Do you write content and never see it on page one in search results? Find less competitive keyword opportunities so you can finally win at Google!
The post How to Find Epic Keyword Opportunities That Turn Into Easy SERP Wins by @josephhhoward appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
When it comes time to launch a new product, the majority of marketers in the US, the UK, and Australia are now turning to social media.
Five by Five, a marketing communications firm that specializes in product launches, polled more than 700 marketers in these countries and found that nearly three-quarters (74%) of them consider social media to be the highest-priority medium to promote new products.
Sales promotions and email were the second and third most popular launch marketing medium, respectively.
According to Five by Five creative director Martin Flavin:
“Social media has become the most important way to generate buzz for new products and services before they appear. Shareable content and social engagement allow brands to create a groundswell of pre-launch interest in a way no other channel can match.”
Social media is now more popular a launch marketing medium than PR/press, television and direct mail.
Social's popularity among marketers for product launches isn't just based on the fact that social channels like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat offer access to billions of consumers around the world.
According to Five by Five, social's popularity is also based on the fact that it's a readily accessible medium that marketers can turn to in a pinch, which is increasingly important given that products are being conceived, built and launched much more rapidly than ever before.
In fact, two-thirds of the marketers the firm surveyed indicated that they usually have no more than six months to prep a new product launch, which can make it more difficult to execute launch strategies that rely on mediums that aren't as accessible.
But social isn't necessarily a perfect medium. Despite its accessibility, it can be very difficult for marketers to cut through the clutter on the most popular social channels, and attracting attention is only likely to become more difficult as marketers put the bulk of their eggs in the social media basket.
For those that are able to attract an audience and generate buzz for a new product, that buzz can also be short-lived thanks to the speed with which the social media world moves, so marketers shouldn't expect social buzz to sustain a new product.
Instead, they'll need to plan for a relatively quick transition to post-launch marketing, which will usually include marketing mediums other than social, including search, which as PR Week's Robert Smith notes, has been called a more powerful medium than social by WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell.
Posted by kerryjones
I was in Peru earlier this year for a digital marketing conference, and I overwhelmingly heard the same frustration: “It's really hard to use outreach to earn links or PR coverage in our country.”
This wasn't for lack of trying. As I continued to hear this sentiment during my visit, I learned there simply weren't a lot of opportunities. For one thing, in Peru, there aren't nearly as many publishers as in more populous countries. Most publishers expected payment for mentioning a brand. Furthermore, journalists did a lot of job-hopping, so maintaining relationships was difficult.
This is a conundrum not limited to Peru. I know many people outside of the US can relate. When you see the Fractl team and others sharing stories about how we earn hundreds of links for a single content piece, you might think it must be nice to do outreach somewhere like the US where online publishers are plentiful and they'll feature great content with no strings attached. While the work my team does isn't easy by any means, I do recognize that there are ample opportunities for earning links and press coverage from American publishers.
One solution is focusing your outreach efforts on publishers in neighboring countries or countries with the same language and a similar culture. During conversations with the Attachmedia team (the company hosting the conference I was at), I learned they had much greater success earning media stories and building links outside of Peru because publishers in surrounding South American countries were more receptive to their email pitches and publishing third-party content.
But you may not need to do any international outreach if you know how to create the type of content that will organically attract attention beyond your borders.
At Fractl, many of our top-performing client campaigns have secured a lot of international links even without us doing much, or any, international outreach. To dig deeper, we recently conducted an analysis of 290 top-performing client content campaigns to determine which content naturally attracted coverage from international publishers (and thus, international links). Altogether, these campaigns were featured by publishers in 130 countries, earning more than 4,000 international media stories.
In this post, I'll share what we found about what causes content to spread around the world.
For years, we've noticed that if content gets enough attention in the US, it will organically begin to receive international press and links. Watch how this happens in the GIF below, which visualizes how one of our campaigns spread globally after reaching critical mass in the US:
Our study confirmed that there's a correlation between earning a high number of links domestically and earning international links.
When we looked at our 50 most successful client campaigns that have earned the highest number of media stories, we discovered that these campaigns also received the most international coverage. Out of the 4,000 international placements we analyzed, 70 percent of them came from these 50 top-performing campaigns.
We also found that content which earned at least 25 international media pickups also earned at least 25 domestic pickups, so there's a minimum one-to-one ratio of international to domestic pickups.
