Communicating SEO’s Value To Clients And C-Level Execs

When it comes to marketing activities, SEO is often the first thing on the chopping block when budget cuts come around.

As an SEO professional, you understand the value of your work. You also understand that not all of your clients or prospects (or C-level execs if you’re working in house) fully appreciate what is required to really make SEO work.

This can be due in part to the fact that proving return on investment for dollars spent on SEO can be challenging. That does not mean, however, that it is impossible.

It is important to track ROI on SEO efforts. You need to do this to justify your worth to your clients and your clients need it to justify continued expenditures to themselves or their management.

Sadly, SEO is one of the first things that many businesses let go in favor of activities that more readily present themselves with hard ROI statistics. How do you combat this?

Let The Numbers Do The Talking

When proving the value of SEO, utilizing hard data is a must. The following steps can streamline this process:

1. Measure leads
2. Measure revenue
3. Measure revenue per leads

You can calculate revenue per leads by simply dividing the total amount of revenue by the total number of leads.

A Word (Or Two) About Leads

Perhaps the first thing that must be said here is that page visits are not necessarily leads. They can be, but they do not have to be. Tracking page visits can provide a snapshot of overall activity, but the data most important to track here when mapping it back to revenue are events or goals.

Events and goals in Google Analytics can be confusing to many companies. Turn this confusion into an opportunity for you by educating clients about them — what they are and why they are important to businesses.

Start by clearly explaining what events and goals are, as follows:

• Events: An event is a particular action that a user engages in while on a website. Examples include clicking on links or downloading information or assets. Each event indicates some form of engagement by a visitor, indicating that particular prospect is more qualified than one who simply visits a page. Hence, the importance of tracking events versus just page views.
• Goals: A goal, as the name suggests, is something that you want to happen. In terms of web visits, there are four important goals a business may want to track. The first is visits to a particular URL, such as a confirmation page. The second is the length of time that a person spends on a site. The third is the number of pages on a site viewed in a single visit. The fourth is actually an event as noted above.

Tracking events and goals gives you and your clients far more insight into their prospect and customer behavior that simply tracking the number of people who came to their sites ever could. These metrics can also tie directly into revenue stream data.

Set Yourself – And Your Clients – Up For Success

Perhaps one of the most important elements of accurately measuring the ROI of your SEO work is to set the stage from the get-go. Ensuring that you and your clients are on the same page can go a long way toward avoiding some unpleasant (and unnecessary) experiences.

Once again, you are presented with an opportunity to shine by showcasing your expertise and sharing it with your clients. The more you teach your clients, the more you empower them and the more you increase their loyalty to you.

The three most important points to establish with new clients are:

1. SEO Is A Long-Term Proposition

Instant gratification is great but that is not at all what SEO is about. This may not be what clients want to hear but it is exactly what you need to tell them. The upside to this is that SEO can return benefits for the long haul, boosting its value tremendously.

Even when search result positions improve, revenue increases may not yet be apparent for some time. It is vital that clients understand this and be willing to wait more than just a few months to get what they really want.

2. How To Measure ROI

It is not just the revenue per lead or even the number of events or goals that indicate success with an SEO program.

Because SEO can take some time to realize its full potential, there are many things along the way that should be measured to track progress such as the removal of Google penalties. Additionally, some metrics are simply not directly trackable to revenue, like a click to driving directions.

3. How To Set Up Analytics

If your clients’ analytics are not set up to track conversions properly, the analytics themselves may paint an incorrect picture. Work closely with your clients to make sure all analytics are setup to capture and show what you need to know.

Establishing these concepts when you first begin working with a client goes a long way toward a healthy — and profitable— relationship between you and that client.

SEO Is Not About Getting Leads

SEO is about getting the right leads. It is also about accurately tracking those leads so that you can make adjustments to your activities as need be but also so that you can accurately help your clients calculate their ROI for SEO.

Content Source - http://nuzzel.com/sharedstory/09012014/searchengineland/communicating_seos_value_to_clients_and_clevel_execs

Content Marketing Rules: What to Ditch and What to Keep

When reaching out to your leads and the targeted audience is on the agenda, content marketing is an approach that works.

