Darren Tse, Author at The Egg https://www.theegg.com/author/darren-tse/ Digital Agency - Search, Social, Display Wed, 21 Sep 2022 09:12:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.6 https://www.theegg.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/favicon.ico Darren Tse, Author at The Egg https://www.theegg.com/author/darren-tse/ 32 32 Google’s Helpful Content Update: 3 Tips to Optimize Your Content https://www.theegg.com/seo/apac/googles-helpful-content-update-3-tips-to-optimize-your-content/ Wed, 21 Sep 2022 09:12:09 +0000 https://www.theegg.com/?p=77125 The post Google’s Helpful Content Update: 3 Tips to Optimize Your Content appeared first on The Egg.

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Google’s Helpful Content Update: 3 Tips to Optimize Your Content

How to write content for googles helpful content update

With competition rife for high-ranking keywords, how do you write content exceptional enough to cut through the clutter while staying in line with Google’s latest Helpful Content update?

On September 9, 2022, Google completely rolled out its Helpful Content update across all its English-language searches worldwide. According to Google, the update aims to “better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations won’t perform as well.”

Essentially, Google will begin rewarding people-first content and devalue content written purely for search engines and SEO, making it a new signal Google will use to rank webpages. But since the update is sitewide as opposed to targeting specific kinds of pages, it has the potential to impact all pages.

How might it affect your website and what can you do to prepare for it?

Discover what Google’s Helpful Content update entails and three tips to optimize your content to align with its “people-first” content best practices.

Why did Google launch its Helpful Content update?

As the world’s most powerful and popular search engine, Google is continually updating its algorithm to improve its user experience and connect its users to more accurate search results based on their search queries.

That is where Google’s Helpful Content update fits into the mix: It helps direct users to webpages with more original, helpful content written by people for people, as opposed to content written purely for ranking on search engines. This update also serves to curb the growing number of AI-generated articles on the web that might not cater best to the overall reader experience.

Indeed, ranking higher on search engines is typically the end goal of content creation for SEOs. But the creation process predicated on that goal can often result in web content that is not “people-first”.

As a result, Google now rewards websites with more “helpful” content—and encourages other websites to follow suit—by improving their keyword rankings and, in turn, their potential to rank higher on its SERP.

According to Google, if you can answer “yes” to the following questions, you’re on the right track to creating helpful content:

  • Would an existing or intended audience in your business niche find your website helpful once they discover it? (i.e., Does your content match their expectations and answer what they’re looking for?)
  • Does your content demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge about its subject matter (e.g., a product or service)
  • Does your website have a primary purpose or focus?
  • After consuming your content, will a user leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
  • Will someone who has read your content leave your site feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?

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How to write content for Google’s Helpful Content update?

Are you worried about how Google’s Helpful Content update might affect your site ranking? Here are three best practices to help you stay on the right track.

Tip #1: Delete Unhelpful Content (And Avoid Creating More)

It is common for content writers to follow a scattergun approach and push out lots of content regularly in the hope at least some of them will rank for high-performance keywords.

Of course, while some of their webpages might appear on Google’s SERP, it must be noted that low-quality content—even in a few areas of your website—can weigh heavily on your entire site’s ranking.

Thus, if you have webpages attracting low or even no traffic, consider removing them from your website completely.

Tip #2: Focus on Your Niche

Although tempting, do not attempt to stuff irrelevant keywords from different niches—no matter their search volume potential—into your content. Doing so makes your content neither helpful to users nor favorable in the eyes of Google’s algorithm after its Helpful Content update.

If your content is not topic-specific or is too general, Google will likely flag it as “unhelpful”, especially if the search query users searched to find it only requires a short answer.

Tip #3: Add Value to Your Content (Don’t Plagiarize!)

When creating content, always consider the value users would get from reading it as Google’s Helpful Content update favors content with first-hand expertise. Ideally, you’ll want to write original content that educates your readers about your subject matter.

But what if you don’t have the capacity to create relevant content week in, and week out?

Taking inspiration from your competitors and creating content based on similar topics with your expertise can be another great (and sustainable!) way to write for Google’s Helpful Content update. After all, your competitors will naturally produce content related to yours.

Of course, you should never duplicate other content and always include your unique perspective to avoid Google punishing your website by decreasing your site’s keyword ranking potential.

One of the most common mistakes an SEO can make is copying content directly from other sources. But Google continually indexes every webpage on its SERP, so it is bound to be able to identify websites whose content relies on copying.

***

Google’s Helpful Content update currently only affects English searches worldwide but is set to expand to other languages in the future. Furthermore, this will not be the only Helpful Content update Google releases.