Maps showing a contrast between countries were the visualizations of choice for international publishers.
World maps can be easily understood by global audiences, and make it easy for publishers to find an angle to cover. A client campaign, which looked at how much people eat and drink around the world, included maps highlighting differences between the countries. This was our fourth-highest-performing campaign in terms of international coverage.
Images were the second most popular visual format, which tells us that a picture may be worth a thousand words in any language. One great example of this is our “Evolution of Miss Universe” campaign, where we created a series of animated and interactive visualizations using photos of Miss Universe winners since 1952:
The simplicity of the visuals made this content accessible to all viewers regardless of the language they spoke. Paired with the international angle, this helped the campaign gain more than 40 pickups from global sites.
As we move down the rankings, formats that relied on more text, such as infographics, were less popular internationally. No doubt this is because international audiences can't connect with content they can't understand.
When creating text-heavy visualizations, consider if someone who speaks a different language can understand it - would it still make sense if you removed all the text?
Pro tip: If your outreach strategy is targeting multiple countries or a country where more than one language is widely spoken, it may be worth the effort to produce text-heavy visuals in multiple languages.
Our top-performing international campaigns show a clear preference for topics that resonate globally. The six topics that performed best internationally were:
Bear in the mind that these topics are reflective of our client campaigns, so every topic imaginable was not included in this study.
We drilled this down a little more and looked at the specific topics covered in our top 50 campaigns. You'll notice many of the most popular topics would make your grandma blush.
We know that controversial topics are highly effective in grabbing attention, and the list above confirms that pushing boundaries works on a global scale. (We weren't exactly surprised that a campaign called “Does Size Matter?” resonated internationally.)
But don't look at the chart above and assume that you need to make your content about sex, drugs, and rock and roll if you want to gain international attention. As you can see, even pedestrian fare performed well globally. Consider how you can create content that speaks to basic human interests, like technology, food, and … Instagram.
While our top five international campaigns did have a global focus, more than half of our 50 top-performing international campaigns did not have a global angle. This tells us that a geographic angle doesn't determine international success.
Some examples of non-geographic ideas that performed well are:
We also found that US-centric campaigns were, unsurprisingly, less likely to succeed. Only three of our campaigns with America-focused titles received more than 25 international placements. If your content topic does have a geographic angle, make sure to broaden it to have a multi-national or worldwide focus.
Pro tip: Consider how you can add an international twist to content ideas that already performed well domestically. The Miss Universe campaign example I shared above? That came to fruition after we successfully did a similar campaign about Miss America. Similarly, we could likely reboot our “Tolerance in America” campaign to look at racism around the world and expect it to be successful, as this topic already proved popular at home and is certainly relevant worldwide.
Over the years, we've seen time and time again that including certain elements in content greatly increases the chance of success. All of our content that achieved international success included some combination of the following:
Look back at the content examples I shared in this post, and make note of how many of the characteristics above are present in each one. To increase the likelihood that your content appeals to global audiences, be sure to read this post about the vital role these elements play in creating content that earns a lot of links and social shares.
What has your experience been like using content to attract international press and links? I'd love to hear what's worked for you - leave a comment below!
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Posted by JoyHawkins
Previously, I wrote an article unveiling some of the most common myths I see in the Local SEO space. I thought I'd do a follow-up that specifically talked about the myths pertaining to citations that I commonly hear from both small business owners and SEOs alike.
Truth: Google doesn't even recognize suite numbers for a whopping majority of Google business listings. Even though you enter a suite number in Google My Business, it doesn't translate into the "Suite #" field in Google MapMaker - it simply gets eliminated. Google also pays more attention to the location (pin) marker of the business when it comes to determining the actual location and less to the actual words people enter in as the address, as there can be multiple ways to name a street address. Google's Possum update recently introduced a filter for search queries that is based on location. We've seen this has to do with the address itself and how close other businesses in the same industry are to your location. Whether or not you have a suite number in Google My Business has nothing to do with it.
Darren Shaw from Whitespark, an expert on everything related to citations, says:
“You often can't control the suite number on your citations. Some sites force the suite number to appear before the address, some after the address, some with a # symbol, some with “Ste,” and others with “Suite.” If minor discrepancies like these in your citations affected your citation consistency or negatively impacted your rankings, then everyone would have a problem.”
