Job-hunting site CareerCast sifted through its database of nationwide IT jobs and came up with a list of the best of them for 2016, based on salary and the importance of the work at their companies.

They also looked at how fast each type of job is growing, and projected how likely that job is to keep growing.

So these in-demand jobs of 2016 are going to stay that way for 2017 and, mostly likely, for many more years to come.

The IT professionals who manage computers and computer networks earned an average of $77,810 in 2016.

It's true the trend toward cloud computing – renting the computers you need and accessing them over the internet – means companies are buying less computers than they used to. But demand for this skill will not vanish. Job openings are expected to grow by 8% through 2024.

No. 5, Data Scientist: growing by 16%

Data Scientists earned on average $128,240 in 2016. And thanks to the boom in all things data and big data, demand for this skill isn't going away anytime soon.

Jobs for data scientists are expected to rise 16% through 2024.

No. 4, Software Engineer: growing by 17%

Software engineers earned $100,690 on average in 2016. 

This is a skill in demand everywhere, from high-tech companies to everyday organizations needing custom software to serve their own customers and employees.

Growth for software engineers is expected to rise 17% through 2024.

No. 3, Information Security Analyst: growing by 18%

Information Security Analysts earned $90,120 on average in 2016.

As our computers, devices and data store more and more of our important, sensitive information, there's rising demand for people who know how to keep all that stuff secure.

Jobs for this skill is expected to rise 18% through 2024.

No. 2, Computer Systems Analyst: growing by 21%

Computer systems analysts earned $85,800 on average in 2016.

As long as people use computers and write software for them, someone will need to troubleshoot problems when things go wrong, aka the systems analyst.

Growth for this job is expected to climb 21% through 2024

No. 1, Web developer: growing by 27%

Web developers earned on average $64,970 in 2016.

While that's not the highest paying IT job in the industry, this job has one major thing going for it: demand. 

Jobs for web developers are expected to grow by 27% through 2024.

The year of (insert trend here) sounds familiar to anyone involved in the tech world. A new innovation arrives, it dominates the news cycle, and its popularity is followed by a chorus of talking heads declaring it as the product of the year.

Reality is quite different: Tech trends don't really follow a yearly cycle and new computing paradigms usually take a lot more than a year to become indispensable parts of the industry.

Take cloud computing for example: We said 2011 was going to be the year the cloud went completely mainstream. Now in 2017 we can see that, while definitely a fundamental piece of the IT puzzle, cloud computing still hasn't taken over and it's not likely to ever do so.

It can be tricky to predict trends, but job search site Indeed thinks it has the answer. Its team put together information from job postings and site searches going all the way back to 2014. Its prediction? 2017 is going to be less about the cloud and all about machine learning.

2017: The year of the learning machines?

If Indeed's numbers are accurate there's definitely a clear winner in the emerging tech field: Machine learning. IoT is following in a close second place and it's obvious why: Data gathered by IoT devices is best sorted and organized using machine learning techniques.

Big data job postings are still dominant as well: Someone has to deal with all that data before it's sorted by learning machines. Here we find our answer for the growing interest in machine learning: There's too much data for humans to sort.

SEE: Machine learning: The smart person's guide (TechRepublic)

"More companies know how important it is to log every piece of data and customer interaction, and it's now simple, with Amazon, to spin up a bunch of nodes and build a model that has predictive power and then shut it down again at a very low expense," said Doug Gray, SVP of Engineering at Indeed. "We're now seeing that companies have enough data and processing power to actually use deep learning."

It's a simple recipe when you break it down: IoT devices are everywhere and they're producing tons of data. Humans can't sort it in an efficient way so we create something that can: Learning machines.

If the Internet of Things continues to grow, machine learning will grow along with it because it has to. Datasets aren't getting smaller but machines are getting smarter. Machine learning is a trend that isn't going away anytime soon.

What about the cloud?

Rather than seeing Indeed's numbers as a sign of the cloud's end times it's more likely that its growth is leveling off. There hasn't been any movement in the number of searches for cloud computing jobs—a good sign that the industry is saturated.

Cloud computing was a game changer when it first arrived and now it's a part of daily life for anyone who uses a computer. That doesn't mean that it's a panacea for every business ill, however.

SEE: 5 big data trends that will shape AI in 2017 (TechRepublic)

"Cloud adoption is nearly ubiquitous, but it's not now and will not in the foreseeable future be suitable for all workloads," said SolarWinds CIO Joel Dolisy. There are organizations managing datasets so large that that it would take decades to migrate it to the cloud. Those kinds of groups won't likely be in the cloud anytime soon but they'll still need machine learning professionals to make sense of it.

The cloud isn't dead, nor is the need for skilled cloud administrators vanishing. It's been constant, and it will remain constant. We're simply over the unfounded promises of a cloud-based future and can finally see what's actually important.

The 3 big takeaways...

1. Research from job searching site Indeed shows that machine learning jobs are growing fast, and that cloud jobs are shrinking.
2. IoT is growing as well, and pairing that with machine learning growth is natural: IoT devices produce huge amounts of data, and machine learning is the best way to sort it.
3. Demand for cloud computing professionals has been steady since 2014. Cloud jobs aren't going away—the industry just knows what it can and can't do now.

Now, I’d like to take a look at how we all should evolve as search optimizers. Since the theme fits, let’s call these the seven New Year’s resolutions you should be making for your campaign in 2017:

1. Create better mobile experiences.

Mobile, mobile, mobile—you’re probably sick of hearing about mobile, but it’s not going away. Google released yet another mobile-friendly update this year, and you can bet the mobile favoritism will only increase in 2017. Note that I specifically chose the term “mobile experiences.” It’s not enough to have a site that’s responsive, and therefore usable on a mobile device. You should be building all your online interactions with customers to be convenient, accessible, and intuitive on mobile devices. This is especially true if millennials factor into your target audience; as a general rule, think mobile first, and have everything else come second.

