Why Images (Visual) Are a important in Social Media

social media has become coveted real estate for brands. It’s a crowded space where consumers spend an inordinate amount of time. Getting heard among the noise can be challenging, and brands looking to differentiate themselves not only need a compelling message, but also - and more importantly -visual content that resonates.

More than a random stock image, employing visual social media - and doing it well - is a deliberative ,thoughtful process. Here are four tips to help you more effectively improve your social strategy with visual marketing.

Make it a Thoughtful Process

As stated above, choosing the perfect image is a careful, deliberative process. Explore how you want your audience to feel when looking at your imagery and think through the factors involved in creating a visual campaign that resonates with your audience. Some questions to ask when collecting images:

• Who is my target audience?
• What is the message that I am trying to get across to them through the image?
• How can this image help them experience this feeling?
• What are their needs?

As a brand, if you push something out to the consumer that’s not aligned with who you claim to be, they feel it. And they’re quick to recognize the separation between what was depicted and what was delivered. Keep it thoughtful and planned.

Forge a Consistent Visual Identity Across Platforms

When most people think of visual social media, Pinterest and Instagram come to mind. These social platforms paved the way for an important movement toward rich social-media images, but it’s important to extend your visual campaign beyond the basics to forge a consistent identity across platforms. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others are also aligning to the idea of visual as a leading force. Video is on the rise, and brands have started using images to create short, engaging video clips as content for use on social channels. Keep your visual story consistent across platforms, and you’ll bolster your brand’s visual social identity.

Use Imagery — Not as a Supporting Asset but as the Message Itself

Great brands understand that the image is the message, particularly with how social platforms distribute visual content and how people consume it. Imagery is no longer a supporting asset but core messaging. Consider Apple’s visual campaign for the iPhone 6. The campaign focused on a series of images — photographs taken by an iPhone. The point of the campaign was to showcase the quality of the picture and nothing more. In this case, a single image was stronger than a brand name or pointing directly to the new features the phone provides.

Tie Visuals to Core Values and Mission

Influential brands use visual social media to personalize their companies. Visuals can provide a glimpse into company culture and personality, showcasing not only who you are as a brand, but also the persona of loyal fans and customers. Tying visual content to core values — and the sentiment that coincides with those values — makes it easy to tell your brand story. The key is to know your audience well and be clear about what you stand for and how you want to be perceived.

Content Credit : Heidi Besik

Impact of Content Delivery Networks on SEO

What is a Content Delivery Network?

Contact Delivery Networks (CDNs) are a system of servers distributed throughout the world delivering web pages, and other web content (like video streaming) based on the users geographical location. This means that large amounts of content can be delivered quickly and without any interruptions.

For instance, if your website is based in Los Angeles, the people who are accessing it in San Francisco will receive the content faster than people accessing it from Shanghai. The farther away the person accessing the website or application is, the longer the load time and the more frustrating the user experience becomes.

CDNs have been a hot topic for businesses wanting to expand by reaching Internet users globally. It gives businesses the opportunity to reach out to millions of web users anywhere in the world in just seconds. Being able to put your company out in front of as many people as possible and quickly should be a priority for any business looking to grow, and when it comes to SEO, it must be a priority.

How do CDNs Work?

CDNs are made up of a network of servers referred to as “points of presence” or POPs. Each one of these servers (POPs) are spread out in locations all over the world. The CDN server that is located closest to where the user accesses it is called an “edge server.” When a user requests content from a website or application through a CDN, they will be connected to the closest edge server. This ensures the user will receive the best experience possible.

According to Incapsula, some of the benefits of using a CDN include:

• Faster load times for content on your site (this is especially useful for increasing performance of your mobile site)
• Image compression improves performance by reducing the size of images sent to the user
• Session optimization reduces the number of open connections to your web server
• Scaling quickly when there is increased or heavy traffic to your website
• Ensuring the stability of your website by minimizing the risk of traffic spikes at point of origin
• Better site performance and customer experience

CDNs allow you to cache (temporarily store) your websites content on a CDN so it is delivered from an edge server to the user faster than if it were to be delivered from the origin. This allows the content requested to travel from the nearest POP and back, instead of having to travel all the way from the website’s origin server and back.

