While PageRank was a huge thing in SEO for years, it’s recently been laid to rest.
This happened in March of 2016, when Google killed off its Toolbar PageRank feature.
While PageRank didn’t have a huge user base before it was axed, there were a small handful of marketers and SEOs still using it, and those people will now need to find something to fill its place. The good news is that the death of PageRank is just another indicator of Google’s ongoing commitment to a “quality over quantity” model, wherein amazing content is rewarded.
The other piece of great news is that the post-PageRank world is anything but a desolate wasteland. Quite the opposite, in fact!
While PageRank had its devotees, most experts agree that it was an outdated and inefficient tool that wasn’t keeping up with the trajectory of online content and user experience. As such, it’s actually a good thing that it’s fallen by the wayside and made room for newer, more intuitive tools to take its place. Alexa Ranking and Topical Trust Flow are two modern quality gauges that are the perfect candidates to restore reliable trust metrics and help both marketers and consumers interact with more reliable content.
We’re here today to talk about both. Ready?
The Slow Death of PageRank
If you’re sad to hear about PageRank heading out, you’re not the only one. Google had been slowly killing the tool for years, though.
Here’s a brief history:
PageRank was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Founders of Google, at Stanford University in 1996. Originally, the tool was part of a larger research product relating to search and how it could be improved. At the time of its development, PageRank was revolutionary and heralded a whole new era, when web pages would be judged by the quality of their content rather than the concentration of their keywords.
The service eventually launched, with Google as its only user. Over time, though, other search engines saw that PageRank was improving accuracy and authority, and they started adopting the system into their algorithms. The program was short-lived, though, and soon started to come under fire. Search Engine Roundtable reports that, in 2007, Google asked its webmasters to provide some feedback about the idea of axing PageRank. In 2009, Google stopped showing data from PageRank in its Webmaster Tools section.
In 2013, Matt Cutts officially alluded to the death of PR:
By 2016, PageRank was on its way out, and SEOs and marketers everywhere were turning to the next reliable quality metric. Although some were sad about the end of PageRank, most people realized that, as good as PageRank had been, it had its drawbacks.
Namely: quality could be faked, and even spammy web pages and websites could have PageRank if they knew how to game the system.
These shortcomings set the stage perfectly for the next big thing, lurking just over the horizon.
Topical Trust Flow: What You Need to Know
The thing that first stepped up to take PageRank’s place is known as Topical Trust Flow, a tool created by Majestic SEO. Essentially, Topical Trust Flow determines how trustworthy and authoritative a URL or domain is within its niche while also determining what the topic of the content is all about. It does this by determining a site’s topical relevance based on the links it enjoys with other relevant sites.
Unlike PageRank, the quality metrics within Trust Flow are difficult to fake, since it’s actually the content that links to a page that determines its Topical Trust Flow.
Topical Trust Flow came at just the right time: with more than fifty million content shares every day, and 58% of consumers reporting they trust editorial content, (according to Nielsen), the web was in dire need of a more reliable trust metric than PageRank.
How Does Trust Flow Work?
Trust Flow is one of Majestic’s most useful tools for SEO practitioners. Flow is calculated using a set of authoritative seed websites as a base. The further away your domain lies from those seed sites, the lower the Trust Flow is.
The set of authority sites measured link out to other great sites, which link out to yet more sites. The whole system works like an underground root system, relying on a complex network of connections and inbound messages to determine stability and reliability. Here’s a diagram from seoworx.net.au to demonstrate how it works:
If you’re still struggling to understand Trust Flow, think of it like this:
Topical Trust Flow measures the quality of inbound links based on the quality of the links pointing to the site your links come from.
If every one of your inbound links come from sites that already have high Trust Flow, your domain is also going to have a high Trust Flow.
This is because the sites your links come from are seen as reputable and reliable, thanks to the inbound links they’ve received.
Trust Flow can be a tough metric to manipulate, making it almost impossible to fake or inflate. As such, it’s a much more reliable trust metric than PageRank, which relied on data that could easily be faked.
3 Facts to Know About Topical Trust Flow
Here are three key truths about Trust Flow and how it operates in the complex online world:
1. Trust Flow Relies on Relevance
A topically-matched trust flow that is high means the sites your links are coming from also have links that are topically relevant.
2. Trust Flow Rewards Trustworthy Links
A high trust flow means your inbound links come from sites that have trustworthy links.
3. Trust Flow Looks for Topical Similarities
A domain’s ability to rank increases when it has topically matched links that come from websites that have topically matched links, too.
To help you further understand how these truths play out in the Trust Flow algorithm, here’s a diagram from Majestic SEO:
How Trust Flow Supports 5 Crucial Foundations of SEO
While it might be easy to write Trust Flow off as just another reliability metric, it’s actually a tool that takes into account the changing climate of the online world.
When Trust Flow was developed, Google’s evaluation process for websites was shifting away from simple variables, like keyword inclusion, and toward more complex metrics, like quality, relevance, and user-experience.
The Trust Flow metric understands this (since it was born alongside it) and allows site rankings based on value, which is, after all, the most important metric of the modern world. What’s more, Trust Flow supports the five main SEO trends of today. These are:
1. Inbound Links
For years, search engines have been shifting toward prioritizing sites that earn lots of high-quality inbound links. Not only is this is a sign of relevance, but it’s also an indicator that a site is high-quality, especially if the sites linking to it are high-quality. Trust Flow is built on this, and it will continue to reward sites that earn inbound links in the coming years.
2. User Experience
While the old PageRank model didn’t think much about a user’s experience on a given page, Trust Flow takes user behavior and mobile optimization into account, rewarding sites that are easy to navigate and mobile-friendly.
