We continue the series of the posts that we consider to be the best ones in SEO, SEM, Content Marketing, Blogging, PPC and marketing niche.
If you are reading this roundup and feel that I missed an interesting post, then you can offer a post to my attention.
In my opinion; here are the best posts of October 2014
We’re starting with Penguin 3.0 update or just refresh, according to Barry Schwartz. We all were awaiting this update for too long. The previous one is dated October, 4, 2013. Pierre Far from the Google team confirmed that on Friday 17th, they started Penguin refresh. Following are some interesting notes that he added:
- The refresh will continue for the next few weeks, so you still can see come improvements in SERP.
- Roll out is a worldwide.
- Impacted less than 1% of English queries.
- They did not add new signals to the update.
- If you fixed your backlink profile, then you may see some improvements in rankings
How to Create Relevant Content Using Customer Personas published at E2M Solutions blog: The author of the post states that you should focus more on targeting the right people. Because if you do not get good social activity, more traffic or subscribers; it does not mean that your content is bad.
He recommends using the following:
- Building the personals
- Personal interviews
- Surveys
- Analytics
- Other sources
- Put it together
- Using the personals
- Blog posts
- Ebooks
- Content hubs
- Other content types
SERoundTable.com was hit by Panda 4: This post was a big surprise for me because the Google team knows that blog and the owner [Barry Schwartz] very well. People who left some comments under that post assumed that it was due to thin content but, at the same time, it is a very valuable blog.
Interesting that in the end of the post Barry said that it is not Panda and he knows it from 2 sources. Anyway, after some time, I contacted him and he told that there are some improvements, but to be 100% sure, he has to wait a little more.
This situation shows that even strong and trusted sites are not safe. We all know that eBay was affected by the last Google updates also.
5 tips for getting more social activity when re-sharing old posts at Bufferapp blog: Kevan Lee said that you do not need to stop with only one tweet of your post. New tweets of the old posts get approximately 75% as many retweets as the first time it was posted.
“Only sharing your content once on social media is a rookie mistake. Studies have shown that sharing your blog posts and other content several times will get you more retweets, views, and comments. As crowded as these networks are; it is unlikely you would bother anyone with multiple shares.”
Some reasons for this:
- Different time zone: When someone from another part of the world is browsing twitter news, they probably will not see your tweet because it is far from the beginning of the feed. So you will have to repeat it again to get more social activity;
- You can connect with new audience by adding new hash tags.
For Twitter he recommends the following method:
- Publish your tweet
- Again, 2 hours later
- Next day
- Next week
- Next month
- 2 months
For Facebook:
- Create your post
- Again, next week
- 2 months
For Google+
- Create your post
- Again, next week
- Next month
- Next 2 month
Discover the difference between guest blogging and content marketing, and why you should stop doing guest blogging. Forget about that and focus on content. It is my post and you can read it here.
John Mueller said that Google will not be updating Toolbar Page Rank in future. I’m not sure that people still worry about that because as we know it is not a ranking factor anymore. However, for some webmasters; it is still important. Actually, I remember when last year, Matt Cutts said they will not update it in 2013 but in December [or am I wrong?] they updated it.
The quote from the John Mueller speech: “We will probably not going to be updating it [PageRank] going forward, at least in the Toolbar PageRank.”
As a person from Ukraine, I read both Russian and Ukrainian search news. According to the latest research, 82% or Russian use Yandex. I’m not talking only about the search engine because Yandex, like Google, has many useful tools. For example, Yandex Maps where you can see traffic jams in Moscow or other big cities; Yandex Market where you can buy something; Yandex catalog where you can find something additional from search engine, etc.
Local search ranking factors 2014 release by Moz team. The results are the following:
- My business signals (categories, keyword in business title, proximity, etc) – 14.7%
- External Loc. Signals (IYP/aggregator NAP consistency, citation volume, etc) – 15.5%
- On-page signals (presence of NAP, keywords in titles, domain authority, etc) – 21.0%
- Link signals (inbound anchor text, linking domain authority, linking domain quantity, etc) – 18.3%
- Review signals (review quantity, review velocity, review diversity, etc) – 9.8%
- Social signals (google+ authority, facebook likes, twitter followers, etc) – 5.8%
- Behavioral/Mob. Signals (ctr, mobile ctc, check-ins, offers, etc) – 6.9%
- Personalization – 8.4%
The picture from Moz.com
Case Study: How I Increased Traffic 272% In 30 Days (Without Spending A Penny) by Robbie Richards: The post is very long, but you definitely must read it. The idea of the post was previously discovered by Brian Dean from Backlinko. What I liked the most is that Robbie used the SkySkraper technique [the original post was included in our September roundup] on the post by Brian.
He just expanded that post and added more information, but the idea of the post belongs to another person. Maybe I should do the following with Robbie’s post? : )
It works very easy:
- Find very good content
- Improve it
- Promote using your own channels
I do not know if Robbie had links that previously were linked to the post by Brian, but I would not be very surprised.
10 Smart Search Engine Marketing Tactics To Get Free Google Traffic by Irina at Jeff Bullas: I can’t say that I discovered something new from that post, but the author gathered very nice information about traffic that really works. She talks about the following ways:
- it or paper.li
- Find broken links and replace them with your links.
- Monitor competitor backlinks and try to get a link for you from that source, too.
- Create infographics because people like to link to the nicely designed content.
- Find content on the forums where people ask about your niche and show them your posts.
- Blogger reviews
- Ask for feedback about your site.
- Make links from your brand mentions.
- Reverse image search
6 rules for success from ex-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Matthew Woodward’s blog: Actually, it is not the first time I read a similar post. For example, there is a post at Quitwork site. However, they all have the same ideas from Arni:
- Trust in yourself.
- Break the rules.
- Don’t be afraid to fail.
- Don’t listen to people around you.
- Work hard.
- Give back.
This is a wrap up of the best posts during October 2014, in my opinion. If you have written a nice post that was not included in this roundup, then you can contact us or send a message via my Twitter. If the post is really good, then I definitely will add it, too.
Thanks for reading!