Digital marketing

Local SEO Guide is happy to announce Locadium , a Google My Business reporting system built from the ground up for multi-location brands and agencies. According to a recent poll of Local SEO Sherpa’s, 78% of them have problems with Google changing information on GMB profiles. Now I know you are saying: “Dan, there is the ability to see changes suggested by Google in the GMB dashboard”. Thanks, random Internet person! You can see Google suggested updates in the various GMB dashboards, and in addition to that, Locadium reports actual front end UI changes that users are seeing .  In addition to the core reporting application, you can also push updates to GMB through the GMB API in real time, manage thousands of children locations from a parent agency or brand setup, check recent reviews and see how Google is updating your information over time. These are all things that we have been using internally to help us manage GMB profiles at scale. In addition to these features, we are har...

Source: Threadheads Ben Thompson’s post this week on Microsoft’s Monopoly Hangover  touched a nerve. Thompson’s thesis is that companies that are monopolies tend to face considerable problems once the monopoly ends. He boils these problems down to: Nature “The great thing about a monopoly is that a company can do anything, because there is no competition; the bad thing is that when the monopoly is finished the company is still capable of doing anything at a mediocre level, but nothing at a high one because it has become fat and lazy.” Business Model “The natural inclination for former monopolies, at least if Microsoft and IBM are any indication, is to stick with the monopoly-era business model.” Culture “When there’s little competitive threat, when high profit margins and a commanding market position are assumed, then the economic and market forces that other companies have to live or die by simply don’t apply. In that environment, what would you expect to happen? The...

Our development team is steadily chugging along and today provides you with a new and improved edition of Yoast SEO. This release features mainly enhancements and fixes, plus a slew of updates to our language support. Let us walk you through the new version we know as Yoast SEO 5.1, starting with our main focus point in this release: languages. Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium » Buy now » Info Updated language support in Yoast SEO 5.1 We like to know a language inside and out to be able to offer the best possible content and readability analysis. That’s why we’re continually improving the support we provide for languages and add new languages in the process. This release, we’re doing a lot of work on our language support. The highlight? Thanks to Abramo Tesoro, we’re now offering complete Italian Insights and Linking Suggestions in Yoast SEO 5.1 Premium. Our Italian friends can now write a couple of hundred words to see ...

The incorrect application of canonical tags might be ruining your past and current SEO efforts. This is because the use of canonical tags is a widely known advanced SEO technique/strategy for dealing with duplicate content or a page that is accessible through multiple URLs. So, if you do not know how to properly use a canonical tag, then you are definitely putting your SEO in danger. Canonical Tags have been around for quite some time now, and you would expect that most – if not all – of the SEO practitioners around the world have grasped it in its totality. But reality is stranger than fiction in that some SEOs still need help with their canonical tags – and that’s amazing it itself. Before you start with using the canonical tag, you should also know what a canonical URL is because the both of them aren’t what they seem – at least at first glance.   Canonical URL What I mean by canonical URL is that this exact URL is the one that you want the search engines to index and ran...

One of the first, and I would argue most important, things you learn as an analyst is that not everyone loves (or understands) data as much as you do. Whether it’s your first executive report or 20th weekly analysis, at some point, you are going to have an incredibly important insight to share, and you definitely don’t want it to fall on deaf ears.… http://ift.tt/2tTELTB

“If nobody writes about it, then the content is a tree falling in the forest without anyone there to listen.” That’s how Dixon Jones, Marketing Director of Majestic, illustrates the importance of getting the right links to your content. We proudly announce that Dixon will be speaking at YoastCon 2017 on November 2! Learn link building from the best!  Get your ticket  now for  YoastCon 2017 ! Dixon Jones has worked at the forefront of search marketing since 1999. He became the Marketing Director of the world’s largest link analysis engine, Majestic , in 2009, transforming the SEO industry by providing link intelligence on a scale not previously open to the industry. Here, you can discover what he has to say about link building in 2017. Majestic is all about links. If you compare links to other ranking factors, like content on a page or technical optimization, how would you rate the importance of links? Any examples to illustrate this? In March 2016 Google’s ...

