I just found out from a colleague that Google uses over 200 ranking factors when determining which pages go where in the search engine results. I knew there were a lot, but I didn't realize there were that many and how they impacted the search engine rankings of my website and the sites of my clients. The link is above if you want to review 200 yourself, but here are eight Google ranking factors that I didn't know about, and you probably don't know about either (until today):
- Exact Match Domains - An exact match domain is a domain name that's an exact keyword, such as contentmarketingservices.com or greenhomecleaning.com. Exact match domains have always been a Google ranking factor, but they have lost strength in the last few algorithm updates. However, if your exact match domain offers high quality content, then it should still give you an edge, but more so because of the content and not because of the exact match.
- Page Loading Speed - Yes, it is a direct ranking factor. If your page takes too long to load, then it could hurt you. Google considers page loading speed, and several other factors, as part of the user experience. The better the user experience, the increased likelihood that the website offers quality content and is regularly maintained and updated, which is essentially what search engines want to show people in the search results.
- Image Optimization - This is one that's worth noting as its a Google ranking factor that may business bloggers and online publications miss. Google can't see images, so it "reads" them according to things like the caption, description, title, file name, and alt tag. When including images on your blog posts and web content (and please include images), include the keyword you want that page/blog post to rank for in each of those sections for the image.
- Contact Us Page - Supposedly, if your contact page actually has information on it (and isn't just a form), then that will improve your rankings. Although, it could just be for that page, but at least this is one more reason why a contact form isn't good enough for a contact page.
- Guest Posts - Guests posts, especially the backlinks, are very valuable for search engine rankings. However, links in the author bio aren't as valuable as those within the context of the article. This may be a little difficult to achieve, since some online publications are picky about the links that can be included in their blog posts, but it's something to keep in mind if guests posts are a big part of your online marketing strategy. By the way, I am accepting guest posts on my blog, in case anyone is interested.
- Wikipedia Source Links - Bad news on this one! All Wikipedia links are 'no follow' so none of them count as part of your search engine rankings. As great as it is to have a link from Wikipedia, it does not count as part of your Google ranking factors. This also means that creating a Wikipedia page about your company may be good in that's in one more thing that can come up when people search for your company, but the links you include in there won't mean a thing.
- Word Count of Linking Content - A link from a 1000-word post is more valuable than a link inside of a 25-word snippet. Who would have thought? This is a good reason to publish longer, more comprehensive content, as it boosts the value of the backlinks you provide to others.
- Brand Signals - This one actually encompasses several factors, but Google does like pages and social presences that indicate that your company or your website is, in fact, a brand. Make sure that your company has strong, fresh, and active brand signals, such as an official LinkedIn company page (using a personal profile is against the site's policy, so stop that if this is you), brand name anchor text, a Google+ local listing, and the number of blog/RSS subscribers you have.
Not only are there eight more ranking factors (well, more actually, if you count brand signals as several) to be aware of, but hopefully there's an additional understanding of things you can do to improve your SEO strategy. Keep in mind that search engine rankings aren't just based on one or two big things, but on a huge conglomerate of things that contribute to the user experience and what you have to offer a web visitor.
Related Links:
Why Did I Drop in Search Engine Rankings?
Improving Your SEO in Mobile Marketing
How a Marketing or SEO Strategy Should Grow with You
People are already shopping on their mobile phones, tweeting from their mobile phones, and using their mobile phones to find jobs, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that people are using their phones to search online as well. Of smartphone users, 71 percent run a mobile search when they see an ad online, on television, or in print. The question is: are you picking the right keywords to reach them in your mobile marketing campaign? Just like with your regular website and with any other online marketing tactic or campaign, you need to think about the keywords you are targeting with your mobile website and in mobile marketing as well. Besides thinking abou it, you need to take the time to do research while improving your SEO every step of the way.