2. Measure and analyze more thoroughly.

There are tons of tools available online to help you measure, analyze, and understand your SEO efforts—most of which are free or inexpensive. There’s no excuse not to be measuring everything you do, from start to finish, as it’s the only way to gain insight into the real impact of your efforts. When I say “thoroughly,” I don’t just mean tracking more metrics—instead, I mean doing more to ensure that your conclusions are accurate, and turning those conclusions into actionable insights rather than speculative hypotheses. Your data can tell you pretty much everything you want to know—but you have to ask the right questions and examine the right areas.

3. Develop more long-form content.

Content marketing is still the king of online marketing strategies as far as I’m concerned, but competition is getting thicker and readers are getting pickier. People have trust issues thanks to fake news, and are getting sick of seeing the same types of headlines and short-form content over and over. The best solution to this is lower quantities of richer, more detailed, long-form content. It means you’ll have to put more effort into every piece you produce, but you’ll stand out from the competition, win more users’ trust, and secure more conversions as a result.

4. Get on top of rich snippets.

I’ve been talking about the importance of rich snippets and Schema.org microformatting for a few years now, but I’m not surprised that most business owners still haven’t gotten involved here. Microformatting is a specific content structure that makes it easy for Google to parse your information, thereby making it accessible to the Google Knowledge Graph and other intelligent content displays in SERPs. Rich answers and rich snippets (the resulting SERP displays) are getting more frequent, which means 2017 is the time to get involved if you haven’t already. Make the pledge.

5. Produce more, better videos.

It was a big year for video, and 2017 is going to be even bigger. With Facebook and other platforms jumping on the “live video” bandwagon, and more mobile consumers hungry for more visual content, the demand isn’t dying down. In fact, we’re seeing a flood of businesses jumping on the trend, which means it’s no longer enough to simply make video content. You have to commit to making your videos better, with more charismatic hosts, better production values, more creative ideas, more practical information, and of course, more raw entertainment value.

6. Learn from your customers' experiences.

SEO has largely been an objective realm, where a focus on numbers and objective results is most important, but in 2017, you’ll need to scale back your analytical thinking and focus more on customers’ subjective experiences. How your customers interact with your site and brand online, on a sliding scale, will dictate how successful your site is—even in terms of rankings. Visitors who stick around for longer and visit more pages will help you earn higher rankings, and of course, more engaged visitors means a higher likelihood of converting your inbound traffic.

7. Audit more frequently.

Search engines aren’t as volatile as they used to be, but that’s no excuse to go months without checking your data or critically evaluating your current strategies. Stagnation and ignorance are leading causes for the decay of SEO campaigns, but with a regular auditing strategy in place, you can easily spot and make improvements before they become problematic. Audit your strategy no less than once a month, and more frequently if you’re a bigger company with more invested in your SEO campaign.

These are all relatively small commitments. They aren’t going to wreck your budget. They aren’t going to completely overhaul the strategic foundation you already have in place. Instead, they’re adjustments to how you think, how you incorporate information into your strategies, and how you consider SEO overall. Because of this, there’s no excuse not to make them and follow through.

I can’t guarantee these changes alone will be enough to increase your site’s rankings in search engines, but I can guarantee they’ll make you a better marketer in 2017.

As 2015 is now behind us, it has become more important for specialists to look out for trends that can affect search rankings for their keywords in this new year.

Considering the changes that took place in SEO this 2015, below are trends that you as an SEO specialist must look out for to improve your site performance on search results in 2015.

Optimize for Rich Answers

Although aiming for the top positions in Google search for your target keywords is still important, it's now time to optimize for other Rich Answers too. These are results that appear towards the top organic search results.

According to Stone Temple Consulting, rich answers appear on 19.45% of Google search results out of the 850,000 keyword queries used to trigger these.

The percentage may not be as high at the moment – most of the rich answers appear on search queries for song lyrics. However, there is good cause to believe that its number will only increase in the future. Since Google has made its intention of providing value to its users clear, rich answers provide the most relevant information based on the search query.

How to rank for rich answers: Northcutt Consulting Group has broken down the most relevant factors for ranking on rich answers.

The first point is important. Optimizing for rich answers requires you to optimizing for your target keyword as well. Getting your page to rank on the first page of search engines will increase your chances of getting into the rich answers box.

The post at Northcutt is not the definitive way to rank for the rich answer box since we are dealing with Google algorithm here, after all. Its algorithm can never be reduced to an exact science consider of how unstable it is. However, the post should give you a good idea of how you can increase your chances of getting your page on topthe top of search results.

Review Google's other featured content

Keep an eye on the Mozcast Google Feature review for other types of content that features within Google results. Rich Answers are referenced here as 'featured snippets'.  A similar feature is 'Related questions', showing how our articles should try to cover these questions.  Images and videos are other better known ways of gaining cut-through in the SERPs for some search terms - check which are important for your industry

Improve user engagement

Ever since, marketers have always speculated user engagement as a possible ranking factor. This covers the average time on site, bounce rate, pogo sticking, and others.

For conversion, it is a proven factor that determines the effectiveness of page elements that contribute to the chances of visitors committing to your call to action.

However, what makes this factors difficult to measure in search engines is the lack of data supporting it.

User engagement is too indirect an influence on search rankings. Nonetheless, it is something that all website owners need to optimize if they are serious about getting more out of their SEO efforts.

“User engagement is just as important as any other on-site element in this day and age,” says Matt Banner ofOnBlastBlog.com. “If a visitor enjoys your website, they'll stay on your site longer, visit more pages, help contribute to a lower bounce rate for your site overall, and most likely become a returning visitor.

“All of these positive elements factored together combine for a type of website that Google wants to rank highly in the search engines. If the user finds the website beneficial, you can bet Google will as well.”

How to rank with the help of user engagement: To help improve your site performance, in the long run, using user engagement as a factor, you may need to use tools to gain insight on how much interaction your site pages is getting from visitors.

Heatmapping quickly comes to mind when thinking of user engagement. The idea here is that the more clicks a page accumulates from its links, the more interaction it has with users.

Tools like SumoMe Heat Maps and CrazyEgg are great ways to break down the number of clicks made by users on your tracked site pages. From here, you can see which links are clicked the most and least. You can then optimize your site by improving your CTA links and buttons based on the accumulated data.

