Tag: Google visibility

It might be true that some sites are “winning” the search engines simply by existing and being a well-known reputable sources, like the New York Times or Wall Street Journal.

But it’s even more true that most of us have to work at it.

Don calls SEO “the new direct mail.” Keyword research and implementation is perhaps … Continue

We’re constantly reading and writing about how to drive website traffic, but how often do we discuss the website traffic report that all of us should be pouring over to see whether or not our hard work is going anywhere? … Continue

Claim your FREE digital copy of Google Website Analytics: The Best Website Analytics Being Monitored by Successful Businesses now. … Continue

Catch up on the Mequoda Daily’s blog posts for this past week … Continue

All SEO keywords are not equally important—volume and competition matter!

The most effective SEO keyword strategy is to compete vigorously for top placement for the most popular keyword suggestions returned by the Google Keyword Tool for a given root keyword phrase (Primary Keyword Phrase). … Continue

Your metadata doesn’t matter anymore … Just kidding. It does, sort of.

Recently one of our clients noticed that the metadata they were putting into their articles wasn’t necessarily the data that was getting pulled into Google search results.

In days of old, metadata was valuable. It’s what Google used to determine the content on our pages. … Continue

Discover how Harvard University uses analytics to gain Google visibility, increase website traffic and sell premium content

Google Analytics should be every online publisher’s best friend … but most don’t have a clue how to use it.

Mequoda Group, a leading consultant to online publishers including The Motley Fool, Consumer Reports, Crain Communications and International Data … Continue

Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You may have a clear strategy and great content, but if your site is unusable and unattractive, it will be difficult for users to find what they’re looking for, difficult for you to get users to do what you want them to do and … Continue

Three or four times a year I get to help launch a new website. Given that we use organic sources like search engines, links from referring websites, and social media to drive qualified traffic, getting those first visitors to a new website is an interesting challenge. The tips provided below will help increase website traffic … Continue

A step-by-step guide to on-page SEO that will boost rankings and site traffic

Publishers are no strangers to search engine optimization, although it’s important to know that there are several dimensions of optimization, and they’re all necessary to get the most residual traffic from your most popular posts. For example, on-page SEO refers to the copy … Continue

Do your audience development tools help produce a more effective workload?

If social media has become a significant part of your audience development efforts, here are three tools that can help you find audience members, competitors, and conversations easier on Twitter.

-TweetCharts. Amanda MacArthur wrote a comprehensive article on what to expect while using TweetCharts. This audience … Continue

White hat SEO techniques are complex and take time to acquire.

Kim and I teach our in-house Audience Development Workshop 10 or more times per year. And yet every time I sign a new audience development consulting client, Kim needs to remind me to schedule the workshop.

I am both a journalist and engineer by training and … Continue

The Audience Development Consulting Program helps define all relevant parts of your content to dictate future improvements

Analytics may not really be the newest tool for audience development, but a comprehensive set of analytics compiled in one location is certainly new for many audience development professionals.

What data are you already looking at in your audience development … Continue

New workshop, new needs analysis, new analytics suite and consulting program

It’s been said that it may be hard to remember that the original goal was to drain the swamp, when you’re up to your ass in alligators. The process of building website traffic is complex and varied. There are day-to-day responsibilities, analytics everywhere, conflicting priorities, … Continue

Maximize your audience development efforts by looking at the cold hard facts

For the last six months, our keyword analysts have been working on a new reporting package that helps guide an audience development strategy through detailed data.

Personally, I was very impressed when I first saw the report and started using it for my own content. … Continue

The new Audience Development Consulting Program will help you plan, target, and track your keyword campaigns

Online audience development has evolved, although not every online business owner realizes this yet.

This evolution isn’t just about the audience development strategies that exist online. It also includes the preparation, monitoring, and measuring that comes along with a well-devised audience … Continue

Our new Audience Development Consulting Program (ADCP) offers comprehensive guidance to audience development professionals … Continue

The Blockbuster SEO Post has become legendary in a short time because knowing how to create Blockbuster SEO Posts can lead to immediate traffic boosts. Sometimes this increase in traffic can account for thousands of new visitors each month.

