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Surviving SEO in a Voice Search World

Surviving SEO in a Voice Search World was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

You wouldn’t want your annual profits cut by 20 percent, would you? Just like you wouldn’t overlook one out of five of your customers.

By the latest stats, 20 percent of people searching on mobile are doing it with voice search. And we expect that number to grow significantly as more and more people adapt to voice search and voice assistants.

As a marketing officer, you might be wondering how voice search will impact your future search engine optimization strategy.

And that’s what I’m going to talk about today:

Why and how your audience is using voice search.
The impact of Google’s machine-learning system, RankBrain, on voice search, where voice assistants come into play, and what voice search means in a mobile-first world.
Strategic recommendations on how voice search impacts your SEO strategy.

Why Your Audience Is Using Voice Search

Voice search, in many cases, is about convenience.

It’s no surprise that it’s popular among mobile users on the go. Would it surprise you, though, to find out more and more people are using it at home?

According to the 2016 KPCB Internet Trends report, 43 percent of people use voice search in their home:

The KPCB annual report on global internet trends shows the primary reasons and settings for using voice search. Click to enlarge.

And as the technology improves, so does the adoption of voice search on mobile devices and voice assistants like Google Home:

The KPCB annual report on global internet trends show how many smartphone users use voice assistants and why behavior is changing. Click to enlarge.

Google is leading the charge to improve voice recognition technology.

In November 2015, Google announced that the Google app had improved its capability to understand the meaning behind voice searches.

Just before that, RankBrain — Google’s machine learning artificial intelligence system — hit the scene. RankBrain makes interpreting queries (including voice searches) and matching them to the best search results easier for the Google search engine.

Voice Search Beyond the Mobile Device

The fact that over 40 percent of voice searches happen at home, versus around 20 percent happening on the go, presents a new level of complexity when we’re thinking about how our brands can become a part of a person’s daily search habits.

What we don’t know yet is the future of how voice assistants like Google Home will identify and serve up results.

In many cases, devices like Google Home have to make complex decisions for you about which answer or result to serve up. This is unlike the traditional way of personally choosing among a set of blue links on a page, and voice search optimizations must be accounted for.

Voice search adds further complexity to local search results, in particular. For example, someone who has a broken water pipe might simply tell their Google Home device: “My plumbing is broken,” versus a more traditional voice search like “show me plumbers in my local area” or “who are the best plumbers in my area?”

Let’s not forget that search must also evolve to fit the tastes of new generations as well.

What we do know is that third-party integrations are happening that allow brands to integrate with Google virtual assistants more seamlessly. And that’s worth looking into.

As search behavior changes, Google has more work to do to find the best answers, and we as digital marketers have more work to do to understand how to become a part of those results.

How to Prepare Your SEO Strategy for Voice Search

We do, however, understand some things about voice search to date, and how it can impact your SEO strategy.

Let’s look closer at what you need to know to survive SEO as voice search becomes more and more the norm.

Know Your Audience

As part of your voice search keyword research strategy, your company needs to be aware of how someone would look for your product or service if they were using a voice search.

Remember, voice searches are more conversational and tend to center around questions instead of the two- or three-word queries that many people type.

But they can also be declarative statements, like the one I used in the plumbing example earlier.

As part of your research, create a list of voice searches you believe users would use. Brainstorm with your team. Peruse social media. Look at forums. Do whatever you need to do to come up with a good starting list for research.

Know Your Results

We recommend in our SEO training class that people start querying their brand, products and services using voice search to find out if they show up and how.

Most companies haven’t taken the time to figure out how to do a search for their products or services on a device using voice search. But, with your newfound keyword research, you can start.

Once you perform that real-time voice query research, if you find your website isn’t showing up, your web pages and their content need some work.

It’s likely that your website pages aren’t doing a good job of answering a where, when, why, what or how-type question.

Know Your Competition

As part of your SEO strategy, you want to find out who is, in fact, showing up for those voice search queries if not you — or who is ranking above you.

Performing page-by-page analyses of the top 10 rankings, for example, for a voice search important to your business can help you better understand the logistics of the content on those top-ranking pages.

Apply Voice Search Keyword Strategy and Website Optimization

The approach to optimizing web pages is the same — meaning you want to ensure you’re following SEO best practices.

But you may choose to tweak your content.

You might decide to include the same target keywords in your meta information and heading tags, but tweak the content to be in the form of a question posed by someone using voice search.

For example, “planets in our solar system” might become, “how many planets are in our solar system?”

This keyword modification tactic could be applied page-wide where it makes sense and feels natural. You might also use the data you gleaned from your voice search keyword research plus the competitive research I mentioned to identify content on your site that’s missing.

Where could you better answer many of the questions your target audience has?

While it’s ultimately Google’s job to best match a search query to a web page, it’s also our jobs as website publishers to do as much as we can to help make that match.

So, many of the SEO practices we’re used to still apply to help make your pages relevant.

I mentioned integrations with Google Home, and those are the types of things you’ll want to watch out for, particularly for certain types of businesses.

And it’s worth mentioning again that voice search today is a highly mobile experience. But we can easily imagine a time when voice search is a desktop function.

Still, with Google planning to take a mobile-first index approach, you can’t afford not to be there.

Right now, it’s safe to say we’re in an experimental phase, where we’re learning how voice search works across devices, how search results surface and how to be a part of it all. And there’s still much work to do.

As brands, we need to figure out how to become a seamless part of our audience’s search habits across technology and devices. Imagine the competitive advantage you would have in being a leader in the “new” search.

But we also need to continue to implement the SEO best practices that help search engines understand our website and its content. Only now, we have more contexts than ever to consider.

What do you think? Do you think a brand can be the last to implement a voice search strategy? Can you? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Let us help you develop your voice search SEO strategy. Bruce Clay’s tailor-made services drive your competitive advantage.

Let’s talk more about growing revenue through smarter digital marketing.

How Fake News Changed SEO & How to Add More Facts to Your Site

How Fake News Changed SEO & How to Add More Facts to Your Site was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

The concept of “fake news” exploded into the public zeitgeist at the end of the 2016 presidential election season. It’s been in the spotlight ever since.

The popularity of the term “fake news” as indicated by Google search volume over the last two years skyrocketed the week of Nov. 6, 2016, the week of the U.S. presidential election.

Google is among those concerned with fake news, as we learn from this December 2016 interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Pichai says:

At Google, we’ve always cared about bringing the most relevant and accurate results to users … There have been a couple of instances where (fake news has) been pointed out, and we clearly did not get it right … Just in the last two days we announced that we will remove advertising from anything we identify as fake news.

Pichai’s focus here is towards paid advertisements but with all the buzz over fake news in the media, SEOs are asking questions about the affect of fake news on organic search.

The bottom line is that Google needs to provide users with quality answers that accurately fulfill the intent of their users’ queries.

So, why should SEOs care? What can you do? These are questions organic search marketers are wondering.

Is fake news beyond Google’s ability to control? You can bet the search engines don’t take that approach. Google and Bing are able to verify the accuracy of content, to some extent. And the search engines are already in a good position to mitigate the spread of fake news in organic search results.

Read on for what we know about:

How Google is looking to algorithmically promote factually accurate content in search results
How Google is training its computer programs to find and weed out fake news via a fresh update to its human quality rater guidelines.
Plus how to integrate trustworthy factual information into your content using database-driven data.

Algorithmic Solution to Factual Accuracy in Search Results: Google’s Database of Facts

Two years ago the SEO community saw the first sign of prominent Googlers arguing for the usage of factual evidence instead of backlinks as the primary way of measuring domain authority.

New Scientist summed up the idea in an article titled “Google wants to rank websites based on facts not links.” The article summarized a lengthy research paper outlining a potential change to the way Google would rank sites organically.

For many SEOs, the paper implied that if a web page appropriately mentioned accurate factual evidence, it could contribute to its trustworthiness and thus boost organic rankings. This makes sense, especially since everyone knows content is king.

Additionally, the paper’s argument is in line with a patent that Google filed a decade prior about how to extract and catalog factual evidence from “unstructured documents and build an oracle for various domains” (emphasis ours).

From these documents we can posit that:

Google has a large repository of factual evidence that they have been building for years and can reference as necessary.
Google is very interested in measuring the factual accuracy of sites so it can be certain users are served the correct answer to any question.

If Google and other search engines place such a high value on accurate facts, it is imperative that SEOs be aware of how publishing fact vs. fiction could affect them.

Furthermore, there’s some evidence that Google is working toward taking action algorithmically to reduce the visibility of sites that publish fake news…

Update of the Search Quality Rater Guidelines

While Google has said nothing officially about penalizing a site for inaccurate facts, we’re seeing signs that factual information is important in their eyes.

Just last week, Google published an update to its Search Rater Quality Guidelines. In summarizing what’s changed, Jennifer Slegg suggested that algorithmic action is the intended goal of the guidelines that help human quality raters identify fake news pages on the web.