In summary, if your citations look great but are missing the suite number, move along. There are most likely more important things you could be spending time on that would actually impact your ranking.
Truth: Say your business name is "State Farm: Bob Smith," yet one citation lists you as “Bob Smith Insurance” and another as “Bob Smith State Farm.” As Mike Blumenthal states: “Put a little trust in the algorithm.” If Google was incapable of realizing that those 3 names are really the same business (especially when their address & phone number are identical), we'd have a big problem on our hands. There would be so many duplicate listings on Google we wouldn't even begin to be able to keep track. Currently, I only generally see a lot of duplicates if there are major discrepancies in the address and phone number.
Darren Shaw also agrees on this:
“I see this all the time with law firms. Every time a new partner joins the firm or leaves the firm, they change their name. A firm can change from “Fletcher, McDonald, & Jones” to “Fletcher, Jones, & Smith” to “Fletcher Family Law” over the course of 3 years, and as long as the phone number and address stay the same, it will have no negative impact on their rankings. Google triangulates the data it finds on the web by three data points: name, address, and phone number. If two of these are a match, and then the name is a partial match, Google will have no problem associating those citations with the correct listing in GMB.”
Truth: SEO companies use this as a scare tactic, and it works very well. They have a small business pay them for citation cleanup. They'll do a scan of your incorrect data and send you a list of hundreds of directories that have your information wrong. This causes you to gasp and panic and instantly realize you must hire them to spend hours cleaning all this up, as it must be causing the ranking of your listing on Google to tank.
Let's dive into an example that I've seen. Local.com is a site that feeds to hundreds of smaller directories on newspaper sites. If you have a listing wrong on Local.com, it might appear that your listing is incorrect on hundreds of directories. For example, these three listings are on different domains, but if you look at the pages they're identical and they all say “Local.com” at the top:
http://directory.hawaiitribune-herald.com/profile?listingid=108895814
http://directory.lufkindailynews.com/profile?listingid=108895814
http://flbiz.oscnewsgazette.com/profile?listingid=108895814
Should this cause you to panic? No. Fixing it on Local.com itself should fix all the hundreds of other places. Even if it didn't, Google hasn't even indexed any of these URLs. (Note: they might index my examples since I just linked to them in this Moz article, so I'm including some screenshots from while I was writing this):
If Google hasn't even indexed the content, it's a good sign that the content doesn't mean much and it's nothing you should stress about. Google would have no incentive or reason to index all these different URLs due to the fact that the content on them is literally the same. Additionally, no one links to them (aside from me in this article, of course).
As Darren Shaw puts it,
“This one really irks me. There are WAY more important things for you to spend your time/money on than trying to fix a listing on a site like scranton.myyellowpageclassifieds.biz. Chances are, any attempt to update this listing would be futile anyway, because small sites like these are basically unmanaged. They're collecting their $200/m in Adsense revenue and don't have any interest in dealing with or responding to any listing update requests. In our Citation Audit and Cleanup service we offer two packages. One covers the top 30 sites + 5 industry/city-specific sites, and the other covers the top 50 sites + 5 industry/city-specific sites. These are sites that are actually important and valuable to local search. Audit and cleanup on sites beyond these is generally a waste of time and money.”
People often wonder what might happen to their NAP issues if they cancel their subscription with a company like Yext or Moz Local. Although these companies don't do anything to intentionally cause old data to come back, there have been some recent interesting findings around what actually happens when you cancel.
Truth: In one case, Phil Rozek did a little case study for a business that had to cancel Moz Local recently. The good news is that although staying with them is generally a good decision, this business didn't seem to have any major issues after cancelling.
Yext claims on their site that they don't do anything to push the old data back that was previously wrong. They explain that when you cancel, “the lock that was put in place to protect the business listing is no longer present. Once this occurs, the business listing is subject to the normal compilation process at the search engine, online directory, mobile app, or social network. In fact, because Yext no longer has this lock in place, Yext has no control over the listing directly at all, and the business listing data will now act as it normally would occur without Yext.”
Nyagoslav Zhekov just recently published a study on cancelling Yext and concluded that most of the listings either disappear or revert back to their previous incorrect state after cancelling. It seems that Yext acts as a sort of cover on top of the listing, and once Yext is cancelled, that cover is removed. So, there does seem to be some risk with cancelling Yext.
