"The bottom line is that content marketing is a great way of generating inbound traffic and making money online. The success of your online marketing depends on timely and effective implementation of online marketing plan. You also to use the right channels, engage your audience, and evaluate the effectiveness of your activities periodically. With all things in place, there is no reason why your content marketing should fail."

This come from this excellent blog post on How Content Marketing Delivers Customers.

Ultimately, that's what copy writing should be about - generating customers for your business. It's no use spending all your cash on loads of words if it doesn't improve your top line profits. Or, as this post points out, brand visibility.

There is loads to digest in the article and we suggest you check it out if you are unsure about the benefits of having loads of great content on your website and elsewhere.

Just to recap here are some of the benefits:

Improve search ranking 

Increase brand visibility

Generate sales by inbound marketing

Boost brand prestige

Generate buzz on social media via sharing of articles

Of course, these are just a few of the major benefits - find out more about our content marketing consultancy service.

At SXSW in Austin, Google head honcho on these matters, Matt Cutts, said there will be a large Penguin update in 2013.

Apparently Google’s search quality team is working on a major update to the Penguin algorithm, which he dubbed significant.

Penguin affects the way we do SEO and content marketing for all websites, but now merchants are being singled out for the algo treatment with Zebra.

"We have a potential launch later this year, maybe a little bit sooner, looking at the quality of merchants and whether we can do a better job on that, because we don’t want low quality experience merchants to be ranking in the search results," Cutts said.

Search Engine Journal helpfully explains the full ramifications (what we know), but here is a quick rundown of what Google is likely to be wanting 'good' merchants to have.

• A “view your shopping cart” link that stays on the same site.
• A shopping cart that updates when you add items to it.
• A return policy with a physical address.
• A shipping charge calculator that works.
• A “wish list” link, or a link to postpone the purchase of an item until later.
• A way to track FedEx orders.
• A user forum that works.
• The ability to register or login.
• A gift registry that works.

So what does it mean? We'll all have to keep improving our websites and content to ensure we stayed at the top. So not much then, just the usual one-step ahead game we have to play all the time to satisfy Google.

Global ad spend will increase by three per cent in 2013 based on current prices, according to Warc. The report also shows spending will rise by 5.4 per cent in 2014.

The forecasts cover TV, newspapers, magazines, internet, outdoor, radio and cinema advertising.

So the global market place is looking healthier, but what's the situation look like in the UK?

The IPA Bellwether report reveals over a third (36 per cent) of marketing executives plan to raise 2013 budgets in comparison to last year.

Internet advertising was the strongest performer in the first three months of 2013, rising 8.9 per cent, according to the survey.

In terms of content marketing, online search/SEO spend was up 1.8 per cent.

Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit and author of the Bellwether report, said: "An upturn in business confidence and corresponding increase in budgeted marketing spend for 2013 augurs well for the wider economy. However, while the Bellwether is suggesting the economy is recovering, it looks set to be another challenging year for businesses and the pace of economic expansion is likely to be modest."

If you were in any doubt about how important it is to approach SEO properly by building up great content for your site, just take a look at Interflora.

The company has been removed from Google rankings for manipulating links to improve its search ranking.

According to Google, the flower seller has been selling links to bypass PageRank, which goes against all that's good and true in the world of SEO.

In a blog post for Google Webmaster, engineer Matt Cutts outlined the reasons for the decision to strike Interflora.

"Google has said for years that selling links that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines. We continue to reiterate that guidance periodically to help remind site owners and webmasters of that policy," he wrote.

He added: "Selling links (or entire advertorial pages with embedded links) that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines, and Google does take action on such violations."

The first consequence for a site that sells links is that it will start losing trust in Google's search results, as well as reduction of the site's visible PageRank in the Google Toolbar.

Another consequence could be lower rankings for that site in Google's search results, explained Cutts.

"We do take this issue very seriously, so we recommend you avoid selling (and buying) links that pass PageRank in order to prevent loss of trust, lower PageRank in the Google Toolbar, lower rankings, or in an extreme case, removal from Google's search results," he concluded.

All this does is reaffirm the stance that great content is the best way to improve search rankings. Why? Because truly great website content is the only reason another site will link to yours.

Find out how great content marketing can help your business reach the top of Google