This post is meant to be helpful for all levels of SEO expertise. You can also find DIYSEO posts classified by level of expertise on the following pages:

• Posts for any SEO experience level
• Posts for beginner level SEO (those new to SEO)
• Posts for those with an intermediate level of SEO understanding
• Posts for those with an advanced level of SEO understanding

It’s Friday again, and you know what that means? That’s right! It’s time to check out all the great information people have published around the Web. This week, beginners get a look at the first steps they should be taking with their websites and their SEO campaigns, including which tactics they should be using.

Those of you who are in the middle of the road will get help choosing the right social networks and getting started on them. Advanced users are going to get treated this week with some statistics and data on mobile marketing, as well as some great tips on increasing conversion rates.

Of course, we didn’t forget about the many Google updates causing site owners pain and frustration! But don’t worry. We’ve shared some helpful information and news items to help you stay in the loop.

There’s even a bonus this week! Check out the inspiring post at the bottom from Lisa Barone. It contains 6 great ideas for using SlideShare that we hope will inspire you and your marketing strategies.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Beginner SEO and Marketing

What Is a Page Title? — A good page title is not only helpful for SEO, but it’s also vital for usability. Getting it wrong can really hurt your chances of snagging new traffic and getting people back once they do visit your site. Preation has a great post on page titles and how to write them the right way.

How to Choose the Right SEO Tactics for Your Small Business — Tom Demers works with a lot of small businesses, so he knows just how scary and dangerous the world of SEO can be for a new site owner. Even the simplest technique can cause a ton of damage and take weeks or even months to repair. In his Small Business Trends post this week, he helps people just like you decided which tactics are best.

7 Steps to Web Marketing Success — With so much to do, it’s tough to identify where you’re going wrong. Charlie Cook walks you through the process.

Revitalize Stale Email Marketing Campaigns — Ever worked really hard to put together an email marketing campaign, only to have it flop? Frustrating, isn’t it? You were sure everything was perfect. Now what? Dave Thomas on Business.com may have some answers for you.

Here’s an Email, Which Every Small Business Owner Should Read — Starting a business is extremely scary, especially if you have no other income to rely on. And sadly, this fear can prevent you from giving it your all and taking the risks you need to take to be successful. This email, published by Jim Connolly, might help get you over the bump.

Intermediate SEO, Marketing & Business Tips

8 Common Twitter Questions From Small Business Owners — Twitter’s inability to relay messages longer than 140 characters has a lot of business owners shying away from it. After all, how powerful could something that short be? You’d be surprised. Matt McGee wrote about 8 of the questions he’s often asked about the network. Not into Twitter? How about Facebook? Peter Geisheker published 5 Critical Facebook Marketing Tips. Too many social networks? Not sure which ones you should be using? “Talk” to Lee Odden, who explained which social networks are the most important for marketing today.

One Simple Tactic That Can Give You an Unfair Advantage in Local Search — Local search can be a tough cookie to crack. Oh, you can show up alright, but showing up in the right places, in the right way, isn’t quite so easy. John Jantsch has a great miniature case study and how-to post to help you dominate the local search space.

Effective Tests We Should All Be Conducting, But Probably Aren’t — Testing is absolutely critical to any successful business. It’s the only way to figure out what you’re doing wrong and how to do it better, but so many times we overlook some of these important tests because we’re sure we’re doing it right. Vertical Response takes a look at the steps many of us skip and explains why we could be doing more harm than good.

Advanced SEO, Marketing & Business Links

Mobile Search [Infographic]: 72% of Smartphone Users Look for Information on the Go — Marketing Sherpa got their hands on an infographic from MECLABS’ Senior Research Analyst Kaci Bower. It’s filled with a ton of great statistics and information on how smartphone owners are using their phones.

Email Marketing: New Tactics for Display Ads, Segmentation and Discount Promos — Adam T Sutton did a handful of interviews at Responsys Interact 2012 recently and he shared some of them on his blog this week. It’s loaded full of great quick tips!

How I Increased Our Conversion Rate 50% In 30 Days — You may think there was a ton of testing and work behind a huge increase in conversion rates like this, but you’ll be surprised to know there wasn’t. It was a simple change that made a huge difference. Try it for yourself and see.

Social Proof Is Real, Robust and Reliable — And while we’re on the topic of increasing conversion rates, check out this post from Deborah Shane. In this post, Deborah talks about how you can use social proof to increase conversions and build authority. And don’t forget to check out the comments on this one.

Great Posts Published This Week Everyone Should Check Out

Google Announces 50 New Search Quality Changes — Google updates. Just the mention of it sends site owners scrambling and SEOs ripping out their hair. Google seems to enjoy this. And it has announced 50 new updates that are going to change the way sites are ranked. Courtney Mills has the details you need to know. Confused? Not sure how Google ranks websites? Check out Google Ranking Explained in Just 8 Minutes.

Just Launched: Google AdWords for YouTube Videos — AdWords for Video is out of Beta! Never heard of it? Not sure how that can help you? Head over to iNeedHits to find out.

6 Ways Small Business Owners Can Use SlideShare — Lisa Barone is always full of great ideas and this week, she shared how small businesses can use SlideShare to market their business and get more attention.

Want to Improve Your SEO Rankings?

DIYSEO Will Analyze Your Site for FREE!

Get a Free SEO Report Today!

This post is meant to be helpful for all levels of SEO expertise. You can also find DIYSEO posts classified by level of expertise on the following pages:

• Posts for any SEO experience level
• Posts for beginner level SEO (those new to SEO)
• Posts for those with an intermediate level of SEO understanding
• Posts for those with an advanced level of SEO understanding

Hello and “May the fourth be with you”! We hope you escaped the Google Penguin Update (and the following Panda tweak) relatively unscathed. But we don’t want to focus on that. Let’s have a look at what else happened this week.

