Google Down, Bing-Yahoo Up In October comScore Search Report

Hot News !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In US marketing, Yahoo-Bing search percentage increased and Google decreased.

Yahoo has slightly up the same 0.3 percentage points, from 10 percent to 10.3 percent. Bing has slightly gain, from 19.4 percent to 19.5 percent.

8 Quick Content Ideas to Inspire Your Business Blog

Fresh, engaging content is constantly stressed as one of the most important aspects of Internet marketing. It’s great to have a blog for your business, but you’ll only reap the benefits if you post frequently and post new ideas. Nobody will want to look at your blog if you don’t update or if you’re writing the same things as everyone else.

Coming up with content ideas for your business blog can be difficult and tiring, but it doesn’t have to be. TopRank created a BigList of the Best Online Search Marketing Business blogs, and looking at these blogs can give you some inspiration for content for your own blog. It’s important to focus on presenting or repurposing content in new ways that are exciting and engaging for readers.

After scanning through the list, I found a few of my favorite examples that can help you break down how to create interesting content for your business blog:

1. Write a weekly roundup post. There are multiple ways to do this, but it’s a valuable way to add a modern element to your business blog through sharing weekly industry news. You can choose to break the post into chunks, and discuss the top industry news of the week in each one. Or you can link to your favorite articles that were written throughout the week, which can help boost your connections with others in the industry.

2. Expand on your comments. If you’re struggling for blog post ideas, look no further than your own blog comments! If you’re prone to leaving meaningful comments on news sites and other blogs in the industry – which is a great way to boost your visibility – scroll back through these comments. You’re more than likely to find brilliant ways to expand those comments into full-blown blog posts – and once you’ve written the post, you can then link to it in the comment section.

3. Fix your readers’ problems. While this type of post is similar to an FAQ post, it gives you a chance to go a little deeper and address broad problems your consumers might be facing in the industry. For example, this post addresses four SEO nightmares and comes up with solutions for readers. The author is relevantly addressing common problems the audience might deal with on a daily basis. This type of post will help you frame yourself as a valuable source in your industry and a place readers will want to continually turn to for knowledge.

4. Collect tweets. If you’ve already written and published a lot of factual, in-depth posts on your business blog, why don’t you try including an opinion piece? This will freshen up the types of posts from your business, making it easier for your audience to connect. Try compiling a list of opinions on a certain issue – by listing or taking screenshots of tweets regarding the particular issue, you’ll provide your readers with access to the bigger picture of what others are saying. This will also show that you’re paying attention to social platforms.

5. Make a how-to video. Every consumer wants to read about inventive ways to use your products. If you want to write a how-to post, break it into steps and make it visually clear for readers. However, video can make the how-to come to life for your customers. If you’re an SEO company, you can film a user’s Google search process, adding color, thought bubbles or screencasts to show the importance of page rank in a fresh way. Try using Vine or Instagram, so you can connect with social platforms and make your post more interesting.

6. Hold interviews. Interviews, whether you present them in a video or transcribe them into words, will allow readers to learn about other angles to your industry. For instance, you can try interviewing one of your employees to give a behind-the-scenes view of your business. You can also interview a fellow industry leader and start a back-and-forth discussion. Either way, interviews can give your readers a wide array of insights and viewpoints.

7. Host a webinar. If you want to create a post that gives readers facts and breaks down a serious topic of discussion, try developing a webinar. This webinar discusses common SEO myths, while holding point-counterpoint discussions. Webinars are an effective way to let readers see all sides of an issue, so they can form their own opinions – and hopefully share them with you by commenting on your blog post!

8. Answer questions. An FAQ post is a common idea, and while you can easily get questions from your customers or by talking to your sales staff, try looking at a site like Quora to help you learn about what people are asking on social platforms. Then, compile the questions and answer them in a blog post. This shows you’re paying attention to what’s happening throughout social channels, and you’re creating content that is focused on the current questions and concerns of your audience.

Visual elements, such as video or info-graphics  are always quick and simple ways to make your business blog more exciting. Don’t be afraid to look at what other blogs are doing to attract readers or lists like the one TopRank created. And do whatever you can to create posts that address a real, current issue among your readers. Posts like this will help you achieve the best response.

resource: http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/10/17/8-quick-content-ideas-inspire-business-blog/

High Rankings, Google and the Human Factor

The wheel in the sky keeps on turning… all the while Google continues to circle its wagons, tightening the noose on the precious marketing spending of corporate America.

