Search Engine Journal: 7 Content Marketing Tips from the Best in Social Business

Getting your content noticed is one of the goals of SEO.  In this article, Erin Nelson delivers seven tips for improving your contents' marketing potential.  Read on for more info:



“Content marketing is not a new phenomenon. Yet, in the context of social media marketing and engagement, it has conjoined elements of communication in ways that (to most) came unforeseen. Here, experienced content marketers share bits of their creation, production, optimization, and distribution experience to help light the way.” 

The best content marketers in our current social business landscape are a little bit like the first kid to have a lemonade stand on that busy street corner. It was easy to doubt the “lemonade entrepreneur’s” initial investment in the cost of production, and the time it would take to make a sale, but in the end weren’t we amazed at how that kid’s money always went further than the other kids who blew their allowances on idle purchases?

In a similar fashion, great marketers today have tapped into this same type of potential, but on the street corners within social media and other online markets (mobile too). They have accepted the fact that the investment in the production of high-quality content is worth the cost – for their business, clients and customers – and in return they have received much higher (and lucrative) engagement than if they would have stayed put on the curb.

These content marketers have propelled the essential elements of a strong content marketing strategy, acknowledging that audiences want to follow a narrative, be exposed to the history of a company, be incorporated in the story of a brand, and to receive information of utility that can be used in their personal and business lives. In short, great content marketers understand people want value.

Below are some content marketing “best practice” tips from a few of the best, some that have stood out in my study and implementation of SEO and content marketing through various interview series I have run. From quality, to strategy, to optimization, to engagement, these marketers get the value in managing a content marketing strategy – and can help you be more like that loaded, entrepreneurial lemonade kid.

1. “Content is the engine that drives the whole machine. Content is the catalyst, or even the glue, that brings people together and binds us there. It is the stories we tell that allow us to begin relationships the have the potential to deliver real value to both parties.” – Michael Brenner, SAP Business Innovation and Business2Community (Full interview.)

Michael says it simply: stories spark initial interest and allow us formulate lasting relationships because of the value provided on either end. Don’t just create content. Produce material that reveals something about your motivations and desires. The more genuine your content, the more value in your response – and thus – more potential you have for your target audience to respond and follow you all the way through your buying cycle.

2. “Be transparent (but not confessional), positive (but not giddy), human (but not frivolous), supportive (but not pondering), and most of all, patient (but not lazy). The primary advantage of content marketing, whether the technique is used for a corporate or personal brand, is trust. By providing informative, entertaining or engaging content that doesn’t overtly push a sale, the marketer establishes herself as a trust source. And trust is a marketer’s most precious asset.” – Joe Chernov, Kinvey (Full interview.)

There are two takeaways from Joe’s advice. One, be trustworthy. Two, earn trust by walking the fine line between providing valuable information to your readers and compromising your professional integrity (by overdoing it). Balance is a key element in establishing the kind of content marketing strategy that it takes to inspire enough trust to produce a transaction.

3. “Content marketing isn’t just about adding more content; it’s about creating information for a targeted audience that has a particular purpose and an intended outcome…Modern day marketers should focus on understanding their customers, what topics are relevant to guide sales and leverage keyword research into an editorial plan and social media engagement program. Remove any technical barriers to search engines crawling and indexing a site efficiently, and promote content to attract links and shares.” – Lee Odden, Top Rank Marketing (Full interview.)

Great content marketing isn’t just about production: strategy and technical oversight are essential to maximize results. Start with researching and defining your target audience. Learn everything you can about their behaviors, buying patterns and desires. Go to where they are and give them precisely what they want – in a way that makes you stand out through a combination of quality and optimization. Then make sure you have the technical support to back your strategic plan.

4. “You cannot be successful without content and SEO combined. There are those that get to the top of the page with crappy content, but then have nothing in place for conversion and/or maintaining a solid audience. Even if you get to #1, without the right content, you’ll fail anyway.” – Melissa Fach, SEO Aware (Full interview.)

