What Exactly Does Google Consider High Quality Marketing Content?

Every 24 hours, 2 million unique blog posts are published. In light of this statistic, the quest to claim the #1 spot on Google’s search results for key terms in your industry suddenly seems harder than ever, doesn’t it?

Google’s search algorithm uses myriad different factors, known as “signals,” to determine qualityof content. The factors and their relative weights are all a closely-guarded secret, but you’ll be pleased to know that content creators aren’t completely left out in the cold. It’s critical to not just acknowledge Google’s quality guidelines, but to also make them an integral part of how you approach the production of web content. 

What Are the Quality Guidelines? 

Matt Cutts and the rest of the web-spam team offer webmaster guidelines, with a stated intention to “help Google find, index, and rank your site.” The site covers technical and user experience tips before delving into content quality, with a clear caveat that the guidelines aren’t intended to be comprehensive. It’s definitely in your brand’s best interest to avoid using deceptive principles just because they’re not illustrated on the list, and uphold “the spirit of the basic principles.” There’s no substitute for reading the guidelines, but the points consist primarily of the following: 

• Create blog content, landing pages, and site pages for people, not search rankings. 
• Don’t try to trick anyone, and don’t use any tactics you wouldn’t feel comfortable explaining to Cutts himself. 
• Invest significant time and resources into differentiating within your niche, andproviding value. 

Google also contracts with third-party organizations to utilize human quality raters, who use a prescribed method to describe the quality of search results. This feedback doesn’t measure the quality of content or affect results, but instead is used to determine how accurately their algorithm is indexing results by quality. 

Google has various categories into which content is separated, too, that help determine which articles pass the quality guidelines and which do not. Vital content is stuff that would come directly from a particular company’s site about their products or services. Useful content might answer questions the company website does not, provide reviews about the products or services, or perhaps suggestions for use. Relevant content might include an overview, expand on previous content, or perhaps answer less in-depth questions. Slightly Relevant would, as you may have guessed, provide information that only marginally relates to the topic at hand. Off-Topic, obviously, is content that has nothing to do with the search at all. 

These third-party organizations manually fight spam under these categories, while also seeking out dirty tactics, including cloaking and redirects, unnatural linking to and from websites, hacked sites, automatically generated content, user-generated spam, hidden text and keyword stuffing, and content with little to no value. 

Following several leaks of the guidelines given to search raters, an annotated version of the document has been made public. While the 43-page document is pretty much the opposite of light reading, and there’s plenty of information that’s not particularly relevant to inbound marketers, there are some outstanding insights on the definition of spam that are well worth incorporating into your research. 

What Quality Means for Your Content Strategy 

In a recent interview with Eric Enge of Stone Temple, Cutts encouraged marketers to “raise the quality threshold of content,” especially when it comes to accepting blog posts from guests. To be clear, originality and quality are definitely intertwined in the eyes of Google. The search ranking guidelines include a look toward expertise and authority, and you certainly aren’t giving the impression that you know what you’re talking about, or are willing to do the legwork on research, if you’re just regurgitating basics. Writing something that’s already been covered by your competitors won’t do you much good unless you add value to the topic. Taking your competitors content and making just a few minor tweaks could even do you some harm. 

Does continual effort to differentiate in search of quality mean you should exclusively focus on newsjacking, or pick a very narrow focus and stick with it permanently? No, but it adds weight to the concept that content reflects your company’s voice. Your CEO should put significant energy into building a company that adds value to your market, and your content should do the same thing. 

Quality means delving deeper into topics that fit your company’s focus, and that doesn’t necessarily require choosing a narrow vertical. You can keep your focus broad, but delve deeper into mapping your content toward buyer personas. You can develop a trademark irreverent tone that’s not currently being used by anyone in your market. However you choose to present your content, the most important thing to remember is that it must provide some value. Seek out other articles on your company’s subject and determine the ground that has already been covered. You may want to summarize those points, but the real meat of your work should be wholly your own. Dig more deeply, provide a new angle, make unusual comparisons, and offer your own voice, your own knowledge, and your own interpretation. How you share your quality content is up to you, but it must be something different enough to provide value in a way that no one else is.

What Quality Means for Your SEO Strategy

Cloaking. Hidden text. Keyword-stuffing. Deceptive page titles.

These are all practices explicitly forbidden by Google, but they’re not the only ways to suffer poor SEO. In the words of Enge, “just because Google doesn’t currently enforce something, doesn’t mean they condone it.” Will your search rankings suffer if you’re occasionally using long tail keywords in a slightly unnatural way? Perhaps, and if they don’t, they could suffer in the future.

However, I couldn’t help but get stuck on one component of their quality guidelines, which recommend you ask yourself “would you do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

Would content marketing in the digital space even exist without search engines? While some search experts have theorized that the internet could become so saturated with content one day that solutions like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are rendered useless, that day’s pretty far into the future -- if it ever comes. In the meantime, we’ll stick to the best practice of writing content for ourbuyer personas, creating helpful content that gets resurfaced and referenced time and time again, and optimizing for user experience.

Are These Quality Guidelines Enough? 

