However, traffic ultimately amounts to nothing if you don’t call website visitors to a desired action on your site.

One way of getting the most out of your website traffic for your online business is by converting them into leads.

This way, you can still connect with them even after they leave your site, if not turn them into clients!

In this post, I will discuss with you the top 10 ways to effectively generate leads from your site.

1. Create a ‘subscribe to my list’ page on your website

Email marketing remains one of the best ways to generate large numbers of leads and turn them into paying customers of your product or service.

The personal nature of email and the fact that it goes straight to the inbox of subscribers with their permission make email an attractive choice to grow your business.

But before you can get there, you must build a landing page where you can funnel all visitors to sign up to your email list.

The page should not only have a lead capture form where people will enter their name and email address. It must also have information highlighting the benefits to signing up to your list.

Creating one should be a breeze if you have access to a landing page builder. Most of these tools have templates with high-converting web design that you can use and edit to create a personalized one on your website.

2. Develop a content marketing strategy

The key to successful lead generation from your website is by driving more traffic to it.

Acquiring leads for your business is a numbers game – the more people that visit your site, the more prospects you can gather.

Therefore, you need to roll out a content marketing plan that will reach hundreds and thousands of website visitors.

What’s important in content marketing is identifying a clear buyer persona of your brand.

By developing the ideal person who will visit your site, you can then create content that resonates with his or her wants and needs.

3. Add pop-up forms to your best performing pages

Over time, with help from the content marketing strategy you developed, your site would have increased traffic.

Now, this is where a pop-up form comes in handy.

You can make them on your blog posts in eye-catching ways. As a result, you can hike up your email sign-ups even more!

If you’re using an email software, most of them offer this feature that you can show on certain pages of your site, if not site-wide.

Now, it’s one thing to set up the forms. It’s another to pick your spots where you must set up these forms.

To maximize the performance of your forms, make sure to head on to Google Analytics and check the pages generating the most traffic.

Now that you have a list, embed the form on these pages so you can squeeze out more leads from your website with the least effort!

4. Diversify your opt-in forms

Opt-in forms come in different shapes and sizes. So, placing just one form on a page probably won’t be enough to generate prospects for your business.

It’s best practice to include a variety of opt-in forms in a page to make sure that visitors don’t miss them.

Below are the different forms available for you to use:

• Lightbox – Appears on the screen front and center
• Welcome mat – Similar to lightbox but covers the entire screen so visitors don’t miss it
• Slide-in – Glides up the screen on the side
• Floating bar – Shows on top or bottom of the page in the shape of a small, thin bar
• Sidebar – Positions itself on the sidebar section of your blog posts alongside your other widgets to not disrupt visitor’s experience
• Inline – Appears within the content so readers of your page can spot them

Use a combination of the forms in a page to help you generate more leads from them.

At the same time, you don’t want to use all types in your page and spoil the user experience. You need to find the balance that works for you and your visitors.

5. Control how you want to show your forms

By default, the forms appear on your screen immediately after the website loads.

And since there’s no established relationship between you and visitors, they will most likely leave your site once they’re bombarded with your forms.

Therefore, you want your forms to appear once your visitors get settled in your website.

For example, make the lightbox appear after users scroll past half of the page.

The fact that visitors are scrolling your page means that they are engaged with your content. Now, once the lightbox appears, there’s a good chance that visitors will submit their email address to your list.

But, arguably the best way to generate more leads from your forms is by using exit intent.

For example, if a visitor tries to leave your page, the pop-up form appears just before they close this window or open a new one.

This is a great way to get their attention with a mind-blowing offer to keep them on your website.

6. Use content upgrades to incentivize your opt-in forms

Most forms simply state that they’ll share update and exclusive news to subscribers.

That’s not an appealing proposition for visitors because it doesn’t offer an immediate benefit to people. This results to a low conversion rate of the forms.

Hence, you need to offer something of value to people that will encourage them to sign up to your email list.

One of the best incentives you can use to encourage sign-ups to your email list are content upgrades. Upon joining your list, new subscribers will receive the content upgrade as a way of thanking people for signing up.

There are many forms of content upgrades that you can use to entice visitors to join your list:

• cheatsheets
• resources list
• audio-recording
• whitepaper
• templates
• ebooks.

The key to using content upgrades is providing a solution to their problems.

For example, with the checklist, it can be a checklist of on-page SEO factors for a website that’s about SEO. This can be a great way to generate more leads from your site.

7. Split-test your forms

Don’t settle with just one version of the form on your website.

Through A/B testing, you can create different versions of the same form and test them at the same time.

What it does is display the variations at random intervals. Over time, you can see which versions landed the most subscribers.

From here, you can create another version of the winning form to further test and maximize your conversion rates.

When putting these variables to the test, be sure to test them one at the time. This way, you can isolate the factors and see how each of them affect the overall performance of the form.

8. Feature testimonials

Even if you have a good content upgrade, don’t expect all of your visitors to become your subscribers.

