Inbound Marketing Funnel

INBOUND MARKETING FUNNEL

1. PLAN:- BRANDED CONTENT

Content is marketing's last opportunity for creativity.

Relevant content earns permission to sell. Content is the fuel that drives the inbound effect from partner sites and outposts, content is the conversation starter and problem solver in social media and it's the only way to develop a strong presence in search engines.

2. REACH:- Search Engines, Social Networks, Publishers and Blogs.

BUYER STAGE: EXPLORATION

Publish and promote your content allow sharing to other outposts, networks and syndicate. Draw people to your content hub.

Key measures:

• Fans/Followers
• Vistors
• Inbound Links

3. ACT:- Your web site, blog, community and interactive tools.

BUYER STAGE: DECISION MAKING

Be worth finding - your content hub needs to be relevant, inspiration, useful problem solving and earn you permission to sell in the future..

Key Measures:

• Time on Set
• Shares/ Comments / Likes
• Leads / Lead Conversion

4. CONVERT:- E-commerce process, product, price and promotion.

BUYER STAGE: PURCHASE

Captilallise on marketing investment, develop re-marketing and email automation to ensure relevance at buyer stage and drive repeat sale..

Key Measures:

• Orders
• Revenue
• Average Order Value

5. ENGAGE:- Customer Advocacy

BUYER STAGE: ADVOCACY

Thrilled customers are key to social media marketing, social proof, repeat sales and referral. Start your marketing here!

Key Measures:

• Repeat Purchase (Lifetime Value)
• Referral

Article Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/302937512413056706/

Benefits of Combining Earned SEO and Paid Search

Benefits of Combining Earned SEO and Paid Search

If you site has deep success in earned SEO and your approach to paid search seemed isolated from it, both should share the same focus – solutions found in search that match user intent.

We find at least 5 reasons why your business should consider running a Google AdWords paid searh campaign alongside your earned SEO strategies.

Earned SEO is getting harder and paid search should not be evaluated exclusive from these efforts. Even if you have gained significant success in levels of search visibility, paid search will improve on results, not compete with them. Below are our top 5 reasons your business can benefit from running a AdWords paid search campaign in addition to your successful SEO technique implementation. drive up your profits from paid search by intertwining efforts better with organic SEO teams – today!

It is proven by numerous studies and market experts that if digital audiences find the organic content of a website in the search results, they prefer to click on their paid links. After getting your website listed in the top 3 results in the organic category, it becomes easier for Internet users to trust you and later click on your paid content.

For more productive and effective outcomes in both arenas, take wins from highly ranked organic pages and apply them to your company’s paid ads for broader exposure and trustworthy influence. At their core both links from paid AdWords advertising and earned links are interconnected and have inter-dependence on each other. Don’t overlook the benefits of their mutual relationship. Marry them and gain the rewards in an integrated approach.

5 Ways That Earned SEO and PPC Synergy and Collaboration = Strength

1. Your Business Brand is More Clearly Identified
2. Double Your Site’s Visibility in SERPs
3. Increase Click-Throughs across Paid and Earned Search
4. Earned Search Rankings Are Volatile; Paid Ad Rank Is Not
5. Marrying Earned and Paid Marketing Teams Reduces Costs

5 Benefits of Earned & Paid Search Teams Working in Tandeum

1. Your Business Brand is More Clearly Identified

When it comes to the big data you have accrued and interpreted to understand your tracking conversions, you know that which consumers are seeing your brand and visiting your site via owned, paid, and earned media by their journey to purchase. By determining optimal paths and messaging along their journey, digital marketers can make better-informed decisions that are critical to your success.

You likely need your company’s brand (big or small) to be in front of more potential buyers and move them to the top of the funnel with your non-branded paid and organic search terms can do their job. First ensure that the bottom of your funnel is working correctly and then try finding a strategy related to how you’re going to increase acquisition to the top of your buyers funnel. Search is often the catalyst of performance.

Once more consumers are in your funnel, you can go back to those who aren’t converting and use paid search retargeting to re-engage them. The higher number of prospective consumers that you can turn into buyers’ means that you now have more advocates who are talking about your brand. Ask them for business reviews, product reviews, and if they are willing to comment or share with their network across social channels.

This is known widely as push vs. pull marketing and leverages both earned and paid search to expand recognition of your brand.

2. Double Your Site’s Visibility in SERPs

Google search engine results pages (SERPs) are becoming more visual with advances in algorithms that may contain rich cards, featured snippets, the Google Answer Box, and a lot of information with ad extensions for mobile paid marketing. To both compete and win for searchers’ attention, your business can gain the added visibility necessary by intertwining efforts across paid search teams and the individuals who are working on earned search for you. Yes, getting on the first page is great, being listed twice or three times is even better. We have times when our paid ad for a client shows at the top where paid results are listed, in the Google Knowledge Graph on the right, and within first-page organic SERPs.

This consumes a tremendous amount of real estate, especially if both your earned search ranking and paid ads are listed in the top three organic and top three paid positions respectively. You advantage is clear if all other ranking factors are comparable.

3. Increase Click-Throughs across Paid and Earned Search

One benefit that comes naturally is an increase in search visibility because you have increased the number of clicks to your website, which earns more domain trust. While it still holds true that clicks are not a good measurement of success, they are a preliminary step in better conversion rates.

Google headed a search study in 2012, which summarized that 50 percent of clicks generated by paid ads are not exchanged by organic clicks when the ads are gone and the website has the top position organic search ranking. The study additionally indicates that as the organic search ranking lowered, the percentage of clicks not replaced by an AdWords paid ad increases. This supports the premise that organic search alone cannot possible drive as much wanted traffic to a website as organic search combined with paid search. Conduct even a low budget paid campaign and watch the increase in your earned results as a correlation.

