#Search Engines & Search Marketing

[aiweirdness]

ASCII art by chatbot

I've finally found it: a use for chatGPT that I find genuinely entertaining. I enjoy its ASCII art.

I think chatGPT's ASCII art is great. And so does chatGPT.

What's going on here? The chatbots are flailing. Their ASCII art is terrible, and their ratings are based on the way ratings should sound, not based on any capacity to judge the art quality.

Am I entertained? Okay, yes, fine. But it also goes to show how internet-trained chatbots are using common patterns rather than reality. No wonder they're lousy at playing search engine.

More examples, including from bing chat and google bard, at aiweirdness.com

[eyekootech]

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[eggheadmarketers]

[ranjumiahlove]

[rankfastgroup]

4 Types of SEO Keywords You Need to Know! In this video, we break down the four main types of SEO keywords: Informational, Navigational, Commercial, and Transactional. Learn how each keyword type serves a different search intent and how they can impact your SEO strategy. From queries like "coffee calories" to "buy crypto online," understanding these keywords will help you better target your audience and drive results. Stay tuned for more SEO tips, and don't forget to follow RankFast for expert search marketing insights!

[digitaldeeptech]

🔍 Traditional SEO vs. Current SEO 🚀 SEO tactics have changed considerably as the digital landscape has evolved. Traditional SEO concentrated on keywords and backlinks, but modern SEO prioritizes user experience and intent. 🎯

From meta tags to mobile optimization, SEO is no longer only about rankings, but also about providing value to your audience. 💡 📣 Let's talk about how SEO has evolved and how we can use it to build our businesses. Please share your thoughts below! 👇

[marouanbd]

I am a YouTube video SEO expert.

[webxsoftech]

Unveiling 5 Benefits of SEO that will transform your online presence and elevate your business to new heights!

Don't wait, start increasing your search engine visibility today ! Get in touch with us. We'll help you to gain more organic traffic.

[cybromtech]

Elevate Your Brand, Rule the Digital Space with Cybrom Technology.

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT SEO & MARKETING NEWS FOR ECOMMERCE, March 2024

Welcome to my roundup of SEO and marketing news and useful resources for ecommerce businesses, March edition. There is a lot going on with Google, and some really strong marketing pieces this time around, so let's get right to it.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Google launched both a core algorithm update and spam updates on March 5, with the spam update ending on the 20th. Core updates now include the Helpful Content algorithm. In early observations, Etsy and Reddit both picked up visibility in the UK. 

The Helpful Content algorithm updates late last year destroyed a lot of sites’ Google traffic. Avoid the things they had in common.  You can read the full study here. 

Ecommerce sites were some of the biggest losers in Google visibility in 2023, with Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, Target and Best Buy in the top 10 of sites whose Google appearances slipped. 

New to Google SEO? They’ve revamped their SEO starter guide for people like you. And if you are more advanced and want to learn how to optimize your website product pages, this is a good overview. 

This lengthy article on backlinks for ecommerce websites covers pretty much all the angles, including the really difficult ones. 

Reminder that if you want to rank on Google for a search term, you need to look at what is already ranking, and make decisions based on that content. [video and transcript] This works for most search engines, not just Google. 

Yes, Google crawls “high quality” content more often. I used to refer to this as Google thinking the page is “interesting”, so I guess I will need to change my wording...

While Google sends the most traffic to websites, people spend a lot more of their online time elsewhere. Market where people are, not just where your stats say they came from. 

Sadly, Google has stopped providing caches of website pages in its search results. While you can still see the caches of some pages by using the Google search Cache:[page link] as in cache:https://cindylouwho-2.tumblr.com that will eventually stop working as well. Bing still provides caches, but unfortunately both it and the Wayback Machine do not crawl often enough to give really recent results most of the time. 

Missed Google news in February? Here’s your update. And just in case you are really behind, here is January. 

Not Google

Unsure if your website has enough good backlinks? Bing Webmaster Tools will now tell you if you don’t. 

Yandex - the top search engine in Russia - was sold by its Dutch ownership group to a consortium in Russia. 

SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site

General

A US study of social media use found that the most popular site was YouTube, with 83% of adults using it. Two-thirds of American adults use Facebook, while TikTok is up to ⅓ of the US population. 

Because they do change periodically, here are the latest image and video sizes recommended for the top social media platforms. [infographic]

Bluesky is now open to everyone - it was previously invite-only. 

Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta)

Meta has introduced several changes to its Ad options, applying to Facebook and Instagram. 

Meta had a great 4th quarter in 2023, with revenue, users, and earnings per share up. “Fast-growing upstarts Temu and Shein, which originated in China, have been pouring money into ads on Facebook and Instagram. Li said on Thursday that revenue from China-based advertisers accounted for 10% of sales for the year and 5 percentage points of growth.”

Instagram

An updated post on Instagram's algorithm and how it works. 

Instagram is still beta testing longer Reels for some users. 

If your account is a brand account, you can now run ads on Instagram with coupon codes right in them. (Some Facebook users can already do this.)

LinkedIn

Among other recent changes on LinkedIn, the algorithm is now looking to boost important content longer than just the first day or two after publication. 

Pinterest

Pinterest has its own stats package, called Pinterest Analytics, but only for “Business” accounts. They show how many people clicked on the outgoing links, how many people saw your pin on their screen, and much more. Here’s everything you need to know. 

Reddit

Reddit successfully launched on the stock market this past week, but questions remain about how this will change the site. 

Google is paying Reddit to scrape its content through the API instead of from the web. 

Snapchat

Snap was a little later than most tech companies doing layoffs recently, waiting until February 5 to let 10% off staff go. 

Threads

Threads is so new that the algorithm is bound to change a lot in the next year, but for right now, here is how it works. 

TikTok

There is an overwhelming amount of info out there on the US attempt to either ban TikTok or force its sale, and much of it is incomplete, so I will let you Google to your heart’s content if you want to learn more. If you are relying on TikTok to drive sales, this would be a good time to make sure you diversify your promotional strategy. 

You can now track trending terms on TikTok through the Creator Search Insights section. “Creator Search Insights will highlight frequently searched topics, which creators can organize by category (for example, tourism, sports, science) or tailor to their content type with the “For You” option. Additionally, creators can filter for “content gap” topics, which are highly searched but have relatively few videos on TikTok covering them.“

TikTok may be testing a photo app, which would obviously compete with Instagram. 

Twitter

What? Twitter may have lied about its Super Bowl ad performance? I’m so not shocked. 

Tumblr

Tumblr will be selling data access to AI companies. 

YouTube

This is a pretty decent article on YouTube SEO. 

(CONTENT) MARKETING (includes blogging, emails, and strategies) 

Small and micro-businesses need an email list. An email list is:  

portable (unlike most social media followers or marketplace buyers) 

is available to almost everyone, as we all need at least one email address if we are online

less susceptible to the whims of algorithms (unlike SEO, marketplaces, social etc.)  

I keep seeing people argue that no one opens emails, but the chart in the article above is proof that is still wrong. (My blog email list averages close to a 70% open rate, depending on the topic and the time I send it. My jewellery email list - which I hardly ever send to - still has an over 30% open rate. My click rates are well above the industry averages, usually 30 to 40% of all recipients for the blog list. These are much better numbers than social, and astronomically better than my clickthrough rate on Google and other search engines.)

Gmail and Yahoo both changed how they handle bulk emails such as newsletters in February. Here’s what you need to know on the basics, including authenticating yourself so your email gets through. 

Find out how to get people to read all the way to the end of your content. 

Get ready for April marketing with 5 topical ideas. National Handmade Day is April 6. 

We should all think twice before deciding to use AI to create content. “Circa 2024, generative AI does not produce new ideas or even develop its own conclusions. Rather, it regurgitates information that it has indexed.” Not convinced? Here’s another article. “AI-generated content represents the literal “average of everything online.”

ONLINE ADVERTISING (EXCEPT INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL MEDIA AND ECOMMERCE SITES) 

Google Ads can now be tracked in Google Analytics 4. 

Both Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising were up in the 4th quarter of 2023. 

