SEO and the future world without cookies
As the end of cookie tracking nears, other marketing channels are changing the way they do performance measurement. SEO needs to follow suit.
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Adam Audette's latest articles
Will Marketing Addressability Leave SEO In The Dust?
In a world where digital marketers have greater control over shaping the customer experience, Adam Audette argues that SEO may soon feel obsolete.
We Tested How Googlebot Crawls Javascript And Here’s What We Learned
Think Google can't handle JavaScript? Think again. Contributor Adam Audette shares the results of a series of tests conducted by his colleagues at Merkle | RKG to examine how different JavaScript functions would be crawled and indexed by Google.
The Paradox Of New Vs. Old SEO
SEO is at a crossroads. Everything in the search industry is continually changing: Google is rolling out new algorithms, tools, and products; Bing is partnering with Facebook in ever more interesting ways; SEO toolsets are being forced to change their approach; and techniques used by SEOs are continually being re-visited to test their validity. Yet, […]
The Latest & Greatest On SEO Pagination
Technical SEO topics such as pagination are near and dear to my heart. This article will build upon and update my previous treatment of pagination and SEO. I’ve written and presented often on pagination for SEO. Why so much attention on this subject? The reason is simple: it can be a big, hairy deal for […]
Report Affirms Strong Q4 Search Growth In 2011, Offers Additional Insights
Marketers have had a couple weeks to digest their fourth quarter numbers and assess their successes and failures from a period that can be a whirlwind, particularly in the retail sector. Now, with Google’s Q4 earnings report and Yahoo’s out, we’re getting a chance to compare our own performance to data put out by some […]
Five-Step Strategy For Solving SEO Pagination Problems
Pagination has always been a sticky problem for search engines. While not nearly as complex as faceted navigations for SEO, they can certainly cause crawling inefficiencies and excessive duplicate content. They can also create problems with undesirable pages ranking for important terms, in cases where the search engines don’t pick your preferred URL. Fundamentally, pagination […]
How To Maximize The Value Of SEO Client On-Boarding
What is the correct process for on-boarding new clients at the enterprise level? How do you get the most value out of the on-boarding process, for all participants? I often hear questions about the brass tacks of search marketing campaigns: how is reporting handled? What happens when we engage, how does the on-boarding process work? […]
Weighing In-House vs Agency SEO For Enterprise Search Strategies
Working on the agency side of search for many years has taught me some valuable lessons. I’ve been privileged to work with the best and brightest, and by turns, saddled to work with the worst and dullest. I’ve seen a little bit of everything: those that get it, those that don’t, and those that don’t […]
The Coming Tide Of SEO Tattletales
Be ready, because there’s a new wave coming: competitive sabotage through SEO due diligence and outing. Competitive analysis will always be fundamental to search engine optimization. SEO, by nature, is a competitive pursuit: a site climbs the ranks on the backs of other sites, and there’s only room for one URL at the top. Because […]
5 New Tactics For SEO Post-Panda
I hear this question, in various forms, quite often these days: “What’s up with Google now, post-Panda/Farmer/whaddayacallit? What am I supposed to be doing for SEO?” (Usually accompanied with a deep sigh, aggressive hand gestures, and/or grimacing.) It All Started With Caffeine “Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale.” – Carrie Grimes, […]
Why Quality Is The Only Sustainable SEO Strategy
One of the most important takeaways after the Panda Update / Farmer fallout is to make your sites as high-quality and useful as possible. The next year should be interesting, as some sites invest in quality, while others try to game signals seeking shortcuts to the hard work. Both are valid, as long as you’re […]
Why Is Project Management Undervalued In SEO?
