Osiyo Digital Marketing

Monday, October 19, 2020

Optimizing the browser long tail across platforms, devices, and countries

30-second summary:

If a company or brand wants to go global, it must understand the intricacies of where and how consumers browse, realizing that true optimization must consider content consumption trends and regional device or browser differences.
Better user experiences and higher engagement levels depend on it.
There is no such thing as “mobile vs. desktop” when optimizing visuals for a website.
Cloudinary’s VP of Marketing discusses how to optimize at a global scale.

Just as diverse as the devices and browsers on which people globally surf the web, the internet is a complex digital world. If a company or brand wants to go global, it must understand the intricacies of where and how consumers browse, realizing that true optimization must consider content consumption trends, and regional device or browser differences. Better user experiences and higher engagement levels depend on it. More on how optimizing the browser long tail can help your business.

Visual storytelling is everything, but not simple

Marketers rely heavily on visuals as part of their strategy to make a meaningful impact and ensure a good first impression. Whether to sell an apparel product or market a professional service, a photo or video will more quickly communicate value than a written description. Delivering compelling visuals across a website is critical to achieving the desired call to action for a site visitor, but it’s often technical details that interfere with a brand’s visual storytelling efforts.

There is no such thing as “mobile vs. desktop” when optimizing visuals for a website. While once a helpful reminder for developing responsive and user-friendly sites, this simplistic, either-or mentality doesn’t account for every possible touchpoint.

Consider this scenario: first thing in the morning, a man checks his WhatsApp messages on his phone to see that a friend shared a Facebook link for a fitness watch. He then starts looking more into it on his device before getting out of bed. Once he’s logged on to his desktop during work hours, he does additional research, digging into product details and features. Later, he pulls up the website on his tablet to show the watch to his girlfriend as a birthday hint, referencing customer testimonial videos to drive his point home. Before calling it a day, he’s back on his phone in WhatsApp or via text message, sharing with his friend that he’s almost certain the watch will soon be his.

There are a variety of important aspects to consider when creating a visual story online, as shown in this example: the default browser on the man’s device, the microbrowser through which he communicates with friends, the previews associated with unfurled social media links; and finally, the different devices he interacts with, each having different requirements for size, and aspect ratios. Nothing is more frustrating than investing significant time and resources to create beautiful visuals for a campaign only to discover that audiences aren’t seeing them how they were intended.

The browser long tail and other browser dynamics shouldn’t compromise your visuals

Despite the dominant players in the global browser market, there still exists a browser long tail – a list of different browser versions used by consumers – with significant regional differences. Consumers expect a consistent experience, wherever they engage with brands, but a big reason for consistency issues is a developer’s limited view of just how lengthy that worldwide list of relevant browser types really is.

In this year’s State of the Visual Media Report, Cloudinary found that while Chrome and Safari continue to lead the worldwide browser market (63.91% and 18.2%, respectively), lesser-known variants are still influential in many parts of the world. In analyzing more than 200 billion monthly transactions across 700 customers, research found, for example, that Nokia devices are still popular in Northern Europe, and in certain Asian markets, Nintendo DS systems see a lot of traffic. Surprisingly, there’s even image traffic coming from legacy office software like Lotus Notes. Understanding these nuances of the browser long tail in different geographies will give developers a leg up as they work to ensure every image or video format used is supported by a viewer’s browser of choice.

Adopting visual content and lite mode to improve engagement durations

In April 2020, 18% of global Android users enabled the “save-data,” or lite mode, function, which enables faster browsing by decreasing the amount of mobile data used. In this mode, Google’s servers may consider web pages fully loaded without processing large-format and data-rich visual content. Knowing this, developers can adopt visual content to ensure the experience will be optimal without losing site performance. According to Cloudinary data, web developers that work to optimize the lite mode experience benefit from longer engagement and see up to a 10% uptick in session engagement. Given the strong correlation between adapted content and longer engagement, it’s in a developer’s best interest to ensure visuals are adapted for this device mode and its users.

Embracing intelligent asset optimization for a seamless user experience

Making sure a website’s images and videos are responsive is more than just adjusting for the right layout. More than ever, it’s now about making sure that content is making the greatest use of landscape and portrait device orientations. A responsive site adapts its layout to the viewing environment, resizing and moving elements dynamically based on the properties of the browser or device the site is displayed on.

AI can automatically detect web visitors’ visual requirements and their browsers, automatically delivering each image and video in the most efficient format, quality, and resolution. AI can also detect the subject in an image that is most likely to capture a viewer’s attention to help automate the resizing and cropping of visual content.

