Genuine SEO Isn’t Going Away, So You Might As Well Get On Board

Let’s not kid ourselves, the state of SEO 4+ years ago was laughable, a joke, if you will. Google’s own search results were so easily manipulated with “backlink packages” and the like that it was straightforward to a fault to get a new site ranking, even for a competitive keyword, provided you had the money (or the time).

Over the past few years, Google – and other search engines, too! – has wised up and started making it more difficult to game the system. While some lamented the downfall of blackhat, spammy techniques, it was a game that was doomed from the beginning, and an equal number of people recognized the value in Google’s new incarnation.

Right now, the social and link cues that tell Google a page is important and relevant are more closely aligned than ever with the actual relevance and genuine popularity of that page. This has been Google’s goal for years, so it’s no surprised that they’ve worked extremely hard to move this direction as quickly as possible. I’m sure they’re quite happy with themselves, and they should be.

Is there still some way to game the system? I’m sure, but it’s not worth it, because every loophole gets closed, and at a rate that is gaining speed with every single day.

So, if the old kinds of link building aren’t effective, what does work?

Social cues are big.

Social media is the currency of a generation right now, and content that is blowing up with links, likes, shares, and retweets on social media is going to make a blip on Google’s radar. Google knows that these are often real indicators of people thinking something is valuable and worthwhile, and they’re all about that positive end user experience.

Leverage and squeeze every drop out of your social networks. Repurpose your tweets and posts to help appeal to different people and at different times. Try scheduling posts to go out on social at various times of day, with different images, and try alternating your headline with a quote from within the page itself.

Mobile is king, for now.

While we can’t know exactly what the future holds, one thing is for sure: Google is big on the mobile trend. It’s for good reason, too, seeing that internet usage on phones has skyrocketed over the past few years, meaning that websites who are responsive to various screen sizes and who don’t have a crappy mobile experience are going to be rightfully propped up in the search results.
This trend is also true of tablets, and any new device that comes out and begins to gain popularity.

Don’t stop building links.

Backlinks are still a big deal, but the focus now is on the quality of the links you’re bringing in. When it comes to lone links with suspiciously consistent anchor text, your efforts are going to get ignored at best or earn you a penalized site at worst. Instead, focus on building contextual links through creating products and services so good other people write about you, through stellar guest posting gigs, and by leveraging the press.

SEO’s Outer Appearance Finally Resembles Its Inner Working

Were you involved in the online marketing world back in 2010? Earlier? Ever as recently as a couple of years ago, actually, the strategies that were considered surefire paths to SEO domination were completely different from what they are today.

Interestingly enough, however, Google was saying the exact same things about how you should try and rank a website then as they are now: Provide detailed, relevant, helpful content, network naturally with others, and Google would notice.

Unfortunately, their desired reality just wasn’t the case for most marketers. Hitting the top of search results meant putting in the hours to create backlinks, make sure the anchor text of your links matched the phrases you wanted to rank for, etc. These practices were considered spammy by Google, but they worked… and so people kept right on doing them.

Now, however, Google has finally caught up with its own mantra, and since early 2014 those adhering to old school link building practices are probably walking away a little disappointed.

For Google, it’s a win.

For us marketers, it makes things more complicated, but it’s a win as well.

Right now, SEO is actually simpler than it has ever been, but it’s not easier. That is to say, there’s a lot of work involved, but the work you put in is more valuable to all parties involved now.

In fact, pages are ranking fairly easily for many website owners now, provided they do a great job of providing content. A key component now is Google’s paying attention to social media cues when determining how much of a buzz a page is creating, and therefore how many people find it interesting and useful.

Right now, you can create a page and be ranking on Google within a couple of hours, provided your piece catches social media fire and gets shared around.

Of course, that means you’ve got to come up with something really good. Honestly, though, this can only serve to elevate the level of content that gets produced, as webmasters will be able to spend more time focusing on creating really useful, interesting content for their sites instead of focusing on the post-care SEO of creating countless backlinks.

In order to win, then, you need to be onboard with this new thinking. In fact, if you’re still working within the old framework of SEO, you’re likely going to see more problems than benefits. Sites are constantly being penalized and thrown into the SERPs abyss because they have tried to game a system that has always been about staying one step ahead of those trying to game it (and a goal they’ve finally achieved).

