Why Google Keyword Rank No Longer Matters

Google keyword rankings used to be a standard for any SEO strategy. In many cases, your keyword rankings were a primary metric used to judge the performance of your site. Today, your Google keyword ranking is only part of why your traffic fluctuates.

Marketers used to have access to a lot more information on the keywords people were searching to reach content. Google Analytics provided this information with a sense of transparency, and you could get more or less what could be called accurate search volume estimates from Google’s Keyword Tool.

The first major update that changed this was Google’s move to encrypted search and the appearance of “not provided” in Google Analytics. These changes mean you can no longer see which keywords are bringing organic traffic to your site.

Then came the decision to move search volume estimates within the Keyword Planner to only show estimates in broad ranges. Instead of seeing that a keyword has been searched for 1,400 times in a month, you can see only that it’s been searched between 1k-10k times per month.

These changes have forced marketers to adapt their search strategy to focus more on a topic-centric content strategy, instead of on individual keywords.

One major criticism of keyword ranking data is that it is very inaccurate. Industry leaders and providers of rank tracking data software have even admitted that this is the case.

Reasons for the inaccuracies can be identified, and mostly fit into these broad categories:

Personalization, Location, and Device.

Personalization basically means that Google delivers search results that are personalized based on a user’s search history. This means that if you were to query “smartphones”  and were previously browsing the Samsung website, Google might tailor the search results to show Samsung at or near the top. This wouldn’t necessarily happen to someone that hasn’t previously gone to the Samsung website, which makes it difficult to determine which site actually ranks at the top.

Location and device take into account the major advancements in search that Google has made in the last few years, including the ability to take into account aspects of a search query that aren’t explicitly typed. Take, for example, a query like, “Minneapolis restaurants”.

A search for “Minneapolis restaurants” a few years ago would generate a list of websites that either talk about restaurants in Minneapolis or maybe include an actual restaurant. Today, a search for will provide Google with more information than ever before. Google sees which device you’re searching on and where you are during the search, even if you’re moving.

So, a search for “Minneapolis restaurants” at noon on a Tuesday would actually look like this to the search algorithms: “Which restaurants are currently open for lunch within walking distance of my current location in Minneapolis, MN?” This means that every search is completely personalized, without the user having to do anything differently, which further complicates matters for marketers.

Keywords with strong rankings don’t always mean to high organic traffic, let alone increases in revenue. Losing a lot of the visibility of search volume metrics makes difficult to estimate the traffic you can gain from one keyword. Factor in the evolving appearance of the search engine results page (SERPs) and this becomes an even more intense challenge.

To combat these changes and to try to get a handle on your metrics, you may want to consider changing how you analyze the performance of your content. Topic clusters are a way to do this that can give marketers clearer insights on the types of content that should be focused on, rather than individual keywords.

Despite everything stated above, keyword rankings aren’t totally dead. Keyword data can be useful for diagnosing SEO problems with your site, and also can give you insight into the intent behind certain types of searches. Mostly it is important to be aware of this information and to use it to your benefit. As a marketer, you need to be aware that the data around your keywords is not going to be 100% accurate. Which means that using keywords as your primary performance metric may not be providing you with the right information that you need for your site’s success.

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SEO vs Social Media Marketing

When you’re trying to increase your web traffic you may be wondering which is better for growing your traffic organically, social media marketing (SMM) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Is one better than the other? Both methods are continually changing and evolving, so the answer can’t really be gleaned simply.

Long story short, SEO and SMM are able to be successful on their own, but when used together have the potential to have the most influence on traffic. Essentially, by sharing content to your social media channels you should be driving traffic to your site.

Throughout the last few years, there has been an exponential growth of social media pages (Facebook and Twitter primarily) in the top 100 on Google.  An article by PrimeView states, “…SMM blogs should be receiving the majority of their visitors from social media channels, as it is their area of expertise …SMM-focused blogs perform better in organic search than SEO-focused blogs. The high levels of engagement SMM blogs receive from social media allow them to get more backlinks and referral traffic, which, in turn, helps them rank higher organically.”

This goes against Google’s stance that rank and social media presence are not correlated, showing that links with more social engagement can lead to a higher ranking. This does not mean, however, that more social activity is a way to “hack” your SEO, in fact, pushing too much low-value content on your followers can annoy them, leading to followers ignoring your posts or even unfollowing you.

