Every company that’s good at marketing knows that SEO, or search engine optimization, is essential to success. But not everyone understands what SEO entails and how it works. Whether you’re completely new to the concept or just need a refresher, we’re here to help.

The goal of SEO is to spread the word about your company, making sure it reaches to and draws in your target audience to your business website. To do that, you’re going to need a set of tools. The first of these tools is Ahrefs, an algorithm that searches the internet for good backlinks for your website. Its expansive database makes it possible to view related backlinks and the metrics regarding those backlinks in a matter of minutes.

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When Facebook first introduced ads to its platform, users didn’t recognize them as ads; they saw them as regular posts. Now that everyone is all too aware of the sponsored posts on their feed, marketers have to watch their step.

Before you create your ad, plan to be honest with your goals and present yourself in a way you know will stand out. Instead of modelling your Facebook ads after those of other companies without knowing if they’ll be effective, choose an unlikely marketing strategy that will increase your uniqueness. Once you’re aware of these tips and are ready to implement them, create and release your ad.

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Companies spent $6 billion more on mobile advertising this year than they did in 2015, and that jump managed to beat out the yearly total of desktop advertising. With mobile advertising securing its place as the new standard, it’s time to start looking at the newest ppc and marketing trends of 2017, featured on Google AdWords and Bing Ads.

The most prominent part of AdWords specifically is its artificial intelligence. Machines have begun to take in new information and learn from it, taking over most search marketing functions. When Google introduced smart display, not many people knew that most of the behind-the-scenes work was completed by autonomous machines, which saves the company time and energy.

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What the iPhone Did for the Tech World

Despite Apple not being the first to create and release a smartphone, the decade-old iPhone became wildly popular upon its introduction to cell phone users and managed to drown out the noise of its competitors surprisingly quickly. With this evolutionary new product on the market, many things in the social, marketing, and tech spheres changed.

The first iPhone had some similarities to other smartphones, but its greatest advantage was its ability to easily connect to the internet. These phones were miniature computers packed into communication platforms, which many customers liked. Mobile device users also seldom took pictures before the iPhone, and when they did, they never bothered to edit them much. Apple made it possible for regular people to take high-quality photos and with the help of easy-to-use editing tools and mobile apps, stylize them on a near-professional level. Many would agree that some photos even rival that of your local web design company or photographer. In fact, 85% of the 1.2 trillion photos taken will be taken on phones this year alone.

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Six months into the year is a great time to analyze your company’s marketing content to determine which strategies are helping, which ones are hurting, and which ones seem to be stagnant. If you’re wondering how to handle such a large task, keep a few of these key ideas in mind as you review your results.

Hire a professional writer to speak to internal experts and record the information they hear in a cohesive manner instead of having the internal experts writing content themselves. This way, proofreading and employee hours can be reduced to a reasonable length of time, and the finished product is much more pristine.

Businesses that team up with companies in other markets tend to spend less on marketing campaigns and extend their reach beyond their regular audience. Both companies benefit financially in the long-run, yet so few take advantage of such a strength.

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Certain business companies have a lot more control over search results than you may think. Some companies can manipulate these results to appear first on the list simply by buying over one thousand domain names to increase consumer interaction with the sites they own, and readers are directed to these sites through anchor text.

Private Blog Networks are often used by those who play dirty in the SEO world to boost their ratings, and although it can be effective, it’s rarely a good option. Sneaky companies will buy several outdated domains and connect them to each other, which seems like the perfect strategy until you realize that Google will punish whoever it catches using it.

Another downside to Private Blog Networks is their high cost and tendency to eat up time. They aren’t an ideal option for any company that wants to play it safe and put their time and money into a few other strategies that would be more beneficial on the whole.

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Creating a best fit offer can be tricky if you don’t know how to do it, but once you’ve learned the rules, it’s a breeze. A best fit offer is the optimum tool to combine with a blog post to intrigue customers and generate leads. By choosing a tool - such as a survey, quiz, or promotion - that strongly relates to your blog post, readers will more likely click on this extra content and become a lead for your company.