The browser long tail shouldn’t degrade a user’s experience of visuals on a website. Dev teams should prepare for the browser longtail as they seek to understand and reach their target audience. Only when they wrap their arms around the vast universe of browser dynamics can they create a visual online storytelling experience that is consistent and meaningful, worldwide.

Sanjay Sarathy is VP Marketing at Cloudinary.

The post Optimizing the browser long tail across platforms, devices, and countries appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Optimizing the browser long tail across platforms, devices, and countries

30-second summary:

If a company or brand wants to go global, it must understand the intricacies of where and how consumers browse, realizing that true optimization must consider content consumption trends and regional device or browser differences.
Better user experiences and higher engagement levels depend on it.
There is no such thing as “mobile vs. desktop” when optimizing visuals for a website.
Cloudinary’s VP of Marketing discusses how to optimize at a global scale.

Visual storytelling is everything, but not simple

The browser long tail and other browser dynamics shouldn’t compromise your visuals

Adopting visual content and lite mode to improve engagement durations

Embracing intelligent asset optimization for a seamless user experience

Sanjay Sarathy is VP Marketing at Cloudinary.

The post Optimizing the browser long tail across platforms, devices, and countries appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Friday, October 16, 2020

Five excellent tips to optimize SEO for Bing – not Google

30-second summary:

Bing isn’t the search engine with the largest market share, but it still serves millions of users every day. One-third of U.S. online queries are powered by Bing, most notably in terms of voice-assisted searches.
The five effective and easy-to-follow Bing SEO tips below will help you rank for the secondary search engine quickly.
A Bing SEO vs. Google SEO mindset is not productive, especially since both search engines use the BERT algorithm. Many optimization initiatives meant for Bing also work for Google, and vice versa.

You read that right: we’re focusing on Bing SEO in this article.

Did you know that Bing is the second biggest search engine worldwide? It also powers Yahoo!, the third biggest. In July 2020, Bing captured nearly 6.5% of the global search market.

In any discussion about SEO, mentioning Google is unavoidable. However, the industry giant isn’t the only search engine that can send traffic to your website. You can make Google SEO your primary focus, but it shouldn’t be the only one in your marketing toolkit.

A global market share of less than 10% doesn’t sound like much, but it translates to millions of users. Bing powers one-third of online searches in the U.S., counting direct searches and those done through Yahoo! or AOL. And as of August 2020, Bing controls over 13% of the U.S. desktop search engine market.

How Bing is different from Google – and why it matters

There are certain things that Bing does better than Google.

For example, doing an image search using Bing is preferable due to the higher quality results. You can search for different layouts and see licensing information for each image without having to figure out where to look. Bing also pioneered infinite scrolling for image search results, though it’s no longer unique – Google now offers this feature, too.

Video search is also more hassle-free with Bing, despite YouTube being a Google brand. When you search for a video on Bing, the results come up as a thumbnail grid. You can then watch the videos without leaving the SERP.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Bing and Google is their amount of influence in a fast-growing subsection of online searching: those done through voice-assisted devices. In 2017, an estimated 35 million Americans used one of these devices at least once a month. Of those millions, more than 70% were Amazon Echo users – and Amazon’s Alexa is powered by Bing.

Five Bing SEO tips to implement for optimization

You will often find that optimizing for Bing SEO is much like optimizing for Google SEO. Both search engines use the BERT algorithm – which means keyword stuffing, manipulative link-building schemes, and other questionable tactics won’t work.

However, there are certain things you can do to take your search engine optimization a notch up with Bing. Below are five tips you can apply to your current marketing initiatives.

1. Claim and list your business on Bing Places

Google has Google My Business, Bing has Bing Places. The goal of these two is similar: to deliver the best and more useful local search results to its users. Claim your business on Bing Places and create a listing to improve your local SEO ranking performance.

Note that Bing rewards websites that put their location details on prominent display. Bing’s algorithm also considers information from third-party sources, such as social media platforms like Facebook. To optimize your Bing SEO presence, make sure you’re ranking in Facebook’s local search engine, too.

2. Improve SEO through Bing Webmaster Tools URL indexing

After claiming your business, use Bing’s Webmaster Tools to index your website.

You will need to sign in to your Bing business account – which may use your Outlook, Hotmail, or Microsoft login – and verify ownership of your website using a back-end XML sitemap.

Like any other search engine, Bing’s algorithm will better handle and understand your content if you employ categories and tags to make your website’s pages more discoverable. Should you work on this, you can expect Bing to deliver better search results and ad experiences involving your brand.

