I’ve got you covered.
I sift through trillions (well, hundreds) of online publications to stay on top of marketing news that might affect your online business.
In the marketing spotlight this week:
- A slew of SEO updates;
- Facebook’s EdgeRank is dead;
- Embed audio on Google+;
- Best Twitter analytics tool;
- How to know if Gmail tabs affected your open rates;
- How to back up your email list;
- Google’s new Quick Answers;
- Twitter IPO?
- and much more.
Let’s start with the news from Traffic Generation Café.
At TrafficGenerationCafe.com
Schema markup allows your content to look better in social media and search engine results. Sounds like something we all should have on our sites, doesn’t yet?
Unfortunately, it was always somewhat intimidating and hard to implement without a single conclusive resource to do it all and without any coding. This post will give you options to do your own Schema markup (including the latest in-depth “Article” markup) with any combination of the following:
- in Google Webmaster Tools;
- with a free WordPress plugin;
- with a more enhanced premium WP plugin;
- (bonus) a special recommendation for affiliate marketers.
Get your content to look better in the next 5 minutes.
Viral content. What is it about all those posts that go viral? What do they have that they don’t?
Your ideas are great.
Your content is compelling.
But no one is sharing it.
Let’s be honest: that’s the main problem that we all face when our blog is new.
We create content, no one hears about it, we create more, and so on until we’re tired. That’s why most of the bloggers fail.
Guess what – you CAN get more shares, tweets and comments from your post. (Yes, you!) That’s what this post will show you how to do.
Question: Why do you think people keep shouting SEO is dead?
Answer: Because they feel helpless they can’t get ranked.
It almost feels like the 1990s again. No one seems to know what to do with their Websites any more, or how to link out…
That wild, crazy link-sotted party that has been raging for ten years almost seems to be winding down. Whatever will Web marketers do now that they cannot spam Google’s index so easily any more?
Write about Current Trends to Get More Traffic
I follow marketing news pretty closely (that’s obvious, right? – after all, I write these sizable Weekly Marketing Skinnies every week), but I’ve never written a post on a trending topic in the past.
However that particular time I was curious to learn more about the topic of in-depth articles on Google and how they could potentially drive more traffic to smaller sites right now or in the future. Since I couldn’t find any decent information on any other blog, other than the worn-out WHAT kind of post, but not the HOW posts, I researched the topic and wrote one myself.
Why am I telling you this?
Because my post was first of its kind, it was mentioned in a follow-up post at Moz.com as well as featured in a BlogWorld.com post:
Of course, it ended up in many links back to my original post (I’ve talked about those links in my special SEO Skinny – the good and the bad behind them), plus traffic back to Traffic Generation Café.
Sure you can say I got mentioned because I am Ana from Traffic Generation Café and you are a brand new blogger, but let me tell you: as much as I’d like to believe every other blogger should know who I am by now, they don’t. I’ve never had anything to do with Moz.com or BlogWorld.com (although I’ve had the pleasure of being mentioned by BlogWorld in the past).
They found my post because it hit the spot and was shared by dozens of my readers all about social media. All I did was promote it as I always do with any post I write.
YOU can do it too.
It takes time and effort to stay ahead of the news and trends, but you can start with keeping up with my Weekly Marketing Skinnies (the best way to do it is to have it delivered to your inbox every Saturday if you are a subscriber to Traffic Generation Café traffic hacks).
SEO
A LOT is happening in SEO these days. Constant updates, changes, announcements – most of which might directly affect your business if you are working towards getting more search engine traffic.
So much so that I decided to put together a special Skinny dedicated to SEO.
I am planning on keeping it updated with the latest from Google, plus SEO community reactions and solutions.
I’ve already linked to the SEO Skinny above, but here it is one more time:
State of SEO and Link Building: Continuous Coverage of the Recent Google Updates and Their Effects on Your Site
In the SEO spotlight this week were:
- New “Nofollow” Video from Matt Cutts;
- Webmasters crying “sky is a-falling!” and fearing to link out AT ALL;
- Google quietly updated their Link Schemes document;
- How to build/not to build links according to it;
- Manual Webspam Actions in Google Webmaster Tools;
- Unnatural Links to Your Site: What to Do;
- Links from Scraped Content: Can They Hurt You?
