Posts About ‘guest post series’

8 Content Strategy tips from a User Perspective

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…)

The Devil’s in the Detail in International Search

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

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…)

Starting Today: Guest Post series: Looking From A Different Perspective

Every summer we try to do something ‘special’ here on State of Search. Last year we did a series of summer interviews (like this one with Chris Sherman) and we’ve done a guest post series as well (also at the end of last year). This year we are again treating you to some new and exciting guest post content from some of the industries finest.

The guest post series has a special character to it. We’ve asked every guest blogger to write us a story, but not just ‘any’ story, one with a different perspective than usual. We’ve asked them to take a subject and then look at it from the opposite perspective. Now I do this as a exercise at my training sessions, to get people to think from a client or visitor perspective instead of their own, and I can tell you: this is very difficult to do. Stepping away from your own views and looking at those of others seems easy, but isn’t. Maybe the posts you will read in the next few weeks will help.

In the next few weeks every day, except for the Fridays you will be treated to a guest post at 14.30 UK time, 15.30 European time. So keep your eyes, readers, twitter feeds and Facebook feeds open and enjoy the content! (more…)

Integrated Marketing – From SEO to TV (by @andybetts1)

Andy Betts is a well respected marketing expert in the search industry. Because he is not your average SEO he has an interesting take on all matters. A person very fit to write about integration. And he goes all the way, from SEO to TV!

After reading the latest in the State of Search Integrated Marketing series it is clear, beyond doubt, that the online market is shifting rapidly from delivering campaigns in isolation to maximizing revenue for clients and brands alike through integrated approach’s to marketing optimization.

You have seen many a great example of integrated marketing in action in this series. So I am going to go a little leftfield. Whilst marketers get to grasps with the integration and holistic use of search, social, display, and digital marketing channels a huge challenge, often over looked or not addressed, still faces many business owners, agencies, and CEO’s alike – integrating and optimizing talent. (more…)

“What do I tell my journalism students about their future?”

Up next in our Integration Series is a very knowledgable lady from the US, Kate Morris. Kate Morris is the Lead SEO Consultant at Distilled in Seattle. She decided to take the integration angle from the journalism view.

A journalism professor at A&T in North Carolina asked a panel I was on that question during Converge South. Too easy, I thought, so I piped up immediately with my answer: brighter than ever before… if they see what talent they have and where it is needed.

The Internet has become the place that most of the younger generation (61% of Gen X) gets their news. The downside to that, of course, is that anyone can say anything online. Zero dollars, a computer and half a brain can get you a blog, so now everyone is a journalist–or are they? (more…)

Echo and amplify your content – The key to integrated search marketing

In our guest post series about Integration today we look North to listen to Sara Andersson. Sara focusses on searchers intent and how both search engines and site owners should take that into account.

Many moons ago, when marketers first set out to use search engines as a tool for reaching potential new clients it was achieved using a banner associated with a search phrase (Alta Vista), then later on through a Google AdWords placement. Essentially, it was just another type of media placement to reach the client. It did not understand the searcher’s intent, or for that matter, the impact the searcher had on the actual results themselves.

In those days an integrated marketing campaign was a media mix where focus was on reach, and performance was measured by CTR (Click Through Rates). This is still applicable, but the structures we work within now are different and this presents new opportunities. The key to integrating search marketing (paid and organic) today is not only defining weather it should be TV, radio or print and aligning the communication message, but also take into account the searchers intent and their social activities. As a company you need to give the searchers access to fresh and responsive content in order to rank well both in the organic and paid search listings. (more…)