For new SEO and Internet marketers, we check out online store software, the basics of how Google works, and try to inspire you with a mix of smart marketing advice. Those of you who have been around a bit longer will learn about how to improve the reactions you get with your content, and take a look at Google Drive. Those of you at an advanced level will learn about fine tuning your website and email marketing campaigns.

And don’t forget all the news items and reports at the end!

Beginner SEO and Marketing

Want to Sell Products Online? 8 Of the Best “New Breed” Online Store Builders — If you’re looking for a quick way to set up a storefront, software becomes an important but nightmarish adventure. iNeedHits’ Rene LeMerle found 8 new sites offering easy-to-use software that’s worth checking out.

SEO 101: How Google Works — Understanding how Google works is the secret to being a good SEO. Once you know that, you can decide how best to improve and tweak your site. And this week, Matt Cutts and Google released a video that reveals the search engine’s inner workings.

Marketing Tips for Boutique Businesses — Marketing a boutique business requires as much finesse and insight as running one. This post from the Joy of Marketing not only gives some great tips, but it has a beautiful and inspiring story at the end. Well worth a read. You might also like Massively Boost Your Sales and Profits By Focusing on These 2 Things.

Customer Favorites: Top 7 Webinars Everyone’s Watching — Vertical Response holds a free webinar every week. Topics cover everything from social media marketing basics, to how your email marketing can get more click throughs. Want to know which ones have been most popular? You’ll have to wander over there for a look.

Intermediate SEO, Marketing & Business Tips

6 Content Marketing Tips for Google+ — Small Business Trends’ Lisa Barone knows Google+ is important for all online businesses these days. The search engine has been pushing its social network at every opportunity. And at the core of this network is content and content sharing. Do you know how to get the most action out of your content?

Facebook Tagging — How It Works for Timelines and Pages — The Facebook Timeline has really changed the game. And if you want to know how to use this to your advantage, head over to Masterful Marketing.

Google Drive — A Quick Review — Cloud storage can’t really do much to improve your SEO or marketing, but it’s still a vital part of any online business. And this week, Google launched its new service. But is it as good as some of the other popular services out there? Preation published its review of the service this week.

Advanced SEO, Marketing & Business Links

Your Website Is Probably Failing This Test — This post earned Dangerous Tactics and author Christian Russell their first appearance in our weekly round up. And just for fun: Can you guess what this test is?

12 Timeless Link Building Tips for Business Blogs — Building links to business blogs is absolutely vital, but it’s not always easy. Lee Odden has 12 timeless tips here that you won’t want to miss. What other link building methods do you suggest for business blogs?

Email Marketing: Dollar Thrifty Generates 47-Times Higher ROI, O’Neil Doubles CTR — While you might expect this to be one of those posts on segmenting or split testing (and it sort of is), this one has a delightful twist. And one we thought was really informative. THIS is email marketing done right! You might also want to wander over to Top Rank and check out Convert More Customers: Tips & Tricks for Running A/B Tests On Your Email Campaigns.

5 Ways to Create Dead on Content — If your content is going to be successful, it has to catch the eye of your audience and hold their attention. Duct Tape Marketing had an excellent post on the topic this week. We loved that he made a list of types and explained each.

Great Posts Published This Week Everyone Should Check Out

New Report: Marketers Still Embracing, Learning Social Media — Vertical Response covered a new report published by Social media Examiner that shows marketers are still in the process of adopting social media. You can get the details on their blog.

Exact Match Keywords Coming to Google AdWords — Targeting the right phrases is a vital component to boost the ROI of your paid search campaigns. Now, Google is going to make it easier with the introduction of exact match to its AdWords program. This will include misspellings, singular and plural forms, stemming, accents, punctuation, abbreviations, and other variations of your chosen phrases. You can find out more about this week’s announcement on iNeedHits.

Goodbye PostRank, Hello Google Social Reports — Many in the marketing world were saddened to hear of the death of PostRank this week, but the news wasn’t all bad. Lisa Barone has the details on the end of PostRank and the birth of Google Social Reports.

Reports of Websites Vanishing From Google Index — Has Yours? — This is a nightmare for any website owner. Unfortunately, it seemed to happen a lot this week. You can get all the important details on iNeedHits.

Want to Improve Your SEO Rankings?

DIYSEO Will Analyze Your Site for FREE!

Get a Free SEO Report Today!

This post is meant to be helpful for all levels of SEO expertise. You can also find DIYSEO posts classified by level of expertise on the following pages:

• Posts for any SEO experience level
• Posts for beginner level SEO (those new to SEO)
• Posts for those with an intermediate level of SEO understanding
• Posts for those with an advanced level of SEO understanding

If you’ve been following the marketing and SEO news online, you’ve probably already heard about the big webspam update and the discussion surrounding negative SEO. It definitely seemed to dominate many of the online communities this week. But there was a ton of other great bits of information and news this week, as well.

Beginner SEO and Marketing

Identifying Your Ideal Customer — Everything — your marketing, business plan, and even the products you offer — depends on how well you know your customer. It takes some work to uncover the details, but once you get the bulk of it done, you can use it for everything. It just needs a bit of updating now and then. Not sure how? Susan Payton from Small Business Trends did an excellent piece this week to get you started.

Keywords Key When Creating B2B Marketing Content — You simply can’t market to businesses in the same way you do individual customers. They think different; have different needs, and different priorities. But you can still use keywords to your advantage. Business.com published a great guide that tells you how.

What Is a Website Conversion? — All websites are after the coveted website conversion. In fact, they spend a large amount of their time trying to achieve a 100% conversion rate. Think of it like the golden goose for site owners. But what is it? Preation provided us with a great definition this week.

Intermediate SEO, Marketing & Business Tips

9 Tweet Types for Your Twitter Strategy — Deciding to get on Twitter and use it as a marketing medium is one thing, but actually using it and creating an effective strategy is something completely different. Here, Lisa Barone gives us a list of 9 different kinds of tweets and how you can use them in your marketing campaign.