3. Valuable Content
The very name “Trust Flow” indicates that valuable, relevant, trustworthy content is what search engines now want to rank. Create more of this, and the Trust Flow gods will smile on you.
4. Social Media
As social media becomes an ever-more influential ranking metric, companies are starting to see that the human signals produced on sites like Facebook are having large impacts on their content strategies.
5. Increased Importance of Earned Links
There will always be people who take the shortest route possible and buy links. It’s getting harder and harder to rank with that approach, though, especially since algorithms like Trust Flow reward links that are earned rather than purchased. This means things like guest blogging, referrals, and organic mentions are the most valuable forms of links out there.
5 Valuable Ways to Start Capitalizing on Trust Flow Today
While the introduction of Trust Flow shook up the SEO world, most professionals have found that the system actually provides many more benefits than PageRank. With that in mind, here are 5 smart ways SEOs can start capitalizing on the Trust Flow system today:
1. Use Trust Flow to Locate Top Influencers
Social signals from platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and Facebook are starting to play an increased role in search results, according to a Search Metrics Ranking Factor. This is making it easier to track down and connect with authority figures and top brands in your industry.
2. Use Trust Flow to Increase Conversions on Social Ads
If you’ve been having a tough time boosting the conversion rates on your social ads, you’ll love Trust Flow. Google’s display network handles more than 1 trillion impressions each month, and managed placements will now allow you to hand-select the sites where you want to display ads.
3. Optimize Your Content for Inbound Links
Remember that Trust Flow places priority on trustworthy, topically-related links. With this in mind, focus on optimizing your content. For what it’s worth, content with more than 3,000 words earns twice as many shares as shorter content!
4. Play on the Strength of Backlinks
Backlinks play a major role in Trust Flow, so make sure you’re making the most of your networking and connections to earn as many backlinks as possible to your site.
5. Use Trust Flow as Inspiration to Become an Authority in Your Niche
Trust Flow places massive importance on topical relevance, so use expert writing to showcase your knowledge in your industry. The more authoritative and relevant your content is, the more likely your pages will be to earn a high Trust Flow ranking.
Diving Into Alexa Ranking: A 101
At the risk of sounding a little overwhelming, Trust Flow isn’t the only player in this game. There’s also Alexa Rank – a relatively new trust metric, my team here at Express Writers started using Alexa in place of the MozBar to learn about a page’s authority.
Unfortunately, the MozBar, like PageRank, had a few issues. It almost never worked, froze up constantly, plus there were rumors about inaccuracy in the actual numbers – inflation by spammy sites.
While Moz has made a very public effort to address the issues with the MozBar, we’ve found Alexa Ranking to be a much more reliable and valuable trust metric.
Here’s some background:
Alexa is an Amazon subsidiary founded in 1996. Thought of as a pioneer in analytical insight, Alexa combines information from the browsing behavior of people in the Alexa global data panel to offer information about traffic estimates and PageRank. To put it simply, Alexa serves as a representation of all the people using the web. It’s basically a census for the online world!
Daily updates. Unlike some other trust metric tools, Alexa’s Traffic Ranks look back at data collected over the prior three-month period, and are updated daily.
This makes them highly comprehensive and, even better, incredibly accurate. Alexa does have a funny quirk, though: it’s the complete opposite of Google’s PageRank.
In Alexa, the lower a site’s score, the better it’s doing in terms of traffic and authority.
How Alexa Ranks Sites
Alexa uses a combination of pageviews and unique visitor numbers to rank a site.
“Unique Visitors” is the number of Alexa users who navigate to a site on any given day and “pageviews” indicates how many Alexa users put in URL requests for a given site. The ranking from there on out is pretty simple: the site with the most visitors and pageviews is ranked #1 on a worldwide and country-specific basis.
While Alexa provides intensely accurate rankings, it does only rank domains, which means you won’t find rankings for sub-domains or pages on a site.
How to Locate Your Alexa Rank
Know what else I love about Alexa?
It’s dead simple.
The easiest way to use it is to head to the ranking site, which you can find at http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo. Once you get to the site’s homepage, you can enter the URL you’d like to evaluate.
For example, here’s what Express Writers looks like (not too shabby as of March, 2017):
As another example of a site climbing close to the 1 (best ever) ranking, here’s Inc.com:
From there, Alexa will give you information on the site’s popularity in a given country and, if you pay for the premium version, insights about daily and monthly site visits and more.
Another Tool to Find Alexa: Use SEOquake
If you prefer not to visit the Alexa ranking site every time you need to evaluate a URL, download SEOquake.
SEOquake is a free tool that downloads right into your web browser and sets up in a matter of seconds.
When you Google URLs, SEOquake will give you their Alexa rank, as well as other valuable authority metrics. While SEOquake can look a bit intimidating at first, it’s a simple tool to use and can integrate with other tools, like SEMrush to provide even deeper trust metrics.
Establishing Site Authority: The Methods Have Changed but the Practice Remains Critical
While many people wonder why it’s so important to gauge a page’s quality before linking to it, content that draws on valuable, relevant content is deemed by both users and search engines as more valuable. While PageRank laid the foundation for this type of evaluation, it’s since fallen out of vogue.
Fortunately, newer and more advanced tools have stepped up to take its place.
Trust Flow has helped the web shift toward a “quality over quantity” model and made it more difficult for sites to fake quality.
Alexa Ranking, on the other hand, has provided a unique and up-to-date way for marketers, writers, and SEOs to immediately gauge a page’s relevance with the web as a whole.
These tools, along with the shifting attitude toward quality content, have made it easier than ever before to create reputable material that links into the wealth of helpful, relevant, trustworthy content on the web.
