Cover your ears for a second. My wife can sing. I can’t. There, I admitted it. But, we do have one thing in common — we both think we can. Only one of us is right (ahem). In the world of business, we all put out a tune. A vibe. A voice. Customers flock to The post 7 Ways to Coach Writing Clients on Finding Their Remarkable Voices appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger http://ift.tt/2zyiwWY
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Google announced it is launching a new Google Finance experience today that brings many of the finance features directly into Google Search on desktop and mobile. With this launch, Google has dropped the portfolio, the ability to download your portfolio, and historical tables — which we saw coming a couple of months ago. In search, there will be a new tab at the top named “Finance.” When you click on that tab, you will be taken into the new Google Finance. This shows you “performance information about stocks you’ve chosen to follow, recommendations on other stocks to follow based on your interests, related news, market indices, and currencies,” Google said. When this fully rolls out, you will be able to access the “finance” link when you do a search on Google for finance-related information or “Market summary” in the finance section of search, Google explained. You will also be able to see the new Google Finance at google.com/finance. Here is a GIF of it in action: The post Google launches new Google Finance features in search and drops the portfolio feature appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2AbFW85 The post 6 Minutes To Start Your Day appeared first on Matt Morris. via Matt Morris http://ift.tt/2AidvTE 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:
The post SearchCap: Google event schema penalty, knowledge graph local panels & fake reviews appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2na53mo SEO is constantly changing, and what worked well last year may not work at all now. With new technologies and new rules constantly evolving, it’s critical to stay on top of the latest developments. In this webinar, we’ll sit down with two of the industry’s top experts to examine what SEOs need to know about best practices for SEO in 2018. RSVP today for “SEO in 2018: What’s hot, what’s not — a conversation with the experts,” produced by Digital Marketing Depot and sponsored by SMX. Speakers: Eric Enge is President and Founder of Stone Temple Consulting, which was named “Best Large SEO Agency of the Year” at the US Search Awards in 2016. Eric was named “Search Marketer of the Year” by Search Engine Land and “Search Personality of the Year” by the US Search Awards also in 2016. He is co-author of the book “The Art of SEO” and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. Marshall Simmonds, founder of Define Media Group, has worked in search since 1997. He was chief search strategist for About.com from 1999-2011 and spent 2005-2010 overseeing search strategy initiatives for the New York Times Company. As an industry leader, he has consulted with some of the biggest brands online, including Condé Nast, Vimeo, Oprah.com, AARP, ToysRUs, NHL.com, Hewlett-Packard, CBS, National Geographic and many others. The post Don’t forget! RSVP for the ‘SEO in 2018’ webinar. appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2Ae6Wnz Recently, my PPC agency almost declined to take on a new client because the client’s website was so severely outdated. The site looked bad, was difficult to use and didn’t have an easy way to convert prospects. But when we learned that the client was in the process of redesigning this website, we agreed to move forward. This scenario suggests that when clients announce a website redesign, it’s good news for PPC. But is it? Well, yes and no. Yes, because updated websites that work well and inspire trust can help our paid search efforts. But no, because website redesigns can also end up sabotaging paid search programs — at least temporarily. Experience tells us that redesigns rarely run smoothly from a PPC perspective. Inevitably, there will be problems we’ll need to fix. In this article, I’ll walk through what can go wrong with website redesign from the vantage point of PPC professionals. By knowing these problem areas in advance, you and your marketing team can anticipate and avoid some of the most common issues. Where things can go wrong in website redesignsUnfortunately, it’s not unusual for elements and functions that are critical for paid search advertising to get dropped somewhere during the redesign process. We usually see this with phone numbers, trust signals, tracking codes, thank-you pages and forms. 