As of today, the dreaded GDPR is in effect!

It caused quite a panic across the world. All companies, big and small, have spent the last month scurrying around, updating their services and policies before the change hit. I’m glad we weren’t one of those businesses who had to do everything posthaste out of fear of facing the fines.

But what exactly is going on? What could cause such turmoil on a global scale?

What is GDPR?

I’ve gone through countless pages of official documents on GDPR to fully understand what it is. My head is spinning from all the formal language, so I’ll just lay it down in simple terms.

GDPR (or General Data Protection Regulation) is a set of new rules for online security. Its purpose is to give Internet users full control over their personal information, such as their names, phone numbers, photos, email and IP addresses – any sort of information that could be tied to a real-life person. Naturally, that also includes data you don’t want to fall into the wrong hands, like credit card information.

I assume the pre-GDPR world is still fresh in your memory, so you know how things were in the not-so-distant past. Users could freely submit their information on websites, but it was almost impossible for them to remove it completely. Normally, only site admins could reach where user data was stored and delete it without a trace. And that’s exactly where the change strikes.

GDPR imposes new obligations upon webmasters. From now on, websites must be open about what sorts of user data they collect, as well as their reasons for doing so. Even then, websites may collect the data only if users agree with those reasons and clearly express their consent. Additionally, websites will have to enable users to delete their personal data, or at least be quick about taking it down per user request. Plenty of work, don’t you agree?

GDPR officially applies only to websites with users from EU countries. However, many websites who don’t have users from there have decided to update their policies, too – just in case. For that reason, we will dedicate a separate blog update to describe how GDPR will affect websites and SEO.

Is WebCEO GDPR compliant?

Definitely yes. WebCEO has users in the EU, as well as every other part of the world, and thus is subject to GDPR.

It has always been our policy to safeguard our customers’ data. We realize what kind of problems can be caused by misuse of sensitive information and wouldn’t wish them upon anybody, least of all our users. We treat said data with utmost caution, and we did so long before GDPR. The new rules simply gave us an opportunity to tighten up our security.

WebCEO collects only the necessary minimum of user information required for the service to perform its functions effectively. We ask users for their permission to gather that necessary minimum, and without their permission, no data is taken. In addition, users may exercise their right “to be forgotten” any time they wish, and WebCEO is obligated to comply.

All the necessary preparations are in place, and WebCEO is now even safer to use than before. So here’s what we did:

• Created a site popup that asks users for their consent to the use of cookies. User consent will be required to work with WebCEO, as the service’s functionality would be severely hampered without cookies.
• Slightly changed our account registration form. The old disclaimer saying “By clicking ‘Sign Up’ you agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy policies” has been replaced with a checkbox that users need to tick in order to create a new account.
• Enhanced the SEO lead generation form. It’s now adorned with a checkbox saying “I agree to submit [my email address, name and additional contact info] for further storage and processing”.
• Added an option for users to delete their account from the service, along with all their information. That includes cookies, email address, billing information, and of course, SEO projects.
• Updated our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy which you can read on our site. These pages describe in detail what user information we take and how it’s used.

If you have any questions regarding your user data or our new policies, please direct them at our support team (support@webceo.com). We are ready to provide our assistance at any moment.

Afterword

It’s kind of amazing how much WebCEO has changed even over the past month. We just had another SEO tools update a couple weeks ago, and then we received an extra impetus from GDPR. Now WebCEO is a shield against any attempts on our users’ sensitive data. Hats off to our developer team and their hard work.

The post WebCEO Update: GDPR Compliance and Data Protection appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Do you feel like you’ve missed something? If you’ve been on vacation, we have some mind blowing news that may change the way you do digital marketing and even open new possibilities for you.

 Google As We Used to Know It Left for Good…

Has the new logo of Google made you smile? It now looks brighter, motley and has a kiddish look. This has caused a lot of discussion. The new logo redesign reflects the global intent of Google to make it one-size-fits-all on any device, in any interface. The new visual identity for Google is a tiny part of the ongoing changes to the company. Another big change at Google is its dramatic reorganization. Earlier this summer it was announced that Google has become a subsidiary of a brand new parent company Alphabet that includes such ventures as smart home products (Nest), life extension researches (Calico), Google X focused on moonshot ideas etc.

