The Daily Carnage

The savvy marketer's hub for industry news, insights, resources, and culture.

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ChatGPT’s Ranking Secrets

How it picks sources.

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3 Ingredients to Your Secret Sauce [Podcast]

JULY 19, 2022

One of the biggest pieces of advice brands get is to show off what makes them unique. This is true for both companies and individuals. So how do you find your own secret sauce, bottle it up, and sell it to the world? Check out this podcast by Scotty Russell. He speaks often about freelance coaching and how to market your creative work, but this applies to anyone trying to find their angle.

Here’s how to find the ingredients to your secret sauce:

Start with Experiences: Your story is your most powerful asset. And consumers love storytelling. Don’t think you have a story to tell? Well, that’s still a story. You may be trying to make it like everyone else, but still, no one can replicate your story. Start jotting down your story or past experiences and see what that looks like.
Skills & Strengths: Outside of your journey, what can you offer that others can’t (or can’t offer nearly as well)? List of any type of skills, credentials, strengths you have. Then try and understand any overlap or outlying skills that are competitive.
Your Identity: What is at your core as a brand or person? Narrow down what matters to you and why you do what you do. If you end up with too many things, they can conflict. Russell suggests picking up to five “buckets” of these categories: interests, passions, beliefs, or values. Jot them down and see where you overlap on topics to understand more about what makes you tick.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and your brand won’t be either. Your sauce is going to take some cooking and tasting to perfect. Check out the full podcast and post by Scotty Russell for tips on getting there.

10 Tips for Creating More Powerful Content

JULY 18, 2022

What’s your niche? What’s your industry? No matter what it is, the experts over at Semrush have definitely researched it in one way or another. They put together a collection of findings for market research and trends through keywords and content.

With the data to back it, they put together actionable tips on how to improve your content marketing strategy, even in niche industries.

Perform Keyword Research and Gap Analysis – Dominate the super specific keywords out there, first.
Create Content Based on Related Topics – Take advantage of possible subtopics that your brand could be the expert on.
Repurpose Existing Content – Do you have a great blog post? Make it into an impactful video, infographic, guide, and social post as well.
Invest in Niche Industry Publications – When you invest in publication placements, you get seen by industry peers and gain credibility.
Amplify Your Content with Influencers – Speaking of industry peers, partner with them or who they follow.
Focus on Customer Insights – Everything should start with this in mind. Use it as your content compass as you go.
Work with Great Storytellers – The best stories come from sales, operations, designers, a.k.a. the people who work directly with your product or service.
Keep Your Big Ideas but Drill Down – Start with a centralized content marketing strategy, consider broad topics, and then double down on local trends.
Be an Educational Resource – The most searchable, rankable content is going to be the content that answers questions or lists solutions.
Give SMEs the Byline – Thought leadership starts with the leaders of those thoughts. The best content comes directly from the mouth of subject matter experts (SMEs).

Want to see all the stats, graphics, and deets? You’re gonna have to check out the rest of this Semrush content research.

Finding weird stuff (FWS) for the sake of SEO

JULY 17, 2022

Lookin’ for SEO love in all the wrong places? Search Engine Land has a new, creative way to go about SEO projects, research, and search audits.

Sometimes you just have to find weird stuff (FWS) to unlock SEO success.

Ways to FWS for SEO Research:

The site: query: In Google, type “site:” followed by the domain that you want to review.
Look into .pdf traffic: Review your analytics. You might be surprised about the amount of traffic coming to .pdf pages hosted on your website because they lack analytics tracking. Converting these .pdfs into HTML pages might be a good solution to making a high-ranking page.
Do a little time travel: If there are dips in organic traffic after a redesign, you may need to better understand what was working in the old layout. Use the Wayback Machine to see how things used to be.
Check robots.txt and XML sitemaps: You’ll often find pages that shouldn’t be on the site publicly, orphaned pages, or essential pages that have fewer internal links than they deserve.
Google Search Console: Google Search Console > Settings > Crawl Stats – Check this out for signs of previous hacks or unknown content.
Page Speed Insights: You might find things like JS, CSS, or images being served multiple times or tracking pixels that are no longer in use.

