Today in Digital Marketing - Really, Though... Are Reciprocal Links Bad for Your SEO?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today,

Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, how will the latest European law affect your influencer campaigns? Be protected. Be Zen. and the new social platform that took 20 minutes to hack. It's Tuesday, July 6th, 2021. Happy Statehood Day, Lithuania. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. A new law in Norway will require advertisers and influencers

Starting point is 00:00:59 to disclose when a photograph being used in a campaign has been retouched. Specifically, the legislation kicks in when a body's size, shape, or skin has been retouched in any way, even if the so-called retouching actually happened in camera, like through a filter or a special camera lens. It's not clear if the law would apply to lighting or saturation changes. The law was brought in amid discussion of what Norwegians call Kropspress, which translates to body pressure. Violations are punishable with escalating fines and, in extreme cases, even prison time. The law is waiting for the king's signature.

Starting point is 00:01:36 But these types of laws, even when they technically only apply in one country's jurisdiction, often have an effect more broadly. After all, if a brand is running a campaign across Europe, are they really going to prepare two different sets of creative just so one can have some fine print? As oftentimes as not, brands will probably just put the fine print in all places. We see this happen a lot with privacy requirements. Sure, the CCPA technically only affects California, but many companies just apply those privacy requirements across their whole site. If you're in North America, you're used to seeing those, hey, we use cookies here banners on websites.

Starting point is 00:02:13 For years now, that's not a North American requirement. That started as a European requirement. But many website admins just shrug their shoulders and put it on for everyone. Will we see the same here? Time will tell. In a shockingly unusual move, Facebook appears to be copying the features of another social platform. I know!

Starting point is 00:02:41 Who'd have guessed? This time, they have Twitter loaded up in their photocopier, and the feature they've got their eyes on, threads. As you may know, on Twitter you can reply to your own tweet and create a thread. It's a way of stringing individual tweets together in a kind of long-form tweet. Last week, some Facebook users started seeing an introductory prompt encouraging people to do the same with their Facebook posts. The prompt reads, Now you can add another post to any previous one to create a thread. All posts in a thread will have the same audience as the first post.

Starting point is 00:03:14 What's especially weird about Facebook copying this particular feature is that it doesn't need to. The whole reason Twitter threads exist is because you only get 280 characters per tweet. If you need to write something that's a thousand characters, you have to do it in multiple tweets, a thread that binds them together. But a single Facebook post can have more than 63,000 characters in it. So what's the point? Sure, I suppose a brand could use it to deliver more context or tell more of a story, but why not just do that in one post?

Starting point is 00:03:49 One post you can promote. One post you can clearly measure. I suppose maybe it'd be okay for live commentary on an event, so they're not just editing the same post over and over. It's also not clear how Facebook would display them. Will it only surface the first post and expect people to follow the threads, or will each sub-post get its own placement in the news feed? This, presumably, is what Facebook is testing now.

Starting point is 00:04:12 No word on when or if this will roll out more fully. While Facebook copies Twitter, Twitter appears to be thinking about developing something fairly unique to social platforms, the ability to have different personas under a single account. The idea is that you could have your main Twitter account, where you mostly tweet about, I don't know, whatever, marketing things, then a kind of sub-personality where you post more personal things. Twitter is calling that sub-personality a facet. You could have a facet for family things and approve people's requests to follow that facet of your account. It actually

Starting point is 00:04:53 has some pretty interesting potential for brands and agencies. Right now, larger brands have dozens of Twitter accounts. The ones that they use for hiring or ones that they use for tech support, another one that tweets out news releases. Each one, a separate account. That can get messy in terms of which staff people can access which accounts. And expensive. As well as third-party social media platforms charged by the account. Then again, if Twitter does put this into effect,

Starting point is 00:05:22 and people and brands end up consolidating their multiple accounts into one, wouldn't that reduce Twitter's overall user count? It's all theoretical for now. Twitter has designed some mock-ups of this, which are in today's premium newsletter, but they say they are not actively working on the idea. Some updates from Microsoft's ad platform to report on. First, later this month, they'll expand dynamic remarketing to more verticals, like car listings, events, and travel and tourism. Second, they've updated the UI around in-market audiences. Now you get to see how big a segment size is as you set up geographic targeting.

Starting point is 00:05:58 Until now, all you could see was the global size. Third, automated bidding will be rolling out to the Microsoft Audience Network later this month. This will only work for search campaigns that are opted into the Audience Network. If you are running standalone audience campaigns with no search components, you will get this feature later in the year.

Starting point is 00:06:16 Fourth, there are two new ways to customize responsive search ads, RSAs, a customized countdown for things like sales or events, and so the ad will automatically update the text as you get closer to the deadline. And location extensions will let you add locations into your RSAs to maximize relevancy to the searcher based on their location. A couple of smaller changes also this month. More action extensions are available and they've sunset their Microsoft advertising intelligence

Starting point is 00:06:44 tool. You can still find and use it, but it won't be updated or maintained anymore. The company says you should switch to the Keyword Planner instead. Lots of people who make podcasts and edit other audio use the desktop audio editor Audacity. They use it not because it's good, but because it's free. Now the tool is under fire after it updated its terms to let it sell user data to third-party companies and share it, quote, with our main office in Russia, unquote. The terms also now say they'll collect

Starting point is 00:07:19 information about users' operating systems, computers, their country, and other data, quote, necessary for law enforcement, litigation, and authorities' requests, unquote. Also notable, the new terms forbid anyone under the age of 13 from using it for some reason, but the terms of its open source GPL license says that software must be available for free to all users. Well, late yesterday, Audacity issued a statement saying they were just clumsy in their wording and that they would, quote, not sell any data we collect or share it with third parties full stop, unquote, and that IP addresses are only stored for 24 hours, then deleted. But here's something they didn't answer. Why do they even need to collect IP addresses at all? Indeed, why does Audacity even need to have an internet connection?

