Nilesh Patel

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

Give.it Enables Easy Gift Giving Around the Web

When Facebook reminds me that it’s my best friend’s birthday, I try to post the nicest message on her page. Because it’s too late to send a birthday card, I message my birthday wishes, noting that I’ll treat her to lunch and bring my gift then. What I’d rather do—other than have the insight to mail her the perfect card and gift that I bought in an actual store—is virtually take my best friend to her favorite online retail store, let her choose exactly what she wants, and pay for it.

Give.it, which launched last week, is here to help with just that. “Many web stores don't offer the possibility to buy products for someone else. And if they do, it’s quite a hassle. To begin with, you need to know the recipient's home address,” says Erwin van Kralingen, co-founder and CEO of the Amsterdam-based B2B ecommerce company offering the embeddable gift solution for online merchants. “In our research, we also found out that gift recipients often wanted a different size or color, or even a different product altogether. Give.it makes the gifting process easier. Once shoppers click on the button, they select the gift’s recipient from their social media contacts. The recipient then gets notified about the gift through Twitter, Facebook, email or LinkedIn, and can fill out all the necessary details, thereby ensuring that the gift is delivered according to his or her wishes.”

Receiving digital birthday cakes in 2011 from friends through Facebook started it all for van Kralingen. “Looking at that I thought, ‘Wouldn't it be fun to send a real product instead of a digital one?’”

The idea for Give.it followed in October 2012 when van Kralingen was working on his startup Kudoo, a Facebook app that made it possible to give real gifts to your friends. “We had 65 merchants selling products through Kudoo in the Netherlands,” says van Kralingen. “Some of them asked me if we had a solution to implement our easy gift-giving process in their own web store as well. That's how the Give.it button came to life—a transaction model for buying things for your friends online.”

Give.it not only makes it really easy and intuitive to surprise a friend with a gift. For merchants, Give.it facilitates more revenue from gift sales and helps them promote their products on social media in a fun and engaging way.

“We ran a promotion with Starbucks in the Netherlands. They did a product introduction through us, which was all about encouraging customers to give a free breakfast to a friend,” van Kralingen says. “Within a couple of hours, thousands of breakfasts were given through Facebook. They received a lot of attention online. The redemption rate was more than 25 percent. This type of campaign proves that people are more likely to redeem a coupon or promotion when it comes from a friend—and friends are what social media is all about.”

Once you click on the Give.it button, a handy widget appears on your screen. The widget lets you select a gift recipient through Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn (coming to Google+ soon), and add a nice message. You pay safely through PayPal (more options to come), and the receiver gets notified about the gift through email or the social network of your choice. The recipient clicks on a link and fills in address details. If there are more options offered by the merchant, such as different sizes and colors, the recipient can specify these as well. Once the recipient accepts the gift, the giver gets charged and notified, and the merchant gets paid immediately. After this, the merchant receives all the necessary order information and can proceed with shipping.

“What sets Give.it apart from other gifting apps is that we offer a B2B gifting solution for merchants,” van Kralingen says. “Give.it is at the heart of where ecommerce is taking place—merchants’ own web stores. We want to become the gifting standard for the web.”

Give.it has made plugins for several major ecommerce platforms such as Magento, Prestashop, Shopify and Big Cartel, making it really easy for merchants to install and customize the Give.it button. In the next couple of years, van Kralingen expects tens of thousands of merchants to join Give.it, turning the web into a gift store.

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The New Google Algorithm and What You Need To Know

For the past few weeks I'd seen a pattern repeating itself across the board with most of the clients that I do SEO and content marketing for, small drops in Page Authority and Domain Authority for every domain I was monitoring. I also observed some big leaps up the SERPs for content that was previously ranking poorly.

Despite suspecting that change was afoot, Google remained unusually quiet and while speculation was rife amongst those of us involved in SEO on a daily basis, nothing had been confirmed. That was, until 26th September 2013 when Google came clean and admitted that the new algorithm had been up and running for the past month.

