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Your opportunity to create higher performing PPC campaigns, prepare for looming algorithm updates, and take your search marketing career to the next level is here: Attend SMX, online November 9-10, to learn actionable, trusted tactics that will give you an edge over the competition and set you up for a winning 2022 and beyond — all for just $289. In two weeks, you’ll access a tactic-rich agenda programmed by the Search Engine Land experts that explores the latest in SEO, PPC, content, and career development — including boosting your rank in Google Discover, optimizing for RSAs, and climbing the ladder from paid media manager to CMO. It’s all available both live and on-demand — and it’s all 100% virtual — so you can train at your convenience from the comfort and safety of your own computer. Keep reading for a rundown of everything your $289 All Access pass unlocks… Broaden your horizons with two forward-thinking keynotesKick-off your training experience with Cultivating your professional path: How to level up your search marketing career, featuring Carolyn Lyden, Director of Search Content at Search Engine Land. Together, you’ll learn how to:
Day two begins with LinkedIn’s Purna Virja and her keynote Generation Z: How to understand and speak to the next generation of digital consumers. After Purna’s keynote, you’ll be able to:
Unlock two days of tactical sessions + live Q&A (Overtime!)Attend nearly 50 experts-led sessions — available both live and on-demand — that deliver actionable tactics, trusted advice, and reliable insights that you can implement immediately. By the end of the event, you’ll be ready to:
…and that’s just the beginning. Live Q&A (a.k.a. Overtime) follows every session on the SEO, PPC, Content, and Career tracks so you can ask speakers your questions live and get specific answers in real-time. Learn from Google, Microsoft, and other leading solution providersGo under the hood of Google’s new Performance Max campaigns with Global Product Lead of Google Ads, Rodney Ip — and stick around for the live Q&A where you can get your burning ads questions answered by Google in real-time. And be sure to check out these two exclusive Microsoft Advertising sessions:
Check out all of the participating solution providers here. Soak up actionable best practices during live clinicsAttend your choice of live clinic on SEO copy, PPC landing pages, or GA4 accounts to watch as a panel of experts audit peer-submitted assets in real-time. You’ll walk away with fresh inspiration and actionable insights to improve your own assets. (All clinics will be available on-demand so you can watch and rewatch!) Meet the 2021 Search Marketers Of The Year!Don’t miss your opportunity to connect with the four winners of the Search Engine Land Awards’ Search Marketers of the Year during two live AMAs on Wednesday afternoon! Showcase your commitment to continued trainingWhen you attend SMX, you’re making a commitment to further your career. That kind of initiative deserves recognition. Attend any track in its entirety to receive your very own Certificate of Completion and a digital badge, perfect for posting to your social profiles and website. Use your Certificate of Completion to:
Dive deep into your search marketing specialty (additional fee applies)Two days of tactic-packed training not enough? SMX workshops were designed for insatiable search marketers like you. Complete your training with a live, two-day, deep-dive workshop on your search specialty:
TL;DR: This is your final chance to attend two days of actionable, expert-led SMX training in 2021.What are you waiting for? You and your career deserve this. Register now to get your All Access pass for just $289 — or bundle with a two-day workshop for $459 — and join us online in two weeks! The post Don’t miss out on expert-led search marketing training at SMX appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3EfUxfX App advertisers are no longer required to implement deep linking to run App campaigns for engagement, Google Ads announced Monday. As a new option, advertisers can select “Set to app homepage” during ad group creation to direct users to the app homepage. Why we careImplementing deep links typically means getting developer support, which may be a limited resource in your organization. This new option enables app advertisers to utilize App campaigns for engagement without having to request that support, which may mean that your campaign can get off the ground faster. Deep linking, however, remains useful as it enables this ad type to take users to a specific part of your app, which may translate to better conversion rates than simply sending them to the app homepage. More on App campaigns for engagement
The post App advertisers can now use App campaigns for engagement without implementing deep links appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3pFZV87 This past Friday a New York judge unsealed previously redacted documents in the lawsuit against Google led by the State of Texas. One of the main allegations of the antitrust lawsuit is that Google and Facebook colluded to rig ad prices and “kill header bidding” (the attempt by competitors to make the ad market less Google-centric). “The lawsuit claims that when Facebook began to gain traction as a rival advertiser, Google made an agreement with Facebook to reduce competition in exchange for giving the social media company an advantage in Google-run ad auctions. The project was called ‘Jedi Blue,’” we wrote in April of this year. The newly unredacted information shows just how deep the alleged agreement went between Facebook and the search engine giant. Read more >> Google accused of colluding with Facebook and abusing monopoly power in new lawsuit Jedi Blue and Facebook/Google ad exchanges. Code-named “Jedi Blue,” the arrangement between Facebook and Google meant that Google would “charge Facebook lower fees and give Facebook information, speed and other advantages in header bidding auctions in exchange for Facebook’s support of Open Bidding, Google’s header bidding alternative,” wrote Allison Schiff for AdExchanger. Some suspect that Facebook initially backed header bidding in order to force Google’s hand in the arrangement and force a mutually beneficial deal. “Partnerships like this are common in the industry, and we have similar agreements with several other companies. Facebook continues to invest in these partnerships, and create new ones, which help increase competition in ad auctions to create the best outcomes for advertisers and publishers. Any suggestion that these types of agreements harm competition is baseless,” Facebook said in a statement. The internal documents at Facebook reveal that the company had “four options: to ‘invest hundreds more engineers’ and spend billions of dollars to lock up inventory to compete, exit the business, or do the deal with Google.” Meanwhile, Google’s main goal was to figure out any way to stop header bidding from gaining steam in the industry. What is header bidding? “Header bidding helped website publishers circumvent Google’s exchange for buying and selling ads across the web. The exchange auctions ad space to the highest bidder during the split second it takes a webpage to load. Header bidding allowed the publishers to directly solicit bids from multiple ad exchanges at once, leading to more favorable prices for publishers,” explained Ryan Tracy and Jeff Horwitz for the Wall Street Journal. Google worried, according to court documents, that having a large ad rival (like Facebook) embracing header bidding would disrupt what was essentially their monopoly on the ad market. “Header bidding was bad because it allowed publishers to bypass fees which we now learn ranged between 19-22% of revenues,” said Jason Kint in a tweet thread analysis of the court docs. How Project Jedi worked. In order to win in the exchange, Google created the Open Bidding program. This program, in theory, let publishers display their inventory to multiple ad exchanges at once. This was presented as a competitor to header bidding. However, the lawsuit alleges that Google manipulated Open Bidding to give Facebook’s Ad Network (FAN) an unfair advantage. “Jedi’s success was measured not by financial targets or output increases, but by how much it stopped publishers from using header bidding,” said Janice Tan with Marketing Interactive after an assessment of the documents. From there, the partnership with Facebook meant the social media giant also threw its weight behind Open Bidding over header bidding. In exchange for backing Google’s open bidding over header bidding, Facebook received “information, speed and other advantages in the auction it runs in the US,” added Tan. “Both companies also had an illegal advertising deal that allowed the social media company to appear more in Google Ads. Google did this by fixing bids in ad auctions to Facebook’s favor,” alleges Nalin Rawat for FossBytes. Why we care. Well, firstly, it’s a lot to digest. There is potential that publishers and advertisers have been overpaying and missing out on placements due to Google’s alleged collusion with Facebook to essentially rig the ad market. According to the unredacted documents, Jedi “generates suboptimal yields for publishers and serious risks of negative media coverage if exposed externally.” Also with Google promoting FLoC, FLEDGE, and the rest of their sandbox as a privacy solution for the open web, these revelations call into question their motives (especially if the company is sharing sensitive data with other firms that have agreed to terms with them for ads). Many advertisers complain about the lack of reach with other competitive ad networks and the revelations in the unredacted Google lawsuit show that the tech giant’s leadership worked diligently to ensure that competition was squashed.The post Google allegedly creates ad monopoly with Facebook to favor its own exchange according to new, unredacted details from Project Jedi appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3npqfkd Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily. Good morning, Marketers, and