“(Google engineer Paul) Haahr said that they needed to make these specific changes to the guidelines in order to have training data from the raters. And the need for training data would mean they are looking for ways to algorithmically detect and downrank sites that fall into the categories of fake news, hate sites or other sites with dubious and unbacked theories or claims.”

Steps You Can Take To Avoid Being Labeled ‘Fake News’

Being perceived as authoritative in the eyes of the search engines is not easy. Here’s what you have to do to pass Google’s factual accuracy check:

Use trusted sources whenever possible.
Fact check when reviewing content. Look for verification of anything passed off as factual on your pages.
Avoid sharing information with your users that could be false.

And here’s another pro tip. Where possible, integrate trustworthy factual information into your content using database-driven data.

Here’s this tip in action. Real estate sites are especially interested in offering users information about a given geographic area. The aim is to help people learn more about the area of a home, which in turn promotes conversions.

For example, here’s a screenshot of a portion of a property listing page on Trulia.com:

Local municipal data provided by third-party sources on a property listing page of Trulia.com.

The local data that Trulia publishes on a property listing page are area demographics, nearby businesses, schools and crime statistics. These stats are taken from third-party databases. The inclusion of these publicly available statistics is advantageous because Google sees these facts and weighs them as valuable information that helps a visitor with the intent of learning more about the property in question.

Thus, by adding this information to the rest of the content on the page, Trulia (and other real estate sites that do the same) have better fulfilled the intent of the query by being a one-stop-information-shop for users.

Similarly Public Storage, another well known brand, includes public data on some pages to either improve the user experience or better fulfill the intent of the query.

Below is a screenshot of a storage facility city page that include a “City Information” tab with indexable content about the region:

City data provided by third-party sources on a storage facility city page on PublicStorage.com.

Again, the inclusion of this information alone does not make Public Storage the best site but it does improve the user experience while simultaneously fulfilling the intent of the query in a more enriched and meaningful way.

In summary, if relevant database options like this are available in your industry or associated verticals,  appropriately integrate them your content in order to:

Better fulfill query intent
Improve UX
Add to the accurate factual information your pages feature
Set your site apart from your competition as a one-stop-shop for searchers
Make your content verifiably accurate

If you are interested in looking for data sources that might work with your site’s content, you might start with Google Public Data, Data.gov or Qliq. There’s a nice round up of more databases you can mine over here.

In a world of fake news where facts will be verified, set your pages apart by supporting your content with accurate information.

Quick Caveat about Database-Driven Content

Using facts as a method for measuring authority is not the be all, end all of ranking factors.

In 2015, Google’s Gary Illyes and Bing’s Duane Forrester spoke against building a site off of public data alone.

Obviously, the search engines will have seen or know about any public data you are referencing so, trying to out rank an existing authority is not the best strategy.

Also, the search engines will still consider other factors so, offering only data does not automatically make you the best. As we saw above with Trulia and Public Storage, you need more than just data and facts. A web page with 100 facts, should not expect to outrank a competing page with the same facts, original content, and a stellar UX.

Will Google Take Action to Suppress Fake News?

By updating the Search Quality Rater Guidelines to reflect a concern with identifying fake news, Google has shown they are not about to let undeserving pages slip through to Page 1 rankings.

It is not yet 100% clear whether Google will take algorithmic action against fake news or factually inaccurate content, or if their action will remain manual. But from all that we have seen, Google has the means to eventually implement an automated process that suppresses sites with inaccurate factual information in organic results. This makes sense since the search engine already goes to great lengths to feature accurate information and this would merely be a continuation of their existing efforts.

How VR Experiences Will Take Marketing by Storm in the Not-Too-Distant Future

How VR Experiences Will Take Marketing by Storm in the Not-Too-Distant Future was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Imagine putting on a virtual reality headset and joining your favorite social media platform as a highly interactive experience with friends.

Imagine shopping for a new dining table by picking up your phone and seeing the table in your dining room, as though you’re taking a video of it right before your eyes.

Sound a little like the holodeck in “Star Trek”? Yes, but this may not be science fiction in the near future.

The opportunity to engage with one another, see new places and reach a mass audience will create opportunities to shop with a confidence never before available from the comfort of your home. This is what’s available through virtual reality, the newest form of marketing.

Creative digital marketing strategies will usher brands into the virtual reality realm. Read on for an idea of:

What virtual reality is and the ways people are connecting to VR today.
The opportunities VR opens to marketers.
Why VR in social media, gaming and commerce may be the catalyst for mass adoption.

With the virtual reality sector forecast to hit $162 billion by 2020 — up from $5.2 billion in 2016, these opportunities are not that far off.

What Is Virtual Reality?

There can be some confusion about what virtual reality is. What does VR actually do? How does it work? What am I going to look like with that headset on my face?

Let’s first get clear on the definition of virtual reality (VR). When we talk about VR, we’re talking about a computer-generated simulation of a 3D environment you can interact with using special equipment like goggles with a screen and sensors you hold in your hands.

Here’s a good explainer video from Mashable:

The key is that true virtual reality meets a few requirements:

Perspective: a perspective that changes with the movement of your body and head
Interactivity: an ability to interact with the environment, such as moving objects
Navigation: an ability to control where you go through the environment

How People Are Using VR Today

People are using the term VR as an umbrella term for a variety of experiences. Purists consider VR to be technology that accounts for user perspective, interactivity and navigation. But you might also hear “VR” used to describe 360 videos, like those you might have seen on Facebook or YouTube, where you can move your phone around to see a from where the photographer stood.

Basically, under the VR umbrella, there are four major flavors of virtual reality, depending on the technology used and whether the environment is 2D or 3D.

Click to enlarge.

On the 2D end, you have things like 360-degree video, which Facebook and YouTube have embraced, and several brands are experimenting with.

Here’s an example of 360-degree video (note how you have the control to move the screen any direction you wish during the video):

Google is betting big on VR, and Google positioned its Daydream View smartphone headset released last November to be one of the ways that affordable VR tech gets into the hands of the mainstream. Apps for Daydream, and other smartphone headsets like the Samsung Gear VR, include Netflix, HBO and a growing list of games. More on how the entertainment industry is going to be one of the first industries impacted by VR below …

How Virtual Reality Will Impact Businesses

VR will eventually transform much of how we live and work online, although some sectors may embrace virtual reality sooner than others — and for different reasons.

Entertainment is the sector where we’re seeing the fastest movement in VR. Product catalogs are also being enhanced with virtual reality as we speak.

The travel industry may use virtual reality marketing to entice potential travelers to their destinations.

The education sector may use VR as a way to bring concepts to life in the classroom, or to allow people to complete their university degrees from afar.

Let’s look closer at how some industries are using VR …

Virtual Reality and the Entertainment Industry

Immersive movie and gaming experiences may be the gateway to getting a VR device into households. Right now, VR is finding the most use here.

Last month, Google VP of VR, Amit Shingh, shared some statistics:

Daydream users watch about 40 minutes of VR media per week.
Over 50% of all content consumption on Daydream is YouTube content.

As a result, expect to see premium VR series and film content (not necessarily paid) coming from YouTube this year.

Experiencing a concert in virtual reality may not be too far off. Experts predict that paying for a VR concert would be an easy win, and in the future, may be an important revenue stream for musicians and producers. It could also free musicians from renting expensive venues.

Companies like VRTIFY are popping up, too. VRTIFY transforms music into fully immersive experiences using a variety of technologies, including VR.

Virtual Reality and Product Catalogs

A close cousin to VR is augmented reality (AR). AR is the technology in which you look at a screen reflecting your current environment and see a virtual layer on top of it. IKEA’s ground-breaking 2014 furniture catalog is a prime example of AR assisted shopping.

If you’re selling products, you should know about Augment.com. This service lets retailers and manufacturers put their product catalogs into an augmented reality shopping experience, like IKEA’s.

Interior design and architectural design are seeing advantages of envisioning a room or building before it is composed. Seeing an interior or building design come to life before committing with cash has obvious appeal. There are a growing number of apps and services that let users design a room with floor plans, wall color and trim, furniture and decor, then pop their smartphone into a VR headset to see their interior design in virtual reality.

Virtual Reality and the Travel Industry

Some businesses in the travel sector are already taking advantage of VR marketing.

Marriott delivers virtual travel experiences via a “teleporter station” and an Oculus Rift headset, transporting people to the beaches of Hawaii and the chic lobby bars of their hotels.

Several travel companies are already using VR to create their own promotional videos:

“We see virtual reality as an innovation that will change the travel business,” says Marco Ryan, chief digital officer for Thomas Cook Group, a U.K.-based tour operator that began testing VR content last year to boost sales. “The closer you get to the destination, the more excited you are to have that experience” — i.e., buy that experience.

To take advantage of the compelling VR experience and close the gap between the lack of VR headset owners and the consumers, “some VR producers set up at trade shows, shopping malls, pop-up stores and even on the street where they can provide the headsets.”

Travel industry pioneer Thomas Cook Group, by the way, has seen VR-promoted New York travel revenue increase by 190 percent.

Virtual Reality and the Education Industry

There are already several niche companies out there that specialize in curriculum, content and teacher training around VR like Immersive VR Education.

In 2015, Google jumped on VR education and launched Expeditions, a way for teachers to take their students on virtual field trips around the world.

Virtual Reality, and the Future of Marketing and Advertising

No matter what industry you’re in, virtual reality marketing may become part of your mix in the not-so-distant future.

Whether it’s through the storytelling power of VR content and experiences, or advertising placements within a virtual reality world, start thinking now about how your brand might fit in.

Think with Google believes that the medium has the potential to make any message even more impactful saying VR is an “incredibly powerful tool to create empathy. When a viewer feels like they are there, they have a greater sense of the situation. Messages become more impactful.”

Given that Facebook owns Oculus VR, it’s likely that social media will be a big catalyst for the adoption of VR among the masses. Once there’s money and connections to be made there, its adoption will likely become more mainstream.

In my 2017 digital marketing predictions, I predicted new forms of behavior around virtual chat rooms this year. Social media platforms are innovating new means of online engagement instead of meeting people in person.

At at the Oculus Connect 3 conference last October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his vision for a social virtual reality chat room.

Why Being Virtual Will Be Virtually Mandatory

Virtual reality headsets are a solution waiting for a problem. The problem is what your target audience wants and needs. The technology is just a new way to give it to them.

The only thing standing in the way of VR right now is the adoption of this new technology. To move it to mass consumption will take a catalyst — catering to the desires of your consumers.

Once this mass adoption begins, it may already be too late to be an early adopter.

So, as you think about how to continually be where your customer has a need, consider exploring new technologies like virtual reality to evolve your brand’s storytelling, marketing and advertising strategies.

I want to know if you can imagine your brand in the VR space. Tell me about it in the comments below.

Virtual reality marketing is still in the future, but your cutting-edge digital strategy should be a work in progress. Partner with a digital marketing agency and stand out above your competition today and tomorrow. Give us a call or start talks today.

Guide to Leveraging Industry Experts to Craft High-Quality SEO Content

Guide to Leveraging Industry Experts to Craft High-Quality SEO Content was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

There’s good content. And, then there’s high-quality content, the stuff that rises in the search engine results pages, oozing those attractive and useful characteristics both consumers and search engines value.

In my experience as an SEO copywriter (going on 10 years now), I’ve learned that there are several SEO content writing tips that make your content more “valuable and useful” to your readers than your competitors’ sites.

A crucial yet very underused method? Expert information.

If your web copy isn’t performing, it might be because it lacks credible, expert information.

While it takes extra time and research, the voice of an expert has the power to lift good content to high-quality heights.

Think about it like this. Would you trust an essay, a research paper or a white paper without original research and real sources? Moreover, would you trust a paper that was plagiarized? Yet for some reason we expect consumers to simply accept digital content even when it’s copied from material on the web and presented without sources and citations. On top of that, we expect search engines to reward that type of content with rankings. It just doesn’t happen that way.

Regardless of your industry or topic, expert information brings credibility to a site. Credible content not only nourishes consumer appetites, but also meets Google’s bar for the amount of E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) on a web page, boosting your rankings. It happens this way.

So is your website content credible? Does it demonstrate a high level of expertise? If so, that’s great news. You can check out the rest of our SEO Copywriting Checklist for other ways you can improve your content. If not, it’s time to make some friends with experts.

How? I’m going to share with you my step-by-step process for building and maintaining healthy relationships with industry experts, a process I had the chance to perfect as a writer for a big-brand client in the wedding industry while working here at Bruce Clay, Inc. Although the project lasted a year, the friendships I made continue as most experts have shared an interest to stay in touch for future collaborations.

Use these SEO content writing tips to make relationships with real experts who will help you publish high-quality content, whether you’re writing SEO web content, articles or blogs.

I’ll walk you through:

How to Identify Industry Experts
How to Find Industry Experts
How to Reach out to Experts
Tips on Conducting Interviews
Tips on How to Maintain Relationships

How to Identify Industry Experts

What makes an industry expert?

Not to be confused with industry influencers, industry experts are people with the expert knowledge, experience, education, data or advice on the specific topics you’re writing about.

According to Google, the level of expertise required for a site varies depending on the topic and industry. In its Search Quality Rating Guidelines, Google gives the example that a medical site should have information with “appropriate medical expertise or accreditation,” yet suggests a site about the proper care of cats could easily be rated high-quality if it features expertise by everyday cat owners as opposed to trained veterinarians.

Ask yourself these basic yet important questions to help you identify the best expert for SEO copywriting:

What type of information do you need? (Studies, analyses, facts, testimonials, opinions?)
Who has first-hand knowledge of this information?
Who does your target audience want to hear from most?

For the purpose of SEO content writing, find an expert who is doing the work today (as opposed to a retiree or someone who just speaks or writes about the topic). These are doers and dream makers, the ones who can provide you with unique, never-before-seen quotes and advice.

It’s also important to talk to someone who has not only been interviewed before, but enjoys talking about what they do or know. It’s not enough to find a professional with the knowledge you need. You want an expert who can appeal to your target audience by simplifying complex concepts without industry jargon.

Next, competitor research will reveal the level of authority you want to go after. At the very least you want an expert at the same level or higher than the ones featured on competitor sites.

For me, this meant talking to wedding planners. On the topic of wedding etiquette, my first thought was to reach out to etiquette experts, such as the team at The Emily Post Institute. Yet, I went with wedding planners because I knew that they could provide me with all things etiquette, plus real-world tips on how to incorporate those rules into modern scenarios facing the couples who are their clients today.

How to Find Industry Experts

You know the title or level of expertise you need, so how do you find the experts?

Here, a few places you can begin your search:

Recent newspaper and magazine articles. If an expert is passionate about what they do and know, chances are they’ve been interviewed before. Begin your search in websites of major newspapers and magazines for the topics you’re writing about to discover notable experts.

If you’re writing about sleep apnea, for example, a recent article in the New York Times on the same subject reveals the name of Dr. Avidan, director of the sleep clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles, David Geffen School of Medicine, someone who just might know a thing or two about sleep apnea and can talk about it in a way that’s not so (queue yawn) boring.

For my project, I needed a wedding planner, but not any planner would do. I needed the best of the best, and that meant planners who produce events and weddings for the stars. I picked well known celebrity wedding planners who helped bring celebrity weddings to life within the last year or were recently named one of the top wedding planners by reputable publications such as the Knot, Vogue, or Martha Stewart Weddings.

University faculty and professors. This is a great resource for a wide range of topics required for informational websites. Many universities have professors and staff who regularly speak to journalists for interviews. Look for the institution’s media page to find a list of faculty by expertise. For example, UCLA has this handy Media Guide to UCLA Experts.

Popular bloggers. If you want to feature information or advice by everyday people with experience in the topic you’re writing about, find an active blogger who is immersed in the conversation. If you’re writing about how to potty train your toddler, for example, it might help to have quotes or advice from a mother who is dealing with this issue today, as opposed to a pediatrician who simply gives generic advice. An active and popular lifestyle blogger who writes about motherhood is also going to give you fun, easy-to-digest information that might better appeal to your target audience.

Dos and Dont’s

Do pick more experts than you need. If the project requires interviewing two experts, reach out to five or ten. You never know who will respond and it’s always a good idea to have backups in case someone flakes, gets sick or simply has to cancel last minute. Another reason to reach out to more experts than you will need is because not everyone is going to give you the best information, and you’ll have a few options to choose from.

Do create a spreadsheet. Keep a list of experts you want to interview. Include the proper spelling of their name, company name, and contact information, including email, phone number and website. Add a column for the date you reached out, the date they responded, if they agree to an interview, and if they agree to be interviewed regularly.

Don’t reach out to competitor resources. As tempting as it might be, it’s better to find your own experts and build relationships with people who are not contributing to your competitor websites.

How to Reach Out to Experts

It’s time to say hello. The way you reach out to busy industry experts matters, as does what and how much you say when you have their attention. You can use the telephone, but here’s why I prefer email along with the process that was most successful for me.

Send a brief but enticing email. Why email? When was the last time you picked up your office phone? It’s simply annoying to cold call someone and even more annoying to be the recipient of that call. Also, people don’t check their voicemails throughout the day, but they do check their emails several times a day. This means that an expert can read and reply on their own time, which makes it convenient for them, and you.

With one email, you can introduce yourself (your title and the company you work for), explain the reason for the interview (talk about the project, client, and benefits of being featured in the content), and let them know you’re reaching out to them specifically because they are an expert in their field. Include your deadline, and keep it open for a phone or email interview.

