Don’t have the time to read all the marketing news, blog posts, announcements, and other content related to SEO/social media/online marketing published each week?
I’ve got you covered.
I sift through trillions (well, hundreds) of online publications to stay on top of marketing news that might affect your online business.
In the marketing spotlight this week:
- A slew of SEO updates;
- Facebook’s EdgeRank is dead;
- Embed audio on Google+;
- Best Twitter analytics tool;
- How to know if Gmail tabs affected your open rates;
- How to back up your email list;
- Google’s new Quick Answers;
- Twitter IPO?
- and much more.
Let’s start with the news from Traffic Generation Café.
At TrafficGenerationCafe.com
Schema Markup: How to Make Your Content More Clickable and Shareable
Schema markup allows your content to look better in social media and search engine results. Sounds like something we all should have on our sites, doesn’t yet?
Unfortunately, it was always somewhat intimidating and hard to implement without a single conclusive resource to do it all and without any coding. This post will give you options to do your own Schema markup (including the latest in-depth “Article” markup) with any combination of the following:
- in Google Webmaster Tools;
- with a free WordPress plugin;
- with a more enhanced premium WP plugin;
- (bonus) a special recommendation for affiliate marketers.
Get your content to look better in the next 5 minutes.
3 Practical Steps to Make Your Content Go Viral
Viral content. What is it about all those posts that go viral? What do they have that they don’t?
Your ideas are great.
Your content is compelling.
But no one is sharing it.
Let’s be honest: that’s the main problem that we all face when our blog is new.
We create content, no one hears about it, we create more, and so on until we’re tired. That’s why most of the bloggers fail.
Guess what – you CAN get more shares, tweets and comments from your post. (Yes, you!) That’s what this post will show you how to do.
State of SEO and Link Building: Continuous Coverage of the Recent Google Updates and Their Effects on Your Site
Question: Why do you think people keep shouting SEO is dead?
Answer: Because they feel helpless they can’t get ranked.
It almost feels like the 1990s again. No one seems to know what to do with their Websites any more, or how to link out…
That wild, crazy link-sotted party that has been raging for ten years almost seems to be winding down. Whatever will Web marketers do now that they cannot spam Google’s index so easily any more?
Write about Current Trends to Get More Traffic
A side note on one of the posts I wrote in the past couple of weeks: Google In-Depth Articles: How to Rank for Them In Google Search Results.
I follow marketing news pretty closely (that’s obvious, right? - after all, I write these sizable Weekly Marketing Skinnies every week), but I’ve never written a post on a trending topic in the past.
However that particular time I was curious to learn more about the topic of in-depth articles on Google and how they could potentially drive more traffic to smaller sites right now or in the future. Since I couldn’t find any decent information on any other blog, other than the worn-out WHAT kind of post, but not the HOW posts, I researched the topic and wrote one myself.
Why am I telling you this?
Because my post was first of its kind, it was mentioned in a follow-up post at Moz.com as well as featured in a BlogWorld.com post:
Of course, it ended up in many links back to my original post (I’ve talked about those links in my special SEO Skinny - the good and the bad behind them), plus traffic back to Traffic Generation Café.
Sure you can say I got mentioned because I am Ana from Traffic Generation Café and you are a brand new blogger, but let me tell you: as much as I’d like to believe every other blogger should know who I am by now, they don’t. I’ve never had anything to do with Moz.com or BlogWorld.com (although I’ve had the pleasure of being mentioned by BlogWorld in the past).
They found my post because it hit the spot and was shared by dozens of my readers all about social media. All I did was promote it as I always do with any post I write.
YOU can do it too.
It takes time and effort to stay ahead of the news and trends, but you can start with keeping up with my Weekly Marketing Skinnies (the best way to do it is to have it delivered to your inbox every Saturday if you are a subscriber to Traffic Generation Café traffic hacks).
SEO
A LOT is happening in SEO these days. Constant updates, changes, announcements - most of which might directly affect your business if you are working towards getting more search engine traffic.
So much so that I decided to put together a special Skinny dedicated to SEO.
I am planning on keeping it updated with the latest from Google, plus SEO community reactions and solutions.
I’ve already linked to the SEO Skinny above, but here it is one more time:
In the SEO spotlight this week were:
- New “Nofollow” Video from Matt Cutts;
- Webmasters crying “sky is a-falling!” and fearing to link out AT ALL;
- Google quietly updated their Link Schemes document;
- How to build/not to build links according to it;
- Manual Webspam Actions in Google Webmaster Tools;
- Unnatural Links to Your Site: What to Do;
- Links from Scraped Content: Can They Hurt You?
TL;DR If you want to stay updated on SEO and Google, but don’t want to sift through hundreds of publications, bookmark this post and come back often to keep up.
