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For SEO agencies and independent consultants looking for new business, a two-step strategy might be all you need to demonstrate your efficacy and separate from competitors. First, identify prospective clients that are well-suited to your offering. Second, send them a pitch that unequivocally communicates the potential results they can achieve from your services. The key to both is data and, conveniently, the same data that you use to recognize great potential clients in the first step can also be used to make a powerful case as to what your services can deliver for them. Identifying your ideal SEO clients The businesses you probably want to approach are those that are tuned in to how SEO works and have already invested in it, but that still have a veritable need for your services in order to achieve their full SEO potential. Naturally, a brand that has already climbed to the top of the most relevant search engine results pages (SERPs) isn’t a great candidate because they simply don’t...

Austin promoters sell controlling interest to concert industry titan from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2IYtDNs via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2J11TYq

Find the nearest one to you and beat the heat from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2IYlyZe via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2JgjCP6

As voice becomes the dominant force in search and people spend more time consuming content via social media, the future for the humble home page looks very bleak. If comScore is correct and half of all searches by 2020 are made via voice, a crucial question arises: will we still need websites? Even if the research is over-egged and the tipping point is reached a year or two later, the question still remains. As consumers increasingly get used to asking Alexa, Siri or Google for the news headlines, a dinner recipe or flight options for a weekend away, answers will not be provided by ten blue SEO links. Rather, the options will be weighed up by an algorithm before what is considered to be the best answer is read out. Remember Lycos and AltaVista? New technology can always delight early adopters, but as it becomes more mainstream, seasoned observers know some huge names may become casualties as the public adopts new behaviors. Remember AltaVista, AskJeeves and Lycos, as well as when...

One of the easiest ways to understand SEO’s importance to the marketing mix is to pay attention to what Google says and does. Google is very keen on good SEO because it makes the internet a better place for users. If the internet is a better place for users, then Google can sell more ads. Here are four things Google has said and done to help marketers improve SEO that you may not be aware of. Google added an ‘SEO’ audit to its Lighthouse extension Google is actively giving developers advice on how to improve the sites they work on: its Lighthouse auditing tool now has an SEO component that can analyse any page for basic SEO competency and tell you how to make it better. This is a nice change for search marketers, who have for a long time made up for Google’s radio silence with research and educated guesswork. Some of the tips offered by the audit extension are fairly obvious and well known (tile tag exists, canonicals not broken, etc.), but others give an interesting insight into...

The era of graphs and spreadsheets as a way of thinking about analytics is beginning to approach its end. Predictive analytics, along with associated artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies, are changing the way in which we deal with data. These tools are becoming more accessible, and ‘big data’ thinking is no longer limited to firms with billion dollar budgets. Predictive analytics provides a glimpse into the future, as well as access to strategic insights that can open up new opportunities. Here are five ways you can put predictive analytics to use, and how you can change the way you think about data. Qualifying leads According to Forrester research , predictive analytics has found three main use cases for dealing with  leads. Specifically: Predictive scoring: This method analyzes how leads are responding to your marketing attempts and how likely they are to take action based on that information. In this way, you can more quickly identify which leads ...

Whether you are new to SEO and looking for a litmus test of your website’s health, or have an ongoing campaign that may need a little refreshing, it’s always a good idea to perform regular check-ups or audits. If you have complex campaigns that are already in full swing this may seem like a lot of effort. It’s a bit like going to the dentist; you may not like it but it’s necessary. Better to identify areas for improvement or success that can be capitalized on than to continue blindly following the original strategy with more limited results. This article explores some of the tools that are available to you in order to perform an SEO check-up. Keyword research With the growing complexity of inbound marketing, voice search, Rankbrain and content marketing, the phrase ‘keyword’ is starting to feel somewhat of a profanity. In fact, Hubspot is even in the process of removing its keyword tracking function from the platform. However, there is still significant emphasis placed on high val...

When most marketers think of Yahoo, they think of low volume and little impact to overall scale. However, Yahoo Gemini is not only search, but it taps into native advertising also. Yahoo is one of the top sites for premium content and generates over 1 billion monthly visitors. Gemini primarily lies in-feed alongside Yahoo’s owned content; it also gives your ads access to Yahoo’s top syndication partners such as Hearst and Vox. Overall, it provides great access to extensive audiences. Yahoo Gemini ad types Yahoo Mail Ads These ads reside in Yahoo Mail and come in a variety of different formats Pencil ads : Native ads that appear within a user’s mailbox: Sponsored Mail ads : Native ads that appear in your mailbox with a ‘learn more’ button that opens up to a more detailed ad: Video Mail ads : Video ads located on the side of the mailbox: Dynamic Product ads : Dynamic retargeting ads that are personalized to each user’s shopping experience and show up in the feed (note: if ...

