Top Stocks 2014, Best Stock Market 2014, Hot Stocks Investing: 3/2/14

Google Posts Women’s Day 2014 Logo After Agreeing Its Logos Are Male-Dominated

Tomorrow, March 8th is International Women’s Day and Google has a special Google logo, aka Google Doodle, for the day. The logo is going live 12 hours early on all Google properties around the world, in order to make sure those who don’t go to Google on Saturday see it the day before.

The Doodle is heavily animated and features a 90-second video showing how women have historically been underrepresented in almost all fields. Here is that video.

It is interesting Google is posting this because just the other day a study came out showing only 17% of Google Doodles in the past two years had women in them. Team lead Ryan Germick agreed with the study, saying “We’ve been working to fix the imbalance in our doodles.”

In this Doodle Google has featured over 100 women, they include:

Cee Chatpawee, TV host, IT Princess, ThailandChinaza Godwin Christiana, Student, NigeriaEaskey Britton, Surfer and the first woman to surf in Iran, PhD and doctoral candidate, IrelandRahimah Yussof, Developer group leader, BruneiChen Yuhong, School teacher, ChinaNaho Okamoto, Jewelry designer, JapanMary Kom, Five-time World Boxing champion, IndiaFunlayo Adewale, Canteen owner, NigeriaJennifer Luo & Yi-hsin Chen, Mothers to be, TaiwanAlifiyah Ganjee, Developer group leader, KenyaKarnataka State Home Guard, IndiaAna Cecilia Castillo, Developer group leader, GuatemalaRivka Carmi, President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, IsraelCamila Batmanghelidjh, Founded the place2be and Kids Company, caring for 17,000 children, UK/IranDalia Grybauskaite, President of LithuaniaSarah Sechan, TV personality and entertainer, IndonesiaShoko Uemura, Under-23 Women’s Football Team member, JapanJanet Mock, Trans woman rights activist and author, USAHarusoga Fujima, Professional Nihon Buyo dancer (traditional dance), JapanMara Gabrilli, Congresswoman & Brazil’s spokesperson for people with disabilities, BrazilMaria da Penha, Women’s rights advocate, named the law protecting women from domestic violence, BrazilViviane Senna, Entrepreneur and founder of NGOs, BrazilMarta Silva, Awarded multiple times by FIFA golden ball as best female soccer player in the world, BrazilStudents, GuatemalaMaia Sandu, Minister of education, MoldovaChamki, Adventurous and inquisitive schoolgirl muppet, IndiaChristine Van Broeckhoven, Molecular biologist, BelgiumTanha Islam, Aspiring engineer, BangladeshJake Feinler, Former head of Network Information Center at Stanford and Internet Hall of Fame member, USAIryna Velychko, Galyna Korniyenko & Marina Derkach, Developer group organizers, UkraineMarisa Mill�n, Proud grandma, SpainNoelle Wenceslao, Janet Belarmino & Carina Dayondon, First Filipinas to climb Mount Everest, PhilippinesClarisse Reille, Managing Director of French Professional Committee for Apparel Economy Development, FranceGesche Joost, Professor of Design Research and one of Germany’s “100 masterminds of tomorrow”, GermanyDora, ExplorerNogah Dufresne, Multinational baby, France/IsraelTooba Shaikh, Aspiring Developer, PakistanKatelyn Donnelly, Executive Director of the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund, USA/UKCatherine Koo, Chairlady of United Christian College Parents Teachers Association, Hong KongRoba Al Assi, Blogger, JordanSOS Lambrate, Ambulance volunteers, ItalyCamila Bernal Villegas, Director of the CRAN Foundation and cancer survivor, ColombiaMalala Yousafzai, Education activist, PakistanAshaji, Holds a Guinness World Record as most recorded artist in music history, IndiaNonna Grishaeva, Actress, comedian and singer, RussiaNdileka Xameni, Runs an orphanage, South africaIpek Hanim’s Farm, Business woman turned farmer and her village , TurkeyProf. Jacqueline A. Oduol, Gender expert fighting for Women’s and children’s rights, KenyaMartha Debayle, Radio personality, named one of the 50th most powerful women in Mexico by Forbes, MexicoAlenka Godec, One of the most prominent jazz and pop singers in Slovenia, SloveniaZakeeya Patel, Actress, dancer and winner of South Africa’s Strictly Come Dancing 2013, South AfricaAstrid Sartiasari, Singer, IndonesiaJenny Chan, Ella Wong & Ching Hoi Man, Spokeswomen, Hong Kong Isadora Faber, Education activist, 14 years old, BrazilRefiloe Khaoli, Copyrighter, South AfricaSerena Gu, Grace Liang & Sharon Tam, University start-ups advocates, Hong KongAnne Geddes, Renowned photographer and women’s advocate, AustraliaCecilia Chung, Social justice & human rights activist, HK/USDiaa Elyaacoubi, Serial entrepreneur, named Entrepreneur of the Year 2004, FranceRos Juan, Entrepreneur and Social advocate, PhilippinesFunmi Victor-Okigbo, Events Production Designer, NigeriaChen Junlan and QiQiGe, Office workers andproudd mothers, ChinaTarryn Tomlinson, Inspiring quadriplegic working with disadvantaged youth, South AfricaZahira Asmal, Founder of Design South Africa, South AfricaFoluso Olaniyan, Agricultural pioneer, NigeriaJirawadee Sudta, Awarded National Excellent Youth in law and protection of children’s rights, Thailand

Twitter’s Vine Updates Rules on Explicit Sexual Content

Twitter is clamping down on graphic sexual activities and provocative nudity that people post on quick clip video app Vine, making it clear that explicit sexual content is unwanted.

Twitter produced a support article to lay out what explicit material includes: various depictions of sex acts (human or animated), nudity that is sexually provocative or in a sexual context, and graphic depictions of sexual arousal.

The firm revealed the updates in a blog post.

"We introduced Vine to make it easier for people to find, watch, create and share videos right from their mobile phones. As we've watched the community and your creativity grow and evolve, we've found that there's a very small percentage of videos that are not a good fit for our community. So we're making an update to our Rules and Terms of Service to prohibit explicit sexual content," it said.

"For more than 99 percent of our users, this doesn't really change anything. For the rest: we don't have a problem with explicit sexual content on the internet - we just prefer not to be the source of it."

So what isn't explicit sexual content? Documentaries with nudity, breast feeding, artistic nudity, and clothed, but rather sexy dancing, are all OK.

Vine was not around very long before it had its first pornography scandal. In January last year a collection of hardcore clips was selected as an Editor's Choice... briefly.

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.

Yahoo Rolling Out Indoor Maps (via Nokia)

Yahoo has started to integrate indoor maps into its newly upgraded mapping product. Even though Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer didn’t want to go head to head with Google in “local” (read: maps), Yahoo has been improving its mapping and local search user experiencesof late.

The inclusion of venue maps comes courtesy of Nokia’s Here division. Yahoo isn’t creating these maps itself; Nokia has been collecting and mapping venues in different categories for a number of years and now has coverage in 45 countries, with more than 1,000 venues being added monthly according to the company.

Nonetheless, improved maps is part of Mayer’s overall effort to boost search usage. This would presumably extend to mobile; however in trying this on the iPhone I discovered that there wasn’t an optimized mobile experience yet. And there’s no Yahoo Local or Yahoo Maps app (might one be on the way?).

Bing and Google are making similar efforts. Despite some fanfare, it’s not clear what level of progress is being made however. See, for example:

Microsoft Makes Venue Maps More Visible On BingGoogle Maps The Great Indoors (Android Only)Google Introduces Offline Maps For Mobile, Claims A Billion Users Globally For Maps, Earth

Indoor maps have a number of functions. As a basic matter they can provide a better maps experience in malls, airports, college campuses, hospitals, stadiums and so on. But indoor or venue maps can also contribute to improved online-to-offline ad tracking.

When a mobile user has been exposed to an ad and then visits a mall or store that visit can be captured in a number of ways, including by watching that user cross a store perimeter threshold.

What’s intriguing to consider is whether Yahoo’s Mayer is going to push deeper into improving Yahoo Maps, local and mobile search as a way to capture new usage. And she doesn’t necessarily need to spend tons of money or recreate Google Street View to do so.

I’ve argued that mobile and vertical search are areas where Yahoo may be able to compete successfully.

