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4 Takeaways from Google’s Updated Link Guidance

FEBRUARY 26, 2023

Google recently updated its guidance on SEO Link Best Practices. These recommendations are generally aligned with HTML recommendations. Here are some things to note:

Title Attribute Can Work Like an Anchor Text. The title attribute applied to a link element can be used in the absence of anchor text (see below) to describe the purpose of the link.

Extra Long Anchor Text is Bad. Google’s new guidance recommends that anchor text serve as a concise description of the link’s purpose.
Context and Natural Language Matter. You know the drill. When it comes to link anchor text, write naturally—for humans—using only those keywords necessary to understand the page you’re linking to.
Don’t Chain Links. Chaining links—or adding links close together so that each linked word does not adequately communicate what the linked page is about—is bad practice.

For more, check out Search Engine Journal’s recap of the updates.

How to Market Your Product on Amazon

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Do you have an Amazon marketing strategy? Here are 8 ways to market your product on the platform to boost sales and close margins:

Study your competition and their strategies. Browse your competitors’ top-ranked product descriptions, reviews, and Q&A sections to gain valuable insights on what to do (and what not to do).
Set your product’s price. Determine an optimal product price to remain competitive without being underpriced.
Deploy an Amazon SEO strategy. Amazon is more than an e-commerce platform. It’s a search engine. To rank well, optimize your content for discoverability, relevance, and sales by including keywords and relevant information.
Develop an Amazon reviews strategy. Encourage reviews from customers with thank-you notes in shipments or follow-up emails.
Create an Amazon Advertising strategy. Get noticed in Amazon’s SERPs with a Product Display ad, Sponsored Product ad, or Headline Search ad.
Participate in promotions. Join in on Amazon Prime Day with coupons, promo codes, and discounts.
Integrate an Amazon affiliate marketing strategy. Pay a small fee to have your product featured in product round-ups and blogs.
Promote your products and Amazon Store on social media. Share product updates, announce sales and giveaways, and invest in paid social ads.

Read the full scoop at HubSpot.

5 Social Media Don’ts

FEBRUARY 20, 2023

We share a lot about what you should be doing on your social channels. Let’s shake things up with 5 things you shouldn’t do:

Don’t Expect Instant Results. Social media is about relationship-building, which requires sustained effort over time.
Don’t Take Haters Personally. Address genuine concerns, of course. But when it comes to the trolls, stay focused on your goals and your true audience.
Don’t Focus on Vanity Metrics. You know what matters more than your follower count? The rate at which your content is resonating with your audience and sparking conversation.
Don’t Ignore Comments. Social media marketing is a two-way street built on authentic connection between brands and consumers. Jump in.
Don’t Be Overly Promotional. Forsake the hard sell. People follow brands that provide value to their feed and their lives. Build trust by entertaining, empathizing with, and engaging your audience.

For the full list of 24 Social Media Do’s and Don’ts, visit Angie Gensler’s blog.

How to Use LinkedIn’s Competitor Analytics Dashboard

FEBRUARY 19, 2023

If you’re not using LinkedIn’s Competitor Analytics Dashboard to identify growth opportunities for your company pages, you’re missing out. Here’s how to get started:

Choose Competitors to Follow. Add your list of up to 9 relevant competitor businesses—at your level or beyond—to the dashboard.
Compare Audience Size and Growth Rate. Use follower metrics to quickly identify which competitor is growing fastest and where you fit in the mix.
Reverse-Engineer Page Growth. Do some digging to discover the driver behind a page’s growth by visiting the company page, scrolling its top-ranked posts, viewing its ads, and browsing its associated thought leaders.
Check Competitor Highlights. This panel shows two metrics: total posts and engagement rate, giving you a percentage for how you compared to competition.
Compare Organic Content Metrics. See how your company page compares to others in terms of reactions, comments, and reposts across time periods.
Review Competitor Content. Take note of the content on a competitor’s page, such as the type, post format, and call to action on their top posts. Read the comments for customer sentiment and company responses.
Chart Competitor Analytics Over Time. Export data from the dashboard to track and report on growth over an extended period of time.

For an in-depth guide to analyzing your competitors on LinkedIn, visit Social Media Examiner.

