Link Building Mistakes and Penguin 4.0: Weekly Forum Update

The aftermath of Penguin 4.0 has been…surprisingly peaceful! In the days after Penguin was announced last Friday, many members of WebmasterWorld reported that instead of a hurricane, all they got was a stiff breeze.

But Penguin 4.0 also seems to be a slow beast – Gary Illyes only recently announced on Twitter that the penalty-lifting part of Penguin should be taking effect soon.

So I hope you’re ready to follow the news for the next couple of weeks! It could be a bumpy ride, and our communities are a great place to get caught up.

Everything We Know About Google Penguin 4.0 So Far

If you were asleep or on vacation last week and missed the announcement, Penguin 4.0 is here. You can catch up with the above article by my colleague, Ann Smarty. She’ll be updating it as new questions and answers arise. You can also get links to news and discussion in SEO Chat’s Penguin 4.0 discussion thread.

If WebmasterWorld is more your style, the experts are watching their sites like hawks as Penguin continues to leave its impact.

September 23rd, when Penguin was announced, ryandiscord and ThomasHarvey of SEO Chat were looking at the SEO weather forecasts. As ryandiscord phrases it, “Nothing crazy,” was happening. But the theory of Penguin 4.0 was appreciated. Ryan also wrote,

“What I like about this update is that the results of a clean up can happen much sooner. I think it may even be easier to spot which links are being caught if it is page level.”

Users on WebmasterWorld had a similar reaction. SnowMan68 wrote,

“Well that was underwhelming. WTF!”

Ebuzz lent credence to the idea that Penguin is rolling out slowly. They wrote,

“I’ve not seen ANY change in my Penguin hit sites. It might as well not even be announced,”

on September 25th. Robert Charlton had exciting news to share on September 29th, though:

“Gary Illyes in ongoing discussion with Barry at SERoundtable, as clarified that the algo has been rolling out in phases, and that the phase in which demotions will be removed started late yesterday afternoon, ie Sept 28, 2016.”

Penguin 4.0: Some Things Change, Some Things Stay the Same

So webmasters haven’t noticed many changes to the health of their sites yet. There are other things about Penguin which haven’t changed with 4.0. You can take a look at all the things that have stayed the same in this Threadwatch update. Disavow files, for example, should still be used.

Everyone at Google is firm about the fact that Penguin will not do disavows for you. Google was also quick to add that manual link-based penalties will still be given out to sites that Penguin doesn’t quite apply to.

Link Building Mistakes of the Pros and Newbs

With Penguin rolling out, now is the perfect time to talk about link building techniques!

This is an AWESOME thread from WebmasterWorld where users are talking about what techniques don’t work and what tactics are mistakes in the modern era. I can’t tell you how many newbie SEOs ask on SEO Chat,

“What are the best practices for link building in 2016?”

You can answer that, and more, with this thread. I dunno about you, but I’ll be sharing this link far and wide – and probably for years. So what are some techniques that don’t work? Martinibuster cites “publishing your actual outreach template in an SEO article” as one of them.

“Being transparent makes some people feel good about what they do… However, publishing search strategy specifics in public has been known to cause a response from Google.”

Graeme_p writes that

“One thing I did many years ago was to put footer links in free WordPress templates. People used them and I did get links that helped at the time. It worked for a while…but later on it probably looked spammy.”

Keyplyr agrees:

“I did that back then as well and many years later it has come back to bite me.”

Here’s one of my pet peeves that engine and martinibuster discuss: chasing PR and DA! Martinibuster writes

“Nowadays I know there are many who are chasing DA, even though Rand Fishkin discourages the practice of using Domain Authority for judging a site’s worth, describing it as the number one link building myth…”

Bing Academic and Movie Search Has an Intelligent Autocomplete

Bing has developed an intelligent autocomplete for its academic article and movie database searches. This intelligence

“…understands the intent [of a search], and generates suggestions based upon the user input. It won’t give a response until it reaches a trigger point of understanding the intent,”

writes WebmasterWorld’s admin, engine. It’s a pretty neat paper! We take Google’s autocomplete function for granted, and this paper will help you understand that as Bing details the specifics of its development.

What’s really interesting is that this technology may be the first step in analyzing the web beyond links. Give it a read!

Is AI Getting in the Way of Google Understanding Your Site?

This is an interesting thread from WebmasterWorld, a spin-off of their Penguin discussion. As part of their announcement, Google said that they wouldn’t be commenting on future Penguin refreshes. MrSavage writes that Google’s behavior could be creating too wide of a disconnect between engineers and their product.

“…Perhaps it’s as simple so the staff don’t have to field…questions anymore…They are hardly concerned about whatever results are showing. The fact you can search something and get a number 1 or 2 result that are articles completely void of one or more of your typed in search terms tells me they don’t give a S behind closed doors…”

We see webmasters, all the time, who use automated tools and are then unable to fix the mistakes they create. Is Google doing the same thing?

Perhaps integrating Penguin into the core algorithm and creating RankBrain are the first steps towards an automated (and ultimately inhuman or outdated) search engine. How important is the human element? Share your thoughts!

SEO: So, What DOES Work?

Several discussions on SEO Chat have been popping up in this same vein. SEO is changing – the things that used to work don’t, and the things that do seem to create very small returns.

This is especially true in local SEO. Gazzahk writes,

“Manipulating Google SERPs is an increasingly difficult thing to do. My website used to dominate all my SERPs both locally and globally. Heaps of links to link bait made my money pages dominate…”

Today, though, he ranks better outside of his local area than he does inside of it. Besides content and links, what are the keys to great local rankings?

One thing that KernelPanic, an SEO Chat mod, brought up in an earlier discussion is reviews. Maybe, some day, local reviews will eclipse links in importance. What do you think?

Design Your Marketing Emails For Being Opened on a Smart Phone!

On Cre8asiteforums, user earlpearl tells the story of a recent email campaign they ran.

“On a recent large email blast our email provider gave us info I hadn’t seen before: Percentage of Opens by Device. On that blast 92% were opened on a smart phone…KABOOOM!!”

It was a revelation – turns out that the recent emails were unreadable on a smart phone! The tiny screen shrunk the text down and scrambled it into gibberish.

“Next job: Change ALL the emails. ALL of them!”

earlpearl writes. User iamlost has a TON of great suggestions for how to optimize your responses, newsletters, promos, and more for smartphones. Check this thread out for a mobile UX wakeup call!

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Here’s How to Find the Right Mix and Fine-Tune Your Offer

Have you ever wondered if your strange collection of skills and interests could be woven together to build a profitable business?

If you have, you’ll love today’s Hero’s Journey article.

Lauren Pawell is a rare breed: she has a background in development and marketing. That’s a combination you don’t see every day!

Some people might have encouraged Lauren to choose one field or the other. But she persisted and has built a business that artfully combines her many passions.

Lauren’s story is this month’s Hero’s Journey feature. We’re tapping the collective wisdom of our community members to bring you reports from the front lines of the content marketing world. See all the Hero’s Journey posts here.

Read on as Lauren shares what she’s learned over the years and how you can use her hard-earned wisdom in your own business.

Building a one-stop revenue-building shop

Lauren Pawell: What sets Bixa Media apart is my background in both development and marketing. This allows me to sit at the intersection of business, technology and design.

We help entrepreneurs turn their WordPress and Shopify websites into revenue-generating powerhouses. We do that through a mixture of website design and development, content marketing, search engine optimization, paid advertising, and online reputation management.

Not only can we write killer copy, but we can also evaluate your technology options, decide which is best for your needs, and build everything for you, while keeping your business objectives at the forefront of the process.

I find our clients really value having a partner who can help them from A to Z.

Perhaps more importantly, we’re able to tell our clients where not to waste their dollars and effort, and where to focus their resources.

Even if this doesn’t always match what a client had in mind, our honest feedback resonates with business owners.

We offer two types of services:

• 1:1 online marketing services: For medium-sized businesses who are looking to outsource their online marketing, we offer a variety of services designed to amplify their online exposure and generate more customers.
• DIY programs: For small businesses or solopreneurs who don’t yet have the resources to outsource their marketing, we offer educational marketing programs through Websites That Generate.

My business is primarily online, although I do plenty of networking offline — I find they go hand-in-hand. The offline contact tends to tip the scale in our favor, especially when it comes to securing large contracts.

Putting the brakes on spinning wheels

Lauren Pawell: I started my business for two reasons.

First and foremost, after working in marketing overseas for a few years, I saw so many small-to-medium-sized businesses with a wealth of online opportunity at their fingertips. But they just didn’t have the right guidance.

As a result, they were spinning their wheels in so many different directions with little-to-no impact.

I wanted to help them pick that low-hanging digital fruit, so that they could continue to grow their businesses and entrepreneurial dreams.

So, in 2011, I moved back to the United States, booked my first client at a friend’s birthday party (notice that offline touchpoint!), and haven’t looked back since.

The best part of that story? Our first client still works with us today and has gone from a one-man business to a 20+ person company. Now that is why I started Bixa!

I don’t share the second reason with many people, but I feel it will resonate with the Copyblogger audience.

In 2011, I had been through one-too-many bad bosses and was tired of not being in charge of my own destiny, from both a personal and career standpoint. That freedom I craved drove me to start my own company.

My driving motivation is to help other entrepreneurial spirits achieve the same freedom I have.

Conversion experiments that paid off

Lauren Pawell: Converting cold traffic into qualified leads is a finicky beast, especially when it comes to selling online education.

It’s not hard to understand why — cold traffic doesn’t immediately pull out their wallets. It took quite a bit of trial and error to dial in our lead-nurturing process, but we did it.

A few highlights:

We use Facebook ads as our hook

A new email subscriber generated from a Facebook ad was not likely to immediately jump up and buy our program. However, when we started to establish trust and demonstrate our authority through a few different mediums, we were far more successful.

Here’s what we do:

First, we run the new subscriber through a long welcome series over email. We send them 7 emails over 20 days, all of which include a lot of copy. It helps us weed out unqualified leads.

While in many approaches we did not want a lot of unsubscribes, in this case, we welcome them. It allows us to filter out anyone who doesn’t immediately love us.

After this, we direct the subscriber to our private Facebook community

There we share weekly educational content over video and give 1:1 feedback, similar to what they would experience in our course. This also helps establish us as a trusted and authoritative figure.

Then, we deliver free educational webinars on specific topics

This helps the subscriber better understand their problem and the solution they need to transform their situation.

Finally, we open our doors periodically

Last, but not least, we sell our program through email during specific times of the year, and are available on live chat to answer any questions the prospects have. (This, again, is similar to our course experience).

Some may say we give away too much for free, but I find this really helps us find great students. Plus, it allows our Facebook ad spend to generate far more ROI.

When we didn’t follow this solution and jumped straight from Facebook ads to a webinar to a sales email, our conversion rates weren’t great. Now, they are stellar.

So, if you feel like you are wasting dollars on Facebook ad spend, consider the rest of your funnel. Now that we know what works, it’s far easier to justify scaling up our marketing spend.

Venturing into online education (one validated step at a time)

Lauren Pawell: In Q2 of this year, I decided to test the idea of online education programs.

I wanted to be less reliant on 1:1 client work, which can be unpredictable. And I wanted to help all the entrepreneurs we were turning away due to a full calendar on our end, and limited resources on their end.

To validate the idea, we began being incredibly transparent about our marketing tactics.

We educated our audience through a number of mediums, notably: email, online webinars, and a private Facebook community.

I believed that through great educational content, we could:

• Empower solopreneurs, allowing them to achieve quick wins in their businesses
• Determine whether there was a demand for our DIY programs

This effort has been quite successful. We recently presold an educational course (before it was created) that our audience was begging for.

By validating an idea through free content first, we were then able to dedicate the resources to creating paid educational programs. A course takes a lot of front-loaded work, especially content creation. The last thing I wanted to do was create a program no one wanted.

As an added benefit of this education-first approach, when 1:1 prospects come through the door, they are already sold on working with us. Because they already understand the “why” behind our recommendations, the selling is 90 percent done by the time we write a proposal.

The Rainmaker Digital products Lauren uses

Lauren Pawell: We use quite a few Rainmaker Digital products, including:

• Rainmaker Platform to power our online courses and membership programs at Websites That Generate
• Genesis Framework + StudioPress themes to power clients’ websites
• Copyblogger Authority and Digital Commerce Institute to continue learning and engaging with the community

I also happen to be a new Copyblogger Certified Content Marketer. And I’m attending the upcoming Digital Commerce Summit in Denver.

So, needless to say, I’m a Rainmaker Digital diehard!

Refining and scaling up for the future

Lauren Pawell: In the final quarter of 2016, we’ll focus on refining our sales funnels and scaling up our DIY programs.

Our educational courses at Websites That Generate haven’t been marketed on our website, or really even promoted outside of email. That’s because I wanted to run a few groups of people through our programs to ensure we really dialed them in.

Now that we’ve gotten the process down, we’re ready to scale up. The first step in that process requires some adjustments to our sales funnel. Then, we can scale up our lead generation through Facebook ads.

An unsolicited piece of advice

Lauren Pawell: If, like me, you’re considering creating an educational program to complement your 1:1 services, I highly recommend the Rainmaker Platform.

All of the technology was so easy to set up, allowing us to focus most of our effort on the course creation and marketing.

When it comes to selling a course and serving your students, the less you have to worry about the technology, the better.

Find Lauren Pawell online …

• Bixa Media
• Websites That Generate

Thanks to Lauren for appearing in our Hero’s Journey series.

Do you have questions for her? Ask them in the comments.

We’ll be back next month with another story to teach, inspire, and encourage you along your journey.

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Marketing Your Book All the Way to the Bestseller Lists, with Jay Baer

In this podcast episode, Chris Ducker sits down with Jay Baer to learn exactly how to become a New York Times bestselling author! Get your notebooks ready!

Book marketing is a topic that has come up a lot for me lately. As many of you know, I’ve just wrapped a book that has been traditionally published a while back.

Earlier this year, I interviewed Farnoosh Brock about her book on juicing, and her grassroots approach to marketing it — which worked very well for her. This time you will hear a different approach — a mix of old and new techniques, with some long-term brand building as the backbone.

In this interview, I talk with Jay Baer about his well-planned book marketing campaign, and we delve deep into how to become a New York Times bestselling author.

This is some very useful stuff, so get your notepads ready!

In this 50-minute episode, Jay and I discuss:

• Why using unorthodox book marketing techniques can work in your favor
• How you can build awareness long before your book is released
• The criteria for hitting the NYT bestseller list
• How to utilize your community to make your book go viral
• Why hiring a publicist is still a good idea in the new business economy
• How to use re-targeting to your advantage

Listen to this Episode Now

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Give Your Book the Best Chance with a Well-Executed Launch

The timing of your book’s launch is important. But how important is it? Here’s what really matters when you’re ready to launch your book.

In the words of Jeff Goins, “It’s really hard to launch too late and it’s really easy to launch too early.”

A good launch can make a book, while a bad launch can damage your credibility as an author, as well as have a negative effect on sales.

Pamela Wilson and Jeff Goins discuss best practices for a successful launch — and Jeff shares insight and experiences he learned the hard way from his past book launches.

In this episode Jeff Goins and Pamela Wilson discuss:

• The ideal day of the week to launch your book
• How the way you’re publishing should influence your launch date
• Best launch practices for the self-published author
• Pamela’s super-cool bonus for people who purchase her book

Listen to this Episode Now

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SEO that Grows Your Business with John Jantsch

Of all the components of a holistic online marketing strategy, search engine optimization (“SEO”) seems to mystify many the most. And it’s true that years back, the key to ranking well in Google was a form of dark art.

That’s changed in recent years. Google’s algorithm has gotten smarter, and is more distinctly tuned in to what the audience thinks is relevant and valuable for a given search term, rather than what we as marketers would prefer to rank well.

As my friend Rae Hoffman says, “Google doesn’t want to make websites popular, they want to rank popular websites.” In other words, get traffic rich by creating content that people want and value first, and Google will make you even richer.

Another friend of mine, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, has just co-authored a book called SEO for Growth, and it’s a completely up-to-date examination of what it takes to do well in search engines. I was honored that John asked me to contribute the foreword, and long-time readers of Copyblogger will see the natural evolution of tactics and strategies we’ve talked about for a decade.

Tune in for valuable tips on the modern practice of SEO. More importantly, discover how to execute on an SEO strategy that grows your business, not just your search traffic.

Listen to this Episode Now

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Ask Yourself These 3 Simple Questions to Craft Better Headlines

Last week, when I wrote about how to become a writer, I forgot to mention something about why you’d want to be a writer.

Writers are communicators. If you’re proud of your ideas, you want to be able to communicate them clearly and precisely.

Headlines are your first opportunity to present your message to the audience you want to reach. The language you use should appeal to those people and make them want to find out more.

To review the next headline you write from the perspective of an editor who is focused on audience engagement, here are three simple questions you can ask yourself.

A guide to finding the right words

Once you’ve written a draft of your headline and article (or you’ve recorded a podcast episode or video), use the questions below to ensure your headline is the most effective it can be:

1. Who will benefit from this content?
2. How do I help them?
3. What makes this content special?

The answers to these questions most likely won’t produce the exact headline you’ll use. Rather, they’ll help mold your headline draft into a persuasive message that reaches and connects with the people you want to attract to your content.

To keep the process of infusing your headline with meaning and fascination simple, I recommend answering each question in one to two sentences.

If you need to write more, recognize your opportunity to fine-tune your goal for the content before revisiting these headline questions.

Let’s look at the important information each question will help you cultivate and how the answers will transform your headline.

1. Who will benefit from this content?

As Brian wrote yesterday:

“The point is to bond strongly with someone rather than boring everyone.”

When you define your audience, you can review your headline to make sure you use language that intrigues those individuals.

For example, your target audience may be marine biologists who have a tendency to procrastinate.

If your headline only says, “10 Tips to Beat Procrastination,” you can look for ways to add words that will attract marine biologists. And you don’t have to explicitly announce, “Hey marine biologists who have a tendency to procrastinate, this content is for you!”

You could try:

10 Tips to Beat Procrastination Faster than a Black Marlin

(A black marlin is one of the fastest fish.)

2. How do I help them?

People don’t necessarily wake up in the morning excited to read content.

The promises that certain pieces of content make to expand people’s understanding or knowledge of a topic persuade them to read content throughout the day. The content may even change their lives.

Your tips might help marine biologists accomplish tasks faster, and if they can accomplish tasks faster, they’re less likely to put them off.

Here, you can add another benefit to the headline:

10 Time-saving Tips to Beat Procrastination Faster than a Black Marlin

3. What makes this content special?

You may now realize that while a lot of other articles focus on “beating procrastination,” your content is special because it shows how to simplify and organize your daily marine biology to-do list so that each task is manageable.

Now you’ll want to revise a few words from your original headline:

10 Time-saving Tips to Zip Through Your Work Day Faster than a Black Marlin

Custom-tailored headlines for your content

We started this exercise with the headline:

10 Tips to Beat Procrastination

The final result is:

10 Time-saving Tips to Zip Through Your Work Day Faster than a Black Marlin

If you’re a marine biologist with a tendency to procrastinate, which headline would you click on?

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Is the Novel Dead? Part One

In this special edition of the show, two writers joined me to opine the death of one of the most influential forms in the history of the written word. I posed the question that many great writers have pondered stretching across the last two centuries …

Is the novel dead? And maybe a more up-to-date version of that question is, did the internet kill books?

Of course these are famous — almost cliché — theoretical discussions that writers often chew on over stiff drinks, and they raise hackles for those of us who adore them.

What you won’t find here is a highbrow literary dissertation, or even a very strict definition as to what the novel is or isn’t. But you will find a lively discussion between friends who care about the writing life and its future.

Robert Bruce is a writer, voice actor, and copywriter, as well as the Vice President of Rainmaker Digital and the guy who runs the Rainmaker FM podcast network.

Adam Skolnick is an award-winning journalist, author, and a returning guest on the show. His first book, One Breath, was published by Crown last January, and his work has appeared in publications including Playboy, The New York Times, and many others.

If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews as soon as they’re published.

In Part One of the file Robert, Adam, and I discuss:

• How longer works of writing have been forced to compete with disposable culture
• Why Herman Melville died penniless
• How the novel has stood the test of time
• The role of podcasting for modern writers
• Author Hugh Howey’s “Rock, Paper, Scissors” model of book retail

Listen to this Episode Now

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7 Powerful Content Strategies Borrowed from Advertising Masters

The Copyblogger blog was founded on a simple but powerful idea — that our content (blogs, podcasts, videos) can be strengthened by adapting techniques from the world of direct response copywriting.

Today, Sonia drills into some specific techniques and approaches that we can profitably swipe from our direct response brothers and sisters.

In this 24-minute episode, Sonia Simone talks about:

• The crucial difference between subscribers and an audience
• How to develop a “big idea” that tells the world who you are
• The boring-sounding secret of the really great copywriters (this is especially powerful today)
• The fascinating world of recommendation algorithms
• Working toward business goals without sounding like an infomercial
• 9 quick ideas to make your content more interesting

Listen to this Episode Now

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3 Ways Twitter Update Will Change the Way You Tweet

A few days ago Twitter finally introduced its long-awaited “longer tweets” update. But how much do we really know about what really had changed?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/777915304261193728

Apart from the basic and the most important news that we can now type more before tweeting, what else can we do differently?

No more dot @

Do you know how to tell a Twitter geek from Twitter noob? By the dot before @ sign.

If you are a Twitter geek, you know that when you start a Tweet with @friend (like in reply), that @friend will be the only person on Twitter who’ll see the tweet in their timeline. To overcome this, you would need . before username.

Well, there’s no need any more. From now on, @friend tweets are seen by all your followers.

More visual tweets

If you could not include an image in a tweet previously (because there was no character space for it), now there is no such an excuse. Visual tweets are on the rise more than before.

And it doesn’t really matter what you think of them. Whether you like images in tweets or not, your tweets will most likely be ignored lest you include an image to go with it because most other tweets will be visual from now on.

So make sure to use these tools to come up with cool, attention-grabbing images to tweet. Here’s also a detailed guide on how to make the most of visual tweets.

Also, make sure to use our image resizing tool to properly size your visuals before tweeting them.

More quote tweets

Just like with visuals, it’s now easier to add more context to your tweets by quoting your Twitter friend you are talking to.

Not only does it make your conversations easier to follow, it also notifies the person you are quoting, so it works well for Twitter interactions.

How is the Twitter update changing the way you tweet? Please share in the comments!

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2 Essential Elements of Irresistible Content

I once asked on social media:

What’s your biggest challenge when creating compelling content?

I didn’t treat it as a poll with various challenges. I wanted pure, unfiltered responses.

And the number one answer was:

Keeping it original and interesting.

So, let’s talk about that today.

Meaning + fascination

The two elements that lead to reader engagement, social media sharing, and the “gotta have it now” impulse are meaning and fascination. But you knew that from the subhead.

Let’s unpack each a bit.

Meaning: This is the informational aspect of your content that your regular readers, listeners, or viewers expect from you. This is also a topic that matters to the prospective audience you’re trying to reach through social media sharing.

Another way to think of this important aspect of your content is relevance. Content must be highly relevant to your existing and prospective audience, but I prefer meaning, as it implies an extra level of value that makes people treasure you.

Fascination: The fascinating element of your content is where your creativity shines. It’s the fun, shocking, or entertaining aspect of your content that makes people pay attention and share with their friends and colleagues.

Often you’re using an analogy, metaphor, or simile to make an associated connection between something cool and an important topic that might otherwise be pretty boring.

Not only does this attract and hold attention, it also aids in comprehension and retention for your audience, which in turn increases your subject-matter authority with them (because they actually learn something).

Here are two examples from Copyblogger (meaning in italics, fascination in bold):

How I Became a Better Writer Thanks to Distracted, Hungover College Kids

This article took a highly improbable source of fascination to deliver the meaning readers of Copyblogger seek — how to write better.

5 Things a Bad Dog Can Teach You About Writing Good Copy

It’s pretty easy to spot the meaningful and fascinating elements in that one, right?

(Don’t fear) fascination

Many people, especially in professional services or conservative industries, are afraid to go out on a limb and throw in that fascinating aspect. I’d argue that these are the types who have the most to gain from breaking out of stodgy convention and shaking that moneymaker a bit.

You can get a lot of mileage out of industry inside jokes and references that are completely obscure to outsiders. Remember, you don’t care what anyone else thinks other than your target audience.

And from post to post, you may only bond strongly with a small segment of the people you talk to. One article speaks strongly to some, the next to others.

The point is to bond strongly with someone rather than boring everyone.

Bonus points if you got that the subhead for this section is a terribly clever Blue Öyster Cult and Human League reference: (Don’t Fear) the Reaper + (Keep Feeling) Fascination.

Also, if you have to explain your terribly clever reference, it’s too obscure. Clarity matters more, no matter how cool the author thinks it is.

Ultra-meaning can be fascinating

It’s true that you can intrigue people with an overwhelming amount of relevant meaning, to the point that it becomes fascinating in and of itself. This is the realm of list and how-to articles that go viral on sheer value alone.

The key to this type of engaging content is specificity. The more specific the value you promise and provide, the more fascinating people deem it.

Check out these examples:

• 109 Ways to Make Your Business Irresistible to the Media
• 5 Remarkable Qualities of Effective Online Content
• The 4 Words That Will Get Your Email Opened

Hopefully you feel the same way about this article.

Yep, this is also how you write great headlines

In each example I’ve given, you can spot the intersection of meaning and fascination from the headline alone.

That’s why meaning + fascination = the secret to engaging content and great headlines.

Remember, the title of your article is simply a compelling promise of what your content offers. When I say write your headline first, I mean come up with an intersection of meaning and fascination, reduce it to a working title, then deliver on the promise by crafting the content.

If you find you can’t deliver on the promise, you’ve got to scrap that idea and find another.

Don’t strain to make a bad analogy work; simply look for another pairing of meaning and fascination — they’re everywhere once you understand what you’re looking for.

Editor’s note: The original version of this post was published on April 7, 2011.

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The Upside of Setting Outrageous Goals

This week’s guest on The Digital Entrepreneur is determined. His goal is to help five billion people with their efforts to grow their businesses. How?

He’s doing so by sharing as much content as he possibly can and by providing valuable services to purpose-driven companies.

He strives to be wealthy, not just in material things, but also with connections to make the world a better place …

In this 46-minute episode, Brandon Lewin and I discuss:

• The biggest benefit he derives from being a digital entrepreneur
• Why he finds it imperative to “give away” all the information he possibly can
• His story on how he got the taste for entrepreneurship at a young age
• What led him to the realization that he never wanted to work for anybody else
• The milestone that he’s most proud of as a digital entrepreneur
• How he consciously chooses the right people to work with to create his “A-Team”
• How marketing automation has benefited his business

And much more.

Plus, Brandon answers my patented rapid-fire questions at the end of the episode, which unveiled a couple common interests that we share. Don’t miss it.

Listen to this Episode Now

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Everything We Know about Google Penguin 4.0

Google Penguin 4.0 was officially announced on Friday and I’ve waited a few days to collect various questions and observations.

I’ll be updating this post as more questions and observations are coming.

So what do we know by now?

From the official announcement:

• Penguin 4.0 is real time (and part of algorithm): Google will determine if a web page should be affected by Penguin filter as it crawls the page. This means, you won’t need to wait till the next Penguin update to see if your site is no longer affected by it. The filter may be removed as soon as Google re-crawls the page again. This also means this is the last officially announced update.
• Penguin 4.0 is now “granular” which sounds like it may affect pages or sections of the site, not always entire sites.

What does it mean?

Penguin will be hard to diagnose

With no dates and official announcements, Penguin will become very hard to diagnose, especially if the site is partially effected.

This means a thorough professional backlink profile audit is more important than ever.

Should disavow still be used?

Yes, it has been confirmed that Disavowing bad links is a viable option after you did you due diligence in removing them.

URLs is the disavow file should be re-crawled for those backlinks to be discounted (same as before)

Observations so far:

It looks like the impact has been very mild but it only confirms that Penguin is now real time: It takes time to crawl the web!

No signs of major SERP movement yesterday – the two days since Penguin started rolling out have been quieter than most of September.

— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) September 24, 2016

Fits w/ the idea that this new Penguin inside the core algo is a learning system, not a set of hard-coded rules https://t.co/Jh63YfkFzu

— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) September 24, 2016

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How to Ruthlessly Cut Worthless Words from Your Sales Copy

When you’re writing sales copy for your business, showing a little personality is a good thing.

It’s also a good idea to use natural language whenever possible, so people know you’re a real person who is genuinely interested in helping your prospects and customers.

I write conversationally when I write copy, and so do a lot of other folks I trust and admire.

However, there are limits to how far you should take that advice.

Are you taking a risk when you use slang?

Unless you have proof that your audience uses slang — and wants to see it in sales copy — you should avoid using it in your persuasive emails, sales pages, and other types of “selling” collateral.

And when I say “slang,” I’m also including alternative spellings, slang abbreviations, and hyperbole.

I know there’s a high probability I sound like an old grandmother shouting at kids to stay off her lawn — but lately I’m seeing this trend more and more frequently in sales copywriting. And I suspect it’s radically decreasing conversions.

Types of slang to avoid in copy

Want to see some examples? These are all words and phrases I’ve recently noticed on sales pages and in emails that were designed to sell me something:

• BOOM!
• Pleez (or worse yet, pleeeeeeeeez)
• OMG
• FREAKING ROCKED
• LOL

Chances are, you’ve got your own list of words that annoy you when you see them in professional writing. My list could go on for a while, but I’ve chosen some of my biggest pet peeves. I wince every time I see those words in an email from a business.

Why you want to avoid them

There’s a compelling reason to avoid slang and abbreviations like the ones on the list above: they often don’t add value to your copy — and can actually distract your prospects.

When your prospective buyers read your sales page and decide whether or not your product is a good fit for them, you don’t want to distract them for a single moment. You want every line of your copy to flow seamlessly into the next, without interruption.

If you sprinkle your sales page with slang and nonsense words, there’s a good chance you’re going to interrupt that flow.

Keep prospects focused on the action you want them to take

You might innocently include “OMG” in your copy in attempt to sound conversational, but prospects could be distracted by that choice and think, “Wait, why does he say ‘OMG’ in the middle of this paragraph?”

If you’re trying to reach people who aren’t native English speakers (or who come from older generations), they might also ask, “What does ‘OMG’ mean?”

At best, the “OMG” is only a temporary distraction that slows down prospects’ decision-making processes as they read. At worst, the slang and misspelled words will turn off readers so much that they abandon your sales page forever — and you’ve just lost them as customers.

Slang words and abbreviations that belong in text messages also don’t add any value to your copy. As sales copywriters, we must choose every word carefully. Every word and phrase on the page needs to pull its weight — slang and overused exclamations like “OMG” just don’t cut it.

Think I’m wrong?

Perhaps in certain circumstances you’re correct — there are exceptions to this rule, of course.

If you performed extensive research and know for certain your prospects use this type of language — and want to see it in sales copy that promotes your product or service — you might be able to get away with using it.

You should test out these words and phrases to see if including them increases your conversion rate.

If they don’t, I recommend cutting them. Even if your prospect tolerates these words and phrases, they’re probably not contributing anything to your copy.

Get more copywriting tips

If you’re looking for more tips on how to make your copy tighter, more readable, and more persuasive, check out Copyblogger’s free ebook Copywriting 101: How to Craft Compelling Copy.

The 90-page ebook is packed full of helpful advice, including more thoughts on audience research and using your prospect’s preferred language.

Do certain words irritate you when you see them in professional copywriting? Or are there any you’re guilty of using (or overusing) yourself? Tell us about it in the comments below.

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When Will Penguin Update?

There have been several promising signs this month that Penguin may drop sooner than you think.

Late last year, Google said that Penguin would be here in Q1 2016 – so perhaps some of you have lost hope. But the members of our communities, WebmasterWorld especially, are getting very excited about all the changes and activity happening in Google lately.

Along with a few threads about Penguin, we’ve got lots of stories about AMP pages! These super-fast mobile pages have been Google’s pet project this year, and they’re more prevalent now than ever before.

Also check out a story about HTTPS, Google Keyword Planner, and the Coalition for Better Ads – all below!

Legacy Crawl Errors Plague Google Search Console – Are You Seeing Them?

What’s a legacy crawl error, you might ask? Basically it’s when a page that hasn’t existed for a while (sometimes months or even years) starts displaying errors in Search Console. They might also show up as being “linked from” pages that don’t exist. Some members of WebmasterWorld have been seeing a ton of these legacy errors lately – and they believe it might have something to do with Penguin.

“I’ve never seen Googlebot go this crazy before. It’s as if it’s performing an exhaustive and historical update of its link graphs,” writes Simon_H.

Massive crawls by Googlebot have happened in the past, and John Mueller has said before that these crawls do not foreshadow a big update. But this time might be different: the crawl errors could be the result of Google doing some massive software and hardware updates in preparation for Penguin.

“…Penguin itself is an immense link graph related application, one that used to take months to calculate,” writes martinibuster.

Penguin is on a massive scale, and preparations to change it could, in martinibuster’s opinion, result in the symptoms WebmasterWorld users have been seeing.

Comments Get AMP’d Up!

Disqus is bringing AMP to comments sections everywhere, and in an unusual way. It seems like you’ll need a separate domain to place the special AMP code on.

Get the details on Threadwatch!

Google Says SERPs Are Officially AMP’d

Getting tired of all the “AMP” puns? Well, you better get used to them because AMP pages are here to stay! Google announced this week that there are “more than 600 million AMP pages in 232 locales and 104 languages.”

Google says that when you search on your phone or mobile device, you’ll find a label to tell you that the page has AMP capabilities.

Much like last year’s “mobile-friendly” label, the label itself has no impact on SERPs rankings…but it might give a boost to your CTR, as it indicates to a viewer that your site will load faster than average.

Does Your HTTPS Site Need a Unique IP Address?

Here’s a thread from WebmasterWorld about accommodating users with old and out-of-date technology. As keyplyr explains, a unique IP is often combined with a domain that has secure hosting enabled.

“While it is possible to use Secure Hosting without a Unique IP, some older browsers which do not support Server Name Indication display a certificate warning when viewing your site (even if your cert is valid).”

So, is it necessary to combine a unique IP with Secure Hosting so that you don’t scare away users on older browsers? User lammert says that

“Recently…I switched all my sites to https only over one IP…cutting [off] the two to ten percent [of] visitors still using outdated technologies. Revenue from the sites hasn’t changed which was for me the assurance that those who don’t invest in their own computer equipment also do not spend much money on the net.”

It’s a matter of user metrics, it appears – and there’s a diversity of opinions in this thread!

Critical Must Know: Chrome to Target HTTP as Non-Secure

Google has been warning for years now that, eventually, they’d be marking sites without HTTPS as “non-secure” in Chrome. According to a post from iamlost on Cre8asiteforums, they’ll finally put their foot down in January 2017.

“…a simple switch to HTTPS/1.1 is likely to get dinged again within a few years with Google/Chrome pushing HTTP/2,” iamlost adds.

“Therefore do appropriate due diligence and decide what to switch to…to best future proof your site and its delivery.” EGOL adds that if you serve HTTP and HTTPS versions simultaneously, make sure your 301 redirects are put in place! Otherwise,

“…if you are not HTTPS and don’t have all of your redirects in place you are going to be embarrassed in front of some of your visitors.”

Coalition of Internet Advertisers Formed to Improve Consumer Experience

It’s the long-awaited Coalition for Better Ads! We’ve highlighted a few discussions about them in the past, such as when they laid out their L.E.A.N. (that’s Light, Encrypted, AdChoice supported, Non-Invasive) guidelines for Online advertising back in May. The coalition contains a variety of different businesses, including

“Facebook and Google, IAB and IAB Europe,” according to WebmasterWorld’s admin, engine.

Users on WebmasterWorld are skeptical, though.

“This is from The Onion, right?” writes user weeks.

User mcneely isn’t convinced, either:

“Sure, this all looks good on the surface – the true test will come when major publishers…make the hard choices, like…building for the visitor-ship or building for the ad companies.”

AdBlockers dominate the Internet these days, and the Coalition for Better Ads appears to be a way that advertisers are trying to fight it – not directly, with hostility, but by taking the rise of AdBlocking as a serious backlash to the state of online advertising. What do you think?

Possible Google Mobile Update Causes Widespread Drop in Rankings

In addition to the rumors about Penguin, Webmasters are currently contending with an update that they don’t completely understand yet.

It’s been called a new “Quality” or “Phantom” update.

“While Google has not commented definitively, many experts are convinced that two different updates took place around the date in question,” writes GrowMap on Threadwatch.

Local rankings were one of the biggest hit: “keyword + city” queries appear to have taken a serious tumble. Get the details here!

Adding Text Descriptions to Classes!

Here’s a cool thread on Cre8asiteforums for all you programmer geeks out there! User glyn is working with a piece of code that renders an icon in a set font. They wonder:

“Is there any way within this class that I can add a text description so if someone mouses over [the icon] they will get a description?”

It’s the kind of thing you see on lots of blogs all over the web – and the users of Cre8asiteforums can show you just how to do it! Check this out if you’ve ever wanted to add custom text descriptions to your icons.

Google Keyword Planner’s New Search Volume

While some of us have been mourning the decline of Keyword Planner for months, others have been out there hustling for information.

When Keyword Planner went “pay to play,” Google started hiding the accurate information it gave about what users are searching for. The more you pay, the more information about keyword search volume that you can see. User knuckles has the bottom-line in this thread:

“I really don’t see how one can research keywords [with Keyword Planner] anymore…your first campaign’s purpose is paying for keyword research.”

ThomasHarvey adds,

“The less the advertisers know, the more Google makes.”

What has your experience with Keyword Planner been like since the changes?

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