Personalize the email. You have time to personalize your emails and there is an important reason to do so: you’re making a real relationship. You want them to feel as though they are your top choice. A generic email without the recipient’s name is insulting and exhibits lazy behavior on your part, not a good start to a relationship.

Create a template. What can save you time is creating a template, but be careful to highlight the dynamic areas of the email so that you don’t use the wrong name, which is also very insulting.

Here’s an example of the template I used to contact a luxury wedding planner.

Dear [the expert’s name] and the team at [the business name],

[The client’s name] is building its resource library for brides.

We’re looking for wedding and events experts to provide background on wedding invitation wording and etiquette. Are you interested in being a named expert in our series? The name of [the expert’s name and business name] will be featured in the piece in front of researching brides.

If you’re interested, I would like to set up some time to talk. Both phone and email will work for the interview. My deadline is [a date], so please let me know as soon as convenient.

Sincerely,

Melanie Saxe

Content Writer

Bruce Clay, Inc.

https://www.bruceclay.com

1-805-517-1900 Ext: 1804

Tips on Conducting Interviews

These tips will help you conduct thorough interviews that will provide you with the unique, expert-level information you need to write quality content.

Here’s the prep work:

Research competitor content. Before I begin any SEO content optimization project, I want to know what my competitors are already writing about the topic or industry. Above, I mentioned competitor research is an important step to find the type of expert you need, but if you want to beat your competitors you will need to write content that’s more valuable and useful, which means you will have the basics covered and then some. While reading competitor content, you’ll find content gaps and weaknesses, which can be the areas you can focus and expand on to capture your target audience.

Research past interviews or online content featuring your expert. If your experts have been interviewed before, read every single interview as well as the content they’ve contributed to. This is because the expert might give you a similar quote, and you don’t want to run into duplicate content issues or repeat what’s already available online.

Write down your questions. Even if the conversation flows out of order, a written list will keep you on topic and ensure you get all the information you need at one time. It also shows that you did your homework. Ask the who, what, where, when, why, and how, and then dig deeper with questions that will give you the unique information your target audience needs and wants.

When it’s time for the interview:

Email questions ahead of time. Whether it’s in person, by phone or via email, the interview will go much smoother if the expert receives your questions ahead of time. In my experience, this extra step gives them time to think about the questions and produce better, more thoughtful answers. If you’re conducting an email interview, then send your questions along with a reminder of the due date. If you’ve scheduled a phone interview, remind them of the date and time of the interview and make sure you confirm time zone differences, and that have the right phone number.

Get personal. I love to open my interviews with a discussion on the expert’s recent contributions to the industry. There are many benefits to this approach, including possibly bonding over a common interest, breaking the ice with someone who’ve just met, and opening the door for the expert to freely chat about their passions and work, a technique that’s provided me with tons of unexpected information I can then incorporate into the content.

Confirm the name and title of the expert. Don’t assume the owner of the company is the CEO, even if the website says she is. Always confirm the expert’s title as well as any qualifiers. Some wedding planners preferred “celebrity wedding planner,” while others requested “luxury wedding planner,” “event designer,” etc.

Thank them for the interview. Whether you conducted a phone or email interview, send a follow-up email thanking them for the interview, with a sentence about how you will inform them once the piece goes live.

Tips on How to Maintain Relationships

So far so good. You’ve interviewed the right people, got some great information, and now it’s time to honor these relationships. Here are few tips to help you foster and keep these relationships.

Stay consistent with tone and formality. Remain formal, even if the expert breaks out into casual communication. I’ve had experts write back in fragments and without punctuation, yet I remain formal because my goal is to be respectful, consistent and earn their trust as a professional. At the end of the day, this relationship is a formal business relationship and you want to earn their trust by being reliable and consistent with your communication style.

Follow up. If you don’t hear back within a few days, go ahead and send out a second email to follow up. With a few experts, I sent out more than one follow up and it proved to be fruitful because my emails went into their spam folders and they were so happy when they found out I was still interested in an interview.

Make notes. Consider this as being a good listener. With every reply and conversation, update your spreadsheet with information that helps your relationship. Identify the experts who’ve agreed to be interviewed and those who would like to be interviewed regularly.

You also want to add any new or specific contact information. For instance, 75 percent of the experts I reach out to refer me to their assistants and request to be CCd by all the correspondence; I record that in my notes.

As time goes by, you will also get to know how reliable and prompt your experts are. Those who continue to miss deadlines can be dropped off the list. Those who respond immediately and seem super eager about helping can be relied upon for last-minute deadlines and special cases. I had one expert who would always fill in the gaps when others flaked.

Follow through. Once the piece is published or live on the web, email the link and thank them a second time. is also a great time to ask them for a second interview, if you need more information from them to clarify the first interview, or for a different project. Let them know if you plan to interview them again in the future and ask if they have any favorite topics or ideas they want to contribute; this makes them feel a part of the project. I kept this process going with 10 experts, and interviewed each expert every other month.

Follow them on social media. Following experts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook shows not only support, but also keeps you up-to-date on future projects that might benefit your content.

SEO Content Solutions and Takeaways

As an SEO copywriter, you never go into a project hoping to produce mediocre content. Yet even the best writers find it challenging to write that high-quality copy that satisfies both search engines and consumers. Why? Because high-quality content has many characteristics, and without a clear SEO content strategy, it’s easy to forget some of the ingredients that set copy apart from the competition.

Consider expert information as the solid research behind a good essay; by featuring original research and citing reliable sources, you can build trust with your readers and prove to be an authority on the subject.

Are you interested in learning more about SEO content optimization to set your copywriting apart? Bruce Clay’s SEOToolSet Training is an in-person workshop that will teach you the SEO best practices to boost your content’s search rankings. Sign up for the course, held each quarter in Los Angeles, and lock in a competitive advantage.

Are you closer to the Bay Area? Bruce presents an Advanced SEO Workshop at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West in San Jose on March 20. Learn how to help raise your rankings and visibility in search engines. Save 10% with our exclusive discount code: BRUCECLAYSMXW17.

Why an Insanely Fast Site Is Your 2017 Priority

Why an Insanely Fast Site Is Your 2017 Priority was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

The concept of an insanely fast site is something Google has been talking about for a long time.

Are you convinced that site speed is your top priority for optimizing user experience in 2017?

In this post, I’ll cover:

Why site speed matters.
How your mobile visitors fit into the equation.
The need for speed in a mobile-first index world.

Why Site Speed Matters

Throughout the years, Google has implemented a host of recommendations and tools to help website owners make their sites faster. These guidelines and tools support the core of our services as a mobile SEO agency.

After all, fast sites are good for the end user. And Google wants to feature in its results those websites that offer a good user experience.

No matter how you slice it, the message from Google is clear: faster is better.

In fact, in late 2016, Google rep John Mueller said to keep page load time under three seconds.

@vivek_seo There’s no limit per page. Make sure they load fast, for your users. I often check https://t.co/s55K8Lrdmo and aim for

— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) November 26, 2016

Back in 2010, Google said site speed would be a factor in its ranking algorithm, albeit a lightweight signal.

In its announcement, Google explained why site speed matters:

Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.

Notice that last sentence: “We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.”

If every website that shows up for a particular query has about the same average page load time (even if that happens to be on the slower side), your website will be considered normal.

However, if your website’s page load times are much slower than the average, you’re at a disadvantage.

Former Googler Matt Cutts mentioned back in 2013 that when all other things are equal, page speed can factor into rankings.

For example, if I do a search and all the relevant web pages load are between 1.5 and 2.5 seconds, Google isn’t going to use site speed as a factor for ranking.

But, if there’s a web page that takes 12 seconds to load, it’d probably see a demotion in rankings. You have to be average compared to the performance of every other web page for that query.

So the question is actually: Is faster an advantage or is slower a disadvantage? I think the latter.

Google’s no stranger to giving mixed signals, though. Remember that tweet from John Mueller? Well, here’s another tweet from Google’s Gary Illyes that mentions not to worry “too much” about page load time:

@seefleep I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Make it as fast as you reasonably can.

— Gary Illyes ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ (@methode) April 21, 2016

The bottom line is that you should care if you have very slow page load times.

And, you should try to meet Google’s recommendations if you can, making sure pages load within just a few seconds.

How Mobile Browsing Matters to Site Speed

Now let’s talk about how site speed manifests in various scenarios.

Mueller recommended a three-second ceiling for HTTP page load speed. But when it comes to mobile, Google’s official stance here is to have above-the-fold content render in one second or less, so that the user can “begin interacting with the page as soon as possible.”

And, in the coming months, it’s possible this will factor into mobile rankings in Google’s mobile-first index.

This is significant for site speed optimization because with the mobile-first index, Google bases its rankings on the mobile version of your website.