STATS, DATA, TRACKING 

Google Analytics 4 tracks organic traffic differently than the previous version. Here’s how to figure it out. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER TRENDS, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

I’ve probably posted this specific article before, but it is worth another read: how to communicate with customers.  For example, “Mirroring your customer’s tone lets them know you’re on their side. If a customer is formal, for example, hold back on the LOLs. If they’re more casual, relax your tone.”

According to a US study, Generation Z is skewing the traditional marketing funnel. “Per Archrival’s data, 77 per cent of Gen Zs and 79 per cent of millennials in the US are actively seeking style inspiration at least monthly, with almost half of those looking for style inspiration on social media. When asked where they learn about new brands, products and experiences, video reigns supreme: YouTube is the most popular platform with Gen Zs, followed by TikTok, then Instagram.”

Trend alert: bag charms are back. 

IMAGES, VIDEO, GRAPHIC DESIGN, & FREE ONLINE TOOLS

Almost all of these 12 video tools are free, and some can be used on your phone. 

MISCELLANEOUS

This is an older piece, but it checks out: IKEA Hacks for Craft Show Displays. A few of these could be done with non-IKEA items. 

Want to stay up-to-date on a nearly daily basis? Follow me on Bluesky or on LinkedIn, or become a member of my Patreon.

[aiweirdness]

bing chat is trained on internet text and in an internet argument it is statisitcally probable that when challenged you double down.

So it attempts to gaslight me into thinking that I have written an AI-generated Battlestar Galactica script, claims it is on a separate newsletter that it somehow has access to, and, when pressed, fabricates a lengthy excerpt from the nonexistent blog post.

Ironically, I did write about Galactica, a chat-based "knowledge search" from Meta that had a similar habit of fabricating text.

If a search engine will find what you're asking for whether or not it exists, it's worse than useless.

More examples of bing chat fabrication on the AI Weirdness blog

[eyekootech]

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[mohammedrinshad]

How the Best Digital Marketer in Malappuram Can Boost Your Business

In today’s digital age, the success of any business depends on how well it can leverage digital marketing strategies. Whether you’re running a small local business or a growing enterprise, having a solid digital marketing strategy is crucial. But how do you ensure your business stands out from the competition? The answer lies in working with a skilled digital marketer – someone who can tailor strategies that align with your goals, audience, and market trends.

As the best digital marketer in Malappuram, I’ve helped numerous businesses achieve remarkable success through a combination of creativity, strategic planning, and the latest marketing techniques. Here’s how partnering with me can give your business the boost it needs to thrive:

1. Tailored Digital Marketing Strategies

Every business is unique, and a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work when it comes to marketing. By working with the best digital marketer in Malappuram, you’ll get a strategy customized to your specific needs. I will analyze your business, identify your target audience, and determine the most effective digital channels to reach them. Whether it’s through SEO, social media marketing, email campaigns, or paid ads, I’ll design a roadmap that ensures maximum results.

2. Boosting Online Visibility

A strong online presence is essential for any business looking to expand. By implementing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques, I’ll improve your website’s ranking on search engines like Google. With the right SEO strategy, your business will be more visible to potential customers who are searching for products or services like yours. This increased visibility can lead to more website traffic, higher conversions, and greater brand recognition.

3. Social Media Expertise

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter are powerful tools for engaging with customers. As the best digital marketer in Malappuram, I use these platforms to create compelling content that resonates with your audience. Whether it’s organic posts or paid ads, I will help you build a loyal online community and foster deeper relationships with your customers. Social media marketing is not just about posting; it’s about creating a conversation that drives action.

4. Targeted Advertising for Higher ROI

With the right paid advertising strategy, you can drive quality leads and increase your sales. As an expert in Google Ads and Facebook Ads, I specialize in running targeted ad campaigns that deliver results. I use data-driven insights to optimize your ads, ensuring that every penny spent yields the best possible return on investment. Through careful audience targeting, compelling ad copy, and A/B testing, I’ll help you generate leads that convert into loyal customers.

5. Content Marketing to Build Trust

Content is king in the world of digital marketing. From blog posts to videos, infographics, and email newsletters, content is a powerful tool for building trust with your audience. As your digital marketing partner, I will help you create valuable, informative, and engaging content that educates your customers while promoting your products or services. Content marketing not only boosts your SEO efforts but also positions your brand as an authority in your industry.

