8 Essential Concepts Every Digital Marketer Should Understand

There’s an old story about a reporter who visited a skyscraper construction site. He approached one worker and asked what he was doing. “I’ve got to pour this cement before it sets, don’t bother me,” was the reply.

The reporter asked another man the same question. “I’m setting this rebar, don’t bother me,” the man said. Over and over, when asked what they were doing, each worker irritatedly explained their task at hand.

Finally, the reporter interviewed the lowest man on the job totem pole—the hod carrier. His job was to scoop up clay on a flat board, then hold it for someone to trowel it onto a wall. Not exactly the most interesting or inspiring work. “What are you doing?” the reporter asked.

The young man stopped and looked up to where the top of the building would be someday and said, “I’m building a skyscraper.”

There is no shortage of specialties in an average marketing department. There is certainly no shortage of small, incremental tasks to be completed, either. But it’s important to ask yourself: Am I pouring cement, or am I building a skyscraper?

The most successful marketers tend to be skyscraper builders. They understand how their role fits into the overall plan. Which means they have a base understanding of what everyone else is doing, too. Having that context can only make your work better. What’s more, you can avoid being commodified—being thought of as “the content guy” or “the SEO woman”—and expand your role.

You don’t have to be an expert on everything, of course. But even if you never touch one of them in your current role, it’s important to have a basic understanding of these eight concepts:

#1 – SEO

SEO is rapidly becoming a highly specialized field. It’s one of the fastest-changing aspects of marketing, too, as search engines continue to refine their algorithms to provide a better searcher experience. A major part of SEO now is simply having content that is the best answer for your potential customers.

That said, there are some old-school basic SEO elements that every piece of content should have:

• A title tag fewer than 80 characters long, to avoid being shortened in results pages
• A meta description that describes the content in 160 characters or fewer
• Header text (H1 tags) for the most relevant text
• Alt descriptions for images that describe the content of the image
• Descriptive text for links (not just “Click Here” or “More”)

If you want to dig deeper into SEO basics, Google’s SEO starter guide is a great resource.

#2 – Optimizing Content for Web Reading

Even if you’re not a content creator, it’s important to know how people read content online versus print. Online reading habits affect everything from SEO to design.

People tend to ‘scan’ online content rather than read it top-to-bottom. Long paragraphs and lack of navigational elements can send readers back to their search engine results for a more reader-friendly page.

Keep paragraphs short and to the point. Just two to three short sentences is enough, for the most part. Make sure there is plenty of white space breaking up your content into snackable sections.

Add headers (with the H1 tag, as above) for each topic. That way, skimming readers can see your most important points at a glance.

#3 – Content Planning

As a content creator, this is an important bit of context that I sometimes have to go out of my way to get. It’s easy to relax into being told, “here’s your topic; fill up a bucket with words and send it off.” But that’s ground-level thinking. It’s important to know how content planning works, where the topics are coming from, and how to do that research for yourself.

Learning the process of content planning can help you achieve content mastery. You’ll write better content because you fully understand the need you’re trying to meet.

#4 – Full-Funnel Content Strategy

We have a three-stage funnel model at TopRank Marketing: Attract, Engage, and Convert. Buyers in the Attract stage may not be actively looking for a solution. They might not even be aware they have a problem. Those in the Engage stage are looking for a solution, researching their options. Those in the Convert stage have made a decision to buy, and need a final nudge to our client’s solution.

That model drives nearly everything we do. We develop content for each stage of the funnel, each with radically different SEO strategy, amplification strategy, and targeting. It’s important to know your funnel, and how your role fits into the overall full-funnel strategy. 

#5 – Paid Social Media

It used to be simple to get reach on social media. You put out great content, build an audience of followers, and they shared your content to their networks. Easy. Simple. And above all, free.

Now, the big social media guns like Twitter and Facebook are undeniably pay-to-play. Without advertising, you’re only reaching a fraction of your followers, let alone attracting new ones. Even on LinkedIn, which has yet to embrace the algorithm scourge, you can reach a much broader audience with a little strategic boosting.

