Microsoft Clarity, a free product to help site owners better understand visitor behavior so that they can improve their user experiences, is out of beta and now generally available, the company announced Wednesday. First launched as a closed beta in 2018, Microsoft Clarity provides site owners with visual heatmaps that illustrate user engagement, individual session replays, a dashboard to help them get an overall understanding of user interactions and filters to drill down on various types of interactions. The dashboard. The Microsoft Clarity dashboard provides an overview of how many users were clicking on non-existent links, the number of users that scrolled up and down on a page in search of something they couldn’t easily locate, how much time the average user spends navigating your site and so on. Two types of heatmaps: clickmaps and scrollmaps. Clickmaps can help point out which content on your page visitors are interacting with the most. Conversely, scrollmaps can tell you whether visitors are actually seeing the content you want them to see. Session playbacks. The ability to view recordings of individual sessions allows site owners and designers to examine user behavior as it occurred. This may also help identify edge cases and inform better site design decisions. Filtering mechanisms. In addition to the typical filters (timeframe, browser, OS, country, etc.), Microsoft Clarity also uses machine learning to identify “rage clicks,” “dead clicks,” and “excessive clicking” across the dashboard, session recordings and heatmaps. “Rage clicks” are when users repeatedly click on a section of the page, presumably because they think there’s a hyperlink there when there actually isn’t. This may help distinguish parts of a page that are counterintuitive for users. Why we care. While attracting visitors to your site is the primary objective for SEOs, that traffic isn’t going to help you meet business objectives if users can’t find what they’re looking for. Being able to identify which sections of your crucial pages are turning users away and which sections are performing well can help you improve your user experience, which can also lead to more conversions. For example, using heatmap and scrollmap data to inform your site’s design can help to ensure that your high-value content is front and center for your users. Similarly, “rage click” information can enable you to make more intuitive pages. And, this data can be provided to stakeholders to justify design decisions. Clarity is designed to have a low impact on your page load times, but you’ll want to test this to ensure that any additional load times aren’t a significant factor for your users. The post Microsoft Clarity, the company’s tool for visualizing user experience, is out of beta appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/37S3Tl8
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Roku is the world’s most popular connected-TV platform with almost 40 million active accounts. This number is expected to climb even higher, which will also boost the ad revenue Roku channel owners collect per annum. Statistical trends, effectiveness and the simplicity of doing business with Roku are the main drivers that attract content distributors to the platform — and advertisers follow. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Creating a channel isn’t usually enough to get things up and running. Some channel owners tend to skip the hardest part — the promotion — and rely on organic growth or appearing in Roku’s highlights. However, this strategy is inherently ineffective. Of course, channels eventually gain an audience if they’re captivating and original content is regularly uploaded. But whether this rate of growth would satisfy business goals is a whole other discussion. Promoting a channel is a complicated subject, with potential pitfalls and hazards, that requires attention to detail. Still, it’s not rocket science. In this article, we’ll explain what it takes to successfully run a Roku channel. To promote something, you need to create something first. So before we get to channel promotion, let’s first examine the two most common ways of establishing your own Roku channel. Default solution: Direct Publisher from RokuAs any self-respecting CTV platform would, Roku has its own tools to develop apps from scratch. Firstly, they see it as their responsibility to provide content distributors with functionality to operate app development. And secondly, one of Roku’s main objectives is to make this process easier so they can attract quality content creators along with their audiences. Direct Publisher is a standalone tool designed specifically for content creators. It is meant to facilitate channel configuration and publishing processes so that regular users with minimal expertise can set everything up on their own. However, it still requires some technical knowledge and developers’ assistance to get things going the right way. Before you can finally enjoy the benefits of a dedicated application, you’d have to deal with the following:
Resort to custom channel developmentJust as it should be with complicated digital fields, there are professionals and dedicated companies that are happy to help with whatever troubles you might encounter for a fair price. This means that it’s possible to outsource all these responsibilities to professional Roku channel-makers. Although it would require a lot of time to ensure the right layout and function, this method is a no-brainer for clients, but a more expensive one, compared with the Direct Publisher from Roku. A custom-made app is more likely to fit precise specifications if you have any. Plus, it allows developers to add extra features that are otherwise unavailable through Direct Publisher publication. If your aim is to grow big, you’d have to go with this method since the default tools are limited. Take a look at the Netflix or Spotify apps. Those wouldn’t be able to perform without custom engineering. At the same time, full application development from scratch requires hiring an agency or developer. This, in turn, implies developer fees, as well as maintenance and hosting expenses. Custom development normally takes months to complete and there’s always a risk of underperformance from third-party contractors. How to make your channel performAs is widely acknowledged, making a good product is only 30% of what determines success, and perhaps 10% can be attributed to luck. The other 60% is how you sell it. Just like any other product on the market, Roku apps only perform when wisely promoted. As mentioned above, it’s unrealistic to just create the channel and expect huge revenue from it right from the start. You either develop a marketing strategy on your own or assign outside professionals to do it. One way or another, the content has to be promoted, especially at the onset. Here are a few ways of doing that.
