SEO Tips from the Experts' Pen. Client Success Story: Nestlé & The Digital Acceleration Team. Why You Should Get Serious About Social Media Automation. Don’t you wish you had a few extra hours in your day? Your to do list keeps getting longer and longer, and your stress levels are rising. Something needs to get pushed back. Social media is on the chopping block. Even though you know it has long term benefits, right now it feels like a pretty low priority. What if there was a way to have an even bigger impact on social media than you are having right now, and do it in less time? Social media automation enables you to do this. 3 things social media automation will help you achieve; 1. Consistency is key to building a strong following on social media. Businesses often create accounts on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, but have trouble achieving consistency.
Businesses that are strapped for time or do not have sufficient manpower to assign a dedicated team for social media management tend to drop off the social media radar. As a result, they reap little or no benefits from marketing on social media. Feedly DrumUp 2. 3. 1. 2. 3. FAQ: All About The New Google RankBrain Algorithm. A complete guide to SEO for university websites. Digital marketing and SEO are becoming a higher priority now that universities are finding that they live in a much more competitive environment. Historically universities haven’t prioritised ranking their courses highly in search engines. Many are now starting to realise that, as students move from traditional methods of gaining course information to online, a high ranking in Google is crucial to be seen as a leading provider. In this article I’ll discuss the main areas of SEO that universities should be looking out for, and throw in a few hints and tips from my experience working with universities.
Let’s start with an overview of SEO: The three pillars of SEO The basic concepts of search engine optimisation are quite simple to understand, although the analysis and implementation of these pillars can be very complex. Note: I use Google as an analogy to search engines as Google has over 90% of the search market. 1. 2. 3. Content (on-page) optimisation Page content Ask yourself these questions: The SEO And User Science Behind Long-Form Content. To-Do List for Social Media Managers. Want to know what the to-do list of a successful social media manager looks like? Here’s an infographic based on Sprout Social’s Darryl Villacorta’s to-do list. It’s broken down into daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly tasks. Michael Patterson, also of Sprout Social wrote an article in which he explained the tasks in detail.
So what should a social media manager be doing on a daily basis? No. 1 task: Respond to inbound social messages. “Social media is quickly turning into one of the most popular channels for customer support, so it’s key to engage with the customers who are proactively reaching out to your brand,” writes Patterson.
No. 2 task: Monitor and respond to brand mentions. No. 3 task: Create conversations with brand advocates. No. 4 task: Find and engage with potential customers. No. 5 task: Research the social media industry. No. 6 task: Load your social editorial calendar. No. 7 task: Post three to six times on Twitter. No. 8 task: Post one to two times on Facebook. Econsultancy. Content-Marketing-Performance-Altimeter-Group. SEO: what it used to be vs what it is now. With Panda, Penguin and all the other Google updates, SEO has changed over the years.
What used to work doesn’t anymore. Source: www.quicksprout.com As many have observed for some time now, SEO has completely changed over the past few years. From being machine-centric, it became people-centric. But what does it mean concretely to content marketers? This infographic by Neil Patel gives a number of interesting points, a couple of which I want to comment: 1. 70% of search traffic comes from long tail keywords. One way to naturally cover the long tail is to curate content as explained here. 2. Old-school SEO tactics were obscure, technical back-linking techniques. Integrate content and SEO: it’s more and more the same thing. SCRM Cloud - Professionally managed Social media monitoring and analytics solution. The 7 Biggest, Counterintuitive Social Media Mistakes You May be Making. 5K Flares Filament.io 5K Flares × I’m pretty well known for making mistakes.
It’s kind of a known trait of mine. Just this weekend I walked into a door because I didn’t open it properly first. When it comes to social media, though, I try hard to learn from mistakes since they’re all saved for me to reflect on. Plus, I research and write about social media enough to have access to stats that make it easier to pick up and rectify these kind of mistakes. The funny thing about some of the mistakes I looked at for this post is that the advice to avoid them is counterintuitive—sometimes even controversial. 1. This is something that can be pretty controversial – a lot of people discourage re-posting links to the same content more than once. Guy is a big proponent of repeating your tweets, and has faced a lot of flack for it. Guy makes a good point that his followers probably aren’t reading his tweets at every moment of the day.
