Since many SEOs emerged from the cave, realising the hard way that three way links, splogs, private networks blogs, directory submissions, article marketing spinning etc were no longer advantageous tactics to get great results in the SERPs, Content has become a kind of mantra. The new magic silver bullet that you have to use to kill the archetypal monster that, for many people Google is.
The areas of SEO and PPC are awfully close to each other and yet very different in their approach. SEO is about creating as much visibility as possible for relevant search queries. PPC is much more driven by ROI, visibility is not always as valuable as within SEO. Although the underlying techniques have similarities there are also some skills you just need for SEO or PPC. Therefore there are specialists in both disciplines. As a true search marketer though, I believe you should be skilled in both disciplines. And as a search marketer there’s only one place you really have to make the difference: The Search Engine Result Page (SERP).
The SERP is the battleground of search marketing. Although the most effect is clearly created within your website, the SERP is where your first and most important battle takes place. The battle for the visitor. It’s a direct battle with all your competitors. And you have to make sure you’re properly armed to be able to come out on top every time.
In this battle for the visitor there are two main strategies available: SEO and PPC. Some choose to fight this battle by just using SEO, others rely solely on the big guns of PPC. And some choose to bring out their complete arsenal to win the battle over the visitor and focus on a strong combination of SEO and PPC. (more…)
As an SEO I’ve always been very focused on learning. When I started I realized almost instantly that in a fast developing business like ours you need to be ahead of developments all the time. Therefore I made some choices to make sure I would be obligated to stay on top of the developments and know my stuff. One of the best choices for my development was to start blogging about search (and online marketing).
It all began when I decided to start a blog for my former employer. As the only contributor at the time I was forced to produce something with a certain amount of regularity. Based on the posts I produced there I was asked for some guest posts on different blogs in The Netherlands. Which finally led to me being asked by Bas to blog for State of Search. Which of course I gladly accepted although I knew it was a level of audience that would force me to achieve a higher level of blogging I was used to (and in different language as well). Later on I also picked up blogging on my own blog in Dutch on jeroenvaneck.com.
Almost 200 posts later I realize blogging for all these platforms gave me a lot of benefits. Much more than I expected. I recommend everyone who wants to be good in this business to pick up in blogging. And here are four reasons why you should. (more…)
The term ‘crowdsourcing’ is not particularly new, in fact we have been surrounded by crowdsourced products and services for some time. A basic example are video games in beta mode where developers release a beta version for a selected few from their audience to test before its actual launch. Or think of Wikipedia which is nothing else than an encyclopedia written by people from all over the world. But what is the actual power of crowdsourcing, what lessons can we learn from it? (more…)
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…)
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…)
Video – what marketer doesn’t love it eh? Done well, we know it’s fantastic for driving traffic, lowering bounce rate and making content more ‘sticky’, increasing engagement (and hopefully conversions), and generally enhancing the whole user experience. (more…)
Whatever you want to call it – task management, time management, productivity – sorting out the million niggly jobs that need doing both in work and in our personal lives can sometimes be overwhelming. This has been a huge issue for me recently as I am currently preparing to move to Sydney in a month while also helping recruit for a number of new positions on the OMD SEO team, sorting out my handover, making time for friends and family, getting excited about the Olympics and generally tearing my hair out. (more…)
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…)
This post was inspired by a question I had via email from Grant Horejsi following my SEOmoz blog post on eCommerce SEO. The question was a great one and related to scaling SEO across an eCommerce website which had thousands and thousands of products. This is a common situation to be in and one which I’ve experienced a lot. So this post is going to go into detail on how to scale SEO recommendations across a large eCommerce site.
It’s hard not to constantly look to the future, our industry changes so rapidly and so dramatically that the next big thing could pass you by in the blink of an eye, without you even knowing about it. The SEO industry has come a long way over the last decade or so, and we’re almost free of the “spam-hobbit” reputation. I say almost because, let’s face it, the majority of people outside of the industry either have no idea what SEO is, or think that we spend our days writing spam comments and “clicking on results in Google until it goes to the top of the results” – if only it was that easy, seriously. On the flip-side of the coin, modern business owners are beginning to appreciate the amount of work and skill that goes into creating a successful SEO campaign. Some even understand just how vital it is to have the right SEO team behind them if they are ever going to compete in the world of online business. (more…)
So this is a post written on the plane so bare with me for a little. It’s thoughts put on paper, but I think it’s important. For the past year and a half I have been talking all over the world about Google’s Social Search efforts. How the search giant was, and still is, trying to embed social into search. At first my talks were about the social signals we were seeing, how Google was for example integrating Twitter results or how it was showing when and where someone was sharing a specific piece of content. That was even before Google launched Google+. And even then I was saying: Google is up to something more than just a Facebook clone.
I showed some of my findings and conclusions at SMX 2011. Soon after that Google+ launched. It sure as hell looked like a Facebook clone, and don’t get me wrong, if Google would be able to push out Facebook, they sure would, but still Google+ is much bigger than a social network. It is much bigger than a Facebook competitor. I actually wrote about that back then as well, explaining what Google+ was really all about.
In the past few months, well, to be honest ever since Google+ launched, I have heard a lot of complaints from marketers about Google+. These complaints are mostly about the social network part of Google+: too little numbers, not enough functionalities, not enough engagement, you name it, all the complaints were there. And the funny thing is: they were all true. But now I believe it is time to stop complaining and get to work, you might be too late already. (more…)
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