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Understand and Harness the Power of Archetypes in Marketing

Posted by gfiorelli1

Roger Dooley, neuromarketing expert, reminds us in his book Brainfluence that in 80% of cases we make a decision before being rationally aware of it.

Although Dooley explains this effect in terms of how our brain works, in my opinion, distinctly separating neuroscience and the theory of archetypes would be incorrect. On the contrary, I believe that these two aspects of the study of the human mind are complementary.
According to Jung, archetypes are “[…] forms or images of a collective nature which occur practically all over the Earth as constituents of myths and—at the same time—as individual products of unconscious”. He then, added something that interests us greatly: “The [forms and images] are imprinted and hardwired into out psyches”.

Being able to design a brand personality around an archetype that connects unconsciously with our audience is a big first step for: brand loyalty, community creation, engagement, conversions.

The Slender Man is the “Internet age” version of the archetype figure of the Shadow

Archetypes can be also used for differentiating our brand and its messaging from others in our same market niche and to give that brand a unique voice.

If we put users at the center of our marketing strategy, then we cannot limit ourselves in knowing how they search, how they talk on social media, what they like to share or what their demographics are.

No, we should also understand the deep psychological reasons why they desire something they search for, talk the way they talk, share what they share, and their psychological relation with the environment and society they live in.

Knowing that, we can use archetypes to create a deep emotional connection with our audience and earn their strong positive attitude toward us thanks to the empathy that is created between them and us.

Narrative modes, then, help us in shaping in a structured way a brand storytelling able to guide and engage the users, and not simply selling or creating content narrative doomed to fail.

The 12 archetypes

graph by Emily Bennet

The chart above presents the 12 Jungian archetypes (i.e: Hero), to what principal human desire (i.e.: leave a mark on the world) they correspond and what is the main behavior each one uses for achieving that desire (i.e.: mastery).

Remember: if the audience instinctively recognizes the archetypal figure of the brand and its symbolism and instinctively connect with it, then your audience is more ready to like and trust what your brand proposes.

On the other hand, it is also a good exercise to experiment with archetypes that we would not think are our brand’s one, expanding the practice of A/B tests to make sure we’re working with the correct archetype. 

The Creator

In my last post I used Lego as example of a brand that is winning Internet marketing thanks to its holistic and synergistic use of offline and online marketing channels.

I explained also how part of its success is due to the fact Lego was able to shape its messages and brand personality around the Creator archetype (sometimes called the “Builder”) which is embodied by their tagline, “let’s build”.

Creators tend to be nonconformist and to enjoy self expression. A Creator brand, then, will empower and prize its audience as much as it is able to express itself using its products.

The Ruler

The Ruler is the leader, the one setting the rules others will follow, even competitors. Usually it’s paired with an idea of exclusiveness and status growth.

A brand that presents itself as a Ruler is suggesting to their audience that they can be rulers too.

A classic example of Ruler brand is Mercedes:

The Caregiver

Altruism, compassion, generosity. Caregiver brands present themselves as someone to trust, because they care and empathize with their audience.

The Caregiver is one of the most positive archetypes, and it is obviously used by nonprofit organizations or governmental institutions like UNICEF, but brands like Johnson & Johnson have also shaped their personality and messages around this figure.

The Innocent

The Innocent finds positive sides in everyone and everything

It sees beauty even in things that others will not even consider, and feels in peace with its inner beauty.

Dove, obviously, is a good representation of the Innocent archetype.

The Sage

The Sages wants to know and understand things. 

The Sage is deeply humanist and believe in the power of humankind to shape a better world through knowledge.

However, the Sage also has a shadowed side: intolerance to ideas others than their own.

Google, in both cases, is a good example a Sage brand.

The Explorer

The Explorer is adventurous, brave, and loves challenges. He tends to be an individualist too, and loves to challenge himself so as to find his real self.

Explorer brands prompt their audience to challenge themselves and to discover the Explorer within

Red Bull is a classic example of these kinds of brands, but REI and Patagonia are even better representations.

The Hero

In many aspects, the Hero archetype is similar to the Explorer and Outlaw ones, with the difference that the Hero many times never wanted to be the hero, but injustice and external events obliged him to find the courage, braveness, and the honor to become one.

Nike, and also its competitor Adidas, shapes its brand voice around this archetypal figure.

The Magician

The Magician is clever, intelligent, and sometimes his ability can be considered supernatural. 

The Magician is able to make the impossible possible. Because of that some of the best known technology brands use this archetype as their own to showcase their innovation and how they use their advanced knowledge creatively.

Apple—even if you are not an Apple fan—created a powerful brand by shaping it around this archetype. 

The Outlaw

The Outlaw is the rebel, the one who breaks the rules in order to free his true self.

The Outlaw goes against the canon and is very aware of the constrictions society creates.

A great example of a brand that very well represents the Outlaw archetype is Betabrand.

