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Category: SmallBusinessUpdate

SmallBusinessUpdate

  • It Takes Both High-Touch and High-Tech, Says Bank of America CEO

    It Takes Both High-Touch and High-Tech, Says Bank of America CEO

    Bank of America has gone massively digital and it is now powering their growth. “We had a billion and a half logins to our apps last quarter,” says Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. “This is not theoretical. We are one of the largest digital companies. We are also one of the largest physical companies. It takes both high-touch and high-tech.”

    Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, discusses the digitalization of banking with Fox Business at Davos 2019:

    Consumers Have a Branch in Their Pocket

    On the consumer side, they have a branch in their pocket. Anything you can do at a branch, in the traditional banking sense, or over the phone, you can do in your app. There are 36 million digital users, 26 million mobile users who are not digital users growing at 10-15 percent a year. Sales are at the 20 percent level and 25 percent of all sales are digital. Our digital mortgage product is growing. Our digital auto product is growing. What you can do is do everything.

    Half of the checks we have are deposited at the ATM and a little over 25 percent of deposits are by people taking pictures of them with their phone. It’s the exact same activity but you don’t have to go anywhere. You can do everything.  

    Then you have Erica. We have five million Erica users and it only started a little over a year ago. That’s where people can just talk and ask questions and it learns about you. It’s artificial intelligence voice recognition program. When you pay your bills you just say, “I need to pay X.” It will say, “You want to pay X, here is the amount.”  Think about how easy it is versus writing out checks or even going into digital bill payment. The technology enables consumers to do more faster and easier.

    Apps on the Institutional Side Getting Interesting Too

    The applications on the institutional side are getting interesting too. Believe it or not, corporate treasurers want mobile capabilities also. With Cashpro Mobile they can initiate a $5 million wire on a mobile device while sitting in a meeting with all the controls around it and all of the foreign currency features.

    To me, it was… really? But absolutely, that’s the way they want to do it because that’s the way they are used to operating.

    It Takes Both High-Touch and High-Tech

    We had a billion and a half logins to our apps last quarter. This is not theoretical. We are one of the largest digital companies. We are also one of the largest physical companies. It takes both high-touch and high-tech.

    What have we learned? We are always a curious company and always out their learning. When we go and talk to fintech companies or observe what they are doing, more importantly, we’re trying to learn what does the customer see in that activity that they don’t see in our activity? Then we look at how we can adapt to that.

    Are we interested in acquiring fintech companies? There will be no acquisitions, we just work.

    Small Business Still Very Optimistic About the Economy

    We do more small business than most of the people in the world. When you think about small business, what’s interesting is that the business community in the United States is very optimistic still. Even though they are not as optimistic as they were at the highest point they’re still very optimistic on a relative basis.

    In our small business surveys late last Fall they are saying, “We’re going to invest more. We’re going to hire more. We can’t get people.” Those are the common themes.

    I think it is a good year for investment as long as we solve a couple of key issues. We have to get the sutdown done. The incremental impact of the workers is important but it’s also just the process of getting approvals and stuff is being held up. Then ultimately the trade situation has to be solved. I’m not giving you any news, everybody says that, but it’s time to get some of this stuff done.


  • Founder Ron Shaich Tells the Inside Story of Panera’s Amazing Success

    Founder Ron Shaich Tells the Inside Story of Panera’s Amazing Success

    Making the decision in 1998 to sell the main divisions of Au Bon Pain and focus all resources on the company’s lowly Panera brand became the most stressful year and a half ever for Panera founder and former CEO Ron Shaich.

    The lesson is to stand up against the pressure when you know your decision is right. Ultimately, Shaich says, even though there was “blood on the floor” initially, the stock is up a hundredfold.

    Ron Shaich, founder and former CEO of Panera Bread, tells the inside story of Panera’s amazing success in an Inc. profile:

    The Moment of Truth and Self-Reflection

    Along the way, I had many moments of truth and many moments of self-reflection. But one of the most powerful moments was the moment when I made the decision to ultimately sell all of our original businesses. It was 1998 and I was in the Caribbean. It was Christmas time and I was kind of bummed.

    We had four divisions in a large public company. I was looking at those four divisions and I understood that one of those divisions, the Panera division, had the potential to be a nationally dominant company. But it was the third largest of our divisions and it was really buried. This gem was buried under our three other divisions, Au Bon Pain, Au Bon Pain International, and Au Bon Pain manufacturing.

    There I was on the beach in the Caribbean and I thought about it for a second. If I had any guts, if I had any strength, I would monetize every other asset in the company so we could take the financial resources and put it against growing Panera the way it needed to be growing. I would take our limited human resources, most importantly myself, and make that Panera business grow into what it was meant to be, and what it had the destiny to be.

    Frankly, There Was Blood on the Floor

    What that led to is over the next year and a half, the worst year and a half of my life. I had a Board that was disagreeing with me. My Board said we invested in Au Bon Pain, why are you selling the old Au Bon Pain divisions to bet on Panera? There was a real challenge whether I would lose my job.

    One of our Board members looked at me and said, Ron, I think you’re crazy. I think you’re washed up. I think probably the problem is you and not what you perceive it to be. I had team members all of whom saw their careers affected. Frankly, there was blood on the floor in our corporate headquarters. Everybody was trying to figure out how it would affect them.

    You Must Have the Fortitude to Go Through With It

    That year and a half was the most stressful year and a half I’ve ever experienced. It was a stress in every sense of what stress meant. It was with me while I was sleeping. It was with me while I was driving. If I were honest with you, I would tell you there wasn’t a day I didn’t go in and say to myself is this really the right thing?

    The truth of the matter is nothing is proven until it’s done. But you need to have the fortitude to go through it. You need to have the strength to make those bold leadership decisions. You need to have the wisdom to be right about 80 percent of the time on those decisions.

    Ultimately, the Stock is Up a Hundredfold

    The result, in the end, was all good. Everybody who was on the Board ultimately saw this as a very positive thing. I didn’t lose my job. We completed the transactions. Ultimately, the stock is up in the range of a hundredfold since that time. The people that were sold with these Au Bon Pain divisions, many of them ultimately came back to Panera when their non-competes were over.

    I will tell you that in retrospect this may look brilliant. But when you’re going through it it’s so powerfully difficult and it’s so powerfully rooted in uncertainty. So much of it is about making the decision to go forward and to stick with it and to bring your organization along with it despite the uncertainty you may feel within you.


