SEO Content Marketing Roundup, Week Ending March 16th, 2011

Dances with…Google?  This week’s latest and greatest web writing news features new dance steps with (and around) Google’s Farmer/Panda update as the SEO and search community continues to evaluate and adjust to the algo changes.  Meanwhile, content marketers talk scale and inbound marketing, and social media marketers get analytical.  Put on your dancin’ shoes and join in this week’s SEO content marketing shuffle.

Content Marketing:

Brian Halligan (of HubSpot) posts eight lessons learned from HubSpot’s recent $32 million investment from Google Ventures, Salesforce.com and Sequoia Capital.

Mitch Joel, author of “Six Pixels of Separation,”  is featured in a video post about bridging the gap between digital and traditional marketing at HubSpot.

Lee Odden of Top Rank discusses five ways to fail (and alternately, tips to succeed) in B2B content marketing.

Marketing Sherpa has published its new weekly chart, ranking B2B content marketing strategies by relative effectiveness.

On the B2C side, five steps to use inbound marketing to convert more leads into customers are posted at Business 2 Community.

HubSpot answers with eight ways to use inbound marketing to retain customers.

Acronym soup: Content Marketing Institute discusses three types of website optimization and their respective tests (VBO, LPO, and CRO).

Copyblogger has a fun read about seducing your audience ‘a la James Bond.

Marketing lessons from Seth Godin’s new book, “Poke the Box,” are at HubSpot via video interview with the author, as are highlights from Tim O’Reilly’s (of O’Reilly Media) live SMX interview about building brands and seeing patterns.

Finally, Neuromarketing features an article discussing the use of ratings to improve “real” satisfaction.

SEO & Search:

Search Engine Land posts its comprehensive recap of SMX West via Barry Schwartz, while Vanessa Fox posts a summary of the most “actionable and useful” lessons she learned at SMX West.

Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz also released poll results indicating that a whopping 40 percent of SEO respondents said their sites were hurt by the Farmer/Panda update.

Hugo Guzman shares his truly interesting take on content farming at Search Engine Journal, and Brian Massey develops a persona for Googlebot in a fun read at Search Engine Land.

Kristi Hines posts a compilation of over 50 articles and resources on the Farmer/Panda update at Stay on Search.

Ross Hudgens posts a model for link-building that goes “beyond great content” at his site.

Preventing link-based penalties is the subject of Rand Fishkin’s latest SEOmoz whiteboard Friday presentation, and a second advanced linking post at SEOmoz looks at scaling white hat link-building/scaling white hat content.

Citing the collateral damage to whitehat sites by Google’s Farmer/Panda update, SEO Book warns about the danger of blindly following SEO prescriptions, and posts a quick and dirty guide to competitive keyword research.

SEOmoz’s Dr. Pete tackles the question “What keywords do I rank for?” dispelling myths along the way, and Search Engine Land looks at an alternative to tradition ranking reports.

Search Engine People posts a detailed checklist to getting your WordPress blog indexed by Google withing 24 hours.  No kidding.

Ian Lurie posts analyzing log files for SEO at Conversation Marketing, while Lee Odden posts his Techmunch video presentation on social SEO for blogs at Top Rank.

Social Media Marketing:

eMarketer posts an article indicating that more marketers are moving from a mere presence towards active engagement on social media

Twitter has issued a stern warning to third-party developers against using applications that display and send tweets to its clients, reports Mashable.  In a related development, Twitter is offering a permanent https setting to its users to improve security.

Approved Twitter application Hootsuite now has analytics reporting capability, and Ian Lurie gives it a most favorable review at Conversation Marketing.

Speaking of social analytics, Social Media Examiner featured the subject in its weekly social media news, and posted a video interview with Amber Naslund on using social media monitoring to grow your business.

Another new development is LinkedIn’s launch of “LinkedIn Today.”  Tips for marketers on this new feature (and an introductory video by LinkedIn) are posted at HubSpot.

HubSpot also posts the future of Foursquare from SXSW Interactive (derived from an interview with Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley and Mashable founder Pete Cashmore).

In a completely different take, Level 343 posts “Got Klout?” that expresses the desire for hard data and meaningful numbers.

Several notable posts by Social Media Examiner, including:  8 social media tips from eight industry experts, 9 ways to transform your website into a social media hub, and no less than 26 ways to use social media for lead generation.

Jay Baer reviews Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book, “The Thank You Economy,” mining and sharing “13 nuggets of greatness” from it.

Finally, Search Engine Journal has announced the release of a free ebook featuring social media insights gleaned from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and other industry heavies during the 2010 “social hackathon.”  The core concepts were captured in the ebook titled “The Goodness Engine: Driving Greater Social Impact in the Digital World.”