Google Ads (the artist formerly known as AdWords) turned 21 this weekend. Did you know that Google Ads started as a service where marketers paid a monthly fee and Google would set up and manage the ad campaigns? Quite ironic considering many advertisers today are lamenting the loss of control and data as Google Ads invests in more automation and is managing many elements of ad campaigns itself. The company offered a self-service option for small businesses “who wanted to manage their own campaigns,” which is the foundation of our current Ads platform today. What was AdWords like when it first ramped up? “The AdWords program provides low-cost exposure on one of the industry’s leading search engines with CPMs from $15 or 1.5 cents an impression, $12 or 1.2 cents an impression, and $10 or 1 cent an impression, for the top, middle, and bottom ad unit positions, respectively,” stated the announcement. Not only that but, “Google’s quick-loading AdWords text ads appear to the right of the Google search results and are highlighted as sponsored links, clearly separate from the search results.” It seems a lot has changed with Google’s ads product since inception, and yet we’re almost coming full circle in many ways too. Carolyn Lyden, How to solve the marketing reporting conundrum without being a magicianIn a recent survey shared at SMX Report, C-Suite executives said sales and leads are top performance indicators for marketing teams. If sales and leads are what our leadership teams, whether internally or externally, care most about, what does this mean for PPC marketers? Such preferences can lead to a level of expectation that marketers are going to create a magic sales faucet, a fountain of fortune, or that there’s a secret Google leads button hidden in our toolbox somewhere. And hey, PPC marketers can help make some pretty magical things happen, but we’re definitely not magicians, at least not in the Gandalf the Grey or Albus Dumbledore kind of way. In this how-to, SMX speaker and Aimclear’s VP of Growth, Amanda Farley deep-dives into the steps to get reporting and measurement right for your audience. Navigating Google’s title changes: The rollout, what’s happening now and what you can do about itIn August, Google introduced a new system for generating title links (the title of a search result in Google Search). “This is because we think our new system is producing titles that work better for documents overall, to describe what they are about, regardless of the particular query,” the company explained. However, during the new system’s initial rollout, SEOs provided example after example after example of titles that not only failed to describe what the page was about, but may also confuse users and deter them from clicking through. Fortunately, the situation has since improved, but placing blind faith in Google’s new system can mean that you’re ceding control over a crucial aspect of your content, which could ultimately affect your business. Below, you’ll find a synopsis of how Google’s title changes have evolved, how you can verify whether your titles have been changed and what you can do to regain control over them. In this in-depth analysis, editor George Nguyen covers what’s changed, what to do if you suspect Google is changing your titles, what to do if you dislike the changes Google is making, and what these changes mean for the future. How to fix the SEO issues that keep you from achieving your goalsAt this year’s SMX Report, JR Oakes, Senior Director of Technical SEO at Locomotive, provided an overview of SEO Issues that hold us back from achieving our goals. He took a holistic look at resources, communication and mental constructs around SEO that often hinder progress. Oftentimes we look for the quick fixes that drive major ranking improvements. These still exist, but the relationships involved with connecting us to clients, and the website to users are where the most sustained value can be found. In this article, Oakes goes through the 8 ways that SEO teams can break through major issues and reach their KPIs and achieve their goals:
Jobs: On the hunt for something new? Check out the latest jobs in search marketingMarketing Automation Strategist @ The Keller Group (Greater Phoenix Area, remote)
Head of Growth and Marketing @ Insight Global (California, U.S., remote)
Ecommerce Associate Director @ Havas Media Group (London, England, UK)
Content Marketing Manager @ GoHealth (Texas, U.S.)
What We’re Reading: What does “shoppable” content mean for the upcoming holiday season?We’ve mentioned it a thousand times, probably, but the pandemic has accelerated e-commerce and online retail. It’s a fact of life that the trends of COVID shopping have just become a way of life now. People expect to find what they need online (whether they plan to have it delivered or pick it up on location), and that reality coupled with advances in AI and VR technology means retailers are looking to “shoppable content” to boost their online sales this holiday season. How are platforms doing it? Mike Boland covers the top 3 for StreetFight here.
