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Because of Christmas and New Year holidays I was not able to publish December 2014 roundup at the end of month as I usually do. So here are the best posts according to me that were published in the last month of 2014 year.

If you think that I missed something, then you can get in touch via this form or using my Twitter account.

 

“Social Media Marketing Trends You Can Expect in 2015” written by Mark Scott for Ahrefs blog. In this post, Mark highlighted some trends that will be important to know in 2015 year.

  1. Facebook advertisement demand and pricing will increase considerably.
  2. Business advertising model of Twitter will enjoy a massive increase in popularity.
  3. Google + will be an abject failure.
  4. Instagram will gain importance in image centric social media marketing.
  5. LinkedIn will surge ahead in B2B social network segment.

 

5 Sources of Online Traffic You’ve Never Heard Of” by Karan Sharma for Search Engine Journal. Some very useful source were found by this author from my perspective. I did not have a time to try what he suggested but some of them I’m already using.

  1. Reddit. Some interesting facts from Reddit. During last month, the site had 174,088,361 unique visitors; more than 8,000 active communities during one day; more than 3 million of logged users during one day.
  2. Ask Quora. This source won’t bring you such amazing numbers as Reddit, but if you use it properly, then other users can follow your questions. The site has 1.5 – 3.0 million active worldwide users.
  3. Content Agregators. It could be any software that generates web content. In this case, you will not get “dofollow” links but traffic from those links could be very quality.
  4. Linkedin. As you know, LinkedIn now has an option to “Create a post”, which means you can get some traffic from people who are in the same area as you. And don’t forget that this social network has more than 330 million active users worldwide.
  5. Blog commenting. In my previous November roundup, I included this post by Neil Patel where he generated more than $25,000 with only 249 comments. So I will not say more about this. The most important lesson here is to be sure that the comment you’ve added is valuable.

 

Google Pigeon Update Rolls Out To UK, Canada & Australia”. This new local algorithm, after some time, was rolled out to other English speaking countries. It was launched on 24th of July, 2014 and it showed some good results so the developers decided to extend it.

This update will improve local search results by giving more accurate, useful and relevant results.

 

“Killer startup pre-launch strategy to gain traction” by Andrew Gale for Makerstool blog. The post itself is very long but it is well worth the time to read it. The author showed some very interesting techniques that you can use to grow your email list.

On average, if you publish quality content, you may count on 5% conversion rate, which means you should get at least 10,000 visitors to get the first 500 subscribers.

Andrew recommends using the following content distributions:

  • org
  • com
  • Social Media Today
  • Hacker News
  • Reddit
  • Facebook Groups
  • LinkedIn Groups
  • Tribber
  • Twitter
  • SlideShare
  • Tumblr

There is much useful information in this post and is a “must read.”

 

“8 Fatal Local Search Mistakes and How to Fix Them” by Jaykishan Panchal for e2msolutions blog. Local SEO is not very easy and, at the same time, it is a little different to what you must do for worldwide SEO. In this article, the author shows 8 common mistakes and how you can fix them.

  • The first one is “Ignoring Local”. Don’t forget that you are doing SEO for local business and there is no point in getting traffic from the sources that not relevant to your region.
  • Next is “NAP Inconsistencies in Citations”. You must find some regional resources that can mention your business name. According to Moz Local, it can help you to grow your search rankings.
  • Then there is “Listing for Shared/Virtual Offices”. Don’t list a virtual office because you will not get any benefits from this. It would be better to get a physical address and share it.
  • Consider “Content Duplication”. It is not a big surprise that in Local SEO duplicate content is not good for your rankings.
  • Important information is found in “Lack of a Separate Web Page for Each Store Location”. If you have few stores, then it would be better to create a unique URL for each store so search engine can easily crawl it.
  • “Ignoring Reviews” shows how in Local SEO, reviews is one of the most important factor. Not only because of traffic but because of trust.

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  • Discover in “Ignoring Video Marketing” how video can bring you very good results especially in Local promotion. People who saw your video and heard something about your business will more likely make a purchase.
  • Last but not least, “Forgetting Localization in SERPs”. Don’t forget to add your location and other keywords in search snippet to make it more attractive for the visitors.

 

“8 Types of Blog Posts That’ll Earn You More Traffic and Shares” by Gary Dek. In this article, you can discover the sort of blog post will earn you more social shares and traffic.

  • How to
  • Lists
  • Infographics
  • Podcasts
  • Checklists And Cheat Sheets
  • Start A Series
  • Guest Posts
  • Controversial Posts

 

“SEO & Social Media Marketing Tips for Fundraising” by Temitope Odurinde. Fundraising is a very interesting topic and, before the holidays, Temitope asked me to participate in this roundup. As you may see from the number of social shares it received, the topic is very popular.

At the same time, it is not easy to raise funds using social media so some SMM experts gave their answers and shared the most useful techniques.

 

The Year in Stats – SEO, Content, and Data Analytics” by Jim Yu. It is not a matter of the quality of your posts or how good you search rankings if you do not examine your Analytics data. Each good online marketer must be familiar with Analytics.

For the most part, there are many interesting facts about organic search statistics, content statistics, B2B content stats, B2C content stats. That data gives a great benchmark for what other companies are dealing with.

 

There you have the best posts during the month of December 2014, according to me. I hope you liked them too. :). Please share your comments below or contact me via this form or via my Twitter account.