Another benefit of using a CDN is that CDNs will remove and update (purge) your content regularly, to ensure the most relevant and current content is being delivered, even if the website content is cached. This process is referred to as content invalidation.

How do CDNs Help SEO?

CDNs improve the speed and quality of content that is delivered to the user. CDNs should be seen as part of the solution for search ranking as it is applied to page speed and efficient content delivery, but it is not the only thing that needs to be done to increase search ranking. Think of CDNs as a way to improve upon the technical ranking factors for SEO.

For instance, CDNs help to ensure each version of your website across several servers and locations are identical. CDNs use caching algorithms and canonical headers to help enhance SEO of your website by combatting duplicate content creation issues. Remember, as CDNs purge content so the most recent and relevant content loads first, they must do this across every cached version of a site.

How CDNs Make Your Site Safer?

Having the site load from several servers and from several locations will not only improve your site’s health, but again it is a huge benefit for SEO by increasing the load time of your website.

The risk of attack on your site will also decrease, because of the multiple servers located in multiple geographical locations. Having multiple servers will also help prevent your website from crashing by dividing the load time up among the various servers.

Should You be Using a CDN?

CDNs can benefit anyone with a website or mobile application that could be requested by multiple users at a time. CDNs are especially useful for websites that have a lot of content and varying content types, and complex websites with users from multiple geographical locations. Most importantly, CDNs will increase site load speed, which will increase your search ranking.

On the other hand, if you are going to implement a CDN, make sure that you implement it correctly. Contact a professional to help you implement your CDN, because an incorrectly implemented CDN can compromise your site’s SEO and usability.

Original Source : Adobe

Micro-Conversion vs. Macro-Conversion

• The Personalization Gap Is Wide

It indicates that consumers would welcome real-time offers in stores and online. Yet, very few marketers are using technology to achieve micro-level personalization, with almost one-third saying that they do not personalize at all. The result? Most consumers find that the personalization they do see is superficial and annoying. They want to use technology to solve problems and find services quickly, but many organizations are falling short.

The stakes are high. Companies that can deliver the right experience to the right person will become the go-to brands, leaving other brands far behind.

• The Right People + the Right Data = the Right Experience Design

A key element in an engaging customer experience is continuity across devices and platforms. Often, a fragmented customer experience is a reflection of the structure within an organization. Different platforms within a company present a challenge - they may only be able to optimize pieces of the whole experience, and they use different KPIs (key performance indicators) to do so, leading to multiple personas for the same customer, competing offers on different channels, and other poor experiences.

Integrated data systems, where the same solutions that harness all of the data are used to optimize and personalize the experience, will help marketers understand how their customers experience their brands as a whole. A unified platform makes it easier for all team members to see the same data and analysis and to work together to create a focused, optimized experience.

The best experiences will be forged when people are able to listen to the data and, from it, understand how the customer thinks and feels about the brand. The skillsets needed are an intersection of business, science, and liberal arts skills. Only 10 percent of companies have established customer-experience teams - people who combine the art of design with the science of optimization to create personalized experiences that drive engagement and revenue. Companies that invest in agile and efficient technologies - and the right people to use them - will become the competitive leaders of the future.

• Personalization Is a Process, Not an Event

Leading personalized experiences are evolved with an iterative process. They begin by bringing data together to map customer behaviors and identifying top-performing areas and bottlenecks. A prototype experience is developed from this initial map.

Most companies would stop here, but significant gains are realized by continued analysis of performance and revisions to the experience. From there, one can move on to automate the experience. This is necessary to achieve personalization at the micro-scale needed to reach every customer on all of their channels and devices.

• The Internet of Things Will Widen the Gap

In just a few short years, the mushrooming number of devices on the Internet of Things will create new data streams and a torrent of new information. This data can potentially give an even clearer view of customers lives, if marketers can meet the challenge of making sense of this massive amount of data. These new devices will compound today’s marketing problems and make it critical to implement strategies now before the avalanche begins. Today’s integrated technology supports these new levels of data analytics, content management, testing, and optimization and will allow scaling of personalized experiences at the new levels of data input that are coming soon.

