The End of SEO as We Know It: Mobile is the Reason

Lots of observers note that traditional search is changing with the advent of social networks, mobile apps and other ways for people to find things without engaging with a traditional search engine application. Some would say that Apple's Siri voice recognition app is just the latest example of that trend.


That has implications for content marketers as well, a least in terms of how much time and effort to spend to search engine optimization, for example. 


In the future, it is argued, people often will bypass search altogether. Ask Siri to "find the closest Italian restaurant" and the result is based on your current location and data from Yelp. 


Clawing your SEO way to the top spot on Google for "Philadelphia Italian restaurant" won't matter.


At the very least, the importance of presence on local content sites will grow. As a result, savvy small businesses that don't rely on e-commerce will spend even more time optimizing listings on Foursquare, Yelp, Facebook Places.


Yelp recommendations are currently embedded in Siri responses, so Yelp optimization matters more than SEO, some will argue. Siri: This Is the End of SEO as We Know It | Inc.com

The choices brands make might also change, to favor recommendation sites that are affiliated with certain app environments such as Siri. 

Why Mobile Search is Different

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23 Questions from Google on "Quality" Rankings

Without disclosing anything about its algorithms, here are 23 questions Google suggests content creators think about when creating content that Google's algorithms will tend to rank favorably. 


The questions are analogous to what Google's algorithms try to do when assessing the "quality" of a page or an article.

"Our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals," Google says . "Some publishers have fixated on our prior Panda algorithm change, but Panda was just one of roughly 500 search improvements we expect to roll out to search this year."

"In fact, since we launched Panda, we've rolled out over a dozen additional tweaks to our ranking algorithms, and some sites have incorrectly assumed that changes in their rankings were related to Panda. Search is a complicated and evolving art and science, so rather than focusing on specific algorithmic tweaks, we encourage you to focus on delivering the best possible experience for users."

Guidance from Google on building high-quality sites

Social Media and Email Best for Organic Lead Conversion

One of the most controversial topics in lead generation and online marketing in general is the best source of traffic for generating leads. After analyzing more than 2.2 million leads generated by its customers, Hubspot says.

Paid traffic and email marketing tended to have the highest conversion rates. Also, social media performed better than both organic SEO traffic and direct navigation.

Social Media and Email Best for Organic Lead Conversion

New Google SEO Guide is Out

If you are the kind of person who likes to know something about search engine optimization, Google has just published a new version of its guide.

Google SEO Guide