Posted by randfish Getting readers on board with your ideas isn't the only way to achieve content success. Sometimes, stirring up a little controversy and earning a few rivals can work incredibly well - but there's certainly a right and a wrong way to do it. Rand details how to use the power of making enemies work to your advantage in today's Whiteboard Friday.
Video TranscriptionHowdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today, we're going to chat about something a little interesting - how content can succeed by making enemies. I know you're thinking to yourself, "Wait a minute, I thought my job was to make friends with my content." Yes, and one of the best ways to make close friends is to make enemies too.
So, in my opinion, I think that companies and businesses, programs, organizations of all kinds, efforts of all kinds tend to do really well when they get people on their side. So if I'm trying to create a movement or I'm trying to get people to believe in what I'm doing, I need to have positions, data, stories, and content that can bring people to my site. One of the best ways to do that is actually to think about it in opposition to something else, basically try and figure out how you can earn some enemies. A few examples of content that makes enemies & alliesI'll give you a few examples, because I think that will help add some context here. I did a little bit of research. My share data is from BuzzSumo, and my link data here is from Ahrefs. But for example, this piece called "There Are Now Twice as Many Solar Jobs as Coal Jobs in the US," this is essentially just data-driven content, but it clearly makes friends and enemies. It makes enemies with sort of this classic, old-school Americana belief set around how important coal jobs are, and it creates, through the enemy that it builds around that, simply by sharing data, it also creates allies, people who are on the side of this story, who want to share it and amplify it and have it reach its potential and reach more people. Same is true here. So this is a story called "Yoga Is a Good Alternative to Physical Therapy." Clearly, it did extremely well, tens of thousands of shares and thousands of links, lots of ranking keywords for it. But it creates some enemies. Physical therapists are not going to be thrilled that this is the case. Despite the research behind it, this is frustrating for many of those folks. So you've created friends, allies, people who are yoga practitioners and yoga instructors. You've also created enemies, potentially those folks who don't believe that this might be the case despite what the research might show. Third one, "The 50 Most Powerful Public Relations Firms in America," I think this was actually from The Observer. So they're writing in the UK, but they managed to rank for lots and lots of keywords around "best PR firms" and all those sorts of things. They have thousands of shares, thousands of links. I mean 11,000 links, that's darn impressive for a story of this nature. And they've created enemies. They've created enemies of all the people who are not in the 50 most powerful, who feel that they should be, and they've created allies of the people who are in there. They've also created some allies and enemies deeper inside the story, which you can check out. "Replace Your Lawn with These Superior Alternatives," well, guess what? You have now created some enemies in the lawn care world and in the lawn supply world and in the passionate communities, very passionate communities, especially here in the United States, around people who sort of believe that homes should have lawns and nothing else, grass lawns in this case. This piece didn't do that well in terms of shares, but did phenomenally well in terms of links. This was on Lifehacker, and it ranks for all sorts of things, 11,000+ links. Before you create, ask yourself: Who will help amplify this, and why?So you can see that these might not be things that you naturally think of as earning enemies. But when you're creating content, if you can go through this exercise, I have this rule, that I've talked about many times over the years, for content success, especially content amplification success. That is before you ever create something, before you brainstorm the idea, come up with the title, come up with the content, before you do that, ask yourself: Who will help amplify this and why? Why will they help?
