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On Page SEO checklist: Blogging for People and Search Engines

This is the third article in a series of guides for content specialists on how to write successfully both for people and search engines in 2017. Check out previous one and stay tuned for new updates. 

Top-rated bloggers don’t only have excellent writing skills, they also take responsibility for their content’s performance in search engines. They’ve learned one simple trick – you have to write both for people and search engines.

Of course although over the time search engines have become smarter, and learned to understand the context, not just the separate keywords, search engine optimization is not going anywhere just yet. The good thing is, it is becoming technically easier to promote the website now than it was a few years ago, because there are a lot of tools that do all the boring work for you.

In this article, we’ve collected the complete list of the tools that can be used for content optimization of your page. Step by step, following the logic of SERP anatomy, we’ll explain how to make each detail of your article attractive to both users and search engines.

On-Page SEO Checklist 

Title 

As a writer, you sure understand the power of a good title. It’s highly important for attracting the user’s attention and increasing the page CTR: they will see your title on the SERP, and if they don’t like it, they will most probably not read your article.

From the SEO point of view it makes sense to put your keyword in the title only if it is short and high-volume: the recent SEMrush research on ranking factors confirmed it. If you are trying to promote for a long-tail keyword, it will be quite tricky to put all of it into the title, so better focus on the quality of the content, Google and social shares will do the rest for you.

The title should be there not only for users, but for crawlers as well. So make sure you have title tags on your page. Also notice that while your H1 tag and title should not necessarily be repeating each other, you would still want them to be related.

Check out this article whenever you run out of ideas for great headlines: How to Write Great Headlines for the Web.

Related tools

On Page SEO Checker gathers information about the correct H1 and title tags and checks keyword stuffing there.

URL

Before anything else, your URL has to be descriptive and meaningful (please avoid weird number and random letter combinations!). And of course the URL is a very good place for your keywords.

Also don’t forget that in a year you may want to update your content (including the title), so make sure your URL is evergreen and can be later applied to slightly or even drastically different content. If you decide to change the URL, do not forget about redirection in order to avoid 404 mistakes.

Your URL length matters — it’s best to keep it around 3 to 5 words long. Also, when it comes to URL structure, using underscores as word separators is not recommended.

Want to learn more? Check out this article: On-Page SEO Basics: URLs.

Related tools

SEMrush Site Audit checks all the URLs on your website for length, for underscores and helps you make sure none of the URLs has too many parameters in them.

Meta Description

Meta description does not impact your rankings in any way, but as I said earlier, you have to think about your users as well. Well-written meta description will help them better understand what your article or page is about.

Also do not just let Google choose the meta description for you: if you do, you may find a random phrase from your page residing there. And avoid duplicate meta descriptions across different pages.

Get some more ideas here: On-Page SEO Basics: Meta Descriptions.

Related tools

SEMrush On Page SEO checker — the group of Content ideas provides you with all the tips you need to make your content better from the SEO standpoint. For example it will help you make sure that you put tags to all the right places, and if your SEO specialist resorts to the old keyword stuffing in <meta> tag.

SEOmofo is a SERP view generator. Enter your URL, title and description to manage the number of symbols and preview your article’s appearance on SERP.

Portent – another SERP view generator.

Keywords and Semantically Related Words

To provide users with the most relevant results for their particular search terms, use your target keywords within the first 100-150 words of your text and add some additional weight by placing semantically related words.

To improve your understanding of the idea of semantic search, check out this recorded webinar: The Future of SEO: 5 Ways to Adapt Your Content for 2016 with Andy Crestodina.  

Related Tools

SEMrush SEO Content Template gives you a whole list of semantically related keywords for the ones you plan to create content for. There you also get examples of content the top-10 ranking websites put on their pages.

SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool gives you a huge list of keyword ideas based on your single seed keyword.

H1…H3

Structured text is easy to read and navigate through. There are plenty of methods for text structuring. If you are dealing with a lot of information, you can use a list with numbered bullet points – it’s easy to perceive and allows you to include plenty of information in the article without sacrificing the user’s attention.

The second way is more ‘classic’ – write an introduction pointing to the problem and then divide the text into 3 to 5 main points and title them with descriptive subheads. In my experience, 3-5 statements within one article is more than enough to prove your point. (Fewer might not look like enough to convince a reader, more might make the article difficult to read.)

In SEO language – don’t forget to use H1…H6 tags for your subheads (and place your target keywords in the subheads, of course). Learn How To Use H1-H6 HTML Elements Properly.

Related tools

SEMrush Site Audit helps you avoid a lot of troubles with H1 tags: it will tell you if any of them are duplicated, missing, or in abundance on the page. Any of these things can become an issue in the eyes of Google.

Video Content

Adding video content to your page can also help you structure it and get more attention. It also attracts the audience that prefers visual content.

Although it hardly benefits you from the SEO point of view, absence of videos can harm your visits, especially if everyone else in the niche has them. Also, having a script besides the video has become a common practice, because it helps both, users and crawlers, notice your content.

If you are placing your own videos, don’t forget to optimize them as well. Check out this guide:  Advanced Hacks for YouTube Optimization.

Related Tools

SEMrush On Page SEO checker – this instrument will check if websites with a higher position for a particular keyword have video content on their pages.

SEMrush Social Media tracker provides you with detailed analytics for your video content and its performance through all social networks. You can monitor video metrics, such as likes, dislikes, and shares, track the audience activity, engagement, and interest trend for every video posted by you or your competitors.