The digital landscape is rapidly changing and different ways to promote our products and services are adding new dimensions to the way marketing was done in the past. The old mainstream habits have made way for innovation. And when was the last time you referred to the number of press releases you launched for your product to evaluate the reach of your brand or measure the success of your promotional endeavors.

Content marketing is not about press releases!

But, with an increasing awareness among the brands regarding the typical and atypical content marketing ways, more and more business owners have resorted to multiple ways to use content for maximizing their reach. That could include running a blog, or boosting their social media presence, or for that matter, continuing on with their email marketing.

…and that’s how the “Rules” were born

With the frenzy over content marketing as a potent tool to maximize brand’s presence over the web, the digital marketeers of the web have curated some “unwritten content marketing rules” that are being increasingly referred  to by those who are novices.

So, what really are these rules? Do you need to follow them to their last thread? Or maybe you need to listen to your own requirements and make your own rules.

Well, it’s a bit of both.

Instead of building from the ground up, it would be easier for you to go with the tried and true ways, but at the same time, using approaches that are relevant to your brand is what will serve you in the long run.

Here are some rules to “ditch” and some to “keep”

1. A rule to ditch: The title of post *Has to be shorter*

Shorter and crisper titles not exactly a passe, but if you are under the impression that your visitors will always find the lengthy titles too unwieldy to read, you have not been keeping up with the trends. The best of websites and bloggers can be observed of making their post breaking all the rules of word limit. Their titles sometimes end up being as long as 80 characters (at times longer), and they are still doing as far as gaining traffic is concerned.

A common myth going around the web is that the Internet readers are too impatient to read a long-drawn out title and they instead pay attention to the ones that express the theme in 5-6 words. The truth however lies somewhere between “definitely” and “not quite”. If you are able to make your title interesting enough, you have got their attention.

Look at Buzzfeed for inspiration

Buzzfeed has indeed created a buzz riding on their unconventional long titles that grab a reader’s attention.

2. A rule to keep: Include search-friendly phrases or words in the title

Now, there is no dearth of words and phrases that have a dominating presence over the web. As visitors, we usually start our queries on Google with certain words that include:

• How to
• What are
• Why is
• Difference Between
• Tips to/for
• Free
• New
• Best
• Good

Now that you are already open to using long titles, injecting these keywords or phrases shouldn’t be a matter of force-fitting them.

3. Rule to ditch: Email marketing is passe, go for social media marketing

There is absolutely no doubt over the efficacy of social media as a marketing tool, but you would be widely off the mark in your analysis if you believe you don’t need email marketing.

All you need to do is to observe how many fans on your Facebook  page see your posts on their Newsfeed. I have observed it to drop as abysmally as 0.3%. on my luckiest day, it sometimes reaches in excess of 5%, but that is rare.

Twitter is now a much better alternative for organic reach.

Posts on your blog that are are directly delivered to the inbox of your readers is effective and an essential part of content marketing.

In fact why don’t you start building your email list with Facebook using a tool like Heyo’s free contest builder.

4. Rule to keep: Write longer posts

Whilst there is an anti-rule as well to the word limit which suggests that you write shorter posts to stand a better chance of capturing the attention of readers, but most experts would advise you to write longer posts. The more information your post provides (unless you are just forcing-in words), more eyeballs it manages to grab. Let’s elucidate it further by the study Moz performed a while back:

Moz ran a test on their blog to evaluate the number of backlinks they customarily get based on the length of the posts:

As far the links to those posts were concerned, here is the graph for links against number of words:

But it doesn’t end with Google and links, the social media users like to Share and Like longer posts much more than the shorter posts. Neil Patel observed that the posts written in more than 1500 words received these results:

• 68.1% more tweets
• 22.6% more Facebook likes

It has been proven that content-rich posts get more ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ across the social media and most importantly, Google likes them!

So, with more links and likes to the content which lasts for more than 1500 words, it can be safely deduced that you don’t have to hold back while writing a post.

5. An evergreen rule that’s beyond ditching and keeping: Make your blog conversational

Conversational writing is now an essential approach to content marketing. And what is one way to do that? By asking questions.

