Join more than one thousand search marketers next week to discover actionable tactics that will drive more traffic, leads, and sales: Attend SMX online, December 8-9, for just $249! Your All Access pass unlocks 45+ tactic-rich sessions programmed by the Search Engine Land experts you know and trust, covering crucial topics like…
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Snapchat puts the “Spotlight” on top Snaps, will pay creatorsSnapchat has launched Spotlight to feature the best Snaps in a new feed aimed squarely at countering rival TikTok. Creators whose videos are selected can “earn a share of more than $1 million that we’re distributing to creators every day!,” said the company. Creators can submit their videos to Spotlight. They must be at least 16 years old to be eligible for revenue sharing. Spotlight is first rolling out in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and France. Why we care. Spotlight’s launch came as TikTok announced Charli D’amelio became the first creator to gain 100 million followers on the platform. Unlike TikTok, creator discovery has never been an integral feature of Snapchat. Spotlight presents a big shift in Snapchat’s approach. Spotlight has a very TikTok feel, with the ability to swipe up through videos in the feed. Paying users to make and promote their content on the app could help Snapchat attract and keep creators investing their time on the platform rather. Facebook partners with BBB on retail ads policingFacebook has established a new partnership with the Better Business Bureau National Programs’ National Advertising Division (NAD), the investigative division tasked with addressing disputes regarding truth and accuracy in advertising. NAD will now be able “to directly share with Facebook the outcomes of cases related to specific ad campaigns faster.” The BBB and Facebook have also launched a “Shop Safe, Shop Smart” campaign that will run through December on Facebook, Instagram and other social media channels. The campaign is aimed at helping consumers spot, avoid and report online scams. Why we care. Trust and safety will be particularly crucial for Facebook to continue to grow its social commerce business. The NAD agreement should help bolster Facebook’s efforts to police advertising on its platforms. “This will allow our enforcement teams to take action on ads reported to us that violate our policies, while helping to encourage more ethical practices among advertisers and across the digital advertising industry. Snapchat launches ad campaign for its TikTok rival SpotlightAlong with the announcement last week, Snapchat began promoting its new Spotlight feed on Twitter. Aimed squarely at TikTok, Snapchat’s Spotlight promoted posts highlight the curation of “the best of Snapchat” for users and the potential monetary reward for creators whose videos are chosen. TikTok also is no stranger to advertising on Twitter. Why we care. Snapchat is investing heavily in Spotlight to draw creator and user engagement in the face of TikTok’s rapid growth. The strategy is to pay creators whose Spotlight videos catch on. Any user can submit videos for Spotlight consideration, regardless of following, for a chance at a share of the $1 million daily lottery. The post Social Shorts: Snapchat’s TikTok rival is here, Facebook teams with BBB for ad reviews appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2Jpp7N8 Last month, we asked some industry experts whether economic uncertainty or increased comfort with online shopping would be the headline for this holiday season. It looks like we know the answer. As online shopping soared, in-person store visits fell by over 50% compared with 2019. In October, Taylor Schreiner, Director of Digital Insights at Adobe, told us in an interview: “It’s very hard to predict with precision what’s going to happen. The biggest question in my mind is, how bad is the personal employment and disposable income situation going to become?” On Black Friday, in a release, he said: “We are seeing strong growth as consumers continue to move shopping from offline to online this year. New consoles, phones, smart devices and TVs that are traditional Black Friday purchases are sharing online shopping cart space this year with unorthodox Black Friday purchases such as groceries, clothes and alcohol, that would previously have been purchased in-store.” The data in this article is derived from Adobe’s analysis of around one trillion visits to U.S. websites. A Thanksgiving record. Thanksgiving Day this year saw an increase of over 20% YoY in online sales, hitting a record consumer spend of over $5 billion — and almost half those transactions were conducted on smartphones, another record. The data also shows a strongly increased conversion rate for retailers offering curbside pickup for online purchases. This should be seen against a background of increased difficulties in offering swift and inexpensive shipping. Read more about how supply chain and shipping impacts CX here. More of the same on Black Friday. The day after Thanksgiving saw records smashed too, with an almost identical YoY increase in online sales (21/6%). Consumers spent some $9 billion, making it the second largest online spending day in U.S. history, with 40% of spending coming through smartphones. One statistic held big promise for Small Business Saturday: on Friday, small businesses saw sales increase well over 500% compared with a typical day in October, success which continued with revenue growth of almost 300% on Saturday, based on the same comparison. How is Cyber Monday looking? Adobe predicts that today will be the largest online shopping day in U.S. history, with consumers spending between $10.8 billion and $12.7 billion. Why we care? It looks like mass consumer adoption of online shopping has thrived in the continuing, and likely worsening, health and economic crises. These figures underline the wisdom of those brands that invested heavily in the e-commerce experience this year, as well as those brands that launched new e-commerce initiatives. Unfortunately, the figures are also consistent with a K-shaped recovery, in which increased spending by some consumers does not reflect prosperity across the population. Here’s our look back at a long, strange year in digital marketing.