3. Pay extra attention to on-page SEO for Bing

While backlinking still helps with Bing SEO, clever and contextual keyword utilization is much more relevant. To rank for Bing, concentrate your efforts on on-page SEO rather than off-page SEO.

However, certain tricks will work better than others. For instance, Bing seems to prioritize content with exact keyword matching in page titles, meta descriptions, and web content. You may want to sacrifice smooth readability occasionally for long-tail keywords verbatim.

Using keywords in URL slugs, subheadings, and in the first paragraph of your content are also good practices to follow if you want to see your website nearer the top in Bing SERPs.

4. Maintain a genuine online social media presence

Bing’s webmaster guidelines tell us that social signals weigh heavily in its ranking algorithm. What this means is that your social media presence matters more to Bing than it does to Google. We touched on this briefly when we talked about claiming your business on Bing Places.

How your social media performs helps Bing judge the quality of your content. So, make sure you’re not buying likes or follows, or posting without a clear brand voice.

What does Bing mean by “social signals”? These are social media shares and interactions, typically on industry-leading platforms like Twitter and Facebook. However, you also need to match your social media presence to your target audience. Law firms probably won’t have much use for Pinterest or Instagram, for example, but these platforms could be indispensable for photography studios.

5. Consistently produce great content

Make sure that anything you publish is trustworthy, scannable, readable, and well-researched. Lots of related images to illustrate your points throughout the text content will help, too.

Focus on quality and not quantity. Don’t try to maximize your content by splitting it into several short blog posts. In 2020, the ideal blog post length should be between 2,100 and 2,400 words – enough to thoroughly discuss a topic with authority, but not too long that fluff would be inevitable.

Not yet convinced? Here’s why marketers should focus on Bing

Bing, the second most influential search engine in the world, can be a very lucrative channel. You shouldn’t ignore opportunities for increased reach and growth. Besides, Bing SEO tips may often coincide with what you’re already doing for Google SEO.

If you’re ambivalent due to Bing’s runner-up reputation, consider its parent company. Did you know that more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide are powered by Windows, and over 900 million of those use Windows 10? That last part is important because Windows 10 devices direct traffic to their built-in search engine: Bing.

More than 85% of desktop computers run on Windows. When you ask Cortana a question or search from your lock screen, you’re using Bing. Bing also powers search functions with applications like Microsoft Office, Skype, or Outlook.

One of the most overlooked audiences is over 65 million gamers on their Xboxes. Microsoft’s gaming console uses Bing, too. When players pause their games to search for something, they’re typically using Bing and not Google.

Wrapping up: Bing SEO vs. Google SEO

It’s not a good idea to think of optimizing your online presence in terms of Bing SEO vs. Google SEO. As we’ve touched on consistently throughout this piece, Bing is more similar to Google that many realize. Their algorithms may not be the same, but with delicate balancing, it’s not difficult to come up with a strategy that satisfies both Bing and Google.

Any savvy marketer will find it a good idea to get in on both market shares. Despite the low percentage of people using Bing and Yahoo!, you’re still looking at a potential audience numbering in the millions.

Justin Staples is a business entrepreneur who provides companies with results-driven SEO, custom web design, digital marketing, and content development. He can be found on LinkedIn.

The post Five excellent tips to optimize SEO for Bing – not Google appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Agency lead generation: How to create white papers that convert

30-second summary:

Agency lead generation strategies are top of mind right now and attracting more leads regularly has become a challenge with more and more content being available online now.
Agile marketers are paving the path forward combining technology and talent.
You can boost lead generation using content that adds value to your prospects—content such as white papers.
Venngage’s Content Marketer, Ronita Mohan shares a five-step guide to design papers that will generate leads for your agency.

Agency lead generation strategies are top of mind right now. Attracting more leads regularly has become a challenge—the world is more online, but that also means that there is more content available.

Rising above the noise to draw in the right leads can seem like an impossible task. But we’re here to tell you that it isn’t.

You can boost lead generation using content that adds value to your prospects—content such as white papers.

While designing white papers from scratch can be tricky, there are online resources to create attractive white paper designs that boost brand awareness and increase conversions.

So, how do you create white papers that convert? We share a five-step guide to design papers that will generate leads for your agency.

1. Target agency lead generation audiences

Before you design a white paper, you need to define the audiences who will read it.

While your agency may have a diverse set of clients, when you’re trying to generate leads, you need to narrow down your focus.

You don’t want to create content that aims to please everyone—the chances are, you will end up attracting no one.

Generic content is easier to create—there’s a proliferation of it online. But you want your content to stand out in the crowd. That is how prospective clients will notice your agency.