Google also has a new look for the filter links at the top of search results pages. Google has updated its SERP red filter navigation links to show more positive blue-colored links.

Long live HTML5, die Flash! Starting on September 1, Google officially killed Flash. The death of Adobe Flash technology became real when Google announced the possibility to convert Flash ads into HTML5 format. According to Google this is an inevitable measure to keep advertising friendlier and secure.

Local Pack results got squeezed! It seems like Google is making hard attempts to simplify the look and interface of the local desktop search results for a better experience on desktop and mobile devices. Lately, Google started to provide only 3-pack local listings instead of 7 listings and removed some details that used to be included within an old 7-pack listing result. Now, searching for any local place information you will not find exact addresses, phone numbers, the G+ links etc within the local pack listings results. To get further contact details you will have to click on results.

Mobile Search is the New Upmost Search…

Google mobile search has also experienced significant changes to its core algorithm of search results display. Now Google provides 3 instead of 2 ad results on mobile search results pages, while the real estate for organic search results gets squeezed. The ad rotation resulted in a visibility drop for organic results in mobile search.

Google has improved the mobile image search usability by adding in-depth search filters to help users manage specific searches. For example, if you are looking for wood home siding, Google will ask you to choose color filters to select or clear.

Social Media Pulls Ahead of Google For Generating Traffic

According to the quarterly referral traffic report from Parce.ly, Facebook has pulled ahead of Google search in the generation of referral traffic to news websites. The Facebook share makes 43%, while Google sites share is 38%. Although, Facebook dominates in referral traffic, the report doesn’t provide any data on the quality of that traffic. Its bounce rate and interaction score remain unclear.

The Twitter Firehose Is Now Streaming

No news has been heard since a Google-Twitter partnership was announced in May; but earlier in August, Google officially integrated Twitter feeds into Google search results. This feature is globally available and you can search for some trending news with hashtags and find what people are saying on Twitter at this moment right from the Google search. It seems that Google shows tweets only for specific queries or when you type the name of a brand “+ on Twitter.”

Here is a quick snapshot of some new features in the Google search results interface:

Do you think you have heard all the news?  What about news at WebCEO? You may have missed 2 newly added tools at WebCEO:

• The Lead Generation tool that allows you to generate SEO leads from a widget placed on your site. This will save you a lot of time on cold calls and meetings.
• The Facebook Insights tool that helps you to keep your finger on the pulse of your targeted audience discussions on Facebook and track the effectiveness of your Facebook campaigns compared to your competitors’.

The post Top 6 SEO News Stories You Should Feel Ashamed Not to Have Heard appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

The first thing every marketer learns is to listen to his audience. Remember Google Glass? On January 15, 2015, Google announced that it would stop producing the Google Glass. What had happened? A genius team worked on the great idea, they invented the technology of the feature, but there was no audience for it. To know what your audience wants is the most basic part of marketing.

Facebook is the best place to listen to your audience.

Hundreds of years ago people gathered on market places to talk about everything. Now they gather on Facebook. You should be there to:

• Find out what hurts your audience and what it is interested in.
• Know the exact language your prospects use to describe their issues.
• Learn the words they use to describe the success they’re having with your product.

How can I monitor Facebook discussions effectively?

The easiest way to keep track of your audience on Facebook is to use the new Web CEO Niche Popular Posts report. This report is part of the Facebook Insights tool.

All you need is to add up to 5 Facebook pages that are popular in your niche. Tip: you can add 4 your competitors and your own Facebook page to compare their popularity.

As a result you will see what posts were discussed and shared most often. You can be sure: the topics discussed and shared represent what your audience needs.

What should I do now?

