Black History

his summer, I conducted empathy interviews a bunch of our clients and prospects to understand their content marketing challenges. One big pain point: SEO.

SEO remains a huge part of content marketing, as it should be. High-ranking content creates long-term value for your brand. It’s a key part of what Tomasz Tunguz calls the compounding returns of content marketing.

When you invest in content and a strong SEO strategy, you drive more and more valuable traffic to your site over time, resulting in compounding returns on your content marketing investment.



The problem with SEO is that many companies’ content SEO strategy looks like this:

Step 1: The content team creates a pretty good article.

Step 2: They pass it off to the SEO team, who stuff the piece with a bunch of keywords that make it nearly unreadable and press publish.

Step 3: The content team cries, and the piece doesn’t perform well against search anyway BECAUSE THAT’S NOT HOW SEO WORKS ANYMORE.

Even in 2020, I see this same mistake made over and over again. Instead, marketers should:

A) Factor a target keyword into content planning and production from the beginning, so that it’s naturally integrated into the piece. Since Google has shifted to semantic search, you want to focus on long-tail keywords associated with a question that someone’s trying to answer. (i.e., “What makes good content marketing,” “content marketing tips”). By answering the question at hand, you build SEO into the editorial process and avoid keyword stuffing.



B) Prioritize quality over everything else. Nowadays, Google prioritizes backlinks and E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) ratings in their rankings. The easiest way to drive both of those up is to create interesting content with original research and reporting related to your industry. You need to create content that inspires people to link, share, and spend time on page. And you need Google to see you as an expert in the core topics you’re covering.

In 2020, this is what matters. Traditional keyword stuffing is now terrible for your SEO. And mediocre content that won’t earn links is essentially worthless. Focus on publishing original research and reporting that helps answer your audience’s big questions. Focus on quality over quantity. Bring your SEO team in at the beginning of the content planning process—and then politely kick them out of the editing room. If you do that, I promise: You’ll see greater SEO results this year.

While search engine rank is ultimately based hundreds of factors, it rests on three main characteristics: relevance, trust (impacted by technical and social factors), and authority (based on backlinks and other factors like domain age).

Complete SEO analysis and optimization - RyteThe core element of SEO is content; no amount of technical excellence or high-quality backlinks will help thin, low-quality, or irrelevant content rank well. The best content is highly relevant to its target keyword phrase (and therefore to corresponding searches), well-written, and easily digestible.



Though the broader practice of SEO has evolved over time (as detailed in SEO: The Movie), relevance and “digestibility” still form the basis of on-page SEO. Just as elements like a table of contents, chapter titles, and an index make a book easier to read, so on-page SEO makes web pages easier for both search engines to evaluate and human readers to absorb.

This interactive graphic illustrates 14 vital components of on-page SEO best practices. It uses The 26 Best All-in-One SEO Tool Suites as an example. That post has recently ranked between the first and third spots on Google for the phrases “best all in one SEO tools” and “best SEO tool suites.” Hover over any of the arrows to see the details.



As this interactive graphic demonstrates, on-page SEO involves optimizing a number of technical, navigational, and design aspects. But the practice is most commonly thought of in terms of how and where target keyword phrases are used in posts and pages. Among the important places to include your target keyword phase are:

In the meta title tag: This is possibly the single most important place to use your target keyword phrase, and preferably at the beginning. Using that keyword phrase in the meta description tag is optional, as that text doesn’t really impact ranking–it’s more about “selling the click” when your page does appear in search.

In the on-page (H1) headline: It’s helpful (and logical) to use your target keyword phrase in the visible title of your page content.

In the body text: Use your keyword phrase, within the first 100 words if possible, and at least a few times (depending on word count) in your page content. Also use synonyms. Use these terms naturally though; your text should flow logically, and there’s no need to “keyword stuff” your writing (that can actually backfire).

Is there an intersection between content marketing and local SEO for B2B businesses? That’s what we want to explore in this piece. Google and Bing have leaned a lot into local SEO on their search engine results pages. It’s become a lot easier for local businesses to get a high placement on SERPs than in the past.

