Vulnerability discovered in WPCode - Insert Headers & Footers WordPress plugin - Second one this year
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Jetpack WordPress plugin joins a growing list of social sharing apps and services that are leaving Twitter
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Uncover new social platforms attempting to revolutionize online communication, featuring blockchain technology, decentralized systems, and unique verification methods to challenge Twitter's supremacy.
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Here are seven evidence-based reasons why content needs compelling visuals to fully and efficiently convey a message, tell a story, and create a connection.
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ChatGPT ban ends in Italy after OpenAI meets privacy requirements as the EU AI Act advances, potentially impacting generative AI tools and companies.
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OpenAI ChatGPT can now access the Internet with new plugin functionality
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What are the limits and what should the limitations be? Understand the impact that social media channels have and see what you can do today.
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In July 2023, Google Ads will update its Dangerous products and services policy to encompass advertisements for items that pose an imminent, proven, and unresolved risk of death or severe bodily harm, particularly if they have been the subject of consumer advisories or product recalls. Enforcement of this policy update will commence on July 3.
Violations. Accounts found to be in violation of this policy will not face immediate suspension without prior warning. Instead, a warning will be issued at least seven days before any account suspension takes place.
What to do. It is recommended that advertisers review this policy update to determine if any of your ads fall within the scope of this policy. If so, remove the ads in question before July 3, 2023.
Why we care. By proactively reviewing and removing any ads that fall within the scope of this policy, advertisers can maintain their online presence, protect their brand reputation, and continue to reach their target audience effectively.
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Google tightens its advertising policy to restrict ads for products with imminent risk of death or grievous bodily harm.
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YouTube's Trust and Safety team addresses content moderation challenges, balancing user safety with creative freedom while minimizing bias.
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Virtual events are great for education, global outreach and strengthening your brand awareness. But what they’re especially fantastic at is lead generation.
In this webinar, you’ll get the perfect cut-and-paste formula for turning your events into lead-generating machines.
Register and attend “Maximize ROI and Lead Gen With This Virtual Events Marketing Formula,” presented by Kaltura.
Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.
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YouTube educates creators on copyright laws, dispels misconceptions, and offers copyright-safe music through Audio Library and Creator Music.
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How are you identifying where you can reduce your marketing costs and increase profitability, without hurting revenue?
If you’re a PPC advertiser, chances are you are throwing money away on brand terms.
“Lone Rangers” are your brand terms that rank #1 in both paid and organic search but have no other
competitors bidding on them. Why pay for those clicks? Some enterprise brands with large paid search investments waste millions each year.
Adthena’s research shows brands can save up to 20% of their PPC budgets annually by eliminating spend on these Lone Rangers.
Don’t let your budget go to waste! Download How to Get 1 in 5 Dollars Back on Brand Search to learn everything you need to know to reduce brand search costs and reinvest in higher-performing search terms.
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Explore an exciting new list of SEO podcasts for 2023, offering the busy SEO professional an easy way to keep up with news and trends.
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Google triumphs in legal action against CryptBot malware distributors, protecting Chrome users and disrupting cybercriminal ecosystems.
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Google Search Console API offers developers four in-depth search performance data methods, enabling data-driven website optimization and improved performance.
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With changes happening to measurement and attribution, many advertisers are examining the effectiveness of their ad placements and casting a critical eye on the reliability of the systems they have in place to properly measure their marketing efforts.
Join industry experts Bhanu Bhardwaj, media and data science leader at Meta, Bryan Karas, CEO of Playbook Media and Yehonathan Barnea, VP of customer success at Pecan AI, as they discuss how AI unlocks customer potential and campaign performance.
Register today for From “Clicks to Conversions: Drive Performance with Marketing AI,” presented by Pecan.
Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.
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YouTube unveils AI-powered ad solutions targeting Gen Z's diverse music preferences on long-form and Shorts formats.
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Are you struggling with your content marketing strategy? Do you lack time, resources, and a clear purpose? The Content Marketing Quick Start Guide from MoreVisibility is here to help! This guide provides tips and guidance to jumpstart your content planning and creation, helping you overcome common challenges such as lack of time, strategy, or production resources.
One of the most critical aspects of content marketing is Google E-E-A-T, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. In this guide, you’ll learn how to create content that meets these guidelines, ensuring that your website ranks higher in search engine results and drives more traffic to your site.
The guide will walk you through the different types of content you’ll need to plan, create, and optimize. Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download the Content Marketing Quick Start Guide.