• Now you can jump into discussions anywhere and get noticed by people who are your prospects.
• Or you can discuss the same topics on your social media platforms and in your blog. Bring a new point of view, say something controversial, show your expertise.
• Become a spy. Investigate what your audience wants and do it for them!
• Listen to the words people use. Facebook is the best play for fieldwork…for keyword research. You can work out a great list of long tail keywords just from Facebook comments.

Another great thing about the Web CEO Niche Popular Posts report is that it is absolutely free and has no limitations. Start hearing your audience now.

The post Use Your Crystal Ball or Monitor Facebook Discussions Like a Fox appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

The trends in SEO shift like a clock. Several years ago, internet companies worked hard to generate traffic. Today, high traffic is not a long-run objective and it doesn’t always bring you high ROI. With a new generation of big data players the stakes are high in SEO industry. SEO gurus and internet marketers spread themselves out to build a strong online presence and create an effective conversion funnel. Lead generation is the critical point in any conversion funnel, the liaison between traffic generation and customer acquisition.

According to the SEO survey provided by Conductor, [Tweet “60% of surveyed enterprise companies consider lead generation one of the leading marketing objectives in 2015.”]

What are the most common ways to generate SEO leads?

Now, that you are ready to improve your lead generation strategy for your SEO agency, choose the best ways and techniques. There are 2 well known ways to generate some prospects:

• Paid lead generation. The most common ways of generating SEO leads is email marketing, cold calls, PPC, Facebook/Twitter ads, remarketing. There is also a direct way of buying leads via third-party services.This is the worst technique, because paying for SEO leads is now considered an old-fashioned and rotten technique. You’d better walk on by when you get generic propositions of getting # of SEO leads for $500 -…Let’s face the truth. You don’t know what quality these leads are, how many of this crowd are cash prospects and how many are blanks. You would have better luck with your own,“manupropria” leads than with uncertain junk that may have also been sold to someone else.

• Organic Lead Generation. Organic SEO leads come from organic traffic through Google (Bing, Yahoo!) search and social media channels as a result of your content optimization and promotion. It is the hardest indirect way to convert visitors into customers. Sometimes it works, but in most cases it can take months to generate leads and convert them with the help of just content. You can produce hundreds of posts, infographics and guides on SEO topics with “Ask about our Services” links and forms, but only a few such leads will pan out.

Lead Nurturing as a key part of lead generation

When you go fishing you always take the most attractive and nurturing live bait in order to get a fine catch. The same strategy should be used when you “fish” for leads. Before capturing SEO leads, you should give them satisfying information, specifically about them, that would attract their interest to your offer and make them want your services.

The best strategy for you to generate qualified leads and convert them into loyal customers is to run lead nurturing campaigns. Lead nurturing is the process of capturing, informing, educating, involving and converting your site visitors. There are a lot of techniques and practices of lead nurturing, which include display and social ads, emails, supporting content, online interactions via social media, forums and communities, etc.

How can Web CEO help you easily generate and nurture five-star SEO leads?

We, at WebCEO, have just released an innovative Lead Generation Module that comes as a bonus to our Agency Unlimited SEO tools set. Instead of promoting your SEO services to your prospects through exhaustive cold calling, expensive display ads, annoying email newsletters, you can cost-effectively place our Lead Generation Widget button on your website and issue Express SEO Audit reports even while you’re sleeping.

There are two strategies for the double-quick generation and nurturing of the SEO leads you will get with the help of the Web CEO Lead Generation tools.

Free-of-charge Express SEO Audits

Let’s say you already have some prospects in mind. You make arrangements for a meeting, phone or Skype call. An Express SEO Audit can serve as a good SEO tool at hand that will help you persuade her to order your SEO service on the spot. It takes no longer than a couple of minutes to generate an express SEO report. You will not have to add a new project and run multiple tools at once. All the SEO data you will need, including SEO analysis, technical audit, rankings, backlink data and web analytics will be provided within one single SEO report after one-click effort.Chances are, your lead contacts will understand that they have some serious issues with their sites and they will WANT to order your services after seeing a BOOtiful SEO report that discusses (without revealing more detail than you want them to have at this point) all the SEO issues which keep their site from high rankings.

