Content Strategy - An Important Aspect of Marketing

It is not that simple to entice visitors towards the online destination of merchandises, oodles of search engine marketing efforts are desired to attract their attention. However, amid all those verticals of this improvised form of marketing that claim their credit in luring the potential visitors, it is perhaps the quality content that ultimately steals the show, let us know why.



Importance of content:
In the domain of online marketing, content could be deemed as a sensible stuff that could motivate the people towards buying a particular product. Having said that, it could be anything but gibberish; intelligently blended with the material that never seems like an advertisement yet manages to gather a respectable customer base. Whatever is its form, whether text, audio, video or image, it ought to be interactive. This evidently fuels the necessity of chalking out a sound and soothing content strategy that could appeal masses.

Content strategy:
Three effective points lead to the formulation of a thriving content strategy that could really lift the reputation of a website:
•    Creation of gripping content
•    Assuring increased search engine rankings
•    Mustering quality backlinks from other sites

Gripping content:
 An engaging content is one that could attract the potential visitors and at the same time could also be indexed by search engines more often. Intense use of keywords is likely to distort the originality of the content thereby making it more search engine friendly rather than user friendly. It is therefore necessary to design content that is appealing enough both for the users as well as search engines. After all, the ultimate goal is to make the most of a web page in the form of high end monetary benefits and only an informative, readable yet SEO friendly content could do the honors.

Enhanced search engine rankings:
Significant traffic boost together with high search engine rankings comprise of the most important ingredients of a thriving content strategy. Needless to say, quality content paves its part significantly towards helping these ingredients striking the right chords. Though, including good Meta tags is definitely a good practice that helps the web page to be identified by search engines. But yet again it is the actual text on a web page that enhances the chances of indexing, which is a must to make way for enhanced traffic and better search page rankings.

Mustering quality backlinks from other sites:
Search engine rankings are heavily influenced by high quality inbound links. If a particular web page is linked to multiple authoritative pages that own a higher credibility over the search engines, the chances of former to secure enhanced traffic and therefore high ranking, increase excellently. However, the number of inbound links could witness an appreciable surge only if the content is genuine, to-the-point and relevant.

Additionally, the number of social media websites such as StumbleUpon, Delicious Digg, Magnolia and so on has increased heavily in the recent times that have contributed towards assuring bigger and better customer base online. The importance of fresh and flawless copy that could enthrall the attention of these millions of online visitors has therefore grown to manifolds. Most of the big companies attain this coveted targeted by producing more articles, press releases and blog posts on regular basis and they have indeed got success in mustering high quality inbound links.

Content strategy in the post-panda and post-penguin era:
Google keeps on updating its algorithms so as to bar the low-quality content from getting any attention on the search pages, this instantly work sin the favor of websites that possess high grade content. Abiding by this fact, many of the SEO companies have been targeted that used redundant, keyword stuffed, and unattractive content, both with respect to the readers as well as the search engines since the past one year, thanks to the advent of Google Panda and Google Penguin algorithm (announced on April, 2012).
Implementation of these algorithms have left the room for only superior content to break the ice while those with lower grade no more share the space of search pages. Owing to this fact, certain important amendments in the content strategy are worthy to be taken care of the prominent of them being avoiding ‘thin content’ and combating the occurrence of LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) issues. In short, attention to details is a must while drafting out a copy, such as:

•     Reduce grammatical mistakes to all time minimum
•     Avoid writing crap copy, full of keywords and devoid of real meaning
•     Use keywords as well as the words that relate to them, such as synonyms in balanced proportion.
•     Do not overuse or under use keywords
•     Avoid redundant copy that conveys same intent repeatedly

5 Ways to Master Social Media Multitasking BY Jonathan Blum

Managing social media accounts across Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other sites can be overwelming for some business owners. Posting to each can simply require too much attention for time-crunched entrepreneurs.
But you don't need to be all things to all people on the social Web. And you don't need to hire a social media manager to handle it all. There are a number of cost-effective ways for you to have an active pressence on more than one social media site without devoting all your time to it.
Here are five tips and tools for how you can get your message across on multiple social platforms without wasting a ton of time -- or breaking the bank.

1. Have a strategy.
Try spending your limited time and resources investing in only the social media sites you know that your customers use. It can be better to build one or two strong profiles than to dilute your influence with a scattershot effort across four or five.

Once you determine which sites to be on, creating a social media content strategy can help you stay organized. Maybe you tweet only five times a day, post to Facebook once a day and update your business blog once a week. Laying out a strategy and sticking it to it can help take some of the haphazardness out of managing multiple social accounts.

Related: How to Create a Social Media Content Strategy (Video)
And the good news is there are plenty of free and inexpensive Web apps that can help. Bliss Control is a free tool that offers shortcuts for you to manage account settings such as privacy, profile pictures and passwords from one place. Social media dashboards such as HootSuite and Buffer are free options for managing and scheduling posts across multiple accounts.

2. Don't blindly recycle content.
Managing different accounts from the same location can create the temptation for you to use the same updates over different platforms. The probelm in doing so is that customers often follow you on multiple sites and don't want to find the same content from site-to-site.
In general, form follows function. Twitter can be effective for sharing links, thoughts and quick updates about your company. Facebook can be better for creating and sharing photo albums, longer summaries of your links and customer comments. Don’t automatically Facebook everything you tweet or syndicate your blog on LinkedIn.

Related: Finding the Best Time to Post to Social Networks

3. Don't be shy about cross-promoting posts across sites.
While social-media multitasking usually means creating content that’s unique to each platform, that should not stop you from cross-promoting content without annoying your followers. The trick is to direct users to unique or helpful content. For example, ask your Twitter followers to check out new pictures on your Facebook wall.
One free option for building automation into your social networks is a tool called ifttt, which stands for “If This, Then That.” Users can build automated tasks for more than 40 social networks and Web apps using simple conditional statements.
Sendible which starts at about $10 per month also pushes content to various platforms. It also includes metrics to track who is talking about your business and on which sites.

4. Use analytics tools to know what's working and what isn't.
Don't waste time socializing content that isn't resonating with your followers. Analytics apps can be key to figuring out which of your posts are successful and why.
Consider starting with SocialBro which is available as a free desktop app or a browser extension. It includes information on which cities your followers live in and when they’re likely to be online. Free apps such as Tweriod and TweetWhen can also help you determine optimal posting times for different networks.
Related: 10 Little Known Social Media Tools You Should Be Using -- Now

Link-shortening tools such as bitly can offer statistics on who is clicking through on the links you post. Another option is to monitor your website analytics through tools such as Google Analytics or Yahoo! Web Analytics to see how many referrals you are getting from social media sites. Web hosting services often offer this capability as well.

5. Treat followers like customers.
Try using Twitter, Facebook and, for instance, Instagram's mobile posting features, to put faces to your employees and give a behind-the-scenes look at your company. Your followers are real people and they most likely will apprecaite seeing the people behind your business and your social media pressence.
There are free Facebook apps for interacting with customers via polls and surveys. Poll for Facebook comes with the ability to add custom code, multiple-choice or written questions and extra privacy settings. Promotion Builder, by Redwood City, Calif.-based Wildfire, starts at $5 per promotion plus 99 cents per day and lets users run contests and promotions such as coupons, group deals and sweepstakes across multiple sites.
Written By: Jonathan Blum Source: Entrepreneur.com

Google’s Penguin Update How Impacts Keywords

On April 24, Google released an updated algorithm with the codename Penguin. The purposes of this update are to reward websites with quality content aimed at good user experiences and penalize sites practicing black hat tactics with nefarious link profiles. Since the release of Penguin, several articles about the impacts of Google’s changes have circulated the Internet. Many website owners fear that their rankings will drop, but the key to success remains the same: providing unique, quality content for users.



Throughout the history of SEO, business owners have placed a high emphasis on keyword density and placement. The importance of these factors has changed with the new updates because Google is trying to eliminate sites with keyword stuffing and link spamming from search results. It is still beneficial to place your main keyword in the titles and beginning of articles, but keyword diversity is also important. Modifications of keywords and related phrases are good to use throughout content because they sound more natural while promoting high quality articles. Crawlers still search sites for keywords, but an over-abundance of repeated phrases will raise a red flag to Google and cause those pages’ rankings to drop.

The weighing of anchor text works in a similar fashion. The main focus of Penguin is to determine the relevance and quality of websites based on their link profiles, and the anchor text plays a large role in the algorithm’s methods. Google crawls through the displayed text of hyperlinks in order to gauge the relevance of linked pages. Before Penguin, some businesses took advantage of this algorithm by spamming links on blogs, forums and comment pages to improve their rankings. Google hopes to discourage this tactic and improve search results for users by penalizing websites that use matching keywords for multiple links. The majority of websites affected by the update maintained the same keywords for their anchor text in at least 65 percent of their inbound links.

The changes to the way Google analyzes anchor text do not limit a website’s potential for link building. The best post-Penguin method is to build a natural backlink profile with diversity in the anchor text. Using keyword variations in your anchor text will yield better results. When commenting on other sites and blogs, make sure that your keywords are relevant to the content while linking to high-quality pages. Google places negative weight on websites engaging in practices that resemble link spam, so it is best to attract natural links by producing informative content that is worth sharing.