Panda and Penguin were updates which changed part of the algorithm, but Hummingbird has replaced the old algorithm and it’s the biggest change in 3 years. It’s not just a major update or refresh, it’s an entirely new ranking algorithm.

This latest news comes hot on the heels of Google’s announcement that in future, all searches will be secure and as such, keyword data will no longer be available in Google Analytics. Not only this, but many website owners have spent the last few months dealing with the effects of the major Penguin refresh which hit earlier this year and had far reaching effects, making ‘bad’ SEO not just unsuccessful, but ensuring guilty websites were actively penalised.

Hummingbird aims to deliver results which are precise and fast

Whilst specifics are still somewhat patchy, Google has confirmed that Hummingbird focuses on ranking information based on more intelligent and naturalistic search requests. In short, Google is getting smarter and is now better able to understand the relationships and relevance of words and phrases, instead of just considering a bunch of individual words.

Google Hummingbird At A Glance

Many of the existing rules and weightings still apply, so don’t stop doing what you are doing if your activities are based on Penguin pleasing, sustainable and ethical content focused techniques
A sizeable 90% of all searches are likely to be affected by Hummingbird though the full extent and reach of its effects is currently unknown
Known as Semantic search, more naturalistic or ‘conversational’ search terms (which tend to be long-tail in their nature) are now more important than ever
Google still wants to return the most relevant, accurate and useful search results to its users, Hummingbird provides a more sophisticated means for Google to deliver this
There is now less emphasis on individual keywords and more emphasis on their collective (semantic) meaning
PageRank remains an active ranking signal and Google claims that there is nothing massively different that SEOs need to be doing or worrying about

Summary

If you’ve not noticed any significant changes in the last month, then it looks like you’ve escaped unscathed. Some of the effects we’ve seen have been small however and could easily be missed, including small losses in Domain Authority and drops down SERPs for some previously highly ranking content, while other, less obvious content has risen up.

For some time now, the emphasis has been upon providing useful, high quality content on websites and blogs and upon optimising content towards long tail keywords. This simply means that future SEO activities will be more focused on longer, semantic search terms. In real terms, for those who have already adapted their content marketing and SEO following the Penguin update earlier this year, very little is likely to change.

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Thursday, September 26, 2013

The New Google “Hummingbird” Algorithm

Google has a new search algorithm, the system it uses to sort through all the information it has when you search and come back with answers. It’s called “Hummingbird” and below, what we know about it so far.

What’s a “search algorithm?”

That’s a technical term for what you can think of as a recipe that Google uses to sort through the billions of web pages and other information it has, in order to return what it believes are the best answers.

What’s “Hummingbird?”

It’s the name of the new search algorithm that Google is using, one that Google says should return better results.

So that “PageRank” algorithm is dead?

No. PageRank is one of over 200 major “ingredients” that go into the Hummingbird recipe. Hummingbird looks at PageRank — how important links to a page are deemed to be — along with other factors like whether Google believes a page is of good quality, the words used on it and many other things (see our Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors for a better sense of some of these).

Why is it called Hummingbird?

Google told us the name come from being “precise and fast.”

When did Hummingbird start? Today?

Google started using Hummingbird about a month ago, it said. Google only announced the change today.

What does it mean that Hummingbird is now being used?

Think of a car built in the 1950s. It might have a great engine, but it might also be an engine that lacks things like fuel injection or be unable to use unleaded fuel. When Google switched to Hummingbird, it’s as if it dropped the old engine out of a car and put in a new one. It also did this so quickly that no one really noticed the switch.

When’s the last time Google replaced its algorithm this way?

Google struggled to recall when any type of major change like this last happened. In 2010, the “Caffeine Update” was a huge change. But that was also a change mostly meant to help Google better gather information (indexing) rather than sorting through the information. Google search chief Amit Singhal told me that perhaps 2001, when he first joined the company, was the last time the algorithm was so dramatically rewritten.

