I am on holiday, if a freelance consultant like me can seriously be on holidays, but traditions are traditions, and I cannot miss to offer to all of you my monthly “Super Search” column, and be advised: the things shared this months are possibly between the best ever share this year.
Search and Internet Marketing Industry
The Gen X CMO, Smarter Search And Smarter Content is thoughtful post written by Ruff Mann of Covario on Mediapost.
Between the many reasoning Ruff does, this particularly hit the mark:
As a digital immigrant or digital native, the new-era CMO knows that only search, share and serendipity are the ways that her consumers will find and engage with her brands. And that these consumers are more valuable, more measurable, and also more expensive — in that order.
Google is taking a profoundly new direction, says one of its top execs by Christopher Mims on Quartz.
Every day passing I am more and more convinced that search marketers must start opening their interests (and their eyes) to fields wider that just Search. And this post is a prove of that, because it shows quite well how Google – even though Search (paid search) represents still the 90% of its revenues – is moving fast forward into directions that even its engineers were completely conscious it would have taken.
On the other hand, we should not forget we are search marketers, hence that we should improve and refine our real skills and not trying to mimic those of the advertising agencies.
The key for the future existence of the SEO agencies is not in really in trying to become a Digital Advertising Company, but to be able to integrate themselves in a collaborative way with those agencies.
Laura Lippay explains all this in this post: Think Bigger: There’s a Glaring Marketing Industry Opportunity Up for Grabs on SEOGadget.
Risk Mitigation During Early Stage Consulting by Ross Hudgens and published in his site is something I want to share especially with those search marketers, who have started his adventure in this exciting but hard profession, because in many occasion our biggest enemy is not Google, but ourselves.
What I Learned at #MozCon 2013 by Matt Gratt in the Buzzstream blog.
I want to insert this post under this category because it clearly explains the value of this year edition of MozCon, which really was more about a “new better conscience” about our industry than a simple succession of “new” tactics.
I though I got too serious with my curated list.
A moment of light “crazyness” is needed 
Dealing with Google
One of the SEO I most respect is Alan Bleiweiss. I know, sometimes he may sound rude on Twitter, but – trust me – he is not only one of the most gifted SEO, but also a great human being.
He doesn’t write that much, but when he writes you must read him.
Few days ago he published QUART – The 5 SEO Super-Signals on Search Engine Journal. It’s a long form, but worth every minute spent reading it.
Google Warns Against Large-Scale Guest Posting, Advertorials & “Optimized Anchor Text” In Press Releases.
Not having a real update to talk about, apart the not so clear two-week-roll-update happened between the end of June and the 4th of July, this is probably the most talked about video by Matt Cutts of late.
But – let me be 100% honest – someone should explain me why SEOs overreacted to what Matt Cutts said in this video? In fact – prove me if I am wrong – nothing we didn’t know already was told.
Penguin 2.0 – Learn from Icelolly.Com’s Penguin Filter by Derek Devlin on LinkResearchTools is not a post, but an über detailed case history about a Penguin 2.0 successful recovery.
Hence, it is not only interesting because of recoveries from Penguin are not so common, but – and especially – because of the useful it can be as a process to follow and as reporting document. Amazing!
How many of you are getting desperate because of a site that they are able to revive because of a manual penalization? I am sure quite many.
For you can be useful – as it was for me – reading this: Google’s Manual Penalty > Why You’re Still Doing it Wrong by Adam Mason on Zazzle.
Another classic issue is duplicated content. Branko “Neyne” Rithman have written on Rank Above what is maybe the best most recent post about this issue: Duplicate Content: the symptoms, the causes, the treatments.
Final post this month for this category is the wonderful interview Eric Enge did to Matt Cutts: Link Building Is Not Illegal (or Inherently Bad) with Matt Cutts.
I confess it: I dream one day to be able to interview people like Eric does. His ability is creating that climate, which helps people being totally open and transparent. And this is what happened with Matt Cutts himself.
It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying & reassuring.-Carl Sagan
— Avinash Kaushik (@avinash) July 21, 2013
Theory
This month Bill Slawski monopolizes this section as he distilled some very interesting posts in his site SEO by the Sea.
How Google May Diversify Search Results by Merging Local and Web Search Results is the first one, and it presents the possible idea of how Google may try to solve the domain clustering issue we all have blame so much since a long time.
The second is Is the Future of Mapping Social?, which collects information taken from patents filed in the past years, and that are becoming extremely actual right now, in a year where Waze has been acquired by Google, and self driving cars are becoming a social space.
Third and last post by Bill is How Google May Classify Pages Using Hierarchical Categories in URLs, which is really about a issue much more common that we may think… or you never doubted if it was better to use this kind of URL, www.domain.com/category-a/subcategory-b/product.html, or this one: www.domain.com/product.html ?
