Make a List of Occupations to Explore

You probably have multiple lists of occupations in front of you at this point—one generated by each of the self-assessment tools you used. To keep yourself organized, you should combine them into one master list.

First, look for careers that appear on multiple lists and copy them onto a blank page. Title it “Occupations to Explore.” Your self-assessment ​indicated they are a good fit for you based on several of your traits, so definitely consider them.

Next, find any occupations on your lists that appeal to you. They may be careers you know a bit about and want to explore further. Also, include professions about which you don’t know much. You might learn something unexpected. Add those to your master list.

Explore the Occupations on Your List

Now get some basic information about each of the occupations on your list. You will be thrilled you managed to narrow your list down to only 10 to 20 options!

Find job descriptions and educational, training and licensing requirements in published sources. Learn about advancement opportunities. Use government-produced labor market information to get data about earnings and job outlook.

Create a “Short List”

At this point, start to narrow down your list even more. Based on what you learned from your research so far, begin eliminating the careers you don’t want to pursue any further. You should end up with fewer than two to five occupations on your “short list.”

If your reasons for finding a career unacceptable are non-negotiable, cross it off your list. Remove everything with duties that don’t appeal to you. Eliminate careers that have weak job outlooks. Get rid of any occupation if you are unable to or unwilling to fulfill the educational or other requirements, or if you lack some of the soft skills necessary to succeed in it.

 Conduct Informational Interviews

When you have only a few occupations left on your list, start doing more in-depth research. Arrange to meet with people who work in the occupations in which you are interested. They can provide firsthand knowledge about the careers on your short list. Access your network, including LinkedIn, to find people with whom to have these informational interviews.

Make Your Career Choice

Finally, after doing all your research, you are probably ready to make your choice. Pick the occupation that you think will bring you the most satisfaction based on all the information you have gathered. Realize that you are allowed do-overs if you change your mind about your choice at any point in your life. Many people change their careers at least a few times.

 Identify Your Goals

Once you make a decision, identify your long- and short-term goals. Doing this will allow you to eventually work in your chosen field. Long-term goals typically take about three to five years to reach, while you can usually fulfill a short-term goal in six months to three years.

Let the research you did about required education and training be your guide. If you don’t have all the details, do some more research. Once you have all the information you need, set your goals. An example of a long-term goal would be completing your education and training. Short-term goals include applying to college, apprenticeships, or other training programs, and doing internships.

 Write a Career Action Plan

Put together a career action plan, a written document that lays out all the steps you will have to take to reach your goals. Think of it as a roadmap that will take you from point A to B, and then to C and D. Write down all your short- and long-term goals and the steps you will have to take to reach each one. Include any anticipated barriers that could get in the way of achieving your goals and the ways you can overcome them.

The first step for any marketing team using Facebook is creating an optimized profile picture and cover photo.

Your profile picture should be:

• A high-resolution photo of your company’s logo.
• Sized down to a 180px x 180px square.
• Still be recognizable viewing it on a mobile or tablet device. Remember your profile picture is the first thing that your audience sees in their newsfeed. Your logo should still be distinguishable in a small size.

Your cover photo should be:

• Within the same theme as your profile picture.
• Should tell a more comprehensive story about who your organization is. This could be through taglines, product photos & more.
• Sized correctly to allow your audience to see the full photo. Right now the optimum size for a cover photo (or video) on Facebook is 815px x 215px.

2. Fill Out Your Facebook Bio

There are no shortcuts when it comes to your social media marketing. That means you need to fill out your Facebook bio.

A business’s Facebook bio is broken into multiple parts including:

About Section

The first part of your Facebook profile is easy to fill out. It should include your company name, when your organization was founded, a phone number and email for people to contact you and a link to your website.

3. Set a Consistent Posting Schedule

Consistently posting to your Facebook page helps get your audience into a rhythm. If they see that you share new content on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at noon, it will help remind them to check in.

According to 14 different studies, you should be posting to Facebook at least once per day:

4. Schedule Your Posts at the Optimum Time

Facebook’s algorithm makes it difficult for companies to reach their full audience because newsfeeds are continually reshuffling content and limiting the organic reach of your company’s post.

To maximize the life of your content, you should schedule your posts to publish at the best time.

According to our research, we found that scheduling your posts at 9 am, 1 pm and 3 pm will give your content the best chance at attracting more eyeballs:

5. Use Video To Attract Your Audience

Tons of advice try and tell you what the best content type is for posting on Facebook. It ranges between images, videos, and links. Here’s the truth.

As of 2017 videos are the most reliable type of content that your team can publish. Why? Because the current Facebook algorithm pushes them to the top of your audience’s newsfeed.

Let’s not forget Facebook just launched “Facebook Watch” a host platform that allows users to upload video series instead of only stand-alone videos:

6. Use Facebook Advertising To Boost The Reach of Your Posts

If you want to guarantee you’ll have eyeballs on your content you need to use Facebook advertising and boosted posts.

Those eyeballs don’t come cheap, and it’s up to your social team to determine how much money you’re willing to spend to get your posts in front of people.

Check out this video from Hubspot to see how Facebook advertising works:

How Are Search & Social Media Marketing Related?

Why would a search marketer — or a site about search engines — care about social media? The two are very closely related.

Social media often feeds into the discovery of new content such as news stories, and “discovery” is a search activity. Social media can also help build links that in turn support into SEO efforts. Many people also perform searches at social media sites to find social media content. Social connections may also impact the relevancy of some search results, either within a social media network or at a ‘mainstream’ search engine.

Social Media Marketing At Marketing Land

Marketing Land is the sister site to Search Engine Land that covers all facets of internet marketing, including these popular topics within social media marketing:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Linkedin
• YouTube
• Social Media Marketing How To Guides & more!

To keep up with social media marketing, subscribe to our weekly Social Media Marketing digest and Marketing Day daily recap newsletters, with the latest articles from Marketing Land and Search Engine Land, as well as the day’s news sources all over the web.

Every business needs to invest in search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website to maximize organic traffic from search engines. The leading search engines are Google, YouTube, Bing, and Yahoo.

This blog is a warning to everyone that does not have an effective SEO strategy. You are making a huge mistake by not leveraging all of the below SEO benefits.

You are losing money every day your website is not optimized in the search engines.

Here’s why.

1. There are people searching for your products or services on search engines

There are over 2 billion people online. 93% of online activities start on a search engine. There are 40,000 searches every second, and 3.5 billion searches per day. There are millions of opportunities for your business to become found on search engines. One of the most important benefits of SEO is that your customers are using search engines daily.

2. SEO pulls-in quality traffic 
Traffic on search engines is the best traffic. Why? Because people are actually searching for the problem you solve. You can “pull” traffic to your business. You do not have to “push” out advertisements to persuade people to buy. Search traffic is already interested in your products and services. This is why the SEO industry is worth $65 billion.

3. SEO traffic is more likely to convert

SEO traffic is more likely to convert than other sources of traffic. In fact, search traffic has the best conversion rates for most websites. By positioning yourself on search engines, you are positioning your business to win more conversions.

4. SEO increases sales and leads

SEO is not a myth. You will increase your leads and sales if you offer a viable product or service. One small business generated over $103,510.98 worth of SEO results in just 5 months.

However, you must invest in the best SEO strategy. With a winning SEO campaign, your business will be on it’s way to higher conversions.

 5. SEO can decrease your cost per acquisition

Another benefit of SEO is that it is “free”. It is far less expensive than advertising to acquire customers. The only costs in SEO are the costs to hire the best SEO company. Unless you have experience in website coding and Google algorithms, you will need an SEO firm or agency to grow your rankings.

6. SEO does not involve any paid advertising

You do not have to advertise if you have strong SEO standings. You can increase your website traffic without having to pay per click. An effective SEO strategy can help you scale back your advertising dollars, and invest it in more efficient areas.

7. Top SEO rankings provides 24/7 promotion

SEO is 24/7. It does not sleep. Your rankings do not disappear overnight. You can increase your website traffic all day, every day. Once you rank high in search engines, they will promote your business while you are sleeping.

8. SEO builds trust and credibility

People trust Google. They use it every day to find what they are looking for. By ranking high on search engines, your business will build trust and credibility with your audience. In fact, 37% of search engine clicks are on the first organic listing. Major SEO Benefit is that if your websites ranks first people will trust and in a way your business will get a boost.

9. SEO is a long-term strategy

SEO is a long-term strategy. It can take 6-12 months to see optimal rankings. However, just as it takes time to move up the rankings, it takes time to move down the rankings. Once you are placed in top positions, you rarely move down. The only reason this would change is due to rising SEO competition or changes in Google algorithm.

10. SEO makes your customers more informed

Your customers are using search engines to research. They use their findings to help them make informed decisions on available options. High SEO rankings allows you to educate potential customers. This indirectly builds trust, but most importantly helps them make an informed decision.

11. SEO influences purchasing decisions

SEO significantly influences purchasing decisions. This is because of the developed trust and credibility mentioned in our prior points. Use SEO to improve your conversions by significantly influencing the purchasing decisions of those on the web.

