Creative Marketing Channel

SEO for Lancaster, PA and beyond.

“To stand out you need to be wherever those customers are looking and that means social, that means search, that means word of mouth.” – Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing

A few weeks ago a tweet by Bob Tripathi, founder of Instant E-Training, alerted me to a fantastic video interview with Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing. When it comes to search, social, and content, Lee Odden is the one of the best so I had to click, watch and listen.  Here are a few of my favorite takeaways from this content marketing strategy gold mine:

1. Create searcher personas
Searcher personas reflect people: They are the many faces of your customers. What are their wants, needs, and consumption habits? What are their typical online behaviors during different phases of the buying cycle? Answer these questions to determine their search behavior. Understand your personas and optimize your content uniquely for them.

2. Create relevancy
Meeting the needs of personas creates relevancy and is the first step in developing relevant content. Relevancy is the connection between what people want and what you want to sell. “Instead of optimizing for keywords ’cause they’re popular, we’re actually optimizing for keywords that we know are a reflection of where that customer is in the buying cycle, ” explains Odden.

3. Listen to customers
There are a variety of social media monitoring and data collection tools that allow you to collect information about your customers. Which social media channels they prefer, their buying habits, as well as common phrases or social keywords they like to use can be discovered with these tools. Another big benefit is this information helps you create socially interesting or relevant content.

4. Distribute and promote
Crappy content with a snappy headline will beat high quality content with a boring title every time. Package your content to purposefully inspire others to share it or link back to it. Distribute it on your platform, to social media and to other online publishing communities. An RSS feed and social sharing tools are must haves (for example Slideshare and Revver).

5. Create an engaging social community
People with common interests like to connect with each other so create a place where they can do this. If your community has the right climate your customers will happily share information and tips about your brand with one other for you. Don’t push your brand at your community; rather, encourage your community to enthusiastically share your brand.

6. Measure your results
Social monitoring AND analytics tell where engagement is happening. This information enables you to intelligently scale any approach up or down as needed. Evaluate both on a regular basis and refine your content marketing campaign as needed.

If this information piques your interest then Odden’s newly released book Optimize is a must have.  ”Optimize will provide you with the tools necessary to plan, implement, and scale an integrated content marketing strategy which will boost your relevance and increase your online visibility.”  I ordered mine and can’t wait to read it!

The Creative Marketing Channel specializes in optimized content marketing and distribution. Improve your Google rank, deepen visitor experiences, and increase brand awareness, leads, and conversions when you hire The Creative Marketing Channel to create your company’s content.  Connect with us on YouTube, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+and Facebook. Email us at cl@2designs.com.

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SEO for Central PA and beyond.

Danny Sullivan, editor and chief of Search Engine Land broke the story first.  Any day now Google will release a focused new algorithm update whose sole purpose is to seek out and penalize over optimized websites. Should you be wary of Google’s impending update? What exactly is an over-optimized site?

1. An over optimized site has too may keywords says Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google. For example, let’s say your company wants to market to Lancaster, New Oxford, Abbottstown, Hanover, Gettysburg, York, Harrisburg, and Camp Hill Pennsylvania. Well, that’s a mighty long list of keywords. An outdated or uneducated web designer or SEO company will litter a list like this throughout your site – in your meta data (the hidden area only search engines read), behind your photos, in your header and footer, and throughout your content. Cutts says these websites will get the smackdown.

2. An over optimized site has exchanged too many links, according to Cutts. Did your website or SEO company participate in a link exchange program on your behalf? If you’re not sure, you’d better find out. Very soon, websites with an overabundance of backlinks acquired from link exchange sources will feel the pain.

According to Cutts, one of the best things you can do is remove low quality content (like long keyword lists) from your site and replace it with compelling, useful content which answers visitor questions and inspires visitor actions. If a user finds the answer to his/her search question on a website, he/she will not bounce out, return to search, and click further search results. Instead, he/she will stick around, showing Google this website answered a query with useful content. The result: This visitor is happy. Sullivan reminds us, “You have to think beyond signals that are just SEO: They (search engines) are extracting sentiment now. ” In other words, it matters whether visitors are happy or annoyed. Social sharing, leaving a comment, spending time, signing up, and visiting more than one page are all indicators of visitor happiness.

If you’re concerned about Google’s upcoming algorithm change, email me at CatLockey@gmail.com. I’ll look over your website content and code (for free) and let you know if I see any keyword stuffing, weak content, or other visitor deterrents.

To learn more about the difference between low quality content vs. compelling, useful content, check out these posts:

Your Content Marketing Core Matters

Six Content Marketing Myths – Digital Marketing Wisdom for Businesses

6 SEO Ripoff Dead GiveAways: Don’t let that Marketer Make a Clown out of You

Corporate Content Marketing for Best in Class Results

Content Marketing: What it is and Why it Works

The Creative Marketing Channel belongs to oz 2 designs LLC – a small, flexible, full service digital marketing agency.  Connect with us on YouTube, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+and Facebook or call us at 717-586-8386. Email us at cl@oz2designs.com.