  • Even Just on the Medical Side, There’s Big Business in Pot

    Even Just on the Medical Side, There’s Big Business in Pot

    There’s a big business to be built even just on the medical side of legal marijuana says legendary technology investor Geoff Lewis. Lewis was an early investor in Tilray which recently had a hugely successful IPO of which he was pleasantly surprised.

    Lewis thinks the worldwide trend is toward recreational legalization of marijuana and that bodes well for Tilray. “I think quite honestly the US is behind other countries on that score,” says Lewis. “So TBD here, but around the world, the trend is very much toward recreational legalization.”

    Geoff Lewis, the founder of Bedrock Capital and an early tech investor in many companies including Tilray, the global leader in legal marijuana, Lewis recently discussed the recent Tilray IPO and the future of legal pot around the world on CNBC:

    I Didn’t Think the Tilray Founders Actually Used the Product

    One of the reasons I invested in Tilray, via Privateer Holdings, the creators of Tilray back in 2014, was that I didn’t think the founders actually used the product. I spent a lot of time trying to diligence whether I thought the team was actually using it and they weren’t.

    The reason I cared is not that I have anything societally against it, but it was illegal at the time. The company was based at the time in Washington State where it was not legal.

    At this point, I do think the trend has really dramatically shifted from back when we invested in Tilray in 2014 and it’s now obviously a publicly traded company. It’s a big win and we’re really lucky to have been able to back those founders early on. But there were only a few countries in the world where there was a medically legal framework and now there are over 30 countries.

    There’s Big Business to be Built on Just the Medical Side

    We didn’t know the IPO was going to be as successful as it was, that was a pleasant surprise. I would say that we did believe that regulation ultimately follows what society wants. We felt back in 2014 when we made the investment that most people in most countries believe it should at least be medically legal and the regulations were very expected.

    There’s big business to be built just on the medical side. I do strongly believe the trend is toward recreational legalization. This is certainly true in many of the Western European countries and South America. I think quite honestly the US is behind other countries on that score. So TBD here, but around the world, the trend is very much toward recreational legalization.

  • New Instagram Feature Will Tell Brands What Products Have Been Bookmarked by Customers

    New Instagram Feature Will Tell Brands What Products Have Been Bookmarked by Customers

    Instagram is set to start developing analytics tools that will inform companies what products are being bookmarked by users. The information can help brands in their ad targeting campaigns.

    Instagram formed a team in 2017 to transform the app into a conduit for online shopping. With that goal in mind, the team launched a new tool last month that allowed users to bookmark products that captured their interest. Now, Instagram is working on creating a tool that will tell brands which of their products are being saved.

    The company is reportedly planning to release this feature in early 2019.

    Layla Amjadi, Instagram’s product manager, explained to CNBC how challenging it is to maintain all the products that have interested users on different sites. She added that this is a problem they are excited about solving.

    Instagram’s bookmarking feature could be used for advertising purposes in the future, with users seeing more ads about items they have specifically saved. But Facebook, Instagram’s mother company, does not have the necessary tools for this yet. It’s also not offering any similar feature at the moment. However, companies should consider the analytics tools Instagram is creating as the first step to this.

    The platform looks at bookmarking as a “reconsideration problem” where consumers like an item but are not yet making a purchase due to several factors. For instance, they may not have the money for it yet or they’re waiting for a particular style or color. Amjadi believes that with their bookmarking tool, the company can help users reconsider their choices at the right time.

    At the moment, Instagram seems to be more focused on ensuring that they’re “nailing the consumer experience” of the app’s shopping element. Amjadi revealed that the company wants its users to feel like they’re window shopping. It’s an experience that she believes people crave, which is why they’re trying to build a “personalized mall within Instagram.” It’s also a good way for consumers and brands to establish a fruitful relationship.

    [Featured image via Pixabay]

  • Facebook Tests Search Ads for Businesses in North America

    Facebook Tests Search Ads for Businesses in North America

    Facebook will once again try to channel some of Google’s search success with its new and improved Search Ad feature. However, the ads will only be seen by users in North America.

    The new Search Ads will work the same way as conventional search engines. The user will type what they are looking for in the search bar and the platform will show the results. And similar to Google, the promoted results will be at the top of the list.

    Facebook’s product manager, Zoheb Hajiyani revealed that this new feature is just a trial run, and only a select number of eCommerce, retail, and automotive companies in Canada and the US have access to it. He also explained that they are only conducting “a small test to place ads in Facebook search results.” The company will then assess the value of these ads before deciding whether it will be beneficial to expand it.

    The new Search ads will be composed of a headline, an image, copy, and a link to external websites. While the format is more complicated than Google’s text ads, Hajiyani admitted that they’re still improving the feature’s design.

    Facebook also hasn’t commented on whether the search triggers are based on phrases or branded or non-branded keywords. But the company will reportedly tag the ads with a “Sponsored” label. It will also provide users with the same controls and transparency settings that will determine what ads they will see.

    Users won’t be able to opt out of these ads though. While they can “hide” ads they don’t want to see, much like how it’s done with News Feed advertisements, it won’t stop different ads from appearing on their wall later.

    This is not Facebook’s first foray into monetizing the search feature. It previously launched a “sponsored results” feature in 2012 but shut down the project the following year when it was discovered that many advertisers were taking advantage of loopholes in the system.

    If account holders take a shine to the new Search Ads, it could lead to a new and significant revenue stream for the company. It will also pit Facebook directly against Google’s paid-search ads.

    At the moment, Facebook needs something to energize its growth. Most of the company’s profit comes from ads. Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild saw its profits peak at 59 percent in the third quarter of 2016 and 49 percent in 2017. However, this year’s revenue only grew by 33 percent.

    [Featured image via Pixabay]

  • Entrepreneur Jon Taffer: The Common Denominator of Failure is Excuses

    Entrepreneur Jon Taffer: The Common Denominator of Failure is Excuses

    Prolific entrepreneur Jon Taffer who is the producer and host of the popular TV show Bar Rescue says that the most common denominator of failure is excuses.

    “The common denominator of failure is excuses,” says Jon Taffer on an episode of Business Rockstars. “Years ago when I had all my restaurants, we had a line on my daily revenue report for comments. They would write, snowing no business. Then the next day they would write, cold no business. Then the next day they would write, first nice day no business.”

    “I learned that if you give somebody a line for an excuse they will use it every time,” explained Taffer. “So I took the line off the piece of paper because there are no excuses in business. Fact of the matter is when we fail it’s because of us and the choices we make, the decisions we make, the people we hire, and the things we do and don’t do. Passing blame to me is the most influential element of causing failure.”


