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Thursday 2 January 2014

Leading Experts Predict The Content Marketing Trends for 2014

Unknown at Thursday, January 02, 2014 No comments:

2013 saw a number of new Internet marketing trends emerge along with a handful of new technologies, practices, and buzzwords. One of these many changes came in the form of Google’s various algorithm updates, which forced countless brands to revisit their existing SEO strategies and give them a much-needed face lift. Another new focal point came from the mobile side, and with 2014 fast approaching, nearly every brand on Earth is looking for ways to tailor their services for mobile. Despite the wide number of changes this past year, one thing stole the Internet marketing spotlight this year—content marketing. As we look towards 2014, it’s obvious that content marketing has already become the hottest trend in the industry—the go-to strategy for most, if not all, Internet marketers. Despite its growth, 2014 will finally bring a full-fledged, industry-wide adoption of content marketing standards and practices. So what are the top players in the internet marketing field expecting with this shift towards content marketing? Actually, thoughts are mixed.

Chase McMichael

According to cinematographers Chase McMichael, “2014 is all about going beyond experimenting, to full content marketing integration and executions.” Rather than debating its significance, brainstorming strategies, or trying to establish an appropriate content budget, 2014 will be the year where those who don’t have their content marketing strategies ironed out will be left in the dust.

With widespread adoption of content marketing looming on the horizon, many marketers are wondering what to expect in 2014. Well, if 2013 proved anything, it was that quality content is now the name of the game and that social shares and user engagement are the new benchmarks of a brand’s success. What does this mean for advertisers and publishers? It means that in order to stay relevant in the near future, marketers must be able to create and share original and compelling content that customers (or potential customers) are likely to read, comment, and share with their networks. Simply put, performance marketing in 2014 will be all about earned media.

Greg Secrist

BKA Content’s Greg Secrist says that he expects to see marketers place an even stronger emphasis on “high quality content, authorship content, and FAQ-type content” in 2014 order to gain traction and to rank better within organic search results. “In short, I think we will see a mind shift in which marketers start taking the SEO out of SEO, and instead, start focusing on creating content that resonates with users and answers their search questions.”

With advertisers and publishers readily adopting new content strategies, it seems as though the digital marketing industry has already accepted the concept of content marketing with open arms; however, there are some people who aren't on board.

David Spark

David Spark of Spark Media Solutions is one of those people, and his main concern is that advertisers and publishers are using “content” as click-bait, with the sole intention of selling something rather than providing the consumers with any valuable information.

“I’d like to see an end of the term ‘content marketing’ because I think’s it’s insidious,” Spark explains. “My wish for 2014 would be a quick death for the term ‘content marketing,’ but my 2014 prediction will be a major upheaval in click-bait content such as info graphics and listicles. Most brands will realize that these paper-thin content offerings only generate vanity metrics and don’t ever truly deliver value to the business’ bottom line. And herein lies the challenge of content marketing—publishers post pieces of “content” such as memes, viral videos, info graphics, etc., and see a lot of user engagement via comments, likes, and shares, which is currently being equated to a successful, revenue-producing campaign.

However, whether or not those “engaged users” actually perform the desired action often remains to be seen. In fact, in most cases when users are interacting with “branded content,” they’re not converting or producing any desired action, rather, they’re skimming over the content, liking and sharing, and moving on. More times than not, these shallow, yet viral pieces of content serve no purpose when it comes to actual business objectives, despite their propensity for inflating a brands “vanity metrics” and boosting perceived “user engagement.” So as 2014 approaches and the content marketing craze continues its takeover, we expect to see a lot of new practices arise and different trends come and go.The main thing that we expect to see in the New Year is for marketers to shy away from the cheap, clickbait content that inflates “vanity metrics,” and move more towards creating niche-specific, high quality content that provides values to their followers.

This type of content will not only entice fans to engage and interact with your brand, but it will also help on other fronts such as SEO, and most notably with revenue.”

Wednesday 1 January 2014

News Search Marketing SEO

Google Hits Rap Genius With A Spam Penalty Resulting in 80% Traffic Loss

Unknown at Wednesday, January 01, 2014 No comments:

Lyrics site Rap Genius was penalized by Google just before Christmas after being outed for a black-hat link building scheme. Rap Genius was looking for bloggers to publish links with keyword rich anchor text in exchange for tweeting out a link to the bloggers’ websites.