Shopping doesn’t just happen on e-commerce sites anymore. Social and streaming platforms are becoming retail destinations (especially as we near the holiday season) with shoppable content. Retailers will have to take advantage of the integrations to ensure they’re found across channels this shopping season. The post Harry, yer a [reporting] wizard; Monday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3pBwYKI Google has added new support, data and features to the Google Search Console Search Analytics API. The API now supports showing data for Google Discover, Google News and also supports Regex commands – all of which was supported already in the web interface. Google announced this morning this support has been added to the Search Analytics API after many requests from the industry to add it.API updates. Google said “the searchType parameter, which previously enabled you to filter API calls by news, video, image, and web, will be renamed to type and will support two additional parameters: discover (for Google Discover) and googleNews (for Google News).” Google is still supporting the old name searchType for the time being, so it is backwards compatible. Also, Google explained that “some metrics and dimensions are compatible only with some data types; for example, queries and positions are not supported by the Google Discover report.” This would also apply with the API and the API would thus return an error message. Regex API support. Google has adde Regex support to the API, specifically to the query and page dimensions. Two new operators have been added to the existing match operations, they are includingRegex and excludingRegex. More documentation. You can learn more about the API in the help documents over here. Already in web interface. Like we said above, these features have been in the web interface for a while. Google has now brought support to the API. Google News performance reports were added in January 2021, Google Discover performance reports gained full data in February 2021 and Regex support was added in April 2021. Why we care. Many of you use APIs to help automate and streamline your day-to-day SEO practices and reporting. Having access to these additional data points and adding in Regex controls, should make these reporting tasks easier and more automated. This should save you time to do other SEO related tasks, tasks you might have a harder time automating. The post Google Search Console Search Analytics API gains Discover, News and Regex appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3CjVnIg Consumer demands are ever-evolving. It’s what makes the role of the marketer equal parts exciting and frustrating. As the world has changed rapidly in the last 18 months, so has the game for B2C marketers – making the concept of engaging consumers across the entire customer lifecycle in a unified approach essential. This article will look at four key tenets to delivering just that. The value exchange economyAcquiring new customers, and gathering the personal and preference data required to deliver better offers, content and experiences are significantly more effective when you’re able to articulate the value you’re offering in return – this is the value exchange economy. This can be something immediate and tangible — a prize, discount or personalized recommendation — or slightly more long-term, where you ask about specific interests and needs in order to deliver bespoke news, tailored advice or exclusive access and so on. Marketers can deliver this through interactive experiences that ask pertinent questions and incorporate reward mechanics that give consumers a genuine reason to engage and submit their data. Real-time engagementDigitally savvy consumers who have long demanded next-day shipping, live-tracking of their brunch and dates at the swipe of a finger expect real-time engagement. Consumers interact with a brand on multiple channels, oftentimes unpredictably. The way to engage with these consumers is through real-time, hyper-personalized experiences powered by machine learning. That means providing the right offer, on the right channel, at the right time, a strategy which, according to Gartner, is 10x more effective than traditional outbound campaigns. Unified loyaltyA loyalty program shouldn’t be a standalone, isolated tactic that sits siloed from the rest of your marketing strategy. An effective loyalty program must be connected to an omnichannel engagement system, at the heart of your marketing function. This empowers you to talk to customers and prospects differently and gives you the tools to stand out from competitors, grow profitability and create long-lasting, more meaningful relationships. To the customer, this should appear seamless, but to be done effectively, SMS, mobile wallet, website, email, POS and social media are all talking to one another and delivering a consistent experience. Learn more on omnichannel personalization Truly knowing your customerThe ability to deliver all we have discussed above requires these strategies to be powered by up-to-date data, housed in a sound ecosystem. However, 27% of marketers believe data is the key obstacle to personalization. Changes in the buying journey from linear to multi-channel have required new methods to understand customer behavior. Adding AI and ML to your programs enables highly relevant, personalized, and contextually aware offers and empowers you to truly understand your customers’ behaviors, past histories, and what action they will take in the future. Signals21- the award-winning virtual content series for marketers – is live. Whether you’re