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For the last couple of years we have heard nothing but declarations of the importance of content marketing, and that it really needs to be the driving force behind our SEO campaigns. 'Content is King', remember? Well you will find no disagreement from me, however just because content rules all that doesn't mean that all content was created equally or that every single bit of it is worth doing. So do yourself - and your marketing budget - a favour and stop wasting your time with these three outdated content marketing tactics....
Anything that you post on social media (article links, pictures, videos – everything) is essentially a part of your content, much like the written words in this article. Like any other content, your social media posts absolutely need to be of high quality and provide value to your audience. This is the first and most important thing that you need to keep in mind.
To make all your posts crystal clear for search engines, try to make use of semantic markup every time you share something on social. Semantic markup is the name for putting a HTML tag on your content (like a description for articles or alt-text for images/pictures) that tells search engines what exactly your content is about.
Use a clear, catchy description and mix in a few keywords here and there. For example if your post is about making pancakes and includes a pancake image, you can use something like “Ever wondered how to make the most delicious pancakes at home in just an hour?” and make sure you pay attention to the image’s alt-text, which should read something like “the most delicious pancake recipe”....
Google itself is one of the best tools at an SEO’s disposal.
However, not everyone knows how to use it effectively. There are dozens of search operators and tools that you can use to find virtually anything you’re looking for, but you need to know how to use them.
In this post, I’m going to show you 9 Google search operators that you should know and use on a regular basis.
I’ll show you some tactics that could be helpful for, but if you combine all these operators, they could be used for thousands of useful purposes. Don’t be afraid to be creative....
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if I could get them a No. 1 Google ranking for a specific non-branded, hyper-competitive keyword, I would be rich. If I had a dollar for the number of times the people asking me that question actually had the content to warrant such a listing, I would be poor.
Many digital marketing folks, especially in enterprise B2B companies, don't quite understand the relationship between content and SEO. It's long been said in SEO circles that content is king. However, some SEO folks would argue that links or social engagement is king, and that content is the primary driver of links and social success. There are valid arguments on all sides of that meaningless debate, but the point that often gets lost is that creating the best user experience for the vast majority of people searching for a specific keyword is probably what's going to get you ranked consistently for that keyword.
A content strategy that supports that bigger vision is typically different than the customer-focused strategies most B2B companies use. Many people over the years have told me, "Our company is the market leader for this term! We should be No. 1!" That is often true for products or services that are relevant to the keyword phrase they are targeting. It is true that brand recognition - and certainly the links that typically accompany successful brands - make it more likely that a company will rank well for relevant terms, but the fact remains that brand authority is not always enough to guarantee a top ranking for a particular keyword....
But then, this begs the question: if Matt and Google have stuck a fork in one of the most used and effective method of link building — guest blogging, what other link building tactic could replace it? Infographics.
Heck, they even generate more backlinks than most other link building tactics on the Web.“…these visual content pieces are generating more backlinks than any other form of content I publish, which—in the long run—helps increase my search engine rankings and overall readership numbers.” says Neil Patel — Renowned Internet marketer.
Top content marketing influencer, Jeff Bullas, also mirrors Neil’s idea in his post on 9 awesome reasons to use infographics in content marketing...
There’s a bit of confusion over SEO and content marketing. The confusion comes over how SEO and content marketing fit together. Do they fit together? Are they at odds with each other? If so, is it possible to force them together?
In a previous post, I explained why SEO and content marketing are like PB&J. They go together. They just fit. They work well together.
Now, I want to share exactly why that is — why SEO is actually all about content marketing, and vice versa.
I’ve been building SEO-driven, Adsense/Affiliate monetized sites for 4 years now. I’ve been through every Panda update and Penguin update. I've survived a lot of them, but I've been absolutely crushed by some of them as well. If getting crushed is how you learn, then I've learned a lot.
I started out building hundreds of microniche sites with content as cheap as $3/500 word article, to creating sites that received thousands of FB, Twitter, Reddit, and Stumble upon shares - even though my goal was solely to drive organic search traffic.
