I recently came across this great infographic created by Salesforce.com entitled “The Modern Marketer”.  This graphic shows how the modern marketer has to be multifaceted – half artist and half scientist. Gone are the Mad Men days of marketing where creativity was valued above all else. New technology offers modern marketers not only the ability to create very creative marketing campaigns, but also ones that are data driven with performance tracking and insightful  analysis to better understand the target audience and improve conversions.

The role of a modern marketer sounds pretty exciting, right? Well, achieving this balance between artist and scientist is not easy and requires a special skill set not previously seen or required in the marketing field before. It requires marketers to use both the creative and analytical side of their brains. The creative side is responsible for producing all the creative content, visual assets, engaging social media, and great email campaigns while the analytical side has to focus on all the important data, analytics, and overall campaign performance. It is certainly not an easy balance to maintain by any means.

The Modern “SEO” Marketer

This infographic got me thinking about how the role of SEO professionals has also drastically changed  as we too have essentially become “modern marketers”. Before Panda and Penguin came along, SEO required much less creativity and true marketing. Apart from some technical on-page optimization, SEO was more about manual link building, and the site with the most links usually won. Sure, there was still some link building strategy involved, but it was also easy to cheat the system. You could buy links, spin articles, and pay to have a service submit to hundreds of directories for you with the click on a mouse.

The mindless link building and low hanging fruit days of SEO are gone and true SEO professionals must now shift into the new role of modern marketers in order to obtain the results that clients expect and deserve. Modern day SEO professionals must have one foot planted in science and the other in art just as depicted in the infographic above, and must use an arsenal of marketing tools and  methods such as Google+, Pinterest,  conversion optimization, etc. to achieve the best long term results for their clients.

Great News For Some

This is actually exciting news for SEO professionals that love real marketing, strategy, and data analysis, but it is not so exciting for SEO guys that just wanted to build lots of low quality links and manipulate the search engines with the latest short term tactics. Sure,  there will still be SEO pros that will find small loopholes to manipulate rankings short term, but those types of strategies will yield fewer and fewer returns as search engines become smarter and more advanced.

Long term SEO success is now centered on creating compelling content the intended target audience likes so much that they can’t help but share it with their social networks as well as take the desired action you had for creating the content to begin with. This is the whole idea behind content marketing, and the SEO’s role is not only to help create this great content, but to get it in front of the right people. Great content is only great if people know about it.

SEO professionals should not focus on building links back to their clients’ sites but instead help facilitate in getting the content in front of the right people through social media and other outlets. This will increase the chances of people linking back to the site naturally simply because the content is that good. People like to look smart and be helpful to their sphere of influence online, and they accomplish this by linking to and sharing great content with those in their social networks.

What are your thoughts on the role of a “modern marketer” today and what changes do you see in SEO in the coming years as it relates to this role?

Modern Marketing In The Digital Age is a post by SEO expert Shay Wright. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

SEO & PPC. Friends or foes? And which one really is more effective in an online marketing campaign? The truth is that they are not only friends but “coworkers” as well, and one is not necessarily more effective than the other. They serve different purposes but working together they create a synergy not possible as two independent parts.

PPC is great because you can be up and running in a matter of minutes. SEO, on the other hand, is more of a long term investment that takes some time and patience to finally start paying off. When you do get good organic placement through your SEO efforts though, the return on investment can be quite remarkable. Even when you do achieve top organic rankings, this still doesn’t mean you should just drop your PPC campaign altogether. There are some real advantages to maintaining both a strong PPC and SEO campaign together as outlined below.

1. The Best Keywords

PPC can be a great testing ground for potential keywords to target in your SEO campaign. You can run multiple PPC ads and target several different keyword phrases to see which ones not only drive traffic to your site, but actually convert. With this information, you can then target only the highest converting keywords in your SEO campaign. It takes a lot of time, effort, and money to place a competitive keyword at the top of organic search results, so you want to be sure you’re targeting the best keywords possible before you embark on your SEO campaign or target new keywords in your current SEO campaign.

2. Higher Click Through Rates & Conversions

When sites eventually achieve top organic rankings, there is a tendency for the site owners to cut back on PPC spend because they feel they’ll get the click in the organic results anyways. However, studies show that the sum total is worth more than the individual parts. In other words, the additional benefits of having both PPC and organic placement more than pays for the PPC outlay.

