Daniel Burstein says, “Every year at Email Summit, we ask marketers for their predictions. Before MarketingSherpa reporter Courtney Eckerle interviews you about your marketing predictions in the Email Summit Media Center, I figured it was only fair to put a stake in the ground and make some predictions you could hold me to as well. Prediction #1: Convergence is the watchword for digital marketing this year You’ve already seen (and will continue to see) convergence among marketing and business software platforms, and this trend will continue to grow as the line blurs between publishers, brands... [...]

Jan Vels Jensen says, “SEO is not dead, despite what a lot of people have been saying recently. You still need to ensure that you’re using best on-site SEO practices. If your competitors are optimizing their Web pages effectively through strategic use of keywords, internal linking, and image optimization—and you aren’t—then you’ll perform poorly in the search engine results pages (SERPs). That poor performance will have an impact on everything from traffic to conversions to ROI. You still need to do the basics. However, although SEO may not be dead, it has been evolving”. The... [...]

Guillaume Delloue says, “Online video is big. Huge, even. Digital marketing firm Syndacast estimates that 74% of web traffic will be video in the next couple of years. Yet, a majority of companies fail to use this rapidly growing medium beyond the classic marketing video on their site’s homepage. In 2015, video empowers savvy marketers and salespeople to increase conversions throughout the entire sales cycle. Win these four key conversion battles with video strategies. Convert Visitors to Leads: “How-To Videos” on the Blog A video blog post can be a powerful top of the funnel tactic... [...]

Pamela Vaughan says, “You may have heard of this little thing called Google. You know, where 1.17 billion people go to find stuff on the web? But Google is more than just a search engine. So much more. In fact, Google offers a ton of tools in addition to its search engine that can be hugely valuable if you’re a marketer. So we decided to round up some of the most essential Google marketing tools at your disposal so you can be sure your business is taking full advantage of all Google has to offer. 1) Google My Business Want to get yourself some free advertising on Google? I kid you... [...]

Graham Charlton says, “When used well, drop-down menus should help users to navigate more effectively.  They allow easy access to various sections of a website, and allow designers to tidy up busy layouts. In this post I want to look at how drop-downs should be activated. Is it better that users open menus by mousing over them, or by a click? Hover or click: pros and cons I did float this question on Twitter recently and received a range of answers, though perhaps hover was slightly favoured, at least for desktop”. How should drop-down menus be activated? Hover or click? ‘Econsultancy’... [...]

Martin Link says, “Remember when the meta keyword tag was popular? Or when a good SEO strategy was to put keywords in everything (URL, title, description, headings, images ALT text, side nav, main nav, footer nav, in the keywords and 231 times in the body content)? Welcome to 2015, where the world of search is a completely different game. In fact, in 2015 you need to check site pages to be certain keywords aren’t overused in key elements. So why are so many SEOs still recommending that webpages include the “targeted keyword” in the URL, title, headings, and corpus? Can you... [...]

Graham Charlton says, “It’s easy to become bamboozled when thinking about SEO, but there’s a lot you can do without any expert knowledge.  Here I’ve compiled 30+ tips to help small businesses improve on their SEO efforts. These are all simple and free to implement, it’s just a case of allocating the time to put them into practice. Think content We rank well thanks to the content we produce. It’s the best way to make your site relevant to the terms people are searching for and to give people a reason to visit your site. This means making sure the content on every... [...]

Ruth Burr Reedy says, “SEO is a seller’s market. The supply of people with SEO experience is currently no match for the demand for search engine marketing services, as anyone who has spent months searching for the right SEO candidate can tell you. Even in a big city with a booming tech scene (like Seattle, LA, New York, or Austin), experienced SEOs are thin on the ground. In a local market where the economy is less tech-driven (like, say, Oklahoma City, where I work), finding an experienced SEO (even one with just a year or two of experience) is like finding a unicorn“. Hiring... [...]

Lyndon Antcliff says, “It’s useful to remind ourselves that the act of publishing is a methodology that has been developed over thousands of years, and has used the most efficient technology of the day in which to deliver the message. We see that whilst technology constantly changes over time, it’s still the message that is the primary objective of publishing, the act of communication goes from one to many, from many to many. Communication that influences, persuades, angers, motivates… etc. But what is this to an SEO? The objective of an SEO is to efficiently get as many people as possible... [...]

Sam Carulso says, “It’s common knowledge that search engine optimization (SEO) often plays a major role in how companies group their key terms, whether they be in the headline or in the bottom of a page. This practice can also lead some companies to avoid testing certain areas of their site in order to maintain page rank. However, there is one area where company value can easily utilized without risking online ranking. Here’s a recent experiment where we tested one minor change in an SEO headline and achieved a significant lift in conversion. The MECLABS’ Research Partner wanted to concentrate... [...]