seeking that utopian single source of truth of the customer, how to use mobile across the entire customer lifecycle, or just want to be entertained and motivated by world-leading brands, we have a session for you. The post 4 ways marketers can turn innovation into action appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/310100k The post 20211025 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3Ea5Zty Google throttled AMP page speeds created format to hamper header bidding antitrust complaint claims10/24/2021 Newly unredacted complaints against Google allege that the search giant’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which the company claimed would “dramatically improve” mobile web performance when it launched in 2015, was in fact a scheme to coerce publishers into using the format in order to limit advertising dollars not spent on its own ad exchanges. The complaint, which is led by the State of Texas on behalf of 12 mostly Republican states, goes so far as to allege Google even throttled the load speed of pages not using AMP in order to give a “nicer comparative boost” to AMP. “Throttling non-AMP ads slows down header bidding, which Google then uses to denigrate header bidding for being too slow,” it reads. “‘Header Bidding can often increase latency of web pages and create security flaws when executed incorrectly,’ Google falsely claimed. Internally, Google employees grappled with ‘how to [publicly] justify [Google] making something slower,'” according to the complaint. The lawsuit, which cites internal Google documents, was originally filed on Sept. 9 and was heavily redacted. However, a ruling by a Manhattan judge forced the release of the mostly unredacted version on Friday. Google had not responded to Search Engine Land’s request for comment by the time this article was published. Targeting header bidding. At the center of the issue is header bidding, an advertising practice where publishers can place their ad inventory on numerous ad exchanges at once. It’s a method meant to sidestep Google’s “waterfall” approach to bidding, which often favors Google’s ad servers. Publishers generally like header bidding because of its potential for higher revenue and transparency. However, header bidding requires publishers to place JavaScript on their pages to trigger the auction, and AMP pages do not support that JavaScript. “To respond to the threat of header bidding, Google created Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”), a framework for developing mobile web pages, and made AMP essentially incompatible with JavaScript and header bidding. Google then used its power in the search market to effectively force publishers into using AMP,” the complaint alleges. A damning indictment of AMP. The complaint is not wrong that publishers have held a love/hate relationship with AMP. The premise itself goes against publisher instincts. AMP requires us to create versions of our content on servers we do not own using templates we have limited control over. The tradeoff meant improved user experience on mobile and a greater likelihood of showing up in Top Stories, a placement that can yield significant traffic. Using AMP wreaks havoc on internal analytics, too, since it makes it very difficult to track users migrating across a site’s AMP and non-AMP pages. The complaint, however, claims the speed benefits are both exaggerated and manipulated due to Google’s alleged throttling of non-AMP pages. “All those years, all those Googlers, devs, & SEOs defending AMP… And this is just the tip of the iceberg,” wrote SparkToro founder Rand Fishkin on Twitter, sparking a thread of outrage and disgust over the allegations. Google earlier this year stopped requiring publishers to use AMP in order to score Top Story placements. But it also rolled out its Page Experience Update this year too, which it claimed made factors like site speed a ranking factor. The combination surely had publishers wary of ripping out their AMP architecture (it certainly does for us). Why we care. First, these are allegations made in a highly politicized lawsuit, and without access to all of these internal documents it is difficult to tell whether some of these claims represent flawed interpretations. But Google’s lack of transparency has always worked against it in terms of public trust. This lawsuit, one of four antitrust complaints now, highlights way more than possible manipulation around AMP. It also highlights alleged collusion with Facebook to give the social media giant unfair advantage in ad bidding. All of this supports a growing concern over the toxic relationship between Google, the only search platform that frankly matters for publishers, and the content creators and search marketers looking to compete fairly for placement on its platform. Whether it’s the favoring of Google properties in results, the ad-position takeover of the SERP, the rise of on-SERP elements that stifle clicks to actual content creators and the ham-fisted rewriting of publishers’ titles, creators are fed up. “I’m so sick of Google. And I unfortunately make a decent part of my living working with it. That makes me sick to my stomach,” wrote SEO Sam Insalaco in response to Fiskin’s Tweet. The AMP allegations also strike a nerve for publishers, whose businesses have seen incredible disruption in the past decade as advertising shifted to search and social and reach became so dependent on Google. AMP was heralded as a way to give publishers a chance to stand level with its competition. If these allegations are true it’s hard to believe publishers would ever trust Google