One of the great things about framing things in terms of who are my allies, the people on my side, and who are the enemies I'm going to create is that the "who" becomes much more clear. The people who support your ideas, your ethics, or your position, your logic, your data and want to help amplify that, those are people who are potential amplifiers. The people, the detractors, the enemies that you're going to build help you often to identify that group. The "why" becomes much more clear too. The existence of that common enemy, the chance to show that you have support and beliefs in people, that's a powerful catalyst for that amplification, for the behavior you're attempting to drive in your community and your content consumers. I've found that thinking about it this way often gets content creators and SEOs in the right frame of mind to build stuff that can do really well. Some dos and don'tsDo... backup content with dataA few dos and don'ts if you're pursuing this path of content generation and ideation. Do back up as much as you can with facts and data, not just opinion. That should be relatively obvious, but it can be dangerous in this kind of world, as you go down this path, to not do that. Do... convey a world viewI do suggest that you try and convey a world view, not necessarily if you're thinking on the political spectrum of like from all the way left to all the way right or those kinds of things. I think it's okay to convey a world view around it, but I would urge you to provide multiple angles of appeal. So if you're saying, "Hey, you should replace your lawn with these superior alternatives," don't make it purely that it's about conservation and ecological health. You can also make it about financial responsibility. You can also make it about the ease with which you can care for these lawns versus other ones. So now it becomes something that appeals across a broader range of the spectrum. Same thing with something like solar jobs versus coal jobs. If you can get it to be economically focused and you can give it a capitalist bent, you can potentially appeal to multiple ends of the ideological spectrum with that world view. Do... collect input from notable partiesThird, I would urge you to get inputs from notable folks before you create and publish this content, especially if the issue that you're talking about is going to be culturally or socially or politically charged. Some of these fit into that. Yoga probably not so much, but potentially the solar jobs/coal jobs one, that might be something to run the actual content that you've created by some folks who are in the energy space so that they can help you along those lines, potentially the energy and the political space if you can. Don't... be provocative just to be provocativeSome don'ts. I do not urge you and I'm not suggesting that you should create provocative content purely to be provocative. Instead, I'm urging you to think about the content that you create and how you angle it using this framing of mind rather than saying, "Okay, what could we say that would really piss people off?" That's not what I'm urging you to do. I'm urging you to say, "How can we take things that we already have, beliefs and positions, data, stories, whatever content and how do we angle them in such a way that we think about who are the enemies, who are the allies, how do we get that buy-in, how do we get that amplification?" Don't... choose indefensible positionsSecond, I would not choose enemies or positions that you can't defend against. So, for example, if you were considering a path that you think might get you into a world of litigious danger, you should probably stay away from that. Likewise, if your positions are relatively indefensible and you've talked to some folks in the field and done the dues and they're like, "I don't know about that," you might not want to pursue it. Don't... give up on the first tryThird, do not give up if your first attempts in this sort of framing don't work. You should expect that you will have to, just like any other form of content, practice, iterate, and do this multiple times before you have success. Don't... be unprofessionalDon't be unprofessional when you do this type of content. It can be a little bit tempting when you're framing things in terms of, "How do I make enemies out of this?" to get on the attack. That is not necessary. I think that actually content that builds enemies does so even better when it does it from a non-attack vector mode. Don't... sweat the HateradeDon't forget that if you're getting some Haterade for the content you create, a lot of people when they start drinking the Haterade online, they run. They think, "Okay, we've done something wrong." That's actually not the case. In my experience, that means you're doing something right. You're building something special. People don't tend to fight against and argue against ideas and people and organizations for no reason. They do so because they're a threat. If you've created a threat to your enemies, you have also generally created something special for your allies and the people on your side. That means you're doing something right. In Moz's early days, I can tell you, back when we were called SEOmoz, for years and years and years we got all sorts of hate, and it was actually a pretty good sign that we were doing something right, that we were building something special. So I look forward to your comments. I'd love to see any examples of stuff that you have as well, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care. 