Category: SEO

See details of post Wanted: Session ideas for SMX West below

We want your input to help us plan our upcoming SMX West conference, which will be taking place on March 13-15, 2018. Specifically, we’d love to hear from you if you have an great idea for a session that you think should be on the agenda. And if you’re interested in speaking at the show, the absolute best way to improve your chances of being chosen is to get involved at this point, by suggesting an awesome idea that really catches our attention.

We’re looking for two types of suggestions:

Session ideas for regular SMX sessions. Most sessions at SMX conferences are 60-90 minutes in length, and feature 2 to 3 speakers. Here, we’re not looking for solo presentations; rather, your idea should be a topic where multiple speakers can each weigh in with their own point of view, opinion and suggested tactics. You can let us know if you’re interested in speaking or would just like to see the session idea considered without nominating yourself to speak.

Session ideas for solo presentations. Solo presentations are keynote level, Ted-style presentations from industry visionaries. We’re looking for the best of the best: seasoned professionals, acknowledged thought leaders, inspiring communicators. People who will wow attendees with their insights and motivate them to chart new territory in their own online marketing campaigns. If you pitch to speak on a solo session, you really need to wow us to be seriously considered. Solo sessions are typically 22 minutes long.

New: Focus On Online Retail Track

view the original article here

i wish you like this post on Google Testing Mobile First Index In The Wild

Google’s John Mueller confirmed yesterday in a hangout at the 15:38 mark that Google is indeed testing the mobile first index in the live search results. He did not explain what percentage of searchers are seeing these live test results but I have to imagine it is really small. With this test, Google is not only looking to see how much it impacts the searchers and current rankings but they are also building new classifiers for debugging purposes.

John explained that these internal classifiers are designed to label which sites have equivalent desktop to mobile pages and which do not. This way they can see if there are any common problems they are noticing across the live web where they can communicate to webmasters what changes they need to make. These forms of communication can be done via blog posts, direct communication from Google, Search Console messages and other means.

John Mueller would not give a date on the release but he did say they are testing things.

link to original source

See details of post Will chatbots become part of the consumer search experience? below

When thinking about the future of organic search, common considerations include the impending mobile-first index, machine learning, AI, natural language processing, voice search, site speed, HTTP 2, personalization and consumer behavior changes led by the Internet of Things and digital assistants.

However, during an inspirational Future of Search meeting with the Bing team and Rik van der Kooi, corporate vice president for Microsoft advertising worldwide, discussion focused on a different topic — how chatbots could form a much greater part of the consumer search experience. Van der Kooi explained that since May in the US (Seattle area), Bing has been testing chatbots directly in paid and organic search results, as shown below.

While chatbot integrations have been in the news over recent months, most people outside of the Seattle area won’t have seen them in action or truly considered how such integrations could be used.

For instance, if chatbot integrations within search results become a future reality, they could be used to carry out the following without ever leaving search results:

• Book a test drive
• Engage with customer service
• Order products and services

The possibilities are vast and shine a light on the importance of APIs and data integrations to enable the next generation of consumer interaction.

The challenges of a chatbot future

For a moment, let’s assume Bing’s testing is successful, and we see chatbots roll out in search results. Getting brands to a point where they can leverage the technology is going to be a challenge never before experienced by owned performance and marketing teams.

Do brands have the data infrastructure and customer service setup to make this happen? Who leads these teams, and are they willing to cooperate? What reporting metrics will be required? New relationships and process will have to be forged and maintained.

Measurement and reporting will also pose new challenges, as consumers will interact with brands through search results pages rather than on-site. Analytics platforms will need to find a way to track these interactions.

If chatbots are to become a part of the consumer search experience in the future, agencies and in-house teams have to set expectations with brands about the level of resource and data integration requirements.

For instance, being an early adopter and investing in new technology may produce underwhelming results until consumer usage becomes mainstream; however, at that point, you’ll be a front-runner with an advantage over competitors.