Do Google’s quality guidelines contain all the knowledge you need to stay out of hot water, and create content people love? Probably not, but that’s okay. In fact, it's probably by design -- because the intent is clear: Google doesn’t hate content creators or SEO, they just probably won’t reward anyone who isn’t willing to put the legwork into building an authoritative website over time. There are no shortcuts. 

Author: Bill Faeth

Bill Faeth is Founder and CEO of Inbound Marketing Agents (IMA), a gold HubSpot partner in Nashville, TN. Check out IMA’s latest ebook, The Science of Enterprise Lead Generation.

Source: http://blog.hubspot.com/google-guidelines-high-quality-content-var?

11 Places to Find Awesome Content Marketing Ideas

Are you having trouble coming up with ideas for your content marketing? If so, you’re not alone. It can be very difficult to come up with new ideas for content several times a week. What if there was an easier way? This article will introduce you to some methods of generating awesome content marketing ideas for your site. Using these techniques regularly will help you come up with content ideas for years to come.

1. Google

We’ve all seen Google’s keyword suggestions when entering a keyword phrase. This simple method can lead to great insight into what people search for in your niche. All you need to do is open your web browser, go to Google.com, and start typing your keyword phrase. As seen in the example below, Google will automatically give you suggestions with popular keyword phrases that are relevant to your niche.

When your search is complete, take a look at the related searches section at the bottom of the screen for more suggestions.

 2. Youtube

Depending on your topic, YouTube can provide some alternative ideas related to videos using the same principle from Google. Of course, watching the videos can be a source of inspiration as well.

3. Soovle.com

If you’re looking for a faster method to generate keyword ideas, check out Soolve.com. Like Google, Soovle.com provides a list of keyword phrases based on the keyword you type in. The difference is that Soovle.com provides keyword ideas from several websites all at once:

• Google.com
• Amazon.com
• Bing.com
• YouTube.com
• Answers.com
• Wikipedia.com

 4. Social Media

You’ve spent a lot of time following people while trying to build your brand in social media.   Why not use these great contacts to get ideas for new content? Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ allow you to see what your customers are talking about. This can be an easy way to start a conversation with your potential customers and ask them what they would like to learn about your niche.

While you’re there, you may have the opportunity to interview them and learn what they think about the content you provide. You can learn more about where they hang out online, get some feedback on content that you have already created, and where they think you should fill in some gaps.

5. Forums

While we’re on the topic of community, forums can be another way to generate content marketing ideas. This can be as simple as finding the right forum for your niche and spending some time there contributing. You might be surprised to see how many different ideas can be generated from a few minutes spent on a forum.

One thing you will typically find on forums is that people ask questions about how to solve their problems. This can be a great way to identify common problems for your niche. You can then write a blog post explaining how to solve the problems and then post a link on the forum to your blog post.

6. LinkedIn Groups

While LinkedIn may be known as a social media marketing site for professionals, it can also be a great way to gather insight about your industry. LinkedIn group discussions can provide insight into problems that are not available elsewhere. By staying up-to-date with these groups, you can make a list of frequently asked questions and generate some new content marketing ideas along the way. For more information on using LinkedIn in your marketing campaign, see my article “The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn Marketing.”

7. Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers is an interesting way to find what questions and problems other people have related to your niche. An example would be going to Yahoo Answers and typing in “content marketing”. Once you hit the “search answers” button, it gives the following results:

For this basic search, there were over 25,000 questions asked that are related to the words “content” and “marketing”. Of course, you can narrow down the search by using quotation marks around your search query.

Some of the questions can be great topics for your content. They’re usually specific to your niche and show you the exact questions a potential client would be asking.

8. Quora

Quora is similar to Yahoo Answers. While it may be younger than Yahoo Answers, Quora is growing quickly. It usually has more in-depth questions than other Q&A sites.

9. Alltop

Keeping track of the latest trends can be another way of generating ideas. Alltop.com provides a list of hot topics in a number of different niches. You can see what’s trending on several different sites at once.

Alltop can be a powerful source of gathering competitive intelligence. Imagine waking up every morning, drinking your coffee (or whatever morning beverage you prefer), and finding the latest updates in your niche. You can then bookmark and share the items you want to comment. Along the way, you can brainstorm topics for your next article.

10. Surveys

Surveys can be a great way to collect ideas directly from your readers. You can use surveys every few months to help generate new ideas. Many times, we’ve heard that a lot of the same questions come up again and again. When this is the case, you can pick the most commonly selected items.

By decoding your target audience and creating content that your customers want, you can more easily resonate with what they want. You can also assume that future customers will want similar types of content. While this method may take more time, it can allow you to learn more about your readers to create compelling content that they’ll want to share.

11. Read Other Blogs

It’s amazing how many incredible ideas you can find when you read other people’s work. You obviously don’t want to copy their exact ideas, but sometimes it can be very helpful to meld ideas from multiple people into a new blog post. Sometimes you can even find great ideas by reading blogs from a totally unrelated topic to your niche. This can also be a smart way to find out what is trending. After your research, you can write your own take on it.

In the Internet Marketing niche, I love checking in on Inbound.org to see what sorts of blog posts are catching people’s attention and generating discussion and interest. Almost every niche or industry has content curators like Inbound.org – you just have to do some searching to find them.