Higher Ranking Factors Revealed By Google

Google made very interesting announcements about SEO recently..

#1: Links and content are Google's #1 and #2 ranking factors

As you may know, Google uses over 200 ranking factors to rank websites.And SEO pros have long known that backlinks make up a good chunk of these 200 factors.

For example, three of Google's most well-known ranking factors are link-related: 1. the number of links pointing to your site, 2. the anchor text of those links and 3. the authority of those links.

That's why any SEO agency worth their salt tells their clients that link building is the KEY to first page Google rankings.

So it was refreshing to hear Google confirm that links and content were Google's two most important ranking signals.

When a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google (Andrey Lipattsev) was asked what the top two ranking factors were, he answered:

"I can tell you what they are. It is content. And it’s links pointing to your site."

So the next time you see an alarmist "link building is dead!" article, you can chuckle to yourself...
...and then get back to the important task of link building.

Key Takeaway: Despite the buzz about social signals, backlinks remain the core of Google's algorithm. If you want to build more white hat links to your site, I highly recommend watching this step-by-step video case study.

Announcement #2: Google uses CTR and user experience in their algorithm

Yes, links are still king today...and will likely remain Google's top ranking signal for years to come.

That said, Google is consistently adding new ranking signals into the mix.And in a recent talk, Google engineer Paul Haahr revealed some of these new signals.Specifically, Paul revealed that:

1. Google runs A/B tests with the SERPs. So if you drop or go up 1-2 spots, it may have nothing to do with links, on-page SEO, etc. It could be a test.

2. Google definitely uses click-through-rate (CTR) data as a ranking signal.
This shouldn't come as a huge surprise.

After all, if a site ranks #2 in Google -- and hardly anyone clicks on that result -- it probably means the page is irrelevant.

And if they DO click on it -- but hit their "back" button after 2 seconds -- it tells Google that it's a low-quality result.

On the other hand...

If your page gets an above-average amount of clicks -- and people stick to your page like superglue -- this tells Google that people like your page.And it's likely to get a rankings bump.

Key Takeaway:Google pays attention to how searchers interact with your site. A high CTR and time on page may boost your rankings.

And for a bunch of super-practical strategies that you can use to optimize for CTR and time on page.

Is it Time for Growth Hacking to Rebrand?

“Well, the one thing that never quite sat right with me is the word hacking. There are a number of things implied by that word that don’t align with the intended growth hacking definition. I argue that we must replace the word hacking with something more appropriate.My rationale is as follows.”-Andy Ramnn

1. Hacking implies shortcuts and quick fixes.

Anyone obsessed with business growth knows that sustained growth is only achieved through a dedication to understanding and maintaining maximum relevance and appeal to a target audience. Doing so requires the disciplined and relentless application of specific methodologies to drive engagement, conversion and loyalty. Furthermore, additional methodologies must be deployed to detect and adapt to changes in the needs and orientations of that audience.

Great copywriting is not a quick fix. Disciplined A/B testing is not a quick fix. White hat SEO is not a quick fix. Focusing on the customer to optimize engagement and drive down is not a quick fix. And, this applies to all companies, not just startups.

This is a deep process. A long(er) term strategy. This is not hacking.

2. Hacking implies nefarious methods.Being highly relevant and accessible to your target audience doesn’t come from gaming the system. Black hat SEO techniques to artificially boost page rank are dying off fast as viable means to drive sustainable growth. Real growth hacking strategies not only create better, more relevant content and offerings for customers, they make the web better as a whole. And as more companies engage in a process of continuous optimization (improvement), the entire web improves.

Growth hacking techniques are not shady, deceitful, or ill meaning. They require creativity, analytical thinking, and social prowess to achieve a singular goal.

This is not hacking.

3. The term hacking causes confusion and adoption of false principles.

The term is misunderstood, which means the benefits of growth hacking becoming widespread, or even universally adopted, is slowed unnecessarily.

If the perception among company leaders and marketing generalists is that growth hacking involves quick-fix and black hat methodologies, then the adoption of real techniques to drive customer-oriented optimization stalls. If growth hacking makes for a better web as a whole – as I argued previously – then slowing the adoption of its true methods is bad for the web.