9 Mistakes We Make With Our Email Marketing — Email marketing can be a bit overwhelming at first. And lets be honest: No matter how careful you are, you’re destined to make at least one mistake while you’re planning and running your campaign. This week, Vertical Response tried to eliminate these mistakes. You might also want to check out Email Marketing: Alive and Well from Small Biz Bee.

5 Tools to Make Semantic Search Work for Your Google Ranking — Semantic search is just another segment of SEO and marketing, but it’s an important one. Getting it to actually work to your advantage takes a bit of work. INeedHits has a list of tools here to help make it a little easier.

Advanced SEO, Marketing & Business Links

Yelp’s Review Filter Sometimes Does More Harm Than Good — Small Business Search Marketing looked at how this simple Yelp feature can cause you all sorts of trouble and really do a number on your local search marketing campaign.

Marketing Boring Products – It’s Not a “Boring” Problem, It’s a “Knowing Your Customers” Problem — What do you do when you’re selling a product or solving an issue that no one really wants to read about? Lee Odden has a few great ideas.

Can Your Web Site’s Rankings Be Affected by Negative SEO? — Another super hot topic this week was the idea that a competitor can sink your website in the search results simply by pointing a bunch of bad links at it.

Great Posts Published This Week Everyone Should Check Out

Google’s Improved Online Advertising Metrics Aimed at Brands — To help brands increase the effectiveness of their advertising, Google released a new set of metrics during the Ad Age Digital Conference. You can learn more about them at V3.

Facebook Increases the Size of Profile Photos for Pages — There were more changes over at Facebook this week, too. Nothing serious, but something to keep in mind. V3 also included the measurements/specs for the new photo size, which you might find handy.

Google’s New “Webspam” Algorithm Update Goes Live — Perhaps the biggest news item in the world of marketing and SEO this week was the release of Google’s “Webspam” Update. According to Google, it was supposed to reduce the amount of keyword stuffed pages and sites using link networks to rank, but webmasters are seeing something completely different. Some marketers have even called it a bloodbath.

Study: 60% of Websites Missing Vital Contact Information — iNeedHits reported on a new study released by SMB DigitalScape & BIA Kelsey that found businesses are missing out on a ton of opportunities simply because they’ve forgotten to include contact information.

Study Shows Value of Social Media for B2B Marketers — Another great study to come out this week was one from the Aberdeen Group that looked at the benefit B2B marketers can gain by using social media.

Bing Business Portal Prepping Two New Features: Marketplace & Lists — They’re not live yet, but Matt McGee spotted these two features are coming soon to a Bing Business Portal near you. Do you think they’ll help improve your marketing?

YouTube Updates Audio Editing Features — If you’re using video, you might have also noticed some changes at YouTube this week.

Want to Improve Your SEO Rankings?

DIYSEO Will Analyze Your Site for FREE!

Get a Free SEO Report Today!

This post is meant to be helpful for all levels of SEO expertise. You can also find DIYSEO posts classified by level of expertise on the following pages:

• Posts for any SEO experience level
• Posts for beginner level SEO (those new to SEO)
• Posts for those with an intermediate level of SEO understanding
• Posts for those with an advanced level of SEO understanding

The SEO world is abuzz with the topic of negative SEO and how bad backlinks can harm your website. But there was a ton of other great links and topics discussed this week, too.

Beginner DIY-ers were treated to a series of posts on Advertising 101 and increasing interaction and engagement on their Facebook pages. For intermediates, email marketing and teleseminars were the top topics of discussion. Have you used either of these in your marketing strategy? And tips to share?

This week, user behaviour was a popular topic for advanced marketers and SEOs. And to help you along, we found some information on the new comScore report and a smart post on smartphone use.

Let’s get started!

Beginner SEO and Marketing

7 Steps to Make Your Advertising Work — If you’re ready to start advertising, Charlie Cook has done a great series of posts to walk you through the process and help improve your ROI.

5 Tips to Building Affinity on Facebook — Do you know what the key to social media marketing success is? Engagement, of course, but getting your followers and friends to engage and interact with your brand isn’t easy. This week, Vertical Response published an interesting post with 5 helpful tips to get things going. If you’re struggling with it, or just starting out, go have a read. Duct Tape Marketing also had a great post on the subject this week.

Intermediate SEO, Marketing & Business Tips

Teleseminars – A Great Marketing Tool for All Businesses — If you’re looking for another way to advertise your business while still providing value to your clients, teleseminars may be an option. You don’t have to worry about video, and you’re better able to communicate and address the needs of the listener. You can find out more on Small Biz Bee.

Clicking Send Is Just the Beginning – Put Your Reporting to Work — When running an email campaign, most people think all the work is in the creation and distribution phase. In reality, that’s when the real work begins. Reporting is the only way you’ll know which elements of your campaign are successful and which ones aren’t. If your emails need some work, check out Deluxe for Business’ post entitled Drive Action With Your Email Marketing. And if you’re still building your list, check out David Kirkpatrick’s post on Marketing Sherpa this week, which included the four questions your capture page needs to answer to get more signups.

Advanced SEO, Marketing & Business Links

comScore: Internet Users Spending More Time on Social Sites — V3 covered comScore’s latest research on US Internet use, and it’s good news if you have a comprehensive social media strategy.

Getting a Grip on Mobile – Understanding Smartphone User Behavior — A large amount of mobile marketing fails simply because the business failed to consider how and why smartphone owners use their phones to access the site at the time. This can greatly change the way you interact with mobile users. See what Deluxe Blog for Business’ Françoise Rose had to say on the subject.

Great Posts Published This Week Everyone Should Check Out

Google to Become an Answers Engine in the Long Run — There are more changes ahead at Google. Interestingly enough, it’s the first step in a series of changes that will take the search engine in a new direction.