4. Earned Search Rankings Are Volatile; Paid Ad Rank Is Not

Your earned rankings are subject to daily fluctuations. One day your web pages are in the top three for a high-priority search term, and the next day it seems to have disappeared from the first page in SERPs. Given that we now know that Google’s algorithm update continually and user-interface demands change, organic rankings seem more hot-blooded and fluid than ever.

Putting your marketing dollars into AdWords is different.

After you have optimized your AdWords account, quality score, budget, and bidding strategies, your Ad Rank’s position in relativity to other ads is typically fairly consistent. Paid search marketing demands a considerable amount of daily monitoring and tweaking to achieve the right Ad Rank and lower costs per conversion, but marketers still have far more control over the ranking of your ads than SEO professionals do over organic search rankings.

5. Marrying Earned and Paid Marketing Teams Reduces Costs

Some individuals have mistakenly come to believe that paid ads are just for companies that have $1,000’s to spend. Small to mid-sized business can compete if the ad targeting is buttoned down to the core target audience. It is still possible in many verticals to spend just a couple hundred dollars per month and gain deserving results. For many targeted terms, it is possible to obtain inexpensive bids that will increase your exposure online.

One great thing about Google’s ad auction platform is that it actually levels the playing field, and permits smaller businesses that are savvy to compete effectively with the bigger budgets since it is less about how much you bid, and more about how relevant you are to the search query. Google actually stops showing an ad if it determines it is a bad match; its chief goal is to keep the individual using Google search happy and coming back. Businesses that are so huge and sprawled that marketing teams become disjointed sometimes find that even their deep pockets cannot achieve bidding well on everything. Closely marry your SEO teams work building landing pages to what SEM marketers know produces conversions and revenue.

If your landing page is not closely themed to support the keyword terms that your paid marketer can win on, then your quality score will drop, and you conversions will cost more.

Organic Search and AdWords Feature Image Search

Knowing the best strategies for including images applies to both earned and paid searh as well. On May 16, 2016 Google announced New ways to be there and be useful for mobile shoppers.

“Behind your simple page of results is a complex system, carefully crafted and tested, to support more than one-hundred billion searches each month.”

Semantic search allows us to better define who we are online. Each business’s existence in the digital arena is unique; defining it to our digital audiences projects our brand and encourages a following. It is a core component that applies to complex aspects of organinc search and PPC marketing. When your web content clearly explains your products and serives, both search engines and searchers with commercail intent can find your more easily.

Foundational Principal: Focus on What Users Want

What Google is seeking to achieve with their algorithm updates is to make it so that for digital marketers to stay ahead in gaining online visibility, you must provide site visitors with what they want. This principal is foundation to both earned and paid search. Do this successfully and your web pages will rank high, fail and you’ll slide downward as the algorithms refine and old SEO tactics won’t cut it. 

And Google implemenets new algoritums, the customer gets a better user-experience on the Google search engine – today that particularily applies to mobile users. Company’s that align their earned and paid serach marketing efforts will reign at the top in SERPs, if other facotors are healthy. In effect, it’s like a ratchet that will constantly wind up more tightly and thereby twist organic SEO and paid advertising closer together.
Synergies or differences in the way marketing teams look at PPC as it relates to the overall marketing strategy may either help or hinder SEO techniques.

2 Overarching Prioritizes for Both Earned and Paid Search

Make it a prioirty to do both:

* Optimize you web content on your landing pages

* Optimize your copy in your Google paid search ads

Paid Search & Organic Search are an Ideal Pairing

Google Research published a report titled

Impact of Organic Ranking on Ad Click Incrementality that confirms the value of using paid advertising in addition to organic search optimization.

The study clearly reveals that even if a business site can claim a #1 organic ranking in SERPs, paid ads provide an additional 50% incremental clicks. In the scenario happens that your organic placement drops further off the front page of Google or lower in position, then your paid ads can provide up to 82% – 96% additional web traffic to the landing page that your ad points to.

This research was conducted to review the interaction between organic results and paid search; it reveals that businesses with a top organic ranking still gain notable benefits from an accompanying paid ad. The reason is that the extra 50% of clicks won from the ads do not get replaced by clicks within earned search results at the time when the ads aren’t displayed. Ranking in organic search is typically higher when branded terms are uses. For digital marketers of AdWords campaigns, we often recommend using value-per-click calculations to determine the spend amount per keyword phrase.

The findings demonstrate that 82% of ad clicks are incremental when the associated organic result is ranked between 2nd and 4th on the front page, and 96% of clicks are incremental when the brand’s organic result was in a 5th position or lower. This creates more in-the-moment opportunities for you to win the following of new clients.

If you find that your site’s overall traffic and online sales are dipping, you can leverage the benefits of Google PPC ads boosts to and show up on the first page. The cost of this is typically well worth it when you blend earned and paid search efforts to maximum results.

SEMrush has determined that “PPC campaigns should be a part of any good Internet marketing plan. Even big brands budget for PPC ads, and they often times dominate the search engine organic ranks. It’s a boon to any marketing campaign to always keep paid ads integrated with free organic rank.” The Future of SEO: AI, Personalization, and Machine Learning article published on January 5, 2016 in “The Future of SEO: AI, Personalization, and Machine Learning”.

Theme Your Content to be Used Throughout Earned & Paid Search

While this applies to all forms of content, such as images, copy, banners, and video, for an example, let’s focus on video.

There is a lot in a video that cannot come across in words. “It is more shareable; it is easy to engage with”. Video content is easily incorporated in AdWords advertising, within your web pages, and shared on your social media sites. When a viewer “watches” you, they can relate better to you and tell that you are not just another business going through the motions of marketing. Product reviews on YouTube are very, very powerful and are an ideal component to add to your landing pages. Video lets you take in a person’s emotions, gestures, accent, inflection, and emphasis from tone adjustments.