As expected, irrelevant offers are unlikely to create leads and should be swapped out for something your customers will click on. If your company is looking to multiply its leads by a factor two or more, consider collecting information about your company’s destination conversion rates with this simple process.

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If you’re strolling through NYC’s most happening spot, you can’t miss it! There now stands a seven-storey-tall Amazon Echo attached to a billboard in Times Square, built to advertise Amazon Music and the Echo, a voice-activated device that’s the latest service from the ecommerce giant.
This 24m tall model is decked out with LED lights and real song lyrics to give off the impression that it works, but while the gargantuan structure holds the record for the tallest ad in Times Square, it can’t be used like a regular Amazon Echo. This marketing campaign is mainly to promote the Echo’s new lyrics feature where a user can search for a song even if they only remember a few words from it. Haven’t we all tapped a friend on the shoulder and said, “Hey, what’s that song that goes…?” Now, there’s a digital way to do that and you don’t even have to remember many of the lyrics.

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The latest in ecommerce news - With Google Shopping, improving sales by less than 90% doesn’t cut it, and online businesses are beginning to see the effects of this unfortunate truth.
Why is this happening? Well, Google Shopping’s popularity skyrocketed in 2016, its SERP click rate increasing from just over one half to nearly three-quarters while its paid clicks increased by more than one-third. When added up and converted, the platform’s growth was 89% in one year alone.
Another reason this is happening is because the number of ads on Google’s search results page is steadily going up, and these aesthetically reliant ads take up more space, pushing the searched content down the page. Text-heavy ads are less common nowadays, as they don’t always give potential customers a clear idea of the product.
Although this ad push is good news for businesses overall, it’s bad news for any firm that doesn’t have a monopoly, which is most of them. If you want to get ahead without waiting for your popularity to naturally increase, there are a few things you can do.

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Firefox’s new Version 54 browser is finally here, and expectations are very high. Following the trend set by Google Chrome and then copied by many others, Firefox’s updated browser will run faster and more smoothly than ever before. Let’s take a look at the different features and improvements we’re supposed to be able to see:
Users can expect to experience better speed when having multiple tabs open. Users will finally be able to open multiple tabs on the internet browser without the loading speed of any one tab being affected by others, thanks to Version 54’s multiple processes. This upgrade will show on both desktop and mobile.
Firefox, created by the Mozilla Foundation in 2002, was close behind Internet Explorer in popularity until 2011, the year Google Chrome was released. Firefox’s technological advancements have been slow for the past six years, constantly trailing behind other browsers that upgrade their systems as soon as a functioning version comes out. This could be the company’s chance to catch up.

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If you have a blog for business, you may want to share your content on social media, or even make a social platform your new basis, to draw more attention to your products or services. But how exactly do you go about it? We have everything you need to know about marketing through blogging and social media posts.
Before you begin, decide what you want your goal to be. Choose an achievable goal that can be accomplished in a matter of months or years before you jump right into what you wish to accomplish decades from now. Goals based on reasonable audience growth, sales, or product manufacturing are good places to start. Track your success on the journey towards your goal.

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Because screen cracks are usually an inevitable part of owning an iPhone and fixing those screens is quite the task, Apple has developed a machine made specifically for replacing them.
Four hundred of these new machines have been created and will be distributed to twenty-five different countries, and while they do replace the glass of iPhone screens, they are also programmed to properly line up the sensors with the correct spots on the screen for optimum use. These Horizon Machines have been beta-tested in London store locations to minimize the Genius Bar crowd.

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We now know for sure that social media affects SEO, but few people know exactly how. We have to examine some information to gain a better understanding of the subject.
Because Google will likely never release its programming secrets to the public, we have to use the surrounding data to draw conclusions. The company doesn’t consider social signals to be an indication of ranking, but links from Facebook and Twitter once fell under that category. Currently, SEO isn’t symbolized by social activity for Google. Successful social media posts can, however, have major effects on ranking.
Content interaction increases as it gets passed around. While the number of shares a post has doesn’t indicate its SEO impact, those shares up the chances of gaining links from popular websites. This is true of almost every social media platform, so delivering good content can indirectly affect ranking.

