Whether you’ve recently been promoted to a leadership position, or you’ve been leading your team for years, it can often seem tricky to discern what being a "good" leader actually means. When you’re trying to determine the components of a successful leader, it’s easy to fall-back on certain terms we commonly associate with leadership — words like "assertive", "inspirational", and "confident". But what about being "authentic"? While the idea of authentic leadership is not a new concept — it has its roots in Ancient Greek philosophy, which posited that authenticity is an important state of being and enables you to control your own destiny — it can certainly feel like a novel component of leadership today. I mean, what does "being true to yourself" have to do with anything? In fact, research has shown authentic leadership serves as the single strongest predictor of an employee’s job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and workplace happiness. To ensure long-term happiness and productivity out of your team, then, it’s critical you demonstrate a level of authenticity as a leader. Authentic leadershipAuthentic leadership is a management style in which leaders are genuine, self-aware, and transparent. An authentic leader is able to inspire loyalty and trust in her employees by consistently displaying who she really is as a person, and how she feels about her employees’ performance. Authentic leadership is the single strongest predictor of an employee’s job satisfaction. Here, we’re going to explore how the Authentic Leadership Theory can help you become a better, more inspiring leader, today. Authentic Leadership TheoryThere are four distinct components to the Authentic Leadership Theory. Let’s dive into those, now. 1. Self-AwarenessAs a leader, it’s critical you have a strong sense of self, including your strengths, weaknesses, and values. It’s impossible to demonstrate authenticity as a leader if you’re unsure of who you are or what you stand for in the first place. Additionally, by displaying both your strengths and weaknesses to your team, you’re able to demonstrate that you have nothing to hide, and don’t play games. In this way, you’re better equipped to build trust among your team, and when your employee makes a mistake, she’ll feel more comfortable admitting her error to you. Self-awareness is also critical for you to grow as a leader, and strengthen other components of authentic leadership. For instance, perhaps you’ve noticed you don’t do a great job at displaying transparency with your team. By acknowledging this weakness, you can take steps to rectify it. In Bruce J. Avolio and Tara S. Wernsing’s essay Practicing Authentic Leadership, they outline three ways authentic leaders should practice self-awareness:
Self-awareness is vital for acting appropriately as a leader, and feeling empathy for how your employees might perceive your feedback. For instance, perhaps you feel a conversation you had with your team was demoralizing — you’d just received some disappointing news about your team’s performance, and you’d spoken out of frustration. It’s critical you seek feedback from your environment by asking your team what you can do to help them improve moving forward. Additionally, perhaps you can mitigate these issues in the future by regularly practicing self-observation, so you’re able to notice, in the moment, "I am very frustrated right now, so I will wait until I am calm to have this conversation with my team." 2. Relational TransparencyPassive aggression, subtle messaging, and convoluted feedback have no place in leadership. To truly foster authenticity, it’s critical you remain genuine, straightforward, and honest with your team. Let them know where they stand — if they mess up, tell them. While it might seem counterintuitive — "How will I become close to my team if I am often providing constructive rather than positive feedback?" — it works in your favor in the long-run, as your employees trust that you are not "hiding" your true feelings regarding their performance. Transparency and honesty must be encouraged from the leadership level if you want your business to be successful. For instance, when Former President and CEO of Ford, Alan Mulally, began working at Ford, he implemented a system in which business leaders would produce color-coded charts at each of their meetings — green to signify success, red to signify failure. At the time, Ford was forecast to lose 17 billion that year. At the meeting, however, Mulally noticed every chart was green. He recognized that Ford’s culture was one in which leaders hid problems, and avoided transparency out of a fear for job safety. When one leader, Mark Fields, handed over a chart with red on it — due to a production issue — Mulally began clapping. His reaction signified the concept that failure can be seen as an exciting opportunity for growth, and honesty should be always rewarded. The following week, he saw charts varying from green to yellow to red. The point is, authentic leadership must start with you displaying behavior you hope to see in your employees, as well. If you aren’t transparent and honest, how can you expect your employees to come forward with problems when they arise? 