This story first appeared on MarTech Today. The post Online shopping hits new records over the holiday weekend appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3lngIaj In part one of my interview with Elie Orgel, the director of marketing at Rosenblum Law Firm, we discussed how to get links by leveraging data sources. Here, in part two, we move to how to build really good and useful and unique content with those data sources. There are many online databases, databases that Google cannot index, that have troves of amazing data. You can use these data sources to build out unique and useful content that has a good shot at ranking in the search results. If you can leverage that data and show it to users in a way that make sense and is useful to them, Google will often want to rank it. Elie also said when building out a site, it is important to show your expertise in your niche area of expertise. Write the most comprehensive pieces of content on the topic and then expand from there. You can learn more about Elie Orgel on LinkedIn or ElieOrgel.com. He gives some very useful and practical content advice in this interview: If you’re a search professional interested in appearing on Barry’s vlog, you can fill out this form on Search Engine Roundtable; he’s currently looking to do socially distant, outside interviews in the NY/NJ tri-state area. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel by clicking here. The post Video: Elie Orgel on leveraging data for unique content appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/33u496K In an increasingly digital world, video is becoming the new norm for visual storytelling. It’s no surprise, given that video is a highly visual and effective medium for communicating with a brand’s audience. Going beyond static images, videos use sound and movement to create a compelling message, making it an integral part of any brand’s online marketing strategy. According to Databox, almost 60% of marketers said video ads tend to drive more engagement than images. To create online experiences that resonate with customers, every business should consider emerging video technologies that mirror the in-person experience, such as 3D and 360-degree videos that we highlighted in our last article. These immersive tools will build strong customer engagement that push the boundaries of the digital experience. However, the key to using these tools effectively is to first get back to the basics and understand all of the fundamental strategies that can improve a brand’s video visual storytelling – one that reaches the right audience and generates strong ROI. Segment audiences for a personalized connectionCreating great video content is wasted if the wrong audience is watching it. As with anything, personalized communication that targets the right consumer will lead to the strongest results. Accenture’s study reveals that 83% of consumers are willing to share their data to create a more personalized experience. It’s clear that consumers desire their favorite brands to truly understand them and their preferences. Since one-to-one video personalization is not always possible, marketers can simply create one-to-small group outreach that segments customer data into specific categories, whether it be age, gender, location or behavior. A new restaurant opening in a New York neighborhood can target consumers who live in that specific region. A retailer with a new outdoor clothing line can segment their audience to target customers who have bought hiking gear in the past or have searched for camping items. These grouped segments can also inform the video’s message and storyboard, creating meaningful interactions that consumers will resonate with. Use AI to boost efficiencyManaging video assets for each segment and campaign can take hours of manual work. Delivering video content in today’s competitive world demands an intelligent approach that provides speed and performance. This is where AI steps in to boost efficiency and make it easier than ever for organizations to create and distribute videos, all at scale. With AI, teams can dynamically format, crop and resize video content, live crop to ensure the main subject is always the focus of the clip, automatically transcribe audio to produce subtitles, and generate short previews for visitors to click through and view more. This technology can also streamline workflows through AI-based auto-tagging, structured metadata and advanced search for real-time collaboration and on-the-fly content changes. By taking the complexity out of managing videos with AI, companies can be more efficient with video creation and distribution and focus on delivering more engaging visual experiences that convert. Measure video performance with analyticsTo determine success, brands must measure their video campaigns to evaluate what’s working and what’s not. Each data point will help inform the on-going creative and marketing strategy, ultimately improving video ROI. To start, marketers can evaluate the following key metrics:
