I’ve been enjoying a needed break from blogging this year but I thought it was time to pop my head up and share some thoughts. So I put together a round-up of current SEO and digital marketing trends that offer good opportunities for publishers. Some are newer, others are longstanding, but I wanted to gather […]

Google News has been in the news itself lately, from European efforts to impose taxes to questions about its value and even suggestions for giving it a full redesign. But just how much traffic is it currently driving to publishers? In working with a wide range of news and content sites, I know that becoming […]

Google Panda was designed to go after sites with a high volume of thin or low-quality content (among other things) in an effort to improve the overall strength of the search results. But the unfortunate reality is that with just about every Panda update well-established brands with good content get caught in the filter. We […]

Editorial teams and content creators are always on the lookout for useful tools for keyword research and content planning. To help with that, I’ve put together a list of the best options for keyword research, competitive analysis and monitoring search and social trends. There is a wide universe of tools out there and my intention […]

Google News continues to be an important source of traffic for publishers, in particular from the news OneBoxes that are frequently included in regular Web search results. While most news search optimization efforts rightly focus on editorial best practices and avoiding Google News errors, there are some additional opportunities that are worth taking advantage of. […]

Which news organizations are having the most success with the Google News standout tag? I monitored “Featured” articles in Google News for 90 days to find out. When I previously wrote about how to use the standout tag, I wished I could have provided some insights on how often “Featured” articles appear and which publications […]

A quick tip for news publishers on using Google+ embedded posts. When embedding a Google+ post in a news article, be sure to include enough original editorial text to meet the 80 word minimum for Google News indexation. The same goes for Facebook Embedded Posts, Embedded Tweets and any other form of embedded multimedia. The […]

The standout tag for Google News has been around for a couple years now but many news publishers are still uncertain about it. The questions I’m asked most often are how and when to use it, how well it works and if it is worth putting in the time and resources to support it. Does […]

I attended MozCon 2013 last week. It’s really become a big production with a three-day agenda, large stage and space-age theme in the main room. I hadn’t been to one before and I came away pretty impressed. I don’t think I’ve ever done a conference recap, but I had a good experience at MozCon and […]

Most editorial teams employ basic keyword research tactics as part of their daily routine, such as using keyword tools to refine word choice or monitoring trending topics for real-time opportunities. But what about using search and social data to influence the editorial calendar over the longer term? Mining keyword research, analytics and competitive data to […]