3. Balanced ProcessingA leader needs to make decisions and stay true to her decision in the face of opposition — but she must also be capable of receiving and considering alternative viewpoints before choosing a plan of action. When making major decisions, it’s important you ask for alternative opinions and remain open to discussion. While it’s important you stick to your values, it’s equally critical you seek out opposing viewpoints, which can help you see flaws in your initial course of action, or enable you to strengthen your argument by understanding all points of view. Additionally, if you want to be an authentic leader, it’s critical you create an environment in which employees feel both safe and encouraged to share their opinions. This ties back to self-awareness — you must be self-aware enough to accept that your opinion, by itself, is likely biased or partial. By collecting outside feedback, you’re able to see more potential weaknesses in your decision. 4. Internalized Moral Perspective (“Do the Right Thing”)An authentic leader needs to know when to put the needs of the company and its customers ahead of herself and her team. Ultimately, a leader should be focused on doing the right thing for the long-term success of the business — not herself. Additionally, it’s critical a leader have strong ethical values and integrity, and exercise these traits even in the face of tempting shortcuts. For instance, let’s say your employee comes to you with a "make money quick" scheme — his idea is to make it difficult for customers to know how to cancel their subscription, so they are forced to keep paying unless they call up customer support. As a leader, it’s important you recognize the downfall of this type of decision. While it could temporarily help boost your team’s numbers, it’s not a decision made out of integrity or fairness for your customer, and won’t result in lasting loyalty. Emmy Jonassen, Director of Acquisition at HubSpot, seconds this point, noting the importance of being a leader whose behavior matches up with the values you want to instill in your team:
She goes on to say, "For example, if you ask your team to come to meetings on time and prepared, you should as well. If you impress upon your team that no task is beneath anyone if it works toward team goals, you should help out with team ‘grunt work’ every now and again by being the notetaker, cleaning up after a team birthday celebration, and so forth." By being a leader who emphasizes the importance of doing the right thing, you’re better equipped to set up your team for long-term success. Why Authenticity in Leadership is Difficult to AchieveUltimately, the four components of authentic leadership are good jumping-off points, but it’s important you remember the true meaning of authenticity — the ability to express yourself as you truly are. The meaning of authenticity makes it inherently difficult to prescribe in any one way. Meghan Keaney Anderson, HubSpot’s VP of Marketing, describes it like this — "It’s funny that something so basic as being yourself starts to become harder as you gain responsibility and scope. But the truth is, being authentic as a leader has to be consciously worked at."
She goes on to say, "You have to create touch-points in the course of meetings, presentations, management that remind you of yourself — who you are and where you’re strongest. When I give speeches, I tend to start with a personal story to set the tone for the rest of the talk, because there’s no way to tell a personal story without being myself. When I’m out of my depths on something, or need time to think before a decision, I make sure to say so, so that my team knows I don’t always have the answers. Authenticity requires touchstones to remind yourself and the people around you that you’re human." Ultimately, authenticity is a leadership skill like any other — and skills can always be developed (or weakened) over time, depending on your conscious efforts. To ensure you’re able to lead your team as well as they deserve, it’s critical you remain focused on demonstrating authenticity whenever possible. via Hubspot – http://bit.ly/2M2zkw1 via http://bit.ly/2Ss2aMS
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In a Webmaster Hangout, someone related to Google’s John Mueller that they followed Google’s advice and achieved a score of 100 on Google’s Web.dev tool. Having followed Google’s recommendations, they asked why they “didn’t see any ranking improvement.” John Mueller explained that there is more to ranking than scoring well on the Web.Dev tests. Here is how Mueller explained it:
Web.dev is More than a ToolAlthough Google’s Mueller refers to Web.dev in terms of a tool for testing against best practices, Web.dev is more than just a too. It is an educational site that offers basic information about making a site discoverable and some best practices for writing content. Here’s how the Web.dev site describes itself:
This is a partial list of areas it will help you improve:
An exceptionally useful section of Web.dev is the Easily Discoverable section of the website. Here’s what it says:
That’s an encouragement to make your site easy to crawl, make sure your server is responsive and not easily slowed down by scrapers and hack-bots, that there are no huge files to download and no technical errors such as, for example, an improperly set up shopping site that spawns a half a million duplicate web pages. Web.dev Teaches How to Write ContentOn Web.dev you will find actionable advice about writing content. It’s one of the best descriptions of how to create a web page that has a chance to rank. The section is titled, Write Descriptive Titles, Descriptions, and Link Text for Every Page. Web.dev has useful content about making a page attractive, useful and discoverable. Of course, as John noted, we have to be realistic about the limits of the advice that Google can offer. That’s why there’s an SEO industry to fill in the gap. Here is how Google’s Web.dev defines SEO:
That is a limited and highly literal interpretation of Search Engine Optimization. The real-world definition of SEO encompasses best practices in content, marketing and promotion for better rankings and sales. In the real world, making a site “discoverable” is just the beginning of the SEO journey. The publisher observed to John that his site’s rankings did not improve after following Google’s own advice. John Mueller responded that there is more to it than satisfying the technical benchmarks offered on Google’s Web.dev website. Based on my professional experience, I agree with Google’s John Mueller. Top rankings do not happen simply by satisfying the technical requirements of making a site discoverable. Watch the Webmaster Hangout here More ResourcesScreenshots by Author, Modified by Author Subscribe to SEJGet our daily newsletter from SEJ’s Founder Loren Baker about the latest news in the industry! via Search Engine Journal – http://bit.ly/1paqDU3 via http://bit.ly/2SReB4c Instagram is perhaps the best platform for promoting your brand – especially using influencers. As of January 2018, 78 percent of social influencers used Instagram for brand collaborations worldwide, while the share of blogs remained 16 percent followed by YouTube (4 percent), Facebook (2 percent), and Pinterest (1 percent). Instagram influencers can easily generate authentic word-of-mouth engagement that turns their followers into your loyal customers. According to a study released by Quintly, Instagram boasts the highest interaction rate compared to all its counterparts. As the most effective platform, it seems to be the right choice for your influencer marketing campaigns. Without the right influencers, however, you can’t produce the desired results even on Instagram. Finding the best suited Instagram influencers for your niche can be challenging. Here are four essential tips that will help. 1. Keep Your Business Goals in MindBefore you start looking up the influencer’s vital metrics such as engagement rate and number of followers, think about your business goals. Step back and determine why and how you intend to use Instagram influencer marketing campaigns. Why Do You Need Influencers?What specific objectives do you have in mind for influencer marketing? The three primary goals should be:
Your choice of influencer will depend on these objectives. For example, increasing your Instagram followers will require you to create competitions or quizzes using a specific hashtag. Roping in an influencer who can participate in the competition and encourage his/her followers to jump in too will be the right way to go. On the other hand, sales and lead generation will need you to use affiliate marketing and discount codes. So, you will need to partner with influencers whose audience is likely to buy your product. Do They Fit Your Brand’s Personality?The influencer needs to align with your brand’s identity or at least the products you want to sell. If there is no brand alignment, your campaigns will generate low ROI. Having a clear idea of your influencer campaign goals is necessary to find an influencer that closely reflects your brand. For example, an influencer who is known for traveling on a budget will be the right choice to promote low-cost travel gear. Hiring a model who offers beauty tips will be a waste of time. Sperry, a boat shoe brand, worked with more than 100 micro-influencers who were already posting high-quality images of Sperry’s products on social media. Most photos comprised the micro-influencers in high-altitude scenic locations. Until recently, Canon focused on using professional photographers to drive their latest innovations on Instagram. Thinking outside the box, however, the brand has started embracing the new generation Instagrammers like filmmakers Elise Bauman to promote their products on Instagram. Although these influencers have a lesser number of followers, they offer better engagement owing to their industry expertise. On the other hand, American Express uses a mix of mega-celebrities as well as micro-influencers to promote their brand on Instagram. Andrea Pion is one such niche influencer along with top Instagram influencers such as Flaviana Matata, a Tanzanian fashion model, and Patrick Janelle, an entrepreneur and social media influencer actively involved in their #AmexAmbassadors campaign. All of these influencers take advantage of American Express services during their frequent travels. 