Thinking about Keywords in Your Mobile Marketing Campaign
Mobile marketing campaign? Isn’t it good enough that I have keywords on my website and blog? Well, no, because those searching on a mobile phone have very different motivations, and are under very different circumstances than someone who’s searching on a desktop or laptop. For example, those in front of a monitor may be more interested in making pizza, while those on the street searching on a mobile phone may be more interested in eating pizza and finding a good restaurant. In picking the right keywords for your mobile marketing campaign, businesses need to think about what the needs are of the potential customer on the street, searching for the thing he or she needs right then and there.
Fortunately, Google’s Keyword Tool has the option of checking keywords based on mobile search volume. In the advanced settings right underneath where you would type in your keyword or phrase, simple change ‘Devices’ to “all mobile devices”. You may find that popular keywords on desktops and laptops aren’t that popular on mobile devices. But, you will be able to find the keywords that are commonly searched for on mobile devices.
Why Mobile SEO is Incredibly Important
Internal Google data found that searches from mobile devices grew 130 percent year by year. On top of that, 59 percent of shoppers said they plan to use mobile searches to facilitate their holiday shopping. If your business has not yet paid attention to mobile searches and mobile keywords, now is the best time to do so. The holiday season is just around the corner, and the back to school season serves as a perfect time for you to test certain keywords and mobile marketing campaigns. This way, you can spend the time in between improving your SEO and better preparing yourself for the holiday season.
Mobile users conduct searches on their phones with the intent of visiting your store and making a purchase soon, if not immediately. If you have the perfect Christmas gift on your shelf, wouldn’t you want these people to know? If people are using their tablets to look up different services for their home or their businesses, wouldn't you want your company to come up in those searches? The best way to start is to think about what these mobile searchers would be looking for, and making sure you’re the one they find by picking the right keywords for your mobile marketing campaign.
Related Links:
5 Mistakes Businesses Make in Keyword Research
Starting a Website: Why Every Business Needs One
5 Big Components of Keyword Strategy
Do you run your own website or blog? If you’re just starting out, you need to be employing SEO to your corner of the web. If you aren’t familiar with the term, it stands for search engine optimization. Basically, SEO is placing keywords (and other strategies) on your page that people will commonly search for on sites like Google, Yahoo and Bing that will in turn bring visitors to your website by having your page listed near the top of the keyword search results.
Growing Your Company
If SEO has helped your company grow, you should be able to have a higher budget. This can be used with fantastic results as you can have one person (or a group depending on your growth) devoted to utilizing SEO as a valuable asset. Of course, a larger budget means that since you have more money to spend, it can go into the SEO development itself.
As your company grows, you will want to utilize SEO more and more as you develop the resources to enhance your SEO tools. Google Analytics is a good place to start to see what search results are getting visitors to click on your website’s link. This way, you are able to put more focus on certain results and use a marketing strategy that fits best for your budget.
Having your site appear on the top of search engine rankings for a keyword search isn’t going to happen overnight unless you are in an extremely niche market. You can use some of that new money to advertise yourself through SEO even harder and become a top result for sites such as Google. Google brings in almost 5 billion searches each and every day. Not a year, not a month, not even a week, but every day. It will be important to take advantage of those searches as your SEO can help bring a wide array of customers through these searches.
Getting SEO Help
There are experts that have nearly mastered the skill of using search engine optimization to bring clicks and visitors to sites. If bringing in a team of people hasn’t been as effective as you had hoped, then hiring online contractors to get the job done may be the way to go. Your budget can be what you want it to be. As your company grows and you have more to spend you can get more time from these experts that will surely drive in the customers.
If you do not have the time to work with these experts, it may not be worth it for your company. But if you have someone willing to work with them and utilize and implement the strategies that have been placed before you, you will see a lot of success through SEO. Some managers can be too busy which is why it is important to assign that term or person into this specific category.
As you grow and get more visitors, you will be able to track which strategies are working best for you and will now have the budget to utilize those strategies. You will now be afforded the luxury of expanding your SEO result possibilities as your company continues to grow. Instead of a specific search, you can call for a wider array of search results that are less specific and more general in nature. This way, it attracts a larger group of possible customers will continue to generate traffic and ad revenue if you advertise on your site.
