Bruce Clay's Blog, page 37
October 22, 2014
Penguin 3.0 Update is Overwhelmingly Underwhelming
Penguin 3.0 Update is Overwhelmingly Underwhelming was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
For 12-plus months, organic search marketers have been waiting for the Penguin 3.0 update that would allow reformed corner-cutting clients to claim full penalty recovery and regain SERP rank. With six months between updates set as the standard through 2012 and 2013, a full 12-month cycle between updates created quite the build up for Penguin 3.0.
So, when an Penguin 3.0 update was announced by Search Engine Land on October 19, significant SERP rank fluctuation was expected. Instead, what we’ve seen in the six days since the update can only be described as overwhelmingly underwhelming.
Penguin 3.0: What We’ve Seen In the First 6 Days
In a post on Google+, Google UK Webmaster Trends Analyst Pierre Far confirmed that the “update” (referred to as a “refresh” twice in the body of the post) started rolling out on Friday, October 17. Wording the change as a “refresh” in the body text gives us the impression that the event we’re witnessing this week is a minor algorithm reiteration more comparable to the quiet release of Penguin 2.1 than the massive release of Penguin 2.0.
The Mozcast barometer which monitors fluctuation in Google’s rankings and reports volatile conditions as hot, stormy weather, showed a temperature well over 100 degrees when Penguin 2.0 was launched in October 2013. Currently the Mozcast is showing a comfortable 71 degrees at the time of this posting, and an actual decrease in instability between Friday, October 17 (when the update was announced), and Saturday, October 18.
At this point the analysis we’re seeing from our SEOToolSet ranking tool aligns completely with the comfortable, stable Mozcast forecast: we’re seeing very little SERP fluctuation – for better or worse. In general, we have seen neither significant penalty removal or penalty increases. It was thought that sites would show marked recovery for repenting this last year while those continuing their spammy ways would see increases in ranking drops. We have seen neither.
Speculations: Why Release an Update That’s Not Really an Update?
With so much anticipation leading up to the long overdue (in our opinion) release of Penguin 3.0, we can’t help but wonder: after a year, why would Google release a Penguin “update” that is so insignificantly affecting so many?
Here are four speculations we’ve cooked up in our internal discussions:
One theory is that the public was getting antsy and Google took this recent action to appease a vocal industry. In this scenario we posit that Google, overwhelmed with millions of disavow requests, has yet to figure out a meaningful way to use the abundance of disavow data. If the elongated lapse in time between 2.0 and 3.0 updates is the driving catalyst for the update we’re seeing this week, then this week’s update may reflect the best they could do to throw us a bone, so to speak.
Another speculation shifts the blame toward the upcoming holiday season; reasonably, Google doesn’t want to create mass instability in the SERPs right before Black Friday ushers in the biggest online shopping season of the year. In this case, a bigger shakeup could be coming with a Penguin 3.1 update roll out just after the holiday season.
A third speculation takes Google at its word that the update is still rolling out, and the U.S. market will see a bigger impact in the days to come. In the above-mentioned Google+ announcement, Pierre Far says, “It’s a slow worldwide rollout, so you may notice it settling down over the next few weeks” (emphasis ours). Jennifer Slegg reports that the Penguin 3.0 update was rolled out on international Google sites Google.co.uk, Google.de and Google.fr, before roll out on U.S. sites. In other words, there still could be a tiny glimmer of hope that Penguin 3.0 is in fact still rolling out, and will begin to affect U.S. sites with more gusto in coming weeks.
The fourth and most pessimistic speculation suggests that this update-slash-refresh may actually be a sign of things to come; what if Google aims to make cheaters pay for their crimes with an unforgettable punishment, as Bruce Clay, Inc. Senior SEO Analyst Robert Ramirez proposed speculatively in an article last month, Does Google Have a Responsibility to Refresh Its Penguin Algorithm ? What if this update is a sign that penalties for black hat marketing techniques may be in the initial phase of an exponential increase, evolving into website death sentences with no hope for the penalized to ever fully recover?
What Now? We Wait and See
With a substantial lack of data to show Penguin 3.0 significantly impacting the SERP space, or an at all, really, we can only continue to wait and speculate among ourselves.
Photo by Fod Tzellos (CC BY 2.0), modified.
If above-mentioned speculations one, two, or three are true (or near truth), the seismic Penguin update we’ve been holding our collective breath for could still, very well, be on the horizon. This means hope could still be in the cards for former corner-cutters who have been working hard to prune their backlink profiles and waiting patiently for the Penguin update that would result in penalty resolution.
If the more dramatic fourth speculation is closer to true, we’re in for a real game change. In the Search Traffic portion of their Webmaster Tools Help, Google goes to great lengths to teach webmasters how to disavow unnatural links and correct manual link penalties. We like to believe all this training and effort means something and that Google really does want what’s best for your site, and for the greater good. For that reason, we choose not to put too much weight on the Penguin-3.0-as-eternal-death-sentence speculation.
But, still, it all boils down to waiting and seeing.
The bottom line is that something has to give sooner than later.
We’ve been waiting over a year to see Google refresh the algorithmic elements that manage the analysis and judgment of backlink profiles so that reformers can see rank recovery. What we saw this week just wasn’t that update.
Here’s to hoping that update is coming our way…soon.
October 21, 2014
Bringing Your Brand Mission & Mobile Strategy to the Next Level: 6 Digital Marketing Lessons from SMX East & Pubcon
Bringing Your Brand Mission & Mobile Strategy to the Next Level: 6 Digital Marketing Lessons from SMX East & Pubcon was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
It’s been a good month to learn about the latest strategies evolving in Internet marketing, with Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East 2014 and Pubcon Las Vegas 2014 taking place back to back in October. After liveblogging 36 key sessions throughout both conferences, two major themes emerged: the necessity of optimizing for mobile at every turn and the importance of a mission that goes far above and beyond sales.
Read on for six lessons, straight from Pubcon and SMX East, on these key themes:
Brand + Mission = Excellence
Think Bigger: Startups Save the World
Focus on Users with “Youtility”
Responsive Design isn’t the Only Choice That Makes Sense
Click-to-Call Extensions Reap Major Rewards
75% of Users Access Pinterest on a Mobile Device: Optimize Accordingly
Brands Must Have Mission
Keynote speakers at Pubcon had a lot to say on the subject of mission, vision and “youtility” of a brand. If we can take these CEOs and bestselling New York Times authors at their word, successful brands must h
ave a mission greater than sales, p
ossess a clearly defined vision, and think of creative ways to be
useful.
1. Brand + Mission = Excellence
“Brand is the outward expression of a mission. Mission is what drives your deepest purpose. Match these well for excellence,” said Chris Brogan, CEO of Owner Media Group, as he delivered a passionate address that appealed to idealism and the bottom line simultaneously. According to Brogan, brands that are fueled by a mission — something they could write on a flag and get people to march behind — are the kind of brands that reap the greatest success.
By infusing your company with a mission, your consumers will feel like they belong to something greater. Brogan asserts that if they feel like they belong to something greater they will become content creators and spread the word of a brand themselves. Brogan points to Crossfit as an example of this, noting how actively and avidly Crossfitters share Crossfit’s mission on social media. What Crossfit inspires (that ordinary gyms don’t) is that sense of belonging — and that allows them to offer their services at a premium.
2. Think Bigger: Startups Save the World
Angel investor Jason Calacanis examined the global impact that mission-minded brands can have. Calacanis discussed six major world problems (cancer, climate change, energy crisis, hunger, unemployment, and repression) and showcased startups that are finding solutions. His final thought? That the work entrepreneurs, engineers and the tech elite perform is the work that lifts the world up. Calacanis believes that even bigger things are coming.
3. Focus on Users with “Youtility”
Jay Baer, president of Convince & Convert, also believes brands are on a mission — a mission of “youtility”. Youtility is the idea of focusing on the “you” who is consuming your content. It’s marketing with the chief aim to be useful. As Baer said, “it’s marketing that people cherish rather than tolerate.”
Marketing that people cherish means abandoning a “me, me, me” attitude. It’s not about touting your brand, but about knowing your audience and supplying them with content (apps, articles, social presence) that will help them. For example, Hilton has a Twitter account called @HiltonSuggests. The account’s entire mission is to find traveler’s looking for suggestions or tips and help them. A look at their Twitter feed shows them talking food, attractions and sights; there’s no call to stay at a Hilton. This kind of youtility, though, leads to something priceless: brand recall and top-of-mind recall.
“Great Youtility can transcend the transaction. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger – you don’t just have to talk about your own stuff. You can talk about other things that are relevant and useful,” said Baer.
A natural consequence of focusing on the “you” is something all brands are hungry for: loyalty. Joanna Lord, vice president of marketing at Porch.com, echoed Baer’s sentiments at SMX East, using Starbucks as an example.
Lord explained that we’re in a place today where businesses need to be just as loyal to customers as they want customers’ loyalty. Look at the messaging on the Starbucks website. It’s hyper-focused on words like “you” and “we” and “our” and “us,” punctuated with three to four word phrases. Marketers are empowered when every morning they can wake up and know they’ve delivered a message to the world.
Consider Mobile Traffic at Every Turn
Mobile optimization has been a hot topic all year long. 2014 was, after all, the year that saw mobile search traffic overtake desktop search traffic. I recently interviewed Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge, and he reported that BrightEdge data shows mobile traffic is outpacing desktop traffic by 10. That’s precisely why digital marketers are focusing their efforts on mobile optimization and paying close attention to design, user experience, content and SEO. Like Bruce Clay said at Pubcon, “Mobile will disrupt everything. It’s already disrupting everything.”
4. Responsive Design Isn’t the Only Choice
Each type of mobile site implementation comes with its own set of unique pros and cons. Knowing, however, that Google’s preferred method is responsive design (as opposed to separate sites or dynamic serving), digital marketers tend to advocate responsive design, as well. But not the panelists in “What SEOs Should Be Doing with Mobile” at SMX East.
Cindy Krum (CEO of MobileMoxie) asserted digital marketers shouldn’t feel bound to one type of design; each page should be taken into account on its own.
“You don’t have to commit 100% to one mobile type. Part of your site can have one architecture and other pages can have a different architecture. If it provides a better user experience, then you should do it. Google is not against this if it’s warranted,” Krum said.
Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, agreed. What Google cares about most, he said, is making the user happy. He also emphasized that responsive design does not lead to ranking boost, and a lack of responsive design does not lead to penalty.
5. Click-to-Call Extensions Reap Major Rewards
Jason Spievak, CEO of Invoca, and Daryl Colwell, Senior Vice President at Matomy Media Group, shared statistics that demonstrated the importance of implementing Click-to-Call functionality on PPC ads in the Pubcon session New Mobile Behavior and Click-to-Call Strategies:
47% of mobile users will explore other brands if there is no phone number associate with the business’ search results (Google Mobile Playbook 2013).
The average American consumer spends 34 hours a month browsing the Internet on a mobile device (source: Direct Marketing News).
By 2018, mobile search will drive 73 billion inbound calls to advertisers (source: BIA/Kelsey).
There are 30-50% conversion rates on a call.
Given these statistics, it seems more important than ever to make sure people viewing your ads can easily call your business.
6. 75% of Users Access Pinterest on a Mobile Device; Optimize Accordingly
In Pubcon’s Pinterest and Other Missed Social SEO Opportunities, Cynthia Johnson, director of social media marketing at RankLab, pointed out that 75 percent of users access Pinterest from a mobile device – it’s the digital marketer’s job to optimize accordingly. Practically, this means first and foremost have a mobile-ready site – there’s no point in sending users from Pinterest to a site that they’re going to bounce back from.
This also means limiting the characters in your pin description to those that can be seen on a mobile device (100 characters on iOS/125 characters on Android). It’s also important to consider the order of your boards. When you go to a brand/pinner’s page on desktop, the top eight boards are visible above the fold – on a phone, only the top four boards are visible above the fold. This means, then, that you need to strategically place your best four boards in the top four slots, rather than thinking you have eight to work with.
In addition to mobile optimization and mission-minded marketing, there was an abundance of new and insightful information in all arenas of digital marketing. Virginia Nussey and I liveblogged 36 key sessions throughout the conference. Find an easy-to-read overview of all of them in 36 Coast-to-Coast Liveblog Posts Covering Pubcon Las Vegas & SMX East 2014 and click through to the topics that interest you most. You’ll find coverage of sessions featuring the latest SEO, SEM, SMM and content marketing tactics.
October 20, 2014
36 Coast-to-Coast Liveblog Posts Covering Pubcon Las Vegas & SMX East 2014
36 Coast-to-Coast Liveblog Posts Covering Pubcon Las Vegas & SMX East 2014 was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
Bruce Clay, Inc. sent livebloggers Virginia Nussey and Kristi Kellogg to Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East 2014 and Pubcon Las Vegas to report live on 36 sessions on key digital marketing topics. Whether you’re interested in SEO, SMM, PPC, mobile optimization or content marketing, you’ll find coverage of the most important sessions coast to coast. Read on for an overview of each liveblog post and click through to read what piques your interest — or read them all!
Pubcon Las Vegas 2014
1. New Mobile Behavior and Click-to-Call Strategies
Learn how to enhance your PPC campaigns with click-to-call extensions — and why they matter so much — as Jason Spievak (CEO of Invoca) and Daryl Colwell (Senior Vice President, Matomy Media Group) take the Pubcon stage to talk mobile search advertising.
2. Chris Brogan on Mission-Driven Execution
In Wednesday morning’s opening keynote from Pubcon Las Vegas, Chris Brogan shares inspiring examples of brand and mission. Keep the mission alive with content and participation. Content is the drum that calls us together.
3. Search Algorithm Chaos & Keyword (Not Provided)
In this Pubcon Las Vegas session, Bruce Clay (president of Bruce Clay, Inc.), Prashant Puri (co-founder of AdLift) and Jake Bohall (vice president of marketing at Virante) are going to talk about an always-hot topic in SEO: Keyword data (Not Provided).
It’s Pubcon’s 15th birthday (and the final panel), and you know it’s a party when there’s beer and cake and an SEO Mosh Pit, a Q&A session where conference attendees get to ask their questions of some of digital marketing’s best minds and leaders, including Bruce Clay, about the current SEO state of affairs.
5. The Importance of ‘Buyer Legends’ with Jeffrey Eisenberg
There’s so much that goes into online marketing, and marketing at largeBuyer legends” are what marketer and bestselling author Jeffrey Eisenberg calls the narratives that craft a customer journey – and it’s also the name the company that he runs with his brother. In this morning’s keynote, Eisenberg will dive into buyer legends, exploring why they matter and what goes into them.