This is the point where I confess that I don’t know if I have anything better in mind. I have no quarrels with growth engineering as a term of art. Growth marketing is also somewhat apt, though less complete in terms of what it encompasses.

In the end, growth hacking may stick. I can probably live with that. Do you know a growth hacker who would prefer to be called a growth engineer? You’re at a party. You introduce yourself to someone. You tell your new companion that you’re a growth hacker. What you do is witchcraft, unknowable to ordinary mortals. You are the James Bond of the deep web. You are mysterious, and important.

Or, you say that you’re a growth engineer. You’re the nerd in the marketing department.

See the difference?

The point is to continuously make the web a better place. This happens when companies focus on being more relevant, more accessible and more frictionless. If this is the true collective ethos of growth hacking, then perhaps it’s time to redefine the word hacking, rather than rebrand our discipline.

About Author: Andy is the President & General Manager of Alexa.

"WHITE HAT SEO" Not about Gaming Google - 2

#3: HELP GOOGLE KNOW WHAT YOUR CONTENT IS ABOUT BY GETTING VOTES OF CONFIDENCE

Google needs to know what your content is about in order to place it in the right SERPs for the right search terms.

One way it does this is through on-page signals–things like the inclusion of keywords in the URL, title, body content, etc.

Another way is through on-site signals— internal links from related pages on your site using anchor text that is descriptive of the content (i.e. it includes the target keyword).

And then there are off-site signals–inbound links from 3rd party trust-worthy sites that have related content linking to your content. A 3rd party citation of your content tells Google that a real, live person who created it thinks your content truly is about “xyz” (aka your keyword).

This is the origin of SEO’s spammy reputation. Bad-actors manipulated off-site signals by fabricating inbound links with things like link farms—clearly not living, breathing humans giving a vote of confidence that the content is indeed about what you claim it to be.

As a result, Google has put great effort into knowing when an inbound link is from a quality, trust-worthy site, versus a fabricated link purely for manipulative gain. The former helps you. The latter hurts you.

So when you hear the term “link building,”forget those old school black hat tactics. The game has changed. When done right, link building can be an extremely powerful way to boost search rankings. As a bonus, it could drive referral traffic too. 

The key here is in building relationships and reaching out to bloggers and journalists to let them know about your awesome content.We’ll need to write a whole other post on white hat link building.

BUT THE POINT IS -

If you followed technique #1 , you’ll have content that’s in demand–and the bloggers you reach out to will know their audience enough to know that.

If you followed technique #2 , bloggers will appreciate the resourcefulness of your content and be more likely to cite it when it is relevant and complimentary to the content they are creating.

IN WHITE HAT

• Reach out to influencers to let them know about your content, pointing out why it might add value to their content.
• Personalize your outreach in a genuine,one-on-one way that shows you know the blogger.
• Be patient. Building mutually beneficial relationships takes time. 

IN BLACK HAT

• Send mass emails to influencers with no personalization. It won’t be effective. It won’t get you to the top of Google. And you’ll burn bridges in the process.

SEO,PPC Updates: Google Removes Right-side Ads & Drops Flash Ads

• No More Ads on the Right-hand Side of SERPS

Google “We’ve been testing this layout for a long time, so some people might see it on a very small number of commercial queries. We’ll continue to make tweaks, but this is designed for highly commercial queries where the layout is able to provide more relevant results for people searching and better performance for advertisers.”

There are only two exceptions to this: Product Listing Ads (PLAs) and Knowledge Panel ads. They may show a fourth ad above the search results now, but only for “highly commercial queries” such as “hotels in New York City” and “Car Insurance.”

How is this affecting people in the industry? For smaller advertisers, this change has had a minimal impact. They haven’t seen much of a change in clicks. For organic search, this probably won’t impact visibility that much. They’re not going to show up as every single query.

I was happy to see Google’s comment on PLA listings, because I have said over and over that they are going to take over the right side due to their higher CTR and visibility: “Interestingly, as an aside, PLAs demonstrate strong user interaction when they’re on the right side, so they’re staying put.”

Google to stop showing ads on right side of SERP

• AMP Pages Now Live

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are now fully rolled out globally. And apparently, this is very important to Google.