In summary, there is definitely a risk when you decide to cancel an ongoing automated service that was previously in place to correct your citations. It's important for people to realize that if they decide to do this, they might want to budget for some manual citation building/cleanup in case any issues arise.
Many Local SEO companies have the impression that citation building is the only type of backlinking strategy needed for small businesses to rank well in the 3-pack. According to this survey that Bright Local did, 72% of Local SEOs use citation building as a way of building links.
Truth: Local SEO Guide found in their Local Search Ranking Factors study that although citations are important, if that's the only backlinking strategy you're using, you're most likely not going to rank well in competitive markets. They found also found that links are the key competitive differentiator even when it comes to Google My Business Rankings. So if you're in a competitive industry or market and want to dominate the 3-pack, you need to look into additional backlinking strategies over and above citations.
Darren adds more clarity to the survey's results by stating,
“They're saying that citations are still very important, but they are a foundational tactic. You absolutely need a core base of citations to gain trust at Google, and if you don't have them you don't have a chance in hell at ranking, but they are no longer a competitive difference maker. Once you have the core 50 or so citations squared away, building more and more citations probably isn't what your local SEO campaign needs to move the needle further.”
This was a question that has come up a number of times with our team. If you have a restaurant that once had a phone number but then closes its doors, and a new law firm opens up down the street and gets assigned that phone number, should the lawyer worry about all the listings that exist for the restaurant (since they're in different industries)?
Truth: I reached out to Nyagoslav Zhekov, the Director of Local Search at Whitespark, to get the truth on this one. His response was:
“As Google tries to mimic real-life experiences, sooner or later this negative experience will result in some sort of algorithmic downgrading of the information by Google. If Google manages to figure out that a lot of customers look for and call a phone number that they think belongs to another business, it is logical that it will result in negative user experience. Thus, Google will assign a lower trust score to a Google Maps business record that offers information that does not clearly and unquestionably belong to the business for which the record is. Keeping in mind that the phone number is, by design and by default, the most unique and the most standardized information for a business (everything else is less standardize-able than the phone number), this is, as far as I am concerned, the most important information bit and the most significant identifier Google uses when determining how trustworthy particular information for a business is.”
He also pointed out that users finding the phone number for the restaurant and calling it continually would be a negative experience for both the customer and the law firm (who would have to continually confirm they're not a restaurant) so there would be added benefit in getting these listings for the restaurant marked closed or removed.
Since Darren Shaw gave me so much input for this article, he also wanted to add a seventh myth that he comes across regularly:
“This one is maybe more of a mis-labelling problem than a myth, but your listing at Google isn't really a citation. At Whitespark we refer to Google, Bing, and Apple Maps as 'Core Search Engines' (yes, Yahoo has been demoted to just a citation). The word 'citation' comes from the concept of 'citing' your sources in an academic paper. Using this conceptual framework, you can think of your Google listing as the academic paper, and all of your listings out on the web as the sources that cite the business. Your Google listing is like the queen bee and all the citations out there are the workers contributing to keep the queen bee alive and healthy.”
Hopefully that lays some of the fears and myths around citations to rest. If you have questions or ideas of other myths on this topic, we'd love to hear about it in the comments!
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The first Fortune 500 list was originally published in 1955 and since its creation; it has been one of the best indicators of the top corporations in the US. To those unaware of what the Fortune 500 is, the Fortune 500 is a list compiled by Fortune magazine raking the top 500 public corporations of…
The post How much Twitter influence do the top 10 companies in the Fortune 500 hold? appeared first on Majestic Blog.
Google has revealed the latest data on the impact of mobile shopping searches during Black Friday.
The post Mobile Shopping Searches Continue to Surge During Black Friday [DATA] by @MattGSouthern appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Posted by lkolowich
It's been years since the power's shifted away from marketers and advertisers and in favor of Internet consumers. Now more than ever, people are empowered to choose their own experiences online. They're actively avoiding ad content - and instead of living by advertisers' rule books, they're deciding what to click on, what to read, what to download, and what to buy … and what not to.
And they have a lot of choices.
When inbound marketers like us are looking to generate more leads from our website, we need to think not just about how to capture people's attention, but how to capture it in a way that makes people want to learn more from us. A smart lead generation strategy includes creating valuable offers and experiences that fit seamlessly into the context of what people already like and want to do online. It's the consumer's world; us marketers are just living in it.