There are so many off-page and on-page influences for a brand’s SEO that you are bound to find new insights when you shake up your research checklist and start turning over weird rocks.

Check out the full post by Search Engine Land for more research possibilities.

Strategically Pinning Instagram Posts and Reels

JULY 13, 2022

Got something good? Put a pin in it. 📌 Instagram has a new feature for pinning posts and reels at the top of a profile’s grid. Great! Now, how do you do it? What should you pin?

Let’s Start with the Basics:

You get three pinned posts at a time.
You have to remove pinned posts manually or replace them with another pinned post.
Posts are pinned in the order you pin them, not the age of the post.

How to Pin Posts:

Make sure you have the latest version of the Instagram app.
Find the post you want to pin and open it. Tap the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner. Select the “Pin to Your Profile” option.
Follow the exact same process for Reels***
To unpin, use the same process and choose the option that should have changed to “Unpin from Profile.”

***Note: ❌ You CANNOT pin Reels that are not posted to your profile grid. If you’ve published a Reel to the Reels tab only and opted not to add it to your profile grid, you won’t have the option to pin it.

What to Pin:

Like we said, you only get three posts. You don’t have to use all three, but you do have to make sure these posts are aligning with your current marketing plan and decide how often you want to rotate them. Content that is good to pin:

Promotions and limited-time offers.
Timely spotlights on content, products, or people.
Introductory content explaining something about your company.
Your favorite UGC.

Check out the full post by Social Media Examiner for more pinned post ideas!

Google’s Title and Meta Description Tips

JULY 12, 2022

It’s all in the details. The details this time being SERP-friendly desciptions and titles.

The Meta Measurements:

TITLES: Under or approximately 60 characters.
DESCRIPTIONS: Between 150 and 160 characters.

Best Practices For A Good Headline or Title Tag in 2022:

Describe the page’s content accurately. Google knows when you’re just keyword cramming.
Create unique titles for each page. This helps Google know how the page is different from the other pages.
Keep it brief but descriptive.
Use high-value keywords when possible.

Best Practices For A Good Meta Description Length in 2022:

Second verse, same as the first. You pretty much wanna follow the same course of action as titles but with some slight details in mind.

Accurately summarize the page content. Google recommends longer over shorter.
NOTE: Users may see different sized snippets as Google tests out pulling content from pages depending on how and what a user searches.
Use unique descriptions for each page. This is especially user-friendly for searches that could result in multiple pages from your domain in the SERP.
Don’t forcefully include your primary keyword and related keywords. It all has to read naturally.

Check out the full post by SEOPressor for the latest Google Search updates and more meta data deets.

How People Read

JULY 11, 2022

Our minds work in amazing ways – especially in how we make sense of visuals. The way we communicate through text isn’t as simple as presenting a paragraph of content. We are visual creatures who require a little stimulation and interest to gain our full reading attention.

Chris Do put together a helpful guide on how we digest typography. Here are some interesting tips on text treatments and how we read content:

ALL CAPS is great for emphasis, but caps do require a little extra effort to read them. It’s rarely advised to use it for body copy.
Humans will recognize the shape of words before actually reading letters.
You can reduce the amount of letters to represent a word to make words easier to read (with the right context around it).

This guide is a preview of Chris Do’s full Typography 01 course. We wanted to share the conversation continued about the guide that Chris shared on LinkedIn.

Some conversation around typography:

We need better typography with writers who understand how important it is to have a designer or production designer involved with establishing type that is legible, depending on color and placement for users.
When you find yourself in a “chicken or egg” situation with copy or design first – start with copy.
When you emphasize everything, nothing is emphasized. So keep that in mind for your font weights, as well as capitalization.

Visuals do it best! Check out the full post by Chris Do that includes the full pocket guide with text examples.

