I Love It...I Love It Not

Digital Surfer Wave Issue 207; Forbes is a Parasite; AIO + Ads; How Newsletters Make Money; Google Hides Search Data; Growth Marketing Tips; 234 ChatGPT Prompts; and Much More!

Author

Yoyao
September 20, 2024 • Est. Learning Time: 15 minutes

In partnership with

I Love It…I Love It Not

You ever played the French game of He loves me, he loves me not or She loves me, she loves me not or seen it on TV or films? Picking the petals off a daisy one at a time.

I started out with a different intention for that image - trapped by all the surfboards that I’ve bought.

That’s how it can feel when you’re surrounded by all these surfboards, too many options and not knowing which one to ride. So how do I pick?

I could go the route of random chance and do a version of the French game. Or I can create my own version with “I love it…I love it not” to simplify life.

  • I Love It - Keep the surfboards I love to ride

  • I Love It Not - Remove the surfboards I don’t love to ride

It’s hard to remove the surfboards though. I brought them into my circle for a reason. But then I become trapped, like in the image.

The only way out is to remove surfboards to have an opening. And remove doesn’t mean “gone forever” either, it could just mean to delegate it it to someone else.

Whether that’s a VA or outsourcing to an agency, you’ve just created an opening for yourself to escape the trap.

So what do you have going on in your life that you can delegate or remove?

But I do thank you all for not removing Digital Surfer from your life 🙏 

In the continuing roller coaster of open rates, last week’s email was 43.6%. A far cry from 59.8% the prior week, but in-line with the week before at 44%.

I’d really appreciate it if you could continue to help in just one of these ways:

  1. 📩 Reply to this email with “I Love [topic]!” or “I Love [topic] Not!” 

  2. 🏆️ Mark this email as “Important” and “Star” ⭐️ it on Gmail

  3. 📂 Create an email filter for [email protected] to always be marked “Important”

  4. ⏩️ Forward this email to that one friend always asking you questions!

And don’t forget to jump on Topical Maps Unlocked 2.0 to get your topical authority and brand game going!

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SEO

Glenn Gabe into the recent Google search volatility in his latest SEO from the Front Lines episode. He observes significant ranking swings and reversals following the August 2024 Core Update, particularly around September 6th, 10th, and 14th.

He notes that many sites affected by the August update are now experiencing opposite trends - those that surged are dropping, while some that dropped are now climbing back up.

Lars Lofgren pulls back the curtain on Forbes Marketplace, revealing a massive parasite SEO operation that's dominating Google search results across diverse topics. He explains how this separate company partnered with Forbes to exploit its domain authority, growing from zero to over 27 million monthly search visits in just a few years. Lars estimates Forbes Marketplace is now generating $300-400 million in annual revenue through affiliate marketing, to the point where they're trying to buy Forbes itself.

My Take: Will Google ever take manual action on Forbes? Or did they put some of those 9 figures into securing their position in the SERPs with Google? just saying…money talks 🤑 

Yevheniia Khromova dives into how AI Overviews (AIOs) and Google Ads are playing together in search results. The study looked at over 100,000 keywords across 20 niches. Lots of interesting findings:

  • 12.47% of keywords now trigger AI Overviews, up from 7.47% in July 2024.

  • 13.51% of AI Overview-inclusive SERPs also contain ads, down from 52.20% in June 2024.

  • The Relationships niche leads in AIO appearances at 46.14%, followed by Food and Beverage at 33.46%.

  • Pets (68%), Healthcare (65.51%), and Fashion and Beauty (60%) niches have the highest ratio of keywords triggering both AIOs and ads in SERPs.

  • 69.44% of the time, text ads appear at the bottom of AIO-inclusive SERPs.

  • Keywords with a CPC of $0.5 or less trigger AIOs and ads in SERPs most frequently at 23.26%.

  • 29.26% of keywords with a search volume of 50 or less trigger both AIOs and ads in SERPs.

  • Three-word (15.75%) and four-word (15.54%) queries are most likely to trigger both AIOs and ads in search results.

  • On mobile devices, 70.35% of tested keywords triggered AIOs

Mark Meyerson analyzed keyword-level data across multiple accounts and found that, on average, 40% of search term data is hidden from advertisers. This lack of transparency makes it difficult for marketers to optimize their campaigns effectively. Meyerson suggests that Google may be deliberately obscuring this data to increase ad revenue by forcing advertisers to spend on low-quality inventory. He offers several tips to mitigate the impact:

  • Switch to exact match keywords to limit hidden data to under 20%

  • Monitor spend on hidden search terms regularly

  • Experiment with pausing keywords that have high percentages of hidden data

  • Test campaigns using only exact match keywords

  • Analyze your own accounts to understand the extent of hidden data

SEO Ripples

  • Martin Splitt from Google shares three actionable tips to speed up your website in this GSC video. He emphasizes reducing JavaScript usage through code splitting and content hashing, avoiding unnecessary redirects by updating internal links, and optimizing images with proper formats, compression, and lazy loading. He emphasizes that while improvements won't directly impact search rankings, they'll significantly enhance user experience.

  • John and Lizzi from Google's Search Off the Record podcast chat with SEO Erika Varangouli about how businesses can evaluate if their SEO efforts are effective. Erika shares some great insights, emphasizing the importance of communication and transparency between SEOs and clients. She suggests being skeptical of agencies promising unrealistic results and instead looking for those who provide context, prioritization, and education.

  • Roger Montti reports on Google's overhaul of its crawler documentation. They split the content into three new focused pages, allowing for increased information density and improved topical coverage. This reorganization makes room for new details on content encoding, HTTP protocols, and crawling goals.