1. Phone numbersSometimes the client’s phone number, which was prominently displayed at the top of every old web page, is absent from new pages. Or, if it’s still present, it’s smaller in size and more difficult to spot. Here’s an example: This image is the top portion of a client’s new webpage. But where did the phone number go? Originally, it had a prominent position at the top of every page. But now, users have to click the “contact us” button to find it. Why force visitors to take this extra step? 2. Trust signalsOther times, the phone number will remain but trust signals are removed. Elements such as testimonials, certification badges and affiliations are either missing or only present on select pages. Why do we care about phone numbers and trust signals as paid search pros? Because they have an important role to play in paid search. Making it more difficult for prospects to call you or removing elements that give prospects the confidence to do business with you will negatively impact your paid search efforts. Additionally, we care about these elements being present on every page because we can’t assume that new prospects will start on your home page. They might start on a product page, service page or FAQs page. So we need phone numbers and trust signals to be present on those pages, too. 3. Tracking codesTracking codes return data that allow us to know exactly what’s going on with an account. We use these data to direct and refine our paid search efforts. Without data from tracking codes, we’re essentially running accounts blindfolded. Yes, we can still make decisions based on our experience and knowledge, but those decisions will always be our best guesses. With tracking data, we can make decisions based on what’s actually happening. Which codes are we most concerned about? At least these four:
I can see how these codes might get removed or corrupted in the course of redesigning a website. But at the same time, the impact of losing these codes is very real. The sooner the problem is spotted, the sooner it can be corrected. But often, it’s not caught until the marketing team looks at its data and realizes something is off. 4. Thank-you pagesUnfortunately, it’s not unusual for website redesigns to do away with thank-you pages. These are pages that are returned to users after a contact form is submitted, confirming that the message has been sent. Instead, visitors get a single thank-you line that appears on the contact page. It often looks something like this: There are a few problems with this approach. First, it may leave visitors wondering whether their message went through. That single line of text is easy to miss. Second, it’s a lost opportunity! Thank-you pages are a great place to put additional content to further engage visitors. Third, we often use thank-you pages as a place to put tracking code. With no thank-you page, we have to resort to event tracking, which isn’t as simple as adding codes to thank-you pages (and can sometimes lead to errors). 5. FormsSome website redesigns do away with contact forms entirely and replace them with email address links. This isn’t good. Using email links seems like an outdated approach. Technically, we can still track these links via event tracking. But this can get tricky, and we sometimes run into technical issues. When website redesign problems get worseEven when things go bad with website redesigns, we can usually get back on track relatively quickly if we’re aware of the issues and the web design team is responsive. But sometimes, things can go from bad to worse. In some cases, it can take weeks — or even months — to fix problems. And sometimes we can’t get the changes we need, so we end up developing workaround solutions. For example, remember the client that replaced their contact forms with email address links? For technical reasons, we weren’t able to track when visitors clicked the link, and we couldn’t convince the web development team to put the forms back in place. We ended up developing landing pages for each page that contained an email address. Sometimes, problems are ongoing. For example, we have one client where the developer does a backend refresh regularly. Every single time, our tracking code gets stripped from the web pages. Needless to say, this gets old real fast. And sometimes, we see website design issues on the horizon. For example, one of our PPC clients redesigned their site last month. When we saw the new site, we were surprised to see it was HTTP and not HTTPS. We raised this issue with the designer, pointing to the announcement that Chrome will start adding “not secure” warnings to non-HTTPS pages. The designer’s response? “We’ve scheduled that for later.” Oh boy. In the meantime, we’re holding our breath. Because nothing will shoot down a paid search program faster than a website with “not secure” messaging. So what’s the solution to these problems of website redesign? It’s to give serious consideration to the requirements of paid search as part of website redesign. When I raised this question with Stephen Merriman at cre8d Design, our Group Twenty Seven go-to web designer, he responded with the following: One of the steps I do just before migrating a completed website is to hunt through the existing site for any tracking codes and such to make sure nothing important gets removed. I also double-check with the client to see if there is anything they haven’t mentioned so we don’t experience issues. Which, in my opinion, is exactly the right response! The post How your website redesign can sabotage your paid search efforts appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2ABCfZW Google is warning publishers and webmasters not to use event markup in a way that is misleading to searchers, or else Google will remove the ability for your whole website to show rich snippets in its search results. Google said it has recently updated and clarified the guidelines around the use of event markup after they received a lot of feedback around the misuse of that markup. Specifically, Google is calling out publishers in the coupons/vouchers space as marking up their offers with event markup. “Using Event markup to describe something that is not an event creates a bad user experience, by