What about all these Penguin, Panda and other “updates” — haven’t those been changes to the algorithm?

Panda, Penguin and other updates were changes to parts of the old algorithm, but not an entire replacement of the whole. Think of it again like an engine. Those things were as if the engine received a new oil filter or had an improved pump put in. Hummingbird is a brand new engine, though it continues to use some of the same parts of the old, like Penguin and Panda

The new engine is using old parts?

Yes. And no. Some of the parts are perfectly good, so there was no reason to toss them out. Other parts are constantly being replaced. In general, Hummingbird — Google says — is a new engine built on both existing and new parts, organized in a way to especially serve the search demands of today, rather than one created for the needs of ten years ago, with the technologies back then.

What type of “new” search activity does Hummingbird help?

“Conversational search” is one of the biggest examples Google gave. People, when speaking searches, may find it more useful to have a conversation.

“What’s the closest place to buy the iPhone 5s to my home?” A traditional search engine might focus on finding matches for words — finding a page that says “buy” and “iPhone 5s,” for example.

Hummingbird should better focus on the meaning behind the words. It may better understand the actual location of your home, if you’ve shared that with Google. It might understand that “place” means you want a brick-and-mortar store. It might get that “iPhone 5s” is a particular type of electronic device carried by certain stores. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages with matching words.

In particular, Google said that Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.

I thought Google did this conversational search stuff already!

It does (see Google’s Impressive “Conversational Search” Goes Live On Chrome), but it had only been doing it really within its Knowledge Graph answers. Hummingbird is designed to apply the meaning technology to billions of pages from across the web, in addition to Knowledge Graph facts, which may bring back better results.

Does it really work? Any before-and-afters?

We don’t know. There’s no way to do a “before-and-after” ourselves, now. Pretty much, we only have Google’s word that Hummingbird is improving things. However, Google did offer some before-and-after examples of its own, that it says shows Hummingbird improvements.

A search for “acid reflux prescription” used to list a lot of drugs (such as this, Google said), which might not be necessarily be the best way to treat the disease. Now, Google says results have information about treatment in general, including whether you even need drugs, such as this as one of the listings.

A search for “pay your bills through citizens bank and trust bank” used to bring up the home page for Citizens Bank but now should return the specific page about paying bills

A search for “pizza hut calories per slice” used to list an answer like this, Google said, but not one from Pizza Hut. Now, it lists this answer directly from Pizza Hut itself, Google says.

Could it be making Google worse?

Almost certainly not. While we can’t say that Google’s gotten better, we do know that Hummingbird — if it has indeed been used for the past month — hasn’t sparked any wave of consumers complaining that Google’s results suddenly got bad. People complain when things get worse; they generally don’t notice when things improve.

Does this mean SEO is dead?

No, SEO is not yet again dead. In fact, Google’s saying there’s nothing new or different SEOs or publishers need to worry about. Guidance remains the same, it says: have original, high-quality content. Signals that have been important in the past remain important; Hummingbird just allows Google to process them in new and hopefully better ways.

Does this mean I’m going to lose traffic from Google?

If you haven’t in the past month, well, you came through Hummingbird unscathed. After all, it went live about a month ago. If you were going to have problems with it, you would have known by now.

By and large, there’s been no major outcry among publishers that they’ve lost rankings. This seems to support Google saying this is very much a query-by-query effect, one that may improve particular searches — particularly complex ones — rather than something that hits “head” terms that can, in turn, cause major traffic shifts.

But I did lose traffic!

Perhaps it was due to Hummingbird, but Google stressed that it could also be due to some of the other parts of its algorithm, which are always being changed, tweaked or improved. There’s no way to know.

How do you know all this stuff?

