Google's unabridged Page Quality rating guidelines were released in November 2015.
Whilst some outlets covered this at the time, I thought I'd do so in purely practical terms.
So, here's a very simple checklist, based on Google's approximation of highest and lowest quality content.
It by no means covers everything in the guidelines, but references those bits that caught my eye.
66% of marketers believe location-based advertising is the ‘most exciting’ mobile opportunity for 2016, according to a recent IAB UK study I quoted in our digital marketing stats round-up.
This is a huge endorsement from the marketing community, but how many people really use this channel to its full potential?
For those still relatively new to the term, or for anyone wanting to refresh their knowledge, I’ve created this location-based advertising guide for you.
Posted by KelseyLibert
Did it feel like everyone you knew was watching “Making a Murderer” at the same time? It may have just been an illusion, thanks to a few key members of your social network.
Researchers at the University of Southern California recently uncovered that when something appears more popular than it actually is, it can create the right conditions for it to be widely spread. They named this social network phenomenon the majority illusion, which happens due to highly-connected individuals within a social network skewing the group’s perception. These findings explain something we already knew — well-connected individuals can wield extraordinary influence. The majority illusion may also explain why it can take only a handful of the right influencers to make something go viral.
Marketers can leverage the majority illusion to create the tipping point needed to drive action or spread a message far and wide. It starts with identifying influencers who have the potential to create the majority illusion among your target demographic, and then encouraging those influencers to help amplify your message.
Are you surprised when your non-marketer friends are completely unaware of something that was major news in the marketing world? You may think it’s popular because you kept seeing it discussed by key members of your network, which can give the impression that it’s universally popular.
Let’s say that in the figure above, each of the colored nodes is a Nickelback fan. The networks are identical, except different people are Nickelback fans in each figure. Since the Nickelback fans in figure A have more connections, it may appear to their network that Nickelback’s music is popular. This is how the majority illusion can create the impression within a group that an idea, behavior, or attribute is common, even if the opposite is true.
By illustrating how a social network is organized, we can see how an idea can potentially spread across communities or stay within a select group.
We modeled a network graph of 77 Twitter influencers across eight different verticals: automotive, business, entertainment, finance, health, lifestyle, technology, and travel. Influencers were chosen based on criteria including relevance to a vertical and engagement. In order to create a usable graph, we then narrowed down the influencers’ 19 million followers to about 8,600 second-degree influencers. We chose those users based on a set of criteria that signaled mid-level influence: a following greater than 30,000, a follower to following ratio of at least 1:1, and a “lists per followers” rate of at least 6.5 (the number of times they have been added to a Twitter list per thousand of followers). Side note: Wondering why you can’t find Rand? He’s too popular to meet the parameters we set for a “mid-level” influencer.
The resulting network illustrates the hierarchical relationships of first- and second-level influencers within a social network. Click here to see the full interactive graph.
The nodes represent individuals, while the relationships between individuals are expressed as lines. The larger a node, the more relationships the individual has within the network. It’s important to understand this does not mean the large nodes have the most followers within the network; rather, they have the most connections within a particular network (some being first-degree, second-degree, third-degree connections, etc.).
By examining this graph, you can see that social influence is more like six degrees of Kevin Bacon than a popularity contest. Because of this, marketers should focus on getting their message spread by influencers within a focused niche or strategically-positioned influencers to maximize reach, rather than looking for influencers who merely have a large following.
Tools such as BuzzSumo and Followerwonk are a good jumping off point for finding influencers within a vertical. But you want to look at more than the number of followers, because influence depends on far more than popularity.
There are three main factors for determining the most powerful members of a network:
So which of these variables are most important? It depends on your goals.
Do you want people to take an action? Niche influencers may be best to create the majority illusion and give the impression of popularity, thus spurring others to mimic their behavior. An influencer’s closeness may be the most important factor in this case, since it signals they share a lot of connections with other individuals in their network. When you consider all of the common relationships within a niche group, it’s easy to see how these groups are susceptible to the majority illusion effect.
Are the goals for your content expanding brand awareness or increasing viral potential? Influencers with connections to other communities may be most effective for reaching a large audience. Betweenness centrality is the greatest signal of strategic positioning, since it shows the individual’s potential to influence and connect different groups.
If you want to create the majority illusion within a niche-focused group, target influencers with followers similar to them who have a low number of followers.
Notice how some groups are isolated on the edges of the graph. We can assume the “majority illusion” is likely to happen within these groups since they have little to no overlap with the other communities.
The researchers found that the majority illusion occurs most frequently in networks where individuals with a low degree of connections tend to connect with individuals with a high degree of connections. Those with a low number of connections may be easier to influence since they aren’t exposed to a wide range of ideas and opinions — plus they have less noise in their stream, so they are likely to see what the influencer posts.