Search Given Second Chance in Yahoo! Re-Organization — If you’ve been following Yahoo’s downsizing and re-organization, you may have noticed the CEO’s announcement this week about the company’s plans for restructuring. Miss it? You can get the details on iNeedHits.

LinkedIn Rolls Out New Features for Marketers — LinkedIn continued to upgrade and improve its network this week with another round of updates. These ones will help you improve your marketing on the site and increase your conversions. Lisa Barone broke it down this week and provided some good tips on Small Business Trends.

Want to Improve Your SEO Rankings?

DIYSEO Will Analyze Your Site for FREE!

Get a Free SEO Report Today!

This post is meant to be helpful for all levels of SEO expertise. You can also find DIYSEO posts classified by level of expertise on the following pages:

• Posts for any SEO experience level
• Posts for beginner level SEO (those new to SEO)
• Posts for those with an intermediate level of SEO understanding
• Posts for those with an advanced level of SEO understanding

Happy Friday the 13th! We hope the day has been good to you and that you weren’t the target of too much bad luck. You were likely busy catching up from the extra long weekend, but don’t worry. We’ve scoured the web for you and come up with a great list of posts and news items from around the web.

This week, beginners can learn more about the basics of forming their identity online and perfecting their marketing strategy. Intermediate DIY-ers can sharpen their email marketing skills and focus more on their conversion rates (and why really high conversion rates aren’t a good thing.)

For advanced marketers and SEOs, this week was filled with information on using the data you have access to and paying attention to the hidden signals your marketing and communications could be sending out to the rest of the world.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Beginner SEO and Marketing

Common Small Business Mistakes Made Online — It’s impossible to get everything right, when you’re just starting out online. But, you can learn from other people’s mistakes. Big Marketing for Small Business had a post by Rajan Sodhi that looks at some of the most common ones new site owners make.

Criteria for an Effective Logo DesignCriteria — One of the first big hurdles you have to get over, when building a new site, is creating a logo for it. Small Biz Bee did a great post this week on what a successful logo needs to have.

5 Ways to Win WIth B2B Content Marketing & Social Media — Successful social media and content marketing strategies don’t just happen. They take work. There’s a specific process you have to follow if you’re going to get it right. And Lee Odden of Top Rank goes through the steps in that process to help you be a better B2B marketer. You might also want to check out How to Develop Clear, Compelling Marketing That Attracts High Quality Clients by Jim Connolly and 3 Hot Demographics Your Business Can Profit From in 2012 from Small Business Trends.

The Most Important Page in Your Corporate Identity Manual — While big businesses create a corporate identity manual to help their employees keep everything straight, it can be helpful for you too. Not that you’ll have issues with others not doing as you tell them, but it’s something that will help you keep everything straight. And you’ll always have an up-to-date guide you can give to others, when you expand and bring others on board.

Intermediate SEO, Marketing & Business Tips

Evolution of an — Like everything else in the online world, email has evolved into a completely different animal than it was almost 20 years ago. This piece from Deluxe Blog for Business goes the some of the many changes, and gives some great hints as to what works now. Vertical Response covered personalization of emails and its affect on your bottom line with their postThe Results are In! Takeaways from VR Email Tests: Personalization Edition.

The Downside of Very High Conversion Rates — As marketers, we’re always taking every step we can possibly think of to improve our conversion rates. The goal? Make a sale from every visit. Who would have thought there was a downside? You can find out what it is on Marketing Sherpa.

5 Website Customer Support Tools That Double as Sales Tools — Part of increasing your profits isn’t finding new ways to make money, but rather making more money with the tools and assets you already have. This brilliant post from Preation looks at some great ways you can generate sales while serving your customers.

How to Conduct a Marketing Audit — After you’ve been marketing and pushing your business, you need to do an audit to identify what you’re doing right, where you’re going wrong, and where there’s opportunity to do or make more. Rebar Business Builders did a great post on how you can conduct an audit on your own properties.

How and Why to Create Smarter Content — On Duct Tape Marketing this week, John Jantsch talked about a very important problem with creating “great content”. If no one wants to read it, and it doesn’t meet your goals or the needs of your readers, it’s useless. In this post, John shows how you can create smarter content, using a few select tools.

Advanced SEO, Marketing & Business Links

Are You Tracking Campaign-Generated Revenue? — Business.com recently looked at a survey from Paradot that looked at how businesses track (and don’t track) the success of their campaigns. We thought it was some interesting data. And if you’re interested in using data to improve your marketing, check outData and Contextual Analysis: The Road to Good Decisions by V3.

Are You Sending Invisible Signals? — Recently Mark received an innocent, but rather inconsiderate email from Ancestry.com. It’s a great example of how you can be showing your flaws to your audience. Makes you think!

4 Reasons Customers Prefer Your Mobile Website — Interesting anomaly, right? And it does happen. Take a look at your analytics and then head here to Lisa Barone’s post to find out why this might be happening and how you can use your mobile site to improve your traditional one.

How Google Detects and Removes Bad Ads — Google recently announced it has been detecting and shutting down bad ads. And this week, Rebar Business Builders found a video that looks at how Google does it. Any thoughts? Have you noticed any “good” ads getting caught in the system?

Great Posts Published This Week Everyone Should Check Out

AdWords Gest Big Location Targeting Improvements — iNeedHits covered improvements made to AdWords this week. In fact, there were three new features added to AdWords to help you improve your geo-location and profits.

LinkedIn Update Makes Finding Connections Easier — Connecting with others is a vital component to LinkedIn, but it hasn’t always been easy to find good connections. New updates made to the social network should hopefully change all that. What do you think?

Crazy Valuations: Instagram Deal Worth More Than New York Times — Facebook didn’t just create waves this week. It created a tsunami of buzz when it purchased Instagram for a whopping $1 billion. (And not everyone was celebrating the occasion.) Small Business Trends’ Anita Campbell looked at the valuation and reasoning behind the sale.

