Content Trends

Content Marketing, SEO and Digital Marketing

Transform your marketing with 5 new technologies

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Have you read sci-fi novels where your brain has only to think of something that you need and voila — you have it? AI is making this past fiction scenario into a future reality and is quickly transforming digital marketing. And while we haven’t quite reached this point just yet, every day, AI is getting better at learning how we think and what we want.

Thanks to NLP (Natural Language Processing), Voice search, Google’s algorithms like Hummingbird and Panda, predictive modeling in Data Science, marketers can better target the right customers with the most relevant message to their needs.

These 5 AI trends can help you sell more in three ways:

  • Your customers will better understand how your product will work.
  • You can reach the right audience with the right message.
  • You can automate certain tasks that were previously labor intensive.

All three ways help you save money, create a stronger customer experience which in turn will help you retain and win more customers for stronger profit and ROI.

1) Virtual reality

What is VR?
VR helps you create a simulated environment using computer software.
How to benefit from VR
Every day companies are coming up with new ways to use this technology. VR’s potential is still untapped and the sky’s the limit for many industries. For example, you can use VR to help customers imagine how your product will look in their environment or help them travel the world or even watch virtual exhibits. Here are some innovative ways companies are using VR.
IKEA: Place is an app that lets you virtually place true-to-scale 3D models in your very own space.
VOLVO: was one of the first companies to introduce virtual test drives with the help of VR sets.
Thomas Cook: released a VR campaign called Try Before You Fly. The results — $17,000 on flight and hotel bookings and a 190% uplift in trips to New York. All this within the first three months of the campaign.

Thomas Cook’s successful “Try before you Fly” campaign

2) Chatbots

What are chatbots?
Chatbots are an AI-powered software that help you converse with customers. They understand users’ keywords and can accordingly give pre-set answers to frequently asked questions about your business. Chatbots often have human names and avatars so we feel comfortable chatting with them.
There are lots of great chatbot platforms that allow you to build your own chatbot and integrate it on your website.
How to benefit from chatbots
Chatbots allow you to save money by answering questions and welcoming people with no need for human interaction. To answer more complex questions, you’d still need human interaction.
For example, chatbots can:

  • Greet your customers when they first land on your site.
  • Answer FAQs (like “what’s your return policy?” or “how much do your services cost?”)
  • Gather basic info from leads
  • Set up a sales call with them

3. Voice-activated search

What is voice-activated search?
Voice search allows users to use their voice to search the Internet, a website, or an app. More broadly, voice search includes keyword queries on any info on the Internet. Google Voice Search, Cortana, Siri, Alexa and Amazon Echo are all great examples.
How to benefit from voice-activated search
Some tips on how to optimize your site for voice-activated search:
1. Register for Google My Business
When you register for Google My Business, Google can confirm that yours is an authentic business. This means it’ll more likely bring up your name in a voice search.
2. Optimize Your Site for Mobile
Chances are, you won’t be doing a voice search on your desktop. You’ll probably do it while driving

  • Making sure your buttons aren’t too small to be seen comfortably on a mobile device.
  • Go for mobile-friendly plugins.
  • Optimize your site so it loads in under 3 seconds.

3. Get into Google’s Featured Snippets
This isn’t an easy task, but it’s the #1 reason you’ll make it in a voice search.

4. Personalization and recommendation engines

You know how Netflix and Amazon recommend products based on your previous history? Personalization and recommendations such as these are what consumers want. A recent report showed that nearly three-fourths (74%) of online consumers get frustrated with websites when they see content (e.g. offers, ads, promotions) that has nothing to do with their interests.
How to benefit from recommendation engines and personalization
AI predicts customer behavior based on previous brand interactions. For example, Amazon has a record of every purchase you’ve ever made, your browsing history, items you’ve wished for, apps you’ve downloaded, reviews and everything you’ve asked Alexa or Echo. They use this wealth of info about you to recommend other products.

AI also helps brands to personalize email marketing campaigns based on user behaviors. Marketers can send out emails based on certain actions you take while browsing or shopping. AI helps marketers optimize their email campaigns. You can use tools like like Phrasee to dynamically analyze and optimize campaigns quickly, rather than having to A/B test different messages and designs, which can take time.

