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.

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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.

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Editor’s note: For the most recent version of this post, click here.

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