SEOmoz Internet Marketing 2012 Infographic

26/10/2012 By Leave a Comment

Here’s an infographic that the team produced highlighting the latest information regarding the state of internet marketing from the SEOmoz 2012 survey.

internet marketing infographic

Filed Under: Building Authority, Content Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Understanding AuthorRank and The Google Disavow Tool

18/10/2012 By Leave a Comment

The web is buzzing with speculation and information on the latest Google changes including its new tool for disavowing links and the increasing focus on “AuthorRank”.  In this update I provide a bit of background on both concepts and let you know how I think they are changing the search landscape forever.


 
Topics Covered:
00:08 – AuthorRank Update
02:48 – Should You Use Google’s Disavow Tool
05:20 – RapidAction Writing and RapidAction SEO Update
 

Why Should You Care About AuthorRank?

It’s become clear recently that Google are placing more and more ranking emphasis on the idea of authority. “Agent Rank” as an idea was lodged with the Patent Office by Google in 2005. Essentially, it meant that pages and content could be ranked based on the “authority” of the person publishing the material.

But it’s only been recently – last year in fact – that Google have come out and publically spoken about “Agent Rank” that includes looking at a range of factors including the website that content is published on, but also the authority of the publisher and the content’s author. The ìAgent Rankî patent has also been updated to incorporate the concept of “portable information profiles”, and is probably a reference to Google+.

So what does this mean for you? It means that, as an author and/or publisher of online content, your authority, or how trustworthy you are, will be a lot more important for rankings going forward. Building up a credible and authoritiative online presence has never been more important.
 

Making Sense of Google’s Disavow Tool

There has been a mixed reaction online to Google’s new Disavow Tool – somewhere between confusion, excitement and suspicion. Understandably people who have been punished in the past for having dodgy backlinks will see this as a “fresh start” – a type of amnesty if you like. What I’d say is that, as with all Goggle’s changes, waiting to see what happens is usually your best bet.

Those people who make changes in the very first days or even weeks of a new Google change or “tool” are often the ones who end up suffering the most down the track.

Trying to remove old backlinks can be risky at the best of times.

With this tool Google is giving you the means to reverse a few mistakes you may have made in the past, sure. But do you really want Google to know that you have to take advantage of this tool?

My advice is just be cautious, and review other people’s findings and thoughts about what happens to them while using the tool.

Let me know what you think – do you think AuthorRank will change the way you look at content, or do you have questions about the Disavow Tool? Leave your comments and questions for me below!
 
 

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Filed Under: Building Authority, Content Marketing, SEO Tools Tagged With: , ,

SEO Services Done For You

03/03/2012 By

SEO ServicesWhen I first started out in online marketing, one of the things I tried to ignore was SEO.  Considering that I have a very technical background, that’s a pretty odd decision.

I quickly learned that to have have success as an online marketer, you needed to have some kind of SEO Services capability in your arsenal or have a great working relationship with a trusted, “Done For You”  SEO Services provider.

It took me a while to work that one out.  I had bought into the concept of paid traffic because when I started out everyone just told you to buy “cheap” traffic from Google.  And so I did.

Then Google cracked down on quality sites and landing pages, and suddenly it was hard to get cheap paid traffic and drive leads to websites without much content.

That’s when I got turned onto SEO.

This really was a pivotal moment for me in my Internet Marketing career.  It changed the way I looked at everything I was doing.  To be honest it made me focus on quality content and strong processes.  We’ll talk about that in other posts, but for now, it is safe to say that my results improved dramatically because of this change.

One problem I did face was trying to build up the backlinking and SEO capability that I needed.  I didn’t have a team, I didn’t have the tools. I was really behind the 8-ball.

I decided to immerse myself in SEO tactics, strategies, best practice and modern thinking.  I effectively learned what made the search engines tick.

That was a few years ago.  Since then I discovered that I could use my techniques, experience and knowledge to rank for tough keywords in very competitive niches.  When combined with higher quality content, sales and earnings increased dramatically.  I was finally getting the type of traffic that I should have been targeting from the beginning.

About six months ago I started building a business where I could use my systems to help other businesses generate more targeted traffic.  With the efforts of an amazing team, the business has developed over that time to offer a range of SEO products and services, and we launched RapidAction SEO in late February.

During the incubation period of this business, SEO has changed a great deal.  Early in 2011 we saw the introduction of Google’s Panda algorithm.  I think it’s fair to say that it was a bit of a mess at first.  For example,  it wasn’t even until the October updates that they came close to getting it how they wanted.  I still think the algorithm now “overweights” certain authority sites like Wikipedia but again that’s a topic for another day.

I really like SEO.

I like talking about it, experimenting and learning.  So what better place to share what the RapidAction SEO team are working on behind the scenes and what we think about the new trends in the SEO industry than a blog?

SEO is about driving traffic to websites that convert, so in this blog we’ll talk about marketing and conversion as they relate to SEO.  Our goal is to provide you with a great “done for you” SEO Services experience. Our blog will provide free valuable information about search engine marketing in general.

Thanks for reading this inital post and I hope you enjoy the blog!

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