Hey there, Brian Clark here. It’s been a minute, right? Along those lines, a lot has changed in my world... The post How to Build an Audience in 2020 (and Beyond) appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger https://ift.tt/2X5AoWP
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Google announced that its testing tools and the Google Search Console Performance report will recognize if your AMP document is a Web Story. Google said, “In our testing tools and Performance report we’ll use the term Web Story to identify this format.” What is a Web Story? In its developer document, Google said that “a Web Story is a visual storytelling format in Google Search results that immerses the user in a tap-through full-screen experience. Web Stories can also appear in Google Images, Discover, and the Google app. This guide explains how Web Stories appear on Google, and how to enable a Web Story on Google.” What a Web Story looks like. They come in many variations and Google is testing multiple layouts. They can show in web search, Google Discover, Google Images and many other places. Here is one example of what it looks like. Testing tools. The AMP testing tool and the other testing tools will now label these as a “Web Story.” Here is a screen shot from the AMP testing tool that shows a “valid web story”: Performance report. In Google Search Console, the Performance report, Google will also show how much of that traffic is from a Web Story. So you can filter it out even more: Why we care. Google is now giving SEOs and site owners even more refined breakdowns of how a Web Story published on your site can send you traffic from Google Search and Google Discover. Google will also properly document in its testing tools if it is a Web Story, how those web stories previews may show up in search and more ways to debug your web stories. The post Google’s tools now recognize “Web Story” appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2DdwrbH In covering Google algorithm updates for almost twenty-years now, one trend you notice over and over again is how SEOs tend to do two things. Many SEOs blame a Google algorithm update for their ranking declines and many SEOs often try to figure out which ranking factors they need to work on for a specific site. The thing is, often this is the wrong way to go about Google algorithm updates. In my keynote during our virtual SMX Next last month, I covered the past 20 years of Google algorithm updates and what SEOs need to focus on in the future. I later hosted a panel with a few veteran SEOs to discuss Google algorithms, I asked these experts, what do SEOs often get wrong about these Google updates. It wasn’t the updateYour ranking decline (or increase) was probably not due to that recent Google algorithm update. Yes, it is possible, but you first need “to have a [web site code] change log, you have to know what changes you made and when and be able to very definitely correlate” any changes you made that may have impacted your rankings. If you made zero changes and you lost 40% of your traffic on the same day as an algorithm update, “yeah that’s probably the update,” Carolyn Shelby, manager of SEO at ESPN said. But if you “made 80 changes the week before the update, we lost the traffic two days before the update, probably not the update,” she added. One example Shelby gave at ESPN was around the time Google announced the launch of RankBrain. Truth is, when Google announced it, it actually went live months and months prior to its official announcement. In any event, the people at ESPN felt a ranking issue the company was experiencing was directly related to RankBrain. But Shelby said, “You need to calm down, I’m sure, this has nothing to do with this, we broke something else.” And when they fixed the issue they had with an AMP implementation, traffic returned. It was not related to any algorithm update Google released, but rather a change made to the site. I brought up the nofollow attribute change where Google would treat the nofollow link attribute differently. The truth is, Google never fully launched the change — not yet at least and when it does, it won’t impact rankings. But SEOs were citing this as a reason for ranking changes, when it was not. Correlating ranking factorsAnother thing SEOs have been trying to do for ages is trying to figure out which ranking signals or factors are most important for a specific update. Back in the old days, yes, we know Penguin was about links, Panda was about content. In the earlier days, SEOs would be able to track Google Dances and PageRank values directly towards rankings the next day. But now, we really cannot do that. Eric Wu, VP of product growth at Honey Science said, “SEOs are spending too much time trying to figure out like what correlation matches the algorithm update.” The more “you understand machine learning” the more you know that you cannot figure this out. “Weighted values of these things the behavior doesn’t happen on all the sites similarly or the same way right,” Eric said. Focus on your web site, not the algorithmIn short, instead of obsessing about the changes Google is making to its algorithm, focus on your web site. You can end up spending too much time chasing your tail, when you can use that time making your own web site better. Focus on what your users want, build more and better content. Build better tools and features on your site. Make