How to Appear in Google's Answer Boxes - Whiteboard Friday

Featured snippets are the name of the rankings game. Often eclipsing organic results at the top of the SERPs, "ranking zero" or capturing an answer box in Google can mean increased clicks and traffic to your site. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains the three types of featured snippets and how you can best position yourself to grab those coveted spots in the SERPs.

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evolve and embrace the new mode of thinking/operating are vulnerable with nowhere to hide behind mediocre work and outdated tactics.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.