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Monday, October 31, 2016
Q4 must-knows for CMOs: Crucial developments across channels
Q4 must-knows for CMOs: Crucial developments across channels Q4 can be a merciless time for marketers; even if you're not staring down a couple of make-or-break months as a seasonal retailer, you're likely battling for user attention, fighting against rising CPCs (costs per click) on platforms like Facebook or ... read moreSTMicroelectronics NV Management Discusses Q4 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript Thank you very much for joining us today for our Q4 and Full ... of software development in analog like radio frequency and power management, in other design for embedded processing. And all of these resources are now contributing across all the product ... read more
Source: Q4 must-knows for CMOs: Crucial developments across channels
Source: Q4 must-knows for CMOs: Crucial developments across channels
Why all search ads seem the same (and what you can do about it)
No fluff - just the best news in paid search marketing every week.
Let's face it: anyone with an AdWords login, bank account and keyboard can create ads for search. It can be a Wild West out there, which means that many ads ultimately fail. They fail because they don't capture the attention of searchers, because they don't include the best information, and frankly, because they look like every other ad out there.
Your paid search ad strategy goes way beyond the 140 text characters allotted to you. It starts with that, sure, but the entire architecture of your ad from the text to the extensions should all support a strategic message about your brand, its products or services.
So in this post, we'll look at some of the steps you can take before you type that first word of text, so you can construct informative, eye-catching ads that truly support a company's goals and stand out from the crowd.
Get into the mind of the business and consumerYou can't very well create impactful ads without first understanding the business and consumer needs inside and out. And there are several ways you can facilitate research to get a 360-degree view of the company. Let's look at those now.
Interviews and questionnairesCreate a questionnaire you can send to employees from various departments — like customer service representatives, sales teams or product teams — or talk to them directly. These folks are on the front lines every day and should have some interesting insight.
Sample prompts and questions include things like:
What a company's customers have to say (the good and the bad) can do a lot for the ad strategy. Read as much of these as you can to see if you can spot any trends that you can work into the ads.
You may also want to talk to key folks in the organization about any negative trends in reviews. Oftentimes, internal teams are not aware of what the customers are saying, and a conversation like that can be helpful so they can tweak their strategy.
And remember that when it comes time to create the ad, you also have things available to you in AdWords like review extensions for third-party reviews and seller ratings that can help highlight those praises.
Study the competitionUnderstand how the company is the same and different from its competitors. And watch out for the we-don't-have-any-competitors response. If you run into that, simply search in Google using the top keywords you plan to target to get a better picture of who you're up against.
But be aware: Sometimes the ads that show up for the keywords aren't really your competitors. For example, if Target shows up for a specialty dance shoe, use your discernment in assessing if Target really is a competitor to a specialty dance shoe company.
In this sense, an exercise like searching for keywords can really get you up to speed on the competitive landscape.
Reviewing competitor ads can also be a good thing if you don't let what they are saying influence too much the ads you want to create (Remember, you're trying to get away from what every other ad is doing).
However, it can help you spot missed opportunities for your own ads — places where you can one-up the competition. And sometimes, you can learn from them, too — so go in with an open mind.
Then, having candid conversations with the company about the competition's advertising (what they like or don't like) is also important in the strategy phase.
Understand your other marketing effortsIt's good to understand the full scope of the company's marketing efforts in other channels because they often inform and influence one another. So get plugged into the strategy by talking to other teams and vendors and looking at product guides, subscribing to the company's mailing list and so on.
You can learn a lot of about the tone and the messaging of the brand by how it communicates, and you can then incorporate that into the advertising.
Plus, when you know what the other marketing teams are doing, you're more likely to be able to work with them on the things that impact both your channels (for example, website speed) and react quicker in any given situation (for example a PR crisis).
Like any other marketing or sales effort, you have to put in the research to understand both the business needs and the audience desires. With those two areas researched well, you can begin to create killer ads that stand out from the crowd.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author Pauline Jakober is CEO of Group Twenty Seven, a boutique online advertising agency specializing in the Google AdWords and Bing Ads networks. As a Google AdWords Certified Partner, Jakober and her team practice cutting edge paid search strategy and management for clients across many industries.Source: Why all search ads seem the same (and what you can do about it)
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Top 4 Trends In #SEO #Marketing
Top 4 Trends In SEO Marketing SEO marketing is ever-changing, with many factors determining the most effective practices to increase a website's SERP ranking. This year's most effective techniques and trends are leaning towards multimedia, social media, and mobile optimization. read moreTen SEO Gurus You Should Be Learning from Right Now Now you just sit back and watch your site rise to the top of ... is the Head of SEO at InboundJunction. He's respected as a tireless marketing enthusiast who's never content with the status quo. Constantly looking for the latest SEO trends and tools ... read more
Source: Top 4 Trends In #SEO #Marketing
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7 SEO Tools We’re Thankful For
I know what it's like running a business.
There's always a thousand and one things to attend to. And when it comes to SEO, make that a thousand and one.
Of course, don't forget that's without keeping on top of the subject matter and learning all the new techniques and updates. SEO can be complex; it seems like every day there is some new SEO strategy to be learned and 100 more articles to read.
It can be overwhelming and often, force it to the back burner. I know so many business owners who have found it can be too time-consuming to get enough of the skills and knowledge to dive in and optimize for SEO on their sites.
That's where systems come into play. And systems run better when they're automated.
The good news?
There are plenty of tools out there that can help you dramatically improve your SEO while saving you time and energy by automating the process. The problem for many is trying to figure out which of those tools are going to let you work smarter and get great results.
