SEO Content Marketing Roundup, Week Ending December 14th, 2011

Wow! This week’s Web writing news is nearly decadent with rich and informative content: E-commerce marketers have occasion to rejoice with record-breaking holiday numbers, SEO and search professionals contemplate where “the new Google” (and the industry) are going, and social media marketers are assured an ever-growing piece of the world-wide content marketing pie. Here are this week’s yummy picks…enjoy!

Content Marketing

This week’s Marketing Sherpa research chart shows that the biggest content marketing budget increases are expected in inbound marketing over the next year.

Content Marketing Institute (in partnership with Marketing Profs) has released its 2012 B2B content marketing report on budgets, benchmarks and trends (free download).

Just beginning your foray into content marketing? Joseph Putman posts the beginner’s guide to content marketing at KISSmetrics.

Lee Odden outlines an exceptional four-step content marketing framework for start-ups at Top Rank.

Heidi Cohen reveals five secrets to creating compelling content at her blog.

Corey Eridon posts 11 essential editorial guidelines for business blogs at HubSpot.

CMI contributors share their favorite content marketing lessons from 2011 at Content Marketing Institute.

Heidi Cohen discusses mobile marketing strategy with five mobile marketing tactics (that you need now) at ClickZ.

Pamela Parker discusses findings of a study showing how mobile apps can help build your brand at Marketing Land.

Carl Frisen discusses the five types of content you need to grab reader attention and influence their perception of your brand at Content Marketing Institute.

Scam alert: Ann Smarty addresses the persistent scam of using foreign characters to make content appear unique at SEO Smarty.

Neil Patel posts five reasons why your email marketing isn’t working (and how to fix it) at Quick Sprout.

SEO & Search

Tom Schmitz shares an astute SEO “playbook” for 2012, from coding to content, at Search Engine Land.

Avinash Kaushik discusses the best web metrics/KPIs for businesses of all sizes at Occam’s Razor.

Gabriel Gervelis shares his search marketing holiday wish for complete conversion tracking at Search Engine Journal.

Google-induced headaches and where SEO is going from here are entertained (with entertaining humor) at SEOmoz.

Citing a provocative post by Aaron Wall of SEO Book, Dan Angotti addresses whether Google has indeed “declared war” on small businesses and publishers at Search Engine Journal.

SEO Book followed that post (above) with an infographic on the decline of organic links at the cyber hands of Google.

Tim Ash posts the first step in his series on fixing your website for usability (post audit) at ClickZ.

The top three end-of year initiatives for inhouse SEO’s are posted by Bob Tripathi at Search Engine Watch.

Ten illustrations of how fresh content (a la Google’s freshness update) can influence search rankings are posted at SEOmoz.

Ian Lurie shares 10 tips for hiring an SEO company at Conversation Marketing.

Vertical Measures posts seven attributes (“internet marketing qualifications”) that make for a successful SEO hiring choice.

Todd Bailey discusses how YouTube’s redesign (notably “Channels”) calls for video SEO services at Search Engine Journal.

What’s in a (domain) name? New research from Microsoft reveals that searchers favor brand domains, as reported by Search Engine Land.

SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Friday presentation addresses that irksome scenario where your quality content is outranked by a spammer.

Finally, seven mobile SEO myths are exposed at Search Engine Land.

Social Media Marketing

The wave of social media platform makeover’s headline Social Media Examiner’s weekly news.

Mashable posts its own top six social media marketing trends of 2011, also with interesting insights.

David Bratvold posts that enterprise crowdsourcing has taken off as a social media growth industry at {grow}.

Twitter’s 2011 year in review stats show that death, soccer, and celebrities provided the most tweets-per-second, reports Marketing Land.

Laura Sydell explains how Twitter’s trending algorithm selects its topics at the NPR (National Public Radio) site.

Mashable reports on the launch of “Bottlenose,” a social media consumption “game changer” for those suffering from social media overload.

Michael Stelzner interviews John Jantsch (of Duct Tape Marketing fame) on how small businesses should adapt to social media, at Social Media Examiner.

Ashley Zeckman shares four tips for motivating your social network to share at Top Rank.

Andrea Vahl posts the top 10 Facebook apps for fan engagement and building your social media community at Social Media Examiner.

So what does Google+ mean for marketers? Patricia Redsicker interviews Jesse Stay, author of the newly-released Google+ for Dummies, at Content Marketing Institute.

Tom Pick discusses 10 ways to use social networks for B2B marketing at Webbiquity.

Jason Falls and Erick Deckers co-author a how-to on using social media for research and development at Entrepreneur.

Gabriella Sannino posts a great rant on how there is no ROI in owning an (“efin”) iPhone at Level 343.

Copyblogger posts that there is no ROI in social media marketing, period.

Marketing Land reports on Google Analytics’ new Social Data Hub initiative, aimed at centralizing users’ social activity from a variety of social networks.

Five things that PR pros can expect in 2012 are posted at Ragan’s PR Daily.

Finally, no less than 21 types of social content to boost your SEO signals are posted at Search Engine Land.

photo credit to: lookslikeamy