TL;DR If you want to stay updated on SEO and Google, but don’t want to sift through hundreds of publications, bookmark this post and come back often to keep up.
And here’s one more for the road.
Best of Matt Cutts: “It’s party in here!”
Now that you had a good laugh, go read the SEO Skinny (no worries, it’ll open in a new window).
Social Media
Facebook’s EdgeRank is Dead
EdgeRank, Facebook’s original News Feed ranking system, is dead. The current News Feed algorithm doesn’t have a catchy name, but it’s that EdgeRank is a thing of the past.
Learn more about Facebook’s new machine learning-based algorithm in this post at MarketingLand.com.
Embed Audio into Google+ Updates
Google+ has introduced SoundCloud embeds for Google+ posts.
Now when you share any SoundCloud URL to Google+, a widget will appear that allows you to play the sound directly within Google+.
By the way, Facebook has been offering SoundCloud embeds for quite some time now; I had not idea. You?
And now we know.
Best Twitter Analytics at Your Fingertips
Introducing Twitonomy, one of the best Web-based Twitter Analytics tool I’ve seen.
Once signed in, you’ll get a Twitonomy profile page that has all kinds of statistics about your own activity. You can see things like
- tweets per day
- how many links you’ve shared
- how often others mentioned you in their tweets
- who you retweet most often and who you reply to the most
- what hashtags you’ve used the most
- which of your tweets were retweeted the most
- which of your tweets were favorited the most
- much more
It can also act as a Twitter dashboard.
More about Twitonomy features or check it out for yourself.
Email Marketing
Did New Gmail Tabs Affect your Open Rates?
Of course, there’s a lot of talk about new tabs in Gmail or, more precisely, how it has affected email marketing so far and how to minimize its impact.
In case you don’t use Gmail, here’s what it looks like:
A recent Return Path analysis shows that the tabbed inbox is both a blessing and a curse.
The top group, the group most engaged with their inbox, read nearly 59% of their email promotions before the rollout, and the good news is they were reading 2% more emails after the rollout.
The potentially bad news is the medium group. Before the rollout, these Gmail users read an average of 10.6% of emails in their inbox. After the rollout, they were only reading 9.8% — less than a percent drop, but a variance of 7%. (source)
Whether you use Gmail or not, one thing is for sure – many of your email subscribers do.
Here’s how to find who’s on Gmail in Aweber (if you are not using Aweber, your should be able to apply the same principles in your autoresponder): Optimizing Your Campaign for Gmail.
How to Back Up Your Email List
Sure, everyone knows about backing up your blog, but when was the last time you backed up your email list?
Don’t you think you should? It’s only one of you biggest business assets…
Two quick steps to do it in Aweber (that’s what I use for Traffic Generation Café; check it out for yourself: http://tgcafe.it/17F7itP)
1. Click on Create and Manage Lists in the top left.
2. Click on Back Up and Export.
That easy.
Do it NOW before you forget again.
WordPress
WordPress.com Connect
Automattic (owns WordPress) has released WordPress.com Connect, a secure and easy way for millions of WordPress.com users to log in to your website or app.
Using the same log-in credentials you use for WordPress.com, you’ll now be able to sign in to third party sites that integrate with WordPress.com Connect.
Learn how to integrate with WordPress.com Connect: Integrate WordPress.com Connect.
Genesis 2.0 Would Make a Great Husband…
You know why? Because it’s VERY responsive.
http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/genesis-responsive.mp4Try it for yourself; resize your browser screen by dragging it by the bottom right corner.
And if you like what you see and would like to upgrade your blog to a responsive theme, give Ian Belanger a shout (told him I sent you).