  • Patrick Bet-David: Patriots and Entrepreneurs Make America Work

    Patrick Bet-David: Patriots and Entrepreneurs Make America Work

    Entrepreneur and successful motivational speaker Patrick Bet-David says that there are two groups who really make America work, Patriots who put their life on the line and entrepreneurs who put their salary on the line. He says that entrepreneurs choose choice over force and despite anxiety, they do it because they don’t want to live an average and ordinary life.

    Social Contacts: @patrickbetdavid / @ValuetainmentTV

    Patrick Bet-David recently posted this motivational speech on his 1 million subscriber YouTube channel Valuetainment: 

    Patriots and Entrepreneurs Make America Work

    You know who makes America work? Let me tell you who makes America work. I think the two people who are patriots in America are our Patriots who put their life on the line, but I think the second Patriots are entrepreneurs who put their salary on the line. You may not put your life on the line but let me tell you something you put your salary on the line. Any entrepreneur knows what I’m referencing when I say put your salary on the line.

    When you have a job and you’re making your three, four, five grand every month consistently. It’s security. You feel it’s security, it’s warm, it’s comfortable. You know you get to have your barbecue once a month, you get to have a decent life, you got some nice benefits. Somebody introduces you to an opportunity and you start working but most don’t, 80 percent don’t. They go back to protecting their salary.

    What Happens When an Entrepreneur Goes to Sleep?

    About 20 percent say man this is scary. They have a conversation with their wife and their family and their husband and they say… baby, I’m gonna make this decision. Babe this is scary, I know baby, and they go to sleep. You know what happens to an entrepreneur when he goes to sleep, he has a lot of anxiety attacks, he has worries, she stresses out, they think about their bills, they see savings deplete. They see all of us these things happen, but do you know why they do it? They do it because they have a dream because they don’t want to live an average and ordinary life and neither do you.

    You don’t have to be here today, you’re not an employee. You chose to be here today. It is your choice to be here today. You chose. Whether you get up and walk out right now we cannot fire you. You have chosen to be in this room today because we prefer CHOICE over FORCE. It is what we as human beings prefer is choice. I want to choose because I want what I want to do to.

    People Come Here to Be Free

    The most honorable jobs any human being could take is being in the military and being an entrepreneur because both of them have a lot of risks. If you in the military you could get killed. If you’re an entrepreneur you could get killed. You don’t do it for the small little things. Both of them have the same outcome. You know what the outcome is for both of them? It starts with the letter F. What is it? Freedom. Why do 41 million immigrants come here and the number two country with 11 million coming here is Russia? Why do people come here? Because we want to be free.

    You Are Responsible for Feeling Special

    I think most companies are talking about whether you the hit your numbers or not. I think most companies are talking about the smaller stuff. What they don’t realize is they’re gonna live 80 years and then they’ll die. No one will remember them but a few people and within two generations they’re forgotten and history will not favor them. I mean, I don’t see a purpose in that. I really don’t think the Creator gave you all those unique gifts that you got just to go out and be a regular person. I don’t and I don’t think you do either.

    I think when you’re alone by yourself and you kind of talking to yourself in the car, in front of the mirror, and you think you really are special. Guess what you really are special. But you only believe that for a split second and then you go back to feeling like you’re not special. So we’ve got to get you to feel like you’re special more often. You are responsible for that.

  • GaryVee: Everybody’s So Over-Leveraged They Don’t Have Businesses

    GaryVee: Everybody’s So Over-Leveraged They Don’t Have Businesses

    Gary Vaynerchuk says that startups are so over-leveraged that they don’t really have businesses, they have VC arbitrage machines for the next fundraising. He suggests to young VC funded entrepreneurs that they should realize this and actually build a business focused on profit, not just appeasing VC’s who have no vested interest in the business.

    Gary Vaynerchuk recently talked about building businesses with legendary Hollywood dealmaker Michael Ovitz at Summit.

    This is the Easiest Time to Run Your Own Company

    Running your own company is hard right? Well guess what, this is the easiest time to do it. The amount of fucking money that’s in the system and the amount of you that have bullshit businesses that actually aren’t businesses but are funded, being serious, this is something we have to talk about if you think it’s hard now.

    One of the things that I’m most proud of is that from the day I started running my dad’s business 20 plus years ago to this moment I’ve been running a company and I’ve never had a credit line that I took from Wine Library. I never raised capital. I have paid my bills weekly in perpetuity. I have never lost six million dollars this year and did all my behavior to get enough CAC an LTV to get the next fundraising round.

    Everybody’s So Over-Leveraged They Don’t Have Businesses

    You do understand that everybody’s about to get smoked the fuck out right? Everybody’s so over-leveraged they don’t have businesses, they have VC arbitrage machines for the next fundraising. I’ll see you all working at Bank of America in a couple of years. It’s a hundred percent true. Let me say this I’m not sitting up here like I’m cool and I’m razzing you. I’m hoping that that hits you in a way that says maybe I should actually build a business, not something that appeases the VC’s who have no vested interest in my business to get the next fundraising round. That’s how you’ll navigate the shit, you’ll be practical.

    One of the things I’m most fascinated by right now is there’s so much money in this system. If you follow where the money comes from that’s an interesting thing to debate in the first place, but let’s leave that for another day. I am fascinated by people thinking that not making more profit than expenses is not something you need to think about a lot more. I’m just watching people spend all their time on like you know influencer marketing and tack and M&A.

    Influencers Are Going to Have to Go Get a Job

    When the money dries out like they’re a lot of young people in the system. You didn’t live through 2007 as an operator, you were in college having fun. You didn’t live through 2001. We have never been this over-leveraged. When the dominoes fall and there’s no next fundraising round or when you’re an influencer and nobody’s got $8,000 for you to take a picture with a fucking toothpaste in your hand, it’s not gonna be fun to go from traveling the world as an influencer to no money in the system and you have to go get a job. I want people to be prepared and everyone’s living in la-la land. We’ve been living in la-la land for a decade which makes me nervous as fuck.

  • How Will New USMCA Trade Agreement Affect Small Business?

    How Will New USMCA Trade Agreement Affect Small Business?

    The United States, Mexico, and Canada finally wrapped up months of negotiations and finalized a new trade deal a few hours short of its Oct. 1 deadline. The US Congress still has to approve the deal but all signs point to its ratification, with the USMCA set to take effect by January 1, 2020. But how will this new agreement affect small businesses?

