SEO

What You Need To Know

Published

2 years ago

September 8, 2022

To stay relevant, brands must continue to engage their customers through ads, contests, and other marketing strategies.

But what is a Facebook competition? How does it work? And why should I care?

Competitions are a great way to get noticed and build brand awareness. They are excellent for getting more likes on your page and in your group or boosting traffic to your site. They also provide a fun opportunity to interact with your audience.

Competitions on Facebook can involve posting a question or challenge, then promoting it to engage your followers.

Rewards can include cash prizes, gifts, or even admission to exclusive events.

But before jumping into a competition, there are some things you should consider. To ensure your competition is a success, check out these helpful tips.

1. What Are Facebook’s Official Rules?

Like most aspects of Facebook, there are official rules, including rules for all competitions.

However, the rules tend to change as new policies arise, so it’s important to check them before starting a competition. The current ones include:

Setting Up Your Own Restrictions

When you create a competition, the owner of the Facebook Page or Group’s job is to ensure they run properly and lawfully.

This means you have to set up terms and eligibility requirements which would include the age range for who can participate and the region for the competition.

So, for example, a brand can set guidelines that only people 18 plus in the U.S. can participate in the competition.

It also means that there need to be clear standards of how the competition will be run. Such as how and when the participants will participate and receive rewards.

Transparency is paramount. It will ensure everyone knows how the competition will operate and won’t get your brand in any sticky situations with Facebook or the law.

Create A Statement About Facebook

You will also need to mention in a post or release that Facebook is not involved in the competition in any way. And that the brand itself is in charge and responsible for the competition.

The participants also need to agree to these terms. So, it’s your job to get the participants to consent to these terms before participating.

Restrictions To Where You Can Post About The Campaign

Only official Facebook Pages, Groups, or Events can be used as platforms to promote a competition.

A brand can’t encourage its team or other participants to promote, tag, or share the competition on their personal Timelines.

People can find this as a spammy way to promote a competition anyway, so this shouldn’t impact promoting your competition.

Understanding Who’s Involved

Unfortunately, you are on your own and in charge of running a campaign on Facebook. So, Facebook can’t get involved if issues arise; it’s your job to manage any potential problems.

2. What Objectives Do You Want To Achieve?

Now that you know the rules, it’s time to set your goals for the competition.

There are numerous objectives you can select for a Facebook competition.

Some of them include:

Increasing likes or followers.
Getting traffic from other pages.
Building engagement
Promoting a product or service.

If you want to increase the number of likes you receive for posts and use a competition to help with this, then you need to post regularly and interact with users.

To build engagement, you should ask questions to your participants and answer any responses they give.

Additionally, if you want to promote a product or service, you should use promotion tools like Facebook ads.

Generally, the main objectives of any Facebook competition are to increase engagement and gain followers.

If you want to achieve higher engagement rates, you need to create a competition where participants feel like they have something to gain.

This could mean giving away prizes to select participants after encouraging them to participate on your social media pages or directing them back to your website to sign up for your email subscription.

This helps you get more active leads while also generating engagement.

Tracking Your Competition

As you would set goals for other social media campaigns, selecting specific and measurable objectives is paramount. This way, you can track the success of the campaign.

Putting together a couple of key performance indicators (KPIs) can help inform your promotional strategy for your Facebook competition.

It’s also incredibly important to set a schedule to monitor Facebook promotion analytics regularly.

Promote Your Competition

For your competition to gain traction, you need to leverage your marketing efforts.

Whether your competition is run solely on Facebook or you’re using it across multiple platforms, it’s crucial to hit all areas where your customers follow you.

Either direct them back to Facebook to participate or be clear about how and where they can enter the competition on other platforms, such as your website.

Also, depending on your brand goals for the competition, it may be worth boosting it as a paid Facebook post.

You can also customize your campaign by creating unique hashtags. This will help participants associate a post with your competition to remind them to enter if they haven’t done so already or reignite their excitement about potential prizes.

In addition, remember to establish a set schedule for when and how you will post about your competition throughout its duration.

Do You Need An App For Your Competition?

Using a third-party app to run your competition removes a lot of the headache associated with running a promotion but also has some drawbacks.

For example, they may not offer any additional functionality beyond what your team can manage.

Also, if you plan on promoting through Facebook ads, you’ll need to pay separately for each campaign (which could get expensive).

And finally, these apps aren’t usually designed to work on mobile devices, so you won’t be able to access them easily from a smartphone or tablet.

3. Who Is The Audience You Want To Enter?

With your objectives and rules established, it’s time to decide who you want to get involved in your competition. It’s essential to tailor your competition to your target audience.

What do you think your target audience wants? Do you have a new product or product line coming out soon? Then maybe you can gift a couple of participants some of these products.

Or perhaps there is a product that is generally sold out. Then a couple of lucky winners can receive this elusive good.

You could also create a limited edition product specifically for the competition. This way, more people will get excited to participate, so they don’t miss out on this one-time offer.

Figuring out what your audience wants most can help improve the success of your competition. Choose a prize that appeals to your ideal customers. You want your participants to be excited when they finally get their gift.

Finally, think carefully about how you’re reaching your target audience.

Will they respond positively to how you plan to promote your competition? Are you offering enough prizes for the type of following you have on Facebook or across social media?

4. What Type Of Competition Do You Choose?

A Facebook competition requires a lot of planning. Before starting any Facebook competition, you need to decide how much effort and money you want to put into the competition.

Such as how much money you want to spend on Facebook ads and other promotional activities, as well as what prizes you want to give away and how many prizes you’re willing to offer. Then it’ll be easier to select what type of competition would work best.

Three traditional competitions include giveaways, sweepstakes, and contests. Each has different rules.

If you plan to run a giveaway, you should consider limiting how many products you give away. Usually, with a giveaway, a set number of the people who participate first receive a prize.

A sweepstake is more of a lottery where you would select a certain number of participants from the pull of participants that enter the competition over a period of time.

And a contest would have more specific criteria that the participants need to follow, and then the participant(s) who best follow the criteria would win. Such as a picture contest.

How Long Will The Competition Run?

If you want to run a competition on Facebook, then you should know how long the competition will last. The typical duration is one month.

However, some competitions may be open longer if you have the budget and time or certain long-term goals for that competition.

Some competitions end when they reach a certain number of entries, while others continue until a specific date.

5. How Will You Follow Up With Participants?

It’s crucial to communicate how you will follow up with your participants to let them know who won the competition.

This way, you won’t create any unnecessary upsetness or miscommunicate about when the prizes will go out. You don’t want to waste all your hard work by ending the competition on a sour note.

Here are some tips on how you can follow up with participants after the competition ends:

Announce the end of the competition and thank everyone for participating.
Make a note of the winners’ names and send them a message with the information about how and when they will receive the prize.
Finally, don’t forget to check periodically to see what new messages or comments they leave.

Takeaways

Facebook competitions are a fun way to promote your company, brand, product, service, or cause.

Also, they are a great way to build a community around your brand and get feedback from followers.

They’re free to enter, easy to set up, and fun to watch. So, if you want to build a community around your product or service, try creating a Facebook competition.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Dean Drobot/Shutterstock

SEO

OpenAI To Show Content & Links In Response To Queries

Published

7 hours ago

May 1, 2024

Max

ChatGPT takes step toward becoming a search engine

OpenAI content deal will enhance ChatGPT with the ability to show real-time content with links in response to queries. OpenAI quietly took steps to gaining more search engine type functionality as part of a content licensing deal that may have positive implications for publishers and SEO.

Content Licensing Deal

OpenAI agreed to content licensing with the Financial Times, a global news organization with offices in London, New York, across continental Europe and Asia.

Content licensing deals between AI organizations and publishers are generally about getting access to high quality training data. The training data is then used by language models to learn connections between words and concepts. This deal goes far beyond that use.

ChatGPT Will Show Direct Quotes With Attribution

What makes this content licensing deal between The Financial Times and OpenAI is that there is a reference to giving attribution to content within ChatGPT.

The announced licensing deal explicitly mentions the use of the licensed content so that ChatGPT could directly quote it and provide links to the licensed content.

