Every couple of years, Facebook has tried its best to crack down on clickbait in the Feed. Now Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is warning marketers to avoid a new tactic they call “watchbait.” What is watchbait? According to Facebook, watchbait is video content that “intentionally withholds information, sensationalizes content, or misleads viewers into watching or engaging with the video.” Watchbait can happen in the title, caption, thumbnail or within the video itself. Here are six examples Facebook cited as using watchbait:
Facebook views watchbait and clickbait as basically the same thing. See the language Facebook used about clickbait when it cracked down on it in 2014, 2016 and 2018. What will happen if a Page uses watchbait? If Facebook’s system detects watchbait in your video, the company says it will limit how often it is recommended and its ability to rank. If you regularly post watchbait, Facebook may reduce your page’s overall distribution. You can read their Meta’s blog post and help doc on watchbait. But keep reading for quick “do this, not that” checklist to watchbait. What not to do. In short, what should you avoid when publishing videos on Facebook? Don’t:
What to do. So what should you do when publishing videos on Facebook? Do:
Why we care. Watchbait results in disappointed or frustrated viewers, as Facebook noted. We all know that clickbait works – that’s why Facebook has to make changes like this every couple of years. Always make sure you’re giving something of value to your viewer – something that is relevant, helpful, useful, or inspiring. Deception may be great in the short-term or even expected in some specific industries, but the question you have to answer is: is it worth potentially damaging or destroying your reputation (and your discoverability and visibility) in the long run? The post Facebook warns publishers to avoid ‘watchbait’ tactics appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/rCtk9Ms
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TikTok is starting to roll out ads within its search results. The video ads have a “Sponsored” label, are located above the “Others search for” section, within the top four results. What it looks like. Here’s a screenshot of a TikTok search ad on the results page for [skincare routine], via a tweet from David Herrmann, president of Herrmann Digital, a paid social advertising company. More details on TikTok search ads. The beta test was spotted and tweeted by Herrmann. He noted that once you can run ads in search results, you can pull the search terms for ads that converted and use those search terms with high click-through rates from search results as titles for your top-performing TikToks to drive additional value. Keyword targeting is not yet available to TikTok advertisers, just placements, according to Herrmann. He added that the smart play for brands is making “how-tos” of their products that solve specific problems. For example:
“Make your ads solve problems, don’t just sell. Drive them to advertorial pages,” Hermann said. “This is Pinterest 2.0, but better cause people buy.” What’s unclear. If TikTok search ads are only for managed accounts. According to Andrea Taylor, outreach and account manager at Clix Marketing, that’s what her rep told her. We’ve reached out to TikTok with some follow-up questions on search ads. Why we care. TikTok search ads provide a new opportunity to get in front of your target audience with high purchase intent. TikTok has been an influential platform for turning views into sales for many brands and products. Look no further than the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt, which got billions of views. Tapped out on Google and other ad platforms? If TikTok search ads become available to you, consider testing out this platform. TikTok could also become a keyword goldmine, especially considering how many other platforms have taken away this data from marketers. The post TikTok testing search ads appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/N9xl0pc Earlier we reported about the Google Shopping experience scorecard where Google said it would reward merchants that provide an “excellent customer experience” with “a boost in rankings,” “a badge” and “other benefits that will help consumers find your business,” within the Google Shopping tab in Google Search. Google now announced this reward is through the “Trusted Store badge” that can be seen on free Google Shopping listings. Google said “merchants who provide excellent shipping and returns services, for example, may receive a badge indicating they’re a Trusted Store, which will appear alongside their free product listings on the Shopping tab.” What the trusted store badge looks like. Here is a GIF of the trusted store badge in the Google shopping results: The badge increases engagement. Google said the trusted store badge, “based on our early testing,” drive more clicks to the merchants listings, Google said they are “more likely to receive clicks.” Google also said the search company is “seeing stronger traffic to lesser-known merchants.” How to earn the badge. Merchants receive a Trusted Store badge based on their performance across metrics relative to other merchants, including but not limited to shipping speeds, shipping and return costs, and return windows. We documented a lot of these metrics over here in our earlier coverage, but here is Google’s help document as well. Launching in a few months in