Adam Sherk

MARCH 8, 2012

Not including @[brand] or listing a third party tool instead (e.g. For instance every media outlet has main profiles for the brand, but to what degree should they develop profiles for specific site sections, topics and writers? Yes, we touched on the “P” word, as in Pinterest: Great Opportunity for Lifestyle Publishers and Brands ).

Publishing 215

Publishing Questions Social Media Activities 215

Adam Sherk

MAY 14, 2013

It is one of the many reasons that content marketing has become so popular, as brands in other industries put an emphasis on content development and promotion and essentially become publishers themselves. So make sure to include not only brand new content but also high-priority evergreen and seasonal content when appropriate.

Publishing 209

Publishing Module Syndication Badge 209

Adam Sherk

FEBRUARY 27, 2013

Now that Instagram web profiles have been around for a few months I thought I’d check in on the participation and activity of major news brands. I keep coming across things like the Simply Measured study showing that 59% of top brands are now active on Instagram and the news that Instagram has surpassed 100 million active users.

Activities 194

Activities News Instagram Brands 194

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 14, 2012

For reasons of client confidentially I am not able to reveal the specific sites but they are all well-known brands from major publishers. Related posts: Pinterest: Great Opportunity for Lifestyle Publishers and Brands. To make the survey more meaningful I divided the 60 sites into eight categories.

Survey 166

Survey Sites Publishing NoFollow 166

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 22, 2011

Google’s expanded sitelinks give sites greater exposure for branded searches and the ability to dominate the page one results above the fold. User reactions have been mixed so far (some find them overwhelming or borderline obnoxious) but Google is touting the user benefits and the expanded sitelinks appear to be here to stay.

Google 215

Google URL Sites Issues 215

Adam Sherk

JANUARY 23, 2013

To get a better sense of the situation I pulled StumbleUpon referral figures from 2010-2012 for a group of 47 news and content sites that we work with at Define Media Group , primarily magazine brands. For confidentially reasons I am not able to reveal the specific titles, but they are all well-known brands from major publishers.

StumbleUpon 172

StumbleUpon Sites Content Survey 172

Adam Sherk

JUNE 16, 2011

Do men prefer LinkedIn’s brand of simple, stripped down, business-oriented networking? According to the new Pew Internet study Social Networking Sites and our Lives there are nearly twice as many male LinkedIn users as female. What gives? So what accounts for this disparity? More males in the workforce?

LinkedIn 174

LinkedIn MySpace Survey Study 174

Adam Sherk

MARCH 24, 2010

Home About Contact PR Publishing SEO Social Media Subscribe Adam Sherk Does Google Want Brands in Your Social Circle? Johanna said she could understand why brands would want to connect with users through Social Search, but that Google had developed it with individuals in mind, not companies.

Google 129

Google Brands Google Reader Digg 129

Adam Sherk

DECEMBER 17, 2013

The Most Popular and Active News Brands on Instagram. Google+ Engagement for News Sites: Top Performers and One-Year Growth Rates. Top Link Building Tactics for Publishers. A Year in the Life of 14 Million 301 Redirects. A Simple Workflow for Keyword Research for Content Planning. The Google News Standout Tag: Does it Work?

SEO 129

SEO Publishing Social Media Sports 129

Adam Sherk

DECEMBER 3, 2013

Whenever I do a presentation on Google+ for publishers I mention that quite a few news and content brands are among the most followed pages. 29% of the top 500 pages is a pretty good showing, and a wide range of content brands, areas of coverage and audience demographics are covered.

News 161

News Sites Google Content 161

Adam Sherk

MAY 30, 2012

Pinterest: Great Opportunity for Lifestyle Publishers and Brands. Pinterest users have an expectation of interesting, compelling photos and without that it is difficult to succeed. Related posts: NBC Targets Local Markets on the New Digg. Pinterest Traffic to Magazine Sites Up 141% But Figures Still Modest.

Team 148

Team News Digg Fashion 148

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 28, 2012

Brands of all shapes and sizes do it, but as I mainly follow news organizations and sports teams on Facebook it is the teams that negatively caught my attention. It is an effective tactic and there are plenty of good ways to do it. The counterpoint is that most of these posts are getting a lot of likes, comments and shares.

