Digital Marketing Digest

Here's a great infographic with some key stats on how social sharing can help increase your SEO rankings.

Fun Fact: When you share your content on Scoop.it (or someone else does) it's indexed in search engines as a piece of curated content. 

What does this mean? While links shared on Scoop.it are no-follow links (like any other social network), they have a unique quality - they don't disappear after they're out of the stream. Essentially, your post is indexed as a curated post in addition to the original piece of content being indexed as a page on your site. Plus, you get all of the mentioned benefits of social sharing, like being discovered more easily and proving engagement.

You'll never guess what it is.

JK, it's the same thing we're always saying.

But actually do it this time.

A long but extremely worthy read by Mani Karthik. 

I happen to agree that we need to stop saying that SEO is dead. It isn't dead; it's simply evolving in ways that we never could have imagined a few short years ago.

It's going to be critical for all us - well, you - SEO people (and us wannabes) to pay attention to the updates like the ones coming up for Penguin and Panda and how they're going to affect which pages get higher rankings, because frankly this is not going to go away. Just beacuse loading pages with keywords and links won't do the trick anymore doesn't mean SEO is dead; like Mani points out, the way people consume and share information is changing and that's what is leading to the need for new SEO strategies.

Are you using Pinterest as an integral part of your social and PR strategies?

Some announcements from Google's Matt Cutts on the upcoming changes to Google and how it can help you and your business.

The good news is that the trend of favoring quality content is stronger than ever.

The even better news comes in the form of authority sites. Google is going to be working on coming up with tools to favor people who are running sites that are an authority on some topic - whatever field it may be in. 

"The take-away: If you aren’t already providing a lot of high quality content in your area of expertise, now is the time to start."

I'm not going to say that this is a sign for everyone to get curating, but it's totally a sign for everyone to get curating.

Mentions are kind of a huge deal. Mentioning someone on a social platform is yet another way to get their attention. When sharing content "via" someone else, mentioning them lets them know that you found their content valuable and shared it, and this usually leads to them thanking you and in turn starting a conversation and potentially a relationship.

Any way to get someone else's attention on social media is useful these days, so take advantage of this great new feature.

This is definitely an interesting stat, considering the fact that Google says Nielson's numbers are "far off" from their internal data on the subject. It's interesting to consider this: Neilson pulled their data from visits to plus.google.com. Google has been called out in the past for counting all activtiy on Google+, Gmail, or even Google.com as "using Google Plus" because technically when you use Google, a profile is created for you even if you don't actually use the social network. 

Paid online advertising is not something that you can just "jump" into. There are tons of things to know about it so that you don't end up spending millions of dollars a day.

Most importantly,

-learn the difference between "head" and "long tail" keywords.

-understand your analytics and check them daily (read: hourly).

-include a call to action.

-A/B test.

These are some seriously awesome tips.

While it's somewhat of a long read, it's well worth the time. 

According to this post:

1 Facebook comment = 7 likes

1 Facebook share = 2 comments, 14 likes.

I'm not sure where these numbers come from, but there is a compelling case for the fact that comments and shares are much more valuable than likes. 

When it comes down to it, always go for the shares. This means that your audience found your content worth of sharing with their audience.

My favorite thing from this post is the advice from Krista Neher, CEO of Boot Camp Digital. "Don't write boring content."

How many times have we heard this? As a content-focused marketer and the curator of #leancontent, I've probably given and/or quoted this advice upwards of 8 million times.

Something Krista stressed, though, is that this advice goes for any content at all. This doesn't only apply to writing blogposts, infographics, and videos - it also applies to Tweets, Facebook posts, and literally anything you're putting out onto the web.

Lately, I've been spending just an extra minute or two on Tweets and Facebook posts to make sure that they're interesting and not just "Title | Link | What do you think?"

Anything you broadcast online is public. Don't forget it.