So, as important as it is to post consistently, again we find that quality over quantity is key to adding value to the content you’re publishing, and key to getting post engagements and therefore improved SEO. With that, make a note that SEO should not be the focus of your social strategy and that content is still king for getting you ranked, as quality is the number one factor for Google rank.

When trying to grow your site traffic and developing content for SMM, it is crucial to put the work into placing keywords and links correctly so that your content will garner more backlinks and get more referral traffic from your social media followers. SEO appeals to an algorithm, but SMM appeals to people, so to really harness the power of both you must understand how these two key components to your marketing strategy are almost complete opposites, but yet interdependent. Content that is high ranking will bring in more search traffic, and by the nature of how the world of social media works, this search traffic will drive shares, comments and follows on your social channels.

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Marketing Tips: Keyword Research and Planning For Improved SEO

If you’re looking to improve your SEO and haven’t done much research into keyword planning, you might not realize how important it really is. Knowing how to use and find the right keywords is arguably the most important skill a marketer can hone when it comes to search effectiveness. The start of effective SEO comes from a well-built keyword map or keyword plan.

What is keyword mapping?

“Keyword mapping is the process of assigning or mapping keywords to specific pages on a website based on keyword research. Based on your mapping process you are able to then make specific on-page SEO recommendations to help make the page more relevant to the mapped keywords.” Says Adam Bate of SEO Brothers.

How to start keyword planning

Step One: Research

Put together a list of all of the words you might want your business to appear when someone searches that word. It would be nearly impossible to achieve getting your business to rank on the first page of search results for every word you choose but here you can shoot for the stars.

Tools like Moz, SEMrush and the Google keyword planner can help you expand your list and include faceted keywords you may not have initially thought of.

Step Two: Filter

Work on removing any duplicated words, as well as any that you know for a fact you won’t rank for (taking out branded terms from competitors is usually a good starting point).

Now set your keywords into sets: Priority, Secondary, and Other Terms.

1. Priority terms: Should be keywords you want to appear for right away. They need to imply that you have the answer to a question or the ability to fulfill a need; be a high volume keyword that is worth the investment, and need to be related to current and upcoming (near-future) business.
2. Secondary terms: These will come into play later on, once priority keywords are locked into optimized pages that are query-responsive. These should be keywords that relate to your site, have a decent volume and imply questions you don’t have the expertise to answer.
3. Other terms: You’ll ignore these for now, and note why you may or may not want to re-evaluate these keywords later on

Step Three: Map keywords to pages

The first thing to do when mapping is to scrape Google for your keywords and current rank. You don’t have to do this, but generally, it is useful to be able to keep things simple, rather than to manually map each page, regardless of how Google feels about scraping and rank tracking (the general consensus is not incredibly positive). Now you need to ensure that the content on the page that the clickthrough directs to actually answers what is being searched for. Sometimes your map will work perfectly, and other times, Google gets it totally wrong, so remapping is necessary to close the gap. You’ll go through this same process when you’re working with mapping URLs, starting new pages, as well as when optimizing content and existing pages.

Keyword planning is a big job, but when done right can get you noticed and moved up in the ranks of the SEO world. For a more in-depth walkthrough of keyword mapping for SEO and content creation, see this blog post from Moz that will give you a map to mapping.  

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Marketing Trends To Expect in 2018

As 2017 comes to a close it’s time to look to the future to predict what will be the biggest trends in marketing. With only a month left in the year, now is the time to reevaluate your current strategies and start working on new ones to match the technologically focused consumer. Here’s what you should be looking for this coming year.

Death of organic reach on Facebook

In the past, it was easy to see results when marketing on Facebook just by having a page out for people to find. Those days are in the past, as many marketers are reporting decreased organic traffic, leading to slowed growth and decreased conversions from social media to the website. This is due to changing algorithms that make it more difficult for non-sponsored posts to reach into the newsfeeds of consumers, but also because of the steadily increasing presence of businesses on social media.

What to do:
Start investing in a paid Facebook strategy. Over 50 million businesses use Facebook, and most are feeling the effects of the shift from organic to paid reach. Buffer’s Facebook advertising guide is a great resource for those new to the process.

