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 how Facebook is giving back some control to users, Ahrefs new content explorer update, and tips of featured snippet optimization. We would love to hear your thoughts so make sure to comment or tweet us at @Sylvestrer1, @SeanHenri, and @Tendrecroppes or @PepperlandMKTG.
Masterful Mobile Web
Google recently launched a new tool/resource that marketers and business can use to see how the most visited websites are performing in term of mobile usability. Essentially how it works is that did a deep dive analysis of the most visited website and measured them around things like findability, product page performance, registration and conversion, mobile design, and speed. You can view sites by country or industry and use the insight for bench-marking your own website.
Discover just some of the ways the world’s top brands are creating smooth, fast and highly-engaging mobile experiences – and how you can do the same.
Key Takeaways:
- Page speed, usability, architecture, and user experience are the main characteristics that Google is using in conducting this analysis, which just serves as one more reason that you should be thinking about them yourself. If Google prioritizes them, then so should you.
- Use the tool to see where you compare to other websites and use those insights to improve and stand out from the garbage.
Why Am I Seeing This? We Have An Answer For You
Ramya Sethuraman for Facebook Newsroom Blog
Each of our Facebook newsfeeds is tailored to our interests, who we follow, what we like, and plenty of other things. Sometimes we might see things in our newsfeed that make us laugh, catch our interest, or make us go, “huh?” Facebook rolled out a feature so you can tap on a post or ad and get more context on why you are seeing that piece of content.
Having this feature available will allow Facebook to understand the types of content you want to see so they can deliver the most relevant news and topics right to your news feed. People can now take action on the types of things they want to see when they log in to their Facebook profile.
The goal of News Feed is to show people the posts that are most relevant to them. “Why am I seeing this post?”, which can be found in the drop-down menu in the right-hand corner of a post, explains how your past interactions impact the ranking of posts in your News Feed.
Key Takeaways:
- In a way, this will help anyone trying to advertise on Facebook to reach targeted people who want to see their ad.
- Facebook is making an effort to become more transparent and give people back some control
- You will be able to see what previous actions triggered different types of content to show up in your news feed so you can understand why Facebook chose to display it.
How to Optimize For Google Rich Search Results
Miranda Miller for Search Engine Journal
Getting to the top of the search results page is obviously everyone’s goal when trying to get more traffic and ultimately more customers to their website. Getting to the top of the search engine results page is great, but getting a featured snippet is even better. For certain searches, Google is creating a little preview to hopefully answer your question as quickly as possible.
Rich snippets, featured snippets, Map Pack results, Knowledge Graph panels, and more all compete for eyeballs and clicks on the dynamic front page.
Key Takeaways:
- Following Google’s structured data guidelines is a really good way to ensure that they will pick your content to be featured.
- If you do a search and see a featured snippet you want to rank for, see what kind of result it is, and replicate it with better/valuable information.
- Always understand the searchers intent, just because there is a featured snippet for a certain query, don’t add a line or two to your article in hopes to rank for it if your article addresses a different part of that topic.
App Of The Week
EKO Studio
EKO Studio is a platform where you can make interactive videos that allow the user, and yourself, control what story the video tells. This format allows users to interact with you and your brand through the choices they make when watching your video.
Use cases:
- Be able to lead people down a certain path that allows you to segment possible customers
- Use this for tutorial videos to help people work through a common problem
- Make videos for onboarding new clients to help them through complex tasks.
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.
- Google Assistant is Not Disclosing That Some Search Results are Ads
- How To Choose The Best Platform For a New Website
- Google Ads Keyword Planner Now Allows Up To 10 Seed Keywords
- 19 Advanced Google Sheets Tips for Content Marketing, SEO, Reporting, and More
- Gmail Turns 15
- HubSpot March 2019 Integration Roundup
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!
