Alongside a number of other changes made this year, Google continues to revise and rebrand its toolkit for online businesses and internet retailers by changingGoogle My Business into the Google Business Profile.
While little more than a name change on the surface, a deeper dive into the announcement reveals Google’s long-term plans for Google Business Profile, and how the product can benefit small businesses, customers, and advertisers alike.
Why the Change?
The name change might be an attempt by Google to help clear up what Google My Business is designed to do, and make it clear to businesses with multiple branches and locations that Google is providing them with a means to better analyze and control their web presence on the search engine giant.
Additionally, the name change is coming with a few additional features. While Google Business Profile is functionally the same thing as Google My Business, a few things are being expanded upon.
Most notably, Google is including greater customer communication tools, an easier way to respond to and manage reviews and questions, as well as streamlining the onboarding and management process for newcomers to Google Business Profile, so you can claim and begin improving on your business’ web presence right away.
What Is Google Business Profile?
Google Business Profile is, ultimately, the latest in a long line of names for the same or similar products aimed at helping local businesses establish and curate profiles that Google can use to improve search results. Previously, Google My Business was effectively Google Places, Google+ Local, and Google Local, among a few other iterative name changes.
Aside from the rebrand, Google Business Profile is a web-based platform business owners will have access to, in order to claim and verify their businesses, manage their business profiles on Google Maps and Google Search, interact with customer reviews, answer customer questions, receive and send messages as a business via Google, and even monitor and analyze performance metrics for inbound customer calls (such as call length, caller information, missed calls, and much more.
Managing Your Online Presence
The principles of how best to represent your business on Google via Google My Business haven’t changed. Google Business Profile still relies on unseen metrics to rank you against the competition.
It’s important to remember the basics of how search engine ranking works, and why SEO is becoming ever more complicated and involved.
There are thousands of factors that go into ranking any given site on any given search query, nearly all of which play a role in Google’s secret sauce in-house algorithms. Things like how quickly your website loads, your company’s location relative to the location of the user who initiated the search, your bounce rate (or how long people stay on your page), the readability of your website, the quality of your content, and the consistency with which you can gather and retain an audience and loyal following are just a handful of examples.
Coming out on top when ranked as a business in Search or Maps is much the same way, albeit with a few metrics skewed to adjust for relevance. For example, it’s safe to presume that Google places even greater importance on location when ranking different small businesses.
Making Use of Google
Online retailers and other small businesses with eCommerce capabilities can further leverage Google’s new tools to drive up sales during the holiday season, and beyond. Google wisely rolled these changes out just weeks prior to Black Friday, although it’s likely expected that the full impact of the rebrand will take shape in 2022, as Google slowly sunsets Google My Business and makes way for Google Business Profile to replace it entirely.
If you don’t already have your own Google Business Profile set up and ready to go, it’s worth noting that it likely exists anyway. That’s not always a good thing.
You Probably Already Have a Web Presence
The thing about the internet is that if you run a business, you’re on it. The question isn’t whether you have a web presence, to begin with, but whether you are in control of it.
Google Business Profile seems to be a more manageable and deliberate attempt at getting users to customize and curate their business profiles, both for their benefit, and to improve Google Search by bringing more accurate data to customers and advertisers.
How This Might Affect You
The biggest question to ask yourself in all of this is: why should I bother? And thankfully, the answer is quite straightforward. The more you control how your business is represented on Google, the better your chances of ranking above the competition, getting local traffic, and having new loyal customers make their way into your office.
Additionally, Google Business Profile is a direct pipeline for businesses with or without websites and social network profiles to benefit from the ubiquitous nature of Google on today’s Internet.
What’s the first thing you do when you need a recommendation for a service or product a friend can’t advise you on? Chances are that you look it up online. Or, you ask someone who did. This means that if someone in your vicinity looks for a service that you provide, there’s a good chance they’ll see the name of your business – alongside every other similar company and service provider in the area.
The better your business ranks via reviews, curated answers, response times, customer interactions and impressions, the more likely you are to be Google’s top recommended pick for that search.
On the other hand, the opposite can be just as easily true for businesses that rank poorly, with bad or few reviews, little to no interaction with customers, and no pictures or additional information to help a potential customer make an informed decision. Don’t let Google describe your company for you. Take charge of how you’re represented online and take full advantage of the new Google Business Profile.
Google has introduced a new Google Deals feed, an innovative addition to its Shopping tab in search results. This Google Deals feed categorizes products related to user queries, highlighting promotions, sales, and price drops. This feature streamlines the shopping experience by conveniently displaying various deals, making it easier for consumers to find and take advantage of ongoing promotions and discounts directly through Google’s platform.
Google is updating some of its ecommerce features through a new feature: the Deals feed.
The Deals feed is a new feed added to the Shopping tab on Google search results, categorizing items related to the search query with promotions, sales, price drops, and other running promos.
Finding the Right Deal
As part of a range of changes and fixes planned for the holiday season, Google’s new Deals section will function by way of a “deals badge” applied to any items that are on sale, or part of a promotion.
Deals will be shown automatically when a search query specifies sales, promotions, deals, or related search terms (such as Black Friday). Alternatively, shoppers can select to filter results based on deals in the Shopping tab, from a drop-down menu in the search result (next to Shopping home, Stores, Saved items, Tracked products, and so on).
Performance Metrics Over the Holidays
Another change coming to Google Shopping and its list of ecommerce functions will be in the form of new trackable performance metrics in the Google Merchant Center. You can access the Google Merchant Center via Google for Retail, and begin managing how in-store items and other aspects of your ecommerce offering are showing up in Google’s search results under the Shopping tab.
The new performance metrics in question are largely going to help people separate traffic, clicks, click-through-rates, and impressions for all products, and products with promotions, sales, or price drop badges (i.e. products eligible for the Deals feature).
This will help webmasters and shop managers better gauge how effective a given promotion or sales drop has been. Managers can further segment their impressions and clicks by promotion type, product, brand, or product type.
Other Features of the Merchant Center
If you haven’t gone through the trouble of setting up with Google’s Merchant Center for your ecommerce platform, you may want to know how it works.
The Merchant Center effectively functions as a hub for you to go over the metrics on your products as they appear on search results, and it allows you to purchase and schedule advertising services and campaigns with Google directly, as well as manage and review the improvement any given sale or marketing campaign has had on your product’s sales and impressions.
To utilize Google’s Merchant Center, you will need a Google account through which you want to manage your products and sales data and follow Google’s beginner guide to adding and measuring products.
Google’s Merchant Center isn’t exclusively for ecommerce platforms – you can integrate your brick-and-mortar products as well, in which case advertising on Google will simply give customers the opportunity to find out more about how and where to buy from you. Note that for brick-and-mortar stores, these are local listings.
What this means is that anyone on Google making a rudimentary search for a product may have your listed product recommended to them if they’re from the same region. Alternatively, including the region in the search term (i.e. “cheese-making kits los angeles”) will likely help you and other local listings gain prioritized visibility.
Other information Google will require from you includes the basics, like your business’ address, a verified phone number (they will call you), the website you use to list your products, and any third-party platforms you work with to promote products on Google.
Note that Google offers different options and opportunities for free and paid listings, or “enhanced”listings. The difference between free and enhanced listings is that the latter requires more product information (as Google will display more of it to customers).
Integration with Shopify and WooCommerce
We’ve mentioned earlier this year that Google Shopping is also integrating Shopify and WooCommerce globally, which meant that you could manage your Google merchant settings and review performance metrics for your Google product search results through WooCommerce and Shopify.
A previous statement from WooCommerce explains that their users can “upload their products to Google, create free listings and ad campaigns, and review performance metrics — all without leaving their WooCommerce dashboard.”
This integration now extends into the new deals feature, as well. In other words, if you’re a retailer, or are implementing ecommerce through WooCommerce or Shopify, you can take advantage of the new deals feature by showing your existing deals on Google.
Starting December, Shopify users and WooCommerce users will also be able to show their deals in the Search and Shopping tabs.
How This Might Affect You
If you sell anything tangible and aren’t utilizing the Internet to send it halfway across the world – or even just one or two towns over – then you’re missing out on the biggest commerce shift of the century.
Online shopping was up a stratospheric 44 percent during the onset of the pandemic, after having already achieved pretty significant popularity over the last two decades. This is far from a new thing, after all. But it’s never been as ubiquitous or easy as today.
And the profits have never been greater. While it’s true that a vast majority of the growth in the industry has likely been soaked up by online retail giant Amazon, there is a bit of general tide raising going on for all boats in the industry.
These new tools by Google will further help you boost visibility for your listings and drive traffic to your products or net you holiday sales directly through the search engine. Now, products offered on sale or via promotion will be featured in the related search items, the new Deals feed, and the deals carousel. Once your product is eligible to appear on the new feed, you may be seeing increased traffic as people gear up to snag sales items before they’re sold out during the big holiday rush. And the best news? Google doesn’t take a cut from the sale, unlike eBay or Amazon.
Of course, there’s more to leveraging this feature than a simple plug-and-play with your product information.
Managing your ad budget for Google product listings, carefully monitoring and comparing results from different sales and promotions, tracking your campaigns – whether through Shopify or Google’s Merchant Center – can help you greatly improve the efficiency of this feature.
To prevent emails from going to spam, ensure your email list is clean and consists of opted-in recipients. Craft a clear, engaging subject line without spam triggers. Maintain a consistent sending schedule and sender name. Include a plain text version of your email, and make sure the HTML is clean and error-free. Lastly, always provide an easy unsubscribe option.
Email marketing It’s been over 50 years since the beginning of what would become the digital mail, or email, and it’s probably not going anywhere anytime soon.
One of the oldest pieces of digital infrastructure on the Internet, the email remains the tried-and-true way of sending and receiving both personal and commercial information. With that undying relevance comes the similarly immortal relevance of email marketing.
That’s right, email marketing still matters in 2021. And it probably matters more than ever, as digital marketing techniques took center stage for many industries surviving the pandemic and using emails as one of multiple ways to advertise products and services online amid an e- commerce boom.
But just because email is near ancient (in Internet terms) doesn’t mean you can rely on the same old techniques that might have worked with commercial emails in the 90s and 00s.
Major email providers, including Google, Yahoo, and AOL, have gotten much better at recognizing and flagging spam over the years, protecting consumers from trillions of unwanted messages year after year. Here’s how you set yourself apart from the bots and make the most out of your campaign.
Focus On Quality, Not Quantity
This goes for emails and subscribers alike, but it’s arguably even MORE important for subscribers.
There’s going to be a threshold for how often you can send your subscribers something before they start to get fed up with the rate at which you’re pushing content, sales, or other marketing media, and following your metrics closely to observe jumps and drops in click-through and opening rates can help you figure that out for your audience. But cultivating a quality audience is even more important.
One way of making sure that you’re getting subscribers who are actually likely to care about the content you put out (or the product you sell, or the services you provide) is to make it even more of a privilege to follow your newsletter and receive promos and updates. You can do this via a double opt-in function.
Instead of just typing their email into an annoying pop-up window, and getting a piece of unread mail every day of the week until it eventually lands in spam automatically, giving readers of a post or potential buyers the option to provide their email during checkout for new updates or products, or new blog posts, gives you the ability to send them a confirmation email that requires them to click a link or tick another checkbox on your website to make sure that they’re interested in your marketing campaign.
Remember, you’re not trying to trick people here. Email marketing has legitimate value as one of the easiest ways to update and notify subscribers about new products and content they genuinely care about. But if you try to just get your emails out to as many people as possible, regardless of what they really want, you will eventually end up in the spam folder.
A double opt-in function makes sure that most of the people who sign up for your emails end up opening them, and even clicking through to your website again.
Sanitize Your Database
It’s not enough to cultivate an email list or database of emails that want to read your content or receive your news and marketing. You need to make sure you’re keeping that list updated. Various email marketing tools help you ensure that your emails aren’t being sent out to dead emails anymore, but beyond that, give subscribers the option to opt out of your content (or stop sending it after a certain point) to avoid ending up on a deny list.
Furthermore, it’s really important that this is YOUR email list. What this means is that probably the easiest way to get flagged as spam is to buy email lists or use shared lists. Even worse would be scraping for emails using automated tools. These types of bots and third-party email list sellers are often going to be a sure-fire ticket to the spam folder.
Why bother throwing money out the window? You might not have as big of an email list if you grow it organically, but let’s remember that it’s more important to prioritize quality over quantity, even when working through your list of recipients.
Authenticate Your Sender
What this means is to ensure that the IP sending your email is authenticated via a list of IP addresses allowed to send mail from your website domain, via your DNS records.
Most email marketing tools help you do this and will walk you through the setup (and remind you if you haven’t done it yet). This is important. It’s a clear red flag and a sign of phishing if an email is sending mail from your domain but hasn’t been authenticated through your DNS.
Aside from authenticating your sender, remember to check for real-time address validation (to avoid sending mail to dead emails, which can be a red flag for a lot of email providers).
Obey the Law
The best way to prevent emails from going to spam is to obey the laws in place relating to email communications. Did you know that there are more than a few pieces of user privacy legislation that govern commercial emails targeted towards some of the biggest markets on the planet, including the United States, Canada, and the EU? CAN-SPAM, the GDPR, the CCPA, and the CASL all have clauses dictating what does and doesn’t count as spam, and privacy laws around the globe are booming in general.
While following their guidelines isn’t guaranteed to keep your emails from landing in the spam folder, they can be an additional hurdle to worry about. These are hefty pieces of legislature, but thankfully, there are plenty of articles online giving the quick gist of them, as well as more lengthy breakdowns that avoid pouring over every last detail.
A few tips you can gleam from each of these laws are as follows:
Make it easy to unsubscribe from your promotional mail.
Authorize your senders.
Be transparent about your sending practices.
Give users control over how their personal data is stored and used by you (and, in turn, by your email marketing). More importantly, give them the clear option to opt out of any user data being stored.
Provide Options and Control
If your website already provides login functionality and allows users to create and adjust their profile, even if it’s just to keep track of their orders, browse personalized suggestions, and cash in promo codes, you can take things a step further by providing mailing preferences in the user settings page.
These could be anything from letting users control how often they receive mail from you, to controlling what kind of mail they want to receive (just product info, general sales, specific discounts, other newsletters and content), and so on.
If you want to make the most out of this feature, be sure to tell your users about it when they’re signing up for your newsletter. Remember, one of the most important factors behind whether or not your content ends up in a spam folder is whether people are bothering to open it. Giving them the option to opt out of mail that doesn’t interest them reduces the likelihood of your sender ending up in a deny list.
Email marketing is a world in and of itself, and these are just a few simple tips. But it’s often the fundamentals that count the most.
There’s a lot more to running a successful email campaign: from writing beautiful copy, to keeping your emails light and relevant, personalizing your marketing material automatically, reviewing your email performance metrics, making the relevant adjustments, and more. Get in touch with us if you want to step up your email marketing game.
While there’s no guaranteed method to prevent Google from changing your title tags, following these best practices can reduce the likelihood of it happening. Remember, Google’s goal is to provide the best user experience possible, so creating title tags that accurately and succinctly describe your content will always be beneficial.
