How to fire a vendor (and still feel OK after doing it.)
I had to fire a vendor today.
When it comes to giving someone the ax, I am a far cry from Donald Trump. Did I get pleasure from the experience? Heck no. Did I lose sleep over the decision? Sure.
Did it need to be done? Yes.
Fortunately, I’ve (finally) learned when to fire someone – and how to do it well.
Chances are, you’ll have to fire someone someday. The writer who misses deadlines. The accountant who doesn’t return your calls. The consultant that isn’t teaching you anything new. It’s never easy – no matter why you have to let them go.
Looking back, I’ve made many “I should have fired them sooner” mistakes. There was the vendor who bad-mouthed me to clients and colleagues (and yes, my clients and colleagues told me what she said.). There was the flaky vendor who would do a half-assed job, make lots of mistakes, and would charge me for fixing the mistakes she made. And then there was the vendor who was so rude to clients that they refused to talk to her. At all.
In all of these cases, I gave everyone chance after chance. I sent supportive emails. We had “talks.” There would be a temporary short term improvement. Then, time would pass, old habits would kick in and we’d be back to square one. Or even square zero.
This time, I was definitely smarter and more methodical. It didn’t make the process psychologically easier, but it did make it smoother.
Here’s what I learned:
Figure out the core problem
Is the vendor missing deadlines? Are your emails to them going into a black hole…and you never hear from them in a timely manner? Or, is it just that you aren’t “clicking” with the vendor, no matter how you try? There may be a list of issues, or just one main one. Be clear about your reasons for wanting to let them go.
Do you want to work it out?
If the vendor lied to you, bad mouthed you or purposely did something to jeopardize your business, you got to let them go. Right now. I don’t care how much you like them, or if they’ve worked for you for years. Let them go. You can’t afford to work with people who don’t have your back.
If there’s room for improvement, determine your desired outcome. Maybe you need them to always get back to you by the end of the business day. Or, you want them to proof their work before sending it to you. Ask yourself what kind of behavior change you need, and when you need to see it.
Start documenting the problem
It’s easy to think, “Things aren’t that bad” and fool yourself into thinking things are OK. When you document the problem, you’re forced to acknowledge that, yes, it is a problem. It’s not a one time thing. It’s a long standing issue. Plus, the documentation helps during the next step, which is…
Talk to the vendor about it.
This is not the time to suffer in silence. If missing deadlines is unacceptable to you – tell them. Outline what deadlines they’ve missed and how that affects your business. If communication is an issue, tell them you need a faster response time – and be specific about what that means to you. I prefer to do this by email so I have the paper trail. Other people prefer to do this by phone and then they later send a follow-up email. It depends on your personal style and the relationship you have with the vendor.
You may learn that the vendor has been sick, is going through a divorce or having another problem that prevents them from giving their 100 percent. Be sympathetic, but remember that their problem isn’t your problem. It’s OK to cut them some slack. But it’s not OK to do it when it’s at the expense of your business or sanity.
I will have one – maybe two “talks” with the vendor. After that, my next step is to…
Set up consequences
Have you told the vendor what you need – and you’re still not getting it? Tell them that if things don’t improve by X date, you’ll have to let them go. At this point, your vendor may quit. Or, she’ll promise to get back on track. Promises are nice – but action is what you’re looking for. If your vendor doesn’t fulfill his or her end of the bargain, it’s time to…
Say, “You’re fired.”
If things have reached this point, you have done everything you can do. The vendor, for whatever reason, can’t do what you need – so it’s time to let them go.
Send them an email and keep it professional, factual and friendly. Tell him or her why it’s happening, refer to past documentation and sever ties immediately. If they’re in the middle of a project, find someone else who can take over. The faster you (and your vendor) can move on, the faster it’s out of everyone’s lives.
Firing someone is never fun – but it is necessary. What tips would you add to this list?
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SEO content marketing roundup, week ending May 15th
May 15, 2013 • written by Laura Crest
Content and social media marketers discuss the reality of a youthful audience and its preferences for mobile, social, and visual content. Meanwhile, YouTube introduces paid channels, Bing helps Klout out with its new “experts” feature, and local search shifts to mobile apps in a big (and affluent) way.
The SEO and search community buzz about Matt Cutts’ forecast for SEO over the next few months, and discuss the need for a new mindset around link strategy as Penguin 2.0 looms ever larger on the horizon.
Enjoy this week’s picks!
Content Marketing
Alex Clifford posts “Content Marketing in 2023: Expert Advice on the Trends that Will Matter” at Content Marketing Institute.
Lee Odden shares eight optimization fundamentals with “Want to Improve Your Online Marketing? Master These Search & Social Media Tactics” at TopRank.
Frederic Lardinois reports “Google Launches Content Recommendation Engine For Mobile Sites, Powered By Google+” at TechCrunch.
Josh Byers posts “Three Reasons a ‘Mobile First’ Philosophy is Critical to Achieving Your Business Goals” at Copyblogger.
James A. Martin shares a slideshow, “The Content Marketing Hall of Fame: 13 Ways to Build Your Business” at CIO.com.
phrase HQ assembles an illustrious list featuring “The 101 Best Copywriters in the World” at their site.
Alicia Lawrence posts “Writing Pixelated: Visual Content for Generation Y” at Spin Sucks.
Steve P. Young posts “The 2013 YouTube Marketing Guide” for video content marketers at KISSmetrics.
Tom Pick features “30 Awesome Blogging Guides, Tips and Resources” at Webbiquity.
Miranda Miller discusses “Content Marketing Tactics: Business Blogging Pros, Cons, Best Practices & Brands Doing It Right” at TopRank.
Ben Straley posts “3 Keys to Activating an Audience with Smarter Content” at Search Engine Watch.
Arnie Kuenn posts a video interview with Curata’s Pawan Deshpande on “Content Curation for Your Website” at Vertical Measures.
BtoB Magazine has released its annual “B2B Media Power 50”, listing the top b-to-b advertising vehicles in eight different categories, posted by Kate Maddox.
For fun: Simon “Media Guy” Dumenco posts “What Happens Next in Media? 9 Predictions” at Advertising Age.
Seth Godin posts “The reason they call it a browser” at his blog.
Shelly Bowen discusses “Exploring Your Brand’s Personality with Story” at Pybop.
Rae Hoffman posts a self-described rant, “Content Marketing is the ‘Escort’ of Online Marketing” at The SugarRae Blog.
Mark Emond discusses metrics and ROI with “Four Foundational Elements of Marketing Analytics Success” at MarketingProfs.
John Bonini discusses “How to Fix 6 Failing Marketing Metrics Your CEO Actually Cares About” at HubSpot.
Zach Bulygo discusses “How Being an Authority can Boost Your Online Sales” at KISSmetrics.
Lee Odden shares his keynote presentation to the Portland Communicator’s Conference with “Digital Convergence of Public Relations & Marketing” at TopRank.
Laura Hazard Owen reviews “Ping.it: Not a Google Reader replacement, but a tool to discover emerging viral content” at paidContent.
Roger Dooley posts “Persuade with Visual Metaphors” at Neuromarketing.
Karen J. Bannan posts “How real-time analytics help email marketers” at BtoB Magazine.
