How to avoid those typical PR blunders
PR, like many parts of digital marketing, can be a numbers game. You try different pitches to different publications and hope that something works. Along the way, you make mistakes and you learn from them.
Below, we’ve spelled-out five of the most standard mistakes of PR outreach so you can avoid making them.
Mistake #1: Thinking news will come to you
It can be exhausting, but in order to get coverage, you need to seek it out. And today, there are more tools available than ever for low-budget, reduced-effort PR outreach campaigns.
'Info' and 'tip' lines are freely available online and more effective than you probably think, too and social platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn or software-as-service like MuckRack provide an opportunity to get in touch directly with people you might otherwise never have had access…
3 case studies showing how negative SEO works
Negative search engine optimization (SEO) can take many forms, but the most dangerous are those you never see coming. It’s not indulging in 'black hat tricks' hoping you’ll never get caught, getting lazy when defining 'quality content' or getting talked into invisible text as a means for boosting your rankings. The worst kind of negative SEO is an attack from the competition. It can be many things, but some of the most common include:
A competitor buying 'bad links' and then pointing them to your site to sink your rankings
Hacking websites to inflict damage
'Review bombing,' which seems like a positive thing at first, but when the competition floods review sites with glowing reviews for you it seems 'paid for' and can result in a search engine penalty
Reporting you falsely to Google for participating in black hat tricks
Stealing non-indexed content
DMCA removal requests
Unfortunately, website owners have very…
Who uses Instagram by age, gender and country? [Infographic]
With more than 150 million users and 16 billion photos shared to date, Instagram is going from 'strength-to-strength'. For marketers, there are ongoing new features including the recent ads for the UK market, launched in the US last year, and their first ever app - 'lapsed video' which keeps up with the '#selfielapse phenomenon'.
In this GlobalWebIndex's Infographic, we share some profile demographics across the globe:
20% of Internet users now have an Instagram account.
For more ideas on Instagram Marketing, Expert Members can download our Smarter Instagram Marketing guide by Rhian Simms.
…
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook's new ad network?
Importance: [rating=1] Current importance to small, mid-size businesses.
Value: [rating=4] for larger businesses and brands.
Recommended link: Facebook Atlas announcement
What is Facebook Atlas?
1. Atlas is not a new service
There has been a lot of hype around Facebook's recent re-launch of Atlas which you may know as an ad-serving product which has been used for managing display campaigns by large media companies for many years. Facebook purchased the Atlas ad server from Microsoft in early 2013 and are building it into their ad offering.
2. Atlas will offer targeting based on Facebook profile information and remarketing across publisher sites
Atlas will enable targeting of audiences on publisher sites based on their Facebook demographics and interests. Remarketing or retargeting should also be possible - this is an established approach by brands to offer people reminders about products or services. It's unclear…
A simple explanation of the Robots.txt file for marketers
The robots.txt file, also known as the Robots Exclusions Protocol, is an essential part of your website. It provides instructions to the search engine robots that crawl your site. Get it wrong, and you could damage or even destroy your search engine visibility.
In this tutorial on robots.txt I'll explain the what, why and how of robots.txt for non SEO specialists so you can ask the right questions or have the right discussions about it with your specialists.
What is robots.txt?
Any webmaster worth their salt will know how important the robots.txt file is. Essentially a list of instructions for search engine robots (or web crawlers), it indicates any areas of your website you do not wish to crawled (and potentially indexed) by search engines. Getting it wrong could lead to your website disappearing…
Chrome triumphs on desktop, but Safari on mobile
If you're a marketer or designer you'll be aware of the dramatic change in browser use since Google introduced Chrome. This compilation from the US from Adobe Digital Index's report clearly shows the change across the most popular browsers, across desktop and mobile. Is it no surprise that in 2014 we have seen a crossover so that Google Chrome commands the highest share, as us consumers are spending more time in the 'google ecosystem' through our Gmail accounts, Google hangouts, and Chrome and Android browsers default to google search - we can't escape it!
However, Internet Explorer and Safari are still at similar market share, so as Craig Sullivan points out in his post on 17 ways to F**k-up your AB Testing - many sales can be lost because designers ignore older versions…
Should you switch your site from http to https?
In September Google announced that websites would receive a minor ranking boost by using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and switching from HTTP to HTTPS. Now that the 'dust has settled' a little, this post looks at the 'Pros' and 'Cons' of making the switch.
Google has stated that it would be a 'very lightweight signal' within the overall ranking algorithm and carried 'less weight than other signals such as high-quality content; Google webmaster trends analysts Zineb Ait Bahajji and Gary Illyes went on to say that Google
'would like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.'
As a result, the search marketing community went into overdrive, blogging, tweeting and commenting on the reports. Many webmasters and business owners were soon requesting information and guidance on moving to SSL and companies were producing…
What length of copy is most shareable across social media?
As we all put more effort into content marketing and our competitors do as well, we want to get cut-through, to maximise the chance of sharing. So, it helps to know the length of copy which maximises shares.
We like this research from CoSchedule since it isn't based on opinion, it's based on data analysing the number of shares from social media from 1 million articles, focusing on those with more than 1,000 shares in total... It showed that 'on average, longer content gets more shares’.
Source: OkDork.com
Of course, there will be exceptions to any rule-of-thumb based on a large data set, but this clearly shows that content producers who create more in-depth content will be rewarded by more shares.
Their research reinforces researchers found in the…
Avoid those common PPC Mistakes to maximise your campaigns
As I work with new clients to improve their PPC campaigns, there are some common mistakes I see again and again. These include both the way the account is set up and the overall strategy of where to focus PPC spend. In this post I'll recommend a number of tools and techniques that can help you avoid these mistakes and so boost campaign ROI in AdWords.
1. Not analysing enough data
One simple mistake that marketers make is that they don't analyse enough data to come to a statistically reliable decision. When you first start out testing and you see that one ad has 15 clicks and one has 12 and come to the conclusion that the one with 15 is better. However here you would not have enough data to make a reliable decision and are at risk of choosing the wrong advert as your winner.
To…
Take control of your localized website for SEO
For digital marketers managing many localized websites, multilingual SEO can be a whole different ballgame compared to traditional SEO strategies. Sure, some practices are similar, such as placing appropriate keywords in headers and metadata. However, there are many new considerations to factor into the plan when optimizing your website for various cultures around the world.
After all, there is a lot more to multilingual SEO than translating a few keywords.
5 Tips to avoid with your website localization
Here are five common setbacks to avoid even before you head down the website localization path. Along the way, I’ll share some valuable tips to help guide you on the right path to search engine (and customer experience) glory.
Tip 1: Thin, low-quality content on your localized websites
As you may know, SEO is not about stuffing your website full of keywords. In fact, doing so can land you right…