Take Your Sitelinks to the Next Level With Descriptions

Back in June of last year, in conjunction with new features of enhanced campaign, Google introduced an enhancement to sitelinks that allows users the ability to add descriptive text for your specific sitelink. I've always been a great fan of sitelinks, because it’s a great way to boost your average click-through rate (CTR) on your ads, in particular for brand terms (as much as 50 percent, per Google).

It gives you the ability to have more than one link in your paid search ad to different pages on your website. And with the ability to add additional detail to your site links, it gives you the ability to "own" more real estate in the paid search results.

Sitelinks also factor into your ad rank, and can influence the position of your ad on search page. Ad Rank previously took into account your max cost-per-click (CPC) and quality score, and now ad extensions and formats are another component of the calculation.

Seems like a no-brainer to implement, right?

Surprisingly, many clients are still not taking advantage of this feature. Google actually noted this in a blog post in January. After some extensive research, I found a surprisingly small number of customers are taking full advantage of the benefits of sitelinks. In the example below, Merry Maids is using the traditional sitelink format; the two other businesses aren't using sitelinks at all.

The addition of descriptive text could provide additional information regarding the individual links. For user example, the "Our Guarentee" link could describe what the actual guarentee is, or its benefit to the prospetive buyer. Using sitelinks means that the user is getting more useful and relevant information. Google’s testing shows that CTRs were higher than the same ad that had traditional site links.

In searching for "dog crate covers", we see again the traditional site link formats being used, but not the descriptive text versions:

The implementation of this feature is relatively easy. When you add a new site link, Google provides you with a Description field. You can describe your link in more detail, promote an offer, or create a call to action to the user.

We implemented descriptive sitelinks right after they became available, and we noticed for our clients a stronger overall CTR, in particular with branded terms. Not only were our clients able to provide users with information about their products and promotions, but their ads displayed in higher positions on the search results page. Your ad is utilizing more space, and your ad appears to be more relevant.

Some key things to keep in mind when implementing descriptive site links:

Incorporate calls to action where applicable. It’s a great way to drive users directly to another internal landing page.Provide promotion information, such as sales, discounts or free shipping.Think of each sitelink as an additional ad that you would create. Incorporate keywords in the ad, and use compelling messaging.Test and test again. In Pauline Jokober’s article, she refers to doing periodic sitelink audits. This is important to see what is and isn't working.

Sitelinks can help users find information faster on your site, and get to exactly where they need to go. Providing ads with more detail improves the overall user experience. Don’t you think it’s time to take your sitelinks to that next level?

Link Building Basics for International Search Engine Optimization

Whether international or local, link building is the all-important SEO topic.

Anyone at least moderately familiar with SEO best practices has a good understanding of both the importance of link building as well as the fundamentals of the approach, but for those who are just getting up to speed, here's a quick synopsis.

What is Link Building?

Link building is a tactic or series of tactics that increase the number of websites linking to a particular page or domain. Some factors in this approach include:

How many links are pointing to a specific page or a domain from other unique domains?How are the links positioned and what text is included in the hyperlink on the page they live on?What are the unique characteristics of the site(s) linking to the page or domain?

A website with a large number of inbound links to pages can enjoy a boost in rankings when a search engine deems those links as valuable. The value is determined by authority, relevance, popularity, and other ranking mechanisms that make up the algorithms of Google and other search engines.

Think Like an International Search Engine

To take this approach to an international campaign means building upon the foundation of domestic link building practices and beginning to think how a non-domestic search engine might look at it.

Here are a few questions to ask, using India as an example:

Is the information on your page relevant to visitors from India?Are people in India writing about the topic on this page, and do they consider this particular site a good resource when they do?Are other popular sites and authors in India linking to this website?Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs)

Whatever your target countries are, you should make sure that you have websites that are based in that country linking to your pages and domain. Target specific regions for link building efforts by soliciting and acquiring links from target ccTLDs that match the country or region you are targeting. For instance, if you were targeting India, you would want to make sure that several websites with the domain .in are providing backlinks.

To help with your efforts, there are several SEO tools that allow you to analyze your backlinks by location and/or ccTLD, which should make this easier, especially if your SEO campaigns are targeting multiple countries.

The Media Relations Component

A good link building campaign has a lot of similarities to a media relations or PR initiative. You want to get reputable sources to write about you, and ultimately link to you. Not all news outlets will hyperlink to your site, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

Find popular sites in the country you are targeting and create a plan to solicit links from them. This applies not only to larger news sites, but also to bloggers who are often more likely to provide a link to your pages.

Don't forget directory sites as well, many of which can be country-specific.

The methods to acquire these links are similar to a domestic campaign, but the individual outlets are sure to vary from location to location.

Conclusion

One thing that you shouldn't do is to assume that your link building strategies can be exactly the same as they are for your domestic efforts, even if some of the tactics do bear a striking similarity. Make sure you invest the time and effort to truly understand the media culture of the countries and regions you're targeting.

To put this in perspective, consider the effort you have invested in local link building efforts and remember that the same type of research and education will be required in each region you target.

Finally, remember that, like any other SEO effort, link building needs to be real and genuine if it is to be truly successful. If you don't have anything valuable to offer audiences in your target country, you need to rethink your objectives. With a solid value proposition, however, it is really just a matter of getting up to speed on your new target country.

New UserStats Tool Uses Social Proof to Grow Conversions

UserStats.com recently hit the scene with a new tool that offers free to paid subscriptions for increasing a websites conversion through “social proof.” Social proof is a concept rooted in psychology that discusses the power social influence has on a person’s behavior.

UserStats taps into the power of social proof by allowing websites to display the current activity happening in real time on their website; think downloads, visitors, purchases and more.

The company’s founder, Dr. David Darmanin, created UserStats after finding, through years of testing at large and small companies, that there were some things that worked almost all the time when optimizing for conversions. Social proof was one of them.

“One of the most interesting discoveries I made was that showing usage numbers – proof that a given service or product is widely used – to site visitors consistently led to an increase in the number of visitors that converted into customers or users, said Darmanin. “It became clear to me that sites that failed to show user activity and usage statistics were often being judged as 'empty restaurants' by visitors - which led to them abandoning the site.”

Companies from Basecamp to eBay use social proof statistics in some form or another, but what UserStats is attempting to do with their tools is make it easy to implement and accessible to everyone in terms of cost.

“The tool has been built with simplicity in mind - all a site owner needs to do is set up some simple tracking, similar to Google Analytics, and set a goal to track,” said Darmanin. “UserStats will then show your visitors the right stat at the right time - its all dynamic and automated. And more importantly, it’s verified by a third party, making it extremely trustworthy. Our team manually checks every stat that is set up or modified to ensure it’s authentic.”

Here’s a screenshot of the widget with “dummy” stats:

Once the widgets are up and running, how do you know if social proof is working for your conversions? Test, of course.

In a demo of the tool, UserStat’s Johan Malmberg recommends a split test for a period of time to see how conversions fare with and without the social proof stats.

And if you don’t have a lot of activity on your site, not to worry. UserStats allows you to set thresholds where the numbers only show when those minimum thresholds have been met.

UserStats is offering a special 90-day trial of the basic, pro or premium version of the tool, and you can access that code over at Search Engine Watch on Facebook.

A True Integrated Marketing Framework

The goal of making your agency or your work more integrated is a great one. Or at least it starts out that way. After all, you have design people over there, a content team here, a development team down in the basement, and maybe even a public relations team over in the sunny side of the office.

Why wouldn't you want everyone working together, with the same metrics and sharing the same data points? Of course you would. But then the office environment gets in the way.

There are silos. And closed offices. And different languages. And established process not conducive to new partners. And, well, sometimes sharing is hard, even amongst the most well-intentioned employees.

But we know that integrated campaigns are stronger ampaigns. They're more effective, give us clearer data points, allow for more creativity and bring greater ROI for client and agency. So that goal we started with in the beginning? We have to make good on it.

Below is a framework to help make that happen.

Get Genuine Buy-In

Creating an integrated marketing strategy isn't a new concept. But it's one that continues to be difficult for agencies to implement for all the reasons mentioned above.

Making an integrated marketing strategy work for you means getting initial buy-in from the key decision makers at the beginning. If your executive team isn't onboard or, just as important, your team leaders aren't, you're going to have an impossible time trying to push your new ideas down the line. Avoid the bottleneck later by greasing the pipe now.

One thing about buy-in – it has to come from an honest place where people are ready to pull up their sleeves, work together, and wear the same jersey. It's easy for an executive or team member to nod along in the "should we do this" meeting, but if they're not truly on board, you'll know and you'll know quickly. It will be their team dragging their feet on new processes. Or them not sharing information or letting someone else sit inside their sandbox.

