SEO Roundup: December 5, 2014

Dear blog readers, Welcome to your issue of the SEO Advantage newsletter. You'll find access to our articles covering the latest industry news as well as tips and knowledge you can put to use right away. As usual, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Just click through to comment, hit reply to email us, or call 1-800-366-1639 to speak to one of our online marketing specialists directly. And have a great month! SEO Roundup: December 5, 2014 2014-12-05 17:55:37-05 If you're reading this, then congratulations—you survived the biggest shopping weekend of the year. Retail sales following the Thanksgiving holiday broke records this year, but not because of people sleeping in Best Buy parking lots or throwing elbows during a mad Walmart rush. Cyber Monday reports are in, and according to market data it was the heaviest online shopping day to date. Retail e-commerce spending from desktops topped $2 billion for the first time—and that doesn't even include the rapidly-growing share of mobile commerce sales. Here are the highlights: Total e-commerce sales were up by 8.5% year-over-year, although average order values were down by 3.5% There was a 16.7% year-over-year increase in same-store sales on Cyber Monday Mobile comprised 41.2% of e-commerce traffic and 21.9% of sales on Cyber Monday (up from 15.9% last year) Email marketing fueled almost one-quarter (23.9%) of e-commerce orders on Cyber Monday Shoppers referred from Facebook had an average order value of $123.44, 26.2% higher than those referred from Pinterest ($97.78) For the internet marketer, these stats can potentially have major implications on the development of client sites and making sure consumers are led from "screen shopping" to actual conversions.… Continue Reading Read more... Potentially Difficult, but worth it in the Long Run: Link Building through Email Outreach 2014-12-09 08:00:38-05 Let’s face it; link building is difficult work—especially if you're using techniques that make you work harder than necessary. One such example is email outreach. Now don't get me wrong, email outreach does work, but some people do not use it correctly. Here's a better idea of how you should employ email outreach. Scenario: you've decided to use email outreach for link building and have put in the time to organize your strategy, draft the perfect email message, and reach out to potential contacts. After receiving your response(s), you've been turned down, but now what do you do? Many make the mistake of giving up; however, you're better off by responding to those that have turned you down and kindly question why.… Continue Reading Read more... SEOe Trivia – Nofollow 2014-12-12 08:00:30-05 Welcome to SEO Advantage's Trivia feature, where we discuss, dissect and comment on the internet and marketing, and how the two intertwine. Why did Google release nofollow? To combat blog spamming To make sure no one else could copy their business model To allow people to easily stop their Google Alerts Nofollow is an HTML code that certain search engines use to determine which hyperlinks should be ignored when it comes to a site's target rank. Nofollow was invented to try to combat blog spamming by lessening the effectiveness of spammy advertisements online. Nofollow was important because search engine algorithms were designed to rely heavily on website links.… Continue Reading Read more... SEO Roundup: December 19, 2014 2014-12-19 08:00:07-05 As the holiday shopping season reaches maximum velocity—primarily driven by procrastinators who still haven't completed their gift list (myself included)—Google has announced a new metric for advertisers that should help shed light on which products are driving consumers to their stores based on data from online ads. The new "store visit measurement" feature has been added to the Estimated Total Conversions (ETC) tool in AdWords, and, according to Search Engine Watch, is intended to provide AdWords users with "a holistic view of how consumers are engaging with their businesses"—both online and off. Although e-commerce sales hit record highs this year and continue to rise, offline sales still account for more than 93% of total retail sales.… Continue Reading Read more... Fad or Not, #SEO can benefit from Correctly Used Hashtags 2014-12-26 08:00:39-05 While hashtags may have begun as a way for social media users to connect with one another, hashtags have evolved to promoting products. In recent years, many companies have been including hashtags as a part of their strategy for optimizing their websites. Unfortunately, many people are still using hashtags incorrectly. Hashtag usage made its start on Twitter, but the popularity of hashtags has extended to Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and Google + —just to name a few. Hashtags have become so popular that the Oxford English Dictionary has even included "hashtag" as an entry. The general usages of hashtags include: Identifying content and categorizing it Convey a message in a small space Join a group Create a unique hashtag for a reoccurring event How hashtags will help you the most Hashtags cannot only accomplish the above list they can help improve the number of people you can reach.… Continue Reading Read more... SEO Roundup: 2014 Year in Review 2014-12-31 07:00:49-05 We wanted to squeeze in one more SEO roundup before the close of the year to reflect on significant events in the world of internet marketing during 2014. The last 12 months have certainly been active in terms of SEO's changes. As one industry blogger puts it, "Every year, we say how much has changed in the industry – and every year, we're right." Well in case you just woke up from a year-long coma, or you need a recap, here are the big SEO stories from 2014 by month: January – The popular travel site Expedia got slammed with a ranking penalty, Matt Cutts almost singlehandedly made guest blogging obsolete, and Google announced its intent to focus more on mobile optimization. … Continue Reading Read more... SEOe Trivia – What is Cloaking? 2015-01-05 07:00:58-05 Welcome to SEO Advantage's End of 2014 Trivia Feature, where we discuss, dissect and comment on the internet and marketing, and how the two intertwine. What is cloaking? Dressing up your website to make it look better Presenting a search engine spider with different content than displayed on a visitor's browser Hiding your website from normal internet traffic Not all webmasters practice good internet etiquette when it comes to them looking better for Google rankings. One such technique that some webmasters use to help improve their ranking is called cloaking. Cloaking is an SEO tactic in which the information presented to a search engine spider is different from the content that you have displayed on a visitor's browser.… Continue Reading Read more... The Importance of Getting Links from Authority Sites 2015-01-06 07:00:32-05 Link building, a long-standing part of SEO, has changed over the years; however, it has never lost its importance as a part of company's search engine optimization strategies. Moreover, link building is one aspect of SEO that you cannot afford to forget. Changes to search engine's algorithms have altered how link building works, but these changes have also driven home the fact that writers should make sure that when they do link out that they get high quality links. Low quality links can end up harming a website's Google ranking rather than helping. Often, these high quality links can be obtained by focusing on authority sites.… Continue Reading Read more...   Read all the latest blog articles   About SEO Advantage SEO Advantage, Inc. is an online marketing /search engine optimization firm that helps businesses turn their web presence into a powerful revenue generation medium. Our clients enjoy dominance on Google, Yahoo and Bing through a suite of unique pay-for-performance search engine optimization and online marketing services implemented by a multidisciplinary team of SEO engineers, copywriters, and web designers. You'll find us referenced in books such as Writing Web-Based Advertising Copy to Get the Sale and the BusinessWeek bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR, as well as the popular ebook The Small Business Blogging Blueprint. Find out more today. Visit www.seo-advantage.com, call 1-800-366-1639 or email us here.   Connect with us! 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