A component of my publishing philosophy is: “Wanting to write something does not guarantee that someone will want to read it.” And it comes into play when you write the first marketing materials for your business — many new marketers get excited about a type of writing that doesn’t turn out to be engaging. The The post Avoid This Rookie Marketing Habit to Get New Customers Faster appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger http://ift.tt/2xJwvrG
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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:Link Building
Searching
SEO
SEM / Paid Search
Search Marketing
The post SearchCap: Google knowledge panel ads, Google Maps videos & AMP survey appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2gkVbmJ As many as three-quarters of website visitors abandon their shopping carts, and nearly 50 percent bounce from your site. Wouldn’t it be great if you could read your website visitors’ body language while they are browsing — and better understand which visitors you can profitably engage with and what they need to make those purchases? On September 19, join our e-commerce and conversion optimization experts as they explain how you can read your visitors’ intent signals — accurately and instantly — to optimize website conversion. They’ll explore how live chat can increase visitor engagement and sales, and how you can determine which site visitors need a real person to give them a helping hand. You’ll learn:
Register today for “Live Chat Best Practices for Conversion Rate Optimization,” produced by Digital Marketing Depot and sponsored by MarketLinc. The post Live Chat Best Practices for Conversion Rate Optimization appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2gjQCJu Google is testing more ad opportunities in knowledge panels. In this case, it’s testing ads on panels for local businesses. Spotted by Dr. Pete Meyers of Moz, the example below shows an ad from Groupon for the featured club. A call to action to “View Deal” links to the related offer page on Groupon.com.
“We’re currently experimenting with new ways to surface helpful and relevant local information to users on Google Maps and Search,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land when asked about the ad placement. “Maintaining a good experience for our users is our top priority and based on feedback, we’ll determine whether to roll these changes out permanently and broadly.” Google has been running various ads in knowledge panels since 2013 — for car dealers, products, movies and TV shows and music — but this is the first time ads for them have appeared in panels for local businesses. Last year, shortly after removing Maps from the Search Partners network in AdWords, Google introduced plans to expand the presence of ads and experiment with formats in Google Maps. At that time, Google said one-third of searches are local and that local searches are growing 50 percent faster than mobile search overall. The post Google is testing ads in local business knowledge panels appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2vxiah5 The post When You’re About To Give Up… appeared first on Matt Morris. via Matt Morris http://ift.tt/2wWWwGJ Well, it’s official. Google doesn’t like overly intrusive ads like pop-ups on websites. This sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? After all, Google makes its money from advertising. However, as a search engine, Google’s number one priority is to make a searcher’s experience a positive one. And, just as Google put sites with mobile interstitials on the naughty list earlier this year, it’s now taking a stand against pop-ups and other annoying ads. Google’s not the only one that is annoyed by pop-up ads. Your potential customers don’t like them either. In a recent survey by inbound marketing giant HubSpot, they found that consumers don’t like overly intrusive ads. Consumers especially don’t like pop-up ads, mobile ads and video ads. Not surprisingly, the HubSpot Adblock Plus Research Study found that one of the most frustrating types of ads were full-page pop-up ads that make the user find the “X” or some other (often difficult-to-find) button to close the ad. Just look at the example below. On CNN.com, a half-page ad appears at the top of the screen when you go to the home page. This ad literally takes up HALF the screen (valuable real estate) — and there’s no obvious way to close it. This makes for a horrible and intrusive user experience. Here are some other stats from HubSpot’s survey:
As consumers, we all know what “annoying ads” look like: ads that force you to wait before you can get to the content you want to read, full-page ads that overtake your screen, ads with music or videos that automatically start playing — you know the ones. (If you’ve ever been at your cubicle quietly working, then clicked on an article link and been greeted by the unexpected audio from an ad that started playing, you know what I mean.) These types of intrusive ads are part of the reason for the 30 percent increase in ad blocking software. Google cracks down on these annoying adsGoogle’s latest anti-intrusive ad effort relies on the Coalition for Better Ads standards, and it has already begun by sending out emails warning websites that have “highly annoying, misleading or harmful” pop-up ads on their sites that violate these standards. So, what types of ads are offensive? The group ran surveys to determine which ads most annoy and irritate consumers. In their survey, they simulated “real world” experiences of users as they looked at ads while reading website content. The research results identified the types of ads that are most likely to frustrate users — four types of desktop ads and eight ad types for mobile devices: Desktop ads
Mobile ads
Here are a couple more examples that I’ve experienced. Forbes.com double-whammies you when you try to read an article on their site. First, you are confronted with a full-page “prestitial ad with countdown” — the countdown timer must run to zero before you can get to the article you want to read: And then when you finally get to the content you want to read, a video automatically starts playing on the article page itself: In the example below, check out the article that The Wall Street Journal wrote about how Google is planning to block ads. Notice the pop-up ad on the page? (A little ironic, huh?) Google’s backing of these Coalition for Better Ads standards is leading up to next year’s release of a version of the Chrome Browser that will stop showing ads (including those ads owned or served up by Google) on websites that are not compliant. This feature will be turned on by default on desktop and mobile versions of Chrome. Given that Chrome is the most popular browser, with more than 1 billion users, every business needs to re-evaluate the