6. Real-Time Analytics and Continuous Improvement

One of the key advantages of digital marketing is the ability to track and measure results in real time. With the help of analytics tools, I’ll monitor the performance of your campaigns and adjust strategies as needed. From website traffic and engagement rates to conversion metrics, I’ll ensure that your digital marketing efforts are continually optimized for success.

7. Cost-Effective Marketing Solutions

Compared to traditional marketing methods like TV or print ads, digital marketing is highly cost-effective. By focusing on online platforms, I can help your business reach a larger audience without breaking the bank. Whether you’re a small startup or an established business, digital marketing provides opportunities for all to achieve growth on a budget.

8. Competitive Advantage in Malappuram’s Growing Market

Malappuram, known for its vibrant local businesses, is also a rapidly growing market for digital opportunities. By working with the best digital marketer in the region, you’ll have the edge over your competitors. I keep up with the latest trends, tools, and techniques in the ever-changing digital landscape, ensuring that your business stays ahead of the curve.

9. Building Strong Brand Identity

A well-executed digital marketing strategy can help define and solidify your brand identity. From your website design to your social media voice, I ensure that your brand stands out and communicates its unique value proposition. By fostering a strong brand presence, you’ll attract more customers, build loyalty, and increase your overall market share.

Conclusion

Digital marketing isn’t just about advertising; it’s about creating long-term strategies that drive results and connect with your audience on a deeper level. As the best digital marketer in Malappuram, I am committed to helping businesses unlock their full potential through smart, data-driven marketing strategies. By partnering with me, you’ll gain access to a wealth of knowledge, expertise, and resources that will take your business to new heights.

Ready to boost your business? Let’s work together to create a digital marketing strategy that works for you!

[sahl2024]

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[sean-parnell]

How Manufacturers Can Leverage Content Marketing to Grow

Cold calls, print advertising, tradeshow participation, and knocking on doors once worked well manufacturers can no longer rely on them to generate leads that fuel sustainable, double-digit growth despite having an effective sales team that may still have some skills in these areas.

Inbound lead generation in commercial and industrial markets requires compelling brand storytelling and thought leadership that educates prospects along the buyer’s journey, who don’t want to talk with salespeople before they’re good and ready as they fear being “sold to” by people that don’t have their best interest in mind.

Problems Solved vs. Products & Services, Features & Benefits

Powerfully resonating with prospects requires brand storytelling that converts website visitors into prospects then into customers.

Your brand story begins with having a deep understanding of the problems faced by your prospects, what they need to overcome them, and the value to them in doing so before promoting all of your products and services and their features and benefits. Prospects are searching for who can solve their problems and may have a limited understanding of what will solve their problems, so claiming your solutions are “the best” and that you’re an “industry leader” may mean nothing until they have an understanding of how your products will help them.

The hero of your prospects’ story is themselves, so you need to educate them on how you can solve their problems, and how your people, process, products, and services – not just products – do so. This is what will resonate powerfully with them. In this way, you serve as a guide for achieving success and avoiding failure. Your products and services with their features and benefits are how you solve these problems..

Thus, your “brand story” needs to be told throughout all of your marketing: on your home and about pages, blogs, guides, case studies, marketing collateral, presentations, proposals, press releases, third-party website profiles, direct mail, email campaigns, your tagline, and anywhere else you promote your company.

A brand story for each product and service you sell can also be developed as each of them solves different problems in different ways for different markets. This “sub-brand storytelling” is also effective for different vertical and geographic markets as each has different requirements.

Extracting & Promoting Thought Leadership

When they have a problem that they want to solve – because the pain of not changing exceeds the pain of the change – prospects self-educate themselves by researching the internet before speaking with any vendors, so it’s important to provide educational content that will help them understand how you can solve their problems:

TOFU: Top of Funnel: this content builds awareness by providing an overview of the problems you solve and how your products solve them

MOFU: Middle Funnel: this content goes one level deeper and helps them consider between different options that can solve their problem

BOFU: Bottom Funnel: this content gets very specific and helps prospects make their final decisions

OOFU: Out of Funnel: this content is created in a misguided attempt to maximize keyword rankings and website traffic as part of a flawed search engine optimization strategy (SEO) but fails to generate leads though can be quite costly

Tip: it’s important to have a good balance of all types of content (except OOFU).

