Category: SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be complex, but columnist Marcus Miller simplifies it by breaking down its key elements into four main categories. SEO can be complicated — in many cases, overcomplicated. How many ranking factors are involved in generating strong organic search results? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? Two hundred? A quick search for “SEO ranking factors” will give you all of these answers and myriad others. There is a lot of information out there. And the reality is, while there are likely hundreds of variables working together to determine final placement, much of…

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Columnist Jayson DeMers explores the impact of Google’s shift toward machine learning and discusses what the future will look like for search professionals. With Google turning to artificial intelligence to power its flagship search engine business, has the SEO industry been left in the dust? The old ways of testing and measuring are becoming antiquated, and industry insiders are scrambling to understand something new — something which is more advanced than their backgrounds typically permit. The fact is, even Google engineers are having a hard time explaining how Google works anymore. With this…

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Even the greatest SEO strategy won’t succeed if you can’t implement it properly. Columnist Casie Gillette discusses common client obstacles and how to overcome them. If you’ve been doing SEO for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly experienced your fair share of failures. And in many cases, frustratingly, the SEO program itself was not the issue. While I’ve discussed meta topics such as management challenges, getting executive buy-in, and the need for flexibility in the past, I haven’t directly addressed the question, “What do you do if SEO isn’t your SEO problem?” As search…

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The new series will address frequently raised issues in the webmaster forums. Google has announced a video help series aimed at helping webmasters and SEOs with short answers to their webmaster and SEO questions. Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller introduced the series, saying they hope to cover topics including “404 errors, how and when crawling works, a site’s URL structure [and] duplicate content.”

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Columnist Kristopher Jones talks visual search — its current state, its implications for the future and strategies for SEOs looking to capitalize on this evolving technology. The arrival of the Pinterest Lens and Google Lens has ignited a battle for visual search engine supremacy. Beyond opening up a new revenue stream for e-commerce stores, visual search could completely alter consumer habits and purchasing decisions. In a world driven by instant gratification, visual search can open the door toward “snap and surf” purchasing, streamlining the search interface. This provides a promising outlook for e-commerce stores that…

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Federal judge invalidates five patents SEO platform provider Brightedge claimed in lawsuit against competitor Searchmetrics. An important ruling was issued last Friday in the four-year-old patent infringement lawsuit that SEO platform BrightEdge filed against competitor Searchmetrics. The California federal court judge sided with defendant Searchmetrics, ending a long and expensive court battle. At issue in the federal case were five patents Brightedge claimed were being infringed upon by competitive SEO platform Searchmetrics. Searchmetrics successfully argued that the patents owned by Brightedge were both abstract and broad and thus did not offer an “inventive concept”…

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Google has used links to determine the authority of websites since its early days: the idea of webpages casting “votes” for other pages by linking to them is at the core of the PageRank algorithm. This led to the rise of numerous manipulative link tactics. Google reacted with the Penguin update and manual penalties; link […] Google has used links to determine the authority of websites since its early days: the idea of webpages casting “votes” for other pages by linking to them is at the core of the PageRank…

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We are looking for someone who can help us grow our audience of digital marketers through SEO, content and website optimization, and by building content destinations that drive organic search traffic. We know our audience is made up of talented SEOs, which is why we’re very excited to announce that we are looking for an experienced content and SEO manager to work on Third Door Media’s flagship brands MarTech and Search Engine Land. Specifically, we are looking for someone who can help us grow our audience of digital marketers through…

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For technical SEO practitioners and site developers alike, we can glean a lot from the announcements the Chrome team made about the availability of technologies and extensions to their current products in the “What’s new for The Web Platform” keynote. Announcements at Google I/O last week include those by the Google Chrome Team about the availability of technologies in a session titled: “What’s new for The Web Platform.” It’s no coincidence that the two primary speakers of the session, Ben Galbraith & Dion Almaer, co-wrote a book about AJAX and…

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Contributor Dianna Huff explains that blending website data, smart online and proven offline marketing tricks of the trade will generate new leads and sales inquiries for small businesses. After my agency completely overhauled a small manufacturer’s website, the owner of the company emailed to ask these questions: “I know a lot has changed recently regarding keywords and search engine optimization, so how do we improve our website results? How do we get the most out of Google Analytics?” These are great questions — but they need to be phrased a…

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