A couple of days ago Google switched on a new search algorithm, new Google Hummingbird Algorithm, the system it uses to sort through all the information it has when you search and come back with answers.

It was merged together with 15th anniversary of Google.

We love Google for its great search engine, for helping us finding the most relevant information, for collecting so many information globally.

I believe that Google is a great source for education, business and inspiration. It gives equal opportunity for all people with Internet access to the knowledge and information.

Yes, we are in an information age.

Recently I read a couple of post about SEO changes due to Google recent algorithm. It looks like Google finally judges the content value, brand and technical preparedness – not links, backlinks and all SEO hidden activities.

This will change the whole situation.

“Hummingbird” Algorithm

I see it very well on my own websites. It looks that natural search rules, like great content, great meta tags, alt tags and speed of website, are the most important now.

Google said that Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or meaning are taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.

google hummingbird

I see it – my websites statistics show better data now and are more visible in natural search.

Paid Search – Google Adwords

On the other hand I noticed that Google Adwords take now 6 lines on each page and sidebar.

It looks like it is the very important change and income source for Google.

Let’s see if this recent change has impact on average conversion rate.

We managed a couple of campaigns recently for our clients and we noticed many major changes: more functions and more customization possibilities.

. Today I read an interesting article on HBR  about negative feedback.

I don’t want to copy their thoughts but I would like to add my own ones.

Negative feedback

Currently we afraid about negative people, negative feedback, negative emotions, etc. I see it like a “positive trend” that it is not always a positive and good for us and our businesses. Of course there is another trend in social media and online media overall – haters…- people that hate everything, comment with anger, envy,etc. We can easily find such examples in our world.

On the other hand we forget about the constructive critique than brings development and changes our world in a positive way. All inventions come from a critique of a lack of some needs fulfillment and dreams.

I don’t think here about the straight critique of people’s work, talents or their traits that can damage a very fragile person and stop her/his development. It has to be done in a very tactful way. Everybody is unique with his/her skills, talents and experience. We have to respect each other but also constantly develop our skills. Young people should learn it especially. The competition is growing rapidly. They have to compete with all global generation that has similar skills and possibilities.

I think here about the critique of company processes, customer service, products.

The business consultancy is something like that  – we look  at the company’s issue and analyse, criticize and recommend solutions.

Our customers are our consultant very often. Simply we forget about it.

Recently I had a B2B client that lost his 70% customers. Of course he wanted to know why.

After small talks to his team, I got information that all his team members knew about this change half a year before their customers left. Can you imagine?

And they didn’t do anything to stop or find out why. The employees thought that their services/products are too expensive in comparison to the competition. But they didn’t ask straightforward their customers if they were satisfied or not.

This is the reason if your company gets the direct critique or feedback, it is a positive act.

Simply you can change something faster or prepare yourself for changes ( if they are long lasting like a needed investment). You can get loyal customers if you can help them and solve their problems.

If employees of the company that I described before shared the information and knowledge with his boss, they would prevent a situation of losing rapidly 70% of customers. Maybe they could change their products, price list, internal processes or prepare themselves for new ones, or postpone their leaving.You can imagine how difficult is to get new customers, how costly it is and time consuming in B2B service.

After my analysis we found out that not only too high price was the main issue.

There were others:

  • lack of flexibility in solving issues
  • poor customer service – answering after 24 hours; lack of nice atmosphere and simply chatting that customers needed
  • lack of regular reviews of customer portfolio: most profitable customers, most demanding vs. cost, time spent
  • lack of effort of getting new customers
  • lack of regular promotions and marketing activities
  • lack of investment in online tools that people prefer now
  • and many others

My advice is to take a negative feedback from your customers as a gift. It can Negative feedback is positiveshow you an issue in your business very often before you can notice it in your financials and statistics.

Social marketing can help in getting some trends for your business if you plan a long term business. You can learn what people like, what is interesting, how to engage them, even they are not your customers now because of their age.

I see that the most important is your product and service. If you can excel and present it in a marvelous way, you will win. People love unique and great designed things. Look at Apple, Samsung, Boca do Lobo. They have all these parts plus great operational processes.

I wish you and myself to get to such level.:)

Content Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are two critical components of inbound marketing. Recently I read a few interesting articles about it. These is a summary of my findings.

The larger the organization, the more challenging it is to get approval and buy-in to build a sustainable content marketing program that will significantly move the needle in SEO

Your content marketing strategy will provide the biggest boost to your organic search visibility if you follow these four rules:

1) Know your key personas

2) Know and write to all stages of the buy cycle

3) Talk outside-in vs. inside-out

4) All write in the same direction

Know Your Key Personas

We all know how important it is to know your customers, core audience and key personas on the web. This applies directly to the content you create – especially for B2B companies – that usually have a limited content creation budget.

The clearer the picture of your personas are, the more targeted your content creation will be resulting in higher quality visitors that are closer to your ideal prospect.

Simply answer following questions:

• What are the main types of business problems the persona typically needs to solve?

• How does your product or service provide solutions to these problems?

• What are some specific tasks the searcher wants to accomplish?

• What are some sample search queries the persona might use?

• What can the site provide that will cause the searcher to accomplish this task?

• What is your business goal for the visitor? Lead gen? Newsletter sign-up? Sale? Inspiration?

• How will the searcher be motivated to complete this business goal? i.e., what’s the offer or incentive? What is the call-to-action?

With this intimate knowledge of your audience in hand, you can craft more relevant keyword and content topics.

Know and write to all stages of the buy cycle

Here are the four main stages of the buy cycle to build content for and the appropriate types of format for each:seo-content marketing

 Author: Scott Fasser, VP of Customer Experience at Optify

 

Talk outside-in vs. inside-out 

Knowing your key words that web users use via a search engine can help you drive a new way of your brand communication as well as modifying your basic message.

SEO helps reach more customers in an inexpensive way. If you don’t like words your clients find your company via search engine, you can invest your time and money into the keywords more relevant to you. But a wiser thing is to use what you have and create different communication by using your current key words.

The lesson here it to review your current and future messaging from the point of view of a persona that does not know about your brand, focus on true differentiation/value proposition and create content that they will understand without needing an explanation. Finding that balance between pushing new concepts and terms vs. serving the market where it exists today is an important input into your content marketing planning.

Write in the Same Direction

Content creation and SEO is no longer limited to the marketing department and copywriters. Blogs, social media, press releases, video, podcasting, etc. has created many ways to easily publish content to your company and other industry related sites. Profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, SlideShare, Pinterest, Google + mean that there are MORE places to fill with content. All of this communication impacts your brand and visibility – positively or negatively.

One of the most important things you can do to amplify your content strategy is to get as many people in your organization to understand how their work can impact the SEO program and what they should to contribute. By giving them the education and the game plan for what key messaging and keywords are reinforces the central promise of your business.

Simply one voice and one direction = you are the king.