5) CRMs powered by AI

What are CRMs?
Customer relationship managers are software systems that manage customer data. These systems help businesses manage their relationships with customers.

According to a recent survey by Capterra, 47% of polled CRM users said that their CRM had a significant impact on customer retention and customer satisfaction.

How to benefit from CRMs
Marketers can analyze a prospect’s needs and adapt to boost sales. Thanks to AI, CRMs can:

  • Better target your customers and serve them messages relevant to their needs.
  • Visualize the customer journey and make the shopping experience easier by helping the customer reach the checkout with recommendations that better reflect them and their habits.
  • Sync up with other marketing tools so that marketers can create better:
    • Email nurturing campaigns that educate prospects and new customers
    • Landing/sales pages personalized to the customer’s needs (for ex. special landing pages for those who abandoned their carts)
    • Targeted digital and display ads

All these help especially with products that are more expensive or need more thought before buying. These strategies help keep prospects moving steadily through the marketing funnel till they buy.

Your turn

What are you doing to optimize your marketing with new technologies? Please share in the comments below. Thank you!

10 off-site SEO strategies to boost your rankings

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image of off-site SEO optimizationSearch engines are constantly changing their algorithms. While it’s important to keep track, these days your off-site SEO efforts are almost as important as your on-site efforts.
A recent study by Moz found that off-site SEO-related factors likely carry more than 50% of the ranking factor weight.

image from an article written by SEO Moz showing that off-site SEO is almost as important as on-site SEO
An article by Moz that search engines use off-site signals almost as much as on-site signals

Need just one sentence to summarize your off-site SEO efforts?

It all boils down to how your brand is perceived by your customers and more broadly in the community. Are you creating the best possible brand experience for your customers and community? Then, Google is interested in rewarding you with good rankings. According to Google, if you’re respected in your community as a leader you’ll also have:

  • Quality backlinks from authoritative and respected sites
  • Authority
  • A strong reputation and be considered a leader in your space

Building relationships and community outreach

Link-building in the past involved buying links. This technique has long been considered spammy but it didn’t stop people from using it. Then, the Penguin update was released in April 2012. Until then, even though Google had improved its link evaluation, this was the first step toward the modern ranking system we know today. Sites using spammy, “black-hat techniques” were penalized. On the other hand, Penguin rewarded sites that had a natural link profile.

Matt Cutts said in a video that when you approach building links only for search engines, you create a certain mindset. Think instead of who might be interested in your content in the community and build relationships with them. This way, link building is just a byproduct of their collaborative relationship with you.

Also, think of quality vs. quantity. There was a time when the number of links that you had were important. This was before the days of link-spammers and sites selling you links. Nowadays, the only links that count are from high-authority websites.

What to do

Think strategically. “What can I do to market my website to make it broadly known in the community?”:
#1.Talk to people in the media such as high-profile newspapers and online news sites.
#2. Network at industry conferences and forums. Build relationships which in turn may lead to opportunities for collaboration.
#3. Sponsor an event that will create buzz in the community and earn you links from the organizations whose event you’re sponsoring plus the media.
#4. Donate to charitable organizations that have a high degree of trust and good sentiment in the community.
#5. Collaborate with educational institutions. They are respected and have a great deal of authority online.

Authority

Domain Authority (DA) is a ranking metric that Moz uses to predict how well a site will rank. It’s one of the industry standards we use when we talk about ranking on the SERPs. Moz has a free tool, Open Site Explorer (OSE) to check your DA.

Your DA depends on your MOZrank, how trustworthy your site is, links and domain age. Other factors include the number of social media mentions of your brand and brand search volume.

Brand reputation

Google takes the total brand experience into account. This includes user reviews, testimonials, social media shares, mentions and brand-name searches.

Google favors highly-rated sites

Google’s algorithms also factor the rating of sites, favoring the ones with the highest ratings according to a Search Engine Watch article. “It’s your social proof and authority that reviews can boost, which means that it’s not just about adding reviews to your site, you should also focus on how to improve them.”

What to do

# 6.Receive visible star ratings

When star ratings are displayed in Google search results, prospective customers can instantly judge whether they can trust your product enough to visit your site. This helps increase traffic and sales, but it’s not always easy to achieve it.

