This week you’ll see that the Weekly Digest is slightly trimmer and, dare I say it, fitter.

Previously, we’ve tried to ensure that you’re getting a full insight into the week in search marketing (through the prism of DSM’s experience).

However, we’re now going to strip back the digest to its fighting weight, to help give you the most important information, the sharpest commentary and the clearest insights, wrapped up with some of our views of the issues of the day.

As we’ve stressed in previous digests, we’re very keen on ensuring all clients have Google Authorship tagging set up and are receiving the associated benefits it provides in site authority development and content ownership.  However, sometimes it helps to go back to the start of the conversation and outline the full argument – with this in mind, I found nobody who’s done it better than Sarah Matista here.

This pursuit of authority is at the heart of how search marketing has changed in recent years, with a clear development of the sophistication of the SME industry in view.

One can look at the years – when content was keyword stuffed, links were bought in bulk with no regard for source relevance and sites ignored technical best practice so as to deliberately game the ranking system – as the industry’s adolescence, when it worked out the building blocks for success in SERPs and pursued them each as individual Holy Grails.

Digital marketing is no longer the teenage sibling, however – it’s now a fully-fledged adult and has embraced the complexity, the sophistication and the appreciation of how all the elements link together that broader marketing professionals have always understood.  Indeed, as Catherine Flynn put it last week at TFM&A, the word “digital” is no longer necessary at the start of the phrase – digital marketing and marketing are indivisible.

This inter-weaving of disciplines requires one simple mind-set – know what your ultimate goal is.  Or, as Dr Covey would have it, “Start with the end in mind”.  Eric Enge talks here about how link-building is not about the individual value of the links, it’s about a broadening of brand and reputation (a point that is developed by Rand Fishkin in his Whiteboard Friday).  Links are still integral to the algorithm but you’re missing the point if you pursue them without understanding why they’re important (and pursuing the ultimate goal of authority, rather than backlink count)

On a related note, the development of inpage content (and tagging) is not a series of ticks in boxes for keyword density – as Jil McCoy articulates, your content marketing should be focused on engaging your audience.  And this is why social media is so important in a search marketing campaign – it is a true development tool for brand and authority, not simply a tool for drawing in link juice.

The need to broaden your company’s appeal to a human audience and to Google’s algorithm are not delineated objectives – on the contrary, they are exactly the same and all search marketing activity become more efficient if it is focused on that same end goal.

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What are YOUR thoughts?  We’re always keen on feedback so please feel free to comment below – or via our social media – and tell us if there’s anything you’d like us to discuss.