Apart from some really cool achievements Google has recently managed to ruin reputation of the cutest monochromatic animals and cause an acute attack of paranoia among SEOs. An army of slapped-by-panda-pecked-by-penguin prophets shout about the approaching SEOpocalypses and preach on optimization asceticism. The naïve and trusting webmasters start removing backlinks, content, and keywords from their websites to cause nothing but even a faster decrease in rankings.

There are at least two teams in the field that benefit from the situation: the cunning dudes who mind their business and keep on working (see the case study below) and "the big SEO guys" (read: the evangelists of the fluffy white SEO). The latter are hypnotizing you with "we are building trust and authority using advanced techniques" mantra, which is yet another marketing catch. Sure thing the reputable consultancies might help you rank higher but their services don't always meet your budget.

As far as most of you know, during the past few years Google implemented several quality related updates but none of them was really fatal for traditional SEO. Though the aftermath of Penguin is not totally clear yet, we're absolutely sure, it's not going to be grave. Read more »

Somehow I just can't picture Joe the marketer making bank on Pinterest. Repinning and liking pins? Sure. Making money and driving traffic to his site? Nope. Don't see it happening. Here's why.

"I want to pin!"

Meet Joe. An online marketer blogging about tech, with a decent following on Twitter, Facebook and (maybe even) Google+.

For the past few months he keeps reading about this Pinterest thing. It's making headlines all over the place. Mashable can't stop talking about these exciting Pinterest stats. A look at Compete alone is worth a million words. Joe is pumped. He is so ready to pin.

Question is how does Joe's pinning bring money for his biz? Read more »

guest post by Michael Gonzalez

Facebook marketing has emerged as а popular model of online marketing аnd advertisement. Along with а number of ecommerce and online business owners, Facebook as also used be а number of traditional businesses to promote thеіr products, services аnd activities.

As а marketer уоu аlsо hаvе options tо carry оut marketing activities thrоugh уоur Facebook wall, business раgеs, аnd groups аs well аs customized Facebook ads.

Just like any other methods of marketing, you will have to invest some effort in properly planning solid strategies to ensure that your Facebook marketing campaign becomes successful.

Here are four effective Facebook marketing tips that you could focus on to help boost your Facebook marketing efforts. Read more »

guest post by IslaMarie Turnbull

Mocial is a term which has only recently come into more common use in the digital marketing and SEO industries.

This new term plays on the sudden growth in popularity of mobile devices and highlights the requirement of mobile specific marketing practices.

There are a number of reasons why this new term has emerged, however put simply it purely reflects the shifts in market trends and highlight the requirement of flexibility in the marketing and digital industry.

Why Do We Need The Term 'Mocial'? Read more »

I may get fired for writing this post but the heck with it. It’s time to vent. About SEO, online marketing, priorities, goals and, quite simply, a sense of purpose in business, and life. As you read, ponder these two short and simple words: long run. Read more »

Today, let us speak a little hotlinking. Let us see what hotlinking is and whether the phenomenon is completely negative as many white-hat SEO-optimizers believe.

So, first thing first, what is hotlinking? This is, technically, linking to a piece of content that's located on another site in such a way that people can actually view it from YOUR site, WITHOUT having to go to the site where it is physically situated. Think of a Vimeo video that you embed on your blog: it would be hosted on Vimeo's server, while being available for viewing on your very resource.

Hotlinking is also referred to as direct linking, leeching or inline linking.

Hotlinking Images

Images get hotlinked a lot. It's not that often that one would want to have a snippet of text from another site sitting on their resource. However, with images, things are different. A lot of people just perform a basic Google search, see an image they can use to illustrate their article with and - voila – put a direct link to it. Read more »

guest post by Emily Murray

Of course we all know that the first goal you have as an Internet marketer is to drive potential customers to a website, but traffic can only get you so far. How can you ensure that the traffic you are getting is relevant to the product or service you are selling?

Most businesses will eventually hit a plateau of daily visitors, at which point it becomes prohibitively expensive to gain more. The only way to increase profits after this is to optimize sale conversion rates. Learning how to keep visitors through the completion of a purchase can seem daunting, but often it is not so much about holding their attention, as avoiding driving them away.  Read more »

guest post by James Ged

It's been almost a year since Google's Panda update hit, and we're all still reeling a little. Although I work as an SEO strategist at a great marketing firm, I also work with a number of other companies during my free time, and I've seen many of them stop and retool their SEO strategy over the past year because they've seen their rankings (or the rankings of their clients) drop. Basically, Panda was a huge wakeup call to all those SEOs out there who were still relying on article spinning and keyword stuffing as a way to get good rankings.

Now the focus is on creating top-notch content, which often times means linkbait. The theory is that if you can make awesome content - articles, graphics, videos, and more - people will naturally link to you, and that's what Google likes to see: nice, natural link profiles.

Formulaic Linkbait

Unfortunately, many SEOs are approaching linkbait in the same way they were approaching article spinning. For example, they've figured out that great linkbait articles are usually 800 words or more, in list format, with pictures for each heading. So they commission 100 writers to write 100 articles with those vague parameters. Read more »

Back in September, Google introduced GA Real Time, which has recently become available in beta for the majority of users.

Yesterday it became accessible to our Google Analytics account as well, and we decided to sort out what value internet marketers can derive from it.

Indeed, people are very excited about this feature. Watching the number of people on your site changing and the charts indicating page views per second (!) floating is overwhelming.

Yes, real-time analytics is captivating to watch. But it's not inherently helpful. Users need to understand how exactly their particular website can benefit from it.

In short, the new GA feature lets you see how your visitors interact with your site – live. You get the number of active visitors on your website, the keywords that brought them in, referrers, location by city, content they're accessing.

Here's a more detailed overview of what data you can get with Google Analytics Real-Time. Read more »

There's no unanimity of opinion among SEO guys and gals about link-building and attracting traffic with social Question & Answers Sites – some claim it's a brilliant opportunity, others say it's a waste of time. The truth is, as always, in between – a positive impact of Q&A on your SEO at large depends on the way you do it. The major Q&A service that comes to our minds first is Yahoo! Answers. In this post we shall give some practical guidance to contributing expertly to Yahoo! Answers and provide a list of other question and answer services worth trying out for boosting your SEO.  

Yahoo! Answers: Basic Things You Should Know

Yahoo! Answers is a place where millions of users meet daily to ask for help and share their own expertise (or spam, unfortunately). Those who participate earn points and grow to occupy different levels – from 1 to 7. Make sure you read the community guidelines before you start to prevent your account from being banned. Read more »