Monday, February 24, 2014

Content Marketing Trends In 2014

 Most of the current “Get ready for 2014!” posts integrated a section about content marketing and how important it will be this coming year. 

Google’s recent emphasis on long-form content and its dedication to shutting down article submission sites and penalizing other strategies marketers have used to make content bound for at search engines, rather than the reader, means companies are taking notice of just how significant good content is for their online presence.

Hiring Trends in 2014

Because of the deterrent tales that come with Google penalization, and the fact that 93% of B2B marketers are currently using content marketing in some form, and plan to step up their efforts , there has been a dramatic boost in the number of brands and start-ups hiring content marketers because they  want a stronger online attendance and know that great content is going to take their web traffic to the next level.

Of course, many large companies have had an whole team of content marketers for years now, but the increase in start-ups and small to medium-sized companies hiring for this type of site is growing earlier than ever before.

Many of the content marketer positions are the first position of their kind within the company, showing a new inclination in hiring someone to heart solely on content.
Below are some of the top experience and duties of this new crop of job openings that I’ve seen in the last few months.

Blog Responsibilities

The primary task in most of these new job openings is the company’s blog being the main focus. The blog starting point varies madly. Some have no blog at all; others have one that could be better. The novel content marketer is accountable for creating a strategy around the blog’s messaging, setting up goals for content and writing the bulk of the blog posts.

Besides creating a innovative strategy, because the person is being hired solely to write, many companies are expecting blog posts on approximately a daily basis, with many wanting four to five posts per week. moreover, the content marketer would also be responsible for organizing the editorial calendar for not only their own posts, but for any contributing guest bloggers.
Crafting an engaging and active blog is one of the easiest ways that content can help a company, both from a social and SEO standpoint.

Long-Form tasks

Another newer duty that many small to medium-sized businesses have never implemented before they formed the content marketer position was a focus on long-form content, like white papers, e-books, webinars, or tutorials.

As mentioned before, Google’s inclusion of long-form content and PDFs in search results (which wasn’t always the case) has made companies understand that the longer the content, the more likely they are to receive traffic from it.

Regularly producing several different types of long-form content not only gives content diversity, it makes the company a leading resource in their industry.

In the best part of the job openings, the new content marketer is also expected to frequently interface with all employees, particularly those in marketing and advertising. By working mutually on strategy for each season or promotion, content can be a lot stronger and carry across different platforms, from social media to blog posts.

The content marketer may also help foster outdoor marketing efforts, like guest blogging on other websites to raise awareness and writing copy for advertisements, brochures, or other promotional resources.

By allowing this new employee to be freely accessible across several departments, the advantage is two-fold. The content marketer will have a better feel for the company as a whole and other employees have a store to work with on content-related projects.
Cross-working in several departments also helps all employees feel like they are working to a common goal, something that is important to many of the hiring companies.

Flexibility and repayment

Another clear feature of the type of companies that are hiring content marketers is the outstanding employee settlement and perks. Many companies willing to add on a person whose sole focus is writing also usually have huge perks, like telecommuting, paid insurance, three to four weeks of vacation, paid cell phone, new computer, and more.

This can’t be a chance, as companies that are progressive enough to understand that content marketing is essential to their company is also progressive in other areas, such as company traditions and working environment. Working for these growing companies are ideal for the ideal content marketers, as a more creative, independent environment typically leads to better content and strategy idea generation.

Why This Role is essential

Hiring a content marketer that has no set ROI guarantee may be one of the greatest acquisitions a company can make. More content equals more visibility, and by hiring someone focused solely on writing can help companies be seen as a store in their industry, increase their chances of being found via search engines and other inbound links and continue to grow an situation of vision.

Friday, February 21, 2014

Matt Cutts About Backlinks

seo tips
 Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, answers a question about backlinks in his most recent Webmaster Help video where a user writes in to ask.

"Hi Matt, does the big G have a version of the search engine that totally excludes any backlink relevance? I’m wondering what search would look like and am inquiring to try it out."

There’s no version of Google matching that explanation that is showing to the public. However, Google has run experiments like this within and Matt says the quality is much worse.

