SEO

With all the talk about data analytics in the advertising business, it can often seem creative is dead. Not so, said executives gathered on Tuesday to discuss social advertising at Internet Week in New York.

If you visit Google today, on their home page is a special Google Logo, aka Doodle, created by Sabrina Brady of Sparta...

I read “Ontology Slays Data Integration and Ignites Semantic Search Revolution.” I found several things interesting about the write up. First, there is the word choice: “slays,” “ignites,” and “revolution.” In case you have forgotten, an ontology is, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia: Though the term is used in this literal meaning by Clauberg (1625-1665) (Opp., p. 281), its special application to the first department of metaphysics was made by Christian von Wolff (1679-1754) (Philos. nat., sec. 73). Prior to this time “the science of being” had retained the titles given it by its founder Aristotle: “first philosophy”, “theology”, “wisdom”. The term “metaphysics” (q.v.) was given a wider extension by Wolff, who divided “real philosophy” into general metaphysics, which he called ontology, and special, under which he included cosmology, psychology, and theodicy. This programme has been adopted with little variation by most Catholicphilosophers. The subject-matter of ontology is usually arranged thus: The objective concept of being in its widest range, as embracing the actual and potential, is first analyzed, the problems concerned with essence (nature) and existence, “act” and “potency” are discussed, and the primary principles — contradiction, identity, etc. — are shown to emerge from the concept of entity. The properties coextensive with being — unity, truth, and goodness, and their immediately associated concepts, order and beauty — are next explained. The fundamental divisions of being into the finite and the infinite, the contingent and the necessary, etc., and the subdivisions of the finite into the categories (q.v.) substance and its accidents (quantity, quality, etc.) follow in turn — the objective — reality of substance, the meaning of personality, the relation of accidents to substance being the most prominent topics. The concluding portion of ontology is usually devoted to the concept of cause and its primary divisions — efficient and final, material and formal –the objectivity and analytical character of the principle of causality receiving most attention. My reaction? The use of the term ontology in the context of “slays,” “ignites,” and “revolution” seems a little frisky. Second, the product referenced in the news release offers some relief. I find the explanation of the product in terms of what it is not quite interesting; to wit: Ontology 4 is built to five key principles that separate it from traditional data integration technologies: No schema – Ontology uses a searchable, semantic model built on proven graph-based technology. No Integration – Ontology uses a semantic model to find and combine data relating to business entities fragmented across the enterprise. No Big Bang – Ontology’s semantic model embraces on-going changes while delivering value early and iteratively over the duration of a project. No Search Restriction – Ontology’s semantic search find’s information across application data, documents and emails. No Upfront Risk. – No integration to data sources, No unnecessary tying up of team resources, No feasibility surprises, and No problem changing project requirements. “The Internet is the world’s largest source of data, yet no one integrates it. They search it,” concluded Enweani. “So, when it comes to enterprise data, we say ‘Search, don’t Integrate.” Third, enterprise search and the vendors engaged in the discipline demonstrated at two enterprise search summits in the last two weeks a strong shift away from the use of the word “search.” Synonyms included customer relationship management, discovery, search based applications, and similar distancing terms. Perhaps more colorful word choice and the use of old style rhetorical flourishes will breathe life into a dogpaddling business sector. As one vendor which recently experienced a CEO

SEO used to be about tuning a website for optimal consumption by spiders. Today’s SEO is about earning recognition, social spread, and backlinks. Here are practical activities that need to be done every month to achieve real SEO results.

I get to meet a lot of professionals in the marketing, advertising, communications and public relations industries where topics of conversation often revolve around content. Concerns about where to start, what tactics work best, how to plan, produce and promote all come into play right along with staffing, integration with other channels and measurement. Of course, if you try hard enough you can worry yourself out of a job when it comes to developing a solid approach with content marketing. On the one hand, there’s a temptation to spend a lot of time and resources developing “the perfect” strategy. On the other hand, you could also just start cranking out content and see what sticks. Neither of those approaches really work well in a practical way. What does work? There’s one thing that can help answer many of the concerns marketers have about content and that also helps you cut to the chase for practical implementation: Understanding the customer journey. Google Think Insights has a great post with tools to help marketers better understand how different content and channels affects customers during the buying cycle or customer journey to online purchase. Check it out and then come back. Welcome back. Google has some of the best content marketing, don’t they? There’s a saying that goes something like, “Walk a mile in a man’s shoes to really understand where he’s been” that reflects what a lot of companies don’t consider when creating their digital marketing plans. Understanding the customer experience from awareness to consideration to purchase folds well into the core principle of Optimize – to empathize with your customer and understand how they discover, consume and act on information. By doing so, you can create a practical digital marketing plan that optimizes for attraction, engagement and conversion. To put that idea of customer empathy in action, I put myself in the position of a customer and documented my journey from curious social browser to a highly motivated searcher. I started on Facebook, asking my network (as many people do) for recommendations on things to do and see in Portland. Immediatley, Melodie Tao not only made several recommendations including Powell’s Bookstore, Voodoo Doughnuts and Portland City Grill, but she pointed me to a blog post where she had documented her visit to Portland.  Pretty awesome right? I received many more suggestions from other friends too. But is that all I needed to take action? Maybe for some people. But I needed more information, especially about Voodoo Doughnuts. So what do you do when a friend recommends something and you need to get more details? Where do you go to get more facts and information as well as to validate their recommendation? Yes, that’s right. You Google it. Lucky for me the search results for “vodoo doughnuts” reveals a cornucopia of useful information including reviews, local information, coverage in local and national press, the business website, map, address and even photos of the product. That was enough for me. I knew I needed to include Voodoo Doughnuts in my presentation. If for nothing else, to experience the freak of sugary gastronomy that is known as a “Bacon Maple Bar“. Arriving at the store didn’t disappoint and of course I had to take photos. And what do you do with those photos? You use them when you check in on Foursquare. Then share to Instagram and Pinterest of course. The takeaway here is to think about the ways in which your target audience discovers, consumers and acts on information so you can give them what they want.  Optimizing for the customer journey means bringing in content, social media, search, advertising and even PR to help your brand become the best answer whether customers are asking their friends on Facebook or searching on Google. It may not be practical to literally put yourself in your customers’

