Month: March 2016

Save Images in Desktop Google Search

Last year, Google added a feature that allowed you to save image search results and organize them using tags. This feature was only available in the mobile interface, but now you can use it on the desktop too. Just click the “save” button next to an image search result and then click “view saved” to go to google.com/save and manage your saved images.

“This feature is currently available in the US when you search for images on desktop and in your mobile browser. To try it out, make sure you’re logged into your browser with your Google Account; then you can start image searching and saving,” informs Google.

The site mentions that the “website links you save using the Save to Google extension for Chrome can also be found here,” but I couldn’t find this extension. There’s a Save to Google Drive extension, but it only saves images and screenshots to Google Drive.

Google April Fools’ Day 2016

April Fools’ Day is an important day for Google because there are a lot of hoaxes and crazy features to show.

Google Japan announced a Physical Flick Bluetooth keyboard (translation). It’s called Furikku and the circuit board and firmware are open source. The keyboard is actually the hardware version of Google’s Japanese input software for Android.

“The device consists of a button that users can ‘push’ and also a sensor that detects ‘flick’ actions. There are 12 sensors and 8 complementary action buttons so a total of 20 sensors in the device. This device can be employed by users who are accustomed to typing letters on their smartphones, but not on their desktop keyboards,” mentions Google.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Google Knowledge Graph Cards Add Share Button

Google’s Knowledge Graph cards added a button that lets you share the search results pages on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or by sending an email. You’re actually sending a link to the entire search page, not just to the card.

Knowledge Graph cards include a lot of useful information extracted from various web pages and other resources: images, official homepage, social network pages, Wikipedia descriptions, useful facts, events, quotes and more.

Multimedia Added to Your PR Content

Engaging content is more essential than ever in today’s busy media landscape, and one smart way to heighten the engagement factor of yours is with multimedia. Adding multimedia is both an art and a science. If done right, it can help your content gain a competitive edge. If your photos are boring, your videos aren’t helpful, and your infographics aren’t outstanding, you’ll miss out on valuable traffic that can lead to sales. The good news is, there are some standards and best practices you can rely on to make sure your multimedia content checks out.

Here are the answers to 6 questions you might have about adding multimedia to PR content – from blog posts to press releases.

What is multimedia?

Multimedia refers to the electronically delivered combination of media – or methods of communication, including text, graphics, video, animation, and sound that can be accessed in an interactive way. Much of the content online today falls within this scope.

How has the use of multimedia in content changed over the last 5 years?

In the past 5 years, internet use worldwide has drastically increased. The digital revolution has had a major impact on the way we communicate – advances in technology have influenced the development of multimedia systems such that virtually all computers in use today have some capacity to create and display multimedia.

Here are some stats that point to the increasing importance of multimedia:

What are Google Panda and Google Hummingbird, and how do they affect multimedia?

Of course, if your content isn’t being found online, multimedia won’t work for you. You want to make sure your content is recognized by Google and served up for the right queries.

Google Panda (which rolled out in July 2015), and aimed to downrank pages that it deemed low quality. According to a Google spokesperson, “When our algorithms look out for unique, compelling, and high-quality content, that can have many forms, including images, videos, or other kinds of embedded rich-media … it helps us a lot to have context of any content like that, and we generally pick up that context in the form of text on pages that embed that kind of content.” So, provide text around your images and video (captions and surrounding text) as well as alt text to give Google cues.

Google’s Hummingbird update took place in 2013, and aimed to facilitate ranking of pages based on semantic search. Content must be created to match the more-conversational queries of searchers. Not only does that include conversational writing but according to Hubspot, “the more you can diversify your brand with different digital media assets, the more likely you are to curry favor with the search engines and the searchers” – Google now delivers a blend of multimedia results including images, product listings, reviews, and photos.

Importance of Content Quality and Optimization

Google’s algorithm can change on a dime, but with every update Google has made, it has prized higher-quality content. Content creators who are genuinely interested in providing valuable, engaging and clear information – in the forms readers want – will not be at a loss. Help Google understand the context of your multimedia content by adhering to these optimization best practices:

  • When adding images: Include an image file name (ideally this will include a focus keyword you want to rank for), image size (for faster loading time) alt text, description and caption
  • When uploading a video: Titles and tags are a major factor in making your videos more discoverable. Include brand keywords in your tagging, and try your best to avoid irrelevant tags
  • When uploading audio files: Optimize audio file names with relevant keywords just as you would for image files. Make sure each podcast episode has its own unique title and description

Optimizing press releases with multimedia and links

Today’s high-performance press releases, like content, include multimedia assets as well as well-placed links, compelling headlines and engaging CTAs. They’re created with shareability and search engine-friendly language in mind. In content as in news releases, Google will penalize an overuse of keywords or links, so write press releases and content with links that lead naturally to other content as you see fit, and incorporate keywords in a way that is natural.