You can test the load times of your pages with Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. Here, Google explains the need for above-fold-content that is immediately usable:

PageSpeed Insights measures how the page can improve its performance on:

time to above-the-fold load: Elapsed time from the moment a user requests a new page and to the moment the above-the-fold content is rendered by the browser.
time to full page load: Elapsed time from the moment a user requests a new page to the moment the page is fully rendered by the browser.

Here’s an example of the types of issues that can improve load times as reported by the PageSpeed Insights test:

Click to enlarge.

One of the things we’ve discovered is that the results of a PageSpeed Insights test changes over time, and lately it has been very much biased by image load times.

Apparently, a lot of website publishers have gotten their overall page load time to be fast, but their images do not load quickly.

In order to make mobile page load time faster, image compression will be an area of focus. Determining whether an image is even needed may be one of the next things you have to decide in prioritizing efforts of your mobile SEO strategy.

In new research published by Google, the key recommendation is to keep the average request count (the number of individual pieces of content needed to display the entire page) below 50.

The Need for Speed in the Mobile-First Index

It’s worth noting how the practice of reducing content for mobile speed optimization may impact your rankings in this new mobile-first index world.

What is currently being served as your mobile site is what Google would consider for indexing and ranking in its mobile-first index. If the mobile version of your site only displays a portion of all available content, then Google will only consider that part in its ranking calculations (and not any additional resources available in the desktop version of a site).

If a site has a responsive design configuration, as Google recommends, everything on both the desktop version and the mobile version should be accounted for by Google, right?

Not exactly. In responsive design, you tell the site not to display blocks of text or certain images in a mobile device.

Traditionally, Google would index the desktop version of your site. Whatever the desktop image was, that’s what Google would index and use to rank. Whatever the desktop content was, that’s what Google would index and use to rank.

Then, when a person loaded that page on a mobile device, at that point, you could control what was displayed. However, the index was based on the full desktop version of the content. Responsive design just decided what was displayed or not for a mobile or tablet device.

Now Google is moving to a mobile-first index. So if the mobile version of your site is not displaying certain content or images, Google will no longer consider it in ranking and indexing.

For example, on your desktop site in your footer, you might have 50 links. But in the mobile version, you don’t want to clutter it up so you only display 10. When Googlebot crawls your page, it’s not going to count 50 links, it’ll only consider the 10.

As another example, consider the way people have approached mobile performance in the past — by cutting parts off of their page, like images or content. If that’s your approach for the mobile experience, you need to understand you’re cutting out content that may be helping you rank.

So, what do I recommend?

You do want to create a fast experience when mobile users come to the site — that’s still important. But you have to balance the content you need to rank with the mobile experience.

Design your website around the mobile experience to start.

Only display content that is worthy of being displayed on a mobile device, even on your desktop pages. It may require you to have more web pages with less content, because that 2,000-word page may not be mobile friendly.

And when it comes to speed, website publishers may cut out images because loading a particular image on a mobile device takes too long. These common activities geared towards increasing your page load times may actually cause the content to no longer be indexed in a mobile-first world.

Weighing the Option of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)

This brings us to Google’s latest project geared towards speed: AMP.

We cover AMP in detail in our guide here.

AMP is an open-source project that effectively helps website publishers create faster mobile experiences via specific configurations that:

Pre-render website content while limiting the use of JavaScript that publisher sites can use.
Caches content so Google doesn’t have to fetch page content from the publisher’s server.

Google has said AMP won’t impact rankings, but with all the signs that faster is better in mobile, I wouldn’t rule out AMP’s ability to load pages faster as a way they might inherently rank better.

Keep in mind that AMP is not an easy thing to implement on a website, and the specifications for AMP are reportedly changing often. As the program expands into more and more potential types of websites (remember, it started out with just news sites and expanded from there), Google is constantly having to make compromises.

And then, of course, there is a cost to develop in AMP. You are going to need to actually change your site to support it. There are also ongoing costs as AMP specs change, because you need to update pages. Then there’s the risk that Google will abandon AMP or come up with a different system such as making your website behave more like a mobile application.

Choose your AMP pages wisely.

Beating Your Competition to the Finish Line

If you want to compete online in 2017, your website has to be fast.

The message from Google is that speed counts. But there are many ways to achieve speed.

This requires you to weigh the costs and benefits of mobile configurations, including responsive, AMP and more.

All the while, keeping in mind that changes you make to your mobile site can and will impact your rankings in a mobile-first world.

Let us help you drive and track traffic to your website with a mobile SEO strategy. BCI’s services are tailor-made to match your business goals and audience. Let’s talk more about growing revenue through mobile-friendly SEO.

7 Search Marketing Trends for 2017 from Bruce Clay’s SEO Master Class in India

7 Search Marketing Trends for 2017 from Bruce Clay’s SEO Master Class in India was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Quote of the day: “Don’t be surprised by the results you don’t get for the work you don’t do.”

Click the image to download this post by Bruce Clay India Managing Director Siddharth Lal.

Feb. 6, 2017, was a bright and buzzing day at the iconic Le Meridien Hotel in Gurgaon, India’s Millennium City. Seventy-five digital marketers (including a few SEO fanatics) came from all parts of India to attend SEO author and industry thought-leader Bruce Clay’s one-day SEO master class.

Indian brands are finally waking up to the long-term benefits of a solid SEO strategy. With every passing year, Bruce Clay India continues to run bigger classes.

The SEO master class of 2017 at Le Meridien Hotel, Gurgaon

SEO companies in India have mushroomed up all over the place. But ethical, knowledge-based SEO – offering an authoritative glimpse into the mind of a search engine and how it works – remains elusive.

Enter Bruce Clay, a veteran SEO since before the launch of Google.

Below are the key takeaways from the high-powered master class of tips, tricks, best practices and methodologies.

Download 7 key takeaways from Bruce Clay’s SEO training in India, 2017

1. Mobile-First Indexing

2017 will be the year of mobile-first because that’s where the market is headed. Google is planning to use the mobile (rather than desktop) version of a website in their primary index used to rank results.

If the mobile version of your website isn’t displaying all the content that you normally display on your desktop site, be aware that your website will run into problems.

Did you know that Google has only one index for both mobile and desktop sites — despite reports to the contrary?

2. Voice Search

With the exponential rise in the use of mobile devices and AI-based digital assistants like Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana, voice search is poised to become the next frontier for digital marketers. comScore predicts that by 2020 more than half of all searches will come from voice search.

Voice search is going to have a huge impact on the future of SEO. Start thinking of strategies that target voice searchers – including natural language keyword phrases people will most likely be using when searching for the types of products or services you sell.

The ability to ask questions of an SEO expert is one of the unique advantages of the classroom.

3. Theme

It’s no secret that search engines award top rankings to the website that they see as most relevant to the theme or subject of a user query. The primary goal of SEO is to make a website such that it’s about themes that best match certain keywords – and not just a collection of targeted keyword phrases containing unrelated information without a central theme.

If you have a single page on a theme compared to 10 pages of useful information on that same theme by your competitors, chances are that your competitor’s website will answer a user’s query more satisfactorily. Thus Google will reward them with rankings. The takeaway for a digital marketer is to expand the depth and breadth of content on your themes.

4. Siloed Site Architecture

Siloing refers to grouping keyword-based theme pages together – either structurally or via linking – much like the chapters of a book. It has become one of the most significant architectural concepts in digital marketing. It enables you to construct a website that aligns with the way users search. When done right, it positions you as a subject matter expert in the eyes of search engines.

Strategically architecting your website by ensuring your most important themes get the highest visibility allows you to deliver higher rankings for major keywords that matter. There are two ways to silo a website, physical siloing (directory structure) and virtual siloing (internal linking). Siloing isn’t a new concept to SEO but it is a critical one that can drive meaningful results immediately.

5. RankBrain – A Top Search Ranking Factor

RankBrain helps provide more relevant and helpful results to user search queries using artificial intelligence (AI). Pulling up the most appropriate results is what keeps Google in business – and RankBrain helps the search engine do just that.

Google has publicly acknowledged that RankBrain is among the engine’s top-three ranking factors, alongside content and links. With that kind of weight, marketers must make strategic adjustments along the lines of higher quality content.

As RankBrain continues to get better, content quality will be in increasingly high demand. RankBrain’s strength is in serving results for long-tail queries. Stop words are normally dropped from queries but RankBrain understands the conversational manner of search and give results accordingly.

Download 7 Key Takeaways for SEO in India in 2017

6. Local Search

Claiming your business online by listing it in local search directories and listing services – such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yellow Pages – shows that you exist, and builds trust and visibility for your brand. So identify high-quality local and vertical directories, and claim your presence!

Also ensure your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) is identical across all listings and directories. It’s one of the most important local search ranking factors, so you won’t want to get this one wrong. For example, each local directory that accepts a listing might have a different requirement in terms of the “name” field (think character length), and you may end up entering different business names. Do not fall into this trap, instead ensure your company name is the exact same every time.

