7 TIPS FOR OPTIMISING CONTENT FOR VOICE SEARCH

By the end of 2019, the US alone will have more than 67 million voice assisted devices in use. And of the 2 trillion global Google searches performed each year, half of those are expected to come from voice search by 2020.

Voice search is changing the very way that online content is created and managed. Traditional content creation methods are unable to cater for this huge shift toward voice assistant devices. Which may prove challenging for many digital marketers and content creators.

To help you stay ahead of the game, we have pulled together a list of our top tips for optimising your content for voice search. So if you’re ready, let’s get started.

1 – Up Your Question Quota

The majority of searches performed online are question phrases… people just love to ask Google for an answer. But there is a difference between the way that people ask questions via a text search and a voice search.

Whenever a user performs a typed search, it’s typically a compact, shorthand version of how they would vocally present the phrase.

As an example:

Typed: Red velvet recipe

Voice: How do I make a red velvet cake?

To improve your chances of making it in the voice searches, you need to ask more questions with a natural structure and tone.

The perfect place to use full question phrases is in your headers. You can then use the header body to answer the question. Try to weave in semantically related questions where possible. And always aim to ask and answer those most important questions as naturally as possible.

2 – Avoid Fluff and Filler

As people type less and talk more, avoiding fluff and filler has never been as important as it is today. The intention of voice searches is to deliver accurate and easily digestible results.

Try to keep your verbiage as clear and succinct as possible. Avoid complex phrases and difficult to understand words. And get straight to the point.

While listening to lengthy audio output is much easier than reading large blocks of text, we live in a world where people demand instant gratification.

Make your message as clear as possible from the get-go and try to include a summary at the beginning. This helps both reader and search engine understand what to expect from the content.

3 – Get Conversational

The search engines are always going to favour good content above all else. So creating this as you always do is important. However, what will change is the way that you write.

As voice devices read your content aloud to the user, natural language is going to start to dominate. Look at the way you normally write and compare this with how you would have a conversation with someone.

You will probably notice stark differences between the two. And typically, typed text is much more formal and less natural sounding to the ear than spoken text.

Don’t be afraid to interject linguistics, speech disfluencies and filled pauses into your content. As voice assistants evolve to become more human sounding, these all help add to a more natural experience.

Colloquialisms are good. But remember that they tend to be regional and not everyone is going to understand their meaning. Think of the bigger picture but add as much character as you can.

4 – Put Yourself in the Searchers Shoes

We all know the importance of keywords. And while they are slowly starting to take second place to context, they are always going to play a vital role in SEO.

There are literally thousands of tools out there to help you discover the best keywords to use. But how do you find natural sounding question phrases instead?

The first thing that you can do is think about how you would ask a question out loud. Then head on over to Google and perform a search for the exact wording via the voice search function.

Scroll on down to the bottom of the page to wear the ‘people also search for’ section is. This will throw up a lot of related question phrases you can use along with your primary search phrase (PSP).

While SEO tools are useful. Sometimes the most powerful tool we have is our own thought process. Use this as the foundation for discovering more semantically related phrases.

5 – Optimise Old Content

If you are thinking about getting ready for voice search, optimising your current content is much easier than creating brand new content. It also gives you a better understanding of what you need to do when new content is needed.

Now, while it would be easy to focus all of your energy on optimising for voice search… it’s important to remember that other avenues are always going to be used too.

Just as some people have decided to hang onto home phones, cable TV and CD players, desktop searches won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. So you need to find a balance between traditional SEO and voice focused SEO.

In all honesty, they are two of the same things. The only difference is the way that your content is delivered and the way that you need to construct it. As an example, instead of foregoing keywords completely, use conjunctions and articles to create natural sounding phrases.

Voice search SEO is still pretty new. So many of the techniques and strategies you will need to use are still being worked out.

6 – Build on Mobile Search

Mobile search changed the way that SEO and content was implemented. A brand-new set of search queries, such as ‘near me’ entered the world of search terms.

As mobile devices use GPS and Wi-Fi signals to determine a user’s location, optimising for geographic keywords and Google my business became vital.

And here’s the thing:

Voice search and mobile search are much closer together than voice search and desktop search. But why?

More often than not, people use voice search when it is not possible to use text search. And these searches are performed on mobile phones and voice assistant devices.

So understanding how to optimise your website and content for mobile search can go a long way with helping your voice search efforts.

7 – Get Structured

You’ve probably seen content featured at the top of traditional searches. These might be a bullet point lists, ingredients or event dates, etc.  

But what are they? 

These are known as rich snippets. And the only way you can ever be featured for them is to use structured markup. 

Structured markup let’s the search engines better understand the context of your content. You provide all of the information needed and Google does the rest.

And there are literally thousands of different types of structured markup out there. A great example of how structured markup help is with video content.

Google is smart. But it’s not quite ready to be able to watch videos and determine what they are about. And this is where structured markup comes into play.

You basically tell Google (and the other search engines) what the video content is about. It then takes this information and is able to display the video in the search results to the right people.

Check out schema.org to find the perfect structured markup for voice search. These already exist and let the search engines know that your content is voice search friendly.

Final Thoughts on Voice Search Optimisation

When it comes to winning online, being ready to make changes as soon as possible goes a long way with helping.

You might think that voice search is not important for your business. But regardless of your industry or niche, it will be.

As more and more people move away from traditional text and screen searches, the search engines are going to be looking for content that translates well into spoken words.

If 1 trillion voice searches are performed each year and you are not voice search ready, your online business is missing out on a huge number of potential opportunities.

Head on over to our blog today for much more on the rise of voice search, actionable SEO tips and tricks, and a dedicated archive to everything digital marketing.

Article first published here: 7 TIPS FOR OPTIMISING CONTENT FOR VOICE SEARCH

3 Awesome Messaging Apps for Businesses to Try in 2019

The History of Google – Then and Now

A giant among giants. In just 25 years, Google has managed to grow from a small company to one of the most valuable multi-billion companies in the world.

Google’s logo and search engine home page are easily recognisable all around the world. Today, Google serves about 4.5 billion users in 160 countries and 123 languages.

But how did it all begin and where is Google headed in the future? Let’s take a look at Google’s history.

Early History

Despite what you may think, Google was not the first web-based search engine to appear on the worldwide web. The first search engine used to search for content on the Internet was Archie. 

Google’s history begins in 1995, which is when Larry Page met Sergey Brin. Page was studying at Stanford and Brin was considering studying there. The two started working on an engine called BackRub in 1996.

Backrub alludes to the way that the engine’s algorithms rank pages. You guessed right, backlinks were extremely important even back then. The technology that they developed was called PageRank; it determined a website’s relevance by checking the number and importance of pages, mainly by checking for other pages that linked back to the original site.

Page and Brin operated out of their dorm rooms. They built a server network using cheap, used computers. Backrub worked on Stanford University’s servers for a bit more than a year, but as the engine grew, Page and Brin had to expand and grow.

Both Page and Brin wanted to license their search engine technology at an early stage of development. After a number of failed negotiations, they decided to keep Google and seek more finance.

On September 15th, 1997, Google.com was registered. The term Google is a play on words of ‘googol’, a mathematical term which is used to describe the number 1 followed by 100 zeros ( 1 googol = 1.0 × 10100) . 