Considering Google is constantly tweaking its algorithm, one aspect has, and most likely will remain the same: the dependence on human involvement to validate websites and their content. This involvement insures the quality of the top ranked sites in search results. The foundation of Google’s better search results lies in the human factor: links. Links that are placed manually by website owners, editors and webmasters, linking one website to another.

The premise was and remains, that if you could be bothered to place a link, there must be value at the links destination. So Google measured each website’s link popularity (total inbound link quantity) and ranked websites accordingly. There was a time when the website with the most links equaled top rankings for the sites relevant market phrases. Those days passed, and Google next factored in elements of relevance of the originating website and anchor text of the link itself as a guide to better search results. This worked exceptionally well until unscrupulous webmasters began gaming the system and building links at an astronomical pace to push low-quality websites, with not so relevant content to the top results. Enter Google’s Penguin update which, among other things, changed the valuation of links to websites.

Any search engine optimizer practicing for more than a decade will remember the high value once placed on being listed in DMOZ and Yahoo’s directories. A listing in both would fuel almost any website to higher rankings. What these two directories shared in common was they were administered by humans; no automated computer placements here. Every website listed was manually reviewed by site editors who guaranteed the quality and relevance of each listing. Google even added DMOZ (for a period) as its own manual directory. Years have passed and times have changed. DMOZ has been withering on the vine for the better part of a decade.  Yahoo, which was once a free submission, then became a $299 annual subscription, paid in advance with no guarantee of getting listed. This all seems but a distant memory. Today some still extol the value of listings in these two mega directories, but their heyday has certainly passed.

What does this have to do with rankings and Google and the fore-mentioned wheel, you ask? Well, the void once filled by links and directories in the human factor portion of search engine algorithms has been nicely filled by social media. Today search engines’ need for real live editors is being filled by the many facets of social media mentions, likes, shares, connections, checkins and reviews. If there is social buzz, then there must be merit, credibility and interest in a given subject.  Measured properly and factored in correctly, Social Media Marketing impact on the rankings of websites has major impact. The impact is not only as high listings of relevant posts in search results, but also power to websites linked to, and mentioned in the wave of social chatter, simply deciphered by an algorithm.

Authorship and author rank are two more efforts to bring the human element back to search rankings. Google wants you to put a name and face to your content by linking your website to your Google + account. “Why,” you ask? Because any self-respecting person willing to show his face with his website listings in Google’s search results, wouldn’t publish spam, of course. In a recent video Matt Cutts, head of the Google Spam team, noted Google is getting better at detecting who is the authority behind each website for each given subject, and then attempting to rank the sites more highly.

So long as Google is an automated computerized service, spammers will be exploiting the latest holes exposed in its algorithm, and Google will be looking for new methods that bring a human component into its rankings. Human validation will continue to impact search rankings. Participants on social channels may not be in the buying mode while perusing their daily feed; however, their social activities can impact a company’s website and post rankings in search engine results. They will then be positioned for the moment humans are ready to spend.

resource: http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/10/01/high-rankings-google-human-factor/

Innovative Marketing Trends to Date from 2013

There are many timeless elements to creating top-notch, results-oriented online marketing campaigns. If it’s not engaging, memorable, or oozing with a little wow factor, there won’t likely be much fanfare. Every year, however, smart folks figure out new and innovative ways to lure in the masses, manifest a rags to riches story, and create tools and campaigns that become bona fide trends and legends.

We may only be in the fall of 2013, but already there have been many notable new movements that have created a stir in the world of marketing. It’s a bit early to tell which of these have significant staying power, but here are a few of the most critical innovations that business owners should take notice of.

It’s a Gamer’s World

Gamification may not be a new term, but it’s proving to be a trend that seems to grow and grow. Business owners have become hip to the essential element of engagement through all marketing channels, and there are few activities that prove more engaging than an addictive video game. Couple that with the game-playing obsession proudly touted in younger generations, and it’s clear to see how and why adding gaming elements to websites and marketing campaigns is exploding.