Melissa speaks to one of the hardest truths of content marketing: the production of high-quality content means little if it cannot be found. Research ways to optimize your content to ensure your target audience is exposed to you in the first place. Once they are aware you exist, you will already have a foundation of strong content that can inspire dialogue and convert.

5. “If there isn’t a clear strategy behind it, content is just content. Instead of aiming for vague ‘high quality,’ I would think in terms of relevant, creative and timely content. Once the content is there, it will work in a cycle: SEO will help you get that content in front of the right eyes, and working with good content will make building links easier.” – Gisele Navarro Méndez, Upstream Connections (Full interview.)

While recent Google updates have altered elements of SEO, content marketing and SEO are still in a state of symbioses. Because of such updates, content made solely for the purpose of “SEO” has a short life. Yet, high-quality content that is optimized to maximize visibility within search engines creates a positive cycle where it can be found and shared (and shared and found). The important thing to remember is to strategize how to both optimize content and how to make this content highly “shareable” regardless of its optimization.

6. “Complaining your industry isn’t glamorous tells me two things about you: 1) you don’t fully understand your customers need/pain points/ wants and 2) you are boring. The opportunity to create high-quality content is there, regardless of what industry you serve…. Just because your topic is toilets (or insurance, or telecom, or stained-glass windows), doesn’t mean your topic has to be 100-percent toilet focused. Find those interesting periphery topics, or the topics your customers are passionate about, and create content around them.” – Lisa Barone, Overit (Full interview.)

Lisa puts it best: don’t complain – create. While you are busy whining about the inability to produce compelling stories for your brand, others will quickly take over your niche. As Lisa says, it’s not about the toilets; it’s about the story surrounding their new home and the topics that matter to the potential toilet buyer.

7. “The blog was always the last thing I did during the day – or should I say, night – and the first place where I tried new ideas in digital marketing, studying the results for potential use. It’s the place where I took all the risks, every day. But writing on the blog was only part of the equation. Commenting on other blogs, extending discussions, helping others with research and content via interviews, and writing for other sites with higher visibility…made it all work.” – Valeria Maltoni, The Conversation Agent (Full interview.)

Valeria’s advice comes from her personal initiation to content marketing. While focusing on audience needs is number one, there is something else to be gained from this aspect of content marketing: the opportunity to detect how best to advance your future strategy. Content marketing, in fact, relies on measuring and re-assessing the results of your content. Taking risks (along with engaging in active and visible communities) allows you to hone in on the exact needs of your target readership to better analyze and configure how best to move forward.

Good luck with your lemonade stands out there!

TopSEOs.com: Upholding fair play in the search industry

Amid the atmosphere of fierce competition that exists in the search industry, TopSEOs.com endorses the spirit of fair play among Internet marketing service vendors. It insists that going against this model is detrimental to the development of the industry as a whole.

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Companies in the search industry can set themselves apart from their competition simply by constantly striving to improve on their methods and in meeting the challenging demands of their clients. However, there are times when lackluster companies turn to more drastic measures that demean, threaten, or incite violence on their competitors and their partners in order to push their agenda at the cost of others. Such measures, when allowed to perpetuate, can stifle innovative thinking in the industry because they promote a cut-throat culture instead of creative problem-solving.

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To help prevent this from happening, TopSEOs.com provides unsatisfied clients with a way to report violators of fairness and constant offenders to the industry’s code of ethics through its EthicsViolations service.

Reporting unethical behavior is easy for the users on the site and it merely involves filling out a simple form. However, the search authority takes great pains to verify the validity of the complaints before it lists the reported company as an offender.

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Meanwhile, the service providers that have been listed as offenders must spend time and effort to engage TopSEOs in a dialogue to prove that they have made improvements to their methods and have rectified any behavior which may have breached the ethics code.

Additional information on the EthicsViolations service of TopSEOs.com can be found on the company’s official website.