Images

It’s been proven that “content with at least one image significantly outperformed content without any images. However, we didn’t find that adding additional images influenced rankings.” And, as we mentioned above, it’s a great way to structure your article and customize it. Some experts recommend to insert an image in the text in depth of one scroll, so the user would always have an image on the page while reading. We think it’s optional if you have some other eye-catching elements on the page like subheads or quotes.

Do not forget that the image format changes from platform to platform (they are cropped differently on Facebook, Twitter, and any other social network or search engine), so pay attention to microformats. Make sure that links to your domain and header images will look good on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and any other platform.

Talking about SEO: images that are too large can slow down your site speed – one of the most powerful user experience constituents. So be sure to use the right file size and format, and use image compressors correctly to reduce image size while maintaining visual quality.

Descriptive image file names and the use of ALT tags can help images from your page appear in Google image search results.

For more information, check out this great article by Shopify: 10 Must Know Image Optimization Tips.

Related tools

SEMrush Site Audit checks all the images for the presence of ALT attributes in the page code.

Content length

You have to be sure that your content is long enough – it’s good for readers and search engines. But keep in mind that there is no exact ‘perfect’ content length; it all depends on your goals and the content purpose.

The main point is: people love longer content because it implies deeper topic coverage.

And it’s a proven fact that longer content tends to rank higher.

Here’s more proof of why big content wins, along with some recommendations on writing lengthy texts: 10 Things to Keep in Mind When Working on Big Content.

Related tools

SEMrush On Page SEO checker will provide you with the information about your (and your competitors’) content length on a page ranking for a particular keyword.

SEMrush SEO Content Template tells you how long your future content should be so that it’s on the level with your competitors’.

Readability

There is another important content metric — readability, which shows if your content is easy or difficult to read. Readability level depends on a lot of factors. Not only grammar and syntax play an important role, but also the design and structure of the text — everything that can influence our perception. Basically, the secret is simple — know your audience (are they advanced specialists or beginners?), good writing skills and focus on the message will help find a balance. If you want to check your text’s readability score — there are some tools that can help.

For more information and recommendations about readability tools, check out this Raven’s post – Ultimate list of online content readability tests.  

Related tools:

SEMrush On Page SEO checker helps you make sure that your content is not less readable than your competitors’.

Readable checks the pasted or typed in text for readability.

Readability Test Tool checks how readable is the text under the specific URL.

Internal Links

Internal linking helps you enrich your content with additional useful information for readers while attracting attention to the related content you’ve created. Also, internal linking is one of the SEO essentials – it has a big influence on search engine bots’ behavior. Crawler starts visiting pages that could otherwise be lost. And in case you did not have time to dive deep into backlink building, internal linking may be a good place to start.

Check out this article for more information: 3 Internal Linking Strategies for SEO and Conversions.

Related tools

SEMrush On Page SEO checker lets you know if the page has any internal links leading to it.

SEMrush Site Audit compiles all the internal links that are broken in one list so that you can fix them quickly.

Social Sharing Buttons

Social shares don’t count as links, but they will help your content earn more SEO badges and cover bigger audience — add social sharing buttons and make them noticeable. And it seems that content with a lot of social shares is more likeable and trustable in the eyes of random users. Also, if an opinion leader or someone with a big scope of followers likes or reblogs your content, it’s very likely that it will attract new readers to you.

Related Tools

SEMrush Social Media Tracker searches for your rivals’ posts that gater a lot of user interactions and helps you gather ideas for the topics and formats of your future content.

Click to Tweet – use Click to Tweet tool for sharing the main statements of your article. Choose a quote, insert it into Click to Tweet; embed generated a link to your blog  and you’ll get tweetable, noticeable quote with Twitter logo on it.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is one of the most common SEO problems. Our recent study shows that 50% of websites have some pages with duplicate content. It won’t give you a penalty, but it’s a signal to search engines that your website has little to no value for your readers. Needless to say – your readers won’t appreciate it either.

All aspects of the duplicate content problem are covered here: Duplicate Content SEO Advice From Google.

Related Tools

SEMrush Site Audit provides you with the list of all pages with duplicate content on your website.

Crawlability

Can’t see your article in SERPs, although you think you did everything right? Make sure that your website was not blocked from crawling, otherwise, you did all your work in vain. Crawlability is a difficult technical question most content creators are probably not familiar with, so talk to your webmaster and find a solution.

Meanwhile, check out: 18 Reasons Your Website is Crawler-Unfriendly.

Related tools

SEMrush Site Audit not only checks if all the pages of your site are crawlable, but also provides you with the info about all necessary tags (e.g. headings, <meta> tags and other important HTML attributes).

Page Loading Speed

It’s not even a second – it’s a millisecond delay that can force a user to close your article and go to another website. Sometimes the reasons for delays can be simple, such as images with large file sizes on a page; sometimes they are more serious, including problems with your server. No matter the reason, it’s crucially important to be aware of any page speed issues.

Related tools

SEMrush Site Audit checks load speed and page compression, which are both responsible for the page load time.

Google Pagespeed Insights – the easiest way to check your page load time.

Mobile-Friendliness

If your company’s website is still not mobile-friendly, you are probably missing a part of traffic flow. No, let’s put it this way — you’re losing traffic. Of course, responsive design and mobile website development requires time and effort. It’s not something you can do in a day but it is worth every second you spent on it. Mobile-friendly websites have a strong priority in mobile SERP.

