5 Simple Strategies To Improve Your Blog’s Search Rankings

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, there is ample opportunity to boost your search engine rankings through blogging. However, you can’t implement a short-term approach to build a long-term source of organic traffic.

When you’re doing SEO, you need to be cautious. Some of the strategies that worked in the past will now get you penalized. On the contrary, some strategies that formerly weren’t worth your time are now essential.

If you want to build a sustainable web presence, then you need to adapt to the changes of Google’s algorithm. Whether you see these modifications or not, they are happening.

As you continue to align your content to the updated algorithm, you’ll gradually generate organic traffic. But more importantly, you’ll be able to attract prospects that could potentially become loyal customers.

Popular avenues for generating traffic to a business’s website include blogging, SEO, social media and email marketing. Many of these can (and, I would suggest, should) be used in conjunction with one another.

For example, blogging accounts for a large portion of traffic for businesses — and if you continue to create relevant, high-quality content, it will increase your rankings in the search engines, especially if you optimize your posts and promote them via social channels and email.

Today, I will share five tips that you can use to build a reliable source of organic traffic to your blog site:

1. Stop Focusing Solely On Keywords

Over the past few years, Google has made a concerted effort to value the overall experience of its users, which was all the more evident when it rolled out Hummingbird, a smarter search algorithm that looks at keywords in context. Their goal is to move away from seeing search queries as strings of keywords and towards understanding them as meaningful concepts.

A result of this is that Google now places greater emphasis on the value of your content than on the specific keywords it contains.

Does this mean that you shouldn’t optimize your content for keywords? No. The search engine still relies on keywords to some extent to understand the relevance of your content, but it’s gotten better at understanding context and detecting spammy, thin content — meaning that the days of achieving strong rankings simply by placing the main keyword in the title of your blog and repeating it over and over again throughout the content are over.

The key is to focus on creating quality content that provides useful information to your audience. If you want to rank number one for a keyword, then create content that deserves to be ranked number one. Stop looking for the shortcut in SEO. This mindset will do nothing but impede your visibility in the search engines.

2. Share Your Content On Social Media

More than two million blogs are posted each day. If you want to rank high in the search engines, then you need to get your content out into cyberspace. One of the best ways to do this is by building your brand visibility through social media.

Start sharing your blog posts on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. Create a social media regimen that holds you accountable each week. The more places your website is featured, the more data Google with gather on it.

Your social media fans are probably not ready to purchase your products. Unlike search engine users, they aren’t looking for an immediate solution to their problem. However, they are always interested in rich content related to the topics that matter to them and the problems they are trying to solve.

Creating thoughtful, useful content will ultimately improve the user experience of your fans. As you continue to provide value, they will start visiting your web properties. This will increase the level of engagement on your social media channels, in addition to your organic reach. It also can’t hurt that you’re potentially getting backlinks to your useful content pages.

Building a social media presence will enhance your brand’s visibility. Is there a concrete method to measure the SEO impact of social media? Considering Google hasn’t explicitly addressed this issue, I can’t say for sure.

What I can say is that in my experience, when you distribute your content through a myriad of social platforms, you’ll generally notice more links. The social media dynamic is similar to a “cocktail party.” Always lead with value, and don’t try to pitch your fans repeatedly.

3. Quality Versus Quantity Links

The more links to your website, the better, right?

Not anymore.

Links are still a determining factor in the search engine rankings. However, the days of creating thin content and “link blasting” are over.

Buying backlinks is fast, simple and relatively cheap, and there are many SEO agencies that can provide hundreds of links to your website. But proceed with caution, because this practice could lead to a penalty (and potentially ruin your brand) if the following applies:

• You receive a large volume of links in a short time frame.
• The links aren’t relevant to the theme of your website.
• The linking websites have a low Domain Authority.

These days, the quality of your inbound links is what matters most. The link-building mindset change from “quantity” to “quality” can largely be attributed to Google’s web spam algorithm, Penguin, which was introduced in 2012 and was aimed at websites buying links (bad or good) strictly to boost their Google rankings.

Nowadays, any SEO impact that you get from link building is predicated on the idea that these links provide real value to users who might come across them.

4. Promote Your Content To “Earn” Links

Most novice marketers buy into this erroneous notion of “if you build it, they will come.” Unfortunately, this is seldom the case. If you want to enhance your brand awareness, then you need to heavily promote your content.

If you don’t have an inbound marketing strategy that will help you “earn” links, then it will be difficult to build a sustainable source of organic traffic. My first piece of advice is to figure out who your audience is (through polls, surveys and cold calls) and what problems or needs those prospects are looking to solve or fulfill.

Your content should directly address these needs, and you should create a social media content promotion regimen that gets your content out in front of your audience on a regular basis (which social media avenues you use will also depend on your audience).

You might be asking, What are “earned” links?

They reflect the value that you deliver to your market. For instance, if you get a backlink to your website from guest posting on another site, that’s technically not an “earned” link. It’s a result of your time and effort. But when another credible source in your niche links to your website, then you have “earned” a link.

This idea of pursuing earned links has essentially forced marketers to step up their game. If you aren’t creating useful content, then don’t expect anyone to link to it.

There are no shortcut strategies to increase the number of earned links to your website. The best advice is to focus on creating thoughtful, useful content that meets the objectives of your audience.

5. Optimize Your Website For Mobile

The technology trends in our society have diversified your target audience. Your customers are no longer all sitting at their desk behind a personal computer to access the web.

