SEO, Digital Marketing, and Analytics Nerd
Let’s start with the basics: KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. It’s incredibly important to identify your SEO KPIs as you start on your SEO campaign. You need to be able to measure progress in your campaign to see if you efforts are returning any value. Specific KPIs are going to differ, but there are major ones your should be reporting on and using to measure your SEO campaign. Read more
So I’ve been off the past couple of weeks and haven’t been keeping up with the weekly SEO and digital marketing roundup. There was Thanksgiving, side projects, my full time job, and, you know, sleep. But I’m back baby!
Full disclosure: I am featured in this article, but there are some good tips in there, including mine (in my opinion!). Here’s my tip:
I’ve learned from working in the inbound marketing world is that you need to be focused on the customer. What do they have questions about? What do they need help with? What are their frustrations? And then you can frame your marketing strategy around answering those questions and how your product can help your potential customers. You need to be there where your customers are and that channel can differ from industry to industry, but if you’re providing informative and useful information your customers need, you’re on the right track.
This is the second time I have featured Kerry Jones in my weekly SEO and digital marketing roundup, and she writes great stuff. A lot of us SEOs are in industries that are maybe not the sexiest so creating engaging, linkable content about that industry can be difficult. This article argues that we should be using tangential content, which is content that is somewhat related to your industry.
For example, an apartment listing site put together a piece on which states post the nastiest tweets. We can see how that is tangentially related: who wants to get an apartment in a state that is awful? That piece of content got over 620 media pickups. Kerry lists some more examples, and it should be the proof you need to invest in tangential content Read more
There’s plenty of reasons to move to HTTPS, it’s going to help you with rankings and give your the site the needed security it needs. But it can be a bit daunting to actually make the switch. I know I put it off because I worried I would screw it up. And guess what? When I made the switch I screwed up. That’s why I wish I had this guide that walks you through every step and gives you a detailed checklist. Best of luck on your HTTPS migration!
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A crucial step in your SEO campaign is doing keyword research, implementing those keywords, and prioritizing content ideas. This guide from Digital Examiner walks you through the whole process. The guide is informative and extensive, and you can operationalize the techniques that are listed:
This article, if true, is a fantastic case study of why you you need to understand your audience before you make a big business decision with your website. Fox Sports made the decision to pivot to video and in the process their traffic dropped 88%.
So this article should serve as a case study for you if you’re thinking about making major content changes to your website. Are you taking away the thing your audience loves about your site? Do you actually know what your audience wants? If you don’t, you better answer those questions before making big changes. Fox Sports didn’t and now they are paying the price. Read more
This is from Google’s official Webmaster blog, and I take it as a heavy hint from Google to prepare yourself for their mobile-first indexing update that is looking to happen sometime in 2018. They lay out how to move your site URLs when you go responsive in 4 steps and providing some imagery along with it:
If you’re not on a responsive site, it’s time to make the change. Seriously, start getting a plan together and stop delaying the inevitable. Read more
I’ve got to do a quicker post this week unfortunately, but it’s for a good reason. I’m headed out of town to celebrate my anniversary! We’re going to Milwaukee, which is really like a smaller Chicago, but I spent a lot of my childhood running around the city and going to Brewers games (Go Brewers! As of this post we’re only 3.5 games behind. We’re going to a game this weekend and I’m hoping we can close that gap a bit). We’ll be hopping around the lakefront and different breweries and basically just enjoying the Wisconsin of it all.
If you have suggestions on something you think I should check out while in Milwaukee, get at me on Twitter! My main concern is getting my cheese and sausage game on across the border. I don’t think we’ll have a problem that!
Anyway, here’s what I’ve been reading this week, and what I think it worthwhile for you to check out.
As a SEO, whenever I read that there has been a Google algorithm update it sets off mild anxiety inside me and I go to check my analytics to check if there has been a drop in traffic. Then I hurry up and load Search Console to see what it is reporting for my target keywords. Good times, am I right SEOs?
I thought I’d walk through the major stages of emotion a SEO goes through when they learn of an algorithm update.
What is happening? What happened? What did this do?! Read more
If you’re blogging on a regular basis, it can be hard to come up with ideas again and again. And this can be true if you work in a traditionally “boring” industry. Salesforce put together this list of 61 writing prompts that can help you come up with some fresh blog ideas for your site and maybe help cure your writer’s block. Read more