2013 has likely seen more gamification growth thanks to platforms like PunchTab and BigDoor, tools that make the integration of gaming elements into many business models a more seamless and organic process. Plus, apps like FourSquare have turned mundane tasks like running errands into a fun-filled, social-centric gaming experience. If you haven’t integrated a level of status or fun into your efforts yet, and your industry is appropriate for the task, make this a top consideration.

Refocusing on Retention

When we think of internet marketing, most people conjure up thoughts of acquisition efforts – ad banners, viral campaigns, and anything that brings eyeballs to websites. Marketers have been more and more aware that retention – or loyalty – marketing can be far more profitable (and honestly, a lot more fun, too). Existing customers are feeling a whole lot more love this year, as trends point toward rewards and bounties for loyalty, not just for new sign-ups.

It’s a brilliant move, overall, because potential customers that witness how well existing customers are taken care of won’t need a newbie promotion to lure them in. The promise of long term care, discounts, and overall attention can do plenty to move your acquisition numbers, too.

Crowdsourcing Goes Mainstream

These days, what can’t you crowdsource? It all started with sites like Kickstarter and IndieAGoGo, which allowed folks to fund projects (not businesses, mind you) by asking the entire internet for assistance. Now, you can crowdsource non-profits, start-ups, college tuition – even design options for your company’s website or logo (99Designs is an absolute sensation.)

Can you crowdsource marketing ideas? Heck yes you can. Leaders in the field are using social media platforms to crowdsource all manner of marketing strategies, getting real-world feedback about ideas without spending thousands of wasted dollars on directions that your audience won’t respond to. Companies like Zappos have had tremendous success with this process – there’s no reason why you can’t do the same.

Locals Have Their Heyday

Entrepreneurs that run local businesses suddenly have an influx of tools specifically geared toward local Best Online Marketing. SEO experts often focus solely on local results, leveraging geo-targeted tools and techniques to reach communities outside your door. Marketers have become wise to the fact that even local businesses can adeptly use online strategies to find new customers, and just as important, keep existing ones engaged.

Put the Multi in Multi-Screen Marketing

75 percent of the world now has access to cell phones, and if you’re not attempting to reach them, you are definitely losing out on a massive market share. Utilizing either responsive design or taking a multi-screen development approach is no longer an option to consider, it’s often a first priority for new startups. All signs point to this trend continuing, too, meaning mobile is really king of the screens, and the once mighty PC has taken a backseat. Keep this in mind as you launch or redesign your online site – make sure it rocks on a small screen too.

The Rise of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a relatively new expression, and in many ways, the biggest contribution 2013 has offered up to the world of marketing. This focus involves content creation, conversation-starters, and resources that lure in customers through valuable information shares, rather than hard-selling tactics. More and more companies are launching blogs that showcase information about their industry, often with little to no mention of their business at all. While that may sound counter-intuitive, it’s SEO gold, and just as precious to users that want value before traditional marketing messages. If you hook a potential customer by providing something meaningful, you’ve already helped to establish loyalty. The great thing is, stellar content also woos search engines too, so this is a double bounty.

Whatever tactics you employ, remember that today’s online user is savvier and more discerning than ever before. Honesty trumps slickness, transparency trumps trickery. The more human you allow your campaigns to be, the more engaging and appealing your brand will feel.

What new marketing tactics are you noticing or employing this year? How have your overall results looked?

resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/09/27/2013-innovative-marketing-trends-date/

Know When to Cut Your Losses: How To Switch to a New Domain

Over years of operation, websites pick up a lot of baggage in the links department. Google’s Penguin algorithm seems to take no account of links accumulated on your website prior to this becoming an offence against their terms of service. If you innocently built links in the sure and certain knowledge that it was OK to do so, way back when, you might now be eyeballing a disastrous drop in traffic in recent months…

If you read the book that said build deep links, with keywords in anchor text then you are surely in Google’s gun sights.

Panda, Penguin and Phantom repairs meet with mixed success

Some site owners solve their issues and are a duly restored to the ranks of the faithful. Others struggle to make sustained ranking gains, with SERPs profiles like a rollercoaster diagram after being hit bymultiple algorithms and subsequent version releases.

There comes a point where the cost of fixing the problems greatly exceeds the cost of migration to a new domain. If your site has thousands of incoming links, and a close examination indicates the majority are potentially harmful, then you are at the point where the evaluation of domain migration should be made.

