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9 Steps To A Future-Proof Social Media Strategy In A Web3 World

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9 Steps To A Future-Proof Social Media Strategy In A Web3 World

May I see a copy of your social media strategy?

🦗(crickets) 🦗

More than a decade into the Web 2.0 era and entering into the Web 3.0 evolution, brands are still lagging regarding a documented social media strategy.

Looking back, it was the mid to late 2000s when Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the iPhone hit the palms of our hands.

Fast forward to today, we enter the next generation of the internet, called the metaverse, and even more digital ways to engage with audiences.

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You aren’t alone if you don’t have a social media strategy.

While almost 60% of the world population are reported active social media users, more than 50% of B2C brands admit to not having documented content or social media strategy.

In addition, most brands consider themselves amateur when rating their expertise level, with more than half of brands surveyed rating their social media marketing levels as immature.

Uh oh?

It’s true! Without a strategy, you are gambling. With Web3, the metaverse, digital goods, and virtual worlds on the horizon, it is impossible to skip Web 2.0 and move on.

“I believe Web 2 and Web3 have a lot to learn from each other. There are frameworks and best practices in each which lend themselves very well to the other, so it’s a lot about bridge building. Leave behind the practices that slow us down but bring with us those which provide structure and support scaling in a sustainable way. We are moving too quickly to re-invent the wheel; better to grab the best and mold it to our future needs,” said Stefanie Hingley, COO of Mission Impact, an organization helping females elevate in Web3.

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Forward-thinking, purposeful plus strategic will usually win the social media game.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating an effective social media strategy to level up your Web 2.0 and prepare for Web3.

1. Write An Executive Summary

Start your strategy with an executive summary.

This should be a one-pager, succinctly identifying your social media purpose and how it ties into your current business goals and objectives.

In addition, make a note of relevant testing or projections into Web3.

Establish the primary goal and specific objectives you are trying to achieve. Be sure to identify a channel focus and avoid trying to be all things to all social media platforms.

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For example, if you are a B2B company, consider creating content for Linkedin and then repurposing it for other secondary channels.

Web3 Tip: Explore and research what other brands are doing with Web3. What is working? Start holding team meetings to discuss your social media strategy in the Horizons Workrooms environment.

“Horizons Workrooms works across both virtual reality and the web and is designed to improve your team’s ability to collaborate, communicate, and connect remotely through the power of VR— whether that’s getting together to brainstorm or whiteboard an idea, work on a document, hear updates from your team, hang out and socialize, or simply have better conversations that flow more naturally,” as noted in the Meta Newsroom.

Benchmark and include measurable outcomes to assure all players are defining success with the same expectations. Larger goals need granular objectives.

Example: Grow your Instagram audience by 20% by the end of the quarter.

2. Do A Social Media Audit

Keeping your friends close but your enemies closer is an intelligent way to stay ahead of the competition.

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Start by conducting a social media audit of your brand’s social channels compared to two or three competitors. You can even pick a non-competing brand to use for inspiration and aspiration. Consider choosing a brand already involved in Web3 strategies.

For example, Wendys, Airbnb, Netflix, Buffer, Hubspot, and Cisco are known for their social media savviness. It’s helpful to go beyond your industry’s borders and see what’s working.

Compare types of content, engagement, frequency, audience size, visuals, video use, tone, and customer service messaging. How’s the response rate?

Other factors to compare and take note of include:

  • Live streaming.
  • Courses and webinars.
  • Influencer marketing.
  • User-generated content.
  • Features such as Reels, Stories, and Frequency.
  • Communities.
  • AR/VR.
  • 3D.
  • Virtual Worlds.
  • NFTs.
  • Creator Coins, Tokens, or Crypto.
  • Metaverse collaborations.
  • Audio experiences.
  • Emoji use.
  • Facebook Messenger, chatbots.
  • Keywords and hashtags.
  • Third-party content.
  • Online branded search results.
  • Reviews.

According to the 2022 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, brands and marketers see increased exposure and traffic as social media’s main benefits. On the flip side, the “struggle is real” for translating social media into quantitative ROI, such as improving sales and generating leads.

Recent reports indicate Facebook and Linkedin are the go-to channels if you are looking for leads out of social media channels.

3. Zero In On Social Media Objectives

Focus Pocus.

