This post was written by the team at Link Assistant.

While doing keyword research, the digital marketer normally tries to accomplish two things: spend as little time on it as possible and cover as many potentially profitable keywords as the niche provides.

However, hitting both these targets at once is one heck of a task. Hence, it is very good to know what shortcuts one can take, without sacrificing the productivity of their campaign.

Say, you are a CPA (certified public accountant) and have a website called www.SuperDuperAccounting.com (just for the record – the site does not exist in reality as this post is being written). How can you quickly identify high-paying keywords in your niche? Let’s conduct a small case study, shall we?

Are you worried about Google’s upcoming search makeover? Whether you agree that Google’s upcoming refresh is a big deal or not, a storm of change is brewing on the search horizon, and it’s best to be prepared. Even though semantic technology has been embedded in search for years, Google is planning to include more of it. Focusing on named entities and marking up content with semantic microdata could keep your search traffic (mostly) intact.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal

Google is planning to revamp search and feature more facts and information generated from semantic technologies. Recently it grew its database of named entities (people, places, and things) from 12 million to over 200 million. The forthcoming changes have potential to impact billions of search queries. It’s Google’s effort to get way ahead of Bing and keep up with Siri on Apple’s iPhone 4S.

The following post was written by our SEO Channel sponsor Link-Assistant.

It amazes me how many online optimizers ignore Universal Search. I’ve come across site owners who ask, “Hey, we are a flower retailer, how do we rank in the top 10?” And I’m like, “Jeez, you’re not even on Google Places”.

Years ago, whether you owned a hotel, a newspaper or an insurance company, the way you optimized your site for Google was more or less the same. Remember the good old SERPs with a homogeneous mass of search results?

Nowadays, times have changed. Today, the search results contain paid listings, specialized search results (Images, Videos, etc.), and what not. There is now more distraction for the searcher, and potential visitors may simply ignore your insignificant “normal” result and click on a flashy Shopping snippet or something similar.

Long passed the days when we had to wonder why we should care about search results for our (brand) names. Google reputation management is a well-known phrase to anyone making a living online. Hence, you are most likely to know that in order to maintain stable presence in branded search results, one should be working continuously.

If you are blogging a lot and care about your brand name and what people see when they are searching Google for your name, here are exactly three things you need to do once to improve your Google search results branding:

1. Verify the Authorship of Your Articles

A few months ago Google got really serious about giving more credit to great content authors. As a result, you can see the author’s headshot right within relevant search results.

This post comes from our SEO channel sponsor Link Assistant.

The mobile Web has been gaining HUGE momentum in the past few years. Different statistics pertaining to the mobile Internet paint a vivid picture of the latter growing bigger each day:

•  76 percent of the world population (5.3 billion people) use mobile devices, of which over 1 billion are smartphones.
• The average iPhone user only spends 45% of his on-device time making voice calls
• Facebook pages drive 80% of newsletter sign-up’s through mobiles
• The number of mobile searches has grown 400% in the last year
• For many products, 1 in 7 searches comes from a mobile device
• 1/3 of flowers sold on Mother’s Day were through mobiles