If you are unfamiliar with the process of creating Blockbuster SEO Posts, take a look at this … Continue

Catch up on the Mequoda Daily’s blog posts for this past week … Continue

Knowing how much qualified website traffic Google should be sending you is just a matter of doing the numbers

Almost a decade ago, a close colleague told me that it was impossible to figure out how much search traffic a website could or should be receiving from Google and other search engines. He was wrong.

In 2012, … Continue

After you have a keyword universe developed, how do you make sense of all the data? A keyword universe, which is the backbone of online marketing efforts, typically consists of hundreds of thousands of keyword phrases. Where do you rank on those terms? Which keyword phrases are the most important to your online business?

The Google … Continue

Five expectations for a modern media company IT department

I suppose most people my age in the IT industry have a favorite character from the original Star Trek. When I was 12, I wanted to be the chief engineering officer for the Starship Enterprise. I love watching Montgomery Scott push his ship to the limit, often … Continue

For consumer marketers, there is perhaps no better audience development program than one anchored by a well-run audience development blog

I almost never meet a publisher who tells me their audience could not be larger. And for the most part, they are absolutely correct. Most niche media publishers never reach more than three to five percent … Continue

3 best practices for increasing website traffic

January 2012 has been a record setting month for Mequoda Daily.

As a small B2B company, it can be hard to reach specific milestones since most are resourced at a smaller level. However, this past month has yielded more significant results than usual, and it is due to some … Continue

A 7-step guide to the keyword universe

The keyword universe is the core to any successful online business. If content publishers or content marketers lack a keyword universe, they are basically operating in the dark – defining their online existence by assumptions and not clear factual evidence.

How is your keyword universe built and managed? For … Continue

Target and track the keywords that are core to your online business

The Google Visibility Report (GVR) is the core document behind our keyword strategy. It is used to structure all SEO activities and conveniently house them in one location, which aids in the process of keyword research, analysis and reporting.

A keyword universe, which is ultimately … Continue

By now, the savviest online publishers understand the need for a thorough keyword universe. Although it is time consuming to create such a document, the rewards are great, as it provides the ability to target keyword phrases that matches your content with what audience members are searching for.

The Keyword Benchmark Study is available to all … Continue

Catch up on the Mequoda Daily’s blog posts for this past week … Continue

Discover the secret behind Blockbuster SEO posts that generate hundreds or thousands of unique monthly page views

If you want to attract a more targeted audience, and receive hundreds or thousands of new page views each month, try following these steps.

First: Open up your Google Visibility Report (GVR). Sort the Keyword Competitive Index (KCI) of all … Continue

Catch up on the Mequoda Daily’s blog posts for this past week … Continue

Don’t forget these SEO tips for Google visibility, or your SEO efforts will be lacking

Aristotle once said, “Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.”

I bet Aristotle would be enthralled by the technology we have today, especially search engines.

I doubt he could … Continue

Tips from PR Newswire on selecting the best words for SEO success

SEO is not just for blog posts; it has found a place all throughout the Internet, from image tags and video transcriptions to optimized press releases.

SEO is ultimately all about reaching your audience. You need to use and understand the language employed by your … Continue

The lines between SEO professional and SEO blogger are becoming thinner – but not too thin

I love to look through Quora.com, a Q&A site mostly geared towards professionals and technology although I’ve read some pretty intense personal stories of battling cancer and other real-life triggers. The other day I came across a thread called, “What … Continue

Technology powers change in Gold Member service options

For more than two decades, I’ve based all my consulting relationships on a face-to-face meeting schedule. I learned the model from my mentor, John Klingel. The idea was pretty simple; for each client, I would establish a regular face-to-face full-day meeting schedule as the basis of the relationship. … Continue

7 steps for natural SEO writing

In yesterday’s Mequoda Daily, I discussed what it takes to be labeled as an SEO native.

