“The Experts’ Views on Content Marketing” plus 1 more

Posted: 15 Jan 2013 12:03 PM PST

This guest post is by John Abrena of As the Ghost Speaks.

There have been a lot of discussions about what works in the realm of online marketing. Many say that massive link building and the quantity of links still matter, while others focus on optimizing their website to its fullest.

But after Google's Panda update, there seems to be a talk of a "new" type of marketing which focuses on content.

Content marketing has boomed since Panda rolled out. Website owners looked for ways to build links, to promote their business, and to gain traction and traffic by having great content. But what baffles me is that it isn't new. This type of marketing has been here longer than most online marketers realize. However, the belief that it's a "new" system is ingrained in their heads only because, I believe, a lot of site owners haven't really paid attention to their content until now.

A few weeks back, I asked a couple of online marketing experts about content marketing, and got some really interesting answers. My question? How do you see content marketing as the new face of online marketing?

Rand Fishkin

CEO of SEOMoz
Content marketing can accomplish much of what advertising attempts to do—earn the familiarity, trust, and positive sentiment of an audience toward your brand—and it does so without having the huge associated costs. Content requires and rewards creativity, effort and execution more so than strict dollars, but it also overcomes much of the natural bias modern consumers form against advertising’s motivations and “ad blindness.”

As online marketing evolves, more and more attention and awareness goes to the web’s content—to blogs, to social media, to search results, to videos, to news publications. But, only a fraction of this attention spreads to the paid advertising on these channels. Thus, it only makes sense that as ads become ubiquitous but low ROI, marketing efforts will spread to inbound channels.

Don Rhoades

Owner of The Gonzo SEO

Content marketing is a hell of a lot better word than “inbound marketing”. I would argue that content marketing has always been the face of online marketing. I know some people are tired of hearing the phrase, but it does best describe the intent of the campaign. It also supports the necessity for shareable content, and not just writing.

John Doherty

SEO Consultant at Distilled

John I don’t think it’s the new face of online marketing. It may be the new thing that SEOs have not thought about before, but it’s always been the most effective form of online marketing in ethical ways, ways that build businesses for the long term. As someone recently said, “Content marketing is not a shiny new toy.” It has always been around. We are just now realizing that old ways of gaming the system don’t work well anymore, and we need to find ways that will last.

Michael King

Owner of iPullRank and Director of Inbound Marketing at iAcquire.

It’s not the new face of online marketing, content has always been what people are looking for. It’s trendy in online marketing right now at least to talk about. Not enough brands have embraced it as a more viable method than interruption marketing. The concept of Earned Media is definitely not new, and most brands only consider it a small part of what they do. They will continue to funnel the biggest dollars into advertising and the like, but I think as more big brands like Coca Cola and Red Bull see results more people will adopt it.

Jon Cooper

Consultant reachable via his blog, Pointblank SEO

Content is giving someone a reason to link to you. In the past, you didn’t need much of a reason, just a website. But as time goes on, and like with any market that deals with an increase in competition, you have to set yourself apart in someway, and outside of the obvious ones like pricing, community, and product quality, content is becoming the main (if not only) way to do so.

James Agate

Founder of Skyrocket SEO, the content-driven link building agency

Content marketing isn’t a new concept. Joe Pullizi was recently talking about a form of content marketing which dates back to 1895; obviously it has moved online since then but the fundamental principles remain the same.

James Content marketing has and always will be an integral and vital part of online marketing. The name might change and the way we do it might evolve but fundamentally nothing has changed for over 100 years. It’s about “creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers.”

Content touches and drives every aspect of online marketing so if a business isn’t investing in content then they will be falling behind. As many businesses (and agencies in fact) have found out recently, link building for example without the production of solid content will really only get you so far and in some cases may end up pushing you backwards.

Tom Demers

Co-founder and managing partner with Measured SEM, a search engine marketing firm that offers paid and organic search marketing consulting services

Content marketing is really a great example of a new kind of marketing that a lot of people are talking about by a number of different names (inbound marketing, permission marketing, etc.) I think the reason content marketing is being adopted so quickly is that it has a cross-over set of benefits where it's delivering a lot of the things direct advertising has (direct, measurable traffic and conversions) while simultaneously providing a lot of the same benefits traditional brand advertising has (thought leadership, brand building, etc.)

