Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Wednesday, March 15th, 2023
Google is now rolling out the March 2023 broad core update.
This is the first broad core update of 2023. It has been just over six months since Google’s last broad core update – the September 2022 broad core update.
The announcement. Google announced this on Twitter and updated its search updates page:
- “Today we released the March 2023 core update. We’ll update our ranking release history page when the rollout is complete.”
The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete, Google said.
What to do if you are hit. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update in the past. There aren’t specific actions to take to recover, and in fact, a negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages.
However, Google has offered a list of questions to consider if your site is hit by a core update. Google said you can see a bit of a recovery between core updates but the biggest change you would see would be after another core update.
Why we care. Whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms, it means that your site can do better or worse in the search results. Knowing when Google makes these updates gives us something to point to in order to understand if it was something you changed on your website or something Google changed with its ranking algorithm. Today, we know Google will be releasing a core ranking update, so keep an eye on your analytics and rankings over the next couple of weeks.
Product reviews update. As a reminder, the February 2023 product reviews update just finished rolling out, it started on Feb. 21 and ran for 14 days, ending on March 7. This was a significant update.
Previous core updates. The most recent previous core update was the September 2022 broad core update which was less impactful than previous core updates and finished on Sept. 26. The May 2022 broad core update was a significant and fast update.
We also had core updates prior including the November 2021 core update and prior to that was the July 2021 core update, before that it was the June 2021 core update and that update was slow to roll out but a big one.
Before that, we had the December 2020 core update, which was very big, bigger than the May 2020 core update, and that update was also big and broad and took a couple of weeks to fully roll out. Before that was the January 2020 core update, we had some analysis on that update over here.
The one prior to that was the September 2019 core update. That update felt weaker to many SEOs and webmasters, as many said it didn’t have as big of an impact as previous core updates.
You can read more about past Google updates here.
The post Google releases March 2023 broad core update appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, March 14th, 2023
Google is bringing generative AI to its Workspace suite. Coming first to Gmail and Google Docs, you will soon be able to enter a prompt to Google will generate a first draft for you.
Google Docs. Now instead of just getting a blank screen, you will see a prompt – Help me write. In the example Google shared, you could instantly create a job description for a regional sales representative then hit a blue Create button.
Here’s a preview of what it will look like:
But. As with all things AI, you’ll want to review and edit whatever Google Docs will provide. That’s why Google noted “AI is no replacement for the ingenuity, creativity, and smarts of real people. Sometimes the AI gets things wrong,”
Gmail. Google will also be bringing generative AI to Gmail to help you write and rewrite drafts. Google highlighted how you could input a few notes and then Formalize it.
In addition to the Formalize option, Google’s preview image included five additional generative AI features – Elaborate, Shorten, Bulletize, I’m Feeling Lucky (“a new playful voice”) and Write a draft.
Vaporware (a.k.a., coming soon). This is another step in Google’s slow rush into AI. Google has only announced these new additions – they aren’t actually available yet. As with Bard, Google said the generative AI features in Workspace are only available to a small set of “trusted testers.”
Why we care. If you use Google Workspace, then you’ll probably want to test out these tools when they become available to see just how useful and time-saving this actually may be for creating content or emails. AI is already baked into Gmail and Google Docs (think: finishing sentences for you or the ability to generate content summaries), and these additions could potentially help save you more time on some more mundane day-to-day tasks.
Dig deeper. You can read Google’s announcements here and here.
The post Google: Generative AI coming to Docs, Gmail in Workspace appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, March 14th, 2023
Since Performance Max’s rollout in November 2021, adventurous PPC marketers (me included) have been giving it everything we’ve got to make these campaigns work.
The early days of a new Google Ads product often come with some hiccups. The lack of control and visibility into Performance Max felt incredibly disappointing, given its potential and innovation.
That’s why this year’s Search Ads Week felt a lot more reassuring, thanks to some new updates for Performance Max campaigns that include campaign-level negative keywords and asset group reporting.
With an exciting product now offering more levers to ensure brand safety and profitable ad spend, there’s never been a better time for DTC brands (and other Facebook-first advertisers) to test a Performance Max campaign meaningfully.
In this article, I’ll walk you through:
What DTC brands are missing without Performance Max
After running Google Ads campaigns since 2003 and seeing every iteration and innovation the product offers, I can confidently say that advertisers ignoring Google Ads are missing out.
The Google AdWords of yesteryear was about the intent behind a keyword or search query.
It sought to answer what people were searching for at a given moment, why they were searching for it, and how to differentiate it from similar but different things.
When I think back to 2015, Google put out many marketing materials about “micro-moments” – that is, you’re serving an ad to somebody searching for that exact thing at that exact time.
But to scale past a certain point, you’ve got to think broader. Only so many people are searching for a given keyword, particularly at a transactional level.
Once you’ve achieved a high impression and market share of that business, how do you continue to make money?
This is where you add a layer of audience targeting.
Google works hard to connect keyword intent to audiences by looking at users’ previous search history, the types of websites they browse, the types of purchases they make, and so much more.
With Performance Max, there are two sides:
- Search intent: Action-oriented, clearly defined, based on user behavior.
- Audience signals: Awareness oriented, less defined, based on your data or Google’s.
This campaign type tries to get in front of people who are (or might soon be) at the convergence of those two paths.
Let’s say you sell pickleball rackets. Performance Max will target people who’ve told Google through their actions that they’re interested in pickleball.
Maybe one user watched a video on YouTube about it. Another searched for pickleball gear or lessons. And now, those people will start to see ads on YouTube, in the Discover app, in Gmail, and across other Google properties.
Indeed, Google has constantly been shifting toward machine learning and automation.
So how do you augment a keyword with who a user is and what they might be interested in, similar to what Facebook does?
Performance Max.
Google has an advantage over Facebook in this area because it has your search history.
They know what you’re looking for across different sites and properties, which means piecing things together is not predicated on guesswork and estimation.
What’s new in Performance Max campaigns
On February 23, there were rumors of several new capabilities for Performance Max, followed quickly by an official Google announcement.
Several PMax announcements today — thanks to your feedback!
You likely saw account-level negative keywords started rolling out next month for brand suitabilty & other purposes. Now coming soon are…
— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) February 23, 2023
While Google has given top billing to combining broad match keywords with Smart Bidding (what they call the Ads Power Pairing), I’m more excited about these four updates, most of which Google Ads community liaison Ginny Marvin chose to highlight.
Campaign-level brand exclusions
It’s the feature everyone has been asking for (kind of).
While it’s currently limited to a drop-down list of brands, PPC marketers will still appreciate the ability to exclude branded traffic (their own and that of competitors) from Performance Max.
Though it’s important to note that branded traffic isn’t always worth excluding. (My team makes this decision on a case-by-case basis.)
Page feed support
Performance Max includes an option to enable final URL expansion, allowing Google’s machines to decide which pages on your website it should send users to.