Even though some noise and a lot of spam gets through into Google search rankings as a result of backlink building, Matt says for the most part backlinks are still a giant win when it comes to recurring quality search results.

Google has played around with the idea of spinning off backlink relevance, but at least for now it’s still an significant indicator that helps Google return the best, most relevant, and most current set of search results.

Could you imagine a Google search where backlinks didn’t matter? sadly I’m sure spammers would find something else to abuse in no time. In fact, maybe if Google let us take a look at their new search results that disregard backlinks we’d all be thanking Google for being so strict about them.

Kind of fun to think about anyway, makes you doubt what other kind of experiments Google has going on . 

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Quality Content for Backlink Purposes

What is Quality Content for Backlink Purposes?

Quality content is going back to the fundamentals of SEO.  It means given that an amazing user experience for everyone involved. Quality content is as simple as having an easy-to-use process for finishing a conversion and finding information that people want to share. It adds value and gives actionable items without a ton of fluff or filler. It is also something that will request to and be informative to your user base, the person shopping, and to the journalists and bloggers that write for your industry’s trade publications and blogs.

Now think about how I defined quality content and look at how you can apply it to the three link building strategies below.

1. build Backlinks with Video & Technology.

 
 Once you make a video, select the apps that are most relevant for the content.  Once you place the video inside the player, you can use the YouTube app to flow other videos from your series so that people can see you are able to back up your knowledge with more detailed videos about the same topic.  Also, make sure you orientation different episodes or resources on your website within the videos so people know where to find them.  Viewbix takes this a step additional with their list app which lets you open the app midroll and display a link, description, and image to the exact locations you are referencing. If you don’t want to interrupt the video, you can set the list app to unlock at the end to display everything you referenced giving the viewers a way to find your resources, share them and hopefully link to them instead of your video.
 
What is the List App?
 
The list app lets you upload a list of images, metaphors, and trackable links to your video. By using the list app, you can link to the high quality posts you orientation within your video, plus any infographics, or anything else you location in the video. By having the list app open at specific times during the video, people can find the relevant pages and income within your website if they want more information.

2.  How to Build Backlinks with Webinars.

Everyone spits out webinars as a link building method, but I haven’t seen many people who are able to really make it work. An management from a large company may be able to get a million people to listen, but regularly when I hear someone higher up speak, it is a ton of fluff and means people are less likely to link to you. in its place, they link to the Executive or “Authoritative Voice” site, to your webinar sign-up form (on another site), or anywhere but your own url.  Use the big name to draw a lot of people, but also have people who work in the field for a living give actionable items while playing nice with the “Expert”. This will result in higher class content that users will actually want to reference.
Things to remember for generating backlinks from Webinars.
There are little things to keep in mind when using webinars produce quality backlinks:
 
•    Have actionable items people can take away with the resources available on your website.
 
•    Host the report and information about the webinar on your site so as people share they come to you.
 
•    Make sure to have internal links to applicable resources on your site for the panel members to review before the webinar and be able to situation during it.
 
•    Have the webinar signup, listen, and download pages on your site.  If it exists on your site, when people share and link to it, you obtain the social signals and backlinks.
 
•    learn to include social sharing apps on the webinar download page if it is special from the sign-up page.
 
•    Link to guides, resources, and infographics that reinforce topics from the webinar on your site from the sign up, listen to, and download pages. Do not hold spammy content!
 
•    Contain links when one of the resources on your site is mentioned so listeners can see them.
 
•    Make sure to mention your url, thank everyone for attending, and remind them when and where the recording will be accessible.
 
3.  Building backlinks with traditional PR.

Keep in mind in the stone ages when people read these magical things called books and magazines that were made from dead tree byproducts?  These paper things were a huge way to get people to find your brand.  They would find you in magazines and newspapers and then pick up this other magical device called a land line telephone.  At some point there was a person called an machinist that would connect you with the person you were trying to reach. 

Pitching newsites with bylines & article ideas.

