Posts About ‘content marketing’

Where Does SEO Belong in the Overall Marketing Mix?

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I believe that there is a problem that SEO is facing in 2013, and will continue to face moving forward. I believe there is the risk that, as SEOs, we will spend too much time focusing on what we’re going to call ourselves and forget exactly what it is that we should be doing. Both to raise the profile of SEO as an industry, and continue to push the boundaries. While we’ve heard the pleas that ‘SEO is dead’ for a long time now, and SEO has had it’s fair share of criticism. I believe this is unfounded, spend in SEO is burgeoning and grown hugely, and it is not going to go anywhere soon.

However, a spate of new monikers or ‘rebranding’ in the industry has only served to confuse things in a way that we are siloing ourselves and causing alienation amongst the broader online marketing community. (more…)

Why Content Marketing Rocks My World (and Why You Should Care)

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The words we use to talk about digital/internet/online marketing are changing as rapidly as Google are updating their algorithm. The term link building was booted out a while ago and more recently content outreach seems to have been replaced with my favourite of all, no, not inbound marketing, but content marketing. Yes, content marketing is all over the place, not that it’s necessarily a new term, but it seems to be positively and magnetically charged at the moment. Needless to say, I’m pretty happy about this. Here’s why you should be too. (more…)

How to Create a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

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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…)

Content Marketing for Conferences: How to Stand Out from the Crowd

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Content Marketing for Conferences: How to Stand Out from the Crowd & Deliver Value to Those that Weren’t There…

Live blogging and/or writing summary blogs for conferences is a way in which it is common in our industry to exchange value and share our experiences. Online marketing, and more specifically social media and SEO, are ever-changing fields that arguably warrant the huge amount of conferences that happen across the world every year. Many individuals and companies liveblog at these events, or summary posts to attempt to summarise and share the key takeaways from the speakers. However, I believe that many don’t stop and question why you are covering these events? Is it just because everyone else is doing it? In this post I will explore some of the reasons why I believe we should cover events and also provide my top 4 tips on how I approach covering events. (more…)

Does Content Marketing Kick TV Advertising’s Ass?

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The SEO industry have long bemoaned investment in traditional channels like TV advertising; claiming SEO yields higher ROI. However, if we’re honest I think our arguments have also been about us wanting to get our sticky mitts on a larger share of the marketing budget. (more…)

FAQ Pages – Are you Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory?

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Last month I spoke at the SearchLove London conference. One of the sessions I took part in was entitled ‘Let’s Get Real’ where each of the speakers were asked to share an actionable tip or tactic.

The tip I shared was around FAQ or Terms and Conditions pages, and went a little something like this:

When you get back to the office on Wednesday morning, go take a look at your FAQ and/or Terms and Conditions pages. Most are woeful. All too often the language used is unfriendly at best; or impenetrable legal jargon at worst. This is a crying shame on several counts – not only may it adversely affect a visitor’s perception of your company, but it may actually lose you business.

Why am I bothered about these pages?

Because the visitors who are reading your FAQ or Terms and Conditions pages are a hair’s breadth from converting on your site.

Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

No one wants to be *that* girl.

 

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Content Marketing Show 2012 Round Up 2: Approaching Content Strategy

Lauren Pope at the Content Marketing Show

This post is part 2 of the coverage from the Content Marketing Show that took place on the 20th of November 2012 in Conway Hall, central London. As I said in part 1 of the roundup of the day, the conference was a fresh and exciting take on an content marketing, an area that has been growing in SEOs vocabulary across the last 6-12 months (if not before). It joined together people from a variety of industries and different backgrounds and also covered some thoroughly interesting and actionable points which, I know, will have left most attendees feeling far more filled in on content marketing, as well as having plenty of actionable takeaways too!

While part 1 of my round up of the Content Marketing show dealt with those presentation that I felt covered the importance and ‘power of culture and influence in content marketing’, this post will focus on those presentations that I felt were focused on the importance of content strategy for content marketing. Below are my summary of some of the great presentations, including all key points and takeaways of the day: (more…)

Content Marketing Show 2012 Round Up 1: The Power of Culture & Influence

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In the wake of the phenomenal rise in popularity and success of BrightonSEO, State of Search’s very own Kelvin Newman has invested his fantastic conference organising skills to creating a new conference, The Content Marketing Show. The inaugural event was hosted on the 20th November 2012, in the Conway Hall in central London and promised to bring together 350 representatives from agencies, in-house marketing teams and small business owners with some of the best minds in the content marketing world together under one roof.

The agenda for the day covered a wide variety of topics related to the booming field of content marketing, including:

  • Content Strategy
  • The importance of conversion optimisation in content marketing
  • How to get press coverage and insights into journalists
  • Social media monitoring
  • How to write great briefs
  • And, errr, even a session on how to sell coffee online!
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The State of Content Marketing by the ‘new’ Blueglass UK

Last week in London an announcement was made which surprised a few in the search industry but saw many happy smiles. Blueglass, one of US’ hottest agencies announced it was coming to London and to make that work it acquired content marketing agency Quaturo from Kevin Gibbons.

Blueglass intents to give content marketing a boost in the UK, making it more that the ““add-on” to SEO” which many companies feel it is. We’ve interviewed Kevin Gibbons about this move which we will publish later, but first we’d like to share this info graphic from the (new) Blueglass team about, what else, content marketing. (more…)

SMX East 2012 New York – Day 1 #SMX

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This was my first time to attend SMX East and I was really pleased to attend the SEO and link building sessions. The sessions were Keyword Research and Copywriting, Surviving Penguins, Pandas and Other SEO Beasts, SEO is an investment and SEO Beware: Black Hat Tactics To Avoid and Be Wary of.

Here is summary of each of the four from the first day of SMX East.. (more…)

3 Ideas to Create, Optimize and Track Your Web Content more Easily

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A situation I have found myself in different SEO processes working for large companies or news related sites with an experienced editorial team, is that instead of starting from scratch developing a content strategy (which is a very hot topic lately) my job is more focused on:

  • Aligning the already ongoing content strategy with SEO best practices to optimize and improve its organic search visibility and performance.
  • Implementing a workflow along with tools to facilitate the analysis, management and tracking of a large volume of information and make it also more easily scalable.
  • Following-up and measuring content results from organic activity and provide the necessary feedback to the editorial team to improve it.

In this post I will share 3 ideas I have implemented to successfully develop the previous activities. (more…)

How to Secure Budget for your Content Strategy

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“Any good marketer can come up with a great content idea for their niche, the difficult part is selling the idea to your company and getting the budget. “

This was the challenge laid down via the comments of a post I wrote back in June for SEOmoz highlighting companies in “boring” niches creating great content. It’s something I’ve been meaning to write for ages – as it’s something I know many face whether their in-house or agency-side.

The way in which you pitch likely depends on whoever you’re pitching to – if you can get a meeting with them, then great – however this might not always be possible. If you’re relying on your documentation to do the talking then keeping it short and sweet is best; backed up with a comprehensive appendix which can be cross-referenced.

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