People read calls-to-action that say things like “Sign up here!” as basically synonymous with “We're gonna spam you.” If you're recycling these same old lead generation tactics over and over again, it's quickly going to become white noise. But calls-to-action that fit into the context of what a person's doing already? That's smart marketing.
If you want to increase the conversion rate on your website, you need to get smart and creative with your lead generation tactics. Asking for blog subscriptions and gating high-quality content like comprehensive guides, ebooks, and whitepapers behind landing pages still works, but you have to be smart about where you're offering them on your website. And they shouldn't be your only lead generation plays.
There are many ways to get creative with lead generation to make sure you're reaping the benefits of the traffic you're working so hard to get. Here are some lead generation ideas for B2B and B2C marketers to try. Test them out, tweak them according to your audience's preferences, and share your own ideas you have in the comments.
CTA placement can have a profound effect on the number of leads you're generating from your site. And yet, not many marketers are spending a whole lot of time thinking about, testing, and tweaking CTA placement to optimize their conversions. Many claim that as long as they place their primary CTA above the fold, they're good to go. (Side note: Even though putting primary CTAs above the fold is often considered a best practice, even that is still up for debate.)
Start your CTA placement tests by putting them where people's eyes naturally go on a webpage. An eyetracking study found that when people read a webpage, we naturally start by looking in the upper lefthand corner of the page, and then move our eyes in an F-shaped pattern.
[Image credit: Nielsen Norman Group]
Here's what that looks like:
[Image credit: Envato Studio]
You can capitalize on this natural eye path by placing important information in these key spots. Here's an example of what that might look like on a website:
[Image credit: Envato Studio]
Notice how the business name is placed in the top left, which is where a person would look first. The navigation bar takes over the #2 spot, followed by the value proposition at #3 and the primary CTA at #4.
Does this order look familiar to you? When you're browsing the web, you might have noticed that many of them put the primary CTA in the top right corner - in that #2 spot. Here are a few real-life examples:
In the last example from BarkBox, you'll notice that the secondary CTAs still follow that F-pattern.
Keep this in mind when you're placing your CTAs, especially on your homepage and your other popular webpages - and don't be afraid to experiment based on how it makes sense for your own marketing story should be told.
Pop-ups have been vilified in the last few years - and quite understandably, too. Far too many marketers use them in a way that disrupts people's experience on their website instead of enhancing it.
But pop-ups do work - and, more importantly, when they're used in a way that's helpful and not disruptive, they can be a healthy part of your inbound strategy. So if you're wondering whether you should be using pop-up forms, the short answer is yes - as long as you use them in an inbound-y way. First and foremost, that means offering something valuable and relevant to the people visiting that site page.
When you're considering what type of pop-up to use and what action should trigger them, think about how people are engaging with your pages. When someone reads a blog post, for instance, they're typically going to scroll down the page to read the content. In that case, you might consider using a slide-in box that appears when someone's scrolled a certain percentage of the way down the page.
Here's a great example from a post on OfficeVibe's blog about how managers gain respect. While I was scrolling, a banner appeared at the bottom of the screen offering me a live report of employee engagement - an offer that was perfectly relevant, given the post was aimed at managers.
It felt helpful, not disruptive. In other words, it was a responsible use of a pop-up.
Similarly, someone who's spending time reading through a product page might find value in a time-based pop-up that appears when a visitor's been on the page for a certain number of seconds, like this one from Ugmonk:
The most important takeaway here is to align what you offer on a pop-up with the webpage you're adding it to, and make sure it's actually adding substantial value.
If you're looking for a good free tool to get started with inbound-y pop-up forms, I'd recommend you try HubSpot Marketing Free. We built the Lead Flows feature within this free tool to help marketers generate more leads across their entire website without sacrificing user experience.
It's common for business bloggers to add an end-of-post banner CTA at the end of every one of their blog posts, like this one:
In fact, you might already be including CTAs like this on your own business blog posts. At HubSpot, we include an end-of-post banner CTA on every single one of our posts, and we also add slide-in CTAs to blog posts that prove themselves to convert visitors into leads at a high rate via organic traffic.