Refashioning that approach, you can use it for your blogs as well. Whilst you don’t have to change the approach you take while writing your blogs, you can tweak the conclusion part by adding a relevant question at the end of each post, asking readers to express their opinions in the comment box.

Increasing activity in the comment box leads to increased engagement on your website. But don’t make that question scientific or filled with jargons. Ask a question the likes of which can be answered by the general audience, and you will see a lot many hands raised.

Wrapping up

Content marketing isn’t an exercise where you need to overplot and overcook, but it sure is a practice where focusing on the relevant, and getting rid of the fluff is what matters to fuel more-than-desirable results come down the pike.

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/08/11/content-marketing-rules-what-to-ditch-and-what-to-keep

How to Create a Site Structure That Will Enhance SEO

The better your site structure, the better your chance of higher ranking in the search engines. Every website has some “structure.” It might be a rigorous and streamlined structure, or it may be a disorganized jumble of pages. If you are intentional and careful with your site structure, you will create a site that achieves search excellence.

In this article, I share some of the best advice on creating a powerful site structure. The tips below will help you create a site that appeals to users, gets crawled and indexed by spiders, and delivers the best SERP listings and rankings possible.

Why Structure Matters

As I’ve worked with hundreds of clients over the years, I’ve been surprised at how often site structure is overlooked. On the one hand, it’s one of the most crucial aspects of a site’s SEO performance, but on the other hand, few webmasters and owners understand what it means to have a site structure that enhances SEO.

I’m going to share a few of the reasons why site structure is so crucial, and then get into the how-to of developing your own SEO-friendly site structure.

A good site structure means a great user experience.

When you take away the colors, the fonts, the kerning, the graphics, the images, and the white space, good site design is really about a great structure.

The human mind craves cognitive equilibrium — being able to put pieces logically together, finding things where they’re expected, and locating what they are seeking. Thus, a strong and logical site structure is cognitively satisfying to users.

As you know, the more appealing your site to users, the more appealing it is to search engines, too. Google’s algorithm uses information from searchers to rank your site. If your site has poor CTRs and low dwell time, it will not perform well in the SERPs. By contrast, when a user finds a site that they like — i.e. a site with great structure — they don’t bounce and they stay longer. An accurate site structure can reduce bounce rate and improve dwell time, both of which will lead to improved rankings.

A good site structure provides your site with sitelinks.

Sitelinks are a listing format in the SERPs that show your site’s main page along with several internal links indented below. You’ve seen them before.

Sitelinks are a huge SEO advantage. They increase the navigability of your site, point users to the most relevant information, increase your brand’s reputation, improve user trust, help you dominate SERPs, increase clickthrough rate, and shorten the conversion funnel. Basically, sitelinks are awesome.

But how do you get sitelinks? You don’t simply go to Google Webmaster Tools and fill in a few fields on a form. You can’t issue a sitelink request. Instead, Google’s algorithm automatically awards websites with sitelinks. And they do so based on great site structure.

If you have a poor site structure, it’s very likely that your site will never receive site links. The absence of sitelinks could be costing your site more targeted traffic, higher CTR, and increased conversions.

A good structure means better crawling.

Web crawlers like Googlebot crawl a website’s structure. Their goal is to index the content in order to return it in search results. The better your site structure, the easier the crawlers can access and index the content.

Crawler’s don’t automatically discover everything on your website. Google even admits, “[there are] pages on your site we might not…discover,” or “URLs that may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process.” (That’s one of the reasons why Sitemaps are necessary.) However, crawlers will have a far easier time accessing, crawling, indexing, and returning the pages of a site with strong structure.

A good site structure is at the very core of good SEO — optimizing for the crawlers.

To sum up, your site’s organization paves the way for SEO success. In fact, it could be argued, that without a good site structure, you will never have SEO success. Strong site structure gives your site an unbreakable SEO foundation that will provide you with vast amounts of organic search.

Six Steps to Creating Site Structure

Now, I’ll tell you how to create this kind of site structure.