As you can see in the example below, Hotels.com ranks #1 in organic search results for the search term “hotels”, but also pays for the top spot in the paid search results.

When your paid and organic listings show up together on the same search result page, users tend to place more trust in your site, and they will be more inclined to click on your website. And when they do, there is a higher probability that they will actually convert when on your site because you have already gained a slight boost in credibility in their eyes. They already see you as an established presence in that particular market.

3. Build Brand Recognition & Trust

When your site appears in multiple places on a search result page, you will start to build brand recognition and gain consumers’ trust.

4. Drown Out The Competition

As you start to gain a strong presence in both organic and PPC search results, your competition will struggle to get any sizeable share of the pie, and when you eventually dominate both the organic and PPC market, you may very well eventually drown out your major online competitors.

5. More Data to Analyze

If you run organic and PPC campaigns simultaneously, you will have twice the amount of data to analyze, to make educated and insightful changes, and then capitalize on.

6. Repurpose The Best Ad Copy

As you study your PPC campaign, you can determine which ads result in the best click through rate. This will help you in writing the best title tags and meta descriptions for the pages you’re targeting with your SEO campaign. The great thing about PPC ads is that you can figure out pretty quickly what ad copy works best pretty quickly.

Keep in mind that title tags are an important search engine ranking factor, so be sure to keep your key keywords phrases for a page in the title tag. Meta descriptions on the other hand have no real influence on organic rankings, so feel free to change your meta descriptions to whatever ad copy works best.

7. Improve Adwords Quality Score

A page that has been properly optimized for SEO should help improve your Adwords Quality Score for your targeted pages. This will result in better PPC placement for your ads as well as lower cost per click.

8. Maintain Site Traffic

When you launch a new site, it may take a short time for search engines to put their trust back into your new content and site. A PPC campaign can help maintain traffic to your site during this time period and help build legitimacy to your site once again. Increasing PPC spend can also help fill in for lost traffic due to a Google algorithm changes that may cause your organic rankings to drop. There may also be times when the PPC bidding for certain keyword phrases just goes too high, and when this occurs, you can start putting more emphasis on your SEO efforts for these keyword phrases while cutting back on your PPC budget for these phrases.

9. Target Competitor’s Brand Terms

If you were solely running a SEO campaign, it would not make much sense to target a competitor’s brand terms because this would require creating content focused around your competitor’s brand which in turn could benefit your competitor. However, it can make sense to target a competitor’s brand in a PPC campaign.

Just be sure your product or service really is superior to your competitor’s because if a user searched out your competitor specifically, your competitor is likely already one up on you. You’re going to have to convince them that their initial thought was wrong and that you actually have the product or service they really want.

10. Combat Negative PR

Sometimes bad things happen to even good companies. Employees do stupid things. Cars have to be recalled because of bad parts. Machinery goes bad and causes accidents. A good example of this is with the Gulf Oil Spill. During this time, BP bought several PPC ads relating to the term “oil spill” in order to address the public directly instead of relying on the press. The PPC ads help fill in until SEO efforts can place your website in a better organic position, and then together, you can properly address bad press head on.

Conclusion

To run an effective search marketing campaign and truly maximize online exposure and returns, a site should have both a good SEO and PPC campaign in place that work together to benefit the overall marketing campaign. SEO and PPC each serve different purposes, but when used together, they create a synergy that is not possible as two separate units.

What other advantages do you see for having both a SEO and PPC campaign working together?

SEO & PPC: Working Together To Maximize Returns is a post by SEO expert Shay Wright. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Back when we were blazing through the Internet over a phone line, it may have actually been helpful to include the phrase “click here” in our anchor text to help people understand they could actually click on the text and be directed to another page. However, that time has long since passed, and it is now time to be much smarter about our use of anchor text.

When used properly, anchor text can really enhance user experience and entice users to actually take the action you want them to take. However, it is important to keep some basic ground rules in mind when using anchor text for optimal results.

1. Anchor text should be descriptive

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide states that anchor text should be descriptive and generic terms such as “click here” and “page” should be avoided as anchor text.

When creating anchor text, always use good descriptive words and be straight forward so that your users will know exactly what they’ll find by clicking your link. Here is an example of some generic, non-descriptive anchor text that we should always avoid.