Will SEO professionals still have specific strategies you can take to give your site a leg up?

Absolutely.

Will they work? Probably, but you need to think of SEO best practices these days as a side dish, because there is no longer a substitute for the main dish of hard work creating genuinely awesome pages for Google to crawl.

Growth Hacking Day 1 – Goal Defining

If you’ve been around in the online marketing world for a while, you probably recognize the phrase ‘growth hacking’, but you might also get the impression that it’s a fairly new player in the online marketing sphere. And you’d be right. Growth hacking is an interesting way of building up a company or brand because it was literally grown out of the necessity to avoid old, more expensive tactics.

The tools and skills to develop apps, found a startup, and take an idea to fruition are more widespread than ever before, meaning that the rate at which new products and services are brought to market is extremely fast. The founders and marketing teams of these companies are usually small and in their experimental phases. Additionally, they’re usually fairly strapped for cash. This, combined with the fact that paid search advertising is more expensive and competitive than ever before, birthed growth hacking. Literally, growth hacking is the art/science of growing customer base without spending any actual money. Sounds great, right?!

Unfortunately, most people get it wrong. They jump straight to trying to hashtag their way some sort of niche popularity and people see right through it; nobody wants to interact with posts devoid of value. Before ever getting to this phase, however, these companies and individuals should have been defining goals.

That’s right, the first step to proper growth hacking is defining real, actionable goals. They can’t be obscure. They can’t be broad. We’re talking laser focus, and here’s how you find it:

First, let’s take the broad, universal goal of ‘getting more awareness for my brand’. What are some ways you can build awareness that are specific to your business? Let’s say you’ve got a referral plan in place, but people aren’t biting. The people who do become longterm customers, however, so it appears to be an area worth improving. Perhaps your incentive for referrals currently is access to a library of training materials, and you think that creating more content for your training library which you can then reference in sales copy will be the way to get more people on board.

Let’s say you then define your goal as “add five new lessons to the knowledge library,” and go from there. Is your goal boiled down enough yet? Because you can take clear, definable actions at this point to reach your goal. Once you can see individual steps (write one article per week, create promotional email for each article, etc.), then you’ve got something you can work with.

Of course, an equally important part of the goal framework is the ability to accurately monitor your results. You don’t want to have people hitting your new referral incentives and have no way of telling whether or not they’re engaging more or less than before. If you don’t have proper analytics in place to measure every facet of your business, you’re not ready for growth hacking.

Growth hacking is an agile process that requires adaptability, but more importantly adaptability that is based on sweet, sweet data.

Trimming the Fat – Copy Tips for Saying More With Less

Copywriting doesn’t always get the credit it deserves. From the billions of dollars in sales each day that hinge on a well-formatted sales letter, to a polished TV commercial script, to the catchy jingle or slogan you just can’t get out of your head, effective professional, persuasive writing, “copywriting,” does a lot for us as marketers.

It’s unfortunate then that copy is often neglected as a luxury expense or an unnecessary cog in many marketers’ or business owners’ sales funnels. The reason, inevitably, is cost. Good copywriters know that their words will have a direct effect on your conversion rates, and thus the money you make, and leverage that knowledge for a nice payday. It then goes to follow that many marketers begin crafting their own copy. To be honest, even if you don’t have the polish and practice of a professional, someone who is a good writer in general can learn to produce decent copy to keep them growing and selling until they can afford a dedicated copywriter. The key word there, however, is “learn.”

Amateur copy is almost always identifiable by a lack of brevity; people often write too much and get too wordy, losing their vital, important, life-changing points amongst superfluous, unnecessary adjectives and ineffective anecdotes. See what I did there? That sentence could have been a lot shorter! Today, we’ll take a look at how you can catch yourself and self-edit copy to stay effective and to the point.

