Monthly Archives: January 2013

Fast Five in Search – Week 5, 2013

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fast-fiveThis week’s Fast Five is mostly about the power of mobile search, but there’s also a little something about email marketing and developing good old-fashioned valuable content – just to mix things up.

1) Top Three Inbound Marketing Strategies for Mobile Apps by Robi Ganguly              Waiting at the doctor’s office recently I noticed a lot of us were whiling away the time on our smart phones. According to recent research there are over one billion smart phones out there, and mobile apps are absorbing our attention almost as much as television. Robi’s post is an excellent reminder for online marketers to keep abreast of this explosion of mobile technology.

2) 4 Reasons to Convert Your Facebook Business Profile into a Page by Michelle Stinson Ross                                                                                                                                      As mentioned in the post above – mobile apps mean more people are using social media than ever before, so our Facebook presence needs to be right. I enjoyed Michelle’s no nonsense approach to the topic and it got me thinking about how Facebook is changing the way people can find and share business info online.

3) The SEO of Responsive Web Design by Kristina Kledzik                                          While browsing the web on my smart phone recently I noticed some web sites still aren’t mobile friendly. In this post Kristina outlines how responsive design work to radically increase the reach of your web site.

and now for something slightly different…

4) How Unique Does Content Need to Be to Perform Well in Search Engines? – Whiteboard Friday by Rand Fishkin                                                                                   This post is more than just an explanation on how to avoid duplicate content – it’s about creating and maintaining valuable content. In this post Rand outlines the dos and don’ts of unique content creation.

5) Eight Completely Avoidable Mistakes E-mail Marketers Make by Natalie McCatty       There have been a few posts about email marketing lately, but this one caught my eye because I’ve experienced several of the ‘eight mistakes’ myself. Natalie’s engaging post will no doubt have us all double checking our email marketing copy, to ensure we haven’t unwittingly fallen into any of the traps she describes. Thanks Natalie!

Happy reading!

*Image courtesy of Threadless

SEC Affiliate Program to be Discontinued

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SEC-smiley-150x178Due to an upcoming shift in our business model, we have made the decision to discontinue the Search Engine College Affiliate Program from 1 March, 2013.

After that date, any affiliate links pointing to our site may cease to work and all traffic will cease to be tracked for commission-earning purposes. Please remove any affiliate links from your site prior to this date to avoid any confusion for visitors to your site.

You are welcome to login to the Affiliate Area any time up to 1 March, 2013 to check your statistics and residual commissions.

Any residual commissions owing to affiliates will be paid via PayPal after 1 March, provided the residual amount meets the minimum payment threshold of USD 200.

If you’ve got any questions about the discontinuation of the Affiliate Program not answered here, feel free to contact us.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for supporting Search Engine College via our affiliate program and we wish you all the best with your future endeavours.

Kalena Jordan
Director of Studies
Search Engine College

 

Q and A: Should I optimize my existing site or start over?

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QuestionHi Kalena,

I have a question. I want to start optimizing my own site. Would it be better to start fresh with a new site or should I try to fix the existing site? And does it make sense to purchase a template or have a webmaster design it from scratch?

Thanks
Nelson

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Hi Nelson

Whether you optimize your existing site or start from scratch depends on a lot of factors:

  • Are you happy with the design of your current site?
  • Is the current web site designed with users in mind?
  • Does it convert well and/or attract a lot of traffic?
  • Does the current design allow for SEO to be performed easily?

If you’re able to quickly answer YES to these questions, then you may not need to start from scratch. If you hesitated even a little, you would probably be better off redesigning your site from the ground up.

In other words, if there are more ticks in the *negative* column than the *positive* one, you should absolutely not fear scrapping your existing site and starting a new one. If you are worried about losing current search rankings for existing pages, you should consider 301 redirecting those pages to their replacement pages when you create them.

In terms of a new site template, I have been recommending WordPress for SEO purposes for a long time now. I advocate keeping your own domain and installing WordPress on it, with an attractive theme that is easy to use. Google and other search engines adore web sites built with WordPress and there are a lot of SEO-related plugins that will help you. Plus it’s free! Can’t argue with that.

If you aren’t confident using WordPress, there are a lot of talented WordPress designers out there who can be of assistance, or you can teach yourself using the detailed WordPress user documentation.

As an alternative to WordPress, you could also consider Google Sites.

Hope this helps.

Kalena
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Sick of paying others to SEO your site? Download my Free SEO Lesson. No catch!

 

Search Industry Job of the Week – Managing Blog Editor

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Job Title: Managing Blog Editor
Job Reference: Unknown
Position Type: part time / telecommute
Name of employer: Search Engine Journal
Location: telecommute – US
Date Posted: 24 January 2013
Position description:

Search Engine Journal, a community-focused, internet marketing industry blog with 600K visitors monthly, is looking for a Managing Editor. The Managing Editor will oversee the team’s day to day publishing activities, and will work with both guest bloggers and stakeholders to bring insightful, exclusive content, news and features to our loyal and very interactive audience.

Note this position is part-time.

Responsibilities

  • Maintain content strategy and tone of voice while ensuring quality guidelines are met.
  • Develop relationships with existing guest bloggers to get regular contributions. Recruit new guest bloggers.
  • Manage the publishing schedule.
  • Supervise and delegate to a full-time virtual assistant who will perform administrative and operational tasks WRT publishing, goal tracking and reports, providing customer service to writers and their requests.
  • Write 2 posts/month.
  • Manage and track performance goals.
  • Community engagement via commenting in articles and/or social media

Must-have Skills

  • Established reputation in the internet marketing industry.
  • 3+ years’ experience working on a team
  • 3+ years’ experience supervising a subordinate
  • 3+ years’ experience blogging and/or blog editor
  • Lives in US or Canada
  • Strong organization and planning skills
  • Very responsive to email

Nice-to-haves

  • Extensive industry connections
  • Experience in industry-related journalism, including newsroom, interviews and editorials
  • WordPress experience

Please send a cover letter, resume, and links to published articles. Send to jenise[at]alphabrandmedia.com. Make sure to highlight your experience in the internet  marketing field and provide a high quality writing sample for the editorial team to review.

Salary range: Unknown
Closing date: Unknown
More info about company from: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/about
Contact: Send resumes via online form to: jenise[at]alphabrandmedia.com

For more search industry jobs, or to post a vacancy, visit Search Engine College Jobs Board.

Say Hello to Panda Update #24

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evil panda

Evil Panda is Evil

Google rolled out another Panda update this week, making it update #24 since Panda first hit the SERPs in early 2011.

According to Google’s related tweet, the Panda refresh impacted approximately 1.2 percent of English language search queries.

You can see a handy timeline of all Panda updates on the Search Engine Land site.

Has Panda #24 impacted your site yet? Let us know in the comments.