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Most consumers rely on their smartphones to make purchases and gain knowledge. In 2017, any business that lacks a mobile presence runs a serious risk of falling behind. But it's not just about having a site it needs to provide a good experience.According to Google, 29% of smartphone users will immediately switch to another site if it doesn't satisfy their needs. Mobile users are goal-oriented, and they expect to find what they need from a responsive mobile instantly and easily. So punch up your conversion rates by designing your mobile site with the user's intent and needs in focus. 1. Homepage and navigationA homepage can serve as a promotional space and welcome page, but should provide users with the content they are searching for. A conversion focused homepage should tick off the following elements: concise CTAs, homepage shortcuts, minimal selling or promotions. Navigating on a smaller screen, it is easy for users to miss key elements on your homepage. Therefore it is advisable to put your calls-to-action where users will see them easily, such as occupying the bottom half or above the fold. Your call-to-action signifies the tipping point between conversion and bounce. To design calls-to-action that convert, optimize the copy and design, i.e. choice of words, color, size, fonts, etc. We understand the travails of losing our way in the mall or a mart? The same happens on mobile sites, the lack of navigation menus or location bars can hurt conversion. Mobile users expect to get back to the homepage with a single tap either through tapping your logo or clicking the home navigation menu. For best practices, use your logo as the homepage shortcut. Too often, ads and promotion beat the purpose of visiting a page and users get turned off. To entertain visitors and drive conversion, ads or promotional banners should be kept to the minimum and placed in a position which won't affect the user experience. To place ads on your homepage, think like a user. What is the user trying to accomplish?Where will their attention be focused? How do I keep the page clean and uncluttered? By answering these questions, ad placement on your homepage will be a breeze and won't need to negatively impact user experience. 2. Commerce and reviewsWith an increased rate of digitization, users expect smooth mobile experiences when searching, reviewing and purchasing products. How canmarketers and businesses increase their conversion rates while ensuring excellent mobile experiences for visitors? The answer lies in allowing visitors/users to convert on their own terms. For an ecommerce store, requesting that visitors sign up very early in the customer's journey is a major turn off. Visitors will abandon a website demanding registration before they can continue, resulting in low conversion unless the site is an authoritative brand. For better results, allow visitors explore your site before requesting for registration and enable visitors purchase products as a guest. For mobile commerce sites, easy and quick should be the watchword when designing the checkout process. Best practices for mobile commerce include the availability of multiple payment options for commerce sites. Adding payments options such as Apple Pay, PayPal and Android Pay can boost conversion rates saving users the stress of inputting credit card information. For previous users, load and pre-fill their data fields for convenience in filling shipping information. Statistics show that 92%of consumers read online reviews before purchasing a product or doing business with a company. Meaning reviews are an important part of the decision-making process for consumers, include reviews on your web pages then allow filters be applied to these reviews. Filters such as most recent reviews, most positive reviews and lowest ratings. 3. Site usabilityWhen it comes to mobile site design, every little detail matters. Details such as zooming, expandable images, transparency about the use of visitors data will aid conversion. According to studies, users found it easier to navigate a mobile-optimized website than desktop sites on smartphones. To ensure consistency, optimize every single page on your website for mobile devices, including forms, images, etc. Your search bar should be placed near the top of your homepage for users to search for specific products and ensure the first search results are the best. Remember to include filters on search results to narrow down users intent or preferences on your mobile site. Be careful not to label the link to your desktop site as full site. This might confuse visitors into thinking the mobile site is not fully featured causing them to opt for the full site, simply label the link to the desktop site as Desktop Site and link to the mobile site as Mobile Site. When optimizing a mobile site, remember to disable pinch to zoom on your images as this might affect the general site experience, calls-to-action will be missed and messages will be covered. Basically, upload images that are sized properly and will render perfectly on any device. Due to the nature of mobile devices, lengthy forms will hurt conversion when trying to gain leads. On surveys or multiple page forms, include a progress bar with upcoming sections at the top or bottom to guide users through the process. To aid or satisfy customers, implement auto-fill on forms for name, phone and zip code fields. For date and time fields, include a visual calendar as users might not remember dates for the next weekend but the visual calendar will stop users from leaving your page to use the calendar app. There are numerous resources on forms that include the use of calendars and other custom input fields, including Google forms, Xamarin Forms and FormHub. 4. TechnicalitiesWhile great design drives conversions, do not ignore the very foundation of your website. The following technicalities should be implemented and audited monthly.