Video gives viewers a better sense of the “real-deal. In terms of getting your identity out there”, according to Oleg Moskalensky. In a live event about ontology, David Amerland says, “Google now separates desktop and mobile, which has put Youtube videos in the number on position in search. Be real. That is the number one thing that will give you a competitive advantage in marketing.”

VIDEO “Marketers who add video to their email campaigns see an average rise in revenue of 40 percent.” – DesignMantic

How Personalized Search Influences Earned & Paid Search

Increases in how earned search impacts the outcome of Google paid search are attributed in part to recent Google algorithm updates that prioritize personalized search results.

When personalized search creates a different SERP variant for every searcher or even the same searcher on a different day or time of day, SEO’s must get savvier at deciphering ranking reports. Viewing and understanding SEO reports in Google Analytics are two different levels of expertise. It is critical to know how the Google search engine works. Testing search term queries and questioning why search results present differently leads to a better grasp of how conflicting rankings are actually the result of personalized search. Dissecting how the same search terms ranks in earned search versus paid search helps digital marketers know where they are positioned or how they’re supposed to gain visibility in SERPs.

“While Google hasn’t provided details on whether and how its latest algorithm changes might affect paid search, recent trends point toward organic search becoming a greater factor in the success of a paid search campaign. This trend falls in line with Google’s strategy of making searches more useful for users, providing the right results in the right place and at the right time,” according to Alexander Kesler in the How Google’s Frequent Algorithm Updates Affect Paid Search article.

SEOs and SEM experts that work in partnership to take personalized data results into consideration when analyzing rank and performance can best leverage advantages. If a site ranks well for one particular search query, it increases it chances to rank well for additional keyword phrases. One aspect of personalization is that Google ranks a site more favorably if site visitors continue to click on the same website for a number of queries. If Google comes to trust that users prefer your web pages over interactions with other sites for similar, it’s likely that you will rank higher due to personalization for additional queried terms.

Google’s Artificial Intelligence Is Used for Both Earned and Paid Search

Conversion rate optimization that increases business revenue encompasses both earned and paid search efforts.

Along with the higher use of Google’s latest algorithm named RankBrain, its dependence on Artificial Intelligence improves GoogleBot’s attempts to “understand and interpret’ the context of the content in both ad copy and within web pages. This reduces the previous focus on keyword density because it can better engage the use of related words to understand the writer is trying to say and match its value to search engine user queries.

There are two primary buckets of content marketing: on-site and off-site.

Onsite web content must be relevant, unique, and written to engage users and drive more social shares across multiple media sites – not for search engines. Google incorporated an algorithm update that penalizes sites that display too many ads above the fold. This means that teams working on organic SEO content will benefit not only from producing well-written material but that they should target real users (not search bots) and reduce risks of penalties by watching both the number of and placement of paid ads. Observe how many are above the fold and what Google considers as potentially interfering with the user experience.

Page rankings are influenced by how well or poor of an experience the user has after landing on your site – whether from a paid ad or from organic search engine result pages.

Use GA Conversion Funnel Report to Improve Earned and paid Search

The Google Analytics conversion funnel insights report makes it easy to see how site visitors progress from page to page when they make a purchase. Using conversion funnels simplifies the process of identifying the specific processes that may be behind the lose of potential customers. Then, armed with these insights, you can blend both your earned and paid search efforts by knowing the needed actions to fix related site issues.
If GA is not set-up already, be sure to do so and understand your search queries that are working for you from your Google Analytics Reports. The Google Search Console is the the resource for seeing your organic search queries. But the best way to improve acquisitions – for me – comes from GA reports for AdWords campaigns.

Reporting > Acquisition > AdWords > Keywords

This is a great way to identify the long-tail keywords that drive your paid conversions. Having this knowledge, it is easier to use the best keywords to build site content with a clearer plan on increasing conversion rates and revenue streams.

How Partnering with Hill Web Marketing Works

In our experience, we find that when we are able to have a higher quality of communication between marketing teams, web designers, the IT department, additional freelancers, and others within our client projects, we can obtain proven results faster. Even more so recently, as search in both worlds of earned and paid search are harder. When your SEO consultant and individuals optimizing your AdWords campaigns/ meet regularly, whether digitally or in person, to share reports and brainstorm – it it an immense help. In the end the client is the big winner.

We prefer to meet in person with you on a monthly or regular basis to go over monthly marketing performance reports. Otherwise, too often key insights go missed or key action steps across teams are more disjointed and delayed. You gain the benefit of being having not just the number of clicks, ad conversions, and your average order value, etc. explained from PPC, but also how these same data points for organic search are generating traffic to your site. Sometimes what the facts prove up is that while all the other channels or forms of marketing suffered, PPC saved the day. Or, if everything suffered, maybe there’s a critical technical SEO issue that is hurting the entire site, or maybe your messages are off in seasonality. At that point, we recommend a full Website Technical SEO Audit is conducted.

With AdWords conversion tracking implemented properly, you can see how effective clicks from your paid search are at generating valuable current and new customer activity. This works for learning of user engagement in areas like website purchases, phone calls, mobile app downloads, white papers engaged, PDF downloads and more.

Article Source:- https://www.hillwebcreations.com/benefits-of-combining-earned-seo-and-paid-search/amp

Video Marketing on Social Media: A Small Business Guide

Social media makes video marketing accessible – and affordable – for every business. It's one of the best ways to reach your customers where they already are: on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other online networks. And since social media users love video, it's one of the best ways to raise brand awareness and engage customers and clients.

These days, you don't need any special equipment to shoot a great video ad — a smartphone and enthusiasm for your brand will suffice. If you're not sure where to start, here's a rundown of the top social media channels you can use to boost your brand with video.

1. YouTube

YouTube is the biggest video-sharing platform on the planet, so it's a great place to start marketing your business. After you sign up, you can create a customizable channel for your business, complete with colors, logos, slogans and more. Don't be intimidated — setting up a YouTube channel is simple and takes just a few minutes.

