Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) is now showing for 84% of search queries. SGE has three main variants:
That’s according to new data released by enterprise SEO platform, BrightEdge, and its new experimental tool, BrightEdge Generative Parser. The company shared new data on the most popular Google SGE content formats, warnings being shown in YMYL queries and ways Google is experimenting with product views. Why we care. SGE is a huge coming shift in Google Search. It could result in big changes in some verticals. For search marketers, many unknown unknowns remain because Google has shared no data with us – either on the organic or paid side. All Google has promised is that they will “get it right.”` Content formats. Unordered (bulleted) lists appear 48% of the time, and can be shown with or without accompanying descriptions.
A location/local module (including maps) appears 38% of the time. Meanwhile, product viewers (for product-related searches) appear 8% of the time. YMYL warnings. Google has started adding a variety of warnings on SGE answers. These categories include:
Product views. Google is experimenting heavily in this area. BrightEdge identified five key variants for how Google is displaying products in SGE:
via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/N2qwaI1
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With a shared commitment to fostering a secure and trustworthy environment for publishers and advertisers, BidsCube and Pixalate have partnered to fortify the digital advertising industry and make it more transparent. Pixalate’s fraud protection, privacy and compliance analytics solutions integrate into BidsCube’s programmatic ecosystem, providing clients with comprehensive tools powered by AI and machine learning. It will enhance the company’s quality approach, reinforcing its dedication to delivering safe and compliant programmatic advertising products. “As the programmatic advertising continues to evolve, addressing ad fraud and ensuring transparency has become paramount for success,” said Dmytro Chebakov, CEO of BidsCube. “Our collaboration with Pixalate reflects our commitment to delivering trustworthy and secure programmatic advertising solutions.” Why we care. The partnership of BidsCube and Pixalate is notable because it’s a substantial step towards creating a more secure ecosystem that benefits advertisers and publishers. The latest report by the Association of National Advertisers confirms concern about transparency issues in the programmatic market. The strategic partnership between BidsCube and Pixalate marks a significant milestone in the fight against ad fraud and championing transparency in programmatic advertising. “Our partnership with BidsCube provides their customers with comprehensive fraud detection and prevention solutions,” said Jalal Nasir, CEO of Pixalate. “We are encouraged by their proactive approach in creating a programmatic advertising ecosystem built on transparency, efficiency and quality.” How it works. For BidsCube customers, the new features will be now available within all platforms out of the box. Users can navigate the built-in Pixalate panel to customize all the necessary settings. For partners utilizing managed services, a traffic monitoring option with the Pixalate solutions will be available on demand. The company aims to provide every party involved with a more secure and reliable environment. Why it is important for advertisers and publishers. This partnership will impact more than 250 of BidsCube’s global programmatic partners that use the company’s products, providing reliable publishers with more revenue and advertisers with high-quality advertising inventory. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/fhtaWs7 SEO can be complicated – in many cases, overcomplicated. It’s easy to get lost in the SEO rabbit hole, spending significant time with minimal results. This article will help you cut through the noise and focus on the four key pillars of SEO that will help you improve visibility in 2024 and beyond. The four pillars of SEOThe four key areas of SEO that site owners need to consider are:
By procedurally working through these four SEO pillars, you can improve your visibility, traffic and engagement from organic search. 1. Technical SEOTechnical SEO can seem a little daunting. But need it to make sure search engines can read your content and explore your site. Much of this will be taken care of by the content management system you use, and Google’s Search Console can help you understand the technical makeup of your site. The main areas to consider here are:
If you are a small business using WordPress (or a similar CMS) for your website, technical SEO should be something you can check off your list pretty quickly. If you have a large, bespoke website with millions of pages, technical SEO becomes much more important (and troublesome). In 2024 and beyond, much of what is “technical SEO” is actually part of your website and CMS. The key is to collaborate with a developer who grasps SEO principles and builds you a website that is SEO-friendly and properly configured. Doing this should get you most of the way toward effective SEO. Note: If you are a small or micro business, don’t obsess over this too much or feel you have to perfect everything. We still see lots of sites that are essentially doing everything wrong and rank well, so just do your best! 2. On-site SEOOnce your technical SEO is in a good place, you need to optimize the content on your site. Structural optimizationThe first job here is to ensure your site is structured in a way that helps Google understand the relevance of every page. Think of your website as a filing cabinet. The website is the cabinet, the sections are drawers, and the pages are folders within those drawers. You should be able to draw this structure on the back of a napkin and understand how everything relates.
You get the picture – and so, hopefully, does Google. By structuring your site like this, you provide context for a page before Google has even examined the page itself and set the scene for the page itself to be optimized. Page-level optimization With a sensible structure in place, you can now optimize the individual pages. The main areas to focus on here are:
If you have taken the time to structure your site correctly, then the on-page optimization is fairly simple to layer over. If it helps, put your list of pages in a spreadsheet and detail the keyword you want to optimize each page for. Plenty of tools will assess how well a page is optimized for a given term that can aid you in the nuts and bolts of the optimization. Don’t think of this as a one-time job, either. Once the site is indexed, you can gather much more information from Google Search Console on what keywords each page ranks for and refine your optimization at a page-by-page level. 3. ContentContent is king. That’s the saying, right? It’s true in a way. Your website is just a wrapper for your content. Your content tells prospects what you do, where you do it, who you have done it for and why someone should use your business. And if you’re smart, your content should also go beyond these obvious brochure-type elements and help your prospective customers achieve their goals. For service businesses, we can loosely break your content down into four categories:
SEO is important for each type of content in different ways. SEO is often forgotten about when it comes to credibility content like case studies and reviews, but in an E-E-A-T world, this is a lost opportunity. For example, I recently renovated a Victorian-era house in the UK. The house is 140 years old, falling apart, and known as The Money Pit! Finding good people to help with this project was difficult, and it was those with good testimonials and case studies that we ended up:
E-E-A-T may seem like another painful SEO acronym to work around, but in reality, E-E-A-T just represents what we, as consumers, want. Adjusting your thinking to demonstrate your E-E-A-T in your content will only help you rank more highly, get more visitors and convert those clicks into customers! Further still, ensure you optimize your marketing content, including case studies, portfolio entries and testimonials – not just the obvious service pages. For larger businesses, a solid content marketing and SEO strategy is also the most scalable way to promote your business to a wide audience. This generally has the best ROI, as there is no cost per click – so you are scaling your marketing without directly scaling your costs. Layer in some remarketing and other ads that build on this first organic touch, and you can be onto a winning mix of tactics. Ensure your SEO tactics align with your overall SEO strategy. We still see too many paint-by-numbers approaches to SEO, where local businesses are paying agencies or using generative AI tools to pump out blog posts that will never rank. Create content that helps your customers either find you or choose you and focus on optimizing that. Dig deeper: What is helpful content, according to Google 4. Off-site authority buildingEventually, all SEO rivers run to this one spot: authority building. Building your authority, historically, was all about link building, a much abused and maligned SEO practice by 2024. Authority is still crucial to developing strong organic rankings and is part of the E-E-A-T approach. However, this can be the hardest part of SEO to get right. The best way I have ever seen to describe the right link-building mindset was penned by the late, great Eric Ward: “Connect what should be connected.” This philosophy is beautiful in its simplicity and corrects the “more, more, more” mentality of historic link building. We only want links from relevant sources. Often, this means that to scale our link building efforts beyond the obvious tactics, we need to create something that deserves links. You have links where it makes sense for you to have links. Simple. Wikipedia has millions of links, yet I am pretty sure they have never done any link building. This is because they have reams of useful content that gets linked. These are real, natural links that enrich the linking page, provide further context and serve as the real connective tissue of this hyperlinked world we live in. This kind of natural link should be the backbone of your link-building efforts. This may mean you have to revisit the content on your site and create something of value first, but if you can nail that, you are halfway home. Any safe, scalable link building strategy should be built on this mindset. SummarySEO becomes more manageable when broken down into four core pillars.