Aside from providing people with value, you also need to earn their trust.

The easiest way to do that is by using testimonials from customers or influencers.

Include them in the form or landing page where you’re gathering their contact information.

It would be great if you could get glowing recommendations from people whom your audience respects.

Because if the people they trust trust you, then they’ll also pay you the same respect by becoming your subscribers!

9. Use a live chat widget

Moving away from opt-in forms, you can also use live chat to generate more leads to your website.

This widget is normally found at the bottom right of the screen. If visitors click on it, it opens a dialog box that helps people with their questions and concerns.

The advantage of live chat is people can reach out to you and expect a reply in minutes, if not earlier.

There are tools you can use to help you set up a live chat widget on your site. Most of them work the same way – it’s just a matter of choosing one that you’re comfortable using.

10. Use call tracking

Some people prefer reaching out to you via phone, which is why call tracking as a lead generation tactic exists.

Using a call tracking software, you can create a toll-free phone number to feature on your website.

When people use the phone number to call you, the software tracks the calls and breaks them down into metrics – think Google Analytics, but for phone calls.

Aside from singling out calls that come from your website, call tracking gives you a better understanding on how callers interact with your support.

This way, you can improve your interaction with callers and close them into becoming prospects of your business, if not clients.

Conclusion

Building an email list of leads for your business can be a long and draining process. But if you want to expedite the process, then make sure you following the quick wins above.

The idea behind the aforementioned tips is to leverage your existing website traffic and convert them into prospects.

So, if your online business is attracting tons of traffic, then expect to acquire tons of name, email, and phone number information as well!

The post 10 Quick Wins to Get More Leads From Your Website appeared first on David Carralon.

As the content marketing landscape increases in competitiveness, the importance of knowing what is great content – and obviously, how to produce it – has significantly risen.

Let’s take a deep look at what it REALLY is, and what you need to know as a marketer when it comes to producing outstanding content.

What is high-quality content

High-quality content is content that gets outstanding results. It achieves goals and marketing objectives and is best assessed by taking a look at its performance.

The clearest way to determine the quality of content

Most people, when trying to determine the quality of a piece of content, use an approach that consists of looking at a list of attributes and characteristics, and checking if the piece has them.

While characteristics have a very important play at how well a piece performs, they are not direct indicators of quality content. A piece can have all of those attributes, yet may not have good results – which is exactly what high quality pieces achieve.

What your measurement of quality should be based on is on data. Results are the best way to determine the level of quality of a piece. They are the only way to objectively measure it.

It doesn’t matter how much time and money you spent on a piece of content, or if it looks very visually appealing. The way to evaluate quality is by the results it gets.

With data and results, I’m mainly talking about things like how well it ranks in the SERPs, it’s daily visitors, it’s conversion rate, it’s click-through rate, etc. I’m going to talk more about which of these points you should look for soon.

What are the characteristics of high-quality content?

We now know that to precisely evaluate quality, we need to use objective data. But what data should we look for?

It’s now time to pin down the characteristics of content that screams quality!

Characteristics of quality content

Meets a goal

You work hard on a piece. You get it published. It looks good, has relevant information and a lot of great images, but doesn’t perform well.

Is it considered quality content?

NO!

You can’t evaluate a basketball player based on its height, speed, and shot accuracy. Those may be signs that correlate with being a good basketball player, but the real performance of the player isn’t revealed until you ask him to play and help to win the match.

If he can help you reach your goal of winning the match, even despite lacking extreme levels of speed and accuracy, he’s a good player. Makes sense?

*That doesn’t mean being fast or having other qualities doesn’t help. The best players are almost always fast. But they are not objective indicators of quality.

It ranks well on Google

Google is constantly working on improving its complex language processing algorithms, like BERT or Rankbrain, that use machine learning to show the best results for each query and the highest quality content.

These algorithms are sometimes evaluated by over 10,000 raters hired by Google. These ‘quality raters’ are given actual searches, and they evaluate the quality of the pages that appear in the top results.

The data generated by the raters is fed to google’s algorithms to improve its accuracy at showing quality content. 

The outcome: an algorithm that is extremely accurate at measuring the quality of websites and their content, and delivers the most relevant results to search engine users.

Clearly, there’s a HUGE focus on quality. If your content is ranked high, Google itself gave you the thumbs up, and you’ve got a marvelous piece.

It drives backlinks and shares naturally

A good indicator of high-quality content is backlinks and shares, especially when they happen naturally. 

Every backlink and share is a point that your player (your content) is scoring. Bad players generally have a bad time scoring. Good ones, the ones that craft the art of producing great content,  score again and again.

It has a high CTR

Is your content good at making people click when they see it?

If you take a look at your best-performing pieces, you’ll notice higher click through rates across the board.

Google rewards this type of content by ranking it higher. And if you’re using paid ads, the price that you have to pay to advertise this type of content is lower. Low CTR, more often than not, means low quality and lacks engagement.