Google shared some of it at its press event today, and then I talked with two of Google’s top search execs, Amit Singhal and Ben Gomes, after the event for more details. I also hope to do a more formal look at the changes from those conversations in the near future. But for now, hopefully you’ve found this quick FAQ based on those conversations to be helpful.

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Google unveils major upgrade to search algorithm

Google has unveiled an upgrade to the way it interprets users' search requests.

The new algorithm, codenamed Hummingbird, is the first major upgrade for three years.

It has already been in use for about a month, and affects about 90% of Google searches.

At a presentation on Thursday, the search giant was short on specifics but said Hummingbird is especially useful for longer and more complex queries.

Google stressed that a new algorithm is important as users expect more natural and conversational interactions with a search engine - for example, using their voice to speak requests into mobile phones, smart watches and other wearable technology.

Hummingbird is focused more on ranking information based on a more intelligent understanding of search requests, unlike its predecessor, Caffeine, which was targeted at better indexing of websites.

It is more capable of understanding concepts and the relationships between them rather than simply words, which leads to more fluid interactions. In that sense, it is an extension of Google's "Knowledge Graph" concept introduced last year aimed at making interactions more human.

In one example, shown at the presentation, a Google executive showed off a voice search through her mobile phone, asking for pictures of the Eiffel Tower. After the pictures appeared, she then asked how tall it was. After Google correctly spoke back the correct answer, she then asked "show me pictures of the construction" - at which point a list of images appeared.

Big payoffs?

However, one search expert cautioned that it was too early to determine Hummingbird's impact. "For me this is more of a coming out party, rather than making me think 'wow', said Danny Sullivan, founder of Search Engine Land.

"If you've been watching this space, you'd have already seen how they've integrated it into the [predictive search app] Google Now and conversational search.

"To know that they've put this technology further into their index may have some big payoffs but we'll just have to see how it plays out," Mr Sullivan said.

The news was announced at an intimate press event at the Silicon Valley garage where founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page worked on the launch of the search engine, which is fifteen years old on Friday.

At the event, the search behemoth also announced an updated search app on Apple's iOS, as well as a more visible presence for voice search on its home page.

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Monday, September 23, 2013

On Site SEO Vs Off Site SEO Strategies

While there are advocates on each side, the most successful SEO strategy is one that incorporates both on-site AND off-site.

Let’s take a look at exactly what each category means via handy checklists:

On-Site SEO

On-site SEO is exactly what it sounds like, SEO that can be done on your site without exterior elements. This can include the use of:

Title Tags and Meta Tags (Keyword, Description)
H1 Tags
Alt Tag optimization
Layout and Design Elements
Keyword Research
Keyword Density
Keyword-Formatted URLs
Fresh Relevant Content
XML Sitemap
Robots.txt file
301 redirects
Loading Time Control (via HTTP compression or other method)

Off-Site SEO

On the flipside, off-site SEO is equally as self-explanatory; it deals with all the elements of SEO-based marketing that are done outside of your site. These elements can include:

Directory Submission
Bookmarking Submission
Search Engine Submission
Article Submissions
Press Release Submission
Classified Submission
Forum Posting
Optimized Video Submissions
Guest Posting
E-Mail Marketing
Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter,)
Commenting on related sites, forums and blogs
Keyword analysis
Competitor analysis
RSS Feeds
Web 2.0 marketing
Paid linking
Posting on Q&A sites
Set up Google Webmaster Tool
Set up Google Analytic
Trackbacks

On-site AND off-site: Together as One

When thinking about on-site and off-site SEO marketing you should be thinking about creating a unified marketing strategy.

Remember SEO is constant vigilance; it is a consistent and successful string of on-site and off-site SEO strategies.

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Saturday, September 21, 2013

What is SEO, and What Does it Mean Today?

For an intangible, virtual landscape, the internet is simply massive. Actually, massive doesn’t quite cover it. It’s a behemoth. It’s super-colossal. It’s really, really, really big. That is to say that there’s a lot of information available on the web, and it’s not always easy to locate the exact datum that you want. Simply combing through web pages one at a time to find what you’re looking for is the equivalent to searching for an atom-sized needle in a haystack the size of Texas. This is where search engines come in.