Mobile has essentially taken over. Google has adapted to the behavior of its users, and therefore, so should you. The “Mobile Friendly Update” went into effect on April 21, 2015, which essentially leveled the playing field between mobile and PC users.

Google has stated that the majority of monthly searches in 10 countries (including the US) have come from mobile devices.

Here are three tips that you can use to optimize your website for mobile users:

• Layout. Ensure that your pages, menus and posts are optimized for mobile.
• Behaviors. Your landing pages and sales pages might require different strategies on mobile. Tools such as Crazy Egg will help assess the behaviors of mobile and desktop users.
• Content. Is there a disparity in the content that mobile and desktop users want? Determine what format is generating the most traction with mobile visitors to your website.

Conclusion

Nowadays, SEO is a long-term strategy that encompasses all relevant aspects of digital marketing. The best way to increase your search engine rankings is by creating useful content that addresses the core needs of your audience.

If you promote your content across a multitude of social media platforms, you’ll ultimately build a reliable source of organic traffic to your website.

What other strategies do you use to improve your SEO rankings?

The post 5 Simple Strategies To Improve Your Blog’s Search Rankings appeared first on Search Engine Land.

5 Ways To Crawl A Staging Server Before Important Site Changes Go Live (To Save SEO)

There you are. A big redesign or CMS migration is looming, and you’re ready to unleash a crawl on the new site in a test environment. You fire up your favorite crawling tool and trigger the crawl… and it lasts all of three seconds.

Yes, there’s an obvious problem. The staging server is protected and behind some type of security measure that inhibits you from freely crawling it. Sweat begins to form on your brow as you wonder how you will get the crawl completed.

At this point, you could choose to manually check all the pages, but you might end up in a padded room whispering something about header response codes taking over the world.

Or you could continue to click “crawl” and repeatedly crawl a login page, but that won’t help either. OR you could snap out of it and figure out a way to crawl the site in staging, which would enable you to analyze the crawl data and save SEO. Yes, that’s the ticket.

Some of you might be saying, “Hey, this is easy to get around!” Well, it’s important to understand that it’s not so easy sometimes. In my experience, I’ve helped a number of clients that used a staging setup that was just not easy to access and crawl. And for those situations, you might need to use alternative methods.

How To Crawl A Staging Server

Below, I’ll cover five methods for crawling a staging server ranging from using basic authentication to VPN access to creating custom user agents. I’ll end with some key takeaways and tips. Let’s begin!

1. Basic Authentication

If the staging server is using basic authentication, then you’ll be happy to know that the top crawling tools support this method when setting up a crawl.

For example, my favorite crawling tools are DeepCrawl (where I’m on the customer advisory board) and Screaming Frog. Both tools provide the option to provide login details so you can crawl away.

Handling Basic Authentication in DeepCrawl:

Selecting the “Request Authentication” setting in Screaming Frog:

2. VPN Access

I’ve had some clients that keep their staging servers behind a firewall (on their company network and not publicly available). For a situation like that, I’ve sometimes been given VPN access so I could crawl the server. Once I connect via VPN, I could crawl away with any tool that was local (working on my systems in my office).

The upside is you can crawl staging with local tools. The downside is that you probably can’t use enterprise-level crawlers which aren’t located on your own network. And that could be important, especially if it’s a large-scale website.

Accessing a staging server via VPN:

3. Whitelist An IP Address

I’ve also had some clients that used a staging platform that redirected all users to a common login, which then redirects you back to the specific staging server you wanted to access. Unfortunately, many of the tools that support basic or digest authentication will not work here, as the redirect throws a wrench into situation.

But you could request that the platform whitelist your IP address for the staging server you are trying to access. Your client would simply be providing access to your specific IP address to the staging server for a short period of time — for example, one day, or just a few days of access — while excluding all other IPs.

4. Create A Custom User Agent

You’ve heard of Googlebot and Bingbot, but have you heard of GSQiBot? That’s one of the custom user agents I’ve set up for client crawls. Using the top crawling tools, you can create a custom user agent that you can pass along to your clients.

Then they can whitelist that specific user agent while blocking all other access. It’s similar to the IP address method, but it whitelists a user agent versus an IP address.

Setting up a custom user agent in DeepCrawl:

Setting up a custom user agent in Screaming Frog:

5. IRL – Going Old-School

Yes, you read that correctly. In certain situations, I’ve had to go old-school and actually visit clients “in real life.” Whoa, the horror!

If staging is not accessible from the outside, and your client will not open up access for some reason, then you might have to go visit their office.

Once you do, you can crawl away from within their network. This obviously has some geographic restraints, but I’ve done this before for clients located in the Northeast. (I’m in Princeton, NJ.)

Key Takeaways & Quick Tips

Now that I’ve covered five different ways to crawl a staging server, I’ll provide some key takeaways and tips based on my experience helping clients.

