JIC94 #1
Hi folks,
Thanks for subscribing to my first weekly newsletter! Itās going to be about digital strategy, content, community and the culture surrounding them. Plus some interesting things that I found online and offline. Lots of research, and I am very excited to share my knowledge with you.
I am Julian - a content and community strategist in the travel tech industry during the day and a blogger/indie maker at night.
This week, Iāve written about content strategy, being scrappy, and on search engine optimization (SEO) and Googleās new hint system.
Online, SEO has shaped the majority of the content that is being churned out - for the goodā¦and the very unfortunate. Iāve shared a profile feature on Gretchen Andrew, an ex-Googler and an artist and self-professed Internet imperialist who uses SEO tricks to propel her art to the top of Google Images. And thereās also a very fascinating rundown by Hubspot on the history behind Search.
Please donāt hesitate to hit the reply button if you find something thatās interesting or just want to say hello š.
Thanks again for being part of this journey,
Julian
>Internet Conversations
For Google, if webpages are the way we interact on the Internet, then relevance comes in the form of high-quality dofollow backlinks.
Last week, Google announced that they were going to move away from not counting nofollow links for ranking purposes and toward a hint system, where nofollow links will not be consideredā¦ save for special circumstances. They also introduced new backlink values - ugc (user-generated content) and sponsored.
Everyoneās confused. But Bing has always followed a hint system, and Yahoo! doesnāt consider nofollow in their page ranking algorithms. Does Ecosia index nofollow links? Hmm.
>My writing for the week
Googleās massive Search makeover: intro to SEO and the new hint system - A no-no-nonsense introduction to those who donāt know what SEO, backlinks and the nofollow attribute value are.
Being scrappy and doing things that scale
The social impact of content production
>Interesting stuff on the web
Newish
Iām taking a power gap and closing it with an information gap
A self-described āInternet Imperialist,ā Gretchen employs the same SEO techniques that businesses use to propel their sites to the top of Google searches to reveal the holes in what the internet knows. She is fascinated by systems ā whether that's how the internet or the art world function ā and she likes learning the rules to figure out where they bend.
Everything Google Has Said On The Nofollow Link Attribute Change
Evolving ānofollowā ā new ways to identify the nature of links
Intercomās Jonathon Colman on why content designers should do less
Applying systems thinking in product design
The Untapped Power of Vulnerability & Transparency in Content Strategy
Evergreen
I Used Only Bing for 3 Months. Here's What I Foundāand What I Didn't
A Brief History of Search & SEO
Are Nofollow Links Actually Good For SEO? Here Is Proof...
How We Got 2,000+ Customers by Doing Things That Didnāt Scale
>Book recommendations of the week
An amazing book on the Bayesian theory, the history behind it, and the whole controversy between Bayesians and Frequentists. McGrayne knows how to create a narrative that unfolds throughout history. Jonathan Bryan from Flatiron Health suggested me this book. Thanks, Jonathan.