Want to grow your audience with Instagram Live? Looking for tips on creating Instagram Live videos? To explore how to create and repurpose Instagram Live videos, I interview Todd Bergin. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media
Posted by randfish
It's tough to admit it, but many of us still practice outdated SEO tactics in the belief that they still have a great deal of positive influence. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand gently sets us straight and offers up a series of replacement activities that will go much farther toward moving the needle. Share your own tips and favorites in the comments!
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to go back in time to the prehistoric era and talk about a bunch of "dinosaur" tactics, things that SEOs still do, many of us still do, and we probably shouldn't.
We need to replace and retire a lot of these tactics. So I've got five tactics, but there's a lot more, and in fact I'd loved to hear from some of you on some of yours.
Dino Tactic #1: AdWords/Keyword Planner-based keyword researchBut the first one we'll start with is something we've talked about a few times here — AdWords and Keyword Planner-based keyword research. So you know there's a bunch of problems with the metrics in there, but I still see a lot of folks starting their keyword research there and then expanding into other tools.
Replace it with clickstream data-driven tools with Difficulty and CTR %My suggestion would be start with a broader set if you possibly can. If you have the budget, replace this with something that is driven by clickstream data, like Ahrefs or SEMrush or Keyword Explorer. Even Google Search Suggest and related searches plus Google Trends tend to be better at capturing more of this.
Why it doesn't workI think is just because AdWords hides so many keywords that they don't think are commercially relevant. It's too inaccurate, especially the volume data. If you're actually creating an AdWords campaign, the volume data gets slightly better in terms of its granularity, but we found it is still highly inaccurate as compared as to when you actually run that campaign.
It's too imprecise, and it lacks a bunch of critical metrics, including difficulty and click-through rate percentage, which you've got to know in order to prioritize keywords effectively.
Dino Tactic #2: Subdomains and separate domains for SERP dominationNext up, subdomains and separate domains for SERP domination. So classically, if you wanted to own the first page of Google search results for a branded query or an unbranded query, maybe you just want to try and totally dominate, it used to be the case that one of the ways to do this was to add in a bunch of subdomains to your website or register some separate domains so that you'd be able to control that top 10.
Why it doesn't workWhat has happened recently, though, is that Google has started giving priority to multiple subpages in a single SERP from a single domain. You can see this for example with Yelp on virtually any restaurant-related searches, or with LinkedIn on a lot of business topic and job-related searches.
You can see it with Quora on a bunch of question style searches, where they'll come up for all of them, or Stack Overflow, where they come up for a lot of engineering and development-related questions.
Replace it with barnacle SEO and subfolder hosted contentSo one of the better ways to do this nowadays is with barnacle SEO and subfolder hosted content, meaning you don't have to put your content on a separate subdomain in order to rank multiple times in the same SERP.
Barnacle SEO also super handy because Google is giving a lot of benefit to some of these websites that host content you can create or generate and profiles you can create and generate. That's a really good way to go. This is mostly just because of this shift from the subdomains being the way to get into SERPs multiple times to individual pages being that path.
Dino Tactic #3: Prioritizing number one rankings over other traffic-driving SEO techniquesThird, prioritizing number one rankings over other traffic-driving SEO techniques. This is probably one of the most common "dinosaur" tactics I see, where a lot of folks who are familiar with the SEO world from maybe having used consultants or agencies or brought it in-house 10, 15, 20 years ago are still obsessed with that number one organic ranking over everything else.
Replace it with SERP feature SEO (especially featured snippets) and long-tail targetingIn fact, that's often a pretty poor ROI investment compared to things like SERP features, especially the featured snippet, which is getting more and more popular. It's used in voice search. It oftentimes doesn't need to come from the number one ranking result in the SERP. It can come number three, number four, or number seven.
It can even be the result that brings back the featured snippet at the very top. Its click-through rate is often higher than number one, meaning SERP features a big way to go. This is not the only one, too. Image SEO, doing local SEO when the local pack appears, doing news SEO, potentially having a Twitter profile that can rank in those results when Google shows tweets.
And, of course, long-tail targeting, meaning going after other keywords that are not as competitive, where you don't need to compete against as many folks in order to get that number one ranking spot, and often, in aggregate, long tail can be more than ranking number one for that "money" keyword, that primary keyword that you're going after.
Why it doesn't workWhy is this happening? Well, it's because SERP features are biasing the click-through rate such that number one just isn't worth what it used to be, and the long tail is often just higher ROI per hour spent.
