Content Archives - Page 5 of 17

March 27, 2017

3 Strategic Ways to Get Links to Your Website

“Link building” is something I’ve never done in my 19 years of publishing online. In other words, I’ve never spent any time whatsoever emailing strangers and trying to convince them to link to my content. I have, however, been on the receiving end of many link-building requests. And they’ve never worked on me. Now, I know there are smart people who work on behalf of clients to get links through these outreach initiatives. Strangely, I’ve never received a link request from a smart person. It’s usually just dopey people using bad email scripts and automation that some clown sold them on. They don’t even bother to modify the language, so you see the same lame emails over and over. Outside of receiving compensation for a link (which I would never accept and is just a bad idea in general these days), I don’t see why any online publisher would agree to these requests. What’s in it for us? So, if you’re looking to get links to your site for all the benefits that come with it (including enhanced search rankings ), maybe you should try a different approach. Let’s look at three that might work for you. 1. Guest posting Not a new approach, certainly. But guest writing for relevant and respected publications remains one of the best ways to gain exposure to an audience that builds your own. And of course you’ll want, at minimum, a bio link back to your site in exchange for your content contribution. Now, you may remember that Google at one point spoke out against guest posting for SEO . Yes, spammy sites submitting spam to other spammy sites in exchange for links is not smart — but that’s not what we’re talking about. I’m also not necessarily talking about content farms like […]

LinkedIn Analytics: A Guide for Marketers

Why do we care about metrics? Hootsuite’s senior manager of customer success, Gerard Recio, says it best: “Without measuring your social media efforts, how are you able to tell if your social strategy is working? Use analytics to establish baseline targets, then create short and long term goals to work towards.”

We’ve given you the rundown for analytics across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest—so it’s about time LinkedIn got in on the action. To help you get the most out of LinkedIn analytics, we put together the following guide.

Content Marketing and Customer Acquisition: How to Calculate Your CAC, CLV, and ROI

A series of weekly videos shared on Facebook generated 15 new customers for you over the course of a month. Pop quiz: is that result worth the effort you put into it? There’s no way of knowing: You need to identify acquisition costs, marketing spend, lifetime value, and more; you need to compare stat A with stat B. In short, tou need to put the data into context. Content marketing in 2016 was an undisputed champion. A full 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each day. Content marketing leaders experience traffic growth that is 7.8x higher than that of content marketing followers. Inbound (i.e., content) marketing costs 62% less than outbound methods, but generates 3x as many leads. But (there’s always a "but") some may question the point of it all. Sure, content marketing spreads brand recognition, assists with SEO efforts, and builds your reputation and authority, but is that enough? If you’re on the content bandwagon but don’t know your customer acquisition cost (CAC) and customer lifetime value (CLV), you’re playing a dangerous game: You might be spending thousands on blog posts or infographics and assuming it’s worth those seven new clients you picked up, but is it really worth it? To some, it always comes down to dollars and cents. They want to see facts and figures that demonstrate the monetary value of the strategy. In the past, that kind of talk had content marketers gasping, clutching their chests, and muttering about "engagement this" and "awareness that" under their breath. But you can show the financial side of content. It can even be simple. And you need to do it to understand the big picture. Ready? Even if math scares you a little, I promise this won’t hurt. The Building Blocks Customer acquisition […]

Which Content Marketing Strategies Have the Biggest Impact on Keyword Rankings?

The term “content marketing” is a wide umbrella. It encompasses a plethora of different strategies and techniques. But at the end of the day, one of your primary goals is to create content that ranks as highly as possible on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is important because organic traffic is the number one means of generating traffic for many companies. A study from The Bright Edge even “found that organic search drives 51 percent of all visitors to B2B and B2C websites trumping all other non-organic channels.” This means one thing. You need to figure out the relationship between content marketing strategies and keyword rankings. This is instrumental in fine-tuning your content marketing campaign and finding the right areas to focus on. In this post, I analyze data from multiple studies and draw on my own knowledge and experience to give you a clear idea of the content strategies demanding the most attention. So, let’s see which strategies have the biggest impact on keyword rankings. Rich content I won’t waste your time telling you about the importance of creating quality content. You already know that. But I’d like to share with you this statistic from an infographic on Quick Sprout : That’s a lot of links! And I’m sure you know the integral role links play in SEO. This graph from Moz illustrates the importance of links and their influence on Google’s algorithm: Let’s put this information together. When you create rich content, it gets you more links. These links improve your overall SEO, which improves your rankings. So, being diligent about achieving and maintaining rigorous quality standards should be of the utmost concern. Long-form content Here’s the deal with long-form content. It’s hot right now. Scorching hot. I remember a few years ago when your average […]

