It's about your identity
I’ve created a geeky masterpiece! Behold, my 404 Fowl Not Found Easter egg.
After I had my egg epiphany, I Googled ”404 Fowl Not Found” to see if it had already been done. As you can see, Hootsuite beat me to get idea, but I have the first (as far as I can tell) egg-carnation.
And as a parting shot, the ever-present under construction egg. It’s as maligned here in Illinois – state of constant construction – as it is on the interwebs.
Originally posted on Web PieRat.
SEO Traffic Changes When URLs Change
You may have noticed that we recently updated Practical Ecommerce with a fresh, new design. Behind the scenes, a lot of things changed as we moved to a new platform, but the primary URLs stayed exactly the same. And that has made all the difference for organic search-referred traffic.
URL changes are a common byproduct of redesigns, especially when a platform change is included. Unfortunately, the importance of these changes to SEO is often overlooked in the process.
URLs and navigation form the road map that search engines use to crawl and index a site. When URLs change, organic search performance changes — often for the worse.
Originally posted on Web PieRat.
Excerpts from my latest article at Practical Ecommerce: “SEO: 5 Reasons Not to Ignore Google+.”
Two years ago when Google+ launched, I had high hopes for its value as a marketing platform to rival Facebook and Twitter. Read my enthusiastic missal, “Google+: The Beginning of a Revolution?” The reality of Google+ for marketers thus far has been less than glorious, with low adoption rates for many ecommerce sites’ target audiences.
Even so, Google+ matters to search engine optimization.
I know, your audience isn’t on Google+. The consumers you’re trying to reach are on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or LinkedIn. So why not engage with them on their social platforms of choice, but echo the conversation on Google+?
What follows is why you can’t afford not to….
Read more at “SEO: 5 Reasons Not to Ignore Google+.”
Read my articles in full at Practical Ecommerce » Jill Kocher
Originally posted on Web PieRat.
Excerpts from my latest article at Practical Ecommerce: “Google Offers Paid and Organic Search Report.”
Paid and organic search work better together. Because searchers inherently trust that search engines are recommending the best pages in search results, when brands rank well in both paid and organic search their search performance for that phrase tends to increase. However, measuring that increase has been a bit challenging until now.
Google AdWords released a new feature this week enabling search marketers to measure performance of their paid and organic search efforts. The “paid and organic report” can be found in the AdWords campaigns tab as a dimension.
Analyzed together, paid and organic search data can uncover a wealth of optimization opportunities. Taken together, paid and organic search represent a large portion of the available real estate on the search results page. The larger your brand’s footprint on the search results, the more likely searchers are to choose one of your listings over the competition.
For example, the report could show keywords that are driving organic search traffic but no paid search traffic. Those keywords could be added to your AdWords campaigns to drive additional traffic and potentially boost the effectiveness of the organic search listing as well…..
Read more at “Google Offers Paid and Organic Search Report.”
Read my articles in full at Practical Ecommerce » Jill Kocher
Originally posted on Web PieRat.
Excerpts from my latest article at Practical Ecommerce: “SEO: Google Adds Manual Spam Actions to Webmaster Tools.”
Google Webmaster Tools launched its new manual spam actions feature yesterday, enabling verified site owners to check whether their site has been manually penalized by Google.
Over the last couple of years, Google has slowly increased its communication to webmasters, with the goal of fighting webspam by educating site owners on how it impacts their performance in search results. Previously, Google would leave notifications about manual actions taken against a site in the owner’s Webmaster Tools account. This feature augments the notifications with a real-time tool that performs a live check against Google’s internal webspam systems.
Read more at “SEO: Google Adds Manual Spam Actions to Webmaster Tools.”
Read my articles in full at Practical Ecommerce » Jill Kocher
Originally posted on Web PieRat.