Make sure you optimize your landing pages for local search by following SEO best practices, such as listing your business address, phone number, business hours and services offered on your home page, with a map and directions to your business, as well as prominent landmarks in your area.

Do not forget to add schema markup for local business and be sure it matches your NAP details.

Shhh … SEO class in progress!

7. Frequently Asked SEO Questions Answered

One of the benefits you can only get from an in-person, classroom style SEO workshop is the ability to ask questions and get answers from an unmatched expert like Bruce. Here are some of the highlights gleaned from attendees asking questions.

Q: Does domain age matter?

A: We believe if a domain is above six years of age, it can add some extra authority to your website. A legacy domain (pre-Google) might also deliver some additional value.

Q: What’s more important – the quality of a blog post or the quantity?

A: The quality of the blog post matters the most. One of the measures of quality is the number of engagements it gets – signs of popularity such as comments, social media shares and backlinks.

Q: What’s the difference between a newsletter and a blog post?

A: A blog is a theme-focused series of writings and media published to a website. A newsletter is a collection of information, such as upcoming events and organization updates, commonly distributed to subscribers by email.

Note: BCI recently stopped publishing its newsletter in favour of weekly blog posts.

Q: How many hyphens can a domain name have before it is considered spam?

A: We believe more than two hyphens in a domain name will raise a red flag.

At the end of the day, minds were racing with all the strategies that could be implemented to improve rankings. Every year we collect inspiring testimonials about the value of the SEO master class in India and the transfer of advanced SEO concepts. Here are some comments that we received about this year’s master class:

“It’s the most comprehensive SEO course I have attended.”

– Gaurav Gaba, CEO Amaugerwatch.com

“Insights into the ranking algorithm and details of each ranking factor (made for) a great course. I believe it will be very beneficial once I will start implementing the recommendations from this course.”

– Nikhil Jogimahanti, Manager, Oyo Rooms

Download 7 Key Takeaways for SEO in India in 2017

If you are looking for a strategic partner in India to execute top-tier SEO solutions for your organization, please contact us to talk about how we can help you.

4 Reasons Your Retail Brand Needs to Be on Instagram Right Now

4 Reasons Your Retail Brand Needs to Be on Instagram Right Now was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

I predict that this is going to be the year that shopping on Instagram goes gangbusters. In my 2017 digital marketing predictions I wrote:

Shopping on Instagram: Instagram storefronts and affiliate programs take hold. The online fashion industry is many billions of dollars, and visuals rule. Look for massive growth in the area of Instagram shopping.

Instagram is not just a place millennials go to post funny cat pics. There’s real money changing hands, influenced by the platform.

Marketers are taking note, recognizing Instagram as a potential direct response channel — especially with all the new ways shopping is getting easier on the platform.

So are you ready to add shoppable Instagram to your retail marketing mix? Read on to find out:

If your target demographic is on Instagram
How people are shopping on Instagram today
What industries are embracing the social platform — and seeing ROI

Reason No. 1: Your Customer Is (Probably) Shopping on Instagram

Thirty-two percent of all online adults use Instagram. Here’s the demographic breakdown:

To a greater extent than the other social platforms measured in this survey, Instagram use is especially high among younger adults. Roughly six-in-ten online adults ages 18-29 (59%) use Instagram, nearly double the share among 30- to 49-year-olds (33%) and more than seven times the share among those 65 and older (8%). And as was the case in previous Pew Research Center surveys of social media use, female internet users are more likely to use Instagram than men (38% vs. 26%).

Over a third of Instagram users have purchased a product online from their mobile device, making them 70% more likely to do so than non-users.

Half of Instagram users use social media for product research.

On Instagram, half of users follow brands, making it the social platform where users are most likely to do so.

Click to enlarge.

Plus, Instagram users are most likely to make a purchase influenced by content seen on the platform. A third of Instagram users bought an item of clothing they saw on the social network.

Instagram suggests that fashion brands are most likely to see direct response marketing success due to the segment’s high engagement level. Fashion fans check the Instagram news feed 15 times a day, post three times as much as the average user, and have 200+% more followers than the average user.

“Instagram is now the ‘look book’ for brands people love and the shop window for small businesses on mobile,” said James Quarles, Instagram’s VP of monetization.

Reason No. 2: Instagram Is Testing a Native Shopping Feature

In November 2016, Instagram announced it was testing a new shopping feature on the platform.

This new functionality allows Instagram to capture the entire consumer journey, from search to purchase — well, almost; the purchase still happens on the business’ website.

… 20 US-based retail brands including Kate Spade, JackThreads and Warby Parker will share posts that have more depth, making it easier for Instagrammers to review, learn about and consider the items that interest them. Each post will have a tap to view icon at the bottom left of a photo. When tapped, a tag will appear on various products in the post—showcasing up to five products and their prices. Once a tag is selected a new detailed view of the product will open. This functionality will bring important product information to the consumer earlier in the journey, all without having to leave the Instagram app to search. Then, if the consumer taps the Shop Now link from the product details view, they’ll go directly to that product on the business’ website, making it easier for them to buy the product they want.

Here’s an example of this in action:

Kate Spade from Instagram for Business on Vimeo.

According to Instagram’s VP of monetization, James Quarles, in an interview with TechCrunch, Instagram is not going to take a cut of the proceeds when purchases are made, and instead plans to monetize the feature as an ad type on the Instagram advertising platform.

While native shoppable photos are not yet available to everyone, there are third-party tools that retailers are using right now to allow followers to shop their Instagram feeds.

TakeScoutsee, for example. This app allows anyone to create a storefront linked to their Instagram account to “continue sharing what you love on Instagram and choose what you want to make shoppable.” (Full disclosure, Scoutsee is a client of Bruce Clay, Inc.)

Reason No. 3: Certain Industries Are Made for Instagram

In the middle of the media frenzy of New York Fashion Week, Instagram emerged as a breakout star.

Fashion and beauty brands are using Instagram as part of their strategic marketing efforts today.

Fitness brands are, too.

CMOs in these sectors are prioritizing Instagram this year. In the “,” CMO Jen Lavelle of fashion brand Mizzen+Main had this to say:

“Our biggest MarTech-related need or wish for 2017 is to gain a shopable Instagram … It creates an amazing customer experience, and it’s something we hope to be able to offer in the near future. It’s an awesome way to let your customers buy something straight from Instagram without navigating away from the native application. Any time you can cater to your audience and make the mobile-online shopping experience an easy one is a win.”

Reason No. 4: Because You Can’t Afford Not To

The final reason may be obvious: Be where your audience is or slowly fade away.

In his book, “Engage! The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate and Measure Success,” Brian Solis reiterates the importance of your brand being on social media today:

New Media is simply a matter of digital Darwinism that affects any and all forms of marketing service. In a world of democratized influence, businesses must endure a perpetual survival of the fittest. Engage or die.

If you can become an Instagram influencer or collaborate with an influencer, imagine the possibilities of your brand’s reach and ROI.

Want to sell to Millennials, Gen X and even some Baby Boomers? Get on Instagram. Got a fashion, beauty or fitness product? You should be there. In fact, any retailer should consider Instagram in 2017.

Instagram is part of the new media revolution, and now more than ever, it’s allowing brands to monetize their efforts. If you don’t, your competition will.

So What Are You Waiting For?

With new features and apps that are making Instagram a more shoppable social platform, and certain multi-billion-dollar industries recognizing its purchasing power, we fully expect massive growth in the area of Instagram adoption and revenue.

Is your retail brand on Instagram? I want to know what challenges you’re facing. Let me know in the comments below.

Let us help you drive and track traffic to your website with integrated search and social media marketing solutions. Our strategies are tailor-made to match your business goals and audience.

Let’s talk about your 2017 ecommerce digital marketing strategy.

Patent Reveals Insight into How Google Generates Answer Boxes via Content Scores

Patent Reveals Insight into How Google Generates Answer Boxes via Content Scores was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Optimizing a page in hopes of capturing an answer box is a trending SEO specialty. A newly filed patent suggests insights into how Google approaches answer boxes. (Thanks to Google patent expert Bill Slawski for surfacing the document.)

The U.S. patent application filed by Google on Jan. 12 gives search marketers a look into the search engine’s plans for answer boxes. The patent application titled “Generating Elements of Answer-Seeking Queries and Elements of Answers” covers a lot of technical ground. For digital marketers engaged in SEO for answer boxes, two key insights and one question emerge:

Content will receive a score, and the content with the highest score earns the answer box.
Search queries will not need to use question words to generate an answer box.
Could answer boxes be comprised from multiple sources?

Read on to discover more about each of these coming developments.