But let's admit it: At first glance, these types of CTAs look a little bit like ads, which can result in banner blindness from our readers. That's why it's thanks to a recent study conducted by my colleague Pam Vaughan that our blogging team has added one more, highly effective lead generation tactic to their arsenal: anchor text CTAs.
In Vaughan's study, she found that anchor text CTAs are responsible for most of our blog leads. On blog posts that included both an anchor text CTA and an end-of-post banner CTA, she found that 47–93% of a blog post's leads came from the anchor text CTA alone, whereas just 6% of the post's leads came from the end-of-post banner CTA.
What's an anchor text CTA, you might be wondering? It's a standalone line text in a blog post linked to a landing page that's styled as an H3 or an H4 to make it stand out from the rest of the post's body copy. On HubSpot's blog, we'll typically put an anchor text CTA between two paragraphs in the introduction, like this:
What makes anchor text CTAs so effective? Let's say you search for “press release template” in Google, and you click on the first organic search result - which is currently our blog post about how to write a press release, which I've screenshotted above.
As a searcher, the next thing you'd probably do is quickly scan the post to see if it satisfies your search. One of the first things that'll catch your eye is an anchor text that reads, “Download our free press release template here” - which happens to be exactly what you were looking for when you searched "press release template." There's a pretty good chance you're going to click on it.
This is where relevancy becomes critical. The anchor text CTA works really well in this case because it satisfies the visitor's need right away, within the first few paragraphs of the blog post. The more relevant the anchor text CTA is to what the visitor is looking for, the better it'll perform. Simply adding an anchor text CTA near the top of every blog post won't necessarily mean it'll generate a ton more leads - and frankly, you'll risk pissing off your loyal subscribers.
If you decide you'd like to experiment with anchor text CTAs, be selective about the posts you add them to. At HubSpot, we typically add them to old posts that rank well in search. We purposely limit our use of anchor text CTAs on brand new posts - because most of the traffic we get to those posts are already leads and some of the biggest fans of our content, whom we want to have the best possible user experience. (You can read more about anchor text CTAs here.)
Every time you launch a new marketing campaign, posting the good news on your blog should be a key part of your launch plan. It's a great way to let your existing subscribers know what new content, products, and features you're putting out there, and it also helps introduce these launches to brand-new audiences.
At HubSpot, we've found the best strategy for promoting campaigns on the blog is to write one official launch post, followed by a handful of follow-up posts that are relevant to the campaign but are written in the style of a normal blog post. We typically scatter these follow-up posts over the weeks and months following that initial launch.
When done correctly, launch posts and their supporting blog posts have very different formulas:
Let me show you an example. Earlier this year, HubSpot partnered with Iconosquare to write an ebook on how to use Instagram for business. A few days after we launched the offer online, we published a launch post on HubSpot's Marketing Blog specifically promoting it to our own audience. Here's what that launch post looked like:
Notice it has a brief introduction of the topic, an introduction of the ebook as a helpful resource, a bulleted list of what's inside the ebook, two in-line text CTAs pointing toward the ebook, and an end-of-post banner CTA.
Once we published that initial post, we published a series of follow-up blog posts about the same topic - in this case, Instagram for business - that supported the launch, but promoted it much more subtly. These posts covered topics like:
In each of these cases, we used keyword research to find long-tail keyword phrases related to our offer topic, and then wrote blog posts related to those highly searched terms and included CTAs to our offer.
The goal here? Both to expose our own audience to more content related to the offer and to expose our offer to a new audience: specifically, people who were searching for related topics on search engines, as we've found visitors who find our posts through organic search tend to convert at higher rates.
When you're planning out your next campaign, be sure to include both a launch post and supportive, follow-up blog posts like these - and plan them all out using a blog editorial calendar like the simple one HubSpot's blogging team uses with Google Calendar.
Top-of-the-funnel marketing metrics like traffic and brand awareness isn't all social media is good for. It can still be a helpful - not to mention low-cost - source for lead generation.
In addition to promoting new blog posts and content to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social sites, be sure to regularly post links to blog posts and even directly to the landing pages of offers that have historically performed well for lead generation. You'll need to do a lead generation analysis of your blog to figure out which posts perform best for lead generation.
