SEO techniques and tools that support effective SEO for 2014 and beyond

Earlier in the month I attended the SMX search marketing event in London, and as with last year, SMX 2014 offered a huge amount of knowledge and insights from a wide variety of speakers from agencies, search engines, bloggers and brands. There was a lot a take in over the two days so for this post I’ve decided to highlight five topics that really stood out:

1. Focus on user experience and engagement as well as links

Whilst links are most certainly not dead as influencing ranking, it’s clear that search engines like Google have been attempting to look beyond links for some time. So, to show the relevance and quality of a website or piece of content and therefore webmasters and marketers alike need to consider not only their thinking around link-building but other emerging ranking factors, too. In a session on Long-Term SEO: How To…

Using video for brand storytelling

There is no shortage of people out there telling us that marketing today is all about storytelling, and that if you want people to connect with your brand, you need to tell stories that they can relate to. Of course, this is easier said than done, so in this post I wanted to introduce you to some ways of determining what story you should tell.

Making a video about your product

When you first consider making videos about your product, the natural tendency is to think about making videos that revolve around the product itself - demonstrating its features and benefits. This is our connection to traditional sales-focused advertising talking. Here is a Fairy Liquid advert that anyone based in the UK of 30+ years should remember. It is a good example of a product-focused advert that clearly shows some awareness of the importance of ‘story’ and emotional connection –…

How should content marketers drive leads for B2B?

Getting a good 'lead' remains the metric that matters the most to marketers. To a Journalist, a good 'lede' is a great headline that entices readers to read the full story. As the content marketing revolution marches on, all companies will need to become, in part, media companies. Modern marketers can join the charge forward   and improve program ROI, by adopting a new CPL: the Cost per Lede.

Discussion of two biases in marketing

However, as I work with marketers around the world, I’m struck by two persistent traditional marketing biases that keep them from joining the revolution:

1. The bias in favour of director-and-above level professionals, at the expense of individual contributors; and 2. The bias in favour of opportunities and leads, at the expense of prospects and suspects. As the VP of the Global Audience Business…

How e-marketing talent can be improved with digital marketing training simulations

Business owners and agency executives are looking to provide marketing and sales staff with access to the latest technologies for reaching out to potential customers while creative leaders are looking to enable lean teams which use online tools to plan and execute complex action items with predictable results. The cloud is now enabling a new range of simulation services which can help improve the operational skills and decision-making abilities of marketers through training. For businesses reliant on digital marketing which experience turnover of personnel that holds different levels of expertise we see two areas that will be transformed by simulation: first, on-the-job training and sourcing candidates for project assignments. Since the advent of readily available computing resources, simulation has been used in training military staff, in medical schools and in the nuclear energy sector. Simulations provide considerable learning value where there is high-risk…

8 key issues to review in your post-launch website checklist for Google Webmaster Tools

During the process of creation of a website, lots of individuals (account managers, designers, developers and SEOs) will have spent many hours to create the best experience possible. But this can be wasted if certain checks aren't made after launch to ensure that everything is running smoothly from SEO. Apart from the essential Google Analytics customisations I described previously and review of routine onsite SEO checks (e.g. proper implementation of meta titles, meta descriptions, text links, heading tags, 301 redirections etc.), it is also essential not to check Google Webmaster tools as part of the post-launch process. In this post I will take you through the checks I regularly make as a guide.

1. Verification of the Site on Google Webmaster Tools

Why do we need to verify the ownership of our website?  According to Google Webmaster Tools: ‘we need to…

What’s New in Marketing? Our summary of digital marketing advice and developments in April 2014

Three of the main social networks updated their profile pages in April. Have you updated yours to fit in with the new designs? See the social media marketing section for details.

Strategy and planning

Key digital marketing priorities for 2014?. In this article Dan reviewed new research from Deloitte/Exact Target which discusses priorities - how do yours compare?Take our digital marketing healthcheck. Have you taken our free healthcheck? We’ve updated this to include our latest research and recommendations. It’s designed to be quick to take with just 5 questions across each of our RACE Planning framework.

Improving results with the aggregation of marginal gains philosophy. In this article I took a look at applying Dave Brailsford’s philosophy of excellence to improve results from digital marketing.…

Why is marketplace analysis important for digital marketing and what does it involve?

For me, marketplace or situation analysis is a key part of creating a digital marketing strategy.  We've included it as the starting point in our RACE digital strategy planning framework - it includes these key areas for defining the future opportunity or potential for digital marketing for which I've added examples at the end of this post. But some, maybe many, would ask "what's the point of situation analysis? We don't have time, why don't we just get on with our search, social and email marketing to hit our sales targets". The problem with this, is that if you're always operating in "campaign execution mode", you don't really know what's possible from digital marketing; you're "shooting in the dark". For us, taking time out regularly for…

Research on UK SME usage and attitudes to online marketing

Over 188 UK small and medium business responded to Browser Media's survey at the London Business Show, providing insight into how SMEs are using and investing in online marketing today. We think you will relate to their findings.

79% felt the website was critical to their marketing, yet 28% are happy with their Google rankings and 4 in 10 are investing in their websites!

The survey highlighted:

SME managers and owners are familiar with social media marketing, email marketing and SEO. Over 50% manage their digital activities in-house and one third have Agency support. The least familiar online marketing tactics are content marketing, affiliate marketing and inbound marketing.

Summarising the research, Joe Friedlein, Founder and Managing Director at Browser Media said:

…

Vision-setting examples for digital examples

When we discuss goal-setting and measurement for Internet marketing and Ecommerce, it's all too easy to start reviewing nitty-gritty measures from analytics like bounce rates, conversion rates and average order-value.

But if you do this, you fail to capture the big picture and create a long-term vision of how the Internet and other digital channels can really contribute to your business as a whole.

Using BHAG thinking can help you think out-of-the-box and think BIG.

BHAG stands for "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" and was popularised in a 1996 Harvard Business Review article by James Collins and Jerry Porras on Building Your Company's Vision.

Here are two examples of how companies define their long-term vision with BHAG.

Case study 1. How ASOS reports it's Ecommerce KPIs

Pureplay fashion retailer Asos has been very successful in taking on the established providers…

Applying Dave Brailsford’s philosophy of excellence to improve results from digital marketing

The recent announcement that Sir Dave Brailsford has stepped down as British Cycling performance director to concentrate on Sky team management reminded me of his famous philosophy for improving performance from his team and how it can be applied to digital marketing.

British Cycling describe his marginal gains philosophy as perhaps his greatest British Cycling legacy. The technique is encapsulated by this quote:

“If you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by one percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together,”

Implementing his marginal gains approach initially led to success in Chris Hoy’s gold in the kilometre time-trial and Bradley Wiggins’ gold in the individual pursuit in Athens. More recently, multiple Olympic gold medals and…