Conclusion

Sometimes it can be helpful to start with the search engines to get an idea of what keywords are being used in your niche. Once you have those keyword phrases, you can then search social media sites like Facebook and Twitter or forums to find content related to your niche. Question-and-answer sites like Yahoo and Quora can give you further insight with moderated responses.

Once you know the right keywords to look for, discover the problems people in your target market are having by staying on top of the latest trends. Alltop.com can be an easy way to stay active in the community and help promote your brand. Please keep in mind that the goal is to help people and not to directly promote your business.

Of course, surveying your existing customers can provide insight like no other method. Sometimes an open comment box where you ask the reader, “What kind of problems are you having with <niche>?” can provide incredible insight.

Combining these ideas into habits will take a little time. However, it allows you to follow what’s important to people in your niche and create awesome content marketing ideas to fuel your online marketing campaign.

Author: Jayson DeMers

Source: http://tiny.cc/xvov2w

5 Tips for a Stronger Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is changing the way we do business—in how we engage our customers and position our brands in the digital space. According to a study by Roper Public Affairs, 70% of respondents said content marketing helps them feel closer to the sponsoring company, while 60% said that company content helps them make better product decisions. Whether generating leads, supporting sales efforts, or improving search engine visibility, content strategy plays an increasingly important role in successful marketing programs.

Following are five tips that will help you develop a stronger content marketing strategy:

Start with strategy, not tactics

This may seem like common sense, but many well-intentioned marketers jump into tactics before developing a focused content strategy. Content marketing is just one component of a larger integrated marketing program. First, you need to understand the audience and what motivates them. Next is message development, which informs what tactics and channels will best engage your audience. Finally, remember to include measurement.

Your content marketing program should leverage your core go-to-market strategy, orchestrating scenarios that drive awareness and move quality prospects through the sales funnel. Regardless of the tactics employed, stay disciplined.

Don't overlook internal opportunities

Once you've established a solid content strategy it's time to start filling the pipeline. Certainly, you will leverage your thought leaders, but there are hidden gems throughout your organization. Consider the perspectives of your sales team and customer service representatives. They're engaged in dialog with your target audience everyday and can share insights that are meaningful to your customers. Also consider your company's internal education sessions. Do you bring in outside vendors to educate your staff? Do you hold Lunch & Learns to share the latest industry trends with your employees? Would your customers and prospects benefit from this information, as well? Sometimes great content is in hiding in plain sight. You just need to find it and use it.

Be opportunistic

With a solid content strategy, an organization can be more agile and strategically opportunistic in identifying great content. This means being prepared and understanding the difference between on-strategy content and just making stuff.

We ran into this issue recently with a client. The team was at an international trade show and we knew some key customers would be in attendance. Our team worked to orchestrate potential content opportunities in advance. We were looking for moments of meaningful dialog and insight—interactions with customers. We captured a great three-way discussion between one of our client's best customers and the editor of the industry's leading trade journal. Because we were prepared and opportunistic, the client has a great piece of relevant content.

Make the right investments

Effective content marketing is only possible with the right resources in place. Designate a team that can share the responsibility of creating content. Consider an outside agency to partner with your internal team. Content marketing requires a depth of resources, and a partner that focuses on these needs will lead to more consistent outreach and better content.

You should also implement quality assurance and messaging consistency review process. But mandate quick approvals to keep content timely. You must also hold your team accountable. Making content creation a priority adds a new level of responsibility. Just as content marketing is changing the way we do business, we must reshape our teams to do it right.

Make it actionable

It's crucial to evaluate how your content will motivate the audience to take action. Effective content marketing doesn't sell; it educates and assists. We want the audience to reexamine their approach and thinking. We want to produce “aha” moments for our customers. This is how you open the door and build relationships that boost sales opportunities.

Don't be shy about sharing your content. Readers become invested in the result when you help them understand a complicated topic or provide great insights. Ultimately, they'll either view you as a reputable and valued source of information, or they'll turn to you for your help and expertise.

Author: Matt Day

Source: http://www.dmnews.com/5-tips-for-a-stronger-content-marketing-strategy/article/308674/?#

Creating online content to help your business

If I had to choose the most important social media theme for 2013, it would be content. Yes, major platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn have all rolled out big updates and changes this year, but great content is the key to success on these and every other social platform. The focus on stellar content has become increasingly important.

Create amazing content, and people will love your company and buy your products/services. It seems so obvious, right?

So much easier said than done.

Amazing content doesn't just happen. It requires research, planning, strategy, execution and maximization. Sadly, many content creators think what they are sharing online is more than worthy of our time to read it … but it's the opposite.

Over the past few years, our dear friend Google has cracked down on bad content and introduced several algorithm updates to ensure quality content gets the search result attention it deserves. Google's latest feature, in-depth articles, focuses even more on bringing meaty, well-written and well-researched content to the surface.

Of course, if you have a team dedicated to content creation and management, the strong focus on original content for multiple online platforms is an easier pill to swallow. But don't think you're doomed if you're a small business owner or one-man shop. You can still use content to the advantage of your business. You'll just choose the most important one or two online platforms for your business and focus on rocking out the content on those, rather than trying to balance many platforms.

