5 Tips to Maximize Your Retargeting Campaigns Using data to retarget Internet users with more relevant ads is growing more popular. And why not? Retargeting makes online advertising more intelligent and efficient, and that means much better returns for advertisers. Now more marketers are jumping on the bandwagon before learning all of the ins and outs of retargeting. Let’s take a look at five key tips to keep in mind before launching your next retargeting campaign. 1. As consumers, we’ve all experienced it: that brand that stalks us around the Internet after we leave its site without converting. When retargeting a site visitor, a marketer should always set a maximum time period based on the buying cycle for the product or service being advertised. 2. Many different companies offer retargeting solutions, and, as a result, it can be tempting to use more than one of them in an effort to achieve scale. Don’t do it. 3. SearchSEOEmailContextualEngagement Social 4. All site visitors are not created equal. 5. Summary
How to Manage an Effective Outreach Team Managing an outreach team can be a daunting task, as you are essentially in charge of people browsing who-knows-what websites and saying oh-no-not-that to influencers on behalf of your business' brand. It's a scary thought, knowing you're incapable of monitoring each and every detail of whom and what they are pitching. Besides being scary, outreach teams are a breeding ground for inefficiency and poor practices. If you aren't careful, you could be leading a team made up of members who spend all watching TED talks or annoying Wall Street Journal journalists with guest post pitches. Effective outreach is only as good as its management. Hire the Right People First, you need to have an outreach team that is built for success. Note, not every team member needs to have every single one of these characteristics. Train…Then Throw Them in the Deep End Outreach is a very personal learning process – it is impossible to prepare someone for every single response he/she will receive. Summary
Where Link Building is Heading in 2013 Another year has come and gone. For link builders, 2012 may well be remembered as the year that link building truly changed forever. There have been hints over the years that the engines were getting wise to certain questionable linking tactics, but nothing quite as dramatic as what took place in 2012. Several techniques that had worked for years stopped working. Link networks discovered and devalued, site after site vanishing from rankings. Indeed, 2012 was the year link building changed. We can argue about the details. Maybe the larger truth is that for some, link building changed forever while for others (who never ventured down darker alleys) not much changed at all. The techniques and tactics I've used since 1994 are absolutely as effective today as they were then, with the added advantage that we now have even more methods to help URLs migrate and be pushed along and throughout the web. So let's be candid. But enough about 2012. Tactics and Topics In no particular order... The tactic:
How to Structure a Link Building Campaign for Maximum Impact While you may have all the pieces to run link development campaigns, putting them together is crucial. Structuring linking campaigns can be tough. There’s so much contrary advice on the internet – Make big content! 301 redirects! Guest post! Make friends! Most of these tactics will work – up to a point, where you’ll hit the point of diminishing returns. In the past, you might’ve used a large number of directory submissions to start your campaign, followed by other mechanical ways. There are ways to structure these campaigns where you find yourself running up a wall, instead of starting a fly wheel and carefully picking up all of the low hanging fruit before advancing to high quality . Nothing Attracts a Crowd Like a Crowd – Nothing Attracts Links like Links In 2004, Mike Grehan wrote a now-famous essay, “Filthy Linking Rich”, on the tendency of well-linked sites to organically gain more links and make new competition impossible. Start at the Beginning Do I have to ‘build’ a link? mattgratt
5 Ways to Use Craigslist for SEO More than ever, SEO professionals need to get creative to do their jobs well. Google’s Penguin and Panda algorithm updates put an end to the effectiveness of old, unnatural and manipulative tactics that worked well temporarily. In the wake of the recent algorithm updates, we’ve seen tactics rise in popularity like guest blogging, link reclamation, and email outreach. But have you ever thought about using Craigslist for SEO? Craigslist is full of people who need something. The purpose of this guide is to outline some simple tactics by which you can take advantage of this fact to improve your organic search rankings. 1. In the wake of Panda and Penguin, many webmasters and small business owners have come to realize that great content is an important foundation of an effective online marketing strategy. Use some simple searches like "writer," "content writing," or "blog content" to find webmasters looking for content writers. 2. People love puzzles, especially when they solve them. 3. 4.
