Matt Cutts took to YouTube this week to answer the following question:
“Google changed the search engine market in the '90s by evaluating a website's backlinks instead of just the content, like others did. Updates like Panda and Penguin show a shift in importance towards content. Will backlinks lose their importance?”
He said at the moment people care about the quality of the content on a particular page. However, over time backlinks will become less popular. We are all fully aware that Google are investing in conversational search. In order to figure out what someone is saying they need to understand natural language and the meaning behind it. Finally, yes backlinks will eventually lose their importance in ranking, however in the next few years links will still be used to assess the basic reputation of pages and of sites.
Matt also reminded users to use links wisely and not attempt to trick search engines. Always check with Google's guidelines first.
Exciting news, yesterday Twitter announced on their blog that they will be introducing language targeting.
“Advertisers can now target Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts in languages that their audience understands, while users are eligible to see highly relevant ads in their language. Along with language-specific analytics, this targeting is available to all advertisers globally and through our Ads API.”
Overall good news for marketers who are attempting to reach a global audience and target message in a specific language. Twitter stated that they will be using different signals to figure out the user’s language - including what is selected on their profile settings and language used on Twitter activity. This also means if they determine that user is multilingual they can be targetable by multiple languages - how clever!
Continuing with the language theme, I have been using DUOlingo, an app that Andy (Wordtracker's co-founder) recommended to me to practice my Spanish. I must say that I have been glued to using this app, I especially like the reminders. You have the option to learn Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and English all for free. You can get the iOS version here
Here's what an Android user had to say:
“Awesome Very easy way to get introduced to a language in a fun and interactive way, works amazing, keeps you consistent and really makes think by not teaching through simple memorization”
Overall users seem to be enjoying and improving with this app - the only downside is that it could do with some more languages. Let’s hope there is more to come soon.
SMX is right round the corner and it will be my first time attending. If you’ve never been and you’re interested in going this year, take a look at what’s in store with our SMX agenda. Don’t forget to head over quickly to the registration page to get your ticket as there are only a few left - we'll see you there!