12. SEO increases your brand awareness and equity

Conversions aside, SEO will also build your brand equity. In other words, SEO will help people become aware of your brand. Awareness is important because your website visitors may not always be ready to purchase. However, by being aware of your offerings, they may purchase in the near future.Increasing your brand awareness and equity is one of the major SEO benefit.

13. SEO increases customer attribution or “touches”

While your awareness is increasing, SEO will simultaneously increase your customer attribution points. Attribution is the amount of times your audience sees your brand. The more times they see your business, the more likely they are to purchase from your business. Strong SEO rankings will help you dramatically increase your touch points with potential buyers.

14. SEO receives 90% more clicks than PPC

SEO trumps paid advertising. This is because organic SEO listings receive 90% of clicks. Many users of search engines tend to skip paid advertisements. This is most likely due to their trust in Google’s algorithm. By investing in SEO, you will likely gain more traffic than the advertisers on the same keywords.

15. SEO can increase your website referrals

SEO will increase your website referrals. You will gain more website referrals from search engines. In addition, your website visitors are likely to refer your website to their friends. A strong SEO presence will you grow referrals, literally and figuratively!

16. SEO is measurable

One of the most effective SEO benefit is that SEO is measurable. You can measure your conversions and the source of conversions. You can also measure the progression of your website rankings and organic traffic. With the right tools (or SEO company), you will be able to measure which search keywords are the most valuable to your business.

17. SEO drives offline sales

Do your customers do research online before visiting your store? Of course they do! Because most people do their research online, SEO also drives offline sales. This is because they are using search engines to do their research, but may visit your store or make a phone call to actually buy your products. Therefore, SEO is a major contributor to driving offline sales.

18. SEO is more cost-effective than paid advertising

This is a no-brainer. SEO is more cost-effective than paid advertising. Once you rank high on search engines, you do not have to pay for clicks from search engines. Pause your PPC advertising campaigns and let #1 SEO rankings drive more results.

19.Your competitors are using SEO to grow

Kill or be killed. Your customers start their internet journey with a search. Your competitors are using search to grow their business. Sooner or later, if you are not using search to grow your business, you will not have a business!

20. SEO can give smaller businesses an edge on larger companies

If you operate a small business, you may find that it is tough to outspend larger competitors in AdWords. However, an effective SEO strategy may be your way to gain higher rankings. While larger companies rely on advertising, you can rely on a savvy SEO strategy to go in the back door to acquire customers. SEO benefits can be seen by the small business as well as large business.

It feels like only yesterday we were making our bets on what was awaiting SEO in 2016. Then boom, and it’s almost 2017 — the time for planning, budgeting, and strategizing for your SEO success in 2017 has come. And if you need some inspiration or some help setting up the priorities, I’ve got a handful of useful tips to share!

Just back from one of the largest (and most trusted) SEO events in USA, the SMX East conference, I’ve carefully documented the most important takeaways for you. Some of them are quite logical and expected, but others are true game changers!

I’ve been all eyes and ears for you, and here’s what I brought back — the top 5 SEO trends for 2017 as seen by me and the SEO PowerSuite team:

1. Google’s AMP- just another fad or the future of mobile?

Accelerated Mobile Pages project (AMP for short) is a new Google initiative to build a better, more user friendly mobile Web by introducing a new “standard” for building web content for mobile devices. Basically, this new standard is a set of rules that form a simple, lighter version of HTML. And pages built in compliance with AMP are sure to load super-quick on all mobile devices.

Ever since its launch in search results in February 2016, AMP has been in the SEO news. However, despite all the buzz around the project, SEOs and webmasters keep treating it quite warily. Is AMP yet another Google fad to come and go within a few months like many of them did before? Or is the project here to stay and form the future of mobile?

When faced with this very question, Google’s Adam Greenberg stressed AMP is a really big thing for Google:

Adam Greenberg, @adamgreenb

Global Product Partnerships — Search & Mobile Platforms, Google

“Google now links to AMP pages in all its search results, which shows the project is now pretty central to the company’s plans.”

Sure, you wouldn’t expect someone who’s just built a new product to say it’s not gonna last long. However there’s a number of other reasons why you might want to consider using AMP in your strategy:

1. Ultimate user experience

It’s no secret that speed matters. Multiple research has shown slower-loading webpages are associated with higher bounce rates, and up to 40% of visitors are likely to abandon your site if it loads longer than 3 seconds.

Will AMP pages really solve the speed problem? You bet!

Thanks to the “lighter” HTML and CSS they use, and the fact that AMP content is cached in the cloud and delivered not from your server, but from the Google-hosted cached version, AMP pages load 30 times faster (the median load time is 0.7 seconds for AMP and 22 seconds for non-AMP pages).

This gives your users a truly enjoyable reading experience.

2. Positive effect on rankings and CTR

According to Condé Nast’s John Shehata, AMP pages tend to perform better in search both in terms of rankings and CTRs:

And even though this improvement is not going to bring your floods of traffic straight away (we have to understand that the majority of mobile search traffic still comes from non-AMP search results), it’s quite likely that getting AMPed will pay off soon — AMP already dominates fresh content and its share will only grow.

John Shehata, @JShehata

VP of SEO, Condé Nast

“When we look at fresh content alone, AMP results account for twice as much traffic as non-AMP results.”

2. 301 redirects can prevent your pages from passing topical relevance

If you are in SEO for quite some time, you definitely remember the golden rule: don’t overdo with redirects — they are a PageRank leak.

However two months ago Google turned the SEO world upside down, announcing that redirects no longer result in losing PageRank and you are free to use any type of 3xx redirection without the fear to lose your rankings.

Well, I hope you haven’t got accustomed to this idea over the past two months, because according to Christoph C. Cemper of LinkResearchTools, 301 redirects might actually harm your SEO by intervening in how pages pass their topical relevance via anchor texts.

Christoph C. Cemper, @cemper

CEO, LinkResearchTools

“It looks like links from a page “stop working” (stop passing anchor text relevance) when the page is powered by a 301 redirect.”

The experiment:

For his tests, Christoph:

1. Picked a number of test pages that were:
– Each located on an authoritative domain with a strong link profile;
– Each being a target page for either a 301, 302 or 307 redirect from another page of the same domain and not powered by any other links (like in case of a site migration or an HTTP switch).

2. On each of these test pages, Christoph put an outgoing link to another domain with a non-existent keyword as its anchor text (a “non-existent” keyword in this case meant that Google had zero documents in its index matching that word, and thus there was no SERP competition for it).

3. By looking whether the linked-to page was ranking in Google for the keyword or not, Christoph was able to tell whether the linking page is passing any topical relevance to the target page or not.

(Please note that Christoph is planning to publish the full test report and the details on its methodology on the LinkResearchTools blog very soon, and you can subscribe to get notified when the report is out).

The results:

The surprising takeaway of the tests was that 301 turned to prevent the linking page from passing any anchor text relevance via its outgoing links. On the graph below, it is only the short period of time in orange over which the page was passing anchor text relevance to the linked page:

And, no less surprisingly, it is the “temporary” 302 redirect that showed the most stable results:

What does it mean for your website? For instance, if you migrate your website to HTTPS using 301 redirects, the redirects might pass PageRank to the target pages, as Google keeps constantly saying. But after that, the passed PageRank might turn out to be in the dead end, as the target page of the redirect won’t be able to pass any anchor text relevance to any other pages it links to.

Christoph C. Cemper, @cemper

CEO, LinkResearchTools

“Site migrations via 301 might “die slowly””

3. HTTPS is eating up your referral data. Any ways to fix that?

It’s been two years since Google started its active campaign for Web security and announced HTTP to be a ranking factor in its algos. The Web blew up with the idea of switching to HTTPS to improve rankings.

Could we still hope to see a ranking boost thanks to the switch? Nope. Truth be told, it’s highly unlikely that HTTPS can help you up with Google rankings. On the contrary, there are countless examples of how the switch can go terribly wrong:

So, if not for rankings and security, why on earth would you run through this tedious process? Quite likely your marketing team already has a good reason for switching to HTTPS — your referral traffic:

Patrick Stox, @patrickstox

SEO Specialist, IBM; Raleigh SEO Meetup organizer

“When going from HTTPS to HTTP, referral data is dropped and without it the traffic looks like it’s direct. Switching to HTTPS fixes some of your attribution issues”

However the funny thing is… referral traffic is also a reason not to switch to HTTPS. Because if your website is making money by sending referral traffic to other sites (think affiliate, directories, niche magazines), you need referral data to prove your value.

Patrick Stox, @patrickstox

SEO Specialist, IBM; Raleigh SEO Meetup organizer

“If you’re a website who earns money by sending people to other sites, don’t forget switching to HTTPS will stop your website from sending referral data to HTTP sites.”

4. Still building citations for your local business? It might be just the time to stop!

It turns out citation building might be the most overestimated factor for local SEO. A recent study from Andrew Shotland & Dan Leibson of Local SEO Guide showed that the strength and volume of local citations don’t seem to matter much for local rankings.