Here, you'll find a number of incredible SEO tools that we've used in our business and have helped us create a system to improve our rankings.
Keyword ResearchSEMRush – From $69.95/mo and up
Keyword research is at the heart of any successful SEO campaign. If you don't know which keywords are the best for you to target, then chances are, you're going to be in trouble before you even get started.
That's where SEMRush becomes a great tool. As a tool for keyword research, it offers a number of options that will let you find the best keywords for both paid and organic campaigns, find keyword matches as well as related keywords, and highlight those long tail keywords that can often be ignored.
SEMRush also has a "keyword difficulty" tool that is specifically designed to highlight those keywords that have less competition, and alternative options for keywords that are notoriously difficult to rank.
Alternative tool: For a free option, it never hurts to turn to Google's Keyword Planner. While it won't give you the in-depth reports and information that SEMRush does, if you're looking for a quick and easy tool that can help with basic keyword research, this works.
Ranking AnalysisAuthority Labs – From $99/mo and up
Rank tracking can get complicated; it's something that you do want to pay attention to but the biggest problem is that keeping track of rankings can be incredibly time-consuming.
The good thing is there is a tool that makes it very simple: Authority Labs. With Authority Labs they offer a very easy to use and reliable tool to get the job done automatically. That means you get all of your daily tracking results in one report. This is going to allow you to be able to pivot quickly and see how your campaigns are doing.
Another big benefit of Authority Labs is it's really developed for Local SEO as well. It also has options to track results based on zip codes and includes Google+ rankings as well.
Alternative Tool: Google Search Console has replaced what the old Google Webmasters Tools was and offers a suite of options for SEO for free. Use the Search Analytics tool to find out where your websites are ranking.
Content IntelMozBar – Free
When it comes to search engine optimization, it's not enough to just look at your own sites; it's also important to pay attention to what your competitors are doing as well. This is why so many consider MozBar to be such a valuable tool.
Quick and easy to use, MozBar is a Google Chrome plugin that will give you instant and accurate information on a number of key metrics of any website you're on. While the free version will work well enough for many, if you're looking to upgrade your intel with the best information out there, MozBar Pro starts at $99/mo.
MozBar has a bunch of features that will help you improve your own SEO by collecting important intel. Some of the most important include social metric tracking, custom searches, data export and on page highlighting to check specific types of links.
Alternative Tool: For quite a few SEO experts, SpyFu is up there as one of the best competitor intel tools out there. Use it to track competitor's keywords, which can help improve your own strategy. Pricing starts from $79/mo.
Content OptimizationYoast – Free
One of the biggest ways to immediately improve your own rankings and see some small SEO wins is to optimize your content. Most people don't realize that they are missing some opportunities on their home pages and within blog posts.
One amazing tool to help change that is Yoast. This is a free WordPress plugin that is the go-to tool for SEO on blogs and other sites. In fact, it is the #1 top ranked SEO WordPress plugin, so it's pretty clear it works.
Once installed, Yoast is incredibly easy to use. It allows you to pick a keyword for each page, create a meta tag, and it monitors the content itself to let you know of any potential problems and opportunities to improve.
Alternative Tool: Another good tool to use to monitor content is Seobility, which bills itself as a site auditor. What's really helpful is it digs deep into your site and can highlight links that are useful but have been buried and help you rank them better.
Link BuildingBuzzStream – From $24/mo and up
One component of SEO that is very important is link building. There are a number of ways to approach link building. Unfortunately, many brands ( especially small businesses) just don't have the time or the human resources to devote to it productively.
That's where a tool like BuzzStream can make the process feel almost automated, saving you and your time a lot of time and effort. BuzzStream was built to let you easily find and connect with influencers to create relationships with people and brands that will get your site placed on quality sites.
Once you've got BuzzStream up and running, you'll find it's where you can do all your outreach and potential link building in one place. Use it to make lists, contact influencers, and keep track of projects all at the same time.
Alternative Tool: A lot of sites run into issues with broken links when trying to improve their SEO. LinkMiner can help solve that. This tool is a free Chrome extension that highlights broken links so they can be fixed.
Backlink AnalysisAhrefs – From $99/mo and up
Getting high-quality backlinks is an essential building block of good search engine optimization. In fact, a number of SEO experts cite that when it comes to getting high rankings, it's important to have at least a few high-quality backlinks pointing back to your site.
One of the best tools out on the marketing for backlink analysis is Ahrefs. It has two big benefits going for it: first, the site has an index of over 12 trillion links, and second, it is incredibly easy to use for such a powerful tool.
Their reports let you see a number of details on any backlink including the anchor terms that are being used for it, it's ranking, referring pages, the content that it is being linked to, and how strong the backlinks are. In addition, they have an alert system that will notify you if you've gained or lost a backlink on your own site.
Alternative Tool: Open Site Explorer is an alternative tool that can be used as well and is part of the Moz Pro bundle of SEO tools. It helps you find backlink opportunities, discover any potentially damaging links, and researches backlinks, too.
OutreachNinja Outreach – From $49/mo and up
Outreach has always been an important piece of any SEO improvement strategy, but over the past few years, it's been a much bigger part for many successful brands. Much of that has to do with influencer marketing.
Ninja Outreach is a tool that was specifically created exactly for this situation. It helps brands find the biggest influencers in their particular niche or market and then connect with them directly.
What makes Ninja Outreach special is that it provides a treasure trove of information on influencers in one place. You can find links to content they have written, social media shares, and SEO metrics. This data lets you see who can really give your brand a boost.