At first glance, local SEO might only seem like a B2C thing. The point of local search is to help the public find things nearby that relate to their interests. For instance, if someone is hungry they can look for restaurants on their phones and get results based on their location.

But the stereotype for B2B is different. It’s all done through phones and emails, not someone walking up to a storefront. Business decisions aren’t decided in an instant either, unlike deciding to look for some food. So why would a B2B business even want to look at local SEO techniques?



Local Content and Search Advantages for B2B Businesses

There are plenty of tactics that you can use in the quest to raise brand awareness. Some choose to use paid advertising, others want to pay for billboards, and still others engage in email campaigns. Local content is another tactic. Local content is content that talks about something relevant to the local business area.

This kind of content is great for improving local SEO results because it gives search engines the confidence that your business is located in a region. “It really comes down to one question: would you advertise locally to acquire new clients? If yes, then you can utilize local content. If no, local content probably doesn’t make sense for you,” says Crazy Egg.




The process of creating local promotional content is very similar to creating content for a national brand.

A catering company for business events might write something like “Top 5 convention centers in Spokane,” assuming they were in the Spokane area. Local content goes above and beyond general articles to provide information relevant to that area. Articles about local festivals and events, weather conditions, and the like are all possibilities.

When it comes to digital marketing for startups, SEO has the best ROI of all efforts you can possibly engage in. The only thing that comes close is going viral on social media, but that is not nearly as predictable and nowhere near as sustainable or scalable.

Building a company requires playing the long game, and SEO is a perfect complement to that mindset. Organic search optimization allows you to drive traffic to your website you would otherwise be paying for. If done right, you can sustain that traffic for years or more. Here’s how to get it done right.

Research the Right Keyword Opportunities

SEO isn’t just about generating more website traffic, it’s about attracting the right kinds of visitors. Focus on “buyer keywords,” which are keywords that have the highest potential to turn into a customer, as they are the types of words and phrases your prospects are most likely to use when searching.



With SEO, it’s possible to get 1,000 visits and generate no leads/customers, or get 100 visitors and generate 10 leads, depending on the type of keywords that are getting the traffic. Start your research by talking to your actual customers (ideally) or least to customer-facing staff in sales and support functions.

As an example, if you’re selling a sales CRM platform, a keyword phrase like “tips for sales people” might be good, but a term like “tools to increase sales productivity” might be better. The best one to target is of probably “best CRM for sales” (though that is likely to be difficult to rank for due to high competition).



Many companies don’t have the budget to launch a full-scale digital marketing campaign. Startups and small businesses have to be clever enough to stay lean and still find ways to scale their business growth.

How to use SEO in our digital marketing programThat’s no easy task, and it requires a lot of sweat equity investment from the team—though not necessarily a lot of spending. Here’s how to use search engine optimization (SEO) and other digital marketing tactics to grow your business without a huge chunk of capital.

Considering more than  90% of online purchases start with a search engine, and nearly 60% of B2B marketers say organic search generates more leads than any other marketing tactics, your number one digital marketing goal should be getting your site onto the front page of search engines.

7 tips for hiring an SEO consultant people should be able to find your blog or website with just a few clicks. Search engine optimization (SEO) practices have changed significantly over the years, but remain at the core of digital strategy.

Between Google’s history of algorithm updates and increased competition, running an SEO campaign by yourself can be harder than you think. That’s why many people seek the help of an SEO expert. But finding an SEO specialist with the right mix of writing ability, technical skill, and industry knowledge to get your website on the front page may not be easy.



You have to make sure you are on the same page (so to speak) and share the same view. Marketing agencies bring a diverse mix of talent, though they can end up charging a small fortune. If you run or manage marketing for a small to midisized business, an SEO freelancer might be the best answer for you.

But with the abundance of freelancers on the market, how can you make sure you find the right fit? Here are seven tips that can help you make the right decision.

Be Specific with Your Requests and Deadlines

Before beginning your search for the perfect SEO match, get as specific as possible about what you are looking for. Coming up with a description for your project will help the freelancer build a proposal for discussion.

Most freelance websites that connect employers with specialists allow you to put together a description of the project and let freelancers submit proposals you can choose from. A description should give information about your business, expectations, and deadline. Drawing up a clear description of your request will ease the communication between you and the freelancer and help you find the best match.

