Google seems to have been rolling out a large search algorithm update starting sometime around Sunday, June 25. Google’s John Mueller said, “We make updates all the time,” when asked specifically about the speculation around a Google update. In my opinion, there was an algorithm update to the Google search rankings over the past few days that is still rolling out. Google technically did not confirm it, outside of John Mueller’s typical reply to any questions around an algorithm update. But based on the industry chatter that I track closely and the automated tracking tools from Mozcast, SERPMetrics, Algoroo, Advanced Web Rankings, Accuranker, RankRanger and SEMRush, among other tools, it seems there was a real Google algorithm update. Again, Google’s PR team did not officially confirm it outside of John Mueller’s tweet. Here are some screen shots of those popular tracking tools: Here are some random tweets from industry SEOs:
Check your analytics and rankings. You may be surprised to see changes in your traffic — hopefully for the better. The post Google algorithm update may be rolling out since June 25 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2rXH0oz
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Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that they are now rolling out two new local search features:
Local highlight icons show icons in a local panel that represent what amenities the local business has. Items might include fast service, healthy options, small plates and so on. Google began testing these icons last month, and now they are rolling out to all searchers. Here is a screen shot of the highlight icons for a local restaurant near me. Google is also launching price labels directly in the hotel results, so you can quickly see on the map the price of the hotels in that area are. Here is a screen shot: Hat tip to Sergey Alakov for spotting these early. The post Confirmed: Google rolls out local highlight icons & price labels for hotel results appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2rXMi3j When we decided to launch our search marketing industry awards program three years ago, the guiding principle was have the honors be truly meaningful. That’s why it’s no small task to enter the competition- we ask for a lot of supporting data and information so our editorial staff and industry judges can effectively measure outstanding results and reward innovation in search marketing. Year after year, we’ve seen the level of competition rise, and fully expect 2017 to showcase some amazing examples of successful search marketers. And for many finalists, there really is satisfaction in being added to the short list, and we agree – it’s incredibly difficult to name just one winner in every category. While earning a finalist title would have been enough after a win the previous year, Katy Tonkin of Point It was pleasantly surprised to take home a trophy in 2016 for an enterprise SEM campaign they ran for Microsoft Store.
We were up against some impressive brands: AARP, Catalyst for Jaguar Land Rover, ROI DNA for Virgin America and Search Discovery for ApartmentFinder.com
Whether you’re an individual consultant, in-house team member or part of a small or large agency, we want to honor your hard work and the tangible results you and/or your team drive as a result of the search marketing tactics learned here on Search Engine Land, at our conferences or through your own experiments and learning. At last year’s awards gala, we took to the red carpet to ask some of the winners what it meant to be recognized by Search Engine Land and take home a coveted “Landy Award”. While being humble about their own thought leadership and contributions to the search marketing community, last year’s individual winners Eric Enge and Jennifer Lopez both noted the efforts of their supporting teams. For many agencies, it’s a tangible representation of all the hours of work team members do on behalf of clients. It’s validation for the client. It’s recognition among the best of your industry peers. See what last year’s winning SEM Agency of the Year, Jellyfish had to say about why this award means so much to their team: There are 25 categories in the 2017 awards competition, so start putting your submissions together today. Reminder – the early entry period for Search Engine Land’s 2017 Landy Awards is just a few weeks away! Save $100 when you enter before 11:59PM PST on July 14th – enter now. The post What does it mean to win a Search Engine Land Award? appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2sMWjmX What is the key to building a better website? Well, you first need an idea. And it needs to be useful. Next, you need to start with the right stuff, the right raw materials. You clicked on the headline of this post, so perhaps you’re already using WordPress or strongly considering it. Good choice. Continue down that path. After that, you have to be willing to hit Publish. Whether you’re starting your own food blog, marketing your copywriting business, or building an audience for your coaching services … you have to put your story out there on the web for all to see. That can be scary. It’s also empowering. What comes next? Find a path for continuous improvementA few years ago, I wrote an article on Copyblogger titled How to Immediately Become a More Productive (and Better) Writer. A book I had just read called One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer inspired that post. The book takes its cue from the Japanese concept of kaizen, which means continuous improvement — or, to be more specific, the process of achieving sustained success through small, steady steps. This concept spoke to me then. It continues to speak to me now.
