cbrower

M Posted 7 years ago

t 9 min read

I have worked for many companies, small and large, and have never experienced such a tight-knit culture as I have with BrightEdge. The very fiber of the company is built on the relationships you will form and the bonds that will last a lifetime.

BrightEdge offers tons of team-building activities from Thank You Thursdays to happy hours to company lunches to Halloween and holiday parties! Thank You Thursdays allow you to show appreciation for your fellow colleague by just dropping a note card to let someone know you are thinking about them. The company gatherings give you the opportunity to interact with other teams that you would not typically see on a daily basis.    

At BrightEdge you truly feel like you are a part of something revolutionary. I constantly brag about our brilliant technology, our internship program, and fantastic leadership team. I have such pride coming to work each day knowing that I am making a difference and not just another cog in a wheel.  

Diversity in the workplace:

BrightEdge is committed to diversity and a work environment that promotes acceptance, respect, and teamwork. When different minds come together to achieve a common goal the result is monumental, and everyone feels appreciated for their contribution to the company’s success.

BrightEdge truly cares about their employees and takes an interest in what is going on in your life even outside of work; I recently signed up to run the New York City Marathon with Team For Kids, and BrightEdge employees went above and beyond by contributing to my TFK fundraising page.

"Funds raised by Team for Kids members support Rising New York Road Runners, NYRR’s youth program and events platform. Through school-based programs, youth events, and a collection of digital resources, Rising New York Road Runners brings free running and fitness programs to students across the country.

• Team for Kids funds help support programs for nearly 250,000 children nationwide, including 125,000 in New York City’s five boroughs. These programs help to build students’ motivation, confidence, and desire to be physically active for life.
• Since 2002, Team for Kids members have raised more than $74 million dollars.
• Funding helps pay for training for teachers and coaches, most of whom are volunteers; program and practice supplies; and student incentives.

For most of these kids, running with an NYRR program is their only opportunity to get exercise or play sports. NYRR youth programs have been recognized by Partnership for a Healthier America as a leader in the fight against childhood obesity and health issues."

I have never worked for a company that goes above and beyond for their employees like BrightEdge.

Being a part of the BrightEdge family is a truly wonderful adventure, professionally and personally. I really love coming to work each day and feeling like I am part of such a great journey.

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 7 years 5 months ago

t 9 min read

Does your job seem like a fire drill? Well, ours sure did when the fire alarm went off in the middle of the 1-hour Titans of SEO webinar. The alarm was so loud that we went on mute and then decided we would do the expected thing and evacuate. Dre de Vera and Eugene Feygin kept the Q&A info flowing from Pleasanton and Chicago respectively. Kirill Kronrod, Yulia Kronrod, Mark Aspillera, and I went down to the Kronrods' minivan and dialed back in and continued.

So now we have done a live broadcast during a fire alarm from a car. Check out how the titans of SEO pulled it off. You can hear the fire alarm from 35:48. Ok so back to the webinar: we brought together 4 titans of SEO for a live community Q&A. The audience asked 167 questions of the intermediate, and advanced level.

Mark Aspillera, senior product marketing manager at BrightEdge, and I moderated, and we tossed the hot potato questions to 4 of the most talented SEOs we know in the industry. These are the people I go to for advice and confirmation on SEO best practices. 

View On Demand Now.

Dre de Vera is currently the Search Marketing Global Lead at Workday and has almost 20 years’ experience in SEO. He has led global SEO efforts at 5 other companies: SAP, SuccessFactors, Anaplan, SmartRecruiters, and ABS-CBN.

Dre is strong at vertical search and YouTube and takes a scientific approach to SEO by conducting single-variable tests. He currently ranks #1 for “enterprise SEO consulting” on Google for his digital agency, Dreme Digital and #1 for “enterprise SEO expert” for his BrightEdge customer video on YouTube.

Yulia Kronrod is the director of SEO at Insureon, 

a small business insurance marketplace, where she drives 45% YOY growth in organic visits and 30% YOY growth in SEO conversions through content marketing and optimization, information architecture, technical SEO, user experience testing, and conversion rate optimization.

From prior work at Adobe, Yulia has extensive international SEO experience, including localization and geo-targeting (hreflang). Yulia hosted the last BrightEdge San Jose User Group. 

Eugene Feygin is the Sears Home Services SEO manager managing SearsHomeServices.com & SearsPartsDirect.com with over a decade of SEO experience in the E-Commerce arena from content strategist to technical research and implementation.

Among his many achievements in his SEO career, he improved page load speed by 80% and conversion by more than 500% at Quill.com. Eugene is the moderator for the Chicago BrightEdge User Group.

Kirill Kronrod manages global SEO at Adobe and has been with the company for 8 years. His focus is content strategy, technical SEO, analytics, testing, and user experience enhancements that push Adobe Natural Search presence and conversions. He has spoken at multiple BrightEdge Share conferences.

Fun fact: Kirill has introduced non-branded optimization at Adobe, and in addition to broad success in Google Quick Answer rankings, he has 1st SERP position (and sometimes the Quick Answer) for the "google quick answer” query for the article he published on the BrightEdge blog.

We hope you can join us for this amazing session.

maspillera

M Posted 8 years ago

t 9 min read

The fundamentals of how we do SEO, the framework of Discovery, Creation, Optimization, and Measurement, don’t change very much whether you’re an SMB just getting started or a multinational enterprise with brand presence across several continents. Managing ten pages is very different from managing 100 pages, and managing 100 is much different from managing a 1000.

Attention to detail is critical as well as the ability to manage or at least monitor the activities of multiple content creators and teams across the organization. There are many potential setbacks and BrightEdge looked at a few prevalent enterprise SEO mistakes to be aware of and help keep you from getting caught off guard. Avoid these four mistakes while scaling enterprise SEO.

• Neglecting enterprise SEO
• Overexpanding vs optimizing
• Not doing channel optimization
• Unoptimizing page templates

Enterprise SEO Neglect

Though it isn’t always the case necessarily, the concept of “enterprise” SEO is typically associated with website size as opposed to just organization size. By this standard, an enterprise SEO site usually has thousands of pages, spread across any number of different categories, such as product pages, blog articles, asset landing pages, About Us pages, and more. Having so many pages presents an issue of scale. In most cases it simply isn’t feasible or economical to pay an equal amount of attention to every page. Instead, enterprise SEOs and digital marketers will focus their time and efforts on sections of the site that drive the most value for the business. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this strategy, it does create a risk of overlooking potential areas of SEO growth and/or risk. An important rule of thumb for SEO is that the rules that apply today may not apply later down the line. If an organization has been around awhile and passed through the hands of more than one digital marketing team, there could be pages, if not entire page sections, of legacy content created at a time when SEO standards and best practices were entirely different from what they are now. At the enterprise-SEO level the need for data-driven insights to help drive decision making - and avoid enterprise SEO mistakes - is clear. An effective and comprehensive site auditing tool can help enterprise SEOs identify and keep track of these kinds of gaps, which a manual review of a sitemap.xml file or Google Search Console might not uncover.

Overexpansion vs. Optimization

Enterprise websites tend to be large sites with a lot of history behind them. “A lot of history” entails years’ worth of content publishing, site redesigns, product launches, product sunsets, site migrations, and more. Over that time the site and its content likely passed through the hands of more than one digital team, introducing a different version of standards and practices each time. At enterprise scale it’s surprisingly easy to lose track. Active management of a sitemap.xml file and keeping track of indexed pages in Google Search Console can help to keep up. That said, it’s not uncommon to have cases, for example, where the need to capitalize on a specific group of high-value keywords arises and significant resources are invested in generating new content when there are older pages on a related topic on existing URLs that could have been rewritten, re-optimized to fit the new keyword targets, and republished. Legacy pages may also have years’ worth of quality backlinks and internal links pointing to them. The resultant domain authority gives them - after a content refurbishment, SEO tune-up, and recrawl from Google - a better chance of ranking. Forming a practice around identifying site sections and legacy content for refurbishing can help to save yourself from reinventing the wheel and avoid contributing to website bloat. Associating target keywords with Preferred Landing Pages in Keyword Reporting can help to keep a record of which site sections are targeting which keyword groups and whether or not you already have keyword coverage that you may not know about.