True integration takes every department understanding their part in the greater whole of the organization. It sounds corny, but it's true.

Get All the Resources on the Table

Non-integrated marketing can be messy. Sure, every department may be getting things done, but what does it look like when they try to share that work with others?

You find that while your SEO, public relations, content, and social media teams are all invested in similar actions (tracking social influencers, identifying blogging partners, placing content) they're all using different tools, metrics and reports to accomplish it.

The SEO team doesn't know on which sites public relations has written contributed content and the public relations team doesn't know which sites they should be going after for the best link opportunities. And neither SEO nor public relations knows where social media already has established relationships. And content is just writing words to throw in the air with no promotion.

Resources. Wasted.

A step toward true integration means coming together to put all your resources, goals, technology and assets on the table to understand where your information may benefit someone else and how to get everyone pulling from the same dataset.

What tools does public relations use that would benefit other departments? What data is development or SEO sitting on that content or design would find helpful?

Can sorting this out be an absolutely monster task? Yes, absolutely. So it may not happen overnight or even in the same quarter. But make it a sticking point to get there. Aim for that.

Making data accessible to everyone is a great first step toward improvement.

Change the Language

This is difficult. (Even when your core competency happens to be words.)

Changing how you approach your marketing means you have to change your language and the way you speak about the work you do. Because both your employees and your clients learn from the language you use internally.

This is something we've struggled with at my agency. We understand that SEO, content marketing, and public relations are all often fighting for the same goal and advocating similar tactics – so what do we call it when we identify influencers and craft a campaign to reach out to them? When we put it in a proposal or when we talk about it internally, what is the language we use to describe what we're doing? Who is accountable for it?

The words you use will dictate how it's handled. Stop talking about the tactics and start creating language around the intention.

It's OK if that means creating your own language to describe the work that you're doing. I'd even argue that creating a team language will help create a common understanding a sense of purpose for people within your organization.

(I'd love to hear how other integrated organizations have handled this.)

Create the Process

You've decided you're going to do it – but how is it going to play out?

You need to build the process. That takes answering some tricky questions:

Who are the stakeholders responsible for creating and enforcing the new process?Who is responsible for conceptualizing the integration of campaigns? Will it be leads from departments, a separate strategy team, someone else?Who will be responsible for establishing metrics in the beginning and setting up tracking?What are the new metrics you'll track to measure success? The metrics, themselves, may not be new but the way you're approaching them may be. Or new buckets may need to be added to address new departments.What will reporting look like?Who is accountable for effectiveness and ROI?

If you've worked in an environment where departments were siloed or isolated from one another, creating campaigns that are integrated and measurable is a formidable challenge. You're not going to get it right the first time. But by building a process and tweaking it as new experiences lead to new insights, you'll become closer with each iteration.

Check in & Celebrate. Frequently.

This isn't something you can set and forget. Changing process or behaviors isn't an easy task. People will revert back, if not intentionally, out of habit. When it happens, address it.

Have regroup meetings to address any issues, concerns, or feelings of stomped toes that may arise about how things are moving. Squashing these fires early will help everyone continue to move toward where the company is going, not how things used to be done.

Keep everyone motivated by celebrating small wins and internal achievement. When SEO and PR are able to use the same data to make decisions and create content to earn linked buzz, that's an internal win. When Analytics is brought into a traditional marketing campaign earlier to allow for URL-tracking, that's a great step for the client. When your billboard matches the messaging and voice on your website? OMG, a miracle.

Celebrate these things. Pull everyone into a quick standing meeting and show the team that it's working. That the new way of doings things is getting results. Get them excited about the results and they'll keeping working to create them.

Get Integrated

You need your offline presence. You need your online one. And you need all the different departments that allow you to maximize both. Integrated campaigns, campaigns that track and measure the whole of your actions, are what will continue to produce the greatest ROI.

BrightEdge Uses SEO Patents As “Sword,” Sues Searchmetrics

Oh no they didn’t: BrightEdge has sued rival Searchmetrics using multiple SEO patents, which were granted last year. The concern being expressed by some today is that this could be the beginning of a wave of litigation as BrightEdge seeks to capitalize on its newly granted IP or goes after competitors that it perceives to be infringing.

The patents in question broadly pertain to various automated SEO software tools:

8,577,863: �Correlating web page visits and conversions with external references� Granted 11/5/20138,478,700: �Opportunity identification and forecasting for search engine optimization� Granted 7/2/20138,478,746: �Operationalizing search engine optimization� Granted 7/2/20138,135,706: �Operationalizing search engine optimization� Granted 3/13/2012

Reading the complaint (embedded below) doesn’t clarify much about the specific factual allegations of infringement other than plaintiff’s contention that infringement is happening and ongoing. The complaint asks for standard IP-related damages (i.e., monetary damages, injunctions, etc.).

It goes without saying there are lots of SEO-related software tools in the market. Doing simple keyword searches in the USPTO database or in Google Patent Search reveals thousands of documents that discuss or in some way implicate search optimization. Google itself has filed and been granted many patents on SEO-related software and inventions.

Bill Slawski has written extensively about SEO patents and only scratched the surface.

As a basic legal matter, the existence of a patent does not mean there will be a finding of liability by a judge or jury. Patent litigation is complex and can be confusing and messy. Patents can also re-examined by the US PTO upon request with the submission or citation of alleged “prior art” (earlier, related patents).

Regardless, this will be a case to watch. We’ve asked both companies for a comment and will update if we hear back.

Postscript: We have a statement now from Searchmetrics founder and chief technology officer Marcus Tober who emailed:

I appreciate that BrightEdge understood the value of Searchmetrics SEO platform and that they see us now as a serious competitor. That�s great. I�m looking forward that much more of their customers are switching to us because we have inventions, better data and we deliver to our customers what we promise. I�m absolutely not afraid of a lawsuit because as I see it we are not infringing any patent, especially not patents that were filed after we had these features already.

Postscript 2: We now have a statement from BrightEdge CEO and founder Jim Yu:

BrightEdge filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Searchmetrics in federal court in California yesterday.� The complaint alleges that Searchmetrics�s products infringe one or more claims of U.S. Patent Numbers 8,577,863, 8,478,700, 8,478,746, and 8,135,706.� A copy of the complaint will be posted on BrightEdge�s website later today.

As company policy, we take a �no comment� approach to all inquiries regarding litigation, including this lawsuit.

You can also refer to our website and content found at:�http://www.brightedge.com/patents,�which includes the following:

“BrightEdge Technologies, Inc., the leader in enterprise SEO, believes that investing in R&D is critical to delivering the advanced technology that sophisticated customers and marketing professionals increasingly need to keep on top of the dynamic world of digital marketing. The Company has spent millions of dollars on research and development, and our growing patent portfolio largely reflects fundamental innovations important to our industry. During the course of our history – since the earliest days when our founders worked relentlessly around the clock late into the night over months and months to invent their first new solutions and systems to tackle the needs of large enterprises – we have invested heavily to innovate and to deliver solutions that add significant value to customers.�

The case is below:

bright edge-technologies-v-searchmetrics-et-al from gesterling

Google Improves GDN Targeting With Bizo Audience Segments

As advertisers continue to require their digital marketing efforts accountable for results, the ability to deliver display advertising directly to your target market is essential. Each day hundreds of millions of impressions are shown below the fold or go ignored by non-relevant web surfers. Ad verifications tool shave helped decrease wasted impressions, but advertisers still waste impressions on users who are not interested in their products.

While behavioral targeting, lookalike modeling and content based targeted can help get your ads in front of you customer, there is still a significant amount of wasted impressions. Adding on third party data can increase the granularity of which you display ads are served. Guaranteeing you're reaching the right audience with the right messaging.

While Google has made strides in the past, until now, much of Google’s ability to target on their display network focused on content. While advertisers could control specific sites and placements, DSPs and direct to partner buys often provided superior targeting capabilities. Even networks such as Facebook and Twitter have email level targeting that can ensure impressions are delivered to the correct audience.

To combat this, Google is currently beta testing new targeting capabilities through a partnership with Bizo. Bizo has access to over 120 million business professionals across the world. Their B2B database can be leveraged across email, display and social. In this case, with their audience targeting layered on top of GDN buy, you can guarantee your ads are getting in front of the right audience. There is a wide array of audience segments available such as beauty, fashion, parenting, technology, music and many more.

