Best of Austin

Because you don’t want to miss a good Austin thing from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2KlWkIM via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2lHFCov

Running a WordPress website or a blog is exciting. The thrill of being able to share your content with your audience at ease is the driving factor in why WordPress powers over 30% of all the websites. A people’s platform, WordPress is a popular Content Management System (CMS) for new and experienced users alike. WordPress however, does offer its fair share of issues that trouble its users. Some of these issues are generic and can be addressed with small amendments. Other complications with the system demand a technical learning curve to solve. This article highlights the common issues and how to solve them. Issues with themes and plugins Themes and plugins are essentially the structures that support WordPress’ framework . Users often have to deal with issues related to them. Theme issues: Theme installation failed Missing stylesheet Sample data import errors HomePage not similar to the demo etc. The root cause of such theme related issues could be that something is missing ...

The fun isn’t over, yet. Summer is just getting started. from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2MvpbXW via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2tNqUjs

There is a common misconception that SEO simply involves link building and including relevant keywords in content. While these are two important strategies, search engines consider a lot more than this when ranking websites. Elements of user experience (UX) have been rolled into SEO practices. Is your site fast, secure and mobile-friendly? Do you have quality content that engages users and encourages them to stay on your website? Is your site quick to load and easy to navigate? These are all elements that are considered by Google and other search engines when determining how to rank your website. With that in mind, read on to discover more about how UX fits into search engine optimization. Why UX is important for SEO Google has changed considerably over the years. The search engine giant constantly updates its algorithms to ensure users are provided with the best possible results. Each and every update that Google has made has been geared towards providing more user-focused and use...

When it comes to being visible online, video content is increasingly proving its worth as a way to grab attention and – crucially – to engage meaningfully with internet users. Currently, one third of all time spent online is accounted for by watching video and it is predicted that 80% of all internet traffic will come from video in 2019 . Videos are engaging growing numbers of users and are consequently having an impact on the SERPs. Forrester estimates that the chances of getting a page one spot on Google increases by 53 times with video . This also translates into clicks; video has been seen to boost traffic from organic listings by as much as 157% . Video is appearing in an increasing range of contexts and the type of video content available to marketers – such as live streaming, 360 and virtual reality (VR) – is diversifying. So how is the way we search for video changing? YouTube: the video search engine? YouTube is the second most popular site in the world according to Alexa...

Dance party meets market celebrates intersectionality from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2tHcUHU via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2IsGeHP

With new goals and new leadership, the people behind Pride start fresh from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2Kjkbbo via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2KmIdz8

Whether you work in an agency or in-house, SEO success has a lot to do with influencing other functions, for example, web development, site merchandising, content marketing, PR, etc. As SEO professionals, we do have our own secret sauce to cook with: meta tags. Although meta tags are only used for search engines, they are still an essential part of Google’s core algorithm and must not be ignored. We will go through the most common meta tags and highlight their usefulness so you can easily check if you’re spending enough time where it counts. Meta tags defined Meta tags, or HTML elements, are codes of text that help search engines and website visitors better understand the content found on a website page. Meta tags are not the actual content that is featured on the page. The purpose of meta tags is instead to describe the content. Therefore, these HTML elements are found in the <head> section of the HTML page, not within the <body> section. Since meta tags need to be wr...

Austin can’t have too many breakfast sandwiches from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2KnvRGI via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2trIQkj

2018 has already been a big year for voice search and virtual assistants, with Alexa making its way into hotel rooms and Google Home racing ahead in sales . However, recent developments from Google suggest that what started off as a neat way to order milk, play music, and switch the lights on has become something that will soon be having real-world consequences for local businesses. The current SEO landscape is already tricky for local businesses. Google Maps’ business listings have been trimmed from a maximum of seven listings to three in search results. Google My Business has evolved into a listing which features elements that take the place of social media (GMB Posts), forums (GMB Q&A), and includes many points of conversion, resulting in visitors no longer needing to visit your site for the information they need. On top of that, all that great work being done to create useful content is often swallowed up by Google featured snippets even when you do get a top ranking. With t...

