SEO Content Marketing Roundup, Week Ending October 26th, 2011

Trick or treat! Google’s newest twist of limiting access to (organic) search query data has the SEO and search industry buzzing – snarling, growling, howling — in this week’s latest and greatest web writing news. In the meantime, content marketers discuss strategy and the tablet revolution while social media marketers talk Twitter and its surge in users. These treats (tricks?) await you just in time for Halloween – enjoy!

Content Marketing

Is “content marketing” broken? The question is posed at HubSpot.

Ten tips for shifting from “old-fashioned” print content to “real-time” web writing are shared at Search Engine Watch.

Content marketing strategies used by the seven media giants (“merchants of cool”) are posted at Content Marketing Institute.

Pamela Vaughan posts how to patch up holes in your content strategy at HubSpot.

Michael Stelzner interviews C.C. Chapman (co-author of Content Rules) on how content marketing helps build “trusted relationships,” at Social Media Examiner.

In a follow up post by Annabel Candy, eight more habits of “highly effective” bloggers are posted at Copyblogger.

Seth Godin discusses form and function , as well as the power of visualization, at his blog.

As the holiday season approaches, HubSpot posts five ways to “maximize e-commerce” marketing.

Thomas Clifford posts a template for marketing videos at Content Marketing Institute.

How to forecast and measure your marketing ROI across multiple channels with a simplified scorecard is posted at Search Engine Watch.

Paring down the complexity of content marketing and keys to using an editorial calendar to keep your content “on track” are both posted at Content Marketing Institute.

Six tips for more effective email marketing campaigns are posted at Top Rank.

SEO & Search

Google is again provoking much discussion amongst search and SEO professionals with its newest announcement (i.e., limiting organic SEO access to search query/keyword data, under the euphemism of “making search more secure”):

Danny Sullivan provides an expansive explanation of Google’s search encryption and organic search query (keyword) data access limitation (noting its double-standard) at Search Engine Land.

So how much data will you lose with Google’s encrypted search default? Good read by Kaila Strong at Vertical Measures.

Jonathan Allen of Search Engine Watch notes the reaction of SEO’s to Google’s encrypted search data with “SEO’s Strike Out as Google Encrypts Signed-In Search Data.”

SEOmoz devoted its Whiteboard Friday presentation to Google’s latest twist in  “an emergency Whiteboard Friday” video post.

HubSpot also reported on Google’s organic keyword/search referral data restrictions.

Ready for good news? From Search Engine Land: Matt Cutts devoted an entire video reassuring the SEO community that SEO is not spam (phew!)

And Matt McGee reports that the search industry is well-represented on the annual Tech 200 list of fastest-growing U.S. companies,  AND that SEO is cited as a top ROI tactic.

Barry Schwartz reports that Google is now eliminating its “+” search command  (as in search term +, not Google+) in favor of quotations, also at Search Engine Land.

Social Media Marketing

A three-fold increase in Twitter sign-up’s headlines Social Media Examiner’s weekly news.

Eight Twitter tools “that will get you tweeting like a pro” are shared by Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer, at Jeff Bullas’s blog.

Five ways to double your social media results are (guest) posted by Dave Larson of @TweetSmarter at HubSpot.

Top Rank’s Lee Odden discusses “the journey of social business marketing,” as well as the reasons you should attend Blog World in Los Angeles next month (“Optimize and Socialize for Better Business Blogging”).

State of Search posts how Google is pushing Google+ in your face, and KISSmetrics posts a beginner’s guide to Google+.

HubSpot shares seven pro tips for expert LinkedIn marketing, as well as how to become a top story on the new Facebook.

Social Media Examiner features an interview with Mari Smith, promoting her new book, “The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, and Profitable Network Using the Social Web.”

Jeff Bullas posts a fun infographic on Facebook’s rich history of failures and mistakes.

Photo courtesy flickr – Robert Scoble