And here’s one more for the road.
Best of Matt Cutts: “It’s party in here!”
Now that you had a good laugh, go read the SEO Skinny (no worries, it’ll open in a new window).
Social Media
Facebook’s EdgeRank is Dead
EdgeRank, Facebook’s original News Feed ranking system, is dead. The current News Feed algorithm doesn’t have a catchy name, but it’s that EdgeRank is a thing of the past.
Learn more about Facebook’s new machine learning-based algorithm in this post at MarketingLand.com.
Embed Audio into Google+ Updates
Google+ has introduced SoundCloud embeds for Google+ posts.
Now when you share any SoundCloud URL to Google+, a widget will appear that allows you to play the sound directly within Google+.
By the way, Facebook has been offering SoundCloud embeds for quite some time now; I had not idea. You?
And now we know.
Best Twitter Analytics at Your Fingertips
Introducing Twitonomy, one of the best Web-based Twitter Analytics tool I’ve seen.
Once signed in, you’ll get a Twitonomy profile page that has all kinds of statistics about your own activity. You can see things like
- tweets per day
- how many links you’ve shared
- how often others mentioned you in their tweets
- who you retweet most often and who you reply to the most
- what hashtags you’ve used the most
- which of your tweets were retweeted the most
- which of your tweets were favorited the most
- much more
It can also act as a Twitter dashboard.
More about Twitonomy features or check it out for yourself.
Email Marketing
Did New Gmail Tabs Affect your Open Rates?
Of course, there’s a lot of talk about new tabs in Gmail or, more precisely, how it has affected email marketing so far and how to minimize its impact.
In case you don’t use Gmail, here’s what it looks like:
A recent Return Path analysis shows that the tabbed inbox is both a blessing and a curse.
The top group, the group most engaged with their inbox, read nearly 59% of their email promotions before the rollout, and the good news is they were reading 2% more emails after the rollout.
The potentially bad news is the medium group. Before the rollout, these Gmail users read an average of 10.6% of emails in their inbox. After the rollout, they were only reading 9.8% — less than a percent drop, but a variance of 7%. (source)
Whether you use Gmail or not, one thing is for sure - many of your email subscribers do.
Here’s how to find who’s on Gmail in Aweber (if you are not using Aweber, your should be able to apply the same principles in your autoresponder): Optimizing Your Campaign for Gmail.
How to Back Up Your Email List
Sure, everyone knows about backing up your blog, but when was the last time you backed up your email list?
Don’t you think you should? It’s only one of you biggest business assets…
Two quick steps to do it in Aweber (that’s what I use for Traffic Generation Café; check it out for yourself: http://tgcafe.it/17F7itP)
1. Click on Create and Manage Lists in the top left.
2. Click on Back Up and Export.
That easy.
Do it NOW before you forget again.
WordPress
WordPress.com Connect
Automattic (owns WordPress) has released WordPress.com Connect, a secure and easy way for millions of WordPress.com users to log in to your website or app.
Using the same log-in credentials you use for WordPress.com, you’ll now be able to sign in to third party sites that integrate with WordPress.com Connect.
Learn how to integrate with WordPress.com Connect: Integrate WordPress.com Connect.
Genesis 2.0 Would Make a Great Husband…
You know why? Because it’s VERY responsive.
Try it for yourself; resize your browser screen by dragging it by the bottom right corner.
And if you like what you see and would like to upgrade your blog to a responsive theme, give Ian Belanger a shout (told him I sent you).
Marketing This & That
Google’s New Quick Answers
Google is definitely tightening its grip by giving us more of what we want and/or need IF we use their services: Gmail, Google Calendar, or Google+.
Want to know your flight number for the upcoming trip? When you package is due to arrive without having to look up tracking info?
Soon you’ll be able to find this info instantly in Google Search if it’s in your Gmail, Google Calendar or Google+. For example, just ask or type, “What’s my flight status?” or “When will my package arrive?”
It also comes with voice search (so you don’t have to type) - why wouldn’t it, right?
Twitter prepares to fly IPO
SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter appears to be getting ready to issue stock to the public in the wake of social media companion Facebook’s return to favor on Wall Street; USA Today reports.
Interesting Stuff
One Second of the Web
One Second is a Web project that can help us gain perspective on the amount of sharing going down across the Web. The site visualizes everything that happens each second on the internet through simple charts.
It can be difficult to catch the hard numbers from the site (the information changes every second, after all), so here is the data in a more static state. Each second on the internet,
- 197 Reddit votes are cast
- 463 Instagram photos are uploaded
- 833 Tumblr posts are published
- 1,024 Skype calls are made
- 3,935 messages are tweeted
- 11,574 files are uploaded to Dropbox
- 33,333 Google searches are performed
- 46,333 videos are viewed on YouTube
- 52,083 posts are liked on Facebook
- 1.67 million e-mails are sent
That’s right, 1.67 million emails are sent each second! Wow.