Now with a page feed, you can input a group of URLs to prioritize. And with URL expansion turned off, you can still send users to one of several pages instead of a single one.
Asset group reporting
This is my favorite announcement and arguably the most important. Being able to see which creatives are driving the best performance allows you to iterate even better ones that speak to customer desires.
While brand exclusions are undoubtedly helpful, success in advertising is still largely down to the quality of your ads.
Experiments for incremental lift
The new experiments feature in Performance Max embodies the spirit of “Always be testing.”
I look forward to seeing how some of my Standard Shopping campaigns measure against Performance Max. You can operate using either conversions or conversion value as your guiding metric.
Performance Max uses Google’s AI to drive results in three ways:
- Multiply your customer connections by finding new customers across all of Google’s channels and inventory.
- Multiply conversions and conversion value by optimizing for the highest-ROI conversion opportunities.
- Multiply your expertise by sharing insights to help you answer strategic questions about your business.
For more details on these and the full list of Performance Max updates, read the official Google Ads blog post.
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How to set up a ’social-style’ Performance Max campaign
There are three ways to run a Performance Max campaign:
- The authentic Performance Max experience as it was intended, which is a combination of search, shopping, and social display inventory.
- The attempt to replicate Smart Shopping, which is only to provide a data feed and no creative assets.
- The social-style campaign, which only uses creative assets taken from high-performing ads on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
I only hear people talk about the first two, but the third can be very powerful for brands that have proven themselves on Facebook and other social media platforms.
When you use those high-performing assets from your other ad networks, they’ll appear on:
- YouTube.
- The Discovery network, including the Google app, Android news feed, and Gmail.
- The Display network.
But for this to work, you must tell the system who to show it to. Unlike the shopping component based on keyword intent, Google needs to know your audience signals.
Remember, these are not a list of users you want to target directly. You simply want to share the characteristics associated with your specified audience.
Let’s say you’re selling an impulse purchase product. It doesn’t make a difference whether it’s $40 or $100. You’re doing great on Facebook and getting a ROAS that you’re happy with.
On Facebook, the pixel can do automated targeting based on who else buys from there. But when you start a brand new Performance Max campaign, it doesn’t have that data. And so I shout from the mountaintops all day – use your data!
If you have 100,000 customers in your Shopify database, upload that list to Google as an audience signal. This will tell Performance Max who buys from you and, more importantly, allows it to find more people like them.
You can also create an audience signal around search terms, competitor names and websites, demographics, interests, and affinity groups. When you combine these with your winning ad creatives and remove the data feed, you have a “social-style” Performance Max campaign.
Embrace the opportunity
I wasn’t always accepting of Google’s move toward machine learning and automation.
However, I’ve realized over the last few years that resisting it negatively influences my mentality and the performance of my campaigns, team and business.
So I spend less time trying to hack or game the system and more on sourcing the data I need to drive performance.
But when you consider a campaign type as automated as Performance Max, it’s critical that you seed it with high-quality data and then continue to monitor performance.
You should embrace it, but not blindly. Trust but verify.
In addition to providing audience signals and getting your campaign structure right, you have to make peace with the learning period.
Even with the most relevant data, every brand must spend a little money while the campaign runs in trial and error mode. With the right moves, it will be a very affordable entry price for additional profit.
So, have I convinced you yet? Ready to give it a shot? If so, check out these other articles from my series on Performance Max:
The post Why Facebook advertisers should test Performance Max appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, March 14th, 2023
Maintaining top brand positioning can be costly. But reducing brand ad spend opens the door for competitors to take away your terms.
To combat this, savvy PPC advertisers are turning to automated brand bidding to reduce costs and increase profitability without sacrificing market share or revenue.
Don’t let your budget go to waste! Download How to Get 1 in 5 Dollars Back on Brand Search and learn everything you need to know to reduce brand search costs and reinvest in higher-performing search terms.
The post How to get 1 in 5 dollars back on brand search appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, March 14th, 2023
Automating content creation with generative AI is a promising solution for resource-strapped businesses and teams. But when it comes to SEO, cost-savings don’t matter as much as content quality.
As Google’s search algorithms place greater weight on helpful content, gauging AI-driven content’s value from an SEO standpoint is critical.
Let’s use Google’s template for search quality – experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness or E-E-A-T – to assess and improve AI-generated content.
In this article:
The meteoric rise of generative AI
AI-generated content is not a fleeting hype – it’s here to stay. In the last few months, many quickly incorporated AI into their content creation process.
But the rapid rise of AI tools has also encouraged some to generate content just for the sake of it, without regard for quality. And there are thousands of Google search results to prove it.
When you look up “Regenerate response” -chatgpt <keyword> on Google, you’ll get results for webpages that have copied and pasted ChatGPT content without much editing – evident from the “Regenerate response” phrase taken from the AI chatbot’s interface. (h/t Jennifer Slegg)
Below is a sample query for the health industry.
The ability to generate and publish content quickly at scale raises questions about how Google will adapt to such shifts and how SEOs can ensure their content will not be used by AI tools to outrank them.
Google on AI content
In November 2022, Google’s Duy Nguyen said that the search engine has “algorithms to go after” those who post AI-plagiarized content. As such, we can safely assume that Google can detect AI content.
In the quality raters guidelines (QRG), Google clearly states that content copied, auto-generated, or otherwise created without adequate effort, originality, talent, or skill such that the page fails to achieve its purpose will be marked with the “lowest” quality rating.
At the moment, we also know that Google is not against AI-generated content per se. It’s against “spammy automatically generated content.” (This seemingly deviates from – and supersedes – what Google’s John Mueller said in April 2022.)
One way to verify Google’s stance on AI content is by looking at the SERPs today. How well is AI-driven content performing in organic search? The accounts vary.
In one example, Mark William Cook conducted an experiment that involved creating a website with 10K pages filled with 100% AI-generated content without human editing. The website tanked shortly a few months after going live.
Then we have Bankrate’s AI-generated content that has been live for six months. SISTRIX assessed the performance of one of their articles and found that the content is faring well:
But why was AI-generated content successful in one situation and not so much in the other?
If we compare the websites, we’ll see that:
- The website that tanked a few months after launch was brand new with little authoritativeness or reputation. Humans did not edit the content, so no fact-checking or proofreading was done.
- Bankrate.com, on the other hand, is a pretty established website with history and backlinks. More importantly, people edited and fact-checked the AI content thoroughly before publishing.
Another example is that of a brand-new test website I created last year with 30 blog posts, each around 1,000 words.
One blog post, which went live last October 2022, was written by someone with experience in the niche. I decided to update it in January 2023 by supplementing it with AI-generated content that is human-edited. The blog went from 1,000 words to 5,000.
The website has no authoritativeness in the niche, so the performance did not change much. I only saw some initial spike in impressions, which then returned to normal.
(Note: Do not judge the performance of any AI-generated content based on the initial increase in impressions or clicks. We need to see its performance for at least three months.)
