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COMPETITIVE SEO AND INBOUND MARKETING
COMPETITIVE SEO AND INBOUND MARKETING
Let’s not waste time, shall we? We went in depth over at KISSmetrics. Today we just want you to pump out something that could put you in front of hundreds of thousands of people within half an hour. And…go. (more...)
The SEO industry has a problem.
Actually, it's easy to find fault with all kinds of facets of this industry, but here I'd like to heckle just one. It begins with one tweet that I saw today from SearchLove. It involves two people that I've actually been fortunate enough to see speak, and even recommend that our staff watch their videos of as a part of their orientation.
If you're seeing long green bars, 2 issues: your server is slow or latency problem. Latency is on the user side. @willcritchlow #searchlove
— Annie Cushing (@AnnieCushing) May 21, 2013
Repeat after me: latency is hardly a user side problem.
It’s not uncommon that you hear of people belittling copywriters, as though they serve no real purpose. Every educated person can write, so what’s the use in having copywriters? You’re just paying them to write, right? Yes, but they can write well for starters and they’re trained in picking up on common inconsistencies and errors, unlike the average non-professional writer.
Many non-professional writers tend to go about writing their website content themselves, filling in the blank pages with spelling offenses and grammatical nightmares. While this is not ideal and certainly makes a trained writer want to run, hide and “unsee” everything they just laid eyes on, it’s a reality that is highly prevalent on the web. With this in mind, it’s imperative that all writers – professional and not-so-much – take note of some solid tips that will help in creating killer content for your site. So, how do we go about doing this?
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Let me clarify something unambiguously before we move on. I am not asking you to pay micro-celebrities to say something dishonest, to let you guest post on their blog, or to put a link up.
I am asking you to pay a micro-celebrity to write a guest post, or do whatever they do best, on your blog.
I feel like I'm on repeat with this, but the message keeps failing to stick. Pay people who always get natural links, and you will get natural links. Would it earn you links and attention if Rand Fishkin wrote a post on your blog? Would you pay for that kind of attention? Yes?
Then why aren't you thinking about your clients the same way? (more...)
Events (provided they’re not insurance conventions) offer up the perfect subject matter for captivating content. Whether you’re an event planner or are looking to host an event for your company, bolstering the big day with a sound content marketing strategy can help you build necessary hype and keep it going long after the event is over. Creating the bond between offline events and online marketing properties opens you up to a world of possibility that is present well before the big day even arrives.
Before you even begin, create a solid base from which to work. If this is an extension to your business, having an optimized page within your domain is your first port of call. You can direct all event related traffic to your home page, provided it’s clear where they have to go or what they have to do from there in order to reach their specific goals. Some goals to consider would be:
Event information is shareable stuff as you’ve often got groups of friends keeping each other in the loop with what’s happening. Make sure you’ve got all your pieces in place before you “go live” so that you don’t miss out on that lucrative distribution power.
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Every time a case study boasts about the number of Likes and Tweets it earned, an angel loses its wings. Hate to say it, but the culture of social media metrics is broken, and it’s time to fix that. There’s a reason I don’t track Facebook Likes, and I feel our other industry standard metrics are equally good at failing to understand why people use social networks.
We need to change what gets measured and why. It’s time to stop managing the wrong things. Here’s how. (more...)
The weather is warming, which means you've probably been spending more time outside. That's why we've been keeping a close eye on all the major happenings in SEO, content marketing, and social media during April. We share our favorite content throughout the month on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, but if you want to get your inbound marketing fix in one sitting, here's our roundup of what you may have missed.
How to Divert Competitors’ Customers With ‘Bling’ Keywords
Sending out news releases using Vocus or PRWeb tools featuring news, updates, and developments about your company is a great way to build marketplace awareness of the solutions that you offer. Implementing a search engine optimization plan that enhances your website content with the right keywords is a great way to attract business and potentially increase your company’s search rank.
Graph Search Optimization: The New SEO and What it Means for Social Advertisers
Facebook introduced Graph Search in January signaling a major shift in social search. Graph Search matches natural language search terms with content from the searcher’s network (social graph) to identify and return relevant results based on several factors. (more...)
By definition, inbound marketing refers to any and all forms of content marketing used to attract customers to your business. They might not necessarily convert, but they “buy in” in some way – whether it’s by signing up for an RSS feed on your blogs, or following your page on Facebook. Inbound marketing is a collective term for the numerous ways you can turn strangers into leads, and leads into customers.
So where do you begin? There are so many options to choose from and they are all successful in one way or another, but finding the tactics that apply directly to your business can be tough. So why not look at someone who has already tried and tested various tactics against their business model and benefit from their experience? Investigate and analyze your competitors’ inbound marketing tactics.
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There's a forgotten traffic source sitting right in your Google Analytics Dashboard. It's right there under Traffic Sources, wedged between Direct and Search. It's called referral traffic. Those are the people who came to your site because they actually clicked on a link. And I happen to believe that this should be the most important section of Google Analytics to anybody who cares about inbound marketing or SEO. (more...)
When putting all the components of a website together, we often start with the user experience design team. They go about researching the target market and creating personas relating to the different users. Based on their research, the services offered and overall function of the website, the UX team will also design the sitemap and navigation of the website; piecing together the elements that they feel are most pertinent for the target market as a whole.
This tried and tested method is most effective and there’s no disputing that it works. But there is another alternative route that can be taken when designing the navigational flow of a website and determining the user journey. Let me explain.
While this is almost never done, Ruth Burr of SEOmoz showed us that keyword research can in fact supersede the entire user experience design part of a website build. We can learn a lot about our users and supporting communities by evaluating what they search for.
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