To Drive Massive Online Traffic, Start With What Your Audience Loves

With content overload at an all time high, competing with heavy-hitting media sites seems impossible. They’ve staked their claim, and all the rest of us can hope for is to pick up the leftovers and eke out a meager living. Nonsense. On August 17th of 2016, Arthur Tubman and the team at Monday Monday Network did the impossible. Within the first 45 days of launch, their site attracted just under 9 million visitors and today their daily average visitor count clocks in over 600k. The question is: How? Answer: By adopting a them-first approach before pushing go on a single piece of monetized content. While much of their approach centered around Facebook, there’s nothing magical about Facebook ads and there are plenty of other creative ways to drive traffic . The lessons from the launch, however, prove that the bedrock principle of all marketing is still true: it’s not about you … it’s about them. Here’s how you can take that advice to heart. Start with what you love. When it comes to social media, brands are notorious for taking one of two misguided paths: “dominating” or “dumping.” With the first, businesses — particularly e-commerce — dominate their feed with heavy-handed promotions, pitches, and products. With the second, social is treated as little more than a repository for that same business’ usual onsite content — i.e., a digital dumping ground. Both approaches, while well-intentioned, amount to a social-media presence that screams, “Me first.” In contrast, consider Monday Monday Network’s approach. Today, the site hosts 24 separate topics — basically channels to which they post roughly 30 articles a day. Each of those topics began its life not as a column or blog, but as an individual Community Page on Facebook. Some communities they took over — like Addicted 2 […]

How to Produce Juicy Content That Catches Eyeballs

In Los Angeles, where I live, I constantly see billboards for popular YouTubers…which tells me that Google (who owns them) is investing a lot of money into helping popular brands succeed. More and more frequently, we are seeing popular YouTubers transcend the internet and move into more traditional media and movies, knocking down the gatekeepers that held the old guard in place. Guess what? It’s still free to start making this type of content. All you need is a laptop with a webcam and a free YouTube account. You can record the videos on your computer and upload them. Within minutes, you’re up and running. Of course, you’ll improve your content and upgrade your equipment as you keep going…but the point is that it’s free to start. So what are you waiting for? Related: These Are the 18 Most Popular YouTube Stars in the World — and Some are Making Millions How to produce content that people want to read, watch or listen to: The first decision you’ll have to make is what you want to talk about. This applies not just to written content, but to all content. What are you good at? What could you talk about enthusiastically for days from many different angles? It could be one thing, or a collection of things, but find those core ideas. For instance, the core idea and focus behind Rich20Something is helping young people live better lives by upgrading their wealth, health and happiness. I use my own experiences to write about making more money, becoming more well-rounded and feeling better about yourself. This could take the form of: Step-by-step how to’s for starting a freelance business Case studies of successful readers and students who’ve left their boring jobs to become entrepreneurs Thought pieces on my philosophies behind improving […]

Marketing’s Artificial Intelligence Revolution Is Here

Chief marketing officers have one of the hardest jobs in the corporate world. According to research by the consulting firm Russell Reynolds, it’s only getting harder. Last year, CMO turnover reached its highest point since Russell Reynolds began tracking the data in 2012. After years of swift technological development disrupted marketing to its core, CMOs and their teams are now responsible for a bevy of critical company functions: optimizing the sales process, improving customer experience, and marketing the product across a complex array of channels. Meanwhile, CEOs understand that technology allows for accurate tracking of marketing dollars spent, creating immense pressure on CMOs to perform. Now, another technological breakthrough is on the horizon: artificial intelligence (AI). According to many experts , AI has the potential to be the most revolutionary technology since computing itself—and marketing is first in line for disruption. Should marketing leaders panic or celebrate? It depends on who you ask. The artificial intelligence hype machine 2016 was a big year for artificial intelligence. Google’s AlphaGo program defeated the world champion in the complex game of Go , a landmark in AI development. Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all made significant investments in AI. Wired proclaimed that the world’s biggest tech companies are “remaking themselves around the technology.” In marketing, Salesforce and Adobe announced new intelligence programs, called Einstein and Sensai, respectively. We’re in the midst of an AI arms race. “I’m astounded in how AI is going to transform every industry,” said Leslie Fine, VP of product at martech giant Salesforce. “Companies today face an imperative to integrate AI into their products and services, or risk becoming less competitive with companies who are applying AI to improve customer experiences and make more intelligent business decisions.” But what is AI exactly? And how does it apply to […]