Cyrus Shepard

Former SEO at SEOmoz, owner of Above The Fold, his own blog

It’s ironic that content marketing is finally seeing it’s day in the sun. In reality, good content marketing has been the primary tools of many good SEOs and online marketers for years. If you look at what some of the industry leaders were doing back in 2005, it was content marketing mixed with technical SEO—really no different than today.

The difference is that many of the “tricks” SEOs have relied on for so long have finally been devalued, too many companies have been burned by Penguin and Panda, and so marketers with an eye towards the long term are waking up to the benefits of producing content with actual value. Take it for what you will, but the shift towards content marketing is a direct result of Google’s war against low quality websites.

Neil Patel

Marketing Guru at Quick Sprout

I don’t see it as the new face. I just see it as a piece of the bigger picture. I don’t think there will be one thing that is the “face” of online marketing as what works for one company won’t work for another.

Ryan Clark

Head Strategist (and all around awesome guy) at Linkbuildr

Content marketing is the “old but new face” of online marketing perhaps, and it basically means lazy marketers are going to have to become creative in their efforts. Being creative will do the one thing I love the most, making your brand stand out from the rest. If everyone likes what they see those coveted links will come in naturally … and yes, that actually does happen. Being creative with your content will also bring in more social followers who will help spread your next masterpiece so keep that snowball rolling.

The other huge benefit of content marketing is also putting a face to your brand, not just a funky logo. Your customers will appreciate experiencing your brand with someone they can relate to and content marketing is the perfect weapon. This is advice myself and our team actually needs to get better at which is why I’m getting forced into doing more videos in the near future.

What do I love the most out of all of it? The fact that you’re not trying to trick any search engines or really care about them at all. It’s all about the user experience here and if you start by pleasing their needs and wants first, the search traffic will soon follow.

Hugo Guzman

Owner of his own title site, HugoGuzman.com

I actually don’t see content marketing as the new face of online marketing. It’s been one of the foundations of my approach—and that of many colleagues—for many years. What I do think is that its popularity is rising, especially among SEOs, because Google has done a good job of muting other techniques like reciprocal linking, article submission, and paid linking.

Wayne Barker

Online Marketing Consultant at Boom Online

To be honest, content marketing isn’t that new but there is always a buzz when something starts to getter wider recognition. The more people ‘get’ it the more it spreads. I think people are definitely getter smarter at measuring it’s worth and defining real strategies – and that is where the success lies.

Bonus!

So there you have it. Now, you ask, how will you shape your content marketing efforts? Which types of content should you focus on? If you are a small business and plan to scale your content marketing efforts, read my previous post about truths in content marketing scaling for small businesses, answered by the same people I mentioned above.

But here's what you need to know if you want to get started on content marketing:

Focus on being a brand: whether your business is a small one, or if you are aiming to be a large enterprise, always (and I can't express how important this is) focus on your branding efforts first. You want to be known as "that awesome company that provides great content," not just "some random source of good content."
Develop a unique value proposition for your business: know what makes your business sell, and what makes it unique. From there, you can build additional content that will be bought by your market. For instance, the other day I was searching for car rental comparison websites and I stumbled upon CarRentals.co.uk. As a would-be customer, I really liked how the home page was set up, and for me, it's the business’s unique value proposition. Have a look:

Note the following elements:
1. They already know what I'm looking for, and make finding it straightforward. They make it easy to choose the date, pick up location, drop off location, etc. They don't bother with asking your name, address, and other essentials yet. You came to their website to find something, and they help you do it.
2. You can choose which currency you will be using.
3. Country of residence can be chosen as well.
4. You can get a free quote!
5. A list of the best suppliers of car rental services to choose from is also provided.
I took the bait. That's how good the service is (for me). Learn which part of your business/blog is your most valuable asset, and harness it. From there, and with tons of creativity, other forms of content can easily be produced.
Know your audience: after you identify your unique selling proposition, another very important factor is to know what type of content your audience and would-be customers want. Assess your website assets (current articles, videos, presentations, etc.), then from there work out what content types your audience would enjoy. Some people do not like reading long posts, while others enjoy interacting with you directly. Study your audiences' demographics to help you decide which content to build.
Businesses should know how the conversion funnel works: this is important if you wish to really convert your content marketing efforts into something profitable.
1. Top-of-the-funnel content should be for promoting your site/business, which works well in forms of guest posting.
2. Middle-of-the-funnel content can either be blog posts on your own site or a solid and interactive page with good call to actions.
3. Bottom-of-the-funnel content can be your product pages, etc.