After looking at the above three scenarios (pure AI content; AI content + human editing + authoritativeness and trustworthiness; AI content + human editing), we can assume that AI content can work to some extent.
But AI content alone is not guaranteed to work, even if you generate longer content. It still needs other factors supporting it to signal trust to Google.
In most instances, who wrote what doesn’t count. Instead, the quality of the content and the overall website trustworthiness matter. (Yes, you can rank without backlinks, but that’s a story for another day.)
Your strongest weapon against the flood of AI-generated content is your website’s overall authoritativeness and trustworthiness. But what does that look like?
E-E-A-T for AI content: SEO checklists
The concept of E-E-A-T applies to three areas:
- The website as a whole.
- The content on the page in question.
- The author or the entity behind the content.
We know that trustworthiness is the most vital component of E-E-A-T. Untrustworthy pages have low E-E-A-T in the QRG, no matter how much they demonstrate experience, expertise or authoritativeness. Pages with the lowest E-E-A-T or lowest reputation are considered untrustworthy.
We can learn from Bankrate and others that followed the same pattern. While the QRG does not translate to direct ranking factors, it helps us gauge content quality according to Google’s standards.
If I were to evaluate whether a website that is using AI content today sends clear trust signals to Google, here’s what I would look at:
On the page level
- Clear editorial disclaimer on how and where AI-generated content is used and whether it is human-edited and fact-checked.
- The AI content is actually edited and fact-checked by writers.
- Each piece of AI-generated content must offer a unique take and stand out from existing content on the topic. This is why human oversight is required. You cannot just rehash what’s in the top results, rephrase it, and consider it quality content. It’s not.
- Links to external authoritative sources and entities.
- The content delivers on its promise to the user. The page content needs to fulfill its purpose.
- The amount of effort, originality, and talent or skill that went into creating the content. (QRG)
- For informational and YMYL content, accuracy and consistency with well-established expert consensus are important. (QRG)
- Clear information on who wrote this content and why this person is qualified to do so (author bio). This varies in importance based on the topic at hand. Generally, who (what individual, company, business, foundation, etc.) is responsible for the website and its content should be clear.
- The personal experience of the content creator on the topic in hand (if relevant).
- The expertise of the content creator on the topic (e.g., financial advice).
- Bonus: The content discusses other points of view.
Sitewide, there are generic trust signals to consider, including information about the website and its reputation. This translated to the following checklist.
On the site level
- Authoritativeness: To what extent is this website known for the topic at hand?
- Clear information about the company: The website has an About page, privacy policy, terms and conditions, return, exchange and shipping policies pages (if applicable), and ideally linked to from the footer.
- The online reputation of the website: If the website is not the primary creator of the content, then the reputation of the content creator. (QRG)
- Customer reviews of the website or the business.
- The footer includes company information: If the company is part of a group of companies owned by one bigger entity, it’s a good idea to add this information in the footer.
How important is authorship for E-E-A-T?
In today’s world where AI is writing content, is authorship less important?
I’ve always supported hiring writers with experience in the niche/industry they are writing about and, ideally, with some online presence that reflects that experience.
Google’s Gary Illyes recently said that Google does not give too much weight to who writes your content. Yet, in Google’s quality raters’ guidelines, authorship is clearly mentioned in several instances.
For example, one of the reasons a parenting blog post was marked as “high quality” was that:
“The author of this blog post has become known as an expert on parenting issues (Expertise) and is a regular contributor to this and other media websites (positive content creator reputation).”
Authorship is still a crucial part of E-E-A-T. It may be more or less critical, depending on what industry you are optimizing for.
It is also important to highlight that if the business/website is responsible for the content (e.g., using ghostwriters), then the website’s reputation would substitute the authors’.
Also, consider E-E-A-T as a filter vs. a ranking factor.
You need to meet a filter to be eligible for ranking and performing in SERPs (with varying importance based on industry) and not to get marked as “lowest quality” content.
If a person is experienced on the topic but didn’t write a well-crafted, informative piece of content, don’t expect to rank well. Having experienced authors, specifically in specific industries, will protect your content against being filtered out.
Many websites were hit by the product review updates (there have been six so far) that aim to ensure high-quality product reviews are rewarded. Google defines the latter as:
“[C]ontent that provides insightful analysis and original research and is written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well.”
Not having the right authors with original experience is a disadvantage when writing product reviews. This is one of those situations where E-E-A-T and authorship are important.
While the importance of authorship and the overall website reputation varies depending on the niche, with AI in play, I’d project they will be even more critical in the future.
How important is E-E-A-T for a website’s performance?
According to Google’s search quality rater guidelines:
“The Low rating should be used if the page lacks appropriate E-E-A-T for its purpose. No other considerations such as positive reputation or the type of website can overcome a lack of E-E-A-T for the topic or purpose of the page.”
In Arabic, we say, “The opposite reveals the truth.” To know the importance of E-E-A-T for SEO performance, let’s explore the lack of it.
Remember the 2018 Google “Medic” update that strongly hit many websites in the health and nutrition sectors? Analysis of the impacted websites shows they had one or more of the following:
- Missing About page.
- No or poor online reputation.
- Promoting medical treatments that go against the scientifically agreed-upon consensus.
- Missing or questionable authors.
- No links to reliable external sources.
- Too many affiliate links and salesy content. (I can confirm from personal experience that having too many affiliate links with no “nofollow” or “sponsored” attributes can lead to a manual action in YMYL topics.)
On the other hand, websites that saw increased visibility after the update showed one or more of the following:
- Authors of the content are clearly labeled and have relevant expertise highlighted in their bios.
- Signs of authoritativeness.
- General transparency with users.
- Links to reliable external sources.
- Clear information where needed (e.g., About page, Contact page and other policy and brand pages).
After the medic update hit many websites, it was clear that you could have a solid technical foundation and highly optimized website but still lose rankings due to a lack of E-A-T signals (now E-E-A-T).
There’s no reason to ignore AI tools completely
Despite the alarmist narratives on generative AI, the tech can’t stand on its own.
We must watch out for the risks of AI use, but that should not stop us from embracing opportunities to enhance our marketing efforts.
The key is to double down on the many things only we humans can do:
- Gaining real-life experiences.
- Sharing our expertise with people in need of guidance.
- Tapping others to lend authoritativeness on a topic we might not fully know about.
All these actions make us more credible and trustworthy sources of information than AI ever will.
(And since we’re talking about AI, let’s leverage it for our benefit. If you’d like to audit a website for E-E-A-T, this script from Daniel Foley Carter is useful.)
The post How to demonstrate E-E-A-T in AI-generated content appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, March 13th, 2023
You’ve probably heard how successful content marketing can be when you do it consistently.
Consistent content earns 55% more visitors coming to your site and 67% more leads. (Overall, creating content is your best bet for increasing traffic – ranking in organic search brings in 1,000% more traffic than organic social media.)
But you can’t produce one blog post per month or blog randomly at a whim and expect to move that needle.
