SEO
17 Awesome Examples Of Social Media Marketing
Technology has made the world seem a lot smaller.
Keeping up with friends and family on the other side of the country or across the globe no longer requires an expensive telephone call or slow, one-way snail mail.
Instead, thanks to the power of social media, in just seconds, you can share updates about your life or check in with anyone who has internet access.
But there’s so much more to the world of social media than just making and maintaining connections – especially for savvy marketers.
Why Is Social Media Marketing Important For Brands?
For business purposes, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram present an opportunity to engage with a massive audience.
Last year, there were more than 4.7 billion people worldwide using social media platforms, which means a whole lot of potential customers.
Social media allows you to tell your story and humanize your brand.
Without a large budget allocation, it lets you build an audience and stay top of mind with your targets.
You can connect and interact with customers, deal with feedback (both positive and negative), and build authenticity just by being active on the right sites.
Not convinced? Here are some key stats about social media marketing:
From paid display ads targeting a highly specific demographic to organic posts that go viral, social media presents an incredible opportunity to evangelize your brand, increase your visibility, and find new customers.
But what separates the companies who are really killing it on social media from the thousands of also-rans who never quite seem to get any traction from their accounts?
In this piece, we’ll take a look at some outstanding ways popular brands are leveraging common platforms to inspire your campaigns.
How To Measure Social Media Marketing Effectiveness
Before we dive into the fun stuff, let’s take a moment to discuss how you can track the results of your social efforts.
Judge the effectiveness of your social media marketing by measuring your KPIs or key performance indicators.
Some KPIs you may consider include:
- Reach (the number of people who saw your post).
- Impressions (the number of times your post was seen).
- Engagement (how many likes, shares, comments, etc., you received).
- Conversions (button clicks, follow, forms filled out, etc.).
The ones you use to measure success will depend on your goals.
For example, if your goal is increasing awareness, you’ll want to examine your reach and impressions statistics.
If you’re trying to generate leads, you probably want to focus primarily on conversions.
Each brand is different, which means they will not only measure success differently but will also vary in which platforms are most effective for their social media marketing efforts.
With this in mind, we’ve broken down our examples and inspiration by platform. So, with no further ado, let’s jump in.
YouTube
1. Dove: Project #ShowUs
When: 2019
Campaign Outline:
Recognizing beauty comes in many forms, Dove launched Project #ShowUS, a social media campaign intended to challenge stereotypes of what is and isn’t considered beautiful.
Employing women and non-binary people, this campaign is a collaboration with Getty Images and Girlgaze Photographers.
The Numbers:
- The project has reached over 1.6 billion people with over 660 media pieces in 39 markets worldwide.
- More than 2,000 women pledged to create a more inclusive vision of beauty.
- In just the first year, the hashtag #ShowUs was used more than 7 million times on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
Why Did It Work?
For generations, media and advertising have presented an image of what beauty is. However, this has left 70% of women feeling like they are not represented by media and advertising.
Dove spoke directly to the feelings of its target audience, engaging with them about the brand’s value and encouraging them to take pride in being themselves.
Strategic delivery helped reach women worldwide.
2. Gillette: “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be”
When: 2019
Campaign Outline:
In January 2019, Gillette launched a social media campaign aiming at a modern interpretation of manhood.
The short film posted exclusively on YouTube depicted several cases of men struggling with traditional masculinity that Gillette itself used to glorify: the fear of showing their emotions, sexual harassment, and bullying others.
Then the film shows several examples of positive masculinity, such as standing up for others, caring for your loved ones, and so on.
The campaign was clearly inspired by the #MeToo movement.
On their Instagram, the company also posted positive male role models with short stories about their journey in the world:
- Organizers.
- Community leaders.
- Non-profits’ CEOs.
In addition to that, the company promised to donate “$1 million per year for the next three years to non-profit organizations executing the most interesting and impactful programs designed to help men of all ages achieve their personal best.”
The Numbers:
- The short film that launched the campaign has over 30 million views.
- The #GilletteAd hashtag reached more than 150 million people in one month, according to Awario (disclosure: I work for Awario), a social listening tool.
- The Instagram posts related to the campaign gathered around 800 likes and 50 comments, which is higher than usual for Gillette.
Why Did It Work?
This campaign managed to tap into an extremely relevant and widely discussed issue.
It juxtaposed the previous branding of Gillette with a new one and showed the willingness to change.
At the same time, it was also quite controversial – some people didn’t agree with how the short film portrayed men and thought that it was offensive.
They even started a #boycottgillette hashtag. However, it only took up around 3.5% of all the conversations around the campaign on social media.
THIS is how you use your brand. THIS is how you engage with your audience. Gillette being aware of mostly having a male audience and using their influence as a global brand to make a change for the better. other companies take notes pic.twitter.com/KCdxKDLji0
— 💭 (@spidervesre) January 15, 2019
3. BuzzFeed x Friskies: Dear Kitten
When: 2016
Campaign Outline:
If there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s cat videos.
Buzzfeed and Friskies tapped into this sentiment with their “Dear Kitten” videos, in which an older house cat teaches a kitten how to be a cat.
The Numbers:
- The launch video has been viewed on YouTube more than 32 million times.
- 12 follow-up videos have been viewed upwards of 3 million times each.
- The campaign led to viral TikTok parodies, with the hashtag #DearKitten receiving more than 3.6 million views.
Why Did It Work?
You don’t have to have genius-level insight into the human psyche to understand why this campaign was so successful. It has cute cats and a funny script.
4. Apple: The Shot on iPhone Challenge
When: 2015
Campaign Outline:
The world’s most popular smartphone manufacturer, Apple, takes great pride in the quality of images that can be captured on its devices.