Danny Sullivan shares an infographic from Email Monks with “Infographic: The Challenge Of Email Success In A Fragmented Mobile World” at Marketing Land.
Jakob Nielsen shares insights into why users often fail at new tasks with “Usability for Novel vs. Routine Tasks” at his Alertbox blog.
Events:
SEO & Search
Matt Cutts discusses “What to expect in SEO in the coming months” from his Webmaster Help video, re-posted at his blog (Gadgets, Google, and SEO).
Chris Crum covers Matt Cutts’ main points nicely with “For Better Or Worse, A Lot Of Change Is Coming To Google SEO” at WebProNews.
In step with Matt Cutts’ video and post, Heather Lloyd-Martin asks “Are you writing content ‘for Google’?” at SEO Copywriting.
Referring to a tweet from Matt Cutts earlier in the week, Danny Goodwin posts “Matt Cutts: Google Penguin 2.0 Coming in ‘Next Few Weeks’” at Search Engine Watch.
Peter DaVanzo discusses post-Penguin linking strategies with “Link Madness” at SEO Book.
Michael Garrity posts “Could Google+ Play a Role in the Upcoming Penguin Update?” at Website Magazine.
Sean McGinnis shares “Link Building Techniques That STILL WORK!” at 312digital.
David Harry speaks to SEO link-building addiction with “It’s Time to Change the SEO Mindset” at Search Engine Watch.
Ron Garrett discusses “Positioning Your Business for the Future of SEO” (Whiteboard Friday) at SEOmoz.
Mani Karthik discusses “The Future Of SEO in a Socially Driven World” at Search Engine Land.
Barry Schwartz reports that “No, Publishership Isn’t Coming Soon To Google Search To Join Authorship” at Search Engine Land.
Courtney Ramirez addresses client enlightenment and managing expectations with “SEO client education: It’s your most important job” at SEO Copywriting.
Rob Toledo discusses explaining SEO to non-techies with “How My Mom Thinks Search Engines Work” at SEOmoz.
Amy Gesenhues reports “Another One Bites the Dust: Google SMS Search Shuts Down Without Warning” at Search Engine Land.
Jessica Lee discusses the website Gwern.net with “Can This Data Analysis Predict Which Google Products Will Close Next?” at Search Engine Watch.
In the first of a six-part series, Chad Kearns posts “Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Account Structure” at Portent.
Trond Lyngbo posts “How To Double Your Revenue With SEO” at Search Engine Land.
Tim Ash posts “The Secret Ingredient for Successful Websites: Effortlessness” at ClickZ.
Jennifer Horowitz posts “Site Redesign: Avoid These Mistakes” at Level 343.
Jill Whalen shares the “SEO Tools and Extensions” she uses on a regular basis at High Rankings Advisor.
Tom Demers posts “Web Analytics Software Comparison: Identifying The Right Web Analytics Tools For Your Business” at Search Engine Land.
Marc Purtell posts “Beyond Search Rankings: Using SEO to Improve Site Optimization” at Search Engine Journal.
Cyrus Shepard posts “How to Rank: 25 Step SEO Master Blueprint” at SEOmoz.
Glenn Gabe discusses “Facebook Graph Search: Local Search Ranking Factors” at Search Engine Watch.
Spencer Yao discusses “How Your Domain Name Will Impact SEO & Social Media Marketing” at Search Engine Journal.
Anna Bager discusses “How to Benefit From the Mobile Shift in Local Search” at ClickZ.
eMarketer reports “Affluents Drive Local Search App Use.”
Allison Howen discusses the latest development in the Bing-Facebook connection with “Bing’s Social Sidebar Gets Interactive” at Website Magazine.
Another Bing alliance: Anthony Ha reports “Klout Gets Into The Q&A Business By Launching Klout Experts (With Help From Bing)” at TechCrunch.
Mark Schaefer posts “Klout innovation will power search engine results” at {grow}.
Events:
Social Media Marketing
eMarketer posts “Which Social Networks Are Growing Fastest Worldwide? Twitter, Google+ see major gains in active users.”
Todd Wasserman reports that while Google+ may be catching up to Facebook, it still lags in average time spent on the site, at Mashable.
Josh Constine reports “Facebook Previews New Features For Home, Which Is Near 1M Downloads And Increases Users’ Time Spent On Facebook By 25%” at TechCrunch.
Andrea Vahl discusses “How Your Business Can Use the New Facebook Cover Photos” at Social Media Examiner.
Mark Burgess discusses “Building Your Brand With Google+” at Blue Focus Marketing.
Re-posting a video interview, Ad Age reports “Foursquare’s Crowley on Automatic Check-Ins and Privacy: ‘Just the Natural Progression.’”
“YouTube Paid Channels” headlines Social Media Examiner’s weekly news.
Frank Strong discusses “The End of Free” at Sword and the Script.
Acknowledging its 10th year, LinkedIn’s Outstory posts an interactive infographic, “A Brief History of LinkedIn.”
Host G+ Hangouts? Tim Schmoyer posts “How to Create A Permanent Link for Your Hangouts-On-Air [Creator’s Tip #90]” at ReelSEO.
Rachel Freeman posts “Overlooked and Underappreciated: the Social Share Button Strategy” at Search Engine Journal.
Peter DaVanzo posts an in-depth discussion on “Measuring Social Media” at SEO Book.
Debbie Hemley collects “26 Social Media Marketing Tips from the Pros” at Social Media Examiner.
Brian Solis discusses “New Digital Influencers: The Coming Youthquake” at his blog.
Bonnie Fuller posts “Baby-Boomer Marketers Are Misreading Millennials’ Media Behavior” at Ad Age | digital.
Gini Dietrich looks at “The Best of the Least Engaged Brands on Twitter” at Spin Sucks.
Rachel Miller asks “Is Your Company Social Media Friendly?” at WindMill Networking.
Jeff Bullas shares “How to Make Money from Your Blog: 11 Powerful Case Studies” at his blog.
Kristi Hines posts “How to Generate More Leads With Your Blog: 5 Tips” at Social Media Examiner.
Rebecca Debono posts “Top 5 hottest social media tools” at iMedia Connection.
Greg Jarboe posts “Unruly Unveils Top Vine Metrics and 100 Most Tweeted Vines” at ReelSEO.
Events:
(For an all-in-one listing and description of social media, content & inbound marketing events, check out Neal Schaffer’s “The 12 Best Social Media Conferences to Attend in 2013” at Social Media Today.)
photo thanks to Bitterjug (Mark Skipper)
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SEO Copywriting Checklist: Are you writing content “for Google”?
May 13, 2013 • written by Laura Crest
The idea that you need to write content in a particular way for it to position well in search results is a tenacious misconception. It’s also an unhealthy one, both in terms of search engine appeal and user experience.
Tune in to hear what Heather has to say about writing “for Google” and how to correct for this stubborn tendency in your own SEO content:
“Gift Baskets” Is Repeated 9 Times!
So here’s an example of what writing content “for Google” can mean, where the term “gift baskets” is repeated nine times within a teeny-tiny block of copy!
I’m sure that the person who wrote this content didn’t do so thinking “Im gonna try to spam the engines and get up to the top results!” But the problem is that a lot of folks still think this kind of keyword stuffing is the way you write good SEO content.
