Last week I talked about how writers seem like magicians, because we have the power to create something out of nothing. An important point to note about magicians, though: They don’t really do magic. Instead, they study and practice specific behaviors until they can create that illusion of creating something out of nothing. And of The post 7 Steps to Grow a Blog Post appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger http://ift.tt/2vJuyKc
0 Comments
Here’s your chance to finally own my most treasured collection of network marketing training… Reports, Checklists, and Implementation guides. Literally everything I use to grow and operate my network marketing business. Welcome to a special episode where you get to hear what’s going on Behind the Scenes at MLM Nation and get a close up view of the life of an entrepreneur. This is where you’ll get not only the latest news about MLM Nation, but a sneak peek inside the life of Simon Chan… Learn about the latest adventures that Simon is going through… His journey as a husband and father… His wins and losses… His reflections and deep thoughts… What Simon is currently reading and learning … In this Episode You’ll Learn:One of the Best Days of Simon Chan’s Life Must Read BookJames 1:2-5 (NIV Version of The Bible) Recommended Resources Mentioned On ShowNO BS NO HYPE Australia Event What Did You Learn?Thanks for joining me on the show. So what did you learn? If you enjoyed this episode please share it on social media and send it to someone that needs extra motivation in their MLM business. Do you have any thoughts or comments? Please take 60 seconds to leave an HONEST review for the MLM Nation Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely important for me to make this show better. Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes so that you get updates and new episodes downloaded to your phone automatically. Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes Click here to Subscribe via Stitcher Click Here to Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed) The post 380: Behind the Scenes @ MLM Nation “How to Stay Focused and Not Sabotage Yourself When You’re Not Getting the Results” appeared first on MLM Nation: Network Marketing Training | Prospecting | Lead Generation | Leadership | Duplication | Motivation. via MLM Nation: Network Marketing Training | Prospecting | Lead Generation | Leadership | Duplication | Motivation http://ift.tt/2x3uCsx Google Maps is making it easy for Android users to find parking options. The Android app now has a “find parking” button on the direction card that is displayed once you search for your location. The button leads to a list of parking garages and lots near the intended location. Users can select their preferred parking option, and the app will automatically add it to their trip, along with walking directions from the parking spot to their destination. The “find parking” feature was rolled out in 25 US cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, DC, Detroit, Portland, Orlando and St. Louis. In addition to its latest feature, the app has expanded its “parking difficulty” feature for Android and iOS apps to 25 international cities, including Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, London, Milan, Rio de Janeiro and Vancouver. When available, the parking difficulty icon appears in the bottom of a direction card screen, and it ranks parking availability as “limited,” “medium” or “easy” based on historical parking data. The post Google Maps Android app adds ‘find parking’ feature to show you nearest parking garage appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2xKrY87 Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land:
Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:
Search News From Around The Web:Industry
Local & Maps
Searching
SEO
SEM / Paid Search
The post SearchCap: Google AdWords ad rotation, local panel ads & trip search appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2vHgAII Google announced several upgrades to both their flight search and hotel search features to aid searchers in finding the most economical options for their trips. Rolling out on Google Flights is the ability to ability to click on “Dates” to see the calendar view of date combinations with the cheapest prices highlighted in green and the most expensive in red. You can also see price graphs over time if you have a certain length of trip in mind. This feature is available on mobile and rolling out to desktop later this year. Here is a GIF of these flight search features in action: Often, flying to different nearby cities’ airports can save you on flight costs. Google also added the ability to see all nearby airports on an interactive map, view the distance between each one and your final destination and select the most convenient airports to include in your results. Here is a screen shot of this feature: Google Hotel search added a nightly rate in the calendar view that shows you a similar grid of prices for the hotel you selected. You can also check out price trends for a hotel to see how rates change over time. Here is a GIF of that in action: Also, Google formally announced the hotel price labels on the interactive maps in this