Martes, Nobyembre 29, 2011
Can you really buy good quality social signals?
Two Examples of How One Line of Code Could Kill Your SEO [Case Studies]
YouTube Passes 20 Billion Video Views In One Month
How To Get Started With YouTube Promoted Video
Huwebes, Nobyembre 17, 2011
Use Social Media and Lead the Way to More Customers
Real Guide to Getting Links and Traffic from Trending Topics
The Confusing World Of Sharing Songs From Google Music To Google+
Martes, Nobyembre 15, 2011
Pubcon Las Vegas Day 3 – Key Takeaways

As Pubcon 2011 wraps up, it's difficult to reflect on the past 72 hours on so few hours of sleep. Wednesday, we attended Alan Bleiweiss' #EpicDinner with 120 attendees. It was fantastic. He did an incredible job. Afterward, we went to karaoke and watched several of our own rock the mic and the dance floor.
Content & Link Building
Arnie Kuenn shared the following content and link building strategy: focus on generating content (interviews, videos, promotional, humorous, etc.) that can attract natural links from multiple domains. Not all pieces of content should be expected to received hundreds or thousands of links.
- Content generation idea #1 – search your competitors top linked pages in Open Site Explorer (OSE) and review why the content was impressive enough to demand a link
- Content generation idea #2 – Browse the Q&A sites like Yahoo! Answers, Quora, etc. for the most frequently asked questions and discussions that you can bring insight, process, or direct answers through content created on your site
Wikipedia ranks for 92% of the 100 most searched terms on Google. Imagine if you ranked in the top listings for 92% of your industry terms. – Matt Tuens
Competitive Analysis
Mat Siltala shared the following 10 things you should track when researching competitors:
- Domain Authority
- Total Links
- Social Media Activity
- LinkedIn Connections
- Blog Activity
- Identify Promotional Pages
- Affiliate Programs
- Shopping Cart Spying – look for remarketing and other competitive advantages
- SpyFu
- ReverseInternet.com
Jane Copland shared the following points that were extremely interesting:
- Never try to copy someone else's backlink portfolio — get creative with "your" opportunities
- Pay attention to the number of C-class IP's in your competitor's backlink profiles
- Look at "why" they have those links, not the links themselves
- Relationship links are not paid links
- Track links/rankings over time — you should never be surprised by a competitor
Data & Intelligence are Central To Qualified Marketing
Data and intelligence is only as smart as the interpreter. Gathering data is barely a step in the process of doing qualified marketing but it is one still missed by many.
The key to using data is:
- Regular and comprehensive tracking. (For instance in links – tracking not just C-Class IPs but also B and Hosted to look are variants overall and overtime)
- Knowing what can be tracked and just how to do it; there are still many metrics not yet built out by tools or available to all of us. Discover these metrics and develop them.
- Track not only results (analytics) but measure what you can control. (For instance, how much content you put out, time spent on creating content, redevelopment frequencies of your own site and competitors etc.)
- Evaluate relationships. Just as there is a lot you can learn from watching a husband and wife interact and recognizing they’re married – they is similar immediate knowledge to be gained from knowing who is related to your clients business and competitors businesses and how, what and why.
Should I Work In-House or at an Agency?
How To Identify True Search Competitors – SEO Competitive Analysis
The Link — SEO.com’s November Newsletter
Use infographics to boost your SEO
This is it! The answer to your questions! SEO Hawaii find this article very interesting not just for our company but for all of us. This will greatly help you to make your SEO great!
Though the popularity of infographics has exploded over the past few years, questions may always linger about how to design and promote graphics that generate leads, build your reputation or expand your company's reach on Facebook and Twitter.
Infographics, also known as information graphics, are visual representations of data or knowledge. They present complex information in a quick, clear manner that makes it interesting to the average person.
Some examples of infographic topics have included: “Father’s Day vs. Mother’s Day”, “How Are Smartphones Being Used?” and “What is a Stock.” The information was presented using colorful pictures, graphs and charts. And the data came together in the end as one image known as an infographic.
