SEO
What’s the Impact So Far?
Google releases one or two changes to its algorithms daily; most of them are not noticeable.
And a few times a year, Google will officially announce a “core update.”
A core update refers to broad changes to Google’s algorithm and systems that cause notable fluctuations in search results.
This article is an up-to-date summary of the impact of the May 2022 core update on industries, search queries, and the search result page.
Winners and losers are analyzed to provide additional insights and links to help your website recover from the impact of these changes.
Core Update Terminology
No one knows the exact nature of core updates unless Google tells us, as it has in the past with the Speed update or Freshness update.
To analyze the impact a Google core update has on organic search results, we can look at two things: visibility and volatility.
Visibility tells us the organic presence of a domain in Google’s search results.
When the visibility metric increases, a site ranks for more high-volume keywords likely to attract clicks.
Conversely, a decreasing visibility metric means that the domain is losing keywords.
How much the visibility metric increases or decreases is known as “volatility.”
We can tell when core updates affect a website because the visibility metric drastically increases or decreases during a defined period that aligns with Google’s announcement.
With these two terms in mind, let’s view Semrush Sensor data and the Sistrix visibility index to see what we can learn about the May Core Update 2022.
Industries Affected
Marketers discussed huge swings and drops in traffic across sites early in the roll-out.
Semrush sensor data showed that the May 2022 update was mild compared to the last core update in November 2021.
Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO branding at Wix, reviewed Semrush Sensor data on June 01 and did not find any indicators that the May 2022 update targeted specific industries.
I asked Oberstein what fluctuations would indicate that an update targeted a specific niche, and he replied that he doesn’t think Google targets particular verticals; that it’s not a hard number, but rather, a consistent trend across types of content within that vertical.
Oberstein recommends that people look at what is happening at the page level, “…because you wouldn’t really be able to diagnose what was happening until you looked at a specific (keyword) ranking shift.”
Search Queries Affected
During a Wix webinar, Marcus Tober, Founder of Searchmetrics, broke down rank volatility by keyword intent using Semrush sensor data.
Keyword intent can be split into four main categories:
- Informational: Find an answer to a question or general information.
- Navigational: Find a specific site or page.
- Commercial: Investigate brands or services.
- Transactional: Complete an action or purchase.
Here’s new @semrush data that @marcustober just shared during our @Wix webinar on rank volatility from the May 2022 Core Update…. per intent!
I’ve never seen rank volatility data broken down like this… very cool! pic.twitter.com/MW5YZPxUPC
— Mordy Oberstein 🇺🇦 (@MordyOberstein) June 28, 2022
The graph shows informational (an answer) and transactional (a purchase) search queries experiencing over 50% volatility during the May 2022 core update.
Tober’s findings align with who we saw win and lose in the SISTRIX visibility index, which we will dive into next.
Winners and Losers
We can see the following winners and losers based on the Sistrix visibility index (keyword rankings weighted by search volume and click probability).
Winners
Winners were defined as those among the top 20 websites by absolute visibility change in the UK.
Screenshot from Sistrix, June 2022.Big Brand eCommerce
eCommerce has been a popular topic of conversation on social media, and the Sistrix UX visibility index supports this chatter.
Branded retail websites like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy are seen in the table above as having the greatest absolute visibility change.
They are taking up more of the hypothetical “storefront” online.
This expansion of brand presence and the three product review updates over the past year may explain the drop affiliate site owners are experiencing.
Screenshot from Google SERP, June 2022.The big brand ecommerce websites winning (Amazon, eBay, and Etsy) are outpacing smaller sites in implementing full product schema.
This finding aligns with the 51% volatility in transactional (a purchase) search queries shared by Marcus Tober.
Video
Video sites like YouTube, TikTok, Disney Plus, Hulu, and Twitch increased significantly.
TikTok had the most impressive growth — red line seen below — with an overall gain of 133%.
Screenshot from Sistrix, June 2022.This phenomenon plays into what we know about how the internet is evolving.