If you spend a lot of time tracking your web pages and search result rankings, you’re probably familiar with the ins and outs of search engine optimization. It’s complicated, to say the least – mostly because the rules of the game are changing constantly, and often, they’ll change without anyone even noticing for the first few hours.
Google, which constitutes the majority of search traffic on the internet (by far) makes thousands of changes to its search algorithm every year. And it isn’t like every single change log is documented for the world to see.
That being said, whenever Google makes a pretty big change, you can expect to see some kind of announcement, and at least a little bit of an explanation. One of those changes hit us just late last month, with Google’s new page title update. Google announced that they’ve gone from using about 80 percent of the title elements provided by you in your title tags, to 87 percent. The update is one piece of a continuing experiment on Google’s part to optimize title tags.
It might seem like a minor change – and it is – but it allows us to go deeper into why Google is making changes to the way you’re tagging your titles, and what that should mean for you and your website’s SEO.
What is Google’s Page Title Update?
First, a little explanation and backstory. Title tags, like meta descriptions, are important pieces of information for both search engine users, and the search engines themselves.
They’re what your users will typically see first when catching a glimpse of your site on Google’s search results page, and they’re really important for both getting ranked, and getting traffic.
Not only will better title tags help you catch more traffic, but by refining and improving your title tags, you can drastically improve the quality of your traffic, generate more leads, and help people find the kind of content they’re really looking for.
That’s what Google is after, as well – and it is why Google has a long history of altering title tags, or at least, not really using yours (Google does the same thing with meta descriptions – sometimes, it will just pick a phrase from your content that it feels better represents your page than the description you provided).
Back in 2014, a study of 111,000 search results found that 36 percent of results had their titles partially changed (minor changes, such as adding the company name or name of the city into the title), and over 25 percent had their titles completely changed (entirely different words or word orders compared to the specified title tags).
About the update: Not only has Google revealed why they’re changing title tags, but they revealed to what degree (on average) title tags are being changed, as well (a change from 80 percent to 87 percent). They also released guidance on what makes a great title, and how to improve your titles for clarity and better search results.
Furthermore, Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller clarified that the changes Google makes to title tags do not affect ranking and are only meant to help convey better clarity and provide more accurate search results to users.
It’s important to note that not affecting ranking does not mean that your changed titles aren’t affecting click-through rates for pages and ads, because users are ultimately seeing a different title from what you may have intended.
Why Has Google Been Changing Title Tags?
To provide better context for why Google’s algorithm might sometimes partially or wholly change a page’s title tags, it’s important to understand Google’s main complaints with bad title tags. According to the company, the issues the algorithm looks for and tries to address the most are:
Half-empty titles: “ | Site Name” would be detected by the system and changed into “Product Name | Site Name” if the page in question was a product page, for example.
Obsolete titles: “2020 admissions criteria – University of Awesome” is changed into “2021 admissions criteria – University of Awesome” if the content was updated for the new year, yet the title tags weren’t.
Inaccurate titles: “Giant stuffed animals, teddy bears, polar bears – Site Name” may be made more accurate in cases where the content doesn’t reflect all the elements of the title, instead becoming “Stuffed animals – Site Name”.
Micro-boilerplate titles: If “My so-called amazing TV show,” is repeated for multiple different pages per season, then the system may change each page’s title to something along the lines of “Season 1 – My so-called amazing TV show”, “Season 2 – My so-called amazing TV show”, “Season 3 – My so-called amazing TV show”, and so on.
And a lot more.
Google will make very minor changes to title tags that, generally, reflect the content on the page and provide the kind of information you expect to see in a title – such as the name of the company or blog, or the location if it’s relevant to the content being posted.
Again, these changes do not affect the way your pages rank. But title tags themselves do affect ranking. This means that your own title tags are still important! Even if Google will change them for you, they won’t change the way your original title tags affect your search result rankings.
How Google’s Title Tag Change Affects You
While ranking is still entirely up to you, Google’s changes can affect click-through rate as users will be seeing a different title than you might have intended for them to see, under certain circumstances.
This is something a lot of marketers and SEO experts are skeptical on. There is no data to really prove that Google’s changes are purely positive – and it’s something Google tacitly admits.
This is a system that is still being developed after all, as proven by the fact that they’ve gone from changing affected titles by 20 percent, to changing them by just 13 percent.
If you want to avoid having your title tags altered by Google, take some time to review what they’ve previously written on good title tags, and be sure to take the time to update your title tags, especially after making major changes to a page, or for pages with dynamic content.
How to Write Meta Titles that Google Won’t Alter
IT can be frustrating to discover the meta titles you’ve created for your page have been altered by Google to display differently in the search results.
Fortunately, there are several things you can do to write a meta title tag that will ensure its optimized for your target keyword and safe from being altered.
Relevancy: Make sure your meta title aligns with the content on the page. Google’s algorithms are sophisticated enough to determine whether your title tag accurately reflects your content, and if it doesn’t, it may change it.
Length: Google typically displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag. If your title exceeds this limit, it may be shortened and replaced with an ellipsis (“…”). This may trigger Google to replace your title with what it considers a more accurate representation.
Keyword Placement: Try to place your most important keywords towards the beginning of your title. This ensures they’re seen by both Google and users, even if the rest of the title gets cut off.
Branding: Google now displays the favicon and site name above each result, so it may not be as necessary to include your site name at the tail end of your title. This is great because you no longer need to struggle to fit both your title and brand within the character limits of title tags.
While there’s no guaranteed method to prevent Google from changing your title tags, following these best practices can reduce the likelihood of it happening. Remember, Google’s goal is to provide the best user experience possible, so creating title tags that accurately and succinctly describe your content will always be beneficial.
Need Help with Your Title Tags?
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Don’t let your competitors outshine you in search results. Contact Sachs Marketing Group today and let’s discuss how we can tailor an SEO strategy that will catapult your business to new heights of success. Your journey towards top Google rankings starts here.
Title Tag FAQs
We work with a lot of business owners who wonder why their website page titles aren’t displaying as intended. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about Google changing title tags:
Why is Google changing title tags?
Google is changing title tags in an effort to better serve users. The goal is to provide more descriptive and relevant titles in search results that accurately reflect page content. This change aims to help users quickly understand what a page is about and decide whether it’s worth their click, improving the overall user experience.
Why is Google not using my title tag?
Google might not use your title tag if its algorithms determine that another piece of text on your page, or in the anchor text pointing to your page, is more representative of the page content. This usually happens when the original title tag is overly generic, stuffed with keywords, or is not descriptive of the page content.
How do I fix Google title tag rewrites?
You can reduce the likelihood of Google rewriting your title tags by making them highly relevant, concise, and accurate representations of your page content. Ensure they are unique to each page, include important keywords naturally, and appeal to the user. Creating well-structured, meaningful titles that closely align with the page content will discourage Google from altering them.
What does Google do if your title is too long?
If your title tag is excessively long, Google may choose to shorten it or replace it entirely in the search results. They do this to ensure the title remains readable and useful to users. Google usually truncates titles after approximately 60 characters, replacing the remainder with an ellipsis (…), or it may rewrite the title based on your page content or the search query.
How often does Google rewrite meta titles?
As of my last training data in September 2021, Google hasn’t publicly shared specific statistics on how often they rewrite meta titles. However, it’s known that the frequency can depend on several factors, including the relevance and quality of the original title tag, its length, and whether it accurately reflects the page content. Observations suggest that poorly structured or keyword-stuffed title tags are more likely to be rewritten.
Conclusion
Google’s practice of altering title tags in search results underscores the importance of crafting concise, relevant, and appealing titles for every page on your website.
A well-structured title tag that accurately reflects page content can enhance user experience and increase click-through rates, while also reducing the chances of Google rewriting it. Remember to avoid overly long, generic, or keyword-stuffed titles. Instead, aim for a unique, descriptive, and engaging title that naturally incorporates your target keywords.
In this era of ever-evolving algorithms, staying informed and adaptable is key to maintaining a robust and successful online presence.
We are no longer simply moving away from third-party cookies and targeted advertising – in many ways, we’ve already moved past it. As Google joined Mozilla and Apple in ending its support for third-party cookies in web browsers, the internet collectively reached a historical point in digital advertising and arrived at a post-third-party cookie world.
This means that it’s going to get harder and harder to gauge exactly how effective your advertising is, because you’re not going to have access to the same level of data you might once have had; data that explained a customer’s journey through the web on the way to your page on one of multiple platforms; data that allows you to cross reference ad campaigns on different platforms to gather a better understanding of an ad’s performance; data that allowed you to clarify and confirm that you’re catering your ads to the right kind of leads, and are reaching the kind of people you want to reach.
Does that mean that digital advertising as we know it is dead? Not at all. Does it mean we can still uphold the advertising status quo? For a short period, maybe. But not in the long-term. Alternatives already exist – and while they’re far from ideal, they do give us better insights into what advertisers and ad tech companies will be focused on for the foreseeable future. Among these alternatives is the data clean room. Let’s take a closer look at what it is, and what role it will play in the coming digital landscape of internet advertising.
What are Data Clean Rooms?
A data clean room is a space – real and digital – where aggregate data is held at an immense scale. While smaller companies can develop data clean rooms using their own first-party data in theory, these are little more than sizeable databanks. Data clean rooms describe the kind of aggregate data held securely by companies like Google or Facebook (so called “walled gardens”), to be used for comparison with first-party data from advertisers without sharing any individual customer data.
Google’s data clean room is one of the largest and most prominent and is called the Ads Data Hub. This is effectively a software solution that helps you analyze data based on your own and Google’s, via BigQuery.
They aren’t exclusive to the tech or advertising industry, though – companies like Unilever and Procter and Gamble have been making use of data clean rooms generated from anonymized data provided by measurement firms like Nielsen.
Data clean rooms play an important role as a sort of information-based mirror for other companies to reflect their own data off of.
With the end of third-party cookies, the idea behind giving companies access to the perks of data clean rooms is that the information being shared is aggregate, rather than individual.
Companies will not and cannot access the raw data that businesses like Google and Facebook are storing and cannot attribute any given piece of data to any given consumer.
Instead, they can use the data sets present within these data clean rooms to essentially compare and contrast with their own first-party data.
Data clean rooms contain raw data that never leaves the room. Advertisers can take a peek, and view an abstracted form of the data stored within, but it is not shared.
Ultimately, data clean rooms allow advertisers to get an idea of whether they’re wasting time going after leads they’re already reaching via a different channel (Twitter vs. Facebook, Google vs. Twitter, etc.), but it is still very much like trying to look into a darkened room through a frosted window.
These massive data sets are nothing new. They have been around for a while, and they further cement the power that ad companies like Facebook and Google have over the entire advertising industry. However, their rise is relatively recent – and can largely be attributed to rising concerns regarding user privacy, the GDPR, and scandals like Cambridge Analytica.
User Privacy Is on the Rise
People have always been a bit wary about being watched on the Internet – but that worry was certainly amplified in waves of news stories regarding consumer information and data misuse.
Apple made headlines after publicly reiterating a commitment to user privacy – going so far as to introduce more user control over ad tracking in iOS 14, and completely eliminate third-party cookie usage in Safari – and other industry giants have followed suit, as it became obvious what direction the winds were taking.
An Imperfect Solution
Data clean rooms like Google’s Ads Data Hub constitute a less accurate, but serviceable alternative when analyzing ad performance on Google channels – things like Google Search, YouTube, and Google Shopping.
It’s especially effective if you’re targeting users on all of these things and have a serious amount of first-party data.
But it isn’t going to give you reliable cross-platform data – no data clean rooms can, even if ad companies promise otherwise. This means you’re left with manually figuring out whether you’re double dipping by hitting the same users on multiple platforms.
Alternatives to Data Clean Rooms
Data clean rooms aren’t the alpha and the omega. There are a few other alternatives floating around – the most significant one being browser-based tracking, such as Google’s experimental FLoC (federated learning of cohorts).
This is a system that anonymizes individual customer data (gathered by the browser) by using its data to describe different customer archetypes rather than individual consumers – hiding the individual in the crowd. But the efficacy, security, and safety of this system is yet to be fully understood. FLoC is still undergoing origin trials.
What Does This All Mean?
The jump away from third-party cookies and more towards large aggregates of anonymized data from first-party sources, and anonymized data comparison to huge customer databanks (from the likes of Google and Facebook) further amplifies the ad monopoly that walled gardens have in the industry.
It also gives brands with much more customer data, or an established brand (and far greater opportunity to gather comparative data) the clear upper hand when it comes to making the most of their information without violating the GDPR, or other user privacy initiatives.
There’s a silver lining to it all, though. This will be as good as any an incentive for you to invest in your own CRM (customer relationship management) solutions to better gather and store first-party information on the people that interact with your company and products online. If you can no longer rely on third-party cookies to help you track users throughout the web, your website, app, and storefronts will have to do the heavy lifting.
Want to learn more about how to make the future of digital marketing work for you? Get in touch with us.
The news that Google integrates with GoDaddy is exciting for merchants interested in the benefits of two giants connecting. On July 13th, Google expanded its integration efforts to include GoDaddy merchants in the U.S., enhancing the ecommerce landscape. This move is part of Google’s broader strategy to integrate various ecommerce platforms into its Google Merchant Center. This integration allows for seamless advertising and selling of products via Google Search, the Google Shopping tab, Google Image Search, and YouTube, previously including platforms like Square, WooCommerce, and Shopify.
Earlier this year, Google announced that it would be working on improved integration of ecommerce platforms into its Google Merchant Center, which allows users and companies to advertise and sell products via Google Search and the Google Shopping tab, and manage the way their inventory appears on Google.
On July 13th, it extended that integration to GoDaddy merchants selling products in the US. Other ecommerce platforms that Google has been working with include Square, WooCommerce, and Shopify. Google’s Merchant Center also allows products to show up on Google Image Search and YouTube.
GoDaddy is a domain registrar and web hosting service company. However, the company also offers several different web design and web builder services. One of its services is called the GoDaddy Online Store, through which you can build an ecommerce website for your company via GoDaddy’s own proprietary ecommerce builder and backend. In other words, GoDaddy lets you set up your own online shop, with features including:
Secure payment via major credit cards, Apple Pay, and PayPal.
Facebook integration.
Email marketing campaigns.
Mobile-friendly design.
Google integration.
That last one is the company’s most recent offering. Through their cooperation, GoDaddy now allows you to log into your Google Merchant Center account while remaining onsite, syncing your GoDaddy Online Store catalog with Google, creating free listings, and configure your Google Smart Shopping ad campaigns to determine what products will show up across Google, including Google Search, Maps, Shopping, YouTube, and even Gmail.
Where free listings simply allow Google to pull from your catalog whenever results seem relevant to users, Smart Shopping allows users to manage how and where to focus their advertising budget on Google, while receiving clear performance metrics to better inform their advertising decisions in the future.
Commenting on the topic, Greg Goldfarb, the GoDaddy Vice President Commerce Products, explains: “Our customers’ success is our core motivation, we know that providing powerful ways to engage large buyer audiences is a key driver.