When writers and SEOs rely on quality content, the entire online atmosphere as a whole benefits from it.
Looking for help managing and improving your online content? Browse our Content Shop today to find the perfect package for your company!
Before Christmas, I was lucky enough to sit down with more than a dozen experts in our online marketing industry for some insider predictions into the state of content marketing and social media in 2017.
From entrepreneurs to leading consultants, speakers and authors, these experts each had something unique to add to the roundup below that offers us content creators serious guidance on how to create content in the New Year, and what to expect of the content marketing landscape as a whole.
Our design team did a fabulous job taking the predictions and putting it into an infographic. Read below the image for the full expert quotes – the infographic is an abridged version. Quotes and experts are placed in no particular order. Feel free to link to and share our post with credit back to Express Writers and this link.
2017 Expert Content Marketing & Social Predictions Roundup: The Full Story
“2016 was the year of BIG. Many content creators came out of the woodwork creating HUGE posts à la 715 and one third reasons why you don’t have enough time to write more content.
But the majority of the posts lacked high quality content.
So let’s say that in 2017 your competitors will do this too (if they aren’t already). But this time they will add the high quality part. How the heck do you stand out with your content?
The businesses that will get the biggest ROI from content marketing in 2017, will be those who are able to:
Produce content in their own voice (this is your #1 unique value proposition that your competitors can’t copy)
Create high-quality content that actually solves the readers’ problem
Focus on cooperating with influencers within your industry
If you take the three bullet points above and add dominating Facebook Live, it´s like pouring rocket fuel on a bonfire. It will go BOOM! (in a good way).” – Tor Refsland Follow on Twitter: @TorRefsland
Award-winning Blogger, Digital Marketing Strategist & Business Coach, timemanagementchef.com
“Leading content marketers will be delivering 3 key things in 2017: 1) personalized, 2) visual, and relevant content in a 3) specialized niche that they can own. Visualization, personalization and specialization!
“The marketing leadership mandate for 2017 is transforming the entire company culture. Consumers and buyers are tuning out (or blocking completely) self-serving promotion and ads. Leading marketers in 2017 will strive to create a culture focused on delivering value to their customers that translates into better marketing results. This is content marketing! The tip: focus on being human. Tap into your employees, customers and partners to tell THEIR stories. – Michael Brenner Follow on Twitter:@BrennerMichael
Speaker, Best-Selling Author of The Content Formula, CEO of Marketing Insider Group
“I definitely see a huge shift to visual storytelling over the last year and expect that to continue in 2017. Not only have visual social media sites like Snapchat and Instagram continued to grow, but we are seeing a clear shift in the way people prefer to tell their day to day stories, which is more visual. There is definitely a challenge for companies to see how their traditional marketing efforts will fit into a purely visual medium, but I think companies are going to have to get creative and get engaged, because I don’t see that trend going away anytime soon!” – Brent Csutoras Follow on Twitter:@brentcsutoras
Founder, CEO at Pixel Road Designs, Speaker, Content Marketer, Managing Partner at Search Engine Journal
“I predict there will be a backlash against safe, mediocre content. Five percent of all branded content attracts 90 percent of the engagement. That’s not only a sign that you can leave your competitors in the shadows if you create something great, but also a clear indication that mediocre, safe content doesn’t do much for you. If you’re not adding anything new to the world and telling a great story in 2017, it’s just not worth pressing publish.
Also, distribution will be a much bigger focus. At many companies, content is silo’d away from social and paid media. As a result, there are a lot of brands creating content and just praying that people will magically discover it. That’s not how media works. Paid distribution will increasingly become a big buzzword this year.
Tip: Don’t hire a career marketer to run your content program. Hire an editor or producer who’s built and sustained a large audience before. That’s the common theme I see across 99 percent of all successful content marketing programs.” – Joe Lazauskas Follow on Twitter: @JoeLazauskas
Editor-In-Chief at Contently
“My prediction is actually the exact same as last year’s.
More companies then ever are investing into content marketing and it’s making it incredibly difficult to stand out from the crowd. The only way to do this is by creating high quality content. I call it epic content but it also goes by the name 10x content.
In 2017 people are going to catch on and flock towards epic content.” – Sujan Patel Follow on Twitter: @SujanPatel
Growth Marketer, GM at Web Profits, Entrepreneur
“Business leaders are beginning to understand the necessity of holistic content marketing practices. They get that it’s not just about the perfect press release, but the entire approach. I credit this largely to the omnipresence of HubSpot’s inbound marketing principles and 2016’s push towards storytelling. As a result, I predict digital marketing spend will diversify in 2017, and we’re already starting to see that in sales at Express Writers.” – Tara Clapper Follow on Twitter:@irishtara
Content Development Specialist, Express Writers
Speaker, Writer, Editor
“More and more data is collected through a brand’s digital marketing efforts. Brands and agencies will further personalize and customize offerings to their customers. With the trends of major e-commerce sites opening physical stores (Amazon, Warby Parker, Birchbox, etc.), brands need to accelerate the integration of the online digital experience with that of the offline physical experience. The challenge is to seamlessly integrate the online and offline experience by leveraging and hiding complicated technologies from your customers. It will be important to understand the metrics of your company’s “outbound channels” and work with your marketing peers to co-own some of these goals.” – Pam Didner Follow on Twitter:@pamdidner
Content Marketing Expert | Author | Speaker | Adjunct Professor www.pamdidner.com
“The biggest content marketing trend I see is influencer promotion…but not as we know it. I believe more brands will begin ‘buying’ influencers so they are exclusive to them over a period of time…the power of that? Priceless!