Once your channel is ready, you can upload as many videos as you want. Viewers rate your videos and leave comments, which will raise the overall visibility of your videos among other YouTube users. Anyone can subscribe to your channel, so whenever you upload a new video, they'll be automatically notified.

If you don't think you have the chops to put together a high-quality video ad, check out YouTube Director, an app for the iPhone and iPad. The app walks you through the process of making a quality ad, and lets you add text overlays, music and scene transitions with a few taps.

Tips

• Be consistent: Upload new videos regularly to encourage viewers to subscribe.
• Include calls to action: Tell viewers directly to rate the video they're watching, leave a comment or subscribe to your channel.
• Interact: Respond to feedback quickly, and thank viewers who leave comments to encourage further interaction.
• Share: Share links to your YouTube Channel, and embed your YouTube videos in posts on Facebook and Twitter to engage new viewers.

2. Facebook

Taking your video-marketing campaign to Facebook is a no-brainer, given the platform's huge and devoted user base. Generally speaking, Facebook users love video — they're much more likely to click and view a brief video clip than to read a text-based post.

To get started on Facebook, you'll need to set up a page for your business, which is quick and easy. Pages can be fully customized to represent your business, with all the information that potential customers need to know. Users who "Like" your page will see your posts — including any uploaded videos — and those posts will appear automatically in their news feed. Even better, friends of those users might also see the same videos appear in their own feeds.

Tips

• Keep it light: Facebook users log on to be entertained, so striving to keep your videos light, and even entertaining, is sure to boost engagement.
• Get interactive: Watch for comments and questions that viewers leave under your videos, and respond to them quickly and professionally.
• Monitor reactions: Facebook gives you the tools to see who likes and shares your videos. Watching to see which videos garner the most positive reactions will help you plan your next updates.
• Broadcast live: Facebook lets you broadcast live video using a feature called Facebook Live. Check it out— it's a great way to boost engagement and give clients and customers a more intimate look at your business.

3. Twitter

Like Facebook, Twitter has a huge, diverse user base, and its regular users are extremely engaged with the platform. That's why it should be a key part of any small business's video-marketing strategy.Twitter isn't just about short, text-based messages. The network also lets users embed videos directly into their tweets, which will then pop up in the feed of anyone who follows your business's account. Videos can be up to 2 minutes and 20 seconds long — plenty of time to engage viewers with a short clip.

Tips

• Be concise: Twitter has always been about keeping it brief. Users view their feeds sporadically, often for just a few seconds at a time, so stick to short, easily digestible clips.
• Engage: One part of Twitter's appeal is the ability it gives users to engage directly with the brands they care about. When users comment or share your videos, reward them with a response.
• Be timely: Twitter users want to know what's happening right now. Use your video clips to advertise special deals and ongoing sales, or to let followers see what's happening with your business today.

4. Instagram

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, Instagram is a social network that's dedicated solely to sharing photos and videos. For that reason, it might seem like a network where only highly visual businesses — such as those in food or fashion — can succeed. But with a little creativity, you can probably find a way to make the platform work for just about any brand.

Using Instagram is simple. After you create an account, you can upload images, photos and videos that run for 15 seconds or less. Users who follow your page will see those updates in their feed, where they can like or comment on them — and it's really as simple as that.

Keeping your business's Instagram account updated is easy, but the nature of the platform might make it a poor fit for your business. The network's user base skews relatively young, which can be limiting. And if your business isn't particularly visual, you might put your efforts elsewhere.

Tips

• Show off: Sharing images of your business's products or services can help you reel in new customers.
• Post deals: Share images with coupon codes and other information about how to redeem special deals. That will encourage users to follow your account closely so they don't miss out.
• Go behind the scenes: A good way to generate interest is to show people how your product is made, or perhaps give them a glimpse of your office.

5. Snapchat

It may be the fastest-growing social media platform out there, but Snapchat is still a niche platform for small businesses. If you're not familiar with Snapchat, here's a quick primer. The app lets you upload short video clips — as well as images — and the content is sent directly to anyone who follows your account.

The trademark feature of Snapchat is that users can usually only view each video once before it disappears from their feed, but that restriction actually only applies to videos sent directly to individuals. Content uploaded to your account's "story" can be viewed by your followers an unlimited number of times for 24 hours.

The ephemeral nature of Snapchat posts — as well as the fact that the app's user base skews younger than any of the others on this list — means that many small businesses would be better off investing their resources elsewhere. But businesses that cater to young people would be wise to give it a chance.

Tips

• Keep it casual: While other platforms encourage highly curated content, Snapchat posts can be simple and casual. If a post isn't perfect, don't fret — it will disappear soon anyway.
• Make it fun: Clips of employees or customers having fun with your product will keep young Snapchat users engaged and coming back for more.
• Go behind the scenes: Snapchat is the perfect platform for taking viewers behind the scenes of your business for a glimpse of how it's run.

6. Periscope

Periscope — the most popular live-streaming app for mobile devices — is a great way to connect with your customers on a personal level. The Twitter-owned service makes it easy for you to start broadcasting live video with just a few taps. Customers who follow your account will automatically receive an alert on their smartphone whenever you start a new broadcast, which makes it relatively simple for you to cultivate an audience.

Live streaming has some clear perks over other kinds of video marketing. Since live streams are happening in real time, they help humanize your brand. Instead of seeing a carefully crafted advertisement, viewers feel like they're seeing a truly authentic, behind-the-scenes representation of your business.

Tips

• Demonstrate: If you sell a physical product, Periscope is a great way to show how it works. Customers can tune in to a live demonstration, which can feel more trustworthy than a canned ad.
• Get creative: Periscope can be great for showcasing your company's offerings, no matter what you sell. For example, realtors can use the app to broadcast virtual open houses.
• Interact: Live streaming isn't a one-way street. Periscope lets you interact with customers and clients in real time, which is a great way to hold live Q&A sessions, webinars or tutorials.
• Reward: Giving exclusive offers for people who tune in to your Periscope stream is a good way to hook viewers and boost your sales.

