SEO
The Three Pillars Of SEO: Authority, Relevance, And Experience
What do you need to compete in SEO?
Some say more inbound links, others better content, while some might emphasize a technically healthy site.
Experienced SEOs know that the most successful sites when it comes to organic search have the right mix of high-level fundamentals.
In recent years, there has been a lot of attention around E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) as mentioned in Google’s Search Rater Quality Guidelines.
Some have come to think of these as the most fundamental aspects of SEO.
However, as important as E-A-T maybe for some sites, it only addresses one aspect: content.
A holistic SEO program needs to include more.
Over the years, I’ve come to think that SEO can be reduced at its most fundamental level to building three things into a site and its pages:
- Authority.
- Relevance.
- Experience (of the users and bots visiting the site).
The sites that pay attention to all three of these are more likely to be valued by both search engines and users, and attract more organic traffic over time.
Notice that one of my categories, Authority, overlaps with an E-A-T category.
That’s because I believe at the highest level of SEO, expertise and trustworthiness are really parts of what makes a site or page authoritative.
Let’s dive into each of these A-R-E categories to see how they should be incorporated into a holistic SEO program.
Authority: Do You Matter?
In SEO, authority refers to the importance or weight given to a page relative to a given search query.
Modern search engines such as Google use many factors (or signals) when evaluating the authority of a webpage.
Why does Google care about assessing the authority of a page?
For most queries, there are thousands or even millions of pages available that could be ranked.
Google wants to bring to the top the ones that are most likely to satisfy the user with accurate, reliable information that fully answers the intent of the query.
Google cares about serving users the most authoritative pages for their queries because users that are satisfied by the pages they click through to from Google are more likely to use Google again, and thus get more exposure to Google’s ads, the primary source of its revenue.
Authority Came First
Assessing the authority of webpages was the first fundamental problem search engines had to solve.
Some of the earliest search engines relied on human evaluators, but as the world wide web exploded, that quickly became impossible to scale.
Google overtook all its rivals because its creators, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed the idea of PageRank, using links from other pages on the web as weighed citations to assess the authoritativeness of a page.
Page and Brin realized that links were an already-existing system of constantly evolving polling where other authoritative sites “voted” for pages they saw as reliable and relevant to their users.
Search engines use links much like we might treat scholarly citations. The more scholarly papers relevant to a source document that cite it, the better.
The relative authority and trustworthiness of each of the citing source come into play as well.
So, of our three fundamental categories, authority came first because it was the easiest of the three to crack given the ubiquity of hyperlinks on the web.
The other two, relevance and user experience, would be tackled later, as machine learning/AI-driven algorithms developed.
Links Still Primary For Authority
The big innovation that made Google the dominant search engine in a short period was that it used an analysis of links on the web as a ranking factor.
This started with a paper written by Larry Page and Sergey Brin called The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.
The essential insight behind this paper was that the web is built on the notion of documents inter-connected with each other via links.
Since putting a link on your site to a third-party site might cause a user to leave your site, there was little incentive for a publisher to link to another site, unless it was really good and of great value to their site’s users.
In other words, linking to a third-party site acts a bit like a “vote” for it, and each vote could be considered an endorsement, endorsing the page the link points to as one of the best resources on the web for a given topic.
Then, in principle, the more votes you get, the better and the more authoritative a search engine would consider you to be, and you should therefore rank higher.
Passing PageRank
A significant piece of the initial Google algorithm was based on the concept of PageRank, a system for evaluating which pages are the most important based on scoring the links they receive.
So, a page that has large quantities of valuable links pointing to it will have a higher PageRank, and in principle will be likely to rank higher in the search results than other pages without as high a PageRank score.
When a page links to another page, it passes a portion of its PageRank to the page it links to.
Thus, pages accumulate more PageRank based on the number and quality of links they receive.
Not All Links Are Created Equal
So more votes are better, right?
Well, that’s true in theory, but it’s a lot more complicated than that.
PageRank scores range from a base value of one to values that likely exceed trillions.
Higher PageRank pages can have a lot more PageRank to pass than lower PageRank pages. In fact, a link from one page can easily be worth more than one million times a link from another page.
Let’s use our intuition for a moment.
Imagine you have a page that’s selling a book, and it gets two links. One is from Joe’s Book Store, and the other one is from Amazon.
It’s pretty obvious which one you would value more as a user, right? As users, we recognize that Amazon has more authority on this topic.
As it turns out, the web has recognized this as well, and Amazon has a much more powerful link profile (and higher PageRank) than any other site involved in selling books.
As a result, it has a much higher PageRank, and can pass more PageRank to the pages that it links to.
It’s important to note that Google’s algorithms have evolved a long way from the original PageRank thesis.
