Google has released a new API for the mobile-friendly testing tool named the mobile-friendly test API. The API is a simple and quick tool that you can use to build your own tools to see what pages are mobile-friendly or not. Google’s John Mueller said “the API method runs all tests, and returns the same information – including a list of the blocked URLs – as the manual test.” “The documentation includes simple samples to help get you started quickly,” he added.” The API test outputs include these three statuses:
You can access the API at http://ift.tt/2kmS3af. The post Google mobile-friendly testing tool now has API access appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2jyC4Sl
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If you are considering licensing an SEO software tool, this report will help you decide whether or not you need to. The report has been updated for 2017 to include the latest trends, opportunities and challenges facing the market for SEO software tools as seen by industry leaders, vendors and their customers. Also included in the report are profiles of 13 leading SEO tools vendors, pricing charts, capabilities comparisons, and recommended steps for evaluating and purchasing. Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download this MarTech Today report. The post Updated for 2017 — Enterprise SEO Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2karMJN 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:Local & Maps
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SEM / Paid Search The post SearchCap: Google News AMP, LSA survey & Google doodle appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2kNhKNT A report from RankRanger, a toolset that tracks the Google results, shows that the AMP results shown in the Google News section for mobile users has more than doubled in the past several days. A week or so ago, AMP content was showing in Google News for about 30% of the news results. Now it is more than double that in the Google News US based mobile section, with 70% of the news results returning AMP content. Mordy Oberstein from RankRanger said “the number of AMP optimized news articles appearing within Google’s Top Stories on mobile has skyrocketed across the globe.” On January 25,2016, RankRanger reported about 30% of mobile Google News box results in the US showing as AMP. On January 29th that number hit 70%. Here is a chart showing the rollout and increase by country: It is unclear if this is a glitch or a change in the algorithm where Google is showing more AMP for mobile users in Google News. We have sent a request to learn more about this change to Google. The post Google AMP results in Google News more than doubles appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2jn9PLa SMBs are overwhelmed with digital marketing choices. How to stand out and win their business.1/30/2017 Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) get almost 24 calls a month from marketing providers looking to sell them advertising or marketing products and services. Competition is fierce, and SMBs often have a difficult time choosing a provider. Last month, I covered how the trend of fake online content leads to a general distrust of digital and online media. But the local digital marketing industry, especially in the area of SEO, suffers from its own share of issues that lead to a lack of trust by SMBs. LSA (Local Search Association) conducted a survey to examine what challenges SMBs face when shopping for a digital marketing provider and what areas they feel are most important for marketers to address when trying to gain their business. Below I discuss the results of the survey, data regarding client churn in the industry and ways in which marketers need to respond. Lastly, I share some information on a new certification program that LSA is launching to address these problems. Top challenges in finding a marketing providerLSA’s survey found that the top challenges expressed by SMBs when shopping for a marketing provider were:
Other questions asked in the survey that reflect what SMBs want from their marketing partners provide further insight into these numbers. SMBs aren’t just concerned with the bottom-line cost, but also with knowing what the price includes. Eighty-six percent of SMBs responded that a clear statement of pricing or costs from providers was very or extremely important. Likewise, 82 percent of SMBs stated that it’s very or extremely important that a provider fairly represents its expertise, the product or service being sold, credentials and past performance. Thus, the top four challenges listed above are related in that SMBs have difficulty trusting that what they are buying really will pay off and meet their needs. SMBs also want agreements with providers to be clear, especially in the areas of length of the agreement, how they can terminate an agreement, a schedule for payment and what happens when there is a dispute between the SMB and provider. Seventy to 80 percent of SMBs rated these areas as very or extremely important. A similar percentage of SMBs wanted assurances that they will receive reliable customer service in communicating with them once an agreement is in place. Sixty to 70 percent of SMBs felt regular reporting, an evaluation of whether they were a good fit for specific marketing products/services and setting reasonable expectations were very or extremely important. Sales tips based on what SMBs wantThe challenges SMBS face in finding a provider they feel comfortable with are becoming even more pronounced as they are targeted by an increasing number of remote sales calls. Recent data from Borrell Associates revealed the number of sales calls received by SMBs per month increased over 60 percent last year, from 14.6 calls in 2015 to 23.7 calls in 2016. Knowing what information SMBs express as important to their decision when shopping for a digital marketing provider can help marketers understand how to build trust and confidence with a potential client during the sales process. Here are a few tips based on the survey results:
Some disclosures might seem counterintuitive to making a sale, but the credibility gained by demonstrating transparency and honesty should lead to positive results. Dealing with unfair competitionLocal search marketers also face competition, both from outright scams and unfair or questionable sales tactics by companies who actually offer real marketing products. It’s difficult to know what percentage of sales calls or communications are from these bad apples, but it doesn’t take much to poison the whole barrel. Here are some examples of the bad sales practices that leave SMBs with negative experiences and cause them to shop for digital marketing services skeptically.