• Do not bypass the crawl. It’s too important to overlook. There are many problems you can uncover with a strong crawl of staging. And that means you can nip serious SEO problems in the bud. Emphasize the importance of a crawl to your client, their digital marketing team and dev team.
• Be flexible and work with your client’s dev team to gain access. Don’t demand a certain method. Understand their situation and work towards gaining access. The goal is to crawl staging to give the green light. It’s not to boost your ego.
• When you gain access, fire away. Perform both enterprise-level crawls and surgical crawls (if possible). Be prepared with what you need to do and which crawls you would like to perform. You might only have access for a day or two, so make the most of it. Again, I like to use DeepCrawl for enterprise crawls and Screaming Frog for surgical crawls.
• Double-check your crawl data before losing access to staging. Make sure you captured the data you need to complete the analysis. If for some reason the initial crawl data isn’t sufficient, refine your settings and crawl again. For example, exclude unimportant directories that are hogging the crawl, use different starting URLs, ensure the proper crawl restrictions are set up, make sure the right report settings are selected and so on.
• Make sure your client understands that there probably will be changes to implement based on the crawl analysis of staging, and that they should leave time for developers to make those changes. This is not a “crawl once and launch” type of process (although that can happen in a best-case scenario). It’s more of a “crawl, find problems, fix problems and crawl again” process. You don’t want to push SEO problems to production. Googlebot may not be as nice as GSQibot.

Summary: There’s More Than One Way To Access Staging

As I explained earlier, it’s critically important to crawl staging before key changes are pushed to production. You could very well uncover SEO technical problems during the crawl that will cause serious issues if pushed live.

My recommendation is to gain access to staging at all costs. The good news is that there are several methods you can choose from, as I documented above. Work with your client, and with their dev team, to gain access. That’s how you win. Now crawl away.

The post 5 Ways To Crawl A Staging Server Before Important Site Changes Go Live (To Save SEO) appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google To Remove Right-To-Be-Forgotten Links From All European Domains, Including Google.com

Google had been resisting European demands that the company remove links purged under the Right to Be Forgotten (RTBF) rule from its global index. Instead the company had been expunging them from domestic search results in individual European countries.

This meant that European users could access the disputed content simply by searching on Google.com. Google took the position that RTBF would only apply to European domain (e.g., .fr) users:

We’ve been working hard to strike the right balance in implementing the European Court’s ruling, co-operating closely with data protection authorities. The ruling focused on services directed to European users, and that’s the approach we are taking in complying with it.

Arguing that by simply searching on Google.com users could circumvent the intent of RTBF, The Commission Nationale de l’informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) threatened to fine the company €150,000 ($169,000) for failing to apply the rule on a worldwide basis.

Google then appealed CNIL’s order. However, according to Reuters, the company has now decided to remove all RTBF content from all its domains in Europe. This is according to Reuters; however we independently confirmed the accuracy of the report with Google.

As a practical matter RTBF-purged links will be removed from search indexes for individual European countries and Google.com throughout Europe. So an individual user could not access a removed link anywhere from within Europe.

The ban would not apply outside of Europe. To date Google has removed roughly 43 percent of submitted links or a total of 1.4 million URLs.

The post Google To Remove Right-To-Be-Forgotten Links From All European Domains, Including Google.com appeared first on Search Engine Land.

SearchCap: Conversions, PPC Optimization & Wikidata

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Wikidata 101
  Feb 10, 2016 by Clay Cazier

  Columnist Clay Cazier guides you through the basics of Wikidata, explaining what it is, why it matters to SEO professionals and how you can leverage it.

• Brand Bidding & PPC Optimization: The Value Of Brand Keywords (Part 2 of 8)
  Feb 10, 2016 by Lori Weiman

  Columnist Lori Weiman continues her series on brand bidding for PPC by discussing how brand terms improve the bottom line for advertisers.

• Content Marketing That Drives Conversions
  Feb 9, 2016 by Digital Marketing Depot

  Relevant, engaging content now plays a critical role in nurturing prospects into the purchase funnel to become customers. How can marketers produce, distribute and optimize well-defined content assets — including blogs, email, infographics, landing pages and videos — to create deeper prospect engagement and contribute to business goals and bottom-line results? On Thursday, March 1, […]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• John Sculley To Marketers: Don’t “Worry About The Technology,” Focus On The Customer
• Survey: SMBs Boosting Digital Media Spend Because Of Competition, Not ROI
• Data-Led Inbound Marketing, Part 2
• Jump-Start Your SEO With These 6 Surefire Tactics
• Facebook Releases New Video Ad Features, Including Automated Captions
• Top 10 YouTube Ads In January: “Clash Of Clans” Takes The Lead 2nd Month In A Row
• How Do You Actually “Think Outside The Box” In Digital Marketing?
• Pay Attention! 3 Steps To Digital Advertising Breakthrough
• Report: Established App Markets Transitioning Away From Download Revenue And Toward Usage
• What Twitter’s New Timeline Means For Brands And Advertisers
• MarTech Today: Google HTML5 Ads, Data-Led Inbound Marketing & Edits To Knowledge Graph
• Twitter Launches New Timeline Featuring Top Past Tweets
• FAQ: All About How Twitter’s “New Improved” Timeline Works
• Finally! Brands Can Edit Their Knowledge Graph Cards In Google
• Digital Customer Service Is Becoming A Fully Realized Marketing Channel
• 8-Step Road Map to a World-Class Social Media Governance Program

Search News From Around The Web:

Industry

• Bringing You Live Reports from #SMX West 2016, BruceClay.com
• Google crafts custom networking CPU with parallel computing links, The Register

Local & Maps

• Landsat coverage, Google Earth Blog

Searching

• Answer: Mysteries at Universities, SearchReSearch
• Search Challenge (2/10/16): Why an arc of lakes?, SearchReSearch
• Tell us what you think: Font size settings, DuckDuckGo Blog

SEO

• Big List of SEO Penalty Recovery Tools, Ignite Visibility
• How Voice Search Will Shape SEO in 2016, SEMrush Blog

SEM / Paid Search

• Use Multi-Channel Funnels To Improve Your PPC, PPC Hero

The post SearchCap: Conversions, PPC Optimization & Wikidata appeared first on Search Engine Land.

