u/Greg_Benatar

This is definitely not my field, but I’d like to understand it better for the future.

I understand the basic idea, but what actually makes a backlink more valuable than another? Is it primarily the authority of the website linking to you, relevance, the number of links, or something else?

For example, if I publish an article on my website and then republish that same article on LinkedIn with a link back to the original article on my website, does that count as a backlink? Or is that doing something different from what SEO specialists mean when they talk about building backlinks?

This is definitely not my field, but I’d like to understand it better for the future.

I understand the basic idea, but what actually makes a backlink more valuable than another? Is it primarily the authority of the website linking to you, relevance, the number of links, or something else?

For example, if I publish an article on my website and then republish that same article on LinkedIn with a link back to the original article on my website, does that count as a backlink? Or is that doing something different from what SEO specialists mean when they talk about building backlinks?

Do you start with search volume and keyword difficulty, customer questions and intent, competitor gaps, or something else? I'm interested in how you balance search demand with what is actually useful to the audience.

Not looking for the usual “it depends.”

If you had a room full of marketing graduates who had just started their first jobs, what is one piece of marketing advice you would tell them not to take at face value? Something you've followed, questioned, or eventually ignored because your actual experience taught you differently?

I'll start: synergy, growth hacking and AI-powered.

I'm sure some of you know the billboard I'm talking about.

There was a dentistry campaign with the bold headline, "We Make Sexy Teeth" (around 2020, I think), yet almost nobody in the ad was actually smiling or showing their teeth.

At first, I thought it was an odd creative choice and wondered whether the creative had missed the mark. Then I realized something... I'm still thinking about it years later. Maybe that was the objective all along.

It reminds me of a principle in advertising: people don't always remember the ads they liked. They often remember the ads that made them think.

If you remember the ad and you were the creative director, would you have shown big smiles, or do you think the curiosity made the campaign stronger? It certainly sparked conversation, at least from what I remember.

I'm looking to hear from SEO professionals and those leading digital marketing teams.

If you had to teach a CEO or Managing Director just one SEO metric to pay attention to, what would it be, and why?

It's easy to get lost in rankings, impressions, clicks, backlinks, and dozens of other reports. Which metric do you believe best reflects real business impact?

Always looking to learn from those working in the field.

I'm looking to hear from SEO professionals and those leading digital marketing teams.

If you had to teach a CEO or Managing Director just one SEO metric to pay attention to, what would it be, and why?

It's easy to get lost in rankings, impressions, clicks, backlinks and dozens of other reports. Which metric you believe best reflects real business impact? Always looking to learn from those working in the field.

For marketers and media buyers.

You can have brilliant creative. You can have brilliant placement.

Sometimes you can't afford both.

If you had to choose, would you rather invest in exceptional creative with average media placement, or exceptional placement with simple creative?

There isn't a right or wrong answer. I would just like to hear how you'd approach the trade-off and why.

We talk about digital ads but I keep seeing brands go back to mall placements, billboards near food courts, screens at entrances. And there's something to it, you've got someone standing right in front of your brand with nowhere else to be. But is it actually converting or is it just a brand awareness play that's hard to measure?

To marketers, ad creators and media buyers in this community. The digital vs traditional debate has been going on for as long as I can remember, even with over 25 years of experience in the outdoor advertising space, and i can say it's always felt like the wrong conversation. The best campaigns I've both worked on and seen don't choose sides, they find the moment where both ad formats work together and amplify each other. Would love to hear from people who've actually seen it done well, big budget or small. Could be a campaign you worked on, one you admired from the outside, or even a small brand that just figured it out quietly. And is integrated thinking even something you're recommending to your clients, or is the budget conversation still forcing the either/or choice?

We run a monthly mailer through MailChimp to our existing clients and have been noticing a steady rise in unsubscribes since we moved from quarterly to monthly sends. We clean our list every month, fixing legacy data, removing wrong emails and updating contacts but the unsubscribes keep coming. Deliverability has also been an issue. The strange part is we are still seeing some conversions come through so the content is landing with some people. My gut says it's the frequency but I could be wrong. Has anyone been through the same thing?

To the marketers and media buyers here, I’d like to get your perspective.

What does a good Out-of-Home brief actually look like to you? From what I’ve seen, a lot of briefs lean heavily on formats, locations, and budgets, but miss some of the fundamentals. There’s often very little around audience mindset, context, or what the campaign is actually meant to do. And it tends to show in the final output, especially when creative gets designed in isolation rather than for the environment it lives in.

Maybe I’m being a bit too critical. But are others seeing the same, or am I off base?

For me, Its the overloading of the space. If its not too much copy, its weak visual hierarchy, or no real thought about how the placement context affects visibility and impact. It often feels like the execution is designed in isolation, instead of being built for the scale, context, and pace of the medium. Its a little frustrating i won't lie.

Is it just me or am I being a bit too harsh?