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SEO for PA, MD and beyond.

Sharks circle when food is nearby and small businesses who vaguely grasp SEO are good food.  Perhaps your business has received a call like this, “Hi this is James Walker, data service provider for Google, Yahoo, and Bing.  Hey listen wanted to give you guys a call, we’ve got a really good opportunity there in your marketplace, uh, we’ve got openings on the first page of the search engines specifically for your your industry, um so when you get in, give me a call … Essentially what this does is that anybody in your area that’s looking for the products or services that you offer, uh, it’s guaranteed your your website, your business  will come up on the first page of the search engines, um, so call me when you get it, huge huge opportunity…”

SEO is optimizing digital assets (website, blog, videos etc…) for search.

SEO definitely offers your businesses a “huge, huge opportunity.” At least that much is true about the cold call script above.  Fact is, more than any other marketing strategy, SEO has the greatest impact on lead generation. Therefore; small business owner, you’re on track when you say you need SEO.

What’s the worry?  SEO is SEO right?

Not all SEO is good SEO. I love this statement from Hubspot’s Corey Eridon’s  7 Sure-Fire Signs Your SEO Sucks,  “There are lots of things from the 90s that are still quite magical … alternative music, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, boy band choreography. 90s SEO is not on that list. That means if you are trying to reach an arbitrary keyword density percentage, creating keyword dense doorway pages that redirect to another destination, freaking out over your meta keywords and keyword stuffing your meta description field, or engaging in link buying, link farming, or link exchanges, your SEO is way out of date. Not only will these black hat tactics not help your SEO, but they will also fiercely harm it. Google Panda has made sure of that.”

How to protect your business from the 90′s SEO specialist.

Here is your armor. The only SEO that offers a huge, huge opportunity is the written word.  Those paragraphs on your website – they matter a whole lot. A real SEO specialist is a content marketer who will optimize your website (and other digital assets) based on your business goals and research findings.  She/he will create useful, compelling, optimized content around longtail keyword phrases. We’re talking about pages of the written word both visitors and search engines  read.  Optimized content will answer visitor queries, draw the reader in, and inspire comments and social sharing.  For deeper understanding read “Your Content Marketing Core Matters”  which details how to optimize a website.  Small business takeaway – SEO  is about content.

2012 SEO is Content Marketing.

Google continues to weed out  B.S. on the web by penalizing all of the black hat tactics listed above as well as weak content, redundant content, copied content, poor visitor engagement, shoddy backlinks and too many ads on a website.  Google rewards websites and other digital assets for fresh, relevant content that answers visitor queries,  encourages visitor engagement and inspires visitor actions – especially social sharing on Google+.

Call or email the Creative Marketing Channel

Improve your Google rank, deepen visitor experiences, and increase brand awareness, leads, and conversions through proven SEO strategies – call or email us at 717-586-8386 or cl@oz2designs.com.   Connect with us on YouTube, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+and Facebook.  The Creative Marketing Channel belongs to oz 2 designs LLC – a small, flexible, full service digital marketing agency.

Learn more about SEO here:

Your Content Marketing Core Matters

Six Content Marketing Myths – Digital Marketing Wisdom for Businesses

6 SEO Ripoff Dead GiveAways: Don’t let that Marketer Make a Clown out of You

Corporate Content Marketing for Best in Class Results

Content Marketing: What it is and Why it Works

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Best in class companies utilize content marketing for brand awareness, customer acquisition, lead generation, and customer retention. It’s no surprise more than 60% of ALL companies plan to substantially increase their content marketing efforts in 2012.  Why is content marketing so popular? What content marketing tactics do best in class companies employ? Here, in part six of my six part content marketing series, I answer these questions and more.

Why is corporate content marketing so popular?  Great content ranks well in search and a good search ranking leads to more traffic, leads, and conversions. Google’s Panda update in 2011 changed SEO forever declaring content the primary force responsible for best rankings.

What kind of corporate content does Google like best? According to Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, Google rewards interesting, unique content because this type of content fosters visitor happiness. Yes, Google actually looks at visitor happiness now. Is your content engaging? Do visitors spend time reading it? Does your content answer visitor queries? Does it motivate visitors to perform an action? Does it inspire them to return to your site (your content core)? If you answered yes to these questions then Google is already giving your content and your search rank a big thumbs up. “Think more broadly about on page optimization – not just keywords,” explains Fishkin. Compelling images and creative content encourages a deeper experience for your visitors. (From Advanced On-Page Optimization – Whiteboard Friday by SEOmoz). Big takeaway: More relevant, unique and interesting content directly correlates with higher rankings and a deeper visitor experiences.