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Many companies are choosing online advertising more and more for its wide reach and easy-to-track nature. Google has had great success with this tactic, using it with Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Search, but it’s had difficulty determining which brick-and-mortar stores customers visit and how much they spend at those stores. Recently, that’s become much easier.
The company plans to correlate digital advertisements with physical purchases in the near future by examining 70% of consumer credit and debit card information. Because 90% of sales occur in physical stores, it’s challenging to link those sales to digital marketing, which is problematic for the largely online presence of Google.

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Having watched America excel in the artificial intelligence sector for several years, China has finally begun to contribute to the industry, and their ideas could do powerful things when made reality.
In Beijing, researchers have received billions of dollars for developing artificial intelligence that will eventually control traffic, complete transactions, censor the internet, and infer national crime. The Chinese tech company Baidu has even employed professionals who have built military robots for the country.
Now that the US has slowed its research in the field after President Trump’s suggested budget cuts, China is catching up to its rival in terms of spending. The nation’s laboratories are dedicated to creating machines that can locate and store digital memories without human assistance. More importantly, China’s artificial intelligence machines will likely be able to predict terrorist attacks before they happen when they become more advanced.

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It can be difficult to tell a substance abuser apart from the crowd despite the one in ten statistics of finding one, but analyzing social media activity can make this much easier and save billions of dollars as a result.
A test program called myPersonality was run on 150,000 participants’ Facebook accounts between 2007 and 2012, collecting data about each user’s interests, hobbies, and drug use levels, which included tobacco, alcohol, and recreational drugs. All participants were sorted into categories based on drug use frequency.
Once that experiment was complete, researchers recorded the status updates and likes data of millions of users and compared the results to the those of drug use. Reportedly, around 3,500 users fit into the likes and substance abuse combined category, while more than 1,000 users fit into the status updates and substance abuse combined category and less than 1,000 users fit into the triad category. With these fascinating results, researchers looked for recurring patterns in the overlapping groups, tested them, and achieved an 83.7% accuracy average across all drug types.

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Google has finally put its ads measurement system into place to collect marketing information from YouTube, DoubleClick, and Google Display Network.
Although cookies have gained a massive following lately, this new algorithm - officially called Ads Data Hub - uses mainly user identification codes to track and record how much attention mobile device ads receive. With this information, companies like the already on board Omnicom Media Group can alter their marketing strategies as needed to appeal to more consumers.
The information compiled by Ads Data Hub is made anonymous to protect user privacy while analyzing a wide range of marketing tools across several different platforms, and participating businesses can connect marketing databases into the system to observe the effectiveness of each ad they release.

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Despite the ever-growing use of computers and handheld devices in North America, companies continue to market their products on tv. Although this still works, relating the product back to social media is a great way to engage potential customers.
Popular companies that release television ads are typed into search engines nearly two-thirds more than those that don’t release them. These searches may or may not have the brand’s name attached, depending on what the viewer took notice of in the advertisement. One person could search the exact product, while another could describe the commercial in which it was shown.

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Mayfield Robotics is nearing the end of its development of Kuri, a tiny robot with a wide range of functions. When it’s finally distributed, Kuri will come with acoustic speakers, a WiFi connector, a self-charging system, and home mapping programming.
The robot’s i-shaped figure drew in spectators and received a great deal of media coverage at CES 2017, the convention at which customers could pre-order Kuri for the end of the year and be updated on its latest abilities.