Dan Leibson, @DanLeibson

Head of local search & product, Local SEO Guide

“Citation consistency can be a key factor to getting you into a local pack — so don’t ignore them — but the “strength” or volume of citations just doesn’t seem to matter as much.”

Looking at ~3000 local searches, the Local SEO Guide team analyzed what factors correlate with higher rankings in Google’s local packs. And the surprising finding of the study was that citations showed much less correlation than other factors, while the unquestionable leaders are backlinks:

“How come we’ve been told for so long that citations are the new backlinks?” you might ask. Well, the thing is that most of the previous local SEO knowledge was based on expert surveys rather than an empirical look. And while empirical correlation (which this study is built upon) is still not causation, it might give us some solid clues for setting up our local SEO priorities.

5. Optimizing for voice search — your chase for featured answers

A featured snippet — also known as a “rich answer” or “direct answer” — is a summary answer to a searcher’s question that Google shows in a special block at the top of its SERP:

As you can see from the screenshot above, a featured snippet usually includes a link to the page from where the data was taken. And thus it has a great traffic-attracting potential you can utilize

It feels like only yesterday we were making our bets on what was awaiting SEO in 2016. Then boom, and it’s almost 2017 — the time for planning, budgeting, and strategizing for your SEO success in 2017 has come. And if you need some inspiration or some help setting up the priorities, I’ve got a handful of useful tips to share!

Just back from one of the largest (and most trusted) SEO events in USA, the SMX East conference, I’ve carefully documented the most important takeaways for you. Some of them are quite logical and expected, but others are true game changers!

I’ve been all eyes and ears for you, and here’s what I brought back — the top 5 SEO trends for 2017 as seen by me and the SEO PowerSuite team:

1. Google’s AMP- just another fad or the future of mobile?

Accelerated Mobile Pages project (AMP for short) is a new Google initiative to build a better, more user friendly mobile Web by introducing a new “standard” for building web content for mobile devices. Basically, this new standard is a set of rules that form a simple, lighter version of HTML. And pages built in compliance with AMP are sure to load super-quick on all mobile devices.

Ever since its launch in search results in February 2016, AMP has been in the SEO news. However, despite all the buzz around the project, SEOs and webmasters keep treating it quite warily. Is AMP yet another Google fad to come and go within a few months like many of them did before? Or is the project here to stay and form the future of mobile?

When faced with this very question, Google’s Adam Greenberg stressed AMP is a really big thing for Google:

Adam Greenberg, @adamgreenb

Global Product Partnerships — Search & Mobile Platforms, Google

“Google now links to AMP pages in all its search results, which shows the project is now pretty central to the company’s plans.”

Sure, you wouldn’t expect someone who’s just built a new product to say it’s not gonna last long. However there’s a number of other reasons why you might want to consider using AMP in your strategy:

1. Ultimate user experience

It’s no secret that speed matters. Multiple research has shown slower-loading webpages are associated with higher bounce rates, and up to 40% of visitors are likely to abandon your site if it loads longer than 3 seconds.

Will AMP pages really solve the speed problem? You bet!

Thanks to the “lighter” HTML and CSS they use, and the fact that AMP content is cached in the cloud and delivered not from your server, but from the Google-hosted cached version, AMP pages load 30 times faster (the median load time is 0.7 seconds for AMP and 22 seconds for non-AMP pages).

This gives your users a truly enjoyable reading experience.

2. Positive effect on rankings and CTR

According to Condé Nast’s John Shehata, AMP pages tend to perform better in search both in terms of rankings and CTRs:

And even though this improvement is not going to bring your floods of traffic straight away (we have to understand that the majority of mobile search traffic still comes from non-AMP search results), it’s quite likely that getting AMPed will pay off soon — AMP already dominates fresh content and its share will only grow.

John Shehata, @JShehata

VP of SEO, Condé Nast

“When we look at fresh content alone, AMP results account for twice as much traffic as non-AMP results.”

2. 301 redirects can prevent your pages from passing topical relevance

If you are in SEO for quite some time, you definitely remember the golden rule: don’t overdo with redirects — they are a PageRank leak.

However two months ago Google turned the SEO world upside down, announcing that redirects no longer result in losing PageRank and you are free to use any type of 3xx redirection without the fear to lose your rankings.

Well, I hope you haven’t got accustomed to this idea over the past two months, because according to Christoph C. Cemper of LinkResearchTools, 301 redirects might actually harm your SEO by intervening in how pages pass their topical relevance via anchor texts.

Christoph C. Cemper, @cemper

CEO, LinkResearchTools

“It looks like links from a page “stop working” (stop passing anchor text relevance) when the page is powered by a 301 redirect.”

The experiment:

For his tests, Christoph:

1. Picked a number of test pages that were:
– Each located on an authoritative domain with a strong link profile;
– Each being a target page for either a 301, 302 or 307 redirect from another page of the same domain and not powered by any other links (like in case of a site migration or an HTTP switch).

2. On each of these test pages, Christoph put an outgoing link to another domain with a non-existent keyword as its anchor text (a “non-existent” keyword in this case meant that Google had zero documents in its index matching that word, and thus there was no SERP competition for it).

3. By looking whether the linked-to page was ranking in Google for the keyword or not, Christoph was able to tell whether the linking page is passing any topical relevance to the target page or not.

(Please note that Christoph is planning to publish the full test report and the details on its methodology on the LinkResearchTools blog very soon, and you can subscribe to get notified when the report is out).

The results:

The surprising takeaway of the tests was that 301 turned to prevent the linking page from passing any anchor text relevance via its outgoing links. On the graph below, it is only the short period of time in orange over which the page was passing anchor text relevance to the linked page:

And, no less surprisingly, it is the “temporary” 302 redirect that showed the most stable results:

What does it mean for your website? For instance, if you migrate your website to HTTPS using 301 redirects, the redirects might pass PageRank to the target pages, as Google keeps constantly saying. But after that, the passed PageRank might turn out to be in the dead end, as the target page of the redirect won’t be able to pass any anchor text relevance to any other pages it links to.

Christoph C. Cemper, @cemper

CEO, LinkResearchTools

“Site migrations via 301 might “die slowly””

3. HTTPS is eating up your referral data. Any ways to fix that?

It’s been two years since Google started its active campaign for Web security and announced HTTP to be a ranking factor in its algos. The Web blew up with the idea of switching to HTTPS to improve rankings.

Could we still hope to see a ranking boost thanks to the switch? Nope. Truth be told, it’s highly unlikely that HTTPS can help you up with Google rankings. On the contrary, there are countless examples of how the switch can go terribly wrong:

So, if not for rankings and security, why on earth would you run through this tedious process? Quite likely your marketing team already has a good reason for switching to HTTPS — your referral traffic:

Patrick Stox, @patrickstox

SEO Specialist, IBM; Raleigh SEO Meetup organizer

“When going from HTTPS to HTTP, referral data is dropped and without it the traffic looks like it’s direct. Switching to HTTPS fixes some of your attribution issues”

However the funny thing is… referral traffic is also a reason not to switch to HTTPS. Because if your website is making money by sending referral traffic to other sites (think affiliate, directories, niche magazines), you need referral data to prove your value.

Patrick Stox, @patrickstox

SEO Specialist, IBM; Raleigh SEO Meetup organizer

“If you’re a website who earns money by sending people to other sites, don’t forget switching to HTTPS will stop your website from sending referral data to HTTP sites.”

4. Still building citations for your local business? It might be just the time to stop!

It turns out citation building might be the most overestimated factor for local SEO. A recent study from Andrew Shotland & Dan Leibson of Local SEO Guide showed that the strength and volume of local citations don’t seem to matter much for local rankings.

Dan Leibson, @DanLeibson

Head of local search & product, Local SEO Guide

“Citation consistency can be a key factor to getting you into a local pack — so don’t ignore them — but the “strength” or volume of citations just doesn’t seem to matter as much.”

Looking at ~3000 local searches, the Local SEO Guide team analyzed what factors correlate with higher rankings in Google’s local packs. And the surprising finding of the study was that citations showed much less correlation than other factors, while the unquestionable leaders are backlinks:

“How come we’ve been told for so long that citations are the new backlinks?” you might ask. Well, the thing is that most of the previous local SEO knowledge was based on expert surveys rather than an empirical look. And while empirical correlation (which this study is built upon) is still not causation, it might give us some solid clues for setting up our local SEO priorities.

5. Optimizing for voice search — your chase for featured answers

A featured snippet — also known as a “rich answer” or “direct answer” — is a summary answer to a searcher’s question that Google shows in a special block at the top of its SERP:

As you can see from the screenshot above, a featured snippet usually includes a link to the page from where the data was taken. And thus it has a great traffic-attracting potential you can utilize

It feels like only yesterday we were making our bets on what was awaiting SEO in 2016. Then boom, and it’s almost 2017 — the time for planning, budgeting, and strategizing for your SEO success in 2017 has come. And if you need some inspiration or some help setting up the priorities, I’ve got a handful of useful tips to share!

Just back from one of the largest (and most trusted) SEO events in USA, the SMX East conference, I’ve carefully documented the most important takeaways for you. Some of them are quite logical and expected, but others are true game changers!