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OpenAI enhances ChatGPT privacy, adding chat history disabling, data export options, and developing a Business subscription plan.
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As new ChatGPT alternatives pop up daily, AI content detectors are also gaining popularity.
In this article, I’ll share 16 of these detectors and show you how they score some paragraphs of my original, unpublished writing versus a few paragraphs on the same topic from ChatGPT.
I’ll also walk through the types of functions AI detectors are (and aren’t) a good fit for and how marketers, editors, and SEOs should think about them.
As I’ve detailed in other articles, generative AI and ChatGPT content poses several issues:
It’s important to note that the current AI detectors do not solve all of these problems.
Mostly, these tools do not fact-check AI content, improve or audit content quality, or provide citations for information pulled from other sources.
That said, the areas that AI detectors can help include:
Each tool is different and has its approach to the problem. But for the most part, ChatGPT detection tools grade content based on how predictable the phrase choices are within a piece of content.
In other words, the likelihood that content is scored as AI versus human has a lot to do with whether the detection software deems a piece of writing as following the likely pattern AI would follow in generating content.
The two core concepts around this process are called:
For example, in an essay about the founding of America, it’s highly unlikely that generative AI would include a random, unevenly written anecdote about the first time they ever saw a penguin, so that would likely look like human writing to a detection tool.
Similar to how ChatGPT detectors popped up to detect generative AI writing, tools are already being developed to get around the detectors. (And, of course: the detectors are likely already thinking about how to detect the bypassers, and so on).
Tools like Undetectable or Quillbot will rewrite your content, sometimes making it more difficult to detect for certain AI detection tools.
Additionally, several people have found different prompts to get ChatGPT and other AI writing tools to output content that scores “more human” on the human-to-AI scale by using prompts defining burstiness and perplexity and telling ChatGPT to write with more of each.
An important question to answer before you dive too far into these tools is:
How much do you care about detecting whether content is written by AI? And why?
If you’re using ChatGPT for rewriting title tags or generating email copy, maybe it doesn’t matter at all if that content “passes” AI writing checks.
Additionally, if a writer uses AI to generate a copy and the copy is great, maybe the score isn’t important at all.
These detection tools will likely be engaged in the “detection arms race” with un-detection tools and prompts I mentioned above.
If you're still looking for an AI/ChatGPT content detector, we'll go through each of them and how they “scored” in evaluating human-generated copy versus AI copy versus AI copy that used this prompt to try to “beat detection."
Note: Detection versus a few paragraphs of content isn't necessarily a thorough test of the detection capabilities of these tools. Hopefully, it will give you a rough sense of how they score different content and a glimpse of the range of outcomes you can expect from these kinds of tools.
(You can view the actual samples input to the tool – the “human” sample written by me, the “AI” sample written by ChatGPT via GPT-4, and the updated copy based on the same topic here.)
In the table below, you can see how each tool scored the copy I wrote from scratch, the copy I took from ChatGPT directly with no prompt modification, and that same copy tweaked with the “perplexity and burstiness” prompt :
Below is a brief overview of the tools included in the table and some of their key features.
Originality.AI is a paid tool described as “the most accurate AI content detector and plagiarism checker built for serious content publishers.”
It costs $.01 per credit, which scans 100 words. It also features a plagiarism scanner alongside the AI scanner.
As you can see from the chart above, this is the only AI scanner with 100% confidence that the human content was human and that the AI content was AI (while also being correct in all cases).
Hive Moderation (discussed later in the article) essentially had the same conclusion with a 0% AI score for the human content and 99.9% confidence the two AI-generated texts were AI.
On top of having a Chrome extension and an overall score, Originality.AI added a feature highlighting the specific sections of the content you paste that it predicts will and won’t be AI.
I use this tool most frequently to check for AI content personally. My most frequent use-case is checking content submitted by freelance writers we work with for AI and plagiarism.
Writer offers a free detector that works on up to 1,500 characters and requires API access for more.
This tool essentially thought all of the submissions were relatively likely to be human-generated.
Writer is an AI writing platform, and the free content detector also allows you to input a URL to check.
There is no plagiarism feature within this tool directly, and it gives you an overall score but doesn’t mark specific sections as likely or unlikely to be AI-generated.
The Copyleaks AI Content Detector has a few interesting features:
The tool is free, and while a single scan doesn't do both, there's also a plagiarism detector.