Funding

It wasn’t long before Google was noticed by investors. After a quick demo of the search engine at work in August 1997, Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim was so impressed that he wrote the pair a check for $100,000. 

The problem was that the two founders couldn’t cash in as Google Inc. did not yet exist as a legal entity. They incorporated on September 4th, 1998 and they eventually raised $900,000 more. Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos was one of Google’s angel investors.

Google’s first office was opened in Menlo Park, California. It was attached to the garage of a friend who sublet the place to the new corporation. It was about that time that Google hired its first employee, Craig Silverstein. He stayed with the company for more than ten years.

At the time of launch, Google.com answered about 10,000 queries every day. Google now processes more than 63,000 search queries every second, which translates to about 5.6 billion searches per day.

An Old Rival

Long before Google, Facebook, and YouTube, Yahoo was the undisputed king of the internet. Yahoo reigned supreme for more than a decade, but was sold for a mere $5 billion in 2016. 

Yahoo’s history is interesting on its own, but as you may have already guessed, Google’s rise to prominence had everything to do with Yahoo’s downfall. Yahoo had a chance to acquire Google in 1998 for just $1 million. They turned down the offer. In 2002, Yahoo’s CEO Terry Semel offered Google $3 million for the company. It was Page and Brin’s time to Turn Yahoo down, reportedly holding out for 5$ billion.

Yahoo’s platform was successful at the time. Its directories were designed to answer questions and view emails. They rejected Google’s PageRank algorithm because they didn’t think it would benefit their platform in any way. 

In the following years, Yahoo missed several more opportunities to acquire small companies that would go on to completely change the way we think of the internet today. Some notable examples include Facebook, YouTube, and eBay.

Constant Growth

Google was no ordinary search engine. The company’s willingness to innovate and keep moving forward were key factors to its success. Adwords (since renamed to Ads), Google’s own pay-per-click advertising platform has been the biggest contributor to their success.

Improvements, such as the doodle series, multi-language support and the Google toolbar also played an important role in the search engine’s success.

 In 2001, Google acquired Deja.com, an archive of 500 million discussions dating all the way back to 1995. In the same year, Google launched Google images and released their first annual ‘Google Zeitgeist’, a way to see what other people all over the world are searching for.

Google Adsense, which allowed businesses to connect with advertisers from all over the world, was announced in 2003. Google was growing at an incredible rate, and in 2004, moving to their new office at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, known as the ‘Googleplex. 

Google launched Gmail in 2004. What was then an invite-only service now serves more than 425 million users. Google finally entered the stock market, offering the public class A shares at $85 each.

New Heights

2005 was another great year for Google. Google Maps was born and Google set its eyes on the mobile market. Google Earth launched in the summer of 2005.

Google Analytics changed the way businesses track and measure their marketing impact. Even today, it’s one of the most useful free marketing tools available on the market.

2006 was the year that Google bought YouTube for a whopping $1.65 billion. Today, YouTube is estimated to be worth around 75$ billion dollars. Google and ‘googling’ were added to the Oxford English dictionary in 2006. 

Street View debuted in 2007 and is now available in more than 50 countries. Android made its first appearance in 2007 and was released officially on September 23, 2008.

In 2008, Google Chrome was introduced to the world. It quickly established itself as one of the fastest and most secure browsers in the market. It’s currently the most used web browser, with a market share of 64%.

Google+ launched in 2011 and Chromecast in 2013. Google’s smart home speakers powered by Google assistant launched in 2016.  

Logo

Google’s logo has changed quite a bit over the past 20+ years. The original logo was designed by Brin himself using GIMP. The logo used between 1999 and 2013 was designed by Ruth Kadar. A new, revised logo was unveiled in September 2015. 

The logo is regularly modified in the form of doodles. Doodles come in all forms and shapes, celebrating all kinds of different events and anniversaries.

Goooooooooogle’s Big Numbers

• 63,000 searchers per second, 3.8 million searches per minute, 228 million searches per hour, 5.6 billion searches per day. Wow!
• Google Search was responsible for 63.1% of queries in October 2018.
• Google Search’s desktop market share is 90.22% (95.2% on mobile).
• 15% of all searches on Google are unique. 
• Google owns more than 200 companies.
• Google earned $39.1 billion in revenue for Q4 of 2018.
• 90% of all internet users see Google Display ads.
• Gmail has 1.5 billion active users in 2019. Its market share is 27%.

 

And there’s no sign of Google slowing down anytime soon. Unless the world turns upside down, Google will continue to dominate the search and video market for a long time to come. 

Learn more about Google and digital marketing by visiting our blog today!

Article first published here: The History of Google – Then and Now

The Ultimate Exit Survey Guide

Some users will convert. Some will sign up for your newsletter. But what if people don’t really do what you want them to do? How can you tell if too many visitors are leaving your website and what can you do about it?We do everything we can to make sure users make it to our website. Once users do make it to our website, we do everything we can to make sure they stay there.

An exit survey can help you learn more about the state of your website. Here’s everything you need to know.

What Is an Exit Survey?

Exit surveys are shown to visitors just as they’re about to leave your website. Exit surveys often come in the form of a pop up that appears if a visitor moves their cursor away towards the browser toolbar. Other mouse movements can be set to trigger the survey.

Now, why would you want to annoy visitors with a pop up survey when they are about to leave? Most people will ignore the survey anyway. That’s one way to look at it.

Think about it this way. If visitors are leaving sooner than you’d want them to, then chances are they won’t be returning anytime soon. It makes sense to try and learn more about their experiences on the website, even if sudden pop ups may come off as spammy. 

It may be the case that only a small percentage of the users who leave your website actually complete the survey. However, even such small numbers can tell a lot about the state of your website.

Any kind of feedback that you can get is good feedback. You’d be surprised at the actual number of people who complete exit surveys.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Exit Surveys?

Exit surveys may not sound too exciting, but they can help you discover problems with usability, layout, value proposition, content, and the list goes on. Here’s why you might want to consider adding an exit survey to your website:

 

• Surprisingly, exit surveys have high response rates and they often outperform other kinds of website surveys. Maybe people are eager to express their discontent. Maybe they just like filling out surveys.
• People who fill out exit surveys provide you with the most valuable insights. Of course, you want to take into account the opinion of happy or converting customers too, but it’s often hard to improve when all the feedback that you get is positive. Finding out what doesn’t work that well will help research and reduce bounce and exit rates.
• Lower bounce rates translate into higher conversion rates. Knowledge is power. If you know that people think your product is overpriced, then adjusting the price tags or adding more value to your product will most likely increase conversions in the near future.

 

Be that as it may, exit surveys are not always reliable, especially if samples are small. We’ve mentioned the good so it’s only fair that we tell you about the bad as well:

 

• Exit surveys are intrusive. There’s no other way to put this. A large pop up never makes for a good user experience. 
• This is not a problem, if the user would just leave and never come back. But exit surveys can be triggered accidentally if users hover over specific elements during their stay on your website. Showing an intrusive exit survey to a user who’s just browsing is more than just awkward. 
• Results can be biased. Some visitors may see exit surveys as an opportunity to express their frustration. In this case, you might receive conflicting feedback from confused and agitated users, which may make it difficult to come to sensible conclusions.