I’ve been all eyes and ears for you, and here’s what I brought back — the top 5 SEO trends for 2017 as seen by me and the SEO PowerSuite team:

1. Google’s AMP- just another fad or the future of mobile?

Accelerated Mobile Pages project (AMP for short) is a new Google initiative to build a better, more user friendly mobile Web by introducing a new “standard” for building web content for mobile devices. Basically, this new standard is a set of rules that form a simple, lighter version of HTML. And pages built in compliance with AMP are sure to load super-quick on all mobile devices.

Ever since its launch in search results in February 2016, AMP has been in the SEO news. However, despite all the buzz around the project, SEOs and webmasters keep treating it quite warily. Is AMP yet another Google fad to come and go within a few months like many of them did before? Or is the project here to stay and form the future of mobile?

When faced with this very question, Google’s Adam Greenberg stressed AMP is a really big thing for Google:

Adam Greenberg, @adamgreenb

Global Product Partnerships — Search & Mobile Platforms, Google

“Google now links to AMP pages in all its search results, which shows the project is now pretty central to the company’s plans.”

Sure, you wouldn’t expect someone who’s just built a new product to say it’s not gonna last long. However there’s a number of other reasons why you might want to consider using AMP in your strategy:

1. Ultimate user experience

It’s no secret that speed matters. Multiple research has shown slower-loading webpages are associated with higher bounce rates, and up to 40% of visitors are likely to abandon your site if it loads longer than 3 seconds.

Will AMP pages really solve the speed problem? You bet!

Thanks to the “lighter” HTML and CSS they use, and the fact that AMP content is cached in the cloud and delivered not from your server, but from the Google-hosted cached version, AMP pages load 30 times faster (the median load time is 0.7 seconds for AMP and 22 seconds for non-AMP pages).

This gives your users a truly enjoyable reading experience.

2. Positive effect on rankings and CTR

According to Condé Nast’s John Shehata, AMP pages tend to perform better in search both in terms of rankings and CTRs:

And even though this improvement is not going to bring your floods of traffic straight away (we have to understand that the majority of mobile search traffic still comes from non-AMP search results), it’s quite likely that getting AMPed will pay off soon — AMP already dominates fresh content and its share will only grow.

John Shehata, @JShehata

VP of SEO, Condé Nast

“When we look at fresh content alone, AMP results account for twice as much traffic as non-AMP results.”

2. 301 redirects can prevent your pages from passing topical relevance

If you are in SEO for quite some time, you definitely remember the golden rule: don’t overdo with redirects — they are a PageRank leak.

However two months ago Google turned the SEO world upside down, announcing that redirects no longer result in losing PageRank and you are free to use any type of 3xx redirection without the fear to lose your rankings.

Well, I hope you haven’t got accustomed to this idea over the past two months, because according to Christoph C. Cemper of LinkResearchTools, 301 redirects might actually harm your SEO by intervening in how pages pass their topical relevance via anchor texts.

Christoph C. Cemper, @cemper

CEO, LinkResearchTools

“It looks like links from a page “stop working” (stop passing anchor text relevance) when the page is powered by a 301 redirect.”

The experiment:

For his tests, Christoph:

1. Picked a number of test pages that were:
– Each located on an authoritative domain with a strong link profile;
– Each being a target page for either a 301, 302 or 307 redirect from another page of the same domain and not powered by any other links (like in case of a site migration or an HTTP switch).

2. On each of these test pages, Christoph put an outgoing link to another domain with a non-existent keyword as its anchor text (a “non-existent” keyword in this case meant that Google had zero documents in its index matching that word, and thus there was no SERP competition for it).

3. By looking whether the linked-to page was ranking in Google for the keyword or not, Christoph was able to tell whether the linking page is passing any topical relevance to the target page or not.

(Please note that Christoph is planning to publish the full test report and the details on its methodology on the LinkResearchTools blog very soon, and you can subscribe to get notified when the report is out).

The results:

The surprising takeaway of the tests was that 301 turned to prevent the linking page from passing any anchor text relevance via its outgoing links. On the graph below, it is only the short period of time in orange over which the page was passing anchor text relevance to the linked page:

And, no less surprisingly, it is the “temporary” 302 redirect that showed the most stable results:

What does it mean for your website? For instance, if you migrate your website to HTTPS using 301 redirects, the redirects might pass PageRank to the target pages, as Google keeps constantly saying. But after that, the passed PageRank might turn out to be in the dead end, as the target page of the redirect won’t be able to pass any anchor text relevance to any other pages it links to.

Christoph C. Cemper, @cemper

CEO, LinkResearchTools

“Site migrations via 301 might “die slowly””

3. HTTPS is eating up your referral data. Any ways to fix that?

It’s been two years since Google started its active campaign for Web security and announced HTTP to be a ranking factor in its algos. The Web blew up with the idea of switching to HTTPS to improve rankings.

Could we still hope to see a ranking boost thanks to the switch? Nope. Truth be told, it’s highly unlikely that HTTPS can help you up with Google rankings. On the contrary, there are countless examples of how the switch can go terribly wrong:

So, if not for rankings and security, why on earth would you run through this tedious process? Quite likely your marketing team already has a good reason for switching to HTTPS — your referral traffic:

Patrick Stox, @patrickstox

SEO Specialist, IBM; Raleigh SEO Meetup organizer

“When going from HTTPS to HTTP, referral data is dropped and without it the traffic looks like it’s direct. Switching to HTTPS fixes some of your attribution issues”

However the funny thing is… referral traffic is also a reason not to switch to HTTPS. Because if your website is making money by sending referral traffic to other sites (think affiliate, directories, niche magazines), you need referral data to prove your value.

Patrick Stox, @patrickstox

SEO Specialist, IBM; Raleigh SEO Meetup organizer

“If you’re a website who earns money by sending people to other sites, don’t forget switching to HTTPS will stop your website from sending referral data to HTTP sites.”

4. Still building citations for your local business? It might be just the time to stop!

It turns out citation building might be the most overestimated factor for local SEO. A recent study from Andrew Shotland & Dan Leibson of Local SEO Guide showed that the strength and volume of local citations don’t seem to matter much for local rankings.

Dan Leibson, @DanLeibson

Head of local search & product, Local SEO Guide

“Citation consistency can be a key factor to getting you into a local pack — so don’t ignore them — but the “strength” or volume of citations just doesn’t seem to matter as much.”

Looking at ~3000 local searches, the Local SEO Guide team analyzed what factors correlate with higher rankings in Google’s local packs. And the surprising finding of the study was that citations showed much less correlation than other factors, while the unquestionable leaders are backlinks:

“How come we’ve been told for so long that citations are the new backlinks?” you might ask. Well, the thing is that most of the previous local SEO knowledge was based on expert surveys rather than an empirical look. And while empirical correlation (which this study is built upon) is still not causation, it might give us some solid clues for setting up our local SEO priorities.

5. Optimizing for voice search — your chase for featured answers

A featured snippet — also known as a “rich answer” or “direct answer” — is a summary answer to a searcher’s question that Google shows in a special block at the top of its SERP:

As you can see from the screenshot above, a featured snippet usually includes a link to the page from where the data was taken. And thus it has a great traffic-attracting potential you can utilize

It feels like only yesterday we were making our bets on what was awaiting SEO in 2016. Then boom, and it’s almost 2017 — the time for planning, budgeting, and strategizing for your SEO success in 2017 has come. And if you need some inspiration or some help setting up the priorities, I’ve got a handful of useful tips to share!

Just back from one of the largest (and most trusted) SEO events in USA, the SMX East conference, I’ve carefully documented the most important takeaways for you. Some of them are quite logical and expected, but others are true game changers!

I’ve been all eyes and ears for you, and here’s what I brought back — the top 5 SEO trends for 2017 as seen by me and the SEO PowerSuite team:

1. Google’s AMP- just another fad or the future of mobile?

Accelerated Mobile Pages project (AMP for short) is a new Google initiative to build a better, more user friendly mobile Web by introducing a new “standard” for building web content for mobile devices. Basically, this new standard is a set of rules that form a simple, lighter version of HTML. And pages built in compliance with AMP are sure to load super-quick on all mobile devices.

Ever since its launch in search results in February 2016, AMP has been in the SEO news. However, despite all the buzz around the project, SEOs and webmasters keep treating it quite warily. Is AMP yet another Google fad to come and go within a few months like many of them did before? Or is the project here to stay and form the future of mobile?

When faced with this very question, Google’s Adam Greenberg stressed AMP is a really big thing for Google:

Adam Greenberg, @adamgreenb

Global Product Partnerships — Search & Mobile Platforms, Google

“Google now links to AMP pages in all its search results, which shows the project is now pretty central to the company’s plans.”

Sure, you wouldn’t expect someone who’s just built a new product to say it’s not gonna last long. However there’s a number of other reasons why you might want to consider using AMP in your strategy:

1. Ultimate user experience

It’s no secret that speed matters. Multiple research has shown slower-loading webpages are associated with higher bounce rates, and up to 40% of visitors are likely to abandon your site if it loads longer than 3 seconds.