Blog | 11 Link Building Strategies That WON'T Break the Bank You already know that the link building game has completely changed… …and that building spammy, low-quality backlinks to your site simply doesn’t work. Not only has this made white hat link building harder, but a lot more expensive to boot. #1: Broken Link Building Broken link building is a killer SEO strategy that’s an SEO agency secret weapon. #2: Quality Paid Directories Despite what you may have heard, web directories are far from dead. #3: Fiverr If you’ve been doing internet marketing for a while I know you use Fiverr more often than you’d like to admit. But if you’re creative, you can find people willing to post your article (and backlink) on their site for $5. #4: Guest Blogging Yes, it’s time-consuming to find sites that accept guest posts, write an article, submit your post and go through rounds of edits. #5: Business Profiles These aren’t the most powerful links in the world but they do send Google the brand signals that they’re paying more and more attention to. #6: Press Releases
20 Top YouTube & Video Marketing Stories of 2012 Not surprisingly, YouTube marketing news and developments continue to dominate this year’s installment of our video marketing year in review for 2012. In reverse chronological order, here are the top 20 video marketing stories of the past year: YouTube Unveils New Look to Increase Channel Views, Subscriptions December 7, 2012: The redesign aims to help users find their favorite channels and “subscribe, subscribe, subscribe.” Online Video Ad Spending Increased 27% in 2012; Projected to Grow Another 47 percent November 22, 2012: A new research report from online video advertising company Adap.tv has found that online video ad spending has risen 27 percent in 2012. Obama vs. November 5, 2012: President Obama is trouncing Romney with 53 percent of total shares – 69 percent of the ads shared on blogs, 86 percent of the ads shared on Twitter, and 51 percent of the ads shared on Facebook, according to Unruly's 2012 Election Tracker. Google Play TV Shows, Movies, Music Debut on Google TV
How to Write Title Tags For Search Engine Optimization Today we're going back to basics! And nothing is more basically important to a site than properly written title tags. You know the ones that used to appear in the little blue bars in your browsers. Most modern browsers try to hide these, though that doesn't stop them being helpful! So what is a title tag? Meta Tags First let's talk about meta tags. Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of a HTML document. Title TagDescriptionKeywords (No one uses these anymore and you can get spam "points" for overuse on Bing, so just forget them. What is a Title Tag? Title tags are part of the meta tags that appear at the top of your HTML inside the < head> area. Title tags are also part of what makes people decide whether to visit your site when it shows up in the search results. Write title tags for humans; format them for search engines. NOTE: Every experienced SEO has their own unique methods to doing this, so I'm going to give you best practices along with some of my methods. or
Social Media Engagement: The Steps for Improving Yours Social Media Examiner’s recent study revealed that 83% of marketers claim that social media is important for their business, but they still continue to have a difficult time measuring and attaining the ROI they’d like to be seeing with social media. We talk about lead engagement and generation quite a bit in our free eBook, “Take Your Social Media To The Next Level”, but here we’ll share some of our new tips and pieces of advice on how you can learn about your buyer through social media that we know will really benefit your business today. Review Your Social Data Frequently Reviewing the statistical data for your social media efforts on a regular basis will go a long way in helping you improve your social media engagement by better understanding your target audience. When is the best time for me to post content? All of these questions should allow you to get a good idea of what sort of engagement you’re getting out of your social media. Use Your Audience Learn Their Language
Protecting your Company from the Risks of Negative SEO We love SEO, but recently we’ve been hearing a number of concerns and complaints about the ominous “negative SEO”. We thought that we’d take the time to get the facts straight, clear the air and tell you about what you can do to protect yourself from it today. What Is Negative SEO? We’ve talked a lot about SEO in a number of our eBooks, like “Ten Things You Can Do Right Now To Improve Your SEO” where we point out how SEO can be a very, very positive thing for your website and how you can do it fairly through using “White hat” practices. But negative SEO has the opposite effect on your website. The term “negative SEO” refers to having a web page or multiple web pages demoted from their search engine results page (SERP) through a number of unethical practices. MalwareHackingInjections A hacker, for example, can find a vulnerable spot in your FTP logins and then wreak havoc on your WordPress account, creating bad fishy backlinks to other shoddy sites. Should I Be Concerned?
How to Feature More Magnetic Copy in your Marketing No matter what type of content you are producing the goal is to keep the reader engaged and bring them closer. Writing that is informative, interesting and engaging will draw the reader in and keep them satisfied. To do this magnetic copy needs to be created. It may seem as though creating magnetic copy is an ‘easier said than done’ idea, but there are several ways to write copy that will bring the reader closer. Interested in learning more about how magnetic copy can improve your content? Be Direct People spend very little time looking at the content in front of them. Not only should your writing be direct in getting to the point, but in the flow of writing as well. Being brief also means eliminating hedging. Be Yourself Let your voice shine through when you create content. Telling a story is always a great way to attract an audience. Originality When researching a specific topic for a long period of time you start to see repetition in facts and content. Transform your Marketing Content
Visual Academy Welcome to Visual Academy, OnlineSchools.org's novel attempt at furthering education and creating a hunger for more knowledge through the use of visual learning techniques. Visual learning is a learning style in which teaching is accomplished through the association of images and techniques with ideas, concepts, data and other information. While the concept of purely visual learners has been debunked, the benefits of using graphics to introduce new concepts and ideas are still worth mentioning. Mixing things up, such as conveying data with pictures rather than straight text, can boost attention. It is precisely this boost of attention that can aid in learning because "when students pay closer attention, they learn better," psychologist Dan Willingham told NPR. Our infographics aim to catch your attention by presenting data in an interesting new way.