Alternative Tool: Are you tired of wasting hours scanning the web for link building possibilities? If so, Link Prospector is another great tool. It scours the internet for blogs, guest posts, and resources pages, for new outreach opportunities.
ConclusionLet's face it, when it comes to SEO there are a lot of tools out there. Fortunately, these can help really bring your SEO to the next level without having to devote much time and energy to the cause.
As you continue to build your brand, being able to effectively and efficiently improve your search engine rankings and results is going to be a key part of that strategy. That's why having the right tools to get the job done is so important.
These are just a few of my favorite SEO tools. What about yours?
Image CreditsFeatured Image:DepositPhotos.comScreenshot by Tony Messer. Taken October 2016.
Source: 7 SEO Tools We're Thankful For
Saturday, October 29, 2016
Q4 must-knows for CMOs: Crucial developments across channels
Q4 must-knows for CMOs: Crucial developments across channels Q4 can be a merciless time for marketers; even if you're not staring down a couple of make-or-break months as a seasonal retailer, you're likely battling for user attention, fighting against rising CPCs (costs per click) on platforms like Facebook or ... read moreSTMicroelectronics NV Management Discusses Q4 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript Thank you very much for joining us today for our Q4 and Full ... of software development in analog like radio frequency and power management, in other design for embedded processing. And all of these resources are now contributing across all the product ... read more
Source: Q4 must-knows for CMOs: Crucial developments across channels
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How Social Media Nurturing Gets You More Results
Social media nurturing has to be a requirement for all businesses. Businesses have turned social media automation into something that seems to resemble broadcast radio by posting large volumes of tweets and updates occurs fast with automation tools. Now imagine every business, regardless of their industry, doing the exact same thing.
Automated postings have inundated social communities to a point that no one is listening anymore.
Unfortunately, businesses have over-used social media automation tools to be the end of their marketing efforts. They are seeking efficient (not necessarily effective) ways of getting their message out as fast and as low cost as possible. Low cost to these businesses includes low to no labor. These quick tactics are not effective and do more harm than good.
The question we have to ask ourselves is how effective is broadcasting your message in bulk? How effective is it to wait for people to come to you? With every business broadcasting to the social communities, how likely is it for someone to listen on the other end? It is more likely people have become numb to the broadcasts.
4 DON'Ts of Social Media Automation
The reliance on social media automation tools can put a business at risk of ruining their social community presence. First, we must recognize social media marketing to be about relationship marketing. If the audience doesn't recognize there is a real human being behind the business account, they are not likely to stay engaged.
Over-reliance on marketing automation tools will create the opposite effect over time. Consider balance between using marketing automation tools and your time.
Getting Past The NoiseNurturing your social media activities does not mean you need to drop your social media automation. Rather, nurturing is about augmenting the automation with real relationship marketing.
"Engagement and nurturing go hand in hand. One of the most important factors in being nurturing on Twitter is how well you engage with your followers. Thank everyone who followed you, introduce yourself and let your followers know that you are interested in learning more about who they are and what they do. Respond to all of your messages that are not on auto-pilot," says Audrey DeSisto, Founder and CEO of Digital Marketing Stream.
There are two simple points to understand when it comes to nurturing your social media marketing activities.
The nurturing process is about spending 15 minutes or less each day. Imagine putting on a reporter hat on and interviewing those who you have selected to bring into your conversation. You are soliciting for their help, opinion, knowledge, experience, and expertise. You'll see how much people would like to share their thoughts. This process does need you to keep asking questions to keep the conversation alive.
Your Social Nurturing Activities"Nurturing begins when you meet socially, just as if you are meeting someone personally. When you have made a connection, and the connection has been supportive, thank them with a tweet. Check your notifications often for connections asking for a Retweet, it is very easy to miss important messages from fans." added Audrey DeSisto for your Twitter relationship nurturing activities.
The list of activities to nurture your social media marketing is not that long and completed in 15 minutes. The activities below are best suited for LinkedIn. The concepts are similar in other social communities:
Does it help to know your network? Yes. Start with people you know will engage with you. Later start tagging people who have a high volume of connections. Each time others comment on your post, their entire network sees their activity. This means they see your post too. This is how viral marketing gets going.
Depending upon the success of a post you may decide to sponsor the post for even more exposure. Planning this up front will be helpful since you need to start this type of conversation from your company page.
In LinkedIn, you may wish to start a post and nurture the conversation in the Pulse Post section. This opens the conversation up to the entire LinkedIn network. In Pulse Posts other people can see your posts without a connection to you. Since the Pulse Posts are open to the public, Google will see your activity, too. This improves your chances of showing in search results.
Points About Twitter NurturingAudrey DeSisto provides some final thoughts on this subject. "The best Twitter practice is to grow your account organically. Everyone has visibility to profile follower lists, and many profiles like to copy followers who are like-minded. Growing an account organically, nurturing it, and getting to know your followers will prove to be much more rewarding. There are many Twitter accounts with a large follow with no likes, retweets or engagement. That is a sign the profile built a follow, set up an auto post schedule for a year and moved on. Set up a list called auto-pilot and add them!"
Social Relationships Take TimeNurturing your social media activities is helpful to present your knowledge and authority on a subject to your network. I would recommend visiting the profiles of those who have commented on your posts. You can then Like their activities along with commenting on one of their posts without solicitation by them.
You are now showing respect for their efforts and your relationship marketing is well underway. This has a much better possibility to become real revenue generating business!
