Category: Industry Insights

We’re back with another 5 for Friday, a collection of the freshest and tastiest SEO news stories, blogs and recommendations from across the web!

Is Google Scared of Amazon? — SEOBook

SEOBook, latching on to a Bing-sponsored study that indicted Google’s switch from Shopping Search to AdWords-based Product Listing Ads, posits that Google is afraid of Amazon’s conversion data. SEOBook claims that, like the search behemoth’s failed acquisition and then direct competition of Groupon, Google exerts its organic search power to give credence to its product search, which due to brand recognition and skillful acquisitions has become a strong pull away from Amazon’s purely organic search strategy.

The Magic of Visual Merchandising — SASRlink

SASR, a retail merchandising company, takes the high-impact product display of Adidas and compares it to the look and feel of physical stores. Supermarkets are among the best at (admittedly real-life) conversion optimization. Read this excerpt:

In-store displays should always be clean and neat and never over-crowded, as that can create confusion and detract from the main goal of selling. Items in a display should interact with and complement each other.

Is that not the same advice touted by CRO experts for landing pages? What other sources of inspiration can you draw good website promotion from?

Sina Weibo has a Cool Way to Make Money — Tech in Asia

Right now, “Chinese Twitter” Weibo has no revenue model. But their test from last week of essentially “Tweet to Buy” seems to give Twitter and other social networks hope for directly creating e-commerce sales. Using integrated “Weibo Credits,” the social network generated nearly $416 million in revenue for the smartphone company Xiaomi, flying in the face of IBM’s data that social can’t drive real sales. Should stateside networks take notice?

How to Read Google Forum Posts — Search Engine Journal

Echo chambers abound when you follow any social network, online or off. A swath of SEO news sites took hold of one post Matt Cutts made in the Webmaster forums about press releases — but was that post really so newsworthy? Alan Bleiweiss takes SEOs to task for not seeing the bigger picture: that there are other reasons to build content than simply the direct SEO benefit. Furthermore, Bleiweiss asserts that spam is spam, no matter what the site, and that PR sites tend to be filled with news that doesn’t really deserve press. Read his rant and find out how to turn quick, tangential, one-line responses into actionable steps to better your site’s SEO.

Top Ten Google Analytics Reports — Koozai

When Analytics is used to strengthen your online tracking, it’s a godsend. But what data is actually important? Anna Lewis whips up 10 of the most telling Analytics reports, from Top Content to finding (not provided) keywords via a Landing Page report. Cutting through the fluff in reporting lets you really “get stuff done.” Want to make your own Top 10 list? Follow Avinash Kaushik’s “So What” test.

Got a killer link from this week? Let us know in the comments!

And now… your moment of zen.

Will sleep on it. (Crawls under couch and deactivates)

— Self Aware ROOMBA (@SelfAwareROOMBA) December 28, 2012

• Google FINALLY Admits That GWO Could F*** Up Your Rankings — Graywolf’s SEO Blog

Michael Gray complains about then explains a way to fix SEO problems caused by the Google Web Optimizer’s A/B test suite. Apparently some sites have had their rankings negatively affected by GWO, despite assurances from Google that the test would have no impact.

• Create Crawlable, Link-Friendly AJAX Websites Using pushState() — SEOmoz

Rob Ousbey at SEOmoz has a way to enable Google crawlers to index your Ajax-ified website with Javascript. Now you can get faster user experiences with Ajax loading without hiding your content from the search engine!

• Video SEO just became a lot easier! — Yoast

Get your video site optimized automatically by Joost de Valk’s WordPress plugin. It takes care of several techniques to optimize your videos, integrating with Youtube, Vimeo, and several other video platforms.

• Video Series on SEO Techniques for Adobe Flash Sites — Adobe

For those of you with Flash sites, maybe you thought SEO was impossible. Myth busted! These video articles from Adobe explain the challenges and the solutions to optimizing media-rich webpages.

• SEO Friendly URLs in Rails — TechOctave

Tian Davis explains how to leverage Ruby On Rails to more easily implement optimizations without extra support!

Here at Search Influence, we’re excited to hear that Pubcon is coming back to New Orleans! In September, Pubcon announced that they will be coming to New Orleans for their spring 2013 conference (they must have heard about all the exciting stuff happening at the SI offices). Dubbed “Pubcon New Orleans 2013,” the conference will be held at the New Orleans Convention Center on April 22 – 25th.

Pubcon is one of the leading social media and search marketing conferences, famous for groundbreaking keynote speakers such as Matt Cutts and Guy Kawasaki. As a local New Orleans SEO & online marketing firm, Search Influence is thrilled at the opportunity to help bring recognition to New Orleans as a burgeoning homesite for our industry. “As the home of this season’s Super Bowl, and with so many other good signs — it is clear that New Orleans is back! The layout for Pubcon at the New Orleans convention center is the best conference setups we have ever had.” says Brett Tabke, founder and chair of Pubcon.