Being aware of these tactics will help providers understand the mindset of some SMBs during sales calls or while trying to make contact. Ultimately, demonstrating transparency and honesty and showing that the provider is sensitive to these concerns will help win over SMBs that have legitimate reasons to question who they do business with. The importance of fulfillment and churnA genuine sales process that keeps expectations realistic has an impact beyond making the sale: it also affects client retention. Marketing agencies have traditionally struggled in this area with historically high churn rates. An LSA Report titled “SMB Advertiser Churn: New Data for an Old Industry Problem” (January 2016) revealed that agencies continue to have one of the highest churn rates by media category at a rate of 40 to 50 percent a year. The only media category that experiences higher churn rates is television. SEO/SEM as a media category also experienced higher-than-typical churn, at an average rate of about 40 percent per year. Client retention is important from both a cost and revenue business perspective. It costs five to 10 times more to sign up a new customer than it does to retain an existing one, according to data shared by Google at LSA’s 2016 Annual Conference. On the revenue side, Google also shared that selling to existing customers has a 60 to 70 percent probability of success, compared to only five to 20 percent for new customers. These numbers reveal that clients who see results matching what they were promised in the sales process trust their marketing provider, grow into long-term business relationships and end up being much more profitable accounts. What can marketers do to earn SMB trust?LSA created a set of standards that capture those best practices SMBs state would help foster trust in a digital marketing provider. Reviewing these standards and implementing them into company policies, training, quality control checks and client agreements and communications will go a long way to developing strong client-centric digital marketing sales processes that SMBs look for. According to the survey, 80 percent of SMBs stated that they would be likely or highly influenced in their choice of digital marketing provider if a provider demonstrated that it adopted these standards. The standards cover, but are not limited to, the following subject areas:
Eighty percent of small and medium-sized businesses stated that they would be likely or highly influenced in their choice of digital marketing provider if a provider demonstrated that it adopted these standards.
One of LSA’s not-for-profit missions is to advocate for and elevate the local search and local marketing industry. In response to the needs identified above, LSA created a first-of-its-kind program called LSA Certification based on those standards (disclosure: I work for LSA). Unlike other certification programs that focus on subject matter expertise, such as Google AdWords, LSA certification examines companywide policies and processes for digital marketing sales and fulfillment. We hope LSA Certification will help companies identify best practices that are important to adopt and guide them through ways to incorporate those practices into their business operations. A business can certainly put the standards into practice without becoming certified. Certification, however, requires that a business demonstrate it engages in those best practices. LSA performs a rigorous review of policies, training, company documents and agreements to determine whether business practices meet the standards. If it passes the review, a company may then cite its certification as evidence it complies with those standards. ClosingStandard features in consumer products often start with one company offering it and others copying the practice or feature to stay competitive. For example, all major cellphone providers now offer unlimited data plans, and side impact air bags are now fairly standard in passenger vehicles. Our hope is that by raising the bar for digital marketing sellers, more and more agencies and providers in the industry would follow suit and adopt these standards. Better business practices that consider the interests of small businesses and boost the reputation of the industry is a win for all. The post SMBs are overwhelmed with digital marketing choices. How to stand out and win their business. appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2kKwEIO Branch unveils AMP Deepviews so content in uninstalled apps can be previewed from search results1/30/2017 Let’s say you create a mobile app. And you get it accepted into Apple’s and Google’s app stores. Now what? There are zillions of apps added to the app stores every week, so your biggest problem is simply getting found. Maybe you could luck out and get featured by the App Store. Or, maybe, you invest a considerable budget in ads encouraging users to install your app — even though they don’t really know it. Palo