Starting point is 00:08:06 It's a desktop audio editing software. It should work exactly the same if you were in the middle of a desert with no internet connection at all. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen.

Starting point is 00:08:42 An interesting post today on the always excellent searchenginejournal.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Of course, over time, filthy digital marketers like you and me ruined this for everyone, essentially turning websites into spam pages. Google took notice, started changing the way they rank those backlinks. Mostly, they just ignore them, but they can reduce ranking or even issue a dreaded manual penalty. So what's it like today? Here's Tony's take. Quote, reciprocal links happen naturally, and common sense dictates that sites with relationships will link to each other. Google understands this.

Starting point is 00:09:28 Yet Google states that link exchanges are against the rules. My opinion is that getting a one-off reciprocal link, where it makes sense, is perfectly okay. For example, if you have a trusted vendor and you want to link to each other for purposes beyond SEO, it's perfectly acceptable to exchange links. Where it's not okay is when you're exchanging links with sites you have no connection with, either professionally or vertically. Link exchanges are against Google's webmaster guidelines, but reciprocal links are not, if they are done in a natural way, unquote. Tony's whole piece is definitely worth a read if you handle SEO for your brand or agency.

Starting point is 00:10:07 You'll find it on searchenginejournal.com. Look for the piece titled, Are Exchanged or Reciprocal Links OK with Google? Former U.S. President Donald Trump has been kicked off Twitter, kicked off Facebook and Instagram, and his attempted blogging platform closed after only a handful of mostly ignored posts. Now, he may have found a new social platform, a Twitter clone created by a former Trump aide called Getter, as in Get Hillary Clinton, I guess. These people really can't give that up.

Starting point is 00:10:39 Anyway, it's a kind of Twitter knockoff, populated almost entirely right now by three types of content. First, a preset, hey, I'm on Getter, you should join me too, promotional tweet or whatever they call posts there. Two, people posting the pride flag emoji, since apparently there's debate about whether the platform is blocking that emoji. And three, porn. Not just any porn, but Sonic the Hedgehog porn. One member of the site, which Kotaku.com says is a QAnon supporter who suggests drinking bleach to cure the rona, posted, quote, shills are already hitting the QAnon hashtag on getter hard.

Starting point is 00:11:22 I won't repost what I'm finding. Titties and bad words and stuff, unquote. In addition, with not being able to keep up with the moderation responsibility, it seems this new platform has also given up on verification. Oh, they have the blue checkmark, but seem to be handing it out to pretty much anyone. Apparently, Margaret Thatcher is posting there and is verified,

Starting point is 00:11:47 which is cool. I mean, good for her, except that she's been dead for eight years now. Oh, also, the site's source code has been leaked. People discovered in that code that the platform's operators can manipulate what's trending by literally just adding or deleting topics manually. Oh, and the API has been compromised. One reporter from Salon said a hacker, quote, shared with me all my personal information,

Starting point is 00:12:11 which I inputted when making an account, unquote. The hacker said it was one of the easiest hacks he's ever done. Didn't even take him 20 minutes. Had a couple of tiny items to wrap up. Twitter says it's fixed the bug that it had in DMs. You should be able to search them now. Also, they're working on a way to remove yourself from other people's lists if you want to. And Shopify seemed to be having a limited outage for some people.

Starting point is 00:12:38 Their status page didn't show any problems, but I did see a handful of reports. I need a hero. I need a hero. Our Slack community just keeps on growing. but I did see a handful of reports. Our Slack community just keeps on growing. You know, just in the last 12 hours, three people joined. First, someone from a digital agency in Dubai. We have an account coordinator at a web design shop in Wisconsin. We have an inbound marketing agency person from Florida who reports, quote, my entire agency is required to listen to your podcast

Starting point is 00:13:05 as much as possible. It has become a great secret weapon for us. So thank you, unquote. Well, thank you. And thank everyone who, of course, listens like you and subscribes to the premium newsletter, but joins either our Slack

Starting point is 00:13:17 or Discord communities because there are real practitioners in there, just like you, other digital marketers. There's channels where you can get help. You can post job. You can even promote yourself in there. There's a special channel for that. So if you're not in either our Slack or Discord, make sure you join. You'll find links in this episode's description, or just go to todayindigital.com slash Slack or slash Discord. I'm Todd

Starting point is 00:13:37 Maffin. Talk to you tomorrow. Fingers that are keeping score. I'm right here, baby, what you waiting for? Got three wishes and they're all for you. Mama always said the one and one makes two. It's quality, not quantity. There's just one guy in this world for me. Don't need a perfect 10 to love him so.

Today in Digital Marketing - Really, Though... Are Reciprocal Links Bad for Your SEO?

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