What is an answer box? Answer boxes are direct answers to queries that appear above the search results. Answer boxes are displayed for queries that Google algorithmically determines are “answer-seeking.” The content inside an answer box is pulled from one of the top ten results on a  search engine results page (SERP) and appears in a light grey box at the top of the SERP. Why does this matter? “Ranking zero” with an answer box can drive more traffic to your site than a No. 1 ranking.

Here’s how Google describes the process of displaying an answer box, straight from the patent: “When the search system receives a query having elements that are characteristic of an answer-seeking query, the search system can identify a corresponding answer that has characteristic elements of an answer to an answer-seeking query. The search system can then generate a presentation that prominently displays an answer to the answer-seeking query.”

Answer boxes are sometimes referred to as featured snippets, direct answers, and zero rankings, among other terms.

Answer Box Scores

The patent outlines the process of generating the answer box, and includes this step:

“(Compute) a respective score for each of one or more passages of text occurring in each document identified by the search results, wherein the score for each passage of text is based on how many of the one or more answer types match the passage of text.”

Earlier in the patent, an answer type was defined as “a group of answer elements that collectively represent the characteristics of a proper answer to an answer-seeking query.”

What does this mean for digital marketers optimizing content for answer boxes? The patent begs the question: does content with more answer types win the answer box?

For example, if Page A has a chart, two respective text paragraphs, an image and a bullet list that all qualify as answer elements, does that page receive a higher score than Page B that has text paragraphs alone? Even if the text of Page B have higher scores than the text paragraphs in Page A?

In other words, does a page with more answer types fare better than a page with equal or greater relevance of content and a single answer type? Based on the patent alone, this seems to be a logical conclusion.

When it comes to optimizing for answer boxes, then, the new content publishing process involves production of multiple answer types to answer the targeted question.

The patent goes on to state that all scores must meet a threshold to be considered for inclusion in an answer box, indicating that even if your content is the best of the possible answer boxes, it still must reach a certain level of quality to be considered.

Search Queries Will Be Identified as Answer-Seeking without Use of Question Words

No need for the searcher to include “who,” “what,” “when,” “were,” “how” or “why” in a query to trigger an answer box. Google wants to identify queries as “answer-seeking” regardless of inclusion of question words. Here’s what Google had to say, straight from the patent (emphasis ours):

“A search system may consider a query to be an answer-seeking query because its terms match a predetermined question type. However, the query need not be expressed in the form of a question, and the query need not include a question word, e.g., ‘how,’ ‘why,’ etc.’”

Google provides this example of how it should work:

Figure 1 from Google patent application “Generating Elements of Answer-Seeking Queries and Elements of Answers.” This figure shows how queries need not include question words to be classified as “answer-seeking.” As the patent states, “In this example, the search system provides the answer box in response to the query even though the query is not phrased as a question and even though the query does not include a question word.”

Google also notes: “In this example the answer box is identified as a good answer to the query even though the answer does not include the term ‘cooking,’ which occurred in the query and even though the answer does not occur in a document referenced by a highest-ranked search result. Rather, the answer in the answer box is identified as a good answer because the search system has determined that the question type matching the query is often associated with an answer type that matches text of the document referenced by the search result.”

That’s another key insight: Your content does not have to rank No. 1 to earn the answer box. That’s something answer box researchers already knew, but it’s always good to have statements directly from Google that support the current understanding how the search engine is working.

While you do not have to rank No. 1, you do need to rank in the top ten results. Our own research at Bruce Clay, Inc., as well as research by other SEO agencies, points to the fact that you must be in the top ten if you want a chance to rank zero.

Could Answer Boxes Be Comprised from Multiple Sources?

The patent explains that after “determining that the one or more passages of text have respective scores that satisfy a threshold” the search engine will select “one or more passages of text having respective scores that satisfy the threshold for inclusion in the presentation.”

Let’s say Page A has the highest scoring paragraph for a query. Page B has the highest scoring image that answers that same query. Page C has the highest scoring table, and Page D has the highest scoring video. Is there any reason that, in the future, answer boxes could be comprised from multiple web pages? In reading the patent, we don’t see any reason why not; Google’s statement that “one or more passages of text” will be included does not describe those passages as being on the same page.

What Next Steps Should SEOs Take When Optimizing for Answer Boxes?

Given that the document is a patent application, we can’t take the statements in it to be fact. There is a good chance, of course, that answer box scores will become a reality. In fact, they could already be a reality or in beta at this moment. This patent application, nonetheless, provides valuable insight into how Google is thinking about answer boxes and what answer boxes might look like in the future.

As digital marketers, we always seek to stay several steps ahead — anticipating the coming algorithm and search feature changes so that we’re prepared when they happen. Patent applications take us behind the Google curtain and can help us understand what’s down the pike.

Want more ways to stay ahead of the search curve? If you’re obsessed with winning at web traffic, you don’t want to miss Bruce Clay’s Advanced SEO Workshop at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West in San Jose on March 20.

This full day of master SEO training will equip you with cutting-edge SEO techniques. Bruce will tackle answer boxes, RankBrain, voice search, AMP and more. Learn how to help raise your rankings and visibility in search engines. Save 10% with our exclusive discount code: BRUCECLAYSMXW17.

How to Improve Your Social Media Strategy for 2017

How to Improve Your Social Media Strategy for 2017 was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

If you’re a marketing professional, you can’t ignore the power of social media. When used correctly, it’s an important tool to increase web traffic, brand reputation and visibility online. But how can you be sure you’re using social media correctly? How can you get more out of your social media efforts?

The first question to ask yourself is what role does social media currently play in your marketing program?

Customer service
Lead generation
Sales
Data gathering
Ad targeting
All of the above

If you answered “All of the above” then you’re an organization with digital marketing maturity — you’ve run out of low-hanging fruit. So what are you planning to add to your social marketing strategy in 2017 to be smarter, stronger and faster?

And how will you strategically integrate your social media strategy into all the other components of your marketing mix? After all, social media is just one part of an overall marketing strategy. Your marketing mix likely includes everything from SEO to paid media, social, mobile, content and more.

So, here’s your 2017 social media power play. This year, make it a priority to integrate your digital marketing efforts. You can make gains by applying what you learn from search marketing to your social media efforts and vice versa.

2017 continues to be a year of integrated digital marketing programs. Social media, paid search, display, SEO, content, PR, email — they’re all levers of a big-picture marketing machine.

In this article I will:

Describe the effects of social media on search engine optimization — two marketing channels with a historically fuzzy relationship.
Share valuable tips on how to be where your social audience is.
Offer 5 ways to integrate data from social media marketing into other marketing channels like SEO and PPC.
Share statistics of the impact of cross-channel marketing when organizations embrace integration.

The Relationship between Social Media and SEO

First, let’s tackle the conversation about how social media and SEO work together. Many misconceptions exist regarding the effects of social media on organic search rankings.

For years, people have been trying to figure out if, and how, social signals impact search rankings.

Back in 2014, former Googler Matt Cutts said social signals were not part of the ranking algorithm. Again in 2016,

Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed it.

Meanwhile Bing has stated that it uses social signals as ranking factors. From the Bing Webmaster Guidelines help files we read:

“Social media plays a role in today’s effort to rank well in search results. The most obvious part it plays is via influence. If you are influential socially, this leads to your followers sharing your information widely, which in turn results in Bing seeing these positive signals. These positive signals can have an impact on how you rank organically in the long run.”

In addition to being a factor in ranking algorithms, we know other ways that social media marketing can impact organic search.

Social media profiles and content can show up in organic search results. This gives you more real estate in the search results. Take Twitter, for example. In 2015, Twitter gave Google access to its firehose, which allows Google to index tweets so they show up in the organic search results. (Caveat: even with this access, one study showed that Google doesn’t index every tweet, but only those it deems worthy.)


Social media mentions and activity can be a catalyst for organic search queries. This is about being top of mind, and growing brand visibility. Plain and simple: social media stimulates interest. A simple tweet or Facebook update posted by a brand, or someone mentioning a brand, can later cause a person to search for that brand and its products, services or target keywords on Google. And social mentions are important in helping search engines determine when people have interest in what your site is about or what your company is about. Social updates may not generate valuable links to your site, but they absolutely signal to the search engines that people are talking about your brand. We call this “buzz.”

And here’s something to ponder: it’s no secret that Google Analytics uses aggregated data across industries from companies that opt in to help you benchmark.

We can imagine a world in which Google could use the social referral data to see how much traffic is coming to a particular website from social, and make inferences about that brand.

I’m not saying Google is doing this or even has an interest in it, but the data is there for the taking, should they ever want it.

How to Be Where Your Social Audience Is

OK, now that we’re clear on how social media can impact organic search, let’s talk about evolving your social media strategy.

Much of that is going to depend on being where your audience is, and not trying to be everywhere at once — or be where you think you should just because your competition is there.

For example:

If you’re a B2B, you likely have a captive audience on LinkedIn.
If you sell a product, Facebook might be your platform.
In fashion? Check out Instagram as a social community to put your efforts into.
If your target audience is millennials, Snapchat may be where you want to go.
If you’re targeting women, Pinterest is worth exploring.

