Since I joined Raven about two years ago, we’ve gone through our share of new website designs. I think I’ve been a part of three or four of them so far, and I’m sure we’ll be ramping up for another soon. And with every new web design, every big promotion – basically the longer your …

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In terms of a ranking factor, site speed has been in the cards for a while – officially, since Google announced back in 2010 that it had become a consideration in rankings. The question is, how much does site speed affect rankings – and how much should you worry about it? As this post will …

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One of my favorite things about our Research Central tool is how versatile it is. You can use it for just about any SEO task, whether you’re in the keyword research stage or finding link opportunities. One of my favorite uses of Research Central is for competitor analysis. If you remember, a few months ago …

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Google made (at least) 30 changes to Google Search in December, according to a post yesterday on the official Google Search blog. Now, the official Google Search blog isn’t one of those I subscribe to by RSS, because most SEOs like to blog, tweet, Facebook and Google+ Google news to death. I tend to hear …

Continue reading "Three cool Google changes for real people (not just SEOs)"

If you love lists, top 10s and bullet points (and, come on, as Internet marketers this stuff is our bread and butter), the week between Christmas and New Year’s is a gold mine. We all try to make sense of the year by cataloging its high points and missteps, then move on to making bold …

Continue reading "300+ Internet marketing predictions for 2012"

One of my favorite features of our new social media monitoring tool is the ability to only pull in mentions from Twitter influencers. It’s a great way to find potential evangelists, identify competitors and find guest blogging/link building opportunities. Let’s take a look at just how easy this is to set up, and how you …

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Sadly, we said goodbye to Yahoo! Site Explorer today. For those of you who have been in the SEO game for a while now, it was a bittersweet goodbye. But fear not! With the help of Raven’s Research Central SEO tool, you’ll quickly find yourself knee deep in all of your favorite data sources (SEOmoz, …

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SEO research has never been convenient. In the early days of SEO, you had to visit several websites to gather (sometimes sketchy) intelligence data, and then you had to decide which data was relevant, and then you had to export it, and then you had to mash it all together in a spreadsheet to make …

Continue reading "New feature: Raven launches Research Central, a dream SEO research mashup tool"

Competitive SEO analysis has always been a passion of mine. I’ve always found it to be one of the best areas for inspiration and, well, free advice. When done correctly, competitive analysis can save you hours of time from a research standpoint, and it can greatly increase your chances of succeeding in SEO. From keyword …

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Not even two weeks out from Google’s encrypted search announcement, and we’re already seeing the effect of Google’s decision to remove search query information from logged in users in Google Analytics. To recap, this update means that if someone is: Logged into Google (for Gmail, Google+ or any other Google product), and they perform an …

Continue reading "The noticeable (not provided) impact on the Internet marketing industry"