7 tips to advance your online content creation

Whether you're a large or small company, for profit or nonprofit, here are some tips to help you rev up your online content creation strategy:

• Get employees from all departments involved. If you're a larger company, don't think your communications team members should be the only ones coming up with content ideas. Particularly important is your sales team. They're the ones on the front lines. One great question to ask to help spur some content ideas: "What are the top five questions we always get from customers?" You never know – Tom the office manager or Sally in IT may have some really creative content ideas.
• Get visual. Content creation isn't confined to only words. Imagery is a huge part of online content, particularly for sites like Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. Don't forget about video. Create a two-minute video rather than writing a 500-word blog post. If you aren't taking the photos yourself or using stock imagery, make sure you know the rules when it comes to finding and using images online.
• Make it shareable. This seems like a no-brainer, yet I still come across great content online that I want to share, but the owner doesn't have sharing buttons. Don't make your readers have to do extra work to share your content. If you use WordPress, I love the Digg Digg sharing tool.
• Speak directly to your audience and in their language. It's not about you. It's about them. If you know the customers you're trying to attract (and if you don't, work that out before you even think about content creation!), then make sure your content is tailored to meet their needs. You can, and should, add in important company news and announcements. But the bulk of your content needs to provide value and be of interest to your audience. Make sure you stay true to who you are as a company, though. People will know if you're trying to be something you aren't just to attract new customers.
• Maximize your content. You wrote a blog post. You think it's pretty stellar and definitely worth reading. You published it. Now what? Well, you and your team should share it on company and personal online networks. You could include it in an upcoming e-newsletter that goes out to clients/customers. You could reach out to other publications/blogs to get it republished (I advise slightly altering it and giving it a different title so Google doesn't view it as duplicate content). Plenty of options.
• Don't try so hard. Don't agonize over creating the most perfect content. Do your research, make it unique/inspiring/interesting, but don't think you have to spend gobs of time coming up with the most jaw dropping, "OMG, I need to share this with everyone I know!" content. A good quote from marketing expert Jay Baer to remember in relation to content creation: "Stop trying to be amazing and start being useful." The OMG moments will follow.
• Test, rinse and repeat. There is no one-size-fits-all template when it comes to creating content and what works/doesn't work with social media. Something that works for my company may not work for yours. You have to experiment with the type of content you share online. Be strategic, but know that especially when you're first starting out with content creation, you have to experiment to figure out what works. It's trial and error, and practice makes perfect.

Author: Nikki Little

Source: http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20130821/BLOG102/130829992/creating-online-content-to-help-your-business?#

9 Reasons Content Marketing Programs Fail, and How to Ensure They Don't

It's all about content.

Content marketing is gaining prominence, as marketers look for more impactful ways to connect with and engage customers. Unlike most forms of marketing, content marketing focuses less on selling, and more on communicating, informing, and educating the customer. Generating engaging content is all about knowing your audience, capturing their attention, and staying relevant—often easier said than done, which is why some content marketing strategies miss the mark.

Here are nine common mistakes in content marketing, and ways to avoid them:

You don't draw the reader in. “Ninety percent of the battle is getting folks to the landing page or form or call-to-action,” says Paul McKeon, president of The Content Factor. “If the teaser, headline, or abstract aren't compelling, even if the content is great it's an uphill battle.”

Do: Write catchy, compelling headlines, teasers, abstracts, and summaries. A good rule of thumb is to think about what would get you to click on a piece of content.

You don't know your numbers. “Your board or investors wants to hear what you're doing to engage people with content—Facebook fans, blog subscribers, etc.—but, mostly, they want to hear how the content you're creating is moving your business forward,” says Mike Volpe, CMO atHubspot. “You should be able to easily, and readily, articulate how much it costs to create content, how it's moving the needle on your competitive landscape, lead flow, cost of customer acquisition, and customer acquisition, and you should always optimize your content approach based on those indicators each month.”

Do: Create a plan for how your content strategy will further your company's business objectives, and “outline a baseline from which you're launching your content strategy so you can quantify impact and results over time,” Volpe advises.

You're impatient. “Content marketing is a process, not a project,” McKeon says. “I recently downloaded a content asset from a well-known provider of marketing automation solutions. No sooner had I clicked “submit” than my phone rang with one of their salespeople on the line. Tongue in check, I asked if I had been ‘nurtured' long enough.”

Do: Delay “the inevitable salesperson call,” McKeon recommends. Failure to do so is likely to deter customers from engaging with your gated content in the future.

You don't promote it. Posting great content on a medium that gets little traffic is a mistake. “Creating great content is only part of the puzzle; you have to promote it to get people to view, interact with, and share it with others,” Volpe says. “Remarkable content will work wonders for your business, but to do so, people need to be able to find it, so ensure that you're promoting it effectively to maximize traction,” he explains.

Do: Leverage keyword trends to optimize your content for search, maintain a presence on social networks and blogs, and use co-marketing partnerships and PR to ensure your content is visible.

You don't know your audience. “An accurate definition and prioritization of your buyer personas is critical,” says Amnon Mishor, founder of Leadspace. Often, marketers produce content without a specific audience in mind. “Get to the job of creating content only when you have a good notion of who to target,” he adds.

Do: Analyze your existing customers. “[Identify] who's a decision-maker and who's an influencer, and learn where key target personas are likely to congregate online,” Mishor says. Then, he says, “model your ideal buyer profile manually, or with a social lead targeting technology.”

You don't understand your medium. “Twitter is not the best place for your 14,000 word essay on the challenges facing your industry, nor will a meme perform well in a serious industry journal,” Volpe says. The channel your content is published or promoted on dictates the format and style of your content. Understanding the potential, as well as the limitations, of each channel is step one to creating content that doesn't “make people [want to] hit the snooze button.”

Do: Use compelling images and infographics to “keep your content visually appealing,” he says.

You don't share the content-creation love. “Some of your best potential content creators may not be on your marketing team,” Volpe points out. “Ask your founder, sales folks, services team, really anyone, who interacts with customers on a regular basis or knows your industry well for content ideas.”  

Do: Tap into the content-creating potential of your entire team to deliver content that resonates with your leads and prospects.

You focus on the wrong company instead of the customer. “Although it's getting better, there's still a lack of ‘what's in it for me' content,” McKeon says. Too often, marketers generate content that revolves around the company and its products, and fails to provide value to the customer.

Do: “Create prescriptive or informative content,” he says. “One litmus test: Is the content you're sending good enough that the recipient would share it with their boss or customer?” If the answer is no, consider revising it.

You don't use data. “One hundred percent of Americans like facts and figures, from what we can tell,” Volpe quips. Relevant stats and figures serve up information in bite-size pieces, to be consumed and shared more easily.

Do: “Be a resource your prospects, customers, and leads turn to for data and information in a digestible format,” Volpe says. “And make sure you tweet relevant stats, as well—they are highly shareable.”

Author: Nel Malikova

Source: http://www.dmnews.com/9-reasons-content-marketing-programs-fail-and-how-to-ensure-they-dont/article/304217/?

Essential Q and A on SEO & Content Marketing for Small Businesses

The idea of making online content that is useful to people as well as easy to find and share applies to any organization whether it’s a B2B software company, a non-profit association or a government organization. There’s so much information being produced and promoted plus a growing array options for consuming content that standing out can be a real challenge.

I recently did a Google+ Hangout with a group of Chamber of Commerce executives from all over the U.S. talking about the role of content in marketing for small businesses. We dug into the fundamentals of what to talk about and how it can create a mutual benefit for SMBs and their customers. We also discussed the notion of empathy for our audiences and how important it is to invest in quality content as well as efforts to make that content easy to find and share.

Here’s a “cliff notes” version for our conversation, which was organized and led by Frank J. Kenny:

What’s more important, content or SEO?

Content is the reason search engines exist and if they didn’t, content would still be what people use to connect online.

In the modern digital marketing mix, it’s a holistic and customer centric approach that wins. That involves objectives and planning but also an understanding of the topics that matter to customers through the buying journey. Knowing how customers seek out answers online and what content formats they prefer is important too. Understanding how to create useful, entertaining information that moves the buyer along from awareness to purchase is how investments in content pay off.

SEO plays a role for discovery across the entire sales cycle to surface brand information that helps buyers come to know your company as the “best answer” to their problem.

By understanding how your target audience Discovers, Consumes and Acts on information, we can optimize to Attract, Engage and Convert them as customers.

How do you decide what to write and how much is enough?

Intuitively, content creation should come from a place of passion about what your company stands for and how it helps customers. There are many reasons people buy a product or service and that translates into stories to be told. As long as different people buy a company’s products and services for different reasons or applications, there will be reasons to create content.

I think it’s important to understand that Content Marketing is not a project. It’s a commitment to your customers that you’re there to help them get the information they need to feel confident about buying from you.

Logistically, content should be planned in an editorial calendar that focuses on the topics, frequency and channels that matter most to potential customers and any other audience you’re trying to connect with: existing customers, the media and industry influencers.

Crawl, walk, run and base the transitions on your goals, resources and monitoring of what’s working and what’s not. Always be optimizing!

How does social media work with search and where does content fit?

I like to say SEO is peanut butter, Social Media is the jelly and content is the bread that holds it all together. Except this sandwich is in more than one dimension.

Content is where your stories get told and both SEO and social media are ways to amplify the reach and engagement of those stories. Insights from SEO keyword research can review topics in demand that you should probably write about to attract customers that are actively looking. At the same time, monitoring social media can reveal topics and trends that can drive your editorial plan by covering issues, topics and especially, answering questions that your customers and buyers are interested in.

Understanding customers, researching relevant keywords, planning, creating, optimizing and promoting content are all part of a process that any small business owner can begin to tackle through a blog or contributing articles to other blogs and industry publications. Think about what kinds of questions customers have when they buy and then create content with answers that is easy to find and compelling to share. Become the best answer for what your business is best at, make it easy to buy and your sales will grow.  That’s a win for everyone.