Based on the results, brands can easily pivot their video content and distribution strategy. Over time, these metrics should be updated and refined as marketers gain a better experience and understanding of the different components of video storytelling. With measurable goals, brands can constantly track what is happening to the video content and continuously improve and optimize those metrics with a sound strategy. Brands can win with personalized, high-performance videosThe power of video visual storytelling cannot be underestimated. As we’ve seen from the pandemic, consumers have quickly adapted to all things video, making that medium even more central to a brand’s online marketing strategy in the coming years. Now more than ever, brands must understand where their audience is and create immersive and engaging videos that resonate. Implementing these three main pillars creates a strong foundation for delivering the great video storytelling that consumers crave. Once these are established, marketers can move towards new video trends that will take their video content to the next level. In the end, the winners are those brands that deliver more personalized, high-performance videos to customers across the buyer journey. The post Be a digital marketing winner with these 3 powerful video storytelling strategies appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2VhJePZ One of the cornerstones of powerful writing is the use of concrete details that can tell your story for you.... The post How to ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ for More Persuasive Copy appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger https://ift.tt/33pOQMn The post 20201130 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2Jomonk The post 20201125 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/33eFUK0 I score poorly on every SEO writing tool out there. My headers, sentences and paragraphs are all too long. My voice is too passive. The tools are unanimous, my writing for SEO needs to change. I must be a terrible writer… but wait, what does any of that have to do with writing? To quote Lord Helmet from Spaceballs, “Absolutely nothing!” Yet, if you asked most SEOs they would tell you that the key to good SEO content is structure, structure, and even more structure. I’m here to tell you why I think this mindset is dangerous, detrimental, and debilitating for creating strong content. Let the eye-rolling begin. What is the ‘structured mindset’?What I’m calling the ‘structured mindset’ is really nothing new. It’s the notion that content must be formatted to incredible lengths in order to achieve search engine success. It’s the idea that for search engines to understand our content, they need an obscene amount of structured formatting. I’m talking about the overuse of headers, tables, bullet and numbered lists, snackable paragraphs, and of course… structured data itself. It’s the notion that good content is structured content. And that is just not true. How a piece of content is structured does play into content quality. Structure, however, is not content quality per se. It’s merely an element. More than that, it’s not a universal element and this is where I really have a bone to pick with SEOs. The ‘structured mindset’ almost assumes that every piece of content needs large amounts of structured formatting. And that my friends, is a dangerous game to play. Why the structured mindset is dangerous for content and SEOCan you imagine a grad student handing in a thesis that utilized what SEOs consider best writing practices? It’s absurd. Why is that so obviously absurd, but the notion that overusing structure can be detrimental to web content probably has most of you rolling your eyes? In my opinion, it’s because we’ve lost the notion of what ‘content’ or more specifically ‘web content’ is. I get the feeling that in our minds, all web content looks something like this: That’s a great piece of copy… for a very specific purpose. It’s certainly not Faulkner nor should it be. For the purpose of driving sales, you don’t want the prose of Shakespeare. What you see here is great. For the record, our notion of ‘blog content’ is not much better: I mean just look at it. What a thing of beauty! Wonderful use of headers, short snackable paragraphs perfect for any sort of SERP snippet. Let’s ignore the fact that it probably reads like every other piece of fluff out there on the topic and ask, does this work for everything? Can you use the same structured and snackable format for content that’s a bit more complex than generic nutrition tips? What if Einstein, Freud, or Feynman had written in the same format? It would clearly take away from the ability to convey complex topical matters in an effective way. It’s why grad students don’t use ‘the SEO format’ for their thesis. The problem with the ‘structured mindset’ and the notion that as much structure as possible is a good idea, is that it pigeon-holes content. Google’s not wrong when they say “write naturally.” Nor are they being superficial. Writing naturally means that the concerns of the content and its audience outweigh everything else. By the way, this is the basis for creating strong content. Writing naturally is doing what is needed to ensure that the content is created in a way that maximizes its scope and ability to be received by the intended audience. Sometimes that’s going to be a large amount of page structure. Sometimes it’s not. There’s a reason why successive long-form paragraphs uninhibited by headers is a literary form. It’s not because writers who do it are horrible at their craft. It’s because in order to convey nuance and layered depth – and for the sake of the continuance of the concept – you need paragraphs that are longer than one sentence. Doing so