Dwell times are low

Another important factor that Google is suspected to be considering along with CTR is dwell time.

Dwell time is the time a user spends looking at your content after clicking it.  In some cases, your content may have a high CTR, but it can still be considered low quality if its average dwell time is low.

You want to make content that people consume. If they’re clicking and leaving, it’s not high quality, and Google is quick to notice somehow.

Whether directly or indirectly, time spent on content is something that Google is likely using to measure engagement and to score pages.

Subjective characteristics of quality content

These characteristics don’t define quality content because they aren’t hard data, but they are common across quality pieces. Make sure that each piece of content that you make has the following characteristics:

Meets the search intent

Something that’s clear is that good content provides information that is relevant and helpful to the searcher. When a piece of content fails to meet the search intent, it fails to do its purpose and is lost deep in the SERPs.

It’s almost impossible for a piece of content to get excellent results and fail to meet the search intent at the same time.

It provides value

You’re probably very aware of this but I’m including this tip anyways because of its importance. 

Your audience doesn’t want content. They want valuable content. Some businesses forget about this fact. They make it a goal to churn X amount of content every month, but don’t prioritize value.

Content that doesn’t provide value is a waste of time, both for you and your audience. 

Always prioritize value. If that means you can only release half the amount of content, so be it. 

It’s engaging

Nowadays, just being informative is almost never enough. People expect your content to also be interesting or entertaining.

Think about it. The information that you’re displaying is probably already out there. But if you can display it in an engaging way, you can differentiate your content and people will prefer it over other sources of information.

Keep an eye on engagement KPIs such as dwell time, CTR, bounce rate, likes and shares, and pages per session. Make it a priority to consistently create the type of content that your audience finds engaging.

How to create high-quality content

The biggest dilemma today is: How do we go about creating high quality content? What should we aim for to inform, engage, and captivate readers?

Defining what quality content is is extremely useful, but doesn’t necessarily help us at the time of producing it.

That’s why I also brought you some proven, practical tips and examples to help you create the type of content that nails it today:

Engage with visual content

Our brains are wired to quickly analyze and understand visual content. 

In fact, the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, and 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual.

No wonder that images and videos are so engaging.

You need to leverage their power as much as possible and fill your content with images and other forms of visual content, such as :

• Infographics
• Animates Gifs
• Cinemagraphs
• Videos
• Animations

Text content can be repurposed into an infographic, giving it a visual touch – and in turn, making it more engaging and shareable.

Infographics, often, get 3x more shares than any other type of content (NNGroup) and with tools like Visme you can easily learn to make a pretty cool one easily.

Back up your claims citing statistical research and mentioning the source

Making a bold statement? Or presenting a new idea to your audience?

Backing up your claims not only helps to convince the reader that what you’re saying is true but also makes you and your brand look more professional.

When you show statistics, mention studies, or link to authority websites, you also provide valuable information that gives additional insight to readers

This is an example of two statements with the same message. The difference is that one is stats-based, and the other isn’t:

“Many visitors will quickly leave your site if it doesn’t load right away”

“53% of visitors leave your site if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds or less” (Google)

Let’s say you were to include the first statement in your content. You could get the same message through by using the second one, but with more credibility and precision.

Readers are also more likely to see the importance in the statement because they can see, numerically, how much loading speed can affect their business.

Display Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. (E-A-T)

In August 2018, a Google algorithm update called “the medic update” drastically changed the factors that Google considered when ranking YMYL (Your money or your life) websites.

Since then, showing Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (known as E-A-T) in your content has become of paramount importance.

High quality content that displays E-A-T signals is loved by Google. I wrote an in-depth article to help you understand how to make this kind of content:

• Recommended reading : Google E-A-T for SEO – breaking the Enigma

Follow Google’s guidelines

In one of Google’s many guidelines, there’s a section called “What counts as a high quality site” that’s worth pure gold.

It contains a list of questions that you should ask yourself to assess the quality of a page or article:

From Google’s Webmaster Central blog:

• “Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?”

For the full list of questions, read Google’s advice to Webmasters last August 2019 responding to questions about Core Updates and what they mean.

Use engaging content formats

Video

Videos are engaging and effortless to consume. They are and will never stop being one of the most popular and engaging content formats.

One of the issues with video and one of the reasons why many content creators don’t do them is that they are usually a bit more difficult to create due to the requirement of certain skills like speaking in front of a camera and editing.

But if you can get your hands around doing them, they are proven to win big:

59% of executives say they prefer to watch a video than reading text. (Wordstream)

Cinemagraphs

If video and photographs had a child, that would be the cinemagraph. 

Cinemagraphs are pictures with minor movements that form a short video clip.

Top brands are implementing the cinemagraphs with outstanding results:

Image from Flixel

If you have the resources, it’s time to get on-board. People love the cinemagraph, and they work very well in certain sectors like travel, sports, lifestyle.

