Today is the big day: Google’s mobile algorithm update is rolling out!
Or, D-Day this week—for webmasters to have their sites up to par with accepted mobile optimization standards.
Since this announcement from Google came out in February 2015, professionals that use the internet have been trying to figure out exactly how much of a change we’re likely to see here. Whilst the regular desktop users won’t notice any difference in the way they see the world, this mobile update makes it easier for mobile users to access content on the internet and read it comfortably in miniature screens.
The Mobile Content Update: What’s The Extent of Change?
The last time Google announced algorithm changes so openly was when the first anti-content-farm update (nicknamed “Panda”) came out and changed the game for SEO in general. Based on the amount of time Google gave before their scheduled algorithm change, we can be fairly certain that we’re going to see some pretty major changes as far as internet-based business is concerned. Google has realized that vast numbers of users have forgone the traditional method of access through browsers and are now looking at web-pages on miniature screens such as tablets and mobile phones. In order to help these users out, Google has instituted a checking system that will determine whether the page is mobile-friendly or not (there is no grey area here, it’s either-or) and let the user know beforehand.
What The Google Update Means for Content
The crux of the matter for content production teams and content marketing professionals is that we need to rethink our content game when it comes to Google’s mobile update. A few of us already have mobile-friendly sites (You can check if yours conforms here), but there are many of us that aren’t mobile-friendly and don’t create content for that audience. It’s about time we changed that. With the burgeoning mobile internet market entering the big leagues with this update, we would be making a serious misstep to overlook these users. How can we go about creating content that meshes with this new update?
Make it Short and Snappy: The key thing to keep in mind here is that mobile users will most likely be consuming much more bite-sized content than regular web users. Short, sweet and concise are what you’re aiming for. Long content (such as a few thousand words of length) still has its place on a web page, but not one geared towards mobile users. Just like how regular web users are daunted with walls of text, mobile users will probably take one look at a massive post and run for the hills. Keeping it concise and to the point is important to maintain your reader’s interest.
Build your Home Page Differently: Home pages usually have a large amount of copy to go with them because they aim to draw the user in and make them click on to other linked pages. With the new mobile update, we’re going to have to start considering our home page differently. Typically, we’re going to have to revamp the homepage to make it more suitable for viewing on a small screen by getting the copy more concise than it currently is. For a mobile user, you should be considering your homepage as ad copy in a limited space. Your mobile-search compatibility will not affect your regular desktop rankings (according to Google).
Consider the Look & Feel of your Email Campaigns: The sheer amount of users that check email on their phones has gone up tremendously since the early 2000’s. I, personally, check email on a bi-hourly basis and many other professionals do it far more often than that. Google’s integration of Gmail with the Android operating system makes it even easier for users to stay connected via their phones. To this end, when we design our email marketing campaigns, we should give a thought to those users that are accessing our emails through the phone and develop the look and feel for our marketing content around that.
Hard-Hitting Headlines: Writing content for a web browser means you have a whole lot of screen real estate to work with. For a mobile platform, that screen real estate comes down to nearly nothing and you’re going to have to be creative about how you fill that space. Your headlines have to attract and tease, but they only have a handful of characters in which to pique the readers’ interest. Professionals that use Twitter will shine here since they are already used to getting their message across in one hundred and forty characters. This just gives them an extension of that particular skill, shortening headlines down to the very minimum so that they can be easily transferred to a mobile platform for viewing.
Don’t Sacrifice Quality for Space: Probably the largest challenge we will have as content creators is maintaining the value of our message despite having to deliver it to our audience in a reduced space. This is where the true marketing professionals will shine. Someone who truly understands the audience will be able to explain to them in the least amount of words possible the things that the audience needs to know. Concise explanation is exactly what we want for our post-mobile content, because it gives us value without sacrificing content for it. At the end of the day, content drives our business and for it to do so with success, it must be good content.
A Changing Paradigm of Digital Content
Now would be a good time to batten down the hatches and perform a mobile content audit to determine if your site will be able to survive the oncoming algorithm change. We won’t know for certain exactly how significant a hit sites will take until the algorithm goes live, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. One thing we know for sure is that the face of content marketing is changing yet again, undergoing an evolution that ensures that our field of expertise delivers the best it has to our audience at all points in time. The only other professions that have such massive, seismic shifts that change the layout of the whole field are geography and seismology. Are you ready to take your content into the mobile-based internet of the twenty-first century?
Looking for the best times and content types to post to social media can be a time-consuming activity for any company. There are several articles out there with their own opinions that can really help. In addition, there is now an incredible new study by NewsCred on these questions. It shows concrete examples of excellent sharing times and the content that can help bring in more clicks, traffic, social shares, and revenue. I am going to sum up this study just for you to help you learn all that you need to and also give some points to help you apply this study to your own social strategy.
What is NewsCred’s Social Media Study All About?
NewsCred decided to team up with two different companies to create a study to see what type of content was shared most, and when. This was a way to not only help the companies come up with great content ideas and when to post them, but to also help other companies figure out how to change their content for maximum results. They looked at Fractl and BuzzStream’s social content over the months of June through November 2014. By looking through all of the data, NewsCred, Fractl, and BuzzStream were able to see the most successful content formats and what months were the best for different formats. I am going to look into their findings and help you learn different ways to share you content and get the most out of your social media campaign.
What Types of Content Get Shared Most?
Some of the more popular content formats for Fractl and BuzzStream were list posts and how-to articles. They also saw significant success with videos for their clients, as well. However, the type of content and its success varied from month to month. Posts that focused on a “what” instead of a list, how-to, or why tended to not be as popular until October. While this might not seem like it shows much, it does show that you need to make sure you are mixing up your content formats to match each month and get more traction. It can be easy to get settled into one format such as a list, but that can become detrimental if you don’t mix it up with how-to articles or explanation posts about products, services, and more.
However, this does show that if you are not focusing on sharing lists or how-to articles, you should make some changes. These are great because they offer value to all readers, and it is easier to read through a list and share if the person is busy or on a commute.
NewsCred also notes that evergreen content did the best because it was a theme that remained constant and offered value to readers no matter the month or year. Evergreen content is a great idea for all business blogs because it can be just as valuable years from now as it was on the day it was posted. It will help your search engine rankings and will bring in high traffic for your website throughout the coming months and years.
What Months Should You Post Certain Content to Social Media?
Learning the best times to post to social media can be helpful but sometimes you might be wondering if certain content does better on certain months. This is what NewsCred looks at and shows the variations of content and the months that did the best. Let me break down their findings to help you learn a few great tidbits of information: (Note that the months are listed from most successful first.)
Fractl and BuzzStream saw that list posts did very well in June, September, and October. They saw that posts referring to travel or entertainment were shared most, accounting for 25 to 32 percent of social shares.
Posts that answer a “why” question were shared more during November, September, and October with 22 percent of the shared posts referring to travel or news.
Videos did great in September, November, and October, especially those with an entertainment or educational factor.
How-to posts were most often shared in October, November, and August with how-to articles in news, entertainment, and business getting the most shares.
Posts answering a “what” question were shared October, November, and August with posts that focused on news, technology, and entertainment accounting for 15 to 26 percent of social shares.
The findings show that October was a very popular month for all social shares with everything but videos ranking in at over 20,000 shares. While this is incredible and a great insight into consumers’ minds, you should make sure that you don’t limit yourself to these findings. You don’t want to keep all of your marketing for fall, nor do you want to ignore certain months entirely. This formula and these findings might not work for your business, which means you need to tweak and change things to find months that are perfect for different content types and social shares. However, this is a great starting point.
Which Platforms are the Best for Social Media Use?
While the NewsCred article does not go on to explain the social platforms you should use, I have found an excellent infographic from QuickSprout. Social media is an interesting marketing format because there are many different variables to consider with each of the major channels. The best social channels to use for businesses that have a B2B model are Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus. These provide you with a quicker access point to your customers and other businesses, helping them find you and choose your business for their needs.
If your business is more visually driven, channels such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest are a great option. You can share pictures of your products with links to blogs, products, or services. You will have a higher likelihood of getting things shared on those channels if you utilize images or videos, providing excellent visual content for your clients.
However, it is important to remember that these suggestions are not for every company on every social channel. Your business could be a B2B model, but you might see more traction on Facebook than you do on Twitter. The best thing to do is choose two or three channels you want to use and start implementing your content strategy, tweaking as you go. Pay attention to your analytics to see which channels are driving more shares and traffic, and consider using those predominately.
How Can You Apply NewsCred’s Findings to Your Campaign?
“This is excellent, but how do I apply this study into my social media campaign?” Don’t worry; I am going to take a look at a few things you can do by following a few interesting points in the NewsCred article.
Re-work Your Posting Times. If you have a set schedule for your blog postings, yet aren’t seeing many, if any, social shares, consider changing to different months and times to find something that works. You should also try to share different content throughout different times of the day and year to get more social shares, especially if you follow the above findings.