In the past, appearing in these publications would carry more awareness and drive more calls and foot traffic to your store.  In current times, we call these visitors, links, and traffic. It’s really that simple. You also buy ad space in the publication or pitch an idea to a journalist to write about a topic and take in you. Think about what traditional PR firms did before the internet and tie those practices back into your link building strategies.

 Even if guest posting was dead, which I candidly believe it is not, there are plenty of other ways to make and draw high quality links to your site. Use technology to improve your current marketing and help people find out the great content and income available on your site.  If you do webinars, think about how you can incorporate the resources your site provides into the conversation. You also want to consider to go back to your basics. Sometimes using usual and offline marketing is the best way to attract the right audience and get you high quality backlinks. Tradeshows, direct mail, and even standard media pitches are great ways to build buzz and drive high quality and authoritative links.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Google Offers guidance Infinite Scroll Web Pages

 Pages with Infinite  scroll are often valued by users but not so much by Googlebot, as Google themselves points out in a post published this morning on their official Webmaster Central blog. The problem with infinite scroll is that search engine spiders cannot creep the site as a user would without the capability to mimic behaviors like scrolling to the bottom of a page, clicking to load more, or clicking to load the next page in a series.

If spiders can’t access content, the chances of it appearing in search results are unlikely, and the truth is that spiders can’t always access all content on a page with infinite scroll. In order to make sure Googlebot can crawl all items linked from an endless scroll page, it is recommended that either the webmaster or the content management system produces a paginated series to agree with the infinite scroll.

Google says a page with infinite scroll is far more search friendly when changed to a paginated series. In a paginated series, each component page has a similar meta title with rel=next/prev values stated in the <head> tag.

Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, John Mueller, has created an infinite scroll pagination demo that illustrates two key search engine friendly feature of an infinite scroll page: All individual items are accessible and each item is listed only once in the paginated series.

Additional SEO Recommendations For Infinite Scroll

Google goes on to offer a detailed list of search friendly recommendations for pages with infinite scroll. Here are the significant points:

•    split up your infinite-scroll page content into component pages that can be accessed when JavaScript is disabled.

•    On each page makw sure that if a searcher came straight to this page, they could easily find what they need .

•    Make sure each page has a straight load time.

•    Make sure there is no overlap in content between each part page.

•    Each component page should contain a full URL that can be accessed independently.

•    Configure pagination with each component page containing rel=next and rel=prev values in the <head> tag.

•    Google recommends implementing pushState for any user action that resembles a click or dynamically turning a page.

•    Finally, test it by checking that page values adjust as the user scrolls up or down.
Applying these recommendations should make sure that your pages with infinite scroll are fully search engine friendly and all content can be seen by Google’s crawlers.


Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Google's Page Layout Algorithm expansion

 Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced that Google has released a revive of its Page Layout Algorithm. The filter, also known as the Top Heavy algorithm, downgrades the ranking of a web page with too many ads at the top or if the ads are deemed too distract for users.

Cutts said the algorithm was revitalized. Here’s his tweet:
This would be the third established update to the Top Heavy algorithm.
Background On & improving From Top Heavy

What is the page layout algorithm? As we quoted from Google initially:

We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s hard to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content correct away.

So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be artificial by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of noticeable content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real assets to ads, that’s not a very good user experience.

Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

See also our original article for when Top Heavy was first released, for advice about how a site that’s fixed may have to wait until the next release for any changes it’s made to restore rankings.

 you might also like: How Algorithm Updates influence SEO

Monday, February 10, 2014

Important On-page Factors To Judge When Building Links


seo tips
Here are seven on-page factors to judge when building links.

1. Types and Quality of Content

Building links can be hard when you have great content. When you have subpar content? It can be a nightmare, unless you're willing to use riskier strategy.

One big problem that I see with the general blanket advice of "create great content" is that there isn't always a essential emphasis on creating the right kind of content. Not all site needs a blog.

Think about what your users want to see, what they need, what they'd find useful and helpful, and see if you can make it in such a way that people outside of your target audience could also advantage..

Good writing is also very important. If there's one thing that makes me instantly distrust or discount a site, it's poor writing.