Relax! Google Wants You To Write Good Content
So if this has been your mindset – that you have to write separate pages “for Google” or stuff the page full of your keyphrases in order to get a good ranking – you can relax: Google wants to you to write good, quality content. Really!
- Never write copy “for Google”. Write it for your readers.
Instead of hanging onto the notion of writing your content for Google, think about writing for your readers – always focus on their experience!
You don’t want to include a keyphrase so many times that it becomes distracting. People may well bounce off your page and out of your site to find another source of information that sounds more reputable, and offers content that is easier to read.
Additionally…
- Keyword stuffing won’t help your SEO.
Google has closed that loophole. Once upon a time, sure, jamming your copy full of keywords might’ve worked – but not today. So there’s no reason to do it!
- Unsure if you added too many keyphrases? Read the copy out loud.
If you aren’t sure whether or not you’ve been heavy-handed with the use of keyphrases in your content, sometimes the best thing to do is to just print that page and read it aloud.
The same applies if you’re a site owner working with a copywriter: when s/he submits the copy, read it out loud. That way you’ll hear if the keyphrase has been used too many times.
- Think quality – not quantity.
When thinking about your content, it’s always best to think of it in terms of quality.
It’s not about how many pages you can kick out so Google starts thinking you’re an authority on “X”. It’s about how many good pages you can write for your readers, so you attract more traffic and build your brand that way!
Thanks for joining me for this week’s video! As always, if you have any questions about today’s post, or anything else for that matter, I’d love to hear from you! You can email me directly at heather@seocopywriting.com, or find me on Twitter @heatherlloyd.
image thanks to warrantedarrest (Tomas de Aquino)
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SEO content marketing roundup, week ending May 8th
May 8, 2013 • written by Laura Crest
Content marketers discuss mobile trends and innovation, the future of PR, cross-platform content creation realities, and the interplay of SEO and content marketing.
The SEO and search community note Google’s new offering in real-time analytics as well as its quiet elimination of yet more search tools. Other notable discussions include the impact of Google Now on search, the implications of its acquisition of Wavii, post- (and impending) Penguin link-building strategies, and the new role of the SEO professional.
Social media marketers discuss LinkedIn’s introduction of visual content, YouTube’s premium content monetization, Google+ overtaking Twitter, and Twitter’s extending its platform to all advertisers.
Enjoy this week’s picks!
Content Marketing
Arnie Kuenn posts his presentation on “The Intersection of Content Marketing and SEO” via Vertical Measures on SlideShare.
Lee Odden discusses “What Should Lead Your Online Marketing Strategy: SEO or Content Marketing?” at TopRank.
Joe Pulizzi shares “The Top 10 Content Marketing Strategy Lessons from the Last 15 Years” at Content Marketing Institute.
Eric Enge shares post-Penguin strategy with “How to Shift From Guest Posting to Content Marketing in 6 Basic Steps” at Search Engine Watch.
Forrester has released its 2013 Mobile Trends for Marketers report, highlighting how to become “more strategic with … mobile initiatives” as well as “game-changing mobile topics.”
In her ongoing series on mobile innovation, Christina “CK” Kerley posts “Innovating Value Propositions Through Mobile” at MarketingProfs.
Kelsey Libert shares “The Secret Recipe for Viral Content Marketing Success” at SEOmoz.
Dan Tynski posts “Mining Current Events for Content Marketing Home Runs” at BuzzStream.
Sujan Patel discusses “Mining Your Social Networks for Content Marketing Ideas” at Search Engine Journal.
David Gould posts “Rethinking Relevance in Content Marketing” at Vertical Measures.
Jeff Ogden posts “How to Organize a Digital Marketing Team – Lessons from Hubspot” at Fearless Competitor.
Gini Dietrich shares her Ragan Corporate Communicators Conference keynote with “The Future of PR: It’s Our Time to Lead” at Spin Sucks.
Paula Andruss shares “The Secrets of 7 Successful Brands” at Entrepreneur.
David Soyka posts “Be Your Brand: 5 Tips To Help Your Brand Connect With Customers” at My Blog Guest.
Jay Baer interviews Kyle Lacy of Exact Target on content creation vs. engagement with “Don’t Ignore Content in Favor of Engagement” at Convince and Convert.
MarketingSherpa’s weekly research chart is on “Use of analytics to inform customer theory.”
Cheri-percy posts “Data vs. Personas for Content Planning” (a DistilledLive video discussion) at Distilled.
Courtney Ramirez discusses “How to Perform a Content Audit” at Greenroom Interactive.
Seth Godin posts “Remind you of anything? Simple typography for non-professionals” at his blog.
Heather Lloyd-Martin discusses readability with “Does your web content pass the quick-scan test?” at SEO Copywriting.
Dan Virgillito posts “How to Write Copy in the Post-PC Era: Surrender to the Cross-Device Reality” at KISSmetrics.
Amanda Clark shares “10 Essential Components Of Effective E-mail Marketing Copywriting” at Business 2 Community.
Ben Settle discusses profitable email marketing with “How To Sell Without Selling” at Copyblogger.
Karen Talavera shares “Three Powerful Ways to Measure the Impact of Your Email Marketing” at MarketingProfs.
Heather Lloyd-Martin shares “7 tips for sales call success” at SEO Copywriting.
Miranda Miller posts “Conversion Rate Optimization Software: Choose the Right Tools for Your Business” at TopRank.
Events:
SEO & Search
Guillaume Bouchard posts “How Google Now Will Impact SEO: What You Can Do to Get a Head Start” at Search Engine Watch.
Bill Slawski discusses the ramifications of Google’s purchase of Wavii in “With Wavii, Did Google Acquire the Future of Web Search?” at SEO by the Sea.
Danny Sullivan reports “Yahoo Extends Microsoft Search Deal & Revenue Guarantees” at Search Engine Land.
Jayson DeMers discusses the anatomy and how-to of co-citations with “SEO co-citations: What they are & why they matter” at SEO Copywriting.
Michael Martinez shares “Link Building Strategies for 2013” at SEO Theory.
Pratik Dholakiya posts “The Definitive Guide to Recovery from the Unnatural Link Penalty” at Search Engine Journal.
Nick Stamoulis discusses “Who’s Name to Use for Link Building?” when using blog commenting as a linking strategy, at Brick Marketing.
The latest (non T-shirt related) Matt Cutts’ Google Webmaster Help Video addresses the question: “What’s the latest SEO misconception that you would like to put to rest?”
Citing Cutts’ video (above), Brafton posts “Is Matt Cutts saying Authorship updates are not imminent?”
Nathan Safran posts “SEO Branding: Appearance In Search Results Impacts Brand Perception” at Search Engine Land.
Rand Fishkin discusses “Why We Can’t Just Be SEOs Anymore” (Whiteboard Friday) at SEOmoz.
Thom Craver posts “New in Google Analytics: Real-Time Conversion Report” at Search Engine Watch.
John E. Lincoln posts “The Ultimate Guide to Multilingual and Multiregional SEO” at Search Engine Land.
Tom Pick shares “11 Expert PPC Guides, Tips and Techniques (and One Rant)” at Webbiquity.
Ginny Marvin reports “AdWords To End Product Extensions As PLAs Take Over,” at Search Engine Land.
eMarketer reports on declining CPC rates and rising global paid search ad spending with “Mobile Gets One Out of Five Paid Search Clicks.”
