Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Wednesday, December 7th, 2022
The featured snippet is still one of the SERPs’ most coveted pieces of real estate. They allow your site to quickly jump to the top of the search results, even if the “traditional rankings” would place your site at the bottom of the first page.
My team and I have had a lot of success optimizing for featured snippets over the years. Eventually, we developed our internal frameworks for what performs best in claiming these yearned-for positions.
Below are the strategies we use to optimize for featured snippet results.
What is a featured snippet?
A featured snippet is a two- to three-sentence summary of text that appears at the top of Google. Featured snippets directly answer a user’s query in the search results. Receiving a featured snippet can result in more traffic for a given page.
Featured snippet optimization
Follow these steps to optimize for featured snippets::
- Add a “What is” heading.
- Use an “is” sentence structure.
- Fully define the topic.
- Match the featured snippet format.
- Don’t use your brand name.
- Don’t use first-person language.
- Scale featured snippets.
- Prioritize when you rank in the top five.
- Iterate your optimizations.
The featured snippet appears to work on a more simplistic algorithm than Google’s “primary” one. The featured snippet is much more influenced by simple on-page adjustments that clearly define the topic to users.
Featured snippets and voice search
Also, remember that one of the goals of the featured snippet is to fuel voice search.
Google reads back featured snippets when users perform voice queries on mobile or Google Home devices. This means that featured snippets must always make sense in this context.
When optimizing for featured snippets, it makes sense to ask yourself, “How would my answer sound if it was read back on voice search?”
The types of featured snippets
You might notice there are several kinds of featured snippets. Knowing each type is important to understand how to structure your content to optimize for them.
What follows are the most common types of featured snippets.
Paragraph
The most common type of featured snippet, the paragraph is composed of two or three sentences of text pulled from a <p> HTML element.
List
A bulleted or numbered list generally pulled from either an <ol> or <ul> HTML element.
Table
A table of information pulled from a <table> HTML element. This is the least common type of featured snippet.
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How to optimize for Google’s featured snippets
Throughout the years, one of the things I’ve been able to hone in on is how to optimize for the featured snippet.
I’ve developed a set of rules to follow when optimizing client pages for this SERP feature. You can learn more about each rule below.
1. Add a ‘What is’ heading
To start your featured snippet optimizations, you’ll want to look for a place in your content to add a “What is [keyword]” heading tag. This signals to Google that your upcoming text could be helpful as a featured snippet.
Countless examples of pages get the featured snippet using this heading format. We’ve seen good success rates when replicating this strategy for our clients.
Ideally, you’ll add this heading as close to the top of your content as possible. If writing a blog post, I’ll generally add it right below the introductory paragraph. This is often a great place to add it because it flows well with the content while allowing you to include it near the top of the page.
For instance, here’s a great example from TechnologyAdvice. We can see that they include this section right below their “Table of contents” at the top of the page:
Adding this section gives Google a clear indication of what text they can pull into the featured snippet.
As a result, they received the answer box for the competitive keyword “project management software” and even outranked Capterra, which is tough to do in SaaS SEO.
2. Use the ‘is’ sentence structure
When optimizing for the featured snippet, it’s important to include an “is” statement.
The first sentence should start with the structure: “[Keyword] is…”
Below are some examples from results getting the featured snippet:
- “Agile methodology is a type of project management process, mainly used for software development…”
- “Customer relationship management (CRM) software is software that automates and manages the customer life cycle of an organization.”
- “Return on Investment (ROI) is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of a number of different investments.”
Our analysis of pages receiving featured snippets consistently shows that “is” statements are utilized within the text.
In our experience, this content structure appears to act as a “triggering phrase” allowing Google to easily find relevant text for the featured snippet.
To boost your chances of getting the featured snippet spot, ensure that your first sentence follows this format. By using an “is” statement, you should see a higher percentage of your optimizations result in winning the featured snippet.
3. Fully define the topic in 2-3 sentences
This is the most important rule to follow, in my opinion.
Featured snippets should give users as much information about the topic as quickly as possible.
This means the content you’re optimizing must try to describe the topic as completely as possible in two to three sentences. For this rule, being concise is extremely important.
Here are some general guidelines we try to follow when trying to concisely define featured snippets
- The first sentence should define the topic.
- The second and third sentences should describe 2-3 must-know facts about the topic.
- Avoid using any extraneous phrasing in your definition.
Here’s a great example from Investopedia:
This follows the above pattern of first describing the topic and then providing users with two must-know facts about it.
- Forensic accounting is a specific accounting technique to discover crimes.
- It’s used to provide evidence of financial misconduct to courts.
- Forensic accounting is heavily used in the insurance industry.
Also, notice how the text doesn’t use unnecessary words within the definition. It’s short and to the point.
4. Match the featured snippet format
As explained earlier, the different types of featured snippets include:
- Paragraphs (most common).
- Bulleted and numbered lists.
- Tables (least common).
This rule is simple. Whatever featured snippet type you see on the SERP, match that type in your content.
For example, if you see a paragraph featured snippet appearing for the term you want to optimize for, you need to find a place to add/adjust two or three sentences of text.
However, if a bulleted list appears, you’ll need to add a similar list to your page’s content.
5. Never use your brand name in featured snippet text
This is a mistake we see all the time.
A company will get rules 1-4 right but will use some language that makes the result ineligible for the featured snippet. Brand names are one example of such language.
Remember that featured snippets fuel voice search. Devices such as Google Home will directly read what’s in the featured snippet to users. This means that the content needs to make complete sense in this context.
For example, say Wegmans was trying to optimize for the featured snippet “health benefits of avocado” and used the following sentence:
- “Avocados from Wegmans have many health benefits as they are a great source of riboflavin, vitamins C and potassium.”
When read by a voice assistant, this might be confusing as the searcher was looking for general benefits that apply to all avocados – not just the ones sold by Wegmans.
Replacing the brand name with general language will give the content a higher chance of receiving a featured snippet.
The ideal optimization could look something like this:
- “Avocados have many health benefits as they are a great source of riboflavin, vitamins C and potassium.”
6. Don’t use first-person language
Similar to the previous rule, using first-person language can be a mistake due to the ramifications of voice search.
In the above example, let’s say the on-page text optimized for the featured snippet read:
- “Our avocados have many health benefits. We have avocados that are a great source of riboflavin, vitamins C and potassium.”
Again, imagine if this sentence was read by a voice assistant. The user might wonder:
- Who is the “we” that is being referenced?
- Does this information only apply to their product?
This sounds like the information might be specific to a type of avocado and might not apply to the food in general.
Limiting this type of phrasing may also help you improve your chances of receiving a featured snippet.
7. Scale featured snippets when possible
We’ve seen interesting behavior throughout the years with bulleted list featured snippets.
For instance, you can see that a search for the term “food franchises” yields the following featured snippet below.
However, when looking at the page, there is no specific bulleted list. Instead, the page is set up as a standard ecommerce category page.
What Google appears to be pulling the featured snippets from is actually the individual product listings within the category page, and the selected text all appear to be formatted as H3.
The example shows us that in some results, Google scrapes heading tag information to display as featured snippets. This allows for an interesting opportunity as featured snippets can be scaled with adjustments to the HTML.
We’ve recommended adjusting the HTML on category pages from standard paragraph tags to H2 or H3 tags for some clients. This might send stronger signals that could scale featured snippet optimization globally.
Take the time to review where Google is pulling your competitors’ featured snippets from. If you’re seeing common HTML elements, consider adjusting your global templates to give your content the best chance of triggering the featured snippet.
8. Prioritize opportunities where you rank in the top 5
Previous studies have shown that ranking position matters in terms of claiming a featured snippet. Simply put, the higher you rank, the better your chance of claiming one.
An Ahrefs study showed that results ranking in the first position had a 30.9% chance of receiving a featured snippet. Positions 2 and 3 had a 23.5% and 15.9% chance, respectively.
While this data might be different now since deduplication, it still has clear takeaways for SEOs.
The higher your site ranks in the “standard” results, the better the chance of generating a featured snippet.
When prioritizing, look for keywords where you already rank within the top 5 results.
9. Iterate your optimizations
You’ve followed the steps above.
You’ve written fantastic on-page content that clearly describes the topic under a dedicated “What is” heading at the top of the page.
You’ve also been sure to stay clear of any brand or first-person terminology.
You push your optimizations to production and wait for Google to re-index your content.
When Google finally indexes your new changes, your page still isn’t generating the featured snippet.
This is not the time to stop optimizing. Instead, iterate your approach and try again. For many of the featured snippets we get, it can take multiple iterations.
In this phase, I’ve found that using the above process generally gets you 80% of the way there.
If your result still doesn’t receive a featured snippet, minor adjustments tend to work well.
Look for opportunities to better define the topic, use even more concise phrasing or test highlighting different facts (see Rule 3).
Start with minor adjustments and work to more major ones if you’re still not seeing the desired results.
You’ll often find that the featured snippet can be obtained after a few rounds of interaction to perfect the language.
Earn featured snippets and boost your SERP visibility
Hopefully, these guidelines will help you when optimizing for featured snippets.
Remember, it’s extremely important to:
- Use an “is” statement.
- Fully define the topic in two to three sentences.
By following the rules above, you should be able to significantly improve how many featured snippets you’re able to receive for your site.
The post How to get Google featured snippets: 9 optimization guidelines appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, December 7th, 2022
More than agencies or freelancers, in-house ecommerce marketing teams tend to have more access to data, making them the perfect intermediary between that data and the campaigns they manage.
Accurate, timely insights from analytics platforms or customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help marketers make informed decisions on how best allocate resources when automating tasks (e.g, email sequencing, segmentation strategies).
This allows for more efficient use of time while also providing a higher return on investment through targeted messaging that resonates with prospects over time.
In his SMX Next presentation, Andrew Lolk, founder of SavvyRevenue goes over what it takes for in-house ecommerce marketing teams to implement the necessary data for their algorithms to be efficient, and making sure that the data that we’re actually feeding into the engine also equals the goals.
Feeding the beast
Feeding the beast means giving as much data as possible. This includes:
- Server-side tracking.
- Enhanced conversions.
- Giving the algorithms as much data as humanly possible.
“We need to feed the system with as much data as humanly possible and then use other methodologies to define attribution,” Lolk said. “What we see in Google ads shouldn’t be what you use to actually determine whether it is good for us or not, as profitable or not. The second part is making sure that the data that we’re actually feeding into the engine also equals the goals.”
Analytics
What should PPC marketers focus on? Not manual bidding, keywords, and rules, according to Lolk.
Rather, your focus should be on taking the captain’s seat. Become a mini-manager, or team lead. In order to optimize accounts, attention needs to be given to feeding the right data into the algorithm.
In fact, analytics should equal about 99% of your back-end data. Lolk’s advice: get enhanced conversions
Micro conversions
Managers need to track micro conversions, Lolk said.
“Once you’ve figured out all these micro-conversions you want to track, you need to assign a value. The reason you want to assign a value is that unless you put some kind of conversion values to these micro-conversions, then you can’t use it for shopping because you can’t do target CPA or maximize conversions or maximize conversion value bid strategies.”
Use cases
Use cases for assigning value to micro conversions are as follows:
- The long customer journey, where it takes consumers 3-6 weeks to make the purchase.
- High average order value, such as mattresses and high-end office chairs
- Tracking micro-conversions and assigning a value to those. Whether they be using a chat feature or clicking on reviews
Blended ROAS
To calculate blended ROAS, you take your total revenue and divide it by your total cost across all platforms.
Blended ROAS includes spend and return for Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Microsoft, and any other ad platform where you’re running campaigns.
Negative ROAS
Brands and advertisers need to be comfortable with a negative ROAS for some products in certain categories in order to maximize profits and balance new customers, Lolk said.
There are times when you increase profit but your revenue is still down. But by looking at back-end data you can see which products were best sellers, had the highest conversion rates, or got the most clicks.
You can use that data to create a custom product score, allowing you to prioritize them.
Watch: Feeding data to automation: In-house teams’ secret sauce to Google Ads
Below is the complete video of Lolk’s SMX Next presentation.
The post Feeding data to automation: In-house teams’ secret sauce to Google Ads appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, December 7th, 2022
This article details how aspiring search marketers can advance their careers through accelerated job performance and proactive outreach.
The best path to advance your SEM career involves:
- Delivering stellar execution and task management.
- Providing incredible contributions to your team.
- Taking ownership of projects of any size.
Aim to exemplify the following nine attributes, and you’ll be on your way to a thriving search marketing career.
Delivering stellar results
Individuals who bring a proactive approach to their roles will grow faster.
Within most SEM teams, there is an endless list of tasks, and anyone who jumps in and starts acting as part of the team will get noticed and promoted.
Here’s how to bring your best self to your position daily and do outstanding work.
1. Execute flawlessly within accounts
SEM is complicated. You must consider hundreds of nuances during each campaign launch. An incorrectly clicked radio button within Google Ads can cause an error with significant negative impacts.
Flawless execution will get gradual attention when settling into your first role in SEM. Mistakes gain immediate attention, which is not the best way to get on your manager’s radar.
SEM is fast-paced. You’ll have numerous tasks to complete each day. Keep yourself from being pushed to execute more than you are comfortable with. When you feel rushed, mistakes will undoubtedly creep into your work.
2. Manage tasks and deadlines relentlessly
Staying on top of your daily and weekly tasks is critical. Team members and clients depend on you to complete work on time.
In addition, being responsible for your workload builds confidence in your overall performance.
Begin each day by reviewing your top priorities. Then, end each day by setting your priorities for the following morning. This process will significantly impact your productivity, mental health, and stress.
Also, set the appropriate amount of time for each project each day. Prioritizing tasks and allocating enough time per project will ensure you can execute flawlessly.
3. Track long-term goals and milestones
Own your development. Collaborate with your manager to set goals and milestones for the upcoming three or six months. Work together to establish goals to support your team, advance your responsibilities, and develop your skills.
Don’t rely on your manager to maintain your long-term goals. It’s easy to lose sight of your long-term plans due to the urgent needs that arise each day.
Instead, be proactive by providing regular updates on your goal progress. Your manager will appreciate it when you take ownership of your development.
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Being an incredible contributor
An exceptional team member is someone who actively contributes to their team.
Awesome team members help everyone in their group win. Keep in mind – when the team wins, you win too.
4. Train/mentor junior team members
If you have the experience and availability to mentor junior team members, go for it. Alternatively, you could find a mentor within your company for yourself.
Mentoring can provide valuable insights to your mentee and help you hone your skills. Providing guidance and insight forces you to clarify your thoughts and perspective.
You could ask to form one if you don’t have access to a formal mentorship program.
5. Bring a steady stream of innovative ideas
Innovation is everyone’s job. You can bring new, creative ideas to your team at any career stage.
In addition, your manager and team will appreciate someone who is proactively solving problems and improving processes.
If you are at a different point of presenting new strategy suggestions to clients or C-Level executives in your organization, then you should aim for what is within reach.
Pitch new process ideas to your team. Propose new campaign strategies to your manager. Look for new, better ways to help the team and provide solutions.
6. Offer to review accounts from other teams
Learning is a two-way street. If you work in an agency, you could offer to review accounts for different groups.
Account teams benefit from a third-party perspective. You could discover areas of opportunity or potential problems within an account. Offering account reviews is an excellent contribution to a team-focused mentality.
Also, you will likely learn from other teams in this process. You could see strategies and techniques that you have yet to try before.
Offering to review accounts can help open new perspectives that you can bring back to your team.
Taking ownership
Managers will notice when team members step up to lead projects. Whenever possible, take ownership of projects of any size.
Demonstrate that you have the drive to take ownership and the ability to manage.
7. Ask to lead a new project
Taking ownership of a project happens in many forms.
For example, you can offer to resolve a reporting or tracking issue. In addition, you can propose a new process to streamline or improve collaboration.
This behavior shows that you want to solve issues. Taking ownership of any size shows that you are proactive and have a positive attitude toward finding new ways of working.
Don’t underestimate the power of proactivity and ownership when thinking about your career.
8. Gain a holistic understanding of your business
If you are in-house, this means learning more about your company’s strategy.
This means seeking additional information about your client’s business if you are with an agency.
You’ll better understand the business you are promoting and how digital marketing strategy will drive growth.
You can set up Google Alerts for your business or your client’s business.
If applicable, you can attend quarterly earnings calls. You could also subscribe to your client’s marketing newsletters or other publications.
9. Make strategy presentations to senior team members
You might not be able to make presentations to clients, prospects, or the C-level executives at your company. However, you can still gain valuable presentation experience in your available setting.
You can take the projects you own (see the point above) and present your findings to senior team members.
In alignment with the above, you could present high-level findings about your business/client to your team. These presentations can be low-stress but high-yield in terms of experience.
The path to growing your SEM career
These ideas will help level up your engagement in your current role.
Consider how you can bring stellar execution and task management, incredible contributions to your team, and ownership of projects of any size.
The SEM career playbook series covers must-know tips and advice for getting started with and navigating a career in search marketing.
The first article, “SEM career playbook: Overview of a growing industry,” introduced roles within search marketing. The second one, “How to excel in your current and future SEM roles,” discussed ways to capture learning opportunities for building your career.
In our final installment of this series, we’ll explore boosting core skill sets to advance your SEM career.
The post How to advance your SEM career: 9 attributes to master appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, December 7th, 2022
E-commerce is a highly competitive environment where giant online retailers like Walmart and Amazon make it difficult for other online merchants to grow and drive conversions.
The reason why conversion remains low for some is mainly that customers cannot find what they are looking for. More than ever before, customers are shopping online for the convenience. If they cannot find what they are looking for on your site, they will leave, abandon carts and go to your competitor to buy what they need quickly and easily.
The key to solving the conversion problem is personalization – deducing what your customers want and how to help them seamlessly find what they’re looking for. It is going beyond acknowledging what they have bought in the past and accounting for what they have viewed and interacted with.
Join Jonathan Meyer, senior solutions engineer, HawkSearch by Bridgeline, in his informative SMX Next session to learn how to drive conversions and increase average order value. The answer? Implementing machine learning and AI-powered search and recommendation functionalities into your e-commerce site.
After this session, you’ll be able to:
- Track trends and recognize patterns
- Auto-generate product recommendations
- Personalize the customer’s experience
Tune into the session and get ahead of your competition in 2023 by helping your customers stay engaged during their search on your e-commerce site.
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Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, December 6th, 2022
Imagine walking into a grocery store, list in hand, and all of the store’s products were randomly strewn on tables displayed throughout.
Odds are good that you would U-turn and make the drive to a store where things were better organized. You wouldn’t want to spend the rest of your life sorting through all the products to find the things on your list.
The same is true for your ecommerce website. Organization is critical for a good user experience and good SEO.
Also, imagine having “toilet paper” on your list, but the signs on the various rows say no such thing.
And according to this imaginary grocery store, “toilet paper” is called “tissue for your bottom.”
Does anyone have “tissue for your bottom” on your list?
No. We simply call it “toilet paper.”
Ecommerce mirrors in-store browsing and buying
From studying traffic patterns, grocery stores learned long ago that aligning “like” products makes the shopping experience easier.
As we all know, everyone seems to be there for milk so stores keep them in the back. (“Let’s make sure that folks have to walk past all the other items before getting to the milk!”)
What you call “Products” and where you have them on your ecommerce site (i.e., information architecture and taxonomy) matter quite a bit in SEO.
This hypothetical grocery store is akin to the ecommerce website with “Shop” in the navigation.
- Once you’ve clicked through, you get a list of every product available on the website.
- Things need to be organized (categorized). And again, the categories need to make sense.
For many years, my agency handled SEO for a leading HVAC manufacturer.
Back in 2005, when we first engaged, they called their air conditioners “cooling products.” Unsurprisingly, they did not rank in Google for “air conditioners.”
User experience needs to consider the customer journey
It’s often been said that SEO and UX are linked, and it’s never been truer than when we think about how you organize an ecommerce website.
That one product you have may have several categories that fit within. Easy enough – make sure that the product is associated with those other categories.