Google’s focus has always been on providing high quality and relevant results for search engine users, and Penguin aims to penalize sites that take advantage of the algorithm’s loopholes. Websites that satisfy desires for informative and helpful content will be rewarded through higher rankings on organic search results. Keywords are good in moderation, and the bottom line is unique content that meets or exceeds expectations.
Written By: CitrineFox Source: TextBroker.com

213 Must Have Tips & Takeaways from SMX London WordTracker 2012

Mal Darwen, Julie McNamee and Andrew Tobert were at SMX London this year. We've gathered up 213 tips and takeaways. Read through, learn, and share these tips.

General

1) There's no fixed date for the launch of Google Search Plus For Your World in Europe.
@theamitsinghal, http://www.google.com
2) Google made 525 algorithm changes last year.
Amit Singhal
3) Check you've been penalized. If you lost ranking on some keywordss but not others, you probably weren't, it's just that some links lose value. If you file for re-inclusion with Google, it won't make any difference.
The Search Marketing Experts Panel

PPC

4) The basics in writing copy for your PPC ad:

• Highlight your USP - include prices, promotions and exclusives
• Tell your customers what they can do
  
• Include at least one of your keywords
  
• Remember user intent
  
• Use tried and tested phrases such as "Official site" and "Free Delivery"
  
• Use language that turns the wrong customers away
• Match your ad to your landing page
• Experiment
  Ben Beard, http://www.adobe.com

5) Use Google Ace to experiment on ads, ad groups, keywords, placements, ad creatives, remarketing lists etc.
Ben Beard
6) Bear in mind the types of buyer out there - survivalist, scarcity, convenience, prestige, social, value-minded, fearful, goal-minded.
Pamela Olson, King Schools
7) People buy on emotion and justify with logic. It's when they've gone past the research stage to the buying stage (and you can appeal to that emotion) that you can grab them.
Pamela Olson
8) Nobody wants to make a bad decision - they don't want DRED - discomfort, risk, embarrassment or doubt. So try to allay these fears in your ad copy.
Pamela Olson
9) Use keywords such as reviews, information, testimonials, best, comparison, cost for the person at start at the buying cycle.
Pamela Olson
10) Create a sense of urgency for those further on in the buying cycle.
Pamela Olson
11) Use the term "Your Guarantee" rather than "Our Guarantee" - your prospect will feel that you're talking to them.
Pamela Olson
12) Address fears and be more product-specific by using sitelink extensions.
Pamela Olson
13) Try testing 3-4 ads at a time if you have the amount of traffic that can handle that number. Try out different headlines, offers and USPs.
Pamela Olson
14) Use call extensions if you're the type of business that that suits - eg, if you're a restaurant or taxi firm.
Pamela Olson
15) Use keyword search queries to help increase your CTR and bring down your CPC (cost per click).
Pamela Olson
16) ENVY: Your ad copy should appeal to the consumer's Emotions, Needs, give them Validation and provide the Yay factor (make them feel they've got a deal).
Pamela Olson
17) SQRs (site query reports) should form the backbone of everything you do in PPC
Ed Schofield, Expedia
18) Start with a Broad Match strategy, run that for a couple of weeks, then start using Negatives, Exact Match, Broad Match Modifiers etc.
Ed Schofield
19) 25% of consumers scan the URL for indicator of relevance in search results, so try to have a relevant keyword in there.
Ed Schofield
20) Test attribution models and understand media impact drivers.
Ed Schofield
21) Move beyond last click attribution. Last click is last year!
Ed Schofield
22) Keyword Reports with PPC - put each keyword in its own Adgroup so you can get an impression share report
Scott Krager

SEO

23) Brands possess immense SEO power.
Marcus Tober, http://www.searchmetrics.com
24) On researching .co.uk SERPS, the key finding was that for the number one placing, social signals dominated (although Google+ data is not yet reliable).
Marcus Tober
25) Bounce rate, clickthrough rate in SERPs (search engine ranking pages) and time on site can all be measured.
Marcus Tober
26) A 40% average clickthrough rate (CTR) uplift is being seen with a three line sitelink and 17% with one line.
Ben Beard
27) Backlinks are still a major ranking factor, but quality matters.
Marcus Tober
28) Measure social media signals: motivate users to make your company more famous.
Marcus Tober
29) Become a brand and have recognizable products.
Marcus Tober
30) Google wants to rank the best site for the user, not the site with the best SEO.
Marcus Tandler, http://www.mediadonis.net/
31) Google wants to know which sites get lots of direct traffic (the user expects to see those sites as a result).
Marcus Tandler
32) Be careful with link profiles - use brand terms as well as target keywords.
@DaveNaylor, www.davidnaylor.co.uk/
33) Track keyword data while you still can - track Goals in Analytics (if you're not doing it now, then start).
Scott Krager, http://www.notprovided.com
34) Track keyword rankings - proving your case with numbers can win budget!
Scott Krager
35) Control what you can. Measure what you can.
Scott Krager
36) Share everything with your clients/boss. Transparency is coming.
Scott Krager
37) Power Articles work well: 1,000 - 2,000 words, good quality, in-depth researched material, published weekly.
Duran Inci, http://www.optimum7.com
38) Power Articles are what Google recommends; great content for the user; attracts links; is more effective in social.
Duran Inci
39) Identify pages with poor bounce rate/visits/time on site and de-index them (add no-indexes or no-follows to your robots.txt/).
Duran Inci
40) Microdata is not easy to implement but there are big wins if you do it right.
Duran Inci
41) 45% of algorithm search results are now personalized.
Craig Macdonald
42) Social and intent are going to become bigger ranking factors than links and on-page SEO.
Craig Macdonald
43) Don't assume there's only one English, Spanish or French language. The challenge is to find out the lexicons and slang of local users.
Jonathan Ashton, http://www.tbwa.com via @ShaadHamid
44) It's not a developer task to build schema.org microformats into your content - it's not too complicated.
Richard Baxter, http://www.seogadget.co.uk/
45) Authorship: link content to your Google+ profile, check the implementation and wait for Googlebot crawling!
Pierre Far, http://www.google.com
46) Authorship links should be to the author's page, NOT the publisher's page.
Pierre Far
47) Make sure that your rich snippets markup is correct and complete - many webmasters do this wrongly.
Pierre Far
48) Only use relevant rich snippet markup - make it visible and not misleading.
Pierre Far
49) You can find links to Google Webmaster hangouts at http://bit.ly/KqlTTk
Pierre Far

Landing page optimization

50) Look for inspiration outside the bun fight that is the search results pages - otherwise everybody's ads will end up looking the same. For example, have a look at a magazine to see how it grabs attention.
Guy Levine, http://www.returnondigital.com
51) The greatest uplifts in CTR are seen with the use of sitelinks.
Ben Beard, Adobe
52) Test your images in Facebook (check out the clickthrough rate) and whichever gets the most clicks, add to your Merchant Center.
Ben Beard
53) Don't violate design conventions - lurid colours, black backgrounds etc.
Malcolm Graham, http://www.limetreeonline.com
54) Don't make an ad too obvious eg, "Buy Me Now!" People will avoid the hard sell.
Malcolm Graham
55) An example of a very good landing page is Mailchimp
Malcolm Graham
56) If you're selling complex and expensive products you'll need lots of informative content, or people won't buy it.
Malcolm Graham
57) Offer something free with lots of branding to get good conversion rates.
Malcolm Graham
58) The home page is not a great place to send PPC traffic - it's just a waste of your money.
Guy Levine,
59) Think above the fold.
Guy Levine
60) Repeat your messages - lead the user by the hand to show them what you want them to do.
Guy Levine
61) Restrict the navagation - don't give them too many options.
Guy Levine
62) Build trust - use video.
Guy Levine
63) Every landing page should have a purpose and defined most required response.
Guy Levine
64) Use convincers (mentions in the media, awards, association membership logos.)
Guy Levine
65) Not everyone is in buy mode - use information and a two step sell to get them back to your site.
Guy Levine
66) Use forms scientifically - short increases fill, long improves quality.
Guy Levine
67) Ensure a tight correlation between your ad and your landing page copy.
Guy Levine
68) Measure specific conversion actions - not page views and time on site.
Guy Levine
69) When testing buying pages, the call to action button is the biggest priority.
Guy Levine
70) Your site should say - we are experts, this is what you should buy, please buy it from us!
Guy Levine
71) Landing page mistake: visual bullying - "Buy Now" within an enormous orange button. Brian Lewis
72) Don't use too many font treatments as it's too difficult to read.
Brian Lewis
72) Don't use rotating banners - it's distracting and slows the loading of your page.
Brian Lewis
73) Use tabs for more info etc rather than long, long web pages.
Brian Lewis
74) Make text easy to ready - use high contrast. Eg, blue on a white background.
Brian Lewis
75) 'Use cases' - defining the roles of people coming to your site. What's important to them? Price, warranty, what's their level of knowledge, where are they coming from, who are they?
Brian Lewis
76) They could be there for pre-research, early research, research on your company's advantage, browsing, pice comparison, ready to buy - create content that will be useful to all these people.
Brian Lewis
77) 4 types of trust and credibility

