Halloween Inspired SEO Tricks to Keep Spiders at Bay

Over the years, I’ve made a habit of prodigiously extolling search engine best practices per contra to taking shortcuts designed to trick search engines into trusting that an online destination is something it is not. This Halloween, I’ve decided to produce an antithetical essay to my digital morals and beliefs by way of parody and embrace the dark side of search engine spoofs. Fear of spide

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The Value of Referrer Data in Link Building

Before we get into this article let me first state, link building is not dead.  There are a lot of opinions floating around the web on both sides; this is just mine.  Google has shut down link networks and Matt Cutts continues to make videos on what types of guest blogging are OK.  If links were dead, would Google really put in this effort?  Would anyone get an “unnatural

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Matt Cutts on SEO, PageRank, Spam & the Future of Google Search at Pubcon Las Vegas

Matt Cutts kicked off day two at Pubcon with another of his signature keynotes, dispelling myths, talking about spammers and about Jason Calcanis’ keynote from day one, at the urging of the audience. First, Cutts spoke about Google’s “Moonshot changes,” which he broke down into these areas: Knowledge graph Voice search Conversational search Google now Deep Learning He revealed that Deep Le

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9 Ways to Prepare for a Future Without Cookie Tracking

It was over a year ago that I first wrote about do not track legislation, and luckily for most organizations the browser-provided imperative is loosely supported or regulated today, with very few sites adhering to interpretation and compliance of the preference. For the most part, do not track legislation is often misunderstood by the general public, and even our regulators in its definition,

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Google Rolls Out AdWords Ad Rank Algorithm Update

In a quiet but not entirely unexpected move, Google has announced they are updating and improving the Google AdWords Ad Rank algorithm to take into account some of the new features they have rolled out this year, primarily their new ad extensions. Ad extensions and formats can now affect the positioning of your ads on the Google search results page. Google uses the example: If two otherwise id

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Become a Leading SEO Mechanic with Both Google & Bing Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Tools offerings from both Google and Bing can offer a wealth of insight to business owners. In order to get the whole spectrum of insights, marketers must learn just what they can do with both Google and Bing Webmaster tools. Using both together allows you greater insight into the factors contributing to the success—or lack thereof—of your SEO strategy. Internet Marketing Ninjas COO

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The Impact of Penguin 2.1: Recovery, Knockout Punches & Fresh Hits

On Friday, October 4th, Matt Cutts announced the release of Penguin 2.1. Based on the amount of Penguin work I do, that meant one thing. Matt just threw a serious wrench into my Friday night (and weekend plans). Similar to previous Penguin updates, I began heavily analyzing websites hit by Penguin 2.1 to identify new findings and insights. Needless to say, the past two and a half weeks have

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Searcher Personas: A Case for User-Centric SEO

It wasn't so long ago that, when educating the uninitiated on the SEO process from the bottom up, we would explain that keywords are foundational to SEO – start with your keywords and work up from there. Lately, we've seen some very fascinating (though not unexpected) developments from Google that give users ever more control in the driver seat. Hummingbird was a big stride toward better sema

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Demographics and Interests: Coming to a Google Analytics Profile Near You

I was really excited to see some new information in one of my Google Analytics profiles this week. What wasn’t so exciting is that out of the approximately 20 profiles I flit between, only one sported this new feature. With that said, my inner analytics nerd wanted to dig deeper. How many of you are seeing “age” and “interest” data in your Google Analytics dashboards? I’d guess about 20 percen

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Instagram Coming to Windows Phone 8 After Nokia's 'Screaming About It' for 18 Months

Nokia announced on Tuesday that Instagram is finally coming to Windows Phone 8, and the firm told us that it's something it has been "screaming for" for a long time. SEW's sister publication, The INQUIRER caught up with Samuli Hanninen, vice president of software program management for Lumia smart devices, who told us that Nokia has long been calling for Instagram to come to the Windows Phon

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Google Doodle Pays Homage to 'Salsa Queen' Celia Cruz

Google pays homage today to Celia Cruz, a Cuban-American entertainer who reigned as the “Salsa Queen” to adoring fans worldwide. A singer and dancer, Cruz made many gold albums and won several Grammy Awards during her time as an entertainer. She died at the age of 77 in 2003.    Cruz grew up in Cuba but moved to the United States, where she resided in New Jersey for the majority of h

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