Article Source:- http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/9273-video-marketing-social-media-small-business.html

Google expanded text ads are live, and device bidding & responsive ads for native roll out

Standard text ads will no longer be accepted as of October 26.
By Ginny Marvin July 26, 2016

The day has come: Google has officially launched expanded text ads. The extra-long ads with double headlines began rolling out across devices Tuesday morning. The rollout comes along with the availability of device bidding and responsive display ads for native that were first announced at Google Performance Summit in May.

Expanded text ads rollout begins

As Sundeep Jain, who oversees text ads at Google, told the audience at SMX Advanced in June, existing standard ads will continue to run alongside expanded text ads (ETAs). As of October 26, 2016, however, advertisers will no longer be able to create or upload standard text ads. Google has not set a date when standard ads will no longer run with ETAs, but Jain noted advertisers should have sufficient time to test standard and expanded ad formats against each other to ensure they are properly using ETAs.
In other words, the expectation is that advertisers will run A/B tests with standard and expanded text ads for a period.

Expanded text ads include two headlines, each with up to 30 characters and a description of up to 80 characters. Google has said the extra copy was specifically designed to give mobile users more information and cited an average CTR bump of 20 percent in early tests. Robert Spears, digital marketing director for Guitar Center, whose ads are featured in the screen shot below, said as an early adopter, its non-brand campaigns “have seen more than a 2X increase in CTR.”

AdWords Editor and the AdWords API support ETAs, as well as third-party tools including DoubleClick Search, Kenshoo and Marin.

A caveat is that even though Google gives advertisers a total character count of 60 for headlines, advertisers have seen the second headline get truncated on desktop if Google doesn’t wrap the headline. On Twitter, Google actually suggested using just a total of 33 characters on the conservative side to avoid headlines getting cut off, though that seems extreme. You can use the ad preview tool to see how your ads will appear before launching them.

Google has published a new best practices guide on using Expanded Text Ads and device bidding, which is also getting a big update.

Separate device bidding is here

Advertisers can now start setting base bid adjustments for mobile, tablet and/or desktop, control that was lost with Enhanced Campaigns. (Update: Google has clarified that this roll out is going to take up to a few months to get to all accounts.)

Bid adjustments can now be set for each device type at the campaign level in AdWords.

Even as it rolls out these new controls, Google is pushing its automated bidding tools — now under the umbrella of Smart Bidding — and recommending that advertisers not go back to separating their campaigns by device type. Automated bidding will soon take advantage of the device separation as well, initially with the ability to set Target CPA by device.

Despite Google’s downplaying this new manual functionality, there’s likely to be quite a bit of experimentation in this area among advertisers that have the expertise and resources to test new campaign structures now feasible with separate device bidding.

Responsive display ads for native inventory

Also announced at Google Performance Summit are responsive display ads that Google will auto-generate from a headline, description, image and URL provided by the advertiser. The ads can serve across the GDN (Google Display Network) on all devices and, more interestingly, are eligible for the native ad inventory Google has opened up across publishers on the GDN.

Advertisers provide a short 25-character and a long 90-character headline, a description up to 90 characters (This might appear cut off with an ellipses in some cases), an image and a landing page URL.
These are rolling out now, and advertisers will find the option to set up a Responsive ad in the +Ad drop-down in AdWords when they become available. For more on setting up Responsive ads, see the Google help page.

Article Source:- http://searchengineland.com/google-adwords-expanded-text-ads-live-254548

How to Recycle Old Website Content

May 18, 2016 by HigherVisibility

“Content is king” is an adage that has been adopted and practiced by every successful blogger across the web for years. So practiced, that there’s a definite surplus in content. While content continues to flood the internet at an increasing rate, users continue to only consume so much of it. This creates a problem-or opportunity, depending on how you look at it-with blogging strategy. In an attempt to stay at the surface in such a competitive landscape, bloggers are cranking out content at a rate that takes away from the quality of their posts and contributes to the excess information put out there for users.

Recycling Old Website Content

The effort of content production can be subsidized with reposting old blog content, an effort that can drastically increase your site’s traffic, make usable content readily available for your readers, and make your writing last longer. Content takes time to produce, so you might as well squeeze as much use out of it as you can. Part of doing that means upcycling and recycling old website content, specifically the content that has performed well.

For nearly all blogs, a very small percentage of high performing posts generate the majority of traffic for your site. Take the prominent website Hubspot, for example. An analysis of their blog determined that 76 percent of their monthly blog views came from old posts, and similar analyses have revealed the same trend across the board. With the knowledge that the majority of blog views are coming from a handful of your older, most successful posts rather than the new stuff you’re racing the clock to finish, you can plot your next move: capitalizing on things you’ve already written by reposting old blog content.

How to Do It

• Start by identifying your top posts (most blogging platforms and websites have this information available when you log in through the back end). Look for what’s called “evergreen” content-pieces that remain relevant and fresh in concept for users, even though time has passed since it was originally published.
• Update the content. Stay on topic with what the post is about, but updates images, add a little more information, or rewrite a paragraph.
• Evaluate your keywords. Did you miss any the first time? Can you add a little to the content to include some new keywords?
• Don’t change the URL, but refresh the time stamp to reflect the current date.

Why Recycling Old Website Content Works

It may seem like a practice that’s too easy to work, but it does. If the content is evergreen, it will still create a lot of user engagement by striking a relevant nerve with your audience. By tweaking your content just a little and reposting it at a later date, you can reach new users that didn’t see the post the first time who will like, link, share, and comment.

Not to be confused with duplicate content, reposted content will yield positive effects on search engine rankings. Google values quality content that performs well and offers real value to users. When you have content that has performed well, offers value, but gets buried by constant content production, reposting is a way to resurrect and reuse it.