“Expanding our work with Google simplifies creating an ecommerce presence across Google surfaces and jumpstarts sales momentum by leveraging their best-in-class automated advertising solutions.”
Google has also announced that eligible GoDaddy users will receive up to $150 in ads credit when starting their first Google Smart Shopping ad campaign via GoDaddy.
What is the Google Merchant Center?
Google’s new Merchant Center allows you to manage how products that appear on your website will show up in free listings via Google Search, as well as paid Google ad campaigns.
It’s no secret that Google is by far the most popular search engine on the planet, and that hundreds of millions of people (by the company’s own metrics) use the website to specifically search for products to buy on a daily basis.
Google’s Merchant Center allows users to manage what products appear on Google, how they appear on Google, how to boost their appearance on Google, and how your advertising investments on Google are paying off for you. In short, the Merchant Center offers three basic features:
Free listings.
Paid ad campaigns.
Metrics.
So far, Google has worked with Shopify, WooCommerce, and GoDaddy to bring the Merchant Center to each of these companies’ respective ecommerce platforms, so their users can start and manage Google ad campaigns for their own products via their respective ecommerce platform.
Like a lot of other Google products, you only really need your own Google Account to get started. You probably already have one if you’ve ever logged onto YouTube, have a Gmail, or use Google Analytics (which you definitely should).
Premium ad campaigns utilize your detailed product listings as uploaded to Google Merchant Center, and require a Google Ad account, where you can begin and manage your very own ad campaign.
How Do Listings Work?
Google requires different levels of information for products to show up on the Shopping tab, Image tab, or general Search. Signing up with the Google Merchant Center isn’t required for Google to automatically construct free listings if your website has structured data markup, and you haven’t opted out via your indexing and crawl controls. If your products haven’t been crawled, you can manually submit a feed via google Merchant Center. Some of the attributes Google uses to index, sort, and recommend your products includes:
Product ID.
Product title.
Product link.
Image link.
Product price.
Product description.
Product availability.
Product condition (for refurbished products).
Product brand.
Product GTIN.
And much more.
Among these data points, Google particularly recommends that you provide information on shipping info and shipping policies, return policies (via the Merchant Center), the correct product URL (via the canonical_link attribute), and product availability.
For more information on making the most out of your Google ad campaigns, SEO campaigns, and product listings, get in touch.
Why Does This Matter?
This partnership between Google and GoDaddy is going to prove particularly beneficial for small-to-medium businesses, and small retailers. It’s a smart move for tech and IT companies to invest heavily in creating intuitive and easy-to-use ecommerce tools, as thousands and thousands of business owners are looking to move inventory over the internet after the pandemic forced countless brick-and-mortar stores to close.
But with the influx of new platforms to buy from comes a natural oversaturation of the market. Even niche industries are beginning to see multiple online storefronts fighting for the same or similar customer bases, to the point that differentiation and marketing savvy are becoming more and more important.
GoDaddy’s Google (and Facebook) integration, alongside a robust search engine optimization strategy, can help smaller retailers looking to reach broader audiences (locally, nationally, or worldwide) and ship their inventory out to the world.
While larger online retailers like Amazon took the biggest slice of the ecommerce revenue pie by far in 2020 and the first half of 2021, online shopping in general has experienced a massive boom as a result of the COVID pandemic, and we are likely to continue to see that trend grow even after this pandemic has finally come to an end.
The early days of search engine optimization were as simple as paying attention to your keyword use and gaming the “algorithm” as it existed at the time – and while things have gotten a lot more complicated since then, it does kind of work out to be the same thing it’s always been: trying to figure out the best way to top search engine results by playing by (or subverting) the engine’s rules.
Even now, decades after the launch of the first search engine, SEO remains a key tool in any digital marketing campaign as search still drives just around half of all website traffic, give or take (depending on niche and industry). Among those results, the vast majority of traffic originates from organic search (rather than paid), often to the 99th percentile.
In other words, no matter how many different platforms show up to present themselves as the next big opportunity to capitalize on growing demand for video content, audio content, written content, or other mediums, it all ultimately comes down to the same thing every time: now that you’ve got the product and the content, how are you going to make sure you get the right people?
Does that mean SEO has become stagnant in years past? Absolutely not. While it remains a pillar of digital marketing, part of the reason that’s the case is because the opposite is true: SEO is constantly evolving, even if in relatively minor ways. Most of the changes in the SEO game come in the form of new tools to aggregate and analyze search data and user information, single out specific user profiles to both improve traffic while maximizing leads, and optimizing loading speeds, user experience, ad experience, and more.
SEO is about so much more than backlinks and content. It now encompasses a vast number of factors that aim to make use of the way Google recommends information based on user preferences, search patterns, location, interest, and much, much more – while helping companies funnel their resources into their digital presence as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Let’s look at some of the ways in which SEO has changed in recent times – and how you may have adapted, or need to adapt.
User Experience is Critical
We’ve all heard the phrase “content is king” a million times now, and that isn’t necessarily wrong, even so many years later. It’s no surprise that Bill Gates of all people was right on the money well over twenty years ago.
But there’s certainly a whole lot more to search engine success in 2021 than good content. Good content does not excuse a poor user experience. This means everything from page loading speeds to fonts and colors, ad placement, page functionality, streamlined design, and more.
Poor user experience won’t get you penalized on Google, but it can be a make-or-break difference when the search engine compares your page to that of your closest competitor.
Google Has Emphasized Clean, Responsive Content
Aside from user experience basics, Google has further emphasized what they call their Core Web Vitals earlier this year. These are metrics of page performance, specifically factors that relate most closely to how users perceive your page. Core web vitals measure how quickly and effectively your page handles the following three tasks:
LCP (largest contentful paint), which is the amount of time it takes to render the largest piece of content on the user’s viewport.
FID (first input delay), which is a measure of how long it takes the browser to react to a user’s interaction with your page after their first click.
CLS (cumulative layout shift), which measures a phenomenon where page elements load inconsistently, causing misclicks and frustration as a user tries to interact with a page element that is no longer there.
A Higher Premium on Expert Advice
Another major change is that Google has continued to pay more attention to credibility and authority on certain topics, to the point that it becomes very hard to rank on them without serious credentials – such as being a renowned expert on the subject, an academic, or a credentialled professional.
This also means that content created and curated by professionals and experts in their given fields is given a higher premium than content created by unknown writers – especially in health and wellness niches. This is part of the reason you’re likely going to see results on certain medical conditions flooded by websites like WebMD, Cleveland Clinic, Healthline, and Mayo Clinic.
Bounce Rates and Search Intent
Getting a lot of clicks isn’t actually a great metric for success on Google – but it is the fastest way to expose weaknesses in your SEO strategy, by analyzing your bounce rates. A bounce rate is the number of people clicking off your page after realizing that it isn’t what they were looking for.
Bounce rates are an indicator that you’re attracting the wrong people with your search engine strategy. You might need to be more specific with your keywords and SEO, in order to ensure that as many people as possible who visit your page are satisfied with what they see. This is called search intent.
Much, Much More
While search engines like Baidu and DuckDuckGo command a lot of traffic (the first being China’s largest internet company, and the second being a popular privacy-oriented alternative to the Big Two), Google and Bing easily dominate, and the steps the two take to shape search – especially Google – have a continuous, reverberating impact on search as a whole every time a major change is announced.
Keeping an eye on changes as they’re announced and anticipated is important for any marketer looking to capitalize on modern SEO, especially because search engines can be volatile – and what might have been best practice six months ago isn’t necessarily harmful, it could be much less effective than a different, new approach.
News this week is being presented by more than yet another change to the algorithm – this time, Google is making marketing headlines with the development and release of a (sort of) brand new toolkit called Ads Creative Studio.
The new toolkit is designed for both creative types and marketers, with the aim of helping them take their campaigns to the next level via a new suite of resources both old and new. Google has also stated that they are trying to make it easier for artists and ad specialists to collaborate.
What is Google’s Ads Creative Studio?
Combining the forces of the YouTubevideo editor, Display & Video 360, and Campaign Manager 360, Ads Creative Studio gives you a set of basic features unifying the best of all three – in theory, and hopefully, in practice as well. So far, Ads Creative Studio is boasting the following base features:
The Director Mix. A brand-new tool that allows advertisers to create and customize ad campaigns that scale. Advertisers can design and produce a base video asset and utilize customized and dynamic elements to adjust to a variety of potential customers and target audiences – greatly expanding the efficacy of a single campaign and multiplying an ad department’s productivity.
The idea, according to Google, is to enable advertisers to create “thousands of video variations with relatively little effort”, through the use of customizable video layers containing text, graphics, audio, and even references to the viewer’s location, time of day, or interest.
Dynamic Display ads. Dynamic display is an existing feature in Google’s advertising products, particularly the Google Display Network in Google Ads. Dynamic Display, in theory, allows advertisers to cater their ads to the user, rather than trying to sculpt an ad around a vague target audience.
This allows ads to display products and offers that are most relevant to the person viewing them, based on information Google has gathered. Data is by far the most valuable resource in the advertising arms race, and Dynamic Display ads are one of the more unique ways advertisers can choose to leverage Google’s enormous data analysis capabilities.
HTML5 creation tools. HTML5 creation tools simply let advertisers leverage the improved performance and loading speed of HTML5 web elements when creating ads through the new Ad Creative Studio. Remember, speed is key with Google – your ad should be catchy and unintrusive, as well as quick to load.
Audio Mixer and Dynamic Audio. Audio is the unappreciated and underrated MVP of any given ad. Sound is immensely powerful, from voice acting and music to basic sound design and foley. But audio mixing, in particular, can make or break an ad and can mean the difference between something memorable and catchy, or something completely and utterly forgettable.
And finally, a Project Library, which is as straightforward as it sounds.
Why Consolidate These Tools?
While Ads Creative Studio is bringing a few new things to the table, most of its tools can be found in Google’s other existing products, mainly the aforementioned three: YouTube, Display & Video 360, and Campaign Manager 360.
At the heart of it, the idea to consolidate probably boils down to this: one is simpler and more efficient than three. Let alone five, six, or seven, once you take into consideration how people utilize a vast number of different programs and suites to work on HTML5 ads, video ads, display ads, and audio ads.
Ads Creative Studio is Google’s way of taking what they’ve already developed and repackaging it with a neat little bow – while telling advertisers that this is the project they aim to refine over the next few years.
Ads Creative Studio is also a way for Google to lead advertisers in a dance towards a new kind of way to develop and roll out ad campaigns: a dynamic way, where ads become building blocks that include a foundation, and multiple dynamic and customized, user-specific elements that are swapped in and out by both man and machine (or, more correctly, algorithm).
Google is basically telling us that we’re going to spend less and less time coming up with ways to design a new ad around each and every target customer, and instead automate the way ads target our audience, while designing better, more intuitive, simpler, and hopefully less intrusive and less bloated ads (via HTML5 tools and Google’s help). Ads Creative Studio also contains an asset management system where advertisers can store and browse text, video, audio, and graphical assets to utilize in their different ads.
There’s another potential benefit behind the curtain here: increased and improved collaboration between the media team and the ad team. By consolidating the tools and the managerial process, Google aims to create a one-stop-shop for a company’s general ad creation needs – a place where artists can create assets, while advertisers assemble them in real time.
What Does This Ultimately Mean for You?
Ideally, Google wants it to mean that you’ll spend less time making more ads. More ads means more revenue, which is a good thing for a company that mostly generates revenue from online advertising.
Whether or not you use Google’s tools is absolutely up to you, and there’s no denying that a consolidated web-based toolkit like Ads Creative Studio probably won’t be putting out the same quality of work as an experienced ad agency with very high production values and renowned artists. But for the average marketing specialist, Google’s new suite can definitely help make life much easier, on artists and advertisers alike.
Google is Merging Other Resources
In other news, Create with Google is being merged with Think with Google. This is Google’s resource for sharing tools, information, and spotlights in creative ads and creative advertising throughout the industry. Check it out if you want a little inspiration for your campaign – or, more specifically, just want to go check out the kind of ads that perform well with Google. You can also review Google’s creative guidelines on video, text, and more.
Whether you’ve heard of it via headlines in the news, releases by the EFF, or the viral sharing of AmIFLoCed, chances are you’ve heard about Google’s new FLoC initiative at some point this year.
FLoC, or the Federated Learning of Cohorts, is part of Google’s larger privacy sandbox, and is an experimental replacement for third-party cookies. While the name might sound confusing at first, the API is quite simple in concept (though its execution remains to be seen).
Explaining Google FLoC
FLoC is a new data collection concept by which the browsing and behavioral data of multiple individuals would be grouped up into generalized cohorts and used as an alternative to third-party cookies.
Currently, advertisers use cookies to track user behavior and create targeted ad campaigns. But privacy concerns surrounding the ubiquity of cookies and their invasiveness – particularly insofar as how they allow programs to track users across the internet, create user profiles based on their activities across different websites, and track users across different locations – have led people to wonder if there could be a better alternative, or if third-party cookies (and user tracking in general) should be completely done away with.
One of the biggest concerns regarding third-party cookies is that they can be attributed to a single person. Advertising platforms can generate user profiles based on their cookies and learn just about everything about a person from their behavior on the Internet.
FLoC aims to obscure the individual in the group, making it impossible for advertisers to single out individual users, and instead only gather and use information about large groups of people with similar patterns of behavior.
These cohorts would still enable personalized advertising, but the ads would be personalized to a profile roughly fitting several thousand people, rather than individual users.
“Federated learning” means that Google will be using machine learning to generate these cohorts. The idea is that advertisers will only be able to target a cohort once enough user data has been gathered to generate one, based on at least a few thousand users per cohort.
Cohorts would be categorized based on interests and behavior, and users could be placed within different cohorts at different times – for example, a single user may be part of a cohort centered around looking at gardening equipment one week, then at another point in time they may be in a cohort of people who viewed a lot of baking recipes.
How is Google FLoC Different from Cookies?
User information will be gleamed, aggregated, and provided by a user’s browser, but advertisers would only ever have access to the information of a generalized cohort of people rather than the individual user information currently made accessible by third-party cookies.
FLoC itself would still have access to that information to generate cohorts, but it wouldn’t be shared, even with Google.
Why Is There Controversy Surrounding Google FLoC?
Although FLoC is a proposed alternative to third-party cookies, there are privacy experts who worry that it’s just a pivot in a similar direction. FLoC holds no answers for common invasive forms of tracking like fingerprinting (which tracks user’s browsing history based on device information and other data rather than cookies) and may be combined with other non-cookie forms of invasive tracking to generate an even more accurate user profile.
Privacy experts also feel that addressing third-party cookies (which track users across websites, platforms, and devices) isn’t enough, and that first-party cookies (which are used to track logins and cart histories, but can also be used to generate in-house user profiles) still lend themselves to the development of targeted ad campaigns that are, by their very nature, discriminatory. Like fingerprinting, first-party cookies could potentially be combined with FLoC to continue to erode user privacy.
Google acknowledges these issues and is pushing ahead with FLoC testing, with the added caveat that the feature isn’t ready for a generalized rollout. So far, only about 0.5 percent of Chrome users in selected regions are being “FLoCed”. Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla all feel that the feature would have to be improved considerably, and are unwilling to implement it. Brave Browser explains that FLoC: “harms user privacy, under the guise of being privacy-friendly.”
