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SEO

Why Google Search is Falling Apart.

Arun Maini dives into why Google Search is deteriorating. He points out three main issues: an increase in sponsored content, the rise of SEO manipulation, and Google's shift towards AI-generated responses. He highlights how Google's search results page has become cluttered with ads, often pushing organic results below the fold. He also discusses how SEO practices have led to low-quality, keyword-stuffed content dominating search results. Then of course there’s Google's AI-powered summaries potentially replacing the need to visit other websites, further centralizing web traffic on Google's platform.

My Take: If you’ve been following along here, you’ve probably heard about all of these things. But this is a good “layman’s” explanation of why Google isn’t as useful anymore, so you can share it with people not in our space to understand what we struggle with when it comes to Google 😅

3 Tips for International Websites

Marlin Splitt discussing optimizing multilingual websites for international audiences. He emphasizes proper site setup, using hreflang attributes, and providing user-friendly navigation between language versions. Splitt recommends using local top-level domains, subdomains, or subdirectories for different country versions, highlighting the pros and cons of each approach. He explains the correct implementation of hreflang tags, including valid language-country codes and proper linking between versions. He also advises against automatic redirection, instead suggesting visible links to different language versions.

SEO Ripples

• Fabio Quattrociocchi shares Bing Webmaster Tools’ Insights feature is transforming into "Recommendations," offering more personalized and actionable insights for website optimization. This upgrade provides enhanced data granularity, real-time updates, and comprehensive SEO guidance. Google announced a similar feature a while back and the majority of us are still waiting for it in GSC. They’re also extending their search performance data to 16 months to match GSC.

• Google announced an overhaul of Google Shopping powered by AI. The new experience will use Gemini models and Google's Shopping Graph so users can now get AI-generated briefs on key considerations for their searches, along with personalized product recommendations and dynamic filtering options. The update also introduces a customized shopping feed and a dedicated deals page to help users find the best prices across stores.

• Barry Schwartz highlights a concerning trend in search engine practices that could negatively impact recipe publishers. While Google tests a "Quick view" feature for recipes, Bing has already implemented a similar function that displays entire recipes directly in search results.

AI

Cheap AI 'Video Scraping' to Extract Data From Any Screen Recording

Simon Willison found a great way to extract data from twelve different emails - “video scraping.” He screen recorded himself in his Gmail account going through emails for a couple seconds each, then uploaded the video to Google’s AI Studio and asked it to create a JSON array of date and amount.

My Take: This gets a 🌊 because it’s such a time-saver! Especially while AI Studio is still free!

Nvidia Quietly Releases AI Model That Outperforms GPT-4

Michael Nuñez reports on Nvidia's AI model, Llama-3.1-Nemotron-70B-Instruct, that outperforms OpenAI's GPT-4 and Anthropic's Claude 3.5. The new model topped key benchmarks without fanfare. It’s available for use on HuggingFace if you know how to use it and on Nvidia’s build site with a preview chat (doesn’t always work for me, will sometimes get stuck).

Elon Musk's X Changes Privacy Policy to Allow Third Parties to Train AI on User Posts

Sarah Perez from TechCrunch reports that X (formerly Twitter) has updated its Privacy Policy to allow third-party "collaborators" to train AI models on user data, unless users opt out (not available yet). This change, effective November 15, suggests X may be looking to monetize user data by licensing it to AI companies. The policy now states that third parties may use the data "for their own independent purposes" including AI model training. X also added a "Liquidated Damages" clause to charge organizations $15,000 per million posts if they scrape large amounts of content.

That may have helped Bluesky jump into the top 5 in the US app store at the same time.

AI Ripples

• NotebookLM, Google's AI-powered note-taking tool, now allows users to customize Audio Overviews. You’re able to focus it on specific topics and adjust expertise levels for different audiences.

• ChatGPT released an early version of the Windows app for paid ChatGPT Plus, Team, Enterprise, and Edu subscribers to test. No voice yet for it and no GPTs.

• Penguin Random House is taking a stand against AI training using their books. The publisher has updated the copyright page of new and reprinted books to explicitly state that they cannot be used or reproduced for training AI technologies or systems. This appears to be the first of its kind among major publishers. While the copyright page amendment serves as a warning, it doesn't necessarily change existing copyright laws or fair use defenses.

MARKETING

How Your Online Reviews Influence Click-Through Rates, Traffic, & Sales

Sergey Rusak dives into the impact online reviews can have on a business's success. He explains how positive reviews boost click-through rates, traffic, and sales, while negative ones can hurt a company's bottom line. He highlights that reviews appear prominently in search results and across various platforms, influencing potential customers at critical decision-making moments. He also discusses how positive reviews can help with zero-click searches and enhance PPC and social media campaigns.

How to Do Market Research for a Startup: A Complete Guide

Boris Mustapic shares a guide on conducting market research for startups. He emphasizes the importance of understanding your target audience, analyzing competitors, and identifying market opportunities before launching. The article walks through a 6-step process, including defining research goals, analyzing industry reports, evaluating competitors, and performing a SWOT analysis.