• Presumed credibility (they already know your name)
• Visual credibility
• Industry (insignias and emblems, members of an association, "as seen in New York Times")
• Social (testimonials and reviews)
  Brian Lewis

78) Relevance - the landing page should represent what they're looking for. If you mention an offer on the ad, point the link to a page with the offer on.
Stephen Pavlovich
79) Attention - have a clear call to action, an image that grabs.
Stephen Pavlovich
80) Show don't tell eg, Hyundai had an ad where 40 monkeys are challenged to pull apart one of their cars.
Stephen Pavlovich
81) Read "Made to Stick" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Make ideas simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and do they tell a story?
Stephen Pavlovich
82) Orientation - look at CampaignMonitor for a good one. Guide the user's hand as they go through their website so that they don't get lost. Make it obvious what they've to do next.
Stephen Pavlovich
83) Basecamp have great landing pages.
Stephen Pavlovich
84) Add a point of action reassurance underneath your call to action button (eg "You can cancel at a later date, there's a 30 day guarantee").
Stephen Pavlovich
85) "Steal" people's ideas with user testing, surveys and speaking to people in coffee shops.
Stephen Pavlovich
86) Google has changed its rule on Exact Match (it now gives close variations eg, plurals and misspellings) - you can revert to the old way in your settings.
Stephen Pavlovich

Cookie Law

87) 2011 Cookie rule asks for consent - May 25th is the cut-off date in the UK.
Andy Atkins-Krueger, http://www.webcertain.com
88) There are different rules for different countries - France's are some of the toughest.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
89) In the UK users need to actively configure their browser settings. But it doesn't affect analytics cookies.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
90) Your cookies should be harmless and non-intrusive.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
91) Audit your site to see if you have "aggressive cookies".
Andy Atkins-Krueger
92) Work to the lowest common denominator eg France's conditions are much tougher than Ireland's.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
93) Do a cookie audit before the Cookie law comes into force (UK). Do you know how many 1st and 3rd party cookies you drop on people's websites?
Andy Atkins-Krueger
94) One of the large Fortune 100 companies is putting the warning into a small Privacy Statement in the footer of their home page.
Anthony Haney
95) Watch what the giants are doing eg, Google and Amazon.
Anthony Haney
96) According to an Econsultancy report, 82% thought cookie opt-out is a bad idea for the consumer. But 80% of consumers thought it was a good idea.
Craig Macdonald, http://www.microsoft.com
97) In another survey 55% considered a cookie to be malware.
Craig Macdonald
98) Opt-out rates are low - only 2% for email (according to a US-based survey). So it may not be so bad when people are asked to opt-out of cookies.
Craig Macdonald
99) Even though the Cookie Law is so far only in Europe, US websites are going to have to pay attention because they have to tailor their websites to the lowest common denominator.
Craig Macdonald

Local search

100) Consumers are adapting to social at faster rates - be nimble.
Jonathan Ashton
101) Don't determine content with scripts for different languages - use a tunnel with hard links to country-specific urls.
Jonathan Ashton
102) Local operations need local pages.
Jonathan Ashton
103) SEOs must form good relationships with IT managers to achieve good results.
Jonathan Ashton
104) Make sure your local site is 'Venice-friendly' (the name of the localization Google algorithm) - build relevant landing pages for each location.
Aleyda Solis, http://www.fxclub.com
105) Maintain a flow of fresh and relevant localized content to succeed in local search.
Aleyda Solis
106) Curated user-generated content can be a great help in local search.
Aleyda Solis
107) Build citations for each location you target - collaborate with local media and bloggers.
Aleyda Solis
108) Mobilize your local presence - use tools like Screenfly to check how your site looks on a mobile.
Aleyda Solis
109) Monitor and follow local activity - stay in touch!
Aleyda Solis

Mobile

110) Use a free app to promote a premium one.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
111) And use a free app if your goal is to promote your brand.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
112) Things to bear in mind - use HTML geared towards mobile, or use apps to drive traffic?
Andy Atkins-Krueger
113) Comscore reports 60% of activity on mobile phones is done at home or in the office - static rather than properly mobile.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
114) Mobile's role from 1% to 20%

115) % of mobile website visitors in the UK has risen from 1% in 2010 to 20% in 2012.
Neil Walker, http://www.seomad.com
116) There's a higher clickthrough rate on mobile although conversions and transactions are still lower than on desktop. This may well change in future, though.
Neil Walker
117) Mobile usability. You have three choices: using a third party mobile site service, building a new mobile site in-house or re-designing your website using responsive design ...
Rob Kerry, http://www.ayima.com

• A third party site is currently not a good option - the site will not be attractive, duplicate content is a result, plus a broken user experience and increased bounce rates and link dilution.
• The best option is reponsive web - re-design your website so that it scales gracefully depending on screen resolution.
  Rob Kerry
• Site redesign: same urls, same content, better usability uses existing infrastructure and CMS but requires a website re-design use HTML5 and CSS3 and responsive design.
• Building a new mobile site will cause duplicate content problems which you can solve with rel=canonical code but you do have more control than you would with a third party site.
• Look at WPtouch plugin or the Magento M-Commerce platform for setting up a mobile site - though not just as good an option as responsive design.
  Rob Kerry

118) Don't automatically think of an iPhone app when designing. Think of who your customers will be. Eg China are big Android users.
Rob Kerry

Social

119) In Google Webmaster Tools use Fetch Googlebot>Submit to Index to submit pages to Google to have them prioritized. (Up to 50 URLs a week, domains only (not subdomains)).
Maile Ohye, http://www.google.com
120) And use an accurate (last modification date) to get your updated pages crawled faster.
Maile Ohye
121) Eliminate known duplicate pages or low quality content.
Maile Ohye
122) Only link internally to quality pages and check Webmaster Tools for any internal links to old pages.
Maile Ohye
123) rel="author" is the biggest social signal and Google is ranking individuals over companies and publishers.
Lisa Myers, http://www.vervesearch.com
124) Link building = creativity, communication and execution.
Lisa Myers
125) Timing is becoming more crucial. Experiment about when the best time to tweet is.
Lisa Myers
126) Social is all about personality. Make sure there are distinctive voices writing for you who are known or who can get themselves known.
Lisa Myers
127) Telling an employee not to tweet is like telling a 15yr old not to drink. But if they have a big Twitter following you can give them guidelines rather than telling them not to.
Lisa Myers
128) Facebook is for a general audience, whereas Google+ and Twitter are about news and technology.
James Carson
129) Think about your influencers. You don't always have to follow A-listers. Being tweeted by someone with 50,000 followers might not be as beneficial as being tweeted by someone with fewer followers but with many who have with their own medium-sized following.
James Carson
130) Gameification - eg, have your users earn badges the more comments they make, as a way of encouraging them to do so.
Simon Heseltine
131) Hijack a large happening event, and tweet your way through it eg, Huffington Post tweeted quotes from the state of the union address as it was happening.
Simon Heseltine
132) Don't just worry about the shares you get. Look at your engagement metrics.
Simon Heseltine
133) There's no harm in re-tweeting evergreen posts as long as it's not a time-reliant post.
Simon Heseltine
134) Optimize where you put your social buttons: put them in an obvious place or you won't get shared.
Lisa Myers
135) Google+ isn't terrible, but it's not as good as Facebook. Google+ averages 3 mins per month per user on site as opposed 20 mins per user day on Facebook.
Bas van den Beld, http://www.stateofsearch.com/
136) Don't think of Google+ as a Facebook competitor - it's more of a data-gatherer than a social network.
Bas van den Beld
137) People succumb to peer pressure, taking on recommendations from authorities and people we trust.
Bas van den Beld
138) When we sign up to Google+ we're passing on our identities, our friends and employees' details and information on how we're using the web.
Bas van den Beld
139) Find out what information Google+ has on you at http://www.google.com/s2/search/social
Bas van den Beld
140) Tell intermediaries what content you'd like to see and with a bit of luck the A-listers will get to know about your requests through them.
Bas van den Beld
141) Create content based on what your users want to see rather than what you think it should be based on.
Bas van den Beld
142) If content has been Google+1'd it will appear artificially high in the SERPs, but you may see a lower than average CTR because it's less relevant.
Kevin Gibbons, http://www.seoptimise.com
143) The result of a case study showed that a site with no Google+ profile showed a decrease in organic traffic of 19.5% and those with a strong Google+ profile an increase of 42.6%.
Kevin Gibbons
144) Whatever you do, build up a great content team - bloggers, video producers, writers. Keep doing that and you'll start looking forward to ranking updates.
Kevin Gibbons
145) Force yourself to share something on Google+ every day.
Kevin Gibbons
146) Google said that links are like a democracy - maybe a democracy where you have to be white, male and a property owner. When they said this you needed a blog or a site and you needed to be web-savvy. These days it's much more democratic with social - anyone can comment on anything.
Danny Sullivan, http://www.searchengineland.com/
147) "If you're doing something you don't want the world to know about, maybe you shouldn't be doing it."
Bas van den Beld quoting Eric Schmidt of Google