Learn the basics of social media advertising with this post.

#6 – Online Advertising (Pay Per Click)

Pay per click (PPC) is for organic search what your paid social media is to your organic reach—a way to reach a broader audience and prioritize your content over others. For a price.

This LinkedIn Marketing blog post has a ton of resources to help you grasp the basics of PPC.

#7 – Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is rapidly becoming a go-to solution for co-creating great content and increasing content amplification. It seems simple enough—find influential people, get them to share your stuff, profit—but each of those steps has plenty of sub-steps built into it.

Influencer marketing involves content strategy, content creation, and amplification. Since it touches multiple roles, it’s a good idea for every marketer to at least have a grasp of the fundamentals.

#8 – Measurement

Unless your role specifically requires it, you may not need to know exactly how to track, measure, and report on the results of your marketing efforts. But it is important to understand your department’s overall goals, the goal for each piece of content, and how progress will be measured. Goals and metrics vary widely, so I recommend tapping the metrics & analytics experts in your organization for an overview.

Reach for the Sky

The difference between a ground-level grunt and a skyscraper builder is a sense of context. That knowledge of the bigger picture can inform how you do your day-to-day tasks, set you up for future success, and even inspire you to build a taller skyscraper. If you’ve had your eyes on the ground, get together with your team and share information about each other’s roles. Learn a little bit of what they all do, and make sure you’re all building the same building.

Need help with any of these 8 areas of expertise? Our team of skyscraper builders is standing by.

By Joshua Nite

Article Source: http://www.toprankblog.com/2016/05/essential-concepts-digital-marketer/

SEO Checklist for Content Marketers: 21 Common Mistakes to Avoid

With so much content being created, published and promoted online every second—as well as consumers becoming increasingly self-directed in their quest for answers—competition to capture your audience’s attention has never been more fierce.

As a result, quality and strategic SEO has probably never been more important for helping you be the best answer whenever and wherever your audience is searching.

But as seasoned marketers know, SEO has gone through a tremendous evolution since its early days of keyword-focused content. With more than 2 trillion searches happening on Google every year, today’s SEO is about finding the perfect balance between user-centric content and convincing search engine crawlers that your content is supreme.

Of course, on the journey to creating the perfect content for both humans and search, you may make some mistakes. But the good news is that may are easily avoidable.

Below we dive into some of the most common SEO mistakes, as well as tips for helping you avoid or remedy them.1

#1 – Optimizing content around one keyword.

In the “old days” of SEO, it was common practice to optimize web pages with a specific keyword that you wanted to rank for. Today, that practice not only provides a poor user experience for your audience, but it’s simply ineffective since search engines are becoming increasingly better at determining search intent.

Tip: Simply put: Do not optimize any pages for just one keyword. Instead, think bigger about the need your content can fill and hone in on keyword topics that include a variety of relevant and related search terms.

Think bigger about the need your #content can fill and hone in on keyword topics. @CaitlinMBurgess #SEOCLICK TO TWEET

#2 – Neglecting dated content.

Let’s face it. You’ve probably created a ton of content in the last couple years that you haven’t touched since it first published. But you could be leaving opportunity on the table if you’re not regularly looking for ways to refresh it and keep it relevant for searchers.

Tip: Dig into your analytics to find your top and worst performing pages and blog posts, paying special attention to evergreen topics. Then conduct some keyword research to discover new opportunities for updating that existing content to continue or improve ranking momentum.

#3 – Forgetting mobile users.

Whether you’re a B2C or B2B brand, much of your audience is likely using a mobile device to find good content. If your content isn’t mobile friendly, the user experience will be negatively impacted.

Tip: Take steps to ensure that your website and its content is mobile friendly and responsive. Also, focus on creating content for users that would typically use a mobile device.

#4 – Not optimizing for site speed.

This one is pretty simple. Faster sites have a better crawl rate and provide a better user experience.