    Key Changes Between USMCA and NAFTA

    Taking away all the comparisons being made about NAFTA and the USMCA, the bottom line is that the new trade agreement does have several key changes. The first one deals with the automobile industry. Under the USMCA, 75 percent of a vehicle’s content should come from North America in order to avoid tariffs. This will cut down on the number of parts being imported from Asia. The agreement also states that by 2023, 40 to 45 percent of production should be made by workers who are receiving an average of $16 or more an hour. That hourly wage is definitely higher than conventional salary levels in Mexico.

    There are also a number of vital agricultural concessions in the new deal. For instance, Canada will be giving American dairy producers access to 3.6 percent of its market. This change could potentially be worth around $70 million in trade. In return, the US will also give its neighbor increased access to its agricultural market, including peanuts and sugar and all its related products.

    The USMCA also introduces a sunset clause. According to this, the countries involved will renew the agreement every 16 years.

    How the New Agreement Will Affect Small Businesses and eCommerce

    Online retailers and small American businesses will be affected by the deal’s enhanced trade policies. One change that the three countries have agreed on is the increase in their “de minimis.” This refers to the level at which imported products are exempted from taxes, customs documentation, and duty collection.   

    Under the USMCA, Mexico will be doubling its de minimis from $50 to $100 and Canada from C$20 to C$40. The U.S’ threshold remains the same. This means Canadian consumers won’t have to pay duty for cross-border online orders that are less than C$150 while Mexican customers will enjoy duty-free online orders for products $117 or lower.

    A fact sheet provided by the Office of the U.S Trade Representative shows that the new agreement will also make the processing of shipment orders across the three states go faster, allowing small and medium-sized businesses to engage in more cross-border trading.

    SMEs usually don’t have the resources to pay for customs taxes and duties, but they shoulder the compliance costs that low de minimis have on low-value shipments. The policy changes will give SMEs and new traders to Canadian and Mexican markets the opportunity to reach more customers at lower costs. Express delivery carriers will also benefit since they carry the bulk of low-value shipments.

    Groups like the National Retail Federation are supportive of the raised de minimis threshold as it can improve sales across the borders. But eBay says that the USMCA’s customs provisions are not enough. It claims that it could lead to confusion among small businesses since express and postal shipments will be treated differently and there’ll be different collection rules based on the value levels.

    [Featured image via calendar.in.gov]

  • How to Turn Seasonal Shoppers Into Year-Round Customers

    How to Turn Seasonal Shoppers Into Year-Round Customers

    The outlook is pretty rosy for retailers this year. The high consumer confidence and low unemployment rates mean that people have more money to burn. Deloitte’s yearly forecast for the holiday shopping season also showed that retail sales are expected to grow from 5 percent to 5.6 percent from last year. Sales could even hit $1.10 trillion.

    While the numbers look good, companies should consider that many of those shoppers are seasonal ones—people who won’t make another purchase from them for months (or ever). That is a massive missed opportunity as it costs more to catch the eye of a new customer than retaining the interest of an existing one. So make sure you take advantage of this upcoming holiday season to try and turn a seasonal shopper into a loyal customer.

    After all, a strong and loyal customer base means continued profit for your business. You have to think in terms of your client’s lifetime value (LTV). This is how much the customer will invest or spend in your store for his or her entire life. You should know how to calculate a customer’s LTV to ensure that you’re spending money on the right demographic and marketing strategy.

    There are also other ways to turn seasonal shoppers into year-round ones. Here’s how:

    Email is Still King

    Email marketing remains a very powerful marketing tool. It’s easy to use, convenient, and affordable. It also has a better response rate than direct mail and banner ads. And if used correctly, you can start developing loyalty in a seasonal shopper.

    • Send Your Thanks with an Incentive: A thank you email is one of the best ways to improve your conversion rates. Improve your open rate odds by including an incentive that will make a seasonal shopper want to visit your site again. Add a discount coupon or a freebie.
    • Add Value by Cross-selling: Use your knowledge of the shopper’s purchase history to upsell or cross-sell products. Suggest items that complement their previous purchase to start establishing a relationship with them.
    • Request Feedback: Ask your customer for their opinions on your product and service. This tells them that you value their thoughts. Plus, you can also use these feedback as social proof for future customers.

    Inspire Loyalty with Great Service

    Make customer service a priority in your business and you have a higher chance of getting that seasonal shopper to come back. Show them that you care by personalizing their shopping experience. Recommend products based on what they have viewed or placed in their carts. A 24/7 live chat is also a worthwhile option since it provides them with the customer support they need without the hassle of calling or waiting for a reply.

    Great service also means taking positive action and making amends when mistakes happen. The best brand takes care of every customer all the time, and when things go wrong, they want to see that you’re taking steps to address it. The way Starbucks handled the controversy when two of their guests were arrested is a good example. The company quickly posted a statement apologizing for what happened and stated what they’re doing to correct their policies.

    Offer Exclusive Deals or Loyalty Programs

    A loyalty program can also turn seasonal shoppers into year-round customers. It helps to engage customers and keep their attention through freebies and discounts. Design a program that will keep your customer active and in the loop. For instance, award points for every purchase made. Once they reach a certain number of points, they can redeem them for a reward or a discount. To make your brand stand out more, offer a 15 percent discount instead of the standard 10 percent.

    Reach Out to Your Customers Again

    Don’t relax just because you already made a sale. Retargeting seasonal shoppers will get them back in your shop. Remember that people are busier than usual at this time of year so you might need to remind them of the wonderful experience they’ve had with you. Send them a reminder to restock on the supplies they bought after a few months. Or email an exclusive offer to try out a new product they might like based on their past purchase.

    You can transform seasonal shoppers into regular ones. Convince them to return to your store. Send them incentives via email and enroll them in a loyalty program. Reach out to them and show that you value them. In turn, they will value and be loyal to your brand. And if you do your job well, they could even become your best brand evangelists.

    [Featured image via Pexels]

  • Early Signs of a New Google Update This Morning

    Early Signs of a New Google Update This Morning

    Search expert Barry Schwartz reported in his weekly video update that there are early signs that Google is rolling out another search algorithm update this morning.

    Early Signs of a New Google Update

    “There are early signs this morning of a possible Google update that is starting to roll out,” said Schwartz. “It’s very early but there are a number of signals both the chatter in the forums and in the SEO community as well as some ranking tools that were updated already that definitely show some signs of a Google update. Some are saying it’s just in the U.K. which I kind of doubt.”

    Google News Publishing Issue Resolved

    Schwartz also talked about a problem that Google News publishers noticed earlier in the week. “Google News publishers have been complaining about indexing issues,” noted Schwartz. “I saw that with my own two eyes. Basically what would happen is you would publish a story and then it wouldn’t be found in Google News or Google Search. It wasn’t every story, it was some stories.”