Landing pages

The landing page is often overlooked, but it is one of the fastest and least expensive ways to increase conversions. A website is always a necessity, but a landing page is a focused way to ensure that your customer is seeing exactly what they want or need to see without distractions and multiple calls to action that distract from the main goal.

What to do:
Build focused landing pages for each campaign. Follow these steps for great form optimization. Build more pages for more conversions. This Hubspot article will tell you why this is so important for growth.

Integrated influencer marketing

Influencer marketing has become increasingly important to marketers, and because Instagram is becoming (for many) one of the top social media platforms, the use and understanding of influencer marketing in all verticals is becoming a valuable tool.

What to do:
Prepare for a boost of companies using influencers, especially on social media. Many companies will begin building long-term partnerships with influencers, allowing them to become brand ambassadors. However, be aware of the FTC’s strict rules and regulations about endorsement posts. The key measurements to track this year for influencer marketing are KPI and ROI.  Learn the basics of influencer marketing here, and learn how to find the right influencers here.

Personalized content

Personalized content has been having a moment lately, and the moment will continue into the new year. Hubspot reports that personalized content does 42% better than non-personalized content. It is important to understand your audience and to use the new shift towards emotional content to engage with your customers and to increase that “shareability” of your content. Storytelling with creative content will be a big theme this year.

What to do:
Begin with gathering information about your audience, even if it is as basic as their name and email address. Make the content you use to acquire this something relevant that will grab attention and encourage conversions. With the information you gather, you can begin to target your users, and provide them with content that matches their needs and lifestyle. Read more about personalized marketing here.

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Is Digital Marketing Destroying Marketing As A Whole?

Looking into the future of marketing many times forces us to look into the past. What has worked? What hasn’t? Is there something that was executed poorly that could be re-integrated into a more current strategy? But looking at the past faces of marketing might make marketers of today nervous, and for good reason. TechCrunch released an article on how the use of Google Analytics has changed marketing, and in their opinion, changed it for the worse.

Simply stated, Google Analytics has allowed marketers to focus solely on digital methods, sometimes getting poorer results than could be expected if strategies and channels were paid more attention to in the overall view of what marketing can be. Marketing has shifted completely from the advertising empire that was so renowned in the days of Madison Avenue. Gone are the days of a basic strategy and here are the days of separate and not usually equal use of marketing channels.  

This isn’t to say that digital marketing isn’t important. In fact, with the amount of people who own computers, cell phones and other devices, digital marketing (which includes social media, native advertising, influencer marketing and any mobile marketing or apps) and mobile marketing have rightfully become some of the top ways to generate more customers and revenue as well as increase public knowledge of brands.

The deceiving part of this is that at least in the United States, people are spending more and more time watching TV, with the daily time devoted to television almost equal with the amount of time spent working (According to this article from the Washington Post). But television marketing isn’t something that you hear many marketers discuss on a day to day basis, especially in the world of startups, where money is tight and marketing efforts need to do more for less.

The reasoning behind this may be that marketers of today don’t fully comprehend differences of what content, channel, and strategy are. Just like television is a channel for advertising, channels in digital marketing can be search results, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat a blog and any other platform you may think of. Content is what you post on these channels: videos, blogs, images, testimonials, the list goes on and on. And the backbone of it all: strategy. Strategy can be advertising, promotion, SEO, publicity, personal selling, direct marketing, essentially asking what the purpose of content on a specific channel is.

For marketing to work as it is supposed to, marketers need to go back to basics and relearn how they connect with their audience and for what purpose. Google Analytics does not deliver you the information you need to decide if the return on investment (ROI) you get from social media is from any specific strategy, which negates any ability to change or improve a strategy if all you see is that the ROI is there and often comes across as “good enough”.

Google Analytics is without a doubt useful and important to continue using, but the key to overall marketing success is remembering that it A) does not track all marketing efforts (only online campaigns) and B) does not always give you the details you need to make the strongest decisions for your overall marketing quality. Branch out and learn about other ways you can track your ROI and success, try new content and channels. You never know what strategies might work for you.

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Marketing Trend: Data Driven Content

Looking to make your marketing efforts a little more streamlined? Or just trying to create content that is easy to scale, right for your audience and optimized for search purposes? Data-driven content is the way to go. The biggest hurdle for most marketers is leaving the creative brain behind and getting into a quantitative mindset that allows you to look at your metrics and analyze how to improve those numbers and statistics.

