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Wow, this is a great #mustread post by @aimeemillwood by way of [url=/u/114035 x-already-notified=1]Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com[/url] (Brian Yanish a Scoop.it #mustfollow).

Love this quote:

The easy answer is, because guest posting for the sake of increasing marketing metrics doesn’t work.

My goal with guest posting has never been to improve SEO with link-backs and stealthily placed keywords, or seek to grow viral articles that would be forgotten just as soon as they were read." 

and this

"Guest posting was once a very successful tactic, but it’s quickly becoming a cookie-cutter recipe, spiced up with varying degrees of growth hacky tricks (some of which, like the Skyscraper technique, are notably very good)."

Aimee is making a favorite point of ours - tactical web marketing is over! I said this to my friend Red Maxwell in a conference call the other day and he almost choked. 

Look at guest posting as a tactic since it's history is every tactics evolution:

 * Early Adopters pioneer and reap benefits. 

 * Early majority moves in and SCRUMS the tactic to death.

 * Efficacy is reduced to zero.

 The web is NOW and PUBLIC so any winning tactic will be copied and beaten to death FAST and then FASTER. Aimee hits the solution right on the head too with what Guillaume and the Scoop.it team call "lean content". Here is Aimee's insightful quote:

"With such a deluge of content, marketers are scrambling for ways to stand out.

Make content shorter! Bite-sized is the way to go! Time to bring in the long-form! Pack in the videos and photos!"

Preach sister, preach. In an era when SHARES trump all creating content that is more likely to be shared is key. Aimee also makes Scoop.it's point about content curation.

She doesn't call her solution "content curation" nor does she go into the tactic, but you are here reading this because I know and like Brian Yanish's content curation.

But isn't curation another "tactic"? Yes, and that is why the rest of Aimee's post is a must read. Aimee talks about passion, beliefs and LOVE. She writes for THOSE REASONS more than for any material rewards clearly seen and easy to recognize.

NOW we've left the land of tactics and entered Simon Sinek's Start With Why. Aimee is SO RIGHT. If you write for fame, money or glory good luck with that in a world where everyone is trying to pimp their English 101 class.

When the world is drowning in STUFF we read, buy and listen to those we trust and love. Interesting that Aimee's trust factors didn't rise with such branded supporters, but she DIDN'T guest post for Tech Crunch with an eye toward becoming famous.

She wrote because she is passionate and loves what she does and THAST IS WHY Aimee's web marketing future looks bright. Don't leave everything to chance. Read Mark Schaefer's Content Code book (yes Mark wrote the influential Content Shock post) and follow Amiee's suggestions and lead.

Lean, fun content about what we LOVE and those who love us in in all of our content marketing futures.  

Neil Patel shares valuable tips for content marketiing and SEO.

Neil Patel shares valuable tips for content marketiing and SEO.

Neil Patel shares valuable tips for content marketiing and SEO.

This is a very interesting case study by the team at B2B Content Engine on content curation and website traffic: it analyzes the impact content curation has on a B2B web site's traffic.

Learn more:

• http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Curation

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Knowing the health of your website SEO is key if you want your pages to rank at the top of the search results.

Having good onpage optimization is critical. Here are the other steps you should do to get a complete picture.

How do you know if your SEO is enough? Find out how to score your website's SEO in ten minutes or less. 

Here's a great guideline to quickly analyze the SEO/effectiveness on your website.  It's rather simple to do and quickly points out the areas you need to work on.

For me, I still need to do some work on my domain authority.  So that will be my focus for the next few months.

Excellent article by Ammon Johns explaining clearly what the new Google algorithm Hummingbird does and how it really affects the world of search.

Contrary to what has been written by many, Hummingbird changes deeply how Google interprets search queries, especially, long, detailed ones, not the search results directly. This is also why no-one has really seen major changes to web site traffic after Google has introduced the new algo quietly in August.

In simple words, what Google Hummingbird does, in the words of Ammon Johns is: "...making the very concept of many long-tail searches go the same way as referral data.

Google is trying to get away from exact wording to understanding the concepts.

So no matter how verbose or roundabout your search for pizza restaurant in Denver may be, the search it runs is exactly the same as “Denver Pizza Restaurant”, “Pizza Restaurant Denver”, etc."

Read the full article and the examples provided and you will get a good gist of it.

Very interesting. Useful. 8/10

Read the full article here: http://www.isoosi.com/blog/hummingbird-the-opposite-of-long-tail-search.html 

Danny Sullivan reports today on Search Engine Land: "Last week, Google moved to send all searches through Google SSL Search, setting up the ultimate end of keyword data passed along via referrers non-advertisers. Now, Google’s official alternative channel for this information — Google Webmaster Tools — has also stopped sharing the data, most likely due to a bug."

You can check for yourself: go to your Google Webmaster Tools and see if you see any referrer data past Sept.25th. I don't. What about you?

Very worrisome for whoever relies a lot on keyword data. 8/10

Full article: http://searchengineland.com/google-webmaster-tools-blocks-keywords-173153 

Excellent resource, especially this advice on infographics:

In August 2013, the same Googler followed up on that promise by saying that, to avoid raising suspicion with Google, marketers should consider using nofollow links in the infographics they distribute across a large number of sites. This should be done to signify that your infographics aren’t being shared just to up your Google rankings, but rather they are being shared for educational, promotional, or lead and traffic generation purposes.

Rules, rules and more rules...