Author: Lee Odden

Source: http://www.toprankblog.com/2013/07/qa-seo-content-smb/

Content Marketing – are you stuck for ideas?

It takes time to see sizable impact, but once it’s working it attracts traffic and builds a loyal customer base. At its simplest it’s a blog and great product pages – but it can then stray into any number of other areas.

Content marketing is important because:

1. Once you have built your content it’s very hard for a competitor to copy you
2. It provides you with a USP and sets you apart from other sites
3. Great content is an essential foundation of both your SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy and your social media strategy 

It can bring you a steady stream of traffic that’s interested in your products and business

At its simplest, content marketing is creating content that relates to your brand/products and putting it on your website.

Every piece of content you create should do at least one of these things (and usually all of them):

1)    Be something people will read and want to share

2)    Reflect your brand well

3)    Help sell the products and remove barriers to conversion

4)    Appeal to your target customers

Content can be infographics, videos, pdfs, FAQs, buying guides, images, reviews etc.

Most businesses have more content than they realise, so before you do anything else you need to work out what content you already have. To do this you need to do a brainstorm with key people in the business.

Ask them:

1. What content do we already have?
2. What content would our customers appreciate having on the website?
3. What stories are there around our products?

Take the answers and extrapolate them. Each story from the brainstorm can create several items of content.

Each idea has the potential to be turned into several different pieces of content in varying formats.

Now you have an idea of the sort of content you are going to be creating, you need to decide what formats, and which platforms, you are going to be using.

For most businesses, the starting point and the centre of your content strategy, is your blog. A blog can host pictures, text, audio, and video - which makes it really versatile. Plus you own it entirely – so it’s all working for you.

Blog content is then very easy to syndicate and feed into your social media activity using RSS feeds.

Now that you have a long list of story ideas, and a list of where you are going to be putting that content, you are ready to get creating and putting live.

Don’t forget to look at your analytics after a couple of months to see what’s working and do more of that!

 Author: Chloë Thomas

Source: http://www.b2bmarketing.net/blog/posts/2013/07/08/content-marketing-%E2%80%93-are-you-stuck-ideas?

Content Marketing Tips To Keep Your Traffic and Customers Moving

You admire blogs like Copyblogger and ProBlogger. You think they know exactly what their audience wants. You want to be like them. And write content that’s compelling, valuable, and interactive.

You (thankfully) know that content marketing is not (and never has been) a sprint. So you want to develop epic content consistently.

That’s great!

But let’s face it: you somewhere, deep down, think that search engines are that species which can only smell links and nothing else – not even epic content. Sure, search engines can’t magically recognize epic content. But what we often fail to understand here is that crap content doesn’t fix that. A good content marketing does.

As a matter of fact, it’s the best way to make sure that your epic content is considered as epic content and is ranked accordingly by search engines. Today, I’ll share some content marketing tips that’ll not just help you better market your brand – it’ll keep search engines satisfied.

Start with your website

Quite obvious, right? Wrong. I’ve seen many, many sites that miss out on this and suffer.

• Get your site through a content audit to make sure your content is in sync with your objective and is persuading enough to make people take out their credit cards.
• Create a valuable blog. According to a study, companies that blog have 55% more traffic, 97% more backlinks and 434% more indexed pages in search engines.

Guest blogging is good but investing in your own blog is amazing.

• If you don’t already have, employ an in-house content team to look after your blog and, in fact, all of your content marketing. Outsourcing content won’t get you going in the long run.
• Post frequently as it’ll keep search engines satisfied and will get you more social attention, more subscribers – all in all, more ROI.
• Be open to (and rather try out) different content models such as comics, infographics, podcasts, webinar, open discussions, newsletters etc.
• Make it easier for people to share your content, by giving them just a few options. For example, instead of having 10 social media buttons, settle for just 3 or less. Smashing Magazine is a good example here; it gives just one option (“Share on Twitter”) and that too at the perfect place – end of an article.
• Take a special care of your meta descriptions. Remember, they’re no more a ranking factor and have not been for long, but they sure can increase your click through rate (CTR) if you make them compelling enough.

You don’t want to do content marketing like a spammer

Whatever you create reflects your brand, and in order to succeed in content marketing, you need to inspire your audience. For this, you ought to:

• Stop producing bullshit (aka rehashed/thin/duplicate/unshareworthy) content. If this sounds gobbledygook today, even the holy Google+ authorship may go against you tomorrow.
• Refrain from practices such as article syndication – because neither is it content marketing nor will it get you audience and/or valuable links.
• Check whether you’re unintentionally devaluing your content. For example, you may be putting up your content by your company’s name. Or you may be using a sub-standard author bio – one that’s many, many anchor texts and portrays you as a link-hungry bear. Thanks to Google, for it has finally started giving value to authorship (did you know, rich snippets in search results can increase your CTR by as much as 30%). Moreover, Google won’t mind penalizing you if it notices that you’re too much obsessed with your anchor texts.
• Stop blabbering about your dentist on an SEO-based blog – choosing the right channel plays a major role in content marketing.

