Today in Digital Marketing - 127: The Link Building Strategy You Need to Stop Doing

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, April 7th, 2020. Happy World Health Day, and perhaps just coincidentally, National Beer Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Today, how to get your Facebook ad campaign bumped to the front of the review queue, your brand's content is less likely to go viral on one of Facebook's main platforms as of today, and the SEO strategy that you might be using, which Google now says you should not be using. Here's what you missed,

Starting point is 00:00:29 today in digital marketing, sponsored by Tresta.com. All right, let's get the COVID news out of the way. If your brand has had its content blocked by Facebook because its automatic moderators have inaccurately tripped on something that you've posted, you are not alone, because many of Facebook's human moderators have inaccurately tripped on something that you've posted, you are not alone. Because many of Facebook's human moderators are at home, and owing to the nature of the things they have to review can't do that work at home,

Starting point is 00:00:52 the platform is using a lot more AI-based moderators. And brands have been reporting their posts have been blocked by those bots, most recently from a group that was showing people how to make do-it-yourself face masks. If this happens to your brand on the organic side, there's not really a lot you can do other than create another post and try to rip out some of the problem words. If it's on the ad side, you can try to appeal it or just simply change the ad text. More than half the news consumed on Facebook in the U.S. right now is about COVID-19. No surprise here, but in case you're curious, 87% of U.S. consumers and 80% of U.K. consumers say they are consuming more content across various media since the coronavirus outbreak. The biggest increases? Broadcast television, online video, and online television streaming.

Starting point is 00:01:43 The stats are about what you'd expect. Millennials and Gen Zs are watching more online videos than do Gen X and Baby Boomers. Interestingly, though, men and respondents with higher income are more likely than women and respondents with lower income to have increased their media consumption. The chance that your brand's content will go viral on WhatsApp is getting kneecapped today. As of this afternoon, any message that has been forwarded five or more times will now no longer be able to be forwarded except by doing it one person at a time. Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, says that they are doing it to clamp down

Starting point is 00:02:22 on the spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation. Last year, they limited users to only being able to forward a message to more than five users at one time. It's especially interesting because Facebook doesn't actually know what messages people are sending via WhatsApp. That's because they use end-to-end encryption. Even they can't read the messages. But they say anecdotal evidence and analyzing the metadata has given them cause to implement this. Still ahead, the SEO technique that you may be using right now that is hurting your ranking. And the three-second fix to your Facebook ad campaign that could move it to the front of the review queue. That's in a minute when Today in Digital Marketing continues. I want to talk to you about one of our sponsors, Tresta.

Starting point is 00:03:09 Tresta is a mobile app for iPhone and Android that lets you do business calling and texting from anywhere. With Tresta, you can set up your business phone number, download the app, and start calling and texting unlimited right away. Tresta is the best business phone app on the market. Whether you're just starting your business or you're already established, Tresta offers the call management features that empower you to communicate smarter and more efficiently. One of the best things about Tresta is it's so flexible. If you just need a business phone number, you can set up a local or toll-free number instantly.

Starting point is 00:03:43 If you're looking for a complete business phone system, all their powerful call management features are included. We'll see you next time. phone you're already using. Start your free 30-day trial today at tresta.com slash today. That's T-R-E-S-T-A dot com slash today. The practice is known as Web 2.0 link building, and one of Google's top engineers says if you're doing it for your brand's website, it's probably doing more harm than good. Quoting searchenginejournal.com, Web 2.0 link building is where you sign up at, typically, social microblogging sites. it's probably doing more harm than good. Quoting searchenginejournal.com, Web 2.0 link building is where you sign up at, typically, social microblogging sites. After you sign up, you are granted a subdomain or a web space where you can blog and publish links to yourself. Examples of sites that have been abused in Web 2.0 link building are Tumblr, Reddit, Alexa, Slideshare, Medium, and Quora.

Starting point is 00:04:51 An example of how in the past some have obtained a free link on someplace like Tumblr is to sign up, get a subdomain of Tumblr, then create blog posts with links back to the spammer's website. The strategy itself is so simple to plan that a third grader with a juice box and 10 minutes to spare could have created it, unquote. In a recent Google Hangouts with John Mueller from Google, he said, knock that off. All of those examples that you mentioned are really terrible ways of promoting your website. So that's something where if you hire an agency and they go off and post links on Tumblr, on classified sites and free posting sites, and they claim that and post links on Tumblr, on classified sites, and free posting sites,

Starting point is 00:05:26 and they claim that this is going to help your website, then I would move to some other agency. So just to be really clear, this kind of activity has zero value for SEO. It's not something where you're promoting your website in any way, but rather, essentially, they're spamming the web. So that's something I would strongly

Starting point is 00:05:49 discourage anyone from doing. On the other hand, creating really fantastic content and then reaching out to perhaps other sites who want to talk about that content, that's like a totally different story. So it's not the case that I would say any work that you do that results in getting a link is a bad thing. But rather, you should be focusing on things where you end up getting natural links because of the value of your

Starting point is 00:06:17 content that you're providing. For the record, Mueller did not specifically say it hurts your ranking, only that it doesn't help. But we know from years of Google statements that when they say that, they mean we will derank you for this. I'm going to share something that we think we may have cracked here at my agency at EngageQ. And I will warn you, this is just anecdotal. We have not done a study on this. I haven't seen anyone else do a study on this. But we've tested it a few times, and it does seem to work, at least for our ad account. What am I talking about?

Starting point is 00:06:53 Review queues. As you know, nearly every ad campaign you set up on Facebook's platform gets reviewed by a human moderator to make sure it's complying with their ad policies. And with COVID-19 happening, those review queues can be long. One thing we've noticed, and again, this could be coincidental, is that by changing the budget by even just a dollar, this appears to move us quite far up the review queue. Campaigns that were taking a day to get approved will get approved within the hour after a small budget change. So we did test this a little bit. We ran two nearly identical campaigns. We let one be normal. The other, we increased the budget by just $1 after an hour in the queue. That budget increase campaign was approved 45 minutes later. The other one that we didn't touch took 17 hours. Again, big caveat here. This may be a fluke, but it's been working for us for about a week now.

Starting point is 00:07:43 Your mileage may vary. Also, in the random things that people have noticed, DTC Pro David Herman said on Twitter this morning he's been removing the call to action on his Facebook feed ads. That's in the headline section, and his click-through rate has increased. Weird. Anyway, maybe stuff you can test for your own account. Finally, a new app from the developer NPE Team is out. It's called Tuned, and it's meant for couples. The app describes itself as a private space where you and your significant other can just be yourselves. This is notable because, in case you didn't know, NPE Team is secretly Facebook.

Starting point is 00:08:22 That's the code name for their new product experimentation team. My wife and I tried it out, and it is really, really stupid. It's basically like a scaled-down private Facebook for just two people. It's only available in Canada and the U.S. right now. I expect they will probably kill it in a few months. Thanks again to Tresta.com for sponsoring this episode. Do check them out, T-R-E-S-T-A.com. I hope you're doing well.

Starting point is 00:08:48 I hope you're healthy and that your people are well. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - 127: The Link Building Strategy You Need to Stop Doing

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