An SEO Lead Generation Widget button placed on your site

For those who offer SEO services, the best way to get SEO leads is to showcase your potential to your prospects. The best way to demonstrate your business solutions is to provide your leads with a quick analysis of their SEO status with all the issues they have. An Express SEO Audit is what you and your future customer need. Once you have added a branded SEO leadgen button provided by the Web CEO SEO platform on any page of your website in the most fitting part of the page, you will start to automatically generate free-of-charge SEO reports to your visitors which show an overall performance of visitors’ sites via the popup fill-in-the-form widget. Every lead that was captured with a free express SEO audit report will automatically appear in the SEO leads tab of your Lead Generation module. You will be able to see contact details and look through the SEO insights of your prospects’ sites.

Build an effective SEO lead generation strategy with the help of the Web CEO lead generation tools in order to get more high quality SEO leads into your business’s fish net and increase your sales revenue.

The post 2 Passive Ways to Generate Five-Star SEO Leads Using Web CEO appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

If you run a local business or manage a local SEO agency, then you must have heard about the great movements in local SEO that happened in 2014 and how they dramatically changed the way most SEOs did their local business. With the expansion of smartphone usage, more and more searches have had local intent. That means that being mobile-friendly and having a strong local presence can be paramount.

At the request of many of our pro-active users, we will continue to educate our users with Local SEO Training Courses in cooperation with Search Engine News. The 2015 is designed specifically for local business owners and local SEO newbies who want to become pros in local search optimization. In order to impress your local SEO clients you will need to master key local SEO aspects. This course is dedicated to mastering 28 critical elements involved in getting a local business ranked in the top of its country specific Google results.

What is on the agenda?

The 2015 Local Search Certification Course will give you 3 basic optimization strategies for local search:

1. The Vision of the new Local Search Landscape.
2. The key aspects of website optimization for local search.
3. Local Link building, troubleshooting and list management

Who is in charge?

The course will be conducted by Mary Bowling. She is one of the best local SEO experts and has been working as an SEO consultant since 2003 and training others in local search since 2007.

What is the schedule?   

Week #1, the dates:

• June 1st, Mon – Session One: Understand the NEW Local Search Landscape
• June 3rd, Wed – Session Two: Putting Your Local Optimization in Place
• June 5th, Fri – Session Three: Link Building, Troubleshooting & List Management

Week #2, the date:

• June 8th, Mon – Complete Q&A + Graduation Day

The course will be LIVE and held entirely online. That’s right; you’ll be attending from the comfort of your office or home.

As a WebCEOer, you will get a generous BONUS:

$200 Web CEO discount

$200 Early Bird discount if you enroll for the course BEFORE May 28^th.

Sign up for 2015 Local Search Certification Course here and register today. Save money and bring your site to the top of local search.

Hint: If you are *not* a Web CEO user yet for some reason – be sure to Sign Up for FREE today and get the privilege to use the above-mentioned discount!

The post Local SEO Training Course: Be the Only Pebble appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

In 2015, Search Engine Land has featured WebCEO in its famous Enterprise SEO Tools Guide. This is quite an honor! Here is a synopsis of key features that got our service listed as best-of-breed enterprise-level SEO tools software.

The growing complexity of Internet Marketing has encouraged the SEO industry to shape up. Its savvy stakeholders have kept their expertise up-to-date and fine-tuned. Their on-going strategies now include well-integrated marketing automation software. More and more companies have created enterprise-level online brands with thousands of pages of content to optimize and hundreds of external and internal links to keep control of. The use of marketing automation software, especially SEO tools, is now critical. Here are some questions you should ask when choosing the right enterprise SEO tools provider.

When we say Enterprise SEO we mean the type of SEO campaigns that need to be implemented and maintained by enterprise-level companies. Enterprise-level companies usually have multilingual websites with more than 1000 landing pages organized in a thoughtful URL hierarchy with multiple hosting servers, consistent content creation, a digital marketing strategy, strong reputation management and a dynamic online community.