Achieving consistency – producing great content on a regular schedule – is hard to do unless you scale your content marketing operation.
Scaling means ramping up production while growing your resources and increasing your efforts to get it done.
Scaling the right way means you’ll have the ability to amp up your content output without sacrificing any part of what makes your content unique, engaging, and valuable.
So, what do you need to scale?
You need a strategy, systems, workflows, and a team in place if you expect to scale your content marketing successfully and earn more traffic.
How to scale your content marketing in 3 steps
Step 1: Build a content strategy
No, the first step on this list isn’t to hire more people for your content team.
Why?
Because if you hire more people, that’s all you’ll have – more people.
You won’t have a strategic way to guide those people to produce great content at scale.
It’s that simple: You can’t scale without a strategy in place. That’s because, at its most basic level, a content strategy is a plan of action that maps out how you’ll execute content marketing.
Without this action plan, you’ll be missing key building blocks that make scaling possible in the first place.
- Who are we creating content for?
- Why are we creating content for them?
- What do we hope to get out of content marketing?
- Who is in charge of our content? Who plans, who writes, who publishes, etc.?
- What tools do we invest in to make our jobs easier? What resources?
- What broad topic area is our focus? What content topics will we cover under that umbrella?
- How often will we post?
- What will we post about next week? In 2 weeks? Next month?
- How will we measure and track our progress?
Attempt to scale without setting a foundation, and you’ll risk breaking your content marketing entirely. That’s because increased output adds pressure to every piece of your operation – especially your team members and processes.
For instance, if you decide to double the number of blogs you publish each week but don’t plan how to do that beforehand, your production will become rushed and messy. Your content creators will burn out quickly. Little things will start falling through the cracks. Here are a few examples:
- You’re rushing to publish blogs each week, so you skip the final editing pass that would have caught small but detrimental mistakes like a missing link, a broken image, or misspelled words.
- Burned-out writers who feel trapped by impossible deadlines and a lack of guidance are more likely to copy and spin content – a huge issue that could destroy your reputation.
- Or, they might skip researching thoroughly and citing sources, so your content loses credibility.
- Since your standards slip, your brand voice falters and sounds off-key – a trust-breaker.
- Your team is too busy and rushed for much creativity (which needs time and space to simmer), so your content starts to sound samey and repetitive.
Blindly adding more team members won’t solve the root issue – a lack of strategy that directs and guides your content marketing, processes, team, and roles.
TL;DR: Your content will suffer if you scale without preparation and strategy. And sub-par content does not bring results.
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Step 2: Put a content marketing team in place
Once the strategy is set, you can move on to solidifying your team or putting one together.
A strong team is essential to scaling content marketing because, without an effective team, the effort will inevitably fall apart. An effective team:
- Works toward a larger goal than just completing their individual tasks.
- Knows their roles, what success looks like within them, and how every other team role contributes to the whole.
- Can create content at scale without sacrificing quality.
A good, effective team is not just made up of talented individuals. Instead of plain talent, look for people with potential + the right mindset. This means:
- They have some skills, but more than that, they have the potential to build those skills to leverage them toward your business specifically.
- They’re willing to learn and happy to grow with the brand/business.
If you already have people like this on your side, make sure their roles are clearly defined within your team. And keep in mind one person may wear multiple hats.
This is true in smaller teams more often than in large ones. Additionally, small teams without the budget to hire for specific roles may need freelancers to fill in gaps until they have the funds to grow their team permanently.
Here are the essential roles:
- Content manager: Every content team needs a leader who guides the ship’s direction. This person oversees writers/creators, the content calendar, the brand voice and style guidelines, and ensures all content aligns with the brand’s goals and carries out the strategy.
- SEO specialist/strategist: This person ensures the website and blog are SEO-ready. They strategize to ensure SEO goals are met on- and off-page with keyword research and proper optimization.
- Content writer/creator: This role can be multi-faceted (or involve multiple people) if the brand creates more than written content. Writers write, designers create visual content and infographics, videographers create videos, etc.
- Social media/promotions manager: Who distributes content on various promotional channels after publication? Who’s in charge of social posts, emails, or even ads? This person.
Step 3: Set up content marketing workflows
Scaling is a lot easier when you have documented processes for each piece of the content marketing picture. For instance:
- Your main content writer leaves the team. Your content manager must moonlight as a writer until you can find a replacement. They follow the content writer’s workflow to produce consistent content without missing a beat.
- You hire a new writer to help scale your content marketing. You give them the workflows and SOPs (standard operating procedures) your established writer uses to create content, streamlining the onboarding process.
What do workflows look like?
To create a writer workflow, you might ask these questions:
- How should your writer(s) go about writing content?
- What are the standard procedures they should follow as they research and write?
- What style should they use?
- What grammar rules?
- What resources?
- What tools?
- Should they follow a general outline for each post?
In short, a workflow is a series of smaller tasks and guidelines anyone can follow to carry out a larger task, like writing a blog post, promoting blog content, or researching keywords and content topics.
Workflows are helpful because they help your team members’ output stay consistent across tasks. For example, with one workflow that all your writers use, your blog posts will look, feel, and sound more consistent – like one person wrote them in the brand’s voice versus two or three different people.
Workflows are meant to be repeated and reused no matter who fills a specific role. That means, even if your team makeup changes, it will still run like clockwork because you put SOPs in place.
Best of all, you can get creative with workflows. You can create one for each content marketing task, like ideating content, researching keywords, or writing blogs, or you can create a large, overarching workflow for each role on your team.
Workflows can also apply to much broader tasks – like your content marketing as a whole. For instance, an overarching team workflow can help your team members understand exactly how they fit into the large process of producing and publishing content consistently.
Source: Content Marketing Institute
Here are some examples of workflows attached to content marketing processes.
Ideating
Document how someone ideating content topics should go about the process.
- What tools should they rely on?
- What research should they carry out? (Social listening? Keyword research? A mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods?)
- How should they record the topics they find and share them with the team?
Writing/researching
Create a detailed writer workflow showing them exactly how they should write your brand’s blogs.
- Give them a general skeleton outline to follow with rules for formatting that can be reused for every blog.
- Provide overarching grammar and style guidelines.
- Stipulate which resources are good to cite and which are off-limits.
- Detail where/how they’ll receive assignments, who they report to, and who they submit completed assignments to (or where they should be uploaded).
Editing
Guide your content editor, so they know exactly how to effectively do their job.
- What should the content editor look for while editing? Just spelling/grammar/punctuation, or should they review links, check sources, and edit for flow and style?
- Should they rewrite when they find large issues or send it back to the writer?
- What style guides should they follow?
- Should they use Word’s “track changes” feature or edit without marking up the doc?
Scheduling/Publishing
Decide which tool you’ll use for content planning (like a content calendar), and document how often content should get published, the best times for publishing, and the strategy for published blogs that coincide with events, holidays, sales, or seasons.