Not Doing Channel Optimization

At the enterprise level, digital marketing strategy will often be invested in multiple channels. SEO, paid search, social, paid social, syndication, and any other area through which a brand can potentially reach its target audience and draw them to its website. Some of these channels can have a significant cost associated with them, whereas SEO’s cost for acquisition tends to be lower. The reality is that many if not most enterprise-level brands need to leverage multiple channels to scale their efforts properly. It's as much of an enterprise SEO mistake to try to expect organic to carry everything as it is to neglect it. It simply isn’t feasible, nor efficient, in most cases to expect a single channel to meet the demand generation needs of the entire organization. SEO itself has also expanded as the rise of non-traditional search engines, like Amazon has opened up the playing field and emphasized the need for vertical search optimization. Enterprise SEO should be seen as a tool in a larger demand generation toolbox. Opportunity Forecasting helps to identify areas in your keyword strategy where your brand will be able to compete effectively in organic and where a paid search campaign or approach from a different channel might yield the best results.

Unoptimized Page Templates

Effective SEO often happens at the structural level. Having a structurally sound site architecture and well-managed taxonomy for how content on your site is categorized and where different types of content will live is critical. In addition to that, many of the fundamentals of on-page SEO are dictated by the template that the content goes into. A template will determine where the h1 tagged title appears (or if it appears at all), how it looks on the page, and how the end user will input the copy and edit it down the line. Another example is internal linking, a vital on-page SEO practice. An effective template for blog posts or product pages will include an on-page widget that displays links to related content and can even be configured to fill in programmatically based on related meta tagging or semantics. Because of the scope of different content types an enterprise organization may have to have in its catalog, it’s easy to fall into the SEO mistake of not integrating SEO into the design of new templates and also to not go back and review legacy templates to make sure that they are setting up new content for long-term success. In fact, it's often the case that legacy templates were designed and built so far back that now-common template features didn't exist at the time. Enterprise SEO mistakes, as with any kind of SEO mistakes, are inevitable. No SEO or SEO campaign is infallible, and at scale the likelihood of oversights only grows. The true mark of effective enterprise SEO work is identifying those SEO gaps where they exist, elevating them proactively, and taking the lead on resolving them. 

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 8 years 7 months ago

t 9 min read

Google called for “HTTPS Everywhere” (secure search) at its I/O conference in June 2014 with its Webmaster Trends Analyst Pierre Far stating: “We want to convince you that all communications should be secure by default,” and it anticipated some resistance and skepticism from the SEO industry. The picture is definitely getting more clear. As a digital marketer, it’s important to understand the differences between HTTP vs HTTPS, the advantages of switching, and any issues you might encounter in your SEO management efforts. 

A few years later, two different Google representatives advocated for HTTPS: Maile Ohye in a joint BrightEdge webinar "A View from Google" called HTTPS a "requirement" and Thao Tran speaking on the main stage at Share16 in October said "HTTPS and making sure your site is secure is an imperative at this point... Google will start marking things non-secure... The future of the web is a secure one, and so make sure people in your organization understand HTTPS, and it should be on the road map" for all websites.

The adjustment period has come to an end with Google warning Chrome users when displaying pages that include forms from non-HTTPS sites: “Chrome will show the ‘Not secure’ warning in two additional situations: when users enter data on an HTTP page, and on all HTTP pages visited in Incognito mode.” This message will appear in url bar of Chrome browsers.

What is the difference between HTTP and HTTPS?

