Persuasive video can be a highly effective and engaging form of content. But all too often, it’s … well, not.... The post Persuasive Video Strategies that Prompt Action appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger https://ift.tt/2YfPYza
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In the next video interview, I drove out to the beautiful Croton-on-Hudson, in New York and met up with Dawn Beobide. Dawn is the Director of Marketing at Consumer Labs. She started doing SEO way back in the 1999. We began our conversation talking about Dawn’s history in the space, including a discussion about the old SEO forums. But we quickly moved into our first topic, why it is important to educate your developers on SEO and the importance of SEO. If you can properly share the importance of SEO with your development team, those developers will be eager to implement these SEO changes. You need to build a good relationship with your developers and you need to earn their trust. This is part one of our talk: If you’re a search professional interested in appearing on Barry’s vlog, you can fill out this form on Search Engine Roundtable; he’s currently looking to do socially distant, outside interviews in the NY/NJ tri-state area. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel by clicking here. The post Video: Dawn Beobide on the importance of training your developers on SEO appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2M3p6zZ Google has quietly updated the product structured data help documentation to add a section for price drop appearance. In that section Google said it now supports displaying price drop rich results on snippets within English in the US, on both desktop and mobile search. What is looks like. Here is a screen shot of price drop appearance in action from Brodie Clark: How do you show up. How can you get your product search results to display this new price drop rich result in search? Google said “to be eligible for the price drop appearance, add an Offer to your Product structured data. The price must be a specific price, not a range (for example, it can’t be $50.99 to $99.99).” How does Google calculate the price drop. Google does this all automatically based on the pricing you send the search engine via product schema over time. Google said it is “based on the running historical average of your product’s pricing, Google automatically calculates the price drop.” Why we care. This new rich result snippet feature may help you sell items that you are looking to offload. It may catch more searchers attentions because of the the change in price. So if you are using product structured data, make sure you have the Offer type within that markup. The post Google adds price drop appearance rich results to search results appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3a5xd74 In a blog post today, Google announced that they will make their alternative to third-party cookies available for public testing in Q2 2021. “Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) … effectively hides individuals ‘in the crowd’ and uses on-device processing to keep a person’s web history private on the browser… Chrome intends to make FLoC-based cohorts available for public testing through origin trials with its next release in March and we expect to begin testing FLoC-based cohorts with advertisers in Google Ads in Q2,” Google said in an announcement. Google announced in October that they’re testing an alternative to third-party cookies called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). This process essentially groups people with similar interests into cohorts to protect the privacy of the individual and allows advertisers to still serve relevant ads while keeping each person’s browsing private. With this testing happening in late 2020, it made sense that Google announced the plan to phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome over the next two years. Why we care. Cookies have carried the weight of online advertising for quite a long time and have taken on greater importance as the web has evolved and search marketing has along with it. With more consumers and internet searchers caring about protecting their data and privacy online, browsers are ditching the cookie-tracking model. The FLoC model by Google claims to protect the privacy of the individual but still allows advertisers to see data from the collective. This change could be an adjustment for advertisers who rely heavily on Google Ads for revenue. The attribution issue. Cookies have been the main driver of advertising attribution. Tech and browser companies have been working hard to eliminate the outdated cookie-based tracking models while also preserving their own ad revenues. A 2016 Princeton University study found that Google tracks two-thirds of activity online. Browsers like DuckDuckGo (which recently reached over 100 million searches per day), Firefox, and Safari have shown dedication to privacy with their commitment to eliminating tracking, cookies, and browser fingerprinting. The FLoC model is the future of advertising measurement for Google which attempts to both give advertisers the data they need to attribute and measure and determine fraudulent traffic from actual visitors while maintaining the privacy of individuals online. Google says, “Our tests show that advertisers can expect to see at least 95% of the conversions per dollar spent when compared to cookie-based advertising.” Finding the balance. GDPR, CCPA, the elimination of third-party cookies, browsers cracking down on fingerprinting, and other privacy measures all have to be balanced with the understanding that tech companies rely on ad revenue and businesses rely on advertising to drive more traffic and grow their own businesses. “We are more confident than ever that the Privacy Sandbox is the best path forward to improve privacy for web users while ensuring publishers can earn what they need to fund great content and advertisers can reach the right people for their products,” the announcement says. Meanwhile, others like the Electronic Frontier Foundation wonder if it’s too easy for individual data to be decoded with technologies like FLoC. Google seeks feedback. With any new technology, user testing will allow advertisers to provide Google with feedback on their experiences with the model including attribution, ad fraud prevention, and anti-fingerprinting. In a blog post from Friday, Google announced, “Google is launching experiments that are intended to provide bidders with an opportunity to test and provide collaborative feedback on ads-privacy proposals–these are features intended to improve user privacy protections and provide mechanisms for testing Chrome Privacy Sandbox proposals. We strongly encourage interested bidders to sign up and participate!” The post Google’s alternative to third-party cookies open for advertiser testing in Q2 2021 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3sRYQJv Learn why User-Generated Content (UGC) is one of the most effective ways to create a highly successful, long-term SEO and conversion strategy. This report from Shopper Approved covers what the most relevant forms of UGC are, how to collect more UGC, and how to use it to dramatically improve your organic and paid search results. See how UGC can improve all your search marketing KPIs:
Learn more. Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download “How To Optimize SEO With UGC.“ The post How to optimize SEO with user-generated content appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3iFwo8U In November, contextual links began appearing in Google’s featured snippets. Although it’s still in the testing phase, the potential for more links to appear in this high-visibility search result feature has SEOs concerned about what that may mean for their click-through rates, the safety of their brands as well as how they might optimize for it. The potential implications of contextual links in featured snippets“What could put some publishers off is the fact that winning a featured snippet may now result in sharing the spoils with the other websites that were linked to,” said Izzi Smith, technical SEO analyst at Ryte, adding that the stakes can get higher if links to competing sites also appear. Instead of being strictly worse for publishers, this may actually be more of a double-edged sword. If other sites can get linked to in your featured snippets, you may also be able to seize that opportunity as well. “My reach would be expanded by my featured snippets being referenced in other featured snippets, so it’s likely a win overall even though I may lose a few clicks on the single snippet,” said Patrick Stox, technical SEO and product advisor at Ahrefs, who suspects that Google is referencing other featured snippets in its contextual links. Although this new aspect of featured snippets carries a range of implications, it is unlikely to prevent publishers from pursuing them. “In the current form, I don’t believe it will change much,” said Melbourne-based SEO consultant Brodie Clark, who first brought this feature to our attention. This sentiment was echoed by the majority of professionals who spoke to us for this article. Third-party sites stand to gain, but perhaps not all, and not risk-free“These are likely to be a big win for reference sites like dictionary.com and Wikipedia, as well as sites which have taken the time to create knowledge resources for users,” said Crystal Carter, senior digital strategist at Optix Solutions. “Because of the definition-styled links, it’s only sites similar to Wikipedia that will appear for the most part, which is an extremely small portion of sites on the web,” Clark said in agreement. The majority of contextual links do seem to cite the aforementioned informational sources, but there are exceptions, such as the Business Insider link in the example below. Limiting contextual links to informational sites and journalistic publications may prevent featured snippets from becoming a battleground within the greater arena of the search results page. However, that is likely to limit the links Google can present. “I actually think this will become a new targeting tactic for third-party sites as they see an increase in their traffic,” said Jori Ford, CMO at Food Boss, should contextual links be available to all publishers. One theory floated by multiple professionals is that the contextual links point to other content that earned a featured snippet. If that is the case, “I’d suspect those who own snippets for broader queries will see an uptick,” Ford said. Appearing as a contextual link may not always be advantageous, though. “This update would take away the control website owners have in relation to where their content appears, and which brands they are then potentially associated with,” Tom Crewe, head of SEO at Adido, told