Digital marketing is becoming more difficult each year…there’s so much noise, and always more competition. To rise above that, it’s the influencers who hold the targeted, engaged audiences, and loyal followers listen to their inspirations infinitely more than they do a Google or Facebook ad.” – Sam Hurley Follow on Twitter:@ Sam___Hurley
Social Influencer, #1 Digital Marketer, Founder https://optim-eyez.co.uk
“For 2016 I urged my audience to concentrate on quality of content over quantity in order to differentiate themselves in the increasingly overcrowded content marketing space. For 2017 I stick by that priority, but based on my experience in the past year I now temper it by saying, “Never sacrifice quality for quantity, but still strive for a consistent quantity of content.” By “consistent” I mean regular. The cold, hard truth of content marketing is that no matter how mind-blowing your last piece of content was, if you go silent for too long, you become forgotten. At Stone Temple we’ve adopted a strategy of planning for one “blockbuster” piece of content per month, while filling the in-between times with content that is still quality and useful, but easier to produce, such as content repurposed from our blockbusters (for example, a short video covering one aspect of a lengthy data study).” – Mark Traphagen Follow on Twitter: @marktraphagen
Senior Director of Brand Evangelism for Stone Temple, Speaker & Author
“In 2017, brands will build or buy their own media properties to disintermediate the giants of search and social.
What Joe Pulizzi calls ‘rented land’ is getting too expensive. Own your own audience!
Live video and interactive, data-gathering content will go big. The first because it’s cool and easy; the second because it will drive far better targeting (which always boosts ROI).
2017 tip for B2B marketers: double your efforts in bringing marketing automation, web analytics and CRM together so you can track content success.
Integrating marketing silos at the data layer will become a major imperative — brands need to own their own data and manage it like the strategic asset that it is.” – Doug Kessler Follow on Twitter: @dougkessler
Creative Director & Co-Founder of Velocity
“I foresee 2017 being a year where more content marketers stop wasting so much time and money on things that aren’t working. A ton of companies get little or no traction from certain tactics and channels—even some of the most popular ones, such as blogs and Facebook. I’m not suggesting you stop creating content, but I am suggesting to try new and different approaches when the ones you currently use aren’t producing traffic, leads, sales or whatever type of results mean something to your business.
It’s so much harder to stand out when you focus strictly on doing the same things as your competitors. It’s time to get creative. When everyone’s zigging, you need to zag.” – Barry Feldman Follow on Twitter: @FeldmanCreative
Digital Marketer, Author, Marketing Consultant at feldmancreative.com
“Today, marketers know they should do content marketing, but still not how to do it best. I think that 2017 will be the year of problem-solution growth and development in content marketing, as well as the growth of unique content types and outstanding writing with SEO as an afterthought, the reader as a forethought.
Solutions (unique tools, creative companies, brilliant thinkers behind them) will rise to the need of solving the ever-growing problem of too much content, not enough strategy.
Content will rise to the occasion, as well. We have a ton of platforms. Noise is growing. Content is multiplying. Rise above the noise by standing out with unique content types (try commissioning a hand-drawn, Adobe illustrated custom art piece for your next blog!), and creating your best content. Take a stand. Be yourself. Do insider research for your stance that takes you weeks to complete. Marketers will start thinking of SEO less, readers, more, and invest in content that truly stands out.”
– Julia McCoy Follow on Twitter: @JuliaEMcCoy
CEO at Express Writers, Best-selling Author of So You Think You Can Write?, Content Marketer
“I believe artificial intelligence will start to have a significant impact on content marketing in 2017. Content marketing is becoming more and more complex. Creating great relevant content is still a major challenge but the sad news is that it’s not enough. Not only do you need more and more content but you also need to optimize its lifecycle across multiple channels like the various social networks, email and SEO. Trying to do everything manually is overwhelming at best and impossible for many under-resourced marketers. Smart marketers will leverage AI not just to automate various tasks but also to have insights on what content to create, how and when to distribute it and how to optimize its impact.” – Guillaume Decugis Follow on Twitter: @gdecugis
Co-Founder & CEO at Scoopit, Entrepreneur
“I predict that Instagram will continue to grow as a preferred broadcasting channel.
Every business, brand and entrepreneur has the opportunity to use Instagram to amplify & promote authentic, entertaining, fun, creative content. Focus on the person who you are trying to do business and think about what they need. Not what you want to create. It’s all about connecting on an intimate level and this can now be done through Instagram direct messaging, Instagram Stories and Instagram Live.” — Sue Zimmerman Follow on Twitter: @SueBZimmerman #TheInstagramExpert Speaker, Consultant, Top @CreativeLive Instructor
“In 2017, I think accompanying media and visuals with content will continue to be extremely popular. Think explainer videos, gifs, infographics, social media images. People are raising their expectations when it comes to the way content looks, and it’s up to us as marketers to continue experimenting with how to present content that gets our audience’s attention.
In the New Year, I think video will continue to blow up. I see more and more people using Boomerang to create looping mini videos for Instagram, and live video on Facebook and YouTube (and now Instagram) will continue to be popular. Being live brings a whole new set of exciting challenges and content marketers should be thinking about how to best use live video, as well as thinking about how they repurpose it or tie it into their other efforts.
Continue to look for new apps and services to try, in 2017. There are new things popping up every day. For instance, I just heard about Ripl a few months ago and can’t wait to start using it. In addition, while you are learning and trying new things, don’t forget about your old content. Most website traffic comes from evergreen content pieces that could be months or years old. Set up a strategy to continuously improve these pieces and re-share them regularly on social media.
