SEO This Week Episode 14 – Content Marketing, Disabling AMP, and Menus

1. SEO This Week Episode 14 – Content Marketing, Disabling AMP, and Menus olympiaseo.com/seo-this-week-episode-14/ 12/12/2016 December 12, 2016 in Marketing News 10 Lessons Learned about Digital Co-op Advertising More and more brands are putting co-op advertising funds toward digital media. We’ve been watching this activity for the last few years, and just last month I had a chance to discuss the changing landscape with local media executives at a Borrell Associates event in San Francisco. Read More Our Insights: As I was going through this article I was brainstorming ideas on how to create our own Co-Op advertising opportunity for local businesses. Imagine pooling your money together with other businesses like yours to push your way into a higher spot on digital platforms that you may otherwise be priced out of because big players are driving up the costs. Seems like an idea worth pursuing. Anyway, this article highlights some things that were discovered when looking into a co-op for brand marketing (think Ford and Ford dealers, that is a potential co-op) and how they are moving into the digital marketing space more and more because of the return on investment. Anyway, this article highlights some things that were discovered when looking into a co-op for brand marketing (think Ford and Ford dealers, that is a potential co-op) and how they are moving into the digital marketing space more and more because of the return on investment. 1/5

2. 5 Things To Scrap From Your Content Marketing Strategy + Infographic Content marketing is so integral to the success of an online business that a strong strategy is required. And like most things in life, there is a right and wrong way to go about it. Read More Our Insights: This is a pretty good article, however, the title is miss leading (one of the things the article tells you not to do), but we will let that slide for now. One of the points is that shorter content is not quality content. Frankly, I couldn’t disagree more, if you are answering a question with 500 words and adding another 1000 to fluff up your content, you are doing it wrong. Write using the amount number of words it takes to answer the question, and if that answer raises more questions, answer those too. Typically, we shoot for 1300 words when we are creating content, however, that is only a goal line, sometimes we hit it, sometimes we don’t. The second thing we agree and disagree with is the link building section at the bottom. It seems to have been written as an afterthought because they ran out of things to say. However, it makes a good point about not getting low-quality links, more to point, don’t depend on software, etc. to boost your sites up. It also says if you create high-quality content people will link to your content. Well, if you don’t promote your content, how are they going to promote it? You have to do some link building to promote your work, no way around it. Telling people to just write good stuff is not realistic or responsible. 5 Content Marketing Ideas for January 2017 2/5

3. From creating a video series or publishing a book to celebrating the Chinese New Year, January 2017 is full of content marketing opportunities for your business. Read More Our Insights: It is nice to seen an author take a topic that has been written about so much and make it a bit entertaining, as well as useful. A couple of points there that we like is the encouragement to create videos for your content. It is not that hard to do, and if your original articles are good quality, they can become popular. Second, we like the idea of adding courses to your content marketing mix. For example, our agency could help out the DYI community by creating courses on SEO, local marketing, ranking in Google Maps, and more. Finally, the thought of publishing a book has been a dream of many. However, publishers were not going to support just everyone in their dream. Today, we can publish our stuff, especially with Kindle and other e-reader platforms that encourage self-publishing. Google Working On Enabling Searchers To Disable AMP Update: This is not about webmasters disabling AMP but rather searchers disabling viewing AMP. Read More Our Insights: The concept of AMP is actually a pretty good one, however, the execution of it has left something to be desired. First, you need a plugin (for WordPress) or custom coding for other CMS’s in order to implement it, and that isn’t cheap by any means. Second, it shuts down your ability to use JavaScript on your site, that’s what makes it faster, but that also means that your web forms will no longer be available. So forget about getting people to opt-in. As a matter of fact, Google had to custom code AMP so that it would allow even YouTube videos to be displayed, as well as their own Ads platforms. In short, unless you are just writing to write, or have the dollars to spend to customize your unique AMP experience, I would recommend not using it right now until Google gets its act together. 3/5

4. Social Media Marketing Statistics are Important to Small Businesses These social media marketing statistics will help your small business make more informed decisions about promotions on social networks. Read More Our Insights: If you were wondering if social media is right for your business, check out these statistics. They tell us that even if you are not the type of business that caters to customers on a social media platform, you really should be using them for branding and online reputation management. Getting your most loyal customers and employees talking to and about your business on social sites like FaceBook and Twitter now is the best way to avoid, or at least reduce the impact of, a negative news cycle later. Menu Attributes – Why Your Services Page Just Got More Important 4/5

5. It’s time for every business to take a second look at their services page and be sure that it is a great page that converts your local customers. Last week Google added Attributes to the Google My Business Dashboard. Earlier this week they added the ability to add menus via the Google My Business API. Read More Our Insights: This is actually good news for Google My Business users who are looking to highlight their services better. While this option is not yet working, I foresee some great opportunities for businesses to reach more people using cards. Combine these changes with the changes we have seen to Schema markup in the last couple of week and we potentially have a situation where Google is actually trying to help small businesses versus crush them (but we don’t go that far just yet). Images from lsainsider.com, positionly.com, practicalecommerce.com, seroundtable.com, smallbiztrends.com, blumenthals.com Husband, father, dog owner, marketer. Clint Butler, an Army vet, founded Olympia SEO to combine his love of marketing with his desire to help small and medium sized business succeed. 5/5