Efforts to clean up your link portfolio by trying to get low-quality links removed may not have sufficient impact. This scenario was expected when Google set out to tackle link manipulation by application of penalties.

Google’s Max Cutts has said publicly: “ If you’ve cleaned and still don’t recover, ultimately, you might need to start all over with a fresh site.”

In some cases it may be the only recourse that a site has, should the sheer volume of bad incoming links exceeds a certain threshold.

In my experience on a recipes site with approximately 8,000 links generated by a previous owner, many were blogroll-type links from low-quality Blogger, Blogspot and WordPress.com cooking sites.  Of those sites, less than half had any contact details whatsoever. Of those that did, many were fakes; no@way.com being an excellent example of an anonymous site’s owners attitude to efforts to contact him/her.

Out of 10-plus e-mails sent to possibly valid addresses, a mere eight responses were received over a two-week period. One site owner wanted $5 per link to remove 23 links.  Four indicated that they had removed all links. One stated that the site was only a month old and had no outward links — the probability being that the domain expired and was acquired by a new owner.  Link removal campaigns can easily drag on for many months, regardless of how hard you work at it, or if you use Disavow to assist.

Traffic had already declined from 240,000 per month in January 2012 to 70,000 in May 2013. A “Starting Over” domain migration made a lot more sense under such circumstances… That was completed by late June, with an immediate response in traffic growth.

• The July traffic was 93,000.
• As of Aug. 9, the trend continues, with a predicted 135,000 visitors for the month.

A similar pattern of results has occurred on several other sites I’ve worked on.

How Difficult is Starting Over?                                                                       

Actually, its not as difficult as it might at first appear… and its certainly a lot less onerous than attempting to fix 11,000 bad links.

The presumption is that this is not a “churn and burn” site — its a well-designed site with a serious investment in good content that has fallen into disrepute via inappropriate link building practices.

Pros of Switching Domains

If the original domain has great content, and the majority of bad links are directed at the domain name rather than internal pages, it should be possible to transfer significant value across to the new site. That’s done by transferring content to the new domain, and using the power of 301 redirects to transfer an individual page’s rankings and intrinsic value over to its counterpart on the new domain.

Change of Address Support — both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools provide ‘change of address’ procedures.

Loss of Links Issues — every poor link you leave behind improves your prospects in terms of rankings. Bear in mind that you may be getting penalized from multiple quarters:

• Low quality of links — bad neighborhoods, wrong genre etc.
• Deep links from low-quality sites.
• Over-optimization of anchor link text, exact-match keywords in link titles.
• Link acquisition speed of past quick link building efforts — too many, too fast.

Any combination of the above leaves a site completely crippled and on life-support. Leaving the mess behind you en masse may be more cost-effective than trying to rehabilitate it.

Many Good Links are Salvageable — in my experience, most good sites that already link to you are receptive to a polite request to edit your domain name and/or anchor text in the link to your old site. Right now, in Google’s Penguin equation, one good link is literally worth more than 11,000 bad ones.

301 Redirects will preserve all user bookmarks and deep links from other sites but DO transfer the stigma from suspect links. So, while you can preserve all of the residual page value in the existing site by adding a 301 redirect for every page, post and category etc, some caution is required.

• Identify internal pages with low-quality incoming links, especially those with keyword in anchor text.
• Either get the links removed or don’t add a 301 redirect for them. Instead, delete the content and leave a brief note with a standard hyperlink explaining where the content has moved to.

Speed — rankings start accumulating within a week on the destination domain, and expand rapidly.

Cost — given that ALL of the current site  is transferred to a new location, it may take a day or so to:

• Move it to a new domain.
• Configure the 301 redirects.
• Add the appropriate settings in Google and Bing webmaster tools.

Time needs to be allocated to requesting owners of the good links to edit the links to you from old to new domain — but speed is not crucial to a positive outcome.

Conversely, there’s literally weeks of work trying to sort out the bad links problem before any improvement to rankings and traffic will be discernable.

Cons in Domain Migration — Pretty minor, all things considered.

Potential Client Confusion — There may be the odd client who gets slightly confused if you change the domain name. However, because you need to keep the home page in place for at least six months, and all required internal pages will be redirected automatically when links are clicked or followed, it should be a minor issue. Use a domain name that is almost identical and your visitors will barely notice.  For example, www.mywebsite.com becomes or www.mywebsite.co or some such similar approach. If the design and layout remains similar, it should prove to be a seamless transition.