1. Plan out a hierarchy before you develop your website.

If you’re starting a website from scratch, you’re in a great position to plan out site structure for the best SEO possible. Even before you start creating pages in a CMS, plan out your structure. You can do it on a whiteboard, a spreadsheet program (Excel, Google Drive Spreadsheets), most word processors, or something like Visio or OmniGraffle.

A “hierarchy” is nothing more than a way to organize your information — something that is simple and makes sense. Your hierarchy will also become your navigation and your URL structure, so everything important begins here.

Generally, a site hierarchy looks like this:

Image from http://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link

There are a few features of hierarchy that you should keep in mind.

• Make your hierarchy logical. Don’t overthink or overcomplicate this process. You want simplicity, both for your own sake and for the ease of crawlers and users. Each main category should be unique and distinct. Each subcategory should somehow relate to the main category under which it is located.
• Keep the number of main categories between two and seven. Unless you’re Amazon.com, you don’t want to have too many main categories. There should be only a few main things. If you have more than seven, you may want to rethink the organization, and pare it down a bit.
• Try to balance the amount of subcategories within each category. Basically, try to keep it approximately even. If one main category has fourteen subcategories, while another main category has only three subcategories, this could become a little unbalanced.

A site hierarchy is the beginning point for a great site structure.

2. Create a URL structure that follows your navigation hierarchy.

The second main element in developing strong site structure is your URL structure. If you’ve logically thought through your hierarchy, this shouldn’t be too difficult. Your URL structure follows your hierarchy.

So, let’s say your hierarchy looks like this:

The URL structure for the Chinatown location would look like this:

www.kimsrestaurant.com/locations/chinatown

Your URL structure will be organized according to your site hierarchy. This means, obviously, that your URLs will have real words (not symbols) and appropriate keyword coverage.

3. Create your site navigation in HTML or CSS.

When you create your navigation, keep the coding simple. HTML and CSS are your safest approach. Coding in JavaScript, Flash, and Ajax will limit the crawler’s ability to cover your site’s well-thought out navigation and hierarchy.

4. Use a shallow depth navigation structure.

Your navigation structure will obviously follow your site hierarchy. Make sure that pages, especially important ones, aren’t buried too deep within the site. Shallow sites work better, both from a usability and crawler perspective, as noted in this Search Engine Journal article:

A shallow website (that is, one that requires three or fewer clicks to reach every page) is far more preferable than a deep website (which requires lengthy strings of clicks to see every page on your site).

5. Create a header that lists your main navigation pages.

Your top header should list out your main pages. That’s it. My website, Neilpatel.com uses a very simple top navigational header with three subcategories. This accomplishes everything I need.

Adding any other menu elements apart from your main categories can become distracting and unnecessary. If you’ve designed a parallax site, be sure to provide a persistent header menu that displays through each scrolling phase.

While dropdown menus using CSS effects or disappearing menus may provide a unique or intriguing user experience, they do not enhance SEO. I advise against them. I also advise against using an image-based navigational structure. Text links with appropriate anchors provide the strongest form of SEO.

If you have a footer with menu links, be sure to duplicate the main links of your top navigational menu in your footer navigation menu. Changing the order of links or adding additional category listing will complicate the user experience.

6. Develop a comprehensive internal linking structure.

Internal linking puts meat on the bones of a logical site hierarchy. Moz’s article on internal links lists three reasons why they are important:

• They allow users to navigate a website.
• They help establish information hierarchy for the given website.
• They help spread link juice (ranking power) around websites.

Each of these is directly tied to creating a tight-knit and well-integrated site structure.

There’s no need to get complicated with internal linking. The basic idea is that every page on your website should have some link to and some link from another page on the website. Your navigation should accomplish internal linking to the main categories and subcategory pages, but you should also make sure that leaf-level pages have internal linking as well.

Internal linking tells the search engines what pages are important, and how to get there. The more internal linking you have across all pages, the better.

Source - http://blog.kissmetrics.com/site-structure-enhance-seo

20 SEO Tips, Trends and Predictions for 2014

Google made big changes to its search engine algorithm in 2013. What will those updates mean for search engine optimization in 2014? SEO experts offer their advice for the new year.

