Bookmarks are links from social media accounts like scoop.it and instapaper. The problem is that many don’t get indexed at all and will not help a bit. In this article we will discuss what you need to know about bookmarks. You will learn howto fix the problem to get your bookmarks and promote your pages
What You Need to Know About Bookmarks
If you are bookmarking (social linking to) a low quality page with content that is not relevant to the pages it links to; chances are your bookmarks will not get indexed. In addition if your social site has a pile of unrelated bookmarks (ie unrelated to the niche you want to link to) it will have little value. This a big problem when you outsource marketing and search engine optimisation and your outsourcer places your bookmark links on sites that have a mixed bad of content. Your hotel and tourism business links may end up in a site with teeth whitener and plumbing supplies. It will be deemed to be of low value.
This video shows a bookmark campaign that failed: Google did not index many posts. As a side note, this happened at a time when search was undergoing testing and change. That has settled down to some extent but it is still worrying and we analyze why this can happen and how to fix it below .
Why Google Devalues Bookmarks
In 2016, Gary Illyes from Google even said they were just going to devalue (or not count) lower quality links. That trend has continues and in addition Google now favors quality over quantity for links. As bookmarks are just snippets their quality is by nature low and as a result they don’t get huge traffic. But it’s not just bookmarks. Ahrefs estimates that over 91% of websites get ZERO traffic from Google.
There are 3 main reasons that sites are failing:
1) They Don’t Have Relevant Links
Optimally, you want to get links to and from a page / that is relevant to your business.
2) Your Backlinks are not In-Content and Not Contextual
Getting links to your pages from inside an article (in-content) are better, They are contextually relevant and natural. Links that stand alone are not contextual and will have less value.
3) The Site you Bookmark has Marginal Traffic
If you link to or from a site that has no traffic your bookmark will have low value.
How to Fix Bad Bookmarks
First and formost make sure that your bookmark links are valuable on their own and that they link to quality pages.
Any site that Google ranks, and is getting organic traffic, is a site that Google likes – links from it and to it would be valuable. Links for sites that Google has approved as Newsworth and appear in their News listing are high value, so long as they are relevant.
You need to Build your own social network (see page 61 0f my book).
Your social network should include Facebook, Instagram, Blogger, YouTube and Video Sites. Post content and links (bookmarks) on these sites that are highly related to your niche. Only create bookmarks that link to high value information.
Get Google News Approved
Post high quality blogs on relevant authority sites that are Google News approved. Once your content is solid you can promote it with links from relevant social bookmark sites. Quality Social bookmark sites include Scoot-it, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest with content that is relevant to your niche and the articles you are linking to.
Bookmarks and Content Marketing
Based on what we just covered here and in the preceding lessons on Content Marketing you can see how bookmarking can help promote your content. The best promotion of blogs are actually other blogs linking to it. That actually a hierarchy of blogs which are call tiers. Always make sure that the most valued links point to you own site. Use Bookmarks to promote the second tier.
Example –
1. Write a blog about travelling as a life changing experience – this links to a relevant page on your website.
2. Another blog “Journey to discover” links to this (tier 2)
3. Bookmark tier 2 with a few links from your own network
4. You can extend this with another blog maybe about Tips for planning the perfect holiday
– Put this on a high authority guest blogging site like TheFritz
– You can link this to 2 and to another authority site. Bookmark this with another related network.
Strategic Link Structure
If you plan to do much blogging you will need to vary how you link you content. Linking is referred to in my book DIGITAL MEDIA in several chapters.
Backlinks and What You Need to Know About Bookmarks:
Building Your Social Media (Page 61)Digital Media Strategies for Hotels and Tourism
Available from Amazon in eBook and paperback
Technology
Structured linking is an advanced concept that is fairly new but will soon be mainstream. It is a subject of my next book on TECHNOLOGY. It’s not trivial: Strategic link structure creates highly effective bookmarking that extends beyond social media.
In this hybrid content networks, social media bookmarks take a secondary role to in-depth articles. They are part of a holistic linking structure that builds authority leading back to your website and sales partners. Don’t miss this
Social media is supplanting search as the go-to source for discovering content, according results of a survey of active online users conducted by Publicis’ Mediavest | Spark unit and BuzzFeed. The study, which was conducted by Forrester Consulting, surveyed 1,500 18- to 55-year-olds, and found social media is replacing search as the dominant means they use to find media content. A majority of the respondents identified social media as their “most preferred source” for reading, viewing or listening to content about topics they care about. Source: Social Supplants Search For Content Discovery, Millennials Twice As Likely To Get News That Way 05/11/2016
Marhat POV
WHY Search is failing
f you every wondered why SEO is not bring the returns it did just a while ago, then you will understand that social media is apart of the answer. More users are going to social sites to find what they are looking for and search is falling as users discover other venues to search on. That is not the only reason why search engines are failing travel.