Facebook Building a Social Search to Rival Google — The team at Facebook haven’t just been brokering a deal with photo networks this week. They also announced they’re working on a massive search system that will make it easy to search the vast network and its hoards of user-generated content. What do you think about the idea?

Rumours Surface That Yahoo! Will Move From Bing to Google — Binghoo! could soon be GooHoo if this week’s rumours are true. What do you think Google wants with Yahoo! now that it’s been Bingified?

Want to Improve Your SEO Rankings?

DIYSEO Will Analyze Your Site for FREE!

Get a Free SEO Report Today!

This post is meant to be helpful for all levels of SEO expertise. You can also find DIYSEO posts classified by level of expertise on the following pages:

• Posts for any SEO experience level
• Posts for beginner level SEO (those new to SEO)
• Posts for those with an intermediate level of SEO understanding
• Posts for those with an advanced level of SEO understanding

With it being such a short week, you’d think there wouldn’t be too many posts and news items to catch up on. But if you’re thinking that, you’d be wrong.

This week, beginners can get some SEO and website building tips, as well as some information on dealing with bad customer reviews and poorly performing Twitter strategies. Intermediate-level DIYers will get some ideas for boosting online sales, as well as techniques such as sharing, guest blogging, and video.

Copywriting, spring email campaigns, and PPC are big topics for advanced marketers. And in the news department, we’ve included some interesting posts about Kotex and Coca-Cola, as well as news from the usual sources. Let’s get started. (And have a happy long weekend!)

Beginner SEO and Marketing

Get More Targeted Traffic From Google With These 5 Simple Tips — Jim Connolly had some great tips for companies just getting started with their websites and their SEO campaigns.

Deluxe Blog for Business also shared some great beginner SEO tips. Can you think of more?

Common Sense Mistakes With New Websites — Preation also published a similar post to Connolly’s this week, but Preation looked more at the design and usability of a website. We thought it went well with the previously mentioned post.

Dealing With Negative Customer Reviews — And we know it might be a bit early for you to be worrying about negative reviews, but we thought it was important that you know how to deal with negative PR before you have to deal with it. And we thought this post from Deluxe Blog for Business was a good start.

Three Tips to Tweet Better Content — Getting frustrated with your Twitter campaign? Does it feel like you’re tweeting into the abyss and no one is noticing? You might need to reassess the content of your tweets. Deluxe Blog for Business had some good tips for Twitter hatchlings this week. You might also find10 Tweets to Solve Writer’s Block andHow to Find Your Customers on Social Networks interesting.

Intermediate SEO, Marketing & Business Tips

Small Businesses Are Finding More Ways to Use Video — We’ve talked several times in the past about how video is growing in popularity, but this week, Deluxe Blog for Business backed up this statement with a report from the Web Video Marketing Council and Flimp Media.

Why SMBs Should Get Serious About Guest Blogging — There are a number of benefits to guest blogging, but for some reason, a lot of SMBs don’t make use of this tactic like they should. Not sure why you should invest time into guest blogging? Lisa Barone has a great starter list of excuses.

Digital Product Marketing: Five More Ways to Promote Web Sales — After a while, it can be tough to come up with something new to give your site sales a boost, but Small Business Branding has some ideas.

How to Embrace the Sharing Economy — Buyer habits have changed drastically in the last decade or so. But should your marketing tactics change, too? Kelly Spors looks at the growing popularity of sharing and how it’s changing the way businesses work.

How to Run a Winning Online Contest – #PRSADIConf — There are a number of benefits to running a successful contest, but be aware that they do take some effort to set up and get going. This week, Jolina Pettice shared some great info on contests that came out of the PRSA Digital Impact Conference.

Advanced SEO, Marketing & Business Links

What Does Your Advertising Say About You? — Creating ad copy is not something you can do well, without a lot of testing, trial, and errors. This piece from Fortune Marketing Company compares a set of ads and identifies what they do well and where they go wrong. This is a great piece if you’d like to get more from your advertising and marketing strategies. And while there was no discussion on why they were good/bad, or how much money they made,Fontaine Marketing also did a similar post on video ads.

Spring Holiday Emails – Hop to It! — Vertical Response covered some fantastic spring email marketing campaigns that have been sent out recently. Again, we hope you’ll get some ideas from it and walk away having a better idea of what’s working and what isn’t.

Copywriting: How to Improve Headlines on Landing Pages and Blog Posts — Writing a headline is easy. Writing a headline that convinces someone to click through to the destination page and actually read the destination page takes talent. But this week, MarketingSherpa’s Adam T. Sutton takes some of the mystery out of this fine art.

Measure Social Media ROI With Google Analytics Social — We reported about Google including social media in its analytics a few weeks ago. Now, V3 has an excellent post on how to use it and figure out the ROI of your social media campaigns.

Customer Story: MagnetVideo Launches New Landing Page — If you’re struggling to create a profitable landing page, perhaps this case study from Preation will help. We thought it was a great way to get an understanding of landing pages and conversion optimization.

Remarketing Increases Paid Advertising Conversion — If you’re investing in AdWords campaigns, but you’re wondering how you can improve your conversion rates and get more bang for your buck, it might be time to consider remarketing. You can find out more about the practice in this week’s post from Big Marketing for Small Business.

Is Your Email Message Living to See Another Day? — This week on Business.com’s B2B Online Marketing blog, Dave Thomas supplied us with even more research data on email marketing and email lists, as well as some brilliant tips for increasing the size of your lists.

10 Essential Website Usability Tools — It’s been awhile since we posted about tools and toys you can play with, and it’s been even longer since we included a post on tools for more advanced marketers. Well, the wait is over. You’re going to love this one. Small Biz Bee also published a post on tools this week, but they looked attools that’ll help your business scale.

