SEO content marketing roundup, week ending May 1st

Truly awesome tools, technologies, resources, and Pubcon New Orleans (NOLA) presentations fill this week’s latest and greatest online marketing news – as the World Wide Web (W3) turns 20 years old.

Content marketers share rich online marketing resources, and discuss mobile app usage, video content marketing, Authorship and AuthorRank, blogging, and content curation.

In the SEO and search community, Google Now displays omniscient predictive powers and hints at a future of machine-learning search technologies, the Penguin update is predicted to come soon and with a vengeance, while discussions and presentations on social media’s influence on search (as well as Authorship and AuthorRank) abound.

For its part, the social media marketing industry notes the search perks of Google+ (even for B2B), and discusses Facebook’s open graph, LinkedIn’s new Contacts feature, branding, influence, reputation cleanup, and ROI.

And to lead off, CERN marks 20 years’ of the World Wide Web by recreating the first website ever, with “Twenty years of a free, open web.” (More discussion of CERN’s “techversary” celebration and its broader mission can be found at Gizmodo and Engadget.)

Enjoy this week’s picks!

Content Marketing

Kristi Hines compiles “The Top 75 Must-Read Online Marketing Blogs” at Unbounce.

Referring to content marketing as “the new SEO,” Neil Patel and Kathryn Aragon co-author “The Advanced Guide to Content Marketing,” available as a free download at Quicksprout.

Mauro D’Andrea shares “51 Practical Resources to Increase Blog Traffic” at Blog Growth.

Reader favorites on the art of blogging are shared with “Blogging: 4 experts share their favorite tips & strategies” at SEO Copywriting.

Isla McKetta posts “How to Blog: Humanizing Your Brand” at Portent.

Sarah Perez posts “Flurry: U.S. App Audience Now Roughly Equal To Internet Users On Laptops & Desktops” at TechCrunch.

Altimeter’s Jeremiah Owyang’s Marketo Keynote on Converged Media is featured with “The revenge of content in marketing and media” at the Interact Congress Blog.

Lee Odden shares insightful lead generation stats among different marketing channels before discussing “The Best Marketing Investment You’ll Ever Make” at TopRank.

Marketing Sherpa’s weekly research chart looks at “Measuring website optimization ROI.”

Katie Burke asks six experts to give their input with “6 Expert-Endorsed Ways to Improve Your Marketing TODAY” at HubSpot.

Leo Widrich discusses emotion and color theory with “Why Facebook is blue: The science of colors in marketing” at The Buffer Blog.

Jakob Nielsen talks usability with “Users’ Pagination Preferences and ‘View All’” at his Alertbox.

Danny Brown’s Sunday Share features “Disruptive Technologies and the Digital Revolution” by Carlos Domingo, President and CEO of Telefonica I&D.

Mike Volpe shares findings from HubSpot’s 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report with “10 Inbound Discoveries That Will Disrupt Marketing Forever” at HubSpot.

Dennis McCafferty posts “How to Stop Jargon from Pulling the Plug Out of Your Powerful Content” at Content Marketing Institute.

Gary Hennerberg and Perry Alexander co-author “Short Video vs. Long Video: The Results” at Target Marketing Magazine.

Shelly Bowen posts “Writing Video Content: Strategy Makes It Easier” at Pybop.

Ted Karczewski interviews key people at video solutions provider Conviva with “Why video content analytics are critical for an optimal user experience” at Brafton.

Mark Walker addresses B2B marketers with “How to Use Video Content to Drive Awareness, Leads, and Sales: A Guide” at Content Marketing Institute.

Ann Smarty publishes her Pubcon NOLA presentation, “Google Authorship & AuthorRank for Content Marketers” on SlideShare.

Brad Miller shares five takeaways from his interview with Guy Kawasaki with “Guy Kawasaki Talks Content Marketing, Social & Google+” at Search Engine Watch.

Pawan Deshpande posts “Content Curation Guidelines for Where to Share” at Curata.

Anthony Kosner posts “New Wave of Curation Platforms Hit Targeted Audiences” at Contently’s The Content Strategist.

Virginia Nussey discusses “SEO-Friendly Content Curation in a Post-Panda World” at Bruce Clay, Inc.

Purna Virji posts “How to Create Effective Content to Help SEO & Sales: 3 Top Ideas” at Search Engine Watch.

Barry Feldman discusses “Why You Shouldn’t Do Content Marketing” at Convince and Convert.

Joe Pulizzi discusses “The 3 Building Blocks to Content Marketing Strategy” at Content Marketing Institute.

Miranda Miller posts “Do Advertorials & Native Advertising Fit In Your Content Marketing Strategy?” at TopRank.

