If you read Internet marketing blogs or follow SEO news, you’ll notice story after story about how crazy the SEO world is getting. One week, Google says your site needs an SSL certificate to rank higher. Not long after, it says that your ranking will drop if you’re not mobile friendly. But beneath all of this, there is a strange story, one that almost seems like it’s from the pages of a George Orwell novel, involving a large monolithic organization, a group of rebel SEOs trying to outsmart the organization, and a group of citizens none the wiser to what’s going on. It’s the […]
Freelance writers beware: 3 bad SEO practices to avoid
Take it from me: There are signs that a client isn’t worth it. If you’re being paid to write content specifically designed to trick search engines, you’re most likely working with a business that doesn’t put its content first. This type of client won’t value your creativity as much as they should. If you’re like most WordPress users, you have some talent to spare, so chances are good you have considered freelancing. It takes time to build a portfolio, so it’s tempting to do every single project you’re offered when starting out. I’ve worked as a freelance copywriter and SEO blogger […]
Write for Readers or Search Engines? Here’s How to Do Both
Sometimes it can be challenging to keep up with how the rules of the web are changing. Remember when SEO was just a competition on who can fit a keyword on their site more often? Or when many websites suddenly found themselves blacklisted from one day to the next? Or when “content is king” became the official motto of the Internet? Good times. While the rules might be constantly in motion, one thing that has continued to be true is that content is at the core of running a successful website. Yes, other elements of online marketing (such as social media […]
23 Must-Have Apps for Running a Website from Your Mobile Device
There’s no denying it: mobile devices are on the rise. Not only are more and more people using their devices to access websites, but phones and tablets are quickly becoming important tools for our careers. With the evolution of devices, we (as people) are becoming more mobile ourselves. Many internet entrepreneurs actually start out with the specific goal of being able to work from anywhere. In fact, this trend is increasingly more common for people across all careers. People simply do not want to be tethered to an office. The reason many of us opt for smart phones and tablets is because we don’t […]
DradCast Episode 047: Lead Don’t Follow
[y=xcAL_PifbwE#t=412 height=400] Show Notes Host Joost de Valk started developing PHP in 1994. He created a site called css3.info in 2006, which was his first WordPress site and his introduction to SEO. Joost developed his own SEO plugins to solve his personal need, then turned all of his small SEO plugins into one big one. In 2010, he started his own company, and now he is expanding and hiring his 13th employee. In today’s WordPress community Joost is known for his guru-like knowledge of all things SEO. You can find Joost online at yoast.com or on twitter @yoast. Sippin’ On Brad – Water Dre – Diet Coke Joost – Dutch […]
Panda 4.0 Is Shaking Things Up
This week kicked off with the announcement of Panda 4.0, and since then it has been shaking things up across the web. The Panda algorithm is Google’s effort to keep low-quality sites low in rank, and return higher-quality sites towards the top of the search results. Since 2011, Panda has undergone frequent data refreshes and updates, but many times they aren’t announced or confirmed. So, when the head of Google’s webspam team, Matt Cutts, announced the release of 4.0 SEO specialists began speculating about its significance. According to searchmetrics, Panda 4.0 is rumored to be a major update that will serve as the platform for […]
10 Things I Would Do to Improve WordPress as a CMS
WordPress is the greatest 🙂 WordPress powers roughly 74 million websites on the internet, and has over 46 million user downloads—making it the preferred content management system (CMS) on the web. The WordPress.org database boasts 29,000 plugins and hundreds of free themes—and that’s not even counting themes and plugins sold externally. But you’ve heard that before, right? I mean, WordPress statistics are all over the web. Today, I’d like to look at WordPress through the eyes of an objective critic, rather than a glossy-eyed admirer (in real life, I’m frequently both). In this post, I’ll discuss 10 simple, yet important, […]
Speed up to a Higher Rank and ROI
The web isn’t what it used to be. In the past, before the web frontier was conquered, anyone could throw up a website and make money. This is because search engine ranking was fairly straightforward and easy to understand. Your site could be successfully ranked simply by using keywords, avoiding the use of images for links, and keeping words at the bottom of the page to a minimum. Today, the landscape has drastically changed. The, once empty, web has become Times Square. There’s advertising in all directions, with millions of people playing the same game. So, naturally, maintaining a high […]
Matt Cutts on Guest Blogging and SEO
When it comes to Google and Search Engine Optimization, Matt Cutts is no stranger. Having worked at Google for fourteen years, Cutts knows all that there is to know about search engines. Apart from that, he also happens to be the subject of a good number of internet memes. So when Matt Cutts recently wrote an article titled The Decay and Fall of Guest Blogging for SEO, the internet went wild. What could this mean? Matt Cutts on Guest Blogging and SEO The Action To cut the long story short, this is what Cutts had to say: “Okay, I’m calling it: […]
Less is More: 3 WordPress Plugins for SEO
WordPress plugins are a fast and simple way to customize your site’s performance or modify its look. It is common (and tempting) for new webmasters to load up their site with dozens of plugins, but this practice may actually be doing more harm than good. I’m of the belief that less is more. My team at DigitalTraffic.com has been doing eCommerce SEO for over a decade. When we optimize a client’s website, there are really only 3 plugins that we always use. This is not to say that certain desired functionalities won’t require other plugins, but for the vast majority of our […]
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