Scale smartly to grow your content marketing without breaking
To scale your content marketing successfully, you must scale smartly.
Think of strategy as the foundation of your content marketing. The strategy provides support and structure to effectively add to it and scale content as the brand grows.
An effective team with defined roles and workflows adds another layer of support and stability to your scaling efforts. It’s much easier to hire more people when they can slot into the roles you’ve established versus hiring and figuring it out as you go.
Plus, when your team understands their place within the business and knows exactly what’s expected of them, how to execute, and what success looks like, they’re better able to follow through, stay productive, and work together.
Bottom line: Don’t attempt to scale without first reinforcing your content marketing efforts. Without that support, your operations will be unstable – they’ll fail and crumble.
The post How to successfully scale your content marketing and grow traffic appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, March 13th, 2023
Google recently added an extra “E” to the search quality standards of E-A-T to ensure content is helpful and relevant.
The extra “E” stands for “experience” and precedes the original E-A-T concept – expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
We know that E-A-T was already of high importance. Hyung-Jin Kim, VP of Search at Google, confirmed this at SMX Next:
“E-A-T is a template for how we rate an individual site. We do it to every single query and every single result. It’s pervasive throughout every single thing we do.”
To rank at Google’s SERPs, you must demonstrate E-E-A-T in your content strategy.
This comprehensive overview will dig deeper into E-E-A-T – specifically what it means, why it matters to SEO, and how to use it to your advantage.
In this article:
E-E-A-T: What does it mean for SEO and why is it important?
Trust is earned by demonstrating experience, expertise and authoritativeness, according to Google’s search quality rater guidelines.
As a ranking factor, E-E-A-T feels more than reasonable. After all, in the real world, we trust sources who are qualified and would prefer to get information or advice from authoritative people.
Google provides a perfect example of this in the Google Search Central Blog, pointing out that if you want to find tax information, you’ll want to see content produced by an accounting expert.
A tax advisor or accountant would be a highly desirable source since they have experience, expertise and authority on the subject, so we trust what they have to say. We can be sure we’re getting accurate and sound information.
Google wants to provide accurate information to its users, so to gain traction in SERPs and get your site to the top spots, you need to demonstrate E-E-A-T.
Demonstrating E-E-A-T to Google
SEO is highly accountable for delivering what’s needed to meet E-E-A-T standards, but what does it mean exactly and how do you prove experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness?
The good news is most conscientious website administrators, SEOs, and marketing teams are already doing what they need to and developing E-E-A-T right now.
The Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab compiled 10 guidelines for building web credibility based on three-year research with over 4,500 participants.
- Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.
- Show that there’s a real organization behind your site.
- Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide.
- Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.
- Make it easy to contact you.
- Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose).
- Make your site easy to use – and useful.
- Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been reviewed recently).
- Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).
- Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.
– Stanford Web Credibility Research
If the above doesn’t scream, “Be a human, care about your users and your website experience,” I don’t know what does.
Let’s break down E-E-A-T and see how SEO can influence it with the above guidelines in mind.
Experience
Think of lived experience – specifically, first-hand experiences on the topic you’re writing about.
Experience is especially important in a digital world moving toward generative AI content.
AI can never demonstrate true experiences of anything. At best, it can make assumptions about the human experience, but the content it generates won’t be unique.
It’s probably no coincidence that Google announced the addition of “experience” in its search quality raters guidelines shortly after ChatGPT’s launch.
Experience is a core differentiator between human- and AI-written content.
You can showcase your experience by sharing the faces behind your website. This statement lines up with Stanford’s web credibility guidelines to:
- Show that there’s a real organization behind your site.
- Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide.
- Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.
Achieving this doesn’t have to be complicated. Consider a well-thought-out About us page to share your team’s credentials and qualifications.
Think of what makes you feel safer before you spend your money on a product or service and transfer that to the digital world.
Expertise
Expertise relates to the extent of knowledge demonstrated within your article or by the writer.
The rater guidelines suggest that an author’s expertise or authoritativeness on a subject would count considerably toward demonstrating expertise.
But there’s some evidence suggesting that an author’s authority as an individual doesn’t matter to E-A-T (dare I say, yet).
Take a look at this WordStream article. The author is unknown, yet a search for “Google E-A-T” brings “unknown’s” article to the prime position at the top of Google with a sought-after featured snippet.
You can bet that Google values this article as the best one to rank, and it’s probably received more than its fair share of clicks.
Although author authority doesn’t seem to influence Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines in this example, I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss it.
WordStream is likely perceived as a highly authoritative website on this matter. Plus, author expertise is detailed in the quality rater guidelines (more on this in the Tips section).
As AI content rises further and Google’s algorithm gets more sophisticated, it can’t hurt to demonstrate an author’s expertise on a subject.
Besides, expertise will build confidence with the human reading your content, so I would still consider adding:
- The author’s name.
- A descriptive bio containing:
- Their relevant qualifications.
- Links to their social media profiles.
- A Person schema with relevant properties for certifications or professions.
Building trust with your audience will result in other positive engagements that indicate to the algorithm that your site is one to trust and rank.
Moreover, Google’s search quality raters guidelines are clear on what experience entails:
“…which would you rather trust: home electrical rewiring advice from a skilled electrician or from an antique home enthusiast who has no knowledge of electrical wiring.”
In the case of the WordStream article, it may be that the site itself had enough authority on the subject of Google E-A-T that it could rank with an unknown writer.
Authoritativeness
Authoritativeness considers the extent to which a content creator is known as a go-to source on the topic.
Authority can be demonstrated in three core ways:
- Establishing a strong content architecture covering all aspects of a particular topic.
- Earning backlinks from other authoritative sites.
- Building a digital profile or personal brand as an expert in a particular topic.
Authority, expertise and experience go hand in hand. You can’t be an authority on a topic without experience and expertise, and vice versa.
Let’s dig further into the ways you can build authority using SEO.
Content architecture and topical authority
Building topical authority makes sense to appease Google E-E-A-T and applies in the real world.
Think about it this way…
If you were hiring an SEO consultant who could tell you about keywords, you might consider them fairly authoritative.
If the same SEO could tell you about keywords, backlinks and technical SEO with confidence, they’re going to seem even more authoritative.
If the SEO could do all of the above and prove their expertise through case studies (experience) and relate SEO to other forms of marketing, they’re going to seem highly authoritative.
You’re more likely to trust and hire the person with the most amount of authority.
Regarding E-E-A-T, you can demonstrate authoritativeness with a solid content strategy.
Your content strategy should consider everything your potential buyer/site visitor will want to know. Develop and document a strategy to deliver answers in a way that exhibits E-E-A-T in every article.
The more high-quality content successfully indexed by Google, the more authoritative your site becomes on a particular subject.
Once again, the idea of publishing content that is truly helpful supports Standford’s web credibility guidelines:
- Make it easy to contact you.
- Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.
- Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose).
- Make your site easy to use – and useful.
- Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been reviewed recently).
- Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).
- Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.
Helpful content that supports buyers through their journey will naturally achieve all of these items.
Backlinks from authoritative sites
Although they carry less weight than they used to, backlinks are still an indicator of an authoritative site. If someone links to your site referencing information you published, this is a sign that you can be trusted.
Earning backlinks from other authoritative sites will also indicate that your site is trustworthy. The critical thing to note is that authority refers more to topical authority relating to expertise and experience and not domain authority.
For example, Google recognizes Search Engine Land as an authority in SEO. A search for “SEO publications” ranks Search Engine Land on Page 1. At the bottom of SERPs, Google associates Search Engine Land as an SEO source.
As a trusted website, a link from Search Engine Land to an article carries some weight.
Google knows it can trust Search Engine Land when it comes to SEO, so if there’s an external link to a topically relevant website (say an SEO study or research), it will add some indication that the linked site can also be trusted.
Building a digital profile or personal brand
If you can show Google who you are and what you do, you can establish authority and expertise on a particular subject.
Sara Taher, an SEO consultant and speaker, achieves this with great success. Taher’s knowledge panel clearly says she is a “Canadian-based SEO consultant.”
The panel has her social links and shares details of her authored pieces.
We can see that Google knows Taher is an authority on SEO. With this in mind, it’s unsurprising that Taher has articles ranking number 1 in Google for SEO-related topics.
Trustworthiness
When we break it down, we’ll see that trust is developed by showcasing experience, expertise and authority in aggregate.
Building E-E-A-T is a long-term process. Be mindful of these core pillars when creating a content strategy so SEO can work properly.
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Levels of E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T is a wide spectrum, and some sites have higher levels of E-E-A-T than others.
Within Google’s search quality rater guidelines, there’s guidance on what E-E-A-T looks like at various levels.
The aim is to build E-E-A-T to the highest possible level, but every website will need to move through the levels over time – likely years.
It’s worth noting that most websites won’t have low E-E-A-T, provided the content they’re putting out there is genuinely helpful.
The lowest E-E-A-T websites will look and read spammy. Equally, high levels of E-E-A-T will be challenging to achieve.
Website owners must aim to share good knowledge and build topical clusters that serve buyers at every step of their journey.
All that said, it’s good to know what the different levels of E-E-A-T look like according to the guidelines.
Lowest E-E-A-T
Pages with the lowest E-E-A-T will probably look and feel spammy to the human eye. Interestingly, the lowest E-E-A-T pages fail to meet an optimal page experience.
“Obstructed or obscured MC [main content]” relates more to page experience than anything else.
Pages with the following characteristics should be considered untrustworthy:
- Inadequate information about the website or content creator for its purpose.
- Lowest E-E-A-T or Lowest reputation.
- Deceptive purpose, deceptive page design, or deceptive intent.
- Deliberately obstructed or obscured MC.
- Characteristics of scams, malicious downloads, or other harmful behavior.
- Any webpage or website designed to manipulate people into actions that benefit the website or other organization while causing harm to self, others, or Specified Groups.
Lacking E-E-A-T
The rater guidelines suggest that a website can lack E-E-A-T on a subject despite having a positive reputation elsewhere. This suggested that page and topical relevancy is of high importance.
As detailed below, it wouldn’t make sense for a cooking website to share a tax form download. It no longer matters that the cooking might be otherwise trustworthy if the topical relevance is low.
Low-quality pages often lack an appropriate level of E-E-A-T for the topic or purpose of the page. Here are some examples:
- The content creator lacks adequate experience (e.g., a restaurant review written by someone who has never eaten at the restaurant).
- The content creator lacks adequate expertise (e.g., an article about how to skydive written by someone with no expertise in the subject).
- The website or content creator is not an authoritative or trustworthy source for the page’s topic (e.g., tax form downloads provided on a cooking website).
- The page or website is not trustworthy for its purpose (e.g., a shopping page with minimal customer service information).
Important: The Low rating should be used if the page lacks appropriate E-E-A-T. No other considerations, such as a positive reputation or the type of website, can overcome a lack of E-E-A-T for the topic or purpose of the page.
High level of E-E-A-T
Websites with high levels of E-E-A-T will achieve and demonstrate experience, expertise, authority and trust.
Google describes high E-E-A-T websites as news or government sites but also highly relevant videos, small business websites and blog posts.
Don’t be dismayed about achieving high levels of E-E-A-T. Every website has a chance!
Very high level of E-E-A-T
Websites that showcase the highest levels of E-E-A-T will look good to the user.
High E-E-A-T pages will satisfy search intent and will be home to high-quality, well-written articles with evidence of knowledge and expertise.
In the documentation, Google says:
“The standards for Highest quality MC may be very different depending on the purpose, topic, and type of website. Here are some examples of Highest quality original content:
- For news : Original reporting that provides information that would not otherwise have been known had the article not revealed it. Accurate, original, in-depth, and investigative reporting requires a high level of skill/talent and effort. Very high quality news content will include a description of primary sources and other original reporting referenced during the content creation process. Very high quality news content must be accurate and should meet professional journalistic standards.
- For artistic content (videos, images, photography, writing, etc.): Unique and original content created by highly skilled and talented artists or content creators. Such artistic content requires a high level of skill/talent and effort. If the artistic content is related to a YMYL topic (e.g., artistic content with the purpose of informing or swaying opinion about YMYL topics), YMYL standards should apply.
- For informational content: Original, accurate, comprehensive, clearly communicated, and should reflect expert consensus as appropriate. Expectations for different types of information may vary. For example, scientific papers have a different set of expectations than a social media post sharing information about a hobby such as stamp collecting. However, all types of very high quality informational content share common characteristics of accuracy and clarity of communication, in addition to meeting standards appropriate to the topic or field. The Highest rating may be justified for pages with very satisfying MC created with a very high level of effort, originality, talent, or skill.”
When building a level of E-E-A-T, asking if something feels right on your website is essential.
Aim to be consistently useful across the site, showcasing genuine knowledge and expertise, and you should meet E-E-A-T.
SEO tips for achieving E-E-A-T
The most conscientious of us are already on the trajectory of achieving high levels of E-E-A-T, but if you’re still unconvinced or’d like a steer, here are some tips.
Consider page experience
Google algorithms tend to build on and evolve rather than supersede each other. Although we heard about page experience a while back, it is still imperative.
Look at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s BMI calculator page. In the rater guidelines, Google classifies it as having the highest E-E-A-T.
As seen from the screenshot, the page quality rating and explanation consider plenty of factors, including the reputation and expertise on medical topics and the general functionality of the page.
The page’s functionality and the BMI calculator’s usability feed into its E-E-A-T.
Get technical
It’s not much of a leap to assume that if functioning page experiences matter, then so does the website’s functionality.
Keep your site tidy and maintain technical SEO foundations, like:
- Reducing 404s which result in a poor user experience.
- Reducing crawl rate so Googlebot can find all the good information on your site and not duplicate or missing pages and daisy-chained redirects.
