by JCM | 15 Aug, 2024 |
There’s some fascinating stuff in this SEO long read, based on impressive research and analysis. Just bear in mind that, as leaked Google documents put it, “If you think you understand how [search algorithms] work, trust us: you don’t. We’re not sure that we do either.”
To save you time, the main lesson is that “achieving a high ranking isn’t solely about having a great document or implementing the right SEO measures with high-quality content”. Search results shift in near realtime based on thousands of utterly opaque, interconnected assessments of obscure demand and user intent signals, so there’s only so much website managers can do.
For me, this all confirms a few core content principles:
? Context is king, not content. You can have an amazing page full of astounding insight, but if it doesn’t clearly meet the needs of the user at that moment in time, it will go unviewed.
?? Page structure is at least as important as substance – if (human and bot) audiences can’t quickly tell that your page is interesting and relevant, they’ll bounce.
? But don’t worry – the key to success is rarely going to be a single webpage. More important is the authority of the domain and brand.
? This means the impact of content is at least as much about cumulative brand building as it is immediate engagement. Think of the long tail, not just the short spike – and focus your content strategy on building this long-term growth over the short-term quick hit.
? Given so much about how this works is unknown, and so many factors are outside your control, it’s best not to over-think it. Follow all the advice SEO experts offer, and you’ll end up with something so over-engineered it’ll lose its coherence and flow. This will increase bounce rates.
???? So how to succeed? Go back to basics: Focus on ensuring your content fulfills a clear audience need (ideally currently unmet by other sources), using language audiences are looking for, presented in ways audiences are likely to engage with, and with clear links to and from other relevant content to help both humans and bots understand its relevance within the broader context.
? In other words, SEO may be complex when you dig into the details – but it’s really just a combination of common sense, long-term authority building, and a good bit of luck.
It’s still worth reading the whole thing, though.
by JCM | 5 Aug, 2018 |
Inspired by a piece comparing the creative side of marketing with the more business-focused obsession with data and ROI.
The short version?
“Rather than worry about big ideas vs targeting, what the marketing industry really needs to learn how to do is revive the art of the soft sell and the long tail. That’s the more human way of building relationships that last – but to work it needs a significantly more nuanced understanding of how people will be interacting with you than I’ve seen from pretty much any modern brand marketing campaign.”
Read the full thing on LinkedIn…
by JCM | 2 Sep, 2014 |
Useful look at how detailed, adaptable, *tailored* performance data (and people who know how to analyse and explain it) is essential if you want to be successful in modern media. As so often, Buzzfeed seems to be ahead of the curve.
It never ceases to amaze how often online publishers get het up about the wrong metrics. Tools like Omniture are obscenely powerful, yet all we tend to use them for is to find PVs, UUs, occasionally time spent, and sometimes how particular headlines are performing. Used properly, web analytics can help us keep our sites in a state of constant evolution, adapting to the tiniest shifts in user behaviour through minor design/code tweaks.
This isn’t about becoming Keanu Reeves and learning how to read the Matrix – it’s just knowing how to use the tools that are available to us.
by JCM | 27 Aug, 2014 |
Twitter Analytics will be fun and useful, but why no ability to sort by best/worst performers? How can we tell what does/doesn’t work if we can’t see what does/doesn’t work? Intro here. Analytics themselves here (you need to activate before you’ll start seeing stats).
by JCM | 22 Jun, 2014 |
Upworthy have released the code they use to track user engagement, with a nice bit of methodology explaining what they’re tracking and why they care:
“In the age of ever-present social media, our collective attentions have never been spread thinner. According to Facebook, each user has the potential to be served 1,500 stories in their newsfeed each time. For a heavy user, that number could be as much as 15,000. In this climate, how do you get people to pay attention? And, more importantly, how do you know they’re actually engaged?
“Clicks and pageviews, long the industry standards, are drastically ill-equipped for the job. Even the share isn’t a surefire measure that the user has spent any time engaging with the content itself. It’s in everyone’s interest — from publishers to readers to advertisers — to move to a metric that more fully measures attention spent consuming content. In other words, the best way to answer the question is to measure what happens between the click and the share. Enter Attention Minutes.”
