SearchInfluence

Pinning for SEO: Pinterest Can Boost Your Rankings

Pinterest is a hot topic right now, and not just for people wanting inspiration for their future wedding. While blogs, websites, and the big-name social sites get all the SEO airtime, Pinterest can get overlooked, even though it has huge potential to boost your company’s rankings. With the right tactics, you can start pinning your way to greater exposure, one infograph or product at a time.

Sneak In Keywords

Don’t make me angry.

At a recent event I found myself ranting – yes, really, ranting and I understand there’s video – about what I think is a very big deal for SMBs and those who market for them. The topic at hand was call tracking and local search.

Over the course of my interaction with a few of our attendees I discovered that at least a couple of them were using call tracking to demonstrate ROI for their customers in a potentially harmful way. Call tracking in local SEO, if done poorly, is one of the most irresponsible things an online marketing company can do.

1. Dusting The Website For Spring: Optimization and SEO Cleaning – SEOmoz

1. HTML5: An Essential Weapon for SEOs – Search Engine Journal

The new HTML5 is set to receive a major upgrade and there are 5 key SEO innovations coming :

1. Nofollow’s little brothers and sisters
2. Alt-text gets some much needed support
3. Identifying the most important links on your page
4. No more Flash for videos
5. AJAX gets search engine friendly

2. Which Finds the First-Ever Website Better, Google or Bing? – Search Engine Land

1. Back to Basics: Meta Descriptions 101 - Search Engine Journal
If you haven’t looked at your meta descriptions in over a year or 6 months, it may be time to refresh your meta data. Meta descriptions are the ones that will show up in search results, so they should sound coherent to humans. Read this refresher on meta tags.

2. Thinking about adding 10,000 pages to your site at once? Take caution. - Search Engine Land
If you are adding a large number of pages to your site, it is better to do so in stages according to Google’s Matt Cutts. Adding them in batches may be better. Releasing thousands of pages at once may cause Google to manually review your site for any suspicious behavior.

Keeping up with SEO tactics isn’t always easy, which is why the general rule of thumb is to build a good site and network, and wait to be found. Even still, many people are attempting quick shortcuts that have long since been proven less than useful, or even damaging. If the sole reason for doing something—submitting a press release, for example—is to drive SEO, there’s a good chance it will backfire.

SEO mistakes fall into a few distinct categories: fishing for links, diluting personality, and failing to strategize.

Link Cheats

The Holy Grail Of Internet Marketing: Owning The Whole SERP — Search Engine Land

Search Influence’s very own Will Scott gives a brief how-to on the essential methods of owning your search engine results page. The main points he hits in the post are the importance of branded SERP ownership, branded  AdWords campaigns, branded organic results, Google+ and local optimization. But the “real win” of owning the whole SERP is obviously taking over your non-branded ranking page. One of the more surprising tidbits for PPC naysayers is “It may seem crazy to pay for clicks to your site, especially if your site shows up in the first position organically, but the data shows that having both the first and “zeroth” positions increases clicks by up to 89%.” Now, that’s a big increase!

The Marketing Value of YouTube - SEO MOZ

The author here discusses the impacts YouTube can have for your product. YouTube is a great resource if you are looking to build your brand. It is important that you put up quality videos over the quantity of videos. Check out the article for some great information if you are looking to build a presence on YouTube.

Google Places Is Being Updated To Google + Local - Search Engine Journal

This talks about the transition from Google Places to Google + Local.  The post describes how this should make the process easier to use, faster updates, and integration with Adwords (Express) and G +.

1. Who is Winning the Apple vs. Google iPhone Driving Directions Battle? Too Close to Call – Mike Blumenthal

Even if you don’t keep up with the war between Apple and Google, you’re probably familiar with Apple Maps and it’s not-so-impressive emergence last fall. Well, since then, the app’s gotten its ducks in a row, and I know quite a few people that use it as their primary navigation tool. But how does it compare to Google Maps? Mike Blumenthal decided to find out. Check out this blog post to see how the two compare now that Apple Maps has matured a bit. I assumed that Google Maps was still the outright leader and was surprised by the results. Who knows, maybe I need to switch over to Apple Maps!

1. Top 4 Strategic SEO Trends to Watch for in 2013 - Search Engine Journal

Don’t get lost in the mix! Take a broad look at your organization to make sure you’re producing top quality content, including social media, making your site mobile friendly, and understanding the knowledge graph.

2. Google Announces Retirement of RSS Reader – The Content Standard 

Google has just announced that on July 1, 2013 Google Reader will retire. This is part of Google’s plan to remove irrelevant and no longer useful services. If most of your audience is using this to get your updates, now is the time to transition them to a new service.