    “Usually when a Google News publisher, especially one that has trust, value, and so forth, publishes something pretty much within a matter of seconds or minutes are found in Google Web Search and Google News Search,” he said. “That has been an issue the last couple of weeks. Google has been addressing it and has said they fixed it and they’ve said it again, three times in the forum thread. It does seem to be resolved I believe.”

    “When you publish something you want to see within nine minutes or less that your article is found in web search and Google News,” added Schwartz. “If it’s not there is an issue. Google has made some tweaks to address the issue and it seems like Google has fixed the issue.”

  • Reddit Co-Founder: Every Businesses is Going to Have to Be a Software Business

    Reddit Co-Founder: Every Businesses is Going to Have to Be a Software Business

    The co-founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, says that every business is going to have to be a software business. “Our beliefs still remains that every business is going to have to be a software business in some way, shape, or form,” Ohanian told CNBC. “For us to be able to make these investments on bright engineers building software solutions still feels like the right long-term play. We noticed the turning point in the last couple of years where the C-Suite all got on Instagram.”

    “What I mean by that is they got exposed to it and there’s now a broad use of world-class software for really trivial stuff,” said Ohanian. “Once enough execs have spent time looking at selfies on Instagram, of their kids or their grandkids, they come back to work they sit at their desk and they look at the software that they’re using and that their companies are using and they can’t believe how antiquated is by comparison.”

    “So we’re seeing this new trend in startups that are selling direct to the enterprise level from jump,” explained the Reddit co-founder. “They’re people who left that world, see the problems, and are saying I can build a better solution and I’m just going to sell it back to my old buddies and then hopefully the rest of the industry. Whereas ten years ago, if you were starting Dropbox as Drew was, you’d be trying to sell the basic $10 a month package to some little startup.”

    Ohanian says that today, companies realize this existential need and startups are now able to sell to enterprise direct.

    About Alexis Ohanian:

    Alexis Ohanian was the co-founder of Reddit, one of the first social media companies in the world. He is also a bestselling author and he is currently co-founder & managing partner of Initialized Capital that focuses on very early stage VC ($22B in market value so far).

  • How to Leverage Testimonials From Social Media to Make More Sales

    How to Leverage Testimonials From Social Media to Make More Sales

    Getting new customers to buy from you is a challenge you’ll likely have to deal with for as long as you own your business. However, a good testimonial goes a long way in swaying a person’s opinion about a product. People feel more confident buying from a brand if they see that other consumers purchased similar items and were satisfied with them.

    Research by Nielsen showed that 92 percent of consumers will trust a recommendation given by a peer and that 70 percent of shoppers trust a recommendation or review even if it’s from a stranger. Amazon and eBay understand this phenomenon well. The two online retailers have built their entire platform around customer testimonials and reviews.

    Why are Testimonials Effective

    The smart marketer understands that the most effective sales messages come from happy customers. Here’s why:

    Provides Social Proof

    Every shopper is a skeptic. They wonder whether your product really works or if other companies have already worked with you. Testimonials let satisfied customers answer the shopper’s questions. They have less doubt when they know that other people enjoyed doing business with you. This is “social proof” and it’s very powerful. It’s why advertisers use messages like “9 out of 10 doctors trust this brand.”

    Connects With Customers Emotionally

    Testimonials also help connect you with your target market on an emotional level. This is crucial as studies have shown that most shoppers make buying decisions based on their feelings. If a review or testimonial made a prospective client laugh or teary-eyed, you can bet they will remember that brand and be more open to buying it.

    Tells a Good Story 

    Testimonials are essentially stories, with the customer as the main character; the search for what they want or need is the conflict and your product or service as the resolution. A well-written review or testimonial is like a story with a happy ending; people really love happy endings. 

    5 Ways to Leverage Testimonials From Social Media

    1. Highlight Positive Testimonials on Your Website

    Put your testimonials to good use by highlighting them on your website’s service or product pages. They can help create leads and drive conversions. Prospective buyers will be more amenable to making a purchase if they see testimonials from satisfied clients while browsing through your products.

    You can actually integrate reviews and testimonials on any page, like the home page, About and Contact pages. But make sure that the testimonial you’ll feature is relevant. For instance, a testimonial applauding your team is better suited in the About page than the landing page.

    2. Incorporate Testimonials into Your Blog

    Every visitor to your blog is a prospective customer. Incorporating testimonials within the content can capture the reader’s interest. However, they should be placed where they won’t detract from what the visitor is reading, like in the sidebar. In their own way, testimonials also add content to your site. They also make your brand appear more trustworthy and valuable to first-time site visitors.

    3. Utilize a Variety of Formats

    There’s no law stating that testimonials should only be written. Audio or video testimonials are considered to be more effective since they feel more personal and real.

    Don’t be afraid of asking a loyal and satisfied customer to record a review or shoot a small video. You can even join them and make it appear like an interview. But regardless of whether it’s a sound clip or video, make sure you coordinate with the client so they know what to expect and prepare accordingly. The testimonial should also be short and concise.

    4. Add them to Printed Material

    Print marketing still carries a lot of punch today, and one study explains that this is because printed material feels “more real to the brain.” Handling something solid, like flyers or brochures, involve deeper emotional processing, which is vital for brand associations. Including client testimonials to your print marketing materials will add more weight to them.

    5. Have a Testimonial Page

    Even if you have included testimonials on your website, blog, and social media posts, it’s still a good idea to have a separate testimonials page where you can place the most positive reviews. Prospective clients will see these are further evidence that they are making the right choice in choosing you.

    Testimonials are a powerful marketing tool that you should not be afraid to use. Ask your customers to vouch for you. Satisfied clients are only too happy to provide a good word for a brand that they like. Integrate these testimonials in your different marketing strategies so more people will see why they should choose your brand.

    [Featured image via Pixabay]

  • Dropbox CEO: The Opportunity is Massive

    Dropbox CEO: The Opportunity is Massive

    Dropbox CEO Drew Houston says that making their product better is their primary strategy to achieving continued strong growth and he doesn’t expect their growth to slow down in the near future. Houston says that the opportunity is massive and that they are not going to run out of people who need Dropbox anytime soon.

    Drew Houston, Co-Founder & CEO of Dropbox, talked about their earnings release and their growth strategy on CNBC:

    The Opportunity is Massive

    We had another strong quarter, strong revenue growth, strong free cash flow. The way we see driving conversion is about bringing people along a journey from using Dropbox as individuals, maybe they start using the free version, and then they bring it into work and start using the business product. We’ve been able to do that at bigger and bigger scale over the last few years.