Further, the licensing deal is intended to help improve ChatGPT’s “usefulness”, which is vague and can mean many things, but it takes on a slightly different meaning when used in the context of attributed answers.

The Financial Times agreement states that the licensing deal is for use in ChatGPT when it provides “attributed content” which is content with an attribution, commonly a link to where the content appeared.

This is the part of the announcement that references attributed content:

“The Financial Times today announced a strategic partnership and licensing agreement with OpenAI, a leader in artificial intelligence research and deployment, to enhance ChatGPT with attributed content, help improve its models’ usefulness by incorporating FT journalism, and collaborate on developing new AI products and features for FT readers. “

And this is the part of the announcement that mentions ChatGPT offering users attributed quotes and links:

“Through the partnership, ChatGPT users will be able to see select attributed summaries, quotes and links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries.”

The Financial Times Group CEO was even more explicit about OpenAI’s intention to show content and links in ChatGPT:

“This is an important agreement in a number of respects,” said FT Group CEO John Ridding. “It recognises the value of our award-winning journalism and will give us early insights into how content is surfaced through AI. …this partnership will help keep us at the forefront of developments in how people access and use information.
OpenAI understands the importance of transparency, attribution, and compensation…”
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Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI directly referenced showing real-time news content in ChatGPT but more important he referenced OpenAI exploring new ways to show content to its user base.

Lastly, the COO stated that they embraced disruption, which means innovation that creates a new industry or paradigm, usually at the expense of an older one, like search engines.

Lightcap is quoted:

“We have always embraced new technologies and disruption, and we’ll continue to operate with both curiosity and vigilance as we navigate this next wave of change.”

Showing direct quotes of Financial Times content with links to that content is very similar to how search engines work. This is a big change to how ChatGPT works and could be a sign of where ChatGPT is going in the future, a functionality that incorporates online content with links to that content.

Something Else That Is Possibly Related

Someone on Twitter recently noticed a change that is related to “search” in relation to ChatGPT.

This change involves an SSL security certificate that was added for a subdomain of ChatGPT.com. ChatGPT.com is a domain name that was snapped up by someone to capitalize on the 2022 announcement of ChatGPT by OpenAI. OpenAI eventually acquired the domain and it’s been redirecting to ChatGPT.

The change that was noticed is to the subdomain: search.chatgpt.com.

This is a screenshot of the tweet:

Big News For SEO and Publishers

This is significant news for publishers and search marketers ChatGPT will become a source of valuable traffic if OpenAI takes ChatGPT in the direction of providing attributed summaries and direct quotes.

How Can Publishers Get Traffic From ChatGPT?

Questions remain about attributed quotes with links in response to relevant queries. Here are X unknowns about ChatGPT attributed links.

Does this mean that only licensed content will be shown and linked to in ChatGPT?
Will ChatGPT incorporate and use most web data without licensing deals in the same way that search engines do?
OpenAI may incorporate an Opt-In model where publishers can use a notation in Robots.txt or in meta data to opt-in to receiving traffic from ChatGPT.
Would you opt into receiving traffic from ChatGPT in exchange for allowing your content to be used for training?
How would SEOs and publisher’s equation on ChatGPT change if their competitors are all receiving traffic from ChatGPT?

Read the original announcement:

Financial Times announces strategic partnership with OpenAI

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Photo For Everything

SEO

Google’s John Mueller On Website Recovery After Core Updates

Published

1 day ago

April 30, 2024

Max

businessman financial professional look through binocular to see graph and chart.

John Mueller, a Google Search Advocate, provided guidance this week regarding the path forward for websites impacted by recent search algorithm updates.

The discussion started on X (formerly Twitter) by SEO professional Thomas Jepsen.

Jepsen tagged Mueller, asking:

“Google has previously said Google doesn’t hold a grudge and sites will recover once issues have been solved. Is that still the case after HCU?”

Mueller’s response offered hope to site owners while being realistic about the challenges ahead.

Addressing Recovery Timelines

Mueller affirmed Google’s stance on not holding grudges, stating, “That’s still the case.”