Google relies on specific third-party review sites to determine your star rating. You should have at least 30 unique reviews during the past year, with an average of 3.5 or higher.

Star ratings may lead to an increased conversion rate of up to 17%. This itself is a great incentive to research more about them, along with Google’s guidelines on how to be eligible.

If anyone leaves a negative review, it’s important to respond and find out the root cause. Many brands have turned these experiences into positive outcomes for their brand.

#7. Monitor your brand search volume

Paying attention to the discussions of your customers and prospects can also do wonders for your marketing strategies. Uncovering brand mentions can lead to:

  • Reputation management opportunities
  • Honest feedback and insight
  • A better understanding of how customers interact with your product or service

Listening online for brand mentions can also lead to legitimate link opportunities. Both branded and non-branded mentions of your company offer link prospects plus an exposure to new audiences and communities.

There are many tools that let you monitor brand mentions not only on Facebook and Twitter, but also on each and every website out there – whether they’re forums or news sites. These tools also allow you to respond immediately.

#8. Use social media to spread the word about your brand

It pays to be there, be proactive and be human.
1. Be there: Make sure someone is monitoring your social media accounts and can quickly answer questions and respond to comments. You should also have special social media accounts set up just to answer questions and for customer service.
2. Be human: People online expect interaction, not robotic responses or constant brand promotion.
3. Be proactive: Use social media as a resource for the online community in the vertical you serve. For example, you can do that by answering questions on q and a sites like Quora or looking to answer them with a Twitter search.

Some strategies with social media:

  • Many brands make the mistake of being on all the social media channels. This dilutes your social media strategy. It makes sense to stay on the important social media channels you know your customers are likely to frequent plus those channels that are relevant to your business. For example, if you sell clothes, Instagram is a must-use social media channel.
  • Make sure that your social media profiles are up to date and correctly reflect your brand promise.
  • Social sharing contributes to a brand’s authority much in the same way that external links do. To search engines like Google, any indication of a verifiable external source validating your brand or your content is grounds for a small improvement in domain authority. Likes, shares, favorites, replies, and retweets all count toward this increased authority.

#9. Build connections with social media/online influencers

An effective strategy for enlisting the help of influencers to boost your off-page SEO is to get to know them in person, at events, and online via group chats/tweets and such, which puts you on their radar without much heavy lifting on your part.

Then, in the future, when you do create and share content, they’re more likely to recognize your brand and share the content themselves.

Even better, later on, after you’ve developed a stronger relationship, you might even collaborate together on a piece of content.

#10. Optimize all your digital assets

This includes having and optimizing:

  • A blog, so you share fresh content regularly — search engines love fresh content
  • A YouTube channel and a presence on other video-sharing sites
  • Images on image-sharing sites like Flikr and Instagram
  • Mobile apps
  • Podcasts

Increased engagement will lead to an increased online brand presence. This in turn will lead to more brand searches on Google, and the more branded searches your brand receives, the higher it’s likely to rank for non-branded keywords.

All these off-site SEO strategies combined are bound to increase your influence and rankings online. As with anything, SEO takes time. If you hear differently, run miles away like you would run from a snake-oil salesman.

Your turn

What strategies are you using to increase your rankings? Or do you have any other ideas to share? Or you just want to share some feedback on this post? I’d love to hear from you. Add a comment below. Thanks.

How to plan and create SEO-friendly content

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image of the different elements of SEO such as strategy, keywords, links

SEO-friendly content is all about ensuring that your content is timely, relevant and useful for your prospects and customers. Creating SEO-friendly content involves some planning before you structure your pages.

First step: Plan your topics around search terms your prospects use

So how do you help the right people discover your content? It’s simple. Just try getting into the minds of readers and thinking like them. This will help you use the right search terms that users use when they search for your product.

Content planning in 4 easy steps

  • Create personas of your buyers. This will allow you to map content according to their demographics, professions and interests
  • Find keywords for each stage of the buyer’s journey.
  • Map keywords to content.
  • Understand how to create content for semantic search systems.

1. Create personas of your buyers

These tools help you understand your buyers’ habits and preferences:

  • Facebook Insights lets you upload your customer list to help you understand what Facebook knows about them.
  • Adwords Customer Match allows you to upload your email list to understand buyer behaviors so you can better target your ads.
  • Survey Monkey helps you directly find out what customers want by creating polls and surveys.
  • Twitter Analytics presents information on interests, location, gender, and people your followers follow on Twitter.