Finally, run your website through Google's Mobile-Friendly Test. Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land:
Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:
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The post SearchCap: Google AdWords Editor, Danny Sullivan podcast & conversions appeared first on Search Engine Land. Canada's Supreme Court orders Google to de-index site globally, opening door to censorship6/28/2017 The Canadian Supreme Court has ordered Google to de-index an e-commerce site globally. This sets a disastrous precedent that opens the door for other governments (and private parties) across the globe to try to control or censor Google's search results. The case was Google Inc. v. Equustek Solutions.The plaintiff, a smalltech company in British Columbia, sued its former distributor, which was selling allegedly counterfeit versions of its products online. An initial injunction against the defendant failed to stop the behavior.The present case against Google went up on appeal and theSupreme Court granted a worldwide injunction against Google:
The Canadian Supreme Court agreed with the lower court ruling that simply blocking or de-indexing the infringing site on Google.ca would insufficiently enforce the injunction and thus justified the global banagainst the company. Asa practical matter, the court's reasoning may be accurate - similar to theFrench privacy regulator'slogic in seekingto enforce the Right to Be Forgotten globally. However, it's a bad decision and establishes a terribleprecedent. Companies and governments unhappy with the way they are represented in search resultscould seek,on some pretense or quasi-legal basis, to not only censor Google domestically but also internationally. Governments such as Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia or China could pass laws demanding removal of critical or offensive content that's politically unpalatable or disagreeable. For example, China might seek to globally censor political discussions about Tibetor the Dalai Lama.Russia could ask Google to remove content about Russia'sWestern-election hacking or critical of Putin, as destabilizing tothe regime. Saudi Arabia or Pakistan might seek global removal of content critical of Islam or the Prophet Muhammad. Sound implausible or unlikely? Perhaps. Yet that'swhat the Canadian decision opens the door to. Indeed, laws censoring the internet under the jurisdiction of one countrycould be extended internationally using the Canadian court's logic: the intended objective cannot be fully achieved without global application. Ultimately Google's recourse would be to pull out of the country entirely. Who gets to control or censor the internet? That's what's at stake. And while factually it could be argued that the court's decision makes sense, there are larger, more important principles that should trump the rights of the individual corporate plaintiff in this case. No single country should be able to dictate what people in other countries or regions get to read or see. But that's precisely what the Canadian ruling sets the stage for, permitting unprincipled governments and companies to try to eliminateobjectionable or illegalcontent. That's why it's so dangerous to free speech and to thefuture of the internet. The post Canada's Supreme Court orders Google to de-index site globally, opening door to censorship appeared first on Search Engine Land. College Station Rhinoplasty,Every patient may have a different goal when considering (nose job) or nose surgery. Call 469-352-2129 You may be seeking to reduce a nasal hump or bump, make a crooked nose straight, narrow a wide nose, refine a bulbous tip, or rotate a tip that hangs down to much.
college station rhinoplasty college station rhinoplasty college station rhinoplasty college station rhinoplasty college station rhinoplasty Google has been fined a record $2.7 billion for a breach of E.U. anti-trust rules. The search giant was charged with giving illegal advantages to another Google product within search results in a case that started more thanseven years ago. The case relates specifically to Google Shopping, Google's increasingly profitable shopping comparison engine. This fine dwarfs the previous record fine for the abuse of a monopoly, doled out to Intel in 2009. The E.U. commission arrived at the figure by taking a percentage of Google's revenue from its Shopping product across the 13 European countries in question since 2008. Should Google fail to comply with the terms set by the E.U. within 90 days, they will be fined 5 percent of the daily turnover of parent company, Alphabet. What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on their merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation, stated Margrethe Vestager, the E.U. competition commissioner. The wider implications of this rulingThe bigger questions now surround the precedent that this sets. There is a general consensus that the industry requires independent regulation, but that will be a lot trickier than it seems. Google would be loathe to reveal its closely guarded algorithms. Moreover, we are moving into an era where they may start to lose full transparency over the inner workings of their products. With Google and all of its main competitors moving their focus towards unsupervised machine learning algorithms, how exactly will they comply with these regulations? It may become impossible to prove the non-existence of bias in such a complex system in constant flux. The likes of Facebook and Amazon will surely see this as the E.U. making an example of Google. However, they may have cause for concern too. Google's position as a search engine sets it apart, as consumers trust that the results have been ranked based on their quality. A 2014 study in India showed the persuasive power that Google holds, and this is one it is adjudged to have abused to the detriment of European consumers. Facebook and, in particular, Amazon, strive