Get to Know the Person You Will Be Working With

Working with a person you just met online can be frightening, especially in today’s world. Giving access to your website can expose you to all sorts of issues. The online world sadly includes scams and frauds as well as legitimate service providers.

A reputable SEO expert should be able to answer your questions in a simple, straightforward manner. If you have any suspicions, you can conduct a background check to find more about the person, before sealing the deal. Some red flags might include asking for payment before the work is completed, not delivering original content or— if you contracted them through a platform—asking for money offsite.

Ask for References from Past Clients

An experienced SEO specialist should have no problem giving you a short list of clients they’ve worked with. Do a Google search on those clients, with specific keywords, and see if they show up on the first page. Don’t hesitate to contact them and ask for a reference.

Want more leads? Maybe… but probably what you really want is better leads. It’s 2019, after all – B2B marketers have evolved past “lead gen 101”. They need leads that contribute to pipeline. Leads that become closed deals and real revenue.

Plenty of research backs this up. But here’s just one example: 58% of marketers said their top priority was lead quality.

Only 46% said it was lead quantity.

Getting higher-quality leads is a great goal, but it means you have to think more strategically about your ppc lead generation advertising. You have to think beyond the first click – way beyond it. So while many of the tools we’ve listed here are expressly for ppc, a couple are for optimizing what happens after the click.



Some of these ppc tools may be brand new to you, some will be familiar. Some you may already use. We’ve also included a handful of tools that aren’t primarily known as pay per click tools – but if you know how to use them, they can really help B2B lead generation campaigns.

PPC Lead Generation Competitive Analysis Tools

SpyFu.

SpyFu can show you detailed information about your competitors’ SEO and pay per click campaigns, including keywords, estimated spend, estimated traffic, and even the ads they’ve run. It will give you suggestions for negative keywords, tell you who their top organic and paid competitors are, and more. SpyFu’s new tool, Nacho Analytics, even promises to basically show you your competitors’ analytics reports.



Ahrefs is another tool that has similar functionality to SpyFu. They’re primarily known for SEO, but because SEO and PPC are so complementary, you could easily find ways to optimize your ppc accounts with this tool. Same goes for Moz, which is also a terrific SEO analysis tool.

SEMRush.

SEMRush is another competitive analysis tool that can be used for both SEO and PPC. It can help you:

analyze your ppc strategy and your competitors’ strategies
organize your keywords into ad groups more effectively
find negative keywords (more on that below)
research your competitors’ keywords and ads

High-quality photos are critical to an effective marketing strategy. Did you know that the inclusion of quality photographs generates a 30 percent increase in Twitter engagement?

This means that social media users, or prospective clients, are more likely to like, retweet, or comment on your post. Ultimately, quality imagery yields lead that your team can convert to sales.

Read on to learn why you should invest in high-quality digital marketing images. Explore why imagery is so important in marketing and how to take your game to the next level.



Photos Do Not Lie

The truth is that consumers trust photos more than any other type of sales pitch. Take a technical description as the perfect example.

Shoppers know that companies talk up their products and write about them in the most favorable way. On the other hand, a photograph says 1000 words. It gives consumers a baseline to set expectations and determine if they like it.

The product description and characteristics are still important. However, a high-quality photograph sets a great first impression and makes the shopper want to learn more.



Quality Is Important

Every business plays lip service to producing quality products or service. Some of the best companies go to great lengths to deliver the highest quality in their industry.

Either way, using low-quality photographs to market a product or service is detrimental. What kind of message do you think a low-quality picture gives to shoppers?

It tells them that management is willing to overlook quality. Perhaps most important is that it inserts doubt into the shopper’s mind about quality assurance.

Images Affect a Shopper’s Mood

There is clinical proof that imagery affects a person’s mood. Depending on the tone of the picture, an image can make a person angry or sad.

When trying to sell a product or service, the goal is to generate a positive mood. Simply put, a happy or motivated shopper is more likely to make a purchasing decision than an angry one.

Did you know that 15 percent of state surveys miss actual harm and jeopardy nursing home residents are facing?