Garrett Moon discusses “5 Things You Must Do Before Jumping Into Paid Internet Advertising” at KISSmetrics.
Describing mobile, local, and apps as “the trifecta in web marketing,” Jessica Lee reports “Local Search via Non-PC Devices Quadrupled in 2012 [Study]” at Search Engine Watch.
Another search feature removed: Barry Schwartz reports “Google Local Results Drops ‘More Results Near…’ To ‘Improve’ Local Search Experience” at Search Engine Land.
SERP URL displays on Google’s chopping block too? Chris Crum posts “Webmasters Hope This Google Test Doesn’t Become A Reality” at WebProNews.
George Freitag assures with “5 SEO Strategies We Swear Aren’t Going Anywhere” at Portent.
Derek Edmond shares “5 Ways to Create Productive B2B SEO Benchmarks in a ‘Not Provided’ World” at Search Engine Watch.
Carrie Hill discusses “Using Advanced Segments & Scroll Depth To Test Content Types in Analytics” at Search Engine Land.
Lori Kirk posts “Not all traffic is created equal: Qualifying SEO & PPC visits” at Brafton.
John Gagnon shares “5 Free Excel Add-Ins to Help Digital Marketers Decipher Big Data” at ClickZ.
Cyndie Shaffstall posts “23 Keys to Targeted Landing Pages: Conversions, Attribution and SEO” at Target Marketing Magazine.
Jim Yu discusses “Optimizing For Facebook Graph Search: SEO Meets Social” at Search Engine Land.
Bill Slawski takes a departure from patents with “Bill’s Most Excellent Top 10 SEO Rules” at SEO by the Sea.
Starting off a monthly SEJ video series, Srinivas Rao posts “A Sit Down With SEO Expert Alan Bleiweiss” at Search Engine Journal.
Events:
Social Media Marketing
Thomas Watkins posts “Suddenly, Google Plus Is Outpacing Twitter To Become The World’s Second Largest Social Network” at Business Insider.
Chris Atkinson reports “Google+ Hangouts-On-Air Now Feature Live Rewind, Instant Publishing” at ReelSEO.
Ryan Hanley posts “Building Authority Online using Google Plus with Mark Traphagen” at his Content Warfare Podcast.
“LinkedIn Visual Profiles” headlines Social Media Examiner’s weekly news.
Kristi Hines posts “The 2013 LinkedIn Marketing Guide” at KISSmetrics.
Maura McGowan reports “New Instagram Feature Allows Users to Tag Brands” at Adweek.
Eric Schwartzman shares a podcast on “Why Salesforce is Closest to Pulling KPIs from Social Media” at Social Media Today.
Amada Sibley posts “Twitter Opens Advertising to All: Here’s How it Works” at HubSpot.
From Business News Daily comes “The Best Twitter Accounts for Entrepreneurs” at Mashable.
Chris Atkinson posts “YouTube Trends Adds Nifty Map for Popular Videos Across the U.S.” that shows what people are sharing as well as watching, at ReelSEO.
Mitch Joel advises “Pay Closer Attention to YouTube” via Six Pixels of Separation at Twist Image.
Adam Morgan reports “YouTube Will Now Monetize Its Premium Content” at Search Engine Journal.
Jeff Bullas shares “21 Awesome Social Media Facts, Figures and Statistics for 2013” at his blog.
James Dohnert discusses a recent LinkedIn study that indicates “Nearly 90% of Affluent Consumers Use Social Media” at Search Engine Watch.
Craig M. Jamieson discusses connection vs. engagement with “How Engaged Are You With Your LinkedIn Contacts?” at Adaptive Business Services.
Danny Brown discusses “The Crossroads of Influence Marketing” at his blog.
Rachel Sprung shares “5 Ways Marketers Can Stay Updated on Facebook Changes” at Social Media Examiner.
Jay Baer shares “4 Ways to Thump Your Competition with Better Facebook Analysis” at Convince and Convert.
Christopher Penn posts “More than 1 in 6 access Facebook only on a mobile device” at Shift Communications.
Lisa Buyer shares “22 Facebook PR Secrets Every Community Manager Should Know” at Search Engine Watch.
Scott Gerber discusses “8 Facebook Graph Search Pros and Cons for Marketing” at Mashable.
Michael Stelzner interviews Facebook wizard Jon Loomer with “Facebook Ads and Beyond: What Marketers Need to Know” at Social Media Examiner.
Semil Shah shares several good references in posting “Iterations: A Youthful Rebellion Against The Permanence Of Facebook’s Walled Garden” at TechCrunch.
Jennifer Horowitz talks social media planning and blogging consistency with “Does Your Blog or Social Interaction Suffer When….” At Level 343.
Brian Solis shares an edited excerpt from his new book (What’s the Future of Business…) with “The First Mile: The Broken Link of Social Media Customer Service” at his blog.
Brent Leary interviews Sprout Social’s Justyn Howard with “Social Media Management Evolution” at Small Business Trends.
Kelsey Jones posts “How To Organize A Social Media Content Strategy” at Marketing Land.
Natalie Saumure shares “2 Great Tools to Help with Your Sales Process” via social media marketing at Business 2 Community.
Events:
(For an all-in-one listing and description of social media, content & inbound marketing events, check out Neal Schaffer’s “The 12 Best Social Media Conferences to Attend in 2013” at Social Media Today.)
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SEO co-citations: What they are & why they matter
May 7, 2013 • written by Jayson DeMers
Once you’ve been in this industry for a while, you learn to pay attention to what’s going on, but not to jump to conclusions and pull your hair out every time someone sneezes.
Link building has always been an integral part of performing effective SEO on any site, regardless of whether it’s a big brand or small mom-n-pop shop around the corner. But when Penguin hit the scene in April 2012, a whole new mindset had to be adopted.
No longer could you easily get away with ranking a lower-quality site merely by creating an army of backlinks for it. And in the SEO world, heads were spinning. To this day, many agree on some principles of links, building them, which ones are good, and which ones really help your site (or hurt them). Other times, there’s disagreement.
Co-citations are becoming a hot topic in the SEO world these days, and for good reason. Several years ago there was a lot of discussion about them; it was the hot new thing for SEO professionals to talk about. But the talk sizzled down… until very recently.
What are co-citations?
Co-citations can be a little difficult to wrap your head around. But I’m hoping you’ll leave here with a basic understanding of them. Co-citations mean that if someone links to your site as well as a well-known, authority site, within or closely related to your industry, in the same article, then you will share some of that authority site’s respect from Google.
Even that was something you had to read several times to try to understand, right?
Maybe this will help:
In essence, the authority or respect from Google flows both to and from a link. Article “A” links to authority site “B,” and smaller site “C.” The authority from authority site “B” transfers back to article “A” (which is why it’s always good to link an authority site to your content), but it also carries over to smaller site “C.” Got that?
Now, I can just hear you saying, “If I’m writing article ‘A,’ I certainly don’t want to link to a better-known, big-boy competitor’s site!” Well, yes, it can be tricky. What you want to do in this situation is find something relevant and helpful to the reader, but not something that would be a direct competitor to you and your content.
