Author: Jessica Lee
A version of Google's quality rating manual was leaked in June, giving us more insight into how Google rates your site's content and experience. In this article, we'll explore some of the tried and true practices that continue to make the grade with Google, including:
- Defining a purpose for your site and delivering on it well.
- Putting time, effort and thought into the content you publish.
- Keeping user experience in mind with all the content elements on a your site.
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Author: Virginia Nussey
"Content" — it’s an all-encompassing term that covers a number of channels and formats. So how do you know which content type to create and how to measure success? This article dives into content types and the business goals they drive, and how to decide which type of content to create. Here, you'll discover:
- The objectives of various content types, from share of voice and brand awareness to lead generation and site traffic.
- Which content type will best serve the data or information being delivered.
- What metrics the online marketing community reports it measures success.
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Author: Debi Hazelden
You might be thinking of a publishing strategy for your business, but you’re not sure how to approach it or where to start. Focusing on your customer’s needs is a great first step, and can give structure to your plan. Here, Bruce Clay Australia shows ways to create a customer-focused content strategy. In this article, you'll learn:
- How keyword research and customer research set the stage for content.
- What a content strategy looks like and tips on how to create content.
- Why the final step in your content is to optimize for your customer.
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Oh So Mobile
It's smartphone season. Mobile device makers, including Apple, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung unveiled their new product lines. Apple's iPhone 5 got the most fanfare and set a new first-day sales record Friday with 2 million devices sold. But even the tech-gadget darling is at an interesting place as far as innovation goes. While feature upgrades to the iPhone include a better camera, higher resolution and larger screen and support on the 4G LTE network, there were none of the usual surprises Apple has been known to deliver at events.
Not long ago it felt like every year marketers were heralding the year of mobile had arrived. And yet, trying to get businesses on board with the marketing opportunity of mobile was a challenging sell. Suddenly mobile Internet use is so ubiquitous, "year of mobile" rhetoric is obsolete.
Today, 38% of media interactions take place on smartphones, according to a report from Google. Smartphones, Google says, are the backbone of our media interaction activity, the most common bridge between devices when we move across screens.
One critic proposed that there's nothing left to get excited about when it comes to smartphones, as no new feature or technology will radically improve the experience. Instead, future exciting advancements will be left to technologies like Google Goggles. The first movie was just shot on Google Goggles during New York Fashion Week. How much more mobile can we go?
Knowledge-Sharing Boosts Your in-House/Agency Relationship
If you've hired an agency or consultant to handle your Internet marketing, you're familiar with some of the things that create a good working relationship. But what you might not be taking full advantage of is the knowledge and resources you have at your fingertips during the engagement.
Consultants and agencies are typically a wealth of resources. The professionals serving you spend much of their time on research and staying on top of trends. They also have the ability to help you solve strategic and tactical problems by giving new perspective.
So we've compiled some quick tips for you to make sure you participate in active knowledge sharing, to get the most out of the unique partnership that is the in-house/agency relationship.
- Share all the relevant information about your online business and its challenges. Sometimes, clients either don't want to share certain information in fear of being judged, or they just forget to share some key pieces of info. Your consultants are there to help you solve problems and remove obstacles, so be open to sharing.
- Engage in the resources the company has to offer. When you partner with a company for their expertise, you should consider getting on their mailing lists, following their blog, watching their webinars, attending their workshops, connecting with their social media. This helps you tap into their methodology and supplement your education with the agency/consultant. It can also be a great conversation-starter for some of the problems you might be having.
- Don't be afraid to ask questions. Sometimes companies can feel overwhelmed with the amount of information they're receiving from the agency -- especially if it's very technical. While it's the job of the consultant to explain the data in a way that's relevant to the client, questions almost always arise. The key is to ask specifics. Once you know more about why they are doing something, you can begin to take that knowledge in-house.
Zynga's chief marketing and revenue officer Jeff Karp departed the company after only a little more than a year.
HootSuite acquired Seesmic, a social media platform. HootSuite said it's a logical step for two companies that share many similarities.
According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, users are consuming twice as many feed stories since the update to the new iOS app.
In New York City, SMX East takes place in the Javits Center October 1 to 4. Bruce Clay's SEO workshop is Monday, October 1. Meet Bruce and the team in booth 322 and use discount code WS-BC10 for 10% off the cost of conference registration.
DMA2012 direct marketing conference will take place in Las Vegas from October 13 to 18. Bruce Clay will co-present on Using Content Curation to Drive Marketing and Revenue.
The newly updated SEOToolSet® standard and advanced training and certification course will take place in Simi Valley, Calif., from December 3 to 7.
Online Marketing Institute presents Digital Marketing Strategy Summit, an online educational event with sessions available both live and on-demand from September 17 to 28.
DemandCon Boston will stride into The Walking City October 1 and 2.
Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., hosts the two-day CRO-focused Conversion Conference October 9 and 10.
Online Marketing Summit Santa Clara, a digital marketing conference and exhibition, takes place October 22 to 25.
Internet Summit digital strategy conference, including tracks for start-ups and tech for the C-suite, comes to Raleigh, N. Car., November 6 to 8.
Ragan PR and Social Media Summit is a one-day digital communications conference in Cary, N. Car., on Nov. 30. Attendees who can't be there in person can also attend virtually via summit webcast.
Tampa, Fla., hosts BlueGlass X 2012, a digital marketing conference, on December 3 and 4.
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Bruce Clay Australia presents the following one-day SEO training courses:
- Melbourne, AU: September 18, 2012
- Auckland, NZ: October 11, 2012
- Brisbane, AU: October 23, 2012
- Perth, AU: October 30, 2012
- Sydney, AU: November 6, 2012
SEO copywriting workshops will be held in Sydney on September 20 and November 28. These half-day workshops teach principles for writing content to support SEO and conversion.
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Facebook said it's doing well with its ad retargeting program, Facebook Exchange, which allows ads to be presented to users within Facebook from third-party sites they've visited prior.
Twitter announced a new expanded tweets feature that allows linked articles to be opened up to see a partial view of the post.
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Bing released Editorial Exceptions and the Exceptions API to all Yahoo! Bing Network advertisers, allowing for easier filtering of editorial disapprovals and requests for exceptions by advertisers.
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It's the season of smartphone announcements. At Apple's event in San Francisco last week, the company unveiled new models of iPhone, iPod Touch and iPod Nano as well as upcoming updates to iTunes and iOS. The much anticipated iPhone 5 has a 4" display and runs on 4G LTE.
A federal court ruled that electronic device maker Samsung must pay Apple $1 billion damages in a lawsuit that essentially targeted phones running Google's Android operating system for being too similar to the iPhone.
A Google quality rater handbook updated this June was leaked on an Internet forum. It describes how Google wants human judges to score a landing page's overall quality and usefulness for users — a potentially useful tool for SEOs in improving page quality.
At the TechCrunch Disrupt SF conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined his strategic vision for the company and heavily featured the role of increased mobile use. The comments came at a critical time for the company, whose stocks have fallen nearly 50% since the IPO in May. Stock prices have since rebounded.
Each month, our developers make improvements to SEOToolSet V5 to ensure users have a more efficient experience. The following updates were made this month.
- Added more URL slots into the Multi Page Analyzer when running URLs from the Research Summary. This means that you can choose more than 5 URLs to run analysis on in the Research Summary.
- Fixed a problem with the foreign engine support in the Research Summary where only the search engines from one of the countries would run if you had multiple engines from multiple countries selected in your configuration.
- Increased the speed of the Multi Page Analyzer.