However, he acknowledged the complexity of rankings, saying:

“…some things take much longer to be reassessed (sometimes months, at the moment), and some bigger effects require another update cycle.”

That’s still the case. That said, some things take much longer to be reassessed (sometimes months, at the moment), and some bigger effects require another update cycle. https://t.co/WDy7Q4dpzb has some more.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 29, 2024

Mueller pointed to a Google help document explaining the nuances. The document reads:

“Broad core updates tend to happen every few months. Content that was impacted in Search or Discover by one might not recover—assuming improvements have been made—until the next broad core update is released.

Do keep in mind that improvements made by site owners aren’t a guarantee of recovery, nor do pages have any static or guaranteed position in our search results. If there’s more deserving content, that will continue to rank well with our systems.”

The Comments Sparking Debate

Jepsen probed further, asking, “Is a core update what’s needed for HCU-affected sites to recover (assuming they’ve fixed their issues)?”

Mueller’s response highlighted how situations can differ:

“It depends on the situation… I realize there’s a big space between the situations, but generalizing doesn’t help. Sometimes it takes a lot of work on the site, a long time, and an update.”

It depends on the situation. https://t.co/F9s3Hli9t7 and https://t.co/pLdm29PjPD has some on that. I realize there’s a big space between the situations, but generalizing doesn’t help. Sometimes it takes a lot of work on the site, a long time, and an update.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 29, 2024
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The thread grew as user @selectgame raised concerns about Google Discover traffic, to which Mueller replied:

“Google Discover is affected by core updates as well as other parts of Search (and there are more policies that apply to Discover).”

Google Discover is affected by core updates as well as other parts of Search (and there are more policies that apply to Discover). If you’re seeing these changes when a core update rolled out, that might be what you’re seeing.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 29, 2024

Growing Frustrations

Prominent industry figure Lily Ray voiced mounting frustrations, stating,

“…many HCU-affected websites – which have been making all kinds of improvements over the last 7 months – have only seen further declines with the March Core Update.
I have seen some sites lose 90% or more of their SEO visibility since the HCU, with the last few weeks being the nail in the coffin, despite making significant improvements.”

Ray continued:

“And in my professional opinion, many of these sites did not deserve anywhere near that level of impact, especially the further declines over the past month.”

Mueller hasn’t responded to Ray’s tweet at this time.

John, any chance you can comment on the fact that many HCU-affected websites – which have been making all kinds of improvements over the last 7 months – have only seen further declines with the March Core Update?
I have seen some sites lose 90% or more of their SEO visibility… https://t.co/lvYRAScRQQ
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) April 29, 2024

Looking Ahead

As the search community awaits Google’s next moves, the path to recovery appears arduous for many impacted by recent algorithm reassessments of “Helpful Content.”

Site improvements don’t guarantee immediate recovery, so publishers face an uphill battle guided only by Google’s ambiguous public advice.

Why SEJ Cares

The March 2024 core update has proven disastrous for many websites, with severe traffic losses persisting even after sites try to improve low-quality content, address technical issues, and realign with Google’s guidelines.

Having clear, actionable guidance from Google on recovering from core update updates is invaluable.

As evidenced by the frustrations expressed, the current communications leave much to be desired regarding transparency and defining a straightforward recovery path.

How This Can Help You

While Mueller’s comments provide some insights, the key takeaways are:

Regaining previous rankings after an algorithm hit is possible if sufficient content/site quality improvements are made.
Recovery timelines can vary significantly and may require a future core algorithm update.
Even with enhancements, recovery isn’t guaranteed as rankings depend on the overall pool of competing content.

The path is undoubtedly challenging, but Mueller’s comments underscore that perseverance with substantial site improvements can eventually pay off.

FAQ

Can SEO professionals predict recovery time for a website hit by core updates?

SEO professionals can’t pinpoint when a site will recover after a core Google algorithm update.

Reasons for this include:

Google releases core updates every few months, so sites may need to wait for the next one.
It can take months for Google to reassess and adjust rankings.
How competitive the query is also impacts if and when a site recovers.

Does making site improvements after a core update ensure recovery in rankings and visibility?

After making improvements following a Google algorithm update, regaining your previous rankings isn’t guaranteed.

Reasons why include:

Your impacted content may not recover until the next core update, provided you’ve implemented enough site improvements.
Google’s search results are dynamic, and rankings can fluctuate based on the quality of competitor content.
There’s no fixed or guaranteed position in Google’s search results.

What is the relationship between Google Discover traffic and core search updates?

Google’s core algorithm updates that impact regular search results also affect Google Discover.

However, Google Discover has additional specific policies that determine what content appears there.

This means:

Improving your content and website quality can boost your visibility on Google Discover, just like regular searches.
You may see changes in your Discover traffic when Google rolls out core updates.
Your SEO and content strategy should account for potential impacts on regular searches and Google Discover.

Featured Image: eamesBot/Shutterstock

SEO

5 Things To Consider Before A Site Migration

Published

2 days ago

April 29, 2024

Max

One of the scariest SEO tasks is a site migration because the stakes are so high and the pitfalls at every step . Here are five tips that will help keep a site migration on track to a successful outcome.

Site Migrations Are Not One Thing

Site Migrations are not one thing, they are actually different scenarios and the only thing they have in common is that there is always something that can go wrong.

Here are examples of some of the different kinds of site migrations:

Migration to a new template
Migrating to a new web host
Merging two different websites
Migrating to a new domain name
Migrating to a new site architecture
Migrating to a new content management system (CMS)
Migrating to a new WordPress site builder

There are many ways a site can change and more ways for those changes to result in a negative outcome.

The following is not a site migration checklist. It’s five suggestions for things to consider.

1. Prepare For Migration: Download Everything

Rule number one is to prepare for the site migration. One of my big concerns is that the old version of the website is properly documented.

These are some of the ways to document a website:

Download the database and save it in at least two places. I like to have a backup of the backup stored on a second device.
Download all the website files. Again, I prefer to save a backup of the backup stored on a second device.
Crawl the site, save the crawl and export it as a CSV or an XML site map. I prefer to have redundant backups just in case something goes wrong.

An important thing to remember about downloading files by FTP is that there are two formats for downloading files: ASCII and Binary.

Use ASCII for downloading files that contain code, like CSS, JS, PHP and HTML.
Use Binary for media like images, videos and zip files.

Fortunately, most modern FTP software have an automatic setting that should be able to distinguish between the two kinds of files. A sad thing that can happen is to download image files using the ASCII format which results in corrupted images.

So always check that your files are all properly downloaded and not in a corrupted state. Always consider downloading a copy for yourself if you have hired a third party to handle the migration or a client is doing it and they’re downloading files. That way if they fail with their download you’ll have an uncorrupted copy backed up.

The most important rule about backups: You can never have too many backups!

2. Crawl The Website

Do a complete crawl of the website. Create a backup of the crawl. Then create a backup of the backup and store it on a separate hard drive.

After the site migration, this crawl data can be used to generate a new list for crawling the old URLs to identify any URLs that are missing (404), are failing to redirect, or are redirecting to the wrong webpage. Screaming Frog also has a list mode that can crawl a list of URLs saved in different formats, including as an XML sitemap, and directly input into a text field. This is a way to crawl a specific batch of URLs as opposed to crawling a site from link to to link.

3. Tips For Migrating To A New Template

Website redesigns can be can be a major source of anguish when they go wrong. On paper, migrating a site to a new template should be a one-to-one change with minimal issues. In practice that’s not always the case. For one, no template can be used off the shelf, it has to be modified to conform to what’s needed, which can mean removing and/or altering the code.

Search marketing expert Nigel Mordaunt (LinkedIn), who recently sold his search marketing agency, has experience migrating over a hundred sites and has important considerations for migrating to a new WordPress template.

This is Nigel’s advice:

“Check that all images have the same URL, alt text and image titles, especially if you’re using new images.
Templates sometimes have hard-coded heading elements, especially in the footer and sidebars. Those should be styled with CSS, not with H tags. I had this problem with a template once where the ranks had moved unexpectedly, then found that the Contact Us and other navigation links were all marked up to H2. I think that was more of a problem a few years ago. But still, some themes have H tags hard coded in places that aren’t ideal.
Make sure that all URLs are the exact same, a common mistake. Also, if planning to change content then check that the staging environment has been noindexed then after the site goes live make sure that the newly uploaded live site no longer contains the noindex robots meta tag.
If changing content then be prepared the site to perhaps be re-evaluated by Google. Depending on the size of the site, even if the changes are positive it may take several weeks to be rewarded, and in some cases several months. The client needs to be informed of this before the migration.
Also, check that analytics and tracking codes have been inserted into the new site, review all image sizes to make sure there are no new images that are huge and haven’t been scaled down. You can easily check the image sizes and heading tags with a post-migration Screaming Frog crawl. I can’t imagine doing any kind of site migration without Screaming Frog.”
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4. Advice For Migrating To A New Web Host

Mark Barrera (LinkedIn), VP SEO, Newfold Digital (parent company of Bluehost), had this to say about crawling before a site migration in preparation for a migration to a new web host:

“Thoroughly crawl your existing site to identify any indexing or technical SEO issues prior to the move.
Maintain URL Structure (If Possible): Changing URL structures can confuse search engines and damage your link equity. If possible, keep your URLs the same.
301 Redirects: 301 Redirects are your friend. Search engines need to be informed that your old content now lives at a new address. Implementing 301 redirects from any old URLs to their new counterparts preserves link equity and avoids 404 errors for both users and search engine crawlers.
Performance Optimization: Ensure your new host provides a fast and reliable experience. Site speed is important for user experience.
Be sure to do a final walkthrough of your new site before doing your actual cutover. Visually double-check your homepage, any landing pages, and your most popular search hits. Review any checkout/cart flows, comment/review chains, images, and any outbound links to your other sites or your partners.
SSL Certificate: A critical but sometimes neglected aspect of hosting migrations is the SSL certificate setup. Ensuring that your new host supports and correctly implements your existing SSL certificate—or provides a new one without causing errors is vital. SSL/TLS not only secures your site but also impacts SEO. Any misconfiguration during migration can lead to warnings in browsers, which deter visitors and can temporarily impact rankings.
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Post migration, it’s crucial to benchmark server response times not just from one location, but regionally or globally, especially if your audience is international. Sometimes, a new hosting platform might show great performance in one area but lag in other parts of the world. Such discrepancies can affect page load times, influencing bounce rates and search rankings. “

5. Accept Limitations

Ethan Lazuk, SEO Strategist & Consultant, Ethan Lazuk Consulting, LLC, (LinkedIn, Twitter) offers an interesting perspective on site migrations on the point about anticipating client limitations imposed upon what you are able to do. It can be frustrating when a client pushes back on advice and it’s important to listen to their reasons for doing it.

I have consulted over Zoom with companies whose SEO departments had concerns about what an external SEO wanted to do. Seeking a third party confirmation about a site migration plan is a reasonable thing to do. So if the internal SEO department has concerns about the plan, it’s not a bad idea to have a trustworthy third party take a look at it.

Ethan shared his experience:

“The most memorable and challenging site migrations I’ve been a part of involved business decisions that I had no control over.
As SEOs, we can create a smart migration plan. We can follow pre- and post-launch checklists, but sometimes, there are legal restrictions or other business realities behind the scenes that we have to work around.
Not having access to a DNS, being restricted from using a brand’s name or certain content, having to use an intermediate domain, and having to work days, weeks, or months afterward to resolve any issues once the internal business situations have changed are just a few of the tricky migration issues I’ve encountered.
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The best way to handle these situations require working around client restrictions is to button up the SEO tasks you can control, set honest expectations for how the business issues could impact performance after the migration, and stay vigilant with monitoring post-launch data and using it to advocate for resources you need to finish the job.”

Different Ways To Migrate A Website

Site migrations are a pain and should be approached with caution. I’ve done many different kinds of migrations for myself and have assisted them with clients. I’m currently moving thousands of webpages from a folder to the root and it’s complicated by multiple redirects that have to be reconfigured, not looking forward to it. But migrations are sometimes unavoidable so it’s best to step up to it after careful consideration.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com