Advertisers can select Bizo audience segments within Google AdWords for their display campaigns. Performance data of the Bizo targeted campaigns is housed directly in AdWords, which can lead to real time optimization and performance reporting. The audience segments available get quite granular so the transparency within AdWords for real time optimizations is a plus.

The audience segment targeting is applicable to both display and video targeting options through Google AdWords.

CPMs and CPCs for this type of advertising on the GDN will most likely be inflated compared to traditional display targeting options. This is due to the cost of Bizo and other third party data providers being baked into your advertising costs.

5 Reasons Why We Can’t Wait for Social Media Marketing World 2014 #SMMW14

Most businesses are aware of the importance of social media marketing, but the number of companies really succeeding at it represent just a drop in the ocean.

When you think about it, the world of social media is a lot like the ocean actually – constantly moving and evolving due to trends and feature updates. Those who really want to to succeed at social media marketing are like expert surfers, continuously swimming in the seas of change, riding the waves of trends, finding the best tools to keep their boards working well and keeping a close eye on the horizon for new best practices.

Where am I going with this surfing metaphor? Social Media Marketing World 2014 in San Diego, California of course! That is where several of the team from TopRank Online Marketing will be diving headfirst into the ocean of social media marketing smarts . On March 26-28 some of the best social media surfers will be sharing their tips, tricks and secrets and we can�t wait to dive in.

Social Media Marketing World will be my first conference as a member of the TopRank Online Marketing team and here are 5 things I am really stoked about:

1. Learning how to Ride the Big Wave

In an industry that changes as fast as online marketing, it�s imperative that marketers stay nimble in their social media strategy. Social marketing best practices are constantly evolving and rarely agreed upon. That�s why it�s so exciting that we get to learn about social media marketing tactics from the best and the brightest at #SMMW14. We�ll ride the edge of social media innovation as we learn about social media ROI, time-saving tools, the intersection of content and social and more.

2. Getting Props from the Pros

#SMMW14 will give attendees the unique opportunity to interact with some of the world�s best social media strategists both online and in person. The tweets will fly as we attend sessions together and explore the city of San Diego. Engagement will flow and follower / following counts will increase as social media marketers connect and share insights with each other. The benefits of attending this conference will extend far into the future as we continue to interact socially with the marketers that we met at this conference.

3. Swimming with the Big Fishes

We�re looking forward to learning from and rubbing shoulders with the marketers who are making social media magic happen for big brands like LinkedIn, Citrix, IBM and Whole Foods. We�ll learn all that we can from influential social marketers at #SMMW14�and then put this new information to work helping our clients expand and improve their social media marketing programs.

4. Helping you Get Up on your Surfboard

The TopRank team wants to share the best social media marketing strategies and tactics that we learn at this conference with you! Our CEO Lee Odden will be giving a presentation on How Content Plus an Influencer Network Can Help You Grow Your Business. In addition to myself, Lee and Jesse Pickrain from TopRank will be busy tweeting interesting insights from the keynote speakers as well as live-blogging the highlights of the sessions that we�re attending. Get in on the action by following @toprank, @leeodden, @emilybacheller, and @jpickrain on Twitter!

5. Sunshine and Sea Lions

Coming from the freeze of Minnesnowta, we can�t wait to jet off to sunny southern California! We�re usually knee deep in snow by the end of March, so spending a few days in California will give us that first taste of spring that we�ve been waiting for. We also expect to have a lot of fun at Social Media Marketing World, knowing that the organizers do a remarkable job of making this conference exciting and memorable! From nautical networking parties on an aircraft carrier to the sea lions in San Diego Bay, we know that we�re going to have a great time at #SMMW14.

BONUS: TopRank Online Marketing is the sole media sponsor for Social Media Marketing World and we’ve created the most awesome of conference eBooks featuring tips, tactics and insights from 38 of the numerous speakers at #SMMW14. �From famous social media starts like Mari Smith and Jay Baer to savvy social brands IBM and Whole Foods, this eBook will be an amazing primer for the conference. Be sure to watch for it here on Online Marketing Blog.

It take a lot of practice before you can feel comfortable standing up on a surfboard and confidently enjoy the rush of riding the waves. You may have to spend a lot of time swimming in the social web before you can stand tall on your surfboard–head and shoulders above your competition. It helps to have a good teacher and some time to observing the patterns of the social ocean–that�s one of the most important reasons why we�re attending #SMMW14

Will we see you at Social Media Marketing World this year? What are your top reasons for attending? Will you try to surf while you�re in San Diego?

Top photo: Shutterstock

BrightEdge Uses SEO Patents As “Sword,” Sues Searchmetrics

The patents in question broadly pertain to various automated SEO software tools:

Bill Slawski has written extensively about SEO patents and only scratched the surface.

Regardless, this will be a case to watch. We’ve asked both companies for a comment and will update if we hear back.

Postscript: We have a statement now from Searchmetrics founder and chief technology officer Marcus Tober who emailed:

Postscript 2: We now have a statement from BrightEdge CEO and founder Jim Yu:

As company policy, we take a �no comment� approach to all inquiries regarding litigation, including this lawsuit.

You can also refer to our website and content found at:�http://www.brightedge.com/patents,�which includes the following:

The case is below:

bright edge-technologies-v-searchmetrics-et-al from gesterling

New Video Shows Microsoft “Assistant” Cortana In Action

Microsoft will be introducing its Siri and Google Now/Voice competitor Cortana with Windows 8.1 in April. The new “intelligent assistant” will eventually be available cross-platform, although launching on Lumia Phones.

The name Cortana comes from a character in the game Halo. It was originally thought that Cortana would look like her character in the game (see image right). However it now appears “she” won’t have a face or a body.

Cortana is intended to help users discover and search for information as well as providing Google Now like personalization and “predictive search” capabilities. The problem with the latter is that�Microsoft doesn’t have as much data as Google does to power anticipatory search and recommendations.

For that reason, upon set up, Cortana takes users through a battery of personalization questions.�The blog�UnleashThePhones posted a video (below) of Cortana in action.�Among the questions Cortana asks users are the following:

What are a couple of the most enjoyable parts of your everyday evenings?When you think about food, what�s most important to you these days?What are two of your main motivations for going out to an event/activity?

Microsoft is also licensing Foursquare location data to help further enrich the Cortana experience.

Reportedly behind Cortana will be sophisticated machine learning and Microsoft’s/Bing’s �Satori� technology. Cortana will supposedly�enable �deep personalization” of device experiences from mobile to the PC to Xbox.

However to be more than simply a “Siri impersonator” or “me too” product, Cortana will need to obviously outperform Siri and Google Now. That remains to be seen.

It appears that Cortana will in a way compete with Bing. It’s not clear however whether Cortana is intended to become the dominant UI for “search” on Microsoft devices or whether it will operate more like a Google Now product that includes Bing search but offers different use cases.

New Google Search Layout Has No Underlines, Makes Titles Bigger

Google is testing out yet another new layout design featuring a few significant changes to the search results. The new layout was first spotted by Dan Barker and seemed heavily widespread in Europe, though many others have since been reporting seeing it, including in the U.S.

One of the biggest changes is the removal of underlines from all the links, both paid and organic results.

Along with a new font, Google has increased the font size for titles, which means less characters appear – notice in the screenshot that "Financial Times" no longer fits in the new layout, which means you may need to revisit your title tags.

Google is also favoring a harder to read gray text, rather than black.

The new search result layout also features a new look for ads, part of an ongoing test dating back to last year.

Unlike the AdWords ads we're become familiar with, where Google sets ad blocks apart from organic results by using a different background color, the new layout simply includes a yellow "Ad" label beside every AdWords ad that appears above the organic results. A line separates the paid search results with the organic search results. Many people now associate those colored ad blocks on Google and other search engines as being paid ads.

Riding the Waves of Social Media – 38 Social Media Marketing Tips from #SMMW14

A few years back while vacationing in Oahu, we decided to take surfing lessons. Well, everyone but me.

I made up all kinds of excuses but when I saw my 8 year old daughter pop up like it was nothing, I had to try. The guy running the lessons had really been around and the young men helping him were clearly “all-in” for the surfing life. They were experts. With their help and my daughter’s example, I quickly went from disinterested to being eager to go again.

That story reminds me of how a lot of marketers take a turn with their digital and social media marketing skills. Getting inspired and then connected with people that really know what they’re doing can be a direct line from zero to social media hero.