When these cases come to light, these people need legal representation. If they don’t know about your law firm, they won’t be able to contact you. The ability for people to be able to find your business is why you need an effective digital marketing campaign.

In this article, we are going to talk about marketing a law practice and how you can use the internet to get in front of your target market.



Launching a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign

As you are learning more about launching your firm’s campaign, your goal should be getting your firm in front of your ideal customer. While wide-reaching approach type marketing plans may be the norm, you don’t want normal. When you have a well-planned campaign, you will be able to pass your competition with smart law firm marketing ideas.

When you become a lawyer, you probably didn’t expect to need to learn digital marketing skills for your business. While you may not have gone to school for marketing, you’ll need to get good at it if you want to bring in a steady stream of clients.

Focus on UX (User Experience)

User experience should be the center of your marketing efforts. Your website should allow potential clients to find what they need easily.



Setting up your site’s navigation in a common sense way will make it easier for people to use the site. Keep visible options to a minimum so extra buttons don’t distract users from taking desired actions. Important call to actions should be positioned strategically.

Use YouTube to Get in Front of Potential Clients

Video marketing is a powerful way to get your message in front of your target market. When people watch your videos, it is easier for them to connect with your image than words on a page.

When you use video marketing, do keyword research to find terms you want to rank. You might want to rank for terms in your local area, such as lawyer in your city or attorney in your city. Optimizing your videos for certain terms helps your videos show up in the right places.

Make Sure Your Website Is up to Speed

Optimization is the process of serving unique experiences to each individual in your digital space by tailoring content and design to their specific needs and preferences. According to Forrester, continuous optimization is “an analytics-driven approach that seeks to leverage every customer interaction to evolve the understanding of the customer, which is in turn used to evolve and optimize current and future customer experiences.” In today's age, optimizing your digital presence to meet the needs of consumers is vital in promoting new sales, customer loyalty, and business growth.

Why Is It So Difficult to Achieve?

Often times, while some members of an organization may wish to start moving toward optimization, there are factors that actually prohibit their ability to achieve it. Common challenges that businesses are faced with include lack of data available and the misconception that all visitors are the same. It’s important to understand that every user is unique, and not everyone will engage with content or experiences in the same way across digital channels (think email, website, and mobile apps). Without an ample amount of data, decisions tend to be based upon opinions and hypotheses rather than factual evidence.



So, Why Should Your Business Care About Optimization?
By utilizing a testing strategy to reach optimization, businesses are able to use data as evidence in deciding what content, designs, and experiences will resonate with people most in order to create better-performing user experiences across the board. There are a plethora of reasons as to why businesses should adopt an optimization strategy, but here are a few of the most common reasons:

1) An optimized UX on your website or app shortens the path to conversion for your visitors.

Consumers are constantly looking for the quickest and easiest ways to accomplish tasks, and optimizing the user experience is vital in helping users accomplish this. By testing and collecting data to determine exactly how users interact across digital platforms, organizations are armed with the facts around how to convert visitors quickly, easily, and seamlessly without a conscious thought from the user.

2) Gathering actionable insights allows your business to keep up in an ever-changing marketplace.

Gathering actionable insights is where data collection becomes a true game changer. Monitoring users on a website allows a great deal of information to be gathered, and based on user behavior, areas of opportunity and areas of strength can be identified extremely quickly. This allows business to turn data into knowledge and power, to eliminate the guesswork when planning for future designs and experiences.

3) Cross-channel enablement enhances your ability to foster brand equity.

By testing, collecting data, and gathering actionable insights, business are able to start moving toward a cross-channel approach. Serving users consistent experiences across digital channels not only helps increase brand awareness, but it fosters the idea of brand loyalty and the ability for visitors to remain connect and engaged with specific products or brands that are of interest.

My clients often ask me to write posts for their industrial blogs. This requires me to work very closely with engineers and technical SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) on a daily basis for creating content. I have learned some important lessons about blogging that are specific to this technical and industrial audience.

Editorial calendar: This may sound like content marketing 101 but let me tell you why it is so important for industrial blogs. At a recent discovery meeting, I received little to no response when I asked a group of engineers about their customers’ challenges that we could blog about. I was expected to do the industry research and come back with a list of topics. Ideas for blog posts just flowed after I presented my findings. I kid you not; I now have weekly blogging topics lined up until the second week of November for this manufacturing client.