Here’s a typical example of the traffic from one of Guy’s tweets: 2. M&M's - Find Red. 5 Metrics Every Marketer Should be Watching. You can always rely on Einstein to give good quote. One of his most famous quotes accurately sums up the biggest challenge of digital marketing measurement: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” The internet has given marketers many things, one of which is more ways to reach potential customers directly. But with this comes further challenges, most notably, how do you work out whether all that online activity is having any real impact on sales?
Tweeting, posting, uploading videos; that’s the easy part. Why? The reality is that the easier something is to measure, the less useful it will usually be in terms of demonstrating actual value to the organization. The answer, of course, is no. Over the last few years, the practice and discipline of measurement has taken huge strides forward. Still, many smaller businesses, non-profits and startups don’t have the luxury of being able to hire experienced data analysts or invest in costly tools. 5 Metrics Every Marketer Should be Watching. How to Monitor Social Media in 10 Minutes a Day. The Top 14 Content Marketing Trends of 2014. 2014 was a busy year for marketers. Content Marketing hit the big time, brands and agencies embraced micro-content, and video marketing proved that it is here to stay. Here are the 14 biggest content marketing trends we saw in ’14: 1. Content Marketing is the New Norm Content Marketing has come a long way since its days as a buzzword. 2.
At Visually, we’ve discovered a thing or two (or three) about best practices when it comes to creating compelling content. 3. Hemingway is famous for writing a 6 word novel – “For Sale: Baby shoes. 4. Gary Vaynerchuck is betting big on the future of micro-content. 5. When native advertising solutions first appeared on the scene, publishers like The Atlantic failed to strike a balance between sponsored content and taking advantage of consumers, as John Oliver has famously noted. 6. 7. As consumers spend more time with their mobile devices, advertisers are shifting their strategies to reflect this trend. 8. 9. 10. 11. Content Marketing can be complicated. SEO is dead. Long live SEO. - Cox BLUE. Social media data collection tools. Why you need an evergreen content strategy. 10 Things to Never Share on Your Company’s Social Media Accounts. There's a time and a place for everything, and the open, personable atmosphere of social media might make it seem like anything can be appropriate if posted with the right hashtag or paired with the right quip.
While social media certainly allows for more flexibility in content and voice than more traditional marketing platforms, you still have to be careful when publishing a new post. If you're running an active campaign for your company on social media, make sure you never post or share any of these types of content: 1. Political Views. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Conclusion The consequences of even one bad post can be dire for your company, especially if you already have a large fan base. HubSpot | What is Inbound Marketing? The proven methodology for the digital age Since 2006, inbound marketing has been the most effective marketing method for doing business online. Instead of the old outbound marketing methods of buying ads, buying email lists, and praying for leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your company and product, where they naturally want to be.
By aligning the content you publish with your customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can then convert, close, and delight over time. How to interpret the graphic Along the top are the four actions (Attract, Convert, Close, Delight) inbound companies must take in order to obtain visitors, leads, customers, and promoters. Along the bottom are the tools companies use to accomplish these actions. (Note the tools are listed under the action where they first come into play, but that’s not the only place they’re applicable! Major themes: Make marketing people love. Attract Convert Close. Adobe guide to ROI on Social Media. Sitebeam | Test your websites for everything. Twitter Search | Email Alerts & Tweet History | Twilert.
SEO for startups in under 10 minutes. Website Review - SEO Tool | WooRank.com. How to use HootSuite for Social Listening. HootSuite is a tool for social media management that we've talked about and referenced many times. I am a Certified HootSuite Solution Pro, which means that I have been trained on not only how to use HootSuite, but how to help business owners understand how they can use HootSuite to manage and monitor their social media accounts. We are continuing our series on How to Make the Most of Your HootSuite Account by reviewing how to use HootSuite for Social Listening, including both tactics and techniques businesses can use. What is Social Listening? Of course, it helps if we're all on the same page as to what Social Listening means. The details will vary from business to business and industry to industry, but the core principle is that brands will listen to conversations taking place on social media and look for opportunities to participate and engage customers and prospects.
Second, a business will identify key influencers. Conversational Listening with HootSuite 1. 2. 3. 1. Mobile Listening. Social Media ROI: 11 FREE Tools for Measuring Social Media Success. One of the most challenging tasks in selling digital marketing to the C-Suite is defining the return on investment (ROI). It can be particularly challenging when justifying the budget for social media marketing (SMM). Many SMM efforts lend themselves to brand building, community building, and customer service. Unlike "traditional" SEO, these activities aren't always transactional in nature. Marketing ROI has traditionally been measured like this: Return on Investment (%) = (Net profit / Marketing Costs) × 100. Sometimes, cost per customer acquisition is the measure.
