How Not Be Boring: Food Blog Guide, Infographic

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions otherwise known to be responsible of "sponsored updates", has made an infographic to guide food bloggers for a week's daily posts. It includes vegetables, meats, whole wheat and grains, condiments and desserts. Their study shows that 82% who blog everyday see improvement in ROI as opposed who just blog monthly. Blogging with a schedule and with themed content everyday enables you to have fresh and diverse updates for your readers. So if you think about blogging like food using this schedule, you are less likely to publish the same peanut butter and banana sandwich day after day.

SEO Prediction in 2014

Happy New Year! It was a crazy Q3 and Q4 for me but gladly we hit our company target, thanks to the efforts of all! While new targets are rounding up for different companies, we digital marketing professionals should have some insights to guide us as we move forward with our craft.

I say:

• More Knowledge Graph data
• Some redesigns for Adwords ads
• More mobile results appearing in the results page including (in app content)
• Better overall UX and UI in Google results
• More personalized results and targeted results to seamless UX with Google's acquisition of Behavio
• Guest blogging will have lesser impact or correlation to ranking
• Mobile sites will be a default

With all the changes (versions of both Penguin and Panda and Hummingbird) and these predictions, "Search Engine Optimization" will seem to veer towards to be more of "Search Experience Optimization" in 2014.

How about you? What's your prediction? :)

SEO: Separate IP Address for Each Country-Specific Site

Should I use a separate IP address for each country-specific site? Today, Matt Cutts answered this question in another webmaster video. He said ideally it would be great to have different IPs on different locations for their respective locations or countries. But it seems that SEOs and Webmasters shouldn't worry about this too much as Google is smart enough to take TLDs (top level domains) as a strong indicator that your site is operating normally.

Click here to see the video in Google Webmaster YouTube Channel.

Instagram Introduces Instagram Direct

Instagram, the photo and video sharing app acquired by Facebook, announced today that they launched a new feature to support private sharing through Instagram Direct.

Instagram pointed out that there will be moments in our lives that we want to share, that will only be most relevant to a smaller group of people, thus this feature.

On their blog, Instagram wrote the steps to use this feature:

When you open Instagram, you’ll now see a new icon in the top right corner of your home feed. Tap it to open your inbox where you’ll see photos and videos that people have sent to you. To send a photo or video to specific people, tap the camera button to enter the same simple photo or video capture and editing screens. At the top of the share screen, you’ll see the option to share with your followers (“Followers”) or to send to specific people (“Direct”). To send using Direct, tap the names of the people you want to send your photo or video to, write your caption, tap “send” and you’re done.

Instagram added that the photo and video will be received immediately from people you follow. Photos and videos from people you don't follow can send you but a request notification will appear - enabling you to decide if you want to view it or not.

I think this is another step to data collection for monetization - a typical thing about apps. Promoting everything publicly at the first phase and then giving privacy control to users once they get huge database of users. I'm predicting ads (sponsored posts) too will probably appear here soon. A couple if months ago, Instagram did announce that they will slowly introduce sponsored photos and videos. With the promise of giving users the ultimate control over the experience, Instagram opened another door to more and better insights on how users use their app and that data can be another sounding place for "targeted ads" in the coming month/s. Hey it's business after all. For whatever it's worth, cheers to Instagram for a great app!

Cheers!

Hummingbird: Google Algorithm Update

Hummingbird update today (9/26/2013). Google announced that this update will be optimizing for Voice Search and long search queries. According to Moz "Hummingbird has been compared to Caffeine, and seems to be a core algorithm update that may power changes to semantic search and the Knowledge Graph for months to come." Amid Singhal, search executive of Google, said that users can now be comfortable searching for long queries instead of breaking the thought into keywords. I think this is a real game changer for Google and another step to help those who were left behind in using their search.

Another thought for me is that Hummingbird tells me more that SEO is not dying - instead, it's just moving to a path towards Content Marketing. The reason is that Google keeps on telling SEO's to create compelling content and with this update, it beats how SEO's battle it out on a keyword basis. Google hasn't announced how this update would affect sites that primarily rely on target keywords but nothing has changed as to how websites should do their SEO and content marketing: Link Naturally and Provide Great Content.

How do you think this update can impact you and/or your business?

Promoted Pins: Pinterest Will Start Showing Ads and Going Mobile

I've got an email yesterday from Pinterest.

Pinterest has been around for 4 years now and now they are taking their baby step towards monetizing. Yes, they will be putting their years of effort to leverage on ROI and mobile usage.

The first tests of ads will be in the categories feeds and search results. For instance you search for "Men's Fashion", you might see a store selling men's clothing nearby - like how Promoted Tweets work.

A lot of comments from netizens spurred from this, mostly negative. Some said that Pinterest just signed their death wish and some say that this is goodbye for them using the pinning platform. A few number of neutral responses say that as long as Pinterest will do it in a "not intrusive and spammy" way, they have no problem against it.

It is a fact that successful platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Dropbox start with free service before they introduced Twitter Promoted Tweets, Facebook Ads and Dropbox Plans. Little do most people know that in the end, it is all just business - and all business have costs to carry on their shoulders. Having to make an exceptional innovation and exquisite UI/UX platform should not be expected "free all the time" and/or there's always a price to pay for something "more".

At the end of the email it was signed by a guy named "Ben" who is obviously represented by Ben Silbermann, the CEO of Pinterest.

SEO Updates 2nd Quarter of 2013

Wow, time flew fast for me this July. This was a challenging month for me since the Penguin 2.0, Panda Dance and the Multi-Week update effects. True indeed that it has affected some of the sites I'm currently managing. Tests and recovery plan had been implemented. To this point, I'm working closely with top management to get us back and stronger on this cruel web competition.