It’s especially important for manufacturers to understand that, in addition to learning about how you solve their problems with your products and services, your prospects want to know how your solutions and business practices compare with both direct and indirect competitors. They also want to understand how their investment can be cost-justified so they can sell the idea of buying from you to internal decision makers that may not be in communication with you. Product comparisons are very useful because this is what prospects try to compile themselves, especially if they include areas where your competitors have an advantage over yours. Case studies that include return on investment (ROI) estimates are also highly useful for prospects.

Lead-Generating Content Begins with Keyword Research

Understanding and prioritizing what your prospects are searching for is a critical first step for lead generation, which begins with conducting keyword research on all the different terms your prospects may use.

Onsite SEO then fully leverages the content you’ve already developed when you work the highest priority keyword phrases into your page titles, meta descriptions, H1 headers, and throughout the content of each page – just remember it has to read well and should only be performed by someone that thoroughly understands your business and what prospects value.

Brainstorming content ideas that incorporate these keyword phrases and educates prospects along the buyer’s journey is the next step, following by prioritizing these content ideas into an editorial calendar. The best content comes from getting a professional copywriter to interview your company’s thought leaders and then writing up what is learned in the form of foundational website content, blogs and guides.

Best Practice: Google Search Console reports the keywords people searched for to find you.

Creating Lead Magnets

When your prospects discover that you are providing education and thought leadership for how you can solve their problems, many will be willing to provide their contact information to download this gated content – especially long-form, MOFU and BOFU content including guides, whitepapers, ebooks, and webinars. It’s also important that your contact forms ask prospects where they found out about you so you can attribute each download to the marketing or other activities that generated them. It’s not recommend to gate promotional material that prospects expect to be freely available, including blogs, brochures, data sheets, infographics, case studies, and similar materials.

Promoting MOFU and BOFU also generate even more website traffic and leads, including in Google Ads, LinkedIn Campaigns, Microsoft Ads and other pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, your social media profiles (especially LinkedIn and Twitter), on third-party article publishing sites (e.g. Medium), and throughout your public relations activities.

The Manufacturing Content Creation & Lead Generation Process

Here are the steps for creating content that has been proven to generate leads and product sales from many commercial and industrial manufacturers:

Conduct keyword research and optimize all of your current content for search

Develop brand storytelling and implement it throughout your home and about pages, marketing collateral, presentations, and all other marketing materials

Write blogs and publish them on a consistent schedule, educating prospects on a wide variety of topics that help them understand how your products and services will solve their problems

Syndicate unique versions of this content on high ranking, third-party websites

Launch Google ads and email campaigns to bring more prospects in

Create microsites to promote how you solve specific problems in your top vertical markets

Launch ecommerce to supplement sales through your channel partners for people that want to speak with and buy directly from you – just don’t undercut them, so selling only at list price is recommended

Evaluate new market opportunities where your current competitors are irrelevant with Blue Ocean Strategy

This approach routinely generates sustainable, double-digit sales growth with an ROI of over 300% within 12-18 months when executed by an experienced industrial marketing agency – and your company will no longer be a well-kept secret in your markets.

The Case for a Marketing Audit

While it may be appealing to hire a full-time content marketer, SEO specialist, or to outsource to a manufacturing marketing agency that may wow you with shiny objects, conducting deep dive marketing due diligence with an experience marketing consulting resource understands your industry is typically a better way to start.

An effective marketing audit will identify what it will take for you to generate sustainable, double-digit growth by leveraging brand storytelling, content marketing, SEO, content syndication, email campaigns, marketing automation, social media, advertising, PR, and more.

Most marketing audits focus only on promotional marketing communications, so you may want to find an industrial marketing agency that can auditing the other three Ps of your marketing: products and services, pricing and placement (selling through channels and go-to-market strategy).