Wes Holing

If you thought you could do away with all your content and SEO people now that Google is offering AI generated responses, think again. Unless you're ok with AI telling people to "jump off the Golden Gate Bridge" if they're depressed, "add non toxic glue" to their cooking, "run with scissors" for cardio exercise, and "smoke 3-4 cigarettes a day when pregnant" - I'm not kidding, check out other examples in this article: https://lnkd.in/gWT_vw6T I've spent almost 15 years working in content in some form. It's much more complex than many people think. But I don't need AI to create content, I need it to help solve critical, complex world issues, and I need it to replace the mundane manual labour that humans don't want to do. Leave art to the humans. Art is human connection. And, content is human connection at the core.

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Lately, I’ve been having conversations with editors about using swear words in headlines and body copy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It’s generally a good rule to avoid using them – especially if you rely on Google News and Discover for traffic. But there are rare cases where obscenities are part of the story and you’ll want to include them in the head, the page title and the body copy. Here’s how to do it without violating search engine headline policies (this may also help with syndication partners and social media headlines). Note that editorial policies may vary, but this can be a jumping-off point. ✅ DO: Use swear words if it’s a critical component of the article. ✅ DO: Use them in direct quotations. ❌ DON’T: Use swear words for shock value or to make the article “more clicky”. 🤬 If a curse word appears in the headline or page title, make sure to remove it from the URL before publishing. 🤬 When using profanities, use the initial letter followed by hyphens, not dashes, and no last letter, like:  s- - - or f- - -. 🤬 This also applies to compound words: a- - - - - -, not a- - -hole. 🤬 For words ending in ‘ing’, use the first letter, plus hyphens, then ‘ing’: f- - -ing. Out of context, this word could be farting, farking, fussing, fading, etc. If your editorial policy is ‘never ever ever use swear words in headlines,’ then a way to get around that is to change the focus of the headline from the message (the swearing) to the action. 🚫 Instead of this headline: Famous Singer Tells Runway Photographer to ‘F- - - Off’ 😃 Try: Famous Singer Claps Back At Runway Photographer At The Grammys Or 🚫 Instead of: Famous Person Wears ‘F - - - You’ Sweatshirt While Shopping With Kids 😃 Try:  Famous Person Wears Explicit Sweatshirt While Shopping With Kids And when in doubt about using profanities or swear words in your headlines, don’t use them. Swearing is not required. 🤬 #SEO #content

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No matter how qualitative, helpful, reliable, EEAT-aligned, well-researched, fact-packed, and smexy the blog post is…. If it’s NOT filling in the overall content strategy  If it’s not correctly published, & on-page SEO-ed If it's not aligned with the UX… Forget the rankings & traction.  And Get the base right. #Mrsaiqo

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One challenge that news SEOs occasionally face is creating an evergreen content strategy because evergreen content isn’t exactly news. 🌲 Even though evergreen content for news sites seems counterintuitive, it isn’t. For evergreen content to benefit both the site and the readers, it has to be rooted in the news, which makes it newsy. And because it’s newsy, having an evergreen content strategy helps newsrooms create more content around a new idea, subject or event, and it can help sites rank for breaking news topics without actually breaking the news. The most straightforward topic for news evergreen content is explainers. Explainers are a great way to create factual, serviceable content about an event or person that informs your readers and creates background information about a person or event that you can link to repeatedly. Another benefit of explainers is that they provide the background information that your readers might otherwise leave your site to find. This keeps your readers on your site, reading your content. For some examples of newsy evergreen article ideas to get you started, check out Creating Evergreen Content For News Sites at Oriole Group. #SEO #content #cmo 🌲 🌲 🌲

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Questions about how design impacts your bottom line? Molly will set you straight!

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GA4 is a critical tool in every institutions’ website toolbox - even at the community college level! If you’ve been intimidated by setting up GA4, take a look at this great resource from my talented colleague Elizabeth Glass #analytics #highered #insights

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Natural resource agencies’ conservation missions depend on engaged customers, reliable revenue streams, and tools that grow participation and relevance. Choosing the right platform is a key part of driving the right outcomes. This new guide from PayIt helps natural resource agencies define digital engagement and business software requirements and evaluate vendors — specifically with R3, customer engagement, and relevancy efforts in mind. Access the guide now: https://okt.to/cKSrVg #NaturalResources #PayItOutdoors #ConservationTechnology #r3

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🕵️‍♂️ What’s the right cadence for an enterprise SEO Audit? For large organizations, the answer isn’t a simple “once a year” or “as needed.” With so many teams impacting SEO, a strategic audit cadence is essential. Here’s what I typically recommend: 1️⃣ Full/Comprehensive Audit – Once a Year For enterprise companies and sites, an annual full SEO audit should go beyond the basics—more than just crawl data. This in-depth review uncovers hidden issues and missed opportunities that day-to-day tracking might overlook. Key tip: outsource the audit at least every other year. Fresh eyes bring fresh insights that internal teams can miss. 2️⃣ Monthly Audit of Key Tech Metrics In between, run a lighter, tech-focused audit every month to catch issues before they snowball. It’s a preventative SEO. 👀 Imagine an audit that isn't just about spotting errors; but is also about uncovering growth opportunities hidden within your company's repeated processes. Let’s make it happen. https://www.seoinhouse.com

