Online Marketing Blog

At some point, most of us have been lost. We know our ultimate destination, but either through a wrong turn or poor directions we find ourselves in the wrong place and likely very frustrated.

Without landing page optimization, your visitors may have this same lost feeling when they arrive on your website. Whether the content was written 10 days or 10 months ago, it’s easy to make assumptions about your website visitors and assume the directions (read: content and calls to action) you are providing make sense.

If anyone has ever given you directions based on landmarks (turn right at the gas station) you can understand this feeling. And ultimately you are unsure and have questions such as: what gas station, what if there is more than 1 and good grief why didn’t you just give me the street name?

Panda, Penguin and other Google updates are part of  search marketing. The frequency of updates has continued to garner attention over the last 6 months.

The only sure thing; it’s likely to continue as Google stays its course in refining standards for quality content.

And in a post-Panda and Penguin world, smarter more meaningful link building is not only recommended but a requirement.

Understanding this is only the tip of the iceberg. What lies below the surface is the real opportunity and from SES Chicago, here’s what you should be thinking about.

7 Link Building Philosophies to create value and remain Penguin-friendly. Shared with the audience by Jon Ball of  PageOnePower.  

1. In a World without Google
Imagine if Google didn’t exist, where would you spend link building efforts? What would you do and not do?

Online Marketing Magic blankets the Midwest as SES Chicago kicks off this morning. Audience members packed the room and gulped coffee anxiously awaiting to know what Avinash knows.

Curious to know what makes Avinash Kaushik (Digital Marketing Evangelist, Google) roll out of bed each morning? Surprisingly, it’s not data.

3 Simple Ideas Keeping Avinash’s Finger Off Snooze

1. Influence: The ability to find people and brainwash them that they need our products or services.
2. Experience: Most websites suck according to Avinash. And he’s on a one-man mission to fix them.
3. Value: If we solve the 2 problems above and can’t make money doing it, we’re doing it wrong. And that’s no fun at all.

How do you reach the intersection of influence, experience and value and find Online Marketing Magic?  Start with 14 online marketing Wake-Up Calls spanning from Analytics to Social to Mobile.

Summer in Minnesota is my favorite. Warm weather, green grass and puffy, white clouds flittering across the sky; it’s fabulous.

In particular I’m excited for the month of August because there are 2 great events happening in Minnesota.

Event #1 – Explore Minneapolis August 16-17, where digital and social media marketers are gathering to explore the latest in online marketing and I’m presenting on Optimizing for B2B Audiences.

Event #2 – The “Great Minnesota Get Together”, where mini-doughnuts, Sweet Martha’s Cookies, and Corn on the Cob are must-have’s on the list.

What do these 2 events have in common? It might seem like nothing, but let me explain: One of the key challenges most B2B Marketers face is selling a product or service where multiple end-users and decision makers are involved.

If you flip through your TV channel guide, it’s hard not to notice the number of contest-based shows. Whether people are competing to be the next music icon, lose weight or play games using household products the common theme is competition and a chance to win big.

TV producers are smart and continue to find success from audiences who like to compete and love to win.

This same idea can be leveraged in online marketing to get a community excited, find new audiences and keep your brand top of mind.

At the PRSA Digital Impact Conference Sandra Fathi, president and founder of Affect and Ben Pickering, CEO of Strutta guided the audience through the process to create a winning online contest.

This week at the PRSA Digital Impact Conference Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks talked to attendees about the benefits of online communities as part of a B2B social media strategy.

According to DiMauro, nearly 2/3 of organizations surveyed are engaged in private, online communities hosted by companies that sell them computer hardware, software or services.

The average visit in an online B2B community is 10 minutes, with 1 visit every 5-7 days.

What B2B organization wouldn’t want roughly 40 minutes of time per month with members to help solve problems, learn how they are using tools and what topics they are most interested in?

Building an online community gives organizations an opportunity to strategically connect with its audience in meaningful and sometimes deeper ways through private interactions.

Can BFF’s lead to more effective marketing?

That’s the topic of discussion for the PRSA Digital Impact Conference opening keynote featuring Caryn Marooney, vice president of technology communications for Facebook.

Before going to Facebook, Caryn explained that she ran an agency, however  she talks about having felt like a mechanical bunny always chasing something and not catching it.

Why? Everything is constantly changing. And we as PR and Marketing Pros have to be ok with that. What’s remains constant is what remains important.

3 important things we need to remember:

1. What audiences are we trying to reach
2. What are our goals
3. What tools can we use to reach our goals

As we think about audience, that of Facebook is expansive and exponential which is why it can be so effective in terms of online marketing.

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.

The growing Global Economy has significantly increased the number of companies seeking search marketing strategies to connect with target audiences all over the world. Many clients we work with at TopRank Online Marketing are either already global organizations or aspiring to deliver products and services in different countries. As a result, we routinely field questions as clients begin their journey into International Search.

Many companies don’t know where to start with International SEO, so here are 5 basic and tactical SEO considerations for companies looking at expanding into International Search:

1. Domain Name
3 common domain setups include Country-specific, Subdomain and Subfolder.

Whenever possible, a country-specific domain name is preferred. i.e. companyname.co.uk

Pros
The country-specific domain is a strong signal to the search engine and may provide better visibility for country-specific searches.

On a sunny, warm day in Minneapolis, marketers gathered near one of the city’s best attractions – LakeCalhoun – to learn about “Search and the Connected Consumer”, a view of how people retrieve information online and what that means for the future online and search engine marketing.

Hosted by MIMA, the event featured Mike Grehan, Global VP Content, Search Engine Watch, ClickZ & Search Engine Strategies.

Mike started by educating the audience on the history of the World Wide Web and the Internet (note: they are not one in the same).

The SES New York 2011 conference wrapped up last week on the heels of one of the biggest Google updates in recent years.

And although there was enough Panda talk to make a passerby think we might all be zookeepers, there were other themes running through the conference as well including content, paid strategies and tools, tools, tools.

Here’s a quick recap:

Panda: The Aftermath, as it was called essentially recapped what TopRank and other content advocates have been saying along.

Create unique, quality content that is written first for the target audience and second for the search engines. It’s those who have been living dangerously – or maybe just naively – creating what’s now referred to as shallow content who likely got hit the worst.

Content, Content, Content.

After attending search conferences for a few years now, it seems only right that content is getting some time in the spotlight. This week at Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York, I had the great pleasure of presenting on the topic of content marketing.

For so long talk has been about how to optimize and then how to promote – but we’re circling back around to meat and potatoes of online marketing which is the content.

Without it, what are we optimizing and promoting? Oh no, please don’t say it’s your static product pages… Well, if it is (and we’ve all been there), it is most definitely time to look at content marketing and what it can do to take your brand to new levels of customer engagement and acquisition.