SME Interviews: I have found it a lot easier to write technical blog posts if I start by interviewing SMEs. I have to do my homework and come prepared with a list of intelligent questions to ask. Engineers can spot a novice quickly and they are not particularly patient with people trying to interview them about a topic that the interviewer knows very little about.

Be a ruthless editor: Writing copy based on interviews is one thing but the skill that I find most useful is editing. It takes time and understanding of the subject matter to publish blog posts that are compelling stories that educate and engage readers. One caveat I have discovered is that there is a fine balance between being a marketer and a technical content editor. What may sound geeky to a marketer may be just the right content for a technical audience.
Become an SEO expert: You’ve got to learn most everything there is to know about keyword research, on-page SEO and internal linking with keyword-rich anchor text. There is no point in publishing a bunch of unoptimized blog posts that your target audience will never find in search engines. SEO and social marketing skills are what separate a content marketing expert from a copywriter.

Add a touch of humor: This one is a myth buster. Contrary to popular belief, engineers do have a sense of humor and appreciate wit. Just don’t go overboard and try to be too clever and cutesy. Clever wordsmithing will only take you so far if your content lacks technical accuracy and substance.
For more on this topic, you may want to read my earlier post, “How to Coax Content Out of Engineers.”

As a Mechanical Engineer myself, I find it easier to interact with technical SMEs but I still have to go in there prepared to get my job done. I know I couldn’t just wing it after all these years and having written hundreds of industrial blog posts.

Creating a publicity campaign could never be easier now thanks to social media. Gone are the days of printing out thousands, if not millions, of flyers. No more buying up space in your local newspaper and plastering your logo on billboards. Digital marketing can spread your brand to users all over the globe. Or can it?

Let’s be honest about something. Even though pop-up ads have become less of a nuisance, you still don’t dare turn off your ad-blocker. You may be a small business promoting your brand online, but every click you get is a glittering buoy in a sea of apathy. Perhaps digital advertising could learn a thing or two from print ads.

Different marketing styles need to stick together when the going gets rough. So, here are ways print and social media can integrate for a better yield.



Business Cards

Whether you’re a freelance artist or a realtor in North Carolina, business cards are as professional as a LinkedIn page. Cards are great for handing out at events or meetings. In addition to your occupation and company, be sure to include social media and website addresses. A sleek, eye catching design goes a long way, too.

Catalogs

In 2016, catalog mailings were still sent 9.8 billion times despite the presence of online retail. This is because catalogs keep the buyer immersed in a brand while away from a computer.

Make catalogs available upon request to returning customers and new ones. Treat your catalog like a specialized magazine that showcases your products to prospective buyers. Sweeten the deal for them by adding exclusive coupon codes and giveaways that can be redeemed by mail-in or online.

Crowdfunding

Remember those PBS telethons where you donate money to support their programming and get a free tote bag? Crowdfunding is like that, but better.

Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Patreon are social media platforms that connect producers with their consumer base. They provide a clubhouse aesthetic wherein patrons commit a subscription fee to the supplier. In return, they get bonus rewards on top of new and improved product. These rewards vary based on the amount. They can be personalized mailings of postcards, artwork, t-shirts, or any other published materials.

These days, finding good-quality links for SEO purposes is as challenging as it’s ever been. Not only should your links appear within the editorial content of a page, they should be naturally acquired and placed on pages that are relevant to your own website’s content.

But ever since Google’s Penguin update, fewer and fewer opportunities exist to obtain backlinks that meet these criteria. If you’ve exhausted your email link building and guest posting efforts, another option to consider is broken link building.

What Is a Broken Link?

A broken link is when you click on a link and it takes you to a 404 page. Broken links are also often referred to as “dead links,” as the page you were directed to is now dead.

Even if you have tried broken link building in the past and say it doesn’t work, you probably weren’t doing it correctly. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you why in this article.

The process of broken link building involves seeking out website pages in your industry with broken links in their content and then contacting their webmasters to offer your own content or link as a replacement for these dead URLs. If you’ve struggled to find new link building opportunities in the past, read on to find out exactly how this useful process can be implemented on your own website.