Alto, California-based Branch is out with a free solution that it believes could dramatically change these choices, by changing how app content is discovered via search engines if you don’t have the app installed. Currently, Google can lead you to content in apps via app indexing, where deep links can be found in mobile search results and lead you to content in the app. If the app is installed. If not, it leads you to the app store, and then to that content once you’ve installed the app. The new Branch solution, called AMP Deepviews, is designed to accomplish three things: presenting in-app content when the app is not installed, loading quickly, and getting the preferential mobile search treatment that Google gives to AMP pages. [Read the full article on MarTech Today.] The post Branch unveils AMP Deepviews, so content in uninstalled apps can be previewed from search results appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2jmPi9b It’s another month, so it’s time for another installment of Greg’s Soapbox. This time, we’re talking about reviews. Is it just me, or does it seem like we’re seeing more and more fake reviews out there lately? Sure, reviews are an important piece of the Local SEO puzzle, but they’re nowhere near a silver bullet. Why is it that so many companies are cheating when it comes to reviews? I’d at least understand if they had a problem with bad reviews that they were trying to bury, but it makes zero sense when it’s a company that gets great reviews anyway. Even worse, it seems that the vast majority of fake reviews are happening on Google. After this fall’s Possum update, it’s more important than ever before to spread your reviews around to third-party reviews sites. I was doing a mini-audit for a potential client last month (using the same template and system I shared in my Local SEO mini audit post here on Search Engine Land a few years ago). When I got to the reviews section, I found appalling results — it was painfully obvious that they were faking reviews. I brought it up on the call, and it turned out that the owner had no idea that his team was faking reviews. So for this month’s post, I thought it would be prudent to share six important tips to help everyone make their reviews (or their clients’ reviews) more honest in 2017. They’ll be better for potential customers, and they’ll avoid potential problems from filters or penalties. 1. It’s not normal behavior to mention staff members by nameSure, if you’re offering really amazing customer service and your sales process is longer or more drawn out, you might get a few reviews that mention staff members by their first names. People will never leave reviews that mention your staff by first and last name, though — and they definitely never leave reviews that mention multiple staff members by first and last name. If you see this in reviews, one of two things is happening: the reviews are fake, or the review content is being influenced by staff members — both of which are either illegal or against the rules of review sites. Google’s review guidelines even state that reviews should be “honest representations of the customer experience. Those that aren’t may be removed.” 2. Too many reviews can be a bad thingYep, we all want to have a higher review count than other local competitors — but if you get significantly more reviews, it starts to look fake. When you get exponentially more reviews than competitors, it’s human nature to assume that something fishy is going on, even if your reviews are all legitimate. Facebook breaks down the numbers of your different star ratings, so if you’re faking reviews, the huge discrepancy is even more obvious. Suddenly your play to get reviews is backfiring and scaring potential customers away. 3. Don’t collect reviews on siteGoogle has done some flip-flopping over the years when it comes to review stations, but they’re currently in the “don’t do it” camp. Official review guidelines state:
Reviews are supposed to be left after the purchase/service is completed and the customer has left. Reviews that come from a single location run a risk of, at minimum, getting filtered out — or at worst, getting penalized. Yelp even covers your review content with an interstitial warning if they’ve detected too many reviews coming from your IP address — does it really matter what your review score is at this point if this is all people see when they come to your site? 4. Don’t let employees leave reviewsThis one should be common sense, but your employees shouldn’t leave reviews for your business. Google’s guidelines state, “If you own or work at a place, please don’t review your own business or employer.” Not only is it risking a filter or penalty, it’s simply a bad idea because it makes you look desperate. 