This post on SEOmoz by far is one of the best explanations of:

1. What to focus on for SEO
2. Why to focus on it
3. What KPI's to measure
4. What KPI's to ignore
5. Success for SEO's in the future

Watch the video at the link and listen and watch for these specific statements:

"Getting us all the way down from these what I call "leading indicator metrics" down to the business KPIs. Business KPIs, the things that indicate the performance of the business, are where we should take our strategic initiative, our strategic lead, for any sort of online marketing effort, whether that's SEO, whether it's PPC, advertising"

Don't focus on these. If you focus on these from a strategic point of view, your tactics are probably going to lead you in the wrong direction, and, by the way, those of you who might be buying consulting services

"I want links and rankings," please have them watch this whiteboard video, have them leave comments, have them e-mail me. My goodness, I don't think that this is going to be how successful SEO gets done in the future. This is how tactical SEO was done in the past, and, unfortunately, it's how a lot of black and gray hat SEO became the norm.

Link to the post and video on SEOmoz - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/fixing-the-broken-culture-of-seo-metrics-whiteboard-friday

"Wow" is the first reaction as BlueGlass was the company I looked to as an agency who is doing it right.  They have a great content marketing strategy around their brand and have a solid set of focused services to offer their clients and a talented team to execute on those services.  So what happened is the questions that are being asked.

Is SEO Scalable?

This blog post from Search Engine Round Table does shed some light on some of the issues surrounding the apparent BlueGlass wind-down.  The comments section is a good read as well as it seems some believe that SEO is not scalable unless its a platform play (much like SEOMoz - I'm a paying Mozzer BTW).  I'm not so sure about that as SEO has always been a misnomer of sorts and sites should "naturally" rank and have authority.  But there is an architecture that is needed to satisfy the spiders and robots to adequately place you in the rankings and I've always been a big advocate for years that good, solid quality content always wins. So its about education, tools and systems for companies to employ "SEO" to their sites. However, I have noticed a surge in the need for SEO's (seems like there are always several job listings on any given day for SEO's) which has morphed dramatically in the last year and has become a interconnected network of activity that includes community management, social signals, quality content generation and value laden information contained in a nice neat package.

The SEO clients I work with are in the game for the long haul so the Fiverr 1 billion back links package isn't for them....SEO is a very involved engagement today.

What does it take for a Company like BlueGlass to Win in SEO?

I do believe that a systems approach rather than a platform approach can solve a lot of the SEO scalability issues.  I have been able to create a systems approach to reporting and executing on keyword research and on page SEO programs for clients.  That leads into a systematic approach to off page SEO and content strategy development and execution.  I give clients the option to have their internal team execute or have my team execute.  Can it work and scale? Absolutely Yes.

But then there is the business side of any company.  It includes operations, AR/AP, business development, people management, benefits management, compensation management and financial/fiscal management. There-in lies the "trick" for a lot of companies.  I truly believe BlueGlass had the talent to execute on strategy and tactics and even build systems and processes to scale the workflow for their clients; however, was the management team an extension of the technical team?  Only BlueGlass knows the answer to that question but I can attest first-hand that the management and the leadership of the business belongs in the hands of a team that can, and has, managed businesses SUCCESSFULLY in the past.

What is the Net-Net?

Do what you do best and have a passion for (I will do Digital Marketing all night long and be surprised when the sun comes up because I think its only 11:00 pm). The trouble seems to start when you end up wearing too many hats and getting into areas that are not even remotely something you want to do.  You do the things you love with care, expertise and love. You do the things you dislike so you can do the things you love - and rarely are they done with care and never with expertise.  Know when to turn the reins over to the experts & professionals in their field.

I learned long ago from a mentor that told me to focus on my strengths and not my weaknesses. Because my strengths were where my passion was rooted. Weaknesses are weak for a reason - don't ask why - just don't focus there. Think about it -  if we focus on our strengths we become the best at our passion.  If we focus on our weaknesses it prevents us from truly realizing our maximum potential and our weaknesses just become mediocre at best.