Despite the founders issuing a public apology to Google they were still hit with a manual penalty for violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by trying to artificially boost their rankings.

Rap Genius’ penalty buried every one of their pages deep beyond the first page of Google’s search results, no matter what keyword was being searched. Even searching for the name “Rap Genius” won’t bring up their domain on the first page, just their Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Needless to say, this has had a profound impact on their search traffic. Quantcast shows nearly an 80% drop since the spam penalty went into effect:

The founders of Rap Genius claimed they will stop the link scheme and suggested other lyrics sites are doing worse things:

"We effed up, other lyrics sites are almost definitely doing worse stuff, and we’ll stop. We’d love for Google to take a closer look at the whole lyrics search landscape and see whether it can make changes that would improve lyric search results."

There’s no word on if Google has any intention to lift the penalty, or if they will be looking into the alleged techniques being used by other sites. One thing is for sure: follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines or they will take necessary action!

Monday 30 December 2013

Google Update Local Search Search Engines Search Marketing SEO Social Media

Do you have more amazing facts about Google?

Unknown at Monday, December 30, 2013 No comments:

Fact #1: Believe it or not, the Google homepage is so bare mainly because Sergey Brin and Larry Page didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. Since then, Google has grown to be used by at least everyone on the planet, and processes around 20 petabytes of information on a daily basis. In the past 5 years, it has indexed over 50 billion web pages, and hosts over 620 million visitors a day.

Do you have more amazing facts about Google? Share them in the comments.

Saturday 28 December 2013

Local Search News Social Media technology Tools Web

Nokia removes Here Maps from Apple App Store

Unknown at Saturday, December 28, 2013 No comments:

WASHINGTON: Nokia has pulled the plug on its Here Maps app from the Apple App Store, saying recent changes to iOS 7 harming user experience.

The Here Maps app was touted to be an alternative to Apple's initially unpopular Maps app.

However, the Finnish mobile giant, now owned by Microsoft, said that they have made the decision to take off their mapping app as the recent changes to iOS7 were not compatible with the app, AllThingsD reports.

The company said that iPhone users can continue to use the mobile web version of Here Maps that offers core location needs, such as search, routing, orientation, transit information, all completely free of charge.

A Nokia spokeswoman said that the app was simply not optimized for iOS 7 and that is why they decided to remove it.

Local Search News

Retailers record strong sales on Boxing Day

Unknown at Saturday, December 28, 2013 No comments:

Retailers in the UK recorded strong sales during the post-Christmas shopping season as 13million shoppers rushed to shops to get attractive holiday deals.

According to estimates, shoppers are expected to spend around £1.8 billion today. It is believed that a total of £2.57 billion was projected to have been spent on December 27, which is 7.1 per cent higher than the £2.4 billion recorded in the previous year, according to the Centre for Retail Research. The total expenditure rose to £3 billon, which is higher than £2.8 billion, which was a previous record that was held by Boxing Day this week and December
21 and 27 of the previous year.
Fashion and technology items emerged as the top selling items in the market this shopping season. Exerts had said that the stormy weather might affect the retail sales as people would prefer to stay indoors but shoppers defied the weather and as an increasing number of shops went on sale during the season attract more customers to the stores across the country.
CRR director Professor Joshua Bamfield explained, "The sales period will be busier than last year, partially because retailers have more unsold stock to sell than last year."

Friday 27 December 2013

Local Search News technology Tools

Apple’s iPhone 5C, 5S launched in India

Unknown at Friday, December 27, 2013 No comments:

NEW DELHI: The wait for iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C is over for Apple fans in India. Nearly one-and-a-half-month after its global launch, Apple has launched its new iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C in the Indian market.

Apple has priced the iPhone 5S at Rs 53,500, Rs 62,500 and Rs 71,500 for the 16, 32 and 64GB models respectively. The 16 and 32GB variants of iPhone 5C will cost Rs 41,900 and Rs 53,500 in the country.

The two new iPhones are now available at retailers across the country as well as on e-commerce websites. Telecom carriers Airtel and Aircel have announced that they will offer the two iPhones with custom plans. However, Airtel's website lists the two models with the "Coming Soon" tag, while Aircel has not listed them on its website as of now.

