Whether you think SEO is dead or not, that company called, Google, still probably has a lot of pull on your day-to-day web marketing activities.
What follows are a few headlines from January, 2015’s SEO, Google Update, PPC and content marketing news that might have slipped past you while you were busy trying to figure out how to keep your revenue flowing.
What That a Penguin Update? – Google has really gone back and forth on its edict regarding announced/named updates.
That means every month we’ll continue reading reports from SEOs who are certain they were hit by a Penguin update, and denials from the people who roll them out.
It’s a cat-and-mouse game that doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of a satisfying conclusion (which is why so many casino affiliates have been exploring SEO alternatives lately).
Maybe it Was…but We’ll Never Tell – Maybe one of the reasons Google isn’t all that interested in talking about named updates is because they plan on doing so many of them that it won’t matter. That’s the gist of what Google rep John Mueller said in a recent video.
Mueller suggested the updates may be occurring on an almost constant basis, eliminating the need for announcements.
Still Removing Links? – Penguin’s reach deep into the heart of link-heavy affiliate sites was a hassle that never seems to end. Even worse, best practices for link removal projects are constantly changing. If you’re looking for the current best technique for the never-ending war against the Penguin, here’s a great tutorial from Search Engine Journal.
Bing Has Updates, Too – Poor Bing. It’s really not a bad search engine, but hardly anyone brags about a top Bing result. At the same time, Bing has plenty of unnamed SEO updates – just like Google.
Of course with a 12% market share, Bing updates simply don’t make news the way Pandas, Penguins and Pigeons do.
SEO Checklist Manifesto (Just in Case You Don’t Think SEO is Dead) – We love the work Neil Patel does over at Quicksprout, especially when he forces us to revisit the basics. Last month Patel ran a very interesting checklist that content providers should be thinking about before ever posting content.
Is This the End of Keywords? – How important are keywords to the bigger SEO picture in today’s market? In a recent column that every SEO and web marketer should check out, Jayson DeMers suggest that keywords are just one piece of a much larger puzzle. Some serious food for thought here.
Paid Search Matters – If fighting the same SEO battle year in and year out is getting to be a headach, now might be a good time to re-visit the subject of paid search. As Diane Pease points out, paid search allows web marketers to narrow their efforts to some very specific audiences.
Content Marketing…Without the Marketing – Speaking of targeting narrow audience segments…Neil Patel reminded us last month that the long tail keyword is still alive, well, and very useful.