    The opportunity is massive. When we think about it, every company, every team in the world has content and needs to collaborate around it. We’re not going to run out of people who need Dropbox anytime soon and we have hundreds and millions of people who have used Dropbox. We’re operating in massive scale. So really we think about how do we drive people along that journey as effectively as possible?

    We Drive Value Per Subscriber by Making the Product Better

    The way we drive value per subscriber is make the product better. There’s a number of improvements we’ve made in this quarter and in the last few quarters. When you think about new features in Dropbox like Smart Sync and a feature called Showcase which is about richer sharing, those are driving higher and higher adoption of our premium individual plans in the business version of Dropbox.

    A really important part of our strategy is our open ecosystem and our customers love having the freedom to use any different tool or any different ecosystem. That’s a big strength of ours. We’ve announced integrations earlier this year with companies like Google and Salesforce. This quarter we also announced some integrations with companies like Zoom who is a leader in video communication and collaboration. We saw that our Dropbox customers were using all of these products and Zoom found that their customers are using Dropbox. Building a seamless integration is a really powerful way to both increase engagement and then improve the stickiness of our platform.

     

  • How eCommerce Businesses Can Prevent Fraud in 2018 Holiday Season

    How eCommerce Businesses Can Prevent Fraud in 2018 Holiday Season

    Given the dynamic nature of the internet, it’s not surprising to also see frequent changes in consumer buying behavior, which online retailers try to predict and cater to on various digital platforms. Convenience and revenue growth of eCommerce businesses, however, come with a price in the form of fraud.

    Sales transactions from online merchants are on an uptrend, but attacks on eCommerce businesses have alarmingly increased as well. Based on the first-quarter report by ThreatMetrix, 210 million cyber attacks were prevented in real time from January to March 2018 – up by 62 percent from prior year. Some of these attacks have cost the eCommerce industry a whopping $58 billion in losses in 2017, according to the Global Fraud Report done by PYMNTS and Signifyd.

    Image result for threatmetrix fraud report

    Image source: ThreatMatrix (2017 Cybercrime Report)

    With the upcoming holiday season, incidents of digital fraud are expected to further rise in the eCommerce industry. Avoid the pitfalls of fraud by proactively taking steps to detect its forms and prevent them from hurting your bottom line, which can be significant for some eCommerce businesses. Fraudulent purchases can translate to chargebacks from affected online retailers, resulting in financial losses.

    Pay particular attention to these three kinds of eCommerce fraud:

    Types of eCommerce Fraud

    1. Identity Theft

    Among the most common type of fraud, identity theft has been a long-running scheme of cybercriminals. Identities, along with credit card information and addresses, are stolen using the latest techniques on data hacking, malware, and theft of mobile devices, which are then used to purchase from online merchants. Aside from stolen identities of actual individuals, fraudsters can also fabricate fictitious or manipulated personalities and use these instead during transactions.

    2. Friendly Fraud

    Sometimes called “chargeback fraud,” friendly fraud happens when customers call their credit card issuer and dispute the charge. While some fraud incidents are due to misunderstanding, others are done with malicious intent. Dishonest consumers will claim that they never received the item, heavily damaged, or not as described, requesting refunds from the online retailer after getting the package.

    3. Phishing

    This type of fraud is rampant and requires technical capability, as fraudsters pretend to be a company or eCommerce platform to trick customers into typing in personal information on a rigged form. Phishing emails often contain a warning to customers that their accounts have been compromised and need to input details like user ID, password, and personal information as proof of their identity. Armed with an individual’s stolen details, fraudsters can use these to make online purchases or transfer money to another account.

    How Online Merchants Can Protect Against Fraud

    To minimize the increasing risk for eCommerce fraud, there are a few things that you, as a business owner, can do. A proactive approach, rather than a reactive one, is more effective in preventing fraud from happening and taking a cut of your profits, especially during the holiday rush.

    1. Have a good fraud protection system in place.

    Before the buying frenzy of the holidays begins, ensure that your business has fraud prevention and chargeback protection systems set up. There are numerous tools available on the market, so choose one that fits your business needs. It’s a cost-effective solution that’s well worth the investment in the long run.

    2. Use a prevention system that combines human and artificial intelligence.

    While machine learning can effectively analyze patterns of fraud based on millions of transactional data, it still takes human intelligence to know something is off with a transaction.

    3. Take advantage of the verification process as well.

    To mitigate eCommerce fraud, make use of a good address verification system. This will confirm whether the bill-to and ship-to addresses are similar, along with email address and location as part of a customer’s identity verification when the transaction happened. An extra layer of protection helps by employing the card verification value to ensure that the customer holds or has access to the actual credit card.

    Image result for ecommerce fraud 2018

    Image source: Amasty

    4. Use email authentication.

    Even though email fraud is a far-too-common occurrence, you still need a good authentication system for your business. Authentication systems with Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance will give you a heads up if an email contains dubious links or potential threats. Aside from protecting your eCommerce business against fraud, email authentication assures your customers that what you send is trustworthy.

    5. Determine transaction origins.

    Each electronic device has a particular fraud profile and depending on what was used for the transaction, you can gauge and screen for potential eCommerce fraud. Device assessment assists online merchants in identifying transactions made by bots, flagging anomalous purchases through account takeovers, and highlighting malicious intents. 

     

    When consumer spending picks up during the holiday season, it is expected that eCommerce fraud will gain momentum as well. Ensure that your business is not losing money from fraudulent transactions by beefing up your prevention and authentication systems and keeping them updated with the latest patches. 

    [Featured image via Pexels]

  • Bumble CEO: Launching in India to Further Empower Women

    Bumble CEO: Launching in India to Further Empower Women

    Bumble is launching their app in Inda with the help of its new investor and brand ambassador actress Priyanka Chopra. The actress should help Bumble India get off to a fast start, having already announced it to her 23.6 million followers on Twitter.

    The CEO of Bumble, Whitney Wolfe, also announced Bumble India on Twitter:

    Whitney Wolfe commented on CNN about changes Bumble made in an effort to make them feel more comfortable using the app in India:

    Bumble is a Recalibration of Human Behavior

    I believe that no matter what area of the planet you are trying to enter you have to be so in tune with the customs and the culture. We’ve taken a lot of measures, both in the product and in the go-to-market strategy to really be mindful and to bring something that the girls and women of India would actually want to use.