2. Find keywords for each stage of the buyer’s journey

Yes, keywords. So why are talking about keywords in 2017? Because keywords are still the best tool to plan your content and structure your pages since these are the search terms people use when they look for you. Using keywords on the page is an entirely different matter. You need to use keywords sparingly on a page but we’ll tackle that in the next post.

Most buyers begin with broad searches since they are in the research stage and once they know what they want their searches are more specific.

For example, let’s say I was planning content for a vacation tour agency. After studying my users, I came up with search terms for the different phases of my buyer’s journey. So searches in the initial phase would include these keywords:

  • European vacation packages
  • 6-day vacations in Europe
  • Best places to visit in Europe

As I move through the buyer’s journey and become aware of options and narrow down where I want to go, searches will become more specific like:

  • Paris vacations
  • What to see and do in Paris
  • Compare hotels in Paris
  • Compare restaurants in Paris
  • Compare fares to Paris

I’m now in the Comparison phase — comparing various hotels and their features to determine which particular one is the best for me.
Finally, I may get very specific as I settle in on what I want:
Hotel Green reviews

Now I’m in the purchase phase. I know exactly where I want to stay.

Some tools to help you mine keywords

    • Google Suggest completes terms based on the first few letters users type into the search box. You’ll get an idea of the most frequently searched terms.

screenshot of Google Suggest

  • Keyword Tool Dominator helps you find long-tail keywords your target audience is searching for.
  • Google Keyword Planner gives you an idea of how often people search for certain keywords and how their search volume changes over time.
  • Keyword Explorer by Moz helps you prioritize important keywords, and check keyword difficulty, volume, and competitive metrics.

3. Map keywords to your content

The next step is to actually map each of these keywords to one blog post or page. The most important goal with SEO and with anything on your site is to deliver the best user experience. For example, you could write a blog post on the different sightseeing options in Paris and link to the tour operators page for more info and to buy tickets.

4. Understand how semantic search engines work

Google and other search engines use complex algorithms to understand users’needs. They penalize websites that use keywords excessively on a page. So the trick is to use your core keywords sparingly on a page at the right places where they’ll be most effective. Semantic search systems look for synonyms and alternate words that describe your topic. For example for my vacation to Europe example, some alternate terms to use on my page would include holiday and trip.

Semantic search systems also look for other terms that relate to your topic. What else would you probably look for while shopping for a Paris vacation? You may also look for a hotel or a map.

LSIGraph/LSI Keyword Generator is a great tool for this. For my vacation in Paris, these are the alternate terms I got:
vacation in Paris reviews
holiday rentals in Paris
vip vacation in Paris
Paris vacation packages
map of Paris
best hotels in Paris

Measuring effectiveness of your search terms

Most experts agree that the best way to find out which terms are driving the traffic to your site, is to create content around each of these long-tail keywords. Your Analytics report will show you which pages are converting.

Second step: Create your SEO-friendly content

Once you have your keywords and semantic search times, it’s easy to build content. Next week, we’ll go through all the steps for creating and sharing your SEO-friendly content.

Your turn
Have a trend to report that you don’t see here? Or used any of these techniques and want to share your results? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks.

Filed Under: Seo

Top 5 content trends for 2017

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2017 is an exciting year for content. It’s finally the year where you can target each customer so they have a unique experience with your brand.

These 5 content trends are all inter-connected as everything in digital marketing is these days. And using them will make a big difference to your content marketing goals.

#1. Video content

Almost 50% of users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store.
69% of companies report their video marketing budget is increasing.

And 25% of consumers will lose interest in your brand if you don’t have a video explaining your product or service.

Video trends
Creating a video can be simple and inexpensive. Live videos are big now. And brands can use them to get a high level of reach on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, so take full advantage.

Ways to include video content

  • Turn sales materials into video format.
  • Show how customers engage and are helped by your brand every day with customer stories.
  • Have a helpful how-to video about something related to your industry.
  • Engage with customers via live video on Facebook.

