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Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing

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Attract, engage, and inspire your customers with an "Optimize and Socialize" content marketing strategy

"Optimize" is designed to give readers a practical approach to integrating search and social media optimization with content marketing to boost relevance, visibility, and customer engagement. Companies, large and small, will benefit from the practical planning and creative content marketing tactics in this book that have been proven to increase online performance across marketing, public relations, and customer service. Learn to incorporate essential content optimization and social media engagement principles thereby increasing their ability to acquire and engage relevant customers online.

"Optimize" provides insights from Lee Odden, one of the leading authorities on Content and Online Marketing. This book explains how to: Create a blueprint for integrated search, social media and content marketing strategyDetermine which creative tactics will provide the best results for your companyImplement search and social optimization holistically in the organizationMeasure the business value of optimized and socialized content marketingDevelop guidelines, processes and training to scale online marketing success

"Optimize" offers a tested approach for a customer-centric and adaptive online marketing strategy that incorporates the best of content, social media marketing, and search engine optimization tactics.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published February 21, 2012

37 people are currently reading
753 people want to read

About the author

Lee Odden

2 books152 followers
Lee Odden is CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and editor of Online Marketing Blog: Rated the #1 content marketing blog by Junta42 (3 times), #2 social media blog by Social Media Examiner and a top marketing blog by Advertising Age. He also writes a monthly column called "Social Media Smarts" for ClickZ.

Odden is a 14-year internet marketing veteran cited for his search, social media and content marketing expertise by numerous industry publications including The Economist, DM News and books ranging from ‘Marketing in the Age of Google’ by Vanessa Fox to Content Rules by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman.

Besides running a successful Internet Marketing agency, Odden speaks internationally on Social Media SEO and Content Marketing for top conferences including ad:tech, Intel’s Social Media Summit and SES, where he serves on the board of advisors. His first book, ‘Optimize’ will be published by Wiley in 2012.

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
Profile Image for Skarjune.
9 reviews2 followers
March 23, 2015
I attended the launch party, met Lee Odden, and this guy really impresses me, because he has accomplished so much in the Content Marketing realm but doesn't come off like yet another "thought leader." I won't name names, but I'll just ponder can every dancer dance without a piper?

This book and Kristina Halvorson's Content Strategy for the Web are the two companion pieces I'm recommending for anyone who wants to learn how to best work with online content.
Profile Image for Bruce Kirby.
236 reviews4 followers
August 20, 2012
Lee Odden's holistic view to SEO, social media and content marketing is better than so much that's out there right now. SEO is important but your conversion ratio and subsequently sales won't increase if your website's content is weak. A must-read content marketing classic.
Profile Image for Mike Wilton.
3 reviews14 followers
June 9, 2015
Though its a few years old and much of the landscape has changed, Lee Odden's Optimize still gives you the blueprint for a successful content marketing campaign. With detailed information on how to optimize your online presence from start to finish,this is a mist read for anyone responsible for online business. Best of all he ends the book with examples for various businesses and how to implement process behind optimizing their online efforts.
Profile Image for Blake King.
86 reviews2 followers
April 6, 2013
There is some good information in this book but I couldn't stand how boring it was and how much filler junk was in it. I couldn't help but imagine the author continually asking himself and whomever else was involved, "what else can we include to make this book look likes its worth $19.99?" The book could have been written in 25 pages and sold for $1.99.
31 reviews1 follower
December 6, 2013
What's the number one influence on the decision to purchase a product? Search engines. What's number two? Online word of mouth.

According to Optimize, 48 percent of consumers purchase products based on what they find in search results, and what they read on social media sites. That's why search engine optimization is important.

The book describes the content marketing "trilogy" of discovery, consumption, and engagement, and how to best approach the vast audiences on Google (1 billion queries a month), Twitter (350 billion tweets a day), and Facebook (nearly 1 billion users).

The book describes how to select the most popular keywords for your topic and add them to metatags, page titles and subtitles, Web copy, anchor text, image alt text, and image captions.

The book discusses consumer preferences and behaviors and developing personas to help you analyze your potential audiences.

The book explains that content relevance, timeliness of publication, and ease of sharing are the current content development trends.
Profile Image for Jon-david Mafia Hairdresser.
83 reviews45 followers
July 9, 2013
I got a signed copy at one of the Chicago Social Media Club events where author Lee Odden spoke. The man is a genius.
This book has great insights for the internet marketing age. I feel my artist brain had a hard time with the point business-speak. It took a long time for me to get through the whole book. But now, in my own field, I'm considered an SEO genius. Thank God I read this book!
Optimize helped me explain SEO in my latest book: Twitter for Salons Spas: 10 Minutes a Day Wins New Clients and Customer Satisfaction
Profile Image for Belal Khan.
123 reviews19 followers
December 2, 2013
This is an excellent book for marketing professionals. I don't recommend this for folks who aren't in someway engaged in some form for digital marketing. For those who are, this will serve as a great strategy book as well as a guide to regularly refer back to. The author has clearly put a lot of work into this and the depth of knowledge clearly shines through.
Profile Image for Patrick Macgougan.
Author 1 book4 followers
February 4, 2013
The information was ok, although not exactly standout and the style was pretty boring and didn't really come alive. The examples weren't strong enough and it wasn't a fun read.
Profile Image for Jorge.
13 reviews
March 7, 2013
Excellent book about SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing! Very useful for those who're not really experts on this field! Easy to read and to understand! Recommended!
Profile Image for Tim Raveling.
49 reviews5 followers
June 13, 2013
Great for what it is -- an overview of marketing in the social networking age. Recommended to anyone with an interest in online promotion and project marketing.
716 reviews33 followers
July 20, 2013
This was a pretty informative book, I had to keep notes to remember everything.
Profile Image for Jurgen Appelo.
Author 9 books959 followers
July 27, 2013
Most comprehensive and useful book I found on social media marketing. Would have been perfect if the writing style hadn't been so dull.
Profile Image for Bobby Stark.
3 reviews1 follower
Read
August 12, 2013
Great book. Good tips and strategies, all packed into a relatively short read.
Profile Image for J.R. Gershen-Siegel.
Author 12 books20 followers
April 6, 2014
I think I finally understand Search Engine Optimization after having read this book. Of course, SEO is a fluid, ever-changing task, but this book gives you the WHY.
Profile Image for John Malley.
13 reviews
September 28, 2014
Great book! Gives a great overview of marketing in the digital age. I used this to help out a local company with great success.
Profile Image for David Scott.
4 reviews1 follower
October 5, 2014
Awesome book about modern day content and digital marketing.
Profile Image for Debbie.
115 reviews
November 24, 2017
This was a book for one of my classes, ended up being a pretty good book.
14 reviews
July 2, 2025
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Profile Image for David Rosen.
36 reviews6 followers
December 27, 2018
Found it: A Book on the Strategic Use of SEO for the Post-Panda Age

It's nice to find exactly what you're looking for. In this case, I sought a book on the strategic use of SEO for the post-Panda age and Lee Odden just wrote it.

Making it clear that this is not another tome on tags, Odden asserts that "Companies are now vying for central positions inside consumer networks" and so it has become "essential...to understand the online information discovery, consumption, and engagement preferences of the people they're trying to reach."

The way to achieve this, he explains, is by seeing optimization not as a series of technical techniques, but a "state of mind" that pervades every department. Sure, that includes sales, PR marketing and social media. But it's really any division that needs their information to be found: HR, customer service, internal communications and others.

The most valuable sections to me are those that evolve your perspective on SEO. These include:

* A hierarchy of strategic questions that help organize and customize best practices at your company
* A section on metrics with plenty of KPIs to draw on, along with a healthy approach that focuses on objectives within a business goal context
* The critical nature of upfront research, with Odden comparing it to intelligence gathering before a war

On the tactical and practical front, he offers:

* Five types of SEO audits that provide benchmarks to measure against
* Dozens of tips on how to optimize content of all kinds and social channels (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+)
* Suggestions for free and paid tools

If, as Odden says, "optimization is a state of mind," then you can consider his book the way to achieve it.
Profile Image for John.
415 reviews4 followers
August 16, 2019
Informative, but a bit cumbersome and drags on a bit. Nice content, but could have been about 100 pages shorter.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews

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