You can also use your expertise to expand your website as SEO will take the larger sites into account first. The more words you have on the site, the more likely you are to be towards the top of a search for a keyword. So remember to continually grow your website as the company gets larger and you will surely get more hits and customers.
With the increased budget, you can also offer surveys for customers to help enhance SEO. Asking questions such as, ‘when you think of our company, what is the first word you think of?’ Having surveys filled out for free isn’t very popular amongst customers, but there are services that you can pay to have surveys taken. This can be vital in developing an SEO strategy that works best for you.
Use these tips for helping you along the way. Search engine optimization has been one of the most valuable assets in the past few years for business and will continue to be for quite some time. As long as there is a Google or Yahoo or Bing, your company will rely on these search engines to increase business as your company grows.
Angie Picardo is a staff writer for NerdWallet. Her mission is to help consumers stay financially savvy, and save some money with the best 6 month CD rates.
Related Links:
How to Improve Your Website's User Experience
5 Big Components of a Keyword Strategy
Getting Found is Only Half the Story
There's a lot of great advice on how to do business blogging well, why it should be done, and what great business blogging can accomplish. There's also a lot of advice on the biggest and most common business blogging mistakes. However, there's not a whole lot that puts the two together, that actually shows you how to fix those mistakes and to go from blogging horribly to blogging well. Here are three wrong ways to do business blogging, and how to do it right:
Writing Articles that are Too Short
Search engines LOVE content that is of quality and is of value to the reader. Although it's possible, most of the time it is very difficult to accomplish both in a short post. Yet, many businesses still publish 200, 300-word posts regularly and expect that to be enough to provide value and benefit to the reader. Sometimes, it can, depending on the subject matter. However, most of the time, it doesn't because there isn't enough there to engage the reader and to provide enough information about the subject matter to ensure that the reader will come away with something valuable and beneficial.
The Fix: Shoot for 600-800 words. It allows you to go more in-depth on a topic and to be more comprehensive. This benchmark is also what Google recommends for blog posts, so that's another thing to keep in mind.
Publishing Inconsistently or Infrequently
Granted, our business blogging service case study involves publishing twice a month, but it also took two whole years to get the results that we did. Part of the reason why we got the results that we did was because we stuck to that schedule for two years, offering a sense of security and reliability to our audience, while writing content that is comprehensive and of value to our audience.
In business blogging, you need to publish frequently and to publish consistently. The schedule can't change from three times a week, to three times a month, to once a week, and then once a day. To your audience, that's not reliable. It's also not reliable for you to publish once a month or every other month and to do that consistently. That's not enough to retain an audience, as it's not enough to keep people coming back. You could be writing great posts, but if you're not writing these great posts consistently and frequently, then those great posts aren't going to get you anywhere.
And while we're talking about this, don't EVER post the "Sorry we haven't blogged in a while" post. No one cares, especially if you're only blogging to get something up because you haven't blogged in a while. When you publish an article, make sure that you have something to say.
The Fix: Find a schedule and stick to it. As stated, if twice a month is all you can do, then do that. If you can write more often, then do that consistently, as you'll see results and a return on your effort much, much sooner.
Writing Only About Yourself
Some businesses think that because it's their business blog, that it needs to be all about them, mentioning the company in every blog post and writing specifically about the company and/or its products and services. This is the wrong way of thinking, and this should be done on the rarest of occasions. Your business blog is the one place on your website that's for your potential customers. You need to make it that way, and writing about yourself doesn't accomplish that.
The Fix: A good way to change direction on this is to write down all the questions that customers typically ask, and all the questions that customers have ever asked. Then, write a post answering each question. This is a great way to start building a business blog that offers value and benefit to your audience and your potential customers.
Related Links:
5 Business Blogging Best Practices
How to Make Your Blog Article Titles More Search Engine Friendly
Blogging for Your Business: How Long Should a Post Be?
