Welcome to the winter edition, of what is now becoming a monthly roundup of what I consider to be some of the best SEO and internet marketing article.  Without much ado, here are some of the most exciting and informative articles I came across during the month of December 2016.

 

“5 Takeaways from Earning Links in 130 Countries” by Kerry Jones on Moz blog.

  1. Domestic success was a key factor in driving international placements for Fractl’s campaigns.
  2. Overcome language barriers with visual formats that don’t rely on text.
  3. Topics that speak to universal human interests performed best internationally.
  4. A global angle isn’t necessary.
  5. The elements of share-worthy content hold true internationally.

 

“Google Mobile Friendly Test Tool Allows You To Submit Pages To Google’s Index” by Barry Schwartz on SERoundTable. Google has added a feature to submit pages to their mobile index through mobile friendly test tool.

You just need to submit the URL you want and after you did it, it says “page added to indexing queue”.

 

“What to Expect for Search Marketing in 2017” by Ryan Clutter on Search Engine Journal. 2016 year comes to an end and more and more posts appear online about 2017. This is one of them.

Here are some thoughts from Ryan:

  • Accelerated Mobile Pages Will Develop Further & Become Critical to Search
  • The Innovations of AI Learning & Google RankBrain
  • Advancement of Voice Search for Search Marketing
  • The Race for Featured Snippets
  • New Opportunities Will Be Seen in Paid Search Advertising
  • More Video, Please
  • A Closer Look at Progressive Web Apps
  • Increased Attention to Schema Markup

 

“10 mistakes businesses and brands make with social media” by Bob Cargill on Search Engine Watch.

  • Not providing enough education
  • Not providing enough incentive
  • Not connecting with others
  • Not sharing organizational content
  • Not producing original content
  • Not keeping up with changes
  • Not looking at the big picture
  • Not brave enough to experiment
  • Not aware of their capabilities
  • Not leading by example

 

“Pop-Ups Be Gone: The Solution to Google’s Interstitials Update in 2017” by Nadya Khoja on Venngage blog. Pop ups still could be very effective according to some marketers.

But pop ups soon could lead your site to a penalty Google says. And here is what you can do:

  • Instead of pop-ups, create valuable gated content
  • Use NudgeSumo to replace pop-ups
  • Include subscribe forms directly in your content

 

“6 discreet ways to (legally) spy on your competitors” by Tamar Weinberg on TheNextWeb. Here are the ways:

  • Follow the traffic
  • Find the right leads
  • Accept the conference invitation
  • Don’t let anonymous visitors sneak by
  • Find out what interests your competitors
  • Talk to your customers

 

“6 Ways to Convert Your Instagram Audience into Customers” by Pratik Dholakiya on Entrepreneur. Nearly 71% of U.S. companies will be active on Instagram next year. I think Instagram is the most spammy platform online but if you use your brains you can convert your audience into customers. Here are some recommendations from Pratik:

  1. Make your posts shoppable.
  2. Never underestimate your CTAs.
  3. Reward followers with promo codes.
  4. Run a contest.
  5. Show off the people who love your brand.
  6. Tell a great (visual) story.

 

“14 Advanced SEO Tactics That Your Competition Doesn’t Know About” by Neil Patel on Quick Sprout blog.

  1. Expand your presence
  2. Create a mobile app
  3. Fix any crawl errors
  4. Optimize your images
  5. Use latent semantic indexing (LSI)
  6. Optimize your landing pages
  7. Spy on your competitors’ keywords
  8. Fix your broken links
  9. Sniff out unnecessary code
  10. Fix any errors in your code
  11. Tell a story with your internal link structure
  12. Join question-and-answer sites
  13. Use infographics
  14. Consider making videos

 

“50 Best Social Media Tools From 50 Most Influential Marketers Online” by Aaron Orendorff on Content Marketing Institute blog. There are many very good social media tools online but it is quite difficult to identify a tool you need from such huge list of available services, especially when majority of them are not free.

Here are some of them:

  • Buzz Sumo
  • Instagram
  • Start a Fire
  • Qwaya
  • SumoMe
  • Oktopost
  • Grum

Find more tools from social media entrepreneurs by clicking the link above.

 

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