I am easily prone to this. I’ve learned this about myself. I have to be intentional about pulling myself down out of the clouds so that I can actually plant my feet firmly on the ground and put one foot in front of the other … then the other … then the other. Steps. One at a time. That is the only way to achieve continuous improvement — the only way to take a big, grand idea and bring it to fruition. Now, with that as our foundation, let’s talk about your website … The four pillars of a successful WordPress websiteBuilding a powerful website that does everything a website should do — help you earn authority, build an audience, and drive business — is a big task. There is a lot that goes into a successful WordPress website. Some of the choices you have to make are big decisions, like where to host your site and what theme to use. Other choices are smaller, more subtle, like what color to use for your call-to-action buttons and whether you should use “How to …” in two consecutive blog post headlines or change one for the sake of variety. All of your decisions, big and small, can be categorized in one of the following four buckets:
They are the four pillars of a successful WordPress website. If your website lacks any one of these elements, it might be okay, but it’s probably not optimized to help you achieve your goals. You could also be wasting time, effort, and money. Think about it this way:
And if your website lacks two of these elements, it might fail altogether. Consider a website with useful content that adheres to a smart, cohesive strategy. That’s a good start. But if the design is ill-fitting, and if the technology is lacking (think: poor hosting and security warnings), then visitors are unlikely to stay long … if they ever reach your site at all. The rub in this example, of course, is that you can’t really have a smart, cohesive strategy with design and technology lagging far behind. And given how intertwined content and design are, content with poor design won’t be nearly as useful as it could be. Point being: they all fit together. Now let’s marry together the two big ideas we’ve explored so far in this post … How to apply kaizen to the four pillars of your website’s successYou can’t build a successful website with one inspired 48-hour work binge over a weekend. You can’t even do it by taking an entire month, or even three or four, to focus on nothing but your website. Not if you want your success to sustain beyond those three or four months. Sure, through evergreen content, autoresponders, and the power of digital products, you can (and should) do a lot to earn ongoing, recurring, some might say “passive” revenue … but you’ll also experience diminishing returns if you aren’t:
In other words, you can’t just set-and-forget your content, design, technology, and strategy.
If that sounds like a lot of time and effort, good. Because it is. But it’s worth it. If you are intentional about avoiding the myopia that so many people approach online business with, then the time and effort, along with the money, that you invest into your website will not be an expense. It will be an investment. And the investment will pay off. That said, it’s still smart to save yourself little bits of time and effort where you can. Which is why we created a new podcast. Introducing the Sites podcastWe want to help you make continuous improvements to your WordPress site while saving you the time and effort it requires to find all the best tips, techniques, and important developments that are out there. It can be overwhelming trying to keep up, and you already have enough work to do. So let us curate the information, and then you decide what’s relevant to your situation, how you want to apply it, and when. One tip at a time. One step at a time. Continuous improvement. Sites is a podcast that delivers timely insight on the four pillars of a successful WordPress website that I described above: content, design, technology, strategy. New episodes publish on Tuesdays. They are short and get straight to the point, with each episode focusing on an individual pillar. And they all include one hyper-specific call to action to help you take that kaizen-inspired next step. You can also view the first four episode pages here:
And if podcasts aren’t your thing, we also have Sites Weekly — a curated email newsletter delivered to your inbox on Wednesdays. Each edition delivers four links, one focused on each pillar of a successful website. Click here to subscribe for free. Together, let’s create better websites … one week at a time. Keep building. The post How to Build a Better WordPress Website … One Week at a Time appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger http://ift.tt/2shQ5YD Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land:
Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:
Search News From Around The Web:Industry
Local & Maps
Link Building
SEO
SEM / Paid Search Search Marketing
