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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 seven 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 SEOmoz, 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 6 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
SEO is among one of the biggest concerns for anyone who is running an online business or website. While there are plenty of marketing techniques that are important, particularly content and social, search ranking is still a crucial element to netting yourself a strong audience. After all, not everyone is going to come across your social media account or blog, but a few targeted keywords could bring them straight to… [Read More…]
Twitter is a great connecting tool. It’s much more open than Facebook (You don’t have to be anyone’s friend to get in touch) and much more active than Linkedin. Facebook does allow to send messages to non-friends but for some reason I only receive those using a mobile app. Also you cannot really tag people on Facebook unless you are friends. As for Linkedin, weirdly, I receive several messages a… [Read More…]
Images go hot on social media easier: Images are sharable and eye-catching. Images make better Tweets, attract more plusses on Google Plus, grab attention on Facebook. Images also expand your reach to other social media channels like Pinterest and Instagram. But the key of social media sharing is that it should be productive: If you spend 30 minutes crafting one social media update each time, you won’t have any time… [Read More…]
Video marketing has been growing for many years now, especially the “how-to” video type. Google says YouTube’s “how-to” searches are growing by 70 percent year-by-year. There are lots of reasons to add how-to videos to your content marketing strategy: Improve your conversion rate. Nearly 1 in 3 millennials state they have purchased a product directly as a result of watching a how-to video about it. Make it easier for your… [Read More…]
Visual tweets attract more clicks and shares. Despite various levels of skepticism (many people were claiming visual tweets to be annoying), visual tweets are getting more and more adopted. Here are three free tools allowing you to create stunning visual tweets in seconds. 1. Twit Shot (Online, Mac App, Google Chrome Extension) TwitShot.com is a cool app that extracts an image from the given page and creates an instant visual… [Read More…]
With AMP project being aggressively pushed by Google recently, site speed topic has been discussed more actively again. In case you wanted to get a quick background of those discussions, here is the timeline of Google trying to make the web faster and dealing with site speed over the years: 2009 December: Google Page Speed report comes to Google Webmaster Tools under “Site Performance” section. 2010 April: Google announces they… [Read More…]
Finding content ideas that could trigger real customer interaction and help you make a difference in your niche is tough, especially of you have to do it on a regular basis. Therefore I was so excited to discover this new tool from the creators of my beloved Buzzsumo. BloomBerry (in beta) helps researchers uncover the needs and concerns of their target consumers. The tool does this by finding the most… [Read More…]
Creating interesting, engaging content is just par the course for anyone involved in marketing, website development, or pretty much anything else on the web these days. Whole careers are launched on blogs, and if you are able to capture the continued interest of readers you can pretty much solidify a place in Internet history. But writing content isn’t really the whole problem. Most of us can generate something that will… [Read More…]
Next week I am heading to Pubcon SFIMA, so I thought it would be a good time that I try a couple of new Twitter tools to make the most of it. I love using Twitter when I go to conferences because it helps me get much more out of an event in terms of connecting to people and getting my word out there. The ability to tweet to and… [Read More…]
You may have noticed an interesting trend developing on Instagram lately. People are using emoji’s in their descriptions and comments. Not just a little bit… sometimes there will be as many as ten emoji’s in a single description. This isn’t that unusual if you think about it. Instagram is a visual platform, and it encourages visual storytelling. It was only a matter of time before that extended beyond the picture… [Read More…]
Webinars are an excellent way to connect with users, directly engage, promote services, generate leads, and build authority. Webinars are among the most effective promotional tactics out there providing you with lots of opportunities from marketing to sales. A single webinar can provide benefits for years to come. There is no doubt that webinars are incredible resources. But they don’t end at the webinar itself. You can repackage that content… [Read More…]
Making your site faster has been a hot topic for many years now. It started with Google announcing site speed a ranking factor and it’s got hotter with the mobile search traffic getting more and more discussed. Sadly, it’s also one of the most complicated topics to discuss. You are unlikely to handle speeding up your site yourself: You’ll need good developers to rely on. However you also want to… [Read More…]
Working in social media marketing can be overwhelming, so you are forced to try to organize and scale tasks as much as you can. Sadly, behind that scaling effort hides another problem: You may ultimately build a routine and do the same thing day after day. Social media is all about variety though: Tactics change daily, new tools and apps are launched, new opportunities emerge. Here are 15 resources to… [Read More…]