Make sure to establish clear SEO goals and track your performance KPIs to continually improve on these four pillars. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2A5cqHW 4.95 billion. That’s the number of social media users worldwide. For the savvy marketer, that number represents a market they can tap into to drive business growth. However, that number represents people who use social media in general. Each social media platform has its own monthly average users (MAU). For example, Facebook boasts a whopping 3 billion users. With numerous social media platforms and new ones emerging constantly, marketers face the challenge of deciding where to concentrate their efforts. If you’ve been wondering, I want to share the top five social media platforms you should focus on for business growth. These platforms drive engagement for brands and have stood the test of time. I will also show you ways businesses can harness the power of each platform to get the most mileage out of them. 1. Facebook: The powerhouse of social media marketingFacebook is the platform that should take precedence when attempting to expand your brand’s social media presence. With a staggering2.9 billion monthly active users worldwide, it’s an undeniable powerhouse in social networking. Why does this matter? It means vast brand awareness and customer service opportunities on this bustling social media platform are just a click away. No matter the target audience, Facebook offers a variety of features that can be tailored to suit one’s requirements. The key to success on Facebook is creating an engaging business page and completing your profile. Once done, understand your target audience and how the Facebook algorithm works. This will help you create Facebook posts that resonate with your audience and get shown in more users’ news feeds. You should also leverage other tools like Facebook stories for sharing short but captivating posts. Stories offer an immersive full-screen format where photos and videos play together sequentially with unique creative tools not available anywhere else on the site. You can also use Facebook groups to build a community around your brand and its products/services. Leveraging Facebook Ads for increased visibilityThe key to completely harnessing the power of Facebook marketing is runningFacebook Ads. Facebook Ads enable you to reach your target audience with laser-focused precision – think demographics, interests, behavior patterns and more. You can customize every aspect of these ads, from images and text to the timing of when they appear in user feeds. The best part? These personalized advertisements don’t feel intrusive but instead, add value to the overall browsing experience on the social platform. 2. Instagram: Harnessing visual storytellingBusinesses with visually appealing products or services can find a goldmine in Instagram, a platform teeming with 2 billion monthly active users. Instagram thrives on visuals – from breathtaking travel photos to mouth-watering food snaps. It’s an exciting playground for businesses targeting niche communities and aiming to connect more personally with their target demographic. The key lies in showcasing your consumer goods and weaving narratives around them through visual storytelling. Utilizing user-generated content on InstagramThe real magic of Instagram comes alive when brands leverage user-generated content (UGC). This is authentic, relatable, and often more trusted by consumers than brand-produced ads. Encouraging customers to share images of themselves using your product can amplify engagement significantly. This tactic enhances the authenticity of your Instagram content and helps foster strong relationships between you and your audience. By reposting customer content, you recognize them while showing potential buyers how existing customers enjoy your product. You don’t need high-end equipment or a professional photographer to leverage Instagram’s visual appeal. A smartphone camera coupled with creative thinking does wonders here. The key is crafting stories your target audience resonates with. You can even show behind-the-scenes glimpses into production processes or highlight the people who make it happen. In essence, effectively utilizing Instagram’s narrative power involves strategically using brand-created and user-generated visuals to create an immersive experience for followers. And this is what turns mere viewers into loyal customers. Again, you also have to understand how the platform’s algorithm works and what Instagram users want if you’re to create more impactful Instagram content. Dig deeper: Instagram Ad formats: Best practices for effective ad creative 3. YouTube and the influence of video contentYou’ve likely heard that YouTube is a great place for product-based businesses. But why exactly? One reason is its sheer reach. With its massive2.6 billion user base, YouTube is one of the most popular social media sites on the planet. This expansive user base isn’t just about numbers – it translates to an audience hungry for video content. People don’t visit YouTube merely to kill time. They’re actively searching for information, entertainment, or both. As such, creating engaging long and short-form videos on this platform can give your brand immense exposure. A brilliant example would be beauty tutorials, which are incredibly popular on YouTube. They illustrate how well-crafted video content helps brands connect with their audience by providing value and building trust – key elements in any successful marketing strategy. One of the beauties of YouTube is that you can grow your brand awareness without creating a single YouTube video. That’s because you can collaborate with creators and influencers to bring your brand in front of their audience. But for lasting impact, creating your own channel is best. It allows you to create the types of content your target audience wants. The impact of short-form videos on YouTubeIn today’s fast-paced digital world, attention spans are shrinking rapidly. This has led to the rise of short-form videos as a powerful tool for capturing viewers’ interest quickly while still delivering meaningful messages effectively. Besides being more digestible than long-format counterparts, these quick clips also tend to get shared far more frequently across various social media platforms. This is a bonus if you aim to grow your online presence beyond just YouTube. Dig deeper: YouTube Shorts guide: How to get noticed 4. LinkedIn: The professional networking giantIf you’re in the B2B space and need to connect with other businesses, then LinkedIn is one of the social platforms tailored for you. It’s not just a place to flaunt your resume anymore. With 950 million members worldwide, LinkedIn has become an essential tool for B2B marketers. Building business connections through LinkedInRelationships are vital in growing any business in today’s digital world. And where better to start building these connections than on a platform designed specifically for professionals? But it doesn’t stop at making connections. The real power lies in leveraging those relationships to create opportunities to expand your reach, generate leads and drive sales. Personal profile vs. company pageMany marketers ask which is better to use – a personal profile or a company page (business profile). The simple answer is both. Your personal profile will help you network personally, even regarding growing your business. You can leverage your company profile to boost your brand awareness, educate your customers on your products/services, establish yourself as a thought leader, and more. The key to successfully using LinkedIn as a marketing tool is posting regularly, engaging with other users, and even running LinkedIn ads. Besides a personal profile and company page, LinkedIn also offers a powerful tool called Sales Navigator. Sales Navigator is a suite of tools that gives you insights into your target audience, gives you extra marketing tools, and much more. Dig deeper: Decoding the SEO success of LinkedIn collaborative articles 5. X: The pulse of real-time updatesMany people trust X (formerly Twitter) to stay up-to-date on the latest trends. With