Samuel Edwards

Chief Marketing Officer at SEO Company

In his 9+ years as a digital marketer, Sam has worked with countless small businesses and enterprise Fortune 500 companies and organizations including NASDAQ OMX, eBay, Duncan Hines, Drew Barrymore, Washington, DC based law firm Price Benowitz LLP and human rights organization Amnesty International.

As a technical SEO strategist, Sam leads all paid and organic operations teams for client SEO serviceslink building services and white label SEO partnerships.

He is a recurring speaker at the Search Marketing Expo conference series and a TEDx Talker. Today he works directly with high-end clients across all verticals to maximize on and off-site SEO ROI through content marketing and link building. Connect with Sam on Linkedin.

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How Do I Get High Quality Backlinks
Samuel Edwards

How Do I Get High Quality Backlinks in 2025?

Link building has come a long way since the early days. Successful offsite SEO and link building is no longer a matter of quantity (though, quantity and regularly still play a role) so much as it is a matter of quality. In order to build the authority of your own site, you must leverage the domain authority of existing sites, and construct high quality backlinks that are meaningful in the eyes of users as well as search engines. Actually, building links on major news sites isn’t as difficult as you might imagine. But it takes work!  Try any or all of these three significant ways you can earn valuable backlinks from major sites: Write High Quality (Link Worthy) Content Writing high quality content is one of the most effective ways to increase the likelihood that you will attain high quality links from larger websites. In short, writing high quality content increases the perception that you are a professional and leads other website owners to believe that you are the type of individual with whom a business relationship could be mutually profitable. There are a variety of things you can do to ensure that the content you produce is high quality: Make your text is “scannable.” To ensure that your readers can quickly scan through your content to find the information they want, make a point to include things such as headers, bullets, and numbered lists. Use shorter paragraphs, shorter sentences, and more line breaks. It helps people scan/skim the content which is how most people consume text content these. If it isn’t skimmable then I think people will just click that back button and look for something that is. Be very focused and targeted when using h2 and h3 tags to segment content into sections that make sense, so readers can easily get to the info they want. Become a source for research. Be a source for first-person research and data in the form of industry surveys, direct market research and unbiased reporting. Report your findings via graphs and charts and promote them heavily. You are likely to get natural, quality links this way. Lists of statistics work VERY well for becoming a link-worthy, linkable source. Don’t focus on word count. It’s really more about post quality. In fact, most of post updates have involved cutting a lot of content that I just felt was too fluffy. Cut the fluff wherever you can and get to the point. People have short attention spans these days and just want answers. Move the “meat” of your articles as close to the top as possible. No more long-winded intros or background stories. I also cut out stuff that I think should be obvious to my readers, and I just try to get right to the good stuff. Listicles are big-time winners, especially for acquiring high quality backlinks. Make sure every post has a target keyword. Use Yoast to make sure you are optimizing each post for its target keyword, and after publishing the post I always make sure to build at least three internal links to it from other pages on your blog, using the keyword as anchor text, when possible. Keep your opening paragraphs as short as possible, while including the target keyword as close to the top as I can. It’s all part of my effort to cut out fluff and just provide dense content. I think people are just tired of fluff in general. Become a Source & Thought Leader If you’re serious about getting links from larger websites, you should know that becoming a thought leader in your area of business can help you accomplish your objective. This is the case for several reasons, one of which is that your website gains credibility (and subsequently, visibility) when people believe that you have extensive education and experience in your chosen field. So, how do you become a thought leader in your area of business? Write and publish a book & then promote it. Continually publish thought leadership articles on your website that are sharable, include research findings Attend lectures and conferences where you can network with other thought leaders In the remote working era, you can even connect with other thought leaders on social channels. Linkedin is my personal favorite for this Becoming a source also means using channels that can connect you with high-profile journalists where you can acquire quality links for your website. For more information on this strategy, please visit our HARO link building services guide. Add A Blog Adding a blog to your website is a fun and effective way to get more links from larger websites. Like several of the other link building strategies outlined here, adding a blog is a viable link building strategy because it can increase the visibility of your website and thereby catch the attention of larger websites who will then view linking you in to be a mutually profitable decision. To make the most of each blog post, be sure that the content you publish there is interesting and informative. Also make a point to try to guest post on the blogs of other people. This is a good networking strategy that also increases the likelihood that you can reach more people within your target audience. Implement Proven Social Media Optimization (SMO) Strategies. One of the many effective strategies that can help you get links from larger websites is to simply increase your visibility in the online world. In short, a large website cannot link you if they do not hear about you somehow. With this idea in mind, take note of the fact that social media channels are an incredibly useful (and cost effective) way to share information about your business’s goods and services with other people. There are a variety of social media optimization (SMO) strategies you can implement to increase your business’s online visibility. For example, tweeting at peak times (5 pm) will increase the likelihood that a large number of people learn about the goods

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Top Legal Software Tools in 2024 copy
Samuel Edwards

Top Legal Software Tools in 2025

Most non-legal professionals get much of their information about the industry from crime dramas they see on the small screen. But life doesn’t always imitate or accurately reflect art. The general public sees men and women dressed to the nines going toe-to-toe with opposing legal teams, pulling out all the stops to represent their clients, and sometimes challenging judges.  But plenty goes on behind the scenes that most people aren’t remotely aware of. U.S. law firms operate like well-oiled machines, relying on specialized software to do just that. According to Zion Market Research, the worldwide legal document management software segment was worth $1.9 billion in 2022. It could expand at a 12.28% compound annual growth rate between 2023 and 2030 and be worth about $4.73 billion by the end of the forecast period.  Meanwhile, Verified Market Research reports that the U.S. enterprise legal management software segment is worth $455.39 million and could grow to $817.03 million by 2031. Mondor Intelligence adds that the AI software market in the legal industry is on pace to reach $2.19 billion this year and grow to $3.64 billion by 2029.   Law firms use AI tools to run their operations better, according to Mondor Intelligence. It explains that internal legal departments usually spend half their time reviewing contracts. That can cause productivity-draining bottlenecks and delays. However, AI tools help lawyers improve efficiency and productivity by handling all but the most essential parts of legal documents. If your law firm is looking for legal tools, what are the top options for 2024? The good news is that there are tons of options out there. But that doesn’t mean all of them are a great fit.  Continue reading to see 10 of the top legal software tools that can benefit your legal practice. Law.co Are you looking to automate and streamline complex legal processes and research? Do you want to optimize your contract drafting and editing with the power of GPT? Law.co — where law and AI meet — is the answer. It’s the ultimate AI platform for lawyers and law firms. Use it to digitize and optimize legal operations by leveraging the power of AI. With Law.co, you’ll benefit from the fusion of GPT tech with semantic search from our custom-trained legal database including north of 1 million cases and 20,000+ contracts. Prepare to revolutionize your legal research. And while Law.co is NOT legal practice management software, it is a great enhancement tool for research, drafting and structuring complex estate planning law. SmartAdvocate SmartAdvocate is one option if you want legal case management software. It’s billed as an all-in-one platform with AI features baked in. You can automate your legal processes, simplify document management, access user-friendly dashboards and reports, and improve the intake process. The solution also has tech that can boost profitability, says the company. Features include eSignatures, texting integration, a client portal, office calendaring, and more. Clio Clio is also worth adding to your shortlist when you need legal practice management software that offers everything your law firm requires in one place. Whether you want to work on billing, document management, or communication, Clio is worth putting through its paces. According to the company, law firms can use the software to find and win new clients, send bills and get paid, and create and access documents from anywhere. Whether you’re working solo, at a small law firm, or at a mid-sized or large legal practice, Clio is one option to mull over when looking for the best law practice management software. Filevine  Filevine is an AI-powered solution that the company says will accelerate your law firm. You can use it to lessen the burden of redundant tasks, customize procedures and processes to meet the needs of lawyers and the law firm, draft documents, connect your workflow with all your documents and contracts, and more. The company claims to offer solutions for all practice types. PracticePanther  Consider PracticePanther if you’re seeking software to automate your law firm. The law practice management software features include case management, document management, legal billing, legal customer relationship management, calendaring, eSignature, and more. It’s made for solo, small- to medium-sized, and large practices that want an all-in-one solution.  When it comes to legal practice management, PracticePanther has not left anything out. Actionstep  While many law practice management software options on this list are for law firms of all sizes, Actionstep is built with the needs of mid-size law practices in mind. The legal business management platform offers tools mid-size law firms can use to operate their businesses, create sustained growth, and increase profitability. The solution delivers everything needed in one place. You find CRM, document assembly and storage, matter management, time and billing, accounting, and other tools. The company says the platform offers unlimited scope for law firms to evolve. MyCase MyCase is a legal software solution offering tools for case management, billing and payments, client intake, lead management, client communication, and financial practice management software. If your law firm wants to stay organized with legal case management, MyCase is worth considering as a great case management software solution. Legal Files Legal Files is another possibility if you need legal practice management and case management software. It offers lawyers and law practices an all-in-one tool to streamline matter and email management, eBilling, litigation, and reporting. You can save time and resources by automating legal processes, centralizing data, and working more efficiently. CaseFleet CaseFleet helps lawyers build successful cases by offering tools that help review evidence, organize facts, and decipher trends. Its document reviewer feature helps lawyers to quickly and easily enter and review case evidence. It also provides a great task management solution.  Smokeball  Smokeball is another legal practice management software option for lawyers and law firms. It can help users eliminate administrative tasks so they can concentrate on high-value tasks. Using Smokeball, users can run more profitable and organized legal practices and attract more clients. It includes automatic time tracking, seamless integrations, a library of 20,000+ legal forms,

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Most Underrated SEO Consultants in 2024 copy (1)
Samuel Edwards

Top 13 Best SEO Consultants in 2025

It’s not easy to build a successful SEO strategy. That’s true even if you have decent domain authority and some SEO experience to start with. That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) consultants exist. These talented professionals often have years, if not decades of SEO experience – and the business acumen and communication skills to use that experience to transform organizations like yours. There are consultants that serve different niches and offer different types of skills, and of course, each consultant has their own unique style and approach to bring to the table. But when you’re searching for an SEO consultant, it’s sometimes hard to find the right fit. Not only do you need to find someone with the right skills, the right industry familiarity, and the right price range, but you also need to find someone who will work well within the context of your organization. That’s one reason why we came up with this list of underrated SEO consulting services in the search engine optimization industry in 2025. It’s pretty easy to find the biggest names in the industry, but what about the talented and successful SEO consultants who fly under the radar? Why Hire an SEO Consultant? Why should you hire an SEO consultant and not a full-fledged SEO company?       Knowledge and expertise. Most individuals and organizations hire consultants for their knowledge and expertise. There are specific problems they don’t know how to solve or strategic elements they don’t know how to create – and a consultant with ample experience in the industry should be able to step in and resolve the issue. Even better, if your consultant has expertise in your specific niche, they can help you navigate the unique challenges of your industrial landscape and develop your business to be more competitively viable. This is also much cheaper and easier than trying to learn everything yourself, from scratch.       Practice experience. Qualified SEO consultants have real experience helping businesses like yours achieve their SEO goals. They know how to recover from penalties, how to overcome growth plateaus, and how and when to change goals during the execution of your strategy – and they’ve learned from their past mistakes so they can help you avoid making similar mistakes in the future.       Outside perspective. It’s valuable to hire an SEO consultant for their outside perspective as well. If you’re used to solving all your business’s problems from within, or exclusively relying on internal SEO teams, you could likely end up with blind spots that you don’t even recognize. An external, competent professional can help you identify those blind spots and work around them with new knowledge, insights, and recommendations.       Cost savings. Some organizations are reluctant to hire SEO consultants because they don’t want to spend the money. But in the long term, SEO consultants have the power to save you money. You’ll get better results, faster by following their advice, and you might be able to forgo the need of hiring new internal staff members while doing it. Oftentimes, consultants more than pay for themselves.       Better results. The primary driving factor for hiring an SEO consultant is the ambition to achieve better SEO results. For whatever reason, your current efforts just aren’t cutting it – and you need an amplifier to drive more organic traffic to your website. What Makes an SEO Consultant Underrated? For the purposes of this list, what criteria are we using to designate SEO consultants as underrated, specifically? Generally, we want to find SEO consultants who are extremely good at what they do, and who we feel should have an even greater market share in social media marketing circles. We want people with:       Experience in the industry. As a prerequisite, we need SEO consultants who have meaningful experience in the industry. Ideally, we want people with decades of experience in both national and local SEO services and general digital marketing, and preferably people with business management experience and leadership experience as well. The more, the better.       Proven results. Simply being a search engine optimization (SEO) consultant, Google Ads manager or a digital marketer for several years doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about or that you’ll be able to replicate your past success. That’s why we specifically focused on candidates with a long, proven track record of results. They’ve helped dozens of brands and clients achieve their strategic goals.       Communication and support. Search engine optimization consulting isn’t just about sharing technical knowledge or forming high-level strategies; it’s also about communicating effectively and providing ongoing support. That’s why we also considered the working relationship that various SEO consultants have with their clients.       Industry recognition. Finally, we needed to consider each consultant’s level of industry recognition. We wanted underrated consultants, so we specifically sought out candidates who were recognized as talented professionals, but without much online visibility, pomp and circumstance. Top 13 Most Underrated SEO Consultants in 2025 With those criteria in mind, here are our most underrated SEO consultants in 2025:    1. Michael Cottam. First, there’s Michael Cottam. Michael Cottam brings a host of skills to the table, including site architecture planning, SEO site auditing, programming, and business management and startup experience. He’s spoken at conferences like MozCon, SearchFest, and Innotech, and has been featured on too many podcasts, panels, and webinars to list here. With his evolving SEO expertise and unique approach, he can help you solve almost any SEO problem. Whether your issues include on-page SEO or off-page SEO, Michael has you covered.    2. Aaron Rains. Aaron Rains is another SEO consultant with more than 15 years of experience – and a consulting firm that started as a one-man operation. His core SEO services include keyword research, strategic guidance, on-page SEO, penalty recovery, technical SEO services, and more – and he has lots of free educational resources on his website for anyone interested

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What is Mobile-First Indexing & How Does it Work
Samuel Edwards

What is Mobile-First Indexing & Why it Matters for SEO

There’s been plenty of talk about mobile-first indexing for a few years, but what is it? How does it work? Are any webpages at risk of being de-indexed? Although Google first introduced mobile-first indexing in 2016, SEO communities are still talking about the implications and effects on ranking. The initial introduction of mobile-first indexing was Google’s attempt to make search results as mobile-friendly as possible. Years later, people are still wondering what the effects are (or will be) on non-mobile webpages. While some people have said there’s no reason to be concerned, that’s not entirely true. While mobile-first indexing began as a Google experiment, the company is now taking it very seriously as a Google standard. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, it’s only a matter of time before you’ll see your rankings drop… or worse, your pages might be excluded from Google’s index. In other words, while you might already know that mobile-first indexing might suppress your desktop webpage rankings, as of 2021, you probably haven’t heard that discovered desktop results are being dropped entirely from Google’s index. That’s definitely something to be concerned about. According to Search Engine Journal, as of March 2021, John Mueller confirmed that all desktop-only websites will be dropped from Google’s index. What was once just an experiment has now become a standard for optimizing for mobile devices. If your website is not mobile-friendly, you won’t get indexed in Google. What does Google say about mobile-first indexing? On November 4, 2016, Google published an official announcement about how the company was beginning to experiment with mobile-first indexing. This experiment was launched in response to the fact that more people were browsing the internet from all types of mobile devices. Google wanted to make sure its search algorithms provided mobile and desktop sites with the best experience possible. Back in 2016, webmasters were still creating separate websites for mobile devices and serving an entirely different experience to desktop users. Prior to the mobile-first experiment, users would get the short end of the stick in searches. Desktop webpages were given more ranking importance than mobile pages simply because Google’s algorithm evaluated pages based on content. Since mobile pages usually had less content, they weren’t ranking alongside the desktop pages equally. This meant mobile site users would be given desktop results even when mobile pages existed. Mobile-first indexing was launched to fix this dilemma and make using the internet a better experience for both your mobile and desktop site. Around 2016, more people were accessing the internet primarily from mobile devices, so Google felt it was time to make a big change to support mobile devices. Naturally, webmasters have been concerned regarding the status of desktop results. However, Google clarified that if you have a mobile-friendly site design, there is nothing to be concerned about. Google’s announcement explicitly stated that responsive websites that display the same content to mobile and desktop users won’t be affected. However, you do need to be concerned if you’re serving a different version of your website for mobile devices. If you’ve been reading older announcements and analysis of mobile-first indexing to try to figure out what’s going on, you don’t have the full story. Mobile-first indexing has been evolving for the last several years and there is no more leniency for desktop-only websites. Mobile-first indexing has evolved since 2016 Google doesn’t usually roll out a change without evolving that change over time. The mobile-first indexing rollout is no longer an experiment, but a standard. The full details will be discussed further down in this article, but you need to know that Googlebot is being retired and replaced with a smartphone Googlebot. This means Google is now indexing all webpages with a smartphone bot. If the smartphone Googlebot can’t access webpage content because it’s not mobile-friendly, it won’t make it into Google’s index. People are concerned that mobile-first indexing will cause desktop pages to stop ranking Since Google never publicly discloses the finer details regarding its search ranking criteria, the most people have been able to do is perform experiments and document their results. It’s hardly a scientific approach, but it’s the best we’ve got. Even so, once you have a full understanding of what mobile-first indexing is and why it exists, you won’t need to be so concerned – there are simple solutions. In the last few years, people have been trying to optimize their website to make sure this new change doesn’t adversely impact their rankings. However, mobile-first indexing doesn’t eliminate or de-rank desktop results as long as the desktop results are simultaneously mobile-friendly. Since there’s a lot of confusion around what this change actually means, let’s dive into what it is and how it might affect your ability to rank webpages in Google. What is mobile-first indexing? Mobile-first indexing performs three main functions: Prioritizes the mobile version of a webpage from the same domain. When two versions of a webpage on the same domain are available, mobile-first indexing delivers the mobile-optimized version in search results. Prioritizes mobile results in the SERPs. When a user performs a search, Google’s algorithm has to decide which webpages to display in the SERPs. With mobile-first indexing, Google’s algorithm prioritizes mobile-optimized search results across the board. This means that your desktop webpage will be outranked by a mobile-optimized webpage of the same nature. Beginning in March 2021, desktop webpages won’t even be indexed. Searches Google’s mobile database first. Google has one search results database, but has been segmenting results as either desktop or mobile. Google used to pull search results from the desktop segment first, but now searches the mobile segment for results first. This means that if you don’t have any mobile-optimized webpages indexed in Google’s database, and mobile-optimized webpages match a user’s search, you’re unlikely to rank high regardless of how much work you’ve put into your website. As Google stops indexing desktop-only webpages, if you don’t have mobile-friendly webpages, it will eventually become impossible to rank high in the SERPs. Although it

