Googles Huge $2.7 billion EU Fine, New Facebook Mission & More: Weekly Forum Update

This week’s biggest news was Google being fined 2.42bn euros by the European Commission after it ruled the company had abused its power by promoting its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results.

Below we highlight the most indepth discussion of the news you’ll be able to find online.

In other news, Facebook is shifting its focus towards its groups functionality and Google recommends moving sites from m-dot to responsive before the Mobile First Index Launches,

Members also discuss the benefits of having dates in URLs and reputation management for someone sharing a celebrity’s name.

Google hit with $2.7 Billion by the EU

As reported by the BBC, Google was fined an astonishing $2.7 billion after the European Commission ruled that the Google search engine abused its market position by promoting its own shopping service comparison service on top of search results.
In a record fine, the European Commission orders  Google to comply with the ruling in 90 days or face further action, specifically additional fine per day that are 5% of its parent companys global earning.

The BBC, referencing Alphabets most recent reports, states that this may result in a potential $14 million in daily fees for non-compliance.

Webmaster World members discussed the decision from several different angles:

Anti-trust vs. Monopolistic abuse

Multipe members found it interesting that Google compares itself to other merchants in their formal response where Googles Gary Walker SVP and General Counsel states that,

“We think our current shopping results are useful and are a much-improved version of the text-only ads we showed a decade ago. Showing ads that include pictures, ratings, and prices benefits us, our advertisers, and most of all, our users. And we show them only when your feedback tells us they are relevant. Thousands of European merchants use these ads to compete with larger companies like Amazon and eBay”.

Members including Shadow, found this interesting because as Shadow suggests, the comment conflates the concept of “monopolistic abuse” and anti-trust, which the member differentiates conceptually using the following differentiating comments:

“’We’re not the biggest price comparison site’”
Vs
‘We’ve not been leveraging dominance in one field to distort the market in another field’”

Shaddow went on to state that these two are different in EU law, referencing the following article.

Member mosxu further noted the difference,

“I think google got it all wrong here thinking that they have competition from amazon or ebay which is not true it is about search where a monopoly exists in Europe and not what presses google internally and that is lack of buyer traffic.

50% of buyers type direct in their browser amazon.com and buy there no need for a search in google. Another 30% start at ebay and other brands so google may be left with 20% of buyer traffic. To stay on the right side of the law they should have started google-shopping.com and compete in the rankings like everybody else.”

Role of politics in decision

Brotherhood of LAN and mosxu mused about the roll of politics may have been in such an action. Brotherhood of LAN noted that,

“from the technical standpoint I’m sure many would agree that the law has been playing catch-up, and big tech over the past 10 years has been taking various liberties with market dominance, privacy and ‘fair’ taxation. Hopefully this is a good thing for the market/web in general wrt market dominance.”

Member heisje contrasted the aggressive European Commission action with regulation in the SU, claiming  that

“I wonder when the U.S. authorities will stop Google from strangling the U.S. consumer and U.S. small business, by an abundance of “dominance abuse” tricks & practices. To date, U.S. authority inaction on this “elephant in the room” has been disastrous both for U.S. consumers and small / medium businesses – and truly disgraceful. Nothing less than dereliction of duty.

Breaking up data collection/storage and search presentation is the best way out of the nasty situation prevalent today.” .

Precedent

Shepherd chimed in with concerns about precedence of this action, saying that “A slippery slope does not care if you are wearing the same shoes as the person who fell before you.” Shepherd also quoted was the following from the European Commission announcement (linked to above),

“Today’s Decision is a precedent which establishes the framework for the assessment of the legality of this type of conduct. At the same time, it does not replace the need for a case-specific analysis to account for the specific characteristics of each market.”

Fining based on earnings of Alphabet:

Shaddows questioned the legality of such a move, that there may be jurisdiction issues in fining using a percentage of Alphabets global earnings. Shaddows claimed that if Google is an LLC company, its misdemeanors would not not be passed on to the parent company.