Actionable posts and tools
Call-to-Action Cheat Sheet for Writing Effective PPC Ad Copy by Stephen Kapusta on Lunametrics.
Psst… the cheat sheet is not good just for PPC, but it is a incredible inspiring source for on site and meta descriptions CTAs.
The SEO’s Guide to Building a Great Mobile Site by Kristina Kledzik on Moz is a great starter guide.
Be sure to check also the comments; many of them add valuable information to the post.
Advanced SEO For Ecommerce: Maximizing Keyword Spread by Nick Eubanks is an greatly actionable post, which will make the joy of all the SEOs involved in eCommerce sites.
Finally, a tool that you will find very useful now that Content is so central, is this one: the Fractl Content ROI Calculator (still in beta).
This photo shared by @BarakObama explains storytelling better than thousands posts.
Content Marketing and Strategy
Fight Club’s 8 Rules for Writing that Creates a Ruckus.
I think I would have shared this post even if it were just because of its title. But, I am serious, the 8 rules Greg Ciotti shares in his post should be printed and followed by every writer, not only bloggers.
Take this rule as spoiler and example of the post:
Rule #4 — Only Two People at a Time
“But I want to write for thousands of people!”
I want that for you as well, but if you ignore this rule, you’ll end up writing for no one.
Before you try to create an audience with your writing, you must first decide who you want in the seats.
Gold, distilled in 8 rules. READ IT!
What Makes ‘Great Content’ Great? 8 -Able Words for Greater Content by Elisa Gabbert on Wordstream is another must-be-read post.
The 8 words (what a coincidence!) are:
Findable;
Shareable;
Usable;
Readable;
Memorable;
Quotable;
Actionable;
Reportable.
Reading the post you will discover why those are the qualities of great content.
By the way, aren’t those also the qualities of those contents, which receive tons of links and social shares thanks to the real job now of the link builders?
What is this real job? Outreach and promotion, as superbly has described in a picturesque way Rishi Lakani in his blog.
How to: Do a content inventory by Ian Lurie on Search News Central is great content because, using one of the 8 words cited before, is 100% actionable.
More over, its real virtue is that it remembers us that great content is what we all must aim to achieve, but content – as an all of what compose a site – must be organized, classified and ordered so to be able to give us hints and signal about the performances of contents themselves.
This post is all about Content Strategy, without which is Content Marketing would be simply randomic creativity.
The Future of News and how we can apply this to broader content strategy. If you are dealing with the news industry, an industry which, while still being respectful and trusted, is living a very complex moment in its hundreds years of history, then you should read this post by Sarah Kershaw on Distilled.
The news industry must evolve, or it will die after a long agony. Sarah explains how – instead – it can acquire a new strength and meaning, which marries with what users really want.
The Behavioral Psychology Behind Bold Creative by Joshua Gilardino on iAcquire allows us to (re)discover the importance of psychology in (content) marketing.
It’s a long form, but worth the read and with an actionable ending, which is resumed in this acronym formula: SEEU:
Surprise;
Emotion;
Expectation;
Utility.
Analytics
Free Google Analytics dashboard allowing you to compare organic search traffic across iOS5, iOS6 and iOS7.
As you will see clicking the link, this is not a post but a Google+ status update by Dan Baker and it refers to the very recent news that iOS5, iOS6 and iOS7 are reporting again (and partly) the referrer in case of organic searches.
See-Think-Do: A Content, Marketing, Measurement Business Framework by Avinash is the long form version of his session at MozCon, and it is something every marketer should read, understand and apply.
Another post that was directly inspired by MozCon – more exactly by the Dharmesh Shah session – is this post by Rand Fishkin in his personal blog: Vanity Metrics May Not Be All Bad, where he explains how throw in the garbage the so called “vanity metrics” in the name of more valuable ones could be not that correct.
Social Media
Twitter Launches Its Version Of Universal Search Results.
Show this post to all those ones saying (still) that Social Media has killed Search.
The Rise Of The Niche Social Network by Rishon Roberts on Fast Co Labs reminds us that Social Media is not just Facebook, Twitter or Google+, but neither Reddit, LinkedIn or Pinterest.
There’s an increasing powerful influence of Social Networks, which target small niches of users. The post cite Quibb, Path, Medium, Quora and Potluck, and demonstrates why we should pay attention to them.
Twitter again. This time with a post, which is more a divertissement than something really useful (well, in reality it can have a great value if we can create a tool doing something similar): Visualized: The world of verified users.
Post from Gianluca Fiorelli on State of Search
Gianluca Fiorelli’s Super Search Update – July edition
Keep reading:
Gianluca Fiorelli’s Super Search Update – June edition
Gianluca Fiorelli’s Super Search Update – March edition
Gianluca Fiorelli’s Super Search Update