The Everyman

It is perfectly fine to be “normal,” and happiness can come from simply sharing things with people we love.

Brands targeting the Everyman audience (and painting themselves as such) craft their messages about the beauty of simple things and daily real life.

Ikea is probably the brand that’s achieved mastery in the use of this archetype over the past few years.

The Jester 

Fun, irreverent, energetic, impulsive and against the established rules at the same time, the Jester is also the only one who is able to tell the truth with a joke. 

Jesters can be revolutionary too, and their motto could be “a laugh will bury you all.”

A brand that presents itself as the Jester is a brand that wants to make our lives easier and more bearable, providing us joy.

The Lover

Sensuality is the main characteristic of the Lover archetype, as well as strong physicality, passion, and a need for deep and strong sensations.

But the Lover can be also the idealist, the romantic longing for the perfect love.

Archetypes and brand storytelling

Our brain, as many neuroscientists have proved, is hard-wired for stories (I suggest you to watch this TEDx too).

Therefore, once we have decided what archetype figure best responds both to our audience and our values as a brand, we must translate the psychology we created for our brand into brand storytelling. That storytelling must then be attuned to the psychology of our audience based on our psychographic analysis of them.

Good (brand) storytelling is very hard to achieve, and most of the time we see brands that miserably fail when trying to tell branded stories.

Introducing the Theory of Literary (or Narrative) Modes

In order to help my clients find the correct narrative, I rely on something that usually is not considered by marketers: the Theory of Literary Modes.

I use this theory, presented first by Northrop Frye in it essay Anatomy of Criticism, because it is close to our “technical marketer” mindset.

In fact:

  1. The theory is based on a objective and “scientific” analysis of data (the literary corpus produced by humans);
  2. It refuses “personal taste” as a metric, which in web marketing would be the same as creating a campaign with tactics you like but you don’t really know if your public is interested in. Even worse, it would be like saying “create great content” without defining what that means.

Moreover, the Theory of Literary Modes is deeply structured and strongly relies on semiotics, which is going to be the natural evolution of how search engines like Google will comprehend the content published in the Internet. Semantic thinking is just the first step as well explained  Isla McKetta here on Moz few months ago.

Finally, Northrop Fryed considers also archetypes this theory because of the psychological and semiotic value of the symbolism attached to the archetypal figure.

Therefore, my election to use the Theory of Literary Modes responds 

  1. To the need to translate ideal brand storytelling into something real that can instinctively connect with the brand’s audience;
  2. To make the content based on that storytelling process understandable also by search engines.

The Theory of Literary Modes in marketing

To understand how this works in marketing, we need to dig a little deeper into the theory.

A literary work can be classified in two different but complementary ways:

1) Considering only the relation between the nature of the main character (the Hero) and the ambient (or environment) where he acts.

2) Considering also if the Hero is refused or accepted by society (Tragedy and Comedy).

In the first case, as represented in the schema above, if the Hero:
  1. Is higher by nature than the readers and acts in a completely different ambient than theirs, we have a Romance;
  2. Is higher by nature than the readers, but acts in their same ambient, we have an Epic;
  3. Is someone like the reader and acts in the reader’s own ambient, we are in field of Realism;
  4. Is someone lower by nature than the readers and acts in a different or identical ambient, we are in the realm of Irony, which is meant as “distance.”
A fifth situation exists too, the Myth, when the nature of the Hero is different than ours and acts in an ambient different than ours. The Hero, in this case, is the God.

If we consider also if society refuses or accepts the hero, we can discover the different versions of Tragedy and Comedy.

I will not enter in the details of Tragedy, because we will not use its modes for brand storytelling (this is only common in specific cases of political marketing or propaganda, classic examples are the mythology of Nazism or Communism).

On the contrary, the most common modes used in brand storytelling are related to Comedy, where the Hero, who usually is the target audience, is eventually accepted by society (the archetypal world designed by the brand).

In Comedy we have several sub modes of storytelling:

  1. “The God Accepted.” The Hero is a god or god-like kind of person who must pass through trials in order to be accepted by the society;
  2. The Idyll, where the Hero uses his skills to explore (or conquer) an ideal world and/or become part of an ideal society. Far West and its heir, Space Opera (think of Interstellar) are classic examples. 
  3. Comedy sees the hero trying to impose his own view of the world, fighting for it and finally being awarded with acceptance of his worldview. A good example of this is every well ending biopic of an entrepreneur, and Comedy is the exact contrary of melodrama. 
  4. On a lower level we can find the Picaresque Comedy, where the hero is by nature inferior to the society, but – thanks to his cleverness – is able to elevate himself to society’s level. Some technology business companies use this narrative mode for telling their users that they can “conquer” their market niche despite not having the same economic possibilities as the big brands (this conquering usually involves the brand’s tools).
  5. Finally we have the Irony Mode of Comedy which is quite complex to define. 
    1. It can represent stories where the hero is actually an antihero, who finally fails in his integration into the society. 
    2. It can also be about inflicting pain on helpless victims, as in mystery novels. 
    3. It can also be Parody.