Use stats-based content

A really good example of this is the series of informational posts that Rand Fishkin, from Spartoro, regularly publishes in his pursuit to raise awareness of Google’s monopolistic practices.

His articles shine with interesting data sets about search engine market share, SERPs clickthrough and the like.

How to avoid site issues that spoil high-quality content

In recent updates, Google has made it harder and harder for low-quality content to rank well. To filter out this type of content, Google takes a look at a series of factors and signals like grammar mistakes and excessive ads.

You need to do your best to remove these signals from your content. Otherwise, Google will think your content quality is poor.

In particular try to avoid:

Over-monetization: Content with excessive monetization through affiliate links or other means.

Excessive ads: Avoid having too many ads as they worsen user experience.

Keyword stuffing: Loading your content with keywords in an attempt to get better rankings will get you penalized.

Unnatural linking: Never do artificial linking to manipulate rankings. 

Misleading titles or content: Clickbaity titles that trick readers instead of accurately describing content. 

Low E-A-T: Having a low E-A-T score will tank your rankings (especially in the YMYL sector.)

Malicious behavior: Such as viruses, phishing, theft.

For a more extensive list of malpractices, check out this article by Search Facts.

Conclusion

Creating high quality content isn’t easy. It takes trial and error, looking at your results to see what kind of content works, and optimizing your content creation process accordingly.

After reading this article, you might have noticed that some of what you thought was your best content is actually mediocre. What defines quality is not what we thought, and we can only see its real value until we take a look at its results.

It is worth taking into account that success is not solely dependant on producing good content. Having the right systems and resources in place to promote that content is equally important.

…but that’s a different story altogether beyond the scope of this article.

Do you have anything add in terms of what entails ‘great content’?

The post How to produce high quality content appeared first on David Carralon.

These resources have helped day to day with a variety of inhouse tasks and processes while working on international projects, so the post is kind of focussed on ‘International’ and of course with a ‘Search’ flavour. Also, one of the key criteria used to build this list of resources has been ‘market research information’. Some of the sites I recommend below are great stop shops for marketing strategy (some free), to support campaign project work and also to help you in your consultant role withing the organisation that you work.

The first one and for me one of the most important is Smart Insights :

Smart Insights

This one has to be one of the main resource or reference sites that I use most often. Smart Insights often helps me find a quick way to kick off a specific process and or establish a roadmap to carry out tasks, as well as it does help me ensure I follow best practice with insights-driven decisions.

The entire site is purpose-built to help today’s digital marketers get better at what they do. From an SEO standpoint, and considering today’s post-panda and penguin search engine world, there is an increased need to tackle SEO strategies from an integrated marketing and communications approach, as opposed to adhoc SEO. This is one of the reasons why this should be one of the main marketing resources to turn to for help.

These are some of the resources that you can find on Dave Chaffey’s Smart Insights website that I feel add great value to every marketer:

Guides and E-books

• Guides & Ebooks: from comprehensive beginners guides about SEO, analytics or Content Marketing to more detailed and practical ones about specific task-based approaches, eg.: 7 Step Guide to Content Marketing, the Mobile Strategy guide , or the guide to Google Analytics
• Templates: these range greatly from plan frameworks onto specialized spreadsheet docs. There are times when you are in a rush and do not want to get tangled up with having to figure out a particular layout for a audit of this or that project. Smart Insights offers a range of practical templates easy to customise from the traditional excel Email marketing campaign template one onto more selected ones like the Editorial calendar spreadsheet or the spreadsheet to help you plan a mobile marketing audit or the template for Google Analytics for Ecommerce or the ready-made templates for marketing role job descriptions . The latter has been used at the British Council to put together a framework of marketing capabilities for digital marketing jobs.
• Framework project docs: Similarly if you run your own business or plan your own start-up, resources like the ‘framework for defining online business models‘ is a simple doc and a great time-saver, and you get the reassurance that you are on the right track with you marketing planning.  or the Primer info for Managing Website redesign projects:
• Advice : you can get guidance and advice to go through the process of either strategising a global marketing plan or setting up a tactical campaign on one specific channel. These are sometimes free guides, like the ‘Free guide to creating a social media marketing plan‘ As advice you also get access to asking questions (technical or strategy-based), here’s an example of a user question about tracking carousel banners on Homepages
• Video Training Material: these range from practical short video tutorials or training courses onto actual webinars given by known marketing practitioners and conference speakers. The overall approach to digital marketing on Smart Insights is making things clear for you if you are serious about learning online marketing. From basic Google Analytics video tutorials for beginners  onto social media marketing how-to videos.  As part of this offer, Smart Insights regularly joins up with top marketers to run webcasts about digital marketing. For example a few months ago the creator of the SOSTAC system, PR Smith ran a Webcast about strategy development.
• Infographics: the site is not short of interactive and creative material to help marketers learn more visually. For example look at the Content Marketing Model infographic. It’s brilliant if you need something visual to help teams or inhouse colleagues understand the whole idea behind Content Marketing.  These regularly produced infographics support some of the educational blog posts, tutorials or guides on the site.
• Case studies: the site is not short of  inspiring case studies worth reading about.