How Your Content Can Be Your Best PR

According to BuzzSumo, the Internet grew by a little over 500 link building-related articles last month. Buzzsumo content analysis report Of course, this is a good thing, as everything that was published before April 24, 2012 can be safely disregarded thanks to Google’s Penguin update. Yes, 2012 happened forever ago, or at least that’s what it feels like, but some of those old posts and articles still pop up here and there in search results (speaking of link building done right). No doubt, link building is still an in-vogue topic not only because it is one of the most important ranking factors , but also because it’s a vital part of any brand’s credibility or PR strategy. People tend to purchase services or goods from familiar brands, so that means your company’s name has to resonate with your potential consumers when they are sifting through numerous other brands. Being mentioned by popular online news resources is one of the best ways to gain your clients’ trust. In this article, I am going to discuss some link building strategies that any company will find affordable to implement. Since I have in-depth expertise on building links through content creation and distribution, that’s what we’re going to focus on here. I strongly believe that basing your link building strategy on content management principles will not only earn you links but will also increase social shares along with referral traffic. Interviews Whether you’re presenting an existing idea in a new light, capturing a new audience, or simply growing your list of connections, interviewing the right people for their insight is a smart move that makes sense for brand publishers. However, it’s so easy to bungle or miss a potential opportunity. Below are a few things worth keeping in mind if you want to […]

Three misconceptions content strategists have about metadata

As every content strategist knows, content needs management. Most often, content is managed by an IT system referred to — unsurprisingly — as a Content Management System, or CMS. Many content strategists also know that another technical tool helps to manage access to the content as well, something called metadata. But what metadata is, and does, it often not clear. I want to address three common misconceptions about metadata for web content. To understand how metadata is misunderstood, we first need to understand the purpose of metadata. Metadata exists so that computers can understand what the content is about, which allows these computers to deliver the appropriate content to audiences. Audiences are the ultimate beneficiaries of metadata, but they aren’t the immediate users of the metadata — computers are. When viewing content, audiences see text on the screen that looks like metadata, such as a label identifying a menu item or a descriptive field on a webpage. But what they are seeing may not actually be what computers are using to decide which content to deliver to the viewer. Some of the organisational elements that audiences encounter when viewing content are just styling as far as computers are concerned. What humans see and understand, and what computers see and understand, can be very different. Even if the content looks highly organised, that doesn’t mean that computers will understand that organisation. I want to qualify my prior statement about the purpose of metadata, to make it even more explicit. Metadata exists so that any computer can understand what the content is about. This is an important distinction. You may have a neat file structure in your CMS that helps you manage your content. But that doesn’t mean that other computers will understand what the content about. What makes sense to […]

7 Easy-to-Forget SEO Steps You Need to Consider Every Time You Publish

“But I don’t really think about SEO very much anymore.” That was my initial reaction when we all agreed that March would be SEO month here at Copyblogger. At which point, of course, I knew I’d have to write about it. “Look, I just create useful content for people. Do that, get it read, get it shared, get links, have good hosting and fast page-load times … and productive search engine results will follow, right? I mean, what else is there to say?” Turns out, plenty. Keyword research is more fundamental to your content marketing strategy than you may think. Also, you may already be making fatal optimization mistakes . Plus, who knew SEO advice could be so … practical ? (Including #8, which will punch you square between the eyes.) I read those articles, rethought my position, and decided to examine exactly how much I actually think about SEO on a post-by-post basis. And, turns out, plenty. (Whether or not I realized it.) It’s easy to forget about the basic steps I’m going to outline below, but they shouldn’t be overlooked. Because the minute I stop doing them is the minute my content starts attracting fewer targeted visitors. Same goes for you. So let’s start at the top, because the first one is by far the most important of the seven — and it will take me the longest to explain. ( Note: I’m going to use my site AssemblyCall.com as an example throughout this post. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform , which has all of the tools I’m about to mention built right in. And thank goodness, or I’d probably forget about them. StudioPress Sites has all of these tools built in, too.) 1. Be extra intentional about your SEO title tag You don’t have to […]