    In India, in particular, we have deleted first names. Now you use your first initial. We want you to feel safe and secure and have your anonymity and know as a woman that you can really hide behind all these different shields Bumble provides you. So, a first initial for starters, verified photos, and then women make the first move on Bumble. This is a huge thing.

    There were a lot of naysayers at the beginning of Bumble four-plus years ago that this is a gimmick, this is just a way to enter the space. But no, it’s not a gimmick. It’s a recalibration of human behavior and the way we treat each other. This creates safety in and of itself.

    Women Need Empowerment Globally

    I think that women need empowerment globally, it doesn’t matter where it is. The more disempowered the mindset, the culture, wherever that might be. You can even take America, for example, there are different parts of the country that are a bit more archaic in mindset. We had a lot of people challenge us here as well at the beginning of Bumble. You will never survive in the South, or you will never survive in this state or that territory. To be candid, we thrived.

    The more disempowered, the more archaic, the more desire to rise and be equal women truly are at their core. We need to provide that globally. Yes, we need to be really mindful of culture and tradition. But at the end of the day, we aren’t doing anything other than saying we want to encourage empowerment and equality.

    About Bumble

    Bumble is a social network that allows you to feel empowered while you make those connections, whether you’re dating, looking for friends, or growing your professional network. When members of the opposite sex match on Bumble, women are required to make the first move, shifting old-fashioned power dynamics and encouraging equality from the start.

  • Gary Vaynerchuk’s Formula for Success

    Gary Vaynerchuk’s Formula for Success

    Gary Vaynerchuk released another video which you watch below. If you feel like you are spinning your wheels, lost, or without vision, Gary Vaynerchuk in 3 minutes provides his formula for success:  

    400 trillion to 1 are the odds of becoming a human being.

    You choose what you’re looking for because what you look for… you find. That’s how fucking life works.

    Being successful takes several different variables. I think self-awareness is number one. If you don’t know yourself and you don’t know what you’re good at you’ve got no shot because you’re gonna be spinning your wheels. I think work ethic is at the top. Nobody knows anybody that’s successful at all that hasn’t put in serious amounts of work.

    Very quickly I can tell you that you need to get every voice out of your head besides yourself and you need to love yourself. You will win. You can’t live your life based on other people’s point of view. I am tired of people not starting and living their life on one very simple thing which is they’re worried about what other people think.

    Learn the work ethic and the skills that match your ambition.

    You get to live life one time and this is the time right now to understand what’s actually happening and actually map your behavior to something that will impact you for the next 80 years.

    Pay the fuck attention to who’s giving you the advice, who’s giving the advice. More importantly, if you live your life where you’re comfortable taking somebody else’s point of view on how you should live your life you deserve to lose.

    Figure out what fucking puts you on fire and you’re halfway decent at and become tunnel fucking vision.

    I only want one thing for people that I have, really outside of health, the only thing I wish for people is for them to love what they do as much as I do.

    It’s not that you can’t, it’s that you’re not willing to give up dumb shit for a better life. It’s very very simple, put yourself in a position to succeed. Figure out who you really are and figure out if what you’re talking is being mapped by what you’re doing, because the second you put those things together shit fucking unlocks.

    Whose fucking permission are you looking for?

    Go do your thing. You’re gonna die. If nobody’s gonna give a shit when you die why the fuck are you worrying about their opinions while you’re alive.

    I just can’t explain to everybody like clearer when you figure out who you are and do all that you win.

    Regardless of what you’re trying to accomplish you’ve got to tell the world about it.

    This is now the world (Pointing at a smartphone) and if you’re not betting on this you’re finished. If you’re not betting on this you’re finished. If you’re not betting on this you’re finished.

  • Uber is Planning to Start an On-Demand Staffing Agency for Businesses

    Uber is Planning to Start an On-Demand Staffing Agency for Businesses

    Uber is preparing to launch a new on-demand staffing business ahead of its first initial public offering. Called Uber Works, the new business could show prospective investors that the company can be a strong and lucrative platform for on-demand services.

    Uber is banking on the fact that their “on-demand” transportation model was a huge success. The company is also betting that its massive database of contractors can be utilized to serve as temporary staff, like security personnel, waiters, or cooks, for corporate functions and various events.

    While Uber Works is targeting people who are not Uber drivers, there’s no denying that the program could also help the company retain its drivers, or “partners,” by providing them with an alternative means of making money.

    Some of the ride-hailing company’s drivers are already moonlighting at Uber Eats, the company’s food delivery platform. Aside from the additional income, opting for a staffing job can also break the monotony of driving the whole day.

    Sources have reported that the Uber Works project had an initial trial run in Los Angeles before being developed further in Chicago.

    There’s no word yet on when Uber Works would be formally launched. However, the company is said to have already started its recruitment drive. Job ads stating that a Chicago-based special projects team is looking for applicants that have a “strong interest in the on-demand labor space” have already been posted.

    Uber Works will reportedly operate in the same vein as Freight and Uber Eats. The former connects shippers with the appropriate truckers. The latest “internal start-up” will fall under the office of Rachel Holt, the present head of Uber’s “new modalities” department. Holt’s division is in charge of the company’s multi-modal transportation drive. Aside from ride-sharing, the department is also expanding into scooters and bike sharing.

    On-demand staffing is said to be among the numerous initiatives Holt’s division is studying. However, there’s no guarantee that Uber Works or any of these other projects will become the main business line.

    [Featured image via YouTube]

  • Bizzabo Wants to be the Salesforce of Events

    Bizzabo Wants to be the Salesforce of Events

    Putting on an event, marketing an event and more importantly, measuring the impact of your event has never been easy. Enter Bizzabo, a company that is working to become the Salesforce of Events.

    Recently, Tom Shelly, Product Marketing Director at Bizzabo, discussed how their cloud-based solution is disrupting the event industry:

    Bizzabo Event Cloud Empowers the Marketer

    Bizzabo is a cloud-based service, the same as Salesforce which invented the Sales Cloud and then we had Marketo that invented the Marketing Cloud, we came and said there needs to be an Events Cloud. Our audience is the event marketer and essentially we’re empowering that marketer to create events that are actually rewarding and impactful for the audiences.

    Bizzabo is an all-in-one platform that they use in order to manage the event, in order to promote the event, and in order to execute it. But the secret sauce and the wisdom behind the platform is the fact that it allows the marketer to measure the impact of the events and that’s something that sounds standard, but no one can actually measure.