1) Cut out very. The concept of “cutting out very” is probably referenced in proper copywriting books somewhere, but here’s my take on it. The tendency in sales writing is to be, well, selly. The way to do this however is with proper punctuation and, more importantly, by getting inside your audience’s head and telling them what they want to hear. Unfortunately, amateur writers usually use “filler” words. The word ‘very’ is one prominent example, because it is a false enhancer that is rarely needed. Don’t say “It’s very good,” say “it’s the best.” Another example is the use of very before the word ‘unique’, which is redundant. Something is either unique or it isn’t, it’s not “very unique.”

2) Boil it down to exactly what someone needs to know. One of the biggest things you can do to make your copywriting effective is to put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re writing to. This gets you out of salesman mode and helps you think about what someone with the problem you’re offering a solution for actually wants to hear. Sometimes, doing this can help us see that what we’re put down is over the top, too selly or spammy, or even just flat out unhelpful!

3) Proofread 80 times. And I’m not just talking about any usual proofread. Sure, you’re going to be checking your spelling and grammar and making sure everything lines up, but a copywriting proofread should see you putting on another hat as well, the “could this possibly sound any better?!” hat. Read each sentence and look for words that could be dropped, phrases that could be made more appropriate for your customers, etc.

Of course, just like every facet of IM, there’s always more to learn on the copywriting front, but this should get you headed in the right direction until you can hire a personal Don Draper of your own.

The No BS Intuitive Guide To SEO Success

SEO is one of those secretive beasts that has been the obsession of online marketers since the dawn of their profession. Especially with the event of one search engine pulling far ahead of the rest in its usage, an intense culture was born out of focusing on how to best game or manipulate Google’s search algorithms over the years.

Now, for better or for worse – and I think for better – Google has wised up and, through a series of updates, brought their algorithms into the modern day by being able to account for the factors that make a site most relevant to users today. While this is great for Google’s users, it does mean that getting your site on top of relevant search results is no longer a simple matter of pulling the right strings for a few days and awaiting results. So, without further adieu, here are a few ways you can ensure your SEO success in 2015 and beyond.

Google knows what it wants, and so do you!

Google’s end game has always been about providing the best user experience possible. They want to make sure that the results they display are getting people to their desired answers as quickly as possible. While there are literally thousands of metrics that go into determining what websites best service the interests of a given query, a little bit of honesty about your site can go a long way in getting results. In every decision you make, you should be evaluating your options from a consumer perspective: Don’t think about your bottom line, or your conversions, or your sales funnel. Instead, figure out what decision will provide the best possible experience for people searching your niche. Have you adequately answered an asked question? Will your bounce rate remain low because people want to stick around and read what you have to say? These kinds of questions can help you honestly evaluate the usefulness of your site.

Social Indicators Are Huge

If you aren’t killing it in social media already, you’re behind the curve – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get started now anyways! Google has been known to, since the beginning of their work as a search engine – weight links and references to your sites as more or less important depending on where they come from. Nowadays, you can bet that social “buzz” is a metric taken into account by Google when ranking any site.

Now, being an expert in your market requires you to also take your social controls by the horns and get active. Promoting your own brand and site(s) through social can generate a kind of natural traction – providing you’re putting out good content – that Google has no choice but to love. Well, that is, until the game changes again.

Ride Waves, Don’t chase Them

The best note to leave you on has to do with education. Simply put, you should be researching SEO and social bloggers and thought leaders regularly. Keeping up is half the battle, and you never know which big trend you can ride the front of and end up catapulted to the top of your market.

3 Reasons Your Social Media Presence Sucks

Social media has been hailed time and time again as the new (which is a bit out of date now, really) big player in marketing and brand engagement. Then again, the reality of the situation has shown that the vast majority of brands, individuals, and even social media managers don’t actually find themselves successful in cultivating a large following. If you’ve ever wondered why that is, here are a few mistakes that keep marketers from ever reaching their maximum potential.

 

1) Not being a creator.

The people who have the biggest social media followings on the planet, or even just within whatever niche(s) you find yourself marketing, are people who create something. Their tweets, posts, and pictures carry weight because they’ve got something solid to back them up. Too often, people as for “follows” and other social media engagement without giving anyone a good reason to actually do so. If you’re begging people to retweet your link, you sure as heck better have something on the other end that delivers true value if you want those who get curious enough to continue to engaging with you.