Tip: Use site speed tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, or WebPageTest to analyze your site speed score. Some of the most helpful tips to improve site speed include leveraging browser caching, optimizing images and minifying JavaScript.

#5 – Failing to include relevant and helpful internal links.

If you’ve attracted people to your content, you have a captive audience that’s interested and probably looking for more. As a result, internal links are critical to keeping people engaged and signaling that you have more to offer.

Tip: Always be on the lookout for opportunities to link to other content on your website. In addition, use keyword variations for anchor text to expand visibility for the keyword topic that content represents.

Be on the lookout for opportunities to link to other #content on your website. @CaitlinMBurgess #SEOCLICK TO TWEET

#6 – Failing to include relevant and helpful external links.

Just like internal links, external links have the ability to provide your users with more helpful and relevant content. In addition, quality external sources can also signal credibility to search engines and users.

Tip: Make sure that all external links open in new windows to allow users to venture to other content, but also make it easy for them to go back and stay engaged with your content.

#7 – Serving up hard-to-read blocks of content.

Users are often looking to find and absorb content quickly, and move on if they are unable to easily see the value in the content they’ve clicked on. In addition, studies show that people read online content in an “F” pattern. As a result, large blocks of text can be a big turn-off for many, especially those using mobile devices.

Tip: Utilize headline tags to break up content. This will not only make it easy for users to scan content, but also send a positive signal to search engines.

8. Forgetting about image optimization.

The images on your website or blog add an important visual element that can positively impact user experience. But they can also help you tell your story to search engines.

Tip: Cover all your bases by making sure image filenames and alt text contain relevant keywords. Also, to ensure your page loads quickly, optimize the image size for each screen size and/or lazy load the images.

9. Not having unique content.

While it can be tempting to reuse some of that great content you’ve already created, be careful. Search engines will not be fooled, and you could be penalized if you duplicate content across pages.

Tip: Don’t publish duplicate or similar content to your site, including title tags and meta descriptions. When it comes to the technical stuff such as title tags and meta descriptions, just take the little bit of extra time it takes to create something unique. When it comes to full pages of content, if you have existing content that fits, take a repurposing approach to make it personalized and different.

10. Focusing on quantity over quality.

In today’s competitive world of content, it can be tempting to try to out-create your competition. But publishing more content than the next guy doesn’t guarantee results, especially if that content isn’t a quality piece that actually helps your audience.

Tip: Create a content strategy that includes audience and keyword topic research. In addition, study the other content that is already out there and look at what your competitors are doing. This will allow you to identify content gaps and help you create content that fills them. In addition, shoot for writing longer pieces (600 to 1,000+ words), that are optimized for scanability and include visual elements.

11. Not optimizing URLs or site structure.

Many marketers leave the title of the page or the post as the URL, which can lead to long URLs that do nothing to help your search rankings.

Tip: Keep URLs short, concise and optimized with keywords. In addition, make sure that your URL structure is consistent throughout your site to make it easier to crawl.

Make sure that your URL structure is consistent throughout your site to make it easier to crawl. #SEOCLICK TO TWEET

12. Neglecting broken or redirecting links.

During our technical crawls and site evaluations, TopRank Marketing often finds that many sites have broken links or links that redirect instead of linking directly to the target page.

Tip: Conduct a technical audit to identify all broken links and internal links that redirect to a different page. Then update with links that connect directly to a target page. This will help search engines crawl your site more efficiently.

13. Not auditing the redirect rules for a site.

For websites with multiple redirect rules, there’s an opportunity to remove redirect chains and errors that make it more difficult for search engines to crawl.

Tip: Audit the redirect rules to make sure you’re properly using 301 or 302 redirects and remove any redirect chains you might have.

14. Focusing on meta keywords.

Meta keywords are not used by Google and can be a sign of spam from Bing.

Tip: There typically isn’t a reason to add meta keywords to your site. If you choose to utilize the meta keywords field, make sure you limit the amount of keywords to less than five.

15. Forgetting analytics or misusing metrics.

Data is an incredible tool to not only measure the impact of our marketing efforts, but also help inform those efforts. So, neglecting our analytics reports outright or not using the right metrics can have a costly impact.