Infographics are powerful tools for improving your website search engine optimization. They boost SEO by providing visibility and brand awareness, generating social signals and creating natural backlinks.
Infographics also generate visibility by pushing your brand to the forefront of social media marketing.
“If it’s interesting enough for the average individual then it’s very promotable. It gets shared and helps drives traffic to the website,” said Greg Shuey, vice president of client services for SEO.com.
This can create natural backlinks. When search engines see that your website is receiving lots of shares across the popular social networks, the search engines begin viewing the page as a trustworthy source.
But for an infographic to be successful, you need to have an awesome concept and amazing design. If these elements are not present, then your graphic will not make an impression.
"If you have unique data pertaining to your company, utilize it to create an infographic," Shuey said.
Infographics with new data that is not publicly available thrive in social media, he added.
Your team must also be excited about the project for an infographic to really be successful. It is important that everybody involved in the infographic be committed and eager to participate and promote it.
“When the client is brought in, they begin pushing it through their organization. They’re sharing it with their friends, their neighbors and out on Facebook … We get a whole lot more promotion, we get a whole lot more visibility and more eyeballs on the website when we have that excited team,” Shuey said.
However, design is only one component when it comes to utilizing infographics for SEO. Before you start creating your infographic, you must develop specific goals for the content. Decide what you want the infographic to achieve before diving into the process. Do you want 15,000 page views? How about 65 new backlinks or 25 new leads?
“The goals can really be anything, but you want goals that will help build the business,” Shuey said.
Laying out the goals of the infographic beforehand is important because it can play a major role in the design.
Another key element to using infographics to boost SEO marketing is developing a plan for promotion. Simply uploading the content to your website or blog won’t cut it. Work at getting your infographic into the public eye. Otherwise, only your followers are going to see it.
“If you don’t have a solid promotion plan in place, you’re probably not going to have a very successful infographic,” Shuey said.
It is important to tailor your promotion plan to your design. Some infographics fare better than others when it comes to different social media outlets. There are many ways to get your infographic noticed and earn natural backlinks. It’s important to reach out and connect with networks of individuals who share content.
Shuey recommended contacting the blogger community by utilizing websites such as Tumblr and Pinterest. Leveraging social media like Facebook, Twitter and Digg is also important, but these should not be your only promotional techniques.
When infographics are created and promoted correctly, they will continue to acquire backlinks and be shared through social media networks long after your campaign is complete.
Listen to Shuey's webinar for more infographic tips.
Client Spotlight: Michigan company sees boom despite the slow economy

One of the largest industries in the United States is the automobile industry, and Michigan is its hub. The state also bears the stigma of a gloomy economic landscape. However, for Alta Equipment Company, this is not the case.
Alta Equipment Company is a family-owned business, which was founded by Steve Greenawalt in 1984. The firm provides industrial forklifts, heavy construction equipment, and warehouse solutions to a variety of companies in the Midwest. They currently have 14 branches located in Michigan, Illinois and northwestern Indiana, and they carry an array of brands from Combilift forklifts to Volvo construction equipment.
The Automobile Industry
Automobile manufacturers comprise one of the most prominent industries served by Alta Equipment Company.
“We provide the automobile companies with lifts and other equipment to assist in the building of vehicles,” said Kristina Heimbaugh, Alta Equipment Company's marketing director.
Going Green
The environmental movement promotes the sustainable management of Earth’s resources. As the movement has grown in popularity, more companies have strived to reduce their carbon footprints. Alta Equipment Company is currently in the process of organizing an educational seminar on environmental responsibility.
“We are putting together this seminar to help our customers become a little greener,” Heimbaugh said.
The seminar will cover ways Alta Equipment Company’s customers can move toward alternative fuel and eco-friendly batteries.
Pride and Passion
Employees at Alta Equipment Company have pride in the business, and it definitely shows.