- Adding alt text to your images, so all users have a positive experience.
Show your humans with an About us or Team page
The new “E” is here for a good reason, so showcase your experience.
As mentioned, consider all the points and frictions in the real world. What do your customers need to see to feel they can trust you?
If I were hiring a lawyer, for example, I’d want to know who they are, what their expertise is and what their credentials are. Put this information on your website
Lawyers and service-based businesses can showcase their experience online in a way that is easy to understand.
On their team page, BD&P Law showcases experience, education, professional involvement and awards. This helps Google build a picture of who each team member is.
All this information is helpful to Google and useful for a person needing a lawyer.
Another option is creating an Awards page if your specific industry values them.
Link to authoritative sources
You wouldn’t have known everything you know now without researching and learning from other credible sources, right?
Don’t be afraid to link to the sites that helped you develop your content, particularly in article/blog writing.
Linking to credible resources shows you’ve done your research, allowing your user to read related content (don’t worry, they’ll come back!). Google can also verify the information you’re sharing.
Add or update content regularly
Add new content as regularly as you can to keep your site competitive. This give you something to share with your target audience and shows Google you’re active and in business.
Don’t forget to update existing content. Some queries demand updates such as breaking news, product releases or reoccurring events (TV shows, the Olympics, sporting events and more).
Naturally, Google will prioritize updated pieces of content in these instances. But I wouldn’t sleep regularly for a site outside the above categories.
At the turn of the New Year, a joke circulates in the SEO community that we need to update our blogs from “Best Dancing Shoes to Buy in 2022″ to “Best Dancing Shoes to Buy in 2023.”
I don’t think this update will pass the E-E-A-T checks as Google inevitably gets smarter. Take your time to update content properly. What’s changed? What else do people need to know?
Perhaps there’s an argument to say that no content is truly evergreen. At some point, it’ll need a little tweak to hold the most recent and trustworthy information.
Build topical clusters
The importance of topical clusters has been mentioned already, but it is crucial to showcase expertise.
You can’t prove subject matter expertise with a single webpage. (Well, maybe you can if it’s book-length content. But I’m not convinced your users want 60,000 words on one webpage.)
Use internal links
If you’ve got articles around a subject, then link them together.
You don’t need to do anything exceptionally clever to build authority through internal links.
Simply link relevant pieces of content together, so it is useful for your audience. Think of a related webpage the user might want to see next.
Include different content types
Content is more than just words on a page. On top of the typical blog post, consider creating:
If a video is the best way to satisfy user intent, use it to your advantage.
Try for a Wikipedia page
Wikipedia is known for having a robust process. It’s not easy to get a Wikipedia page so having one can help you appear more authoritative.
It’ll also help sites earn knowledge graphs in the SERPs – a clear indicator that Google pays attention to Wikipedia.
Engage experts
If you’re adding content to your site, include quotes from experts or have experts write the article.
An article written by someone in-the-know is going to be far more compelling than one that’s not.
A high E-E-A-T blog post on parenting is highlighted in the rater guidelines. It’s written by an author who’s known as an expert on the subject of parenting issues.
You can develop expertise on a subject by building your brand and showcasing your content on other sites through guest posting.
Encourage reviews
Reviews provide proof of expertise. If your customers are happy and Google can see this in the data or entities related to your website (like Google Business Profile), this can only go in your site’s favor.
Final thoughts on E-E-A-T
We know there’s no way to identify a high E-E-A-T website. Instead, Google looks at a multitude of factors.
While it can be an overwhelming concept, it is a straightforward and effective way to gauge content quality.
Treat your web users like your offline customers, know their needs and serve them.
Treat your website like your home or brick-and-mortar store. Keep it tidy and updated, and you should have no problem achieving some decent levels of E-E-A-T.
All this ensures you’re providing value and building trust at every step.
The post An SEO guide to understanding E-E-A-T appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, March 13th, 2023
Google publishes video of search quality meeting
In 2012, Google shared a video from one of its search quality meetings – something that few outsiders had ever seen.
Google annotated the video to make the conversation more understandable to the general public, as well as explain more about the particular feature that was being discussed, a change to how it handles spelling corrections.
“I got to attend one last October, and it was one of the most fascinating, interesting things I’ve witnessed in my nearly 16 years of covering search,” wrote Search Engine Land’s Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan. “I watched many different features get evaluated, with discussion and debate flying back-and-forth among those gathered in the crowded room as well as those interacting through video conference…”
Read all about it in An Unprecedented Video Glimpse Into How Google Crafts Its Search Results.
Also on this day
2020: The mandatory deadline was extended into June.
2020: The not-for-profit search engine joined Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo as an option in 47 markets.
2019: Designed to show how changes in spend could impact campaign performance.
2019: The new site mirrored the UI of Google Flights – would it have a similar impact on the hotel booking market?
2019: Users could interact with the desktop ad format to inspect product features and details.
2019: Gabriel Weinberg also believed that privacy legislation could make the internet more competitive.
2018: Google acknowledged the suspected update but said there was nothing webmasters can do to fix their sites if they dropped in rankings.
2018: This new interface used a more rounded design and boldly omitted the full Google logo at the top of the search results page.
2018: You could track and optimize to custom metrics tailored to your goals at all levels of your campaigns.
2018: Google would roll out message reporting metrics in the next few weeks for the US, the UK, Canada and other countries.
2015: Google was testing a new local pack in the web search results that displayed maps plus logos and pictures of the business listing.
2015: Google seemed to be rolling out the new mobile interface where they showed Googley colored line separators in the mobile search results.
2015: Wal-Mart reportedly had plans to offer inventory data directly to its shoppers through Wal-Mart.com and its mobile app, rather than through an intermediary.
2014: While Google’s goal is to give searchers a quick answer, there is no substitute for the searcher to do deeper research by clicking into the sources provided in the Google search results.
2014: Google’s head of search, Amit Singhal, said “we’re always experimenting” and this design test was just that, one of Google’s experiments.
2014: Google said it was reexamining the issue and seeking a better solution.
2014: The test only ran in the U.S. and was small with about 30 advertisers participating and banners showing on about 5% of search queries.
2014: Concert information for a musician would be pulled from the artist’s official website if the site included structured data markup.
2014: When you clicked on “read all . . . reviews” or “write a review” you were taken to the Yelp profile or review page for the specific business.
2013: Complete with step-by-step instructions and videos that outlined each part of the process.
2013: A promotional video suggested the Google Search App for iOS may be gaining Google Now support.
2013: Google had to take additional measures to educate employees and consumers about data privacy.
2013: Facebook was focused on improving search from within Facebook through Graph Search.
2012: Unfortunately, several pieces of important functionality were lost with this change.
2012: Survey respondents had a very positive view of search and the quality of search results. Yet the majority gave an unequivocal thumbs down to search personalization (and behavioral targeting).
2012: The easter egg showed the value of the results in those number systems.
