Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

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.

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...

With social selling, you’re no longer simply pushing information about products and services out to your audience. Instead, you’re discovering what they’re passionate about, which can lead naturally—organically—into a discussion of how you can solve a problem or improve their lives, and why your company is the right choice to help them,” Nimble CEO Jon Ferrara said recently, as I was researching technologies that enable this kind of social approach.

Building a socialized selling strategy involves completing the following three basic stages: Research: This stage is all about identifying your ideal customer – also called your Buyer Persona – then finding out what their fears are when buying your product: Content: This stage is all about creating content that speaks to the buyer persona you identified in the first step. Distribution: This stage is about getting the word out about your content, then using the results to refine future content.

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....

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...