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Promote Your Business with Blog Reviews

If you have a business website, be it an online store, a web app or a magazine, you know that promoting it and doing some advertising is a must if you want your site to grow and become popular.

Most people know the traditional advertising methods: display banners, video ads, Facebook ads and so on. One advertising method you probably don’t know about, but that is very efficient, is blog reviews.

By getting a blog review you’ll be able to get your brand in front of the audience of the specific blogs and sites you choose. If those are relevant to your product or service, the overall return on investment should be nice, because you’ll be exposing your brand to people who interested in it.

The big advantage of blog reviews over other forms of advertising is that your message will go straight to the visitors. People tend to ignore banners and traditional ads, but they will read a blog review just like they would a normal post, making it a very effective advertising option.

When people hear about blog reviews they tend to think that we are talking about fake reviews. That is not the case. Most review networks required the bloggers to write real and unbiased reviews about the products and services. You can also disclaim that the review is sponsored by your company, making the process 100% transparent and ethical.

If you want a recommendation, check out the guys from Get Reviewed. It’s a new blog review advertising network that is growing quite fast, and they already have a nice list of authority blogs where you can get reviews from.

Finally, remember to not put all your eggs on the same basket. Mixing banner ads, social media advertising and blog reviews can be an efficient combination to raise awareness about your brand and drive more visitors and customers to your website!

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What Native Advertising Does to Your SEO

Though marketers might have you believe that content creation is the only way to get noticed online, the truth is advertising is far from dead ? it’s just hiding.

Rather than using obtrusive banner ads and flashing sidebars, smart businesses have begun investing in so-called native ads, which blend seamlessly into any website’s style to prevent disruptions to user experience. Even better, like content, native ads give a major boost to your SEO efforts. Here’s how.

You Want Lots of Links for High Rankings

nativeWhile Google’s algorithms for determining rankings change seemingly every month, one factor always remains: Links. So far, link building is hands-down the most important activity you can do to improve your site’s SEO ? more important than keyword selection, meta-tag creation, and content optimization combined. The fact is, the more links on other sites that point to yours, the easier search engines can find your site.

The reason for this dates back to the advent of Google, when founder Larry Page created PageRank, software that could determine the popularity of webpages using incoming links. Page used the same tech to develop Google, which quickly became the most powerful search engine on the Web. Eventually, Page used PageRank’s numbers to understand quality of webpages, which only further improved the effectiveness of Google’s searches.

However, before Google began organizing search results based upon quality, websites began abusing the power of link building (as well as other optimization techniques). Many added their webpages to directories in an attempt to trick Google’s spiders into ranking their sites higher ? and it worked. However, today, Google actually penalizes such blatant attempts at SEO with lower rankings, though, importantly, advertisements still contribute positively to a webpage’s rank.

Thus, having incoming links is crucial to your site’s placement on search engine results, but there is a limit to how and where you should build links. Thankfully, native advertising makes the process so much simpler.

Native Advertising Is Good for Everyone

native2There is a reason Google is trying to curb the popularity of artificial link-building: It hurts the search engine’s ability to provide relevant and valuable results to Web users. When the most optimized pages always outrank those most applicable to search keywords, users leave discouraged, and the Internet as a whole suffers.

In an ideal world, your website would naturally gain incoming links from Web users who know your company and appreciate your products and content. However, now that nearly every business has come online, it is nearly impossible for one to stand out without engaging in active SEO, which means actively attempting to accumulate incoming links. Unfortunately, getting publishers to add your links to their sites isn’t always easy. Because Google punishes publishers and businesses for obvious paid links, publishers are hesitant to add links to their sites without context.

Enter: native advertising. Though it comes in many styles ? from full content creation to native ad networks ? native advertising blends into a publisher’s existing content, providing value to everyone involved: Business owners achieve more incoming links as well as added visibility for their pages and products; publishers gain income and additional content to populate their sites; and users benefit from enhanced website style and advertisements tailored to their interests.

As a result, higher quality sites (meaning those deemed reliable and popular by Google) are generally more likely to accept only native advertising, which means your SEO will increase dramatically by opting to subscribe to a native ad network or engage in content creation.

