Two days, three tracks, over 50 speakers. IonSearch 2013 certainly didn’t lack in ambition, nor in potential for some insightful search marketing conversation and thought.
And it did not disappoint; we thoroughly enjoyed our in time in Leeds, and came away with plenty of takeaways. With so many talks (over 40 different talks/panels), we sadly couldn’t see everything there, but we’ve put together some of the key takeaways from our favourite sessions of the conference.
Each year, webmasters and marketing managers are faced with new developments and technologies, and it can be hard to know which to adopt and which to ignore. But Google Authorship is not one something to casually disregard.
Google’s AuthorRank can strengthen the SEO value of pages published by a particular individual and now is the time to climb on board – before your competitors do.
New year, new you – but is it time for a facelift of your website’s content as well? To stay ahead of the competition and to win moments that matter to your customers, recognising the growing value of good online content is the first step; whether it’s launching a new blog, writing some guides, or revamping your landing pages and paid search text.
If you still need some persuading from the higher-ups, here’s our list of reasons for you to make content your king in the new year and beyond:
Web marketing is a constantly developing challenge and it can be useful to have staff who specialise in particular areas. That’s certainly true with online copywriting – there’s such a lot to consider that having a dedicated copywriter can make a real difference to your overall online performance.
But whether you’re a writer trying to perfect your online capabilities, or an SEO exec needing to brush up, there’s a wide range of issues to consider. Online copywriting poses its own challenges, from knowing the basics of HTML to understanding the ever-changing world of SEO.
So what help is available?
Even if you have the best intentions in the world, coming up with a constant stream of new ideas for blog posts can be pretty intimidating. All too soon, the corporate blog lies empty because the company has run out of ideas. Don’t let that happen to you! From company brainstorms to new ways of planning copy, we are going to provide you with some great tips on how to generate ideas for blog content.
WARNING: This is a long post, but we think it’s worth the read (and hopefully you’ll agree). If you really don’t have time then there’s a list of our top tips at the end!
Journalists have been frantically learning SEO and social media techniques over recent years, so they can stay ahead online. But now some of them are so skilled that SEO teams could learn a few things from them too. From writing clickable headlines, to using Twitter to network, here are all the journo skills that I’ve learnt by following (no, not stalking!) some of the best in the business…
Monitoring and Targeting
Like most blogs, news sites tend to cover a number of different subjects. For the main newspapers, these tend to be major topics such as politics, finance, property, jobs and so on. However, within those ‘channels’, similar stories often come up again and again – interest rates, house prices, unemployment figures, that kind of thing.
Journalists and editors use analytics programs to check how many readers are visiting each section and which stories are grabbing their interest. That means that they can give more coverage to the stories that really interest their readers, and move other stories further down the hierarchy. This also allows them to maximise click-throughs from their front pages because they know what stories get readers excited.
Since Google released the Panda update in February last year, the importance of having high-quality content on your site has increased hugely.
In May 2011, Amit Singhal published a post aimed to help people build better quality websites. One of the most important points to take away from it was, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, having good-quality content. Here I’m going to go into detail over some of his points and explain what you really need to do if you want to rank well.
Content strategy has always been a valued part of SEO and, with Google’s recent updates, it’s become increasingly important. No matter what size your business is, having a regular flow of good quality content on your site is essential.
However, content does take time to produce and, when you’re a small business, it can be hard to find the time or people to produce regular content for your site.
There are several options for small businesses to make the most of their resources and create a site with a steady stream of relevant, useful content. We’ll go through some of them here in order to help those of you who are finding it difficult to know where to start.
Getting visitors to go through your blog and enjoy what you have written isn’t the easiest thing on the planet. It requires time, patience and a lot of practice. To see evidence of visitor engagement you should see signs of regular activity and so should the visitor.
Here is some simple advice which might help keep your visitors engaged with your site and encourage them to come back for more.
Your goals should be:
The real aim is to keep your content interesting and be proactive. Here are some tips for achieving these goals:
Online reviews can be a divisive idea among marketers. Some welcome the user-generated keyword-rich content and increased transparency. Others argue that they have to be censored or you risk negative comments and even legal challenges.
So who’s right? This article takes a look at why you’d benefit from publishing reviews, what the risks are and how to mitigate them.
The rise and rise of UGC
UGC, or user-generated content is a fairly recent phenomenon of web marketing, and serves several of the major demands of SEO (at least in terms of how Google defines ‘optimised’ website content).
For a start, reviews are helpful to other visitors to your website – as long as they are honest. They offer an independent assessment of the quality of a product or service. No material written directly for marketing purposes can inspire that much trust.
Updating a page by posting a new review onto it shows Google (and other search engines) that the page and the website as a whole are still ‘alive’. Regularly updating a website is still one of the best ways to get it to the top of the search rankings.
On top of all of these things, like any text content added to your website, reviews contain plain, search-visible text; it may not be professionally keyworded or optimised, but it can still help you to rank higher for product names, and associated technical terms and phrases.
What are the risks?
One of the reasons why UGC is so popular is that it seems very low-risk – once you’ve added the capability to write reviews to your website, each user who posts their opinion is effectively providing you with search-visible content for free.
Signup for the SEOptimise newsletter:
Download our free whitepaper...
A blog can bring numerous benefits to your website and ultimately to your business. Download our free whitepaper to find out the secrets to blogging success…
