For several years, the search term ‘payday loans’ has regularly attracted more than 200,000 searches per month on Google.co.uk. Whether providing loans or generating leads, the payday loans industry has notoriously been big business and at its peak, was estimated to be worth around £2 billion per year. Because of this, the top positions on Google’s SERPs for ‘payday loans’ have been a hugely lucrative and sought-after search term; and subsequently was dominated by SEO professionals using massive manipulation to hack their way to the top of the search results. Until 2013, page one for payday loans barely listed a real payday loan company. Instead, the listings were made up of ‘hacked sites’ including bicycle sales, women’s magazine and frankly, just random domain names that once clicked on redirected to a dubious data capture form.
Introducing the payday loans algorithm With customer data at risk and a mountain of complaints from UK consumers (and similar results in the US), Google reacted and introduced an official “payday loans algorithm” in June 2013. For the search giant to acknowledge a particular search term – demanding its own algorithm and focusing on a micro-industry across the pond – it was certainly out of the ordinary and we are yet to see any other industry treated in the same regard. The payday loan algorithm update was rolled out over a two-month period. The first payday loan update occurred in June 2013, followed by Payday 2.0 on 16 May 2014 and Payday 3.0 which was rolled out shortly thereafter in June 2014. Whilst the first algorithm change was a general clean up, payday loans algorithm 2.0 focused on targeting spammy queries, abusing Google+ accounts, doorway and hacked websites. Payday loans 3.0 was geared towards tackling spamming links including links of low quality, reciprocal links, forums, blog networks and websites which require paid submissions in exchange for a link. Soon after the rollout of Payday 3.0, the search results were essentially cleaned up and have since been a much clearer representation of how rankings for payday loans should be by showing legitimate companies. Those websites that were targeted by changes in the algorithm were subsequently penalized from Google searches, which included dropping 10 pages or even off the face of Google altogether. There were a handful of sites that had previously dominated the SERPs and then ceased to maintain any online real estate including Tide U Over and Red Wallet.
Bringing payday to today The payday loans business took another drastic change following the introduction of FCA regulation in January 2015. Whilst the industry remains lucrative, the number of companies’ active has diminished significantly in the last three years – from 200 lenders to around 40 and originally hundreds of comparison sites to around a dozen. Margins have been hit by the introduction of a price cap, keeping the daily interest at a maximum of 0.8% and tougher regulation on the selling of data – leading to much higher operating costs and barriers to entry. While there have not been any additional releases of the payday loans algorithm, Google is still keeping an eye on it and even implemented a ban on PPC ads for payday loans in 2016. The outcome was far stricter in the US than in the UK where lenders and comparison sites can still show paid ads but are required to show proof of their regulatory license to Google before going live.
How to successfully rank for payday loans in 2018 Fast forward to 2018 and there are 10 legitimate companies ranking in the top 10 for ‘payday loans’ in the organic search on Google.co.uk. Our SEO company has successfully ranked five of the websites that are currently positioned in the top 10 and based on the success we have seen, we have identified some of the main trends below, which seem to be very specific to a payday loans algorithm and differ to the techniques used for ranking for other keywords in loans and insurance.
Direct lenders win over comparison websites: All websites positioned in 1 to 10 are essential providers of payday loans, known as ‘direct lenders’ and not comparison websites. While the main comparison sites in the UK dominate the search results for things like life insurance, car insurance and personal loans, none of these companies come near the top 3 pages for ‘payday loans’ despite all having a landing page to target this keyword. In positions 1 to 20, there is only one comparison website that features all the lenders and we are responsible for their SEO. However, their homepage resembles a more direct lender with a calculator and apply now button versus a comparison table format. Brands win over exact match or partial match domains: There is no website listed in the top 10 that has the word ‘payday’ in their domain, suggesting that Google prefers to see brands over exact match or partial match domains. Compare this to other industries where logbookloans.co.uk ranks first for ‘logbook loans’ and two companies ranking on page one for ‘bridging loans’ that include the main keyword in their domain name. Keeping in line with the brand theme, sites that rank well will have quality traffic from several sources including direct, paid, social and email. To benefit their SEO, the users should have high engagement rates, high average time on site and low bounce rates. This can be hugely beneficial for search rankings but is not an isolating factor. Companies such as Sunny and Lending Stream advertise heavily on TV and will generate good direct traffic as a result, but their lower search rankings do not correlate with enhanced direct traffic. Domain age less relevant: Whilst several industries such as car insurance use the age of the domain as an important ranking factor, this seems to be less relevant for payday loans. Notably, 3 of the top 5 that rank (Cashfloat, Drafty and StepStone Credit) are less than two years old. This could be attributed to accumulating less spam and a history of low-quality links compared to much older domains. Links still win… domains with more links tend to outrank those with fewer links. Interestingly, around 7 of the top 10 seem to have similar domains linking to them, suggesting there are some links that Google clearly values in this industry. However, finding the balance here is key as some of these similar links have a very low DA and spammy link history. Understanding which will work well will be the difference between better search positions or a penalty. Strong user experience: A strong UX making it clear where to apply for a payday loan is proving to be more effective than providing thousands of words explaining what payday loans are. Keeping in line with user intent, successful websites are making use of calculators, images and videos to drive the application and not provide thin content. Room for alternatives: Two sites currently in the top 5 for payday loans are offering alternatives (StepStone Credit and Drafty.) This could highlight Google’s moral obligation to offer a variety of products and not just high-cost short-term loans, thus alluding to whether they are in fact manually organizing the SERPs themselves.