If you’re not sure where to start, leverage the research of others. Nielsen and Pew Research Center have a fair amount of data on social media platforms and who uses them for what.

What if you sell toilet plungers or some other obscure product or service? Well, social media isn’t for everyone.

You don’t have to be on social sites to fulfill some digital marketing checklist. Go where your audience is. And if that’s a “Toilet Plungers of America” tradeshow and not Facebook, that’s perfectly OK.

Once you’ve refined your social media targets, test, test and re-test.

Test your presence on your chosen platforms on both the paid and organic side of things. Paid social advertising is usually going to let you see results faster (meaning, if a campaign’s messaging is working or not) and target better.

And know that every social platform has its own algorithms for surfacing content, like Facebook , Instagram and so forth.

Even Google has its own method for how it indexes tweets in its search results, so just like SEO, you want to get familiar with those social algorithms in the places you want your brand to be.

5 Ways to Integrate Social Media Data with Other Marketing Channels

We know that marketing efforts do not exist in a silo. Using data across your marketing channels will help create a more cohesive experience for your target audience.

Here are five ways to use social media data for your marketing efforts:

1. Discover web content ideas from customer service activity on social media. Knowing the real-world challenges your target audience is dealing with can help you create content that answers their needs.

2. Find web content ideas in social communities, comments and most engaged posts. What is your target market talking about in your various social media platforms? Use this knowledge to help inform your content strategy for your website, on your key landing pages and in your blog.

3. Get remarketing audiences from the website’s cookied users and similar audiences from the email team’s lists. You can use this data to do some retargeting advertising of the people who have already expressed interest in your brand, products or services, or who may be very interested in what you have to offer.

4. Use social media advertising results to inform search advertising efforts, and vice versa. Use best performing messaging in social media ads as test creative for search ads.

5. Derive link magnet ideas from trending topics on social media. The beauty of social media is that it allows brands to be a part of the real-time conversation. Find out what’s trending, and think about the content you can create right away to attract users to your site.

Success Stories of Marketers Embracing Social Media Integration

More than 5,000 marketers weighed in on the benefits of social media to their businesses in the 2016 “Social Media Marketing Industry Report” by Social Media Examiner.

The top two benefits cited included increasing exposure and traffic.

In fact, improved search engine rankings was a prevalent concept. From the report:

From the “2016 Social Media Marketing Industry Report”

Improved search engine rankings were most prevalent among those who’ve been using social media for 1 year or longer, with 54%+ reporting a rise. At least 59% of those investing a minimum of 6 hours per week in social media marketing saw improvements in search engine rankings.

What type of social media involvement does it take on a daily basis to see an impact on web traffic? According to the report, it’s minimal:

A significant 79%+ of participants found that increased traffic occurred with as little as 6 hours per week invested in social media marketing. And those who’ve used social media for 1 year or more reported substantially better results (73%+ reported benefits), compared with those with less experience.”

Your Social Media Strategy Starts Here

Social media (and digital marketing in general) is a bit like fishing. And to catch fish, there are two things you must do: 1) Use the right bait and 2) Fish where the fish are.

And since social media is just one part of an overall marketing strategy, be sure to integrate social media efforts into other marketing channels in ways that make sense for you.

Evolving your social media strategy this year is really about understanding how much social plays into reaching your audience and into the other facets of your digital marketing strategy.

Once you’ve figured that out, you can determine how much effort needs to go into which social media activities in order to see a return.

I want to know your biggest challenges with social media marketing in 2017. Tell me in the comments below.

Let us help you drive and track traffic to your website with integrated search and social media marketing solutions. Our strategies are tailor-made to match your business goals and audience. Let’s talk about your 2017 digital marketing goals.

How to Hire an SEO – in Google’s Words

How to Hire an SEO – in Google’s Words was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

As a digital marketing agency, we know a lot about the importance of SEO consulting. But it’s hard for us to tell you how to hire an SEO without sounding self-serving.

But when a search engine like Google gives that kind of advice? That’s a more unbiased source you can really listen to and learn from.

As it happens, there’s a new video on Google Webmaster Help’s YouTube channel called “How to hire an SEO,” and we think it’s excellent. So we’re putting it up on our blog to help it spread far and wide.

If you’re shopping for an SEO consultant, or even if you ARE one, this 11-minute video is a must-see.

“SEO is not black magic.”

Maile Ohye, a developer programs tech lead with Google, opens by myth-busting some ideas about search engine optimization — it’s not magic and it doesn’t work overnight.

If someone is promising you instant rankings as if by magic, look elsewhere! It’s critical to avoid a “bad” SEO — someone who produces no results or, worse, implements shady practices on your website that hurt your visibility in search.

For long-term success, there are no quick fixes that will immediately rocket your site to rank No. 1. A good SEO helps improve the site itself so it can put its best foot forward and rank appropriately.

An SEO’s potential is only as high as the quality of your business or website. –Maile Ohye

I’d like to have that engraved for our lobby.

“SEO looks to improve the entire searcher experience.”

The scope of optimizing a website — the SEO’s purview — is broad. It requires looking at the entire journey a searcher may take, from seeing and clicking your search result, to arriving at your website and potentially converting.

Accordingly, an SEO looks at straightforward improvements like writing descriptive tags all the way to complex issues such as implementing language tags for an international site. Along with increasing the organic traffic to the site, the SEO has to ensure that your site provides a good, helpful experience for visitors no matter what device they’re using.

How long will it take to see results from SEO?

Four months to a year is a realistic estimate of how long it takes to reap results. Since many prospective clients expect to see results much faster, we’re so glad Google set the record straight.

With our own SEO services clients, we first lay the groundwork — analyzing the site, researching competitors, compiling an assessment and making initial recommendations. Then the timeline greatly depends on the client’s ability to implement. We work with the client’s in-house SEO or technical staff to help move the project along as we further refine and expand our recommendations.

Certain fixes can produce nearly instant results. For instance, if something is truly broken on the site, such as a robots.txt file that’s blocking the search engines, a correction can make an impact. However, in most cases, four months to a year sounds about right.

Get corroboration for recommendations.

Ohye’s “strongest advice” is to request that SEOs support their recommendations with a documented statement from Google. Ask to see an article, video or Googler response that includes the issue that needs to be improved and the approach being prescribed.

Oh, and never buy links for ranking purposes. Ever.

If your site has some “technical debt” (not being mobile friendly, or having an antiquated CMS, for example), you may need to invest in improving your infrastructure as part of your SEO project. If you’re a local business owner, you can get started bringing your local business online using this Google video series: https://goo.gl/I4giIX

In a majority of cases, doing what’s good for SEO is also doing what’s good for your online customers. –Maile Ohye

Steps in the SEO Hiring Process

Here’s what Google outlines as the “General SEO hiring process”:

Step 1: Conduct a two-way interview

We can’t agree more that you want to find a consultant who’s sincerely interested in you, your business, your customers and your goals. After all, you want someone who feels like an extension of your team.

Ohye advises that if the person doesn’t show interest by asking exploratory questions (check the video for a suggested list), then don’t do business with them.

Step 2: Check references

Talk to past clients about their experience. Ask them how effectively the SEO worked with their various staff and vendors, and what kind of guidance he or she provided.

You want to hire someone who will help educate you, not just implement short-term solutions.

A good SEO should be someone you can work with, learn from, experiment with, and who genuinely cares about you and your business. –Maile Ohye

Step 3. Request an audit

For smaller businesses, Ohye suggests asking for “a prioritized list of what they think should be improved for SEO.”

For larger businesses, she suggests doing this with multiple SEO consulting candidates. Then, compare their audits. Here’s the audit structure Google recommends:

You’ll need to give the SEO restricted-view access to your Google Search Console and Google Analytics accounts (not full or write access) so they’ll have the data needed to perform the audit. You should also let the consultant talk with your developers to understand any technical constraints.

Google’s very helpful Maile Ohye

Right up front, Ohye notes that you’ll probably have to pay for the audit. We agree.

This level of custom technical and search auditing requires a considerable amount of time spent by a trained, experienced SEO analyst. If a prospective consultant is offering you a “free audit,” more than likely he or she plans to just run your site through a tool to produce an automated report.

A good SEO will try to prioritize what ideas can bring your business the most improvement for the least investment, and what improvements may take more time, but help growth in the long term. –Maile Ohye

Step 4. Decide if you want to hire

When you’re ready to engage an SEO consultant, make sure your whole organization is on board. Without internal cooperation, you may not see any search improvements at all, no matter whom you hire.

One of the biggest holdups to improving a website isn’t [the SEO’s] recommendation, but it’s the business making time to implement their ideas. –Maile Ohye

Want to talk about your business and how SEO might help you? Fill out our request form and we’ll contact you.

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