Ok, enough of don’ts. Thinking how you can make your content marketing stand out from the crowd? Here’s how:

• Think through what your content marketing objective is, what your audience wants, what your business needs and how you can help your customers.
• Devise a content strategy, which should cover how you’d develop, publish and govern your content over time. Above all, it should cover the why behind all that you do. So that you know what you’re doing is not without meaning. So that your audience wants to trust you and buy into what you sell.
• Define performance metrics so you can measure your success time and again… and again.
• Think about mobile, too.

Use content marketing to help your audience. Wow them. Give them what they want. Educate them. Solve their problems. And make them build trust in you, in what you say/write and in what you sell.

So, are you ready to make your content marketing matter?

Author: Ruchi Pardal

Source: http://tiny.cc/gahzzw

7 Ways Small Businesses Can Integrate SEO, Social Media & Content Marketing

Fantastic article (and cool graphics) by Lee Odden on how to integrate SEO, social media and content marketing. A must read.

In today’s age of ubiquitous connectivity, many small businesses have implemented a variety of online marketing efforts to attract new customers and increase overall sales. Unfortunately, results can vary significantly because tools are only as good as the expertise of the person using them.

The lure of the “next big thing” can create online marketing inefficiencies when small business owners try to be a marketing “jack of all trades and master to none”.

For example, the rapid growth and adoption of the social web can be overwhelming for small business marketers. Consider these social network growth statistics:

• Google sites handle about 100 billion searches each month (SEL)
• YouTube hosts nearly 14 billion videos (comScore)
• Facebook is now over 1 billion users (Mark Zuckerberg)
• Google+ has over 500 million users (Google)
• Twitter has over 550 million accounts (Statistics Brain)
• LinkedIn is at 225 million users (LinkedIn)
• Pinterest grew 4,377% in 2012 and continues to expand with 25 million users (TechCrunch)

Small business owners, employees and their customers use various social networking sites personally so in many cases the platforms are familiar. As a result, more small business marketers are starting to use Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter to attract new customers and engage those customers they already have.

However, personal use is not the same as expertise when it comes to marketing and with so many options available, prioritization, management and optimization are less than ideal.

Essential Questions for Small Business Marketers:
The variety of options for customer marketing and engagement ranging from social media to SEO to email marketing to online advertising can be overwhelming. As a result, some of the most common online marketing questions I hear from small businesses revolve around how to decide which tactics are best? Or, “How to manage time across so many tactics? and “How long will it take to see results?”

Answering these questions starts with a clear understanding of goals, customers and a flexible online marketing strategy that assembles the right mix of tactics and measurement practices. Most companies are looking for more customers and to retain those they have, but the question is, “How to do so efficiently?”

The Answer for Better Online Marketing Starts with Content:
In the context of this article, a big part of the answer is through content marketing. If Social Media and SEO fit together like peanut butter and jelly (if you didn’t know, yes they do) then content is the bread that holds them together.

For 81% of consumers, search influences what they think about a company (Weber Shandwick) and of companies that invest in content marketing, 78% use paid search and 69% use SEO to increase audience discovery of that content (Outbrain) – eMarketer.

The trend in search and social information discovery, consumption and action behaviors of consumers are an opportunity for small businesses in all industries to become highly valued sources of information wherever their customers are looking.

Search engines favor high value content in the search results. Social media sites favor sharable, linkable content. A small business that combines smart Social Media and SEO tactics can create a competitive advantage for attracting new customers whether they search Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or blogs.

Topics and Keywords Homework:
With search or social media optimization, it’s important to empathize with the audience you’re trying to reach in terms of the language they use while searching and how they talk on the social web.

Optimizing a web site for topics and specific phrases that customers rarely use, results in a waste of effort on your part and frustration on the part of the customer because they can’t easily find your content.

Keywords from a social media perspective involve discovering what customers are interested in and talking about on the social web vs. deciding that for them by pushing traditional marketing materials.

Basic Search Engine keyword research can be done with free tools available from Google.

Enter the kinds of phrases that your customers use and the Google Keyword Tool will report back the popularity of those phrases and suggest related phrases to target. The process of doing keyword research should result in the creation of a keyword glossary, which is a list of keyword phrases in a spreadsheet.

Whenever new content is created online, the keyword glossary can be referenced to check keyword relevance and popularity so new information published to the web is of interest to customers that are searching. The process of looking up keywords to determine current popularity and variations should be repeated quarterly to stay current.

Social keyword research is a little trickier because there are no dedicated tools to provide what topics and phrases are most popular on the social web at large. However, there are tools like SocialMention that offer a social search function which provides a list of keywords most often found in Tweets, comments and other social content based on your query. The keywords can be imported into your Keyword Glossary spreadsheet for comparison to search keywords.

Social keywords might help you determine topics for Tweets, Facebook updates and content, tags used with videos and images, blog posts and general names/titles of content and objects that you publish using social media websites. Doing so helps guide content that is of interest to those publishing similar content on the social web.

Quick Tip: Your brand name is a keyword and worth protecting. Check your brand name with a site like Knowem to make sure no one else is squatting on it. You can register accounts yourself or have the folks at Knowem do it for you.

