Posted by amandamilligan This is a stressful time to say the least. Everything is impacted by COVID-19 in some way, including our work. Once we’ve taken time to acknowledge how lucky we are to work in digital, it’s time to assess if our current content strategy needs any adjusting based on current events. Many marketers are finding themselves: Wanting to write about something topical Needing to add more content to their calendars At a loss for how to contribute at a time like this So, I spent hours using Ubersuggest , putting myself in the shoes of various Americans. I tested a variety of keywords to see which ones have exhibited a trend during the COVID-19 outbreak and might warrant some attention from content marketers. The results below are for the term “Coronavirus,” so for the other keywords identified, I looked for a noticeable spike in the months of January, …

Posted by MiriamEllis “We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.” ― Thích Nhất Hạnh , Buddhist teacher Image credit: Maulvi My warm New Year’s greetings to all local business owners and local SEOs reading my column today. Add to this my sincere sentiments of solidarity for what we went through together in 2020 — we won’t soon forget it, and our stories from the journey contain important teachings for our market and industry. I often find that the best local SEO takeaways sprout from the real-world anecdotes of colleagues and friends, and you’ll find those here today along with my personal predictions for the year ahead. Let’s get learning! Teachings from the real lives of local SEOs In a year when we were physically distant from one another in unprecedented ways, I’ve found memorable lessons in how local business owners broke down barriers to keep communities connected. …

Have you ever seen a Facebook ad for Chanel? Or an Instagram ad for Lamborghini? Me neither. That’s because luxury marketing strategies don’t follow the same rules as mass-market brands. Selling to high-end consumers requires a different approach. But that doesn’t mean popular digital channels are off-limits. SEO, PPC, even some social media sites can drive online sales for your luxury brand. Today, I’m going to show you exactly how to take your luxury brand online with the best luxury marketing strategies. What Qualifies as a Luxury Brand? Gucci, Rolex, Ferrari. For the most part, you know luxury brands when you hear them. But what does it take for a brand to qualify as a luxury? In my opinion, it’s down to the three Es: Expensive, Excellent, and Exclusive. Luxury products are synonymous with high price tags. This is the most common indicator of luxury, but it is also the …

Color wields enormous sway over our attitudes and emotions. When our eyes take in color, they communicate with a region of the brain known as the hypothalamus, which sends a cascade of signals to the pituitary gland, on to the endocrine system, and then to the thyroid glands. The thyroid glands signal the release of hormones, which cause fluctuation in mood, emotion, and resulting behavior. What is even more interesting is that a case study showed that adjusting color, among other elements, can increase conversion by as much as 24%. The study of all this is called color psychology, and the bottom line is: use the right colors, and you win. What is Color Psychology? Color psychology is the science of how color affects human behavior. Color psychology actually is a branch of the broader field of behavioral psychology. Suffice it to say that it’s a pretty complicated field. Some …

A new index and coalition that shines a spotlight on inclusion is key to lasting change, says Intel’s chief diversity and inclusion officer. Everyone is carrying things you can’t see and working through challenges that may not be voiced. For me, it is navigating obstacles as a Black family and a parent of a Black adult male son in America. As a mother, I am constantly thinking of my son’s safety and ensuring his place in this world is aligned to his greatness and not held up by artificial barriers such as skin color. How do I lead and influence in a way that protects him as a human being? I also think about the world I brought my son into, and how it needs to be much better than the world I grew up in. Read Full Story

* Please read the whole post, I have some good news at the bottom, but it won’t make sense unless you read the whole post. Do you know why I got into SEO? Not many people know this, but I grew up in middle-class America, and I wanted a better life for me and my parents. When I was 16 years old, I worked at a theme park called Knotts Berry Farm where I picked up trash, cleaned restrooms, and swept up vomit every single day. I didn’t mind it because that’s life and I needed the money. At 16, I realized I was too young to get a high paying job, so I did the next best thing… I started a business. But making $5.75 an hour picking up trash wasn’t enough to market my business, though. The only solution that I could think of was SEO because if …

30-second summary: Atlanta-based Cardlytics is an ad platform that operates within banks’ native digital channels. Cardlytics brings the worlds of ad tech and fintech together within a fraud-free and brand-safe environment, offering a high degree of trust. Cardlytics boasts an audience within the US of more than 125M monthly active users. Larger than Snap, Twitter, and Pinterest. The Cardlytics platform enables banks to send offers to their end customers and enrich the banking experience by getting cash back. Advertisers can show ads to potential customers to motivate online and in-store purchases, and they’re also able to give their customers cash back. Cardlytics sees 1 in 2 of all credit and debit card swipes in the US, which enables them to understand how a bank user engaged with an offer through the platform and then went on to make a purchase. Cardlytics has helped customers get back nearly half a billion …

Put down the sourdough. It’s time to build something great for your good boy. Chances are you’ve already mastered quarantine hobbies such as baking sourdough bread and planting a garden. So it might be time to level up to a new challenge. How about building a house for your faithful furry companion? Read Full Story

Posted by MiriamEllis Image credit: Kenneth Leung , Michael Coghlan “Dried beans saw a more than 230% increase in demand and rice sales spiked by 166% in that same time.” - ABC How should a business operate now? Where is there work to be done? Economists are making stark predictions about the future of small businesses in the US, but at the same time, I live in a town without a courier service established enough to meet the mushrooming demand for home delivery. Frankly, it’s devastating reading headlines forecasting the permanent closure of 7.5 million American SMBs , but while absorbing these, I also spent six weeks shaking the Internet for bathroom tissue before locating some 1,400 miles away. Point being: Where there’s need, fulfilment can be a public good, and where there’s upheaval, any possibility is worth considering. Necessities are emerging in bold relief on the map of each …

Posted by rjonesx. Building local pages in any amount can be a painful task. It's hard to strike the right mix of on-topic content, expertise, and location, and the temptation to take shortcuts has always been tempered by the fact that good, unique content is almost impossible to scale. In this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday, Russ Jones shares his favorite white-hat technique using natural language generation to create local pages to your heart's content. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Hey, folks, this is Russ Jones here with Moz again to talk to you about important search engine optimization issues. Today I'm going to talk about one of my favorite techniques, something that I invented several years ago for a particular client and has just become more and more and more important over the years. Using natural language …