Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®

Miranda Miller

7 Steps to SEO at Scale: How to Ramp Up Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy

Miranda Miller
Miranda Miller
Online Marketing, SEO

Scalable SEO in brands and organizationscomScore reports that in April 2013 there were over 20 billion search queries and of the 13 billion+ handled by Google, 16% of daily searches have never been seen before.  Each of those attempts represents buyers looking for solutions at the moment of need. Online marketers that take advantage of modern, scalable search engine optimization best practices as part of their overall digital marketing mix can gain a significant advantage over competitors to become “the best answer” when it matters most.

Understanding the basics of search engine optimization can be challenging given how often major search engines update and change the rules. However, buyers’ overwhelming use of search to find solutions is too great to ignore its influence on the buying cycle and achieving sales growth goals.


7 Steps to SEO at Scale: How to Ramp Up Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy

Online Marketing News: Video Trends Map, Content Recommendation Engine & New Google+ Layout

New Google+ Stream, Hangouts, and Photos

New Google+ Layout: Hangouts, Photos and Stream Reminiscent of Pinterest

Google announced a major update to their social network this week that changes the way Hangouts, photos and the Google+ stream are viewed by users. The decidedly Pinterest-esque layout was just one of many announcements this week out of Google I/O, the totality of which Jeremiah Owyang and Chris Silva dubbed a “wreck.”

“The end result, we hope, is an app that looks and feels great across a family of devices,” Senior VP Vic Gundotra wrote of the Google+ changes. This is in line with Google’s mantra of late: Technology works best when it gets out of the way, and lets people do what makes them happiest: living, learning and loving.


Online Marketing News: Video Trends Map, Content Recommendation Engine & New Google+ Layout

The Power of Visual Content Marketing and Brand Visuals in Action

Visual content marketingVisual content is certainly trendy – see the meteoric rise in infographics and social engagement with images as proof. Yet the need for content that appeals on a visual level and presents information in a more engaging format than text goes far beyond what is cool or fun to create.

In creating curriculum and learning materials for students (child to adult) and their teachers, I learned just how important visuals are in meeting the needs of different types of learners. This is too often a missing piece in the marketing mindset; we focus on what we want people to do, the action we want them to take. We think of learning styles in terms of learning disabilities, yet the ways in which every person on the planet takes in information should be a major concern for marketers, whose express purpose is to get people to take in information.


The Power of Visual Content Marketing and Brand Visuals in Action

Content Marketing Tactics: Business Blogging Pros, Cons, Best Practices & Brands Doing It Right

Blogging for content marketersAs part of our continuing series on content marketing tactics, I’ll be covering a topic that is absolutely near and dear to every content marketer’s heart: business blogging.

According to a recent NM Incite report, there are over 181 million blogs around the world. The way many companies treat blogs in their content marketing mix is to incorporate blogs into their website as a section or subdomain, or host them on their own domain name as we do.

With that kind of popularity, you would think everyone in business would know what a blog is and would be using them to their maximum advantage. Trust me, I’m in the content business and they don’t.  In fact, brands split just 11% of their total social media budget between blogging and influencer outreach. So just to clear up any ambiguity and to follow the format for this series, here goes:


Content Marketing Tactics: Business Blogging Pros, Cons, Best Practices & Brands Doing It Right

Online Marketing News: RipOff Report Expands, Paid YouTube Channels Launch & Mobile Local on the Rise

Mass Marketing Versus Personalization - Monetate

Your customers want more personalized messaging and content. In fact, 64% believe it’s more important that companies represent them with relevant offers, compared to 36% who don’t want their activity tracked. Given the tools available to block ads, tactics to stop tracking, opt-in nature of communications and social participation, it’s clear that customers who do choose to interact with brands expect a more personalized experience as a result.

The Mass Marketing vs. Personalization infographic from Monetate shares a number of other interesting recommendations and finds, including:

  • 94% of companies agree that online personalization is critical to business performance.
  • Two of every three companies believe personalizing their website will improve the customer experience and overall success of their business.

Online Marketing News: RipOff Report Expands, Paid YouTube Channels Launch & Mobile Local on the Rise

Tips for Brand Social Media Marketing Success with Agencies & Consultants

Miranda Miller
Miranda Miller
Online Marketing, Social Media

How to work with a Social Media Marketing AgencyPlanning and executing a successful social media marketing strategy sometimes requires that brands look outside their own companies for assistance. Businesses may partner with consultants or agencies to tap into the expertise, skills and resources they can offer, to help with strategy and tactical execution of the plan.

However, things can go wrong in social and when they do, the fallout can be massive and instantaneous. I wrote about a few examples of epic social fails recently and sometimes, brands find themselves having to defend their image over the damaging actions of an external resource. Tsk, tsk, people say. They should have handled their social media in-house and this never would have happened. This was certainly the case with Celeb Boutique, who publicly laid the blame for their insensitive #Aurora tweet at the feet of their PR agency.