We all know that inbound links are great, and that inbound links are one of the benefits of business blogging. A good way to increase the number of links to your blog posts is with internal links, links to your blog posts from other pages on your site. Of course, you can do this by including links to your blog posts on other posts with related link or links within the text. Or, you can include links to relevant and/or popular blog posts on other pages on your site. Here are three places you can include links to your blog posts:
Product/Service Pages
First of all, every single one of your products and/or services should have their own page (it helps with SEO), so if you don't have that then you should do that. Second, each product and service page can have three relevant blog posts at the bottom. It's a way to give prospects additional resources regarding that specific product/service. It's also one more way to keep prospects engaged with your brand while visiting your site. Third, if you're running short on blog post ideas, come up with two or three that would complement each product or service that you offer, and write those posts just so that you can include them on the page. Placing internal links on your product and/or service pages can increase traffic to those blog posts and give those specific posts additional exposure.
The About Us Page
Although your blog posts shouldn't be strictly about your company, your corporate blog is a crucial part of your brand and who you are as a company. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to include a few blog posts on your About Us page. This can be an RSS feed of your latest posts, or perhaps a list of your most popular or your best posts. It might not seem like something those who visit this page would be interested in seeing, but it doesn't hurt to include the links, and people can't visit your blog from this page if you don't include links to the blog posts.
On Thank You Pages
Once your web visitors download something from you, it's great if you can keep them engaged. An excellent way to do that is to include blog posts on your thank you pages. It adds something to the page (this way it's not just text that says 'thank you' and a link to the download and a link back to your home page) while also offering the newly converted lead additional resources to read and to consider.
Now, if you don't have thank you pages, like this one for our free 30-minute consultation, for every single one of your lead generation offers, then that's something you need to work on first. It's much more snazzy then something that just says, "thank you for your interest" or "thank you for your information."
Having a business blog is great, but if you don't make it easy for visitors to find your blog posts, then it'll be that much tougher to bring traffic to your awesome content. There are many more places to amplify your blog content then through email or through social media. Including them in strategic places throughout your website can make a difference.
Related Links:
Creating Blog Content: Why 'Contact Us' is a Horrible Call to Action
5 Business Blogging Best Practices
AP Style Blogging: What That Even Means
Social Media Optimization is usually considered as a part of online marketing, and is the optimizing of a site and its content to make it worth sharing on various social media sites. In short, we can say, SMO is making use of social media in order to promote a brand or a product or to generate publicity.
The Need for SMO
SMO is optimizing a website on social media. Just like SEO, SMO also plays a vital role in business development and its promotion because social media is one of the most powerful platforms to reach millions of people at once. Social media plays a crucial role in driving huge traffic as it allow your content to flow across the web globally.
The Various Types of SMO Techniques
There exists so many types of social media like RSS Feeds, social news, bookmarking sites, and social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. The main motive behind such SMO techniques is to generate traffic and promote a brand. Here are some SMO techniques you cna use to utilize the different typesof social media wisely.
Develop proper strategies - No goal can be achieved without following a proper strategy, so make a plan, follow it step by step, and includes measurements so you know when you achieved your goal.
Increase your visibility by creating links - You can increase your visibility online by increasing the linkability of your content. Blogs can be helpful in this context as it will enhance your website’s visibility and credibility.
Tags and bookmarking - Additional features like buttons for like, share, tag etc. are the best way to increase the visibility of pages or product. So make sure that such pages include relevant tags, notes, or links, and don’t forget to tag your pages on popular social bookmarking sites.
Inbound links - Quality and high value inbound links serve as the measure of success of your site. Try to make a difference by employing a few SMO activities, which helps you in boosting quality inbound links because it will increase the demand of your products and services.
Let your content flow - Unlike SEO, SMO is all about flow of content and not changes in content. Let your content flow across the web. Share links, files, images etc. as much as possible.
Appreciate visitors and their thoughts - Appreciating others for sharing their views is the best way to leave a good impact on visitors. Answer their queries, appreciate their comments, and ask them for advice, as this will enhance your reputation.
Be creative and experimenting - Social media offers you a great platform to show your creativity and experiment with the changing scenario of the online market. So, be creative and be willing try something new to attract visitors.
The Advantages of SMO
Connect with customers - Social media helps you to get connect with your potential customers so that you can customize your services and products to your customer’s requirements.