Some examples

The Magician, gamification, and the Idyllic mode

Consider this brand plot:

The user (the Hero) can become part of a community of users only if he or she passes through a series of tasks, which will award prizes and more capabilities. If the user is able to pass through all the tasks, he will not only be accepted but also may have the opportunity to be among the leaders of the community itself.

And now consider sites, which are strongly centered on communities like GitHub and Code Academy. Consider also SAAS companies that present the freemium model like Moz or mobile games like Boom Beach, where you can unlock new weapons only if you pass a given trial (or you buy them).

The Magician is usually the archetype of reference for these kinds of brands. The Hero (the user) will be able to dominate a complex art thanks to the help of a Master (the brand), which will offer him instruments (i.e.: tools/courses/weapons). 

Trials are not necessarily tests. A trial can be doing something that will be awarded, for instance, with points (like commenting on a Moz blog post), and the more the points the more the recognition, with all the advantages that it may offer. 

Gamification, then, assumes an even stronger meaning and narrative function when tied to an archetype and literary mode.

Ikea, the Everyman, and the Comedic mode

Another example is Ikea, which we cited before when talking of the Everyman archetype.

In this case, the Hero is someone like me or you who is not an interior designer or decorator or, maybe, who does not have the money for hiring those professionals or buying very expensive furniture and decoration.

But, faithful to its mission statements (“design for all”, “design your own life”…), Ikea is there to help Everyman kind of people like me and you in every way as we decorate our own houses.

On the practical side, this narrative is delivered in all the possible channels used by Ikea: web site, mobile app, social media (look at its Twitter profile) and YouTube channel.

Betabrand, the Outlaw, and Picaresque Comedy

A third and last example can be Betabrand.

In this case both the brand and the audience is portrayed using the Outlaw archetype, and the brand narrative tend to use the Picaresque mode.

The Heroes is the Betabrand community who does not care what the mainstream concept of fashion is and designs and crowdfounds “its fashion.”

How to use archetypes and narrative modes in your brand storytelling

The first thing you must understand is what archetype best responds to your company tenets and mission. 

Usually this is not something an SEO can decide by him- or herself, but it is something that founders, CEOs, and directors of a company can inform.

Oftentimes a small to medium business company can achieve this with a long talk among those company figures and where they are asked to directly define the idealistic “why?” of their company.

In case of bigger companies, defining an archetype can seem almost impossible to do, but the same history of the company and hidden treasure pages like “About Us” can offer clear inspiration.

Look at REI:

Clearly the archetype figure that bests fits REI is the Explorer.

Then, using the information we retrieve when creating the psychographic of our audience and buyer personas, matching with the characteristics each archetype has, and comparing it with the same brand core values, we can start to understand the archetype and narrative mode. If we look at REI’s audience, then we will see how it also has a certain affinity with the Everyman archetypal figure (and that also explains why REI also dedicates great attention to family as audience).

Once we have defined the best archetype commonly shared by our company and our audience, we must translate this figure and its symbolism into brand storytelling, which in web site includes design, especially the following:

  • Color pattern, because colors have a direct relation with psychological reaction (see this article, especially all the sources it links to)
  • Images, considering that in user-centric marketing the ideal is always to represent our targeted audience (or a credible approximation) as their main characters. I am talking of the so called “hero-shots”, about which Angie Schottmuller brilliantly discussed in the deck I embed here below:

If you want to dig deeper in discovering the meaning and value of symbols worldwide, I suggest you become member of Aras.org or to buy the Book of Symbols curated by Aras.

  • Define the best narrative mode to use. REI, again, does this well, using the Idyllic mode where the Hero explores and become part of an ideal society (the REI community, which literally means becoming a member of REI). 

We should, then:

  1. Continue investigating the archetypal nature of our audience conducting surveys
  2. Analyzing the demographic data Google Analytics offers us about our users 
  3. Using GA insights in combination with the data and demographic information offered by social networks’ ad platforms in order to create not only the interest graph of our audience but also to understand the psychology behind those interests 
  4. Doing A/B tests so to see whether symbols, images, and copywriting based on the targeted archetypes work better and if we have the correct archetype.

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How We Fixed the Internet (Ok, an Answer Box)

Posted by Dr-Pete

Last year, Google expanded the Knowledge Graph to use data extracted (*cough* scraped) from the index to create answer boxes. Back in October, I wrote about a failed experiment. One of my posts, an odd dive into Google’s revenue, was being answer-fied for the query “How much does Google make?”:

Objectively speaking, even I could concede that this wasn’t a very good answer in 2014. I posted it on Twitter, and David Iwanow asked the inevitable question:

Enthusiasm may have gotten the best of us, a few more people got involved (like my former Moz colleague Ruth Burr Reedy), and suddenly we were going to fix this once and for all:

There Was Just One Problem

I updated the post, carefully rewriting the first paragraph to reflect the new reality of Google’s revenue. I did my best to make the change user-friendly, adding valuable information but not disrupting the original post. I did, however, completely replace the old text that Google was scraping.

