Newbie Question(s) so dumb, you're afraid to even ask!

hey all

I'm reading through the Digital Strategy Crash Course, and the voice in the back of my head keeps pinging me.... "this content is 9 years old...."

I have no doubt whatsoever that there is still a metric shit ton of good info here, but also some of the info has certainly changed.

Is there any way to determine what has evolved/changed? Or should I simply read it all, absorb it, and continue reading and evaluating all I can to see myself what has changed?
 
melh99 said:
hey all

I'm reading through the Digital Strategy Crash Course, and the voice in the back of my head keeps pinging me.... "this content is 9 years old...."

I have no doubt whatsoever that there is still a metric shit ton of good info here, but also some of the info has certainly changed.
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The digital strategy course focuses more on techniques, approaches and the overall mindset to adopt when approaching digital marketing projects/businesses. It's not a time-bound set of tips and tricks.

This is also constantly emphasized throughout the course.

Oftentimes, the suspicions of such techniques' effectiveness are caused by people looking at them as "tips" and "tricks" rather than techniques/tools for developing your business strategy.

According to Marriam-Webster a "technique" is:
a method or body of methods for accomplishing a desired end.
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Whereas "tips" and "tricks" are:
a piece of advice or expert or authoritative information
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and
a crafty procedure or practice meant to deceive or defraud OR a quick or artful way of getting a result
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The goal of the digital marketing strategy is not to provide you with the latest tips and tricks, it is to provide you with the tools and techniques to know how to dip your toes into the world of digital marketing and develop your own strategy that works for your business specifically.

This is briefly stated in the first day of the crash course as well:
The Engineer said:
We're not going to tell you exactly what to do, only how to think and what to think about.
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The reason many tips and tricks get outdated, unlike techniques and strategies, is because they are time-bound. This can include things like "stuff your posts with keywords to rank higher", "start a blog on a trending niche", and "spam your links in blog comments" etc.

If you're main strategy is just "I'm going to trick the algorithim into thinking that my content is geniunely useful and has the end customer in mind, when in reality I'm just banking on a temporary weakness of the algo until it gets fixed in the next update", then yeah, your "strategy" is going to get outdated pretty fast.

As for your second question:
melh99 said:
Is there any way to determine what has evolved/changed? Or should I simply read it all, absorb it, and continue reading and evaluating all I can to see myself what has changed?
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The way you can approach this is that you just read through the crash course. You'll be able to weed some things that won't apply to your business today instantly, like in Day 6 @CCarter talks about a tool called Google Correlate for keyword research - but that tool has been shut down for years now. The same thing for some social platforms like Tumblr, which although is still somewhat active, has died down and Google + which has died a long time ago.

The best way to evaluate what will or will not work for your business is to test and figure it out for yourself. You'll be going through this iterative cycle for most of your time, regardless if you follow the crash course or not:

HfNfYv9.png


Of course you won't have the time or money to test every single thing in the crash course, so you can keep yourself updated with some of things in SEO, Marketing, Social Media, etc. either by the keeping in touch with industry blogs or even following some of the threads in this forum as many times people here are discussing the latest hiccups in the algorithims. If you come across a specific issue, you can ask away as many people here are very helpful and experienced in their craft.

As an end note, you won't know the value of the crash course unless you read it through. It'll open a lot of doors to new opportunities you never considered, guaranteed to give you many "Aha!" moments when reading.

Give it a try, you've got nothing to lose. As a plus, you'll defo gain something
 
I came across this forum as i wanted to circumvent reddit's perma ban. After lurking around here for some time, I came to know this is some marketing forum. What exactly do you guys market? Like do you guys run a marketing campaign for other companies' or your own products? And how does reddit help you achieve your goals? How does it help you make money?
 
Hi,
How do you guys post to social media?
Do you use a pa/agency, or some sort of automation (ie FS Poster)

Cheers.
 
Nonbeardedman said:
As an end note, you won't know the value of the crash course unless you read it through. It'll open a lot of doors to new opportunities you never considered, guaranteed to give you many "Aha!" moments when reading.
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Yeah there's still some real gold in there. You can't take any exact copy or individual tactic from my linkbuilding one for example word for word anymore but the mindset/strategy/way of finding new opportunities is still where I'd start any new teammate at my agency off today. The same is true for so much of the other content on there. It's mostly not tailored to be 'one quick tip' type content - most of the contributors wrote a lot about how the actual strategies work/why they work which can be applied eternally.
 