again. The post Google throttled AMP page speeds, created format to hamper header bidding, antitrust complaint claims appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3pwtd94 Navigating Googles title changes: The rollout whats happening now and what you can do about it10/22/2021 In August, Google introduced a new system for generating title links (the title of a search result in Google Search). “This is because we think our new system is producing titles that work better for documents overall, to describe what they are about, regardless of the particular query,” the company explained. However, during the new system’s initial rollout, SEOs provided example after example after example of titles that not only failed to describe what the page was about, but may also confuse users and deter them from clicking through. Fortunately, the situation has since improved, but placing blind faith in Google’s new system can mean that you’re ceding control over a crucial aspect of your content, which could ultimately affect your business. Below, you’ll find a synopsis of how Google’s title changes have evolved, how you can verify whether your titles have been changed and what you can do to regain control over them. Title changes: Then and nowA tale of two title changes. Google has been adjusting titles links for a long time. In 2014, the company explained that it might change a title to match the query (to a certain extent). This is an important detail because Google would later cite these historical practices as precedent for its new system — a justification that some SEOs found misleading as the magnitude and impact of the changes contrast sharply. “[More recently,] I’m rarely seeing examples in the wild of noticeably worse rewrites for large-scale sites that I’ve done in-depth audits for,” said Brodie Clark, Australian SEO consultant, “This was definitely not the case initially (for about a month post-update), but Google seems to have since turned down the dial and made the update work as intended.” The other SEOs that spoke to Search Engine Land for this article shared similar experiences. The first weeks of the title change rollout. When the new title change system rolled out in August, SEOs took to Twitter to share examples of poorly rewritten titles in the search results. “While many of the title overwrites made sense and were unlikely to negatively affect performance, there were many (too many) examples of title overwrites gone awry,” said Lily Ray, senior director, SEO and head of organic research at Amsive Digital. SEOs feared that rewritten titles might be inaccurate or simply worse than what was in the title tag. While the title changes do not affect rankings, the title itself can influence clickthrough rates (CTR), thus also potentially impacting business KPIs such as revenue. Consequently, Google’s botched rollout of title changes fueled a movement among some SEOs who demanded a way to opt-out of the changes. At one point, Danny Sullivan, a cofounder of Third Door Media (Search Engine Land’s parent company) and now public liaison for Google Search, also advocated for a similar feature: “As a site owner, I hate this. I want Google to use whatever page title I give it. Google argues back that it has to be creative, especially in cases where people have failed to provide titles. I’ve argued in the past that as a solution, Google should provide site owners with some type of ‘yes, I’m really really sure’ meta tag to declare that they absolutely want their page titles to be used.” The nature of Google’s title rewrites. “It appeared that Google was truncating some article headlines in strange ways that changed the meaning of the title,” said Ray, “In other cases, it seemed that punctuation, like quotation marks or dashes, caused the title to break early. In even rarer and stranger situations, Google would choose anchor text or other article text to display as the title, which was occasionally taken out of context and was a poor representation of the full page content.” “[Google] seemed to latch on to any type of header tag and really didn’t like the pipe character and overt branding,” said Colt Silva, SEO engineer at iPullRank. During our own analysis of Search Engine Land titles that changed in the search results, we also noticed that Google had a proclivity for removing the pipe character. Google has since improved its system for rewriting titles (more on that below). To illustrate some of the types of title rewrites that we’re still seeing in the search results, Clark assembled a collection of examples from Search Engine Land article titles. Here is Clark’s analysis of some of the changes:
Google has since improved its title rewrites. After the initial blowback from the SEO community, Google’s Danny Sullivan published a post explaining why Google made the title changes. Several weeks after that, the company published more help documents on controlling titles and descriptions in Search. Just as important, Google’s explanations seem to be accompanied by improvements to its title change algorithm. “Fortunately, many people submitted feedback and examples to Google, which caused them to acknowledge that they were still refining the title change,” Ray said, “Since then, it’s clear Google has made improvements to the title overwrites and even reverted many of the worst offenders back to their original <title> tag.” “As soon as title-change-mania started, we saw one of our biggest e-commerce clients have 5% of their title tags changed without any real effect on their CTR,” Silva said, “Shortly before the Google announcement of rollbacks, we saw