Panda, Penguin and content

148) 43% of all searches done on the web comprise of four or more words. 64% of searches no exact match.
Ken Dobell, http://www.dacgroup.com
149) Create highly relevant content for the user and for the search engine.
Ken Dobell
150) Panda's had a much greater impact than Penguin but they're both part of a campaign to get rid of webspam.
Ken Dobell
151) Google decides your link profile on many criteria, including age of the page, last date of edit, reciprocity, number of links, age of link, type of link (image,text), and location.
Simon Penson, http://www.zazzlemedia.co.uk/
152) Content marketing is going to be key in future.
Simon Penson
153) Something has changed re using anchor text as a ranking signal. Might it have been turned off altogether?
Simon Penson
154) Remove over-optimized anchor text links avoid/remove sitewide links.
Simon Penson
155) Remove non-relevant links.
Simon Penson
156) Add high quality links.
Simon Penson
157) If you have Penguin-related problems, fix them before your Panda problems.
Simon Penson
158) Clean up your site's index by dealing with extraneous URLs.
Stephen Croome, http://wwwSEOGadget.com
159) Delete or rehome orphan pages and low quality internally linked pages.
Stephen Croome
160) Improve site internal linking - tidy it up and add good internal links to quality pages.
Stephen Croome
161) Get rid of categories that have no content in them.
Stephen Croome
162) Increase the ratio of your good content by throwing away your worst content.
Stephen Croome
163) It's obvious from Google's updates that they are valuing diversity, freshness, quality and authority.
Stephen Croome
164) Content wins big long-term.
Vince Blackham, http://www.97thfloor.com
165) If you're making infographics don't try doing it in Word and saving as a jpg - make it beautiful. Interactive ones are even better with links off to other pages.
Vince Blackham
166) Put your infographic on Pinterest and have the version on your site larger than the one on Pinterest (at least 500px width and 2500px in length), so people will have to click through to see the infographic properly.
Vince Blackham
167) Use Tineye to find out who has used your images and go after links from the sites that have used them.
Vince Blackham
168) Entity rank rather than page rank - is that going to become more important?
Simon Penson
169) Yandex said that either Google are talking to aliens or gods, or they're using the clickthrough rate as a ranking factor.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
170) People avoid spammy-looking URLs.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
171) User testing has shown that people love clicking anything with a numerical character in it on SERPs pages.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
172) Think natural when it comes to anchor text - use brand plus something else. Exact match anchor text looks like a paid link to Google.
Andy Atkins-Krueger

Remarketing and retargeting

173) Understand what the re means - do it again and do it better.
Lisa Williams, http://www.acquisio.com
174) Test on multiple platforms. Different ones will have different pricing structures and customer service etc.
Lisa Williams
175) Use Facebook to get a better feel for your demographics. Target your ads to different groups of people to find out which likes them better.
Lisa Williams
176) Look at your metrics to see what remarketing is doing for other areas of your marketing: brand searches, conversions etc.
Lisa Williams
177) When you're retargeting look at the sites that don't deliver and remove them.
Lisa Williams
178) "Win moment" - if you can target them on the same day you'll get a 50% higher conversion if you don't.
Ariel Bardin, http://google.com
179) There is a significant drop-off in conversion after an hour.
Ariel Bardin
180) Make better decisions - make sure you make use of all your data and that it's in an accessible place.
Ariel Bardin
181) Your conversion is 136% quicker if you use search and display together. And you'll get five times more conversions.
Ariel Bardin
182) The more control you give users, the more engaged they will be.
Lisa Williams

Paid search campaigns

183) Product listing ads is relatively new and up to now there hasn't been much information on them.
Ann Stanley, http://www.anicca-solutions.com/
184) There are two formats for product extensions - linear usually performs better.
Ann Stanley
185) Most companies still don't use it - it will give you a competitive advantage.
Ann Stanley
186) Product listing ad brings extra brand enhancement and a better CTR, although it appears randomly. You have no control over when it is seen.
Ann Stanley
187) Use social extensions if you want your customer engaged with your business before or even after conversion.
George Popstefanov, http://pmg.co/
188) Seller ratings come from external sites such as Reviewcentre, Ciao, Trustpilot, Resellerratings as well as reviews on your site.
George Popstefanov
189) The customer must be searching on Google and you must have at least 30 unique reviews. If your rating isn't four stars or higher they won't show it.
George Popstefanov
190) You don't need to have a Google Merchant Center account for your ads to be eligible for seller ratings.
George Popstefanov
191) You can have up to eight sitelinks.
George Popstefanov
192) Use sitelink extensions as shortcuts to your best-selling products or to highlight offers, but make sure you keep them updated.
George Popstefanov
193) Dynamic search ads where Google generates the headline and the template is worth trying out. Use them if you don't have time, if you're not sure what you're doing or if you have a huge inventory which changes frequently. (Only available as Beta in Europe at the moment, but full version available in the US).
George Popstefanov
194) You can specify that Google uses just one section - eg a category, or pages that contain certain words so you are in control.
George Popstefanov
195) For your ad templates (which you create) have a universal message about your brand, use offers that apply to everything on your site eg free shipping, mention any free resources.
George Popstefanov
196) When a relevant search occurs, Google dynamically generates an ad with a headline based on the query, and the text based on your most relevant landing page.
George Popstefanov
197) With sitelinks: Test -Learn - Roll out - Test. Then do it all again.
Paul Risebury-Crisp, http://www.adobe.com
198) Make sure your sitelinks point to the relevant landing page - don't have them pointing to your home page.
Paul Risebury-Crisp
199) On a mobile screen you have significantly less space so if you have sitelinks you'll take up more of it than your competitors without.
Paul Risebury-Crisp
200) Have sitelinks as part of your brand launch - don't wait for a few weeks to add them.
Paul Risebury-Crisp
201) Google Brand Logo beta - next big thing?
Paul Risebury-Crisp

SEO and social media tools

202) Majestic SEO have launched two new metrics - citation flow and trust flow, alongside their link metrics.
Dixon Jones, http://www.majesticseo.com
203) Pay attention to your competitor rankings but don't obsess about yours.
Dixon Jones
204) For Google Analytics alternatives, try Yahoo Web Analytics.
Dixon Jones
205) Google custom search lets you input specific sites. With every algo update, create a profile of winners and losers. You can then see qualitatively what google is looking for.
Dixon Jones
206) Use Mockingbird for site mockups.
Aleydra Solis
207) Test responsiveness with Screenfly
Aleydra Solis
208) Automate social tasks with IFTTT
Aleydra Solis
209) Social Mention tracks buzz across the web and lets you see the top influencers.
Neil Walker
210) Use Google+ Ripples for Google+ analytics.
Dixon Jones
211) Basecamp for project management.
Dixon Jones
212) If you get a "you've been busted" email, correct everything before you quibble with Google.
The Search Marketing Experts Panel
213) Check you've been penalized. If you lost ranking on some keywordss but not others, you probably weren't, it's just that some links lose value. If you file for re-inclusion with Google, it won't make any difference.
The Search Marketing Experts PaneCredit Source: wordtracker.com

4 Content Tips We Should Follow To Improve SEO & Sales

On the back of Panda, Penguin and any other updates Google has stored in the Zoo, writing SEO content has become more and more about delivering a better user experience.
Gone are the days of keyword laden text that reads poorly and lacks substance. It has been laid to rest and will never return. We’re not mourning.

With ‘quality content’ the buzzwords on everyone’s lips, identifying areas in which you can deliver a better user experience whilst adhering to key SEO techniques is the overall goal.

Below are four aspects of on-page content that enable you to naturally combine interesting, marketable content with SEO copywriting techniques, resulting in a page that is not only likely to rank higher, but turn more visitors into customers.

Before We Begin – The Nitty Gritty

Users aren’t going to read all of your content.
They won’t.
As an SEO writer it’s something you’re just going to have to deal with. OK? Have you recovered? Good.
The less content there is, the more users will read. Pretty simple but not advantageous if you’re trying to get across a number of key selling points to new customers. Striking a balance between word count and design/usability should be the focus.
When writing, remember that readers are only going to consume a short amount of information, so make the most of the advantages you have!

1). Do Your Best Work Above the Fold

The stuff you see when you first land on the page is what’s most important. Searchers are fickle beasts – they’ll click onto another page quicker than you can say “G’day”, making it vital to get your key messages across quickly and efficiently.
Headings, bullet points and call to actions (aka the 3 other points we’re going to touch on!) should all feature above the fold to ensure greater conversions.
The reality is that once you factor in header images, menu options, navigation links and alike, there may only be a small section for you to ply your content writing skills – use it wisely!

2). Keywords + USP = Conversion Heading

Forget E=MC². The above equation is gold when you are looking to increase sales through enticing content. Every company has Unique Selling Points and benefits that differentiate them from the competition. If you don’t then odds are you’ll be out of business soon.
Balancing points of difference and benefits with focus keywords is the key to capturing your reader’s attention via headings. As a general rule, include your major selling point in your h1, second major selling point in your first h2 and so on.
Conversion headings capture the attention of readers – if you can get them to browse a couple more sentences or look at a bullet point as a result of reading your heading, it is doing its job.
Ensuring main keywords feature in your headings also creates a parallel between the search results and your website. If someone searches for ‘SEO Company’ and that same term appears in your h1, you’ve created a link that will register in the searchers mind and keep them on site.