Hello

I am a digital marketer who has been in industry for around 13 years now. Have seen these digital marketing platforms develop from good old days as a direct user for myself and clients.

I was wondering if there is interest for paid ads marketers in this group as well. I see lot's of activity and forums for SEOs and other marketings but few relatively for paid ads.

Looking forward to forge good relationships here, learn many new things from fellows and may be teach few as well.

Regards
 
@Ryuzaki Thank you for guiding me towards these sections. I already visited them. My query, rather observation was that, I saw more activity and posts regarding SEO and devops rather than in advertising and YouTube/video sections.
 
Hey all, I was wondering if you have recommendations of SEOs to follow to learn about marketing on Facebook, Reddit and Pinterest? There is a thread in the laboratory right now titled “little guy fights back” and he mentions he learned from the best in the business for advertising on these platforms.

He did mention certain playbooks he follows for email marketing and I’ve signed up for Tony Hills newsletter but I’m just looking for more advice. I do not have enough likes to ask him there directly.

As to why, I’m a former SEO site owner who had middling success and I’ve been stuck in the wagie grind for the past several years. I just feel like I’ve had my Tyler Durden moment and I need to take a shot again at trying. When I wasn’t working full time I was able to sit down and write and work on sites, I’ve made plans these past few years and gotten sites started and I just putter out.

It’s embarrassing to admit that, I just can’t stick to anything and need to get back into the game.
 
looks like you're diving into digital marketing strategy. That's a solid move. The advice about starting with research and really understanding your audience before jumping into tactics is key.

I like what Paul Kohn said about finding your unique angle. In a crowded market, standing out is crucial. His point about consistency across channels is spot on too.

The discussion about SEO is interesting. While it's important, I agree with the sentiment that it shouldn't be your only focus. A well-rounded strategy usually works best.

Have you thought about how you'll measure success? Setting clear, measurable goals can really help guide your efforts.

Anyone else here implemented a digital marketing strategy recently? What worked well? Any pitfalls to watch out for?
 
Hello, I'd like to know if hiring a reputable link building service from BuSo's marketplace and asking for a w9 is acceptable/standard practice.

Knowing whether or not I can deduct the cost would determine how I purchase. Thank you.
 
TheDoctor55 said:
Hello, I'd like to know if hiring a reputable link building service from BuSo's marketplace and asking for a w9 is acceptable/standard practice.

Knowing whether or not I can deduct the cost would determine how I purchase. Thank you.
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It’s accepatable. I’ve sent out many tax forms to buyers/clients. I’d be wary of anyone not willing to do so if you’re transacting sums that require it (and you’re in the same country).

A lot of people do still value privacy and anonymity but people can’t remain neckbeards hiding in darkness while simultaneously being real businessmen. You’ll find the cohort here are all veterans and adults with no issues trusting each other with basic confidential needs.
 
Hey, stupid question here. Does rel=canonical allow you to build links to one domain and yet rank using a different domain?

Let me explain. I have a domain that is SFW but has a stigma around it. People often refuse to build links to it because of the stigma. If I change the branding and put the content on a new domain and put rel=canonical from the new domain to the old domain, does that mean that any ranking power obtained by the new domain gets passed to the old domain?

So let's say I have PornVideos.com/article.php and StrangeYouTube.com/article.php. I build links to StrangeYouTube.com/article.php and it has a rel=canonical to PornVideos.com/article.php. PornVideos.com/article.php will rank and get the link equity of StrangeYouTube.com, right?

I've seen people move a Spanish language subdomain to a new domain with Rel=canonical and keep the English site up on the old domain, so I think this works like this but I just want to double check with anyone here before I risk my reputation at work.
 
BakerStreet said:
Hey, stupid question here. Does rel=canonical allow you to build links to one domain and yet rank using a different domain?

Let me explain. I have a domain that is SFW but has a stigma around it. People often refuse to build links to it because of the stigma. If I change the branding and put the content on a new domain and put rel=canonical from the new domain to the old domain, does that mean that any ranking power obtained by the new domain gets passed to the old domain?

So let's say I have PornVideos.com/article.php and StrangeYouTube.com/article.php. I build links to StrangeYouTube.com/article.php and it has a rel=canonical to PornVideos.com/article.php. PornVideos.com/article.php will rank and get the link equity of StrangeYouTube.com, right?