 

Types of Exit Surveys

Exit surveys come in many shapes and forms. Depending on when users decide to exit your website, different surveys can provide you with valuable insight. Here are the most popular types of exit surveys:

Shopping cart abandonment surveys

Did you know that 70% of users abandon their online shopping carts before making a purchase? Now, that’s a shocking number. An exit survey can offer marketers a quick glimpse behind the scenes. Why are users not completing orders? What is it that stops them from buying?

Of course, this can be anything from an unexpected increase in price, lack of interest, lack of trust, to exhaustion at the face of extremely long forms that ask for way too much information. 

To create an abandonment survey, all you have to do is focus on those users who added a product to their cart and then decided to leave. Here are some sample questions that you could include in your survey:

 

 

• Why did you decide to quit shopping? A generic question that can work surprisingly well.

• Having trouble completing your order? This one’s a bit trickier. It implies that the user wants to complete the order but something’s holding them back. 

• Do you have any questions before completing your order? Similarly to the previous question, it’s implied that the user wants to complete the order. These last two questions are great for helping troubled customers convert, but don’t do much in the way of obtaining information from users that just don’t feel like buying anything anymore. 

 

 

This is exactly why being able to track the time that a user has spent on your website is extremely important. Someone who has had something on their cart for a long time, may actually have trouble completing the order. They decide to leave the website in frustration. Questions two and three can solve the problem and help them convert.

A user who just added a product on their cart and decided to leave after a few seconds, may have a completely different reason for wanting to go. A more general question (such as number one above) may give you a better idea of the reason behind their decision.

Pricing abandonment surveys

Users often make it to the landing page of a product or service but leave when they click through to the plan/pricing page. Obviously, pricing alone can determine whether someone will convert or not, but that’s not always the case.

Of course, when you’re setting up a pricing abandonment survey, you know that a lot of people are going to specifically complain about the product’s price. However, you may discover that pricing alone doesn’t answer many questions that visitors may have about your product. 

You may find that users do not clearly understand how your pricing plans work. Here are some sample questions that you could include in your pricing abandonment survey:

 

 

• Is our pricing clear to you? A crucial question, especially if you have several products or service plans on offer. 

 

• • Compared to similar solutions, do you think our prices are lower, higher, or about the same? You may already know how your prices compare to those of your competitors’, but knowing what customers think is probably more important.

 

• How much would you be willing to pay for our product/service? They say that the customer is always right. If the majority of people leaving your pricing page say they would feel more comfortable with a small drop in price, then it may be wise to take their suggestion into consideration.

 

Goal completion surveys

Goal completion surveys are more generic exit surveys that can pop up in places where other more specific surveys wouldn’t make too much sense. 

Goal completion surveys simply ask visitors if they managed to complete their goal during their visit, whatever that goal may have been. It may be that they found some useful information on your blog; maybe they learned more about your products or services.

Goal completion surveys are more than just about numbers. If customers are able to achieve their goals, then user satisfaction is high; a sign that you’re offering a great user experience. Such general information may not seem very useful but says a lot about the overall state of your website. It doesn’t really matter what their goal is today. Satisfied users are more likely to convert in the future.

 

Simple goal completion questions that you can include in your survey include:

 

 

• Did you complete the goal of your visit?

• From a scale of 1 to 5, how difficult was it to complete your goal?

• Would you visit our website again in the future?

• How likely are you to recommend our website to a friend?

 

Landing page bounce research

People leaving right after making to your landing page is never a good sign. Instead of panicking and trying to guess why people are not taking the actions you want them to take (e.g. sign up to your newsletter, download your new ebook, visit your products page), you can just ask them.

More than any other page on your website, your landing page is designed to hook users with actionable content and great value propositions. If people are leaving without going anywhere else, then chances are you’re either not being as clear as you should, or you’re bombarding users with too much information.

In this case, an exit survey won’t be able to solve all your problems. It can, however, help you uncover the root cause of the problem. Here is what you can ask:

 

 

• What should we do to improve your experience on our website?

• What more would you like to see on this page?

• What prevented you from signing up?

 

 

Exit surveys as a lead generation tool

One of the more effective uses of exit surveys comes in the form of special and limited offers. Just as the user is about to leave, you provide them with a personalised offer that they won’t be able to ignore: a discount, a free consultation, a free guide etc.

You can set up lead generation exit surveys on promotional or specific product pages. Think about it. Just by setting up a convincing exit survey you’re generating leads out of thin air. 

You can use the information you’ve obtained from other exit surveys to position your offers and propositions accordingly—discounts work great if customers believe that your product or service is a bit too expensive for them. 

Make sure you that you don’t ask for too much and that your offer has value. Remember that you’re targeting users who almost clicked away. A name and email for a 20% discount on a mid-range product is a good example of an exit lead generation offer done right. 

Response Rates

How you design your exit surveys, where you place them, and what you ask will affect your response rates. These can vary greatly, but successful exit surveys enjoy response rates of up to 70%. 

The type of survey clearly affects those numbers as well. When users are engaged, surveys have higher response rates (as is often the case with cart abandonment surveys, for example). 

When users are less engaged and not considering taking a specific action (e.g. they’re just browsing your blog), response rates remain low (as is the case with goal completion surveys).

This is all fine and dandy, but what can you do to increase your response rate? If you’re going to take the time to create multiple exit surveys, then you’ll want to make sure that people respond to them as much as possible. 

Using the best practices you can achieve high response rates and collect a large amount of data, even if traffic to your website is low to moderate.

Creating the Best Surveys Possible

Keep it nice and short

Don’t forget that exit surveys are pop ups. No one will engage with a 500-word, essay-long exit survey. Ideally, it should consist of just one question. If you really have more to say, then create more space and spread things out. 

Multiple choice or scale questions work the best. Text-input surveys can work too, but users are less likely to answer those. Still, written feedback is extremely valuable so what you can do is add an extra comment box at the end of the survey—give users the choice to express their concerns in more detail.

Don’t forget to follow up with an appropriate ‘thank you’ message. If you’re asking more than one question, make sure users know about it. They’re much more likely to make it to the end of the survey if they know there’s only one—or two—more questions coming up.

Make it visible

You don’t need to be subtle with your exit surveys—think of them as your last resort. It’s your last chance to capture the user’s attention and prompt them to take action. 

The form should appear in the middle of the screen and should be clearly visible and easy to follow. Unmissable is the word: make use of an overlay, go with a large design, and don’t be afraid of bright colours.

Test

Make sure that your surveys run well on all screens and devices. This is not always easy as buttons and fields may be too small and hard to interact with on mobile phones (especially if you’ve designed your website with desktop users in mind).

Testing tools, such as BrowserStack can help you get it right. Browserstack can help you check out how your website looks and runs on more than 2,000 devices. Needless to say, optimising for mobile is key, even beyond the scope of exit surveys.

To Survey or Not to Survey

There’s much debate around surveys, but exit surveys always seem to spark debates among marketers—some marketers love them, others hate them.

It’s not a matter of getting the code and implementing it on your website. There are more than a dozen tools that can help you create all kinds of exit surveys. The issue rather lies with the intrusive nature of the survey itself.

A well-placed exit survey can help you gain valuable feedback, which is exactly where things can get out of control. Instead of implementing an exit survey for a specific reason (e.g. a need to understand why users abandon their carts at the last moment), many end up using a combination of different exit surveys for more than just that.