When you first land on the site you may feel a bit overwhelmed by the amount of content to your disposal and the many different areas to access that content. It may help you get started if  decide and establish what you need : perhaps a base excel template to help you create a dashboard for one of your in-house supported web projects, information about running a marketing health check…

Whether you are interested on learning the basis of PR Smith’s SOSTAC marketing, the RACE marketing management system or market place analysis, this little gem will help you with it. The site has something for both global marketing managers in the large enterprise, site owners, or affiliate professionals. So whether you are solely interested in Search Marketing or simply learning SEO there will be something for you here.

Cost: €29/month on annual contract.  This gives you access to the entire collection of resources on the site. I do recommend you go for the pay subscription directly if you want to save time and delve straight into getting guidance and ideas and improve overall your digital marketing skills, including search marketing. Smart Insights saves me time, effort and energy. If you want more reasons for subscribing to this site, then visit this page. But of course if you are just starting in digital marketing and not convinced yet of where to put your many for a paid subscription, then you may want to register as a free member and visit the free downloads section for a flavour of marketing goodies.

Econsultancy

This site is surely known to most readers. The majority of people though only know the site because of its great blogging activity. Some of the top SEOs and digital marketers are posting on this site. Apart from the blog section, the site is packed with resources from A to Z: market research, guides and training on digital marketing, advice on internet marketing strategy and best practice and a jobs board with strong focus on digital and marketing though mainly geared towards the UK market.

If you are serious about digital marketing then having a subscription on this site will give you access to invaluable material that results from 14 years of industry expertise.

Market Research Data

This section boasts great research and statistics compendiums and surveys on a variety of disciplines. For example the Email Marketing Industry Census 2013 is out and could be really valuable to help you proceed with the process of procuring the right Email marketing tool for internal use in your organisation. Equally useful and interesting is the Adobe infographic on key Digital Trends for 2013 and the more comprehensive Intelligence report: Digital Trends for 2013 as they help you stay tuned with the direction digital marketing is taken overall and how marketers respond to the new digital channels. Or the State of Digital in the MENA region that’s great reading material for those marketers working for organisations that may be penetrating in that region.

Best Practice Guides

This one is one of the main USPs of the paid level offer by Econsultancy. If you work in-house and need additional insight on something specific like SEO and have ended up with the task to draft an SEO strategy for the organization, the Econsultancy SEO Best practice Guide can help you greatly, even though considering that the current one is outdated (2012) some of the main areas or enterprise SEO are still valid in today’s Post Panda/Penguin world. You may be thinking why not just use the SEOmoz beginners guide, and the reason is that the Econsultancy SEO Guide will give you more structural inspiration if you are working at large enterprise where SEO tends to depend more on processes. Another good Guide is the Paid Search Marketing (PPC) Guide which provides solid guidance on Marketing campaign integration and is quite up to date (March 2013).

I also couldn’t finish this section without mentioning the new Digital Marketing Guide by Neil Perking that has just gone out, and which I am reading at this very moment.

Web Project Templates

Don’t fail to look at Digital Marketing Templates Files or the Web Project templates.

Cost: the entry-level ‘individual’ subscription has considerably gone up recently from €345 to €595 but if you happen to be the only one responsible for marketing at your workplace, I highly recommend you get your boss to put the funds aside for this. This individual subscription already gives you unlimited access to all reports, research guides and academic papers on the site. If you run a small team you can get 3 subscriptions access for €1195… and if you work in-house in a large enterprise then it’s best to contact Econsultancy to request a custom price depending on number of users in your organisation.

To be truthful, I have to admit that when it comes to keeping all their material up to date, the site has seen better days. Some of their guides do need an update and/or facelift, but it is definitely still worth subscribing due to the depth and usefulness of their resources.

Marketing Sherpa

I have not yet tried or accessed the ‘paid subscription’ online resources on Marketing Sherpa, but sometimes I find myself downloading their free stuff and read their blog and have always had a good impression about the work. Many friends in the industry use this resource and recommend it. Reknowned marketers like Lee Odden do recommend Marketing Sherpa too.

The onsite training, case study handbooks and most of the the paid downloadable material is done via Meclabs, which seems to  be the name for Marketing Sherpa’s publications centre. Although it is not the first resource I would go to for  spacialised marketing areas like SEO, if you are interested in getting better at marketing, Marketing Sherpa runs thier own workshops, online courses and other training all marketing-focussed.

With regards to free goodies, I have downloaded some of the free reports on the Free resources section like the e-books ‘Tactical approach to Content Marketing’ or the ‘Mobile Marketing Benchmark Report’ and they seem good material… the full comprehensive study is usually at a cost. Once you pay for one single full report, you may find that it is worth paying for the membership instead and get access to many more resources.