Be the best YOU that you can be and focus on your strengths.

Good Luck to BlueGlass and their team of seasoned SEO professionals.

“10 billion SEO back links to your site for 1 cent.”

The Bad:

Ok I am exaggerating a bit – but only a little bit.  It has really gotten out of control.  Google has done a great job in cleaning up their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) as they should.  No one wants to go and search Google and find a bunch of poorly spun crappy articles that are not relevant to their search. I know what you are thinking – “Well I only link those to the tier 2 sites and they are spun for 80% uniqueness”. Guys – its still crap and its snake oil.  Its not scrappy SEO and marketing its the marketing that is for lazy folks looking for a short cut.

If you have a solid product you want to market then use the tried and true techniques that work.  I wrote an article a while back on how Content Marketing is the new SEO.  You need solid content that engages and excites your target market and sometimes it can take 7 – 10 touch points to get the conversion.

The Good:

SEO has changed and thankfully for the better. Stop trying to “game” the system – Google is smarter and has hundreds of super smart people working to stop the spammy back linkers. So what can you do? Here are 5 steps to success using SEO and strategies that work today and will always work in the future – truly Google proof (because they don’t game the system).

1. Identify your target goals first – “If you aim at nothing you will hit it every time”:

What do you want to achieve? A certain number of sales, visitors, downloads etc.  So figure this out and then back into what your monthly targeted goals will be so you can go after it in bite-sized pieces.  How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

2. Create and define your target list:

The key here is getting inside the head of our customer. Who are they? What are their biggest fears and concerns? What most excites and motivates them? What kind of personality do they have, and where do they like to spend money? Customer clairvoyance – defining and deeply understanding the needs and personalities of our customers is going to drive this critical portion of the overall plan.

Create a spreadsheet to identify the main factors that motivate your clients.

3. Find out where your customers are online:

You will need to perform research in many different areas based on your target customers identified above in #2. You will need to identify keywords for each group to be sure we can uncover their online personas and where they congregate. And finally you will need to create a master list of target sites and blogs and analyze them using Google Ad Planner to check traffic etc.

Search - use Google to find blogs in the various niches and verticals that map to our target customers.  Perform a search for “best “X” blogs” or “top “X” blogs” also use Technorati to discover additional blogs within the niche. Also Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world. Find relevant content and potential content partners etc. add to the list. The new Edge search in Facebook could be a new resource worth checking out. And sputtr.com is the final one that will extend across multiple sites.

Stumbleupon/Delicious – great aggregators of information and they are also easily searchable through keywords.

Twitter – to locate influencers – wefollow.com is a tool that can be used.  Also followerwonk to check your own followers to see who you could potentially engage with.

Socialmention.com – a great way to find conversation in the social-sphere related to our areas of interest and keyword driven.

Google Alerts – create Google alerts for the keywords associated with each of the 8 customers identified.

4. Test Messaging – “Tell them what they want to hear”:

Most of us know that marketing that ‘sticks’ is marketing that makes sense to the customer, where benefits are quantified in the customer’s own terms. You need to know exactly what messages will resonate with your targeted audience. It isn’t enough for the messaging to be targeted; it also had to be articulated in the customer’s own terms. The most fascinating part about testing messaging is that it’s a test. It’s not permanent, and test results can and should be cycled back to the marketing and development teams to be built right back into the product and site.

5. Execute violently:

Based on 1 – 4 above you know where to execute and create a content strategy that will work for you and your target audience.  This is a book of information unto itself – so that’s why I wrote one because a blog post won’t do it justice.  You can find it on Amazon here. Its a measly $2.99 for information that is worth tens of thousands of dollars.  If you’re not going to spend $2.99 – hang up your online marketing hat now.

And….The SEO Ugly:

You can’t have the good and the bad without the ugly. Here is an example of the ugly in SEO and marketing.  This is an ad I saw on a site and they will do all of this great linking for you for $5.  Wow how exciting and what a deal (the sarcasm should be thick when saying this). This is what you should never ever do….