We’ve all been to those websites. Navigating through them feels like walking through a field of landmines. And this is exactly why marketers need to be careful with exit surveys—and any kind of intrusive, in-your-face marketing tactic.

Too many pop ups negatively affect the user experience as they target more and more users. Things can quickly spiral out of control. Leverage exit surveys but make sure you know why and when to use them.

For more digital marketing guides, make sure to check out our blog today!

 

Article first published here: The Ultimate Exit Survey Guide

How to Write the Perfect Blog Post

How to Reach Millennials with your Marketing Campaigns

There are few generations as widely discussed as millennials. Baby boomers don’t understand them and gen-X most definitely doesn’t like being confused for them. But here’s the thing… Millennials play a hugely important role when it comes to the future success of brands and businesses.

In the United States alone, millennials make up a quarter of the population and are directly responsible for more than $200 billion yearly consumer spending! Multiply that on a global scale and the power of millennials becomes shockingly clear.

In this post we are going to look at why millennials are so difficult to target, who they actually are, and how you can connect with them. 

Millennials Vs Gen-X Vs Baby Boomers

We’ve all heard of millennials, but do you actually know which generation they fall into? Do you even know which generation you are? Let’s take a quick look at each of the different generations before getting started with millennial 

Baby Boomers. Born between 1946 and 1964, they range from 55 to 73 years old today. This generation were around during the flower power era and enjoyed a huge population boom following the Great Depression and World War II. Baby boomers we’re the ones who fought for protection of the environment and were the first to experience the civil rights 

Generation-X. Born Between 1965 and 1979, they range from 40 to 54 years old today. Also known as generation bust, Gen X were the first generation to experience MTV, the fall of the Berlin wall, Tiananmen Square, and the rise in popularity of 

Xennials. Born between 1980 and 1985, they range from 34 to 39 years old today. Seen as a crossover generation between generation X and millennials, Xennials enjoyed life before home computers, mobile phones, and social media and were also the first generation to use them. They are considered to be more like generation-X than 

Millennials. Born between 1986 and 1994, they range from 25 to 33 years old today. Millennials were born during a time where almost every home had internet, mobile phones, smart TVs and modern technology was the norm. They are often seen as the entitled generation who were raised to think that they are special. Every loser was a winner and they were raised to believe anything was possible. Of course, reality soon hit home 

Generation-Z. Born between 1995 and 2012, they range from 7 to 24 years old today. This generation has access to mobile phones and modern technology from birth. They spend less time socialising and more time online. They are also seen as the most tolerant generation toward different races, sexual orientations and cultures. Gen-Z’rs are also less likely to believe in church and government and are more forward-

Generation-Alpha. Born between 2013 and 2025, they range from 1 day to 6 years old today. This generation is still too young to have developed any clear character traits. 

 

 

Why Millennials are a Marketing Nightmare

Unlike the preceding generations, millennials are much less likely to respond to traditional advertising campaigns. And here is where the problem 

As Millennials start to take the reins of consumer spending, it is becoming harder and harder to understand their spending 

Plenty of research has been conducted trying to understand what it is that gets their attention. And while some patterns have become clear, it’s still not understood why they don’t match the marketing numbers of previous 

With more Millennials spending online than any other generation, marketing campaigns should have some type of influence. We already know that influencer marketing works with this generation, but why are ad campaigns missing the 

 

 

It’s all to do with the lingo you use!

The Solution to Millennial Marketing

We know where Millennials hang out and which platforms work best for reaching them. But unfortunately, most marketers don’t know how to connect with 

If your ad campaigns and marketing efforts don’t resonate with them, they will simply ignore you. So what can you do? The answer is actually much easier than you would 

Forget about spending a small fortune on ad campaigns that keep failing and work on utilising words from the millennial lexicon! Yep. That’s all it takes.

Every generation has its own style of language that the preceding generations struggle to understand. Just as you find millennial lingo confusing and hard to connect with, the same is true in 

The internet makes it so easy to integrate relevant millennial-friendly phrases and words into your campaigns. But to save you the time and effort of trying to find them, we’ve pulled together a list of the biggest and best millennial words for you.

 

 

Millennial Lexicon (with old people translations)

 

 

Final Thoughts

Adapting and modifying the way that you write your marketing campaigns can cost effective and easy once you know how. Of course, the millennial lingo goes far beyond the examples that we have listed in this post. 

Start off slowly by testing the waters with a few additional millennial words sprinkled in here and there before going in full force. This will give you a better idea of which words grab their attention and which don’t.

You also want to make sure that you don’t come across as condescending. It might not be your intention to insult come up but it can happen all too easily. Anagrams such as FOMO, GOAT and SMH not only resonate with this generation, but can save you space and money when creating ad campaigns.

 

 

Combining these words with visual images that resonate with causes and activities such as sustainability, global warming, political events, etc are the perfect way to reach out to and connect with the often confused millennial consumer.

Millennials are not the enemy… they are just harder to understand than all of the other generations. And now that you know what makes them tick, you can start checking all the right boxes to get them on side.

Why not check out our blog today for more awesome marketing and SEO tips, tricks and techniques to boost your reach across the board.

Article first published here: How to Reach Millennials with your Marketing Campaigns

The Evolutionary History of YouTube

Next year, the world’s biggest and best-known video site turns 15. From humble beginnings as a place for amateurs to upload videos to a platform that launches global cyber stars, YouTube continues to grow day by day.

Each month, more than 4 billion hours of video content are viewed. And for every minute that passes, users upload 72 hours worth of video content. 

Without it, Gangnam Style would have been confined to the airwaves of South Korea. Rebecca black would never have been so happy about Friday. And a prepubescent Justin Bieber wouldn’t have sung about his baby, baby baby.

Ok. So now that we’ve got the unfortunate side of YouTube out of the way, let’s take a look at the video sharing giant from its early inception to how it went on to dominate the world.

Nip Slips and Tsunami’s

Ideas come to people at the strangest of times, and YouTube was no different. 

If Janet Jackson hadn’t ‘accidentally on purpose’ displayed her breast to the world at the 2004 Super Bowl and the Indian Ocean tsunami didn’t devastate Southeast Asia, YouTube might not even exist today.

It was these key events that spawned the idea of an online video sharing platform according to Jawed Karim, one of YouTube’s 3 founding partners.

While at a dinner party with Steve Chen and Chad Hurley who had worked with Karim at PayPal, the concept of an online place for amateurs to upload their own video content was born.

On February 14th, 2005, a year after they came up with the idea, Chad Hurley register the domain, logo and trademark for YouTube setting it on it’s path to world domination.

YouTube Goes Live

3 months after YouTube was registered and trademarked, it’s very first home page went live when the beta version. One month later on April 23rd, the very first video was uploaded onto the platform.

Titled “me at the zoo”, the 19 seconds long clip was uploaded by co-founder Jawed Karim. Filmed in front of the elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo, a baby-faced Karim spends 19 seconds talking about elephant trunks.

Just five months later in September, Nike went on to become the first video to achieve 1 million views with their iconic Ronaldinho ad. This served to cement YouTube’s potential as a promotional platform for brands and businesses on a global scale.

YouTube Goes Public

In mid December 2005, Sequoia Capital invested 3.5 million dollars into YouTube. This allowed YouTube to finally improve-it servers and increase its bandwidth so that it could launch itself as a public video sharing platform.

But it’s conceptual idea of being an amateur video sharing site changed come February 2006. It was this month that NBC ask YouTube to upload a clip from SNL titled Lazy Sunday.

This gave rise to YouTube content verification program, which was created to help content owners remove infringing video content uploaded by others. Ongoing promotions for NBC made Google stand up and pay attention to the potential of YouTube.

In Comes the Giant

October 2006 what was the month that Google purchased YouTube for a whopping $1.6 billion. The world’s largest search engine took YouTube and turned it into the world’s largest video sharing site.

When Google acquired YouTube, there were just 65 employees working for the video-site… fewer people than what work in a single department today.

Google had already conquered the online revenue earning potential of AdSense, now it was time to let people monetise their video content.

Average Joe’s Making Moolah

May 2007 saw the introduction of the YouTube partner program. This was a key turning point in taking YouTube from a standard video sharing platform to one that would grow to be the world’s biggest.

It suddenly became possible for the everyday person to take their hobbies and turn them into an online business. Just 12 months later, the most popular users on the platform were already earning incomes consisting of six figures!

In fact, it wasn’t just hobbies and businesses making money. Who can forget baby Charlie biting his brother’s finger and giving an evil grin to the camera! This funny family moment caught on camera has earned the parents behind the video more than $175,000!

From cats and fails to makeup tutorials and cookery shows, YouTube became firmly established as a viable alternative to TV.

Greedy Old Google

August 2007 was the month that Google decided to start placing ads on videos to generate revenue. 

Covering approximately 20% of the video screen, semi-transparent banners started to make an appearance. Of course, Google is a business and was looking for ways to monetise the website and ads seemed the natural way to go.

Giving rise to one of the biggest annoyances that viewers faced when watching content, it didn’t take long for adblock plus to make an appearance. 

Going Mainstream and Vevo

January 2009 saw the launch of official congressional channels on YouTube. In February, even the Vatican got in on the action and launched its very own channel.

Then comes April 2009… the year that the world’s ears were forever tortured with the high pitched vocals of Justin Bieber.

But going mainstream also caused a lot of tension within the music industry. Record labels started to complain about copyright infringement, licensing terms and piracy… and thus, Vevo was brought on board.

A joint agreement between Vevo and YouTube allowed the video sharing platform to continue streaming mainstream music so long as the video content is uploaded and monetized by Vevo.

Going Live & Democracy

2011 saw some pretty big advancements that would shape at YouTube into what it is today. 

In April, YouTube launched YouTube live, making it possible for video content to be live streamed on the platform. 

It also started to invest heavily in original content, carving out it’s very own Netflix Style programming and creating an online place for watching series and original movies.

Along with Twitter and Facebook, YouTube also played a pivotal role in the early stages of the Arab Spring. 

Helping spread important messages covering everything from political commentary to protests and activist planning, it made it possible to empower freedom of speech and democracy.

Banging Out a Billion

At the end of December, 2012 KPOP superstar PSY became a global sensation and went on to become YouTube’s most viewed video. Gangnam Style rapidly racked up over 1 billion views in 2012 and moved the goalposts for viewing goals.

By now, people were enjoying over 4 billion hours of viewed video content each month and uploading 72 hours worth of content every minute!

Dislikes Making a Mark

YouTube has been releasing a rewind video for the past few years. YouTube rewind looks back at the biggest and most iconic moments on the platform over the past year.

But the 2018 video released by YouTube went on to become the platform’s most disliked video ever. Within a week of being uploaded and released, it attracted almost 10.3  million dislikes, surpassing the then most disliked video, Justin Bieber’s “Baby” (which had 9.9 million dislikes.)

This was one of the first times that audiences, creators and YouTubers clashed with the views of YouTube as a corporate giant. Many claimed that YouTube overlooked the efforts put in by content creators and instead focused on creating an ad and celebrating already known celebs such as Will Smith. 

Viewers and creators wanted to know where Logan Paul and pewdiepie were. A few controverses seemed to break their relationship with YouTube. Which, in turn,broke the audience’s relationship with YouTube.

Making Millionaires

For quite a few years now, YouTube has been turning average people into millionaires. In 2018, the highest paid YouTubers were raking in double digit millions.

 

• PewDiePie – 15.5 million
• Jacksepticeye -16 million
• VanossGaming – 17 million
• Markiplier – 17.5 million
• Jeffree Star – 18 million
• Ryan toysreview – 22 million

 

The biggest earner of 2018 hadn’t even reached his first decade of life before earning his family a multimillion-dollar income.

Business Sense

With social media and video content leading the way in an ever connected online world, businesses realised the potential that online video offers their marketing strategies.

Other platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have managed to forge their own paths in online video sharing. Gone are the days off sharing a video from YouTube to Facebook. They now make it possible for businesses to upload directly. 

For now, YouTube doesn’t look set to hand over it video content crown anytime soon. But, as is true with everything online, things can change almost overnight.

That’s about it for today’s post. Why not head over to our blog and check out more of our social media posts.

Article first published here: The Evolutionary History of YouTube 

HOW TO GET MORE SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWERS

Social media plays a huge role in today’s world of online marketing and brand identity. But what if your social media follower count is almost non-existent?

What can you do to supercharge your followers and fan base… especially when you don’t have time to create new content on a regular basis?

Today we are going to look at how to get more social media followers without creating brand new content. These tips and tricks will see your social media followers increase with little effort on your part.

Is Social Media Follow Count Important?

One of the most common questions people have about social media is whether the follow count is actually important?

As an online brand or business, people will check your follower count before deciding if they are going to follow you or not.

When you want to partner with a social media influencer, they will take a look at the numbers to decide if you are a good partnership opportunity.

Having a low follow count doesn’t mean that your content or brand is not up to standard. But it can impact how seriously people take you.

When you look online for tips on how to increase your social media follower count, almost every marketer says you need to create more content.

But is this actually the case?

Not always! In fact, sometimes the best way to build your social media fan base is by taking a completely different approach.

So let’s take a look at what you can do to get your follow counter ticking upwards.

Promoting Vs Informing

When it comes to social media, you have two options available to you. You can focus on selling your products or services… or you can focus on providing trustworthy and useful information.

At the end of the day, content is content and what people expect from it is the same. Be it on your website, your blog or your social media accounts, people appreciate value.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make on social media is to use it as an online sales pitch platform.

But here’s the thing about this method:

When people are looking at purchasing one of your products or services, your sales pitch is not going to have much of an impact on their decision.

They will tend to seek out reviews from prior customers, check out YouTube for opinions and thoughts on your product, and make comparisons to check out if it is worth it.

People prefer to make an informed choice when it comes to spending their hard-earned money… and you can use this to your advantage.

Forget about uploading glossy photos and sales banners that focus solely on selling and instead aim to offer real value.

By this, we mean highlighting how your product or service can benefit them, making use of customer testimonials, and explaining how it works.

Ideally, you want to answer any questions that they may have so that they are armed with all of the info that they need to make a purchase… and all without coming across as a sales pitch.

The majority of people don’t care if your item has 15% off or if your item is selling out fast. This isn’t going to attract followers. 

Informing and educating helps build brand authority and trust. Which, in turn, makes you much more follow-worthy in the fickle world of social media.

Target a Younger Audience

When it comes to social media, there is no denying that millennials lead the way. And millennials typically tend to follow brands and businesses that have a certain degree of social impact.