Preparing for the Future
One thing to make note of is that FLoC is proposed to be a replacement for third-party cookies, and their ability to track users as they move throughout the web. FLoC is not a replacement for first-party cookies, which allow websites to offer functionality such as registering an account and logging in, saving items in a cart, and compiling data for the use of user experience improvements, for example.
If third-party cookies were to be extinguished, advertisers would (theoretically) have a harder time tracking a single individual throughout the internet and would be replaced by generalized cohorts instead. But that doesn’t mean advertisers cease to have any info whatsoever on individual users. It’s just that most, if not all of it, will come in the form of first-party data.
This leads to the question: what will advertisers be able to do with first-party data? Google continues to probe and research this question via its FLEDGE initiative, an expansion of a previous Google Chrome program dubbed TURTLEDOVE. Via FLEDGE, Google claims that Chrome plans to take into account: “the industry feedback they’ve heard, including the idea of using a ‘trusted server’ – as defined by compliance with certain principles and policies – that’s specifically designed to store information about a campaign’s bids and budgets.”
FLEDGE testing is currently in progress, and origin trials testing is set to begin this month, with “advertiser testing” occurring at some point later this year before the 2022 deadline. That being said, some experts doubt that any serious testing on Google’s new privacy concepts will take place until next year. Google has stated that ad companies interested in joining these tests will be able to make use of the experimental API through a “bring your own server” model.
Other proposed changes to preserve crucial ad effectiveness functionalities, such as conversion tracking, are still underway. Currently, there have been talks about altering the way conversion tracking data is presented to make it impossible to identify and expose any given individual behind a conversion, but still present advertisers with enough actionable data to determine how successful their campaign was in relation to previous efforts.
The privacy sandbox Google continuously mentions is part of a greater initiative throughout the web to earnestly tackle and answer the questions and problems surrounding privacy and anonymity in the modern web.
Privacy and user data has come into the forefront of public consciousness via the popularity of search engines like DuckDuckGo, Apple’s initiatives to block third-party cookies altogether and market privacy as a selling point for its consumer tech, as well as the implementation of the GDPR throughout the EU. Whether Google’s new initiatives will prove to be a long-term solution, or just a short-term paradigm shift in the online advertising world, is still undecided.
Are you making the most of Amazon’s advertising suite? Are you sure? Because amid global turmoil, a major stock market crash, and murder hornets, Amazon’s stock soared to record numbers on the way to 2021, and it has continued to update and evolve its advertising options in an effort to help brands capitalize on all of this new growth.
What does this mean for you? Well, just as Amazon has been ramping up, it’s time for advertisers to ramp up with them. If your brand relies on ecommerce, then Amazon Advertising should be a major part of your overall marketing strategy.
If it doesn’t, then giving Amazon Advertising a look is still worthwhile – because regardless of what you’re selling, and where you’re selling it, you want ads on Amazon and its dozen high profile acquisitions.
Sponsored Brands and Display
We don’t need to explain why branding matters on the Internet. Amazon is no exception and has even expanded its options for brands to further draw in audiences, create connections via live video, over-the-top (OTT), and creative display ads, and capitalize on the power of branding via pay-per-click brand ads.
These are sponsored brand appearances on related searches and items, so potential customers continuously see your brand name and logo as they search for items in your particular niche or industry. Clicking on a sponsored brand also funnels users into a customized sales experience, via your own brand page – complete with current offers, new arrivals, and categorized inventory.
New additions to the sponsored brands feature include video, brand stories, your very own Amazon Store, Amazon Posts, and Amazon OTT.
Then, there’s sponsored display. This is Amazon’s on- and off-site display ad function, allowing you to create campaigns on-the-fly.
Not sure where to start? You’re not alone. Amazon has been ramping up its advertising upgrades and features with the pandemic, leaving some retailers in the dust. If you’re new to testing your ad campaigns on Amazon, be sure to work with someone with prior experience.
Amazon Attribution
Amazon Attribution is a new service in beta mode focused on providing ad campaign data and ad analysis for brands on Amazon, particularly regarding user behavior off-site via search, social media, video ads, display ads, and even email marketing.
The idea behind Amazon Attribution is to help marketers trace how each of these efforts directly translated into shopping activities and impressions on Amazon – so you can home in on what works, eliminate what doesn’t, and get fresh, data-driven ideas to optimize your ad investment on Amazon and elsewhere.
Amazon Live and Amazon OTT
Amazon launched over-the-top (OTT) video in 2019 and hasn’t slowed down with the investment in video ad functionality.
While display and audio ads still play an important role in your strategy – especially with Amazon owning both Prime Music and Audible – Amazon has been pushing video, in the light of how video ads have exploded in 2021. Today, about 80 percent of all internet traffic comes from watching streamed video.
Amazon Posts
Amazon Posts is another function in beta that attempts to introduce lifestyle-centered curated brand content to viewers and users browsing the platform. Basically, brands can now create Posts to promote individual products, or the brand itself, whenever users browse relevant categories.
Users that click through your Posts will be brought to your brand feed – and from there, they’ll click through to your product pages, and the eventual shopping cart. Or at least, that’s the idea. Amazon Posts is still in beta, and is currently only available on mobile (both through the Amazon app and the mobile web version of the platform).
Are You Making the Most of Amazon DSP?
Another one of Amazon’s critically important tools for both search marketers and ecommerce experts is Amazon’s demand-side platform (DSP).
You don’t need to be a brand on Amazon to use its DSP. Anyone can take advantage of Amazon DSP to start managing video, display, and audio ads to drive traffic back to their main site and make use of Amazon’s massive resources, including the Amazon network (which includes properties like IMDb, Twitch.tv, Audible, and more), and the platform’s over 2 billion visitors per month.
Making use of Amazon’s DSP is surprisingly easy. All you need to get started is an Amazon DSP account (separate from the Amazon Ad account you’re using for Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and other Amazon Advertising options), and your ad assets.
The platform itself is straightforward, albeit a little simple. Don’t expect specific information on how well your CTA performed, or which CTA performed best. You will get information on impressions and performance but expect that data to trickle in over time as the ad gets going. Also note that ad assets may have to be adjusted for Amazon – don’t just reuse the same assets you’re running on Facebook. Amazon has its own guideline for ideal ad specs.
Amazon and eCommerce in 2021
After the ecommerce insanity that was 2020, it’s hard to confidently predict what the near future is going to look like for both Amazon and its alternatives/competitors.
Making sure your brand is performing well on the world’s largest and fastest growing marketplace is definitely an absolute must – as is ensuring that you’re also being optimal on other channels as well, whether it’s via your website, social networks, or organic traffic through Google. Don’t neglect ecommerce alternatives, whether on your own site or elsewhere – we all know how dangerous it is to put all of our eggs in one basket, even if it’s an incredibly profitable and convenient basket.
But as we continue to move towards a post-pandemic world, one thing seems clear: ecommerce growth shows no signs of slowing down, and it’s likely that people will continue to heavily incorporate online shopping into their day-to-day even as brick-and-mortar shops reopen.
Need help making heads or tails of Amazon’s ever-expanding suite of advertising options in 2021? Be sure to work with a partner that knows what they’re doing. You don’t need to take advantage of every single tool Amazon throws your way – but even a simple strategy takes understanding of how Amazon pushes and promotes products, mobilizes leads, and responds to off-site optimization.
Google released a new core update earlier this month and has uncharacteristically announced a second update following very closely next month. Google core updates tend to be spaced several months apart, but a statement from Google Search public liaison Danny Sullivan clarified that they originally planned on releasing a single, larger update this month, and have had to split the update into two parts to begin rolling out this month and avoid major delays.
Google’s blog previously wrote about core updates in 2019 and has linked to the same post once again to tell webmasters how to prepare.
Among other things, the post states: “There’s nothing wrong with pages that may perform less well in a core update. They haven’t violated our webmaster guidelines nor been subjected to manual or algorithmic action, as can happen to pages that do violate those guidelines. In fact, there’s nothing in a core update that targets specific pages or sites.”
To clarify further, this means that changes in rankings after a core update are not the same as penalizations, and core updates don’t tackle spam or dole out penalties. This is more about Google trying to improve search results.
The post goes on to provide an analogy, where core updates are akin to changes to a Top 100 Films list. The iteration of the list in 2015 will look different from an iteration of the list in 2019, due to changes in interpretation, newer worthy additions, and reconsiderations or reflections granted by hindsight and time.
What is Google’s Core Update Covering?
Google continuously updates its search algorithm, which relies on hundreds of known ranking factors and hundreds more that are unclarified or potential ranking factors. While Google makes changes to its search algorithm several times a day, it packs most of the “bigger” changes into so-called core updates.
As with most Google core updates, the focus here is on content. What Google is looking for specifically is relevance and accuracy. The gist of what core updates have been covering so far is as follows:
Google is trying to improve how websites are ranked based on content quality and relevance.
They’re paying more attention to unique and cite-worthy content. This doesn’t mean heavily-cited content is a prerequisite for ranking – but they are trying to rank pages with insightful and interesting information.
They’re trying to discourage clickbait. Again, core updates don’t lead to penalties – but they do mean that your ranking may decrease because the algorithm now thinks other content should rank higher.
Sourcing and expertise are becoming more important. Google may rank authoritative content higher than content with dubious sources or authors.
Content should be more than just legible – it should be well-presented, on all platforms, free from excessive distractions (ads).
And, perhaps most importantly, Google wants webmasters and content creators to ask themselves: “Does the content seem to be serving the genuine interests of visitors to the site or does it seem to exist solely by someone attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?”
Expect Another Google Core Update in July
As mentioned previously, this update will amount to only about half of the changes Google aimed to introduce this month. The rest will follow next month.
However, because Google remains fairly opaque about what these changes are exactly – outside of clarifying that they’re trying to make search results emphasize content quality – we can’t really report on what’s “missing” from the update, so to speak, or predict how July’s changes will affect this month’s changes.
Unlike penalties, which can take several months to be reversed (even if you make the appropriate changes to your content ASAP), changes in ranking caused by a core update are not affected by the same kind of “time-out”.
You can make changes to your content to try and better match Google’s update, and hope for a more positive result. But there’s also an argument to be made for not doing anything hasty. If you want a more in-depth look at what Google might take into consideration when ranking, give the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines a look.
What To Do If You’ve Had a Hit in Ranking
With Google’s June update out in full force, many websites are seeing their rankings drop or change already. If you’ve experienced a sudden drop, then hold your horses on making any major changes. Your ranking might reverse with the next update (which is just a few weeks away). Alternatively, keep in mind what core updates usually seek to address: improved accuracy and relevancy when recommending content on the web.
In previous core updates, Google has advised webmasters to focus on the following four areas when hit with a drop in rankings:
Content authoritativeness.
Author expertise and truthfulness.
Visual style and content presentation.
Comparative quality (versus other similar pages).
To sum it all up, the general advice is for this coming core update is to wait and see, potentially do nothing. If the update did affect you, consider how your web content compares to the pages that outranked you, and what you might want to change to improve it (and even beat the competition).
Google’s update hit the ground running on June 2nd, and they’ve previously stated that it might take up to two weeks for the effects of the update to be fully integrated into the search algorithm. This means that even if you haven’t been hit with a ranking change yet (both positive and negative), it can still happen.
If you need help preparing for the next update, do note that any changes you are seeing now may reverse themselves in a few weeks. The July update can be more accurately seen as part two of the June update, or just the second, potentially larger half of an update Google had been planning to roll out completely earlier this month but failed to.
Webmasters and content creators should also bear in mind the previously mentioned Page Experience Update, which is rolling out this month as well, focusing on Google’s new Core Web Vitals.
Google Analytics 4 is a new kind of analytics property, and the newest incarnation of the Google Analytics platform. Previously known as Google Analytics App + Web, Google Analytics 4 can be used to track, compile, and visualize data from apps, websites, or a website and app together, versus web-only tracking from Universal Analytics, for example.
Google Analytics 4 was built on the bones of the App + Web property, utilizing machine learning to compensate for privacy changes in the industry that may make it harder to track a user’s journey through the web.
Furthermore, Google’s implementation of machine learning advancements in its analytics properties will extrapolate data into actionable information, to the point that Google feels it may help you: “anticipate future actions your customers may take.”
Ultimately, any analytics tool acts as a flashlight into the dark and unknown future of any given marketing campaign or major SEO change. Google Analytics 4 is the latest in a line of products designed to improve your ROI – provided you know how to use it.
How has Google Analytics 4 Changed?
There are a few major changes in the way Google Analytics 4 presents actionable data. Perhaps the biggest conceptual change is a shift towards a consumer-centric measurement.
GA4’s analytics are no longer built around user sessions. Moving forward, Google plans to change the way data is collected and examined to provide greater cross-platform benefits to marketers, and better predict user behavior by tracking each user interaction. Data collection terms central to GA4 include:
Events – any trackable user interaction (a click, a purchase, login events, page views, etc.). GA4 does not register hit types the same way Universal Analytics does.
Parameters – similar to “dimensions” in Universal Analytics data collection. Describes useful information relevant to the event.
User ID – user-specific identification for cross-platform tracking.
In other words, the data being provided and visualized through both web and app properties on GA4 utilizes marketer-provided User IDs and Google signals from opt-in users to give you cross-platform user-specific snapshots and measurements, rather than per-device measurements or per-platform measurements.
GA4 also provides a comprehensive reporting of any given user’s life cycle on your website or app, specifically on acquisition, engagement, monetization, and overall retention.
Google Analytics 4 vs. Universal Analytics
There are a few fundamental differences, beginning with how events work. Universal Analytics property hit types translate into a GA4 property event, and these GA4 events have no concepts of Category, Action, or Label, unlike UA.
When porting over into UA, you need to be aware of events that GA4 will not automatically track, requiring you to add specific code to implement them properly. These include:
Ad impressions
Virtual currency
When a user joins a group
When a user completes a purchase
When a user logs in
When a user has shared content
When a user searches for content
And more.
Google provides a tutorial on how to map UA events to GA4, and help with the transition into the new data collection system.
Should You Set Up Google Analytics 4?
Even if you are only tentatively planning on integrating GA4 in the near future, consider jumping in now to see how it will develop over time, via increased data aggregation and machine learning.
Setting Up Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 practically sets itself up, on the most basic level. If you have a property that already has analytics, there’s very little for you to do – just head on into your Google Analytics account, and pay a visit to the Google Analytics 4 Setup Assistant.
If you are setting up a new site, you can use the Create Property action in your Google Analytics account to add your site, set up data collection for it, and begin tracking your data.
Additionally, Google has a tutorial to help users set up both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 as parallel properties.
A reminder that there are different ways of setting up data collection for websites, and Google Analytics 4 utilizes the global site tag API (gtag.js). If you are using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, you are going to have to add the Analytics tag to your CMS or website builder backend. Refer to the Tagging Instructions under your Data Stream info in the Property column. There should be a snippet of code that begins with:
<!– Global Site Tag (gtag.js) – Google Analytics –>
And ends with:
</script>
You will need to copy and paste this into your website’s code, via your website builder or CMS. Each website builder or CMD typically has its own instructions for doing so.