Within less than a day, Google had re-cached the content, and I just had to wait to see the new answer box. So, I waited, and waited… and waited. Two months later, still no change. Some days, the SERP showed no answer box at all (although I’ve since found these answer boxes are very dynamic), and I was starting to wonder if it was all a mistake.

Then, Something Happened

Last week, months after I had given up, I went to double-check this query for entirely different reasons, and I saw the following:

Google had finally updated the answer box with the new text, and they had even pulled an image from the post. It was a strange choice of images, but in fairness, it was a strange post.

Interestingly, Google also added the publication date of the post, perhaps recognizing that outdated answers aren’t always useful. Unfortunately, this doesn’t reflect the timing of the new content, but that’s understandable – Google doesn’t have easy access to that data.

It’s interesting to note that sometimes Google shows the image, and sometimes they don’t. This seems to be independent of whether the SERP is personalized or incognito. Here’s a capture of the image-free version, along with the #1 organic ranking:

You’ll notice that the #1 result is also my Moz post, and that result has an expanded meta description. So, the same URL is essentially double-dipping this SERP. This isn’t always the case – answers can be extracted from URLs that appear lower on page 1 (although almost always page 1, in my experience). Anecdotally, it’s also not always the case that these organic result ends up getting an expanded meta description.

However, it definitely seems that some of the quality signals driving organic ranking and expanded meta descriptions are also helping Google determine whether a query deserves a direct answer. Put simply, it’s not an accident that this post was chosen to answer this question.

What Does This Mean for You?

Let’s start with the obvious – Yes, the v2 answer boxes (driven by the index, not Freebase/WikiData) can be updated. However, the update cycle is independent of the index’s refresh cycle. In other words, just because a post is re-cached, it doesn’t mean the answer box will update. Presumably, Google is creating a second Knowledge Graph, based on the index, and this data is only periodically updated.

It’s also entirely possible that updating could cause you to lose an answer box, if the new data weren’t a strong match to the question or the quality of the content came into question. Here’s an interesting question – on a query where a competitor has an answer box, could you change your own content enough to either replace them or knock out the answer box altogether? We are currently testing this question, but it may be a few more months before we have any answers.

Another question is what triggers this style of answer box in the first place? Eric Enge has an in-depth look at 850,000 queries that’s well worth your time, and in many cases Google is still triggering on obvious questions (“how”, “what”, “where”, etc.). Nouns that could be interpreted as ambiguous also can trigger the new answer boxes. For example, a search for “ruby” is interpreted by Google as roughly meaning “What is Ruby?”:

This answer box also triggers “Related topics” that use content pulled from other sites but drive users to more Google searches. The small, gray links are the source sites. The much more visible, blue links are more Google searches.

Note that these also have to be questions (explicit or implied) that Google can’t answer with their curated Knowledge Graph (based on sources like Freebase and WikiData). So, for example, the question “When is Mother’s Day?” triggers an older-style answer:

Sites offering this data aren’t going to have a chance to get attribution, because Google essentially already owns the answer to this question as part of their core Knowledge Graph.

Do You Want to Be An Answer?

This is where things get tricky. At this point, we have no clear data on how these answer boxes impact CTR, and it’s likely that the impact depends a great deal on the context. I think we’re facing a certain degree of inevitability – if Google is going to list an answer, better it’s your answer then someone else’s, IMO. On the other hand, what if that answer is so complete that it renders your URL irrelevant? Consider, for example, the SERP for “how to make grilled cheese”:

Sorry, Food Network, but making a grilled cheese sandwich isn’t really that hard, and this answer box doesn’t leave much to the imagination. As these answers get more and more thorough, expect CTRs to fall.

For now, I’d argue that it’s better to have your link in the box than someone else’s, but that’s cold comfort in many cases. These new answer boxes represent what I feel is a dramatic shift in the relationship between Google and webmasters, and they may be tipping the balance. For now, we can’t do much but wait, see, and experiment.


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10 SEO Myths that Friggin’ Tick Me Off

Posted by Cyrus-Shepard

I love SEO. I love talking about SEO. Most non-SEO folk you talk to are generally very nice people. They may not understand everything you say, but they often nod their head and smile. The open-minded may even ask you to look at their site.

On the other hand, there’s the non-SEO “expert” (loosely defined as someone who has a cousin in marketing) who represents a different beast altogether. Well intentioned but misinformed, they believe SEO is urban legend, no better than a Ponzi scheme.