To do this, you should study your market segments and answer these questions:

What pain points do your clients have?
How can your agency resolve those issues?
Is your current market large enough for your service?
Are there market gaps that you should explore?
What kind of content has already been successful?

Following this process will help you understand your audience’s needs better. This will make it easier to choose topics and designs for your white paper and boost conversions.

2. Define topics for agency lead generation white papers

Now that you’ve defined your audience—and you know your goal is agency lead generation—you need to pick a topic that is suitable for your prospects.

Remember, your aim with your content is to provide solutions to your clients’ pain points—that should be the driving factor behind creating any kind of content.

There are a few ways to find topics of interest for your prospects.

One method is to send survey questions to your existing clients asking them what kind of content they would like to see from you.

You can also look at content that has already done well on social media, past white papers, and blog posts. This will help you decide which topics attract the most views.

Consider searching online for keywords related to your clients. Google’s longtail keyword suggestions are a great place to find new content ideas.

Plus, SERP results give you an idea of what content is being searched for and why.

It is best to get granular with your white paper topics. Instead of creating a paper on the wider topic of brand awareness, the below example focuses on brand positioning.

defining topics for your agency lead generation white paper Source: Venngage

If you’re writing about email marketing—which is a broad topic—consider focusing on something narrower.

Write about incorporating user-generated content in emails, or how email marketing can be used to improve hiring rates.

You can also focus on specific aspects of your industry, such as the impact of phishing scams on company cybersecurity, or how to outsource IT departments.

The more targeted your topics are for your audience, the more likely they are to engage with your content.

3. Agency lead generation content creation

When you’re creating content designed for agency lead generation, your mind is on sales and conversions.

However, that shouldn’t be the primary thrust of your content. If you create white papers solely to sell your agency to leads, you might end up losing them instead of converting them.

Nobody wants to be sold to—especially when they’re investing time and energy into reading a white paper.

Additionally, white papers are gated content—they require interested parties to fill up a form to obtain access to the paper.

You can’t ask prospects to put in that much effort to get a piece of content that doesn’t enrich their lives or educate them about a topic.

But you do still need to convert prospects into clients. How can you do that?

Your white papers should be educational and informative about the subject matter, like in this example about employee engagement.

content creation for your agency lead generation white paper

Source: Venngage

Do original research into the topic and include data that backs up your assertions.

Share case studies and illustrated use cases from your agency. Not only do case studies make for interesting content but they also act as testimonials for your work.

The process of attracting prospects should be organic—encourage them with well-researched and well-written white papers.

4. Designing white papers for agency lead generation

Your white paper needs to be interesting and engaging, but it also should be attractive to prospects.

You could create a Word document, export it as a PDF, and share that with your audience. But is that going to get prospects’ attention like this example below?

Neon Digital Hiring Strategy White Paper_Venngaeg

Source: Venngage

It is possible to design a white paper that is colorful and detailed with templates and even from scratch.

We outline how to design great white papers to improve your agency lead generation efforts.

Be on-trend with your agency lead generation white paper design

Your white paper needs to follow present graphic design trends. This is important because, while you want to stand out from a crowd, you don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb.

In the foreseeable future, these are some of the design trends agency marketers need to be aware of:

Muted colors, not bold or neon colors
Flat icons and illustrations, as opposed to 3D icons
Geometric shapes, instead of the abstract, flowing shapes of 2019
Classic Serif fonts, which are coming back into fashion

All these design elements will influence how you create your white paper and how successfully they draw in prospective clients.

Use visuals to design attractive lead-generating white papers

Visual communication has become one of the pillars of content marketing—which is why visuals need to be incorporated into your white paper design.

Start by designing an attractive cover page for your paper.

Similar to book covers, the top page of your paper has the power to draw people to read further, like in this example.

using visuals for your agency lead generation white paper

Source: Venngage

Your cover page should also convey what leads will find within the pages of the paper—don’t mislead them with visuals that are attractive but irrelevant.

Though papers are largely text-based, that doesn’t mean that visuals don’t help engage readers further.

You can use visuals like icons, illustrations, photos, and charts to add depth to your white paper. They also make the content more readable and scannable.

When using photos, look for imagery that reflects your target audience—that will make the white paper feel more relevant to your readers.

Structuring your agency lead generation white paper

We have already mentioned the importance of having a cover page for your paper. But you also need to include an index that outlines the chapters of the paper.

To make the process easier, always include page numbers in your white papers.

Readers will be able to return to sections they are interested in if they have an index to refer to, like in this example.

structuring your agency lead generation white paper

Source: Venngage

When you can, try to include quotes from experts in your field—this will give your paper more gravitas. Quotes should be highlighted with a bigger font size to vary the design.