Here is an example of some great descriptive anchor text that lets users know what they’ll get even before they click on the link.

See how much good descriptive anchor text can improve user experience? It can really make a big difference. Wikipedia is the king of great descriptive anchor text. The site uses descriptive anchor text like no other, and we all know the success they have seen over the years.

2. Anchor text should provide information when read out of context

Users shouldn’t have to read a whole paragraph to figure out what your anchor text is about and where it will take them. The truth of the matter is that many people skim through pages looking for helpful resources, and what catches most users’ attention on a page is the anchor text. If a user is searching for a link to your newly released Pinterest eBook, will have a better user experience if you use anchor text like this:

Or, if you create anchor text that can actually be read out of context like this:

In the first example, the user has to go back and read at least part of the paragraph to figure out what “here” will lead to. In the second example, all the user has to do is skim over the anchor text to figure out what it’s about, thus providing a much better user experience.

3.  Anchor text should link to nouns when possible

It’s best to avoid linking to verbs simply because they are more abstract and vague, and users don’t always know exactly where they will end up when clicking on them.

On the other hand, a link to a good solid noun is something a user can relate to through their senses. It creates a visual picture in their minds, and they’ll know better what to expect when clicking on anchor text that is a noun.

4. Anchor text should be concise

The Google SEO Starter Guide also states that anchor text should be short, but descriptive. Anchor text containing a few words or a short phrase is perfectly acceptable, but making a full sentence or paragraph with all anchor text is strongly discouraged by Google.

5. Anchor text should stand out

CSS and other text styling methods make it possible to hide your anchor text and have it appear as if it were any other text. Google encourages site owners to make it easy for users to distinguish between anchor text and other normal text on a page. If you’re using a styling method to essentially hide your anchor text, you’re probably up to no good and creating a bad user experience along the way.

In the end, creating great anchor text comes down to user experience. You should create anchor text that will make your content better than content without links, and entice your site visitors to take the action you want them to take. Be descriptive, concise, and make your anchor text stand out on your page. If you do, I can’t guarantee you success, but I can guarantee your user experience will be enhanced and your likelihood for success will only increase. Happy anchor-texting!

What tips do you have for creating great anchor text?

5 Ways To Improve User Experience Through Better Anchor Text is a post by SEO expert Shay Wright. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you have probably heard a lot of talk about the idea of content marketing.

While content marketing is not necessarily a new marketing concept, large and small businesses alike are beefing up their content marketing budgets in an effort to attract new customers and increase market share. But why all the recent focus on content marketing when it is a concept that has actually been around for years?

Part of the reason is because we have understandably grown tired of being bombarded with online advertisements and sales pitches. What makes it even worse is that they often come from companies that we have no prior relationship with. It’s like going in for a kiss before your date even finishes opening the door.

It’s About Gaining Trust Slowly Over Time

Consumers don’t want to be sold in a single pitch. They want to establish relationships with companies that gradually gain their trust and loyalty by consistently delivering the content and information they want. Content that entertains, answers their questions and resolves their concerns. Content that informs, educates, and inspires. This is what consumers really want, and this is why the whole content marketing concept has taken center stage in online marketing today.

Before you go out and start your new content marketing campaign though, you need to keep some things in mind and go about it the right way. Below I’ve outlined 10 essential elements to any successful content marketing campaign to help get you started.

1. Bring The Passion

If you’re not passionate about your product or service, you either need to find a different product or service to offer or find someone that is passionate about it to work for you. You simply will not be successful in any content marketing strategy unless you’re passionate about what you have to offer. Your passion will show in the content you produce, and it is that passion that will connect and engage your targeted audience.

2. Focus on Your Niche

The Internet provides a big enough market that you can afford to specialize in one specific niche these days, and the niche you choose should be one that you’re an expert in. You don’t have to be the old General Store in the Wild West that provided everything the town residents needed. In fact, online consumers don’t want you to provide everything they need. They want you to specialize in one thing and know everything there is to know about that product or service. And why do you know everything there is to know about your product or service? Because you’re passionate about it for crying out loud!

3. Understand Your Audience

Before you can create great content for your specific niche, you have to understand who your target audience is. Who are you talking to? Who is it that is most likely to buy your product or service or religiously read your blog? If your target audience is a group of electrical engineers, the content you create and the tone you use is going to be much different than a target audience of high school seniors trying to decide on a college to attend.

