Content marketing is nothing new. The first commercial website started back in 1993, so we’ve had nearly a quarter of a century to refine its application. That’s why it’s so surprising that of the 86 percent of marketers using content marketing, only 32 percent find it effective.

Credit: Moz

SEO is constantly evolving. As the owner of an SEO agency, it’s my job to stay on top of Google’s updates and algorithm changes to keep my clients on the front page. In fact, I’ve had to alter my entire business model more than once to keep up with this rapidly changing world.

Many companies are caught up in search engine optimization, but this approach belongs in the past. In my 15 years working with SEO, I’ve watched the process evolve from a black hat spam tactic into a nuanced, quality-based marketing strategy—and that evolution has only just begun.

The best advice I ever got came from my boss at my first real, full-time job. He was giving his monthly corporate overview of the startup, discussing the company's progress and describing its history. He recalled that when he started out, he had no employees, no clients and no revenue.

Many businesses today consider backlinks to be the gold standard in boosting organic keyword rankings. It’s believed that, if they can generate a high number of links, they’re sure to rank highly on Google searches. It doesn’t matter where the backlinks come from. As long as plenty exist, the company is sure to profit — right?

It’s easy to forget that different teams must rely on one another to get the whole job done. That’s because interdepartmental separation happens naturally at companies in which teams focus on different initiatives.

We’re in the age of uncertainty when it comes to keywords. Utilizing them in content is still crucial for search engines to interpret subject matter and relevance, but relying too heavily on sprinkling these buzzwords into your content can land you in serious trouble.

A high organic search ranking is essential to your business. More than 71 percent of users click a link on the first page of results on Google, and almost 68 percent choose one of the top five results. Only 1.6 percent of searchers progress beyond the second page.

This article was originally posted on VERGE.

Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

It’s here! After nearly two years of waiting, Gary lllyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google and a member of Google’s search ranking team, announced that Penguin 4.0 is now live.

Roadmaps are becoming an obsolete marketing tool as the industry shifts. Testing is becoming simpler and faster, and agility is all the hype.

Prepare for marketing roadmaps to be a thing of the past.

Link prospecting is a necessary part of a link building campaign. It’s essentially the first step, a huge step, in starting your link building process. So, it’s important that you go into this step with the knowledge needed to be successful in your research.

 Search engine optimization is essential for marketers. That’s why optimizing your blog post is a MUST. You are making it easy for users and search engine robots to comprehend your page thus improving your search engine rankings.

What is Growth Hacking?

Growth Hacking is a process of rapid experimentation across marketing channels and product development to identify the most effective, efficient ways to grow a business. Growth hackers are marketers, engineers and product managers that specifically focus on building and engaging the user base of a business.

If you entered a question into Google recently, you may have noticed the informational box at the top of the page that displays a quick answer to your question.

First, let me start off by saying that hopefully there are some Pink Floyd fans reading this that got the title of my post. If not then you really need to go Google their CD “The Wall” and listen to it, but I digress……

Are you aware that valuable inbound links generate traffic and increase conversions?

 
Today we’ll look through what the AMP project is, why it’s beneficial for your website, and how to make the adjustment if you haven’t already.

Creative thinking is often thought of as a gift. If you were not born with it, then you simply cannot do it. You are just an analytical thinker and there is nothing that can change it. That is a misconception that is unfortunately believed by too many people. Now if you are saying, “but I’m really not creative at all” then listen up!