1) How to Find Broken Links: Identifying Web Pages

The first step in the broken link building process is figuring out how to find broken links. It’s not as hard as you might think.

If you’re going to contact webmasters with broken links and recommend that your own URL replace the dead references you’ve identified, the obvious first step in this process is to find web pages that contain these outdated links. There are a few different ways you can do this depending on your time constraints and budget.

CitationLab’s Broken Link Finder (Big Budget)

If you’re short on time and long on extra cash, CitationLab’s Broken Link Finder tool will automate the entire process of identifying dead links on pages throughout your industry. Depending on your marketing budget, investing in a program like this can be a great way to build the largest possible number of links in the smallest amount of time.

When many people think of the B2B organization, they imagine large factories or manufacturing companies, turning out large orders to other big companies. However, the reality is that companies of all sizes are business-to-business-oriented, which means that marketing strategies need to be utilized by every company, no matter the size or level of complexity in their solution offerings.

Businesses at their core, exist to solve a problem for their target audience. Once a business remembers this (even if they consist of a single person), it’s easy to see how basic B2B marketing strategies as mentioned on Forbes, like targeting actual humans, building trust, and reducing expenses for clients can have true appeal and effect.

By focusing on what the client needs (instead of your size relative to theirs), it can help you communicate better to the client how you can make them better. Furthermore, the internet has made it easier than ever for small businesses to scale, especially because they have better access to vendors and drop-shipping companies they can partner with to make their products and services available to more people.



A few good examples of this were given in Diana Huff’s post titled U.S. Manufacturing Anchors the Innovation Economy, which not only discusses how technology has furthered the development of B2B innovation, but it has also allowed companies like Diverse Woodworking, which started in a garage and now has scaled to large warehouse to create custom wood-carved products.

Not utilizing social media: Because social media sites like Facebook have their own review systems, it’s important for businesses to have a local presence. Clients are much more likely to choose a business based on a referral, whether it’s from someone they know or a handful of online reviews they’ve read. Having an active social media presence can help ensure that not only are reviews being left on website profiles, but that they, along with other current updates about the company, are being shown to as many people as possible.

In John Deere MachineFinder, optimizing John Deere dealer web pages and contact information has become an important localization element of the entire online marketing program. Indeed many of the organization’s social media mentions and inbound links can be realized through localization efforts.

Every discussion I’ve had with manufacturers and industrial companies starts with “we need more leads” or ends with “we need results.” I understand and accept the fact that the main goal of industrial marketing is to generate leads. I have no issues with that but do these companies know what a qualified lead is?

That may sound like a dumb question to ask in industrial lead generation but in reality, you would be surprised by how fundamental and serious that question is. I’m not making this up or trying to be clever here.

Let me explain with three excerpts from conversations I have had in just the past few months.


Problems in industrial lead generation

Conversation #1: The US Sales Manager of a manufacturer of level controllers and control vales said to me, “We don’t talk to leads until we receive an RFQ/RFP.”

Problem: The buyer is already at the end of their buying decision by the time an RFQ/RFP is issued. He wants to compare bids from vendors based on price and lead-time. The manufacturer doesn’t want to sell on price because their strength is in providing engineered solutions. It is too late for the manufacture to start talking about their expertise at this stage because they have to conform to the exact bid specifications in order to provide a price and a delivery time.

Conversation #2: The President at a distributor of natural gas and compressed air dehydrators said, “My sales team can tell if a lead is qualified or not within two minutes of talking to someone.”

Problem: The sales team isn’t receiving enough calls or able to get in front of enough prospects to make that quick determination. As a result, sales are down and they need more leads.

Given the modern data environment, improving your PPC results will increasingly rely on processing quality data. Going from good to great PPC performance involves collecting and processing bigger data sets and using machine learning to find and select the best bids. But, despite what you may fear, humans are an integral part of this process as well. Machines can’t do it alone.

You’re a talented search marketer, but you want to constantly improve, grow, and stay sharp on the latest techniques in digital marketing. Whether you’re the hands-on owner of a SEM program day-to-day, or you’ve stepped away to think more broadly about your digital acquisition strategy, the goal is still the same: turn your PPC channel into an efficient and predictable revenue driver. 