What if you could attend a conference where you could get inspired and learn from top thought leaders and brand practitioners while having a great time doing it?

Luckily, we’ve been at it again at TopRank Online Marketing and have produced a conference eBook for Social Media Marketing World to give you a glimpse at the combination of inspiring and practical content planned.

In line with the conference surfing theme, this eBook offers social media smarts from major brands: Century 21, TaylorMade, Eloqua, Whole Foods Market, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Discover, LinkedIn, Humana, Marriott, Experian, Citrix, PwC, HubSpot, Kelly Services, Cox Communications�plus top social media marketing thought leaders and influencers that include Mari Smith, Mark Schaefer and the man behind Social Media Marketing World himself, Michael Stelzner.

There are 38 tips overall on topics that include understanding goals, speaking customer, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, video, social content, influencer marketing, social service and of course, measurement and analytics. Riding the Waves of Social Media is a great primer or appetizer for what you’ll find at Social Media Marketing World. �Check it out:

38 Social Media Marketing Tips from #SMMW14 Speakers eBook�

There are some pretty impressive brands and thought leaders in this eBook, so here’s a full list of contributors and their Twitter handles. You can also find this list (and rank speakers) on List.ly. And if you want to follow the content these social media smarties share on Twitter, be sure to check out the #SMMW14 Paper.li paper.

Mari Smith – @MariSmith
Brian Clark -�@brianclark
Laura Fitton -�@pistachio
Jay Baer -�@jaybaer
Dennis Yu -�@dennisyu
John Jantsch -�@ducttape
Mark Schaefer -�@markwschaefer
Amy Porterfield -�@AmyPorterfield
Neal Schaffer -�@NealSchaffer
Michael Stelzner -�@Mike_Stelzner
Lee Odden -�@leeodden
Martin Jones -�@martinjonesaz
Viveka von Rosen -�@LinkedInExpert
Joe Pulizzi -�@joepulizzi
Brian Carter -�@briancarter
Gini Dietrich -�@ginidietrich
Todd Wheatland -�@ToddWheatland
Justin Levy -�@justinlevy
Jason Miller -�@JasonMillerCA
Jill Rowley -�@jill_rowley
Connie Bensen -�@cbensen
Marcus Sheridan -�@TheSalesLion
Tom Martin -�@TomMartin
Cliff Ravenscraft -�@GSPN
Andrew Gill -�@AndrewGrill
Andrea Vahl -�@AndreaVahl
Becky Carroll -�@bcarroll7
Lewis Bertolucci -�@Lewis502
Maria Poveromo -�@mariapoveromo
Michael Bepko -�@Bepkoboy
Tim Washer -�@timwasher
Cynthia Sanchez -�@OSPInteresting
Matt Gentile -�@MattGentile
Azure Collier -�@azurecollier
Michael Delgado -�@mikedelgado
Dan Gingiss -�@dgingiss
Charles Kautz -�@charliekautz
Michelle Lapierre -�@mmlap

Of course, the content in this eBook is just a slice of the social media talent that you’ll find at this year’s Social Media Marketing World.

Enjoy the insights in the eBook and then consider attending the event in San Diego. Never mind the opening night on an aircraft carrier and the San Diego Bay networking cruise. Or the fact that your state is probably knee deep in snow and freezing cold and San Diego is sunny and warm.

Even if you ignore those experiences that won’t be found at any other conference, Social Media Marketing World offers an incredible mix of information and learning opportunities.

TopRank will have two livebloggers (Emily Bacheller @emilybacheller �and�Jesse Pickrain @jpickrainand) covering sessions each day and I will be giving a presentation on How Content and an Influencer Network Can Grow Your Business.

One question I have about this particular conference eBook: Will it really be the most popular eBook we’ve co-created with a conference? �That’s up to you and the influencers that helped create it. If you like it, be sure to share and even republish it for your own readers.

Surf’s up! Are you ready?

Image: Shutterstock

10 Huge Online PR Mistakes You Must Avoid

We're all pretty familiar with Murphy's Law "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong". It's an amusing and important point of view that teaches us not to take things for granted. Yet few people are familiar with O'Toole's Law which is arguably much more important: O'Toole's Law is simply, "Murphy was an optimist."

One area that has got the potential to go wrong in SEO is online public relations. Here are 10 mistakes to avoid.

1. You Undervalue Press Releases as Part of Your Link Building CampaignGain Cutting Edge PR Insights at ClickZ Live New York 2014:The Marriage of Social Media & PR: Making it Work for Your BrandSee the full agenda.

Links in press releases have no value for SEO, but that doesn't mean press releases have no part to play in link building campaigns.

A press release is still one of the most effective ways to get your story in front of journalists. And journalists may well give you a nice clean link in a published article – the link is on an independent, quality site over which you do not control and therefore it has SEO value.

Then, if other journalists, experts, writers, and bloggers read the article and are then moved to write a post on their own blog and link to you in the process, then those links are also likely to have SEO value.

Bottom line: effective use of press releases has a critical role to play in link building campaigns.

2. Your Press Release Doesn't Have a Clear, Single Focus

Concentrate on telling just one of the many stories you could tell about your client. The temptation to put too much in is almost irresistible, but you must resist it. However, do provide a link to your client's newsroom or online press center where they can find out more if they really want to.

3. Your Press Release Isn't Newsworthy

This is one of the most common mistakes in traditional public relations: lots of companies put out press releases that aren't really news at all.

This mistake is exacerbated in the SEO world because keyword-rich anchor text in press releases worked really well once upon a time. Who could resist sending out poor news stories when they had such a great effect on SEO?

But those days are gone forever. Now every press release you send out should be newsworthy. That means it is something that a journalist will want to write about and something that a reader will find interesting.

The best way to find out what is newsworthy in your industry is to read as many relevant posts on high quality sites. Does your news match those other stories in quality? If not, don't waste everybody's time by sending it in.

4. Your Press Release Isn't Getting Into the Right Hands

Yes, it's possible to send your release to thousands of journalists, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. You must do research and be selective in choosing the journalists and outlets to approach.

The most effective ways of getting your press release into the right hands are, in descending order of importance:

Journalists you already know or who have written about you in the past. This is should be one of your most valuable lists. Unsurprisingly, this is by far the most effective way of getting your news outJournalists who you don't know but who you've carefully researched. Note what stories they tend to write about, the tone they take and the angles they are likely to follow. Then tailor your pitch to match their tastes. When you do persuade a new journalist or outlet to write about you, move them up into the top category.Journalists who are on a large distribution list. This falls way short of the two categories above by some distance, so much so that many PR people will just not use it. However, if can be successful in picking up new journalist contacts who have seen your general release and have written about you. Again, once they do move them up into the top category.5. You Don't Keep Control of Everything

Public relations is often an intensely collaborative exercise. You have a client, the client has a PR consultant and might also be working on a joint venture with another business. The chances for miscommunication therefore grow exponentially – and that's when problems multiply.

Say you're organizing an event and you want to make sure you get good photographs so someone has to organize a photographer. It isn't enough to know you're going to have a photographer. You must make sure that the photographer knows exactly what photographs everyone wants.

A photo that's going to be published in the local newspaper is very different from the one you need to encourage sharing on social networks.

6. Your Press Release Isn't Structured Properly

You need a killer headline and a killer first paragraph. The news value of your release is rarely special – it's one of hundreds that a journalist has to scan every day. You've got to write a headline that immediately grabs their attention – that makes your pitch stand out from all the rest.

Spend time crafting the headline. And once you've done that, spend time writing a fabulous first paragraph. Do those two jobs well and you increase the chances of even ordinary news getting coverage.

7. You Aren't Ready for Follow Up From a Journalist

We do live in a world of cut and paste journalism where people just don't have time. However, if you do attract the attention of the New York Times or the BBC or Inc. Magazine, then you can expect the journalist to get in touch and ask questions - and that can be followed by a ‘fact checker' after they've written their piece.

How well you answer their questions can make the difference between publication and failure.

Imagine what follow up questions you might be asked - be confident and have some decent answers ready. It can be a good idea to hold back one piece of the story and then give that to journalists who take the initiative of asking questions.

8. You Don't Follow Up

No one likes to be seen as a persistent, irritating jerk and most journalists will tell you that they hate follow up calls, saying that if they had been interested in the story they would have published it or asked some questions.

But everybody in PR knows that if you do follow-up, you will get additional stories – so sadly it is something that must be done if you're to get the most out of your story.

But be polite and don't be pushy - you might even be able to pitch a different angle on the story that might get the journalist hooked.