In the same vein, include tables and text boxes that focus readers’ attention on specific facts and data.

Highlight key takeaways in the summary section of your paper—it is best to summarize your findings only after the paper is written.

Add a CTA in your agency lead generation white papers

What is the purpose of your paper? You want your prospects to perform some action.

That is why you need to include a call-to-action in your white paper—so that you can convert prospects into leads, and eventually into clients.

Here are some calls-to-action you can add to your papers:

Subscribing to your newsletter
Trying out your service
Scheduling a call
Learning more about your business

Ensure your CTA is visible and stands out on your page—this will encourage leads to click on it and travel further through your sales pipeline.

Repurpose content into agency lead generation white papers

Creating content for agency lead generation can be a tough task—especially when you have to build content from scratch.

But there is a workaround for agency marketing teams—repurposing existing content. Instead of creating the text and visuals for papers, breathe new life into what you already have.

For example, your company blog may have multiple posts around one topic. These can be collated into chapters for a paper.

Similarly, a webinar can be used to create a white paper, or a long eBook can be broken down into several white papers.

The possibilities for repurposing content are endless—keep an open mind and you can create papers that will generate more leads.

5. Agency lead generation white paper promotion

Congratulations, you’ve created a white paper! Now, what do you do?

Leads aren’t going to find your paper on their own. You need to actively promote your content.

There are numerous ways to get eyeballs on your paper. Here are a few promotion methods to follow:

Blog posts

Create blog posts around your white paper content and include a call-to-action to download the paper, like in this example.

using blog posts to market your white paper for agency lead generation

Source: Pardot

Leads are more likely to access gated content if it has some context around it.

Email marketing

Promoting your white paper through an email campaign can boost downloads.

Share previews, statistics, or facts from the paper to entice your email list to click through to your paper’s landing page.

Write a follow-up email to everyone who downloads the paper to continue a conversation—this will increase conversions.

Social media marketing (SMM)

Leads use social media to find content and future partners all the time. Sharing white papers on your channels will increase visibility for your content and your brand.

Use social media tools to schedule posts about your white paper at relevant times to your audience.

Website marketing

You can build a landing page for your paper that includes a summary and key learnings—enough information to encourage leads to download your content.

Your page should include a simple form that prospective clients can fill in to access the paper—don’t ask for too much information, or they may be deterred from filling the form.

Promoting your content is a necessary step if you want to create agency lead generation strategies that convert.

Key takeaways: Prioritize audience needs to boost agency lead generation

Creating a white paper is a long process but a fruitful one that brings in more clients. To be successful, you need to follow a few crucial steps:

Target your white paper audience
Choose topics that are relevant to your leads
Create content that will encourage leads to partner with you
Design the white paper to attract leads
Promote your content on multiple platforms

These steps will help you create white papers that will boost your agency lead generation efforts.

Ronita Mohan is a content marketer at the online infographic and design platform, Venngage.

The post Agency lead generation: How to create white papers that convert appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

The agile marketer: Building agility with technology and talent

30-second summary:

Old point and shoot methods of SEO are unsustainable.
Agile marketers are paving the path forward combining technology and talent.
Machine learning is helping search marketers remove repetitive and mundane tasks.
COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation that was underway well before.
Combining business intelligence and search intelligence is a must.
Jim Yu, Founder and CEO of BrightEdge discusses the essentials of being an agile marketer.

“Seeking marketing and search optimization expert with demonstrated abilities to understand search ranking process, lead strategically and collaborate with other teams and departments, bring forth new processes to streamline tasks and create efficiencies, drive brand storytelling strategy across channels…” – Being a digital marketer on the job market, you would see a mix of descriptions like this and the ones below which hint on the search for agile marketers.

“Must have experience in HTML, CSS, PHP, and web standards… own and execute digital strategy including content ideation and creation…”

“Perform A/B testing, own the marketing database, carry out full SEO audits… contribute to thought leadership by authoring blog posts and speaking at events…”

It’s not your imagination, clients and recruiters alike are in fact searching for digital hybrids—for equal parts technical expertise, strategic insight, and creativity all wrapped up in one neat package.

Once upon a time, these seemingly conflicting qualities existed inside of very different roles. Those days are long over. SEO is no longer a tactic and a siloed team, but an integral and foundational part of a holistic digital marketing strategy. Search insights reveal consumer behaviors and trends critical to marketing’s performance and thanks to recent developments in AI, we can monitor and make sense of more of this data than ever before.