On average, Google makes about 500 adjustments to its search engine algorithm every year. Since the first Panda update in February 2011, though, many of Google's algorithm updates and other changes have been more ambitious and far-reaching in their impact. The net effect, in part, has been to elevate quality content over "thin" content, punish dubious link building practices and spammy sites and push digital marketers away from relying on keyword usage and performance data.

The changes are designed to improve the quality of search results Google delivers its users. For those who practice search engine optimization (SEO). However, the updates' collective impact has been at times confounding, frustrating and game-changing.

"I've been under the hood in this SEO game for over a decade, and I can't recall the last time the SEO community was this panicked," says Casey Halloran, co-founder and CEO of Namu Travel Group in Costa Rica. We dropped from the first page of search results to page 2 for our top keyword phrase, and we've been working to regain that position for about five months now."

Digital marketers in 2013 scrambled to keep up with all the Google changes, which included Hummingbird, a major overhaul of the Google search engine.

"Every time we react and recover from one Google update, there's another," Mike Huber, vice president of client services for content marketing agency Vertical Measures, said in a recent webinar. "It's like a game of Whac-a-Mole."

Given Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird and other big Google updates, are we moving into a post-SEO era? How will SEO in 2014 be different from SEO in 2013? What do digital marketers, businesses of all types and search engine optimizers need to do in the coming year to adapt?

[ More: How to Deal With Panda, Penguin and Other Google Algorithm Changes]

CIO.com asked these questions to the SEO community and received more than 60 responses. The following is a sampling of opinions and tips from a variety of experts.

Are We Moving to a Post-SEO Era All About Content Marketing and Results Tracking?

1. SEO will always be with us. Says Brian Provost, vice president of digital strategy for Define Media Group: "SEO is like tax law. It's a set of compliance issues and strategies to optimize businesses around them. To that end, SEO will always exist as a practice discipline to market content." Smart businesses, he adds, have stopped playing "chase the algorithm," opting instead for metrics-based content creation "in line with market demand."

2. SEO has always been about content marketing. Brian Wood, senior marketing manager of SEO for Wayfair.com, says he thinks the content marketing trend is overblown. "This is what quality SEO has always been about. It only seems like a growing thing to people who were, perhaps, using spammy tactics that Google has since made more difficult.

[ Tips: 16 Ways to Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy ]

[ Feature: The Content Marketing Hall of Fame: 13 Ways to Build Your Business ]

The same SEO tool that white-hat SEO pros used last year will be used next year, Wood says. "That said, it's true that the quality bar is getting higher as more and more sites focus on producing quality content. It's also getting harder to earn links with good content as bloggers are inundated with great stuff."

3. SEO and content marketing are becoming synonymous. "If you play by the rules, you can't have one without the other, SEO consultant Christian Sculthorp says. But traditional SEO will always have a place, he adds. "People underestimate the work that goes into keyword research, tagging each page [and] website structure. There's much more to SEO than simply spamming links."

4. SEO basics will never go away. Adam Barker, senior inbound marketing manager for SmartBear Software, admits that SEO has changed: "Content is the new way to optimize and drive traffic." But you still have to prepare your site through keyword research and basic on-page SEO, he adds. "This is laying the tracks for the train to come through — and making sure you have the right train coming, through keyword research, is still just as important as it was before."

How Will SEO in 2014 Be Different From SEO in 2013?

5. Search engines will get smarter. "Search engines are rapidly developing the intelligence to discern between websites that provide value from sites that create the illusion of value," says James McDonald, ecommerce analyst for Lyons Consulting Group. "If you [only] think of SEO as a series of HTML, link building, and keyword tactics that enable a site to rank better in a search engine, then yes, we are well on our way to a post-SEO era." Why? The next generation of SEO specialists will eschew those techniques, McDonald says, "and will instead dominate search rankings by consistently creating relevant, engaging and detailed content."

[ Related: 8 Things You Need to Know About SEO ]

6. Social presence will be more important than search. This trend, evident in 2013, will only be more apparent this year, says Ian Aronovich, president and co-founder of GovernmentAuctions.org. "It's not that search rankings and the SEO era are over," he says. "It's still worthwhile to put resources into SEO. But having a strong social presence is becoming more and more reliable in driving traffic and building brand awareness."

