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, Soundcloud, Spotify, and Google Play Music.
In this episode, we talk about the new Google Search Console Discover report, lazy image loading, and how to boost your LinkedIn SEO. We would love to hear your thoughts so make sure to comment or tweet us at @Sylvestrer1, @SeanHenri, and @Tendrecroppes or @PepperlandMKTG.
Google Search Console Launches Discovery Report
People all across the web are using Google’s Discover feature when they open Google Chrome. For those that don’t know what this feature is, open Google Chrome on your smartphone. If you haven’t deleted your history or cookies, you will see a curated menu of content related to your searches. This helps users stay up-to-date on things related to the things they search. Google has now released a “Discover” report in Search Console that shows you how well your pages perform in this category.
To provide publishers and sites visibility into their Discover traffic, we’re adding a new report in Google Search Console to share relevant statistics and help answer questions such as:
- How often is my site shown in users’ Discover? How large is my traffic?
- Which pieces of content perform well in Discover?
- How does my content perform differently in Discover compared to traditional search results?
Key Takeaways:
- You will be able to understand how relatable your topics are to people searching within the same topic area.
- Pay close attention to your click through rate, your article is going head to head in this list format. If your title doesn’t excite the reader, you will see low engagement metrics.
Native Image Lazy Loading For The Web
We talk about page speed a lot of the podcast so naturally, we were excited to see this native lazy loading for images get rolled out. If you’ve never heard about lazy loading before, this is a tactic used to prevent web browsers from automatically loading images below the fold or “out of view” to the user when the page is initially loaded. This native lazy loading feature will allow you to place a loading attribute on <img> or <iframe> which will help you improve your page speed.
Chrome’s lazy-loading implementation is based not just on how near the current scroll position is, but also the connection speed. The lazy frame and image loading distance-from-viewport thresholds for different connection speeds are hardcoded but can be overridden from the command-line. Here’s an example that overrides the lazy-loading settings for images:
Key Takeaways:
- Even when placing this lazy loading attribute on an <img> or <iframe> each browser decides when the right time to load the images will be. So
- While this is exciting, it’s probably a good idea to wait to use this until a solid release of this functionality has been rolled out.
How To Boost the SEO of Your Organization’s Linkedin Page
Kylee Lessard for LinkedIn Business Blog
Optimization doesn’t stop at your website. Social media accounts can also act as a great pathway to get people to your website. LinkedIn recently offered some tips on how to optimize your business profile to better attract users using the site’s proprietary search function.
While these are largely common sense ideas, they are not things that many people think about when they think about social media. Since these are coming straight to us from the LinkedIn team, it’s a smart idea to pay attention.
LinkedIn Page is also a very functional and flexible marketing tool. Through consistent posting and audience engagement, you can build a centralized community on the world’s largest professional network and encourage employees to participate in spreading the word.
Key Takeaways:
- First understand if your potential buyers are on LinkedIn to begin with. Every type of business and every industry doesn’t need to be on every social media platform. If LinkedIn doesn’t make sense for your business, don’t feel like you need to be on there.
- Think about your LinkedIn profile as any other kind of content that you would have on your business’s website. Generally speaking, the same kinds of tips that you would use to optimize content on your site can help you optimize your LinkedIn profile:
- Focus on the right keywords, and weave them into your tagline and headers, etc.
- Use your text to anticipate and answer any questions that searchers may have, especially those that can drive them back to your site
- Don’t forget the images: Your company logo and banner image can do wonders for improving engagement
- Don’t forget that Google and other search engines crawl, render, and index LinkedIn pages, so any steps that you can take to keep your page up to date and relevant will only have a positive impact on how your page performs.
App Of The Week
VOIQ
We have talked about VOIQ and it’s amazing features on a previous podcast episode. We wanted to highlight this product again to talk about a new feature. Let’s say you have someone come to your website and they fill out a request a consultation form. You can have VOIQ call that person to book a meeting.
Leverage a VoiceBot to call prospects on behalf of your sales team and book meetings automatically in their calendars. VoiceBots are also great to call and remind prospects of upcoming demos, and to make sure your closers (sales reps) have appointments to go to.
Use Cases:
- Use a voicebot to schedule a meeting with a prospect who recently filled out a form on your website.
- Notify your subscribers of news, content and business promotions.
- Delight your customers with automated appointment confirmation calls.
The Lightning Round: What We’re Reading This Week
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.
- Live: Google Sitelinks Images
- Google gives you fresh results when you want it and history when you need it
- First Image Of Black Hole in Space
- Social Media usage in U.S. remains unchanged despite a year of turmoil
- Google Fixed Indexing Issue For Dropped URLs
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!
