Best of Austin

The four-day festival drops 11 feature films and even more shorts from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2zmkkWD via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2z8CFpg

The firm behind the new library has changed our city’s look from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2A2W2hb via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2lEiQkz

Did sexess spoil Jayne Mansfield, or was it … Satan? from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2A33BVl via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2ik335x

Video is booming as a content marketing medium. People love watching videos online, and producing great video content is quickly becoming one of the most surefire ways to command attention and grow a following. In fact, by 2019, video is expected to drive an astonishing 80% of all internet traffic . Clearly, it’s important for businesses to start working on their video content sooner rather than later. And while producing great content is essential, that’s only half the battle. For your videos to benefit your business, people have to be able to find them, and that involves optimization. So which video search engines should you focus on optimizing for ? This article will explore the differences between YouTube and Google Videos, the two biggest video search engines on the web. Keep reading to learn more about the types of traffic these search engines will bring you – and why your videos might rank well in one but not the other. How do people find your videos? There’s no shortage...

How does using social media benefit your efforts with SEO ? Back in 2008, Search Engine Watch published the article ‘ Social Media and SEO – Friends with Benefits ‘, and I’d highly recommend reading it back now for a stark reminder of how far the digital world has progressed in the last nine years. Some of the key statistics and points featured in the article (although contemporary at the time) may seem somewhat archaic in 2017: Facebook having 140 million active users (when they are now over 2 billion ) LinkedIn having 30 million users (less than 10% of their current user base ) Popularity of now defunct social platforms like Digg (which sold for just $500,000 back in 2012) MySpace being mentioned in the same breath as Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit and Twitter (ha!) Use of ‘SEO friendly’ anchor text when linking from social profiles ( ahem … ‘ money keywords ’) Nobody could have guessed what social media would become in such a short amount of time. Nearly a decade later and F...

Austin Books & Comics makes space for queer fans and queer lit from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2iFaOH1 via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2xuiy12

No matter what industry you’re in or what your business does, you want to be as close as possible to the top of a search engine results page (SERP). And of course, SEO is what gets you there, taking into consideration more than 200 ranking signals , such as the quality of your content, backlinks , mobile optimization , and keywords . While these traditional SEO tactics have dominated strategies since the formation of Google,  customer reviews  are another ranking signal hot on their heels, now making up 7% of Moz’s localized organic ranking factors. Reviews provide search marketers with a huge opportunity to go above and beyond . But how do they enhance SEO? You could say that customer reviews piggyback on one of the most important ranking factors: the ‘freshness’ of your website content . By providing your business with a continuous supply of fresh, unique user-generated content (UGC), webcrawlers know your site is active, driving your website li...

In SEO , Google’s ranking factors are the stuff of legend. There are rumored to be more than 200 signals which inform Google’s rankings (although this statistic originated in 2006, so it’s probably safe to say things have changed a bit since then), and the exact factors which make up this list, as well as their order of importance , is the subject of perennial debate. While we at Search Engine Watch can by no means lay claim to a complete list of Google ranking factors (and anyone who says they can is lying to you – yes, even if they’re from Google, probably), we’ve delved into the subject a fair bit. Last year our intrepid editor Christopher Ratcliff wrote a ten-part series examining a number of important Google ranking factors in detail. This guide will summarize the key insights from that series for your referencing convenience, with links to the full explanations of each ranking factor. From content freshness to content quality, internal links to backlinks, we’ve covered off ...

Director David Bellarosa on Austin as the velvet coffin from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2yOMbhf via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2yOnGAR

Mayor writes in support of Austin location for corporate “HQ2” from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2zSTfHE via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2zHe2Ne

Roy Orbison, Rosanne Cash, Neville Brothers, and LBJ honored from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2zRFEjG via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2yMEAQh

The convergence of SEO and content has been a driving force in marketing for the past few years. A recent survey conducted by my company, BrightEdge, found that 97% of marketers view these two areas as converged disciplines. Given that 51 percent of the traffic arriving on your website is likely from organic search, I believe that the growing understanding of the integration between these two formerly separate silos is an essential transition. Despite this rise in understanding, however, a prominent problem remains: many marketers still struggle to get their content consumed by their target audience. BrightEdge found that a full 71 percent of marketers report that less than half of their content has been used by their target audience. This problem not only causes tremendous frustration for brands, it also results in countless wasted work hours as well as unnecessary spending. It is time for marketers to take a more intelligent, smart approach to content marketing. Smart content...

With multinational technological companies Google and Facebook conquering the field of online advertising revenue , many smaller companies and indie publishers are left wondering where they’ll end up in the digital world – if they’ll end up anywhere at all. According to data recently released by the  Interactive Advertising Bureau , digital advertising revenue in the U.S. increased by 20% in the past year. This puts the American digital ad revenue at a record of $72.5 billion. Unfortunately for smaller companies, the vast majority of online advertising revenue is coming from tech giants Google and Facebook. The duopoly of the digital advertising industry Because the specific ad-only revenues of Facebook and Google aren’t disclosed, the exact calculations of revenue aren’t available. However, Jason Kint of  Digital Content Next , a publishing industry trade group, reported in June 2016 that Google and Facebook accounted for a grand total of 89% of the digital ad growth...

Celebrating and advocating 30 years of progress and beyond from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2zA1Duy via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2iwamL3

Pinterest has announced its long-awaited move into the self-serve paid search space, after a period of trial campaigns with select partners. With innovative visual search technology and an ambition to corner the ‘discovery’ phase of search, this could prove an enticing complement to AdWords for many brands. So, how does Pinterest PPC work, how does it differ from other paid search options, and how can advertisers get started? Pinterest Ads Manager is now open to all businesses who have opened an account and uploaded at least one Pin. In what is a fiercely competitive space, Pinterest is hoping that its offering can both provide something new and still deliver on the core performance metrics marketers have come to expect from Google AdWords . This announcement comes at the end of a lengthy campaign to get the product right, with early partners including eBay, Target, and bid management platform Kenshoo. The newly released self-serve paid search platform provides the same...