As part of our SEJ interview series, Pierre Zarokian of Submit Express joins us to discuss how to outrank Ripoff Report, a site that can be volatile to your brand’s reputation. Ripoff Report does have good intentions by offering a platform for consumers to keep others aware of businesses who legitimately engage in poor practices

After being outed for unnatural link scheme, lyrics site Rap Genius was hit with a manual penalty by Google that buried their pages deep into the search results listings.

Google Product Listing Ads have become a key component of driving online sales, so the time to capitalize is now. As 2014 gets underway, marketers should consider the following ways to take PLA programs to the next level.

Over Christmas, Rap Genius was penalized by Google for unnatural links. In short, they offered an exchange of traffic for keyword rich links to their site. It was outed, Google’s Matt Cutts saw it, it lead to a manual action that had a serious impact on their traffic

There are some SEO rules that you should break.

Rich Ads in Search (RAIS) ads are available only on Bing and Yahoo for branded or trademarked campaigns. They are the combination of the standard sitelinks with an image that is 80 pixels by 60 pixels. Advertisers use their logo as the image for brand recognition and awareness

Pew’s new research reveals that Facebook has been the most popular U.S. social media site (7 in 10 online adults had Facebook accounts in 2013), as well as the most effective networking platform to engage online users over the past year.

Everyone wants to be valued for their insights, and today’s content marketing-fueled age presents multiple opportunities for people to become influencers. I covered how to crowdsource these influencers in an earlier post , but what if you wanted to become one yourself? What does it mean to be an influencer

Social media has the power to drive an insane amount of traffic.  While many may not think of it has a source of huge potential, Pinterest drives more traffic than Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit combined.  But how do you harness the power of this social network powerhouse to drive that traffic to your blog?  Cynthia Sanchez , one of TopRank’s 25 Women who Rock Social Media, gave a session on Taking Your Pinterest Account to the Next Level. Her  strategies for attracting followers and driving traffic to your blog showed great ways to blow your blog up on Pinterest

Posted by randfish It’s time, once again, to continue my annual tradition of analyzing my predictions from 2013 , and if I score high enough, predicting what will happen in 2014. I use this process because it keeps me honest, and keeps you informed as to my relative levels of accuracy (or failure). Here’s how scoring works: Spot On (+2) – when a prediction hits the nail on the head and the primary criteria are fulfilled Partially Accurate (+1) – predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality Not Completely Wrong (-1) – those that landed near the truth, but couldn’t be called “correct” in any real sense Off the Mark (-2) – guesses which didn’t come close If the score is positive, I’m at least somewhat good at this, and if it’s negative, I’m clearly losing the pulse of the industry.