To analyze visitor engagement with your site pages, the SumoMe Content Analytics is an extremely helpful tool in looking how many of your site visitors scroll down until the very end of the page. From the data, you can also find out which part of your page where 50% of your visitors leave. Determine which elements of your site pages serve as obstacles that prevent visitors from scrolling down your page and optimize your site as you see fit.

Mobile App Optimization

The mobile market is big. So big, in fact, that Google is still figuring out how to provide mobile users with a better search experience.

The so-called 'Mobilegeddon' or more accurately Google's Mobile-friendly update is a step towards this direction, as site owners are encouraged to develop mobile or responsive designs to increase the site’s loading speed on mobile devices. A faster loading site means more chances to retain visitors.

While there is also interest in spending on mobile ads as the figures from eMarketer show, Google will soon take a more crucial role in delivering content to mobile users, starting with app store optimization.

"ASO (App Store Optimization) will be the next gen SEO in 2016,” says Rob Lons of performance SEO services RankPay. “If you look at the rise of mobile use and how much paid ad dollars are being spent each year, you can see the huge demand and rush to reach people on their mobile devices.”

More importantly, the App Indexing is the latest development in search results that can make an impact in how your site pages will rank for your target keywords.

Originally, apps are indexed on App Store and Google Play, not on Google search. This made it much more complicated for Google to streamline its search capabilities – marketers will have to optimize on both app stores instead of just on Google organic.

Through App Index, apps are now indexed on Google search. The search ranking of apps falls under the App Pack or Deep Link category.

Below is a comparison of app rankings on mobile search. The image is taken from this extensive article about App Indexing at Search Engine Land.

App Indexing brings in millions of additional search results for search queries on Google mobile search. This means that webpages ranking for their target keyword will have to fight of million of app pages that are optimized for their keyword as well. As if the competition is not stiff enough!

How to rank for mobile search results after App Indexing: Instead of fending off app results for your target keyword, why not consider developing an app for your business?

If you do not have an app for your site yet, consider building one to take advantage of the benefits App Indexing brings, in particular, its deep links.

Choosing the best mobile app development services is just half the battle. The other half involves developing a solid foundation for your mobile app and the goal you wish to achieve in developing it. Identifying both should provide you a more strategic approach with your mobile app in line with meeting your online goals.

Once you have a mobile app in place, you can begin implementing the steps on how to get your deep app screen indexed on search results by referring to this straightforward documentation from Google. The process can be arduous for non-developers, so you may want to ask for help from an expert regarding this.

Google’s new search quality guidelines

Google released their latest 160-page search quality guidelines. The last previous published was the abridged version two years ago that was a reaction to the leaked versions from 2008, 2011, and 2012 (notwithstanding the 2014 version) for the purpose of transparency.

As expected, the published document is far from the finished product.

"This is not the final version of our rater guidelines,” says Google Senior Program Manager and Search Growth & Analysis Mimi Underwood in this post. “ The guidelines will continue to evolve as search, and how people use it, changes. We won’t be updating the public document with every change, but we will try to publish big changes to the guidelines periodically."

You can download your copy of the search quality guidelines from the link above.

Below are some key takeaways from the guidelines:

• High-quality standards are set on Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) pages - These pages include shopping transaction pages, financial information pages, medical information pages, legal information pages, and similar sites. The reason for the placing high-quality standards on these pages is how these can affect "the future happiness, health, or wealth of users." Low-quality YMYL pages can negatively impact one's happiness and health, so it is important to build useful pages under this umbrella term.
• The value placed on Expertise/Authoritativeness/Trustworthiness (E-A-T) –high-quality content must come from E-A-T sources. E-A-T is built by acquiring accreditation if necessary. For instance, medical information found online must come from accredited medical persons or organizations. Corollary, first-hand experience counts as a form of expertise. For example, a user sharing how he survived cancer is a form of expertise.
• Needs Met guidelines cater to mobile usability – Web pages are gauged by how they are optimized for mobile viewing and the satisfaction they provide to users about the search query. The guidelines are loosely divided into five ratings (from Fully Meets to Fails to Meet) – a website can fall between the assigned ratings if needed be.

What to make out of these quality guidelines: All signs point to improving the mobile usability of your site (as already mentioned above), as well as establishing yourself as an influence within your niche. By building your expertise and knowledge in your industry, you can establish your authority as a subject matter expert, thus earning the trust of your audience.

You can start by launching an influencer marketing campaign to establish your online visibility. From there, you can slowly build yourself as an authority based on different factors such as your site's Domain Authority, social proof (testimonials from customers and social media shares), and blog comments, among other factors.

The importance social media marketing plays in long-term business growth is one of the most heavily debated topics among marketers and business owners.

Most social marketers would agree that tying social media marketing to actual business results is a very difficult task. Social media marketing, in comparison to traditional media and alternate forms of digital marketing, is still in its infancy. As the tools marketers use become more sophisticated, and our strategies more refined, the role social media marketing plays in impacting business growth will become easier to quantify.

In the meantime, measuring how social media is turning into actual business results is not impossible. In fact, one of the greatest tools at measuring and reporting social media success is freely available and probably already installed on your website: Google Analytics!

And don’t forget to check out Simply Measured’s Landing Page Comparison, which gathers data from Google Analytics so you can easily understand how your landing pages compare in terms of goal completions and bounce rate.

In this post, we’ll cover basic Google Analytics reports, set up goal conversions, look at how to review conversions from social media, and pull all of the most important reports into a single downloadable social media marketing dashboard.


Identify and Set Up Goal Conversions

The first step in measuring the success of a business’s social media strategy is determining what within the website needs to be measured. Common goal conversions include form completions, downloads, time on site, amount of pages viewed, or even a specific sequence of pages viewed.

To set up a goal within Google Analytics, click your Admin tab, select your view, and click Goals > + New Goal.

For this example, let’s create a goal to measure the number of email newsletter opt-ins from the website. The Goal setup step has a few templates, but I usually recommend the Custom selection.

Goal description is simply the name this conversion will appear as in reports. Leave Goal slot ID as is and select Destination for the Type.

