Content Merchandising Roundup #51
Below is a summary of the week's most interesting content merchandising-related posts from Content Ping as well as from other blogs and news sites. Happy reading. How the Hunt for Cheap Prices Is Hurting Retail Loyalty Consumers are increasingly willing to drop their store loyalties in favor of cheap prices. That's bad news for retailers, says CNBC. EBay vs Amazon Becomes Amazon vs Google It looks as if Amazon's next push will be into the online...read more >>
Content Merchandising Roundup #42
Below is a summary of the week's most interesting content merchandising-related posts from Content Ping as well as from other blogs and news sites. Happy reading. Google Shopping Transitions to a Paid Platform Google Shopping officially launched on Wednesday. Here's what online retailers need to know. How to Create Effective Global Content: Translating and Localizing Product Pages Also on Wednesday, content26 gave a webinar on creating content for...read more >>
SEO Questions and Brand Links
Lee Odden, master of all content marketing things, says, "In all my time as an Internet marketer, no other combination of tactics has yielded results like search engine optimization and content." With that in mind, he recently posted a great article on TopRank Blog that offers a creative approach to SEO. Instead of just listing elements of SEO, Odden provides a list of questions we should ask ourselves when planning to optimize a piece of content....read more >>
Writing for Content Merchandising and SEO Pointers
People take writing for granted. "How hard can it be?" we might think. "It's not like I have the grammar of a Cockney soccer hooligan--and besides, spell-check's always got my back--I'm golden!" Not so fast, Ernie Hemingway, there's a lot more to it than that. To help us imperfect writers, James Chartrand of Copyblogger has (quite skillfully) written an article on how to improve on this sometimes under-appreciated talent. He notes that while just...read more >>
Making Transactions and Finding Your Local Keyword-Success
You know when Steve Jobs retires and the Apple world fades to a shadow of its former self? (Okay, I don't actually think anything like that is going to happen--Steve Jobs can retire all he wants, and Apple will still be a great company. Sorry PC fans.) The companies that may be headed toward shadow-land are credit card companies, if the government's tinkering has anything to say. A new-ish law dramatically lowers the amount financial institutions...read more >>
SEO, More SEO, and a Word of Encouragement
Lee Odden of TopRankBlog welcomes us to Monday morning with a great article on balancing quality content and search optimization. He argues that the language SEO folk use tends to scare away creative content types. Really, they are trying to accomplish the same thing. Great SEO uses keywords. But, as Lee puts it, "Great SEO copywriting doesn’t read as a list of keywords, but instead balances keyword usage with creative writing that appeals to...read more >>
Nordstrom Planning Ahead and Content SEO Faux Pas
Does packing your merchandising copy with relevant keywords necessarily lead to high search-engine ranking? As Andrew Redfern of Hit Search humorously puts it: "Search engines are dumb, but they're not that dumb." The fact is, engines like Google and Bing are now sophisticated enough to distinguish high-quality, grammatically correct content from keyword-rich drivel. Another big no-no favored by Johnny Cut-Corners is pilfering phrases and content...read more >>
Tracking SEO Trends: Keywords Still Key, and Content Still Champ
Today's Dilbert comic humorously depicts the protagonist resisting his manager's wishes to embrace "black hat" SEO practices. "Black hat" suggests underhanded methods for boosting web-search visibility, such as loading a page with invisible-text keywords or link farming. Lee Odden of TopRank's blog recently wrote a great article on keyword use relative to content merchandising. While Odden acknowledges that strong content is paramount, he urges...read more >>
More Meta Data, Keyword Suggestions, and Online Growth
SEO Book recently discussed some ways to enhance what exactly appears when your page shows up on a search engine results page (SERP). Of particular importance is the meta description, which is the text underneath the (meta) title. Any space you have the good fortune to occupy on a SERP should be considered valuable real estate, so it's vital to make sure you have robust, informative meta descriptions that exhaust Google's character-count limit. Everyone...read more >>