Digital Marketing

canonical tags
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Improve SEO by Auditing and Fixing Canonical Tags (and How to Do It)

The reason Google doesn’t accept the canonical tag as a directive is probably because they know many webmasters will screw it up. If you have a massive database-driven eCommerce site, and you’ve tried to get a developer team to implement, you’ve seen how it can ultimately launch with a ton of unexpected results. Examples I’ve seen: via templates, products were suddenly “canonicalizing” to the homepage. Page 4 of a collection suddenly canonicalizing to page 1 of the collection. Crazy, random results are always likely if not implemented and QA’d properly. When the tag was announced in February of 2009, I worked for one of the largest eCommerce platforms at the time. We wanted to be first to offer this, and we rushed it out – with many, many problems. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with this tag.

voice search
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Voice Search Optimization: The SEO’s Journey (So Far)

  As long as I’ve been doing SEO and digital marketing, I’ve pushed for the early adoption of new products, platforms, and technology. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (not an Amazon affiliate link, I swear!) has been a book I’ve leaned on since studying marketing in college. The first law states, “being first in the…

user location reports
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Are You Checking “User Location” Reports in Google Ads?

Google Ads location targeting allows advertisers to choose who can see their ads and prevent them from showing in areas they cannot serve. Google uses a variety of signals such as user settings, device, and search activity to determine where a user is located each time they search. In Ads reporting, you will see two…

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Rise of the Machines: How Google AdWords Got Smarter

Update: On 7-25-2018, Google changed the name of its ad platform from AdWords to Google Ads. We are leaving this article as it was originally written with AdWords as the platform’s name. What is machine learning? Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides systems the ability to learn and improve from…

mobile seo
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Don’t Make These Ridiculously Simple Mobile SEO Mistakes

Unless you’ve been dialing up to the internet on a 56K modem attached to your Tangerine iBook G3, chances are you’ve heard that mobile internet usage has surpassed desktop usage for over a year now. Mobile SEO and the mobile experience is perhaps the most important consideration for your site after the content itself. Source:…

8 Reasons Podcast Ads Should Be In Your Marketing Plan
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8 Reasons Podcast Ads Should Be In Your Marketing Plan

Chances are if you’ve ever heard of SquareSpace, Blue Apron, or Audible, you probably first heard about them on a podcast. These brands sponsor quite a few shows, and in return have gained a decent amount of brand recognition. What makes podcasts so appealing to these brands, and why should more marketers (like you) consider…

forecasting
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Prep for the Holidays: Tackling the Dreaded Forecast

Forecasting. Some account managers love it, some hate it. Others believe it should be owned by an analytics team. For the record, dear reader, I LOVE forecasting. Judge me as you see fit. Regardless of your position on the matter, a Q4 forecast is essential to building a solid holiday plan. It sets your client’s…

website migration
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12 Valuable Lessons on Redesigns, Replatforming & Migrations

If you asked me 1000+ days ago if I thought I would consistently have some redesign, replatform, or migration on my to-do board I would have laughed. Not because redesigns make me laugh like Bill #Sebald stories, but because I “left” the design world for content and marketing back in 2011. However, even though I…

rankings
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How I Explain Ranking Algorithms In SEO

Simplifying a massively complex algorithm sounds like a fool’s game.  Google’s search algorithm is like a rope.  A thick rope full of fibers.  Some of the fibers (or smaller algorithms) are old, and some are new. Some are made for on-the-fly determinations, and some are looking for old school signals. A jungle of computation! Think…

ecommerce
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How eCommerce Merchandisers Can Leverage SEO Trends Data

Nowadays, SEO and PPC practitioners need to think outside the box, especially when it comes to eCommerce sites. In order to stay ahead of competitors, we need to invent creative ways to provide unique value through search engines. Ecommerce SEO isn’t just about rankings anymore. It includes ROI (revenue) from category pages, product pages, and…