type of ads they put on their site — starting today. Why the switch?There are a variety of reasons for this massive switch in how Google identifies and evaluates intrusive ads. First, we are moving more and more to a mobile-first world. Companies vying for potential customers are trying to improve the mobile user experience — and Google encourages that. Secondly, studies show that consumers do not like intrusive and obnoxious ads. When providing search engine results, Google’s mission is to give users a list of websites that provide great information and a great experience. Intrusive ads on websites can frustrate users and make them leave offending sites more quickly. A high bounce rate signals to Google that the site either didn’t provide the information the consumer was looking for or didn’t provide a good user experience. When Google sees that a website has high bounce rates, that can negatively impact how that site ranks on Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs). Ad guidelines for businessesTo help businesses understand which ads they should keep on their website and which ads are annoying visitors, Google has created a new tool called the Google Ad Experience Report. Google defines an ad experience as the combination of site layout and behavior, as well as the content and ads that your users are exposed to. This tool gives website owners a clear look at how the Better Ads Standards apply to their web pages. It even gives you screen shots and videos of the annoying ad experiences on your website so you can find and fix them. Users and owners of websites that are verified on Search Console can review the Ad Experience Report. After you get your website connected to the Ad Experience Report, you can choose to view either the Desktop or Mobile version of the report. If your website hasn’t been reviewed by Google, you will see “Not Reviewed” in the Status section: If this is the case for your site, a Google representative in the Ad Experience Report help forum asks that you be patient: “The Ad Experience Report is focused on covering as many domains as possible and our coverage will ramp up during the year. While there isn’t a way to request a review and we can’t provide timelines for when your site will be reviewed, new sites are getting reviewed every day.” If a sample of your site has been reviewed by Google, you’ll see either a “Passing,” “Warning” or “Failing” notice. The meaning of your review statusYou’ll see one of the following statuses at the top of the Report:
Note: Google does not look at every page of your site; they look at sample pages and report on the ad experience they find. What do you think of Google ad blocking?What do you think? Have you noticed any sites that have changed the type of pop-up ads they have? Are you planning to change the type of ads you put on your site? Do you see offending sites with obnoxious ads? We’d love to hear your thoughts — please share them with Search Engine Land on Twitter or post on our Facebook Page. The post Google hates obnoxious pop-up ads: Here’s why you need to look at the ads on your site appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2vlAopR This article was co-authored with my colleague at Go Fish Digital, Samantha Hughes. Working at an agency that does a large amount of online reputation and crisis management, brand protection is always top of mind. I’ve written about how autocomplete is your brand’s true first impression, and that is still very much the case. What comes up when people search on your brand name also sheds light on your company’s reputation — even when those results aren’t from your own site. If you aren’t actively working on what ranks for your brand name, you leave yourself exposed to potential damage from:
As Benjamin Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It is much better to spend time proactively preventing one of the situations above, rather than reacting to it after the fact. And the prevention isn’t all that difficult. If you can create some strong properties that can rank alongside your own domain, you can build a proverbial “wall” that would help suppress negative content from surfacing on page one for your brand name. Before undertaking the SEO tactics to get that “wall” of content to rank, though, you have to have the right content available to work with. When working with clients, we always start by identifying existing pages that could rank well. These should be highly targeted (brand name in the URL, title and so on), have good domain authority, and ideally already rank on page two or three. After that, though, we often turn to creating new content to rank. This new content, combined with what already exists, gives us a lot of bricks to build that strong wall. The following are some common, and not-so-common, options for creating content that can rank well for your brand name. 1. CrunchbaseCreating a profile on Crunchbase is super-easy, and your profile there has the potential to rank really well. The fact that Crunchbase has been around for over a decade and has domain authority of 89, according to Moz, means that Google tends to trust content on the site. Profiles on Crunchbase can be a simple or as rich as you’d like them to be. We encourage our clients to use every category possible, filling out as much information and making it a really useful profile for people actually researching the company. An example of one of the categories is “News,” which allows businesses to add news articles/publications to their profile. As new articles are posted about your brand, we recommend you add them here, which will keep the page updated with fresh content, as well as providing a backlink (albeit no-followed) to that new article. An example of Crunchbase ranking on page one for a brand name is for Fatwallet, pictured below. Their profile could use some expanding, as it really only highlights the “News” and “Competitor” categories, but even so, it ranks well for a pretty popular internet brand name. 2. RedditMarketing on Reddit is a minefield, but when done right, it can be a huge branding win. However, what most people don’t realize is that it can help with online reputation management (ORM) as well. Cooler brands with large fan bases can have dedicated, highly-active subreddits where loyalists interact and share relevant content. Outlier Clothing, makers of high-end everyday wear, have such a community, whose digital home is on the r/Outlier subreddit, which ranks #2 in Google when you search “Outlier Clothing.” If you have a community of people who love your services or products, and that community overlaps with Reddit’s demographic, studying what Outlier did would be wise, as it could also be a smart play for your brand. 