To conclude, the usual SEO techniques of brand building, link acquisition and good user experience still apply to rank well in a modern payday loans algorithm. However, there is no doubt that payday loans in 2018 still requires a very specific approach; which can be achieved by looking at the sites that rank successfully and getting a feel of what content they write and what links they get. In an ideal scenario, we should see MoneyAdviceService ranking top of the tree since it has the most authority and has numerous links from every single payday loans company in the UK – but as they sit on page 3 and have for some time, this is proof that the beast of ranking for payday loans surely has a mind of its own. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/22/a-review-of-the-payday-loans-algorithm-in-2018/
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Choosing a commerce platform is one of the most crucial and important decisions you’ll make in the early life of your business. There are a number of factors to consider before purchasing a commerce platform – in fact, the choices are endless. But what’s really important? Here are some of the key considerations. The product catalogueYour product catalogue is technically a reservoir for every item you sell. Its role is to promote the items you want to push and simultaneously help your customers find the items they are looking for with ease. A poorly constructed product catalogue can be rigid and uncompromising, especially if the product attributes you want to store don’t naturally align with the definitions set in your commerce application. Some commerce platforms charge based on the number of products on your platform. Depending on the requirements of the ecommerce marketplace, you can choose accordingly. In the case of a multivendor ecommerce marketplace, the product list can easily grow to more than 10,000. It is therefore important to choose an ecommerce platform that doesn’t put a limitation on the number of products a marketplace can have. The good news is that there are a number of product catalogue software that offer user-friendly tools and outstanding features to provide high-level functionality to entice your customers. Volusion, Big Commerce, Shopio and Shopify are a small selection of the platforms that offer a comprehensive solution, while keeping all aspects of your website up-to-date. Identifying how you intend to organize your catalogue will have a dramatic impact on how your ecommerce website is developed – and on how well it converts visitors to customers. ContentProducts are extremely important with regard to how successful your online store can be. When you have a quality product with a customer demand, the content you include on your website and your interaction with customers will play a huge role in your success. According to Rapt Media, 63% of customers said they’d think more positively of a brand if it gave them content that was more valuable, interesting or relevant. Product photos and descriptions ought to be well written and highly informative; consumers won’t buy something that they cannot clearly see or understand. This is Sales 101 and something that everyone should be aware of when it comes to content on your website. Taking your content further can really help your business to grow. Consider including a blog page on your online store with posts relating to the niche or industry in which you are selling. This shows customers that you’re an expert on the topic and invested in what you are selling, thereby building trust. Do you have video or visual presentations as content? Webinars as a sales tool is another alternative. An example of a niche ecommerce solution that specializes in sites for online course merchants is Kajabi. This provides users with email funnel templates and one-click upsells, allowing you to generate sales/leads with one button. Furthermore, the inclusive nature can encourage loyalty from consumers – and repeat purchases. Consider a platform that allows customers to leave comments, ask questions and review your products online. In addition, ensure they can share via social media as 71% of consumers who have had a good social media experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others –essentially creating free advertising for your store. If you decide to use this, then ensure you respond to every question or comment. This will help build lasting relationships with your customers and help grow your brand exponentially. ScalabilityWhen choosing a platform for your business, it is crucial to check its scope for scalability. This ensures that the platform will grow alongside you. Choose an ecommerce platform that not only works best for your platform today, but one that will support your business as it grows. As your platform experiences increasing traffic, it is imperative to ensure your platform can handle your peak traffic, maximum orders and page visits without speed reduction. Will the site perform efficiently through traffic peaks and troughs? Slow internal applications are annoying, but unresponsive customer-facing applications will frustrate your customers, drive them to your competitors, and prove detrimental to your business. An ecommerce platform is only measurable against the way it can handle its peak traffic. As your website popularity increases, it needs to scale with minimal effort so you can avoid incurring disproportionate infrastructure management costs. Choose a platform that you can scale to your business size and that won’t charge outrageous fees for doing so. As a result, you won’t have to pay for features and storage that you’re not using when you first start out. You also want to keep up with higher demands as your business takes off. Mobile readyMobile phone usage is now at an all-time high. Statista believes that in 2017, mobile accounted for 50.3% of all web traffic generated worldwide. With these numbers quickly increasing, retailers should endeavor to create an effective mobile strategy that will reach the masses and convert the clicks into dollars. Having a user-friendly, fast and easy to navigate mobile site will instantly keep your customer interested, which will directly affect your retention rate. With this in mind, users are significantly affected by a slow site performance; only 2% of the top 100 ecommerce sites load in fewer than 4 seconds on smartphones. Ensure that your platform is fully integrated and has an infrastructure that enables you to deploy a mobile-ready site, along with social sharing capabilities to maximize the reach of your business. Having a platform with reliable payment gateways instantly makes your online store functional and profitable. The mode of payment acceptance should be in accordance with the operations of your business. Regardless of whether you require a payment gateway and merchant account – or a payment service provider to handle your payments – your platform should integrate with the payment method. Whichever experience the commerce platform offers, it should be smooth, reliable and secure to boost customer trust and retention in your site. The ecommerce platform you select should be compatible with the payment gateway of your online store, or it may result in a technical glitch or unacceptability. PayPal, Stripe, and Amazon Payments are just some of the best payment gateway platforms that make payments for online transactions easy. Online shoppers are not just looking at the product and price; they expect a seamless experience on the platform while making any purchase. Reports and analyticsEcommerce platforms house an abundance of information about your customers, their behaviors and preferences. However, businesses tend to find it hard to figure out how to leverage the business value this data holds. The platform you choose should come with a variety of features to assist marketers, with the most important tool being powerful analytics and a report generation system. Marketers rely on analytical information driven by ecommerce – specific key performance indicators (KPIs) to stay informed regarding sales, strategy and methods to improve sales or traffic. Payment gatewaysReporting and analytics deliver insights that act as a catalyst in your routine decision making. Popular commerce platforms like Magento will not only help you with marketing automation, but will also provide out-of-the-box integrations with Google Analytics (GA). GA commerce tracking is a powerful engine for ecommerce sites delivering information including transactions, time to purchase and typical sales cycle. You should choose a commerce platform that allows you to track the activities of visitors, know where a visitor lost interest while checking out, and conduct tests using two different inputs to improve services. Taking these points into consideration will help you make an informed decision when purchasing a commerce platform. After careful consideration, you’ll be well on your way to opening an online store and joining the wonderful world of ecommerce.
Pius Boachie is the founder of DigitiMatic, an inbound marketing agency. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/22/technical-considerations-before-purchasing-a-commerce-platform/ Working at Search Engine Watch isn’t all about studying, understanding, and reporting on Google. With more than 9% of web users searching on other engines, it’s important that we occasionally take the time to check out what they are using and what those platforms are up to. Read on for my hotlist of 12 alternatives to ‘The Big G’. As you’ll see, there’s been some changes in the alternative search world since my colleague Christopher Ratcliff wrote his comprehensive listicle back in early 2014. Since then, some have dropped off the map and others have been usurped in usefulness by Google’s increasingly rich functionality, and are not featured here. Globally, Bing is still the second biggest search engine after Google and it also still powers the third biggest, Yahoo!. With its clean white background, blue links, and green URLs, it sure looks familiar although it also features a few things that sets it apart. For example its ‘Rewards’ scheme gives you points when you shop or search via the service that can then be used to go towards buying things like apps and movies.