But what do we mean by social impact?

Basically, social impact is when a brand or identity advocates a worthy cause. Be it environmental or political, they expect so much more than just another online business.

A recent study showed what millennials really care about… and it most definitely is not flashy ads and sales pitches.

• 83% believe that businesses should have an involvement in societal issues.
• 82% believe that businesses can have an impact on addressing societal issues.
• 79% want to know which companies are doing good.
• 69% want businesses to make it easier for them to involve themselves in societal issues.

Improving your brand identity to reflect social issues, such as sustainability, environmental care, equality, fair trading, etc. will bode much better with the younger generation.

And overlooking the younger generation is one of the biggest mistakes that you can make. Not only are they much more likely to follow brands and businesses on social media. But they are also the future success of your company.

They may not be your target audience today. But getting them on side means that they are much more likely to be your customer base a few years down the line.

Start Following More Brands and Users

As with most things in life, we receive what we give. And one of the best ways to start encouraging more people to follow your social media accounts is for you to do the same.

This doesn’t mean that you need to follow absolutely every social media account that you come across. But you should try to spend a little time understanding which brands your audience follow.

Once you have a good idea of where your audience focuses their attention, it’s time to get interactive. Don’t just follow that brand or influencer. Leave them comments and get involved in the conversation.

By doing this, people are much more likely to check out your profile and follow you. And while we are on the subject of interaction, don’t be afraid to repost another brands tweet or image.

Of course, you need to make it clear that you are retweeting or sharing so people don’t think it’s your content. 

But why would you share your competitors social media content? Isn’t that counterproductive? 

In a nutshell, no! By sharing your competitors content, you are building relationships not only with other businesses but with their audience too.

This makes attracting followers easier… and all without needing to create content. Pretty much a win-win for everyone.

Build Your Following Away from Social Media Platforms

If you have a website that receives plenty of traffic every month, you have the perfect opportunity to boost your follower count away from social media.

This is something that many websites overlook. Which means they are missing out on plenty of new social media follower opportunities

But how do you get more social media followers from your website or blog? The answer is so simple, CTA.

A call to action can get people subscribing to your social media accounts without needing to leave your website. Making use of social media widgets and pop-ups on your website to pages can see your follow count skyrocket.

If you are using a CMS platform such as WordPress for your website, there are plenty of plugins that allow users to follow your social media on site.

Pop up screens are also a great way to get people following. The awesome thing about using your website to get new followers is that you know they are already interested in your products, services or brand.

After all, they are already on your website, so you know that the interest is there. 

Use a simple call to action, such as:

“Follow us on social media for much more.”

You might just be surprised at how effective this is for boosting your follow count with uses prepared to interact with your brand.

Final Thoughts

There is no denying that getting high quality followers on social media can be tricky. But once you shift focus from selling to informing and educating, things can pick up speed pretty quickly.

Of course, sooner or later you are going to need to create some kickass content to upload. But there is nothing wrong with first building connections before jumping in with regular content uploads.

For more about social media, including the best times to follow and the best types of content to use, why not check out our blog today. We have plenty of actionable content ready and waiting for you.

And while you are here, why not follow us on social media.

Article first published here: HOW TO GET MORE SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWERS

SEO in 2020 – Getting Ready for Google’s Changes

Anyone who deals with SEO knows that changes can come in quick and heavy. Just as you finally nail your SEO techniques, Google goes and switches things up throwing you back to the start. 

But Google is not doing this to annoy you. Just as eBay favors the buyer over the seller, Google cares very little about your SEO pains and is much more focused on the user. 

So as you have now come to expect, you need to be one step ahead of the game to succeed. And this means switching your focus toward the search engines motives instead of your own.

And the only way that you can do this is to be armed and fully prepared to go to battle with your competitors by using newer techniques.

Today we are going to look at the future of SEO and what is expected to change in 2020.

Out With Keywords – In With Phrases

This is something that horrifies many SEO marketers. But it is something that is happening… and at a pretty quick pace.

Smartphones and Amazon Alexa are changing the very ways that search engines discover and present content. It is estimated that by 2020, approximately 50% of all internet searches will be performed on voice-activated devices.

This means that you are going to have to incorporate completely new strategies into your content creation with voice search SEO. While those ever faithful 1 to 5 word keywords will still play a role, the future is all about natural language.

As screen searches start to give way to voice searches, text links and unnatural sounding language will fall to the wayside. Trying to stuff in unnatural sounding keywords just isn’t going to cut the mustard in 2020.

As an example, voice search will favour:

“Ten of the best hotels to stay at in Sydney” over “10 best hotels Sydney”

But why? It’s all about the user experience. Voice search intends to deliver the most natural-sounding speech possible. This means that phrases that are missing conjunctions, articles and correct structure will most likely be skipped.

Using links to provide further information by directing the user to another page is also going to fall out of favour. Voice assistants cannot read beyond the link. So you are going to have to answer the questions in detail on one page.

Writing for machines is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Adopting a conversational tone that is friendly and informative will far outweigh the benefits of using unnatural sounding keywords.

Local SEO will Continue to Grow

Currently, local searches make up 46% of all searches. And the focus on local SEO is set to grow. 

Much of this ties in with the growth of voice search. This is because voice shirt tends to be a much more specific and focused on the local area.

So what do you need to focus on to improve your local SEO? The following are things that you don’t want to overlook.

Non-traditional Keyword Queries

Non-traditional keyword queries cover the card like results displayed by Google. Of course, there are many other search engines out there but Google dominates and it makes sense to focus your efforts toward the giant.

Along with your Google My Business listing, non-traditional keywords include the most important information, such as:

• Hotel near me
• Crowne Plaza
• What time is check in open?
• What time is check out?
• Crowne Plaza phone number
• Distance to Crowne Plaza
• Room rate today

Focus on Geographic Keywords

Crowne Plaza have hotels located around the world. So for local SEO you need to include geographic targeted keywords. Let’s say that we are focusing on Crowne Plaza Melbourne. What types of geographic (service in location) keywords could we use?

• Crowne Plaza in Melbourne
• Hotel rooms in Melbourne
• Meeting rooms for hire in Melbourne
• Hotels for couples in Melbourne
• Accommodation In Melbourne
• Suites in Melbourne

Google Autocomplete

What better way to get keyword recommendations then from the giant itself. Whenever you perform a search on Google, it provides you with the autocomplete function.

And this autocomplete function goes much further than just finishing your search term. It provides LSI keywords (latent semantic indexing) that help provide context to your content.

Along with that, it will give you some awesome suggestions that you may not have thought about. You can also scroll down to the bottom of the SERPs for the “people also search for” section for more inspiration.

As an example, when you type in Crowne Plaza Melbourne you will get the following suggestions.

• Crowne Plaza Melbourne restaurants
• Crowne Plaza Melbourne address
• Crowne Plaza Melbourne casino
• Crowne Plaza Melbourne gym

This gives you some pretty useful keywords to weave into your content. Of course, you need to remember to make them sound as natural as possible. So use them as sentences that ask or answer questions in a friendly and personable tone.

Revving Up for Reviews

Everything from your business service to engagement and popularity are taken into account. And this is set to continue well into next year.

It’s reported that Google is working on a system that is favoured toward highly rated and ranked businesses. This means that quality customer reviews about your products, services or brands are now more important than ever before.

