Angie’s List is now free: What this change means for your business

In a move that hasn’t attracted a lot of attention online, Angie’s List followed through on their March announcement and removed their paywall last week. Anyone can now become a member without paying the previous ~$40/year fee, and reviews are now accessible by anyone. This change, which did fly under the radar, does have strong implications for the online reputations of many businesses. Angie’s List has always done well in the home services market: think plumbing, landscaping, HVAC, roofing, concrete and the like. And while Angie’s List did have an impact on their reputations, less than one percent of the US population were members, which meant the vast majority of people couldn’t see the rating or reviews posted on a company profile. Unlike Yelp, businesses could get by with bad Angie’s List scores and negative reviews because a lot of people couldn’t see them. Now, everyone can. The tearing down of the Angie’s List paywall is a game-changer for these service providers. Search Engine Land Source

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Do keyword rankings even matter anymore?

Some SEOs and brands think that rankings are a very important metric to track for SEO success. But is this really the case? Some sites rank well for high-volume keywords but don’t get any benefit from it because the keywords do not meet user intent, and the user ends up leaving the site because they could not find what they are looking for. This leads to a bad user experience. High search engine rankings can be great — but only if the keywords drive traffic, deliver conversions and improve your ROI. Sometimes, a brand owner or client has specific keywords for which they want to rank because they think those keywords are valuable. You plead your case on why these keywords will not be good targets (e.g., because they have low search volume, the content does not meet the intent and so forth), but you’re a team player, so you go ahead and target the keywords to make your client happy. Once you get your Search Engine Land Source

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13 link opportunities to pursue now

Link acquisition is hard. There are a number of unique challenges in link building, which are made even more difficult since most SEO programs only allocate a small portion of their budget to link building. Links are still not guaranteed, even when you have incredible, compelling content to share. According to a study conducted by BuzzSumo and Moz: When we looked at a bigger sample of 757,317 well shared posts we found over 50% of these posts still had zero external links. Thus (sic) suggests while many posts acquire shares, they find it far harder to acquire links. So even if your content is popular and achieves a healthy number of social shares, links are far from guaranteed. That’s why intentional link acquisition is important. It’s not impossible to strategically secure worthwhile links for your site — in fact, you likely have a number of link opportunities worth pursuing. Here are 10 (plus a few extra!) link opportunities — with real-life examples — that you might be Search Engine Land Source

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Fourth of July Google doodle brings Old Glory’s stars to life to enjoy the holiday

Today’s Google logo on its U.S. homepage has been replaced with a doodle to mark the July 4th holiday. The illustration gives life to all 50 American flag stars as they celebrate Independence Day. They’re doing everything from grilling, playing in a sprinkler, throwing a baseball and riding a bike to a marching band playing music and others just enjoying the day. The logo leads to a search for “Fourth of July” and includes the usual sharing icon to post the image on social or send via email. Here’s the full picture to see everything the stars are up to: Search Engine Land wishes all of its readers a happy Fourth! The post Fourth of July Google doodle brings Old Glory’s stars to life to enjoy the holiday appeared first on Search Engine Land. Search Engine Land Source

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eBay goes AMP, sign it might break out past news?

eBay announced they are now serving over 8 million pages using AMP, Google’s accelerated mobile project initiative. This is the first major non-news site that has deployed AMP widely in a production setting. eBay said deployed it for many product and category based pages for mobile only. They even gave example URLs of the pages that support it including this one and this one. eBay said you can add the amp/ parameter to any browse URL when you are on the mobile site and you should see the AMP version. Here are examples of the URL: Not AMP: http://ift.tt/296eok5 AMP: http://ift.tt/295uiPh In late February, AMP went live in the top news stories box on mobile pages. In fact, the only way to show in the top news carousel on mobile is to have AMP available pages. Since then AMP has expanded into iOS app, recipes and the Google News apps. Everyone expects Google to enable AMP promotion in more and more Search Engine Land Source

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Meta Tags (html) & Search Engine Optimization

Meta Tags (html) & Search Engine Optimization Quick Tip: How to insert Meta Tags into your HTML web pages and how to use your focus keywords for Search Engine Optimization. http://www.qhorr.com

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HTML and CSS tutorial for beginners – Web design tutorial for beginners 2016

HTML and CSS tutorial for beginners – Web design tutorial for beginners 2016 In programming for beginners, with HTML & CSS you’ll learn basic web development concepts and skills that will allow you to build simple websites, modify existing websites and create interactive prototypes of your business idea so that you can use it as a communication tool with your developer, customers and investors. In this lesson, we’ll follow a project-based approach. Through out the lesson you’ll be building a “Metro style” homepage that looks great in a desktop computer and in a mobile phone. HTML and CSS tutorial for beginners are the fundamental skills for building any kind of website. This lesson is an opportunity for all you who wants to become a web developer and does not know from where to start. This lesson will provide for you, the beginner a great start in their web development journey. Even if your goal is not to become a web designer, learning HTML and CSS can be an amazing tool to have in your skill-set – both in the workplace, and at home. Whether you are a personal favorite web programming, or the business, organization, programming languages ??HTML and CSS this is especially important for you, HTML and CSS is the foundation for you so you have the skills needed for web design, From a simple website that shows who they are and what they do, to more complex solutions such as mobile apps and information systems, aimed to give personal, entrepreneurs the basic programming skills and knowledge so that they have higher chances of success with their business ideas. Thanks for watching and don’t forget to subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcxgwjdQEh7rNCq5vpWYJ5A?sub_confirmation=1 “Like” us on Facebook: https://goo.gl/zK1iUO G+: https://goo.gl/ZdKBAE Twitter: https://twitter.com/tuanthong138

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