I've seen people move a Spanish language subdomain to a new domain with Rel=canonical and keep the English site up on the old domain, so I think this works like this but I just want to double check with anyone here before I risk my reputation at work.
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This might have worked in the past but Google no longer recommends canonical tags for syndicated content as of last year. Probably to prevent link building schemes.
 
ryandiscord said:
This might have worked in the past but Google no longer recommends canonical tags for syndicated content as of last year. Probably to prevent link building schemes.
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Thanks for that. I went and read https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/9606800 and it seems like it is specific to Google News and you can apply it to Google search if you wish. The title is "avoid article duplication in Google News" after all.

Also, it said "If you want to avoid duplication by syndication partners, the canonical link element is not recommended because syndicated articles are often very different in overall content from original articles." I don't have a tin foil hat on, so I think it means "If you don't want your syndicated copy to rank in Google News above the original, you need to no-index the syndicated version, since our algorithm will think that it is 'very different' than your original version, so we can rank it above the original."

What I'm going to try is:
  1. setup PornVideos.com as the original domain.
  2. Buy WeirdYouTube.com and add rel=canonical to PornVideos.com
  3. Map all posts on WeirdYouTube.com to PornVideos.com.
  4. Build links to WeirdYouTube.com and see if traffic to PornVideos.com goes up.
  5. If yes, it works and I can work around the porn stigma.
  6. If not, I just fully redirect WeirdYouTube.com on to PornVideos.com as I know a 301 redirect passes ranking value.
 
fatihodaci said:
https://www.semrush.com/blog/anatomy-of-top-performing-articles/
Can I find more resources about this Invisible Content published by semrush.com? Or does anyone have any ideas on this subject?
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Invisible content in this context is referring to poor performance and low visibility, it's not some secret type of content.

Invisible content is real, very real! It's how all the top SEOs rank! but for real, anyone remember the days of keyword stuffed local sites with white text on white backgrounds?
 
ryandiscord said:
Invisible content is real, very real! It's how all the top SEOs rank! but for real, anyone remember the days of keyword stuffed local sites with white text on white backgrounds?
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Or when it evolved into making the position absolute in the CSS and moving it a few thousand pixels off the side of the screen, but not invisible in terms of color. Back when Google was a baby lol. Such easy exploits used to exist. It’s insane how far it’s come.
 
ryandiscord said:
Invisible content in this context is referring to poor performance and low visibility, it's not some secret type of content.

Invisible content is real, very real! It's how all the top SEOs rank! but for real, anyone remember the days of keyword stuffed local sites with white text on white backgrounds?
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It just occurred to me that we didn't have dark mode back then.
 
Jesse said:
It just occurred to me that we didn't have dark mode back then.
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I had just remembered right after posting we've got dark mode on here haha

Ryuzaki said:
Or when it evolved into making the position absolute in the CSS and moving it a few thousand pixels off the side of the screen, but not invisible in terms of color. Back when Google was a baby lol. Such easy exploits used to exist. It’s insane how far it’s come.
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The -9999px text indent! It is wild to see how far things have progressed. Before web fonts were a thing, I would also use that if I wanted an H1 to be a some fancy image background font instead of text but wanted the SEO value.

Not sure this ever worked but before mobile, I would use absolute positioning to arrange a site with all of the body copy first, then the navigation below it in the markup as to prioritize the content.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Or when it evolved into making the position absolute in the CSS and moving it a few thousand pixels off the side of the screen, but not invisible in terms of color. Back when Google was a baby lol. Such easy exploits used to exist. It’s insane how far it’s come.
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To be completely honest, this is a lesson in and of itself.

A giant like Google has blundered so much in the past and it still evolved into the behemoth of a business it now is. To anyone thinking they have to get it perfect from the start... Google itself didn't get it perfect from the start and couldn't account for all the ways people would find to exploit/abuse their systems.
 
Hey, I have a question. I have read the rules, and I am confident this is allowed. I am an entry-level marketer/writer and am wondering if anyone knows of any good freelance sites for someone just starting out. I'm fresh out of college and looking to start freelancing to supplement my income from my day job! All advice is appreciated! Thank you!
 
Naturellement said:
Hey, I have a question. I have read the rules, and I am confident this is allowed. I am an entry-level marketer/writer and am wondering if anyone knows of any good freelance sites for someone just starting out. I'm fresh out of college and looking to start freelancing to supplement my income from my day job! All advice is appreciated! Thank you!
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Upwork, Fiverr, YTJobs, Freelancer, SEOClerks.
 
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