Enterprise SEO campaigns will include a basic and advanced approach to search engine optimization.

A Basic SEO approach would include:

1. Setting business goals based on a potential customer persona analysis.
2. Configuring a business traffic and performance tracking system (integration with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.
3. Evaluating and fixing crawl/audit issues (i.e.: duplicate content, slow page speed, server access errors, broken links, improper 301 and 404 redirects, multiple redirects, poor mobile user experience, non-search friendly images, Flash/Ajax issues, canonical tags issues).
4. Keyword research, categorization and landing page mapping
5. Internal link structure implementation and optimization
6. Link-bait content building (blog posts, infographics, case-studies, guides etc.)
7. Visual content ideation, creation and optimization
8. Micro-format optimization

An Advanced SEO approach would include:

1. Inbound link building (including directory and review site submission, guest post campaigns, native advertising etc.)
2. Social Media Marketing
3. Cross-channel integration between SEO, content marketing and social media marketing
4. On-site and off-site performance monitoring (i.e.: country-specific, city-specific and mobile search rank tracking, earned backlink analysis, removal and acquisition, landing page SEO analysis, website traffic analysis, social signals tracking).
5. Competitor performance research and analysis
6. Website performance reporting
7. Ongoing adjustments to existing on-page and off-page optimization based on delivered data.

Only enterprise-level SEO software allows you to integrate, scale and improve all of the basic and advanced approaches to your SEO, content and site performance data in order for you to dominate organic search results.

Here are the hallmarks of proper enterprise-level SEO accurately as practiced by Web CEO’s SEO Software:

Real-time built-in diagnostic tools to parse and identify site-wide and off-site issues with easy-to-follow checklists and recommendations.

Third-Party Analytics Data Integration to inform and evaluate keyword discovery, backlink analysis and site monitoring data integrated with Google Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs, Google Analytics and other third-party partnership services.

SEO Workflow Automation to schedule and deliver easy-to-customize reports with user-friendly dashboards and widgets.

Competitive Analytics provided in the form of informative widgets driven to gauge how well you perform against your competition.

User-Role Task Management System to build vertical and cross-functional collaboration between CEOs and their employees and contractors, such as webmasters, marketers and content managers.

Easy-to-Access Branded SEO Reporting to provide well-designed and individually branded PDF and CSV reports that can be easily shared to any user on your own sub-domain or emailed on a schedule to any client.

Single Sign On API Integration to provide remote access for and to third-party services. With API you can easily create, manage and export SEO data generated in your Web CEO account in order to combine and build your own SEO tools and offer branded SEO reports to your own clients.

White Label Program to provide large-scale digital agencies, web hosting companies & CMS developers with the ability to host their own branded SEO tools or show read-only reports on their own custom domain.

Using enterprise SEO software like Web CEO, you can get more BENEFITS than from a single-function solution:

• Run 14+ SEO tools within one interface
• Get unlimited access to SEO data, analytics and web performance
• Keep up-to-date with SEO algorithm changes
• Benefit from an efficient SEO team collaboration workflow within your organization
• Get real-time data with automated reporting

Sign up for any of the cost-effective WebCEO Enterprise-level SEO Plans and save time while managing your enterprise SEO campaigns.

The post How to Succeed In Enterprise SEO With WebCEO appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Are you sure you get the most from social media? Do you know what type of content your audience loves? Do you know how your competitors build their communities? What social channels should you concentrate on?

You have questions – WebCEO Online has answers. We have created a new tool to help you navigate through the chaos of social media and get the most of your social activity. The Social Engagement tool is available for all WebCEO Online users.

Discover What Content Your Audience Loves

Use the ‘Social Citations’ report to find out what pages of your site get the most Facebook shares, likes and comments, Google +1’s and tweets. The Social citations trend will show how your pages’ popularity changes over time.

Click on the image below to see a full-sized screenshot.

How to use this report:

The pages that get the most social engagement will be the pages your audience is interested in. Analyze what type of content (infographics, blog posts, video, images, how-to’s, etc.) and what topics attract the readers. Consider creating more content of the most shareable types to attract new readers and grow a bigger community.