 

2) Mistaking social media for a one-way channel of communication.

In other instances, I’ve actually seen it be the case that someone had great content on their blog, but wasn’t having much luck getting people to engage on social platforms. One of the reasons this happens is that people assume importance too early. It’s like any kind of marketing that isn’t in its infancy anymore: You don’t get widespread recognition just for “doing it,” or even doing it well, because the market is too saturated.

So, how do you stand out? You start talking with people, and not just at them. Make sure that you are giving out what you’re asking for be engaging with others you find interesting, asking them questions, and commenting on their content. Real comments, not the “wow, great read!” variety. Some of the biggest names in social media still take time throughout the day to respond to people messaging and asking them for advice.

 

3) Automating.

Gary Vaynerchuk, who has a mind that’s built up companies based almost exclusively on social media expertise, has an interesting stance on automation; it’s a stance you can learn from. First of all many people get caught up in automating their social media endeavors far too early. In a sense, they haven’t really maxed out their time, they don’t really need to back away from active engagement, they’re just lazy. Or maybe they’re just putting the cart before the horse. Automation isn’t inherently bad, but it is when you try and hide the fact that you’re doing it. Another way of putting this is that it’s fine to automate simple tasks that don’t involve direct customer interaction, but you shouldn’t fake interaction. Customers know that the mass email you sent out wasn’t personally directed to them just because their name is in it. They know that your auto-following them back on twitter wasn’t out of genuine interest. Don’t be fake, people will see through it.

While social media isn’t intensely complicated, it’s also not hard to end up doing it wrong. Make the time to strategize and account for factors like these before you actually touch your fingers to your keyboard… or your phone… or your tablet… you get the idea.

The 2 Social Media Sites That You Aren’t Taking Advantage of In Your Business

Social media apps and sites popup with alarming frequency. Also alarming, is the rate at which these platforms seem to overtake each other in traffic and popularity. While you can’t go wrong growing your influence at the top of the food chain where a couple of massive entities still dominate, you can sure as heck get innovative and ride the wave on newer trends to quickly become a standout resource for potential followers. With that in mind, here are a couple of platforms most marketers aren’t taking adequate advantage of.

Pinterest – Pinterest is the iceberg of social media platforms: Unless you’ve spent some time exploring, it might seem like not that much is going on over there, but you’d be dead wrong. When measured in monthly unique visitors, Pinterest is actually the 4th most visited social network on the English-speaking planet; it trails only Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Yep, it even beats out heavyweights like Tumblr and Instagram.

The nature of Pinterest, which is all about quickly sharing images, whether original or curated, makes it such a great opportunity for brands. On Pinterest, “boards” can be created within a theme, so a board may consist of “nature scenes,” for example. Your business can take advantage of this unique tagging system, no matter what niche you’re in, and grant itself massive exposure. Let’s say you were working with an offline client who was a construction contractor, for example. You could create an account for them and start adding images of their stellar work to boards on houses, architecture, even remodeling. And, yes, those all exist.

With unique monthly hits in the hundreds of millions per month, don’t pass up on this opportunity to turn your brand, site, or niche expertise into a visual, sharable commodity.

Periscope – “Peri-what?!” you might say (especially if you’re not on the cutting edge of social media already). Periscope is a new app that allows individuals to livestream what their phone camera is seeing to the internet. In turn, users can follow their stream and comment and chat in real time. The concept of livestreaming is years old, but Periscope seem to have finally been able to popularize it on mobile. Since that’s where most people are spending their time these days anyways, it’s started to really take off.

The whole point of Periscope is to teleport users to another location, lifestyle, or adventure. Savvy social media marketers have taken to announcing that the most interesting parts of their day will be streamed – and you’d be surprised at what really seems to hit home for people! Make a live Q&A session happen during your lunch break, show off your daily work ritual that really gets you in the zone. Even if the majority of your day involves sitting at a computer, you can find a way to deliver some livestreamed value to people out there who are in the same boat or who are trying to follow in your footsteps.

Of course, these are far from the only social hangouts you should be working on, but they’re good places to start. Depending on the needs and demographics of your niche, you may also find certain platforms make a lot more sense for content presentation, so don’t be afraid to deviate when it makes sense.