On the other hand, you can wait until consumer adoption has reached high levels, but you’ll then be playing catch-up to earn visibility within search results.

Prioritizing the short-term, middle and long-term future

view the original article here

i wish you like this article on October 2017 Google Webmaster Report

link to original source

See details of post Beat high-cost paid search clicks by sweating the details below

In some industries and sectors, the per-click cost of search keywords is notoriously expensive — so expensive, in fact, that it dissuades some businesses from even stepping into the fray. When a click can cost you $200 or more, that reluctance is understandable.

At the same time, the costs of not stepping into PPC might be just as pricey, even if they’re not as obvious. In industries where competition is stiff, you could stand to lose a lot by being conspicuously absent from PPC.

So, what’s a business to do?

Fortunately, expensive clicks — even really expensive clicks — don’t have to stop you from venturing into PPC. You just have to make sure that every click counts.

Industries where clicks are costly

Before we get into a discussion about how to make sure every click counts, let’s get clear on the industries and sectors we’re talking about.

Though most advertisers aren’t paying more than a few dollars per click, some industries have average CPCs of $50 or more. Which keywords are garnering these high rates? Here are a few:

1. Business services
2. Bail bonds
3. Casino
4. Lawyer
5. Asset management
6. Insurance
7. Cash services & payday loans
8. Cleanup & restoration services
9. Degree
10. Medical coding services

My agency has clients in education, insurance and legal sectors, and I can attest to the sky-high rates. In fact, I’ve seen click costs of $200 or more with some clients!

How can a business justify playing on this field? Mostly, it comes down to sweating the details to make sure every one of those clicks counts. And by sweating the details, I mean doing the following:

1. Pay more attention to Quality Score

Normally, my team doesn’t manage to Quality Score. This is partly because most of our clients already have excellent Quality Scores, so it’s a non-issue. But sometimes we onboard new clients that have Quality Scores that are just okay.

Usually, we won’t worry too much about these scores because we know they’ll improve over time as a byproduct of good account management. But when a client is in an industry with high costs per click, we give these Quality Scores more attention.

As you know, Ad Rank is determined by a combination of factors, as stated in AdWords Help:

We combine the components of Quality Score (expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience), the max. CPC bid, and the expected impact of extensions and other ad formats to determine Ad Rank. When estimating the expected impact of extensions and ad formats, we consider such factors as the relevance, expected clickthrough rates, and the prominence of the extensions or formats on the search results page.

Consequently, in a high costs-per-click environment, we’ll look closely at ad extensions, keywords, ad relevancy and landing pages to make sure everything’s set up perfectly to boost the Quality Score.

Recently, we went through this with a law firm client. The firm came to us with a decent Quality Score, but we wanted to get it even higher. We ended up creating additional landing pages to make sure that our keywords lined up perfectly with our landing pages. In fact, we ended up creating one set of landing pages for “lawyer” themed pages and another set of “attorney” themed pages to make the match seamless.

2. Keep a tight handle on location targeting

Again, this is something my team does for all accounts, but it becomes even more critical in a high-click-cost environment. Obviously, you want to minimize “wasted” clicks as much as possible — and having your client’s ad display in areas they don’t serve is a big waste!

You might think this point is self-evident, but we recently on-boarded a new client and found that its ads were showing up across the US, even though the bulk of its business was in one particular city. Needless to say, we quickly clamped down on location targeting.

The lesson here? Target the geographic radius of the company’s business, and check traffic periodically to make sure nothing extraneous is getting through. Then exclude as necessary.

3. Look for lower weekend bids

Amazingly, some advertisers turn off their ads on weekends. I can’t fathom why this is. Perhaps they think no one researches universities or lawyers on the weekend. However, weekends can present an excellent cost-saving opportunity.

In some cases, we’ve lowered bids by as much as 75 percent on weekends, and the ads continue to display in the second ad position. More importantly, we haven’t experienced a dip in leads over the weekend or during the week.

4. Focus on what’s converting

Generally, it’s better to have a handful of well-converting campaigns with generous budgets than a wide swath of campaigns with limited budgets.

