SEO Content Marketing Roundup, Week Ending January 11th, 2012

In this week’s latest and greatest web-writing news, there’s still much buzz to do with 2012 trends and predictions spliced with backward glances at 2011.  But, as you’ve probably noticed, the New Year is well underway – and Google’s “Search, plus Your World” is making a splash. Catch the newest wave of industry news with these picks…

Content Marketing

Target Marketing Magazine’s January 2012 cover story, by Thorin McGee, addresses “The Big Questions of 2012.”

Lee Odden pens the ambitious “Convergence & Integration of Content Marketing with Social Media & SEO,” in promoting OMS (see events, below) at Top Rank .

Joe Chernov posts “20 Women Who Rock Content Marketing” at Content Marketing Institute.

Avinash Kaushik posts “The 2015 Digital Marketing Rule Book” (“Change or Perish”) at Occam’s Razor.

“Extreme” 2012 marketing predictions from 24 industry experts are shared by Heidi Cohen.

Jeanne Jennings addresses email trends and benchmarks in click-through rates by message type at ClickZ.

Neil Patel discusses how to indentify content scrapers (and what to do about it) at KISSmetrics.

Finally, the emergence of a “new breed” of the content marketer (the content marketing “engineer”) is discussed at Content Marketing Institute.

SEO & Search

Google’s social ambitions, incorporating G+ in its search results, are discussed by Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land.

Matt McGee assesses the damage of Google’s search encryption on analytics data at Small Business Search Marketing.

Danny Goodwin reports on Google’s bad behavior, profiting from “illegal 2012 Olympics ads,” at Search Engine Watch.

SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin discusses testing the accuracy of visitor data from Alexa, Compete, Google Trends, Doubleclick, and Quantcast.

Jordan Kastaler posts how to improve site credibility through search and social media at Search Engine Land.

Mike Huber shares five things you can do to make the day-to-day monitoring of your website more effective at Vertical Measures.

Tim Ash continues his instruction in fixing your website with “Where do you start testing?” at ClickZ.

Jenny Halasz posts five questions to streamline your keyword research at Search Engine Land.

Can your SEO clients recognize success when they see it? Nick Stamoulis poses the question at Search Engine Journal.

Social Media Marketing

Pamela Vaughan also discusses the big G’s “biggest social search update yet” at HubSpot.

Marketing Sherpa’s weekly research chart features agencies’ perception of social media marketing’s “tactical effectiveness.”

Brian Solis shares 10 social media strategies for defining a successful 2012 at his blog.

Jeff Bullas discusses 10 reasons why “liquid” content should be included in your social media marketing at his blog.

Bright Oak posts the interesting “Klout, Egometrics, and 9 Symptoms of Shiny Algorithm Syndrome.”

Andrea Vahl looks at four ways the new Facebook “Insights” can grow your fan base at Social Media Examiner.

Heidi Cohen talks brand definition with “What’s Your Brand’s DNA?” at her blog.

Finally, HubSpot’s Corey Eridon cites “shocking data” showing that the average large company has 178 social media accounts. Zowie.

photo thanks to Horizon2035