It may sound scary, but using data can really improve your content, SEO and more. Try these tips and tricks from JBH: The Content Agency to get started!

If you still aren’t convinced that data is changing the way marketers think and execute their strategies, take a look at these examples that prove that data-driven marketing and content can work in any industry.

Fitness Tracking: Jawbone

Because fitness tracker Jawbone’s purpose is to collect data for consumer use, it makes sense that their marketing efforts are also highly data-driven. By collecting the data from their customers, the content that is produced is much more relevant to the lifestyles of the entire user base.

Music: Spotify

Spotify users see curated playlists and song suggestions based on their listening history, and via this post from 2013, it’s clear to see that Spotify doesn’t take their analytics lightly. Spotify also has a “Found Them First” feature, that lets you know if you were an early listener of emerging artists that are now big.

Home Search: Trulia, Zillow

Zillow and Trulia are two giants when it comes to online house hunting, but also when it comes to using data to improve customer experience. From amassing crime data to pricing and neighborhood demographics, the data compiled on these sites and individually compiled from users’ browsing sessions can help homebuyers find the perfect place.

Ridesharing: Uber

Ridesharing app Uber does the typical promotional posts and company updates but also uses the data they compile to create great human interest pieces, like this article. The data Uber uses to create content used for both societal and human nature research.

Data drives the world. How will you use it to create better content?  

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Marketing Trend: Expiring Content

Have you ever opened an email telling you that there is a “limited time only” sale, then went on to click that ad to shop even if you haven’t purchased anything from that store in years? Placing a hard and fast deadline on a sale or promotion is nothing new in marketing and sales, but with the growth of content marketing, there is now an influx of content only available for a limited time, otherwise known as “Expiring Content”.

One Day Only! Defining Expiring Content:

Moz.com defines expiring content  as “content on a website that is only relevant for a limited period of time.” The easiest examples of widespread expiring content are Snapchat and Instagram Stories. Posts expire 24 hours after being published. In a world where mobile marketing strategy is becoming more and more prevalent, expiring content is perfect for breaking through the clutter of too much available content.

Why use expiring content?

Exclusivity

If the idea of expiring content seems foolish, now is the time to reconsider. Psychologically, the human brain often desires things that are exclusive or rare. This is due to the Scarcity Principle, a psychological phenomenon that can cause consumers to purchase items or, in the case of expiring content, view posts because they are seen as more valuable because of limited availability.

Relevance

Using expiring content ensures that your content only exists for as long as it is relevant. With this mindset, you can post promotional materials, events, and contests and let the posts filter out on their own after the window of opportunity for your audience has passed.

Improved Social Reach

Snapchat and Instagram aren’t the only platforms where you can have expiring content. Facebook has a feature that allows you to set your posts to expire and you can set up blog posts on WordPress to phase out over time as well.  Some studies have shown that having expiring content can improve your social reach due to your own irrelevant older content phasing out to clear the pathways for new content to be seen.

With more proven benefits, improved reach and SEO, expiring content is making its mark on the marketing world. Will you try expiring content in your next marketing strategy?

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The Best Conferences to Attend in 2017: Tech, Marketing and Business

TechCrunch Disrupt NYC May 15th to 18th

Ideal for startups, TechCrunch Disrupt is for innovators, investors, tech fans and everyone in between, unveiling the latest in technology and key industry innovations. The Startup Battlefield puts early stage startups together to compete for the Disrupt Cup, cash prizes and the attention of investors.

World Business Forum May 31st to June 1st

Held in Sydney, Australia, the World Business Forum will host speakers including Arianna Huffington and promotes a “state of permanent beta”. Introducing new technologies and strategies is key to living in this state, and this conference empowers entrepreneurs, business owners and more to learn how to see new opportunities, use new tools and strategies and thrive with these changes.

Next Gen Summit June 2nd to June 4th

Specifically for the younger crowd of entrepreneurs, influencers and more, the Next Gen Summit was built for young minds by young minds in the entrepreneurial world. If you fit the bill for this niche opportunity, this conference in  New York City will be the place to be.

Confab Central June 7th to 9th

Minneapolis will hold the Confab conference for content strategy this June. Workshops, higher ed programming and great networking events for teams or individuals. With a focus on content strategy there are talks centered on UX, marketing, communications and more.