Here’s what I have to say to a few of the worst offenders.

1. SEO is a scam

What the friggin’ what?

The above screenshot of organic traffic to Moz’s own website shows the kind of success many strive for, but it is neither unusual or unattainable for folks that consistently invest in SEO as a marketing strategy. 

Sadly, many business owners have been approached by less-than-ethical marketing vendors who promise SEO services but basically deliver nothing. If you are paying $49/month to a service that promises you top rankings in Google, it is almost certainly a scam.

That’s not SEO.

Perhaps this most harmful of myths stems from those seeking quick and easy wins with little effort. Indeed, there are cases of SEO wins that meet these criteria, typically when a site has easily correctable technical problems. In other cases, SEO involves real effort and commitment which often pays additional rewards beyond the increase in traffic.

2. Google will figure it out

No. No they friggin’ won’t.

Here’s what many webmasters see far too often when they trust search engines to do their SEO for them.

The temptation of many website owners and developers is to throw as many URLs as possible—sometimes millions—at Google’s crawlers and pray that their mysterious algorithms will magically deliver these pages to valuable users. Alternatively, even sites with a handful of pages expect search engines to do all the heavy lifting.

Google is smart, but not magic.

What’s forgotten in this equation is that Google and other search engines strive to mimic human behavior in evaluating content (and no human wants to sort through a million near-duplicate pages) and use human generated signals (such as links and engagement metrics) to crawl and rank results.

Every page delivered in search results should be unique, valuable, and more often than not contain technical clues to help search engines sort them from the billions of possible pages on the web. Without these qualities, search marketing is  a game of chance that almost always loses.

3. We did SEO once

Congratulations. Buy yourself a cookie.

It’s sad to see organic search traffic fall over time, but all too often that’s exactly what happens when no effort is applied. Continually maintaining your SEO efforts is essential because of:

  • Link degradation (a.k.a. link rot)
  • Publishing new pages
  • Evolving search engine algorithms
  • The competition moving ahead of you
  • Outdated content
  • …and more

For a small minority of sites, SEO doesn’t need continual investment. My father-in-law’s auto shop is a perfect example. He has more business than he needs, and as long as folks find him when searching for “Helfer Auto” he’s happy. In this case, simply monitoring your SEO with the addition of a deeper dive 2-3 times per year may be sufficient.

For the rest of us, one-and-done SEO falls short.

4. Link building is dead (again)

Sigh.

Recently the SEO world got worked up when Google’s John Mueller stated link building is something he’d “try to avoid.”

Many misinterpreted this to mean that link building is bad, against the rules, and Google will penalize you for it. 

In fact, nothing has changed that the fact that search engines use link authority and anchor text signals heavily in their search ranking algorithms. Or that white-hat link building is a completely legitimate and time-tested marketing practice. 

Ranking Factors

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google’s Algorithm by Rand Fishkin

I’m certain John was referring to the more manipulative type of link building, no doubt encountered frequently at Google. To be fair, this type of non-relevant, scaled approach to links should be avoided at all costs, and search engines have taken great strides to algorithmically detect and punish this behavior.

Marketers build links in a number of natural ways, and attracting links to your website remains darn-near essential for any successful SEO undertaking. If you need help, we write about it frequently.

5. I want to rank #1 for “magic keyword”

No. No you friggin’ don’t.

Look, here’s a personal example. I really want to rank #1 for “SEO” because Moz offers SEO software. Because of our Beginner’s Guide to SEO. Because SEO is our lifeblood. 

But we don’t, and it doesn’t matter.

Moz typically ranks #2-3 for “SEO”. It sends good traffic, but not nearly as good as the thousands of long-tail keywords with more focused intent. In fact, if you went through our entire keyword set, you would find that “SEO” by itself only sends a tiny fraction of our entire traffic, and we could easily survive without it.

The truth is, when you create solid content focused around topics, you almost always receive far more (and oftentimes better) traffic from long-tail keywords that you didn’t try to rank for.

The magic happens when visits reach your site because the content matched thier needs, but not necessarily when you matched the right keywords.

6. Google hates SEO

Some days, it feels that way.

In truth, Google’s relationship with SEO is much more nuanced.

  1. Google readily states that SEO can “potentially improve your site and save time” and that many SEO agencies “provide useful services.” Google even advises “If you’re thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better.”
  2. Google published their own SEO Starter Guide. While a bit out of date, it certainly encourages people to take advantage of SEO techniques to improve search visibility.
  3. Google Analytics offers a series of SEO Reports. Keep in mind, these are almost laughably unusable due to the handicapped data quality.

While Google seems to encourage search engine optimization, it almost certainly hates manipulative SEO. The type of SEO meant to trick search engines into believing false popularity and relevancy signals in order to rank content higher.