Coca Cola Encounters Backlash After Failed Marketing Stunt — Coca-Cola made a big oops this week with its NCAA ad campaign. It wasn’t exactly digital, but we thought it was a great example of how poorly bad PR can be handled.

Kotex Sparks Nearly 700,000 Impressions With Pinterest Campaign — On the other side of the coin, Kotex hit a homerun this week with its new Pinterest campaign. We thought it was a fascinating idea and we hope it sparks some fresh new ideas for you, too.

2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report — That’s right. The 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry report is out and it’s filled will all kinds of juicy data you can use to tweak and alter your marketing campaigns. And if you don’t want the full report, you can catch the details here on Top Rank.

Are Search Ads Still Worthwhile Alongside a #1 Organic Ranking? — Google released the findings of a new study this week. In it, they were able to prove that you should still invest in PPC, even if you already rank in the organic lists for that term. You can get the details at iNeedHits.

Google Shares 5 Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid — The search giant also took steps to help website owners this week by releasing 5 mistakes they see often and how to avoid them.

Warning: Google to Cracck Down on “Unnatural” Links — Not all the news coming out of Google was good news, however. This announcement from the search giant has caused yet another uproar. It should be interesting to see how this one pans out.

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Beginners will get to read about some marketing methods you don’t normally read about and learn a bit more about how to create content that actually works. Intermediate DIY-ers will get the change to download some free ebooks and guides, learn how to test their current sites, and discover how they can make their content more effective, too.

For advanced marketing readers, we found some brilliant research and survey information, get a few helpful linkbuilding tips, and refine their email marketing campaigns. And let’s not forget all the juicy news items we spotted out in the wild this week!

Beginner SEO and Marketing

SquidooLensMarketing — Some experts love it and others hate it. Want to try it for yourself? Get the information from Peter Geisheker and the great introductory post on Squidoo Lens marketing.

5 ThingsYourCustomersNeedtoAskBeforeBuyingWhatYouSell — No two questions will strike more fear into the heart of a new business owner than “What makes you special?” and “Why should someone buy from you instead of a competitor?” Unfortunately, without answers to these and other important questions, you can’t even begin to plan your new business. Want more info? Duct Tape Marketing published7 CompetitionCrushingValuePropositions. And when you’re ready to take the next step, head over to Do It! Marketing and read “MarketingConcept: 8 MistakestoAvoidWhenNamingYourBusiness“.

The 3-StepProcessforCreatingYourBlogVoice — The information on your blog is important, but your blogging voice is a vital part of your brand. In fact, it’s the one of the few main features that’ll keep your readers coming back. If there’s anyone out there who knows about unique blogging personalities and blogging, it’s Lisa Barone. And this week, she shared the priceless steps that helped her become so successful.

Infographic: SocialMediaVSSearchMarketing — Both marketing methods are vital to any successful website, but knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each one can make a huge difference in your strategy and planning. This infographic from the OC Business blog makes understanding these strengths and weaknesses easy.

MaketheCall – Everywhere!! — A call to action can be a powerful thing, but are you using one everywhere you should be? Or, are you missing out on some huge opportunities? Preation looked at a few important places you should have a call to action.

Intermediate SEO, Marketing & Business Tips

A/BTestingGuideforBeginners — Testing is absolutely vital for getting the most from your website and your marketing, but it can be extremely overwhelming for someone who hasn’t done it before. Big Marketing for Small Business has a super helpful how-to that’ll get you started.

FreeeBook: “HowtoUsePinterestforBusiness” FromHubspot — Considering the idea of using Pinterest for marketing? Cheap Revolution spotted a free ebook download from Hubspot that may be able to answer you questions. Oh, and you don’t have to worry quite as much about copyright and Pinterest as you did before. The social networkclarifieditstermsandremovedtherighttoselluploadedimages.

HowtoMakeYourCustomerstheHeroofYourStory — If your content is going to be effective, your reader has to be able to identify with it. And how could you resist identifying with something that makes you the hero? This week, Duct Tape Marketing showed us just how to pull that off. Lee Oddengaveabrilliantpresentationonthetopic, V3 published“It‘sAllAboutStorytelling…ItAlwaysHasBeen“, and Courtney Mills wrote the “Ultimate 24-PointWebsiteCopywritingChecklist“.

FourSocialMediaTrapstoAvoid — You can shoot yourself in the foot almost instantly in the world of social media. Are you doing it and holding your company back? You’ll have to read this post from Deluxe Blog for Business to find out. You might be surprised.

Advanced SEO, Marketing & Business Links

ContentMarketing‘sNoJoke – HowtoKeepItSweet & Succinct — By now, you know how vital it is to get your message out there. Creating content that meets those needs isn’t quite so easy, however. But never fear! Vertical Response published an excellent guide to help you learn to write concisely and write well.

WhatAreEffectiveSalesChannelsforB2BMarketing? — B2B Online Marketing’s Dave Thomas looked at a new survey recently done by Crain’s BtoB Magazine and Bizo. In his post, you’ll find some fascinating facts and some great tips to help you get more profit from your marketing efforts.

LinkbuildingLikeaNerd #SESNY — Continuing the fantastic info coming out of SESNY, BLarson published an excellent post on how to build quality links. This isn’t the usual basic post, either. Oh, and while you’re there, read“TopProblemsWithLandingPages & HowtoImproveYourConversionRates“ also from SES NY.

EmailMarketingTrends: TheResultsfrom 6 LivePollsConductedatEmailSummit 2012 — The results of these surveys are arguably some of the best details to come out of Email Summit 2012. We think you’ll find them extremely interesting and hopefully helpful in improving your campaigns. And while we’re on the topic of email marketing, visit Vertical Response’sGiveYourDashboardaMakeover: 8 EmailMetricsthatCount and Rebar Business Builders’6 TipsforGettingMoreFromYourEmailMarketing.

