Content marketing gurus and SEO mavens alike were in a tizzy earlier this week as Google rolled out its Penguin update. Penguin, like Panda, is an algorithm update aimed at catching webspam. Sometimes these updates, which Google routinely does, do really have an impact on online marketers outside the SEO world. But Penguin is unique. Being smaller than Panda, its focus is more direct and strict. And if blogging for business or article marketing is your thing, you could get bounced by Penguin and not even know it. Luckily, there are ways for your blog to play nicely with Penguin and they come straight from Google’s mouth.

Google’s top 8 things to avoid via WebProNews on Penguin are:

1. Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
2. Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
3. Don’t send automated queries to Google.
4. Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
5. Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains or domains with substantially duplicate content.
6. Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans or other badware.
7. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
8. If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

These are all great tips — especially the keyword stuffing — Penguin or no Penguin. We’ve seen clients eager to jam as many keywords into a blog or article as possible and it never seemed like a good idea. Now we know it isn’t. Things like sneaky redirects, hidden links and multiple pages of duplicate content have always been looked down on by Google and now Penguin is better way combat it. In short, Google is getting smarter all the time and updates like Penguin are on a mission to take out bad, spammy content.

The good news is that these updates actually help those of us who create original, non-shady content. By playing along with Penguin, instead of against it, your content can now be found faster and read by more people!

Freshness is a word we preach often in the custom content biz. Fresh and timely blogs, articles and social media updates are king in online marketing because they help readers and consumers find brands. Now Google’s latest algorithm overall includes a freshness update which is bound to confirm the power of keeping it fresh.

Google conducts hundreds of algorithm updates a year, but this current batch of ten updates is creating a buzz in the content marketing world. The freshness update in particular is causing marketers to salivate because of its proposed power. The update will impact 6 to 35 percent of web search results and it includes searches for up-to-the-minute events, news stories, blog posts and hot topics. For small business owners, the update is titillating because it will also push up the ranking of product and service reviews. According to Google’s official blog, the freshness update will allow searchers to find the latest information about a topic first. This means if you typed in “online marketing” the most recently updated blogs and articles would rank higher. Likewise with current news stories. If you searched for Demi Moore, news stories about the newly single actress would appear before biographical information, with many of the items being just a few minutes old. Basically, your new Google searches will have faster and more recent results than ever before.

Freshness is now not only ideal for our businesses content but a necessity. In order to stay relevant, our content has to be fresh and interesting — and this a good thing. Bloggers and article marketers and small business owners now have the opportunity to keep their followers up to date with the latest happenings in their world. Content creators are now not only spreading the word about their business but providing news.

As we watched article marketing roll along on a never-ending conveyor belt, filling up thousands of websites, we never thought for one minute the whole machine would come to a screeching halt. Yet here we are in 2011, and while article marketing hasn’t stopped, it sure ain’t what it used to be… that’s for sure. Google’s “Farmer” update pretty much squashed the easy breezy way of article marketing. According to SearchEngineLand.com, big content farms have been left scratching their heads as many have lost their rankings, forcing them to up the quality ante and implementing no-followed links. So is article marketing about to be extinct? Or might it be reinvented?

While ringing the death knell for article marketing may be premature, the platform is certainly going through some changes. And as content creators, we think this is a good thing. Google’s update has pretty much put an end to the crappily-written and reorganized articles. Instead, SEO experts are (finally!) saying that article marketing should be done with only well-written and -researched pieces — you know, the ones people would actually want to read. Uploading articles on your personal website and using social media to spread the word is what these same SEO geniuses are recommending in today’s new article marketing atmosphere. For lower-quality content, marketers will undoubtedly rely on farming techniques — but with more caution. With the growing community of talented writers online, lame articles and the spam-ish marketing that go with it have no more reason to exist.

The biggest change here is that the old Internet-polluting article marketing is done. Good riddance. Of course, it means you’re now responsible for producing great articles that increase your web visibility and fit with your well-crafted brand. This is all part of the story of online marketing and digital branding, and how many of the channels we use will continue to grow and change while others will simply fade away.