Yeahhhhh Right……..

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ACXJ1KK/

Amazon has a cool service called KDP Select – https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A6KILDRNSCOBA

This allows an author to give their book away for free for only 5 days in a 90 day period.  As a side note – they do not have to be consecutive days.

I am taking advantage of 2 days to give my book away for free – March 17 – 18.  So get it now while its free here

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ACXJ1KK/

Here is a little info on what it is about:

Get Advanced Traffic Strategies that drove 200,000 users and 300+ earned media mentions.

No hype, no B.S. I have used each and every one of these strategies and they have worked. As a matter of fact they worked so well I was able to drop 200,000 + users onto a product and garner over 300 earned press mentions and win 5 industry awards.

I’m not here to sell you on who I am and all of the great things I did. I just know where some of you are right now.  Looking for a way to drive traffic and launch a product without breaking the bank – exactly where I was but I didn’t have a proven blueprint to teach me how to kill it in online marketing on a shoestring budget.

If you are looking for well researched and tested methods that can drive traffic and buyers to your product or service then get these advanced traffic strategies.

If you want to get over 30+ resources that you can use today and literally market on a shoe string budget that would typically cost thousands of dollars – then this is for you.

Testimonial for Advanced Traffic Strategies:

It is actually 58 pages of gold!! I can’t believe the low price here! This is a steal!!

Mark is right though this is not for newbies! The strategies and methods outlined in this book are very advanced and very powerful! Even if you are already getting 1000 views a day this book can take you to 2000+!

I really do recommend this for anyone who is serious about generating tons of traffic and can handle the advanced strategies.

Robin – Obin94 on Warrior Forum

This article was written by Tim Williams - but man did it hit home!  I have used these words so many times and with online marketing evolving to the level it has today - its a reality.  Not only is it a reality - this is how all marketing initiatives should be run in every company - no exceptions. Marketing is now fully quant-based.  If you are not running quant-based programs then I truly believe you should not be running the programs unless it is a very concerted branding awareness effort and you have tons of money to throw away (kind of like the Bing Search engine launch that cost $80 million).

Enjoy this article it rocks.

One of the deep-seated beliefs of the late great Peter Drucker was that “The business enterprise has two -- and only two -- basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.”

Manufacturing is a cost. Management and administration are costs. Finance, accounting, HR, IT, legal, and sales are all costs. The only function in a company that produces revenues and profits is marketing; that is, marketing defined holistically as product, price, place, and promotion.

Viewed another way, attorneys, accountants, and IT consultants essentially cost the company money. This isn’t to say that the money isn’t well spent, or that these professionals don’t sometimes save corporations a lot of money by preventing lawsuits, keeping things straight with the IRS, or implementing timesaving new software. But none of these functions actually produce revenues for the company. Marketing does.

So why do law firms earn three times the fees of marketing firms? Because they’re accredited? Because law is a “true profession” and marketing isn’t? Perhaps. But it’s more likely the case that it’s because marketing has become the department that produces brochures and ads.

Marketing ≠ Advertising

In the earlier days of marketing, which emphasized all four Ps, marketing was a board-level function in corporations. Today that’s often not the case. Marketing professionals are usually seen as the “advertising people.” Marketing as a profession has allowed itself to be moved downstream, and “business consultants” have come in to fill the void.

When defined as it should be, marketing is a C-level job. It’s by far the most important function in the company, and as Drucker says, the only one that produces results. Because global business has lost sight of this, C-suites are instead filled mostly with executives from finance. Finance exists to support marketing, not the other way around.

Marketing as a growth driver instead of a service provider

Within corporations, the marketing function exists somewhere along the spectrum between:

Marketing as proactive growth driver > < Marketing as reactive service provider

If you’re an advertising agency and you take on clients where the marketing function falls on the “service provider” side of the equation, guess what kind of work you’re likely to be doing?