Image Courtesy : conductor.com

Google’s VP of Engineering stated at SMX West that, “everywhere we use content, we want to embrace AMP.”

• Google Allows Changes to Knowledge Graph Data

Bill Hartzer on billhartzer.com wrote a great article about the ability for Official Representatives to suggest edits to their own Knowledge Graph.

According to Google, “If you officially represent a topic that has a Knowledge Graph card in Google search results, you can request changes to that card. To be recognized by Google as an “official representative,” you need to be signed in as an owner of the topic’s official website, YouTube channel, or Google+ page.”

Before, you never really had any control over this (Google would normally pull from Wikipedia or other sources).

• Google Drops All Flash Ads and Goes for HTML5 Ads Instead

Starting June 30th, 2016, display ads built in Flash can no longer be uploaded into AdWords and DoubleClick Digital Marketing.

Starting January 2nd, 2017, display ads in the Flash format can no longer run on the Google Display Network or through DoubleClick.

This is going to affect anyone who is running display campaigns. This should not be a surprise to anyone because Flash has been out for awhile. Google has put together a help document on how to move from Flash to HTML5, which can be found here: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6249073

For people who are running really large display campaigns, you should start changing now, so you have enough lead time. Start switching to HTML5 now and get out of Flash!

• Penguin 4 Update

Gary Illyes announced at SMX West that he’s not going to give out release dates for Penguin anymore.

They’re going to stop commenting on when it’s going to happen but just keep hanging on: they’ll eventually roll it out…

• Google Launches “Google Analytics 360 Suite”

Though this wasn’t discussed in this month’s webinar, Google has launched their Analytics 360 Suite, which they have been working on for quite some time now. This is their enterprise solution that is more likened to Adobe’s analytics suite than anything else.  Per Google, the 360 Suite is “a set of integrated data and marketing analytics products, designed specifically for the needs of enterprise-class marketers.”

It’s currently in beta but is most likely going to be released very soon.

Source:Conductor Spotlight 

Do not use these, when using Digital Marketing 2016 ?

Digital marketing in 2016 comes with a new set of problems, pitfalls, technologies, innovations, strategies, and opportunities.Analyse yourself, and avoid these silly digital marketing mistakes.

1. Failing to identify your target audience.
Identifying your target audience is the initial step in any type of marketing endeavor. Tragically, it’s also easy to overlook. Don’t make this mistake. Study your audience, and much of your marketing will take care of itself.

2. Not having a strategy at all.
Yes, it happens. Sadly, much of digital marketing relies on “tactics” and “techniques” rather than solid strategies and goals. Before you ever pick a tactic to try, form a strategy to rely on. Your Online marketing strategy will be your guiding light as you engage in the wild world of marketing.

3. Forgetting about mobile.
Mobilegeddon may have happened in 2015, but we’re still living in the wake of its impact. If you aren’t functioning with a mobile-first strategy, you are alienating more than half of your potential audience. Mobile optimization is a key ingredient both for conversions and content, so keep it at the front of your mind when forming your digital marketing strategy.

4. Rejecting SEO.
The SEO-is-dead myth has been around almost as long as SEO has been a thing. Now, in an age of artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms, more marketers are willing to say “What gives?” and leave SEO well enough alone. This is a mistake. Why? Because SEO remains (and will continue to remain) one of the building blocks of a technologically sound and competitive web presence. Without an understanding of SEO, your marketing presence will falter and fail. You don’t have to know everything there is to know about SEO. Just get the basics, and you should be fine.

5. Not doing any conversion optimization.
There was an era in digital marketing when it was okay not to do conversion optimization. That time is far gone. Failure to conduct regular and careful split testing is a recipe for decline. Don’t be afraid of it. Yes, it requires some technical chops and an eye for analytics, but most CRO software eliminates the need for in-depth knowledge.

6. Trying every digital marketing tactic .
The best method for avoiding tactic overwhelm is to

•  figure out what your audience wants, 
•  identify where they are,
•  adopt a strategy to reach them. With this kind of laser focus, many tactics will fall to the wayside.

