The Stack is a weekly podcast where we share and discuss the latest trends, news, and content from the world of marketing, sales, and tech. In each episode, Sean, Tim, and Ryan sit down to chat about the hard-hitting questions related to sales, marketing, and tech. You can subscribe on iTunes and Soundcloud.
In this episode, we share insight to Bings release of “Clarity” analytics as well as recent Google hangout questions, and LinkedIn’s algorithm.
We would love to hear your thoughts so make sure to comment or tweet us at @Sylvestrer1, @SeanHenri, and @Tendrecroppes or @PepperlandMKTG.
Google Hangout News
Everyone once in a while, Google’s very own John Muller does a live stream of himself answering questions from the SEO, content creation, webmaster, and general marketing community. One of our very own tunes in each time John gets in front of the camera and brings back some interesting takeaways from others in the marketing community.
Question 1: Does connecting an AMP page to a normal HTML page affect ranking?
John’s Respone: “If you connect an amp page to an HTML page it is likely to have little effect on ranking. This is a signal to google that we can display the AMP link rather than the normal HTML, which might be a better user experience but still comes down to the content on that site.”
Question 2: Is it okay not reply or not respond to a comment on a news post? Secondly, should I be monitoring the types of comments on my site if they have an effect on rankings?
John’s Response: “From a search point of view we see this content to be apart of your page and this is content that you want to be found for. You may think that it’s not beneficial for your users or its a magnet for spammy links then you can choose to remove them. In general, we see this content and will grade it and rate it as such. If you provide low-quality comments, it may impact ranking slightly.”
Question 3: We have put in place the new code for rich reviews so we can get our q&a’s displayed in search results but are getting error messages for the ones that don’t have any answers yet. How can I stop this?
John Response: “I wouldn’t mark up the page until it has a few answers to actually be displayed. If you don’t have content for this structured data we won’t display the results. You’re telling us there are reviews when there are really no reviews.”
Online Reviews will never help you find the “best” product. That doesn’t mean they aren’t useful.
Gaby Del Valle for Vox.com
I don’t know about all of you, but I scour the web for review before making a purchase. Just the other day I was checking out some online reviews about a sander I wanted to buy.
“Amazon, for example, highlights not only the “most helpful” good review but the “most helpful” bad review for most products. These are determined based on an algorithm that takes the review date into account, as well as feedback by other reviews.”
Key Takeaways:
- Customers are likley to focus soley on the highest or lowest product review.
- Always respond to negative reviews
- Make it easy for people to find different levels of reviews – this means a functionality that can seperate 1 star from 2 star ratings and so on…
Introducing Clarity – A Product to visualize user interactions at scale to optimize conversion, engagement, and retention
Bing Blogs
Bing has announced their new analytics product “Clarity” that helps webmasters visualize user behavior to make “data-driven” decisions. So what does this mean for you and your website?
Building a compelling and user-friendly website requires a deeper understanding of user behavior, their pain points and what users are looking for. Traditionally, web developers utilize user research and A/B experimentation to update web experiences.
You will be able to visualize what users are doing and how they interact with things on your web page. You are able to see things like
- Mouse movements
- Touch gestures
- Click events
Key Takeaways:
- detects maleware which may alter the way users see your website – allow developers to design better user’s experience
- Having the ability to see the way people interact with your site will give you the opportunity to change things to better suit the user
- Works on any HTML webpage
The LinkedIn Algorithm: How it Works
Joshua Boyd for Brandwatch
We treat LinkedIn as the more serious place to get your content seen and appreciated rather than Facebook or Twitter. Users seem to be more understanding and have more serious engagements on this platform related to business and marketing.
But how can you make sure your content is getting noticed? Joshua Boyd for Brandwatch went into great detail about how the LinkedIn algorithm works.
Key Takeaways:
- When you have a post that is clearly spam, it’s immediately filtered out
- The higher precieved value that your post has the longer it stays visible and likely to get shared.
- Try not to post a link in your post, platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook value posts that keep people on their site rather than navigating away.
LinkedIn’s algorithm is similar to others we have seen. Much like Google, they want to see high-quality content and engagement. Make sure to post discoveries instead of constantly talking about yourself. You will likely get more overall engagement and thus, stay relevant for a longer period of time.
App Of The Week
SEO Minion – “Alfred to your Batman, Mushroom to your Super Mario, Lightsaber to your Jedi Knight … you get the point!”
Features:
- Analyze On-Page SEO – Analyze On-Page SEO issues for any webpage: Meta Tags, Headings, Open Graph etc
- Check Redirects – Find all Redirects that a URL has taken (Server, MetaRefresh & Javascript)
- Check Broken Links – Check all Broken Links on a page and categorize them based on Status Codes
- SERP Preview Tool – Improve CTR by previewing your website on the top of Google Search Result Page for your chosen keyword
- Simulate Multi-Location SERP – Check Google rankings for your website across multiple locations without personalization
- Advanced Settings – Loads of advanced settings to give you complete control on how SEO Minion should work
Lighting Round
In this section, we quickly run through some other updates that we didn’t have enough time to deep-dive on, but we still felt were noteworthy.
- Google – Year In Search 2018
- How Our Data Got Hacked, Scandalized, and Abused in 2018
- Facebook Watch: What We’ve Built & What’s Ahead
- Official AMP for WordPress: Allows Sites to be Built Entirely With AMP
- Twitter says governments are ramping up their demands for user data
- Google Chrome Is Poised to Swallow the Whole Internet
Listen or watch for new episodes each Friday, or check out the archives to watch past episodes on-demand. Like what you hear? Leave us a review or let us know in the comments!