Why Bother with Google Analytics 4?
Aside from the factors we’ve mentioned earlier, one of the overarching benefits of Google Analytics 4 is its machine learning integration allowing marketers to fill in the gaps created by increased user privacy protections, while featuring a simplified reporting interface.
This way, you can focus on spotting trends and tweaking campaigns, while GA4 does its best to create a consistent and accurate user journey based on as much data as it can accumulate.
Some of the other cool features you can use with Google Analytics 4 include:
Realtime Data Tracking
User Snapshots
Life Cycle Reports (User Acquisition, Engagement, Monetization, Retention)
And, perhaps most impressively: a custom analysis report maker, in the form of the Analysis Hub. The hub lets you determine what data points and variables you’re looking to visualize and explore, giving you an unprecedented tool to compare the effectiveness of campaigns and techniques, review how changes have impacted your traffic and user experience, and better communicate the effects of even the most minute changes to other team members, clients, and managers.
Analysis tools are the bread and butter of modern marketing. Data is essential for effective decision making, and the more actionable user data you have access to, the more you can tailor your website experience to improve user retention and monetization, turning traffic into leads, leads into sales, and sales into more users.
Google Analytics 4 is a better analysis tool for most marketers, especially with its forward-thinking machine learning feature. As an increasing number of users are looking for ways to limit how they’re being tracked, a demand that Google has responded to with renewed commitment. We will need ways to fill the gaps.
There are nearly two billion separate websites on the internet. Every awesome website added to the net today is the digital equivalent of a drop in the ocean. So how do you improve rankings and increase traffic to make your drop stand out?
The answer still lies, as it always has, in taking advantage of the way search engines filter through this enormous amount of content to bring users the results they want to see.
An overwhelming 93 percent of “web experiences” begin with an online search, overwhelmingly through Google, but also through other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo. Furthermore, users overwhelmingly focus on the first few results of any search, with at least a third of users clicking on the top result.
In other words, the best bang-for-your-buck in improving traffic and lead generation is by making sure your search engine ranking improves, and capitalizing on the way search engines like Google rate and rank the websites that show up on people’s searches.
That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play. Search engine optimization is about utilizing the known factors that companies like Google use to rate and rank websites according to different user searches, including ones such as content relevance, user experience, loading times, keywords, and more.
While there are hundreds of factors at play in any given search, we’ve picked out eight important ones for any new website to focus on.
Improve Your User Experience
Recently, use experience has taken center stage regarding ranking factors. Ignoring user experience is one of the most common SEO mistakes. Is your website intuitive, easy to navigate, and pleasant to the eyes? These aren’t just vague metrics – user experience (UX) is an integral part of both web design and SEO, as search engines like websites that snowball in traffic, and the only way to keep users on your site is to give them a few reasons to stay.
Poor performance, a cluttered look, and a confusing web architecture can serve to push potential clients away, and cost you leads. Loading times in particular are crucially important.
Search engines hate slow websites, and you’ll have a hard time outranking the competition if your pages take forever to load. If you’re in a niche that relies on multimedia, leveraging smarter ways to load image- and video-based content can help your ranking significantly.
UX depends on the target audience, as well as some simple best practices that aim to streamline the user through your website, from product search to purchase.
Include the Mobile Market
The mobile market has been exploding in popularity and significance in nearly every branch and industry since the early 2010s. About 68 percent of all website visits in 2020 came from smartphones and other mobile devices, and over half of the planet’s population now has access to the mobile internet, and mobile searches are becoming an ever-larger part of the pie.
To that end, you need to make sure your website is just as fun and intuitive to use on the small screen as it is on the big one.
Home In On a Niche
The Internet is a big place, and there are far too many competitors in any given industry to take them all on without some serious marketing guns and a lot of time and capital. However, even smaller startups can gain massive traction online without the financial backing of a venture capitalist or a viral Twitter campaign by simply picking their battles.
While you might not reach number one on Google for “New York bakeries” just a few weeks after the launch of your new site, you can focus on a niche that might not have quite as much competition, and dominate the search results there – such as “Brooklyn wedding cakes”.
Beyond picking popular keywords with less competition, focusing your brand and content on a particular niche can help improve your traffic and ranking by improving the legitimacy of your site.
A website focused on consistent leads in a single industry is going to have more success than one that produces content for both confectionary and woodworking.
Do a Little Keyword Research
Some keywords are better targets than others, even when they’re contextually related. Keyword research tools like Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, and Moz can help you figure out how most potential leads word their searches, helping you funnel your SEO resources in the right direction.
Quality and Consistency
Websites need content to help search engines rank and categorize them. While you can just build a simple storefront, slap it on the web, and push it via social media, you’re going to see a lot more organic search traffic (and better leads) if you add content to that storefront to attract and educate readers on the uses and benefits of your product or service.
To that end, there are two major factors to consider when producing web content: quality and consistency.
Your content shouldn’t be riddled with spelling errors, and it should be relevant to the product – without reading too much like a marketing brochure, or an attempt to do nothing but sell your services. The best content is the kind that helps readers learn something, and produces actual value for your brand.
It’s a big plus when the content is easily readable. That’s where header tags come in, letting you break up your content into digestible chunks, while providing opportunities for both readers and search engines to, at a glance, understand what your content is about.
Consistency is important too. You don’t need daily or even weekly new posts or updates, but do pick a realistic content schedule and stick to it. The more content you post, the more traffic will begin to snowball.
Links, Backlinks, and URLs
There are a few types of links to keep an eye on when improving your website’s ranking and traffic. These are:
Backlinks: These are external links leading to your website fromother websites. These are random at best, as any means of trying to purposefully influence your backlink count (such as buying backlinks) can drastically backfire. Your best bet is to ensure that news outlets and trusted websites publicizing your company are linking to it as well. You want good backlinks.
Internal links: These are links leading to other relevant pages on your website. You can use these to keep readers interested and on-site, linking them from one topic to the next. Use internal links to lead readers to relevant on-site content, or products.
External links: These are links leading to websites outside of your own. External links can also be used to refer to backlinks. You can use these to boost the credibility of your content, or just provide quality sources for your information.
Furthermore, keep an eye on your page’s URLs. Dynamic URLs (those with a bunch of numbers) typically won’t perform as well as static URLs (especially ones relevant to the content of the page).
Keep an Eye on Your Traffic Metrics
You can’t gauge the impact of any major change in your SEO strategy without first having some idea of how your website is performing. While you don’t need to be a data junkie to implement good SEO, it helps to keep an eye on your weekly metrics and track how well new content is performing.
This can help you course-correct in the middle of a campaign, figure out a niche that seems to be doing much better than others, or halt a change that seems to be backfiring.
Google Analytics is the most common way to review your traffic and other metrics, but there are several other options.
Keep On Learning
Google alone makes changes to its search algorithm daily, and SEO experts always harp on the importance of keeping up-to-date on best practices to stay relevant on the web.
Websites have seen traffic tank for seemingly no reason at all, because of a subtle change to the way Google ranks pages, and more major changes can drastically affect a website’s strategy, to the point that what was once a best practice becomes actively harmful to your traffic and reputation.
If you’re looking for a team to get your content up to snuff, and start outranking the competition, get in touch with us today.
Earlier this year, Google announced its most recent change to the way keyword match types will work. This change sees the end of the modified broad match while expanding one of the other existing match types, the phrase match.
The modified broad match was introduced in 2010 and allowed advertisers to specify keywords that needed to be included in a search query to pull up their content.
Commenting on the change, Google explained that the modified broad match’s functionality was partially folded into the phrase match because the two often intersected. However, for many advertisers, the removal of the modified broad match feels like the loss of an important tool for manually specifying what keywords are most relevant for any given ad.
Before we get into the finer details, let’s review how match types work, and how the recent February changes will reflect on common keyword practices.
What Are Match Types?
Search results on the internet are displayed based on a complex set of factors, each of which attempts to contribute to the accuracy and relevance of the results respective to the query entered by the user. Keywords have always played a central role in this, and search engine optimization techniques have always involved utilizing a targeted approach to match content and ads to popular, niche, or valuable search queries.
This goes for both organic and paid results, paid results (or Google Ads) being the sponsored search engine results that usually show up near the top of a Google search. Keyword match types are a unique and important metric for pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns on Google, and they determine what search queries your ads are matched to. You can utilize different keyword match types by formatting your keywords accordingly.
Before the February 2021 change, there were five main match types for you to select for your ad. These were:
Broad match type. This would bring in the widest audience, but with the least specific targeting. As long as a query would be even contextually related to the keywords you have specified, your ad might be shown to the user. For example, the keyword “men’s shirts” as a broad match type keyword would trigger your ad on relevant searches, including queries for jackets, coats, and hoodies. Broad match keywords are written without brackets or quotation marks.
Modified broad match type. When selecting modified broad match type, you could further specify what keywords must be included in a query to trigger your ad. For example, adding “+shirts” as a broad match modifier keyword means your ad would show up to contextually similar queries as long as they included the term “shirts”. Queries for just jackets, coats, or hoodies would be ignored. Word order also didn’t matter. You could add multiple modifier keywords to your campaign to increase the relevancy of your ad to specific queries. Modifiers were specified through a prefixed plus sign.
Phrase match type. Phrase match type keywords were a little bit in-between, putting a greater emphasis on queries that match the keywords provided. When using the phrase match type, your keyword would need to be found in the query, but other terms could be added behind and after (but not in the middle) of your keyword phrase. For example, “men’s shirts” would also cause your ad to show up on queries for “shirts for men”, “men’s shirts for sale”, “casual shirts for men”, and “striped men’s shirts”. Phrase match keywords are written in quotation marks.
rolling it into a feature. The exact match type allows you to target very specific queries to maximize your conversion rate, at the cost of missing out on a wider audience. For an exact match type keyword, the query must be exactly like your keyword phrase, or a close variation thereof (i.e., “men’s shirts” is functionally identical to “shirts for men”). Exact match keywords are written in brackets.
Negative match type. rolling it into a feature allow you to filter terms that would disqualify a query from seeing your ad. You can set negative broad match keywords, negative phrase match keywords, and negative exact match keywords. These function just like normal keywords, but for search term exclusion rather than inclusion. This is useful when you want to make sure your product isn’t confused for something else, or when you want to improve conversion by cutting out contextually similar queries that end up being completely irrelevant. Negative keywords are specified with a prefixed minus sign.
Throughout the years, Google has been making changes to its search engine – including how each match type really works. In other words, broad match keywords were always spec’d to reach the widest audience, but the mechanics behind how they worked have been tweaked time and time again.
While this change is more substantial than usual – removing a match type altogether – it was presumably done in the service of leaning out the concept of keyword matches and avoiding redundancies. Whether or not the idea was executed properly is still up for debate between advertisers and SEO experts.
Why is Google Phasing Out Modified Broad Matching?
Google has removed the modified broad match type in favor of rolling it into a feature as part of the phrase match type. In other words, at least on a conceptual level, nothing has changed. But on a more specific level, advertisers now need to be careful about how they add modifiers to their keyword strings, and they need to keep in mind that modifier keywords now count as phrase match keywords.
To sum it up, you can continue to prefix keywords with a plus sign to single them out in your ad campaign, and they will continue to function as broad match modifiers. However, Google will also treat these as phrase match keywords, which means word order and context is important.
What You Should Do Next
Google itself is discouraging the use of the modified broad match type, as part of this shift towards the focus on the phrase match type is to highlight the improvements Google has made in recognizing context and intent for search optimization, through machine learning. Going forward, Google wants advertisers to utilize keywords on a simple slider of three basic settings
Very broad, barely targeted (broad match type)
Somewhat broad, somewhat targeted (phrase match type)
Barely broad, very targeted (exact match type)
Whether these changes are positive depends on how your ad is currently performing. Google states that there should be no change in performance data and keyword migration wouldn’t be necessary and that modifiers can still be used until July when the change is completely integrated.
However, some campaigns will inadvertently do worse (reaching fewer people), but most should generally be doing better, as the increase in flexibility and automation means, at least on paper, your ad will be shown to more potential users. Here are some basic tips to navigate the change moving forward:
Review Google’s recommendations. Google’s optimization tips can be a handy starter checklist to help you work through the most obvious issues in your ad campaign, especially new duplicate keywords and match type suggestions.
Utilize negative keywords to specify queries you DON’T want. If you’re worried about Google’s new changes pulling in traffic you don’t want or need, take the time to highlight and exclude terms that are definitely bringing you non-converting visitors.
Listen to what advertisers have to say. Keeping up to date on the conversations and discussions between PPC experts and advertisers can help you optimize your keywords moving forward.
Worried about the new changes to your PPC campaign? Get in touch with us today for a free consultation.
From an SEO perspective, there are several Google My Business fields that have a more significant impact than others. Key fields include accurate business name, address, and phone number (NAP), which ensure consistency across listings. Categories and attributes effectively describe services, enhancing relevance. High-quality, updated photos and regular posting of updates or offers engage users. Importantly, encouraging and responding to customer reviews builds trust and authority, boosting local SEO performance and online presence.
With the number of customization options in your Google My Business Profile, it can be hard to decide what to focus your efforts on. But when it comes to ranking in the search engine result, they’re really only four fields that influence where your business will end up.
In this article, we explore the Google My Business fields that matter most for SEO.
Before we take a look, you might want to check out this guide for some helpful SEO tips for local business visibility.
Business Name
This field seems to have the strongest effect on rankings, which is less than ideal for people who don’t have keywords in their business names. Since it’s not easy (or worth it) to change your business name, you’ll only see an advantage here if you happen to have keywords in your business name. Why not add some keywords? Because it’s against Google guidelines.
So what can you do? Search for your competitors. If they’re adding descriptive keywords to their business name, you can report it to Google with the Google Business complaint redressal form. It’ll at least level the playing field, so you have a better chance of ranking.
It’s worth mentioning that you can include descriptors in your business name in your Bing Places business listing, so feel free to do it there.
Categories
Categories are the second most important ranking fact, according to available tests and analysis. It may seem pretty easy since you’re the one who gets to go pick the ones you can use. After all, you can use up to 10 of them.
The thing is – Google has about 4,000 categories to choose from, and they continue to add categories. But sometimes, they remove them, too. Moz data suggests Google removes anywhere from two to 10 (on average) every month. Sometimes, Google adds categories that didn’t exist before. In the last year, they found that there was a lot of auto dealer and restaurant categories, but the dental industry got a new one (dental implants), too.
That means you need to be keeping track of all the categories you’re using in your Google My Business listing, as well as how your options change. If Google deletes a category you were using, you’re missing out on that 10th spot – and you may find the category replaced with something more relevant to your audience. Keeping track of them will let you know if you need to make adjustments.
Website
Your website field is the third most important factor. It’s perfectly fine to link to your home page. But, for businesses with multiple locations, it is sometimes better to link to a specific location page.