7. Using social media platform .
A close cousin of the “trying every digital marketing tactic” mistake is “using every social media platform.” I’ve watched hundreds of digital marketers make this massive mistake. It’s obviously important to have a social media strategy. But when you try to blanket the social media universe with your brand presence, you’re going to fall short. Why? Because social media channels require a ton of time and energy. If you try to go all out on each one, you’re going to burn out very quickly. A better approach? Pick the top three platforms where your audience hangs out, and give these all your energy.

8. Link building.
Link building (done wrong) is an old SEO tactic that got websites into trouble. Thankfully, most SEOs and marketers are beyond this point, but it bears repeating: Don’t do “link building” as it was traditionally performed. There are ways to do it correctly, so take heed.

9. Avoiding content marketing.
Content marketing should form the core of any digital marketing strategy. We have not yet reached the point at which content marketing has diminished in effectiveness. Using content aggressively, strategically, and expertly will take your marketing where you want it to go.

10. Having no marketing budget.
If you get stingy with your marketing budget, one of two things will happen. First, you realize your mistake and get desperate, dipping into other funds, which messes up your entire business plan. Second, you have no budget, so you do no marketing, and your business fails to take off. Either way, you run the distinct risk of destroying your business. Instead of shortcircuiting your business with no marketing budget, release a few funds to get the ball rolling. This is especially critical for startup businesses that have little to no market penetration.

Source : Forbes

How to Earn Links for Free : SEO Tips

Link earning is an important aspect of content marketing and has been recognized as an effective means to increase the rankings of your website.

Why Link Earning is important?

Some argue that it makes them a bit of confuse over the  transition from the previous approach of link building to link earning.I would like to clarify this confusion by saying that there is a stark difference between earning and demanding.

The current set of visitors never likes to be misguided, instead they like point by point data or content.Link building as a whole, requires unique & relevant content targeting the right traffic. Both goes hand in Hand! In layman terms,Link building is a homogeneous mix of content and the readers.

Earning is definitely an arduous task, as it would require a strategic effort to bring your website to a respectable position but believe me the effort is worth it!

Everybody expects relevant results from Google. Having irrelevant or shady sites ranking in the top of the search results helps neither you, the visitor, nor Google the search engine. This is one reason why Google works hard to improve their algorithms in order to rank those that deserve to be there.

Image Courtesy : cognitiveseo

You could earn links by following:

1. Creating epic content that was so engaging people naturally linked to it in the course of their editorial and online work;
2. Promoting your content so that it gets in front of the right people, who are naturally motivated to share and link to your content;
3. Building relationships that give influencers in your space comfort in the fact that your work is high quality and valuable enough to share.

Earning links still requires a strategic approach, but it’s less about creating artificial structures that result in links or treating links like a numbers game. The focus, as with other areas of SEO, is on quality and value. Still, there’s an active place for building: instead of focusing on building links, focus on building your brand. If you’re creating high quality content that you’re placing in priority outlets, links will naturally follow as a by product of that work.

How to Evaluate the Quality of a Link:

Google’s Penguin update underscored the importance of the quality of your links. Nothing can damage your site’s credibility and rankings faster than sketchy links. As a result, it’s critical to assess the quality of a potential link if you’re working to cultivate those connections. Here’s a quick guide of questions to ask before actively pursuing a link to your site:

• Is the site topically relevant to my content?
• Is the design and organization clean and professional?
• What’s the quality of the content that it publishes?
• Is the site overrun with advertising?
• Does the site have an active community, as evidenced by comments, social media engagement, and mentions?
• What does their incoming link profile look like?
• Is there a clear editorial hand at work developing and selecting content?
• Would I be comfortable associating my brand with this site?

By shifting your focus away from tactics that build links and instead investing in earning them, you’re creating a foundation that help you attract links from the top authorities in your space. One of the best strategies for doing so is through content marketing; in the next chapter, we’ll take a closer look at what you need to know about content marketing and inbound strategies that work.

Continues .....