9. You Leave the Journalist With Too Much Work to Do

Journalists are busy people who work to tight deadlines under enormous pressure. They simply do not have the time to dig into stories that are not immediately interesting. Your job is to make their job as easy and straightforward as you possibly can.

So that means writing the story as you would like it to appear in the final publication - if your story is newsworthy and gives them everything they need to write the story immediately, your odds of getting published go up dramatically.

10. You Don't Maximize Your Chances of Getting Editorial Links

No matter how much we might buy into the idea that online PR is about more than links, we're still pretty delighted when we get an editorial link from the BBC, CNN, or Los Angeles Times.

But sometimes a story will have an editorial link and a similar story on the same media outlet will not. Why is that? And how do those links happen? Sometimes journalists have the power, sometimes they don't.

There really is no rhyme or reason to it. The Telegraph is an important UK newspaper and frequently links out to other sites as in this Travel Guide to Belfast Cityby Geoff Hill, an award-winning travel writer.

The guide contains lots of links and I asked Geoff how they got there. His answer confirmed the serendipity of it all, "I compiled a list of recommended restaurants together with all their web addresses and put those in, but any other links were put in behind the scenes after I've filed my story and I don't know who did it."

There is no "secret" to getting editorial links but there are things to do that can increase your odds – check out 10 Ways to Increase the Odds of Getting Editorial Links.

Press releases are still an important part of link building campaigns. Not for the links that might be embedded within them, but for the publicity and editorial links that they can generate.

Learning to write good press releases isn't difficult and it gives you another important tool in your link building kit.

Image Credit: Ian Fraser for LinkingMatters.com

BrightEdge Uses SEO Patents As “Sword,” Sues Searchmetrics

The patents in question broadly pertain to various automated SEO software tools:

Bill Slawski has written extensively about SEO patents and only scratched the surface.

Regardless, this will be a case to watch. We’ve asked both companies for a comment and will update if we hear back.

Postscript: We have a statement now from Searchmetrics founder and chief technology officer Marcus Tober who emailed:

Postscript 2: We now have a statement from BrightEdge CEO and founder Jim Yu:

As company policy, we take a �no comment� approach to all inquiries regarding litigation, including this lawsuit.

You can also refer to our website and content found at:�http://www.brightedge.com/patents,�which includes the following:

The case is below:

bright edge-technologies-v-searchmetrics-et-al from gesterling

BrightEdge Uses SEO Patents As “Sword,” Sues Searchmetrics

The patents in question broadly pertain to various automated SEO software tools:

Bill Slawski has written extensively about SEO patents and only scratched the surface.

Regardless, this will be a case to watch. We’ve asked both companies for a comment and will update if we hear back.

Postscript: We have a statement now from Searchmetrics founder and chief technology officer Marcus Tober who emailed:

Postscript 2: We now have a statement from BrightEdge CEO and founder Jim Yu:

As company policy, we take a �no comment� approach to all inquiries regarding litigation, including this lawsuit.

You can also refer to our website and content found at:�http://www.brightedge.com/patents,�which includes the following:

The case is below:

bright edge-technologies-v-searchmetrics-et-al from gesterling

Content Marketing With Research and Surveys: Pros, Cons, Examples, Best Practices

All marketers need actionable insight to make important decisions. As the internet reaches a crescendo of voices all vying for their customers� short attention span, the need for quality citations and third party industry research becomes even more important to stand out.

Therein lies an opportunity: Companies that create credible surveys, reports and playbooks on a regular basis can become known authorities and trusted resources – ahead of the competition. Such authority leads to trust and in the content marketing world those are essential characteristics to attract a target audience whether they are buyers, journalists or investors.

Ironically, it�s this exact labor-intensive exercise that provides some of the most sharable, citable content. The ability to attract substantial citations, social shares and attention is a very powerful capability for agencies and corporate marketing marketing departments to have right now.

To benefit from this opportunity, it takes the hard work of doing thoughtful research. Once you�ve invested in conducting original, topically relevant research through polls and surveys, the task of making your findings part of the�content marketing mix is only a matter of breaking it down into digestible bites, customized to the people you’re trying to connect with.

Every industry has their data champions whose purpose is to explain what�s happening in your world. Industry Analyst and Research Organizations like these�devote a good portion of their marketing efforts on providing industry trends and offering insights and advice to illuminate what’s in demand within a market now and in the future:

Altimeter GroupAberdeen GroupeMarketerGartnerForresterIDCPew Research CenterNielsen Norman GroupMarketingProfsContent Marketing InstituteEconsultancyIABCEB

Whether you�re a non-partisan, public opinion poll, a B2B company wanting to demonstrate thought leadership within the business community or a B2C brand using research to gain a foothold in a new market, the data you collect and research you conduct represent a solid foundation for a plethora of the content marketing tactics.

For example, research was recently published by The Corporate Executive Board Company and LinkedIn (a TopRank client) that identified how marketers� content skills, in particular, need to evolve, providing any number of content bites for practitioner�s in the field.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has an entire section devoted to industry research available to its members that can inspire companies to conduct their own research or repurpose the research they find that relates to their audience.

When done right, you could gorge on a content feast for the next six months with the data and analysis revealed from this type research.

ProsCan become a revenue stream for your agency or business (MarketingProfs, eConsultancy)Established thought leadership in a crowded market (Gartner, Pew Research, HubSpot)Leverage research to drive customers and prospects to real-world events (Content Marketing World, MarketingProfs B2B Forum)Tacit endorsement for industry practitioners when compiled by impartial third parties (CMI, GigaOM)You can quantify meaningful engagement from your market research (Hubspot)Providing strategic industry research consistently builds your reputation, trustworthiness and, ultimately, your bottom line (CEB)ConsQualitative research takes unique skills and resourcesDirect line of sight ROI with research is not as likely compared to other content marketing metricsInitial research efforts, without history, may not be perceived as credible. It can take multiple reports to gain momentum.Your research is only as good as your premise. If your premise if flawed, your research could prove useless.What the Marketing Experts Are Saying

“The biggest opportunity corporate researchers have is to make sure our voices are heard within the organization. Not all organizations have �bought in� to research and what it can do to save time, money and resources for the future growth of a company. Researchers who know how to demonstrate this value, while also selling what they do to gain buy-in from the top down, have the greatest opportunity.” Kassandra Barnes, Research & Content Manager, CareerBuilder

“RockYou� is investing in the development of the social gaming landscape and its growth as a powerful advertising medium. This study enables us to better understand social gamers and their motivations and provide advertisers, agencies, and social game developers with actionable information they can leverage in a rapidly evolving social economy.” Julie Shumaker, SVP and GM of Media

Examples: Slide Deck, eBook, White Paper

Blackbaud & Content Marketing Institute

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and Blackbaud have released the findings from a first-time study that shows how nonprofit professionals in North America approach content marketing.

Getting it Right

Piggybacking on the highly successful B2C and B2B benchmarking surveys CMI has previously conductedResearch on how nonprofits distribute content helps justify their content marketing effortsAccompanied by a compelling Infographic created by Blackbaud, making the research eminently shareable across social platformsOffered in both PDF and slide deck creative for diverse consumer consumption

Kapost

Kapost, a content marketing software platform, developed a 41-page eBook targeted at marketers. Surprise!

Getting it Right

Examines the new buyer�s journey and marketing�s new roleCreative execution with its comic book theme, giving readers a unique reason to shareProvides a side-by-side comparison of old-school vs. content-powered marketingSuveryed content marketing industry experts, such as Joe Pulizzi (Content Marketing Institute), Joe Chernov (Kinvey), Barabara Saxby (Accelent Consulting), Todd Wheatland (Kelly OCG) to derive recommended next steps

Jive

Social business solutions technology provider, Jive, partnered with GigOm, a new type of media company, to identify how HR can embrace social business despite a distributed enterprise workforce.

Getting it Right

White paper explores the current state of the workforcePartnering with independent third party, GigaOM Research, lends credibility to the researchPresenting research on social technology investments for HR give a reason to share the data across social platforms.

Photo credit: GigaOM

Guidelines for Conducting Customer Surveys & Research for Content Marketing

For the purposes of our online marketing audience, the following guidelines apply to conducting electronic surveys only.