It accurately identified much of the human-generated content as human and much of the AI-generated content as AI. However, it wasn't always confident and was incorrect in some individual sections.
AI Text Classifier is a free tool from OpenAI, the company that created GPT (which is what runs many generative AI tools) and ChatGPT.
If you thought the company that makes the most popular AI tools would have the most accurate detector, that didn't ring true for our test.
The tool identified the human content as “very unlikely” to be AI-generated but identified the content from OpenAI’s own platform as “unclear” if it was AI-generated and “unlikely” AI-generated with and without the additional prompt.
The tool is free (you need an OpenAI account). There aren't a lot of bells and whistles and no plagiarism check.
You get a finding (like what you see in the screenshot) but no precise score. It also won’t highlight specific sections of copy for their individual likelihood of being AI-generated or not.
Crossplag offers a few free scans without an account. When logged in, you'll get unlimited free scans. The tool does give an overall score but doesn't offer the ability to check for plagiarism or mark up individual sections of the content.
Crossplaq identified the human and AI content as 99% human. It is worth noting that the tool repeatedly calls out that it performs better on longer text.
Our samples here were above their 200-character minimum recommendation but on the shorter side.
GPTZero has free and paid versions. The free version gives you a score and has some pre-loaded examples.
The paid version also offers a plagiarism checker, highlighting AI content, and the ability to bulk upload multiple pieces of content (which is actually designed for a classroom environment, like many of these tools).
Pricing for the paid tools isn't listed on the website, but you can fill out forms to request access to the paid tool and the API.
The free version of the tool identified all three of our writing samples as likely entirely human.
Sapling AI Detector offers free and paid versions, a Chrome Extension, an API, an overall score and sentence highlighting.
Sapling identified the human content as mostly human and the AI content as almost entirely AI. However, it identified the “perplex” and “bursty” ChatGPT content as highly likely to be human.
The Content at Scale AI Detector is free and offers a score with a breakdown of different elements within the content (predictability, probability, and pattern) and pre-populated examples.
No plagiarism detection option exists, and individual content sections aren’t highlighted.
Content at Scale rated all three samples as 92% human or higher.
The human did have the highest human percentage, followed by the prompt-modified GPT content and the content generated by the simplest prompt.
ZeroGPT is a free tool that offers an overall score and highlighting but no plagiarism detection.
The tool returned low percentages of AI-generated likelihood across the board. It roughly corresponded to the human-ness of the samples, with the human-generated sample getting the lowest AI percentage, followed by the burstiness / perplexity prompt, and then by the simpler prompt).
GLTR, or the “Giant Language model Test Room,” is a free tool that was a collaborative effort between Hendrik Strobelt, Sebastian Gehrmann, and Alexander Rush from the MIT-IBM Watson AI lab and Harvard NLP.
The tool offers some overall scoring but mainly shows whether each word within a text was one of the 10, 100, 1,000 or outside the 1,000 most likely words to be generated by AI based on the prior context in the text. There is no plagiarism feature set here.
The tool returned the highest number of “likely words” and particularly likely words in the top 10 for the text generated by the simpler prompt.
Still, the distribution was similar for the human and additional prompt copy in this small test.
This is a free detector that gives an overall prediction and score. It doesn’t have any plagiarism or highlighting features.
This tool generated over 99.9% likelihood of human content for all three samples.
Corrector AI Detector is a free tool with a 600-word count limit and a percentage score. There is no plagiarism or highlighting features for the tool.
The tool labeled each of the samples with a very low percentage probability of being “fake” or AI.
The Writefull GPT Detector is a free tool with a simple score and API access. There is no highlighting and no plagiarism detection.
It found all three samples as likely human but did have the ChatGPT content with the simplest prompt with the highest AI likelihood (19%).
The Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection tool is free (with character limits and requiring sign-in after several uses).
It doesn't offer plagiarism or highlighting but does allow you to break content out by sections and get segment-specific scores.
Hive essentially scored each writing sample properly, with a 0% likelihood of being AI for the human content and 99.9% scores for the AI samples.
(Only Originality.AI had a similar confidence level while being accurate across the samples.)
The paraphrasing tool is a re-writer, and they offer this free AI content detector with an overall conclusion and highlighting and no plagiarism features.
The Paraphrasing Tool concluded that each of the text was likely human.
AI Writing Check is a free tool that offers a score, has a word maximum, and does not feature text highlighting for AI probability or plagiarism features.