The Mechanics of Domain Change

The new domain must be selected, and this could be an opportunity to select a better fit to your brand. Businesses evolve over time, so the domain name that suited the start-up business might now bear little relevance to what you now do. Alternatively, that aspect may be fine and you will just want to use a visually similar domain name to minimize confusion.

Consider Future-Proofing the New Site

As you are creating the new site from the old content, this could be a good opportunity to fix the known shortcomings of the old website. Examine items such as:

• Navigation structure
• Search-friendly URLs
• Menu organization
• Blog integration
• Page load times
• Mobile responsive design
• Call to action and unique selling proposition

These will help ensure you make the most of the opportunities and get the best value from your relocation investment. The content must be transferred across — and if it’s static HTML, then getting it into a modern content management system makes the most sense.

Understanding Your Old Site’s Link Profile

Most links tend to be to the domain name rather than the internal pages — both good and bad. Orchestrated Link-Building Campaigns tend to include a range of primary internal pages, so reviewing previous worksheets detailing what links were built will give you a head start on determining which pages might be a problem.

To make informed decisions on how to handle content transfer and redirection, you need access to reliable data. A thorough understanding of WHO links to WHICH pages with WHAT anchor text is required. Armed with that information, you can then prioritize which pages need special care to prevent contamination of the new domain.

Google and Bing Link Data Accuracy

Both webmaster tools provide you with incoming link information, albeit with slightly different perspective / emphasis. Combining both sets increases the overall count.

Data accuracy from both these sources is sub-optimal and makes the entire process twice as hard as it should be.

Both Google and Bing appear to cling desperately onto historical links data that may literally be years old. Some of these links you may very well know are dead and gone due to your own efforts. Percentages vary, but sometimes more than 40 percent of the links are no longer functional. This really clutters up the data because there can be a large amount of false positive links to sift through.

That also raises the question: “Is the data Google makes available to webmasters the SAME data that Penguin uses to slam sites for inappropriate links?”

If so, using substandard data to apply severe penalties would be an inexcusable state of affairs.

If the data differs, that’s equally inexcusable as it makes webmaster compliance with guidelines and terms of service unnecessarily difficult. The problem with Penguin is that it does not necessarily punish the guilty. The innocent also become collateral damage.

• Many site-owners contracted out work to supposed professionals who took unapproved short cuts…
• A site changes hands, and the new owner bears the burden of repairing the previous owners damages…
• Mr. Know-it-all next door gives the mom ’n pop site owner some seriously bad advice, and they take it.
• A good directory (e.g. DMOZ) gets cloned and spawns dozens of copies.

Third Party Tools

I use LinkAssistant to help combine and sort out the messy data — importing CSV link data files into LinkAssistant is a simple task. Then I set the software to query each linking site via the “Update Backlink Data” option for:

• Link Status — live, not found, nofollow, noindex, page not found, site not found
• Backlink page, anchor text, anchor URL

That gives the best possible information to tackle the problem of page link contamination head-on. I do that via a series of steps after the backlink data is updated. The goal is to prioritise thin out the backlinks that are not part of the problem:

• Copy all the data to a spreadsheet.
• Sort by link status.
• Remove all rows with; nofollow and page not found (link / site not found may only be a temporary status).
• Sort by backlink page.
• Remove all rows with original domain name as the backlink page (because we are leaving that behind).
• Sort by domain name.
• Remove all rows where backlink is from known good domains; dmoz.org, facebook, plus.google etc.
• Go through and highlight the potentially damaging low-quality domains.
• Sort by anchor text.
• Remove all rows with domain name / website / click here anchor text — unless they are from a known bad site.
• Highlight in red the potentially damaging “over-optimized” anchor texts.
• Sort by Anchor URL.

Now you can examine the residue closely — it will show you who links to which pages with what anchor text. You can now decide which pages you might be best NOT 301 redirecting to the new version of the site on the new domain.

The Disavow Tool

If you’ve attempted link removal and disavow options on the original site, this may translate into some value to the new site. It reduces potential damage from adding a 301 redirect on a tainted page to the respective page on the new domain.

It may also make sense to submit the same disavow request for the new site, in an effort to prevent any 301 redirects inadvertently transferring bad karma from the old site to the new site. The political correctness of doing this remains a mystery… comments on other’s experiences are welcomed.

