The accelerated mobile pages (AMP for short) standard by Google appears to be gaining traction with publishers. The standard, is meant to make pages smaller and reduce loading times. It achieves this in two ways. Firstly by narrowing down the technologies used and secondly by serving the pages from Google’s own servers. Here is a bit more detail from Wired: “To use AMP, you create an alternate version of your site that conforms to the specifications published by the AMP project. These standards are a lot like traditional HTML, but pared down to what Google considers to be the bare minimum. Typically you’ll give your AMP-optimized site a separate address, for example: yoursite.com/yourpage/amp. If you use WordPress, there’s actually a plugin will automatically create these alternate versions and help Google find them. But you could, theoretically, just replace your whole site with AMP optimized pages and it would still work in most modern web browsers, though it might be a bit drab.” Now it appears that more and more publishers are adopting the standard to serve on mobile devices. At Google IO 2016, Richard Gingras announced Google has indexed AMP pages on over 125 million documents from more than 640,000 domains across the web. In addition they also announced that updates to the Google Search app on both iOS and Android will now show AMP pages in the results. Recipes and other verticals will also start showing AMP pages by default wherever they...
read more
It appears that Google is running a limited experiment when showing local search results. Some search results are seeing “business cards” appear for local search terms. The result shows a carousel with results from local businesses that match the search result. Google also allows the content to be shareable directly from carousel itself. This is an interesting move. Although it remains to be seen if the link to the individual business or its Google Maps entry is shared. According to SEL: “This was first spotted by Mike Blumenthal, but I have confirmed with Google that this is a real test. Local Business Cards are built on the same display functionality as Candidate Cards, launched a few weeks ago.” At this point the experiment is limited to a few search phrases. One interesting point mentioned: “It’s all custom content and not being drawn from Google My Business or any other feeds. It’s also noteworthy for the fact that it represents the first time that Google has introduced or allowed animation/GIFs on the search results page.” The content could be custom due to the nature of the experiment and we could safely assume that were to go public, then the content will likely be from Google Maps Businesses. There is no official confirmation from Google, but were it to be launched, it could be significant for local...
read more
When it comes to blackhat techniques to improve seo, the linkwheel was one of the most popular. Linkwheels were basically a collection of web properties which linked to each and to your target page. Blackhat seo involved creating a set of web 2.0 properties, each linking to the next and to the page to be promoted. After the Google Panda update, a lot of the link juice from linkwheels was nullified. Google figured out an easy algorithmic method of identifying link wheels and link juice from such setups were de-emphasized. This did not stop blackhatters from continuing to sell linkwheel services. This would go to show that although effect is minimal, it still exists. There is now however a whitehat approach to making use of the link wheel concept. Googles focus was to kill any link juice passed from web 2.0 property based linkwheels or from sites that only existed for the purpose of a being a spoke in a linkwheel. The new approach is to use legitimate links to generate each of the spokes of the wheel. For example, a guest blog post could credit another element in the linkwheel rather than linking directly to your main site. That next element would link to another property and so on and so forth until the final page which links to your target page. The primary benefit here is that the final page which links to your site would get additional link juice from all the other links that lead to...
read more
When it comes to monetization of your websites traffic, the true tried and tested method is to build and utilize an email list. A large mailing list is a great way of continuously making more money without any additional marketing costs. Members of your list will be those who are interested in your content and want to continue seeings what you produce. In the event you have premium product for sale, you will find willing customers easily within this group. Getting visitors to sign up to your list is not as hard you think, here are a couple of easy ways: The Giveaway A small ebook either summarising or extending the content on your website is a great incentive to use for mailing list signup. Once they signup and confirm, the next email can contain a welcome message and a link to the ebook. Competition Another great incentive is a competition. Visitors can sign up and stand a chance to win either a prizes (or prizes). Timing the actual awarding of the prize well after the signup period will ensure retention after the initial signup. The prize could be provided by a sponsor of the website. That would give you a campaign, new members to a mailing list all without any additional cost. There are many more ways to grow your list but these two will guarantee some signups. Everyone loves a freebee and there is nothing wrong with taking advantage of that. Once you have exhausted these two methods, you can move on to the more advanced...
read more
It was not long ago that email marketing was said to be obsolete due to the rise of social media. Time has indicated otherwise. Only now, they are said to complement each other instead of being mutually exclusive. In other words, they can be both used in combination for any communication or marketing strategy. Here are 4 ways by which social media and email can work together: 1: Extending the Reach of Email Social media can be used to further extend the reach of email by adding social media share buttons. This is, of course, accessible when the email reaches the recipient’s inbox and is opened by the users. If you click any of these buttons, then you are taken directly to one of their social media pages. 2: Build Your Customer Database Both these marketing tools can be used together to build your contact database. Customers can join email lists from your social media pages with the available of widgets. They can also click on social media share buttons within an email to like or follow a particular business page. It works both ways. 3: Marketing Automation Quite interestingly, email can actually automate your social media content. In fact, you can do this almost a year in advance where you can use tools to repost scheduled content to social media itself. One thing to remember: the number of times you send emails can be very different to posting on social media. 4: Email Notifications One excellent use of email is how social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter can send you notifications of your activity either in real-time or in summary form. One excellent tool to use is Constant Contact’s Nutshell Mail that will send you reports of your social media activity apart from the ability to respond from within that...
read more
A Social Media Marketing Industry Report surveyed 3720 marketers, owners and solopreneurs. Interesting trends emerged from this survey. Understanding these trends can prove to be useful for your business, leading to sales. So, here are 4 important social media trends gathered from this industry report: 1: Social Media is Vital for Any Business 92% consider social media to be vital for any business. It’s not surprising that 96% of respondents use social media. If that’s not enough, most respondents use Facebook to promote their business. 2: B2B and B2C Use Social Media For Different Purposes B2B marketers consider LinkedIn to be the #1 social media platform. B2C marketers use Facebook and other platforms. Also, 71% of B2B marketers want to learn more about LinkedIn even if only a handful use ads. 75% of these marketers use Facebook ads. This is because every consumer they’d like to reach out to is on Facebook. 3: Marketers Aren’t Sure If Facebook Efforts Are Working Most small businesses use Facebook for promotional activities. Yet marketers aren’t sure if these efforts are working. In other words, whether they are building brand awareness and customer relationships. This could translate to leads and sales. Either they haven’t met their goals or don’t have any. This is why only one in three marketers consider Facebook to be effective. 4: Small Business Spend 6 or More Hours on Facebook Social media management requires a decent amount of time. Small business owners worry about this as they have to work on other tasks. While Post Planner and HootSuite help to reduce time, it still isn’t enough. In fact 33% spend 1 to 5 hours every week while 25% spend 6 to 10 hours. Only 19% spend 20 hours and above each week. Link:...
read more