(source)
How to Clean Your Computer Screen from the Inside
Oh Wow! A remarkably simple way to clean your computer screen!
Did you know that every 30 days it is necessary to clean the computer screen from the inside? Many people ignore this fact or do not know how. Manufacturers take advantage of this ignorance to increase their sales.
To clean the screen from the inside, just click this link:
http://www.lingdao.fr/outils/nettoyeurecran/cleanscreen.swf
Thank You
To all of you who mentioned Traffic Generation Café in any share or form in the past week, my whole-hearted THANK YOU.
Traffic Generation Café would NOT be what it is today without you.
Here are just some of the mentions I came across in the past week:
The Writer’s Weekly Wrap-Up (Issue #12) - Kimberley Grabas at yourwriterplatform.com
How To Get More Traffic To Your Blog With These Blog Promotion Tips - Sandy Halliday at sandy-halliday.com
Tips Tuesday – PowerPoint, Site Review Webinars, Make Screencasts, Contact Form 7, G+ Communities, and Google Drive Slide Decks - MaAnna Stephenson at blogaid.net
Inside In-depth Articles: Dissecting Google’s Latest Feature - Peter J. Meyers at moz.com
What Exactly is Quality Content? - Joseph Adediji at bloggingtipstoday.com
Email Autoresponder: Make It About Your Subscribers And Build Rapport - Jane Sheeba at probloggingsuccess.com
10 Brilliant Bloggers Talk About Google In-Depth Articles - Allison Boyer at blogworld.com
SEO Rankings: How To Get a Boost - Tom Jamieson at tomjamieson.com
Why Our User Experience Should Be Determined by Data - Danny Brown at dannybrown.me
Fetching Friday – 20 Marketing Links - Kristi Hines at kikolani.com
How to Reach Your Target Audience by Not Marketing to Them - Adam Connell at bloggingwizard.com
Bloggin Insight Of The Week – Importance Of Building A List - Peter H. at ubersteward.com
7 Techniques You Should Try for Getting More Comments - Ahmed Safwan at basicblogtips.com
Google Manual Actions, Types of SPAM, Data Board, Addon Domains, Speedlink 32:2013 - Francisco Perez at iblogzone.com
Disavow Tool Question, Bing SEO Checklist, MailChimp Hates Affiliates - Francisco Perez at iblogzone.com
5 great articles you may have missed (August 5-11, 2013) - Cendrine Marrouat at creativeramblings.com
Have I missed your mention? Let me know in the comments!
Want to see your name here? Mention Traffic Generation Café in your next blog post!
Subscribe to Stay Ahead
I share a lot of marketing news as well as the best posts I read throughout a week on my Google+ profile.
To read them as they come out and stay ahead of your competition, as well as become a social media star and share the best with YOUR followers (you’d be surprised how much it’ll do for your credibility and online presence!), join me there:
You can also subscribe to my G+ feed through your RSS reader of choice; just add the following link like with any normal blog RSS feed: http://tgcafe.it/gplus-feed
To an even better next week,
Weekly Marketing Skinny • September 7, 2013
Weekly Marketing Skinny • August 31, 2013
Weekly Marketing Skinny • August 24, 2013
Weekly Marketing Skinny: August 10, 2013
Ana, I LOVED that you included the last link here, for How to Clean Your Computer Screen from the Inside! It shows that you definitely have a sense of humour. This is hard to see sometimes, especially since most of the information you share on your site is …ahem…stuffy…and for techies, which I am NOT.
Most people like dogs and/or cats, and this was a purr-fect way to end an informative post!
lol, Lorraine - so glad I made you smile!
Interesting you say my writing feels techie, because that’s exactly what I am trying NOT to be.
Any particular feedback for me that would “unstuff” my posts?
Ana, since you asked, there are a couple of things I’ll mention. The first is to remember that you have readers for whom your content is sometimes “over their heads”, and so keeping things simple and explaining the “why” or “when” people/bloggers need to do certain things you suggest will really help. Many newbies (like I was about six months ago, and still am, to a certain degree) come to you for help and advice. When your posts are really technical, these people get overwhelmed with information overload. I speak from experience! Sometimes, going the extra distance to simplify things is necessary, just to add a bit more understanding on our part. At least, this is how I feel.
For example, the focus on numbers and stats and analytics and rankings … are important …why? I still don’t know all the answers to these questions. You are a teacher, Ana, whether you hold a teaching degree (like myself) or not. Please realize this; people look up to you, and often they are amazed by your knowledge. I know I am.