The effectiveness of the disavow tools at both Google and Bing seems very questionable indeed. Many people have yet to see any demonstrable impact of its use — positive or negative. The conspiracy theorists that who hold that its just Google’s way to get webmasters to help identify low-quality websites may indeed have a point.

The problem is that of time. If your site has gone off the rails into the ranking chasm, and traffic has been slashed by 60 percent or more, you could literally go out of business before the disavow tool works for you.

Seriously, its more than likely going to take MONTHS before demonstrable improvements to rankings accrue via the disavow tool, or link removal for that matter.

Switching to a new domain is probably the single fastest way out of a serious predicament.

Change of Address at Google and Bing

Fiddling with Bing’s address change option is problematic because it makes the fundamental assumption that you’ve 301′d the entire site at domain level. However, Bing does respond properly to the individual 301 redirects on pages on the original site.

Google sensibly assumes that you will apply 301 redirects to each individual page across the website being moved. Google also expects and recommends that the domain and its redirects are left in place for a minimum of 180 days (six months). That gives sufficient time to transfer all residual value to the new site.

Commonsense suggests that you might want to keep that old domain under your management for a long time to come, to prevent an unscrupulous competitor gaining control of it.

301 Redirects

Some experience of Excel spreadsheets helps with getting these sorted out. The point being that this allows you to transfer the full value of every good page from the old site across to its equivalent page on the new site. Basically, you need a URL list and there are several sites that allow you to produce such a list free, for up to 500 URLs.

Alternatively, there are free downloadable programs that will perform a similar task — I use a Windows app called Sitemap Generator.

The Carrot or the Stick?

Google’s focus from the outset of Penguin seems to have been more on punishment for breaching guidelines and terms of service than on encouraging compliance. There’s a presumption of guilt and application of punishment — meted out in dictatorial circumstances;

• By an entity that is investigator, prosecutor, jury, judge and executioner.
• And who changes the rules as it pleases, with any redress or oversight.

Why, that would be considered unjust pretty much anywhere except North Korea. Too much stick and not enough carrot, in my view…

Give Us a Carrot…  

Frankly, Google does NOT provide enough quality information (let alone assistance) for a ‘mere mortal’ webmaster to confidently get their website back on the right track after link penalties. Even seasoned professionals struggle with restoration of a site’s status after a Penguin penalty. It is little short of a nightmare situation, and what would help enormously is:

• Accurate incoming link data with NO dead links included.
• Indications of which are nofollow and therefore harmless.
• Outline of which links are harmful and why.
• A Disavow Tool that actually WORKS in a timely fashion.
• Ignoring links that pre-date the change to Google’s Terms of Service.

Consider mom ’n pop, struggling to get a new venture off the ground, and studying prevailing literature. The preponderance of readily available advice is now in direct contravention with many aspects of Google’s new rules. Everyone wants to compete — across all levels — its part of the human condition to strive to do things better, smarter and faster than your competitors…

Every pre-2012 book ever written in the history of the Internet emphasizes the importance of links to attain decent rankings.

• Go down to any local library to do some research on how to improve your rankings and the book you borrow will place you in jeopardy.
• Do a bit of online research and most of the guidance you find will be wrong.
• Ask a local “expert” and they will be blissfully unaware that the SEO world suffered a paradigm shift in the past year.
• Ask your web designer / developer and he or she will have minimal comprehension of the extent and severity of penalties for doing it wrong.

Google arbitrarily changed all the “old” rules… Overnight, the efforts you made to remain visible above the ever-growing crowd of websites five or more years ago now destroys your online business… And good luck with sorting it out, because Google thinks you are guilty of breaching its (new) terms of service and guidelines. Collateral damage is no concern of theirs, it seems.

A company the size of Google really ought to have some compassion, and an ethos to helps nurture the websites that make up the bulk of its SERPs content. Sure, identify errors of judgments but provide:

• Comprehensible warnings.

• Accurate data.

• Tools that work to resolve issues.

It would be nice if that was done BEFORE a site owners had to face abandoning a much-loved domain to extricate his business from a mess that may not have been of his own making… Or, heaven forbid, go out of business as a direct consequence of draconian penalties.