Benchmark against Competitors

With the ‘Competitor Social Citations’ report you can learn how popular your site’s homepage is in Facebook, Twitter and Google+ compared with your competitors.

How to use this report:

Nobody knows for sure whether search engines use a site’s social media popularity as a ranking factor. We think they should and probably do. Use the ‘Competitor Social Citations’ report to estimate how hard you should work on your social media promotion to outrank your competitors.

Evaluate Your Social Media Marketing Efficiency

With the ‘Social Traffic’ report you can easily analyze what social channels are the most profitable for your site. All you need is to connect your Google Analytics account with the WebCEO (just two clicks and you get comprehensive data to analyze your website).

Click on the image below to see a full-sized screenshot.

How to use this report:

This report shows how many visitors the various social channels bring to you. Pay attention to the ones with the highest conversion rates. They are the networks you should focus on.

Bonus tip: Use the Social Engagement tool summary to get a quick overview of your social media promotion success. Here you will see social citations changing over time, your top 5 social media referrals, your Facebook engagement stats and your site’s social media popularity numbers. Click on the image below to see the full-sized screenshot.

The post A Must-Have Tool to Master Social Media Promotion appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

It is New Year’s Eve and you want to follow the annual tradition of making those resolutions that, let’s face it, you won’t be fully keeping. We make resolutions with the best intentions but January ends and we forget most of them.

However, if you are an online business or rely on your site to bring in valuable business then there are some resolutions you seriously should think about making and keeping during 2013.

Do not start 2013 with false resolutions; start with the year by making your business prosperous.

1. Start with a full SEO audit.

This will help you understand what’s happening on your site so that you know what needs to change and where you’ll need to invest in your site to make it happen. A qualitative SEO audit involves looking at elements like your internal and external linking, code validation, URLs, redirects, digital assets, mobile presence, conversions, etc, to find areas of strength and weakness. The actual analysis is broken down into five large sections: accessibility, indexability, on-page ranking factors, off-page ranking factors and competitive analysis. With your audit in hand, it can be a lot easier to develop an actionable plan for the whole year.

2. Adopt more effective tools.

It’s high time to review your marketing toolset. Take another look at the tools you’re using, the applications you’re depending on and the work environment you’ve set up for yourself. Is it working or are you still struggling to spend your office hours as productively as you can? The less you have to worry about how you work, the more you can focus on what you’re working on. Here WebCEO Online is your greatest helper, especially in SEO reporting. All of the site performance monitoring and quality checking tools can run reports on schedule and save you the time that you can use for being more social, for example.

3. Create your social media plan.

If you still haven’t developed a social media strategy for your business, you should do it now. Remember that all your marketing (I mean social media marketing first of all) should be integrated. Your aim is to develop a marketing plan in which nothing is off the table – video, mobile, display advertising and even more traditional offline advertising.

4. Learn more about Local/Schema/Social/Mobile/etc.

Every day there appears to be more and more things in web marketing and social optimization that can be learnt. We all live with a permanent lack of time and you want to read only the most important things (such as our blog ).  The best way to learn more is to practice. You can make a case for leveling up in mobile, social, video, schema, local, and a lot more.

5. Avoid over-optimization.

Google again and again hits webmasers with over-optimization penalties. Remember the Google algorithm updates from 2012 – Panda, Penguin, Ads above the fold. The updates aim to remove spam websites from the Google results pages (spam according to Google, of course). Your task for the year 2013 is to balance on that thin line between proper optimization and overdoing it.

Keep these promises and grow your online business to new heights. We, in our turn, promise to keep you informed with great SEO and SEM related news, answer your questions and explain website promotion basics, give you social media advice and maintain WebCEO Online as the best SEO toolkit for DIY and teamwork (try our online collaboration feature with logins from your own domain).

We will explain how to implement your New Year’s resolutions’ promises in our next posts.

The post SEO Resolution for 2013 appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.