For instance, let’s say you’re a travel agent. You aren’t going to want to link to Tripology or some big travel company. An acceptable alternative might be to link to a well-known luggage store or travel guide books on Amazon for where your readers are interested in going.
This concept has also been referred to as SEO co-citation and similar terms. It shouldn’t be confused with local SEO citations, though.
The shifting perspectives on co-citations
This has been a pretty well-known concept in the SEO industry for a while. But today, the strategy of using co-citations seems to be shifting. The same principles still basically apply, but now we’re going deeper, due to the need to respond and adapt to Google’s constantly changing algorithm. We should be concerned not only about who we’re linking to and who’s creating content that links to us and authority sites, but also the anchor text.
The age-old practice of using keywords as the anchor text is out. Instead, Google seems to be factoring in the words that surround or are in close proximity to the anchor text, as well as the context and subject of the entire article.
Using the example above, in which we imagined you are a travel agent, here’s an example of a great link to have pointing at your site: A blogger for an African Safari company writes a piece about the new day trip they offer. They’ve noticed a spectacular deal you have right now for travel to Africa and link to you saying: “And if you’re looking for a great discount on traveling to Africa, click here.”
They’re using only the “click here” for the anchor text, but it has “discount on traveling to Africa” very close to it. Let’s say they’ve also linked to Wikipedia for the term “African safari” and to a guidebook on Amazon.com.
Essentially, you’re now sharing the authority of Wikipedia, Amazon, and that company’s blog. Plus, you’re keeping Google’s Penguin algorithm on your good side because the link anchor text isn’t keyword-rich.
So how do you make this happen?
I’m hoping this has helped you understand what co-citations are, how they’re shifting, and why you should be striving to get as many of them as you can. But that leads to the next question: How can you get them?
The best advice is to create content that’s not just for SEO, or purely for the sake of link-building, but to be helpful to the user. Every article, post, video, infographic, or whatever you create should focus on a targeted theme. It should be insightful or trigger an emotion among your readers so they feel encouraged to share it within their networks.
The more people who discover it, and like it, the more people will link to you; the hope is that they’ll also link to related authority sites.
If you’re actually creating content to use for linking back to your site (guest posts, for example), remember to avoid always using your keywords as anchor text. Instead, use different keywords in close proximity to your anchor text. And don’t forget to link to authority sites that are related to your industry.
If you create a post that links to resources the reader finds useful, and if you create content for your own site doing the same… co-citations will come naturally, along with better rankings, traffic, leads, and sales.
About the Author ~ Jayson DeMers
Jayson DeMers is the founder & CEO of AudienceBloom, a Seattle-based SEO agency, as well as Crackerize.com, a lyrics-humor website. You can contact him on LinkedIn, Google+, or Twitter.
image thanks to Dzhus (Dmitry Dzhus)
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SEO Copywriting Checklist: Does your web content pass the quick-scan test?
May 6, 2013 • written by Laura Crest
A visually overwhelming page filled with dense copy isn’t inviting. More likely than not, a reader confronted with such a page will bounce off it in preference for a competing site with more reader-friendly content.
So tune in to learn how to structure your copy for quick scanning to leverage time-on-site and conversions!
Do You Really Want To Read This Copy? Really?
This first screenshot is an example of a visually overwhelming page. Chances are, when you’re looking at this page, you might see the headline, and a lot of text – but you’re probably not going very deep into the copy and reading it.
That’s the challenge for really copy-dense pages. You don’t see a lot of white space, and the text is structured in such a way that it looks like a whole bunch of paragraphs that just go on, and on, and on…
If you think about your own searching behavior, it’s likely that if you were to land on the page like that shown – even if you might be interested in the information – you might back out of the site to find another source, because this is just hard to read!
Much Better!
Now compare this to a page from 37 Signals (I’ve written about how much I like their site before).
As you can see from the slide, there’s certainly a lot of text on this page, but it’s structured in a way that makes it easy to read: you have bullet points, you have a headline, you have sub-headlines, and smaller paragraphs.
Things To Think About
- Write shorter paragraphs, use bullet points…anything to add more white space.
- Sub-headlines are great for quick-scan readers.
- Remember your mobile readers!
Besides breaking up your content with shorter paragraphs and bullet points, you want to think about using sub-headlines: they’re great for quick-scan readers!
Looking at the 37 Signals example, you’ll notice that even if you don’t read what’s in the paragraph copy, you can really get a feel for what they’re saying just by scanning the sub-headlines: “Great service is everything” and “Our customers are our investors”.
Also, you’ll want to remember your mobile readers! Going back to the example of visually overwhelming, dense copy, try to imagine looking at that page on your smart phone – it’s really going to be difficult to read!
If you’re getting a lot of mobile traffic and have these kinds of challenging pages, you’re missing a lot of conversion opportunities! So you definitely want to structure your content with your mobile audience in mind, as well.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s SEO Copywriting Checklist video! As always, if you need any help or have questions, or if you have feedback on today’s post, I’d love to hear from you: zip me an email at heather@seocopywriting.com, or find me on Twitter @heatherlloyd.
image thanks to Naomi Ibuki
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SEO content marketing roundup, week ending May 1st
May 1, 2013 • written by Laura Crest
Content marketers share rich online marketing resources, and discuss mobile app usage, video content marketing, Authorship and AuthorRank, blogging, and content curation.
In the SEO and search community, Google Now displays omniscient predictive powers and hints at a future of machine-learning search technologies, the Penguin update is predicted to come soon and with a vengeance, while discussions and presentations on social media’s influence on search (as well as Authorship and AuthorRank) abound.
For its part, the social media marketing industry notes the search perks of Google+ (even for B2B), and discusses Facebook’s open graph, LinkedIn’s new Contacts feature, branding, influence, reputation cleanup, and ROI.
And to lead off, CERN marks 20 years’ of the World Wide Web by recreating the first website ever, with “Twenty years of a free, open web.” (More discussion of CERN’s “techversary” celebration and its broader mission can be found at Gizmodo and Engadget.)
Enjoy this week’s picks!
Content Marketing
Kristi Hines compiles “The Top 75 Must-Read Online Marketing Blogs” at Unbounce.
Referring to content marketing as “the new SEO,” Neil Patel and Kathryn Aragon co-author “The Advanced Guide to Content Marketing,” available as a free download at Quicksprout.
Mauro D’Andrea shares “51 Practical Resources to Increase Blog Traffic” at Blog Growth.
Reader favorites on the art of blogging are shared with “Blogging: 4 experts share their favorite tips & strategies” at SEO Copywriting.
Isla McKetta posts “How to Blog: Humanizing Your Brand” at Portent.
Sarah Perez posts “Flurry: U.S. App Audience Now Roughly Equal To Internet Users On Laptops & Desktops” at TechCrunch.
Altimeter’s Jeremiah Owyang’s Marketo Keynote on Converged Media is featured with “The revenge of content in marketing and media” at the Interact Congress Blog.
Lee Odden shares insightful lead generation stats among different marketing channels before discussing “The Best Marketing Investment You’ll Ever Make” at TopRank.
Marketing Sherpa’s weekly research chart looks at “Measuring website optimization ROI.”
Katie Burke asks six experts to give their input with “6 Expert-Endorsed Ways to Improve Your Marketing TODAY” at HubSpot.