As recently as 2010, the dawn of social media marketing, those in the C-Suite attempted to apply the tried and true transactional ROI model to SMM. By 2013, only 9 percent of marketers were using traditional ROI metrics, down from 17 percent in the initial survey. That said, there are highly successful direct response campaigns that run on Facebook and other social networks every day. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Summary. SEO in 10mins... Is that possible? Our summary of the new advice from Google on SEO for startups and small sites You’ve probably heard of the Penguin series of updates that have negatively affected rankings for many companies.
It’s worth being aware that last week we had the release of Penguin 3.8 which impacts 1% of global searches. You can learn more about this Penguin update here. SEO basics in 10 minutes The main purpose of this post is to alert you to this new video guide from Google. While most online marketers will already know most of the advice, you may find it useful to share in these situations: Friends / family just starting their own site / business who are asking you for advice and you want a simple starterSmaller websites and clients that maybe want to learn and understand more about your servicesStudents and anyone new to marketing who should know the basics of SEO Here’s the advice, a summary follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Interesting she stresses anchor text, something we’ve been saying for years. 8. 9. 10. Critical Search Skills Students Should Know. There is a new digital divide on the horizon. It is not based around who has devices and who does not, but instead the new digital divide will be based around students who know how to effectively find and curate information and those who do not. Helene Blowers has come up with seven ideas about the new digital divide – four of them, the ones I felt related to searching, are listed below. The New Digital Divide In an age of information abundance learning to effectively search is one of the most important skills most teachers are NOT teaching. They assume students know how to conduct a search, and set them free on the internet to find information. Teachers – especially in the elementary grades -need to develop a shared vocabulary around the skill of searching.
Critical Search Skills Students Should Know Quotation Marks Students should always use quotes to search for an exact word or set of words. Example: “The Great Chicago Fire” Dashes (or minus sign) Example: Great Chicago Fire -soccer. Google unveils major upgrade to search algorithm. 26 September 2013Last updated at 18:21 ET By Richard Taylor North America Technology Correspondent Google search expert Amit Singhal outlines his vision Google has unveiled an upgrade to the way it interprets users' search requests. The new algorithm, codenamed Hummingbird, is the first major upgrade for three years. It has already been in use for about a month, and affects about 90% of Google searches. At a presentation on Thursday, the search giant was short on specifics but said Hummingbird is especially useful for longer and more complex queries. Google stressed that a new algorithm is important as users expect more natural and conversational interactions with a search engine - for example, using their voice to speak requests into mobile phones, smart watches and other wearable technology.
Hummingbird is focused more on ranking information based on a more intelligent understanding of search requests, unlike its predecessor, Caffeine, which was targeted at better indexing of websites. Google Webmasters. The History of SEO, and a Glimpse Into Its Future [SlideShare] It’s hard to imagine a world without search engines. Even though they are only two decades old, search engines have given people superpowers with unlimited knowledge at their fingertips. And with this endless source of knowledge, many things in our lives have changed. Search engines have changed how we discover information. They've changed how we connect with friends and family. And most importantly, they've changed how we look for goods and services. These changing consumer behaviors have led to explosive growth in the field of SEO as businesses looked to capitalise on potential customers searching for information related to their product or services online.
But as SEO has evolved, a growing division has grown between those people in marketing who try to stay within Google’s guidelines (as best they can), and those who try to beat the algorithm. The constant state of change in search has people questioning the importance of SEO at all. A website with an amazing user experience. State of Social Media Advertising.
Springsteen shows why it's positive to be negative with your PPC. The Future Of How Businesses Connect With Customers. 6 Tips to Rank High in Google's Search Engine. 13 Ethical Ways to Increase Your Site's Search Traffic. 8 Essential Web Optimization Techniques That Makes Google Happy. 14 Social Media Tools Used by Marketing Pros. 10 Top Google Plus Tools for Digital Marketers. 10 Ways to Prove the Value of Social Media Monitoring. 50 Top Tools for Social Media Monitoring, Analytics, and Management. Top 10 Social Media Management Tools. Optimize Website Content with Calls to Action: Tips for Small Businesses. State of Social Media Advertising. Measures of digital marketing ROI are meaningless unless ads are viewable.