In times past, our target audiences were much larger and broader. I may have considered myself a savvy marketer before if I was able to focus my marketing efforts on a group of say men ages 28-50. Well, that’s great if I’m selling life insurance, but what if I’m selling something much more unique that doesn’t fit into any particular age group or demographic? Suppose, for example, that I’m selling a high end backpack specifically designed for ice climbing. Will my content marketing be more effective if it’s directed towards all men ages 28-50 or just towards those that are into ice climbing? With new marketing opportunities such as Facebook Ads, you can now direct your content to very targeted audiences, so figure out who your targeted audience is before you start to create great content.

4. Be The Right Person

One of the most important parts of content marketing is connecting and engaging with your online audience. How well are you going to connect with your audience if you’re a 50 year old man that wants to start an online bridal shop? Probably not too well unless you happen to be George Clooney or Brad Pitt. Assuming you’re neither of these guys, but your lifelong dream is to still own an online bridal shop, by all means do it. However, remember that if you want your content marketing efforts to be effective, you better get a nice, recently married, or soon to be married, young lady to be the face of your content marketing campaign and truly interact and engage with your audience.

5. Take Time to Listen

Don’t assume you know what content your audience wants. Take the time to listen to your targeted audiences’ questions, comments, suggestions, and reactions. Reading the blog comments on your blog can be a great way to understand your audience better. Studying your Google Analytics traffic can also help you see which topics your audience is reading and engaging with most. Use the information you gather to develop ideas for your content strategy.

6. Use Stories

Nothing resonates with your targeted audience better than stories, especially happy and inspiring ones. Personal stories and experiences as well as the stories and experiences of clients can be key to engaging your audience and having them just pace the floor waiting for your next update. People relate to stories and share in the emotions and experiences of others through stories. This doesn’t mean you should just tell a story to tell one though. Make sure it’s interesting and entertaining and that it is also in line with the overall message you want your audience to hear.

7. Use Employees and Customers

Don’t feel like you have to be the sole source of content for your campaign. Rely on your employees and customers to provide insight, stories, testimonials, and other helpful information to add to and improve your content marketing message. You might be surprised by how much content is available right at your fingertips if you just reach out and ask the people around you and your happy customers for help with your content.

8. Have a Plan

Putting together a good editorial calendar is essential to any good content marketing plan. Strategically plan out the order and timing for each new piece of content and understand what it is you want to accomplish with each post.

You should also create a marketing mission statement to help guide the direction and overall plan for your editorial calendar. Ask yourself why you publish the content you publish. What is your end goal? How do you want your followers to respond? What action do you want them to take? And how will your content motivate and entice them to do this? To help better organize your content goals and properly map out a great editorial calendar, please download our free content roadmap calendar.

9. Don’t Focus on You

The content you create should focus on your audience and not on you or your company. Even if you run the greatest company in the world and get daily recognition for your accomplishments, your audience doesn’t want to hear about how great you are everyday. Sure, drop in a real brief mention of something your company was recognized for here and there to build more credibility, but don’t let it get in the way of the content your audience really wants to receive.

Your content marketing should engage them, educate them, inspire them, and have them begging for more, and delivering that type of content should be your focus day in and day out. It’s awfully hard to inspire and educate someone when all you talk about is how great you are, even if you are pretty great (which I’m sure you are my friend).

10. Update, Update, Update

Don’t just get half way through a story and leave everyone hanging in cyberspace wondering how it ends, or write a great piece of content on a subject that you never update as things change over time. Always revisit your published content and make sure it’s complete and up to date.

This is especially critical if you work in an industry that is constantly changing such as SEO. Suppose I publish a great resource about effective link building strategies, and it’s a big hit. It generates a lot of natural links and is shared through various social networks. What if I never go back and update that post though? A year later when the latest Penguin, Panda, or Polar Bear (just kidding) update completely changes effective link building strategies, I’m not going to look real smart with links to my now very outdated link building guide all over the Internet.

I hope you enjoyed my 10 keys to a successful content marketing campaign guide, and I look forward to reading all the great content you’ll now deliver to the world. Are you still hungry for more? Download our free ebook 11 Types Of Content You Should Be Creating For SEO Right Now.