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is a structure for transferring and receiving information on the web, most frequently operated to retrieve HTML web pages. HTTP is considered an application layer protocol — it exists to present information to the web user no matter what channel it takes to do so. HTTP is stateless, which means it uses less data by forgetting earlier web sessions.

What does HTTPS stand for? HTTPS, or Secure HyperText Transfer Protocal, was established to sanction secured transactions and authorization over the web. Exchanging information, like credit card numbers or access, requires security to avert unauthorized entry through HTTPS. So what's the difference between HTTP vs HTTPS? HTTPS is HTTP — just the secure version. HTTPS follows the same protocols as HTTP — the browser begins a connection to a server on a standard port. The additional layer of HTTPS security uses Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, to transport data. HTTPS exercises TCP Port 443 by default, so they use two separate communications. For a detailed walkthrough see our on-demand webinar on HTTPS vs HTTP for SEO.

Where Does SSL Come In?

HTTPS works simultaneously with another protocol, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to communicate information safely in three ways:

• Encryption: Encrypting the transferred data for security
• Data Integrity: Data cannot be altered or corrupted during transmission
• Authentication: Users are authenticated to communicate with the website

Just like HTTP and HTTPS don’t discriminate with the path that data takes to its destination, SSL equally doesn’t care how the data looks, but HTTP does. So how does it affect HTTP vs HTTPS? In between the two HTTPS presents the best of both worlds: the data is visually appealing to the user, and you’re getting the extra layer of security as the data moves.

What is HTTPS Used For?

Since the key is search security, HTTPS has been used for any site involving secure information. It’s used for ecommerce sites to tender protected transactions. More than likely, your bank will use HTTPS to secure your personal information — easily recognized by the padlock on your browser. And as we’ll discover next, HTTPS is recognized and used as an SEO benefit to your secure site.

HTTP vs HTTPS: HTTPS as a Ranking Factor

Even years ago, research showed an increase in encrypted URLs. However, it wasn’t until the official announcement that we began to see sites affected by this factor. Considering their user-based algorithm updates, Google preference for trusted sites isn’t surprising. If users are guaranteed to have a secure site experience, the answer to HTTP vs HTTPS becomes simple — they will prefer HTTPS to HTTP.

SEO Advantages of Switching to HTTPS

If you’re following Google’s recommendations, deciding on HTTP vs HTTPS is also easy - switching to HTTPS will benefit you and the security of your site. There are also some additional SEO benefits for you to consider: Increased Rankings Not a major boost, but as part of an overall strategy with other ranking factors, it’s a safe bet. In addition, we usually see that the impact of Google’s recommendations and algorithm increase over time. Learn more about Google page rank. Referral Data If you’re exploring Google Analytics for your HTTP site, the traffic passing through referral sources can appear as “direct” traffic. Through an HTTPS site, the security of the referring domain is preserved. This makes the HTTP vs HTTPS decision even easier to make. Security and Privacy Security benefits your overall goals in a few ways:

• Authenticates the website and server communication
• Avoids damage by third parties
• Encrypts data and communication, like browsing history and credit card information

So Are There Any SEO Concerns in Switching to HTTPS?

As with all major URL changes and site migrations, there is likely to be a disruption and loss of rank followed by a recovery in rank. There are little to no issues when switching to HTTPS, especially for SEO. But implementing the secure switch incorrectly can hurt your site and possibly your SEO and cause a sustained loss in traffic. Steps to Switch Google’s own recommendations are below:

• • Determine if you require a single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate
  • Use 2048-bit key certificates to generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) on your webserver
  • Make sure to maintain a current SSL certificate
  • Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain
  • Redirect to HTTPS pages by server-side 301 HTTP redirects (mod_rewrite is common)
  • Update your robots.txt to allow your HTTPS pages to be crawled
  • Check that your website returns the correct HTTP status code

• Get and configure the required TLS certificates on your server

More from Google Support: Avoid irrelevant redirects

Don’t redirect many old URLs to one irrelevant destination, such as the home page of the new site. This can confuse users and might be treated as a soft 404 error. However, if you have consolidated content previously hosted on multiple pages to a new single page, it is acceptable to redirect the older URLs to that new, consolidated page.