To highlight the great photos that it can take, it launched a competition that asked iPhone users to “capture the little things in a big way.”
Photographers were then invited to share their images on Instagram and other social media sites using the hashtag #ShotOniPhone.
A panel of judges then selected 10 winners from tens of thousands of entries, which were then featured on Apple’s website, the company’s Instagram, and on 10,000+ billboards in 25 countries.
It has since become an annual campaign for the brand.
The Numbers:
- The first round of the campaign had more than 6.5 billion impressions.
- It was mentioned by 24,000 influencers, with a 95% positive comment rating.
Why Did It Work?
User-generated content (UGC) is a low-investment way for companies to promote their brand on social media, but this isn’t the reason for this campaign’s success.
Instead, Shot on iPhone encouraged people to discuss the campaign, which closely aligned with Apple’s reputation for creativity, lifestyle, and innovation.
It encouraged existing users to participate in product launches and built a sense of excitement about being part of the iPhone community.
Additionally, it gave iPhone users a sense of being part of something cool, which everyone likes.
5. Starbucks U.K.: #WhatsYourName
When: 2019
Campaign Outline:
Starbucks U.K. partnered with Mermaids, an organization to support transgender and gender-diverse youth, for a #WhatsYourName campaign focused on trans rights.
The campaign builds on a well-known aspect of the Starbucks experience – having your name written on the side of your cup – by committing to respect the names that customers want to be called by.
In addition to that, Starbucks started selling a mermaid tail cookie to raise funds for Mermaids.
Social media users were encouraged to use the hashtag on Instagram to tell about their experience with gender.
The Numbers:
- The YouTube ad gathered 605,000+ views (with less than a thousand YouTube subscribers).
- The Instagram post gathered 1,000+ comments, with an average comment rate for the Starbucks U.K. Instagram profile being around 40 comments.
Why Did It Work?
The team behind the campaign created a simple, clear campaign hashtag.
And they led with their values, which helped this campaign make a real, emotional impact.
Many brands avoid politicized topics, but ultimately, your employees and customers want you to take a stand.
Specifically, they want companies to lead on issues of diversity and community.
6. Spotify: #YearWrapped
When: 2019
Campaign Outline:
Three years ago, Spotify launched a campaign where its users could see the most important musical highlights on their website.
The special webpage Spotify Wrapped showed you your most listened artists, genres, songs, and other fun data discoveries.
You could even see how the music you listened to coincided with your life events that year.
Once you went through all the data analysis, Spotify suggested you share these highlights on social media, specifically Twitter and Insta Stories, and tag your favorite artist of the year.
The Numbers:
- According to Twitter, the campaign has been mentioned in at least 1.2 million posts in the launch month.
- More than 60 million users engaged with the in-app story experience.
- There were nearly 3 billion streams from Wrapped playlists.
Why Did It Work?
Spotify combined two big psychological triggers in this campaign: personalization and FOMO.
Firstly, the app provided a personalized story for each user – you could see how your music taste developed through the year and what songs accompanied you in your life.
Secondly, by enabling and encouraging sharing on social media, Spotify amplified the campaign’s reach.
People naturally wanted to show off their highlights to their friends, thus making more people eager to try this experience.
7. Netflix: Wanna Talk About It?
When: 2019
Campaign Outline:
Recognizing the importance of mental health and overcoming traumatic experiences, Netflix launched Wanna Talk About It?, a weekly Instagram LIVE series and accompanying website that addresses topics ranging from sexual violence and abuse to gender identity and suicidal thoughts.
It features stars from several Netflix movies and series, it was initially launched at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Numbers:
- Wanna Talk About it? Works with 150 organizations in 45 countries, offering information, videos, downloadable guides, and nonprofit helplines in 26 languages.
Why Did It Work?
The global lockdown was a difficult time for many people. Unable to leave their homes, streaming services were a major source of entertainment.
With this campaign, Netflix addressed the mental health issues many were suffering through, giving them celebrities to whom they could relate.
8. Daniel Wellington: #WheresWellington
When: 2016
Campaign Outline:
Swedish watch manufacturer Daniel Wellington was one of the first brands to recognize the power of social media influencers.
The company sent free watches to some of the most-followed individuals on Instagram, with the only requirement being that they post one photo on their feed using the hashtag #WheresWellington. Followers were then asked to guess the location where the photo was taken.
This, in turn, generated a significant buzz around the brand, which increased in popularity with teenagers and young adults.
The Numbers:
- The Where’s Wellington content saw significantly higher engagement than the watch company’s normal social media posts.
Why Did It Work?
By gamifying visual content on social media, Daniel Wellington gave followers a reason to engage with its posts, whether in the form of a like, a comment, or a share.
Guessing formats is a simple yet powerful way to encourage interaction on platforms like Instagram, while a branded campaign hashtag makes it easy to track success.
9. BuzzFeed: Tasty
When: 2016
Campaign Outline:
You’ve probably seen these quick and easy recipe videos popping up all over your Facebook news feed.
BuzzFeed’s Tasty videos are essentially cooking shows for the social media generation.
These videos, typically lasting less than two minutes, deliver on-trend recipes to a highly engaged audience.
The Numbers:
- Nearly 15 months after launching, Tasty published 2,000 recipe videos, giving the brand a steady stream of new content.
- Videos reach around 500 million users monthly.
- 100 million Facebook fans.
- In September 2016, Tasty generated more than 1.8 billion views of its videos. BuzzFeed now has a team of 75 people dedicated to producing content for Tasty.
Why Did It Work?