2. Titles

Misleading titles waste people's time.

Think about how you'd sense if you were running Google AdWords and the person who had written your ads had used a title that caused loads of people to click then instantly leave the site because they were misled. There's absolutely a chance that you might come up with a great title that you think completely represents your content but no one else agrees.

3. Images
 
For my monthly columns, we're required to use images, and rightly so as there's a lot of information out there about the increased user engagement on content that is or contains at least one chart.
Images by themselves can be fantastic for link building purposes, but if it's true that having a post with an image on it can up the chances of attracting more eyes on your content, that noticeably increases your chances of getting links.

4. Video and Interactive Content 

Above all else, make sure that your video or interactive content really works! I seem to have a bad habit of landing on posts that contain videos that don't load. If you're pulling something like this from another site, make sure it's dependable.

5. Internal Links and Search ability
 
Think of this from a user's perspective. If you land on the homepage of a site that you found in the SERPs or saw socialized on Twitter, it may not hold the information that you're looking for and hoping to potentially link to. If it's difficult to move around on the site and find what you need, you'll get frustrated.

Don't make things hard for people. If you have a Services page but have a page for each of those services that goes more in-depth, then link to it! It sounds clear, but I've seen enough pages where basics like this weren't done that I don't think anything can really be too obvious a concept.
 
6. Outbound Links

When you link out, do so to trusted and applicable sites. Think of it in the same way that you would think about a site linking to you. You want those links to be good ones, so link out well.
I've thought less of several articles when I saw who they referenced. If someone writes an article that is widely criticized, one where the comments are full of authority figures pointing out the inaccuracies, then I will think less of a post that links to that article in order to highlight it as a reputable one. You are who you associate with, remember.

7. Shareability and User Engagement

Remember how we had planning online before Twitter? We commented on posts.
Many times discussions seem to take place on social media and not in blog comments, so I wouldn't discount content that has no comments, but if a post has 150 spam comments on it, I would think twice before linking to it. If I come diagonally a post from someone I've never heard of and see people that I know commenting on it or sharing it online, I'm much more likely to spend the time to read it myself.
 
Conclusion

Make your content something that we want to link to, something that's simply shared on Twitter or Facebook or wherever you want it to be shared. Make your site easily searchable and make sure everything works and looks good, too, and check it on mobile devices. It's fairly simple.
With the nonstop information being published online, people have to pick and prefer what they read, share, and link to, so don't think that on-page factors don't come into play where links are worried. They can make or break your link building in many cases.


You might also like: Link Building Things To Be appreciative For 2013

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Google detached 350 million dreadful AdWords ads

seo tips
In 2013, Google removed 350 million bad AdWords ads as piece of its efforts to avoid abuse of AdWords by both advertisers and AdSense publishers, although sadly they don't detail much about why those exacting ads were removed.

In 2012, Google reported killing 224 million bad ads.The most common reasons ads tend to get removed are for things like products that violates AdWords terms, ad copy issues , or having a display URL that doesn't match the destination URL .

Google makes a special mention of their battle beside counterfeiters, which is likely in part because of the agreement multiple ad agencies, including Google AdWords, made with the White House last summer to curb the amount of advertising of copyrights infringing and counterfeit goods.

The number of complaints about counterfeiters marketing on AdWords dropped 85 percent in 2012 and another 78 percent in 2013. Any attempts to market counterfeit goods on AdWords decreased by 47 percent in 2012 and 82 percent 2013, showing that it's becoming clear to counterfeiters that they are being let down with their AdWords attempts.

Interestingly, the number of advertisers Google removed from the AdWords network dropped radically from this year over last year's numbers. Google disabled more than 850,000 advertisers in 2012, but that number dropped to 270,000 in 2013. Google credited this to their safety screenings catching some of these types of advertisers, and going to other "less-secure" advertising networks for their ads.

The role of AdSense publishers within the Google advertising ecology was discussed, with Google blacklisting over 200,000 pages on publisher sites. Also, Google disapproved more than 3 million attempts to join the AdSense network, which shows they are definitely trying to tighten up publisher quality within the network. Of the 250,000 publishers removed for different policy violations, 5,000 were due to violating copyright policies, likely from copying content or scraping from other sites.