It’s a bit awkward to write about a company we have an investment in without sounding like a total salesman, but I am going to give it a try. Even if we had no interest in SEO Radar (full disclosure: we do), I’d like to think I’d still be writing this. Cause it saved my ass today. A few years ago Mark Munroe showed me a prototype of a tool he was building that would crawl websites and report on changes to pages that would affect SEO. Whether you are an in-house SEO or an outside consultant, it often is the case that releases go live without you knowing about it, or without you getting a chance to test everything. We used to use various hacks to automate the tracking of a client site’s SEO elements and a variety of tools that could ping web pages and report but it was always a bit of a kluge. When I saw the SEO Radar demo, I wept like Alexander …and I asked Mark if I could invest in the company. I am telling you about this today because this morning one of our clients pushed a big re...

3 Steps Every Digital Marketer with a Dynamic Serving or Mobile Site Needs to Take Remind me: What is this Mobile First Index all about, again? In October 2016, Gary Illyes announced that Google will be creating a new mobile index that will become their primary index.… http://ift.tt/2uPSX53

We are addicted to our smartphones. For many people, the smartphone is the first thing they check when they get out of bed in the morning. It is also the last thing they check before they go to sleep. People use it for everything. It’s huge. Mobile has changed our lives. It has also changed SEO. Mobile SEO helps you to reach customers and satisfy their needs in an enjoyable way. This guide to mobile SEO will show you everything you need to deliver a perfect mobile experience. Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium » Buy now » Info Mobile SEO vs. desktop SEO Google’s mobile-first index Know what to do Mobile SEO tools Design for performance Responsive design vs. dynamic serving vs. separate domain PageSpeed Insights Think about implementing AMP New kid on the block: Progressive Web Apps (PWA) Focus on user experience Optimize for local Finetune your mobile content Write for the small screen Write be...

Meta descriptions are essentially your way of showcasing what you want people to see – the high level of your page in search results. They matter because click-through rate matters, and if you write them well and follow a few simple principles you can increase your site traffic. Step One: Start with an action verb You can create a sense of movement and inspire people to read with just this one copywriting trick. When you start with an action verb like “Discover,’ “learn,’ or “become” you get the person moving along the sentence and reducing friction. Step Two: Give a clear picture of what the content will be If you describe with clarity what a searcher will get if they click through to your content – if you really outline in a succinct way what the benefit to them will be for clicking, your click through rate will go up significantly. This is why the meta description is just about being persuasive, not stuffing as many keywords in as possible. Though it may make sense to use...

We are working with a mattress retailer who would like to show up higher for mattress brand queries like “Tempurpedic mattress”.  So I thought it might be helpful to see what types of pages currently rank for that query. Here are the top ranking URLs. Check out result #4: Here’s a link to the query so you can see yourself. If you look at the Mattress Firm URL, check out the not very visible copy block below the hero image: For those of you whose eyes are not what they used to be, here’s what the copy says (emphasis mine): “Mattress Firm, Inc. is not an authorized reseller of Tempur-Pedic products and is not affiliated with either Tempur-Pedic North America, LLC or Tempur Sealy, International, Inc.” “IS TEMPUR-PEDIC ® MATERIAL THE SAME AS MEMORY FOAM? Tempur-Pedic ® is known for using a TEMPUR ® material similar to memory foam, which has millions of movable cells designed to cushion the body during sleep… Perhaps there is a legit reason to display this stu...

Couldn’t resist a little hashtag-jacking… This is one of those posts where I #humblebrag about having been too busy to post much this year. The demand for our services and the complexity of some of our engagements ha…er…must…stop…the…marketingspeak… What I’m really trying to say is two awesome people have joined the Local SEO Guide team and I’d like to formally announce it to the world via the miracle of WordPress. We are super pleased to welcome Ashley Berman Hale, our new Director of SEO (think audits, audits + more audits) and Jessica Baker, our new Director of Client Services (think running herd on everything we’re doing for our clients) to Local SEO Guide! Ashley is a Google Top Contributor with lots of experience with SEO for funky websites (all of our clients are by definition funky) and Jessica joins us from Advice Media where she ran SEO programs for SMBs in healthcare. You can find out more about them and the rest of our team, oddly enough, on our Team page . And of cour...