That’s why testing the page on your website that you link to is important. If you’re a business with lots of different listings – such as departmental or practitioner listings, try to make sure you link those to different webpages across your site. This maximizes your exposure while making sure you’re not simply trying to rank all your listings for the same thing. That won’t happen – as Google will filter them. Test and see what works best for your industry and your company.
Reviews
Perhaps no surprise really, your reviews matter. The number of reviews has an impact on your ranking, but it does have diminishing returns. If you go from zero reviews to 30 reviews, you’ll see your business rank better. But let’s say you go from 30 to 70 reviews. You likely won’t see the same kind of increase you did with the first one.
That’s why working with your customers to encourage reviews is important. People rely on reviews to determine if they want to do business with you – so putting your best foot forward matters. If you get some bad reviews here and there, it’s not the end of the world. It’s how you respond that makes all the difference.
You may be tempted to get angry in your response, especially if you know the reviewer is stretching the truth or outright lying. Save that frustration for off the screen, and away from your place of business. At the same time, though, you don’t want to completely ignore the bad review…. Or any of your reviews for that matter.
It’s best practice to reply to all your reviews. It not only shows your customers that you’re paying attention and appreciative of the time they took to leave the review but also tells Google that you’re paying attention and proactive in your business.
When responding to a negative review, keep the tone polite and helpful. Apologize for the issue and invite the person to take the conversation to email or phone, so that further conversation takes place outside of the public forum. This way, your unhappy customer has a chance to speak their peace and you can make an effort to solve the problem. And, any people who come along and read the review see that you have made an effort to rectify the issue, which helps them keep the faith in your business.
What about the other fields? Should you ignore them? No, definitely not. The more complete your profile is – with services, Q&A, and other information, the more you can tell your potential customers about your company. The main issue is that those fields won’t necessarily do anything to help improve your ranking – but they are still important for customer experience.
Do you monitor your GMB ranking on a regular basis? Would you like to learn more about how to rank it better? Get in touch today!
The Content Marketing Institute also shows that 72% of marketers say their content marketing efforts increase engagement and that it has increased the number of leads.
Your content is worth optimizing because 95% of people only look at the first page of search results so if your content appears on the second page or after, the majority of people will not see it.
Most of the content marketing advice out there is general and does not give you actionable tips you can use to see a return on your investment. This list gives you a solid place to start.
1. A New Spin on Gated Content
Gated content requires a subscription or an email address to access. You can grow your email list with these kinds of posts by creating a small selection of normal blog posts that only your email subscribers can get access to. When someone clicks on one of these posts, a pop-up should appear that asks for their email.
This approach can help you grow your email list while playing up the “exclusivity” part of some of your content, without having to charge people to read it.
2. Attack Content Decay
If you’ve produced content for a while, chances are you’re losing traffic as a result of content decay. Simply updating and relaunching your old post can dramatically improve your traffic. If you’ve been blogging for some time though, it may be hard to tell where to begin with updating your old posts. That’s where the Animalz Revive tool comes in. It’s a completely free tool that will analyze your Google Analytics data and provide a list of posts that you should refresh.
It’s up to you whether to relaunch the post like it’s brand new or if you want to quietly update the content. Either way, you should see an increase in traffic to the post. The more posts you revamp, the more traffic you can capture.
3. Use Templates to Mimic Past Successes
Templates are helpful when it comes to scaling up your content marketing. Whenever you start a new post, avoid opening up a blank Google Doc. Instead, work from one of your proven blog post templates. When you sit down to write a blog post, use the template to help you get all of the important parts down on paper.
After you’ve done that, transfer it to a Google Doc and start writing. Working from a set of templates Makes it easier to scale up your publishing schedule. Where you used to publish a new post once a month, with this approach, you can publish a post every two weeks.
You’re not sure where to start with creating templates, take a look at the most popular posts you have and determine if they are of the same type. For example, if you noticed that your most popular posts are case studies, you’ll definitely want to create a case study template to use in the future.
4. Create Stats Pages
Creating a stats page is a wonderful way to build backlinks without needing to do a lot of outreach. Those pages are optimized around your “topic + stats” keywords and the people who tend to search for those kinds of keywords are journalists and bloggers.
Typically speaking, when they use one of your stats in their article, they’ll link back to your stats page.
5. Reverse Engineer the Competition
When it comes to digital marketing, there is certainly a place for originality and creative thinking. But, it’s okay to copy what your competitors are doing and you don’t need the Google analytics password to do it. There are a number of tools that show you what is already working for someone else.
For example, if your main focus is link building, Detailed.com provides you with a list of where the top blogs in nearly every niche get their links from. Knowing this, you can craft a strategy that helps you earn links from those places to making it easier for you to compete.
Not sure what to write about? You can use BuzzSumo to see a specific site’s most shared content, to give you an idea of what resonates with their audience so that you can develop your topics accordingly.
6. Use the PBC Formula
Backlinko says the PBC formula is when you quickly preview what your post is all about. Then, follow it with a list of benefits that someone gets from reading your post. And finally, you finish the introduction with a brief call to action. Why does this approach work? your blog post introductions are important because they are the first thing people see when they land on your post. However, the majority of blogpost intros are way too long. Using the PBC approach keeps your intros lean and gives the user exactly what they want or need to keep reading the post.
7. Focus on Trending Topics
Trending topics are those that are popular, yet haven’t reached a super competitive point. If you’re tired of using tools like Google Trends, there’s a free tool, Exploding Topics, that’s helpful. In the last six months, covering the business and marketing categories, the “exploding” topics include local SEO, regenerative agriculture, YouTube hashtags, customer persona, and UX writing.
What’s cool about this tool is that you can set it for a wide variety of time frames – starting with one month and going all the way to 15 years. You’ll find that some topics are brand names, but if they are your competition, you can do an X vs. Y post to make use of the branded keyword and topic while still reaching your goals.
Let’s talk about other things you can do to improve your content marketing. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
A Foldable Web refers to designing websites adaptable to foldable devices, such as smartphones and tablets with foldable screens. This trend matters for web design and digital marketing as it requires responsive layouts that seamlessly adjust to varying screen sizes and orientations. It ensures optimal user experience and engagement across these emerging devices, becoming crucial in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Though not widespread, foldable mobile devices have hit the market. As these devices become more commonplace, and we see devices with dual screens that can be used as one continue to grow in terms of usage, we can expect web design to change to keep up with the trends and keep a quality user experience. This could lead to the biggest change to web design in more than 10 years. Let’s take a closer look at what this could mean for web design as we know it.
The “foldable web” will bring with it new challenges and opportunities, and quite possibly new syntax. It could be the biggest set of changes we’ve seen since the introduction of the smartphone. Coders and users have gotten used to things – desktops, smartphones, and tablets. If only it stayed that easy! Responsive design has helped, but foldable innovation changes everything.
New Experiences Mean New Standards and New Problems
Foldable screen technology research started in the 1970s, but its development didn’t really start until the turn of the millennium. It’s only within the last few years that consumer devices have made their way to the market.
The Galaxy Z Flip mimics an old school flip phone, but others like the Huawei Mate X feature screens that wrap around the outside of the phone. Others operate like electronic books that feature two interior displays that function as one screen when the device is fully open. It’s common to see a separate smaller screen on the outside that lets users get the information they need without having to unfold the device to use it.
New hardware means updated software. Microsoft has been responsive to foldable technology because they are working on foldable devices of its own. Microsoft developers have published an explainer proposing a new CSS media query and a new JavaScript API. In a GitHub post, they discuss a number of potential issues with foldable devices, including fold area functionality and the variety of hardware in the market.
By developing a spanning CSS media feature, it’s possible to test whether a browser window is displaying across two screens or across a fold. This allows the content to position relative to the fold or seam, to evolve the responsive design. Along with this, they’ve proposed environment variables to help recognize orientation and segment size. These additions would allow websites to shape across three dimensions, allowing the page to behave differently when it’s flat and when it’s in an L shape. The JavaScript API would allow sites to behave more dynamically, changing what’s displayed when the screen is bent, or whether users touch one half or the other.
The proposals don’t make considerations for more than two screens or segments. If they are implemented, it will add another layer to responsive design. If things continue as anticipated, we’ll no longer be able to assume sites behave in single rectangular spaces.
As long as new web primitives remain ahead of technology, developers will be able to focus on improving site functionality.
Dual Screen Experience and the New Fold
“Above the fold” has always been prime real estate for web design, because users are more likely to pay attention to what’s on the page before they have to start scrolling down. With the introduction of foldable devices and the foldable web, comes the fold in the middle of the page.
At least, this means adjusting content so users aren’t required to interact with anything that would appear “on the fold.” If touch control is limited at the fold, or the device is partially folded, it makes the most sense to reposition certain elements so they are on one half of the screen or the other.
On the other end of the spectrum, designers will able to treat websites like a mini dual-screen setup where the two halves can be used to display different things. Ultimately, this allows content to displayed more like an app.
When looking at a recipe in the kitchen on your tablet or smartphone, how many times have you wished you could have the ingredient list on one side and the directions on the other? With a dual-screen setup, this could easily become the standard. On a news website, it may mean having the article you want to read on one side, and the related reading on the other.
In the majority of cases, the “foldable web” will mean better-optimizing sites for tablet-sized displays. Right now, tablets don’t account for much of the global market share – coming in at around 3%. Mobile phones account for 52% and desktops cover 45%. If we reach the point where foldable devices make a dent in the market share, it will be harder to ignore them, and we’ll have to change the standards to account for them so that users get a quality experience on those devices.
When we start to see Apple releasing foldable devices, it’s a safe bet sales will increase. As foldable tech comes into the market, responsive design will have to adapt simply to maintain existing user experience and functionality.
Right now – we can expect the trend will at least mark the next phase of responsive design. It means creating multi-screen experiences. How far these experiences go depends heavily on how widespread the foldable device market becomes. There’s no guarantee that we’ll see foldable devices take off the way smartphones did – and we can expect that they’ll remain fairly rare until the price of the technology decreases rather significantly to make it more affordable for the masses. Most of these devices cost nearly $2,000, putting them out of reach for the average consumer.
Developers and designers have to push the platforms. There’s the chance to make websites more fluid, with functionality never before available. It’s an opportunity to venture into uncharted territory. It’s the biggest change the web has seen since the iPhone. The changes to syntax are still largely unknown, so now is the time to begin experimenting, making suggestions, and offering feedback.
If you’ve been in web design and digital marketing for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase intuitive design. What does it actually mean? I’m here to tell you why this phrase doesn’t make sense and ways we can better approach design solutions.
What’s the Definition of Intuitive?
According to Merriam-Webster, intuitive means, “known or perceived by intuition: directly apprehended; readily learned or understood.” And according to the Cambridge Dictionary, it is defined as: “based on feelings rather than facts or proof.”
Based on the dictionary definitions, intuition is something associated with gut instinct or feelings that enable us to make decisions without proof of reasoning. While this does help in various life situations, our intuition doesn’t necessarily provide us with the function to guide ourselves through digital interfaces.
The truth is the intuitive behavior that designers aim to create relies on familiar design patterns that users have experienced before. In this context, intuitive design interactions aren’t grounded in unconscious reasoning but in familiarity.
While many clients say the design needs to be intuitive, it’s not something that is easy to define or measure. Many of us have experienced intuitive or gut feeling about a decision. I’ve had intuitive feelings about my children where I feel like something bad has happened and thankfully I’m not always right. However, it still feels like a bad impulse at tapping into my emotions. This demonstrates how intuition can behave for us and a particular moment and it’s hard to imagine having those kinds of instinctive feelings when interacting with an interface on a website or within an app.
Why Intuitive Design Isn’t Real
In reality, what’s intuitive for you or your client isn’t the same as what’s initiative for their clients, or your parents. Interfaces can feel familiar if you as the user have experienced something similar before and it’s the familiarity that we often call intuitive.
The first time I saw a nondescript menu on a mobile app, there was nothing intuitive that called out and said “Tap on me, I’m a menu. It was only because I tapped around and I discovered that the three bars gave me a menu when I tapped. Now, when I see a menu like that, I know what it does. I don’t know what it is because of intuition, I know it because I’ve done it before; so there’s nothing instinctive about it.
We know that intuitive design isn’t the real thing, but we know that familiarity with certain interactions we have experienced before is easier to understand. For users to have some technical experience, designers can make use of those already familiar interface patterns when it comes to making decisions about design patterns. UI Patterns defines design patterns as “recurring solutions that solve common design problems.” The UI Patterns website is a great resource for designers to see various patterns to use in new designs.
What are Design Patterns?
Design patterns are essential because they provide recognizable interactions. This ensures users spend less time trying to understand how to interact with something and more time interacting with it. Keeping things as simple as possible helps to minimize the time spent on achieving an outcome and thus creating a better user experience.
Any design that deviates from the well known and recognized design patterns is unfamiliar. When users have to learn something new, this can adversely affect the overall user experience. Designers are constantly striving to minimize and eliminate that learning curve so it can be hard to balance the need to create new Innovations while presenting a contextual experience that makes sense.
That’s where considering business outcomes and conducting user research for a good market fit along with user testing your design with the intended audience comes in. If you find you’re dealing with an audience that is not particularly technologically savvy and needs to keep things as simple as possible, you know it’s not the time to deviate from the familiar and understood
User testing ensures that you can validate your hypothesis as much as possible to help mitigate additional risks that are inherent in executing designs for products or services. Ideally, you should design to incorporate interactions that measure a user’s level of comprehension while also allowing them to personalize their path to achieving the desired outcome in the unknown environment.
Artificial Intelligence and Design Innovation
AI technology is continuously innovating, but companies still managed to design good user experiences using these advancements. For instance, Pinterest uses AI to understand the intention behind a simple search and deliver personalized results. Research shows that 80% of users are more likely to make a purchase if their experiences personalized.
Below, you’ll see an example of a search for vegan. Pinterest uses artificial intelligence to return a slew of related topics to make it easy for users to discover new content. These related topics are displayed as text across the top of the page.
As we continue to integrate AI into products and services, we can use it to create notifications for a user to take a specific action or not. This creates a more passive user experience as tasks that used to be manual are now automated behind the scenes.
Gmail for instance has a spam filter to automatically move suspicious emails into your junk folder without you needing to do anything. Google has been using rule-based filters and AI for many years but we continue to see innervation because Google AI now recognizes the weekly newsletters you may not be interested in and moves them directly to the spam folder. The spam filters are now able to identify and respond to individual preferences.
The Future of Interface Design
As we move to a world where voice assistants remove the need for a screen, we are starting to rely less on visual user interface design and more on the overall user experience. We can now talk to our devices and ask for what we need and we can ask for it to be given at exactly the right time. However, we still have a long way to go in terms of what virtual assistants can do. As technology continues to advance, we will see great improvements to the understanding of how people naturally speak. this is particularly like changing for older people who are not tech-savvy.
Content syndication, or publishing and promoting your original content on third party websites, is a crucial part of building authority and increasing your visibility. Whether you’re promoting articles, videos, or other kinds of content, content syndication networks are a valuable resource. They generally have large established audiences with high domain authority.