Like the vast majority reading this article, I am an SEO immigrant. However, unlike most, I’ve spent years understanding, practicing and teaching the SEO writing process. … Continue

How we can all learn to think about SEO first

Print editors were trained long before SEO, and as digital immigrants, they often find it difficult to incorporate the SEO process into their writing.

Over the years, as an instructor and coach, I have taught hundreds of people how to properly use SEO in their daily writing. … Continue

The most relevant keywords may change, but our step-by-step process remains the same

In yesterday’s Mequoda Daily, we discussed using Google Insight for Search as an assistant for continual keyword research.

If you are familiar with Google Insight for Search, you know that it can help you find the keywords that resonate the best with your audience. … Continue

Early bird pricing ends on Tuesday, July 12th so register now and save

Register for Search Engine Optimization 2011 Seminar now

SEO has become a fundamental skill in the digital landscape. If online editors, writers and content marketers aren’t knowledgeable on the best practices for SEO, then will not be as successful as possible in building website … Continue

Three reasons why we are good at SEO

In the Mequoda Daily yesterday, I talked about writing and titling blockbuster SEO articles.

This method of targeting relevant keyword phrases your audience searches for is a true white hat SEO technique because it involves researching questions being asked and providing informative, high-quality answers. … Continue

5 tips for writing and titling blockbuster SEO articles that will generate more Google visibility

A blockbuster SEO article is a post that will show up in the first three pages of Google, preferably page-one, and remain there for an extended amount of time.

Blockbuster SEO articles do not happen by chance. Although, I suppose if … Continue

A step-by-step video for using the Google keyword search tool for on-the-fly keyword research, and why Mequoda ranks so well for apple pie recipes

Why do you write blog posts for your publication? It’s probably because you want people to read them, right? Well, most people find the articles that they read through the Google search … Continue

All online businesses need to track metrics, and pay attention to the numbers that equal successful revenue generation

At the recent SIPA 2011 event in Washington, DC, I had the opportunity to sit in on David Meerman Scott’s keynote entitled “Real-Time Marketing and PR – Why Journalists and Marketers Should Care.”

This session focused on the concept … Continue

Order this 90-minute webinar and discover a step-by-step process for taking visitors from search to conversion … Continue

Three effective uses of keyword research include audience development, website taxonomy and article tagging

In yesterday’s Mequoda Daily, I discussed the impact that Mequoda System publishers have experienced from Google’s Panda update.

All of the Mequoda Systems we’ve analyzed thus far have seen an increase in the overall number of Google listings for their keywords by at … Continue

Virtual perceptions grow within Google

By now, online publishers have acknowledged Google’s Panda update, which began rolling out in late February.

To discover how the algorithm change affected Mequoda System publishers, we recently ran an original analysis of B2B and B2C media websites. This analysis focused on some of our Mequoda Gold Member clients, for whom we … Continue

This document guides website and content development efforts by incorporating a keyword universe  that serves as a key management component. The Google Visibility Report and Google Visibility Index are parts of the Keyword Benchmark Study and key components to planning, measuring and managing your keyword universe. … Continue

Content Marketing – Content, Community and Commerce: 5 documents special- interest online media businesses need to consider before launching or relaunching a “website”

Over the past 15 years, I’ve helped start more than 100 successful online businesses. Without exception, all of them have properly addressed three principles that were laid out in the mid 90s as … Continue

5 Advanced Google Search Tips for Editors

Google is a great tool to use for writing headlines that will get found and bring you new traffic.

Furthermore, Google Analytics is a great tool for an in-depth drilldown on your keyword strategy. Utilizing it will help you determine which keywords demand more attention through added content and optimization. … Continue

The Mequoda Key Metrics Dashboard will help you manage content marketing efforts

What criteria are you using to determine if your content marketing efforts are successful?

Many online publishers are having difficulties adopting a content marketing strategy, let alone measuring its success. … Continue

How to avoid black hat SEO practices while embracing a respectable standard of journalism

There is a growing trend where media reporters are investigating why certain websites rank so well.

If foul play is afoot, these reporters expose the black hat SEO practices and the offending websites typically feel the consequences. Google has penalized JCPenny, Overstock and, … Continue