The post SearchCap: Bing Ads Editor update, Bing Ads voice metrics & Danny Sullivan changes appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2sU8IUr Bing Ads Editor updates: Bulk edit & copy multiple campaigns manage device & radius targets6/26/2017 Bing Ads rolled out some handy updates to Bing Ads Editor (BAE) last week. Here’s a quick rundown for the next time you log in. The most requested update here is the ability to select multiple campaigns or ad groups for bulk filtering and editing, as well as copying and pasting multiple items from one account to another. This is only available in the Windows version of BAE. Hopefully, it will roll out to the Mac version soon. With the recent changes in device targeting and bid adjustments, Bing Ads has added a “Device targets” menu option in the left pane in Editor. Here you can manage targeting and bid adjustments. Under “Locations,” now you can set multiple radius targets with different bid adjustments for a single location. For example, you might want a higher bid adjustment for a five-mile radius than for a 10-mile radius. Finally, you may also notice it’s faster to navigate, edit and get data from different statistics views in Editor due to a change in the way data is cached in the desktop tool. The post Bing Ads Editor updates: Bulk edit & copy multiple campaigns, manage device & radius targets appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2sJxrfK New columns are now available in Bing Ads to see competitive metrics related to impression share. The Competitive (Share of Voice) metrics are available at the campaign, ad group and keyword levels in the main UI and Reports tab. They are also accessible in several reports via the Bing Ads API. There are six new metrics available, including Impression share (IS) lost to rank and IS lost to ad relevance. Claire Lee, Bing Ads platform program manager, added in the blog post that more reporting updates are in the works. “One of our goals for reporting on Bing Ads is to surface the information you want, in the context you want it, so you can make quick and informed decisions across your ad campaigns,” Lee said. The post Bing Ads now offers competitive share of voice metrics appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2seZgZX The post Get Unstuck From Destructive Habits! appeared first on Matt Morris. via Matt Morris http://ift.tt/2tbYVv6 One of my favorite aspects of SMX Advanced is the guarantee of emerging with a list of new tests to try out, along with pointers given by the industry’s top experts. SMX Advanced 2017 was no exception! Maximizing Performance With AdWords Campaign Drafts And ExperimentsMichael Elkins’ session, “Maximizing Performance With AdWords Campaign Drafts And Experiments,” contributed to this list rather quickly. Elkins, who is director of paid search at Red Ventures, spoke about leveraging campaign performance with Google Campaign Experiments & Drafts, a somewhat “new” replacement for AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE). For a quick overview, Google’s testing capabilities began modestly with indefinite ad rotation, which evolved into ACE in 2014, and then more recently, New Campaign Drafts — a playground that offers plenty of new opportunities to improve our campaigns, including tests for ad copies, extensions, bid strategies, and of course, ad rotations. Elkins offers the following tips for leveraging New Campaign Drafts, starting with implementation:
Pro tips:
Elkins covers three case studies where he tests New Campaign Drafts hypotheses, which you can find in his slides. Overall, it’s worth trying New Campaign Drafts for yourself, as it opens new testing scenarios that were impossible in the past. The setup is straightforward and intuitive, and the split statistics make it easy to quickly identify significant changes in the relevant KPIs. Yet because AdWords basically duplicates the campaign for the test, there are a couple of things that weren’t addressed in the session and are worth knowing. For example, if you use third-party tracking on the keyword level, you should remember to differentiate those in draft from the original; otherwise one will end up having duplicate tracking. It is also important to ensure settings and bidding are consistent or untouched during the time of the test — if these are maintained in just one of the two campaigns, results will be inconclusive. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that New Campaign Drafts is not yet applicable toward Shopping, which in this case we’d need a scheduled A/B test. If you are working with Shopping campaigns, I covered how to implement A/B testing at SMX London, which you can find here. Taking Audience Targeting to the Next LevelI found one other session incredibly dynamic, which was “Taking Audience Targeting to the Next Level,” presented by David Szetela, Andy Taylor and Michelle Morgan. It’s obvious that “target audience” is a building block all campaign managers must take the time to invest in, and at first glance it may seem like low-hanging fruit — but this session introduced some cream-of-the-crop techniques that marry targeting options with multiple data sources, ultimately maximizing ROI in campaigns and proving audience targeting can reach the highest degree of complexity. David Szetela, founder and CEO of FMB Media, gave a detailed overview of all types of advanced retargeting options for Google Display Network. GDN is one of the most valuable channels due to its expansive reach, versatility in ad format and numerous targeting capabilities. Check out his slides to find his tips for each targeting capability: I was particularly intrigued by the presentation