Five days ago, Google announced its June 2021 Core Update. SEOs didn't notice many changes and were wondering when the ranking tremors would start.
What SEOs are starting to notice: It all started when Barry Schwartz published a blog post a few days ago about noticing a few changes. Things appeared to be off to a stormy start, and the storm is now in full force.
Glenn Gabe, an SEO consultant, tweeted several screenshots of large ranking surges he noticed. Barry Schwartz retweeted this, asking if anyone else is seeing significm.wtaff.co/t/j-l-ftydiuk-l-ucant ranking changes, and several people confirmed.
What can you do about this update: Nothing, according to Google. In their usual fashion, the search engine said to just follow their general webmaster headlines.
As always, we expect SEOs to provide much more valuable and actionable information on this in the near future, so stay tuned.
TikTok continues to be on fire
Last month, we wrote about TikTok being the most downloaded app overall for the second month in a row (March and April 2021).
Looks like the social network's winning streak is not coming to a stop. According to recent SenorTower data, TikTok is (once again) the most downloaded non-gaming app in May 2021, with over 80 million installs.
What has changed since April: In April, TikTok dominated every category except for the download count for Google Play Store. The throne was held by Facebook.
One month later, Facebook was dethroned, and TikTok now ranks first in both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store in download numbers.
Countries downloading TikTok: Brazil leads the way with 13 percent of total downloads. China comes in second with 12 percent.
The Crew's Take: There is a distinction between usage and downloads. In the grand scheme of things, Instagram and Facebook are currently used by far more people than TikTok. However, if TikTok continues to dominate the downloads charts, we can expect this to change in 2022.
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Affiliate marketers are losing sleep over this podcast
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How to write introductions so powerful they could catch a 2,664-pound shark
This article by Animalz was shared in our Slack channel as "probably one of the best things ever written about writing introductions".
Well, it's hard to say if it's the best, but it certainly got us hooked: It starts by talking about Australian men fishing for giant white sharks.
And that's one of the main points of the post: surprise the reader.
The metaphor that Gail Marie makes about fishing giant sharks does make sense: When you go fishing, you need a hook, a line, and a sinker. And that's also what you need to write great introductions to your posts.
Of course, this is what your primary school teacher taught you: But Gail goes deeper than what you learned when you were 8. Let's take a look at what she recommends.
Hook: Your goal is to surprise the reader with a pattern interrupt. Start with something that the reader would never expect, like talking about great white sharks in a marketing post. A few formats you can use are:
Metaphors: These make unfamiliar topics easier to understand, and they allow the writer to pull stories and ideas from interesting places.
Non sequitur: Introduce a fact that has nothing to do with the topic, and then link it to your argument.
Hypothetical: Bring the reader in your article with a hypothetical situation.
Quote: Start with the quote of an expert, even if it's not related to your topic.
Anecdote: Create a connection with the reader by sharing a personal experience.
Data: Let numbers speak.
Line: Your hooks shouldn't be disjointed from the rest of the article. If you spend a good amount of mental energy to come up with an innovative hook, you should make the most of it. Come back to that unexpected fact or metaphor throughout the rest of the article. This helps you build a consistent narrative along with all the text.
Sinker: After you hook the reader, your job is to provide some substance to deliver the expectations created by the hook. You can do this by:
Make a clear, concise summary of the argument you're making.
Demonstrating relevance to the reader.
Highlighting concrete benefits from reading your post.
Check out Gail Marie's full post here. There are some great examples within, and it's well worth a read or three.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
ADVERTISING: Are we about to feel the full effect of Apple's ATT update? Apple is getting more pushy in getting people to install iOS 14.6.
FACEBOOK: The social network wants to put ads on everything. It looks like Facebook is testing running ads on videos that are shorter than 1 minute.
SEO: We didn't see this coming. Moz just got acquired by iContact Marketing Corp.
GOOGLE: If you do SEO for local businesses, you want to read this. Google is adding a new label so people know if a business is "new on Google".
PINTEREST: "Here comes the Greenissance". According to Pinterest, more and more people care about sustainable living.
TWITTER: Nigeria has blocked Twitter after one of the President's tweets was deleted.
GOOGLE: The search engine wants to be more "safe to search". Google has added new "video best practices" for adult content.
The shorter I am, the bigger I am. What am I?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Lithuania built a portal (kind of)
Lithuania is becoming the dream country of sci-fi geeks.
The city of Vilnius built a real-time portal you can "jump in". Not literally, of course.
But it's still pretty cool: Instead of a dark hole gateway leading you to another universe, the portal contains a screen which shows a live video to another city in Poland: Lublin. Oh, and Lublin also has the same portal connecting to Vilnius.
According to the organizers, the portal took five years to complete and they soon plan to add other portals to other cities.
It's a pretty cool idea, we just wish it was real. Maybe in another hundred years!
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