How to gain high-quality links

Value: [rating=4] Our commentary: A recent post on Search Engine Land (see recommended link at the end) draws out the tactics you may want to consider if you are facing the challenge or opportunity of a client that already has 10,000's of incoming links and is a well known brand in its market. The article focuses most of its ideas around high quality & high volume links. The first being links from authority sites such as key newspaper sites or government / education related websites for example. The second is much more about volume links from lots of websites to yours, very social media & advertising orientated. Clearly the two options I have mentioned there will be on any link building task list, where this blog adds some good value is how you should then leverage your brand & other marketing activities to accelerate & improve the effectiveness of…

Using Google Analytics to Audit and Improve SEO

Here is a post explaining a simple way to add some extra info to your Google Analytics data to help improve your natural search traffic. In this post I hope to show you...

An explanation of what's missing from Google Analytics in terms of actionable SEO data. How to fix it. A free excel template so that you can play about with it yourself. A tutorial to accompany the excel spreadsheet. The actions to take as a result of the data. Some suggestions for extending this further. (more…)…

Email marketers were all-a-flutter recently when Google announced the Priority Inbox feature for Gmail. And for good reason. Not because the Priority Inbox is a big deal in itself, but because of what it represents: the era of the intelligent inbox. This intelligent (and social) inbox was one of the four trends we identified earlier this year as crucial to future email marketing, so Gmail's announcement is a timely reminder to explore that topic in more depth. In this post I'll briefly review the implications for email marketers and then suggest three approaches to help your email marketing achieve cut-through. (more…)…

Social Content Management System Tools Reviewed

Value: [rating=4] Our commentary: Since many marketers have rushed to embrace Facebook, Twitter, blogs, customer ratings and reviews, and other social media platforms"€”inviting consumers to comment on their products and services across the Web"€”they are facing an unexpected consequence: content overload. The posts, comments, tweets, videos, and other content your customers are creating about your product and services may feel like a tsunami. The lay on all the user generated content that should come as a result. So what do you do? The good news is that several social media content-management systems (CMSes) to hand that allow marketers to not only manage the distribution and placement of the online content about their brands but also analyze and leverage that content to build their businesses. Marketing Profs have created a handy reference of the best 8 that they can find. Marketing implications: Now that you've invested the time to…

The advantage of building open-source based communities

Value: [rating=3] Our commentary: Open source - some marketers cringe, others will cheer. What's the best option for your web strategy? According to Marketing Prof's open source not only offers the collective creativity of a large, vibrant community but also promises a new level of customer engagement, brand equity, and a competitive edge for today's marketers - faster. However, determining how and where open source fits into your marketing mix may be more challenging. According to Lynne Capozzi, the biggest advantages are around social media. Marketing implications: Using open source technologies in the social media space has huge advantages, not least speed, cost and minimising the need for "IT". There's an even bigger argument that the products are better, more up to date and empowering - but then you'll be the judge of that. Recommended link: Open-Source Social Publishing Opens Doors for Marketers…

Integrating social media is the key to success

Value: [rating=4] Our commentary: eConsultancy commentator, Matt Owen, writes "...traditional media is still huge and it"€™s concerning that some of the hype surrounding social media could eventually be doing more harm than good for businesses". Just as some businesses are still very slow to take social media seriously, the path runs two ways and there's no advantage to ignoring traditional media. Social media is not a magic marketing pill - nothing is. So what's the story? Integration - the expanding usage and growth of one media does not mean a decline in another. Marketing implications: It's integration, and understanding what you are using social media for. Marketers need to remember that while there is massive potential the emphasis now needs to be on integrating successfully with other marketing channels and creating a multi-channel presence rather than disparaging the effectiveness of other channels. As Owen notes: "If…

Minimising Email marketing mistakes

Value/importance: [rating=3] Our commentary: This post from Dela Quist at Alchemy Worx reminds us of the potential mistakes we can make with our email marketing based on the many campaigns he reviews. Marketing implications: Review the 6 mistakes and check how good your processes and tools are for avoiding them Recommended link: Avoiding the most common email marketing mistakes…

Value: [rating=3] Our commentary: Mark Brownlow's review of Litmus - an inbox preview tool shows the benefits of knowing how your emails appear in different inboxes. It's always been difficult to get emails to render correctly for the main readers. You're very dependent on the skills of your email designer in tailoring their HTML and CSS for Email since it's so different to web design. Marketing implications: It's particularly you ask your agency to test a new design against all the main email reading platforms listed here. Increasingly, email service providers like the SmartFOCUS tool we use incorporates email platform preview within the system and make it part of the process of editing and reviewing and email, so make sure you ask the question when you switch providers too. Recommended link: Email Tool review - review of Litmus…

How will Google Instant affect SEO and Google Adwords

Value: [rating=5] Our commentary: These brief comments on search are based on my initial comments in Twitter while listening to the announcement by Marissa Mayer Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google - before I went to get my tea! For the full-analysis on search implications I always turn to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land which is the link below. Then the more technical SEO blogs. When she promised "A fundamental shift in search" at the start of her talk I expected to be underwhelmed. When I initially hear about I thought, this is actually a fundamental shift, the most significant change since the 2007 Universal Search / Google Onebox incorporation of  images/news/video into the SERPS. Having now seen it live, I think it's more important - it is a "game changer" for…

Keyword Research Process Tips

Value: [rating=4] Our commentary: Keyword research is a little bit like marmite: some love it, a lot hate it. However tools have made the whole research & analysis of keywords a much easier task and to help we have a compilation of other keyword analysis tools for assessing customer demand for products. However, we don't mention Google Suggest... The blog post below is a great little guide to making the most of Google Suggest using spreadsheets and other tools. Suggest is a tool which can make keyword research a lot of fun and more interesting! It makes the whole experience much more human which a lot of the automated tools obviously don't and they often leave you with the tiresome job of removing irrelevant keywords. This method and tool really helps with focussing on your keywords and building your tail orientated terms Marketing implications: If you are just starting your…