NEW! Raven by TapClicks - SEO + SEM Tools with Deeper Competitive Insights
NEW! Raven by TapClicks - SEO + SEM Tools with Deeper Competitive Insights
We write tips for digital marketers and we create beginner through advanced guides for search engine optimization. Improve your SEO and Content Marketing game.
After a painful series of failed attempts to compete with other social networks, Google is giving it another go with a new service called the Google+ project. The key features of Google+ include text and video chatting (Huddle and Hangouts), automatic sharing of photos (Instant Upload), the ability to discover interesting content (Sparks), and intuitive […]
While I love blog comments for the conversations and the potential SEO benefit they provide, I hate the spam and moderation that goes along with it. Another issue I have with comments is that they don’t provide much exposure to the blog post (with rare exceptions). I was looking for a way to solve these […]
Update: October 8, 2018 Google announced it will be shutting down Google+ Google released +1 (pronounced “plus one”) yesterday, and search engine optimizers are already wetting their pants in excitement. +1 gives people with Google Accounts the ability to vote up (also known as Facebook Like) a page. Except in this case you do it […]
Most people don’t know this about me, but I have a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology, and I even had a private practice for a few years. While I think I was pretty good at it, I wasn’t cut out to listen to people’s problems every day (and maintain a professional demeanor). Throughout that short […]
When we launched our marketing site redesign several weeks ago, I decided to do a little experiment with our blog. I removed the URL input field for blog comments, because I wanted to see how it would affect the quality and quantity of comments. Why do people comment? I predicted that removing the URL input […]
It’s no secret that Google isn’t crazy about marketers using their PageRank (PR) score. They probably even regret letting it loose to begin with, but let it loose they did — via their toolbar. Since that time, enterprising marketers have done whatever they could to know and reference PR for any given site or page. […]
It’s in our name: Raven Internet Marketing Tools. And “Internet Marketing” is more than SEO, SERPs and social media. For many businesses, email marketing campaigns are critical to retaining customers, and getting new ones. That’s why we’re excited to announce our new email marketing tool — a tool that makes it easy to monitor and […]
Google will abandon Google Wave in 2011. Before I rant about what I think was wrong with Google Wave, and why I thought it was doomed to fail from the beginning, I must first admit that I, too, manage an imperfect product. As Raven’s product manager, I can look at just about any aspect of it […]
This is a feature article I had the honor of writing for the May issue of Vue Magazine, a monthly magazine from Market Research and Intelligence Association in Canada. They gave me permission to republish the article on our blog. You can also download a PDF version of the article. When it comes to ranking […]
When I first came to Sitening, the company that built Raven, I had a lot of ideas — none of which included the creation of a Web based SaaS. Instead, I focused on providing client services, like Web Design, Software Development, Information Architecture and Online Marketing. But soon I wanted to build an automated tool that […]
This year has been a good year for me and Google. 2009 brought more love to our love/hate relationship, mainly because of two major announcements. The first announcement had to do with my longtime infatuation with microformats and Google’s inclusion of rich snippets, like hReview microformats, into their SERPs. The second announcement came from Matt […]
When it comes to link building, driving exposure to a website, and affiliate marketing, commenting on blogs is still alive and well. One of the things I love about Internet marketing is the constant adaptation of techniques. For example, while blog comment marketing is still prevalent, the approaches used by marketers are constantly changing. There […]
There’s been a lot of concern among bloggers lately about the FTC’s new Endorsement Guidelines. The updated guidelines attempt to address endorsements made online and strive to protect consumers. On the surface, this is a great idea. This is especially true when a consumer’s health or livelihood is at stake, and when an endorsement includes […]
Twitter recently sent out an email notifying users about their updated Terms of Service. They wrote a blog entry about it, and one of the interesting links was to their Twitter Rules page. Although this document was published in January – what year, who knows – it’s the first time I’ve laid eyes on it. […]
When it comes to marketing your business online, there are many labels to sift through. The most common terms are: Search Engine Optimization Social Media Marketing Conversational Marketing User Generated Marketing Experiential & Live Marketing Engagement Marketing Inbound Marketing Evangelism Marketing Un-Marketing Relationship Marketing Permission Marketing Transparent Marketing Most of these labels have successfully permeated […]
There are a lot of ideas and theories about which backlink attributes affect organic search results (SERPs) the most, but the reality is that there are several factors. Ted Ulle of Converseon recently posted an excellent and concise list of backlink factors on a WebmasterWorld thread about Google’s Patent on Backlinks. Trust of linking sites […]
WordPress does an excellent job at providing incredible content management features, while also keeping its CMS as secure as possible. However, there are still some things you can do to make it even more secure, even from Google (I’ll explain that in a minute.) After you install WordPress, there’s still information that crude hackers can […]
One of the most frustrating things about registering a new domain and starting a new website is that you’re starting from scratch. That means that nobody knows your site exists and search engines are afraid to even touch it. New websites have a long hard road to getting indexed and found in organic SERPs or […]
Twitter gurus will try to tell you that Twitter is only for relationships. However, they are wrong on both accounts. They are neither gurus (a ridiculous term for anyone to give themselves) and Twitter can be used for much more than relationships. Saying that Twitter is only for relationships is like saying that telephones are […]
I find it fascinating when I read about people balking or cringing at the way Guy Kawasaki uses Twitter for marketing. It’s as if he’s paving the way for the Twitter apocalypse and is destroying everything Twitter was meant to be. In reality, that couldn’t be furthest from the truth. He’s simply testing the medium […]