Under the Goal details field enter the URL of the thank you or completion page, excluding the domain name. Optionally, if you know the lifetime value of one email subscriber, enter it in the Value field. You can even specify a sequence of pages required before a conversion is counted (for example, a multi-page form). You can enter this information in the Funnel field.

Save your goal and it will immediately begin measuring all future traffic to the conversion page entered in the Goal details field. Later on, we’ll look at how to determine what kind of impact social media is having on website conversions.

Identify Which Platform Drives the Most TrafficTo accurately measure how social media is influencing overall website traffic, you must be able to view traffic referred by social media networks independent of all other traffic sources.

This information is in the Channels report, which can be found by clicking
Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels.

The Channels report silos all individual traffic sources into their corresponding groups and allows businesses to easily compare traffic from each channel type. This is important because businesses can review not only total site visits per channel, but also engagement and conversion rates channel-to-channel, which helps determine the quality and value of the traffic referred by each channel.

Simply Measured’s Social Traffic Report gets right to the heart of the matter, synthesizing Google Analytics data and making it easy to understand and manipulate, and also visually appealing.

Using the date selection, this report can be compared month-over-month, year-over-year (or any other time frame) to show changes in traffic, engagement, and conversions over time.

Clicking on the Social channel dives deeper into this report, revealing all individual referring networks.

This is the same as the Channels report, only now you’re reviewing traffic, engagement, and conversions on a network-to-network level. This can be useful if you’re wondering exactly how a specific network’s strategy is paying off in terms of goal conversions and on-site engagement.

View Conversions Assisted By Social Media

There are a lot of ways to review the number of conversions from social media, the easiest being the Social view of the Channels report mentioned above.

What I feel is more important is measuring the amount of conversions that social media has assisted with but has not been awarded the attribution. One often-misunderstood piece of conversion reporting is that in most cases, the conversion is attributed to the traffic source directly before the conversion. This is called Last Click Attribution.

For example, what happens if a consumer discovers the brand by visiting the site through a tweet, comes back three days later through a remarketing ad, and becomes a customer? Pay-per-click is awarded the attribution, even though social media is how the customer discovered the business.

To see how many conversions social media has assisted in, open theAssisted Conversions report by clicking Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions.

In this report you can see Social was attributed with 903 conversions in a Last Click Attribution model. However, Social assisted in 173 more conversions which have been attributed elsewhere.

Clicking the First Interaction Analysis tab at the top of the Assisted Conversions report shows us that Social would be attributed with 941 conversions in a First Click Attribution model.

Whatever the case may be, a combination of these reports is a great way to show exactly what role social media marketing is playing in the ever-changing consumer purchase path, be it introducing future customers to the business or directly selling a product.

Create a Social Media Marketing DashboardSometimes, proving the value of social media marketing is all about how the data is presented. There’s no easier way to do this than to set up a social media marketing dashboard within Google Analytics.

To get started creating a new dashboard, click Dashboard > New Dashboard. Select Blank Canvas, name your dashboard, and select Create Dashboard.

The first widget I always create is Total Social Visits. To do this, I select Metricas the Standard and Sessions as the Metric.

The most important piece of every widget in this dashboard is filtering out any non-social media traffic. This is done by adding a filter which matches,Only show + Default Channel Grouping + Containing + Social.

From here, you can keep adding widgets to track what is most important to the business. Just remember to filter out any non-social media traffic. Some of my favorite widgets include Conversions by Network, Time on Site by Network, Pages Per Session by Network, and New Visitor Acquisition by Network.

If you need a little more guidance in creating a social media dashboard, you can click here to automatically import my dashboard and learn from the widgets I’ve created.

Measurement Starts With Organization & UnderstandingMeasuring and reporting on how successful your social media marketing efforts are at driving web traffic is not impossible; in fact, it’s relatively easy with just a few basic reports. It all begins with having a well-planned and organized strategy with clearly defined goals.

The more clear it is to everyone in your business exactly what the social media goals are and how you will measure them, the easier it becomes to show the value of social media marketing. If you need more help clarifying the role of social in your own organization, download Simply Measured’s on-point guide below.

New to the world of search engine optimization (SEO)? Columnist John Lincoln explains some things you might not know about this online marketing discipline

SEO is a complicated discipline. There are many components to it, and best practices change from time to time. Add to that the fact that Google updates its algorithm frequently, causing ranking shifts that are known to make digital marketers lose sleep.

Additionally, Google often releases new technologies that offer alternative ways to rank. That makes the lives of SEOs even more complicated, as they have to overcome a learning curve to properly serve their clients.

One day, it might be easier to become a doctor than an SEO — kidding! (But not really… )

Even now, though, there’s a lot of misinformation (and missing information) about what it takes to rank a page in organic search results. Here are nine things most people don’t understand about SEO.

1. Bigger really is better, in most cases, for big termsIn some niches, Google favors larger sites.

If you’re launching an e-commerce site that sells men’s jeans, it’s not likely that you’re going to rank at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) for the search phrase, “men’s jeans.”

Why? Google “men’s jeans” right now and see who’s at the top.

Disregard the sponsored ads, and you’ll notice names like Macy’s, Nordstrom, American Eagle, Levi, and Kohl’s. Do you really think you have the SEO power to knock any of those brands out of their position?

Spoiler: You don’t.

Google will generally favor brands that are household names over new startups when it comes to ranking. That’s because the search giant wants to provide the best possible experience for its users.

So does that mean all hope is lost if you’re running a new company that wants to sell men’s jeans online? Not at all.

First of all, you can optimize for your own brand name. That way, once you’ve got some reputation in your space, people can still find your site by searching for your name.

Also, you can run paid ads. They can put you at the top of the SERPs, but keep in mind that advertising can be costly. As of this writing, the suggested bid for “men’s jeans” is $2.09 per click, according to Keyword Planner, so your margins had better be spectacular.

You should also look for alternative keywords that you can use to promote your brand. You might come across some golden opportunities that even your biggest competitors haven’t noticed.

For example, you might be offering a specific style/color combination of men’s jeans. Optimize your site for a search term that includes that style and color.

2. Websites are broken up into segmentsThe reality is that you’re not trying to rank a site. You’re trying to rank pages within a site.