real-time updates and an active user base of over 556 million monthly users, it’s a platform where news breaks first. This is particularly useful for fast-paced industries (like financial services) where up-to-date news is crucial. Despite having fewer users than other social networking sites, X users (and the platform) are quite influential. One reason users love X is the brevity of the content. Being a micro-content site, users can quickly get the information they want without wading through unnecessary content. For longer content, you can create X threads. X also has other features brands can leverage. Examples include live streaming, communities, hashtags, and much more. While business posts don’t get much traction on the platform, it’s still a great place to post updates about your brand and products. The up-and-comersTikTokWith over 1.2 billion monthly active users globally, TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social networks on the planet. Founded in 2016, it’s also one of the newest major social media platforms. While the platform thrives on a younger demographic, it’s now reaching more people of all ages. One reason for the platform’s explosive growth is that it mainly features short-form video content, usually challenges that other users jump onto. This results in the virality of certain videos, hashtags, and topics. Brands can also leverage this social platform by creating short-form video content that appeals to their target audience. And if funny ads are one of the ways you market your business, TikTok is a great place to share them. ThreadsThreads is one of the newest social media platforms, launched in 2023 by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Launched as an X competitor in 2023, the platform has already garnered over 141 million users. While it may be too early to tell, research shows the platform’s momentum is slowing down. Could this be a shiny syndrome that you shouldn’t waste time on? While I may not like making predictions, I strongly believe it could be. For one, it’s a knockoff of X. Secondly, people have trust issues regarding Meta and how the brand handles users’ data. However, time alone will tell if Threads is a viable social media platform for business. Know the top social media platforms you should focus onSocial media marketing is a critical component of digital marketing. You can use it to grow brand awareness, generate leads, and even drive sales (particularly on platforms with shoppable posts like Instagram). The best part of social media is that you can create any type of content to reach a wider audience. From live video to short-form and long-form content to images, GIFs, and memes, social media allows you to publish content your target audience resonates with. Plus, you don’t need massive budgets to run successful campaigns. You can often use an in-house social media management team to create and run your campaigns. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/caQzYW2 In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, the use of customer data has become more critical than ever before. Customer data platforms (CDPs) have emerged as a game-changer, enabling businesses to harness the full potential of their customer data. With CDPs, organizations can unlock a wide array of use cases, each catering to specific business needs. This article covers a CDP use case, its benefits and how to implement them effectively for maximum impact. Crawl, walk, run: The iterative approach for a CDP use caseBefore delving into a specific CDP use case, it’s essential to emphasize the importance of the iterative approach. Often, organizations tend to get overwhelmed by the sheer possibilities of a CDP and aim for complex solutions right from the start. Instead, adopting a ‘crawl, walk, run’ approach can be highly beneficial. To begin, start small – perhaps by addressing a straightforward use case and gradually build upon it. This way, you can understand how the CDP integrates into your existing systems and learn to harness its full potential progressively. How can you use the ‘crawl, walk, run’ approach?Cart abandonment is a common CDP use case. Here is an example using the iterative “Crawl, Walk, Run” approach.
What is a use case in a CDP?A use case in a CDP has eight main pillars. Here is how they can add value to your business. 1. MeasurementDefining measurable objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial when developing a CDP use case. For instance, in a cart abandonment use case, the measurement could involve tracking the abandonment rate, the number of recovered carts and the increase in revenue. 2. Business valueTo determine the business value, you need to identify the direct impact the use case will have on your organization. In the context of cart abandonment, the business value is evident in the form of increased revenue through recovered sales and improved customer retention. 3. ActivationActivation refers to the action you take based on the data and insights provided by the CDP. In a cart abandonment use case, activation involves sending personalized reminders or offers to customers who have abandoned their carts. Activation strategies should be well-defined and designed to achieve the objectives set in the measurement phase. 4. ConnectorsConnectors are the bridges that link your CDP with other tools and platforms. In the case of cart abandonment, you would need connectors to integrate your CDP with your email marketing platform, SMS or app notification tools and potentially your ecommerce platform to track and recover abandoned carts effectively. 5. AudiencesUnderstanding your target audience is crucial. In the context of cart abandonment, the audience would be those customers who have abandoned their shopping carts. These audiences can be further segmented based on attributes and behaviors to tailor messages and offers effectively. 6. AttributesAttributes are the characteristics or data points that define your audience segments. In the cart abandonment use case, attributes may include the value of the abandoned cart, product categories within the cart, purchase history, and more. These attributes help you personalize your messages and offers. 7. Customer journey eventsCustomer journey events are specific actions or interactions that customers take along their path to purchase. In cart abandonment, the key event is abandoning a cart. Understanding the customer journey events lets you pinpoint when and why potential customers drop off. 8. Data sourcesData sources are the places where the relevant data is collected. Data sources in the cart abandonment use case include your website, ecommerce platform, customer relationship management (CRM) system and CDP. Data from these sources is used to track customer behavior, gather cart abandonment data, and trigger activation processes. It is important to underscore the need for data quality and consistency from these sources to ensure accurate results. By considering these elements, you create a comprehensive framework for building a CDP use case that is well-defined, measurable and aligned with your business objectives. Here is how it all comes together in a framework. Example use cases associated with definitionsTo further examine the use cases, see the below graphic with example-specific definitions. In conclusion, building a CDP use case involves careful planning. Focusing on measurable objectives, business impact, targeted activation strategies, data integration through connectors, well-defined audience segments, relevant attributes, customer journey events and the data sources that power the entire process is important. When executed effectively, CDP use cases can significantly improve your marketing efforts, customer engagement and overall business outcomes. Incorporating these CDP use cases into your marketing strategy can substantially improve customer engagement, retention and revenue. Remember, it’s essential to start with simple implementations and gradually progress towards more complex strategies. This approach ensures a smoother transition into the world of CDPs, allowing your organization to fully leverage the power of customer data. So, take the first step and start reaping the benefits of CDPs today. For more resources, explore this blog post, 5 Clever CDP Use Cases You’ll Want To Implement. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/emtxbRW Google’s local search ranking algorithm has recently been updated to strengthen its “openness” signal for non-navigational queries. Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, said, “we’ve long used “openness” as part of our local ranking systems, and it recently became a stronger signal for non-navigational queries.” What changed. Earlier this month a report showed Google ranked open businesses more often in its local search rankings higher than businesses that are closed. “As of November 2023, Google appears to be looking at whether a business is currently open as a ranking factor for local pack rankings,” Joy Hawkins wrote in her report. Google confirmed. A couple weeks later, Danny Sullivan from Google confirmed this saying, “we’ve long used “openness” as part of our local ranking systems, and it recently became a stronger signal for non-navigational queries.” Navigational queries. Non-navigational queries are queries where you search for types of services versus specific brands. So a non-navigational query would be to search for a pharmacy, whereas a navigational query would be to search for CVS. Don’t change your business hours. The report said, “If you are a business that’s open 24-hours a day, this would benefit you in the evenings when your competitors disappear but you still rank.” But Sullivan said, “This might change in various ways, as we continue to evaluate the usefulness of it, however.” He added, “I wouldn’t recommend businesses do this, given the ranking signal may continue to be adjusted.” Why we care. If you notice changes to your Google Business Profile listings, this may be why. It is also important to ensure your business hours reflect your true open hours because if you make up your business hours, you never know if you can be hit by some sort of penalty in the future. In short, Google is now showing more businesses that are open at the current time of the search. Is that a good thing for searchers or bad is up to debate and probably very query dependent. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/ukD1NY7 Leading U.S. marketing company Cox Media Group (CMG) has reportedly admitted to monitoring conversations for the purpose of targeted advertising. Working with renowned brands like CBS, Fox News and ESPN, CMG has allegedly been promoting its ability to eavesdrop on consumers through microphones in smartphones, TVs, and smart speakers. The agency has coined this capability “Active Listening” and has been actively pitching this service it to advertisers, showcasing the feature on its website, reports 404. Why we care. Amid the worldwide push for enhanced privacy, including measures like the phasing out of third-party cookies, these statements have caught the PPC community off guard. Many are now speculating about potential repercussions, signaling a warning to the broader industry. SEO consultant Gelnn Gabe responded to the report on X, writing: “This will not end well.” Google Ads expert, Steve Huskey, added: “Textbook definition of invasion of privacy.” How it works. CMG allegedly claims that its Active Listening technology can spot potential customers in real-time through everyday conversations. It’s uncertain if this feature is on current devices, but CMG promotes it as a futuristic marketing tool that is “available today.” Pitching the product. A CMG rep was reportedly spotted on LinkedIn promoting this service, encouraging interested parties to get in touch so that they could provide more information on prices. What CMG is saying. The company did not respond to Search Engine Land’s request for comment. However, a promotional post on its website, which appears to have now been removed, reportedly read:
Deep dive. Read ‘A PPC guide to privacy-focused audience targeting‘ for more information on how to serve ads while adhering to user privacy best practices. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/208WRT9 YouTube creators can now give away 10 free subscriptions each month as part of a new program aimed at facilitating audience growth. Eligible creators with channel memberships can use this benefit at no extra cost to promote the perks of their memberships. Why we care. This promotion is designed to give viewers a taste of the benefits offered by subscribing to your channel. Once they recognize the value, there’s potential for them to upgrade to full-paying members, contributing to increased revenue and brand awareness. Getting started. To ensure your account is eligible for this off, make sire you:
How it works. To give away these complimentary memberships to viewers during a live stream or Premiere, follow these simple steps:
You can give out gift memberships in batches of 5, twice a month. Share them in one stream or across several throughout the month. Unused gifts reset on the 1st of each month, so be sure to use them regularly. Exclusions. Free of charge gift memberships are not currently available for Brand Accounts – however YouTube has confirmed it will be soon. You can check to see if you’re using a Brand account by:
Ensure you’re using the correct account by clicking on your profile picture in the top right corner if you don’t see any listings. What YouTube us saying. Currently, creators cannot individually select who benefits from free subscriptions, however, a YouTube spokesperson explained on X this may change:
Deep dive. Read Google’s ‘manage channel memberships‘ guide for more information on promotional gift memberships. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/uITF7Dr Artificial intelligence offers exciting opportunities but also raises understandable concerns – including the potential for generative AI models to “take” or misuse content created by human writers and marketers. This article aims to clearly define these risks, analyze scenarios of how AI could replicate or plagiarize your work, and offer practical tips to protect yourself in generative AI-powered world while still benefiting from emerging technologies. Why do we care about AI taking our content?Let’s define our terms. When we speak of AI “taking content,” we are actually discussing multiple distinct risks to us as individuals, the marketing campaigns that we run, and the work that we’ve created. To help us navigate this web of scary possibilities, I’ve made a graphic summarizing a couple of ways in which AI could take your content: Let’s think through all of these risks in more detail. What can AI take from your content?First, what can generative AI even take from us? I see five categories of what we’d actually stand to lose: Your entire work or multiple worksGenerative AI can take an entire piece you may have produced, like a blog post, a video, a social post, an image, or a combination of the above. Potentially, generative AI might index your entire website and all the content you’ve published on any of your social media accounts. Your words or elements of your workGenerative AI could copy full bits of your work, such as direct word-for-word quotes from your content, including an image you created, or replicating frames from your videos. This type of direct plagiarism could also include small changes in the words or colors within your content. Your ideas or styleGenerative AI could plagiarize you more indirectly by stealing your content’s ideas, format, or aesthetics. If you’ve done research combining a few sources in a new way, the AI could suddenly make the same comparison. If you’ve made a clever observation about the future of SEO, generative AI might suddenly predict the same scenario but in its own words. Someone could also prompt generative AI to create content in your style, as many tools allow people to do. Your marketing resultsGenerative AI could take your content results instead of copying your work. You might lose your audience if AI content suddenly floods the SERP ranking for the same queries you were targeting or if other companies begin taking up social media feeds with AI-generated posts. You may also have difficulty standing out, earning trust, or converting to sales. Your job, tasks or budgetGenerative AI could take your content by making content without you instead. Your tasks, role, or team might get cut and replaced by generative AI that is supposed to produce the same content that humans like you were producing. How can this happen?But how can generative AI even take those things from us? If we are afraid of losing something, we should understand the mechanisms by which we could lose it. I would split those scenarios into four categories: Training data
Generating responses to users
Competing for marketing results
Influencing the economy and available work
How could it impact you?Losing something is always unpleasant, but what impact would AI taking our content even have on us? I see three core types of harm that we’d face as content marketers: Financial lossesYou might lose money in the form of:
Marketing, emotional, and reputation lossYou may lose out on the recognition and opportunities when:
Job success and securityYour work as a marketer may get affected if:
A lot of these risks aren’t unique to content marketers. But while we might fear some of the same things as other professionals, all of these harms could affect our work directly and in unique ways. On the other hand, are those risks necessarily unique to AI taking our content? Plagiarism can be damaging whether it is done by humans or software. Is there a difference between a human stealing your content and a large language model doing the same? What is the difference between another human being stealing your content and generative AI?The easy answer would be to say that a human knows what they are doing and can be held responsible. A human has agency and free will. They have to actively decide to find your work, take some of it for themselves, and present it as their own. Generative AI, on the other hand, is a program that includes a level of randomness and unpredictability to its output. When generative AI steals, it feels accidental. There is no culpability because AI cannot have criminal intent or a mental state. Without a mind that could understand the consequences of its actions, generative AI is not culpable for the results of what it does. But is that true? How different is plagiarism via AI from the old-school, 100% human version? Let’s think through some hypothetical scenarios and see where that leads us. Scenario 1: Old-school human plagiarismWhat does conscious and deliberate plagiarism look like? Let’s say that a human writer named Jane Doe decides to take the article “12 SEO Tips to Boost Your Organic Rankings & Traffic” by Connor Lahey from the Semrush blog. Doe may change up the title, intro and some headings, and then publish it under her own name on hottestseotipsblog.com. In this case, Doe knows what she is doing and actively chooses to misrepresent someone else’s work as hers. What is the problem with Doe presenting Semrush’s piece as her own original content? Her plagiarism causes two types of harm: harm to Semrush and harm to people visiting Doe’s site. Harm to the original author Doe harms Semrush because when she steals their content, she might also steal its marketing and business impact. Doe may end up taking traffic away from the original piece. She could end up:
It’s reasonable to say that the money and traffic should have gone to the original author and the Semrush site instead. Harm to the audience Doe harms people visiting her site because she is misrepresenting her own expertise. By putting her own name on that content, Doe gives off the false impression that the words on that webpage are her original ideas and experience. Doe may sell SEO consulting services, and she could get clients who read the plagiarized piece, liked her insights, and decided to hire her based on the knowledge implied through that content. Essentially, by plagiarizing Semrush’s piece, Doe is stealing trust and credibility. Scenario 2: Hiring a ghostwriter with no oversightLet’s say that instead of plagiarizing an existing piece of content, Doe hires a ghostwriter to write it for her. She tells the ghostwriter that she needs a blog post on the topic “10 Best SEO Tips” and that she wants it to be around 2,000 words long. When the writer sends over a complete draft, Doe publishes it on hottestseotipsblog.com under her own name. Is this plagiarism? Even if the writer crafted that piece as fully their original work, we can argue that the same harm from Scenario 1 is still present: Harm to the original author The ghostwriter might not be compensated for any resulting revenue from publishing that piece on Doe’s site. They might not be allowed to use that content in their portfolio and lose out on opportunities to get additional clients even if their piece takes off and becomes popular. For the public, the original writer is invisible and functionally does not exist. Harm to the audience Any users visiting hottestseotipsblog.com are still being given the impression that Doe is the author of that content. Doe is still borrowing credibility and trust from ideas and skills that were not hers. Note: Ghostwriting arrangements are common. If the writer consented to giving up any credit or additional compensation for a fee, they should be allowed to do so. This scenario is not necessarily “stealing,” but it is still misrepresenting who did the work that went into creating that content. Whether this is plagiarism or an acceptable practice depends on our own definitions and morals. On the other hand, if the writer actually copied the piece from an existing source like Semrush, then this piece is definitely plagiarism. In that case, we could argue that Doe was responsible for cross-checking the final draft and ensuring it was original work. But most of the responsibility would lie with the ghostwriter, who misrepresented the content as their own original work to Doe. Scenario 3: Generic AI prompt that generates plagiarized quotesWhat happens when AI enters the picture? Perhaps Doe may open ChatGPT and prompt it with something like:
Let’s assume that, in our scenario, ChatGPT has been trained on Semrush’s blog content. When ChatGPT generates the blog post for Doe, that draft copies entire paragraphs and most of the main points from the Semrush article with 12 SEO tips. If Doe keeps that AI-created draft unaltered and posts it on hottestseotipsblog.com under her own name – did she plagiarize? The end result is the same as in our first scenario – there is now a published blog post under Jane Doe’s name on another site using the exact same words as an article on Semrush’s website. Hottestseotipsblog.com might not include any disclaimers that the content was produced with the help of AI. How does that fit into our framework? Harm to the original author In this situation, Semrush is still losing potential traffic, revenue, and other business opportunities. Harm to the audience To any user visiting Doe’s site, that content appears as if it is completely original and written based on Doe’s own expertise. However, it doesn’t feel right to place the same level of blame on Doe as in the first scenario. After all, Doe doesn’t know that the content she published was plagiarized. She may have never seen Semrush’s piece. She may sincerely believe that ChatGPT gave her a completely original blog post that has never been published elsewhere. Yet, Doe still misrepresented her work. She didn’t write the piece – ChatGPT did. Doe might not have plagiarized from Semrush deliberately, but she did steal the expertise of ChatGPT and the data it was trained on. Scenario 4: Specific AI prompt to copy someone’s styleWhat if Doe opened ChatGPT, copied the text of Semrush’s article, and wrote the following prompt:
In this case, ChatGPT may not copy any of the exact phrasing or points from Semrush. But instead, Doe is asking the AI to copy the more nebulous notion of style and format from Semrush’s piece. ChatGPT’s output would still sound similar to Semrush, and some of the ideas might even echo the original. Doe is still stealing something, even if it’s harder to pin down. So, how does that fit into our framework? Harm to the original author Semrush is still not getting recognition for their original content. Style is the result of hard work, writing skill, and creativity. Doe is taking that without permission, and any traffic or revenue she generates is still relying on something that wasn’t hers. Harm to the audience Doe is presenting those stylistic choices as her own, and might come across as a much better writer or thinker than she actually is. If the Semrush article had a particularly unique structure and ChatGPT copied it, then Doe is benefiting from multiple creative choices that now come across as her own. Sure, copying the style of someone else’s content could be described as inspiration. But if no credit is given and that inspiration is heavily relied upon to the point of both pieces resembling each other, that is still likely plagiarism. And Doe holds a level of responsibility for that plagiarism – she directly prompted ChatGPT to copy the style of someone else’s content. Scenario 5: Specific AI prompt to paraphrase someone’s ideasWhat if Doe prompts ChatGPT to copy the ideas from Semrush directly? She could write a prompt like:
Like with Scenario 4, including the word “original” in the generative AI prompt does not magically erase the intent to steal from others. Doe is prompting ChatGPT to directly copy someone else’s original work and explicitly asking for it to copy not only the style but the main points of the Semrush piece. Even if all of the words and phrases in the final draft are different, the resulting article is still plagiarized. Here’s how it would fit with our framework: Harm to the original author Semrush and the article author are still not getting any credit, recognition, or revenue from their work. Any hours of research that the original author may have spent creating the piece, thinking through the ideas, exploring best practices of SEO, and gathering information – they are simply lifted by Doe for her own benefit. She is taking credit while stealing the time and effort required to come up with good content. Harm to the audience Anyone reading Doe’s piece will still believe that it’s her own. Readers would trust Doe not simply because of her exact word choice but also because of the sophistication that she shows in her understanding of SEO and her ability to explain best practices to others. When Doe steals ideas from Semrush, she is stealing all of those implications, even if the exact words are changed. In this case, most of the responsibility for plagiarism is with Doe. This scenario is nearly identical to Scenario 1: Doe deliberately chose to copy the content from Semrush and present it as her own with some modifications. The only difference is the method she used: while in Scenario 1, Doe made those modifications manually, in this case, Doe used ChatGPT to do the dirty work for her. Scenario 6: Creating a generative AI model to write blog posts based on existing contentIn our discussions, we have not addressed one key party in scenarios involving AI: the people who built that AI model in the first place. Let’s say that Jane Doe is actually a skilled developer who can build her own machine learning applications. She builds her own algorithm that can shuffle and automatically paraphrase language. Then, Doe prompts that algorithm to rephrase the Semrush blog post with 12 SEO tips. Is that plagiarism? Functionally, this scenario is identical to Scenario 5. The only difference is that now Doe has also built her own paraphrasing software instead of relying on something like ChatGPT. What if Doe builds an algorithm that is trained on all of Semrush’s blog posts and then she asks it to generate a draft for “10 Best SEO Tips”? In this case, Doe isn’t stealing from one article. However, her software is still reshuffling and paraphrasing the language and ideas from Semrush. The resulting piece is still plagiarized, but pinning where each part comes from becomes harder. Now, let’s say that Doe takes all of Semrush’s blog content and also includes blog posts from Ahrefs, Moz, Search Engine Land, and 50 other SEO websites. She uses all of that content to train her own LLM and then prompts the AI to generate a blog post with “10 Best SEO Tips”. Then, Doe publishes that AI-created piece on hottestseotipsblog.com under her own name. How does this scenario fit within our framework? Harm to the original author We are now dealing with multiple original authors, not simply Semrush. But all of the sites whose content was used in the training dataset have had their ideas, style, and word choice copied to some degree. Doe’s piece might still generate revenue, business opportunities, and traffic for her site. And none of the original authors and websites are getting credited or compensated for those results. Harm to the audience Anyone visiting Doe’s site still thinks that the content presented to them is a reflection of Doe’s original work, ideas, and expertise. Sure, Doe has put effort into building generative AI that created the content. But if a reader is simply reading SEO tips and not learning about the intricacies of Doe’s AI software – is the reader actually witnessing any of Doe’s own work? At the end of the day, if someone believes that Doe is an SEO expert because of that content, Doe still steals that trust from others. None of her SEO advice is her own. Doe deserves credit for creating a fancy stealing machine, not for the content that it produces. Plagiarism is the same whether AI is involved or notIt doesn’t matter if AI is involved: as we see from the scenarios outlined above, plagiarism is always done by humans when they take credit for the work of other humans. AI is simply a technology that provides new ways of stealing content, but it hasn’t created a fundamentally new type of plagiarism or content creation to begin with. You can think of AI as a particularly high-tech blender: you can stuff it with a bunch of pieces, press a button, and then get a homogeneous mixture to post on your own site. But that mixture is still made up of the same content that you put in there. A blender doesn’t create anything new. It simply puts some pre-existing substance in a different form. If you make a carrot smoothie, can you say that you grew those carrots? The same could be said for content. If you worry about AI taking your content, remember to look behind the curtain at who is actually pulling the strings. While the software itself may not be capable of a criminal mental state, the humans who created or prompted it certainly are. AI cannot steal from you, but humans using AI might. How can we minimize risks posed by AI to our content?OK, all of that sounds extremely depressing. You may be ready to throw up your hands and give up on marketing as a concept. And I don’t blame you – the threats that AI poses to our content are scary. The way people obfuscate their culpability in stealing content, ideas, or jobs is dangerous. People using generative AI can cause real harm to you, me, or many people we work with and care about. However, that doesn’t mean we should give up. Humans have been stealing ideas as long as there have been ideas to steal. Just like we’ve had ways of combating old-school human plagiarism, we can work to prevent AI-assisted plagiarism too. Let’s wrap up by looking at how we can minimize risks and reduce the harms of generative AI to our content. No, ‘becoming a generative AI expert’ isn’t a solutionBefore I dive into specific suggestions, a short disclaimer: I won’t recommend that you become a generative AI expert or learn how to work with machine learning. Sure, those kinds of skills could be valuable. But they are a distraction from the real question we’re wrestling with:
AI, like any technology, will have some impact on the kinds of tasks we can do. But it doesn’t change the essence of “marketing” or “content”. Saying that you can only remain a marketer if you learn about AI is tantamount to telling you that you must change careers entirely. A generative AI expert is not a marketer. A marketer might also be a generative AI expert, and a generative AI expert could be a specialist in content. But these professions are not interchangeable and the skillset behind them is distinct. Think of it this way: does going into Excel now and then to prepare reports make you a data analyst? Probably not. The work we do as marketers will remain valuable even if AI becomes a core part of how we do that work. So, as we think about minimizing risks from AI taking our content, we should think about the unique skills and challenges of marketing work in particular. Avoid financial losses by opting out of AI scrapingThe first thing you can do is to prevent your content from appearing in some AI datasets. This is the most brute force option, and won’t be practical for most marketers or web publishers. Keep in mind that opting out of any AI indexing also means that your site and any associated information will not appear in that AI’s output. If any user is looking for information about your business by prompting a generative AI chatbot, they might not see you in the results. By protecting your privacy this way, you are essentially sacrificing generative AI as a marketing channel. So make sure that you are ready for any consequences of taking that step. You can opt out of OpenAI’s GPTBot crawling by adding these lines to your robots.txt file:
You can also block Google’s Bard and Vertex AI using the Google-Extended control, by adding the following to your robots.txt file:
Unfortunately, Google-Extended won’t block your site from getting indexed in Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE). It seems that the only way to avoid appearing in SGE is to opt out of Google’s indexing entirely. You can read more about Google’s crawlers and editing your permissions in their own documentation. Some other publishing tools might let you control these settings within the platform itself. For example, Substack includes a setting within its writer dashboard to “block AI training.” This appears to mostly opt you out of GPTBot, but perhaps it will become a more robust blocker in the future. Reclaim a marketing advantage by switching to harder-to-replicate marketing approachesFor most of us, blocking AI crawlers or opting out of SEO entirely isn’t exactly an option (otherwise, why would you be reading this on Search Engine Land?). So, what can we do instead? Accept that someone may try to plagiarize your content using AI. Even if you could opt out of every training dataset, someone can still copy-paste your work into ChatGPT and steal it that way. When someone wants to steal, they will find a way. Trying to prevent your content from getting copied will quickly become an endless game of whack-a-mole or lead you to stop publishing on the open web entirely. How can you reduce harm even if others copy your content? By thinking about marketing approaches that are hard, if not impossible, to copy. If Jane Doe did steal a piece from Semrush, and you came across both versions of that article – who would you be more likely to trust? If you’re a marketer, you are likely already familiar with Semrush as a company and a trusted source of information. When seeing content that has been plagiarized, you are likely to assume that Semrush was the original author. Even if Semrush may lose some traffic or revenue, in the long run, Jane Doe cannot steal their brand, reputation, content creation process, team, or experience. Others might be able to steal some of your work, but they cannot steal your expertise. If your content is truly original, trustworthy, and helpful – people will continue to trust you. You can continue to:
No AI can steal that. Protect your job and budget by leaning on your humanityWhat is your essence that no AI or other human could ever take from you? What makes you, as an individual, a department, or an organization – you? Lean into your true differentiators from your unique blend of experience, positioning, and connections. Someone else might be able to copy your idea or automate some of your skills. But if your job or marketing program is built on your fundamental humanity and unique point of view, they won’t be replaced. If you want to be resilient in the face of AI, stay human. Invest in true thought leadership, developing relationships, expressing strong opinions, and telling the stories that only you could tell. Don’t give up to AI – marketing isn’t going anywhereHumans trust other humans. AI won’t change that, even despite all the current hype. A thief might be able to borrow your reputation, but true expertise will always become apparent. A plagiarist won’t be able to build on your ideas or recreate your success. So, if you’re worried about AI taking your content, make sure that you keep building content that is worth stealing because your ability to create good content in the first place will be the best defense you could possibly have. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/JYqcF9B You have a client emailing every half an hour asking if that analysis you promised is ready. Your boss is demanding your end-of-year self-appraisal, and you still haven’t started your clients’ monthly reports. Life as a search marketer – freelance, agency, or client-side – is full of deadlines. So, how can you better structure our approach to our work to help us meet these ever-looming deadlines? Why search professionals have so many deadlinesLet’s start by examining why search marketing professionals have deadline-filled workdays that often cause pressure. Working in an agencyWhen working in an agency, marketers usually have multiple clients. With those multiple clients will come multiple deadlines, seemingly as important as the next. When you have to send out each client’s end-of-month report by the first week of the following month, who do you prioritize? What happens to the SEO or PPC work you need to finish in that first week while creating these reports? Working in-houseWorking in a brand is no different. There are still multiple stakeholders all vying for your time. Now, instead of working with external clients, you’re working with teams within the same company. These internal teams have their own deadlines, and they rely on your input to meet those deadlines. If engineering, marketing and product all need your feedback by the end of the day, how do you meet all those deadlines? Working as a freelancerMany people become self-employed in the hopes that it will free up their time to focus on work that they love. In reality, it tends to bring the same pressures of employed life, with multiple agency stakeholders. Add to that the additional administration of book-keeping, company reporting and meeting legislative requirements. In this scenario, a missed deadline can have serious financial or legal repercussions. Search marketing can be reactiveA sudden drop in a client’s performance and an agency SEO will be pressured to drop everything to find out what’s happening. Existing deadlines are stretched as the push to keep an unhappy client increases. A shake-up in the Google SERPs, or a change in user behavior can cause even the most seasoned professional to push deadlines to find out what’s going on. Lack of workflowsSome marketing-adjacent disciplines, like engineering, have clear workflows and protected time. Unfortunately, search marketing is almost the complete opposite. A developer might log on for work to be met with a clear list of tasks for the day, the nuances already spec’d out, and a reasonable deadline for when it should be completed (in theory, anyway!). Rarely is that the case for a search marketer. There will be an ever-growing list of to-dos, but it is rarely a list that is documented company-wide and set in stone by a project manager. As such, it is subject to interruptions and conflicting priorities. Changing prioritiesOne problem with having multiple stakeholders is that whoever shouts the loudest tends to win in terms of upcoming deadlines. If two important clients request work to be finished before the end of the week and only let you know this midway through the week, that poses a problem. You may have intended to get Client A’s work done by the end of the week and Client B’s the week after. Now, what? If it is decided that Client B’s work needs to take priority, then work on Client A’s account stops. Client B’s work is unlikely to get finished in