One of the key objectives for agencies in the 21 century is to do more “magic,” not just “logic.” Magic is the high-value ideation, insights, and problem solving that most agencies do well, but do a poor job of getting paid for it (or worse, give it away). “Magic” work includes helping organizations think though all the dimensions of marketing – from the way the product is named and distributed to how customer service is delivered.

When agencies instead default straight to producing advertising, they are largely engaging in the “logic” side of the business – execution and implementation. “Logic” work, while it must be done well, carries a lower perceived value and keeps agencies mired in the advertising factory model where “marketing” mostly means “advertising.”

Marketing needs a new OS

So how can marketing regain its rightful place? For starters, we can stop using the word “marketing” to describe just one aspect of the marketing mix. If we mean promotion, let’s say promotion, publicity, or even (perish the thought) advertising. This may seem like a small point, but behavioral psychologists have long taught that language is the precursor to behavior change. Change your mind, change your language, change your behavior – in that order.

Then let’s hire and develop people within agencies and marketing organizations who actually know marketing – not just promotion. This isn’t to stay that we don’t still need specialists; writers, designers, developers, project managers and the other functions that help bring ideas to life. But at the planning and strategic level, we need holistic marketing problem solvers who are just as like to recommend a product improvement as they are an ad campaign.

To help recast the marketing function within our organizations, we need to practice more “design thinking” (as practiced by firms like IDEO) and less “advertising” thinking. And as paid media advertising continues to decline in both volume and effectiveness, redefining “marketing” isn’t

Marketing has come to be defined by just one of its four P’s: promotion. Advertising agencies and client marketing organizations alike have been marginalized in the business world by allowing themselves to be boxed into just the business of promoting and advertising the product, rather than marketing it.

Link to the article by Tim Williams - https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130219165549-2042198-marketing-should-be-a-profit-center-not-a-cost-center?_mSplash=1

Robert Cialdini is The Master of Influence

As far as I’m concerned Robert Cialdini is the master of influence and its not that he discovered these techniques first but he was the first to break them down so they could be used effectively.  Some of the big internet stars who use his techniques and rework them into packages they sell for thousands of dollars are Frank Kern and Jeff Walker.  Also conversion optimization is really based on many of the principles that Cialdini has written and lectured about over the years.

This video is a crash course of the book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” and is a great primer on how to get someone to say “Yes” and transact business on your website or with you 1n general – Enjoy!

Check out the video about Robert Cialdini and the Psychology of Persuasion

I will be speaking at the Bay Czech Professionals Event on December 5th and I will be giving away my e-book for free to all attendee’s.  Amazon allows you to give away free promotional copies for 5 days only during a 90 day period.  So I will use one of the free 24 hour time periods during this event.

Anyone can go to amazon and get the book for free starting on December 5th through December 6th.  I do ask one favor if you get the book for free.  Please go to my Amazon page and “Like” the book and give me a fair and honest review.

Here is a synopsis of what you will find in the book:

The 7 Key Advanced Traffic Strategies that drove 200,000 users and 300+ earned media mentions.

No hype, no B.S. I have used each and every one of these advanced traffic strategies and they have worked. As a matter of fact they worked so well I was able to drop 200,000+ users onto a product and garner over 300 earned press mentions and the product won 5 industry awards.

I’m not here to sell you on who I am and all of the great things I did. I just know where some of you are right now. Looking for a way to drive traffic and launch a product without breaking the bank – exactly where I was but I didn’t have a book with an easy to use blueprint to teach me how to kill it in online marketing on a shoestring budget.

I had a problem that needed to be fixed fast or I would lose my job.

I had a bigger problem just 2 years ago. I had just started working for an Internet startup as the Director of Marketing. They were ready to launch a product and the company needed to get users on the product and make a big splash. I had just come off of another product launch at a different company and in a very different market.

So what should I do? I even went online to do a Google search on marketing plans – wow that was a mistake – complete garbage. What next? I had to dig in and figure it out – it was my job and I was used to eating so it HAD to work.