Today, if you want to succeed as a leader in the marketing space, you must be agile in its most literal sense: able to move quickly and easily. Across teams and departments, between campaigns and tools, through various channels and market segments—the Agile Marketer has the analytical know-how and emotional intelligence to navigate and lead others through the sprawling digital marketing landscape with ease.

Here are two specific areas in which modern marketers can focus to build agility and value:

A. The technology and insights at your disposal

Monitoring, evaluating, and activating search insights at any sort of scale has proven challenging for SEOs still trying to cobble a workflow together out of disparate tools. Last year, BrightEdge research showed that the average search marketer relies on four to six SEO tools and data sources to execute their strategy.

These tools are responsive by nature, as they tend not to “speak” to one another. Data must be manipulated, reformatted, and evaluated before any recommendations can be deployed. Using point solutions leaves SEOs scrambling to answer consumers’ needs as they were expressed days, weeks, or months ago. To measure the impact of a search update, formulate a new strategy, and only then be able to respond.

Both search technology and consumer behavior have outpaced this approach by far. Data silos and point solutions limit the reach and efficacy of your every digital marketing effort, hindering your ability to drive traffic, leads, and revenue. Companies that make their decisions based on data are 58% more likely to beat their revenue goals, but the quality of that data is imperative.

There’s just no point anymore in creating a massive data warehouse jammed with prospective use cases. The path to operationalizing that data is too long, cumbersome, and far away from its actual utility in marketing.

If you haven’t already, it’s time to graduate beyond this time-consuming and labor-intensive approach. Find a platform that gathers data from all relevant sources, automates repetitive tasks, employs AI and deep learning to make meaningful recommendations, automates to assist, and keeps pace with changes in search all within a single interface.

Intelligent automation and this level enable agile marketers to get in front of consumer demand—to meet site visitors in their moments of need with personalized content that is relevant, timely, and speaks directly to their unique behavioral characteristics. Your tools and technology need to empower your marketing team, not frustrate them, or create more work. They must free up time for more creative, impactful pursuits.

B. The way you put these insights and tools to work

Building agility into your marketing strategy isn’t a matter of picking up a few new skills or switching tools. It’s a mindset, a culture that transforms your marketing strategy from start to finish, from SEO to CMO.

According to a recent survey from Aprimo, 95% of marketers who have agile on their mind plan to adopt the approach within the next 12 months. The same respondents told us that 74% of Agile marketers are satisfied with their team’s performance and that Agile teams feel more capable of handling fast-paced work than their peers.

Top tips to help you and your team become Agile marketers

1. Take a page from our friends in software development

Familiarize yourself with the core tenets of Agile as it’s been used successfully by tech and development teams for years. The Agile Manifesto of Software Development, the Agile bible produced by 17 people in 2001, is a great starting point.

This mindset was founded on four key values:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

Agile began as a method of developing software but has evolved into an ideology applicable to all manner of digitally transformative projects such as the Agile Marketing Manifesto.

The four key values when applied specifically to marketing become seven, and they are:

Validated learning over opinions and conventions
Customer-focused collaboration over silos and hierarchy
Adaptive and iterative campaigns over Big-Bang campaigns
The process of customer discovery over static prediction
Flexible vs. rigid planning
Responding to change over following a plan
Many small experiments over a few large bets

2. Decide what you want to achieve with your Agile approach

Understand the benefits of Agile and decide how each will apply in your own organization.

Accelerating time to market, enhancing one’s ability to manage changing priorities, increasing productivity, and improving alignment between IT and business objectives are among the top reasons firms adopt Agile methods. But what do you expect it to do for yours—and how will you accurately measure outcomes?

3. Understand the characteristics that make agile team members

As I’ve said, agile is a mindset. As you’re putting your teams in place and making new hires, keep your eye on building that culture you want to achieve. Marketers who exhibit qualities of collaboration, openness, creative thinking, and resilience are good choices. Rigidity, total ownership of processes and ideas, unwillingness to change once a plan is in place, and protectionism are all red flags.

Being an agile marketer doesn’t mean you stop planning. It means you build the ability to change and pivot quickly into your plans. At the leadership level, agility requires that you have a big picture view of the tools, data, and people in play but more importantly that you possess the emotional intelligence to understand the motivations and needs of each stakeholder. An agile marketer can “read the room” quickly and on an ongoing basis to inform incremental decisions and make adjustments as the plan is implemented.

Constantly learning. Constantly testing. The Coronavirus was a stark reminder of just how quickly things can change. Consumer behaviors, service delivery models, market segments, and entire organizational models had to change overnight. Companies have been forced to rethink entire product and service lines, in some cases shifting into new verticals.