BlogHer June 22nd to June 24th

A conference specifically  for female content creators (bloggers, marketers, social media influencers etc.) this event is being held in Orlando, and  invites the fans, brands and other content creators to meet, collaborate and get inspired through networking with other attendees, workshops, and keynote speakers.

Summit November 3rd to November 6th

This invite only event in Los Angeles connects leaders in nearly every space, from technology to arts and culture, hosting thoughtful, well-rounded and meaningful discussion about the world we are living in. Keynote speakers at Summit 2017 include Kobe Bryant, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, CNN’s Van Jones, Jane Fonda, Olympic Gold Medalist Kerri Walsh Jennings and more. This impressive lineup of great minds will replace the Summit-at-Sea conference cruise.

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Insider Secrets For Great SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most used tools for anyone in marketing, but how many marketers actually understand it? Or go back and learn how to adapt to changes made in search behavior? The last few years have brought up some major changes to the way SEO works, and how to use it to its full potential. The changes made to Google’s algorithm, more use of anchor text within posts and increased security measures are all things that need to be taken into consideration for anyone looking to up their searchability, increase organic traffic, or even just have a better ranking on Google.  Here’s what you need to know to become an SEO expert.

Just Starting Out

If you are just beginning your journey into the world of SEO the task at hand can seem daunting.  Building a sitemap? Submitting a sitemap to Google? Where do you even begin? First things first, the sitemap is important to the general start of good SEO. You don’t necessarily have to update and resubmit your sitemap every time you publish new content, but it is a good measure if you ever put out any important updates or major changes.

The next change to think about is Mobile-First Indexing. In a mobile facing world, the importance of having a mobile friendly site is something you can’t ignore. Google prefers mobile responsive designs, so if you’re building out or re-designing your site, take that knowledge into consideration, especially due to the change that Google announced in November:  the search results index will be prioritizing mobile results first. This change is still being tested, but the update is likely to happen.  Another important thing to keep in mind is that AMP-enabled pages are treated as mobile pages as well, which will get them indexed first.

Once your site itself is optimized and submitted, you can start creating your content on the site. Anchor text, Some people argue that keywords are becoming less and less important, as in the very first days of SEO you could put as many keywords as you could possibly fit into a title or a post and still make it onto the front page of Google with that as your only SEO technique. That is a strategy unlikely to work today, as the technology has advanced far beyond where it once was. Now it is likely you will see top ranked pages all without targeted keywords anywhere in the content.

This is not to say that keywords are not important! Whether they are in a custom URL, in anchor text links, in a title of a post, or just located in your content anywhere, keywords can get your content to show up on a page that may or may not even be an exact match. Using a keyword research tool can help you find and utilize the most effective and relevant keywords for your content. But remember: top search terms only make up for about 30% of web searches, while unique searches that usually don’t contain popular keywords make up that remaining 70% of search traffic. Because of that large differential, it’s important that you use keywords from both ends of the spectrum, regardless of the diminished value of “Exact Match Domains” (EDMs). Branded keywords (keywords in the brand names of companies) can still be highly ranked even with the 2012 Google update against EMDs.

Sound Familiar?

If you’re already well versed in SEO you probably already know that keywords, backlinks, submitting your site to a search engine, and having a fully mobile responsive site are the first steps to higher ranking and increased traffic. What else can you do to keep ranking higher to a bigger audience? With every year and with every update to the parameters of the search, what can marketers do to continue the process of establishing great SEO? As of 2017, what will make a difference is going to be increased security measures, post content and user experience optimization.

Security and SEO

In a world full of online fraud and theft, Google gives a slightly better standing to those who use higher security settings on their pages, for example: using HTTPS versus HTTP links. When you obtain a certificate to verify the extra security of an HTTPS page, you become a “trusted third party”. Essentially, with this verification you get three types of security: encryption, data integrity and authentication. The process to switching from an HTTP address to an HTTPS address can be tricky for someone without an IT background, but this Ahrefs blog gives a great and simple explanation of how to get started, covers more SEO benefits and explains how to avoid any SEO concerns that may arise during a transition.