Related tools

Google Mobile Friendly Test  – solution from Google for checking website mobile-friendliness.

Markups

We’ve already talked about the importance of your content’s SERP appearance.  Markup implementations can increase your CTR in times, and the best thing of it, that microdata can be applied to different types of content no matter what topic you are covering.

Look at this great example. Both sites are using Schema markups to provide more information to the user: a list of ingredients, reviews, cooking time and even calorific value.

How does this influence your SERPs? Not in any way. Schema implementation has nothing to do with the direct impact on your ranking. But do you remember about CTR? Exactly! Everything that’s good for your reader is good for SEO.

Related Tools:

SEMrush Site Audit – will give you information about the percentage of pages with implemented markups: Schema.org, Twitter Cards, Open Graph, Microformats.

Google Structured Data Testing Tool – will check if there are no mistakes in markup implementation on your page.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, Google is doing a lot in trying to help unique, informative content get better ranking. But it’s not just Google who decides if your content deserves a higher position – it’s your readers as well. Google doesn’t read your work and grade you with an “A” for excellent wording or exclusiveness of insights; it estimates a level of interest for your article by taking into account users’ behavior and your text’s availability.

You might be surprised to know that some on-page SEO issues have a little to no impact on rankings. At the same time, some issues which have nothing to do with SEO directly, but mostly with writing and content appearance, can have a giant impact on page CTR, time on page and bounce rate –  user experience signals which Google relies on to determine page quality and SERP positions.

Which of these on-page and text elements do you think you might sacrifice without any negative impacts on your article’s ranking? One? Two? Maybe five?

Well, of course, some of them can be ignored, but we intentionally didn’t point them out. Don’t think about a bare minimum. Create a good story and do as much as you can to make your text attractive and noticeable to readers and you’ll maximize your content’s impact. 

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Facebook’s Latest Plan for Fake News

Fake news…the term itself is enough to elicit powerful emotions from whoever is reading an article. There is so much distrust and misinformation on the Internet these days that people can’t make heads or tails of current events. Today we are going to be taking a closer look at Facebook and its plan to quell fake news debacles, but first I must offer a disclaimer: this analysis does not take a political stance.

Rather, I want to look at the fake news update from the perspective of a small to medium-sized business and adopt the perspective of a digital marketer. Why? Because it matters to your social media marketing strategy. Plus, it cannot be denied that people are more skeptical of information today than ever before. As digital marketers, we have to work that much harder to earn the trust of our audience, and it is infinitely easier to lose their trust than it is to gain it.

And, I have to admit, not all news is necessarily political. There is plenty of news that is industry specific and related to business. It is fairly common for businesses to voice their opinions or inform their audience of the latest industry developments. If you have ever posted a news-type article on your blog, then you need to be aware of Facebook’s latest changes.

 Why Did Facebook Roll Out the New Update?

If you were not already aware, Facebook has been under heavy fire from a variety of sources, including the general public, the government, talking heads, and many other organizations. Many have criticized Facebook as only providing an “echo chamber,” and due to political controversy, has taken a lot of heat due to recent misinformation that could sway people’s understanding of current events.

In fact, there have been organizations outside the United States that intentionally inject fake news into US citizens’ Facebook feeds to muddy the waters. There have even been instances of US citizens purposely making fake news as a means to their own ends, be it a politically motivated goal or a way to incite fear to get people to purchase products. And finally, there is the good ol’ Internet trolls and jokers who just think it is funny to mislead people.

Even though some of them are so ludicrous you can’t help but laugh (such as the KFC mutant chicken hoax), misinformation can be damaging to society. But as far as Facebook is concerned, it can also be detrimental to the success of the social media platforms. The new update aims to cut down on misinformation and stymie hoaxes. Facebook posted that it is doing three main things to thwart misinformation, as follows:

• Inhibit the financial incentives that motivate false news creators.
• Create new technology that helps mitigate the prevalence of fake news.
• Help people make better-informed decisions.

That all sounds well and good, but I am curious to see how effective the latest update will be. Furthermore, I am curious to see what other tools Facebook will implement in the future. I doubt that this will be the last update the Facebook unleashes to stop hoaxes, trolls, scam artists, and charlatans. They have existed since the dawn of the Internet, and will likely persist for years to come.

There has been some exciting speculation that special AI systems will be able to track and identify trolls and accounts specifically designed to mislead people. But most people have fearful doubts about general AI. Still, this seems to be an exciting step in the right direction.

 Sharing Content

Given the recent Facebook crackdown on false information, web marketers need to be extra careful concerning what content they engage with on their social media accounts. Some lax small businesses may, every now and then, share another piece of content that populated their news feed. Doing so isn’t all that uncommon because it allows a marketer to inform their audience of breaking industry news without having to instantaneously draft content in response to current events.

However, you need to be more careful now than ever before. We do know that Facebook is cracking down on the fake news in the immediate future, but they may ratchet down on hucksters even more in the future. Not only would sharing a fake news content erode credibility and trust with your audience, but it also perpetuates false claims. Oh, and it isn’t going to do your marketing campaign any favors, either.

If you get flagged too many times, you could lose the ability to purchase Facebook ads. Facebook isn’t only trying to discourage those that post false information; it is also trying to stop false information from spreading like wildfire.