Sports 116

Sports Team Facebook Feed 116

Adam Sherk

JULY 12, 2011

Related posts: Does Google Want Brands in Your Social Circle? And few would argue against the importance of PR and marketing in launching and growing any new business regardless of how formalized those efforts are. Rand Fishkin covered this well on SEOmoz earlier this year. So the question is: how much is a PR professional worth to a startup?

Startup 146

Startup Film Team Meeting 146

Adam Sherk

JULY 10, 2012

I am not able to reveal the exact sites due to client confidentially but they are all well-known, established brands. So for any type of site it is worth experimenting with Google+ promotion and engagement (see 8 Social Media Questions Publishers Should Be Asking Themselves ). Here are a few more examples. Women’s Site. Entertainment Site.

Google 119

Google Fashion Sites Report 119

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 24, 2010

News brands seem to fare better with the embedded video listings, although I also came across several examples (not pictured above) in which YouTube got both results. But based on what I saw today Google’s expanded domain results do not apply to the embedded Google News listings.

News 113

News List Google Embedding 113

Adam Sherk

JUNE 4, 2014

5) Google+ and Google Authorship – Google News will sometimes feature Google+ posts from brand pages and individuals among the regular news search results. This will increase the likelihood of your article images being pulled into clusters and other locations in the news search results.

News 147

News Publishing Google Module 147

Adam Sherk

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

The Huffington Post is a strong enough domain and brand to overcome the SEO and usability issues, but not every site is. In the second post above the tags take up almost as much space as the actual editorial content. At best that’s a distraction; at worst it looks spammy. So my advice: take it easy on those blog tags.

Sports 118

Sports SEO News Issues 118

Adam Sherk

JULY 15, 2013

Joanna Lord – Joanna seems genuinely passionate about building customer loyalty, transparency and some of the specific marketing efforts that big brands have undertaken. Dana DiTomaso – I liked her ideas and her creativity, and she has lots of good ways for smaller brands to compete against the big ones in local SEO.

SEO 148

SEO Tips Startup Loyalty 148

Adam Sherk

OCTOBER 18, 2011

Brand and product/service names will be naturally supported so choose a literal, descriptive phrase that matches how people search for the topic. But there’s no need to get caught up in making sure it appears X times or represents X% of all words. Press Release Optimization Checklist. Keyword Planning.

Press Release 206

Press Release Tips Adwords Yahoo 206

Adam Sherk

JANUARY 25, 2012

I’m not able to reveal the specific sites or figures due to confidentially requirements but they are all well established brands. So I pulled the 2009-2011 Reddit and Digg referral figures for selection of 12 major magazine and Web-only content sites. To anonymize the data I combined each site’s figures into a total number for the group.

Digg 149

Digg Reddit Survey Publishing 149

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 11, 2010

Home About Contact PR Publishing SEO Social Media Subscribe Adam Sherk NBC Targets Local Markets on the New Digg by Adam Sherk on August 11, 2010 Through branded profiles and the personalized “My News” feature on the new Digg, publishers are hoping that building up followers who view them as a preferred or trusted source will enable them to reach a (..)

Digg 166

Digg Marketing News Press Release 166

Adam Sherk

FEBRUARY 17, 2010

Does Google Want Brands in Your Social Circle? Sharing and discussing content is a key component of Google Buzz, so it’s a natural fit for article promotion and audience development. At a minimum news sites should set up an official profile and experiment with “buzz this” buttons on their templates.

Sites 118

Sites News Google Facebook 118

Adam Sherk

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

When users click a retweet button, they expect to see something along the lines of: RT @[brand] [headline] [URL] That exact format does not need to be followed, but you want to minimize the work that users need to do before sending out the tweet.

Syndication 117

Syndication URL Press Release SEO 117

Adam Sherk

SEPTEMBER 11, 2012

Successes like significantly increasing YoY non-branded search traffic or effectively leveraging social media for SEO are actually really cool. In most cases keeping it simple is best. Graphs and charts are a great way to illustrate the key points. “Aaay!” ” Fonzie, Happy Days. Just saying.