Try Out Popular Content Formats. As you can see, multiple content formats can help you get great social shares throughout the year. Play around with list posts, as well as making sure you always answer the “why” and “what” questions your clients will ask. You can also use formats such as videos, creating infographics, and more to help maximize your social reach.
Be Willing to Play With Things to Find Something that Works for You. While this study does shed light on a few things you can implement into your strategy to make it successful, you need to make sure you are willing to play with things first. This study illustrates how things work for these two companies and it might work for you similarly or not at all. Be prepared and willing to see what you need to do to reach out to your audience and give them the best content they want to share. You can do this by asking questions or taking a look at your analytics to see which posts get the most interaction and shares.
Use the Study and Improve Your Social Shares
This study shows that there are a few things you can do to make sure you get great social shares, increasing from what you already have. By implementing a few of the key points into your content strategy, you will be able to see amazing results. If you aren’t too sure if you are able to handle a social media strategy completely, then look no further! Express Writers offers excellent social media content for our clients, making sure you get incredible posts that your readers will love to share. We also provide excellent blog services, helping you get lists, how-to articles, and other content formats to share. Don’t hesitate to ask us your questions by contacting us or commenting below.
In a world where the answer to every unanswerable question is “Google it,” it is easy to see why marketing people really want to be friends with the almighty search engine.
In other terms, Google is the stereotypical popular girl in every high school or frat movie, and companies are the minions hanging on to her every word. If Google says SEO matters, then Company A is going to use SEO as much as possible hoping against hope that Google looks over and finally notices them.
The Story Says: Lose All Your Followers Trying For A Quick Success, Or Gain Steady & Sure Results
And for a while, Google just might. However, if you ever watch all the way to the end of one of those movies, you know there are only two possible endings. The first is that the popular girl turns out to be the bad guy and nobody should have been trying to impress her in the first place. The second is that the popular girl turns out to be a regular girl who doesn’t just want a lot of yes men. She wants a real friend who truly cares about her.
In today’s writing market, we are at the part of the movie where we see Google is really looking for quality friendships (i.e., good writing), not just someone spewing out whatever it is they think Google wants to hear (i.e., bad marketing).
(See, Google, I made you the protagonist, not the villain—your turn to rank me higher.)
Why Getting Ranked Is NOT the Same as Making a Sale
When you want to get ranked highly for a term such as dentists in Detroit, you don’t want to sound like you are trying to get ranked for the term dentists in Detroit. Because if you oversell the fact that you are advertising dentists in Detroit, people might find you when they search dentists in Detroit, but they will think you are the dumbest of all the dentists in Detroit – and who wants a dumb dentist, in Detroit or elsewhere?
When you care more about getting in your keywords and less about writing quality copy people care about, you get writing as seen in the above paragraph, which was probably as annoying to read as it was to write. Nobody is going to trust you or use you if that is how you sound. Good writing trumps bad marketing.
There is an old sales trick that even people who have never worked a day in sales might know: when you are trying to sell someone something, repeat their name a lot so that you remember it because no one wants to buy something from someone who can’t be bothered to learn who they are.
Really good salespeople can weave a name in and out of conversation, and you don’t even realize what is happening. You think, ‘Wow! This guy/gal is great. They get me.’ And before you know it, you’ve got way more wrapping paper or Girl Scout cookies (or whatever else they happen to be pedaling) than you could ever need or want.
Then you’ve got those salespeople who learned this lesson on the first day of class and ran with it. That’s when you get conversations like this:
“Hi, Ethel. It’s nice to meet you, Ethel. How are you doing today, Ethel?”
“Oh. Um. I’m, great. Thanks. And you?”
“That’s great, Ethel. I’m great, too, Ethel. We should get lunch and talk business, Ethel.”
It’s these salespeople that, while certainly never forgotten, make you more likely to believe they are a serial killer or otherwise mentally deranged than make you want to buy their product.
Writing content for content’s sake is analogous to being the crazy, serial killer-type salesperson. Yes, you might get noticed, but who really cares if you scare away all your potential victims, err, I mean clients?
Getting noticed is not the same thing as making a sale. If you really want to sell your content, you have to be like that salesperson who knows how to artfully weave in a customer’s name – or keyword as the case may be – into a conversation in a natural and pleasing manner. You have to take the time to get to know the person (or people) you are selling to and talk to them as if they are actually human beings, because they are, instead of just shouting out a lot of marketing tactics you’ve heard might somehow work and hoping someone hears them. In other words, you have to connect with your audience or you’ll end up sounding like a lunatic.