“We all love being here,” Heimbaugh said. “The salespeople and managers are great. Everybody does their part and they’re really here to support each other.”
They also have a passion for their customers and the service they provide.
“All companies say they’re about service, but we really are about service,” Heimbaugh said.
Tips and Tricks: Two awesome tools for link prospecting
Citation Labs founder Garrett French
Citation Labs has created some useful tools you can use for search engine optimization. These two tools — the Outbound Link Scraper Tool and the Contact Finder — may be found at citationlabs.com. They can save you lots of time (and headaches) when it comes to prospecting for links.
Outbound Link Scraper Tool
The Outbound Link Scraper Tool is not only useful, but it is very easy to use. With this tool, all you have to do is insert a URL and it gathers all outbound links on the page and returns the links to you in a csv file. This allows you to quickly go through and capture URLs that are relevant to what you are searching for.
Contact Finder
The Contact Finder is a tool that allows you to harvest contact information without manually going from site to site. The first step is adding the URLs you generated from the Outbound Link Scraper Tool. Next, specify what anchor text you want the tool to look for on a website, for example, the about us or contact page. Then identify what to pick out, including email addresses and phone numbers.
These tools are both easy to use and save lots of time. There are costs associated with the use of these tools, but they are definitely worth the price. One hundred megabytes of bandwidth starts at $10, and 1,000 megabytes at $50.
10 Incredible Face-Melting Google Tricks

SEO Hawaii would like to share this article to all of you. This is really important for you to read on this article.
Many companies regularly use humor in their marketing efforts. Old Spice comes to mind, with their ridiculously funny spots featuring Isaiah Mustafa, and recently Fabio (although I’d contest the latter isn’t as funny as the originals were, but I digress…) Since Google dominates the search engine market in America, it’s a good bet that when they change up their home page with a doodle, or add a couple of Easter eggs in the mix, people will notice.
Even though these tricks provide no real value for web SEO, they’re fun to play around with, talk about, and especially blog about!
FEELING LUCKY TRICKS
1. Google Gravity
A site created by web developer Ricardo Cabello. At first glance, it looks like the familiar Google home page, but suddenly all the elements of the page fall down.
2. Google Sphere
Here’s another one from Cabello. The Google logo and search bar are in the center of the page, and all the other elements are orbiting around them.
3. Google Klingon
Only a small fraction of uber-geeks will actually appreciate this version. ghobe' vetlh 'ach jIH vIHHa'!
4. Google Pirate
Yarrrgh. If ye be sailin’ across the spammy seas, yer best be speakin’ the Pirate.
5. Google Pacman
On May 21, 2003, a Google doodle was created for Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary, changing the logo into a fully functional Pac-Man game.
6. Google Swedish Chef
Remember the Muppets character?
EASTER EGGS
7. ASCII Art
Basically text-based art, Google’s logo will change into a a graphic based on dashes and slashes.
8. Google Barrel Roll
Try not to get nauseous and puke on your screen.
9. Google Recursion
Here’s a fun one to try when you’re bored at your desk. Search for “recursion”, and you’ll see “did you mean recursion?”
10. Google Tilt
You can either search for “tilt” or “askew.”
Other search engines have their tricks too. Bing has animated backgrounds on their home page, and you can hover your mouse over certain spots to learn more about that particular image. Their search box is pretty intuitive too.