Article Source:-  http://smallbiztrends.com/2016/05/recycling-old-website-content.html

Google: First Build High Quality Content Then Worry About Web Spam Issues

Jul 25, 2016
by Barry Schwartz

So you have a spam issue with your web site and your web site doesn't rank well in Google. What do you do first? Google's John Mueller said on Twitter first thing to tackle is to make sure your site has high quality content and then you should focus on web spam issues your site may have.

What John Mueller means is that if you have some sort of manual action, don't jump to just fix the specific issue but step back, look at your site as a whole and make your whole site better. Don't fix the single problem here or there because ultimately it probably won't have as much of an impact as making your whole site better.

Here is the tweet:



The specific issue this webmaster has is a sneaky mobile redirect manual action, but the webmaster fixed it and still has issues ranking. John said he should focus on building high quality content first and then worry about the web spam issues.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Article Source:-  https://www.seroundtable.com/google-high-quality-content-web-spam-issues-22427.html

Let Me Google That For You – An Interview with Gary Illyes

Gary Illyes, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst since 2011, is kind of a big deal. Many in the world of search are dubbing him the new Matt Cutts, but whether or not this is the case, there are few people on the planet who know as much about what’s going on at Google as Mr. Illyes.

By: Woj Kwasi

When he’s not (quote­unquote) “creating a better search experience for users by helping webmasters create amazing websites”, crunching data or reinventing search, you might find Gary helping (or trolling) users on Twitter, jumping out of moving planes, or talking about chowing down on an Australian marsupial or two. Culinary tastes aside, Gary’s the man with all the answers on Google’s algorithms.

We caught up with Gary at Big Digital Adelaide to try to trip him up and spill the beans.

This post has been lightly edited for clarity. Gary’s opinions are all his own and don’t necessarily represent those of Kwasi Studios or Google.

Woj: Welcome to Australia, Gary.

-------------> Gary: Thank you for the very warm introduction.

Woj: No problem. So let’s go back to the beginning. Well, not too far back.

What’s your first memory of the internet?

Gary: 28K modem sound

Woj: *Beep boop boop*

Gary: Yeah, exactly. With my brother, we learned to sing that, to whistle it because we realised that it always followed the same pattern and except when there were troubles with the line and then the beeps were different. But yeah, that’s my first memory. And of course we were teenagers and we had to download pictures and how the pictures were rendering on the computer. I mean, pictures of cats.

Woj: Yeah, of course.

Gary: They took a very long time to load and I remember how frustrating that was. But we were mostly living in Romania and they have amazing internet.

Woj: Really?

Gary: Yeah, for a very, very long time, probably for 20 years by now. The first time I was in the U.S. they were still struggling with half a megabit DSL and by that time in Romania, 100 megabit synchronous connection was pretty common.

Woj: Oh, wow. And your background is being an online journalism teacher.

Gary: Yeah.

What are your thoughts about Google Podium?

Gary: Personally I think it’s an interesting way to present content. It’s a very cool idea, I think, and it can easily satisfy the information needs of the users. I don’t know where it will it go or what will happen to it. We like to experiment with these kinds of things and just see how it spins out.

Woj: What will happen to old content (e.g. news) with Google’s Podium instant articles feature? Do you see the content published direct to the search results as having potential value beyond its initial seven ­day lifespan, and will it be searchable at all?

Gary: I would hope that, in some sense, the posts would be archived. I think that it’s very good for humanity to preserve knowledge. We wouldn’t know much about history if that wasn’t humanity’s priority to archive things. So I hope that we are continuing with that.

Woj: We’ve got to make sure that future generations have access to all these wonderful historical snapshots of our lives.

Gary: Yeah, it’s not like I’m publishing stuff about what I was doing in the early morning after coffee.

Woj: Yeah – and also, as per the earlier disclaimer: these thoughts are Gary’s and not representative of Google.

Gary: I mean, some of them are but in many cases, probably I will not have a good answer from Google’s side because I just don’t work on the product, for example, like Google Post. In those cases, instead of saying that I don’t have an answer and then stop, I would prefer to just say something that is my personal opinion.

Woj: Sure. So Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Aside from minor punctuation, this mission statement has not changed since the company’s inauguration in 1998.

What has changed is the search engine has grown into a colossal machine learning monolith, almost always delivering the right answer and in one eighth of a second. This implies that Google doesn’t want low quality in their results, and the technology they use to separate the wheat from the chaff has improved.

What are some ways that webmasters can change their behaviour to focus on providing a better user experience?

Gary: Our goal was always to provide the most relevant results to our users and that hasn’t changed over the years. The correct answer…well, not correct, but the relevant answer could be from a local site as well. It doesn’t have to be from a high quality site, but in most cases it will be.

In general, I hope that publishers will try hard to create high ­quality sites instead of trying to sell Viagra in a Canadian casino without a prescription, and we will try to reward those sites by presenting them in our search results.

Basically you want to create high quality sites following our webmaster guidelines, and focus on the user, try to answer the user, try to satisfy the user, and all eyes will follow.

Woj: Which doesn’t include manipulation and all of these sort of tactics that SEOs often want to take as shortcuts.

Gary: Going out and buying 5,000 links from a Russian spammer, it’s not a good idea in general; but sure, it could work for a few hours.

Woj: Google’s very good at detecting patterns. The way I see it, Google is trying to replicate the real world. The real world is full of entities and relationships between them.

How important is it to give Google clues via semantic markup or is Google pretty good at working out the clues themselves?

Gary: I think the answer is both. We are pretty good at triangulating answers or facts in general. We have multiple sources of information to validate its correctness for the knowledge vault. Schema Markup, for example, is also a very important part of search.

Woj: Is that a signal that, if found, kind of precedes other signals? Is that advantageous?