3). Bullet Points – Your Friend for Advantages and Internal Links

Like headings, bullet points offer dual incentives for your SEO and conversion metrics. They break up the page and stand out from the rest of the text, which means they’ve got a better chance of being read.
After all, pretty dot points are easier to read than chunky text.
Conversely, filling your page with bullet point lists will dilute their impact on readers – so be careful!
Listing services and benefits within your bullet points ensures that they are easily consumed by the reader. Better yet, the information in your lists can be prominently linked to relevant internal pages, gaining you big ticks for usability from both users and search engines.

4). Call the Reader to Action and Complete the Sale/Enquiry/Download….

Remind the reader why they are there! Call-to-actions should feature more than once on a page, but shouldn’t deliver mixed messages. Keep all of them uniform with the overall goal of the page – whether it’s to buy, enquire, download or sign up.
Call-to-actions also enable you to give your main keywords another natural mention, reinforcing the buzz words that have appeared throughout your content to well and truly close the deal!
As a rule, have at least one call-to-action in your content above the fold.

Balance SEO and Sales Copy to Turn More Visitors into Customers!

It’s all well and good to get great rankings and traffic, but without proper conversion practices in place, it’s a fruitless process. Strike a balance in your content between SEO and conversions using headings, bullet points, call to actions and the area above the fold, and you’ll be closer to online domination (in an ideal world!).

Are you achieving a balance between SEO and sales copy?

1. Do you have headings, bullet points and call to actions above the fold?
2. Do your headings contain a good balance of unique selling points and keywords?
3. Do you feature bullet points containing key services and benefits, and do they link to relevant internal pages?
4. Do you have numerous, keyword savvy call-to-actions that direct visitors to the same end goal?
   Written By: Dylan Thomas Source: SearchEngineJournal.com

30 Web Trends for 2012: How SEO, Search, Social Media, Blogging, Web Design & Analytics Will Change by Tad Chef

It’s this time of year again! In the previous years my web trends lists were very successful, both as predictions and by traffic or number of shares.

People working in the web industries want to know what’s ahead.

So for 2012 I want to tell you again what’s coming up. Basically I’m not predicting anything here; instead I just list trends you can already see and measure, but which will be obvious next year.

SEO
Good bye PageRank and links – links and PageRank matter less and less. In 2012 more ranking factors will probably be about other signals than conventional a href links. Google will use all kinds of other data including feedback human quality raters to overcome the big decade long link buying spree.
Freshness – the latest Google update is perhaps more important than the high quality update dubbed Panda. Nobody cries about it because it wasn’t about penalties for sites but about improvements for searchers this time. This is good news for big news sites and bad news for brands with questionable business practices. The bad news will show up on top.
Quality – the Panda update wasn’t really about pandas, as I hope you know:  it was about ”high quality” sites. Thus focusing on quality metrics that entail usability, readability and overall usefulness is key in 2012. Underpaid quality raters are out there to get you, sometimes even without a look on your actual site.
SEO is just a part – SEO isn’t dead in 2012, but it’s more and more part of bigger ideas and concepts. This year it seems it’s not SEO 2.0 or findability anymore. The new en vogue terms are content marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing or Internet/online marketing (again). SEO practitioners do just stuff meta tags, but their tasks now encompass much more.
SEO marries CRO – The two disciplines, SEO and CRO or conversion optimisation are just two sides of one coin. While SEO focused on getting traffic, CRO concentrates on making this traffic work for you. I’ve watched these two disciplines converge more and more. In 2012 you will rarely have one without the other. I know I predicted this for 2011, but many people still tried to divide the two sides of the same coin.
​
Search
Google does it again – Google has quickly reacted to competition from small contenders like Blekko, Ixquick and DuckDuckGo. It has appropriated all improvements and features by these faster competitors – be it the removal of content farms by Blekko or the introduction of SSL search by Ixquick or referral blocking by DuckDuckGo, Google offers it all now as well.
Even more confusion – last year I predicted more clutter in Google results and was nevertheless unprepared for the wide range of changes leading to portal-like search results. In particular, many changes on local searches lead to even more information stuffed in the SERPs. Furthermore, the manifold social enhancements such as who +1′ed, shared or authored a post make the SERPs look like a collection of gif clip art. I’m afraid this won’t be the end of this trend of more confusion.
Search without clicking – in 2011 several small moves by Google showed a tendency to show search results as content directly on Google, thus making a click to the actual page not necessary anymore. We will see more of it until people start suing Google for stealing their content.
Google does it already on Google News, Google Places and Google Images. It also owns YouTube, where most video searches end up. They want the same thing for text search as well. They don’t want people to leave Google properties at all. Google+ brand pages just add to it.
Google reads your mind – we already got used to the sometimes annoying instant search results that appear even before you type something meaningful. Google works on more ways to find out what you need and give it to you even before you ask. Just consider the multiple data sources Google now has about you:  Google toolbar, Chrome, Profiles, Plus, search history…
Speech recognition – Siri, the speech recognition ”assistant” on the latest iPhone, makes people talk with their phones and it’s extremely popular already. In 2012 we will see Apple’s competitors come up with similar tools so that we don’t need to talk to people or type in search queries anymore. Is this the end of SEO as some journalists assume (just like some suggest after every other major change in the search industry)?
No, it just means different kinds of queries, maybe more colloquial or clumsy ones. Maybe more dialogue with your search engine, for example ”I want something to eat”. I can’t imagine people just saying one, two or three word queries in public without looking silly. So they will talk as they do with other people.
Mobile grows – no surprise here. Mobile search will grow in 2012 again. How big it will become? Some pundits suggest that more than 1/5 of all searches will be conducted via mobile devices.
​
Social media
Google+ stays tiny – Google+ is being heralded and pushed by Google in search results because it’s still tiny – it hasn’t even reached a social networking market share of 0.5%, while Facebook owns approximately 65% of it.
Facebook losing ground – despite its almost monopolistic position, Facebook is already losing ground. In 2011 Facebook lost 6 million users in the US. The various privacy scandals and annoyances, along with alternatives like Diaspora, Google+ or Tumblr, will accelerate this process in 2012.
Oversaturation – it has been evident for a while already, but in 2011 most people noticed it: people can’t join more social media sites and spend even more time there without spending 24h on social networking and creating user generated content. We witnessed this when Quora appeared and demanded constant attention and production of high quality content.
Also, the emergence of Google+ has shown that most average people already have enough to do with Facebook and the likes. In 2012 it will finally become obvious that the social networking and UGC market is saturated and that creating another site that demands time and effort is not a valid business model anymore.
Social bookmarking vs social saving – last time I predicted the death of social bookmarking. In a way I was right, though luckily Delicious, the original social bookmarking site, has survived. Nonetheless it moved on to a different model of sharing links. Other social bookmarking sites or their competitors have created something that has no name but that I’d like to call social saving.
People are saving snippets or whole webpages using tools like Diigo, Evernote or bo.lt to collect, edit and share them. The future is bright for these type of tools in 2012 as webpages, articles or blog posts you want to bookmark vanish faster than you can look.
Curation – Curation is the collection of resources by an editor or a user who acts as an ad-hoc editor. Search engines like Blekko or Rollyo use curation but also third party services that create “Twitter newspapers”. With the relaunch of Delicious as a curation site for compiling small lists (aka stacks of links), the idea has been given another push. Adding +1 votes to search results is another kind of curation.
Social CRM goes prime time – customer relationship management (CRM) and social media converged for a few years now but there was no perfect solution to merge those two. In 2011 Nimble CRM appeared. This tool is so simple to use and flawlessly combines CRM, email and social media sites Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in one place, so that you can save lots of time and effort when trying to generate leads right on there on social media sites.

Blogging
Quantity vs quality – in 2011 people blogged less often, but when they blogged they wrote long articles. With the new freshness algorithm Google just introduced, the process might get reversed, as now the latest articles are more likely to show up on top in the top 10.
Tumblr – miniblogging is still growing, at least the market leader Tumblr. Why is Tumblr such a success? It’s a bit like Facebook, a bit like blogging and a bit like Twitter, but it combines the best of all of them. You can like or “heart” postings, you can reblog them and you can use a pseudonym like on Twitter. In 2011 many high level bloggers even moved their blogs from WordPress to Tumblr for the sake of simplicity and ease of use. Also, never underestimate the huge Tumblr audience.
Corporate blogging fails – businesses dump blogging in order to invest in Facebook marketing some statistics suggest. This is like giving up your office and doing business from Starbucks. Despite logic, this seems to be an appealing business model both in real life and online. Why host your own website and practice SEO, networking and advertising to get people to visit it when you can rent a “table” at Facebook. This is quite a short-sighted and risky move but business people tend to follow this trend.
Line breaks – for the sake of readability bloggers use more text-decoration, lists and breaks. Some overdo it though it seems. Not every line needs a break after it, not every post has to be a list and every second word has to be bold.