time, however, as it really did need that whole week to do. These changes in priorities can hurt the whole month’s work. Poor planningI’m a huge advocate of the adage, “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.” In reality, I’ve never had the guts to say it to an actual stakeholder. It’s common in search marketing. Frequent collaboration with other teams will mean that there will sometimes be an expectation that you need to rush to meet their suddenly changed deadline. Requires support from other teamsSearch marketers can also be pressured to meet deadlines because of project collaboration. Often, our ability to complete work is reliant on other teams. For example, an SEO who needs to complete a content pruning task by the end of the quarter may find they are subject to bottlenecks in engineering, content creation and product teams. Why is meeting deadlines so important?Being a reliable team member is important for your progression in a company or your ability to keep a client engaged. Also, it makes you more likely to see other teams meeting their deadlines for you. Beyond the obvious collaboration aspects, meeting deadlines will reduce your stress. No one enjoys feeling like they are letting others down. Dig deeper: How to say ‘no’ as a digital marketer How to make sure you don’t miss deadlinesEnsuring you don’t miss deadlines involves effective time management, organization and planning. Here are some strategies to help you stay on top of your deadlines. Set realistic deadlinesA key to ensuring you can meet deadlines is setting realistic ones. You need to get good at estimating how long a task will take. It is always best to add some contingency in case another team slows down the process or something else becomes a priority. Whenever you agree to a deadline, consider and aim more toward the worst-case scenario than the best-case scenario. If you are not in control of your deadlines, it is always worth stating the likelihood that you will be able to meet the deadline set for you. This way, you are still letting colleagues and clients know that you will try your best to meet the date, but it may not be possible. Inform others of your deadlinesKeeping people informed is the easiest way to get support for meeting deadlines. Suppose your immediate team and stakeholders know you are working toward something that has a fixed end date. Hopefully, they will be more amenable to self-prioritizing the upcoming work they want you to do. Your teammates may also be able to lend a hand if they know that an important deadline is approaching. Track upcoming deadlinesEveryone works differently in keeping track of their deadlines. Some like a Kanban board, while others prefer sticky notes. Whatever your method is, it would be good to find something that suits you. Consider a method that helps you see both final deadlines and important milestones. You may consider making this tracking system publicly accessible to your team so they can see what you are working on and your priorities. A place where the whole team can collaborate on their deadlines will help team leads identify resourcing issues and where assistance can be beneficial. Prioritize based on effort and rewardWhen faced with competing deadlines, it is sometimes necessary to simplify the situation by identifying which is genuinely more urgent. If one activity will have a bigger impact upon completion than the other, that may have to take priority. Equally, if missing a deadline is going to be catastrophic, then deprioritizing other tasks may be required. Ensure others are committed to those deadlinesSearch professionals aren’t often operating independently. To make a deadline that involves many teams or individuals, they all have to know what that deadline is. If the engineering team simply cannot action your meta tag changes by the end of the month, no matter how far in advance you have communicated them, your end-of-the-month deadline will be missed. When setting deadlines, make sure they work for everyone involved. Do your discovery firstMake sure you understand a task’s full scope before committing to a deadline. This might mean doing some discovery first. For example, it will be better to take a day to look into all the moving parts of website migration and how they may need to be tackled than agreeing to a deadline in a month that you will not be able to meet. Communicate needs for additional resourceIf a deadline is set in stone but simply isn’t achievable on your own, look at how you may be able to gain additional resources. For example, if you are a freelancer, can you subcontract to another in your network? If you are working in-house, can you hire a freelancer for a short period of time to assist with a project? There’s a saying I follow, known as the “Iron Triangle,” which goes like this:
If a stakeholder wants a task done quickly, it may mean spending on hiring a contractor to assist you. Remove distractions where possibleTo help you achieve your deadlines, try to remove distractions where possible. Give yourself permission to pause notifications on the instant messenger or ask for meeting notes instead of attending the call briefly. This is all subject to how feasible this is with your company or client. If you can “clear the deck” from other less important work, it can help you operate faster. Look at the concept of “Deep Work” for more guidance. Dig deeper: 10 things to eliminate from your life to be more productive at work Speak to people in your business who do it wellFinally, speak to your colleagues who are good at achieving deadlines. This might well be people like project managers trained in setting and achieving deadlines. They will understand the nuances you face with your particular company and what can help or hinder you from achieving deadlines. Some great planning software may be available to your colleagues that you have not used, for example. What to do when a deadline is approachingWhen you are approaching a deadline, there are several actions you can take to help you. Identify if you will make the deadlineBe realistic about whether you will make the deadline unaided or need support from a colleague or another team. Think critically about whether the deadline is achievable in the wake of changing priorities and unforeseen circumstances like sickness absence. Communicate if you won’tIf you don’t think it is possible to meet your deadline, you must communicate this to stakeholders. The sooner you can identify that a deadline will be missed, the sooner support or another deadline can be arranged. Communication is often the greatest help when dealing with a potential missed deadline, as it can raise issues with a process or lack of resources that will affect that deadline. Equip others to support youIf you feel that you cannot meet the deadline on your own, look to who can support you in meeting that goal. Are there search marketing colleagues with more capacity and can take over some of your workload? Is there someone with more experience in what you are working on who can provide tips on streamlining the process? Try not to struggle alone if you are facing an unachievable deadline. Reschedule with a realistic deadlineIf it still looks like that deadline will be missed, arrange another, more realistic deadline. Inform stakeholders of a time in the future, with some built-in contingency, that you can meet. This is likely to be preferred to updating them each day that you are still not quite ready. Conquering deadline pressures in search marketingNot everyone plans and works in the same way. A method of meeting deadlines that is good for your colleague may not work for you. In some ways, prioritizing and scheduling is a skill developed over time as you become more autonomous in your work and better able to predict bottlenecks. If you are likely to miss a deadline, then the first point of action is to ask for help. Beyond that, communicating the situation to the stakeholders can ensure that a solution is found. Dig deeper: The secret to work-life harmony in SEO: Setting boundaries via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/MV0ao8G |
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