Why You Might Want To Pay Attention To Podcasting Again

Let’s get one thing out in the open straight away: We all know that podcasts are nothing new. In this newsletter, I’m not going to try and tell you that podcasts are anything new – these web-hosted, episodic radio show type broadcasts have been around for roughly a decade now. So no one would have known that they would have just soared back into popularity, but, by gosh, they absolutely have.

Of course, the time to develop the medium and for listeners/viewers to grow their expectations means that anyone who wants to standout these days is going to need to try a little harder in order to make a splash. Let’s take a look at how you can turn your personal brand(s) into the splashiest of podcast.

First things first, dig into something that you can really dominate. What are you so passionate and knowledgeable about that you’ll be able to put in more hours each day than anyone else? What part of your business do you feel you have the strongest execution in and would be the most impressive for someone earlier on in their journey to learn about?

Once you’ve honed in on something you can do well, start thinking about how you could make it interesting. For most people, podcasts start out as a series of videos or recordings where they simply talk about what they know. As long as you’re personable and can pull that off with some enthusiasm, you’re ahead of the game. That said, once you get several episodes deep, even the most prolific thinkers might be at a loss as to what to say into the microphone.

Here, a great route to go down is the Q&A route. If you’ve built up a little subscriber base, ask them to tell you what they want to know, ask how you can help with the problems they’re facing, etc. Or you can go down the tutorial route. Or you can create themed episodes in which you do a giant fast paced knowledge-dump of everything you’ve got on a certain topic. Keep your show interesting at all costs; look at what else exists in your market, and make your content the obvious choice.

This revival is also very much about the use of diverse media. In the early days, podcasts were often audio-based and lived in itunes, embedded in webpages, or even on platforms like Soundcloud and the like. Now, many podcasts come in video form – it’s not a necessity, but it does give you broader options for presenting your show. Even if you stick to audio format, take advantage of promotional graphics and logos to pique interest for your podcast.

Become memorable through the use of a catchy intro or jingle. Don’t make music? Don’t write jingles? No problem, just grab a freelancer – old standbys like fiverr, odesk, and freelancer are alright to start, but with a bit of searching you can find specialists ready to spice up your show intro without breaking the bank. There’s a reason advertisements have had jingles for decades: They get stuck in your head, and, along with them, comes brand recall.

Finally, assure good audio (and video, if applicable) quality. Don’t worry, you can do this on a budget. For most audio podcasts, you can achieve a professional sounding setup for less than $100. Grab a quality USB mic (the ‘Snowball’ and other iterations by Blue are really excellent). Once you’ve got your recording, learn a bit about how to make your voice sound nice and rich using a free program like Audacity. When you launch your podcast, try to have several episodes already recorded so that listeners will be hooked from day one.

SEO Doesn’t Look Like It Did Last Year

A perfect search engine optimization strategy has been the stuff of dreams since, well, the beginning of search engines. Since that time, SEO has gone over so many facelifts and iterations that seemed to completely reinvent what it meant to maintain “best practices” when it came to search engines. As recently as a couple years ago, “link building” was hailed as SEO king, and link building networks found themselves in high demand.

Too often, the trend of providing SEO work became about ‘tricking’ the search engines, particularly Google. Funny, since what search engine companies have always wanted hasn’t really changed in two decades: Google and its competitors simply want to provide the best, most relevant search experience for their users. This is what keeps searchers coming back for more. Over time, they’ve perfected their search algorithms to better achieve this goal by excluding results which try to game the system.

Professional SEO outfits know this, and have for some time. More and more, working in SEO means becoming proficient in a larger number of tasks than ever before in order to guarantee Google’s good graces.

First of all, if you want to be working in SEO in 2015, you’d better know how to write and prepare some great content. More and more now, SEO positions look for someone who can create the actual content that will help to populate, update, and keep their web properties valuable. This means that being able to write blog posts, scripts videos, create images in Photoshop, and more should be in your CV’s skill list. Let’s face it, SEO now is an aggregate of other tasks and companies aren’t looking to pay four different salaries to have them accomplished when one ambitious employee with a bit of know-how can make it happen.