3. IdeaMenschIdeaMensch is a simple but brilliantly effective site that every entrepreneur and executive can, and should, use to their advantage. The execution here is straightforward: Everyone is welcome to answer the same set of 16 interview questions. The questions and answers are then published on their website, along with a great head shot, bio, and links to your other web properties. There is currently a backlog of interviews waiting to publish, so we always spring for the $30 expedited publishing option. The company name is typically included in the title of the interview, which is one of the reasons the site can be very powerful. You can have an executive or founder of an organization do an interview, and, if you pair that with other ORM strategies, that interview can rank really well for branded search. Here is an example from a stock photo company, Colorstock, which has an interview with their co-founder and CEO ranking in position two for their brand name. Also notice their Crunchbase profile a few spots below. 4. VimeoDon’t let YouTube’s video dominance steer you away from Vimeo. Although often overlooked, the platform boasts over 100 million users. Vimeo is a different type of video site, and, when optimized for a brand name, it can hit page one for branded searches. RVCA, a California-based clothing company, is very active with their Vimeo account. They host 541 videos and have 28.9K followers on the platform, which helps their profile rank #5 in Google for a search of “RVCA.” As you will find with most social profiles, the more engagement and real activity you have on it, the more likely it is to rank for your brand. 5. Branded jobs websitesMany big companies will take the time to create separate subdomains and domains to highlight their career opportunities. Often this is done due to technical limitations of the CMS on the main site, but a nice added benefit is that these sites open up new ORM potential. For ORM, when creating a microsite, we typically recommend using a completely new domain rather than a subdomain. The reason is that most times, Google will treat a subdomain just like any other page on the root domain (although you can see in the Chevron example in #6 that this isn’t always the case) –whereas a whole new domain is treated separately and can get pulled into the SERPs to defensively occupy another position. CVS and Macy’s are great examples of companies that utilize these unique domains to take up a position within their search results. 6. Other microsite optionsCreating a separate jobs/careers domain isn’t the only option companies have for building unique microsites on their own domains (although it is the most common). We’ve helped clients create dedicated websites for scholarships, charitable arms and foundations, photography, specific products and more. The key for this strategy to be successful is that there actually has to be a need or interest in the microsite. Just creating “stuff” to fill the search results doesn’t work anymore; the microsite you create should be logical and useful. You can see this strategy put to good use (whether intentionally or not) in Chevron’s search results. They actually have three microsites on page one for their brand name. The different sites make logical sense, as they are very different lines of business, so the strategy is logical from a business standpoint, and it pays off by keeping negative content about Chevron off page one. Final thoughtsThose are some of our favorite sites and types of content to work with to help improve the search results for your brand name. Other sites, like Wikipedia, will rank really well but open you up to a whole new type of risk. Because of that, we prefer options like those above, where you retain most of the control, and the likelihood of the content turning negative is pretty low. Using these types of content, plus strong interlinking and backlinking strategies, you can build that protective wall that’ll help prevent negative content from surfacing. The post 6 web properties you can use to protect your branded search results (with real examples) appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2vDbZr0
Imagine this: You live in a world where storefronts aren’t a guaranteed commodity. Sure, you have a store full of goods. And you’re paying rent to the landlord. But periodically and unexplainably the store just disappears. It might be minutes, it might be hours. But anybody who was inside is suddenly standing on the street in bewilderment among more bewildered people who were about to enter the store. It sounds like a weird dream or a parallel universe, but it’s just the internet. Downtime is the scourge of the internet (right up there with all kinds of cyber attacks and
via ShoeMoney http://ift.tt/2xGbD4g Google released their AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) framework nearly two years ago, and even though Google noted at their recent I/O event that more than 900,000 domains have adopted the framework, that’s just a small fraction (.075 percent) of the 1.2 billion websites on the internet. Given Google’s emphasis on the coming mobile-first index and its continuing full court press to get webmasters far and wide to implement AMP for the sites they work on, we’re interested in understanding how the Search Engine Land audience is approaching AMP adoption. We’ve put together a brief survey — 10 quick questions, will take you about three minutes tops — and invite you to participate. We’re looking for feedback on whether and why you or your clients have or have not adopted AMP for your sites. We’re also interested in knowing whether or not you or your clients are using AMP landing pages and AMP ads. We’ll be looking at the responses and discussing the trends that emerge from the initial data on our “Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): Is faster better?” webinar next week — and we invite you to join us for that as well! The post Take the Search Engine Land AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) survey appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2wDg03s Google announced in the Local Guides Forum that they now are rolling out support to upload videos to Google Maps local listings on Android devices. The help document explains the feature is currently only available to Android users. Google wrote, “To add videos, you must use an Android device. To remove videos, you must use an Android device or a computer.” You can add videos from three different areas:
Meg from Google announced this first to the Google Local Guides who earn points when they add videos or photos to local listings. Meg from Google wrote:
Here is a clip of what it looks like to add videos: Hat tip to Mike Blumenthal for spotting this. The post Google Maps local listings can now have videos uploaded appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2giYevA |
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