The Quandary of Quantity Vs. Quality Content
If you have ever looked at an advertisement for a writing position, you tend to notice that terms such as ‘SEO experience’ and ‘quick turnaround’ often find themselves placed higher than the less important qualifications such as ‘good writing.’
Companies that are looking for anybody who happens to have a working computer and is willing to write for practically nothing are relying on the infinite monkey theorem. You’ve probably heard of it. Apparently, if you give a monkey a typewriter and let him hit keys at random for long enough, he’ll eventually type a Shakespearean piece. However, instead of hiring a hundred monkeys and hoping they’ll eventually get you something great, there is a better solution. Just hire Shakespeare (well, a good writer. I don’t think you’ll be able to get a hold of Shakespeare.)
Putting the time and effort into getting a real writer capable of great writing in lesser quantities, is going to pay off a lot more than hiring a bunch of sub-par, pseudo-writers who only offer a lot of content fast. After all, we are still reading Shakespeare today, but I’ve yet to hear of a real monkey who has successfully proven the infinite monkey theorem.
Three Steps to Avoid Creating a Blogs ‘R Us
What you have hopefully gotten from everything I have said is that you cannot purchase a chain-store, one size fits all blog for your company and hope to make it successful. If you want to be a real friend to the popular girl, succeed in salesperson tactics, and stop relying on monkey theorems, then there are a few steps you need to take.
Write for a reader, not for an algorithm. If you write content that you think your customers will really be interested in hearing, guess what? They probably will. Plus, it is likely you’re hitting a bunch of keywords without even trying. If you write for Google, you risk alienating both the search engine giant and your potential audience. So connect with your audience, and show Google you are a true-blue friend – not just a yes man.
Incorporate Google-ranking tips into real writing; don’t create writing to use the tips. When you write something just because you think the words you use will get you high up in a search, people are going to read what you say and be seriously turned off. Don’t ignore SEO, keywords, and other online marketing considerations, but use them in a way that makes you sound like a knowledgeable salesperson, and not a scary maniac.
Use a few skilled writers who will post great content, instead of hiring anybody who’s willing to type for cheap. A bunch of short, not thought-out posts will not get you anywhere. It might be cheap, but it’s still a waste of money. Hiring someone that knows what they are doing might be more expensive now, but it will be more profitable in the long-term.
Consider hiring a professional writing company. They’ll work with you to create the content you need, and they’ll do it with the help of a few good writers, not a room full of typing monkeys.
We all know how important content is to our websites. It helps bring people in, converts visitors to leads and brings in great revenue. There are many awesome tips out there to help people come up with excellent content. However, one thing I’ve noticed recently is how many people still think duplicate content is perfectly fine for their site. But this is a big no-no in the content world, and I am going to take a look at this issue to show you why you need to get rid of duplicate content.
What is Duplicate Content?
Simply put, duplicate content is any content that is the exact same as another. Let’s say you have your home page and about page, and you decided to create information only for the about. This may leave you wondering what to put on the home page, and while you really don’t need much on it, you still might think about copying the about section there. This seems easy and like it can help save you time and money, but the truth is, it can hurt your ranks on Google, drive customers away, and just be an overall problem for your site.
Why Should You Get Rid of Duplicate Content?
There are many different reasons why you should get rid of duplicate content. One of the biggest reasons is that you can become a less trusted source because you do not provide clients with unique, high-quality content. People want to see that you know your stuff and if you’re constantly duplicating your articles or content by others, you will look like you’re just making it up as you go. Some other reasons are:
It Will Get You a Penalty from Google. Another really important reason to get rid of duplicate content is because you can and will, get a penalty from Google. When their algorithms scour Internet-land for awesome web pages and content, they make sure that websites with spam-quality material aren’t ranked. Duplicate content can make your site look like a spam-filled site, even if you are a truly legitimate business. Why would this happen? Because this is something spammers like to do – they see a website or blog, they copy that site or blog, and then they attempt to be successful. Google wanted to stop this and issued a decree that any content that looked manipulative or deceptive would be penalized.
It Makes for a Negative User Experience. I briefly touched on this in the above paragraph, but when you have duplicate content, you’re creating a negative experience for your customers. When clients come to your site, they want to see something that they enjoy and that helps set you apart. If you have the same content on multiple web pages, it will become boring and be an overall negative experience for your readers. Take user experience into mind when you are creating content to help you avoid duplicating anything!