Lunes, Nobyembre 14, 2011
Search Engine Land Gets Sister Site: Marketing Land Arrives Next Month
Google Leads In Search Engines’ Efforts To Woo TV Viewers
How To Measure The True Return On Your Ad Spend
Search Engine Land Gets Sister Site: Marketing Land Arrives Next Month
Google Lets Users Choose Their Ads
Google Drops Plus Sign from Search Operators
Google Leads In Search Engines’ Efforts To Woo TV Viewers
Google’s “Dear Sophie” TV spot for Chrome, in which a father creates a Gmail account for his newborn daughter and sends her multi-media messages as she grows up, earned the top spot in Ace Metrix’ rankings of websites’ TV advertisements. Despite being a recent and... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Huwebes, Nobyembre 10, 2011
Google Plus Unveils Business Pages
Google Unveils Think Insights
Get Your Facebook Ad Noticed
8 Tips to Maximize Your Branded Presence in the Google Local Search Results
How to Get the Most Value From Your SEO Investment
This article is for everybody but it focuses on the SEO Industry and especially for those who are in the market field. This will help enhance your skills and gain more knowledge about the update in this industry. We hope that SEO Hawaii helps you through this tactics.
Getting the most value from your SEO investment isn't always easy. There are a lot of factors that go into every SEO campaign and it's not always easy to cut something out without negatively affecting something else, or worse, the entire campaign. I addressed some of these issues in my last post linked above, and here I wanted to provide some additional insights on ensuring your SEO investment is a valuable one.
Comparing In-House vs. Outsourced Costs
The number of hours "needed" to optimize your website can fluctuate from one SEO company to the next, as will the hourly rate. Assuming that the cost of a quality SEO team runs $150-200/hour, you can see it's not difficult to reach a monthly investment of $3,000 or more. For a lot of small businesses, this is no small chunk of change. Many small businesses will look at a $36,000 per year investment. At that rate, you could just hire a full-time employee!While true, you also have to consider other questions as well. The main question is this: Can a single person do everything a team of experts can? Can they efficiently research, write, optimize, link build, implement proper IA to the same degree and hit expected results?
It's rare that you can find one person who is an expert in all these things. Then throw in the education time they'll need to not only become an expert in each of these fields, but to keep up with the latest trends and algorithm changes. You're looking at a lot of education, time and money!
When you outsource you don't have to pay for education time, only hours worked on your site. When you hire in-house, you have to pay for education time, materials, conferences, travel and everything else needed for a quality education. Let's not even get into benefits, holidays and PTO!
Sometimes the hard part for the SEO provider is convincing clients to invest in our time. But this isn't the correct approach. We should be convincing business owners to invest in their website. It's not how much money the client pays for SEO; it's how much return they are getting for the time they are investing into their online marketing strategies.
Cautious Spending in an Uncertain Economy
I'm as cost conscious as the next guy, but there comes a point when pinching pennies is counter productive... especially in business. When I look at various on- and off-line marketing campaigns, I don't look at the cost so much as I look at the overall return on the investment being made (ROI). Sure, a big price tag makes me think long and hard before investing, but what I want to know is, will I get my return on that investment?The bigger the price tag, the harder it is to jump into an unknown investment. This is just as true with SEO as with any form of marketing, but perhaps even more true with SEO because the return is not instant. SEO requires a long-term commitment before you're going to get the results you want to see.
Making any business succeed requires an investment of both time and money. Consider this:
If you have neither time nor money, there will be no success.
If you have time and not money, success can come, but you may run out of time before it happens.
If you have money but not time, success may come, but it will be fleeting without proper preparation and planning.
If you have both time and money, success may come, but only if you have implemented a strong plan to achieve that success.
Obviously, the best option is to have both time and money and be willing to invest it, if you want your SEO to succeed.
Spend More to Get More
Growing profits means you need to get more conversions (sales, signups, proposals, customers, etc.) for less money. To achieve that often means you have to spend more, not less.We all know that you have to be willing to spend money to make money. If you've seen the show Shark Tank, you know how much of their own money people often invest to get a business idea off the ground. You gotta risk it for the biscuit!
What you have to think about is whether increased spending will give you an even greater return. Spending less would be nice, but you have to get out of that mindset. Target, Walmart, Pepsi and Coke all continue to spend, spend, spend on their marketing because they know it gets results. And the second they stop spending, they know they lose market share to their competition.
If your online marketing efforts are working they way they should, your marketing budget should always be increasing rather than decreasing - assuming, of course, that you can handle the increased business that the marketing efforts are bringing in.
