The Best Small Business Marketing News & Blog Posts of the Week — January 27, 2012

Posted January 27, 2012 by DIYSEO Team (0 comments)

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This post is meant to be helpful for all levels of SEO expertise. You can also find DIYSEO posts classified by level of expertise on the following pages:

Hello you wonderful SEO DIYers! Another week, another roundup filled with fun, fantastic, and of course, informative posts and news items.

Google decided to stir things up a bit by changing its privacy policy. In addition to grumbling and moaning, the move also seems to have inspired people to consider moving away from the search engine’s online products. That wasn’t the only topic covered in the blogosphere this week. Have a look for yourself…

Beginner SEO and Marketing

Maximizing StumbleUpon for Your Content Sharing Strategy — V3′s guest poster Peg Fitzpatrick covered StumbleUpon this week and went into detail about how it can help your content marketing. In it, she says the network can increase your views, but also lengthen the life of your content. She also mentioned it’s a great place to spot other relative content to user on your other social networks. This is a great how-to for Stumble newbies.

7 Unforgivable Sins of Web Design — Ivana Taylor hit a home run on Marketing for Success again this week with her post for those looking to build their first website (or those who have just built their first website and aren’t getting much action out of it). The sins she lists here are ones you’d think are pretty standard, but they’re committed far too often by those lacking experience. Are you committing a web design sin? You’ll just have to read her post and find out.

Small Business Social Media Cheat Sheet — If you love infographics, boy are you gonna love what Rene LeMerle served up this week on INeedHits. It doesn’t have every social network you’ll likely use for business, but it has a great list of pros, cons, stats, and tips you can eagerly lap up in one (pretty) juicy infographic.

Intermediate SEO, Marketing & Business Tips

Mobile Marketing: Seven Tips, Tricks and Techniques for Small Business Owners in 2012 — Contrary to what many believe, mobile marketing is nothing like marketing on the ‘regular’ Internet. It comes with its own challenges, needs, and steps that you HAVE to satisfy before you can get anywhere. Otherwise, you’re investing time, energy, and money that just looks really cool on paper.

Is Your Site Mobile Friendly? Google Can Tell You — Do you need to tweak your site for mobile phones, or is it already mobile friendly? And what about on other people’s mobile phones? If you’re not sure how mobile-friendly your website is, visit Google to find the answer. Not sure what we mean? Read Susan Payton’s post this week and find out.

5 Ways to Use Other People’s Content in Your Marketing — You probably don’t have as much time to create content as you’d like. And you can never have enough content. This leaves most site owners and marketers with a problem: How to generate great content, in a fast and affordable manner. Why, you get someone else to create it for you, of course. At least that was John Jantsch’s suggestion in his Monday’s post this week.

How to Customize Your Email Marketing With Little to No Effort — Vertical Response featured a post that originally appeared on iMedia Connection. The subject? Improving conversions in your email campaign through personalization. This post also gives some great examples of subject lines and things you might find useful.

Advanced SEO, Marketing & Business Links

3 Ways to Improve Your Copy in Less Than 60 Minutes — In a hurry, but need some copy? Need to make your content better without wasting too much time fiddling with it? StartupNation’s Melanie Rembrandt has three great tips that will make your writing infinitely better, without taking up a ton of your time.

10 Best Alternatives to Google Analytics — Google’s decision to update their privacy policy and start sharing information between products has upset a number of people. Many now have the urge to go elsewhere for their online software, analytics included. So, if you were fed up with Google, where would you go? iNeedHits’ Courtney Mills had a few suggestions.

Using Google Analytics to Refine Targeting and Marketing Strategies — If you decided to stick with Google Analytics, you might want to consider using it to improve your marketing and targeting, the cornerstones on conversion optimization.

5 Basic SEO Troubleshooting Tips for Content Marketers — Hurry! Quick! Get this free sample of Lee Odden’s new downloadable guide before it’s too late. While I’ve not seen the guide, it’s going to be a fascinating and helpful read, if this post is any indication.

Great Posts Published This Week Everyone Should Check Out

How Google Chooses Your Title Tag for Search Results — Google has a habit of tossing out your suggestions and pretty much just doing what it wants. Previously, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason behind its decisions to replace your title tags, but an explanation from Google’s Pierre Farr may help clear things up. If you want to read a bit more and maybe even walk a little on the geeked-out tinfoil side, have a look at How Classification of Page Elements and Search Results May Influence Alternative Titles and Snippets Displayed in Google from Bill Slawski. Fascinating read.

Google Panda in Plain English (Infographic) — This really needs no explanation. If you want the basics of the many Panda updates Google has made in the last year, go here.

Bing Surpasses Yahoo! to Become 2nd Favorite Search Engine — I think we’ve all been subconsciously waiting for this news for quite some time. Bing finally beat out its adopted sister Yahoo! in terms of market share. But this news item also has some interesting statistics you might find interesting. Go on. Have a look. You know you want to.

Update to Top Search Queries Data — Google has changed the way it determines the average top search position. Not that this will change much outside of Webmaster Tools, but if something looks horribly off, you’ll know why. You can also read more about it on Search Engine Land.

Now Test Your Sitemaps Before Submitting Them to Google — Also on Search Engine Land this week was information about Google’s new test tool. That should eliminate some headaches, particularly for large complex sites.