Mike Murray has shaped online marketing strategies for hundreds of businesses since 1997, including Fortune 500 companies. A former journalist, he has led SEO studies and spoken at regional and national Internet conferences. Founder of Online Marketing Coach, Mike is passionate about helping clients identify their best opportunities for online marketing success based on their strengths, his advice and industry trends. You can find him at his blog, Online Marketing Matters or on Twitter @mikeonlinecoach.
I doubt any marketing team can perfect its SEO and content marketing efforts. Time, degrees of expertise, and changing algorithms always get in the way.
But SEO misfires abound for B2B and B2C websites and they can be avoided or at least minimized.
Let’s dive in.
Businesses should use 2018 to break the bad habit of viewing aspects of an SEO marketing strategy as a one-time exercise. Too often, some companies optimize a website page and never adjust it.
Though 61% of marketers in a 2017 HubSpot study say increasing organic visibility is their highest inbound marketing priority, they don’t always follow through.
A key performance indicator (KPI) is only effective if you’re actively measuring it.
Key performance indicators can help provide insight into whether your marketing efforts are effective or you need to take a different approach. For example, if one of your campaigns is negatively affecting ROI, the sooner you know the better.
Marketers who measure their KPIs on a frequent basis can more easily identify bad campaigns and flip the switch before it affects the ultimate objective. Likewise, campaigns showing promise through positive key performance indicators can be further explored. Continue Reading
If you care about content marketing and SEO, you can’t ignore link building.
Google executives acknowledge that backlinks are among top three ranking factors along with content and RankBrain (Google’s artificial intelligence technology that handles search queries).Continue Reading
SEO image optimization should be second nature for content marketers, but it’s easily overlooked. Search traffic loses when haste wins.
Before I get into all of the nuances and tips, I want to be clear. Google still highlights some poorly optimized images on the primary and image search results. Why? Google is all about presenting the right information when it can. If the content is relevant to a search phrase, the image could appear high even if it misses the mark in terms of best practices.Continue Reading
It makes sense at times to produce content without worrying too much about the SEO aspects. (Please know it isn’t easy for me, an SEO professional, to write that.)
Some SEO purists suggest that website content be optimized at all times. It’s inevitable that someone – or a team – will follow an internal process and think about the content with an everything-SEO mentality.Continue Reading
The tech-savvy president of a company recently told me he’s confused because he heard keywords don’t matter anymore with SEO.
It’s not the first time I’ve come across that view about keyword phrases.Continue Reading
Success at blog marketing depends on a myriad of content, design, technical, and promotional factors. Though it would be prohibitively exhausting to excel at all of them simultaneously, the good news is that there are many small changes you can make that can significantly improve the success of your blog content over the long term.
Whether you’re just starting to explore the world of blog marketing, looking to spruce up the look and feel of your existing blog, or are ready to take your efforts and expertise to the next level, the 65 tips (8 more than when I wrote the original post two years ago) on this handy checklist will support your journey to blogging success.Continue Reading
Consuming great writing is like listening to a great singer. If the performer makes an emotional connection with me – even though she misses a few notes – I eagerly listen to the rest of the song and anticipate the next performance.
A year ago, I shared helpful lessons on powerful and effective text with 48 examples, tools, tips, and resources. Today, I share those plus another six to help you win over as many of your readers as possible.Continue Reading
SEO page titles cause their fair share of confusion among B2B and B2C content marketers. In the old days, it was easy to throw a bunch of words in there with commas and rank well for some of those keyword phrases.
The SEO page title still carries weight, but other ranking variables matter as well. If the quality and quantity of inbound links had to go head to head with SEO page titles in a strange Internet game, the links would crush the titles.Continue Reading
