During the State of Search Tools Week we have given you several demo’s from tools, the last one in the series is Majestic SEO. Dixon Jones showed us the product and took the time to answer questions afterwards, which you can also listen to in the video below.
After the video there is information about what was said in the Q&A so you can skip directly to the part you find interesting. Below more information on Majestic SEO.
Over the years, I have worked for start-ups, on my own sites, on huge multi-national brands, across a variety of countries and a variety of digital channels. A
mentality that seems to continuously pop up no matter what country I’m on what type of site I’m working on is that SEO should be used to focus on non-brand generic keywords because a site should ‘be default’ always rank for its own brand. This is especially true when considering large multi-national brands. Or is it? A big mistake I see sites make all the time (and I’ve been guilty of myself) is getting so bogged down in the details and the focus on ranking for those all important non-brand keywords that the quick, obvious wins, and investment in SEO as a branding tool are overlooked. SEO brand marketing is ‘a thing’! Here’s
a few quick win areas that are often being forgotten. In the interest of being local, I’m using all Australian search results for this particular exercise but the quick wins remain true no matter the territory! Brand searches are not a guaranteed conversion, it is too easy to assume so. Don’t give the searcher the opportunity get distracted by what else is on the page, ensure a brand search is always part of a wider branding exercise. Just because they’re already looking for your brand doesn’t mean they are 100% loyal! (more…)
Sony recently unveiled plans to release the PlayStation 4, ushering in the eighth generation of video games consoles. Fans went berserk online and during the week of the announcement 1 in every 900 searches online were related to the new Sony console. In amongst the thousands of different ways that people were searching for PlayStation though, one of the most striking things was that relatively few people were actually using the term ‘playstation’ which had me wondering – is the PlayStation brand dying?
Of course the entity that is PlayStation remains incredibly strong, but in terms of taxonomy (how we name stuff) people are much more likely to search for the acronym ‘ps’ rather than ‘playstation’. On the day of the Sony announcement (20 February 2013) ‘ps4’ was the 31st most searched for term in the UK compared to ‘playstation 4’ which ranked in 40th position. When we looked at the total search volume of recurring keywords for PlayStation 4 searches between December 2012 and February 2013 only 33% of searches included the word ‘playstation’ whereas 67% included ‘ps4’. (more…)
It’s Tools Week here on State of Search and as such we’re celebrating all those great, informative and handy tools that help make the technical and analytical aspects of our roles that little bit smoother and quicker. Whilst we have a number of posts planned on the bigger premium tool suites; plus a tonne on the link tools I thought it might be handy to collate a list of disparate free technical SEO tools that help us solve problems and answer questions. I recently posted here about handy Chrome Extensions for SEO, so in this post I thought I’d focus more on web (plus a little software.) (more…)
As an SEO, I use a wide range of tools to help me with my job. There are loads of tools out there and being honest, I often forget about some of the ones I have available to me. Today I wanted to show you the contents of my bookmarks when it comes to technical SEO. I’ll talk about the tool itself and highlight some SEO tasks that it can help with.
I will be talking about XML Sitemap Validator, Bulk HTTP header response checker, W3C Internationalization Checker, Web Page Speed Test, SEO Toolkit for IIS, Built With, Schema Creator, Reverse IP lookup, Spy on Web, Check Websites on same IP C Class and Screaming Frog. (more…)
Last week Interflora was quite humiliatingly outed for its use of advertorials and unnatural link building; even for its own brand name, the site all but disappeared from the SERPs. Without speaking about Interflora or a collection of newspaper sites that were clearly selling advertorials directly, Matt Cutts wrote a statement reiterating Google’s position on paid links: it’s bad, don’t do it. While that position has been clear for some time, it’s not been clear that Google was prepared to act quite so abruptly on punishing major brands. With the dust from the hit still floating around, it appears that this is another step by Google to clean up Search Engine Optimisation, and another notch in what has been a tumultuous two years for the industry since the first Panda Update in April 2011.
With advertorial link building now clearly presenting higher risk, some SEOs must be wondering where to pivot. Inevitably, brand building will seem a likely option, and building credibility through quality content and inbound methods is the future. I’ve read and heard this rhetoric many times before, but I’ve often wondered how suitable the wedding of SEO and brand building will actually be. (more…)
I’ve been lately asked to give some tips, especially to new SEOs, to enhance their skills. Although I already presented in MozCon last year best practices and guidelines to effectively manage SEO projects, I would like to share some principles –instead of specific tips–, that when followed together I’ve found they create the foundation of a great SEO work, providing consistent, long-term value to clients that can be applicable to any SEO project and differentiate exceptional SEO specialists.
I have no doubt that most of you already know and follow them in one way or another but I have also seen how these principles are unfortunately diluted in our busy daily SEO life. Here are these 4 principles to enhance your SEO value and ultimately, achieve SEO success.
There are many awesome traits of the typical SEO, from the constant inquisitiveness to the unparalleled competitiveness, but we often see ourselves as an island within the digital marketing sphere. In my opinion this is the biggest threat to SEO. In no way do I believe that SEO is, or ever will be, dead. I do however believe it is going to get far harder to do great SEO without great integration.
There’s always a real sense of ‘change’ and ‘urgency’ in our industry, and there’s nothing we love more than predicting the next advancements. But as we move forward, it seems the rules are becoming increasingly familiar; they’re not new rules at all.
This blog post is a response to a very interesting, timely post that my friend, Clarissa Sajbl, wrote here on State of Search recently, called PR + SEO When Two Worlds Collide.
In this post she cleverly discusses how SEO agencies are beginning to team up with PR agencies to create content that’s good enough to generate online brand awareness, as well as high quality links. Funny that, don’t you think? We’re no-longer happy just with the link; now we want the content of the article to actively promote our clients’ brands. (more…)
Outsmarting Google
SEO Secrets to Winning New Business
By Evan Bailyn with Bradley Bailyn
Book Website | Amazon UK | Amazon.com
Outsmarting Google is a book that’s been out since 2011, so I’m late with this review. And due to the fast-moving nature of the SEO industry, some parts of the book are expectedly out of date.
In the interests of full disclosure, before I began reading the book I was fully prepared to dislike it. Over the years I’ve developed a mild allergy for what I’d call ‘self-help business speak’. We all recognise this type of hyped-up copywriting when we see it: ‘Killer Strategies to Success’, ‘Hidden Secrets To Become an Instant Millionaire’ – books with such titles are a dime a dozen, and usually worth even less than the paper they’re printed on. (more…)
Until recently SEO and PR were regarded as two separate industries – but the scene has changed and we are now witnessing the coalition of the two. So what has led to this trend? What is it that those 2 professions are each missing – leading to the fact that they are now converging? In this post I would like to give you an understanding of these colliding worlds as well as some early adopter examples and their motivations for adopting this trend – and how that is affecting their overall digital efforts. (more…)
As part of my new years resolution, I have promised myself that I will read more. This does include a number of highly recommended digital marketing and SEO reads, but I have also promised that I will branch out a little reading things that aren’t necessarily focused on SEO. I believe that many SEO’s, like me, can spend too much time reading everything and anything to do with SEO using services like Buffer, Instapaper and Reeder. However, doing this gets us trapped in our own filter bubble the information being shared restricts you from seeing the bigger picture. My reasons for focusing on some non-SEO reads is a selfish one, I’m aiming to broaden my knowledge and learn things from others that I may be able to apply to my profession. (more…)
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