SEO Experts Blog

Search Engine Marketers generally know how to advantageously apply HTML tags, create focused content, and build link equity for positioning Web sites with an eye toward reaching their ranking objectives. But, in regards to online marketing in general, there's one little 'ole-school' piece of homework that most SEO's entirely overlook — they neglect to interview their target customers!

Why is this important? ...because you absolutely must,

find out what they want!
...never mind what you think

Facebook has just announced that Facebook Offers and Promoted Posts are now available to all local US businesses. However, as of the time of this publishing, we had paid posts but not Facebook Offers on Planet Ocean's Facebook Page. So we're guessing these features are still rolling out and will be available to everyone sometime in June. Regardless of when you get them on your page they're both going to be great resources.

Facebook Offers...
These offers will work very similar to a Groupon or Google Offer. Creating an offer is completely free and extremely easy. This makes it obvious...

Googler Vanessa Schneifer (aka Vanessagene) begins a weekly “need to know” video round up of important things happening in the help forum available via YouTube. Two videos have been released:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp30pGhveJE&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO5wd2fl2Vs

...

While those of us in the US are often clueless about what's going on north of the border, SEO's working to promote Canadian Businesses via Local Search are acutely aware of the unique challenges they face. Hopefully, this post will help the rest of us understand Local Search in Canada a little better.

Dot Com or Dot Ca?

If you have a business that is marketing strictly to Canadians, then dot ca is the way to go with your domain name. Nothing more clearly tells the Search Engines that you are marketing to searchers in Canada.

If you also market in other countries, a dot com domain name will serve you better in most instances. How...

There’s no doubt that, in the last few months, Pinterest has become the social media darling du jour. In March, Experian Hitwise data indicated that Pinterest was the third most popular social media platform in the U.S. with 104 million visits.

It's officially 10 days until Europe's much talked about ‘law' comes into play doing its best to restrict and control the way site owners use cookies within their sites. The law sounds scary and there are rumors flying about how it will ‘kill European marketing'.

However the truth as we see it is that it's just a pain in the ass to have to stop what you're doing in order to comply. Then once you've complied you're getting in the way of your visitor's user experience with annoying pop-ups and warning messages. So, let's cover what this law is, what you need to actually change on your site AND how to do it gracefully without chasing your visitors away.

Understand The Law

The new Places Help Forum is buzzing with problems. There are either some serious bugs in Places, another "unknown" guideline of some kind is in force or the enforcement of one or more known guidelines has been stepped up considerably - or all of the above. Just when you think Google Places can’t get any more confusing for small business owners, it does.

Rich snippet spam becomes a household word, at least in houses with SEOs. It’s mainly coming in the form of false rating stars appearing in the Search results, but it’s so easy to make happen and the positive effect is so strong and so immediate that you ca...