Introduction
Following on from my two previous posts on link building techniques I want to take the time to look at the use of article marketing as a tool to help generate inbound links. Article marketing is quite an intensive tactic though as with my previous post on forum marketing it can impact various KPIs such as brand searches, referral traffic as well as generating links.
Benefits
Aids becoming a thought leader in your industry (great for your brand)
Generates new traffic sources
Builds new pages / content for engagement on your own website
Starts conversations with…
A reference of major updates we think marketers involved in SEO, Pay Per Click or Social media need to know about
Each day Google makes many changes and updates to its different tools and it does a great job of announcing them through all its feeds, but it can be difficult to keep on top of what matters and what doesn't.
So on this page we'll be selective and update you on algorithm updates, new tools, policies and changes to Google Analytics we think anyone working in digital marketing or marketing needs to know about, even if they're not a search specialist. Hopefully SEO or Adwords specialists will find it useful too and can let us know what we're missing!
Significant January 2011 updates from Google
Google Keyword Tool now includes mobile volumes (12/10/11)
Importance: [rating=3]
Category: Search behaviour and Adwords targeting
(more…)…
The start of a new year quite often means lots of reflection & sets in place new ideas / learnings for the year to come. 2011 is no different; its always difficult to remember where you were 12 months ago, but digital marketing and search as part of that came a long way in 2010. Search in my opinion has matured, enough people now understand enough for it to become more widely accepted and feared less.
The smoke & mirrors, black hat techniques and complexity that used to make it inaccessible to so many has finally been broken down. Moving into 2011 I believe Natural Search will start to work its way into marketing teams & businesses rather than outsourced to "specialists" or left to specific roles in the business, it will as my first trend talks about become integrated.
Recommended reading on SEO success factors for 2011
I've been checking out the…
Using Blog content to generate links and shares
My last two blog posts on this topic, an Introduction to link building & link building using forum marketing hopefully opened up new ideas for you and your business. This week I want to focus on using blog content to create opportunities for links. Using blog content to link build is one of the more unpredictable of link building techniques. There are two methods to using blog content to generate inbound links.
Benefits to link building using blog content
Establish thought leadership
Create content & pages as well as opportunities to link build
Every post has the opportunity to create links or social media shares and bookmarks which are also now part of the Google algorithm
Two methods to link building through blog content
The first method resides with your own onsite blog. The key…
Search Queries & Links to your website get updated!
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: With Christmas fast approaching and rumours of Google updates during Christmas, a distant memory its nice to receive some news that the free webmaster tool kit from Google is still receiving updates & new features. Last Friday (10th December 2010) Google announced two upgrades to its webmaster toolkit.
The post we link to below on Google Webmaster Tools alerts you to an update to the Search Queries report which now has the ability to show which pages are displayed for certain search queries.
The second update relates to the links to your site area of Google Webmaster Tools. This new facility displays the appropriate information when an inbound link is redirected to another page.
Find out more about the updates here >
Marketing implications: The two updates gift marketers with some great new…
My blog post last week on link building techniques touched briefly on each of the techniques available. I going to focus on one technique this week - Forum Marketing. Before I get into using forum marketing, we have to have the health-warning that :
Not all links are the same
Getting one link at a time is not a waste of time, its the compound effect over time that is powerful. If you can get a lot of links too quickly it's likely not worth it
The concept of "€œnofollow"€ still has an effect in forum marketing and comments on blogs "€“ Google won"€™t rate these links as highly but do not write off engaging on sites that use the nofollow technique. These links will help with your social score which from recent blog posts is becoming slightly more important in search and will continue to do so.
The concept…
Confirmation that social mentions are used by Google to rank sites
Value: [rating=5]
Our commentary: With Danny Sullivan's interview with Google & Bing earlier this month & the follow-up by SEOMOZ it would appear its now almost official that social media & SEO need to be well & truly integrated. The concept of quality content that is shared, tweeted etc is now a big part of Google & Bing search results.
The interview with Danny Sullivan also goes onto talk about the concept of authority users and how being successful in social media (whether thats followers, fans, sharing) will help you in natural search rankings.
Marketing implications: I think this is something a lot of marketers have believed for sometime now, it just seemed so obvious. But now we know for sure what does that mean for digital marketing teams & online businesses? I would be asking myself :
Does my 2011 marketing strategy…
With Nov 2010 change, Google Places now an even bigger opportunity for clicks & mortar businesses
Importance: [rating=5] (if you have a physical location!)
Our commentary: Google Places has evolved as with most Google products quite significantly in the last 12months. With the renaming of the service from Local Business Centre there are a number of new features, but the most significant was in late November when the Places algorithm changed to favour businesses with a Places presence.
As you can see by a recent search Google places now takes up larger area on a Google results page for a local search. Even more significant, all the top entries have a Places entry, so you're effectively invisible unless you do Places marketing well.
This clearly presents a great opportunity for businesses though as with traditional search results there is only room for a certain amount of results and we all understand the value of…
The top 10 link-building techniques
Two of the most common questions I'm asked as a consultant is, "How do I get more links?" quickly followed by, "is there a quicker way of doing it?". Quite often clients expect link building to be something you outsource or there is a "tool" that does it for you. Unfortunately this is far from the case.
During this blog post I want to quickly look at what I see as the top level methods for link building. In future posts I'll look at best practice for each of these. In the meantime, I invite you to add to the methods and also add any insights or experiences you have.
Creating amazing content
Looking at the various ways to generate links, there is one thing common between them - they all rely on content. But not just any content, it has to be exceptional,…
Alert about new Google Webmaster Tools notification
Value: [rating=5]
Our commentary: The use of Adobe Flash has long been a debate between agencies & / or internal teams. On one hand you have the creative team who promise that they can deliver a better designed & more interactive website if they use flash. While on the other hand you have people tasked with growing traffic through natural search which would say "it is impossible to rank with a flash website as Google will ignore it". Both are right... to a point.
It has always been difficult to really drive natural search with a pure flash website, the fact there tends to be only one URL (your homepage) link building becomes very difficult as one example. Equally though, up until the last couple of years it was easier to create better designed and more interactive websites in flash. You end up in a place…