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Samuel Edwards

11 Top Law Firm SEO Companies to Grow Your Legal Practice in 2025

Are you thinking about using search engine optimization (SEO) to generate a steady stream of hot leads for your law firm and grow your business with a competitive edge? You probably know that SEO is a crucial part of search engine marketing your law firm, and without it, you’ll continue to fall behind while competing law firms attract all the leads.  Investing in SEO is one of the best things you can do for your law firm business. Although, with so many law firm SEO agencies to choose from, it’s not easy to know which ones will get you the best results at the best price. At SEO.co, we know what it takes to get results, so we’ve compiled a list of the 11 best SEO companies that can boost your firm’s visibility in the search engines and bring you more law firm leads. SEO.co – a law firm SEO agency that delivers results  When you need SEO for your law firm’s website, your top choice should be a company that specializes in getting results for attorneys. At SEO.co, we have extensive experience getting lawyers to the top of search results so they’re visible to leads looking for legal services. We regularly work with lawyers in a variety of practice areas, including car accidents, estate planning & probate, family law, criminal defense, intellectual property, personal injury, employment law, mass tort and more. Using a combination of quality content, on-page optimization, and high-quality backlinks, we will generate a flow of targeted, organic leads to your law firm’s website. We also have launched some pretty powerful legal AI software to help lawyers enhance their legal practice. If you’re ready to grow your legal business and get more qualified leads, we’d love to partner with you. Contact us now for a free consultation and learn more about our expert law firm SEO services for attorneys. UpFire SEO UpFire is an SEO agency that takes a unique approach to optimization based on each client’s needs and goals. That’s important because there is no one-size-fits-all approach to SEO. Every strategy needs to be tailored to meet the client’s needs and reach their specific market to generate the right kind of leads. Leveraging cutting-edge techniques and technology, UpFire delivers results that give their clients an edge against the competition. They have many happy clients who have successfully increased their flow of traffic and qualified leads. RankRealm The SEO experts at RankRealm have an impressive portfolio of satisfied clients. This company creates fully customized SEO strategies for optimizing content and performing technical SEO with a focus on metrics that matter. Their team of experts can analyze your current web traffic to find out how people are finding you and use that insight to increase your traffic and get you more targeted leads. If you need a stronger backlink building strategy and higher quality leads, RankRealm can help you with all your law firm SEO needs. Throttle SEO Throttle SEO has extensive experience working with law firms and specializes in all the intricacies of SEO, including on-page optimization, backlink building, keyword and competitor research, and content marketing. Although they were officially established in 2001, the founder came with 15 years’ experience getting big results for clients, so when you work with Throttle SEO, you’ll be in good hands. Coalition Technologies You probably know what it’s like to get a bunch of leads that don’t pan out, especially if you have a contact form on your site instead of strictly using your phone number. Driving traffic to your website isn’t that hard – the challenge lies in generating relevant leads that need your services. That’s where Coalition can help. Coalition has a track record of helping law firm clients generate relevant leads by ranking them at the top of search results for local and national search terms. Calls from leads are the result of well-written content designed to encourage leads to contact their client. SearchX Every law firm requires a different strategy tailored to their specific area of practice and optimized to reach their ideal client. SearchX focuses on business growth, which is ideal when your goal is to grow your law firm as much as possible. Through a personalized approach to SEO, SearchX delivers exceptional results and has a proven track record of success for generating relevant traffic and leads, and boosting sales. The company specializes in local SEO on an optimized budget, which is exactly what your law firm needs to be successful among the competition. Bullseye Digital Marketing The Bullseye Digital Marketing team consists of qualified optimization experts who will help you achieve your SEO and lead generation goals for your law firm. If you’re like most attorneys, you probably dabbled in marketing and legal SEO at some point just to see what you could do on your own. If you accidentally purchased some spammy backlinks that might be harming your site’s reputation in the search engines, Bullseye can fix it for you. They’ll either get those links disavowed, deleted, or both. They’ll also work hard to get you the high-quality backlink profile you need to rank in the search engines and avoid issues that come from the constant updates from search engine algorithms. MacroHype As a full-service law firm SEO agency, MacroHype can help your law firm gain visibility in the search engines and help you grow your social media presence to generate leads through additional channels. The bigger reach you have across social channels, the easier it is to get referrals from former clients. MacroHype also offers reputation management, which can often be part of your SEO needs. For example, there might be negative content about your law firm showing up in search results and if so, you’ll need a professional to suppress that content. When potential leads research your reputation, you don’t want them to see negative content, whether it was posted by a competitor or an objective third—party comparing your law firm to others in the area. Rankings.io The law firm SEO

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How to Promote Your Content Online
Samuel Edwards

