Stephan Marais
The SEO industry is (finally) getting the message that making content user-centric rather than focusing so heavily on outdated, over-optimized practices is the path to better rankings, more traffic and more customers. It's not enough just to focus on onsite optimization anymore, and content marketing (whichever of the competing definitions of that term you use) has rightly moved to the forefront of everyone's minds.
Savvy marketers know that content marketing is key when it comes to building up a relationship with other sites, social networks, and syndication partners. Whether or not you agree with slapping the (buzz)phrase 'content marketing' across many of the already commonly used SEO tactics, everyone can agree the technology to find, distribute and track how content delivers ROI (meaning influencer tracking, social analytics, custom CRMs) has really kick-started an interest in the field.
Many of us have cobbled tech solutions together to form the backbone of our marketing. Buying a single, comprehensive suite would make everything work together - but does such a thing exist? The answer to that question is complicated.
Back at the turn of the century, blogging was in a nascent state. Over the next five years, many individuals and news organizations discovered the benefits of blogging. And soon after, brands began to realize that creating content (actually they just called it blogging back then) could greatly benefit both SEO efforts and brand awareness.
Real-time social engagement is a great way for brands to stay top of mind, build their social audience and even influence the buying decisions of consumers. On-the-fly upsets to content plans and rapid response content creation are counterintuitive for most brands, though. At TopRank, we coach brands on careful planning, implementation, measurement and ongoing improvement based on insights.
Content is king. How many times have you heard that in the last, say, 2 hours? It's all anyone talks about now that Google has closed so many loopholes and is forcing online marketers to focus on Earned Links.
Inbound marketing - or combining different online marketing processes such as SEO, content marketing, social media and conversions - has been one of the most effective ways to hit a site's various business goals in one go, like driving more specifically targeted traffic, improving revenue and/or building a stronger brand mind share.
The SEO industry has been shaken up quite a bit as of lately with the Panda/Penguin updates, leaving scores of low quality sites now sitting at the bottom of the heap. Good riddance I say, as even good internet marketers who were able to effectively use Google search operators had trouble finding the information they were after while sorting through pages and pages of useless spammy results.
Managing an outreach team can be a daunting task, as you are essentially in charge of people browsing who-knows-what websites and saying oh-no-not-that to influencers on behalf of your business' brand. It's a scary thought, knowing you're incapable of monitoring each and every detail of whom and what they are pitching.