What To Expect When You Attend Our @SMX Search Marketing Event

Search Engine Land’s SMX West search marketing conference is returning for the 6th year in 2016 to San Jose this March 1-3. If you are obsessed SEO and SEM, or involved in marketing, PR, social media or any other customer-facing activity, you owe it to yourself (and the ultimate benefit of your company or client’s bottom line) to attend the show. Here’s why:

Constant Change, Constant Challenge, Constant New Opportunity

Online marketing continues to evolve at a breakneck pace. This creates great new opportunities for marketers, but it also suggests that there’s turbulent change afoot, with budgets, priorities, tactics and techniques changing rapidly to keep pace with burgeoning new channels and opportunities.

Now more than ever it’s crucial for anyone involved in online marketing to keep up with this accelerating change, overcome new challenges and opportunistically embrace new approaches – and do so while maintaining an edge on your competitors.

That’s our guiding philosophy in designing and programming SMX events: Providing you with the quality content, speakers and networking opportunities to keep you up to speed with the fast pace of change and help you hone your skills and tactics to keep your competitive edge sharp.

SMX West: Something For Everyone

Whether you’re a web designer, developer, in public relations, advertising or traditional marketing, search is a crucial marketing medium. It’s imperative that you maintain your ongoing education in its ever-changing ways.

As organizations integrate online and offline marketing, it’s crucial to understand how search fits in with the “big picture,” not only contributing to enhanced brand exposure but in many cases paying for itself via measurably improved ROI.

SMX West gives you that education, no matter your role. The show is big enough that we can offer multiple tracks filled with sessions that cover all interests and experience levels. Whether you are beginner, intermediate or advanced level, or focused on paid search, SEO, social media marketing we’ve got plenty planned for you.

“I came away with a lot of action items that I could implement almost immediately. There were also good high-level discussions on strategy and the future of the industry.”
– Andon C., Mayo Clinic

The conference agenda provides an overview of everything that’s going on, complete with the ability for you to customize your own experience and have a personalized agenda emailed to you. Labels identify sessions that are focused on search engine optimization (working with “free” listings), PPC (paid search ads), and the increasingly crucial social media marketing.

SMX Boot Camp Gets You In Shape

If you’re new to search marketing, our SMX Boot Camp will get you up to speed. It happens on the first day of the show, Tuesday, March 1. Attend and you’ll learn the fundamentals in these sessions:

• Keyword Research & Copywriting For Search Success
• Link Building Fundamentals
• Paid Search Fundamentals
• Search Engine Friendly Web Design

To encourage you to learn about search marketing, we offer all these sessions through an affordable SMX Boot Camp ticket. Bootcamp tickets include admission on the first day to the Expo Hall, networking lunch and the Expo Hall reception. After attending SMX Boot Camp, it’s easy to upgrade to a full pass, should you want to attend more sessions on the second and third day.

SMX Boot Camp is, of course, also open to anyone with a full All Access conference pass. Everyone who attends every session gets a certificate of completion.

Stepping Up To The SEO Challenge

Over the years, search engine optimization has evolved from a relatively simple process of keyword optimization and link building into an ever-changing and increasingly complex technical challenge. If you’re just getting started with SEO, SMX West’s SMX Boot Camp can help, but we’ve also got plenty of sessions designed to help seasoned professionals keep and sharpen their edge:

• How Google Works: A Google Ranking Engineer’s Story
• All Your Google Manual Actions Questions Answered
• RankBrain: What Do We Know About Google’s New Machine-Learning System?
• Think Like A Search Engine: How Brand Queries & User Engagement Drive Organic SEO
• Optimizing Pinterest For Maximum Search Engagement
• Better Together: Search & Social
• What You Need To Know About Google App Indexing
• What You Need To Know About Apple iOS App Search & Universal Links
• Meet The SEOs

“There was a great mix of excellent take–aways for both the advanced search marketer as well as beginners, which is a tough balance to strike, but the conference hit it seemingly effortlessly.”
– Purna Virji, Microsoft

Paid Search For The Pros

Are you focused on paid search? Don’t worry, all that talk about SEO above doesn’t mean you’re left out. We have plenty of dedicated paid search sessions throughout the conference, including:

• Getting Creative With Ad Copy & Testing
• How Dynamic Ads Can Supercharge Your SEM Campaigns
• What Would Beyonce Do? 5 Fierce PPC Tactics To Make Your Account A Superstar
• How Email Marketing Is Revolutionizing Paid Search
• Running Global PPC Campaigns At Scale
• Mining, Refining & Minting Success With AdWords Display & Video
• Yahoogling: What’s Up With Yahoo, Google & Bing
• Mastering AdWords Scripts
• The Great Campaign Structure & Match Type Debate
• Advanced Audience Targeting
• Getting Images Right In Paid Search
• Competitive Research For SEM
• How To Care For Your Shopping Campaigns: What To Do Every Day, Every Month, Every Season
• Paid Search Roundtable

Local & Mobile Tactics

If you cater to a local clientele, local search is an essential channel. The current state of local search is messy, with many confusing options, variations and alternatives. Add to that a constantly shifting landscape where major local search providers are fiercely competitive, vying for an advantage over one another at the expense of both searchers and marketers.