Image CreditsFeatured Image: Christian Battaglia/Unsplash.com. Image derivative by Melih Oztalay.In-Page Image: Sonny Abesamis via Flickr.
Disclosure: Melih Oztalay and SmartFinds Marketing do not have any affiliation with recommended products or services mentioned in this article.
Source: How Social Media Nurturing Gets You More Results
Friday, October 28, 2016
Seven deadly #SEO sins
Seven deadly SEO sins Much like transgressions against the seven deadly biblical sins are, say, frowned upon by custodians of heavenly portals, so too the seven deadly SEO sins can doom you to a lifetime of anguish as you languish on Page 10 of the SERPS - and watch as your ... read moreThe Seven Deadly SEO Sins – A SEO-News Exclusive Article As a site owner, you never want to have your brand lumped in with these SEO con men, even if you didn't mean to engage in black hat SEO. That is why it is important to avoid the following SEO sins ... be two steps behind. 7. Going for Immediate Results ... read more
Source: Seven deadly #SEO sins
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Micro-moments and beyond: Understanding and optimizing for consumer intent
Google introduced the concept of micro-moments over a year ago, and since then, the company has consistently published supporting information as it relates to specific industries and user behavior across content platforms.
If you're unfamiliar with micro-moments, they're essentially a way of framing a user's path to purchase or to conversion, with specific focus on mobile and the needs or questions users search on Google along with way. The concept of micro-moments is easily digestible and provides a great way of conducting and organizing keyword research, something search marketing practitioners and decision-makers alike can certainly appreciate.
At our agency, ZOG Digital, we've been developing ways to comprehensively identify micro-moment opportunities for clients while mapping and optimizing to the consumer's conversion path. The following is a high-level look at our approach and a few of the resources we use.
1. Identifying micro-moments: The consumer journeyBefore you can identify micro-moment opportunities, you must understand the structure or user path and adapt it to your particular business or vertical. For instance, we categorize micro-moments for hospitality clients into Dreaming, Exploring, Planning and Booking; these buckets support each step in the consumer journey to bookings, and keyword opportunities can logically be categorized within them.
Google uses a fairly ubiquitous micro-moment structure of "I want to know," "I want to go," "I want to do" and "I want to buy." Unlike the categorization structure I noted above, Google's classification maps micro-moments to different types of consumer journeys with additional research to support best practices for search content.
Either of these examples can work, as long as consumer intent can be appropriately segmented. Keywords are the backbone of this phase and enable future content to be planned, developed and published by each opportunity category.
2. Organizing micro-moments: Defining parameters and collecting dataWith keyword categorization structure understood, the next step is to map out the keyword modifiers that users will use in their path to conversion. Our philosophy is to use all available modifiers, with an understanding that not all will apply to each client. This approach allows us to cast the widest net and effectively understand the micro-moment opportunity size.
Here are some example modifiers grouped under questions and prepositions:
Questions: (Keyword) + Where, Which, Who, Why, What, How and Are
Example hospitality-related searches using questions could be "Things to Do in San Francisco" or "Where to Stay in Miami."
Prepositions: (Keyword) + With, Without, Versus, Near, Like and For.
Example retail-based searches using prepositions could be "Tablet vs. Laptop" or "Ceiling Fan with Lights."
At ZOG Digital, we predefine all keyword modifiers so we can map across keyword lists at scale. However, if you're looking to define micro-moments across a small set of keywords, we recommend Answer the Public and Keyword.io as great starting points. Answer the Public predefines questions and prepositions automatically, while Keyword.io allows you to segment keyword results by questions once they've been retrieved.
It's important to note that collecting micro-moment data doesn't stop at the keyword level. To effectively understand opportunity size and prioritize tactics, consumer intent and demand needs to be identified and grouped within the aforementioned consumer journey stages. This research process provides a segue into our next step, which is building a plan for ROI.
3. Forecasting and prioritizing for ROIThe next step to moving forward with micro-moment opportunity analysis and planning is to forecast potential and prioritize for ROI. My agency developed our own tool, the Keyword Revenue Forecasting Tool, to automate this process with historical client performance data, but a basic one can be created through Excel and a few simple formulas.
First, you'll need to determine a click-through rate by keyword position. There are numerous data sources for this — we like Advanced Web Ranking, as they regularly update their CTR data. The best option, if you have enough data, is to use Search Console and filter out branded keywords. This will then most closely resemble the CTR you can expect from each keyword position.
Second, you need to forecast how your rankings can improve over time. This is a bit tricky without substantial historical data, so the next best option is to look at where similar websites rank for the keywords you're targeting. Check the domain and PageRank of the websites that rank in the top positions for each keyword. If you are within range comparatively, chances are that you have a likelihood of competing, assuming you're conducting comprehensive on- and off-page optimization.
The improvement over time is tricky here — if you have performed SEO in the past for the site, you should be conservative and make assumptions based on performance you have observed historically.
Finally, you can now calculate potential return based on the metrics you have available:
(keyword position CTR) x (keyword search volume) x (organic conversion rate) x (organic average order value)
When possible, we like to make these calculations at a categorical level, applying unique conversion rate and average order volume (AOV) data to get the most accurate results.
4. Content analysis and selectionAfter assessing the value of keywords and micro-moments, one final step needs to occur before defining content topics and types. It's important to examine and dissect the search results and content that currently exists for each keyword. Because Google takes into account the context of each search term and displays the most relevant results, the types of results revealed will give you an idea of the intent behind the query.
For example, a search term with modifiers like "best" or "top" may imply the user is seeking an article, blog post or list, while a search term that includes modifiers like "discount" or "buy" may suggest the user is looking for a product page.