Something else that is attractive is that there's been discussion on the Webmaster World forums where people are seeing huge uptick in the number of invalid clicks, both from the advertiser perspective and the publisher perspective. We don't know if it's because Google has recently broken some sort of network abuse, if they are tightening up some of the invalid click variables, or a mixture of the two. However the display network was mentioned as a exact source of an increase in the number of invalid clicks.

 you might also like: SEO And AdWords

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Build Quality Backlinks devoid of Guest Posting

seo tips
 What is Quality Content for Backlink Purposes?

Quality content is going back to the fundamentals of SEO.  It means given that an amazing user experience for everyone involved. Quality content is as simple as having an easy-to-use process for finishing a conversion and finding information that people want to share. It adds value and gives actionable items without a ton of fluff or filler. It is also something that will request to and be informative to your user base, the person shopping, and to the journalists and bloggers that write for your industry’s trade publications and blogs.

Now think about how I defined quality content and look at how you can apply it to the three link building strategies below.

1. build Backlinks with Video & Technology.
 
 Once you make a video, select the apps that are most relevant for the content.  Once you place the video inside the player, you can use the YouTube app to flow other videos from your series so that people can see you are able to back up your knowledge with more detailed videos about the same topic.  Also, make sure you orientation different episodes or resources on your website within the videos so people know where to find them.

  Viewbix takes this a step additional with their list app which lets you open the app midroll and display a link, description, and image to the exact locations you are referencing. If you don’t want to interrupt the video, you can set the list app to unlock at the end to display everything you referenced giving the viewers a way to find your resources, share them and hopefully link to them instead of your video.
 
What is the List App?
 
The list app lets you upload a list of images, metaphors, and trackable links to your video. By using the list app, you can link to the high quality posts you orientation within your video, plus any infographics, or anything else you location in the video. By having the list app open at specific times during the video, people can find the relevant pages and income within your website if they want more information.
 
The last thing to keep in mind is to make sure people can reach you. Your major call to action can be a button on the player that says “Buy Now”,  or you can contain a phone number, contact form, or email link. Even better, add the Skype app so people watching the video (even on Facebook and Twitter) can call you through the real video. The ability to get the notice of journalists and bloggers with the video and have a direct line of communication to you during or after watching the video is very influential. This is why Viewbix is an amazing way to build backlinks with your videos. You can track, measure, test and then repeat the process to drive a ton of quality links if you do it well.  Viewbix has both free and paid versions, so I highly recommend you try them out.
 
2.  How to Build Backlinks with Webinars.

Everyone spits out webinars as a link building technique, but I haven’t seen many people who are able to really make it work. An executive from a large company may be able to get a million people to listen, but frequently when I hear someone higher up speak, it is a ton of fluff and means people are less likely to link to you. in its place, they link to the Executive or “Authoritative Voice” site, to your webinar sign-up form (on another site), or anywhere but your own url.  Use the big name to draw a lot of people, but also have people who work in the field for a living give actionable items while playing nice with the “Expert”. This will result in higher class content that users will actually want to reference.
 
Things to remember for generating backlinks from Webinars.
There are little things to keep in mind when using webinars generate quality backlinks:
 
•    Have actionable items people can take away with the resources accessible on your website.
 
•    Host the report and information about the webinar on your site so as people share they come to you.
 
•    Make sure to have internal links to applicable resources on your site for the panel members to review before the webinar and be able to reference during it.
 
•    Have the webinar signup, listen, and download pages on your site.  If it exists on your site, when people share and link to it, you get the social signals and backlinks.
 
•    Memorize to include social sharing apps on the webinar download page if it is special from the sign-up page.
 
•    Link to guides, resources, and infographics that reinforce topics from the webinar on your site from the sign up, listen to, and download pages. Do not contain spammy content!
 
•    Include links when one of the resources on your site is mentioned so listeners can see them.
 