As a smart, savvy business owner you have to consider all your options. Pricing alone isn't a strong enough indicator on whether you can "afford" a particular company or not. You have to consider what is being offered, the history of success the company has, the communication they provide in meeting your needs and a whole lot more. Just because it's more expensive doesn't mean you can't afford it. You just have to determine if you want some kid to mow your lawn or a gardener to make your whole yard beautiful.
Follow me at @StoneyD and @PolePositionMkg.
Be sure and visit our small business news site.
Google Expands Offers To Five New Markets
SPONSORED MESSAGE: How to Increase Revenues with Display Advertising
Annual Budgeting Guide For The In-House Marketer
‘Think Insights’: Google’s New Research Hub Offers Data Porn For Marketers
Martes, Nobyembre 8, 2011
Google+ Pages For Businesses: The AdWords Impact
Content Marketing Essentials: Tactical Advice From A To Z
Who's Better: Google or Bing Webmaster Tools?
Linggo, Nobyembre 6, 2011
Mozilla Releases New Version of Firefox for Bing Users
Do You Use Data Providers To Boost Your Local Search Results?
This article is being re-posted by SEO Hawaii to give you an essential information on what is happening now in the SEO and marketing Industry. This article will help you improve your knowledge and skills regarding this topic.
Having your business rank in local search results can get complicated, especially if the local review sites don’t have your correct business address. Correlating the right business address online is super important in order to rank in local search results. Logging into each local review site individually and correcting your business address manually may seem like you’re David facing off Goliath–but there is an easier way.
A more efficient way to correct the information for your business is to correct the errors before the information is sent to the hundreds of local review sites. You will have to correct your data in the source with the data providers. Currently, there are three major data providers including Localeze, Infogroup, and Universal Business Listing.
Why Change Information With The Data Provider?

Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing get their local business information from two locations; they store local business information in their own index and receive it from data providers.
Once your business information is submitted to Localeze and Universal Business Listing, your information will start to trickle down to smaller local review sites like Yelp, SuperPages, and DexKnows. These smaller local review sites pull their data from the larger data providers. If you correlate your business information at the source of the problem (major data providers) then you’ll save yourself time, effort, energy, and money. That’s the best way to take on the giant.
We’ve seen awesome results for our local SEO clients. Simply go to Localeze and Universal Business Listing, enter your information, pay a small fee, and you’ll have all of your local business information correlated across the Internet. Now that’s an easy way to do small business SEO.
Good Luck!
Cloaking: A Guide From Google
Google News To Promote Google + Profiles Of Authors
Twitter Testing Top News & People in Search
Huwebes, Nobyembre 3, 2011
Do You Use Data Providers To Boost Your Local Search Results?
Having your business rank in local search results can get complicated, especially if the local review sites don’t have your correct business address. Correlating the right business address online is super important in order to rank in local search results. Logging into each local review site individually and correcting your business address manually may seem like you’re David facing off Goliath–but there is an easier way.
A more efficient way to correct the information for your business is to correct the errors before the information is sent to the hundreds of local review sites. You will have to correct your data in the source with the data providers. Currently, there are three major data providers including Localeze, Infogroup, and Universal Business Listing.
Why Change Information With The Data Provider?

Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing get their local business information from two locations; they store local business information in their own index and receive it from data providers.
Once your business information is submitted to Localeze and Universal Business Listing, your information will start to trickle down to smaller local review sites like Yelp, SuperPages, and DexKnows. These smaller local review sites pull their data from the larger data providers. If you correlate your business information at the source of the problem (major data providers) then you’ll save yourself time, effort, energy, and money. That’s the best way to take on the giant.
We’ve seen awesome results for our local SEO clients. Simply go to Localeze and Universal Business Listing, enter your information, pay a small fee, and you’ll have all of your local business information correlated across the Internet. Now that’s an easy way to do small business SEO.