Search engines—such as Google—are designed to take an overview of the entire accessible internet and then give you links to sites that it believes are authoritative and relevant to your search. Relevance has to do with the words used on the page, while authoritativeness is usually based on the number of high-quality links that are directed to the page from other sites. It has been said that links are like votes, and in the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), that’s certainly true.

SEO is a practice that began back in the 1990s, when people first started to realize that they could make money off of their websites. In order to do that, they would need people to visit the sites, and in order for that to happen, they would have to utilize search engine results to the best of their abilities.

Thus, website owners were tasked with creating authoritative content into which promising keywords and links could be inserted. At the same time, the purpose of good content is to draw other respected sites in the hope that they will link to the page in question. The end goal is to have enough quality links and relevant content that the target site shows up on the first page of search results when an online search engine is used (for example a search for the words “Home Automation” using Google will result in the top results including sites for top rated home automation providers such as Vivint, as opposed to random pages of nonsense that just happen to use the right keywords). Better still, if you can land at the number-one spot for a specific search, then you know that your site will be getting a substantial amount of traffic. It is now a big part of the digital marketing industry, and is very popular.

Of course, to some people, anything worth doing is worth doing underhandedly. Using unethical “Black Hat” SEO techniques (which are techniques that break terms and conditions set forth by search engines), some unauthoritative and irrelevant sites began to take advantage of—and ultimately damage—the entire system. Keyword stuffing, hidden text, and doorway pages were all used in this way, killing the credibility of otherwise viable search engines, and making it much more difficult to find useful information on the internet.

However, Google, the world’s most popular search engine, began to develop ways to fight against this type of devious SEO. Two specific updates, first Google Panda (in February 2011) and then Google Penguin (in April 2012) were released and strengthened the Google algorithm. Panda was basically an improved intelligence which was designed to keep low-quality sites away from the top ranking spots, whereas Penguin was focused more on identifying sites that utilize Black Hat techniques, and lowering their search engine ranking as a deterrent.

But these new updates aren’t perfect. As long as search engine results are an important factor to online business and advertising, there will be people looking for innovative new ways to increase their site’s ranking without having to actually improve its content. Naturally, search engines such as Google will continue to fight against these tactics with new updates and programs. One major factor in the future of SEO will be its involvement in social media. Search results will be forced to include more social media results, and will also take into account personal information to provide the best and most useful returns. Of course, as these changes begin to take place, one can expect SEO as we know it to change as well. One thing that won’t change, however, is the necessity of search engines to deliver the most relevant data from authoritative sources. After all, the internet isn’t getting any smaller, and we’re all going to need a little help navigating it.

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Friday, September 20, 2013

What Makes You A Best In Class SEO Survey Says

Today, at Conductor’s annual client summit, #C3NY, Director of Research and Search Engine Land contributor Nathan Safran unveiled research from a pool of over 380 enterprise search marketers and SEO professionals, analyzing common behaviors which lead to success.

Three key areas where the most successful search marketers thrived? Content, reporting excellence, internal education and evangelism.

The results of the study identify best practices in each of these areas to separate “best in class” from “laggards”. The characteristics that define ‘best in class’ include being involved early in the content creation process and employing advanced reporting techniques.

Specifically, reporting best practice behaviors include:

Using reporting data to determine strategy
Reporting early and often
Varying reporting requirements by stakeholder interest
Reporting automation to free valuable time
Data mash-ups to draw meaningful insight from multiple variables
Drawing insights from ‘hidden’ data

How Much Does Budget Really Matter?

Interestingly, not as much as some might think. Conductor found that 43% of ‘best in class’ had more than 10% of overall marketing budget, while 57% of ‘laggards’ had less than 10% of overall budget.

