Black Hat SEO News

The most obvious problem with lying is that it makes you wrong. Anyone who knows the truth then immediately knows, at a bare minimum, that you said something that is not the truth, aka wrong.

Getting others involved in your SEO strategy can sometimes cause too much confusion, but a public relations department is one place that can actually give you some real help. By enlisting the help of others, your SEO strategy can move to a new level. Public relations often has quite a few high profile connections and quite a few different avenues to help you gain visibility, so it’s important not to let this department pass you by. This leaves many businesses to that simple question: Why haven’t I been using public relations before, and how can I get started right away? Fortunately, the answer isn’t too difficult. Once you really dive into the subject you’ll be wondering why you didn’t consider the help of public relations in the first place.

Since the JOBS Act was signed into law in April 2012, crowdfunding campaigns and platforms have been growing like wildflowers. There are many choices for campaign teams but also some uncertainties with pending S.E.C. rules.

The American youth are jumping into a world where achievement and efficiency are key judgment factors. Their parents are encouraging them to speak and participate, praising them for nearly everything they do. Now that many children and young adults are used to having a voice within the home, they are desperately searching for an avenue to be heard outside of the home as well. Social media does just this.

Although Google escaped relatively unscathed from a U.S. antitrust investigation into its business practices by the FTC, Europe may bring a less favorable result for the dominant search engine, based on comments by the EU competition commissioner.

Foundem, a comparison search website that helped initiate a large-scale European Union anti-trust investigation against Google, has filed a lawsuit against Google, according to court papers filed in October and released this week.

Facebook will let its billion users send a message directly to its boss, Mark Zuckerberg, but only if you pay #100 for the privilege. Facebook called the Zuckerberg price point an "extreme" test to "see what works to filter spam."

Does time of day play in sentiment? Does the topic of the post come into play? When is net sentiment highest? What about just positive sentiment? Should posting be concentrated on one platform over another? Having such an extensive list with these questions in mind, Socialtyze's goal was to build analysis that gives Community Managers and Brand Managers an indication of when their fans are most likely to engage positively.

his week the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas came to an end. Here's a brief rundown of what was hot, what was not, and what was "meh."

Delta Airlines should take a page from the Enterprise Rent-A-Car mantra, "We Can Fix It." Their recent debacle is a hearken back to "United Breaks Guitars", and not in a good way.

Have you noticed you’ve been losing Twitter followers and you don’t know why? Did you work hard to gain your followers and find yourself struggling to keep them? Do you have numbers but a very small engagement ratio? If you’re losing followers, then there is a good chance you need to adjust some Twitter techniques to stop this from happening.

Among the many factors that go into sourcing and crafting great articles, there are many other dynamics that go into making the content searchable and significant for the search engines to determine what, where and how display your written content and rank in the search engines. Take a look from the technical perspective to help you find that things aren’t as easy as just creating a readable and engaging article (though it should be that simple).

Over the past year, 171% more queries are showing up as ‘Not Provided’ in analytics reports, and it’s a trend that’s likely to continue. The options to overcome this are fairly limited – the change is part of Google Search, rather than in the way Analytics collects data, so switching to a different platform would not restore the ‘missing’ keywords.

Social netizens unquestionably have associated Walmart with Newtown. Social responsibility demands that Walmart heed the social welfare of the communities it serves—and not hypocritically hide behind its yellow smiley face mascot. The “big box gun store” finally is being held accountable in a mounting social effort.

It can be easy to overcomplicate content strategy and keyword research. There’s lots of great ways you to create a content strategy, but to really make it a success you have to get to know your audience and find out what it is they want to see.

More brands are hopping in bed with Instagram and statistics show the relationship just might work. If your brand is buying Instagram shots for everyone, here’s how to track every move, filter, hashtag, keyword, Like, comment, and user.

Instead of focusing on New Year’s resolutions, let’s look back at the things B2B SEOs did that were working in the past year. Let’s focus on how we can enhance what we know works well in content marketing, performance, and collaboration.

How does one convert a lead into a real customer? How quickly should the company respond to web forms? After reading through several articles and working with several different clients, I’ve gathered a list of best practices on how to respond to leads.

Successful social media marketing needs to be consistent, organized and strategic. Establishing a social media presence for your business is critical. What better place to establish or enhance your company’s social media presence than the most popular social network?

Complex sales involve a number if different people. You will find multiple decision makers, buyers, each having a completely different role and needs than the next one. As sales professional, it is up to you to work within the ranges of expertise and knowledge to present your solution in a compelling manner. This is where social media hand social selling helps!

The Courageous CEO, Robbin Phillips of Brains on Fire discusses how to Ignite Powerful, Sustainable Word of Mouth Movements and how she thinks marketing saves lives.