Gary: It’s not very visible in general. For a rich submit, for example, it is. For recipes, it is. For movie reviews, it is. But other than that, typically webmasters or content producers will not see a clear benefit. It’s more about making sure that search engines understand the content well.

So for example if you are talking in your pages about Apple, then that’s quite ambiguous unless you specify somehow which entity are you talking about. Are you talking about the fruit or the company? And one way to do that is to have Schema Markup on your pages.

Woj: So it’s beneficial when disambiguating terms?

Gary: Yes, it can be. Yes. And generally, it’s good for search engines because they will better understand the content of the page.

Woj: RankBrain has been mentioned as the third most important ranking factor. You’ve said that it lets Google understand queries better. No effect on crawling or indexing or ranking.

Can you explain how RankBrain lets Google understand queries better? And how it fits within the core algo?

Gary: Is that all?

Woj: Yes.

Gary: You want fries with that?

Woj: Yes, please. Do you have a diagram?

Gary: So yes, RankBrain. Its importance depends on which way you look at it. It’s an important ranking factor because it affects pretty much all queries. In many cases, it will not do anything for the query stack because the results are already ranked by the core ranking algorithm. But for queries that we haven’t seen before – really long complex queries – it can produce very good predictions about what will work best for the user.

What it does is look at the query based on previously fed training data and try to make a prediction from the results set in order to provide results that work best for a specific query. It’s also really good at getting negative queries right.

So for example, “Can I beat Mario without using a walk-through?” Traditionally, for our algorithm, it was quite hard to understand “without” in the query and typically it was dropping it. With RankBrain, we do a better job at these kinds of queries.

Continue to more some important facts news - go to the link ==> http://www.kwasistudios.com/gary-illyes-interview/

Is your HTTPS setup causing SEO issues?

Although Google has stated that sites using HTTPS will be given a minor rankings boost, many websites have experienced losses due to improper implementation. Columnist Tony Edward discusses common issues and how to fix them.

Tony Edward on July 22

Google has been making the push for sites to move to HTTPS, and many folks have already started to include this in their SEO strategy. Recently at SMX Advanced, Gary Illyes from Google said that 34 percent of the Google search results are HTTPS. That’s more than I personally expected, but it’s a good sign, as more sites are becoming secured.

However, more and more, I’m noticing a lot of sites have migrated to HTTPS but have not done it correctly and may be losing out on the HTTPS ranking boost. Some have also created more problems on their sites by not migrating correctly.

HTTPS post-migration issues

One of the common issues I noticed after a site has migrated to HTTPS is that they do not set the HTTPS site version as the preferred one and still have the HTTP version floating around. Google back in December 2015 said in scenarios like this, they would index the HTTPS by default.

However, the following problems still exist by having two site versions live:

• Duplicate content
• Link dilution
• Waste of search engine crawl budget

Duplicate content

If canonical tags are not leveraged, Google sees two site versions live, which is considered duplicate content. For example, the following site has both HTTPS and HTTP versions live and is not leveraging canonical tags.


Because of this incorrect setup, we see both HTTP and HTTPS site versions are indexed.

I’ve also seen sites that have canonical tags in place, but the setup is incorrect. For example, Adorama.com has both HTTP and HTTPS versions live — and both versions self-canonicalize. This does not eliminate the duplicate content issue.

http://www.adorama.com/

https://www.adorama.com/

Adorama’s XML sitemap highlights the HTTP URLs instead of the HTTPS versions.

Link dilution

Having both the HTTPS and HTTP versions live, even with canonical tags in place, can cause link dilution. What will happen is that different users will come across both site versions, sharing and linking to them respectively. So social signals and external link equity can get split into two URLs instead of one.

Waste of search engine crawl budget

If canonical tags are not leveraged, and both versions are live, the search engines will end up crawling both, which will waste crawl budget. Instead of crawling just one preferred version, the search engines have to do double work. This can be problematic for very large sites.

The ideal setup to address the issues above is to have the HTTP version URLs 301 redirect to the HTTPS versions site wide. This will eliminate the duplication, link dilution and waste of crawl budget. Here is an example:
Be sure not to use 302 redirects, which are temporary redirects. Here is an example of a site that is doing this. They are actually 302 redirecting the HTTPS to the HTTP. It should be that the HTTP 301 redirects to the HTTPS.
Here is a list of the best practices for a correct HTTPS setup to avoid SEO issues:

1. Ensure your HTTPS site version is added in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. In Google Search Console, add both the www and non-www versions. Set your preferred domain under the HTTPS versions.
2. 301 redirect HTTP URL versions to their HTTPS versions sitewide.
3. Ensure all internal links point to the HTTPS version URLs sitewide.
4. Ensure canonical tags point to the HTTPS URL versions.
5. Ensure your XML Sitemap includes the HTTPS URL versions.
6. Ensure all external links to your site that are under your control, such as social profiles, point to the HTTPS URL versions.

Article Source: http://searchengineland.com/https-setup-causing-seo-issues-254236

June 2016 Google Algorithm Update – Analysis and Findings (But Was It Panda or Another Quality Update?)

Summer is here, and it could be a hot one. Earlier this month I noticed some major volatility, which led me to believe there could be a major update brewing. For example, I tweeted this last week:

That’s a huge swing for that website, so I definitely took notice. Also, there was a connection with the November 2015 update (Phantom 3), so I was interested to see if there were more examples like it. Well, the past few days yielded even more volatility, with some websites surging and others dropping. And after digging into more drops and surges, it’s pretty clear that Google rolled out a major algo update in June.

June Algo Update – Important Dates

Specifically, I saw movement on June 1, June 8, June 21, and then more movement on June 26. Now, I’ve covered many times that Google can roll out an update followed by a number of “tremors”, which are tweaks to the algo to fine tune the results. We could be seeing those with the most recent volatility.