The problem with campaigns with limited budgets is that those budgets can get used up quickly. In fact, a severely limited budget might not even meet minimum bid thresholds. Consequently, your campaign ends up sitting there, doing nothing.

It’s much better to cut back on the number of campaigns and give more generous funding to those that are actually converting.

To give a simplified example: You have 10 campaigns with a total budget of $100. You assign each campaign a budget of $10. If clicks rise to $12 each, nothing is going to happen.

Instead, pick your one or two top-converting campaigns and assign them appropriate budgets so they can actually convert.

5. Experiment with shared budgets

Another way to address the above scenario is to set up a shared budget. A shared budget is a single budget that’s shared among several campaigns. With a shared budget, you don’t have to try to guess which campaigns are going to convert. It’s also an excellent option when costs and campaign volume vary significantly from day to day.

We’ve deployed this strategy with some of our university and law firm clients, and it’s worked well. It avoids scenarios where some campaigns have used up their entire budget allotment, while others have budget remaining but aren’t seeing any action.

6. Lean into the Google Display Network

Often, we find that costs per click are lower on the Google Display Network (GDN) — sometimes much lower. In fact, I’ve seen $200 Search Network clicks priced at $5 on the GDN!

In addition, the GDN has all kinds of options for placement and targeting, which allows you to get super-specific and thereby minimize waste.

That’s why we’ll often suggest starting on the GDN before moving to the Search Network when industries are hypercompetitive, and clients are competing against big brands with big budgets.

7. Choose your devices wisely

Sometimes, clients feel they should run their ads across all devices: desktop, tablet and mobile. But this isn’t always the case.

Sometimes, click costs are lower on some devices (e.g., mobile) than others, which can create another cost-saving opportunity.

We recently came across a retailer who was running all of their campaigns on mobile — and just mobile. This may seem surprising (especially for a retailer), but for this client it made sense. They were getting great performance on mobile — and cost per acquisition was lower there, too.

8. Spend more time looking forward than back

We constantly look at comparative month-over-month and year-over-year data. But when clicks are super-pricey, there’s a danger in putting too much emphasis on this data. Things always change. New competitors enter the market. Google raises their prices. Or any other number of things can happen.

So rather than getting tied up in knots wondering, “Why are we paying $59 per click when we paid $50 last year?,” you’re better off spending your time on the things you can control.

Don’t stop sweating the (right) details

Sweating these details won’t turn expensive clicks into cheap clicks. But it can sometimes bring down costs a bit and, more importantly, help make sure that every click counts.

view the original article here

See details of post 14 ways to get smarter with your content and SEO below

Despite the many ways Google has changed the search game over the last five years, one truth remains: content is the vehicle that drives your consumer interactions, engagements, experiences and, ultimately, conversions.

However, only 41 percent of marketers think their organization is clear on what an effective or successful content marketing program looks like, according to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI).

Marketers aren’t just lacking confidence in their efforts; these are real and measurable deficits. In fact, only 20 percent of B2C and 50 percent of B2B content earns any engagement at all, my company’s research has found.

That’s a lot of wasted effort and resources invested in content that ends up just floating around the web, winning zero business benefit for its creators.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at content through the SMART lens. SMART is a goal-setting framework in which S stands for Specific, M for measurable, A for achievable, R for relevant and T for timely.

Below is my variation that explains how to apply search engine optimization (SEO) to your content within a SMART framework, giving you 14 concrete ways to make your marketing more effective and to win you more business.

S —  Specific content wins every time

Content is not about what your marketing team wants to say. It is about providing insight and information that your audience actually wants to hear.

SMART content is designed for a specific audience, based on your understanding of their needs, preferences and intent.

1. Get to know your audiences.

There’s much more to this than keyword research. Where do your consumers live online? What’s their intent when performing certain types of searches or engaging your brand in social? What action are they most likely to take at that point? Understanding the audience you’re writing for is the foundation on which SMART content is built.