I’ll be the first to admit that I have little knowledge of formal project management. While I cherish quality project managers and certainly know the importance of prioritization, stakeholders, and overall project management, it is not my job. My job is to bring the best SEO strategies and ideas into an organization. Luckily for me, […]
3 Important Ecommerce Trends To Watch
The web is shifting rapidly, again. Search has seen accelerated growth over the last two years, at a quicker clip than any time over the last ten. This has been fueled primarily by innovations at Google. However, Bing is also pushing innovation rapidly and was cited by Google CEO Eric Schmidt as, their “biggest problem” […]
Search Engine Metrics Are Horrible (And Why That’s Okay)
The condition of standard SEO metrics search engines provide the web community (if the term “metric” can even be used here) is pretty deplorable right now. Back in February, I wrote: “…the convention of using indexed page counts and backlinks to benchmark and report on site performance is facing a similar demise [to ranking reports].” […]
Consistency Is King In SEO
In SEO, the small stuff truly matters, and consistency is especially powerful. At the enterprise level things like page titles, internal links and duplicate content may seem almost trivial compared to the overall complexity of the site. But they are hugely important, and when well-optimized in sum can literally make or break a site’s SEO […]
5 Rules For Successfully Selling Search Services
I’m a pretty idealistic person. I’ve been known to put unicorns and rainbows in my presentations. And I like to sit back and fantasize about various pie-in-the-sky scenarios. In one such (recurring) “blue sky” daydream, I head to the office on my bike under dawn’s pink glow. As I enter the office, the sun is […]
Enterprise SEO Tools, Part 2: The Cloud
Get ready for Part 2 in our series on enterprise SEO tools! Next up: web-based (or cloud hosted) tool sets for link research, SEO diagnostics, and competitive research.
A Turning Point In The Field Of SEO
We are at a turning point in the field of search engine optimization (SEO)—a positive turning point. For those of us who have been around for a long time, it’s an interesting (and very good) time to be involved in search. But it must be daunting for those outside the industry, or just getting started […]
Enterprise SEO Tools, Part 1: The Browser
Everybody loves tools! For search marketers working on any level—a 10 page site or a 10 million page site—tools are essential. They save us time, they help us diagnose issues, and they give us a peek into what our competitors are doing. They can even give us a peek into what the search engines are […]
5 New Paradigms For Link Building Success
Link building has changed. Over the past several years, a shift has taken place that has removed much of the meritocratic, or natural reward, of high-quality content with quantities of high-quality links. This self-guided sharing by website owners is becoming rare. Competition and noise on the web, combined with financial incentive surrounding links, has made […]
Internal Linking Tactics For Users & Search Engines
The internal linking structure of a website represents a wealth of (usually) untapped opportunity. Back link acquisition is always going to be fundamental to organic search efforts, but before reaching out across the vast web for links, look within.
Worthy Alternatives To The Useless SEO Data Provided By Search Engines
The data classically used in search engine optimization (SEO) to benchmark sites and track performance is all but useless today. Ranking reports, still a necessary evil in SEO reporting, have been unreliable (at best) for at least 3 years. Their validity has been further marginalized over the last 24 months by way of Google’s increased […]
Enterprise SEM: Q&A With Zappos’ Darrin Shamo
Zappos.com, the online retailer with legendary customer service, has been on a meteoric rise during the last few years. After achieving revenues of over $1 billion in 2008, Zappos was acquired by one of the biggest players on the web in late 2009: Amazon.com. Behind Zappos’s amazing customer service and great brand, lies a sophisticated […]
Two Essential Search Channels To Boost Holiday Sales
Here are a couple important areas for Industrial Strength search marketers to focus on right now, both of which are feed-based: Google Product Search and Yahoo! Paid Inclusion. Below I outline why these channels matter more than ever this holiday season, and how they can help you capture substantial traffic and sales. Google Product Search […]
Small & Nimble Trumps Big & Slow In SEO
In my experience, the best search engine optimization (SEO) in the world comes from small shops and freelance consultants. That statement (and the following article) is only my opinion, of course, but it’s an opinion based on about 14 years working in this industry.
9 Tasty Tips For Ecommerce SEOs
Step right up fellow search marketers, and get your tasty tips for ecommerce right here! I have to admit, my favorite number is “9,” so this list is already my favorite. The below tips are especially for search engine optimizers (SEOs) actively working in the ecommerce field. Hopefully you can make use of these, and […]
SEO “Best Practices” Are Bunk
On this, my maiden voyage as a columnist here at Search Engine Land, I’m going to rant about the empty buzzphrase “best practice.” Nothing like a little rant to get things started, right?