Optimized Links in Press Releases & Guest Posts Can Harm Your SEO, And Other Inbound Stories of the Week

Yet again, lots of news happened in the world on inbound marketing: Google updated its algorithm, a social network released an exciting new feature, and one media publication had a hilarious misstep, among other stories.

We know you're down in the marketing weeds all week, and it's really hard to stay on top of the news when you're heads-down creating amazing marketing. So instead of scouring every single news site hoping to get caught up, just keep reading. You'll be finished in no time. ;) Here we go!

Optimized Links in Press Releases & Guest Posts Can Harm Your SEO, Says Google, via HubSpot

This week, Google sneakily updated its Webmaster Guidelines' Link Schemes document with a section condemning unnatural links that "weren’t editorially placed or vouched for by the site’s owner on a page." It also said that "large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links" can also negatively impact a site's search rankings ... which basically means that search engine optimized press releases and guest posts could end up hurting your marketing, not helping it.

That being said, not all hope is lost. For all of us who try to optimize our press releases and guest posts for search (aka every inbound marketer ever), we need to be very careful about how we link anchor text and shift our linking strategies to focus even more on the reader experience. Check out our blog post to get some tips for avoiding the SEO fall-out in press releases and guest posts. 

Advertising on Women’s Thighs is Now a Thing in Japan, via Quartz

Interruptive marketing just got a little more intrusive thanks to a new campaign in Japan that will place ads directly on women's thighs. According to Quartz, participating women must be over 18 and have at least 20 friends on social media. Once they put the stickers on, they must take pictures of themselves wearing the sticker in two different locations and upload them to the internet.

Though Quartz says that "Don Draper would be proud" of this new type of advertising, we're not buying it. The $121 a day marketers could pay to sponsor one ad on one woman's leg could be spent much more effectively elsewhere. (Here are a few suggestions on other ways you could arrange your budget.) 

Get Quick SEO Tips in Your Inbox Every Day for a Week

With all of these SEO changes happening each week, it can feel hard to keep up with it all. Luckily, there are people who study the ins and outs of SEO every day of the week -- and we compiled their advice into easily digestible emails that you could read over your morning cup of coffee. If you want to keep up with the latest and greatest in SEO tips, sign up to get a quick tip in your inbox every day for a week. 

The Chicago Tribune Has Made the Best Internet Mistake of the Day, via Gizmodo

Okay, we all make mistakes, but some of are more prominent (and hilarious) than others. Earlier this week, The Chicago Tribune made one we couldn't help but share with you all today: the newspaper mistakenly published a test post on their website. This is what it looked like:

Poor Tribune. We really included this story for the giggles, especially since most marketers have made the mistake of inadvertently publishing something on their website at least once in their life. Let the lesson for us be to double -- or triple -- check every piece of content before we hit "publish."

Facebook Finally Introduces Embedded Posts, via HubSpot

Hallelujah, Facebook is finally rolling out an embed feature for public Facebook posts! You will be able to embed all public statuses, photos, videos, and hashtags, and users will be able to interact directly with the embedded content. Though the feature is currently only available to certain large media publications, we got really excited about this new feature. Once we all have access to the new feature (possibly within the new few weeks), it will be super simple to embed posts on your blog or website -- just copy and paste a slice of code into your HTML.

This new feature will be a great way to easily share interactive Facebook content -- right now, you just have to screen shot Facebook posts if you want to reference them elsewhere. If you're pumped about this new feature and want to get rolling on using it in your marketing, we have a few ideas for how you could use the new embedded posts.

Netflix Makes Recommendations More Personalized By Adding Individual User Profiles, via TechCrunch

If you have a Netflix account you share with someone else, you've definitely had Netflix recommend totally irrelevant (and often weird) content to you based on the other person's last-watched TV show or move. Luckily, that won't happen anymore with Netflix's new user profiles -- now, new users can create their own "Taste Profiles." While currently only available to new sign-ups, this new feature will hopefully be rolled out to existing users in the next few weeks. 

While I'm pumped to finally get rid of content suggestions based on my little brother's interest in Cartoon Network shows, this update is really exciting from a marketing perspective: this new feature aligns with the recent trend in marketing around personalized, contextual content. Delivering the right content to the right person at the right time is incredibly important to engaging your leads and customers. This is just a really great example of how you can use personalization in your marketing.

What other inbound stories did you hear about this week?

Image credits: fleno.de; Twitter