Unless you have a site that’s a just a single landing page, then ranking a page and a site aren’t the same thing. It’s more likely that you have various segments on your website, including a home page, a contact form, a blog, a categories page, a price table, an FAQ and possibly other parts. For example, if you take a look at the Levi’s website, they have a structure that breaks the site up into sections for Men, Women, Kids and so on.

Some of those segments are more valuable than others. For example, you’re probably not interested in ranking your contact form. However, you certainly want to rank the content on your blog. Focus on ranking pages that will reel in potential customers from the SERPs. Then, use your favorite method to capture their contact information and add them to your email list.

3. You might just need to rank for a few termsYou might think that to be successful in SEO, you have to rank for dozens of search terms in the top three positions. That’s not necessarily the case.

If you’re in a micro-niche or your target market is very narrow, it’s likely that you can get away with just ranking for one or two terms. For example, if you’re selling “disc profiles,” you are going to make most of your revenue from a few core terms.

The main point here is that for some sites, ranking for lots of terms makes sense. For others, you can make great money just targeting a few core terms.

4. Content marketing is very competitive. You’ve probably heard “content is king.” Unfortunately, so has everybody else in your niche.

That’s why you need to be at the top of your game when it comes to inbound marketing. Invest the right amount of time and money into keyword research, hire the best writers, update your blog consistently, and pull out all the stops to create attention-grabbing headlines with amazing content.

I recommend using BuzzSumo and Moz Content. Both allow you to analyze a site’s content, uncover their strategies, track the new content they create and search the most popular content. Both create some pretty nice reports, too.

Take a look at your competition — then make a better page for your site.

5. Early adoption pays offAs we’ve seen, Google is known to release new technologies from time to time. Some of those technologies can help you rank in the SERPs.

That’s why you should be an early adopter.

For starters, take a look at accelerated mobile pages (AMP). That’s an open-source project backed by Google that enables webpages to load lightning-fast on a mobile platform. AMP pages can appear at the very top of mobile search results in carousel format. You can see a visual of this in the video below:

Speaking of mobile, make sure that your site is fully mobile-friendly. Google uses mobile-friendlinessas a ranking factor for mobile search results, so if you expect your site to rank there, it had better behave well for a mobile audience.

Finally, be an early adopter when it comes to using HTTPS on your website instead of HTTP. Even though Google announced back in 2014 that it was giving secure sites a ranking boost, a lot of sites have still stubbornly refused to make the switch. If you want to potentially have an edge on your competition, use HTTPS.

When it comes to SEO, you need to be the first to market with new technology. These are just a few examples. It takes time to plan, develop and execute, so it is always a good idea to start when the news of new tech breaks.

6. SEO can be used to target different global marketsDid you know that you can rank your site in different countries? If your product or service is something that can be appreciated by people outside the United States, you should optimize your site for an international audience.

One way to do that is by offering a country-specific domain — for example, if you’re targeting people in France, you can use the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) of .fr. You can also host separate content for each different country on a directory or a subdomain.

When targeting other markets, don’t forget to translate your content into the appropriate foreign languages. After all, you can’t expect your content marketing efforts to be successful if people in foreign countries can’t read your articles in their native language.

You should also register your business in foreign countries, list your business in web directories specific to those countries, and even have your site hosted in those regions.

Here is a client we recently pushed into 27 different countries and languages. Check out this growth in Italy alone.

7. There are lots of ways to be visible in Google resultsYou might be under the impression that the only way to rank in Google is by building backlinks and using on-site SEO so that a page ends up as high in the SERPs as possible. However, there are other ways to gain visibility and visitors from the SERPs.

For example, if you can get into Google’s Knowledge Graph, your brand can potentially earn a prominent spot at the top of the SERP, to the right of organic listings. It’s quite an effort to get a Knowledge Graph entry, but once you do, you could give your brand a big boost.

You can also stand out from the crowd by using structured data markup to display rich snippets, which are visual enhancements to a SERP listing. Structured data markup is added to your website code to provide Google with more information about the content on your site.

If you Google “best pancake recipe” right now, you’ll see results that include aggregate ratings in the form of stars. You’ll also see calorie counts. Those are rich snippets, and they make the listing in the SERPs stand out.

By the way, you’ll also see that there’s a direct answer at the very top of many search engine results pages. That’s another way that you can achieve search visibility: by establishing your site as an authority in your space and producing content that Google determines to be a quick answer to a user’s query.

If you have a brick-and-mortar business, you can also rank within the local 3-pack. If you Google the name of your city plus the word “plumber,” you’ll see a map below the paid ads at the top. Just below that map, you’ll see three listings in your area. (To get started with local SEO, check out Marcus Miller’s “The big picture guide to local SEO: ranking in 2016 & beyond.”)

As discussed above, publishers can rank by appearing at the top of the mobile SERPs when they implement accelerated mobile pages (AMP).

Here is a list of common result types that appear in Google’s blended search results pages:

• Organic listings
• Knowledge Graph cards
• The local 3-pack
• Instant answers (also known as “featured snippets”)
• AMP carousel
• Google Images
• Google Videos
• Google News

SEMrush and many of the other SEO ranking tools actually report on these varying result types now, which is great.

The main point is, there’s more than one way to win.

8. There are many different specialties in SEOSearch engine optimization is a broad online marketing channel that includes a handful of niche disciplines. There are SEO practitioners who specialize in technical SEO, link building, content marketing, local SEO, international SEO and more.

And guess what? Each requires a different skill set.

Bottom line: You need to determine first how you want to rank a site and then select the appropriate campaign strategy.

9. There are other search engines besides GoogleSure, Google is the undisputed leader in web searches. That doesn’t mean that other search engines don’t exist and that people in your target market don’t use them.

The most obvious competitor to Google is Bing. That’s Microsoft’s search engine, and as of this writing, its share of search traffic is growing faster than Google’s.

And don’t forget about YouTube. Believe it or not, YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world behind Google.

Of course, there’s also Amazon. You might think of Amazon as more of an e-commerce giant than a search engine. However, it’s the starting point for 44 percent of consumers searching for products.

