Online Marketing Blog

At TopRank Online Marketing, we are fortunate to provide consulting to quite a few innovative B2B companies that serve other marketers. A great example of that is PRWeb and parent company, Vocus, both long standing clients.

In late 2011 Vocus welcomed Jason Jue as Chief Marketing Officer. As Vocus & PRWeb’s Account Manager at TopRank, I was keenly interested in getting to know Jason better and learning his plans for the future – and what better way than through an interview for all readers of Online Marketing Blog to see?

In this interview Jason talks about the undeniable convergence of PR and marketing, what social media metric is most undervalued by many PR and marketing professionals, where marketers should invest for 2013 and his vision for Vocus.

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.

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.

The “Smart Mobile Marketing” session was a panel discussion, moderated by TopRank CEO Lee Odden. To begin the discussion, Lee opened with a question for the room of 80+, “How many people in the room have developed a mobile version of a site?” 3-4 hands slowly raise. And with that, the stage is set: There is a lot of learning to do surrounding mobile marketing.

The session panel consisted of 2 leaders and veterans of the mobile marketing industry, Deborah Hall and Michael J. O’Farrell.

Deborah Hall

Hall founded web2mobile 3 years ago, frustrated with the user experience when trying to access a site via a smart phone. One of the greatest challenges she noticed was the upload speed, or lack thereof, of sites.

WARNING: This post is based on a Marty Weintraub presentation.  If you have seen Marty present, then you understand the warning and are probably smiling.  For those of you who have not, just remember you were warned, although this text doesn’t do justice to Marty IRL.

All kidding aside, Weintraub, CEO of aimClear, is a talented presenter that has a passion for his subject matter, Facebook.  In “Killer Facebook Targeting Tactics” at SES Toronto, Weintraub focused primarily on behavioral targeting. You know, identifying the behavior of your ideal audience and target/market accordingly. Sounds simple until you consider the millions of ways a marketer can slice and dice audience segments in Facebook.

Facebook marketing is a big topic and this presentation was specifically focused on Facebook ad targeting.

Really, truly understanding the competitive landscape can help pave the way for a successful search engine marketing program.

Chris Boggs led a panel discussion at SES Toronto on Competitive Analysis – What tips and tools can get you the vital competitive information that every SEO needs. According to Boggs, “Competitive analysis is one of the most exciting and important tactics (SEOs) can do.

The session was segmented into 3 areas of focus: on site research,off site research and PPC research.

On Site Research

Marios Alexandrou, Rosetta

When conducting on site (i.e. within your competitor’s site) competitive analysis, start by:

1) Asking yourself, “what companies should I look at?”  Compete.com can come in handy here.  Enter a handful of competitors and look for companies with high traffic. These are the companies that will likely have characteristics that will help inform your SEO approach.

In my preview post for SES Toronto, I counted John Alexander’s Keyword Forensics session as one of my “Must See” presentations for the 2011 conference. The promise of really digging down into keyword discovery and keyword analysis techniques sounded far too good to pass up. After all, keyword research is an essential part of any SEO process.

The session starts with an inspiring quote on the projector “Keyword Forensics – Exploring the Hidden User Search Behavior for Keywords That Are Often Missed by Keyword Researchers.”

I research keywords!  What am I missing?

Here are some good nuggets from the presentation:

Understand the Difference Between Keyword Research vs. Keyword Forensics

Keyword Research: Researching identified keywords to determine which phrases will provide the most search traffic.

If you’re wondering, “Who’s Brian Larson?”, you’re not alone. Before I jump into the details of some of the can’t miss sessions at the upcoming SES Toronto conference, I’ll borrow a line from Austin Powers: “Please allow myself to introduce…myself.”

I’m a SEO Account Manager at TopRank Online Marketing – which means I have the enviable job of developing and managing SEO programs for several TopRank clients. One of the many benefits of my job is that I have the opportunity to work daily with some of the most intelligent and forward thinking companies around (you know who you are).  As I head to SES Toronto, I go with my clients’ goals and needs at the front of my mind.