Inspecting content types indexed in search results can inform future content that will succeed at each stage of the consumer journey. Particularly, deciphering content trends for each phase will inform the long-term content strategy for brands and agencies to begin building together.
With micro-moments inspired by Google, savvy marketers can see the consumer journey through a new lens and gain further insights from keyword categorization. Google has recently published an article, "Micro-Moments: 5 Questions to Ask Your Agency," that concisely summarizes many of the aforementioned steps and recommendations. We highly encourage reviewing for assessing agency partners and internal teams alike.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author Thomas Stern leads client strategy and solution development as SVP of Client Services at ZOG Digital. He has over 10 years of digital marketing experience through a range of industries like retail, insurance and travel/hospitality. He has been featured in numerous digital marketing publications, has received graduate level internet marketing education and is a board member of Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) Arizona. Follow us on Twitter @ZOGDigital.Source: Micro-moments and beyond: Understanding and optimizing for consumer intent
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Staying Local: Four Ways to Keeping Your #SEO Strategies Localised
Staying Local: Four Ways to Keeping Your SEO Strategies Localised Almost half a decade ago we saw Google release one of its biggest algorithmic updates yet. Surprisingly, very few SEO professionals took notice, as they focused their attention on the stream of updates that came out at the same time, including Panda 3.3 ... read more4 Big Local Marketing Trends - Plus 8 Ways to Adapt The key for any local business or SEO expert adapting in the local market is ... and you can see how that may affect your testing here, but what you want to keep in mind (for starters, at least) is that there is a different between "views" and ... read more
Source: Staying Local: Four Ways to Keeping Your #SEO Strategies Localised
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From the Editor’s Desk: How we work with outside contributors
I'm in charge of what may be the most mysterious part of the editorial operation at Marketing Land, MarTech Today and Search Engine Land — the contributed columns.
Who are these contributors? How are they chosen? What determines the topics covered? Even among my fellow editors, questions like this abound. In this edition of "From The Editor's Desk," I'll answer these questions and more, hopefully demystifying how all this works.
To start at the beginning, let me explain how our editorial operation is set up. It consists of two parts: our News department and the Features/Columns area. Our News staffers are either full-time employees or freelancers who cover the fast-moving events occurring in the industry — things like mergers and acquisitions, new products, trends and issues facing marketers. You'll see their bylines again and again: Danny Sullivan, Matt McGee, Barry Schwartz, Greg Sterling, Ginny Marvin, Amy Gesenhues, Tim Peterson, Barry Levine.
Meanwhile, our Columns are written by outside contributors who are experts in their particular area of marketing because that's what they do in their day jobs. They aren't journalists or professional writers (content marketers aside), but they're immersed in the everyday practice of marketing. In short, they are people that are just like our readers, but with a level of experience or unique perspective that enables them to help everyone else.
Who are these contributors, and how are they chosen?There are a variety of ways that prospective columnists come to our attention. Sometimes they're referred by other columnists, or perhaps they've been speakers at one of our SMX or MarTech conferences. Other times, we hear from folks directly or from their PR representatives, often via our "How to become a contributor" forms. Sometimes we'll hear someone speak or see something someone has written on their own site and reach out to ask them to contribute.
In any case, there are a few things we look for when evaluating candidates:
ExperienceWe look for folks who have been in the industry a while and have responsible positions at highly regarded agencies, consultancies or brands. Additionally, contributors should bring to the table some unique perspective, access to proprietary data or in-depth experience in an area of interest to digital marketers.
We largely depend on contributors to come up with their own ideas of what to write about, which is why their personal experience and position is so important — contributors must be on the vanguard of digital marketing, continually exposed to the challenges of their particular space.
The editors on my team do a great job, in my opinion, of keeping up with digital marketing, but it's impossible for us to keep abreast of every area in a space as diverse as digital marketing — think about the differences in email marketing versus search engine optimization versus display advertising. We need to be able to count on contributors who are genuine experts.
This means that we wouldn't be interested in an article titled something like "What's the difference between CPC and CPA?" or one that simply restates publicly available information you can find in Google Help files. We'll sometimes run contributions aimed at small business owners or digital marketing beginners, but we get a lot more excited about something that couldn't be written by any reasonably competent industry person off the top of their head.
For example, last year's most popular column on Search Engine Land was titled, "We Tested How Googlebot Crawled Javascript And Here's What We Learned." Writing it required a lot more than just an afternoon in front of Google Docs — author Adam Audette and his employer, Merkle|RKG, first conducted a comprehensive series of tests, collected and analyzed the results, then summed them up in a way that proved useful to the SEO community as a whole. We were thrilled with the results, and so were our readers.
Maintaining currencyWhat's of interest to digital marketers changes over time, of course, as external events — like Google or Facebook algorithm changes, new tool launches or the introduction of novel ad products — often determine the subjects that everyone is talking about or needs to know at a given moment. Therefore, the particular subjects we are most eager to cover will vary from one week to another.
That's why we strive to have a mix of contributors who have expertise in different areas, but, no matter what the subject, we value columnists who keep up with current events in their niche. Thankfully, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and Search Engine Land are great resources to help them stay up to date with what's happening.
When a dramatic industry event occurs, such as Google's announced changes to AdWords earlier this year or Microsoft's declaration of its intent to acquire LinkedIn, our news staff will cover the nuts and bolts of what's happening. But we love hearing from our contributors who have done deep thinking or have a unique perspective on what the developments mean for marketing practitioners.