Posting Content

Right now, it doesn’t seem that Facebook is too heavy-handed when it comes to making judgments regarding whether or not a website shares the fake news. Unless you are a diabolical content producer with malicious intentions, I think it is doubtful that you will end up getting flagged by Facebook. But because we don’t know exactly how all the proprietary Facebook code works, it is better to err on the side of caution.

It is more important now than ever – regardless of the update – to check your facts, cite and link to your sources, and publish accurate content. Also, if someone genuinely questions the validity of your content, I would recommend responding with links to your sources. If on the other hand, you seem to be dealing with a troll, you will just have to use good judgment.

Final Thoughts

Before you click the “share” button on Facebook, make sure you scrutinize the information that you are sharing. If you get duped into sharing false news stories every now and then, it doesn’t seem that any negative consequences will arise. However, if you repeatedly get tricked or share misinformation without doing your homework, your account could be banned from Facebook advertising.

Read more……>click Here<

20 Awesome Tools for Social Media Success

Managing multiple social media networks can be tough, and it means that you have to juggle several activities at once. The fact that each network has its own posting rules and the unique audience doesn’t help either.

As a social media manager, I often lose my mind when managing several social media accounts at once. Sometimes I wish I had several clones of myself that could manage each account seamlessly. But hey, there is only one me, surrounded by many tools, and each serves its own purpose.

The following are some of my favorite tools that cover different aspects of social media manager’s work.

Large Toolkits

By “large” I mean those that offer social analytics, content, and SEO functionality, in addition to the standard posting feature. These are a great fit for both large companies and agencies who want to skip buying 10 different tools and are looking for a team management facility.

1. Sprout Social

Considering its impressive array of features, this tool is truly an online marketer’s dream. Sprout Social encompasses everything you need for posting, analytics, and customer success.

Sprout Social is very customer-oriented, in the sense that they provide exclusive features for managing customer relationships. To start, the tool compiles all your messages from Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ into a single stream, allowing you to be super efficient in terms of responding to messages and mentions.

Another great feature, by clicking on a person’s avatar you will be able to see a complete history of your interactions with them and add notes to keep track of your offline interactions. To get an even more complete picture of your customer relationship management, consider integrating your Sprout Social account with Zendesk, Salesforce, and UserVoice. In addition, the tool provides a quick rundown of followers who have conversed with or mentioned your brand, along with their photo, tagline, and number of followers.

On a different note, I absolutely love the look of Sprout Social’s tabbed dashboard – it is a lot easier on the eyes than any other tool’s interface!

2. Hootsuite

If you are in charge of managing your business’ social, it is highly likely that you will have heard of this tool. Hootsuite is relied upon by many companies today and is undoubtedly one of the best solutions for managing just about any social network, including Vimeo, Tumblr, Evernote, Flickr, MailChimp, SlideShare, Storify (via 3rd party apps.) The tool provides an amazing team management facility, whereby you can delegate tasks to different team members. They, in turn, will be able to see which tasks have been allocated to them and track their status.

Another thing I adore about Hootsuite is the sheer number of apps it supports (iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry.) For those who wish to track their performance, a weekly click summary is available free of charge.

3. SEMrush Social Media Toolkit

It is great to be able to tweak a tool to be just the way you want it, and this is exactly what we did at SEMrush. We created a dedicated tool to help our social media team cope with their routine tasks more efficiently. It took only six months for our tool to grow into a comprehensive social media suite that covers the entire workflow of a social media manager.

The toolkit is broken down into two tools — the Social Media Tracker and the Social Media Poster. Tracker is about competitive analytics. It is an absolute must-have for every social media marketer who wants to analyze their competitors’ social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and Linkedin.

Poster is a relatively new tool designed to simplify the social media scheduling process. With its current functionality, the tool allows you to post to Facebook and Twitter; LinkedIn and Instagram will be added by the end of the year. Posts can be published instantly, scheduled for later or put in the posting queue.

The scheduling process itself is very simple and intuitive; you can juggle your posts using the drag-and-drop feature and see all the feeds from your favorite blogs and other sources arranged in a list, with the ability to repost them to your own social media accounts. We want to make Poster the most responsive tool in the world, so we keep adding new features based on our users’ feedback. Feel free to share your thoughts on it to me directly or at Smm-tool-feedback@semrush.com

4. Rival IQ

Rival IQ, as its name suggests, allows you to track your competitors’ social media activities and compare your progress with them. I found it to be very useful for setting social media benchmarks based on what our competitors are doing, especially those we aspire to beat. I always rely on this tool to alert me on our competitors’ top content or on any changes they make to their website (edits to title and meta tags.)

5. Buffer

A fantastic tool for busy bees like me, who want to keep their Twitter account updated with great tweets. One of the coolest features of Buffer is the ability to set a tweeting or updating schedule unique to each account you manage in Buffer. You create your buffering patterns, which may differ depending on the day of the week, and add new updates easily with the simple interface.

6. Swat.io

What I like about Swat.io is that their choice of networks to post to is not limited to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. You can plan your content on all major social networks, including Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn, XING, Vimeo, and any custom channel. One slight omission is that, at the moment, the tool has no Instagram scheduling facility, but nevertheless, you will be reminded that it is time to post.

Additionally, the tool visualizes all upcoming posts in a shared calendar, so the whole team can schedule, approve, and publish their social media content together. Overall, Swat.io keeps growing in the direction of social listening; they have even created their own e-book.