2. Discover opportunities through topical research.

How well do you understand the competitive environment in the verticals for which you’re creating content? Today, you’re competing for eyes and clicks. Your competitors may be other companies, but you could be competing for space in the SERPs against media brands, bloggers, influencers and more. Without that bigger-picture, bird’s-eye view of relevant search and social spaces, you’re flying blind.

Evaluating the content gaps not covered by your competition provides you with opportunities to create engaging content that speaks to people in the key moments that matter.

3. Choose content formats wisely.

Which media will you incorporate to best illustrate your message, engage your audience and reach people across platforms?

Don’t limit yourself; a single piece of content can incorporate several types of media, including socially shareable images, quick video clips and embedded media, like SlideShares.

This gives you various ways to convey your message, but it also allows you to appear in different types of search results (like Google Images) and on different search platforms (like YouTube or SlideShare’s internal search), as well.

M — Measurable content delivers on the metrics that matter

Content marketers are getting better at proving the business value of their activities. Just two years ago, only 21 percent of B2B marketing respondents to CMI’s annual content marketing survey said they were successful at tracking ROI. Now, in 2017:

• 72 percent are measuring their content marketing ROI.
• 51 percent are using a measurement plan to provide both insight and progress toward the business goals.
• 79 percent are using analytics tools.

How can you make your content marketing efforts measurable?

4. Choose metrics that matter and align with your business goals.

Which KPIs tell the true story of your content’s success? Ideally, you’re going to measure your content’s performance through the entire funnel, right from lead generation and audience-building to nurturing, conversion, sales and right on through post-sales to retention and evangelism.

Site traffic, lead quality, social shares, time on site and conversion rates are among the top metrics used by B2B marketers to determine content success. Priorities are similar for B2C marketers.

5. Make search engine optimization a core component of content creation.

Improve your visibility and key metrics like engagement, time on site, sharing and conversions with strategic content optimization.

Apply readability standards and optimize title tags, meta descriptions, subheadings, images and text in line with current SEO standards.

Keep visitors clicking and engaged with smart internal linking that both improves user experience and resurfaces your most popular, highest-converting content.

6. Accelerate with automation.

Machine learning is growing in importance in search, especially where data sets are large and dynamic. Identifying patterns in data in real time makes machine learning a great asset to understand changes in your customer base, competitor landscape or the overall market.

Ideally, your content automation system will include reporting to tell you not only how each piece is performing but also make recommendations to help you focus on your most valuable opportunities.

Automation allows you to manage routine tasks with less effort so that you can focus on high-impact activities and accomplish business goals at scale.

A — Actionable content is always on & ready for activation

By actionable content, I mean that which is ready to answers users’ questions but also is valuable way beyond the initial period of promotion after publishing.

7. Empower your content creators with technical SEO support.

Last month, I wrote about the importance of balancing technical and non-technical SEO within your organization. If you want your content to perform its best, you need to support your creative team with a technically sound, optimized online presence.

Site structure and hierarchy, meta data, mobile readiness, internal linking, site speed, coding errors and other technical SEO factors can all affect your content’s ability to rank.

Further, they can affect readers’ ability to access and enjoy the content and then take next steps. Get your technical and non-technical SEO in order to set your content team up for success.

8. Optimize for activation across multiple channels.

Search engine marketing is the second-most commonly used paid content promotion tactic, next only to social advertising.

Push your content to social channels like Twitter and Facebook, but don’t forget other channels like LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+.

Ideally, you’re going to have some understanding of your audience on each platform and which channels will be most receptive to each new piece. Make sure you’re optimizing your social posts for the platform on which you’re posting — cutting and pasting the same post across all channels doesn’t cut it.

R — Resonate with content promotion in relevant channels

Even if you build it, they will not come until attracted. The competition for eyes and minds is fierce; increase the efficacy of your organic efforts and promotional spend by targeting the right people in the right places at the right time.

9. Amplify in social channels for early traction.

Low spend minimums on channels like Twitter and Facebook make it affordable to run experiments against different audience segments and see where your content resonates best.