6. SEO Copywriting Style Guide: Tools & Tricks for SEO Writers
The lessons shared by these panelists, including Bruce Clay, Inc.’s SEO Manager, Mindy Weinstein, help writers craft content for people that’s also rich for search engines. Whether you’re writing an article, a blog post, your home page — where do you start? You need to start with the human element.
7. Link Building Without a Penalty
Rhea Drysdale, Joe Youngblood and Russ Jones talk about link building. While this session was covered, Bruce Clay, Inc. does not endorse any of these tactics. Always proceed with caution when it comes to any link building effort.
8. Jay Baer, Author of Youtility – Help Not Hype
Marketing is more challenging than ever. Attention spans are shorter, consumers demand more knowledge, and what worked twenty years ago won’t work today. What does work for gaining mindshare? Being helpful.
9. Real-Time Content Marketing with Wearables & Google Glass
When it comes to wearables, devices and technology are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and Internet marketers are embarking on a new frontier: real-time marketing.
10. Link Building through Press Outreach
Rob Woods, SEO consultant, will share insights on press outreach that leads to strong links in this Pubcon Las Vegas 2014 session. Caveat: Going after press links are hard work, take time and money, and you are going to face rejection from reporters.
11. Jason Calacanis on Startups that Save the World
Angel investor Jason Calacanis’s keynote is unique – it’s not tactical or strategy-driven. It’s steeped in reality and meant to simply inspire and inform the audience of the amazing progress that startups and forward-thinking companies are bring to the world in the areas of six global problems. Startups, he asserts, will solve our world’s problems rather than governments. His keynote, that is meant to inspire us, will cover major advances by tech and startup companies.
12. Pinterest and Other Missed Social SEO Opportunities
Have an interest in Pinterest? You should – there are 70 million users are Pinterest, and their business is up for grabs. John Rampton, editor-at-large at Search Engine Journal, Stephan Spencer, vice president of SEO at Covario, and Cynthia Johnson, director of social media marketing at RankLab, share their insights on wielding Pinterest for to drive traffic, build community and boost sales.
13.Utilizing Personas in Social Media Contests
One of the most common reasons why business fail to gain ROI from their social media marketing efforts is their failure to fashion their content to target specific personas.
SMX East 2014
Googler Gary Illyes, talks about the future of secure search, Google’s thoughts on secure search, and the possible return of keyword data (scroll to Q & A at end). Eric Enge says he’s seen “no material change” in moving to secure search, and Raza Zaidi weighs in on RSS and WordPress in relation to secure search.
2. BuzzFeed Founder Jonah Peretti Talks Going Viral, SEO, Social Media and More
Jonah Peretti, founder of BuzzFeed, has a history of Internet brilliance. Before founding BuzzFeed, he was a co-founder of the Huffington Post. For tonight’s grand finale, Search Engine Land Founding Editor Danny Sullivan picks Peretti’s brain on the early days of SEO at the Huffington Post, the nature of social sharing, the nuances of different social networks, the role (or lack thereof) of SEO at BuzzFeed, native advertising, and more.
3. 25 Smart Examples of Structured Data You Can Use Now
Have you reviewed your website inventory ad implemented structured data markup wherever applicable. Perhaps most important to your decision of whether or not you need to add markup now, speaker Mike Arnesen shares how to track the ROI of rich snippets.
4 . How SEO & SEM Can Help Each Other
SEO and PPC VIPs Lisa Williams, Aaron Levy and Brett Snyder break down the relationship between SEO and SEM from an operational and tactical level during the first session of Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East 2014’s Tactics Track.
Think of an apple and a bag of marbles. Both simple images, and when you compare the two you’ll get an idea of the shift that social media has caused brands to make to stay relevant today. An apple is the old way of thinking of your brand, unified and on-message. The bag of marbles is a little more assorted, a collection, not a unified message but it has 300% more surface area. You’re able to increase the surface area of your brand by releasing individual advocates.
6. SEO Is Never Dead — Marshall Simmonds
In this opening summit session at SMX East, the SEO thought-leading veteran Marshall Simmonds puts to rest the popular critique of search engine optimization, “SEO is dead.” He explains: “If Google is constantly changing, we [search marketers] have to be constantly moving to meet those changes.
7. Branding Your Data Visualizations with Annie Cushing
Annie Cushing makes data pretty and meaningful for her clients with Excel dashboards customized in their colors and fonts and will be imparting her guidelines for making your data visualizations fit your brand, making it a brand identity tool online.
8. The 4th Wave of Content Marketing
We’re at the forefront of a movement to make technologists and marketers talk to each other. This session is called “The 4th Wave of Content Marketing: From Passive to Interactive” and it’s about the next thing in content. Don’t just publish more, make it interactive with marketing apps.
9. Twitter Cards & Facebook’s Open Graph
Take your social game to the next level by implementing Twitter Cards and Open Graph Tags. The speakers in this panel assert that social strategy means thinking about social posts as if they are ads (and therefore crafting them with the same amount of care and creativity).
10. Automation Does Not Equal Strategy
SMX speaker Kevin Ryan posits that “a Tool Box Does Not a Cabinet Make” as referenced in the alternate title of this session on marketing automation. Ryan is going to speak on a bad habit: focusing on the new, shiny new technology and neglecting the strategy.
What is a brand and how are marketers in control of a brand? These are the questions she’s been tackling this decade because things have changed, and branding is now a business driver. As such, a brand should have it’s own budget, it’s own team and it’s own conversation with the executives. Joanna Lord explains the best practices of what some better brands are doing.
12. SMX East Evening Forum with Danny Sullivan
Search Engine Land Editor in Chief Danny Sullivan fields questions from the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East 2014 audience. Find out what he had to say about Authorship, markup, local SEO, how to teach SEO in college and much more.
13. Tough Love: What I Wish CMOs Knew About Search Marketing
Internet marketers know the importance of SEO, SEM and content marketing … but that’s not always the case with the C-Suite. Hillary Glaser stresses the importance of maintaining SEO. If your CEO/CMO is unconvinced of the power of ongoing Internet marketing, Glaser’s insights are definitely must-shares. Erin Everhart shares the seven things she wishes execs understood. Tom Alison rounds out the session by sharing compelling statistics on the future of Internet marketing, and why PPC is necessary for branded terms.
14. Creating, Testing & Optimizing Paid Search Ads
PPC pros share their top tips on testing ads, including tips that account for the shift of mobile users. From “always be testing” guidelines to creating ad testing framewor, discover what matters most when it comes to creating, testing and measuring ads.
15. Learn With Google — Attribution Strategies
In the Learn with Google classroom, the topic of the morning is: Attribution Strategies to Inform Your Search and Digital Investments. Because understanding the interplay of channels leads to smarter marketing investments.
16. What SEOs Should Be Doing with Mobile
When it comes to mobile, Google prefers responsive design. But there is no ranking boost or penalty for using this method when designing your mobile site. Cindy Krum, Michael Martin, Jim Yu and Gary Illyes talk about what happens when sites use dynamic serving, separate sites and responsive design — or some combination of all three.
In a stream of consciousness presentation of images, SMX speaker Rhonda Hanson, Sr. Director of Digital Marketing, Global Marketing, formerly of Concur, thinks about using images to your advantage and points out a few dos, don’ts and trends.
The sales funnel has exploded. However, the pieces of the funnel are still highly relevant. You need to be there in the consideration phase. You need to streamline the purchase process so it’s frictionless. You need to work to maintain retention and get fanatical loyalty.
19. Keyword Research for Better Content & Audience Engagement
SEO masterminds Michael King, Jason White and Joe Pawlikowski share their top insights on keyword research. Discover their favorite tools, tried-and-true tactics, thoughts on persona research, (Not Provided) and much more.