5. Don’t limit replies to negative reviewsLeaving responses to positive reviews shows that you care about your customers. It’s a warm fuzzy that helps build trust with potential customers. Most businesses respond only to negative reviews, even though the vast majority of their reviews are positive. Yelp has started to advise against leaving public replies to positive reviews, so be prepared to receive a warning message if you’re replying to positive reviews there. For any other site, go for it — leave some thanks and praise to your happy customers. 6. Bad replies make bad reviews worseYou’re not really replying to bad reviews to respond to the person who left the review — you’re responding so that everyone else can see how you deal with customer complaints. Your responses should be short, to the point, and well-thought-out. Long, rambling responses or responses that don’t really address the complaint can actually do more harm than good. The worst thing you can do is leave canned responses. Typically, we only see this when businesses are using a reputation management provider to handle review responses. They’ll simply paste in a generic response to every bad review. Check out the example below. This dealership was using a third party to respond to reviews, and that company simply pasted the same response to every single review, only changing the name of the person they’re responding to. Clearly, this makes you look like you don’t care about your customers. If you’ve got a problem with bad reviews, take a close look at your processes and figure out how to improve your customer service. If you already get great reviews, let them come in naturally — don’t cheat the system to try to get ahead in Google. It won’t help, and you’ll do more harm than good with potential customers. The post Let’s make 2017 the year of honest reviews! appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2jKEYXc Fred Korematsu Google doodle honors Japanese internment camp survivor & civil rights activist1/30/2017 Google is honoring Japanese internment camp survivor Fred Korematsu on what would have been the civil rights activist’s 98th birthday. Born in Oakland, California to immigrant parents, Korematsu went into hiding in 1942 to avoid being incarcerated after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order to incarcerate people of Japanese descent in U.S. internment camps during World War II. Korematsu was found and arrested the same year – but, with the help of the ACLU, fought his conviction. In the landmark Supreme Court case – Korematsu versus the United States – Korematsu’s conviction was upheld and Korematsu was sent to a Topaz, Utah internment camp from 1942 until the end of World War II in 1945. From the Google Doodle blog:
Korematsu’s conviction was overturned in 1983, and in 1998, Korematsu was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Now, four states – California, Hawaii, Virginia and Florida – officially recognize January 30th as Fred Korematsu Day. Designed by doodler Sophie Diao, the daughter of Asian immigrants herself, the doodle leads to a search for “Fred Korematsu” and features Korematsu with his Presidential Medal of Freedom. The doodle gives Google’s letters a patriotic treatment and includes an image of internment camp living quarters surrounded by cherry blossoms – a flower that has come to represent peace and friendship between the U.S. and Japan. Last week, Google shared a doodle celebrating the first female African-American aviator Bessie Coleman and paid tribute to Ed Roberts, the leader of the disability rights movement. The post Fred Korematsu Google doodle honors Japanese internment camp survivor & civil rights activist appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2jKmSEK Back in the 1940s, psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel conducted an experiment. They showed study participants an animated film consisting of a rectangle with an opening, plus a circle and two triangles in motion. The participants were then asked to simply describe what they saw in the film. Before you keep reading, take a look at it yourself. I’ll be here when you come back. So, what did you see? Out of all the study participants, only one responded with “a rectangle with an opening, plus a circle and two triangles in motion.” The rest developed elaborate stories about the simple geometric shapes. Many participants concluded the circle and the little triangle were in love, and that the evil grey triangle was trying to harm or abduct the circle. Others went further to conclude that the blue triangle fought back against the larger triangle, allowing his love to escape back inside, where they soon rendezvoused, embraced, and lived happily ever after. That’s pretty wild when you think about it. The Heider-Simmel experiment became the initial basis of attribution theory, which describes how people explain the behavior of others, themselves, and also, apparently, geometric shapes on the go. More importantly, people explain things in terms of stories. Even in situations where no story is being intentionally told, we’re telling ourselves a tale as a way to explain our experience of reality.