That's because people can quickly share content across social media networks, especially Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn, Aronovich says. "If you put out content that people are willing to share, you can get way more eyes on your company and brand in much less time [when] compared to waiting for search engines to update their listings."

7. Determining what ranks, and why, will be more complicated. Copley Broer, CEO of LandlordStation, expects a lot of time and effort devoted to sorting out what type of sharing and content move the needle for Google rankings now and which don't.

Flipboard, the mobile content aggregation app, is a good example, Broer says. Being indexed into Flipboard's bot so your content pops on Flipboard is important — but it's nearly impossible to tell when readers view your content on Flipboard unless they click through to open it in a browser. "How do you know if Google thinks that content is important if you can't tell how many people are seeing it?" Broer asks. "Does Google's Hummingbird search engine overhaul take Flipboard directly into account, or are you only impacted if someone shares your content from Flipboard to Google+?"

Popular On CIO.com

8. In 2014, SEO will be all about mobile. David Finkelstein, director of worldwide marketing for KEMP Technologies, notes that more than 40 percent of emails are now viewed on a mobile device. "Email remains the killer digital marketing app that can … create the viral marketing effect like no other app," he says. "SEO and associated content optimized for the mobile platform that connects to other apps via open APIs will continue to be the biggest trend, and challenge, to marketers."

[ Tips: Mobile SEO Is More Than Just Choosing Keywords]

Wood, of Wayfair.com, says mobile search is the big shakeup, as it's growing faster that desktop search (which is also growing). "At some point, we can expect Google to start heavily weighting a proper mobile site … and to weight speed, speed, speed. Ultimately, nonresponsive desktop sites or mobile sites that are only a portion of the site content are a bad user experience, and Google doesn't want to deliver that." Wood doesn't know if the mobile ranking overhaul will come in 2014 — "but when it does, sites without a quality, comprehensive mobile solution are going to be scrambling."

9. Local will continue to be big. Austin Melton, onsite SEO supervisor for SEOSalesPro.com, expects to see Google and Bing continue their trend of localizing search results. "[This] will spell the death of the 'national' search in many verticals," he adds.

10. Natural language queries will be more important. Daniel Laloggia, digital marketing manager for Walker Sands Communications, says the biggest trend for SEO will be trying to take advantage of Hummingbird, which is less a change to Google's algorithm and change to the engine that drives Google.

Google wants people to be able to "talk" with the search engine the same way they would talk with anyone else, Laloggia says. Users, meanwhile, want Google to parse sentences and understand their intent. As a result, the focus on individual keywords should fade in lieu of a more keywordtheme approach to content creation. "In other words," he says, "1,000 keyword variations on a theme should be less important, while great content built around the hub of the keyword theme will become more important."

11. The role of SEO experts will evolve. "There will be a continued rebirth of SEO agencies as content marketing or inbound marketing shops. It's already started to happen," says Chad Pollitt, director of marketing for DigitalRelevance. In addition, the marriage of SEO and traditional public relations will represent another SEO trend, taking the name "digital PR." Finally, Pollitt says, expect marketing communications and PR departments to swallow up SEO departments.

What's Your Best SEO Advice For 2014?

12. Identify your customers' biggest pain points by asking sales and support team members for feedback. "That means those questions aren't being addressed on your site," says SmartBear Software's Barker. "Write your content plan around those pain points and questions."

13. Stay honest. "Focus on generating high-quality content, creating a website that really serves your users and avoiding old link-building tactics entirely," says Namu Travel Group's Halloran. "If you build a 'killer app' of some sort, you'll most likely attract quality links regardless."

14. Be an authority, don't talk about yourself, and be better than your competitors. "Don't just have another company blog using announcements that nobody wants to read. Add value. Educate your target audience," says Adam Connell, marketing manager for U.K. Linkology. "Tap into influencers within your market sector and use them to distribute your content."

[ Related: Does Google Authorship Matter for SEO? ]

Don't worry about being unique, Connell adds; just be better than your competitors. "That's what Social Media Examiner did, and now [it's] one of the biggest marketing/business blogs on the planet."