Great Posts Published This Week Everyone Should Check Out

3 NewChangestoMicrosoft‘sadCenter: YahooRichAds, NegativeKeywordsandLandingPages — Microsoft isn’t stupid. It knows that if it wants to compete with Google’s AdWords, it’s going to have to make some improvements. And it has. You can learn more on iNeedHits.

NoMoreFacebookWelcomeTabs: 10 TipsforaPainlessTransitiontoTimelines — Shashi Bellamkonda shared some great tips for marketers struggling to handle all the changes to Facebook pages. Bellamkonda wasn’t the only one to talk about these changes this week:

·       V3 released “HowtoMaximizeFacebookTimelineforYourBrandorBusinessPage“

·       Vertical Response published“TheUltimateProcrastinator‘sGuidetoFacebookTimelineforBrands“

·       Top Rank’s guest post entitled“FacebookTimeline: WhatAretheChangesforBrandPages?”

TwitterRollsOutSelf-ServeAdPlatformtoGreaterAudience — Twitter’s self-service ad platform has been out for quite some time, but not everyone could make use of it. Until now. Deluxe Blog for Business has the scoop.

TwitterWritesaNewGuideforSmallBusinesses…andIt‘sPrettyGood — Matt McGee covered the other juicy news item to come out of Twitter this week: Twitter’s new business guide. He gives us the details and the link if you’d like to download it.

GoogleRollsOutPanda 3.4 Update — Google stirred the panda pot once more with even more updates to its famous algo. iNeedHits reports there isn’t much to panic about, but you’ll have to read it to find out why. Google alsode-indexedafewmorelinknetworksfromitsresults as part of these updates.

ComingSoon: GoogleAnalyticstoMeasureSocialMediaROI — This announcement means website owners will now be able to get a more accurate and thorough look at their marketing efforts and the results they’re getting from their various strategies. Will you make use of this new feature?

LinkedIn‘s “PeopleYouMayKnow” GetsaFacelift — Rebar Business Blog covered an update to LinkedIn’s connection recommendation system. But we’re not so sure about it. What do you think? Has it improved this feature or made it worse?

This post is meant to be helpful for all levels of SEO expertise. You can also find DIYSEO posts classified by level of expertise on the following pages:

• Posts for any SEO experience level
• Posts for beginner level SEO (those new to SEO)
• Posts for those with an intermediate level of SEO understanding
• Posts for those with an advanced level of SEO understanding

The end of yet another week and it’s time once again to look at all the great news items and blog posts from the past seven days. And what can you look forward to?

Preation gave beginners some help with their on-page SEO and Google helps teach site owners about creating quality content. There was a lot of great information about customer profiling, some fantastic marketing ideas, and a ton of fantastic info coming out of SESNY. Let’s get to it, shall we?

Beginner SEO and Marketing

What Is a Meta Description? — Is your new website really done? What about the small details “under the hood” that can make a huge difference on your rankings and click-throughs? Preation has some tips to help you out.

5 Tips for Creating Perfect Page Titles — And while you’re working on the meta descriptions for your site’s pages, take a few minutes to fix up the page titles, too.

Google Pushes Same Old Story — Perhaps It’s Time to Listen — Google has told website owners to create content for readers, not search engines. And in the last year or so, it has been taking steps to encourage that. If you’re not sure what that means, or are new to content creation and SEO, visit this post from Small Business Mavericks and watch the video. And if you’d like some further reading on the topic, read “Avoid Google Penalty for Too Much SEO — Get Your Content in Shape” from V3.

Intermediate SEO, Marketing & Business Tips

Social Sharing: Twitter has Highest Amplification Rate, Email has Highest Conversion Rate — Marketing Sherpa talked to Angela Bandlow of Extole this week. The topic? A recent study on social sharing. We think you’ll find it quite interesting.

Customer Profiling and CRM — Small Business Branding asked a very important question this week: How well do you really know your customers? If you’ve been struggling to create successful marketing campaigns, products, and services, you might not know them as well as you think. Find out more in this post. Duct Tape Marketing also covered the topic in their post “How to Discover Your Perfect Target Customer in 5 Steps“.

How to Put the Action in Your Transactional Emails — Transactional emails are a common visitor to most of our inboxes, and they achieve something that marketing emails often don’t: They frequently get opened and read. Vertical Response shares how you can use this to your advantage and get a little more action out of these simple emails.

Advanced SEO, Marketing & Business Links

Expert Video Marketing Strategy — Spoiler Alert: Cat Videos Included #SESNY — Tired of the same old video marketing tips? Couldn’t make it to SESNY? Then go to Top Rank! They had excellent coverage of the conference and shared some of the fantastic tips and information to come out of the sessions they attended, led, and participated in. This one is sure to give your video marketing a good, solid boost.

Digital Coupons as Real Time Conversion Content — Coupon use has become a staple in many marketing plans. Are you using them? And most importantly: Are you getting the most profit from them? Duct Tape Marketing has an interesting infographic on the topic. (Don’t forget to check out the comments!)

Landing Page Tips to Increase Conversions — #SESNY — Landing pages was another hot topic at SESNY this week. BLarson covered this session by Nathan Richter, Angie Schottmuller, and moderated by Bryan Eisenberg. Some other important posts to come out of SESNY included:

• Google Bringing You Down? Tips for Avoiding Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues
• Is Your Local Optimization Landing You New Customers or Leaving Them Lukewarm?
• 7 Lessons Learned About Business Optimization From Avinash Kaushik

Great Posts Published This Week Everyone Should Check Out

Video: Google’s Plan to Eradicate Bad Ads — While the idea that Google wants to eliminate bad ads from its system isn’t news, how they’re doing it is. This post from iNeedHits explains how Google does it and some of the changes the search engine has made to its ad review system.

Video: Google Engineers Share Unprecedented Access to Search Quality Meeting — Another hot video released by Google this week showed engineers in a search quality meeting. Tons of hints and information here.