Will AMP pages really solve the speed problem? You bet!

Thanks to the “lighter” HTML and CSS they use, and the fact that AMP content is cached in the cloud and delivered not from your server, but from the Google-hosted cached version, AMP pages load 30 times faster (the median load time is 0.7 seconds for AMP and 22 seconds for non-AMP pages).

This gives your users a truly enjoyable reading experience.

2. Positive effect on rankings and CTR

According to Condé Nast’s John Shehata, AMP pages tend to perform better in search both in terms of rankings and CTRs:

And even though this improvement is not going to bring your floods of traffic straight away (we have to understand that the majority of mobile search traffic still comes from non-AMP search results), it’s quite likely that getting AMPed will pay off soon — AMP already dominates fresh content and its share will only grow.

John Shehata, @JShehata

VP of SEO, Condé Nast

“When we look at fresh content alone, AMP results account for twice as much traffic as non-AMP results.”

2. 301 redirects can prevent your pages from passing topical relevance

If you are in SEO for quite some time, you definitely remember the golden rule: don’t overdo with redirects — they are a PageRank leak.

However two months ago Google turned the SEO world upside down, announcing that redirects no longer result in losing PageRank and you are free to use any type of 3xx redirection without the fear to lose your rankings.

Well, I hope you haven’t got accustomed to this idea over the past two months, because according to Christoph C. Cemper of LinkResearchTools, 301 redirects might actually harm your SEO by intervening in how pages pass their topical relevance via anchor texts.

Christoph C. Cemper, @cemper

CEO, LinkResearchTools

“It looks like links from a page “stop working” (stop passing anchor text relevance) when the page is powered by a 301 redirect.”

The experiment:

For his tests, Christoph:

1. Picked a number of test pages that were:
– Each located on an authoritative domain with a strong link profile;
– Each being a target page for either a 301, 302 or 307 redirect from another page of the same domain and not powered by any other links (like in case of a site migration or an HTTP switch).

2. On each of these test pages, Christoph put an outgoing link to another domain with a non-existent keyword as its anchor text (a “non-existent” keyword in this case meant that Google had zero documents in its index matching that word, and thus there was no SERP competition for it).

3. By looking whether the linked-to page was ranking in Google for the keyword or not, Christoph was able to tell whether the linking page is passing any topical relevance to the target page or not.

(Please note that Christoph is planning to publish the full test report and the details on its methodology on the LinkResearchTools blog very soon, and you can subscribe to get notified when the report is out).

The results:

The surprising takeaway of the tests was that 301 turned to prevent the linking page from passing any anchor text relevance via its outgoing links. On the graph below, it is only the short period of time in orange over which the page was passing anchor text relevance to the linked page:

And, no less surprisingly, it is the “temporary” 302 redirect that showed the most stable results:

What does it mean for your website? For instance, if you migrate your website to HTTPS using 301 redirects, the redirects might pass PageRank to the target pages, as Google keeps constantly saying. But after that, the passed PageRank might turn out to be in the dead end, as the target page of the redirect won’t be able to pass any anchor text relevance to any other pages it links to.

Christoph C. Cemper, @cemper

CEO, LinkResearchTools

“Site migrations via 301 might “die slowly””

3. HTTPS is eating up your referral data. Any ways to fix that?

It’s been two years since Google started its active campaign for Web security and announced HTTP to be a ranking factor in its algos. The Web blew up with the idea of switching to HTTPS to improve rankings.

Could we still hope to see a ranking boost thanks to the switch? Nope. Truth be told, it’s highly unlikely that HTTPS can help you up with Google rankings. On the contrary, there are countless examples of how the switch can go terribly wrong:

So, if not for rankings and security, why on earth would you run through this tedious process? Quite likely your marketing team already has a good reason for switching to HTTPS — your referral traffic:

Patrick Stox, @patrickstox

SEO Specialist, IBM; Raleigh SEO Meetup organizer

“When going from HTTPS to HTTP, referral data is dropped and without it the traffic looks like it’s direct. Switching to HTTPS fixes some of your attribution issues”

However the funny thing is… referral traffic is also a reason not to switch to HTTPS. Because if your website is making money by sending referral traffic to other sites (think affiliate, directories, niche magazines), you need referral data to prove your value.

Patrick Stox, @patrickstox

SEO Specialist, IBM; Raleigh SEO Meetup organizer

“If you’re a website who earns money by sending people to other sites, don’t forget switching to HTTPS will stop your website from sending referral data to HTTP sites.”

4. Still building citations for your local business? It might be just the time to stop!

It turns out citation building might be the most overestimated factor for local SEO. A recent study from Andrew Shotland & Dan Leibson of Local SEO Guide showed that the strength and volume of local citations don’t seem to matter much for local rankings.

Dan Leibson, @DanLeibson

Head of local search & product, Local SEO Guide

“Citation consistency can be a key factor to getting you into a local pack — so don’t ignore them — but the “strength” or volume of citations just doesn’t seem to matter as much.”

Looking at ~3000 local searches, the Local SEO Guide team analyzed what factors correlate with higher rankings in Google’s local packs. And the surprising finding of the study was that citations showed much less correlation than other factors, while the unquestionable leaders are backlinks:

“How come we’ve been told for so long that citations are the new backlinks?” you might ask. Well, the thing is that most of the previous local SEO knowledge was based on expert surveys rather than an empirical look. And while empirical correlation (which this study is built upon) is still not causation, it might give us some solid clues for setting up our local SEO priorities.

5. Optimizing for voice search — your chase for featured answers

A featured snippet — also known as a “rich answer” or “direct answer” — is a summary answer to a searcher’s question that Google shows in a special block at the top of its SERP:

As you can see from the screenshot above, a featured snippet usually includes a link to the page from where the data was taken. And thus it has a great traffic-attracting potential you can utilize. http://www.link-assistant.com/news/smx-east-2016-recap.html

Are you looking for ways to strengthen the impact of the content you create?

It isn’t always easy to generate the buzz you’re looking for.

Knowing what to publish, when and where can greatly increase the visibility and reach of your content.

In this, you will find 26 topics, an A-Z guide, with key points that will help you create a social media content strategy that resonates with your audience.

#1: Align Content Development With Social Media Metrics and Goals

Understand the goals of your company’s social media content delivery to help you develop a more attainable strategy.

Jayson DeMers suggests, “First you need to know what to measure. The end goals dictate the measurement metric.”

He offers metrics for four social media goals:

• If you’re looking to generate traffic, your metric should be: unique visitors from social websites where you’ve run your social media campaigns.
• If you’re looking to create a following, your metric should be: subscribers, followers on your social channels (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
• If you’re looking to generate interaction, your metric should be: quantity and type of commentary (Facebook comments, Twitter replies/mentions).
• If you’re looking to generate revenue (which is the ultimate purpose), your metric should be: the precise dollar value of every lead a social post generates.

Keep this information in mind when crafting your social media content.

#2: Beef Up Your Content Strategy With a Big-Brand Mindset

Small businesses can learn valuable lessons from the big-brand approach to social media.

Rick Mulready suggests three things big brands do very well that small businesses can emulate:

• Find where their customers talk and “go deep.”
• Create content that people want to talk about.
• Use social media to listen to customers.

Starbucks, with over 34 million fans on Facebook, is a good example.

On Thursday, June 6, they posted a Facebook offer “Enjoy a Grande Iced Coffee, Iced Tea, or Starbucks Refreshers Beverage for $1 on June 7.” The update was shared by 13,931 people and received 1,553 comments. The offer was not tweeted to their 3,852,454 Twitter followers.

By promoting the offer on Facebook, where they have a significantly larger following, Starbucks leveraged the promotion on a platform where they were sure to get higher visibility, giving followers an incentive to follow the brand.

Use a big-brand approach to engage your social media followers.

#3: Concentrate on Increasing Daily Updates

Ensuring that your posts and updates have a good chance to be seen by your target audience is an integral part of a content strategy.

Leo Widrich offers 3 key tactics:

• Frequency: Post around 5-10 times a day on Twitter and 1-4 times a day on Facebook for optimal outcome.
• Timing: Almost all research studies highlight the main work hours from 8 am to 8 pm as good times to tweet and post to Facebook.
• Multiple sites: Post to multiple social sites, in addition to your own blog or website.

  Create a frequent and reliable presence on social networks.

Pay attention to frequency, timing and multiple sites, and you’ll increase the odds of achieving higher levels of social engagement.

#4: Delve Into Data From Social Media Channels

Data from social channels (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and blogs) can be overwhelming unless you have clear goals to guide what you’re looking for and what you’ll do with the information once you find it.

Douglas Karr points out, “The sheer volume of social media data makes it incredibly difficult to analyze.”

He offers five practical ways you can use social data to benefit your business:

• Gauge the real-time market mood.
• Identify relevant issues and content.
• Determine user interests.
• Provide internal operational metrics.
• Execute competitive research.

Explore social data with an actionable plan in mind.