Agile Marketers are best positioned to succeed in whatever comes next, having built the solid foundation of skills, technology, and talent it takes to constantly process and activate new information.

Is that you?

Jim Yu is the founder and CEO of BrightEdge, the leading enterprise SEO and content performance platform.

The post The agile marketer: Building agility with technology and talent appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Friday, October 9, 2020

BrightEdge launches market insights and shares updates on new purchasing behaviors

30-second summary:

BrightEdge is bringing together search and business intelligence with major new innovations.
Marketers are looking for a robust view of their macro market and to act on micro opportunities.
Consumer emotions are a major driver in market shifts.
Holiday shopping insights show how people are buying specific items.
Improving the brand’s ability to monitor, analyze, and activate data is vital to 2020 success.

As the traditional customer journey continues to be radically altered in many industry sectors of the economy, many companies struggle to align their search and digital strategies in line with macro market shifts and conditions. Recently at Share20, BrightEdge launched Market Insights to allow marketers to combine Business Intelligence (BI) with search intelligence for the first time in our industry.

According to their COO Krish Kumar,

“Marketers need platforms that leverage big data on a massive scale that can scan the entire marketing landscape but also quickly pivot to dive deep to find opportunities and understand rapidly shifting search patterns. Old models don’t always fit the new reality. Recent times have upended markets, and marketers increasingly need a robust unified platform with agility, breadth and depth, and execution speed with high precision. Our announcements show where our industry is really heading.”

BrightEdge Market Insights provides customizable macro-market trends for strategic planning and reveals prescriptive opportunities. Combined with the newly released BrightEdge Intelligent Log Analyzer, the company integrates massive data, powerful analytics, BI, and web infrastructure optimization in one platform.

This year more than ever, marketers need a robust view of their market and opportunities comprised of as much relevant, real-time consumer data as possible.

Consumer emotions a major driver in market shifts

According to Deloitte’s most recent Global Anxiety Index Survey, 50% of U.S. consumers are concerned about their health, and 61% are worried about the health of others. Thirty-eight percent are delaying large purchases, and for 26%, the ability to meet upcoming financial obligations and make payments is a real concern.

Anxiety isn’t the only emotion driving massive shifts in consumer spending behavior. BrightEdge research into search volume in the first six months of the Coronavirus pandemic shows that demand in segments including home office, garden and patio, cooking, and food delivery remains higher than in 2019. Their COVID Impact Index shows that initial spikes in search interest for pet goods, exercise goods, gaming equipment, and grocery have leveled out, although demand remains higher than pre-COVID.

Rebounding interest in verticals typically associated with discretionary spendings such as apparel, footwear, and beauty/cosmetics indicates that consumers may be returning to at least some of their pre-pandemic shopping habits.

In the early days of the pandemic, few could have imagined it would persist as long as it has, and with no end yet in sight. Having no context from previous experience in our lifetimes, it seemed impossible that life would be upturned worldwide as indeed it has been. Given the ongoing risk and the unusual longevity of the crisis, many consumers are now searching for ways to feel better—to self-care, to have the company of a pet at home, to improve their physical health, and have entertaining ways to pass more time at home.

Why marketers need to combine search and business intelligence

The Coronavirus has undoubtedly changed consumer behavior and shopping behavior in a multitude of ways. What’s more, the scale of this crisis has proven that we, as a business community, are perhaps more vulnerable to large-scale, long-lasting economic interruption than previously thought.

Consumers are reevaluating their careers, rethinking their lifestyles, and seeking meaning in their spending decisions. The way forward requires that brands simplify complex data analysis and understand key market drivers in real-time, across millions or billions of data points. And indeed, one of the most direct expressions of that intent is through search.

Real-time search data provides a much more holistic view of consumers’ interest not only in the brand itself but in the market as a whole. Broad market shifts become evident alongside localized opportunities, and comparison against competitor performance becomes possible. Search insights give brands a high-level view of the entire marketing landscape, but also the granularity to find specific localized opportunities and to understand the intent behind the trends.

Activating your search data and digital strategies for Q4 and beyond

Heading into the holiday shopping season, BrightEdge, holiday planning research, suggests that shoppers shifted purchasing behaviors online during the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic and are more keenly aware of their budgets – refraining from placing big-ticket purchases online while stocking up on more essential goods or affordable luxuries. Shoppers browse more frequently, leading to more purchases and overall revenue, though they are smaller in value.

Conclusion

Improving your brand’s ability to monitor and gather and analyze and activate data is a vital part of digital marketing strategy. Organizations that implement changes based on data analytics can expect to see sales margins increase between 8 and 25%.

