Search Engine Land is one of the digital marketing industry’s leading authorities and one of the most popular websites in the sector. Whether you are looking for information related to search, social, PPC, content marketing, local SEO, or anything related to digital, you can always find a great resource on the website. Search Engine Land is comprised of a selection of news, expert opinion, and advice, and something fresh and informative can always be found on a daily basis.
We’ve been following Search Engine Land closely throughout the year, even featuring some of their articles in our blogs of the week feature, and have come up with what we think are the 10, in no particular order, most important posts from the last 12 months.
This guest post reaches out to the frustrations many people feel when they are trying to optimise their website. It looks at how Google both helps and hinders SEO activities and is controversial to say the least. In many ways it is everything you’d want from a blog post related to SEO, although it does concede that we all need to be sticking to the rules if we’re to enjoy success in the long term.
Irrespective of confusion around who said what and who is right, the Search Engine Land article provides a useful insight into how Google+ – and by association social media in general – can be used within SEO.
Anyone who enjoys keeping up with the latest digital marketing trends, especially if they are a small business owner who struggles to keep up with what they should be doing, will be pleased to learn that only a very small percentage of larger companies are actually following trends themselves. Do they suffer from the same lack of time, or have they simply become lazy or complacent?
Read the article now, and take heart from the fact that if you aren’t as up to speed with digital marketing as you could be, you’re not the only one.
Despite Google stating back in March 2013 that they would no longer publicise when Panda updates were rolling out, they have been surprisingly transparent and helpful with the information they have continued to provide. This article looks back to only a few weeks after Google’s announcement of “no more announcements,” where Matt Cutts openly told a forum of SEO experts that Google Panda updates roll out over 10 days, which is where there is often an old-school “Google Dance” taking place during the month. He also adds that Google Panda updates most months.
If you have worked in the digital marketing industry for any length of time, you’ll be familiar with the regular talk of “SEO is dead,” “SEO and social media are now the same thing,” “social is the new search,” and various other quotes and sound bites that often find their way into article or blog titles.
This post tackles all of those issues as well as looking at the wider future of both SEO and social media, raising a number of interesting points and ideas.
Google aren’t perfect, and while they are usually open enough to admit that, it is often heartening for others when they can see evidence of this for themselves. This happened during early 2013 when Danny Sullivan did a small piece of research into what happens when Google present their own page title tag as an alternative to the one input by the webmaster. Unfortunately, there have been no posts yet that look at when they get meta descriptions wrong; maybe it should be something in our own editorial calendar for 2014!
The points raised in the blog, along with counterpoints raised in the comments at the foot of the page, are the ones that have continued to fuel debate throughout the rest of this year, and the fact that it was published on April 1st might have even inspired some of the comments. Will 2014 be any different in that regard?
A similar post, also featured on Search Engine Land, can be read here.
This is a great post that was written in January 2013, and considering how the (not provided) landscape has dramatically shifted in the latter half of the year, it now stands as a brilliant reminder of how quickly things can change in the digital marketing industry.
SEO agencies and commentators – including ourselves – have assumed for much of 2013 that PageRank was finally dead, with Google’s Matt Cutts also indicating this was the case. However, Cutts has once again fed much of the industry a red herring, and in this post he confirms that PageRank updated in early December.
There is no doubt that Search Engine Land is a great blog to read for all the latest updates and news from the industry, and we’re looking forward to seeing more authoritative pieces from the site into 2014 and beyond.