My Take: Semrush is used to do some parts of the research for keyword analysis, but everything else doesn’t need Semrush. Research is something I cover in my TMU 2.0 course update because it’s such an important part of making topical maps and starting any content strategy. In today’s landscape, researching what you’re going to do next is essential.

How to Create a Product Marketing Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide

Following the above on general market research, Leigh McKenzie discusses how to create an effective product marketing strategy. He breaks down the process into eight steps, from initial market research to post-launch optimization. He covers understanding your target audience, analyzing competitors, crafting a compelling value proposition, pricing strategies, go-to-market planning, and product launch execution.

Marketing Ripples

• Starting November 13, 2024, Google Ads will only store data up to 11 years old, removing anything older. If you want to keep historical data beyond that timeframe, make sure to download it before the cutoff date.

• Anu Adegbola reports on a significant update to Google's Local Service Ads (LSAs). Starting November 21, businesses must have a verified Google Business Profile (GBP) matching their LSA information to continue running ads. Unverified or mismatched profiles will lead to ad pauses, potentially disrupting lead generation. Customer reviews for LSAs will now be managed through GBPs, with all reviews appearing on both platforms by early 2025.

CONTENT

Keyword-First SEO vs. Topic-First SEO Content Creation

Andy Crestodina explores two distinct approaches to SEO and content marketing: topic-first and keyword-first. He breaks down the processes, pros, and cons of each strategy using flowcharts and detailed explanations. He emphasizes that topic-first content focuses on readers and often stems from personal insights, while keyword-first content prioritizes rankings and search visibility. He provides step-by-step guidance for both approaches, including how to evaluate search demand, analyze SERPs, and assess ranking potential.

My Take: It’s another way of saying to write by topics and build your authority around certain topics. The keyword-first approach is like the low-competition keyword approach that scatters content across different topics. TMU students will know it as “no silo jumping.”

25 Best Examples Of Effective FAQ Pages

Lee Wilson shares FAQ pages that help users and boost your site's performance. He says that FAQs aren't just for show - they should be constantly updated to address real user needs and pain points. The key is making info easy to find and digest, whether through expandable sections, chatbots, or mixed media content.

My Take: Lots of nice ideas here. If you have a product or service, these explanations can often be the difference-maker in someone purchasing. 3 Tips for International Websites

TOOLS AND RESOURCES

Wayback Machine is back up! It’s only in read-only mode right now after the recent attack, so no adding of new pages. And if you have an account there, don’t forget to change your passwords due to the breach and exposure of user data.

Beehiiv Offers CPM Deals Now

Beehiiv introduces a new feature for beehiiv users: CPM Deals. With CPM Deals, publishers can now earn guaranteed payouts based on impressions from top global brands through the beehiiv Ad Network - no more hoping for users to click. They also have a new Backlinks feature that makes it easier for you to do internal linking within the editor and providing a UI to track incoming and outgoing backlinks.

My Take: This is big - for me at least. Beehiiv has made it easy for me to monetize Digital Surfer since I don’t spend any time looking for sponsors. The ads I’ve been sending out lately help to recover some of the costs of Beehiiv (if there are clicks), but I still run this at a loss, not even accounting for my time yet. So a deal where I’m able to monetize without hoping for ad clicks is awesome to me. Go check out CPM deals and then sign up for your Beehiiv account! (aff link too 😁 )

Complete Overview of 2024 Social Media Sizes

Freya Laskowski compiles the social media image sizes for 2024 in this guide. She covers optimal dimensions, aspect ratios, and file types for profile photos, cover images, and shared content across major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google My Business. She also gives handy notes like: “The profile photo partially covers the left side of the cover photo so you may need to crop or edit any important content on that side.”

My Take: Bookmark this one to come back to (this deserves a 🌊 ). While tools like Canva have templates, it’s really only the sizes they give you. They don’t give you other notes like file size, type, and notes.

CASE STUDY

How 1.2 Million Posts Created with Buffer’s AI Assistant Performed vs Human-Only

Tamilore Oladipo shares insights on AI-assisted social media content performance. After analyzing 1.2 million posts across major platforms, the data reveals AI-assisted posts consistently outperform human-only content in engagement rates. The most significant boost was seen on Threads, with AI posts achieving a remarkable 11.11% engagement rate compared to 5.56% for non-AI posts. Results led to a key takeaway that AI assistance empowers creators to maintain consistency and quality, leading to better overall performance.

NEWS

Semrush Acquires Search Engine Land

Semrush acquires Third Door Media, which covers Search Engine Land, SMX – Search Marketing Expo, MarTech.org and the MarTech Conference, and Digital Marketing Depot. Not much else to say about this.

Here’s rival Search Engine Journal’s CEO, Jenise Uehara, responding in an open letter about how SEJ is independent and unbossed.

My Take: I don’t have a preference for either SEL or SEJ. They both report on what’s going on. As for biased journalism, I feel that they’re both biased and Google apologists (how else will they get the scoop from Google). So just like any other industry, these acquisitions happen - it’s vertical integration.

And if you’re worried about more bias, it’s everywhere - affiliate marketing ? Sponsored ads? SEO agencies writing “Best Agencies” lists? Influencers investing in and/or partnering up with startups? Me saying the best topical maps come from TopicalMap.com? 😂 

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