Content syndication can also help improve your SEO. It can drive traffic to your website much the same way SEO and paid search do. It can increase your product or service’s user base, help your linkbuilding efforts, and may even improve your own domain authority. To get the most benefit, though, you need to be doing it correctly. Mistakes could backfire and negatively impact your search engine ranking.
The key to leveraging content syndication is to start with high-quality content. Whether you write it yourself, hire a freelance writer to craft it for you, or decide to let AI handle it for you, you can use any content syndication tool to promote it.
Content Syndication Options for Written Content
Medium
Medium is a free platform that lets you publish content, photos, videos, and audio directly. Users can comment and discuss the content directly on the platform. There’s also a monetization option.
Quora
Quora is a question and answer site that can help you build your personal and professional brand. By becoming an active member of the community, you can use your existing content to answer questions when and where relevant. You can include a link to the text of a full blog post, or a video that answers the question.
Reddit
Reddit is becoming a larger part of popular culture because it’s possible to reach tens of thousands of people every day. There is something for everyone on the platform, and anonymity is more possible there than anywhere else online – even though nothing online is every truly anonymous. It’s a community first and foremost, so it pays to become an active member in the various subreddits before you post your own content.
Mix
Once known as StumbleUpon, Mix is a content discovery tool that allows users to submit your favorite pages, share content with friends and follow people and interests. You’ll be able to look at popular articles, videos, and photos. You also have the option to pay for advertising, if desired.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a blogging platform. There’s a dashboard with a live feed of blogs people are tracking. The posts are automatically displayed, and users can interact with then any time. There is space for all activities, so it’s easy to filter and manage according to your needs.
RSS Feeds
Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, is a way to compile a custom feed of content from your favorite websites, podcasts, and more. With an RSS feed reader, you can get headlines, update notices, and links back to content on your favorite websites.
LinkedIn (Freemium)
For those in the B2B space, LinkedIn offers a way to syndicate content with free and paid options. Paid syndication options include sponsored content, inMail, and display ads.
Facebook (Freemium)
Using Facebook Pages, Groups, and Ads, you can share your content with your current audience, while also drawing in new followers.
Outbrain (Premium)
Outbrain is a paid content marketing platform. You’ll be able to advertise your content on major media platforms like People, ESPN, and CNN. The platform has a global audience of more than 550 million people every month, so you’ll definitely be able to reach your target audience.
Quuu Promote (Premium)
WIth this paid content syndication option, all you have to do is submit your RSS feed and the platform handles the rest. The partner service, Quuu.co, has users who subscribe to various interest categories, where they’ll have content (that comes from Promote) to share on their social media channels. It integrates with Buffer, so people can completely automate their social media content – using real people to promote real content.
Taboola (Premium)
Taboola is a paid content discovery platform that provides placement on top websites. THe platform gives personalized content to 1 billion users every month.
Content Syndication for Video
Many platforms I covered above will also work for video, but if you want platforms that offer nothing but video, you’ll want to look at these two.
YouTube
Owned by Google, YouTube is one of the most popular websites online today. Because of the sheer volume of content on the platform, you’ll need to make sure it’s well optimized, so you can ensure it gets more views.
Vimeo
Vimeo is another video hosting platform like YouTube. It can help you reach more people, especially if you take the time to optimize it.
Content Syndication for Audio
For musicians and podcasters, these are popular syndication networks for your audio content. Even if audio content isn’t your main form, you can easily pay to have your blog content recorded, and then distribute it in audio format.
SoundCloud
SoundCloud lets you host your podcast on their platform, but if you don’t host it there, you can syndicate it so that people who prefer to use it for their podcasts can find it. Musicians can use it to share their tracks and connect with listeners and fellow artists alike.
Leveraging these platforms, you’ll expand your reach and grow your brand. To get the most out of syndication, use a mix of platforms and content formats.
Are you using any of these already? Did I miss any of the great ones? Let me know in the comments.
iTunes
If you’ve got audio content to share with the world, you can list it in iTunes, for free or for purchase.
Spotify
Spotify makes it easy to share your music and podcasts with hundreds of thousands of users every month.
You spend your time feeling like a marketing rock star. You have content routinely rolling out, traffic growth is on point, and businesses are reading your email newsletters. Then you sit in a meeting and the VP of Finance asks if all the spending is necessary. The CEO questions the time spent on these endeavors. The only way to answer these questions are with content marketing metrics.
Tracking, Something Everyone Should Do
Tracking the ROI is important and sadly, not all marketers perform this vital task. You need to show the numbers to those who don’t understand marketing the way you do. Tracking your content in Top of the Funnel (ToFu), Middle of the Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu) levels is the best way to show the success of your efforts. Each of these levels have different goals within themselves and you must find the right metrics for each. We recommend you build a metrics dashboard with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Facebook Pixel.
Content Marketing Metrics – ToFu
There are two goals with ToFu, branding initiatives and awareness. Branding initiatives is the focus of spreading the word about the company and its mission. This is easily achieved with recognizable branding that lends to your authority in your niche. Awareness is the understanding that you must consistently find new audiences who will become a steady stream of visitors to your company. You can have other goals but that will be dependent on your business and historical data. Even after you achieve these two goals, you still need a focus on your persona. If you are focused only on gaining new sets of eyes, you will not be able to convert them into buying customers.
To see how well you are doing with ToFu, these are the metrics you want to track.
Google Analytics:
New visits
Your percentage of new visitors – you should over around 68%
New direct visits – measuring the people who already know your brand and looking for you is important. They are the most organic, and profitable, traffic source.
Branded searches – truly defining if your marketing efforts are working. While the visitors didn’t look for your brand, they found you through a search related to your brand.
Facebook Pixel:
Pixeled marketing – building an audience for remarketing objectives.
These five metrics can be compared to historical data to relay how well you have grown in your goals. If you aren’t achieving your goals, then you know it’s time to try some new methods. This should all be visited on a weekly basis. You can add a few more metrics to dive deeper, but you can space them out monthly or quarterly. Consider content bounce rate, average session rates, and page visits to see what your people are responding to.
Content Marketing Metrics – MoFu
There are also two goals at this level, driving visitors back to your site and converting visitors to leads. It is easily one of the more challenging metric levels to deal with. To nurture your campaigns, you need to get leads. To be the most effective marketers can generate 50% more sales with a 33% decrease in cost, at this level. Here are the metrics to use in Google Analytics to see if you are as successful.
Visitor recency – the length of time between visits a visitor makes in a given time frame. Since the focus is getting your visitors to come back, this number is very important. A high number indicates you are doing excellent. A low number means you need to improve the quality of your content strategy and build up links for a better SERP rating.
Returning direct visitors – those who know your brand well and continue to come back. You are successfully fulfilling a need and they trust you to do so. Using that information to transform newcomers to returning direct visitors is key.
Leads generated – a bit complicated but necessary. You must set up goal tracking in Google Analytics to help measure this metric. You also need to have a written plan on how you are achieving your leads.
There are a few other metrics you can add for more insight and stay on top of your marketing game. Number of social shares, blog banner clicks percentage, and growth of retargeting lists are some of the best ones to add.
Content Marketing Metrics – BoFu
There is only one goal of BoFu, to transition your earliest leads into your loyal customer. While it does happen, it is rare for a visitor to turn into a buyer after reading one article. This level is about understanding the journey through the entire funnel. From the first website visit to conversions. Here are the metrics to measure:
Number of visitors leaving your offer/demo page. The offer/demo page has to be updated frequently to keep the interest alive. If your percentage is high, optimizing the page will increase your conversion rate and sales.
Conversions – the number that is the top priority out of all your metrics
Content that results in customers. Not a metric but it is important to know. You can apply that knowledge to future content to maintain the flow of customers. Your PPC team can also work to bring more traffic to those areas.
From here, you take the time to build your report. Two to three month’s worth of data is enough to analyze and prove your efforts are worth the time and money. Seeing the patterns not only give you insight on what is working, it reinforces your success. It will also show you the shift in trends that you will need to shift with. While some older methods still work well, the face of business to business marketing needs to be fluid. Stay true to your brand and the mission, that part will never fail you.
Google is now asking some searchers to “verify the facts to help others.” This feature is a new development – not available for all queries and not available for all searchers. Evidence at this point indicates that it appears to be an option for some knowledge panels.
Upon clicking the button, an overlay presents itself to allow you to indicate whether the information they have is correct.
There’s not much to indicate how widespread these searches are – or whether people will be able to manipulate Google’s results by blatantly providing it with wrong information. We’ll have to keep an eye on this to see how it pans out.
When someone searches on Google Images, there may be a fact check label below the image thumbnail results. If you tap on one of the results to see a larger view, you’ll get a summary of the fact check that appears on the underlying webpage. Labels may show both for fact-checked articles about specific images, and for fact check articles that include that image in their story.
The fact check label appears on results that come from authoritative, independent sources across the web that meet Google’s criteria. These sources rely on ClaimReview which is an open method publishers use to indicate fact check content to the search engines.
Fact Check Labels in Search and News
Google has offered fact check in Search and News since 2017. The fact check label in Google News was made available everywhere and expanded into search globally in all languages. When you conduct a search that returns an authoritative result that contains that check from at least one or more public claims, the information is clearly displayed on the search results page. The snippet displays information on the claim including who made the claim in the fact check of that particular claim.
This information is not available for every search result, and there may be search results pages were different Publishers check the same claim while reaching different conclusions. The fact check does not belong to Google and is presented to allow people to make more informed decisions. Even though differing conclusions can be presented, it is still helpful for people to understand the level of consensus about a particular claim and have clear information on the sources that agree. As fact checks have become more visible in search results, people will be able to easily review and assess the fact checks to make their own informed opinions.
YouTube also uses the ClaimReview to surface fact check information panels in the U.S., Brazil, and India.
How You Can Fact Check Your Content for Google Searchers
The ClaimReview schema is part of the review schema. It is a fact-checking review of claims either reported or made in some creative work. It can be referenced via itemReviewed.
To add the fact check tagged to your content, there are some rules to follow. You need to build content around what users want, relying on trusted sources of information to back it up with facts, and be transparent as to where the thoughts came from. Your customers, prospective buyers, and fans will come to know your business and digital reputation as either one that provides the truth or stretches it.
Even though the fact-checking articles do not get any kind of special ranking boost, the visibility can boost traffic in terms of clicks, and help increase your conversions.
The fact check snippet references search words or phrases instead of being a cad for specific news. While aiming to offer valid sources of information, it includes a link to help readers develop their own views on the topic.
ClaimReview is a source label that helps to inform the search engines that use machine learning about the content of your website and offers insights that help them classify that content for rendering on the SERPs.
Google states: “We acknowledge the difficulty in characterizing different types of content in the rapidly changing publishing landscape, but we also hope to provide useful ways of helping users select what they want to read.”
The fact check label helps users to evaluate content before clicking on the link. The web page that contains the fact check data provides a link to the original data itself so that viewers can analyze it. Fact checks may provide the page quoted with a higher relevance than they might otherwise have. Google does not determine what is true or objective.
It’s important to note that fact checks are not guaranteed to be shown. The inclusion of fact check elements in search results is determined programmatically, based on things like how the search is phrased and the domain trust of the site that is referencing the fact. It also depends on whether the topic that has been fact-checked by someone participating in Google’s program, and if the necessary schema markup has been implemented on the page correctly.
For those who are curious, the full fact check tool, Fact Check Explorer, can be searched here, and APIs are available for developers.
Does Fact-Checking Influence Search Ranking?
If you, as a publisher, have fact-checked your content – either text or images – you will not see an increase in ranking just because you added the fact-checking schema to your site. The system is designed to provide users with the most relevant and reliable information available, including from the sources that provide the fact checks.
Pillar content, sometimes also referred to as cornerstone content, is a crucial part of your online presence. Imagine your website as a home for your business and the pillar content as the foundation the rest of the house is built upon. It is the underlying structure. Getting it right can make all the difference in your online success. Let’s take a closer look at what it is, why you need it, and how to create strong pillar content both your audience and Google will love.
What is Pillar Content?
Your pillar content will consist of several structural elements. It is easy to try to go for too much, but for the best result and most efficient use of resources, focus only on distinct, critical areas you want to be recognized for – what your business specializes in.
Regardless of what you deem your pillars to be, those pieces of content have to be solid. The more exhaustive, the better. You can break it down into small pieces of content to fill all your channels to draw in people from different channels. For instance, you can repurpose that single pillar piece into a series of blog posts, emails, infographics, social media updates, and more. I talk about ways you can do this in my post on repurposing content. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel every time.
Imagine that you’re a dentist’s patient, and you know that because you haven’t been in a long time, you’re going to lose some teeth. You want to learn more about dental implants, but you don’t really know much about them.
You decide to do a quick search of Google, and this is what you find after scrolling past the ads and local office results:
You decide that because Perio.org is clearly an organization related to periodontology (or gum health), you should start there – and click the link.
Here you find that this content is from a trusted source, the American Academy of Periodontology. Not only can you use this to find out more about dental implants, including the types that are available, but you can also get an idea of whether or not you’re a candidate, more about the procedure itself depending on how many teeth are to be replaced, and what you can expect afterward. Plus, there are links to other relevant issues surrounding gum disease and treatment.
This resource page is an example of a pillar that you need to create for your brand.
So how do you determine what your content pillars need to be? Reverse engineering – and taking a look at the competition.
Know Your Brand
Your brand determines a great deal about the core topics your pillars need to cover. For example, you’re a cosmetics business specializing in all-natural makeup.
Understand Your Audience
Who are they? What do they want? What do they need? What are they interested in? How do they consume content? How do they prefer that content be presented? What do they need to convert?
In our cosmetics company example, an analysis determined the average customer is a female, with a concern about the environment, who still wants to look great. She fails between 30 and 50 years old and lives in a suburban area. She uses as many eco-friendly products as possible in all areas of her life, and when she finds makeup she loves, she sticks with it.
Map the Customer Journey
You know the endpoint. Think about what steps the customer would take to get from the beginning to the end – working backward. Remember, it’s not a linear path, so you’ll need content for each distinct phase, but that can be found in numerous ways.
The endpoint is a customer buying cosmetics online, or if you also operate a brick and mortar store, to come in and shop. To get them there, you’ll need awareness content to help them learn about the benefits of natural makeup, application techniques, and so on. You’ll also need content for those who are familiar with it, such as makeup looks, demo videos, and more.
Start with a detailed guide about how to choose the perfect shade of lipstick for your skin tone. Include videos, how-tos, and images.
Build Out with Contextual Topics
From there, consider a dive into how to choose the right lipstick for incredibly fair skin, finding the right lipstick to make your teeth look white, and choosing lipstick for cool and warm undertones.
Fill the Base with Subtopic Content
These could be anything from celebrity makeup looks, how-to videos, tips from the most well-known makeup artists, seasonal trends, different shades within a certain color, lip-liner advice, gloss vs. matte finish, etc.
Why You Need Pillar Content
Content pillars not only provide support for your overall content plan, but they also help you to be found in search. Using one piece of content, you can generate multiple subtopics to support the core topic, but also capture the interest of your various customer personas.