SEO Specialists should be able to adapt to Google’s changes on the fly. I’m not exaggerating when I say that for SEO, you either adapt or you die. I can’t stress how crucial it is for any SEO to be ready to accept any changes in the industry and to always be informed on the regular updates that any search engine releases. Whenever you notice an update, you should immediately evaluate and integrate the changes through your on-site and off-site testing, create some link building campaigns that are in-line with the changes, and all the other SEO tasks you know and love. However, we all know that this is easier said than done. Ensuring that all your efforts are focusing on valuable traffic, and ensuring that the traffic you have could help your brand grow to new heights are only some of the things that you should take note of. Today, I’ll be showing you how you could edit your SEO strategy in accordance with the sudden changes your business undertakes. Situate Your SEO Strategy Along...

There’s a dark side and a beautiful future built around every new tool and technology that comes along. For all the brilliance of marketing automation, artificial intelligence, and chatbots, there are all kinds of ways to use these tools to alienate and upset your customers, as well. As with all pursuits, we have to look at the intent of your execution and make sure you’re not annoying the people you most want to serve. Every time you “set it and forget it,” you’re missing the actual business value. I use marketing automation of some form every day. I sent out automated newsletters to my subscribers. I schedule anywhere from 20-30 tweets to go out every day from my Twitter account. There are all kinds of parts of my business that are automated. But in each of these cases, I’ve built a system that also allows me to connect and interact directly with people who engage with that information. http://ift.tt/2u2H0at

Those used to tabbed browsing know why favicons are important. Your site will stand out from the rest if your favicon is recognizable. After all, a picture says more than a thousand words. Personally, I often find myself pinning websites in Google Chrome, still my browser of choice. As a to-do list, or simply because I want Gmail at hand anytime. Or that specific spreadsheet in Sheets. Or Facebook. That little favicon is the only reference to what site is hidden in that tab. You simply need a good favicon for your website. For good SEO, you need a good user experience. Learn about UX & Conversion! » $ 19€ 19 - Buy now » Info Make your favicon stand out You should make sure your favicon stands out from that long list of tabs. Check if it matches your logo and website well. Especially when you are not one of the big brands, you want people to recognize your favicon. Two tips directly related to that are: avoid too many details in your favicon, and please use the right...

So Rand is “stepping away” from Moz … When I started trying to figure out SEO around 2003, I had no idea what I was doing. As I recall I stumbled onto a few voices that helped me start to make sense of things – some of the more memorable were  Andy Beard , Aaron Wall  and Rand Fishkin . Each of these guys in their own way provided me with a veritable lifeline as I started to understand that SEO was a key factor in whether or not my startup, InsiderPages, was going to survive, and my job along with it. While I loved Andy Beard’s mind-bending PageRank theories and Aaron’s brutal honesty about the business, it was Rand’s unique voice that most helped me overcome whatever intimidation I may have felt about being a complete SEO idiot. Rand exuded empathy. And as a newbie, I needed that as much as I needed to know how to figure out how to fix a duplicate content problem. Rand’s voice has perhaps done more than anything other than Google itself to drive SEO into th...

In our Ask Yoast case studies we give SEO advice for websites in a specific market or industry. This time: the website of Slemish Design Studio Architects , the business site of an architect duo. The architects told us that they get great responses from their clients, but is their website optimized for search engines as well? We’ll dive into this architectural website to see what improvements can be made to enhance their site’s SEO. First impression The first page we land on is the homepage. We see lots of full screen images of the great work these architects deliver on top of the homepage. Though impressive, the images are shown in a slider. Loyal readers of our blog know that we’re not a big fan of sliders . Many experiments show why you shouldn’t use a slider on your website. Only 1% of your visitors will actually click on a slider, they slow down your website and lots of visitors ignore sliders because of banner blindness. Just to name a few. Looking at this specific website,...