Why You Should Invest in Branded Keywords (Even if You Rank #1 for Them)

JULY 10, 2022

Marketers spin their wheels to stay ahead of the SEO game. It’s a good feeling when the work pays off and your brand ranks No. 1 for a keyword. But what do you do when you get there? According to Search Engine Land, you have to keep that investment going. Why do you need to get ahead if you’re already ahead?

Here are the top reasons why brands should remain invested in their brand keywords:

SERP Authority: Dominate SERPs with PPC in addition to your top ranking. Search ads take out competition from this prime real estate.
Auction Dynamics: This is the most straightforward reason to keep up with brand search keywords. Because of changes in auctions, you may find that brand investment yields higher conversions than non-branded keywords. Work with your analytics teams to show how any shifts in investment impact total traffic to the site.
Meet the Customer Where They Search: People searching for your brands seek additional information about your brand. That means they are telling you what they are interested in learning more about. Invest in those search queries for your brand to give these engaged users the best possible search results.
Messaging Autonomy: To establish SERP authority, you need a catered message that shows prominently at the top of the page. PPC provides an opportunity to customize the message, based on known attributes of the user.

Check out the full article by Search Engine Land for all the details PLUS how to explain this tactic to clients.

Tips for Different Social Media Algorithms

JULY 6, 2022

Each social media platform has its own algorithm that takes into account different factors. So while step one is to create high-quality content that encourages engagement, step two is to use these tips for each channel to get it to the most people possible.

Facebook

Relevancy: Facebook/Meta audience personas are not always accurate, but keep audience data points from Facebook in mind when creating content.
Timing: On the topic of data, post when your audience is most active (even if it means scheduling at funky hours).

Twitter

Hashtags: Twitter is an oddball because of how fast Tweets can fly. Pay attention to trending topics and hop on hashtag trains (ideally within the same day of a topic).
@Mentions: Mention influencers and other brands with large followings strategically. Use your existing partnerships to your advantage.

Instagram

Hashtags: Hashtags are more influential on Instagram than other social networks. Instagram settled the caption vs comment debate at the end of 2021. (Captions are the better hashtag home.)
Comments: Comments show Instagram that your content is engaging and worth reading. With likes, they help your content become more likely to be discovered.

LinkedIn

Engagement: While content that has more likes and comments is likely to be seen by your connections’ networks, making content worth sharing is the most ideal. Shares get the most eyes.
Groups: LinkedIn has been shifting heavily into groups for more engaging content sharing.

TikTok

Views: The number of views your content gets is the most important factor in the TikTok algorithm.
Comments: Comments are important for two reasons. First, they show that your content is engaging and worth watching. Second, comment engagement is essential for building your TikTok community.

Keep in mind, these algorithms are constantly changing and social platforms aren’t exactly revealing all of their secret formulas. Check out the full Bsquared blog for more social media tips and tricks!

How Reviews Can Improve Your SEO Efforts

JULY 5, 2022

Off-site SEO can be some powerful stuff to continue giving you brand awareness outside of your own website or SEM. A great way to give your off-site SEO a boost is with reviews and testimonials that aren’t hosted on your website.

Here are five ways marketers can leverage SEO from reviews:

Off-site should be a priority: Your off-site SEO helps your relevancy, authority, and trustworthiness. Yet, brands still push it to the wayside and spin their wheels focusing on on-site SEO. Make more effort to expand your online presence with third-party review sites (and Google reviews, of course).
Don’t neglect referral traffic: Creating complete brand profiles on third-party sites can also lead to a spike in referral traffic. Research the top results for third-party review sites and take advtange of that channel opportunity.
Display reviews on your website: Okay, we just got done saying that brands are spending a lot of time on their on-site SEO. BUT if you don’t already have a place on your website to show off some testimonials, now is the time to change that. Show off your good side!
Pay attention to star ratings: While individual reviews that are rich with keywords and search terms are great for the long game, star ratings are often the first impression that matter most.
Make use of long-tail search queries: Detailed reviews are a great opportunity to rank for niche keywords and phrases. Leverage those long-tail keywords that get less search traffic but often have a higher conversion value as they are more specific.

Check out the full post by Search Engine Land for more SEO tips and real examples of how it’s done.