ReferralsReferrals count for a lot. Many of us on staff have been in the digital marketing industry for quite some time, and we've met people along the way who have gained our trust — including current contributors and PR folks. When these people, or another staff member, are willing to speak up on behalf of a prospective contributor, we take note.
Good writingWe have a team of editors who can check over submissions and help with word choice, grammar and style, but, to do that, we need to understand the point the author is trying to get across — and that means the writing has to be clear when it's submitted.
Reliability and trustworthinessWhen we bring a new columnist aboard, we typically put them on our editorial calendar and give them deadlines. And these aren't just chosen arbitrarily — they are set up to provide our readers with a mix of different types of content over time. Whether these new columnists will make or miss deadlines is a tough thing to judge in advance, but we'll be more likely to part ways with contributors who disappoint us and send us scrambling month after month.
Legal considerationsWhen we bring aboard new columnists, we have them sign a contract that governs our relationship. One of the contract's key provisions calls for the contributor to submit only original content that hasn't been published elsewhere and agree they won't publish it elsewhere for a two-year period. In addition, contributors promise that what they will submit is true — in a legal sense, that means statements of fact must stand up to scrutiny in a court of law.
Requiring that content is original and won't be published elsewhere means that our sites remain special places — places you'll find unique and valuable viewpoints. And having contributors certify their submissions are true meets an even more critical requirement for the environment we're trying to create, making our sites worthy of readers' trust. That's the most important thing we as an organization possess, and it's easy to lose.
For our contributors, the relationship may be about content marketing, thought leadership or advancing their careers or businesses, but the reason the opportunity is valuable for them is that we make sure we're putting out a valuable editorial product, not a thinly-veiled sales pitch or a seductive tease leading to a lead-generation white paper download.
By making it legal, we set out our expectations at the beginning of the relationship in the hope of establishing a smooth working partnership. We say what some might think goes without saying — you must disclose your relationships, you must link only to relevant resources, you must ensure what you're saying is factually accurate and reliably sourced, and you must provide value to the reader — not just to yourself and your company.
Why does it take so long to hear back?If you've applied to be a contributor via our "How to be a contributor" form, the topmost question on your mind may be, "When will I hear back?" Fortunately or unfortunately, there's a lot of interest in contributing to our sites. That's why we are often strategic in reviewing applications, starting with the categories and commitment levels we're seeking at that particular time.
As we say on the form, we can't guarantee you'll hear back from us, but we keep a database so that we can find you when we're in need of contributors with your area of expertise. I'm not going to lie; our approach has likely resulted in our missing a stellar contributor or an outstanding contribution along the way.
Hopefully, that doesn't happen too often, but, if you want to make the case that we're missing an opportunity, you now know a lot more about our process and philosophy — work your network, introduce yourself at a show and make sure you stand out in all the ways we've outlined above.
Meanwhile, we already have more than 200 contributors we work with either regularly or occasionally. Oh, and then there's that pesky need to edit and publish content that's scheduled on the calendar every day. In a future edition of From the Editor's Desk, I'll continue the demystification by telling you all about how we do that.
Note: If, after reading this, you've concluded you're just the kind of contributor we're looking for, you can apply on Marketing Land, MarTech Today and Search Engine Land.
About The Author Pamela Parker is Executive Features Editor at Marketing Land, MarTech Today and Search Engine Land. She's a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since 1998. She's a former managing editor of ClickZ, and worked on the business side helping independent publishers monetize their sites at Federated Media Publishing.Source: From the Editor's Desk: How we work with outside contributors
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Top 4 Trends In #SEO #Marketing
Top 4 Trends In SEO Marketing SEO marketing is ever-changing, with many factors determining the most effective practices to increase a website's SERP ranking. This year's most effective techniques and trends are leaning towards multimedia, social media, and mobile optimization. read moreMedium: Top Marketing Skills of 2017 Top Marketing Skills ... is slowing: While marketing skills like marketing campaign management, SEO/SEM, and channel marketing were in high demand in 2015, things have changed. This year, SEO/SEM dropped five spots from #4 to #9 and marketing campaign ... read more
Source: Top 4 Trends In #SEO #Marketing
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A Brief History of Search & SEO
Tracing the history of SEO is kind of like trying to trace the history of the handshake. We all know it exists, and we know it's an important part of business. But we don't spend a ton of time thinking about its origins -- we're mostly concerned with how we use it day-to-day.
But unlike the handshake, SEO is fairly young, and changes frequently. Quite appropriately, it appears to be a millennial -- its birth is predicted to fall somewhere around 1991.
And in its relatively short life, it's matured and evolved rather quickly -- just look at how many changes Google's algorithm alone has gone through. 
So where did SEO begin, and how did it become so darn important? Join us, as we step back in time and try to figure this out -- as it turns out, it's quite a story.
But First, a Look Back at Search Engines
Source: Wayback Machine
The first idea for creating a common archive for all the world's data came to fruition in 1945. That July, Dr. Vannevar Bush -- then director of the now-defunct Office of Scientific Research and Development -- published a piece in The Atlantic proposing a "collection of data and observations, the extraction of parallel material from the existing record, and the final insertion of new material into the general body of the common record." In other words, we believe, today's Google.
Several decades later, in 1990, McGill University student Alan Emtage created Archie, which some say was the very first search engine -- though that remains up for debate, according to research from Bill Slawski, president and founder of SEO by the Sea. However, Archie was what Slawski called the "best way to find information from other servers around the internet at the time," and is actually still (very primitive) operation.
The next decade saw several pivotal developments, with the more commercial versions of search engines we might recognize today taking shape.