Bing also has a ‘My Saves’ function acting as a bookmark tool. It also boasts some prominent – and handy – filters for results by date, language, and region. If you have an interest in digital in Asia, you need to know about Baidu. Baidu is the search engine of choice for around 77% of China’s internet market. Though its dominance can be seen to fluctuate – thanks to fierce competition from other domestic rivals such as Shenma and Haosou. Like Bing, you have to look closely at Baidu to see many differences between it and Google (other than it being in Mandarin). It is similar aesthetically, has a reliance on ads, and is also making moves to incorporate more rich features in the SERPs. On the flipside though, the service is noted for its censorship of certain images and blocking of pro-democracy websites – to the extent that might seem quite extreme to searchers who are used to Google. Yandex is to Russia as Baidu is to China. More than 53% of Russian search engine users favour Yandex. It also has a presence in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Belarus. The search engine is available in English and Cyrillic and incorporates social logins. And if users choose to use Yandex Disk – its cloud storage service – it is easy to search your files right from the search bar. As more of our computing moves into the cloud, users are becoming increasingly aware of the environmental impact of day to day digital activities. Googling is – perhaps surprisingly for such a quick innocuous activity – a formidable Co2 producer. Launched in 2009, Ecosia is a Co2-neutral alternative. With every search made, the social business uses the revenue generated to go towards its tree-planting scheme. On average, 45 searches are needed to make a single tree. Much of the engine itself is powered by Bing. We have covered DuckDuckGo extensively in the past and the engine is still going strong. Its USP is simple: it doesn’t collect, store, or pass on any personal information about its users. It’s a logical choice if you want a search experience which is free from ad targeting and if potential data storage about your search activities makes you feel uneasy. While the service doesn’t target users with ads or suggestions based on search history, it is not free from ads altogether. The ads it does deliver are syndicated via Bing. Like DuckDuckGo, StartPage was founded with strict user Privacy as its USP. Again, it doesn’t track and store your data, and it doesn’t target ads based on your behaviors. The engine is powered by Google and does use ads (delivered by Google) to generate revenue. Each search result is also delivered with a ‘Proxy’ option which allows users to browse the following site anonymously. I’ve included Twitter because I think its search functionality can be useful in certain situations. For instance, during a breaking news event, tweets from people in the vicinity are likely to be the quickest up-to-the-second updates of what’s going on before initial news sites and Google’s algorithms catch up. You can see this ‘First For News’ authority being something the service is increasingly exploring. Any search on Twitter will lead to a filtered ‘News’ tab initially, but users can easily click over to the ‘Latest’ tab to see updates come in from anyone using that search term second by second. CC Search is a great tool for finding copyright-free content. Whether you want an image to use on a blog post, a piece of music to add to a video, or you just want a piece of media to remix – it is a really h engine. The site works by drawing in search results from existing platforms – such as Flickr, or Soundcloud – which have been tagged as Creative Commons material. Continuing in the spirit of accessible content, Internet Archive (often known by its URL, archive.org) is a vast collection of documented material – including music, books, video, educational texts, and more. It is also home to the endlessly fascinating Wayback Machine, a tool which has been taking snapshots of the internet since the 90s. You are probably all familiar with Wikipedia but there are thousands of other wikis which are an amazing resource on a range of topics – from politics to pop culture. Wiki.com is a handy search engine which draws in content from wikis only if you want community-led encyclopedic know-how about something (aside from Wikipedia). Boardreader is a search engine which pulls in results from forums and message boards. It’s a convenient tool if you’re searching for content written by everyday users about a topic, but you aren’t necessarily familiar enough with the niche to know the best forum or board to visit from the outset. Slideshare, now hosted by LinkedIn, is a great tool for searching documented slideshow presentations, as well as PDFs and eBooks. If you’re tasked with needing to do a presentation yourself, or you need information about a topic that is likely to have seen a presentation made for it in the past, Slideshare is a valuable repository. You can save slides you might need to refer to later and download entire slideshows direct from the platform. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/21/no-need-for-google-12-alternative-search-engines-in-2018/ Journalists are renowned for sniffing out a good story; they instinctively know how to get to the crux of a matter, asking the right sort of questions to get to the truth, and can decipher complicated subject matters succinctly for everyone to understand. Pick up any newspaper or magazine and you’ll find it packed with a wide variety of content with something for everyone; from hard-hitting news investigations to human-interest features, opinion-based columns and picture stories. Print media may be on the decline, but there is a lot that content marketers can learn from this profession. While content that targets a Google algorithm is a good strategy to have, you should also create content that builds and engages with people. Back to the startMy career in journalism began in 1989, when I joined the Bucks Herald as an editorial assistant. One of the first lessons I was taught was how to write attention-grabbing content to grab attention from the very beginning. I had been shadowing a senior reporter and went with her to the local police station to find out what crimes had been committed overnight. We then had to come back to the newsroom to write a series of short, snappy articles – news in brief (NIBs) – to publicize the incidents. I started my first story: “A house in Wendover was broken into on Wednesday night and £300 worth of jewelry was stolen.” But this was quickly edited to read: “Heartless thieves stole £300 worth of jewelry from a house in Wendover on Wednesday night.” The senior reporter explained that although my attempt was factually correct, starting with ‘A house’ was not anywhere near as powerful as starting with ‘Heartless thieves’. This was an invaluable lesson and one that holds true for content marketers: it is vital to hook a reader in from the beginning using emotive language that makes them want to read on. Keep it succinctWhen writing a news article, it’s paramount to summarize the story in the first few paragraphs, giving the reader all the facts quickly. The who, what, where, when and how must be covered in the first two to three paragraphs, while subsequent paragraphs will add more color and detail to the story. Just look at The Sun newspaper, for example; love it or hate it, they give readers all the information they need/want in around 5 minutes.