How do best in class companies create all of their great content? Producing enough engaging content continues to challenge most companies to some degree. One way they meet this challenge is outsource their content marketing to businesses like mine. Take a look at the percentage of companies who outsourced content marketing in 2010 and 2011:

(Data from MarketingProfs B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends).  Since 60% of all companies intend to increase their content marketing in 2012, I predict outsourcing percentages will grow as well.

What content marketing tactics do best in class companies employ? According to the MarketingProfs /The Content Marketing Institute’s report ” B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks report, Budgets & Trends,”  best in class companies share 7 content marketing practices:
1. They invest 31% of their marketing budget into content marketing.
2. They segment their content based on the buying cycle.
3. Content marketing is C-Suite supported.
4. They plan to increase their content marketing over the next 12 months.
5. They use at least nine content marketing tactics.
6. They outpace less effective companies adopting blogs, articles, videos, eBooks, social media, and mobile content.
7. They have an effective distribution network using at least 3 – 4 social channels at a higher rate than their peers.

The Creative Marketing Channel specializes in optimized corporate content marketing and distribution. Improve your Google rank, deepen visitor experiences, and increase brand awareness, leads, and conversions when you hire The Creative Marketing Channel to create your company’s content.  Connect with us on YouTube, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+and Facebook. Email us at cl@2designs.com.

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Content Marketing for Lancaster, York, Harrisburg, Camp Hill, PA and beyond – Part III of a Six Part Series.

The biggest trade show in the world is happening right now and it’s hard to miss those businesses participating.  That’s because the show is online and active participants know how to show up on search.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Content Marketing for Baltimore, Maryland and beyond – Part II of a Six Part Series
Businesses around the globe know content marketing brings traffic, leads, and conversions. From social media to webinars there are a multitude of content marketing assets. Yet, each and every content marketing strategy must begin – and end – with your website. When constructed using a solid content marketing strategy most websites make a a bold appearance in organic search.  Below I share what constitutes an effective content marketing core.

Creation of a Fierce Digital Contender
Google looks for relevant, original, optimized content and solid website construction which is why search engine friendly websites feature smart content marketing. Here, I’ll briefly share how my company creates a fierce digital contender.  First, (after we qualify a client) we learn all we can about his/her business and business goals. Our Objective: Create a a drilled down list of categories with future expansion in mind.  We create our list through a demographic and keyword evaluation process.  This means we ask A LOT of questions, review a lot of materials and do research.  After our list is approved, we move to the construction, design, and content creation phases.  The end result: A stunning website complete with a solid content marketing strategy for maximum ROI.

A Solid Content Marketing Core Example
Janney Painting Inc., an East Coast commercial and industrial painting company in Manchester, Maryland hired my company to create their new website. Take a look at it:

Rather than the traditional “Contact Us” and “Services” buttons you see something far more detailed and specific.

Search Results Tell a Story

Now, take a look at their organic Google search results – keep in mind their new site was loaded to the internet September 7th 2011.

More noted Google search results:

Quarry Painting Company #8
Asphalt Plant Painting – #7
Grain Elevator Painting Contractor #5

A Strong Core for Long Term ROI
The results my company achieved for Janney Painting Inc. in less than two months are impressive. Janney Industrial Painting’s ROI to date is an astounding 524%.   My company recently created their brand new blog and their first article. Over time, Janney Painting Inc.’s organic rank for a multitude of relevant keywords and phrases will continually increase inspiring even more traffic, leads, and conversions.   As a marketing tactic, SEO’s ROI for both products and services is an astounding 68% or higher. To survive and thrive in today’s digital world, every B2B and B2C business needs a strong content marketing core.

About The Creative Marketing Channel
Do potential customers find your website on search? If not then your business needs a strong content marketing strategy from a qualified digital marketing agency.  The Creative Marketing Channel belongs to oz 2 designs LLC, Pennsylvania and Maryland’s first choice for SEO,  SEM, animation, website design, content marketing, print design, email marketing, and all things interactive and digital. Inquire about hiring us here.   Connect with us on Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook. Email us at cl@oz2designs.com and stay tuned for Part 3 of this 6 part content marketing series.

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Sorry bottom feeders, but Google says your time has come. An intense, new algorithmic adjustment arrived the other day and it doesn’t tolerate your kind.  Projected to influence almost 10.5 billion search results every month, this adjustment lowers the rank of scraper sites, link farms, and other useless sites while increasing the rank of quality sites.  What motivated this change? Google’s post,  Finding more high quality sites in search explains,  “Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.”