Tip: Use the right metrics to inform your content and SEO strategy, and decrease the importance you put on vanity metrics. In addition, leverage Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools to get a better understanding of what people are actually searching for.

16. Not allowing your site to be crawled

This one is pretty obvious. If you’re site is blocking search engines, your content will not be found in search results.

Tip: It’s simple. Don’t block your site from search engines in your robots.txt file or a “noindex” meta tag.

17. Not taking advantage of Local SEO.

All businesses have an opportunity to take advantage of local SEO and visibility. At the very least, your business should claim and optimize your Google My Business listing.

Tip: At the very least, focus on getting local citations by using tools like Moz Local or Whitespark.

18. Incorporating too many PDFs.

While PDFs are a great way to provide users with information that can be easily downloaded, it’s not ideal for search. First of all, most websites don’t track PDF views in Google Analytics, making it difficult to see if that content is having an impact on users. In addition, PDFs don’t allow you to create a custom experience for users easily.

Tip: Change PDFs to HTML format to be able to create a consistent experience and get the most search benefit from each content asset on your site.

19. Not optimizing for other search engines.

While Google is pretty much the King of Search, other search engines—including those within social media channels—deserve your attention, too.

Tip: Take steps to optimize your content for other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo. In addition, optimize the content you’re putting out on social media sites such as LinkedIn and YouTube.

Optimize the #content you’re putting out on #socialmedia sites such as LinkedIn and YouTube. #SEOCLICK TO TWEET

20. Not focusing on getting quality backlinks.

While link building and link earning gets a bad rap sometimes, the number of quality backlinks a website has is still an important ranking factor for search engines and links deliver interested users to your content.

Tip: Conduct outreach to relevant influencers and websites to earn quality links back to your quality content.

21. Having too many blog categories or tags.

When you create a blog category or tag, you’re essentially creating a new page on your website that can be indexed by crawl bots. However, if those categories or tags don’t have a decent amount of content associated with them, you could be signaling thin content to search engines and it could potentially hurt your crawl budget.

Tip: Remove categories or tags that contain orphaned content, and retag or recategorize that content within a relevant and more robust category.

How do you find the perfect balance between quality, user-centric content and optimizing for search? Share your tips in the comments section below!

By: Caitlin Burgess

Article Source: http://www.toprankblog.com/2017/02/common-seo-mistakes-to-avoid/

More Than a Website: Digital Marketing

A website is a great starting point and an important centerpiece of your digital marketing efforts, but you really need more than a website to optimize market performance.

Why you need more than a website

Here are 4 reasons:

1. SEO
2. Build relationships with customers and prospects
3. Amplification and de-commoditization
4. Analytics help optimize performance

SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) creates awareness of your brand by moving it up on the results pages when folks in your target market search for products and services.

With over 200 ranking factors, Google includes more factors than just those on your website. In fact, in an effort to deliver the most valuable links first, Google looks for indicators that folks approve of your page — things like social engagement (all those likes, shares, and comments).

While there’s no indication that bringing more visitors to your site results in higher sales, but, all things being equal, it’s better to have more visitors than less as visits represent opportunities.

Moving on to conversion, a blog delivering fresh, valuable content on a consistent basis is key for both SEO and conversion, according to Hubspot.

While a blog is technically part of a website, not all websites contain a blog, so I list it as something more than a website.

Build relationships with customers and prospects

First, let’s talk about why you want to build relationships, not just engage in transactions with customers.

• they help promote your business to friends [source]
• customers who engage with the company are more likely to be repeat customers [source]
• retaining existing customers is cheaper (by 5X) than replacing them [source]
• customers who have a relationship with a business are more loyal and less likely to be lured away by competitors [source]

So, building relationships has a huge benefit for organizations that flows directly to the bottom line rather than just giving customers and managers some touchy feeling goodness.