Kelsey: Please link back to MoxieDot.com (you can mention SEJ too, but I’d love a link to MoxieDot instead of SEJ :)) – Kelsey Jones
Follow on Twitter: @wonderwall7
Executive Editor at Search Engine Journal, #MarketingNerds Host, Founder at MoxieDot
“Predictions are difficult but we can be sure more content will be produced in 2017 than in any previous year. I suspect we will see more content in every format but particularly video. I believe marketers will act more like publishers and hence increase content volumes. Michael Brenner has recently made a great contribution to this debate.
Content marketers have to reach people, which means you have to be where they hang out. Pew Research have shown that this is primarily Facebook and their data shows Facebook’s dominance is continuing to grow. The data also shows that over 89% of people that use LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter also use Facebook and they use it more frequently. Thus I think we will see an increased focus on Facebook as the most important distribution and engagement platform, and increasingly see it used by B2B marketers.
Content marketing is about building an audience. Thus understanding your audience, the questions they ask and the issues they face is critical if you are to produce valuable and helpful content for them. Personally to break through the noise I think you need a strategy which combines producing regular helpful content with more infrequent blockbuster or ten times content. This might be a major research study or comprehensive guide which moves the needle. Something that has longevity and attracts links as well as shares.” – Steve Rayson Follow on Twitter: @steverayson
Director at BuzzSumo, Content Marketer, Entrepreneur
If you spent any time in marketing circles this year, you probably heard the phrase “semantic search” tossed around in conversation quite a bit.
But what in the world is semantic search, and how does it impact SEO?
If this is a question you’ve asked, you’re in the right place.
Semantic search was a big trend in 2016, but it isn’t new. It did, however, rise as a content marketing trend throughout this year. And guess what? Going forward, it’s going to continue to have a major impact on the way content marketers achieve success in the SERPs.
Today, I’m here to take it apart, tell you how to best use it in content creation, and how it will impact content development now and in the future.
[bctt tweet=”How do #semantic search trends impact content creation? Learn in @JuliaEMcCoy’s guide” username=”ExpWriters”]
What is Semantic Search?
In order to fully understand semantic search, let’s back up a bit to the basics of algorithms and how they work, and then explore semantics as it relates to Google searches.
First, Understanding the Different Shades (Algorithms) of Google
Since the inception of our search friend known as Google, the internet know-it-all has attempted to move search results into a more natural-sounding realm. Part of that strategy falls under the idea of semantic search and machine learning algorithms like RankBrain.
In machine learning, a computer basically teaches itself how to do something, and RankBrain is just one component of Google’s search algorithm program.
When we use Google to search for something, there are potentially millions of webpages that can provide a solution. Algorithms are the computer formulas that take our questions and turn them into the answers we are looking for.
Past algorithms that Google has used include:
Panda (Source): In 2011, Google updated search filters to stop sites with poor quality content from showing up in top search results.
Penguin (Source): Penguin was launched in 2012 to catch sites that appeared to be spamming its search results in order to boost Google rankings.
Hummingbird (Source): Launched in 2013, Hummingbird was designed to sort through information and deliver the best results–the name came from the speed of the algorithm.
After the launch of Hummingbird, users may have noticed that Google was offering more precise answers to search queries. The update was one of the biggest overhauls to its search engine and it allowed Google to provide faster answers to questions and rank them according to the index.
Semantics: Did You Really Say What You Meant to Say?
Now, let’s move onto semantics.
Merriam-Webster defines the word “semantics” as the study of meanings.
In the field of linguistics, semantics is all about the logic behind the meaning of natural and artificial words, signs, and sentence structure, whether it’s a spoken language or that of computer programming.
A famous author penned the following, and I feel that it quite adequately sums up semantics:
“Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not, or that you feel good this morning, or that it is a morning to be good on?” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
In other words, what are you really trying to say?
Check out how this works when you type a question in Google. I love how Google is smart enough to correct bad spelling (Semantics FTW!):
Semantics: Going Behind the Search
For online content and its goals, semantic search involves the use of quality resources (and not just keywords) to perform a search and provide the best results.
Here’s just how (creepily?) knowledgable Semantics is in its inner workings.
It knows your history and uses it: semantic search takes the details of a user’s history and offers back the most relevant results.
It knows logic and deciphers meanings: Semantic search looks for the logic, or intent, behind what a searcher is looking for in their quest for information. It is about going beyond the traditional definition and moving towards the motivation behind a searcher’s request.
Rather than searching for what someone literally types in (as in, misspelled words), Google semantics uses a complex system of algorithms and prediction to make a guess as to what we actually mean, and then looks for the most relevant content.
Ever feel like the search box is reading your mind? Thank semantics.
Examples of Semantic Search
Whether we know it or not, semantics plays a part in every search we perform. In his post over at Crazy Egg, Neil Patel gives us some good examples of common semantic search, something we can all relate to in our everyday lives.
1. Conversational queries
We ask, Google answers. In this case, rather than provide us with every website that answers the question, “how do I bake?” or the words, “Christmas cookies,” semantic search works to first give us the directions, then relevant recipes.
2. Auto-corrected misspellings
As we showed in the example above, it corrects misspellings. (I think that’s pretty cool.)
Here’s another example.
It’s safe to assume we all have enough Christmas “cookys”. After correcting for the misspelling, we have ideas for a Christmas cookie swap and the Best Christmas Cookie Recipes for 2016.
3. Information shown as graphics
Relevant images are provided as part of the answer. Now, if only my Christmas cookies turned out like those.
3 Key Ways to Create Content With Semantic Search Standards in Mind
The challenge in our field comes when we sit down to create the content our readers are looking for, and we forget the importance of staying relevant and natural. All in all, it’s simple (but in reality and the work/time/skill involved, not).
1. Stay away from subpar content that isn’t readable: invest in quality.
Here’s the thing…
Writing with Google Semantics in mind doesn’t really mean NEW advice for us content creators.