Traditional Advertising Is Dying

Though native advertising’s benefits are incredibly useful to your site’s SEO, making the switch to native advertising should be your top priority for another reason entirely: the imminent death of traditional advertising. As more and more businesses customize their advertising content to specific groups of Web users ? and as consumers demand more interaction from their favorite brands ? the centuries-old style of one-way advertising (a la print ads and television commercials) is declining slowly, painfully, and obviously.

Native advertising is the future, for better or for best. By using native strategies to increase your incoming links, your site will rank higher on search engine results, but that isn’t even the most powerful benefit of the advertising style. By integrating your ads into content Web users want, your business becomes a contributor with a devoted online following. In the end, your increased SEO and improved reputation mean one thing: more sales.

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The Retargeting Techniques That Everybody Should Be Aware Of

One of the most successful websites in the field of online marketing had once used this technique, it doesn’t matter how much they have been through to achieve such success, what really matters is that they have managed to reach their goals.

What is retargeting?

Retargeting is a form of digital marketing where companies serve ads to people who have already visited their websites. This definition confuses a lot of marketers but to simplify it, let’s think about it in a different way.

Imagine you are a marketing manager of an electronics store. Someone comes in, walks around the shop, stares at one computer, reads all the information related to it and leaves the store without buying it. While observing his journey in your store, you started wondering how to get this person back into your store, present him with all the features of this computer, remind him of its benefits to finally close the deal. You’re thinking that if you could go after him, and have another chance at presenting this computer, you would totally do. He might end up purchasing it, or not. But at least, you’ve tried!

Let’s mirror this in your online store now. But instead of going after this prospect in the streets, you go after him online when he’s visiting other sites. If the targeting is done correctly, you can show him the same computer he was looking at on your products page.

Your goal is to market your product and sell it. So Let’s think of this way, someone comes to ask about a product but leaves without buying, the best way to convince him to purchase the item would be to send someone behind him who can remind him if not convince him of the products and its benefits and that it is the best bargain he could afford in the market. But of course you won’t do that in real life, it would be creepy, awkward and most importantly, it will make the consumer anxious enough to get rid of you and it also illegal to stalk someone like that. But however weird that may sound, it can be done online, and it’s not at all illegal, the technique is known as Retargeting or Remarketing

The reasons why remarketing is preferable are basically the efficiency and low cost of impressions, the accurate targeting of people, improves the return on investment, the branding’s cost becomes effective and eventually deliver better conversion rates. This is one of the reason people are engaging into the online marketing world instead of the actual one. It is not as hard as it seems, it basically takes a little bit of time to be accommodated.

When you master the skills of retargeting it will become easier for you to build a fast growing company that will make the outcome more quantitative than what you have expected. With the help of various platforms on the internet, you can really step it up and manage to find the right targets. One of the most useful platforms are the ones that keep an eye on the visitors, know their interests, calculate their behaviors and all this can be done by simply leaving a cookie in their browser and as a result, displaying for them various ads that convey exactly what products they are interested in.

Perfect Audience

The Perfect Audience provides a small manual that informs the user on how to properly use the website in order to make the most out of it.

The people at Perfect Audience make sure that you never go weary of retargeting people, they do the job and thus provide a very simple service for people who have the need to keep their retargeting strategy on a certain level. A script is handed to the owner to be included in his or her website’s body and after that, a list should be created of the types of visitors that must be retargeted, a campaign should be outlined in order to target specific parts of the the targeting list you have already created and when all this is down, the ads will start appearing in every slot of a website the target visits.

Social media, and especially Facebook that has an immense database of users, will contribute in making the come back to your website, how is that you may ask? The answer is very simple. When the code that you had implemented in your website functions, the customers who closed the page and went to browse Facebook, will encounter an ad from your website and with a slight chance will persuade him to go back and check out. Perfect Audience can target people on Facebook through standard ads that appear at the side or an ad that can be displayed in the user’s news feed

Retargeter

This is a new website in the field of retargeting, it basically based itself on the other website that already existed and managed to combine all the good things they offer in addition to the new thing they offer, that is it quickly managed to become of the most used websites that offer this service. There are plenty of services Retargeter offers, starting from Facebook exchange to search retargeting, the website cookies ads just by simply a click, in other words, if a consumer click an ad it will directly go to his cookies which will make it, alongside with other ads, appears in every other website and free ad slot. The main targets this website aims to achieve is to integrate its ads into websites with over 30 thousands new visitors every week, the option with which you can create ads vary from geographic, income or the interests of the consumers.

Retargeter allows you to control the number of ads you want to be displayed every month, this way you will be able to control your financial position as well, the prices they offer per month can be a little bit expensive but they offer the best service in the market to the time of writing these lines.

