A recent survey performed by Forrester and a scathing open letter from Nate Elliott to points to one major and undisputed fact: marketers and businesses are not getting the value they had hoped from Facebook advertising. That much is perfectly clear from the graphic. The reality, however, is that Facebook's only problem is that many marketers are stuck in the "spam and manipulate" model that simply doesn't work on Facebook.

Facebook isn't the one failing anyone, at least in this regard. It should be noted that I have never been the biggest fan of Facebook, what it represents, and in particular what it does with our data. With that said, I find myself reluctantly defending them because the assertions against them are absurd.

The biggest clue to the flawed nature of the premise is in the results themselves. If you were to take an experienced marketer and have them stack-rank the various marketing techniques based on how easily they can be manipulated, spammed, and generally utilized in nefarious ways, the top three would on the Forrester list would be the same that would be on the top of the "spamability" list. Gaming the system for reviews, search marketing, and email marketing are all extremely easy and are the favorites amongst those who are looking for the easy road.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not condemning the methods or those who game the various systems. Of the three, search is one that I operate in regularly and must combat the gaming of that particular system on a regular basis. The bottom line is that it is simple to get benefits from boosting online reviews, search marketing is getting more challenging but is still pretty easy to manipulate, and email marketing is, for the most part, about trying to provide value while staying within the rules. They are easy and effective.

Further down the list, we see the second clue. LinkedIn marketing is a very niche arena when it comes to effectiveness. The majority of businesses do not and should not be marketing their products through LinkedIn. Marketers themselves, however, find great value in marketing their services through LinkedIn. The fact that this is higher on the list than mobile marketing and YouTube marketing shows that the 395 marketers surveyed were considering their own personal gains from marketing as highly as they were considering their clients' gains.

The final clue comes in at number 4 on the list. Branded communities, like LinkedIn, are not appropriate for the majority of marketing agencies unless you're talking about how well they can be used to market the agency's services. To come in at #4 is ludicrous without the personal gains of the marketers taken into account. If branded communities worked so well, why wouldn't every flower shop, car dealership, and dental hygienist in North America have one? If Facebook marketing was so bad, why do just about every flower shop, car dealership, and dental hygienist waste their time one it?

Now, let's take a look at the post by Elliott. In short, he points to two problems that Facebook has with their advertising. He believes that Facebook does not drive genuine engagement and that they do not leverage their social data well enough. The statements are true for most. Facebook has not done enough to teach marketers how to take advantage of the system. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's Facebook's fault.

The reason that they aren't to blame is because tenacious, aggressive marketers are both driving genuine engagement and utilizing the social data that Facebook provides. Facebook's only fault in this regard is that they do not offer classes to those marketers who are too incompetent to use the instructions that Facebook offers, test the effectiveness of their efforts, and grow based upon using real marketing chops rather than have it waiting for Facebook to devise a road map that they can follow.

Unfortunately for the incompetent, such a road map can never exist. Facebook is a social network. It relies on creativity and manual effort, not automation and templates. For Elliot's statements to be truly accurate, Facebook would have to teach marketers how to market. It's a lost art nowadays because of the very advertising venues that are being heralded in the study. Marketers found an easy road to manipulate and spam. Why would they want to actually work for it?

Done properly, social media in general and Facebook in particular is the most cost-effective way to perform true marketing goals. It isn't a venue that your average internet marketing professional can do well in because it takes an old-school mentality to make it sing. Television advertising executives would probably have an easier time adjusting to the realities of Facebook than a search marketing pro any day. The former knows that creativity and effort supersede automation and manipulation. The latter, which likely accounts for the majority of those surveyed, doesn't understand the concept of "doing it by hand" or "quality over quantity". They are looking for a push-button solution. Facebook is not one of those.

Having tracked data for the last seven years in the automotive marketing arena, I can tell you a few things that I've learned that have brought us to where the content marketing world is today. It's all about process and answering the questions that consumers are asking and it's something that, as I've said time and time again in the past, needs to be viewed holistically.

Rather than go into a long post about how to make it all sing properly (that's for future posts), it's important to understand the content marketing trio. No, they have nothing to do with the Three Stooges, but those who don't understand the consumers' mentality might ended up looking like stooges in 2014. This is that important.

To get this understanding, you have to put yourself in the consumers' shoes. You buy things. Take what you know about that and apply it to the mentality and process below.

Where

If they can't find you, they can't do business with you. This is a no-brainer. You can advertise on the various networks, get your branding in place through billboards and radio, put ads in third-party sites across the internet, and a dozen other ways to help people find you, but it's search marketing that truly answers all of the questions that start with "where".

Since content marketing can help your search engine optimization tremendously, it fits in as the first of the trio. Most people are probably finding your website by the name of your company. While this is fine, you don't need to be heavily optimized to be found for your name. It's the other people, the ones that are doing generic searches for you by product or service in your local area, that can have a double impact on your business. By being better optimized, you are moving yourself up in searches which means you are also moving a competitor down.

What

This is your website. "What" you're trying to sell should be easy to determine once visitors get there. The challenge is that having a website that's just like every other website in your market is silly yet so commonly practiced thanks to the mega-vendors and forced OEM adoption.

There is a psychology that goes along with websites that says, "different is usually better". If your customers visit five websites, four of which look pretty much alike and the fifth, yours, looks different, they'll wonder why. It will register, even if only on a subconscious level. If the design and content are compelling, you have an advantage.

Why

In industries such as automotive where the differences in price are measured in small percentage points, the "why" factor comes into play. Most have a page that's a variation of "Why Buy from Us" on their website but it gets very few visitors. It takes more than that to get a consumer to consider you over a competitor.

This is one of the many places where social media comes into play. When are people most likely to click on the social media buttons on your website? When they're done. In other words, they might visit a handful of websites and put in leads at two or three of them. Once they're done, there's a decent chance that they'll click through to your social media presence to see what you're up to from the human side of the company. What will they see? Will it be a ton of ads? Will it be a ton of "look at me" posts?

What if they saw your community involvement? What if they saw your happy customers? What if they saw the local community engaging with you and you engaging back with them? They might look at you and two of your competitors during the course of their browsing. Will you be the most compelling? Does you social media presence give them a good reason to want to buy from you rather than the store down the block that's posting boring or unauthentic content on their social media profiles?

Holistic

In future posts, we'll go into how the holistic method of content marketing can make the whole greater than the sum of its parts, but it's important to understand that reasons that it's all tied together. Don't think search, websites, and social. Think where, what, and why.

Having tracked data for the last seven years in the automotive marketing arena, I can tell you a few things that I've learned that have brought us to where the content marketing world is today. It's all about process and answering the questions that consumers are asking and it's something that, as I've said time and time again in the past, needs to be viewed holistically.

Rather than go into a long post about how to make it all sing properly (that's for future posts), it's important to understand the content marketing trio. No, they have nothing to do with the Three Stooges, but those who don't understand the consumers' mentality might ended up looking like stooges in 2014. This is that important.

To get this understanding, you have to put yourself in the consumers' shoes. You buy things. Take what you know about that and apply it to the mentality and process below.

Where

If they can't find you, they can't do business with you. This is a no-brainer. You can advertise on the various networks, get your branding in place through billboards and radio, put ads in third-party sites across the internet, and a dozen other ways to help people find you, but it's search marketing that truly answers all of the questions that start with "where".

Since content marketing can help your search engine optimization tremendously, it fits in as the first of the trio. Most people are probably finding your website by the name of your company. While this is fine, you don't need to be heavily optimized to be found for your name. It's the other people, the ones that are doing generic searches for you by product or service in your local area, that can have a double impact on your business. By being better optimized, you are moving yourself up in searches which means you are also moving a competitor down.

What

This is your website. "What" you're trying to sell should be easy to determine once visitors get there. The challenge is that having a website that's just like every other website in your market is silly yet so commonly practiced thanks to the mega-vendors and forced OEM adoption.

There is a psychology that goes along with websites that says, "different is usually better". If your customers visit five websites, four of which look pretty much alike and the fifth, yours, looks different, they'll wonder why. It will register, even if only on a subconscious level. If the design and content are compelling, you have an advantage.

Why

In industries such as automotive where the differences in price are measured in small percentage points, the "why" factor comes into play. Most have a page that's a variation of "Why Buy from Us" on their website but it gets very few visitors. It takes more than that to get a consumer to consider you over a competitor.

This is one of the many places where social media comes into play. When are people most likely to click on the social media buttons on your website? When they're done. In other words, they might visit a handful of websites and put in leads at two or three of them. Once they're done, there's a decent chance that they'll click through to your social media presence to see what you're up to from the human side of the company. What will they see? Will it be a ton of ads? Will it be a ton of "look at me" posts?

What if they saw your community involvement? What if they saw your happy customers? What if they saw the local community engaging with you and you engaging back with them? They might look at you and two of your competitors during the course of their browsing. Will you be the most compelling? Does you social media presence give them a good reason to want to buy from you rather than the store down the block that's posting boring or unauthentic content on their social media profiles?

Holistic

In future posts, we'll go into how the holistic method of content marketing can make the whole greater than the sum of its parts, but it's important to understand that reasons that it's all tied together. Don't think search, websites, and social. Think where, what, and why.

There's a real beauty to Facebook for adults. It allows us to keep track of things that are happening in the lives of those important to us such as friends, coworkers, family, and those who are distant from us. It's for this reason that the hoopla about Facebook losing too many teens is being misunderstood by many, including Facebook itself.

Here's the thing. Facebook isn't cool. It hasn't been cool for a couple of years. It was cool before more adults started getting on it. Now it's a drag, at least from a teen perspective. They see their parents spending as much if not more time on it than they were and they simply don't want to be using the same social network as them. It's pretty natural. Few teens want to be hanging out in the same places that their grandparents hang.

More importantly, they don't have to. The people that they want to interact with are the people that they see for several hours five days per week. For the most part, their world is isolated to their friends from school. Facebook brings no additional value to fulfill their lives the way it does with adults. As some flock to Instagram, Twitter, and other social networks, it's natural to see this sort of exodus.

They'll be back.

When they graduate and they really want to know more about people than what they can see in 140-characters or less or what they can discover from a 15-second video, they'll turn to the same place they abandoned. When their friends go off to different colleges, take on different jobs, and move to different states or countries, they'll want to keep tabs on them in ways that only Facebook can deliver.

This isn't the end of Facebook. Kids might be the driving force that makes networks popular, but Facebook has reach a self-sustainability point. They are flocking away from it now, but they will flock right back to it in the future. They'll have to when they can no longer see their ex-boyfriend and who he's talking to in the lunch line. Businesses must understand this in order to make appropriate decisions about whether or not to invest in Facebook as an advertising venue. As Zach Billings mentioned in a blog post the other day, "If your target audience is an older crowd, then Facebook is still the social network of choice."

If your future target audience is the teens that will some day be adults, then you should still stick with Facebook.

There's a real beauty to Facebook for adults. It allows us to keep track of things that are happening in the lives of those important to us such as friends, coworkers, family, and those who are distant from us. It's for this reason that the hoopla about Facebook losing too many teens is being misunderstood by many, including Facebook itself.

Here's the thing. Facebook isn't cool. It hasn't been cool for a couple of years. It was cool before more adults started getting on it. Now it's a drag, at least from a teen perspective. They see their parents spending as much if not more time on it than they were and they simply don't want to be using the same social network as them. It's pretty natural. Few teens want to be hanging out in the same places that their grandparents hang.

More importantly, they don't have to. The people that they want to interact with are the people that they see for several hours five days per week. For the most part, their world is isolated to their friends from school. Facebook brings no additional value to fulfill their lives the way it does with adults. As some flock to Instagram, Twitter, and other social networks, it's natural to see this sort of exodus.

They'll be back.

When they graduate and they really want to know more about people than what they can see in 140-characters or less or what they can discover from a 15-second video, they'll turn to the same place they abandoned. When their friends go off to different colleges, take on different jobs, and move to different states or countries, they'll want to keep tabs on them in ways that only Facebook can deliver.

This isn't the end of Facebook. Kids might be the driving force that makes networks popular, but Facebook has reach a self-sustainability point. They are flocking away from it now, but they will flock right back to it in the future. They'll have to when they can no longer see their ex-boyfriend and who he's talking to in the lunch line. Businesses must understand this in order to make appropriate decisions about whether or not to invest in Facebook as an advertising venue. As Zach Billings mentioned in a blog post the other day, "If your target audience is an older crowd, then Facebook is still the social network of choice."

If your future target audience is the teens that will some day be adults, then you should still stick with Facebook.

There are those who think that Facebook and Twitter are the only relevant social networks when it comes to business. There are those who go so far as saying that Facebook is all that you need. In truth, both may be right, but that's strictly from a social perspective. Once you throw search into the equation, Google+, Pinterest, and Tumblr start having a bit more relevance than before.

Don't get me wrong. There's definitely social benefits that can be acquired through the "three lesser social networks". It's not all about search, but if for search and search alone you're able to find value, at least you're in there and participating.

These sites (and others, of course, but we're going to focus on these three) are able to improve social signals to your website. These social signals, a mysterious but undisputed component of the Google search ranking algorithm, can help your pages get indexed more quickly and demonstrate popularity in the social sites that would normally not be achievable. This is not a license or recommendation to go and spam these sites by any means. At the end of the day, the quality of the content must still be high.

Let's take a look at the quick and easy process. If you do it once a day, every day at a minimum, you will get benefit sooner rather than later.

Find the Right Content

You can't just start spamming pages that are important to you like contact forms. There needs to be a social component of some sort with the links. You have to find or build the right pages that can resonate. Sometimes, that means finding pages that we want to rank well in search that can also play well in social. At other times, it means using pages that don't really benefit us from a search perspective. Some would argue that there's no reason to share this type of content, but they don't understand social signals. While posting the direct page itself that you want ranked, there's a flow of "social signals juice" that flows from a page that does well in social signals to the other pages of your site.

In other words, promoting a strong piece of content that can get more social signals is better than promoting a page that won't do well in social media but that you would love to have ranked. Focus on the quality of the content and the social signal juice will flow across the board.

In this example, we're going to use a pre-owned Mercedes. It's pretty low hanging fruit - people love luxury vehicles on social media - so we'll be using the vehicle detail page itself. It's good social content and useful for business - perfect.

This will work nicely. Now, let's get it some social signals...

Get it on Google+

As with anything that you post on social media, you have to have a story behind it. Just saying something like, "Check out this Mercedes," that won't work. There needs to be something socially compelling about it to put it up anywhere.

In the example above, we see the story. It's a compelling plea to touch the desires of the audience. Once we've laid the groundwork in the text, we want to be transparent about what the link is going to do. There's no need to try to coax people into clicking on the link. Say what it is - "we want you to buy this car". Note the hashtags - important on every social site except for Facebook (for now).

Now, let's take a look at Pinterest and Tumblr.

Put it on Pinterest and Tumblr

There are a few different options here. Mix them up. Try a little of everything.

Option one is to post directly from the page itself onto Pinterest and Tumblr. Option two is to post the Google+ post to Pinterest and Tumblr. Option three is to mix it up - put the source on Pinterest and the Google+ post on Tumblr, for example. By mixing it up, you'll get variety on your Pinterest boards and Tumblog. Also, the signals, when followed, do have a certain level of flow from domain to domain. It's not as powerful as it is with inbound links, but it's there nonetheless.

Here it is on Pinterest taking it directly from the source. You'll note that the text associated with it is shorter, though still includes the hashtag.

On Tumblr, let's post from the Google+ post. Keep in mind that all three of these sites are relatively interchangeable. In other words, you could post from the source on Tumblr, then pin it and post it to Google+ from there. Of the social signals, Google+ is the most powerful so you won't want many of those to be from other sources.

Here's the Tumblr post:

In this case, we posted as a Tumblr link. It could have also been done as a Tumblr image with a link to the post in the content, but then it's not a social signal but rather an inbound link. No need to go into details about the difference here - as long as you're getting it posted, that's better than nothing. You'll also note that the content itself is duplicated from the Google+ post. I never, NEVER recommend using duplicated content anywhere, but because we're trying to make it easy enough for you to be willing to do it, I took the lesser of two evils. It's better that you do it rather than skipping it because it was too hard to do it the best way. The benefits are there even if it isn't perfect in this scenario.

* * *

Once you get used to the process, it takes about 5-10 minutes. Do it every day. Not everything should be a link to your site. In fact, you should mix in other content regularly. A good mix (despite the fact that I don't like giving formulas) would be to post 1-2 links to your site per week and fill the other 3-6 with outside content. Mix it up. Have some fun. Get the benefit. Take over your market.

There are those who think that Facebook and Twitter are the only relevant social networks when it comes to business. There are those who go so far as saying that Facebook is all that you need. In truth, both may be right, but that's strictly from a social perspective. Once you throw search into the equation, Google+, Pinterest, and Tumblr start having a bit more relevance than before.

Don't get me wrong. There's definitely social benefits that can be acquired through the "three lesser social networks". It's not all about search, but if for search and search alone you're able to find value, at least you're in there and participating.

These sites (and others, of course, but we're going to focus on these three) are able to improve social signals to your website. These social signals, a mysterious but undisputed component of the Google search ranking algorithm, can help your pages get indexed more quickly and demonstrate popularity in the social sites that would normally not be achievable. This is not a license or recommendation to go and spam these sites by any means. At the end of the day, the quality of the content must still be high.

Let's take a look at the quick and easy process. If you do it once a day, every day at a minimum, you will get benefit sooner rather than later.

Find the Right Content

You can't just start spamming pages that are important to you like contact forms. There needs to be a social component of some sort with the links. You have to find or build the right pages that can resonate. Sometimes, that means finding pages that we want to rank well in search that can also play well in social. At other times, it means using pages that don't really benefit us from a search perspective. Some would argue that there's no reason to share this type of content, but they don't understand social signals. While posting the direct page itself that you want ranked, there's a flow of "social signals juice" that flows from a page that does well in social signals to the other pages of your site.

In other words, promoting a strong piece of content that can get more social signals is better than promoting a page that won't do well in social media but that you would love to have ranked. Focus on the quality of the content and the social signal juice will flow across the board.

In this example, we're going to use a pre-owned Mercedes. It's pretty low hanging fruit - people love luxury vehicles on social media - so we'll be using the vehicle detail page itself. It's good social content and useful for business - perfect.

This will work nicely. Now, let's get it some social signals...

Get it on Google+

As with anything that you post on social media, you have to have a story behind it. Just saying something like, "Check out this Mercedes," that won't work. There needs to be something socially compelling about it to put it up anywhere.

In the example above, we see the story. It's a compelling plea to touch the desires of the audience. Once we've laid the groundwork in the text, we want to be transparent about what the link is going to do. There's no need to try to coax people into clicking on the link. Say what it is - "we want you to buy this car". Note the hashtags - important on every social site except for Facebook (for now).

Now, let's take a look at Pinterest and Tumblr.

Put it on Pinterest and Tumblr

There are a few different options here. Mix them up. Try a little of everything.

Option one is to post directly from the page itself onto Pinterest and Tumblr. Option two is to post the Google+ post to Pinterest and Tumblr. Option three is to mix it up - put the source on Pinterest and the Google+ post on Tumblr, for example. By mixing it up, you'll get variety on your Pinterest boards and Tumblog. Also, the signals, when followed, do have a certain level of flow from domain to domain. It's not as powerful as it is with inbound links, but it's there nonetheless.

Here it is on Pinterest taking it directly from the source. You'll note that the text associated with it is shorter, though still includes the hashtag.

On Tumblr, let's post from the Google+ post. Keep in mind that all three of these sites are relatively interchangeable. In other words, you could post from the source on Tumblr, then pin it and post it to Google+ from there. Of the social signals, Google+ is the most powerful so you won't want many of those to be from other sources.

Here's the Tumblr post:

In this case, we posted as a Tumblr link. It could have also been done as a Tumblr image with a link to the post in the content, but then it's not a social signal but rather an inbound link. No need to go into details about the difference here - as long as you're getting it posted, that's better than nothing. You'll also note that the content itself is duplicated from the Google+ post. I never, NEVER recommend using duplicated content anywhere, but because we're trying to make it easy enough for you to be willing to do it, I took the lesser of two evils. It's better that you do it rather than skipping it because it was too hard to do it the best way. The benefits are there even if it isn't perfect in this scenario.

* * *

Once you get used to the process, it takes about 5-10 minutes. Do it every day. Not everything should be a link to your site. In fact, you should mix in other content regularly. A good mix (despite the fact that I don't like giving formulas) would be to post 1-2 links to your site per week and fill the other 3-6 with outside content. Mix it up. Have some fun. Get the benefit. Take over your market.

If there's one thing that bugs me more than anything professionally, it's when bad marketing people give good marketing people a bad name by continuing to use spam and automated techniques when they simply do not work anymore. It's a plague in many industries, but seems to find its happiest home in the realm of search marketing.

There's a reason for this, of course. Real search marketing is hard. Google and Bing have done a masterful job the last three years at deterring just about every known form of search spamming out there. They have learned to recognize quality over bulk. They can tell when something is automated and when it's manually created. They can determine when links are legitimate or just placed there for the sake of optimization value. They're starting to discern between quality social signals and junk signals.

It's abundantly clear that those who rely on bulk and automation are losing ground. Why, then, are so many of them still heading in this direction? Why are they not only failing to stop the bad practices but are actually developing them even further? Call it a rant. Call it a warning. The smoke and mirrors in search marketing may have been exposed by Google and Bing, but they're still preying on businesses who aren't paying close enough attention to what's happening. Here are some examples:

Link networks have been broken since April 24th, 2012

This is one of the easiest ones to see because it held little ambiguity in the eyes of the search engines thanks to the two major and dozens of minor Penguin updates. They can tell when a network is specifically designed to drive links to various websites. They have devalued these links to the other side of zero. In other words, they aren't just worthless, they can actually do harm to the rankings of the recipients.

It has been a challenge for Google and Bing to distinguish between poor SEO tactics and blatant negative SEO attacks, but they're getting there. They know that if they give spammy or automated inbound links the ability to hurt the target domain that there will be those who drive links to their competitors in an effort to discredit them in the eyes of the search engines. As a result, Google created the disavow tool that may or may not have a powerful effect, but that's not the point. The reality is that if enough links are disavowed from a domain, Google can do a manual review to determine if this is the target or their SEO company's attempt to game the system or if it's a negative SEO attack. It's not perfect. It can be wrong. Thankfully, it's been working well so far.

Links should be earned, not created for the sake of SEO value. That's not to say that quality links cannot be built, but it's better to simply create value with the content and perform the appropriate tasks necessary to earn inbound links. It's not a matter of "if you build it, they will come,"  as it does take effort to get the target pages attention, but if the quality is truly useful and can be exposed to the right audience, the links will definitely come.

Automated content has been dying since 2011

Panda supposedly fixed this problem, yet it persists today. Heck, it's used as a shining example of the way to do SEO by some large companies. The challenge is that the Panda update is a work in progress. Google must learn how content flows and how to recognize based more about value than length of HTML code.

A couple of sentences followed by a useful infographic or video is better than 500 words of SEO spam, at least to the end user. Google is still learning how to recognize this properly, but one thing they have down is recognizing automated pages.