  • John Mueller sheds light on why valid HTML and typos aren't Google ranking factors, and why other seemingly quality-related characteristics likely aren't either. Mueller suggests that these "low bar" factors are too easy for spammers to fake, making them unreliable signals.

AI

Hava Salsi from Semrush shares 234 ChatGPT prompts across various industries and provides tips for writing effective prompts. He emphasizes providing context, feeding reference material, being specific, setting parameters, specifying formats, assigning roles to ChatGPT, and refining prompts. The article covers prompts for marketing, SEO, content creation, social media, ecommerce, developers, UX design, data science, education, and more.

My Take: That’s a whole lot of prompts. Something to save for later when you need a prompt.

AI Ripples

  • Has your ChatGPT started a conversation with you? Vince Quill reports a Reddit user claims ChatGPT spontaneously initiated a conversation about their first day of school, pulling info from previous chats. This comes as OpenAI rolls out its "Strawberry" upgrade. While unconfirmed, it hints at AI's evolving conversational skills and potential to leverage past interactions in new ways. OpenAI did say they fixed the issue now.

  • Runway and Lionsgate team up to develop a custom AI model trained on Lionsgate's catalog to enhance film production. This tool aims to generate cinematic video that filmmakers can further refine using Runway's suite of controllable tools. New Twilight and Hunger Games films in the horizon? But really, I was in the industry for a long time and there’s definitely a lot of areas where AI is already being used in development and pre-production, as well as some production in animation.

MARKETING

Julian Shapiro drops some serious knowledge bombs on turbocharging your startup's growth. He shares tactics and clever tricks to make your marketing efforts pop like: retargeting newsletter unsubscribers, using cheap video ads to test what works, cross-targeting audiences on multiple platforms, and optimizing ad timing. He also covers some underused strategies like geolift testing to measure word-of-mouth impact and using break-even ads for brand awareness.

The Trends Team at HubSpot breaks down how newsletters are becoming big business. The Athletic was scooped up by the New York Times for $550 million 🤯 They highlight two main models:

  • Ad-supported models (think The Skimm and Morning Brew)

  • Subscription-based models (like Stratechery and 2PM)

Along with many newsletter examples, here are a few tips they offered up:

  • Find your niche: There's still plenty of room for specialized content, especially in B2B markets.

  • Build a direct relationship with readers: Newsletters give you a direct line to your audience, no middleman required.

  • Consider a hybrid model: Mix free and paid content to attract and retain subscribers.

  • Don't ignore the power of community: Engaged readers can become your best marketers.

  • Stay adaptable: The newsletter landscape is always changing, so be ready to pivot and try new things.

Barry Schwartz reports on Google Ads updates announced at DMEXCO in Europe. Performance Max campaigns are getting campaign-level negative keywords by year-end - a long-awaited feature. There's also new insights and reporting for PMax, including asset coverage and impression share data. Advertisers will also have more control over video placement in Demand Gen campaigns. Lots of new toys to play with!

CONTENT

Chris Haines explores how Google's search results can dramatically change over time as the meaning and context of certain keywords evolve - search intent shifts. Chris examines seven examples, from "Oasis" shifting from fashion to music, to "LLM" transforming from a law degree to large language models. He breaks down what causes these shifts and discusses whether affected websites can recover their rankings.

My Take: One of the biggest things we do at TopicalMap.com and the Authority topical maps we do is the SERP analysis for unique topics. Many others put keywords through AI and it spits out titles for articles, but it doesn’t match the search intent. That’s why you still need to do the SERP analysis yourself - or have someone do it for you 😉 

Rene Ritchie shares updates from YouTube's Made on YouTube 2024 event. They announced new AI tools, community-building features, and monetization opportunities. YouTube is introducing Veo, an advanced video generation model for Dream Screen, and upgrading the Inspiration tab in YouTube Studio. New features like Communities and Community Hub to connect creators and viewers. Auto dubbing and shopping expansions will help creators reach global audiences and increase earnings. The platform is also rolling out Hype, a feature to boost smaller creators, and enhancing the TV viewing experience.

source: blog.google

Content Ripples

  • Matt Tutt shares essential tips for optimizing images on Google Discover. He emphasizes using high-quality, compelling images at least 1200px wide and avoiding site logos as the main image. He recommends real photos over heavily edited ones and suggests including small logos in corners is acceptable. He also advises on image formats, proper metadata usage, and technical checks to ensure content is discoverable.

LINK BUILDING

Darren Kingman shares insights on creating standout content campaigns in this interview with Vince Nero. He breaks down how they come up with creative ideas by springboarding off existing successful concepts and methodologies. Darren emphasizes the importance of transparency in research methodologies to appeal to journalists. He also discusses how even smaller brands can compete for high-volume keywords by improving on existing content.

There’s a great link to past digital PR campaigns. They’re from 2022 and earlier, but lots of ideas for you.

Ana Pérez shares a powerful method for improving internal linking using Google Colab and Python. She guides readers through extracting page content with Screaming Frog, creating a Python script in Google Colab, and analyzing content similarity to identify linking opportunities. This approach streamlines SEO processes by leveraging AI to find relevant internal links based on content relevance.

My Take: This is a pretty technical guide, so it could get messy if you’ve played with Screaming Frog, XPath, and Google Colab. I actually built an internal tool doing similar things to this and can be very helpful.

TOOLS AND RESOURCES

Arielle Garcia from Check My Ads shared a site usvgoogleads.com that will update with the latest on the antitrust trial. Google shares their trial exhibits on their site, but whether or not everything is shared is another question. Check My Ads also has a Notion page that collates the DOJ and Google’s documents.

If you think that’s a lot - just imagine how much there’d be if Google wasn’t telling people not to keep a history of conversations.

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