But, once you’ve started hitting the ceiling, it’s time to put more of your data to work.




Collecting More Data from PPC

I’m going to assume you’re a pretty advanced search marketer, so you’ve got your ducks in a row regarding your program structure. This means you probably have strong campaign build-out, highly relevant ad groups matched with ad copy and keywords that are tested, kept clean, and aligned with a good landing page experience.

You’re also probably driving some significant volume. If PPC is a truly pivotal channel–generating forty, sixty, or eighty percent of your revenue–you’re willing to spend a lot with search engines. Lots of dollars leading to lots of clicks and revenue.

When you’re spending tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of budget dollars on search engine marketing, you earn a valuable byproduct: data.

This data is a gold mine! Every click results in some set of actions on your website and some get further down the path towards revenue than others. Beyond that, every click is not only attributed to the keyword, ad, ad group, and campaign, but also to all sorts of attributes and dimensions that provide details about demographics, geographies, and habits.

The intricate customer journeys of the modern era make a “Conversion” in Google Ads worth less – and your own ability to track the path to revenue so much more meaningful. Your data tells a better story, you just need to capture it, unify it, and process it. 

Your B2B PR strategy is a complex machine, with earned, owned, shared, and paid media components all working together. Today, we're focusing on the earned media portion of your public relations strategy.

What is earned media? It is the attention a brand receives through through media or other websites. It is called "earned" since it cannot be bought or owned. It is attained through media relations, such as press releases and pitches to journalists.

So how do you get it? A lot relies on understanding what's happening in the world of journalism and what that means for your public relations strategy.



Which begs the question...

What is Happening to Modern Journalism?

Cision, one of the most foremost resources for everything PR, has released its 2019 State of the Media Report. This report helps us see where media relations is headed and what PR tactics would be most useful. 

What does this Cision report have to say about the state of modern journalism? The intro puts it this way: "In this fragmented, dynamic media environment, communications and PR professionals have an opportunity to become even more reliable partners with their media counterparts. " Given the right PR tactics, PR professionals can succeed in firing up their media relations strategy.

Another study, Onclusive's 2019 Global Journalism Report gives us more valuable information about how we view journalism in the 21st century. Onclusive has based its report on an analysis of 2.1 billion pieces of editorial content between Q1 2018 and Q1 2019.  Its conclusion: "The world of journalism has never been as dynamic as it is today .... The numbers tell a story of an author ecosystem which is fragmenting across publication tiers, editorial topics, and content formats."

What makes today's journalism so different and powerful? The report refers to two key areas to which we may attribute this: digital media and self-publishing.

Where once it was easy to know which media to pitch, today given the proliferation of Tier 3 publications (the non-media elite), there is a virtual army of lesser known outlets to penetrate. Moreover, brands can easily publish their own content and get their name and ideas in front of more eyeballs by amplifying owned content with paid media.

Let's examine these two reports and the findings therein to see what we can learn, as well as pinpoint how it will impact modern PR strategies and tactics.

Evaluating link quality within a link building campaign is critical, because you must ensure you’re building worthwhile links that help you reach your campaign goals.

Every link you build should be a link that you would be proud to show your friends and family, colleagues, and even Google. Building links you would be proud of means building quality links. But what constitutes a “quality link”?

Ever since the introduction of Google’s Penguin algorithm link building has shifted to quality over quantity. Here are some barometers you can use to measure link quality during a campaign:

Relevancy
SEO value
Usefulness
Marketing value



Always scrutinize your links in these four areas to ensure you are building links that will contribute to a successful campaign.

Relevancy

Relevancy offers a great starting point when evaluating link quality.

If the relevancy isn’t there, you know you have an issue right off the bat. Links form online connections between two websites, and without some sort of relevancy these connections wouldn’t make sense.

There are four main types of relevancy to consider, and some are more crucial than others. In order of importance, they are as follows:

Link to page – the contextual relevance of the link on the page
Page to page – the relevance between the page on your website and the page linking
Domain to page – relevance between your site and the page linking
Domain to domain – relevance between your site (as a whole) and their site (as a whole)
Now all of these levels of relevance don’t have to line up perfectly every time, but the overall relevance still needs to be there. If you have any doubt, try to explain the relevance out loud to another person. If you’re struggling the relevance likely isn’t there.