Events:

• Lee Odden shares his April/early May presentation schedule with “Content Marketing & Optimization 6 Ways – Upcoming Speaking Events” at TopRank.
• The Neilsen Norman Group’s Usability Week 2013 conferences will be held in London from May 12^th thru the 17^th, Toronto from June 3^rd thru the 7^th, and Washington, D.C. from July 15^th thru the 19^th Register by May 3^rd to save 10% on the Toronto conference!
• Interactivity Digital Marketing Conference will be held in South Beach, FL, May 15^th and 16
• Marketing Sherpa’s Optimization Summit 2013 is scheduled for May 20^th thru the 23^rd in Boston.
• Confab Minneapolis 2013 is on for June 3^rd thru the 5^th.
• Ad Age CMO Strategy Summit 2013 will take place June 4^th in San Francisco.
• GigaOM’s Structure conference on the future of cloud computing and internet infrastructure will be held June 19^th & 20^th in San Francisco. Supersaver rate ends May 24^th!
• Content Marketing World 2013 returns to Cleveland, OH, September 9^th thru the 12^th.
• MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum 2013 will be held October 9^th thru the 11^th in Boston.

 

SEO & Search

Simon Penson paints a picture of “Digital Marketing When Computers Can Think,” asking several industry experts for their take on marketing in the future, at Zazzle Media.

Danny Sullivan posts “The Amazing ‘Google Now’ – When Google Searches Before You Think To” at Search Engine Land.

Beyond Google Now’s predictive capabilities, there’s mobile thinking potential…Bill Slawski posts “Google Granted Patent on Mobile Machine Learning” at SEO by the Sea.

Jennifer Cowan reports “Google Now Hits iPhone, iPad (Apple’s Siri Could Be Usurped By Competitor)” at SiteProNews.

Citing a new report on mobile search by Google and Neilsen, Claire Brinkley posts “55% of mobile search conversions happen within an hour” at eConsultancy.

Ian Lurie posts “Machine Learning and Link Spam: My Brush With Insanity” at SEOmoz.

Kristi Kellogg interviews Bruce Clay on Google’s imminent Penguin update with “Bruce Clay on Expecting and Escaping Google Penguin’s Wrath” at Bruce Clay, Inc.

Citing recent Matt Cutts’ (Google Webmaster Help) video(s), Chris Crum posts “Google Has People Scared To Link To Their Own Content” at WebProNews.

David Ciccarelli shows “What a Penguin Recovery Looks Like” at YouMoz.

Daniel Dannenberg distinguishes between literal and semantic search with an infographic showing “How Google Understands You” at Vertical Measures.

Jonathan Schikowski reviews a cool tool he created for browsing from a search engine’s perspective with “The world really needs another SEO browser” at Search News Central.

Charles Montgomery posts a “Pubcon NOLA Recap: Key Themes to the Future of SEO” at TQE Marketing.

Jayson DeMers outlines a great metaphorical SEO strategy with “Why SEO Is Like An RTS Game (and why you should care)” at SEOmoz.

Matt Morgan shares “Top Google Website Optimization Resources” at Search Engine Watch.

Robert Miller shares “5 Google Analytics Time- and Sanity-Savers” at ClickZ.

Annie Cushing posts “Deduplicate Your Google Analytics Reports in Excel” at Search Engine Land.

Michael Martinez posts an in-depth look at “Which SEO Tools Should You Use and When?” at SEO Theory.

Avinash Kaushik discusses data strategy metrics (or lack thereof) with “Eight Silly Data Things Marketing People Believe That Get Them Fired” at Occam’s Razor.

Rand Fishkin discusses “Fixing the Broken Culture of SEO Metrics” in the latest SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday presentation.

Citing a recent eMarketer report on robust U.S. retail ecommerce, Brafton posts “SEO content helps brands take advantage of rising ecommerce spend.”

Heather Lloyd-Martin addresses ecommerce retailers with “SEO Copywriting Checklist: Are your product descriptions costing you customers?” at SEO Copywriting.

John Doherty posts “Competitor Research In An Inbound Marketing World” at SEOmoz.

Alan Bleiweiss shares his Pubcon NOLA presentation, “In-House SEO Strategies – Using Data To Gain Allies” on SlideShare.

Aaron Wall takes Google to task for encouraging user-generated spam on social media sites with “Getting Granular With User Generated Content” at SEO Book.

Tom Bennet posts “Forum Spam – A Practical Guide” at SEO Gadget.

Alluding to Google’s Content Quality Guidelines, Josh McCoy posts “Website Indexation Audit: How to Find & Remove Non-Essential Content” at Search Engine Watch.

Gabriella Sannino posts “Social Media or Search: What You Should Know” at Level 343.