by Andy Taylor, Merkle’s associate director of research, about a new(ish) AdWords feature he’s been tinkering around with: Customer Match. I’m sure you were all jumping out of your seats when this came out last year — we definitely were, so naturally we were all very eager to hear his results. Taylor found that despite Customer Match yielding less than 5 percent of clicks, returns on average double the conversion rate at one-third the cost for Google PLA. Ratios like these never last, so now is a good time to jump into the game if you aren’t already playing. Despite its return, one caveat to Customer Match is that Google experiences a few blips when matching emails with searchers. Match rate of Customer Match varies a lot depending on email provider (with Gmail having a 90 percent match), but also depending on demographics. Younger people frequent Gmail, so if you plan to target that demographic, Customer Match will deliver a more extensive list. Aside from a small reach, I think that Customer Match is an option that has yet to be explored deeply. I found it especially interesting to hear how to best utilize this type of audience, whether it is for upselling or cross-selling in a separate campaign to test incremental value of remarketing. Taylor mentioned that Customer Match is a small batch that packs a punch. Despite small reach, it is very effective for testing, as one could set up a test and control group in the frame of the Customer Match A/B test, turn off the ads in the test group and keep the ones in the control group running to determine whether remarketing has an impact on the order volume of the users. Additionally, implementing RLSA and Customer Match can yield substantially higher CR and CTR. From our side at Crealytics, we also dove into this new feature and found that RLSA and Customer Match have proven to drive incremental revenues of 18 percent or more. If you’re interested in fine-tuning your remarketing strategy, we’ve made it easier to assess your status quo with this RLSA benchmark script. The final leg of the session was on negative audiences, which are imperative for reaching only the audience that is relevant to your business. Our team enjoyed this presentation by Michelle Morgan, director of client services at Clix Marketing, who stressed that negative audiences are used for two purposes: to exclude unwanted users or to shape audiences and deliver a consistent message to each list. Unwanted users include those who are already a lead, have poor engagement, are the wrong fit or fit a specific audience pattern. Luckily for you, Morgan paves the way to extract these lists, which can be found on her slides (below). Regarding audience shaping in Display, Morgan advises to begin with layering, or prioritizing audiences by order of importance, and then to exclude down the hierarchy. Hierarchies can include audience size, highest value targets, sales funnel position or audience targeting strategy. Ultimately, when using negative audiences to shape an audience, we are fundamentally enabling ourselves to deliver the right message to the right people. By shaping audience and buckling down on the appropriate audience, we can avoid inappropriate messaging, poor efficacy, and of course, wasting ad spend. Overall, from this session, we got a taste of where audience targeting is heading as more information about users becomes available. This data will ultimately be integrated into new scenarios, such as the algorithmically informed bidding using audience data, or “people-based” data. One thing is sure: Audience targeting is becoming multi-faceted, multi-layered and convoluted, allowing infinite scenarios to cross data sets — and therefore many, many testing opportunities in the near future. The post SMX Advanced: A paid search roundup appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2s9xFyd After 21 years running sites about and covering digital and search marketing, it’s time for a change. I’m becoming an advisor to Third Door Media, a shift from my position as chief content officer. Third Door Media is the company that I cofounded with our CEO Chris Elwell, VP of programming Chris Sherman and VP of sales Sean Moriarty. It publishes our Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, Digital Marketing Depot and MarTech Today sites and produces our SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech conferences. I’m extremely proud of all that we’ve accomplished since the company began back in 2006. We have the aforenamed industry-leading vertical publications and successful conferences. Our company has grown to over 40 people. And it’s all been done organically, without VC funding, and has been consistently profitable. Time for a changeMy move to a new role is because I’m ready to try something different. What that is, I don’t know! I have no immediate plans, other than to enjoy some time off. I might do some consumer tech writing down the line, which I enjoy and did a bit in the past, in my extra time. I might explore other types of writing, perhaps about science fiction on TV and in movies. All I know for certain is that I’ll remain pretty active on Twitter with opinions about tech and beyond. Goodbye to a great team that remainsWe’ve transitioned to the change internally over the past few months. Michelle Robbins