When you’re optimizing your content assets, make sure that you take into account the broad spectrum of search engines that exist online. Where you choose to focus your optimization efforts will depend on your goals online.

There is a lot to know. What you don’t know can hurt you when it comes to SEO. Going forward, it’s important that you also keep up with the latest changes in SEO best practices — otherwise, your future optimization efforts might fall flat.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

With more than 300 million members, LinkedIn is the most popular business-oriented network. But are you using all the possible feature of LinkedIn?How do you know LinkedIn? May be not as well as you think. Here I have compiled a few features that can save your time, expand your network and drive your business goals.

How do you know LinkedIn? May be not as well as you think. Here I have compiled a few features that can save your time, expand your network and drive your business goals.

1. Hide your connections:

With using this feature you can have the flexibility to control how open or private you make your connections to others within your network. You can set your settings so that your connections are only visible to you or those who are also connected with you. If you make your connection private then it’s only visible to you. This will stop competition, recruitment companies and other accessing a network of potential clients, employees and channel partners you have worked hard to build a relationship with over the years.

In order to make the required changes scroll to the upper right-hand corner of your LinkedIn profile and select privacy & settings. Just click on the link “select who can see your connections” and from there choose the option, “only me” when this is done, save your changes.

2. Export Your Connections:

Want to move LinkedIn connections to other contact management system? LinkedIn allows you to easily export your connections. You can easily download a spreadsheet either .CSV or .VCF format and a list of your connections including their name, current company name and email address. If you want to export your contact then click connections in LinkedIn’s top navigation, click on the settings gear icon in the top right and click export connections under advanced settings on the right.

3. Delete, Manage And Edit Your Skills & Endorsement:

Skills and endorsement area is very important when you are building the LinkedIn profile. By clicking on this you can endorse someone or to have someone endorse you. It adds the tag so that make your profile more easily found by search engines and LinkedIn searches also.

While LinkedIn allows up to 50 skills listed. I recommend that you should only have 3 or 5 skills and expertise listed on your profile. However, you need to do some research online along with speaking to some of your clients about what skills or expertise your target market are looking for in an expert within your field before including them in your profile. If a skill is unique that has not been entered into the database so you can add manually. To edit, this simply select edit profile in the drop down menu. Then scroll down to the skills and expertise section of your profile and click edit.

Within this area, you can remove any endorsement you no longer want, add new skills you want to be endorsed for and manage the endorsement you have received with particular skills or expertise and much more. After finishing this click on save to ensure all your changes are updated.

4. Create LinkedIn Showcase Page:


LinkedIn showcase pages are the perfect way to segment your inbound LinkedIn traffic. If you can create a business unit that is directly connected to a specific target audiencethen you need to create a showcase page. It allows companies to target different buyer personas by providing single pages that focus on specific products, product categories, and service. LinkedIn users can also follow specific showcase pages without having to follow a company’s main page or its other showcase pages, allowing your business to change the page closely to the audience specific to the page.

If you want to create showcase page, click the edit dropdown at the top right of your company page and select create a showcase page. You can create up to 10 free showcase pages per each parent company page.

Showcase pages were basically custom-made for B2Bs to better generate leads. LinkedIn writes, “It makes sense to create a Showcase Page when you want to represent a brand, business unit, or company initiative. These pages are intended develop long-term relationship with a specific audience.”

Tips for making showcase pages as good as possible:
• Create showcase page just like your company page
• It is vital to keep the name of the page short so it won’t be shortened in the display sidebar.
• Use the word that your audience will understand and relate to
• Showcase pages are just another way to get more leads interested in your product or service
• Add website link, image and industry just like for regular page

5. Hide Your Identity When Viewing Profiles :

The “who’s viewed my profile” box is on the right side of your LinkedIn page when you first login it, you can see vague attribute of people who have clicked on your profile, such as the company the person works for, sometimes their name and someone labeled “Anonymous.” If you don’t want others to see information about you when you look at their profile, you need to change the setting.

Find the settings page and click the link for “select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile”. When you select this you will see the pop-up, then select the appropriate option, either you can select anonyms profile characteristics or you will be totally anonymous. Then click save changes.

6. Save Searches:

When you go through the work of creating a highly specific targeted search, you’ll want to save it. The saved search is the great way to stay active in your prospecting. LinkedIn allows users to save up to ten job searches and three people searches. So after conducting a search just click on the save search option on the right allows you to save a search and easily run it again later. In addition, you can choose this option to receive weekly or monthly reminders via email once new members in the networks or job match your saved search criteria.

7. Show Media Files On Your Profile:

Did you know LinkedIn enables you to include a variety of media like videos, documents, Photo, links, and presentations to the Summary, Education, and Experience sections of your LinkedIn profile? This allows you to showcase different projects, show samples of your work, and improve your LinkedIn profile. Just click the edit profile, then look for the media icon for each section, placed between the pencil icon and the up/down arrow.

You can also reorder your profile sections. For example, you want your job experience to show up in front of your summary. Click the Edit Profile button on your LinkedIn home page, and look for the up/down arrow icon at the top of each section. Click, drag, and drop where you’d like it placed.

8. Make Contact Without Making a Connection:

If you want to get in touch with someone on LinkedIn but you have yet to make the one-to-one connection, you can join a common group. Once you have joined a common group, you can send the message as the member of the same group even if you are not directly connected. On the comment section, you will see an option to report privately in the drop down under comment conversation. By clicking this, you can send a message without making a connection.

9. Maintain LinkedIn Relationship Note:

Under each connected profile, you will see the option to add relationship notes. Using this feature you can add the information like how you met, add reminder notice and other important context.

The reminder notices are great because you can set feature and recurring alert with each content. If you click the recurring option, you could set up a reminder to call or follow up with the person on a weekly, monthly, every three months or custom basis. However, in relationship panel, all the information is kept private so that only you can see this.

10. Take Advantage Of Advanced Search Option:

LinkedIn’s advanced search feature gives a much richer search experience as well as the best way of identifying the exact type of the people who are targeting. For example, say you want to find out if you’re connected to anyone who works at a specific company. Type the company name in the company field in Advanced Search, then filter the results by “Relationship” to see if you have any first- or second-degree connections to any employees.
In addition, you can filter your search by location, industry, past company, school, profile language, and nonprofit interest.

