Is Google favouring long-form content in its results?
Something rather strange happened recently to the results for one of our major keywords 'copywriting' - see SERPs. For the past 12 months or so, our homepage has consistently appeared in the top 10 results for the term – the largest volume search term in our industry.
This page has been replaced with various other landing pages, most recently settling on a guide we produced titled 'How to become a copywriter.' This is despite the fact that this page does not include the term 'copywriting' in the meta data or header tags on the page and has no external back links.
I suspected that the replacement of this page may have been due to an algorithmic penalty due to overzealous use of the term in link building to the homepage. However, …
Examples of developing your brand in 2015 by building your Digital Knowledge Centre
SEO technology provider, Searchmetrics, recently released a white paper: SEO Rank Correlations and Ranking Factors 2014 – Google U.S., evaluating factors impacting organic search results and an analysis of search engine algorithms. This post highlights some of the findings for organisations SEO brand strategy. I have condensed the 83 page document into some of the key factors brands need to be aware of.
The searchmetrics report provides some good news for brands. Whether an established player or an emerging start-up, brands need to wake up to the opportunities the ever changing search landscape offers.
There has been a fundamental shift in the types of brands monopolising the search landscape along with the rapid growth in content marketing, the brands winning this game are the brands that have re-defined their…
What are the biggest challenges for enterprise SEO?
Today's consumer buying process for many consumers starts with on-line activity - often involving search to find the relevant reviews or price comparisons. Since research has shown that across industries 'organic traffic accounts for 94% of clickthroughs' on the search results, it's clearly important for larger businesses with a complex product portfolio to compete through SEO.
In this research conducted by Conductor with Ascend2, ROI from Enterprise SEO and the challenges and tactics considered are reviewed.
72% of respondents were positive about their ROI from SEO strategies, and 54% contributed this to content creation.
So the majority of respondents were positive, but here we pick out the challenges of Enterprise SEO. As the graph shows, companies who were not seeing the benefits, felt that their challenges were around a lack of in-house SEO skills, limited budget and difficulty in optimizing content with keywords.
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A review of technical SEO in the Cruise industry
ClickThrough Marketing conducted mini technical SEO audits on the top five cruise travel agent sites in Europe, and found that all five could boost their search performance with SEO tweaks.
This isn't an industry-specific problem – it's an all-round epidemic. We have carried out countless SEO audits for companies of all sizes. And if we’ve learnt one thing, it’s that the size or position of a firm has little bearing on its technical SEO performance. We've seen huge, popular sites with critical SEO problems, superbly optimised sites from struggling brands, and vice versa. To demonstrate this, we conducted mini audits on Europe's top-five cruise travel agents (by reach according to Alexa), looking at 12 key factors that can affect search performance and usability.*
We hope this research shows the type of checks that are relevant and worthwhile for businesses…
What does research show are the emotions that content must create to encouraging sharing?
Marketing has forever been about making people aware of one’s brand, as a precursor to making them actually desire it. Since the very concept of branding and proactive selling (marketing) began back in the late 19th century, the goal has always been the same, even if the methods have changed beyond all recognition; connect with people whom you feel are likely to relate to whatever product or service it is you are offering, and make them want it.
With this in mind, marketing has been, is and always will be about relating to your audience and whether this is done online, offline, through mainstream or non-mainstream avenues, is largely irrelevant; whatever succeeds in triggering a collective positive emotion in one’s target audience, is always going to be the correct approach. Remove all the jargon and fancy marketing terminology,…
A 10 step online PR process to prepare and initiate the perfect Digital PR campaign
The C word, you know the one I’m talking about. It’s the word that can put you in the good books with Google and holds the key to adding value to your clients website. We’ve all heard time and time again that this is the key to gaining success in the world of digital marketing. That’s true, but don’t for a minute think that this creation of content is the end of the road. Contrary to Kevin Costner and his 'Field of Dreams' movie quote, if you build it, they may or may not come.
So! What do we have to do to get our beautiful creations out there? Whether they are artistic infographics or feature length articles, you can guarantee that somebody, somewhere wants them to…
An introduction to Attribution Modelling
In a bid to connect web users with great content (and generally make the world a better place) Google is constantly tweaking its algorithm and filling SEO managers with dread.
Updates like Penguin and Panda have altered the fabric of search entirely. The things that used to take your website to Page 1 simply don’t work anymore. But don’t believe the harbingers of doom just yet: SEO isn’t dead… it’s different.
There are plenty of ways to understand your SEO effectiveness and so boost your rankings and improve the visibility of your site. An important part of the process is attribution modelling,
What is Attribution Modelling?
Attribution modelling is a system which can help you get the most from your marketing mix.
Modern web users are smart and they don’t always purchase the first thing they see online. Often, they don’t buy something…
A reminder of the latest thinking on copywriting for SEO and conversion
If you're not an SEO specialist, but are involved with writing or reviewing website copy, it can be tricky keeping up with the latest approaches to writing for SEO. We can't all afford SEO agencies or in-house experts! If this describes you, this infographic from ContentVerve could be a useful reminder. It gives a good summary of the latest thinking if you are simply looking to become familiar with the current top level SEO tactics, without it getting too techie.
Remember though, as the introduction to the infographic says, write for humans first, SEO second, keep it natural!
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An example analysis of Groupon's traffic showing a signficant proportion of direct traffic could be SEO-related
Gaining organic traffic from SEO is a significant inbound marketing investment for many businesses, so making the business case and demonstrating returns from SEO is important. The typical approach for this is naturally to use Google Analytics to report on the organic traffic segment. Since Google Analytics can no longer reliably provide SEO keyword data due to the growth in keywords marked 'not provided' we have written about how to use Google Webmaster Tools keyword data to determine keywords.
We're alerting readers to this example, since it shows that you should make colleagues (or clients) aware that significant additional SEO traffic may be hidden as a referrer.
Case shows that 60% of direct traffic is actually organic search
This research summary of Groupon visitor referrers from Conductor summarises the importance of SEO to Groupon based on their standard analytics. They comment:
'Groupon recently…
Inbound marketing success requires digital channel integration
As referenced in the book, Inbound Marketing and SEO, Inbound Marketing is defined as an organisation gaining the privilege to deliver anticipated, personal and timely content to people who actually want to receive the content. It’s a concept the polar opposite of customers being blasted email shots, their email addresses being sold off to 3rd parties without permission, money off coupons and direct mail shots where an organisation hopes enough customers would interact with the promotion to make it stick.
A number of digital communications channels are being utilised to adapt an Inbound approach with the aim to customise the delivery of content to a well-defined, targeted customer group such as Search Engine Optimisation and Social Media, working together as one joined up digital strategy, delivering the same message adapted for the chosen digital channel optimised to attract the…