to dominate the e-commerce advertising market. Any potential abuses of their increasingly strong positions will be watched very closely, by both the E.U. and Google. Although companies like Amazon operate on different business models to Google, they are still moving towards a 'machine learning first' approach and will want to solidify their dominant position as the number one online shopping destination. With the E.U. taking such a firm stance now, it seems unlikely they will relent and accept that their algorithms are making unbiased decisions. What happens next?Google has the right to appeal, which could extend the case by another 5 to 10 years. Intel, for example, is still fighting its fine from 2009 in European courts. However, even if Google should choose to appeal, it will still need to provide proof that it has changed its business practices in line with the court's ruling within 90 days. Google remains under investigation by the E.U. for giving similar advantages to two other Alphabet products, Android and AdSense. For more Google vs. the EU, check out our previous news story: When is a search engine not a search engine? When it's Google, says the EU It's difficult to believe that Google News is 15 years old. In that time, ithas been through a number of feature changesand minor redesigns. The last major redesign was in 2010, but today it's getting another one. The idea is to addfeature and content depth but also simplify the layout and navigation. I spoke withAnand Paka, the Google Newsproduct manager. Hesaid the redesign intends to connect users with more quality journalism and to make Google Newsmore accessible to everyone and less of a power user product. By the same token, Paka told me that Google News is adding more facts, perspectives and context. So, in addition to beingsimpler to use, it has more depth. The Google-provided screenshot aboveshows a side by side comparison of the old and new layouts. The formerlayout (left) is very link-dense. The new layout (right) is easier to scan visually. It also offers cleaner navigationand is more personalized.Google is also making video more prominent throughout. The top of the page features new tabs forHeadlines, Local and For You. The Local tab will enable Google to greatly expand the availability oflocal news. Google's Paka said that Local (news) is an anticipated area of growth. BothLocal and For You (by definition) are or can be personalized. Google has also created new story cards that break out and offer a variety of perspectives on a topic. The initial presentation is a summary view, which users can expand in an effort to get more context, perspectives and depth. To assist in thatprocess Google has added directional tags such asLocal Source, Opinion,Fact Checkand others. There's also afull coverage option, which provides many additional sources. Google's Fact Check label indicates whether an article has been fact checked (US only for now). I asked Paka if this was a response to the 2016 election and the fake news debate. He said no and told me that theredesign had been in the works well before the 2016 election. Apple News is a very strong product and Facebook's News Feed has become a primary source of news for many consumers. Compared withthose two products, the old Google News design was getting a bit long in the tooth, as the saying goes. With the redesign, Google is adding more context and depth but seeking to make theproduct more appealing to a casual newsaudience that may only want headlines and high-level information. Google says the changes are rolling out in the coming days. The post Google News gets a cleaner look, new features to make it 'more accessible' appeared first on Search Engine Land. Bing Ads Editor updates: Bulk edit & copy multiple campaigns, manage device & radius targets6/26/2017 Bing Ads rolled out some handy updates to Bing Ads Editor (BAE) last week. Here's a quick rundown for the next time you log in. The most requested update here is the ability to select multiple campaigns or ad groupsfor bulk filtering and editing, as well as copying and pasting multiple items from one account to another. This is only available in the Windows version of BAE. Hopefully, it will roll out to the Mac version soon. With the recent changes in device targeting and bid adjustments, Bing Ads has added a Device targets menu option in the left pane in Editor. Here you can manage targeting and bid adjustments. Under Locations, now you can set multiple radius targetswith different bid adjustments for a single location. For example, you might want a higher bid adjustment for a five-mile radius than for a 10-mile radius. Finally, you may also notice it's faster to navigate, edit and get data from different statistics views in Editor due to a change in the way data is cached in the desktop tool. The post Bing Ads Editor updates: Bulk edit & copy multiple campaigns, manage device & radius targets appeared first on Search Engine Land. New columns are now available in Bing Ads to see competitive metrics related to impression share. The Competitive (Share of Voice) metrics are available at the campaign, ad group and keyword levels in the main UI and Reports tab. They are also accessible in several reports via the Bing Ads API. There are six new metrics available,including Impression share (IS) lost to rank and IS lost to ad relevance. Claire Lee, Bing Ads platform program manager, added in the blog post that more reporting updates are in the works. One of our goals for reporting on Bing Ads is to surface the information you want, in the context you want it, so you can make quick and informed decisions across your ad campaigns, Lee said. The post Bing Ads now offers competitive share of voice metrics appeared first on Search Engine Land. Professional search engine optimization company visit http://seozzz.net/contact-us/ To Learn How We Help You Reach Your SEO Marketing Goals.
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