#2. Personalization

Nearly three-fourths (74%) of online consumers get frustrated with websites when they see content (e.g. offers, ads, promotions) that has nothing to do with their interests.

Personalization these days is all about data and using it to shape a customer’s experience with your brand.

Maximize your ROI

When you offer your prospects and customers alike only what they have expressed an interest in seeing, you’ll be likely to get higher levels of engagement – and more sales – than you would if you blanketed everybody with the same content.

5 ways you can instantly personalize

  • Location
  • Persona
  • Behavior
  • Device
  • Referral source

What you can do to personalize

  • Use recommendation engines. They show people items they may like based on previous behaviors and other user’s who bought similar things.
  • Ask users in your email lists to specify their topics of interest. Or create special social media pages for separate lines of business.

#3. Cross-channel marketing

According to Econsultancy’s fourth annual Cross-Channel Marketing Report, 73 percent of respondents said that cross-channel marketing had a significant impact on increased conversion rates. But it is only effective if you know your target audience and their consumption habits.

The primary goal of cross-channel marketing is to create a consistent brand presence across multiple channels so that users can move seamlessly between devices and platforms to make a purchase.

3 best ways to use cross-channel marketing

  • Determine what the right message is
  • Find the right time to release it
  • Use the correct channels

High demand but still in early stages
Although there are several tools and resources to help, cross-channel marketing is still in the early stages, even with the widespread adoption of mobile devices. Consumers today are more connected than ever, and the need for quality cross-channel marketing will continue to be in high demand throughout 2017.

#4. Big SEO update – Mobile version of your website is indexed as the primary version

Google is busy rolling out their mobile-first index. Until recently, Google viewed web pages through the eyes of a desktop user, treating mobile pages as important, but secondary to desktop pages. Now, Google is indexing the mobile version as the primary page, with desktop pages being secondary.

Mobile-friendly features Google rolled out recently

  • The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) update allows users to access content almost instantaneously when the protocols are included.
  • App streaming update allows users to preview content within apps they haven’t even downloaded to their mobile devices.
  • Mobilegeddon, Google’s algorithm update from 2015 — it started giving priority to web sites that display well on smartphones and other mobile devices.

What you need to do

  • Make sure your content is optimized for all devices. Here are some tips on how to write for mobile
  • Make sure you use responsive design templates so the site automatically accommodates the device used to access it.
  • Develop an app for your business. Experts are saying that the mobile-first index is paving the way for app favoritism in the near future.

# 5. Content strategy

According to Content Marketing Institute (CMI), only 40% of companies have a documented content strategy. 57% of marketers have a strategy that’s either not documented or they plan to documents their strategy within the next 12 months.

That’s a huge opportunity for marketers and for content marketers. They can increase their insights and show a direct relationship beween content, business goals and profits with a documented content strategy. And it’s an upward trend for 2017.

Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends for 2017 report by CMI and Marketo

5 most important priorities in developing a content strategy

  • A plan to operate content marketing as an ongoing business process
  • A differentiated story value to deliver
  • Well defined business goals for content
  • A process to align with other sales/loyalty objectives
  • A measurement plan to provide insight and progress toward the business goal

Your turn
Have a trend to report that you don’t see here? Or have you used any of these trends and what were your results. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks.

How to Rank Well after Panda 4.0

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win against panda 4.0On May 21, 2014, Google unleashed Panda 4.0, an update to their famous filter known for flushing out low quality content. Panda’s main aim is to remove content that’s thin, low-quality or spammy from rankings so that the user gets the highest quality results. Panda was first released in February 2011 and has had several updates. Panda 4.0 is the largest update and has affected 7% of queries. It’s main aim seems to be to flush out “thin content from top rankings.”

As soon as Google made the announcement for Panda 4.0, the search world was buzzing. Updates to Panda were monthly and an announcement of an update was unheard of. It meant that this was a huge overhaul. Within, a couple of days it was apparent that certain sites took a huge hit and lost almost 80% of their organic results. According to Search Engine Land in their winners and losers post, Ebay and ask.com topped the list of losers. Ebay has a lot of doorway pages that have little or no content, just meant to lead the reader to a product page.

I think that this update and Panda are actually reasons for content marketers to celebrate. Now more than ever before it’s apparent that your content is the most important thing on your site, something that content marketers have been saying for ages.