7. SimplyMeasured

Reports by SimplyMeasured deserve a separate mention. Scale-wise, they have turned into a whole independent suite with a variety of reports and analyses, some of which are still free to use. For instance, SimplyMeasured offers a free user report on any Instagram account (with up to 25,000 followers) in exchange for following them on Twitter. Other than that, there is a competitive analysis report for you to benchmark engagement and audience growth, cross-channel reports that unify data from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Youtube, and other handy reports to tickle your fancy.

Niche-Specific Social Media Tools

Some companies prefer to concentrate their efforts on a particular social network, in which case there is no need for such a vast array of features. These guys tend to chose niche-specific tools.

8. Iconosquare

A go-to tool for anything Instagram related, including contests, management tools, and so on. It comes with some great analytics as well to help you track important metrics like follower growth and losses, best times to post for maximum engagement, engagement rates, and engagement growth.

Iconosquare’s analytics allow you to track important metrics like follower growth and losses, best times to post for maximum engagement, engagement rates, and engagement growth. It also highlights your best- performing content, both in terms of likes and comments. Another plus is that you are given a 14-day free trial to figure out whether the tool suits you or not.

Even though currently the tool is all about Instagram marketing, they are looking to add other social networks soon.

9. SocialRank

If you want to shed light on your follower demographics and find your most valuable followers and brand advocates in parallel, definitely give this tool a try. The tool provides valuable insights into your followers, with a variety of ways to splice and filter their profile data.

10. TweetBinder

If you are after an accurate and high-quality analysis of your marketing campaign on Twitter or Instagram, based on a particular hashtag, this tool is just right for you. It provides full hashtag analysis, helping you to keep in touch with your audience. This includes your potential reach (the number of times someone might have seen your hashtag,) and the number of followers per contributor. So if you are running Twitter chats and offline events that use a Twitter hashtag, TweetBinder is truly indispensable.  

11. Crowdfire

Crowdfire is a great free tool that can be used for managing your Twitter and Instagram followers, adding users and searching for users you might want to follow, as well as following your competitors’ followers.

My tip: Follow influencers in your niche and the niche of your competitors’ (you have a daily limit of 100). Some will follow you back; some won’t. After some time, go back and locate the accounts of users that you are following but that isn’t following you back and perform regular clean-ups. It is better to engage and build a community around your brand with people that you are connected with.

12. Twitonomy

Think of Twitonomy as your Twitter’s GP: it will provide you with complete diagnostics on the anatomy of your Twitter account, giving a comprehensive overview of your account’s performance, detailing followers to following ratio, account activity and follower engagement stats and other useful information. If you are after a quick analysis of your Twitter performance with lots of visual data to use for your reporting, Twitonomy is what you need.

13. RiteTag

RiteTag is a hashtag analysis tool and is fully compatible with Hootsuite and SproutSocial. Using the right hashtags helps you to reach the right audience and increase the total reach of your tweets.

Once you type in a hashtag, it turns gray, blue, green or red. Grey indicates that the hashtag is not so popular; blue means “good to go;” green stands for “excellent” and red warns you that the hashtag is overused and that your tweet is likely to disappear among all the other tweets with the same hashtag.

RiteTag has recently rolled out hashtag analysis for Google+. I would recommend you try the tool there as well. I would love to hear your feedback.

14. Feedly

Feedly is a fantastic news aggregator. Having all your news in one feed is convenient if you regularly mix your promotional content with industry news. There is no need to trawl through countless websites searching for relevant content — it is all there, all in one place, helping you keep a finger on the pulse of your industry.

15. ClickToTweet

This small web app could significantly increase your conversion rates. It provides a unique opportunity to convert any quote from your blog to a re-tweetable phrase that can be submitted directly to Twitter with just one click. This means a higher rate of engagement and a higher rate of conversions. It is free, so go ahead and give it a try now.

16. Tchat.io

If you are a fan of Twitter chats and prefer to engage with your audience online, this one is a catch for you. The tool allows you to chat in real time and to keep up with what is currently trending on Twitter. We use this tool for our #SEMrushchat, which takes place every Wednesday at 11 am ET. We would love for you to join in!

17. Mention

This is a reliable, niche-specific tool for media monitoring with a focus on social listening. What I particularly like about it is that you get live updates about your brand from the web and social media. If your role involves tracking your brand’s mention and responding to them as quickly as possible, you won’t regret having this tool under your belt. Also, you can arrange for mention alerts to be sent to your email address on a daily base, and it works well with Twitter’s and Facebook’s blogs and forums.

Tools for Creating Awesome Visual Content

Even if you are just starting out as a social media manager, you can still create amazing content. There are hundreds of tools out there that do visual editing, but not that many I would personally recommend. Below are some of my favorites.

18. Canva

Canva is loaded with features to help you create engaging, nice-looking content, and all those features are pretty straightforward and easy to use. The tool is free and has plenty of templates you can use for your social images. Another advantage is that it doesn’t require installation and supports logging in with Facebook.

If you are not a professional designer, Canva provides you with free tutorials to introduce you to some basic design techniques and concepts to get you started. One thing I love about Canva is it is collaborative. Being cloud-based, Canva allows you to share direct links to the images so that other people can edit them. This is extremely useful if you have a team working on the same project.

19. Snappa

DO use this tool for creating pics. No Photoshop, no graphic designers – the tool is simple enough for you to whip up graphics for social media, ads, and blogs yourself. It has pre-made templates designed to help you gain more attention, clicks, and customers. Also, Snappa provides a nice collection of free, good-quality stock photos for you to choose from.

