The SEO Blog from cognitiveSEO

Updated: The recorded webinar can be found here. Since last year, it seems that Google started to aggressively clean its search index from sites that do shady link building practices involving the creation of unnatural links. Last year it started with Penguin , which was mostly about low quality links and this year it started with the Interflora Penalty that aims at “advertorial” content written with the pure scope of increasing search engine rankings. I have seen a lot of confusion ar [...]

Another week … another highly requested feature is launched. After our latest successful upgrade last week, with the new Visual Link Explorer, here comes another feature.This new feature extends the overall functionality of the cognitiveSEO toolset by allowing tagging and tag filtering. What is a TAG in cognitiveSEO? TAG = “A label attached to something for identification or other information.” We added color to make it easy to spot and differentiate among various tags.   [...]

If you have a local business, or a business with some local aspect, then you can incorporate local link building opportunities into your SEO strategy. This can help you gain more variety in your backlinks as well as get exposure with your geo-targeted audience. The following are various local link building opportunities you can pursue for your business website and have a higher chance to increase your local rankings. Local Review Sites If you're not interested in the reputation management bene [...]

Approximately six months ago we started the implementation of what is probably the most powerful, beautiful and easiest way to visualize a site’s link profile. The name of this new cutting-edge feature is:   Visual Link Explorer - Cutting-Edge Link Graphs Made Simple   This is the easiest, yet advanced, visualization that allows you to comprehend the ever-growing complexity of a site’s link profile.   No other SEO tool has implemented automatic extraction, creation, and navigati [...]

Brainstorming for content can be really difficult at times especially, when your job requires you to write about various niches at a short notice. Though there are many tools like discussion forums, content curation sites, social media platforms, social bookmarking sites, etc. that can help to overcome this problem. Using a lot of tools can be overwhelming. Hence, I have come up with some of my favourite tools that can help to do an effective brainstorm for content ideas. (more…) [...]

Last night Alex Graves from Bronco posted an article discussing the Payday Loans niche and how he thinks that the Google algorithm has been gamed, even after the Penguin and EMD update. I tweeted to him, the payday loans case study that I did back in June (this was the first case study of its kind, that ignited a series of articles talking about how the payday loans niche is abused in Google). He is saying that this new site ranking on the "payday loans" keyword in the UK was not a hacked [...]

Once you have decided on the keywords you are targeting for your search engine marketing campaign, your next task will be to do a little competitor analysis. This is where you look at the top websites in your industry to see what they are doing to rank highly in search. In this post, we're going to look at defining your competitors in search and what you should look for to determine your next course of action. Who Are Your Competitors When working with a new client, they will supply a few piec [...]

  I’ve noticed lots of data visualisation posts and infographics being posted on many websites lately. Many of them are displaying too much information on a poorly designed visual post. Is this just another tactic to gain links? Just a few months ago, I heard some SEOs talking about how infographics don’t work for SEO campaigns and now the tables have turned. I’ve noticed a lack of strategic planning in the industry, which is the first and foremost step forFtops any campaign. A wel [...]

Content, data visualisations and social media are hot topics in the digital marketing industry currently. Brands are focusing on increasing engagement with their fans, customers and users. Facebook is of course the most widely used platform to interact and create social buzz around potential and existing customers. According to research by Buddy Media, retail brands that write a post in less than 80 characters on Facebook tend to receive 66% higher engagement as compared to longer posts. [...]

There is a lot of talk about Google’s continued algorithm changes, particularly Google Panda and Google Penguin. Most of the talk seems focused on what not to do or what strategies to employ to avoid being affected by these algorithm changes, but there are still plenty of people who don’t quite get how or why they are losing their rankings or what to do about it if they are. Today, we would like to rundown the past, present, and future of how Panda and Penguin affect your website and your bu [...]