Feeding the Hummingbird: Structured Markup Isn't the Only Way to Talk to Google

In a recent poll, Moz asked nearly 300 marketers which Google updated affected their traffic the most. Penguin and Panda were first and second, followed by Hummingbird in a distant third.

 

Breaking the SEO Rules: When Not to Follow Best Practices - Whiteboard Friday

Best practices are set in place to guide us toward success in most situations. Not all situations. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus shows us several instances in which it's actually best to break the rules and throw those best practices out the window.

 

How to Be More Creative in Your Online Campaigns

The SEO landscape has changed so much in the last few years in the wake of the Penguin and Panda apocalypse that the discipline is now considered in the broader terms of online marketing or digital marketing. The one element that is common is the requirement for new skills such as PR, classic marketing and most importantly: creativity. Agencies and freelance individuals who can't adapt, evolve and embrace the new mode of thinking/operating are vulnerable with nowhere to hide behind mediocre work and outdated tactics.

Be more creative, is a phrase often used within business and marketing with little consideration given to its meaning. But, what does it mean to be creative?

                           
                               

Silly Marketer, Title Tags Are for Robots!

Like all good marketers, we think carefully about our title tags before publishing new content. Then we just take that carefully crafted title and plop it into the OG tags for social shares, right?

In today's Whiteboard Friday, Jen Lopez explains why we need to put in a little more effort than that.


                          

Is eBay A Big Loser In Google’s Panda 4.0 Update? — Winners & Losers Data

Google began rolling out their Panda 4.0 update designed to punch low-quality content. That’s generated both “winners” who have moved up in rankings as “losers” have dropped down — and eBay might be one of the big losers.

Searchmetrics gave us their initial winners and loser charts, based on rankings they continually monitor. These show that one of the biggest losers was eBay. According to the data, eBay lost a tremendous amount of traffic from Google, much of it from the ebay.com/bhp/ area of its site.


                     

10 Tactics to Improve Blog Readership

If you're looking to increase traffic to your blog, there are many tactics that can significantly boost your progress. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand lays a roadmap for the journey, offering 10 of the best tactics for you to keep in mind along the way.

                                

Google’s Matt Cutts: Why Google Will Ignore Your Page Title Tag & Write Its Own

Google’s Matt Cutts posted a video answer on the question about why and when Google will ignore your title tag and use something else for the snippet title in the search results.

Matt explains in the video that Google really wants the title of the snippets to match on some level the query of the searcher. This logic often results in a higher click through rate on the URL and thus should be better for both the searcher and the web site owner.

The criteria Google uses when coming up with a new title tag are:

(1) Something that is “relatively” short

(2) Have a good description of the page and “ideally” the site that the page is on.

(3) And that it is relevant to the query.

If your existing title tag fits the criteria, then Google will most likely use your title tag. If not, then Google may use (1) content on your page, (2) anchor text links pointing to the page and/or (3) may also use the Open Directory Project.