Top 25 Inbound Marketing Articles of the Week: March 14, 2014

Each week, we scour the web to uncover valuable articles and blog posts for our readers on the topics of inbound marketing, local optimization, search optimization, social media, and much more.

Welcome to the world of inbound marketing, where we pick up the best informational articles and stories to educate our readers on the industry! Quite a few changes happened this week, including Facebook changing its timeline design, Google officially updating the SERPs, and Yahoo partnering with Yelp to combine their local data and search tools.

Search Optimization

There is nothing worse in the SEO world than losing traffic to your site. In many cases, a Google algorithm change or penalty issued to your site may cause this decrease in traffic. Felix demonstrates strategic ways to recover from Google’s punitive action in a post.

Tumblr is a tool that can be used for both link building and social social media purposes. Do you want to learn how? Read Henry Croft’s tips to using Tumblr for SEO.

How much of an effect does Google Author Rank have as a search factor? Mark Traphagen posts his insights on the impact of Author Rank in the SERPs.

Black hat SEOs, beware! Google is sitting up in its efforts to shine a light on shady practices that push undeserving pages to the top SERP spots. Brafton discusses the full story.

Social Optimization

You might think that it is unnecessary to monitor social media, but it’s hard to stay relevant. Do you want to avoid a social media shipwreck? Here are five tips from Donald Macgregor to keep your website afloat.

Sometimes we forget that social media needs to be social with your followers. Are you engaging with your audience in the right way? Julia Giacoboni presents four social media blunders you might be making.

Customer service through social media is an important aspect of business. How does your brand’s social management stand up to the challenge? Sofie De Beule explains how many companies fail at social media.

Do you think your product is too boring for social media? Think again. Jessica Stillman expounds upon the true power of word-of-mouth marketing in an intelligent article.

Local Optimization

In addition to a top physical location, you need an optimal online presence as a local business. Is your local strategy up to par? Here are 10 local marketing tips from Greg Middlesworth.

Local marketing is more than just incorporating your physical location. It is also about providing the local context for potential customers. Deborah Lance provides a thorough explanation on the evolution of location-based mobile marketing.

Email Optimization

Sending one amazing email to prospective customers is a fantastic start. However, you must continuously provide value to keep them customers for life! CoSchedule presents the ultimate guide to craft an autoresponder course.

Starting from zero clients isn’t easy. Are you still looking to grow your email list? Noah Kagan highlights several unique ways to earn your first 100 subscribers.

While social media maintains a strong presence in the inbound marketing world, email will always remain the most significant communication source for consumers. Willie Myers shares why in a terrific post.

Creating an email list is no easy feat. Do you want learn the best ways to get started? John Souza lays out his list building strategies for us to learn from.

Mobile Optimization

The path forward in mobile looks bright indeed. Is your business ready to leverage what is to come for the mobile platform? In this Q&A, Kelsey Jones publishes Greg Sterling’s discussion on the future of mobile SEO.

Let’s say you decided to take the plunge into mobile advertising. Do you know how to get viewers to click your ads? Danny Brown teaches business owners five methods  to optimize their ads for mobile.

Content Marketing

If you still don’t believe the effectiveness of content marketing, you don’t yet understand the power of giving knowledge away for free. Stéphane Moracchini explains why you contemplate content marketing for your business.

There is only one way to create a valuable content strategy: lots and lots of research on your market. In this article, Ron Sela expands on the anatomy of a stellar B2B content strategy.

While inbound marketing is an excellent free way to attract customers, it is not necessarily always the best way. Welcome Pushkar Gaikwad to the stage as he points out six problems with inbound marketing.

As a business owner, it is in your best interest to start a blog. Still not convinced? Salman Aslam gathers 13 of the best bloggers in the world to make a strong case for blogging.

Conversion Optimization

There are a plethora of ways to acquire leads and increase your conversions. Have you ever wondered how Buzzfeed generates so many leads? The Interact team walks through a brilliant explanation of Buzzfeed’s lead generation strategy that you can test with your own business.

Every company wants to raise its conversion rate and sales. Are you putting conversion killers on your pages? Shelly Koenig displays a worthy infographic to aid in your CRO.

Knowing where visitors look the most on your site is a prime opportunity for conversion optimization.Wilson Peng reveals a telling infographic guide on eye-tracking.

Reputation Management

Your reputation goes beyond simple transactions and customer service. You need to build a brand for your customers to get behind; Sujan Patel tells us why we need to build memorable brands.

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of reputation management, start experimenting and gathering data. Are you ready to hack your customer development? Lincoln Murphy offers detailed steps on growing your SaaS company through research.

The list above includes some of the most interesting articles we caught in our streams this week. If you want to share other great inbound marketing news, please let us know below in the comments.