It’s the start of a brand new year which means new beginnings and resolutions. For some of you this is also the time you commit (once again) to making content a priority for your website and blog.

So to prevent another year of unfulfilled resolutions and empty blog posts, we present the 5 Hard Truths You Need to Know Before Committing to Content Development.

#1. It Isn’t Supposed to be Easy

If good content was easy to create, you’d already have a blog filled with great posts and probably wouldn’t need to be reading this article.

The truth is that quality content is time consuming (don’t ask how long it has taken me to write this post). Good content requires creativity, diligence and commitment. Producing consistently good content should frequently be a pain in the ass.

But if you are a marketer, isn’t that why you got into this business? Didn’t you want to be creative, and produce consistently great work while adapting to new trends and strategies?

Minnesota Welcomes You!

To help you prepare for your next content outing, we’ve decided to help stock your tackle box with some fresh content bait. So we did some scouting and put together a calendar of Minnesota events to give you some ideas and help inspire your social media and content marketing for 2014.

Cheers from WebRanking!

The Portland crew did not join us this year. We were fortunate to have them in Minnesota last year as all the stars aligned and schedules worked out perfectly to have them with us. Alas, the stars were crooked this year. But that didn’t stop us!

The 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors is released

And once again our very own James Svoboda was asked to participate as one of the experts for this annual survey.

I had the honor of presenting at the MnSearch event “Search Snippets #8: The Pro’s Positive Perspective on All Things Google+” in Minneapolis, MN. The presentation I gave had to be slimmed down to fit within 20’ish minutes. Here is the full version presentation entitled “Google+: The Unsocial Network (for marketers)“.

The basis of this presentation is to look at Google+ from a unique perspective. It shows Google+’s impact on Google’s search engine and advertising offerings, as well as how businesses and marketing professionals can use Google+ effectively.

I hope you enjoy it!

July 22nd is fast approaching. This is the day that AdWords advertisers has been dreading since Google first announced to Enhanced Campaigns, the platform upgrade that includes major changes to how campaigns are built, managed and perform. On the 22nd of July 2013, all existing campaigns will be automatically upgraded to Enhanced.

Several studies have already shown that Google Enhanced campaigns are causing AdWords Cost-Per-Click rates to rise, and will increase even further on the 22nd when all campaigns will be auto-upgraded. If you have not yet upgraded your campaigns, you only have a little time left. I suggest doing so ahead of time so that you get your settings dialed in the way you want them, and not the way Google wants.

Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts of 2013

 
We don’t typically pay much attention to “Top” lists, but when our friends over at PPC Hero put together theirs we couldn’t help but notice. Recently they published their “Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts in 2013” and as WebRanking provides Paid Search services to our clients, we were eager to see who made it into this year’s Top 25.

#16 on the Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts in 2013 list

And what do you know….?

WebRanking is sponsoring WordCamp Minneapolis!

WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress and features industry experts speaking on topics ranging from security, theme and plugin development, blogging 101, SEO and more.

As a sponsor, we are giving away 2 tickets to the event. If you live in the Twin Cities area and are interested, you can visit our Facebook page to enter.

For more information about the conference, speakers and schedule, please visit the WordCamp website.

I had the honor of presenting at Hero Conf in Austin, Texas. Here is the Slideshare from my presentation entitled “Visual CRO: Optimizing CTAs for Focused Conversions“. The basis of this presentation was to highlight how to optimize call-to-actions from a visual perspective to increase conversion rates.

I hope you enjoy it!

A thumbs up for Facebook’s newly designed news feed?

While it will take some time to figure out exactly how this will affect paid advertising, it will significantly change how we interact with Facebook, both as consumers and as businesses.
Some of the major changes which stood out in today’s announcement are: