Content Crush: The Best Content Marketing Content This Week

These are our picks for the best content marketing articles, inspiration, and how-tos of the week. You could say it’s a roundup of the best content marketing content for content marketers (how meta). 

1. Google Search Algorithm Explainer

If you have a hard time keeping Panda, Penguin, and Pigeon straight, Brafton’s handy infographic is a good primer.

Modern SEO attempts to establish high relevance in as many of Google’s ranking criteria as possible. What’s important to understand is that those criteria have changed since 2015, and SEO has changed with them. More than ever, they err on the side of quality [content].

See Also: Eight SEO experiments you can run using your website and search analytics for content marketing superpowers.

2. Lies My CMO Told Me

In MarTech Today ON24’s CMO outlines some of the marketing “truths” that are often taken for granted, and how he’s bursting his own bubble. One marketing myth he addressed is the persistence of quantity over quality when it comes to lead generation:

Why, then, do marketers continue to share prospects who have clicked on one link in an email? Because we’re not focusing on the quality of their engagement. Instead, redefine how you’re qualifying those leads and change the metrics that evaluate a prospect’s likelihood to purchase.

See Also: Boost Engagement and Traffic to Accelerate Lead Generation to get tips on increasing and tracking on-site engagement with your content.

3. ROI Focused Keyword Research

These Search Engine Watch pointers focus on scoring quick wins and building on existing search authority to quickly gain position and pageviews.

Optimizing for individual keywords is so far outdated – content marketing helps us move beyond this and optimize for topics. This helps us to be more informative and more comprehensive than our competitors. By grouping keywords by tight semantic relationships, you will not only have the head term, but also all the queries people have.

See Also: The Ultimate Guide to Your Content Marketing Keyword Strategy for more information on the rise of semantic search.

4. Need Creative Inspiration? Do Something Boring

It may sound counter-productive, but as Note to Self‘s Manoush Zomorodi explained in Fast Company, boredom can clear space in our brains to allow us to come up with more creative ideas.

To see if she could amp up their creativity, [University of Central Lancashire researcher Sandi] Mann gave subjects an even duller task, asking them to read phone numbers aloud before brainstorming uses for those paper cups. This second time, subjects had ideas with far more originality and flexibility–like earrings, telephones, musical instruments, and Madonna-like bras.

Extra credit: Pick up Zomorodi’s book, Bored and Brilliant, and try out the behavior-adjusting challenges for yourself.

5. In Praise of Curiosity

Bernadette Jiwa’s blog, The Story of Telling, is Godin-esque in it’s ability to poke at the very heart of marketing and business challenges and assumptions in a few short sentences. Concerned by what she sees as an uptick in insular, self-interest in society at large, she laments:

Today, eyes down, earbuds in, thumbs scrolling, we are the losers. Our capacity to be interested is diminishing, as a result of our obsession with being interesting. We don’t know what we’re missing.

See Also: 10 Best Examples of Companies That Get B2B Marketing