You also need to be a strong team leader. This is truer if you’re working in a brick and mortar company than if you’re doing SEO for your own blog, but it’s still relevant to enterprises of any size. A large part of an SEO expert’s job is educating others. Because content creation, social engagement, and more all tie into SEO these days, it’s important than anyone and everyone on a team have a basic working knowledge of what SEO is and how you seek to achieve it. In a sense, your job is to help instill SEO into workplace culture so that employees are keeping search engine impact in mind when they work on their own projects. Even if you’re a solo marketer working from home, instilling SEO smarts in any freelancers you hire or business partners you might be taking on can be invaluable.

In the old days it seemed to be that everyone was preaching the “building” of links, when what they should have been on about was the “attraction” of them. Now, more people are catching on, and so should you. Create content that is so good it has to be shared, and make good use of social channels. Your goal should be to attract links from other people who want to repost and talk about your content – what was once limited to syndication is now expanded into the entire arena of social media.

And finally, always keep your eyes peeled for the next trend – the most successful SEO’ers don’t chase waves after they crest, they ride them as they form.

Introducing Weibo, the ‘Twitter’ of China

Despite having the world’s largest population and the second-largest economy, social media in China hasn’t taken off as quickly as it has in other developed countries.

Part of that has to do with the Chinese government. Although it may not be as strict as it once was in terms of censoring the content it allows its citizens to view online, it still is far more restrictive than most European countries or the US. The Chinese government continues to be serious about cracking down on dissent and keeping tabs on those it considers to be enemies of the state.

Still, the Chinese are beginning to go just as crazy about social media as people everywhere else in the world. And the biggest name in Chinese social media today isn’t Facebook, Twitter or Google+. It’s a site called Weibo.

 

Popularity of Social Media in China

Weibo has exploded in popularity in recent years. It currently has 176 million active daily users and 503 million registered users. While that’s still only about half of China’s estimated 1 billion citizens, that represents a 36% growth over last year.

The site is used regularly by about 30% of Chinese Internet users. That’s about the same market penetration that Twitter has in the US, which has prompted Weibo to get the nickname “The Twitter of China”.

The site is only a couple of years old, having been founded in 2009 by SINA Corporation, which still owns 56.9% of the Weibo. Alibaba owns another 32% if the company. Stock in the website has been publicly traded on Nasdaq since last April.

 

Enter Oracle

Just recently, Oracle announced that its Social Cloud will provide the publishing, engagement and analytical support for the site. The purpose of the move is to boost Weibo’s usage outside of China, as well as to grow the site within that nation.

Oracle also will provide engagement and analytic services for Instagram within China. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook and recently offered the ability to post 15-second videos as well as images and photos, is rapidly becoming one of the most popular sites among 18 top 24 year olds in that country.

 

Who’s Using the Site

Like Twitter in the US, Weibo allows its users to follow posts from their favorite celebrities, sports stars, political leaders, media figures, businessmen and religious leaders. Users also can share their own microblog posts with their own followers. It’s estimated that the Weibo’s top 100 users have an estimated 485 followers combined.

But companies and commercial interests both inside and outside of China are huge users of the site as well. More than 5,000 companies and 2,700 media companies are believed to use the site regularly.

 

Censorship on Weibo

One of the biggest differences between Weibo and western social media sites is that Sina cooperates with Chinese Internet censors, setting strict controls on the contents of its postings. Comments about politically sensitive topics, as well as those containing blacklisted keywords, are regularly deleted.

But when compared to other Chinese media, Weibo is relatively permissive. Criticism of the Chinese government, while not encouraged, isn’t as controlled on Weibo as it is on Chinese TV, newspapers or radio.

 

Where Its Name Comes From

In Chinese, the word for microblog is “Weibo”. Sina Weibo launched it as the service’s domain name in 2011. While other Chinese microblogging services such as Tenchent Weibo, Sohu Weibo, and NetEase Weibo also include the term, most people in China recognized Weibo as the leading social media platform in the same way that the term “Facebook” is synonymous with social media in the US.

When it comes to social media, 500 million Chinese social media users can’t be wrong about Weibo.