Web development
No more Flash – there will be no Flash on Android and RIM tablets and smartphones anymore. Thus the original Flash will die finally. Adobe is already working on a HTML5 implementation instead. So Flash will be probably resurrected based on Web Standards.
​UX surpasses usability – if you believe Google Insights for search is a reliable statistic, you can see that in 2011 the interest in UX or user experience design has outgrown the dwindling popularity of the keyword usability. Fewer and fewer people are satisfied with usability because it’s too limited. The overall user experience, which includes emotional states of the user in its ideas, is the more important discipline of both.
@​font-face usage - I remember it as if it was yesterday, when I first heard about the @font-face CSS method to embedding web-safe fonts to websites around 2004; I couldn’t wait until web browsers started supporting them. It took almost a decade and half a dozen font replacement techniques to make this CSS3 method work in most modern browsers. Now most browsers support it and we already see an abundance of websites using beautiful and readable typography. In 2012 we will probably see this going mainstream.
HTML5 innovation – when HTML5 came up, the hype was huge but I rarely ever noticed some HTML5 that wowed me. Most websites still seemed to look boring. Yes they were readable, usable, maybe even findable but what about the 21st century design I’d expect in 2011? Well, now the sites that really use HTML5 to create a design beyond a few boxes start appearing in larger numbers.

Analytics
Referral keywords - Google proprietary SSL search kills the Google keyword referrer. You can’t even see it on an SSL site, as Google removes the keyword using a script. Thus people will finally look at conversions not keywords.
Klout – no other metric has been so obsessed about both in a positive and a negative way recently. People love and hate Klout as if it was a nation or a religion. Whether you like Klout or not, it’s the elephant in the room. The social media influence measurement may be flawed at the moment, but it’s still the best there is. Also, Google has similar metrics for authors or might acquire Klout in the near future, maybe even in 2012. What’s safe to say is that in 2012 you won’t just measure websites but also people.
Rankings, traffic – simple SEO metrics such as rankings and traffic die a slow death. The search referrer blocking by Google may be only the last nail in the coffin of simplistic SEO metrics. When you can’t even see what keywords people use and thus can’t segment your search traffic properly, this metrics becomes useless.​
Real time analytics – Google finally caught up with the competition this year, adding real time features to Google Analytics. At least a dozen of other vendors have been offering real time data for a while, and even better than Google Analytics if you ask me.
ROI – business people finally seem to overcome the ROI frenzy. ROI is important for both SEO and social media campaigns, but you can’t quantify everything by chasing after Return On Investment. It seems that in 2011 this simple truth has dawned on marketers and analysts all over the place so that we can sit back and watch other metrics in the coming year.

Feel free to add more trends you want to get noticed in the comment section or on social media.
Written By: Tad Chef Source: SEOptimise.com

Top 21 Tips to Increase Blog Traffic (Updated 2012) by SEOmoz founder Rand Fishkin

It's easy to build a blog, but hard to build a successful blog with significant traffic. Over the years, we've grown the Moz blog to nearly a million visits each month and helped lots of other blogs, too. I launched a personal blog late last year and was amazed to see how quickly it gained thousands of visits to each post. There's an art to increasing a blog's traffic, and given that we seem to have stumbled on some of that knowledge, I felt it compulsory to give back by sharing what we've observed.
NOTE: This post replaces a popular one I wrote on the same topic in 2007. This post is intended to be useful to all forms of bloggers - independent folks, those seeking to monetize, and marketing professionals working an in-house blog from tiny startups to huge companies. Not all of the tactics will work for everyone, but at least some of these should be applicable and useful.

#1 - Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share

When strategizing about who you're writing for, consider that audience's ability to help spread the word. Some readers will naturally be more or less active in evangelizing the work you do, but particular communities, topics, writing styles and content types regularly play better than others on the web. For example, great infographics that strike a chord (like this one), beautiful videos that tell a story (like this one) and remarkable collections of facts that challenge common assumptions (like this one) are all targeted at audiences likely to share (geeks with facial hair, those interested in weight loss and those with political thoughts about macroeconomics respectively).

If you can identify groups that have high concentrations of the blue and orange circles in the diagram above, you dramatically improve the chances of reaching larger audiences and growing your traffic numbers. Targeting blog content at less-share-likely groups may not be a terrible decision (particularly if that's where you passion or your target audience lies), but it will decrease the propensity for your blog's work to spread like wildfire across the web.

#2 - Participate in the Communities Where Your Audience Already Gathers

Advertisers on Madison Avenue have spent billions researching and determining where consumers with various characteristics gather and what they spend their time doing so they can better target their messages. They do it because reaching a group of 65+ year old women with commercials for extreme sports equipment is known to be a waste of money, while reaching an 18-30 year old male demographic that attends rock-climbing gyms is likely to have a much higher ROI.
Thankfully, you don't need to spend a dime to figure out where a large portion of your audience can be found on the web. In fact, you probably already know a few blogs, forums, websites and social media communities where discussions and content are being posted on your topic (and if you don't a Google search will take you much of the way). From that list, you can do some easy expansion using a web-based tool like DoubleClick's Ad Planner:

Once you've determined the communities where your soon-to-be-readers gather, you can start participating. Create an account, read what others have written and don't jump in the conversation until you've got a good feel for what's appropriate and what's not. I've written a post here about rules for comment marketing, and all of them apply. Be a good web citizen and you'll be rewarded with traffic, trust and fans. Link-drop, spam or troll and you'll get a quick boot, or worse, a reputation as a blogger no one wants to associate with.

#3 - Make Your Blog's Content SEO-Friendly

Search engines are a massive opportunity for traffic, yet many bloggers ignore this channel for a variety of reasons that usually have more to do with fear and misunderstanding than true problems. As I've written before, "SEO, when done right, should never interfere with great writing." In 2011, Google received over 3 billion daily searches from around the world, and that number is only growing:

sources: Comscore + Google

Taking advantage of this massive traffic opportunity is of tremendous value to bloggers, who often find that much of the business side of blogging, from inquiries for advertising to guest posting opportunities to press and discovery by major media entities comes via search.
SEO for blogs is both simple and easy to set up, particularly if you're using an SEO-friendly platform like Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla. For more information on how to execute on great SEO for blogs, check out the following resources:

• Blogger's Guide to SEO (from SEOBook)
• The Beginner's Guide to SEO (from Moz)
• Wordpress Blog SEO Tutorial (from Yoast)
• SEO for Travel Bloggers (but applicable to nearly any type of blog - from Moz)

Don't let bad press or poor experiences with spammers (spam is not SEO) taint the amazing power and valuable contributions SEO can make to your blog's traffic and overall success. 20% of the effort and tactics to make your content optimized for search engines will yield 80% of the value possible; embrace it and thousands of visitors seeking exactly what you've posted will be the reward.

#4 - Use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to Share Your Posts & Find New Connections

Twitter just topped 465 million registered accounts. Facebook has over 850 million active users. Google+ has nearly 100 million. LinkedIn is over 130 million. Together, these networks are attracting vast amounts of time and interest from Internet users around the world, and those that participate on these services fit into the "content distributors" description above, meaning they're likely to help spread the word about your blog.
Leveraging these networks to attract traffic requires patience, study, attention to changes by the social sites and consideration in what content to share and how to do it. My advice is to use the following process:

• If you haven't already, register a personal account and a brand account at each of the following - Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn (those links will take you directly to the registration pages for brand pages). For example, my friend Dharmesh has a personal account for Twitter and a brand account for OnStartups (one of his blog projects). He also maintains brand pages on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
• Fill out each of those profiles to the fullest possible extent - use photos, write compelling descriptions and make each one as useful and credible as possible. Research shows that profiles with more information have a significant correlation with more successful accounts (and there's a lot of common sense here, too, given that spammy profiles frequently feature little to no profile work).
• Connect with users on those sites with whom you already share a personal or professional relationships, and start following industry luminaries, influencers and connectors. Services like FollowerWonk and FindPeopleonPlus can be incredible for this:

• Start sharing content - your own blog posts, those of peers in your industry who've impressed you and anything that you feel has a chance to go "viral" and earn sharing from others.
• Interact with the community - use hash tags, searches and those you follow to find interesting conversations and content and jump in! Social networks are amazing environment for building a brand, familiarizing yourself with a topic and the people around it, and earning the trust of others through high quality, authentic participation and sharing

If you consistently employ a strategy of participation, share great stuff and make a positive, memorable impression on those who see your interactions on these sites, your followers and fans will grow and your ability to drive traffic back to your blog by sharing content will be tremendous. For many bloggers, social media is the single largest source of traffic, particularly in the early months after launch, when SEO is a less consistent driver.

#5 - Install Analytics and Pay Attention to the Results

At the very least, I'd recommend most bloggers install Google Analytics (which is free), and watch to see where visits originate, which sources drive quality traffic and what others might be saying about you and your content when they link over. If you want to get more advanced, check out this post on 18 Steps to Successful Metrics and Marketing.
Here's a screenshot from the analytics of my wife's travel blog, the Everywhereist:

As you can see, there's all sorts of great insights to be gleaned by looking at where visits originate, analyzing how they were earned and trying to repeat the successes, focus on the high quality and high traffic sources and put less effort into marketing paths that may not be effective. In this example, it's pretty clear that Facebook and Twitter are both excellent channels. StumbleUpon sends a lot of traffic, but they don't stay very long (averaging only 36 seconds vs. the general average of 4 minutes!).
Employing analytics is critical to knowing where you're succeeding, and where you have more opportunity. Don't ignore it, or you'll be doomed to never learn from mistakes or execute on potential.