The content we consume daily – particularly on social media – is the same; it’s attention-grabbing, quick and easy to understand. We often enjoy this content on-the-go because we don’t always have time to read swathes of copy, or are more frequently consuming content on mobile devices. However, sometimes short and sweet just isn’t enough. Once you have a person hooked, you may find they want/need more, which is when in-depth content can be invaluable. Getting into the detailIn newspapers, feature articles are included in every edition. These tend to spread over two pages, with the words broken up by pictures, fact boxes and graphs. One of the best ways to keep a reader engaged with a longer piece of content is using quotes. Depending on the subject matter, you can include quotes from thought leaders in a given field or bring a story to life with the power of the human interest angle. Of course, it depends on the subject matter, but ultimately people love reading about people and will engage with long-form content that educates, informs or entertains. This is important to remember when creating long-form content for marketing; while you may be writing to capture a particular keyword of with SEO in mind, you can still be creative. Every piece of content should keep ‘the audience’ in mind. Ask yourself:
Google rewards sites with a low bounce rate and it’s clear why: if people are visiting your site for longer, you have given them content that is not only relevant to their search, but also resonates with them in some way. There is nothing worse than clicking on a meta title and description that you think answers your question, only to find the content beneath it is irrelevant. A picture is worth a thousand wordsIn 2001, I became editor of the Boston Standard in Lincolnshire. Boston is a busy market town with a small port, and agriculture is one of the main industries. Consequently, it attracts a high volume of workers from outside the UK and as a result, tensions between communities ran high. In 2004, when England were defeated by France in the European football championship, this tension spilled onto the streets with more than 100 people rioting. We covered this story in detail, interviewing the police, shopkeepers and witnesses, but we wiped out the front page using just one image to capture the carnage and destruction – better than words ever could. This ethos can also be applied to content marketing efforts; sometimes an image, video or graphic can be a powerful tool to bring a written story to life. Nowhere is this more evident than on social media, and particularly Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Snapchat, which rely on images and video to spread a message, including light-hearted memes and funny videos. What makes a good story?Understanding what makes a good story is an essential part of being a journalist. When working as a features editor, the news editor and I would meet every morning with the editor and deputy editor to discuss a list of potential stories we thought were worth pursuing and agree where they would go in the paper. The basic rule of thumb we followed for coverage and placement was based on how interesting the story was deemed to be, and how many people it affected. Of course, this can be subjective, so when trying to decide whether a content marketing campaign has the potential to go viral, ask yourself the following questions:
Appealing to your audienceThe types of content we included in every newspaper was varied and would, we hoped, appeal to a variety of people – a process that content marketers could also to adopt. However, in order to do this properly, it is paramount to understand who you are targeting, the sort of content they enjoy and where you can find them online. It is easy for a newspaper as the journalists know they have to produce content that appeals to everyone in the community they serve, but in content marketing it can be slightly more restrictive. The brand you’re working for should have plenty of audience data, but there are also a wide variety of tools available online to help you flesh out your personas and give them a personality to target your content with. Where to find story inspirationDespite all these tips and tricks, they can only really be put to good use when you have something to write about. An easy way to continually have content to share is to localize a national story, for example. Content marketers often do the same by blogging or Tweeting about a national story or seasonal event. Often referred to as ‘newsjacking’, this is a powerful tool to promote a brand across the web. One of the best examples I have seen is by the toilet tissue brand, Charmin, using the Oscars to promote the brand: But you must act fast for the greatest impact – sending the tweet after the main event would have had little impact for Charmin. The final wordAs you can see, there are plenty of valuable lessons the digital world can learn from print. It really is simple: people want content that resonates with them. Content that educates or entertains them; something they can share with others to make them look good or make them laugh. Print media may be declining, but the journalistic principles many of us hold dear still ring true. Storytelling is as relevant today as it has ever been; the platforms may have changed, but the delivery remains the same.
from https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/21/insights-into-a-newsroom-learnings-for-content-marketing/ SEO on LinkedIn is too often overlooked, and it’s time you start viewing LinkedIn, just like Google, as a search engine. With access to a whole network of professionals, the opportunities for those who are savvy enough can be endless. LinkedIn is the most popular platform for B2B companies to acquire new clients so being able to optimize your LinkedIn presence has a whole array of potential benefits – both for your personal profile and also for your business. Due to its high domain authority, search engines deliver a lot of results from LinkedIn in the SERPs for certain search terms, particularly those revolving around job roles. This post considers how you can stand out and how to occupy the top spot for your business. Devil in the detailThe first step is to fill out as much of your profile as you possibly can. Don’t be lazy and avoid cutting corners – provide the details which will help to elevate your profile. But don’t just mindlessly fill in all the fields; make sure to be descriptive, engaging and use carefully chosen words. Keep it descriptive but to the point through revealing the important information but leave a tad of intrigue. Use bullet points or lists to make it more digestible and encouraging to read. Remember to upload a clear, professional picture. If you still have your graduation picture, it gives the wrong impression and suggests you are a university grad, not a respected professional with three years of valuable experience under your belt. Right or wrong, consciously or subconsciously, people will inevitably base their first impressions on your picture. Give it a little thought and don’t just publish a pixelated picture from that bar the other night. As a final picture tip, make sure it is named appropriately to increase your chances of appearing in image searches. Think in keywordsJust like you target certain keywords when optimizing a website, you need to do the same when optimizing your LinkedIn and give considerable thought to user intent when approaching the SEO of a website. As with optimizing a website, be sure not to overdo keywords. It’ll be so obvious to anyone reading if you’ve stuffed the keyword ‘content marketing expert’ into one paragraph seven times. Remember to be engaging and genuinely interesting. Getting people to find you is only the first step – what’s going to make them ‘convert’, or hit you up with a snazzy job offer / potential new business? Make use of the summary section to further amplify your keywords. This is likely the first section people will read on your profile, so it goes without saying that you need to make it absolutely flipping fantastic. Self-promotion is great, but put the focus on how you help others. People aren’t visiting your profile to see you congratulate yourself; the chances are that they want something and you need to demonstrate how you’re the right person to speak with. Customize your URLIf you’ve never previously thought about this, then just take a second to glance at the URL for your LinkedIn profile. A vague reference to your name is not helpful for anyone, particularly not for search engines. Take a second to update your custom URL to something that includes your full name. If you’ve got a painfully common name like myself then you may need to be a bit creative, but keep it professional and as clear as possible. An easy way of doing this is to think whether you’d be happy seeing that URL on your business card. Network as much as is socially acceptableLinkedIn is, at the end of day, an online space for networking. So don’t just make your profile pretty – you’ve got to use it. In a very similar way to building links in SEO, if you