Posted by Ryan_Watson Did you know that there are over 90 billion URLs are packed into our Mozscape API? That’s a lot of links. So many links, in fact, that it can be daunting to dream up all of the many ways that you could put those links to good use. When we originally built Linkscape (the predecessor to Mozscape), we mainly had one thing in mind... SEO and backlinks. But there’s a whole lot more than that. Links are only the beginning, it’s what those links can tell us that’s so darn interesting. Which is why I wanted to call out all of the amazing ways that developers (and marketers) are using Mozscape data to better their work, as well as encourage new uses of Mozscape data that have yet to be explored. (Feel free to jump in and create your own API key any time.) How Mozscape is Being Used Today Mozscape's wealth of links can be used in a variety of ways: from SEO audits, to domain valuations, to excel integration. Here at Moz, we have only begun to scratch the surface of how we can utilize the API. We currently use it to run some of our own tools such as Open Site Explorer and the Mozbar. But I don't want to focus on the way we use it. Let's take a look at the way other developers have demonstrated some exciting uses for Mozscape. Hopefully these will get your mind going, thinking up other ways to use the data as well. SEO Audits We’ll start with the most obvious of use cases, SEO audits. There quite a few examples of SEO audit tools that use Mozscape data, but a few of our favorites (that are in front of a paywall) are the HubSpot Website Grader and The Found SEO Audit Tool, both of which bring the heat. Mozscape data is what powers things like the total pages indexed by search, MozRank, a list of the most authoritative pages, along with their corresponding anchor texts. The beauty of this use case is that it can provide a great lead-gen funnel for all of the SEO agencies out there, proving value up front with an email address required prior to running the report. As a digital marketing agency, using Mozscape data to develop a site audit is a great way to get users into your sales funnel. You know, that inbound marketing stuff -- cold calls are old news. Domain Valuation How valuable is a website, purely from an online authority perspective? Traditionally, that was a very tough question. You could look at things like site traffic (which typically isn’t very accurate) or rankings for certain terms, but that’s a far-sighted approach to the question. Think about using the metrics behind Mozscape, like MozRank, Domain Authority, and MozTrust instead. Flippa, for example, uses Mozscape data as a datapoint for due diligence. You could imagine this kind of domain valuation anywhere else domains are bought or sold, most of which have yet to use Mozscape data. The value, of course, is providing as much confidence to the buyers of web properties based on the “web footprint” of the site. Spreadsheet Kung-Fu The spreadsheet kung-fu of this industry is unmatched anywhere else. With the integration of Mozscape data to Excel, some have been able to make Excel sing. The beauty of using Excel for analyzing Mozscape data is that you can slice and dice as you please, without setting up complex API calls. Perhaps our favorite example of Excel comes from the illustrious Richard Baxter, with the Links API Extension from SEO Gadget. However, if Google Docs are more up your alley, the amazing Aleyda Solis created just the thing for you (so did Chris Lee). Tools like these allow the average marketer to dig into the firehose of data available through the API in a simple and recognizable interface. Client Reporting Yes, that's right. iAcquire uses the data when creating client reports as it not only helps them to inform the client about how their pages are doing but to also show the impor

Travel brands have a huge opportunity to circumvent the OTAs and connect directly with consumers searching for their products and services through paid, earned, and owned media strategies.

The much anticipated Google Penguin update has finally become a reality following confirmation that the latest generation of the algorithm update has been rolled out throughout their search engine results pages and it seems to be causing a stir. Last night it was revealed that the off-page update was finally switched on following weeks of [...]

The deadline to switch to enhanced campaigns is fast approaching. How will campaigns that utilize Conversion Optimizer be affected? Will this powerful tool continue to function when you combine device targeting and start applying bid multipliers?