The same tactics that make search marketing uniquely effective at capturing a user’s intent can now be deployed on Facebook. Here's a quick look at what Facebook’s introduction of search retargeting on the FBX means for advertisers.

There are 3 main styles for including images in Facebook posts. Here they are demonstrated along with some tips about writing teasers to draw more people into engagement.

Five blog posts in one - Zachary presents the best of his 2012 articles. Facebook justification. Content bolstering. Advocacy importance. True engagement. And Likes and dislikes of campaigns.

Search industry body, SEMPO, have launched their annual salary survey in conjunction with Search Engine Watch's (SEW) sister site ClickZ. It's the 4th survey of it's kind from SEMPO and it is open to everyone with no SEMPO membership required.

In the end, a person with some measure of credibility is laying the reputation on the line to say something good about you. What makes this a big deal? Why is it more important than just taking an individuals word?

Women are the most powerful brand ambassadors but are they brand loyal?

Tired of cold-calling? Wish you could easily keep on top of leads and competitors? Social media is here to help.

Facebook fans are getting regionalized, resurrecting the Digg effect, Google+ pushing communities, and more.

Success in online marketing now calls for more than traditional SEO tactics and the creation of run-of-the-mill content. Dynamic, original and engaging content is what the marketplace demands for nearly all industries. The quality and social capital of content is now playing a major role in marketing industry discourse. To achieve a highly trafficked website and increased new business, you must get on board with the essential goal of creating relevant, valuable, engaging, impactful, information-rich and highly shareable online content. Achieving high rates of social content curation—social sharing—is becoming increasingly vital to SEO and the ranking of search engine results pages. To improve SEO, increase website traffic, garner more lead conversions and ramp up new business, you need to find a way to distinguish yourself and your company via content marketing—to stand out from your competitors. Become content royalty with these five best practices.

Google Analytics is unarguably powerful for a wide variety of different forms of website analysis, but step off of your own site and it becomes a little harder to track visitors, where they arrive from, and how they found you in the first place. Luckily, there are several ways that you can identify social media referrals in your data – and not all of them even need any action on your part in order to set them up.

Professional social networking site LinkedIn has announced a new milestone: more than 200 million members. By far, the United States boasts the most LinkedIn members and the site is most used by those who work in information technology and services.

Lots of things are shifting in the social space for brands this year - one of the most important being a heightened (and long overdue) focus on analytics. The whole idea may be frightening and a little overwhelming for others, but you can get a jumpstart with post tags in 3 easy steps.

The Los Angeles Times ran an article recently entitled “Is Facebook worth it? Film execs confide they may cut movie ads.” In it, they cite multiple sources who are unable to quantify the value of Facebook activity to sales at the box office. They also describe a growing frustration for movie studios about the decreased reach that Facebook’s new EdgeRank algorithm is delivering them.

Through comScore’s 2 million panelists, we were able to track behavior of those who saw our earned (or organic) Facebook impressions (among fans and friends of fans) and those who saw our paid Facebook impressions (Marketplace, Premium and News Feed sponsored ads) against a control group that did not see them.

Digital Daya’s recently released report claims that 75% of world leaders are now on Twitter. Find out who makes the top 3 and what 2013 might hold for the political Twittersphere.

Neil Patel, founder of KissMetrics, shares his thoughts on topics including post-Penguin SEO link building best practices, anchor text, social signals, misconceptions, and the importance of getting press – plus future insights for 2013 and beyond.

The social or connected customers is your influencer. They are the gatekeepers to a more efficient and expansive network of referrals linked by shared experiences and optimized through an endless social effect that extends your value proposition beyond your reach today.

Some of the exact elements that can elevate a site – content, links, and usability – can also cut it down. Minor tweaks and waiting for the next refresh is the wrong prescription. With a little SEO surgery, you can restore your site’s health.

In order to develop successful persona profiles, you need to know where to get the information and the right questions to ask. Here’s all the information you need to gather about your customers' behavior to create detailed customer personas.

The Internet wept with the implementation of the most recent Timeline changes, but what will happen when the even newer Facebook Timeline changes begin hitting users? During the past few days, it has been reported that Facebook users in New Zealand have been seeing a new Timeline layout. Ready or not, here it comes!

Social media's role in business marketing is constantly evolving. However, there are several trends that we can speculate will come to fruition in the next year.

Social selling involves using social media to identify buying trigger events and to target of the right message, at the right Time, for the right Person. Let's have a look at the Dos and Don'ts of social selling.

One of the focal points of a person or company’s Internet reputation is in fact social media. As more and more consumers go online to find the goods and services they want, discovering some negative details about a business owner can easily sway them to find another company to deal with.

How can you make sure Google interprets your website’s information and technical SEO instructions the way you want it to while preserving a good user experience? Learn how you can get the right pages to rank in a large ecommerce environment.

