SEO Digital Group

Posted by Dr-Pete Early search engines were built on an unspoken transaction — a pact between search engines and website owners — you give us your data, and we'll send you traffic. While Google changed the game of how search engines rank content, they honored the same pact in the beginning. Publishers, who owned their own content and traditionally were fueled by subscription revenue, operated differently. Over time, they built walls around their gardens to keep visitors in and, hopefully, keep them paying. Over the past six years, Google has crossed this divide, building walls around their content and no longer linking out to the sources that content was originally built on. Is this the inevitable evolution of search, or has Google forgotten their pact with the people's whose backyards their garden was built on? I don't think there's an easy answer to this question, but the evolution itself is undeniable. I'm going to take you through an exhaustive (yes, you may ...

Posted by randfish Building an online community sounds like an attractive idea on paper. A group of enthusiastic, engaged users working on their own to boost your brand? What's the hitch? Well, building a thriving online community takes a great deal of effort, often with little return for a very long time. And there are other considerations: do you build your own platform, participate in an existing community, or a little of both? What are the benefits from a brand, SEO, and content marketing perspective? In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, Rand answers all your questions about building yourself an online community, including whether it's an investment worth your time. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week, we're chatting about how and whether to invest in and structure online communities. I want to say a thank you to @...

Posted by JoyHawkins Fake reviews are a growing problem for those of us that own small businesses. In the online world, it's extremely easy to create a new account and leave either a positive or negative review for any business — regardless of whether you’ve ever tried to hire them. Google has tons of policies for users that leave reviews. But in my experience they're terrible at automatically catching violations of these policies. At my agency, my team spends time each month carefully monitoring reviews for our clients and their competitors. The good news is that if you’re diligent at tracking them and can make a good enough case for why the reviews are against the guidelines, you can get them removed by contacting Google on Twitter , Facebook, or reporting via the forum . Recently, my company got hit with three negative reviews, all left in the span of 5 minutes: Two of the three reviews were ratings without reviews. These are the hardest to get rid of because Google...

Posted by sanfran What does Google consider “quality content"? And how do you capitalize on a seemingly subjective characteristic to improve your standing in search? We’ve been trying to figure this out since the Hummingbird algorithm was dropped in our laps in 2013, prioritizing “context” over “keyword usage/frequency.” This meant that Google’s algorithm intended to understand the meaning behind the words on the page, rather than the page’s keywords and metadata alone. This new sea change meant the algorithm was going to read in between the lines in order to deliver content that matched the true intent of someone searching for a keyword. Write longer content? Not so fast! Watching us SEOs respond to Google updates is hilarious. We’re like a floor full of day traders getting news on the latest cryptocurrency. One of the most prominent theories that made the rounds was that longer content was the key to organic ranking. I’m sure you’ve read plenty of articles on this. We at B...