Bob’s Weekly Reading Picks
2019.10.20 volume 41
Content
1.The affiliate marketers blueprint to futureproof your business
2.21 Ways to Promote Your Blog
3.Shopify SEO: The Guide to Optimizing Shopify
4.Intro to SEO Competitive Analysis
5.An Introduction to Python for Technical SEO
6.Why You Should Integrate Search Marketing into Your Organization’s Culture
7.Who Owns Your Favorite News Media Outlet
1.The affiliate marketers blueprint to futureproof your business
Focus on consumer privacy first
Privacy and data will continue to be two major battlegrounds.
- The first consideration should be what data do you capture and can you justify doing so?
- Additionally, the smaller the amount of personally identifiable information you capture the better.
Regulations
- GDPR
- New York SHIELD Security Act
- Nevada Consumer Privacy Bill
- California Consumer Privacy Act
Implement adaptive tracking solutions
Apple, Chrome and Mozilla move from supporting third-party tracking to reliance on first-party cookies.
Solutions:
- Server-to-Server tracking,
- API tracking
- first-party cookies
Diversify partnerships
One of the key developments over the past 18 months has been the emergence of a number of non-traditional affiliate businesses, software companies, banks and brands looking to explore the CPA model and build additional revenue streams.
2.21 Ways to Promote Your Blog
- 1. Guest Post Bonuses
- 2. Publish Data-Driven Content
- 3. Update and Upgrade Old Content
- 4. LinkedIn Syndication
- 5. Facebook Boosted Posts (With Retargeting)
- 6. The Super Simple Newsletter
- 7. Cross-Pollinate Your Audience
- 8. Collab With Other Blogs
- 9. Super Personalized Outreach
- 10. Eye-Catching Social Media Images
- 11. Turn Blog Content Into YouTube Videos
- 12. Reply to Every Single Comment
- 13. Write Blog Posts on NEW Topics
- 14. Podcast Bonuses
- 15. Speak at Events
- 16. Publish Posts at The Right Time
- 17. Leave Super Helpful Comments on Other Blogs
- 18. Create a Blog Alliance
- 19. Reader Case Studies
- 20. Create Cool Visuals, Charts, and Images
- 21. Double Down On List Posts
3.Shopify SEO: The Guide to Optimizing Shopify
Some of the most common Shopify SEO recommendations are:
- Remove duplicate URLs from internal linking architecture
- Remove duplicate paginated URLs
- Create blog content for keywords with informational intent
- Add “Product,” “Article,” & “BreadcrumbList” structured data
- Determine how to handle product variant pages
- Compress images using crush.pics
- Remove unnecessary Shopify apps
By default, Shopify stores allow their /products/ pages to render at two different URL paths:
- Canonical URL path: /products/
- Non-canonical URL path: /collections/.*/products/
Shopify accounts for this by ensuring that all /collections/.*/products/ pages include a canonical tag to the associated /products/ page.
Robots.txt file
A very important note is that in Shopify stores, you cannot adjust the robots.txt file. This is stated in their official help documentation. While you can add the “noindex” to pages through the theme.liquid, this is not as helpful if you want to prevent Google from crawling your content all together.
4.Intro to SEO Competitive Analysis
what keywords to target,
what content to create,
how to optimize that content, and
where to get links.
- Identify your top competitors
- Perform a keyword gap analysis
- Perform a link gap analysis (domain, page level)
- Perform a top content analysis
5.An Introduction to Python for Technical SEO
Python Libraries
The main power of Python is in its libraries, which enable a number of add-ons including:
- Data extraction.
- Analysis and preparation.
- Scientific computing.
- Natural language processing.
- Machine learning.
Some useful libraries for tasks involving data analysis and automation include:
- TensorFlow: An open-source machine learning library.
- NumPy: Useful for scientific computing.
- SciPy: Used for scientific and technical computing.
- SciKit Lear: Machine learning for data mining and analysis.
- Pandas: Used for data manipulation and analysis.
- SpaCy: A great natural language processing library.
- Requests: A library for making HTTP requests.
This list of tasks you can automate with Python is growing continuously:
- Identifying user intent.
- Mapping URLs ahead of a migration.
- Internal link analysis.
- Performing keyword research.
- Optimizing images.
- Scraping websites.
Some real-world machine learning examples include:
- Google’s RankBrain algorithm.
- Baidu’s Deep Voice program.
- Twitter’s curated timelines.
- Netflix and Spotify recommendations.
- Salesforce’s Einstein feature.
6.Why You Should Integrate Search Marketing into Your Organization’s Culture
Acceptance
With the maturity of the industry, there is more common knowledge of what SEO and paid search metrics, strategies, and tactics are. However, there are still people from the outside that don’t get it or want to question it as a valid marketing channel and challenge the search team’s process and competency.
Support
SEOs need UX, IT, content, social media, PR, and other areas of support.
Speed
SEO is a long-term process, but requires short-term iterative updates. Paid search is real-time marketing and often needs new and updated assets and resources in specific timeframes to shape success.
The speed of execution is critical for the success of a search team especially in areas where they rely on other resources for support.
Collaboration
To get the most out of the search team, it’s important to:
- Know what the top-level goals are.
- Know the performance in other channels.
- Know the content and strategies being conducted in other parts of the marketing plan.
- Be given a chance to collaborate.
The Company or Agency
- Audience Research （keyword research）
- Competitor Research
- Website Improvements (CRO, UX…)
- Testing Opportunities (updated messaging, offers, calls-to-action, or sales tactics)
- Cultural Alignment (Having shared goals and KPIs is important)
7.Who Owns Your Favorite News Media Outlet
Below is a look at the top 20 owners of America’s newspapers:
| Parent Companies | Total Papers | Example brands |
|---|---|---|
| New Media Investment Group | 451 | Patriot Ledger, The Columbus Dispatch, The Providence Journal |
| Gannett | 216 | USA Today, Detroit Free Press, Arizona Republic |
| Digital First Media | 158 | Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, Denver Post |
| Adams Publishing Group | 144 | The Charlotte Sun, Wyoming Tribune-Eagle |
| CNHI | 114 | Niagara Gazette, The Huntsville Item, The Lebanon Reporter |
| Lee Enterprises | 100 | Arizona Daily Sun, St. Louis Post Dispatch |
| Ogden Newspapers | 81 | The Maui News, The Toledo Chronicle, Salem News |
| Tribune Publishing | 77 | Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun |
| Berkshire Hathaway Media | 75 | Buffalo News, Winston-Salem Journal, Omaha World-Herald |
| Shaw Media | 71 | Suburban Life Magazine, Putnam County Record |
| Boone Newspapers | 66 | The Austin Daily Herald, The Charlotte Gazette |
| Hearst Corp. | 66 | San Francisco Chronicle, Seattlepi.com, Houston Chronicle |
| Paxton Media Group | 58 | Daily Corinthian, Connersville News-Examiner |
| Landmark Media Enterprises | 55 | Citrus County Chronicle, The News-Enterprise |
| Community Media Group | 51 | Lafayette Leader, The Wellsboro Gazette |
| AIM Media | 50 | Odessa American, El Nuevo Heraldo |
| McClatchy | 49 | Idaho Statesman, Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee |
| Advance Publications | 46 | The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, The Oregonian, NJ.com |
| Rust Communications | 44 | Cherokee Chronicle Times, Southeast Missourian |
| News Media Corp. | 43 | Cheyenne Minuteman, Brookings Register, Newport News Times |