With the coronavirus outbreak branching further across the globe, and causing widespread anxiety and disruption, it’s also added a new complication to consider in brand communications and messaging. It goes without saying here that the human impact, the real-world, immediate health concerns of the outbreak, are the biggest concern, but for those businesses looking to maintain their activity, in alignment with this shifting focus, there are some key considerations that you need to keep in mind. This week, Twitter has provided a list of key elements to factor into your messaging, in order to ensure that you’re providing helpful, beneficial information to your audience, while also working to navigate the […]
LinkedIn is the latest platform to update its measures in response to the evolving coronavirus outbreak. This week, LinkedIn has outlined the steps it’s taken to keep its members informed, including broadcasting WHO updates live daily and “scaling its events platforms to enable companies to reach audiences virtually”. LinkedIn has also created a new Trending News element, in order to highlight reliable updates from experts, including the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong also recently spotted a new format for LinkedIn updates on the coronavirus which seek to highlight the information in-stream. But the biggest LinkedIn addition may be this: “In the […]
As Twitter works to improve its action against the misuse of its platform by political operatives, one key area that Twitter, specifically, needs to focus on is bots, and the use of automated profiles to amplify specific messaging. Bots have repeatedly been identified as a key issue in influencing tweet discussion – in the wake of the 2016 US Election, for example, researchers uncovered “huge, inter-connected Twitter bot networks” seeking to influence political discussion, with the largest incorporating some 500,000 fake accounts. Last year, Wired reported that bot profiles were still dominating political news streams, with bot profiles contributing up to 60% of tweet activity around some events, while earlier this year, a network of […]
Microsoft has this week outlined its effort to take action against the Necurs botnet, which it says is one of the largest online criminal networks in the world. As per Microsoft: “Today, Microsoft and partners across 35 countries took coordinated legal and technical steps to disrupt one of the world’s most prolific botnets, called Necurs, which has infected more than nine million computers globally. This disruption is the result of eight years of tracking and planning and will help ensure the criminals behind this network are no longer able to use key elements of its infrastructure to execute cyberattacks.” Botnet systems enable cybercriminals to distribute malware and take remote control […]
TikTok has announced plans to open a new transparency center in LA as part of its ongoing effort to distance itself from concerns around potential Chinese Government interference. The center would facilitate more oversight into the platform’s moderation practices – as per TikTok: “This new facility in our LA office will provide outside experts an opportunity to directly view how our teams at TikTok go about the day-to-day challenging, but critically important, work of moderating content on the platform. Through this direct observation of our Trust & Safety practices, experts will get a chance to evaluate our moderation systems, processes and policies in a holistic manner.” Through this new access […]
Back in 2016, I introduced the concept of data amplifiers in this column. I defined them as consisting of publishers (such as Apple and Google) and data aggregators (such as Infogroup) that together make sure an enterprise’s location data is made available to all the places where people conduct near me searches. Since then, a few of the data amplifiers have become something else: Customer review amplifiers. Review amplifiers wield an inordinate impact on a business’s online perception. They not only amplify a company’s presence via search – but they also get more attention for a business through customer reviews. In 2020, Google and Facebook have emerged as the two […]
Most people see search engine optimization, or SEO, as having two parts: on-site optimization and off-site optimization. Both of these having to do with content, keywords, and links, but a lot of the time technical SEO gets overlooked. Many people are either not educated enough about the subject, or get nervous when they hear the word technical. So what is technical SEO? It is essentially the more involved optimization tweaks that help give your content the best chance it can have to rank for relevant keywords and phrases. Technical SEO allows you to focus on analyzing how well the search engines are crawling and accessing your website. If the search […]
Earlier this month, Google called attention to changes in its Google My Business photo and video guidelines, announced last year. The company is letting local marketers know that all images or videos will now be reviewed before being published. We’ve made changes to our photo and video content policy. All photos and videos are now reviewed before publication. If you’re having issues adding photos, check out our photo criteria: https://t.co/XR21n7uM9Z — Google My Business (@GoogleMyBiz) March 5, 2020 Manual and machine moderation. Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz asked Google whether this was a manual or machine-based review process. The company responded that both humans and machines are involved, although wouldn’t […]
Several of our readers have asked how to convert old WordPress post content into the new Gutenberg (block) format in WordPress. After you update to any version above WordPress 5.0, your older post and page content will show up inside a Classic block in the new WordPress content editor. To convert the content into individual blocks, you would need to edit each post and page separately. If you have dozens or hundreds of posts, then this can take a lot of time. Thankfully, there’s a bulk convert option. In this article, we will show you how to bulk convert classic blocks to individual Gutenberg blocks in WordPress. Understanding the “Classic” […]
At SMX East, I sat down with Detlef Johnson, one of the earliest pioneers in SEO, to discuss his new efforts with Search Marketing Expo and Search Engine Land. But I had to first ask him about the past, since he was one the pioneers in the SEO industry, even before it was named SEO. Detlef ran a very popular newsletter discussion forum in the 1990s where a lot of SEOs got their information around how search engines worked. This was prior to Google even being founded. He also helped run Search Engine Strategies for several years, starting in 1999 in San Francisco, California. Detlef is now working on bringing […]