While it may come as a surprise to some people, SEO is still alive and kicking.

Inc. magazine published click-bait piece recently with the title “SEO is Dead”. It promoted a “new” concept they refer to as online audience optimization (OAO). But here’s the thing. OAO isn’t anything new. In fact, it’s what smart SEOs have been doing for a really long time. As search engines have shifted toward more sophisticated language processing, creating content people love has become absolutely critical.

There’s nothing simple about creating a content strategy.

Maintaining and improving a content strategy over time? That’s even tougher. However, the odds are definitely in your favor. Only 44% of marketers have bothered to document their publishing strategy. Your efforts to refine and improve will give you a serious advantage! Here are 10 of the most common things marketers fail to include in their content strategy:

What is the secret behind the perfect blog post?

Is it the formatting, the research, the editing, the optimization, or the images?

Quality isn’t always a measure of whether content is going to go viral. Actually, neither is budget. Studies have found that 60% of viral advertising isn’t created by Fortune 500s. It’s crafted by smaller brands. You have the power to earn thousands of Facebook shares, ReTweets, and +1s. And today, we’ll share some tips on how you can unleash it.

If you’re using email marketing to promote your content, you’re certainly on the right track. Recent studies by MarketingSherpa have found that organizations across industries uniformly believe that email drives an incredible amount of ROI, illustrated below:

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Feeling a little stumped about your next article?

Never fear, for you’ve come to the right place. Even the world’s most creative bloggers find themselves in need of blog post ideas every once in a while. Even worse, it can be easy to find yourself writing what feels like the same thing over and over again.

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The majority of blogs aren’t a success. While that truth is harsh and depressing, don’t let it deter you from establishing a content strategy. Anyone can launch and maintain a legendary business blog, provided they have sufficient dedication and direction. According to HubSpot’s Rick Burnes, one of the worst things you can do is to “start a consistent dialogue with your customers and then stop.” An equally dangerous mistake is to start publishing without knowing exactly what we’re doing…

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Are you reaching your content marketing goals?

I’d be lying if I said this question didn’t keep many of our peers and colleagues awake at night. Despite the explosion of metrics and analytics tools over the past several years, many marketers still think that a data-driven approach to marketing is best left to the nerds. We’ll clue you in on a little secret. Agile, metrics-focused marketing isn’t for the faint of heart, but it’s not too hard for anyone. We’ve compiled a list of the most important measures, tools, and tactics, so you can begin gaining a comprehensive view of how well your work is performing:

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“So, stick a fork in it. Guest blogging is done, it’s gotten too spammy.”

Every marketer with an internet collection gasped when Matt Cutts, Google’s head webspam fighter, published these words on his personal blog a little over a week ago. For decades, guest blogging’s been the backbone of many brilliant brands’ outreach strategies, and often with remarkable results. Case studies have reported remarkable results, including 400% jumps in subscribers from landing a single post on a high-authority site:

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Great SEO isn’t really a standalone practice anymore. In fact, it’s really difficult to seperate search engine optimization from social media and content marketing, because these three factors form the pillar of a modern inbound marketing strategy. Keyword research and optimization can improve the performance of your SEO blog posts in search, while social media shares send a clear message to Google that your content is quality. You won’t get far without the putting effort into all three legs of the contemporary marketing triad!

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