SEO
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.
Adam Audette is SVP Organic Search at Merkle. During his 15 year career in digital marketing, Adam has held various executive management roles on both the agency and in-house sides. He founded his own agency which was acquired by RKG (now part of Merkle Group). A well known expert on the topics of SEO and e-commerce, Adam and his team have helped drive growth for brands including Zappos, Amazon, HSN, Walmart, Urban Outfitters, UnderArmour, Google, Intuit, Apollo Group, Symantec, Edmunds, National Geographic, Experian and many other household names.
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.
Google Algorithm Updates
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, […]
SEO
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 […]
Analytics & Conversion
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 […]
SEO
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 […]
Amazon
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? […]
SEO
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 […]
SEO
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 […]
SEO
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, […]
Google Algorithm Updates
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 […]
SEO
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, […]
Amazon
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 Quality
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].” […]
SEO
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 […]
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 […]
SEO
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.
Amazon
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 […]
Apple
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 […]
Link Building
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 […]