20. Deconstructing Pigeon, Google’s New Local Search Algorithm
In July, the quality of Google local search results took a turn for the worse, experts say. The cause? A pesky little creature called the Pigeon Update crawled into the maps, local packs and authoritative one boxes. Learn what changed for searches with generic terms, geolocally modified terms, and see some of the wacky-broken results that have cropped up since Pigeon landed.
21. Conversion Rate Rock Stars
Luke Summerfield shares brilliant insights on designing your site and content to appeal to people’s unconscious brains (i.e., where emotions live). Then Paras Chopra and Khalid Saleh talk technical CRO matters.
22. Search & Find: Marketing in the Age of the Internet of Things
In this session at SMX East, speaker Erynn Petersen takes a high-level view of a future where we don’t go to a phone or computer to get online, but rather all the devices and appliances around us are online.
23. Competitive Research for SEO
This session dives into competitive research that will help you identify your true competition (it isn’t always who you think it is) and then assess why and how they are outranking you. Armed with this information, you can fight back and rise to the top of the SERP.
October 16, 2014
New Structured Snippets: An Enhanced SERP Snippet Is Just a Table Away
New Structured Snippets: An Enhanced SERP Snippet Is Just a Table Away was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
On September 22, the Google Research Blog announced Structured Snippets, a feature that “incorporates facts into individual results snippets in Web Search.” What it amounts to is elements from an HTML table being shown right in the SERP. If this sounds at all like Structured Data, it should. Sort of. Google displays data from your website on their results page, yet it doesn’t require schema markup or any other specialized coding. All you need is a table. Oh, and relevant data.
The Google post has an example of a Structured Snippet for the query “Nikon d7100”:
In order to test these results out, we found the table below from Car and Driver. It’s formatted as a classic table, without any structured markup.
And here is how it appears in the SERP:
As you can see, the data about the Dodge Challenger in the SERP listing above isn’t quite as easy to read as Google’s Nikon example, but the information is there.
This announcement has been greeted with a fair amount of skepticism, as many webmasters and content creators are frustrated that Google has found yet another way to take data from websites and present it on the search engine’s own pages, consequently stealing clicks from websites that actually published the data originally. But the fact is that there are several reasons to welcome this latest innovation.
Optimizing Structured Snippets
As is often the case, whether you welcome or dread it, this change has a lot to do with perspective. Google introduced this change to improve user experience, so webmasters should have the same goal in mind when thinking of how to include interesting information in tables on their website to garner more attention in the SERPs. Here are some benefits to Structured Snippets:
Challenges webmasters, designers and marketers to reexamine how we present information. A well-made table is an engagement object. It’s helpful for users, and it breaks up long blocks of text. Tables just became another tool in your content utility belt.
No special markup required. Google said it, and based on all the examples we’ve seen, it’s true; you don’t need to learn some new technology to make the most of this change. Got data that would look good/be easier to read in a table? Great. Make that table.
More real estate on the SERP. So far I haven’t heard anyone mention this, but in some instances, like in the Nikon example above, the amount of space for your entry nearly doubles. While it’s possible that Google pulling data from your website and putting it in SERPs may lower your click-through rate, it’s also possible that getting a larger entry in the SERP could help your CTR.
What Structured Snippets Mean for the Future of Search
First off, I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean: the death of structured data. This isn’t cause for letting your schema markup fall by the wayside; if anything, Structured Snippets reinforce the importance of structured data overall. Why? Because both tools enable search engines to determine A) what your page is about, and B) how relevant it is to search queries. Search engines, as they’re always pointing out, exist to serve users, not webmasters. All of this structuring things allows search engine spiders to efficiently crawl your site and figure out who’s looking for what you’re offering.
It’s possible, and I’m really speculating here, that Meta tags (Title, Description, and the seldom-used Keywords tags) will become less and less important over time. Search engines know that it’s too easy to offer over-optimized Titles (can you say “clickbait”?) and so they’re beginning to look directly into your content; after all, how long has Google been presenting snippets of content in the SERP, where it used to always just be your Meta description? Structured Snippets are one more way to let spiders, and users, get your data quickly and easily.
Search Engine Land points out that Structured Snippets could cause some difficulty for websites that use responsive design, however, as tables are tough to format for mobile devices. Probably worth taking a page from Wikipedia’s playbook in formatting tables for a variety of devices.
One thing that is certain, is that those who make the most of this new tool stand to gain the most ground over those who are slow to adapt.
October 15, 2014
What Are Social Meta Tags? Open Graph and Twitter Cards Made Easy
What Are Social Meta Tags? Open Graph and Twitter Cards Made Easy was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
Have you ever pasted a link into Facebook or Google+ to find that the associated image has nothing to do with the content of that page, or that the post description reads like an SEO Mad Lib? You think twice about sharing it, don’t you? Social Meta tags give marketers control over the experience their content produces as it shows up on social networks including Google+, Facebook and Twitter. For instance, if someone copies a link to this page in their Facebook status update:
A website selling green tea
It looks like this:
Link to the above website pasted into a Facebook status update results in a lack-luster piece of content.
The above is not an impressive piece of content. A social media user may even abandon this post instead of sharing it.
The title, description and image can all be specified by the content publisher so that the content, when viewed in a social feed, looks snazzy and is optimized to get a click.
Aren’t you much more likely to click on a post that comes across your feed looking like this?
An article about green tea health benefits returns a richer content experience, with the title, description and image optimized for social sharing.
Read on to learn how to customize titles, descriptions and images via social Meta tags. This article covers the following topics:
Social Meta Plugins for WordPress
Open Graph Tags
Twitter Card Markup
Schema for Sharing on LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest
You can jump to these sections with the links above.
Using WordPress? Let’s Talk Social Meta Plugins
If you’re using WordPress, several plugins make it possible to implement social Meta markup without ever having to write a single line of code. Some options include Facebook’s official plugin, JM Twitter Cards for Twitter, and, the plugin we use, WordPress SEO by Yoast which implements Open Graph tags for Facebook and Google+ and Twitter Cards for Twitter. WordPress social Meta plugins are a quick and easy way to associate custom social media titles, descriptions and images with blog posts (or web pages) on a page-by-page basis.
Social configuration screenshot of Yoast WordPress SEO plugin.
While you’re not likely to be getting your hands in the code to implement social Meta markup, next we run down the code doing the work behind the scenes, for your reference.
Open Graph Tags
The Open Graph protocol is Facebook’s standard for implementing Social Meta tags. It has also become recognized by all the major social platforms, including LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter.
The basics of Open Graph markup include:
og:title = title or alternate title of post
og:url = URL of post
og:description = two to four sentences describing post
og:image = URL to unique image at least 1200×630 pixels
og:type = article (otherwise defaults to “website”)
So in order to have the Facebook shares that come from your web pages formatted with an image, title, and description of your choosing, like this:
…this is what the social Meta tags look like in the HTML code:
og:title” content=”Liveblog Coverage of Pubcon Las Vegas“/>
og:url” content=”http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/pubcon-...“/>
og:description” content=”Find out where the Bruce Clay, Inc. team will be during Pubcon Las Vegas 2014 this week, and get our Pubcon liveblog schedule.“/>
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To make sure your Open Graph tags have been properly configured, use Facebook’s Open Graph Debugger Tool to see a preview of how your post will appear in Facebook.