triggering a rich result for something that will happen at a particular time, despite no actual event being present,” Google wrote. Here is an example of such misleading rich snippets: If you do this, Google said it “may take manual action in such cases.” A manual action is when a human at Google marks your website as doing something against the Google guidelines. Normally, it results in ranking demotion or delisting but “it can result in structured data markup for the whole site not being used for search results,” Google wrote. If your site gets one of these manual actions, you will find a notification in your Search Console account. From there, you can take corrective action and submit a reconsideration request. Google has been penalizing for spammy structured markup for a few years now, but clearly, Google is going to step up action around event markup spam soon. The post Google warns webmasters not to use misleading event markup appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2ABIiO1 It’s not your imagination — there’s no denying that SEO has become increasingly difficult over the last few years. A recent thread on WebmasterWorld highlighted this fact when a poster lamented the challenges he has faced adapting to changes in the SEO industry, and he said that he was considering leaving the industry entirely. This prompted Barry Schwartz to share a poll collecting feedback on the topic from a wider pool, and I was initially quite surprised to see that a large percentage of respondents shared the same concern as the original poster. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised at all. I can definitely understand the frustration. You build a business based on what you think the rules are, and almost immediately, they seem to change. Isn’t that the nature of every industry, though? Amazon, Uber and Netflix all shook their respective industries in seismic ways. And as that happened, we heard the same cries that things are getting too difficult, that things just aren’t fair, and that people can’t make the same kind of money doing work the same way they used to. But is that really such a bad thing? How change can lead to improvementsChange is good for every industry, especially when it forces everyone to up their game. I’ve been in the digital marketing industry since long before Google dominated search, and I’ve seen a lot of changes to our industry during that time — some good and some bad. I’ve watched search engines rank web pages based on nothing more than crude and easily gameable signals, like meta tags, keyword density and title tags. Later, I watched a clunky algorithm evolve from basic and easy to manipulate into something highly refined and effective. Along the way, I’ve watched many tactics come and go — and wave after wave of SEO practitioners enter, then retreat, from the industry, moving on to what they saw as greener pastures. Maybe you’re brand-new to the industry, so you don’t have much to compare it to. Or maybe, like me and some of the other veterans of the industry, you’ve experienced every iteration of search engine optimization firsthand and have weathered the storms. For example, I remember when link building was as simple as just getting more keyword-rich anchor text links than your competitors, which predictably resulted in the SEO equivalent of a nuclear arms race. Marketers took every opportunity to create links in any way they could. I wasn’t immune to this thinking. In fact, at one point, I had built a massive network consisting of hundreds of websites that published a constant stream of user-generated, spun content, all with the sole purpose of linking to the other websites I owned. This network added no real value and existed solely for the purpose of manipulating organic ranking. I had managed to fly under the radar with this tactic for many years, but eventually, Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithms destroyed it by penalizing websites that published low-quality content and/or participated in manipulative linking schemes. This destroyed both sides of the manipulative linking equation. The fallout was brutal for many SEO practitioners and even worse for their clients, who often didn’t know what tactics were being used on their behalf. Websites that had previously benefited from these tactics now suffered aggressive penalties and were often removed from the search results entirely. Often, link-based penalties lasted for years, even after fixing the issues, which predictably destroyed many businesses. Today, we’re living in an entirely different world. While they’re still being sold, the cheap and easy tactics of the past no longer work. This means that as SEO professionals, we have to work significantly harder than ever before. I know that might sound like a bad thing, but I believe it can help the industry. Much like the housing collapse of 2008, which forced a lot of below-average realtors out of the real estate industry, this newest evolution of the SEO industry will hopefully purge many of the SEO practitioners who are still trying to peddle ineffective and/or dangerous tactics. As the algorithms become more effective at differentiating artificial attempts to manipulate ranking from legitimate ranking signals, and they get better at understanding or even predicting what a searcher needs, we will see a lot of people — people who didn’t belong here in the first place — finally leave the industry. This means only