People have a lot of misleading information regarding search engine optimization. Beginners make a lot of mistakes with SEO either because they don't understand it correctly, or they are not aware of some factors. So what are the most common search SEO errors that keep cropping up?
The post The 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes by @alexanderkesler appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
FetchRss)
I'm sure that you've heard the terms “inbound” and “outbound” marketing, but do you really know the difference between the two?
The post Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing – What's Best for 2017? by @ChuckPrice518 appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
If you are struggling to find the right gift for the digital marketer in your life you are in the right place. I've rounded up gifts in a range of budgets to make your holiday shopping just a little bit easier!
The post 7 Holiday Gift Ideas for Digital Marketers by @dantosz appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from the world of search marketing and beyond.
Whether you're taking a break from Black Friday shopping mania, recovering from a post-Thanksgiving food coma, or just getting on with your normal working day because you're in one of those boring countries that doesn't celebrate Turkey Day (*raises hand*), we've got all of the most up-to-the-minute search news for your reading pleasure.
This week, Google has released some canny changes to AdWords ahead of Black Friday, introverts have a new best friend in the form of real-time Popular Times data, and we take a look at the steps Facebook has taken so far to tackle the issue of fake news.
As retailers around the world look to cash in on the annual shopping frenzy that is Black Friday, you can be sure that Google, at least, will be raking it in. Ahead of this year's Black Friday, Google has released additional store visits data to the AdWords location extension, allowing retailers to see exactly how far away people are from their store when they perform a search.
It also published a bumper crop of Black Friday data with shopping searches and foot traffic trends for 2016, in a move that will benefit both physical and digital retailers alike.
Christopher Ratcliff reported for Search Engine Watch this week on exactly how the AdWords improvements work, as well as some key findings from the Black Friday data.
If, like me, you're a hard-core hermit introvert who hates to set foot outside unless absolutely necessary, good news! Google has a function that's tailor-made for you.
Google's Popular Times feature in Search and Maps has always been convenient for checking when a business is typically busy, helping you to avoid the rush. But now, the feature works in real-time, allowing you to see whether a bar or restaurant is busy right at that moment so you can decide whether or not to leave the house.
Christopher Ratcliff took a closer look at the new functionality this week, including the ability to see how long people typically stay at any given location, and an improved 'operating hours' feature for business, service providers and restaurants within larger premises.
What's that, you say? You want some more Google news? All right! How about the news that Google has now expanded its 'rich cards' to cover local restaurants and online courses?
Rich cards are a visual carousel of search results in 'card' form which appear underneath search snippets on mobile, allowing users to swipe from one result to the next.
Like rich snippets, they use schema.org structured markup to display content, making it even more important for website owners who want to stay ahead of the game to hop on the schema.org bandwagon.
From standard results to rich snippets to rich cards. Image: Google Webmasters
When rich cards first launched back in May, they were limited to film and recipe searches. Now Google has expanded their repertoire to include restaurants and online courses, as reported by Search Engine Journal's Matt Southern. Google's developer documents for local restaurants and online courses give instructions for website owners on the right structured data to include to trigger rich cards for their business.
Google has also added upgrades to its Structured Data Testing Tool, Search Console and AMP Testing Tool to help developers build and test their new card functionality.
Not to be outdone, Google's main rival in search has also been making improvements to its own carousel-style feature: the Black Friday flyers carousel. Jennifer Slegg reported for The SEM Post on the new look for Bing's annual Black Friday carousel, which this year is serving ads directly from the brand advertisers instead of via Flipp, its partner of last year.
Image: The SEM Post
Bing is still showing ads above the carousel for retailers who want to target Black Friday keywords, but is limiting those to only two spots.
While the flyers themselves are eye-catching, they don't provide a lot of useful detail to make shoppers want to click on them, and it would be interesting to see how their CTR compares to regular text ads if Bing decides to release any data. Is the visual alone enough to make people click?
We reported last week in our search news roundup that Google was tackling the widespread issue of fake news online by cutting off their AdSense ad revenue, and Facebook has been close behind.