haven’t got any connections on LinkedIn then you’re far less likely to appear in the search results. Networking is arguably one of the most important points here. LinkedIn’s search algorithm is based first and foremost on showing people with similar connections and groups. You’ve probably noticed that the results which are prioritized when you search on LinkedIn are those with 1st, 2nd or even 3rd level connections to you. It, therefore, follows that the more people you are connected with on LinkedIn, the more likely you are to show up in the search results. It’s a social network after all, so be social, and network. Engagement and interactionYou’ve got opinions, so share them. You’ve got expert knowledge, so divulge it. You’ve got a voice, so use it. Like any social network, it’s absolutely imperative to engage with people if you want to make the most out of it. Although this may not directly increase your chances of being found in the search results, it does increase your exposure to other people on LinkedIn. And one thing always leads to another. Participate in groupsThis is an extension of the points about engaging and networking. Groups are an excellent way of finding like-minded people in your industry. Spend some time identifying the groups most relevant to your expertise and profession. It also makes you more visible, as joining a group with thousands of people will suddenly make you more relevant to them in terms of the search results. You’ve got nothing to lose and you’ll probably gain a lot along the way. Collect endorsementsNobody seems to know whether or not a higher number of endorsements or recommendations helps your profile appear higher in the search results. Either way, it’s certainly worth trying to collect as many of these as possible. Just like buying a product based on positive reviews, it’s the same theory for hiring humans. Endorsements and recommendations imbue a level of confidence and trust in the authority and credentials of a given person or business. Just being really good at what you do, sitting back and waiting for the endorsements to come in probably isn’t going to cut it. Take a proactive approach and start endorsing or recommending people in your network. Don’t expect to get anything back as standard, but with any luck, you’ll get at least some people to return the favor. Sharing is caringLet’s admit it, one of the primary functions of LinkedIn is shameless self-promotion. This is a place where you can proudly share your work, show it off to the world, and create open discussions. Just remember that sharing is caring but oversharing is overbearing. As long as you are sharing content and updates which are genuinely interesting and provide value to people, then you’re golden. Don’t approach it as a way to stroke your ego – that’s a recipe for disaster – rather, it’s about collaborating on ideas and sharing value. In short, it’ a great way of interacting with your network and reaching new people. This leads to new connections and a wider network and, a better chance at ranking highly. Publish posts on LinkedInThis is different to sharing articles you’ve written elsewhere. Just click on ‘Write an article’ underneath the status update and lay down your best words. Pushing out content as part of an SEO strategy helps boost your authority and ramp up those rankings and the same goes for LinkedIn. Publish some brilliant articles and you’ll be hailed as the go-to industry expert in no time at all. Actually, it does take a bit of time but it’s absolutely worth doing if you are looking to build your LinkedIn profile and enhance your personal brand. Writing optimized content for LinkedIn is no different to writing content as part of an SEO campaign with all the same rules applying. You can also repurpose content you’ve written elsewhere – just don’t duplicate content because we all know how Google feels about that. For example, if you have an article on your blog that’s no longer doing particularly well, it’s worth including a synopsis of the post as an article on LinkedIn and then link to the full article on your blog. This can also work vice versa. Generate links to your profileIf you’re even a little bit familiar with the world of digital marketing then you’ll understand the importance of backlinks. It’s no different when you’re trying to rank your LinkedIn profile higher. Always be aware of trying to gain backlinks to your LinkedIn profile at every possible opportunity. If you’ve got a blog, be sure to link back to your profile. Add a link to your email signature. Promote your LinkedIn profile across other social media accounts. Guest posting is another great way to build on those links, as it’s very common practice to include social links in your author bio. You’ll then find a snowball effect – the more links you have, the more people will see your profile, the more people will engage with you, the higher your profile will rank and the more links you’ll get… you get the idea. Final wordsMany of the above points can be applied to both your personal profile and your business page. Make the most of SEO on LinkedIn and you’ll be able to reach new audiences, generate leads and build on your professional profile. As a final point, don’t forget to make absolutely sure that your LinkedIn public profile is visible and not hidden.
from https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/18/how-to-use-seo-on-linkedin/ Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are booming. In 2017, there was approximately $5.6 billion raised by over 900 ICOs. Almost half of these ICOs were deemed a success. In the first quarter of 2018, $6.3 billion was raised via an ICO. This figure includes the $1.7 billion raised in Telegram’s ICO. These numbers tell us that despite advertising bans and regulatory threats, ICOs are still a big business that is only getting bigger. Naturally, ICO marketing has also become a growing industry. A large number of ICO marketing firms have sprung up which offer a wide range of ICO marketing strategies using conventional and non-conventional marketing channels. Successful ICO marketing takes a broad, multi-faceted approach. However, when it comes to paid marketing and advertising, any ICO marketing agency’s first two choices are Facebook and Google. Pay Per Click (PPC) was an integral part of ICO marketing campaigns in 2017 as they generated consistently strong ROIs – until January this year. Advertising bans and PPC’s continued role in ICO marketing strategiesIn January 2018, Facebook had over 2.2 billion active users when it announced a new advertising policy that banned ICO and cryptocurrency advertisements. Just two months later, LinkedIn and Twitter, with 500 million and 300 million users respectively, followed suit with bans on ICO advertising. At the same time, Google, with approximately 67% of the PPC market, announced that it was updating its ad policies to include not just ICO and cryptocurrency advertisements, but also all content related to these topics. Google stated that it took down over 3.2 billion ads in 2017, as they were found to be in violation of its policies. With the updated ban coming into effect in June, there has been a massive change in the way ICO marketing budgets are being planned and spent. Previously, budgets included advertising on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Now, these advertising budgets are strictly focused on Google AdWords campaigns. No statistics are yet available on how much this refocus has boosted ICOs in general, but you can taste the frenzy in the air as marketers squeeze the last drops from what has proven to be one of the more effective ICO marketing tools. An estimated 40-60% of ICO marketing budgets are currently being spent on Google advertising, but come June, what’s next for PPC and ICO marketing strategies? The increased role of crypto ad networks in PPC campaigns for ICOsPPC campaigns for ICOs is by no means dead because of the Google ban, nor is it the end of the serious ICOs. If any good will come of this ban, it will be that some of the less serious and scam ICOs will be cleared away. One of the biggest winners from the ad bans will be the crypto-specific networks. Whilst crypto-centric ad networks offer fewer publishers compared to traditional ad-networks, they provide more targeted traffic at reasonably low prices. Some of the top crypto advertising networks are as follows: Bitraffic.com – Launched in November 2017, Bitraffic has 2,700 sites in their network. A-ADS.com – One of the first crypto networks, A-ADS.com claims to generate around 142 million ad impressions a day. CoinAd.com – At the top end of prices, CoinAd.com only accepts publishers with an Alexa ranking below 100k and a minimum of 200k daily impressions. Cointraffic.io – Established in 2014 and relatively small, Cointraffic.cio has only 400 publishers and provides good quality sites with targeted traffic. Coinzilla.io – Launched in 2016, Coinzilla boasts 300 million monthly impressions. A problem is emerging and will increase post-June, as every ICO will be fighting over the same banner space. Costs will increase and the top sites