SEO Content Marketing Roundup, Week Ending March 23rd, 2011

In this week’s latest and greatest web writing news, SEO, search, and social media seem to have finally morphed into one post-Panda animal.  Is it search or is it social?  Or is it searchial?  SEOcial?  Whatever it is, industry thinkers seem to agree that the common glue holding it all together is quality content…whatever that is morphing into (?) :)

Shape-shifting and chameleon tendencies aside, there are great posts representing all voices in the slippery, evolving world of SEO content marketing.  Enjoy this week’s selections!

Content Marketing:

So what to do with a boring brand? Read these content strategies at Content Marketing Institute.

Harnessing the marketing power of humor is at iMedia Connection.

Top bloggers share 17 ways to grow your blog audience at Social Media Examiner, and CMI posts ideas for keeping a consistent daily blogging schedule.

Why companies say they want social media (when they really want content marketing) is addressed at Marketing Trenches, while Search Engine Journal posts the basics of improving search rankings via content marketing.

Creating a content strategy as the cornerstone of your social media strategy was the subject of a #masstlc (Twitter) discussion featuring Ann Handley of Marketing Profs, C.C. Chapman of Digital Dads, and Joe Chernov of Eloqua.  (Highlights and slides are at Subjectively Speaking).

Where content marketing meets the customer throughout the buying cycle is the subject of this infographic post by Heidi Cohen, while CMI posts how to go about researching the buyer.

Interesting read at Businesses Grow {social} about a lively SXSW debate about brands’ role as content publishers (filling the gap left by traditional media).

No less than 109 ways to make your business irresistible to the media through PR is at Copyblogger, as is the Charlie Sheen guide to winning at online marketing.

SEO & Search:

Great read about Google’s Farmer/Panda update and “feeding the content machine” is at Search Engine Guide.

SEO Book posts an infographic of Google’s history (namely, its history of collateral damage), and Copyblogger posts a great podcast about rock-solid SEO via its “Internet Marketing for Smart People” radio.

A local San Jose newspaper caught up with Matt Cutts during SXSW, and published its interview in which Cutts suggests yet more Google quality-seeking algorithm changes.  (*Gasp*)

Search Engine Roundtable posts a video of Matt Cutts that strongly indicates that Google’s next target will be keyword-rich domain names.

Kaila Strong of Vertical Measures posts a smart read on social reciprocity and the social signals that factor into search.

Also in the social-SEO stream is this post at Search Engine Journal, where Nick Stamoulis (of Brick Marketing) discusses social media signals and what it means for SEO.

Lee Odden discusses future trends worth considering in the integration of search and social marketing at Top Rank.

How a search engine might visualize and re-rank web pages based upon credibility, citing a recent Microsoft study, is explored at SEO By The Sea.

Level 343 posts “craphat” SEO techniques that refuse to die (but should.)

A few notable posts on competitive research from SEOmoz:  defining your (true) competitors, using discussion search as a competitive intelligence tool, and using customized Google intelligence alerts to streamline your analytical work.

Topsy has launched real-time video search for shared videos on Twitter, reports Search Engine Land.  SEL also posts an illustrated guide to searching for real-time images featuring nachofoto.

Lessons and strategies are coming in from SES New York, including “tasty” search engine marketing strategies shared by Lauren Litwinka of aimClear.

Social Media Marketing:

Twitter celebrated its 5^th birthday by launching a new website, “Discover Twitter,” as well as a video, which is posted at Mashable.

Brian Solis acknowledged Twitter’s birthday by looking at its milestones over its’ five years (he also posts the Twitter birthday video).

eMarketer takes a hard look at “the true Twitter audience,” indicating that the platform’s user numbers may be inflated.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn hit a milestone of its own, surpassing 100 million members as info-graphed by both Mashable and HubSpot.

LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman addressed the future of the internet and “how data is the next major evolution of the social web” at SXSW, as summarized in this HubSpot piece.

Social Media Examiner posts 10 reasons why you should upgrade your LinkedIn account, and Mack Collier posts a no-nonsense guide to sharing and promoting content on Twitter.

While others mark milestones and birthdays, Digg soon may be marking its extinction according this TechCrunch post.

Jenn Webb posts why social media design should start with human behavior at O’Reilly Radar, and Jay Baer addresses why social success is no accident at Convince and Convert.

Tips for converting social media leads are at Social Media Examiner, while the subject of Facebook commerce (“Fcommerce and the social shift”) is at RINF News.

HubSpot posts a how-to on activating Facebook Insights for your website, and Retail Online Integration (ROI) reports that Facebook will be testing a “groupon-like-deals” service.

Finally, if you hadn’t heard, most marketers are clueless about social media conversations, via Social Media Examiner.