Are you telling a story? And more importantly, does that story resonate with the way your prospective customers and clients are seeing things? This is the key to knowing what your prospect needs to hear, and when they need to hear it, as part of your overall content marketing strategy. And in a networked, information-rich world where the prospects have all the power, this is your only chance to control the narrative. What kind of story to tell?You need to tell a Star Wars story. And by that, I mean you need to take your prospects along a content marketing version of the mythic hero’s journey. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell identifies a “monomyth” — a fundamental structure common to myths that have survived for thousands of years. Campbell’s identification of these enduring myths from disparate times and regions has inspired modern storytellers to consciously craft their work following the monomyth framework, also known as the hero’s journey. Most notable among those inspired by the hero’s journey is George Lucas, who acknowledged Campbell’s work as the source of the plot for Star Wars. As a content marketer, you can also consciously incorporate the monomyth into your launches, funnels, and general editorial calendar. The image above shows the general elements of the hero’s journey, which can be broken down into much more detail than presented here. It’s important to note that not all monomythic stories contain every aspect, but the original Star Wars faithfully follows almost every element of the hero’s journey. Let’s focus on the first two steps of the journey, in the “ordinary world” before the journey truly begins. Here’s how those elements occurred in the original Star Wars.
How does this apply to content marketing? Simple. As I mentioned last time:
The mistake most often made in marketing is thinking of your business as the hero, resulting in egocentric messages that no one else cares about. The prospect is always the primary hero, because they are the one going on the journey — whether big or small — to solve a problem or satisfy a desire.
By making the prospect the hero, your brand also becomes a hero in the prospect’s story. And by accepting the role of mentor with your content, your business accomplishes its goals while helping the prospect do the same. Which is how business is supposed to work, right? 8 core steps in the buyer’s journeyI’ve been using the hero’s journey to teach marketing and sales since 2007. I’ve found that just the act of thinking of the prospect as the hero makes you a better content marketer.
This is also the exact way we come up with content marketing strategies for our own launches, funnels, and general editorial calendar. After years of using this strategic process, I’ve found that every buyer’s journey contains key points where you must deliver the right information at the right time to succeed at an optimal level. Remember, each journey is tied to a particular who that you have documented. Some people create content journeys for multiple personas, but my advice is that you pick one at first and focus. Even Apple stuck with one target persona for the entirety of the Get a Mac campaign. You’ll notice I use the word “problem” below, rather than “problem or desire.” An unfulfilled desire is a problem in the mind of the prospect, so it works on its own. 1. Ordinary World: This is the world (and worldview) that your ideal prospect lives in. She may be aware of the problem that she has, but she hasn’t yet resolved to do something about it. You understand how this person thinks, sees, feels, and behaves due to the empathy mapping process. 2. Call to Adventure: The prospect decides to take action to solve the problem. It could be a New Year’s resolution, a longstanding goal, or a problem that rears its head for the first time. 3. Resistance to the Call: At this point, the prospect starts to waver in her commitment to solving the problem. Maybe it seems too hard, too expensive, too time consuming, or simply too impractical. As we’ll discuss in a bit, this is a key content inflection point. 4. The Mentor and the Gift: This is the point that you are initially accepted as a mentor that guides the buyer’s journey. The prospect accepts your offer of a gift, in the form of information, that promises to help her solve the problem. 5. Crossing the Threshold: This is the point of purchase where the prospect believes that your product or service will lead to the problem being solved, which will lead to transformation. The most important thing to understand is that, unlike flawed funnel metaphors, the journey does not end at purchase. 6. Traveling the Road: The customer begins using the product or service with the goal of achieving success in the context of the problem. Who cares if the customer stops the journey right after purchase, right? Wrong — too often this leads to a refund request; plus you miss out on the huge benefits that accompany a happy customer. 7. Seizing the Treasure: The customer experiences success with your product or service. What does this look like for them and you? How will you know when it happens? 8. The New Ordinary: The customer has experienced a positive transaction with you, and yet we’re just now getting to the really good stuff. This is a perfect time to prime them for repeat or upsell purchases or referrals. At this point, deliver content that aims at retention for recurring revenue products, and make savvy requests for direct referrals, testimonials, and word of mouth. Of the eight, only Traveling the Road isn’t universal — if you’re an electrician, you show up and either fix the problem or don’t. But if you’re selling software-as-a-service, for example, content that gets users engaged with the platform is critical to reducing churn. These core steps can provide you with a beginning framework for a detailed map of the buyer’s journey. The next step is to add the touchpoints that are unique to your product or service. Your unique journey mapYou may be thinking about how exactly you’re supposed to map this out. Fortunately, there’s already an established procedure for this, just as during the who phase.