Reliance Communications will offer both the new Apple smartphones on a two-year contract in India. The base 16GB models of iPhone 5S and 5C will entail zero down payment and monthly subscriptions of Rs 2,599 and Rs 2,999; the company will offer free unlimited calls and SMSs (local and STD across networks) and 3G data usage. The respective 32 and 64GB variants of the iPhone 5S will involve down payments of 10,992 and Rs 19,992 respectively, while iPhone 5C's 32GB variant will require a down payment of Rs 11,600.

With the launch of iPhone 5S and 5C, Apple has discontinued the 16GB version of iPhone 4S, replacing it with an 8GB model. This brings down the price of the two-year-old model from Rs 38,500 to Rs 31,500, making it the cheapest iPhone officially available in the country. However, iPhone 4 is still available in the country at approximately Rs 22,000 for the base 8GB variant.

The India launch comes on the day the company launches iPad Air in major international markets and Google released its Nexus 5 smartphone and Android 4.4 mobile operating system. Google has revealed the price of its new top smartphone, placing the base 16GB model at a very competitive Rs 28,999 point.

According to the latest figures by research firm IDC, Apple has a 2.3% market share in India. On the other hand, Android and Windows Phone take the top two spots in the country with share of 91% and 5.4%, respectively.

Earlier this year, Apple announced buyback offers, where it gave a discount of up to Rs 7,000 for old handsets manufactured by Samsung, Nokia, BlackBerry etc. The company is set to foray into smaller towns and cities of India, where the penetration of its products is low. CEO Tim Cook has acknowledged the role of India in increasing its sales for the last two quarters now.

Monday 23 December 2013

News PPC SEO

7 Dream AdWords Features That Would Make Our Lives Easier

Unknown at Monday, December 23, 2013 No comments:

Google is constantly innovating. Sometimes those changes make our lives easier, and sometimes they leave us scrambling to make adjustments to our PPC campaigns. I identified 7 areas of improvement within the AdWords interface that could make everybody’s life much easier. Hey, we can dream right?

1.See Conversions Action Name Details in the Dimension Tab

This would be a great improvement because it would give advertisers a ton of information by just sorting information that the platform already has. This improvement could help you to:

Visualize the conversion action name data by day of the week
Visualize the conversion action name data by geographic area
Find out what times of the day are best for a given goal
Find out which goal performs well by destination URL
Anything else you can think of looking at the dimension tab

2. Adding the Google Analytics Columns in the Dimension Tabs

Wouldn’t it be nice to have the information regarding the bounce rate by hour, days, and geographic location right into the AdWords interface? This might sound redundant, but it is actually very handy in case of read-only access or simply to not navigate across two platforms.

3. Adding Keyword Type Selection When Adding Keywords from a Search Query Report

If you skip through a search query report in the live interface you are forced to apply the changes to the keyword type manually in the keyword field. It’s time-consuming and redundant. Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply selecting a match type in a drop down menu and copy it to the whole list?

4.Schedule Different Campaign Budgets by Day Directly in the Setting Tab

Some people might have different priorities in terms of what to advertise and how much to spend based on the day of the week. For example, maybe you want to spend more on advertising for the two days before an event. Or, you want to spend more on the weekends when more people are active online.

Right now it is possible to apply bid adjustments by hour or day but it is not possible to allocate different budgets by day to the same campaign in the settings tab. The only way to do it is to actually create different campaigns. Not impossible, but time-consuming. This would be a great add-on that would simplify how we manage accounts and reduce the management time necessary for some manual changes.

5. Google Forwarded Number More Countries

Tracking calls is becoming a fundamental tracking method. It would be awesome if we could offer this service to all clients world-wide. Many people are expressing their interest in this function and I am sure Google has it in the pipeline. The Google forwarding number is currently only available in UK, Germany, and US.

What will you be able to track thanks to the Google Forwarding Number?

Campaigns and/or adgroups that generated calls lasting for more than a given time frame you set up in the AdWords interface. This will give you the information regarding manually dialed phone calls and it won’t include calls coming from mobile devices.

Identify keywords and adds that initiated a click to call type of click (the data is available under the click type option in the segment tab of both the keyword and the ad tabs)

6. Click to Call Conversions Targeted at Both Keyword & Ad Level

This point relates to the one I just introduced. It would be fantastic if we were also able to track the call details at the keyword and ad level in order to be able to better optimize traffic. We could also add that it would be great to track click to call conversions that are not manually dialed at the campaign, adgroup, ad,and keyword level!