Pillar content helps:
Improve your site structure and internal linking
Strengthen your overall search engine rank
Enhance the user experience
How to Craft Stellar Cornerstone Content
When you start building out your content strategy based on pillars – you may feel overwhelmed, and that’s okay. The easiest thing to do is to focus on creating your first topic cluster. Create a pillar page that serves as a deep dive on your core topic. Keep it ungated. You can a guide with a downloadable resource (as we did with the customer personas post – there’s a worksheet you can download to help you.)
Conduct Keyword Research
Keyword research helps you find what people are searching for, so you can work those words and phrases into your content. Longtail keywords are especially important and may give you subtopic ideas to work in, as well. Consider the user intent behind the keyword phrase and create content that matches it.
See Where You Rank Against the Competition
Search for those keywords you think are most relevant to your brand and product to see where you rank. Take a look at the sites that are ranking for them and compare their content to yours. Make a plan to make yours better.
Dig Deep – and Think Like the User
Go into as much detail as possible. Put yourself in your user’s shoes. What would they want to know? Answer as many questions as possible.
Evaluate Current Content
You don’t always have to start from scratch. Look at the content you already have and see what edits you can make to turn it into a higher quality pillar piece.
Promote with Social Media
Your great content won’t matter if no one knows it is there. Promote it with social media. Run ads on Google and Facebook, or YouTube, depending on the nature of the content and your audience. Share it wherever and whenever possible.
After a while, evaluate your content strategy to see if it’s working. You should see an increase in organic traffic, and even better, conversions. If not, revisit your strategy to make changes. Continue building out additional pillars for all your other major areas.
Many years ago, guest posting on another person’s website was considered part of a solid SEO strategy. Not only did it get you a link from another site, but it also exposed you to other audiences. If you guest posted on another site, that site got content they didn’t have to create – and if you posted guest posts on your site, you gave your audience fresh new content without having to do much of anything. There’s been much debate over the value guest posting offers – and now, we definitively have the answer.
Google’s John Mueller has said on Twitter, “Those [guest post] links have zero value. It’s a waste of time if you’re just doing it for the links.” Unfortunately, this isn’t new. Google has been telling us for years that these links don’t add any value – and they’ve even said you need to add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to them if you choose to use them on your website.
Google has said since 2014 that guest posting is a dead approach to link building, and yet there are still plenty of people out there who believe it offers some value in terms of SEO. However, just because it doesn’t do anything to build your backlinks, is it still a waste of time? Not necessarily.
Rather than focusing on what value it brings to the search engines – focus on the value it brings toward building authority with your brand and expanding your community. While it may not boost your search ranking, when people read the blog posts, they may choose to click the link to visit your site – so you should at least get a bit of traffic from each link. The more quality traffic you get, the better your rank will become over time.
Building the Right Kind of Guest Posting Strategy
With guest posting, your goal should be to target the top blogs in your niche and in related areas. Ideally, they will have fairly large audiences who are engaged.
Once you determine what those websites are, you need to craft pitches and produce quality content that the host site will find useful and of value to their audience.
After the pitch is accepted and the content is published, actively promote the content, and participate in conversations around it.
Rinse and repeat.
Finding Guest Posting Opportunities
If you’re a manufacturer of cast iron pots and pans, then you’ll want to focus on blogs that are related to cooking, health and wellness, and bloggers who are reviewers. You can connect with the people who provide the most value in terms of following and engagement with an influencer/outreach campaign, and pitch topics to the others for use on their blog.
Start with a Google Search
Google is a wonderful place to start because all you have to do is search for things like:
“guest post guidelines”
“guest post by”
“accepting guest posts”
“guest post”
“submit a guest post
Simply swap out keyword with your chosen industry keywords. You’ll be taken directly to pages on sites that address guest posting so you can learn more about their process. Some sites only want pitches, while others are willing to accept fully written pieces right away.
Beyond Google, you can also search on social media platforms to see more potential sites to work with. This works because many people share their latest guest posts with their followers. Run a Twitter search with “guest post” and you’ll see all the latest tweets about guest posts in your industry. From there, you can follow the links to see if there are any blogs still accepting guest posts.
Preparing to Pitch Guest Posts
While it may be tempting to go straight from finding the sites you want to guest post with to making contact right away, this isn’t the way to go. First, you need to do a bit of research. Taking the time to get to learn more about the blog you’re pitching not only helps you craft a pitch that is more likely to be noticed and accepted but also prepares you for what and how you should write.
Look through the Existing Content
Take time to read through some of the content that is already on the site. If you have a particular topic in mind, search to make sure it hasn’t been covered, or that you can find a different angle or way to add value without repeating what’s already there.
As you read through everything answer these questions:
What kind of content is most prevalent? Are they posting general overviews? Detailed tutorials? Are they a fan of list posts? How much are they linking to other sites? Are their posts full of images?
Which posts are getting the most interaction from people? Are the most popular posts all centered around one topic, or written by the same person? Are they all the same type of post?
Use what you gather here to help you when you craft your pitch.
Your Pitch
Take time to read the guidelines. Failure to do so just makes you look bad and frustrates the blog owner. Follow the guidelines in your pitch. Double-check everything before you submit.
Personalize your pitch to the site owner. If you can, refer to them by name in your greeting. Most people make their names known in the About section of their website. If you can’t find it there, look around the social media accounts to see what you can come up with. Use their name in the greeting whenever possible. Nothing says “spray and pray” like “Dear Sir or Madam.”
Remember, some of these blogs get hundreds of pitches for guest blogs every month. They’re used to generic pitches, so if you can make yours stand out, you have a better chance of getting them to work with you.
Introduce yourself and your blog, if you have one, but focus on your blogging skills first. Include why you should be a guest blogger, along with some samples of your work that has been published elsewhere. If possible, go with the posts that have the highest engagement levels so the site owner can see the potential value you bring to their audience.
If the guest post guidelines ask for an idea, don’t be afraid to pitch a few different ideas so they can tell you which one they’d rather have you do.
When you submit the post, make sure it’s formatted like the ones already on the site – and around the same word count. In other words, don’t submit a post with 500 words and one image if all the others are 1,000+ words with images throughout. Don’t forget the call to action to encourage people to interact with you, and most importantly, be there to respond and promote once the post goes live.
What are your thoughts on guest posting? I’d love to hear them. Leave them in the comments below.
According to Google Developers, page experience is a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page. This is where core web vitals come in. Core web vitals are a set of metrics that measure real-world user experience or loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of a page.
Before you start to panic, the page experience algorithm roll out is expected in 2021. Due to the coronavirus, Google decided to let everyone know about the future algorithm and what it covers so that you can adjust your website accordingly to prevent your traffic from plummeting.
According to Google, optimizing these factors makes things better for everyone across all web browsers and devices. It also helps sites move toward user expectations on mobile devices. Google believes this change will contribute to business success online as users grow more engaged and make transactions online with less friction.
Basically, Google is looking at how usable your website is. Things like whether the site runs on HTTPS, whether the site is mobile-friendly, and more.
Closer Look at Core Web Vitals
At this point in time, the CWV are focused on three aspects of the user experience: load time, interactivity, and visual stability. The metrics that make up the CWV will continue to evolve, but for 2020, this is what you should focus on.
Largest Contentful Paint
Also known as LCP, this metric measures loading performance. The LCP should happen within 2.5 seconds of when the first page begins to load. Anything after 4 seconds provides a poor user experience.
First Input Delay
Known as FID, this measures interactivity. For a good user experience, pages need to have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
Cumulative Layout Shift
Also known as CLS, this measures visual stability. For a good user experience, pages should maintain a CLS of 0.1.
For each of the metrics, to make sure you’re hitting the right target, aim for the 75th percentile of page loads segmented across both mobile and desktop devices. Tools that assess your CWV performance should consider a page as “passing” at 75th percentile or above, for all three metrics.
Optimize your site speed and reduce 400 errors
The faster your website loads, the better experience your users will have. When testing your page speed, it should be under three seconds to load. If at all possible, get it to one second or less. You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom to test your site speed. Page Insights helps by providing suggestions to help you speed up your site, too.
Check your site for broken links, so you don’t end up with 404 errors throughout your site. You can design a custom 404 page to match the rest of your site and brand’s messaging to make the experience of a 404 error a little less frustrating for users – but you should still aim to have an error-free website.
Analyze the competition
Take a moment to compare your experience to that of your competitors. If you believe you have an awesome user experience but finds that it doesn’t stack up well against the competition, you’ll have a harder time outranking them. Look at their top pages – at least the top 25 to 50, and make sure you’re doing more in terms of speed, content quality, and overall user experience. View the keywords they’re ranking for, and how you stack up.
Look at your design
Usability is about more than site content and speed. Heatmaps show you where people are paying the most attention on your site, where they are clicking the most, and ultimately, how they are engaging with your content. To learn more about how your audience behaves on your website, you’ll want to run some heatmap tests – which are helpful in split-testing because you can see which version of your site your audience responds to better. Heatmap tools include CrazyEgg, Smartlook, and ClickHeat.
Looking at your entire website, you should emphasize page experience. While this doesn’t mean that your whole website shouldn’t have a good user experience, it does mean that Google is probably going to focus its algorithm at a page-level basis.
If you have a few pages on your website that promote a poor experience, but the rest of them are good, it doesn’t make sense for Google to reduce the rankings in your entire site especially if many of your pages provide a better experience than your competition.
The Google Webmasters Unconference is an innovative event where the webmaster community engages with Google’s team in an open, collaborative format. Unlike traditional conferences, it features interactive sessions where attendees actively participate, suggest topics, and lead discussions. This format fosters direct communication with Google experts, enabling attendees to gain insights, share experiences, and discuss the latest trends in SEO and webmaster best practices.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced either the cancellation or the digitization/virtualization of many events across the globe. Google has announced that rather than cancel their conference, this year they are offering a virtual version, known as the “Unconference”.
These events are hard to get into – and this year is no different. The website states that people can register to attend until August 19th, and be alerted about their attendance status by August 20th. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing on August 10, registration is already closed. While many are hopeful it will open again, chances are slim.
The conference starts at 8 a.m PDT on August 26th, and won’t have formal presentations. Instead, there will be a series of “interactive discussions.” Attendance is free for all registered users – but you aren’t officially registered until you get the confirmation from Google.
Google writes, “In this event, you decide what sessions will happen and will actively shape the content in them, by taking part in discussions, feedback sessions, and similar formats that need your input.” They go on to say attendees are expected to “actively participate in sessions you’re interested in, either through a voice or voice/video call through Google Meet.
Registrants have been asked to select two sessions from the list of proposed sessions, discussed below, that they would like to be part of. Only the sessions that receive the most votes will take place on the day of the event. Google also notes, “Depending on your feedback during registration, some of these sessions may not take place and we will group the sessions into two blocks.”
The Possible Session Topics at Google Webmasters Unconference
These are presented exactly as on the official event website. I’ve added links to more information about the topics/subjects themselves where I see fit.
Tips to Get Your Content Displayed in Discover Feed
Google recently updated the help document on Google Discover. In this session, attendees can learn about tips to increase their presence in Discover.
Approaches to Improve Core Web Vitals for Non-Tech Savvy Webmasters
There are many ways to improve CWV. Some of them are easy to implement but some of them aren’t.
In this session, attendees can learn about the optimization of CWV that is relatively easy to implement while showing noticeable improvements.
Web Performance: What Metrics are Important, How to Measure, and How to Spot What is a Priority
What ways are there to gather details?
How do you access them currently?
What do the metrics mean for you / your site?
What aspects confuse you or don’t work for your situation?
This is aimed at mid-level and advanced users.
Mobile/Desktop Diffing – Parity Findings
Why is it important to find the gaps
What’s truly at risk when prioritizing fixes
Helping You (or Your Clients) Understand How Their WordPress Site is Doing on the Web with SIte Kit
How do you combine information from different Google products to understand how your site is doing?
How do you set goals for your site and translate them to specific metrics to track
If you maintain sites for clients, what key metrics are they interested in and how do you share those with them?
Do you have to educate clients on how to set goals for their site?
If you use Site Kit, what can we do to make your life easier?
Common JavaScript Issues
Let’s talk about JavaScript and SEO. We would love to discuss which kinds of problems you see often and exchange ideas on how to tackle common issues.
Brainstorming Session: How Can the Search Console Team Further Help Publishing on the Open Web?
The Search Console team invites you all to a brainstorming session where we want to hear about your day-to-day challenges with publishing on the open web and try to think together of additional tools we can provide to help with these challenges.
E-Commerce SEO 101: Best Practices for Optimizing Online Stores
E-commerce stores come in all shapes and sizes -from commercial platforms such as Magento, Prestashop or WooCommerce, to custom-built and enterprise ones, online shops often face challenges coming up with the right SEO setup.
This session will cover common issues, solutions, and best practices that developers, webmasters, and SEOs should keep in mind when building and optimizing e-commerce sites.
CrUX Show and Tell
Bring your Chrome User Experience (CrUX) tools and show off how you use the dataset to understand real-user experiences. For any custom solutions, describe how you built it and what your feature wishlist looks like.
Accessibility and JavaScript
In this session, we want to talk about:
Ramifications of neglecting accessibility testing at-scale
Prioritizing fixes
Accessibility and JavaScript in general
Hreflang: How to Implement, When to Implement
Taking a look at the different approaches to specifying hreflang (tag, header, sitemaps)
When should you use them?
When shouldn’t you?
What issues do people experience?
Improving Search Documentation
How can we improve documentation to help SEOs to beginners to developers? Bring examples and suggestions! Are case studies helpful? How do you use them?
Mobile-First Indexing and How to Prepare For it
Are you confused about what mobile-first indexing is? Do you feel lost on how to prepare your site for it? Bring your questions!
We’ll help to address your confusion.
Talking About Talking About SEO
I think Google’s messages & information about SEO are getting better & clearer, but we often get flak for being vague. How can we improve in ways that help the average person? Bring examples & suggestions!
Communicating Our Publisher Policies and Monetized Updates
Policy updates: How do monetized policy changes change your experience? Our policies are constantly evolving. How can we convey updates to you in a way you can understand?
Timeline: We’ve gone from site level to page level (granular policies and enforcement) – to restrictions – how can we make your life easier/fairer as a partner?
Policy communication: Are our Policy documentation and training materials clear? What are we missing? Bring your ideas!
Fun with Scripts!
Show and tell! We bring a few examples:
txt diff checker – automated!
Mixed content warnings – identifying assets per page
Common Issues With Structured Data for Rich Snippets
Google documents guidelines for a gallery of rich results that you can obtain via structured data. This is an opportunity to talk about your struggles to enable those sought after enhancements and to discuss possible improvements.
How are Attendees Chosen?
Google maintains they have limited spots, so they may have to select attendees based on their demographics and background so as to ensure a good mix of perspectives in the event.
Will the Sessions Be Recorded?
Google notes that the sessions will not be recorded. It’s reasonable to assume they are doing things this way to keep it simple, keep the event intimate, and best mimic the in-person attendance experience. Instead of releasing recordings of the sessions hosted throughout the day, Google says it will instead publish a blog post that highlights some of the “top learnings” after the event.
After the event, I’ll come back with a summary of what was covered and any insights that may help you in your digital marketing and SEO journey.
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