It's worth noting that nearly twelve years later, in June 2009, Microsoft released Bing -- its previous editions were also known as Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search.
But here's where SEO itself comes in. As search engines became more mainstream and widely used, site owners started to get wise. As SEO community Moz puts it, "It was discovered that by taking some rather simple actions, search engine results could be manipulated and money could be made from the internet."
Those results, though, weren't exactly quality ones. And that, dear readers, is where the SEO story begins.
A Brief History of Search & SEO The '90s
Source: The Daily Dot
With search engines becoming household names and more families becoming connected to the Internet, finding information came with greater ease. The problem, as noted above, was the quality of that information.
While search engine results matched words from user queries, it was usually limited to just that, as an overwhelming amount of site owners took to keyword stuffing -- repeating keywords over and over again in the text -- to improve rankings (for which there was no criteria), drive traffic to their pages and produce attractive numbers for potential advertisers.
There was also a bit of collusion going on. In addition to the keyword stuffing, people were using excessive and "spammy backlinks," according to SEL, to improve their authorities. Not only were there no ranking criteria at the time -- but by the time search engines fixed algorithms accordingly, there were already new black hat SEO practices taking place that the fixes didn't address.
But then, two kids at Stanford got an idea.
Source: Stanford InfoLab
When Page and Brin set out to create Google, that was one of the problems they wanted to solve. In 1998, the pair published a paper at Stanford titled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," where they wrote:
...the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users."
It was in that same paper that Page and Brin first mentioned PageRank, the technology that Google uses to help rank search results based on quality, and not keywords alone. Some might say that thesis cleared the path for SEO as we know it today.
The Early 2000s
Source: Wayback Machine
The early 2000s saw the beginning of the Google takeover. In the process of making search engine technology less advertising-centric, Google began to provide guidelines for white hat SEO -- the kind that the "good guys" stick to -- to help webmasters rank without any of the common fishy behavior from the 90s.
2000-2002But according to Moz, the guidelines didn't yet have an actual impact on ranking, so people didn't bother following them. That's partially because PageRank was based on the number of inbound links to a given page -- the more of those, the higher the ranking. But there wasn't yet a way to measure the authenticity of those links -- for the early part of the 2000s, Marketing Technology Blog says it was still possible to use these backlinking techniques to rank pages that weren't even related to search criteria.
But in 2001, Brin and Page appeared on "Charlie Rose," when the host asked them, "Why does it work so well?" As part of his answer, Brin emphasized that -- at the time -- Google was a search engine and nothing else, and was looking at "the web as a whole, and not just which words occur on each page." It set the tone for some of the initial major algorithm updates that would begin to more closely examine those words. Have a look at the full interview:
Source: Charlie Rose
2003-2004This approach to the web being about more than just words really began taking shape in November 2003, with the "Florida" update to Google's algorithm. Enough sites lost their ranking for Search Engine Watch to call the response to Florida a massive "outcry," but careful to note that many sites benefitted from the change, too. It was the first major instance of sites receiving penalties for things like keyword stuffing, signaling Google's emphasis on solving for the user first -- mainly with quality content.
In 2004, one of the more primitive versions of Google's voice search existed, in what the New York Times called a half-finished experiment. And while the technology was somewhat infantile at the time -- just check out what the instructions looked like at first -- it was also a signal to the future importance of mobile in SEO. (Stay tuned -- more on that later.)
Source: Wayback Machine
2005: A big year for SEOOne of the biggest years in the search engine world was 2005. That January, Google united with Yahoo and MSN for the Nofollow Attribute, which was created in part to decrease the amount of spammy links and comments on websites, especially blogs. Then, in June, Google debuted personalized search, which used someone's search and browsing history to make results more relevant.
That November, Google Analytics launched, which is still used today to measure traffic and campaign ROI. Check out its baby photo:
Source: Wayback Machine
2009: SEO shakeupsIn 2009, the search engine world saw a bit of a shakeup. Bing premiered that June, with Microsoft aggressively marketing it as the search engine that would produce noticeably better results than Google. But as SEL predicted, it was no "Google-killer," nor did its advice for optimizing content significantly contrast Google's. In fact, according to Search Engine Journal, the only noticeable difference was Bing's tendency to give priority to keywords in URLs, as well as favoring capitalized words and "pages from large sites."
That same year, in August, Google provided a preview of the Caffeine algorithm change, requesting the public's help to test the "next-generation infrastructure" that Moz says was "designed to speed crawling, expand the index, and integrate indexation and ranking in nearly real-time."
Caffeine wasn't fully introduced until nearly a year later -- when it also improved the search engine's speed -- but in December of 2009, a tangible real-time search was released, with Google search results including things like tweets and breaking news. It was a move that confirmed SEO wasn't just for webmasters anymore -- from that moment forward, journalists, web copywriters and even social community managers would have to optimize content for search engines.
Here's Matt Cutts, Google's head of webspam, discussing Caffeine in August 2009:
Source: Wayback Machine // WebProNews
2010-Present
Source:Wayback Machine // Google
When you're typing in a search query into Google, it's kind of fun to see what its suggestions are. That's thanks to the Google Instant technology, which rolled out in September 2010. At first, Moz says, it made SEOs "combust," until they realized that it didn't really have any result on ranking.
But Google Instant, along with the evolution of SEO from 2010 on, was just another phase of the search engine's mission to solve for the user -- despite some controversy along the way around pages whose rankings were actually improved by negative online reviews. The algorithm, Google said, was eventually adjusted to penalize sites using such tactics.