Audience engagement is also taking a leading role with the way that businesses communicate with their customers. Providing content of value that answers the question can go a long way with helping.

Whenever your business is searched for directly or reviews are left, Google is taking note. The more engagement your business has, the more popularity it can achieve.

And popularity is another thing that the search engines look out for. This means that you need to focus on creating a solid reputation on social media. Getting people talking by generating a buzz around your brand, products or services may actually have an impact on your search engine ranking success.

SEP (Service, Engagement, Popularity) is definitely something you want to try to achieve whenever possible. Don’t just start the conversation, aim to become a part of it to generate a stellar online business reputation.

Final Thought

We can only go on current trends and historical changes to guess what will happen with SEO in 2020. But looking at the way things have been heading over the past 12 months, voice search is almost a dead cert.

The rise of mobile devices and voice-activated assistants are changing the very landscape of SEO. Ensuring that your websites are responsive and focus on providing the best user experience possible are also driving forces behind the upcoming changes.

If you only start focusing on one thing today, we recommend natural language and a conversational tone. If voice search continues to grow at its current rate, screen search could be almost obsolete within the next 5 years.

It’s all about finding that perfect balance between what currently works and what looks set to lead the way. Why not check out our blog for more today.

Article first published here: SEO in 2020 – Getting Ready for Google’s Changes

The Dos and Don’ts of Content Marketing

For the beginner, content marketing might seem like something that is easy enough to do. But just like with everything else in life, there are things to do and things to avoid.

The very face of content has changed over the last decade, meaning content is no longer just about written words. Everything from audio and visual content to video content and text is now commonplace. And each of these can be divided into hundreds of subcategories.

Regardless of the types of content that you use on your website, the rules are pretty much the same. And having a solid content marketing strategy in place will go a long way with helping you reach your goals.

In today’s post we are going to take a closer look at some of the biggest mistakes businesses make with content marketing. We will also have a look at the methods and techniques that not only work, but can see your content marketing strategy skyrocket.

The Don’ts of Content Marketing

And the following section, we will focus on the don’ts of content marketing. You will notice that there are more dense than dos on this list. This is because don’ts have a negative impact on your strategy. And once you know what to avoid, your chances of success improve dramatically.

Keyword Stuffing

This is something that dates back to the earlier years of SEO. And unfortunately, it is something that some businesses still do… to the detriment of their online success.

In the past, this black hat SEO techniques used to work wonders. However, today it not only detracts from the overall user experience, but is also frowned upon by the search engines.

Let’s say that your primary keyword is “automatic robot lawn mower.” Stuffing this in 20 times throughout a 500-word blog post or article is going to put your reader off right away… and Google is going to pass on by.

In today’s world, there is no place for low quality content and black hat SEO tactics. You need to be able to create content that delivers value and focus on people, not machines.

The search engines, specifically Google, look much deeper than just your primary keywords. Stuffing your articles like a Christmas Day Turkey is something best left back in the early 2000’s. It’s all about context and not keyword count.

Forgetting the Search Engines

Your content marketing strategy should have a dedicated focus on the search engines. As we mentioned above, you don’t write for machines, you write for people. But that’s not to say that you don’t need to optimise your content for the search engines.

Instead of focusing on one or two primary keywords, try to throw some semantically related keywords into the mix. Google is not just looking for keywords whenever it scans your content. It is looking for LSI keywords so that it can be sure your content is what you say it is.

But optimising for the search engines goes much deeper than the different types of keywords. You should also focus on your meta descriptions, image alt tags, robot tags, and structured markups.

Each of these works in a different way to let the search engines understand what your content is all about. The more information you give, the more likely you are to rank. But as we mentioned earlier, you should never place the search engines over your audience.

Not Listening to your Audience

Here’s the thing about the internet; if people don’t like your content, product or service they are going to make this known.

As a business, you have a good idea about the direction that you want to head in. But your customers are the ones that keep you afloat.

Any content marketing strategy worth its salt takes customer and consumer opinions into account. What exactly is it that they want to know more about? How can you improve their overall experience?

Nobody likes to see negative reviews or opinions. But the idea here is to take them as constructive criticism. Don’t see them as weaknesses. See them as strengths. Once you know what it is needs to be fixed, you can deliver exactly what your audience wants.

And if you don’t deliver… they are going to head right on over to your competitors instead.

Focusing on Sales Instead of Value

One of the biggest mistakes that content marketers make is to focus all of their content on sales. People don’t need a sales pitch to make their mind up. In fact, it could have the complete opposite effect.

Whether it is an image, a video or a full-blown article, it needs to provide the user with value. You might think that the best way to sell your products or services is to dedicate blog post after blog post about why they need it. 

But here’s the thing: the majority of people tend to trust honest customer reviews over a company sales pitch.

Instead of pitching to people, aim to answer their questions. How can your product or service make their life easier? What is the history behind it? What research or data does it have to back it up? 

Your content should create a story that leaves the reader satisfied. If it creates more questions than answers or leaves little to be desired, it’s not going to have quite the impact you expect.

A great product or service will always sell itself. And great content that focuses on more than just sales can boost it.

Ignoring your Website Content

Social media is awesome. As a business in 2019, if you’re not on social media, you are missing out on huge potential.

However, it is all too easy to focus all of your efforts on social media instead of your website. Big mistake. 

See, there is only so much you can do with social media before you need more flexibility. And this is where your website comes into play. Your website is home to your business or brand, and should always be your main focus.

If anything, social media should be used for generating traffic for your website and building your brand identity. But all of that juicy content, the content that converts, should be reserved for your website only.

If you put everything on social media, people have got no need to visit your website. Therefore, you should look at repurposing your website content for social media. Give a sneak peek. Pique their interest. Then send them on over to your website for more.

The Dos of Content Marketing

There are plenty of things you can do to improve the outcome of your content marketing strategy. The following advice can be beneficial with helping you work out a plan of action that works.

Having an Open Mind

As an online business, it is all too easy to get stuck in your ways. As people’s behaviours and the internet evolve, so should your content marketing strategy.

A great example of this is the very content that you produce. For now, you will get away with focusing on screen searches and typed searches. But by this time next year, more than 50% of all searches are expected to be voice searches.

This means that you are probably going to have to step outside of your comfort zone. SEO strategies that worked before are rapidly becoming redundant. We’ve already made this clear with keyword stuffing. But actual keywords themselves are playing less and less of a role.

Natural language and fluid paragraphs are expected to supersede standard keywords. Video content is better received than text based content. And content that provides value outweighs content that doesn’t.

A successful content marketing strategy always works best when you have an open mind. Don’t be afraid to try new techniques and embrace any changes as soon as possible.

Include a Summary

Both users and search engines love a summary. But why? The answer is surprisingly simple.

One may be a machine while the other is human, but both want to understand the context of your content from the get-go.

For humans, we don’t want to waste time reading through a huge article if it isn’t going to answer our questions. And for search engines, delivering content of value to the user is the priority.

Typically, a summary is the first paragraph of your content. It will briefly touch upon what the topic is about and what the user can expect to learn. You can throw in a “spoiler alert” to encourage the user to read on.

But why would someone carry on reading if they’ve already been given an answer? It’s all to do with the desire to learn and understand more.

And the more that people learn about your products or services, the more likely they are to convert later on in the funnel. And this leads us nicely on to the next section.