General advice on managing a CTV/OTT app
To summarize, there is no longer a question of whether content creators should set up their individual Roku channels. The question is how to do it in the most efficient way. From our perspective, new or small channels should first trust the task to professionals from Allroll or consider using free promotional options before reaching the right traffic flow. At that point, it is the right time to partner with Roku to get the most out of their Self-Serve Promotions tool. Channel owners must be proactive to achieve desirable performance. There’s a ton of promotional techniques, including free activities done through social networking, emailing or cross-promotion. But the most efficient way, undoubtedly, involves targeted advertising. The post How to kickstart your channel on Roku and stand out: A comprehensive guide appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3e23Vbk Once you’ve cleaned up your content consumption habits, there’s another important step to take that I didn’t get into last... The post Killer-Poet Study Guide for Transformational Learning appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger https://ift.tt/3jwO3id Taken in totality, Google’s recent announcements on its expanding use of natural language understanding algorithms represent a major evolution in how it determines what content gets surfaced in the search results. In turn, these algorithms will impact how we approach content and optimization. Ranking passages in the search results. Google is rolling out passage-based indexing, a change that enables it to identify individual passages on a page and process them as possibly being the most relevant for a given query — even if they aren’t part of the main theme of the page. (Note that Google doesn’t technically index passages separately.) The company expects that this will apply to 7% of search queries across all languages when it’s fully rolled out. BERT goes from 10% to nearly 100% of all queries. BERT is a neural network-based technique for natural language pre-training that Google and Bing use to better discern the context of words. It now powers almost every English-language query on Google search — a dramatic increase from one in 10 queries when Google first announced the use of BERT last October. This wider application of BERT should improve Google’s understanding of content and search intent. You can learn more about what BERT means for language processing in search by reading our resources FAQ: All about the BERT algorithm in Google search and A deep dive into BERT: How BERT launched a rocket into natural language understanding. Misspelling improvements. One in ten search queries are misspelled, according to Google. To improve the search experience for those queries, the company is also applying advancements in language understanding to better model edge cases in spelling errors, such as when context may be required to identify a misspelling or in cases where words are drastically misspelled. For SEOs who may have been attempting to optimize for misspellings, this change, which is expected to roll out by the end of this month, means that your efforts are better spent elsewhere. The implications for SEOs and the direction of Google searchMore freedom to focus on audiences, not search crawlers. The technology used to power passage indexation enables Google to identify pages that have one individual section that matches a query particularly well, even if the rest of the page is slightly less relevant. “If anything, these updates move us toward a world where we can focus more on users and not worry as much about bots, from a content and ranking perspective,” said Dr. Pete Meyers, marketing scientist at Moz, adding that making your site friendly for GoogleBot to crawl it will still be important from a technical SEO perspective. “As Google rolled out Featured Snippets and became more focused on topical authority, there was a movement toward much more focused content,” Meyers said. Search engines’ preference for topical authority and focused content may have cornered SEOs into a mindset in which users and search engines exist on equal footing as priorities when creating content. “If the algorithm can understand the relevance of passages, we can hopefully relax a bit about this and not go overboard,” he said, “We don’t need a page for every question a visitor might ask, for example.” The flexibility to move away from organizing content for search engines should afford SEOs more freedom to instead create content that matches the searcher’s intent, in the form that makes the most sense for the subject matter and the audience, whether that is long-form or laser-focused. What’s good, what’s bad and what to watch out for. Some may interpret the way Google is presenting passage indexing as another milestone of the zero-click search trend. “The better display of passage-related information on Google SERPs means the probability of users clicking on the search result would reduce,” said Kaushal Thakkar, founder and managing director of 2020 Search Engine Land Award-winning agency INFIDIGIT, “Since the passage listed will provide additional information to the users on the SERP itself, not requiring them to visit the source page.” However, the overall trend of increasing query volume each year means that, for many businesses, any decrease in traffic may go unnoticed, Thakkar added. “As an SEO, I’d pay more attention to search impressions data in Search Console,” said Hamlet Batista, CEO of RankSense, recommending that SEOs also monitor their clickthrough rates, engagement and the quality of their traffic as these algorithms impact search results. Unfortunately, at this time there isn’t a specific report in Google Search Console showing traffic from passage indexation, but you may see a rise in page impressions if those passages start ranking for queries. “I wouldn’t abandon [keyword research], but adapt it to intent research,” he said, adding that the same intent can be expressed using various keywords. Google’s expectation is that only 7% of queries will be improved by passage indexation, which means that keyword research will remain an important part of SEO, at least for the foreseeable future. “Glass-half-full SEOs see this as people searching more as [search] engines become more useful,” Batista said, noting a potentially positive outcome of these algorithm updates. In addition to potentially greater search volume, these updates may also lead to higher quality traffic as results would presumably be more relevant to users. Looking to the future. These advancements also speak to the shortcomings of search engines in their current state, as well as the direction that Google is taking in order to address them. “First of all, [passage indexation] illustrates one of the big challenges with search, which is the vast array of types of information that people might be looking for,” said Eric Enge, general manager at Perficient Digital, “Many times this is information that is so specific, yet we already see Google reporting that it impacts 7% of all search queries. Chances are, as this algorithm gets refined that 7% number will go up significantly.” “In addition, this highlights the challenges we all face as SEOs (and digital marketers),” Enge said, referring to how businesses must create a broad range of content to answer users’ questions and address their needs, which are often more complex than we initially anticipate. If search engines continue to prioritize focused content the way they have been, then providing a complete user experience while aiming for high visibility in the search results may result in tradeoffs. For example, it might be necessary to create a large amount of single-keyword-optimized pages to address your users’ various questions while still adhering to search engines’ preferences for focused content. This may result in creating pages about very similar topics or an excess of content and pages that are hard to maintain and difficult for users to navigate, ultimately hindering the experience you were trying to improve in the first place. If Google can continue to advance its natural language understanding, then it’ll be better equipped to gauge relevance, so SEOs won’t have to approach content in such a rigid manner. Google’s recent, and future, applications of natural language processing and AI will be aimed at removing those tradeoffs so that it can serve relevant results, no matter how obscure a query might be or where on a site that information lives. “This is more confirmation that Google is working hard to provide users with any and all the information that they want,” Enge said, “As publishers of websites, it’s incumbent on us to do the same.” The post What passage indexing and natural language processing mean for the future of SEO appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3oqhqWW “There’s no place like home for the holidays,” rings truer than ever this year. Due to the pandemic, consumers are avoiding large crowds in-store and instead, opting to shop online to complete their holiday shopping. From the comfort of their own homes, shoppers can safely browse, purchase and deliver gifts for their loved ones. In fact, Deloitte predicts that holiday e-commerce sales will surge by 25% to 35% this season, amounting to between $182 billion and $196 billion in sales. Brands with an e-commerce presence have a big opportunity to engage with the rising number of online consumers and take a piece of the pie. To grab market share in an uber-competitive environment, they must invest in the right digital tools to create an engaging online customer experience. Here are a few simple ways brands can enhance their e-commerce sites to engage with customers this holiday season and beyond. Rockin’ around the product viewsWith consumers avoiding stores this holiday season, it’ll become more important than ever for retailers to provide an accurate and detailed account of the products online. Since shoppers aren’t able to touch, feel, taste or smell the products, it’s imperative that what’s displayed on the website gives them an in-person sense of what they can expect when they receive their order. To do