20. VSCO

Since Instagram is all about photos, make sure to incorporate VSCO in your marketing strategy. It is a top-notch tool for taking and editing photos. This photo-editing platform will help you tackle the visual side of your marketing approach. You can use a variety of filters to customise your photos and appeal to the audience. You can take pictures of your products, or capture beautiful scenery that can be a great theme for your following campaign.

Get Down to Testing

There are so many great tools out there that can help you analyze, organize and manage your social media, and I hope the tools listed above can help. One last piece of advice from my side is to test as many as you can; as it is with anything in life, you need to try them all out to find your perfect match.

And remember the following:

• If you work for an agency, go for the tools that have a team management facility.
• If analytics and posting are what you are after, choose the tools that combine the two functionalities.
• If you are just starting out and are only interested in one particular social network, aim for the tool that is associated with that particular network (a tool that is aimed at working with that particular social network?)

And feel free to share your favorite tools with us in the comments below!

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Google News Digest: The Arrival of the Mobile-First Index, Parallel Tracking for Ads, and a Payment Service From Google

It is hard to talk about anything outside the long-awaited announcement on the first steps of Google’s major initiative – the Mobile-First Index. But, since the process is expected to be very slow, SEOs can calm down. And truth be told, a lot has been happening alongside the big news.

The SMX East Conference has brought us some insights into the search giant’s biggest commitments: the mobile-first index and the big push towards the local search by enhancing the online-to-offline experience. The latter has introduced us to a few huge and long-awaited features (no spoilers, simply scroll down!). This time around, local search is definitely winning the race towards improvements from Google’s side – new functionality within the search results, a Local Guides Summit, and improvements for local inventory promotion.

Google continues to tackle web credibility issues by partnering up with one of the biggest fact-checking organizations, IFCN. Some other updates, they have a new AdWords feature – parallel tracking – for speeding up the landing page’s load time and enhancing user-experience for many more conversions to come. Plus,  they released their own payment service – yes, you can now “Pay With Google”. Read on to see all the Google updates. 

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GOOGLE SEARCH NEWS

Slowly But Surely: Google’s Mobile-First Index is Out

At the SMX East conference, Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that the rollout of the Mobile-First Index is already taking place, for a few websites at least. And apparently, the tests are going really well so far. Illyes also assured the web community that there is nothing to worry about since Google is not yet at a full launch stage and the implementation process will be really (again, really!) slow. For now, there is no precise timeline for when the mobile-first index will be fully out, and a lot will depend on Google’s tests.

Check out Barry Schwartz’s SEO Recap for more details on this news.

Source: Google’s Mobile-First Index Has Rolled Out For Some Sites & Will Be Implemented Very Slowly

Google’s AMP Project Celebrates its Biennium

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project, which launched in 2015, has turned two. To celebrate the occasion, the search giant shared some fresh stats and the results of recent studies on AMP. Moreover, to promote even more widespread AMP implementation in the forthcoming year, Google established a website, AMP Start, which is full of ready-made templates and components for creating AMP pages. The website contains templates for e-Commerce that include product showcase sites and retail experiences. And, we can expect new templates for local businesses and online magazines coming soon.

In two years, this project, which initially only had a couple of partners, has attracted 25 million websites which have created over 4 billion AMP pages. But, if you still think that AMP is only a feature appealing to publishers, you must have missed our most recent Google Digests. Google is convincing when saying that AMP pages and e-Commerce are a perfect match. Consider the following stats, brought forward by Forrester:

• Implementation of AMP increases website traffic by 10 percent.

• AMP pages also double the users’ time on page.

• Besides, e-Commerce websites that leverage AMP pages see a 20 percent increase in conversions in comparison to non-AMPs.

Source: AMP: Two Years of User-First Webpages

New Features for Enhanced Online-to-Offline Marketing

By pushing local search, Google is also influencing the offline vs. online paradigm. With more online retailers opening up brick-and-mortar stores, and vice versa, the search giant is working on making the integration of two channels easier. At the SMX East conference, Kishore Kanakamedala, Google’s director of product management, introduced a few novelties to the realm of online-to-offline marketing that will drive more interaction between the two retail segments.

The new features include:

• Local Inventory Integrates With Voice Search. With the rise of Google Assistant, the search giant intends to provide answers to questions like “Where can I buy X nearby?” by providing a list of local inventory results on their mobile screens.

• A New Local Inventory Display Ad Format. The new ad format will include promos and local products from the retailers’ inventory feeds.

• Three New AdWords Reports for Measuring Store Visits. Google is now calculating impression-based footfall, with the aid of three reports: a Time Lag report (reflects the time between the click and a store visit), a Demographic report (store demographic reports can be added to the existing ones), a New vs. Returning Customer report (shows the number of repeat in-store customers).

• New Features for Apparel Ads. In the mobile Google Shopping search results, related to apparel, users will soon be able to use filtering options such as size, price, and others.

Source: Google Announces New Online-to-Offline Features on the Cusp of the Holiday Shopping Season

Google Held Its Second Local Guides Summit

Local Guides play an instrumental role in Google’s agenda to trigger local listings. And in order to reward their commitment to the local communities, Google recently held the second Local Guides Summit in San Francisco.

The most active 150 participants from 62 countries were brought together to hear some appraisals from Google itself.