From our experience using the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin to optimize social Meta tags, you can upload an image to the “Facebook Image” field under the “Social” tab, and this image will be used to populate the image in shares on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, if you only include this one. An image with dimensions 470 pixels wide x 246 pixels high will work seamlessly across Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
Twitter Card Markup
Twitter Cards allow you to attach rich photos and videos to Tweets with a few lines of HTML. There are at least 9 types of Twitter Cards but Summary Cards and Photo Summary Cards are most commonly used. The basic Meta tags for Twitter are:
twitter:card = Card type (full list of card types here)
twitter:title = Title or alternate title of post
twitter:url = URL of post
twitter:description = Brief description in less than 200 characters
twitter:image:src = URL to unique image of at least 280×150 pixels
So in order to get something like this:
… Twitter Card social Meta tags will look like this:
twitter:card” content=”summary_large_image”/>
twitter:title” content=”SEO Copywriting Style Guide from @Pubcon #Liveblog”/>
twitter:url” content=”www.bruceclay.com/blog/pubcon-seo-cop...
twitter:description” content=”Liveblog converage of a Pubcon session with tips and tools that SEO copywriters can use to write better content for search engines and human audiences alike.”/>
“twitter:image:src” content=”http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/wp-cont...
You can preview your Twitter markup using Twitter’s Card Validator tool to make sure you’ve configured your Meta data correctly.
Schema for Sharing on LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest
Open Graph tags are also read by LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter. Most of the social networks recognize and support Open Graph as a default standard when it comes to social markup. But there is another solution for Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn which is schema markup.
To use schema markup to customize the title, description and image associated with your Google+ or Pinterest, the social Meta tags look like this:
Again, this Schema markup will go in the HTML code associated with your post right before the closing tag.
You can validate your schema markup using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
Quick Tips for Crafting Social Meta Tags
The key to maximizing your social distribution is to control the way your content is displayed in feeds rather than letting Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms decide for you.
Recycle unused headline ideas by using them as alternative titles for Facebook and Google+. You could use this opportunity to test headline ideas for future content.
Showcase images that will appeal to the unique interests of each network’s distinct audience. This is especially useful if you want to test out different versions of an image.
Craft social descriptions that approach the nature of the content from a different angle or aimed at a different audience. This way, you can target specific personas on different social channels.
Why You Need Social Meta Tags
According to IBM’s Tami Cannizzaro, all search is now social. This means you need to start thinking of all your social media posts more like social advertising, as asserted by aimClear’s Merry Morud who believes strategic content markup for social distribution is everything in today’s dynamic digital landscape.
The key to maximizing your social distribution is to control the way your content is displayed in feeds rather than letting Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms decide for you. By optimizing Social Meta tags, you can craft messages about your blog post geared toward the distinct audiences you have on each social network.
Much like page Title tags and Description tags help boost search engine rankings, Social Meta tags are elements in your HTML that boost social exposure, increase social media traffic and improve click-through rates.
October 9, 2014
Pubcon Liveblog: SEO Mosh Pit
Pubcon Liveblog: SEO Mosh Pit was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
It’s Pubcon’s 15th birthday (and the final panel), and you know it’s a party when there’s beer and cake and an SEO Mosh Pit, a Q&A session where conference attendees get to ask their questions of some of digital marketing’s best minds and leaders, including Bruce Clay, about the current SEO state of affairs.
A panel of digital marketing’s best minds at Pubcon’s SEO Mosh Pit
Leading the charge is moderator, Brett Tabke, Pubcon CEO. Introducing the SEO Mosh Pit panel and their predictions for SEO in 2015:
Bruce Clay , President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
The industry will be 90 percent mobile within a year, and it will change everything.
Gareth Hoyle , Co Founder / CEO, LinkRisk / Marketing Signals
Google will give more clarity to updates and Matt Cutts was kicked out because of Penguin!
Joe Laratro , President, Tandem Interactive
Just introduces himself, no predictions.
Jenny Halasz , President, JLH Marketing
A Dismal prediction: the divide between SMB and enterprise will widen and it will be hard for small businesses to compete in the space.
Tony Wright , CEO/Founder, WrightIMCG
He welcomes the Google overlords, as it takes content from websites and displays it for its own monetization.
Eric Enge , CEO, Stone Temple Consulting Corporation
Dramatic expansion in Knowledge Traph and answer boxes. More structured snippets, and more webmasters won’t like it.
Mike Grehan , CMO & Managing Director, ACRONYM
Matt Cutts is a multi-millionaire and doesn’t need to work anymore.
Greg Boser , President & Co-founder, Foundation Digital, LLC
Mobile is going to be huge, predatory aggregation is going to be huge, and we will all be here moaning about Google and its products.
First Question from Brett Tabke: Is SEO dead? Should it be called something else?
GARETH HOYLE – SEO is never going to be dead, it’s just going to change what we do. It’s never going to die, and will become 5 spots as opposed to 10.
ERIC ENGE – SEO is never going to die, but there are new technologies coming out that someone needs to be on the front lines of trying to figure out, discovering new ways to get traffic. The SEOs of tomorrow will always be figuring out new stuff.
JENNY HALASZ – SEO will never go away. There is an intersection between content that people want to see and availability of the content. There is also “Subject Experience Optimization.”
BRUCE CLAY – Many years ago he said “SEO is dead as long as it’s alone.” Because SEO is part of larger digital marking, there is always something new. Every Monday, SEO is a brand new industry. As long as there are web pages, there will be SEO, and it will be integrated with all forms of digital marketing.
TONY WRIGHT – SEO has come back from the dead so many times. If you can’t adapt to change, then you are in the wrong business. To most, SEO is dead, but to the rest of us, we figure out what works, and we implement it. SEO is not dead as an industry.
MIKE GREHAN – Danny Sullivan was in his office recently, and together they reminisced over an interview from 14 years ago and they couldn’t recognize what SEO was.
Next Question: Does Google have too much power and influence in our lives?
JENNY HALASZ – A simple “yes.”
GARETH HOYLE – Google in the EU has created a great barrier to entry, but we don’t need to use Google. But we keep coming back to it.
TONY WRIGHT – He was in PR with Microsoft, and fought antitrust action against the company in the 90s, and Microsoft was taken down by 2 guys in a garage, not the government. This is the cycle, but no one knows what’s going to replace Google.
ERIC ENGE – There needs to be something dramatically different, but we don’t know what it is. Google will run out of runway eventually.
MIKE GREHAN – In ‘06 Google stopped calling themselves a search engine; they are a digital marketing company now. Google has made so many changes, but they’re not for us, they’re for the user. Hummingbird is not meant for people with a keyboard, because we are talking into mobile phones.
BRUCE CLAY – Asks how many people owe their jobs to google changing all the time? Most raise their hand. Of course.
Next Question: How is mobile changing the game for marketers?
ERIC ENGE – It changes the website fundamentally, based on mobile users and devices. Organizations without mobile are already behind and will feel the financial pinch next year.
TONY WRIGHT – Makes a prediction that 2x the mobile analytics tools at the conference next year.
JENNY HALASZ – We need to consider where the customer is and the context of how they are using devices.
JOE LARATRO – Very few are starting to scratch the surface in mobile behavior. Important issues need to be addressed as a result of this new behavior. The greatest opportunity for mobile is building direct connections with users.
MIKE GREHAN – Google does parlor tricks, they don’t actually answer real questions. Example – is it moral for girls to take the pill? See what answers you get. Google is just a database.
ERIC ENGE – Build your own audience, no matter the platform – this is how businesses succeed.