Lead generation - Lead generation is an important factor for every business and SMO activities play a crucial role in increasing your return on investment.
Maintain your reputation - Social media is the best and cheapest platform to get an idea of your brand status and feedback of customers. This way, it helps you to maintain your online reputation.
Beat your competitors - Social media helps you to mark your presence in the online market. Thus, you can create your brand awareness by using SMO techniques.
Cost effective - SMO serve as the most cost effective way to advertise and market your business products or services.
Author Bio: Sumeet Gaurav is a web enthusiast and a technical guy who is currently working on the website Adda52.com. Adda52.com is an online gaming website for true game lovers where you can play online poker games, learn how to play poker and know about various poker tips and strategies.
Technology evangelist Ramon Ray is the editor of Smallbiztechnology.com, a media company dedicated to creating helpful content about technology for small businesses. What started as a humble website in April 1999 has grown into an influential resource that publishes books, hosts events, speaks at events, creates content for the websites. Although Ray would never call Smallbiztechnology.com a blog, we sat down with him to discuss how others can use content creation as a business model and to build a business.
"It takes persistence. You go on," Ray said. "Focus on one thing and don't do anything else. I don't do home audio equipment. I don't do cabinets. I don't do event planning. I focus on technology for small businesses."
Ray started the site when he still had is own technology consulting firm, and simply wanted to write and to share his thoughts, which were an outgrowth of what he was already sharing with clients. He never intended to turn it into a business, but says it became a business when he started to get paid to write. One of the first gigs that came from the site, which happened about 10 years ago, was to write an article for Inc. Magazine.
How to Use a Blog to Build a Business
Even though Ray started Smallbiztechnology.com well before social media, and well before many others were doing what he is doing, he still says that it's easier now than ever to use a blog to build a business.
"Anybody can create a site and there's always room for someone to be in a niche," he said. "It comes down to producing a volume of good content, having great headlines, knowing your audience, and make sure your audience knows about you."
Ray emphasized knowing the audience for two reasons. First, by focusing on one thing, you provide security for your audience and make it easier to grow that audience and to keep that growth. Second, it makes it easier to get advertisers, who care about who's in the audience as much as its size.
Of course, an audience doesn't exist without content and a regular stream of it. When Ray started back in 1999, he published about one or two articles per day. Today, it's between three and five articles per day, although he now enlists a team of 10 writers to help him. However, getting to that point was a "hard work game" and included several milestones that showed that Smallbiztechnology.com "was more than just a guy typing."
The Technology Evangelist Mindset
"I never ever said I was a blogger. To me a blogger is someone who sits in their pajamas and writes about their cat," Ray said. "To do this, you need to understand and focus on what your goals are."
As offensive that may seem to those who proudly call themselves bloggers, Ray's point is that content creation isn't necessarily armchair journalism, that turning a website or a blog into a business doesn't strictly take place at home behind the computer. Blogging, in and of itself, is not a business. It's really about being an editor, producer, journalist, publisher, tech evangelist etc. and having that mindset.
"Are you serious and not doing this on the side? Are you willing to not have enough sleep? he said, "The more you write, the more it becomes an echo chamber. As you work harder and do more, it only goes up and up and up,"
What's Next for Smallbiztechnology.com?
As for what's in store for Smallbiztechnology.com in the coming months, Ray doesn't really know. He suggested the possibility of an online video show or publishing a book on personal brand marketing, but other that he doesn't have a clue.
"I'm just going to keep doing what I"m doing," he said. "I love writing and I think humans have a natural desire to share."
Related Links:
Content Creation: How to Turn One Idea into 20 Pieces of Content
Homonyms and Frequently Misunderstood Words for Content Creators
5 Business Blogging Best Practices
The blog post title is the first thing, and oftentimes the only thing, that a reader or web visitor will see of your blog post. How do you engage them with just a headline? How do you get them to read more? The key isn't necessarily what you write about, but how you communicate the substance of your blog post in those six, eight, or ten words (blog post headlines should not be any longer than that). Here are the six crucial components to great blog post headlines:
- Actionable - An actionable blog post title means one that tells the reader what they will be doing, or what they will know how to do once they finish reading your blog post. Readers want to learn something, or at least have something to take away from your blog post once they read it, so an actionable blog post title will let them know that this particular post is for them.