In fact, many of the myths in the post boil down to some folks’ inability to distinguish between hard-working SEO and search engine spam. Which leads us to:

7. SEO is dead, because Google Answers

It’s scary for SEOs when we ask Google a question and see an actual answer instead of a link, as in the example below. It’s even more frightening when Google takes over entire verticals such as the weather, mortgage calculators, or song lyrics.

With the flip of a button, it seems Google can wipe out entire business models.

Screenshot hat tip to Dan Barker

In reality, search growth and traffic continues to grow for most industries. Consider the following:

Anecdotal evidence further suggests that even when presented with answer boxes, a large number of users click through to the cited website.

People want answers, but at least for now they also want their websites.

8. SEO is all tricks

Really? This is plain sad. Somebody make me a sad salad.

“Tricks” is what professionals call bad, manipulative SEO that gets you penalized. The problem, I believe, is the first thing any developer or marketing manager hears about SEO is something close to “put more keywords in the title tag.” 

If that’s all SEO is, it does sound like tricks.

Real SEO makes every part of content organization and the browsing experience better. This includes:

  1. Creating content that reverse engineers user needs
  2. Making content more discoverable, both for humans and search engine crawlers
  3. Improving accessibility through site architecture and user experience
  4. Structuring data for unambiguous understanding
  5. Optimizing for social sharing standards
  6. Improving search presence by understanding how search engines generate snippets
  7. Technical standards to help search engines categorize and serve content to the right audience
  8. Improving website performance through optimizations such as site speed
  9. Sharing content with the right audiences, increasing exposure and traffic through links and mentions

Each of these actions is valuable by itself. By optimizing your web content from every angle, you may not even realize you’re doing SEO, but you’ll reap many times the rewards.

9. PageRank

Actually, I like PageRank. 

But it’s still a flippin’ myth.

PageRank was an incredibly innovative solution allowing Google to gauge the popularity of a webpage to the point that they could build the world’s best search engine on the concept. 

Despite what people say, PageRank is very likely still a part of Google’s algorithm (although with severely reduced influence). More than that, PageRank gave Google the ability to build more advanced algorithms on top of the basic system. 

Consider concepts like Topic Sensitive Page Rank or even this recent paper on entity salience from Google Research which highlights the use of a PageRank-like system.

The source of many bad myths

So why is PageRank such a bad myth?

  1. Toolbar PageRank, the PageRank most SEOs talk about, will likely never be updated again
  2. PageRank correlates poorly with search engine rankings, to the point that we quit studying it long ago.
  3. PageRank is easy to manipulate.

Fortunately, Google has moved away from talking about PageRank or supporting it in a public-facing way. This will hopefully lead to an end of people using PageRank for manipulative purposes, such as selling links and shady services.

If you’re interested, several companies have developed far more useful link metrics including Majestic’s Citation Flow, Ahrefs Rank, and Moz’s Page and Domain Authority.

10. Social activity doesn’t affect SEO

At this point, I barely have strength left to argue. 

Explaining this myth could take an entire post, so I’ll boil it down the bare facts. The basic argument goes like this:

“Google says they don’t use Facebook likes or Tweet counts to rank websites. Therefore, social activity doesn’t matter to SEO.”

This statement is half right, but can you guess which half?

It’s true that Google does not use metrics such as Facebook shares or Twitter Followers directly in search rankings

On the other hand, successful social activity can have significant secondary effects on your SEO efforts. Social activity helps address two of the major tasks facing SEOs:

  1. Search engine discovery and indexation
  2. Content distribution, which leads to links and shares

Perhaps no one explains it better than AJ Kohn, in his excellent Social Signals and SEO.

Stolen with permission from AJ Kohn

Successful social activity puts your content in front of the right group of users, increasing visits, engagement, and brand signals like the number of users searching for your site. Finally, the simple act of more influencers visiting your content can lead to more links and further sharing, and the cycle repeats itself. All of these secondary effects can significantly boost your SEO efforts. 

More myths from SEOs 

We asked several folks on Twitter about their least favorite SEO myths. Here are a few favorite replies.

@CyrusShepard That Google doesn’t use any visit/engagement/traffic data in any way in their search quality systems

— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard the one that still bugs me the most is PageRank

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard The disavow tool is useless. 🙂

— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) February 20, 2015

@dan_shure @CyrusShepard How about “you can absolutely, unequivocally rely on the canonical tag… even when set up perfect” 🙁

— Bill Sebald (@billsebald) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard you should have x number of keywords in your keywords meta tag, you know, the tag you don’t need.

— Chris McElroy (@SEOpn) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard That SEO is something that can be done once and then your site is magically all-good for rankings nirvana for the rest of days

— Christian Bullock (@ChristianBk) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard that there is no point getting more than one link from the same domain as it doesn’t pass anymore value.

— Tim Grice (@Tim_Grice) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard That you can pay an agency $100/month and “rank #1 for everything!”

