Online Marketing Blog

With search engine optimization, small businesses have two advantages larger competitors often can’t match: creativity and agility.

By embracing these two philosophies as part of their digital marketing DNA, small businesses can carve out a search marketing strategy that runs circles around larger competitors.

Today, we’ll briefly explore why creativity and agility are advantages small businesses have for search marketing, and some quick tips to activate each.

Creativity as a search marketing advantage

Large = more risk management – Small = creativity/individuality can shine

Larger corporations are naturally risk-averse. Most won’t create blogs that take sides on issues, create controversy or linkbait, push the envelope with snarky ideas or allow shining examples of individuality. Which is why individuals and smaller companies have a continued advantage: there are far less stakeholders so it’s easier to sell creative, controversial or compelling ideas. The more creative your content is, the more editorially earned, organic links you’ll attract from the web community that content builds.

Don't ignore digital assets in your optimization efforts

Don’t fight it: Blended search results, and hence digital asset optimization, are here (at least for now).

Text content may be your SEO poster child, but with images, video and audio content often appearing in standard search results, digital assets can no longer be treated as the ugly stepsister in the online marketing family. Many companies produce a variety of content and media that never make it to the public web.

To this point, the majority of marketers have either overlooked or ignored optimization of non-text digital assets. In fact, a recent Forrester study found:

• Less than 20% of marketers insert keywords into the filenames of videos on their sites
• Even fewer marketers write keyword-rich captions or create online video libraries

Welcome to the newest  BIGLIST review of Search Marketing Blogs. We have a little bit of everything today ranging from Chinese focused PPC to the World’s Greatest SEO to a steaming pile of SEO Bull$#*t. Enjoy!

If you think your blog deserves to be included, then write a compelling and maybe humorous comment below. We’ll almost certainly ignore it but you never know.

The SEO blog design recognition for this week’s BIGLIST update goes to a newer blog from an experienced search marketer:  SEO Mofo. I like the clean, yet colorful (and irreverent) design of this blog by Darren Slatten, self proclaimed “world’s greatest SEO”.  Darren has a sense of humor, SEO and blog smarts and according to his bio, no social life.  That should mean some entertaining and useful blog posts – at least from what I’ve seen so far.

One of the most trusted sources of marketing research and information is MarketingSherpa. I’ve been a subscriber for many years and always look forward to the reports on Search Marketing, Email Marketing and B2B Marketing. Last year MarketingSherpa started conducting research and publishing a Benchmark Report on social media marketing.

The new Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report was recently released and I’ve had a few days to take a look and will provide a review for our readers.

As you can expect, this guide is a “meaty” 250 plus pages of research, charts & tables, examples and well written advice. Over 2,000 marketers participated in the survey covering a myriad of topics ranging from strategy to forecasting & budgeting to integration with other marketing channels to specific research on social applications such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

Our team works hard to stay on top of current best practices and as a result, we’re asked to speak at a variety of conferences, workshops and webinars. One of the goals at TopRank Online Marketing is to help companies better understand the current landscape of the digital marketing & PR environment. That includes strategies that can be executed more efficiently and marketing programs that can adjust to persistent change. Hopefully you’ll find an event below that fits your needs.

Feb 9, 2010
Webinar: Secrets to B2B Marketing Success
TopRank, along with our client Marketo and Ion Interactive will be collaborating to educate B2B marketers on best practices before and after lead generation with an upcoming webinar focused on pre-click, post-click, and post-conversion optimization.

TopRank’s recent Blogging and SEO survey of in-house, agency and independent marketing, advertising and PR professionals revealed that 95% of respondents incorporate blogs as part of their online marketing mix. Nearly 88% have successfully increased measurable SEO objectives as a direct result of blogging.

Thousands of new blogs are started by companies and individuals each day. Yet getting a blog set-up, optimized, and launched are just the first steps. No one will know you have a blog to read, subscribe or link to unless you take an important next step: promotion. There are plenty of places you can promote and market a new blog:

• Add A Link – If it’s a company blog, or if it’s attached to another site, add a link to the blog from the main navigation on the parent website.

After reading Lee’s post earlier this week on how to source content on Twitter, I started to think about the homemade guacamole I made for the football playoff games last weekend. Stick with me here.

With my guacamole, I carefully strategize on the right mix of each ingredient to achieve the perfect flavor and consistency.

Not enough lemon and lime juice, and the avocados brown too quickly.

Too much garlic salt, and the guacamole gets a pungent taste.

Twitter as a marketing tool is much the same way.

Too much product pushing and self-inflation, and your followers head for the hills in droves.

Too little interaction and communication, and your followers forget you exist altogether.

Welcome to a new BIGLIST review of SEO blogs. While it’s by no means a requirement for blogs to post daily or even every week to provide useful content to readers, it does take at least 1 post every 2 weeks to be included in the BIGLIST. We’re seeing a shift with many blogs to posting less frequently and yet most of those bloggers are active on Twitter or Facebook. Is there a connection? Are Twitter and Facebook reducing the frequency of blogging overall in the Search and Social Media Marketing industry?

Take a look at the new crop of blogs in this BIGLIST update and you can be the judge.

As more companies, marketers and industry professionals flood the web with content, the value of those with a true understanding of content marketing keeps going up. More noise increases the value of signal. If your content marketing defines you as that source of signal, you’ll consistently be found, referenced and chosen ahead of competitors. With 6 in 10 marketers spending more on content marketing in 2010, now, more than ever, is the time to find where content fits within your marketing strategy.

Some statistics from Technorati’s 2009 state of the blogosphere back up the efficacy of content marketing:

• 15% of bloggers say they are paid to give speeches on the topics they blog about

With the increasing emphasis on content marketing for both SEO and Social Media, I thought I’d offer some specific tips on dealing with one of the most prevalent issues companies face in this area:  long term sourcing of content.  While we’ve written about content sourcing for corporate blogs in the past, but this post will emphasize how to use social media darling Twitter to find a goldmine of useful resources, tips and information that your customers will love and keep coming back for more.

The irony here is that there’s been speculation as to whether the growing popularity of Twitter has reduced the effectiveness and popularity of blogging. The reality is that Twitter and blogging compliment each other exceptionally well. Here are 5 tips on how to use Twitter to do just that:

Recently I posted a series of informal poll questions about blog SEO on Twitter to gain insights and feedback which were leveraged to construct a more in-depth survey.  I used the longer survey to collect information on how companies are using blogs for search engine optimization purposes and what kind of impact those efforts have. Essentially, I wanted to get opinions on and answers to: “Are blogs still important for SEO and why?”.

The topic of business blogging and search engine optimization as distinct and synergistic tactics have been explored here many times. A large number of companies are familiar with the process of starting a blog, but few have experienced the challenges of maintaining and growing a blog for more than a year.

Understanding long term benefits is key to sustainable business blogging.

If you haven’t already integrated Facebook into your online marketing mix by creating a fan page, consider the most recent staggering Facebook statistics:

• More than 350 million users are active on Facebook
• 50% of active users log in on any given day
• The average user spends 55 minutes a day on Facebook
• More than 1.6 million active Facebook fan pages have been created

With numbers like these — plus the fact that Google is now using social content to help determine the ranking of web pages — it’s difficult to justify not creating a Facebook presence for your brand.

Take the guesswork of Facebook marketing, and follow these 5 tips for making the most of your fan page.