15. Earn attention and develop your network. Pollitt recommends creating problem-solving and/or entertaining content and getting it featured by the online media and industry influencers. "Brands that can truly earn media will be the biggest SEO winners," he says.

To do this, build a network of writers, bloggers, editors, journalists and industry influencers, Pollitt says, as "these are the folks you'll rely on to write about and share your content." In addition, pitch your firm's executives as possible columnists on popular industry websites. Their expertise is valuable, Pollitt says, and the search engines respect link citations from reputable sources such as those industry sites.

16. Consider link building as another form of business networking. Jason Whitt, the "geek of all trades" at Geek Powered Studios, notes that there's been wide speculation about links becoming obsolete. "While I can understand the reasoning behind this, I don't believe it to be true," he says. "It comes down to the types of links you aim to build for a website and the intent behind acquiring the link."

[ Related: Google Begins Penalizing Search "Over-optimization" ]

Links will become obsolete if your Link-building strategy is limited to paying for inclusions in directories and posting blog comments with spammy links, Whitt says.

"Real link building is hard work, and it is in no way quick. The easiest way to look at legitimate link building is to view each link as a business relationship. The more time and effort you put into that relationship, the more likely that relationship will help you grow into the position you want to be."

17. Focus on quality in all its forms. Yes, your content should be "compelling, descriptive and differentiated," says Joelle Kaufman, head of partnerships and marketing for BloomReach — but quality extends to the technical side of your site, too. Kaufman's tips:

• Identify and reduce or eliminate duplicate pages and content.
• Make sure your "in-linking" helps users and search engines find their way around your site.
• Identify sources of insight from within and beyond your site to guide the content you create, curate and retain.
• Ensure your content is accessible and optimized for mobile searchers, who Kaufman says are already reaching 50 percent of search traffic.

18. Build a single site for mobile and desktop users. As the digital divide evolves and segments Web searches, there's an increased need for adaptable websites that are cleanly viewed on smartphones, tablets and computers, says Jayme Pretzloff, online marketing director for Wixon Jewelers. Instead of developing a site for each device, consider responsive Web design, which adapts to a device's browser size. In addition to improving the user experience, Pretzloff says this boosts SEO thanks to increased visits, reduced bounce rates, better search engine result rankings, more return visits and more social shares.

[ More: Google Turns 15, Celebrates by Smartening Up Search ]

19. Look for the best long-tail keywords. Kelly Boyer Sagert, content services manager for The Search Guru, says long-tail keywords are expected to become more important Hummingbird era of Google. Long-tail keywords typically contain more words, and are therefore usually less competitive. They are also more laser-targeted. (Examples include bedroom closet organization tips and kitchen pantry organization tips.) When you find one that perfectly fits your intended audience, it's a terrific find, Sagert says.

20. Schema markup will grow in importance. "Since the beginning of the Web, the most important Web coding language has been HTML. As the Web has evolved, so has HTML," Sagert says. The latest version, HTML 5, incorporates sets of HTML tags that help search engines understand structured data. (These tags are cataloged and referenced from Schema.org.) "Structured data helps the search engines quickly and easily understand the different elements of a page, such as articles, events and local address information," she says.

Source - SEO Tips, Trends and Predictions

Social Customer Service for Marketeers

Customer service IS marketing. I’ll say it again… customer service IS marketing. Because the way you treat your customers is promoted on social media, ratings and reviews every single day, your customer service is no longer an indicator of customer satisfaction, retention or value. Your customers are now a key arm to all of your marketing efforts because they share readily online.

While Marketing Teams aim to increase brand awareness and lead generation through pushing out information and generating positive engagement, Customer Service Teams aim to improve customer satisfaction and increase customer retention by listening, and responding to customer needs. How the two meet is often seen as a challenge among many organizations. Source: Sentiment

While 60% of companies believe social media is just a marketing channel, they’re ignoring the amplification of their brand through consumer advocates or detractors. All it takes to derail months or years of hard work building trust, authority, and an emotional connection with your audience is mishandling a single event that’s published and promoted on social media.

Read more: Social Customer Service for Marketeers