Why is this different from all of the other stuff out there?

So how did I figure out how to do the things to get that kind of success? Hours and hours and hours of research and testing, more research and even more testing. How much money did I spend? Lots – actually thousands of dollars. But don’t worry – you’re not going to have to do that.

From Influencer Engagement strategies to dead simple Conversion Testing to the BEST way to use Social Media – it’s all in this book.

Also, recently I was able to acquire a marketing plan for a major company that sold for $200 million 2 years after its launch. They were able to get over 100,000 monthly subscribers in 6 months! Funny thing a lot of those strategies were exactly what I did or similar to the strategies I used and are included in this book! Validation is always nice

Who is this book for?

If you are looking for well researched and tested methods that can drive traffic and buyers to your product or service then get this book.

If you want to get over 30+ resources that you can use today and literally market on a shoe string budget that would typically cost thousands of dollars – then this is the book for you.

Who is this book NOT for?

Key point if you are a newbie – forget it. Don’t download this book. Seriously, you will be overwhelmed with information and maybe even paralyzed and end up not doing anything. This is for the higher-level intermediate to advanced marketer looking for long-term brand & marketing development.

It’s also not for the marketer looking for a quick hit and thinking “I will launch this product and then move on to the next one and the next one”…..Then don’t waste your time.

Why put this book on Kindle?

I’m new to the kindle world but I’ve been in marketing for over 10 years and grew up in the internet marketing world by building my own sites after work and on the weekends and testing over and over and over again to learn what really worked and didn’t work. Literally spending thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of my money and time so you don’t have to.

I will be launching more books in the future but I want to prove my mettle and earn the trust with my first book – so I didn’t hold back. I have delivered the goods with this book. Learn tricks to split test your pages in minutes. No set up, no configuration – just click, paste code and go.

Get this Advanced Traffic Strategies now and Enjoy!

Method:

Facebook ads that were run:

Facebook ad #1 was started on Monday, June 21^st and stopped on Friday, June 25^th.  This Facebook ad depicted the STG logo and asked for “help” and then pointed them to the community website.

Facebook ad #2 was started on Thursday, June 24^th and stopped on Monday, July 5^th. This ad depicted an oil covered bird and asked for “support” and also pointed out “Ideas only – no $”

Metrics:

Facebook ads metrics

Synopsis:

Facebook ad#2 outperformed Facebook ad#1 by over 100% of CTR’s to Impressions but became more ineffective over time (after approximately a 1 week run time). Which is typical in Facebook apparently.  One of their tips is to keep your ad fresh.  Also, a certain number of folks have seen it after a period of time especially if the targeting is tightly focused such as our campaign was.

Facebook ad#2 was a success overall due to the eye-drawing photo and the fact that it was indicated that there was no cost to be at the site and we were not looking for donations – just ideas.

Results:

The STG community site had 127 signups in this time frame.  The signups trailed off to zero when the Facebook ads stopped.  My estimate is that 110 signed up via the Facebook ads campaign.

That means it came at a cost of almost $7.00 per signup, which is expensive overall in the online marketing world.  Our goal was to drive to $1.00 for CPA (cost per acquisition).

1,516 CTR/127 = 8.4% signup rate based on those who clicked through the ad.  Pretty good rate considering there is a barrier to entry on participation.

Considerations for Future Facebook Campaigns:

• Remove barriers to entry for public sites.  Allow anyone to come and comment without registering.

• For Social Network users – Remove the barrier to entry for signup by allowing Facebook sign-in versus having to add your email and name.

• Refresh Facebook ads & targeted groups on a more regular basis to keep them fresh.  Test content, message and targeted groups more often (every 3 days max).

• A final note is to use content marketing to drive traffic back to your site – facebook ads are a great starting point for a content marketing campaign.

 
]]> http://markkithcart.com/facebook-ads-test-for-a-public-community/feed/ 0 http://markkithcart.com/content-marketing/ http://markkithcart.com/content-marketing/#comments Mon, 22 Oct 2012 03:15:06 +0000 Mark Kithcart http://markkithcart.com/1533/content-marketing/ Why Use Article Content Marketing

By Josh Z.