Cost: $397/year, which allows you to download  10 or more special report per year, plus a few other perks. This price  is probably worth paying even if only want to have access to one of their practical guides or kits, like their ‘Email Marketing Survival kit‘.

WebCertain’s Resources

WebCertain is a UK-based International Search Marketing agency. They help organisations that want to penetrate into international markets with their search marketing efforts. Web Certain runs the International Search Summit conference alongside Search Engine Expo. I recommend you to attend this conference if you into Interanational marketing. They have also recently just launched the International Digital Hub where you can download some great whitepapers such as like :

• The Global Mobile Report 2013, which provides great intelligence around mobile usage in different international markets
• the Essential Guide to Rel-alternate Href
• International PPC Comparison of the World’s major search engines

WebCertain also runs the Multilingual Search Blog which boasts great articles mostly focussed on International Search. And lastly but no least, if you become a WebCertain’s client, you will get access to their international project tool, which also boasts whitepapers, slidedecks from conferences and other useful resources.

Cost: Free

SEMPO

SEMPO is a non-profit organization that looks to bring best practice, regulation and recognition to the Search Marketing Industry. Although they are struggling with their business model and resourcing  methods, I think it is a great organisation that all search marketers should support. I am a subscriber to their services and often download their material and watch their webinars given by popular marketers.

Anyone can join SEMPO to help influence the future growth of the Search Marketing industry.

On a resources side of things, The SEMPO Learning Centre packs amongst others the following:

• Resource Library: containing
• articles -white papers
• case studies
• webinars: great marketers and speakers like Eric Enge from Stone Temple Consulting, and Michael King from iAquire run interesting online marketing webinars for SEMPO

We use it all the time to keep up on industry trends and best practices, as they do tend to offer coverage around international search marketing too. As am member you can benefit from a range of discounts to conferences, industry events, online training courses and you will not have to pay to attend the regular webinars which cost about $15 if you are not a member.

Cost: $125/year

Digital Marketing Depot

Digital Marketing Depot is the new evolution of the former ‘Search Marketing Now’, and is part of the Third Door Media network of sites.   They have a resource centerfor digital marketing worth looking at if you are after learning new digital marketing strategies and tactics.

Their resources can be search by topic or by type. You could search by topic for any kind of ‘mobile marketing’ resources and the site would bring you onto this section: http://digitalmarketingdepot.com/library/mobile, or you could search ‘by type’ about research information like for example: Social media Enterprise management tools, so you would then choose ‘by type – research’: http://digitalmarketingdepot.com/library/research

Their white papers and e-books, research papers, and webcasts on digital marketing topics may give you a ton of ideas and inspiration…. if  — from advertising to analytics, SEO and PPC campaign management tools to social media management software, e-commerce to e-mail marketing. I have often saved a ton of time using this site both as a reference to research info, experts opinions and insights but also lists of software suppliers. My only criticism is that for any piece of material you download you are requested to fill out a form and leave info. that may lead to you being pitched by either the company behind the webcast or whitepaper or a business partner, but given that all resources are free, it is understandable.

Cost: Free (providing you give your email)

Hubspot

Hubpot is an Inbound Marketing commercial software tool that brings in a unique approach to doing online marketing. As opposed to working on certain digital marketing channels in adhoc basis, Hubspot promotes integration, leads-generation and conversion-driven functionality with their tool.

I am not here to promote their tool on this post, but their marketing resources, ebooks, guides, research data, free PPT templates are all great material for anyone starting out in online marketing. Go and check out their newly branded online marketing resources: http://www.hubspot.com/free-marketing-resources

Cost: Free (I mean their marketing resources)

Google’s Think Insights Portal

Think Insights is still an unknown source of information to many marketers as the resource has only been live only since March 2013. It seems that Google  wants to create its one-stop shop for marketing expertise within their own network. Not only you can get information about the various different advertising possibilities, options and tools to plan or strategize an International Ad Campaign across your network, but also case studies: and lots of educational and inspirational video material :

The sort of information you can get on the site ranges greatly:

• industry-standard response rate
• multiple case studies from different industries and sectors
• comprehensive information around the various different types of advertising available in the Google network
• tools to help you visualise the potential of your investment in specific channels

Visit the Google Advertising Platforms section to get an quick idea of the multiple range of advertising options to your disposal, or the  Planning Tool area to get information about consumer surveys, research tools and tools to help you estimate values. For example, if you are leading on a Mobile marketing project and need a tool to help you build the case for more investment in that specific channel, then you will like Google’s Calculator for potential of mobile marketing.  Equally useful is the Media Planning Toolkit that helps you find out which Google marketing tool can be relevant at each stage of your project planning process.

If you need inspiration, check out the Creative Sandbox too for a showcase of successful and innovative marketing campaigns that spark creativity. One of the sections I visit the most in my role  is Education which is well sourced with interviews, campaign showcases and infographics, but Google has been working on adding rich resources to the other sections covering other industries too.