People like watching videos online, and Google is already indexing videos from millions of different sites.
They can find videos on the main search results page, video search results, Google Images, and Discover.
During an episode of the “Off The Record” podcast in March, Google Product Manager Danielle Marshak said, “We think this kind of content could be useful for a lot of different types of search queries, and we’ve been experimenting with how to show it to users more often.”
Losers
Losers were defined as groups that experienced a significant decrease in Sistrix’s visibility index.
Screenshot from Sistrix, June 2022.News and Media Publishers
Among the 30 news websites analyzed, Steve Paine, the Marketing Manager at Sistrix, found a general loss for most news and media publishers.
The loss primarily affected generalists that write about everything; e.g., celebrity news, sports results, weather, economy, and career advice.
In the example provided below, you can see independent.co.uk getting quite the boost for its /topic directory, while competitor dailymail.co.uk (no topic landing pages) tanks.
Screenshot from Sistrix, June 2022.While “Google knows that while you may have the latest news for the Knicks,” explained Malte Landwehr, former VP of Product at Searchmetrics, it “does not mean you are what people searching for [queries like] ‘eyeshadow’ … are looking for.”
Reference Websites
References websites – including dictionaries, Wikipedia-knockoffs, lyrics, and stock photo sites – were among the losers.
Landwehr explains that you can think of these pages (reference pages) as “backfill” to Google.
While a definition-type page may seem relevant based on TF-IDF, Word2Vec, or similar approaches, they rarely match the search intent.
This finding is supported by what Marcus Tober found with informational keywords experiencing 54% volatility.
New SERP Features
You may have noticed different rich results in the SERP for transactional queries in a visual grid format.
It looks like image thumbnails of a product, and when you click a product, a knowledge panel opens with shopping options.
The grid format was initially spotted on mobile around late March 2022 and now appears on desktop. You can test it yourself with product queries such as “sleep sack” or “paintbrush.”
Screenshot from Google SERP, June 2022.While these new shopping features could be seen a few days before the official May 2022 update announcement, they are essential to mention, as they undoubtedly influence eCom traffic – and it’s easy to misattribute the effects of the core update.
Rise of the Visual SERP: What This Means For Marketers
Core updates are changes made to improve Google search results overall, and to help Google keep pace with the changing nature of how people search.
If you see a drop in your rankings, it’s an undeniable signal that you need to update your content to match the current search intent and keep up with updates in your industry.
Here’s a recap of what we see changing.
Video Search Results: The New SEO Frontier
Demand for video content is increasing. A recent study found that 73% of people preferred to watch a short video to learn about a product or service.
And Google knows it.
Videos already appear in several places on Google. And, remember Marshak’s earlier remarks: that Google is experimenting with how to show video content to users more often.
(Interested in learning how to help Google find and fetch your video content? Discover these 5 video SEO best practices.)
Visualize Product Information with Rich Snippets
In a study of the May core update, transactional (purchase) search queries showed a 51% volatility.
eCommerce website owners can enhance their search results by adding schema markup.
Doing so helps potential buyers by providing additional information such as prices or ratings.
For example, more people may click on a search result displaying a high review rating because it provides positive social proof.
You can visualize your own product information by adding structured data to your product pages.
Google Shopping Visual Grid Format
It’s no secret that shopping behavior has changed drastically in the past two years; e-commerce sales, for instance, increased by 43% in 2020.
Hundreds of millions of people are searching for transactional queries daily, and Google is testing new ways of getting products in front of the people searching for them.
Spotted a few days before the official Google May 2022 update announcement, we can see products in a visual grid that opens to the knowledge panel mentioned above.
If you’re interested in growing your business with these features, check out this episode of the SEJ Show with Duane Brown, SEJ contributor, on how to dominate Google Merchant center.
Final Thoughts
I do hope the May 2022 update coverage here is helpful. If your website was negatively impacted, I strongly recommend reading Google’s advice on how to assess your content after a core update.
Remember, what I wrote above is a hypothesis; an educated guess based on publicly available data.
Did your site visibility improve or decline with the May 2022 update? Let us know on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.
Featured Image: JaaaK/Shutterstock
SEO
How To Drive Pipeline With A Silo-Free Strategy
When it comes to B2B strategy, a holistic approach is the only approach.
Revenue organizations usually operate with siloed teams, and often expect a one-size-fits-all solution (usually buying clicks with paid media).
However, without cohesive brand, infrastructure, and pipeline generation efforts, they’re pretty much doomed to fail.
It’s just like rowing crew, where each member of the team must synchronize their movements to propel the boat forward – successful B2B marketing requires an integrated strategy.
So if you’re ready to ditch your disjointed marketing efforts and try a holistic approach, we’ve got you covered.
Join us on May 15, for an insightful live session with Digital Reach Agency on how to craft a compelling brand and PMF.
We’ll walk through the critical infrastructure you need, and the reliances and dependences of the core digital marketing disciplines.
Key takeaways from this webinar:
- Thinking Beyond Traditional Silos: Learn why traditional marketing silos are no longer viable and how they spell doom for modern revenue organizations.
- How To Identify and Fix Silos: Discover actionable strategies for pinpointing and sealing the gaps in your marketing silos.
- The Power of Integration: Uncover the secrets to successfully integrating brand strategy, digital infrastructure, and pipeline generation efforts.
Ben Childs, President and Founder of Digital Reach Agency, and Jordan Gibson, Head of Growth at Digital Reach Agency, will show you how to seamlessly integrate various elements of your marketing strategy for optimal results.
Don’t make the common mistake of using traditional marketing silos – sign up now and learn what it takes to transform your B2B go-to-market.
You’ll also get the opportunity to ask Ben and Jordan your most pressing questions, following the presentation.
And if you can’t make it to the live event, register anyway and we’ll send you a recording shortly after the webinar.
SEO
Why Big Companies Make Bad Content
It’s like death and taxes: inevitable. The bigger a company gets, the worse its content marketing becomes.
HubSpot teaching you how to type the shrug emoji or buy bitcoin stock. Salesforce sharing inspiring business quotes. GoDaddy helping you use Bing AI, or Zendesk sharing catchy sales slogans.
Judged by content marketing best practice, these articles are bad.
They won’t resonate with decision-makers. Nobody will buy a HubSpot license after Googling “how to buy bitcoin stock.” It’s the very definition of vanity traffic: tons of visits with no obvious impact on the business.
So why does this happen?
There’s an obvious (but flawed) answer to this question: big companies are inefficient.
As companies grow, they become more complicated, and writing good, relevant content becomes harder. I’ve experienced this firsthand:
- extra rounds of legal review and stakeholder approval creeping into processes.
- content watered down to serve an ever-more generic “brand voice”.
- growing misalignment between search and content teams.
- a lack of content leadership within the company as early employees leave.
Similarly, funded companies have to grow, even when they’re already huge. Content has to feed the machine, continually increasing traffic… even if that traffic never contributes to the bottom line.
There’s an element of truth here, but I’ve come to think that both these arguments are naive, and certainly not the whole story.
It is wrong to assume that the same people that grew the company suddenly forgot everything they once knew about content, and wrong to assume that companies willfully target useless keywords just to game their OKRs.
Instead, let’s assume that this strategy is deliberate, and not oversight. I think bad content—and the vanity traffic it generates—is actually good for business.
There are benefits to driving tons of traffic, even if that traffic never directly converts. Or put in meme format:
Programmatic SEO is a good example. Why does Dialpad create landing pages for local phone numbers?
Why does Wise target exchange rate keywords?
Why do we have a list of most popular websites pages?
As this Twitter user points out, these articles will never convert…
…but they don’t need to.
Every published URL and targeted keyword is a new doorway from the backwaters of the internet into your website. It’s a chance to acquire backlinks that wouldn’t otherwise exist, and an opportunity to get your brand in front of thousands of new, otherwise unfamiliar people.
These benefits might not directly translate into revenue, but over time, in aggregate, they can have a huge indirect impact on revenue. They can:
- Strengthen domain authority and the search performance of every other page on the website.
- Boost brand awareness, and encourage serendipitous interactions that land your brand in front of the right person at the right time.
- Deny your competitors traffic and dilute their share of voice.
These small benefits become more worthwhile when multiplied across many hundreds or thousands of pages. If you can minimize the cost of the content, there is relatively little downside.
What about topical authority?
“But what about topical authority?!” I hear you cry. “If you stray too far from your area of expertise, won’t rankings suffer for it?”
I reply simply with this screenshot of Forbes’ “health” subfolder, generating almost 4 million estimated monthly organic pageviews:
And big companies can minimize cost. For large, established brands, the marginal cost of content creation is relatively low.
Many companies scale their output through networks of freelancer writers, avoiding the cost of fully loaded employees. They have established, efficient processes for research, briefing, editorial review, publication and maintenance. The cost of an additional “unit” of content—or ten, or a hundred—is not that great, especially relative to other marketing channels.
There is also relatively little opportunity cost to consider: the fact that energy spent on “vanity” traffic could be better spent elsewhere, on more business-relevant topics.
In reality, many of the companies engaging in this strategy have already plucked the low-hanging fruit and written almost every product-relevant topic. There are a finite number of high traffic, high relevance topics; blog consistently for a decade and you too will reach these limits.
On top of that, the HubSpots and Salesforces of the world have very established, very efficient sales processes. Content gating, lead capture and scoring, and retargeting allow them to put very small conversion rates to relatively good use.
Even HubSpot’s article on Bitcoin stock has its own relevant call-to-action—and for HubSpot, building a database of aspiring investors is more valuable than it sounds, because…
The bigger a company grows, the bigger its audience needs to be to continue sustaining that growth rate.
Companies generally expand their total addressable market (TAM) as they grow, like HubSpot broadening from marketing to sales and customer success, launching new product lines for new—much bigger—audiences. This means the target audience for their content marketing grows alongside.
As Peep Laja put its:
But for the biggest companies, this principle is taken to an extreme. When a company gears up to IPO, its target audience expands to… pretty much everyone.
This was something Janessa Lantz (ex-HubSpot and dbt Labs) helped me understand: the target audience for a post-IPO company is not just end users, but institutional investors, market analysts, journalists, even regular Jane investors.
These are people who can influence the company’s worth in ways beyond simply buying a subscription: they can invest or encourage others to invest and dramatically influence the share price. These people are influenced by billboards, OOH advertising and, you guessed it, seemingly “bad” content showing up whenever they Google something.
You can think of this as a second, additional marketing funnel for post-IPO companies:
These visitors might not purchase a software subscription when they see your article in the SERP, but they will notice your brand, and maybe listen more attentively the next time your stock ticker appears on the news.
They won’t become power users, but they might download your eBook and add an extra unit to the email subscribers reported in your S1.
They might not contribute revenue now, but they will in the future: in the form of stock appreciation, or becoming the target audience for a future product line.
Vanity traffic does create value, but in a form most content marketers are not used to measuring.
If any of these benefits apply, then it makes sense to acquire them for your company—but also to deny them to your competitors.
SEO is an arms race: there are a finite number of keywords and topics, and leaving a rival to claim hundreds, even thousands of SERPs uncontested could very quickly create a headache for your company.
SEO can quickly create a moat of backlinks and brand awareness that can be virtually impossible to challenge; left unchecked, the gap between your company and your rival can accelerate at an accelerating pace.
Pumping out “bad” content and chasing vanity traffic is a chance to deny your rivals unchallenged share of voice, and make sure your brand always has a seat at the table.
Final thoughts
These types of articles are miscategorized—instead of thinking of them as bad content, it’s better to think of them as cheap digital billboards with surprisingly great attribution.
Big companies chasing “vanity traffic” isn’t an accident or oversight—there are good reasons to invest energy into content that will never convert. There is benefit, just not in the format most content marketers are used to.
This is not an argument to suggest that every company should invest in hyper-broad, high-traffic keywords. But if you’ve been blogging for a decade, or you’re gearing up for an IPO, then “bad content” and the vanity traffic it creates might not be so bad.
SEO
Is It Alternatives You’re Looking For?
Whatever the reason, in this article, I’ll share some alternatives to HARO and a few extra ways to get expert quotes and backlinks for your website.
Disclaimer: I am not a PR expert. I did a bit of outreach a few years ago, but I have only been an occasional user of HARO in the past year or so.
So, rather than providing my opinion on the best alternatives to HARO, I thought it would be fun to ask users of the “new HARO” what they thought were the best alternatives.
I wanted to give the “new HARO”—Connectively—the benefit of the doubt.
Still, a few minutes after my pitch was accepted, I got two responses that appeared to be AI-generated from two “visionary directors,” both with “extensive experience.”
My experience of Connectively so far mirrored Josh’s experience of old HARO: The responses were most likely automated.
Although I was off to a bad start, looking through most of the responses afterward, these two were the only blatant automated pitches I could spot.
These responses weren’t included in my survey, and anyone who saw my pitch would have to copy and paste the survey link to complete it—increasing the chance of genuine human responses—hopefully.
So, without further ado, here are the results of the survey.
Sidenote.
The survey on Connectively ran for a week and received 101 votes. Respondents could vote for their top three HARO alternatives.
Price: Free.
Help a B2B Writer was the #1 alternative platform respondents recommended. In my survey it got 22% of the vote.
Help a B2B Writer is a platform run by Superpath that is similar to HARO but focused on connecting business-to-business (B2B) journalists with industry experts and sources for their stories.
Price: Free and paid plans. Paid plans start at $99 per month.
Coming in joint second place, Featured was popular, scoring 18% of the vote.
Featured connects journalists with experts and thought leaders. It allows experts to create profiles showcasing their expertise and helps journalists find suitable sources for their stories.
Price: Free and paid plans. Paid plans start at $99 per month.
Qwoted is another platform that I’ve heard talked about a lot. It came in joint second place, scoring 18% of the vote.
Qwoted matches journalists with expert sources, allowing them to collaborate on creating high-quality content. It streamlines the process of finding and connecting with relevant sources.
Price: Free for ten pitches per month
Despite being the “new HARO,” Connectively came 4th on my list, scoring 12% of the vote—surprisingly, it wasn’t even the top choice for most users on its own platform.
Connectively connects journalists with sources and experts. It helps journalists find relevant sources for their stories and allows experts to gain media exposure.
Price: Free and paid plans. Paid plans start at $5.95 per month.
SourceBottle is an online platform that connects journalists, bloggers, and media professionals with expert sources. It allows experts to pitch their ideas and insights to journalists looking for story sources. It scored 9% of the vote in my survey.
Price: Free.
JournoRequest is an X account that shares journalist requests for sources. UK-based journalists and experts often use it, but it can sometimes have international reach. It scored 7% of the vote in my survey.
Price: Paid. Plans start at $1,150 per year.
ProfNet connects journalists to expert sources. It helps journalists find knowledgeable sources for their articles, interviews, and other media content. It helps subject matter experts gain media exposure and share their expertise. It scored 5% of the vote in my survey.
Price: 7-day free trial and paid plans. Paid plans start at $147 per month.
JustReachOut is a PR and influencer outreach platform that helps businesses find and connect with relevant journalists and influencers. It provides tools for personalized outreach and relationship management. It scored 3% of the vote in my survey.
Price: 14-day free trial and paid plans. Paid plans start at $50 per month.
OnePitch is a platform that simplifies the process of pitching story ideas to journalists. Businesses and PR professionals can create and send targeted pitches to relevant media outlets. It scored 3% of the vote in my survey.
Price: Free.
PitchRate is a free PR tool that connects journalists and highly rated experts. Useful for subject matter experts looking for free PR leads, media coverage, or publicity. Or journalists looking for credible sources. It scored 1% of the vote in my survey.
Price: Free and paid plans. Paid plans start at ~$105 per month.
A UK service that connects media professionals with expert sources, press releases, and PR contacts. It scored 1% of the vote in my survey.
Price: Invitation-only platform.
Forbes Councils is an invitation-only community for executives and entrepreneurs. Members can contribute expert insights and thought leadership content to Forbes.com and gain media exposure. It scored 1% of the vote in my survey.
Price: Free.
Yes, you read that right.
HERO was created by Peter Shankman, the original creator of HARO, who said the platform will always be free. It scored 1% of the vote in my survey.
Peter set up the platform after receiving over 2,000 emails asking him to build a new version of HARO.
Price: Paid. Sign up for details.
Meltwater received no votes in my survey, but I included it because I’d seen it shared on social media as a paid alternative to HARO.
It’s a media intelligence and social media monitoring platform. It provides tools for tracking media coverage, analyzing sentiment, and identifying influencers and journalists for outreach.
Price: Free.
Expertise Finder also received no votes in my survey, but it was included as I saw it had been recommended as an HARO alternative on LinkedIn. It’s a platform that helps journalists find and connect with expert sources from universities.
HARO had a dual purpose for SEOs: it was a place to acquire links, but it also was a place to get expert quotes on topics for your next article.
Here are a few more free methods outside the platforms we’ve covered that can help you get expert quotes and links.
We’ve already seen that JournoRequest is a popular X account that shares journalist requests for sources.
But you can also follow hashtags on X to access even more opportunities.
Here are my favorite hashtags to follow:
I used to track the #journorequest hashtag to find opportunities for my clients when I worked agency-side, so I know it can work well for quotes and link acquisition.
Here are two opportunities I found just checking the #journorequest hashtag:
Here’s another example from the Telegraph—a DR 92 website:
Certain types of content are more likely to be shared by journalists and PRs than others.
One of these types of content is statistics-based content. The reason? Journalists often use statistics to support their points.
Once they have included your statistic in their post, they often add a backlink back to your post.
We tested this with our SEO statistics post, and as you can see, it still ranks number one in Google.
Another method is to use the Linking authors report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer. This report shows the authors’ names who link to any website you enter.
You can see which authors link to their site by entering your competitor’s domain. Some of these authors may represent outreach opportunities for your website as well.
- Head to Site Explorer, click on Linking authors
- Type in your competitor’s URL
- Contact any authors that you think may be interested in your website and its content
Tip
If you download your website’s linking authors and your competitors into a spreadsheet and put them into separate tabs, you can compare the lists to see which authors are only linking to your competitor’s website.
When I was about to wrap up this article, I was contacted by Greg Heilers of Jolly SEO on LinkedIn.
He said he’d sent 200,000+ pitches over the years and wanted to share the results with me.
These are his top three platforms over the last 1,000 pitches he sent. Interestingly, we can see that it’s similar to my much smaller-scale survey.
Hopefully, the data here speaks for itself. The high-quality links and traffic from HARO alternatives is considerable.
This research shows that Featured gained the most link placements in this campaign.
We have compiled some helpful content related to link building that you can get your teeth into. These hand-picked guides will take you from beginner to expert in no time.
Here are my favorite resources on this topic:
Final thoughts
There are many options for sourcing expert quotes and getting links for your next marketing campaigns. HARO may be dead, but its legacy lives on.
My highly unscientific survey suggests that most “new HARO” users liked Help a B2B Writer the most, but for HARO purists, there really is only one choice—HERO.
Give your favorites from this list a whirl, and let me know if you have any success. Got more questions? Ping me on X. 🙂
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