5 reasons you should continue guest blogging and 10 actions you should take given Matt Cutt’s latest advice affecting content marketers

Alert importance: [rating=5] Recommended link: Matt Cutts: The Decay and Fall of guest blogging for SEO If you work in SEO, the biggest development so far in 2014 is Matt Cutts of Google's clear guidance for marketers to cease guest blogging. But Guest blogging isn’t just an obscure SEO tactic, it’s used by many media sites and brands, so many businesses who practice content marketing will be affected by this. His new post this week starts with this seemingly unequivocal piece of guidance: “Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company”. He…

Check you’re not making these 5 mobile SEO mistakes to get your SEO right in 2014

Importance: [rating=5] Recommended link: Google’s new advice covering mobile SEO mistakes

December 2013 update

We originally alerted readers to Google's new advice on mobile SEO in June 2013. This is a BIG deal since more searchers are performing mobile searches and your mobile SEO traffic may fall if you get the user experience wrong as explained below. In this update, Google have again highlighted the importance of a seamless mobile experience by releasing a new tool to help site owners review mobile SEO errors. We also advise comparing your mobile/desktop SEO traffic in analytics to see whether you may be missing out on mobile SEO visits. Here is the output from the new Google Webmaster's tool taken from Google's new announcement:

June 17th…

A step-by-step guide to creating rich snippets for e-commerce sites to help boost your SERPS CTR

Google's Structured Data Mark-up Helper appeared in May 2013 and it can be an effective tool in your structured data arsenal that will help you improve your CTR (clickthrough rate).  The benefits, according to Google are that:  'If you mark up these pages, Google may make the information available as rich snippets on search result pages or in other Google properties. Information such as a product's name, price, and review ratings can help users decide which pages to click on in search results'. In plain English, if we have an e-commerce site, why have a basic snippet appearing on search results (like the one below), when we can have a better one that is going to improve our CTR?

With the implementation…

SEO is.... alive!

In this post we're sharing this highly rated presentation to our Digital Marketing 2014 Summit from regular contributor and author of our SEO guide, James Gurd who explained how SEO has evolved and will continue to evolve. Despite the prenouncements by some that "SEO is dead", the evidence is that it still needs to be treated proactively and the latest best practices adopted. Key issues to consider in 2014 are: Content marketing, social and integration into SEO (of course!) More natural search queries prompted by Google's hummingbird and ad promotion of voice activated contextual search Author influence (through Google+ profiles and authorship markup) Specialist developments in technical SEO in particular for international domains Reporting SEO effectiveness given the Growth of Not provided / missing keywords This Slideshare was presented as a webinar by James Gurd, Digital Juggler at the Smart Insights Digital Marketing Priorities…

A step-by-step tutorial to managing Link detoxing

Link detoxing is extremely important for many reasons, including keeping your site active and penalty free. One bad link is a problem, but many bad links are a huge setback and should not be taken lightly. When you do a link detox you can either use a program or go through all of your links manually to check for any bad links. After finding bad links the next step is to get rid of them and delete them off of your profile. Questions that are often asked about this process include how do I spot bad links, should I use a program or do it manually, if I use a program which one, and how do you get penalties removed after the bad links are gone? You can find all of the answers to these questions and more below, as well as some basic information about…

The advantages of claiming your online identity for SEO and brand authority

As search continues to advance, the concept of authorship and identity will grow in importance. Many opinion leaders believe that over time, websites will begin to be ranked based not just on the keywords they contain and the inbound links they attract but also the people and authors behind the content being produced. Earlier this year, Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt stated: 'Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification'. At the time, some commentators suggested that this statement was proof of ‘AuthorRank’, a situation where Google will give certain pieces of content a rankings boost based on the author of that content. However, whilst there’s no definitive evidence to suggest that AuthorRank is in effect now, authorship mark-up is in place…

The best of BrightonSEO Conference 2013 in a Nutshell

The other week, the team and I ventured to Brighton for the annual SEO conference organised by the lovely folks at Site Visibility. Here, I’ve compiled my thoughts on the best speakers of the bunch and suggested how their insights might be implemented by brand owners.

[Editor's note. Readers interested in this article may also like to check out this post from Rhian Simm's on 5 key SEO takeaways from BrightonSEO].

This roundup is from the speakers who really stood out, dropping invaluable tips and drawing on fascinating case studies to illustrate how to get the most out of SEO which I thought would be most useful to share.

Speaker Oliver Snoddy on Real-Time Marketing for any Brand

Speaker: Oliver Snoddy - Head of Planning, Twitter UK

Mr…

Not a major update likely to impact rankings as the headlines suggest?

Importance: [rating=1] For commercial Purchase Intent Queries

Recommended link: Search Engine Land FAQ by Sullivan

Mainstream media such as the BBC have picked up on what they call a "Major Upgrade to Google’s Search Alogorithm". This sounded like something we should alert readers too particularly since it is said to affect 90% of users. However, it has been in place for one month already, so this suggests it won’t have a significant affect on rankings otherwise the impact would have been seen already.

It was announced in a slightly bizarre way, not through consumer-facing Google’s Inside Search blog which covers big announcements to the interface or consumer algorithm or Webmaster Central which alerts about algorithm changes limiting spam which have a major impact on rankings such as Panda and Penguin.

Instead it was announced at what the BBC called…

4 Alternative options for reviewing SEO effectiveness now most keywords are "not provided"

Importance: [rating=5]

Recommended link: Search Engine Land

It’s now two years since Google started restricting information about the search keywords used by searchers to find a site when they were signed in to their Google account. Over this period these not provided encrypted search terms have gradually increased as shown below as different browsers have added encrypted search.

This alert is to let you know, if you haven’t heard, that a recent change by Google means that ALL searches from Google will now be encrypted even if the user isn’t signed in. In effect, this removes specific SEO search query data from Google Analytics.

This change means that, for most sites, counts of specific search terms in Analytics are now unrepresentative and highly misleading. In the Search Engine Land article…

A summary of SEO approaches for 2014

Last Friday saw the latest installment in the bi-annually free SEO conference, BrightonSEO. Lots of ideas and content were discussed - far too many to cover in one post - but I thought it was worth putting together a short list of the top 5 cost-effective SEO snippets raised by the speakers.

1. Data for low cost link building

Link building is not just about hiring an agency, producing lots of inane content, or posting back-links from forums. Data is a key instrument in your link baiting toolbox (and it needn't mean big budgets). Use data to find a niche interest, tell a story, back it up with data, and create news. Readily available source suggestions: Surveys - ask a question and use the results to create content Analytics - spot a trend of interest and write about it Freedom of…