TONY WRIGHT – Web presence should be the center of your universe. You will avoid a lot of problems if you execute on this concept.
BRUCE CLAY – What if Google decides that organic is no longer needed on mobile phones? That changes our lives dramatically, and there’s nothing to prevent that from happening.
MIKE GREHAN – Does Google have all the power? What about Baidu, and Yandex? He’s a new grandfather again for the fifth time (congratulations), and never sees his grandkids open a mobile browser. It’s all apps.
Up next from Brett Tabke: What would be the top recommendations for earning money in the coming year?
BRUCE CLAY – Get better at PPC. He believes that people will get squeezed out of organic, because Google is not in the business of giving away free traffic. The problem is competition, and we are going to have to spend more money to make more money. Because Google doesn’t make money on organic, the real estate on SERPs will be shrinking
MIKE GREHAN – Everyone is a publisher, and creating your audience. Build your own audience.
GARETH HOYLE – Paid social. Not all people hang out on Google. Use the context of different social platforms to increase presence. If you can make a website, you can make money.
TONEY WRIGHT – There are big opportunities to create better websites. And websites that work on mobile. People need sites that just work.
ERIC ENGE – Yes, create an audience, but how do you do that? We should all strive solve problems without asking a penny.
JENNY HALASZ – Diversify. Build content, audience build, brand build. Mobile marketing. Do not be solely dependent on Google for your audience.
BRUCE CLAY – For brick and mortars, be afraid of Amazon. They are opening up a brick and mortar on 34th Street in NYC. Do not underestimate the ability of large online companies to jump into real life.
Audience Questions
Do you think there will be any profit in semantic optimization for the Knowledge Graph?
JENNY HALASZ – Google has developed a knowledge base on how to properly implement schema. Google recognizes the need to make it easier.
MIKE GREHAN – If Google understands the intent of a query, then structured data is not necessary.
ERIC ENGE – Google is getting good at understanding how likely a user is to be satisfied based on UX, which is somewhat outside the realm of schema. This validates the research by Searchmetics on co-occurrence.
MIKE GREHAN – Co-occurrence has been around for forever, but as the lexicon changes, how does Google adapt? One third of queries everyday Google has never seen before. Keywords used to be strong, but Google thrives on end user data. How media is consumed is the most important thing, which is why content is so important.
Q: Where will marketing strategy be on wearables next year?
TONY LARATRO – Don’t be a glass hole.
TONY WRIGHT – Looks forward to the day he can optimize his fridge.
ERIC ENGE – Consider all searches as voice search, because no one types things on their watch.
JENNY HALASZ – Voice and video
Q: Can Siri compete with Google? Will Facebook create a search engine?
ERIC ENGE – He published a study using 3000 keywords running on Google, Cortana, and Sir – Google answered 58% of questions, Siri 29%, Cortana 21%. But were the questions fully answered? Google: 83%, Siri: 40%, Cortana: 20%
TONY WRIGHT – Facebook will have a Knowledge Graph type function.
MIKE GREHAN – You are tapping into a network of trust, so a Facebook search engine will be powerful.
Q: Why does SEO matter more than just to SEOs? How does a company that doesn’t want to invest in SEO do so?
TONY LARATRO – There are a lot of roadblocks, and sometimes SEO is not the best way, like with competing with Google products. No breaking that ceiling. You have to find opportunities to get through to the organization.
JENNY HALASZ – SEO is about marketing. Companies should continue to invest in it because understanding customers never changes.
TONY WRIGHT – SEO is not an island. If it is, you will fail. You must be able to integrate. Requires more than just on-page optimization. It’s about web presence, which must include an all of the above strategy.
ERIC ENGE – If there are big competitors in front of you on the SERPs, you’re not going to win that battle. You must find the battles you can win in the space.
GARETH HOYLE – Buy ads. Maybe SEO is not the right avenue depending on the topic/keyword. SEO is the glue that brings everything together. Everyone needs to speak to everyone. Google what you want to rank for and assess where you need to place your SEO efforts.
That’s it, nothing but applause for the SEO Mosh Pit. Entertaining as always, and happy 15th birthday Pubcon!
Pubcon Liveblog: Utilizing Personas in Social Media Contests
Pubcon Liveblog: Utilizing Personas in Social Media Contests was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
Direct from Collegis Education, online community specialist Kendall Bird and inbound marketing specialist Katy Katz are going to dive into personas – why they matter, how to leverage them in social media contests and more.
Kendall Bird and Katy Katz at Pubcon Las Vegas 2014
Knowing your personas at a really detailed level is important. Personas should play into all your social media efforts, Bird and Katz explain.
What Is a Persona?
“A buyer persona is a semi-functional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.” –Hubspot
Persona research is taking data and turning it into a person. That person is your persona and you think about him or her whenever you’re creating your content.
Create a Persona
Conduct target market research:
Surveys
Creating gated content
Analyzing social behavior
Utilizing an external partner (like Simmons Data)
Divide results into persona buckets
Create a story for each aspect that you identify
Edit, edit, edit
Make the personas personal and detailed
Name
Job title and where they work
Details about their role
Age
Gender
Salary
Location
Education
Family
Values and fears
What a Persona Should Include
Be best friends with your persona – you’re targeting them constantly. You want to build a relationship. Have images of them.
Social media is where your customers are. It’s where you, then, conduct customer service! 71% of customers ended a business relationship because of poor customer service (according to Forbes), and only 23% of customers think that a company values their business (according to CBS News). Responsive social media is a key differentiator.
Personas and Social Media Contests
What do personas have to do with social media contests? If you don’t understand your personas, your social media contest is likely to fail. One of the most common reasons why business fail to gain ROI from their social media marketing efforts is their failure to fashion their content to target specific personas (according to SquareFish).
Social Media Contest Fails
Audi: They did a social media contest targeting and featuring hipsters. Rather than using a photo of a car, they used a photo of a hipster and came under fire. They weren’t adhering to what their personas wanted to see. Their actual persona should be 30 to 40-year-old businessman – that’s the demographic that buys their cars.
Molson Canadian: This beer purveyor held a contest asking fans to promote Molson Canadian. They invited college students to share pictures and show why their school is the number one party school and feature the drink. It really didn’t work. In fact, it was a PR nightmare for the colleges. They should have been targeting their actual personas – beer-drinking fisherman, downhome people.
Persona-Driven Social Media Content Successes
User-generated content is trusted 50% than traditional media. (Crowdtap). UGC is an excellent way to collect creative material for marketing purposes or to get photos of your products on the social web to drive sales and brand engagement (Mashable). When you understand you persona … it gets your audience is excited. You’re speaking to them.
Eggo Waffles: Kellogg’s held a contest, people were invited to share pictures of their Eggo creations/recipes. This spoke to the 30-something moms that Katz and Bird envision are the persona that Kellogg’s was targeting. The contest was wildly successful, and it is because Kellogg’s understood their personas.
Brush Buddies: Brush buddies is a singing tooth brush. The brand held a karaoke contest where users posted videos of themselves singing with toothbrush, and users voted. There were only 30 contestants, and it drove 23,000,000 impressions and garnered 65,300 votes. Again, Brush Buddies understood their audience: teenage girls who love to post videos of themselves and sing.
5 Things You Need to Know About Personas
They should be a person, not a segment.
Know their input and their outputs.
Understand their story.
Be personal to what they care about.
All content should be directed at a persona.