conveys abstract information… abstractly. Which is what you want in such cases. Applying one content format to all content clearly doesn’t make sense. Yet, when it comes to thinking about content from the lens of SEO, that’s pretty much exactly what we do. And that’s the danger in relying on these SEO writing scores too heavily. It’s the danger in thinking that Featured Snippet optimization is stoically formulaic and that one formula applies to all Featured Snippets. The danger in the ‘structured content’ mindset is that it tends to coerce how content looks and feels in cases where said structure is not equally applicable as it is in cases of ‘typical’ web content. It means creating content that misses the mark when it comes to both user intent – and in this author’s opinion – search engines as well. (I personally think Google profiles content and knows for certain kinds of topics/queries a certain type of content construct is more/less appropriate). But doesn’t Google need structure?Well, isn’t “structure” needed when looking to secure Featured Snippets? No. Let me be perfectly clear, I am not against highly structured content. I think it helps the search engines more easily understand the content and use fewer resources when doing so. I think we should structure content as much as is reasonably possible. My point is, just as you wouldn’t have an H2 followed by a line of content, then another H2, and then another single line of content (yep, that’s not a good idea), so too you should not over structure in certain instances. That said, I think we overestimate Google’s ‘need’ or even desire for structure when pulling content into a Featured Snippet. Again, I think that has a lot to do with our ‘content associations’ (i.e., what we think content looks like). If I could be so bold, when we see a Featured Snippet like this: We generally think it leads to a page that looks like this: These kinds of Featured Snippets help reinforce a notion of what web content is. It’s a notion that is simply not true. Not all web content is meant to convert. Not all web content is sales content. Not all web content is informational content that supports a transaction. I already know what you’re going to say, “Sure, not all content is related to a transaction, we do know what blog content is!” True, but I have a suspicion that we think that a blog produces a Featured Snippet that looks like this: Which leads to content that looks like this: My assertion is that there are plenty of Featured Snippets that looks like this: But that comes from a page that looks like this: Notice, there is hardly any structure on the page outside of the title and a header. The paragraphs are quite long and tedious, etc. However, that makes total sense for the content here. It’s a very heady and complex topic and should not get the typical “header and a bit of content” treatment. Google, clearly agrees. The ‘structured content’ mindset in relation to Google’s Search inertiaWhat bothers me about the proposition that a high degree of content structure is needed for Featured Snippet acquisition is that it ignores Google’s ‘inertia’. Let me ask this: is Google putting BERT in contact with nearly every English query so that it has to rely on page structure for understanding or so that it doesn’t have to? When Google talks about Passages and says, “We’ve recently made a breakthrough in ranking and are now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the pages” is the “breakthrough” here a continual reliance on structure for the understanding of content? What sort of breakthrough is that? All roads lead to Google being better able to understand content written naturally by having tools that allow it to better understand the content that’s less structured. Yet, the notion that we can or might soon be able to let up on the ‘doubling-down’ of structure doesn’t seem to be a welcome one. To me, that’s a bit surprising. Google can do some pretty advanced things with unstructured content. If we take them at their word, they’ve made ‘breakthroughs’ here without us adding more and more structure to content. Meaning, to hear the notion that elements like Passages means more content structure is the way to go, ignores that Google already made the breakthrough to create Passages with the current level of content structure out there. At a minimum, having to extensively rely on page structure to understand content is not where Google wants to go. The advancement that Google seems to be throwing so much weight behind is not in relying more on page structure. Rather, it’s being able to do so where that structure is not present and/or where it’s not applicable to the content in question. So why not ‘skate towards the puck’ to whatever extent is feasible for you? Let me throw an even crazier idea out there. What if your over-optimizing page structure was exactly what Google isn’t looking for in some cases? What if Google knows that certain types of content don’t lend themselves to being overly structured? What would happen in such a scenario if Google came across your incredible use of page structure? I have no evidence for or against that notion. But it is interesting to consider when you take some of what Google has said about the way it looks at content along with the advancements in contextual understanding they’ve made into consideration. Why I don’t care about SEO writing metricsComing full circle