10 Reasons Why Public Relations is a ‘Must-do’ for SEO in 2013

Many people today recognize that search engine optimization (SEO) and public relations (PR) have much to offer each other.

The latest Google changes have put a real emphasis on high quality, unique content that is linked to by quality sites. And this is where real public relations – as opposed to crappy news release distribution – can play such a crucial role.

There are real opportunities for great business. What follows are 10 reasons why SEOs should really get to grips with PR in 2013, based on my conversations with the people who are making the two work together.

8 SEO Tips That Take 15 Minutes or Less

While a long standing concerted effort toward SEO can pay off big down the road, don’t forget that sometimes there are quick tasks that can turn the needle.

Over the years, I have heard many times from individuals desiring success in SEO, the request could never gain approval as the resourced time was too great of a budget allocation or that an SEO vendor wasn't in the budget.

This is true to some extent as a full SEO campaign involves the strategic revision to information architecture, attention to SEO design factors, creation of quality content, a blueprint for a link-building initiative just to name a few items. These tasks can take a lot of time and the thought of this can leave many companies throwing SEO on the back burner.

7 Small Business SEO Tips

     
Every year SEO gets more complicated as Google rolls out updates and changes the rules. This is especially frustrating for small business owners who don't have the time or resources to stay current in, what they believe to be, an esoteric and confusing industry.

Here are seven small business SEO tips to help earn more business through traditional organic search rankings.

1. Onsite SEO is Necessary But Not Sufficient

Useful SEO Tips for 2013

As with anything else, you have to be on the constant lookout for great tips and tricks when it comes to search engine optimization. Every year can bring new challenges for your SEO efforts, and this is exactly why you should always be up-to-date with all of the updates and changes that can affect your online marketing campaign. Here, we will give you a comprehensive list of great SEO tips for the year of 2013.

SEO Tips and Practices for the New Year

Make Search Engines Love You And Your Social Efforts

Smart social tactics can boost your SEO results.

Last month I presented at my first online marketing conference about aligning search and social to improve organic visibility and increase traffic. Jason was kind enough to help me with a quote for the presentation on how search and social don’t necessarily get along. His words spoke volumes to both me and the audience:

    “By far the biggest stumbling block is the combination of clients not understanding the technology and SEO types passively talking over their heads. It’s hard to find a good SEO practitioner who can both translate what the tasks and value are and not be arrogant or impatient with the client’s understanding. I’m kind of a go-between that serves in that role and many SEO folks get cocky with me, too. It takes a unique person to master SEO. It takes a rare breed to master that an humanize it.”

8 Ways SEO Should Influence Your Marketing Copywriting

INTRODUCTORY

In the world of inbound marketing, your content is your business and your calling card. Your effectiveness as an inbound marketer relies on the quality of your content, and your content is what helps you get found online, build trust with your readers, educate and inform them, build a pathway to conversions, and sustain ongoing and profitable relationships with loyal customers for years to come.

But for content to truly be successful, marketers must think like SEO professionals to ensure that content gets found online by the proper audience. Old school SEOs believed they could magically sprinkle keywords throughout content with the hope that it would result in solid rankings for as many keywords and keyword variations as possible. For instance, they might use “clickthrough rate” on one page, and “click-through-rate” on another page. But by doing this, you’re not only creating inconsistency in your content and confusing your audience, but you're also inconsistently alerting search engines of your expertise (as well as creating duplicate content -- eek!).

The Ultimate Guide To Ranking Well

Ranking in search and on Facebook have a similarity

Jump into a search engine and look for the phrase, “how to rank well in search engines.” In Google, I get 88 million results. Now look for the phrase, “how to get content seen on Facebook.” I get 5.1 billion (with a “b”) results.

Link-building Tips and Tools for Bloggers in a Post-Panda and Penguin World

There have been several great link building posts so far this year on ProBlogger, including 10 No-Nonsense Ways to Build Links, How to Systematically Build a Mountain of Links, and A New Linking Strategy. And of course, Darren wrote earlier today advocating a more level-headed approach to backlinks.

So you might be asking what more can be written about link building for bloggers? The answer is, a lot. Bloggers have an advantage that static and retail websites don’t. There are tons of great link-building strategies that can be utilized to increase e backlinks.

Link building post-Panda and Penguin

Search Engine Optimization vs. User Experience Optimization

The discussion of whether user experience optimization should take priority, or even in place of search engine optimization, is not necessarily a new one, but it is one of the most important conversations we could be engaging in right now. My goal here is to explain that both approaches—while they have crossover and tend to benefit one another—should be considered separately, as they serve their own purposes. That being said – as both are targeted in a strategic and beneficial manner, a website is likely to get far greater performance on both fronts than if you were to target just one.

SEO Is Leaving Marketing Behind

I’m starting to feel like search engine optimization should be re-labeled again. Real search engine optimization rarely makes any more headlines. The basic processes have been grilled into virtually every corporate and startup by now. People know they should be chasing keywords, populating their Websites with tons of unique content, begging for links from every link-friendly resource, and second-guessing their analytics on a daily basis about why search referral traffic is going up or down.