One article got over 100,000 likes on Facebook and millions of visitors. It cost me $30 to outsource and I made no effort to optimize it for social.
I don’t claim to be a content creation expert, but I’ve picked up a thing or two over the years, and this is the guide to SEO content creation I wish I had when I started....
Have you ever wondered why some types of content generate lots of search traffic and others don’t?
I too was wondering about that, so I started to look for patterns and analyze competing blogs. What I found was interesting – so interesting that I decided to create an infographic to illustrate my findings.
If you want to generate more organic traffic from your content marketing efforts, follow the steps in the infographic below.
Why do people visit your website? As Google updates its search algorithm again, what people search for matters, but the "why" becomes more important. Use these 8 tips to keep your content ranking after Google Hummingbird...
....So back to twerking. Good content can surprise and delight, even shock. But how will Hummingbird understand the relevance of that kind of content, and help your audience associate it with what your business does? A viral twerking clip might generate brand awareness. It might even prompt referral traffic or social shares. But the more important question is, if that content is on your website, will it influence Google rankings in the future?
To make sure your website content is armed to capture the Hummingbird in flight, consider these recommendations...
In my recent post, I talked about the need for Agility, Authenticity and Passion along with the “four C’s” which describe the pillars of great marketing today. Let’s take a look at some examples of great marketers and great companies who are putting these pillars into practice.
Customer-centric. Customers are in control. They decide how and when to connect with you and your company and they vote with their online voice, dollars and attention. Customer engagement – an elusive achievement — is the number one asset to a business today and the number one goal for marketing to pursue. Customer engagement is only possible when customer’s wants and needs are put at the center of everything we do....
While 'creating great content' is important, it's not enough. Promotion is critical to content marketing success. In this post, Paul May shows you how to improve your content promotion. NEWSFLASH! Despite what you’ve read, your “epic content” isn’t going to magically go viral seconds after you click the publish button. There is no content marketing fairy. Like it or not, you’re going to have to work hard to promote your content. I mean really hard. “Well, Hi Paul….Bad Start to the Day?” Why the rant? Well, Cyrus Shepard wrote a fantastic “blueprint for ranking” post recently on the Moz blog (one of the best posts of the year, IMO). I found myself nodding in agreement throughout it…until I got to the end and read this: “This blueprint contains 25 steps to rank your content, but only the last three address link building. Why so few? Because 90% of your effort should go into creating great content, and 10% into link building.” In fairness to Cyrus, there’s more nuance to his thoughts than this quote conveys, but this fits into a theme that seems to be gaining momentum in some circles. I first saw Rand propose this at a Distilled conference I attended last year. The presentation was titled “F*** Link Building, Content Marketing FTW!” I’m paraphrasing, but in this presentation he said something to the effect of: “I have this awesome link building tool…you should totally get it. Every time I use it, I get links from 400 unique domains. It’s called the publish button.”...
A good SEO strategy is the difference between your business easily being found online and getting lost in the noise of thousands of other businesses trying to stand out. With Google’s ever-changing algorithm, it can be difficult to know what’s effective here and now. In 2013, success in SEO hinges on businesses putting together a robust combination strategy that brings together an integrated web of great content, credible links, and social signals. Each of these pieces supports the other, providing tremendous value to readers, building your authority and brand value, and distributing your content across new channels. Here are the highlights of what to think about in terms of each of the three pillars of great SEO....
Content curation services, which had been one of the choice tools of marketing experts for some time now. Content curation is evolving from not being only a professional tool but a tool that saves web surfers time as personal service. It is important to note that the actual popularity of the phrase “content curation” has not decreased. On the contrary, GoogleTrends clearly show that the popularity of the keyword query and its various forms is growing. What does this mean? It means that more and more people are interested in content curation; it is no longer just for marketing professionals.. Why is this happening? Everybody knows that the amount of information exchanged through social networks and feeds is growing exponentially, following the well-known Moore‘sLaw. According to LikeHack’s research based on 3 million user accounts, people spend approximately one hour every day looking through unnecessary information. There are several services available today which solve this problem, and they are growing in popularity: Likehack, Storify, Pearltrees, Getprismatic and others....