OTAS Dominate search
The Online Travel Agents have, to a very large extent, usurped search to become a dominate resource for travel shoppers. Its was clear some time ago that Google was heading to loose out in travel search to the OTAs – see https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1510172072192877942
Travel marketing is changing as OTAs move to dominate hotel and tourism bookings and hoteliers learn to love and hate them. They can’t do without them and they cry foul at the paying higher and higher commission to gt results.
Direct Booking Options With Digital Media
Hotels cant get on search results as they did before their share of direct bookings is under attack. But new option are opening, not only in social, but in may other ways. Google has introduced several “more hotel friendly” initiatives on mobile and now with Hotel Ads it is in direct competition with OTAs. Hotel Ads allows hotel to pay google a commission and get booking direct from place listing on top real-estate on Google. See more about digital media and technology for hotel and tourism on the new book series – Marketing Hotels and Tourism Online. The first book #Website is published now – Be sure to get the book and bonuses at http://bonus.marketinghotelstourismonline.com
#1 Amazon Bestseller Website is first in the series on hotel and tourism marketing
Googles Destination Planner for Mobile Pushed Out Search
Not only is traditional search irrelevant – it almost impossible to find it as Google replaces mobile search with its own travel guides and sales funnels. They are making search obsolete on mobile and that it probably a forerunner of what will happen on the NET. Its part of Google strategy to diminish organic search which they struggle to keep out of the control of blackhat SEO experts. So Google Mobile Travel Web Replacing Search Results is a step in the right direction.
SEO marketers take note. this may be the beginning of the very end for search engine marketing and SEO. In its place will be Googles own travel portal, in many guises and variants, from hotel finderto maps to online guide and booking options, they will have your clients covered. As author of the article Barry Swartz says “Don’t get me wrong; this is an incredibly nice user experience for those looking to travel. But those optimizing for travel search might not like the new mobile experience.”
Is it an App
No its not an app, but as we said before the new web technologies are replace a lot of the functionality of apps. So in some sense you can say that Apps are now moving to the web. And that does make sense, not many travelers want to download an app for every hotel the consider for a vacation, and very few do.But all this just adds to the demise of search as we know it. It become more irrelevant as Google and technology replaces it.
What does it Mean for Hotels
The roll-out has not effected hotel listing directly at this point. If you search for where to stay in Barbados on an iphone you will see a conventional search result. But if you search for where to go in Barbados you will see the new destination guide. That is all encompassing – It starts out looking at regions and as you select one (say Bridgetown) you will see a description which looks like it may come from Wikipedia. Under that is “Top sights”. Again with wiki-like descriptions. Under that is “Plan a Trip” with option for flights, hotels and restaurants and “When to visit- showing main events by month”.
The hotel option links you to 3 star hotel – It eventually leads to search result-like page with bookings by Booking.com etc. Interestingly the listing of hotel does not appear to be an OTA listing although they link to ota to fulfill the book at this time. The key takeaway is that you need to optimize your pages now specifically for google so that you are listed in their mobile search.. We will go into this in more detail later.
Ultimately we expect Google will bring the full travel mobile world to hotel searches to. Like the destination mobile guide, search may still be an option but way down the page and likely to get ignored.
Optimize for Google
So get ready to be in googles new mobile Hotel Search. Step one optimize your site for mobile – and for Google. Be on their maps, have your google Page, a Google PLUS account, optimize your YouTUbe account, and use social accounts to point to your Google properties. Make the most of your reviews and make sure you share to Google – Use video reviews and engaging graphics to make the reviews stand out and get read.
It is big news for new site and we will follow this up and give you all the detail as they emerge.
Called the aging delay, “Google Delays Ranking of New Sites” is going to effect all new site launches, new business and even changes to business names and website.
What Might be Affected
Keep tuned as we explore this issue and give you detailed advice on how to manage website, link building and even social media networks given that Google is actively delaying the rankings of new and less established websites, and it does not end there.
We will let you know how to get around it and what it means for platforms like YouTube. Will they be exempt and is so will new social accounts and profile of Facebook etc also be penalized. Will links from social platforms and new instances of web2.0 properties have the same effect as they do now?
Not Penguin but A Core Ranking Change
Google confirmed this is a core ranking change unrelated to the expected Penguin. We do not know what surprises will be in Penguin but if you are doing a SEO campaign it would be wise to wait to see what is in the new algorithm.
