Since November we have been treated to an abundance of predictive blogging from the SEO industry trying to get ahead of 2014’s “best practices”. Almost every new “SEO for 2014” article has abandoned the usual litany of obtaining links in favor of promoting relatively new priorities. But I find much of this generic advice hard to justify. Let me explain why, based on queries I see people are actually using.
Why Do I Need Google Authorship?
I honestly cannot tell you why you need Google Authorship, but surely if you read a random selection of SEO blogs they’ll all happily tell you that this is the wave of the future. Never mind the fact they were all in a panic just a few weeks ago about whether a recent cleanup operation from Google would remove their pictures from the search results.
The team that designed whatever Google’s Authorship tools has been assigned to new projects. The program — never formally elevated from “pilot” status — has been left on autopilot. One can take that as a sign that the technology is now deemed robust enough to need less human monitoring and tweaking. So we’ll accept that hopeful note but I add the caveat that I think this also means there won’t be much evolution in how Google handles Authorship any time soon.
If I am correct, all these predictions for how Authorship (and Author Authority and Author Rank) will become important in 2014 are off the mark, way out of line, and just superficial thinking. There is really no basis for assuming that Google will take its authorial engineering very far this year. Of course, it’s only January as I write this, and somewhere down the calendar Google might announce a sweeping revolution in Entity Identification and Analysis.
So, do you need Google Authorship markup? Will your business fail if your picture doesn’t appear beside your listings in the search results?
I think “it depends” is about the best answer you can hope to find. It depends on what the people searching for content like yours expect to find in the search results. They may not be very happy with the light fare that many SEO bloggers (some of whom are trying to market their Authorship) tend to produce.
I recently told a client that to execute a proper content strategy they need to hire a writer who just zeroes in on and focuses almost solely on a specific topic. To do that is expensive. A freelancer is not likely to give you the kind of content you need to produce a truly authoritative and exceptional blog.
Identifying authoritative content is still very much hit-and-miss for search engines. Wikipedia continues to outrank too many far better Websites simply because people are lazy and link to Wikipedia articles rather than find the best possible content to illustrate their points. Authority algorithms will fail as long as Google and Bing promote Wikipedia content above more accurate and reliable information.
What Is the Internet of Things?
This is the latest buzzword. Everyone expects Google to expand its Knowledge Graph into a Graveyard for Websites, in that Google will supposedly extract every identifiable piece of information it can from the Web and republish that data in its own search results.
As someone who regularly asks Google for quick answers, I can say I am not yet ready (as a searcher) to leave all the answers to Google. Just this past weekend I asked Google what the scores were for a couple of (American) football games. The scores were wrong so I clicked through to the NFL Website, which not only gave me live score updates but a lot of other live information updates.
The small Website operator who lacks the budget to create streaming content the way the NFL can still has the advantage of publishing new information, new ideas, and new opinions. Google is not yet ready to give you “the Internet of Things”. We are still firmly grounded in the “Internet of Ideas” and Google is legally barred from reproducing your expression of your ideas.
So all those SEO bloggers who are heralding the advent of the “Internet of Things” are pretty much just wasting your time. Unless you are famous you won’t get into the Knowledge Graph, so there is no need to try.
If you don’t ask questions about what you are marketing, the chances are pretty good no one else is. That means you need to evaluate whatever you are marketing. Sure, Google will try to steal the answers from you but consumers oftenmost want longer, more detailed (and more accurate) answers. The search engines cannot yet give their users that much coveted Star Trek experience where the computer finds the answer and provides it in detail for them.
So, do you need structured markup on your Website? Only if you can fill in all the details. I added a structured markup plugin to on of my blogs and now Google is reporting hundreds of crawl errors. Why? Because the plugin won’t allow me to set all the fields and it won’t extract the data from hundreds of blog posts.
Even if structured markup would give you an advantage in the SERPs, if you don’t have the time and ability to fill out all those data fields, you’ll be better off NOT including in them your content.
Meanwhile, back at the technology industry, every Internet-capable device is being labeled a “thing” on the Internet — so prepared to be confused. The day may come when Google starts crawling household appliances to see what they are willing to share. Imagine asking Google how many refrigerators in Los Angeles are connected to the Internet. And how will you market in a world where random devices serve as interfaces or publishing platforms on the Internet?
Google might one day create a Personal Knowledge Graph about you based on what it can find about you through devices that are assigned IPv6 addresses that are only associated with you (or your home, or your business).
Do I Need a Mobile App for My Business?
I have debated whether I should try to create a mobile app just to see what goes into the process. So far I have been too busy to do that. There are, however, a few tools that claim they’ll save you time and make the process simple.
But who needs a mobile app? I can read my blogs just fine on a mobile phone.
Mobile apps need to do one of two things: provide clear information in a concise, structured format OR make it easy to buy something. I have bought almost nothing with my mobile phone, except some movie tickets one evening when I was out driving around and didn’t have time to go home.
Before you commit to create a mobile app for your business, sit in front of a computer displaying your Website. Now pick up a smart phone or a tablet and walk yourself through the process of buying whatever your customers buy from your Website. Can you imagine doing that on a mobile device?
Most mobile sales are still pretty limited in scope — they don’t cut across all industries. Maybe I could sell some consulting time through a mobile app but clients tell me they have done some research before they settle on asking me to do business with them. I have tried to do research on smart phones and I just want to throw them across the room. Their interfaces are horrible and the apps that companies publish make the experience even worse.