Summary

The most important stage of the site migration process is gaining a thorough understanding of the potential problems lurking within internal pages. Leaving all the low-grade domain-level incoming links behind is a given as you switch to a new domain. However, you must exercise great care not to transfer any bad karma from internal pages loaded with bad links.

There’s no indication of Google providing us with a bunch of carrots anytime soon, and many more people will realize that they are between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Migrating a site to a new domain is not rocket science – it just requires careful attention to detail. Do so, and in my experience, the results are invariably positive.

resource: http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/08/27/know-when-to-cut-your-losses-how-to-switch-to-a-new-domain/

7 Must-Have Online Tools for Businesses

Running a business, no matter how large or small, takes a tremendous amount of savvy organization skills. It takes a New York minute for your operation to go from clean to cluttered. From emails to receipts, project planning to social media, there’s a heck of a lot of things for any business owner to stay on top of. Thankfully, there are scads of smart developers out there creating tools that make everything from to do lists to invoice generation a digital snap.
If you haven’t had time to keep up on the latest and greatest organization tools, read on; we’ve done the homework for you.

1. Teuxdeux – To Do Lists for the Modern Age
No matter how digital our lives become, to do lists still remain integral to our day-to-day activities. Whether you’re an old-fashioned pen and paper person or an online task guru, TeuxDeux makes life volumes easier. TeuxDeux lives in a tab on your computer, housing lists from simple to highly complex. The interface is uber-simple, clean, intuitive, and very useful. The best part; it’s completely free.

2. Shoeboxed – Organize the Little Things
Receipts: They’re tiny, plentiful, and can clutter up a happy desk faster than a turbo train. They seem to be everywhere but where you need them most, come tax time. Shoeboxed aims to remedy this mini-nightmare by digitally housing all your important receipts, bills, and business cards. The how is up to you. Either send all your goodies in a pre-paid envelope and let them do the dirty work, or you can purchase an online desktop uploader. Your easiest option: use their handy dandy mobile apps. With minimum setup and reasonable monthly fees (the apps themselves are free, as is the DIY account), your business or nonprofit will reap the organizational benefits from word one.

3. Trello – Easy Project Management
Trello is a project management tool for businesses or departments that need a simple interface and notification system. It’s ideal for tasks that are too complicated for traditional to-do lists, but not complicated enough to warrant a Basecamp style uber-software solution. Trello is free, and super flexible. Create cards and categories for each of your tasks, and assign them to any user, complete with real-time notifications. Customer support for Trello rocks, and you’ll notice frequent upgrades and improvements too.

4. The Invoice Machine – Get Paid and Stay Organized
If you run a business that invoices clients but doesn’t require hardcore invoicing software (that can costs hundreds or even thousands of dollars), The Invoice Machine is an ideal middle of the road option. Basic features like invoice generation are free, as long as you don’t create more than three in a given month. Inexpensive paid plans are perfect for those who send more frequent invoices, and The Invoice Machine will of course keep track of everything you send, and remind you when invoices are still outstanding. Each invoice looks polished and professional, and this tool truly simplifies the process of getting paid.

5. Sanebox- Make Sense of Your Inbox
One of the most demanding tasks of any business professional is keeping up with the mighty email inbox. It doesn’t take long for to suddenly feel like way too much time is spent parsing through stacks and stacks of unread messages. Enter Sanebox. This nifty tool determines how important each received message is to you, and it filters less critical emails into subsequent folders. Sanebox also summarizes emails and information in your less important folders, and appropriately highlights those it knows you need to read now. You can also set-up reminders to follow-up with individuals as needed, and you can ask that Sanebox put designated emails back into your inbox in any given timeframe. There are several paid plans to choose from, depending on the size of your inbox and your overall needs.

6. Hootsuite – Social Media Magic
Just about every business is getting in on the social action these days, and those that aren’t are delaying the inevitable out of intimidation. Hootsuite aims to assist you in wading through the madness and keeping things organized and simple.
Connect all your social media accounts to Hootsuite (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. – note that Google+ doesn’t yet allow connectivity), then send and schedule tweets and status updates to your heart’s content. Hootsuite allows Social Media Professionals to plan out a bundle of blasts in advance, supporting big picture planning and saving you tons of time. It will also let you set-up a column with keyword searches, then display tweets that feature your selections. This allows you to track your business’s social signals, and see all your past, present, and future social updates; all in one handy interface. Basic features are free; utilizing all the bells and whistles will require a paid plan.

