Digital Marketing Mastery: Insights, Strategies, and Tactics for Success

Monthly Archives: July 2014

The Eraser Button Law in California

Privacy laws are getting pretty stringent and far-reaching in the European Union. In the United States, however, the debate is fueled by the fact that privacy laws often conflict with U.S. Constitutional protections of free speech. In 1995, the European Union signed into law the ‘European Data Protection Directive. It has since been revised to include a concept that was not adopted originally that has come to be known as the ‘right to be forgotten.’ This concept was conceived from the notion that individuals have a right to determine the development of their lives in an ‘autonomous way,’ without being perpetually stigmatized by things they did in the past. In the law, the EU gives individuals power to have erased from the internet information previously published on the web. In a response to this law, Governor Jerry Brown of California signed into law Senate Bill 568, which requires websites to provide to minors an online ‘erase button,’ giving them the ability to remove their own web posts. 

The Right To Be Forgotten

If you thought nobody wanted to be forgotten, you might have been correct … in the not-too-distant past. However, since the inception of the Internet and its ‘power through information,’ it appears some people not only desire, but are fighting, to be forgotten, especially when it concerns personal information they no longer want found in search engines. Though unfamiliar to most Americans, the concept of the ‘right to be forgotten’ was established in a 1995 European Union privacy law now being revised to include and expand on this concept. When a man in Spaininsisted that negative information from his past be removed from Google’s search engines, he fought the Internet giant in court and won. Since that time, the law and its components have become one of the most hotly debated legal concepts in history, making ‘the right to be forgotten’ one of the top SEO trends affecting current digital marketing strategies, information retrieval, and even free speech itself.

Top Photo Sharing Websites

There can be many advantages to using a photo sharing website and they are becoming more and more popular. It does not take very long to upload all your pictures, and in most cases, the sites are free to use. There are usually some additional paid features like extra storage space, higher image resolution or ad-free pages that can be purchased. The sites are generally set up to be very easy to use and it allows users to share their photos with distant friends and family members. In days gone by, people collected printed photos in photo albums in order to be able to share them with friends and family but that is not very convenient. By using a photo sharing site once the photos are uploaded they can be shared around the world in a matter of seconds. Another great advantage associated with using photo sharing sites is that you have all of your photos in one place. This is much more convenient than storing them on multiple computers or devices. The photos do not have to be transferred to another device if one should crash or be replaced with a newer model. Photos are all together in one location and easily accessed.

Top Physician Evaluation Websites

SEO for Doctors

PEW stands for Physician Evaluation Websites. There are numerous PEW websites which offer evaluations about physicians and their services. Consumers, or patients, are allowed to leave reviews about their physicians on these sites. The goal is to help develop more of a transparency between physicians and patients. While there are many different types of online reviews that span everything from hotel service, food service and local businesses, it has only been recently that physicians were also being reviewed via online resources.

Why PEWs?

Finding reviews about physicians can be very beneficial for patients who are looking for a physician. Today’s modern patient is looking for a lot out of their physicians and they have high expectations from the medical community. Patients want and need a lot from their physicians. They want a doctor who will spend adequate time listening to them, who makes correct diagnosis, can spend the time to education them about prevention or treatment options, and be empathetic. Physician Evaluation Websites offer a platform for patients to share how they evaluated their physician-patient correspondence and express how they felt about the medical services and attention they received under a specific doctor’s care.

Best Practices for Online Review Sites

Local SEO best practicesCustomer reviews can be a powerful tool for businesses of every sort. As a consumer, when you are considering a new restaurant or looking to purchase a new product you may look at reviews to help you make your choice. People are very social as a general rule and tend to put a lot of credibility in feedback that is provided by other consumers rather than claims offered by the business itself. Stats indicate that nearly 75% of today’s consumers trust online reviews at least as much as receiving a personal recommendation.  Studies also indicate that over 90% of those who conduct an online research which includes perusing business review sites end up purchasing from the businesses they find. However, nearly 90% of the small businesses which participated in surveys indicate that they do not actively use consumer review sites. Reviews can be very beneficial when they are completed by consumers.

Paid Links and Other Outdated SEO Practices

The web is saturated with all sorts of SEO advice and covers many topics which are both white hat and black hat practices. Search engines are updating their algorithms constantly and changes can range from minor, barely noticeable changes to major industry overhauling changes. It’s very important for the SEO specialist to keep up with the most recent changes and make adaptations to keep from being penalized. The updates are really geared towards combating black hat SEO practices but unfortunately sometimes well meaning websites receive penalties. In many cases this is due to using outdated SEO strategies which were effective at one time but are now outdated. There are several SEO practices that are outdated and are now considered to be black hat or bad practices. It’s best to avoid these outdated SEO practices.

How to Use Google Plus for SEO

Google+ is the social network that Google runs, and it can be a great tool to use for SEO purposes since it has a couple of advantages over other social networks. First of all, Google+ ties all of the Google products together and this unification gives it an advantage over other social media networks. Another thing that makes Google+ more advantageous than even social giants like Facebook or Twitter is that these two in particular restrict some of the content shared from being accessed by Google search. Google+ will dominate search results even though the two most popular sites are used a lot more often.

There were also some changes that occurred with the Hummingbird update that makes Google+ an integral part of SEO strategies and online marketing. Google says that Plus is a service geared at connecting people online and it is designed in such a way that it will help increase a site’s rank in search engine results. Here are several ways that Google+ can be used to increase a site’s search optimization.

Rules for Guest Posting

It is very likely that content will always be king; the web revolves around content. However, just producing any old content is not going to cut it in today’s competitive world. SEO and conten are connected since it takes SEO best practices to get content seen; and it takes quality content to enhance an SEO campaign. With all the changes that go on with search engine algorithms one requirement that does not change is the need for high quality content. Blogs are one of the most effective platforms for posting high quality content, and part of hosting a blog is obtaining guest posts from contributors who are relevant to the niche. As an established industry expert contributing guest posts to blogs that are industry related can be a great strategy to get you noticed. There are a lot of popular blogs which get inundated with requests offering guest posts every day. No matter which end of the equation you find yourself on, it is very important to know the attributes of a high quality guest post and what one should contain. Here are a few tips about guest posts to help explain the features of a great guest post.

The Rise and Fall of Guest Posting

Posting Blogs
Guest Blogging

There can be many advantages and benefits from guest posting. The positive effects of guest blogging include things like earning generic links which are valuable and helping to establish authority in a particular field or niche. Contributing guest posts has had a pretty long and favorable run on many counts, but expert predictions indicate that it is highly likely that they may be next on Google’s list of areas to crack down on. Most of the changes made to Google’s algorithm have to do with cleaning up the web by penalizing spammy practices or those that are along those lines. It is very practical to assume that Google will soon present some way to help clean up guest posts. Just like some of the other areas that have been addressed recently, Google will attempt to get rid of many of the poor quality guest posters.