Best of Austin

Drag Race royalty brings her one-drag-queen show to town from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2oxaXfz via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2oFwrpI

Annual day of giving pays off for local nonprofits from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2F2JBEm via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2GQGQXa

Slack rocker serves poundcake at Austin City Limits taping from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2FDwgDp via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2FFGqUb

Search Engine Watch sister site ClickZ has just launched the first report in its new series of buyers guides, which aims to to disentangle and demystify the martech landscape for marketers. The guide, which focuses on bid management tools, covers a range of market leading vendors and draws on months of research and more than 1,600 customer reviews. This will be the first in a series of guides created using the collective knowledge of the ClickZ and Search Engine Watch communities to help our readers arrive at more informed technology decisions. The modern martech landscape is complex and competitive, making it difficult for marketers to cut through the noise and select the right technology partners. Our buyers guides are created with the objective of providing a clear view on the areas in which vendors excel, in order to allow our readers to establish successful relationships with the most suitable platforms. What sets our guides apart is the use of a customer survey to ...

With local search proven to be one of the hottest SEO trends of 2017, it is projected to maintain its standing among make-or-break optimization factors in 2018 . The competition between online and brick-and-mortar stores is heating up, and local search optimization can become a decisive factor in how a site ranks locally and, consequently, in how much traffic and clients it drives from local, on-the-go searches. Fortunately, major local search tactics are not that hard to master. Follow the six steps below to achieve the best results in terms of SERPs, traffic, and conversions on the local battlefield. Claim Google My Business Failure to claim your company’s account at Google My Business may be the reason your website does not show up at the top spot of Google’s local search results. If you are not there (and Bing Places for Business ), you are missing out on incredible opportunities to drive local traffic. With Google’s local three-pack considered to be the coveted spot for e...

On February 22nd, leading digital media agency Brainlabs hosted the latest in its series of PPC Chat Live events at its London HQ. With speakers from Google, Verve Search, and of course from Brainlabs too, there were plenty of talking points to consider and digest. In this article, we recap the highlights from an enlightening event. The theme for this edition of PPC Chat Live was ‘the state of search’, with the focus squarely on the trends set to shape the industry in 2018 and beyond. The speakers delivered a wide variety of presentations that reflected on the industry’s beginnings, not just for nostalgia’s sake but also to illuminate the future too. Brainlabs has carved out a position as an innovative, data-driven search agency and this tone was carried through the evening, all ably assisted by Pepper the robot receptionist. Although paid search took up the majority of air time, there was still plentiful room for ruminations on the evolving role of SEO and what the nature of...

Google’s RankBrain is an algorithm that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to rank results based on feedback from searcher intent and user experience. Diving deep to learn what makes RankBrain tick, here are 15 actionable tips to improve your SEO rankings. Optimizing keyword research Keywords have long been the foundation to high-ranking SEO content.  Most of your content, whether it be blogs or website copy, begin with hours of definitive keyword research you could rank for, and outrank your competitors for. However, RankBrain has in some ways changed those run-of-the-mill SEO keyword research strategies you may have used in the past. It is all about searcher intent when it comes to the future of ranking, so it’s time to adjust your keyword research strategy. 1. Rethink synonymous long-tail keywords Long-tail keywords were once effective, before Google used semantic analysis and understood the meaning of words. You were able to compile a list of long-tail k...

On February 8th 2018 Google announced that, beginning in July of this year, Chrome will now be marking all HTTP sites as ‘not secure’ , moving in line with Firefox, who implemented this at the beginning of 2017 . This now means that the 71% of web users utilizing either browser will be greeted with a warning message when trying to access HTTP websites. Security has always been a top priority for Google. Back in 2014 they officially announced that HTTPS is a ranking factor . This was big, as Google never usually tells us outright what is or isn’t a ranking factor, for fear of people trying to game the system. In truth, every website which stores user data shouldn’t need an extra incentive to prioritize security over convenience. In a previous article for Search Engine Watch, Jessie Moore examined the benefits and drawbacks of migrating your website to HTTPS , and determined that on net, it is well worth making the move. However, if you are yet to make the switch, and nearly 50% ...

What a useless article! Anyone worth their salt in the SEO industry knows that a blinkered focus on keywords in 2018 is a recipe for disaster. Sure, I couldn’t agree with you more, but when you dive into the subject it uncovers some interesting issues. If you work in the industry you will no doubt have had the conversation with someone who knows nothing about SEO, who subsequently says something along the lines of: “ SEO ? That’s search engine optimization. It’s where you put your keywords on your website, right?” Extended dramatic sigh. Potentially a hint of aloof eye rolling. It is worth noting that when we mention ‘keywords’ we are referring to exact match keywords , usually of the short tail variety and often high-priority transactional keywords. To set the scene, I thought it would be useful to sketch out a polarized situation: Side one: Include your target keyword as many times as possible in your content. Google loves the keywords*. Watch your website languish ...

Best radio station, record store, club, music writer, and more honored from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2ESCEcO via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2EWHr98

CM Pool punts vote to March 1 over “transparency” concerns from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2HFiFMy via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2omrSRT

Your weekly film guide for Feb. 23 through March 1 from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2FrIGyi via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2Fnxti5

“Hey Siri, what is the cost of an iPad near me?” In today’s internet, a number of specialist search engines exist to help consumers search for and compare things within a specific niche. As well as search engines like Google and Bing which crawl the entire web, we have powerful vertical-specific search engines like Skyscanner, Moneysupermarket and Indeed that specialize in surfacing flights, insurance quotes, jobs, and more. Powerful though web search engines can be, they aren’t capable of delivering the same level of dedicated coverage within a particular industry that vertical search engines are. As a result, many vertical-specific search engines have become go-to destinations for finding a particular type of information – above and beyond even the all-powerful Google. Yet until recently, one major market remained unsearchable: prices. If you ask Siri to tell you the cost of an iPad near you, she won’t be able to provide you with an answer, because she doesn’t have the data. Unt...

Think of it as a sort of architectural Pinterest board, in 3-D and IRL from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2CEmWw6 via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2Cfj4pr

Why we want Cruz out and how to make your perfect protest sign from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2HFxFdf via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2orPfcc

Get a kick out of National Margarita Day from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2EL8xnV via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2HFHkRe

The Contemporary Austin plans $6 million makeover on 35th St. from The Austin Chronicle – Daily http://ift.tt/2FnGQOZ via Austin Statesman from WordPress http://ift.tt/2sO8KAY

As an SEO professional, your role will invariably lead you to interactions with people in a wide variety of roles including business owners, marketing managers, content creators, link builders, PR agencies, and developers. That last one – developers – is a catch-all term that can encompass software engineers, coders, programmers, front- and back-end developers, and IT professionals of various types. These are the folks who write the code and/or generally manage the underlying various web technologies that comprise and power websites. In your role as an SEO, it may or may not be practicable for you to completely master programming languages such as C++ and Java, or scripting languages such as PHP and JavaScript, or markup languages such as HTML, XML, or the stylesheet language CSS. And, there are many more programming, scripting, and markup languages out there – it would be a Herculean task to be a master of every kind of language, even if your role is full-time programmer and not SE...