When pages are built automatically based upon pre-fab content with certain "unique content" factors in place, it has worked well in the past. Today, Google is de-indexing pages by the tens of thousands when they detect this type of automated SEO spam. If a page is created with low-quality content that cannot bring value to anyone, one should actually hope that nobody ever sees it. This can do even more damage when pages like these are indexed, start ranking, and start bringing in traffic.

People aren't stupid. Google isn't stupid. Still, some companies reminisce about the days when these things weren't factors. They are now, and some are unwilling to change their ways.

Quality is becoming a bigger component of social signals

You can buy just about anything when it comes to social media. Do you want more Facebook likes? There's a place to get those. You want more retweets from pages on your website? There's a huge market for them. Google +1s are often bought. This works...

...for now...

...but not for long.

Google and Bing already take into account the quality of a signal. This understanding is completely missed by many, including some of the most respected in the search marketing world. They will say that Google +1s is the most important factor in offsite search rankings, for example, but they won't mention that a +1 from a quality, aged, and trusted account is exponentially more powerful than a +1 from a spam account. This is a shame and I don't know whether it's simply not common knowledge or if it's just too difficult to make prospects understand.

As a result, marketing companies are buying social signals. They think that if they can get 100 retweets to a piece of content that their work is complete. What they don't seem to know is that those 100 retweets are being summarily dismissed by Google and possibly Bing. The same holds true for Google+, Facebook, Pinterest, and some of the other social signal components. Today, quantity still works as long as there is some quality involved, but looking ahead, a savvy search marketer will be prepared for the days when these fake social signals will be as dangerous as the fake automated inbound links.

Quality

If there's one word that should be understood and adopted by every search marketing firm out there, it's quality. One strong piece of quality content is more powerful than 1000 automated pages. One high-quality inbound link is more powerful (and much less dangerous) than 10,000 low-quality links. A few social signals from trusted accounts is more powerful than hundred of signals from crap accounts and this is shifting more in that direction every day.

If you focus on quality, you'll win.

"Quality" image courtesy of Shutterstock.

If there's one thing that bugs me more than anything professionally, it's when bad marketing people give good marketing people a bad name by continuing to use spam and automated techniques when they simply do not work anymore. It's a plague in many industries, but seems to find its happiest home in the realm of search marketing.

There's a reason for this, of course. Real search marketing is hard. Google and Bing have done a masterful job the last three years at deterring just about every known form of search spamming out there. They have learned to recognize quality over bulk. They can tell when something is automated and when it's manually created. They can determine when links are legitimate or just placed there for the sake of optimization value. They're starting to discern between quality social signals and junk signals.

It's abundantly clear that those who rely on bulk and automation are losing ground. Why, then, are so many of them still heading in this direction? Why are they not only failing to stop the bad practices but are actually developing them even further? Call it a rant. Call it a warning. The smoke and mirrors in search marketing may have been exposed by Google and Bing, but they're still preying on businesses who aren't paying close enough attention to what's happening. Here are some examples:

Link networks have been broken since April 24th, 2012

This is one of the easiest ones to see because it held little ambiguity in the eyes of the search engines thanks to the two major and dozens of minor Penguin updates. They can tell when a network is specifically designed to drive links to various websites. They have devalued these links to the other side of zero. In other words, they aren't just worthless, they can actually do harm to the rankings of the recipients.

It has been a challenge for Google and Bing to distinguish between poor SEO tactics and blatant negative SEO attacks, but they're getting there. They know that if they give spammy or automated inbound links the ability to hurt the target domain that there will be those who drive links to their competitors in an effort to discredit them in the eyes of the search engines. As a result, Google created the disavow tool that may or may not have a powerful effect, but that's not the point. The reality is that if enough links are disavowed from a domain, Google can do a manual review to determine if this is the target or their SEO company's attempt to game the system or if it's a negative SEO attack. It's not perfect. It can be wrong. Thankfully, it's been working well so far.