More on Google Instant, circa 2010:
That year also saw a growing importance of social media content in SEO. In December 2010, both Google and Bing added "social signals," which first displayed any written Facebook posts, for example, from your own network that matched your query. But it also began to give PageRank to Twitter profiles that were linked to with some frequency. The importance of Twitter in SEO didn't end there -- stay tuned.
2011: The year of the pandaThe trend of punishing sites for unfairly gaming Google's algorithm would continue. Some of these incidents were more public than others, including one with Overstock.com in 2011. At the time, according to Wall Street Journal, domains ending with .edu generally had a higher authority in Google's eyes. Overstock used that to its advantage by asking educational institutions to link to its site -- and use keywords like "vacuum cleaners" and "bunk beds" -- offering discounts for students and faculty in return. Those inbound links would improve Overstock's rankings for queries with such keywords, until Overstock discontinued the practice in 2011 and Google penalizing them soon after.
It was also the year of Panda, which first rolled out that February -- the algorithm update that cracked down on content farms. Those were sites with huge quantities of frequently updated, low-quality content that was written with the sole purpose of driving search engine results. They also tend to have a high ad-to-content ratios, which Panda was trained to sniff out.
Panda itself has undergone several updates -- so many that in its timeline of changes to Google's algorithm, Moz declined to list any that weren't major after 2011. Even with that exclusion, the timeline still lists twenty-eight panda updates -- for most of which the impact was difficult to measure -- through July of 2015.
2012: Along came a penguinIn April 2012, Google took what it called "another step to reward high-quality sites" with the first of many Penguin updates -- and, in the process of announcing it, acknowledged Bing's month-earlier blog post on the changing face of SEO. Penguin targeted sites that more subtly used non-white hat SEO tactics; for example, those with content that might be mostly informative, but was also sprinkled with spammy hyperlinks that had nothing to do with the page's H1, like in this example:
Source: Google
It's worth noting that 2012 also saw a throwback to Google's original anti-ad-heavy thesis with the "Above The Fold" update, which began to lower the rankings of sites with heavy ad-space above the "fold," or the top half of the page.
Eventually, Google would go beyond targeting spammy content itself. The Payday Loan algorithm update -- which was hinted at in June 2013 and officially rolled out the following May -- actually focused more on queries that were more likely to produce spammy results. Those were typically searches for things like, well, payday loans, and other things that might make your mother blush. Google adjusted its ranking system to help keep spam out of those results, and while it didn't necessarily impact the SEO efforts of legitimate sites, it displayed efforts to keep search results authentic.
Google goes localKeeping with the tradition of animal-named algorithm updates, Google released "Pigeon" (dubbed so by SEL) in 2014, which carried quite an impact on local search results. At the time, it seems to have been designed to improve Maps queries, which began to be treated with some of the same technology that was applied to its other search functions, like "Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms". Local searches were going to become a big deal -- and it will only continue to do so, as you'll see in a bit.
Then, in 2015...The biggest post-2010 SEO announcement might have been Google's mobile update of April 2015, when non-mobile-friendly websites would start getting lower rankings. That meant SEO was no longer about keywords and content -- responsive design mattered, too.
Google announced that change in advance, in February 2015, with a mobile-friendly test that allowed webmasters to view potential issues and make changes before the rollout. It wasn't the last of Google's mobile updates -- in August 2016, it announced a crackdown on mobile pop-ups.
What's Next?It might be hard to believe, but it looks like even more change is on the horizon.
To mobile and beyondAs mobile usage is on the rise -- 51% percent of digital media is consumed that way, versus 42% on desktop -- it makes sense that SEO will continue leaning in that direction.
That's already apparent with Google's favorability toward a mobile-friendly user experience. We predict that a future wave of SEO will largely pertain to voice search. That has its own complex history and is on the rise -- 20% of Google searches are currently done by voice, as are 25% of Bing's. And it's compounded by the rise of such voice-powered digital personal assistants, like Amazon's Alexa.
While there might not be a clear-cut way to optimize for voice search yet -- largely due to a lack of analytics in that area -- we anticipate that those resources will become available, creating yet another critical pillar of SEO.
Going localBut that brings up the issue of localization in SEO, and optimizing results to be regionally relevant. That's especially true in the realm of voice search -- Yelp and other business aggregators are used to answer voice queries about what's nearby, for example. That's an SEO opportunity for local businesses, by making sure their listings are "comprehensive, accurate and optimized to be referenced" on a third party site.
Getting SocialWhile the 2009 introduction of Google's real-time search had some social ramifications, social media is becoming a more pivotal piece of SEO strategy. When the search engine began indexing tweets in 2011, for example, it hinted toward a future in which users seek information on social media in the same way that they do via search. In fact, this indexing might be Google's version of future-proofing -- if you can imagine it -- for a time when people no longer use search engines the way we do now.
For example, type in the name of any celebrity -- say, Charlie Rose, whose video we shared earlier. The first page of search results for his name includes his Facebook and Twitter profiles. Plus, check out the biographical sidebar to the right -- there are social icons with links to his various networks there, too. When users search for a person, that's one of the first things they want to see.
Source: Google
In any case, it's clear why SEO has become a full-time job. Its history will only continue evolving. Executing it well requires a high level of skill, ethics, and upkeep on technology.
But we know that, sometimes, it's not possible to have a single person dedicated to it, which is why we continue to create the best SEO learning resources we can. Check out some of our favorites:
What are your favorite pieces of SEO history? Let us know in the comments.
Source: A Brief History of Search & SEO
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