Good morning, and happy buy-the-dip-on-Meta-stock Friday. (Or don’t, that’s up to you.)
Thank you to everyone who shared last week’s newsletter. I wish I had some kind of referral program, but for now, I hope my gratitude is reward enough.
If you’re new here, my goal is simple: Provide practical digital strategy updates every week. While I do post some newsy updates, this isn’t meant to be a comprehensive recap of everything that happened in the last seven days. I want to help you actually use the tools we’ll talk about.
If you like what you see, please forward this email/share this post and encourage others to subscribe.
I also love feedback, especially in regard to how I could improve the newsletter.
Thanks!
Brad
For the best reading experience, go directly to the website.
Contents
I. Analysis: An SEO Strategy for All Time
II. News: Snapchat’s Selfie Drone?
III. Tips: Leverage Google Autocomplete
An SEO Strategy for All Time
Google has begun rolling out a “People Search Next” feature to mobile search results. (Similar to “People Also Search For” (PASF).) This could be an opportunity to own the sequence of searches related to a particular topic.
Let’s say – this is me making this up, not an “official Google example” – someone searches for “What is Google Analytics 4?” It seems that a logical “People Search Next” (PSN) result would be “How do you set up Google Analytics 4?”
Or if someone is searching around a particular news event, it could be a great chance to engage the user with a follow-up story. A search for “Tom Brady retires” could feasibly yield a PSN query of “How old is Tom Brady?” that leads to a well-reported story on his career.
The downside? Since you can often see the answers to these types of a queries by “opening” the question in Google results without navigating to the source, this may hurt referral traffic.
But if a user was just looking for a quick answer, do you want that traffic anyway? A click-through and quick exit from your site isn’t too valuable.
If the user finds the answer they were looking for in Google and clicks through anyway, it’s probably because they want to dig deeper, and that’s the kind of visit you should seek.
In fact, these quick-answer boxes are supplanting a bigger traffic-driving feature on the Google SERP (search engine results page): featured snippets.
Neither quick-answer boxes nor featured snippets are items you directly control. As with regular search results, it is Google’s kingmaker algorithm that determines who gets the spotlight:
Featured snippets come from web search listings. Google's automated systems determine whether a page would make a good featured snippet to highlight for a specific search request.
If you don’t know what I mean by “featured snippet,” surely you have seen one before. Here’s an example:
They’re characterized by putting preview text above the link instead of below. It’s like an enhanced preview of what someone would find if they clicked through to your site.
If you’re looking for a quick answer – just like with the PSN or PASF boxes – this can be useful. It’s no mystery why featured snippets tend to drive more traffic than quick answers: they provide more details, and thus are more enticing for a site visit.
What’s happening now, though, is that featured snippets are getting much less visibility compared to the quick-answer boxes, according to Shopify Director of SEO Kevin Indig:
The numbers show that in June 2021, 65% of [desktop] SERPs had a PAA whereas only 6% has a Featured Snippet. That’s 10x more!
Indig reports seeing similar numbers on mobile SERPs.
My advice? Be aware of the various Google SERP features, but don’t chase them. What the algorithm is ultimately interested in doing is getting users the information they want as efficiently as possible. And if that involves the clickthroughs, even better.
It’s like any healthy relationship: If the users didn’t want to visit your site in the first place, let them go. (This is the problem with clickbait – cornering people into clicking through instead of being transparent.) You would much rather have visitors who enjoy your site and spend a lot of time there. This will increase the value of your display ads, and if you sell products, increase the likelihood that they purchase.
I’m not saying Google always gets it right. Surely there are high-quality sites that sometimes get buried well beyond page one of the SERP, but by and large, Google is a great matchmaker between user searches and content providers. Our job is to provide the best content possible – not quick-hit traffic bait – and trust that we’ll be found, whether on Google, social media, directly or via other channels.
Just as there’s a reason “all the good ones are always taken,” the same can be said as to why the best websites are always visited. (Definitely quote me if you use that somewhere, especially if it’s on your dating profile.)
The best SEO strategy, in my opinion, always will be high-quality, original content. You can chase all the best practices and new features you want, but in the end, what matters is that when people come to your site, they spend a lot of time there because they found exactly what they were looking for in a way no one else provided. (You know, like marrying someone you enjoyed dating for a while. Shout out to my wife!)
