New: 🏓 Getting on Google's good side

Hey 👋

Late last year, The Verge released an article titled, “The people who ruined the internet.“

The article essentially goes on to say how SEO experts are ruining Google with SEO optimized content that brings no real value to the end user.

It’s a common issue raised by many people who use search to find answers to things.

“Google sucks.” “SEO garbage.” “Give me the cookie recipe already, I don’t want to know about how you sourced your cacao beans deep in a jungle somewhere in Costa Rica.”

That’s one side — consumers complaining about a lack of valuable content in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

But then you get articles like this (‘How Google is killing independent sites like ours‘), where publishers and creators complain how their valuable content is being outranked by generic media conglomerates.

So now we have two groups of people yelling at Google:

1. The people who search and consume content

2. The people who create the content

That doesn’t seem healthy.

I don’t think Larry Page or Sergey Brin planned for something like this to happen.

But what sucks even more is that while there are tons of critics out there saying Google “sucks,” none of them actually give a proper solution.

If this issue were so easy to solve, Google would have already done it.

In moments like this, I’m reminded how within every problem, there’s always an opportunity. An opportunity as a marketer to look at things objectively and see if there’s a disconnect that can be fixed.

Here’s the thing: marketing is both an art and a science. On one end, it’s an art in the sense that you need to know how to attract and retain the attention of your target audience based on what you say.

And on the other end, it’s a science in that you need to know how to leverage marketing channels effectively and know how to to say something on that medium.

• Art: What you say

• Science: How (and where) you distribute it

You can be an amazing writer and have a valuable blog. But if you don’t understand the science of Google’s algorithm, your content will be hard to find. Your content will have high resonance with its intended audience, but low visibility.

You can be a decent writer and have an “okay” blog. But if you know the science of Google’s algorithm, you will get visitors to your website. Your content will have low resonance, but high visibility.

So how do you solve the issue of “bad” content in Google and dying as an independent publisher? You aim for high resonance and high visibility.

You “knowledge stack” the art of writing/creating with the science of distribution.

And the funny thing is this is what Google wants.

This approach is exactly how Marketer Milk outranks Forbes, Zapier, HubSpot, and some other highly authoritative sites for some valuable marketing related searches.

And the common issue I see is either publishers that have great stuff to say but don’t understand on-page and off-page SEO. Or publishers that get a lot of traffic, but it doesn’t convert because they don’t understand what the right topics are or the art of copywriting.

And as AI content continues to make things “suck” even more, this is a huge opportunity for publishers that are serious about building a brand and genuinely helping others.

It’s an opportunity for a marketer to learn how to write like a creative and knowledgable copywriter, but think and publish like a growth marketer.

If you have something valuable to say, you do the world a disservice by turning a blind eye to how algorithms are designed just because you don’t want to “play the game.” And if you have generic stuff to say, with no real substance, you also do a disservice by gaming algorithms.

It’s where you combine both that creates magic. You give Google (or any medium for that matter) what it wants, while also giving your target audience what they want. And right now, it’s never been easier to create magic because many marketers aren’t actually doing it.

Depending on the demand, in future editions of this newsletter, I want to dive deeper into copywriting, growing websites, and building brands. I’ll also talk about how I grew Marketer Milk to over 100K visitors per month with SEO and how I do it for my clients (if these seem interesting, be sure to reply to this email or leave a comment so I know I should make it!).

With that, let's get into what we have in store this week (lots of good stuff):

• Marketing news from the past week

• The roadmap to product-market fit

• 10 writing tips from the world’s best marketer

• A 50-site case study after the recent Google update

• How to get your first 5K followers on X (Twitter)

• Ad from the past

• Website of the week

• Cool marketing jobs

• And much more

🗞 In the news

• More generative AI tools are coming to social apps - Is that a good thing?

• Reddit shares performance data and growth strategy ahead of coming IPO

• Reddit has reportedly signed over its content to train AI models

• Meta’s layoffs continue as ad account team members are replaced with AI

🚀 All things growth & product

From zero to unicorn in 3 years, and the road to product-market fit.

✍️ Copywriting, ads, & emails

10 writing tips from the world’s best marketer, 4 ways to keep distracted readers engaged, a post about Patagonia’s advertising, and a guide to newsletter referral programs.

⚙️ SEO & content marketing

The forums dominating 10K product review search results, a 50-site case study on factors for winning or losing during Google updates, how to get ChatGPT to recommend your brand, and 10 content distribution ideas.

🛍️ Social media & AI

How to get your first 5K followers on X, a guide to TikTok SEO, and how to spot AI generated text.

🦖 Interesting stuff

📣 Ad from the past

💻 Website of the week

🏝 Cool marketing jobs

• Brand & Web Copywriter @ PandaDoc

• Email Marketing Manager @ Apollo.io

• Growth Marketing Manager @ Kustomer

• Director of Content Marketing @ Lyte

• VP, Content Marketing @ Circle

Okay, that's it for now 🖤. See you next Tuesday!

“If you have done something once, you can do it again or you can do it better. The beauty is the pursuit of the limit, not the limit itself. At least that’s what I hope people realize.” — Ashton Eaton

Riddle answer: A Destination URL