The industry's top wizards, doctors, and other experts offer their best advice, research, how-tos, and insights—all in the name of helping you level-up your SEO and online marketing skills.
When I started in the SEO field (circa 2003), the job responsibilities weren't easy, but the list was relatively small: Over the next 5 years, those responsibilities increased, but it was primarily in tactical and knowledge sorts of ways. A 2008 rundown might look something like: The last 2.5 years, however, have made for some fairly substantive changes. We...
A site can be a lot like a mullet: business in front, party in the back. How do you muss it all up and keep a site in style? Any given website naturally attracts a broad set of visitors, and herding that diverse audience onto the right pages is a huge undertaking (as you know, it's something to consider when doing site infrastructure SEO, etc.). This funneling gets even more difficult whe...
The best experience site visitors can have is to find what it is they're looking for. They want easy access to quality, unbiased information, they want to compare prices and they want to know if the company, association, service provider or other site owner delivers the goods or services visitors are looking for. Unfortunately, site owners want something else – a sale, an opt-in, a...
Do tweets still effect rankings? How about Google+? The mystery began on July 3rd when Google Realtime Search went dark. The next day we learned the underlying cause to be Google loosing access to...
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Several weekends ago, for the first time, I accompanied my wife, Geraldine (aka Everywhereist, whose blog was just placed on Time.com's Top 25 Blogs of 2011 and then on Forbes' Top 10 Lifestyle Sites; woo hoo!), to Vancouver, BC for a professional conference focused on her career rather than mine (TBEX - the Travel Bloggers Exchange). Given that she's attended countless sessions on SEO, analytics, tech startups and scalable SaaS models, I figured it was the least I could do.
We've all been in difficult interview situations - you get a hard question and go on and on and on without giving a solid answer. In our realm, though, there are some SEO best practices that are so well established that everyone should know and be able to describe them to other people. If you're a business looking to hire an SEO...
Google made $58.8 Billion in revenues in 2013. This post is based on Google's 2010 revenues of $29.3 Billion, and it attempts to illustrate just how much money that is.
I'm a little bit obsessed with freebies. OK make that a lot. The psychology of giving someone a freebie and then seeing what you can get in return is fascinating to watch. People will fall at your feet for a free gift, and sometimes the results are better than any traditional marketing tactic could ever be. In this article I look at why freebies are so powerful, and how they can be turned in to...
It feels kind of negative to start a post with a warning, but you’re all busy people and I’d hate for you to waste your time – so here goes: Today I’ll be talking about the ethics of personalisation online, and the potential issues which might arise as a result. As such I won’t be offended if you decide this isn’t quite your cup of tea and decide not t...
As you venture through Natural Search Optimization, your primary goal is to expand the reach of your website to a global level. What happens when you have a client with specific geographic limitations though? If you or your client has a limited service area, then you should place a particular focus on localizing ...
It's here! Google has released Panda update 2.2, just as Matt Cutts said they would at SMX Advanced here in Seattle a couple of weeks ago. This time around, Google has - among other things - improved their ability to detect scraper sites and banish them from the SERPs. Of course, the Panda updates are...
As an SEO agency, Virante has always prided itself in having research-based answers to the questions presented by our clients. A year or so ago, I caught myself referring to the a site as having "a great looking natural link profile" without really having an numbers or analysis to describe exactly what that profile should look like. Sure, I could point out a spam link or two, or wha...
So you want a career in SEO? Or maybe you already have an SEO role and it's time for a change. Well, I've been doing SEO for five years now and I can safely say that I've endured the pros and cons of almost every type of SEO career situation. So let me give you some insight on the good, bad, and ugly for all of them. ...
Your landing pages aren’t converting. Sadly, this is not your customer’s fault. It’s your job to tell your customers why your product is awesome and you have fewer than 5 seconds to tell that story. Regardless of whether you’re a rookie or veteran marketer, we’ve assembled the following checklist to help you avoid some of the common pitfal...