will continue to be booked for months in advance. While PPC should still form an essential part of any ICO marketing strategy, the rules have changed and, ICO marketing managers have to alter their way of thinking. The crypto ad networks do offer targeted traffic, however, it isn’t as targeted as Facebook and Google. Expectations will have to be adjusted, along with PPC’s part in ICO marketing plans. In addition, it’s worth bearing in mind that due to the volume of publishers, PPC campaigns on crypto-centric networks aren’t going to get the same amount of impressions and clicks as campaigns run on a traditional ad network. Still, crypto-centric advertising networks should produce a positive ROI if carried out properly. It is important to make sure that the traffic is targeted. As there is an ever-growing choice of publishers and crypto ad networks, ICOs have the ability to run multiple small campaigns on a few different networks in order to compare the results. The importance of SEO in ICO marketing strategiesIt is important to note that while ads are being banned on traditional advertising networks, search engine results are not. This leads to a much more prominent role for SEO. As always, a well-researched and professionally implemented SEO strategy should form the bedrock of any ICO marketing package. SEO is the best long-term and cost-effective strategy for any ICO that is serious enough to think about post-ICO marketing. In addition to the above-mentioned strategies, there are also PR and media outreach, event sponsoring and attendance, and email marketing, all which provide effective marketing channels. There are also other free channels to utilize, including LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, Telegram, and Steemit, as well as Facebook pages and groups. PPC: ICO marketing for the futureIt isn’t just the ad bans that are making headlines in the world of ICO marketing, regulation is the hottest topic in the crypto world right now. The SEC has stepped up their battle against scam ICOs, which can only be a good thing for the ICO industry. However, what could cause a huge impact on most ICOs is whether or not coins will be classed as securities instead of currencies. A few governments have already banned ICO sales in their countries and regulatory authorities around the world are shining their spotlights brightly on ICOs and cryptocurrencies. In the meantime, ICOs will need to optimize every available marketing channel, including PPC. Crypto-centric advertising networks will play an important role in ICO marketing strategies. The networks will most likely offer the same potential ROI as Google and Facebook, but they can also become a profitable method of ICO advertising. It’s best to start small and test out the different networks. Small campaigns spread across a few networks will allow you to compare results before you consider increasing the PPC budget for a particular network. For ICOs, there’s still gold in the PPC hills, you just have to dig a little deeper to find it. For the time being, at least, the popularity of ICOs, as well as the rewards available to those launching them, show no signs of slowing down. The advertising bans mean that ICOs will need to look for other platforms that allow ICO advertising, including Telegram channels, crypto media websites, and crypto review sites. ICO marketing strategies will need to use more content-based marketing to compliment a strong SEO strategy. Articles and videos that share the ICO’s message in a newsworthy and editorial style will play an important part in ICO marketing strategies. PPC will continue to be relevant in ICO marketing strategies. Smarter, out of the box thinking is required, and some good old-fashioned A/B testing of the networks and publishers that allow crypto and ICO advertising.
On Yavin is co-founder and CEO of Cointelligence.
from https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/17/is-ppc-still-an-effective-channel-in-an-ico-marketing-strategy/ I recently moved to a new position at a new company, with a new computer and a new, clean install of Google Chrome. It wasn’t clean for very long, though, as I logged into my Chrome account and watched my address bar shrink as all of my extension icons flooded the right-hand side of the window. I was determined to use this as an opportunity to pare down the extensions that I had accumulated over the years. I didn’t do a great job cutting back. As an SEO, I lean heavily on these time-saving tools. So in the spirit of new beginnings and sharing knowledge, here’s a selection of my favorite Chrome SEO extensions (with a few apps sprinkled in). The basicsThese are the simple extensions I can’t live without, and often use outside of SEO work. Word count toolSEO is content (well, in part), and an important piece of content is length. One of those extensions that I didn’t know I needed until I had it, this basic word count tool makes roughly assessing a page’s content length a cinch. I generally use this in discussion about competitor pages or to quickly assert whether my client’s copywriters are hitting the length benchmarks they need. Site lookupIf I can avoid opening a new tab to search, I will. That’s why so many of these extensions allow me to do things in-page. The ‘Search the current site’ plugin is a tiny tool that essentially auto-completes the ‘site:’ operator in a Google search for you. HunterI’ve been using Hunter (formerly Email Hunter) for years now – and not just for link building (though it’s been essential for that). It’s also great for following up with potential clients or employers when you haven’t been given an email address. MailTesterHunter gets it right a lot of the time, but MailTester can help you ensure the address is correct before you hit send. It’s got its limitations – many servers will block the request – but on the whole it’s a good insurance policy. Link KlipperThere are a number of ways to pull the links from a page, whether it’s a SERP, a directory, or a partner page. Link Klipper’s handy click-and-drag function can help fill in the gaps by selecting a subset of links, or pulling them from tricky-to-isolate groups like dropdown menus. Redirect pathHow did I get here? Ayima’s simple Redirect Path tool lets you see how your browser arrived at a given page. This tool is particularly useful for isolating complicated or broken redirect paths and ensuring link equity is passing properly. AdvancedDepending on the type of SEO you are, you may use one or all of these extensions, or have 15 others that offer similar functionality. Here’s what’s in my rotation right now. MozBarEvery proprietary metric should be taken with a grain of salt, but Moz’s MozBar is still great for quickly assessing a site’s relative quality through its ‘Domain Authority (DA) mode that displays DA in the tool icon without crowding the page with other details (though you can still display those metrics by clicking on the icon). Tip: As a bonus, MozBar allows you to quickly extract results when you’re on a SERP. It’ll only pull the displayed results so change your settings if you need more than 10 sites. NoFollowNoFollow is a simple plugin that highlights nofollow links on the page you’re viewing. You can also set it to check the robots.txt file against the links to indicate any disallowed pathways. Web DeveloperA powerful plugin with a robust suite of tools, Web Developer allows you to quickly disable JavaScript, cookies, CSS, as well as displaying web page info, styling tools, and more. Chances are if you want to modify, block, or load it, Web Developer can help. BuiltWith Technology ProfilerSee at a glance what’s going on in the background with this plugin from BuiltWith. With just a click, you’ll be able to identify tracking, frameworks, content delivery, and a lot more. Used in conjunction with Web Developer, you’ll be able to troubleshoot issues across myriad systems, all in-browser. Ayima Page InsightsOn-page issues plaguing you? Not sure why a particular page is underperforming? Ayima’s Page Insights extension can help you quickly identify issues like multiple H1 tags, alt attributes, and header problems. It can also display HTML elements like title and meta description without having to hunt through the source code. Bonus: Chrome DevToolsOne reason that Chrome is the first thing I install on a new computer is its powerful developer tools that let me dig into the guts of a web page. DevTools may not be easy to learn or master, but learning the ins and outs – like how to view a page as various mobile devices, or manipulate HTML to mock up recommendations – can make life a lot easier for an SEO. Non-specific to SEO (but still helpful)LastPassAs someone who is simultaneously forgetful and terrified of identity theft, I’ve become a LastPass evangelist over the past few years. Store all your passwords in one place, share them temporarily, and generate complex passwords that you don’t have to write down anywhere else. I’m slowly working my way towards only having to remember one password – ever. Google DictionaryDouble-click on a word to bring up its definition in pop-up bubble with a link