TopRank Internet Marketing News

No matter what type of content you are producing – video, audio, images, a blog, or content on your site about your products and services – it’s important to make sure it’s optimized for maximum appeal to your readers and the search engines. However, you must ensure that your optimization does not reduce the quality of your content for your targeted audience.

Increasing Exposure to Search Engines

Assuming you’ve already identified your competitive keywords it’s essential that you keep your primary focus on providing value and making your content readable, while secondly focusing on keyword density.

This question can be a bit complicated to answer. It’s not easy – there are no tips, tricks or a series of steps to take to make a certain type or piece of content appealing to the widest audience. Unfortunately, no one has a magic bullet for that, or I would surely be sharing that knowledge with you. If someone has that information, please share it with me!

Depending on who you talk to there are many varying opinions about content curation.  Some say there is no place for curation while others believe curation should be a leading element of your online marketing strategy.  What do we suggest?  Finding a middle ground somewhere in between.  There is without a doubt a place for curation it just has to be used appropriately.  Content curation should be considered an extension of your original content on your website or blog. Below we have included some content curation best practices as well as different types of curated content.

Content Curation Best Practices

When should you start with Content Marketing?  Today’s online marketing is a race where the stakes are high, competition is tough and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to create a sustainable, competitive advantage. Consider these questions to help you answer, “When Content Marketing is right?” for you:

• What’s the right time to understand who your best customers are? Who are your “worst” customers?
• When is it a good time to know what your prospects and customers care about and why they buy?
• What triggers your prospects to discover, consume and engage with content that inspires sales, social shares and referrals?

Blogs are great for promoting key messages and distributing information about a brand, company or organizations. Starting a blog can be a valuable tool to help businesses sell their products while making better connections with customers, but it’s not as simple as slapping up some content. Creating a blog that is seen, shared and respected takes some research, strategy and consistency. Here are a few tips that I incorporate at Online Marketing Blog which other companies can follow to increase the value their corporate blog provides.

LinkedIn has long been the social media tool of choice by many professionals.  In the past it was used mostly as a contact database of everyone you have interacted with on a business level.  Recently LinkedIn has added some additional features that make it easier for marketers to reach their target audience. What are some best practice approaches to using LinkedIn for engagement?

Update Your Status Frequently
Your LinkedIn contacts will be very interested to know what you’re doing professionally.  Why? The majority these contacts will most likely be colleagues, prospects, or networking contacts. Your LinkedIn personal profile is a great stage for sharing your professional development and sharing things that you think they will find to be of interest.

The culmination of a deal signed just over a year ago is that Microsoft’s Bing now powers Yahoo! search. The actual search impact remains to be seen, but it’s worth noting that the two search engines together (Yahoo! and Bing) account for only about 30% of U.S. searches – with Google at 65%.

As with any other type of content published in support of content marketing initiatives, mobile content must be findable.  And this means adjusting your optimization and creation efforts to ensure you both identify – and produce – content that effectively reaches your mobile audience.

Because different mobile devices will render your site in different ways, it is most critical to first determine what percentage of your audience is accessing your content through a mobile device – and, of course – what type of mobile device they are most commonly using.  The ‘Mobile’ visitor segment in Google Analytics will provide you an overview of this critical data point.

The Wind & The Sun, arguing over who is stronger, decide to settle their dispute based on which can compel a passing traveler to remove his coat.  The harder the wind blows, the more the traveler clutches his jacket tightly.  The sun, meanwhile, must simply shine gently until the warm traveler is compelled to remove his coat of his own accord. -Paraphrased from Aesop’s Fables

If you are a marketer breathlessly trying to convince your C-suite of the need for content marketing, you likely identify with the wind’s role in the fable above.

A fairly common – and quite fair – question by many companies when seeking a social media consultant is, ‘can you help us with Facebook?’

The answer, provided by most firms, is ‘of course.’   But what positions some social media consultants above others is this:  the best consultants will never agree to such a narrow focus.

For metaphorical purposes, let’s pretend the consultant in question is a golf instructor.  Each day, you pay the instructor, and he helps you master the first hole of stunning 18-hole course.  Weeks later during a tournament, you double-birdie the first hole – and don’t come within a whisper of the competition the entire balance of the day.  Would you consider the money paid to the golf instructor as money well spent?