SEO Strategies We’re Focusing on in 2015

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2014 to 2015 leap

In a lot of ways, 2014 was a landmark year for Google SEO. Hummingbird’s effects finally became tangible as it completed its global rollout. Panda 4.0 and Penguin 3.0 kept the pressure up on spammers, while Google’s human reviewers continued to dish out manual actions to suspicious-looking sites. These, combined with smaller updates, paved the way for the more nuanced and intent-responsive SERPs that we see today. While the search landscape still isn’t perfect, it’s certainly better than what it was years ago. [Read more…]

[Download] The SEO Service Contract Template We Use

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Contract Signing

There’s a lot more to closing a deal with prospective SEO clients than just generating leads, crafting effective proposals and delivering eloquent presentations. Putting everything you agreed on with the client into writing is a crucial component to having a fruitful working relationship. To make everything formal and to keep both parties true to their word at the start of the engagement, you’ll need to have a well-written service contract that both entities sign off on.

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From Nobody to Influencer: 11 Tips to Make the Transformation Happen

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Influence Concept.

Influence is rapidly becoming the most important commodity in SEO and content marketing. As Google gets better at interpreting brand, authority and popularity signals, we’ll see sites that represent influential people and organizations dominate the SERPs more and more.  Influence also helps our content assets get consumed at a higher rate, paving the way for increased conversions for our online businesses.

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Using SEO Silos to Win in the Hummingbird Era

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Silos

 

What is a SEO Silo?

A SEO silo refers to a type of information architecture that groups pages in websites according to topical relevance. It’s an advanced on-page optimization technique that seeks to improve search visibility as well as overall user experience.

Creating quality content is an integral part of SEO in Google’s Hummingbird era. The substance, authority and breadth of the content in a site weighs a lot in how Google perceives the relevance of its pages to queries. After the Hummingbird rollout of August 2013, SEOs have come to realize how critical content is and a lot of us have increased our focus on creating great material that our users gravitate to. [Read more…]

Points for Action on SearchMetrics Ranking Factors 2014

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SearchMetrics ranking Factors

A couple of weeks ago, SearchMetrics released its annual Ranking Factors Study. Like past iterations, the 2014 study used the top 30 ranking pages for 10,000 keyword queries on Google to test the correlation between ranking factors and the position of pages within the SERPs. After processing the data from about 300,000 URLs, SearchMetrics produced more evidence that SEO is entering a whole new age. [Read more…]

Using Customer Lifetime Value to Prove SEO’s ROI

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ROI from SEO

Client retention is the true measure of a SEO agency’s competence. Getting clients to stay through and beyond a contract’s length is much more impressive than acquiring new customers. Acquisition shows that you can get attention and make a good account of yourself in the short term. Retention shows you’re good at what you do and that the client sees the business value of your service. [Read more…]

Scaling Back on Guest Blogging: Four Reasons Why

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Scaling Back on Guest Blogging

No, this is not a “guest blogging is dead” article. As a matter of fact, I’ll be the first to say that I’m still doing it today for friends in the SEO industry. Guest posting is still a great way to collaborate, reach new potential readers and get more exposure for your brand. That’s how guest posting was originally supposed to work and I don’t see how Google would ever  have a problem with that. [Read more…]

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The Content Marketing Strategy that’s Saving a Penalized Site [Case Study]

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LifeSaver

We all know what happens to a small commercial website when Google slaps it with a manual penalty for unnatural links: rankings drop, search traffic is decimated, lead generation slows down and revenue ultimately suffers. Now imagine working hard to get that penalty revoked, rebooting your SEO campaign and then getting hit with another manual action just a few months later. Sounds like a deathblow, right? [Read more…]