to read more. Google Dictionary is very helpful when reading technical SEO documents (or Heidegger). Super Simple HighlighterI’ve recently been searching for better ways of keeping track of interesting points within articles. Super Simple Highlighter lets you highlight passages on page and store the URL for later perusing. Nimbus CaptureWindows’ built-in snipping tool is extremely handy, but for more complex capture, you’ll have to use something more robust. Nimbus lets you capture all or part of your screen, a whole web page, select and scroll, and plenty more. You can also record a video – super helpful for demonstrating all of your other thousands of extensions. For the writing of this article, I solicited recommendations from the SEO team at Croud, and as such am currently experimenting with even more extensions – like Keywords Everywhere. Watch this space! Adam Clemence is Senior SEO Manager at Croud from https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/16/top-time-saving-tools-for-seos/ Directory submission is a tactic that has evolved dramatically since it first became known. Firstly, it is no longer referred to as a directory submission, simply because the term has received some negativity over the years. Secondly, the goals have changed: we no longer focus on link acquisition. When you come to think of it, the whole link-building strategy has undergone the same evolution: it has become more integrated, meaning that we now pursue non-link-building tactics while still hoping to get some links anyway. Some of the non-link-building benefits of getting listed that may still result in links include:
Getting listed: the opportunitiesIf you think directories are dead, think again: there are plenty of new and old directories out there that can send you traffic and leads. Here are just a few categories to look into. SaaS and B2B directories
Business directoriesThese come in several types and forms. Some are more traditional (free but with the option of charging you once for premium review): While others charge you a monthly/yearly fee:
Local directoriesThese deserve a separate article (which you can find here). Apart from the ability to send local traffic (from people trying to discover a local service), they are also quite useful for so-called local citation building – in other words, they help search engines associate you with important locations. Getting listed: the smart wayThere are many more useful directories out there that can still drive sales, but choose wisely; in many cases, it’s an investment of some sort. In addition, it’s paramount to stay away from penalized directories. Here are a few tools I use to evaluate whether any directory or platform is worth the investment: Find whether the platform ranks in GoogleDoes Google think a directory is good enough to rank it high in search results? Search positions are the most reliable sign of a site’s health. There are not many sites that will let you see the stats for free, and Serpstat is one of the most affordable. Simply run the domain in Serpstat to quickly see where it ranks and how its rankings are distributed among different search engines. There are also tools to analyze whether the domain is ever featured in Google, which is an important signal of health too. Here is the list of tools you can use. Find whether the platform has any trafficSince creating an alternative traffic source is one of the main goals here, this is vital. There aren’t many reliable ways to evaluate a website’s traffic unless you own it, but these are decent:
Check whether your subcategory is linked to from elsewhereI wouldn’t be an SEO if I paid no attention to backlinks, but in my defense, links are not just a sign of SEO ‘authority’ – they signal quality too; if someone links to it, it must be a good page. I use Ahrefs bulk backlink analysis feature to quickly run a lot of pages and section to choose the best ones. [NB: I only mention directories that have proven worth the investment based on their rankings and traffic.] Have you listed your website in some directories and seen some solid traffic and leads? Share your tips and resources in the comments.
from https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/15/getting-listed-how-to-generate-more-traffic-and-mentions/ Search engine optimization is a trend that won’t be going out of season any time soon; it’s something that every brand should continually focus on. According to Search Engine People, the top result on Google has a 33% chance of getting clicked, meaning that the lower your brand ranks (even on the first page), the more potential traffic you are missing out on. And the reason why other websites are ranking higher than you on Google is that they are making a consistent effort to improve their SEO. Even if you’ve been focused on your site’s SEO for months, there are still some tips and tricks to implement – and that can be done in less than 5 hours – to increase your chance of higher rankings in SERPs. Incorporate your competitor’s easiest keywordsIn 2008, Google lifted the ban on bidding on competitors’ branded keywords, allowing site owners to bid against the competition’s brands – as long as you don’t mention their trademarked name within your ad copy. Bidding on your competitor’s keywords will give your brand traffic that comprises customers specifically looking for a product or service that your brand and your competition offer. Studies have shown that branded keyword phrases are 5 times more likely to convert visitors into leads; therefore, the chances of retention and conversion are very high. To ensure success, use your competitor’s weaknesses to inform your ad copy – particularly if it’s something your brand excels at. Be sure to include eye-catching copy while maintaining keywords used by customers to find both brands. Think about it: the potential customer is specifically searching for a competitor of yours, but it will take something unique and eye-catching to potentially draw them away from the brand they already know exists. Here’s a quick checklist for selecting which keywords to borrow from your competitors:
Optimize the page speed of your mobile siteAs the digital world embraces Google’s mobile-first index, we also continue to move towards a mobile-first consumer marketplace. Now that there is lightning-fast internet connection and 5G already on the horizon, the time has never been better for the growth of mobile audiences. And with some brands still lagging, it’s an excellent opportunity to keep your brand on the front foot. A mobile website that loads at a snail’s pace not only not only has a negative effect on user experience, but also has a negative impact on a site’s search ranking. Mobile page speed matters: more than 50% of Google’s search activity now takes place on mobile devices, and it’s in everyone’s best interest to ensure that those searches happen quickly and conveniently, each and every time. Large images are one of the main culprits of slow page speed for websites, and Duda was built for this very reason. Duda is a mobile-friendly web design platform for agencies to launch mobile-optimized websites in minutes. All images loaded through Duda are automatically resized and compressed, allowing web pages to render in seconds, and meaning you don’t have to worry about how images will be served to different devices. In addition to resizing these images with ImageMagick, the platform also compresses them using a process called lossy compression. Another technique you can use to ensure that images are loaded as quickly as possible is a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN ensures content can be delivered from the best location according to the geolocation of the device that’s calling it. Local SEOWhile global SEO is very important, local SEO should not be ignored. Statistics have shown that 50% of consumers who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a store that same day. If your brand is not ranking for keywords in your local area, your brick and mortar business could be losing out to competitors. While improving SEO takes time, there are some relatively simple steps you can take to begin improving your company’s local SEO. Making your brand visible through a variety of local listings is important to local SEO, so be sure to insert your local keywords into unique descriptions across multiple listings, ensure that your photos are current, and always include your business category. Another step is to actively increase the quantity and quality of links directed to your website, as they have an increasingly impactful effect on its local search engine rankings. Consider giving a presentation to business students at a local college or university, lead a discussion at regional business organization meetings or publish an article online, and use those opportunities to have the associated organizations link to your company’s website. One of the simplest things that can improve your brand’s local SEO is claiming your Google My Business profile. This is a business listing that shows up for local searches, so you need to have a physical location and street address (not a P.O. box) to set up or claim a listing. Optimizing this profile with the category, contact information, images and business hours can give a significant boost to your local SEO. Crawl website for duplicate tags and broken linksDuplicate content issues can drop your brand’s website ranking significantly, so every business should focus on content marketing to attract more traffic to their website. When creating content, you might encounter content duplication issues on your site, particularly if you are using a content management system such as WordPress, which is known to create duplicate pages that affect your SEO. Fortunately, there are a variety of tools that can be used to assess duplicate content issues. Siteliner is one of the better tools available for discovering duplicate content blocks or broken links on a website, and will provide a comprehensive content analysis report for free. Once you’ve found any content issues or linking issues, it is often quite simple to get them fixed. Use 301 redirects to fix duplicate contentIf you moved content from an old URL variation to a new URL, then you can use 301 redirects to prevent Google from seeing this as duplicate content. For example, if you have updated the page example.com/buy-cars-2017/ with content for 2018 by changing the URL to example.com/buy-cars-2018/, you can redirect the old 2017 URL variation to the updated URL. Canonical URL tag attributesIf your website has two identical content pages with different URLs, you can use canonical URL tag attributes to signal to Google which of the two pages you want to be shown in search results. You can also use the canonical attribute when syndicating content to other websites and social platforms. Noindex and nofollow tagsSimilarly, noindex and nofollow tags can be used if you want search engines not to crawl and index a page in the SERPs. These are meta tags, meaning they can be included in the HTML < head > section of a page. For example, you may wish to use noindex and nofollow tags on the following page types: privacy policy, terms and conditions, user login pages. Similarly, you can use the robots.txt file to allow or disallow pages to be crawled by Google. ConclusionsGood SEO practice is the difference between getting your site ranked as high up the search results and possible, and reducing the chance of a click through – and therefore conversion – to your site. It can be frustrating to spend a great deal of time and effort on SEO and not see the results, so ensure you have the tips shared in this article in place to give a quick boost to your site’s ranking. And don’t forget to force Google to re-crawl your website after implementing any changes. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/14/four-ways-to-boost-seo-in-just-5-hours/ About 10 years ago, it would have been hard to believe that you could ask a Bluetooth speaker for a classic cheese soufflé recipe or take a picture of an object using your phone and find out exactly where to purchase it. Yet, here we are. These interactions have been primarily realized through advancements in machine learning AI. One of the biggest developments in AI over the past three years has been in the area of voice recognition and natural language processing and we’re starting to see advancements in more complex human machine interaction in the form of image/video search. Forward-thinking businesses are already using this new form of machine learning AI image recognition to allow users to search for products using pictures to find the same or similar looks and outfits they stock. However, does this mean intelligent image search is the next big thing? Early days for image search an AIMajor search engines have supported a form of ‘image search’ for some time. Google introduced ‘Google images’ back in 2001 because of a demand for pictures of Jennifer Lopez in a green Versace dress which the regular Google search couldn’t handle. The functionality eventually evolved into being able to drag and drop pictures to find the same or other similar images the user was trying to match against. The image search referred to today shouldn’t be confused with what now seems like relatively basic functionality (much like how ‘voice search’ today is more than the basic input of text search using your voice). The advancements in ‘image search’ allow for an extremely high degree of accurate image classification by recognizing elements and objects based on specific attributes identified within a given image. At Forward3D, we have noticed clients increasingly asking about what they can do with the ever more accessible AI and machine learning APIs, but they are still very much unclear about how developments within this field could enhance many aspects of their business. ASOS’ use of image search is a great example of how such tech can be used to enhance the shopping experience and proves that the right application of AI can benefit any business if implemented correctly. The future of image searchGoogle (as well as others) has recently started integrating features to enable users to shop for products captured with a smartphone, like the example of ASOS mentioned above. While image search will have its practical uses, the current siloed implementations in smart devices are likely to have a very limited impact on general search behavior for now. While basic applications of image search can be used to identify what products are available, the technology will continue to evolve, becoming faster and more accurate, leading to more sophisticated, varied applications and use cases. We are seeing use cases previously only seen in sci-fi, such as real-time image recognition of faces in AR setups, or applications within medicine where a machine can automatically identify early signs of medical conditions from an X-ray or MRI scans without the requirement for a specialist doctor to interpret the results. The main challenge with this technology is that these purpose-built image recognition models are as only as good as its training data, meaning that any application can be significantly impaired if not done correctly or done so without enough correctly labeled data. Image search vs voice searchDespite the advances in image search and its current implementation, voice is likely to remain the preferred way to request information on demand in the future. We are likely to see image-based search complement voice, allowing for a richer way of interacting with AI assistants. The Amazon Echo Look has aimed to actively integrate both voice and image search to create a unique value proposition, enabling a virtual assistant that can scan and suggest clothing outfits for its user. An algorithm combined with input from fashion experts is then able to make recommendations on styling, providing various ‘looks’ via its app on your smartphone. These are great examples of how voice and image search can work to enhance interaction between users and virtual assistants. Outside the home, if integrated correctly on smartphones or wearable tech, image search may enable a new dimension of window shopping that hasn’t previously been seen before. Consumers could ‘bookmark’ something of casual interest for later viewing similar to ‘Shazaming’ a song. Who will come out on top?Comparing voice search to image search is like comparing a computer keyboard to a mouse. They each have their own place in a world where search and discovery will be predominantly underpinned through interactions with virtual assistants. While Amazon may already be combining advanced uses for voice and image search, taking meaningful search market share away from Google will be difficult. Amazon’s early penetration of standalone smart assistant devices like the Echo and Echo Look, along with their ability to supply products directly to the consumer (supporting its retail business), poses a potential long-term threat to Google. The search engine has long been the de facto entry point to satisfy consumer demand for both information and products for many years. However, Google’s success to date as a traditional search engine has come from the ability to retrieve the most relevant and concise results with both speed and precision. Its core strength in organizing information and their recent shift to being an AI first business will pose a serious challenge to Amazon’s early lead. Google does not have the same level of vertical supply chain integration as Amazon to deliver the most seamless customer journey for purchasing physical products. But with its overall accuracy and speed of information retrieval (with the vastness of its knowledge graph), along with integration with its other online consumer services will see it come out on top, be it for voice, image or any other digital search medium in the future.
from https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/11/the-big-picture-whats-next-for-image-and-voice-search/ |
ABOUT MEPleasure to introduce myself I am Gillian 32 from Calgary, Canada. I am working as social media expert and have helped many clients with their social media marketing. Archives
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