Tips for Brand Social Media Marketing Success with Agencies & Consultants

Conversion Rate Optimization Software: Choose the Right Tools for Your Business

Miranda Miller
Miranda Miller
Conversion Optimization

Conversion rate optimization is the marketing art of maximizing your investment in existing site traffic, through improvements and problem-solving rather than additional ad spend. At some point in any business site’s lifetime, CRO is a must; for smart marketers, it’s an ongoing process that pays dividends over and over again.

Once you’ve invested in attracting traffic to your site, whether to complete a purchase or take some other action, CRO helps ensure your visitors are engaged and converting at the greatest rate possible.

Some believe CRO happens only on-site, though attracting targeted prospects likely to convert through paid search ads, email marketing and landing pages, for example, is a critical step. Another misconception is that CRO is all about increasing the number of conversions. You like to make money, right? Optimizing for higher revenue conversions and increasing the value of each site visitor is another element of CRO that can’t be overlooked.


Conversion Rate Optimization Software: Choose the Right Tools for Your Business

Online Marketing News: New LinkedIn & Instagram Features, Brands Missing the Boat on Pinterest

Visually Enhance Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn Adds Rich Media Capability to Profiles

LinkedIn users can now add rich media content objects to their profiles, allowing designers, analysts, authors and others to share their best works in a visually interesting format. Users can now use videos, images and presentations to demonstrate their experience. Danielle Restivo, Head of Global Programs, Corporate Communications at LinkedIn, reminds us that brands have had rich media access on their pages for some time. “The ability to share rich media through company pages is already available for admins of the Company Page. So an employee of a company who has admin rights to update the Company Page can do this, but employees without admin rights could not,” she told TopRank.


Online Marketing News: New LinkedIn & Instagram Features, Brands Missing the Boat on Pinterest

Creative Content Marketing Strategy from Brands Killing It with Content

Miranda Miller
Miranda Miller
Content Marketing

Brands killing it with contentContent marketing has exploded over the past year and will continue to grow in importance throughout 2013. Still, many marketers make the mistake of rushing to publish or producing content without a purpose in an effort to capitalize on the trend.

Quality rules the day when it comes to content creation. We write often here on the importance of content planning and optimization and Lee Odden offered a complete framework for optimizing across SEO, social media and content marketing in his book, Optimize.

Here are just a few examples of brands killing it with great content. Check them out and see what lessons you can take away to improve your own content strategy:


Creative Content Marketing Strategy from Brands Killing It with Content

Do Advertorials & Native Advertising Fit In Your Content Marketing Strategy?

Are advertorials a content marketing tactic?Where do advertorials, also know in politically correct terms as “native advertising”, fit into the content marketing toolkit?  To answer this question, we first have to understand what advertorials are – and also that the definition of content marketing itself is a hotly contested topic.

Adam Stetzer of HubShout, in his recent investigation into the purported Google penalization of Interflora for employing advertorial content, insists advertorials are NOT content marketing.

“Advertorials are advertisements, regardless of how you try to dress them up”, he says, “while content marketing is educational. Advertorials are biased; content marketing is free of any bias. The two may share a commercial motive, but are completely different and should be treated as separate entities”.


Do Advertorials & Native Advertising Fit In Your Content Marketing Strategy?

Online Marketing News: Predictive Social Tools, Content Marketing & The Customer Journey

Miranda Miller
Miranda Miller
Online Marketing News

Brands understand the importance of content marketing, yet most have not yet addressed their content needs on either a strategic or tactical level, according to Altimeter’s Rebecca Lieb.

Researchers for the company conducted interviews with executives actively engaged in content strategy or marketing; their findings were the basis of a new report, Organizing for Content: Models to Incorporate Content Strategy and Content Marketing in the Enterprise. Lieb and report co-authors guide brand marketers through a variety of organizational models for content, with recommendations to help companies execute an effective content strategy. Read the full report on SlideShare.


Online Marketing News: Predictive Social Tools, Content Marketing & The Customer Journey

Brands Gone Wild: Social Media Marketing Fails & Lessons Learned

Social media campaigns gone wrong.So you want your campaign to go viral…

Let’s keep in mind your business objectives, shall we? As these social marketing fails will show, campaigns may take off but go seriously sideways if companies place popularity above purpose.

Some companies can afford more risk and racier campaigns than others, yet risk in business must always be mitigated and justifiable based on the potential rewards. You might disagree with my opinion on the campaigns featured in this post, but I believe the risks should have been evident from the start and far outweighed the potential payoff.

These examples may cause you to shake your head, or enjoy a good belly laugh, but each is a fantastic learning opportunity for social media marketers.


Brands Gone Wild: Social Media Marketing Fails & Lessons Learned