2. Look for Genuine EngagementEngagement is one of the critical metrics of Instagram influencer marketing. The average engagement rate for an Instagram influencer was around 4.36 percent in 2017, with influencers having less than 1,000 followers registering the highest engagement rate of 8 percent. The engagement rate goes down as the number of followers increases. However, sometimes this metric can be misleading as popularity does not always result in conversions. You must first determine how authentic the engagement is. Analyze the CommentsIn 2017, Mediakix created two fake Instagram influencer profiles namely @wanderingggirl and @calibeachgirl310 to make people aware of the fake engagement problem. Both accounts remained active from March to July, generating more than 80,000 followers between them and securing four paid brand endorsement deals. Chances are you may also encounter fake influencers. One of the easiest ways to determine if the influencer is fake or genuine is to analyze comments on their posts. Usually, vague comments such as “nice pic” or “cool dress” or “looking good,” and comments with emojis often mean fake engagement. On the other hand, relevant and conversational comments are a sign of real engagement, which brings us to the next point. Search for Word-of-Mouth ReactionsReal followers ask questions, make personal statements, and also tag their friends in comments. These are word-of-mouth reactions by genuine followers. Check out the following post from Lisa Linh, an Instagram influencer. All her posts receive real responses, like this one, from her genuine followers, not bots. Only this type of engagement can result in new leads and sales. 3. Explore Hashtags Related to Your BrandIt is better to rope in Instagrammers who are already talking about your brand or products. They could be the next influencers to promote your brand. Some hashtag research can prove helpful in this regard. Avoid High-Density HashtagsHashtags are just like keywords for SEO. You will come across several high-density keywords. These are the most used hashtags on Instagram. Though relevant, using these keywords to look up influencers will be a waste of time. For example, if you start your search with #organic, you will have to go through more than 33,00,000 posts. But, as you dig deeper into long-tail (or low density) hashtags, the number of posts also goes down. In this case, #organicfoods has 162,771 posts, #organicfoodstore has 2,386 posts, while #organicfoodchicago has only 17 posts. Both #organicfoods and #organicfoodstore will provide you will more accurate search results. #organicfoodchicago has too few posts to be considered for influencer search. Use Keywords That Describe Your Brand or Target AudienceYou can also start your search with keywords that describe your brand or target audience. Focus on tags with a substantial number of posts to find influencers. If you’re selling running or jogging accessories, start your search with something like #running, and Instagram will suggest the most trending and relevant hashtags. Here you can use hashtags such as #runningmama, #runninggirl, and #runningcoach to look for influencers catering to a specific niche. Use the Hashtags #sponsored or #adInstagram also requires influencers to use #sponsored or #ad hashtags to distinguish promotional content. You can follow these hashtags to find out the potential influencers in your niche. You can mine your followers or your competitor’s followers to see who is using #sponsored or #ad hashtags. If they are using it, they already know what influencer marketing is. You can ask them to promote your product. 4. Use an Influencer PlatformAll these methods, though useful, are manual and time-consuming. Fortunately, you can use an influencer marketing platform to find the right influencers with just a few clicks. Some of the popular ones include HYPR, Tap Influence, Upfluence, Famebit, NeoReach, Revfluence, and Influencer. Find the Right InfluencersYou can search for the most suitable influencers in your niche using different sets of parameters such as the number of followers, type of followers (demographics), and work experience. Complete Campaign ManagementYou can also manage one or more of your influencer marketing campaigns using these platforms. You can control campaign features such as advertisement text, graphics, hashtags, social media mentions, giveaway details, influencer payments, and the complete campaign timeline through one platform. Real-Time AnalyticsYou can calculate various campaign metrics including views, reach, engagements, ROI calculations, and URL tracking. Several platforms allow you to generate daily, weekly, and monthly reports that you can share with your marketing team. Perhaps, the only downside is that all these platforms usually charge you a recurring monthly or annual fee. If you can set aside a budget for this, you will save a lot of time and resources. Keep the following in mind when choosing a platform:
Here are a few examples of influencer marketing platforms to get you started:
Parting WordsInfluencer marketing is catching up, particularly on Instagram. However, only the right influencer can help you succeed. So, you need to focus your efforts on finding the perfect match for your business. Hopefully, these four tips will help you find the best fit for your brand. Have you used Instagram influencer marketing before? Tell us more about it in the comments box below. Image Credits Featured Image: Created by author, February 2019 Subscribe to SEJGet our daily newsletter from SEJ’s Founder Loren Baker about the latest news in the industry! via Search Engine Journal – http://bit.ly/1paqDU3 via http://bit.ly/2DDKNhN Reddit is now home to 330 million monthly active users and recently raised $300 million in funding, giving the company a $3 billion valuation. However, with annual revenue of $100 million, Reddit has the least valuable users of any other social network. Reddit’s average revenue per user is only about $0.30, which is significantly lower than Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. Twitter has slightly fewer monthly active users at 321 million, but it earns about $9.48 per user per year. Facebook, with 2.32 billion monthly active users, has an annual revenue per user of $7.37. Snapchat reported an annual revenue per user of $2.09 in its latest earnings report. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman speaks on the work the company has ahead of it, with respect to earning advertising dollars:
What Reddit has going for it is half of its users are between the ages of 18 and 24. That’s a valuable, hard-to-reach demographic that has the potential to make Reddit appealing to advertisers. The greatest hurdle Reddit has to overcome is its own reputation. Reddit frequently draws criticism and concerns over abuse, harassment, and piracy amongst its users. In order to compete with other social networks in terms of revenue, Reddit has to foster a more positive environment for advertisers. Subscribe to SEJGet our daily newsletter from SEJ’s Founder Loren Baker about the latest news in the industry! via Search Engine Journal – http://bit.ly/1paqDU3 via http://bit.ly/2SMTWOT Posted by TheMozTeam We teamed up with our friends at Duda, a website design scaling platform service, who asked their agency customers to divulge their most pressing SEO questions, quandaries, and concerns. Our in-house SEO experts, always down for a challenge, hunkered down to collaborate on providing them with answers. From Schema.org to voice search to local targeting, we’re tackling real-world questions about organic search. Read on for digestible insights and further resources! How do you optimize for international markets?International sites can be multi-regional, multilingual, or both. The website setup will differ depending on that classification.
To geo-target sections of your site to different countries, you can use a country-specific domain (ccTLD) such as “.de” for Germany or subdomains/subdirectories on generic TLDs such as “example.com/de.” For different language versions of your content, Google recommends using different URLs rather than using cookies to change the language of the content on the page. If you do this, make use of the hreflang tag to tell Google about alternate language versions of the page. For more information on internationalization, visit Google’s “Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites” or Moz’s guide to international SEO. How do we communicate to clients that SEO projects need ongoing maintenance work?If your client is having difficulty understanding SEO as a continuous effort, rather than a one-and-done task, it can be helpful to highlight the changing nature of the web. Say you created enough quality content and earned enough links to that content to earn yourself a spot at the top of page one. Because organic placement is earned and not paid for, you don’t have to keep paying to maintain that placement on page one. However, what happens when a competitor comes along with better content that has more links than your content? Because Google wants to surface the highest quality content, your page’s rankings will likely suffer in favor of this better page. Maybe it’s not a competitor that depreciates your site’s rankings. Maybe new technology comes along and now your page is outdated or even broken in some areas. Or how about pages that are ranking highly in search results, only to get crowded out by a featured snippet, a Knowledge Panel, Google Ads, or whatever the latest SERP feature is? Set-it-and-forget-it is not an option. Your competitors are always on your heels, technology is always changing, and Google is constantly changing the search experience. SEO specialists are here to ensure you stay at the forefront of all these changes because the cost of inaction is often the loss of previously earned organic visibility. How do I see what subpages Google delivers on a search? (Such as when the main page shows an assortment of subpages below the result, via an indent.)Sometimes, as part of a URL’s result snippet, Google will list additional subpages from that domain beneath the main title-url-description. These are called organic sitelinks. Site owners have no control over when and which URLs Google chooses to show here aside from deleting or NoIndexing the page from the site. If you’re tracking keywords in a Moz Pro Campaign, you have the ability to see which SERP features (including sitelinks) your pages appear in. The Moz Keyword Explorer research tool also allows you to view SERP features by keyword: What are the best techniques for analyzing competitors?One of the best ways to begin a competitor analysis is by identifying the URLs on your competitor’s site that you’re directly competing with. The idea of analyzing an entire website against your own can be overwhelming, so start with the areas of direct competition. For example, if you’re targeting the keyword “best apple pie recipes,” identify the top ranking URL(s) for that particular query and evaluate them against your apple pie recipe page. You should consider comparing qualities such as:
Moz also created the metrics Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) to help website owners better understand their ranking ability compared to their competitors. For example, if your URL has a PA of 35 and your competitor’s URL has a PA of 40, it’s likely that their URL will rank more favorably in search results. Competitor analysis is a great benchmarking tool and can give you great ideas for your own strategies, but remember, if your only strategy is emulation, the best you’ll ever be is the second-best version of your competitors! As an SEO agency, can you put a backlink to your website on clients’ pages without getting a Google penalty? (Think the Google Penguin update.)Many website design and digital marketing agencies add a link to their website in the footer of all their clients’ websites (usually via their logo or brand name). Google says in their quality guidelines that “creating links that weren’t editorially placed or vouched for by the site’s owner on a page, otherwise known as unnatural links, can be considered a violation of our guidelines” and they use the example of “widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites.” This does not mean that all such footer links are a violation of Google’s guidelines. What it does mean is that these links have to be vouched for by the site’s owner. For example, an agency cannot require this type of link on their clients’ websites as part of their terms of service or contract. You must allow your client the choice of using nofollow or removing the link. The fourth update of the Google Penguin algorithm was rolled into Google’s core algorithm in September of 2016. This new “gentler” algorithm, described in the Google Algorithm Change History, devalues unnatural links, rather than penalizing sites, but link schemes that violate Google’s quality guidelines should still be avoided. We’re working on a new website. How do we communicate the value of SEO to our customers?When someone searches a word or phrase related to a business, good SEO ensures that the business’s website shows up prominently in the organic (non-ad) search results, that their result is informative and enticing enough to prompt searchers to click, and that the visitor has a positive experience with the website. In other words, good SEO helps a website get found, get chosen, and convert new business. That’s done through activities that fall into three main categories:
Why is SEO valuable? Simply put, it’s one more place to get in front of people who need the products or services you offer. With 40–60 billion Google searches in the US every month, and more than 41% / 62% (mobile / desktop) of clicks going to organic, it’s an investment you can’t afford to ignore. How do you optimize for voice search? Where do you find phrases used via tools like Google Analytics?Google doesn’t yet separate out voice query data from text query data, but many queries don’t change drastically with the medium (speaking vs. typing the question), so the current keyword data we have can still be a valuable way to target voice searchers. It’s important here to draw the distinction between voice search (“Hey Google, where is the Space Needle?”) and voice commands (ex: “Hey Google, tell me about my day”) — the latter are not queries, but rather spoken tasks that certain voice assistant devices will respond to. These voice commands differ from what we’d type, but they are not the same as a search query. Voice assistant devices typically pull their answers to informational queries from their Knowledge Graph or from the top of organic search results, which is often a featured snippet. That’s why one of the best ways to go after voice queries is to capture featured snippets. If you’re a local business, it’s also important to have your GMB data completely and accurately filled out, as this can influence the results Google surfaces for voice assistance like, “Hey Google, find me a pizza place near me that’s open now.” Should my clients use a service such as Yext? Do they work? Is it worth it?Automated listings management can be hugely helpful, but there are some genuine pain points with Yext, in particular. These include pricing (very expensive) and the fact that Yext charges customers to push their data to many directories that see little, if any, human use. Most importantly, local business owners need to understand that Yext is basically putting a paid layer of good data over the top of bad data — sweeping dirt under the carpet, you might say. Once you stop paying Yext, they pull up the carpet and there’s all your dirt again. By contrast, services like Moz Local (automated citation management) and Whitespark (manual citation management) correct your bad data at the source, rather than just putting a temporary paid Band-Aid over it. So, investigate all options and choose wisely. How do I best target specific towns and cities my clients want to be found in outside of their physical location?If you market a service area business (like a plumber), create a great website landing page with consumer-centric, helpful, unique content for each of your major service cities. Also very interesting for service area businesses is the fact that Google just changed its handling of setting the service radius in your Google My Business dashboard so that it reflects your true service area instead of your physical address. If you market a brick-and-mortar business that customers come to from other areas, it’s typically not useful to create content saying, “People drive to us from X!” Rather, build relationships with neighboring communities in the real