Online Marketing Blog

Note from Lee: Please welcome this guest post from Sara Duane-Gladden, of TopRank Online Marketing’s copywriting team. 

Facebook is changing again. That never happens, right? For regular users like me, it seems as if there is something new happening at the social network every day. Facebook Timeline is probably one of the most significant, though, and it’s coming to a brand page near you soon. Very soon.

Timeline is the newest change from Facebook, a social media network renowned for making “enhancements” to its much-beloved product that result in mixed criticism and compliments from users. Timeline is no different, as it has been both praised and panned in the blogosphere. There doesn’t appear to be a consensus on Timeline, which is typical of Facebook changes. Love It or hate it, users and brands alike will adjust to Timeline in order to continue participating in the Facebook community – just like they have in the past.

Small Businesses Increase Online Marketing Efforts

This video from AT&T Business provides great insight into online marketing trends for small businesses.  What you’ll learn:

• User preferences
• Network Growth
• Online Marketing Tactics

News You Can Use

“Don’t Dread Tomorrow’s Mandatory Switch to Timeline, Study Shows It’s Good for 95% of Facebook Pages”  March 30 marks the official rollout of Timeline for Facebook business Pages.  This change has many business owners and brands up in arms.  However according to a recent study 95% of Pages who have switched to the Timeline have seen an increase of likes and buzz about their business.  Via TechCrunch.

“Google Cracking Down on “Unnatural” Links, Deindexing Blog Networks”  Falling from Google’s graces, a position that no company wants to see themselves in.  Recent shifts in Google’s policies include the way that Google perceives inbound links.  Via Search Engine Watch.

It’s amazing how a meme can turn into a stream of content when it resonates well with a community. Recently I was sent a set of interview questions and one of the questions asked about building blog community. I took my response to that one question and turned it into a blog post, “How to Increase Business Blog Readership, Traffic & Community” that was well received. In fact, that post prompted two different social media chats to ask if I’d be a guest host on the topic: #smchat and #nptalk. Thank you for inviting me!

Now I’m turning the questions from those chats and my answers into yet another (unique) blog post full of practical tips.

Photo Credit: @azeckman via Instagram

The word “optimize” has been a staple concept for SEO professionals and online marketers for many years. While SEO is one of the most effective online marketing tactics for customer acquisition, there’s a lot of misinformation and outdated opinions about the role of optimization with internet marketing.

Our CEO at TopRank Online Marketing, Lee Odden, is helping to change the way marketers think about and implement optimization as a holistic approach to content marketing online.

At a Minnesota American Marketing Association (MNAMA) event in Minneapolis last night, he shared that the premise of optimization – and sometimes SEO in general - can be overly keyword-driven and not entirely focused on customer experiences or business outcomes.

Linkbuilding has to be one of my favorite aspects of SEO. All too often people use the analogy of linkbuilding being a popularity contest. As someone who views linkbuilding in a somewhat different light – and as someone who was considered by only his parents as ‘cool’ – I think it’s time to put that analogy to bed. Yes, being the sexy-fun brand will undoubtedly drive links for your site. But in my opinion, it’s the quality of the information on the page that will not only help you succeed in proactively acquiring links, but will also inspire others to link to your page. Or to return to the analogy, the cool kid might start out with the lead, but it’s the smart kid (see nerd) who ends up winning in the long run.

The final day of SES New York wrapped up with a series of the top rated sessions from other SES conferences. One of those sessions was a presentation on “Content & Customer Optimization” by my boss TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden (@leeodden).

I for one was impressed that on the final day of the conference and the last session of the day the room was packed and people were ready to learn.

Lee began by polling the audience to see what mix online marketing expertise was present in the room.  There were a smattering of SEO practitioners, copywriters, agency marketers (like myself), and those working client side.  Below I’ve included what I considered to be some of the highlights from Lee’s presentation.

If your company is throwing around the idea of building a landing page or series of landing pages it is first important to understand what they are, as well as the elements that go into creating an effective landing page.

At their core landing pages are simply a single web page that contains a form that inspires your customers to take the next step. While seemingly simple, many companies are not properly implementing their pages.

Last week at SES New York I attended a session by New York Times Best Selling author and SES Advisory board member Bryan Eisenberg (@thegrok) on “The Anatomy of the Perfect Landing Page”.

Social Media Marketing: The long term and short term value with Avinash Kaushik

This interview from #SESNY features Google evangelist Avinash Kaushik on monitoring social media value.  Kaushik stresses that social media should be about quantifying your efforts.  Companies must determine what they did that ended in specific results, and the economic value that was created due to these efforts. You can see another interview with Avinash Kaushik here on the power of storytelling and web analytics.

Tips & Tactics for Improving Your Business

“Why Relationship Marketing is Important for Businesses” This video interview with author and social media guru Mari Smith(@marismith) sheds some light on the notion of “people-to-people” marketing.  In this video you’re learn why businesses must have listening skills and what businesses are doing well in relationship marketing. Via Social Media Examiner.

Have you worked yourself to the bone on a video marketing campaign only to see the results fall flat? Do you have a wealth of video content but are unsure how to leverage it effectively to serve your marketing objectives? Can your presence on YouTube be summed as ‘well, we have a channel’?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re not alone. Getting results through your video marketing efforts can be a challenge if you don’t have the right game-plan. However, you’re in luck! At day 2 of SES New York TopRank CEO Lee Odden moderated a panel discussion with leading industry video marketers.Their stellar tips and insights that can be found below.

If you’re a marketer with business objectives tied to online conversions, landing pages are likely part of your marketing mix. While landing pages have a proven track record of serving as a lead generation funnel and producing solid ROI, not all landing pages are created equal. Enter the process of testing and refining your landing page in order to deliver maximum result – aka landing page optimization.

Understanding the way that search engines like Google and Bing crawl your sites for duplicate content is not always easy to follow.  What exactly are the rules, and what are the ramifications for not following the rules?

This presentation by a group of industry experts focused on gaining an understanding of how search engines read your content, as well as what steps you can take to avoid penalization for your content.

Peter van der Graff: Redirecting Duplicate Content

We always assume that Google knows best, but is that necessarily true?  According to Peter finding a formula that works 100% of the time is no easy task.  He opened up with a great example “If you have a 301 redirect and you tell Google to go left, they’ll probably go right.”  You could end up implementing a 301 redirect and when you request the location a cached version of the site may still appear instead of the redirect you intended.

This afternoon I attended the panel presentation titled ” Local Myth Busters – Local Optimization Facts Proven or Debunked” which featured four very knowledgable panelists who provided a great mix of instruction and high level tactics.  This session was very focused on Google Places and finding a way to stand out from your competition.

If you are responsible for local marketing or would like to begin implementing a local/mobile marketing strategy these are some tips you don’t want to miss.  Below I have included what I considered to be highlights from the presentations.

Traditional SEO & Citations: Andrew Beckman (@Andrew_Beckman)

When implementing traditional SEO you’re on the hunt for backlinks.  When deploying a local search strategy you want to populate your “place” data among different channels in a cohesive way.  Citations (or mentions of your business) are key for ranking algorithms from search engines like Google.  How can you determine the value of a particular citation?