Search Engine Land. “If the topic is of negative sentiment or something completely unrelated, there might be a connection made that isn’t desirable for the third-party source,” Smith added. More to consider when optimizing for featured snippetsWhile featured snippets remain the object of desire, this change could add a new layer to consider when optimizing for them. “One way in which my strategy might adapt is to start identifying where contextual links are appearing within my own featured snippets, and creating content that caters to those contextual links,” Crewe said. At this point, this strategy is still impossible to test, but if it works, it could help remove links to other sites and replace them with links to your own content. Some publishers may take the opposite approach and follow Google’s lead. “If rolled out, I’m fully confident that adding outgoing links to your content will become a part of every featured snippet-winning strategy,” Smith said, reasoning that many SEOs already emulate existing featured snippet formatting (paragraphs, tables and lists) in hopes of winning them. “Perhaps if connections to sources are a defining factor, websites that already do this will stand to gain initially (especially for higher YMYL websites that already need to provide expert references and fact sources),” Smith added. SEOs see room for improvementIf this change becomes a permanent aspect of featured snippets, one thing is certain: SEOs want more, clearly defined data and more control. “Reporting on contextual links within Search Console would be a huge help, as it would give publishers an indication of how this impacts their CTR,” Crewe said, adding that this data would also help to identify topics that publishers could provide more detail on so that they can potentially keep the contextual link on their own sites. “A snippet tag that can support if publishers don’t want alternate source data included should be a consideration,” Ford suggested. Alternatively, the ability to opt-out of appearing as a contextual link may help alleviate brand safety concerns. It’s good for users, but who else is it good for?It is not uncommon for Google to tout changes and updates as being good for users, while being more tight-lipped about how much the company itself also benefits or how any given change may negatively impact businesses and publishers. Contextual links in featured snippets, however, may be more of a mixed bag than first impressions would lead us to believe. Clearly, more context is better for users, but this can also diminish the need for users to conduct another search, “which I guess works against Google if they can’t service another set of ads,” Clark pointed out, caveating that many of these broad queries may not have relevant ads. More sites appearing on a featured snippet that was once owned by a single publisher can be problematic, but “it could be a positive step towards reducing the online ‘echo chamber’ and broadening the horizons of users across the web,” Crewe said. This would likely be an unintended benefit, as Google seems to favor providing users with one simple, direct answer. “Alternatively, this could simply be a way of Google mitigating the incoming accusations from publishers who claim that featured snippets only benefit Google and not the content creator,” Smith said, “By providing deep links to more articles within the entire feature, it could stand to benefit a greater amount of content providers.” Appeasing publishers, and regulators, has become a larger hurdle for the company in recent years. This week, however, it stated that it would rather turn off its search service in Australia than pay to link to sites. The post Contextual links in featured snippets may present new opportunities and risks appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3qP0s57 Google is rolling out a new design for its mobile search results. The updated interface aims to make the search interface easier to read for searchers while providing a cleaner and more modern experience, the company said. The new look has begun rolling out and will continue to roll out over the coming days. What is new. Google has updated the fonts, shapes, and colors of the mobile search experience. This includes updated looks for their knowledge panels and for the main search result snippets. What it looks like. Below, you can compare the before and afters of each design. Here’s what the new mobile knowledge panel looks like: The difference between the old and new mobile search result snippets is subtle. Here’s what they look like: More on these changes. Google has been testing these new design layouts for several months now. I spotted this in October 2020 and variations of these tests in December 2020. Google told us these were the reasons for the changes:
“We wanted to take a step back to simplify a bit so people could find what they’re looking for faster and more easily,” said Aileen Cheng, visual design lead at Google, “I find it really refreshing. To me, it’s a breath of fresh air!” she added. Why we care. With any design change to the Google search results, there may be changes to searcher behavior. You may notice changes in the clicks and traffic from Google mobile search to your site. Keep that in mind when reviewing your analytics over the next couple of weeks. And, of course, you can expect to hear complaints from Google searchers, because whenever Google releases even the smallest change to its search results, there are complaints. The post Google Search launches updated mobile design and interface appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2Y1gJaC Newly released Chrome 88 adds features for developers looking forward towards the upcoming Page Experience update, which adds the relatively new Web Vitals metrics to any pre-existing user experience ranking signals. Web Vitals measure several things which are then collated into three summary scores as Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift. Each of these must be optimized to reach performance (timings) thresholds to avoid suffering against more performant peers who might appear above you in Google rankings. Two new features of noteThe first new feature of note for us is that Chrome 88 now supports a CSS property called A designer would do this with variable images, such as those supplied by users, to fit the result into a layout system. This capability is now available for you to apply as a CSS rule to images as well as other kinds of elements. Among other benefits, this new rule can help you better plan responsive layouts without having to resort to hacking percentage dimension calculations to achieve a final layout look. Web Vitals lane in Chrome 88 DevToolsThe other exciting new feature is that Web Vitals now gets its own reporting lane in Chrome 88 DevTools. While the timings lane flags for these (and a few other) metrics have been available for some time, there is lots of new space reserved in the new Web Vitals lane for even more detailed reporting. As it is, the flags in the Web Vitals lane are color-coded with green for a passing score and red for failure to achieve a good performance threshold. Hovering your mouse over a particular flag brings up the identifying abbreviation of the metric name and the recorded timing in milliseconds. The colors for metrics in the timings lane are not indicative of a score. There is also a new long tasks reporting area which can be used to line up with main thread events to detect which scripts are being evaluated so that you can troubleshoot whether you can optimize or eliminate the code. In order to add the new Web Vitals lane to DevTools, navigate to the Performance tab and select the associated Checkbox. You can do this even after reporting data has been collected in case you run a report before selecting the checkbox, and you can close Chrome which will remember how you left the state of the checkbox after the last recording when you reopen it. Keep in mind that any particular score is a summary of other metrics you should look to find activity preceding or lining up with a failing score milestone in order to figure out what might be causing the problem. The Network and CPU reporting lanes can help you detect what it is. You might find references to render-blocking scripts for you to evaluate and image loading events where you might discover the opportunity to compress or resize them. Cold start performance reportsFor these metrics to be most accurate you’ll need to load a performance report without assets currently stored in browser cache. Start a recording and hold shift while refreshing the page in the browser which should force your browser to load all resources from the network. You can also select the reload button in DevTools under the Performance tab. Be forewarned, however, that the resulting report won’t necessarily capture everything you want. Both approaches are valid. A cold start with an open-ended recording process lets you decide when to start collecting information with shift-refresh and when to process the result into the final report when you click to stop the recording process. You have selection capability to narrow in and magnify areas of concern along the reporting timeline once your report is loaded. Chrome also stores a history of reports which you can clear when it’s time to analyze another page. As is true with all rankings signals, no single factor is going to boost your score to number one across the board. Keep in mind that poorly performing websites can still rank well when content is indexable and of a quality that attracts search users. As for Technical SEO, Core Web Vitals isn’t an indication that your content is indexable at all. That should serve as a warning that there can be lots more to troubleshoot once you’ve achieved excellent performance scores. Why we should careThe Page Experience update coming up in a matter of months is reason enough for us to care about our Core Web Vitals scores. Google has given us ample time to prepare our sites for the change. As optimization professionals, we seek every advantage we can use to improve rankings and Web Vitals is something that undoubtedly improves things both for users and search engines. The post Chrome 88 Adds to Core Web Vitals DevTools appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3sQ2a7W Local SEO, Joy Hawkins, posted that Google has updated the form businesses use to “flag a review” within Google My Business as being inappropriate. The new form seems to offer additional options and a slightly updated workflow. What is looks like. The new form now overlays on the screen and asks the business owner, “Why are you reporting this review?” Then it offers these options:
A new confirmation. Google also shows the business owner a new confirmation screen after they submit the review flag. Here is what it looks like: What is new. Here is what Joy Hawkins noted as being new, she wrote:
Why we care. This should give business owners more tools to know when they can flag a review to be removed from their Google Local listing. It should help Google expedite review removals and process the reviews much faster. Although, from my recent experience, Google can remove reviews within hours when the review is not in accordance with Google’s guidelines. The post Google My Business updates flag review feature appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3c49lng Google has threatened to leave Australia and remove Google Search for Australian searchers if the Australian government forces the search company to pay to link to websites it lists in its search results. The news has caught wide media attention, as you would expect, but also sets a huge precedent that can change the web as we know it. Google Australia’s Managing Director, Mel Silva said in a statement, “The latest version of the Code requires Google to pay to link to news sites, breaking a fundamental principle of how the web works and setting an untenable precedent for our business, the internet, and the digital economy. This is not just Google’s view. Many other respected voices have raised similar concerns in their submissions to the Senate Committee.” Leave Australia. In her testimony, she threatened that Google would leave Australia. “The principle of unrestricted linking between websites is fundamental to search and coupled with the unmanageable financial and operational risk if this version of the code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia,” she said. The impact. There are over 19 million Australians who use Google to search daily. Those 19 million will not have their go-to search engine going forward. This is a relatively small market for Google compared to all of Europe in the United States. Greg Sterling, search analyst legend, told us, “The issue of governments looking to big tech companies to subsidize journalism isn’t going away. Google’s threat to turn off search in Australia is thus a kind of warning to others around the world. The strategy has its limits; Australia is a small market for Google. But is the company willing to do that across Europe and beyond? I don’t think so. “ French deal. Meanwhile, a couple of days prior, Google reached a deal with publishers based in France to pay them for listing their content in search. This agreement “establishes a framework within which Google will negotiate individual licensing agreements with IPG certified publishers within APIG’s membership while reflecting the principles of the law,” L’Alliance said. This comes two years prior to when Google said it won’t pay French publishers. Instead, they limited how those snippets displayed in the search results. It looks like France’s antitrust claims ultimately worked out on some level for them. Similarly restrictive copyright rules in Germany and Spain several years ago prompted Google to pull back on snippets, which caused a significant decline in search traffic to news sites in those countries. Google’s statement. Here is the full statement from Mel Silva, Managing Director, Google Australia and New Zealand: “The latest version of the Code requires Google to pay to link to news sites, breaking a fundamental principle of how the web works, and setting an untenable precedent for our business, the internet, and the digital economy. This is not just Google’s view. Many other respected voices have raised similar concerns in their submissions to the Senate Committee. By introducing a flawed arbitration model and unworkable requirements for algorithm notifications, the Code exposes Google to unreasonable and unmanageable levels of financial and operational risk. If the Code becomes law, Google would have no real choice but to stop providing Search in Australia. That’s a worst-case scenario and the last thing we want to have happen—especially when there is a way forward to a workable Code that allows us to support Australian journalism without breaking Search. This workable solution would see Google pay publishers through News Showcase, a licensing program with nearly 450 news partners globally. By making News Showcase subject to the Code, Google would pay publishers for value, and reach commercial agreements with publishers, with binding arbitration on Showcase. In addition, we’ve also proposed amendments to the arbitration model that will bring it in line with widely accepted models and lead to fair commercial outcomes, and algorithm notification requirements that are workable for Google and useful for news publishers.” Why we care. Of course, if Google left Australia, that would not be great for searchers there. But ultimately, I do agree, if Google had to pay to list links in its search results, it can change search and the web as we know it. It could also have a drastic ripple effect for companies and marketers in Australia (and globally) who rely on Google Search to drive traffic and business to their websites. What will happen is hard to know. I suspect Google will work out a deal with Australia to help news publishers there with additional monetization efforts and maybe donate some money. We will see. The post Google might remove search in Australia if forced to pay to link to sites appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2MiNVaT |
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