Post Content

The ideal content length used to be a short and sweet 500 words, but today, posts that are longer (around 2,000 to 2,500 words), and contain in-depth, comprehensive information are getting ranked higher and seeing increased traffic. The SEO trend Forbes says to watch for this year is dense content or posts that don’t have a specific optimized length, giving the most information in the smallest space needed, packing in the knowledge into a piece completely different than the small snippets or the huge novels of information we are familiar with. Remember also, as we shift into a mobile focused world that mobile content is usually shorter, and to be an authority on a topic does not always mean the need for long-form content. Consider using video and audio along with a transcript as a means to great SEO and mobile optimization.

User Experience

The amount of time a user spends on your site is a vital sign of your site’s engagement rate and can indicate to a search engine as to how highly the site should rank. Important factors in getting visitors to stay on and interact with your site are loading speed, appealing content, and, once again, mobile optimization. If there is no traffic to your site it may not matter how good the rest of your SEO is, so make sure to keep your audience in mind as you move forward.

Ideas of what the future of SEO will hold will continue to change as the world we live in changes. Be sure to keep checking in to learn about what you can do to ensure your business’ success.

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Social Media For Business 2

ow that you’re familiar with the basic benefits of Social Media For Business, it’s time to dig even deeper into the question of “What can social media do to better your business?” See what else this multifaceted tool can do and start seeing results like:

1. IMPROVED CUSTOMER INSIGHTS

Monitoring customer insights gives you an unfiltered view of what people think of your business, and this is only one small facet of the kind of customer insights that can come with social media. Through social listening you can gain valuable first hand knowledge about what your customers like, are interested in, and how they behave.

2. BETTER SEO RANKINGS

Strong brands have strong social media. Long past are the days where an updated blog with optimized titles and meta descriptions are enough for high rankings, the requirements for Google (and other search engines) search success is ever changing. SEO is the best way to capture traffic, and being active on social media can play a significant factor in creating a brand signal to search engines proving brand legitimacy and relevance.

3. HIGHER BRAND AUTHORITY

Brand authority is nothing short of a commodity at this point in the social media game. When people want to compliment or complain about a business they often times turn to social media first. The more your brand name is talked about the more valuable it will seem to new and existing users. Interacting with your customers often, as well as reaching out to interacting with your industry’s influencers will help boost brand authority and create clout.

4. DECREASED MARKETING COSTS

Social media is by far one of the smaller investments of both time and money that you can make in your business to generate traffic. As little as an hour a day on content and strategy can yield noticeable results. Even paid advertising (now available on nearly all major channels) is relatively inexpensive. Start small, figure out what works,  adjust accordingly and you’ll never have to fear going over budget.

5. RICHER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

The customer is always right. Right!? Well one thing for sure is that the customer always comes first. Every single customer interaction is a public display of your customer service skills. How efficiently do you deal with a customer tweeting their discontent? How gracefully do you thank a customer and hopefully interest them in another on of your products without coming off as greedy? Social media in its purest form is a communication channel, and has the ability to make your customers feel valued and appreciated not only because it’s good practice but also because prospective customers are watching!

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Content Curation For Beginners

In the day and age of “Content is King” creating all your own fresh, relevant and engaging content can be very overwhelming if not often impossible. This is why content curation is a great way to share powerful content created by industry experts and thought leaders. Sifting through the black hole that is the internet to find that perfect blog or video to share with your audience can be a daunting task, here are some options to make it a little easier!

Google Alerts

By far the easiest way to find content is to have it sent to you directly. Google has the “Google Alerts” option where you can set keywords you’re interested in receiving notifications on. Every time new content is created be it an article, blog or webpage Google sends you an email.

Social Media

You can get content from your audience directly via social media. Using Twitter’s List option and searching through relevant hashtags is a great start. Although this is a “roll your sleeves up” method, that can be tedious and time consuming, it can often be the fastest and most cost efficient.

Pocket

Having a way to save and organize your newly found content can be invaluable. Pocket gives you that option, save its button directly to your browser and start saving relevant content. Pocket also gives you the option of organizing by tags for easy future reference.

Newsletters

Newsletters and email blasts can be annoying to some, but for curators they’re shoe in. Getting on the mailing lists of some of your favorite publications is a great idea especially for those short on time. Most companies do daily or weekly recaps of their blogs, making it easy to sift through more content in a shorter period of time and pick up on what you may have missed through the other social listening tools.