blog post. This is something we covered a month ago: The post Google upgrades flight and hotel search to provide price grid views & more appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2gnTc12 Google parent Alphabet is preparing to comply with EU regulators’ demand that it no longer “favor its own content” in shopping search results. Google must propose a solution that will offer “equal treatment” to Google’s shopping rivals by Tuesday at midnight. In June, Google received a long-anticipated antitrust fine of EUR 2.4 billion (now $2.9 billion). The European Commission gave the company until September 28 to discontinue its alleged anti-competitive practices. Google’s indication that it will comply suggests it has declined to challenge the Commission’s decision in court. Failing to meet the Tuesday deadline would expose Alphabet to additional fines, which could amount to millions of dollars per day. The question is: what will Google’s proposal look like? Will it affect shopping-related ad placement in search results? It’s not clear to me whether ads will be impacted. Before current European Commission head Margrethe Vestager took office in late 2014 and adopted a more aggressive approach toward antitrust, Google was on the cusp of settlement with former European Commission competition chief Joaquín Almunia. However, Almunia was unable to sell any of several Google proposals to colleagues and European politicians. Those proposals included modification of search results to make competitive offerings more prominent. A formal Statement of Objections was filed in April 2015 which stated the following:
Any proposed remedy will need to address these considerations, among others. Accordingly, Google may need to remove any results at the top of search results that points to Google Shopping or other Google-hosted content. Addressing this in a mobile context could bring the unwelcome return of “10 blue links.” On the desktop, Google could use the right column for display of Google Shopping ads or content. It could also take a native advertising approach and put third-party content at the top of the page, moving Google Shopping results and ads down the page, which could also be done in mobile. Shopping search is the first of multiple antitrust cases that Google faces, including potentially other “vertical search” categories (e.g., Travel, Maps/Local). Other active cases involve exclusivity provisions in Google AdWords agreements and Android-OEM contracts. The post Google says it will offer antitrust remedy to EU to avoid further penalties appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2wQfD6c With over 1 billion websites on the World Wide Web today, it comes as no surprise that the domain name you may want to use is already owned by someone else. Luckily, in some cases, the current owner might be willing to part with it — for the right price. Acquiring a pre-owned domain can have a drastic impact on your SEO efforts, so it is important to approach such a purchase with caution. It is recommended that you do your due diligence — it’s not uncommon for a domain name to have changed hands many times, and just like buying a used car, it’s often difficult to get the full history. While examining the SERPs and scanning for any spammy links may be a good first step, it’s important to conduct a thorough assessment to ensure that the domain does not have a manual action penalty or warning from Google. There are many small issues that may not initially be cause for concern; however, in aggregate, these problems can seriously hamper your domain’s ability to rank. If you’ve bought, or are looking to buy, a pre-owned domain, read below for 10 things you should check before proceeding with a site migration: 1. Google Search ConsoleObtaining access to the Google Search Console account is critical for analyzing the health of the domain you’re looking to acquire. If you don’t have the credentials to this account, it’s worthwhile to reach out to the current admin and request access. Likewise, if this property hasn’t been set up, you can request for it to be done at this time. Once logged into the Search Console account, you’ll want to go to Search Traffic > Manual Actions and look for any notes on the account. You can also click on Security Issues, which will notify you if Google suspects that your website has been hacked. While you can still make a valid assessment about the domain’s health by performing other checks, it’s highly recommended that you access Google Search Console if possible, since this is the only way to see manual action penalties on the domain. 