Google News Makeover for Desktop

Webmaster World members shared their thoughts on Googles redesign of the Google News homepage. Overall members were ambivalent about the look and feel but they did have some interesting insights about what the redesign may suggest about Googles general direction and perhaps a reference for what to keep in mind for ones own website. Member goodroi, mentioned that by the mobile focused design changes, that the focus is mobile users and for creating a more “sticky” experience to increase time in-product.

Member glitterball noted that the new experience currently only shows title – instead of title and snippet. Glitterball suggests that Google may be getting nervous about regulators in the EU. Engine agrees and adds that,

“showing less of the story may help it comply with the many publishers that feel too much is repeated in the news serps.” .

Engine also makes an observation on the treatment of citation and references on the new homepage, adding that,

“There seems to be, roughly, the same number of stories, but the “highly cited” and “most referenced” appearing as a short headline and link, with no coverage for the others without clicking the down arrow.

“Editors picks,” and “spotlight” appear on the right, with plenty of white space everywhere. Ads coming?”

Facebook shifts core Mission to put new emphasis on Groups

Quoting a recent article on NPR, Webmaster World Member Robert Charlton noted a recent update to Facebooks mission to be more oriented around groups,

“Today, the CEO explained, Facebook’s mission will change to focus on the activity levels of users, and to support the most active so that they can keep building the digital spaces that draw in the masses. In official language, the new mission is to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”

Engine added

“Reading between the lines, and that’s not really difficult on this, Groups are becoming more important, and the huge audience already on FB will see even more groups in their feed. It’ll encourage people to join more specialist groups, and it’ll profile users even more, making even greater opportunity for highly targeted advertising.”

Members weight the pros and and cons of community in a closed ecosystem. On the con side iwrkalot noted that

“Up until now FB, in general, has been a time draining necessary evil for me. Being a forum owner has become much more challenging because of it. The inability to monetize my groups, in any meaningful way, has forced me to tightly control the members that are allowed to join. It’s a PITA.”

On the pro side EditorialGuy mentioned the benefit for organization and groups that have struggled to create a forum style community,

“I’ve found some of the groups to be quite useful. For example, I belong to a professional organization that has struggled for years to attract members to its online forum. The forum has never been successful and is nearly dead these days, but the organization’s Facebook group is growing.”

Dates in SERP’s – Good or Bad?

Crea8asiteforum member xyZed asked about dates appearing in SERPs and if including the date in content is beneficial or not. In general, members seemed to agree that if you’re not able to frequently update your content, that you would lose out in SERPs by displaying date updated. Member waitwhiterabbit provided some specific considerations including:

• Health and medical content should consider including date updated
• Having date updated may be valuable for news search

Famous person with same name

A new member on SEO chat has the same name as someone famous and looks to the community for ideas on next steps to be able to owned his named search, including considering the possibility of using a pseudonym.

Members suggest using adwords but in cases like the one here, where it would be difficult to take over the search,  a pseudonym may be best.

Google recommends moving sites from m-dot to responsive before the Mobile First Index Launches

In a recent Webmaster Google hangout, Googles John Mueller that people migrate their m. mobile sites [mobile subdomains] and move to a responsive template.

On Threadwatch, one member expresses a concern for what this will mean in terms of if content is different on mobile sites vs. desktop sites, even if they do not use a mobile subdomain and serve a very different mobile only experience by detecting the device from the browser.

Over on Webmaster World, member iamlost mentioned that the reason for this – as stated by several Googlers recently – is because the lack of backlinks compared to desktop.

Join in the above discussions to contribute your thoughts!

The post Googles Huge $2.7 billion EU Fine, New Facebook Mission & More: Weekly Forum Update appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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Tweet This! How to Tweet Quotes: Tools and WordPress Plugins for Tweetable Quotes

I share almost everything I like and read on Twitter. I think Twitter is the link-friendliest network. I can share only 2-3 links on Facebook (not to be too annoying and linky) but Twitter is never tired of links.

But tweeting an article title is boring: More often, when reading, I feel like tweeting what it’s said in the body. Tweeted quotes stand out, they always trigger an active discussion and then make my stream more diverse.

Here are some tools for you to diversify your Twitter feed with tweeted quotes!

1. Easily Select Text and Tweet

The official Twitter browser bookmarklet does the best job here. Just drag and drop it into your browser bookmarks bar. Then, once you read a sentence you feel like tweeting, just select that text and click the bookmarklet.

The new pop-up will include the quote and the current URL:

Here are more browser bookmarklets you may want to check out.

2. Tweeting Visual Quotes

There are quote a few free tools that allow you to create visual quotes (here are a few). The one I am using most of all is Quotescover.com

The reason I really like it is that it is very easy and efficient: No need to play with lots of templates you have no time too. I like it because it’s quite basic: Spending less time on each tweet is very essential for productivity!

It also has a handy bookmarklet, so you can highlight a quote on the page, click the bookmarklet and create the visual quote almost instantly!

WordPress Plugins to Let Your Readers Tweet YOUR Quotes

1. Inline Tweet Sharer

I think this is the oldest one. I’ve been using the plugin forever. It won’t work for all the WordPress themes. Also it doesn’t offer a huge customization variety. Here’s how the quotes-to-tweet look like:

2. TweetThis Shortcode

This plugin is my recent find. It has lots of customization features and it looks very robust.

Here’s how the quotes-to-tweet look like:

3. Tweet Dis

This is a paid alternative but it is the best in terms of various way to customize the look. It’s better supported too and it’s very cheap.

Here’s how the quotes-to-tweet look like:

4. Click to Tweet

This one looks good too but it uses their own shortener which I never really feel confident about. What of their site goes down? All my links will be broken?

Here’s how the quotes-to-tweet look like:

5. Social Warfare

This is another paid option which comes with slick social media sharing buttons and stylish-looking in-article tweetable quotes.

Social Warfare makes sense if you use its other functionality (like neat social media sharing count buttons), so you don’t need a separate plugin for click-to-tweet functionality.

Here’s how the quotes-to-tweet look like:

You can also see Social Warfare in action below.

Do you tweet quotes? Please share your tips!

Do you tweet quotes? Why not? HERE'S HOW!Click To Tweet

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Practical Tips to Move You Toward Your Content Marketing Goals

This week is all about good, old-fashioned pragmatism. It’s about the specific tactics you can use to start getting the results you’re looking for — sooner rather than later.

On Monday, Stefanie Flaxman gave us some suggestions on timing when you want to approach that busy influencer with your killer idea or humble request.

On Tuesday, Jerod Morris let us know about the launch of Sites, a new podcast that helps you build the website you need to reach your goals.

And on Wednesday, I outlined specific steps you can take to gain momentum when no one knows who you are (yet). Your “1,000 True Fans” aren’t going to show up overnight, but there is a path you can take to get to them.

Over on Copyblogger FM, I talked about the “killer and the poet” — and what to do if you need a little boost in one of those two roles.

And … did we mention the new Sites podcast? I’m rather partial to the one that Jerod recorded based on my Digital Sharecropping post.

We have four episodes for you at this launch. Each episode of Sites focuses on one of the four pillars of a successful website: content, design, technology, and strategy. The episodes are punchy and focused, and will get you right to the information you need.

That’s it for this week — have a great weekend, and we’ll see you Monday.

— Sonia Simone
Chief Content Officer, Rainmaker Digital

Catch up on this week’s content

---

When to Send Article Pitches (and Other Important Emails)

by Stefanie Flaxman

---

How to Build a Better WordPress Website … One Week at a Time

by Jerod Morris

---

7 Ways to Find Readers and Subscribers When No One Knows You Yet

by Sonia Simone

---

Advice for Poets, Advice for Killers

by Sonia Simone

---

The Simple 3-Step Process to a Winning Content Marketing Strategy

by Jerod Morris

---

How Great Design Can Help Your Content Marketing

by Jerod Morris

---

Is WordPress Hosting Really That Important?

by Jerod Morris

---

The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Content Marketing Strategy

by Jerod Morris

---

How Merriam-Webster Lexicographer and Author Kory Stamper Writes: Part Two

by Kelton Reid

---

The post Practical Tips to Move You Toward Your Content Marketing Goals appeared first on Copyblogger.

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7 Ways to Find Readers and Subscribers When No One Knows You Yet

The early days of a new blog, podcast, or video channel are actually a sort of magical time.

It’s quiet. No one has shown up yet. You can say or do nearly anything. You have the opportunity to experiment and play without fear.

And, let’s face it … we all want to get past it as quickly as humanly possible.

While I truly would encourage you to stop and smell those roses, I also appreciate that we start websites because we want to build and serve audiences.

If you have something cooking and you’d like to accelerate the process of pulling your audience together, here are seven things I’ve found useful for my own projects.

Before we start on that, though, you must absolutely understand who you want to serve. What they believe, what they fear, what they know, what they don’t know. Keep digging and keep researching until you have someone in mind who feels like a genuine individual person.

Once you have a vibrant Who in mind, let’s get to work building an audience of them.

#1: Be ready for the traffic you get

At the beginning, when we’re squeaking along with just a few site visitors, it’s particularly important to capture every little scrap of attention we can.

So before you start trying tactics to get more new visitors, make sure that:

• You have at least a few interesting other bits of content for visitors to look at
• Your site doesn’t look like a dog’s breakfast
• You have a good way to capture visitor email addresses

If you’re making something interesting, you may well find that those first subscribers go on to become some of your most loyal fans. Give them a way to stay in touch by offering a smart email subscription that delivers plenty of value.

You’re not going to get a zillion visitors in the early days. But if you can spark and maintain solid relationships with the ones you do get, you’ll start to pick up momentum.

#2: Answer the right questions

Once you (truly, madly, deeply) understand your Who, you’re ready to think about how to best serve them.

One time-honored tactic comes from sales consultant Marcus Sheridan — answer every question you’ve ever seen, received, or heard of in your topic.

The idea isn’t to write a 150,000-word manual. Instead, make each answer a single blog post — and keep the answers simple and useful.

This does a few things for you:

• It gets you past that dread of the “blank page.” Answering questions is pretty straightforward.
• It reveals any knowledge gaps that you need to work on.
• It spurs you to head out into the digital world and start hunting for those questions. That’s a great way to learn a lot about your audience.
• It creates a steady stream of fresh content. This is helpful for search engine optimization, but, more importantly, it makes your site interesting for human beings.

Figure out a calendar you can stick to for these. Since they’re fairly easy to create, you might publish two of them a week for six months or more. Every other week, swap in a more in-depth article that’s got more meat to it.

You may want to have a few of these done in advance, because I promise you’ll have days when even a 10-minute post is going to be tough to get created and published.

This is also a great way for you to start developing good publishing habits.

I refer folks all the time to Pamela Wilson’s post on publishing one strong piece of content a week, as a model for the steps you want to go through. These quick Q&A posts don’t need as much promotion, but it’s still a good opportunity to practice your process on lower-risk content.

#3: Do one epic thing

If you want influencers to link to you, social media darlings to share you, and potential customers to connect with you, you have to do something to deserve all of that attention.

You have to do something epic.

You might be epically good at what you do. You might be able to pull off some kind of epic stunt.

But most likely, your venture into the realm of epic is going to involve creating a seriously good piece of content.

Boring blog posts, weak videos, or copycat podcast episodes won’t cut it. (We already knew that, right?)

Not every piece of content is going to be a home run. But, at least once in a while, you need to swing for the fences.

Make time regularly to create and publish content that’s more thorough, or more creative — or maybe more innovative, empathetic, or far-reaching.

You’ll create a few near-misses before you come up with one that’s genuinely epic. So you should probably get started on those early attempts. Maybe today.

#4: Be a social butterfly

You might love social media, or you might avoid it like the zombie apocalypse. Either way, it’s a good place to look for new connections.

When you’re growing your audience, schedule one or two short sessions on one relevant social platform every day.

• It might be posting in a big group in your topic.
• It might be posting content to your own page.
• It might be cultivating relationships with other web publishers.

Most likely, it will be a combination of those.

If you’re trying to get a site off the ground, you don’t have hours every day to waste on Facebook. But two well-planned, 10-minute sessions every day can do you a world of good.

Facebook is the biggest dog at the moment, but it isn’t the only option. Instagram has been showing a lot of promise lately, and for the right business, Pinterest can be a winner. And for those with B2B products and services, LinkedIn is refreshingly drama-free — and a place where people expect to do business.

If you have trouble with keeping yourself to short sessions, consider a productivity app to help out.

And don’t fall into the trap of building a giant community on a social platform — and neglecting your own site. Your time is typically better spent optimizing your content to get more shares and building up a good volume of high-value content.

#5: Take one controversial stand

We all know that one person on social media who flips the table over every irritation or slight.

That’s exhausting and counterproductive.

But there’s a word for people who never take a difficult stand, never ruffle any feathers, and never speak out:

Boring.

Whether or not you overtly address politics is up to you. But, as Brian Clark likes to say, “This is the internet — there’s potential for controversy in any strong statement.”

Whether your niche is fitness, dog training, finance, parenting, or knitting — there are fiercely passionate camps around certain topics.

Do some real research. Question your own biases. Weigh the evidence and consider other points of view. Be willing to be swayed by reliable evidence that contradicts your assumptions.

And once you feel confident that your position is grounded with solid evidence, take your stand in the camp you believe is right.

You can literally enrage some people by asserting that the earth is round.

Trying to placate the ignorant doesn’t change the roundness of the earth.

Speak up.

(By the way, if you click the link above, how cool would it be to have a Science Emergency Defense Plan with NdGT on tap.)

#6: Buy a little traffic with money

So if you have a steady, consistent stream of useful material (your question and answer content), along with a few epic pieces, and you’ve taken a stand in your topic … is there anything else to do to get the ball rolling?

You can always try buying a bit of traffic with social media ads.

This is a game with rules that change almost daily, but it’s a game worth playing. Pick the most financially viable platform of the moment (right now it’s Facebook) and buy a little bit of traffic.

“A little bit” is not $1,000 worth of traffic. It’s not $100. Maybe spend $10 this week. And, if budget permits, $10 next week.

Think “risking your Frappuccino,” not “risking your mortgage.”

Learning to buy small amounts of traffic will give your momentum a bit of a push. It will also teach you all kinds of useful things that you’ll be glad you understand when you get more successful or have an offer you’d like to promote.

#7: Buy a little more traffic with time

The other way to “buy” some traffic is to put time and energy into writing guest post content for other sites. You may also find it valuable to appear on other people’s podcasts.

Like #6, this makes sense once you’ve got something worth checking out on your own site.

Guest posting broadens your audience and gives you a great opportunity to form relationships with other web publishers. It can also have nice SEO benefits … but that typically comes down the line, when your site’s a little more mature.

Remember to only submit excellent material for guest posts. It just isn’t smart to show less-than-great work on a larger stage.

Where are you on your journey?

Do you have all the traffic and subscribers you want? Still working on it? Found any great strategies for building an audience in the early days?

Let us know in the comments!

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How to Build a Better WordPress Website … One Week at a Time

What is the key to building a better website?

Well, you first need an idea. And it needs to be useful.

Next, you need to start with the right stuff, the right raw materials. You clicked on the headline of this post, so perhaps you’re already using WordPress or strongly considering it. Good choice. Continue down that path.

After that, you have to be willing to hit Publish. Whether you’re starting your own food blog, marketing your copywriting business, or building an audience for your coaching services … you have to put your story out there on the web for all to see. That can be scary. It’s also empowering.

What comes next?

Find a path for continuous improvement

A few years ago, I wrote an article on Copyblogger titled How to Immediately Become a More Productive (and Better) Writer. A book I had just read called One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer inspired that post.

The book takes its cue from the Japanese concept of kaizen, which means continuous improvement — or, to be more specific, the process of achieving sustained success through small, steady steps.

This concept spoke to me then. It continues to speak to me now.

It’s so easy, especially in today’s environment of ubiquitous distraction, to get lost in big ideas and forget about the inevitable series of small steps it takes to achieve them.

I am easily prone to this. I’ve learned this about myself. I have to be intentional about pulling myself down out of the clouds so that I can actually plant my feet firmly on the ground and put one foot in front of the other … then the other … then the other.

Steps.

One at a time.

That is the only way to achieve continuous improvement — the only way to take a big, grand idea and bring it to fruition.

Now, with that as our foundation, let’s talk about your website …

The four pillars of a successful WordPress website

Building a powerful website that does everything a website should do — help you earn authority, build an audience, and drive business — is a big task.

There is a lot that goes into a successful WordPress website.

Some of the choices you have to make are big decisions, like where to host your site and what theme to use.

Other choices are smaller, more subtle, like what color to use for your call-to-action buttons and whether you should use “How to …” in two consecutive blog post headlines or change one for the sake of variety.

All of your decisions, big and small, can be categorized in one of the following four buckets:

• Content
• Design
• Technology
• Strategy

They are the four pillars of a successful WordPress website.

If your website lacks any one of these elements, it might be okay, but it’s probably not optimized to help you achieve your goals. You could also be wasting time, effort, and money.

Think about it this way:

If you have useful content, a good design, and a strong technology foundation, but no strategy … your website’s “success” might actually be misaligned with your business goals. You’re not maximizing your efforts.

And if your website lacks two of these elements, it might fail altogether.

Consider a website with useful content that adheres to a smart, cohesive strategy. That’s a good start. But if the design is ill-fitting, and if the technology is lacking (think: poor hosting and security warnings), then visitors are unlikely to stay long … if they ever reach your site at all.

The rub in this example, of course, is that you can’t really have a smart, cohesive strategy with design and technology lagging far behind. And given how intertwined content and design are, content with poor design won’t be nearly as useful as it could be.

Point being: they all fit together.

Now let’s marry together the two big ideas we’ve explored so far in this post …

How to apply kaizen to the four pillars of your website’s success

You can’t build a successful website with one inspired 48-hour work binge over a weekend.

You can’t even do it by taking an entire month, or even three or four, to focus on nothing but your website. Not if you want your success to sustain beyond those three or four months.

Sure, through evergreen content, autoresponders, and the power of digital products, you can (and should) do a lot to earn ongoing, recurring, some might say “passive” revenue … but you’ll also experience diminishing returns if you aren’t:

• Marketing your ideas
• Tweaking or reworking your design to keep it fresh
• Updating WordPress and plugins to keep them secure
• Staying vigilant about your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

In other words, you can’t just set-and-forget your content, design, technology, and strategy.

You develop, build, and launch your website in incremental steps … and then you continue taking incremental steps to avoid stagnation and drive your site toward continuous improvement.

If that sounds like a lot of time and effort, good. Because it is.

But it’s worth it.

If you are intentional about avoiding the myopia that so many people approach online business with, then the time and effort, along with the money, that you invest into your website will not be an expense. It will be an investment. And the investment will pay off.

That said, it’s still smart to save yourself little bits of time and effort where you can.

Which is why we created a new podcast.

Introducing the Sites podcast

We want to help you make continuous improvements to your WordPress site while saving you the time and effort it requires to find all the best tips, techniques, and important developments that are out there. It can be overwhelming trying to keep up, and you already have enough work to do.

So let us curate the information, and then you decide what’s relevant to your situation, how you want to apply it, and when.

One tip at a time. One step at a time.

Continuous improvement.

Sites is a podcast that delivers timely insight on the four pillars of a successful WordPress website that I described above: content, design, technology, strategy.

New episodes publish on Tuesdays. They are short and get straight to the point, with each episode focusing on an individual pillar. And they all include one hyper-specific call to action to help you take that kaizen-inspired next step.

Click here to subscribe to Sites on Apple Podcasts

You can also view the first four episode pages here:

• Episode 1: The Simple 3-Step Process to a Winning Content Marketing Strategy
• Episode 2: How Great Design Can Help Your Content Marketing
• Episode 3: Is WordPress Hosting Really That Important
• Episode 4: The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Content Marketing Strategy

And if podcasts aren’t your thing, we also have Sites Weekly — a curated email newsletter delivered to your inbox on Wednesdays. Each edition delivers four links, one focused on each pillar of a successful website. Click here to subscribe for free.

Together, let’s create better websites … one week at a time.

Keep building.

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When to Send Article Pitches (and Other Important Emails)

It feels good when you’ve done your research before pitching an article idea to an editor:

• You know the publication’s audience
• You know your topic offers value in unique ways
• You know the editor’s content preferences and pet peeves

But you’re not done yet.

Although hitting the “send” button on your email seems like an inconsequential step in your article pitching process, I recommend pausing before you take that action.

That moment of excited impatience could spoil all the important research you’ve just performed.

Caution: avoid these days of the week

Have you ever suggested a fun activity to a friend, significant other, or family member when they’re in a bad mood, and they immediately decline?

Although they would normally love your idea, you’ve asked them at a time when they don’t want to be bothered.

I compare that experience to submitting an article pitch to an editor on a Friday or Monday.

Friday is a day to wrap up the workweek before the weekend and organize upcoming tasks.

Monday is a day to catch up from the weekend and start juggling pressing priorities.

When you reach out to someone you don’t know, your email might get lost in the hustle and bustle of those busy days. If you’ve worked with the editor before, it still might not be a priority to review your article pitch promptly.

Another warning

My theory about Fridays and Mondays is absolutely not a strict rule. After all, an editor may have requested that you submit a pitch to them on a Friday or Monday.

It’s simply a way to think about reaching out to someone when they might be more receptive to hearing your idea.

Keeping that guideline in mind, I’ve had a high success rate of getting responses from editors over the years.

Short-term and long-term to-do lists

We all have to prioritize our work, and there are two common types of to-do lists.

• Short-term to-do lists: work that must get done that day … or that week
• Long-term to-do lists: work that is not a top priority but needs to get done eventually

If you send an article pitch on a Friday or Monday, the editor might want to respond. But as they prioritize their work, your email could end up on their long-term to-do list (or even their I-keep-forgetting-about-that list).

Instead, if you send an important email on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, replying to your email might be viewed as a short-term to-do list item. It’s often a lot easier to tackle work as it comes in once the week is rolling along.

I used the phrase “an important email” above because this advice can also be applied to optimize your chances of reaching anyone (coworkers, managers, dental hygienists, etc.) at a favorable time.

People are people

You’re not sending a message to a continually enthusiastic robot that reviews all of the emails they receive with perfect objectivity and care.

You’re emailing another person … a human being.

Ask yourself:

How important is the content of this email for the recipient? Is it helpful to have this information right now? Or, is it just important to me because of the time and effort I’ve spent crafting it?

If it’s mainly important to you, is there a better time to send the email?

There may not be.

But pausing here gives you a chance to think about whether or not the person may prefer to receive it at another time.

What do you know about their current schedule? Do they have more free time the following week? If it’s an article pitch, would waiting to submit your idea until later in the year be beneficial?

Unless an email is urgent, I’ll wait a few days and then decide if it makes sense to send it or continue to wait.

What if you don’t hear back from the editor?

Of course, there is no guarantee you’ll get a quick reply — or any reply — even if you carefully choose when to send an email.

I like the Two-Week Rule when following up with an editor. One week can go by quickly, but after two weeks, it’s reasonable to check in to see if the editor is considering your topic.

And if you do get a response, it might not be the “Yes” you want to hear.

Pitches that are poorly researched or have grammar errors and typos will likely get marked as spam.

If you submit an article to a publication that doesn’t review unsolicited pitches, you likely won’t get a response no matter how compelling your topic is.

For example, Copyblogger does not currently review unsolicited guest post pitches.

There are also many factors out of your control, so be patient and don’t take any response personally.

Trust the editor’s judgment.

A different publication may be an even better fit for your idea … and a rejection from one editor creates an opportunity to explore other options.

Over to you …

What are your tips for sending article pitches to editors? Are there any days of the week or traps you avoid?

Let us know in the comments below.

The post When to Send Article Pitches (and Other Important Emails) appeared first on Copyblogger.

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Dwell Time & Page Speed for Rankings & Google Job Search Opens: Weekly Forum Update

This week members discuss dwell time and page speed and how much of a role exactly they may play in ranking.

Also, Snapchat unveils a new publisher tool and Google opens up Google Job Search to the dev community.

Is Dwell Time A Ranking Factor?

Member KernelPanic, references a 2011 blog post from bing about how they use dwell time as a ranking factor.

Ann Smarty brings up that Google is likely using dwell time but more as a method along side other attributes. Ann cites the following example,

“For example, when they were working on the authorship projects, they would use dwell time to show more articles by the author when you spent enough time on the author’s article and them clicked back to search results.”

That was a signal to Google that you wanted to see more by the author… It’s definitely dwell time in working and since we saw it clearly work, we must assume they use it in other parts of their algorithm too!”

Page Speed For Doing Rank Battle In Google

Cre8pc notes a recent presentation from Googles’ Gary Illyes that HTTP and page speed act as a tie breaker for Google. Members discuss the costs associated with making a site secure as well as performance improvements and if its really worth it for a ‘tie breaker’.

Member iamlost mentions that even sans the potential ranking improvement, performance improvements can help with time on time and interactions.

June Google updates discussion

In recent months, there has been a great deal of shifts in rankings, across a number of niches. Webmaster World members report various levels of impact in search engine results.

Snapchat Now Offers Self-Serve Advertising With Snap Publisher Tool

Oh, Snap! (Pun intended) Snapchat is now releasing a self publishing ad tool, as it plays catchup with Facebook who’s been busy stealing its features and after a lackluster first earnings report. The whole idea of the tool is to make it easier to take your TV and Youtube ads and make them snap ads. Can Snapchat stay ‘cool’ while catching up with more mature platforms?

Google for Job Search Is Open For Developers

Google has opened Job Search to developer with several key partners includingLinkedIn, Monster, DirectEmployers, CareerBuilder, Glassdoor, and Facebook who “may” already be in the mix. Webmasterworld members take a slightly cynical view as to the level of impact job search sites brands, since users will be in Googles product.

My sites are showing wrong ccTLD in Google Cache

A new member has two different domains a, .de and .at targeting two different countries, and yes, ahreflang is applied. However, they’re seeing their .at presence showing up in both places. Member Keypler makes the following recommendations on adjustments to get Google to surface the correct site for the appropriate geo-location,

There’s no absolute fix, but you can start experimenting by making changes by:
• using different meta page titles
• change meta descriptions
• change H1 & H2 tags
• change content (the wording)
• use unique images

Join the discussions to contribute your thoughts and read what forum members share!

The post Dwell Time & Page Speed for Rankings & Google Job Search Opens: Weekly Forum Update appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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