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Get Ready for the Future of SEO

Recently, I ran across a blog titled, “Why You Won’t Recognize SEO in Five Years,” and it grabbed my attention. As an Internet Marketing guru, I know that SEO is a big piece of the content marketing puzzle. It is always good to stay on top of changing techniques.

Let’s take a look at some statistics around SEO:

According to Impact Branding & Design: “81% of B2B purchase cycles start with web search and 90% of buyers say when they are ready to buy, ‘they’ll find you.’”

According to NewsCred: “57% of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation.”

According to NewsCred: “53% of marketers rank content creation as the single most effective SEO tactic.”

So, what do these statistics tell us? First, if you’re not paying attention to SEO as part of your inbound content marketing plan, then you may be missing out on potential customers. Secondly, if you aren’t using current SEO techniques and strategy, then you’re already behind in the game for lead generation. It will only be more difficult to catch up.

Based on “Why You Won’t Recognize SEO in Five Years,” SEO is going to change in big ways over the next five years. Below are three areas where SEO will have the biggest impact.

1. SEO for Mobile Apps 

We all know how popular smart phones are and that people are constantly on them, so why wouldn’t mobile search become a big part of your SEO inbound marketing plan? Here’s the catch though: 85% of the time people spend on their mobile is spent in just a handful of apps. Therefore, search engine optimization for apps and the content within them is going to take on a new role within the inbound content marketing plan.

2. SEO for Social Search

We know that a lot of people rely on social media platforms when doing search on products and companies, so being present on these sites is important for your brand. They drive traffic to your site and create new leads. However, if you’ve noticed many times you never even leave Facebook when you click on a link that someone shared. Now, Twitter and Snapchat have also released features to keep viewers on their sites and apps rather than redirecting them to your website. What does this mean? Content may become more decentralized away from your website, so we will have to adapt to the new ways of optimizing our content for social.

3. SEO for Voice Search & Personal Assistants

The use of voice-activated personal assistants has been increasing over time. There are so many different ways to use these voice-activated personal assistants (computer, phone, tablet, watch, etc.). Most of us have some kind of voice-activated assistant at our fingertips. My niece attends a magnet school where they all get iPads and do a lot of work on the tablet. She uses the voice-activated assistant to search for things online regularly for school. So, why wouldn’t SEO start to take shape around voice-activated searches when a whole generation of future customers are getting acclimated to using them for search?

The newer generations are changing the way SEO will be done in the next five years. Most devices are connected to the Internet and each other. This also plays a part in the whole SEO process because search history and the way we search on each device may be taken into consideration in the overall search engine algorithm. If you’re not SEO conscience with your inbound content marketing plan, then it’s time to take another look and start preparing for what the future holds for your lead generation.

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The Secret to Building Your First 100 Twitter Followers

I regularly speak to clients, business contacts and people at our conferences who want to use Twitter more, or who have struggled with getting past the initial stages of using the site. If you are an experienced Twitter user, then hopefully you’ll still be able to share this post with friends or clients who are just starting out in building their brand or their own profile on the site. 

Getting Started

There are plenty of guides and blog posts that cover the basics of signing up for Twitter account and advice about how to use the site in general. Twitter has released their own Twitter for Business minisite, and Mashable have compiled a number of blog posts into a Guide Book.

I think it’s valuable to think in terms of building an early base of followers, since the flywheel effect comes into play beyond a certain threshold. I would pick the number 100 as a target where anybody can say that they’re beyond the ‘beginner’ stage, and where all the advice from the other guides becomes much more applicable.

Preparing for Promotion

If this is a brand new Twitter account, the first few tweets will demonstrate that you’re actually using the service and lets potential followers know what to expect. This makes gaining followers a little easier.

After creating the account, you should immediately try to publish a few interesting tweets. If there are things on your mind about your industry or area of expertise, then make a comment or two. You could make insightful remarks about your niche or publish links to useful or interesting content (though avoid promoting your own content at this stage.) You could even supplement these tweets with less formal comments, such as something funny, a comment about something that’s been bothering you, or just mention when the weather is going to change.

You can also share images and photos. When photos are shared through certain prefered services (such as Twitter’s mobile apps, yFrog, TwitPic and Instagram), they will be added to your own photo gallery. Thumbnails of these pictures will be displayed on your profile page, which will make your profile look more interesting and can encourage people to follow you. 

