19th – 25th January 2013
There were a few launches and product updates this week, as well as a couple of mammoth articles that will have you reaching for your Bookmark button! Here’s the top news and best articles of the past week:
How to Use Twitter’s Vine to Create and Share Videos
Social media professionals and content marketers will be interested to hear about the release of Vine this week; Twitter’s latest acquisition which allows users to film, edit and upload 6 second videos to Twitter or Facebook. Considering how successful some brands have been on Instagram there could be a lot of potential for creative marketers. If you’d like some ideas check out the 15 brands already using Vine.
Also See: Three reasons why Twitter’s Vine is the future of content marketing.
A faster Google image search
Google have begun to roll-out an update to Google Images, which sees the preview function integrated into the search results so that browsing is smoother. More importantly they report that the new design resulted in “a net increase in the average click-through rate to the hosting website” (though they don’t mention by how much) and that ”there are now four clickable targets to the source page instead of just two.” If this does hold true then images could become an even more prolific source of traffic.
Also See: Google Launches Streamlined Image Search, Search Engine Land.
Quora Launches Blogging Platform
Another big announcement came this week when Quora released a new blogging platform. Just as their Q&As offered high quality responses, the new platform is designed to help good quality writers reach a vast, engaged, thoughtful audience. Considering the rising importance of content marketing this could be a interesting proposition for those who want to build their reputation as a quality author. Especially since your posts could be delivered to readers who are specifically interested in the topics you write about.
Also See: The Official release post, Introducing Blogs on Quora.
The Advanced Guide to SEO
Far from just another ‘how-to’ post, this is perhaps the best SEO guide to be published since SEOMoz’s The Beginner’s Guide to SEO. Suffice it to say I haven’t read all of it yet, but there’s plenty in here to digest over the course of a few days! Of course, I should mention for our users that quite a few of the processes he describes can be done easily in Linkdex (e.g. crawling, site audits etc.) But this is nonetheless a fantastic resource – a perfect example of the ‘quality content’ everyone tells you to create.
Holy Grail of eCommerce Conversion Optimization
Every now and then a YouMoz post comes along that redefines the meaning of ‘in-depth’. This detailed 91 point checklist will help you optimize your website for conversions, provided you have time to read it all! (It comes in at over 10,000 words). More great, detailed content to bookmark, share and re-read.