TopSEOs: 5 essential terms for SEO neophytes

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TopSEOs is an independent ranking authority on search vendors, helping companies find the best services in the industry by evaluating and ranking the best in the SEO industry.


Being a relatively new device in the Internet business, the SEO lexicon is still continually expanding. Here are five key terms neophytes should know:  


301 Redirect – A method that allows the Web address of one page to automatically redirect to another page. This is necessary when changing a page’s URL to ensure that bookmarks or linked text on other Web pages still continue to function.


Social bookmarking – Refers to websites like Twitter, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon, which let users share interesting Web pages and media content with each other. These are essential to the success of TopSEOs-ranked social media marketing vendors. The frequency with which a page is shared contributes to how high it is listed in search engine rankings.

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Anchor Text – The word or words used to link to another page. This is commonly underlined or blue, to encourage clicking. Search engines recognize the relevance of a website to a certain search words based partly on how many times a site is linked using that set of anchor text. Effective anchor text should be related to the link instead of simply saying “click here.” 



Nofollow – Adding this value in an HTML code prevents a link on one site from influencing the SEO rank of the page it sends clickers to. This is advisable when linking to external websites.

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Panda – Not referring to the endearing bear, Panda is Google's ranking algorithm, released in February 2011. It ranks the results that match search words by putting the highest quality of content at the top of the page and lower quality content in succeeding pages.


To read more about search engine optimization, visit www.topseosfaqs.com.

TopSEOs.com: Knowing the standards of Search Engine Optimization

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TopSEOs.com speaks to an industry-wide coming together of SEO vendors confronted with rising competition in the fast-paced world of Internet marketing. There’s a pack of SEO firms offering their wares, and branding differentiation now rests on several factors.


Obviously, effective SEO vendors operate on a generic, client-oriented business model. Much of the delivery of service relies on how well they know their clients and what the latter is offering their Internet base. Starting work for a client means laying out the essential facets of the business. Knowing the unique features of its business, and how it intends to position itself among multiple players in its sector should clue in the SEO vendor on the marketing approach. TopSEOs.com calls this needs analysis.

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In turn, the SEO vendor’s approach is exercised through the choice of keywords and management of keyword density. This is where the engagement between the client and the SEO firm rounds into an agreement, and where the latter could assess if it has aligned its methods to the needs of the client. The vendor should also be instrumental in the consultation process in educating the client on industry practices, SEO models that have worked, and the ultimate purpose of keyword choices.


By creating visibility for business, SEO vendors are also called into different channels of campaign diffusion. This gives the client enough basis for feedback, such as press releases and advertising campaigns.

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TopSEOs.com is the SEO industry’s convergence zone for updated SEO practices. Follow updates on this Facebook page.

TopSEOs: Making SEO work for SMB

TopSEOs, an independent authority rating the performance of various search engine optimization vendors, shares its views on the importance of SEO to small and midsize businesses (SMB).

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There are only two ways to go about the dynamics of SEO and SMBs: SMBs either believe in SEO or they don’t. Internet marketing, however, works better for these businesses than most people would consider. The Internet is an open market for most—the cheaper alternative ideal for most businesses of the more minute variety.

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There the tricky part lies: while the Internet is an open marketplace, the competition is fierce. Turning up within the top results of a search engine is not an easy task—so says TopSEOs. Specialists have determined several important points that SMBs should have covered before undertaking a campaign.

The first step is covering the basics. The most important details lie in the best practices among SEOs, from keyword density to linking strategies. Getting these rules right could be the make-or-break for every campaign.

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When building content, it is likewise important to consider the audience, but contrary to popular belief, customers form but a part of the target. The bigger picture involves opinion leaders, including the professionals, bloggers, credible netizens, and those who tweet. The support of these people bolsters the credibility of any SMB.

More than becoming number one on the search list, an enterprise should focus on winning loyalty among its audience. This means quality, well-researched, and honest facts and figures relevant to their services. In this respect, good traditional advertising and good Internet marketing meet; the more trustworthy the source is, the more chances of the customer base expanding.

