Earlier this year, Google Ads announced it is shifting customer support requests to an online form and will no longer supporting customer service through Facebook and Twitter. On Friday, Google said that, as of January 1, 2020, direct messaging on the Google Ads’ Facebook and Twitter accounts will be deactivated, and users will see a pinned post directing them to the online support form. Why we should careThese social channels were popular ways for advertisers to often get quick responses or clarifications about issues. Google said it is making the changes to streamline the support process as well as to improve security around phishing and spam concerns. “Customer security and success is paramount. Due to the growing global concern around spam and phishing, we are making an effort to resolve all Google product customer questions via 1:1 communication through direct email, phone or chat,” a Google spokesperson said. “Streamlining these channels will provide faster and more secure responses for all global customers.” More on the news
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You’re in a call with one remote worker. Then you get an email. Another remote worker wants to conference with you. Soon your entire day is filled up with calls. Does this sound familiar? You don’t know when you’re going to get your work done. But if you let these people just sit and wonder, they’re not going to be able to do their jobs. You’re stuck between a rock and a hard place…or are you? Suddenly, someone appears before you. “Hello! I’m Conference Call Dave! Have you considered a conference call system!” You almost scream and run out the
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Do you feel alone in your work? I sometimes do. I feel like if I just had a mentor, someone I could go to on how to sift through all the BS and find gold. We’re not all lucky enough to plug into successful entrepreneurs. Some of us live in small towns in the middle of nowhere (could you point to Walla Walla, WA on a map?). Thus, if you do live far from civilization, you rely on the internet for advice and inspiration. Today I’m going to give you some of the best advice I could find. Where does
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Nearly forty percent of web users will abandon a page if it looks ugly. (Ah! It hurts the eyes!) A full 60% would rather read something on a well-designed page than a plain one. Now, ask yourself if your page is the best it can be. Maybe you neglected to hire a design company. You DIYed that bad boy and now you’re not so sure it was a good idea. It’s time to do a complete redesign. Why? Because the original attempt is driving people away. Where do you start? It seems like a massive project and that was probably
via ShoeMoney https://ift.tt/2PZs9Hm This is the second installment of our series on in-house SEO in which we dig into the operational challenges and opportunities that managing search engine optimization in-house presents. As a consultant who specializes in in-house SEO, I’m often asked how large the SEO team should be. Most people think it has to do with revenue numbers. While that comes into the equation, it’s not a leading indicator of what size SEO team a company needs. Let’s explore some of the factors I consider when making recommendations for SEO team size. They’re typically surprising to most SEO teams! The reason is I look at the operations, not just the revenue. Revenue can help justify (or limit) the team size, but it’s not an indicator of the SEO hours needed in a week. Factor #1: Complexity of the websiteIf your site is simple, you typically need a smaller SEO team. The reason is that your SEOs are likely chasing fewer fires. More complex websites have a higher risk of introducing SEO problems with even small changes. Most SEO teams spend a good chunk of their week chasing projects, putting out fires, and trying to minimize SEO problems rather than increasing SEO revenue. All this means, if you’re doing SEO for a site without a lot of complex functionality, it’s one factor that would make me consider a smaller SEO team. Factor #2: Number of developers, number of agile development teams, and frequency of launchesHands down, this is one of the leading factors for determining SEO team size at a larger corporation. Some companies I have worked with have 150+ developers working on the search engine-facing aspects of the site. In these situations, you need more than one technical SEO person to guide each of these releases to ensure they will be SEO friendly. Factor #3: Number of product managersProduct managers are one of the most influential roles on a website, and they are constantly spinning up projects. SEO teams need to be tied at the hip of product managers and have an intimate understanding of what product managers are proposing to change on the site. If you have one or only a handful of product managers, you need fewer SEO hours allocated to work with them. But, if you have 12 product managers, then interaction with product managers will take a lot of SEO time. Factor #4: Number of merchandisers who create pages/contentMerchandisers in each company take on different roles, and at many companies, they have the authority to create new pages, write new content, and change links within the site and navigation. If you have a couple of merchandisers it’s easier to stay on top of what they’re doing, but if you have 8 merchandisers it’s going to take a lot more SEO resources to guide them on keywords for their new pages, the type of content needed to rank, and ensuring they’re not making changes to existing pages that will hurt SEO. Factor #5: Number of UX designersThe number of UX designers focusing on search engine facing pages greatly influences the number of new page designs that are being cranked through the development machine. I typically find the more designers, the more SEO requirements you’ll need to define for development. Factor #6: Number of writers and their writing experienceOnce writers understand how to optimize content for SEO (and have bought into it, or incentivized to do it) they can really start impacting the website from a content perspective. Unfortunately, most companies don’t have a lot of writers for the website, and creating this content falls on the shoulders of roles that are not experienced writers. For these non-professional writers, it’s often more of a challenge for them to account for all the business needs, conversion needs and SEO needs in content and still make it sound elegant and on-brand. This means the SEO team will spend more time reviewing content, and the SEO team may have to write all the title tags and meta descriptions. Factor #7: How much analysis and reporting is neededSome companies are so metrics heavy that SEO teams can easily have one person dedicated to cranking out reports and estimates for revenue lift/drop based on proposed changes. For perspective, I spent a week with a client on-site and watched her spend an unexpected three solid days preparing metrics for a company quarterly business review and two days analyzing a proposed A/B test that, if launched, would shrink the site