It’s simple: write more for your reader. Why? Google Semantics will now (very quickly) identify, and then disqualify, keyword-stuffed content and spammy articles. Poor keyword usage won’t rank well.
And, as we showed above, grammar is checked too by the new Nazi in town (Semantics). So, check grammar, link quality, and spelling for mistakes. Consider making sure you have both a copywriter AND a proofreader on your projects. Spend time to create attractive and engaging headlines that invite readers in and makes them want to stay.
Deliver quality content on a consistent basis and increase your chances of return visitors (Kissmetrics). Post more than once a day and up the potential for more unique views and inbound links.
Keep information scannable and concise, not in long paragraphs bogged down by too much information. While you’re at it, absolutely forget link-generating software and article spinners. Semantics will have none of it.
2. Be authoritative in your content.
As we look to the future with Semantics and Google, the talk is all about the use of artificial intelligence. Google has already unveiled its virtual assistant, which the CEO of Google describes as a “conversational assistant” so users can have an “ongoing two-way dialog.”
AI is the next step in our journey toward advanced technology, another reminder that our search queries need an expert on the other end to provide an answer. Those answers come from the quality content that is provided by authorities in the field.
That would be you, content creator.
You have to decide what you want to be known for, which keywords you want to rank, and how to become known as an expert in your own field. It helps to consider questions like:
How does my audience interact?
Who are they following?
What questions are my readers asking, and am I providing the expert advice they need?
Here at Express Writers, we know the future is headed in the direction of expert content more than ever, which is why I created authoritative content and trained a select group of expert team writers on creating it, this year. It’s the best content we’ve ever offered, and it matches every standard Semantics puts out. Check out Authority Content in the Content Shop.
3. Go au natural in your online language.
Focus on being conversational, not stiff. There is a pretty good chance no robot is going to be ingesting your content anytime soon, so use natural SEO writing as your main language.
Remember that it’s people first, so relevance is key. Readers will be drawn to the answers to their questions and interesting content that they can share, tweet, and repost.
Keywords are still important, but if it makes content sound less organic, it won’t work. Overusing keywords only makes content look unappealing and forced. And since it hurts more than helps, it’s a waste of time to begin with (read more about that over at Smart Blogger).
Will Semantic Search Be Important in 2017?
It’s clear to see that Google has more trust issues than a Real Housewife.
Keyword-stuffed content? Low-quality articles? Not happening.
Now that it’s out in the open, Rule #1 for content development going into 2017 is that writers must be consistent in trying to gain the search engine’s trust. If you are a new business or new website, it might take a while to break into the front-page rankings, and that’s okay.
Give it time. Practice consistency.
Algorithms were built not to discourage us, but to weed out the bad guys and give us a chance. The semantic search is continuing to go through the fine-tuning process, and it will remain an important component of content development in 2017.
4 Things to Remember As We Progress in An Age of Semantic Search
As we are looking to update our game plans in this next year, there are some things that every writer would be wise to remember, especially as we work to develop content in an age of semantic search and SEO.
Be reader-centric.
Stay away from keyword stuffing.
Be patient and consistent.
Produce quality, not necessarily quantity.
The one question that a semantic search asks during the query process is, “what is the user’s intent?”
In our desire to produce quality content, this is the question worth asking of ourselves as we create content in 2017.
Today, we’re living in a time when entrepreneurs are everywhere, and it’s exciting. As we head into 2017, the rise of entrepreneurs is seriously growing.
While starting a business used to be something reserved for those with extensive training or excess family money, just laying around and waiting to be spent, entrepreneurship has become something that everyone can access.
As a result, companies like Facebook, Snapchat, Dollar Shave Club, StitchFix and – hey – Express Writers! – has popped up as a result.
Today, however, people who are trying to get startups off the ground are struggling to figure out where to best invest their efforts, and which type of work will pay off most seriously down the road. Fortunately, the answer is straightforward: content marketing.
Those doing the “side hustle” will SERIOUSLY benefit from a blog and a web presence (and social media), aka, content marketing. Think about it for a moment: content marketing is low-cost compared to traditional advertising, it’s meant for the social media age, it performs well with customers who want to develop honest and long-lasting relationships with the companies they frequent, and some of it can even be done yourself, within reason.
Today, we’re here to talk about why content marketing is an entrepreneur’s best bet in terms of marketing, and how it can help new businesses grow from the ground up. Read on!
Content: The Entrepreneur’s Lifeboat
Content is the one thing that will work when virtually nothing else does for the entrepreneur. Think about it: most forms of traditional marketing are expensive and time-consuming. While large enterprises might have the budget and the in-house staff to accommodate that, entrepreneurs seldom do, and content marketing can be much more accessible.
Although content marketing costs 62% less than traditional advertising, it generates triple the leads, which makes it an astoundingly perfect option for marketers who want to spread the word about their startups online. What’s more, since breaking into content marketing doesn’t require a huge staff, it’s easy to DIY some of it on your own, saving yourself money and learning something new in the process.
By developing an online presence, entrepreneurs can build their brand story, connect with their customers, and set themselves apart from their competitors. A social media presence can also serve to expand your reach and make it easier for you to connect with your followers – both online and in person.
7 Ways Content Marketing is Perfect Marketing for the Entrepreneur
Regardless of whether your startup sells tangible goods or services, here are seven incredibly strong benefits content marketing has to offer for entrepreneurs.
1. Content Marketing is Amazingly Cost Effective
Entrepreneurs rarely have a ton of money to start out with–unless they walked into inheritances like the Rich Kids of Beverly Hills did. 😛
But truly: self-startups don’t usually have an unlimited reservoir of funds. It’s usually the opposite. Funds are low, time is tight, resources slim. I began Express Writers with $75–trust me! I know what it’s like to start with nothing.