your site’s navigation easier for your users, make the site load faster and make the user experience better. Those are all better uses of your time than obsessing over Google algorithm updates. The post What SEOs get wrong about Google updates appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3f8wBOy Selecting the appropriate e-commerce platform for your goals, circumstances and customers can influence your sales and the amount of time your staff dedicates to maintaining that platform. If you’re looking at Shopify as your next potential e-commerce solution, you need to be aware of its strengths and limitations, with regards to SEO as well as other considerations that could affect your organization’s success. “Shopify achieved 47% growth in Q1 2020 primarily on the notion of ease and speed to market,” said Tony Verre, founder of DreamFire Digital Marketing, “It’s a particularly strong proposition for business owners scrambling to get online as retail visits came to a screeching halt. However, with that speed and ease come tradeoffs.” Shopify SEO tradeoffsDuplicate URLs. Duplicate URLs issues, in one form or another, are somewhat common across e-commerce platforms. On Shopify, duplicate URLs are created when products are associated with a collection page, a group of products. “The same exact product can be viewed at yourstore.com/products/{product-name} and yourstore.com/collections/{collection-name}/products/{product-name} for every collection that product is a member of,” said Kevin Wallner, founder of First Chair Digital. The shorter URL is the original, and while Shopify does add canonical tags pointing to the original page, “These duplicate URLs waste crawl budget and make it difficult for search engines to decide which version to show when a user searches for your product,” he said. Verre and Jason White, director of SEO at PMG, also mentioned duplicate URLs as one of the tradeoffs that merchants should be aware of before getting started with Shopify. One way to resolve this issue is to edit your Shopify theme, as discussed in our technical SEO for Shopify guide. URL structure. “Shopify does not allow for URL structure customization, so every page you create is incorporated into a predetermined URL structure that can’t be changed,” Verre said. URLs are a minor ranking factor and having the ability to get rid of the “/products” or “/pages” URL paths would give site owners more space to add descriptive keywords to their URLs. However, Shopify site owners do not have this option out of the box, and all category and product pages built on Shopify follow the URL structure mentioned above (in the section on duplicate URLs). With the help of a developer, solutions such as Cloudflare’s Cloud Worker interface can be implemented to mask these URL paths. You can read more about this option in our technical SEO for Shopify guide. Robots.txt. Shopify doesn’t allow site owners to make edits to their robots.txt file, an issue that Chris Long, senior SEO manager at Go Fish Digital, highlighted during our Shopify SEO session of Live with Search Engine Land. Being able to use robots.txt disallow directives to regulate crawling would provide site owners with a simple solution for Shopify’s duplicate URL issues, Wallner previously told Search Engine Land. Since this is not an option, merchants must look for other workarounds, such as editing their Shopify template or adding page-level meta-robots tags to noindex content. App ecosystem. At the time of publication, Shopify’s app store has 4,541 apps, and while that figure continues to grow, “there isn’t a complete SEO app for Shopify that will help you manage all your customization needs,” Verre said, “There’s not really a Yoast equivalent that can handle architecture, content, and commerce.” “[Shopify is] extensible, and many of these extensions can do pretty solid things,” Steven Hammer, founder of RankHammer, said, “The challenge comes when you want to go to the next level and make something that’s truly yours.” Because no two digital storefronts are the same, Shopify’s relatively small app ecosystem may not be a problem for some site owners while being dealbreakers for others. Related: Shopify SEO Guide: How to increase organic traffic to your store SEO is important, but there’s more to consider“Shopify is a great solution for businesses that simply ‘need something that works today’,” Verre said, adding that its prefabricated themes and low-knowledge threshold make it a good option for merchants that need to begin selling quickly. While this makes Shopify attractive for many businesses, there are other factors that site owners should be aware of before committing to a particular e-commerce platform. Shopify’s non-SEO strengths. “Without worrying about much, you can have a great credit card integration and very few of the hassles,” Hammer said, “You don’t have to worry as much about server performance or security as you might with other platforms.” “Shopify is a bit more nimble than, say, your Drupals or Magentos, and can be well-suited for smaller teams or teams with few development resources,” said Kali Wyrosdic, SEO specialist at Tinuiti. Requiring less staff and fewer resources can save merchants money and enable them to grow faster. “Where Shopify shines is in the extras,” Greg Finn, digital marketer and partner at Cypress North, said, “If you need a POS, Shopify has one. The ‘Shop’ [smartphone] app helps users buy faster and easier across domains, with better tracking.” “Integrations like Shop Pay make it almost as easy to buy as a dedicated Amazon customer, even if they’re a first time visitor,” said Hammer, noting that dropshipping is also a business model that works well on Shopify. Shopify’s non-SEO drawbacks. “The out-of-the-box software platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce are nearly plug and play, while a solution like WooCommerce and Magento can be custom developed into your site to look and function exactly how you want,” Finn said. “From an SEO perspective, this is important to envision, as you may want to move platforms, upgrade capacity and moving away from proprietary systems like Shopify and BigCommerce can cause headaches.” One of the ways Shopify adds customizability is through its app ecosystem; however, directly customizing a Shopify site’s theme can be tougher than it might be on other platforms. Since Shopify themes are built using Liquid, an open-source language created by Shopify, customizability is limited and programmers may need to dedicate more time to learning it (if they’re unfamiliar). This limitation is “part of the reason that a lot of shopify sites feel so derivative,” said Hammer, “Does anyone else get annoyed by the same ‘deal spinner’ that’s on the last three unrelated sites that you visited? We believe that consumers do.” Merchants that use tags to gather insights into how users are interacting with their site should also be aware that, although Google Tag Manager (GTM) is free to use, Shopify store owners will need to be on a Shopify Plus plan, which starts at $2,000 a month, to use it with their site. Open-source platforms like WooCommerce and Magento allow GTM to be added easily, and BigCommerce sites can add GTM by inserting their GTM code directly into their template files. Stacking up to the competition“The largest tradeoff that e-commerce business owners will make when thinking about Shopify versus other platforms like WordPress + WooCommerce, Drupal, or Adobe’s Magento is customization from a theme and functionality perspective, as well as from an SEO perspective,” said Verre. The compromise between these elements was a common point of discussion among the majority of professionals that spoke to Search Engine Land for this article. WooCommerce. WooCommerce is an open-source WordPress plugin, making it a convenient choice for existing WordPress sites that are looking to add e-commerce functionality. “As an Automattic company [WordPress’ parent company], they aren’t in danger of going out of business or losing support and you can customize your store any way you want it and blend it into your site fully,” said Finn. “The advantage [of WooCommerce] is that you can fully control it and it’s a way better content marketing platform,” Hammer said, “It’s great for subscriptions, memberships and other continuity models. It seems like the right choice for anything that’s more than just a transaction, which is why we often recommend it.” However, stores built with WooCommerce do require more upkeep than those built with Shopify. “The challenge is needing to stay on top of seemingly constant updates, so you need to have a resource that’s helping,” he said. Magento. Magento provides site owners with even more possibilities and options than WooCommerce. “The customizability here is second to none, but so are the development stack requirements,” said Hammer, who recommends this platform to businesses that desire a world-class platform and have the budget and resources to maintain it. Finding the right platform. “Realistically, most people fit into the Shopify category,” he said, noting that, although the platform you choose should be based on your needs and the resources at your disposal, “At some point some companies hit a wall and then want to move to something else. And, some companies start with a customized solution and tire of the constant effort required and move to Shopify.” No matter which platform you invest in, you will always have to compromise between factors such as SEO, customizability, price, availability of integrations and the need for dedicated technical staff. “There isn’t any one platform which is better than the other — it’s all in how you manage the tradeoffs,” said White. “Modern SEO is the accumulation of incremental gains and maximizing what you have available, pushing forward however possible. The platform used should be a business decision with an omni-channel approach. From there, the SEO team should be expected to work hand-in-hand with the development team to drive those incremental returns,” he said. The post Shopify tradeoffs: What to consider before selecting your next e-commerce platform appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2P4vxAI The post SEL 20200728 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3319RxJ
In this post, I'll be revealing 3 relatively under-utilized places to find prospects on Facebook. It's not that they're “secret”… It's just that most marketers don't think to look for their prospects in these locations. Before we start, let's get ahead of the game. When you do find potential prospects on Facebook, what do you […]
