A Year In Review: Search Engine Land’s Top 10 Columns Of 2015

Which columns truly captivated our readers this year? We conclude our year-in-review series by highlighting our most widely read columns of 2015. The post A Year In Review: Search Engine Land’s Top 10 Columns Of 2015 appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Facebook’s On This Day bug is telling random users they’ve been friends for 46 years

If you’re a frequent Facebook user, you’ll come to recognize the morning routine of launching the app on your phone or logging on to the website, only to be greeted with memories from this day many years ago. Today’s memory, however, is a little bit off the timelines. Many users are noticing that Facebook is sending out random congratulations for 46 years of friendship between them and a random friend. Facebook launched in 2004. While you can change your birth year to make yourself aged 46 or older, you cannot change the date you joined Facebook or when you became friends with…

This story continues at The Next Web

Announcing: Copyblogger.FM

AKA the Episode Where Sonia Seizes All the Power …

If you’re reading this on New Year’s Eve, you’re probably a diehard. (Which we love, by the way.)

You might have been reading and listening to Copyblogger content for a long time now. And you may well know our original podcast, The Lede.

It started life as Internet Marketing for Smart People (audio edition) with Robert Bruce and Brian Clark, then over time morphed into The Lede, most recently hosted by Jerod Morris and Demian Farnworth.

In 2016, the show is transforming once again, and The Lede becomes Copyblogger.FM.

And I (ahem) kicked all those jokers off the platform and am taking over.

Last time I saw Farnworth, he was demolishing his console with his lightsaber, but I’m sure he’ll get past it. We’re here for you, bro.

Announcing: Copyblogger.FM

What’s the new show about?

Copyblogger.FM is about content marketing, first and foremost. We’ll be covering:

• Emerging trends
• Interesting disasters
• Enduring best practices
• Worthwhile news
• Practical strategies and tactics

We’ll also let you peek behind the scenes at the content strategies for the Copyblogger blog and Rainmaker Digital as a company, so you can learn from our experiments and observations.

And I may go on a rant once in a while.

If you’re already subscribed to The Lede, Copyblogger.FM will use the same feed, so you can just keep listening to the new incarnation without doing anything special.

If you’d like to try it out, you can find us here: Copyblogger.FM.

Serious thanks to our great team

Kidding aside, I want to thank Jerod and Demian (and Robert and Brian) for all of the hard work and insights they’ve delivered over the years. They’ve created something valuable, and I promise I will work hard to keep building on what they’ve created.

They will, of course, be showing up on the new version of the show with their wisdom and occasional shenanigans. We’ll also see lots of Pamela Wilson, our EVP of Educational Content, who will be sharing behind-the-scenes news about Copyblogger.

The team and I are greatly looking forward to seeing you there!

The Cornerstone Content Challenge

Have you signed up yet for our January Content Challenge?

We’re going to be walking folks just like you through a powerhouse strategy to make your site more authoritative, more attractive to your audience, and just plain more awesome. We’ve got tutorials, a free webinar, and even a pop-up forum to help you get it done. And it’s all free.

Join us for the Copyblogger Content Challenge.

Footnote: By the way, yes, I’ll still be producing my own show, Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer, which is focused more on who we are as individuals and how that plays out in our work and business lives.

That one is around 80 percent rant and 20 percent strategy; on Copyblogger.FM, we plan to reverse that ratio.

About the author

Sonia Simone

Sonia Simone is co-founder and Chief Content Officer of Rainmaker Digital. Get lots more from Sonia on her podcast, Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer, or come hang out with her on Twitter.

The post Announcing: Copyblogger.FM appeared first on Copyblogger.

How to Increase Your Social Profile Without Paying for Ads by @IAmAaronAgius

You don’t have to pay for ads to boost your social profile, but you will have to work that much harder to attain it. Are you willing to put in the effort?

The post How to Increase Your Social Profile Without Paying for Ads by @IAmAaronAgius appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

SearchCap: Local Search, SEO Columns & Engaging SEO Stories

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Local Search, SEO Columns & Engaging SEO Stories appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

3 Super Simple SEO Strategies You Probably Forgot About by @neilpatel

Neil Patel shares three SEO strategies that are so simple, you might be surprised you’ve overlooked them.

The post 3 Super Simple SEO Strategies You Probably Forgot About by @neilpatel appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Why Content Marketers Need Editors

I’m good at math.

If you looked at my standardized test results from when I was back in school, you’d see I scored very high in math and very low in verbal.

And yet, today I’m a professional writer and editor.

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Sort of. Your content needs to quickly communicate what your audience wants and needs, so my natural abilities are actually the perfect fit for content marketing.

You probably possess some of these editing skills too, so let’s examine how you can use them to become a discerning content marketer.

Turning a “weakness” into a strength

Most of my English tests in high school weren’t adorned with those coveted “A” grades because timed exams to test reading comprehension didn’t fit my reading style.

I read text passages slowly, studied each word carefully, and analyzed how the writer could have presented his or her message more clearly.

It’s no surprise I’d run out of time before I finished every question. (It’s okay, 16-year-old Stefanie. The future looks bright for you.)

My poor test scores could have convinced me that the English language and reading comprehension were my weaknesses, but instead, I turned my way of reading into a career.

We’re in The Editor Age

The title of this interview on Contently’s The Content Strategist says it all: ‘You Need Editors, Not Brand Managers’: Marketing Legend Seth Godin on the Future of Branded Content.

When asked how he’d build a brand media property, Godin replied that brands often opt for playing it safe rather than thinking, “How can we be more interesting?”