Dino Tactic #4: Moving up rankings with link building aloneFourth, moving up the rankings on link building alone. Again, I see a lot of people do this, where they're ranking number 5, number 10, number 20, and they think, "Okay, I'm ranking in the first couple of pages of Google. My next step is link build my way to the top."
Why it no longer works on its ownGranted, historically, back in the dinosaur era, dinosaur era of being 2011, this totally worked. This was "the" path to get higher rankings. Once you were sort of in the consideration set, links would get you most of the way up to the top. But today, not the case.
Replace it with searcher task accomplishment, UX optimization, content upgrades, and brand growthInstead I'm going to suggest you retire that and replace it with searcher task accomplishment, which we've seen a bunch of people invest in optimization there and springboard their site, even with worse links, not as high DA, all of that kind of stuff. UX optimization, getting the user experience down and nailing the format of the content so that it better serves searchers.
Content upgrades, improving the actual content on the page, and brand growth, associating your brand more with the topic or the keyword. Why is this happening? Well, because links alone it feels like today are just not enough. They're still a powerful ranking factor. We can't ignore them entirely certainly.
But if you want to unseat higher ranked pages, these types of investments are often much easier to make and more fruitful.
Dino Tactic #5: Obsessing about keyword placement in certain tags/areasAll right, number five. Last but not least, obsessing about keyword placement in certain tags and certain areas. For example, spending inordinate amounts of time and energy making sure that the H1 and H2, the headline tags, can contain keywords, making sure that the URL contains the keywords in exactly the format that you want with the hyphens, repeating text a certain number of times in the content, making sure that headlines and titles are structured in certain ways.
Why it (kind of) doesn't workIt's not that this doesn't work. Certainly there's a bare minimum. We've got to have our keyword used in the title. We definitely want it in the headline. If that's not in an H1 tag, I think we can live with that. I think that's absolutely fine. Instead I would urge you to move some of that same obsession that you had with perfecting those tags, getting the last 0.01% of value out of those into related keywords and related topics, making sure that the body content uses and explains the subjects, the topics, the words and phrases that Google knows searchers associate with a given topic.
My favorite example of this is if you're trying to rank for "New York neighborhoods" and you have a page that doesn't include the word Brooklyn or Manhattan or Bronx or Queens or Staten Island, your chances of ranking are much, much worse, and you can get all the links and the perfect keyword targeting in your H1, all of that stuff, but if you are not using those neighborhood terms that Google clearly can associate with the topic, with the searcher's query, you're probably not going to rank.
Replace it with obsessing over related keywords and topicsThis is true no matter what you're trying to rank for. I don't care if it's blue shoes or men's watches or B2B SaaS products. Google cares a lot more about whether the content solves the searcher's query. Related topics, related keywords are often correlated with big rankings improvements when we see folks undertake them.
I was talking to an SEO a few weeks ago who did this. They just audited across their site, found the 5 to 10 terms that they felt they were missing from the content, added those into the content intelligently, adding them to the content in such a way that they were actually descriptive and useful, and then they saw rankings shoot up with nothing else, no other work. Really, really impressive stuff.
So take some of these dino tactics, try retiring them and replacing them with some of these modern ones, and see if your results don't come out better too. Look forward to your thoughts on other dino tactics in the comments. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
Facebook has close to 2.2 billion users worldwide. Youtube has 1.8 billion, which is more than Gmail’s 1 billion user base. A third of the global population is using each of these platforms. This makes social media the right platform to reach your target audience.
But how do we know which type of content to go with? More than 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. Visual content always trumps over textual content. Videos are the key to reach a large chunk of your target segment. Not every video is the same though. You need to understand what kind of videos work best.
Depending on the objective, you need to create specific videos to achieve them. The aim here is to grab attention early; as people tend to lose interest fast. The attention span of an average human being is just about eight seconds.
Do you use multiple social media pixels and tracking tools on your website? Want an easy way to install and manage those code snippets without waiting on a technical pro? In this article, you’ll learn how to use Google Tag Manager to quickly add social media pixels and tracking scripts to your blog or website.
There’s a trend in marketing, fueled by social media, of businesses trying to garner publicity by doing something special for a customer. Known as “surprise and delight” in the social media community, these initiatives typically involve finding a customer via Twitter or Facebook and then aligning operations to create a “magic moment” for that one customer in that single instance.
For example, the author and entrepreneur Peter Shankman tweeted that he wished he had a steak, and Morton’s Steak House brought him one, at the airport.
These heartwarming tales can create momentary spikes in brand chatter, especially on social media, where the sharing of poignancy (even if you are personally unconnected to the story) is seemingly a condition of use. They are also near-mandatory inclusions in every book, speech, one-act play, poem, and puppet show that is even tangentially related to customer experience, as models of how to treat your customers. Except this one. Why? For a simple reason: Any differentiator that happens circumstantially is a publicity stunt, not a word‑of‑mouth strategy.