And mobile isn’t just about smartphones any more – advertising (and importantly, conversions) on tablets has exploded in the past year, and will soon surpass phones as the most effective way for marketers to connect with people not tied to their desktops. In our Mobile Track sessions, our speakers will be covering these trends and more with sessions like:

• Local Search AMA: A Roundtable Q&A With Top Local Experts
• Local Listings: Putting Your Business On The Virtual Map
• Getting AMPed: What You Need To Know About Accelerated Mobile Pages & Google
• Beacons: Opportunities, Limitations & How Marketers Can Use Them Today
• Search In A Multi-Device World
• Beyond Clicks: Online to Offline Tracking & Attribution

Advanced Tactics @ SMX West

This year’s advanced track will push your knowledge to the limit! Amp up your knowledge with sessions focused on technical SEO, link auditing, the all important debate over what makes up quality content. Sessions will include:

• The Latest In Advanced Technical SEO
• Link Auditing & Cleanup For Fun & Profit
• Essential Steps For Performing An Effective SEO Audit
• Progressing Through The Search, Social & Content Marketing Maturity Curve
• Dark Search, Dark Social & Everything In-Between

Analytics & Conversion

Let’s face it, all the work you do with either SEO or paid search campaigns is effectively worthless unless you take the time to analyze and understand the effectiveness of your efforts. The analytics & conversion track focuses on the tools and techniques that help you refine and tune your search marketing. Sessions include:

• Attribution Beyond The Last Click
• Extreme Excel Excellence
• Understanding Your Consumer’s Journey – Using Search Science For Keyword Research
• Google Analytics Power-Reporting For SEO & SEM
• PPC Hacks, Tips, & Tricks – How To Optimize Your Time
• Content, Your Brand, and the Battle for Customers
• Professional Project Management For Paid Search Accounts
• Essential Analytics Reports That SEOs Can’t Live Without
• Brands Talk Search
• Optimizing The Paid Search Conversion Funnel

The Clinics Are Open!

Want specific advice from experts about issues with your sites or campaigns? The digital doctors are in! Our popular clinics return in these areas:

• SEO Site Clinic
• Social Media Clinic
• PPC Tune-Up With The SMX Mechanics
• Link Building Clinic

Learn With Google

Today’s constantly connected world presents digital marketers with new challenges and opportunities. Come see how Google can help you win in this new constantly connected world in our custom-built Google Classroom located across the SMX West expo hall. Stop by and enjoy some Google snacks and beverages in our micro kitchen, and stay for a session or four!

Attend Learn with Google by either registering for an All Access pass or an Expo+ pass which ñ are is free with pre-registration until February 29.

Pre-Conference Workshops & Training

If you’ve got the time, we’ve got even more for you! Arrive a day early, and you’ve got a choice of in-depth workshops and training classes to choose from:

• Bruce Clays’ SEO Training, offering a detailed overview of the ranking and placement techniques required to overcome competition for top search engine rankings for desired keywords.
• Brad Geddes’ Advanced AdWords Training, that teaches you not only the best practices, but also advanced concepts and strategies that are based upon a decade of research and testing.
• Local Search Advantage is a deep dive on local marketing, covering all of the topics necessary to be found by buyers when theyíre looking to purchase.
• In-house SEO Exchange, a closed-door event for in-house SEOs only, tackling the pressing issues facing enterprise-level SEOs through candid and open discussion with others in the trenches.
• Personal Brand Lab, where you will learn how to make a better, more enduring impression within your industry online in search results, through LinkedIn and other social channels, as well as in-person at conferences and networking events.
• SEO & User Experience: Step By Step, where you will learn how to improve your website’s user experience by taking this practical, content-rich, and hands-on training workshop for people with varying levels of SEO and UX skills.

Ready to register? Save now by registering for a combination All Access and workshop pass. If not, keep reading, because there is more!

Quality Programming

All the SMX sessions I’ve described above are what we call editorial sessions. People are speaking on them because we feel they have great information to offer. In other words, no one bought their way onto a panel.

Sessions are curated by the Search Engine Land editorial team, so you’ll know the content and quality will be worth the investment. We guarantee it!

Session formats are varied. Sometimes we have panels with multiple people. Sometimes we have only one or two speakers. Some panels are all Q&A. Some feature presentations and some are PowerPoint free. We don’t lock ourselves into one particular format, because different topics require different approaches. Instead, we focus on creating a great overall experience.

The editorial portion of the show is overseen by me and my co-chair Danny Sullivan. We’ve been organizing search conferences longer than anyone in the industry – more than 15 years and counting!

Freebies: Expo Hall, SMX Theater & Plus Sessions

Our SMX West sponsors & exhibitors have great information to share with attendees. Here are several ways on how you can connect with them:

Our Sponsors & Partners Track features Plus Sessions, which are created and produced by the company sponsoring them.

Sponsors know they’re competing to attract your attention while you are choosing from the high quality editorial sessions. That causes them to want to match the value and quality that our editorial sessions set. We’ll also have a handful of pre-session “Solution Spotlights” where sponsors will offer a short pitch of their product or service.