Our CEO Will Scott says “I’ve taken part in Pubcon for the last 2 years in Las Vegas and I’m very excited they chose New Orleans for their spring show. I’ve been lobbying on twitter, and I’m glad the will of the people matched my own. I’m especially excited at the opportunity for our team to be exposed to some of the best online marketers on the planet. The learning that will come out of this will really add value to our team and our client campaigns.”

What the planning committee for Pubcon didn’t realize (or maybe that they very smartly planned…) is that the conference will be held during one of the most exciting times in New Orleans. The first weekend of Jazz Fest will start the day after the conference ends, on April 26th. For those who haven’t had the opportunity to come to New Orleans, this is the perfect chance to visit during an exciting and informative conference followed by a weekend of great music, food, and festing.

Early Bird Registration for Pubcon New Orleans is now open and will be available until December 31, so hurry up and sign up before the prices increase — you seriously won’t want to miss this week! Speaking Proposals are also open, so get your pitches ready! Expect to see Will on at least one session.

Some interesting facts about Pubcon New Orleans:

• The conference will be held at New Orleans Convention Center
• This will be a “full” Pubcon conference



• “Pre-game” full day of Pubcon Masters Group search and social media training will be held the first day on April 22
• The official conference will be held on April 23 – 25
• The Exhibit hall is scheduled to be open on April 24 – 25
• Last but not least, the conference is 5 blocks from Bourbon Street! Pubcon afternoon will take place at a nearby pub on April 25.

Jazz Fest tickets are also available and can be purchased right here. The line-up isn’t set yet — however, I can promise you that even if your favorite artist is missing from the list, you are sure to be entertained! Check back often, as we’ll update you when the final line-up is announced.

Hope to see everyone in April!

Every month, our Read This! series brings you the best in practical web marketing and online presence-building pieces from across the net. Read on for this month’s selection:

• Forget Linkbuilding, Do A Groupon — Local SEO Guide

The Groupon system can have its headaches for the vendor when improperly-applied, but there’s a surprising SEO benefit that many people overlook. Andrew Shotland tells the tale of a company whose organic traffic drop was remedied with one wave of the Groupon wand.

• 3 Tips for Email Gold — Search Engine Journal

Direct email marketing is a powerful tool, one that can turn passive readers into active leads with one well-placed piece of quality targeted copy. This Search Engine Journal article takes us through tips on increasing your conversion rates, improving your local listings and activating dormant customers on your list!

• 3 Examples of Companies Using Facebook as an Online Public Relations Tool — TopRank

Facebook’s wide userbase and easy sharing options make it an ideal platform for public relations and exciting news that you may have saved for a press release in the past. Check out how these well-known brands have built community engagement and spread their name around by taking advantage of Facebook’s sharing options.

• Discovering Local Citation Opportunities – Whiteboard Friday — SEOMoz

Making sure that your citations are neat and squared away is a huge part of the local SEO game. In this week’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin discusses some underutilized resources and best practices for taking advantage of them with your business.

• The Eminem Guide to Becoming a Writing and Marketing Machine — CopyBlogger

Inspiration can be found in the most unlikely of places, and CopyBlogger’s Sean Platt has found his muse in rapper-songwriter Marshall Mathers, AKA Eminem. Check out this article to find out how the rhythm, tenacity and brevity of Mathers’ work can find its way into your own content endeavors!

Back in June, Linda Buquet posted a great piece detailing Google’s new policy on practice and practitioner listings. In that piece, there was a direct email response from Google stating that “…at the moment we do not remove or merge individual practitioners.” Now it seems that there is a split from this policy if the practitioner is the sole practitioner at the practice. However, Google isn’t exactly being straightforward in how best to handle these particular practitioner and practice listings.

Recently, we have had two instances where a doctor’s listing and their practice listings were merged together by Google. With both of these doctors, they were the sole practitioner at the practice, but there has never been (and still isn’t) a specific rule against listing a sole practitioner and their practice in the quality guidelines. The section that mentions practitioner and practice listings in the quality guidelines is as follows: “You may create one listing per practitioner, and one listing for the hospital or clinic at large.”

To add to the confusion, the way that these issues were pointed out by [email protected] varied greatly from one another.

With one of the doctors, we got this seemingly clear cut response:

“Upon further review it appears that [doctor] is the only surgeon at [practice], as such, he can only have one listing on Google+ local since [practice] is his private practice.”

While for the other doctor, after I pointed out there was no part of the quality guidelines that said anything about sole practitioners not being able to have a practice and practitioner listing, I got this response:

“It is fine having 2 listings, one for regular business and one for the practitioner. But currently our system is combining your 2 listings into one because the data in each one is so similar (same address, same phone number etc.) If it is not important for you to have the practitioner listing, I would recommend only having one listing for this business.”