Size Of Search Team

Search professionals often feel that they need more bodies on their team, but the study shows that nearly 1/3 of ‘best in class’ organizations only have a one person team, while 68% of industry leaders have a team of just two to four people.

This study was published in collaboration with Search Engine Land, a media partner at this year’s C3 event hosted by Conductor. You can download the complete study, which includes a foreword by Search Engine Land and Conductor’s tips to become a best in class search marketer here.

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Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Nina Davuluri is first Miss America of Indian descent

Moments after winning the 2014 Miss America crown, Nina Davuluri described how delighted she is that the nearly century-old pageant sees beauty and talent of all kinds.

The 24-year-old Miss New York is the first contestant of Indian heritage to become Miss America; her talent routine was a Bollywood fusion dance.

"I'm so happy this organization has embraced diversity,'' she said in her first press conference after winning the crown in Atlantic City, New Jersey's Boardwalk Hall. "I'm thankful there are children watching at home who can finally relate to a new Miss America.''

Her pageant platform was "celebrating diversity through cultural competency."

The native of Syracuse, New York wants to be a doctor, and is applying to medical school, with the help of a $50,000 scholarship she won as part of the pageant title.

She is the second consecutive Miss New York to win the Miss America crown, succeeding Mallory Hagan, who was selected in January when the pageant was still held in Las Vegas. The Miss America Organization will compensate Hagan for her shortened reign.

Davuluri's victory led to some negative comments on Twitter from users upset that someone of Indian heritage had won the pageant. She brushed those aside.

"I have to rise above that," she said. "I always viewed myself as first and foremost American."

She had planned to go to the scene of a devastating boardwalk fire in the New Jersey communities of Seaside Park and Seaside Heights Monday afternoon. But pageant officials canceled that visit after learning that Gov. Chris Christie was making cabinet officials available at that same time to business owners victimized by the fire.

Her first runner-up was Miss California, Crystal Lee. Other top 5 finalists included Miss Minnesota, Rebecca Yeh; Miss Florida, Myrrhanda Jones, and Miss Oklahoma, Kelsey Griswold.

In the run-up to the pageant, much attention was given to Miss Kansas, Theresa Vail, the Army sergeant who was believed to have been the first Miss America contestant to openly display tattoos. She has the Serenity Prayer on her rib cage, and a smaller military insignia on the back of one shoulder.

Vail won a nationwide "America's Choice" vote to advance as a semi-finalist, but failed to make it into the Top 10.

In a Twitter message on Sunday before the finals began, Vail wrote: "Win or not tonight, I have accomplished what I set out to do. I have empowered women. I have opened eyes."

Jones made it into the top 5 wearing a bedazzled knee brace. She tore knee ligaments Thursday while rehearsing her baton-twirling routine, which she executed flawlessly Sunday night.

The pageant had pitted 53 contestants, one from each state, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, in swimsuit, evening gown, talent and interview competitions.

Sam Haskell, CEO of the Miss America Organization, said he was thrilled it all played out in Atlantic City after a six-year stint in Las Vegas.

"This is where we belong," he told The Associated Press. "This is the home of Miss America, and this is where we're going to stay."

The pageant started in Atlantic City in 1921 as a way to extend the summer tourism season for an extra weekend.

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Monday, September 16, 2013

Why is Content Part of a Smart SEO Strategy?

Over the last several years, search engine optimization (SEO) has matured quite a bit. Now, it’s no longer the practice of stuffing web pages with as many carefully-placed keywords as possible and hoping that Google notices. These days, it takes a much more sophisticated and refined approach built on fresh, original content that will provide value to visitors, while also attracting search engines and helping sites to move up the natural search rankings.

Quality is Key

Creating content for SEO today means going beyond traditional SEO practices like on-page keyword optimization or link building. Although both of these still play an important role in a business’s SEO success, they can no longer be relied on as the best ways to drive search traffic to a website.