- Keyword-Conscious - Of course, you can't forget keywords in your blog article headlines! It's possible to include them in your title and throughout your post without ruining the density or the quality of the content. For best SEO results, try and put your keyword in the beginning of the blog post title, but we understand that this isn't always possible. Also, try to keep it to one keyword per title, even if the post has the possibility to rank for several keywords.
- Brief - Although anywhere between six and eight words is a great guideline for blog post titles, you essentially want your headlines to be short and punchy. They should be concise and to-the-point, not wordy or complicated. Another good rule of thumb is to shorten your title where possible. For example, use 6 instead of 'six' or '&' for 'and', or remove articles such as 'the', 'an', and 'a' (like in the title for this post, as it's not 'the 6 crucial components).
- Clear - Great blog post titles make is very obvious to the reader what the article is about. They are not vague. They are not confusing. They do not include a play on words (as you only risk confusion, as clever as a play on words can be). For example, the blog post title, "6 Creative Ways to Make Content More Visual" is very clear on what the reader will get from reading this article. S/he will get six creative ways to make their content more visual. If that's what the reader is looking for, then this is the blog post for them.
- Definitive - One of the main purposes of business blogging is to develop and to maintain thought leadership. You are not going to do that if your blog post titles are not definitive, if they do not convey confidence in the ideas that are communicated. Avoid questions as blog post headlines, and use strong, confident language in your blog post titles.
- Intriguing/Interesting - Let's face it, "Components to Writing Blog Post Titles", is an incredibly boring title. Including words like 'crucial' and 'great' make this post that much more intriguing, and do a better job of communicating how awesome it would be to read this blog and to come with great blog post titles. Great blog post titles beat confusing and vague titles, and they also beat boring and bland titles that don't show how interesting the blog post really is.
Related Links:
How to Make Your Blog Article Titles More Search Engine Friendly
Blog Article Headlines: A List of Some of the Worst Out There
Blogging for Your Business: How Long Should a Post Be?
At the End of Your Blog Posts, That Is
One thing that we see on a lot of business to business blogs (and on B2C blogs) is a call-to-action to contact the company or to visit other pages on the website for more information. It's great that these businesses understand the benefit of putting a call-to-action at the end of the blog post, but the "contact us" is a horrible one to use, maybe even the worst one to use. Here's why, when you're creating blog content, that you don't ask readers to contact you at the end of it:
It's Rarely the Next Logical Step
A call-to-action is simply the next logical step that you want the web visitor to take. When someone visits your website home page, what's the next step for that person? When someone take a look at a product page, what the next step for that person? It differs between those two pages, and it would differ on your blog, and with each individual blog post as well. Because of this, contacting your company directly is very rarely the next logical step with a blog post.
If you write a blog post about how to unclog your sink drain, for example, the next logical step for that blog reader isn't to call your company about your plumbing services. If that person just needed help with the sink drain, then there's no need for your services. Therefore, the better logical step is to offer a tip sheet or a white paper about maintaining your sink drain, or how to keep all drains unclogged in the house. No, this doesn't generate any sales, but it does position the company as one who understands its audience and its pain points. When they do need plumbing services, who are they doing to think of? Probably you, the one who offered great advice and provided something valuable.
Your Business to Business Blog Should Generate Leads, Not Sales
Here is the definition of a business to business blog, in case you aren't already aware:
A collection of articles that provide helpful, valuable, educational, and remarkable content to your target audience. By providing this value, blog can easily and effectively draw prospects to your website.
According to this definition, the purpose of a corporate blog is to draw prospects i.e. generate leads. The point of a corporate blog is to engage those who need information, but may not necessarily know about your company and what you specifically have to offer. You need leads before you can get customers. Blogs are better for generating leads and aren't so great at making sales. If you honestly expect that people are going to read one blog post, and then buy from you right away, then that's a misunderstanding of the buying process and what readers are doing when they visit your blog.