“Local Guides” is a community of active Google Maps users, who consistently contribute to the service’s improvement by adding more accurate local information to the map. Here is what we learned about Local Guides:

• The number of Google’s Local Guides has grown up to 50 million and increased by 10X times within only a year.

• Local Guides add about 700,000 new places to Google Maps each month.

• 95 percent of these places are situated outside of the US.

• The largest community of Local Guides is living in the US, followed by India, Brazil, and Indonesia.

These local experts are not merely adding new places; they also play a tremendous role in Google’s push towards localization of its search engine. Along with business owners, these local guides answer user questions within Google’s newly added Q&A feature, provide product reviews and give suggestions for improvement to Google.

Source: Google Now Has 50M Local Guides Adding Content to Google Maps and Search

Google Changed Its Local Search Operation

As latest Google news prove, local relevance for search results is a growing concern for Google. With almost a fifth of all search queries being location-related, the search giant is making a move to improve its users’ “local” experience. From now on, the choice of a country service for your search results will be determined by your location regardless of what country code top-level domain names (ccTLD) you enter. Previously, we could access the UK’s SERPs while being physically located in Brazil by simply entering the relevant ccTLD in the browser. And now, the search results will always depend on your actual location. However, the option to access other countries’ SERPs is still available – you can manually choose the country service you would like to receive in the search settings.

If you were wondering if it would affect the SEMrush data, don’t worry! The accuracy of our data is great, and it will stay that way, regardless of these changes.

Source: Making Search Results More Local and Relevant

Google Partners Up With the International Fact-Checking Network for a More Credible Web

With all the buzz around fake news, about a year ago Google introduced a fact-checking feature – a Fact Check Tag. Currently, thousands of articles that appear in Google News undergo this check for the accuracy and reliability of information. To improve the process, on 26 October at the Poynter Institute, Google announced that it would partner with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). IFCN is known as the promoter of excellence and the builder of a fact-checking community around the globe. IFCN has established a widely recognized Code of Principles for fact-checking institutions.

Here is why Google is establishing a partnership with IFCN:

• To increase the number of people who handle fact-checking.

• To expand fact-checking to a truly global level by targeting more regions and languages.

• To offer free access to fact-checking tools.

Source: Building Trust Online By Partnering with the International Fact Checking Network

Google Tests New Sitelinks Format in SERPs

For a while, Google was testing various sitelinks formats for the mobile advertising. This time around the spotlight has shifted towards desktop. Google is now testing new formats for desktop search.

Instead of separating sitelinks into two groups side by side, they are now presented as a list. The tests have a limited scope, and Indian users were the first ones to shout out about the new sitelinks format.

Source: Twitter post by Vipin Yadav

Source: Google Tests New Sitelinks Format

Once More, Google Experiments With Image Thumbnails for Snippets

If visualization of the web is the way to go, then the fact that, once again, Google is testing image thumbnails in search results snippets for mobile devices is not surprising. The search engine did earlier include image thumbnails for certain queries, but the feature did not catch on. This time the interface looks slightly different, so let’s see how it works out:

Source: Twitter post by Jason Mun

Source: Google Tests Image Thumbnails in Search Results Snippets, Again

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GOOGLE ADS NEWS

Google AdWords Launches Parallel Tracking

As an advertiser, do you ever feel like you are constantly facing a dilemma – providing your users with an instantaneous speed to get from the ad straight to the landing page without any delays, or enhance your tracking and campaign measurement? From now on, you no longer have to think about that. Google AdWords launched a new feature – “parallel tracking” for speeding up landing pages load time and enhancing user experience.

With parallel tracking, the user who clicks your ad gets immediately directed to the final URL while tracking takes place in the background. As a result, this feature will reduce the number of situations where the user never gets to the landing page due to an unwillingness to wait for the page to load.

Parallel tracking will soon become the default tracking method for all AdWords accounts. At this point, it is an optional method for Search Network and Shopping campaigns. In all other cases, AdWords uses standard tracking for keeping track of your clicks.

For a more detailed information about parallel tracking, you can visit the AdWords Help Center page.

Source: Get Visitors to Your Landing Page Faster With Parallel Tracking

AdWords Adds a New “Days to Conversion” Report

Some purchases take a longer decision-making time. After all, it is way faster to decide on buying a $10 headphone set than a $1000 pair of boots. Thus, advertisers often lack information on evaluating the time it takes for Internet users to convert into paying customers, to measure their ad campaign’s performance. After an impression, followed by a click, you might have to wait for another 10 or 90 days. Thus, Google AdWords is introducing a new “Days to Conversion” report that will come to your rescue. The new reporting segment will define how long you have to normally wait for the conversion to take place after the click. This waiting time can redefine the entirety of your campaign results, which often get miscalculated due to such basic timing considerations.

For instance, before you rearrange your supposedly unsuccessful campaign, take into account that, on average, conversions happen within 14 days after the first click. Thus, it makes sense not to change your bidding policy during that period.

If you have not yet switched to the new AdWords interface, do not worry – the “Days to Conversion” report is available in both the old and new AdWords versions.

Sources: Find Out How Long It Takes for Your Customers to Convert; Google AdWords New Days To Conversion Report

Google Expands Its Google Attribution Beta

Inspired by some impressive results – the company HelloFresh has seen a 10 percent boost in conversion since using Google Attribution – Google is making its Attribution beta available to tens and hundreds of advertisers. The purpose of the tool is to make it easier for advertisers to resolve their attribution challenges and performance measurement by adding a multi-device and multi-channel tracking and combining data already available from Google Analytics, AdWords and DoubleClick Search. The tool allows advertisers to follow the entire customer journey, rather than simply look at data points from the last click.