The Expo Hall runs March 1-2. You’ll find innovative products and services to improve performance…it’s every search marketer’s dream!

SMX Theater Presentations are mini-sponsored sessions that run 20 minutes each at the Expo Hall. Presenters frequently cover case studies – they’re a great way to get the scoop on a company, product, service or topic.

Access the exhibit hall for free by pre-registering for an Expo+ Pass through February 29. The Expo+ Pass allows you into the Expo Hall, the SMX Theater and Plus sessions for March 1 and 2; the Expo Hall Reception and morning keynote on March 1. All Access pass holders have entry to all of these events PLUS all the editorial sessions. For a breakdown of what each pass offers, check out our pass options page.

Organized Networking

At SMX, we don’t leave networking to chance, where you hope to randomly encounter the right people. We’re organized!

Even before you arrive, our SMX West Facebook Group allows you to connect with other attendees and speakers before, during and after the show. You’ll have the opportunity to participate in collaborative group with discussions, questions and show announcements.

The night before the show, we have our SMX Meet & Greet reception. It’s another great way to meet people before the show starts.

At the end of the first day, the SMX Expo Hall Reception offers another chance to mingle. The networking continues with a special evening event for those who RSVP in advance, Janes of Digital, hosted by Bing.

First time at an SMX conference? At SMX West, we’re also offering an informal SMX Orientation: Optimizing Your Conference Experience just before the Meet & Greet. This lets you get the scoop on accessing presentations, Wi-fi, power stations, amenities, networking and great content. Plus you’ll meet part of the SMX team as well as other “first-timers” and start making connections before the show starts. SMX Orientation is open to All Access attendees and speakers.

During lunches, we offer our unique Obsessed with… lunch tables, where attendees can network with each other and dive into topics such as SEM, SEO, mobile and more. Being grouped with people who share a common interest is a great icebreaker. Table topics are published several weeks prior to the show.

All these options can be found our networking page. You’re going to meet plenty of people! And when you’ve registered, don’t forget to tell the world that you’re making your way to SMX West using one of our I’m Attending badges.

Featured Event: Google Dance!

The good folks at Google are hosting a party for SMX West All Access attendees! Don’t miss this incredible experience affectionately known as Google Dance* at the famed Googleplex campus.

Attendance is open to the first 500 SMX West “All Access Pass” holders registered. (Sorry, 1-day All Access Pass holders are not eligible.) If you’ve already purchased a 3-day SMX West All Access Pass (or are a speaker), you’re automatically registered for Google Dance. Want to attend? Be among the first 500 people buying a 3-day All Access Pass and you’ll automatically be registered. Transportation will be provided.

As of this post, there are less than 50 passes left! Get yours now!

* The term “Google Dance” was coined to describe the changes in search rankings after an algorithm update. Itís also the name of an annual gathering for search marketers that Google hosted at its Googleplex headquarters from 2002 through 2008. You can learn more about Google Dance here.

Good Food, WiFi & Backpacks

A good SMX experience means no boxed lunches at our shows. You’ll get a great meal, and you’ll want to go back for more. Youíll also get refreshments and snacks during the day. People take pictures of the food we serve at our events, theyíre so amazed and pleased. Honest!

We’ll also keep you connected, providing free WiFi in the conference rooms. Attendees will also come out with a handy conference backpack, which you’ll take home and use again and again.

Join Us In Silicon Valley!

I hope you’ve found this conference preview useful and are ready to attend. You’ll find more details on the SMX West web site. You can register online or by phone at (877) 242-5242. Do it by February 29 to secure low pre-conference rates.

See you in San Jose!

Chris Sherman
VP, Event Programming

The post What To Expect When You Attend Our @SMX Search Marketing Event appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Wikidata 101

No doubt you have run across articles detailing the SEO benefits of structured data and how algorithms focused on things not strings are turning search engines into answer engines.

A quick example: search for “George Clooney’s wife,” and Google immediately tells you Amal Clooney is his current spouse (married in 2014) and Talia Balsam is his former wife, married and then divorced in 1989 and 1993 respectively.

In 2005, it is likely the top result would have been an organic listing featuring a website optimized for that particular query.

Today, Google’s ability to provide logical answers is rooted in the semantic connections provided by structured data entries across the web (like Wikipedia, Wikidata and the CIA Factbook) and within Google’s private Knowledge Vault.

Comprehensive, trusted sources of structured data provide a machine like Google with the entities that enable it to logically formulate an answer for common and not-so-common things (see also “RankBrain”).

“Congratulations,” you might say, “you are one of hundreds who have described the relationship between structured data, Google’s Knowledge Graph and modern search results.”

I’d like to add to this industry conversation by focusing on the basics of Wikidata — Wikidata 101, if you will — and discussing why the site should matter to SEO pros trying to increase their clients’ search visibility.

Why Wikidata Matters

Wikidata describes itself as “a free, linked database that can be read and edited by both humans and machines.” The site goes on to outline that it “acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects including Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, and others.”

It is the heir and progression of the now-mothballed Freebase.com project in its role of organizing, storing and redistributing structured data in a way that people and machines can use to understand the relationships between different data points, including entities like “Mount Everest” or concepts like “highest point.”

For SEO pros, Wikidata is important because it is one of the structured data sources that allows Google to connect George Clooney to Amal Clooney and Talia Balsam via the conceptual data point, “spouse.”