AI Writing Check identified all three writing samples as human.
Again, it’s essential to caveat my key findings here because three short writing samples are very small samples to draw steadfast conclusions about the individual tools.
That said, I found a few interesting patterns related to AI writing detectors in general:
I’d recommend keeping an eye on at least a few of these tools if you find AI detection useful in your projects.
The pace of innovation across AI content generation, editing and detection may quickly make your favorite tool obsolete.
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Bing seems to be rolling out site name and favicons to its search results, much like Google did months ago on desktop and last year on mobile search. Now when you look at the Bing search results, you may start to see little favicons at the top left of the search result snippets, with the site’s name above it, some have noticed and we are able to replicate at Search Engine Land.
What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of Bing showing the site name and favicon for this site:
Here is what it looks like without it in Bing search:
Let’s compare that to how it looks in Google search:
Controlling site names with Google. Google back in October explained that Google Search uses a number of ways to identify the site name for the search result. But if you want, you can use structured data on your home page to communicate to Google what your site’s name should be. Google has specific documentation on this new Site name structured data available over here.
I do wonder if this works the same way for Bing Search?
Site name issues with Google. Google has had some issues with showing the correct site name in Google Search, so much so the CMO of Salesforce called it “extremely damaging to our brand.” Google has since opened a form for you to report issues with your site name in Google Search:
Why we care. Site names and favicons can impact your click-through rate from the search results. If you can control what the site name says and how the favicon appears in the Bing and Google search results, it can be helpful for your brand and traffic. But if they show the wrong information, like “Sales force” with a space, it can be hurtful to the brand.
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Yelp is set to unveil 3 new features to enhance user experience and give businesses more ways to connect with their customers. These new features include:
Yelp Guaranteed. Offers a stress-free experience when hiring home service professionals. To address those concerns and provide a more secure experience, Yelp Guaranteed, is a satisfaction guarantee program offering users up to $2,500 back if something goes wrong with their project.
By participating in the Yelp Guaranteed program, businesses demonstrate their commitment to quality service and customer satisfaction. The Yelp Guaranteed badge on their business page signals to potential customers that they can trust the business to deliver on their promises.
How it works. Upon hiring an eligible business through Yelp’s Request a Quote feature, users will automatically be enrolled in the program. This allows them to submit a claim if they encounter difficulties resolving an issue directly with the business – whether it is due to dissatisfaction with the work performed, property damage related to the project, or the business failing to show up for a pre-paid job.
Availability. Yelp Guaranteed is currently available for eligible Request a Quote-enabled advertisers, based on various qualification factors.
Yelp Guaranteed is accessible in San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Seattle, and Washington D.C., and spans some of the most in-demand home service categories on Yelp, such as movers, plumbers, HVAC, contractors, landscapers, electricians, and more.
In these cities, users can easily find businesses supported by Yelp on iOS by applying the “Yelp Guaranteed” filter in search or looking for the Yelp Guaranteed badge on eligible business pages and in the ‘Projects’ tab. This summer, Yelp plans to extend Yelp Guaranteed’s availability nationwide, make it more prominent across the Yelp app, and introduce it on all platforms, including Android and the web.
AI and Large Language Models. Yelp is working to enhance the search experience by utilizing Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI.
Several new AI-powered search features have been announced, including:
The improved search and discovery features powered by AI and LLMs can surface more relevant businesses to users, increasing the visibility of these businesses on the platform. That increased exposure can lead to more inquiries, reviews, and, ultimately, more business opportunities.
New visual and interactive features. Yelp is also introducing new visual and interactive features for users to share their experiences with businesses and engage with or react to reviews in novel ways.
The new visual and interactive features on Yelp help businesses showcase their offerings more effectively, increase user engagement, enhance storytelling, improve reputation, boost visibility, and gain valuable insights, all contributing to business growth and success.
Dig deeper. Learn more about the new features here.
Why we care. These new features enhance targeting, visibility, and user engagement for businesses, ultimately leading to better advertising outcomes. The AI-driven search features, personalized recommendations, and visually rich content help connect users with businesses that match their specific needs, increasing the chances of conversion. Furthermore, programs like Yelp Guaranteed can instill trust among users, further benefiting advertisers who participate in the program.
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Companies are currently bracing for a potential economic downturn, and many are searching for a solution to their current woes. Increases in labor costs over the past few years, an abrupt churn of employees and clients, looming difficult business decisions and keeping up with the ever-changing landscape of new and emerging technology solutions are all compiling realities in today’s climate—causing further complexities for businesses today.
