Meta descriptions are like silly old Uncle Bob who gets ignored at Thanksgiving get-togethers. But did you know that Uncle Bob is actually a multi-millionaire looking for a decent niece or nephew to include in his will? Like Bob, meta descriptions are often ignored or duplicated on multiple pages by website page creators and editors because they just don’t care. This is a huge mistake. If you care about capturing sales leads from targeted search, you should pay close attention to getting your meta descriptions right. Read more »
Chris Carrel is a Senior Software Engineer at Angie’s List. With over 15 years of experience, he has spent the last two focused on SEO.
One of the hardest parts of SEO is knowing what to measure. How do you know if your latest round of changes is working? How do you separate all the noise and interrelated activity? Most would say look at your rankings.
That’s easier said than done. Search results are not fixed. They change on an individual visitor basis. They are impacted by user testing search engines might perform in areas outside your geographic location. These tests are relevant to overall rankings and can help determine whether you rank on the first page or not. So what other statistics should you monitor? Read more »
Ken Moorhead is the social media manager and blog editor for Compendium, the business blogging platform. When not busy writing creative briefs for the Compendium staff blog, he fills the hours with MBA studies and general hijinx.
In the comments following my last post, Six Minutes to Understanding Business Blogging, Kyle Lacy brought up an excellent point that I left off about business blogging – your blog posts should elicit an emotional response from readers. In order for a business blog to be effective as a marketing tool, readers must, above all else, identify with the content to be willing to take some kind of action.
Taking some time to mull over just how to get an emotional response, I realized there’s a big difference between knowing what’s important to good business blogging and executing an effective content strategy that compels readers to react. Over the past month of reading industry blogs daily, I discovered a quick(er) way to help readers connect with a business: borrowing quotes from historical figures or celebrities. Read more »
Brock Benefiel is an online editor at Angie’s List. For the past year, he has been on the company’s search marketing team devoted to producing original content to help homeowners and consumers, drive search rankings and increase membership.
At Angie’s List, creating good content means promoting action—promote consumer awareness, good hiring practices, smart spending, etc. But to produce the best original content that drives rankings and increases conversions, you can’t just promote action. You have to inspire it.
Think about it. It’s simple. We write meta descriptions to inspire a click to our landing page. We write content on landing pages that demonstrates the value of our product or service. Finally—once we’ve gotten our new customer to take every possible desired action—we kindly ask that they share their newfound love for us with their friends and family by linking to our pages and sharing our site on every possible social vehicle. Read more »
Sucky writing is going to hurt you more than you thought, thanks to the new Google Panda update.
Used to be, if you used the different search engine optimization tactics, like backlinks and proper keyword density, you achieved that first page ranking.
Of course, if your writing sucked, visitors didn’t stick around for very long anyway, but hey, you were at the top of the search engines, right? Read more »
Kyle works with companies to develop sustainable digital marketing plans through employee training and engagement. He is the author of Twitter Marketing for Dummies, Branding Yourself, and KyleLacy.com.
We all have a brand. I have a brand. You have a brand. Xerox has a brand. The definition changes daily. We can argue about what is right and what is wrong. I’d rather not. The true definition is held inside the social ecosystem. Your brand is the perception or emotion maintained by somebody other than yourself. Read more »
Ken Moorhead is the social media manager and blog editor for Compendium, the business blogging platform. When not busy writing creative briefs for the Compendium staff blog, he fills the hours with MBA studies and general hijinx.
Blogging. More like “blah-ging” right? Not quite, people. Sure, a blog is a great place to post funny pictures of cats, but it’s also a killer marketing tool that can fuel both your search and social media strategies. Business blogging is a different animal with its own tricks of the trade. But what makes a blog good for business in the first place? Lucky you: that’s exactly what the next six minutes of reading are all about.
Blogging is conversational
A blog is a great place to toss aside the super-polished “marketing-approved” buzzphrases and actually speak in a natural, informal voice. Don’t get me wrong – carefully crafted marketing messages are important to any brand strategy, and elements of them should be present in a business blog. But a blog is also a great place to try new angles on your messages – take advantage of the less formal setting, play with some wacky analogies and ask readers to interact and participate. Read more »
Your website’s traffic can be your company’s most valuable asset. Unfortunately, many companies are leaving value on the table and aren’t tapping into the full potential value that their traffic can deliver. Implementing a few engagement channels for your audience can help boost the value that you’re receiving from your traffic. By focusing on customer retention and audience activation, your business can and will start receiving the value it deserves from its online traffic.
Ultimately, you want to build engaging experiences that leave each and every single site visitor happy and satisfied. Let me walk you through the four most ways that I feel will help you get the most out of your traffic: Read more »
This is a guest post from Michael Reynolds, President/CEO of SpinWeb. SpinWeb is a web solutions firm in Indianapolis, Indiana specializing in content management and content marketing.
Everybody wants page one rankings in Google, right? Some people make it sound so easy with promises of quick results and low budgets. In reality, SEO is hard work and takes lots of systematic planning and effort. That’s why enterprise SEO companies like Slingshot SEO exist.
However, with all the attention placed on getting traffic, I sometimes get concerned when people leave out the second part of the equation: conversion. Read more »
Be Smart When I talk to our clients about re-purposing, I usually ask them about their video content first, because I find that most people overlook its potential by ignoring two alternative uses for it: podcasts and transcriptions. Read more »
Brock Benefiel is an online editor at 
Erik co-authored 
Kyle works with companies to develop sustainable digital marketing plans through employee training and engagement. He is the author of Twitter Marketing for Dummies, Branding Yourself, and 
Business blogging is a different animal with its own tricks of the trade. But what makes a blog good for business in the first place? Lucky you: that’s exactly what the next six minutes of reading are all about.