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Let’s quickly review the difference between goals, strategy, objectives, and tasks, known as GSOT.

  • Goals: These are your broad social media outcomes.
  • Strategy: The approach you will take to accomplish your goal.
  • Objectives: These are measurable steps you will take to achieve the strategy.
  • Tactics: These are the tools or tasks used in pursuing an objective related to a strategy.

Examples:

  • Goal: Make our book the #1 best-seller in the Metaverse category.
  • Strategy: Increase the amount of content we publish on social channels supporting the book’s topics, ideas, and opinions.
  • Objective: Increase unique visitors from social channels to the book’s website or landing page by 50%.
  • Tactic: Using metaverse and Web3 influencers, leverage the exposure with branded hashtags and behind-the-scenes content using Instagram Stories, Facebook Live, and Twitter.
  • Advanced: Participate and host events in Web3-centric communities using Twitter Spaces, Clubhouse, Discord communities, and virtual worlds such as Meta’s Horizon Worlds, Decentraland, Roblox, or Alt Space VR.

4. Develop Buyer Personas

Know your avatar. Develop a personal relationship with your personas. If 50% of brands lack a documented social media strategy, the number of brands having defined buyer personas must be significantly greater.

Brands need personas. This is a must if you want to survive and thrive in Web3.

Marketers preach the value of personas, but when it comes down to investing the time and effort into building and using personas? Zzzzzzzz. Sound asleep.

The good news: The lack of buyer personas makes for a huge opportunity if your competition is missing the persona step.

Buyer personas + social media = a winning formula.

The results mean big wins in increased:

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  • Conversions.
  • Relevance scores.
  • Engagement.
  • Efficiencies across the board.

Getting your persona started is a must!

Start with these buyer persona hacks and get to know your buyers.

#SocialPRSecret: In his book “X: The Experience When Business Meets Design,” digital analyst Brian Solis had this to say:

“You want to create personas for the people who buy from you today as well as for those who don’t, whom you’re targeting. The research that goes into the accurate portrayal of current and potential customers and their behaviors should be a combination of demographic, psychographic, and ethnographic.”

When creating your buyer personas, don’t forget to include your media, stakeholders, community admins and moderators, podcasters, bloggers, and influencers as personas.

The media (journalists, podcast hosts, Twitter Spaces hosts, Clubhouse room hosts) is your target audience, too! Make them real people with real interests and real lives. You might relate to them more.

5. Find Your Brand Persona

Every brand needs a voice, personality, and sense of character.

Think about what adjectives describe your brand.

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Are you positive, fun, playful, or coy?

Maybe your brand is serious, straight-laced, and emoji-free.

Do you dare to roast or poke fun at a competition like Wendy’s and Taco Bell?

Make a list of how you want to be perceived when interacting with a brand. Are you supporting and encouraging or sensational and bold?

In 2009, when social media was heating up, best-selling author and PR icon Aliza Licht played the persona behind the famous (and now defunct) @DKNYPRGirl.

Of the experience, Licht said:

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“Before any other fashion brand had stepped into the social game, I created an anonymous Twitter personality called DKNY PR GIRL. DKNY PR GIRL pioneered authentic voices in social media and ultimately captivated the attention of 1.5 million people around the world across platforms. In 2011, I revealed myself as the person behind the handle, which resulted in over 230 million global impressions, including a full-page feature in The New York Times.”

Licht’s persona behind the DKNY PR GIRL netted some nice gains for her personal brand.

“Over six years, my DKNY PR GIRL persona resulted in many awards, a TED talk, and a book deal. “Leave Your Mark” was published in 2015 and has successfully mentored thousands of professionals around the world.”

7. Establish Strategies & Tools

This is where you figure out how to slice up the paid, earned, and owned categories.

Paid social is a must – and it doesn’t have to break the bank.

Maybe the combo looks something like this:

Paid

Increase your results, and boost a featured Facebook post once a week.

According to Joe Youngblood, wait a few days before boosting a Facebook post, and let it publish organically and then boost.

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Owned

Remember, anything you build on social media is basically “rented space.”

You do not own your social media community, following, or content. It can shut down tomorrow, as we saw with Vine, Blab, and other now defunct social media channels.

You can transition your social media community into an email list (this is what you own).

Think of creating some free download, cheat sheet, guide, or course to gain direct access to your audience.