So where do you turn? AI tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can mitigate many of these fears and create real efficiency and opportunity for your business. Creative solutions like ChatGPT are already a reality for digital advertisers. So what’s next for AI in the industry—and more importantly, how can the industry leverage them to reap their direct benefits, such as increased efficiency, productivity and efficiency?
Savvy digital advertisers are already using AI tools—like ChatGPT—to support creative tasks like writing content (email copy, outlines for long-form content, etc.), generating keywords and code, and creating images with just a few simple prompts. And this is only the beginning. As variations of ChatGPT and similar AI chatbots continue to advance, users will be able to ease on the prompts they give and, in turn, have to modify even less.
Where else will we see AI in digital advertising? Customer support is one area where AI can learn from unique data points of your customers like commonly asked questions, and reply to them as they arise again.
Generative language is also emerging in videos; users can quickly generate and deliver important messages via web portals, email and the like—at scale—to unlock critical time savings. Consider the multi-family industry: with this form of AI, users can quickly upload a few images which AI can use to create a video of their available properties in seconds. It’s these types of forward-thinking solutions that will drive efficiency throughout the industry.
What do emerging AI technologies have in common with navigating economic headwinds? It’s simple: automation can create vast efficiencies within your organization. The need to hire 20 additional strategists to support the grunt work is no longer a necessity; instead, you can automate those repetitive—yet critical tasks—and focus the staff you have on the more strategic side of your business.
One of the most straightforward ways to understand how automation can create these efficiencies within your organization is to look at the salary of one of your digital advertising strategists. On average, strategists bring in around $80-$85,000 annually. So imagine if they’re spending half of their time each day on tasks that could be automated, like account launches and budget management. That’s virtually $40-$45,000 per year per strategist you’re spending on taskwork. Multiply that by a team of 10 strategists, and at the very least, that’s $400,000 a year you’re spending on tasks that simply could have been automated. Automating task work also transforms the time it takes to do it—think days down to seconds.
Once you start reducing the time your employees spend on taskwork, you can put them on more forward-thinking efforts. Creating more productive hours for your team also decreases the number of strategists needed to complete taskwork. That’s the power of automation: It creates benefits for both the business from a revenue perspective and employees from a sentiment standpoint. Both outcomes are important— and both parties come out on top.
AI is taking form in the industry, whether organizations are ready or not. The question is, will you adopt it and stay afloat, or better yet, get ahead? Or will you continue to resist it and get left behind by an organization that can cater to the rising demands of this technology? If you don’t know where to start, begin by thinking of AI as an assistant or alternative solution to hiring.
Despite the promises of automation, AI in digital advertising is still very much like the notion of a self-driving car. Sure, it’s extremely convenient and impressive, but it shouldn’t be left to its own devices. The same rings true for automation. You can’t eliminate the need for creatives—to do it right, you’ll still need a team of strategists pulling the levers and supporting the more strategic side of the business, but the need to fully staff a team for the grunt work is in the rearview mirror.
One of the ways Fluency—an enterprise-level ad automation platform—creates opportunities for scale is through Blueprints—a Fluency-exclusive benefit of the platform. Think of Blueprints as an advertising strategy plan that uses data to build and apply changes to advertising accounts at scale. Why is this important to your advertising strategy? Blueprints offers the ability to create the backbone of your advertising strategy and launch against it with selected accounts for large-scale control. Where it used to take your staff countless hours to launch accounts, Blueprints use dynamic data points, like inventory feeds, to inform advertising account structures and all of the elements contained in them, like campaigns, settings, targeting, keywords, creative and pretty much everything else.
The result? Quality increases, capacity is limitless, and success is sustainable. These are just a few of the many ways partners of Fluency can take advantage of automation to create a meaningful ripple effect across the organization where the work is strategic and engaging.
Explore Fluency’s Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform.
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Stay ahead in the AI-driven workforce! Learn about its impact on jobs, how organizations acquire AI talent, and online courses to future-proof your career.
The post Embracing AI Skills Amidst Job Market Turbulence appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Beginning in June 2023, new Google Ads accounts will no longer be able to include a URL in their account names.
What’s changed. Specifically, when creating a new Google Ads account through the Google Ads API or updating an existing one, if a URL is found in the descriptive_name field, an ACTION_NOT_PERMITTED error will be generated, causing the operation to fail. This change, however, will not impact the descriptive_name field of existing accounts.