has been promoted to SVP for content and marketing technology — congrats, Michelle! She has great knowledge in search and marketing technology, having been on the front lines of that for years, making her well-suited to oversee the strategic direction of our coverage. The excellent Matt McGee has already been overseeing our day-to-day and long-term coverage aspects since 2012. Barry Schwartz — the hardest-working person in SEO — continues as our news editor, employing his superhuman powers to monitor thousands of sources of information. Ginny Marvin remains watching over the paid search space for us with an insider’s knowledge that’s unmatched, as well as the digital advertising space in general. Barry Levine keeps on as marketing technology reporter extraordinaire. Amy Gesenhues continues doing her insightful interviews with CMOs, CMTOs and coverage of all aspects of digital marketing. Greg Sterling remains our go-to person for all things mobile, local, legal and big picture analysis. Tim Peterson will keep on getting the scoops and deep coverage in the social media space, along with both Greg Finn and Tamar Weinberg. Beyond our reporting staff, our stellar features team will continue doing the hard work that’s largely unseen, recruiting and editing content from in-the-trenches contributors. Pamela Parker, with her associates Jessica Thompson and Desiree DeNunzio, do such an outstanding job to ensure that our content goes above and beyond. And Liz Craig, our copy editor, makes certain that all of our content reads professionally. On the conference side, Chris Sherman remains heading up our SMX shows, as he’s done since the beginning. His nearly two decades of experience in the search conference space is unmatched. Karen DeWeese knows the ropes of all our event logistics and will keep things running as smoothly as she ever does. Our MarTech event continues to be programmed through our partnership with Scott Brinker, the leading voice of marketing technology. Our social and growth teams, who I worked with closely, will continue to do their great work for Marc Sirkin, our SVP of experience and marketing. Monica Wright is so wonderful for ensuring that our engagement stays strong. Lauren Donovan keeps our content flowing on Facebook, Twitter and delights on Instagram. Kyle Pouliot does the same for our conference content and is a madman when we unleash him on Snapchat filters. And Katie Jordan helps them all where needed, our former intern — and third-degree blackbelt — so good that we brought her on full-time last year. Elisabeth Osmeloski keeps developing our audience and improving the experience of our conferences, including being instrumental in making our Search Engine Land Awards a great event. See you at the Search Engine Land Awards!Speaking of the Search Engine Land Awards — also known as “The Landys,” they’ll happen again at our SMX East show — and I’m looking forward to attending those this October and seeing people from our SMX and Search Engine Land communities. Not just work colleagues but a second familyThe people I’ve named above are those I’ve worked most closely with over the years, but our company includes many more people in our sales, marketing services, conferences and administrative areas. Everyone at Third Door Media is amazing. Our company is entirely remote. We have no central office, no headquarters, nor a need for that. It’s possible because of a great self-starting team that does its utmost each day. A few years ago, my youngest son asked me if it was fun helping to lead a company because “you get to boss everyone around.” I told him it was much different than that. Helping run a company, I explained, was like having an entire second family. You worry about them. You want them all to succeed. You care about them. Or at least, that’s how it’s been for me at Third Door Media. It’s been a second family. It’s been a wonderful family, and I’m thankful to everyone in it. I’ll continue to be part of that family in my new role, offering advice as needed. I know that the company will continue to do well with so many phenomenal people in it. I also know it will continue to do well headed by Chris Elwell, our CEO and my great friend, who I’ve worked with in our Third Door Media partnership and before that back to 1997. He has been the guiding hand that saw a company launched right just before huge economic downturn of 2008 get through that unscathed and ensure that we’ve grown and thrived. I look forward to watching him, along with everyone, succeed in the years to come. I don’t have big reflections on my years reporting about search, because I largely did that last year, on my 20th anniversary of covering the space. If you’re interested, please see them here: 10 big changes with search engines over my 20 years of covering them. I’ll repeat what I said at the end of that. I’ve been fortunate to have had a front-row seat in watching the search and digital marketing space unfold. It’s been an honor and privilege to cover the space. I’m glad that there’s a great team in place that will continue to do that, to help digital marketers succeed. The post Danny Sullivan: My new role as advisor for Third Door Media appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2tdbGGu |
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