First 100 Followers

Depending on the existing influence of you or your company, your first 100 followers might be stunningly simple to find, or particularly difficult. I’ve suggested some straightforward ways to build this solid base of followers.

Your Friends & Contacts

The first batch of people you engage with could be coworkers, friends, clients or partners. Aim for people with whom you have a close relationship, so that you can simply email or ask them directly; friends won’t mind you asking, and you could easily pick up your first couple of dozen followers this way.

Your Blog

You can promote the account on your blog, by writing about it and explicitly asking people to follow you. (These readers can visit your Twitter profile to see the types of thing you’ve published already, and make a decision about whether to follow you.) Your blog should be a great source of followers, since the readers are already a self-selected group that trust you enough to subscribe and are interested in what you have to say: this translates well to having an interest in following you.

Email Lists

If you have an email newsletter that gets sent to certain people, you could use that list to promote the account as well. If you have separate lists for different audiences, it’s worth trying to tailor your description to each of them.

For example, a recruitment company with an email list of HR Managers could tell them something like “We’ll be sharing new advice from our recruitment agents about finding and retaining the very best employees.”

Meanwhile, the same company’s email to job-seekers might say “I’ll be publishing the best new job listings on Twitter, so you could find out about the hottest opportunites before anyone else.”

Promoting your Twitter handle

You should also begin using your Twitter username on and off the web, so that people can find and follow you without you explicitly asking them to. There are many easy ways to do this such as:

• Include a link in your email signature
• Add your Twitter URL / Name on print media such as business cards and flyers
• Consider including it on any advertising
• Include a link to your Twitter account anywhere you participate online, such as in forums or when blogging.

Finding People to Follow

Through your regular use of Twitter, you’ll discover interesting and relevant people to follow. However, it will be important to find some relevant people to follow early on.

The focus should be on accounts who you are legitimately interested in following or talking to. For example, suitable accounts might include:

• Interesting or well connected people from your region
• Local companies, restaurants, events, etc.
• Other accounts focused on your business niche
• People with similar interests to you, etc.

Three particular methods for finding these people are listed below:

1. Twitter Search

Twitter’s advanced keyword search tool (more details below) will let you find people who are tweeting about particular topics. It also allows you to restrict your search to a geographic area. For example, I might look for “seattle mariners” or “520 bridge” to find people have an affiliation with or live in my area.

2. Twitter Lists

The official ‘Lists’ feature allows you to view user-generated lists of account. Finding lists created around a particular topic may give you a selection of people worth following. (TheNextWeb has more information about Twitter lists.)

You can find the lists that a particular user has created by following the ‘Lists’ link on their Twitter page.

3. Third Party Services

There are numerous third-party sites to help discover users on Twitter. We also recommend third party services such as Listorious, WeFollow and Twellow to search for relevant groups of people.

One of the most useful services, FollowerWonk allows you to search the profile bio text of Twitter users, which can help to find users in particular niches or local regions.

Sharing Content

There will be two distinct types of tweet that you publish. The first type is one which you decided to write, independent of others. The second are is reactive to what else is happening on Twitter. Early on, I recommended that you post tweets of the former at least once or twice a day. These updates could include:

• A comment from you that demonstrates expertise of thought leadership in some aspect of your niche
• A link to news or blog content that your followers might find interesting
• Photos that are either taken yourself or found online

In addition to creating content, it is important to engage with users more directly. At minimum, this should include checking and responding directly to direct messages (DMs) and @ mentions from other users. (The @Connect link on the site lets you see people who have mentioned or responded to you. In addition, various smartphone apps will alert you when someone mentions you in a tweet.)

We recommend checking relatively frequently and responding to these messages quickly. Whether people are asking you a question or just mentioning you, a quick response will be well received by the other person.

Other Conversations

In addition to seeing things that people have said explicitly to you, scan through the content posted by the people you follow. Are there interesting posts that you would like to comment on, or conversations that you’d like to join? Go ahead and respond to anything that people have posted.

Remember that people on Twitter don’t mind receiving responses or comments from people they’ve not talked to or met before. Don’t feel you have to stick to any off-line social conventions about butting in to a conversation: this is Twitter, and people have only posted content looking for a reaction or response.

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