At a general level, we can also equate SEO with health. Nothing is better for mankind’s physical well-being than a healthy diet and frequent exercise. Sure, you could take pills and get treatments and try all the latest crazes that snake-oil salesperson is peddling on TikTok, but if we’re playing the percentages, nothing beats good food and working out.
So while there’s nothing wrong with optimizing your site for search – you should! – or having a solid back-linking strategy – this, too! – at the core of your SEO strategy should be two things: content that is high-quality and original. Learn about the bells and whistles. Use them. But don’t build your audience strategy on the sandy foundation of ephemeral tools created by companies that have their own bills to pay.
News
Facebook is losing 12-to-17-year-old users, while its average user age simultaneously gets younger. In fact, daily users fell for the first time in the company’s 18-year history in Q4 of 2021, triggering Thursday’s stock plummet.
🔨 This isn’t surprising, and if you care about younger audiences, don’t abandon Facebook, but certainly look into connecting with users on Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.
Twitter has launched Toolbox: “These ready-to-use tools are low-cost and built by our developer community to help you get even more out of Twitter.”
🔨 Some are free or freemium while others are paid. They include help with scheduling tweets, blocking trolls and more in-depth analytics.
Google changed site titles in search results more than half the time in a Zyppy study of more than 80,000 tags. (h/t Search Engine Journal) Some takeaways:
50-60 characters seems to be the sweet spot
Avoid brackets, parentheses and pipes
“…matching the H1 to the title, even containing commonly changed factors like pipes, dropped the likelihood of rewriting to 20.6 percent.”
🔨 If you’re very particular about how your site it displayed in Google, you should check on this. But if a few character changes or other small tweaks don’t bother you, I wouldn’t be concerned. In the end, Google does this because they think it will help users more easily figure out what your site offers before clicking through.
See: “What's a Website Title (Title Tag) & Why Does It Matter for SEO?"
UPDATES & TESTS
Convert Story highlights to Reels
“Audio calling” for businesses, with the ability to hide your number
“We’re beginning to roll out our updated 3D Avatars to Facebook and Messenger.” (You can outfit your avatar in support of the Bengals or Rams ahead of the Super Bowl.)
“Topics” are the new cookies. Google’s new feature will assign you (more specifically, your device) topics – kept for up to three weeks – based on your browsing history. This will then determine the ads you see on sites you visit. While this obviously affects users vis-à-vis the ads they see, its biggest impact will be on ad buyers.
Mysteriously, “Articles,” which could be a longform content tool.
“…one-time warnings to photos & videos you Tweet out if they contain sensitive content.”
Upvoting and downvoting replies to tweets. Upvotes will be displayed as Likes and downvotes will not be publicly displayed.
YouTube
An updated fullscreen-interface on mobile that should make it easier for users to interact with videos.
Snapchat
Rumor: A selfie drone named “Cheerio”…
…and muting your location on Snap Map
Tips
101
Here’s a decision tree I created for a presentation as to whether your company should be on TikTok:
Notice that “correctly” answering all the questions yields a “Yes, maybe” and not a definitive green light. We shouldn’t jump on platforms willy nilly just because all the young people are, but TikTok definitely isn’t a flash in the pan, either. If you don’t yet have an account, proceed with caution and confidence.
Advanced
Use Google auto-complete to your SEO advantage
There are multiple factors that determine how Google autocompletes your search inquiries:
…our systems look for common queries that match what someone starts to enter into the search box but also consider:
The language of the query
The location a query is coming from
Trending interest in a query
Your past searches
Although the autocomplete options are clearly personalized, this is a great way to see what people are searching for related to a certain topic. This may be an opportunity for you to break into a new coverage area, or expand on an existing one.
By simply typing “joe biden” into Google, I see many different ideas:
Many of these look to me like Wikipedia (or other bio-heavy sites) strongholds. It probably wouldn’t be easy to break into the top SERP position for most of these. There is one, though, that stands out, especially for a news site that regularly covers the president: “joe biden speech today.”
Joe Biden gives speeches – you decide if for better or for worse – quite often. If you work for a national news organization, it could be a good idea to dedicate an often-updated page this topic. The headline could be “How To Watch President Joe Biden’s Speech Today,” and it could include times, topics and networks every time he’s set to speak, along with a list of links to related coverage.
The president of the United States is, admittedly, a competitive topic to cover. For something more relevant to your needs, put a relevant (to your coverage) person’s name into Google and see what people want to know about him or her.
There are many other tools available to accompany an exercise like this one, but it’s a good place to start, especially if the results for a given search don’t already seem to be filled with strong content.