Enter content marketing as an effective way at building a brand and starting out when you’re doing the side hustle, trying to build your dream biz while you work on leaving your 9-5 that pays the bills.
Check this out. From one blog post (roughly a $50 investment, between resources and my time), I gained $5000 back – a 100x return on investment. A warm lead walked in from my blog, and converted on our content services at that amount. Proof that content marketing can be a strong endeavor for startups and those trying to brand themselves with limited finances.
To repeat the cycle that I created, you want to focus on these three things:
Building your presence online (your website, starting a blog). Getting off the ground is key here!
Consistency. Build up that presence, don’t just start it. Blogging at least 2x/week, minimum, and pairing up social media to your content presence, is a good consistency to start with. (We blog up to 5x/week for maximum outreach and SEO results.)
Guest blog. Outreach and start putting together a list of key sites you’d like to blog on. Presence there is a tremendous key to the ROI of your content marketing. (My 100x ROI featured in the graphic above came from my column on SiteProNews.)
2. Content marketing helps you develop your unique brand voice
Today, the startups that make it big are the ones who know how to talk to their audiences like nobody else does – in their content, bleeding all the way through social media posts, pulsing through video marketing, shining through blog posts. The voice you establish in your content marketing is key to helping you stand out online.
Take, for example, Dollar Shave Club. Witty, a little edgy, and funny through and through, this is a startup that’s achieved billion-dollar valuation because of its content marketing.
Without content marketing, it’s tough to spread your voice the way Dollar Shave Club has done. In fact, it’s tough to be heard at all. Content is the one central factor that allows marketers to be heard in various places across the web, and it’s the one guaranteed way for small business owners and founders to showcase their unique brand voice to all the critical customers out there who want to listen.
To succeed with content marketing, founders must first have an idea of their overarching brand message and how best to leverage it. This will help people connect with the message and will make it easier for readers and customers to connect with online information. It will also help produce continuity in brand messaging, which will make it easier for a startup to grow in the coming years.
3. Content marketing can welcome people into your world
As a founder, you live a life that people are interested in being a part of. Even if you’ve never met many of your customers personally, they want to know who you are, how you come up with your products, where you work, and who you work with. By giving them these details in the form of content marketing materials or social media updates, you can help develop bonds between your company and its customers, and build ongoing relationships that will serve to uplift both your employees and your clients now and in the future.
To leverage your content marketing to make the most of this, use platforms like Periscope to share live-stream, behind-the-scenes videos or to provide exclusive glimpses into products or launches. Your customer will thank you, and you’ll develop a devoted following.
4. Content marketing can enhance engagement
Every entrepreneur wants a more engaged audience, and content marketing can help. Critical to building ongoing relationships with your audience, engagement is one of the necessary offshoots of content marketing. To boost engagement, post frequent blog posts on topics relevant to your audience and engage with your social accounts regularly. In addition to increasing your SEO (more on this in a second) and building your online presence, this will also render you better prepared to reach your customers in the ways they want to be reached. Finally, you’ll succeed in creating organic attention and publicity for your products, goods, or services by simply pushing out valuable content to your readers.
5. Use content marketing to bounce ideas off your readers
Ever wish you could poll your readers and ask what they think about something? Now you can! Social media is a fantastic place to poll your readers. When it’s done correctly, this approach can help you develop a solid strategy for your products, goods, and services, and enjoy an ongoing connection with the people who help you stay in business.
To use social media to boost your engagement, use Facebook or Twitter to ask your readers’ questions regarding the type of content they prefer and where they want to interact with it. Start a group, or a Twitter chat! Social activity, especially leading a group or new hashtag cause, can go a long way toward enhancing your content strategy and even help you become a more successful business owner.
6. Content marketing is critical for SEO
Part of the battle of being a founder is positioning yourself in a way that allows people to discover you online. Fortunately, content marketing helps with this by providing a fantastic SEO boost. Every time you publish a new post on your blog, for example, you give Google a new page to index. Every time you reach out on social media, you give your audience something to share and engage with, all of which boosts your SEO and helps people find and share your brand.
This is essential for your business and can be one of the major factors that determine whether your brand succeeds or fails in the long run.
7. Content marketing is an excellent way to build trust
Want to build confidence in your customers? Look no further than content marketing. Too many entrepreneurs and small business owners make the mistake of going right in for the kill with a new prospect. This, in turn, makes it difficult for prospects to trust your company because they feel as if they’re always being sold, and people don’t like that. To prevent this from happening and ensure that your brand remains trustworthy and exciting for your customers, turn your attention to content marketing.
In addition to branding you as a customer-focused brand that cares more about providing value than you do about making sales, content marketing can also help give your readers a reason to trust you. When you provide valuable, educational, informative content for free before you try to “sell” your readers anything, you succeed in creating a dynamic and symbiotic relationship in which your customers want you around as much as you need them around.
Content Marketing: The Marketing of Choice for Entrepreneurs
For entrepreneurs, content marketing is the way of the future. Designed to help new marketers enjoy the marketing ROI not typically associated with traditional advertising, content marketing is an effective way to build attention online, gain new readers, and develop trust with customers. What’s more, it’s also a great way for you as a founder to build your voice and uncover your unique brand identity – both of which are central to successful startups everywhere!
With this in mind, develop your content marketing focus by doing simple things like establishing a blog, developing a social media presence, and becoming active in various online communities. In addition to engaging your current readers, you’ll gain new ones in the process.