Source: Smarter Attribution for Everyone

Google Tests Popups for Product Listing Ads in the Search

Although carousel format has been Google’s favorite for a while now, the search giant continues experimenting with various Shopping ad formats. A user from India spotted a new popup overlay on the top of search results that displayed more product listings results. These tests are seemingly available so far on a limited scale.

Source: Twitter post by Maulik Panchal

Source: Google Shopping Ads Tests Popup Overlay in Search

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GOOGLE TOOLS NEWS

A Helicopter View on UX: Google Introduces New Tools for Google Chrome

At Chrome Dev Summit 2017, Google announced the launch of two new tools for Chrome: Chrome User Experience Report and Trusted Web Activity.

Chrome User Experience Report is intended to help developers enhance their website’s usability. Apart from looking at suggestions for improvements and areas of already present success, developers will also be able to track changes in user experience over time.

Chrome User Experience Report is a dataset of key UX metrics, collected from users who allowed the search giant to access their search history and enabled usage statistic reporting.

Source: Google Announces Chrome User Experience Report and Trusted Web Activity

Browse With Google, Pay with Google

Google rolled out a new payment service “Pay with Google”, which is meant to facilitate the online purchasing process for Android users. For now on, the service’s adaptors will be able to not only browse through products and services available online but also make a purchase without any delays. Every time the user of a partner company wants to make a purchase, “Pay with Google” automatically fills in all the required fields to complete the transaction in a few clicks. The data points are taken from the user’s Google account. The service accepts any credit or debit cards that are already tied to users’ Google Play, YouTube, Chrome, and Android Pay accounts.

The service is expected to cover payments for various online platforms ranging from retailers and parking tickets to food delivery. “Pay with Google” is already available on a limited amount of websites, such as Dice in the UK, Kayak in the US and iFood in Brazil. In the foreseeable future, “Pay with Google” will also be available on apps such as Deliveroo, Just Eat, Airbnb, HotelTonight and many others.

Source: Pay With Google and Speed Through Checkout

Gmail Add-Ons for Everyone’s Inbox

With so many applications for workflow management and tools that we all use to complete our tasks, it is time-consuming to have to switch tabs and open new apps each time we want to tick a box off our To Do list. And now Gmail is introducing Add-Ons. These add-ons are a Gmail’s integration with business apps that allows users to work with the latter right from the G Suite. The email service now supports 10 business apps that can be installed from the G Suite Marketplace: Asana, Dialpad, Hire, Intuit QuickBooks Invoicing, PropsperWorks, RingCentral, Smartsheet, Streak, Trello, and Wrike.

Source: Do More From Your Inbox With Gmail Add-Ons

Google’s Chrome Cleanup is Updated for Higher Web Security

Apart from offering ever-increasing functionality, big companies have to convince their users that their security is ensured. Thus, Google is enhancing its security features by adding a basic antivirus-like functionality to its Chrome browser for Windows.

The biggest novelty comes from a function that allows users to spot any changes in their settings, brought by extensions. Whether we intended to set up a new extension or were tricked to install it, Chrome will now let us know by offering to restore the settings to their original version. Google developers have also redesigned the Chrome Cleanup – it now has a new interface which is simpler and facilitates spotting unwanted software and remove it in one click.

Thanks to a collaboration with ESET, an IT security company, the Google Cleanup technology is upgraded to a new level. But do note that Google Cleanup will not replace your antivirus system. Instead, it removes extensions that do not comply with Google’s software policy.

Source: A Cleaner, Safer Web With Chrome Cleanup

Chrome Successfully Embraces HTTPS

It has been a year since Chrome announced its move to a more secure web and implemented an HTTPS Protocol. Just this year, Chrome was proclaimed as the most secure web browser in two independent studies. But let’s talk numbers and how HTTPS progressed just within a year:

• 64 percent of traffic is now secure on Android’s Chrome browser (+22 percent from the previous year).

• Chrome OS and Mac’s Chrome traffic is protected for 75 percent.

• About three quarters (71 percent) of the top 100 sites comply with HTTPS Protocol by default – a double increase from the previous year.

• HTTPS usage is spreading across the globe: USA, Brazil, and Japan are among the fastest adopters of HTTPS.

Google initially encouraged migration to HTTPS by stating that it is a ranking factor. HTTPS is an enhanced version of the standard web transfer protocol (HTTP) that adds an additional layer of security on the data. The endpoint of HTTPS implementation is to provide remote users with encrypted communication and secure connection, especially when they share sensitive information.

To further facilitate the migration and promote HTTPS usage, Google Chrome supports the Let’s Encrypt project that provides website owners with cheaper and easier ways to embrace HTTPS.

Source: Say “Yes” to HTTPS: Chrome Secures the Web, One Site at a Time

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FINAL WORDS

This is it for today, and I am glad you have made it all the way to the end! With so many updates and new features every day, it is not always easy to see how fast the digital space is moving forward and what exactly is happening. Slowly but surely, ground rules are changing, and no digital marketer or SEO specialist can afford to be left behind. Thus, make sure to stay updated with all the latest developments in the Google space and read our Google News Digest that goes live every two weeks.

P.S. If you have any suggestions on the format of our digest or simply want to share/discuss some of the news in the comments, don’t hesitate and give me a shout right below!

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