Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Let me start with a basic statement. Keywords aren’t that important anymore.

How can I be so sure about this? Because the data tells me so. First, let’s look at an example.

In a recent study, we cracked the Hummingbird algorithm code wide open. We analyzed 9.93 million words of content, smashed them together, shook them up and came up some astonishing results. Our focus was to understand exactly how Hummingbird works and how it ranks websites based on their content.

Our study analyzed select sites within a narrow niche and discovered how they ranked comparatively in select topics.

The top-ranked blogs did not necessarily have high keyword saturation, keyword representation or lots of high-DA backlinks.

What did the top ranked blogs have, if not keywords or backlinks?

They had strong topic coverage, few gaps in the topics that they covered and comprehensive content within each of their chosen topic categories.

In other words, they had really strong content, instead of a really strong link profile....

One such significant trend that might govern the future of SEO is:

Voice queries on mobile…

The chronically expanded use of smartphones and the arrival of personal assistants has led to their prominence.

Voice queries are like a two-way conversation and they aim to help the user complete tasks from their life in real-time, like booking tickets and making a purchase.

Rather than links, users want direct answers, when they perform a voice search. So, such queries are inherently different from the typical keyword search in the search box....

Google says it has updated its Trends Reports so that different search terms meaning the same thing will be measured accordingly:

So, when you measure interest in “Gwyneth Paltrow (actress)” our algorithms count many other searches that mean the same thing “Gweneth Paltrow,” “Gwen Paltro,” etc. As our systems improve, we may even count searches like “Lead actress in Iron Man.”

As a beta feature, Google claims the new Trends Reports include data for 700,000 unique topics, with the ability to measure the search interest data worldwide or in Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, UK and the US, with more topics and regions to come...

OAO is the collection of techniques that online content publishers use to rise above the pack of sales sites, catalog sites, or sites that live through shady SEO practices, generating cheap clicks that cause unwary web surfers to stumble upon their pages.

OAO allows online publishers to leverage their greatest assets—their wealth of high-quality content—to create a consistent web-wide presence, and generate consistent new and repeat visitors. OAO uses the best practices of SEO, along with social media, content sharing, engagement mechanics and branding, to build and optimize loyal and targeted audiences for online content publishers.

OAO is an emerging discipline, but savvy publishers can begin to put its elements in place in their online strategies right away. Here are some tips to get you started...

This is partly because Google’s algorithm isn’t playing any games these days, and partly because there are so many businesses working on their local SEO at the same time you are. If these people are your competition it’s going to be more and more difficult to rank as time goes by.

Despite all of this, there are still businesses out there that aren’t embracing the essential nature of local SEO. Some are trying to keep things on a purely social playing field by purchasing ads on Facebook and focusing their marketing efforts exclusively in these areas. Others are (seemingly) deliberately ignoring the opportunity presented by the local listing pages offered by the major search engines – Google, Bing, and Yahoo each offer pages that businesses can claim in order to increase their local exposure. And if the search engine has a result to deliver that was created with their webmaster tools, don’t you think it’s more likely than someone other content to appear when someone searches for a term relevant to your business?...

To write smart copy that attracts more eyeballs, find more keywords related to your topic. Here are eight tools to help.

“Write for the user, not the search engines,” continues to be a mantra of content marketing. In reality, smart content creators write for both.

Quality content is interesting, informative, original, AND it includes keywords, ultimately leading to more visits and helping you achieve your why. Quality content naturally builds links, which improves the site authority, which in turn boosts rankings, and gets more eyeballs on your content.

Integrating SEO with your content is the first step. But to really write smart copy, you should look at terms related to what you are targeting and how Google associates those terms. Then incorporate those terms into your content. Or you can use those findings to identify related topics you may want to write about down the road....

Hashtags are inherent part of Twitter communication and a way of highlighting topics in tweets. They can also help in getting more attention from users. The popularity of specific hashtags reflects interests of followers. Because every profile has its own group of unique followers, there is no universal hashtag that evaeryone could use and win.

There are various strategies and principles that can be applied to maximize the effects of using hashtags. To inspire you, we looked through several cases of using brands’ own and trending hashtags. Check what we discovered....

Are the right technical pieces in place? Are you producing the right content? Are you connecting with customers, colleagues, and other industry thought leaders? These are the hallmarks of a good SEO program today.

Before you start thinking it’s all too difficult, it’s really not.There are some quick SEO wins you can achieve to take steps toward higher rankings. Here are nine of them you can probably do just by setting aside an hour here or there.

Fast changing trends and serious competition has digital marketers chasing the latest and greatest tactics like hamsters on exercise wheels....

... All the scrambling often means core skills are overlooked. In fact, one of the easiest things a company can do to improve online marketing performance is to stop sucking at the basics. When it comes to optimizing for search and social media, well implemented basics are as good for search engines and social networks as they are for your customer’s user experience. Here are a 8 fundamentals worth applying to your organization’s daily content creation, amplification and optimization process....