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Has your SEO tanked after a relaunch? Here's 4 good tips from Search Engine Land to remember to mitigate issues with Google in the process. I always harp about 301 redirects. But, they are important. https://lnkd.in/e-CyYQ3y

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This is a really interesting piece about confirmation bias and why SEOs need to know about it 👇 Sarah takes issue with the 2-dimensional view of keywords (search intent can be broken down into informational, transactional, navigational, and commercial), and highlights “that people are actually looking for information that confirms their existing beliefs…confirmation bias” The best SEOs can and should borrow from other adjacent fields to enrich our own ways of viewing the audience and forming effective strategies.   https://buff.ly/3wqwqNs 

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New Section in GA4: Consent Settings Michele Pisani discovered that the "Consent Settings" section is starting to appear in the GA4 Admin panel for some properties: Pros: It provides a quick overview of consent signal reception across different data streams. Caution: A green light only indicates that consent signals are being received. It does not confirm that the configuration is correct or compliant with legal requirements. Want to check if consent mode is installed correct? Check this article from Cookiebot Web CMP by Usercentrics: https://lnkd.in/g4YKDvMk #GA4

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If you spend a lot of time on Google, you may notice Reddit dominating search results, often stealing ranking positions from authoritative websites. I'm ashamed to admit that I often click through to forums like Reddit for answers to my informational queries, so it's hypocritical of me to complain 👀 However, first-hand experience and back-and-forth debates draw me in every single time. If you're not already using Reddit for brand awareness, customer research and to complement your SEO efforts, it's about time you did! Read more in my guide: https://lnkd.in/e_sDU-b6

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The original Killer Whale update The “Killer Whale” update started in July 2023 as a huge E-E-A-T update to the Knowledge Graph. The key takeaways from the July 2023 Knowledge Graph are that Google is doing three things: Accelerating the growth of the Knowledge Vault (starting with Person entities). Restructuring the Knowledge Vault to focus on important subtitles for user trust to improve the algorithms’ application of E-E-A-T signals. Rapidly sunsetting its dependence on Wikipedia and other human-curated sources. We concluded that the March Killer Whale update was all about Person entities, focused on classification and designed to promote E-E-A-T-friendly subtitles. The Knowledge Graph is Google’s machine-readable encyclopedia, memory or black box. It has six verticals and this article focuses on the Knowledge Vault vertical. The Knowledge Vault is where Google stores its “facts” about the world. The Killer Whale update increased the facts and entities in the Knowledge Vault to over 1,600 billion facts on 54 billion entities, per Kalicube’s estimate. Source: https://lnkd.in/ghiaFGV3

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This is a great discussion of 'guest posting,' a controversial SEO tactic. https://lnkd.in/gQP9vFpU As Joy Hawkins and Colan Nielsen (of Sterling Sky Inc) point out, two things can diminish the utility of the links you get: 1. Sites that allow guest posting are typically very spammy. 2. Your content is featured prominently at first but soon gets buried in their site. Both of these factors cause the value of your backlink obtained through guest posting to drop off quickly. My personal experience is that individual guest posts are hit or miss but there are a lot of things you can do to improve average link quality. For example: 1. Guest post on sites that don't cater to SEO companies. 2. Guest post on sites that people actually read and follow. 3. Guest post on sites that actually offer a service or product and aren't just content sites. That's harder to do but the payoff is larger as well.

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My fellow writers and content strategists, I'm at a point in my career where I'm comfortable coming clean: I have ZERO opinions on what makes a good message map. I've created tons over the years but always as amalgams of immediate client needs and deliverables, with just a smattering of whatever marketing buzzword was making the rounds that week. (Authenticity! Narrative! Brand story telling, etc.) To be fair, this approach has always served me and my clients well, as I get entrenched in the project and make it work for their specific needs. But these days I have a team of writers who deserve a structure for tackling their own messaging projects, and thus far my search for quality formats has turned up a lot of AI-generated drivel. Does anyone I know on here have a messaging framework or method they swear by? Or even one they just like? Not looking for a paint-by-numbers template, simply a POV from a real writer about what message map format they like and why. Thanks!

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Are you a writer procrastinator? How often do you tell yourself you’re going to write? And then you don’t. How often do you get to the point of sitting down, staring at a blank page, hoping to write something awesome, but then zone out? Writing is hard, repetitive work. And we humans don’t like hard, repetitive work. We want fun. And writing can be fun — if you actually sit down and do it. Set yourself up to write even when you don’t feel like it with my strategies below 👇 https://lnkd.in/ebW-BTJm

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