In 2020 it will be mission-critical for marketers to keep a finger on the pulse of changing consumer needs and behaviors. Innovations from BrightEdge are helping both customers and the community as part of their mission to inspire and deliver the best performance for their customers by becoming an integral part of the digital experience.

The post BrightEdge launches market insights and shares updates on new purchasing behaviors appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Crowd marketing is the forum link building strategy you need to know in 2020

30-second summary:

Link building is still one of the best tactics to boost your Google rankings
Forum link building can help you tap into niche communities
Crowd marketing is the concept of setting up a strategy for forum link building
There’s no need to be discouraged if you’re just getting started
Quality is important both in your content and the forum that you decide to join

SEO is evolving through the years and it’s still more important than ever in your digital strategy.

It takes time to rank high in Google’s search results and one of the best ways to improve your success is to aim for credible backlinks to your content.

Backlinks can prove that the content is trustworthy and useful enough for the users to get you higher in SERPs.

Through the years, link building is still one of the most effective methods to build your SEO. It helps you improve your search visibility and work towards reaching higher in the SERPs in a consistent and efficient way.

The question is, how can you make the most out of it in 2020?

Forum link building can be your secret weapon. Crowdo has released ‘The Ultimate Guide to Forum Link Building in 2020’ sharing tactics and examples to make it work.

Here are the key takeaways:

Content created in partnership with Crowdo.

Embracing crowd marketing

One of the most common tactics in link building is guest posting. It’s the process of featuring your content on another blog to get a link back to your site.

Although it’s a popular method, there are still more options to consider.

For example, ‘crowd marketing’, involves link building through communities and forums.

Crowdo is listing the benefits of ‘crowd marketing’ on their latest report:

Forums can be relevant for every niche industry. You can get links back to your site even when trying to reach a very specific group of people
It can be easier to get a link on a forum compared to getting a guest post published.
A lot of forums have been around for many years, which increases their credibility as a source of a link

It’s relatively easy to get a backlink from a forum. Your research can help you find the best way to reach your target audience to maximise the value.

It’s important though to avoid spamming or automated link generators. Crowd marketing should be a white hat technique rather than a quick win with no tangible results.

Focusing on the right links

You don’t want to gather as many links as you can if they don’t add value to your site and your ranking.

The quality of backlinks is crucial. If you’re unsure how to define the quality of the backlink, here are the key factors to consider:

Website traffic. Examine the traffic of the website to understand its popularity and it value it can bring
Relevance. Pick the forums and threads that are relevant to your site’s content. Don’t waste your time on links that are useless.
Authority. Look at the domain authority (DA) of the website. Tools like Ahrefs/ Moz / Semrush can help you discover a site’s DA. Aim for a DA that’s at least 50.
Context. Make sure your link is naturally placed in a sentence. Don’t just add the link on its own but rather link it to the right context.
Quality of forum. Analyse the forum’s quality. Too many spam posts are not a good indication of its quality. Aim for forums that are highly moderated as this may indicate the increase in the quality and the trust.

Best practices for scaling up link building

If you’re just getting started with link building, it might feel challenging to scale up your efforts.

There’s no need to quit though.

Here are Crowdo’s tips on how to address your challenges:

Don’t skip research. Research is crucial. Find the communities that are more relevant to your target audience. Look at their metrics. Read the latest threads to explore the topics that you want to be featured on.
Build trust. When you’re just getting started in a community, it’s important to take the time to build trust. If you need to register, fill all the details on your profile, join additional conversations, and aim for the long-term relationship.
Confirm that the threads are indexed by Google. Make sure that the forum threads that you’re about to post are indexed by Google. You don’t want to waste your time without seeing the content indexed.
Treat link building as an investment. Link building takes time. If your niche forum requires a registration fee, work on your end goal and what you want to get out of it. If it justifies the investment, do not hesitate to invest more time and resources on it.

Practical examples

If you want to see what forum building looks like, here is an example from Crowdo’s report.

In this example, the target niche is insurance providers. The community has more than 80k visitors, 93 DA, 48 TF. Thus, it makes the perfect source to add value to a conversation along with a dofollow backlink.

It’s a great example of how your research can lead you to the right source to make your link both useful and relevant.

Next steps

If you need additional help with your forum building, agencies like Crowdo can help you with on-demand link building services.

They are offering an exclusive offer to our readers with a 10% discount. You can find out more here and make the most of the offer using the coupon code provided in the link.

If you want to find out more about forum link building, make sure you read their latest report here.

The post Crowd marketing is the forum link building strategy you need to know in 2020 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.