— Brandon Hassler (@BrandonHassler) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard That it’s easy. If it’s that damn easy, how come Google invest huge amounts in providing *relevancy* (algos, patents, tech)?

— Tony Dimmock (@Tony_DWM) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard Google favors pages that run AdWords. I roll my eye whenever I heard this from a “subject expert” and they’ve died in my mind.

— victorpan (@victorpan) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard Bonus myth, SEO is dead! 🙂

— Hardik Oza (@Ozaemotion) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard That everything out of Google’s PR mouth about SEO is truth

— Erica McGillivray (@emcgillivray) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard I don’t stand a cliche that has become a myth for having being so badly used (also by Google: content is king cc: @randfish

— Gianluca Fiorelli (@gfiorelli1) February 21, 2015

@CyrusShepard PPC plays a role in SEO ie if you pay to play, google rewards organically. Sad how often I run into this.

— Damon Gochneaur (@DamonGochneaur) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard JSON-LD / Microdata / http://t.co/9u0ueDBJF3 / Rich Snippets automatically add your listings to SERP / Knowledge Graph

— Simo Ahava (@SimoAhava) February 20, 2015

What SEO myth drives you nuts? Let us know in the comments below!


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Grow Your Own SEOs: Professional Development for Digital Marketers

Posted by RuthBurrReedy

Finding your next SEO hire is hard, but it’s only half the battle. Growing a team isn’t just about hiring—it’s about making your whole team, newbies and experts alike, better marketers.

It’s almost impossible to build a one-size-fits-all training program for digital marketers, since the tasks involved will depend a lot on the role. Even “SEO” can mean a lot of different things. Your role might be highly technical, highly creative, or a mix of both. Tactics like local SEO or conversion rate optimization might be a huge part of an SEO’s job or might be handled by another person entirely. Sometimes an SEO role includes elements like social media or paid search. The skills you teach your trainees will depend on what you need them to do, and more specifically, what you need them to do right now.

Whatever the specifics of the marketing role, you need to make sure you’re providing a growth plan for your digital marketers (this goes for your more experienced team members, as well as your newbies). A professional growth plan helps you and your team members:

  • Track whether or not they’re making progress in their roles. Taking on a new skill set can be daunting. Having a growth plan can alleviate some of the stress less-experienced employees may feel when learning a new skill, and makes sure more experienced employees aren’t stagnating. 
  • Spot problem areas. Everyone’s talents are different, but you don’t want someone to miss out on growth opportunities because they’re such a superstar in one area and are neglecting everything else. 
  • Have conversations around promotions and raises. Consistently tracking people’s development across a variety of skill sets allows you to compare where someone is now to where they were when you hired them; it also gives you a framework to discuss what additional steps might be needed before a promotion or raise is in order, and help them develop a plan to get there. 
  • Advance their careers. One of your duties as their manager is to make sure you’re giving them what they need to continue on their career path. A professional development plan should be managed with career goals in mind. 
  • Increase employee retention. Smart people like to learn and grow, and if you’re not providing them ways to do so, they’re not going to stick around.

We have technical/on-page SEOs, content marketers, local SEOs and marketing copywriters all working together on the same team at BigWing. We wanted to create a framework for professional development that we could apply to the whole team, so we identified a set of areas that any digital marketer should be growing in, regardless of their focus. This growth plan is part of everyone’s mid-year and year-end reviews.

Here’s what it looks like:

Growth areas for digital marketers

Want your own copy of the Professional Advancement Sheet? Get it here!

Tactical -> strategic

At the beginner level, team members are still learning the basic concepts and tasks associated with their role, and how those translate to the client metrics they’re being measured on. It takes time to encounter and fix enough different kinds of things to know “in x situation, look at a, b and c and then try y or z.”

As someone grows in their role, they will learn more advanced tactics. They should also be more and more able to use critical thinking to figure out how to solve problems and tackle longer-term client goals and projects. At the senior level, an SEO should be building long-term strategies and be comfortable with unusual campaigns and one-off projects.

Small clients -> big clients

There are plenty of small brochure websites in the world, and these sites are a great testing ground for the fundamentals of SEO: they may still have weird jacked-up problems (so many websites do), but they are a manageable size and don’t usually have the potential for esoteric technical issues that large, complex sites do. Once someone has a handle on SEO, you can start assigning bigger and badder sites and projects (with plenty of mentoring from more experienced team members—more on that later).

We thought about making this one “Easy clients -> difficult clients,” because there’s another dimension to this line of progress: increasingly complex client relationships. Clients with very large or complicated websites (or clients with more than one website) are likely to have higher budgets, bigger internal staff, and more stakeholders. As the number of people involved increases, so does the potential for friction, so a senior-level SEO should be able to handle those complex relationships with aplomb.

