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Our commentary: What SearchEngineLand has described as a "new search engine" was launched this week. Pronounced "Visually", the service offers to "Explore the Best Data Visualizations on the Web". That's what we know as infographics. These are a great way to engage business audiences and they have become popular since they are very shareable.
For example our post on Mobile Marketing Statistics has proved popular.
With Visual.ly you can:
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Marketing implications:
Although touted as a search engine, it's only a niche, vertical search engine. I've also found that it's limited in more specialist areas like mobile or email marketing although there is no shortage of social media examples.
Still we're alerting you to it since:
It's an additional way to search for infographics
You…
What is Stumbleupon and what are its benefits?
StumbleUpon is another way of finding & consuming content online, just as Twitter, LinkedIn news, Facebook sharing / likes & Google do.
Since web users are likely to use a number of tools as way of finding and sharing information, StumbleUpon may be worth a look. [Editors note: by chance as we published this, a new report suggested that StumbleUpon sends more traffic to US websites than Facebook. I'd have to say treat this caution - this is only for sites with Statcounter installed, which won't be representative of larger sites].
If your audience is active on StumbleUpon, then it makes sense that your business is active on StumbleUpon. During this blog post I'll cover, what StumbleUpon is, who uses it, why & how your business can be active on the service.
Here's an intro to the scale of StumbleUpon which shows its scale
…
How do you act on the different SEO ranking factors?
Did you see the recent guide to SEO ranking factors from Search Engine Land? It prompted me to think of search slightly differently & highlighted 3 areas that business often get wrong. Checkout the graphic below and overlay your own thoughts, experiences & how your SEO plan relates. Are you on-top of the +3 (highest rated factors) and avoiding any negatives or violations?
* Click image for larger version
Mistake # 1 - Not enough emphasis on Content
This is the biggest mistake I see in the running of search engine optimisation by far. Obsession about all the data & myriad of tools usually end means quality content generation is forgotten or taken on half heartedly. Out of the 30 factors (positive & negative) mentioned above, content relates to all of them in…
Our review of SEO Spider from Screaming Frog
Hi! In this post I wanted to introduce you to a great new tool for SEO specialists and web content managers. My fellow Smart Insights commentator Dan Barker introduced me to this and recommends it. It's a tool that has really built on the features available in the Xenu Link Sleuth and taken them to a new level for people involved with Search Engine Optimisation.
Those familiar with Xenu will know how difficult it is to find similar software, especially if like me you use a Macbook. If you don't know Xenu, there's an excellent review by Tom Critchlow of how to use Xenu for SEO. So, onto my review...
Introducing - Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Key differences to Xenu
Mac friendly :-)
The tool really makes use of the crawl data to give you relevant on-site optimisation advice & alerts - problems you need to look…
A review of Majestic SEO Site Explorer
In a previous post I compared what I think are the 5 best tools to review backlinks. These show the strength of your all important backlinks against competitors. In this review we took a brief look at the Majestic SEO Backlink history which we find useful for comparing clients against competitors at a top-level. But since this time Majestic now have a new tool - the Majestic Site Explorer.
Now into its 4th month of public Beta, for me, Majestic Site Explorer is a really useful tool to use when completing top level reviews of competitors. I'd also recommend it can be use d for regulary monthly or quarterly health checks for your own business and the SEO efforts of the agency. It's often compared to the similar and I think, better known tool available from SEOmoz (www.opensitexplorer.com). So I thought it…
SEOMoz have updated their search engine ranking factors compilation which they publish every 2 years. We think this is essential reading for everyone in digital marketing, not just SEO specialists since it shows how to best get success in SEO and what to target your agency on. In 2009 the top 5 ranking factors were:
Keyword focussed anchor text from external links
External link popularity
Diversity of external link sources
Keyword use anywhere in title tags
Trustworthiness of Domain based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains
*Source - SEOMOZ
Here are the key charts of ranking factors from the report [Editors note: I use this to show that page Keywords are relatively unimportant compared to anchor text and domain authority] :
While early days in the research the 2011 update from SEOMOZ is formed from surveying 132 SEO professionals and correlating data…
Have you reviewed the importance of Google Blended results recently?
When considering traffic acquisition tactics and specifically Google as a channel to getting traffic it is easy to get caught up in optimizing web pages & “link building”.
Opportunities with Google extend much further through the blended or universal search. Looking down the left navigation bar "codenamed Jazz" on a search results page its easy to see that to reach people looking for different sorts of content in Google you should be:
Creating news daily
Writing blog posts
Producing videos
Publishing your product feed
Active in forum and Q&A discussions
Active in Facebook and Twitter for Realtime
Each of the areas above have their own section in Google and can often appear on results pages instead of webpages.
In this post I am focussing on the Google product service, which is shown in the search results as "Shopping", but…
New research shows why Number One in Search matters and suggests how we should report search effectiveness
Naturally Number One is the position all businesses want for their keywords. But, it's not so easy to achieve in practice: anyone managing a website will understand the joys & heartaches of trying to get this ranking in Google.
I wanted to flag up this data since it quantifies how important the Number One position is and has implications for how you should be setting targets and reporting on SEO for key generic head terms and long tail terms too. I've also linked to a spreadsheet to help you apply this.
This new research is also timely since it's some time since good quality data on the clicks / importance of ranking position has been released. Can you remember when AOL accidentally published their data in 2006.
The ranking…
We quite often see infographics surrounding social media & new / emerging trends. But it's rare you see one on natural search. The infographic below was recently shared with me and I feel it does a good job at visualising search, the various components that make up a search strategy & most importantly simplifying it. It's particularly good for summarising key issues in SEO to non-search specialists.
I hope you find it as interesting as I did.
* Image source www.datadial.net…
How popular is Bing and how do its SEO ranking factors differ from Google?
We are only 4 months into 2011, but I don't think Microsoft and specifically the Bing team could have asked for a better start to the year!
Conversations about the search engine only seem to be heading in one direction, the same direction as the number of people using their service - up.
In a previous post this year I discussed how searches on Bing were increasing, well this trend has not changed. In recent posts on Mashable, bloggers are showing how, if current trends continue, Bing could well overtake Google in the US.
Summary of the current Bing trends
Bing accounted for 30% of all searches in the US during March 2011
In September 2010, Bing accounted 24% of searches
If the same trend continues it would mean by…
