Back in the early days of search engine optimization, some overly opportunistic parties took advantage of then-current data showing a positive correlation between the number of backlinks and Google ranking. This gave rise to automated link building, link farms, links for sale and all sorts of other spammy scenarios and gave SEO, in general, a [...]
There are plenty of actionable points on most websites - buttons and banners entreating visitors to Download, Sign Up, Subscribe, Join, Get Started, Learn More or just plain Contact. Websites with a cohesive digital marketing plan will track and monitor conversions from these calls to action. But there’s one very important CTA that we quite [...]
Planning, creating and promoting online content can be very rewarding but also very time-consuming. It takes significant resources to produce good content and develop a cohesive promotion plan, whether that involves sharing content on social media or posting it to your own blog or to an industry/partner site. It’s not surprising then that digital marketers [...]
When Google announced the phasing out of Google+ listings, we recommended ensuring that your company’s Google Business listing was fully optimized and utilizing the “create a post” feature to share news or events. In early 2018, we started noticing event listings from various sites being promoted in Google Business listings. We’ve continued to advocate the [...]
Mary Meeker, sometimes referred to as “Queen of the Net”, started publishing an annual Internet trends report in 1995 while at Morgan Stanley. Today, she is a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The just-released 2019 Internet Trends report has a number of interesting takeaways. Among the insights is a graph [...]
Google Advanced Search Commands enable a user to make a search query more precise. As we’ll show below, they can also be useful for SEO work. The list of available options has evolved over time, with Google occasionally dropping a search operator and introducing others. Most recently, Google replaced the sort by date feature in [...]
Automated advertising campaigns certainly aren’t new. Google launched Universal App Campaign in 2015 and then rolled out Smart Campaigns last year along with the rebranding from AdWords. Smart Campaigns automates audience targeting and also Ad creation (the advertiser supplies a few images). Smart campaigns are especially attractive to small businesses because they are easy to [...]
Realizing that visual content sells, Google Ads is incorporating its Shoppable Ads into Google Images search results. This a familiar concept to consumers who frequent Pinterest or Instagram or Houzz - various products in the ad will be “tagged” so that the brand and price will be displayed when a user hovers over the image. [...]
For several years, Google has categorized local businesses into broad categories: brick-and-mortar businesses which customers regularly visit (e.g. a retail store, restaurant, etc.) and service area businesses (SABs) in which the business owner or employees visit customers or clients (e.g. electrician, lawn service, etc.). Lost in this rigid categorization are the “hybrid” businesses which may [...]
Is Google+ still worth it? Do I still need a Google Plus listing? Is Google Plus going away? For several years, we heard a version of those questions fairly frequently. Then, in October 2018, Google announced that Google+ would gradually be phased out by August 2019. After a security breach was disclosed in December [...]