Contrary to popular belief, technical SEO isn’t too challenging once you get the basics down; you may even be using a few of these tactics and not know it. However, it is important to know that your site probably has some type of technical issue. “There are no perfect websites without any room for improvement,” Elena Terenteva of SEMrush explained. “Hundreds and even thousands of issues might appear on your website.” For example, over 80% of websites examined had 4xx broken link errors, according to a 2017 SEMrush study , and more than 65% of sites had duplicate content. Ultimately, you want your website to rank better, get better traffic, and net more conversions. Technical SEO is all about fixing errors to make that happen. Here are 12 technical SEO elements to check for maximum site optimization. 1. Identify crawl errors with a crawl report One of the first things to do is run a crawl report for your site. A crawl report, or site audit, will provide insight into some of your s...

PPC and search marketing are both vital to a company’s success. So, it’s amazing to see the mistakes that so many brands still make today. AdWords has added tools like upgraded URLs to make it a little easier to manage campaigns. But glaring errors still happen – and frequently. While these mistakes can seem small – especially if a brand has a big SEM budget – each one can have a significant impact on an advertiser’s reputation and ROI.  Here are a few of the most common PPC mistakes search marketers make, and some methods to address them. Your search terms are too high-level A common mistake for many first-time (and even experienced) search advertisers is that they start out too broadly. For example, if you’re an electrician in Boston starting out AdWords for the first time, you don’t want to go in big on the mains terms such as  [electrician]  and rely on city geo-targeting. Instead, be selective about your target keywords and build campaigns around specific terms s...

It may be obvious statement, but over the last 15 years the internet has completely transformed the retail industry. The once flourishing high-street is declining, as more and more consumers are swapping the shopping experience for the convenience and added choice that online retail offers. Mobile technology means more people are purchasing products via apps while on-the-go, rather than popping out on a Saturday morning to browse the isles and rails in-store. The digital retail space has seen a huge number of disruptive innovations over the years, from artificial intelligence (AI) offering tailored recommendations to smart chatbots transforming and streamlining customer service and the new additions of drone deliveries and augmented reality – it’s an exciting time. Despite these leaps, most search technologies still used by modern retailers and brands are lagging behind. It’s these search engines that are the next element of the retail sphere set to have an innovation makeover. Searc...

Brand bidding is often touted as a hotly debated topic in paid media. That said, a cursory glance will reveal that the typical advice given by PPC experts is to bid on it, without exception. But the question is whether this is good advice or just self-serving.  Let’s look at each of the main arguments for brand bidding in more detail and see if the answer is a bit more nuanced and not just black and white.   Protect your brand If you have competitors appearing for brand terms , either in paid or organic then yes, you need to consider how you protect this traffic stream and PPC brand bidding is an obvious option, along with improving your SEO rankings. On the flip side, if you have limited or no competition, it really is worth considering pausing branded PPC. Logic would dictate that if a user is searching specifically for your brand, then they want to visit your site or engage with content. If your SERPs don’t contain competitors and only links associated with prope...

For several years, the search term ‘payday loans’ has regularly attracted more than 200,000 searches per month on Google.co.uk. Whether providing loans or generating leads, the payday loans industry has notoriously been big business and at its peak, was estimated to be worth around £2 billion per year. Because of this, the top positions on Google’s SERPs for ‘payday loans’ have been a hugely lucrative and sought-after search term; and subsequently was dominated by SEO professionals using massive manipulation to hack their way to the top of the search results. Until 2013, page one for payday loans barely listed a real payday loan company. Instead, the listings were made up of ‘hacked sites’ including bicycle sales, women’s magazine and frankly, just random domain names that once clicked on redirected to a dubious data capture form.     Introducing the payday loans algorithm With customer data at risk and a mountain of complaints from UK consumers (and similar results in...

Choosing a commerce platform is one of the most crucial and important decisions you’ll make in the early life of your business. There are a number of factors to consider before purchasing a commerce platform – in fact, the choices are endless. But what’s really important? Here are some of the key considerations. The product catalogue Your product catalogue is technically a reservoir for every item you sell. Its role is to promote the items you want to push and simultaneously help your customers find the items they are looking for with ease. A poorly constructed product catalogue can be rigid and uncompromising, especially if the product attributes you want to store don’t naturally align with the definitions set in your commerce application. Some commerce platforms charge based on the number of products on your platform. Depending on the requirements of the ecommerce marketplace, you can choose accordingly. In the case of a multivendor ecommerce marketplace, the product list ca...