Content marketing isn't new, but as we know, it works. Add your content marketing advice in the comment section below.

+John Abrena writes on his own blog, As the Ghost Speaks about search marketing, blogging, and all the random things on his mind. He is also a marketing consultant for UPrinting.com, a top of the line offline peripherals printing company.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

The Experts’ Views on Content Marketing

Triple Your Traffic by Guest Blogging for Backlinks [Case Study]

Posted: 15 Jan 2013 06:00 AM PST

This guest post is written by Joseph from GuestBloggingTactics.com

Guest blogging is all the rage now; it's easily the #1 marketing technique used by both individual bloggers and online corporations.

Unfortunately, most people are seeing guest blogging to be different from what it was originally painted to be.

It's no longer the sure-fire, high-traffic formula. It's no longer the thing you must do if you want to increase traffic to your blog. In other words, guest posts on blogs that would have sent you 500 visitors a year ago will barely send you 50 today.

Well, what if I told you you're doing it wrong?

What if I told you I was able to get 120,000+ visitors as an indirect result of guest blogging to one of my websites in one year? And that from less than 50 guest posts?

You'll probably want me to share the sites I guest posted on so that you can write for them, too.

But it no longer works that way. Even if there was a magic site that sent thousands of visitors per guest post, it'll barely be able to send ten per post in a few years time once everybody bombards it with guest posts.

The good news is: it's not about the site you choose, but the approach you use.

Most people see guest blogging as something that has to be direct, and that has to deliver results instantly.

However, by seeing guest blogging in a new light—by focusing on using guest blogging to build links instead of direct traffic—I was able to triple traffic to my blog in one year. To be specific, I experienced a 340% increase in search traffic—over 100,000 visitors—in one year.

Here's a screenshot showing traffic to my blog a year before I started my guest blogging campaign:

Here's a screenshot showing traffic to my blog a year after the guest blogging campaign:

How did I do it? That's the question this post will answer.

Guest blogging and SEO

While there are many reasons people build links to their websites, the #1 reason is often to increase their search engine rankings.

Search engines are the number one traffic referrer online.

When most people have problems or issues they want to solve on the Internet, they visit Google and type a keyword that can provide solutions to the problem they're experiencing. You do it and I do it too, every day of the week.

That's why search engines, especially Google, are the top traffic source to almost every website on the Internet.

Getting ranked well for your desired keywords in Google and other search engines can be left to luck, a game of waiting and praying that things get right, or you can try to take control by actively building high-quality, high-value links that will improve your rankings.

One of the best ways to build these high quality links today is by guest blogging.

When most people guest post, they do it for the traffic and often ignore the link aspect. I've observed that the links you can get from guest blogging are much more powerful than any traffic you can get.

Why not start actively building links to your blog from your guest posts?

A personal guest blogging case study

I dedicated a month to writing and getting guest posts published for one of my sites last year. I started a guest blogging campaign to publish over 30 guest posts on several quality blogs.

The guest posts were written in a way that ties the topic of each blog I approached to the topic of my blog, without sacrificing quality, and with a focus on getting quality anchor-text backlinks instead of traffic.

In other words, since every blogger has to get an author bio below their guest post, instead of just linking back to my homepage, I used my guest posts to link to internal pages and posts on my blog with specific keywords.

I knew that doing this would be very effective, but I never knew it would be much more effective than I anticipated.

While most of the guest posts I submitted didn't result in a single visit to my blog, and every guest post I submitted, combined, resulted in less than 50 visits, I saw a significant jump of 100 additional daily visitors in my search traffic a week after the campaign ended.

Ever since, without any active SEO effort on my part, traffic has grown significantly to up to 340% more visits a year after the challenge.