Provide errors for deleted or merged content

For content on the old site that will not be transferred to the new site, make sure those orphaned URLs correctly return an HTTP 404 or 410 error response code. You can return the error response code at the source URL in the configuration panel for your new site, or you can create a redirect for a new destination URL and have that return the HTTP error code.

Ensure correct Google Search Console settings

A successful site move depends on correct — and up to date — Search Console settings. After the move, add the URL to Search Console. If you haven’t already, verify you own both the old and new destination sites in Search Console. Be sure to verify all variants of both the source and destination sites. For example, you should verify www.example.com and example.com, and include both the HTTPS and HTTP site variants if you use HTTPS URLs. Do this for both source and destination sites. Make sure to read our detailed how-to checklist for how to perform a successful HTTPS site migration.

The Takeaway

HTTPS will make your site more secure and Google is ramping up advocacy and signal weight for it. As always the majority of your decision should be based not on chasing algorithm changes, but on optimizing the needs of your business and improving your user experience. For a more detailed breakdown view our on-demand webinar on HTTPS vs HTTP for SEO.

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 9 years 7 months ago

t 9 min read

SEO optimization and search engine marketing are two terms that both fall under the heading of search marketing. They are two branches of the same tree in that they each work to engage users online and entice them to visit particular websites. SEM, however, focuses on paid advertising efforts and SEO optimization is organic.

Since there is considerable overlap in the goals between these two parts of search marketing, the two methods should be used to amplify each other. When used properly, they can each help to maximize the visibility they provide for the brand.

An estimated 85 percent of retailers say that search marketing, including both SEO and SEM, is the most efficient customer acquisition tactic. Many brands are noticing the value and importance of using these online methods to engage with users. Overall search spend has increased by 9 percent year over year, and about 50 percent of B2B and B2C brands plan to increase their budget for content marketing in the coming year.

The increased saturation in the online world means that for brands to compete, they need to find ways to maximize their usage of these strategies together. They want to leverage them together to see the true power of search marketing.

Recent SERP changes

It is important to take note of the recent changes Google has made to the SERP. A few months ago, marketers discovered that Google had eliminated the ads that once appeared along the right-hand side of the SERP. At the same time, they increased the number of ads above the organic results. Some queries now show as many as 4 ads before the start of the organic results, which then pushes the organic listings further down, in some cases nearly below the fold.

These changes mean that the top positions on organic are even more important, since they have the best chance of appearing above the fold. It also means that ads should be viewed as an even more essential part of an effective search marketing strategy. They provide an additional means of gaining attention on important queries.

How SEM and SEO optimization work together

Brands that leverage these two together have potential to drastically impact their brand growth.

The relationship between search engine marketing and SEO optimization has been a topic of considerable conversation over the years. Brands have wondered how having a paid ad and an organic listing for the same query impacted their results. Interestingly, Google decided to study this phenomenon and found that getting rid of paid ads would result in an 89 percent drop in clicks.

In other words, Google found that having an organic listing and a paid advertisement for the same query would help make the brand more visible and increase the chances of someone clicking on their organic listing. The impact is even more dramatic for brands that had organic results further down the list, but having organic ads even helps brands that have sites listed in the top organic positions. Brands can use this information to build a search marketing strategy that makes their site more visible for users.

How to succeed with SEO optimization and SEM

To properly leverage SEO optimization and search engine marketing together, brands need to develop a cross-channel marketing approach. Those who work with paid search and those who focus on SEO and content production must be able to work together to form a coherent web marketing strategy that builds up both sectors. As already explored, when they are able to work together, they can increase their overall success rate.

Step 1. Buyer personas and keyword research

Brands should begin by making sure that they have a thorough understanding of their key target personas. This includes their audience’s pain points, motivations, budgets, and position within their organization. The more information you have about your buyer personas, the easier it will be to appropriately target them and create web marketing content and advertisements that address their needs and engage them.

