Search Marketing Sage

As the curtain closes on another year at Search Mojo, we like to take one last look back at what made our year interesting – and our blog posts here on Search Marketing Sage are an excellent reflection of that. We write about the new things we as search marketers are learning about each day so we can pass that knowledge on to you, our awesome readers. And because of you, 2012 was the most successful year yet for the Search Marketing Sage!

We’ve compiled a list of our top 30 blog posts on search marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing and content marketing for 2012. These were the most popular posts of the year, judged by your visits and feedback. We hope you enjoy these (and even learn something you didn’t know before), and here’s to a successful 2013 for all of us!

It’s been about a year and a half now since Google+ got started. Today, I’m attending the panel Getting ahead with Google+ to learn about search and brand implications, as well as the sense of community that Google can develop.

Adam Audette, President of RKG, kicked off this session with a story about a magical world called Google Land. Google Land was a happy land of wonder. Google focused on search and they were good at search. Then, along came an evil wizard called Mark. This dark sorcerer came to Google Land to steal the dragon’s fire. Mark was from Facebook. Do you follow?

It’s time for Blow Me Away Blogging! I’m listening to arguments for blogging, so I guess it’s fitting that I am blogging this session. I’ll jump right in:

Jennifer Evans Cario

Jennifer Evans Cario says that we may be tempted with Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and leave our blog behind. But we have one brand and many homes – don’t just focus on one. For instance, if we spend all our time on Twitter and it dies tomorrow, we have nothing. We need channels to support our website and our blog marketing channels. Social media is a channel, not a destination. Use social to entice them and then get them to subscribe to your newsletter.

Why did we get started with social media in the first place? Social media delivers traffic and links. This is the connection and tie for SEO and social, so you can’t ignore this. From that, social media delivers conversions, registrations, leads, whatever your desired action is. Social media can deliver credibility.

I’m in Vegas! So far I haven’t had any Hangover, the movie experiences, but there is still time…. Just kidding! I’m attending Search Marketing Expo: Social Media Marketing. I just checked in, got some coffee, and now am ready to get started.

This session is called “Decoding Facebook Ads: Strategies & Tactics for the New Ad Environment” and I thought this was a perfect follow up to Michelle’s Facebook advertising blog post from last week. Greg Finn is moderating this session with 5 (!!) speakers. I have a feeling each presentation is going to be jam packed with information because they have less time to speak. The speakers are Addie Conner - SocialCode, Zvika Goldstein - Kenshoo, Nate Luman – Zappos, Merry Morud – aimClear, and Christina Park – TriggIt.

With location, social networks, and search history playing a larger role in search rankings, it is becoming more difficult to use unpersonalized SERP rankings as a metric of SEO success. At the first session of the day on Tuesday, Rob Bucci and Ryan Jones presented some interesting ideas about how to effectively measure SEO performance.