One of the more difficult tasks for some SEOs who aren’t great content marketers is to generate great content and actually get that content published on top media websites. We’ve always known that you can, in fact buy your way onto these sites, but what does it cost? Well, I found out what one particular blogger charges to get your content published on top media websites. [Read more…]

Well, as you probably know, or at least if you read my blog (this site), or follow it, you’ll know by now that I’m always testing various things on the site. I was one of the first ones to move to HTTPs, for example, and even tracked my rankings and traffic…just to show that moving to HTTPs helps, and doesn’t hurt, traffic and rankings. I thought it was time for another test, so take a look at my site’s home page now. I just changed it from a static home page and I am now showing the latest posts, the blog posts that my site is really known for. [Read more…]

14 days ago, I decided to perform an interesting experiment here on my site, where I completely removed the blogroll. On August 17, 2015, I removed the sidebar blogroll links. These were sitewide links to highly trusted sites, all on-topic links. Here’s what happened 14 days after I removed the blogroll links from my blog. [Read more…]

If you ever seen any content written or any other type of content on the web with my name on it, then I was the one who wrote it. In fact, even though there is over 1,000 blog posts here on my blog and over 100 pages of online marketing, SEO, social media, and domain name content here on this website, I wrote it all. There was a time a few years when I accepted a few guest blog posts, but they always had the other writer’s name on them. And, by the way, those have all been removed from the site. So what you see now is what you get: content written by me. [Read more…]

Google’s CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA won’t stop spam bots, Best Buy Oops, ICANN hacked, Freebase is shutting down, and Apple’s mysterious domain names.

This will be my last weekly update in 2014, so I want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I don’t plan on sending out any more updates this year. There were a few significant updates and blog posts since my last update, and a few other posts worth mentioning. [Read more…]

Best Buy, in a recent internal communication to their Wolf Bloggers exclusive blogger list, sent out an email to their list of bloggers about an agreement with another affiliate organization. In the email, they CCd everyone. One of the bloggers subsequently Replied All to the list, which then exposed Best Buy’s entire exclusive blogger list. The list contains the email addresses of hundreds of bloggers who Best Buy pays to blog about products sold in Best Buy stores. Best Buy also send those bloggers certain products to test and review. [Read more…]

Domain Name SEO Search Engine Registration scam, Google SERPs Instagram Date Mistake, 7Search Accused of Traffic Stealing.

Last week was a very short week because of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the USA, so I decided not to send an update. There are a few significant updates since then, including two Google Penguin updates, and a few other posts worth mentioning. [Read more…]

Google Updated the Knowledge Graph, and State of Search conference next week.
I only have one update this past week, as it was a short (but busy) week last week, with traveling at the end of last week.

Google Knowledge Graph Update

Last week Google updated the Knowledge Graph, which includes data from various sources like Freebase.com to populate informational data in the search results. Here’s an example of the Knowledge Graph at work (a search in Google for “Bill Hartzer”: [Read more…]

Reddit AMA, Ripoff Report, Klout, and Duane Forrester Leaves Bing.
I have a few interesting updates this week. I did a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), Ripoff Report’s home page was removed from Google, I don’t trust Klout, and Duane Forrester has left Bing as their Webmaster Liaiason. [Read more…]

Google Penguin Refresh last weekend, and Google adds Inbox by Gmail, which is useful for reading email on your phone.

We have a few updates this week, and the major one was the Penguin refresh (a refresh, not an update. We also had the launch of Inbox by Gmail, which is pretty good, as I’ve tested it out already. And oh yeah, there’s a new Share button added this week to Google’s header.

[Read more…]

Google Penguin Refresh this weekend, and a pricing bug found in GoDaddy’s domain registration.

This weekend, there appears to finally be a Google Penguin refresh, which is affecting a lot of website traffic from Google organic search. There are plenty of sites now reporting that they are seeing increases in search engine rankings, some as high as 30 of 40 places from where their site was previously ranking. I also was shown an interesting price bug at GoDaddy, where they were offering a domain name for $5,000. But if you searched for it in another way, the price was only $29. And in case you’ve missed it, you might want to check out SocialCentiv, a really cool new Twitter marketing tool. [Read more…]

This past week, there was a major change this week: Google removed Google Authorship completely from their search results, which I have to say was unexpected. They claim that Google Authorship was just a test–but I honestly thought that it was more permanent then they now lead us to believe. I chose not to write a blog post on BillHartzer.com about this change. Instead, this week I wrote the post on Globe Runner’s blog. Here’s the post, it’s worth a read:

http://globerunner.com/google-officially-removes-google-authorship-claims-test/ [Read more…]

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Screen capture of my WP Dashboard before my 1,000th post.

Wow, what an amazing ride it’s been. I’m happy to say that this blog post is my 1,000th blog post that I’ve posted on BillHartzer.com. It has certainly taken quite a few years to get to this point. But I honestly can say that I’m quite surprised that I’ve been able to write 1,000 blog posts just on this blog. If you count up all of the other blog posts that I’ve written over the years and contributed to other blogs (not including other blogs I own) it’s a lot more than 1,000, I bet it is well into several thousand blog posts. [Read more…]

Image courtesy of hywards / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Working with clients’ online marketing plans, SEO, and their websites, I often recommend during an SEO audit that a website should have a blog. A blog is a good way to regular add content on your website and start engaging with your website visitors. Both are key to your site’s online visibility and success, especially when it comes to search engine rankings. [Read more…]

MyBlogGuest, a popular guest blogging network, has been penalized by Google. In at Tweet posted by Matt Cutts of Google last night at one o’clock in the morning, Matt posted: [Read more…]

Link audits are essential for bloggers who wish to optimize their sites for search engines. They are now just as important as developing the right content and getting people to link to your site.

Ever since Google rolled out the first version of Penguin, negative SEO has become a serious concern. Penguin’s algorithm penalizes websites that used manipulative methods of link building to attain high rankings, such as spamming the comment sections of other websites. That legacy spam could now damage the rankings of those websites. However, many legitimate websites have also been affected by the algorithm change. [Read more…]

No, guest blogging is not dead. In fact, it’s alive and well, and it’s a great marketing tactic to open up your business and personal brand to opportunities and audiences that you normally would not have a chance to reach. Recently, Matt Cutts, the head of web spam for Google, declared that guest blogging for SEO was dead. And there has been a lot of publicity lately because of his statements about guest blogging. [Read more…]

Well, here it is, December 31st, 2013, the evening is drawing to a close. Still a few hours until the ball drops in New York City’s Times Square. Around this time I am always thinking of Times Square, the original(?) place where it all happens. But, maybe because I’m from the New York area, and am used to always staying up to watch the ball drop. [Read more…]

2013 was a pretty exciting year, and there has been a lot of activity in the search engine optimization industry this past year. Looking back, the updates to the Google Penguin algorithm and Google Penguin Recovery have been the most memorable for me, since I’ve been so involved with companies recovering from “bad SEO practices” in the past several years. but that’s not only what has been interesting. There have been quite a few posts that I didn’t expect to get so popular. With my ultimate goal of writing a blog post each day, there have been quite a few memorable ones. Here’s my wrap-up of my most memorable and best blog posts of 2013. [Read more…]