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Repurposing is a common best practice among the most effective content creators: you can be much more efficient and prolific if you take a single idea and turn it 15 different ways rather than trying to come up with 15 brand new ideas. Ideas are super hard to come by, and when you get a great one you have to grab on with both hands and squeeze as much value out of it as you can. If you’re not sure what I mean by “repurposing,” think of it as taking a great idea and building off it to create something completely new. Kind of like IKEA Hacking, but for marketers. Repurposing comes in three different flavors: - atomization, which is breaking a single asset up into smaller pieces; - aggregation, which is pulling smaller pieces together into larger long-form assets; and - amplification, which is using the themes & messages of your core content to create related pieces that build the strength of your brand’s connection to the idea/topic overall. We’ll dive into each option separately so you can think about which method or methods makes sense for your content mix and marketing team....
Search is the #1 driver of traffic to content web pages, beating social media by more than 300%. According to an experiment conducted by the Groupon marketing team, 60% of direct traffic is actually organic search traffic.
These statistics are pretty exciting, right?
But what if you’re unable to rank highly in Google’s results? Does it mean that you have no hope of generating organic traffic from it? You’ll learn the truth about search engine optimization in this article.
How was I able to rank in Google’s top 10 results for several high-volume keywords? Well, it didn’t happen overnight. I’ve been actively blogging since 2007....
Before you start reading, I want to say that I am not an analytics expert per se, but a strategic SEO and digital marketing consultant. On the other hand, in my daily work of auditing and designing holistic digital marketing strategies, I deal a lot with Analytics in order to understand my clients' gaps and opportunities.
For that reason, what you are going to read isn't an "ultimate guide," but instead my personal and practical guide to content and its metrics, filled with links to useful resources that helped me solving the big contents' metric mystery. I happily expect to see your ideas in the comments....
Google's algorithms are better-focused than ever, according to a new study from Searchmetrics.
In its fourth annual Google ranking factors study, the enterprise platform looked at the top 30 search results for 10,000 keywords and 300,000 websites on Google. According to Marcus Tober, founder and chief technology officer at Searchmetrics, the findings simply confirm the current trends.
"Understanding user intention and creating unique, relevant content is more vital than ever before," Tober says. "It is also visible that backlinks are continuing to decrease in relevance. Looking ahead, as the proportion of search queries from mobile devices continues to grow, it will be interesting to see what effect this has on the rankings.
"Some factors Searchmetrics saw positively affecting the rankings include mobile-friendliness; social signals, such as Facebook likes and Tweets; and backlinks, though the latter will likely decrease in importance. The study focuses on three other main areas...
Just a few years ago, articles about SEO consisted almost entirely of advice on how to carry out the day-to-day technical aspects of keyword research, on-site optimization and link building. And while these elements are certainly still necessary, their importance has declined and changed quite significantly.Instead, marketers must create quality, long form content and use SEO as just one of many content amplification strategies.
This article will walk you through the elements of SEO that are still important for content marketing success in 2015....
You know how you’ve been building links to your website for years, trying to get Google look upon it more favorably? Well, according to Google, you shouldn’t bother doing that.
Nearly an hour into a Google Webmaster Central Office Hours hangout on Friday, Google’s John Mueller was asked whether or not link building, in any way, is good for webmasters.
Mueller’s response (via Search Engine Roundtable) was, “That is a good question. In general, I’d try to avoid that. So that you are really sure that your content kind of stands on its own and make it possible for other people of course to link to your content. Make it easy, maybe, put a little widget on your page, if you like this, this is how you can link to it. Make sure that the URLs on your web site are easy to copy and paste. All of those things make it a little bit easier. We do use links as part of our algorithms but we use lots and lots of other factors as well. So only focusing on links is probably going to cause more problems for your web site that actually helps.” Emphasis added.
Google Webspam leader Matt Cutts is one of the most influential SEO advice sources. Before he took a voluntary temporary leave last July, he spent over 10 years giving detailed, precise, and sometimes lengthy explanations to many questions that businesses were asking. He recorded more than 500 videos to share his answers. So how can you sift through all that great counsel and find the ones valuable to you?
