Google Caught Buying Links: Bruce Clay’s Analysis
Hate to say I told you so… scratch that. This time it feels good.
Last month we let you in on the new direction of SEM Synergy: short-form video with an experimental format (Q&As, site reviews, couch-side kick backs). Today we’re happy to present to you the first video episode of the SEM Synergy Web series.
Topic du jour: Google instituting a ranking penalty on its Chrome browser after paid links were uncovered.
Find the transcript for the video below, and check out the Bruce Clay, Inc. YouTube channel for a look at our still evolving platform for the video series. If you like it, come back tomorrow as we dissect the process of producing and publishing video content. As we learn, we plan to share our experiences with trying to create sticky and interesting show. To that end, I do my best Larry King impression as we dive into a hot, timely issue.
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January 6, 2012
How to Choose Social Media Share Buttons
Social share buttons are a great way to spread the content you have deeper into networks across the Web – but which social share buttons are right for your site? Sometimes, the “catch-all” approach to buttons that we so often see isn’t the best route. You know, those widgets that produce a bunch of buttons for social communities for the sake of trying to reach everybody and their mother. Oftentimes, this can just confuse readers or make them think more than they should have to in order to share the content they like.
There are several approaches to how you can identify which social share buttons you should include on your Web pages. One is checking traffic sources in your site’s analytics. Another is knowing who your target audience is and where they are hanging out socially online. And yet another is assessing the importance of individual social share buttons as metrics in whatever goals you have for the business.
Virginia and I recently decided to do an analysis of the social share buttons on the SEO Newsletter article pages, since they hadn’t been refreshed in quite some time. I’m going to share with you what we uncovered about some of the social share buttons, what we plan to do with it and how you can better assess the social share buttons on your (or your client’s) site.
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December 30, 2011
Best of Search Conferences 2011: Day 3
Day 3 of our “Best of Search Conferences 2011″ is upon us, and this post wraps up the series here on our blog. Looking through the coverage, one thing we can say for certain is that there are a ton of enthusiastic, brilliant people in the search marketing community who have a passion for sharing ideas. Thanks to all of them, and special thanks to the conference producers who offer a vehicle for these people to share knowledge with the community. Today’s Day 3 coverage is all about exploring thought-provoking topics in the areas of understanding your audience, holistic marketing, online reputation management and branding, plus cutting-edge topics from this year’s search marketing events. And don’t forget to check out Day 1 and Day 2 if you happened to miss them.
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December 29, 2011
Best of Search Conferences 2011: Day 2
Internet marketing conferences are an exciting resource for those in the SEO and SMM community, offering the most up-to-date and cutting-edge info from experts finding great success marketing online, as well as popular search engine and social media platform employees themselves. You may not have been able to attend all the Internet marketing conferences you wanted to this year, but we reported on many. We’ve categorized the most popular sessions and compiled the liveblog coverage highlights to report all week. Today’s tracks bring you strategic and tactical recommendations for social media marketing and local search and services.
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December 28, 2011
Best of Search Conferences 2011: Day 1
In 2011 the Internet marketing industry had yet another year full of huge changes. In other words, it was business as usual. Google rolled out its Panda update, an adjustment to the search ranking algorithm that aims to remove low-quality content from search results pages. The update also had repercussions for the practices of conversion rate optimization and analytics. To help you keep track of these changes and more, here’s of the first day of our “Best of Search Conferences” for 2011, with top takeaways for analytics, paid advertising, SEO and CRO.
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December 27, 2011
Best of Search Conferences 2011: The Agenda
For many, the holidays bring with them traditions to uphold. One of our Bruce Clay, Inc. traditions is pulling together the best liveblog coverage from Internet marketing conferences we’ve attended throughout the year. Bestowing the title of “best of” our liveblog coverage over the year was more challenging than ever the Bruce Clay blog hosting coverage from 8 stellar shows.
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December 23, 2011
Have a Wonderful Weekend and Happy Holidays!
We had a Secret Santa gift exchange this morning and wouldn’t you know, Bruce got just what was on his wish list! A Shake Weight! This is Bruce’s “how did Santa know?!” face. Our gift to you!
December 21, 2011
The Mother of All End-of-Year Posts for Marketers
Audience: SEOs and Internet marketers
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
It’s the end of the year, and you can count on one thing. Or maybe ten things. Or possibly five things. You know, the list of top X – trends, memes, lessons of the past year or year to come.
Yes, content of this variety is entertaining link bait, luring us to laugh, scratch our heads and pass it along. But more importantly, these posts give us pause to evaluate our successes of the past and opportunities for the future, knowledge that ensures next year will be even better than the last.
It’s with that perspective that we bring you the top of the top lists. Just like mom was always teaching you new things, here is the mother of all end-of-the-year posts of interest to online marketers.
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December 19, 2011
How to Maximize Your Social Media Presence with Minimal Effort
Audience: In-house marketers
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
It’s a fact of life that sometimes only the people who work in a company’s marketing department actually ever know what’s going with the company’s marketing strategy. New ideas get implemented with the rest of the company being none the wiser. And if your organization is like many others, internal social media strategy trickled in a little at a time, seeping through the cracks, but never quite fully soaking in.
This often spells missed opportunity for in-house marketers to leverage the many channels available to them throughout the organization to help them reach their goals.
I, myself, am in the beginning stages of performing a companywide analysis of potential missed opportunities in the way of social media promotion. We want to take full advantage of all the communications and channels we have available to us to let people know that we also want to connect on our Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, and of course, our blog.
In this post, I’ll tell you how I plan to tackle the research and make little adjustments that can have impact on our social media exposure in the coming year.
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December 16, 2011
Friday Recap: “I Had the Timeline of My Life” Edition
Audience: Friday Recap enthusiasts
Estimated reading time: How long do you want to goof off?
It’s been a bit since we’ve done a Friday Recap. We know how much you all anticipate these things, so we hope it didn’t throw you off or cause confusion about whether or not Fridays actually happened in the past month. Well I’m here to tell you (not Rebecca Black), that it’s Friday, and here’s your Friday Recap!
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