Proven tactics to win the online marketing race:
I say race, because in the online world, that’s exactly what it is. A continuous effort towards achieving marketing goals while the competition is doing the same thing. That might seem ominous, but think of it as something you spend a reasonable, scheduled amount of time on consistently. If you keep at it, and work smart, you will win.

Here are 7 content marketing tactics that small businesses can use in combination with SEO and Social Media to win and keep more customers.

1. Blog

A blog offers numerous social and SEO benefits. Blogs are very effective as the hub in a “hub and spoke” social media content model. The spokes of that model might be Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Foursquare and other social media sites your customers are participating on.

Blog posts can focus on answering Frequently Asked Questions and topics of interest to customers. Create categories for each area of focus in your business to serve as an editorial guide.

Schedule posts in advance to save time and encourage staff to comment and promote the blog on any other social sites you’re involved with.

You can find many “how to” articles here in our blogging category.

2. Newsletters & Email Marketing

Email newsletters are great ways to connect directly with prospective customers offering tips and other content. A newsletter for existing customers helps reinforce the connection you have with them and can encourage referrals. A single newsletter can meet the needs of both lists with basic segmentation functionality and personalization features.

When publishing content on other social sites like Facebook, your blog or Twitter, readers can be invited to sign up for your newsletter where they can learn more about your business.

3. Media Coverage & Contributed Articles

Getting mentioned in the local business media and trade publications can boost awareness, credibility and directly generate new business.

To help make that happen, make a list of local business publications, writers and editors as well as popular bloggers. Inquire with those websites about contributed articles or guest blog posts. Content off of your own site gives you exposure to a new audience and links from the author bio back to your website.

Visit industry blogs and make comments that add value, then follow up with more detailed, useful information. Provide “hooks” that give perspectives and insights not normally thought of. Stand out and tell a compelling story. Follow up but don’t stalk!

Many of the relationships we have at TopRank Online Marketing with journalists came as a result of sending an email offering 1-3 abstracts for potential contributed articles. Now many of those news sites contact us for quotes.

4. Resource Center

One way small businesses are beating their larger competitors in search and in building authority is to be a better resource for customers through useful content. Common formats for helpful information about buying, using and related information on products and services include articles, videos and podcasts. Think of it as an online encyclopedia for content and topics related to your business.

Again, this is something you can build up little by little over time. Writing tasks can be handled by internal staff, outsourced bloggers and copywriters.

An effective resource center will be keyword optimized, easy to share on social media site using embedded sharing widgets like Share This and attract links from other websites. Keywords + useful content + links = search engine dominance.

5. Social Networks & Media

In the way that customers expect a toll free number, web site and blog, they’re beginning to expect the businesses they engage with to be social. That means having a presence in the social networks that are most relevant to customers. Spending a small amount of time consistently on interaction and relationship building can go a long way towards developing a community.

The key is picking the right platform. It might be a LinkedIn group, Facebook Fan page or a niche forum. Try out a social media monitoring tool like Bottlenose, or social search tools like Topsy to get an idea of which social websites might be good places to engage with potential customers.

Don’t be afraid to repurpose content. What you create on the newsletter, blog and resource center can be modified and cross-promoted with social networking and media sharing sites.

6. Local and Mobile Content

While “fish where the fish are” ranks as one of the most over-used cliché’s in the marketing world, it’s important to recognize consumer trends towards mobile search with the proliferation of smart phones and tablet devices like the iPad. The web experience has definitively extended beyond the personal computer and marketers must understand their customers’ use of mobile search and what the marketing opportunities are.

Make sure your website can be viewed properly on mobile devices and if you see a significant amount of traffic to your site (via web analytics) from mobile, then you might consider creating a mobile friendly version.

This tool can check the mobile friendliness of your site. Keep in mind, it doesn’t need to be completely compliant to be useful to customers on their mobile phones, but Google has mentioned recently that mobile sites with technical issues will not rank as well as those that are optimized. Also, most smart phones like an iPhone or Android can view websites the same as you would on a computer.

From a local perspective, for companies that serve customers in specific regions or with geographically specific needs, its essential those businesses are present in local search results, map results and specific geo-location queries. That means making sure your business is properly listed with Google Places for Business,  Yahoo Local, and Bing Places for Business listings.

Be sure you take advantage of the opportunity to add content to local listings. In the case of Google and Bing Places, you can add images, video and description content that will make your business stand out. To begin optimizing your local presence, check out Get Listed.

7. Video

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth millions. A video highlighting your business on a YouTube channel can be helpful for customers in getting “to know” who they might be seeing.

Videos can also be used to demonstrate products, show customer testimonials and highlight the personality of staff working within the small business. Videos hosted on sites like YouTube can be embedded within blog posts, extending their value as content.

Conclusion:

As a small business, should you do all of these things? No, of course not. Wearing many hats and slim resources means all of these tactics won’t be practical. But you can start small and specific. Then grow and adapt with more or different content according to what’s working vs. what’s not.  Just be sure to gain an understanding of what your customer’s information needs are, what topics and keywords are important to them and then optimize, socialize and publicize that content so your small business becomes the “best answer” for customers at the moment they need you most.

Author: Lee Odden

Source: http://www.toprankblog.com/2013/06/smb-content-better-online-marketing/