Therefore, remember to observe Google’s upcoming announcements as it continues fine-tuning its detection of helpful content on the web.

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]]> Wix vs WordPress: Which Platform Is Better For You? https://www.theegg.com/seo/apac/wix-vs-wordpress-which-platform-is-better-for-you/ Thu, 15 Sep 2022 09:05:31 +0000 https://www.theegg.com/?p=77067 The post Wix vs WordPress: Which Platform Is Better For You? appeared first on The Egg.

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Wix vs WordPress: Which Platform Is Better For You?

Wix vs wordpress - which is better for you

Are you struggling to decide between Wix vs. WordPress for building and running your website?

While WordPress is arguably the world’s most popular content management system (CMS), Wix—which you’ve probably heard of through its massive advertising campaigns—has branded itself as a flashy and user-friendly website builder used by companies large and small.

With both platforms offering plenty of value, how do you decide which one is right for your brand?

In this article, we’ve compared Wix vs. WordPress on five dimensions and picked out a winner for each to help you decide which is better for your website-building needs:

  • Ease of Use
  • Design & Layout
  • Extensibility (Plugins & Apps)
  • SEO-Friendliness
  • Help & Support

Wix vs WordPress: Ease of Use

 Winner: Wix

Both Wix and WordPress offer easy, code-free ways to help you format content, rearrange elements, add various media and more to optimize your webpages.

But perhaps the biggest advantage Wix has over WordPress is its user-friendliness—which is actually its biggest selling point among newbies. Wix has a simpler “What You See Is What You Get” (or “WYSIWYG”) interface than WordPress, allowing users to preview their webpages and easily customize elements with a drag-and-drop function.

While WordPress comes with a powerful block editor that lets you edit and layout common elements—like text, headings, buttons, and background images—on your pages with a live preview, beginners may initially struggle to familiarize themselves with WordPress’ interface and navigation.

Wix vs WordPress: Design & Layout

 Winner: WordPress

Your site’s design and layout play a critical role in its visual appeal and user-friendliness, which can help you stand out against competitors and improve your search ranking performance.

Both Wix and WordPress provide templates for quickly creating websites from scratch—but WordPress has a much larger range of themes and design layouts than Wix.

Although Wix has templates suited for different categories like business, eCommerce, personal interests, and more, you cannot switch to another template once you have selected one. And while you can customize the default templates on Wix, you can only do so with its built-in tools.

By contrast, WordPress users can switch or customize themes more freely with little to no restrictions. Furthermore, learning to code on WordPress—even on a rudimentary level—opens the door to even more customizations.

Wix vs WordPress: Extensibility (Plugins & apps)

 Winner: WordPress

The overwhelming selection of plugins on WordPress makes it the clear winner in this category—at the time of writing this article, there are a whopping 59,000+ free plugins on WordPress!

This owes much to WordPress being an open-source platform, where developers can upload their own plugins—whether for creating a contact form or setting up Google Analytics for WordPress, there’s likely already a plugin for that.

By contrast, Wix comes with 200+ plugins (or apps, as called in their ecosystem), but options are limited compared to WordPress, primarily since Wix tends to more closely control its app features to ensure they work properly.

Pro tip: Whether on Wix or WordPress, remember to test your plugins correctly to prevent site speed or site crash issues.

1. WordPress has a collection of 59,000+ free plugins

WordPress has a collection of 59,000+ free plugins

Wix vs WordPress: SEO-Friendliness

Winner: WordPress

Due to the vast selection of plugins, WordPress offers more options and tools for SEO, like adding open graph meta tags, advanced XML sitemaps, on-site SEO analysis, and more.

Yoast SEO, for instance, is a free and powerful WordPress plugin that can automate optimizations to your website content and keywords, with the end goal of improving your search rankings.

And although Wix’s built-in tools like SEO Patterns come in handy, like for auto-generating meta titles and descriptions, its main drawbacks are its lack of URL slug customization and canonical tags, as well as being unable to let users access or customize their sitemaps.

Overall, with the right plugins, WordPress offers a bit more in terms of organic SEO, but Wix is still a really good option for most SEOs.

2. A larger proportion of domains on WordPress drive organic traffic than on Wix (Source Ahrefs)

 A larger proportion of domains on WordPress drive organic traffic than on Wix (Source: Ahrefs)

Wix vs WordPress: Help & Support

Winner: Wix

Wix and WordPress both have forums where users can discuss their experiences and FAQs, which is useful for beginners starting out on either.

However, Wix places a heavier emphasis on its help and support since its main target audience comprises users who are less tech savvy. If its users have any inquiries, they can conveniently phone or chat—in some cases, with 24/7 service—with the customer care staff at Wix to get an official answer to a query.