#6 - Add Graphics, Photos and Illustrations (with link-back licensing)

If you're someone who can produce graphics, take photos, illustrate or even just create funny doodles in MS Paint, you should leverage that talent on your blog. By uploading and hosting images (or using a third-party service like Flickr to embed your images with licensing requirements on that site), you create another traffic source for yourself via Image Search, and often massively improve the engagement and enjoyment of your visitors.
When using images, I highly recommend creating a way for others to use them on their own sites legally and with permission, but in such a way that benefits you as the content creator. For example, you could have a consistent notice under your images indicating that re-using is fine, but that those who do should link back to this post. You can also post that as a sidebar link, include it in your terms of use, or note it however you think will get the most adoption.
Some people will use your images without linking back, which sucks. However, you can find them by employing the Image Search function of "similar images," shown below:

Clicking the "similar" link on any given image will show you other images that Google thinks look alike, which can often uncover new sources of traffic. Just reach out and ask if you can get a link, nicely. Much of the time, you'll not only get your link, but make a valuable contact or new friend, too!

#7 - Conduct Keyword Research While Writing Your Posts

Not surprisingly, a big part of showing up in search engines is targeting the terms and phrases your audience are actually typing into a search engine. It's hard to know what these words will be unless you do some research, and luckily, there's a free tool from Google to help called the AdWords Keyword Tool.
Type some words at the top, hit search and AdWords will show you phrases that match the intent and/or terms you've employed. There's lots to play around with here, but watch out in particular for the "match types" options I've highlighted below:

When you choose "exact match" AdWords will show you only the quantity of searches estimated for that precise phrase. If you use broad match, they'll include any search phrases that use related/similar words in a pattern they think could have overlap with your keyword intent (which can get pretty darn broad). "Phrase match" will give you only those phrases that include the word or words in your search - still fairly wide-ranging, but between "exact" and "broad."
When you're writing a blog post, keyword research is best utilized for the title and headline of the post. For example, if I wanted to write a post here on Moz about how to generate good ideas for bloggers, I might craft something that uses the phrase "blog post ideas" or "blogging ideas" near the front of my title and headline, as in "Blog Post Ideas for When You're Truly Stuck," or "Blogging Ideas that Will Help You Clear Writer's Block."
Optimizing a post to target a specific keyword isn't nearly as hard as it sounds. 80% of the value comes from merely using the phrase effectively in the title of the blog post, and writing high quality content about the subject. If you're interested in more, read Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization (a slightly older resource, but just as relevant today as when it was written).

#8 - Frequently Reference Your Own Posts and Those of Others

The web was not made for static, text-only content! Readers appreciate links, as do other bloggers, site owners and even search engines. When you reference your own material in-context and in a way that's not manipulative (watch out for over-optimizing by linking to a category, post or page every time a phrase is used - this is almost certainly discounted by search engines and looks terrible to those who want to read your posts), you potentially draw visitors to your other content AND give search engines a nice signal about those previous posts.
Perhaps even more valuable is referencing the content of others. The biblical expression "give and ye shall receive," perfectly applies on the web. Other site owners will often receive Google Alerts or look through their incoming referrers (as I showed above in tip #5) to see who's talking about them and what they're saying. Linking out is a direct line to earning links, social mentions, friendly emails and new relationships with those you reference. In its early days, this tactic was one of the best ways we earned recognition and traffic with the SEOmoz blog and the power continues to this day.

#9 - Participate in Social Sharing Communities Like Reddit + StumbleUpon

The major social networking sites aren't alone in their power to send traffic to a blog. Social community sites like Reddit (which now receives more than 2 billion! with a "B"! views each month), StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Care2 (for nonprofits and causes), GoodReads (books), Ravelry (knitting), Newsvine (news/politics) and many, many more (Wikipedia maintains a decent, though not comprehensive list here).
Each of these sites have different rules, formats and ways of participating and sharing content. As with participation in blog or forum communities described above in tactic #2, you need to add value to these communities to see value back. Simply drive-by spamming or leaving your link won't get you very far, and could even cause a backlash. Instead, learn the ropes, engage authentically and you'll find that fans, links and traffic can develop.
These communities are also excellent sources of inspiration for posts on your blog. By observing what performs well and earns recognition, you can tailor your content to meet those guidelines and reap the rewards in visits and awareness. My top recommendation for most bloggers is to at least check whether there's an appropriate subreddit in which you should be participating. Subreddits and their search function can help with that.

#10 - Guest Blog (and Accept the Guest Posts of Others)

When you're first starting out, it can be tough to convince other bloggers to allow you to post on their sites OR have an audience large enough to inspire others to want to contribute to your site. This is when friends and professional connections are critical. When you don't have a compelling marketing message, leverage your relationships - find the folks who know you, like you and trust you and ask those who have blog to let you take a shot at authoring something, then ask them to return the favor.
Guest blogging is a fantastic way to spread your brand to new folks who've never seen your work before, and it can be useful in earning early links and references back to your site, which will drive direct traffic and help your search rankings (diverse, external links are a key part of how search engines rank sites and pages). Several recommendations for those who engage in guest blogging:

• Find sites that have a relevant audience - it sucks to pour your time into writing a post, only to see it fizzle because the readers weren't interested. Spend a bit more time researching the posts that succeed on your target site, the makeup of the audience, what types of comments they leave and you'll earn a much higher return with each post.
• Don't be discouraged if you ask and get a "no" or a "no response." As your profile grows in your niche, you'll have more opportunities, requests and an easier time getting a "yes," so don't take early rejections too hard and watch out - in many marketing practices, persistence pays, but pestering a blogger to write for them is not one of these (and may get your email address permanently banned from their inbox).
• When pitching your guest post make it as easy as possible for the other party. When requesting to post, have a phenomenal piece of writing all set to publish that's never been shared before and give them the ability to read it. These requests get far more "yes" replies than asking for the chance to write with no evidence of what you'll contribute. At the very least, make an outline and write a title + snippet.
• Likewise, when requesting a contribution, especially from someone with a significant industry profile, asking for a very specific piece of writing is much easier than getting them to write an entire piece from scratch of their own design. You should also present statistics that highlight the value of posting on your site - traffic data, social followers, RSS subscribers, etc. can all be very persuasive to a skeptical writer.

A great tool for frequent guest bloggers is Ann Smarty's MyBlogGuest, which offers the ability to connect writers with those seeking guest contributions (and the reverse).

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are also great places to find guest blogging opportunities. In particular, check out the profiles of those you're connected with to see if they run blogs of their own that might be a good fit. Google's Blog Search function and Google Reader's Search are also solid tools for discovery.

#11 - Incorporate Great Design Into Your Site

The power of beautiful, usable, professional design can't be overstated. When readers look at a blog, the first thing they judge is how it "feels" from a design and UX perspective. Sites that use default templates or have horrifying, 1990's design will receive less trust, a lower time-on-page, fewer pages per visit and a lower likelihood of being shared. Those that feature stunning design that clearly indicates quality work will experience the reverse - and reap amazing benefits.

These threads - 1, 2, 3 and 4 - feature some remarkable blog designs for inspiration

If you're looking for a designer to help upgrade the quality of your blog, there's a few resources I recommend:

• Dribbble - great for finding high quality professional designers
• Forrst - another excellent design profile community
• Behance - featuring galleries from a wide range of visual professionals
• Sortfolio - an awesome tool to ID designers by region, skill and budget
• 99 Designs - a controversial site that provides designs on spec via contests (I have mixed feelings on this one, but many people find it useful, particularly for budget-conscious projects)

This is one area where budgeting a couple thousand dollars (if you can afford it) or even a few hundred (if you're low on cash) can make a big difference in the traffic, sharing and viral-impact of every post you write.

#12 - Interact on Other Blogs' Comments

As bloggers, we see a lot of comments. Many are spam, only a few add real value, and even fewer are truly fascinating and remarkable. If you can be in this final category consistently, in ways that make a blogger sit up and think "man, I wish that person commented here more often!" you can achieve great things for your own site's visibility through participation in the comments of other blogs.
Combine the tools presented in #10 (particularly Google Reader/Blog Search) and #4 (especially FollowerWonk) for discovery. The feed subscriber counts in Google Reader can be particularly helpful for identifying good blogs for participation. Then apply the principles covered in this post on comment marketing.

Do be conscious of the name you use when commenting and the URL(s) you point back to. Consistency matters, particularly on naming, and linking to internal pages or using a name that's clearly made for keyword-spamming rather than true conversation will kill your efforts before they begin.