As time goes on and technology gets more sophisticated, Google continues to push for a quality over quantity approach. Sites that offer visitors valuable content are going to be looked upon more favorably by the search engine, and will – therefore – appear higher in the search rankings. In Google’s digital eyes, this means providing high-quality, relevant content on a regular basis.

Obviously, what defines “high quality” content is up to the person reading or watching it, but that hasn’t stopped Google from trying to filter the stuff it finds to be the most beneficial to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Some of the things that Google looks for to determine quality are longer content, images, videos, correct spelling, proper grammar, proper text formatting and, of course, links – including both outbound links to other high quality sites and inbound links (and social shares) from high quality sources.

It’s also important to remember that content must be relevant to the website publishing it and the people who are most likely to read it. This means staying around the general topic of the website (as in, only publishing content about tech gadgets on a technology review site, rather than – say – automobile parts). This way, the search engines will see a common, consistent theme across all of a site’s content when they come to crawl it. Relevance is important to Google, because it means that visitors that end up at a website looking for information about a specific topic will be able to find it quickly once they get there and poke around.

Kinds of Content (And How They Help)

Admittedly, “content” is a vague term that can be applied to pretty much anything on the Web, in one way or another. But there are certain types of content that fit into Google’s loose criteria for “high quality” that can also help businesses move up the search rankings. The most obvious (and the easiest to produce) are blog posts.

It seems that every business has a blog these days (or, at least, they should have one) that allows them to consistently publish new long-form content related to their specific industries. With blogs, companies can satisfy both Google (and other search engines) and their target audiences by publishing original posts that provide readers with some kind of informative or actionable value. They also allow bloggers to stay on top of timely or topical news items – another thing that search engines like.

But really, the most obvious way that blog posts help improve a site’s search rankings is that they give writers more opportunities to insert relevant keywords into their sites in a natural, readable way that will attract the search engines and cause them register the site as being relevant to those specific terms. This benefit only grows and become more powerful as a site publishes more blog posts.

Blogs also provide businesses with a way to garner more backlinks from other high quality sites or blogs. This gives the business owner more authority with Google, makes the site more visible to its target audience and helps spread its content around the Web.

In addition, blog posts give companies content that they can push on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +, in turn, giving their fans and followers a reason to visit their websites. Plus, when they like, share or retweet a company’s posts, it provides social signals that act as inbound links, which adds credibility to a website and results in another SEO benefit.

However, not everyone likes to read, so it’s worth keeping in mind that blog posts aren’t going to entice everyone in your target audience. That is why many businesses have started turning to infographics – large-format images that can be used to organize multiple data points on a single subject or topic. Many users like these because they can quickly read and understand a significant amount of information in a way that’s visually stimulating, making it easier to remember later.

Businesses like infographics because they represent a great way to increase traffic and to gain authority needed to help them move up the SERPs. Because of their visual nature, infographics (or well-designed infographics, at least) are far more likely than blog posts to go “viral,” meaning that they tend to receive more reposts and shares on social networks and other websites than standard blog posts. This results in more links, more traffic, a wider audience reach and, ultimately, more credibility with the search engines.

Content Optimization is the New SEO

Back when Internet technology and search engine algorithms where still in their infancy, web professionals tried to find crafty ways to artificially generate signals that would convince Google and other search engines of their credibility. This included tactics like keyword stuffing and low quality link building that were only concerned with manipulating the search engines into prioritizing a site in the SERPs. Nowadays, search engines take a much more sophisticated approach to the way they determine which sites should be given authority in their niches.

These days, search engines require relevant, high quality and fresh content that is published on a regular basis. This can be done in the form of blog posts or infographics, as well as other types of “viral” content, such as videos, slideshows and more. Search engines want to be able to provide their users with valuable information in the same way that businesses want to offer their target audiences something relevant to their interests. An abundance of quality content is the answer for both parties.

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