That said, it’s really hard to build relationships with customers on a traditional website. Certainly, adding a forum or other user elements can help your website engage customers, although those efforts will be mostly invisible to prospects. And, forums and other tools are really more than a website.

Social media is a great tool for building customer relationships and, because these interactions are public, it brings in new customers, as well. Social media, however, is the biggest addition to digital marketing and is much more than a website, although the website and social profiles are likely linked. Here are some great tools for using your social networks to build a relationship with customers and prospects.

Email marketing, which is also more than a website, not only help build valuable relationships, they have the highest conversion rates of any tactic except your website.

Amplification and de-commoditization

Social networks, not only amplify your message, especially on Facebook where every like, comment, and share shows your post to the user’s network, but it acts to de-commodify the message.

Not familiar with the term, de-commodification, no problem.

We’ve become jaded in our culture by commercial messages. We’re bombarded with messages telling us that products will salve our problems and that each is the greatest, yet we’re disappointed time and time again by these products. Eventually, we don’t believe anything the brand tells us.

Enter our social networks. We like the folks in our social network despite the fact we may not know many of them personally.

And, we really don’t care. Those of us old enough to remember Blockbuster video stores had the experience of a total stranger offering suggestions on renting movies — and we believed them because we viewed them as objective recommendations.

Well, the same thing works in social media.

We believe our friends’ assessments (good and bad) over commercial messages sent by brands. Even when the friend is simply sharing the brand’s message rather than constructing a recommendation.

Analytics

It’s hard to have any conversation about digital marketing performance without discussion analytics.

Even though some of your most important analytics may come from your website, they’re certainly more than a website.

In crafting your marketing strategy, consider KPIs (key performance indicators) across your various marketing tactics, then monitor performance using something like this BI dashboard from Microsoft.

Be careful in constructing KPIs to ensure you’re assessing both bottom of the funnel results (sales, lead generation, average order size, etc), but those at the top of the funnel that impact bottom of the funnel performance (visits, CTR, time on site, shares, and vanity metrics such as number of followers).

Final thoughts

While a website is a necessary tactic in today’s world, it’s not sufficient to optimize your market performance. Consider adding:

1. A blog and creating valuable content you share at least once per week
2. An email marketing campaign supported by both list building activities and newsletters that share valuable information not distributed through other sources like your blog and social networks
3. Social media, which again requires a two-prong approach of building and sharing
4. A BI dashboard capable of informing future actions to optimize returns
5. Two-way communication between customers and your brand that builds engagement and encourages sharing
6. A customer journey map detailing the sources and sites your customers travel in their journey to buying your product

By Angela Hausman

Article Source: http://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/website-digital-marketing-01763177#eUS6SuPV4ovCG4JB.97

Do organic keyword rankings matter anymore?

With all the ways search engine results pages have evolved over the years, columnist Julian Connors explores the question of whether SEO is still a wise investment.

High keyword rankings are the most sought-after achievement in the world of search engine optimization (SEO). Small businesses and brands alike strive to obtain the first organic listing in search results because of the lucrative traffic and lead opportunities that are associated with this position.

But with the evolution of paid advertising and expansion of universal search, as well as Google’s continuous efforts to provide consumers with content that resolves their demands directly in search results, the opportunities attached to traditional keyword rankings are diminishing at an alarming rate.

In today’s search landscape, SEOs and digital marketing specialists have to consider whether it’s worth the amount of time and resources it takes to achieve premier organic rankings, considering the click-through rates (CTR) associated with organic rankings that are positioned under PLAs, local results and other forms of content.

Keyword rankings aren’t the only way to connect to online customers

There was a time not too long ago when achieving the first organic position on Google was one of the only ways to attract new online customers to a website without having to invest in paid advertising or e-mail marketing.

Ten years ago, the world was just warming up to the power of social media and its influence on the World Wide Web. Back then, most consumers were just starting to become aware of YouTube’s marketing power, Facebook was starting to open itself up to audiences outside of college students, and blogging was just starting to become mainstream, as everyone from CNN to Mashable began investing in new, niche content in the form of top lists and how-to articles.