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The absence of activity on social media indicates that your marketing techniques aren’t working. But when they are, how do you quantify their success? There are several effective ways to do so.
First, take a look at how much your target audience is tagging and mentioning your brand. If you’re marketing correctly, the number of followers you have should increase, and those followers should be sharing your brand with others. They can do this by reposting your content, writing about your business, or publishing posts with your handle in them.
Many followers and few mentions signifies that your company may come across as attractive but superficial. To fix this, experiment with new content strategies to truly engage the wide audience you’ve gained. If you’re experiencing the opposite problem - a plethora of mentions and a tiny collection of followers - it means your advertising is great, but you’re not giving your company enough exposure. Try a few tactics that accurately represent your brand and will get it noticed.
You should next investigate how involved with your brand your customers really are by analyzing the number of likes, shares, links, forwards, and comments you receive. Better yet, enable an analytics tool for all of your social media accounts and use that information to post the right content on the right platform.
Another great way to get the conversation about your brand going is to team up with companies similar to yours that have already gained popularity. These third parties can easily be found through applications like BuzzSumo, and promoting your brand like this helps draw attention to your social media pages. Try it out on a few different platforms and persist with the one that works best.

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The computer virus that only seemed to affect Windows devices has recently infiltrated macOS systems as well.
The false Adobe Flash Player download hides in the digital folders of macOS in hopes of insidiously infecting the computer even if Gatekeeper is set up, due to the certificate attached to it. In most cases, certificates help Gatekeeper ignore legitimate programs, but can also be used to spread viruses.
This imitation programming is an updated version of Windows’ 2008 Snake virus, an intricately designed malware system that may exist for another decade before it vanishes completely. Random users may not have to worry, however, because Windows computer owners who catch the virus are very specific, singled out by the virus’s creator.

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Adobe’s change from Creative Suite to Creative Cloud, which houses things likes Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere, has caused the cost of Australian user subscriptions to steadily increase since the Cloud’s debut in 2014. The cost is now 2.5 times more than it originally was.
The major spike in pricing is mainly due to the global market, as the cost changes with worldwide currency value, which has had drastic increases and decreases as of late. The prices of the Creative Cloud services will be be raised once more on June 5th.

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As a veteran in the field, Microsoft is a trustworthy company when it comes to artificial intelligence. But is it expecting too much of itself? Consumers are becoming increasingly hungry for quick, easy-to-use, automated services, and the strain this demand puts on Microsoft and similar companies is beginning to show.
At the Build conference in 2016, Microsoft spoke of putting autonomous conversational robots into Twitter, Skype, HoloLens, and other related systems. The robot for Twitter only lasted a few hours, suffering defeat from a different robot. The company has adjusted its goals for this year, looking to use artificial intelligence only for small, information-based tasks.
Fortunately, Microsoft already has the upper hand with OneDrive, which can store and protect huge amounts of data. It has also implemented many subtle artificial intelligence functions for Office and PowerPoint, including face identification, colour matching, and fact sourcing.

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Everything changes so quickly in our digital world so knowing what’s going on is the best way to protect yourself from technological threats. Here are just a few of the most recent events:
An experienced hacking organization has struck a blow at Chipotle through an email scan involving the franchise’s revenue. This organization, called Carbanak Group, has affected many other service chains, including Ruby Tuesday’s and Baja Fresh.
Cloudflare, a website known for being an unbiased collector of a vast range of articles, has reached an unacceptable level of indifference by posting content promoting white supremacy, strict patriarchy, and other harmful ideals. People who have notified Cloudflare of the offensive articles have received insults and threats from the sites these articles originated from.

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Nike dared to dream but couldn’t make that dream come true, having three lightning-fast runners compete in a two-hour marathon in an attempt to break records while wearing the brand’s new Vaporfly Elite. The record-holder himself, Eliud Kipchoge, came up twenty-five seconds short despite an unbelievable effort.
The shoemaker selected Kipchoge and two others, Zersenay Tadese and Lelisa Desisa, to wear the Vaporfly Elites and compete in a 42km marathon in Monza dubbed Breaking2, starting in the early hours of the morning and accompanied by an audience of 700. The marathon situated six pacers in a diamond shape around each runner to prevent the wind from hitting them, all of them running fast enough to meet the two-hour mark. When half of the distance was covered, only Kipchoge kept up with the pacers.

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