And while WordPress provides paid Care & Maintenance Packages ranging from US$79 to US$447, the customer care experience is more akin to getting your issue resolved by an IT team than a dedicated support team.

3. Wix offers Customer Care in various languages and either 247 or on most days of the week

Wix offers Customer Care in various languages and either 24/7 or on most days of the week

***

Conclusion

Whether you pick Wix of WordPress will depend on your website-building needs.

Wix is an easy-to-use website builder with flexible designs and functionality, ideal for informative or portfolio-type websites with smaller target audiences. Small online stores and booking-based services, for instance, can be run completely through Wix.

Alternatively, if web traffic is your main priority, WordPress—albeit requiring some technical know-how—is ideal for creating larger and more intricate websites from the get-go, such as online magazine publications, multilingual sites, and online community websites.

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]]> Facebook Removes Thousands of Detailed Targeting Options: Here’s What You Can do About it https://www.theegg.com/sem/apac/facebook-removes-thousands-of-detailed-targeting-options/ Fri, 06 May 2022 02:40:47 +0000 https://www.theegg.com/?p=76110 The post Facebook Removes Thousands of Detailed Targeting Options: Here’s What You Can do About it appeared first on The Egg.

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Facebook Removes Thousands of Detailed Targeting Options: Here’s What You Can do About it

How to prepare for Facebook ads' audience targeting changes

In January 2022, Facebook—now called Meta—removed thousands of detailed targeting options that related to topics some people may deem sensitive, including labels referencing health, ethnic affinity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation. For example:

  • “Lung cancer awareness” (referencing health causes)
  • “LGBT culture” (referencing sexual orientation)
  • “Jewish holidays” (referencing religious practices and groups)

Detailed targeting is a function located within the Audience section of Facebook ads that lets you filter the groups of users that Facebook shows your ads to.

However, to align with ever-evolving personal data regulations, Facebook has decided to remove targeting options surrounding sensitive subjects to avoid potential issues with underrepresented groups in the future. This decision also comes at a time of pressure piling on Facebook from civil rights experts and policymakers to better match evolving expectations of how advertisers reach users on the platform.

In this article, learn how Facebook’s update might affect you and explore four alternate ways to target ads surrounding sensitive subjects to Facebook users.

Facebook’s Removal of Detailed Targeting Options: Does it Matter to you?

Since most of the detailed targeting options that Facebook removed relate to health causes, political beliefs, religious faiths, race, and sexual orientation, it probably has a limited impact on most businesses. But if your company has incorporated any of these topics into its brand messaging or creatives, the update could affect how you target your audience.

In particular, it will likely affect how social care companies—like charities, non-profit organizations, and allied health services—with low marketing budgets address the social issues that are critical to raising awareness in their field.

So, if this applies to you, what Facebook targeting tools can you use instead?

How Else Can You Target Facebook Users?

Facebook said it remained “committed to helping small businesses, non-profits, and advocacy groups reach their audiences” and has recommended the following targeting options for advertisers to continue maintaining their ad performance on the platform.

And although these tactics might not fully compensate for the targeting flexibility and scope offered by the now-deleted targeting options for sensitive topics, they will at least help your campaign continue running. If you’re an experienced advertiser, you might already be deploying these tactics in your Facebook ads strategy!

Facebook’s Engagement Custom Audiences

Facebook’s Engagement Custom Audiences option lets you target ads to people who previously engaged with your brand with actions that Facebook uses to gauge interest in your brand, including:

  • Users who have spent time watching your videos on Facebook
  • Users who have opened or completed a form in your lead ads
  • Users who have opened your Canvas on Facebook
  • Users who have interacted—e.g., liked, commented, or clicked on links—on your Facebook page

1. Facebook advertisers can target users who previously engaged with their brand via Engagement Custom Audiences

Facebook advertisers can target users who previously engaged with their brand via Engagement Custom Audiences

Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences

Creating Lookalike Audiences lets you reach new Facebook users who share similar demographics, behaviors, and interests as your current audience and are, therefore, likely to respond to your ads. To do so, you’ll need to create a source audience—for example, your Custom Audience (including Engagement Custom Audience)—who you feel best characterizes your target market for Facebook to start serving your ads to them.

When creating your Lookalike Audience, you can also select how closely you want your Lookalike Audience to match your Custom Audience—the bigger the range, the broader your audience.