Given a choice between downloading another app to my phone and using my smart phone’s browser to visit a Website, I almost always choose the browser-to-Website path. I can zoom the screen and find the buttons to click on. With a mobile app I am trapped in an interface that may have been designed as a means of torture in defiance of the Geneva Conventions.
If YOU are not comfortable with the idea of doing business with yourself through a smart phone or tablet, trust your gut instinct. The fact you possess such a device means you’re not too far outside the mainstream of mobile users.
Is Native Advertising Ethical? Is Native Advertising Worth It?
Native advertising is the practice of embedding YOUR content (your message) in someone else’s publication (traditionally a magazine or newspaper). Native advertising has migrated to the Web and it is still passing through an experimental stage.
There are three questions you need to answer with online Native Advertising:
- Will the government have a problem with Native Advertising?
- Will the search engines have a problem with Native Advertising?
- Will Native Advertising bring me any new customers?
Website publishers who sell Native Advertising opportunities need to make it absolutely clear to their visitors that Native Advertising is just that: advertising. They have to label it as “Advertising” or “Advertorial” or something similar. The New York Times created a Native Advertising policy and has begun rolling out a platform. They are making what I feel is a reasonable effort to show their readers the advertising with clear labeling.
The NY Times NA platform also seems to be search engine-compliant. Last year Google penalized hundreds of news Websites for selling Native Advertising that was passing link anchor text and/or PageRank. The NY Times has segregated their Native Advertising into the Dark Web. Google cannot crawl the content so it will never see the links. This segregation may raise some opportunities and challenges for NY Times site search as their Native Advertising archive grows.
Finally, Native Advertising may fail to provide you with any real conversions. Native Advertising is closer to true content marketing, however, than all those scammy blog posts and infographics that are popular with self-styled “Content Marketing” experts these days. As more major Web publishers follow in the NY Times’ footsteps, I expect that new marketing platforms will open up opportunities for hard-to-market Websites.
A few years ago one of my reputation management clients asked me if there was any way we could buy a Web page on a major news site. At the time I had no options. I inquired with a few media channels and they were all kind of stunned by the idea. “That might be expensive,” one news organization told me. Money was no object for that client, but in the end I had to tell him it could not be done.
Native Advertising is not yet the option that client wanted, but it may lead to some new types of media that will satisfy both governmental consumer protection agencies and search engines. Meanwhile, I don’t expect to see a huge impact from Native Advertising on most Web marketing campaigns this year. Faux “Content Marketing” will continue to dominate off-site marketing initiatives and my bet is that the content marketers are setting up their clients for another wave of search engine penalties and algorithmic filters.
Real Native Advertising will remain too expensive with too little availability for most businesses to take advantage of it.
Do I Need Big Data?
If you run a small-to-medium size Internet business you seriously need to ignore all the “big data” articles. Big data really only exists for a small percentage of businesses, unless you acquire data from other sources and in that case most of it will be irrelevant to you.
Big Data tracks consumer activity on the Web. If you get a million monthly visitors you already have big data. What are you doing with it? If you’re just mining it for keywords you’re wasting your time. You should be doing performance analysis to determine which of your content is most productive and why.
If you get 50,000 monthly visitors you DO NOT have any big data. And if you could get your hands on it what would you do with it, except mine it for keywords? If you want to do keyword research you don’t need big data — you probably just need a lobotomy.
Put a decent site search tool on your Website and let that guide your keyword research.
If you’re just starting out or have a Website that receives only a very small number of monthly visitors big data will overwhelm you. There are better tools for keyword research that are more appropriate for your site/business. Start with the advertising platforms that Bing and Google offer. Check out some of the social media advertising platforms, too.
Big data has mesmerized quite a few online marketing pundits but you don’t need to waste your time trying to scrape up as much big data as you can. I have spent hours, days (per project), pouring through huge volumes of data for over 30 years as a computer programmer and as a search marketer. Trust me when I say that most people are not equipped with the analytical skills and tools to do much of anything with big data.
If you’re a vice president in a large corporation about the most you’ll ever see of big data is a 1-2 Power Point slide presentation every week, month, or quarter. You have people to sift through all that crap for you. No software is going to do the job right.
I Don’t Put Much Stock in Marketing Trend Predictions
Once in a while I give in to the temptation and make my own predictions. I remember once sending out a list of marketing predictions to an executive team. The next day a news story broke that shot all my predictions to pieces. The CEO was good-natured about it (he had probably found himself in that boat more than once) but I promised myself I would never look that foolish again. Well, not by design, anyway.
If there’s someone with a blog telling you what to expect in 2014, they probably won’t do any better than a kid throwing darts at a board covered with Post-ittm notes. Guesswork is just that. And every time I read someone big guru’s report card on how good his previous year’s predictions were I come away thinking that 0.8 of “getting it right” is 100% wrong.
Don’t cut the prognosticators any slack. If they can’t do better than 50% (and most don’t even do that well) then why waste your time?
Search engine optimization hasn’t changed very much since 1998. About the only new thing I see in the wind is what I am now calling Transformational Search Engine Optimization and that has been around for a few years. It’s just that now we’re doing enough of it that I can put a label on it and provide some clear examples of what it’s all about.
New stuff does not magically appear just because we turn a page of the calendar. It takes time for all these “new” things to become important, and most of the time people predict that new things become important too soon — or the new things never become important at all.
Traditional, reliable, honest search engine optimization is more important to 2014 than anything “new”.
Read More about Search Engine Optimization
How Long Does It Take SEO To Work?
Guest Post Link Building: Why It Hurts the Web
Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness for Non-expert Websites
On-Page Optimization SEO Checklist
SEO Metrics Online: Which Measurements Should You Use?
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