2. Google Analytics & Bing Webmaster ToolsIf you have access to Google Analytics (GA), poke around the account and make note of any abnormal traffic patterns or unusual URLs receiving organic traffic. You can also look at referral traffic to determine if spammy websites are mainly responsible for driving traffic to the site. If the site does not have GA set up, you won’t be able to backfill the data, therefore making this check null and void. Similar to Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools has a site security section that will alert you about malware, phishing attempts and changes in your sites SSL certificate status. You can also visit the “Page Traffic” report under Reports & Data to assess the top landing pages, much like GA. 3. Site indexation (SERP analysis)Use the site search operator [site:yourwebsite.com] to conduct a Google search, and check for any spammy or malicious landing pages in the SERPs. You can also add on the search operator [inurl:keyword], replacing “keyword” with red flag terms like “online games,” “gambling,” “porn” and so on. While Google typically displays a warning in the SERPs when it detects a hacked site, not all content may be flagged. Read here for a more comprehensive look at a hacked site. 4. Blacklist statusYour domain may be blacklisted if there is a history of sending spammy emails, which may in turn lead to your email server’s IP address getting blocked. You can check the Blacklist status of the domain you seek to acquire by using Site Securi. 5. Internal & external linkingOne telltale sign of domain misuse is link manipulation. A compromised domain may use overly specific anchor text phrases to link out to other spammy content. In some cases, when hackers want to remain even more elusive, the anchor text will remain unchanged, making link manipulation even harder to detect. Fortunately, you can use a tool such as Screaming Frog, which allows you to crawl up to 500 URLS for free. Once in the program, click the “outlinks” tab at the bottom to see what a specific URL links to. When looking at external linking, you can use a tool like Majestic to get a snapshot of the backlink profile. From here, you can take a deep dive into other off-page factors, such as the referring domains which send the most backlinks to the site. You can even get as granular as seeing which TLDs (top-level domains) your backlinks are coming from. For example, if you have a US-based website and notice that 90 percent of your backlinks are coming from Taiwan, that may be cause for concern. Similarly, having a disproportionate amount of backlinks coming from one or more sites that may imply that the domain used a pay-to-play strategy to acquire those links, or perhaps the site has been the unfortunate recipient of negative SEO. 6. Anchor text usageAnother important but often overlooked off-page factor is anchor text usage. Anchor text is simply a word or phrase that is hyperlinked and takes a user to your website. Anchor text signals topical relevancy to Google — for example, if you have a page about women’s fleece pajamas, it would be ideal for other sites to link to that page using that phrase or something similar. If you plan to wipe all content off the domain you are purchasing, these anchor text phrases will lead to 404 pages, thus having no effect on the site. However, if there are any links pointing to the home page that use anchor text that is not in line with your content, it’s recommended you reach out to webmasters to update their anchor text or remove the links altogether. This could be a problem if numerous sites are linking to the domain you plan to acquire using location-specific anchor text. For example, if you sell women’s designer shoes in the US, and most of the anchor text says “Designer boots Paris,” then you may be sending Google mixed signals and implying that your company is based in France. 7. Local citationsLocal citations that reference your business’s NAP (Name, Address and Phone number) are a critical local ranking signal. A citation is whenever your NAP information shows up on another website or directory. Before migrating to a pre-owned website, you should identify all instances of NAP that appear on the web and update them. There are several ways to make these updates:
8. Hosting locationWhile hosting location is not a direct SEO ranking factor, it’s important to at least make sure your website is hosted in the same country where you do business in. In fact, IP location has been shown to impact page speed, which in turn can impact your site’s SEO performance. You can use an IP location tool to determine your hosting location. 9. Domain AuthorityDomain Authority (DA), a proprietary metric coined by Moz, aims to predict the “ranking potential” of your website. In an ideal world, the site you are looking to migrate to would have a higher Domain Authority than your current site. The higher the Domain Authority, the more likely you are to appear in the SERPs. While the formula for calculating Domain Authority is proprietary, we know that backlinks tend to play the biggest role in growing your DA score. If you are acquiring a site with a DA lower than yours, know that rebuilding this score will be a long-term effort. You can expect to see some movement around the three- to six-month mark; however, it may take up to 12 months, or even longer, to match your site’s previous DA. This shouldn’t deter you from migrating to a pre-owned site; however, you will need an ongoing SEO strategy over the course of the next 12 months to make sure you are moving the needle. 10. Page speedLast but not least, one of the most important factors to benchmark prior to any migration is page speed. There are a host of free SEO tools to help you gauge page speed, such as Google PageSpeed Insights, Web Page Test, and GTMetrix, for those looking to get extra granular. While page speed will be influenced by your site’s architecture, if you plan to stay on the same CMS (content management system) as the current domain, ensure that you’re using the most up-to-date version before migrating any content. CMS updates typically include patches for any vulnerabilities –- and many CMSes are constantly optimizing for speed as well. Final thoughtsOnce you’ve completed these 10 checks and resolved any issues, you should feel confident to proceed with your domain migration. Before you begin, there are a few important properties you should make sure are set up correctly so you can start collecting data from the get-go: Next steps:
Once you’ve completed these steps, you are well on your way to a successful migration. For more migration tips and strategies, check out Thomas Stern’s article, “SEO Strategy During A Website Redesign Or Migration.” The post Buying a pre-owned domain? Check these 10 things first appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2gmiMnf How to Use Cold Email to Generate More Social Shares Get More Links and Increase Organic Traffic8/29/2017
Hard Baits and Attractive Lures Your outreach cold emails are not only the vehicle for lead generation or a meeting request, they have the potential to increase your organic traffic, social shares and links. You want to lure visitors to your site with emails that have a bit of movement, some vibration and a vibrant […]
via Lawrence Tam http://ift.tt/2wPdMhS The signs were all pointing this way. Google announced Tuesday a slight change to the ad rotation settings in AdWords. There will soon be just two options: “Optimize: Prefer best performing ads” and the not-so-subtly named “Do not optimize: Rotate ads indefinitely.” The options currently appear as: A bit of backstoryFive years ago is ancient history in digital marketing, but anyone who worked in paid search in 2012 will remember the backlash that came when Google announced the “rotate evenly” setting would last just 30 days before reverting to “optimize for clicks.” That was in April. In October of that year, Google reinstated “rotate indefinitely.” Since then, advertisers have been able to set their ad tests to “rotate indefinitely,” “rotate evenly” for at least 90 days, or rely on Google’s machine learning to optimize for clicks or conversions. Google has made it clear for some time that it would really prefer that advertisers select the “optimize ad rotation” settings. Googler Matt Lawson laid out the case against “rotate indefinitely” in a 2015 column. Over the past year, with the removal of ads from the right rail and the introduction of expanded text ads, Google has been steadily encouraging advertisers to move beyond A/B tests, run at least three ads per ad group and let the “optimize ad rotation” settings determine which ad to serve. This all fits into the broader picture of machine learning’s increasing pervasiveness and influence on AdWords systems as a whole. More details on this change
While there may be some grumbling about this tweak, I expect most marketers won’t be all that surprised or flustered by it. Google can thank Facebook in part for conditioning advertisers to give up ad-serving control to the machines. The next step is to phase out “rotate indefintely” altogether. The post AdWords ad rotation settings to get trimmed: Optimize or don’t appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2vnZMeC Ranking number one is easy! Of course, that is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek comment. After years of working in the search industry, I know that ranking number one in Google search is very, very difficult. But as for ranking number one on YouTube search? Maybe not so much. In fact, we’ve developed a process at Siege Media for achieving first-page rankings on YouTube search in less than a month. Using this process, we saw massive returns in terms of views for our ranking video: Today, I want to share this process with you and help you execute this strategy for your own videos. Because I feel that showing is always more effective than telling, I’ll use a running example throughout this post to help demonstrate the full process we’ve used. For my running example, I’m going to borrow from a recent situation in my life where I could not get my wireless Xbox One controller to sync to my Xbox One console. With “Game of Thrones” in full swing, this was an unacceptable problem, as I needed to be able to stay up to date with Khaleesi and her dragons. Also, it just so happens that the search phrase [how to sync xbox one controller] presents an opportunity to outline this process. Let’s get started! Leverage your popular pagesStart by analyzing your popular pages that are already performing in search. Although YouTube search is less competitive and complex than Google search (and the two rank videos differently), you still need to build on a solid SEO foundation. To springboard your video to the top of YouTube search, you’re going to need to piggyback on an existing page’s SEO equity. For our project, we used a page that was ranking well (lower end of page one) but still had some room for improvement. We wanted to find a page that had enough equity to give our new video a chance to rank, but also could benefit from having the video and potentially see a ranking boost as well. Here are some other criteria for selecting this page:
You need to be strategic about where you place your video if you want it to rank quickly, and analyzing the ranking videos (on both Google and YouTube) will provide a good idea of feasibility. Specifically, you should look at the current top results on YouTube search for your target keyword. If at least three of these top videos have high view counts, you’ll know there is interest in video on this topic, and an opportunity exists. Make sure you pay close attention to who is sharing and responsible for the video. View counts can be inflated if the video comes from a high-profile influencer in the space sharing the video with their subscribers, making the audience seem much larger than it is. For my example, I’ll be hypothetically building a video for Driver Easy to go on this page. Driver Easy’s page is already on the bottom of page one for [how to sync xbox one controller]. This indicates that there is a potential opportunity for them to add a quality video to their content and rank that video on YouTube. However, before I start designing a video, I need to check the criteria outlined above to ensure it’s worth creating a video. Does the content translate to video?Driver Easy’s page would easily translate to video, as the content is built like a tutorial, outlining step-by-step advice. What do view counts look like on Google Video and YouTube search?View counts for videos on both Google Video and YouTube search are strong (many of them are the same videos). The top three results on YouTube have over 100,000 views: Clearly, I am not the only one who has had syncing issues with their controller, and there is interest here. Are there videos showing on Google search?Yup! In fact, there are three videos showing right below the first result (and snippet) on page one. Sometimes the best way to understand what will rank in search is by researching what is currently ranking. Seeing these videos in search results means that Google thinks video content is relevant and useful for this query. Having ticked off all the necessary boxes, I know that if I add a quality video to Driver Easy’s existing page, it will have a strong chance to rank highly on YouTube. Optimize your video for searchAfter identifying a page you can upgrade with video, it’s time to start designing your video. Like when building new pages, you need to also consider search as you build a new video. The beauty of this tactic is that you already have the framework for the video built on an existing page, so all you need to do is convert that content to video. However, there are still some best practices to follow to ensure your video is optimized, including:
Following these best practices will give your video the best chance possible to earn high rankings in both YouTube and Google search. To learn more video SEO tips, I recommend checking out Brian Dean’s post on YouTube SEO. I can leverage these tactics for Driver Easy’s hypothetical video as well. For example, optimal video placement would be below the five steps the post outlines: This would put the video above the fold, but after the intro, so readers would have context for exactly what the video is about. At Siege Media, we’ve noticed that placing videos here helps drive initial, relevant views via search traffic. These qualified views convert to subscribers at a higher rate and send positive signals to YouTube, such as longer viewer duration: And “Likes”: Since [how to sync xbox one controller] has a search volume of over 12,000 (according to SEMrush), a video on Driver Easy’s ranking page would capture a fair number of relevant viewers, boosting the video on YouTube. Using Brian Dean’s “PPP Formula,” I would create an intro like this:
The fact that Driver Easy’s post covers five different ways to sync a controller, when the current ranking videos only show one or two ways, could be an attention-grabber for viewers who’ve already tried the main methods of syncing. To further leverage this, I would consider creating a thumbnail that highlights the five methods covered as a text over an eye-catching and relevant image (controller, console and so on). A well-designed thumbnail would help Driver Easy’s video stand out in both Google and YouTube results, as most of the current ranking videos have no design elements. There is a real opportunity here for Driver Easy to create something that stands out. RecapBy piggybacking on the SEO equity of their existing page-one result, Driver Easy could place a video on that page that would have a great chance of ranking quickly in YouTube search. Furthermore, the video would add even more value to their current page, potentially helping it rise higher on page one of Google’s search results. To recap, here is the process I’ve outlined for ranking quickly on YouTube search:
I hope this post will help you identify any potential opportunities you have on your site to create a video that can rank quickly on YouTube. The post How to rank #1 on YouTube search in 30 days [case study] appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2glJzzV |
Archives
April 2024
Categories |