Search advertising has seen consistent growth over the last year in all the key metrics among advertisers. Here’s everything you need to know. It’s been a good year for paid search and anyone working in the industry. Benchmarking can help us understand where we are and what we should consider as success in our work. Kenshoo has released its Q1 2019 Quarterly Trends Report to look at the latest trends in social and search advertising. The results are very encouraging for search and we’re looking at the key stats here. An increase in spending and impressionsIt’s interesting to see that there has been a drop from the last quarter both in the spending and the impressions in paid search. More specifically, there was a 16% decrease in spending and an 18% decrease in impressions. It’s not surprising though as Q4 is usually the busiest quarter of the year with the biggest spending at the end of year campaigns. When it comes to the comparison from Q1 2018 to Q1 2019 from Kenshoo, there has been an 11% YoY increase in paid search spending and a 36% increase in the impressions. This means that search marketers increased their budget from 2018 to 2019 while also seeing the appropriate success in the increase of impressions. What does a drop in CTR and CPC mean?According to Kenshoo’s report, there has been a 25% YoY decrease in click-through rate (CTR) and also an 11% YoY decrease in CPC. The significant drop in CTR could possibly reflect the growing competition and increased spending and impressions. It would even possibly affect an advertiser’s quality score in ads. It should not be alarming though if we also consider the drop in cost per click. The drop in the cost per click means that search marketers are seeing an improved return on investment in their campaigns. A combined analysis of CPC and CTR in every campaign can help us understand the different ways we can measure success in search advertising and how each metric can help us improve our efficiency. Mobile search ads are on the riseThere is an increasing number of people relying on their smartphones when performing searches. Thus, it’s not a surprise that there has been an increased number of mobile searches from Q1 2018 to Q1 2019. Mobile search ads are also increasing and they currently take 50% of search spending in Q1. It is actually the third consecutive quarter that we see this balance between mobile and desktop search spending. As for CPC, mobile CPCs are still lower than desktop being at $0.42 in Q1 2019. There has been a decrease of 12% from Q1 2018, which highlights the efficiency of mobile search ads. Search marketers understand that we are heading towards a mobile-first world so there will be an even more increased focus on mobile search and finding solutions to create the most efficient ads. Apple Search Ads saw a big growthApple Search Ads can be very successful if you want to promote your app. A large number of people rely on search when looking for the right app. This means that search ads in the Apple Store can have a big impact on your app’s popularity. Kenshoo introduced Apple Search Ads to their platform in Q3 2018 and since then they’ve seen a 90% increase in their spend from advertisers. A combination of excitement but also the understanding that Apple search ads can make your app promotion easier and more effective led to this growth and it seems to be only the beginning. OverviewWhat we can learn from Kenshoo’s Trends Report is that search advertising is evolving but it’s still at a very encouraging stage. It’s important to keep track of the latest trends and what could potentially affect our success. For example, search marketers cannot ignore the rise of mobile consumption and how it affects the spending and the results on the search ads. Also, the drop in CTR and CPC indicates a hidden opportunity that more advertisers could explore. The growing interest in the search industry is going beyond Google. One of the latest growing trends has to do with Apple Search Ads and we are expecting to see more of them over the next quarters. A good way to maintain your success in the search ad industry is to monitor and benchmark the rates that will bring you closer to understanding what’s perceived as success and what can be improved. Look at the stats and the trends that are more relevant to your work and start exploring how you can improve your own ad success through them. The post Kenshoo Trends Report – The state of search advertising in 2019 appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/15/kenshoo-search-advertising-report-2019/
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April was a big month for Google Data Studio (GDS), with Google introducing some significant product updates to this already robust reporting tool. For those not familiar with GDS, it is a free dashboard-style reporting tool that Google rolled out in June 2016. With Data Studio, users can connect to various data sources to visualize, and share data from a variety of web-based platforms. GDS supports native integrations with most Google products including Analytics, Google Ads, Search Ads 360 (formerly Doubleclick Search), Google Sheets, YouTube Analytics, and Google BigQuery. GDS supports connectors that users can purchase to import data from over one hundred third-party sources such as Bing Ads, Amazon Ads, and many others. Source: Google 1. Google introduces BigQuery BI Engine for integration with GDSBigQuery is Google’s massive enterprise data warehouse. It enables extremely fast SQL queries by using the same technology that powers Google Search. Per Google,
Source: Google 2. Enhanced data drill-down capabilitiesYou can now reveal additional levels of detail in a single chart using GDS’s enhanced data drill down (or drill up) capabilities. You’ll need to enable this feature in each specific GDS chart and, once enabled, you can drill down from a higher level of detail to a lower one (for example, country to a city). You can also drill up from a lower level of detail to a higher one (for example, city to the country). You must be in “View” mode to drill up or drill down (as opposed to the “Edit” mode). Here’s an example of drilling-up in a chart that uses Google’s sample data in GDS. Source: Google To drill-up by year, right click on the chart in “View” mode and select “Drill up” as shown below. Visit the Data Studio Help website for detailed instructions on how to leverage this feature. 3. Improved formatting of tablesGDS now allows for more user-friendly and intuitive table formatting. This includes the ability to distribute columns evenly with just one click (by right-clicking the table), resizing only one column by dragging the column’s divider, and changing the justification of table contents to left, right, or center via the “Style” properties panel in “Edit” mode. Source: Google Detailed instructions on how to access this feature are located here. 4. The ability to hide pages in “View” modeGDS users can now hide pages in “View” mode by right clicking on the specific page (accessed via the top submenu), clicking on the three vertical dots to the right of the page name, and selecting “Hide page in view mode”. This feature comes in handy when you’ve got pages you don’t want your client (or anyone) to see when presenting the GDS report. Source: Google 5. Page canvas size enhancementsUsers can now customize each page’s size with a new feature that was rolled out on March 21st (we’re sneaking this into the April update because it’s a really neat feature). Canvas size settings can be accessed from the page menu at the top of the GDS interface. Select Page>Current Page Settings, and then select “Style” from the settings area at the right of the screen. You can then choose your page size from a list of pre-configured sizes or set a custom size of your own. Source: Google 6. New Data Studio help communityAs GDS adds more features and becomes more complex, it seems only fitting that Google would launch a community help forum for this tool. So, while this isn’t exactly a new feature to GDS itself, it is a new resource for GDS users that will hopefully make navigating GDS easier. Users can access the GDS Help Community via Google’s support website or selecting “Help Options” from the top menu bar in GDS (indicated by a question mark icon) then click the “Visit Help Forum” link. Source: Google ConclusionWe hope that summarizing the latest GDS enhancements has made it a little easier to digest