8 Ways to Generate Customer Reviews

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

When was the last time you made a purchasing decision on the Internet without surfing through customer reviews? Exactly. Online reviews provide social proof, establish expertise, and build trust with consumers in ways that marketing campaigns just can’t. Here’s how to get your stars:

Collect Email Addresses During Billing. If someone is willing to share their contact info, they’ve likely had a satisfactory experience. Send a follow-up after a week to solicit a review.
Use In-Store Signage. If you have a brick-and-mortar business, try banners, flyers, brochures, window clings, receipt QR codes, or an in-store kiosk.
Drop a Hint. Train your employees to candidly mention that honest feedback is appreciated and received around here.
Offer Incentives. Tried and true. Offer discounts, coupons, and other incentives (for honest feedback, not strictly positive reviews).
Include Reminders On Your Website. Make it easy on ’em with CTAs and non-invasive pop-ups.
Leverage Social Media. Direct users to leave feedback on the review platform of their choice.
Thoughtfully Respond To All Reviews. Respond quickly, be courteous, acknowledge and apologize, and provide a resolution. Or simply thank users who provide positive feedback.
Delight Your Customers. A winning product or service that fulfills its promise to solve a problem after a frictionless purchasing experience? That goes a long way.

Read more over at Search Engine Journal.

Inspyder Sitemap Creator

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

Automatically generate accurate and compatible XML sitemaps of any size or type with Inspyder’s Sitemap Creator desktop tool, which includes a built-in FTP/FTPS/SFTP client and email notifications when your sitemap has been uploaded to the server. The whole process takes only a few minutes.

Best Practices for XML Sitemaps

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

An XML (extensible markup language) sitemap is a website file that lists pages you want search engines to index. It’s not a requirement, especially for smaller websites; and if you’re using a CMS like WordPress, Wix, Shopify, or Squarespace, you don’t have to worry about it. But for minimal effort, it can give your SEO a boost. So, here’s some best practices for creating sitemaps:

Include only those URLs you want to be indexed by search engines, and those which return a 200 status code (no redirects or error status codes).
Your sitemap files should not exceed 50MB or 50,000 URLs. When multiple sitemaps are required, use a sitemap index to list all of them.
Make sure your sitemap is UTF-8 encoded.
Include links to localized version(s) of each URL.
Update your sitemap with new URLs, and document when old URLs have last been updated (the “lastmod” attribute).
Link to your sitemap from your robots.txt file.
Submit your sitemap to Google via the Google Search Console.

You can create an XML sitemap manually or use a generator tool that updates your file automatically. Visit Semrush to get started on yours.

Why You Should Reuse Your Social Content

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

Every since content was crowned king, brands have generated high-quality, evergreen social content on the daily. There’s no doubt that the digital environment favors the fresh. But when it comes to your most engaging organic posts, what’s so wrong with a rinse and repeat?

Here are 5 reasons to pull some top performing posts back out of your colossal archive:

Your audience hasn’t even seen your content. Sorry. Between 68 and 88 percent of your audience never saw that glossy carousel or joke tweet. It might just gain more traction and favor the second time around.
Everyone wants to hear your greatest hits. There’s a reason those posts did numbers. They likely appealed to an emotion, nostalgia, or irony—and they will again. Really good social content that sticks in people’s memories has the potential to become iconic.
Everyone deserves a second chance. We all have that one tweet that should have went viral but was DOA for no apparent reason. Trust your instinct and see if it lands this time.
Put a little twist on it. Maybe your TikTok didn’t perform well because the first 5 seconds didn’t stop people in their tracks. Test out a new intro, bigger screen text, or a new headline to give it another shot.
You’ll lighten the load on your social managers. Enough said.

Check out Marketing Brew’s post for more.

3 Takeaways From Google’s Year in Search Report

FEBRUARY 12, 2023

U.S. marketers take note: Google has analyzed billions of Search trends from 2022 to identify emerging needs and behaviors, so you can keep pace with rapidly changing consumer behavior in a time of economic uncertainty. Here are 3 key insights about how people shop:

Value: Consumers are searching for items and experiences that provide good value beyond just the price point. In 2023, they’re taking reviews, product popularity, and sustainability into account when determining value. Are you providing value in the way that consumers measure it?
- 190% YOY increase in search interest for “highest inflation.”
- 50% YOY increase in search interest for “how to save money on.”
Aid and allyship: Consumers have new perspectives, renewed compassion for themselves and others, and a hunger to inspire global action through organizing. Focus on building consumer trust now to benefit during recovery, and consider reporting progress toward your KPIs to avoid the appearance of purpose-washing.
- 110% YOY increase in search interest for “donation request”
- 50% YOY increase in search interest for “community project.”
Self-care: Consumers are stressed out and researching products and experiences that will revitalize them. Plus, hybrid work and other factors have redefined our relationship to work. Make the research process frictionless and accessible to your audience.
- 30% YOY increase in search interest for “stress management”
- 85% YOY increase in search interest for “burnout symptoms.”