Examples of Impact (Positive and Negative)

Before I continue, I wanted to provide a few screenshots of the impact I’m seeing. It’s all over the board. Some sites surged, others tanked, others surged then tanked, and vice versa. There’s a lot of movement going on right now, that’s for sure.






What Are We Dealing With? Penguin, Panda, Phantom, or another animal?
In March, I documented a series of updates that looked extremely Panda-like to me. It was the first time in a long time that I could say that. Also, we learned last week from Gary Illyes that each Panda cycle can take months. It’s part of Google’s core ranking algorithm, it continuously rolls out, but it can take months to complete a cycle. So, if this is Panda, it does make sense timing-wise. We are a few months out from March (enough time for the previous cycle to complete).

Then we have Google’s quality updates (AKA Phantom). That’s where Google made a change to how it assesses “quality”. We saw Phantom 2 in May of 2015, then the September 2015 updates, which looked connected to Phantom 2. And then we saw what many called Phantom 3 in November of 2015. That was a big update with major connections to previous quality updates.

So what are we seeing here? It’s hard to say… it could be Panda, or it could be Phantom (a quality update). I was initially leaning towards a quality update, but after analyzing more data, it very well could be Panda. Regardless, it looks quality-based (content quality, horrible user experience problems, aggressive advertising, usability barriers, etc.) These are problems I have seen while analyzing both Panda and Phantom over the past several years.

Also, I know sites that worked hard to fix some of those problems that increased during the June updates. So again, in my opinion, I believe this was a quality update or Panda.

The big question is did this have anything to do with Penguin? That’s always possible, but I don’t think so. First, I’m not seeing signs of links causing problems. More about that soon. Second, Google did say it would announce Penguin 4, so I’m not sure this had anything to do with our cute, black and white icy friend. I guess we’ll see if Google explains more about this update over time.

Problems and Potential Factors

I’ll quickly cover some of the problems and potential factors I saw while analyzing sites that saw negative and positive impact. Note, this is not an exhaustive list of problems and factors, but ones that stood out to me based on my experience analyzing algorithm updates like this one. These were also some of the most interesting situations I saw during my travels.

Sponsored Posts ABOVE The Content

Talk about a usability nightmare. Seeing a large list of sponsored thumbnails linking to third party sites at the top of the article is not exactly the best approach for users. And this site got hammered during the June update. It’s ok to provide content recommendations to third parties, but don’t overdo it. If you do, you could end up getting hammered.

2/3 Ads, 1/3 Content

Boy, is that a recipe for disaster. Checking a site that dropped significantly yielded pages with two thirds ads and one third content. Below the main content there were many, many ads. It was overwhelming, even for someone like me who analyzes this stuff on a regular basis. And this was occurring all over the site. Then boom, June arrived, along with an algo update. Not good.

Answering Questions, Barely

There was a site focused on Q&A that had many ultra-thin pages. Some with no answer, some with ridiculous answers that clearly wouldn’t be helpful for people, etc. I dug into a number of queries and landing pages that dropped and I can see why. Forum and Q&A content can have high quality content, but site owners must manage content properly. For example, don’t let every post be indexable… Only index your highest quality content.

Generic Content, Ads Weaved Into Main Content (MC)

I analyzed one site that seemed to have provided very generic content that could be found many other places (for the topic at hand). Actually, it looked like they took publicly available information and slightly rewrote it. And then they weaved ads into the content (the ads matched the content enough that I almost clicked the ads thinking it was the content on the page). This was going on all over the site.

Interesting Situation -> Desktop Horrible, Mobile OK

I checked one site that saw a major increase during the June update that got hit by the November 2015 update. When checking the desktop version of the site, it looked like minor changes had been made. That had me wondering why the site recovered. In other words, it still wasn’t a great user experience. But, checking on mobile yielded a much smoother, less aggressive approach. I’m not saying this was 100% why they surged back, but we know mobile is incredibly important, and their user experience and advertising situation was much, much better on mobile than desktop. Just an interesting side note.

Indexing Issues – Collateral Damage

A site I’ve been monitoring that went through some major changes this spring just dropped significantly on 6/21 and then more on 6/26.  There was a big indexing issue based on robots.txt problems, which may have led to Google simply not being able to understand a lot of content on the site. The site has had quality problems in the past, but really turned things around a few years ago. The changes this spring, along with the indexing problems, seem to have led to a drop during the June algorithm update. Be careful when you make serious changes to your site. You could become collateral damage. Scary, but very possible.

Opening Reviews The Right Way

Another site that saw an increase had made some major changes with how it handled reviews for products. In the past, they canonicalized all review pages to the first page. That means Google would not index those additional pages, and all of those reviews. They began using a stronger approach using rel next/prev and the proper use of rel canonical across the reviews. That’s across every product on the site. More quality user reviews means more quality content overall. And enabling Google to consolidate indexing properties from across the reviews can help as well. There was a 60% increase in indexation (of quality content that’s connected via rel next/prev).

And I saw much more…
 
I can keep going here, but based on what I’ve seen, the update looks content quality and user engagement-based versus inbound links-based. And regarding Phantom versus Panda, they are very similar factor-wise, so it’s hard to say 100% that it was a quality update versus Panda, or vice versa.
I’ll post additional updates as I learn more. Again, this looks like a big one. Check your stats. :)

Summary – A Hot Start To The Summer Algo-wise?

To quickly recap, there was major volatility in June, especially on specific dates like 6/1, 6/8, 6/21, and 6/26. The algorithm update looks like a “quality update” or a Panda update based on what I’ve seen.  Remember, we haven’t seen a Panda-looking update since March, so it’s definitely possible. And regarding Penguin, we are still waiting for Penguin 4.0 to roll out. I don’t think this is what we are seeing, based on everything I documented above. I’ll try and learn more about the June update and share what I can. Good luck.

Article Source: http://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/june-2016-google-algorithm-update/