this, brands can take advantage of two main product view tools. Spinning product views In a physical store, shoppers can pick up an item and look at every angle of a product. Retailers can replicate this experience by adding smooth spinning 360-degree product views, allowing viewers to turn the item with their fingers or mouse. This can be done through static spin set imagery or interactive 360-degree videos. (Here’s how.) Because they’re able to virtually turn over each item on-screen, shoppers can be confident of what they’re purchasing, decreasing return rates and increasing customer satisfaction. Zooming capabilities Another way to replicate the brick-and-mortar experience is by offering detailed zooming capabilities that allow customers to get a close-up look at every part of the product. For example, someone shopping for a luxury handbag can zoom in on the clasps, zipper, material and more. A full-size, high-res version of the product image will be key for this. By having a clear picture of all the minute details, detailed zooming can boost the effectiveness of the website and encourage customers to “add to cart.” Shoppable and micro-videos are coming to townWe’ve said it time and time again; video is a powerful and persuasive platform that is easily one of the most effective ways to communicate with consumers. Videos simply capture a message in ways that images can’t achieve, going beyond a still image to a fully captivating story that incorporates features like sound and movement. This holiday season, brands can take video one step further with shoppable videos and micro-videos. Shoppable videos Shoppable videos list products alongside the video in an expandable product bar, enabling visitors to interact with the products and find out more details. This tool adds a more captivating user experience by linking visitors to the relevant pages to make a purchase and adding clickable hotspots that highlight the product’s exact location. Instead of only showing the links when the video stops playing, the links appear throughout the entire video, which brings products to life through interactivity, boosting click-through rates and elevating brand awareness. Micro-videos Consumers have short attention spans, and brands must cut through the noise to get to them. That’s why micro-video content, short five- to 20-second videos, can play a significant role in attracting viewers and swaying an audience. For the video to be responsive, the video should fill the width of the screen while maintaining its original ratio. If done correctly, this short format can create a sweet but mighty opportunity to boost engagement and conversions in just seconds. ‘Tis the season for microbrowsersThinking outside of the actual e-commerce website, there’s also an opportunity to unlock the power of “dark social,” or web traffic generated when people share links through private channels. For example, in the spirit of gift-giving, people are sending their wish lists to family and friends, hoping that what they ask for will appear under the tree. Consumers are likely using private communications apps called microbrowsers, such as Facebook Messenger, Slack and WhatsApp, to send these product links to loved ones. When designing their e-commerce sites, brands must be certain that when a link unfurls into a thumbnail preview, an optimal image or video is displayed. Cloudinary’s 2020 State of Visual Media report found that link previews provide huge engagement opportunities, yet many brands often overlook how their site design might be impacting the generated preview. If brands don’t pay attention to this important prospect, they risk losing valuable peer-to-peer recommendations that convert into sales and reads. Good tidings for brands who bring visual online experiencesIt’s been an unusual year for brands, and it’s hard to predict what comes next. However, one thing we know for sure is that those who create a compelling and immersive e-commerce experience with these tips will certainly win over customers this holiday season. The post 4 ways to make your e-commerce experience engaging and bright appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/37GZf9D The post 20201027 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2HxMt29 It’s no secret that my writing voice is a bit different from my speaking voice. Most notably, I’m a fan... The post Why Writers Quit appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger https://ift.tt/3mvlP99 Ready to explore the advanced nuances of technical SEO? Craving a deeper understanding of Google Ads? Searching for fellow in-house SEOs who understand your particular challenges? SMX workshops were made for you! Attend one of our deep-dive, two-day seminars happening online December 15-16 from 12:00pm – 3:00pm* ET… for just $199. These virtual seminars take place live and are hosted by recognized industry experts who know their stuff and want to help you succeed. Learn something new, connect with fellow marketers, and get your specific search marketing questions answered! Click on a workshop to learn more and secure your seat now!