#5: Engage in Real Interactions

Lana Bandoim writes, “Social media engagement is often defined as the real interactions that happen on these networks.” She points out that social media engagement relies on daily interactions among users to survive. While autoposting tools are one way to communicate, more businesses are beginning to understand that engaging with their audiences in real conversations will bring them better results and add more value to their social streams.

Be available to your audience in real time, when you can have more meaningful back-and-forth conversations.

#6: Follow Facebook’s Changes

Got the hang of your Facebook Page? Enjoy it while you can, because based on Facebook’s history, the only thing that’s certain is that Facebook will change.

A Google search for the words “Facebook changes” brings up a great number of results with a range of topics such as changes to timeline, cover photo policy, implications for merchants, mobile layout and much more.

Rachel Sprung suggests 5 ways marketers can keep updated on Facebook changes:

• Follow Facebook’s business changes for regular updates.
• Follow the Facebook tag on TechCrunch.
• Set a Google Alert for Facebook updates.
• Follow new posts on AllFacebook.
• Follow social media and tech experts.

No one wants to have their Page change features on them without having ample time to prepare. Keep up to date with Facebook developments to make sure you don’t miss out on the changes coming down the pike.

#7: Get Acquainted With the New Google Analytics Social Reports

Google‘s new standalone reports, Data Hub Activity and Trackbacks, give marketers more in-depth insights into social networks and how users respond to a business’s content.

As Google describes:

The Data Hub Activity report shows you how people are talking about and engaging with your site content on social networks. You can see the most recent URLs people shared, how and where they shared (via a “reshare” on Google+, for example), and what they said.

The Trackbacks report shows the sites that are linking to your content, and in which context. This can help you replicate successful content and build relationships with those users who frequently link to your site.

Check out the new Google Analytics reports and apply what you’ve learned to your content development strategy.

#8: Help Users Find Your Content With Hashtags

Why should businesses care about hashtags? Steve Cooper sums it up with five reasons:

• Promotions—hashtags make it easy to track a promotion’s activity across many social platforms.
• Unification—you can track a hashtag across all the major networks or filter them individually using new tools such as Tagboard.
• Conversations—giving a customer your website URL doesn’t make it easy to begin a conversation, but hashtags do.
• Targeting—unlike going after a general web surfer on the open web, people who use hashtags are likely to engage in social conversations and therefore are more likely to share a positive experience they’ve had with your brand once you’ve broken through.
• Innovation—because they’re so flexible, simple and ubiquitous, more businesses are able to find creative ways to add power behind the hashtag.

  A hashtag search on Tagboard will help you follow all the conversations.

  Tagboard filters hashtags on major networks.

Use hashtags to include your content in active public conversations.

#9: Introduce Content With Infographics

Infographics are defined as graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.

Dragan Mestrovic illuminates the benefits of infographics in four persuasive points:

• Infographics are shared on the web, Twitter and Facebook more often than other content online.
• Infographics are easy to understand, consume and share.
• On Twitter, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon, infographics get more shares than other content.
• Marketers love infographics because they offer an easy and powerful viral marketing tool to spread the word about your company’s products and services.

  Infographic of infographics

Infographics are a great way to synthesize information simply and visually as seen in the above image from Vsual.ly. When done well, an infographic is a perfect poster-child for quick and effective dissemination of information via social media.

#10: Justify Frequent Updates and Posts

Why is it that some businesses are posting fast and furiously and others are crawling far behind? Chances are that the businesses posting more frequently had to justify to management the importance of maintaining an active presence.

As we discussed in #5, autoposting does not offer a suitable alternative to real-live human beings who can respond to comments and post breaking news updates.

A tool such as How often do you tweet could shed some insight:

Monitor your social media engagement compared with your competitors’. Share the results with management to help justify a request to dedicate more time and resources to the company’s social media efforts.

#11: Keep Klout in Perspective

Klout utilizes Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Wikipedia and Instagram data to create a Klout user profile that is assigned a “Klout score,” a numerical value between 1 and 100.

Many critics suggest Klout scores aren’t representative of the influence a person has and discount the scores, as well as the thinking behind Klout.

Mark Schaefer offers an alternate view: “The ability to create and move content is the absolute key to online influence. So think about this—to the extent that you could actually measure that, wouldn’t you also be creating an indicator of relative influence?”

When it comes to Klout scores, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead, ask what you can learn from your competitor’s higher score and how you can do what they’re doing with their content.

#12: Look to the Future of Social Media

The question of social media’s ability to capture leads has been at the forefront of marketers’ minds from the beginning. Twitter is the latest network to offer an approach that will let marketers be more proactive with lead generation cards.

Twitter describes lead generation cards this way: “[The cards] make it easy for users to express interest in what your brand offers. Users can easily and securely share an email address with your business without leaving Twitter or having to fill out a cumbersome form.

“When someone expands your Tweet, they see a description of the offer and a call to action. Their name, @username, and email address are already pre-filled within the card. The user simply clicks a button to send this information directly (and securely) to you.”

At the time of this writing, Twitter stated, “Currently lead generation cards will only be available to our managed clients; we have plans to launch this card globally and to small- and medium-sized businesses soon.”

Stay updated on the availability of Twitter’s lead generation cards so you’ll be ready to use them.

#13: Make Your Blog Mobile-Friendly

I don’t know about you, but I seem to be visiting more and more websites on my mobile phone these days. If I land on a page that isn’t mobile-friendly and it’s slow and difficult to navigate, I’m out of there.

Jon Young provides 8 tips to make your website mobile-friendly:

• Only give visitors content they need.
• Carefully plan your layout.
• Landing pages should be simple.
• Design for multiple browsers and device compatibility.
• Always include social media icons.
• Automate the experience and use mobile redirects.
• Provide a link to your full site.
• Usability should be top priority.

  By using Mobile Meter, we can see what Social Media Examiner looks like on mobile devices.

Don’t give readers any reason to leave your site. Be mobile-ready and -friendly.

#14: Network in All the Right Places

What social networks do your customers favor? Are they on Twitter and Facebook, but haven’t embraced Google+ yet?

Ryan Little writes, “One recent study on social media usage revealed that the average user has two social media accounts. While some users find pleasure in multiple networks, there are people who have found a single community they love and stick with it, even when the temptations of a new social network arise. And there are others who have used various networks and narrowed their usage down until only one platform remained.”

The situation gets a little more complex for businesses. It’s important to keep in mind that your customers may favor one network today and in six months discover that another meets their needs better.

Follow your customers and prospects so you can network in all the right places.

#15: Outsource Content Development as Needed

Can your business keep up to date with all the tasks associated with maintaining social presences (e.g., reading and sharing good content, responding to users’ comments, asking questions to help engage your audience)?

Tim Devaney and Tom Stein write, “Studies show it takes a midsize company about 32 hours a month to capably handle a single social media platform.”

According to Eve Mayer, “The companies that have the most effective social media communications are those that have a combination of internal and external people doing social media.” She advises businesses to take several steps toward a successful social campaign:

• Decide what you want to achieve.
• Don’t spread yourself too thin.
• Keep some social media in-house.
• Send some social media to a consultant, someone who understands social media and can apply that knowledge across many different platforms.

How many hours a month does it realistically take for your business to maintain social presences? Don’t let the shortage of internal resources hamper your online capabilities. Outsource social media to cover your bases.

#16: Present Your Human Side With Photos

Photos and other types of visual content are highly shareable on social networks. Pam Moore suggests that when you post photos of your team, it helps to show your business as a human brand and build relationships with your community.

Social media has made it possible for you to share information about your business in a multitude of ways. Photos can show your serious, productive, silly, creative, successful and charitable sides—but above all, be sure to expose your human side.

#17: Question Readers for More Engagement

Questions are a good example of engaging content and have become a frequent go-to tactic, especially on platforms such as Facebook. Belinda Whittaker suggests three types of good questions to ask:

• Pure fan engagement questions to help tap into the interests and lifestyles of your fans.
• Market and competitive analysis questions to generate conversations and engage with possible leads who are interested in buying that product.
• Product/service feedback questions that can serve as a fast focus group to find what people like most and what areas you can expand into.

Are you asking your readers questions? When they answer, do you reply?

#18: Replicate Your Brand Identity From Platform to Platform

Let’s say you joined Facebook in 2008 and Google+ in 2012. A difference of four years can seem like eternity in the world of social media. Regardless of the year, you’ll want to make sure you have a consistent brand identity today.

Desmond Wong examined how Google, Target, Etsy, Coca-Cola, Disney, Amazon, New Yorker magazine and SEOmoz approach brand consistency across multiple social media platforms. Factors included how they use design and graphics in unison across platforms, and whether they use consistent colors, fonts, icon styles and logos.

If you’re in doubt about whether you demonstrate a consistent brand experience, take a look at all of your pages side by side and see if there are any changes you need to make.

#19: Strengthen In-Person Events With Social Media Promotion

At times you may wonder about the relationship between in-person events and social media, and how they’re able to coexist.