Leo Widrich discusses emotion and color theory with “Why Facebook is blue: The science of colors in marketing” at The Buffer Blog.
Jakob Nielsen talks usability with “Users’ Pagination Preferences and ‘View All’” at his Alertbox.
Danny Brown’s Sunday Share features “Disruptive Technologies and the Digital Revolution” by Carlos Domingo, President and CEO of Telefonica I&D.
Mike Volpe shares findings from HubSpot’s 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report with “10 Inbound Discoveries That Will Disrupt Marketing Forever” at HubSpot.
Dennis McCafferty posts “How to Stop Jargon from Pulling the Plug Out of Your Powerful Content” at Content Marketing Institute.
Gary Hennerberg and Perry Alexander co-author “Short Video vs. Long Video: The Results” at Target Marketing Magazine.
Shelly Bowen posts “Writing Video Content: Strategy Makes It Easier” at Pybop.
Ted Karczewski interviews key people at video solutions provider Conviva with “Why video content analytics are critical for an optimal user experience” at Brafton.
Mark Walker addresses B2B marketers with “How to Use Video Content to Drive Awareness, Leads, and Sales: A Guide” at Content Marketing Institute.
Ann Smarty publishes her Pubcon NOLA presentation, “Google Authorship & AuthorRank for Content Marketers” on SlideShare.
Brad Miller shares five takeaways from his interview with Guy Kawasaki with “Guy Kawasaki Talks Content Marketing, Social & Google+” at Search Engine Watch.
Pawan Deshpande posts “Content Curation Guidelines for Where to Share” at Curata.
Anthony Kosner posts “New Wave of Curation Platforms Hit Targeted Audiences” at Contently’s The Content Strategist.
Virginia Nussey discusses “SEO-Friendly Content Curation in a Post-Panda World” at Bruce Clay, Inc.
Purna Virji posts “How to Create Effective Content to Help SEO & Sales: 3 Top Ideas” at Search Engine Watch.
Barry Feldman discusses “Why You Shouldn’t Do Content Marketing” at Convince and Convert.
Joe Pulizzi discusses “The 3 Building Blocks to Content Marketing Strategy” at Content Marketing Institute.
Miranda Miller posts “Do Advertorials & Native Advertising Fit In Your Content Marketing Strategy?” at TopRank.
Events:
SEO & Search
Simon Penson paints a picture of “Digital Marketing When Computers Can Think,” asking several industry experts for their take on marketing in the future, at Zazzle Media.
Danny Sullivan posts “The Amazing ‘Google Now’ – When Google Searches Before You Think To” at Search Engine Land.
Beyond Google Now’s predictive capabilities, there’s mobile thinking potential…Bill Slawski posts “Google Granted Patent on Mobile Machine Learning” at SEO by the Sea.
Jennifer Cowan reports “Google Now Hits iPhone, iPad (Apple’s Siri Could Be Usurped By Competitor)” at SiteProNews.
Citing a new report on mobile search by Google and Neilsen, Claire Brinkley posts “55% of mobile search conversions happen within an hour” at eConsultancy.
Ian Lurie posts “Machine Learning and Link Spam: My Brush With Insanity” at SEOmoz.
Kristi Kellogg interviews Bruce Clay on Google’s imminent Penguin update with “Bruce Clay on Expecting and Escaping Google Penguin’s Wrath” at Bruce Clay, Inc.
Citing recent Matt Cutts’ (Google Webmaster Help) video(s), Chris Crum posts “Google Has People Scared To Link To Their Own Content” at WebProNews.
David Ciccarelli shows “What a Penguin Recovery Looks Like” at YouMoz.
Daniel Dannenberg distinguishes between literal and semantic search with an infographic showing “How Google Understands You” at Vertical Measures.
Jonathan Schikowski reviews a cool tool he created for browsing from a search engine’s perspective with “The world really needs another SEO browser” at Search News Central.
Charles Montgomery posts a “Pubcon NOLA Recap: Key Themes to the Future of SEO” at TQE Marketing.
Jayson DeMers outlines a great metaphorical SEO strategy with “Why SEO Is Like An RTS Game (and why you should care)” at SEOmoz.
Matt Morgan shares “Top Google Website Optimization Resources” at Search Engine Watch.
Robert Miller shares “5 Google Analytics Time- and Sanity-Savers” at ClickZ.
Annie Cushing posts “Deduplicate Your Google Analytics Reports in Excel” at Search Engine Land.
Michael Martinez posts an in-depth look at “Which SEO Tools Should You Use and When?” at SEO Theory.
Avinash Kaushik discusses data strategy metrics (or lack thereof) with “Eight Silly Data Things Marketing People Believe That Get Them Fired” at Occam’s Razor.
Rand Fishkin discusses “Fixing the Broken Culture of SEO Metrics” in the latest SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday presentation.
Citing a recent eMarketer report on robust U.S. retail ecommerce, Brafton posts “SEO content helps brands take advantage of rising ecommerce spend.”
Heather Lloyd-Martin addresses ecommerce retailers with “SEO Copywriting Checklist: Are your product descriptions costing you customers?” at SEO Copywriting.
John Doherty posts “Competitor Research In An Inbound Marketing World” at SEOmoz.
Alan Bleiweiss shares his Pubcon NOLA presentation, “In-House SEO Strategies – Using Data To Gain Allies” on SlideShare.
Aaron Wall takes Google to task for encouraging user-generated spam on social media sites with “Getting Granular With User Generated Content” at SEO Book.
Tom Bennet posts “Forum Spam – A Practical Guide” at SEO Gadget.
Alluding to Google’s Content Quality Guidelines, Josh McCoy posts “Website Indexation Audit: How to Find & Remove Non-Essential Content” at Search Engine Watch.
Gabriella Sannino posts “Social Media or Search: What You Should Know” at Level 343.
Arnie Kuenn shares his PubCon NOLA presentation, “Social Media Influence on SEO,” at the Vertical Measures SlideShare channel.
Eric Enge shares his Pubcon NOLA presentation on “Authorship and Author Rank: The Interaction with Social Media” at his SlideShare channel.
Mark Traphagen pens an in-depth post, “Google Author Rank and Authorship: What We Know So Far” at WindMill Networking.
Jayson DeMers posts “How Social Media is Changing the SEO Industry” at Search Engine Journal.
Amy Gesenhues posts “Facebook Offers An In-Depth Look At The Natural Language Interface Of Graph Search” at Search Engine Land.
Events:
Social Media Marketing
Referring to Google’s rollout of “interactivity” to Google+ posts, Greg Finn describes “How Google+ Interactive Posts Push CTAs & Deep Linking Directly Within A Post” at Marketing Land.
Finn also reports “Google Rewards App Developers Using Google+ Sign-In With Better Visibility On Google Search” at Search Engine Land.
Jeff Ogden posts “B2B Marketers See Google Plus Becoming An Increasingly Useful Social Platform” at Fearless Competitor.
“LinkedIn Contacts App” headlines Social Media Examiner’s weekly news.
In greater detail, Pamela Vaughan posts “LinkedIn Launches New Contacts Tool to Make Relationship Management Easier” at HubSpot.
Brian Solis discusses “The Imminent Shift from Social to Digital Engagement” at his blog.
Rebecca Murtagh posts “10 Vital Steps to Building Social Influence” at Search Engine Watch.