SEO 173

SEO Wikipedia Project Creative Commons 173

Adam Sherk

JULY 22, 2009

It’s not just that users expect a branded experience on a dedicated domain. It’s that there are so many SEO and audience development initiatives, including social media marketing, that simply work better when a site exists on its own unique, branded domain. Best of luck to both GQ.com and DETAILS.com.

Press Release 100

Press Release Syndication Blogroll Consultant 100

Adam Sherk

JULY 8, 2011

Some saw this as a sign that the page had been banned or taken down and then allowed to reappear, potentially indicating a double standard for some brands. It will be interesting to see how long news and content sites will continue to use personal accounts and whether or not Google enforces stricter compliance.

Google 111

Google News Engineering Report 111

Adam Sherk

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

Prior to the freshness change the news onebox would have still been prominent but only 2-3 of the natural listings would likely have been brand new content.

Reputation 155

Reputation Google Wikipedia Embedding 155

Adam Sherk

OCTOBER 14, 2015

Google Panda and other forms of algorithmic filtering continue to impact even reputable brands with quality content. But it is a place to start, and when combined with other evaluation and monitoring tools like WebPagetest , Pingdom Tools and Rigor it can help you to develop a plan. Panda and Other Algorithmic Changes.

SEO 100

SEO Syndication Marketing NoFollow 100

Adam Sherk

DECEMBER 22, 2009

Getting a clear understanding of how your target audiences locate and interact with your content and engage with your brand will give you actionable data to use next year and beyond. But while you’re going through this year’s top trends, don’t forget to apply the same practice to your own sites.

Trends 167

Trends How To Digg Press Release 167

Adam Sherk

DECEMBER 15, 2010

Many publications will syndicate the major features and articles from their most important journalists across all their websites, which makes their publication consistent across different regions and helps to establish an international brand. However, they can also provide some regional content that is only available to local readers.

Publishing 124

Publishing Tips Syndication Resources 124

Adam Sherk

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

In my book, Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Google , I share 20 “Googley Lessons” that marketers can learn from the world’s most ubiquitous brand to better engage customers and prospects. But, even for online news outlets — where overhead is low and immediacy is high — there’s too little commercial mindset.

News 121

News Press Release Survey SEO 121

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 25, 2009

Reach out – You’ve been meaning to get more involved in brand and content awareness building activities such as social media marketing; now’s the time. There are lots of good approaches to “link bait” – find the topics and hooks that work for you. Special promotions like contests and giveaways can also be effective.

Engineering 102

Engineering Hitwise Health Care Press Release 102

Adam Sherk

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Related posts: Does Google Want Brands in Your Social Circle? There have been many Google features over the years that never gained traction – a few years ago Subscribed Links offered a similar opportunity for content sites but never found mainstream adoption.

Google 109

Google Google Reader Press Release Survey 109

Adam Sherk

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

PageRank is a lesser factor in Google News, used “delicately” since the linking structure of a brand new article is going to be different from an article published years or months ago. Other video hosters may be included in the future, but for now YouTube is the only way in. Creating textual descriptions and transcripts is helpful.

News 158

News Google Tips Press Release 158

Adam Sherk

APRIL 13, 2010

Home pages will rank well for branded searches regardless of site speed, so it is at the content level that the scores matter more. I double-checked several pages; some scores remained the same but others changed by 1 or 2 points. To take the comparison a step further, I also ran Page Speed on the top 10 sites’ lead article.

Sites 161

Sites News Yahoo Journal 161

Adam Sherk

AUGUST 11, 2009

Tip #21: Guest List People I want to hear a pitch from, in descending order: CEO, CTO, VP Product Development, Janitor, Brand Marketing Manager. It was beautiful, but don’t make it more than it is. Tip #25: Black list Yes, I really do have a list of PR people I won’t talk to. It’s shorter than you probably think, though.

Tips 102

Tips Publishing Press Release Syndication 102

Adam Sherk

APRIL 26, 2010

The Like button does appear on their article template: But at least on my computer it was a little slow to load, and once loaded it added some extra white space before the start of the editorial text. Like The Huffington Post there are also competing Facebook buttons at work.

News 149

News Module Widget Facebook 149