Links should be earned, not created for the sake of SEO value. That's not to say that quality links cannot be built, but it's better to simply create value with the content and perform the appropriate tasks necessary to earn inbound links. It's not a matter of "if you build it, they will come,"  as it does take effort to get the target pages attention, but if the quality is truly useful and can be exposed to the right audience, the links will definitely come.

Automated content has been dying since 2011

Panda supposedly fixed this problem, yet it persists today. Heck, it's used as a shining example of the way to do SEO by some large companies. The challenge is that the Panda update is a work in progress. Google must learn how content flows and how to recognize based more about value than length of HTML code.

A couple of sentences followed by a useful infographic or video is better than 500 words of SEO spam, at least to the end user. Google is still learning how to recognize this properly, but one thing they have down is recognizing automated pages.

When pages are built automatically based upon pre-fab content with certain "unique content" factors in place, it has worked well in the past. Today, Google is de-indexing pages by the tens of thousands when they detect this type of automated SEO spam. If a page is created with low-quality content that cannot bring value to anyone, one should actually hope that nobody ever sees it. This can do even more damage when pages like these are indexed, start ranking, and start bringing in traffic.

People aren't stupid. Google isn't stupid. Still, some companies reminisce about the days when these things weren't factors. They are now, and some are unwilling to change their ways.

Quality is becoming a bigger component of social signals

You can buy just about anything when it comes to social media. Do you want more Facebook likes? There's a place to get those. You want more retweets from pages on your website? There's a huge market for them. Google +1s are often bought. This works...

...for now...

...but not for long.

Google and Bing already take into account the quality of a signal. This understanding is completely missed by many, including some of the most respected in the search marketing world. They will say that Google +1s is the most important factor in offsite search rankings, for example, but they won't mention that a +1 from a quality, aged, and trusted account is exponentially more powerful than a +1 from a spam account. This is a shame and I don't know whether it's simply not common knowledge or if it's just too difficult to make prospects understand.

As a result, marketing companies are buying social signals. They think that if they can get 100 retweets to a piece of content that their work is complete. What they don't seem to know is that those 100 retweets are being summarily dismissed by Google and possibly Bing. The same holds true for Google+, Facebook, Pinterest, and some of the other social signal components. Today, quantity still works as long as there is some quality involved, but looking ahead, a savvy search marketer will be prepared for the days when these fake social signals will be as dangerous as the fake automated inbound links.

Quality

If there's one word that should be understood and adopted by every search marketing firm out there, it's quality. One strong piece of quality content is more powerful than 1000 automated pages. One high-quality inbound link is more powerful (and much less dangerous) than 10,000 low-quality links. A few social signals from trusted accounts is more powerful than hundred of signals from crap accounts and this is shifting more in that direction every day.

If you focus on quality, you'll win.

"Quality" image courtesy of Shutterstock.

When you want to get some pretty good data on using social media for marketing, one of the best people to turn to is Dan Zarrella, Hubspot's social media scientist. "Mad scientist" may be a better phrase for him, but he's crazy like a fox when it comes to Twitter.

This latest round of insights comes in the form of how to get retweets. Size is important as can be seen in the graph above. What's the right size? 100-115 characters appears to be the sweet spot. This can be attributed to a few things. First, longer Tweets can be retweeted the standard way, but when they're manually retweeted (such as "RT @0boy...) then the longer Tweets can't work as well. More importantly, people know that they will not be as easily able to be retweeted themselves if the Tweet is too long.

Another reason for this is quality of content. With the limited space in Twitter, it's hard to say things that are profound, funny, or generally retweet-worthy until you get into the longer format.

Lastly, tweets of this range seem to look better. They may or may not include a link. Whether they do or do not, they appear very nicely in Twitter apps and in the stream in a way that is psychologically appealing. It may sound simplistic, but shorter tweets seem too short and longer tweets turn people off for the reason given above.

At any rate, this data is compiled from a data set of 1.4 million randomly selected Tweets. It's as comprehensive as they come. One thing that should be noted: the length of the Tweet is infinitely less important than the engagement of the account itself. If nobody's listening to you, no measure of science is going to get you more retweets.