#13 - Participate in Q+A Sites

Every day, thousands of people ask questions on the web. Popular services like Yahoo! Answers, Answers.com, Quora, StackExchange, Formspring and more serve those hungry for information whose web searches couldn't track down the responses they needed.
The best strategy I've seen for engaging on Q+A sites isn't to answer every question that comes along, but rather, to strategically provide high value to a Q+A community by engaging in those places where:

• The question quality is high, and responses thus far have been thin
• The question receives high visibility (either by ranking well for search queries, being featured on the site or getting social traffic/referrals). Most of the Q+A sites will show some stats around the traffic of a question
• The question is something you can answer in a way that provides remarkable value to anyone who's curious and drops by

I also find great value in answering a few questions in-depth by producing an actual blog post to tackle them, then linking back. This is also a way I personally find blog post topics - if people are interested in the answer on a Q+A site, chances are good that lots of folks would want to read it on my blog, too!
Just be authentic in your answer, particularly if you're linking. If you'd like to see some examples, I answer a lot of questions at Quora, frequently include relevant links, but am rarely accused of spamming or link dropping because it's clearly about providing relevant value, not just getting a link for SEO (links on most user-contributed sites are "nofollow" anyway, meaning they shouldn't pass search-engine value). There's a dangerous line to walk here, but if you do so with tact and candor, you can earn a great audience from your participation.

#14 - Enable Subscriptions via Feed + Email (and track them!)

If someone drops by your site, has a good experience and thinks "I should come back here and check this out again when they have more posts," chances are pretty high (I'd estimate 90%+) that you'll never see them again. That sucks! It shouldn't be the case, but we have busy lives and the Internet's filled with animated gifs of cats.
In order to pull back some of these would-be fans, I highly recommend creating an RSS feed using Feedburner and putting visible buttons on the sidebar, top or bottom of your blog posts encouraging those who enjoy your content to sign up (either via feed, or via email, both of which are popular options).

If you're using Wordpress, there's some easy plugins for this, too.
Once you've set things up, visit every few weeks and check on your subscribers - are they clicking on posts? If so, which ones? Learning what plays well for those who subscribe to your content can help make you a better blogger, and earn more visits from RSS, too.

#15 - Attend and Host Events

Despite the immense power of the web to connect us all regardless of geography, in-person meetings are still remarkably useful for bloggers seeking to grow their traffic and influence. The people you meet and connect with in real-world settings are far more likely to naturally lead to discussions about your blog and ways you can help each other. This yields guest posts, links, tweets, shares, blogroll inclusion and general business development like nothing else.

I'm a big advocate of Lanyrd, an event directory service that connects with your social networks to see who among your contacts will be at which events in which geographies. This can be phenomenally useful for identifying which meetups, conferences or gatherings are worth attending (and who you can carpool with).
The founder of Lanyrd also contributed this great answer on Quora about other search engines/directories for events (which makes me like them even more).

#16 - Use Your Email Connections (and Signature) to Promote Your Blog

As a blogger, you're likely to be sending a lot of email out to others who use the web and have the power to help spread your work. Make sure you're not ignoring email as a channel, one-to-one though it may be. When given an opportunity in a conversation that's relevant, feel free to bring up your blog, a specific post or a topic you've written about. I find myself using blogging as a way to scalably answer questions - if I receive the same question many times, I'll try to make a blog post that answers it so I can simply link to that in the future.

I also like to use my email signature to promote the content I share online. If I was really sharp, I'd do link tracking using a service like Bit.ly so I could see how many clicks email footers really earn. I suspect it's not high, but it's also not 0.

#17 - Survey Your Readers

Web surveys are easy to run and often produce high engagement and great topics for conversation. If there's a subject or discussion that's particularly contested, or where you suspect showing the distribution of beliefs, usage or opinions can be revealing, check out a tool like SurveyMonkey (they have a small free version) or PollDaddy. Google Docs also offers a survey tool that's totally free, but not yet great in my view.

#18 - Add Value to a Popular Conversation

Numerous niches in the blogosphere have a few "big sites" where key issues arise, get discussed and spawn conversations on other blogs and sites. Getting into the fray can be a great way to present your point-of-view, earn attention from those interested in the discussion and potentially get links and traffic from the industry leaders as part of the process.
You can see me trying this out with Fred Wilson's AVC blog last year (an incredibly popular and well-respected blog in the VC world). Fred wrote a post about Marketing that I disagreed with strongly and publicly and a day later, he wrote a follow-up where he included a graphic I made AND a link to my post.
If you're seeking sources to find these "popular conversations," Alltop, Topsy, Techmeme (in the tech world) and their sister sites MediaGazer, Memeorandum and WeSmirch, as well as PopURLs can all be useful.

#19 - Aggregate the Best of Your Niche

Bloggers, publishers and site owners of every variety in the web world love and hate to be compared and ranked against one another. It incites endless intrigue, discussion, methodology arguments and competitive behavior - but, it's amazing for earning attention. When a blogger publishes a list of "the best X" or "the top X" in their field, most everyone who's ranked highly praises the list, shares it and links to it. Here's an example from the world of marketing itself:

That's a screenshot of the AdAge Power 150, a list that's been maintained for years in the marketing world and receives an endless amount of discussion by those listed (and not listed). For example, why is SEOmoz's Twitter score only a "13" when we have so many more followers, interactions and retweets than many of those with higher scores? Who knows. But I know it's good for AdAge. :-)
Now, obviously, I would encourage anyone building something like this to be as transparent, accurate and authentic as possible. A high quality resource that lists a "best and brightest" in your niche - be they blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, individual posts, people, conferences or whatever else you can think to rank - is an excellent piece of content for earning traffic and becoming a known quantity in your field.
Oh, and once you do produce it - make sure to let those featured know they've been listed. Tweeting at them with a link is a good way to do this, but if you have email addresses, by all means, reach out. It can often be the start of a great relationship!

#20 - Connect Your Web Profiles and Content to Your Blog

Many of you likely have profiles on services like YouTube, Slideshare, Yahoo!, DeviantArt and dozens of other social and Web 1.0 sites. You might be uploading content to Flickr, to Facebook, to Picasa or even something more esoteric like Prezi. Whatever you're producing on the web and wherever you're doing it, tie it back to your blog.
Including your blog's link on your actual profile pages is among the most obvious, but it's also incredibly valuable. On any service where interaction takes place, those interested in who you are and what you have to share will follow those links, and if they lead back to your blog, they become opportunities for capturing a loyal visitor or earning a share (or both!). But don't just do this with profiles - do it with content, too! If you've created a video for YouTube, make your blog's URL appear at the start or end of the video. Include it in the description of the video and on the uploading profile's page. If you're sharing photos on any of the dozens of photo services, use a watermark or even just some text with your domain name so interested users can find you.
If you're having trouble finding and updating all those old profiles (or figuring out where you might want to create/share some new ones), KnowEm is a great tool for discovering your own profiles (by searching for your name or pseudonyms you've used) and claiming profiles on sites you may not yet have participated in.
I'd also strongly recommend leveraging Google's relatively new protocol for rel=author. AJ Kohn wrote a great post on how to set it up here, and Yoast has another good one on building it into Wordpress sites. The benefit for bloggers who do build large enough audiences to gain Google's trust is earning your profile photo next to all the content you author - a powerful markup advantage that likely drives extra clicks from the search results and creates great, memorable branding, too.

#21 - Uncover the Links of Your Fellow Bloggers (and Nab 'em!)

If other blogs in your niche have earned references from sites around the web, there's a decent chance that they'll link to you as well. Conducting competitive link research can also show you what content from your competition has performed well and the strategies they may be using to market their work. To uncover these links, you'll need to use some tools.
OpenSiteExplorer is my favorite, but I'm biased (it's made by Moz). However, it is free to use - if you create a registered account here, you can get unlimited use of the tool showing up to 1,000 links per page or site in perpetuity.

There are other good tools for link research as well, including Blekko, Majestic, Ahrefs and, I've heard that in the near-future, SearchMetrics.
Finding a link is great, but it's through the exhaustive research of looking through dozens or hundreds that you can identify patterns and strategies. You're also likely to find a lot of guest blogging opportunities and other chances for outreach. If you maintain a great persona and brand in your niche, your ability to earn these will rise dramatically.

Bonus #22 - Be Consistent and Don't Give Up

If there's one piece of advice I wish I could share with every blogger, it's this:

The above image comes from Everywhereist's analytics. Geraldine could have given up 18 months into her daily blogging. After all, she was putting in 3-5 hours each day writing content, taking photos, visiting sites, coming up with topics, trying to guest blog and grow her Twitter followers and never doing any SEO (don't ask, it's a running joke between us). And then, almost two years after her blog began, and more than 500 posts in, things finally got going. She got some nice guest blogging gigs, had some posts of hers go "hot" in the social sphere, earned mentions on some bigger sites, then got really big press from Time's Best Blogs of 2011.
I'd guess there's hundreds of new bloggers on the web each day who have all the opportunity Geraldine had, but after months (maybe only weeks) of slogging away, they give up.
When I started the SEOmoz blog in 2004, I had some advantages (mostly a good deal of marketing and SEO knowledge), but it was nearly 2 years before the blog could be called anything like a success. Earning traffic isn't rocket science, but it does take time, perseverance and consistency. Don't give up. Stick to your schedule. Remember that everyone has a few posts that suck, and it's only by writing and publishing those sucky posts that you get into the habit necessary to eventually transform your blog into something remarkable.
Good luck and good blogging from all of us at Moz.
Written By: Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz founder) Source: SEOmoz.org