This is your last chance to train with Brad, Eric, Jessica, and Bruce at SMX 2020… don’t miss out! There are two ways to attend:
What are you waiting for? Register now and save! Psst… Check out the agenda for an exclusive keynote reveal… plus additional speaker announcements from Google, Bing, and more! The post Live, hands-on search marketing workshops… only at SMX appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3e1ariv Small business economic activity represents about 44% of U.S. gross domestic product. This critical business segment has suffered disproportionately from COVID-19’s toll on the economy. Now, as are in the all-important holiday quarter, what’s the current outlook for small businesses (SMBs)? Many pundits and vendors serving the SMB market have been promoting and promising “resilience” for months. A new report from Yelp offers some support for this. But other data argue that challenges for SMBs and, by extension, their marketing providers will persist and may even intensify in the months ahead. Hopeful signs of recoveryYelp’s just-released Economic Average Report (or YEA) focuses on new business openings and reopenings during Q3 in the restaurant and food vertical. The report says that in Q3 new restaurant and food-business openings compared favorably to 2019 (“pre-pandemic levels”), despite the especially difficult circumstances of 2020. That’s quite encouraging and argues a recovery is underway. SMB openings and reopenings across verticalsYelp also identifies the most “resilient” places in the U.S., as measured by growth in new business openings from Q2 to Q3. These were North Dakota, Washington, D.C., Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Wyoming. States with the largest number of business openings overall in Q3 were California, Texas, Florida, New York and Washington. Yelp data reflect that businesses across a range of verticals also reopened in September. They include preschools and childcare centers, gyms, salons, bike repair shops and home services businesses. Financial services also reopened in Q3 (banks, insurance companies, tax services) as did retail stores, according to Yelp. Simultaneously, Yelp observed increased consumer demand in Q3 across many categories as people “return[ed] to their pre-pandemic activities” — for better and for worse. Vulnerable to safety concernsAs COVID cases in many states surge to their highest levels in months, concerned consumers may wind up spending most of their Q4 holiday dollars online and not in stores. Adobe data indicate that e-commerce sales growth has cooled as consumers head back to stores. But, store visitation is dependent on consumer perceptions of safety. Read: What Prime Day signals for 2020 holiday retail Right now, the majority of Americans still don’t feel safe in shopping malls — a surrogate for in-store shopping generally — though trends may vary somewhat by location. Unfortunately, we can’t expect anything significant to change before the end of the year. There are also multiple surveys suggesting that:
According to an early October consumer survey of more than 5,000 U.S. adults from Alignable, 32% of respondents said they would be spending more money at locally owned businesses in Q4. However, the large majority (68%) said they would be spending most of their money online this year (read: Amazon and big box retail). This comes despite a number of surveys from firms like Accenture and McKinsey indicating heightened consumer interest in supporting small businesses and shopping locally. (Attitudes and behavior often diverge.) U.S. Census Bureau survey data from mid-October shows that 75% of SMBs have seen a significant (30.2%) or moderate (44.6%) negative impact from COVID. More specifically, a Q3 SMB survey from Alignable found that “42% of small business owners anticipated revenues [in Q4] below what they needed to stay in business.” That means if Q4 passes them by, vast numbers of SMBs could fail or decide to simply shut their doors in 2021. What SMBs must do now to the meet the Q4 challengeThe internet will be the starting point for most consumer shopping journeys this holiday season, whether they conclude online or offline (BOPIS). That means a fully optimized online presence is critical. SMBs won’t be able to count on foot traffic and in-store browsing as much as in years past. It’s too late to rebuild websites for holiday 2020. But SMBs can still claim and optimize profiles on a few key sites to maximize their online visibility:
All of these sites offer free online presence tools. However, most businesses have yet to take advantage of Nextdoor Business Pages and promotional tools so there are still “early mover” opportunities. Read: Nextdoor emerges as a location marketing destination Google has continued to add more transactional capabilities to GMB and Facebook and Instagram now offer SMB-friendly e-commerce capabilities with Shops and other features. In an ideal world SMB retailers would have their inventory online but, in the absence of that, key products and specials can be promoted through Google Posts. SMBs working with agencies are fortunate and probably in a reasonable position to whether the storm. Those that are not, which is most smaller SMBs, are going to have a much tougher time. They should focus their efforts first and foremost on Google, which dominates local search usage. There’s evidence that a Google-only strategy can succeed, if there isn’t time or bandwidth for other channels and properties. Related:
The post Holiday 2020 is do or die for many SMBs appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/34v920l In the era of technological advancements, many employees have realized that working from home has numerous benefits. While some turn to online gigs on top of their 9–5, others have moved office work to their homes. According to most recent telecommuting statistics, there are 4.7 million telecommuters in the US. […] The post The Biggest Benefits of Working From Home appeared first on Lawrence Tam. via Lawrence Tam https://ift.tt/3e1WeSy |
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