Which of these useful features did you know already? I would love to hear what you are really using or what you have found useful in the comments box below.

URL : http://weneed4info.blogspot.ie/2016/08/10-useful-linkedin-features-you-might_1.html?spref=fb

Facebook last week said it would begin testing long anticipated end-to-end encryption capabilities in its Messenger app, enabling users to have secret conversations.

The new level of security means that a message will be visible only to the sender and the recipient -- Facebook won't even be able to read it.

Users can set a timer to limit the amount of time that a message remains visible during the conversation. Facebook has employed Open Whisper Systems' Signal Protocol technology to provide the encryption.

One major caveat is that an end-to-end encrypted conversation can not be viewed on multiple mobile systems at the same time -- however, the encryption is an optional feature.

Many users want to be able to switch devices during a conversation -- for example, move from a mobile phone to a tablet or desktop computer. With the current technology, secret conversations can be read only on one device.

In addition, sending rich content like GIFs or video and making payments will not be possible using the encryption.

E2E JustificationSome of the security protocols related to the end-to-end encryption have raised questions among Messenger users.

All secret messages are encrypted in local storage with two keys and the remote key can be revoked, said Alex Stamos, chief security officer at Facebook, in one of a series of tweets responding to concerns.

Further, it's likely that an update to end-to-end encryption will allow it to support multidevice use, he said, which is how millions of Facebook Messenger users currently operate.

Hundreds of millions of Messenger users talk Web-to-Web, Stamos noted, but there is currently no secure way to store code or verify keys without using mobile technology.

The provision of end-to-end encryption serves two important uses for Facebook amid a robust debate about consumer privacy and security protocols around the world, commented Tim Mulligan, senior analyst at Midea Research.

"First, it will help Facebook appear to be on the side of the digital consumer; and secondly, it allows the company to inhabit the same ethical high ground that has hithero been the preserve of Apple regarding the privacy of its users," he told TechNewsWorld.

Dual System DisappointmentFacebook's dual approach, which allows both encrypted and unencrypted messages over the same system, is a "fundamentally unsafe design choice," said Nate Cardozo, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"It's just plain too easy to send an unencrypted message when the tool has two options," he told TechNewsWorld.

That said, it would have been problematic for Facebook to make all messages encrypted, Cardozo conceded. It not only would have risked losing millions of customers who want the Web-to-Web option for Messenger, but also would have required a massive amount of engineering work.

Encryption Debate EchoesThe development comes at a critical time in the technology industry. Apple recently spent months fighting a Department of Justice demand that it help create a backdoor to access data on an iPhone it wanted to search for evidence in its investigation of the San Bernardino terrorist attack last year.

Apple fiercely resisted the demand, arguing it would undermine the security of the iPhone, invade customers' privacy, and destroy consumer confidence in the product.

The case wound its way through federal court for months and put much of Silicon Valley at odds with law enforcement and national security experts who wanted the tech industry to help crack down on ISIS-related activity on social media, as well as provide greater cooperation in efforts to resolve terrorism cases.

The DoJ later found an outside firm to help it break into the iPhone used by the shooters, and Apple was left in the dark on the methods used to access the data.

URL : http://www.technewsworld.com/story/83693.html

It’s decision time in many IT departments. Which up-and-coming technology should explore for business potential? VR might drive a breakthrough in conferencing capabilities. AI could push automation to new heights. And bots hold the promise of tying together the deluge of applications being used.

But the Internet of Things looks like the best bet right now. In CompTIA’s latest research, IoT was one of the advanced tech topics that companies were most familiar with, and it was the clear leader for technologies likely to have a business impact. 52% felt that IoT was already having an impact in their organization, and 42% felt that IoT was likely to have an impact in the next 2-4 years.

While it’s great to hear that the technology is getting a warm reception, it’s a little hard to say exactly what these IoT initiatives might look like. Similar to cloud computing, the exact definition of what constitutes an IoT project will differ from one group to another. Some people might refer to connected office equipment, and others might mean smart cities. On the other hand, IoT differs from cloud computing in the initial breadth of application. Most early cloud projects involved migration of a single system and subsequent integration; most early IoT projects are extensions of ongoing activities, such as marketing efforts or inventory management.

Of course, companies are not just pursuing IoT for the heck of it. They expect to see some return on their investment. The top perceived benefits of IoT are roughly split between what could be characterized as “improving/extending existing capabilities” and “leveraging something new.” From cost savings to productivity gains to data-driven decision making, companies are utilizing IoT to continue their transformation into digital organizations.

As with any new technology, there will be some bumps along the way. Finances, of course, are standard fare when it comes to adoption challenges, whether it’s the upfront cost or the ROI justification. Some challenges are more specific, such as the complexity of these new systems or interoperability as standards and protocols are sorted out.

For the IT pro, one challenge can be tackled head on. 40% of companies cite the lack of skilled workers as a potential barrier to IoT adoption—a number that is likely to rise as more companies explore this new field. Building IoT skills starts with the basics. As CompTIA’s IT framework showed, advanced IoT skills will grow from existing skills in Infrastructure, Development, Security, and Data.  All four of these areas play together to create comprehensive IoT solutions, and any IoT specialization will primarily reside inside one of these pillars.

Two specific areas that will blend old and new skills are networking and security. Many companies encounter the need for network upgrades when adopting new technology. There is so much more data crossing the wires, and there must be adequate bandwidth, redundancy, and quality of service. With security, companies are starting to realize that a modern security approach includes not just technology, but also process management and end user education. With physical devices gaining intelligence and connectivity, this balancing act takes on a new dimension.

The Internet of Things started off with a few strikes against it. The name didn’t necessarily inspire confidence, the examples left something to be desired (zombie refrigerators, anyone?), and the previous trends of cloud and mobility had set a precedent that was tough to follow. But the potential benefits that can come from connecting our physical world to the Internet are truly remarkable, and IT pros have a great opportunity to extend their skills to drive more value for their business.

