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With the Winter Holidays having ended along with the year of 2015, I have compiled my monthly roundup of the best articles in the SEO and internet marketing niche for the month of February 2016.

 

“Facebook Cheat Sheet: Image Size and Dimensions UPDATED! [INFOGRAPHIC]” by Adithya Murali on techwyse blog. I find such posts to be very useful. When it comes to adding a FB cover or profile picture, you may face a problem with a part of your image showing on the outside of the cover. Actually, there are many very good posts about FB image size and dimensions but, since it was created as an infographic; I would like to include it in my roundup.

My wish is that Adithya will create one infographic for all major social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

“21 Web Design Tips You Just Can’t Miss” by Debashre Cchanda on My Tasker blog. I’m not a big web design guru but, if you have a good website, especially if you selling something; you should definitely think about your design. A good landing page should be well designed.

In this post, you will find 21 very useful web design tips.

Tips to improve your web design

 

“We Analyzed the HTTPS Settings of 10,000 Domains and How It Affects Their SEO – Here’s What We Learned” by Christoph Engelhardt on Ahrefs blog. After Google officially announced that HTTPs is a ranking factor, many of websites owners started to switch from HTTP to HTTPs.

Following are key findings according to Christoph:

  1. Only 1 in 10 websites has what we consider a flawless HTTPS setup (More on that later).
  2. A whopping 60% of the websites tested have no HTTPS whatsoever (increasing to over 65% when taking into account websites with errors in SSL setup).
  3. Almost 1 in 4 domains were missing a canonical HTTPS version.
  4. Almost 1 in 4 domains were using 302 (temporary) redirects instead of 301 (permanent) redirects.
  5. Even Google can’t be bothered to use permanent redirects and uses temporary redirects (HTTP status code 302) instead. Then again, they won’t ever find it difficult to rank…

 

29 super useful PPC tools you need to try this year” by Larry Kim on Search Engine Watch. Pay per click marketing is growing from year to year and every time new tools are invented. In this list by Larry, you will find those that require the most attention from professional PPC guru: from Adwords Editor and Google Keywords Planner to SpyFu and Unbounce.

 

“110 Top Bloggers And Entrepreneurs Share Their Most Successful Social Media Action” by Minuca Elena. As a person who creates similar roundups from time to time, I know how difficult it is to get such a big number of quality responses from big influencers.

You may read my previous roundups:

  • Blogging Opportunities Roundup – Make Your Site Stronger with Genuine Guest Blogging and Content Marketing – here.
  • Proven Tips to Get More Twitter Followers That Work In 2015 – here.

So if you want to read the best advices from such people as Bill Gassett or Neil Patel go to the link above.

 

Google is Removing all Right Hand Side Ads on SERPs Worldwide” by Christopher Ratcliff on Search Engine Watch. It is confirmed by numerous sources that beginning on February 19, Google ads will no longer show on the right. Instead, they will be shown only at the top and bottom of the SERP.

london-hotel-Google-Search-with-right-hand-side-ads

It means that now you will have even less space for the organic search results without scrolling down. For paid search advertisers, it means their CPCs will increase because ads on the bottom do not get many clicks.

How Does SumoMe Affect Your Site’s Performance?” by Sol Orwell on Sumome. People talk a lot about how having more aggressive opt-ins will decrease site traffic, increase bounce rate, and so forth. So they tested it – with over 750,000 visitors – and they found that it made no difference.

Tests included are:

  • Pageviews per person
  • Average session duration
  • Bounce Rate
  • Emails collected
  • Revenue generation
  • Facebook Shares
  • Twitter Shares

 

“How to start a blog in 2016 even if you do not have a niche (The Entrepreneurial Method)” by Khalid Zidan on successentrepreneur. There are a large number of such posts in existence but only some of them are worth reading. I can say that Khalid did a great job with this article. His plan contains the following chapters:

  1. Mindset & Niche
  2. Domain
  3. CMS
  4. Hosting
  5. Design and Content
  6. Essential Tools

 

5 Things Ecommerce Customers Actually Want From Your Store” by Matthew Toren on entrepreneur. Following are the 5 topics covered in this post:

  1. Opportunities to Qualify for Free Shipping
  2. Smart, Personalized Recommendations
  3. Special Deals to Keep Them from Hunting Elsewhere
  4. Trustworthy, Authentic Customer Reviews
  5. Easy, Shenanigan-free Product Returns

 

Is Any Press Good Press? Measuring the SEO Impact of PR Wins and Fails” by Kelsey Libert on Moz. It will take just 15 minutes of your time to read this article and is definitely worth it.

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Some results:

“Roman Originals was, by far, the biggest winner out of the brands we analyzed, with a 17.5K% increase in press mentions, nearly a 420% increase in US organic traffic, and 2.3K% increase in new backlinks. By far the greatest benefit was the impact on sales — Roman Originals’ global sales increased by 560% within a day of the story hitting the news”

“Of all the PR events we analyzed, the igloo story was the most recent, having occurred at the end of January. Although we can’t yet gauge the long-term impact this media hit will have on Airbnb, the initial impact appears to be minimal. Since Airbnb is frequently in the news, it’s not very surprising that one PR event doesn’t have a significant effect.

Airbnb’s site only saw a 2% increase in organic traffic, despite an 83% increase in press mentions.”

5 Mistakes Small Business Owners Should Avoid” by Caitlyn Rose on lendgenius blog. In this article Caitlyn gives some valuable tips on how to maximize profits over the long term.

  1. Business Tax Errors
  2. No Website or Digital Presence
  3. Bad Financial Records
  4. Too Much Debt
  5. A Short-Term State of Mind

 

There you have,in my opinion, the best posts for the month of February 2016! I hope you enjoyed them, too! Please share your comments below or contact me via this form or via my Twitter account.