Media attention and total Google domination are usually at the top of any business owners’ list when asked what they hope to accomplish from online marketing, social media marketing and digital branding. These are admirable goals and ones that can be achieved with hard work, brilliant marketing and persistence. Yet your highly-paid SEO expert and your PR guru know that fabulous media coverage and great search engine ranking can be unlocked by one thing: a fantastic story.

How many times in the digital age have we witnessed a nobody, small-time-brand hit the jackpot after getting picked up by a news outlet or blog? And how many times did the previously hard to find product or person or place suddenly become easier to find thanks to a good story? About a billion times. Unlike the days of press releases, our good stories can now get carried off to the right person with less effort and in a faster time frame.

A non-profit arts organization that I do social media and PR for recently discovered the power of good story potential. After being picked by the local paper for not one but two different and unique stories, the organization found itself on the top of the Google ranking. Pushed up with constant social media updates, the organization had a legitimate top Google ranking — not because of some crazy promises made by snake oil salesmen, but because of good stories published on well-read sites. Likewise, I’ve seen miracles happen for businesses who reached out to well-read blogs which in turn ran a story about the business; suddenly, people started talking and the rankings improved. Food blogs are so powerful and well-read that restaurants and food companies should pitch to blogs first to see fast results.

But what makes a good story? In short, you make a good story. Whether it’s your cutting edge product, your somewhat wacky yet loveable staff or your crazy low prices, there’s a story in there. In fact, there are tons of stories in there. So the question I pose for you this week, dear readers, is simple: What’s your story?

What do the Nicolette Sheridan versus Desperate Housewives lawsuit, controversial people rating site Unvarnished and Lil Wayne tweeting from prison all have in common? If you answered all stories you’d expect to drive you insane by the end of the week, you are correct.  Little stories like this, though, seem to more…

Who could resist a purposely lame 1980′s style video game that features a purple unicorn and his Fabio lookalike master who are in search of floating cheese puffs while attending a birthday party thrown by puppies? Maybe lots of people, but a certain writer could not. In fact, the aforementioned writer  just spent a little too much time playing Cheeto’s Legend of the Cheetocorn.  The quirky and dumb video game is  little more an elaborate advertisement for Cheetos, yet it possesses a certain “what the hell” factor that makes you take a second look.

In fact, take a gander at the hot articles on Digg, for example. The majority of them have a certain wacky or unique appeal that begs readers to stop and click. Everything from stories about women with multiple body parts to the obligatory goofy animal articles are more…

Anyone with a computer has seen it happen a billion times. One day, you read  a quirky article about something random like the benefits of celery, and the next day the same article has been forwarded throughout your office and even picked up by major wire services. In a short matter of time, the same story pops up on the evening news. It’s a virtual wildfire with unknown origins that spreads like magic across all media incarnations. Those lucky enough to tap into this magic have found a way to communicate with mass audiences in a short amount of time. For the rest of us, this process looks like something created by a wizard and certainly something that a small business could never replicate.
more…

I am in the business of creating high-quality content for companies in order to help them drive qualified leads, establish an online brand footprint and to increase search engine rankings. The competition for content providers is enormous. In a recent Wired Magazine Article titled “The Answer Factory: Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell‘”writer Daniel Roth (daniel_roth@wired.com)  uncovers the fast-paced world of cheap content creation by publisher Demand Media. To put it in perspective,

“By next summer, according to founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt, Demand will be publishing 1 million items a month, the equivalent of four English-language Wikipedias a year.

Streaming video is about to go for overload. But there may be even more competition on the way. In a related post , clickz reports that AOL may be getting into the act. There goes the neighborhood.