Learning -> teaching

At the beginner level, people are learning digital marketing in general and learning about our specific internal processes. As they gain experience, they become a resource for team members still in the “learning” phase, and at the senior level they should be a go-to for tough questions and expert opinions.

Even a beginner digital marketer may have other things to teach the team; skills learned from previous careers, hobbies or side gigs can be valuable additions. For example, we had a brand-new team member with a lot of experience in photography, a valuable skill for content marketers; she was able to start teaching her teammates more about taking good photos while still learning other content marketing fundamentals herself.

learning

I love this stock picture because the chalkboard just says “learning.” Photo via Pixabay.

Since managers can’t be everywhere at once, more experienced employees must take an active role in teaching. It’s not enough that they be experts (which is why this scale doesn’t go from “Learning” to “Mastering”); they have to be able to impart that expertise to others. Teaching is more than just being available when people have questions, too: senior team members are expected to be proactive about taking the time to show junior team members the ropes.

Prescribed -> creative

The ability to move from executing a set series of tasks to creating creative, heavily client-focused digital marketing campaigns is, in my opinion, one of the best predictors of long-term SEO success. When someone is just starting out in SEO, it’s appropriate to have a fairly standard set of tasks they’re carrying out. For a lot of those small sites that SEO trainees start on, that set of SEO fundamentals goes a long way. The challenge comes when the basics aren’t enough.

Creative SEO comes from being able to look at a client’s business, not just their website, and tailor a strategy to their specific needs. Creative SEOs are looking for unique solutions to the unique problems that arise from that particular client’s combination of business model, target market, history and revenue goals. Creativity can also be put to work internally, in the form of suggested process improvements and new revenue-driving projects.

General -> T-shaped

The concept of the T-shaped marketer has been around for a few years (if you’re not familiar with the idea, you can read up on it on Rand’s blog or the Distilled blog). Basically, it means that in addition to deep knowledge whatever area(s) of inbound marketing we specialize in, digital marketers should also work to develop basic knowledge of a broad set of marketing disciplines, in order to understand more about the craft of marketing as a whole.

t-shaped marketer

Source: The T-Shaped Marketer

A digital marketer who’s just starting out will naturally be focusing more on the broad part of their T, getting their head around the basic concepts and techniques that make up the digital marketing skill set. Eventually most people naturally find a few specialty areas that they’re really passionate about. Encouraging employees to build deep expertise ultimately results in a whole team full of subject matter experts in a whole team’s worth of subjects.

Beginner -> expert

This one is pretty self-explanatory. The important thing to note is that expertise isn’t something that just happens to you after you do something a lot (although that’s definitely part of it). Honing expertise means actively pursuing new learning opportunities and testing new ideas and tactics, and we look for the pursuit of expertise as part of evaluating someone’s professional growth.

Observing -> leading

Anyone who is working in inbound marketing should be consistently observing the industry—they should be following search engine news, reading blog posts from industry experts, and attending events and webinars to learn more about their craft. It’s a must-do at all levels, and even someone who’s still learning the ropes can be keeping an eye on industry buzz and sharing items of interest with their co-workers.

Not everyone is crazy about the phrase “thought leadership.” When you’re a digital marketing agency, though, your people are your product—their depth of knowledge and quality of work is a big part of what you’re selling. As your team gains experience and confidence, it’s appropriate to expect them to start participating more in the digital marketing space, both online and in person. This participation could look like: 

  • Pitching and speaking at marketing conferences 
  • Contributing to blogs, whether on your site or in other marketing communities 
  • Organizing local tech meetups 
  • Regularly participating in online events like #seochat

…or a variety of other activities, depending on the individual’s talents and interests. Not only does this kind of thought-leadership activity promote your agency brand, it also helps your employees build their personal brands—and don’t forget, a professional development plan needs to be as much about helping your people grow in their careers as it is about growing the skill sets you need.

Low output -> high output

I love the idea of meticulous, hand-crafted SEO, but let’s be real: life at an agency means getting stuff done. When people are learning to do stuff, it takes them longer to do (which is BY FAR MY LEAST FAVORITE PART OF LEARNING TO DO THINGS, I HATE IT SO MUCH), so expectations of the number of clients/volume of work they can handle should scale appropriately. It’s okay for people to work at their own pace and in their own way, but at some point you need to be able to rely on your team to turn things around quickly, handle urgent requests, and consistently hit deadlines, or you’re going to lose customers.

You may notice that some of these growth areas overlap, and that’s okay—the idea is to create a nuanced approach that captures all the different ways a digital marketer can move toward excellence.

Like with all other aspects of a performance review, it’s important to be as specific as possible when discussing a professional growth plan. If there’s an area a member of your team needs to make more progress in, don’t just say e.g. “You need to be more strategic.” Come up with specific projects and milestones for your marketer to hit so you’re both clear on when they’re growing and what they need to do to get to the next level.


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