Did you get the memo? With Google’s increased focus on content freshness and other social-laced algorithmic updates, marketers already keen on blogging and other recurrent content strategies have a definite leg up. But how far do SEOs need to go and at how great a cost for what results?

What results can churn-and-burn-puppy-mill SEO-laced assembly content attain? Are there advantages to going “high-end” and really making an ongoing content investment, and how might that affect results? Sure, we all know the objectives are to drive traffic, earn links, generate social signals, compel & motivate conversion… but what results are reasonably attainable for which types of content?

Continuum Of Content Success
First, why do we create content, anyway? What are the ultimate objectives and how do we measure success? Here, marketers would say that content is successful when:

• Customers and potential customers are provided with valuable insights to demystify processes, lend perspective, solve problems, stimulate interest; pique emotions and serve needs…

You heard it here first! The Duluth Chamber of Commerce is about to announce an ambitious three track social media marketing conference.  “Zenith Social Media Marketing Conference 2012, Tips, Tools, Tactics, & Beyond,” will be held May 23, in multiple locations in our beautiful city.

But make no mistake. This is no “local” conference, rather a national level conclave held locally…

Businesses: raise your hand if you barely cared about Google+ until your SEO consultant called to say now you just have to. While the disproportionate weight Google is placing on + motivated results may be unhealthy for SERPs in the short term, opening a relatively easy + door to bomb Google SERPs serves the function of enlisting SEOs to goad businesses into participating in Google’s fledgling social community…

My content marketing mentors were marvelous gray-haired men and woman, who cut their teeth during the Mad Men era. They trained me to develop story headlines first by brainstorming quickly through numerous theory statements, choosing the appropriate concept to develop, and then taking time to build out a polished headline.

The timeless premise is that it’s important to fully understand what needs to be communicated before attempting to package it in a headline…

As aimClear celebrates our five year anniversary, following August’s much anticipated move to our incredible new office, we’re unveiling a branding campaign, mostly for the fun of it. The Über-groovy banners (below) were created by artist Rachael Stene with support from Manny Rivas and Joe Warner…

On January 15, 2012 I will kick off aimClear’s intense 2012 conference speaking schedule by moderating and presenting at SMX Israel 2012.  I am honored to say the least. The venue is the Inbal Hotel, one of the finest hotels in all of Jerusalem, located near the Old City and Liberty Bell Park. The sessions will be hosted and is programmed by our good friend and Conference Chair Barry Schwartz (@RustyBrick)…

Imagine my surprise to see my daughter on television this morning! Her school’s choir was singing on the local CBS affiliate’s Sunday morning news show…

Last week Indiana University’s Hoosier Nation was totally screaming, abuzz at IUs stunning upset of (previously) #1 Kentucky.  I saw some retweets among my community that highlighted an incredible reality: These days sports fans don’t just yell at the players in the stadium or at their television sets. They yell at each other on Twitter, at the speed of rabid emotion!

I’m watching IU/Notre Dame game now…

Sometimes it takes a grownup, in physical life, to remind us the basics of online community management. Celia Cohn was handling Ambassador duties at the front entrance of the Westin™ Kierland Resort, the official #SMX Social Scottsdale hotel. Her job is to greet guests in the hotel lobby, guide, engage and support.

She greeted me as I walked by, “Mr. Weintraub, how did your speaking go today, or is it tomorrow?” The familiar greeting surprised me, as I did not remember engaging with Celia prior…

This post shares new and traditional measurement options to sooth the savage SEO.  We’ll also offer a different take on organic keyword tracking, based on page level semantic cluster analysis using Webmaster Tools to mash in keywords, missing as a result of Google’s encrypted search. SO… read the whole post or skim down now for the sexy stuff. OK, let’s get started solving the new success measurement riddle-SEO, brothers and sisters! We’ll start with the most basic solutions like ranking reports, Bing data and new vs…

For years, the “Site:” search operator has provided a quick method to distill mainstream SERPs (search engine result pages) down to results from a single website or class of websites. The operator works for major international search engines including Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, and others. Concatenate keywords to filter SERPs matriculated by both site and keyword. When focused on identifying conversations in social, the “Site:” search operator becomes a powerful tool indeed…

Ah, SearchEngineStrategies Chicago has commenced and the feeds are jamming! One hallmark of SES conferences is the virulent tweet stream of fantastic insights, anecdotes, data and other brilliant tidbits that titillate and tantalize via Twitter for all the world to consume in a learning frenzy.  For those online marketers who were not tuned into the #SESCHI hashtag all day, here are some of our favorite tweets from day one

By far, my vote for awesome tweet of the day came from our friend Kevin Lee…

Welcome to aimClear’s stunning new home, 9 West Superior Street. Located at the crossroads of Duluth, Minnesota, Superior Street and Lake Avenue in the very heart of our city. Read on for a look at the historical background of our new digs, and a sneak peek inside…

From 1884 until 1932, this magnificent Romanesque style building, designed by renowned architects Oliver Traphagen and George Wirth, was home to the legendary Silverstein & Bondy Department Store…

Since we published our post (Did $10 Million In Destination Marketing Make Duluth Famous?) I’ve enjoyed stimulating exchanges with folks we respect. To those who reached out, thank you! We received a number of thought-provoking questions. These inquiries resonated with us, because the very idea was to inspire dialog. We thought our readers would find some of the questions and answers interesting…

We live in a marketing world where it’s possible to evaluate brands based on empirical demographic data culled from massive penetration of digital channels. To our international search and social marketing readers, we hope you find this article’s approach to profiling our region’s tourism brand-penetration a useful methodology to use with your clients. To Duluth’s people, aimClear offers the study as a contribution to this glorious city and the wonderful community that spawned our company…

With such huge modifications rolling out in the Facebook UI, little or no attention is being paid to quiet changes taking place in Facebook Ads. Thanks to our friend Julie Gallaher for bringing us notice of the apparent loss baffling change to Facebook Ads Birthday targeting.

Birthday targeting allowed marketers to push psychological buttons with users specifically on their birthdays, a technique that was colorful and worked in some situations…

One of the coolest marketing blog measurements on earth has been gutted, and we’re crushed (Sniff). The AdAge Power 150 has been reworked in response to the loss of PostRank as a key component. Recently purchased by Google, PostRank shut down their API service. Collective Intellect, another key API used in the Power 150 formula, shuttered their API as well.  These sophisticated social signal aggregation and analysis API tools have been replaced in the AdAge Power 150 by a crude mashup of Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Link data, something called “Todd Score” and Alexa…

Google’s recent modification of how link data is categorized in Webmaster Tools had observant SEO practitioners and clients asking interesting questions. If you’re wondering if it’s time to put the brakes on rolling up your subdomains as an SEO tactic because of this Google change, this post has important information.

To be clear, though Big “G” tossed around twenty-five cent words like “reclassification,” there is now confirmation that the update changed nothing algorithmically and only affects how Google displays existing link data in Webmaster tools…

In late 2009 we published a blog post, “Is Your PPC Expert Asleep at the Switch? 6 Minute Self-Audit.” The post generated a bunch of happy-buzz as laypeople (non-PPC professionals) finally had the means to grab a peek to see if their current PPC agency of record or in-house team might be comprised of smelly carpetbaggers. Though the AdWords PPC UI has changed some, the 2009 suggestions are still applicable…