the truly passionate will stick around. SEO isn’t dead, but your tactics might beThere will be a lot more of “the sky is falling” and “SEO is dead” nonsense proclaimed by those who rely on tricks and are incapable of delivering any real value. But those of you who have been in the game for awhile have heard it all before. In fact, we see this collective panic play out nearly every time there is a major update, going as far back as the infamous “Florida” update of 2003. After Panda, we heard a lot of SEOs asking, “How can we possibly compete when we have to hire real writers to write well-written and longer articles?” While some could no longer compete when churning out a bunch of 350-word, poorly written articles each month no longer moved the needle, those who focused on producing lots of unique, thoroughly researched and well-written content reaped massive rewards. Penguin created a similar situation when it destroyed manipulative link building. Once tactics like guest posting at scale, directory submissions and paid links were effectively eliminated, many stopped offering link-building services entirely because earning real links takes a lot of work. Today, we’re approaching a similar situation — the next evolution, if you will — as artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly larger role in Google’s algorithm. SEO practitioners who have relied on clever tricks will be forced to either adapt or exit the industry, while those who focus on producing quality content and earning legitimate links will become the new standard. Does that mean some SEO practitioners will be forced out of the industry? Absolutely. It also means that some SEO agencies will go out of business. And I’m completely fine with all of that because it means that the industry as a whole will be pushed to a higher standard, benefiting professionals in the industry, search engines, searchers, and most importantly, our clients. The post Looking to get out of the SEO business? Good! appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2n93LYV The agenda for our upcoming SMX West show is live and we’ve opened up our “speaking pitch” form for select sessions for the show, taking place on March 13 – 15, 2018 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. To increase the odds of being selected, be sure to read the agenda. Understand what the sessions are about. Ensure that your pitch is on target to the show’s audience and the session. Please also be very specific about what you intend to cover. Also, if you do not see a particular session listed, this is because there are no openings for that session. Use this form to submit your request. PLEASE NOTE: Many sessions have already been filled and are not open for pitches. If a session does not appear on the pitch form, it is closed, even if no speakers are appearing on the agenda yet. As you might guess, interest is high in speaking at Marketing Land conferences. We literally sift through hundreds of submissions to select speakers for the show. Here are some tips that will increase your chances of being selected. Pitch early: Submitting your pitch early gives you a better chance of being selected. Coordinators accept speakers as soon as they identify a pitch that they think best fits the session, just like colleges that use a rolling admissions policy. So pitching early increases the likelihood you’ll be chosen. Use the form: The speaker pitch form (http://ift.tt/1IKDKAf) is the way to ask to speak. There’s helpful information there about how your pitch should be written and what it should contain. Write it yourself and be specific: Lots of pitches come in that are not specific to the session. This is the most effective ways to ensure that your pitch is ignored. And this year, we’re no longer accepting pitches written by anyone other than a proposed speaker. If you’re a thought leader, write the pitch yourself… and make certain that it is 100% focused on the session topic. “Throw your best pitch:” We’re limiting the number of pitches to three per person, so please pitch for the session(s) where you really feel you’ll offer SMX attendees your best. You’ll be notified: Everyone who pitches to speak will be notified by email you are accepted or not. And don’t delay—the pitch forms for each session will close as sessions are filled, with everything closing by December 15. The post Want to speak at SMX West? Here’s how appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2n6uIwh Google has started showing more information about local businesses in some local knowledge panel results. It is implementing this by showing additional tabs of information above the local panel for (a) locations (b) about, and sometimes (c) Google Posts. Here is a screen shot showing a search for [kfc] which brings up locations for nearby KFCs and an “about” tab for knowledge panel information about the chain. Sergey Alakov, who first spotted this, said it “looks like Google started combining knowledge panels and local packs in mobile search results for businesses that have a knowledge panel displayed for their brand name search and local presence in the user’s area.” I cannot consistently bring this up, so it might be Google is testing this feature still or it is currently still rolling out to searchers. The post Google showing knowledge graph data in local panels appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2iWtUpg |
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