Google’s +1 Expansion Boosts Search and Social

My latest article at Practical Ecommerce, read it in full here.

 

The Google +1 button now plays a much more visible role in promoting content in search and social marketing. Much like Facebook’s Like button, Google’s +1 button allows — as of last week — Google+ users to share a comment, an image, a headline and a snippet of text when +1’ing a page. Compared to the +1 button’s previously limited role of decorating blog posts and search results pages, the expansion connects some important dots in the evolution of Google as a social media payer. More importantly for ecommerce merchants, it represents an excellent opportunity to influence what gets shared, control how it looks when shared and increase visibility in search engines and in social marketing.

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SEO: Automating Keyword Selection with AdWords API

My latest article at Practical Ecommerce, read it in full here.

 

Optimizing a website around highly searched keyword terms can materially increase traffic from search engines. But identifying those keywords takes time. Few SEO managers relish the tedium of slogging through thousands of keyword variations — as critical as that process is to a search-engine-optimization program.

Thankfully, Richard Baxter at SEOgadget recently released a revolutionary free “Google AdWords API Extension for Excel” that automates the most tedious steps of the keyword research process: pasting keywords into the Google Keyword Tool, clicking search, downloading the results, and repeating many times.

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Originally posted on Web PieRat.

My SEO Circle of Trust: The Short List

I’m often asked which SEO blogs can be trusted. Knowing which “experts” to trust in the nebulous world of SEO is a big challenge for those who don’t spend their daily lives steeped in it. Expertise comes from experience, but a shocking number of  candidates I’ve interviewed over the years for SEO jobs are convinced that their book learning and blog reading has made them experts. Worse yet, these folks feel free to preach the word as they’ve read it on their blogs and in social media.

In an industry as mercurial as SEO where algorithms change without warning and new data disproves old notions daily, how do you know who you can trust?

I read and respect many more SEOs than are listed here, but for those folks who can’t afford to spend hours keeping up on all the different perspectives and niches of search marketing these sites are my recommended short list.

Independent Search Marketing Sites
These sites write about SEO news, methodology, tools & tips. Most SEO agencies have a blog and some are quite good, but they’re typically trying to sell you something at least in passing. These sites feature authors from all over the SEO industry and are thus less beholden to one agency or set of tools and approaches than another. Of course, that’s not to say they’re not trying to sell you something….

SEOmoz

Search Engine Land

Search Engines’ Sites
If you’re looking for SEO truth, one side of that truth will come from the engines themselves. Their version of the truth may be less explicit than the SEO industry’s version, but at the end of the day the engines hold the algorithmic keys. Since the engines determine what ranks, it only makes sense to stay on top of what they’re dishing out. The industry blogs above will offer their interpretations of what the engines release, of course, but I like to go to the source on the really important things.

Google Webmaster Central

Bing Webmaster 


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Originally posted on Web PieRat.