By mapping the journey, you know where the additional crucial touchpoints are, and what content can empower the journey to continue. Here’s an example from Adaptive Path for Rail Europe: This map demonstrates the journey a consumer would take while riding the trains in Europe. It follows her from the early stages of research and planning to the end of her trip. You see what she is doing (searching Google, looking up timetables), what she is thinking during each action (do I have everything I need, and am I on the right train?), and what she is feeling (stressed: I’m about to leave the country and Rail Europe won’t answer the phone). Do you see the correlation with the empathy mapping exercise you did back when developing a snapshot of your ideal customer? It’s no coincidence that we’re now applying what the prospect is “Thinking,” “Seeing,” “Doing,” and “Feeling” in their ordinary world to the journey they need to travel. In a piece called the Anatomy of an Experience Map, Chris Risdon at Adaptive Path suggests your experience map should have these five components:
You can find more detailed information on creating a customer experience map here. Like empathy mapping, it can be done solo, but works even better as a collaborative process, so that everyone on your team understands the journey from the perspective of the prospect and subsequent customer. Mapping the 7 key influence principlesWhen you consider influential content, you may naturally think that it’s about how your present the information. While that’s true from an engagement standpoint, which principle of influence to apply and when to emphasize it is an exercise in what as well.
Every successful digital marketer I know purposefully applies those seven principles in their content and copy, because they all treat Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini as their bible. If you haven’t read it, you should — but in the meantime check out this six-page PDF that explains the original six principles, and here’s an article by Sonia Simone on the all-important 7th principle of unity. At Rainmaker Digital, we think in terms of four different types of content when mapping the buyer’s journey. Keep in mind that great marketing content contains all of these elements; you’re simply selecting a category based on the primary aim of the individual piece at the appropriate time. First up we have Attraction content, otherwise known as “top of funnel” information. This corresponds best with the Resistance to the Call point of the journey — it addresses the problem while also addressing common objections to moving forward. In addition to creating the feeling that “you’re reading their mind,” you’re also invoking early influence through reciprocity, social proof through share numbers, and establishing authority. Next up, you have your cornerstone influence principle thanks to Authority content. The important thing is that you demonstrate authority, rather than claim it. Your Attraction content sets the stage, and your Authority content should be gated behind an email opt-in. At this stage, you’re establishing clear authority, continuing to leverage reciprocity and social proof, and adding liking, plus commitment and consistency thanks to the opt-in. Affinity content solidly positions you as a “likable expert,” but it goes beyond that. This is where you let your core values shine. You reflect the prospect’s worldview back to them in a completely authentic way, prompting the powerful principle of unity. Never underestimate how often people choose to do business with people they like, and who also see the world like they do. Finally, it all comes down to Action. Unlike Phil Connors, you don’t look for ultimate action at the beginning of the journey. But you do rely on smaller actions along the way, especially at the bridge between Attraction content and Authority content. That said, the key influence principle at this stage is scarcity, which you’ve earned the right to employ thanks to the other six principles. People fear missing out more than they desire gain, so make sure to use it ethically. This is the outline of your storyIt’s tempting at this point to try to imagine how you’re going to execute on your strategy, but you’re not quite there yet. Soon, I’ll share with you a “real world” example of how this looks in action. For now, map the journey experience. In addition to your character, you’ve now got the plot points in the narrative you’re weaving. All that’s left is to figure out how to tell the story. That’s up next week. The post How to Know Exactly What Content to Deliver to Convert More Prospects appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger http://ift.tt/2kFRF40 |
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