Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Sometimes you do everything right, and it works like it should. Other times you do everything right, but nothing happens.

But here’s the good news.If your rankings are stuck, there are things you can do to help them move up in the SERPs. It’s absolutely possible.

Today, I’m going to show you exactly what to do to get your rankings up....

While Google keeps us on our toes with all the algorithm updates they keep rollin' out, one thing has stayed pretty consistent for inbound marketers looking to optimize their websites for search: keyword research.

Well, the need to do keyword research has stayed the same. How you actually do it hasn't.

So I'm going to lay out a keyword research process you can follow to help you come up with and narrow down a list of terms you should be targeting.That way, you'll be able to establish and execute a strong keyword strategy that helps you get found for the search terms you actually care about.

Brands that learn how to evolve their approach to SEO and content to fit this new world will emerge on top. Here’s how to take an SEO perspective on content and merge it with content strategy, editorial, distribution, and planning.

The search industry is booming. Competition for keywords – organic or paid – has never been higher. All forms of digital content multiply and prosper.

Underneath it all, however, tectonic plates are shifting. Slowly but surely, almost everything that used to constitute search engine optimization (SEO) has become ineffective, risky, or inappropriate for most brands.

SEO tactics are being taken off the table and a gap has begun to arise between what is needed – digital visibility – and the tactics, tools, and business processes needed to achieve it. Brands that learn how to evolve their approach to SEO and content to fit this new world will emerge on top....

We didn’t realize it when we started this research, but we were about to uncover a specific speed factor that Google uses to rank your website. It’s not just speed alone that matters, but a specific type of page speed that makes the real difference.

The study you’re about to read is the largest study of the impact of website speed on Google search ranking ever performed. Ahrefs contributed ranking data, but it took massive amounts of crawling, collating, and crunching the data on our part to get accurate results.

We surfaced several highly significant findings. These findings are significant, partly because they’ve never been revealed before, but also because they could make a massive impact on your website’s ranking!...

If desktop search is the first trillion, and mobile search is the second trillion, where will we find the third trillion?

Well, for a start, there is some growth still to come even in searches like those that people are already doing even in the most mature markets - the best argument I have for that is this chart which shows the growth of e-commerce, and how all of Amazon’s growth fits into around 8% of the total retail market. Just as e-commerce has further to go, so there is still untapped search demand.

But that’s going to be slow going - it’s not going to add a trillion / year any time soon.

So what might?

Well, my theory is that it’s going to come from searches people aren’t doing yet.

Here’s some data and evidence...

Last week Google made a number of major announcements. There’s nothing unusual about that, of course, except this time the announcements have big implications for SEO, which will make thousands of businesses around the world wary about their efforts to scale SERPs.

This time around, Google has publicly discussed two new updates which offer a major shake-up to the standard Penguin or Panda upgrade. One is a new algorithm called RankBrain, which boasts machine learning capabilities, and the other is a slightly disconcerting real-time Penguin update. For the latter, it essentially means it’s time for businesses to be at the peak of their game with their SEO practices.

When not frightening businesses with a continuous SEO ranking update, Google is nearing completion of an extraordinary project which would bring the Internet to over 100 million people around Indonesia. For businesses, however, the big news is Google’s latest updates–here’s what’s known so far....

The majority of brands that researched and targeted long-tail search terms have experienced a leap in organic traffic and rankings, but that doesn’t mean you won’t experience challenges.

Truth be told, if you want an immediate organic traffic boost, creating content around long-tail search phrases may not yield those results.
But your focus should be on the long-term. That’s when your web pages start showing up in results, even for keywords you didn’t primarily target.

If you’re willing to play the long game, long-tail keywords can increase your organic traffic and convert better than head terms....

SEO is going away, at least in the way that most of us know it. What's taking its place is something exciting and better, but, like enlightenment, it can't be achieved directly....

What is the sound of one keyword clapping? Can Google itself create a site so large that it can't even be indexed? Can any marketer ever step into the same algorithm twice? These are the kinds of questions that philosophers worry over – or at least that keep those of us involved in search engine optimization up at night – but they may not matter very much going forward.

That's because SEO is going away, at least in the way that most of us know it. What's taking its place is something exciting and better, but, like enlightenment, it can't be achieved directly. Does that sound confusing? Read on, because here is what you need to know about Zen and the art of improving your search rankings in 2013: 1. There is no try....