For a more in-depth explanation of relevancy in link building, check out Cory Collins’ article here.

SEO Value

In 2015, 28.3 million individuals updated a blog at least once every month. That number will rise to 31.7 million people by 2020.

If you have a blog or you’re thinking of starting a blog, you might be thinking about what makes some blogs so popular? How do you create unique content that sticks with your readers?

The key is to make your blog stand out. Want to know how? Keep reading to learn how to increase blog traffic.

Is Blogging Important?

Is blogging necessary? With 95% of blogs abandoned and the market appearing saturated thanks to blogging behemoths such as Medium, you might be wondering if your website even needs a blog.

Yes, your business does need a blog. In fact, businesses who focus on blogging can get a 13X increase in ROI.



What’s more, blogging can net you more leads. Companies that have 401-1,000 pages of content can get an increase of leads by six times. This is compared to businesses that have 51-100 pages of content.

More content results in more subscribers and form submissions which can get you more leads.

Is Blogging Important?

Is blogging necessary? With 95% of blogs abandoned and the market appearing saturated thanks to blogging behemoths such as Medium, you might be wondering if your website even needs a blog.

Yes, your business does need a blog. In fact, businesses who focus on blogging can get a 13X increase in ROI.

What’s more, blogging can net you more leads. Companies that have 401-1,000 pages of content can get an increase of leads by six times. This is compared to businesses that have 51-100 pages of content.

More content results in more subscribers and form submissions which can get you more leads.

Another major benefit of blogging includes higher search engine traffic. With over 40,000 searches done every second on Google, you want to leverage this market.

Other benefits of blogging include:

Helps you become a leader in your industry

Helps you create inbound links

Personalizes your brand

Want to learn how to create a blog that achieves all of this? Let’s get started.

The competition is fierce out there. There are 58.6 million new blog posts each month on WordPress alone. Everybody, in other words, has clued into this content marketing thing. How do you ever get your work noticed? Is it even worth it? A look at that same page I linked to above answers that conclusively. For though there might be a lot of posts, there are more than 400 million people reading blogs each month. And there have to be at least a few of your customers in there, don’t you think? What’s more, content marketing will generate $300 billion by 2019. Now that’s a big pie and we all want to get our fingers in there!

The trick is, how do you get noticed? After all, you don’t want just an average share of that pie – because that would be only about 6 and 2/3rd people viewing your blog per month. Now unless you’re selling airplanes and you’re absolutely certain to convert one of those people that just isn’t worth your while. And so you have to promote your blog correctly.



But how do you do that?

Sales can’t be your primary motivation

Or, at least, they can’t appear to be. People can smell that a mile away. Instead, your blog truly has to be designed to educate, entertain, engage and inform. It has to feel like – rather than there being a business trying to push through a poorly concealed sales agenda – that there is a person or a team of people who want to help by offering valuable information and insights.

Only in this way can you get other bloggers to share your page. After all, they’re intensely sensitive about their reputation and don’t want to run the risk of tarnishing it by linking to sales-pushing content, even if that site does occasionally have good content. And they are the gatekeepers to becoming part of the established industrial conversation. Now this doesn’t mean you can’t use SEO and keyword search tools. It just means you should take the time to make certain it isn’t blatant or jarring.

Sales can’t be your primary motivation

Or, at least, they can’t appear to be. People can smell that a mile away. Instead, your blog truly has to be designed to educate, entertain, engage and inform. It has to feel like – rather than there being a business trying to push through a poorly concealed sales agenda – that there is a person or a team of people who want to help by offering valuable information and insights.

Only in this way can you get other bloggers to share your page. After all, they’re intensely sensitive about their reputation and don’t want to run the risk of tarnishing it by linking to sales-pushing content, even if that site does occasionally have good content. And they are the gatekeepers to becoming part of the established industrial conversation. Now this doesn’t mean you can’t use SEO and keyword search tools. It just means you should take the time to make certain it isn’t blatant or jarring.