Good Luck!
Google News To Promote Google + Profiles Of Authors
The Google News Blog announced that the leading article will contain the Google + profile information of the author, when available. This is being rolled out in the upcoming weeks to the English Google News portal...
Mozilla Releases New Version of Firefox for Bing Users
Building off the partnership that kicked off last year, Mozilla and Microsoft have just announced the existence of another joint venture with the rollout of the Firefox with Bing browser. As the name suggests, the new version of Mozilla's popular browser uses Microsoft Bing as its search engine of choice in the search box and AwesomeBar. In addition, it sets the default home page to Bing.com. Mozilla officially announced Firefox with Bing in a short blog post. Microsoft's Bing team did the same, noting that they were excited to make it even easier for members of the Mozilla Firefox communi...
Google Drops Plus Sign from Search Operators
Up until last week, searchers could use the plus sign on Google to tell the search engine that particular terms must be on the page for which they're searching. For example, if I wanted to search for craft magazines that mention crochet, I could put [magazine +crochet], without the brackets, into the search box. I can't use that strategy anymore. Since this is still a useful function, Google co-opted quotation marks to take it over. You may recall that quotation marks in Google indicate that an exact phrase must be present; you can now use them for a single word. So my search would now be in ...
Google Lets Users Choose Their Ads
In its AdWords blog, Google reveals that it has started placing a Why these ads? link on Google search results and Gmail. With the few experiments I did, I determined that it does not show up all the time, even if you're logged in; it probably just hasn't reached my area yet. But when the link does show up, if a user clicks on it, a small message pops up to explain why that particular ad was shown - for example, it might be based on the user's current search terms. Within this message, Google links to its Ads Preference Manager, where a user can learn more, block specific advertisers, or op...
Why Does Great Content Fail?
Posted by Dr. Pete
With every skirmish in the ongoing war over SEO hats, I inevitably hear someone say “I built great content, and no one cared – content marketing doesn’t work.” I’m not here to deny it – sometimes, “great” content falls flat on its face.
Part of the problem is that we throw around that word like it’s self-evident (“Build great content! Tada!”), but the other part is that we just don’t give our own content a chance to succeed. Too often, it's not the fault of the content or even Google, but what we do (or don't do) after we create that content. Here are a few ideas for evaluating “great” content and putting it into action…
Don’t Listen to Your Mom
Before you even start promoting your “great” content, take a minute to make sure it’s as good as you think it is. Have you ever seen an American Idol audition where some kid came out spouting how they were God’s gift to singing and dancing and then proceeded to look like Charlie Sheen doing a one-man show? Apparently, they never performed in front of anyone but their mom. Don’t trust your fans, when it comes to the really important content. Find some critics and listen to them. The content that people will come back to time and time again usually didn’t get written in one draft.
What Does “Great” Mean?
Just the word “great” is a minefield of ambiguity. We all have some ability to judge quality, but too often our measures of greatness are based on hindsight – a blog post was “great” because it got a lot of traffic, Tweets, Likes, etc. I don’t think there’s any one recipe for great content, but I have seen some common themes, at least in my own content marketing successes. Most great content will match at least one of these:
(1) Great Content Has Credibility
As a consultant and subject-matter expert, my most successful content has been the pieces that really distill years of my own experience. Don’t cover a topic if you don’t know what you’re talking about. On the flip side, don’t underestimate the value of your own expertise, even if you think your subject matter is boring.
(2) Great Content Takes Real Effort
Not all great content has to cost a lot (plenty of unknown brands have proven that), but I think that most great content takes time and effort to create. If you know someone poured themselves into a piece, whether it’s a well-researched post, a well-edited video, or a gorgeous infographic, it says that they respect your time and intelligence. Real effort resonates with people. Respect your readers.
(3) Great Content Is Actionable
This is more a feature of informational content than link-bait, but great blog posts, for example, leave you walking away with something useful. Whether it’s SEO tactics, recipes, or home-improvement tips, if you leave with actionable knowledge, you’re going to remember that content. Give people useful information and help them put it into action.