Quality means increased visibility
If there was ever a justification for content marketing this is it.  From now on, Google rewards websites with “original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis…” with higher search rankings amplifying the strong bond between search, social, and SEO.  Want to boost your brand’s visibility on search? Fill your website and blog with compelling content.  As TopRank’s Lee Odden says, ” If Social Media and SEO fit together like peanut butter and jelly then content is the bread that holds them together.”  Add social engagement from authoritative users into the mix and I predict powerful results. Google says this recent algorithm adjustment is just a beginning and they plan to present us with more changes in the future.

They were warned.
The developers and SEO companies whose sites are being penalized for poor quality have known all along what Google considers the high road.  My guess is they ignored Google’s quality guidelines because their black hat strategies were working for them.  Doesn’t look like they’ll work anymore. Take a look at Google’s quality expectations:

Quality guidelines – basic principles

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”




• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”




• Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.




• Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Breaking News 2/28/11:

The data is in and the story is huge. According to search engine land, associated content is taking a big hit. Here is a brief look.  Top losers:  ezinearticles.com, associatedcontent.com, suite101.com, hubpages.com and buzzle.com.  Top winners: youtube.com, ebay.com, facebook.com, and instructables.com.   Biggest surprise to me -  slideshare.com and tehnorati.com are on the losers list.  “Number Crunchers: Who Lost in Google’s ‘Farmer’ Algorithm Change” by Danny Sullivan is a MUST READ. Take a moment and review Sullivan’s compelling data and share your thoughts here.

If you would like to hire oz 2 designs LLC to handle your digital marketing and design, email cl@oz2designs.com or call 717-586-8386.

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“As the global economy struggles to correct itself, and social media marketing becomes a strategic imperative, companies will have exciting opportunities to expand in new directions this year…the current shift in geotargeting, mobile marketing, and online reputation management require that small businesses modify their plans to surpass competitors.” – Susan Gunelius, Reuters.

“Still Waiting to Commit to a Strategy…You’re Going to Lose” – Adam Singer
Gunelius is correct; current trends point businesses toward a holistic digital marketing strategy but, the fact is, if your business hasn’t made a commitment to digital yet, surpassing your competitors (even with a gigantic budget) probably won’t happen. Those who’ve already implemented a smart digital marketing strategy are so far ahead of their competition it’s disturbing.  Renowned digital marketing blogger and PR expert Adam Singer exemplifies the seriousness of this type of loss with a simple runner’s graphic.  In it, the newcomer to digital is running uphill struggling to make it to the top while his competition has already crested the hill and is enjoying the benefits of his win.  Stop looking for an easy way out – there isn’t one. Singer writes, “Figure out how the digital channels can best serve your brand. The net result should be a focused strategy that is based on your overall business objectives, economic value to the organization, and a tactical plan.” If you’re in the C-Suite, do your homework and understand digital marketing now, because it’s already too late.

Figure it out!
Here are some social media marketing fundamentals.  Social media starts with content and compelling content is predominantly found on blogs and websites with blogs.  Compelling content is a viable marketing tool. Gunelius on Reuters explains, “Amazing content is essential to break through the noise.” Yes, social media includes Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Delicious, Buzz etc. but before we go there it’s imperative you see the following key distinction: Your blog and your website are YOUR brand. Facebook and Twitter are not your brand – they are Facebook and Twitter’s brands. The goal is to get your friends and followers to link back to your brand.  Have social media accounts but no blog? You’re losing.  Fill your blog with compelling, keyword optimized content which inspires others to share what you write on Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Buzz, and more. This is how you boost your brand’s visibility on search.  Are you posting weekly on your blog?  Is your content interesting enough to share? Do you regularly add fresh content to your website? Your answers to all should be YES.

Search engine attention and author authority
Compelling blog content combined with the creative use of Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and other social media channels is a good start.  Specifically, you build communities on various social media platforms, share valuable information with your communities in an interesting way, then maybe they’ll share your information with their communities.  Sounds simple, right? It isn’t. Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz writes, ” We now know that those link sharing activities on Twitter and Facebook are evaluated based on the person/entity sharing them through a score Google calls ‘Author Authority,’ and Bing calls ‘Social Authority.’” Recently both Google and Bing confessed they give more search engine attention to links tweeted and retweeted by authoritative Twitter users. Know how to leverage social and search.

Time is not on your side.
You won’t get instant gratification from a newly implemented digital marketing plan. It doesn’t matter how much money you throw at it, the fact remains, a good digital marketing plan needs to be up and running at least six months before you’ll see any benefits.  At least.  A year is a much more realistic time frame.  If you study up you’ll understand the daily commitment,  knowledge base, and creativity required to make it work.  Ready to learn more?  Keep an eye out for “A Digital Marketing Study Primer for C.E.O.’s – Part II” and find out how to vet a social media marketing agency and discover how much you should pay them.

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I pronounce you FREE – free to update and add to your website anytime using a content management system! Wondering if a content management system (CMS) is right for your business? Then a quick review of the information here will allow you to make an educated decision. Read the rest of this entry »

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