Hey folks, Austin here, and it’s time for another Weekly SEO Recap (Santa Claus is Coming Edition) .

What happens if you Google SEO? You get all the latest SEO articles Google thinks are relevant to your search. But are they relevant to you? Let me be the judge of that and help you cut to the chase.

Your Start-to-Finish Guide to Using Google’s Disavow Tool

By Marie Hayness

There is a lot of back and forth in the SEO world on if Google’s disavow tool is truly necessary or not.  For our clients we’ve seen improvements in their rankings, mostly because they came to us with manual penalties, but the Google disavow tool has made us a believer.  But we had to stumble our way through the disavow process, and this article would have been so useful if we had access to something like this.  So if you’re about to delve into the VERY LONG process of trying to convince Google of removing a manual penalty this article can give you a few tips.

Pros:

– Lots of easy to follow steps

– Pictures to walk through the process

Cons:

– Long

Overall: Bookmark & Use When Needed

 

Google Maps, Yelp 7 Local SEO in 2015

By: Rachel Lindteigen

 

It’s almost the end of the year and I told myself I was going to steer clear of any “year in review” articles or “‘x’ in 2015” articles, but I made an exception for this article because it isn’t really a what to expect in 2015.  This article is more about how to deal with Pigeon and its effects on the the SERPS then a cheesy what to expect in 2015 article.  This article is a simply step by step guide to doing your Local SEO or NAP, in fact it’s one of the most simply and to the point articles I’ve read on the topic, and for that I’m grateful for.  If you don’t have a local optimization strategy then you could simply adopt this and you’ll be good to go.

Pros:

– Simple and to the point

– Local SEO Strategy

Cons:

– Needs links to delve further when hitting snags

Overall: Read It

 

5 SEO Tools You Need to Use BEFORE Publishing a YouTube Video

 

By: Ann Smarty

 

When people think of search engines they usually don’t think of YouTube, but they should be because it does more searches than Bing or Yahoo!  Doing a little keyword research going into uploading a video can definitely help increase your views, so it makes sense having a systematic breakdown on doing just that somewhere on the internet.  I’m surprised it took this long!  This article is a walk through in understanding the “market” your aiming at by understanding what they’re typing.  If you can do that and add a long tail that matches exactly what people are searching you might have a winning combination for your YouTube video.

Pros:
– Applying basic Keyword Research Techniques to YouTube

– Basic Examples

Cons:

– Needs a Winning Example

Overall: Skip It