Marketing This & That
Google’s New Quick Answers
Google is definitely tightening its grip by giving us more of what we want and/or need IF we use their services: Gmail, Google Calendar, or Google+.
Want to know your flight number for the upcoming trip? When you package is due to arrive without having to look up tracking info?
Soon you’ll be able to find this info instantly in Google Search if it’s in your Gmail, Google Calendar or Google+. For example, just ask or type, “What’s my flight status?” or “When will my package arrive?”
It also comes with voice search (so you don’t have to type) – why wouldn’t it, right?
Twitter prepares to fly IPO
SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter appears to be getting ready to issue stock to the public in the wake of social media companion Facebook’s return to favor on Wall Street; USA Today reports.
Interesting Stuff
One Second of the Web
One Second is a Web project that can help us gain perspective on the amount of sharing going down across the Web. The site visualizes everything that happens each second on the internet through simple charts.
It can be difficult to catch the hard numbers from the site (the information changes every second, after all), so here is the data in a more static state. Each second on the internet,
- 197 Reddit votes are cast
- 463 Instagram photos are uploaded
- 833 Tumblr posts are published
- 1,024 Skype calls are made
- 3,935 messages are tweeted
- 11,574 files are uploaded to Dropbox
- 33,333 Google searches are performed
- 46,333 videos are viewed on YouTube
- 52,083 posts are liked on Facebook
- 1.67 million e-mails are sent
That’s right, 1.67 million emails are sent each second! Wow.
See it for yourself.
(source)
How to Clean Your Computer Screen from the Inside
Did you know that every 30 days it is necessary to clean the computer screen from the inside? Many people ignore this fact or do not know how. Manufacturers take advantage of this ignorance to increase their sales.
To clean the screen from the inside, just click this link:
http://www.lingdao.fr/outils/nettoyeurecran/cleanscreen.swf
Thank You
To all of you who mentioned Traffic Generation Café in any share or form in the past week, my whole-hearted THANK YOU.
Traffic Generation Café would NOT be what it is today without you.
Here are just some of the mentions I came across in the past week:
The Writer’s Weekly Wrap-Up (Issue #12) – Kimberley Grabas at yourwriterplatform.com
How To Get More Traffic To Your Blog With These Blog Promotion Tips – Sandy Halliday at sandy-halliday.com
Tips Tuesday – PowerPoint, Site Review Webinars, Make Screencasts, Contact Form 7, G+ Communities, and Google Drive Slide Decks – MaAnna Stephenson at blogaid.net
Inside In-depth Articles: Dissecting Google’s Latest Feature – Peter J. Meyers at moz.com
What Exactly is Quality Content? – Joseph Adediji at bloggingtipstoday.com
Email Autoresponder: Make It About Your Subscribers And Build Rapport – Jane Sheeba at probloggingsuccess.com
10 Brilliant Bloggers Talk About Google In-Depth Articles – Allison Boyer at blogworld.com
SEO Rankings: How To Get a Boost – Tom Jamieson at tomjamieson.com
Why Our User Experience Should Be Determined by Data – Danny Brown at dannybrown.me
Fetching Friday – 20 Marketing Links – Kristi Hines at kikolani.com
How to Reach Your Target Audience by Not Marketing to Them – Adam Connell at bloggingwizard.com
Bloggin Insight Of The Week – Importance Of Building A List – Peter H. at ubersteward.com
7 Techniques You Should Try for Getting More Comments – Ahmed Safwan at basicblogtips.com
Google Manual Actions, Types of SPAM, Data Board, Addon Domains, Speedlink 32:2013 – Francisco Perez at iblogzone.com
Disavow Tool Question, Bing SEO Checklist, MailChimp Hates Affiliates – Francisco Perez at iblogzone.com
5 great articles you may have missed (August 5-11, 2013) – Cendrine Marrouat at creativeramblings.com
Have I missed your mention? Let me know in the comments!
Want to see your name here? Mention Traffic Generation Café in your next blog post!
Subscribe to Stay Ahead
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To an even better next week,
