The past year has seen a steady flow of thoughtful articles and blog posts dealing with topics like the changing world of SEO, the convergence of search and social, the growing importance of PR in website rankings, the critical role content marketing plays in online visibility, the need to coordinate the efforts of various types on digital marketing experts…in short,  about web presence optimization (WPO)–even if most of the authors don’t actually use that term. How is the role of social media evolving in online visibility? You have to have a way to get the word out. MORE >>

Websites are dead. Search engines are going away. Soon no one will care about the traditional commercial site focused on a company and its products. At least, those are the contentions of John McTigue, EVP of marketing agency Kuno Creative, in his recent blog post Why Websites and Search Are So Yesterday. Image credit: Haley Marketing Group. Now, John and I have been following each other on Twitter for quite some time, and I have tremendous respect for him. But this particular post is nonsense. Poppycock. Hogwash. Baloney. Rubbish. Hooey. suspect John does too. ” What do you think? MORE >>

Guest post by Megan Totka. The benefits of social media are clear: huge outreach, easy to use, low cost and (assumed) high ROI, not to mention a wide variety of options. In no way would I recommend anyone stop using social media as a marketing tool. In fact, I’m a huge advocate of it. But after months or even years of use, you will likely learn, there are a lot of things to hate about these websites; that even though it’s become an essential marketing channel, social media still sucks. There are plenty of posts about Facebook rants as well. Everyone is in a rush these days. The overkill. MORE >>

'Google’s Panda and Penguin updates have irreversibly changed the practice of SEO. Contrary to the most dire conclusions of some, these nasty-though-harmless-sounding pair of algorithmic updates named for monochromatic fauna have not “killed” SEO—but they have, rather, forced an evolution in thinking about web visibility. At a high level, both updates are designed to clamp down on “artificially optimized” web pages (e.g., The effect of these changes is that it may be more difficult for commercial websites to rank highly for specific keyword phrases. Guest blogging. MORE >>

'HubSpot last week released its 2013 State of Inbound Marketing report,  this year weighing in at a massive 175 pages. But as always, the report is crammed with useful facts, interesting stats, and vital tips, tools and techniques for inbound marketing success. Given the report’s heft, no blog post (of any reasonable length) could it justice as a summary, but here are a sampling of the highlights. To get the full story, download the HubSpot report here. Inbound marketing (a subset of though not to be confused with web presence optimization ) is big, and growing. MORE >>