the US. Google said “the Shopping Experience Scorecard program and trusted store badge will roll out across the U.S. in the coming months. New insights reports. To help merchants provide excellent customer service and to see how their product listings are performing. Google said “this new tool shows merchants the total traffic, impressions and conversion rate of their free listings, helping them make decisions about future ones.” Google will break down how well your product listings are doing, even with new conversion reporting on free listings. There is a pricing report to show you how your pricing competes with others in the market and reports on your top viewed products. Here are some screenshots of these new insights reports: Rings a bell. Does this trusted store badge ring a bell to you? Well, yes, a decade or so ago, Google had a free trusted store badge for merchants as well. This was more on the search ad side of the coin, whereas this new badge is for free product listings. Why we care. Badges can help you generate more clicks on your listings, so it is worth looking into and gaining a badge if possible. The insights reports gives you more data on how your products are performing in Google Search and Google Shopping and how you compete with the current marketplace. The post Google Trusted Store badge for merchants with excellent shipping and returns services appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/ylDQecP Google announced that it is adding more contextual information to the structured data error reporting within Google Search Console, the rich results test and URL inspection tool. This does not mean you should expect any additional errors, but rather, you should expect the same number of errors but those errors will be more descriptive and helpful in debugging issues with your structured data. What changed. Google gave an example “if a website doesn’t provide the name of the author in Review snippet markup, Search Console currently reports an error named Missing field “name”. Starting today, that error will be named Missing field “name” (in “author”). The more detailed context in parenthesis can help you find the issues more easily in your structured data.” Here is a screenshot of the before and after on this: What is impacted. A few of the reports within Google Search Console are impacted by this including. Google said all Google Search Console rich result status reports, the Search Console URL inspection tool and Rich Results Test. Google added that even if you haven’t changed your structured data markup:
Why we care. This is just a name change Google said, there is no reason to panic, but you should be aware of this change. Google said this is “simply a change in the issue name, it will not affect how Search Console detects errors, and all the issues that are being closed will be replaced by a new issue with the additional context in the issue name.” At the same time, Google added “please note that if you requested Search Console to validate a fix before the change, you will need to revalidate the new issues.” The post Google Search Console structured data error reporting gains more contextual information appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/FXNQHkE Google announced that the URL parameters tool is going away next month, citing the tool has little or low value. Google will be sunsetting this feature on April 26, 2022 and you will no longer be able to access the tool after that date. What is the URL parameter tool. The URL parameter tool launched in 2009 as a parameter handling tool, a way to communicate to Google to ignore specific URLs or combinations of URL parameters. Two years later, in 2011, Google upgraded to tool to handle many more parameter scenarios. The tool essentially let you block Google from indexing URLs on your site. You are currently able to access the tool over here until April 26th. Why is it going away. Google said it has become “much better at guessing which parameters are useful on a site and which are —plainly put— useless.” Google added that “only about 1% of the parameter configurations currently specified in the URL Parameters tool are useful for crawling.” “Due to the low value of the tool both for Google and Search Console users, we’re deprecating the URL Parameters tool in 1 month,” Google said. What do I do going forward. Google said there is nothing specific to do. Google said “going forward you don’t need to do anything to specify the function of URL parameters on your site, Google’s crawlers will learn how to deal with URL parameters automatically.” You can always use robots.txt rules, Google said “or use Why we care. If you are currently using the URL parameter tool, you will want to see what rules you have set up and watch to see how things change with crawling, indexing and ranking after April 26th. You will want to make sure to annotate your reports to document this April 26th date as well. You can always implement changes to your CMS and/or robots.txt to try to better control crawling and indexing of specific URL parameters on your site, if things do not go smoothly for you after this tool is removed. The post Google’s URL Parameters tool is going away appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/TzmaFJv Website migrations are a part of an enterprise’s natural evolution. Companies may migrate because they’re rebranding, going to the cloud to scale their site easier and numerous other reasons. However, while migration may seem simple on paper, one misstep can lead to SEO problems, such as:
Before you begin with your migration, you’ll want to run a site crawler to take an inventory of your pages. A tool like Screaming Frog can help. The goal is to have a list of all pages that you can refer to when the migration is complete to verify that everything is migrated correctly. Once you’ve got your list, you’re ready to move on. What follows are 10 steps that will help you have a successful website migration. 1. Setup hosting, DNS, CDN, mailMigrations have a lot of moving parts. First, make a backup of your site and database. If something goes wrong, you’ll be thankful that you have a backup to restore your site. Ideally, you’ll also create a staging site to test the migration to reduce any initial hiccups that can occur along the way. Once you’re done with the staging site, you’ll want to:
Complete these preliminary steps done before moving into your redirects. 2. Create a list of redirectsInternally, you and your team should have a list of redirects that you need to create and ones that already exist. You’ll refer to this list to ensure that all existing redirects are in place on your new site. Thankfully, if you don’t have many redirects and are changing domains, you’ll need a single redirect to redirect the site. 3. Review SEO structureSEO specifications should be put in place. You’ll need to check the following to make sure the migration is successful:
Review your current site’s SEO structure to ensure that you can check it when the migration is complete. The key to site migration success is creating lists and reviewing them multiple times. 4. Run benchmarksBenchmarks are going to tell you a lot about your migration and site. From a technical standpoint, you’ll want to view the following data:
You’ll be returning to these benchmarks multiple times over the coming weeks. If you notice that the site speed is slow or you lost rankings, you’ll want to look through your site more to pinpoint the issue. If you have this data available, you’ll also have something to show your client (if you’re working with one) that can highlight the success of the benchmark. 5. Analyze key site pagesYour key site pages are the most important revenue-generating pages and should be the first that you target. Analyze these pages to make sure that they’re running properly. Even if you have 1,000+ pages, choose the top 5% pages and go through them one by one. These are pages that:
When you look through your analytics, you’ll want to keep a close eye on these pages while continuing through the rest of these steps. 6. Rerun site crawlers to compareRerunning your crawler is a good idea at this point. You’ve already gone through most of the tedious steps, but now it’s time to compare your old site crawl to the new one. The goal is to check the following:
Compare your metadata to ensure that everything migrated properly. Sometimes, metadata is lost during the migration, especially if you change content management systems that try pulling data from a database column or table that doesn’t exist. 7. Audit the siteAudits come next, and you can also use some of the data collected in the last step. Your audit should include checking:
You’ll also want to create your robots.txt file, set up canonical tags and ensure that your key pages are running well. 8. Setup search console and webmaster toolsIf you’re changing domains, add your site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. You’ll want to follow this up by requesting that your site be indexed and submitting your XML sitemaps. Google Search Console allows you to change your site address. You can set up the change of address by going to Settings (Gear icon) > Change of address The Search Console’s change of address allows you to alert Google of your site’s address change. However, you will need to verify that you’re the owner of both sites before submitting your change of address. 9. Run usability testsUsability is one aspect of a site migration that people overlook. Your site may maintain its rankings, yet you’ll lose revenue if usability diminishes. Manually testing key areas of your site is the next step, and these tests should be performed on mobile and desktop devices. Check the following areas to ensure that they’re working properly:
You want to ensure that all of your site’s features run properly. If you come across any issues, correct them as necessary. 10. Monitor analytics and perform any necessary cleanupYou’ve reached the final step, but it’s important to remember that this is an ongoing process. Over time, you’ll want to look in your Google Search Console for:
And you’ll want to review your analytics or keyword rankings for your top pages. Traditionally, you’ll want to view your highest traffic-generating pages and see if they’ve experienced a loss in traffic. If they have lost significant rankings and traffic, start analyzing key issues, such as:
You’ll want to keep a close watch on Google Search Console’s Coverage tab, which will show you any critical errors on your pages and warnings. As these errors pop up, go through them one by one and fix them. SummaryWebsite migrations require a lot of diligence and time to execute properly. While there may be a few steps that you can add to the list above to streamline the migration process further, they’re a good foundation to build off of. The post Website migration checklist: 10 steps for success appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/4POv2XD The post 202200328 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/xcH3PeT Google has rolled out a new mobile search interface that allows for a more visual look at some search results. A Google spokesperson told us this new interface helps “surface relevant information related to an image, so users have a deeper understanding of the results they’re seeing.” Mobile only. The new interface is currently live for mobile searches on Google for select queries. You can try it for the query [hand tattoos] or [game room design] on your mobile device. What it looks like. Here is a cropped screenshot of the new visual look, that shows images in a grid-like interface. If you want a full size screenshot, click here. Two position ones? I asked Google if the top two results would be counted in Google Search Console performance reports as position one, or if the one on the left is position one and the one on the right is position two? Is that flipped for languages that go from right to left like Hebrew and Arabic? We will update this story when we hear back. More updates. Google said it will continue to make improvements to the mobile and desktop search results. Last year, Google made several updates to the mobile interface design of search and also launched continuous scroll. Why we care. This new layout in mobile search may help your site get more (or less) exposure in the search results. In these types of queries, you now have two side-by-side results, possibly from two different sides sharing the first position in a grid format. This may impact your site traffic, click through rates and performance reports in Google Search Console. The post Google Search rolls out a more visual search interface on mobile with grid format appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/CSHN1FQ Technical search engine optimization (SEO) for large enterprise companies is much different from traditional SEO because they often have complex, advanced infrastructure along with numerous integrations and dependencies. SEO professionals seeking to work with enterprise clients should be adept at technical SEO and require overlapping competencies in related disciplines. But here’s the problem. SEO experts with a broad range of knowledge and experience with enterprise SEO are hard to find. Most agencies and SEO firms don’t have these specialists on their staff. With enterprise SEO, you don’t just migrate but actually re-platform, redesign and replace a well-oiled machine – with one that’ll hopefully work even better and be more profitable. It’s like replacing a former Olympic gold medallist with a rookie contender. And that’s risky. If the new person is MVP material or isn’t used to competing at a high level, your team will lose. You want someone who has trained hard every day to win – someone who will give their absolute best. That’s exactly how you should hire an SEO expert for your enterprise company. Going by the old mindset that “SEO is just an SEO project” is bad leadership. Even if you have a great relationship with your current SEO agency or its people, that alone doesn’t qualify their team to handle your enterprise-level SEO needs. Good business leaders are careful to pick an SEO consultant for their enterprise company, be it a retailer, service provider or another type of organization. SEO in an enterprise is like a lakeMany brooks, streams and even rivers flow into a lake. Likewise, many teams at an enterprise (marketing, content, developers, IT, traffic, UX, etc.), all flow into the SEO “lake.” Many of my clients are initially shocked when they first realize this. They had thought of SEO as being limited to Google and search engines alone. And they frankly admit to underestimating the true potential of this vague, fuzzy, long-term-focused mystical thing called SEO. Once they start thinking of enterprise SEO differently – and see how everything “walks over that bridge and leads into the SEO lake” – they understand the big picture better. And get excited about the financial implications of SEO on their business. Most of these business leaders quickly begin to appreciate how enterprise SEO overlaps across teams, departments, specialized roles, strategies, technologies, systems, and entire infrastructure. The long future potential of SEOAn effective enterprise SEO strategy can be a powerful weapon that, when detonated, blows competitors out of the market – and keeps them away for years. But it requires an investment in the early planning phase before you re-platform, redesign, migrate and launch. With a good communication plan, anchoring and knowledge transfer – all backed by leadership, an adequate budget, and trust – the upside potential can be truly amazing. My clients are often delighted at how while crafting their UX-templates (PLP, PDP, local store pages, etc.), I identified and fixed a few more things that will build a strong, scalable, automated highway for Google’s crawlers – and did it within the same budget and timeline. Such planned modifications have several benefits:
This requires a solid one-time setup, after which everything works automatically without maintenance costs. It’s like wine that gets better over time. Enterprise SEO is a strategic investmentSEO has a business-critical impact that is long-lasting. However, in enterprise SEO, search optimization itself is the least important ingredient of success. What matters more is how it enables the interplay between sales, marketing and branding to span your customers’ buying journey. Google has become an integral part of lives and is vital to most purchase decisions. Without a dominant presence on Google organic search results, your business will be out of sync with clients on the biggest marketplace in the world. This is why many savvy business leaders view an investment in platform development and SEO as an evergreen, non-seasonal activity. SEO can be massively effective in stimulating ROI, increasing revenue, forecasting profitable scenarios and more. But you cannot slice it up into bits and do it in installments over time. Everything has to be ready to roll before going live. You must be willing to invest in analysis and shift away from the self-destructive mindset that “too much analysis equals paralysis.” The worst strategists believe that “10% analysis, 90% implementation is better.” When you conduct detailed situational analysis to research, analyze and combine available data externally and internally with precision, it cuts timelines by years for the same budget and with less staff – while gaining market share rapidly and boosting profits for owners. The unmeasured cost of missed opportunityBeing passive about all of this has a hidden cost unrelated to SEO metrics, traffic or the website itself. Unless relevant, enterprise-level re-platforming (especially on an unrealistic budget) becomes merely more of the ‘same old, same old.’ Most businesses only benchmark themselves against past performance from the same month in a previous year – meaning YoY. They seldom compete against their own highest potential. And this does not maximize value to owners, shareholders and customers. With improper situational analysis, you might discover that you’ve grown 30% over your own historical performance but completely overlook the search queries that didn’t rank in the top 100 or 200 results on Google! This means you don’t get any impressions in Google Search Console, or traffic in Google Analytics, for these terms. This is a blind spot. Making decisions without correcting this is like driving a car with your eyes closed! Without this information, it’s hard to earn trust, which is critical to enable the right mindset required for an SEO transformation. But once you have all relevant data, it will soon become obvious that something with the potential to earn one billion deserves more resources and a higher priority than another alternative that’s historically been worth no more than a few thousand. Interestingly, even those alternatives might have been limited to thousands only because somebody mistakenly decided they were irrelevant and didn’t pay enough attention. It may well turn out to be a critical ingredient that can also generate $1 billion indirectly and over the long term. And by making fresh decisions along with a strategic redistribution of resources, it could be pushed to generate even $5 billion. And this reinforces the “cost of alternatives” that go unpicked. Choose correct benchmarksBenchmark against your full potential by combining:
Do all of this before determining an SEO budget. Your decisions will be more effective. All proposed timelines, plans and decisions that involve the following will grow synergistically:
Everyone who desires the best for your company will pitch in to help, laying a solid foundation for SEO success and, eventually, business growth and greater profitability. This is why I recommend a process and method that:
To determine the right budget for a one-time initiative like this, consider what it would cost to retain an SEO professional for three months. That is a realistic time frame to paint a revealing picture of your company. This analysis will help close the gap between where you are right now and could be on a higher trajectory toward rapid growth with a higher bottom line. So, there you have it. The arguments for why you should do this and how, when it is relevant, and why you shouldn’t be passive no matter whether you are:
They can help you avoid mistakes. Or even transform them back into grand successes. If you underestimate their importance in enterprise SEO, you’re setting things up to fail. But if you get it right, even if only in part, the rewards will be rich – and well worth the effort. The best strategy for enterprise SEOMany think SEO is purely a technical discipline. That is wrong. The trouble with enterprise SEO is more often a leadership problem. A winning strategy for SEO in enterprise companies is ideally one that will:
Over two decades of my own experience, and countless similar ones shared by my colleagues in the industry, both locally and internationally, the same patterns and success ingredients are revealed as the most critical. The plan outlined in this report has long proven successful, been effectively documented, works in real life, and is specially tailored for large enterprises. It can, however, be implemented only when:
Achieving all of this gives you a “golden ticket” that consistently:
For this, SEO must work across streams, from foundational planning through to the final stages of implementation. Enterprise SEO permeates every facet of your business, flowing like blood through your company’s heart, brain, and guts. The post Enterprise SEO: Lessons from 20 years in the trenches appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/DaJPK1B The post 202200325 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/KRTjJq8 |
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