The days of black hat SEO are gone. And while SEO strategy certainly isn’t dead, the release of Google Panda, the Google algorithm that crowned quality as king, ensures that meta stuffing isn’t the best way to climb to the top of the SERPs. It appears that Google is moving steadily in this direction of rewarding high-quality sites with real content, rather than sites with keyword-heavy articles and tags. As SEO experts try to think of more and more ways to get any old site in the #1 spot, Google is creating more and more ways to make its crawler more intuitive so as not to be ‘tricked’ by those tactics.

How does Google define the quality of a webpage? 

 Who better to advise us on this subject than Google itself? The search engine’s staff has been making noise for some time now about websites that create a poor “user experience.” Those sites are usually advertisement-laden and provide little useful information to the visitor based on the key words they were searching for. And Google has tweaked its algorithm to penalize them. Characteristics of a strong webpage in Google’s eyes include: non-recycled content with relevant information, recently posted content and fewer advertisements located on the top half of a page.

Where does Content Marketing Fit in With SEO?

If you only update your site once a month, people don’t have any reason to visit it more often than that… Innovative content has the power to tell relatable stories and the fluidity to travel easily throughout the internet. It will naturally earn you link juice, keep visitors on your site for longer periods of time and help you brand your site, which will earn you higher rankings in the SERPs. Creating content with these characteristics will require a good deal of creativity.  

Here are some strategy tips for creating your content marketing plan:

• Figure out where you will promote your content – website, Facebook, Twitter, guest post on another blog?
• Research your competitors. Where are they posting, what keywords are they targeting, what type of content are they producing?
• Decide what type of content you will be creating. Try to use a mix of content that appeals to different types of viewers. An article can be enhanced with an informational video or chart/graphic explaining some concept in the content. Perhaps an editorial cartoon?

Strategies for Developing Content Ideas

The key here is creating something that people will want to share. That means posting lots of new content that your visitors will find intriguing. Here are some ideas to help you get your creative juices flowing:

• Create a how-to video for your product or service
• Film videos of your expert staff answering questions submitted by site visitors
• Analyze several recent pieces by well-known bloggers or experts and give your own commentary
• Create a poll on your site and then use the results as a hook for an article or blog
• Get an interview with an expert or popular blogger and post the it on your site Q & A style
• Attend a conference or webinar, summarize what you’ve learned and give your own opinions about the programming
• Download Feedreader (a search feed aggregator) and set up Google Alerts for pertinent keywords in your field to try to spark ideas

For small businesses, it is important to first do research to learn about the people you are marketing to in your community. Ask your customers about their interests and try to keep them satisfied by frequently posting new content to answer questions you think they might have or give analysis on topics they care about.     

Once you’ve created original content, consider it a prime SEO real estate and do your best to optimize it without interfering with the quality of the user’s experience.  Then you’ll have a powerful package of great content and SEO.

The Klik Blog is written by Klik Marketing founder and president Eric Fransen. Eric has been involved with the Internet Marketing industry since the late 1990’s.

Advanced SEO and Social Integration by Roy Morejon and Brandon Uttley, Command Partners

Roy and Brandon are two of Charlotte’s top social media gurus. There presentation is on: There are a few ways to think about SEO and how it connects to other pieces of your marketing strategy. Increasingly, social media and SEO are becoming more closely aligned. A lot of the work we do in social get rewarded with more exposure for our businesses in the search engines. Even Google is making big efforts lately to focus on higher quality content and content that people react to in positive ways. How we rank in search engines can be an integral part of our inbound marketing system.

• Content Marketing is the backbone of all social media and search engine optimization today. 
• Social Sharing is Driving Growth
• We are in the midst of a massive shift online from search and intent to social sharing.

How do you compete with strong sites? A fresh burst of links may provide exceptional value. It will allow a page to overtake a high authority website for a short or even a long period of time. SEO is an amplifier and catalysts to social media and content marketing.

Where to Start?

• You need to make sure your website is suitable so that google can see your website properly.
• Google now has social analytics. Need to use the Beta Version of Google Analytics. You can see Social Engagement, Social Actions, Social Pages. For more information go to http://bit.ly/gasocial
• Google Profile Integration – Google allows you to see what “they see” in regards to content you are sharing. See google.com/s2/search/social.

What’s Working? Most Important Social Media Factors

• Trust Factors – Everything you do online should be done to increase the trust others have in you. 
• Google – Social Authority – An author’s authority on social networking sites is influencing traditional SEO. Social shows authority, not relevance.
• What are the Social Signals? How Google and others are quantifying social networking authority as a ranking factor within traditional search engine results pages. 
• Facebook Optimization - Fill out all page profile information completely. Because of Facebooks Social Graph all information on Facebook has the potential to be indexed. 
• Twitter - Tweeted links get discovered and indexed quickly.  Tweets from high-authority accounts get lots of RTs act as links (Google & Bing)
• Slideshare - Slideshare is great to use. Very good for long-tail keywords. Multiple opportunities for keyword placement. 

Jeanne Hopkins from HubSpot had a great introduction. It’s all about leads at HubSpot. 45K Leads last month. Wow!

It’s time to Rethink Marketing! Inbound Marketing is a fundamental shift in how we relate to potential customers. Jeanne says “Stop Pushing”. People are on the “do not call list”, they skip ads on TV, they unsubscribe, etc.  ”Start Attracting” leads through relevant, useful, easy-to-find content. 

Stop forcing and start responding to how people make decisions. Adapt to their interests and timelines. Inbound marketing you pull, earned, own, attract and asset. Hubspot blogged 6 months before they started company. They are still receiving leads from blog posts 6 years ago. You don’t want to be “the ad”. You want to be the “content” around the ad. Publish everything! 55% more website visitors for companies that blog. 

Tips for Content

• Talk about the industry, not yourself
• Use lots of different media