Click Consult created TheShortCutts.com, developing a brief summary of each video (sometimes just one word) and categorizing all of the videos, which makes it easy to search for topics. Over 50 videos fall under the website-content category and more than 30 address related aspects, so I decided to do that sifting for you and choose seven of the best to help as you plan your website content strategy....
Reading “No, SEO isn’t dead,” or some form thereof, from the search pundits is almost as annoying as reading that it is dead from people who don’t know any better. But over a month ago, Google released its latest algorithm, Hummingbird, and that’s stirred the SEO pot just a bit.
What makes the announcement of this change last month so important is that this isn’t just an update, like Panda or Penguin. This is an actual algorithm change, and we haven’t seen one of those since 2010 when Google launched Caffeine. There haven’t been a lot of details released by Google, except to say that this latest change was designed to serve the way we search now, instead of the way we searched ten years ago.
So what does this mean for search? It’s means it’s evolving into another creature. This post serves as a comprehensive, one-stop-shop for the best Google Hummingbird information available on the web. We’ve curated news, blog posts, opinion pieces and more from industry experts and trusted resources, and broken it down for you into an easily absorbable digest...
If you want to know what will Google penalize you for or how to tell if your site has received a Google penalty then this is the perfect post for you. Read on!...
In keeping with Google’s commitment to providing a great search experience, it has recently released a new upgrade called Hummingbird. Hummingbird is Google’s largest search algorithm upgrade since 2001.Whereas Penguin and Panda were like new parts to make the existing “engine” run more smoothly,
Hummingbird is more like a new engine. It allows users to enjoy a more natural, “human” search experience. But, according to this article on Forbes.com, Hummingbird has no effect on SEO.
What Actions Does Google Penalize For?
So what will Google penalize you for? There are many rules and possible infractions, and a comprehensive answer to this question is way beyond the scope of this article. But we will cover a few of the basic violations you’ll want to be aware of. Avoid these to reduce the likelihood you’ll get penalized in the first place....
Delivering a positive user experience online through quality content and quality web assets creates a quality outcome for the brand. ...Google’s on-going quest appears to be to filter out the attempted nonsense by some marketers so that the user search experience produces valuable results. Poor search marketing and editorial practices are disenfranchised to this objective. Audiences are demanding it. As a marketer, failure to deliver valuable content will ensure that Google and your audience will tune you out or worse, turn you off. Good content delivers a relevant connection that invokes a response through humor, shock, mystery, emotion and/or just plain valuable knowledge. My favorite article on quality content was written by Brad Shore with the Content Marketing Institute. He identifies quality content as being “jargon-free, written in an appropriate voice and style, stimulates a response and is properly structured.” More importantly, he identifies the business value of quality content by emphasizing that it: - Elevates the brand Increase brand awareness - Helps generate leads and referrals Increases customer loyalty - Differentiates your business in a powerful way...
Heard this one before? “If you create great content you will find a large audience.” It’s nonsense. Or at the very least, it’s idealistic. It’s like if you make great music you’ll become a rock star. The number of great bands that are painfully undiscovered is, well, painful. You need to create something great and be discovered. In my articles I tend to focus on the “create something great” half of the formula. Today I’ll focus on the “be discovered” part, which is largely a mechanical exercise you may not understand—or have never considered....
Less than a year ago links were everything to the SEO industry. Whether it was guest blogging or content marketing, the sole aim of many agencies revolved purely around sourcing and acquiring links. The answer is simple. By combining knowledge on entities, associations, co-occurrence and authorship, you can build a strategy that actually solves a problem or satisfies a need for your target audience. By doing this you will increase traffic and naturally generate links. Like Hannah Smith mentioned at this year’s LinkLove conference, if you do stuff that gets links, rather than doing it for links, you are much more likely to succeed. And to save you the hassle of pooling all this together, I’ve done it for you. You’re welcome....
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Time to rethink your old blogging misconceptions.