Short film has last-ditch backer party tonight (with queso) from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2tycp2T via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2K8d7Pq

First trailer arrives for biopic of Austin music legend from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2yAHKIe via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2K9e0TT

Nobody ever said SEO was easy. It not only requires a myriad of different methods that evolve over time and follow no particular pattern, but is also impacted by ever-changing search engine policies. Yet SEO is actually quite methodical. While you will need to mix and combine multiple on-page, off-page, local and other factors to come up with an effective SEO strategy, you can’t just start anywhere. You must prioritize tasks — from basic to advanced SEO — to succeed. If you do not begin by laying a foundation, you will end up spending a lot of time without achieving the results you need to support your bottom line. Set up and check SEO tools SEO deals with data, so your first priority should be to make sure your tools to collect and analyze that data are working properly. The most important are: Google Search Console . You will not be able to track a site’s performance in Google search without this. It is also useful for keyword analysis, implementing and fixing technical SEO, ...

Whether you’ve just started with PPC or work in the industry for years, you still remember a mistake that you’ve never thought you could make. After all, human errors are part of our nature. Every PPC professional is guilty of making at least one mistake at some point . Whether it was important or not, it’s good to recognise it to make sure you’re not repeating it. We’ve decided to focus on the most common mistakes you can make when it comes to PPC and here’s a list that can serve as your next checklist on the mistakes you need to avoid. Wrong targeting and bidding An important part of a successful PPC strategy is the right targeting. Just because you have the ideal target audience in mind from previous campaigns doesn’t mean that you can guarantee future success. The wrong audience for a particular campaign or objective cannot bring the desired results, that’s why you need to be careful when setting up your targeting options. For example, you can narrow down your audience by se...

When running paid campaigns on both search and social, it’s imperative to take all learnings from each channel and apply them to the other. This allows you to take an holistic view of your marketing efforts and optimize each channel with insights you wouldn’t get by keeping things in silos. Search is all about capturing those who have intent related to what you’re selling. Extrapolating and recognizing the audiences expressing that intent should be your goal when it comes to gathering search engine marketing (SEM) learnings. This article covers some of the easiest ways to gather learnings from SEM and leverage them in paid social. Pull demographic data As you run your search campaigns and collect significant data, you should pull in insights on gender, age, household income, and parental status. Google automatically segments out different brackets within these categories to provide insight into how each performs (e.g. how males behave versus females, or ages 18–29 behave versus age...

Plaintiffs cite long-standing malpractice by Austin, Travis County from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2M64Ok2 via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2I3v4cb

The vast potential to create, interact and educate with augmented reality (AR) is quickly gaining popularity. In the past, AR gained media attention for simply existing, but recently, companies have been applying the strategy to their marketing campaigns and reaping the rewards. As we move further into the digital world, the benefits of implementing AR are staggering. For instance, AR has an average dwell time of 75 seconds – affording companies an unprecedented chance to appeal to their consumers. Flow Digital , a Newcastle-based digital marketing company, are sharing why 2018 is the takeover of the media channel, and what it means for the future. The statistics driving AR In the past two years, the AR industry has experienced unprecedented growth. We can largely attribute the early success to the pioneers of AR, Pokémon Go which became the most downloaded app in 2016 with over 750 million to date. By 2020, the number of AR users is expected to surpass one billion and by 2021, th...

Publisher steps down after a brief tenure from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2I3QSEM via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2JZ5Kps

ClickZ , Search Engine Watch’s sister site, has launched an innovative new series of buyers guides, created with the aim of cutting through the complexity of the technology landscape to help our community of readers to make better decisions about vendors. The second guide in the series is dedicated to enterprise SEO tools . With $80 billion predicted to be spent on SEO services annually by 2020, these software packages play a vital role in helping marketers derive insights from masses of data. The core component (60%) of the ClickZ SEO tools vendor guide scoring comes from our customer survey, which received over 1200 responses and evaluated technologies across the following six areas: Scores were awarded across 36 sub-categories, with six grouped under each of the categories highlighted in the image above. A further 20% of the scoring came from the ClickZ expert advisory board, which features representatives from Vodafone, LEGO, GroupM, and Macy’s. The author attended interv...

Appearing in local searches is something businesses need to be taking very seriously. The rise of mobile has made this concept even more prevalent. In fact, a study by Google found that 88% of ‘near me’ searches were conducted on a mobile device. It’s important to realize that ranking on a local search (in any capacity) is no overnight job. Local SEO is extremely competitive and when it comes to any sort of SEO strategy, there is one thing to keep in mind: it changes constantly. There are many different factors that come into play when etching out a name for yourself in the local market. Here are eight fundamental steps to get you started. Prioritize titles and meta description tags Titles and meta description tags are customizable elements that let users know what your website, or webpages, are about. Remember, most users scan the results of online searches very quickly, so these descriptions should be concise and easily absorbed. When looking at title tags: The typical title...