For starters, there’s the content.
“It taps into a simple truth: People love tasty foods and the kind of foods that remind them of their childhood, comfort food, or food that reminds them of an experience,” according to Frank Cooper, BuzzFeed’s chief marketing officer.
But more importantly, Tasty and Proper Tasty have exploded on Facebook because the content is tailor-made for that platform.
The videos are optimized for Facebook’s autoplay feature, which starts playing videos without the sound on. You don’t need sound to see, for example, a 45-second guide to making a cheese-stuffed pizza pretzel.
Within 24 hours, that video had 37 million views, 650,000 likes, and 750,000 shares. (It’s now up to 117 million views.)
10. Houseparty: Fortnite Trivia Challenge
When: 2020
Campaign Outline:
How much do you think you know about Fortnite? 🤔
Maybe it’s time to quiz you!
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) April 10, 2020
Epic Games combined two of its most popular offerings in the online game – Fortnite and the now-discontinued social networking app Houseparty – to create a trivia challenge.
Members of the Fortnite community collectively answered more than 20 million trivia questions about the game to unlock a special in-game skin for all players.
Running from April 10-16, it received thousands of engagements on Twitter.
The Numbers:
Why Did It Work?
Gamers are nothing if not loyal to their favorite video game.
By adding both a community element and gamification, Epic was able to generate significant engagement with its tweets about the campaign under both Fortnite and Houseparty accounts.
And by offering a tangible, exclusive, and limited-edition reward, it encouraged sharing and participation.
11. Getty: The Getty Museum Challenge
When: 2020
Campaign Outline:
We challenge you to recreate a work of art with objects (and people) in your home.
🥇 Choose your favorite artwork
🥈 Find three things lying around your house⠀
🥉 Recreate the artwork with those itemsAnd share with us. pic.twitter.com/9BNq35HY2V
— Getty (@GettyMuseum) March 25, 2020
The Getty Museum is home to thousands of works by some of history’s greatest artists, including Rubens, Monet, Rembrandt, and Cezanne.
In 2020, the Los Angeles-based Museum took to Twitter and other social media platforms, challenging people to recreate famous artworks with just objects from their homes.
The Numbers:
- The initial tweet saw more than 10,000 retweets, close to 3,500 quote tweets, and over 25,000 likes.
- Thousands of recreations were submitted, including some recreating renaissance art with lasagna noodles and a vacuum serving in place of a harp.
Why Did It Work?
It was the pandemic’s beginning, and people were bored and looking for a creative outlet.
Getty’s Challenge allowed them to demonstrate their sense of humor while creating a positive diversion.
12. Greggs: #VeganSausageRoll
When: 2019
Campaign Outline:
Greggs is a British bakery chain loved by the Brits.
In January, they introduced their new vegan sausage roll, with a clever video ad parodying Apple ads.
However, it’s not the ad itself but the events that made the campaign memorable.
Piers Morgan, a controversial public figure, retweeted Greggs’ announcement and expressed irritation at the existence of a vegan sausage roll.
That made both pro-vegan roll and anti-vegan roll British people join the social media battle of the year!
Greggs responded to Piers Morgan along with 9,000+ other Twitter users.
And they didn’t shy away from responding both to sausage roll lovers and haters with witty remarks.
Nobody was waiting for a vegan bloody sausage, you PC-ravaged clowns. https://t.co/QEiqG9qx2G
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 2, 2019
As a result, the vegan sausage roll became one of the most popular Greggs products that year.
The Numbers:
- On Twitter alone, the Greggs vegan sausage roll conversation saw over 516 million impressions, according to Brandwatch.
- The announcement tweet was retweeted more than 15 thousand times.
- Greggs jumped 9.6% in sales in the first seven weeks of the launch.
Why Did It Work?
Even though the success of the campaign partly happened because of an organic retweet and not an action planned by Greggs, it once again shows us the power of influencer marketing.
Even a negative opinion expressed by an influencer draws an incredible amount of attention to your brand.
Plus, if it’s an influencer that most people hate, you only win due to this retweet.
Another lesson to take away from this campaign is the advantages of being witty on social media.
Greggs’ funny responses to haters are what won over a new audience, and it’s a good practice not to take yourself too seriously on social media.
13. Planters: The Death of Mr. Peanut – #RIPPeanut
When: 2020
Campaign Outline:
Perhaps one of the most bizarre social media campaigns: The beloved mascot of Planters snack food company died at the beginning of January.
His death was announced with a tweet and later explained in a video ad posted to YouTube.
Apparently, Mr. Peanut sacrificed his life to save his commercial co-stars, Matt Walsh and Wesley Snipes.
You could win some snacks by replying to a tweet with a #RIPPeanut hashtag.
The brands and regular social media users alike played along with the campaign, and it even got a mention on SNL.
Goodbye, Mr. Peanut. Very few people understand how delicious our relationship has been: https://t.co/0BP3h2j5mr #RIPeanut pic.twitter.com/q6QxXJfArX
— Dr Pepper (@drpepper) January 24, 2020
The campaign was inspired by the reaction to celebrity deaths on social media.
It aimed to repeat the same level of engagement that Tony Stark’s death caused in “Avengers: Endgame.”
Later Mr. Peanut was reborn as a Baby Nut and now happily tweets from the Peanut Jr. account.
The Numbers:
- The tweet announcing the death of Mr. Peanut gathered almost 50,000 retweets.
- The hashtag was used more than a million times on Twitter.
Why Did It Work?
still can’t comprehend that this really happened at an ad agency in the last few weeks pic.twitter.com/hX5UNbjVb0
— rob trench (@robtrench) January 27, 2020
The campaign’s premise was so crazy that it immediately became a meme.