URL : http://windowsitpro.com/iot/internet-things-moving-hype-reality

Digital business models are a bit of a misnomer. It’s not digital technology that defines them; it’s their ability to create exponential value. The music and video industries, for example, weren’t redefined by converting analog to digital formats. Just ask Sony about Minidisc players and Netflix about their DVD business.

To create exponential value, it’s imperative to first create an exponential mindset. The incremental mindset focuses on making something better, while the exponential mindset is makes something different. Incremental is satisfied with 10%. Exponential is out for 10X.

In the last century, industrial business models were defined by their use of machines to create increasing returns to scale. Digital business models use network effects to create what Ray Kurzweil describes as accelerating returns to scale. The key difference is that industrial models are linear while digital models are exponential, as shown in the chart below.

While others have written about how to design exponential strategies and organizations, I want to focus here on how to create an exponential mindset. My work with clients suggests that the incremental mindset is more deeply embedded than we might think. Unless you are conscious and diligent, you can end up with a strategy that looks digital (i.e. uses digital technology) but doesn’t actually operate digitally (i.e. achieves accelerating returns).

The role of incremental and exponential mindsets vary in each phase of the business journey: launch, grow, and expand.

Launch: Vision and UncertaintyIn the launch phase of a business, the team needs to develop and refine the business model. The Lean Startup approach of test, iterate, and pivot is the right thing to do. But you also need the right way to think. Are you thinking about your business incrementally or exponentially?

The incremental mindset draws a straight line from the present to the future. A “good” incremental business plan enables you to see exactly how you will get from here to there. But exponential models are not straight. They are like a bend in the road that prevents you from seeing around the corner, except in this case the curve goes up.

Without an exponential mindset, Google would never have created such an ambitious vision as “organizing the world’s information,” Facebook would never have set out to “make the world more open and connected,” and Airbnb to “create a world where all 7 Billion people can Belong Anywhere.” Similarly, a group of innovative organizations in the public sector are out to solve global social issues by achieving “transformative scale.”

In Maine they have an expression that “You can’t get there from here.” In the launch phase, you need to realize that an exponential strategy has inherent uncertainty. You can’t know what things will look like on the other side of the curve. You can’t draw a straight line from where you are to where you are going. There’s no step-by-step plan. The exponential mindset helps you become comfortable with uncertainty and more ambitious with your vision.

Build: Courage and PatienceThese days, many companies are able to get through the launch phase with an exponential mindset. They manage their uncertainty, take the leap, and start the journey despite being unable to see around the bend. Fear of disruption and envy of unicorns can be a powerful motivator. But then something happens. Or more precisely, something doesn’t happen.

Take a look at the chart above. In the first part of the build phase, you don’t see a lot of change. It’s not until the second part when the line starts to bend. It’s simply the nature of exponential change. Things happen very slowly before they happen very quickly. If this was the only world we knew, it wouldn’t be a problem. But we were raised with an incremental mindset. So we can’t help but compare the exponential path to the incremental path. And this creates a problem.

We are accustomed to measuring progress linearly and incrementally. If 30% of the time has gone by, we assume that we should be 30% of the way there. That’s how things work in the physical world when we are traveling to a destination. But exponential models don’t work that way.

What happens is that businesses run into something I call the “expectation gap,” where the exponential strategy is at greatest risk from the incremental mindset. It’s where many companies abandon the exponential model for the incremental.

I see this consistently on a micro scale in my own work. My workshops are designed with an exponential mindset to generate new ways of thinking about marketing, culture and strategy. Somewhere around a third of the way into a workshop, the leader invariably says something like “so when are we going to get something done?” The reason is that they are still operating with an incremental mindset. A third of the time has passed, but it seems like they are only 10% of the way to our destination. In fact, most of the progress happens once the curve starts to bend. Invariably by the end of the day the same people are remarking that they can’t believe how much we got done in such a short period of time.

In your exponential journey, pay attention to when people get the most impatient for results. It’s the point in the chart where there is the largest gap between incremental and exponential paths. This expectation gap is a risk to the business strategy because the impatience can be used by opponents or skeptics to convince stakeholders to jump from the exponential to the incremental. You will have the immediate relief of having “line of sight” once again and see steady progress. But you will also have given up the possibility of accelerating returns and the opportunity to keep up with customers and competitors. The exponential mindset helps you have the courage to persevere and the patience to see it through.

Grow: Agility and ControlIn the third phase, you have managed the uncertainty of the early days, the impatience of the middle phase, and now you are firmly “in the curve.” Growth is happening faster than you can handle. At this point, the incremental mindset is to try to rein things in and get things under control. But that would be a mistake. To sustain the accelerating returns, you need to shift your mindset about how to mobilize and manage resources.

The incremental mindset assumes that it takes more inputs to produce more outputs. So as growth starts to accelerate, teams start to look for more resources in proportion to the growth. But the addition of too many people or too many resources can “flood the engine” of growth. You need an exponential mindset to figure out how 1X additional input can create 10X additional output.

You also need to apply an exponential mindset to how you manage the resources you have. The incremental mindset about management is like creating a line of dominos. Everything needs to be highly coordinated with active oversight to make progress one step at a time. The exponential mindset is like this demonstration with ping pong balls in which things happen in parallel with a focus on the interactions among participants.

As I’ve written about separately, there is a way to let go without losing control. In the exponential mindset, managers replace control of people with control of principles. The use of doctrine to guide decision-making generates alignment, consistency and empowerment. But most leaders are accustomed to making decisions rather thanempowering decisions. The anxiety from a loss of control can easily push companies off the exponential path back onto the incremental path. The exponential mindset helps to grow output faster than input, and empower teams to achieve both alignment and autonomy.

To summarize, digital business models require a shift from incremental to exponential. At the start, it takes vision and a leap of faith to commit to the unknown. In the early days, it takes courage and patience to build the foundation for growth even when results aren’t yet apparent. When growth kicks in, agility comes from empowering others and letting go without losing control. In all of the stages, the challenge is to “unlearn” familiar ways of thinking and embrace the unfamiliar. But with a shift from the incremental to exponential mindset comes the opportunity for real innovation.

URL : https://hbr.org/2016/07/how-to-create-an-exponential-mindset