world, reflect them on your social outreach, and, if they’re really of interest, reflect them on your website. Both service area businesses and bricks-and-mortar models may need to invest in PPC to increase visibility in all desired locations. How often should I change page titles and meta descriptions to help local SEO?While it’s good to experiment, don’t change your major tags just for the sake of busy work. Rather, if some societal trend changes the way people talk about something you offer, consider editing your titles and descriptions. For example, an auto dealership could realize that its consumers have started searching for “EVs” more than electric vehicles because society has become comfortable enough with these products to refer to them in shorthand. If keyword research and trend analysis indicate a shift like this, then it may be time to re-optimize elements of your website. Changing any part of your optimization is only going to help you rank better if it reflects how customers are searching. Read more about title tags and metas:
Should you service clients within the same niche, since there can only be one #1?If your keywords have no local intent, then taking on two clients competing for the same terms nationally could certainly be unethical. But this is a great question, because it presents the opportunity to absorb the fact that for any keyword for which Google perceives a local intent, there is no longer only one #1. For these search terms, both local and many organic results are personalized to the location of the searcher. Your Mexican restaurant client in downtown isn’t really competing with your Mexican restaurant client uptown when a user searches for “best tacos.” Searchers’ results will change depending on where they are in the city when they search. So unless you’ve got two identical businesses within the same couple of blocks in a city, you can serve them both, working hard to find the USP of each client to help them shine bright in their particular setting for searchers in close proximity. Is it better to have a one-page format or break it into 3–5 pages for a local service company that does not have lengthy content?This question is looking for an easy way out of publishing when you’ve become a publisher. Every business with a website is a publisher, and there’s no good excuse for not having adequate content to create a landing page for each of your services, and a landing page for each of the cities you serve. I believe this question (and it’s a common one!) arises from businesses not being sure what to write about to differentiate their services in one location from their services in another. The services are the same, but what’s different is the location! Publish text and video reviews from customers there, showcase your best projects there, offer tips specific to the geography and regulations there, interview service people, interview experts, sponsor teams and events in those service locations, etc. These things require an investment of time, but you’re in the publishing business now, so invest the time and get publishing! All a one-page website shows is a lack of commitment to customer service. For more on this, read Overcoming Your Fear of Local Landing Pages. How much content do you need for SEO?Intent, intent, intent! Google’s ranking signals are going to vary depending on the intent behind the query, and thank goodness for that! This is why you don’t need a 3,000-word article for your product page to rank, for example. The answer to “how much content does my page need?” is “enough content for it to be complete and comprehensive,” which is a subjective factor that is going to differ from query to query. Whether you write 300 words or 3,000 words isn’t the issue. It’s whether you completely and thoroughly addressed the page topic. Check out these Whiteboard Fridays around content for SEO:
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read! via Moz – http://bit.ly/2CdPo9S via http://bit.ly/2GEH6f9 A new study reveals the real reasons why consumers follow brands on social media, and what motivates them to engage with posts. A survey of 1,000 consumers conducted by Yes Marketing in June of 2018 discovered:
When consumers were asked about why they engage with a retailer’s content on social media, here’s how they responded:
When it comes to which demographics are active on different social networks, the survey discovered:
For more information, download the full report here. Subscribe to SEJGet our daily newsletter from SEJ’s Founder Loren Baker about the latest news in the industry! via Search Engine Journal – http://bit.ly/1paqDU3 via http://bit.ly/2I9VVbW A new report on digital advertising in Q4 2018 reveals that paid search spend grew 10% year-over-year. Spending is highest in the financial services and retail sectors, with a growth of 25% and 12% respectively. This data is included in the research findings from Marin Software’s Q4 2018 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report. The report also includes data on monthly spending on eCommerce ads and paid social. Here is a summary of key findings from the report. Paid Search in Q4 2018Paid search spend across all industries is up but clicks are down. CTR fell from 3.46% in Q3 to 3.16% in Q4. Average CPC is down slightly from $0.77 in Q3 to $0.75 in Q4. Travel clocked the lowest global CPC in Q4 at $0.45, followed by retail at $0.48.
