Patrick Stox says, “Many people are more afraid of duplicate content than they are of spammy links. There are so many myths around duplicate content that people actually think it causes a penalty and that their pages will compete against each other and hurt their website. I see forum posts, Reddit threads, technical audits, tools, and even SEO news websites publishing articles that show people clearly don’t understand how Google treats duplicate content. Google tried to kill off the myths around duplicate content years ago. Susan Moska posted on the Google Webmaster blog in 2008: Let’s... [...]

Jeffrey L. Cohen says, “Sometimes I think about changing famous movie quotes to include marketing terms. I will admit that I may need to get out more, but these can be instructive in drawing some analogies to the topic at hand. Since this post is about leads, here are a few: – May the leads be with you. – Show me the leads. – You can’t handle the leads. B2B marketing is often all about generating leads for sales. And in our demand-driven culture, where marketing is held accountable for having an impact on revenue, it has become even more prevalent. There are many ways... [...]

Sarah Quinn says, “Social media is a tricky marketing strategy to master. After all, each platform is different, appealing to different types of people. How do you know where to focus your efforts? Or when? Or even what to post? Sometimes it can seem like other people are making hit after hit on their social media channel, and you’re struggling to gain any attention. Why is that? Well, there are a couple of secrets that may not know about. But don’t worry, because I’m going to share them with you right now! Here are the five secrets to a successful social media channel: 1.... [...]

Howie Busch says, “What do you do when you need to get to a person or a company? It used to be that when you needed to get through to somebody you didn’t already know you had to pick up the phone and persuade that skeptical receptionist/gatekeeper. Remember the movie “Wall Street,” when Bud Fox called Gordon Gekko for 30 days straight, each time trying to charm Gekko’s secretary to put him through? Gatekeepers can be pretty tough (besides, when Bud Fox did get through the gatekeeper to Gekko, he lost everything and almost wound up in jail. But we digress). Cold calling... [...]

Greg Verdino says, ““Do our content reviews need to take so long?” “Why do our writers keep reinventing the wheel?” “Why do the articles in the same part of our website take such different approaches?” If you’re up against questions like these, you have content messes on your hands. And you can bet that your prospects and customers get frustrated trying to find what they need hidden in those messes. You’re not alone. We hear these things almost every time we revamp a website. A company has built a huge inventory of content, often created by multiple authors. What might have... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “A consumer survey recently conducted on behalf of retail personalization platform BloomReach found that Amazon has increased its lead as the product search engine of choice for US consumers. Last year, 44 percent reported starting their search for products on Amazon; this year, it’s 55 percent. The “State of Amazon” study polled 2,000 US consumers in September. A survey released earlier this year by PowerReviews (n=1,000 consumers) found a narrower lead for Amazon (38 percent) vs. Google (35 percent) as the starting point for products. Amazon is utilized as a starting... [...]

Wesley Parker says, “New expanded text ads came out as part of Google’s latest changes in summer 2016 and will replace the old text format by January 31, 2017. The new ad format has given advertisers another 35 characters to display their offer in the headline and has increased the description from two lines of 35 characters to one line of 80 characters, giving advertisers more space to display their features, benefits and calls to action. But what does all of this mean for advertisers? 1. An increase in clickthrough rate From early tests WordStream has noticed that the clickthrough... [...]

Jeremy Smith says, “How well do you think you know the users who come to your website? Can you tell me about your best customer’s buying habits? Or maybe how long your average customer goes between purchases? Or which customer channel converts more than any other channel? Most marketers will unwaveringly claim to know a wealth of information about their customers. However, when I start peeling the onion layers and asking some tough questions, I find I have tapped into some different emotions (like frustration from realizing that they can’t answer my questions). Can you quantitatively... [...]

Pamela Wilson says, “Have you ever wondered if your strange collection of skills and interests could be woven together to build a profitable business? If you have, you’ll love today’s Hero’s Journey article. Lauren Pawell is a rare breed: she has a background in development and marketing. That’s a combination you don’t see every day! Some people might have encouraged Lauren to choose one field or the other. But she persisted and has built a business that artfully combines her many passions. Lauren’s story is this month’s Hero’s Journey feature. We’re tapping the collective... [...]

Thomas Caulton says, “We all know building backlinks is one of the most important aspects of any successful SEO and digital marketing campaign. However, I believe there is an untapped resource out there for link building: finding your competitors’ broken pages that have been linked to by external sources. Allow me to elaborate. Finding the perfect backlink often takes hours, and it can can take days, weeks, or even longer to acquire. That’s where the link building method I’ve outlined below comes in. I use it on a regular basis to build relevant backlinks from competitors’... [...]