Pubcon Liveblog: Link Building Without a Penalty
Pubcon Liveblog: Link Building Without a Penalty was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
Rhea Drysdale, CEO of Outspoken Media, Joe Youngblood, founder of Winner Winner Chicken Dinner, and Russ Jones, chief technology officer at Virante, are going to talk link building in this Pubcon Las Vegas 2014 session. But first a disclaimer from Bruce Clay, session moderator and Bruce Clay, Inc. president: if you are going to build links, proceed with caution. The tactics mentioned herein are for your information; Bruce Clay, Inc. does not endorse any of these tactics.
Tactics shared at a session on link building at Pubcon should be considered with caution.
“When you’re dealing with inbound links you have to consider whether the links are organic or inorganic to your site’s theme. You have to understand the policies of the search engines relative to possible penalties. You wouldn’t want to overwhelmingly support a single technique. You have to use any technique in moderation,” Clay advises. “You shouldn’t go from one to sixty links overnight on one technique – that sends a signal to the search engine that you’re involved in a heavy link development program and it could ultimately lead to a penalty. Follow the Google Guidelines. Links should be good for your users, contribute to your site content and make sense.”
Rhea Drysdale
Editor’s note: Coverage included here is only a partial reporting of Drysdale’s presentation due to Jay Baer’s keynote address running long.
Don’t just pay attention to Google Guidelines, Drysdale asserts. Pay attention to the actual law – make sure you understand the expectations for giveaways and contests. Take the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as seriously (if not more seriously) than you do Google Guidelines.
Build a real business. You need to have a firm grasp and understanding of your brand/business. What we do as marketers ends up becoming business strategy. SEOs go into a meeting and are asked to build backlinks. What SEOs need to know, though, is who are client’s audience and what content resources we have to give them.
Invest in diverse growth strategies. Marketing strategy has to be robust.
Russ Jones: Broken Link Building
“Broken link building is a link building tactic where a marketer contacts a webmaster who has a broken link on his/her site and recommends one or more alternatives that include his/her target site.” (Moz)
Why Broken Link Builders Succeed Where Others Do Not
Prospecting
Identify broad and related keywords to prospect for resource pages related to your topic. TOOL: Use nTopic to find words and phrases that occur on content like yours.
Find resource pages. Use smart search queries to identify resource pages related to your topic. TOOL: Brokenlinkbuilding.com
You can outreach to the resource page to tell them about their broken link, or you can look up the backlinks to broken.com on Majstic, Moz and ahrefs and reach out to all of them about their broken link.
Panda Rules
Find what the page used to look like and examine the content. Follow the Panda guidelines to make your new version even better. Consider:
Was this content written by experts?
Would you consider this content trustworthy?
Is this page an authority on the issue?
Would you see this content in print?
Are there any obvious errors on the page?
You’ll have more success if you create a replacement piece of content that is superior to the first.
Use Archive.org to determine relevancy, quality and potential for improvement.
Contact Finding
Finding good webmaster contact information is one of the most difficult parts in this process. Consider outsourcing it. Try Mechanical Turk or the outreach app in brokenlinkbuilding.com.
Finding the right outreach style can dramatically improve your conversion rate!
Long form: take the time to personalize a long email that will explain why your new piece of content is better than the first. This is the most successful strategy, but also the most time-consuming.
Short form: simple and quick heads up
Slow play: send an email that says you have a broken link, but don’t tell them what the broken link is or offer a replacement. Then, the webmaster is likely to email back and ask
Double tap: webmasters don’t need a nudge – they need a complaint. Create a false demand by sending complaint emails from email addresses (that aren’t yours).
Follow Basic Ethical Rules
Don’t spam
Don’t commit fraud
Don’t steal content
Joe Youngblood: The Royal Guide to Google Safe Link Building
Youngblood offers four different link building strategies.
Scholarship Link Building
Set up the scholarship via scholarship management service.
Create a page on your website describing the scholarship.
Find targets on .edu sites to link to your scholarship page.
Get listed in scholarship search engines and directories.
Use scholarship-related content to drive links.
Interview Link Building
Google has slapped down guest blogging. Interview link building is a very similar concept, but it’s much better.
Join the FindExpertsToInterview.com email list and MyBlogU.
Seek out an expert to interview and arrange how you’re going to do the interview (phone, email, Google Hangout, Tinychat, in person, etc.)
Write up some ideas for questions you’ll want to talk about and let the person you’re interviewing know your rough idea of how the interview will go so they know what to expect.
Once the interview is done publish it and ask them to share socially.
Use that interview for outward-facing communication to show that you are a go-to source for this information.
Photo Credit Link Building
This is a passive strategy. Find images that people are looking for. Use Ubersuggest.com. Find a highly trafficked image request that you can create.
Use UberSuggest.org set to “images,” and type in a base query.
Take list of all applicable keywords and put them in Google AdWords Keyword Planner under “Get search volume for a list of keywords or group them into ad groups.”
Sort by search volume and fin image keywords that match content you’re creating such as blog posts, articles, product pages, etc.
Find image queries that currently don’t have a lot of good results.
Make the images and publish them on your site with ALT and Title tags.
Do reverse image searches at least once a month to find new websites that have used your image and ask for a photo credit with a link to the original article.
Reddit Link Building
Reddit was accepted into Google News, and journalists are paying increasing attention to Reddit.
Look at the types of content shared on any of the default sub-Reddits such as DataIsBeautiful.
Create content that matches that sub-Reddit and target Reddit users to share the content on your behalf (some allow you to self-submit also).
Once your content is shared, join in the conversation about the content.
Encourage upvotes on your content by sharing it in social media (but don’t ask for upvotes – the Reddit community heavily frowns on this).
Consider using Reddit ads to target a sub-Reddit with thank you’s, special discounts, etc. for sharing and liking your content.
Pubcon Keynote Liveblog: Jay Baer, Author of ‘Youtility’ — Help Not Hype
Pubcon Keynote Liveblog: Jay Baer, Author of ‘Youtility’ — Help Not Hype was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
Jay Baer at Pubcon Las Vegas 2014
Jay Baer, president of Convince & Convert, opens the keynote by explaining that marketing is more challenging than ever – attention spans are shorter, consumers demand more knowledge, and what worked twenty years ago won’t work today. In a keynote packed with real-world examples, Baer shows how brands are wielding transparency and “Youtility” to build trust and business.
There are three enormous obstacles to great marketing. Being a great marketer is harder than ever. There are three enormous obstacles to great marketing.
1. Reach is fragmented.
It is way harder to reach audiences today than it used to be. In 1977, the No. 1 television show (Happy Days) had a 31.5 rating. In 1987, The Cosby Show had a 27.8 rating. In 1997, Seinfeld had a 21.7 rating. In 2007, American Idol had 16.1 rating. In 2011, Sunday Night Football with Al Michaels had a 12. As of May 2014.
We spend more time looking at phone and computers that we do at televisions. Last year for the first time we spent more time looking at computer and mobile screens than televisions.
Moral of the story? People are doing their own thing, and it’s more difficult to reach them.
2. Marketing and customer service have collided.
Ten years ago, what would you do if you had a bad hotel? You would write a letter or call customer service. But today, the Internet has enabled us to be passive aggressive. We take to the web to write reviews like this:
Customer service is now a spectator sport. All the trust and awareness you build with your Internet marketing can be undercut by a review like this.
3. Competition for Attention
Our personal and our professional lives have converged in unprecedented ways. When social feeds are filled with posts from both companies and friends, you’re not competing against other companies – you’re competing against everything. You are competing against people that your audience actually love; are you more interesting to them than their husbands and wives?