it drop to 2%. The client was concerned about a couple of high-traffic keywords, but those have since been rolled back and it’s no longer a point of discussion in any of our meetings.” What to do if you suspect Google is changing your titlesIf you’ve noticed fluctuations in your CTRs, it may be worthwhile to investigate whether Google has changed your title link. SEOs and tool providers have come up with numerous ways to do this — we’ll discuss a few of them below. “Essentially, you’ll need a way to start tracking and trending titles. You’ll need to collect your site’s popular search terms, and then gather the Google SERPs title and compare it to the actual title,” Silva said, adding, “This Search Engine Land article is a solid highlight of options to track title changes. In addition to that, there’s Thruuu, Keywords in Sheets solution, and this creative bookmarklet to inject titles into a SERP.” Ahrefs users also have a new tool that enables them to export title changes for deeper analysis. Brodie Clark has provided instructions on how to get started with it and how he analyzes the data. The new tool is in the “Top pages” tab underneath the “Site Explorer 2.0” heading. Once you’re there, you’ll have to toggle the “SERP titles” button and change the date for comparison. Next, you can export the data for analysis. “There are important aspects to keep in mind when interpreting the data to ensure you’re getting an accurate depiction,” Clark said, recommending that SEOs remove new URLs and URLs that are no longer ranking so that they’re only looking at titles that are eligible for comparison. “Changing the grouping of the rows to the top pages based on est. traffic that has had a title link change, we can see trends for what has changed,” Clark said. At this point, you’ll have to perform a manual review. “When completing the manual review, you’ll also need to look out for titles that have manually changed for pages during the comparison period,” he added. What you can do if you’re unhappy with how Google changed your titlesSome titles may still be unsatisfactory — it can be argued that the example in line #3 from the chart above is less informative than the original title, for example. Unfortunately, there is little you can do to directly change Google’s title links, but embracing a more holistic view of the issue can help you craft more informative titles and avoid bad rewrites from Google. One thing you can do to bring a particularly inaccurate title change to Google’s attention is to submit feedback: “Google created a form where you can submit your feedback for incorrect or egregious titles,” Lily Ray pointed out, “Otherwise, pay attention to when the overwrites take place and what they look like; this could provide insight into potential issues Google may have with your titles and offer some inspiration about how to adjust them. Google also offers clear examples about the types of titles it intended to overwrite, so you can evaluate whether your titles fall into any of those categories.” “If you’re seeing poor title links for your site, try to look at it from a non-biased point of view,” Clark recommended, “Are you keyword stuffing? Is the title accurate enough? Is the text using too much boilerplate content? All are important aspects to consider before making the judgment that Google has done something wrong. If you’re confident that they are at fault, try to make the on-page content more closely aligned with what you’re trying to achieve.” “This is the perfect opportunity to start testing,” Silva said, recommending that SEOs “Follow the scientific method from hypothesis to conclusion and find why an algorithm has latched onto a specific block of text [to replace your title tag]” Since you’re likely in control of your title tags and on-page content, you can use these levers to see what works for your business, your audience and Google’s algorithms. The more things change, the more they stay the sameFor SEOs. We’re now accustomed to optimizing for rich results, featured snippets, knowledge panels and dozens of other non-traditional search features, but titles — as Google has now reminded us — are one of the oldest forms of on-SERP SEO. While its system for title links has improved, SEOs will have to double-check their titles moving forward to ensure that they follow Google’s guidance so users see what we intend for them to see, instead of an inferior title scraped from anchor text, for example. This will simply have to become part of your workflow and best practices will adapt to account for Google’s title changes. For the industry. We rely on Google for traffic and Google relies on us for content to show users. When the title changes rolled out in August, Google said it wasn’t new, which was only half-true as the search engine has been known to replace titles, but had not done so to the extent that we’ve recently experienced. What’s more, it was showing title links that could have confused users and deterred them from visiting our pages. It cannot be said for certain that SEOs holding the company accountable for the flaws in its new system was what moved the needle and got Google to “revert many of the worst offenders back to their original <title> tag,” as Ray put it, but it is something that search marketers will likely have to continue to do in order to advocate for our businesses and the audiences they serve. The post Navigating Google’s title changes: The rollout, what’s happening now and what you can do about it appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3jsYNAS |
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