Kelly Jo Horton discusses “What Facebook Graph Search Means for Your Business” at Marketo (B2B Marketing).
Mark Luskus posts “How Facebook Advertising is Changing with Open Graph” at KISSmetrics.
Justin Lafferty posts “Facebook’s Page Admin Panel Trades Mediocrity for Monetization” at AllFacebook.
Ian Cleary shares “21 Social Media Tool and Technology Tips that will Make your Day” at Jeffbullas’s Blog.
Emil Protalins reports “Digg finds over 40% of respondents are willing to pay for a Google Reader replacement, beta coming in June” at The Next Web.
Gini Dietrich shares “Eight Steps to Clean-Up Your Online Reputation” at Spin Sucks.
D Bnonn Tennant discusses “What Branding Really Means, and Why it’s Usually Code for BS” at KISSmetrics.
Giselle Abramovich lists “15 Alarming Facts About Brands” at Digiday.
Katie Elizabeth discusses “3 Recent Facebook Updates Brands and Businesses Must Know About” at Level 343.
Greg Levitt discusses the significance of click-back rates with “Are Publishers Only Getting Social ‘Half Right’?” at ClickZ.
Amanda Alvarez posts “Predicting Twitter popularity is all about probability” at GigaOM.
Dilip Venkatachari posts “Finding the ROI in Social Media: No Silver Bullet” at ClickZ.
Ken Yeung reports “Twitter is reportedly testing two-factor authentication following multiple hacks on user accounts” at The Next Web.
Jeff Bullas posts “How to Herd Cats on Twitter” at his blog.
Michael Stelzner interviews business trainer and Pinterest marketing aficionado Melanie Duncan with “Pinterest: How to Drive More Traffic to Your Site With Pinterest” in Social Media Examiner’s weekly podcast.
Events:
(For an all-in-one listing and description of social media, content & inbound marketing events, check out Neal Schaffer’s “The 12 Best Social Media Conferences to Attend in 2013” at Social Media Today.)
photo thanks to Rick McCharles
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Blogging: 4 experts share their favorite tips & strategies
April 30, 2013 • written by Laura Crest
Following up on that thread and twisting it a tad, today we feature four reader favorites about blogging by experts who shared their favorite tips and strategies with us!
Learn: how to land a guest post gig, what to watch for when writing and publishing your blog, how to write a quality post in a time crunch, and the content marketing mojo of blogging beyond SEO.
And enjoy!
8 steps to landing guest posts
Widely known in the SEO and blogging community as the owner of MyBlogGuest and SEOsmarty, Ann Smarty writes an expert mini-guide on how to land guest post gigs, every time!
Beyond SEO: The content marketing power of the blog
Brick Marketing’s Nick Stamoulis discusses why blogging makes for a powerful content marketing strategy and savvy business practice in establishing yourself as a go-to resource for your clients and becoming an expert in your vertical.
5 things that make me stop reading a blog post
Written from her perspective as the (then) Managing Editor of Search Engine Journal, Melissa Fach discusses what she can’t abide in a blog post. With its inclusion of readability and usability, this is especially helpful information for aspiring bloggers!
Write a (good) blog post in 1 hour – here’s how!
Our own Heather Lloyd-Martin shares 8 pro tips for cranking out a fun, informative, quality blog post in a time crunch. (It can be done, and well!)
image thanks to Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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SEO Copywriting Checklist: Are your product descriptions costing you customers?
April 29, 2013 • written by Laura Crest
Today’s video is addressed to those of you in e-Commerce retail, and asks: are your product descriptions costing you customers?
Tune in as Heather shows what works, and what does not, in well-optimized product copy:
YAWN…There’s Nothing Here That Screams “Buy Me!”
Well-written product descriptions are a blind spot for a lot of e-retailers, as evidenced by this first screenshot: you have the picture, and then a very, very short description of the product.
As written, the text certainly does the job in terms of the product’s technical specifications, but it doesn’t have any descriptive copy that screams “buy me!”
There’s nothing here that is targeted towards the reader that will tempt them to take that next conversions step.
Compare this example to what you’ll find on the lululemon site…
Great, Descriptive SEO Copy
This second screenshot is actually just a snippet of the product page. There’s a big picture at the top and there are the technical specifications for the shorts down below, but there the similarities end.
The product description is definitely SEO copy – the keyphrases are in there – but the tone and feel of the content is very fun: it’s engaging, and it’s highly targeted towards their audience.
And the lululemon copy provides much more information about the benefits that people will realize when they buy these shorts, as opposed to the previous example.
So you can see how this content is much more compelling. Especially if you’re dealing with products with a higher price point, then the more compelling the content, and the more you can demonstrate that value and the benefits, the more items you’re going to sell!
Highly Descriptive Copy Sells – And Makes You More Money!
At the end of the day, highly descriptive product copy will help you make more money from your site. So if you’re selling products online:
- Think beyond super-short product descriptions.
I know in a lot of cases you may think it’s easier to just do it short and sweet, and let the picture do the selling, but in many cases people want to have more information. And because…
- People can’t touch the product online – so you need to create highly descriptive text.
Rich, descriptive copy helps potential customers visualize what it would be like if they owned that product, so it definitely helps them take that next conversions step.
And like the lululemon example, you can…
- Use tone and feel to differentiate your offer.
This is especially important if you are selling products that other retailers sell online as well – and it might be that you and your competitors have similar price points, as well.
So who are people going to buy from?
They’re going to buy from the site that they “click” with the most, so that tone and feel of writing towards the target audience can really help generate more sales!
Thanks for joining me for this latest installment of the SEO Copywriting Checklist series! As always, if you have any questions at all, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me at heather@seocopywriting.com, or find me on Twitter @heatherlloyd.
photo thanks to StormKatt
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SEO content marketing roundup, week ending April 24th
April 24, 2013 • written by Laura Crest
Other highlights include B2B marketing, Facebook’s new mobile design for business pages, Twitter’s keyword ad targeting, and the “failure” of social media for small businesses.
Meanwhile, SEO and search marketers are crying foul over Google’s removal of yet another useful tool, related searches, as well as its depletion of organic traffic via its Knowledge Graph and Google Maps.
Enjoy this week’s picks!
Content Marketing
Ian Lurie shares his University of Washington Web Council presentation with “Weird, Useful, Significant: Internet marketing in 2013” at Portent.
Joe Pulizzi discusses “12 Roles Essential to the Future of Content Marketing” at Content Marketing Institute.
Tom Pick compiles and reviews “33 Phenomenal Content Marketing and Copywriting Guides and Tips” at Webbiquity.
Joe Lazauskas posts “Why Smart Brands Are Breaking the First Rule of Content Marketing” at Contently’s The Content Strategist.
Chantielle MacFarlane posts “Don’t Let Your Content Marketing Hit A Wall” at Unbounce.
Danny Brown’s The Sunday Share features a SlideShare presentation by John Lane of Centerline Digital, “Content Marketing Art of War,” featuring case studies “on how brands are adapting to the new content-driven marketplace.”
Angie Nikoleychuk continues her Content Criminal Minds series with “Content Criminal Minds: Fast & easy ways to streamline your content strategy” at SEO Copywriting.