The way that links are evaluated has changed in significant ways – some of which we know, and some of which we don’t.
What About Trust?
You may hear many people talk about the role of trust in search rankings and in evaluating link quality.
For the record, Google says they don’t have a concept of trust they apply to links (or ranking), so you should take those discussions with many grains of salt.
These discussions began because of a Yahoo patent on the concept of TrustRank.
The idea was that if you started with a seed set of hand-picked, highly trusted sites, and you then counted the number of clicks it took you to go from those sites to yours, the fewer clicks the more trusted your site was.
Google has long said they don’t use this type of metric.
However, in April 2018, Google was granted a patent related to evaluating the trustworthiness of links. But the existence of a granted patent does not mean it’s used in practice.
For your own purposes, however, if you want to assess the trustworthiness of a site as a source of a link, using the concept of trusted links is not a bad idea.
If they do any of the following, then it probably isn’t a good source for a link:
- Sell links to others.
- Have less than great content.
- Otherwise don’t appear reputable.
Google may not be calculating trust the way you do in your analysis, but chances are good that some other aspect of their system will devalue that link anyway.
Fundamentals Of Earning & Attracting Links
Now that you know that obtaining links to your site is critical to SEO success, it’s time to start putting together a plan to get some.
The key to success is understanding that Google wants this entire process to be holistic.
Google actively discourages, and in some cases punishes, schemes to get links in an artificial way. This means certain practices are seen as bad, such as:
- Buying links for SEO purposes.
- Going to forums and blogs and adding comments with links back to your site.
- Hacking people’s sites and injecting links into their content.
- Distributing poor-quality infographics or widgets that include links back to your pages.
- Offering discount codes or affiliate programs as a way to get links.
- And many other schemes where the resulting links are artificial in nature.
What Google really wants is for you to make a fantastic website, and promote it effectively, with the result that you earn or attract links.
So, how do you do that?
Who Links?
The first key insight is to understand who it is that might link to the content that you create.
Here is a chart that profiles the major groups of people in any given market space:
Who do you think are the people that might implement links?
It’s certainly not the laggards, and it’s also not the early or late majority.
It’s the innovators and early adopters. These are the people who write on media sites, or have blogs, and who might add links to your site.
There are also other sources of links, such as locally-oriented sites, such as the local chamber of commerce or local newspapers.
You might also find some opportunities with colleges and universities if they have pages that relate to some of the things you’re doing in your market space.
Relevance: Will Users Swipe Right On Your Page?
You have to be relevant to a given topic.
Think of every visit to a page as an encounter on a dating app. Will users “swipe right” (thinking, “this looks like a good match!)?
If you have a page about Tupperware, it doesn’t matter how many links you get – you’ll never rank for queries related to used cars.
This defines a limitation on the power of links as a ranking factor, and it shows how relevance also impacts the value of a link.
Consider a page on a site that is selling a used Ford Mustang. Imagine that it gets a link from Car and Driver magazine. That link is highly relevant.
Also, think of this intuitively. Is it likely that Car and Driver magazine has some expertise related to Ford Mustangs? Of course, they do.
In contrast, imagine a link to that Ford Mustang from a site that usually writes about sports. Is the link still helpful?
Probably, but not as helpful, because there is less evidence to Google that the sports site has a lot of knowledge about used Ford Mustangs.
In short, the relevance of the linking page, and the linking site, impacts how valuable a link might be considered.
What are some ways that Google evaluates relevance?
The Role Of Anchor Text
Anchor text is another aspect of links that matters to Google.
The anchor text helps Google confirm what the content on the page receiving the link is about.
For example, if the anchor text is the phrase “iron bathtubs” and the page has content on that topic, the anchor text, plus the link, acts as further confirmation that the page is about that topic.
Thus, the links act to evaluate both the relevance and authority of the page.
Be careful, though, as you don’t want to go aggressively obtaining links to your page that all use your main key phrase as the anchor text.
Google also looks for signs that you are manually manipulating links for SEO purposes.
One of the simplest indicators is if your anchor text looks manually manipulated.
Internal Linking
There is growing evidence that Google uses internal linking to evaluate how relevant a site is to a topic.
Properly structured internal links connecting related content are a way of showing Google that you have the topic well-covered, with pages about many different aspects.
By the way, anchor text is as important when creating external links as it is for external, inbound links.
Related to internal linking is your overall site structure.
Think strategically about where your pages fall in your site hierarchy. If it makes sense for users it will probably be useful to search engines.
The Content Itself
Of course, the most important indicator of the relevance of a page has to be the content on that page.
Most SEOs are aware that assessing the relevance of content to a query has become way more sophisticated than merely having the keywords a user is searching for.
Due to advances in natural language processing and machine learning, search engines like Google have vastly increased their competence in being able to assess the content on a page.
What are some things Google likely looks for in determining what queries a page should be relevant for?
- Keywords: While the days of keyword stuffing as an effective SEO tactic are (thankfully) way behind us, having certain words on a page still matters. My company has numerous case studies showing that merely adding key terms that are common among top-ranking pages for a topic is often enough to increase organic traffic to a page.
- Depth: The top-ranking pages for a topic usually cover the topic at the right depth. That is, they have enough content to cover the topic to satisfy searchers for a query, and/or are linked to/from pages that help flesh out the topic.
- Structure: Structural elements like H1…H2…H3, bolded topic headings, and schema structured data may help Google better understand the relevance and coverage of a page.
What About E-A-T?
Of course, Google encourages all site owners to create content that makes a visitor feel like this is authoritative, trustworthy content written by someone with expertise appropriate to the topic.
But how much they do or are able to evaluate those categories is still a topic of debate.
The main thing to keep in mind is that the more YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) your site is the more you should pay attention to E-A-T.
YMYL sites are those whose main content addresses things that might have an effect on people’s well-being or finances.
If your site is YMYL, you should go the extra mile in ensuring the accuracy of your content, and displaying that you have qualified experts writing it.
Building A Content Marketing Plan
Last, but certainly not least, create a real plan for your content marketing.
Don’t just suddenly start doing a lot of random stuff.
Take the time to study what your competitors are doing so you can invest your content marketing efforts in a way that’s likely to provide a solid ROI.
One approach to doing that is to pull their backlink profiles using tools that can do that.
With this information, you can see what types of links they’ve been getting and then based on that figure out what links you need to get to beat them.
Take the time to do this exercise and also to map which links are going to which pages on the competitors’ sites, as well as what each of those pages rank for.
Building out this kind of detailed view will help you scope out your plan of attack and give you some understanding of what keywords you might be able to rank for.
It’s well worth the effort!
In addition, study the competitor’s content plans.
Learn what they are doing and carefully consider what you can do that’s different.
Focus on developing a very clear differentiation in your content for topics that are in high demand with your potential customers.
This is another investment of time that will be very well spent.
Experience
As we traced above, Google started by focusing on the ranking pages by authority, then found ways to assess relevance.
The third evolution of search was the evaluation of user experience.
In fact, many SEOs (and I’m among them) prefer to speak of SEO not as Search Engine Optimization, but as Search Experience Optimization.
Google realized that authoritativeness and relevancy, as important as they are, were not the only things users were looking for when searching.
Users also want a good experience on the pages and sites Google sends them to.
What is a “good user experience”? It includes at least the following:
- The page the searcher lands on is what they would expect to see given their query. No bait and switch.
- The content on the landing page is highly relevant to the user’s query.
- The content is sufficient to answer the intent of the user’s query but also links to other relevant sources and related topics.
- The page loads quickly, the relevant content is immediately apparent, and page elements settle into place quickly (all aspects of Google’s Page Experience Update).
In addition, many of the suggestions made above about creating better content apply to user experience as well.
In summary, Google wants to rank pages that satisfy the query and make it as easy as possible for the searcher to identify and understand what they were searching for.
Putting It All Together
Search engines want happy users who will come back to them again and again when they have a question or need.
The way they create and sustain that happiness is by providing the best possible results that satisfy that question or need.
To keep their users happy, search engines must be able to understand and measure the relative authority of webpages for the topics they cover.
When you create content that is highly useful (or engaging or entertaining) to visitors – and when those visitors find your content reliable enough that they would willingly return again to your site, or even seek you out above others – you’ve gained authority.
The search engines work hard at continually improving their ability to match that human quest for trustworthy authority.
As we explained above, that same kind of quality content is key to earning the kinds of links that assure the search engines you should rank highly for relevant searches.
That can be either content on your site that others want to link to or content that other quality, relevant sites want to veröffentlichen, with appropriate links back to your site.
Focusing on these three pillars of SEO – authority, relevance, and experience – will increase the opportunities for your content and make link-earning easier.
You now have everything you need to know for SEO success, so get to work!
Beitragsbild: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
![Wie Sie die Aufmerksamkeit Ihrer Kunden gewinnen und zum Handeln provozieren [VIDEO]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/How-To-Win-Your-Customers-Attention-amp-Provoke-Action-VIDEO-400x240.jpg "Wie Sie die Aufmerksamkeit Ihrer Kunden gewinnen und zum Handeln provozieren [VIDEO]")
![Wie Sie die Aufmerksamkeit Ihrer Kunden gewinnen und zum Handeln provozieren [VIDEO]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/How-To-Win-Your-Customers-Attention-amp-Provoke-Action-VIDEO-80x80.jpg "Wie Sie die Aufmerksamkeit Ihrer Kunden gewinnen und zum Handeln provozieren [VIDEO]")
SEO
Inside The Decentralized Social Media Platform
Are you interested in the new social media platform aiming to compete with Twitter?
Bluesky is a decentralized social network led by CEO Jay Graber, with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on its board of directors.
What Is Bluesky?
In December 2019, Dorsey announced through a series of tweets that Twitter would fund a small independent team of up to five people to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media.
The aim was for Twitter to become a client of this standard one day.
Dorsey highlighted several factors prompting this move:
- The challenges posed by centralized control include difficulties in global policy enforcement to address abuse and misinformation.
- The shifting value of social media from content hosting and removal to recommendation algorithms. These algorithms, which currently are typically proprietary, direct users’ attention. Dorsey hopes Bluesky would allow for alternatives to be built.
- Existing incentives in social media often draw attention to controversial and outrageous content instead of promoting informative and healthy conversations.
- Recent technological advances, like blockchain, have made decentralized solutions more viable. These solutions could lead to open and durable hosting, governance, and monetization.
We’re calling this team @bluesky. Our CTO @ParagA will be running point to find a lead, who will then hire and direct the rest of the team. Please follow or DM @bluesky if you’re interested in learning more or joining! 🌐💬💙
— jack (@jack) December 11, 2019
Bluesky strives to make social networks function similarly to email, blogs, or phone numbers as open systems that facilitate online interactions.
Bluesky developers created the AT Protocol, which is nearing completion. The AT Protocol aims to make modern social media and online public conversations more akin to the early Internet era when anyone could create a blog or use RSS to follow multiple blogs.
The Bluesky app demonstrates the features of this protocol.
Bluesky hopes this will lead to new advancements in social media, enabling researchers and communities to solve issues currently faced by social networks, as tweeted by Dorsey.
Social Media Problems Bluesky Hopes To Solve
Most traditional social networks are closed platforms controlled by a central authority that dictates user and developer permissions.
If a user decides to leave a traditional social network, they must begin anew, losing their connections and content. For developers, creating a new app requires overcoming network effects and rebuilding the social graph from the beginning.
Additionally, they risk being shut down abruptly if they try to build using these companies’ APIs.
Similarly, content creators may lose their audience if the platform changes its rules.
The AT Protocol is designed to change this scenario, offering a more open, democratic, and innovative environment for users, developers, and content creators.
How To Get A Bluesky Invite Code
There are several ways to get an invitation to Bluesky.
You can sign up for the waitlist and wait for an invitation to join from Bluesky.
You can ask your friends on other social networks if they have an invite.
You can search Bluesky invite code on Twitter. Check the latest results and reply quickly to get an invite. (This is the method that worked for me.)
Screenshot from Twitter, May 2023You can even buy an invite code for Bluesky on eBay.
Screenshot from eBay, May 2023How To Create Your Bluesky Account
Once you have your invitation code, you can create your account on the website or the Bluesky app from the Appstore oder Google Play.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023You can choose the default Bluesky server ([email protected]) or follow these directions to use your own domain ([email protected]). You can change to your own domain later in your account settings.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023Next, enter your invite code, email, password, and birthdate.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023Finally, choose a user handle. You can change this later in your account settings.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023How To Edit Your Bluesky Profile
Once you’ve completed your account setup, you will want to visit your profile and edit it before connecting with others.
You can add a cover photo, profile photo, display name, and 256-character description.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023While there is no specific field for links to your website or other social profiles, you can place a link in the description.
How To Post An Update On Bluesky
Bluesky allows you to post 300-character updates with text, up to four images, and links.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023Note that all profiles and posts are public, and the user content you share is subject to Bluesky’s Terms of Service.
Within the Terms of Service, Bluesky notes that when you share any content (such as text, images, or videos) on a platform or service provided by Bluesky, you give Bluesky and its related companies the right to use and share that content.
With these terms, Bluesky can use, copy, modify, distribute, and display your content in various ways, including promoting Bluesky and its services through social media channels.
I’m going to try to clarify here. First of all, Jack is 1 of 3 board members of Bluesky, and does not have any personal license to any content.
The “rights to user-generated content” term lets us do stuff like this — use screenshots of user-generated content in the app store. pic.twitter.com/yp4SOgJfBS
— Jay Graber (@arcalinea) April 28, 2023
They can do this without paying you. On the upside, they won’t use your content in any sponsored content without your permission.
How To Build Your Bluesky Network
To find people to connect with, use the search to find posts and users with specific keywords.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023You can reply to, repost, and like posts by other users. The three dots offer additional options, including translating and sharing with other networks.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023Switch to the Users tab to find related accounts to follow.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023When you visit another user’s profile, you can follow them or use the three dots to find more options, including one to add the user to a list.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023Bluesky Lists Vs. Twitter Lists
It’s essential to note Bluesky lists are not like Twitter lists.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023On Twitter, you add users to lists when you want to follow them more closely.
On Bluesky, you add users to lists to mute their activity.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023When you create a Bluesky mute list, it will be visible on your profile. You can, however, follow other users’ mute lists to ignore the same group of users privately.
In addition to public mute lists, you can access more ways to moderate the content you see on Bluesky in the Moderation section.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023Here, you can update your content filtering settings, mute an account, or block an account.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023My Feeds
My Feeds allows users to create custom algorithms for displaying content.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023This feed, created by the Bluesky team, shows updates from those you follow and the people they like.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023How To Change Your Bluesky User Handle Or Domain
As mentioned, you can visit your account settings to change your user handle.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023You can also update your user handle to use your domain instead of @bsky.social.
Screenshot from Bluesky, May 2023The Next Step In Decentralized Social Media
Bluesky may present an approach to decentralized social media that could mitigate many issues plaguing traditional social platforms today.
Bluesky appears dedicated to ushering in a new digital communication era with the AT Protocol’s continued development.
With the issues it aims to solve and the open standard it seeks to establish, Bluesky could be the blueprint for the future of social media. It remains to be seen how well Bluesky will perform once it comes out of beta.
Featured image: Tada Images/Shutterstock
SEO
3 Steps To Building A Winning Holistic Search Strategy
A multi-channel, holistic approach to search marketing is a must in today’s digital marketing space.
You can maximize digital shelf space by removing silos between teams and finding synergies on how paid and organic search can work together.
On May 10, I moderated a webinar with Wayne Cichanski, Vice President of Search and Site Experience at iQuanti, and Erin Wilson, VP of Marketing at HomeEquity Bank.
Cichanski and Wilson demonstrated how to combine insights and data from paid and organic channels to create a cohesive search strategy that enhances online visibility.
Hier ist eine Zusammenfassung des Webinars. Um auf die gesamte Präsentation zuzugreifen, Füllen sie das Formular aus.
Step 1: Learn The Power Of Integrating Your Paid & Organic Search Strategy
SEO & SEM each have different roles, places, and advantages.
But these differences help provide insights into gaps that the other marketing school of thought has.
As such, these two channels can work very well together given a cohesive strategy that integrates both of their beneficial aspects.
So, how do you go about understanding the data that each process brings to the table?
How do you tap into the power of these two channels without needing to increase bandwidth?
One way is to start maximizing your digital shelf space.
[What is digital shelf space?] Find out – Instantly access the on-demand webinar →
Start By Maximizing Your Digital Shelf Space
Between paid results, organic results, People Also Ask (PAA), stories, local map packs, the AnswerBox, video carousels, and more, there are many areas in which you can own a higher market share of a SERP.
So when you think about a cohesive strategy, you’ll need to consider these are these steps:
- Review total digital shelf space.
- Know what keywords trigger what.
- Build assets to acquire.
[Discover how to do each step] Instantly access the on-demand webinar →
After going through these steps, you can now start merging strategies.
Bring Different Tactics Together
Next, focus on synchronizing your research and common messaging across organic site pages, paid search ads, social, display, email, and thought leadership.
You can do this by:
- Carrying the messaging across the entire funnel.
- Using dual rankings to elevate impression share.
- Increasing the halo effect by driving paid to organic.
- Modifying bidding strategies for branded, non-branded mid-funnel vs. lower.
- Discovering and building a common foundation between paid and organic.
[Dive deeper] Instantly accesses the on-demand webinar →
Step 2: Understand The Roles Of Your Marketing Channels
Understanding the roles and expectations for each channel sets them up for maximum contribution.
But before you start, understand that customer centricity is vital. Always consider your customer’s needs, preferences, and behaviors.
Then, leverage each channel for different stages and behavioral needs of the user.
Screenshot by iQuanti, May 2023Knowing each channel’s defined role means you’ll know what to expect and measure in each corresponding stage.
[Learn how HomeEquity Bank leverages each channel] Instantly access the on-demand webinar →
Step 3: Deliver A Connected Search Program
To understand the roles and expectations for maximum contribution, start attacking the SERP positions and journey milestones collectively by:
- Measuring them together.
- Identifying key themes along the journey.
- Developing bid strategies.
[Learn what each step entails] Instantly access the on-demand webinar →
Increase Conversions With Paid Branded & Non-Branded Search
Hinsichtlich Branded Search, focus on maximizing conversion & reducing leakage by occupying a secondary position from a neutral test bed site to push down competitors.
In other words, you can push the competitors down from the top by having a high-visibility listing.
In a Non-Brand Search, a good approach is to segment intents by conversion potential. This quadrant better explains this:
[Slides] 3 Steps To Building A Winning Holistic Search Strategy
Hier ist die Präsentation:
Bildnachweis:
Beitragsbild: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
SEO
YouTube Marketing: A Beginner’s Guide
YouTube, the second most visited website in the world, has changed how we consume content and created a huge marketing opportunity for brands.
But how does YouTube marketing work, and how effective is it as a marketing channel?
In this guide to YouTube marketing, you will learn the different types of videos that produce the best content marketing results and how to leverage this top social media platform.
What Is YouTube Marketing?
YouTube marketing is the process of promoting a brand, product, or service through video content on the YouTube platform.
This type of marketing involves creating videos to increase brand awareness, engage a target audience, and drive sales and revenue.
The key to successful YouTube marketing is to create high-quality, engaging video content that resonates with your target audience and delivers value.
YouTube viewers say good content tells a good story; It’s relevant to their interests, expands their perspectives or ways of thinking, and makes them feel something emotionally.
Organic YouTube Marketing
There are 10 types of organic videos that brands can use for YouTube marketing:
- Social media videos (e.g., YouTube Shorts, Stories, and Community posts).
- How-to videos and/or explainer videos.
- Branded stories (e.g., short films, series, and/or documentaries).
- Interviews with influencers and/or subject matter experts.
- Thought-leadership videos with company leaders.
- Stories about your organization.
- Customer testimonials, case studies, and/or success stories.
- Product demonstrations, either animated or actual.
- External training videos and/or formal education on topics.
- Livestreaming videos (e.g., YouTube Live and Premieres).
More than 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute, so it’s a crowded space. That’s why YouTube marketing is not just about uploading a video and being organically discovered.
YouTube Paid Video Marketing
If you’re establishing a new brand or channel on YouTube, you can get faster results with a paid strategy as you organically build your number of subscribers.
There are several YouTube and Google Ads solutions that support different business goals and marketing objectives – from increasing brand awareness to building consideration or driving action.
In Google Ads, you can create compelling video campaigns with various video ad formats to engage customers in different ways on YouTube and across Google video partner sites.
For paid YouTube advertising strategies, there are three main approaches:
1. Ads For Increasing Brand Awareness
- Bumper ads: Highlight your brand’s most memorable messages with quick, non-skippable ads up to six seconds long.
- Non-skippable in-stream ads: Make sure potential customers see the full story with a non-skippable ad that plays before, during, or after their video on YouTube and across websites and apps running on Google video partners.
- Masthead ads: Reach a massive audience in a short amount of time by featuring your brand’s ad at the top of the YouTube home feed on desktop, mobile, and TV screens.
2. Ads For Boosting Interest And Consideration
- Skippable in-stream ads: Reach as many people as possible on a budget with ads that allow viewers to skip the ad after five seconds and run before, during, or after a video plays.
- YouTube BrandConnect: Connects creators in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K. with brands for branded content campaigns.
3. Ads For Driving People To Purchase, Subscribe, And Take Action
- In-feed video ads: Use images to reach people as they browse their YouTube Home and Watch Next feeds, Discover feed, and the Promotions and Social tabs on Gmail.
- Video action campaigns: Reach as many people as possible on your budget with skippable ads that run before, during, or after a video plays.
How Can Marketers Use YouTube?
Businesses and brands can use YouTube in various ways to achieve their marketing goals.
Out of the 10 types of YouTube videos you can produce (listed above), a survey from the Content Marketing Institute found 5 types of these videos produced the best content marketing results.
1. Social Media Videos
Social media video brand campaigns on YouTube have one thing in common: They provide value to their audience. They also have an emotional hook that will stimulate sharing.
Examples:
- Dove India launched Project #ShowUS, a social video campaign intended to challenge stereotypes of what is and isn’t considered beautiful.
- Gillette launched We Believe: The Best Men Can Be, a social video campaign aiming at a modern interpretation of manhood.
- BuzzFeed Video and Purina Friskies launched Dear Kitten, a social video campaign featuring an older house cat teaching a kitten how to be a cat.
2. How-To Videos
How-to videos educate audiences. Brands can use these to build trust and credibility with the audience, as well as establish themselves as an expert in their industry.
Here are some recent examples of successful YouTube marketing campaigns that used how-to videos or explainer videos:
- L’Oréal has created a series of how-to videos, helping to fulfill the beauty aspirations of consumers worldwide. This includes How To Apply Lash Idôle Mascara by Lancôme USA, which has 15.6 million views.
- Samsung India used ‘how-to’ videos to promote its latest Galaxy A73 5G, including How To Take Screenshots With A ‘Palm Swipe’ On Your Samsung Smartphone, which has 60 million views. These videos provided in-depth demonstrations of the features and capabilities of the devices, helping consumers to understand the value of these products.
- Google used explainer videos to educate consumers about its various products and services, including A (Home) Movie About How Google Search Works, which has 91 million views. These videos are helpful in simplifying complex topics and making them accessible to a wider audience.
3. Branded Stories
The key to success with branded stories is to create engaging and compelling content that resonates with the target audience and supports the brand’s overall marketing goals.
Here are a few examples of successful YouTube marketing campaigns that used branded videos in recent years:
- Clash of Clan’s Lost & Crowned tells the story of Larry’s first day on the job, guarding the Red King’s crown with his big brother Peter on a late-night shift. What could possibly go wrong? This short film got 62.5 million views and 1.3 million engagements.
- Hyundai Worldwide’s Hyundai x BTS I Hydrogen Documentary is a short documentary that aims to increase Gen Z’s involvement in hydrogen and to make a difference through solidarity. The use of infographics also helps people understand hydrogen better. This documentary got 12 million views and 124,000 engagements.
- Patagonia’s The Fight For America’s Public Lands is a feature-length documentary about America’s system of public lands and the fight to protect them. One part love letter, one part political exposé, this film got 2.8 million views and 18,200 engagements.
4. Customer Testimonials
Brands can showcase positive customer experiences and testimonials in their YouTube videos, helping to build trust and credibility with the audience.
Some recent examples of successful YouTube marketing campaigns that used customer testimonials, case studies, or success stories include:
- AmeriSave Mortgage has created a series of customer testimonials. For example, Christine’s Refinance is the story of how AmeriSave’s loan originators helped Christine, a single mother, get a low rate when she decided to refinance her mortgage on her New Orleans home – saving her hundreds of dollars a month while also allowing her to pay off debt. This customer testimonial got 3.9 million views.
- Sell on Amazon has created a series of studies; for example, New Republic, which shares the case study of the digitally-native footwear brand, got 8.5 million views.
- Shopify has created a series of success stories; for example, Maye-Williams Active, which tells the story of the 100% Black-owned activewear company, got 22 million views.
5. Interviews With Influencers
By partnering with influencers or subject matter experts, brands can tap into their expertise, reach a new audience, and establish a strong connection with their target market.
Here are some recent examples of successful YouTube marketing campaigns that used interviews with these individuals – or even people on the street – to create engaging and informative content on YouTube:
- Nike’s campaign, You Can’t Stop Us, featured a series of interviews with various athletes and influencers. The videos highlighted the resilience and determination of these individuals and showed how they overcame challenges and continued to pursue their goals despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Luxe Collective, which buys and sells pre-owned luxury brands, has created a series of street interviews; for example, the video, Stopping People On The BUSIEST Street In Europe To Ask 1 Question, has 34.5 million views.
What Are The Benefits Of YouTube Marketing?
YouTube marketing can help businesses grow their brand and reach new audiences on the video-sharing platform in several ways.
Reach A Global Audience
YouTube has over 2 billion monthly logged-in users, making it the world’s largest social video platform. And every month, they watch over a billion hours of video on YouTube.
There are localized versions of YouTube in over 100 countries worldwide across 80 languages. This enables brands to reach a massive global audience with customized local campaigns.
Reach Your Potential Customers
YouTube.com is the no. 2 most visited website globally, behind Google.com. This means the video-sharing site is the world’s largest social media platform.
YouTube enables virtually any business in every industry to reach potential customers when and where they’re searching, browsing, or watching video content.
Integrated With TV Viewing
Despite its origins as a website and its evolution into a mobile app, YouTube is now being watched by a growing percentage of Americans on connected TVs (CTVs).
According to Insider Intelligence, 38.1% of the time spent daily on YouTube in 2023 is on connected devices like smart TVs and game consoles, 48.5% on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, and only 13.4% on desktops and laptops.
So, how do you leverage YouTube for your brand in today’s multiple-device era?
Engage The Segments That Matter Most To Your Business
YouTube enables advertisers to go beyond demographics to target affinity segments (people whose interests and habits relate to what their business offers) and in-market segments (people actively researching or planning to purchase products or services like theirs).
So, YouTube connects you to the people who matter most to your business, from foodies down the block to business buyers of industrial food-service equipment for commercial kitchens across the country.
Engage Consumers At Every Stage Of Their Journey
Videos tend to be more engaging than other forms of content, such as text or images.
A Google/Talk Shoppe study in 2020 found 75% of respondents said advertising in YouTube videos makes them more aware of new brands or products.
And Google data found 90% of people globally say they discovered new brands or products on YouTube.
To bolster brand awareness and convert leads, many brands use a full-funnel YouTube marketing strategy encompassing multiple objectives.
Measure Channel Performance, Brand Lift, And Conversions
You can use YouTube Analytics to better understand your video and channel performance with key metrics like watch time, views, likes, shares, and comments.
You can use Brand Lift surveys to measure the effectiveness of your video ads with key metrics such as ad recall, brand awareness, and consideration.
And you can use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to measure engaged-view conversions (EVCs) from YouTube. This enables you to measure all the different stages of the buyer journey.
How Effective Is YouTube Marketing?
The effectiveness of YouTube marketing can vary depending on several factors, such as the target audience, the relevance and quality of the content, and the marketing goals.
However, when executed correctly, YouTube marketing can be a highly effective tool for brands and businesses.
It also helps to have an accurate model of how people use YouTube to move through the customer journey on their own terms to understand how to make your video marketing more effective.
Research reveals TikTok’s impact on the consumers’ purchase journeys and found the path to purchase on TikTok looks more like an “infinite loop” than the traditional funnel, which William W. Townsend first proposed in 1924.
But the ‘Messy Middle’ of the Purchase Journey model was based on research by Google’s consumer insights team in the U.K., which found that consumers loop between exploring and evaluating the options available to them until they are ready to purchase.
Screenshot from Thinkwithgoogle.com, March 2023There is also a third model of a similar looping process for discovering new videos and sharing compelling content, inspired by reading “The People’s Choice,” a book by Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, published in 1948.
Image from author, March 2023This landmark study of American voters during the 1940 and 1944 presidential elections found that interpersonal interactions and word of mouth were more significant than mass media for most voters.
Based on their research, the authors proposed a two-step flow model of communication. The first step, from media sources to opinion leaders, was a transfer of information, but the second step, from opinion leaders to their followers, also involved interpersonal influence.
YouTube marketing works much more like word-of-mouth marketing and a lot less like mass media marketing. The journey people take to become loyal customers isn’t a straight shot down a funnel. Stuart Hogg accurately observed in “Customer journey mapping: The path to loyalty”:
“In reality, this journey is often more like a sightseeing tour with stops, exploration, and discussion along the way – all moments when you need to convince people to pick your brand and stick with it instead of switching to a competitor,”
Once you understand how the social video platform works, then you are much more likely to achieve the six key benefits of YouTube marketing that are spelled out above.
YouTube Marketing Tools
Here are some of the best tools to help you with YouTube marketing:
Audience Research Tools
Tools like Find My Audience Und SparkToro can help you to understand who your most valuable customers are on YouTube and which YouTube channels, social accounts, websites, press publications, and podcasts they engage with – so your video marketing efforts can be better targeted and more effective.
Keyword Research Tools
YouTube Analytics, Google Trends, and YouTube Search Predictions are just some of the keyword research tools for YouTube.
These will help you find relevant keywords and identify popular keywords and topics related to your brand or industry, which will help you optimize your YouTube videos for search.
Video Editing Software
Uploads of short-form content on YouTube have grown 135% in Q2 of 2022 compared to 2021, according to Tubular Labs.
To keep up with this trend, you can use video editing software such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Apple’s Final Cut Pro oder iMovie to edit and enhance your YouTube videos, including adding music, sound effects, and special effects.
YouTube Thumbnail Makers
If your account is verified, you can add a custom video thumbnail on YouTube.
And tools like Canva, Placeit, Und Adobe Express can help you create stunning YouTube thumbnail images for your videos that will increase your YouTube views and subscribers without design skills or expensive graphic design software.
Social Media Management Tools
Schedule and monitor your videos on YouTube and respond to comments as well with tools such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buffer, or Later.
You may also use them to veröffentlichen your videos on other social media platforms, helping you to reach a wider audience and drive more traffic back to your YouTube channel.
YouTube Directories
Der YouTube Creative Directory contains lists of 15 collaborative partners for every stage of production and 5 affordable do-it-yourself platforms.
Meanwhile, the YouTube Services Directory can help YouTube creators, artists, media companies, and other content creators find service providers to help them grow their businesses.
Digital Analytics
Measuring your results starts with YouTube Analytics, which helps you understand your video and channel performance with key metrics and reports in YouTube Studio.
It incorporates the data and reports available in Google Ads, as well as Google’s lift measurement tools, which enable you to get fast, actionable results across the entire consumer journey.
And it includes Google Analytics, which collects data from your websites and apps to create reports that provide insights into your business.
Zusammenfassung
By now, you’ve learned the benefits of YouTube marketing, a two-step flow model for effective YouTube marketing, and seven types of marketing tools that should be in your toolkit.
So, is that enough storyboarding? Are you ready to shoot something?
Well, before you do, you may want to read 10 YouTube Marketing Strategies & Tips (With Examples).
Of course, you can always shoot first and ask questions later. But it never hurts to learn lessons from other brands that have developed content strategies that have resonated with 21st-century consumers.
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