2012: Photosynth made it simple to create photo panoramas without any additional stitching/editing required.
2012: Reactions from local community directory AmericanTowns.com; product reviews site Buzzillions; small business networking site MerchantCircle; and product search engine TheFind.
2011: In the controversial tweet, Bing promised to donate $1 to quake relief for every retweet, up to a maximum $100,000 donation.
2010: In addition to microformats and RDFa support, Google had added microdata support, which was part of the HTML5 specification.
2010: China’s no-compromise-on-censorship position was reiterated by a top-level Chinese minister.
2010: The TV shortcut showed the title and a short synopsis of the next episode, along with video clips and links to see photos, the show’s schedule and an episodes list.
2009: A video showed how Google prices and ranks search ads in the AdWords system based on quality and bid.
2009: You could see up to 20 images on a single page. When you clicked on the details of that image you could view a larger thumbnail, visit the web page, or view it in full size.
2009: Google announced a wide range of new services under the banner of Google Voice.
2009: Flash video, games, and documents could now be embedded into Yahoo search results with only a few lines of code.
2009: There were a lot of stats and analyses about Twitter’s traffic, how it compared to other social search sites, and who benefited from all the traffic Twitter can send.
2009: One of Google’s longest serving executives, Tim Armstrong, was departing the company to become AOL’s new chairman and CEO, replacing existing chair and CEO Randy Falco.
2008: Why spinning off Performics needed to be a priority.
2008: Google announced it would have webmaster communication messages waiting for webmasters even if they have not yet verified their site in Google Webmaster Tools.
2008: Nanaimo, a British Columbia town on Vancouver Island, was also known as “Google Earth Town” or “the capital of Google Earth.”
2008: Were the stars aligning for a potential Yahoo-AOL alliance in an effort to address both companies’ woes?
2008: Vertical health destination and search engine Healthline teamed up with US health insurance carrier Aetna to offer what the company called Aetna SmartSource – customized health search.
2008: Click Forensics got $10 million in funding; an early Googler donated money to San Jose State; the fight to control IAC carried on and more.
2007: The days of doing a Google search that brought up results leading to search results from other sites were heading for a close.
2007: Google and Dish Networks were reportedly going to sign a TV ad deal.
2007: Advertisers and publishers were happy with early tests from Google’s Print Ads and Audio Ads.
2007: A roundup of various local online advertising forecasts and some perspective on what the “local search market” may be worth.
From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)
Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
< March 11 | Search Marketing History | March 13 >
The post This day in search marketing history: March 12 appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Sunday, March 12th, 2023
Google officially acquires DoubleClick
In 2008, the European Commission approved Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, valued at $3.1 billion.
The commission found that the “transaction would be unlikely to have harmful effects on consumers, either in ad serving or in intermediation in online advertising markets.”
The deal was first announced April 13, 2007. The EU began its investigation in November 2007. The US Federal Trade Commission approved the purchase in December 2007.
In 2008, display advertising represented about 32% of total US online advertising (roughly $6.7 billion), according to the IAB.
Read all about it:
Also on this day
2022: This format used vehicle data feeds in Google Merchant Center to match users’ searches with ads.
2021: Google tweaked some of the job posting structured data requirements and also how it checked the validity of FAQ and Q&A structured data.
2021: Marketers could now have full control over their ad text with Dynamic Search Ads.
2020: The face mask ban came amid a rise in false claims around coronavirus prevention and price gouging.
2020: Google wanted to ensure all content that appeared in the Business Profile was “relevant, high quality, and appropriate.”
2020: The long-time developer and SEO was working to bring the disciplines together.
2019: Google also offered a few best practices for helping it find the right date for that snippet.
2019: RankRanger said the average number of thumbnails per search result page jumped from 4 to 5.
2019: The interface made it easy to build queries for reporting.
2019: Surveys suggested there was still considerable room for growth.
2016: Google issued new best practices to bloggers who received free products.
2016: The latest images showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more.
2015: Google added a report that showed which resources you were blocking GoogleBot from by host name and updated the fetch and render tool.
2015: Just over 40% of the U.S. smartphone population, these mobile users searched more and relied more on their mobile devices than conventional smartphone users.
2015: Study looked at trademark usage in paid search across 10 industry verticals.
2015: The Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin was open to an exploit where hackers could do a Blind SQL injection.
2014: Google’s Matt Cutts announced warnings to Spanish and Italian webmasters and SEOs not to use unnatural links to promote their sites.
2014: The updated iOS Yahoo Search app got a new minimalistic design.
2014: Apple’s iOS 8 would see a number of improvements, including better and more complete points of interest and business data.
2014: 71% said they were most likely to be home when they research and confirm a business location before visiting the business for the first time.
2013: Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced new updates with Google’s Penguin and Panda algorithms and new link network targets in 2013.
2013: Google has won a lawsuit filed by a Wisconsin woman over Google Instant suggestions leading to a search result set that had ads.
2013: Feature clustered users’ search histories into topics that can easily be searched again.
2013: Despite the commercials and despite Microsoft reporting that after extensive testing users preferred Bing 2:1, people generally expressed skepticism.
2011: Mayer shared her vision for a future enabled by the search company’s technologies.
2011: Google announced the new targeting capability, saying it was the first of more extensive targeting features it was working on.
2011: Google’s inevitable encounter with a formal antitrust inquiry in the US took a step closer.
2011: Related: Internet Lowlifes Already Targeting Japan Quake Search Results
2011: Bing saw its largest share to date – 13.6%.
2011: The new reports could help business owners refine the deals they were offering and track foot traffic from Facebook users over time.
2010: MSN was by far the top source, the last site visited by 42.7% of Bing users before they went to Bing.
2010: Google was working with a limited number of retailers but was inviting others to apply to become part of the program.
2010: It appears that there were some problems for the acquisition.
2010: Hitwise showed Bing gaining share for the third straight month, and its 9.7% share of searches in February was up 4% over its January numbers.
2010: The update included possible updates to Yahoo’s crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms.
2010: Facebook saw 10% search query growth in the past month.
2010: Its objective was to enable people to more easily discover and review iPhone apps.
2009: Interest-Based Advertising allowed advertisers to deliver ads based on hundreds of interest categories and previous interactions with those users.
2009: He answers how Google handles links that are 301 redirected and how Google handles nofollowed links from authority sources.
2009: Google said this tool was not perfect but it did make for a new way of creating driving directions.
2009: Gmail was second only to Google.com in terms of visits among Google’s properties.
2009: The companies were spending $51 million per day on PPC for primary keywords, but they only ranked in the Top 100 natural search ranking for 21% of the keywords.
2008: Judge said “common-law punitive damages cannot be recovered under the Copyright Act,” and denied Viacom’s action against Google and YouTube.
2008: Those Linux-based “Google PCs” didn’t sell like hotcakes, said Walmart; Yahoo got a small paid search distribution deal with LiveDeal and more.
From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)
Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
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Thursday, March 9th, 2023
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