10 Keys To A Successful Content Marketing Campaign is a post by SEO expert Shay Wright. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

When most people think of web directories these days, the first thing that comes to mind is low quality, spammy links that will never bring a single visitor to your site and may actually do more harm than good to your SEO campaign. While this is true for many web directories, there are actually still a lot of great authoritative directories out there that are definitely worth the time and effort to get listed on.

There are niche and special purpose directories that can both improve your rankings in the major search engines and drive a little traffic to your site. The trick is finding these quality directories, and to get you started, I have compiled this list of great directory submission sites and ideas.

1. Niche Directories

A niche directory is designed to feature sites that relate to a specific subject. For example, if I have a travel site, I would look for quality travel specific directories to submit to. Running a quick Google search for “list of travel directory sites” produces a great list of travel directories on DMOZ and Directory Clinic to get started with.  By just following these first two organic results, you already have a list of well over a hundred potential travel directory sites to submit to.

Create a spreadsheet of all the niche directories you find for your specific niche. Next to each directory, note the PageRank using a PageRank tool and whether the directory is free, requires a reciprocal link, or if paid, how much it costs. You might even want to check out the amount of traffic each site gets by using Alexa.

Now look over your options to figure out how to get the most bang for your buck. Your main focus should be on high PageRank directories that offer free submissions, but don’t pass up a really good link on a site with a very minimal one-time fee. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend wasting time submitting to directories with no PageRank because often these directories were flagged by Google.

2. Business Directories

Unlike general web directories, business directories often require more information for each submission. Usually a phone number, address, brief company description, and other basic company information are required. A business directory submission definitely takes a little more time and effort than a general web directory submission, but these links are usually well worth the extra effort.

Example of a business directory: http://businessdirectory.bizjournals.com/

3. Webcam Directories

Is your office or home located near a major road or tourist attraction? Consider setting up a webcam and submitting it to a webcam directory. Many people like to check traffic before they head into work, and if you can provide a good view of traffic flow on a major road, your webcam could start to get an online following.

If you have a view of some sort of popular tourist attraction, you could not only get links from webcam directories, but could very well attract a lot of natural links as well. The same goes for a webcam a major road. Really good webcams are great at attracting a lot of natural links.

If some sort of special event is going to be happening in your area that you can set up a webcam for, this can quickly generate lots of traffic and natural links. A webcam showing Mardi Gras in New Orleans, for example, could be a big hit online.

Example of a webcam directory: http://www.earthcam.com/

4. eBook Directories

Have you published an eBook? If so, why not submit it to some eBook Directories and get some good quality links from it. Some of these directories may actually bring you some readers too.

Example of an eBook directory: http://e-library.net/

5. Logo Design Directories

Have an appealing company logo? Consider submitting it to logo design directories. Some of these directories not only offer a link back to your site from your featured logo but also allow you to set up a profile and list your company URL in your profile as well.

Example of a logo design directory: http://logopond.com/

6. 1-800 Directories

If your company has a 1-800 number, consider submitting it to a 1-800 directory. There aren’t a lot of 1-800 directories around, but there are a few with good site authority that are worth submitting to.

1-800 is not the only prefix accepted by 1-800 directories. Other prefixes such as 888, 877, 866, and 855 are often accepted.

Example of a 1-800 directory: http://www.inter800.com/

7. Regional Directories

Regional directories only accept listings from businesses that are located in a particular region or city. For example, a Central Texas regional directory would only feature websites of businesses that are located in the Austin and surrounding area.

Example of a regional directory: http://www.austinlinks.com/

8. RSS Directories

Do you have a RSS feed? If so, there are a lot of great RSS directories to submit to.

Example of an RSS directory: http://www.rss-network.com/

9. Blog Directories

If you have a blog, it’s worth submitting it to some blog directories. A lot of blog directories have popped up over the past few years, and it’s certainly not hard to put together a good list of blog directories to submit to.

Example of a blog directory: http://www.blogarama.com/

10. Podcast Directories

Do you have a podcast? If so, picking up some quality links from podcast directories isn’t hard either.

Example of Podcast Directory: www.learnoutloud.com

Do you have any unique directory ideas? Leave a comment!

Juice Up Your SEO Campaign With Authoritative Directories is a post by SEO expert Shay Wright. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.