In a more business-oriented example, Wikidata is what creates a machine-learnable connection between Texas Instruments and products like the TI-99. Wikidata’s organized structure of entities like industry and manufacturer allow us to quickly see the benefit to Texas Instruments when someone queries Google for “manufacturer of TI-99.”

Wikidata Basics

How do you enter into Wikidata’s wonderful world of structured data? At first glance, entries in Wikidata are confusing and definitely not user-friendly.

How do you know the names of things you are “allowed” to enter under an existing item? How do I even talk about the things I see in order to research the standards or talk to others about my questions? Before we start talking about editing, let’s establish the names of the elements you’ll see on a Wikidata page.

Wikidata contains entities, or Items, like “London” or “Facebook.” Each Item is assigned a unique identifier starting with a Q, like Q454390 for the TI-99. At the top of each Item is a label, description and aliases:

Within each Wikidata Item lie individual Statements that have Claims composed of Properties defined by Values with Qualifiers that are, ideally, backed up by at least one Reference.

Wikidata statement by Wikidata is licensed under CC BY 2.0

If we look back at the George Clooney example, we see “George Clooney” is the Item, which has a Statement composed of the following: “spouse” is the Property, Amal Clooney and Talia Balsam are both entered as Values of that Property and each of those Values has start time Qualifiers and a single Reference.

As you can see, entering new Properties, Values and/or References is a simple as clicking the “edit” link, making the changes and saving. The hard part? Knowing the accepted Properties and Qualifiers, along with the format you should use for their Values.

For example, can I add a Property to George Clooney’s Item named “Kids?” Apart from the fact he does not have any children, the answer is no — the accepted Property is “Child,” singular, under which you can enter multiple Values, Qualifiers and References.

There are extensive lists of Wikidata Properties you can use to identify accepted Property names, but one quick tip is to cheat! Well, not really cheat — rather, take a look at Items similar to the one you’d like to edit, and note the statement Properties used plus the kinds of Values and Qualifiers commonly accepted for those Properties.

For example, look at the Wikidata entry for a corporation like Facebook, the Item for Barack Obama and the Item listing for the revered TI-99. My top recommendations for Properties that Organizations should supply/populate are headquarters location, official website, image or logo image, described at URL, Facebook ID, Twitter username, inception, industry and manufacturer (of).

One very important note: Like Wikipedia, Wikidata insists upon entries being about notable concepts or material entities (people, places and things). For the most part, that means it is mentioned in the Wikipedia or you can describe the entity using third-party, publicly available resources.

While you are getting accustomed to Wikidata’s layout and standards, you should not jump in and start creating new items about yourself, your clients or your clients’ products (See also Wikidata’s guidelines on Conflict of Interest).

The best way to get started putting the concepts described above to work is to either play the Wikidata Game or perhaps visit a random item that needs to be improved. Once you are more experienced in editing existing items with new statements and properties, you can move on to improving the listings associated with entities about which you’re more familiar.

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Brand Bidding & PPC Optimization: The Value Of Brand Keywords (Part 2 of 8)

Welcome to Part 2 of Brand Bidding & PPC Optimization, a series to help today’s search marketer answer the biggest question facing PPC advertisers in 2016: How do I get meaningful growth numbers out of an expensive, crowded and competitive PPC market?

In Part 1, I reviewed the history of PPC optimization and how easy it used to be to achieve big growth numbers from PPC advertising. To summarize part 1, I discussed the evolution of keyword advertising:

1. Inexpensive search terms (Remember minimum bids under five cents?) drove significant returns on ad spend (ROAS).
2. Next came analytics, which enabled advertisers to set costs per click (CPCs) wisely, based on conversion rates and keyword costs.
3. Followed by analytics were automation platforms, which enabled the industry to manage huge volumes of keywords efficiently.
4. Then, relevancy was introduced, along with a greater focus on effective ad copy and landing pages.

This brings us to today, where competition for clicks makes it challenging to derive meaningful growth from paid search advertising. Merkle RKG reports that first-page bid costs have risen more than 75 percent from mid-2014 to mid-2015.

As an illustration of how tough competition is getting, I pulled The Search Monitor’s keyword data for the footwear category (Disclosure: Search Monitor is my employer) and saw more than 3,700 different PPC advertisers on Google in the US during December 2015.

From my experience, our customers have cracked this code by deploying brand bidding strategies. These strategies, discussed in the subsequent articles in this series, include ad monitoring, carefully crafted partnership agreements, addressing your competition head-on, making search engine complaints coupled with other available legal responses and effectively employing brand bidding techniques.

These strategies have allowed our customers to control CPCs on their branded terms and drive clicks that otherwise would go to competitors. The result has been strong growth in ROAS.

What Are Brand & Brand-Plus Keywords?

Let’s start with some definitions. A brand keyword (aka branded keyword or brand term) is the keyword used to search for a company name. A recognizable example is “Macy’s.” Note that brand keywords can include obvious typos, such as “Macys.”

A brand-plus keyword, meanwhile, refers to a keyword phrase that includes the brand term plus a qualifying phrase. An example would be “Adidas running shoe.” There are many variations, such as:

• Brand + product name (“Adidas Flux”)
• Brand + review (“Adidas Ultra Boost review”)
• Brand + coupon (“Adidas coupon”)
• Brand + sale (“Adidas sale” or “Adidas discount”)
• Brand long tail (“Adidas men’s Springblade running shoe size 13”)
• Brand + website (“www Adidas” or “Adidas website”)

To quantify the competition on brand and brand-plus keywords, consider this: We observe that bigger brand names often enjoy autonomy, with limited competition on their actual correctly spelled trademarked name.