Tereza Litsa took a look this week at the measures that Facebook has taken to deal with fake news on its site, and whether they are enough to deal with the real issue at heart.
She wrote,
Facebook may not be keen on accepting its responsibility as a curated media publisher (and it doesn't see the platform as such), but it certainly needs to admit how its ambitious plan to reach more people and attract more publishers have their consequences.
The age of social media and the way publishing speed became more competitive is certainly the main reason fact checking became a luxury for many publishers, while users got addicted to an increasing content consumption (and a filter bubble that serves the relevancy they like).
Moreover, we are also experiencing a changing nature of media, with the integration of digital technology being demanding and challenging.
Bing will be displaying holiday hours in real time for all holidays going forward.
The post Bing to Begin Displaying Holiday Hours for Local Businesses by @MattGSouthern appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Posted by randfish
When it comes to certain kinds of backlinks, avoiding penalties can be a real gray area. How can you earn the benefits without gaining the scrutiny of Google? In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand will teach you which rules to follow to keep you safe and on the up-and-up, all while improving your link profile.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week, we're going to chat about a question we see a lot here at Moz, around what you should do with websites that you maybe design or build or do work for, your clients' websites if you're an agency or consultant, or a web designer or builder, sites that you own but are not your primary website, and widgets and embeds, blogrolls, all these kinds of things where you control the link infrastructure, or could control it, and should you.
I think one of the challenges here is to understand that many folks have recognized that, over the years, widgets, embeds, links from client websites have gotten other sites penalized, potentially even your sites penalized over the years, because you had all these links that you control pointing back to places, and to Google that can look really sketchy. So I want to talk through some best practices about how you can get link benefit and value from these places without getting yourself into trouble.
All right. The challenge here is let's say that I own sneakerobsessed.com, but it is not my primary website, or maybe it's a client's website. But I do own sneakysneakers.com, and I'm thinking to myself, "Gosh, you know the fact that I control, I have the login for the admin here, the site owner, or me, would be fine with linking from these pages to these pages. What should I do there? I don't want to get into trouble. But I would love to get some benefit, and I think that these links could help me. Should I:
A. Add a link from every page here to a bunch of pages here or to my homepage?
B. Should I link to a variety of my pages, like take a few of these and link them to my homepage, take a few others and link to some internal pages?
C. Should I use a single page on this website to link back to maybe my homepage?
The answer is kind of, it depends. It depends.
Anytime you're referencing other content you've created or things that you've done, or recognition that you have, or someone else from your organization, you would naturally link over here. That's the way you should play it, not with some specific process and checklist. Anything that matches a very standard pattern is going to be easily recognized by Google, and that can get you into trouble.
The only time you get into real trouble is if that blogroll is essentially just a paid manipulation. It's technically a blog network. It's not that you're being editorially endorsed by someone else. They're only linking to you because you're linking to them. You get into that reciprocity challenge. That's not to say you should never link to anyone who has you in their blogroll either. It's just that this has to look natural and editorial to Google, or you can get in trouble.
Syndicators, by the way, it's okay to link from every syndicated piece of content back to the original piece of content. In fact, that's the way it should be. If you do your own syndication, like I do sometimes on Medium, where I put up my blog posts that I've already put on moz.com/rand on medium.com/randfish, then you should have each of those link back to their original pieces, and that's just fine.
So the idea here is that you have this piece of content here that's being embedded from your site. So Sneaker Obsessed, maybe the guys there went to Sneaky Sneakers. They saw a data graph of Nike shoes versus Adidas shoes sales over the last 12 months, and they were like, "Oh, man. I really want to show that. That's awesome." In fact, there's a little "embed this graph onto your own website." So they took that, and they put it on there.
You get into more dangerous territory with this type of thing when in the link between here there's:
You're much less likely to have problems if you:
That will keep you safe.
Hopefully, you will not encounter these problems. I think if you follow these rules, you'll be in the safe zone, and you'll also be benefiting from the link value that these can provide. I look forward to your comments. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