Shelly Bowen posts a “Content Strategy Spring Cleaning Checklist” at Pybop.
Jason Hirthler discusses “Seven Essential Skills for the Content Strategist” at MarketingProfs.
Mike Pantoliano posts “Measuring and Increasing the ROI of Your Content Resources” at SEOmoz.
Jenny Halasz discusses user search intent with “The Informational Content Advantage” at Search Engine Land.
Bob Geller posts “How to Curate Content Like a Pro” at WindMill Networking.
Reporting from PaidContent Live 2013, Eliza Kern posts “5 startups changing the way the news business delivers content” at paidContent.
Anthony Kosner posts “What Publishers Can Learn from Google’s Patented News Article Rankings” at Contently’s The Content Strategist.
Celina Jones posts “Is your Content Boring? 8 Types of Content Every Business Should Consider Publishing” at Jeff Bullas’s Blog.
Ginny Soskey posts “7 B2B Companies to Admire for Exceptional Visual Content” at HubSpot.
Lee Odden discusses holistic B2B marketing with “Drive More Demand for Your B2B Business with Optimized & Socialized Content Marketing” at TopRank.
MarketingProfs’ sponsor, Optify, has released its 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, available as a free download.
Citing a recent study of U.S. B2B marketers, Vahe Habeshian reports “B2Bs Struggling With Online Marketing Mix; Sales Cycle Gets Longer” at MarketingProfs.
MarketingSherpa’s weekly research chart, based off its 2013 Marketing Analytics Benchmark Report, looks at the most frustrating challenges with marketing analytics in 2012.
Frank Strong discusses “Five Ways to Inspire a Culture for Content Marketing” at Spin Sucks.
Carl Friesen posts “Thought Leadership Strategy: 3 Ways to Leverage Live Event Content” at Content Marketing Institute.
Mitch Joel posts “Die, Thought Leaders, Die, Die, Die…” at Twist Image’s Six Pixels of Separation.
Seth Godin posts “You don’t have to pander” at his blog.
Events:
SEO & Search
James Dohnert digests Google’s 31-percent increase in year-over-year Q1 revenue with “Google Reports $13 Billion in Q1 2013 Revenues” at Search Engine Watch.
Danny Sullivan warns site owners to pay attention to user-generated content on their sites, reporting “Google Hits Mozilla With Spam Penalty Over User Generated Content” at Search Engine Land.
Matt Cutts warns against uploading too much content at once in this Google Webmaster Help video.
AJ Kohn sounds off on Google for removing a valuable tool with “(Hulk Mad) Google Removes Related Searches” at Blind Five Year Old.
Ben Goodsell posts “SERP Conditioning: How Google Maps & the Knowledge Graph are Stealing Organic Traffic” at Search Engine Watch.
Tommy Landry posts “Semantic Web: Are You Taking Advantage of Semantic Search?” at Search Engine Journal.
Arnie Kuenn shares his PubCon NOLA presentation, “Social Media Influence on SEO,” at the Vertical Measures SlideShare channel.
Dan Barker shares “6 Free Realtime Google Analytics Dashboards” that work for any type of site, at his Notes.
A “Quick Guide to Universal Analytics for E-Commerce” is posted at Website Magazine.
Based on the SES New York 2013 session by the same name, Amman Badlani posts “Driving Consumer Insights With Mobile Analytics” at Search Engine Watch.
Benjamin Spiegel posts “Optimizing Videos for YouTube Search” at ClickZ.
Neil Patel posts “How to Effectively Build an SEO Campaign From The Ground Up” at Quicksprout.
Thom Craver reports “Google Site Speed Study Says the Web is Getting Faster” at Search Engine Watch.
Speaking of the need for speed, Andy Schaff posts “Portent.com: They’ve gone to plaid” at Portent.
AJ Kohn discusses Google’s “internal metric” of search success with “(Why You Need To Understand Google’s Obsession With) Time To Long Click” at Blind Five Year Old.
Brian Dean compiles an ambitious “Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List” at Backlinko.
Heather Lloyd-Martin posts “SEO Copywriting Checklist: Don’t neglect your keyphrase research!” at SEO Copywriting.
Ruth Burr speaks to a holistic approach to keywords with her Whiteboard Friday presentation on “Keyword-Driven Personas” SEOmoz.
Sean Quadlin posts “Know When It’s Time to Delete Your Paused Keywords” at PPC Hero.
Emma North discusses “Why Landing Page Analysis Is The New Rank Tracking” at Koozai.
Jayson DeMers posts “[How To] Create Landing Pages that Convert & Rank Well in Search” at Unbounce.
Peep Laja discusses “5 Principles of Persuasive Web Design” at Conversion XL.
Alex Moss shares “5 Basic Tips to Improve WordPress for SEO and the User Experience” at Search Engine Watch.
Andres Isidoro posts “Public Relations SEO: How AuthorRank Can Help” at Spin Sucks.
Ted Karczewski shares “6 Authorship examples – including three businesses that get it” at Brafton.
Events:
Social Media Marketing
Pamela Vaughan posts “Facebook Launches New Mobile Design for Business Pages” at HubSpot.
“Facebook App Chat Heads” headlines Social Media Examiner’s weekly news.
Gareth Morgan reports “Twitter Launches Keyword Targeting in Timelines” at Search Engine Watch.
Miranda Miller posts “Never Miss an Opportunity to Engage: Social Marketing Tools to Connect with Influencers” at TopRank.
Mark Schaefer posts “25 social media influencers Forbes ignored, and why” at Businesses {grow}.
Bill Miltenberg interviews Margot Sinclair Savell on measuring influencers with “Measuring Influence Requires More than Counting Social Media Followers” at PRNews Online.
Cotton Delo reports “Tumblr Launches Mobile Ads…In Big Revenue Push” at Ad Age | digital.
Tomer Cohen posts a video featuring LinkedIn’s new mobile app, “A New Mobile Experience Designed for the Everyday Professional,” at the (Official) LinkedIn Blog.
Josh Wolford reports “To Help Content Creators, YouTube Will Up Video Visibility on the Homepage” in its efforts to make its homepage ‘smarter,’ at WebProNews.
Mitch Joel addresses “The Failure Of Social Media” for “the vast majority of small businesses” at Twist Image’s Six Pixels of Separation.
Shanelle Mullin posts “How to Master Social Customer Acquisition” at KISSmetrics.
Danny Brown posts “Empathy is a Social Currency” at his blog.
Courtney Ramirez posts “How to ‘Spy’ Your Way to Better Social Media Writing” at WindMill Networking.
Mark Jackson interviews Rob Garner, VP at SEMPO and author of Search & Social, with “Search & Social Synergy: Build Buzz, Get Links, Grow Your Brand,” at Search Engine Watch.
John Paul Aguiar shares “11 Steps To Building Your Brand On Twitter” at his blog.
Drake Baer discusses “What It Means To Your Personal Brand When You Connect On LinkedIn” at Fast Company.
Jay Baer’s latest Social Pros Podcast features Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You, with “How to Take Charge of Your Personal Brand,” at Convince and Convert.
Events:
(For an all-in-one listing and description of social media, content & inbound marketing events, check out Neal Schaffer’s “The 12 Best Social Media Conferences to Attend in 2013” at Social Media Today.)
photo thanks to PsJeremy
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