Why Google Favors Aged Domains
With all the reciprocal-linking and masked paid link strategies that artificially inflate link popularity, Google has had a number of core updates on “aging delay”. Initially it was a measure for PageRank but that was abandoned some time ago and we no longer see updates to PR6 etc. But the principles are the same; it is a way to evaluate the merit of the page and its rank in googles search results. We suspect that it will be applied to inbound links also, which is going to effect a lot of Search Engine Marketing strategies.
Site owners should build new pages or expand existing sites rather than build new site to Googles aging delay.
MOZ WhiteBoard Friday Video Explain Google Ranking Factors
Authority is Number 1 in Google’s Algorithm
Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) are now the most important signals for ranking on search. The greater your DA, the more likely you are to have strong traffic and high rank, all thinks considered. But they don’t work if everything else is not optimized.
Quality Content is Key
Good quality content, personalized to your audience with good links and social media relevance have to be present. Semantic words context and relevance are now combined with topic modelling algorithm to create an index. The algorithm is getting more integrated and complex. No one thing drives ranking and MOZ lets us know that Google advised they are “not using any single factor or +1’s precisely unless it personalized results.”
Keywords Give Way to Branding
Keywords in domain, as we noted in the 2016 trends, is continuing to sink, whereas brand names are gaining in importance. Interestingly SEO MOZ dropped it SEO and became just MOZ, it took a hot in page ranking for a while but their listing is back up and better that before. That is something we can all work with when trying to rank on search results while balancing the ranking factors in googles algorithm.
I was recently leading a re-branding initiative for a hospitality business so this article caught my eye. Should have read it before the project perhaps but re-branding in the digital age is a long term project and we learn and adapt as we move forward. In the case of my client, formerly know as Poinsettia Apartments St. Lucia, they want to move from being an apartment holiday resort to more accurately reflect the reality of their target client who is the independent minded traveller. The new brand will see the url change to PoinsttiaVillas with the tag line of “St. Lucia Ocean view Villa Resort”. The lines between what is an an apartment and a villa are redefined today as apartments like those at poinsettia take on the attributions in space, privacy and services now associated with a villa resort.
The Digital Footprint is Ubiquitous
The digital footprint for Poinsettia, is however, deep with backlinks, Press Releases, videos, blogs and articles that anchor them in time and place as a holiday vacation apartment. It will take time to build the new identity and in the process we must preserve their first page ranking and authority of the existing brand. Even the best SEO experts and brand professional will fall into the history trap. We know a lot about SEO but their were some surprises that made the heart rate jump. We will share that with you in an upcoming post.
Branding Hot Buttons
To abandon a brand such as st. lucia apartment and change to “villas” would ignore the past and present and simple wipe the brand off the map long before you could build a new one. With all the best precautions you simple cannot be sure what will happen. In our case Google just did not re-index the site as we expected and the team had long hours of work to make that happen. I will share the entire story with you soon. For the re-branding job we called in one of the worlds top marketers, Deigo Rodriguez the founder of power marketing consultants a world wide association of some 200 specially trained consultants which AXSES all Cast Marketing joined in 2015. Diego was instrumental in helping define the target market more clearly and pin pointing the hot-buttons or triggers which motivate these buyers. All about that and the science of buying motivators will follow in a future article.
Branding Strategies & Tools
So now let let me share this article about re-branding with you. Its by Lisa MacKenzie founder of the MacKenzie marketing Group and the entire article is available on Weebly: How Does a Branding Company Re-Brand? Insider Tips from a Branding Expert – Weebly.com. Lisa talks about PrestoBox, which we will cover later also. Lisa says “PrestoBox offers a great process that helps you think about yourself as a company in a more personal way. Instead of relying on written briefs, PrestoBox articulates your core values through fun images. The interface is elegant and simple and the tools are really easy to use and thought provoking. It takes you through a very streamlined path to branding without a lot of meetings, reviews and discussion.”
Her article is based on her own real life experience of re-branding her own company. It is worth reading. Keep in contact with us on these pages as we put together a full analysis of our clients and other brand campaigns to give you the best insights on re-branding in the digital age, where SEO and history take on a significance and permanence you should not ignore.
Rebrand to Preserve SEO
As Lisa say branding is “more than just the logo. A brand should include all of the parts and pieces: your website, your business card, even the patterns and colors that you put on your wall!” to which we add “a Brand on the internet that is already ranking on search engines will loose its entire history and place if you do not phase it well. More on that soon. In the meantime have a look at a work in progress on the rebranding of Poinsettia villa apartments for rent in St. Lucia – Click here for the least work and check out the carefully crafted video on what the Independent traveller wants>>. http://PoinsettiaApartments.com St. Lucia – moving to Villa Aparments and finally to St. Lucia Ocean View villa Resort.
Here is one of the re-branding videos
re branding
Be sure to join our newsletter to get the updates and future articles on re branding- Join http://powermembers.allcastmarketing.com >> click image
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