SEO Tips - Top 10 SEO Blog You Should Refer in 2016

It's been said again and again ,I'll say it again: SEO is something which is constantly changing. One of the best ways to keep up with SEO update is to follow some of the top SEO blogs in the industry.Its not all of them but yes you can stay update by following these blog

What you want to look for in a SEO blog is not only that it covers the latest SEO news, but that it also takes that news and analyses what it means for your brand company or clients. These topics, in addition to other relevant "how-to" articles, videos, and guides, are what make an SEO blog stand out against the rest.

You see where this is going: I found few of the best that really fit this criterion and have great potential for 2015.

Google's Official Blog

The Google Blog. This is obviously a blog that never gets old. It's always updated, it's always correct, and it's always something you should be reading.This blog is purely for the latest news , update on product , events and glimpses of life inside Google.

The Popular Names in SEO industry 

Search Engine Land.“Search Engine Land is a must read hub for news and information about search engine marketing, optimization and how search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live.com and Ask.com work for searchers” Arguably the most popular SEO blog around, this one seems to have it all. It is always the first to break news, and you'll find that they have several articles on one subject, so all of your questions can be answered right on this blog. You'll find that most of the writers are the same each day, but the topics definitely have good variety.

Search Engine Watch.“A guide to search engine marketing and search engine optimization. Forums, reviews, articles, ratings, and frequent newsletters.”This is also one of the main blogs out there on the web for SEO. While Search Engine Land is typically the first to break news and get it out there, Search Engine Watch still covers the news and always seems to publish just a little bit more frequently and add just a little bit more information. In other words, reading both is beneficial.

Search Engine Journal. This blog thrives on guest contributors, so you're always getting different topics and different voices. It still covers news like the other two main websites, but this one seems to have a little bit more fun with videos, great comments, and some of the most detailed content around.

Moz. Moz has been in the SEO game since 2004, publishing some of the best guides available for beginners. They also publish quite a bit of advanced material and keep things very detailed, so just about any small business can benefit. They don't report SEO news quite as much as the others, but they delve into popular topics frequently.

The Blogs Not to Miss

KISSmetrics.This is a cool blog because it puts a focus on data & metrics and is incredibly thorough . Although they do cover other subjects besides just SEO, they publish frequently enough that there is almost always a few articles each week that can help your SEO efforts. If you're looking for content that is detailed and covers every angle of a topic, this is your blog.

HigherVisibility. This is one of those SEO blogs that focuses quite a bit on the "what it means to you" aspects of everything SEO. It doesn't just tell you the news and what it might mean, but it actually gives you steps and tools to put something in place to take action on your website. In other words, it's one of the best out there if you're really looking for useful advice about improving your SEO.

SEMRush. SEMRush is a company that does more than just blog (they offer one of the best SEO site audit tools on the market), so they really know their stuff. You'll see guest authors on this blog occasionally and it's always updated with the latest information. Like HigherVisibility, there is a lot of advice found here that you can really take and put into practice.

HubSpot. The greatest thing about this blog is the way it's written. The articles have a conversational tone and have done a good job "humanizing" the content to make it easy to understand. The Marketing Blog is where you're going to find your SEO advice, but HubSpot also has blogs covering other topics (sales, academy, web design, etc.) that I recommend checking out.

Mattcuts.com. This blog is belongs to former web spam Team Head .This blog contains post related to technology , gadget & SEO.

ShoutMeLoud This blog is about blogging tips and technology, its popular one among  all the bloggers however you can get very helpful tips regarding SEO and Word Press.

Google AdWords - what is changing and what is not on Google desktop search results.

Last Friday, February 19, 2016, Google confirmed that search results pages on desktop will no longer show text ads in the right sidebar. Instead, as many as four text ads will display above the organic search result, and three text ads on the bottom of the page .

Image Courtesy : sriconsultancy

What Exactly Is Changing?

All of the changes confirmed on Friday pertain to desktop search results on Google.com and Google search partners.

There are a few elements included in the changes to desktop results:

• No text ads will be served on the right rail of the search results on desktop.
• Google will serve four text ads instead of three in the mainline area above the organic listings for more “highly commercial queries” (More on that below).
• Three text ads will show at the bottom of the SERPs.
• The total number of text ads that can appear on a SERP will shrink from as many as 11 to a maximum of seven.
• Product listing ad blocks and Knowledge Panels (sometimes with ads, as tests continue in these spaces) will show in the right rail on relevant queries.