Yes, it is possible to acquire a customer through your blog. Yes, blog posts can have a significant impact on purchasing decisions. But, don't expect prospects to make a purchasing decision right then and there.
You Don't Necessarily Get the Information You Need to Make the Sale
Let's say that someone actually does read a blog post and then contacts you. Depending on your contact form, you might not get the information you need to make the sale or to convert that prospect appropriately. If your contact form is just name, email, and a comment box, then you probably won't know if the person who contacted you is the decision maker for the company, or even if the company would be a good fit for your business, or why they have an interest in the product or service that you offer. This could mean that your spending time on a prospect who could have been disqualified earlier the process with a different call-to-action. It could also mean that you have to spend a lot more time getting to know the lead, and figuring out which product or service would be best for them, when that information can be gathered with a different call-to-action and allow you to make a better first impression when you do call them back.
Overall, if you're creating blog content, you ought to have call-to-actions that are the next logical step for that reader on that topic. Oftentimes, that next logical step isn't a purchase or a sales call. It's additional information. It's further qualification in the leads funnel and the buying process. It's another way to engage with your brand that doesn't involve speaking to a salesperson.
Related Links:
How to Capture Leads from Your Business Blog
How Business Blogging Generates Better Qualified Leads
How to Create a Resource Center and Visibility for Your Brand
It's been a while since we did a content marketing news roundup, so we're coming back with it this month! We got a roundup of great content marketing and inbound marketing news articles for you, including 30 business blogging tips and the complete list of Google's ranking factors. There's something here for everyone.
Google's 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List - Backlinko - A big thanks to Brian Dean for this one! This is one of the most comprehensive lists and explanations we've come across when it comes to search engine rankings. We even learned a thing or two from this list, such as using a geographic ending such as .fr or .in can help you rank for that particular country, although it does not help for global rankings.
Why Partnering with a Content Marketing Agency Can Lead to a Better Business Blog - DigitalSherpa - A content marketing agency has a lot of offer a small or medium-sized business that at least has a business blog, but might want to try white papers, case studies, and other longer forms of content to market their business. An agency has the resources and expertise in place to get your business blog (or content marketing strategy) started right and to keep it going with the commitment necessary to make the strategy and effort successful.
20 Enlightening Pearls of Wisdom from Marketing Experts [SlideShare] - HubSpot - Want some tips on how to be a better marketer? Need a breath of fresh air on how to think about marketing? These 20 'enlightening pearls' are as refreshing as the visuals they come with.
Don't Waste Your Time on a Business Blog: 30+ Tips for Doing it Right - Business2Community - This is an incredible list of business blogging tips, and it includes several that we haven't covered in our own posts offering tips. Two of these include using excerpts for SEO value (not sure if all blogging platforms have an easy way to do this) and focusing on structure of the post, which includes an introduction, middle, and conclusion.
7 Lessons from 7 Years of Blogging - Small Business Search Marketing - Seven years of blogging is a long time! Can you imagine your business blog being seven years old, and what could be accomplished in that time? This posts has seven awesome lessons from all that time and experience. The toughest lesson here is that no one is going to read your business blog for several months. It is serious commitment, and one that does not see results overnight.
9 Questions to Help you Prioritize Your Content Creation - Content Marketing Institute - One of the most common challenges for businesses engaging in content marketing is creating enough content. So, when there's not enough time and/or not enough people to create content, how do you decide the content that you will spend your time and resources on? This article comes with a genius template that you can share within your company to determine needs, time, where it fits in the sales funnel etc.
Lead Generation Poses Biggest Challenge for B2Bs - eMarketer - No surprises here, as over 60 percent of B2B companies cite lead generation as their biggest challenge for the year. This is about the same as last year, and coming in second is the challenge of reaching more of your target audience. Content marketing, as it fits into all this, is the second most popular way for B2Bs to generate leads.
Related Links:
How the Buying Process Affects Your Content Marketing
Importance of Content Marketing: The 2012 Digital Influencer Report
The 5 Ws (and H) of a Content Marketing Strategy