Other Google Resources

I will not cover here an exhaustive list of sites to visit to learn about the various advertising possibilites within the Google Network but a few I use often and which I recommend you take a look are:

• The DoubleClick Portal: if you are responsible for managing global and cross-channel paid advertising campaigns using Doubleclick’s resources may help you organise it all better.
• InsideSearch: do you constantly get colleagues in your organisation asking the same questions about how search works? bookmarking this site may help you deal with those enquiries more efficiently. It is the official Google site on how search works. If you’ve heard of the Knowledge graph, you can get full information here.
• and some of the main learning platforms : GoogleAds Webinars, GoogleAnalytics Training
• Youtube CreatorAcademy: to learn everything about marketing your business in Youtube, including Channel Analytics in 6 lessons containing 3-4 videos each.
• Plus your Business: This is not a resource owned by Google but it is about learning Google+ for Business. It’s a great one stop shop for all things Google+ and is authored by Martin Shervington

Koozai’s Online marketing whitepapers

Koozai is a Digital Marketing agency based in office in Southampton and London.

Their website boasts rich and useful online marketing whitepapers: From Brand Monitoring to Google Analytics practical guides, you will find great, practical hands-on whitepapers that you can leverage to make your in-house SEO work easier. Take a look at the ‘how to perform a technical audit guide’. It does a good job at getting you started at performing technical audits for your company.

Cost: free (in exchange for your email)

Content Marketing Institute

Visit their ‘Resources‘ section and download interesting whitepapers mainly from product vendors. Many of the papers cover useful research or article about streamlining marketing techniques, such as this one from SpringCM about Streamlining Content Marketing. Their research and articles sections are also worth following. If you are moving into Content Marketing or want to learn more about it, this should be one of your online resources.

Social Bakers

I use the Social Baker’s Free statistics data for the big picture of what’s happening on some of the biggest social networks and the brands that dominate that sphere. For example, say you are starting to research penetration potential for your company or that of a client, in India, and you’d want to check the brands that dominate social media in this country, you can search by Social network:  Google+ and then choose ‘Brands’ .

Another example of how this could be useful if if you are working on building links for your client via Outreach and Content Marketing, you can find the top Media companies with the highest number of Twitter follower in Czeska by just going to Twitter – Media – Czech Republic  or the most  popular individuals on Twitter going to:  Twitter – Profiles – Czech Republic.

Cost: access to their statistics dbase is free of charge

Blogs that I consider pools of resources

Do you wonder sometimes if you are actually reading the right industry blogs to keep abreast of developments in Search, Social or general industry trends? Some blogs can be a good marketing resource. I am not mentioning here all the cutting edge SEO or tactical-based blogs I read, but those I think of as a good resource for enterprise marketers, particularly those with an international flaveur.

Many of them on the list are too strategy and enterprise driven and typically cover things like strategic planning approaches to large sites SEO, international search programmes or multilingual aspects of large sites. Those are the ones I have focused on, although I may have deviated a little bit with two of them.

Search Engine Land : If your interest is specifically about Search Marketing, then Search Engine Land is always a good source of information. I recommend you sign up for the feeds of the following columnists:

• Andy Atkins Kruger, from WebCertain: the majority of his posts are about International search, so to all International search marketers this should be a must.
• Chris Liversidge, from QueryClick: multinational, multilingual and International SEO are often some of his topics. All his posts are great read.
• Bill Hunt, from Back Azimuth Consulting writes about global search marketing planning and programmes, structures and processes.
• Shari Thurow, from Omni Marketing Interactive, specializes in Website Architecture and Usability as well as SEO. Although her focus is not specificaly about International SEO, all her work and what she lobbies for applies to International SEO structures. I highly recommend you read her column in SEL too.
• How to section: Also the how To section on Search Engine Lands offers great guides and papers ranging from beginners to more advance, from PPC to Analytics
• Although the above are my main preferred columnist, it is worth subscribing to the Multinational Search feed in case any other writers posts with a topic around International, multilingual or international marketing. Search Engine Land used to have a pro membership subscription but they are now phasing it out and at the time of writing the site informs that their conferences videos, and other material will still be available on the site.

State of Digital (former ‘State of Search’):This blog and online portal of information to Digital marketing is run by Bas van Der Beld. Bas tends to provide great coverage of some of the top industry conferences not only in the Uk but throughout Europe, so check the Events section to find out also about the less fancy but good conferences like SASCon and Brighton SEO. The section on Strategy is worth a look from time to time, and if you are constantly o the look out for new tools, check out the Tools section

SEMPO’s blog This is blog about Search engine marketing sometimes covering International search and run by SEMPO. http://blog.sempo.org/

AJPR: This blog is run by Motoko Hunt, an international marketer specialised in the Japanese market. Her blog is mainly about Search in Japan: http://www.ajpr.com/wordpress/ but also on the Asian market. Judging from her speeches in conferences and her contributions on other forums, you can see that Motoko has a wealth of experience in the Asian market. It is therefore a pity that she doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time on her blog (most of the posts are very concise), but I still keep in in my feeds in case she may write something worth not missing.