Arnie Kuenn shares his PubCon NOLA presentation, “Social Media Influence on SEO,” at the Vertical Measures SlideShare channel.

Eric Enge shares his Pubcon NOLA presentation on “Authorship and Author Rank: The Interaction with Social Media” at his SlideShare channel.

Mark Traphagen pens an in-depth post, “Google Author Rank and Authorship: What We Know So Far” at WindMill Networking.

Jayson DeMers posts “How Social Media is Changing the SEO Industry” at Search Engine Journal.

Amy Gesenhues posts “Facebook Offers An In-Depth Look At The Natural Language Interface Of Graph Search” at Search Engine Land.

Events:

• SMX London is on for May 15^th & 16th.
• Distilled’s SearchLove SEO Conference returns to Boston May 20^th and 21^st.
• SuccessWorks Master’s SEO Copywriting Certification Training Event will be held May 22^nd in Phoenix.
• SMX Paris is scheduled for June 6^th & 7^th.
• SMX (Search Marketing Expo) Advanced is returning to Seattle June 11^th & 12th. Save $200 thru May 3rd with early bird rates!
  
• SES Toronto 2013 is on for June 12^th thru the 14^th.  Save up to $300 with early bird rates thru May 9^th!
• MozCon 2013 (SEOmoz) will be in Seattle (of course) from July 8^th thru the 10^th.
• Search Exchange 2013 will be held July 29^th thru the 31^st in Charlotte, NC.

 

Social Media Marketing

Referring to Google’s rollout of “interactivity” to Google+ posts, Greg Finn describes “How Google+ Interactive Posts Push CTAs & Deep Linking Directly Within A Post” at Marketing Land.

Finn also reports “Google Rewards App Developers Using Google+ Sign-In With Better Visibility On Google Search” at Search Engine Land.

Jeff Ogden posts “B2B Marketers See Google Plus Becoming An Increasingly Useful Social Platform” at Fearless Competitor.

“LinkedIn Contacts App” headlines Social Media Examiner’s weekly news.

In greater detail, Pamela Vaughan posts “LinkedIn Launches New Contacts Tool to Make Relationship Management Easier” at HubSpot.

Brian Solis discusses “The Imminent Shift from Social to Digital Engagement” at his blog.

Rebecca Murtagh posts “10 Vital Steps to Building Social Influence” at Search Engine Watch.

Kelly Jo Horton discusses “What Facebook Graph Search Means for Your Business” at Marketo (B2B Marketing).

Mark Luskus posts “How Facebook Advertising is Changing with Open Graph” at KISSmetrics.

Justin Lafferty posts “Facebook’s Page Admin Panel Trades Mediocrity for Monetization” at AllFacebook.

Ian Cleary shares “21 Social Media Tool and Technology Tips that will Make your Day” at Jeffbullas’s Blog.

Emil Protalins reports “Digg finds over 40% of respondents are willing to pay for a Google Reader replacement, beta coming in June” at The Next Web.

Gini Dietrich shares “Eight Steps to Clean-Up Your Online Reputation” at Spin Sucks.

D Bnonn Tennant discusses “What Branding Really Means, and Why it’s Usually Code for BS” at KISSmetrics.

Giselle Abramovich lists “15 Alarming Facts About Brands” at Digiday.

Katie Elizabeth discusses “3 Recent Facebook Updates Brands and Businesses Must Know About” at Level 343.

Greg Levitt discusses the significance of click-back rates with “Are Publishers Only Getting Social ‘Half Right’?” at ClickZ.

Amanda Alvarez posts “Predicting Twitter popularity is all about probability” at GigaOM.

Dilip Venkatachari posts “Finding the ROI in Social Media: No Silver Bullet” at ClickZ.

Ken Yeung reports “Twitter is reportedly testing two-factor authentication following multiple hacks on user accounts” at The Next Web.

Jeff Bullas posts “How to Herd Cats on Twitter” at his blog.

Michael Stelzner interviews business trainer and Pinterest marketing aficionado Melanie Duncan with “Pinterest: How to Drive More Traffic to Your Site With Pinterest” in Social Media Examiner’s weekly podcast.

Events:

• BlueGlassX 2013 will be happening May 21^st & 22^nd in Los Angeles. As of today (May 1st), there are only 12 spots left!
• Zenith SocialCon 2013 reutrns to Duluth, Minnesota, on May 30^th.  See Lauren Litwinka’s sneak peak at aimClear!

(For an all-in-one listing and description of social media, content & inbound marketing events, check out Neal Schaffer’s “The 12 Best Social Media Conferences to Attend in 2013” at Social Media Today.)

photo thanks to Rick McCharles