One out of every ten laptops will be stolen within the first year of ownership. People can get attached to their laptops quickly, and that is why it is a good idea to be aware of the most common places where laptops get stolen and how to prevent yours from disappearing.

The first underground electrically-operated railway made its debut 150 years ago today in London. To mark the occasion for searchers in the UK, Google has posted a Doodle featuring its letters atop the famous map of the London Underground.

Suggesting that companies get rid of any kind of social media leadership or oversight is like firing all the pilots before the rest of us know how to fly the plane. One day many of these skills and knowledge of the social media director will be more widely adopted as part of "business as usual." But the technology or marketing industry isn't slowing down any time soon.

If you buy into the Content Marketing premise, it goes something like this: Your company is now in the content businesses and needs to become a supplier of education, insights and tools that prospects and customers will find relevant and valuable in helping them research, choose and use products and services.

SMT's intrepid author/reporter reflects on his 3 days in Las Vegas with quotable quotes and an interview with Jay Baer, author of the upcoming book, Youtility.

Augie's list of list of three business social media trends that we should kill in 2013. If brands can kill these three atrocious social media practices, Facebook will be a better place for both brands and consumers.

Despite all the goodness of Twitter, there is always a cross-section of people who make some big mistakes…either from ignorance or out of arrogance. Some people just don’t know (there should be a “before you tweet requirement” of Twitter 101) and some people just don’t give a *tweet*...

Like Google+ Local, and Qype and Foursquare before it; Facebook is getting into the local mobile search area with its new Facebook Nearby effort. The social media’s mobile phone apps on both IOS and Android have now incorporated Foursquare style functionality and allows users to find and rate businesses in the local area, and even review them.

Isn’t it strange that one person can have influence on about almost anything? The truth is that every individual has influence. Managing ‘influence’ will have a bigger impact in the long run than managing influencers. This post gives a few guidelines to manage influence.

If you genuinely assess your social media marketing regularly, and find a healthy balance between sharing and selling, connecting and canvassing, and quality versus quantity, it’s highly likely that you’ll reap better financial, statistical and measurable returns on your time and money investments in social media during 2013.

You've seen the movies, read the books, and shared the infographics about the rise and success of Facebook. But you may not be applying the business lessons of the Facebook story to your own marketing activities. Now you can with Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook's Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the upcoming book by global marketing strategist Ekaterina Walter. I sat down with Ekaterina for some Q&A in anticipation of our January 10th webinar Engaging Your Customer Base on Facebook.

The days of saying brand awareness and loyalty are the only results of social media activity are over. Like any other part of your marketing, there needs to be quantifiable success to determine the value of social media.

Financial institutions are using social media to create a competitive advantage and as a way to build their customer base. Let’s look at a few ways in which financial institutes are using the various social networks.

Instead of an immediate apology, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary took another route, publicly stating “We think Mrs. McLeod should pay 60 euros for being so stupid.” Unsurprisingly, the comment didn’t go over well with their customers; the company is still dealing with negative customer sentiment on social even now,...

If you aren’t optimizing your videos to match what people are searching for, then your videos are likely to get lost and not reach their intended audience. Learn how to optimize your videos for more views, clicks, and first page results.

Today's Social Media Intelligence Brief has stories about Salesforce, Radian6, Sina Weibo, and the SocialTimes.

Targeting individuals online who are over age 65 is no easy task, but we’re now entering an area of opportunity with this market. As the Baby Boomers continue to grow older, it presents a unique targeting opportunity for marketing through PPC.

Because of the popularity of Google and therefore the importance for businesses, it makes sense that Google is double-checked for honesty. Were they trying to put their own vertical properties to the top of results? Were they trying to give themselves an advantage over competitors?

Still, we have few brands who struggle with the daily chores involved with in setting up or monitoring content or even driving content. This infographic covers 3 S’s to help brands with maintaining social media presence. Setup, Strategize, Schedule.

One social media prediction that keep cropping up is “2013 is the year social customer service will go mainstream”, yet recently Charter Communications put a stop to all their social customer service efforts.

With social signals playing a bigger part in SEO than ever before, getting more links to your content via Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook is important. So how do you make your blog posts more shareable?

This approach to enterprise SEO campaigns should give you a solid foundation on the basics of constructing a program that makes sense, is efficient, and maximizes your resources. In other words, it's a pretty solid SEO strategy.

In conjunction with CES, which opened today in Vegas, Unruly Media has compiled a couple of charts, which are the top social video ads for tablets.

Previously, Facebook’s Nearby function let users see where their friends had checked in. With this most recent update, users can now search local businesses by name or category. But landing on the result pages is more complicated than simply being “nearby.”