Blogs to keep up with Search Marketing in Asia : There are three main blogs I follow and recommend. They keep me well up to date with insights about Search in Asia from the perspective of bloggers who actually live search and Internet marketing life in that continent:

http://www.searchblog.asia/  for overall search marketing news in East Asia

http://www.nanjingmarketinggroup.com/blog  blog focusing mainly on the nuances of Baidu and on the China market

http://www.techinasia.com/ if you want big industry news such as the biggest brands doing social media, this is a good blog resource.

Distilled Training resources:I do not intend that Distilled may be a comprehensive source of information for international SEO but it does boasts great resources for marketers. You can get a vast amount of free information from this website around online marketing training resources or guides such as SEO for Facebook, the mobile-friendly site build guide, their online video marketing material, and what I also like about Distilled is that they sell the video material of their conferences so you can store it on your ipad and watch the conference sessions while on commuting or travelling. If you happen to be too busy to go to conferences lately, this is a great way to keep up to date.

Search Engine Watch:columns written by the following authors provide value in International business models: but also follow the topic you may be interested in. For example I follow: http://searchenginewatch.com/topic/naver & Daum http://searchenginewatch.com/topic/daum for Korea’s news and http://searchenginewatch.com/topic/japan for news on Japan Search or for South Easta Asia news: http://searchenginewatch.com/topic/southeastasia

Podcasts

Some of the podcast producers I mention below often cover international marketing topics or topics that have to do with multilingual or multinational issues, particularly around search. There are so many people in the industry that do no listen to podcasts, which surprises me as I think they are a great way to keep abreast of developments in the marketing industry, discover new products, get opinions and recommendations from top marketers and expand your knowledge. The bonus is that you don’t need to be dependent of a small or large screen. You just need a smartphone where you can subscribe to them and hook up in your travelling time or while you are taking the usual stroll:

• StrikePoint, by Mikkel deMib. After more than a year lapse, it is great to see that we have StrikePoint podcasts again, and with two big names from the industry: Atkins-Krueger and Kristjian Mar Hauksson as co-hosts
• Internet Marketing from the guys at Site visibility: Kelvin Newman. This podcast from those starting in Internet Marketing but also often insteresting to experienced marketers as they are starting to add speaking conference marketing sessions to their weekly broadcasting.
• Online Marketing & Communications Podcast from Jon Buscall from Jontus Media
• Digital Marketing Podcast from Daniel rowels and Ciaran Rogers
• Webcology which is run by Jim Hedger and Dave Davies

There is a podcast shows that I would have liked to recommend as an international Marketing show worth listening to:  ex-State of Search, which used to be run by bas Ban del Veld and Roy Huskin, but it hit an end about a year ago and they are not broadcasting at the moment.

Another good source of information around Marketing podcasts is Webmaster Radio which does a good job at at categorising podcasts into digestible categories: International Marketing, SEO, Affiliate. What I don’t like is that they still list those podcasters which have not done any production for even a year. It’d be great if they could organise their material by ‘Active, Non-active, etc’…

Books

Here’s some great books which I consider a good resource or worth using as reference:

• eMarketing excellence (by Dave Chaffey and PR Smith): this is a must-have ‘bible-like’ book about Digital Marketing for in-house marketers… it’ll help you have a top-view perspective of the marketing paradigm in your organisation and how to plan campaigns using the SOSTAC system. I have been reading and consulting this book for guidance and as reference for years since the first edition.
• Global Search Engine Marketing by A. kennedy and Kristjan Mar Hauksson: a very easy to read reference book which contains useful tips about different international markets and audiences. Again if you work in International Search you will like it, though it will make you want more, as if there was a second edition with more comprehensive coverage and detailed insights for every country section. You can read my review about the book in amazon under David C:
• Optimize by Lee Odden: this is my latest read. The book’s subtitle is : How to Attract and engage more customers by integrating SEO, Social media and content marketing. Placing customer engagement at the heart, the book takes a deep look into how search and social media can work together to leverage a greater output for companies. Highly inspiring and engaging book!
• The New Rules of Marketing and PR, by David Meerman Scott. This was is quite old ( 2007) so I was hesitating whether to recommend it, but it made such impact on my marketing education when I read it that I had to recommend it.  All the great principles discussed around online PR are still very valid if. The good news is that the author, David Meerman Scott, has published a new edition in july 2013. I have not read the new edition yet, but I intent to.
• The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the web: this book is my latest acquisition. It probably deviates from the focus of this blog post but it’s so inspiring I cannot finish the post without recommending it to all search marketers that want to improve their Content Marketing knowledge and master the skill.

and that’s it, I hope that you found something interesting in my recommended marketing resources.  There are surely many more that I may be missing. Do you have a secret marketing learning resources that you would like to recommend? feel free to add it on the comments.

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