(4) Great Content Begs to Be Shared
On the link-bait side, great content is something you instantly want to show others, whether it’s out of awe, disgust, or just to show that you’re cool. When you’re done creating a piece, are you eager to hit “publish” or are you just glad that it’s over and you can go home? Create content that you’re proud to share, not just because it might go viral, but because you’re the one who has to share it first (see below).
Market Your Marketing
The great irony of content marketing is that you have to market it. We’d all like to write content that everyone links to just by sheer virtue of its greatness. Some people will argue that that’s “pure” and marketing is somehow a stain on real greatness, but (pardon me) that’s bullshit. Wanting to be recognized solely for our virtues is nothing more than an ego trip. If you sit around waiting for a job because you think you’re a genius, but never apply or never talk to anyone, good luck. Your ego is in your way. The same goes for content. Content marketing requires marketing, and that starts with you.
(1) Reach Out to People
Remember what I said about creating content that you can’t wait to share? Well, here’s your chance. If you churn out crap just to build links, you’ll be embarrassed to tell people about it, and you should be. If you know you built something great, you’ll be eager to show your friends and peers. So, show them – contact people directly and let them know you have something great. Don’t just tweet it once and forget – email people, IM them, call if you have to.
(2) Time Your Launch
Too often, we put hours or days into a piece of content and then just hit “Publish” when it’s done, like 8pm on a Sunday when our whole industry is on planes to a conference that starts Monday morning. Plan your content publishing like you would plan a product launch: pre-announce that it’s coming, time your launch well, and don’t be afraid to re-announce. You’re not going to get anyone bent out of shape because you tweeted the same link in the morning AND the afternoon (as long as you don’t make a habit out of it). Only a small percentage of your followers are paying attention at any given moment.
Although I think timing depends a lot on your audience, Dan Zarrella has written some great content on the science of timing content. HubSpot also has a tool called TweetWhen that you can use to see when you’re most likely to be re-tweeted.
(3) Have a Promotion Plan
It’s funny how we’ll pour our hearts and souls into a piece of content, but then, as soon as it’s finished, we’re on to the next project. Then, we wonder why no one cares. I have to admit, I’ve been guilty of this one too many times. Don’t forget the importance of what happens after you publish your content. Better yet, build a marketing plan that covers those next steps. Hit your social media outlets, actively build links, do guest-posts on relevant sites, etc. We see content go viral and assume it just happened by magic – 10% of the time, that may be true, but the other 90% someone hit the streets and made it happen.
(4) Post It Somewhere Else
It’s tough to put a lot of time into a piece of content and not let it live on your own site, but sometimes you need to go where your audience is. Take Oli Gardner’s massive Noob Guide to Online Marketing published earlier this year on SEOmoz. Oli could’ve easily posted this guide on Unbounce, but he opted to target a slightly different but still very relevant audience. Over 4,000 Tweets and almost 100K visits later, it’s hard to deny that this tactic had a positive impact for his reputation and company.
Greatness Isn’t Instant
One last tip: At the speed of the internet, we tend to think that every success is overnight. Some content takes days or even weeks to make its mark. I think the days of trying to make Digg's home-page left us with some bad habits, and one of those is giving up on content that doesn’t explode in the first hour after it’s published. It’s nice when it happens, but too often that explosion just left behind the charred remains of servers and nothing but some traffic logs to show for it.
If you believe your content is great, give it a chance. It could catch on because of a guest post, a well-placed link, an interview, or any of a hundred factors that happen in the days and weeks after the content goes live. Even if you finally decide it did fail, learn what you can from it. People want to bank everything on one-shot content, but even the best content marketers don’t succeed 100% of the time (I’d say they’re lucky to bat 0.200) – failed content still carries valuable information, and you can build the next piece of great content on top of it.