the many new changes that Google rolled out in April (and March). Remember, you can always get a list of updates, both new and old by visiting Google’s Support website here. Jacqueline Dooley is the Director of Digital Strategy at CommonMind. The post A summary of Google Data Studio: Updates from April 2019 appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/14/google-data-studio-updates-april-2019/ Fifteen years ago, if a customer needed a hammer, they’d probably get out a phone book, look up “Hardware Store,” choose the hardware store closest to their house, drive there, go inside, and ask the clerk “Do you sell hammers?” If they happened to be out of hammers, the clerk might draw the customer a map to the next closest hardware store and the process would start all over again. Now that most of us are walking around with tiny computers in our pockets, much preliminary research is taken care of in a matter of seconds via mobile search. If a customer needs a hammer, they simply google “Hardware Store,” and three nearby results pop up instantly. Chances are, that customer will then be done searching. Any stores that don’t pop up will not get their business. Securing one of those top three spots in a Google search is an essential part of nailing local SEO. This is especially significant for enterprise brands to be able to compete at the local level. With hundreds or thousands of locations, it can be overwhelming to ensure data accuracy across the board. Partnering with a local search solution to maintain and monitor listings across all locations is a great way boost online presence and drive foot traffic. Content produced in collaboration with Rio SEO. If you’re just looking at website analytics, you could be missing outMost consumers are researching businesses on mobile before they make decisions about which locations to visit in person. In fact, according to RetailDive, two-thirds of consumers conduct research online before even stepping foot in a store. And while most businesses know that they should pay close attention to their website analytics, many are forgetting that preliminary online research also includes local listings. Research shows that while 75% of consumers use a business’s website as part of their decision-making process, an even greater number, 87%, also consider local listings. Going beyond website analytics to understand how your ranking in local search results affects in-person visits to your businesses is key to understanding how to use local SEO for real-life traffic. A study by Sparktoro found that in 62% of local mobile searches, the customer doesn’t click search results to visit a business’s webpage. Further, Rio SEO found in recent data from enterprise clients that just 1 in 60 Map Pack views resulted in a click-through to a website. Rather, they get the information they need from the local listings that come up at the top of their search results. For many businesses, this means that if you’re not at the top, you might as well be invisible. Optimizing for the Local 3-PackMobile users are most likely using Google to search for local businesses, and those searches are generally limited to what’s called the “Local 3-Pack.” In Google’s search engine results, the Local 3-Pack is a colorful, prominent map listing that presents to consumers the three businesses Google considers most relevant to the query and searcher’s location (refer again to the image above). Coming in as one of those first three spots is critical for making sure local searchers can find your business. How can your business break the top three?The key to breaking into that coveted Local 3-Pack is making sure your corporate and local site’s SEO are in order. And the best way to get your SEO in order is to optimize your Google My Business (GMB) page to give Google’s algorithm everything it needs to find your company in local searches. Here are a few tips for optimizing your GMB:
The right tools can boost your online presenceIf you’re worried that your business isn’t coming up at the top of those critical mobile local searches, changing your SEO strategy to adopt the right tools could be your best bet for getting seen by mobile users. Join SEW, ClickZ, and Rio SEO in our webinar to learn more about how to choose the right SEO toolkits for boosting your local business into those crucial top three search results–and keeping it there. What to know more about mastering local SEO for enterprises?The brands killing it in local SEO now are freeing their corporate teams and local managers of complicated workarounds and messy, muddled local data. In this webinar, you’ll explore the benefits of taking a toolkit approach to enterprise local search and discover the key tools that must be a part of your local marketing arsenal. Join us and learn how to:
It’s time to stop throwing disparate, disconnected solutions that only accomplish one or two things into your stack. Isn’t it time your brand’s local marketing efforts worked together to achieve the results your local stores and customers crave? Join us for our webinar, “Scrap Your Stack: High-Performance Local SEO for Enterprise Brands, Simplified” to learn how. The post Local SEO for enterprises: Optimizing for the Local 3-Pack appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/13/optimizing-for-the-local-3-pack-mastering-your-local-seo/ For the SEO community, Domain Authority is a contentious metric. Domain Authority (DA) is defined by Moz as
Some people say that this score does more harm than good because it distracts digital marketers from what matters. Improving your DA doesn’t mean you’re improving your rankings. Others tend to find it useful on its own as a quick way to determine the quality or trustworthiness of a site. Here’s what I say, from a digital PR perspective, domain authority is valuable when you’re using it to compare sites relative to one another. In fact, DA provides value for us PRs and is incredibly useful to our work. Think of it this way. There are more websites than ever before, about 1.5 billion to be exact and so in some ways, this means there is more opportunity for marketers to get their content out in the world and in front of new audiences. While most people think that journalism is dying out, an enlightening post on Recode by Rani Molla explains that “while job postings for journalists are off more than 10 percent since 2004, jobs broadly related to content have almost quadrupled.” In other words, if outreach is executed well, there are more places than ever to get your content featured and lead to driving traffic, broadening your audience, and improving your search ranking. But even the most skilled PR teams can’t reach out to 1.5 billion sites. The knowledgeable ones know that you really only need one successful placement to get your content to spread like wildfire all over the Internet, earning links and gaining exposure for your brand in the process. With so many options out there, how do PR professionals know which sites to spend time targeting? That’s where DA comes into play. When it comes to link building, content marketers know that not all backlinks and brand mentions are created equally. The value of a link or mention varies depending on the referring website. Moz’s DA score is a way for us PRs to quickly and easily assess the quality of the websites we target for our client’s content marketing campaigns. Our team tends to bucket online publishers, blogs, and websites into three categories:
Keep in mind, particularly with the new Moz update, when deciding who to pitch, you must take a holistic approach. While domain authority is an excellent way to quickly assess the quality of a website, a site’s DA can change at any minute due to a multitude of factors, so make sure you are also taking into account your goals, the site’s audience, social following, and reputation as well as Moz DA score. In response to a Marketing Land tweet about the new DA, Stevie Howard says it perfectly. Top-tier sitesWhat constitutes a top-tier website? Can a top-tier site have a low DA? Potentially, but it’s uncommon. When you look at the holy grail of media coverage, DA tends to align perfectly. Take, for example, the following seven major publishers that any brand or business would love to earn coverage on. The DA scores for all of these sites fall above 90. These sites all have an extremely large audience, both on-site and on social media. Our team at Fractl has an innate sense of the online publisher landscape, and the largest and most well-known content publishers out there all tend to have a domain authority above 90. This is what we consider to be the “top-tier”. These publishers are difficult to place with because of their large audience, social following, and reputation, so for the best chance at earning organic press mentions on these sites, offer them authoritative, unique, exclusive, and newsworthy content. Mid-tier sitesMid-tier sites may not be the holy grail of news publishers, but they’re our bread and butter. This is where the majority of placements tend to happen. These publishers hit a sweet spot for digital PR pros—they’re not as sought-after as Buzzfeed and don’t deeply scrutinize pitches the way The New York Times does, but they have large audiences and tend to be much more responsive to content pitches. I tend to categorize the mid-tier as publishers that fall within a DA of 66 to 89. Here are some examples of publishers that may be considered mid-tier. Low-tier sitesDon’t underestimate a low-tier site simply because of its domain authority. For example, it wasn’t long ago that personal finance website, Money-ish, had a DA of 1. Launched in 2017, it was first its own website before being absorbed as part of the larger MarketWatch domain. MarketWatch has a DA of 93, with social engagement as high as 12,294,777 in the last year. If you ignored Money-ish because of its DA when they first started, you would have missed out on a chance to get your content featured on MarketWatch as well as build relationships with writers that are now under the MarketWatch umbrella. There are all types of content, and most marketers can figure out which projects have “legs” and which have less appeal. These lower-tier sites are often very niche and the perfect home for content that is aimed towards smaller, more precise audiences. These lower-tier sites also tend to have a high engagement where it matters, your target audience. Consider the site’s community. Does this site have a ton of email subscribers or high comment engagement? Are they killing it on Instagram or on another social network? You never know which site will become the next Money-ish, either! Pitching differences for each tierThere are plenty of sites that fall within different ranges of domain authority that would be an excellent fit for your content. It all just depends on your goals. In Fractl’s latest internal study, we were able to identify trends in the way journalists respond to PR professionals, based on the DA of the site they write for. Observations
An example of the feedback we received that would be labeled as complimentary is,
Those of us that have been pitching mainstream publishers for a while know from experience that it’s often easier to place with websites that tend to fall in the mid to low-tier buckets. Writers at these publishers are usually open to email pitches and open to writing about outside content because such websites have less stringent editorial guidelines. Conversely, publishers that fall into our definition of “high-tier” were less positive on average than writers working for publishers with a DA less than 90. On average, the higher the DA, the less positive the language becomes. Why might that be? It makes perfect sense that publishers like The New York Times, CNN, TIME, and The Washington Post would be less positive. They’re likely receiving hundreds of PR pitches a day because of their popularity. If they do respond to a pitch, they want to ensure that they’re inquiring about content that would eventually meet their editorial guidelines, should they decide to cover it. According to our study, when journalists at publishers with a DA of 90 or above do respond, they’re more likely to be asking about the methodology or source of the content. An example of this feedback is from a staff writer at CNN.
A response like this isn’t necessarily bad, in fact, it’s quite good. If a journalist is taking time to ask you more about the details of the content you pitched, it’s a good indication that the writer is hoping to cover it, they just need more information to ensure that any data-driven content is methodologically-sound. ConclusionDomain authority will continue to remain a controversial metric for SEOs, but for those of us working in digital PR, the metric provides a lot of value. Our study found a link between the DA of a site and the type of responses we received from writers at these publishers. High DA sites were less positive on average and requested research back methodologies more than lower-tier sites. Knowing the DA of a site allows you to:
Remember, just because a site has a high DA, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a good fit for your content. Always be sure to take a holistic approach to your list building process. Keep in mind the social engagement of the site, the topics they cover, who their audience is, their editorial guidelines, and most importantly, the goals of you or your client before reaching out to any publisher solely based on domain authority. Domenica is a Brand Relationship Manager at Fractl. She can be found on Twitter @atdomenica. The post Study: How to use domain authority for digital PR and content marketing appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/10/domain-authority-for-digital-pr/ The digital marketing strategies used in B2B for the industrial sector are completely different from the strategies used in other industries because the audience is unique. According to the 2018 buyer survey report, 31% of buyers said that their buying cycles are longer when compared to 2017. Of them, 76% of buyers desired content that speaks to their company needs. And 65% of them followed peer recommendations and online reviews. That’s why manufacturers need digital marketing because each touch point is critical. I will explain it step by step on how to create a digital marketing strategy that you need to apply in order to get relevant traffic and to increase your ROI. B2B industrial manufacturers digital marketing tips:Collect important information from the clientIt is very important to collect the following information from the client:
This information will give me a starting point about the topics I need to start mapping out for my keyword research. I focus on the topics- keywords that provide higher ROI to my clients and in the main products or services. Feedback from clients about competitors, keywords, and target market are extremely useful. I know I have tools to find this information but it is always good to get the insights from the source. Many software provides competitors and keywords based on the website’s content. Furthermore, think for one moment that it is possible that your client is not ranking or does not have the right content yet on his/her website. Then the tool will not provide you the right competitors. After getting the information above, I do an exhaustive keyword research and competitor analysis with at least three competitors. It is preferred to use tools, such as SEMrush and Ahrefs for these tasks. Having a project in SEMrush and tracking keywords in Ahrefs, provides useful information every month about how my project is doing. It’s easy to create reports and to find the low hanging fruits. I later add these findings to the content strategy. Learning about my client’s new products/services as well as the industries they service gives an opportunity to plan keyword rich content in the forms of blog posts, infographics, and videos. In addition to content creation, using industry knowledge about complementary products/services is a powerful backlinking strategy. For example, my client provides metal stamping services for a variety of different metals. I would create a blog post titled “Choosing the right metal for your metal stamping projects” to live on the client site. And also create a sharable infographic ad that would be perfect for other metal suppliers to share on their websites or social platforms. On-page SEO is powerfulFirst, I run a website audit using Screaming Frog. With the results, I can find the bottlenecks which would need improvements through the on-page SEO strategy such as:
It’s never advisable to work on a messy website, so you really need to get this done in the beginning. If the on-page SEO is really off and involves a major project, divide the project into different tasks in order to get it done. I know the power of on-page SEO and I do not want to lose my opportunities here. Among my practices are rewritten URLs following SEO best practices:
After I have created new URLs I use the 301 redirects. Example: www.metalstamping.com/blog/the-advantage-of-fourslide-metal-stamping-over-tradicional-power-press-stamping-explained-09_87-5437&5% www.metalstamping.com/blog/advantage-fourslide-metal-stamping-over-tradicional-power-press-stamping/ I also revamp old content from static pages to add better keywords such as long tail or user intent. A study shows that 50% of queries are four words or longer. Use long tail keywords to get rankingsLong tail keywords help increase your traffic. The best way to optimize on-page is by using about 50% of long tail keywords. Seventy percent, 70% of searches are long tail keywords. That’s why they are an important part of my SEO strategy. I have a client that offers Metal Stamping services. Metal stamping had 4400 monthly searches and 699 million results. With a high competitive keyword, it’s better to use a long tail keyword such as “what is metal stamping?”. I actually ranked number one on Google SERPs for one of my clients with this keyword, within days and without backlinks. You can check out my case study about it. Take your time to learn about the industryWhile working with several clients at the same time can be overwhelming. It is not easy to become an expert in many different types of businesses within the industrial and manufacturing sector. I have overcome this challenge by taking time to read about the products or services pages of my clients’ websites so that I get a general idea of what they do (this is a challenge because many products are designed and used for engineers). Nevertheless, this is a crucial part because I am in charge of the content strategy. You could even watch a video about the main product or services to reinforce your previous readings and research. How I do B2B industrial SEO for my clientsThere are many opportunities for B2B websites in the industrial sector. Many businesses in this sector have old websites and they do not have a digital marketing strategy. While doing my research for content ideas, I have found out that there is no content available for many keywords regarding topics on industrial, manufacturing, and engineering. The lack of online results opens a huge door of opportunities for industrial businesses. I have taken advantage of the opportunity and created informative content that covers the topic. As a result, I have earned top positions in search results and leads for my clients. The buyer journey in the B2B industrial market is different from the other industries. Focus on the personas browsing in B2B industrial websites. Most of the time, the people that are gathering the information to find suppliers are engineers, managers, and CEOs. Make sure you are creating content that speaks to them and make good use of their jargon in the content strategy. Some content ideas that work well are:
These are important topics the person is looking for which the supplier needs to find in an industrial website. B2B industrial content strategyI create a pillar page (a pillar page is usually a long-form content, around 2500 words). I also create the cluster pages (cluster pages are related to subtitles of the pillar page) or related content that internally links to the pillar page. Here one of my client’s pillar page that ranks position one on Google SERP for “what is metal stamping?” The ideal structure of a pillar page
The intro must be a short paragraph about the whole idea that will be discussed in the article. Use a good hook or nice intro to engage users to keep reading. Then start with the subtitles. Try to use long tail keywords. Consider the (latent semantic indexing) LSI, user intent as a subtitle if possible. This adds more SEO value to the content. Another good approach for subtitles is to think about relevant/related topics and use these as subtitles. Later, write independent articles about subtitles topic-ideas (use these articles for internal links as cluster pages). A study shows that:
I have followed these steps and I have gotten results. I have earned several rich snippets and Google quick answer box sections for my clients. Furthermore, using bullet points or lists helps users to skim the content, and provide a better user experience on mobiles because it provides white space. I love to create content in different formats in order to take advantage of the opportunities that may arise. That’s why I create videos, infographics, and pdf. Later, I reuse these video or infographics for social media and email marketing campaigns. We need an alt tag as part of on-page SEO best practices. Infographics can do the job. I use a long tail keyword as an alt tag in my infographics, and I always add the extension “infographic” to let Google know what is my image about. Doing this increases my chances to get ranking in Google image searches. I also use embed codes to my infographics so that it allows others to use them and open my opportunities to get backlinks. I only use reputable and updated sources to get information from my content and I create external links to them (most of the time I add “nofollow” tag to my external links). I usually add videos/infographics to the pillar page (upload the video on YouTube to create a backlink). This also is a way to amplify the content beyond the website. The cluster pages are small articles that support the pillar page. I also add internal and external links (the internal links are always “do follow”). I add case studies, reviews, data sheets about the product; these work well as clusters (internal links). To get leads, I create white papers such as ebooks embedded within the content or a landing page with clear CTAs. I recommend creating a goal in Google Analytics to track white paper downloads. I optimize static pages, product pages and “About Us” pages. The “About Us” page is utmost important in order to build credibility. I recommend you to add a video of the CEO welcoming users and talking about the mission of the company. A short video no more than a minute. Another good thing to do is to check your on-page and make little changes to add value. I used the SEMrush on-page checker feature to improve my existing pages. This provides great results. PPC for B2B industrial marketPPC campaign for B2b for the Industrial sector is a little different because the search volume for the keywords is low. I use long tail keywords that include terms such as industrial, manufacture, supplier. For example, industrial pipes. This helps to avoid invalid clicks from users that are looking to buy from the ecommerce or retailer website. My accounts are B2B and my clients only sell big quantities. I use the same approach at the moment when I write the copy. I regularly optimize the campaigns by adding a negative keywords list that contains words such as:
This avoids wasting my budget with clicks from users that are looking for educational material or to learn a process. I use the Google AdWords platform to test my ads by using A/B tests. Generally, I run three ads, with the option “do not optimize, rotate ads indefinitely”. I run these tests for a couple of months to see which two performs better. Once I have the data from the two, I’ll continually optimize by testing a new one. The tools I use for keyword research are: Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Keywords Everywhere, and Answer The Public. PPC goals for B2B industrial websitesThe most common goals to set up are:
I am recently using the promotion extension, and I have seen that my competitors have followed. My clients don’t offer discounts. Therefore, I have to be creative. I have added lines such as, “100% free consultation”, and “100% free eBook download”. I know that it can sound silly but it works. People are downloading ebooks and my clients are getting leads. The results are what matter. Email marketing to follow prospect through the sales funnelI use email marketing to follow up leads that I have obtained with white papers, eBooks, and the other marketing collaterals. I create different campaigns with targeted content depending on the landing page that was collected by the lead. For example, if the visitor downloads an eBook about metal stamping process, I will create a set of emails to follow-up with the person who is interested in the metal stamping products. The email will be customized for his/her interest only for metal stamping products, application, prices, process, etc. Do not forget mobile and UXUX is very important to lower the bounce rate. I check my client’s website and the competitors’. Then I suggest changes to be made by the UX/Developer people. Some ideas I suggest when working with the UX team are:
Seventy-one percent, 71% of B2B researchers start their searches with generic terms (Think with Google) and then get more specific to hone in on more relevant search results. This is a huge opportunity because here we can create pillar pages with CTA and download material to engage with users. Do not forget that B2B for the industrial sector leads takes a little longer to convert than B2C. Another study shows that organic search is the number one channel that generates traffic to B2B. SEO beats social media’s traffic by more than 300%. We cannot deny that SEO plays an important role in the B2B customer journey. Are we taking advantage of this huge opportunity? Karina Tama is a contributor for Forbes, Thrive Global and the El Distrito Newspaper. She can be found on Twitter @KarinaTama2. The post Digital marketing strategy guide for B2B industrial manufacturers appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/09/digital-marketing-strategy-guide-for-b2b-industrial-manufacturers/ Google has sported a rocky relationship with China for more than 10 years. While the company’s on again, off again approach to the Internet’s largest ‘untapped’ market has always been tempestuous, recent developments suggest the tech giant may be yielding to its own growth imperative and bending to the government’s demands once more. For more than a year, the debate has raged over accusations that the Chinese military is capitalizing on Google’s research and business activities in China. General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate committee in March that Google’s work in China indirectly benefits the Chinese military, an accusation soon echoed by President Donald Trump. Anxiety surrounding Google’s international and institutional affairs is nothing new. Last year, the company faced huge criticism after word leaked that it was building artificial intelligence (AI) tools to analyze drone footage for the Pentagon’s ‘Project Maven’. Executives experienced similar uproar over ‘Project Dragonfly’ in 2018, a secretive effort to develop a censored search engine for the Chinese market. This prompted outcry from employees and politicians who criticized Google for helping China withhold information from its citizens. CEO Sundar Pichai has since pledged not to go forward with the censored search product—at least for the time being. Google has generally limited its operations in the Chinese market since 2010 when it pulled the majority of its products amidst a battle over censorship. Some branches of operation have been maintained, most of which relate to the distribution of Android software and Google Adverts on third-party websites. Despite this tumultuous history, the company’s latest movements have been speculatively characterized as an attempt to regain favor with Chinese officials in a bid to gain a foothold in the country’s heavily regulated internet market. A bow to state censorship?Following calls from China’s market regulator for internet platforms to strengthen their censorship and monitoring of advertisements, it was recently revealed that Google has now banned the distribution of advertisements in China for websites that review anti-censorship software – the very tools that many Chinese people rely on to access Google’s services. Two companies reviewing virtual private network (VPN) software – tools that allow users to circumvent surveillance and censorship – have reported Google refusing to sell their ads to Chinese users after doing so for over two years. Representatives from Google have issued a response stating:
Though the software is essential for Chinese citizens to use Google’s search engine, email, and cloud services, VPN providers and associated websites are now blocked from promoting themselves through Google ads in the country, despite the fact they do not explicitly violate Chinese law. Speaking to the Financial Times, Charlie Smith of GreatFire.org, a censorship monitoring organization criticized Google’s blunt action in relation to these advertisers as being too broad. He said:
As it stands, there is no explicit, all-out ban on VPN providers or review websites in China, though providers do need to obtain a license to operate in the country. The advertisements in question did not explicitly violate Chinese law, which suggests that Google may be following its own prerogative rather than meeting a legal obligation. What’s more, non-Chinese language ads appear to be unaffected by the restrictions, which suggests that Google has come under pressure from Beijing to block ads aimed specifically at Chinese citizens rather than those targeting foreigners. Spokespeople have yet to answer whether the ban was put in place of the company’s own accord or as a response to requests from Chinese authorities. Freedom of informationGoogle’s choice to capitulate to the censorship of advertisements raises questions about the company’s complicity in political restrictions on the freedom of information. Controls such as those in China favor only the information that promotes government interests. When Google shut down its Chinese search engine nine years ago, it announced it was no longer willing to censor search results, thus devastating its relationship with the country’s officials. Just last year, the company’s official position on content moderation stated its loyalty to political neutrality:
It’s clear that future access to the Chinese market requires complicity with state censorship tools, and these developments suggest that Google is willing to bow down to the government’s demands in order to achieve this. The decision to remove advertisements for legitimate security tools further deprives Chinese users of the ability to find uncensored material and undermines the company’s claim to political neutrality. It raises a particular question: If Google is in the business of expanding access to information, why do they not conceive of their business in these terms in China? A fragmented InternetThere is more resting on Google’s movements in China than whether it might be putting profits over principles. The company’s relationship with the world’s second-largest economy tells a wider story of what happens in a world where the Internet is split in two at a time when our realities are largely driven by what we read on the web. China’s escalation of media and communication controls over the past decade has manufactured an Internet and information economy entirely disparate from the model that dictates our lives in the West. Choosing to support this distinction does nothing but widen the digital wedge driving China and Western countries apart, and enables anything but the free flow of ideas. If China and the US continue to live in separate “cyber worlds” and absorb two distinct information realities, how can we expect the two entities to effectively cooperate on the world stage and negotiate political issues outside of internet governance? Even in an environment where Western users are calling for platforms to limit user freedoms in exchange for security, it is only appropriate to recoil at the idea of a global platform that wilfully bans material in support of an authoritarian regime. What it means for search marketersChina boasts a thriving digital economy. If you’re looking to grow your business and haven’t yet capitalized on this market, you may be missing out on tens of millions of relevant queries. If you’re focused on improving organic performance alone, Google’s international decisions will have little impact. Instead, you’ll need to focus on Baidu. One of the world’s largest internet companies, Baidu’s search engine has an index of over 750 million web pages and accounts for well over 70% of Chinese internet search queries. Like Google, Baidu also offers music streaming services, maps, images, data storage and, most importantly for business growth, pay-per-click ads. If you’re targeting Chinese users through Google Ads, Google’s strategic decisions will be paramount. It’s likely that this ban and those yet to come will affect other Google-owned services like Google Marketing Platform and Google Ad Manager. The impact of these decisions