Measuring Social Media With Google Analytics — One of the recent changes for Google Analytics was the addition of social reports. Rebar Business Builders covered the basics of these reports and provided a great guide for getting the information you need out of them. Another recent change to Google Analytics is the referrer tag and how the program records search traffic. You can find out more about this juicy news item on iNeedHits.

Google & Portland State are Violating Google’s Review Policy — This may not have been an “official” news item, but it’s interesting all the same. Matt McGee discovered Google and Portland State going against the search engine’s own guidelines.

Google’s Revamp of Crawl Errors Leaves Webmasters Confused — Take a moment to visit the crawl errors section in Webmaster Tools. Notice something a little odd? Don’t panic! It was another change the search engine made this week. iNeedHits explains.

PayPal Makes On-The-Go-Payments Friendlier for SMBs — Last week, PayPal launched a new app that makes great use of the reader on your smartphone. This week Lisa Barone looked at the announcement, the app, and how small businesses can make use of it.

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This post is meant to be helpful for all levels of SEO expertise. You can also find DIYSEO posts classified by level of expertise on the following pages:

• Posts for any SEO experience level
• Posts for beginner level SEO (those new to SEO)
• Posts for those with an intermediate level of SEO understanding
• Posts for those with an advanced level of SEO understanding

Beginners can look at content and content marketing, while those of you at an intermediate level can read about QR codes, video, and F-commerce. And for the more advanced, we found some great posts on teleseminars, website redesigns, and email marketing. Let’s get started, shall we?

Beginner SEO and Marketing

Marketing Your Virtual Goods: 5 Essential Practices for Online Content Creators –While the “what” and other specifics might change, selling or pushing content online has a general process you’ll need to follow if you want to get the word out there and make as many sales (or get as many visits) as you can. Small Business Branding tells you how to do it.

Onsite Marketing: Making the Most of Your Website for Marketing — Know the difference between onsite and offsite SEO? Are you touching all the bases with your strategy? Not sure? Read this article from Free Marketing Media Group and find out what you’re missing.

Marketing 101: What Is Conversion? — This week, David Kirkpatrick of Marketing Sherpa talked about a recent event he attended and the topic of conversion. But not how to improve them or make them worth more. He got right down to the bare bones and looked at exactly what is a conversion.

Intermediate SEO, Marketing & Business Tips

Take 5…Video Marketing Tips That Is — For those of you looking for something a little different to add to your marketing strategy, head over to Vertical Response and check out their introduction to video marketing. Then, go to Deluxe for Business and read Optimizing Content to Top YouTube Searches.

Panda 3.3 and Other Search Updates — Dan Garfield of Orange Soda looked at the famous Google Panda updates, particularly the newest updates that are changing the way Google ranks content. If you’ve heard the hoopla, but aren’t sure what to do about it, or what exactly it’s about, have a read here and get in the know.

F-Commerce: Best Practices and What the Future Holds — Ever heard of F-Commerce? This form of marketing has been becoming more and more popular as time goes by, so if you aren’t that familliar with it, have a look at this post from 3.

How Can You Use QR Codes for Marketing and Lead Generation? — QR codes are the neon leggings of the 80s. They’re cool. They’re fun, but how exactly can you use them and not come off looking like you’re trying too hard? Flyte blog gave some great ideas that just might spark an idea in you.

Scary Social Media Faux Pas – Don’t Be That Guy — Vertical Response looked at social media and public relations disasters this week. But they didn’t give a list of the worst events in the last year (although they did provide some interesting statistics). What they did give, however, was a great list of what you can do to avoid them and the huge cost that comes with them.

Advanced SEO, Marketing & Business Links

Why It’s Time to Take a Long, Hard Look at Your Web Content — A guest post by Leo Dirr, this post is a fun and really well-written look at what could be wrong with your content and your marketing plan. It’s a great read. And this topic must have been on a number of people’s minds because Deluxe for Business published Why Content Matters in the Modern Business World.

Seven Important Factors to Re-Design Your Website — While you’re looking at your content, maybe it’s time to look at your site design, too. Small Biz Bee gives you seven instances where it’s time to redo the design and fix the elements that aren’t quite meeting your standards.

Get Your Share: 5 Easy Ways to Help Your Content Go Viral — Ok, so it might not make your content viral exactly, but these tips will definitely increase your shares and increase your reach. Have you missed some of these tips? Do you have more to share with us that aren’t on this list?

How to Sell Using Teleseminars — Here’s one you don’t see often. Teleseminars. This week Buzz Booster TV looked at how you can use them in your business to garner some extra sales. Watch it and let us know what you think.

Email Design: 3 Critical Factors of ‘Lucky’ Campaigns — Adam Sutton of Marketing Sherpa took his readers on a journey to the world of email marketing and what factors are most common in successful campaigns. Of course, there’s no set answer or secret, but these tips can definitely help improve your opens, click-throughs, and even your sales.

Great Posts Published This Week Everyone Should Check Out

Google Adds Local Search Feature Across Devices – Now, what users do at home on their PCs will affect what they see in the search results on their smartphones. You can find out more on iNeedHits.

Yahoo! Sues Facebook Over 10 Patent Infringements — Ok, so this might be a bit more industry gossip than make any significant changes to your marketing strategy, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Bing Launches “Search Quality Insights Series — Speaking of Yahoo! and Bing… In an effort to help site owners succeed and give their visitors more of what they’re looking for, the search engine has started to publish its series of articles on how and why they’ve made certain changes to their algorithms.

Facebook Premium Advertising: What it Means for Your Brand — Aside from the launch of timeline for businesses, Facebook also recently launched its premium advertising platform. You can learn more about it here on V3.

Twitter Buys Posterous — Jim Connolly started some interesting conversation about Twitter’s news this week: It bought Posterous. He uses the news to teach business owners a very important lesson. See what he had to say, and don’t forget to leave your own opinion.

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