SEO Content Marketing Roundup, Week Ending June 1st, 2011

Herding cats: this aptly describes the challenge faced by online marketers in this week’s latest and greatest web writing news. Marketers from the once seemingly disparate fields of content, SEO, social, and search convene in discussions on how to optimize social content for SEO, how to socialize SEO copy, how search is becoming ever more social, etc. More often than not, the strategies offered seem to involve “holistic marketing” and “integrated approaches.” An ambition nearly as daunting as herding cats, and all the more interesting for that very reason…Here’s this week’s picks:

Content Marketing:

Lee Odden discusses blog marketing strategy with seven steps to social SEO success at Top Rank.

Shelly Bowen demonstrates four ways a content strategy saves you money at her pybop site.

How to start a corporate blog is at Vertical Measures.

ClickZ features a post by Heidi Cohen on 10 ways to improve your blog’s effectiveness.

Heidi Cohen also discusses making your content mobile-friendly at Content Marketing Institute.

Brand Dignity shares tips for increasing your online influence, while online reputation no-no’s (five ways you’re offending online customers) are at Search Engine Watch.

Brian Massey follows up his post on landing page basics with how to find the right copywriter for your landing pages at Content Marketing Institute.

eMarketer posts how the internet radio audience gives marketers more targeting opportunities, and iMedia Connection posts why everything you know about demographics is wrong.

Intriguing posts from Neuromarketing, including critical thinking about neuromarketing, and getting closer to the “buy button” of the brain.

The three levels of blended content are discussed via guest post at Convince and Convert, while four reasons why your content marketing strategy sucks are discussed via guest post at Level 343.

Seth Godin posts “all economics is local,” and Ian Lurie discusses what “freakish and frumpy aircraft” can teach the internet marketer at Conversation Marketing.

SEO & Search:

It’s now official: the Google +1 button for websites arrives today (June 1st), reports Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land.

Danny Sullivan also posts a great “Matt Cutts debunking” decision-tree’ish flowchart.  Fun read!

Meanwhile, Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee posts a live Google webchat in which Matt Cutts “riffs” on JC Penney, the Panda update, and confirms that Google will use +1 activity to influence its search results.

Mashable posts a live blog that recaps Google’s unveiling of its new mobile payment system, Google Wallet, as well as Google Offers details.

Lisa Wehr of Oneupweb posts that Bing has enhanced its social search even further at iMedia Connection.

What search engine marketers can learn from Google Adwords tests and  changes is posted at Search Engine Watch, as are 13 websites for search engine and browser market share statistics.

SEObook posts free SEO competitive domain research tools for top ranking Google websites, and iMedia Connection raves about the “supercharged Google utility” (Google Commerce Search 3.0) for ecommerce sites.

On the subject of ecommerce, Search Engine Watch posts “Winning Multinational ecommerce SEO Strategies,” and “Inhouse SEO Roles Grow Among Internet Retailer’s Top 500.”

WordStream posts the difference between keywords and search queries, and SEOmoz posts actionable link-building strategies.

And speaking of SEOmoz and linking, Rand Fishkin posts headsmacking tip #20:  “Don’t ask sites for links. Find people and connect.”

Great read at Search Engine Land by Julie Joyce on paid links (“What the Link Value Economy Hath Wrought”) as well as a candid post on how to get free unique content with customer product reviews.

Finally, HubSpot reports data showing that 68-percent of marketers did a website redesign in the last 12 months, largely driven by their marketing team.

Social Media Marketing:

Twitter’s launch of a new follow button for websites is discussed at HubSpot, as is YouTube’s 6^th birthday, celebrated with 3 billion views per day and other monster stats.

Wicked smart read by Lee Odden of Top Rank, on social media (non-)strategy with “consultants, experts, and gurus (oh my)!”

Marketing Sherpa posts its latest weekly research chart showing that firms continue to substantially increase their social media marketing budgets.

Copyblogger posts 16 smart(er) ways to use LinkedIn as a B2B marketing tool for building your business, and Webbiquity (B2B Marketing Blog) posts why trust is crucial for business success and how to build it.

Jay Baer (slide)shares his Social Media Summit 2011 presentation on the 6-step process for measuring social media at Convince and Convert.

Content Marketing Institute post three keys to creating social media content that converts, and three key metrics to measure social media success are posted at Search Engine Watch.

eMarketer posts how social shoppers share local deals.

The top five Twitter tools for social media community managers are posted Social Media Examiner, and eight “must-know” tips on how to run a quality Facebook page are shared at The Next Web.

More data from Dan Zarrella at HubSpot, indicating that asking for the retweet with “please retweet” works, generating four times more retweets.  (It also works better than “please RT.” Go figure).

Mashable posts an infographic on the (brief) history of advertising on Twitter.

Finally, Brian Solis discusses how new media is changing the world of event marketing with “Power to the People: A New Mantra of Business.”