    Before Bizzabo Measuring Event Success Was Impossible

    We know that 24 percent of the marketing budget is invested in events, but they can’t measure it. They literally cannot tell if the event was successful. Were they able to retain customers, acquire customers, and was it because of that event? The platform provides them with a lot of analytics and statistics and insights and recommendations to become better at what they’re doing and grow their business through events that they’re hosting.

    Bizzabo Software Using Artificial Intelligence

    We’re providing them those recommendations and we’re at the point right now of incorporating AI and machine learning and the best technologies out there to provide all the knowledge that they need automatically so that they don’t need to do much.

    It’s already a very profitable engine for many companies all over the world. We have HubSpot as a customer and WeWork and many others.

  • Finery: A Hot Startup That Seeks To Be the Digital Wardrobe for Women

    Finery: A Hot Startup That Seeks To Be the Digital Wardrobe for Women

    Over 80% of the clothes women aren’t wearing is worth half a trillion dollars in the US according to Finery founder and CEO Whitney Casey. Finery, which was just listed in CNBC’s Upstart 100 list of promising young startups, keeps track of all your clothing purchases and creates a digital wardrobe and then helps style you in the clothes you already own.

    Whitney Casey, founder, and CEO of Finery discussed her company’s service and business model in a recent interview:

    Finery is a Digital Wardrobe

    Finery is a digital wardrobe. What we do is we find all of your purchases, from your e-receipts, from your browser history, from attaching your accounts, and then we instantly upload all of those items into a virtual closet so you can see everything you own. We have a bunch of tools on the site that can help you add items easily. You Google anything, you find the image, you push the little ‘F’ browser button and it uploads to your closet. That’s our tech. We go back ten years into your purchase history to find and call all those receipts and put it into this closet for you. The bigger picture of this is really about data and that’s the ethos that this company is built off of.

    We let you also take your account and upload your accounts such as Neiman Marcus, Target, or whatever. The data is really important and when we talk about data we tell women that we really think that your data should be working for you. It should not be working for Facebook. Women are the consumers with 85 percent of the consumer goods purchased by women. Yet, 91 percent of women say they don’t feel like advertisers or anyone really understand them.

    Why Do Women Need Finery?

    What’s great is we style you. A woman will spend eight years of her life shopping and two years getting dressed, we’re shaving the time off that. We also give you a return receipt. So think about this, you buy something and you have seven days left so you can no longer return, you need to know that so we ping you. Hey, it’s raining outside, here are five things you can wear from your closet. Hey, it’s Sunday, you have four interviews this week so here are five outfits for you from your closet.

    We have hundreds of thousands of users currently. But we have a big vision and it is around data because we really do feel like women need to have their data working for them. It’s very hard actually to get data from women because they don’t want this same purple boot following them around the internet like it does (via behavioral ads) for two years that they bought. Instead, they really want their data to be working for them and that’s what we’re doing.

    When you log in to a retail site why does it do you any good to log in with your Facebook account? It only does Facebook good so they can then advertise to you. What we want to do is create a login from your Finery account so that all of your data can come with you and then it could make your purchasing way easier.

    How Does Finery Make Money?

    We offer a rev share, we call it a knowledge tax. Companies pay us to give women a personalization lifeline. When you go to these retailers it’s not very easy, you sift through all of these pages. If you think about it, the service, the flywheel of giving women some utility and they give us more access to themselves and every time access makes the utility better.

    It’s crazy because 80% of the clothes you aren’t wearing is worth half a trillion dollars in the US. If we put RFID tags in all of your clothes we would we could know exactly where you’re wearing them and exactly the amount of time you’re wearing them and then break the cost. Via a consignment site, you could then just tap on any item in your wardrobe and then sell it. It all starts in your wardrobe, all of these all of these functionalities, re-commerce, commerce, rentals, it all has to start with the clothes that you own.

  • Eric Enge Says Google’s Two Most Important Ranking Factors Are Still Content and Links

    Eric Enge Says Google’s Two Most Important Ranking Factors Are Still Content and Links

    SEO is constantly changing but search ranking expert Eric Enge still says that everything else should take second priority to content quality and links. In a recent video discussion (below) and blog post, Eric explains how the Google Ranking Score intersects with the Google Content Score which results in a Google Link Score.

    Eric Enge is General Manager of Perficient Digital, a full-service digital agency. Previously, Eric was the founder and CEO of Stone Temple which was acquired by Perficient in July 2018. Here’s how Eric explains Google’s current method for ranking content:

    Google Considers Content and Links the Two Most Important Ranking Factors

    Earlier this year I was part of a live hangout with Andre Ropeta of Google where he said that Google considers the two most important factors for ranking to be content and links to your site. I provided strong backup for the power of links in a study I published last year. From my experience, I think many organizations could dramatically improve their SEO just by creating better quality content and more effectively promoting it but so few bothered to do that.

    Are Content and Backlinks All That Websites Need to Think About for SEO?

    Of course, just thinking about content and backlinks for SEO would be a gross oversimplification. There are still a lot of other things you can do that will help your SEO. These are things like a better information architecture, making better use of SEO tags, good usability and all that. However, I think it’s undeniable that all of those take a second priority to content quality and links.

    How Do Content and Links Interact?

    To keep it simple, let’s imagine a hypothetical set of scores for content and links. Here ’s an equation that depicts the possible relationship between those two things:

    Ranking Score = Content Score * Link Score

    Now let’s pop that plot that on a graph (below). Notice two things, first the Y-axis is labeled Chances of Ranking, not Ranking. We’re dealing with probabilities here, the higher in the curve you are the more probable it is that you will rank high, but of course, they’re never any guarantees.

    Second, notice that I’ve made the content score way more influential than the linked score. Think about it, if your content isn’t at least good quality and it doesn’t do a good job of satisfying your users’ query or if it provides a poor user experience then it really shouldn’t have any chance of ranking in the first place, no matter how many links you get.

    While links are very powerful for establishing the basic authority of a page, Google is smart enough to know that they don’t tell the whole story. That’s why Google is invested so much in being able to discern the quality and appropriateness of content.

    How Should Websites Apply This in a Practical Way?

    My goal with my two step ranking model is to simplify SEO for most people without oversimplifying it. But making it simple in no way implies there’s not a lot of hard work to be done in order to be successful, far from it. It comes down to the two things that have always been true for successful companies, make really good stuff and market it effectively.

    In the case of content marketing, the good stuff is the content that goes above and beyond in creating delight, trust, and respect in your target audience. The marketing part is effectively sharing and promoting that content and getting it in front of the right eyes and if it’s really good that’s where the earned linked opportunities kick in.