While it ultimately seems that Google does not want sole practitioners to have a practice and a practitioner listing, it doesn’t mean that they have stopped creating what in this case would be a duplicate listing. Practitioner listings often show up on their own due to trusted citation sources like Healthgrades and WebMD having listings specifically for the practitioners. For both of our doctors with this issue, the practitioner listings were generated by Google and were claimed by us in order to clean up the NAP in the listing.

So now that a sole practitioner listing would technically be considered a duplicate of the practice listing, does this mean that they should not be claimed and corrected, and should instead be reported as a duplicate? Because this goes against the previously-held best practice of claiming practitioner listings that are generated from niche citation sources.

With Google sending mixed signals on how to correct this issue, not specifically stating that it is against quality guidelines, and automatically generating practitioner listings from niche citation sources, this is an area that needs to be ironed out and updated in the quality guidelines if it is to become the status quo.

• What next for SEO? Five search trends for 2013 — The Drum

There were some big changes in the search marketing landscape in 2012, and you’re likely to read all about them in an endless stream of “year in review” posts over the next month. This article focuses on forecasting the major developments of the next 12 months so you can get a jump on the trends of 2013.

•  Glogou Launches Products To Help US Companies Do Search Marketing In China — Search Engine Land

China is the fastest growing market in almost every industry, and it’s no different in Internet marketing. Baidu, China’s version of Google, is partnering with Silicon Valley-based Glogou to create an English-language ad market. As the second largest search engine in the world, Baidu will be a highly sought after marketplace in the near future.

• IBM Study: How to Make Social Work — Marketing Pilgrim

A recent study by IBM may be able to help you improve your efforts in social media marketing. The report defines the three basic goals that marketers should be striving for and illustrates each with helpful tips to get you there.

• Master Google AdWords in 3 Steps With the 80/20 Rule — Search Engine Watch

Can you master the complex world of AdWords in a week, a month, or even a year? Don’t count on it. However, this author has a strategy that can help you jump right in and get positive returns on your efforts. By focusing on what matters most, you can get results like a master.

• The Importance of Marketing Analytics — SEOMoz

This author encourages you to spread your commitment to number crunching analytics beyond the performance of your websites. Here are some tools to help you look past simple web results to measure the performance of your campaign. You’ll be able to answer the question “How did that marketing campaign really go?” with specific data instead of broad strokes.

Being a gamer myself, I think seeing video games developing new uses is pretty nifty. We’ve all been exposed to the concept gamification by now — most people don’t call it that, but sites like Foursquare and Yelp! have relied upon the tactic to make their services a lot like level-building in games. Social media ranking site Klout relies heavily (and shamelessly) on the same gimmick. It’s a simple way to draw out the kid part of us that wants to make it to the next level before bedtime, and it works like a charm. But gaming has more relevant applications than just engaging consumers, as Google is proving with its newest offering.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Google mobile group Niantic Project, then you may be a bit confounded the first time you look at Ingress. The multiplayer game uses Google Maps and local data assets to connect online and offline universes based on real life places. In short, it’s augmented reality. In this imaginary world, there’s a new, mysterious power that could potentially be very dangerous. One group, “The Enlightened,” embrace it, while the other, “The Resistance,” struggle against it. After you choose a side, you can participate by capturing portals that are in public places. Once you capture them, they don’t stay captured for good, which means the struggle to hold territory must always be maintained.

How does such a fantastical project relate to business? Well, for Google, it makes them look insanely ambitious — but we already knew that. On a more broad view, Ingress offers opportunity for businesses that fall into the game’s zones. Google’s John Hanke told Marketing Land that Google may make API’s available so that other developers could build augmented reality games on top of Google Maps, but those plans haven’t come to fruition yet. Sponsorships have, however, and Jamba Juice and Zipcar are already signed up to work with Ingress. How they will be promoted in-game has yet to be revealed, but it makes it clear that the option is there. The idea of entering a business to scan a certain item comes to mind, or messages hidden in selected locations — encouraging the player to interact and engage with the brand.

Ingress displays something of the spirit behind geocaching, but with an intense story, which means it will attract an imaginative and passionately dedicated userbase. The game is only playable in a closed beta for Android for now, but since it’s worldwide, thousands of players all over the world are already participating. It’s essential to cooperate with others in order to secure an entire area, so you can’t work alone. It still remains to be seen how exactly it can work, but considering how innovative the product is is, I think the possibilities are substantial. Between Google’s strong userbase and a suite of already-developed systems like Maps, visual search, augmented reality and the Android OS, players have a huge array of ways to engage with the game’s world — not to mention the sponsors that are integrated into it.

What do you think of Ingress? Would you use it to advertise your own business?