Getting a handful of niche influencers talking about your brand within the same time period may be the key to creating an impression of popularity. I see this happen all the time on niche blogs, where several blogs do a sponsored post or review of the same product within a short time period. It does have the effect of making it feel like you’ve seen something everywhere, even though only a few people are talking about it.
If you want your content amplified to the widest possible audience, target influencers who are followed by other influencers and have diverse connections across different communities.
The closer an influencer is to the center of the graph, the more visibility they have across multiple verticals. This gives your content a better chance of escaping the echo chamber likely to occur within the more isolated groups. Individuals strategically positioned within their network, rather than those who are the most popular, may be the most effective at influencing a large number of people.
Two great examples of this within our network model are Ann Handley (@MarketingProfs) and Daniel Pink (@DanielPink). Notice how their connections are spread across different groups.
Example: @MarketingProfs
Example: @DanielPink
You don’t need to build your own social network graph to identify influencers with high betweenness centrality. Look for a mix of these two factors to spot strategically-positioned influencers:
Need help finding the right influencers? Check out our guide to identifying effective influencers. Once you pinpoint the influencers who can help you achieve your desired goal, be sure to deploy Rand’s advice on getting influencers to amplify your message.
By visualizing the structure of a social network, you can see that having a lot of followers doesn’t necessarily equate to influence. Influencers within closely-knit groups may be best suited for influencing their followers to take action or adopt an opinion, since this type of group is primed for creating the majority illusion that "everyone’s doing it." To reach a large audience, marketers should enlist the help of influencers who are strategically positioned between social communities, rather than those with a Kardashian-sized following.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
Thanks to Company Pages, you can create a powerful content-rich brand asset:
Showcase pages are the extension of company pages. They are a way to “show off” your business and its social clout. Use showcase pages to:
Showcase pages allow you to represent your company, just like you are representing yourself. People can get a better feel for your brand and what it is all about.
You are encouraged to have multiple showcase pages (the limit is ten showcase pages per one company page) that work for different projects within your company, all connected to you. Adobe does this, for example; they have Adobe, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Adobe Marketing Cloud among their listed Showcase pages.
Adobe Showcase Page example: Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office has used their Showcase page as a social hub for regular updates on projects, information on their product, and connecting with people who use Office for professional reasons.
It was perfect for their needs, since LinkedIn is a place for professionals, and that was who they wanted to target: people who are using the word processing program and connected features for their working life and projects. They only get a few engagements per post, but anyone who has seen most LinkedIn company pages know what a huge boon that is.
I started with Microsoft example because it perfectly illustrates the SEO value of showcase pages: Each of its showcase page has been picked up as a sitelink:
This is one powerful SERPs asset to rely on!
Adobe Showcase Page example: Adobe Creative Cloud Showcase Page
As mentioned before, Adobe has three different Showcase pages available. The first is their primary, and the other two are separate cloud services. Now, they could have chose any number of products to feature in this way. But they made the smart move of focusing on very specific audiences that were more likely to branch out.
After all, many Adobe products fall under the same audience banner, whereas the clouds focus each focus on different needs less likely to intersect. It was a great way to reach out without casting their net too wide.
Adobe Showcase Page example: IBM Analytics
IBM took a different, but still effective, route. They broke their products down into the basic categories: Primary, Cloud, Analytics, Security, Systems, IBM with MSPs, Watson, Watson Health, Social Business, Commerce, Internet Of Things, MobileFirst and Research.
They didn’t confine themselves within the boundaries of a main group and a couple of others than might appeal to different groups. They opened themselves up to every audience with its own Showcase, and it worked. They also put a lot of focus on their employees, which are listed on the main page, and careers that can be applied for by following a link right there in the right sidebar.
Adobe Showcase Page example: Cisco Data Centers
Cisco is the most active of all the above pages. They post every hour with something interesting that is directly engaging to their followers. They communicate with people directly. They even have multiple groups that are separate from their many Showcase pages in order to get people connecting on a deeper level. Their approach is thoughtful, much more so than you usually see from such large brands.
Being realistic, we have to address a couple of the negatives to Showcase pages and their capabilities. The biggest is the one that tends to turn people off the most: It makes things more confusing.
After we are already confused enough with differences between pages, groups, communities, “updates” and so on, showcase pages make the whole thing even more messed up. They are hard to scale and manage if you create several pages (and creating several showcase pages for every aspect of your business is what they apparently are for).
Another issue is the format. It has been compared in many ways to a less robust Google Plus, and while that isn’t really accurate it is hard to deny the comparison entirely. Unlike other networks that feel very alive, Showcase pages are pretty stagnant. To get it moving you really need to keep up on engagement.
Basically, you are going to need to promote and maintain. If you are willing to put in the work, it can be a great platform for connecting with a new audience.
Have any tips or tricks for Showcase pages? Let us know in the comments!
The post Linkedin Showcase Pages: Create More Brand Assets with LinkedIn Company Page appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.