Google AdWords - Google To Stop Showing ads on Right Side of Desktop Search Result Page

Google has announced a couple of changes related to its desktop search results. The strategy is to remove ads from the right side of its desktop search results, and places ads only at the top and/or bottom of the page. The company also made separate amendments for the additional ads -- ‘ highly Commercial queries’ which is reduced to three, which was earlier four, in the upper section of the search results. This would involve searches like “hotels in New York City” or “car insurance” and the like.

The move is the conclusion of the test that began in 2010. A Google spokesperson has confirmed to Search Engine Land that the change is now rolling out to all searches in all languages worldwide.

The google official statement in this regards clearly states “We’ve been testing this layout for a long time, so some people might see it on a very small number of commercial queries. We’ll continue to make tweaks, but this is designed for highly commercial queries where the layout is able to provide more relevant results for people searching and better performance for advertisers.”

Exit Rate Vs Bounce Rate - Google Analytics

At a glance

To understand the difference between Exit Rate and Bounce Rate for a particular page, keep the following points in mind:

1. For all pageviews to the page,Exit Rate is the percentage that were the last in the session.
2. For all sessions that start with the page, Bounce Rate is the percentage that were the only one of the session.
3. Bounce Rate for a page is based only on sessions that start with that page. 

In depth

Let's clarify this last point with a simple example. Your site has pages A through C, and only one session per day exists, with the following pageview order:

• Monday: Page A > Page B > Page C
• Tuesday: Page B > Page A > Page C
• Wednesday: Page A > exit

The Content report for Page A would show 3 pageviews and a 50% bounce rate.  You might have guessed that the Bounce Rate would be 33%, but the Tuesday pageview granted to Page A is not considered in its Bounce Rate calculation. Consider that a bounce is the notion of a session with only one interaction from the user, and the session-centric analysis answers a simple yes/no question: "Did this session contain more than one pageview?" If the answer to that question is "no," then it's important to consider which page was involved in the bounce.  If the answer is "yes," then it only matters that the initial page in the session lead to other pageviews.  For that reason, bounce rate for a page is only meaningful when it initiates the session.

Now let's extend this example to explore the Exit rate and Bounce rate metrics for a series of single-session days on your site.

• Monday: Page B > Page A > Page C
• Tuesday:  Page B > Exit
• Wednesday:  Page A > Page C > Page B
• Thursday:  Page C > Exit
• Friday: Page B > Page C > Page A

The % Exit and Bounce Rate calculations are:

Exit Rate:

• Page A: 33% (3 of 5 sessions included Page A)
• Page B: 50% (4 of 5 sessions included Page B)
• Page C: 50% (4 of 5 sessions included Page C)

Bounce Rate:

• Page A: 0% (one session began with Page A, but that was not a single-page session, so it has no Bounce Rate)
• Page B: 33% (Bounce Rate is less than Exit Rate, because 3 sessions started with Page B, with one leading to a bounce)
• Page C: 100% (one session started with Page C, and it lead to a bounce)

Digital India: A Revolution for Evolution

The Government of India has embarked on an ambitious journey of connecting whole of India on a digital platform. A complex initiative that is bound to transcend the traditional ‘Hiccups’ and lead India into a more digitally empowered society. It is a nine-pillar program with clear vision that promises to digitize each citizen of India in the coming times. The e-governance which we keep on listening will become a reality which would in turn smoother the tedious government processes and we will get rid of long queues and unending delays. 

Image Courtesy digitalindia.gov.in

This is one of the key aspects of this initiative by which many problems are bound to solve within a click of a button. This is a very first effort by the government of India to communicate with its own citizens digital communication is the simplest and the easiest form of communication.

In India it has always been a challenge to communicate freely with the government so via this initiative other than communicating government is planning for a larger scale of integration where rural and urban barriers will disappear. The stark reality is that our rural population is still untouched by the pace at which India is growing so this scheme will serve as an escalator where everyone is at a same pace. Now the time has come to gather such a pace and once gathered no one can stop India to become a superpower.

Yes! you are reading it right SUPERPOWER!