7. Facebook & Twitter Social Extension

Right now Google AdWords gives you the opportunity to use social extensions that are only based on Google +. Wouldn’t it be great if you could show off the great work you have done with your other social media sites? I believe that the best way to move forward would be to enable Facebook and Twitter extensions.

This extension would give you the chance to add credibility to the business and facilitate the conversion process.

Google Update News Search Analytics Search Engines Semantic Search Tools

Matt Cutts Wants To Know How You Would Improve Google Webmaster Tools

Unknown at Monday, December 23, 2013 No comments:

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, published a post on his personal blog today asking for feedback about how Google can improve Webmaster Tools in 2014.

Google’s webmaster console allows you to verify your website and be alerted of manual webspam actions that will directly affect your site.

They have also improved how they alert users of website security issues, including resources to help webmasters if their site has been hacked. They have made improvements to how site owners can view backlinks pointing to their site.

In addition to improvements made within Google Webmaster Tools, Matt also points out they have spent dozens of hours doing Google+ Hangouts for websites and have published around 500 different webmaster videos to help site owners.

Taking all of that into account, Matt poses the question: “What would you like to see from Webmaster Tools (or the larger team) in 2014?”

Matt throws out an entire list of possible suggestions that you can view on his blog, but I will highlight some of the best ones.

Possible suggestions could include making Google Authorship markup easier for site owners, improved reporting of spam and other errors, checklists for new businesses that are just starting out, tools for reporting duplicate content, and faster bulk URL removal.

Matt ends his post with a disclaimer:

"To be clear, this is just some personal brainstorming–I’m not saying that the Webmaster Tools team will work on any of these. What I’d really like to hear is what you would like to see in 2014, either in Webmaster Tools or from the larger team that works with webmasters and site owners."

Sunday 22 December 2013

Local Search News Search Marketing SEO Social Media

Facebook Begins Testing Auto-Playing News Feed Video Ads

Unknown at Sunday, December 22, 2013 No comments:

Facebook has announced they will begin testing auto-playing News Feed video ads for a limited number of accounts starting this week.

Facebook has been refining their video experience since September, making it a lot more Instagram-like in the way videos begin playing as you scroll past them without having to click or tap the play button.

They’re bringing this same functionality to advertisers with new video ad units. It’s also worth pointing out users won’t hear any sound from the videos unless they click on the video to expand it. Facebook is doing the best they can to ensure these video ads aren’t disrupting the overall user experience.

This format isn’t intended for every video ad, and is entirely different from promoting a post that contains a video. Facebook explains:

"This premium feature is specifically designed for awareness campaigns that are meant to reach a large number of people to increase interest in a brand, product or content, in a short amount of time. Page post video ads can then come into play to sustain the message of this initial campaign over longer time periods, in more targeted ways."

At this time video ad units will be shown from select individuals (personal Facebook accounts or verified Pages), select pages (like those of entertainers and sports organizations), and Summit Entertainment’s content for upcoming film Divergent.

Facebook reiterates several times throughout their announcement that this is an initial, limited test. Future use will be determined based on what Facebook learns from this test.

Monday 16 December 2013

Google Update Search Engines SEO Social Media

Google search Is Testing Embedded Images In particular Search Results Snippets

Unknown at Monday, December 16, 2013 No comments:

SEJ reader Samuel Edwards, from Tenthwave Digital, gave us a bounce up about something he recently spotted while doing a Google search. Google search engine seems to be testing embedded images results in the snippets of web search results.
Samuel discovered this while doing a search for” Flower_Beauty_Facebook” and I found snippets contained amazing small embedded images of profile photos of the related Facebook pages. Below is a screen cap he took:-

So far this seems to still be in the testing stages, which creates it too much hard to tell how widespread it will be in the future. At this point its most worth nothing Google is working on bringing something different to web search results.

As we know from Google’s Authorship markup, snippets having more images tend to get a more and more click-through rate, which makes this a particularly appealing feature for website/blog owners. Having images embedded in rich snippets of pages that don’t have authorship or semantic markup would be a nice way to get more traffic without any more effort.

“ I believe that not to mention having more images in Google search results in an effective way to improve users experience for one and all, not just SEOs & website owners. “

It will be interesting to know how this feature ends up being more used in the future. I will be 100% sure to update with more information if any becomes available.

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