The Latest Online Marketing News – Week of November 18, 2013

It’s almost Thanksgiving, and you probably have a whole list of things to be thankful for: stuffing and pie, football, a day off to spend with your loved ones, and the opportunity to reach tons of loyal fans and new customers with super Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions. We want to make sure you’re always able to communicate effectively with the users who are searching for you or your products and services. Here are some recent articles with smart suggestions that will help you to keep your SEO and PPC campaign strategies working around the clock for you. Bring your online marketing A-game to this holiday shopping season and the new year.

Avoid These Link-Building Tactics – Jayson DeMers – Search Engine Journal

Smart online marketing consultants will always emphasize the importance of quality link building for boosting your search engine performance. We caution you to remember, however, that not all links are created equal—some are helpful, others harmful. (Otherwise Google’s Penguin algorithm will be happy to remind you, and we don’t think you’ll be pleased with the results.) Yesterday, Jayson DeMers of Search Engine Journal posted a helpful article on 6 link building tactics to avoid. To summarize, low quality paid links, press releases, and directories are not your allies. They’re a waste of your resources, and Google will ignore or penalize you for them. Steer clear of these tactics, and instead, focus on strategies for building the high-quality links that will bolster your rankings, e.g. reaching out to bloggers in your niche. Not only will you build links of a higher quality for your SEO, but you’ll also reach users in a more personal way.

The Importance of Unique Meta Descriptions – Jennifer Slegg – Search Engine Watch

What’s the deal with meta descriptions anyway? In an ideal world, you’d have the time and freedom to write a well-optimized description for each of your site’s individual pages. And if you can make that happen, excellent! But if it’s not realistic for you and your team right now, you should know that it’s better not to use tags for certain pages than to use duplicates. Jennifer Slegg of Search Engine Watch recaps Google Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts’s most recent webmaster help video, in which he explains that Google considers it better to skip meta tags for your less important pages altogether if you don’t have the time to come up with original material. That doesn’t mean the art of meta goes out the window, though—it’s still necessary to create unique tags for your most important and/or visited pages as part of your smart SEO strategy.

Leverage Local Events for Inexpensive PPC – John McElborough – Search Engine Journal

Finally, John McElborough of Search Engine Journal has some great advice for your PPC campaign strategy: get local! Keep an eye on what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood, and in the larger community, and think of common-sense ways to tie it in with your paid search program. He provides plenty of good examples, like promoting reservations at a hotel near an upcoming conference or festival, and he emphasizes that you should have directly related content—like a blog post on the event—on your web site to engage users who click through to learn more about the offer. So what’s new in your neck of the woods? If you don’t already know, now is a great time to find out.