Because of this boom in social connectivity, businesses and brands suddenly had access to free channels that were viable for attracting new business to their websites.

In 2017, there are thousands of social media platforms to join, millions of user-generated content forums, and approximately 320 million blogs around the world (up from 260 million in 2015).

Today, it’s rare to find a local business or brand that isn’t connected to an established directory host like Yelp or TripAdvisor, whose own online credibility is so impressive that it allows their less authoritative clients to rank well within organic results.

New niche environments allow businesses to focus on conversions, not site traffic

When companies and brands were only able to connect with new customers through organic rankings, it made sense to invest a significant amount of time and resources to build thousands of links and cram keywords into a particular website to increase visibility.

Now that there are thousands of free channels that cater to niche demographics with specific interests, it’s easier than ever for brands to identify relevant environments that can be targeted for conversions. The online landscape of today allows businesses and brands to focus on maximizing qualified conversions, rather than trying to gain as much traffic as possible with the hopes that a particular portion is going to convert into a sale.

One of the problems with keyword rankings is that any consumer can click through to a website and immediately leave because the title tag and meta description didn’t align with the content of its associated landing page. Ranking first on Google does not mean that every visitor is going to turn into a paying customer because of how limited keywords are for understanding granular details associated with online consumers.

Social media and other niche online communities trump the value of keyword rankings because they serve as natural environments for like-minded users with specific interests to hang out in, consuming new forms of hyper-focused content that keep them returning.

Because of how easy it is today for businesses to build strong social media followings, basic engagement can improve everything from brand awareness and online reputation to traffic and revenue. Keyword rankings lack the power of social media because they are not proactive means of engagement, and they don’t necessarily connect brands with the type of qualified traffic that exists and is readily available in communities like Reddit or Instagram.

Google is crushing the desire to achieve premier keyword rankings

It’s always important to keep in mind that Google is a business; they are not just a convenient means for finding information or purchasing products.

Recognizing that Google is a business that competes in a free market where consumers have options, it is their goal to become an all-inclusive destination that provides an experience that is so fulfilling, it keeps consumers returning to their search engine.

Local results bury traditional rankings

Google’s focus on providing content that displays local options for consumers to consider has diminished the power of premier keyword rankings for some industries which were appearing at the very top of search listings, only to now be buried beneath the fold.

Sponsored ads blend with organic results

Product listing ads and the inclusion of a fourth paid search ad for certain highly commercial queries have pushed organic results down the page even further, which significantly reduces the CTR of each organic position.

Considering that the first organic position on Google commanded a 31 percent CTR in 2014 and the fourth position garnered a 7 percent CTR, it’s clear that today’s blended search results pages may render top organic results that are not nearly as powerful for driving site traffic as they used to be.

Free products, direct answers & featured snippets diminish consumers’ need to engage in site content

The ability for Google to resolve consumer demands without having to enter a particular website continues to increase, as there are more free products, definitions and featured snippets appearing every day.

Informational websites that depend on attracting a tremendous amount of traffic in order to maintain their ad rates are at the mercy of featured snippets, which provide users with immediate answers whenever they search with specific questions. Featured snippets also push traditional rankings below the fold, which may negatively affect CTR.

Why keyword rankings are still important for success

Although all of the points made against the effort it takes to build premier keyword rankings are valid, it is still important for businesses and brands to actively strive for premier organic rankings.

Despite diminished visibility and CTR within particular types of search listings, organic rankings remain one of the most powerful entrances for brands to connect with new customers.

SEOs and digital marketing specialists can maximize their traffic and conversion opportunities through keyword rankings by creating quality content around niche concepts and phrases that their target audience uses or searches for. This allows brands to increase their monthly traffic and receive qualified conversions based on the type of consumer research that guides their content development efforts.

Like anything else with digital marketing, the formula for achieving success is to maintain a campaign that combines social media, paid advertising, SEO and other relevant channels.

By Julian Connors

Article Source: http://searchengineland.com/organic-keyword-rankings-matter-anymore-267885