Posts on State of Search about ‘Guest post’

How to Create a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

content-strategy

This is a guest post by Scott Mclay, who has been around the digital industry for the last 9 years and has worked for both agencies and freelance.

Content marketing has been one of the fastest rising SEO disciplines over the last year, with search interest reaching its all-time highest point in January (2013). One of the main challenges our industry faces is knowing what it takes to create a successful campaign.

A successful campaign does not have to cost you an arm and a leg, some successful campaigns revolve around a few small changes to a product description or adding an image for comedy value (everyone has seen something like this)  in such a way that it looks like a user error or a ticked off employee set out for revenge. (more…)

Getting Ready for the Christmas Season – Nine Paid Search Tips for 2012

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This the season for search marketers in retail to not sleep, as click volumes begin to rapidly increase and fluctuate throughout the busy festive online shopping season. To ease some of this stress, we at Marin Software have been analysing data from the 2011 festive season to help search marketers prepare campaigns for key dates and fluctuations.

We’ve been looking at spend, CTR, CPC, impression, revenue and mobile click share trends across Q4 2011 to identify key dates for your 2012 Christmas calendar. Off the back of this I wanted to provide nine practical and actionable tips to prepare campaigns for the festive season. So, here goes: (more…)

New Remarketing Quality Score Factor?

sliced-bread

This is a guestpost by Alan Coleman, CEO of WolfgangDigital.com.

Remarketing, probably the greatest innovation in digital marketing since search marketing itself.

As digital marketers we love remarketing, we love remarketing for it’s ridiculously good display CTRs and we love remarketing for it’s “brand-term like” conversion rates. However as internet users we are probably not as enamoured right now.

We’ve all been haunted by unwanted remarketing ads.

We’ve been stalked from website to website by stale, irritating ads polluting our internet experience. Perhaps even dreaded watching videos on YouTube or logging into Gmail because we know we are going to see that same overexposed remarketing ad again! (more…)

Revealing the Hidden Benefits of Search Marketing

hide-and-seek

This is a guest post by Cedric Chambaz, EMEA Marketing Lead of Microsoft Advertising.

For several years now, an increasing number of small businesses have reaped the rewards of investing in search marketing as a way of reaching their target audience and delivering to them exactly what they seek. The obvious benefits – better targeting, clearer return on investment (ROI), cost efficiencies and others – are clear to many business owners, and as search continues to grow in popularity, the results only become more compelling.

However, while the benefits mentioned above are soon felt by those embarking on their first search campaigns, if you look past them there are also some more hidden rewards which SMBs might not at first connect with search marketing. Search is much more than just a lead generator; it can be turned into an incredibly powerful business intelligence tool, extending into parts of the business such as PR, product development, sales, merchandising and broader business strategy. All it takes is for marketers to think a little bit outside the (search) box… (more…)

The Mobile Revolution 2012

mobile-revolution

The Mobile Revolution 2012

It is with no doubt that the integration of Smart Phones and tablets have revolutionised the web over the past three years. I have had the opportunity of going to conferences for a good number of years and at each one someone would make the bold statement that this is the year of mobile. (more…)

8 Content Strategy tips from a User Perspective

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One of the common mistakes with content marketing is that the audience isn’t always considered when hitting that publish button.

Content marketing isn’t primarily about SEO, social media, branding or PR goals – it should be about the audience.

For SEO you want to generate natural links & social signals – for social/PR the content needs to be sharable and create a buzz and for branding it needs to provide context and be memorable.

But without an audience, you won’t achieve any of those goals or key metrics anyway. Especially if you want to do things in a natural way for maximum impact – so you need to be hitting all of these goals – not just one of them. (more…)

I ran 24 miles with a Search Marketer (Summer Fun)

facebook-sneakers

Let’s be clear.

That’s a lie.

I would be lucky if I could do 2.4. However, over recent weeks and months I have begun to get a little tired of updates from people about how they ran, cycled, climbed, swam, or pogo hopped a certain distance – normally aided by a certain branded app. As social media adoption continues to soar I think that intrusive messaging will continue to soar. The issue is not just who are friends and who are not (source of update) as many of my friends share similar updates. I am not going to cull a friend for that. It’s, just…well…annoying, and there is only so much time I can commit to constantly checking my Facebook settings. Does it really matter anyhow? (more…)

Selling From a Prospective Clients Perspective

buyer-shoes

Selling is a specialist art and is not something that just anyone can do well. Of course anyone can sell something given enough time to try and of course if they were say ‘slightly flexible with the truth’.

The difficulty comes when trying to create a sustainable brand, and because you want it to have some form of longevity you don’t want to suddenly be dealing with lots of complaints and bad PR.

Sometimes it is not who has the most experience or knowledge that really succeeds in this, it is the sales person that can actually put themselves in the buyers shoes and see things from their perspective. (more…)

I’m a Digital Manager. I think.

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I have my targets, my budgets and maybe my bonuses. In short, I’m good with excel. The way that I want to do my job is the most easy and secure way possible (remember I’m a manager, not a entrepreneur). But what kind of channels should I pick? (more…)

Relaunching Websites (no SEO Tips)

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Working on your website takes a lot of time and is an ongoing process. It sometimes feels like a master’s degree paper, which you just don’t want to read and correct anymore. But you should! You sometimes just feel like you want to throw it all away and restart. But you shouldn’t! If you keep on going this is what separates good websites from great websites.

Relaunching or redesigning websites should be an ongoing slow evolving and tested process not an overhaul of everything every two years. Especially not for the wrong reasons, just because you or your boss can’t stand to look at the website anymore because you have to see it every day.

So the question should be, is it really your customers who need a new website or is it just you wanting something new and shiny?
(more…)

The Devil’s in the Detail in International Search

Facebook-world

If you’re developing international versions of your website, you’re probably hoping to reach a large number of potential users and most likely are investing a lot of money and resource going into getting them up and running. So you want to make sure that you’re giving your international audience the best possible experience on your website; one that will make them relate to your brand, enjoy their experience and ultimately complete whatever action it is you want them to.

To do that, in an international context, you need to think about more than just translating your content. Sure, that is a pretty major step and a huge factor in convincing your multilingual audience that you’re a viable and relevant option for them but it’s not enough on its own.

Here are a few scenarios where missing a piece of the localisation process, could, and in most cases would, result in failure. (more…)

4 Charts and Three Cartoons – Understanding the Client Better

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I recently wrote a post on my model for picking the right agency, or a guide to pitching properly to clients.  The post in itself gives you a slight insight into the client world, but until you have worked in a few different client side roles, you will not really begin appreciate the complexity of being a client.

Don’t get me wrong – some clients are one or a mixture of the following:

  • A Nightmare
  • Unreasonable
  • Unintelligent
  • Myopic
  • Misguided
  • Biased  (more…)
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