Archive for the ‘Search & Marketing’ Category

I’ve worked with a number of website designers and developers over the years, many of them good people with a plethora of skills I couldn’t even dream of having. But one thing gets under my skin: when developers claim to know SEO when they clearly don’t.

Many developers do have a solid grasp and understanding of SEO concepts and some even dig in to become tried and true SEOs as well. Those that fit this latter group are few and far between, and those from the former group know as much about managing an SEO campaign as a community organizer knows about managing a country.

Many (but not all) developers know what it means to create a search engine friendly (SEF) website. But that is not the same thing as optimizing a website for top search engine ranking performance. Think of building a website as building a car. You may have created a high-performance machine, but it’s not ready to compete in the Indy 500 when it rolls off factory assembly line!

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Our team The Pit Crew has read some informative and helpful articles on Web marketing this week. Here are our picks.

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Getting the most value from your SEO investment isn’t always easy. There are a lot of factors that go into every SEO campaign and it’s not always easy to cut something out without negatively affecting something else, or worse, the entire campaign. I addressed some of these issues in my last post linked above, and here I wanted to provide some additional insights on ensuring your SEO investment is a valuable one.

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Here’s a synopsis (and some snippets) of the best online marketing articles our team The Pit Crew has read this week.

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What makes a good SEO? Is it just about having knowledge of search engine algorithms, being able to tweak code for the biggest ranking impact, or inserting keywords into a page to give it a better keyword focus? Is SEO all about search engine rankings or is there more to this than meets the eye?

Several years ago I wrote, “Gone are they days when SEO focused exclusively on top search engine rankings.” I wish I was right about that, but unfortunately, we still see a lot of SEOs doing just that today. Not the good ones, mind you, but still, far too many.

Today’s top-tier SEOs are getting out of the search engine ranking business entirely. Well, maybe not entirely, but they understand that there is so much more to online success than a top position for your keywords. Many clients still need convincing.

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If you’re among the uninitiated with content marketing and feeling the pressure to ‘just do it,’ there are scores of excellent books, webinars, e-books and blog posts for your learning pleasure. But, if you don’t have time for that kind of full-blown affair, the Grande Guide to B2B Content Marketing – available for review on October 4 – is the perfect quickie. This 16-page treatise by Content Marketing Institute’s Joe Pulizzi and Eloqua’s Joe Chernov boils content marketing down to its most basic form, leaving the rest to your imagination.

With help from Ann Handley and CC Chapman, authors of Content Rules (the insightful book I’m currently reading), Pulizzi and Chernov look at the fundamentals and best practices of content marketing with a special emphasis on B2B, including sections on tactics and measurements. In it, you’ll get answers to questions like: Click here to keep learning

Keyword research is an important part of the optimization process. There are thousands of ways, tools and resources to do keyword research. Every SEO has their own methodology, favorite data and ways to organize and sort through that data in order to create solid keyword lists for their SEO campaigns.

But there is more to keyword research than just the research. You have to be able organize and sort your keywords into groups that will allow you to optimize them most effectively into your website.

This post will walk you through the organizational side of the keyword research process, using a customized keyword research spreadsheet I have created to make the process easy. You still have to do the research, but this tool helps us create keyword lists for on-page optimization.

Let’s get to it.

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Sometimes getting conversions is like trying to capture mist in a jar or water with your fingers. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to get a secure hold on them.

There are countless test you can do with your website to help increase your conversion rates. A/B and multivariate tests can help you increase your conversion rate a couple of points, which can often translate into thousands of dollars of increased profits. But in all that conversion testing, trial and error, banging your head against the wall and twisting customer’s arms until they cry “UNCLE!,” there is often one overlooked piece of information that can help you dramatically improve your conversions.

That piece of information is: information. Content, to be exact!

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Companies focus a great deal of attention on two things: ROI and the bottom line. Rightfully so. When you invest thousands of dollars and perhaps hundred of hours in a something you believe will help your business grow, you want – and deserve – to see some results. So, a question we often hear is:

How much does online marketing cost?

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He doesn’t know a thing about conversions or usability.

He thinks his way is the only way to do SEO.

Recommendations for your meta keyword tags are considered “critical.”

When all your competitors are buying links but your SEO recommends “playing fair.” (via chrisfaron)

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