For me, that was an additional 120,000 visitors.

Of course, the guest posts I wrote in that month alone weren’t the only factor contributing to the increase in search traffic, but when I did the math I estimated that each guest post I wrote then would have attracted at least 2,000 search engine visitors in the span of a year.

Even if I'm not accurate and it's half of that, receiving 1,000 visitors for a single guest post is very rare these days.

The campaign enlightened me and made me realize that guest blogging doesn't always have to be for direct traffic and an instant boost in subscriber count. A link-building guest blogging campaign can also be very effective.

It doesn't have to be “immoral”

Due to how widely abused guest blogging for links is today, most people immediately come to the conclusion that guest blogging for links is a bad thing.

It doesn't always have to be. It's just like SEO: there's good and bad SEO, but when most people talk about SEO they talk about it as if it's unethical. Does that mean you should ignore SEO? Not if you want your online business to survive!

Guest blogging is a natural thing for bloggers and it is okay to expect something in return when you write guest posts; instead of ignoring the real estate you have in the author bio of every guest post you write, why not focus on getting a high quality backlink or two that can improve your own blog’s ranking?

With that said, whether you're a blogger or a company utilizing guest blogging, quality should of course be your number one focus. This is especially important for agencies using guest blogging, and something Georgina recently talked about here at ProBlogger.

So let’s look specifically at the steps you’ll need to follow to make this tactic work for you.

5 Steps you should follow to guest blog for backlinks

Here are the steps I take when trying to guest blog for backlinks.

1. Have effective content marketing in place

While guest blogging is effective, doing it alone won't help you get results.

Guest blogging should be a part of a bigger content marketing plan.

In other words, before you get started, you should have a blog that constantly publishes relevant articles; you should then develop a campaign focused on ranking your landing pages and pillar articles on your blog.

For a business, this might sound like something that won't be very effective. After all, why put all that guest blogging effort into blog posts?

However, recent changes to Google's algorithm and those of other search engines have made it very clear that content and social are the future of SEO. It's becoming increasingly difficult for static web pages to rank well in the search engines—and that's where you come in.

Of course, to really get the best from this you'll need to ensure that articles published on your blog are properly aligned with the goals of your business; this could be getting leads, selling a product, or getting readers to take a particular action, for example.

The point is it's easier to rank a detailed blog post that can get comments and social shares than it is to rank your blog’s homepage.

2. Prepare a set of keywords you want to rank for

Based on the content of special blog posts you've written as well as key pages on your website, prepare a set of keywords you want to rank for.

In most cases, these keywords should be centered on a particular major keyword.

So if I'm trying to rank for "guest blogging", for example, instead of letting all the anchor texts I use in my author bio be "guest blogging"—which can be very dangerous—I'll target a host of other keywords such as "guest blogging tactics," "guest blogging tips," "guest posting," and so on.

If possible, try to avoid using the same keyword twice—even if it's the main keyword you want to rank for. Instead, develop a set of keywords that center around your main keyword and use them in your author bio.

By using them, you'll be able to rank for both those keywords and the main keyword you really wanted to rank for, giving you double benefits for your effort.

3. Research and select a list of blogs you want to guest blog on

They don't always have to be as big and massive as Problogger.net, but in choosing the blogs to guest on, try to avoid link farms and poor quality blogs as much as you can.

If you can find a relevant authority blog in your niche, great. If you can't find a relevant blog, however, you can look for a way to write content that’s relevant to both your audience and that of the host blogger to benefit.

For example, if I were to start a guest blogging campaign to rank ProBlogger for major blogging keywords, I can easily benefit from targeting entrepreneurship blogs and even law blogs by writing articles along the lines of:

"7 Reasons Why Every Entrepreneur Should Blog"
"Why Not Having a Blog for Your Law Firm Could be a Disaster"

You get the idea?

The focus should be on quality. You don't have to worry about the relevance of the blogs; your focus should be on making your content relevant and this is very easy.

4. Write great content for your guest posts

Now, don't get this wrong. Because you're writing a guest post ostensibly for the purpose of gaining a quality backlink, that doesn't mean it has to be poor content.