Sometimes people are intimidated by such people, too.
[I am not; I recognize that each person has talents and values and that no one can have every skill or piece of knowledge in the world. I like to learn from others, and I like to teach others, too. (Remember my How to Use 'Click to Tweet' in Your Blog Posts post?)]
In teaching, there is a KISS principle. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. KISS is an acronym for “Keep It Super Simple”. (You likely thought of the old, derogatory saying “Keep It Simple, Stupid.) Either way, try to make sure your posts speak to those that need KISSing!
The other suggestion I’d like to make is to simply add more humour, where possible. For example, look at the paragraph you wrote that leads up to the link with the dog licking the screen. It’s a bit dry/stuffy! You could have given a clue that the link led to something funny, or expressed more enthusiasm or hype about it. You’re a marketer, you know that phrases such as “Must see!” or “This is a must DO!” as well as using ‘extra’ exclamations points will accomplish this easily. You could even just say: I found this awesome link…check it out, it’s funny!
One of the things I really like that you DO do is that you include screenshots in your posts to complement what you’re saying. I’ve noticed this quite often, and love it when you do this. This helps visual learners tremendously! (It helps with the KISS principle, too!) Keep it up!
I hope I’ve given you some food for thought, Ana. I’ve been following your blog for some time now (I’m sure you have ways of checking this…it’s been about six months or so) and have not unsubscribed yet! You write useful posts, teach others, and are knowledgeable. Just remember, you have a wide variety of students, who have different abilities and disabilities, in your classroom!
It was very interesting to read your comment trying to keep an open mind, Lorraine; I appreciate your feedback.
Not sure if we are talking specifically about my Marketing Skinnies or any post I write.
As far as “any post” goes, I think I do write very simply and with humor - not sure if I can simplify it even more even if I tried.
My Marketing Skinnies are special: they are news aggregation of what’s going on on the internet. As such, I don’t make the news; just curate what happened.
I’ll try to take your advice to heart though.
Yep, as you just started people just come in and judge you. But they will get along later on and as you do well they will support you and love what you do for them.
I loved the screen cleaner. If you hadn’t told someone to take a look, I would have overlooked the link myself and missed out on the incredible cleaning resource. ha ha.
lol, Victoria - anything I can do to help the world stay cleaner.
Wow Ana, that twitter tool rocks! Love reading your weekly roundups. Have a good one!
Thanks so much, Tyronne; you do as well!
Ana, just wanted to let you know I think this site is dynamite. I was sent here from a friend of mine and I have appreciated the info. you put out. I love the Weekly Skinny bit. Also, the Google tabs haven’t dropped my open rates as of yet. I know personally I probably open more of the promotions because they are all in one spot for me to find : ) Anyway, thanks for putting this info. in one place for us.
You are so very welcome, Steve, and thanks to your friend for sending you my way!
Look forward to seeing you around Traffic Generation Café.
Hi Ana,
Good Roundup.
And specially loved that clean screen from inside link. Lol.
Ana - you always give fantastic information. I really like your new website and just to let you know that it loads much faster than previously.
Much appreciated, Caroline.
I dont know what ill do without your marketing skinny Ana. Simply the best. Thanks for the mention by the way.
You’d probably live in blissful ignorance and have a lot less work to do, Peter. lol
Have a blessed Sunday!
Oh, Ana, thanks for a good laugh! Loved the “cleaning your computer screen”!
One of my faves…
So much interesting and valuable information again Ana. I don’t know how you do it. It is going to take some time to read all this in depth especially about the SEO and Social Media.
Good to know that Genesis takes care of Schema Markup as I have just changed my detox blog to a Genesis framework.
As for Aweber & Gmail, I have an old account with Aweber and I would have to upgrade it if I wanted to use the analytics to find out how many of my subscribers use Gmail. Fortunately, I have not noticed much difference in my open rates. Maybe I’m doing something right!
I already got caught out with the clean your computer screen from the inside when it did the rounds on Facebook. I don’t want to see it again thanks! Lol.
Sandy
Always glad to be helpful, Sandy.
Aweber: I don’t think you need to upgrade anything, you just need to add a string of Aweber Analytics (similar to Google Anatytics) to your site.
Hi Ana-
Thanks so much for the mention. I really appreciate it. Have a great weekend!
-Tom
Right back at you, Tom!
Hi Anna
Well thanks for the mock up about whats happening around. It good to hear that we can now embed sound cloud audio in the Google + . Beside that SEO has some interesting updates as well
Thanks once again for the update. Keep up the good work , would love to read more from you.
Have a Great and vibrant Sunday
You are very welcome, Ashi, and thanks for the thumbs up!