It Doesn’t Help You Stand Out. When you write content, a major goal is to stand out from your competitors and become a trusted source. You want content that is useful and engaging for your readers to drive clicks, engagement, and revenue. However, if you use duplicate content, you are risking losing readers and not converting any leads. In fact, duplicate copy keeps you hidden and you won’t stand out from your competitor, especially if they have unique content on each page. Duplicate content does not only hurt you on ranking with Google, but it also hurts your overall revenue, so don’t be fooled into thinking it will save you money.
How Can You Get Rid of It if Already Published?
Now that I’ve covered why duplicate content is bad, you might be wondering just how to get rid of it. You may have intentionally used duplicate copy or you may be worried you accidentally duplicated content. Either way, there are a few things you can do to get rid of it.
Delete the Duplicate Content. The first, obvious step, is to delete any duplicate copy you know about to get rid of it quickly. This can be troublesome if it is for multiple products or other necessary landing pages, but you can easily rework and rewrite it. You don’t want to leave it up there for much longer, as a precaution, so as soon as you can delete and replace, do so. Just how can you replace it quickly? I am going to take a look at that in my next point.
Get New Content to Replace it. Before or after deleting the duplicate content, you should get new content to replace it. You don’t want to leave your landing pages void of content. However, you might not have the time to rewrite new content. A great way to get awesome, individual content pieces is to hire copywriters to help you create new content that will help you stand out from your competitors.
Get a Content Audit to Find Accidents. Now, what about the unintentional duplicate content? It does happen, but it can be overwhelming not knowing what you should do or how to find it. A great way to find any duplicate content you may be missing is to have a content audit to take stock of your web pages and blogs. Once you’ve done this, you can start finding duplicate content and delete and replace it quickly to get your site back on track.
Get Rid of Duplicate Content and Have the Perfect Site
Duplicate content does happen, especially accidentally, and thankfully Google does seem to understand this. However, you need to make sure that you work hard to have little to no duplicate content on your website. If you are looking for great, unique content to share or to replace existing duplicates, then consider hiring a copywriting agency, such as Express Writers to help cover all bases. This will help you get expertly written content and help you get rid of duplicate content quicker than if you were to take the time and write it yourself. Don’t hesitate to ask us any questions about how we can help you get rid of duplicate content!
Welcome to my Great Content Roundup, folks! Today, I’m looking at a big question that applies to businesses of all sizes.
When do you start promoting yourself (your content, your business) too much?
The only exception I could think of is local ice-cream shops – I probably wouldn’t ever get tired of seeing their posts, but maybe that’s just me.
Recently, I’ve encountered some businesses that over-promoted the “heck outta themselves,” excuse the grammar. I’m talking every HOUR on Twitter they were tweeting about their app. Every other day the rep was messaging me, either on LinkedIn or on my personal email.
Granted, the company had a nice Twitter community going and what looked like some actual real interested followers who were devoted fans—but as a prospective client of theirs, I was turned completely off and decided to tell them to “stop spamming me” a few days ago.
Now this experience was so fresh and real in my mind, as I read content this week I couldn’t help but place it next to what I was reading about. So, let’s delve into:
The Great Content Roundup, Week 9: How Much Is Too Much Promotion?
Social Triggers has a great rule on how to build a blog audience: the 80/20 rule. Spend 80% of your time promoting OTHERS’ content; and 20% of the time promoting your own. This is exactly what we do at Express Writers (view our Twitter as proof); and we connect with new followers and great industry friends all the time.
80/20, folks. Those that flip this for 80% self-promotion will soon be labeled a spammer.
Neil Patel mentions somewhere in his very useful post How To Inspire Your First Time Blog Visitors To Trust Youthat you absolutely have the right to share your own content on your profiles. I agree. Um, hello: you own the profile—and you should use it for your advantage!
But, he also says this: Blogging is not a one-way street. It’s an exchange between you and your readers. I think this applies to all content you publish. He says you should listen more, and answer questions. (Brian Dean at Backlinko is a very successful example. He emails his new signups with this question: “Reply to this email and tell me one thing you’re struggling with. Even if it’s teeny tiny.”) Patel’s post here is golden.
Buffer’s Guide on Content Promotion: How Content Promotion Works for Blogs Big and Small: Our 11 Favorite Content Distribution Strategies. This is an amazing piece, I highly recommend reading it through. The part where the author follows up and emails the person he mentions in his blog for a kudos, thank-you, and new loyal fan—GENIUS! Might I say. And I’m always saying you should mention your influencers. Also, #6 – the top content community is Inbound – I’m on Inbound and can attest to it as a wonderful community gaining us new fans, followers, and engagement overall. The only downside to all this is time. It’s going to take a LOT of time for one person or one marketer to follow all the steps. I recommend involving a team in this process.