will depend on the nature of your website, product, or service, as well as your target audience. If you intend to target Chinese users rather than foreign visitors to China, or your business provides a service that might be deemed incompatible with China’s agenda even if it’s not technically illegal, it may face a similar fate. Though you may be unaffected thus far, it’s essential to stay on top of Google’s relationship with large markets like China to predict potential impediments to your marketing efforts and formulate an effective alternative strategy. William Chalk is a cybersecurity researcher and digital privacy specialist. He covers these issues for leading tech publications to help support our digital freedoms. He can be found on Twitter @_WilliamChalk. The post Google bans adverts for anti-censorship sites in China appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/08/google-adverts-ban-in-china/ Links are a way for users to get relevant information on the internet. They are also a ranking factor for your pages. Of the 200+ ranking factors, Google is known to use, links share the top three spots with content and RankBrain. However, having links is not enough. Their quality matters. Google takes into account not only the number of backlinks a web page has but their quality as well. Sadly, some SEOs, in the rush to make their sites appear popular to search engine crawlers, invest in low-quality links. High-quality link building, however, is the only way to get desirable results. Chasing the quickest and cheapest results, some SEOs resort to the wrong methods of generating backlinks. These are often blackhat techniques that could lead to Google penalties and destroyed reputations. What’s surprising is that even SEO agencies employ poor link-building techniques. A 2018 study conducted by Assertive Media of 230 UK link-building agencies found that nine out 10 used unscrupulous techniques. To avoid their fate, you need to know what makes a high-quality link. So, what determines high-quality links?Below are three factors that determine the quality of the link. a) Authority of the linking pageThe authority of the page linking to you is important to Google. The logic is that if an authoritative page has noticed your content, it must be impactful and relevant. This authority, referred to as PageRank, shows Google how authoritative the page that noticed you is, signaling your own authority. b) Authority of the linking siteThe site-wide authority of the linking website is also an important indication to Google that your site is authoritative. Much like page authority, website authority measured by domain rating (DR) and domain authority (DA) scales on Ahrefs and Moz respectively is transmitted by the linking website. c) Content relevancePage rank and domain authority are of no consequence if the web content is irrelevant. For instance, the prospect of getting a link from NYTimes.com sounds amazing. However, the link is useless to you if the subject matter of the article doesn’t relate to the subject matter of your website. This is because at the base of all link-building is the relevance of the linked information to the user. How to get high-quality links in 2019?It’s no secret that high-quality link building is still one of the most essential SEO skills. However, to master it means mastering several other skills, necessary for getting others to link to your site. To get a link that meets all three criteria discussed above and do it consistently so your website is strengthened by high-quality links takes a deliberate effort. It requires you to spend an ample amount of time doing the right things. The following are some of the most effective things you can do to improve your link-building efforts in 2019: 1. Publish content strategicallyContent marketing is at the heart of quality link-building. Before you can expect backlinks, you have to provide useful content. But that’s not enough. Having a strategy will help you see what type of content performs best, where to publish it and when to change tactics. For instance, according to Backlinko, visuals, list posts, research data, and in-depth guides perform the best. With a sound strategy, you can distribute the various types of content across a diverse range of top ranking sites. Ultimately, a content marketing strategy will help you publish content that not only aids the user but also gets you high-quality links. For example, in 2015, we did an in-depth article at Effective Inbound Marketing where we called on the most noted link-building experts in the industry and asked them to give their thoughts on guest blogging. The article took nearly one month to complete but was the best performing piece on several article ranking sites for the day. Suffice to say, it generated tons of organic backlinks as it was widely discussed on several blogs. This is mainly because it answered people’s problem at the time and the strategy we used ensured that the thought-leaders shared the article with their followers. 2. Use email outreachIn link-building, often you get only what you ask for. Whether it’s link reclamation, reverse image search, submitting your blog to relevant directories, pitching guest posts or using broken links for link-building, many techniques will require you to email people. Don’t shy away from it. Approach it knowing the challenges of reaching people by email in 2019. In order to avoid ending up in people’s spam folders, I’d suggest the following approach:
3. Be active in your online communitiesFirst, you need a presence on various online platforms that allow you to create a profile with a link to your website. For instance, Product Hunt, the place where users meet to discuss the latest technologies, is also a DA 75 site. All it takes to get a link from it is creating a profile. For best results, be active on the site by reviewing products, commenting, upvoting, and downvoting the content regularly. Crunchbase is a similar community of people who want to stay on top of the digital shift. By creating an account, you automatically get a high-quality link from the DA 91 website. The more active you are, the more you benefit from your account. These and other online communities are a valuable source of high-quality links, but you must remain active to reap maximum rewards. 4. Polish and optimize your websitePoor website design is bad for SEO. To start with, if your design turns people off, they will leave your site quickly. Google will take it as a signal of poor service. Another design factor to consider is website speed. Research shows that 47% of users won’t wait longer than two seconds for a website to load. You also need to take into account the diversity of the devices people use to access your content. More specifically, you have to optimize your website for portable devices, such as smartphones, as a substantial amount of traffic is continually coming from them. Smartphones and tablets make up more than 61% of internet traffic. In 2019, having a flexible site design that can be modified on the fly is crucial. The ability to quickly tweak your website allows you to stay responsive to the needs of the consumers while adopting new design trends as they develop. Settling on a rigid design denies you this chance. However, if you choose to use a CMS based design like WordPress it would allow you the convenience of making changes easily. ConclusionFor more than two decades, link-building has been a sound SEO strategy for many. This is unlikely to change in the coming years. If you hope to succeed, you must learn to recognize a high-quality link and, more importantly, how to get one. Ayodeji Onibalusi is the Founder of Effective Inbound Marketing. The post What defines high-quality links in 2019 and how to get them? appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/07/how-to-get-high-quality-links/ In the practice of SEO, as in life, the only constant is “change.” Even the pace of change in SEO is changing. It’s accelerating as results grow ever richer and more personalized, search engines more numerous and specialized, and searchers increasingly expect to be able to summon answers whenever, wherever and however they like. Though it may not always feel like it, none of this happened overnight. If we look at some of the key milestones in the evolution of search, we can get insight into how we got to where we are now. Let’s skip ahead a bit and start with Google in the early 2000s.