via BobandRosemary.com | Part Time Business Success Tips https://ift.tt/3jKAInI Social Shorts: Twitter ad engagement drops Snap Minis launch more brands pause Facebook Ads7/27/2020 Twitter ad engagement suffers. Snapchat user gains slowWe’re starting to get a clearer picture of how the pandemic affected social platforms last quarter. This week, even as monetizable daily active users increased by a whopping 34% to 186 million, Twitter reported ad revenue fell by 23% year-over-year to $562 million in Q2 (total revenue was $683 million, down 19% year-over-year), that’s coming off flat ad revenue growth in the first quarter of 2020. Twitter’s sharp decline in ad revenue was matched in a steep drop in ad engagement and cost per engagement. Why we care. The trends of these two metrics, shown in the chart above, put in stark light the challenge Twitter’s ad business has been facing for many quarters now. Performance advertisers require engagement with their ads. Ned Segal, Twitter’s CFO, said in a statement that the company is still focusing on performance ads. “We have completed our ad server rebuild and are making progress accelerating our performance ads roadmap. With a larger audience and progress in ads, we are even better positioned to deliver for advertisers when the live events and product launches that bring many people and advertisers to Twitter return to our lives.” (The company is also looking at subscription options.) Earlier in the week, Snap reported revenues rose by 17% year-over-year to $454 million. Investors were disappointed the big bump in users that Snapchat saw at the beginning of shelter in place didn’t continue. Daily active users were up 17% to 238 million, just shy of the 239 million the company had been shooting for. Why we care. Snap’s ad revenues were impacted by disruptions to industries such as transportation services, restaurants and entertainment venues, but Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said e-commerce, streaming and gaming advertisers are leaning into the platform. While Snapchat’s audience skews young, the company also noted that the daily average number of Snapchatters over the age of 35 engaging with Discover content increased by over 40% year-over-year in Q2 2020. The company also said it’s benefiting from Facebook’s brand safety troubles with more brands taking a fresh look at Snapchat. Twitter strikes at conspiracy contentTwitter said it will take action against conspiracy theory-ridden QAnon content on its platform starting this week. It will permanently suspend accounts tweeting about the topics, block URLs associated with QAnon from being shared on Twitter, and content and accounts associated with QAnon will not serve in Trends and recommendations. Twitter took down 7,000 QAnon accounts and is limiting 150,000 others that flood the platform with abusive content and coordinated attempts to get hashtags trending, NBC News reported. Why we care. Twitter’s action against misinformation and conspiracy theories is significant for a platform and stands in stark contrast to Facebook’s “we aren’t arbiters of truth” approach in the midst of an advertiser boycott over brand safety and content moderation concerns. Facebook Ads boycott: More brands quietly sit outSeveral large brands have quietly paused ads on Facebook. Disney pulled ads for Disney+, according to the Wall Street Journal, and Walmart, Geico, Allstate, Kellogg’s, Kohl’s, Dell, McDonald’s, Peloton and Ikea stopped advertising early in the month, per a new report from watchdog group Media Matters. Walmart was Facebook’s second-biggest spender in 2019 at more than $145 million, Media Matters estimates. More than 1,000 advertisers such as Unilever, Starbucks, Adidas and Verizon signed onto the #StopHateForProfit campaign and agreed to stop advertising via Facebook Ads for the month of July over concerns about content moderation and policy enforcement around objectionable content. Why we care. The financial dent of these big advertisers alone won’t cripple Facebook, which has millions of SMB advertisers facing their own challenges due to COVID-19. Nor is that the point. “It’s more for us to assess, as marketers and arbiters of our brands’ equity, whether we should continue defaulting to a platform that stands in opposition to consumer sentiment today,” Elijah Harris, senior vice president of paid social at IPG Mediabrands told Business Insider last month. Facebook published an update on its brand safety efforts. One step involves enlisting the Media Rating Council (MRC) to conduct an evaluation of its partner and content monetization policies and brand safety controls as well as the accuracy of Facebook’s related reporting. Snap Minis start rolling outSnapchat has released the first set of mini apps on the platform. The lightweight HTML apps “are designed to improve engagement among users by enabling them to perform a range of additional tasks without leaving the Snap app,” TechCrunch reported. The initial apps are Headspace for mediation, Flashcards for studying with friends, Prediction Master for messaging and Let’s Do It, developed by Snap to allow users to make decisions with their friends. Why we care. The mini apps are available within Snapchat’s Chat section and are part of a strategy to beef up engagement among the app’s 229 million daily users who represent roughly 90% of 13 to 24 year-olds in the U.S. More engagement means a more enticing environment for brands and advertisers. Last week, Snapchat debuted brand pages that give brands a home base, similar to other social networks. The post Social Shorts: Twitter ad engagement drops, Snap Minis launch, more brands pause Facebook Ads appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3hLzUxb Since its introduction in 2015, Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) framework has been controversial. The company recently decided to no longer require AMP for inclusion in the Top Stories carousel. That may lead to abandonment of the format by many publishers – some of whom considered AMP coercive; however, the data argue that AMP pages do perform much better, boosting rankings and revenue. Page Experience taking over. There are various cynical theories about why Google created AMP. What Google said at the time was that it wanted to “dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web . . . no matter what type of phone, tablet or mobile device you’re using.” And it largely delivered on that promise – it also boosted ad revenues for some publishers — but the price was complexity. One of the reasons Google lifted the Top Stories AMP requirement is that the company has moved to a much more holistic and sophisticated approach to (mobile) ranking, called Page Experience factors. Yet before publishers and developers say “good riddance” to AMP, it’s important to understand what they might be giving up. Page Views, conversions and AOV uplift from AMP Speed improvements yield traffic and better CTR. A June study from Deloitte on the impact of page-speed on page views, engagement and conversions found increased brand loyalty and revenue from even tiny increases in site speed. For example, in the retail vertical, the research found that a 0.1 second speed improvement translated into an 8.4% increase in conversions and average order value increases of 9.2%. In travel, conversions increased 10% and AOV 19%. Perficient Digital conducted an AMP-impact study with 27 publishers and e-commerce sites. There were more impressions and higher CTRs for AMP-enabled sites:
AMP delivers much faster page-load time Better core vitals and more revenue. A more recent study from Milestone, comparing non-AMP websites and AMP websites, looked at multiple verticals: “5,000 landing pages, 408,000,000 search The research found that AMP outperformed non-AMP pages on Google’s Core Vitals metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (17% better), First Input Delay (10% better), Cumulative Layout Shift (70% better). Page speed was 135% better than with non-AMP pages. Milestone also found “AMP has a significant impact on rankings on search, search sessions, impressions, page views, and traffic share.” AMP pages boosted ranking on average by two positions after AMP was implemented. They also saw roughly 380% more search impressions than non-AMP sites. Most significantly, in the case of seven customers in the travel segment where Milestone had revenue visibility, the company saw average mobile revenue gains of 29%. Milestone concluded that “AMP [pages] could see a monthly revenue gain anywhere between $3,500 – $40,000,” depending on the site and average order value. Mobile revenue gains from AMP Why we care. There are a number of things to think about before determining whether to drop AMP, which many publishers may be inclined to do. Given the benefits above, that decision should be carefully considered. Regardless, to rank in the new Page Experience world coming in 2021, brands and retailers must deliver fast sites and strong user experiences. AMP is one way to do that. AMP pages score better on Core Vitals metrics, a key component of Page Experience ranking factors. But it’s the revenue boost that should really get your attention. The post Saying adieu to AMP: You might be giving up rankings — and revenue appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2WZM5hM The Director of SEO at Razorfish, Brian Ussery, an individual who I’ve known in the SEO space for almost twenty-years, chatted with me about the earlier days in the SEO industry. We also talked about the new evergreen GoogleBot and some tips and things to look out for when doing SEO for e-commerce sites. Brian has given a lot of his time to the SEO industry. He has been a “product expert” in the Google support forums for almost as long as Google has had support forums. Before that, he helped SEOs in other public SEO forums. He has also spoken at countless SEO conferences, including our SMX events, he has written many articles here, and is active on social media helping SEOs. In our conversation, we talked about two primary topics. The first was on evergreen GoogleBot and how Google can crawl and understand types of content it once was unable to. Then we talked about SEO advice around e-commerce sites. Tips like making sure you have unique and useful product descriptions, that your technical SEO is sound and tested and that you have great product images. It was a fun talk and I hope you enjoy it. You can follow Brian on Twitter @beussery and here is the video: I started this vlog series recently, and if you want to sign up to be interviewed, you can fill out this form on Search Engine Roundtable. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel by clicking here. The post Video: Brian Ussery of Razorfish on SEO for e-commerce sites appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/32ZT2TF The post SEL 20200727 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3f4fQE8 |
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