Looking for a team of writers with small-business experience to help you get your new venture off the ground? Contact Express Writers about your needs! We LOVE writing great copy for startups and entrepreneurs.
DIY web copy: it’s not the worst thing in the world to do yourself, right?
I mean, half the DIY projects on Pinterest that are in the intermediate-advanced level would be 10x harder, right?
Actually, you might be surprised.
Do-it-yourself web copy is a fate that befalls many business owners, but it can be seriously dangerous if DIY’ed without thought, skill, or care. Worse than you know.
(Cue the Addams Family Values theme song…)
While there are plenty of people out there who are perfectly capable of creating their own online web copy, there are many who don’t know how to do it, or who think they can handle it all by themselves and realize in the middle of a publishing schedule that they can’t. Don’t get lost in one of these scenarios: keep reading to find out why (and when) the DIY line for web copy stops. Save yourself, before it’s too late! (/end cue)
10 Deadly Scenarios that Could Happen to YOU If You DIY Your Web Copy
Don’t make the same mistakes others have done (RIP, copy that never converted a single soul).
Read our ten deadly scenarios that could happen to you if you DIY your own web copy:
1. You could die
I’m not kidding. DIY-ing your web content can be deadly!
It’s deathly exhausting, and, if you don’t call for help, you may soon find yourself buried beneath a pile of papers, fingers stuck to the keyboards, struggling for breath.
30% of marketers spend between 1-5 hours each week on social media content creation, for example, and people who don’t ask for help can quickly find themselves overwhelmed and overworked. With this in mind, save your content and your life by asking for help from a team of skilled writers. Not only will your content come out better, but you may save your sanity in the process.
2. Or, Google could kill you
If you don’t kill yourself first (literally and figuratively) from all the hard work of content writing, Google is a pretty all-powerful internet entity, and you don’t want to get on their bad side.
Unfortunately, this is easy to do when you DIY your web content. Simple things that can easily get missed: citing low-quality sources, plagiarizing content, or simply writing badly can land you in hot water with the Google Gods. Write and publish bad content, Google doesn’t want you showing well in their search engine. Death–by robots.
Just another way that DIY-ing your web content can be dangerous, and it’s one that every professional writer everywhere wants to save you from.
3. Die the death of bad writing
This is one of the most real threats of DIY-ing your online content – you could just suck at it. And here’s the really terrifying part: you don’t even need to be a bad writer to suck at it! Online writing is complex, and few people (aside from those people who are professionally trained in the industry) know how to do it well every time.
While writing badly may not seem that awful, it can have a big, ugly impact on your rankings, and could actually cause bad thing #1 and #2 on this list to happen to you!
4. Miss out on good keywords, and thus, you die (exist online without traffic)
Did you know that optimizing content for online writing is vitally important?
That means picking, finding, and researching the best keywords for your copy, the ones that actually have a shot at being included–long-tails, to be specific.
If you did, the chances are good that you don’t actually know how to optimize your online content. This is one of the worst sins of DIY content, and it’s also one of the easiest to avoid. Have a professional writer do it for you, and avoid this deadly and embarrassing scenario.
5. The world could end as you know it
There’s so much low-quality on the web already that I would not be surprised to see the poor interwebs simply stop spinning one of these days, so weighed down it is by all of the crappy content in existence.
Don’t be the one that pushes it over the edge!
A professional writer can give you high-quality, professional material. Copy that won’t make the world as we know it come to a screeching halt.
6. You could plagiarize something, and thus, die
Even if you’re not copying and pasting someone’s site, plagiarism (duplication of someone else’s content) happens.
It happens in the form of copied meta descriptions, paraphrased content that sticks too close to its original source, and non-cited quotes and copied material.
Plagiarized content has devastating effects on your Google ranking, and more, so it’s critical to avoid it entirely. Besides Google, if someone catches wind that you “copied” your content off someone else, the reputation results are dire.
Don’t let these fates befall you!
7. You could lose readers, and die
Writing boring, flabby, or icky content at any point?
Any existing reader you had will leave and, when they do, you’re going to wish they hadn’t – there goes the lifeblood of your online content (the real, alive, human reader).
Keep them around by writing better content from the get-go, with the help of a professional writer. It will save you time and money and will boost the effectiveness of your content across the board.
8. Stagnation in topic areas you know (death from boredom)
If you’re DIY-ing your content, but you’re in a rush, you’re not pushing yourself to get better. That means stagnation of the worst kind–content that gets repetitive, boring, and useless.
With this in mind, skip the sad effort altogether and outsource your content to a reliable writer. They’ll make it great again and you’ll get to succeed in the other areas of your business!
9. You could make an embarrassing typo, and die a grammar convict’s death
You wouldn’t want to make the mistake of typing “pubic” rather than “public” throughout all of your content, but that’s what so many DIY-ers end up with. Save yourself the embarrassing typo and ongoing repercussions by hiring a professional writer at the outset.
10. You could miss the mark
DIY-ing your content presents one big error: that you’ll miss the mark. Nobody will like and share and your content will be left high and dry, to fend for itself out in the wild web. When a professional writer comes in, though, you can avoid this fate and ensure great content all the way across.
The Case for Not DIYing Your Online Content
While many people believe they can DIY their online content, this is one place you should definitely bring in a professional. In addition to the fact that DIY online content can be low-quality, it’s also time-consuming and difficult for small business owners to manage on their own.
With this in mind, avoid the many problems that come with DIY content by simply hiring a professional writer. These writers can come in, work with your company, and help you craft really outstanding online content that doesn’t result in death or dismemberment by the Google gods. What’s more, they can also save you time, money, and grey hairs.
What’s not to love?
If you’re looking for quality writers to help you develop your online content, visit our Content Shop to get started today!