7. Yast – A Different Kind of Time Tracking
Sometimes we’re so busy each day, it’s hard to know how much time we spend doing each of our critical tasks. If time management is key to your success, let Yast demystify your world. Yast runs in the background throughout your day’s activities, tracking how much time you spend on specific tasks. Each day, it compiles the info into a timeline, visually showcasing where you spent your time and attention each day, week, month, and year. You’re able to chunk out projects into specific tasks too, and see how they each measure up. There are three different kinds of pricing plans, and the Personal option is completely free. Business plans allow for multiple users and shared projects, and there’s a free trial to truly assess if the tool is right for you.
As business owners, we can never be too organized. Got an organizational tool you can’t live without that didn’t make the list? Leave us a comment and enlighten us!
resource: http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/07/18/7-must-have-online-tools-for-businesses/

3 Reasons Why SEO and PPC Are a Match Made in Heaven

You may be investing quite a bit of effort into your online presence, and a majority of that effort may be organic SEO. And when done the right way, this is great for your brand. But did you know that organic SEO and PPC can work together to provide even stronger results?
Search marketing is about the relationship between things — disciplines, strategies, tactics, search engines, websites, people — and there are many ways these relationships affect one another. When working together, these things create stronger results than if they were used alone.
So we’re going to look at three ways SEO and PPC work together to create a mutually beneficial relationship for a website. We’ll explore:

• How to use data you’ve compiled from your organic search campaigns to help your PPC.
• How pay-per-click campaigns can benefit your SEO efforts, and vice versa.


• How PPC can boost usability on your site for visitors who are looking for your products and services.
• Ways to measure the two together, and a powerful example of how the organic side can affect the paid side.

1. You Can Use Organic Data in Your PPC Campaigns

When clients come to Group Twenty Seven looking to explore new paid search campaigns, and they already have a fair amount of data in Google Analytics, we always explore the organic side when selecting keywords to target.
What we do is analyze all the keywords that drove conversions and sales, and start thinking about how we would group them within our AdWords campaigns (assuming you’ve got your e-commerce reporting set up already).
So, for example, say you have a keyword phrase that is producing conversions organically, and that term is “dog beds.” And as a pet store business, you have multiple lines of dog beds.
We’d then look at creating a PPC campaign around dog beds, with ad groups such as soft dog beds, extra-large dog beds, small dog beds, brand-name dog beds, and so on.
Organic e-commerce data can also help you find potential combinations of branded keywords that you may not have thought of to add to your new pay-per-click campaign. So don’t forget about those.

2. Your Organic SEO Can Benefit From Your PPC, and Vice Versa

PPC is a nice complement to your search engine optimization because you can use it to quickly determine which keywords drive traffic and conversions, and then build those keywords into your organic SEO efforts.
Building on the PPC-SEO relationship, good PPC landing pages always contain the information the keyword is promising when a user clicks on an ad. This is why your on-page optimization is important when you’re running both organic SEO and PPC campaigns together.
Make sure that you optimize the landing page that you’re driving users to. This includes ensuring that the page not only has relevant products and information for that keyword, but also that the Meta information and content is optimized with the keyword.
This can help your overall Quality Score in PPC, and Quality Score is an important clue to how targeted and relevant your PPC campaigns are. You may also find a boost in your organic conversions after you start weaving those conversion-focused keywords onto your pages.
For more on Quality Score and how that plays into PPC, check out this post.

3. PPC Campaigns Can Help Boost the Usability of Your Site

PPC campaigns often reveal ways to group products together in a manner that people are searching for. You can use data from PPC campaigns to look at a website with a critical eye and ask, “Which pages best fulfill the promise of this ad and this ad group?”
If no pages on your site support the products you’re grouping together in your AdWords campaigns (for example, you’re just landing users on your home page), create a new landing page with those products grouped together so you can send your customers to the most relevant results.
This also builds on the Quality Score idea I mentioned in the last section.

Relationship Analysis: How to Know if SEO and PPC Are Working Together

Multichannel attribution is one way to know how well all your marketing channels work together on the bottom line. The “multi-channel funnel” report in Google Analytics can be very informative.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/06/14/3-reasons-why-seo-and-ppc-are-a-match-made-in-heaven/