Global CPC for all industries is illustrated in the chart below. Mobile captured 36% of search spend share in retail and 41% of spend share across all verticals in Q4.
Google Shopping Ads captured 36% of search spending for all verticals.
Paid Social in Q4 2018Key findings from the report related to paid social include:
For more information, download the full report here. Subscribe to SEJGet our daily newsletter from SEJ’s Founder Loren Baker about the latest news in the industry! via Search Engine Journal – http://bit.ly/1paqDU3 via http://bit.ly/2SrxJGJ Analyst firm Juniper Research is predicting “nearly 8 billion digital voice assistants to be in use by 2023.” That represents annual compound growth of more than 25 percent. It’s a very aggressive estimate that depends on continued smartphone penetration and expansion of virtual assistants to an array of other device categories. TVs and China driving growth. While most virtual assistants will be on smartphones, the main driver of growth is the expansion of voice assistants into other categories, such as TVs. Juniper says, “The fastest-growing category is connected TV-based voice assistants.” It also says that the market will still be dominated by English speaking markets, though China will drive significant growth through 2023. The Juniper report also asserts that voice-based commerce will reach $80 billion during the forecast period. However, the apparent definition of voice commerce is expansive. Separately, there’s evidence that v-commerce has little if any momentum, unless we include voice-initiated searches that ultimately result in transactions. More than 1.5 billion assistant devices today. The current installed base of virtual assistants now exceeds 1.5 billion devices. Google previously reported that its Assistant is now on one billion devices (mostly smartphones). Earlier, Apple said that that Siri had 500 million active users around the world. Amazon also reported more than 100 million Alexa devices sold to date. CES this year showcased Alexa and Google Assistant on a range of new appliances and devices, from slow cookers and refrigerators to smart toilets and showers. And there’s evidence that there may be more than 100 million smart speakers already in U.S. homes; however, growth may be slowing. Despite more than 60,000 Alexa skills today, most are unknown and unused. However, brands need a voice/smart speaker strategy. Why you should care: different devices, different strategies. One of the most common slides in conference presentations about voice search and smart speakers is attributed to comScore: 50 percent of all search queries will be initiated by voice by 2020. However, the number was actually not generated by comScore and may not be a rigorous estimate. Analysts and commentators often lump smartphones and smart speakers together when they talk about “voice search and virtual assistants.” Voice search is happening almost entirely on smartphones, while smart speakers have yet to develop into a meaningful channel. However, they still have significant potential. And other smart device categories will offer different user experiences and opportunities accordingly (e.g., in-car). Regardless of the precise percentages, voice queries are growing and marketers need to account for them in their upper and lower-funnel strategies. That dictates different content and SEO optimization tactics going forward. About The AuthorGreg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, , about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on or find him at . via Search Engine Land – https://selnd.com/2VGy0n9 via http://bit.ly/2BwrN4G Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land – https://selnd.com/2VGy0n9 via http://bit.ly/2BsheQf Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today… via Search Engine Roundtable – http://bit.ly/1YaVehR via http://bit.ly/2TGB94W |