Introduce a branded hashtag and start using it across social platforms. Publicize in bios and posts.

Encourage influencers to use the hashtag. Promote hashtags across social platforms, emails, ads, and social media covers and captions.

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Earned

Monitor social media for branded keywords and targeted keyword phrases. Twitter is primed with journalists, bloggers, and real-time influencers. Find the conversations and engage.

Warning: This activity has been known to cause positive media coverage, shares, and engagement outcomes.

#SocialPRSecret: You can’t buy good public relations and social proof, and you can’t hide from negative PR.

Earn the positive first to own more and gain positive search and social results.

Tools

I like Canva. She likes Spark. They like Hootsuite. We like Buffer. The CEO’s son wants to know why you don’t have a Snapchat geo filter.

Having 50 million tools fragmented across your social media team is no fun and not efficient. That’s a slight exaggeration; the point is to have an approved list of tools and platforms.

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Everyone needs to be using the same social media management tools and platforms.

Web3 Tip: Explore Web3-centric tools and platforms such as spacial.io, Discord, and Threedium to enhance your brand experience.

8. Make Your Mark: Timing & Dates

Timing is everything! One day late is a dollar lost.

You must show up to the party early on social media and never be late. This means researching industry dates for conferences and events. Look up tie-ins to seasons, days, or official months.

Make sure your reporting is efficient and on point for the proper analysis.

The CEO gets the one-pager, the CMO gets the two-pager, sales gets the sales connection report, and the analysts get the full 10-pager.

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Match the report with the right persona and what they care about most.

Figure out internal dates, external dates, and reporting dates.

  • Internal: Check out conferences, workshops, team meetings, and marketing reports in your industry. Don’t forget the hashtags!
  • External: Look at seasons, themes, events, and trending news to tie into your social media content.

#SocialPRSecret: From Pineapple Day to World Productivity Day, never miss a day! Check out Days of the Year and keep your editorial calendar filled with the most interesting events, festivals, and weird holidays. And bookmark this SEJ article to help your editorial calendar further: You Need This Marketing Calendar & Free Template!

Web 3 Tip: Sign up for Crypto, Web3, and NFT-related events. Be on the lookout for virtual and in-person events and conferences to educate your team and possibly connect with Web3 partners to elevate your brand.

9. Measure What Matters

Measuring what matters is the key to social media strategy sanity and success.

Every network has its version of analytics. It’s easy to spend infinite time running reports. Make sure you are circling back to those measurable objectives.

Look at both quantitative for the hard numbers and qualitative for the sentiment and intent.

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  • Quantitative examples include website sessions, number of email sign-ups, impressions, and social network data.
  • Qualitative examples include sentiment, such as favorable reviews or comments on social messaging. For example, did you raise prices on the menu and have complaints on your Facebook Page?

Quantitative tells what happened, and qualitative can usually tell the “why.” For instance, you have a positive feature story in Business Insider with a link to your company website, which caused a spike in website visits.

When influencers started turning on Daily Harvest, the vegan meal-delivery service that sells bowls, soups, and smoothies, with negative reviews after falling ill – this could be an example of quantitative and qualitative – sales fell, negative media publicity, and negative social media sentiment.

Conclusion

After following all of these steps, what’s next?

You might find yourself in a different direction due to your new social media strategy process.

You may venture your brand into the metaverse, start an NFT collection, continue your hashtag campaign, and even add more budget.

#SocialPRSecret: After accessing your reports and progress, create a proposed action plan, including the next steps. Provide analysis and recommendations interpreting your findings.

Web3 Tip: Make sure you are following the evolution of Web3 – the next generation of the world wide web, which includes the unfolding of the creator economy, decentralization; artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning; Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), the metaverse, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and connectivity and ubiquity, blockchain, digital wearables, and more.

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While having a documented social media strategy is important, it’s more important to make sure the plan is fluid and flexible and to keep current on trends.

Meta offers Meta Blueprint, a selection of self-paced and self-guided courses, certifications, and educational materials designed to keep your business moving forward.

As a marketer, having these certifications can help you stand out from your competition.

Keep the social in social media by staying engaged and in the conversation. The strategy will follow, flow, and fill from Web 2.0 to Web3. Be sure you are proficient in Web 2.0 to maximize your returns in Web3.

More Resources:


Featured Image: Jacob Lund/Shutterstock

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How to Revive an Old Blog Article for SEO

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Step-by-Step: How to Optimize Old Blog Posts for SEO

Quick question: What do you typically do with your old blog posts? Most likely, the answer is: Not much.

If that’s the case, you’re not alone. Many of us in SEO and content marketing tend to focus on continuously creating new content, rather than leveraging our existing blog posts.

However, here’s the reality—Google is becoming increasingly sophisticated in evaluating content quality, and we need to adapt accordingly. Just as it’s easier to encourage existing customers to make repeat purchases, updating old content on your website is a more efficient and sustainable strategy in the long run.

Ways to Optimize Older Content 

Some of your old content might not be optimized for SEO very well, rank for irrelevant keywords, or drive no traffic at all. If the quality is still decent, however, you should be able to optimize it properly with little effort. 

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Refresh Content 

If your blog post contains a specific year or mentions current events, it may become outdated over time. If the rest of the content is still relevant (like if it’s targeting an evergreen topic), simply updating the date might be all you need to do.

Rewrite Old Blog Posts 

When the content quality is low (you might have greatly improved your writing skills since you’ve written the post) but the potential is still there, there’s not much you can do apart from rewriting an old blog post completely. 

This is not a waste—you’re saving time on brainstorming since the basic structure is already in place. Now, focus on improving the quality.

Delete Old Blog Posts 

You might find a blog post that just seems unusable. Should you delete your old content? It depends. If it’s completely outdated, of low quality, and irrelevant to any valuable keywords for your website, it’s better to remove it. 

Once you decide to delete the post, don’t forget to set up a 301 redirect to a related post or page, or to your homepage.

Promote Old Blog Posts 

Sometimes all your content needs is a bit of promotion to start ranking and getting traffic again. Share it on your social media, link to it from a new post – do something to get it discoverable again to your audience. This can give it the boost it needs to attract organic links too.

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Which Blog Posts Should You Update?

Deciding when to update or rewrite blog posts is a decision that relies on one important thing: a content audit. 

Use your Google Analytics to find out which blog posts used to drive tons of traffic, but no longer have the same reach. You can also use Google Search Console to find out which of your blog posts have lost visibility in comparison to previous months. I have a guide on website analysis using Google Analytics and Google Search Console you can follow.

If you use keyword tracking tools like SE Ranking, you can also use the data it provides to come up with a list of blog posts that have dropped in the rankings. 

Make data-driven decisions to identify which blog posts would benefit from these updates – i.e., which ones still have the chance to recover their keyword rankings and organic traffic. 

With Google’s helpful content update, which emphasizes better user experiences, it’s crucial to ensure your content remains relevant, valuable, and up-to-date.

How To Update Old Blog Posts for SEO

Updating articles can be an involved process. Here are some tips and tactics to help you get it right.

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Author’s Note: I have a Comprehensive On-Page SEO Checklist you might also be interested in following while you’re doing your content audit.

Conduct New Keyword Research

Updating your post without any guide won’t get you far. Always do your keyword research to understand how users are searching for your given topic. 

Proper research can also show you relevant questions and sections that can be added to the blog post you’re updating or rewriting. Make sure to take a look at the People Also Ask (PAA) section that shows up when you search for your target keyword. Check out other websites like Answer The Public, Reddit, and Quora to see what users are looking for too. 

Look for New Ranking Opportunities

When trying to revive an old blog post for SEO, keep an eye out for new SEO opportunities (e.g., AI Overview, featured snippets, and related search terms) that didn’t exist when you first wrote your blog post. Some of these features can be targeted by the new content you will add to your post, if you write with the aim to be eligible for it. 

Rewrite Headlines and Meta Tags

If you want to attract new readers, consider updating your headlines and meta tags. 

Your headlines and meta tags should fulfill these three things:

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  1. Reflect the rewritten and new content you’ve added to the blog post.
  2. Be optimized for the new keywords it’s targeting (if any).
  3. Appeal to your target audience – who may have changed tastes from when the blog post was originally made. 

Remember that your meta tags in particular act like a brief advertisement for your blog post, since this is what the user first sees when your blog post is shown in the search results page. 

Take a look at your blog post’s click-through rate on Google Search Console – if it falls below 2%, it’s definitely time for new meta tags. 

Replace Outdated Information and Statistics

Updating blog content with current studies and statistics enhances the relevance and credibility of your post. By providing up-to-date information, you help your audience make better, well-informed decisions, while also showing that your content is trustworthy.

Tighten or Expand Ideas

Your old content might be too short to provide real value to users – or you might have rambled on and on in your post. It’s important to evaluate whether you need to make your content more concise, or if you need to elaborate more. 

Keep the following tips in mind as you refine your blog post’s ideas:

  • Evaluate Helpfulness: Measure how well your content addresses your readers’ pain points. Aim to follow the E-E-A-T model (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).
  • Identify Missing Context: Consider whether your content needs more detail or clarification. View it from your audience’s perspective and ask if the information is complete, or if more information is needed.
  • Interview Experts: Speak with industry experts or thought leaders to get fresh insights. This will help support your writing, and provide unique points that enhance the value of your content.
  • Use Better Examples: Examples help simplify complex concepts. Add new examples or improve existing ones to strengthen your points.
  • Add New Sections if Needed: If your content lacks depth or misses a key point, add new sections to cover these areas more thoroughly.
  • Remove Fluff: Every sentence should contribute to the overall narrative. Eliminate unnecessary content to make your post more concise.
  • Revise Listicles: Update listicle items based on SEO recommendations and content quality. Add or remove headings to stay competitive with higher-ranking posts.

Improve Visuals and Other Media

No doubt that there are tons of old graphics and photos in your blog posts that can be improved with the tools we have today. Make sure all of the visuals used in your content are appealing and high quality. 

Update Internal and External Links

Are your internal and external links up to date? They need to be for your SEO and user experience. Outdated links can lead to broken pages or irrelevant content, frustrating readers and hurting your site’s performance.

You need to check for any broken links on your old blog posts, and update them ASAP. Updating your old blog posts can also lead to new opportunities to link internally to other blog posts and pages, which may not have been available when the post was originally published.

Optimize for Conversions

When updating content, the ultimate goal is often to increase conversions. However, your conversion goals may have changed over the years. 

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So here’s what you need to check in your updated blog post. First, does the call-to-action (CTA) still link to the products or services you want to promote? If not, update it to direct readers to the current solution or offer.

Second, consider where you can use different conversion strategies. Don’t just add a CTA at the end of the post. 

Last, make sure that the blog post leverages product-led content. It’s going to help you mention your products and services in a way that feels natural, without being too pushy. Being subtle can be a high ROI tactic for updated posts.

Key Takeaway

Reviving old blog articles for SEO is a powerful strategy that can breathe new life into your content and boost your website’s visibility. Instead of solely focusing on creating new posts, taking the time to refresh existing content can yield impressive results, both in terms of traffic and conversions. 

By implementing these strategies, you can transform old blog posts into valuable resources that attract new readers and retain existing ones. So, roll up your sleeves, dive into your archives, and start updating your content today—your audience and search rankings will thank you!

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How Compression Can Be Used To Detect Low Quality Pages

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Compression can be used by search engines to detect low-quality pages. Although not widely known, it's useful foundational knowledge for SEO.

The concept of Compressibility as a quality signal is not widely known, but SEOs should be aware of it. Search engines can use web page compressibility to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords, making it useful knowledge for SEO.

Although the following research paper demonstrates a successful use of on-page features for detecting spam, the deliberate lack of transparency by search engines makes it difficult to say with certainty if search engines are applying this or similar techniques.

What Is Compressibility?

In computing, compressibility refers to how much a file (data) can be reduced in size while retaining essential information, typically to maximize storage space or to allow more data to be transmitted over the Internet.

TL/DR Of Compression

Compression replaces repeated words and phrases with shorter references, reducing the file size by significant margins. Search engines typically compress indexed web pages to maximize storage space, reduce bandwidth, and improve retrieval speed, among other reasons.

This is a simplified explanation of how compression works:

  • Identify Patterns:
    A compression algorithm scans the text to find repeated words, patterns and phrases
  • Shorter Codes Take Up Less Space:
    The codes and symbols use less storage space then the original words and phrases, which results in a smaller file size.
  • Shorter References Use Less Bits:
    The “code” that essentially symbolizes the replaced words and phrases uses less data than the originals.

A bonus effect of using compression is that it can also be used to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords.

Research Paper About Detecting Spam

This research paper is significant because it was authored by distinguished computer scientists known for breakthroughs in AI, distributed computing, information retrieval, and other fields.

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Marc Najork

One of the co-authors of the research paper is Marc Najork, a prominent research scientist who currently holds the title of Distinguished Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. He’s a co-author of the papers for TW-BERT, has contributed research for increasing the accuracy of using implicit user feedback like clicks, and worked on creating improved AI-based information retrieval (DSI++: Updating Transformer Memory with New Documents), among many other major breakthroughs in information retrieval.

Dennis Fetterly

Another of the co-authors is Dennis Fetterly, currently a software engineer at Google. He is listed as a co-inventor in a patent for a ranking algorithm that uses links, and is known for his research in distributed computing and information retrieval.

Those are just two of the distinguished researchers listed as co-authors of the 2006 Microsoft research paper about identifying spam through on-page content features. Among the several on-page content features the research paper analyzes is compressibility, which they discovered can be used as a classifier for indicating that a web page is spammy.

Detecting Spam Web Pages Through Content Analysis

Although the research paper was authored in 2006, its findings remain relevant to today.

Then, as now, people attempted to rank hundreds or thousands of location-based web pages that were essentially duplicate content aside from city, region, or state names. Then, as now, SEOs often created web pages for search engines by excessively repeating keywords within titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal anchor text, and within the content to improve rankings.

Section 4.6 of the research paper explains:

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“Some search engines give higher weight to pages containing the query keywords several times. For example, for a given query term, a page that contains it ten times may be higher ranked than a page that contains it only once. To take advantage of such engines, some spam pages replicate their content several times in an attempt to rank higher.”

The research paper explains that search engines compress web pages and use the compressed version to reference the original web page. They note that excessive amounts of redundant words results in a higher level of compressibility. So they set about testing if there’s a correlation between a high level of compressibility and spam.

They write:

“Our approach in this section to locating redundant content within a page is to compress the page; to save space and disk time, search engines often compress web pages after indexing them, but before adding them to a page cache.

…We measure the redundancy of web pages by the compression ratio, the size of the uncompressed page divided by the size of the compressed page. We used GZIP …to compress pages, a fast and effective compression algorithm.”

High Compressibility Correlates To Spam

The results of the research showed that web pages with at least a compression ratio of 4.0 tended to be low quality web pages, spam. However, the highest rates of compressibility became less consistent because there were fewer data points, making it harder to interpret.

Figure 9: Prevalence of spam relative to compressibility of page.

The researchers concluded:

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“70% of all sampled pages with a compression ratio of at least 4.0 were judged to be spam.”

But they also discovered that using the compression ratio by itself still resulted in false positives, where non-spam pages were incorrectly identified as spam:

“The compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6 fared best, correctly identifying 660 (27.9%) of the spam pages in our collection, while misidentifying 2, 068 (12.0%) of all judged pages.

Using all of the aforementioned features, the classification accuracy after the ten-fold cross validation process is encouraging:

95.4% of our judged pages were classified correctly, while 4.6% were classified incorrectly.

More specifically, for the spam class 1, 940 out of the 2, 364 pages, were classified correctly. For the non-spam class, 14, 440 out of the 14,804 pages were classified correctly. Consequently, 788 pages were classified incorrectly.”

The next section describes an interesting discovery about how to increase the accuracy of using on-page signals for identifying spam.

Insight Into Quality Rankings

The research paper examined multiple on-page signals, including compressibility. They discovered that each individual signal (classifier) was able to find some spam but that relying on any one signal on its own resulted in flagging non-spam pages for spam, which are commonly referred to as false positive.

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The researchers made an important discovery that everyone interested in SEO should know, which is that using multiple classifiers increased the accuracy of detecting spam and decreased the likelihood of false positives. Just as important, the compressibility signal only identifies one kind of spam but not the full range of spam.

The takeaway is that compressibility is a good way to identify one kind of spam but there are other kinds of spam that aren’t caught with this one signal. Other kinds of spam were not caught with the compressibility signal.

This is the part that every SEO and publisher should be aware of:

“In the previous section, we presented a number of heuristics for assaying spam web pages. That is, we measured several characteristics of web pages, and found ranges of those characteristics which correlated with a page being spam. Nevertheless, when used individually, no technique uncovers most of the spam in our data set without flagging many non-spam pages as spam.

For example, considering the compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6, one of our most promising methods, the average probability of spam for ratios of 4.2 and higher is 72%. But only about 1.5% of all pages fall in this range. This number is far below the 13.8% of spam pages that we identified in our data set.”

So, even though compressibility was one of the better signals for identifying spam, it still was unable to uncover the full range of spam within the dataset the researchers used to test the signals.

Combining Multiple Signals

The above results indicated that individual signals of low quality are less accurate. So they tested using multiple signals. What they discovered was that combining multiple on-page signals for detecting spam resulted in a better accuracy rate with less pages misclassified as spam.

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The researchers explained that they tested the use of multiple signals:

“One way of combining our heuristic methods is to view the spam detection problem as a classification problem. In this case, we want to create a classification model (or classifier) which, given a web page, will use the page’s features jointly in order to (correctly, we hope) classify it in one of two classes: spam and non-spam.”

These are their conclusions about using multiple signals:

“We have studied various aspects of content-based spam on the web using a real-world data set from the MSNSearch crawler. We have presented a number of heuristic methods for detecting content based spam. Some of our spam detection methods are more effective than others, however when used in isolation our methods may not identify all of the spam pages. For this reason, we combined our spam-detection methods to create a highly accurate C4.5 classifier. Our classifier can correctly identify 86.2% of all spam pages, while flagging very few legitimate pages as spam.”

Key Insight:

Misidentifying “very few legitimate pages as spam” was a significant breakthrough. The important insight that everyone involved with SEO should take away from this is that one signal by itself can result in false positives. Using multiple signals increases the accuracy.

What this means is that SEO tests of isolated ranking or quality signals will not yield reliable results that can be trusted for making strategy or business decisions.

Takeaways

We don’t know for certain if compressibility is used at the search engines but it’s an easy to use signal that combined with others could be used to catch simple kinds of spam like thousands of city name doorway pages with similar content. Yet even if the search engines don’t use this signal, it does show how easy it is to catch that kind of search engine manipulation and that it’s something search engines are well able to handle today.

Here are the key points of this article to keep in mind:

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  • Doorway pages with duplicate content is easy to catch because they compress at a higher ratio than normal web pages.
  • Groups of web pages with a compression ratio above 4.0 were predominantly spam.
  • Negative quality signals used by themselves to catch spam can lead to false positives.
  • In this particular test, they discovered that on-page negative quality signals only catch specific types of spam.
  • When used alone, the compressibility signal only catches redundancy-type spam, fails to detect other forms of spam, and leads to false positives.
  • Combing quality signals improves spam detection accuracy and reduces false positives.
  • Search engines today have a higher accuracy of spam detection with the use of AI like Spam Brain.

Read the research paper, which is linked from the Google Scholar page of Marc Najork:

Detecting spam web pages through content analysis

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New Google Trends SEO Documentation

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Google publishes new documentation for how to use Google Trends for search marketing

Google Search Central published new documentation on Google Trends, explaining how to use it for search marketing. This guide serves as an easy to understand introduction for newcomers and a helpful refresher for experienced search marketers and publishers.

The new guide has six sections:

  1. About Google Trends
  2. Tutorial on monitoring trends
  3. How to do keyword research with the tool
  4. How to prioritize content with Trends data
  5. How to use Google Trends for competitor research
  6. How to use Google Trends for analyzing brand awareness and sentiment

The section about monitoring trends advises there are two kinds of rising trends, general and specific trends, which can be useful for developing content to publish on a site.

Using the Explore tool, you can leave the search box empty and view the current rising trends worldwide or use a drop down menu to focus on trends in a specific country. Users can further filter rising trends by time periods, categories and the type of search. The results show rising trends by topic and by keywords.

To search for specific trends users just need to enter the specific queries and then filter them by country, time, categories and type of search.

The section called Content Calendar describes how to use Google Trends to understand which content topics to prioritize.

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Google explains:

“Google Trends can be helpful not only to get ideas on what to write, but also to prioritize when to publish it. To help you better prioritize which topics to focus on, try to find seasonal trends in the data. With that information, you can plan ahead to have high quality content available on your site a little before people are searching for it, so that when they do, your content is ready for them.”

Read the new Google Trends documentation:

Get started with Google Trends

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