Conduct preliminary research � With automated survey software you can create multiple surveys to gather information. Start with questions that will give you actionable information. Your goals will determine what those questions should be.Determine your target audience � Customize your survey for your target group. If you�ve been segmenting your email list based on the minimum customer profile of existing, potential and leads. The language and tone may vary depending on where someone is in the customer life cycle.Keep the questions simple � Use simple straightforward language and keep them as short as possible. Avoid asking two pieces of information in one question, e.g. cost and quality. Break it into two shore simple questions, leading to better data.Prioritize question order � Start with personal questions that the respondent would most likely respond to from their own experience and work your way toward least-personalized questions once the respondent has warmed up.Use ample white space � If you�re using free online survey software, pay particular attention to the layout. Ideally, you want a survey that presents each question on its own individual page, taking advantage of the white space. It helps to have a progress bar, so respondents know where they are in the process and don�t feel overwhelmed by a long list of questions.Be transparent � Be honest with exactly how long the survey will take. I�ve exited out of surveys when I saw that the progress bar didn�t match my expectation for time allotted.Test before sending � Obviously, you want to check for spelling and grammar errors, but testing different email platforms is important as well. Send a survey to a small sample of your target audience. Feedback from the testers can provide invaluable insight, such as confusing questions illogical order and so on.

For a more detailed understanding of internet methodology, please see Conducting Research on the Internet: Online Survey Design, Development and Implementation Guidelines at ResearchGate.net.

Does your organization use surveys or conduct research to create more insightful content for your audience?

If you like in-depth articles like this about content marketing, be sure to visit our index of content marketing tactics.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Matt Cutts Video: How Google Determines What’s A Paid Link

Google head of search spam Matt Cutts released a pretty detailed video discussing the Google webspam team’s criteria for determining whether a link is considered a paid link or not.

There are five basic criteria Google uses in this determination. The first is the most obvious, is the link an explicit link for sale; then, the others are less obvious. The others include: how close is the value to money, is it a gift or a loan, what is the intent of the audience and is it a surprise or not.

Explicit Link Sales

Links that are explicitly sold for money are the most obvious. A webmaster sells a link to another webmaster in exchange for a certain dollar payment. That is clearly a paid link, and Matt Cutts said that is the most common paid link example, by far.

Close To The Value Of Money

The next determination Google uses is to see how close is the value to money. For example, a gift card is pretty close to money in that it can be often exchanged for a dollar value. But if you give someone a free pen that is valued at $1, the chances are that the value of that $1 pen won’t influence the user. However, a free beer or free trial to software is less value to users than a $600 gift card.

Gift Vs. Loan

If you give someone a laptop versus loaning them a laptop or gift someone a car versus loaning them a car, those are huge distinctions. Often, companies will loan a tech reviewer a device or car or something in order for them to properly review the item. But if you give them the item forever and not ask them to return it, that is closer to a paid link then a loan.

Intent Of Audience

When conferences give away stuff, the intent of the audience is often not to link to the conference as a thank you. For example, when you go to a SalesForce conference and get a free trial of the software, that is often not in exchange for a link. In addition, when Google gives away a free Nexus 7, the intent is not about links but about developers working on apps for the device. But if you give away laptops at events and expect bloggers to link to you in exchange, that is a bad intent.

Surprise Or Not

The final criteria is would the reporter or blogger be surprised? For example, if you are a movie blogger and you are given free access to a movie to review, that would not surprise the blogger. But if you are given a free car or laptop in exchange for writing about it, that would be a surprise.

Matt Cutts also recommends you review the FTC online ads guidelines.

Here is the video:

Building Relationships (and Links) from Natural Content

Those embedded in the digital marketing industry know only too well how important relationship building has become in an effort to gain awareness, visibility, links, and citations for your brand.

Digital PR is the main game in town now outside social when it comes to leveraging search visibility and targeted traffic from digital.

You can reach key people by jumping on natural web mentions and trending content opportunities for both long and short-term gain. Read on to discover how.

The PrincipleLearn More Ways to Build Links & Relationships at ClickZ Live New York 2014:Lord of the Links: Earn Your Way to the Top with Quality LinksCreating Revenue from Relationships and Brand OwnershipSee the full agenda.

The value of brand is increasing online. That much we know. As the web becomes better connected the impact brand marketing has on digital audience growth becomes greater and more rewarding.

By working on great content and PRing it to the right people (irrespective of whether there's a link at the end of it) is now a key part of any strategy, especially if the site in question has a large or very targeted audience.

We know that Google is looking at how to measure brand citations as a measure of authority and also how much they co-occur with other relevant phrases to help define what they may be relevant for.

If you work on, or for, a brand that people talk about it is imperative that you keep on top of those mentions as a way of growing your network of influence.

But fear not if you aren't yet at that stage. Your aim should be to proactively find ways of starting that process. And that lies with relationships with the people that hold the key to the audience you want.

In short, you need to track not just mentions of your brand or specific product/s but also noise around your industry so you can attempt to add value yourself in the right places.

So, how do you do that? Let's look at the process I use to keep on top of this and exploit opportunities from natural conversation.

The Process

Keeping an eye on all brand and industry mentions is a huge task and one that can quickly leave you overwhelmed if you don't plan well and have process and resource in place to monitor and action the insight it provides.

We have made plenty of mistakes in getting this right and through iteration we have found a way to maximize value while minimizing input.

Below you can see the overview of that and we will talk through each part in turn now.

The key to the process is access to tools. While you can find some of the web mentions a brand gets from search, Google news, Blog search and the like the ability to find articles quickly is the key to conversion.

We have a dedicated person who's job it is to continually monitor each brand we manage to ensure we don't miss any opportunities and that means performing a twice weekly check across all the following tools:

1. Social Graph Mention Trackers

Key to all of this is the monitoring of the social space. It is, however, not easy to do well.

You will usually have two key issues here; either you have such a big brand that keeping out the noise is a real challenge to allow you to focus on what is important or, you have zero brand sharing and you need a strategy for tracking the right kind of keywords.

In the first instance one of the best ways of cutting out the trash is to look at the far ends of the sentiment scale.

Here's where the Net Promoter Score scale can help.

By finding, classifying and tracking those that sit on either end of this scale you come across a greater percentage of mentions, and 'stories' about your brand that you can influence.

Positive and negative articles/content is more likely to be written, for one, and the creator of it is often easier to converse with.

That makes it possible to find mentions and to offer help with projects that may later result in links.

This is where the tracking of phrases such as 'help' or 'research' can work helping you to find people looking for expert contributors or interviewees.

The following tools are current favourites for doing this:

Social Mention: A great free tool to find key mentions by search term. Not wholly targeted and things are missed but a useful part of the arsenal.Hootsuite: A free or cheap option for setting up ongoing keyword led tracking. Filtering is challenging but the live feed can be extremely helpful. UX allows you to have several keyword searches side by side for efficient monitoring.Brandwatch: A more top-end solution but with it you get lots more data and the ability to look historically.Bottlenose: Great for surfacing the hottest topics. Often this can help you refine your real time tracking and also define influencers.Topsy: A fantastic tool for keeping an eye on Twitter and for looking back historically too.Little Bird: a smart big data tool that gives you accurate, useful info on the key people writing the key content.2. Web Mention Trackers

Web mention monitoring is a similar process, but if often the next step in the process. Often the social chatter will have resulted in an article or piece of content creation. Web monitoring is designed to pick up on those pieces, allowing you to look at whether you may be able to add extra value to the article, or request citation if it is appropriate to do so.

Tools to do this are a little scarcer but those that do work include:

Moz's Fresh Web Explorer: A great tool to base your web mention monitoring on. It does as good a job as any in finding the key mentions and allows advanced operators to refine results.Google Alerts: Can be useful when used correctly but an awful waste of time if used in the wrong way. Advanced search parameters are key here. example of a few useful ones based on settings I have for my mentions around Zazzle Media can be found below:"Zazzle Media" –site:zazzlemedia.co.uk"zazzlemedia" –site: zazzlemedia.co.uk"Simon Penson" –site:zazzlemedia.co.uk"Simon Penson" Content Marketing –site:zazzlemedia.co.uk"Simon Penson" SEO –site:zazzlemedia.co.uk"Simon Penson" Content Strategy – site:zazzlemedia.co.ukAhref Mention Tracker: A relatively new tracker, but useful as a 'second option or data source.'Majestic Search Explorer: Again this is a new tool from Majestic but it can be useful for finding sites that may feature content you could contribute too. Use refined search queries to find high authority sites.Preacher – My agency's internal tool is great for finding really popular sites based on search parameters and can be further refined using preset filters (being expanded now) to find things such as infographic placements etc.What Are You Looking For?