SEO nowSEO is still very much about maximizing the effectiveness of organic content to drive traffic and demand, but its role in the organization has expanded and so has the workload along with it. How SEO is used in the modern enterpriseSEO methods and insights are supporting strategy and decision making beyond website content. The broader use of SEO intelligence is a natural progression in the evolution of search. After all, SEO research can reveal a lot about consumer intent. For content, paid search, social media, and email marketers, knowing what the target audience is looking for makes it easier to tailor the message, product or service to them. A 2018 survey of UK marketers reinforces the perception of SEO as an essential (88% of respondents) and effective (79% of respondents) part of the marketing imperative, but the survey also highlights the difficulty marketers and SEO specialists have when it comes to keeping up with the pace of change in search. More than two-thirds of respondents (70%) incorrectly identified a bogus Google algorithm change as being real. (Source: Zazzle Media) How SEO is executed in the modern enterpriseFor most search marketers, the daily work of SEO is a significant undertaking. Add to that the fact that 75% of marketers are regularly using at least four different tools or data sources to execute their SEO strategy. SEO in 2019 and beyond: SEO goes single-platform and real-timeTo date, SEO has been largely a reactive business function. In 2019, look for search to become not only reactive but predictive. Two shifts will drive this:
The shift from point solutions to platform SEO
The time-consuming and somewhat disjointed nature of SEO execution for most search marketers is not surprising given the rapid pace of change in search. It is also not sustainable over the long term. Search is only going to evolve more quickly. Keeping up on all the changes, mastering new and additional tools to manage SEO, and finding the time to incorporate more and more diverse data sources into an already overtaxed SEO routine is prohibitive. To see where the practice of SEO is headed, we can look at how leading brands do it now. BrightEdge Instant (disclosure, customer) empowers the next generation of search marketers to use real-time insights and take action to optimize content all within one unified platform, so they can effectively:
For SEO to be effective it needs to be efficient. Moving from managing multiple SEO point solutions, sourcing data from numerous sources in numerous formats, and analyzing data in Excel to single-platform SEO solution creates efficiency that marketers can no longer ignore. The enablement of true, real-time SEOWhat we know today as real-time SEO is, in actuality, the same, rearward-looking SEO with a shortened timeframe. SEO evolution, like change, is constant and the breakthrough for SEO has begun with live, real-time data that right-now drives keyword and ranking research, and produces in-the-moment recommendations. Marketers will be able to see trends as they are developing rather than once they’re established. This level of insight will enable them to predictively produce or optimize content to capitalize on the interest that’s coming. This ability to displace competitors pre-emptively will change the face of search forever. Andy Betts is a chief marketer, consultant, and digital hybrid with more than 20 years of experience in digital, technology and marketing working across London, Europe, New York, and San Francisco. He can be found on twitter @andybetts1. The post The evolution of SEO and the shift from point solutions to platform appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/07/seo-evolution-point-solutions-to-platform/ Is your landing page engaging your target customers? How can you increase ROI without increasing marketing budget? Both of these questions can be answered by a well set on-site analytics routine. You cannot improve what you are not measuring. This makes web analytics the most important growth tactic out there.
But are we measuring enough?
Most digital marketers out there believe they are already incorporating web analytics by using Google Analytics and monitoring daily traffic sources.
While Google Analytics is a great platform, there’s much more into web analytics than using one platform (especially if you are not technical enough to make use of event tracking).
As technology is evolving, you need to always be looking for more and more ways to analyze your page performance to discover new growth opportunities and understand your target customers better. Here are a few on-site analytics ideas for you to experiment with: Conversion optimization analyticsThese questions will lead you to stats that provide actionable insights about your page and user behavior. Are your on-page CTAs engaging your page users?The purpose of conversion tracking is to analyze which of your on-page calls-to-action engage your customers best. There are several events and conversion tracking solutions out there, including the most obvious one, Google Analytics. Further reading:
But you know that I love newer less-discussed tools that can bring an innovative perspective or method to the table. Finteza is a free web analytics platform that focuses on monitoring and analyzing conversions. The unique feature of Finteza is its unique conversion analysis that shows how your customers are engaging with each step inside your conversion funnel. You can track multiple calls-to-action and compare how they perform at what stage of your conversion funnel. To use Finteza:
Once all your events are set-up, you can build your funnels inside the “Funnels” section by simply selecting your events to see within one report: Which page elements draw your users’ attention?Another great way to analyze your page performance is to use heatmaps. A heatmap is a visual color-coded representation of user behavior on your site. Here’s more in-depth information on heatmaps. There are several types of heatmaps that can help you get a more in-depth understanding of what people tend to do once they land on your page: 1. Click maps visualize which links and buttons attract most clicks. These are great to analyze whether your CTA or a banner attracts most on-page interactions (clicks). 2. Move maps visualize where desktop users move and pause their mouse. These could be used to identify parts of the page that distract your users from your main CTAs. 3. Scroll maps visualize how many people scroll down to any point on the page. This is perfect if you want to see how deep into your long-form content your readers tend to get. You can easily set up any or all of these heatmaps to track your page using Hot Jar. To use HotJar, simply install their tracking code. From there you can set up any type of tracking for any page of yours inside HotJar dashboard. HotJar is free unless you want to track more than 2,000 page views a day (my tests usually include 1,000 views only). By analyzing and aggregating user behavior, heatmaps give an overview of how web page users interact with the page. This helps understand on-page engagement trends and optimize for higher conversions. While conversion tracking tools are all about understanding what engages your users, using heatmaps will help you clearly see what distracts your page users from converting as well as what can help you draw their eyes to more important elements of your page. For example, if they keep clicking your image instead of your CTA, or if they keep ignoring your important links (or scroll right through them), you know that you need to re-position your site elements and remove a distracting image. On-page SEO analyticsIs your content targeting the intended audience?Search intent is by far the most important metric out there determining how well the page meets your target customer’s needs:
In other words, search intent reflects the user’s intended action behind each search query. It defines whether your page has any chance to convert at all. With voice search on the rise, meeting the users’ immediate needs should be any business’s priority, which is why search intent has become a much hotter topic these days. Both of these questions can be answered by intent analysis. Text Optimizer is the fastest way to analyze whether your page is likely to satisfy the needs of your page intended audience. Text Optimizer applies semantic analysis to create a visual representation of the intended audience and whether the page is likely to meet their expectations. To install, simply copy-paste the URL of your page and the tool will do the job. Is your web page optimized enough?Finally, the most boring, yet still necessary page analysis tactic is to check if your page is sufficiently optimized. In many cases, when you seem to be struggling to get your page one to two positions up, on-page SEO analysis is the answer. Serpstat’s Text Analysis feature provides a fresh perspective on how on-page analytics should be done. It determines the keywords all your more successful organic search competitors have and shows where exactly you want to include those on your page: To use the Text Analysis feature:
Serpstat’s text analysis goes through your top ten organic competitors, compares its content and generates a list of keywords that appear on all of them. The idea behind this is actually brilliant: We don’t know why a certain page is ranking higher than your page, so whatever is able to move the needle is worth trying. Takeaways: New analytics tools and tactics to experiment with
In order to develop a sound digital marketing strategy, you need to know and understand your target market and how users engage with your site. This research should be repeated at least quarterly, since markets can easily change, even in a short period of time. You may also find that you are able to expand your target market, leading to greater revenue generation, and wider reach. On-site analytics is a continuous process. It never really ends. You need to continue analyzing and comparing your page performance and user engagement metrics to keep up with new user expectations, new traffic sources and new tactics your competitors are implementing to attract and engage customers to their sites. Ann Smarty is the blogger and community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on twitter @seosmarty. The post On-site analytics tactics to adopt now: Heatmaps, intent analysis, and more appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/06/on-site-analytics-tactics-to-adopt-now-heatmaps-intent-analysis-more/ The shift to real-time data analysis and optimization has supercharged marketing in a way that frankly should have SEOs on the edge of their seats. As organizations struggle to make sense of and activate their data, SEOs can combine their deep experience with massive amounts of data to make smarter business decisions and have an edge. Things are about to get real, very real. Automation in marketing no doubt was (and still is) a game-changer for consultancies, agencies, and clients. Straight-up automation brought efficiency and order to the workflow. Now, you can expand your capabilities even further with the AI layer. According to a study by the Economist, 75% of executives say AI will be “actively implemented” in companies within the next three years. Business leaders aren’t feeling so great about how it’s being implemented, though. Although 92% of C-level executives with some of the world’s biggest brands recently reported that the pace of their big data and AI investments are accelerating, 77% also said that business adoption of AI initiatives is a major challenge. Where’s the disconnect? It’s telling that 93% of those interviewed identified people and process as obstacles. In this post, we’re going to explore the different ways SEOs can lead the charge in AI-powered insights and optimizations. We are entering a new era of real-time SEO and insights are being powered by machine learning and AI. Understanding the opportunities in evolving SERPsGoogle has gone all-in on AI, and it’s driving increasingly complex yet engaging and functional enhanced search results. With RankBrain, Google uses machine learning to analyze the context of content and serve more accurate organic search, image, and video results. How does it work? Roger Rogerson dug up a succinct explanation in a recent column:
– Greg Corrado, from Bloomberg’s: Google turning its lucrative web search over to AI machines RankBrain isn’t just using natural language processing (NL) to better understand the intent behind each query. It’s converting words to data, plotting it on a chart, and examining the relationships that exist between terms. What it “learns” then drives rankings and different types of results in the blink of an eye for each new query. How can you use this to your advantage?
Making smarter optimizations with AI-powered insightsA typical SEO practitioner uses six separate tools cobbled together and spends four hours a day on research, reporting, and analysis. This is no longer necessary, though. BrightEdge Instant for example (disclosure, my company’s innovation) provides marketers with real-time recommendations and data so marketers take action to optimize content, all within one unified platform. Voice-enabled technologies, now used in more than 20% of mobile queries, are one opportunity you can’t afford to overlook. Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and other digital assistants rely on AI to converse with consumers and respond to their needs. You need to understand the conversational journey and the next three follow-up questions someone is going to ask but are probably wading through a list of keywords from Keyword Planner. You’re manually looking for conversational searches or turning to a point solution with display-only capabilities (without search volume) that is disconnected from your SEO workflow. SEOs need to be able to analyze when and why people use voice search in order to provide the types of answers digital assistants can use. Structured data is a great way to achieve this, but right now more than 80% of the world’s data is unstructured (SEW offers a guide to help you get started here). Keyword research is another opportunity to save time and improve performance by working AI into your workflow. Given the large proportion of queries that Google says have local intent, you need to understand the location for every part of your business worldwide. For businesses with hundreds of thousands of locations worldwide, it’s impossible to accurately research and report on keyword performance in each of your key markets. Using an AI-powered tool here allows you to scale research across thousands of locations and dozens of languages, all on one platform. You can make smart, high impact decisions that give you the competitive edge quickly and seamlessly, and this is without a mess of Excel sheets. How can you use this to your advantage?
SEOs cannot afford to be late adopters in the AI arena and laggards in relation to real-time SEO. Today, you need to be able to anticipate searcher needs and have technology in place to trigger the optimizations that will return your content as the top answer for relevant queries. Want to learn more? Make sure you caught my last column, Five ways SEOs can utilize data with insights, automation, and personalization. Jim Yu is the founder and CEO of leading enterprise SEO and content performance platform BrightEdge. He can be found on Twitter @jimyu. The post How AI is powering real-time SEO research: Insights and optimization appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/06/how-ai-is-powering-real-time-seo-research-insights-and-optimization/ |
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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