Henry Thomas

To be competitive in search, you must audit and optimize desktop and mobile page speeds while also making data ready for real-time personalization. Google has long been secretive about the nuts and bolts of its search ranking algorithms, but we do know for a fact that page speed is a factor. In its “How Search Works” resource, Google  flat  out states that, “We develop algorithms to promote more usable pages over less usable ones, all other things being equal. These algorithms analyze signals that indicate whether all our users are able to view the result, like… whether the page loading times work well for users with slow Internet connections.” Consumers with lightning-fast connection speeds are growing impatient with slow sites, too – particularly those on mobile. When Google last analyzed mobile landing page load times in 2018, the average time it took to fully load one had dropped by seven seconds. However, it still took about 15 seconds, whi...

Here are some free software options to extract data from small to medium data sets to help you get the job done. We have all been there before. You need the right data from a website for your next content marketing project. You have found your source websites, the data is just there waiting for you to grab it and then the challenge emerges. You have 500 pages and wonder how to extract all this data at once. It doesn’t help if you have the data if you can’t grab it. Without proper data scraping software, you won’t get it. If you are like me, you had to learn Python so Scrapy can get the job done for you. Alternatively, you have to learn XPath for Excel, which is also something that takes quite a bit of time. And since time is our most precious commodity, there is software available that doesn’t require learning a line of code to complete this task. I have tried the following software as they all provide a free account and quite a good number of features to get the job d...

There are many opportunities for apps and businesses to collaborate on co-branded experiences tied to brick-and-mortar locations. TikTok, the video creation app, is looking to monetize its popularity, and for good reason: since its founding in 2016, TikTok has achieved one billion downloads. It was reported recently that TikTok is testing sponsored ads that direct users to advertiser’s websites. This development is not surprising because TikTok has already been doing this kind of advertising in China, where the app is known as Douyin. As TikTok seeks to grow, I think it’s worth considering whether location-based services could be part of the company’s future – a path that streaming app Spotify is exploring already. About TikTok TikTok has an interesting history worth noting here. The app, owned by ByteDance, was founded first as Douyin in 2016 before launching in the United States as TikTok in 2017 and merging with popular video creation app Musical.ly. The app of...

Customers have grown used to searching for exactly what they want. Here’s how to help your brand show up in search results at every step in the customer journey. Understanding how to rank for both branded and unbranded terms in organic search is critical for marketers looking to build domain authority and capture share of search online. After all, over 3.5 billion searches are conducted each day on Google alone . When we talk about branded versus unbranded search, it isn’t an either/or proposition. Both are critical. But to rank in search results at moments of high intent, a business must have a strong grasp of the value of each — and where along the customer journey people are most likely to search for unbranded versus branded keywords. Unbranded search helps you win new customers. Unbranded keywords refer to search terms that do not specify a specific brand or business name (e.g., a Google search for “NYC restaurants with valet parking” or an Alexa search fo...

Do you really need to pay a fortune to find the best SEO & PPC keywords for your business? If you Google for a list of SEO tools, you’ll see there are almost 200 options on the market now. All of them differ in features, amounts and sources of data, and, definitely, prices. But which of them do you really need? And, most importantly, do you have to fork out hundreds of dollars a month, or is there a way to cut the costs? Today we’ll explore 8 of the best free keyword research tools. Each of them best fits a specific keyword research task and does the job no worse than their paid alternatives . 1. Rank Tracker To find the most ample list of keyword variations and analyze their SEO profitability.  When to use:   Your best SEO keywords are often not the most obvious ones. To find real keyword gems, you need to dig out all the possible variations from multiple data sources. And this is where Rank Tracker comes in especially handy with 23 different k...

The gig industry has become rampant across the world. Both big and small companies are opting for remote workers and virtual assistants in a variety of different capacities.  There is no doubt about the advantages of a virtual workforce. Also, as per a statistical analysis on the subject, posted by Global Workplace Analytics, it was determined that virtual teams enhance employee motivation, productivity, and boost satisfaction levels. Moreover, it was also identified that remote workers could save businesses well over $10,000 per year. As hiring remote workers become a common practice amongst different types of companies, it is vital to understand there are numerous complications and challenges that businesses are facing as a result. In light of this, mentioned below are some unique problems of virtual teams and how you can solve them. Complications with effective communication – important for remote team building activities Among the different problems listed h...

The last few years have witnessed a significant increase in searches with additional keywords ‘near me’. The fact that near me searches have doubled since 2015 is a clear indication that customers now prefer to look for products and services in their vicinity. Google trends show a similar growth for the search term ‘near me’. It is almost natural for customers to search for things like ‘ marketing firms near me ’ or ‘ digital marketing agencies + near me ’ to find services that are convenient to them. To benefit the most from this trend, you need to ensure that your business shows up in local searches. You might be wondering how exactly these searches work, what is its relevance in today’s world, and how it impacts local businesses today. This article provides all this information so you can have a clear picture of why local search holds such a dominant position in today’s digital marketing. How do ‘near me’ searches work? It’s difficult to know the exact algor...