SEO content marketing roundup, week ending March 14th, 2012

The spring equinox is just around the corner –  have you noticed its telltale manic weather in your locale? Perhaps reflecting the March madness is this week’s latest and greatest Web writing news, as it defies any coherent, unifying thread!

Content marketers are all over the map with talk about blogging, e-mail design and more, while SEO and search folks run the gamut from detailed how-to’s to overarching thought pieces, and social media marketers discuss everything from YouTube to authority to social link graphs…name it, it’s being chatted up…So hang onto your hat and enjoy an early spring blast of news & links!

Content Marketing

Lee Odden discusses how to increase your blog traffic, readership and community at Top Rank.

So are the content needs of your audience caught in your blind spot? A sharp read by Mark Burgess at Blue Focus Marketing.

Here’s a bright thought: using data to find those most likely to “click” is posted by Gabe Donnini at Marketing Land.

Wayne English posts a how-to on using “sound” reputation management as a way to respond to negative feedback at Content Marketing Institute.

Julie Perry answers three common questions about creating web videos for online marketing at Target Marketing Magazine.

Jeff Bullas lists nine “awesome” reasons for using infographics in your content marketing at his blog.

Marketing Sherpa’s Research Chart of the week features the rising financial expectations among CMOs for their email marketing programs.

In a related email marketing post, Marketing Sherpa features a how-to on email design with five insights to improve open and clickthrough rates.

Stacey Acevero posts a great infographic on the evolution of a PR pro at PR Web.

Greg Sterling delves deeper into the prevailing headlines/thought about consumers’ supposed preference for the mobile web to app’s at Search Engine Land.

Cheryl Burgess takes on the ROI of business blogs with “Do the Math to Calculate the ROI of Business Blogs” at Blue Focus Marketing.

SEO & Search

Hope for the keyword data challenged (aren’t we all): Ben Goodsell posts “Recovering (Not-Provided) Keyword Data” at Search Engine Watch.

So are you using the right keywords on your site? Stoney G. DeGeyter posts a simple 3-rule test at Search Engine Journal.

Dr. Pete posts an open letter to new SEO’s at SEOmoz.

Also for new SEO’s: Jenny Halasz posts tips for growing your keyword “seeds” with Excel formulas at Search Engine Land.

Brian Massey (“The Conversions Scientist”) posts an astute how-to on designing your website for profit (rather than your ego) at Search Engine Land.

Ian Lurie posts how marketing “hubris” (remember anything from college humanities?) will get you killed (especially in search) at Conversation Marketing.

An exceptional read by Aaron Wall on Google’s big-brand bias (and much more), “Branding & the Cycle,” is posted at SEObook.

Rand Fishkin discusses SEO nomenclature with “The Brand of SEO and the Trend of Inbound Marketing” at SEOmoz.

Bill Slawski sleuths out a missing piece of the Google search puzzle with “How Google Data Centers may be Split between Regional and Global  Data” at SEO by the Sea.

Citing Google’s latest Webmaster tools update, Vanessa Fox questions whether its revamp of its crawl errors is for the better at Search Engine Land.

Avinash Kaushik posts “ A Big Data Imperative: Driving Big Action” with his usual acumen at Occam’s Razor.

Eric Ward posts “4 reasons the social link graph will have to improve” (from a search perspective) at Search Engine Land.

Will Critchlow shares the link-building tools used at Distilled (many of them free) with his guest post at SEOmoz.

Greg Finn posts how “Google Meets Miss Manners” by encouraging searchers to thank those who +1’ed content directly in search results – no kidding – at Search Engine Land.

Social Media Marketing

New YouTube changes headline Social Media Examiner’s weekly news.

Kerry Dean shares his mission for finding the perfect social-sharing badge implementation with “The Internet: It’s Like Real Life, Only With Buttons,” at Search Engine Land.

Danny Goodwin posts a quick look at the latest reports showing how social is influencing advertising with “Social Ads Work For Google (+), Facebook,” at Search Engine Watch.

Eric Enge interviews Bing’s Paul Yiu on “Author Authority and Social Media” at Stone Temple (Consulting).

Erez Barak discusses “3 Social Marketing Communication Methods” and when and how to apply each at Search Engine Watch.

Matt McGee reports that Twitter has bought Posterous (and will “keep it alive, for now”) at Marketing Land.

How to optimize Twitter, from being real to using hashtags and more, is posted by Lisa Buyer at Search Engine Watch.

Mack Collier posts a how-to on writing blog posts that both Google and Twitter will love.

Brian Solis discusses how “Enterprise Social Networking is More Than Facebook Behind a Firewall.”

Level 343 talks social privacy (or the illusion therof) with “The Right to Demand Your Social Passwords?”

Stephanie Sammons shares four tips for creating a LinkedIn company page at Social Media Examiner.

photo thanks to Muffet (liz west)