Dig deeper. You can read more about the change on the Google Ads Developer Blog.
Why we care. Adhering to new naming conventions is crucial to maintaining a seamless ad experience. By adhering to the new rules, advertisers can avoid encountering errors when creating or updating their accounts, thus ensuring a smooth account setup process, preventing potential delays in launching campaigns, and fostering a more organized and consistent naming convention across the platform.
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Guides are all over the web. Google any word + “guide,” and you’ll probably find someone has written about that topic, no matter how obscure.
But there’s a good reason for this: Well-written guides are extremely valuable pieces of content.
When your audience encounters your guide at the right place and time, it can be life-changing. Your guide may be the cornerstone or the turning point in their experience of a particular topic.
You could teach them valuable skills, introduce them to a vital concept, expand their knowledge, or help them understand a complex subject.
As you’d imagine, a good guide can help build a strong trust between a person and a brand.
And trust contributes to the customer experience. It can eventually translate to profitable action like converting a casual reader into a subscribed follower or turning a fan into a customer.
That’s why it’s time to learn how to create optimized, useful, and comprehensive guides – so you, too, can build trust with your audience through high-quality content.
A guide is a comprehensive piece of content that aims to educate an audience by:
Quite simply, an effective guide will teach you in some way.
But, the best of this content type will meet you at your level of understanding, speak to you in terms you understand, and take you to the next level to broaden your knowledge.
To write a great guide, you need to understand your audience and know their knowledge level about your topic.
These points are crucial to understand because you will use them as a benchmark for where your guide will begin and what it will cover.
Not understanding your audience’s knowledge level about your topic will lead to a less useful guide.
For example, starting a guide on baking bread with information about buying mixing bowls will be helpful only to true beginners who don’t have the right equipment yet. It won’t be helpful for baking enthusiasts who have moved beyond acquiring tools.
So, if you’re unsure what your audience knows or doesn’t know about your topic, you’ll need to do some research.
When all else fails, ask them directly. Post a poll or survey on social media, or post a question asking for feedback on what your audience would like to know about X topic.
Now it’s time to start drafting your guide.
I always start with an outline and jot down everything I know the guide should include.
Then I research the topic to see what I’m missing, what others have written about it, and any additional tidbits I should add.
For example, even as an expert, you don’t want to rely entirely on your brain for fleshing out a topic.
You may know it well, but you also need to ensure you cover all the key areas readers care about.
Start by researching the topic on Google. Look at what the top articles cover and make sure your guide includes all of those sub-topics, too.
For example, say you’re writing a guide on planting tulips. You discover the guides at the top of Google also include information about when to plant them, how to care for them, and additional tips on varieties and container planting. That means your guide needs to be just as thorough.
When your outline is equally as comprehensive as the top articles in Google, you’re still not done. You need to go further.
Include information guided by your expertise (or the brand’s expertise). That’s the mixture of experience and education that’s unique to you that will differentiate your content from the masses.
For instance, in this particular tulip planting guide, the author added information on common pests and fun facts. Similar guides are missing these pieces:
Beyond Google, look at other information sources to flesh out your topic. Research books, look at interviews with experts, or watch videos.
Double-check to ensure you include the most accurate, relevant, and useful details in your guide.
At this point, while your draft is still pared down, it’s a good idea to get it organized.
The best guides have clearly labeled sections with descriptive headings. This format helps readers find the information they’re looking for without having to hunt through unlabeled paragraphs that all bleed together.
It’s also good for SEO, especially if you include keywords in your section headings.
Here’s an example of a Chicago travel guide that uses clear, keyword-rich headings for each section:
Particularly, note that the keyword “Chicago” is included in each heading.
Imagine if each heading was more generic, like “When to Go” vs. “When to Go to Chicago.” The difference is optimization. The latter heading is optimized – and the former isn’t.
If adding the focus keyword in your section headings doesn’t make sense, consider including related terms and phrases instead. You can find these by entering your main keyword into Semrush or Ahrefs.
At the very least, write headings that help your reader scan your guide and find the necessary information.
Guides are typically long-form content for a reason. When readers look for a guide on a subject, they expect comprehensiveness.
For that reason, don’t just skim the surface of your topic. Go deep.
That means you should try to include examples, descriptions, comparisons, or definitions in your guide.
You may use some of these techniques or all of them – it really depends on your topic.