As soon as we iterate the brand name with typos, dot-com extensions or brand-plus variations, the entire first page of paid results is filled with competitors, affiliates, partners and URL Hijackers.

The Value Of Brand And Brand-Plus Keywords

Instinctively, you just know that these searches provide incredible value to a brand. Search marketing blogs are overflowing with anecdotes and recommendations that discuss the need to focus on these keywords for PPC success.

To back up our instincts, check out these real values with juicy stats to back them up:

More Clicks On Paid Ads

Brand terms generate lots of clicks. A study conducted by Bing at the end of 2015 revealed that running ads on branded terms results in 31 percent more clicks for retail advertisers and 27 percent more more clicks for travel advertisers.

Also, don’t forget, that some (okay, lots) of consumers use search engines as a replacement for the browser address bar. A common behavior is to type the website address into the Google search box. Brand bidding allows you to capture these clicks and their high click-through rates.

More Clicks Overall – SEM + SEO.

Then there is the concept of amplification, which, according to this Search Engine Land article, occurs when “[t]he traffic through the sponsored link is 100% incremental AND the ad is responsible for increasing the traffic on the organic link as well.”

A study by 3Q Digital quantified this amplitudinal (new word!) gain when it showed there was a significant difference between whether you receive 56 percent of all clicks (with no brand ad appearing) or 88 percent of all clicks (with a brand ad at top) from a search on your brand. That’s a gain of 157 percent more clicks.

Improved Conversion Rates

What good are more clicks if they don’t convert and drive a healthy ROAS? The conversion benefits of brand bidding are vast. Let’s tackle them with a nice bulleted list (I feel like I am selling a miracle wrinkle cream that actually works):

• Searchers who use brand keywords are more likely to be familiar with the brand and have an existing level of trust with your company. In other words, they are likely farther down the buying funnel.
• Running an ad on your branded keywords lets you control the landing page experience much more easily than you can with your organic listing. And we all know how optimized landing pages, especially with continuous A/B testing, should convert at higher rates than non-relevant landing pages.
• Studies have shown that branded keyword phrases are 5X more likely to convert visitors into leads, and paid conversion rates can be upwards of 4X higher than organic conversion rates. Simply put, it’s better for conversions to have a paid ad representing you than relying on your organic listing.
• What does Google have to say on this? They reported that paid clicks from branded searches had double the conversion rate of paid clicks from non-branded searches.
• This search marketer was able to increase his ROAS by 159 percent by realizing that it was more profitable to lower the max CPC bid for his branded keywords. In this example, just the simple act of paying greater attention to his branded campaigns led to huge revenue gains.

Better Quality Scores

Brand searches are more relevant and can have low bounce rates. According to Larry Kim, writing in Search Engine Land, “[o]ne way to raise your overall account CTR is by bidding on branded keywords.” Better Quality Scores lead to lower CPCs, which can possibly offset some of your lower-scored terms.

Real Estate Building

By bidding on brand keywords, you can own more of page one and control your message better than with SEO alone. Picking on automotive for a second:

• Fiat was able to grow brand awareness by advertising on paid search. They leveraged search as key part of their US market re-entry strategy. In a case study published in June 2014, Google concluded that “[t]otal unaided brand awareness increased 11.5 percentage points when a [branded] Fiat Search ad was present.”
• On the flip side, your competitors can brand bid on you. Don’t let them. Here is what we saw happening to Ford, because everyone wants in on their brand action. The Search Monitor noticed that Honda and Chevy were paying for high-ranking ads appearing on a Ford trademark, the Ford Focus. They were getting away with it by using the Ford brand in their display URL and not their ad copy (More on that in Part 5, “Addressing Competition”).

The UFC Of SEM

Brand terms are the Ultimate Fighting Champions of SEM. Competitors are trying to give you a beatdown by stealing your clicks, but don’t let them.

In the first article, I told you about one of our clients who gets 66 percent of the clicks on their brand terms when they advertise. Our client is the UFC of their brand, with their sad competitors only taking home 33 percent of the clicks as a group.

If our client didn’t spend the dime, then their competitors would get 100 percent of the take-home purse on their brands all of the time. 

Another one of our UFC super-fighter clients recently increased clicks on their branded keywords by 34 percent (and cut costs by 51 percent). How? They removed unapproved advertisers using an automated search engine complaint submission process.

Brand Bidding Grows Revenue… Convinced?

One of our big travel clients boasted recently that by protecting its brand keywords by advertising on them and blocking the competition, they saved (i.e., earned) hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide in revenue that otherwise would have walked out the door into the hands of rival brands. We got excited when we heard this. You should, too.

We’ve concluded from the great results we have seen that brand bidding is your secret growth weapon heading into 2016. If you don’t know how to do it, don’t worry, we have you covered.

Stay with us for Part 3 of this series. We will tell you how to take advantage of the great values from brand bidding through industry best practices including: maximizing mobile, working with partners and affiliates to block the competition and knocking off competitors by using the engines to help you.

We will also discuss tweaking your copy, ad extensions and offers to maximize the presence on your branded keywords. We will offer tips for both big recognizable brands and for smaller lesser known brands. Stay tuned.

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