navigation by 30%. This doesn’t even account for regular reporting that executives and other teams wanted to see. At this company, there are a lot of SEO hours spent on analysis and reporting. Another client knew their product managers need a significant amount of SEO data broken down by category of their e-commerce site as regular monthly SEO reporting. They realized it would take two to four SEO data analysts to support the reporting requests. Of course, they were making almost a billion dollars in SEO revenue a year so they could justify the expense of such a team. Factor #8: SEO knowledge of each role listed aboveThe last factor I wanted to talk about is where each role is in terms of SEO knowledge. Do they know a lot or practically nothing? I’ve seen many non-SEO teams with enthusiasm to work on SEO (Factor #8), but they knew so little that their enthusiasm couldn’t compensate for expertise enough to make SEO time investments efficient. If your non-SEO teams don’t have enough SEO knowledge (nor enough enthusiasm for SEO), the solution is effective SEO training and toolkits, because:
Next Steps: Determine the SEO team size your company needs
Now you’re set to have a really good understanding of what size of SEO team you should have for your company. And more importantly, how to discuss growing the SEO team with executives. The post How many people should be on your SEO team? The factors to consider appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2PJQWQM France’s antitrust regulator imposed a 150 million euro fine ($166.2 million) for arbitrarily suspending ads, according to the Wall Street Journal. The ads in question were “deceptive,” according to Google. La vie et la mort. Claiming that Google exercises “the power of life or death” over companies, the French antitrust authority characterized the suspensions, according to the report, as “brutal and unjustified” and “random and unpredictable.” The French regulator wants Google to further clarify its ad-suspension rules and create something like a warning system for advertisers facing suspension, presumably to afford them an opportunity to cure whatever problem has been identified. However that approach may not have worked in this case. In the underlying facts giving rise to the fine, Google blocked a company called Gibmedia from buying ads. Gibmedia offers micropayments to publishers; the WSJ article describes it as “a publisher of weather-forecast websites.” Google says protecting people from ‘deception.’ Google told the WSJ that the company ran ads for sites “that deceived people into paying for service.” (We’ve asked Google to separately comment.) Google takes the position that it was protecting consumers. It said the ads in question were “exploitative and abusive.” If that’s accurate, the French government is in the strange position of advocating on behalf of a company that may have been manipulating the public. Google promised to appeal the fine in court. Why we care. Google already has extensive ad policy documentation. However, further clarification and transparency surrounding policies and suspensions would probably be a good outcome. Google competitors such as Facebook and Bing exercise similar discretion over ads and presumably would be equally affected by this decision in France — and perhaps throughout Europe by extension — pending the outcome of any court case. The post La mort d’ads: French regulator fines Google $166 million for ‘brutal’ ad suspensions appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/35IqtsF Images and icons on a website can add to a visitor’s contextual experience. They serve one of three purposes: purely decorative, actionable (ex. magnifying glass on a search field), or to convey information (i.e., a chart demonstrating population growth). Using alt image tags may seem relatively simple at first glance. However, images can be highly problematic for blind and visually impaired people who often rely on screen reader technologies to audibly playback screen content. When a photo or icon lacks a meaningful alternate text – known as “alt text” – the screen reader may read out “image623.jpg” (or another equally unhelpful file name). Even an alt text like “chart showing U.S. population growth – 2015 to 2019” fails to describe the results of the chart for someone who can not actually see the graphic. Either situation could be frustrating to blind and visually impaired people, but such scenarios are common. The use of clear, easy to understand alt text is pretty straightforward. Most content management systems provide an alt text field as part of the image placement or editor tool. Images that are purely decorative should be marked with null (empty) alt text (alt=””) in order for them to be ignored by screen readers. However, in cases where images are used to explain information, alt text must go beyond describing what an image is and actually convey its content. For example, a better alt text for a chart image would be “chart showing 5 percent U.S. population growth between 2015 and 2019.” Using clear, easy to understand alt text will boost your site’s accessibility for screen readers. And alt text – when applied correctly – is also an opportunity to improve your SEO. However, overdoing keywords in alt text can be perceived by search engines as keyword stuffing, not to mention annoying to people using screen readers. If your keywords don’t fit and flow naturally into your alt text, it may be time to re-evaluate your keywords or your chosen images or icons. The post Pro Tip: Making images accessible to screen readers doesn’t need to be hard appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2ZdjHJ4 Determining a marketing budget can be frustrating. Are you investing enough? Are your marketing dollars being applied in the most efficient way? How do you know if what you’re doing is working? Lou Covey, principal of Footwasher Media Agency, has decades of experience helping clients hit that marketing budget “sweet spot.” In this Agency Perspective from SharpSpring, he shares two simple equations that can take a lot of the guesswork out of the budgeting process. Get it now to learn:
Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download “The Secret Formula for a Marketing Budget.” The post The secret formula for determining a marketing budget appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2PIE5P7
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Motivation isn’t just some natural talent. It’s a developmental phenomenon. The people who seem to have natural motivation were blessed with opportunities for safe exploration when they were children. But our neurons aren’t stone-filled pathways cemented into our brains. We can change our brains and train them for success. Training might be more difficult for some than others, but it’s possible to succeed. Motivation is mostly internal and yet outside factors can augment your current abilities. Words are an efficient motivator. They pique the imagination and encourage further exploration. You can find inspiration from words spoken on an inspirational podcast.
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