Search Engine Optimization: A New Way to Think About Links & Other News

SEO Newsletter | Vol 148 | September 13, 2016

This Month's News

Feature
Why You Don't Need that Link to Get the SEO Benefit from an Online Name Drop: The Power of Linkless Mentions

We talk a lot about links in the SEO industry. Here Duane Forrester talks about the absence of links. How a mention without a link is good for SEO.

What are linkless mentions? They happen when someone mentions your business or brand online without a hyperlink. This is also known as linkless attribution.

We're not talking about spam mentions. Comment spam is not transferring credibility to your business. Search engines likely use the same quality assessment filters on linkless mentions as they do hyperlinks. Read all about:

The diverse set of clues the engines use to determine a site's expertise, authority, trust and relevance (hint: it's a lot more than links)
How positive and negative mentions of your business or brand, even mentions without links, can send signals to search engines
The true value of public relations for SEO customer reach

Back to Basics
SEO Crash Course for CMS Content Publishing

Are you a writer or someone involved in the publishing process of your business? Do you consider keywords before you hit publish? If you haven't taken a moment to understand SEO best practices, this webinar is for you.

Bruce offers SEO guidance to those writers, editors, bloggers, and marketing managers who rely on a content management system. View the presentation replay for an SEO crash course on:

The top 10 things you can do using a content management system to see better search engine rankings
How to use internal linking to build a theme that search engines view as topic relevance
How to train your writers to build SEO into the research and publishing process

Hot Topic
Is It Time to #AMPlify? Your Starter Guide to Accelerated Mobile Pages

If you care about the ROI of your website, you know the importance of mobile page speed. Users expect pages to load in the blink of an eye or else they bounce. Unfortunately today, websites can take a handful of seconds to load, meaning grumpy users.

Google has pushed its major speed initiative, Accelerated Mobile Pages, AMP for short, hard over the last year. We know that mobile-friendly pages get an organic ranking boost in Google. Currently, AMP results are delivered as a cluster in a carousel at the top of a search results page. Later this year, within Google's mobile search results AMP pages will be indicated with a small grey circle with a white lightning bolt.

In advance of AMP expanding in Google Search, over the next few weeks Google is posting pointers to help businesses "AMPlify" their websites. Follow or post with the #AMPlify hashtag on Google+ and Twitter for the tips and conversations.

As AMP features and specifications evolve, marketers can capitalize on improved UX and ranking opportunities by staying up to date on AMP.

Get your team up to speed in the #AMPlify age. Here's a primer on the AMP opportunity. We outline: