This is the wrap-up of the most popular posts and announcements on SEJ over the previous week. Newsletter subscribers are the first to receive this and other updates.
Google Rolling Out Accelerated Mobile Pages, Get Your Site Ready Now
Google announced its plans to roll out accelerated mobile pages in February 2016, following successful testing of the new technology.
Initially, this technology was tested with a select few publishers. Now, by late February, everyone will be able to take advantage of the new technology.
Learn how to get your site ready for next year’s “hottest new website technology” in this week’s top post.
2016 Social Media Image Sizes Cheat Sheet
Social networks change the dimensions and formats of images frequently, and it can be difficult to stay updated with the latest image size.
As you start to plan out your social media campaigns for 2016, it’s imperative that you optimize your personal and business’ social media profiles with the right image sizes.
Here’s a handy cheat sheet with us that shows all the social media image dimensions in one infographic. See the post here.
Popular Search Marketing Posts
Here is a rundown of the most popular posts on SEJ from last week:
Google to Roll Out Accelerated Mobile Pages to Everyone, Get Your Content Ready Now, by Matt Southern
2016 Social Media Image Sizes Cheat Sheet, by Aki Libo-on
Content Marketing 101: What Kind of Content Actually Gets Links, by David Farkas
6 Soft Skills That Doay’s SEOs Should Possess, by Neil Patel
5 Mobile PPC Techniques Veterans Use to Win, by Dusty Vegas
YouTube Introduces a Trending Tab, Surfacing Viral Videos in Real Time, by Matt Southern
27 Resources to Help Get Found in Search, by Ryan Hanley
What’s the Problem With YouTube Ad Keyword Targeting, by Isaac Rudansky
How to Get Ahead With Your Content in 2016, by Julia McCoy
Four SEO Strategies Every Digital Marketing Needs to Understand, by Bernadette Coleman
Download This Week’s Episode of Marketing Nerds
In this week’s episode of the Marketing Nerds podcast, we are joined by Robert ‘Snake’ Hansen, who is VP of WhiteHat Security Labs, well-respected DefCon speaker, world renown hacker, writer of Slowloris, and creator of Ha.ckers org. We talk about a number of really important topics related to website security. Listen to the full episode, or download the MP3 here.
Subscribe to Marketing Nerds: iTunes | Android | RSS
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Paulo Bobita In-post Photo #1: Ilin Sergey / Shutterstock.com In-post Photo #2: Image by Paulo Bobita In-post Photo #3: Image by Jamie Spencer. Used with permission.
It’s one of the biggest drawbacks of content marketing. How are you supposed to find time to create high quality content?
On top of all the other things you need to do, now you need to find the time to create epic posts.
These types of posts often take several hours to create. If you’re a small business owner, you have a ton of other things on your plate demanding your attention: customer service, product creation and improvement, social media, and other forms of marketing.
And if you’re a marketer of any kind, you’re being asked to create more and more content. Seventy percent of B2B marketers reported they are creating more content this year (compared to last year).
I’ll tell you something for sure: Most of those 70% of marketers don’t even produce epic content. And yet, they’re spending even more time on it. Why? Because it’s still working for them.
Over time, their results will diminish, and they will decide to either give up or up their content game.
I hope you’re ahead of the curve and are already creating next level content. But that leaves you with the time and resources issues. It’s hard to continually devote 20+ hours a week to creating content. But there are a few ways to lessen the extent of this problem.
First, you can write more efficiently.
But you can also be more selective about which types of content you create. Some types of content take a few hours to put together, while others can take hundreds of hours.
One of the most effective types of content (when you look at results vs time to create) is curated content. The basic idea is to take some (or all) of content created by someone else and feature it along other related content. (Of course, you always provide credit.)
Even something as simple as a link to a guide in a post for more information could be considered curated content. You’re finding content you know your readers will be interested in and then connecting them to it.
Almost all content marketers curate content in one way or another. In fact, one report found that 82% of marketers curate content. Overall, the best marketers create around 65% of their own content and curate an additional 25%.
One of the most common ways to use curated content is for social media marketing. You typically need to share content other than your own to be successful, so finding the best content for your readers (that you didn’t make) is a key part of the process.
Curated content on social media represents about 47% of all clicks. And curated content can be used in almost any niche, which is part of the reason why it’s so powerful.
However, not all businesses are successful at curating content.
If you do it the wrong way, your readers won’t pay much attention to what you offer, and you won’t get the results you’re after. Luckily, I can show you how to do content curation right.
By the end of this post, you’ll know which types of curated content you should create as well as how to create them in order to maximize your results when it comes to traffic, shares, and subscribers.
Four Reasons You Should Publish More Curated Content
I’ve touched on a few positive aspects of curated content, but I want you to understand all the ways it can help you. Incorporating curation into your content strategy benefits you in four main ways.
It’s Faster and Cheaper to Create
Curated content is much faster to create than original content. A great example of this is Brian Dean’s link building guide for SEO.
In the guide, he divides link building into different chapters. Each chapter is literally a list of links:
In total, he links to at least a few dozen really great resources on link building.
How much time do you think it took him to put this together? My guess would be under 10 hours.
Now imagine if Brian tried to write each of those sections by himself. The content marketing section alone would take him a minimum of 10 hours to create. And all the other sections would take a similar amount of time.
All in all, we’re looking at 50 hours for a guide like this as a minimum, or about 500% more time than he probably actually spent. I think that example really shows how much time curation can save you.
On top of that, there’s one other cool way in which content curation saves you time.
If you are active on social media, and most businesses are, you need to share content that others have created.
Well, guess what? Since you’ve researched all the best content to include in your curated content, you can just share these resources on social media and save yourself a ton of time.
Sometimes, the Results are Just as Good (Or Better)
Logically, it makes sense to assume there’s a trade-off.
With your own content, you get more traffic, engagement, etc. than you do with curated content, right? It’s true, you probably won’t achieve the same results with curated content as you will with your own, but you don’t lose that much either.
Case in point: Let’s look at that link building guide again. As of writing of this post, it has over 740 Tweets and 440 Facebook likes:
In order to make a valid statement, we have to compare those results to Brian’s typical results.
I picked one of his most recent posts (it’s had more than a few days to collect shares), which currently has 594 Tweets and 223 likes.
Despite having increased his readership since posting that original guide, he actually got fewer shares with his 100% original content.
Obviously, the topics are different, so they can’t be compared perfectly. However, I think this shows that curated content can still achieve some impressive results when done right.
That’s why 50% of surveyed marketers said that curated content helped improve their brand visibility, SEO, traffic, and buyer engagement. The same report also revealed that 41% of marketers found that curated content increased either the number or quality of their sales leads.
Expand Out of Your Area of Expertise
Even after more than five years, I still write on the same types of topics—mainly about social media, content marketing, and SEO. But I know some of my readers are interested in other topics as well, topics that I might not have as much expertise in.
I could, of course, take extra time to research and experiment in those areas, but it can take months to become an expert. Or I could simply curate the best content on those topics.
For example, I could create a guide to buying an online business with curated content. It is something I don’t have much experience with, so I couldn’t comfortably write about it right now, but I could curate it for my readers.
You can Use it to Open Relationships
One huge potential benefit of curating content is that it provides value to influencers—if you do it right.
A good piece of curated content will actually drive traffic to the sources you link to. In addition, if you only include the best of the best, it increases the brand recognition and authority of the people or businesses you include.
Look at these comments on a pretty mediocre roundup:
There were more comments like these ones. People appreciate being featured, which gives you an “in” to develop a relationship with them. If JC (the author) contacted any of these website owners, they’d know exactly who he is.
And, if you create curated posts like I’m about to show you, this even works with the top influencers in your niche.
Step 1: 7 Types of Curated Content You can Publish
There’s one thing you need to know about curated content: No type fits all.
What I mean by that is curated content can be used in almost any niche, but certain types work better for some than others. Your first real challenge is understanding the different types so you can pick the best ones for you.
The best way I can teach you about each type is to show you an example of each, so let’s get started.
Ultimate Guides on a Topic
There is more written content published online than any other type of content.
We’ve actually already looked at an example of an “ultimate guide”, the guide to link building by Brian Dean. What’s the best use for it?
When you try to create a complete guide to anything, it’s usually going to be about one of your main topics. There’s no sense in creating a massive resource on a topic that only a small fraction of your target audience is interested in. These types of guides are designed to wow readers and attract traffic, links, and social shares.
You should consider creating a curated ultimate guide when creating a complete guide from scratch isn’t practical. Part of that is deciding the scope of your content (more on that later).
Since Brian wanted to cover such a huge topic (everything there is to know about link building), it would have taken him months to create all original content. The curated guide that he published probably took him less than a few weeks.
Who can use it?
Massive guides like Brian’s are best used in niches where audiences are willing to learn. They are great in almost any hobby niche (e.g., sports, music, video games, etc.) as well as any niche related to learning about a specific profession (e.g., marketing, SEO, job hunting, management, etc.).
Roundups
You’re probably familiar with at least one type of roundup, but there are a few different types of curated roundups we can look at.
First is the content roundup. An example of one is “The Moz Top 10″ email newsletter that goes out semi-monthly. In these emails, the primary feature is the best 10 pieces of content for SEO.
Regular email roundups like these are best used in niches that move quickly. There are always changes happening in the SEO niche, which is why this works for Moz. Basically, this type of roundup will work in any niche that has at least one thriving niche news site.
The second type of roundup is the expert roundup.
With this kind of roundup, you collect original answers from influencers and present them within one awesome post. Typically, you’ll ask them all the same one or two questions, record all the answers, and then additionally add some insightful analysis of the results.
This type of roundup isn’t purely curationbecause you can also mix in your own (or a contributor’s) original content.
Let’s look at an example of this type of roundup.
Richard Marriott created a highly popular roundup by asking experts what their 3 favorite SEO tools were.
On top of collecting and posting the answers from 55 experts, he also provided a brief but useful introduction and analysis. This brings up the most important takeaway: Don’t be afraid to mix original and curated content.
Often, you can add extra value to the curated content by presenting it within certain context.
This type of roundup is best used in niches with tons of influencers, where the same questions are asked over and over. Usually, the questions are being asked repeatedly because they have subjective answers. This is where answers from experts (more is better) are given the most attention.
The Best Webinars
I wanted to quickly add webinar curation to this section. It’s a list of the best webinars/video tutorials in your niche. Webinars are getting extremely popular (I used to use them at KISSmetrics a lot). However, they are also pretty long. A curated list of the best webinar replays on a topic would get a lot of attention.
Case Studies
In some niches, case studies are the most interesting type of content to readers.
Personally, I’ve seen how much readers appreciate seeing the results of case studies in the conversion rate optimization niche. But running a complete test can take weeks, and then you’ll have to write the post as well. In the end, readers are only interested in the idea behind the test, how you did it, and what the results were.
In a situation like this, what if you could put several case studies together?
Showcase all the important information in a few hundred words for each case study. If people love one case study, they’ll love having more in one place.
Here’s an example: A post with 100 conversion optimization case studies on KISSmetrics’ blog.
As you can see, it’s been shared over 2,000 times, with plenty of comments and links to the page.
It would take years to run 100 good tests on your own. But by curating case studies others have published (and only including the best ones), you create a really interesting and valuableresource. Your audience can’t help but love it, and you could put it together in less than a week.
Where else can curated case studies be used?
Chances are you already know whether people appreciate case studies in your niche.
I’m actually a little surprised no one has created a post like the one above for SEO case studies. People love to read about how website owners improved their traffic by X% over 6-12 months.
Here’s an example in the home design niche, where the author put together a list of 101 home remodeling projects (equivalent to case studies).
Reading List or Education List
Some niches are built around learning. As you’ve seen, there are already a few types of curated content that work great in these niches. In these niches, there are always people trying to teach (and often sell) to anyone who will listen. This results in a ton of content that no one has the time to read.
Of course, this is a perfect opportunity for curation. You can create something of tremendous value by simply going through the content and picking the best of it. You’re saving your audience from reading the crap while also showing them the content they will love.
One example of this is Tim Ferriss’ book club:
Out of thousands of books Tim has read, he’s picked six so far he says made a meaningful difference in his life.
That kind of selective curation means a lot coming from someone with his reputation. Every entrepreneur will want to read these books.
Your own curation doesn’t have to be quite that strict.
Here’s another good example: James Clear’s book list. He’s included more than 100 great books, sorted by category:
Now we’re getting into some advanced curation; not only picking out the best resources but organizing them in a way that is most useful to the reader. Finally, this type of curation can extend to online courses.
For example, online computer science classes are offered free by hundreds of sites. Some are obviously better than others. This post puts together the 16 best ones in the author’s opinion.
What makes this post valuable to readers is that it’s clear the author spent time testing and reviewing each course.
Customer Stories
Influencers aren’t the only ones who can create content. So can customers and readers.
Although you can only really do this if you have a large or raving fan base, one option is to curate the best customer reviews:
It’s easier than ever for bigger brands to do this now since many customers post pictures of themselves using the product on social media without even being asked. If you monitor your hashtags, you’ll be able to find them and save the best.
Top Sites or Experts
Finally, if you’re looking to build relationships with influencers in your niche, you can also create a “top” list of all the best sites or experts in it.
This is not as effective as it used to be because it is the most used form of content curation. It can still be useful, but the main reason you should be doing it is to reach out to the people you include and open a dialogue.
Step 2: Understand the Finer Details of Curation That Make the Difference
Many website owners post curated content on a daily basis. The vast majority of it doesn’t get much attention.
I don’t want yours to be part of that. In order to make sure that doesn’t happen, you need to understand the true value of content curation: quality.
If people just wanted to learn about a subject they like, they could head to an aggregator such as Alltop:
Just about anyone can submit content there, and it is categorized.
People are getting overwhelmed by the amount of content out there. Although they don’t want to miss out on the truly useful content, it’s hard to wade through 20-30 pieces of content to find one or two good ones.
That’s where you come in. You care about your audience and are willing to do the hard work for them.
Don’t get lazy: To curate content properly, you need to do two essential things.
First, you need to find all the content that fits your topic. When you say you’ve assembled the best content out there, you need to be sure that you didn’t miss anything. As soon as you miss one great resource, readers will doubt you were as thorough as you claimed.
Second, you need to review all the content. And I’m not talking about skimming the content. Do you think a movie critic just skips through a movie to review it?
Never. You shouldn’t either.
It might seem like hard work, and it is. This is the main source of value of your curated content. If you don’t review every piece of content you’re considering thoroughly, your final result won’t be as valuable to your reader.
Those are two simple but absolutely crucial steps if you want to see results.
Step 3: How to Find Perfect Topics for Content Curation
The beauty of curated content is that you can really use it for any good content idea that you had in the first place. However, you’ll still want to quickly run through this 3-step process for picking good ideas.
First, pick a type of curated content: The reason I spent so much time on the different types of curated content is because you need know which ones are valued the most by your readers.
If you’re in a niche like marketing, you have a lot of options:
Ultimate guides
Roundups
Webinars
Case studies
Reading lists
Top experts
You can use any type effectively.
However, if you’re in a niche like camping, there likely aren’t webinars or case studies. In that niche, readers value informative guides and video tutorials, so you’d want to stick to those types of content.
Second, define your scope: The scope of a piece of content refers to how large of a topic you’re going to tackle. The term is mainly used in descriptions of academic papers and studies.
But it’s really important to pick a scope that matches your content type.
When you create your own content, you need to focus on a narrow scope and cover it in great depth. But when you’re curating content, you need to capitalize on the fact that you don’t need to create the content. This allows you to not only go deep on a topic but also wide.
Think back to Backlinko’s link building guide. Here are the first three chapter titles:
Link Building Fundamentals
How to Get Top Notch Links Using Content Marketing
How to Execute Effective Email Outreach Campaigns
Each of those sounds like a huge post that I might write. That’s why Brian links to at least 3-4 amazing resources in each chapter.
When you’re curating content, choose a large scope.
Brian didn’t just curate a guide to getting links with content marketing—he created an ultimate guide to link building.
Finally, find a unique angle: If you’re curating content on a topic, that means a lot of content has been produced on that topic. But that also means you need to find a way to add significant value to it if you want to stand out.
There are a few ways to do this:
Go bigger: In some cases, more is better (e.g., case studies)
Increase your scope: Cover a large topic everyone else is too scared to do (e.g., ultimate guide to link building)
Go after a unique aspect: If many people have curated a topic, you can stand out by modifying it for a more specific audience (e.g., instead of “top X marketing blogs”, do “top X marketing blogs for SAAS startups”)
Step 4: 5 Tools to Track Down Amazing Content & Work More Efficiently
Once you’ve picked the type of content you’re going to create and the topic, you need to do the actual curating.
First, find absolutely everything there is to know about the topic you selected. Then, read/watch it, and save the best pieces. There’s no wrong way to do this, but I recommend using a combination of tools to save time on discovery.
Feedly
This is the leading RSS reader. It lets you add feeds from the top sites in your niche and then shows you recently published articles so you can quickly see what interests you.
Add all the major blogs in your niche, and you’ll never miss a post.
Reddit
Reddit is one of the largest community websites in the world. It is broken down into subreddits, which are essentially different categories. You can find a category for just about any niche, no matter which one you’re in.
After you find a relevant sub-reddit, you can visit it every once in a while to see current trending posts. These posts are semi-curated by the community since they vote on them. In addition, you can also click on “top” along the top menu of any sub-reddit to see the most liked posts of all time:
Evernote
Evernote is an extremely popular app that will help you stay organized, and it’s free. It’s essentially your own personal notebook that syncs across all your devices.
When you come across an article that you think is amazing, you can add it to your notebook and add tags and comments to it.
When it’s time to create content, just search for a few related phrases to bring up past content you’ve saved.
Trello
If you have a specific topic in mind already, your main challenge will be organizing all the content. One option is to manage it with Trello, which can save you a lot of time.
Trello allows you to create boards and then add lists to them. On each board, you can add “cards”, which is where you’d put the great content you find.
Put the headline as the title for each card, and click the card after you make it. Then, add the link to the content plus a comment if have one:
Pocket
If you’re not a fan of Evernote, you might want to give Pocket a try. It’s designed similarly, letting you save interesting content you find on the web to your “pocket“.
Get in the habit of saving the best pieces of content you come across because you never know when you’ll need it for a curated post.
You can use Pocket on any of your devices and can save a link to a piece of content with just a few clicks. You can also tag posts so that they are easy to find in the future.
Step 5: Don’t Just Slap it Together
Doing all the research for your content will take a ton of time. It will be tempting to just publish your results in the easiest way possible; After all, the value is still there. But if you do, you’re throwing away a huge chunk of your potential results.
There are two types of people in your audience that will read these types of posts.
First, your target audience. These are your typical readers that you created the post for. When they come across a curated post, they have one main question:
Should I trust that these resources are actually the best?
If the reader doesn’t believe that your list of the “best books on X” is a good list, they’re not going to give it a second thought.
How do you gain that trust? Two ways:
Be so well-known that all readers know you as an expert (e.g., Tim Ferriss, James Clear)
Present your content so professionally that readers assume you must know what you’re doing
Design matters: Brian Dean is well-known in the SEO industry. He could have put up simple links in his curated guide, but he didn’t because he understands the value of design.
If you want readers to think that your content is a big deal, it needs to look like a big deal.
Secondly, if you’re covering a wide scope (like you should be), you’re going to be curating several (or hundreds) of other pieces of content. Organization is key.
Most readers will only be interested in specific parts, so make sure it’s easy for them to find those parts. Create a custom table of contents or filters that readers can use.
The other part of your readers: Other than your regular readers, you also have all those people whom you featured in your content.
When you curate content, it means you think that content is the best of the best, which is flattering to those content creators. Most will check out your content when you send them a message about it.
When they do, they’re going to look at just a few key things:
Does it look professional?
How am I featured?
Who else is included?
If it doesn’t look professional, it’s all of a sudden a lot less flattering. They’ll see you as a “nobody” who probably doesn’t have an audience.
They also care about how they’re featured. If they’re named as an expert, with a picture or glowing recommendation surrounding your link to them, you get a few bonus points here. They’ll feel more special.
Finally, they care about other included people. If they think that other pieces of content you’ve included suck, they’ll be disappointed. When they see you put in the time to include only the best, being featured is going to be a big compliment to them. If you just picked the first few resources Google showed you, it’s not impressive.
Conclusion
Curating content is a great way to save time while also creating high value content your readers will love. It can attract shares and traffic and is a great way to open a dialogue with influencers you’d like to connect with.
Follow the five steps in this post, and you’ll have a killer curated piece of content to show the world.
I’d love to hear how you’ve used curated content in the past or how you plan to in the future.Just leave me a comment below.
This post originally appeared on Quick Sprout, and is re-published with permission.
Image Credits
Featured Image: LOFTFLOW/Shutterstock.com All screenshots by Neil Patel. Taken November 2015.
As we are about to close out another year, it is time to take a look back at some of the new features, notable MakeUseOf posts, and standout extensions surrounding one of the most popular browsers, Chrome. There has been both good and bad said about Chrome in 2015, but the fact remains that it is and will likely continue to be one of the most widely used browsers.
New Chrome Features in 2015
2015 did bring many new options to Chrome users that you may or may not even realize exist. Take a look at just some of these features introduced this year along with the month of release:
High-resolution audio support and synchronous music using Chromecast Audio (December)
VP9 video format support for less data usage and higher quality videos (October)
Site Status section to check out Safe Browsing warnings (October)
A new Chromecast along with Chromecast Audio for streaming music (September)
Automatically pausing Flash content for better battery life (June)
3 Must-Read Chrome Posts
It’s Time To Break Up With Google Chrome — For those of you on the fence about which browser to use, check out my piece about a heart-felt good-bye Chrome. This is an article that I wrote explaining why I needed to discontinue my use of the browser. The article contains a brief performance comparison between browsers, issues with coming out of a locked mode and then moves onto a speed test that Firefox won.
After favoring Firefox for both customization options and extensions and tools, it was a sad farewell that I bid to Google Chrome. This article sparked a lot of response from those who completely disagreed to those who were a bit indifferent to those who agreed. Whatever your thoughts on Chrome as compared to Firefox, it ultimately comes down to preference as the browser wars will definitely continue.
I Hate Google Chrome But I’m Trapped In It. Here’s Why — This article by Mihir Patkar is in a similar vein to the previous article, but a little more favorable of Chrome. The article points out vital apps and extensions that are available only to Chrome users and that kept the author using the browser.
The primary app mentioned was WhatsApp, which is an extremely popular instant messaging app. If you use WhatsApp often, this is good reason to prefer Chrome over alternatives. The article also notes an extension for Chromecast as another great reason to stick with the Chrome browser. This handy add-on lets you cast images from your computer to your television, allows you play videos from compatible apps like YouTube, and lets you to stream shows from Netflix. So, if you’re looking for reasons to stick with Chrome, this is a very helpful article.
Don’t Give Up on Chrome Until You’ve Done This First — This is quite a valuable piece by Aaron Couch. In this helpful article the author provided a good list of tips for improving the performance of Chrome for those who have been aggravated with the browser. He took readers through several steps from backing up settings all the way to running a software removal tool.
The author’s steps outlined how to fix issues, disable settings and plugins, and gave tips for better management of extensions. Aaron Couch assisted people with questions and provided a great list of actions to take to improve your browsing experience with Chrome, showing that there was hope for doubters.
Standout Chrome Extensions in 2015
As you know, MakeUseOf routinely searches, tests, and uses various browser extensions in order to bring you some of the best out there. Chrome really does have some wonderful, helpful, and useful extensions with many that stand out. Here are some of the best Chrome extensions we featured in 2015.
10 Most Productive New Tab Extensions For Google Chrome — For productivity, Mihir Patkar shares a great list of extensions, including the following five great tools:
Prioritab for managing tasks and seeing what’s on your plate
Momentum for an inspirational start to your day
Wunderlist for a cross-platform to-do list option
OverTask for a project management view of your tasks
TabTab for combining tasks and a calendar into one view
Google Gold: 15 Essential Chrome Extensions — Showing you the tools that you definitely need, Dave Parrack provided you with his ideal list of useful add-ons, which included the following five essentials:
Pushbullet for sending links, photos, and files between devices
Grammarly for spelling and grammar checks
Click&Clean for clearing your cache, cookies, and history easily
PicMonkey for free online photo editing
Evernote Web Clipper for saving pages or sections with annotations
15 Can’t-Miss Chrome Extensions for Productivity — Next you should read Akshata Shanbhag’s list of wonderful add-ons for an array of ways to improve your productivity, including:
Save to Pocket for articles and videos that you want to check out later
Note Board for organizing ideas in the form of sticky notes
Quick Write Text Editor for tidy editing and offline note-taking
Awesome Screenshot for capturing and annotating screenshots
Limitless for a nice dashboard with time tracking, bookmarks, and more
8 Absolutely Brilliant Chrome Extensions That You Should Know About — Mark O’Neill looked outside the box for a list of cool extensions for Chrome, including:
Ballloon for sending items to cloud storage
Floating YouTube for checking out videos using a pop-up player
Linkclump for opening multiple links from one page, at one time
OneTab for gathering links from a page and listing them in one tab
The Best Chrome Extensions of 2015
There you have it, this is our essential list of popular posts and extensions for Chrome this year. Whether you need tips and tricks for better Chrome performance or handy extensions to improve your productivity, MakeUseOf has you covered here. We can’t wait to see what new features, tools, and extensions will be coming in the new year for Chrome users, how about you?
What are your favorite new extensions for Chrome? And which of our Chrome articles did you love most this year?
Image Credit: Gustavo Frazao; Vitalez via Shutterstock.com
This is the wrap-up of the most popular posts and announcements on SEJ over the previous week. Newsletter subscribers are the first to receive this and other updates.
Google Kills off Google+ Local, Still Committed to Local Search
Google has changed the way they show local results. Again. The latest change with very little warning, which has created plenty of confusion and frustration among many business owners.
In this week’s top post, SEJ contributor Myles Anderson, explains explain what has changed, why it has changed, and why Google Local is still a huge opportunity for local businesses to attract new customers. Read the full post here.
7 Simple But Overlooked SEO Audit Tips
Whether you love or hate SEO audits, you can’t deny the satisfaction of finding that one things that has been holding back your site, or a client site, from doing well.
In another of this week’s top SEO posts, contributor Joe Balestrino shares the top 7 issues he routinely helps businesses with following an SEO audit. Not finding what you need with your current auditing techniques? Read Joe’s full list of tips here.
Popular Search Marketing Posts
Here is a rundown of the most popular posts on SEJ from last week:
Google Kills Off Google+ Local, Still Committed to Local Search, by Myles Anderson
Instagram Test Multiple Account Feature, by Danielle Antosz
7 Simple but Overlooked SEO Audit Tips, by Joe Balestrino
Google Permanently Removes “Change Location” Search Feature, by Danielle Antosz
7 Brands Who Are Keeping it Real on Facebook and Twitter, by Danielle Antosz/ [AD] How to Enhance Your Blog’s Engagement With Embedly
5 Ways to Improve Your Organic Reach on YouTube, by Aleh Barysevich
New #MarketingNerds Podcast: When is it Worth Investing in Yourself?, by Aki Libo-on
Google AdWords Doubles Amount of Structured Information Shown in Text Ads, by Matt Southern
Google Releases ‘Trial Runs’ Streaming App Ads, by Danielle Antosz
5 Ways to Build a Listening Culture to Boost Reputation, by Jean Dion
Download This Week’s Episode of Marketing Nerds
In this week’s episode of Marketing Nerds, WordStream CTO and Founder, Larry Kim, joins SEJ Executive Editor Kelsey Jones to talk about Google AdWords’ Customer Match. Larry gave an overview of AdWords’ new feature, how businesses can use it, and why it’s better to choose niche PPC audiences over widespread ones. Listen to the full episode, or download the MP3 here.
Subscribe to Marketing Nerds: iTunes | Android | RSS
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Paulo Bobita In-post Photo #1: rvlsoft / Shutterstock.com In-post Photo #2: Image by Paulo Bobita In-post Photo #3: nerucci/Shutterstock.com
This is the wrap-up of the most popular posts and announcements on SEJ over the previous week. Newsletter subscribers are the first to receive this and other updates.
10 SEO Tips You’d Be Surprised You Didn’t Know
When it comes to SEO, there’s a lot of fluctuation in the industry — and it’s not just Google update, it’s also in the way people use and interact with search engines.
In this week’s top article, SEJ contributor Erin Robbins O’Brien shares a variety of surprising new SEO tips — covering analytics, organization, and productivity practices.
These are practices O’Brien personally uses and believes marketers should be more aware of. View the full article here.
How to Get Your New Website Indexed in Google
Launching a new website is not just about getting it up and running, you need to get it indexed and ranking high too. Can this be accomplished in just a few weeks? VIP Contributor Neil Patel believe it is.
These days you can’t guarantee or get first-page rankings using the same methods as before. In another of this week’s top articles, Patel explains that there’s a new content-driven, user-focused approach to SEO.
The process is different, but Patel says still possible to get your website ranked quickly. Read his full article here.
Popular Search Marketing Posts
Here is a rundown of the most popular posts on SEJ from last week:
10 SEO Tips You’d Be Surprised You Didn’t Know, by Erin Robbins O’Brien
How to Help Your New Website Get Indexed in Google, by Neil Patel
3 Facebook Ad Features You’re Not Using (But Should Be), by Scott Cohen
9 Roadblocks Harming Your Google Rankings, by Barrie Smith
12 Content Marketing Tools That Will Rapidly Improve Your Productivity, by Anna Francis / [AD] 3 Overlooked Keys to Success With Influencer Marketing
More About Google’s Search Quality Guidelines, by Marc Purtell
Google Permanently Removes ‘Change Location’ Feature in Search Results, by Danielle Antosz
2015 UK Search Awards Winners Announced, by Matt Southern
Misconceptions About Facebook Ads: Interview with Rocco Baldassarre, by Kelsey Jones
How Alt Tags Can Hurt Your Business, by Eli Schwartz
This is the wrap-up of the most popular posts and announcements on SEJ over the previous week. Newsletter subscribers are the first to receive this and other updates.
A Snapshot of SEO in 2015 and Beyond
How well do you actually know SEO at the end of 2015? it can be easy to forget the fundamentals and navigate your way through the multiple updates thrown at you from the big G.
Keeping up is paramount, or you’re just going to get lost in the jungle. Contributor Richard Paul has created an infographic compiling all the data related to SEO in 2015.
Get ready to kick back and brush up on what you need to know about this field going into next year. See the infographic here.
Facebook’s Detailed Targeting: What You Need to Know
Are you running Facebook ads for your business? If so, Facebook is rolling out something that will help you narrow your targeting down to the exact customers you wish to reach.
Popular Search Marketing Posts
Here is a rundown of the most popular posts on SEJ from last week:
A Snapshot of SEO in 2015 and Beyond, by Richard Paul
Facebook’s Detailed Targeting: What You Need to Know, by Kyler Patterson
How to Make an Effective About Us Page, by Amanda DiSilvestro
15 Tips to Help You Write Better Social Media Content, by Julia McCoy
Maximize Your Reach Using Google’s Knowledge Graph, by Aleh Barysevich / [AD] Top Search Ranking Factors of 2015, According to Moz Study
Social Media Reputation Management Do’s and Don’ts, by Jean Dion
10 Steps to Effective Website Content and Copy, by Chandal Nolasco da Silva
How to Choose the Best Domain Name, by Travin Keith
#MarketingNerds, How to Succeed in Local SEO, by Aki Libo-on
The Complete Guide to Content Marketing Through Comments, by Brent Csutoras