When you link directly to landing pages, be sure the copy in your social posts sets the expectation that clicking the link will send people to a landing page, like Canva did in this Facebook post:
Contests are another way to generate leads from social. Not only are they fun for your followers, but they can also teach you a whole lot about your audience while simultaneously engaging them, growing your reach, and driving traffic to your website.
In addition to posting links to lead generation forms, you'll also want to make sure you're using the real estate for lead generation that's available to you on the social networks that you're using. On Facebook for example, use the feature available for Pages that lets you put a simple call-to-action button at the top of your Facebook Page. It can help drive more traffic from your Facebook Page to lead generation forms like landing pages and contact sheets.
Here are more lead generation tips for Facebook, and for Twitter.
In addition to optimizing your webpages and social presence for leads, always be looking for opportunities to increase the traffic of your highest-converting pages by optimizing these pages for the keywords they're already ranking for, and linking to these pages internally and externally.
I hope this list has helped spark some ideas for lead generation tactics to test for your own audience. If you've tried any of the tactics I've listed above, tell us about your experiences in the comments - and feel free to add more ideas to the list.
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Instagram has become one of the hottest social networks around. But did you know you can do more than just post photos?
Here are eight insanely, awesomely helpful hacks to try right now.
Once upon a time you could only use squares for your Instagram photos. Which was a real pain if you wanted something that didn't fit well within those confines.
Now you can choose between either portrait or landscape, using the little format selection button on each upload. This gives you more control over what shows, and the final image that is published.
Stay on top of new posts by your favorite IG personalities. All you have to do is go to the user's profile and select one of their posts. On their photos there will be a little line of three dots. Select it and hit Turn On Notifications.
This will give you notifications in the app. If you want them on your phone itself, go to the Settings and to Apps, then select Instagram and allow push notifications.
Alright, this one is a little weird to explain. When you want your text to be centered in the middle of your bio, you have to use spaces to do it. You can't use HTML or any kind of coding, so you have to go super old school.
Copy these spaces (⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀), then paste them in front of every line of text you want. You can do this either through the mobile or web app. Then save. Make sure you don't add in the parenthesis, otherwise it will show in the profile. This will center your text on each line.
I know I am a habitual “liker”. I use it to save posts for later, without having to link to them through bookmarks or Pinterest. To find the posts you have liked, just select Options from the menu bar.
Then go to Posts I Have Liked. It will have each one right there for you to view. To get them out of your history, just go to the photo and unlike it by clicking the heart a second time.
Do you have a WordPress blog? Want to show off multiple galleries from yours or other people's Instagram accounts?
There are a lot of plugins that help you do this, but my personal favorite is Instagram Feed. You can make gallery slideshows for each account, and embed them on your chosen pages.
Tracking hashtags is pretty great. The way I tend to do it is by using Keyhole. It is my favorite tool thanks to its integration with multiple sites, allowing you to track hashtags on several networks instead of just one.
I use it for both Instagram and Twitter, so I can keep an eye on what is trending on both (and what I just like to watch, like popular social welfare campaigns or joke hashtags).
Want to get rid of those embarrassing searches? Go to your profile, hit the menu button, scroll to the bottom, and hit Clear Search. It will ask if you are sure. Once you confirm, they all disappear, never to be seen again.
You have a bit too much to drink at a friend's holiday party, and you know that photos were taken. Your friend uploads and tags them before you are able to tell her not to, and your family, boss, and coworkers all know your Instagram screen name.
Don't worry, that pic of you doing something you regret won't show up. Just go in and click Photo Options, Hide From My Profile, and Remove Me From Photo. This will both take the pic from your feed, and remove the tag.
Have some hot Instagram tips to add to the list? Let us know in the comments!
The post 8 Crazy Useful Instagram Hacks To Try Right Now appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.
Links are one of the top search ranking factors on Google. So essentially, one cannot rank without link building, right? Or can you? This post has results from our #SEJSurveySays poll on whether or not you can rank without link building.
The post 56% Say You Can't Rank Without Link Building [STUDY] by @rinadianewrites appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
People have a lot of misleading information regarding search engine optimization. Beginners make a lot of mistakes with SEO either because they don't understand it correctly, or they are not aware of some factors. So what are the most common search SEO errors that keep cropping up?
The post The 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes by @alexanderkesler appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
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I'm sure that you've heard the terms “inbound” and “outbound” marketing, but do you really know the difference between the two?
The post Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing – What's Best for 2017? by @ChuckPrice518 appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
If you are struggling to find the right gift for the digital marketer in your life you are in the right place. I've rounded up gifts in a range of budgets to make your holiday shopping just a little bit easier!
The post 7 Holiday Gift Ideas for Digital Marketers by @dantosz appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from the world of search marketing and beyond.
Whether you're taking a break from Black Friday shopping mania, recovering from a post-Thanksgiving food coma, or just getting on with your normal working day because you're in one of those boring countries that doesn't celebrate Turkey Day (*raises hand*), we've got all of the most up-to-the-minute search news for your reading pleasure.
This week, Google has released some canny changes to AdWords ahead of Black Friday, introverts have a new best friend in the form of real-time Popular Times data, and we take a look at the steps Facebook has taken so far to tackle the issue of fake news.
As retailers around the world look to cash in on the annual shopping frenzy that is Black Friday, you can be sure that Google, at least, will be raking it in. Ahead of this year's Black Friday, Google has released additional store visits data to the AdWords location extension, allowing retailers to see exactly how far away people are from their store when they perform a search.
It also published a bumper crop of Black Friday data with shopping searches and foot traffic trends for 2016, in a move that will benefit both physical and digital retailers alike.
Christopher Ratcliff reported for Search Engine Watch this week on exactly how the AdWords improvements work, as well as some key findings from the Black Friday data.
If, like me, you're a hard-core hermit introvert who hates to set foot outside unless absolutely necessary, good news! Google has a function that's tailor-made for you.
Google's Popular Times feature in Search and Maps has always been convenient for checking when a business is typically busy, helping you to avoid the rush. But now, the feature works in real-time, allowing you to see whether a bar or restaurant is busy right at that moment so you can decide whether or not to leave the house.
Christopher Ratcliff took a closer look at the new functionality this week, including the ability to see how long people typically stay at any given location, and an improved 'operating hours' feature for business, service providers and restaurants within larger premises.
What's that, you say? You want some more Google news? All right! How about the news that Google has now expanded its 'rich cards' to cover local restaurants and online courses?
Rich cards are a visual carousel of search results in 'card' form which appear underneath search snippets on mobile, allowing users to swipe from one result to the next.
Like rich snippets, they use schema.org structured markup to display content, making it even more important for website owners who want to stay ahead of the game to hop on the schema.org bandwagon.
From standard results to rich snippets to rich cards. Image: Google Webmasters
When rich cards first launched back in May, they were limited to film and recipe searches. Now Google has expanded their repertoire to include restaurants and online courses, as reported by Search Engine Journal's Matt Southern. Google's developer documents for local restaurants and online courses give instructions for website owners on the right structured data to include to trigger rich cards for their business.
Google has also added upgrades to its Structured Data Testing Tool, Search Console and AMP Testing Tool to help developers build and test their new card functionality.
Not to be outdone, Google's main rival in search has also been making improvements to its own carousel-style feature: the Black Friday flyers carousel. Jennifer Slegg reported for The SEM Post on the new look for Bing's annual Black Friday carousel, which this year is serving ads directly from the brand advertisers instead of via Flipp, its partner of last year.
Image: The SEM Post
Bing is still showing ads above the carousel for retailers who want to target Black Friday keywords, but is limiting those to only two spots.
While the flyers themselves are eye-catching, they don't provide a lot of useful detail to make shoppers want to click on them, and it would be interesting to see how their CTR compares to regular text ads if Bing decides to release any data. Is the visual alone enough to make people click?
We reported last week in our search news roundup that Google was tackling the widespread issue of fake news online by cutting off their AdSense ad revenue, and Facebook has been close behind.
Tereza Litsa took a look this week at the measures that Facebook has taken to deal with fake news on its site, and whether they are enough to deal with the real issue at heart.
She wrote,
Facebook may not be keen on accepting its responsibility as a curated media publisher (and it doesn't see the platform as such), but it certainly needs to admit how its ambitious plan to reach more people and attract more publishers have their consequences.
The age of social media and the way publishing speed became more competitive is certainly the main reason fact checking became a luxury for many publishers, while users got addicted to an increasing content consumption (and a filter bubble that serves the relevancy they like).
Moreover, we are also experiencing a changing nature of media, with the integration of digital technology being demanding and challenging.