May 9 update 
- gigantic drops reported but no confirmed update from Google's webspam team.

May 21 (pre-Penguin  update) 
- update that lessens domain crowding. This opened up a room for sites not ranking and decreased some of the top guys showing multiple pages in one query.

May 22 (Penguin 2.0) 
- a webspam change that targeted more of the pages instead of sites trying to kill Black Hats.

June 11 algorithm update 
- otherwise know as the Payday Loan update. Targeted spammy results.

June 11 Panda Dance 
- this was a 10 day roll out update

June 27 Matt Cutts tweeted the "multi-week" update

July 18 Panda Recovery 
- A first aid for those affected by Panda.

Did I miss anything? Feel free to share!

LinkedIn: New Privacy Policy and User Agreement

Today,May 13, 2013, is the day that LinkedIn rolled out their new Privacy Policy and User Agreement update. This is a follow up in my previous blog: LinkedIn: New Privacy Policy Made Easy. As we all know, yellow banners will always catch attention and that is where they put it. This is the actual banner that is linking to their revised page:

As promised LinkedIn has made a nice Privacy Policy page. They used images and grouped the policies into 11 parts namely:


1. Introduction
2. Your Obligations
3. Your Rights
4. Our Rights & Obligations
5. Disclaimer
6. Limitation of Liability
7. Termination
8. Dispute Resolution
9. General Terms
10. LinkedIn “DOs” and “DON’Ts.”
11. Complaints Regarding Content Posted on the LinkedIn Website

In case you you missed it up there, here is LinkedIn's updated User Agreement.

As mentioned before, the most notable thing about this update is that LinkedIn will now be allowing ads to show up on your accounts. Be smart, read.

Google: Penguin 2.0 to Roll Out Soon

Matt Cutts, Google's software engineer and Head of the Webspam Team has recently announced what to expect for SEO in the coming months. In a video released today he is proud to announce that Google will be rolling out Penguin 2.0 soon. It is very important to follow these SEO updates to help you in your digital marketing and online brand presence. Here is the summary of what he mentioned in this video:

• Google still aims to make all the changes that make a site compelling - it is of course through high quality content.
  
  
• Penguin 2.0 will target the black hat web span. This is more comprehensive than penguin.
  
  
• They will look up more on Advertorials that violate Google's quality guidelines. Advertorials should not float page ranks and should be clear in conspicuous disclosures.
  
  
• Upstream to deny the value to link spammers. They are looking to roll out a new system with a more sophisticated analysis.
  
  
• New comprehensive system to detect hack sites better. 
  
  
• Aims to help regular webmasters - algorithms to give more authority. E.g medical or travel. 
  
  
• Updating sites affected by Panda - find additional signals for sites that in the grey area that has quality.
  
  
• Refine host clustering - once you see a cluster of results from one domain in the first page you should see less in the succeeding pages.
  
  
• More for Webmasters - more concrete details and reports.

Coming in the summer of 2013.

Google is getting smarter and smarter so....

Black Hats Beware!

Adobe® Search&Promote: Business Rules and its Considerations

I drafted this post back in 2012 and never had the chance to publish. These are my thoughts in Adobe Search and Promote and how I came to understand the gems behind this marketing software. So here I am continuing what I started. :)

I had the chance to use Adobe Search and Promote for a value-added direct marketing company some 2 years ago. Adobe® Search&Promote is a cloud-based software that lets online marketers supercharge how visitors find, browse, and promote significant products and content on web and mobile sites. With Adobe® Search&Promote, you can easily push priority items based on company objectives and what visitors are actually looking for. It gives you the option to push promotions and merchandising activities by KPI-based triggers.

As I was working on implementing the front-end business rules, I came to realize just how powerful this tool is. It can push products - via category, brand or SKU. This tool can really be beneficial to especially to an e-commerce business. Imagine having the way to show your "not-so-converting" products to a search term? In one way or another, this will give you a possible plus on conversion for that item. I was able to test and play around the software, pushing products that will give more value to the company. I was in control. This is until I figured out the gem of using a great understanding of SEO best pratices and an in-depth web analytics along with this.

It is true that at the end of the day, "sales", "revenue" or "conversions" are important to many business above anything else. But how about user satisfaction, usability and customer impression? How would you feel that you are looking for let's say an optical mouse and you're getting the Bluetooth ones as first group results? Yeah probably you will refine your search but how about getting the same thing? Here are some points I realized and sharing with you:

• Website or internal search should be formatted in such a way like how Google does in their SERPs. Business rules and triggers need to balance your organization's objective and user intent. 

• Optimize Adobe® Search&Promote's feature of setting up categories and pricing to help users refine their searches. This will need proper implementation - a back-end team to make sure it works. Facilitate on the testing and be mindful of the bugs. With proper categories setup, users can easily navigate through your site considering their budget and brands they want. Again, give them what they want.

• If you need to push something - an old stock probably that needed to be converted, use the banners feature rather than giving it in the results list. Banners are not intrusive and users are aware that these are optional aspect of the site. If they are interested, they will click on it. Of course you can still sell your keywords to brand managers for banners ;)

• Respect top internal search terms and top landing pages. People are coming to your site looking for something. Understand your internal searches, what users clicked on, and where they bounce. This will give you a clear insight on where you are doing right, and wrong. 

I can attest that this software is powerful if implemented correctly. Through its wide range of customization including regular expressions, your triggers and business rules can make your business requirements far from impossible.

Remember, in any website reaching out to customers - may it be e-commerce or services, web usability should always be practiced and this can mean more returning visitors and loyal clients to your organization. Customer usability consideration is imperative in digital marketing success.