Being a contractor is one of the hardest positions to keep. Since clients rarely come in and work schedules are not always full, a construction company must have a good approach towards marketing their brand. The internet is a great place to showcase your company?s main assets. However, with the competition continuously increasing on a regular basis, a company must have all the essential strategies to keep up with the booming names in their respective industries. Article content marketing is one of the most effective methods to influence a lot of consumers today. There are a lot of reasons why article content marketing proves to be an effective tool in making a company richer in the consumer?s eye and more desirable for everyone.


By using article content marketing, a company will be able to accentuate their main expertise. We all know that construction businesses are quite general in scope and may cover almost any type of field in architecture and design. However, writing articles will help specify exactly what your company is good at. A lot of construction companies pride in their workmanship when it comes to dealing with clients, while others also focus on providing the best outputs proven by the many testimonials of past customers. Writing is always the most effective method for people to confirm your expertise in your chosen industry. With trust being built up by customers after acknowledging that expertise, it is easier for more viewers or readers to subscribe to newsletters from your company. Subscriptions keep consistent traffic in your website, thereby making it easier for your company to gain more market exposure. You are able to reach an unlimited scope of prospective customers just by placing your articles in the right directories. You may also provide rights for other well known bloggers in the field to reprint your works so as to make your brand more palpable to the knowledge of the mainstream market. A lot of marketing articles used in company websites also contain a resource box, which allows other users to link back the contractor?s website URL. This process is done as soon as a subscriber decides to repost an article in their own blogs.


In due time, your company?s website will have better search engine rankings. A lot of search engines optimization tools greatly value one-way link, which should put your webpage at the top of the links. When making your articles, it is also best to adhere to the needs of your target market. It is not enough to simply discuss articles that may be relative to your field, but to also help consumers expand their knowledge by training them to become better contractors themselves. Sooner or later, you will be surprised to find out that your sales are starting to grow in numbers just by the articles you generate and post on your website. You no longer have to worry about getting constant visitors to your company website, as the articles will simply lure in more traffic all on their own.


About the Author: Contractors! Ready to learn how to run your business better to bring in more business and PROFITS? Go to http://74.200.200.184/public/main.cfm to learn everything you need to know today!


Source: www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=372145&ca=Marketing

And so, how do you get prime quality traffic fast making use of Pinterest marketing tips?

Start with knowing what you propose to market. Make sure should be aware of the real difference involving Pinterest along with other social networks to write this ideas. Twitter has a constraint on the content you can publish and whilst you can find text extenders as well as links that are often inculcated in a tweet, the standard idea of creating short posts work well as the platform is for modifications. You are able to tweet concerning an update for a product or service or perhaps tweet with regards to a few correlated reports.

With Pinterest, the promoting system can get exceptionally unique. It can be product centric, customer centric, innovation centric and several other styles. What Pinterest gives is also not a element which can be appreciated on Facebook. As an example, the idea of following people you should want to inform about your business and therefore content. You may create a Facebook page which might be accessible for people to like, comment or perhaps give some other feedback however you can’t reach out further than that to get more targeted internet site visitors.

Pinterest marketing provides the opportunity to take your pin boards also pins on to all the people you wish to. In that way you can get targeted site visitors, not to ever mention the traffic is in addition quite high quality visitors that provides sales. A fashion wear brand would likely reap more added benefits if the readers of their pins and boards are concerned about fashion and not just a random like from anyone.

Pinterest marketing must not be juxtaposed with Twitter and even Facebook marketing systems. The systems are diverse. Pinterest necessitates a lot more specific method. Don’t just create a page for your business. Rather totally focus on a specific subject matter. By way of example, a mobile maker may choose to create a board for a particular smartphone type and also set up intriguing pins for the readers to mention with awareness. That’s how you possibly can get top quality website traffic fast and easy!