Then, Godin concluded:

That’s not what happens when you want to make a hit TV show or a website that people care about. You need editors, not brand managers, who will push the envelope to make the thing go forward.

Editors produce enjoyable content

“Enjoyable content” sounds a bit weak, doesn’t it? It’s less serious than “effective content” or “content that produces business results.”

But enjoyable content is a prerequisite if you want your content to be effective.

Editors produce the right content experiences with refined messages that help meet your business goals. This meaningful content gives your ideal prospect an enjoyable experience that produces results.

For example, I enjoy painting, but I don’t always have time to paint on canvas, so I frequently paint my nails. It’s relatively quick, and I get to display my work every day for as long as the manicure lasts.

Essie is my favorite nail polish brand and the company’s YouTube channel has a collection of nail art tutorials. To communicate a persuasive message, each concise video required a focused vision and intentional refining.

Here’s a tutorial that has more than one-million views:

Every aspect of the video also forms a seamless call to action — the instructive lesson makes you want to buy the products used in the tutorial so you can try the look yourself.

That is enjoyable content for a nail polish lover. I watched a number of Essie tutorials while researching this article and now have a long list of new colors I’m going to buy. BlogThis!

The 15 best games of 2015

2015 was an interesting year for gaming. While some people saw it as the year that current generation consoles finally became worth their salt (looking directly at you, Xbox One), there were plenty of compelling titles for both console owners and PC gamers. Whether you’re a fan of the major AAA titles you know and love, or would rather devote your time to new and interesting indie titles, 2015 had a little for everyone. In alphabetical order, here are our 15 picks to sink your teeth into. Arkham Knight (PC, Xbox One, PS4) Through its ‘Arkham’ games, developer Rocksteady created…

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Related Questions Grow +500% in 5 Months

Posted by Dr-Pete

Earlier this year, Google rolled out the Related Questions feature (AKA "People Also Ask"). If you haven't seen them yet, related questions appear in an expandable box, mixed in with organic results. Here's an example from a search for "Samsung Galaxy S6":

If you click on any question, it expands into something that looks like a Featured Snippet:

Currently, Related Questions can occur in packs of between 1–4 questions and answers. Here's an example of a box with only one question, on a search for "lederhosen":

Once expanded, a typical answer contains a machine-generated snippet, a link to the source website, and a link to the Google search for the question.

How common are related questions?

We started tracking Related Questions in late July on the MozCast 10K, where they originally appeared on roughly 1.3% of queries. Keep in mind that the MozCast set tends toward commercial queries, and the absolute percentage may not represent the entire web. What's interesting, though, is what happened after that. Here's a graph of Related Questions prevalence since the end of July:

You can clearly see two spikes in the graph — one measured on October 27th, and one on December 1st. As of this writing (December 10th), Related Questions appeared on about 8.1% of the queries we track. In less than 5 months, Related Questions have increased 501%. This is a much faster adoption rate than other Knowledge Graph features.

Where do the answers come from?

When you expand a question, the answer looks a lot like another recent Knowledge Graph addition — Featured Snippets. Digging deeper, though, it appears that the connection is indirect at best. For example, here's an expanded question on a search for "monopoly":

If you click on that search, though, you get a SERP with the following Featured Snippet:

It's interesting to note that both answers come from Investopedia, but Google is taking completely different text from two different URLs on the same site. With Featured Snippets, we know that the answer currently has to come from a site already ranking on page one, but with Related Questions, there's no clear connection to organic results. These answers don't seem tied to their respective SERPs.

Where do the questions come from?

It's clear that both the answers in Related Questions and the snippets in Featured Snippets are machine-generated. Google is expanding the capabilities of the Knowledge Graph by extracting answers directly from the index. What may not be as clear, at first glance, is that machines are also generating the questions themselves. Look at the following example, from a search for "grammar check":

Out of context, the question doesn't even make sense. Expanded, you can see that it relates to a very specific grammar question posted on Quora. While the topic is relevant, no human would attach this question, as worded, to this search. Consider another example, for "cover letter examples":

The first and last question are obviously, to a human, redundant. To a machine, though, they would look unique. To be fair, Google has come a long way in a short time — even a couple of months ago, some of these questions were riddled with grammar and spelling errors. As of this writing, I can't find a single example of either.

Finally, there are the questions that no human would ever ask:

No rational human would ever want to know what kind of meat is in a gyro. It's better that way.

What's coming next?

It's clear that Google is rapidly expanding their capability to generate questions and answers from the index. Both Featured Snippets and Related Questions have evolved considerably since their respective launches, and Google's ability to understand natural language queries and semantic data is growing daily. It may be months before we fully understand if and how these results cannibalize organic clicks, but it seems very clear that Google no longer considers these features to be experimental and will be aggressively pushing forward question-and-answer style SERPs in the near future.

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7 of the best kitchen gadgets from 2015

When it comes to connected homes, smart locks and entertainment systems are in abundance. But for me, the real home innovations are in the kitchen. Cooking is a totally different task today than in years gone by and with these handy gadgets, it’ll never be the same again. 1.  iKettle 2.0 If you have spent the holidays curled up on your couch, this kettle is probably what your dreams are made of. The iKettle 2.0 lets you boil the water without standing up using an app on your phone or tablet. You’ll just have to make sure you have someone…

This story continues at The Next Web

SearchCap: Bing Ads Feature Changes, SEO Hype & Search Trends

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Bing Ads Feature Changes, SEO Hype & Search Trends appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.