Smart social monitoring toolsand tips to help you manage your hashtags better. Recommended reading. 9/10

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Good list.

It’s important to ask: With limited resources, what’s more important—SEO or social media? The answer, of course, is: Both!

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Tick your checklist

It's not too hard to guess what kind of content Google values most highly, but this article validates it empirically.

Content curation can be good for your business..This is a good Article!

La curaduría de contenido funciona siempre y cuando está acompañado de suficiente contenido original

Disruptive & Exploding Content Curation
Wish I could tell you I plan to write sentences that will resonate and define something like content curation in a helpful way. The plan is to LOVE what I do and want to share it as often and as many ways as possible almost everything after that is accident (lol). 

Content curation is about to explode. It has too, as Scoop.it's CEO Guillaume noted a good argument could be made that all content that ever needs to be created already has. This means the shift is to the curators.

I read something attributed to uber-curator Maria Popova. She supposedly said each time an Internet marketer uses the word "curator" real curators kill a kitten. Popova was being dramatic, but I take her point. 

Our "curation" is digital curation - the active filtering, theming and organizing of a monster fire hose of content pointed at all of us. Our ability to read and make sense of the world may mean we are all "curators". A contemporary life requires curation. 

Wish I could plan my day to create another piece of content as well received and helpful as this Curatti.com post, but it doesn't work that way. Better to focus on digging the ditch that needs digging than worrying too much about "viral marketing" or "legacy" content (is my thinking :). M  

Have you noticed a trend toward calling everything the "new SEO"? I'm guilty too with my Storytelling Is The New SEO deck on Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/martinmartysmith/storytelling-new-seo ). We are wrestling with what the absence of so much busy work creates.

I agree with this well written statement about the "new SEO":

"Search Marketing Integration merges the world of marketing with keyword themes and link building to get soaring organic visibility and better ROI. SMI is all about effective use of cross-departmental initiatives. In short, success in an SEO campaign will no longer come from the irrelevant and redundant tactics. The caliber to integrate SEO with the marketing initiatives (branding, press releases, events, products, etc.) of an organization will measure true SEO success."

Not sure about the "soaring" part, but I know any website I manage makes more money with a Phil Buckley or a Bill Ross along for discussions about "blue oceans", keywords and content.

Phil never loved the busywork anyway. Now he, and his fellow SEO experts have more time for thinking BIG PICTURE and helping to create content strategies, new Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), strategies and tactics that can WIN and WIN FAST in this new "social shares rule all" post SEO Is Dead world.

 Rather than chasing Google+1s of content, your time is much better spent making great content."

Excellent Post, My Notes:

1. SEO is about more than keywords! Agree
 Hummingbird's ability to handle multi-word queries is setting the stage for semantic web when search engine spiders understand context, nuance and sarcasm. Keywords are important, but the "social vitality" of your content CONFIRMS your keyword-based claims.

2. Bing Doesn't Matter. Agree
When I went to work, I "retired" last week to start my 5th company, I set up my work PC to be all BINGED up. There is enough difference between Google and Bing that I wanted to know what the other guy was thinking (and how). Bing is NOT as fast as Google and they don't understand the content as well, but unimportant they aren't.

3. Google's Hide Of Keywords Kills SEO
No death here, just have to be more intelligent about modeling our content, understanding what (in the content) is creating conversion and doing analysis BEFORE we write to know the most important keywords. If "writers" gets 3x the traffic of "contributors" then use writers.

4. Good inbound links from comments (don't be absurd, Panda helped Google SEE into all of that kind of BS so stop trying to game and create great, highly viral content instead). Comments links, almost without exception, are no follow links. If you drive links to yourself that math will stick out like the SPAM sore thumb it is.

5. Subheads don't matter much (this was new to me and disappointing, I still like subheads for engagement and formatting though).

6. Don't mistake serendipitous conditions for meaningful patterns - this is a general truth and one blown up for +1s. Pages that receive a lot of +1s are also receiving other kinds of benefits, accolades and links. MOZ pointed out that just because two things happen together doesn't mean there is a cause and effect relationship and good idea to remember at all times and in all things Internet marketing.

7. No higher rank from authorship....yet. Not sure my friend Mark Traphagen would agree, but not important enough to get all bent out of shape over in an excellent post.

More on Gplus
https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/2iFLkcgSkAT

"Morale of the story: Whether or not you think SEO is good or bad and whether you think it is going to die or not, one thing stands certain for the near future: SEO specialists will have a much harder time proving that what they do actually works. Period."

Quote from Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land: "

Publishers allow search engines to index their content, which is used by the search engines as the core content they can put lucrative ads around.

In return, search engines have provided traffic to publishers and data on how those publishers are found. That latter part of the ‘deal’ was unilaterally pulled by Google.”""

Robin Good's insight with this ScoopIt is plenty.  It's a big deal about SEO being worthwhile, a real game changer as of Sept. 25th.  ~  Deb

Danny Sullivan reports on SearchEngineLand about the recent quiet change by Google aimed a encryprinting all users search activity.

"Google says this has been done to provide “extra protection” for searchers, and the company may be aiming to block NSA spying activity. Possibly, it’s a move to increase ad sales."

What's the truth? No-one is really sure at the moment, but if you want to find out exactly why this is quite relevant to independent publishers and - better yet - how to still access and archive most of those keywords, read the rest of this good article.

Informative. Very useful. 8/10

Read the full story here: http://searchengineland.com/post-prism-google-secure-searches-172487