Labor day weekend is typically set aside for BBQs, beach trips and hard labor around the house. If you’re like me, you’ll be slotting in some time for do-it-yourself repairs and a trip to the hardware store. Before heading out, you can bet I’ll do a little research and scan some “How-To” articles on the Internets to get me in the mood. Intelligent online marketing companies like Ace Hardware are hoping to catch folks like me online this weekend. In a recent press release , Ace Hardware will partner up with open content network company Associated Content to deliver rich media, banners and auto-play video in context with do-it-yourself articles. According to the press release, targeted advertising will display in conjunction with articles that cover the following topics: “How to Replace Your Shower Head,” “Build Shelves to Organize Your Closet,” “Trendy Outdoor Accessories For Fall,” “Outdoor Lighting Fixtures for Your Patio,” and “How to Lay a Brick Patio.” How smart is that? I can see how this can be an effective method and may attract potential customers by advertising to them at the right time and place. Compare this with a traditional TV media buy. Let’s say you’re watching football this weekend on the boob tube and on comes an Ace Hardware commercial. Not only are you not thinking about diy-type projects, but your mind is probably focused on what kind of cold cuts are left in the fridge. Targeting your advertising and coat-tailing them on to content-rich articles is both unobtrusive and relevant. But are these banners enough to get your attention? I visited Associated Content and did a search for three of the articles just to have a look-see at the campaign. On two of the pages, the articles were surrounded by various branded Ace banners; both static and interactive. The interactive banner on top was activated with a rollover. What I thought was impressive is the use of rollover technology to give the user a mini-shopping site experience. The banner in the left hand area of the article offered video tips when clicking on the “helpful video tips” button right in the banner. The banners also display relevant products that take you to the e-commerce site for that product when clicked on. I thought it was pretty seamless and effortless. In the third article, a nested video played in the left column of the article. It was simple and caught my eye. The best part of the experience was that it felt right for the brand. Ace Hardware uses the tagline “The Helpful Place” and it seems to fit right into their current strategy. Advertising to me while I am looking for information on how to fix a shower head or laying a brick patio is helpful. But will this campaign be effective? I appreciated the fact that I got something out of it besides a hard sell, so I think it will be a successful campaign for them. But for me, I wouldn’t mind a little more creativity. If it were up to me, I’d work a little more on the creative to make it fun like this one for Lego Star Wars. But then Ace Hardware would have to change their tagline to “The Fun Place” , and that may not fly over at corporate.

Article marketing involves writing informative articles that engage and inform your target audience, then distributing them out to the world over multiple media outlets including both print and online publishing. Online publishing alone offers a whole slew of article directories. Some of the top article directories are ezinearticles, Buzzle, and The Phantom Writers, but there are literally hundreds more. Getting your articles out to as many media outlets as possible means the chances of your articles being read are more likely and the chances of track backs to your site are also more likely.

So what do you do when you want to distribute a video? Well, there’s YouTube of course. But to get the most bang for your buck, you have lots of other options at your disposal. If you want to enhance Search Engine Optimization for your site or blog, consider more than just Youtube. Below is a list of video to use the next time you want to distribute your next videos online.

1. Blip.tv
In a recent blog post I discuss how blip.tv offers distribution across multiple channels, including TiVo. You’ll find a lot of indie-type entertainment and videos on this site and they like videos that come in a series bundle. So if you have a one-off, this may not be the best route to go.

2. Flikr
Everyone knows Flickr is a great way to share your photos with the people that matter to you. But did you know that you can do the same with videos? For more on Flckr, take the Flickr tour .

3. Hulu

I have posted about Hulu before. Hulu is well-known for professionally filmed content or content that already has a following. However, Hulu also caters to the little guy by offering widgets and player embeds. For more on  different Hulu distribution options, click here.

4. Photobucket
Photobucket is similar to Flickr. You can share both videos and photos here. What I like about Photobucket is you can search videos by most popular, newest, most viewed and most commented. The “Most popular right now” functionality keeps me coming back for more.

5. Trueveo
Truveo is one of the largest video search distribution networks, reaching roughly over 40 million unique visitors a month. If your video is already on the Internet, you can submit it via an RSS feed. If your video isn’t already on the Internet, you can upload it via AOL Video. Either way, Trueveo is one monster of a video portal.
6. Viddler
Viddler is both for the novice and for the savvy video marketer. Viddler offers powerful integration if you want to brand your video with your company voice. For example, you can add your logo to their player, change the player’s color to fit your company’s color scheme, and even have the player link back to your website when it’s embedded somewhere else on the web. You can also “time tag”    your videos with comments from other viewers.

7. Yahoo! Video
Y! Video offers both professional entertainment alongside user-created content. The cool thing about this is you get to share the stage with Television shows, movie clips, news segments and more. Pretty cool.

Remember, distribution is key if you plan on implementing a Brandcasting campaign. More than one video outlet is a good idea if you really want to get the word out on your video.