Jay Baer describes 7 ways to use social media to promote in-person events:

• Engage—encourage potential attendees to interact with you early on by crowdsourcing feedback.
• Intrigue—create an event page on event listing sites (e.g., Facebook events, Eventbrite).
• Invigorate potential attendees with videos, blog posts, press releases, Twitter list of attendees, etc.
• Integrate—pick a hashtag for the event to get people talking.
• Inform—ask attendees to vote on session suggestions via text messages, consider QR codes on badges.
• Propagate—stream live video of your event.
• Aggregate—spread the conference presentations as widely as possible; use email links on your website and publish on SlideShare.
• In-person events, combined with online social networking, provide terrific opportunities for businesses to reap the benefits of both worlds.

#20: Talk With Team Members to Keep Up Momentum and Morale

None of us should work in a vacuum. We need to know what’s working and what isn’t. But sometimes the people seeing the analytics aren’t necessarily the ones who are managing the company’s online presences.

Chris Heiler suggests that one critical way to keep your social media team engaged is to provide them with updates on goals. As he says, “You need to keep them updated by sharing your successes with them. Has your website traffic increased significantly since putting together your social media team? Is your blog generating more qualified leads?”

To garner support, show team members the results of their efforts.

#21: Use a Conversational Tone to Engage Readers

Social media has changed the way businesses communicate publicly. In fact, we’re often advised to avoid stiff and stodgy business writing and encouraged to adopt a more conversational tone. And yet sometimes we’re at a loss to know what that means for our business.

Courtney Seiter suggests you explore your culture, community and conversation as you develop your social media voice. As she says, “Take us inside your brand’s experience… listen to the way your community voices their feelings, speak their language, on their terms… and then communicate with personality and authenticity. No strong-arming or hard selling, just talking in a way that’s comfortable, conversational and relatable.”

Use a conversational tone to make your content feel more authentic and engaging to readers.

#22: Visit a Number of Search Engines to Find the Perfect Image

With all the attention images receive on social media, it stands to reason that businesses will be on the lookout for interesting visuals.

Joshua Lockhart provides a list of six visual search engines to help you find the image you want. He suggests TinEye, CC Search, Compfight, FlickrStorm, WeSEE and Google Image Search.

Take a few minutes and check out the visual search engines. When you find one great image you hadn’t previously come across, it will make a difference.

#23: Widen Your Writing Style With Online Tools

When you’re busy writing online content, it may feel like you don’t have the time to stop and look into new writing tools. But when you do, you’re apt to find a treasure trove of useful tips.

That’s how I felt when I came across Sherice Jacob‘s unique list of apps, websites and software programs for online writers: WordCounter, Cliche Finder, Creativity Portal, Unstuck, ZenWriter, Byword, Readability, and SychroEdit.

Writing tools can help recharge your battery while fulfilling specific needs.

#24: Expand Your Article With Relevant Tips

Online readers often gravitate to tips-related articles. A search on the keyword “tips” produced 30,400,000 global monthly searches. Suggested keyword terms included every imaginable type of “tips;” for example, photography, makeup, Sudoku, travel, weight loss. Regardless of the industry, people are often looking for tips.

#25: Yield to Your Customer’s Journey

Social channels differ in the roles they play in the customer’s journey towards making a purchase.

Lee Odden writes, “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 and social media marketing strategy that optimizes for attraction, engagement and conversion.”

#26: Zero In on Your Customer’s Interests and Needs

What do your customers care about? What information will help them in their day-to-day work or make their lives easier and more successful?

If you’re going to go to great lengths to craft and publish content, keep your customer’s interests and needs front of mind.

Your Turn

There’s a lot going on in the world of social media marketing today. We’ve covered some solid ways and social media content strategy to help ground your efforts and explored some of the innovative changes that can affect your presence.

Using AdSense & want to increase your revenue? Here I’m sharing those adsense revenue strategies which will help you to increase your revenue.

AdSense is one of the top advertisement programs for bloggers.

I have already written extensively about some good reasons for using Adsense and, for newer bloggers, I have offered our complete guide to creating an Adsense account.

Now it’s time to move forward and learn some of the basic and advanced tips to increase AdSense revenue.

One factor to which you must give some serious consideration involves the placement of your ads. Be careful to make sure you don’t violate Adsense policies by placing your ads in such a way that forces users to click on them.  Additionally, be sure to never ask someone to click your ads.

With those important considerations out of the way, Adsense’s new interface has some easy-to-use features which will surely help you to boost your revenue.

DIY tips for increasing AdSense revenue:

It is commonly said that traffic is directly proportional to money in blogging, but this is not really accurate in terms of Adsense advertising. The reason for this is that there are many factors which affect your Adsense income. These include ad placement, ad type, traffic source and most important, AdSense CPC.

If you are doing keyword research, keep an eye on the CPC column. The higher the CPC, the better it is for you as an Adsense publisher. If you target high CPC, then the number of words, keywords and clicks on your ads will usually be higher.

You can also use a tool like SEMRUSH to find profitable keywords.

One thing I don’t like about Adsense is that this type of Internet based advertising is performing the least effectively of those in my performance channel.

With all of that said, let’s move on to the goal of this post which is to give you an understanding of some of the simple and advanced ways to increase Google Adsense income.

Size/Location: 

This is one of the most common factors involved in getting low vs. high CTR.

You should try putting Adsense ads around the content and above the fold. (Above-the-fold ads perform far better than below-the-fold ads!)

You can blend the ads with your site design.

Something that bloggers often ignore are link-based ads. Link-based ads are different from banner ads, and they don’t decrease the CTR of main ads if optimized properly. I usually prefer to keep these types of ads on the header navbar.

When you are designing a website for Adsense income, you should keep the AdSense heatmap in your mind. This way you can easily create Adsense-optimized themes and designs for your new site.

Here are some of the Adsense sizes which work best:

• 336 * 280 : Large Rectangle
• 300*250 :
• 728*90
• 160*600

As you can see, in the Adsense world size matters.

Organic Traffic /U.S :

Adsense ads perform best when your traffic is from search engines.Also, interest-based ads might not perform as well if you are getting more direct traffic. Many people complain about low CPC and low Adsense income despite leaving millions of impressions per month. This is mostly due to CPC and traffic sources. Start targeting traffic from countries like the U.S.A and the U.K, and you will end up getting high CPC.

Learning more about on-page SEO optimization techniques should be very helpful to you. Also check out:

• 101 ways to drive traffic to your blog

Adsense for Search: Add extra revenue source

Adsense offers many ways to monetize your site, and you should try to take advantage of all ad types. Adsense for Search not only helps you monetize, but it also helps with user navigation. I have previously shared a guide on setting up Adsense for Search.

Adsense section targeting: Make ads more relevant

Adsense is a contextual ad network that works based on the content of your page, and this includes your header and footer.  So ads shown via Adsense must be highly relevant to the context of your article.

Adsense section targeting is a quick technique to add two lines of code before and after the content, thus targeting your ad to the content. Here is an official guide for implementing Adsense Section Targeting.

Also read: 50 Ways to boost Google Adsense revenue

Image or Text Ads: 

One of the myths of AdSense is that image ads work better. By blocking an ad type or ad category, you decrease the competition on your ad, and this also decreases the CPM of your ads. I prefer to use both ad types.

Ads between posts:

If you want to increase Adsense revenue, you can easily configure Adsense ads to match with your page background and colors, and add 468*60 image ads or text link ads in between posts.  You can also add 7-10 pictures, keeping in mind that you want to offer a good user experience to your readers. Make sure to add enough space between ads & content, so that it doesn’t violate AdSense policies.

Placement targeting:

This is one idea which many bloggers are not implementing. When you create a channel, you have the option to add more details about your ad types, and then put your ad up for auction in the market by opting for placement targeting. This increases the competition, and the ad value on your site goes up. You must enable this manually for every custom channel. To enable placement targeting on your existing custom channel, log in to your Adsense account > My ads > Custom > Custom Channels. Next, click on one of the names and a screen will pop up. Simply add the details and put a checkmark at placement targeting.

Adsense Blacklist URL’s :

There are many advertisers which pay very little per click. There used to be a site showing the Adsense ad “black list”, but if you have compiled a list of your own or you know of any site with very poor performance, you can block that advertiser’s URL. I have done it myself, and it improved my revenue by 10% in one week’s time. You can also block your competitor’s ads from displaying on your site.

Adsense Category blocking: 

In the new Adsense interface, the category blocking feature has become much easier to use. You can quickly see which categories of ads are performing poorly, and you can block those categories. I usually block the categories which have a good percentage of impression but a very low earnings percentage. This can also be configured via your “allow” and “block” ads page.

Adsense for Youtube:

If you are a video publisher or if you upload videos to YouTube, you can monetize your copyrighted video using the YouTube publisher program. I have been using it for a long time, and it performs really well. Performance, of course, depends on the amount of traffic your YouTube videos get, but currently Adsense for YouTube is making almost $40-45/month. So keep checking adsense revenue tips to get better results and to earn more money .

The financial services industry is a quiet giant. The tools it uses to interact with investors, account holders and other industries are frequently in the hands of users although we rarely hear of new or innovative approaches.

The most recent, significant change to the credit card industry was the development and adoption of the EMV liability shift that resulted in many credit card companies issuing new, chip-enabled cards to users. In order for merchants to process the cards in an EMV-compliant manner, new terminals were installed.

The EMV liability shift transferred the responsibility for fraudulent charges from the card issuing entity to the merchant accepting the payment when the credit card is “swiped” instead of “dipped”. The new, chip-enabled cards significantly reduce the likelihood of fraudulent charges by issuing a series of communication between the bank and the terminal. None of the customer’s payment information is stored, or even passes through, the merchant’s point-of-sale solution.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is bringing even more advancements to the financial services industry in the areas of banking, insurance, credit cards, customer relationship management, and data privacy and security.

Big banking

Big banks are already using connected technology to better serve their account holders. Mobile banking apps allow customers to snap a picture of a check and have it instantly deposited into their accounts. Users can also transfer money between accounts or even use apps to pay for products and services in the real world.

Now is the time to begin considering ways in which the banking industry may leverage connected home and business hubs to serve customers in innovative ways. What if your connected business solution could keep track of incoming shipments and automatically authorize payments drop-shipments?

Insurance sector

The newest application of connected technology in the automotive insurance sector is user-based (UB) insurance. Premiums are established based on the driving habits of the insured; which are captured using an in-vehicle sensor.

As more connected vehicles enter the mainstream, insurance companies have a tremendous opportunity to reward those drivers that adhere to safe-driving practices and penalize those that do not.

Credit card companies

With most stores providing reliable, high-speed connectivity credit card companies have the opportunity to issue time-sensitive offers to cardholders during in-store events. The installation of a Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacon in a store could allow credit card companies to target cardholders entering the store. The credit card company could push special offers to customers for the use of their card to pay for purchases made in the store.

CRM

Customer relationship management systems in the financial industry have typically lived on protected, in-house servers. However, the proliferation of IoT technologies has dramatically increased the security tools available to developers; making it possible for those in the financial services industry to utilize cloud-based systems to manage customer relationships.

Connecting CRM systems with content management solutions enables financial advisors to provide customers with relevant and valuable information; strengthening relationships and increasing the total value of provided services.

Secure payment gateways

As the number of devices connected to the internet increases, end-users will have more opportunities to purchase goods and services through the web. However, providing payment credentials to each individual service provider leaves the customer’s personal financial information vulnerable on many fronts. By offering secure payment gateways, financial institutions are protecting the integrity of their own systems while simultaneously providing security services to their clients.

Incorporating connected technologies into every sector of their customer and business management helps big names in the financial industry remain relevant in a generation that rarely touches paper money. It is also necessary to capitalize on the many profitable businesses that exist solely in the cloud – where all transactions are accomplished without a cash register or a card reader.

During the first milliseconds of viewing a site, if the logo, fonts, colors or imagery make my eyes bleed — I won’t proceed to the content. For myself and other professionals, design equals credibility.

We will provide a huge head start towards creating a beautifully designed wordpress tips, there are still potential poor design choices that can be made on the path to completion. Here are a few tips for staying on the path to creating a beautiful WordPress site.

1. Great Images

Images will make or break the appearance of your site. Poor image choice is the most common mistake I encounter in new websites. If you plan to use images, don’t cheap out — it will reflect poorly on your brand.

Good images are going to cost you a few bucks. Great images are going to cost you more than a few bucks. If you don’t have the budget for quality photography, there are a few options for finding good free imagery.

2. Font Choices

Once upon a time, in my youth, I thought Papyrus was a great font. Then I became a designer, and realized it’s not. Making great font choices is very important to the design, professionalism and above all else, the legibility of your site. If you want people to read your content — make it easy for them.

When in doubt, use Helvetica, Arial or Georgia. They are widely recognized as legible fonts online that have stood the test of time. If you’re not a professional designer, and a font looks “boring“, that’s probably the easiest way to recognize it as being a good font.

Seen a great font, but don’t know what it is? Try WhatTheFont from MyFonts.

Using fonts on the web isn’t like choosing a font in Microsoft Word. By default, there are only a handful of core fonts that can be viewed universally on the web. This problem has haunted web typography for years. Very difficult workarounds evolved using images, Flash or Cufon. It wasn’t until relatively recently that great solutions began to emerge.

3. Colors

Unless you are well versed in color theory, getting too creative with the color scheme on your site may be a disaster. It might look like a chimpanzee finger painting.

If color isn’t your cup of tea, a great rule of thumb is to use 2 neutral, contrasting colors (preferably shades of black and white) with the sparse use of 1 highlight color throughout your site.

If you’re feeling more ambitious, try implementing a palette from ColourLovers. Remember to make wise color choices that match your brand.

We create our themes to provide basic color changing options for the links, buttons, highlights and background. We have tried to keep the options minimal to reduce the risk of a color disaster.

4. Your Logo

Not so long ago, I was a logo designer. A logo is more than just an icon at the top of your site — it’s the face of your company. There is a reason why companies like Citibank pay millions of dollars for a logo re-branding from Pentagram. Those companies understand the value of a logo, and the importance of their brand. Follow this wordpress tips as logo is the first thingthat attracts the person whether the person is old,adults or kids.

You don’t need a million dollars for a great logo, but you do need more than $20. I’d estimate a starting rate for a great logo concept at around $300, depending on the designer. The price will likely increase considerably based on the number of concepts and revisions desired.

Logopond is a great resource for finding excellent and affordable logo designers.

If you can’t afford a logo designer, there’s always Helvetica. Use a great typeface, purchase an icon from iStockPhoto for $20, or even use your signature if it’s a personal site or brand. Keep it as simple as possible if you absolutely have to create your own logo without experience.

Just please don’t ask your secretary or nephew to design a logo if you value the appearance of your site. It won’t be pretty.

5. Avoid Clutter

More is not always more. When a site contains too much clutter — the focus of the content is lost.

By clutter, I’m referring to:

• Excessive Advertising
• Pop-Up Newsletter Forms
• Absurd Amounts of Social Media Buttons
• Unexpected Animations
• Auto-playing Music or Video
• Any Other Annoying Distractions

While advertising might be a necessity for creating a profitable site, filling it with Google AdSense on every post and sidebar is not going to result in more money. Place ads wisely, and only if your site is generating enough traffic to warrant the use of advertisements. If you’re just getting started, the focus should be on the content. There’s no such thing as an overnight success, even on the web.

A beautiful site is peaceful, not a bombardment of all senses.

Remember, anything that distracts the viewer from the content is bad. If you don’t need it, don’t use it.

Following these wordpress tips will result in a stronger brand and more interest in your site. The appearance of a professional brand is essential to any business, and we want your business to look great.

When it comes to marketing a small business, there are many different methods and small business tips you can use. There’s SEO, content marketing, email lists and more. If you want to learn more about marketing your business using some of these methods in 2017, take a look at the tips from members of our small business community below.

Watch These Marketing Trends in 2017

If you want your marketing plan to work in 2017, you need to understand all the latest trends, tools and methods available. In this  Media post, we shares some marketing trends you should know for 2017.

Get Better Insights About Your Audience

If you want to create content that resonates with your audience, then you first need to learn about them. There are some essential tools and methods you can use to get useful insights, as this post by Jenny Knizer on the Content Marketing Institute blog points out.

Find an Interesting and Profitable Niche for Your Online Venture

Whether you’re creating a blog, an ecommerce store, or any other type of online business, you need a niche. Since there are already so many different types of businesses online, you may need to get creative in order to find a niche that is both interesting and profitable. This blog post  includes some small business tips.

Use These Customer Retention Strategies That Work for Small Businesses

Once you’ve executed your marketing plan and gained new customers, you still need to work hard to keep those customers coming back. Luckily, there are some tried and true customer retention strategies that can work for small businesses.

Learn What to Do After Creating Your Buyer Persona

If you want to market to specific customers, you first need to create a buyer persona so you understand who you’re marketing to. But even that isn’t enough. For more on what to do after you’ve created your buyer persona, check out this Magnificent post.

Rank for Your Competitors’ Keywords

There are many different schools of thought when it comes to using your competition to gain search traffic. In this post, Neil Patel examines some of the pros and cons of this concept for different types of businesses.

Build a Marketing Budget for 2017

Before you really get started on your marketing efforts for the new year, you need to set some kind of budget so you don’t reach beyond your means. This Search Engine Journal post by Jacob Baadsgaard features some tips you can use to create a marketing budget for 2017.

Use Marketing Velocity to Increase Your Sales and Revenue

Marketing velocity is the speed at which your marketing efforts work to deliver results. So its an important concept for marketers to understand. In this post, Ross Kimbarovsky details some ways you can use marketing velocity to increase sales and revenue.

Help Your Ecommerce Store Recover From a Growth Setback

Running an ecommerce business isn’t easy. You’re likely to face setbacks at some point or another. So understanding how to recover from those setbacks is paramount.

Get the Most Out of Your Holiday Emails

Email marketing can be an especially effective tactic during the holiday season. But in order to get the most out of it, you need to really understand your subscribers and what they’re looking for this holiday season. To see more small business tips about getting the most out of your holiday emails, check the Marketing Land post.