Writers are the key to excellent search engine marketing. Of course, you know that.

In the 90s I thought that PR people would be the rulers of search engine optimization and search results visibility because PR people understood that compelling distributed content generated related comments and analysis. Well, PR people didn't rule. For the last 10 years I have felt it was the writers of all aspects of basic, text-based content. And it continues to be those that can write for the web that rule the success/failure of search visibility projects/goals even if the content no longer resides just on the corporate website. Someone who can write a great description/caption for a video is a treasure indeed.

Copyblogger.com is one of the only 10 sites that are on my home page. Each of their articles/posts is easy to read, has a little humour and imminently scan-able by my impatient eye. The article below summarizes what they preach and practice.

http://www.copyblogger.com/scannable-content/

My major takeaway from the article - lots of white space is good. 

No Surprise to Search Marketers - Emarketer says Content Marketing Is Critical in 2011

In order to be highly visible in search results you need to have content. The content needs to be in places other than your corporate website. Having optimized content on your corporate website is just a baseline now for web marketing and SEO activities; a fundamental and required activity that every company should have executed by now. Having rich content of multiple different media elements is becoming required. A new name for the type of web elements, and how you use them, is emerging: "earned media". Finally a word for what search marketers have been preaching for years. And most importantly, all of this content needs to be searchable so all of it has to be optimized.

2011 Trends: Content Marketing Is Critical - eMarketer

But I want to make sure it is clear that encouraging user-generated content (a brief, fun presentation of mine on UGC) is still critical and participating in other people's "earned media" worlds is just as critical for high search visibility and brand reputation. User-generated content is respected by search engines and recognizes that it really is a consumer's (B2B purchaser/influencer) world. Clearly the search engines reward companies who play in other people's sandboxes.

Thanks Geoff for such an important review.