That doesn’t make it wrong, per se, but it’s certainly not strategic.
Surprise and delight is a lottery ticket, not a word of mouth strategy. It’s a stunt, and stunts aren’t the same as a repeatable, reliable plan.
Surprise and delight is a lottery ticket, not a word of mouth strategy.
Click To Tweet
For every Joshie the Giraffe that gets spread around the internet like a re-gifted fruit cake, how many other surprise and delight efforts don’t break through at all? A lot.
And even for those that do “go viral,” the lasting brand impact of these efforts is minimal. Although it may spawn some temporary goodwill for the brand, it quickly runs out of steam. While the story is cute, it’s not personally relatable: It didn’t happen to us, and we know it will not happen to us when we go to a Ritz-Carlton.
The problem with surprise and delight is that it’s a surprise. It happens one time, to one person, in one scenario. That’s not an operational choice that creates conversation day after day after day. Instead, it’s one or more team members doing something special because they felt like it. A stuffed giraffe is a random act of kindness.
A better approach—and a more strategic one—is to create a Talk Trigger for your business. A Talk Trigger is a strategic, operational choice that compels word of mouth. It’s an intentionally delivered differentiator that causes customer conversation every single day.
Consider DoubleTree Hotels by Hilton. They give a warm, chocolate chip cookie at check-in to each hotel guest for 30 years. At present, they bake and give away 75,000 cookies every day. Does this cookie ritual create word of mouth? Does it turn their customers into volunteer marketers? Does it build their brand? YES.
In fact, we recently talked to 1,000 DoubleTree customers and found that 34% of them have—without being prompted—mentioned the cookie to someone else in the previous 60 days. That means that 25,000+ customers EVERY DAY talk about the cookie at DoubleTree. That’s just one of the reasons you don’t see many DoubleTree ads: the cookie and the conversations it spawns ARE the marketing strategy.
A Talk Trigger is not a stunt, it’s a conversation strategy. It’s doing word of mouth on purpose, instead of randomly. And all Talk Triggers should be offered to every customer, every time.
The impact of a universally offered differentiator is far greater in total that a one-off surprise and delight “magic moment,” because it is achievable by us all. We can personally experience it. It is a story in which we (or someone we know) are a major character.
As Jake Sorofman, formerly a vice president at Gartner, says: “[I]n the game of customer experience . . . consistency will always trump delight.”
We believe that not only does consistency trump delight but inconsistency generates contempt among your customers (or at least has the potential for doing so). Nowhere is this more acute than in the airline boarding process. Airlines in the United States continue to add new “zones” such that loading passengers on an aircraft features laughably numerous striations. Presumably done to give frequent fliers succor and solace, having so many boarding groups (American Airlines currently has nine for every flight) cannot possibly be a great experience for fliers boarding toward the end, followed only by baby strollers, bags of ice, and assorted flotsam and jetsam.
Is the boarding process a talk trigger? Absolutely, if you’re in group nine, and it’s not a happy story being told. Robbin Phillips and her coauthors described the importance of consistency in The Passion Conversation when they wrote: “The goal of any business should be to make word of mouth marketing operationally invisible. That is, it should be how a business does business not just one day, but every day.”
To be a talk trigger, and to work for your business every day and not just one day, a differentiator has to be repeatable. It’s not for randomly selected customers. Or your best customers. It’s for all customers.
(An excerpt from my new book, written with Daniel Lemin. It’s called Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth. Super special pre-order deals available right now (for a few days) including free books AND free chocolate chip cookies. Go to TalkTriggers.com to see the special packages I made for you).
We all know that marketing can help us become successful.
Marketing refers to the tools we utilize to deliver the message of our brand.
Branding is the strategy, while marketing encompasses your tactical goals.
Marketing offers great opportunities.
It can be serious, heartfelt or funny.
It can be a mix of text, keywords, photos, infographics, charts, and videos.
Marketing can be performed by a variety of online and offline methods, as there are (some of the most common):
Problem is:
We cannot do our marketing in the same way as several years ago.
Times have changed – tremendously.
Let’s have a look at what has changed:
1.
Wondering how to place ads in other people’s video content on Facebook? Have you heard about Facebook in-stream video ads? In this article, you’ll learn how to create and serve Facebook in-stream video ads that show during another brand’s video content via the Facebook news feed. What Are Facebook In-Stream Video Ads? The Facebook in-stream
