Yesterday, the folks at SEOMoz released a study that shows a correlation between the amount of action your website gets on Facebook (shares), Twitter (tweets), and Google Buzz (shares) and how websites in the top 30 search results rank on Google’s SERP (search engine results page). There has been plenty of debate about how influential traffic and links from social networks are in Google’s algorithm. From HubSpot's 101 Marketing Charts Report ). Connect with HubSpot No matter what your thoughts are on the matter, the data is hard to ignore. Is this true? MORE >>

If you're interested in learning more about these concepts, join the author for a webinar with HubSpot, How to Improve Lead Generation Using the Social Media Advancements from 2012 , December 10th at 2PM EST. 6 Ways to Create Content That Markets Itself. Here at Shareaholic, for instance, we use our Top Content report to identify our blog's sweet spots; HubSpot does something similar with their Blog Analytics. Shareaholic studied 200,000 publisher websites in October, 2012 and learned that 27.27% of those websites' traffic came from social media referrals. Seriously. MORE >>

Getting found in organic search is one of the most cost-effective means of lead generation , so it's no wonder marketers and SEOs spend plenty of time optimizing their online presence to get ranked in the SERPs for important keywords. For example, not all of the traffic that lands on HubSpot's site actually knows that we sell inbound marketing software. That lets us capture traffic for the long-tail term and educate those readers about how generating leads through social media relates to inbound marketing. Traffic and leads are good, but customers are better. MORE >>

When marketers and SEOs decide to target a highly competitive keyword, it could take months or even years to see meaningful movement in the SERPs. Better quality traffic and higher conversion rates. Content targeting unicorn costumes for kids , for example, will receive more relevant traffic than content targeting unicorn costumes. And since the content on that page is more relevant to the searcher, a greater percentage of that traffic is likely to purchase the costume for their kid. According to SEOmoz , long tail search comprises 70% of search traffic. MORE >>

Others were punished severely in the SERPs for grey and black hat tactics. In the beginning of the year, JC Penney and Overstock saw dramatic falls from page one of the SERPs when Google punished them for getting links to product pages from irrelevant sites. If a user enters HubSpot, for example, they then see the homepage followed by six links to pages on HubSpot.com that predict what the user might want to see. Now, marketers are rewarded in the SERPs for staying on top of news and being the first to pontificate. Connect with HubSpot Power to the people! MORE >>