Educate don’t Dictate

Nobody likes a dictator. You might have thoughts about how people should perceive your brand, product or service… but telling them how to do so is not going to go down well.

Everyone loves to learn something. And if you do it the right way, this can have huge benefits on your content marketing strategy.

The aim of the game is to always try to educate. Let the reader know how your product or service can improve their life? Cover its back story. Find a fresh and unique angle. And most importantly, make it interesting.

As an example, let’s say that you sell organic honey online. You could focus solely on the honey. Or you could dig deeper into how it’s made, the history of honey, information about the different types of honey bees, etc.

The reader most already knows that they want to buy some honey. But what is it about your honey that makes it the perfect choice for them? 

Everyone loves a story and everyone loves to learn. 

Final Thought

Content marketing is a fickle business. What works today might not necessarily work tomorrow. Bought with an open mind, a little bit of research and an understanding of your audience, you can’t go too far wrong.

SEO is always going to play an important part in your content marketing strategy. But it shouldn’t detract from delivering valuable content that keeps the user satisfied.

After all, what is the point in ranking on the first page of Google if people don’t enjoy the content you publish? It’s all about balance. And with content marketing, that balance definitely falls in favour of the user.

Why not check out our beginner’s guide to content marketing today for step-by-step, actionable instructions. 

Article first published here: The Dos and Don’ts of Content Marketing

IS IT BETTER TO REMOVE OR UPDATE THIN CONTENT?

Thin content is one of those things that nobody wants, but nearly everybody has on their website.

Whether it’s on a products or services page, a short blog post, or your about us page, thin is definitely not in!

So what exactly can you do with thin content on your website?

You have three choices available to you.

You can no index, redirect or update.

Today, we are going to look at each of the three ways to deal with thin content so you can stay away from that delete button.

What is Thin Content?

Whenever you create content for your website, it should be juicy and loaded with keywords, LSI keywords, links, and all those other useful SEO techniques. (But not filler content)

Thin content is the opposite of this! Typically, thin content is any of the below.

• Articles or posts containing less than 600 words.
• Outdated content or material.
• Not SEO optimized.
• Contains a keyword ratio of more than 2.5%
• Has links to spammy sites
• Offers no real value to the reader
• Contains duplicate content

But is thin content always bad news for your website? Well… not always.

Sometimes thin content that has been up for many years can be a great source of backlinks. 

And if it’s featured on the first page of Google, it can be a real source of traffic.

But… as with everything in the modern era of the internet, your content is going to need to be regularly updated.

So let’s take a look at when and when not to update or modify thin content that is performing well.

To Edit or to Leave it?

This one can be a bit tricky to work out. But once you know what you are looking for, you know what to touch and what to leave alone.

The first thing you want to look at is how long ago you wrote an uploaded the content to your website.

See, depending on the topic, what was relevant it then maybe completely obsolete now.

For example, let’s say that you wrote a blogpost about SEO techniques back in 2010. Chances are that all of the techniques you wrote about are long gone and buried in the ever-evolving SEO graveyard.

Sure, the content might be driving traffic to your website. But it’s what that traffic does once it opens to page that really counts.

If people open the page only to leave just as fast, that sends Google poor user signals.

And over time, these can relegate your website to those hardly ever visited search engine pages… 2,3 & 4.

So what should you do about content like this?

Should you update it or just remove it?

Before making any rash decisions, first ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the web page have a high bounce rate?
• Is the content still relevant to the topic?
• Does it play a role in the buyer’s journey?

Not all content needs to be updated. For example, if you have a gardening website covering plants characteristics and scientific names, these are pretty much set in stone. There may be one or two new species or cross breeds that you can add into the mix. Otherwise, it is best left alone.

However, if you write about digital marketing. Chances are that you are going to need to update your content on an almost monthly basis.

Remove or Redirect Content

Choosing whether to remove or redirect content can be a tricky decision.

Sometimes, the best thing you can do is to completely remove thin content from your website. 

Be it user-generated content or duplicated content, if it’s got to go, it’s got to go. 

Here are a few situations that removal of content is preferable to redirection:

• Content is no longer current or is outdated.
• Evergreen content that no longer reflects industry trends.
• Incorrect location pages or outdated business address information.
• Content that no longer matches your current niche.
• Content created using black hat SEO techniques.

If removing content from your website it’s something you are not prepared to do, you can look at redirecting.

For any web page that ranks well in the search engines for any given keyword, use a 301 redirect to a similar page or similar content. This helps your website retain it’s value.

For a web page like this, avoid using a 404 gateway.

If you’re pages content is outdated or contains duplicate content, you can use a ‘noindex’ tag. This prevents the search engine crawlers from indexing your page and removing it from the search results without interfering with your sites internal navigation.

Ultimately, inserting a 301 redirect taking the user to a relevant page can add value to the user journey.

Updating Thin Content

Updating thin content is definitely preferable to deleting it. If your page content still adds value to your website, it makes complete sense to update it to reflect more modern and up-to-date info.

Typically, updating thin content involves focusing on improving its SEO.

But why should you update content instead of producing brand new content instead?

Here’s Why:

• Requires less time to optimise compared to writing fresh content.
• Increases your indexation rate by maintaining website size.
• SEO can increase keyword ranking possibilities.
• Content most likely already has backlinks that you don’t want to lose.

So what should you do to update outdated thin content? There are a few main things to fix first.

• Update all of your meta descriptions
• Add appropriate structured markups
• Use LSI keywords in your content
• Update your headlines and H2 Headers.
• Use fresh images with optimised alt text.

A great to turn old content into new content is to create a social video from it. 

Pull some of the text and add it to a video editing tool, such as Lumen5. 

You could also create an infographic on Canva to encourage interaction with your content.

The main thing is to ensure that everything on your page is completely up to date and relevant. 

Ultimately, it makes savvy business sense to update content you already have than have to delete it and have to rewrite it again.

Take a look at your site analytics, run through user interaction, and if it is harming your website… don’t be afraid to pull it down.

Site Audits are Important

Site audits and UX audits are things that many people would rather not do.

However, if you want to identify thin content that is damaging your website’s authority or ruining the user experience, it needs to be done.

One of the best tools to use for performing a site audit is Screaming Frog.

It analyses every page on your website and shows you where under-performing and thin content exist.

This makes it much easier to tackle problematic web pages before they start to create problems.

You should also aim to perform a Content Gap analysis at least once every 6 months.

SEMrush is an amazing way to discover content you can target that your competitors have overlooked.

You can also perform a keyword Gap analysis to find out which keywords your competitors are ranking for with similar content.

Sprinkling these keywords in any content that you update can give you a real boost in the SERPs.

Final Thoughts on Thin Content

sometimes, you just have to rip the bandage off and delete any content that has a negative impact on your website.

Once you have performed a site audit, bring any posts with less than 600 words up to around 800 words as a minimum.

any content that can’t be updated should use the ‘noindex’ tag or a 301 redirect.

And if you feel it needs to be deleted, all is not lost.

You can take that deleted content and re-purpose it as an infographic or social video to go onto social media to generate leads.

Unfortunately, the internet is not a catwalk… and thin is definitely not in!

Head on over to the blog for more useful content posts.

Article first published here: IS IT BETTER TO REMOVE OR UPDATE THIN CONTENT?