How to Promote Your Content Online in 2025

In order to win in online marketing, your content marketing strategy should include at least (perhaps more) two easy steps: Create great onsite content with content marketing (which we have discussed at length before) Promote that onsite content. This ultimate guide to promoting your published content is all about the other side of the equation—the side that gets neglected by most content marketers. Everyone knows the importance of content promotion (otherwise, you’d have no “content”), but for many marketers, that’s the end of the line. Once a piece is created, your job is pretty much done, right? Wrong. In fact, the tactics you use to promote and nurture your published content have just as big of an impact on your overall results as the quality of your content in the first place. Without a proper follow-up strategy, even your best content strategy might fail to live up to its true potential. In this guide, I’ll explain the concept of promotion and nurturing, why it’s important for any digital marketing strategy, and of course, the specific tactics you’ll need to leverage in order to maximize your content’s visibility. As usual, this guide (like our other definitive guides) is broken up into clear sections, so feel free to jump around to the sections that matter most to you and your brand. Lead Nurturing is the goal of quality content promotion Getting your content seen by more people is a big part of your promotion and nurturing strategy, but that isn’t the only goal. There are many benefits to promoting and nurturing your material, which manifest differently depending on what you’re promoting and how you’re promoting it: Increased visibility Rejuvenated interest Maximizing efficiency Lead generation Sales Types of content promotion Throughout this ultimate guide to promoting your published content, I’m going to be walking you through the many types of content promotion that you can engage in. These vary from free to expensive, from easy to hard, from temporary to long-term, and offer many different advantages and disadvantages between them. I encourage you to familiarize yourself with each approach, and decide on an individual basis whether or not each one is right for your brand. Some brands may wish to use all these content promotion strategies in conjunction with each other, complementing all their strengths and weaknesses at once, while others may wish to focus on the one or two most likely to bring them rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs). In any case, here’s a briefer on where this guide is going from here: Social media.  (Image Source: Twitter) Email marketing.  Influencer marketing.  Links.  Social bookmarks.  Paid advertising.  Transformations. Social Media Syndication and Engagement First up, we have the strategy that almost everyone thinks of first when it comes to content promotion: social media syndication. Why is social media syndication so popular? Because it’s free, relatively easy to use, and it offers the potential of exponential growth. Ideal for both one-time and long-term content runs, I highly encourage social media distribution at a bare minimum for every brand. Let’s explore the reasons why, and how to use social media advertising effectively. Choosing the right content promotion platforms One thing, understand that social media marketing isn’t a magical gateway to more visibility and a bigger target audience. Some platforms are going to matter to your brand far more than others, and it’s up to you to decide which ones those are. It’s not an easy decision, nor is it necessarily straightforward, but narrowing your scope of content syndication to only the platforms that are most effective initiatives for your brand can help you maximize your return while cutting back on wasted time. Demographic considerations. Your first job is to take a look at the demographic makeup of each platform, and weed out any platforms that aren’t a good fit for your brand. There’s basic information, such as age groups of users (Snapchat, for example, tends to skew toward teenagers and young adults), but also more behavioral and qualitative information to consider (LinkedIn, for example, is mostly used by working professionals). Other platforms, like Facebook, have a broad appeal and are worth pursuing for almost any business strategy. If you’re looking for a good all-in-one source for social media demographic information, Pew Research has a fantastic breakdown. (Image Source: Pew) What are your main goals? What does your target audience want? What are your competitors doing? What would complement this platform type? Initial content promotion Once you’ve got a loose strategy set in place, and a good understanding of what types of content promotion you’ll be pursuing, you can begin. Ultimately, there are two ways to promote your content in the social sphere, and the first is with initial content promotion. Facebook allows you to boost your posts (for a price) so they reach more of your target audience, and this can be a great way to get an initial boost of syndication with your audience. LinkedIn groups offer another great channel for getting initial visibility. Start by joining as many LinkedIn groups as you can that are relevant to your industry or business (as of time of writing, the limit is 50 groups per account). Once you’re accepted into the groups, participate in them and add your content to them as discussions. Ongoing content syndication The other route for social media distribution is ongoing syndication. Here, you’ll be reposting your older pieces of content on a recurring basis. Obviously, newer content is better, but syndicating your old material will help it be seen by people who missed it the first time around and may re-spark interest in your older concepts. Plus, you need to be posting almost constantly if you want to stay relevant in social media—and your archive of content can help you do it. Timing considerations. There are a couple types of timing considerations you’ll need to bear in mind here. First, it’s not a good idea to repost your latest material the day after you initially promoted it.

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