollow) to their partners.

3. Continuous Partner Search

In the previous activities there shouldn’t be a clear focus on the ranking improvement for specific keyword combinations. Diversity is a much stronger signal of a broad-based authority to Google. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on ranking.
For keywords in more competitive industries additional link building will be needed. This part of your link building effort should focus on groups of related keywords and the most relevant partners you can find for them. This starts by looking for well ranking sites and finding methods to convince them to link to you.  After having contacted the most relevant partners you keep broadening your search for partners until you’ve attracted enough links to outrank the competition. The anchor text and the text surrounding the link should be on topic, which can even make up for less relevant partners that have a great link profile.

4. Viral Boosts

In really competitive industries link building by requesting individual links just isn’t enough. You need messages that spread themselves and hopefully attract a lot of links from a wide range of websites (and social media). Viral link building is the best way to achieve this. Virals with product innovation, targeting weird niche audiences or research with a newsworthy outcome can all be used to attract links. It is important that your viral incorporates multiple storylines so everybody can find their own unique media fact in them:

•     Is it funny?
•     Can someone feel offended by it?
•     Does it seem unbelievable?
•     Is your type of company an uncommon sender for these messages?
•     Is it interesting for a wide range of audiences?
•     Is the topic controversial with both protestors and proponents?

These are just some of the questions that make a good viral. As long as your website holds a central role in the message, links are sure to follow. Use sites like BuzzFeed for additional inspiration. Highly competitive industries like dating, insurance, and gambling often provide the best examples of viral link building. Once you detect one, try to reverse engineer their strategy and learn from it.

Evangelism to get Everybody Involved

Link building isn’t just some activity you do. It should be an integral part of all your activities, even outside regular marketing. Awareness to detect chances and just some small changes to regular activities can make link building an automatic flow. That’s why 90 percent of your SEO effort should be to get everybody involved. Online mindedness can be taught, but it takes effort and a lot of patience.

Source :  Searchenginewatch.com/article/2306840/4-Ways-to-Get-Link-Building-Into-Your-Clients-DNA