Mike Murray has shaped online marketing strategies for hundreds of businesses since 1997, including Fortune 500 companies. A former journalist, he has led SEO studies and spoken at regional and national Internet conferences, including Content Marketing World. Founder of Online Marketing Coach, Mike is passionate about helping clients identify their best opportunities for online marketing success based on their strengths, his advice and industry trends. You can find him on Twitter @mikeonlinecoach.
You can think of link building in many ways. I like to call it tedious, painful, and a test of patience.
It’s also necessary to compete. Can your business survive without getting one new link in the next year or even five years? Sure. Will your brand miss out on leads, sales, and increased profitability? Probably.Continue Reading
SEO can seem like a complicated puzzle for digital marketers. But you need to put it together to create a better picture for your website traffic.
Explore these key tactics, tools, and time savers to make putting together the puzzle easier and help you shine when it comes to sharing your performance data.Continue Reading
Will Google turn the natural search landscape upside down in 2021? I doubt it. Although change is inevitable, you can survive or even gain an edge with a little vigilance.
But don’t expect any relief from the merciless trend of organic results moving way down the search engine results pages (SERPs). Like any good content marketer, Google is focused on the needs of its audience – searchers.
Eager to produce relevant results, the search engine constantly enhances its technology and relies on artificial intelligence to support results. Google’s BERT, for example, focuses on natural language processing (NLP), including searcher intent and the context of search queries.
Fortunately, marketers still see traffic from Google and other major search engines. Organic searches accounted for 53% of website traffic in 2019, according to BrightEdge data. I don’t expect that number has changed much since 2019.
The world’s most popular search engine has affected the marketing psyche. Yes, quality matters.
Marketers believe exceptional content ensures SEO rewards because Google emphasizes quality. But for every success story among enterprises, there’s another that fails in a dramatic way.
Are Google search engine results holding your content down?
Google says its mission is to “deliver the most relevant and reliable information available,” but questions sometimes arise about where “relevant” and “reliable” fall with each search query.
Some SEO low-hanging fruit is almost too low. It makes you think you don’t need to try to earn better rankings that generate more traffic.
But why settle? You’ll miss countless higher-hanging SEO fruit.
Branded keywords can easily fall into that grasp. By brand, I’m not merely referencing a single keyword like GE or DHL. Brands are part of countless keyword phrases:
As you dig in with your SEO strategies in 2020, stick with what you do well and prioritize time for organic search tactics you’ve neglected or handled the wrong way.
Leverage every opportunity that Google gives your content to rank well. Despite constant changes by Google and consumer behavior, a 2019 BrightEdge study found that organic commands 53% of all website traffic.
SEO myths and misunderstandings abound in the digital marketing world.
Although a little truth may be buried in some of these misconceptions, it’s best to understand the nuances. Here’s my advice: Focus first on your users and play fair with search engines. Then you won’t need to worry whether you’ll be kicked off Google.
Here’s a closer look at seven SEO myths.Continue Reading
Editor’s note: You may have missed this article when CMI published it a few years ago. We’re sharing it now because choosing the right KPIs and measuring your content marketing activities are so important to the business.
A long list of key performance indicators (KPIs) can be overwhelming, but don’t let that stop you from reading. You don’t need to use them all. You need to use them wisely.
You’ll likely see some you already use and discover some you never thought about. Reassess your current KPIs and see if you’re really measuring performance that matters to your content marketing and business goals. Maybe you’ll lock in on the ones that will complement what you have. Adapt any of these possibilities to suit your team’s needs.Continue Reading
Editor’s note: You may have missed the original version of this article when CMI published it in 2016. Search engine rankings continue to be important for SEO so we’ve updated the post to include some fresh examples.
Do keyword rankings matter anymore? I cringe anytime someone suggests that they don’t.
Sure, SEO changes over the years. But that hardly means it makes sense to overlook search engine rankings.
Let’s me start with why the question even comes up and then I’ll walk through how you can deal with rankings. Along the way, I’ll put some misunderstandings in perspective.