2. If you have a Custom Audience, you can target similar Facebook users who would likely be interested in your brand with Lookalike Audience

If you have a Custom Audience, you can target similar Facebook users who would likely be interested in your brand with Lookalike Audiences

Facebook’s Website Custom Audiences

Facebook’s Website Custom Audiences is a targeting option that matches your site visitors with users on Facebook using the Facebook pixel—a piece of code that collects Facebook ads conversion-tracking data on your site.

Since it lets you track what actions users took when they visited your website or specific webpages, you can create and optimize ads to retarget any group of visitors with targeted Facebook ads. And just like with Engagement Custom Audiences, you can select your Website Custom Audience as your source audience when utilizing Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences.

For example, you could run a remarketing campaign to reach users who visited your website in the last 30 days or visited a product page without completing a purchase and encourage them to return to your website when they have higher intent to do so.

3. How Facebook ads retarget users via Website Custom Audiences

How Facebook ads retarget users via Website Custom Audiences

Facebook’s Location Targeting

Facebook’s location targeting lets you target users based on their city, community, or country and is widely used by brick-and-mortar businesses to reach potential customers within their proximity.

Similarly, if you run an online store, you can target Facebook users who live within your delivery area and, in turn, avoid wasting your budget serving ads to users outside this range.

4. Additional filters to specify who you want to target with Facebook’s location targeting

Additional filters to specify who you want to target with Facebook’s location targeting

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Bonus Recommendations for Audience Targeting

As the online discourse on privacy issues continues to increase, you can expect more drastic changes to how digital marketers use data to reach audiences. In particular, with top internet browsers looking to stop supporting third-party cookies by 2023, perhaps the biggest impact will be felt in the digital ads space.

Thus, as digital marketers, we must learn to adapt quickly and deploy alternative audience targeting strategies where appropriate, for example:

Collaborate with KOLs, Celebrities, or Organizations

An alternative to some of the removed detailed targeting options is to run collaborative campaigns with key opinion leaders (KOLs), celebrities, or larger organizations on Facebook that share the same audience as you.

KOLs can help expose your brand to their target audience, letting you reach engaged users who are likely to be interested in your business—or even niches that you never knew existed before.

With such an engaged audience, you’re ensuing relationships with them can be long-lasting, and the longer they are retained, the stronger their impression of your brand becomes—this makes it all the more easier to turn them from mere customers into loyal followers.

When shortlisting KOLs to collaborate with, remember to audit them—both online and offline—as those whose personalities and values align closest with your brand are the most suitable for collaboration. You may even consider working with influencer marketing agencies specializing in matching brands with KOLs based on specific briefs.

Build Your Own Customer Database

First-party data will become increasingly critical to advertising campaigns as third-party cookies look set to fade. Therefore, building your own database should be a priority consideration for companies of any size.

For example, collecting your prospects’ email addresses will allow you to run targeted email marketing campaigns to a niche audience, as well as leverage the Custom Audience targeting options from major social platforms like Facebook.

Another mitigation strategy is to strengthen your inbound marketing efforts—like content marketing and SEO—alongside your push marketing activities to maintain direct contact with consumers and build brand equity.

***

In light of this update, advertisers should consistently adopt and test different combinations of Facebook ad strategies to see what best supports their marketing objectives. At the same time, we must also look ahead and prepare for the changes to come in the online privacy space.

So, as Facebook’s ad platform continues evolving, it is prudent that you stay on top of its updates to improve your campaign performance.

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]]> The Hidden Benefits of Email Marketing Towards Your SEO https://www.theegg.com/seo/apac/the-hidden-benefits-of-email-marketing-towards-your-seo/ Mon, 14 Mar 2022 02:52:50 +0000 https://www.theegg.com/?p=75890 The post The Hidden Benefits of Email Marketing Towards Your SEO appeared first on The Egg.

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The Hidden Benefits of Email Marketing Towards Your SEO

Email Marketing and SEO - Better Together

Did you know that email marketing and SEO, which average returns of USD $40 and $22.2 for every USD $1 spent respectively, are marketing channels with the first and second-highest ROI?

So, if your business is engaged in both, give yourself a pat on the back!

Email is far from dead even despite the popularity of social media: The 3% increase in email users worldwide from 4.03 billion in 2020 to 4.15 billion in 2021 suggests many people still love receiving emails. For marketers, this has translated into an average email open rate of 19.8% and a click-through rate (CTR) of 11.3% across all industries.

Meanwhile, SEO boasts the next-highest ROI, averaging a 30.55% CTR and arguably being the single-largest organic traffic driver for websites.

The average ROI of email campaigns and SEO is USD $40 and USD $22.2 for every USD $1 spent

The average ROI of email campaigns and SEO is USD $40 and USD $22.2 for every USD $1 spent

But did you know: While not often thought about together, there are synergies between email marketing and SEO that you may not be fully leveraging?

