Online Marketing Blog

At Online Marketing Blog, content marketing is frequently a hot topic.  And with good reason:  it’s a vital skill for marketers. Not only do we at TopRank Online Marketing see great results implementing content marketing for clients, but the industry as a whole sees it as a clear trend.  Consider the following stats:

• 6 in 10 marketers plan to spend more on content marketing in 2010.
• 71% of bloggers who maintain blogs for a business – their own or one they work for – report that they have increased their visibility within their industries through their blogs (as just one example of content marketing in action).
• Content marketing plays an integral role in many of the top digital marketing tactics marketers implemented in 2009.

Links are the lifeblood of the web. Without fresh links, your website has no authority in the engines or consistent referral traffic.

Some companies and individuals appear to attract links without really trying. Others struggle and never break through to the point of building links at increasing velocity.

We’ve shared plenty of linkbuilding tactics at Online Marketing Blog, and it’s an ongoing popular topic for search marketers. In addition to direct and mechanical tactics, becoming a link magnet in your own right is an indirect yet powerful strategy to attract organic links.

The rise of the social web has set the idea of personal branding on fire. By developing a brand for yourself, your company and even the individuals within it, you can build an army of advocates ready to link to everything you post.

Thinking about social media? Or are you waist deep and need some help? A session today at SES NY highlights different approaches to social media, its purpose and how and why you should get involved.

Li Evans, of Key Relevance, hammers home the need for social media strategy within her presentation.

Social Media – done for the sole purpose of traffic or links – probably isn’t social media you should be doing. Social media is not about your marketing message, it’s about what the customer has to say good or bad. It’s about them talking about you.

Whatever you do socially, remember that the end user has control of your message and sometimes your brand. Li goes on to explain that these conversations are happening any way, online and offline, so would you rather be part of it or continue to ignore it?

In the last session of the day, attendees were rewarded with 8 awesome tips to boost Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Results in a sponsored session  ”Wpromote Workshop: 8 Things You Aren’t Doing That Will Boost Your SEM Results”.  

Using real-life examples, this session promises to teach attendees the secrets top online marketers are using to beat the competition and squeeze the greatest results possible from their SEM efforts.   Topics include: PPC, SEO, landing page optimization and social media. 

Speakers are Michael Mothner, Founder & CEO and Michael Stone, Vice President, Sales & Strategy – both from Wpromote.  Some tips you may know and some you may not, but there is definitely something for everyone.

I love B2B, so a session on how to maximize lead generation within a B2B context is a must-attend.

New or old, a B2B marketer knows that a unique set of marketing challenges awaits them including:

• No single decision maker
• Increased risk for decision makers
• Offline conversions
• Long lead time
• Complex sale
• Ambiguous search terms
• Difficulty to pre-select B2B clickers

Whether you heart B2B or not, who doesn’t want to increase conversions? Find recommendations below to increasing conversion rates.

Scott Brinker, of ion interactive, shared how to increase conversions by segmenting, specifically as it relates to Keywords & Landing Pages.

Keywords & Ad Creative
Give your clickers a very specific, customized landing page about the topic for which they performed the search.

Day 2 at SES NY kicks off with a lesson in Social Media for the little guy.

The purpose of the session is to find out how small companies with small budgets can freely tap the world of social media to improve business and increase sales.

Here’s what we learned from Jennifer Evans Laycock:

Take the ‘marketing’ out of Social Media Marketing because it isn’t about marketing, but rather about conversations.

In addition, there is a reason social media is called the bleeding edge, because it can hurt especially if approached in the wrong way.

Remember, when you are developing marketing plans, that the goal is not to integrate the latest big thing but rather to integrate what works. As a small guy, the people on the leading edge are other marketers and not likely to be your prospect. There’s nothing wrong with leveraging pre-established social tools.

 As a preview to one of the 3 sessions I’m speaking on at SES New York next week (March 23-27) I bring you this interview with my co-panelists Michael Gray of Atlas Web Services, Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus, Michel Leconte of SEO Samba and moderator Rebecca Lieb Lieb, VP of U.S. operations for Econsultancy, for the Blog and Feed SEO session.

These are specific, practical questions and answers about optimizing both blogs and feeds for better search performance from some of the smartest blog and Feed SEO experts on the web. 

If you’re a Twitter fan, please ReTweet: 37 Tips for optimizing blogs and feeds:   http://cli.gs/blogseotips

Please share 3 practical SEO tips business blogs should implement:

Rebecca Lieb: 

Today’s Orion panel at SES NY really took a different spin on the topic of universal search. I went in expecting to hear the same info  about what it is, how info is gathered and how to optimize for universal search. Which, if you are interested, can be read about in a previous SES Chicago post regarding universal search.

This session was moderated by Kevin Ryan and Mike Grehan. The session was lively and engaging. Panelists included:
John Battelle from Federated Media, James Lamberti from comScore, Lyndsay Menzies from Big Mouth Media and Jack Menzel from Google.

James led the group by presenting not-seen-before data about universal search from a study comScore recently conducted.

Of the 1.2 billion queries studied, 220 million contained a universal result, categorized as news, video, images etc.

A full house was in attendance for this SES NY session in which panelists discussed how to squeeze the most out of analytics and turn data into action.

Specifically, Avinash Kaushik, Author, Blogger, Analytics Evangelist from Google shared the following.

3 Tips to Getting More out of Analytics

1. Measure bounce rate

As Avinash described this is essentially when someone comes to your website, vomits and leaves. OR in a less disgusting but not as funny way this is a visitor who having not found what they were looking for left the site immediately.

Be sure to measure bounce rates to understand the number of individuals who are abandoning the website. While some of the traffic will be irrelevant and therefore always likely to bounce, the majority are bouncing because the information they want (while it may be on your website) is not at their fingertips.

Next month I’m heading to New York to blog the SES NY conference for Online Marketing Blog where Lee is speaking on the “Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions” panel with newly elected SEMPO board member Chris Boggs and PR veteran Sally Falkow.

I’m over-the-moon excited to attend and have stumbled upon a tiny connection between the host city and the conference.

The industry that never sleeps will be placed smack in the middle of the city that never sleeps. While I’m not sure what kind of cosmic connection to make of this (and it’s not the first time so I’m pretty sure the earth won’t start spiraling toward the sun), I am curious to see how it all goes down and to share my insights with you.