That’s search engine optimization, right?

So, Where Exactly Is the Optimization in Search Marketing?

SEO: Can Local Searchers Find Your Stores?

Online location pages of physical stores should provide much more information than just the physical address of a store close to the individual user. Many consumers already know where a store is, based on their everyday routines. What they don’t know and are seeking are the hours, holidays that the store is closed, services offered, manager’s name, and phone number to call for questions about items. The store locator, then, needs to answer these individual store questions.

Now consider searchers. For all intents and purposes they can drop out of the sky from Google or Bing and land on any page on the site. That makes every page on the site a potential landing page that needs to be able to command customers’ confidence and convert searchers to some next step.

Top 5 Search Engine Ranking Factors: Pay Attention!!!

As someone who makes a living improving search engine rankings, I can tell you that there is a lot of bad information out there about SEO. What if I were to tell you that the road map for achieving top rankings was within your grasp? The holy grail of rankings is not imaginary. As is true with any major success, it leaves clues.

Maintenance Tips to Help Penguin-Proof your Website Funnel

The “Penguin” algorithm update from Google has certainly taken web spammers down a peg (or SERP ranking) by dishing out penalties for things like overused anchor text and duplicate content. However, it’s not just nefarious websites receiving a penalty. Many well-meaning companies can have spam elements on their site specifically targeted by Penguin. In many cases, these problem areas of a website are a matter of taking some shortcuts with content development. But, there are no shortcuts in quality SEO! If you’re concerned about Penguin penalizing your site, devote some time to these areas:

5 Quick Tips for Writing a Successful Landing Page

Businesses start SEO campaigns to reach the top of the SERPs. But, let's be clear, the goal isn't just to achieve a number one ranking. The goal, as it is in all business ventures, is to make more money. This is why SEO is often supplemented with pay-per-click campaigns and other traffic-generating initiatives. Regardless of how you get the traffic, though, money comes from conversions.

4 Things You Can Learn From Search Advertising Campaigns

Search Advertising is probably one of the most effective channels available for digital campaigns. If used appropriately it can generate many leads and sales but it can also be an incredible source of important data that can be used to learn how to exploit other channels like SEO, or to learn more about your users and your business.

1) The right keywords for your SEO strategy

What Is Negative SEO?

In a broad sense, negative SEO is an action performed on a website to try and decrease its search engine rankings. It usually occurs when a webmaster attempts to “game” a search engine (usually Google) into thinking that a competitors website is lower quality than it actually is. After all, if a webmaster’s site is sitting at number five for a certain keyword, it could potentially be easier to remove the four sites above rather than trying to move up the rankings naturally.

The Cost of SEO: How Much Should You Pay?

As with most service-based industries, there aren’t any “guidelines” about what SEO should cost. It’s built on market demand, the competitive landscape and what makes sense for the individual business. And as a business, there are obviously different factors at play. A one-person organization based from home with an Internet connection and cell phone has a different cost structure than a large service-based agency. So the factors that go into the guidelines must account for the significant cost differentials.

7 Habits of Highly Effective SEO

When I started my professional career (selling advertising), one of the most influential books that I read at the time was "7 Habits of Highly Effective People", by Stephen Covey.

It’s not much of an over-statement to say that this book changed my life.

What’s interesting to me is how many of the tenets that Mr. Covey conveyed in this book hold true in many facets of my life, and specifically with digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).

I speak to many prospects for SEO services, every day. Some of these believe that SEO is a one-and-done affair.

While I find instances where companies could see some solid gains by simply implementing proper title tags and correcting a few things, more often than not, proper SEO efforts need to be worked on a regular basis to realize the types of gains that can deliver really solid, long-lasting and “optimized” (optimal) results.

Every SEO company will have its own processes for performing SEO, and I’m not suggesting that what follows covers everything that goes into an ongoing SEO effort, but the key ingredients are here.

*Note: items in italics come directly from Stephen Covey’s website.

Using SEO to Build Authority and Traffic

If you are putting content on your blog to build traffic and authority, SEO needs to be calculated into your effort. It does not matter if you put out 150 word blurbs on social media sites, full websites, or blog posting. SEO is the primary way the usefulness of information posted is interpreted. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that anyone wanting to be found would want to enable search engines to make that interpretation easy.

The Finer Points of Blog Content SEO
Many of the tactics from building SEO friendly websites hold true on a blog. Appropriate use of keywords will provide the markers that spiders need to accurately interpret the work. A blog post that is overly long will actually be more of a hindrance than a help. There ends up being too much other text that ends up getting into the mix that the spiders can interpret as relevant even if it is not. Other points to consider are…

Website optimization trends, insights and tactics for boosting conversion

When it comes to a retailer’s website, the tinkering never stops. Whatever the incremental improvement—move this button, return these results in this region, recommend this, not that—it’s tested, measured, refined and tested again, all in an endless pursuit to make conversion rates climb higher and higher and make the customer experience better and better.