AdRoll

The last platform is perhaps is the most used in the most known. Adroll was first made appearance in 2007 and since then it managed to introduce the advertising world with a new marketing technique and especially retargeting. The adopt both strategies that are based on content and behavior, in other words, they offer ads based on the interests of the consumer and his behavior and thanks to this their customer service in the best out there. As far as payments are concerned, there are many levels you than you can use, the starter package allows you to spend whatever you like, and the other two levels, premium and plus are each set with a specific amount of money on monthly basis.

But what distinguish them the most among their competitors? The answer is the team and the experience they have in the field of retargeting, not only this, their dashboard offerings are also a factor that makes people choose them. Their platform offers the users plenty of option that they can use in order to control their ads and websites

Conclusion

By the end of reading this article you will be familiar with the term of targeting, also known as remarketing, and have fully grasp the basis of it. You will also be informed of the platforms the deliver the best options and easy access to your content. Aside from the platforms we have mentioned there are a lot of other option, Chango, Triggit, Google and Fetchback are also ones of top platforms you can use if you don’t think one of the ones mentioned above doesn’t go along with your financial position of your desirable settings.

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Infographic: Top 6 SEO Strategies for 2016

For someone with an online presence, personal or business, the concept of an SEO strategy can seem a little daunting. Unless you have experience in digital marketing, you might have not even heard of search engine optimisation, which could mean you’re missing out of a huge amount of web traffic. Never fear; this is exactly why a team of dedicated digital marketing experts from have put their heads together, and compiled this helpful infographic on how to structure your strategies for 2016, so that you can get all the insider tips on the latest search engine algorithms and design your website to be offered among on the first page of search results.

Thousands of sites are rapidly losing visitors, due to being improperly optimized (if at all!), and incorrect or out-dated strategies can do just as much damage to your ranking as a page with zero strategy. Google is refining its searches, and becoming more understanding of the internet user’s intentions when they browse Google. So no, you can’t just pepper your website with keywords and expect that to work anymore! Now, if your content isn’t interesting and fresh, or your backlinks seem a bit shady, Google will be looking the other way. So it’s up to you to scroll through the infographic below, and implement these tips into your SEO strategy.

seo-strategies

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Top 10 SEO Articles of 2015

There have been thousands of articles published on SEO over the past 12 months. Many I’ve read, some I’ve written and a few I’ve bookmarked for safekeeping. Here is a list of my 10 favourites from 2015:

1. 5 SEO Myths to Forget in 2015

All the way back in January 2015, Kristine Schachinger wrote an article on Search Engine Watch to put an end to six myths that some junior or less-informed SEOs may have believed were true.

In her article, Kristine gave an idea of the cost of SEO, the importance of our Google ranking and put to bed any claims that SEO is dead, among other topics.

2. Improve your local SEO with these citation essentials

Back in February, Darren Shaw wrote a detailed article for Wordtracker on improving your local SEO to help potential customers find you or your client’s business in the local neighbourhood.

Darren goes on to explain the importance of listing all of your current contact information, phone numbers and locations to help Google better understand where the business is located. As well as this, the blog post has lots of information on local citations.

3. 4 Technical SEO Issues That Often Go Unnoticed

Daniel Bianchini published this insightful piece on State of Digital back in May, going into some less-discussed aspects of SEO.

In his post, Daniel goes into good detail about Redirect Chains, Layered Navigation, Robots.txt and Schema Mark-Up and their importance to your website.

4. Announcing the Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet 3.0

Cyrus Shepard’s SEO cheat sheet also published in May remains printed and pinned to my note board for being such a simple but genius piece of work.

The information is short and sweet, making it easy to digest. This cheat sheet serves as a great checklist when you take a new SEO client on board.

5. The Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors: 2015 Edition

Danny Sullivan’s periodic table of SEO from June makes it into my list for being an awesome piece of linkbait as much as anything else. It’s a pretty clever adaptation of the original periodic table, don’t you think?

The article on Search Engine Land explains that it was published to help “focus on the fundamentals needed to achieve success with search engine optimisation” and that “the table is designed to broadly guide those new to or experienced with SEO into general areas of importance.”

6. The Top 5 Ranking Factors for 2015: How Strong is Your Hand?

Marcus Tober published the exciting Searchmetrics Ranking Factors study back in July this year. With the mass data they have to analyse I recommend you download the Whitepaper from their website to give you a greater understanding of what the important ranking factors in Google.

