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…
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…
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…
Top takeaways from the content marketing/SEO workshop at Digital Impact
Earlier in September I attended Digital Impact - Smart Insights’ inaugural digital marketing conference at the Cavendish Conference Centre in London. And as expected, it was a festival of all things digital, with presentations and workshops on a variety of topics including ecommerce strategy, digital transformation, paid search best practices and mobile strategy. You can get an excellent summary/ review of the whole day.
For this post, I want focus on another key technique for Digital Impact and one that was the subject of a workshop in the afternoon hosted by ClickThrough.
[slideshare id=39289618&doc=searchcontentmarketingsept2014v4-withoutpresenternotes-140919083858-phpapp01]
Where is SEO now?
Before delving into the workshop, a few facts were shared with the audience to confirm the current state of SEO:
Google are continually fighting poor content and spam
Google’s ranking criteria has…
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…
Broken Links = Missed Opportunities
It's common with the growth of website Content Management Systems that websites have multiple editors & frequent updates, so this can easily result in mistakes. An area that often suffers as a result is internal & external linking from within webpages.
While easy to manually check, it is often the case that sites are just too big to go through page-by-page to check. Luckily for webmasters and marketers alike there are tools that will help you identify broken links on your website.
Why are broken links such a bad thing?
Not only are you disrupting user journeys through the website which could leave users frustrated with your brand, but you are also making search engine spiders jobs more difficult and therefore reducing your opportunity to rank well. If search engines are unable to crawl / index you site easily they will be less likely to appropriately rank it.
Broken links from other sites are also an…
5 reasons why migrating all site pages may be a bad idea
Importance: [rating=1] (Signal currently affects only 1% of queries)
Recommended link: Google Webmaster Blog announcement
You will know that Google uses hundreds of ranking signals to return the most relevant results for a search, plus many filters to remove spammy or duplicate results too. But it’s rare for Google to announce what these are or to disclose new signals. So, the recent announcement from the Google Webmaster Blog that use of a HTTPS (HTTP Secure) will be used as a positive ranking signal prompted many, particular retailers who will already use HTTP Secure in checkout, to take notice. Google’s precise words were:
“Over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections…
A Google update affecting local searches
Value/Importance: [rating=5] (for local marketers)
Recommended link: SearchEngineLand announcement
Well, Pigeon would seem a logical follow-on from Google’s Hummingbird update. There seems to be an avian connection and it could change the search “pecking order” (sorry)…
Note that while Hummingbird, like Panda and Panda and Penguin, were terms coined by Google, this isn’t an official term. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Journal has introduced the term to explain it on the Search Engine Land article above since Google haven’t given a defined name yet.
What do marketers need to know about Google Pigeon?
This algorithm update will only be relevant if your business targets local searches for a product or service in a location, for example through a store or office
It’s a major change which Google told search Engine Land, links:
“deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds…
A summary of SEO techniques you should focus on
Some basic SEO mistakes are all too easy to make. Here are some problems with the overall approach to SEO that I've seen. Do you recognise them?
1. Putting all your eggs in the SEO basket.
SEO can be an extremely fruitful internet marketing strategy for any business, but depending solely on SEO is a dangerous game to play.
Here’s why:
Marketing is not 'one size fits all'. What works like gangbusters for one business may produce almost nothing for another. That’s why companies should use a multi-faceted marketing strategy to test the waters with a variety of tactics, and continue to evolve their strategy over time as results are produced.
SEO is not instant. Results from SEO don’t come overnight. It takes time (sometimes lots of it!) and patience. Other marketing strategies can fill your pipeline in the meantime and help you reach your target audience through multiple…
Is mobile marketing getting enough investment?
SEMPO's 9th report on the State of Search Marketing highlighted that mobile marketing is a priority for respondents. As a result, SEMPO created a separate Mobile Search Trends infographic to showcase the findings which we feature here.
Agencies and clients who took part in this survey shared their views on mobile marketing:
8 out of 10 respondents plan to include mobile marketing in their plans though have only allocated 3% of their overall budget goes into to this.
The main objective of mobile search is unsurprisingly to generate leads through mobile marketing.
Agencies ranked 'geotargeting' as the top technique to help with mobile marketing, compared to insight from Google's Universal Analytics support for cross-device tracking according to companies.
Additional resources on mobile marketing on Smart Insights
Mobile Marketing Strategy Guide
Mobile statistics summary
…