For more of TopSEOs’ tips and opinions on SEO and Internet marketing, log on to www.topseos.com.

TopSEOs and the good word: Advertising in the cyber age

From TopSEOs: Independent Authority on Search Vendors

TopSEOs’ goal is simple as its methods are complex. Its objective is to rank the best players in the field of search engine optimization using comprehensive criteria utilizing a client-to-provider paradigm that measures a vendor’s capability to understand client needs. Its methods are more rigorous, involving assessment, review, and analysis.



Essentially, SEO today is used for sections of mass media before being covered by public relations and advertising. The rise of the Internet as the dominant medium has collapsed several areas of both PR and advertising. Today, for instance, investment in radio commercials may be less appealing, and far more expensive, than a short video posted on popular video-sharing sites. TopSEOs is in the process of gauging how SEO vendors are dealing with the emerging scope of the Internet as a part of mass media.

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Traditional media—print, television, and radio—have been declining as a means for advertising over the past few years. The emergence of the Internet has significantly blurred territorial and linguistic boundaries. Television and radio, no matter how pervasive, cannot disseminate information as quickly as the Internet, while print is proving to be costlier and less efficient than other media.



 Advertising via the Internet has become simpler with social networking, and relatively cheaper to have produced than print or television materials. Image reparation is likewise simpler. However, the Internet’s growing popularity means more potential users. The challenges lie in making a material appealing and noticeable, and to turn up during searches through popular search engines.

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This is the challenge sought to be overcome by SEO vendors. Techniques vary among vendors, but there is a science in the field that allows clients to optimize their chances of turning up during searches.  


For TopSEOs’ ranking of top SEO vendors, visit www.topseos.com.

TopSEOs: Breaking through the competitive clutter

How does a company distinguish itself from the competitive clutter?

TopSEOs, the independent authority on search companies, attempts to provide an answer to this question through its annual competition for excellence among SEO and PPC companies.

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As the Internet has become a strong medium in spreading and receiving information, used by millions of people across the globe, its importance to companies seeking to reach their target audiences with more effective marketing campaigns has exponentially increased.

Meanwhile, the market has undoubtedly become saturated with hundreds of vendors and specialists who all claim to be Internet marketing industry leaders and it has become very difficult for clients to find a competent, trustworthy, and genuine firm. In the years of TopSEOs’ market research and data gathering, it has found that the companies that truly excel in the business still fail to get distinction and the credit that they deserve. Given the sheer number of vendors, true performers get lost within the large number of bogus companies that have no credible proof of their claims.

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This is why the independent authority on search vendors has ventured to create a yearly competition to allow companies to stake their claim for the recognition that they deserve. Through the annual SEO and PPC competition, TopSEOs.com shines the spotlight on the companies truly deserving of praise. The search for the right vendor has become easier for clients that need effective Internet marketing solutions.

For additional information on TopSEOs’ annual SEO & PPC competition, visit TopSEOs.com.

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TopSEOS shares tips on how to make your business flourish online

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TopSEOS is an authority in the search universe. The company, established in 2002, provides its clients with comprehensive and independent advice that becomes very valuable when making purchasing decisions on what Internet marketing products and services to get. The company prides itself on having a very disciplined research process, and the stringent evaluation and rating system that it applies to all the companies that it researches on. The company’s website, TopSEOS.com, is full of information and tips to help companies rule the search engines.

Online reputation is a very important factor that business owners need to consider in today’s digital day and age. TopSEOS shares tips on how to engage your customers and keep them loyal:

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*Make sure that your website contains relevant information. This includes product descriptions, complete details about your products and services, and ample information about your company.

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*Be clear with your operating hours. Never claim that you’re “available 24/7” if you don’t have a dedicated phone line they could contact and personnel that can assist them with their concerns during the wee hours of the morning.

*Make sure that your contact numbers are up-to-date. Nothing is more irritating than calling a number that doesn’t work when you need to inquire about a product or make a purchase.

*Have very clear Return/Exchange policies.