let’s talk about SEO writing metrics again. What is the one thing all of these SEO writing metrics have in common? They all have nothing to do with actual readability. I always do well with the classic readability scores (though it’s hard to nail them all down due to the way the various metrics are structured). Isn’t that weird? Shouldn’t that tell us something? Yes, it should. It says, what’s actually readable and what’s SEO ‘readable’ are not synonymous at all. They have nothing to do with each other. As Google gets better and better at understanding content it is going to be more important to focus on real readability metrics and not something fabricated by your favorite SEO tool. I’m done. You can stop rolling your eyes at me now. The post The problem with the ‘structured content’ mindset appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/37mP0Wn Google this week began testing showing multiple contextual links within a single featured snippet result. In short, a featured snippet would have not just a single link to the publisher that Google used for this content, but would augment that featured snippet to provide links on phrases that Google feels needs more explanation. The catch is, those links would not link to the place Google grabbed the featured snippet from, but to other web sites. What it looks like. Brodie Clark spotted this in action earlier this week and posted about it on Twitter. I was able to replicate it and here is a high resolution screen shot of this in action: How it works. When you hover your mouse cursor over the dotted lines in the featured snippet, Google will overlay content from a third-party site. If you click on that dotted line or overlay, Google will take you to that third-party site, not the site Google uses for the featured snippet result. Here is a video from Brodie Clark of it in action: Google confirmed this as a test. A Google spokesperson confirmed with Search Engine Land that this is indeed something the company is testing. Google told us this is still a small experiment and the example we showed the company was not triggering the result in an ideal fashion. Google promises to continue to experiment and refine this feature. Google’s goal is to help searchers understand jargon or technical terms they might not fully understand, by giving them this additional context without having to leave the page. But again, they can leave the page, by clicking on it, if they want to. The problem. When featured snippets first launched, Google was called out as being a scraper site for stealing content from hard working publishers. Google did adapt the results over time but initially said publishers will deal with it. But truth is, most SEOs I know would prefer to have the featured snippet over a normal snippet, as they tend to drive more traffic that the normal snippets below it. But this depends and you need to test it. Now, in this case, you win the featured snippet and you are super excited. But now, Google is overlaying additional links, to sites that the publisher of this featured snippet did not link to in the source, but rather to other parties. Who knows, maybe Google even links to a competitor of yours. You wrote this content, Google is adding links on this content to other sites that are not yours. This can, and likely will, result in less clicks to your site. Yes, this is useful to the searcher but this is your content, not Google’s. Does Google have a right to add additional links on your content that does not go to your site? Google will keep testing. As I said above, Google said it is a small experiment. This may never really fully launch and if it does launch, it might launch in a different form. So hopefully, if it does launch, Google will do it in a way that not just helps searchers, but also helps the source of the featured snippet – the publisher. Web stories in desktop search results. The other part here is that this snippet is not from any specific publisher. This is automatically created using Google’s AI system to build web stories. So Google took content from around the web, put together this web story and the company is using its own web story as a featured snippet. Will Google eventually just do away with content on the web and build and link to its own content? That strategy cannot work in the long run, so why tease it? The web story leads to a mobile user interface – and Google has confirmed with us isn’t a great experience on desktop and the company look into what the most appropriate improvements might be for this feature. If you want to see where this featured snippet goes, it goes to https://www.google.com/search/static/gs/m016kjs.html. Why we care. In this form, Google is doing two things that can hurt publishers. First, Google is taking publisher’s featured snippets and adding links to sites that are not yours – links you did not add. Second, Google is using their own AI to build these web stories and sourcing them as some featured snippets. Google’s AI builds this content based on numerous sources of content on the web, possibly partially from your own site. Are you getting credit? The final aspect is that the web stories experience is really mobile centric and it feels awkward on desktop. The post Google tests multiple contextual links in featured snippets appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2UYAk9Y |
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