Here, we’ll show you how they can work together towards your SEO, as well as some general tips for running successful email marketing campaigns.

3 Benefits of Synergizing Your Email Marketing and SEO

Maximize Your Content Reach

Content marketing is a common tactic in SEO and is attractive because once search engines index your webpages, your content can start reaching your target audience.

However, consistent content creation can be a burden for some companies, hence why so many convert their high-performing SEO webpages into email content. In turn, the email campaigns can drive additional pageviews to content that you spent time creating, with minimal extra effort.

Email marketing helps you get more “bang for your buck” from content marketing.

Drive Qualified Traffic to Your Website

Email traffic is qualified traffic—email marketing has the benefit of attracting highly engaged visitors to your website, namely those who are likely to be interested in converting and have arrived by clicking on links provided in your emails.

This qualified traffic can also indirectly improve your SEO since it comprises visitors who will likely perform highly coveted actions on your site. For example, they may be more likely to leave constructive comments on your articles and help you build your website community.

We’ve recently heard from Google’s John Muller that user comments can add SEO value to webpages by providing additional context. Your engaged users may also be more inclined to share your content with others or on social, leading to an amplification of reach and more backlink opportunities.

Grow Your Email List

Those organic visitors drawn to your site by your SEO efforts have a higher possibility of subscribing to your newsletter if your content provides value to them. This is especially true for visitors in the awareness stage—the first phase of the buyer’s journey—as SEO can be an effective strategy at this stage in the marketing funnel. You can then leverage email marketing to nurture them and keep your brand fresh in their minds.

In doing so, you increase the likelihood that they will come back to you—as opposed to your competitors—when they have high intent to convert.

So, don’t forget to put an email subscription box on your SEO hero pages!

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4 Tips for Email Marketing Success

Here are some key considerations to watch out for when executing email marketing.

Email Marketing Tip #1: Personalize Your Content for Different Segments

Segmenting your audience and sending them relevant content based on their interests is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic and engagement for your brand. But targeting here requires going beyond demographics and tapping into psychographic data to personalize content based on audience characteristics, interests, and desires.

And each brand may have its own unique audience segments. For example, Nike—one of the world’s most notable sports brands with a behemoth market share—sells products to various audience groups ranging from basketball players to marathoners to your typical everyday customer. Thus, its marketers should target email content that would appeal to each segment to increase their chances of clicking and engaging with Nike emails.

Email Marketing Tip #2: Analyze Your Email Marketing Performance

Email engagement metrics like open rates and click rates are provided by your email marketing tool of choice. These metrics are about how well-received your emails are by the recipients and are invaluable in revealing your audience’s preferences towards your content.

On the other hand, web analytics tools track performance once a user clicks through to your website via a link in your email. Metrics like time on page, bounce rates, or on-page events, will help you understand how email users spend their time engaging on your website.

It is important to analyze performance from both tools to better understand your target audience, as well as what content they may like or dislike. It may even help you tailor your content strategy.

Email Marketing Tip #3: Create Strong Email Subject Lines

A great newsletter is worthless if it never sees the light of day. As such, as the first impression on recipients, your subject line is the biggest determinant of what makes them open or discard your emails.

To this end, it’s vital that you construct subject lines with the right “trigger” keywords and phrases to convince your recipients that it’s worthwhile to open and read your email. After all, maintaining your email list is equally as important as expanding it. But that doesn’t mean throwing in overly used keywords like “cheap” or “free” but instead finding the sweet spot between persuasion and value.

If you maintain an SEO keyword list, the subject line would be a great place to ensure you are utilizing your target keywords!

Email Marketing Tip #4: Archive Your Newsletters Online

One of the biggest hurdles in email marketing is figuring out how to attract more target customers to subscribe to your emails. This often requires providing customers with a “sneak peek” at your offering in the initial interaction; in this case, during—or even before—their email opt-in.

To do this, you can consider making an online public archive of your past newsletters. Not only would this give potential customers a better glimpse at what value they will receive before deciding whether to subscribe to your emails, you could also be giving search engines more of your content to index, provided you have set the archive to be indexable.

After all, if you’ve put hard work into your email marketing, why not get the most out of it as well?

***

Email marketing is one of those tools in your digital marketing arsenal that—if synergized correctly with your SEO efforts—can help you unlock more benefits for your business.

Because while email marketing doesn’t directly influence SEO, it can certainly help attract target customers to your site, on top of enabling you to build stronger relationships with them. And it is this qualified traffic that can keep you on the right track to maximize your digital marketing performance.

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