More information about how TopSEOS can help your business thrive online may be found on its website.

Establishing the niche: TopSEOs.com on creating connection and value with readers

An article on TopSEOs.com shares the importance of identified readership for websites, especially for those that offer products or services through the Internet.

According to the article, businesses should consider the gender of their target market in order for them to come up with efficient online campaigns and content, which can help them reach their marketing goals.

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In the marketing world, this strategy is also known as niche marketing. A niche market is a group of consumers within the larger marketplace that fits the demographic, buying behavior, lifestyle, and characteristics, among others, of a specific business. Entrepreneur.com states that this strategy is cost-efficient as long as the company sets the definite standards on its target market.

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The TopSEOs.com article also emphasizes the significance of knowing the niche market. Interests, time spent on the website, and common subjects searched by either men or women should be highly considered by companies that utilize technology to develop online marketing methods that fit the bill.

For example, research states that men spend shorter time on a website compared to women, thus if a site’s target consumers or readers are men, they should have web content that can get the attention of prospective readers as quick as possible. On the other hand, if the website’s target is the female market, they can allot web columns or advices because according to experts, women are interested in reading advice columns on various subjects like parenting, fashion, food, and relationships.

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TopSEOs.com provides Internet marketing tools to diverse vendors and businesses across the country. For more of the company’s services, log on to its website.

TopSEOs: Analyzing web search among tablet users

As the usage of tablet computers rapidly increase, Internet marketers try to keep up with this growing trend. Bryson Meunier, a TopSEOs contributor, analyzes the differences between web search among tablet and PC users.

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According to a research by Google, next to gaming, the most common activity made by tablet users is web searching. In addition, more than half of tablet owners use their gadget at home, making tablet search usage significantly higher during after work hours. Though it is obvious that web search is very popular among tablet users, it is also believed that tablet web search behavior is different from desktop web search, prompting Internet marketers and web designers to change or update their strategies.

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Meunier’s article, which is featured on TopSEOs’ website, states that tablet searchers also differ from mobile searchers. Since most tablet owners use their gadget at home, it is recommended that desktop content, instead of mobile content, be offered to tablet users. An even better option would be creating content that is exclusively for tablet use.

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Another important factor that web developers and Internet marketers need to remember is that not all features present in a desktop site can be seen when accessed on a tablet computer. An example of a desktop site feature that doesn’t work with a tablet computer is the Adobe Flash. By taking note of these types of features, Internet marketers can avoid having users complain about their site’s inaccessibility which usually results to a decrease in traffic and sales.

More information about TopSEOs and Internet marketing can be found at www.topseos.com.

Tweet away: TopSEOs.com on Twitter as a marketing tool

From TopSEOs

Twitter is not just an ordinary social media website anymore. Like blogging, it has evolved into a powerful yet simple marketing tool. Caroline Chen, a contributor for TopSEOs.com, has several suggestions on how businesses can truly make the most out of Twitter:

From TopSEOs, Google Images

• Attributing tweets to start new conversations – Mentioning the official Twitter page for the original source of any and all interesting link shared will help in opening communication between the company and other brands, individuals, and even potential clientele.


• Designing the personality that the company aspires to be - Creating a personality for one’s business is vital in marketing. Changing the avatar, background, and even the wallpaper of the company’s Twitter profile can go a long way.


• Experimenting with new venues for interaction and creative expression – Chen further explains on her TopSEOs.com article that links which send followers of the company’s Twitter to things like articles and fun games that are related to the business are always a good thing to tweet.


• Less characters, more quality – Tweets that exceed the 140 character limit should be avoided at all costs. While concise, the TopSEOs article explains that these tweets should also retain readability and still be interesting and relevant.


• Tweet smarter, not harder – Flooding followers’ timelines should be avoided, especially with content that is not relevant. Instead of garnering more attention, this will most likely result in a drastic drop in followers and potential clientele.

From TopSEOs

For more information on online marketing from TopSEOs.com, visit www.topseos.com.