Bing Updates Webmaster Tools & Brings Back Site Explorer
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing have made a huge number of updates to their webmaster platform in an update they have called Phoenix (original). The changes cover the following areas of their platform:
New : Link Explorer
New: User Experience
New: SEO Reports
New: SEO Analyzer
New: Fetch as Bingbot
New: Canonical Alerts
Updated: URL Removal Tool
Updated: Keyword Research Tool
Updated: URL Normalization
Safe to say the Bing Search team have been busy. The highlights for me, from an SEO perspective are the SEO Analyser & Link Explorer which I look into more below.
The new look interface, displayed below makes using the platform much easier and makes great use of simple data to create the powerful dashboards.
Marketing implications
Great insights at no cost
A lot of SEO…
Mutual benefits, great communication and unrefusable offers create an outstanding affiliate programme
Don Corleone was a visionary. He was able to look ahead and predict what would happen before his competitors. He thrived in a competitive environment despite a number of challenging circumstances.
While most of us don’t have to face being shot at in our day to day work, I think Don Corleone would have been an exceptional affiliate marketer. He managed to make the most disloyal of men advocates of his cause.
In this post I will explore some of the areas that helped him do this, and how you can apply them in your affiliate marketing campaigns.
1: Build strong relationships by helping affiliates achieve their objectives
This is one area where Don Corleone thrived and something that is pivotal to affiliate marketing.
Your affiliates are your partners so you need to…
Models to review your online engagement strategy
At first, online marketing was relatively straightforward, you had a website and you used different “traffic-building tools” like SEO, Adwords and affiliate marketing to drive visitors towards it to achieve the goals you were looking for. There were limited options to engage audiences on other sites, so it was all about traffic building. This is how I show it in my books:
But in 2012, developing online marketing strategies is much more complex with many, many platforms to consider. It’s important to prioritise on the customer touchpoints which are going to give you the maximum returns given a limited budget and time .
In this post I’ll summarise some different ways to visualise the range of options available for traffic building. I've mainly written the post to introduce the option of the Interractive Brand Ecosystem from Forrester which I show…
Our summary of the new advice from Google on SEO for startups and small sites
You've probably heard of the Penguin series of updates that have negatively affected rankings for many companies. It's worth being aware that last week we had the release of Penguin 3.8 which impacts 1% of global searches. You can learn more about this Penguin update here.
SEO basics in 10 minutes
The main purpose of this post is to alert you to this new video guide from Google. It's from Maile Oyhe who has worked with Google for 7 years. The advice covers the basics needed for SEO for sites with less than 50 pages, she says that doesn't include more complex Ecommerce sites.
While most online marketers will already know most of the advice, you may find it useful to share in these situations:
Friends / family just starting their own site / business who are asking you for advice…
4 issues to consider for successful link-building
There are many parallels in digital marketing where the knowledge we acquire and learn can be transferred and applied to other online marketing tools and tactics.
Over the past eights years, I have managed affiliate programs for start-up companies operating in different market sectors and have been fortunate enough to have gained experience with a "hands-on" approach rather than outsourcing the management of the affiliate programs.
More recently, I have been focusing my online skillset in learning the art of SEO campaigns - and my current employers have provided me with a platform to deliver and implement a strategy for the organisation. What I quickly began to find is there are a number of common similarities in affiliate marketing and devising a link-building campaign.
purpose being to provide similarities between running an affiliate marketing program and a link building campaign.
1. What's your USP?
Before you commence an affiliate/link building strategy it's…
An introduction to increasing visibility in Google for your Facebook page
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Free Distilled SEO for Facebook Guide
Our summary of the Distilled advice on Facebook page SEO
We thought we’d flag this new guide on Facebook from Distilled since it gives some good free, basic advice on how to increase the visibility of your Facebook page in Google. It’s NOT a guide for SEOs, rather it’s an introduction for business owners.
You can download a short PDF at the link above which summarises this video:
…
By
25 Jun 2012
5 simple techniques to consider to increase your Twitter following
I’m often asked how you can build followers on Twitter. The truth is that there isn’t any secret to doing this and buying followers or using autofollow systems is a short sighted cheat which isn’t a good idea. Buying followers is like hiring people to line up outside your bar to make it look busy. You might get some new people lining up because of the crowd, but if your bar sucks, they won’t be staying no matter how many people you’ve paid to get in line.
Leveraging Twitter for your brand marketing simply takes hard work and effort. Here are five ways I've found effective to build your brand on Twitter:
#1 Participate in chats
There are regularly scheduled Twitter chats on just about any subject you can think of. Whether its industries or special interests, there’s a good bet there’s a regular…
New Research Shows Key Ranking Factors for the UK
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Search Metrics 2012 Ranking Factor Report
The volume of data and number crunching to form this guide is remarkable. It's based on analysis of 10,000 selected top-keywords, 300,000 websites and millions of links, shares and tweets from within the Searchmetrics database.
It has been condensed well for a quick summary on SEO in the UK. The guide looks at the 6 trends / changes the research highlighted which are summarised in the diagram below.
Marketing implications
While the report probably won't show anything that most people will not have heard already it may hopefully spur you into action or debunk some of the SEO myths. I have summarised the 3 I believe are most important below, but you can see the full…
Have you considered Facebook Promoted Posts? Examples of results from tests.
Another new feature that Facebook is offering (and yet more evidence of its post IPO drive to monetise) is Promoted Posts.
As I reported here recently, most fans are only seeing 17% of a brand's posts. This data has always been available in the Insights dashboard, but Facebook are now choosing to bring it to brand page admin's attention far more by displaying the percentage to date under each post.
Brand page managers have been less than delighted to discover that they are now having to pay for the privilege of their earned fans seeing their updates. But, even with the best optimised posts on the platform, you will be limited in getting your message out there. Enter Promoted Posts.
It's pretty simple to promote a post. Create your new post and either at that point (or up to three days later) selecte "Promote". Depending…
Practical guidance for modelling full customer lifecycle attribution
With ongoing pressure on marketing budgets and a burgeoning array of digital marketing channels and choices, attribution is a hotter topic than ever.
‘Last click’ is the most common approach; attributing 100% of a sale’s value to the last or converting click.
‘Last click’ is a flawed, though, because it ignores all previous activities that led to the sale, which could result in reduced or cut investment regarding the key contributing activities.
To build a truly accurate attribution model you need current and historic individual-level data from your online channels.
Read on to see why.
The value of aggregated individual-level online data
Only by piecing together each individual customer journey can you build up a truly accurate picture of the inter-relationship between your digital marketing activities and the relative role, importance and value of each one…