For example, in a guide about making a complex dessert, you might want to describe how it should look and taste to help your audience understand a successful end product.
Similarly, in a guide about bird-watching, you could help your audience identify a particular bird species by comparing it to a similar species and noting the key differences.
Explaining a subject well is an art form, so take the time to get it right to create the most useful guide possible for your particular audience.
Let’s return to high school English class briefly for this one. A useful lesson for writing guides is the importance of referencing sources to beef up your points.
In a nutshell, citing sources gives your content more credibility. Include them, and you’re essentially saying, “Hey, all these other authoritative people on this subject agree with me about this. That’s why you should listen to me.”
Even if you’re a known expert on your topic, including sources still shows that you did your homework. You’re drawing from the collective knowledge that exists on the topic, not just your own brain.
Even further, some claims need proof to be credible – like if you write a guide on birds and claim that 10% of bird species can’t fly. You’ll need to prove that’s true, even if you’re the top bird expert.
So, to add credibility to your guide, look for opportunities to link to authorities on the subject.
Search for recognizable names that are established authorities in the field. (Example: For medical information, known authorities include WebMD, Mayo Clinic, or the American Medical Association.)
Check their credentials and experience on their About page if the name isn’t well-known.
When evaluating websites, look at a variety of factors like their DA (domain authority) score, whether they accept and publish sponsored content, how they label that content, and whether the site is actually providing good information or if they’re just trying to sell you something.
(Note: A good identifier for credible websites is whether they accurately link to outside sources in their own content!)
Along with proving your credibility, linking to other sources can help provide additional information or context on your topic for readers from a trustworthy point of view (one you vetted for them!).
For that reason, consider adding links to related blog posts, ebooks, or even full-length books to allow the reader to learn more.
It’s true what they say: A picture is worth 1,000 words. For that reason, adding helpful visuals to your guide is a great idea.
And, by the way, “visuals” means much more than just a few stock photos. Instead, try to find a variety of visuals in different formats that truly add meaning to your guide and clarify concepts.
Think about what visual elements would add clarity to your text. If you were reading this guide as a beginner, what visuals would help you most?
Without good formatting, long-form guides can be a chore to read.
After all, when faced with a lengthy, unbroken wall of paragraphs on a web page, what’s your first instinct?
If you’re like most people, you probably want to run away screaming. Or, you try to read a few paragraphs, but they all start to run together as your eyes glaze over and your mind wanders.
If that’s your guide people are trying and failing to read, that’s a failed guide.
Instead, the most successful guides are easy to read, scan and skim to find the information you need.
That’s because they are:
With your first draft complete, you can edit and optimize your guide.
Even if you don’t have an editor, self-editing helps you trim your content’s fat and improve it.
Editing steps:
Optimization steps:
For inspiration and guidance, check out these examples of effective guides that incorporate all of the above steps well.
This beginner's guide to hiking the Appalachian Trail details everything you need to know, including a trail overview, when to start, what to pack, where to sleep, what to eat, additional resources to read, and more.
This guide is also a great example of how to link to authoritative and useful sources in your content:
This ultimate guide will teach you every facet of influencer marketing – including the how, the what and the why.
It's super comprehensive and is broken down into chapters like "Getting Started with Influencer Marketing" and "How to Work with Influencers."
This guide is a great example of delving deep into a specific topic. The author breaks down 15 types of mushrooms, how they taste, and how to cook them for delicious results.
The kinds you've heard of – button mushrooms and shiitakes – are included, as well as ones you've probably never seen before, like black trumpet mushrooms or lion's mane mushrooms.
This financial planning guide is a great example of what I like to call "overview" content.
This type of guide provides an introduction to a topic for beginners. It helps them understand what something is, its importance, and how to get started.
This guide doesn't go deep but gives newbies the basics they need to understand the topic and eventually dive in deeper.
This tech stack guide's audience is software companies, so the content is framed for that audience's particular needs and problems.
It also uses vocabulary that the average person won't understand but the average software company staffer or founder will.
Creating a guide can be a huge undertaking, but it's worth it.
A useful guide will earn more than search traffic if optimized correctly – it will also bring in and build connections with people who need the information you're offering.
Provide helpful, readable, educational, and useful information, and your guide just might become the turning point in someone's experience of a topic.
That's powerful and can lead to greater things like growing your audience and, thus, growing your business.
The post How to create a guide that is optimized, useful and comprehensive appeared first on Search Engine Land.