Panda goes after thin and low quality content which is a boon for content marketers. Panda targets content that is:

  • Thin or little
  • Duplicate
  • Low quality
  • Plagiarized

What wins and comes up on top are sites that produce this type of content:

  • Original
  • High quality
  • Fresh

So what do we do to ensure that our site is not the latest casualty? And more importantly how do we rank well for all the content we’ve worked hard to create? Here are some ideas that come to mind:

#1. Do a content audit of your site

A content audit will allow you to at-a-glance root out content that may keep you from ranking well. Doing a content audit, if you have a have a huge site with several thousand pages is a gigantic task. Here’s a good article on how to perform a content audit.

If you don’t have the time to do a full audit, use analytics to get a sampling of popular, average, and low traffic pages. Also, you only need to look at the last year to half a year of blog posts. But you’ll be able to unearth a wealth of info such as:

  • Pages with duplicate content. A thorough content audit will point out pages that are redundant and need to be deleted.
  • Pages that are obsolete. For example: last year’s Thanksgiving sale and items on discount for that event. If a visitor lands on this page, it creates a poor user experience.

    • After conducting the audit, for each page ask yourself:

    • Does this page contain enough of content? The page should have at least 300 words or it’s considered very thin content.
    • Is the content valuable to its audience? This is obviously somewhat subjective, but you can understand if it is once you look at your metrics such as bounce rate and time spent on the page.
    • Does the content contain targeted keywords? Do they appear in the first few paragraphs? If you want to rank well, it helps to use the search terms people are using.
    • Does the content have keywords stuffed in it? You want to include keywords in your content, but you don’t want to go overboard.
    • Does the content have spelling and grammatical errors? Grammatically wrong content is a dead-giveaway to search engines on the lookout for spammy content. Spell check is your best friend.
    • Is the content easily readable? This article goes into depth about making your content readable and how to check your readability statistics.
    • Are search engines able to index this content? Do you have an XML site-map? Are you stopping search engines with your robots.txt file?

    #2. Have a content marketing plan in place

    Search engines love fresh content and lots of it. And of-course high quality content. Your content marketing plan needs to include a plan for all the types of content you will be creating during the year. This includes blog content, social media content, customer newsletters and emails, any whitepapers or eBooks. the best way to sort yourself through this maze of content is:

    • Have a content calendar. This will keep you on track.
    • Build plenty of pages targeting keyword variations. The days of keyword-stuffing are long past. If your site ranks well for certain articles, it makes sense to create variations around those terms.

    #3. Do an SEO audit

    Remember, when doing the SEO audit that you’re doing it to find content on your site that is Panda-unfriendly. Check for duplicate meta titles and descriptions. A great tool to use for this is Google Webmasters Tools. If you go into your account:

    • Google Webmaster Tools – Search Appearance – HTML improvements, you’ll see any duplicate titles and meta descriptions.
    • Check for duplicate URLs

    #4.Take care to only hire the best copywriters and content creators – you get what you pay for

    Because of the need to constantly churn out fresh content, many businesses are outsourcing their content creation efforts. One caveat: you get what you pay for. High quality copywriters don’t come cheap but you are guaranteed original, high quality content. In the eyes of Google and even the world that’s priceless.

    #5. Improve the user experience on your site

    There are several ways to improve the user experience on your site. And most of these things you are probably already doing:

    • Have a mobile-optimized site with responsive design. Search engines now prefer sites that work well on mobiles.
    • Make sure that your site’s architecture is easy. If your audience has to drill down many levels to get to your content, that creates a poor user experience.

    #6. Market your content

    Marketing your content on many different channels ensures that your audience will see your content. This sends a signal to search engines that your content is valuable.

    • Plan to market your content on all the social media channels that your audience may use such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+
    • If you sell products that are good on visuals such as fashion wear or interiors, Pinterest and Instagram have growing communities that are worth tapping into.
    • Try reaching out to people in the community who may be interested in your content. They may like your content and link back to it. Sites such as news sites or non-profits and charitable organizations that you may have donatated to are great for getting links.

    Your turn

    Was your site affected by Panda? Do you have more ideas on how to keep content high quality? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please share them in the comments below. Thanks.