Many comedians and funny Twitter personalities “were making jokes about Mr. Peanut’s departure.”
This specific brand of internet humor makes certain things go viral – and it worked.
14. Airbnb: #GoNear
When: 2020
Campaign Outline:
Another pandemic-birthed campaign, Airbnb introduced its Go Near campaign as an initiative to promote local travel and help the economy recover from the lockdown.
The travel industry was particularly hard hit by the pandemic, and the short-term rental company launched the campaign on social media using the #GoNear hashtag to remind people that there are lots of fun destinations near where they live.
The Numbers:
Why Did It Work?
Recognizing not just its own livelihood but the income of the people who depend on it as a revenue stream, Airbnb reacted to the pandemic quickly.
The company deeply understood its audience’s needs and created data-driven content to address them.
Airbnb also focused on creating personal connections that humanized the brand at a time when many were feeling isolated.
TikTok
15. P&G: #DistanceDance
When: 2020
Campaign Outline:
@charlidamelio Stay home & do the distancedance. Tag me & the hashtag in your video. P&G will donate to Feeding America & Matthew 25 for first 3M videos #PGPartner
Created during the pandemic (seeing a trend here?), Proctor and Gamble took to TikTok with a campaign designed to encourage social distancing.
Under the hashtag #DistanceDance, the company teamed up with social media and former competitive dancer Charli D’Amelio to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.
For the first 3 million videos posted to the short-form video apps, P&G donated to Feeding America and Matthew 25 Ministries.
The Numbers:
- The hashtag has generated more than 18 billion views to date.
- Charli D’Amelio’s video received almost 7 million likes and had more than 143,000 comments.
Why Did It Work?
Recognizing that to reach a younger audience, they needed to reach them on their platform of choice, P&G jumped fully into this TikTok campaign.
Partnering with an established influencer helped the company reach an audience it would otherwise have struggled to connect with.
The give-back component also created a feel-good reason to participate in the hashtag challenge.
16. UN Australia: #EmpowerMoves
When: 2021
Campaign Outline:
@unwomenaust #EmpowerMoves is the dance that’s also self-defence. Join the movement today #UNWomenAust ♬ Good Things (R3HAB Remix) – Wafia
United Nations Australia embraced the full potential of the short-form video site by creating a basic self-defense “dance” for women.
Consisting of four basic self-defense movements, #EmpowerMoves is intended to give women and girls the confidence and support to protect themselves and shape a strong and equal future.
This campaign follows on the heels of another UN Women Australia campaign, “When Will She Be Right?,” which seeks to accelerate progress toward gender equality.
The Numbers:
Why Did It Work?
TikTok has been home to popular dancing videos since its inception.
UN Australia capitalized on this by working with choreographers and celebrities to create movements that not only look good in time with the music but can also keep women safe.
It also serves as a rallying point for women who will no longer take a back seat to men or accept being a victim.
17. Harvard Business Review: Special Coverage: Coronavirus
When: 2020
Campaign Outline:
Because it’s so commonly used as a professional networking site, it’s easy to forget that LinkedIn is a social media platform just like Facebook or YouTube.
Harvard Business Review recognized it could fill a valuable role during the height of the pandemic by offering resources about the coronavirus.
Gathering many resources in one convenient place, they provided a credible source of information at a time when misinformation was running rampant.
The special coverage included information about developing work-from-home policies, responding to new variants, and helping find a new normal.
The Numbers
- The HBR has almost 14 million followers, many of whom benefited from this information.
Why Did It Work?
From fears of microchipping to governmental conspiracies, the sheer amount of outright false information about COVID-19 was staggering.
On top of this, this was uncharted territory for businesses of all types.
Leveraging the credibility of its parent institution, HBR provided quality, factual advice for dealing with a wide variety of pandemic-related issues.
Key Takeaway
While many of the campaigns featured here had COVID-ties, that’s about the only thing they had in common. Otherwise, they ran the gamut of platforms and audiences.
But something else tied these brands together: They all found innovative ways to appeal to their targets. And they gave something in return.
From the video game skin in the Houseparty Fortnite Trivia Challenge to the entertainment of the Dear Kitten videos to the mental support of Netflix’s IG live series, they all provided value for their audience.
Keep this in mind as you strive to create your own social media campaigns. And who knows? Maybe next year, you’ll be featured here.
More Resources:
Featured Image: metamorworks/Shutterstock
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SEO
2024 WordPress Vulnerability Report Shows Errors Sites Keep Making
WordPress security scanner WPScan’s 2024 WordPress vulnerability report calls attention to WordPress vulnerability trends and suggests the kinds of things website publishers (and SEOs) should be looking out for.
Some of the key findings from the report were that just over 20% of vulnerabilities were rated as high or critical level threats, with medium severity threats, at 67% of reported vulnerabilities, making up the majority. Many regard medium level vulnerabilities as if they are low-level threats and that’s a mistake because they’re not low level and should be regarded as deserving attention.
The WPScan report advised:
“While severity doesn’t translate directly to the risk of exploitation, it’s an important guideline for website owners to make an educated decision about when to disable or update the extension.”
WordPress Vulnerability Severity Distribution
Critical level vulnerabilities, the highest level of threat, represented only 2.38% of vulnerabilities, which is essentially good news for WordPress publishers. Yet as mentioned earlier, when combined with the percentages of high level threats (17.68%) the number or concerning vulnerabilities rises to almost 20%.
Here are the percentages by severity ratings:
- Critical 2.38%
- Low 12.83%
- High 17.68%
- Medium 67.12%
Authenticated Versus Unauthenticated
Authenticated vulnerabilities are those that require an attacker to first attain user credentials and their accompanying permission levels in order to exploit a particular vulnerability. Exploits that require subscriber-level authentication are the most exploitable of the authenticated exploits and those that require administrator level access present the least risk (although not always a low risk for a variety of reasons).
Unauthenticated attacks are generally the easiest to exploit because anyone can launch an attack without having to first acquire a user credential.
The WPScan vulnerability report found that about 22% of reported vulnerabilities required subscriber level or no authentication at all, representing the most exploitable vulnerabilities. On the other end of the scale of the exploitability are vulnerabilities requiring admin permission levels representing a total of 30.71% of reported vulnerabilities.
Permission Levels Required For Exploits
Vulnerabilities requiring administrator level credentials represented the highest percentage of exploits, followed by Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) with 24.74% of vulnerabilities. This is interesting because CSRF is an attack that uses social engineering to get a victim to click a link from which the user’s permission levels are acquired. This is a mistake that WordPress publishers should be aware of because all it takes is for an admin level user to follow a link which then enables the hacker to assume admin level privileges to the WordPress website.
The following is the percentages of exploits ordered by roles necessary to launch an attack.
Ascending Order Of User Roles For Vulnerabilities
- Author 2.19%
- Subscriber 10.4%
- Unauthenticated 12.35%
- Contributor 19.62%
- CSRF 24.74%
- Admin 30.71%
Most Common Vulnerability Types Requiring Minimal Authentication
Broken Access Control in the context of WordPress refers to a security failure that can allow an attacker without necessary permission credentials to gain access to higher credential permissions.
In the section of the report that looks at the occurrences and vulnerabilities underlying unauthenticated or subscriber level vulnerabilities reported (Occurrence vs Vulnerability on Unauthenticated or Subscriber+ reports), WPScan breaks down the percentages for each vulnerability type that is most common for exploits that are the easiest to launch (because they require minimal to no user credential authentication).
The WPScan threat report noted that Broken Access Control represents a whopping 84.99% followed by SQL injection (20.64%).
The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) defines Broken Access Control as:
“Access control, sometimes called authorization, is how a web application grants access to content and functions to some users and not others. These checks are performed after authentication, and govern what ‘authorized’ users are allowed to do.
Access control sounds like a simple problem but is insidiously difficult to implement correctly. A web application’s access control model is closely tied to the content and functions that the site provides. In addition, the users may fall into a number of groups or roles with different abilities or privileges.”
SQL injection, at 20.64% represents the second most prevalent type of vulnerability, which WPScan referred to as both “high severity and risk” in the context of vulnerabilities requiring minimal authentication levels because attackers can access and/or tamper with the database which is the heart of every WordPress website.
These are the percentages:
- Broken Access Control 84.99%
- SQL Injection 20.64%
- Cross-Site Scripting 9.4%
- Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Upload 5.28%
- Sensitive Data Disclosure 4.59%
- Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) 3.67%
- Remote Code Execution 2.52%
- Other 14.45%
Vulnerabilities In The WordPress Core Itself
The overwhelming majority of vulnerability issues were reported in third-party plugins and themes. However, there were in 2023 a total of 13 vulnerabilities reported in the WordPress core itself. Out of the thirteen vulnerabilities only one of them was rated as a high severity threat, which is the second highest level, with Critical being the highest level vulnerability threat, a rating scoring system maintained by the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
The WordPress core platform itself is held to the highest standards and benefits from a worldwide community that is vigilant in discovering and patching vulnerabilities.
Website Security Should Be Considered As Technical SEO
Site audits don’t normally cover website security but in my opinion every responsible audit should at least talk about security headers. As I’ve been saying for years, website security quickly becomes an SEO issue once a website’s ranking start disappearing from the search engine results pages (SERPs) due to being compromised by a vulnerability. That’s why it’s critical to be proactive about website security.
According to the WPScan report, the main point of entry for hacked websites were leaked credentials and weak passwords. Ensuring strong password standards plus two-factor authentication is an important part of every website’s security stance.
Using security headers is another way to help protect against Cross-Site Scripting and other kinds of vulnerabilities.
Lastly, a WordPress firewall and website hardening are also useful proactive approaches to website security. I once added a forum to a brand new website I created and it was immediately under attack within minutes. Believe it or not, virtually every website worldwide is under attack 24 hours a day by bots scanning for vulnerabilities.
Read the WPScan Report:
WPScan 2024 Website Threat Report
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Ljupco Smokovski
SEO
An In-Depth Guide And Best Practices For Mobile SEO
Over the years, search engines have encouraged businesses to improve mobile experience on their websites. More than 60% of web traffic comes from mobile, and in some cases based on the industry, mobile traffic can reach up to 90%.
Since Google has completed its switch to mobile-first indexing, the question is no longer “if” your website should be optimized for mobile, but how well it is adapted to meet these criteria. A new challenge has emerged for SEO professionals with the introduction of Interaction to Next Paint (INP), which replaced First Input Delay (FID) starting March, 12 2024.
Thus, understanding mobile SEO’s latest advancements, especially with the shift to INP, is crucial. This guide offers practical steps to optimize your site effectively for today’s mobile-focused SEO requirements.
What Is Mobile SEO And Why Is It Important?
The goal of mobile SEO is to optimize your website to attain better visibility in search engine results specifically tailored for mobile devices.
This form of SEO not only aims to boost search engine rankings, but also prioritizes enhancing mobile user experience through both content and technology.
While, in many ways, mobile SEO and traditional SEO share similar practices, additional steps related to site rendering and content are required to meet the needs of mobile users and the speed requirements of mobile devices.
Does this need to be a priority for your website? How urgent is it?
Consider this: 58% of the world’s web traffic comes from mobile devices.
If you aren’t focused on mobile users, there is a good chance you’re missing out on a tremendous amount of traffic.
Mobile-First Indexing
Additionally, as of 2023, Google has switched its crawlers to a mobile-first indexing priority.
This means that the mobile experience of your site is critical to maintaining efficient indexing, which is the step before ranking algorithms come into play.
Read more: Where We Are Today With Google’s Mobile-First Index
How Much Of Your Traffic Is From Mobile?
How much traffic potential you have with mobile users can depend on various factors, including your industry (B2B sites might attract primarily desktop users, for example) and the search intent your content addresses (users might prefer desktop for larger purchases, for example).
Regardless of where your industry and the search intent of your users might be, the future will demand that you optimize your site experience for mobile devices.
How can you assess your current mix of mobile vs. desktop users?
An easy way to see what percentage of your users is on mobile is to go into Google Analytics 4.
- Click Reports in the left column.
- Click on the Insights icon on the right side of the screen.
- Scroll down to Suggested Questions and click on it.
- Click on Technology.
- Click on Top Device model by Users.
- Then click on Top Device category by Users under Related Results.
- The breakdown of Top Device category will match the date range selected at the top of GA4.
You can also set up a report in Looker Studio.
- Add your site to the Data source.
- Add Device category to the Dimension field.
- Add 30-day active users to the Metric field.
- Click on Chart to select the view that works best for you.
Screenshot from Looker Studio, March 2024You can add more Dimensions to really dig into the data to see which pages attract which type of users, what the mobile-to-desktop mix is by country, which search engines send the most mobile users, and so much more.
Read more: Why Mobile And Desktop Rankings Are Different
How To Check If Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly
Now that you know how to build a report on mobile and desktop usage, you need to figure out if your site is optimized for mobile traffic.
While Google removed the mobile-friendly testing tool from Google Search Console in December 2023, there are still a number of useful tools for evaluating your site for mobile users.
Bing still has a mobile-friendly testing tool that will tell you the following:
- Viewport is configured correctly.
- Page content fits device width.
- Text on the page is readable.
- Links and tap targets are sufficiently large and touch-friendly.
- Any other issues detected.
Google’s Lighthouse Chrome extension provides you with an evaluation of your site’s performance across several factors, including load times, accessibility, and SEO.
To use, install the Lighthouse Chrome extension.
- Go to your website in your browser.
- Click on the orange lighthouse icon in your browser’s address bar.
- Click Generate Report.
- A new tab will open and display your scores once the evaluation is complete.
Screenshot from Lighthouse, March 2024You can also use the Lighthouse report in Developer Tools in Chrome.
- Simply click on the three dots next to the address bar.
- Select “More Tools.”
- Select Developer Tools.
- Click on the Lighthouse tab.
- Choose “Mobile” and click the “Analyze page load” button.
Screenshot from Lighthouse, March 2024Another option that Google offers is the PageSpeed Insights (PSI) tool. Simply add your URL into the field and click Analyze.
PSI will integrate any Core Web Vitals scores into the resulting view so you can see what your users are experiencing when they come to your site.
Screenshot from PageSpeed Insights, March 2024Other tools, like WebPageTest.org, will graphically display the processes and load times for everything it takes to display your webpages.
With this information, you can see which processes block the loading of your pages, which ones take the longest to load, and how this affects your overall page load times.
You can also emulate the mobile experience by using Developer Tools in Chrome, which allows you to switch back and forth between a desktop and mobile experience.
Screenshot from Google Chrome Developer Tools, March 2024Lastly, use your own mobile device to load and navigate your website:
- Does it take forever to load?
- Are you able to navigate your site to find the most important information?
- Is it easy to add something to cart?
- Can you read the text?
Read more: Google PageSpeed Insights Reports: A Technical Guide
How To Optimize Your Site Mobile-First
With all these tools, keep an eye on the Performance and Accessibility scores, as these directly affect mobile users.
Expand each section within the PageSpeed Insights report to see what elements are affecting your score.
These sections can give your developers their marching orders for optimizing the mobile experience.
While mobile speeds for cellular networks have steadily improved around the world (the average speed in the U.S. has jumped to 27.06 Mbps from 11.14 Mbps in just eight years), speed and usability for mobile users are at a premium.
Read more: Top 7 SEO Benefits Of Responsive Web Design
Best Practices For Mobile Optimization
Unlike traditional SEO, which can focus heavily on ensuring that you are using the language of your users as it relates to the intersection of your products/services and their needs, optimizing for mobile SEO can seem very technical SEO-heavy.
While you still need to be focused on matching your content with the needs of the user, mobile search optimization will require the aid of your developers and designers to be fully effective.
Below are several key factors in mobile SEO to keep in mind as you’re optimizing your site.
Site Rendering
How your site responds to different devices is one of the most important elements in mobile SEO.
The two most common approaches to this are responsive design and dynamic serving.
Responsive design is the most common of the two options.
Using your site’s cascading style sheets (CSS) and flexible layouts, as well as responsive content delivery networks (CDN) and modern image file types, responsive design allows your site to adjust to a variety of screen sizes, orientations, and resolutions.
With the responsive design, elements on the page adjust in size and location based on the size of the screen.
You can simply resize the window of your desktop browser and see how this works.
Screenshot from web.dev, March 2024This is the approach that Google recommends.
Adaptive design, also known as dynamic serving, consists of multiple fixed layouts that are dynamically served to the user based on their device.
Sites can have a separate layout for desktop, smartphone, and tablet users. Each design can be modified to remove functionality that may not make sense for certain device types.
This is a less efficient approach, but it does give sites more control over what each device sees.
While these will not be covered here, two other options:
- Progressive Web Apps (PWA), which can seamlessly integrate into a mobile app.
- Separate mobile site/URL (which is no longer recommended).
Read more: An Introduction To Rendering For SEO
Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
Google has introduced Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as a more comprehensive measure of user experience, succeeding First Input Delay. While FID measures the time from when a user first interacts with your page (e.g., clicking a link, tapping a button) to the time when the browser is actually able to begin processing event handlers in response to that interaction. INP, on the other hand, broadens the scope by measuring the responsiveness of a website throughout the entire lifespan of a page, not just first interaction.
Note that actions such as hovering and scrolling do not influence INP, however, keyboard-driven scrolling or navigational actions are considered keystrokes that may activate events measured by INP but not scrolling which is happeing due to interaction.
Scrolling may indirectly affect INP, for example in scenarios where users scroll through content, and additional content is lazy-loaded from the API. While the act of scrolling itself isn’t included in the INP calculation, the processing, necessary for loading additional content, can create contention on the main thread, thereby increasing interaction latency and adversely affecting the INP score.
What qualifies as an optimal INP score?
- An INP under 200ms indicates good responsiveness.
- Between 200ms and 500ms needs improvement.
- Over 500ms means page has poor responsiveness.
and these are common issues causing poor INP scores:
- Long JavaScript Tasks: Heavy JavaScript execution can block the main thread, delaying the browser’s ability to respond to user interactions. Thus break long JS tasks into smaller chunks by using scheduler API.
- Large DOM (HTML) Size: A large DOM ( starting from 1500 elements) can severely impact a website’s interactive performance. Every additional DOM element increases the work required to render pages and respond to user interactions.
- Inefficient Event Callbacks: Event handlers that execute lengthy or complex operations can significantly affect INP scores. Poorly optimized callbacks attached to user interactions, like clicks, keypress or taps, can block the main thread, delaying the browser’s ability to render visual feedback promptly. For example when handlers perform heavy computations or initiate synchronous network requests such on clicks.
and you can troubleshoot INP issues using free and paid tools.
As a good starting point I would recommend to check your INP scores by geos via treo.sh which will give you a great high level insights where you struggle with most.
INP scores by GeosRead more: How To Improve Interaction To Next Paint (INP)
Image Optimization
Images add a lot of value to the content on your site and can greatly affect the user experience.
From page speeds to image quality, you could adversely affect the user experience if you haven’t optimized your images.
This is especially true for the mobile experience. Images need to adjust to smaller screens, varying resolutions, and screen orientation.
- Use responsive images
- Implement lazy loading
- Compress your images (use WebP)
- Add your images into sitemap
Optimizing images is an entire science, and I advise you to read our comprehensive guide on image SEO how to implement the mentioned recommendations.
Avoid Intrusive Interstitials
Google rarely uses concrete language to state that something is a ranking factor or will result in a penalty, so you know it means business about intrusive interstitials in the mobile experience.
Intrusive interstitials are basically pop-ups on a page that prevent the user from seeing content on the page.
John Mueller, Google’s Senior Search Analyst, stated that they are specifically interested in the first interaction a user has after clicking on a search result.
Not all pop-ups are considered bad. Interstitial types that are considered “intrusive” by Google include:
- Pop-ups that cover most or all of the page content.
- Non-responsive interstitials or pop-ups that are impossible for mobile users to close.
- Pop-ups that are not triggered by a user action, such as a scroll or a click.
Read more: 7 Tips To Keep Pop-Ups From Harming Your SEO
Structured Data
Most of the tips provided in this guide so far are focused on usability and speed and have an additive effect, but there are changes that can directly influence how your site appears in mobile search results.
Search engine results pages (SERPs) haven’t been the “10 blue links” in a very long time.
They now reflect the diversity of search intent, showing a variety of different sections to meet the needs of users. Local Pack, shopping listing ads, video content, and more dominate the mobile search experience.
As a result, it’s more important than ever to provide structured data markup to the search engines, so they can display rich results for users.
In this example, you can see that both Zojirushi and Amazon have included structured data for their rice cookers, and Google is displaying rich results for both.
Screenshot from search for [Japanese rice cookers], Google, March 2024Adding structured data markup to your site can influence how well your site shows up for local searches and product-related searches.
Using JSON-LD, you can mark up the business, product, and services data on your pages in Schema markup.
If you use WordPress as the content management system for your site, there are several plugins available that will automatically mark up your content with structured data.
Read more: What Structured Data To Use And Where To Use It?
Content Style
When you think about your mobile users and the screens on their devices, this can greatly influence how you write your content.
Rather than long, detailed paragraphs, mobile users prefer concise writing styles for mobile reading.
Each key point in your content should be a single line of text that easily fits on a mobile screen.
Your font sizes should adjust to the screen’s resolution to avoid eye strain for your users.
If possible, allow for a dark or dim mode for your site to further reduce eye strain.
Headers should be concise and address the searcher’s intent. Rather than lengthy section headers, keep it simple.
Finally, make sure that your text renders in a font size that’s readable.
Read more: 10 Tips For Creating Mobile-Friendly Content
Tap Targets
As important as text size, the tap targets on your pages should be sized and laid out appropriately.
Tap targets include navigation elements, links, form fields, and buttons like “Add to Cart” buttons.
Targets smaller than 48 pixels by 48 pixels and targets that overlap or are overlapped by other page elements will be called out in the Lighthouse report.
Tap targets are essential to the mobile user experience, especially for ecommerce websites, so optimizing them is vital to the health of your online business.
Read more: Google’s Lighthouse SEO Audit Tool Now Measures Tap Target Spacing
Prioritizing These Tips
If you have delayed making your site mobile-friendly until now, this guide may feel overwhelming. As a result, you may not know what to prioritize first.
As with so many other optimizations in SEO, it’s important to understand which changes will have the greatest impact, and this is just as true for mobile SEO.
Think of SEO as a framework in which your site’s technical aspects are the foundation of your content. Without a solid foundation, even the best content may struggle to rank.
- Responsive or Dynamic Rendering: If your site requires the user to zoom and scroll right or left to read the content on your pages, no number of other optimizations can help you. This should be first on your list.
- Content Style: Rethink how your users will consume your content online. Avoid very long paragraphs. “Brevity is the soul of wit,” to quote Shakespeare.
- Image Optimization: Begin migrating your images to next-gen image formats and optimize your content display network for speed and responsiveness.
- Tap Targets: A site that prevents users from navigating or converting into sales won’t be in business long. Make navigation, links, and buttons usable for them.
- Structured Data: While this element ranks last in priority on this list, rich results can improve your chances of receiving traffic from a search engine, so add this to your to-do list once you’ve completed the other optimizations.
Summary
From How Search Works, “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
If Google’s primary mission is focused on making all the world’s information accessible and useful, then you know they will prefer surfacing sites that align with that vision.
Since a growing percentage of users are on mobile devices, you may want to infer the word “everywhere” added to the end of the mission statement.
Are you missing out on traffic from mobile devices because of a poor mobile experience?
If you hope to remain relevant, make mobile SEO a priority now.
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
SEO
HARO Has Been Dead for a While
I know nothing about the new tool. I haven’t tried it. But after trying to use HARO recently, I can’t say I’m surprised or saddened by its death. It’s been a walking corpse for a while.
I used HARO way back in the day to build links. It worked. But a couple of months ago, I experienced the platform from the other side when I decided to try to source some “expert” insights for our posts.
After just a few minutes of work, I got hundreds of pitches:
So, I grabbed a cup of coffee and began to work through them. It didn’t take long before I lost the will to live. Every other pitch seemed like nothing more than lazy AI-generated nonsense from someone who definitely wasn’t an expert.
Here’s one of them:
Seriously. Who writes like that? I’m a self-confessed dullard (any fellow Dull Men’s Club members here?), and even I’m not that dull…
I don’t think I looked through more than 30-40 of the responses. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt like having a conversation with ChatGPT… and not a very good one!
Despite only reviewing a few dozen of the many pitches I received, one stood out to me:
Believe it or not, this response came from a past client of mine who runs an SEO agency in the UK. Given how knowledgeable and experienced he is (he actually taught me a lot about SEO back in the day when I used to hassle him with questions on Skype), this pitch rang alarm bells for two reasons:
- I truly doubt he spends his time replying to HARO queries
- I know for a fact he’s no fan of Neil Patel (sorry, Neil, but I’m sure you’re aware of your reputation at this point!)
So… I decided to confront him 😉
Here’s what he said:
Shocker.
I pressed him for more details:
I’m getting a really good deal and paying per link rather than the typical £xxxx per month for X number of pitches. […] The responses as you’ve seen are not ideal but that’s a risk I’m prepared to take as realistically I dont have the time to do it myself. He’s not native english, but I have had to have a word with him a few times about clearly using AI. On the low cost ones I don’t care but on authority sites it needs to be more refined.
I think this pretty much sums up the state of HARO before its death. Most “pitches” were just AI answers from SEOs trying to build links for their clients.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not throwing shade here. I know that good links are hard to come by, so you have to do what works. And the reality is that HARO did work. Just look at the example below. You can tell from the anchor and surrounding text in Ahrefs that these links were almost certainly built with HARO:
But this was the problem. HARO worked so well back in the day that it was only a matter of time before spammers and the #scale crew ruined it for everyone. That’s what happened, and now HARO is no more. So…
If you’re a link builder, I think it’s time to admit that HARO link building is dead and move on.
No tactic works well forever. It’s the law of sh**ty clickthroughs. This is why you don’t see SEOs having huge success with tactics like broken link building anymore. They’ve moved on to more innovative tactics or, dare I say it, are just buying links.
Sidenote.
Talking of buying links, here’s something to ponder: if Connectively charges for pitches, are links built through those pitches technically paid? If so, do they violate Google’s spam policies? It’s a murky old world this SEO lark, eh?
If you’re a journalist, Connectively might be worth a shot. But with experts being charged for pitches, you probably won’t get as many responses. That might be a good thing. You might get less spam. Or you might just get spammed by SEOs with deep pockets. The jury’s out for now.
My advice? Look for alternative methods like finding and reaching out to experts directly. You can easily use tools like Content Explorer to find folks who’ve written lots of content about the topic and are likely to be experts.
For example, if you look for content with “backlinks” in the title and go to the Authors tab, you might see a familiar name. 😉
I don’t know if I’d call myself an expert, but I’d be happy to give you a quote if you reached out on social media or emailed me (here’s how to find my email address).
Alternatively, you can bait your audience into giving you their insights on social media. I did this recently with a poll on X and included many of the responses in my guide to toxic backlinks.
Either of these options is quicker than using HARO because you don’t have to sift through hundreds of responses looking for a needle in a haystack. If you disagree with me and still love HARO, feel free to tell me why on X 😉
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