Follow up the outline of the buyer personas with keyword research. Use platforms, like the BrightEdge Data Cube, to begin developing a list of keywords that will interest your audience. Look at competition and search rates to get a better idea of how popular a particular keyword is and how hard it will be to get a strong ranking for it. Look at the top ten ranking pages for the keyword and see how well those pages fit with your intended audience. When you do find a good fit, seek ways that you can improve upon what is already created so that you can outrank the competition.

Step 2. Optimize your content for the keywords

Once you have your list of keywords that you want to target for your PPC and SEO common project, you then need to ensure that your target content is SEO optimized and prepared. When optimizing your content, make sure that you include the keyword naturally a few times in your content, but do not keyword stuff. Use some semantically related keywords throughout the content as well to show your depth on the subject. Develop a title, headings, a meta description, and alt tags that similarly include the main keyword naturally. Link your content to related pages within your website to demonstrate that this is a topic you are familiar with and that you have explored multiple times on your website.

Step 3. Create ads that add value for the user

Most marketers now understand that the goal of SEO optimization is not to keyword stuff the content or develop thin material that serves little purpose besides checking off a keyword list. Instead, brands aim to create material that adds value for the user. You should do the same with your search engine marketing. If you are creating ads for local searches, for example, remember that most people want to find phone numbers, addresses, or information about businesses carrying certain products. Reflect these desires in your ads the same way Google tries to answer them with the local 3-pack. Make sure your ad provides value for the user and does not just look like a piece of spam.

Step 4. Measure results

Once you have run your joint search engine marketing and SEO optimization campaign, you now need to measure your results including bounce rate. This will tell you how well your efforts performed. You want to look at a few main metrics, such as:

• Your organic content rank and if the material drew clicks when the PPC ad was placed and when it was not
• How well your PPC ad drew traffic
• The traffic from each segment and how well the visitors engaged with the site and moved through the sales funnel.

Search marketing, including both SEO optimization and search engine marketing, is a critical component of engaging with online customers and drawing them into your brand. Understanding how to use these two functions together, however, can help brands digitally mature and see greater ROI from their digital marketing efforts.

A BrightEdger

M Posted 9 years 9 months ago

t 9 min read

Webinar: Why Share16? - August 17 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET

Share16, BrightEdge’s 6th annual digital marketing conference, is only 11 weeks away and shaping up to be the best one yet. In an upcoming webinar, we will give you a sneak peek into the latest Share16 updates and why you need to attend and what’s new this year.

You’ll learn about the incredible value you get from being a part of this Forbes and Inc. Magazine top rated event - you won’t want to miss out!

We will discuss how our approach is very different than other events in a number of ways, all leading to a better attendee experience.  This includes the sessions, speakers, and networking activities at the conference.

High Quality Content

You will learn how we select session topics around the most pressing issues facing digital marketers, how we find marketers from top brands to speak at our conference, and how we work with them to deliver great presentations full of actionable takeaways.  Our sessions are full of the highest concentration of search, content and digital brand marketers and industry thought-leaders who enjoy presenting high quality content uniquely crafted to ensure real value from Share16.

What’s New?

We’ll also discuss major upgrades we’ve made to make the event more fun and provided creative ways to help attendees interact with each other.  Share16 attracts the best digital marketing teams from leading brands, most of whom want to meet and learn from others facing similar challenges. Our enhanced networking party will have delicious food and drinks, along with a number of fun game-like activities that will make it easier to meet new people and form lasting connections.  We even added a special cable car bus tour of San Francisco with lunch served, for those taking the full day of BrightEdge University training on Monday. Share16 will have a new mobile event app - you’ll be sure to leave Share16 feeling connected, inspired, and ready to tackle marketing challenges to elevate your performance.

This webinar will be full of exciting information about Share16 and how the conference will help you grow in your career and accelerate your business.

Register for the Share16 webinar!