Stop being amazing and start trying to be useful. Amazing isn’t a strategy – useful is. The difference between helping and selling is just two letters – but those two letters make all the difference. When you help someone, you create a customer relationship for life. It’s not about right now. It’s about lifetime relationships.
Baer shares an example. Hilton has a Twitter handle called @HiltonSuggests, and the whole aim of the Twitter account is to help people with traveling questions. Hilton called together 20 employees to look for ways to help travelers in their spare time via Twitter. The aim is not to help, not sell.
Herein, Hilton is playing the long game. Hilton is making relationships. Notice in the above example, Hilton doesn’t mention their own properties.
Youtility
Youtility: marketing so useful that people would pay for it.
Make marketing that people cherish rather than marketing people tolerate.
Useful articles are forwarded 30% more than average. We are wired to appreciate youtility.
Do you have the courage to create youtility?
Consider the Clorox: Find a Stain/Take a Spin app. It give you information on how to remove a stain. Clorox determined that they are not always the best answer. And if Clorox was always that answer, moreover, that would change the experience of the app. Clorox considered sharing coupons through the app, too, but decided not to – because it would make it an ad, rather than a piece of Youtility.
3 Ways You Can Create Youtility
1. Self-Serve Information
We crave information like never before. Google interviewed tens of thousands of users and found that the average American consumer need 5.3 sources of information (review, article, testimony from friend) before making a purchase (2010). In 2011, they needed 10.4.
Every single people here has access to all the world’s information at all times in their hands, via smartphone. Today customers are hyper researching everything, because why wouldn’t they? There’s no barrier to research.
Mobile data usage doubled in 2013. Today, if you make a bad decision (bad restaurant, bad hotel, bad sweater), you’re just lazy. All the information is right there.
Baer shares an anecdote. He was recently watching “Orange is the New Black” and wanted to know where he had seen one of the actresses before. He simply looked her up on IMDB on his phone. After getting the information he wanted, he considered the fact that before the Internet, this would have been impossible. He wondered what it would have taken to get the answer – he determined at least four hours to go to the library and scour information. He reasoned that he wouldn’t have done that, and would have just settled on “I don’t know.”
But today, “I don’t know” is no longer an acceptable answer for anything. Your phone knows, Siri knows, and we all have to know.
He shares an anecdote about a swimming pool and spa company was on the brink of going out of business. They decided to write blog posts on every customer question they fielded. On evenings and weekends, they wrote 400 blog posts (they now have well over 1000 blog posts). Those 400 posts turned their business around. They now have more traffic than any other swimming pool company in the world.
B2B customers contact a sales rep only after 70% of the purchase decision has been made (Sirius Decisions 2012).
The better you teach, the more you’ll sell. Relationships are created with information first, people second.
2. Transparency and Humanity
The truth always comes out. There’s nowhere to hide. It didn’t used to be that way. Smart marketers realize, then, that they need to come out with the truth first. Smart marketers choose to be radically transparent.
This is Domino’s entire marketing message: “Hey, our pizza used to suck. Now, not so much.”
Trust is the prism through which all business success must pass. Without trust, nothing else matters – not search rankings, not price, not anything. The best way to keep trust is to be radically transparent and give away useful information.
McDonald’s has a functionality on their Canadian website where consumers can ask any question. And the questions are not easy. There
“Maybe you could post a picture of these happy ‘family farms’ in which you say your animals are raised with the best care?”
In the old days of marketing, businesses would have run away from questions like this. Now they run toward them. What did McDonald’s do? They made a video showing McDonald’s Canadian Senior VP Jeff Kroll visiting a farm in Canada where the animals are raised.
Since implementing this Q & A functionality, the trust rating in Canada has gone up 31%. In the old days of marketing, businesses would have run away from questions like this. Now they run toward them.
3. Real-Time Relevancy
Be hyper relevant in some particular circumstance. Take, for example, The Corcoran Group. Every time it rains in New York City, they share a tweet that directs people to a very useful piece of content they created.
Nowhere in the article do they attempt to sell – but they’re creating relationships by being useful. And relationships like this lead to top-of-mind recall.
Great Youtility can transcend the transaction. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger – you don’t just have to talk about your own stuff. You can talk about other things that are relevant and useful.
Focus on what people really need. Nobody ever, in the history of the world, has ever needed socks. But everybody in the history of world has needed their feet to be warmer. Know the real need. Know your customers better than we really do.
We are surrounded by data, but we are starved for insights. We have more data than ever before, but every time we run a report we are by definition treating our customers as a number and they are more than that. If you are not regularly having conversations with customers in person or on the phone, you are doing it wrong. Talking to them will lead you to amazing, useful ideas that can help them.
Content is fire, social media is gasoline. Remember, you’re competing for attention against people’s real friends,
Twitter was not created to be the world’s shortest press release outlet. The only reason brands are even tolerated in social is because it keeps us free for the rest of us.
Youtility is a process, not a project. Inspiration doesn’t respond to meeting requests.
Baer’s book, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is About Help Not Hype, is a NY Times best-selling business book.
October 8, 2014
Pubcon Liveblog: Real-Time Content Marketing with Wearables & Google Glass
Pubcon Liveblog: Real-Time Content Marketing with Wearables & Google Glass was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
When it comes to wearables, devices and technology are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and Internet marketers are embarking on a new frontier: real-time marketing. Rob Garner, Chief Strategy Officer at Advice Interactive, is going to take the Pubcon Las Vegas 2014 audience on a tour of the real-time marketing landscape in this afternoon session.
Rob Garner at Pubcon Las Vegas 2014
Elements of Real-time Marketing
We’re shifting from passive to real-time engagement. Wearables represent a new kind of content marketing. It’s app-based, mobile, experiential, location-driven and context-driven. It brings immediate physical world experience into social, search and content consumption spaces.
Technologies Driving the Wearable Tech Change
RFID
Bluetooth
Beacons (active and passive)
Smart things (communicative objects)
The Internet of Things
Gesture and touch control
Local digital marketing
Did you know there is a smart mattress in development? $20 million dollars has been invested into it. The smart mattress does not degenerate, but gets better with time. It learns how you sleep and adjusts to your body and sleep patterns. It molds to your body.
Experience Generated Content (EGC)
Fitness trackers
Google Glass
Smart watches
Health and wellness apps
Gamification of many physical actions and tasks
Garner talks about a pest control companies whose technicians wear Google Glass while rooting around attics and what they see is displayed downstairs for the client.
How can you implement EGC for your business?
Thing-Generated Content (TGC)
In a world of the “Internet of Things,” content will be passively generated by context of the things in a physical space, whether it is a room or location. It will happen in real time, based on the arrangement and interconnection of smart things in a space or across spaces.
In many ways, EGC and TGC is the second coming of the Internet. Content marketing opportunity and innovation abounds.
Google Glass
Google Now is an intelligent layer that coordinates multiple services into contextually useful information that shows up as cards on Google Glass.
Types of cards:
TV listings
Currency
Public transit
Nearby attractions
Place info
Public alerts
Stocks
Flight status
Hotel info
Events
Restaurant reservations
Weather
Breaking news
Appointments
Birthdays
Google Glass is like a mobile phone on your face. Garner talks about how Google Glass alerts him immediately his flight is delayed. He calls the device intuitive. You can take a picture by winking.
Common reactions to Google Glass that Garner has experienced:
Delight
Curiosity
Fear
Uncertainty
Bewilderment
Overwhelming excitement
