Rachel Andersen works for the Portland based SEM agency Anvil Media, Inc. She has expertise in all aspects of search engine marketing and specializes in SEO for large sites. Andersen has been responsible for the development and execution of countless search and social marketing campaigns over her time spent with Anvil.
Google has been making a lot of changes lately when it comes to News Search. For those that rely heavily on traffic from Google News, you know that a change in algorithm or glitch with indexation can make or break your month. Some recent updates however, may give you a one up on the competition if used properly. These changes do not seem to have rocked the search world, but in my opinion could potentially...
In need of some easy tips to better optimize your site? Look no further for some quick ways to identify potentially significant SEO issues. Home page canonical issues – the easiest and probably most common source of duplicate content. Check variations of your home page as these are still considered “separate” pages. By implementing a 301 redirect from the other variations to the main domain, inbound links will be aggregated and duplicate content resolved. Sometimes you’ll...
Back in June, Bing made some important changes to their Webmaster Tools platform. They finally caught up to Google in terms of providing a comprehensive resource for developers and search marketers to utilize. Given that these changes have been out for over a month now, this is old news. However, Bing is often overlooked or at the bottom of the priority list for many site owners and SEMs. Time and time...
With all the drama surrounding the “Panda” algorithm update, a lot of big sites were hit hard. Mainly, large content producers that had the resources to generate massive amounts of content – and quickly. In terms of obtaining often stellar organic rankings, this approach was effective for quite some time, despite the fact that the quality of content often suffered. But all good things must come to an end, and...
Looking to partake in the latest infographic craze? Look no further as you’ve come to the right place. In case you were counting on the rapture and were hiding under a rock for the past, oh two years or so, infographics are simply visual representations of information, data, or knowledge. Infographics have turned into a widely popular and viral format of link bait because, since no one on the internet...
Last week, I wrote about how to better take advantage of Google Analytics internal site search reports and types of information about site behavior that can be gleaned from them. This week, I’d like to expand on that post to discuss the next steps – what to actually DO with that information. Let’s dive in. Optimize for internal search. Best practices include but are not limited to: Include site search on ALL your...
Internal site search tracking – set it up and use the data to see what your visitors are looking for. Done and done right? Actually, not the case. If you haven’t been digging into your Google Analytics internal site search reports as of late, start now. Why? Internal site search data will enable you to better understand your customer’s intent, to use the data to improve the user experience, to...
With the release of Google’s new +1 feature, it is clear that Google is working hard to oust Facebook from their social throne. As a search marketer, I think the new feature is pretty great. Eventually AdWords advertisers will be able to get statistics on what ads have the most +1’s and Google Webmaster Central will report +1 stats for organic listings. In addition, I’m sure the number of +1’s...
Let’s be real, standard ranking reports for targeted keywords are dead. With the latest changes in local search, personalization, etc. simply tracking search engine rankings do not tell the whole story. In addition to the challenges of tracking rankings for a set of targeted keywords, what SEO’s often miss out on is the ability to take credit for increasing traffic of OTHER keywords that weren’t targeted – often the long...
On Wednesday, the 5th annual search marketing conference, Searchfest took place in my humble town of Portland Oregon. This is always a great conference with amazing speakers and really smart people asking really smart questions. I attended the advanced track sessions and thought I’d share my favorite takeaways from the day. Conrad Saam’s rankings rant and recommended SEO KPIs: Conrad expanded on his previous ranking report rant by offering...
Loren Baker
+Ann Smarty
Alan Bleiweiss
David Harry