The top five are:
1. Relevant, holistic content is more important than ever
2. User experience – beyond the desktop
3. Keywords are becoming increasingly obsolete
4. Backlinks – correlations are decreasing
5. Social signals – a bonus for organic rankings

Data is from the US and as they often get Google updates before the United Kingdom and Europe, it’s an opportunity to get ahead of the game.

7. 11 Factors That Could Be Killing Your Rankings

Time for a bit of self-promotion. Back in August I published an article explaining lots of things you may be doing to your website that are potentially killing your Google rankings that you may not be aware of.

This has been the most shared article on Receptional.com in 2015, so I like to think my name was worthy of being included in this list.

8. Top 5 Google SEO Performance Indicators

SEMRush have a wealth of great content on their blog and my favourite SEO-related post from 2015 came from Fili Wiese in September.

Fili went into great detail about page download speed, indexed pages and structured data among other information to help Google better understand your website.

9. International SEO: How to Fix & Prevent Duplicate Content Issues

In November, Shane Barker published a guide on Search Engine People to help fix and prevent any duplicate issues SEOs may have when it comes to international SEO.

Aside from an issue with the language barrier which could cause duplicate content issues in Google, Shane produced an in-depth guide to help with managing multilingual versions of your website and targeting specific countries and more.

10. SEO Campaign Case Study: 1,117 Social Shares and 15% More Organic Traffic

Brian Dean updated his SEO campaign case study recently so I couldn’t resist included it in this piece.

All of Backlinko’s blog posts are flagship content and must read pieces but this one falls into the SEO category. Brian’s case study goes into detail about how he helped increase one client’s traffic by 15% in only two weeks, explained in a way you can recreate for yourself or your clients.

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6 Effective Tips on Blog Writing

You can’t be good at blog writing without making efforts.

However, there are many useful tips that might help you improve your writing to keep your audience interested and, therefore, achieve success in a blogging niche. To build authority online, your content should be interesting, unique, and reliable. Thus, it’s important to do research and post up-to-date information that suits your readers’ needs. To become a better blogger, you’re welcome to pay attention to the following tips on blog writing.

Be an Expert of Your Niche

To be helpful for you audience, you need to be an expert in your niche. If you know how to do research to find handy tips, that’s great. If you have an experience, that’s even better. Obviously, it’s impossible to build an authority online in one day, so you need to keep developing your skills, sharing tips, and growing your audience. No matter what you are writing about, just know your theme from A to Z.

Write For Your Audience

A proficient blogger would agree that your readers first. To become a guru, you need to think about your audience: analyze their preferences and predict their expectations, find out what they are interested in, and write for them! Read their comments, communicate with them, and create other topics relevant to their queries.

Avoid Making Mistakes

The better you write, the more readers you have. A blogger can’t make spelling, grammar, or stylistic mistakes, as it’s important to show your expertise and produce high-quality content only. Although all people make mistakes, you’d better learn how to avoid doing it in the future: use tools and apps to proofread the text, ask for the help, or give it a time. All in all, do your best to craft papers on a high level.

Enhance Readability

Even if your text is full of actionable tips, nobody will read it to the end if your writing is boring. With all the information we have on the web, it’s important to write short but not complicated sentences to be read. To keep your audience, remember that you need to enhance readability: use short sentences, divide your text into chunks, write subheadings and bullet lists. If your text is easy to read, the number of your readers will be growing.

Add Visuals to Capture Interest

As people perceive visual information better, it’s important to include media blocks to your article. No matter what the theme is, just find a relevant picture (or craft it) and add it. If you’re good at design, do your best to make an infographic that is both useful and interesting. There is no need to write a book to interest your audience, just shift the textual and visual information.

Follow-up Communication is a Must

Good blog writing is not just about crafting the text. It’s about attracting readers, being useful, and growing your community. All in all, it’s not enough to post an article and become a guru. To learn something new and keep developing, you need to communicate with your audience. Cause a buzz and reply to every single comment you get. Listen to your readers and learn from them. It’s a key to success, indeed.

The Bottom Line

Being a modern blogger means analyzing your niche, reading a lot, writing day in and day out, boosting inspiration, and perceiving a lot of information daily. It’s hard to stay focused and inspired with all these things in mind. Thus, you should have a plan how to write a media-savvy blog post to save both time and energy. The above-mentioned tips can help you improve your blog writing and get an insight on successful blogging.

Give it a try!

Emily Johnson is a writer who loves to share her views and experience. She runs OmniPapers blog that is aimed at giving tips and pieces of advice for students and all learners. To keep in touch with Emily, drop her a line at emily.johnson@omnipapers.com

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