On the contrary. Look at this particular guest post I'm writing here on Problogger.net; it’s helpful to you, and I'm able to get a quality link back to my blog at the end of it.

By focusing on quality for your guest posts, you'll benefit. Social signals are starting to influence how Google and other search engines view any post published today; this includes the number of social shares across various social networks, the number of comments and engagement on the post.

These are things you can't achieve by writing poor posts; you may get links, but that'll just be it. The real value of this strategy I’m talking about comes from the value of your post months after it has been published, not in the few days it spends as the number one post on the homepage of the blog you submitted it to.

5. Spend some time on your author bio

While it’s important that your post is great, it is also very important that your author bio isn't neglected. Don't let your author bio look as if all you want is a link. It doesn't have to!

Make your author bio as professional and descriptive of you as possible, and also include the link; when adding that, here are a few tips you should follow:

Don't use the same keyword in all your author bios. You might want to rank for "health blog" but that doesn't mean you should use only that keyword in all your guest posts. You can use variations such as "health tips blog," "top health blog," "professional health blog," "best health blog," and so on. Do you notice how all those keywords are variations of "health blog"? That will have much more impact on your rankings than just targeting a single keyword.
Don't use the same author bio in all your guest posts. Search engines don't list duplicate content, and duplicate content isn't about your articles alone. Using the same author bio in 40 different guest posts makes your bio duplicate content; it'll be the same in all 40 guest posts and will be seen as unnatural, thus making it difficult for you to even get the value of one of those links.
Not all your anchor text has to include keywords. Feel free to use generic keywords such as "click here," "check him out," "visit his website" etc. as they make your links look more natural than focusing on keywords.
Limit the number of links you include in your author bio. Depending on the blog, don't have more than two or three links in your bio. If you include three links, include two to your blog and one to your social profile. Anything more is unnatural and makes it clear that you only want the backlinks.

Tools of the trade

Guest blogging outreach and research can be very difficult; knowing what to write, which blog to contact and who to pitch is tricky. Here are my favorite guest blogging and content tools:

1. PostJoint

If you're a guest blogger, especially if you're guest blogging on a massive scale, then outreach can be difficult and sometimes stressful.

Of course, sometimes, reaching out personally is great but you can also save time if you have access to a platform or directory of blogs that not only accept guest posts but that make the process easy; PostJoint removes the hassles that comes with pitching guest bloggers and waiting for weeks for your guest post to be published.

2. MyBlogGuest

The premier guest blogging community online, MyBlogGuest can be a powerful tool in the arsenal of any blogger.

MyBlogGuest is a guest blogging forum where you can collaborate with other bloggers for guest blogging; it's effective whether you want to publish or get published and there are bloggers in almost any niche.

3. Customrank

Customrank is a better alternative to Google pagerank and Alexa rank; unlike Pagerank and Alexa rank, Customrank isn't overinflated.

Every website is ranked from 0–100 and the higher a blog's Customrank, the more value you will get from guest posting on it.

4. Quora

Quora might seem just like an ordinary question-and-answer site, but to the discerning blogger it is a goldmine.

Whether you want to get ideas for blog posts on your own blog or ideas for guest posts, having an endless source of content ideas is important. By browsing questions related to your niche on Quora, you'll be able to get more ideas than you need for your guest posts.

5. Google Keyword Tool

Before writing my guest posts, I come up with a list of keywords that inspire my writing and that I can also use as anchor text. There are a lot of quality tools online but a lot of them are expensive. The Google keyword tool is free and reliable and it provides data from Google.

Conclusion

What you just read is practically all there is to building links with guest blogging for beginners. It was what I did a year ago to experience the kind of increase I gained in my search traffic; I still do it for myself and my clients today, and it's phenomenally effective.

Have you ever had an experience guest blogging for links or traffic? How did it go? Please share your tips and thoughts with us in the comments.

Joseph is a guest blogging professional with over 2 years of experience. He writes about all things guest blogging at GuestBloggingTactics.com. If you want to take your business to the next level by guest blogging, especially for links, you should hire him! Joseph is also available on Twitter @gbtactics

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Triple Your Traffic by Guest Blogging for Backlinks [Case Study]