Plus, that initial boost of activity gives your content authority and appeals to the social networks’ ranking algorithms, helping you get more organic reach.

If you are tracking and measuring correctly, you can see which audiences are not only engaged, but converting. That’s where you want to allocate your content-promotion budget, rather than having some predetermined amount of spend per channel that runs its course regardless of performance for each piece.

10. Syndicate and use paid promotion to reach targeted audiences outside your existing network.

Syndication takes content you’ve already published on your site and republishes it elsewhere, exposing you to another publication’s audience. You might be able to find organic syndication opportunities, and there are plenty of paid syndication services like Outbrain, Taboola or Zemanta.

If you’re looking at large-scale syndication, read Danny Sullivan’s caution on using links in syndicated pieces first to stay on the right side of Google.

11. Don’t forget email!

Your consumers want to hear from you. In fact, 86 percent want to receive emails at least monthly from companies they deal with, a MarketingSherpa survey found in 2015.

Make your call to action (CTA) to click through and read the content crystal-clear. Avoid placing competing CTAs in your email, and resist the urge to try to sell in every communication. Your content is designed to do the work of helping them take the next logical step.

T — Tangible business results are derived from SMART content

KPIs like social interactions and site visits give you a great idea of how well your content performs in search and social, but you need tangible business results to prove value.

12. Make content profitable with CTAs that drive performance.

What action would you like readers to take? Which of your site’s conversion pages is currently converting best and generating the highest-quality leads? These insights will help guide your CTA selection, but remember, your CTAs should also match the consumer intent you’re targeting with each piece. Don’t forget to include embedded performance tracking for both site traffic and conversions.

13. Incorporate elements that support multiple business functions.

Make your content multidimensional with elements to build brand authority, inspire or educate on product (or service), encourage engagement and more.

Incorporate testimonials into your content, where they can serve the purpose of providing social validation within the context of an existing consumer experience. Develop author personas to give your content greater authority and build the profiles of key employees and executives.

14. Improve ROI with ongoing content management and optimization.

How much content does your organization have sitting on-site and around the web? Each piece is an opportunity for ongoing traffic and lead generation, but only if it’s kept in line with constantly changing SEO standards.

see more here

i hope you like this post on Google: No Changes On Use Of Image Meta Data In Search

Back in 2014, Matt Cutts formerly of Google talked about meta data in images and basically said they reserve the right to use it, that Google is able to parse it out but did not comment if they use it for rankings or display or both. Well, he did say they did use it for showing more details about the photos in the image thumbnails on Google Image search but did not comment about the ranking component.

Here is that video:

link to main source

See details of post Google: First Click Free is over, being replaced by Flexible Sampling below

Most online news publications are not able to support themselves with advertising these days. For this reason, among others, Google is yielding to publisher requests and replacing its much-debated “First Click Free” program with what it calls “Flexible Sampling.”

Content and news publishers will now control whether and how many articles they want to let searchers access before showing a paywall or subscription prompt. The company is also working on an array of other tools to help boost publisher subscriptions.

End of First Click Free

Google’s VP for news, Richard Gingras, told me last week that the company has been collaborating with publishers and testing the new approach with The New York Times and Financial Times specifically. But despite allowing publishers greater flexibility, Google is still recommending (but not enforcing) that publishers make some content available for free in search results:

Based on our investigations, we have created detailed best practices for implementing flexible sampling. There are two types of sampling we advise: metering, which provides users with a quota of free articles to consume, after which paywalls will start appearing; and lead-in, which offers a portion of an article’s content without it being shown in full.

Publishers will not be required to provide free content to be indexed. Gingras said that Google will be crawling full articles behind the wall for indexing but that publisher decisions about how much content to sample to search users will not impact rankings in any way.

Subscription optimization

Gingras said Google is going to use ad-targeting tactics to identify which audiences are most likely to subscribe. He said that publishers would need to share their audience profiles, and Google would then seek out lookalike audiences to maximize subscriber signups.