Finding the right mentions can be a frustrating business. The amount of noise and the relative inability of tools to cut it out effectively mean that this is not an exact science.

Like any technical project though the key is testing and iteration. Work with the tools above, or those you have at your disposal, and play around with refining search queries to cut out as much useful info as possible.

Once you have that to a minimum you are looking for two key types of content:

Content that features your brand name or mentions/quotes from you or your company's employees without citation links.Content that covers a subject area you are a thought leader in or have input or data of real value to add to the piece to improve it.

Clearly the first will convert the best but the second can also be fruitful if you plan the conversation carefully in the first place.

How Do You Approach the Conversation?

Planning is critical here, as often the journalist that has penned it will have very little time to converse with you. The key is serving up exactly what they need very quickly. I've written previously about how you can structure such a chat and why it is important to follow up on mail and even incentivize the act with a gift!

If you've already been mentioned in the piece, it's a lot easier to cite reasons for wanting the link. Clearly if content you own has been used the old rules of link reclamation and the laws of copyright play into your hands but you would rather earn the link with a value-adding conversation.

That means showing more great content and offering to work with them on follow up pieces or even adding further insight and value to the piece. Offering to share it post update is a sure way of getting the result you need.

Does It Work?

Truthfully, this doesn't always work. Like any genuine tactic, it relies on the relationship, but by keeping at it there's no doubt that it does.

A recent campaign run by a traditional PR agency for a client we work with produced no less than 10 links from DA50-94 sites in a single week; and all of those sites were very well trafficked and read.

It does work, so why not give it a go today?

Google Improves GDN Targeting With Bizo Audience Segments

The audience segment targeting is applicable to both display and video targeting options through Google AdWords.

Show Me the Menu: Google Now Displays Restaurant Menus in Search Results

Looking for a restaurant menu? Now you can search Google and never leave the search results.

You can search [show me the menu for (insert restaurant name)] and Google will display their full menu directly in the search results, without you needing to click through to an additional page, whether on the restaurants homepage or on a third-party website that displays menus, Google announced.

The results also have multiple tabs, so if the menu was split up in section (e.g., appetizers, main courses), you can select any of the tabs to view that particular menu section.

It isn't known exactly where Google is getting the menus from, although they are reportedly getting it from a third party. There are multiple websites that do have menus for a wide variety of restaurants, such as AllMenus.com, Gayot.com and Zagat. There are reports of some of the data is outdated, but I expect it will improve, especially once the third-party source becomes known and restaurants can ensure that site has their most recent menu.

There is also schema.org markup for restaurants to use for their menus, although it seems to be not well known by webmasters or restaurateurs. However, it's still unclear if Google is utilizing any of this information at this time, or perhaps to defaulting to that when it's available. But it seems as though this might be an easy way for Google to verify that the menu is current and up-to-date, and direct from the restaurant's site.

This new feature, which started as a small test, is definitely be seen as a potential competitor to sites such as Urban Spoon, since many of those site's visitors are looking for easy access to menus. But it will also keep traffic off of restaurants webpages, when someone is looking for a menu and might have otherwise gone directly to the restaurant to view it.

There's also the potential that this could be updated quite frequently, once restaurant owners know how they can do this. They could potentially update their menus to show specials of the day or special menus for occasions such as Valentine's Day or Mother's Day.

The feature is available only in the U.S., and not all menus are available this time. Hopefully Google will release more detailed information to help restaurants ensure that the menus Google is displaying are current and updated.

Update: Glenn Gabe alerted us via Twitter that it appears as though Google's data partner is SinglePlatform. TripAdvisor uses SinglePlatform, and the menus on TripAdvisor and Google are an exact match.

How Easy is it to Spam Google Places for Business? The FBI Knows

It's no secret that people think Google Places for Business listings are primed for spam. But the latest debacle making headlines involves an example of just how dangerous those spam listings could be.

Network engineer Bryan Seely intentionally created fake listings for the FBI and Secret Service that showed up in Google Maps, then he showed how easy it was to cause potential damage. The results have since been taken down, but a reporter at Valleywag grabbed screenshots before they were:

When these listings were live, unsuspecting citizens called up the fake numbers in the fake listings, and here's what happened next, as reported by Valleywag:

The callers that Seely recorded thought they were speaking directly to the government agencies because they looked up the telephone number on Google Maps. What they didn't know was that Seely had set up fake listings for the San Francisco FBI office and Secret Service in Washington, D.C., displaying numbers that went to a phone account he set up rather than the federal offices. After Seely's numbers received the calls, they were seamlessly forwarded to the real offices the callers were trying to reach, only now the audio of their conversations with real federal agents was being captured by Seely.

Seely said Google had known about this problem for some time, but ignored his request to fix the issue. So he marched over to the Secret Service offices in Seattle one day to show just how vulnerable this loophole could make the FBI and Secret Service.

But after routing a few calls through the fake listings to the government organizations, it didn't take long for the Secret Service to figure out something was going on. While at the Secret Service office, he “got a notification on his phone that a call had just been intercepted: It was a Washington, D.C., police officer calling the Secret Service about an active investigation,” reported Valleywag.

Seely was read his rights and interrogated that day, but after just a few hours, was released and even reportedly called a "hero" for discovering the loophole.

Creating those fake listings wasn’t particularly hard, Seely told Valleywag. He said he used a combination of Google’s Map Maker tool and Places for Business. And, when he was at the point of verification, he opted for the phone option because “the way that these people build these computer systems is assuming that no one wants to do more work—assuming everyone wants the easy way out. So if you choose the easy way then we don't trust you, if you choose the harder way and verify by phone immediately, 'Oh you must be a person and you must be legit.'"

Googletold Gizmodo it had made updates since then to help combat this problem:

“It was brought to our attention that an individual was creating fake business listings in Google Maps. Although these listings do not appear prominently on the map, we take problems like spam very seriously, and appreciate when the community flags issues so we can quickly resolve them.”

But will Google be able to fix the whole problem once and for all? Seely told Gizmodo that there are more than 100,000 fake listings for locksmiths alone. Here, Gizmodo paints of picture of how these fake listings can be played out:

So say I'm a locksmith and I want a little more business. My ranking is too low when you search "locksmith near [my neighborhood]" on Google Maps; no one ever clicks on me. If I find the right scammer, I can boost my presence with a couple more (non-existent) locations. Or even better, I can have a scammer change my competitors' numbers so that the calls forward to meinstead. All I have to do is pay a scammer $50 or so per call. But hey, that's just the cost of doing (shady) business.

Seely told Valleywag that the small business is the one suffering here, but that he suspects Google won't make cleaning these listings up a priority. Whether or not that's the case, the high-profile nature of this particular instance of spam and the involvement of the government may just make this loophole a primary focus for Google.

Hiding From That Google Penalty? It May Find You At Your New Home

Did you know that even if you try to run away from your Google penalty, it might end up finding you anyway? In a recent Google Webmaster Hangout, hosted by Google’s John Mueller, John said that even if you move your penalized site to a new domain name and don’t redirect the penalized site, Google may still find it and pass along the bad signals.

In the video, 23 minutes in, John answers my question about penalties following sites. He said that if the site is extremely similar and you simply move the site from domain A to domain B, that Google may pick up on the site move without you even giving them signals of the move. So even if you do not set up 301 redirects or use the change address tool in Google Webmaster Tools, Google may indeed know that you moved from domain A to domain B and pass along all the signals.

In that case, if a site is penalized, simply moving it to a new domain name might not be enough. You might have to go the extra mile and rebuild the site, content and user interfaces to convince Google it really is a new site.

Here is the video, again fast forward to about 23 minutes and 15 seconds in:

Yesterday Eric Ward wrote a piece for us named When The Best Move Is To Kill The Site, which covers what to do when your Google penalty is so severe that you can’t recover from it. Eric mentions that in about two-thirds of the cases he sees, he recommends you “kill” the site. Some may want to take shortcuts on “killing” a site by just migrating it to a new domain name, but that might not work.

Based on the feedback from this news, I’ve heard three responses from the SEO community:

Google is a liar and it does not pass either positive or negative signals when there are no redirects or change of address requests made.Yes, Google does pass the penalties in these cases, Google is telling the truth.Not only does the penalty pass but sometimes you will see the links from the old domain show in the new domain show up in the new verified section within Google Webmaster Tools.

What is your experience with site moves without changing the site design, content or structure and while not using redirects or other signals to communicate the penalized site has moved?