•    Make sure to mention your url, thank everyone for attending, and remind them when and where the recording will be accessible.
Webinars can be an grand way to attract links.  By having an authoritative voice you can bring in bloggers, journalists, and listeners.  By having other panel members with solid knowledge to share actionable items you can get a lot of great follow ups and people referencing the webinar.  If they reference it or mention it, there is a good chance they will also link to it.
 
3.  Building backlinks with traditional PR.

keep in mind in the stone ages when people read these magical things called books and magazines that were made from dead tree byproducts?  These paper things were a huge way to get people to find your brand.  They would find you in magazines and newspapers and then pick up this other magical device called a land line telephone.  At some point there was a person called an machinist that would connect you with the person you were trying to reach.  This could easily be the first form of SEO! How you can use this old basic model to build quality links back to your site?
 
Pitching newsites with bylines & article ideas.
 
In the past, appearing in these publications would carry more attention and drive more calls and foot traffic to your store.  In current times, we call these visitors, links, and traffic. It’s really that simple. You also buy ad space in the publication or pitch an idea to a journalist to write about a topic and include you. Think about what traditional PR firms did before the internet and tie those practices back into your link building strategies.
 
Host an industry occasion or use direct mail.
 
Host an event and invite your local bloggers, journalists, and industry people. Send out affordable and related gifts.  Make sure they are eye-catching, unique, or somewhat insane like what Grasshopper did with their chocolate covered grasshoppers.  Having a original PR and Marketing team that can work within a budget or no budget, or even getting a group of local businesses jointly could build enough buzz to generate interest and get a ton of high quality links.  You can do it online or offline, depending on your business.
 
PR isn’t dead.  It has become cliché mostly because everyone is copying everyone else and not always measuring KPIs or Metrics.  Find those sole and creative people and start listening to them.  They are typically hiding in a cubicle or are frustrated because other people get the attention within your company.

  Kick the kiss ups to the side and let everyone share their inspired ideas in an open and safe environment.  Your next PR pitch that could build a ton of high quality links could be hiding with the person who is ignored, sitting in a corner silently and doesn’t get attention because they don’t speak up much. You may even consider a secret submission form where everyone submits their ideas and retains a second copy so when you pick the idea, only the right person can claim it!
 
You can take what Matt said with a grain of salt, or ignore it (which a ton of people will do), or you can go back to the basics.  I prefer to go to the basics – which is building quality content that people will find appealing, want to share and link to. Once you have the quality content, create a sales or lead shaft that is easy to follow and find a way to get your information out there.

Closing thoughts.
 
Even if guest posting was dead, which I truthfully believe it is not, there are plenty of other ways to build and draw high quality links to your site. Use technology to improve your current marketing and help people discover the great content and income available on your site. 

 If you do webinars, think about how you can incorporate the resources your site provides into the conversation. You also want to remember to go back to your basics. Sometimes using usual and offline marketing is the best way to attract the right audience and get you high quality backlinks. Tradeshows, direct mail, and even standard media pitches are great ways to build buzz and drive high quality and authoritative links.


You might also like: Link building techniques in 2014

Monday, February 3, 2014

Matt Cutts about Link Network

 Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, made an announcement on Twitter that action has been taken on another link network:

In a tag on up to that tweet, Matt added in the form of a reply: “today France; Germany soon.” So expect news in the near future of a German link network being taken down.
That marks two more link networks to fall victim in Google’s ongoing crusade against websites that openly violate Google’s guidelines.

Buzzea is one of the few to really take offence to being called a link network and attempt to protect themselves. In a translated statement posted on their website they state that they “oppose this declaration since we never stopped wanting to keep the ethical side of sponsored articles focusing on quality and natural links created.”

However, in the same statement they also decided it was time to leave their business behind: “This marks the end of an adventure for our team but also the end of our collaboration with thousands of publisher sites, agencies and advertisers who have given us their trust.”

That trust Buzzea speaks of will likely result in a warning in Google Webmaster Tools very shortly, as well as a dip in rankings. It would be wise of anyone who participated in the link network to disavow the links immediately and stay far away from anything resembling a link network in the future.