He added that different offers and content might be shown to different audiences based on a “propensity to pay” or subscribe. Google will be using its machine learning and other capabilities to find the right audiences, based on publisher data. Publishers will be able to adjust the presentation of content and offers according to different sub-segments or profiles.

Subscription optimization won’t become available until next year, however. When I asked if this was going to be a formal ad product — given that it uses ad targeting technology and approaches — Gingras said that it might become one, but that Google was right now “just trying to understand costs and value delivered.”

Removing purchase friction

Google also wants to make it much easier for users to subscribe to publisher content. Gingras cited improved checkout and purchase flows and one-click payments as Google aspirations for publishers. “We’d like to get the purchase process down to one click.”

The company is building a standard or template-based checkout flow that will be available to publishers at their discretion. Publishers will be free to ignore it, adopt it or modify it.

Gingras told me that where the user is a Google account holder, the company can prepopulate multiple fields and accelerate checkout. And in cases where there’s a payment card on file with Google, it can enable one-click subscriptions. In real time, the publisher will query Google to determine what category the user falls into and deliver the right experience accordingly.

This attention to improving the checkout experience is especially important on mobile. Pew Research Center data show that 85 percent of US adults access news on mobile devices.

Gingras said that Google wasn’t going to take fees or a revenue share for transactions it delivers or facilitates. He asserted that the company doesn’t want to own the user and that all data would be turned over to publishers.

Showing pubs you subscribe to

check out here

i hope you like this post on Search Buzz Video Recap: Google Algorithm Update, Sitelinks Searchbox Bug, Apple Drops Bing & Happy Birthday Google

This week in search I cover the pretty big ongoing Google algorithm and ranking shifts, you want to check this out. Google said they do look for spam patterns between Search Console accounts. Google bug dropped the Sitelinks search box, Google is working on fixing it. Google is serving more AMP content on the mobile results now. Google said competition is different in different Google regions. Google said when going HTTPS make sure to do it all at once. Google is testing audience reviews in movie knowledge panels. Google phone call organic extensions are rolling out to more. Google is rolling out local finder website mentions. Google does still support pubsubhubbub, now known as WebSub. Google added an export button to the reports in the beta Google Search Console interface. Google launched their new shopping ads ad units to appease the EU. Google AdWords now allows bulk cancels of accounts. Google AMP testing new faster AMP cache. Apple dropped Bing and went back to Google. Google celebrated their 19th birthday this week! That was this past week in search at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

url to original source

See details of post Google’s ‘Manhattan project’: Home device with a screen to compete with Echo Show below

Google generally doesn’t do as well when it builds “follower” products — think Google Plus or Allo. But there are other examples where Google has excelled with later entries (e.g., AdWords, Maps). Right now, Google Home is a follower product seeking to break out of Amazon Echo’s shadow.

On paper, Google should win in this market. It has a larger developer ecosystem. And it has a better assistant. But Amazon is being very aggressive by innovating quickly and offering a dizzying array of devices at different price points. Amazon also has a more powerful sales channel. Overall, Amazon is out-innovating the rest of the “smart speaker” market at the moment.

Amazon now has two devices with screens: Echo Show and the new Echo Spot. According to TechCrunch, Google is also working on a Home device with a touchscreen:

Two sources confirm to TechCrunch that the Google device has been internally codenamed “Manhattan” and will have a similar screen size to the 7-inch Echo Show. One source received info directly from a Google employee. Both sources say the device will offer YouTube, Google Assistant, Google Photos and video calling. It will also act as a smart hub that can control Nest and other smart home devices.

A Home with a touchscreen could run Android apps and offer a stronger screen experience than the sub-optimal Echo Show. It would also enable video calling and be compatible with entertainment services such as Netflix.

Echo Show, right now, doesn’t fully utilize the screen and creates consumer expectations it doesn’t fulfill. An Echo Show 2.0 will likely be an improvement. (I haven’t been hands-on with the new Echo Spot.)

view the original article here