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As Community and Brand manager, Ann Smarty’s work is focused on both regularly contributing to the Internet Marketing Ninjas blog and serving as an internal SEO resource for the team. Ann Smarty has been involved in various high-profile roles in the SEO industry for more than ten years. Her background includes working as Editor-in-Chief at Search Engine Journal and being a regular columnist at some of best-known Internet Marketing online publications including Moz, Mashable, Social Media Examiner and more. Ann's search and social experience ranges from content creation and social media marketing to SEO reporting and consulting. Ann's expertise in Internet Marketing tools also helps in internal tool development and testing process.
I have been working in various areas of the Internet Marketing for 10 years. I come from Ukraine where I got a degree in English and German.
I started working in SEO field when still in high school: All I needed was a part-time job to train my English knowledge. I never thought that was going to be my career...
I have never had to look for a job ever since.
I have always enjoyed learning English and writing and thus I have found huge passion in SEO blogging. I have blogged in English (which is not my native language) for 4 years and have become a well known SEO authority and writer.
I've blogged on my personal blog seosmarty.com. I've also been a guest author at the most prominent Internet marketing blogs including SEOmoz, Mashable, Social Media Examiner etc. I've been interviewed for multiple blogs and books. I am contributor for Search Marketing Standard magazine, a premium online marketing publication delivered via print.
Throughout my Internet marketing career I've been involved in all sorts of related tasks and projects: I have a huge experience in team building (I managed teams both in-house for a Ukrainian company and from abroad as a Director of the large department in the U.S. company).
I have been successfully engaged in social media marketing as well and have built highly-networked and influential online presence and personal brand.
Currently I've joined Internet Marketing Ninjas as the Community and Branding Manager. My work is focused on both regularly contributing to the Internet Marketing Ninjas blog and serving as an internal SEO resource for the team.
My main goal is to to turn our blog into the leading free Internet marketing resource uniting SEO experts from all over the world.
I am also going to help operate all the communities we own: DevShed forums, Cre8site forums and WebmasterWorld forums.
Speaker: Ann Smarty • Location: Salon F
Speaker: Ann Smarty • Location: Salon C
Ann is a genius in her own right. Her deep insight on online marketing has enabled her to carve a niche for herself within the industry. Widely respected, and acknowledged as one of the sharpest brains in SEO, Ann is a delight to work. Being a fantastic colleague and a super person comes naturally to her.
Rajiv Karran, Production Manager, BlueGlass Interactive, Inc.
It isn't just that Ann is very knowledgeable--which she is--but she's a great person to work with too: she shares her expertise freely and is always pleasant to be around online. Rare combination! Ann is also a superb team leader. It looks effortless when she gets everyone to do what they need to be doing, but anyone who has ever managed a team knows how difficult it is. She's great at what she does.
Patricia Skinner, Contributing Writer, Search Engine Journal
You can invest ton of time and money into marketing your website but all your effort will be wasted if your site is down. Uptime is the biggest usability and conversion hurdle… The biggest, yet often most overlooked. How to Monitor a Website: Tools Don’t let yourself fall prey to the same mistake. Here are some easy to use monitoring tools that will tell you the second your users lose… [Read More…]
Social media continues to grow and adapt into a more exciting technology than ever before. While it was once a purely personal platform, the business and marketing applications are ace. Now we have entire degrees dedicated to the practice, and firms popping up all over the world promising to help brands expand on and off the web. While many offer tools to allow you to measure your own analytics, others… [Read More…]
I am a huge believer in content. Providing great trendy content is by the most reliable and efficient way to market your site. No wonder many Internet marketing companies are switching to various content marketing services. However producing great content on a regular basis may be overwhelming (and as many people believe, impossible). Coming up with new and new great and popular article ideas is something we are all struggling… [Read More…]
The web audience is changing. With mobile and voice search, the shopping journeys are becoming more fragmented and harder to predict, the attention spans are getting even shorter and the content supply is often greater than demand. Consequently, it is increasingly important to understand how your site users are interacting with the page elements, and what you can do to better engage them. What is User Engagement? Put simply an… [Read More…]
Competitor marketing is pretty much the obsession of every business owner out there. They want to know what the other guy is saying, doing and what is working. They also want to know what isn’t working, so they can swoop in and poach their customers (admit it, you do this any time you can). But keeping up with the competition’s moves is hard and without the right tools you will… [Read More…]
Social media marketing planning is key to successful content marketing. It makes your team more productive and allows you to catch all the seasonal trends and trending hashtags. Furthermore, it streamlines content planning and helps you focus more on community building aspects and other long-term goals of social media marketing. One of the best ways to plan your social media marketing campaigns, is to create a year-long content roundup including… [Read More…]
Digital marketing is probably the fastest-changing marketing field out there: New tools are being built, more platforms emerge and more channels need to be included into your marketing plan. How not to get overwhelmed while staying on top of the latest marketing trends? Here are a few tools that help you scale and automate some parts of your marketing routine making you a more productive and empowered marketer: Tools to… [Read More…]
Keeping up with the latest trends is a must for any business, but ignoring technology trends in the digital world is the matter of staying in business. Unfortunately, those trends (while easy enough to find mentioned online) are rarely explained well. There seems to be this mistaken idea that anyone who has an interest or need in the practice will just magically get the jargon. As we all know, that… [Read More…]
Videos work great for content marketing for three reasons: Certain demographics of users LOVE watching videos; Videos open up more marketing channels (Youtube, Vimeo, etc) Videos are highly engaging: People like sharing videos Social media networks give your update an organic boost when there’s a native video in them Videos get your message across much more effectively than text Your customers expect to find you on Youtube Now, the days… [Read More…]
Twitter can be used for pretty much anything. You can launch a political campaign, start a non-profit hashtag movement, spy on your competitor, track down your long lost friend… it is a world of opportunities on a single open platform. It is no surprise that people have been turning to it for professional uses over the years. Prospecting is one that has been a little controversial, with some claiming it… [Read More…]
The search industry is evolving fast: We have Google updates and core algorithm changes being announced and we see new awesome tools being launched regularly. It’s one of the most exciting industries to work in. As-you-type search suggestions can be an awesome source of content inspiration because they provide a valuable insight into what people tend to search for when typing in their base term. It’s nice to see different… [Read More…]
Your brand is delicate. It can be compared to rare lily, having to be coaxed carefully and softly into full bloom. What does that mean for your brand? You have to very deliberately curate and grow it, avoiding the many pitfalls that even big brand often fall into. One single brand image problem and you could lose a chunk of your user base. A good strategy for cultivating a strong… [Read More…]
Whenever you are trying to talk to your clients about actually attracting links (versus building them), there are always two types of excuses: either the niche is too boring, or there are no technical capabilities (in terms of a good design team and experience). I don’t believe in boring niches – neither do I believe in the absence of design skills that would be able to prevent you from building… [Read More…]
