Recovering from an Over Optimization Penalty – A True Story

Posted by NickEubanks

As almost anyone reading this post already knows, April 24, 2012 marked a big day in the search industry. Once the initial Penguin update was rolled out (please believe me this is only the beginning and there is much more to come) the SEO industry, as we know it exploded in a flurry of fear and satisfaction. 

For those of us that had sites get hit (I'll admit I had several sites dinged by this update) what started out as anger quickly turned to fear and curiosity. Many industry publications jumped the gun and, in my opinion, began publishing tips and processes on how to 'recover from Penguin,' when the truth is, as mentioned by Ian Howells in his recent SEO Podcast, it's really too soon to tell the full effects of these algorithm updates and anyone out there preaching is really just speculating. The best information I have seen … Read the rest

June 2, 2012  Tags: , , , , , ,   Posted in: SEO / Traffic / Marketing  No Comments

A Small Success Story Inspired by SEOmoz and its Contributors

Posted by Aran Smithson

I’m the e-commerce manager for an online retailer specialising in Coat Hangers, yeah you heard right, coat hangers; and you thought your niche was tough?

We don’t have thousands of inbound links from a myriad of high PR sites, yet we are catching up to the big players in our niche. In December we were no where to be found on the majority of our search terms. Our traffic mainly came from brand searches, which we liked as we pride ourselves on our superb levels of customer service (honestly when I joined I was astonished we could turn a profit with the amount of customer service going on), thus we get a lot of returning customers.

Producing link worthy content for the site has been an uphill struggle, gaining ground in the social sphere is like chewing through leather and guest posting and the like are tough. No one is interested in Clothes … Read the rest

April 12, 2012  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: SEO / Traffic / Marketing  No Comments

The Story of SEOmoz

Posted by randfish

Several weeks back, I gave a very unique talk at LUISS University in Rome, Italy at the bequest of the US State Department and the Business Association Italy America (BAIA). The audience was small, but the energy was fantastic. Italy has traditionally been a challenging place to do a tech startup, but a consortium of folks are aiming to change that. My talk was an early part of that effort, and I’m really proud to be involved.

Luckily, the presentation can now reach a much wider group, thanks to the efforts of Robin Good, creator of Master New Media and one of Rome’s most well-known bloggers. Below, you’ll find all the sections of my talk, broken down by topic, in both video and text format. My deep thanks to Robin for this remarkable work transcribing, filming, editing and even researching all the links I mentioned. Enjoy!
 

This is the story of SEOmoz, as I have heard it by sitting in the first row of a small but very attentive audience at the LUISS University in Rome, Italy. The storyteller is Rand Fishkin himself, the father and founder of an SEO company which

… Read the rest

April 14, 2011  Tags: ,   Posted in: SEO / Traffic / Marketing  No Comments

Traffic "Bait" and Ad Clicks: Perfect Market’s Study Isn’t Telling the Whole Story

Posted by randfish

Yesterday, Perfect Market, a company that "helps publishers create value from their online content with little effort and no risk1" released a study that’s been getting quite a bit of attention. The study analyzes the relative traffic value per visit of several types of content, coming to the conclusion2 that "while the Lindsay Lohan sentencing and other celebrity coverage drove significant online traffic for major news publishers, articles about unemployment benefits, the Gulf oil spill, mortgage rates and other serious topics were the top-earning news topics based on advertising revenue per page view."

Coverage included the New York Times’ Traffic Bait Doesn’t Bring Ad Clicks, Columbia Journalism Review’s Celebs are Loud, but Hard News Pays, Nieman Journalism Lab’s Public Interest News Can Be More Valuable to Publishers than Traffic Bait and Search Engine Land’s Hard News Pays More than Chasing Search Trends.

I’m worried for a few reasons:

  1. What’s the branding value of those stories? Do they drive up awareness of the publications that authored them? Do they increase return visits?
  2. What other actions do those visitors take? Are they more likely to subscribe to an RSS

    3. … Read the rest

October 19, 2010  Tags: , , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: SEO / Traffic / Marketing  No Comments



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