Just like you might find the hot sauce in the Mexican aisle, you’ll also find that there’s a display near the chips.
Make it good for the user, and you’re most likely also making it good for Google and the searcher.
So, where do you start?
The following tips for organizing your ecommerce site and promoting your products will help you get more traffic and sales.
1. Build a solid site taxonomy
Start by creating your main categories. If you’re unsure where to start, learn from your competitors.
Verify that they are successful in their SEO efforts through a Semrush audit and see the breadth and value of their organic keyword presence.
Your main navigation should present your main categories. A great example of solid architecture is Wayfair:
You can see here that although Wayfair offers products across a wide spectrum, they have intuitively broken these out into what they consider to be their main categories.
And, if you were to click into any one of these, you would then see their sub-categories:
2. Explore use cases for product searches
Once you have a foundation of main and sub-navigation (the basics), you can explore the various use cases that users might have for these products and how they search.
Do people search by price? Perhaps categories for pricing?
For example, “Beds under $1,000,” where you list your beds that fall into this range.
Perhaps people search by style?
Let’s say you offer adjustable beds. You’d be inclined to build a category page for this, as there are approximately 47,000 searches per month in the U.S. for these products.
Perhaps people search by brand?
If you offer Craftmatic, you’d be inclined to build a category page for Craftmatic adjustable beds, with an estimated 1,900 searches per month.
Here’s another way to look at this. Say, for instance, you only have one category page for “Furniture.”
In this case, you are targeting a keyword with a large monthly search volume (~588,000 searches per month).
But it is also a highly competitive keyword that is less likely to get you a top-ranking position.
Even if you went to the next level and built one sub-category page for “Beds” (with ~112,000 searches), you’d still be attempting to rank for something that would be very difficult to achieve.
However, if you keep drilling down, you’ll begin to uncover relevant opportunities.
Consider “targeted” keywords that may not have a sizable search volume but have a manageable competition level.
(People searching “Craftmatic adjustable beds” know what they’re looking for and are probably closer to conversion.)
The kicker is that by building this into your site structure and content plans, you reward your website visitors with a better user experience (matching content to the searcher’s intent).
And – almost by default – you will have improved your organic rankings.
That one product can now be represented in several categories/areas of your website (Furniture/Beds/Beds Under {Price Point}/Style/Brand).
You are merchandising your products much better than simply listing them on one page.
Now that you have this built out, consider how you might cross-promote (through internal linking) within your website.
These category and subcategory pages can also be used for paid search, like Google Ads or Shopping Ads, where landing page relevance determines the Quality Score, which in turn impacts the cost per click.
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3. Merchandise your products
Merchandising in brick-and-mortar typically refers to things like the endcaps, the small hanging display of pot holders next to the cookware display and signage.
In ecommerce, merchandising represents many more opportunities for product promotion.
On your product page, you might have:
- Other products from the same brand.
- Other products people also bought.
- Products commonly purchased together.
- Similar products from competing brands.
You might highlight “Top brands” on your home page so visitors can quickly associate your site with reputable brands.
Building brand pages is a natural way to optimize for many “brand + product name” keywords. Your manufacturing/vendor partners can also use these pages to link from their websites.
Many of these manufacturers have site sections devoted to “Distributors”, “Partners,” or “Where to buy” call-outs.
Perhaps the person who’s buying a bed would also be interested in a mattress pad? Do you sell these?
If so, let’s be sure that we have opportunities to cross-sell these things and make sure that it’s intuitive with the product they’re looking to buy.
Once again, Wayfair shows how this can add value to the user experience.
When you merchandise your products better to improve the user experience, you grow the number of ways searchers will find you.
It’s a win-win! Users find what they’re looking for, and you are gaining relevant visitors who are more likely to convert.
You are expanding your keyword breadth, which is always good for SEO as you’ll have several other opportunities to maintain your organic traffic. (You never know when you might lose that top 3 ranking for “Beds.”)
Take it from Wayfair, which has 1.7 million non-brand keywords ranking in Google’s top 10 results, according to Semrush.
This includes:
- #2 for “Furniture” and #1 for “Beds.”
- 253 keyword variations of “Adjustable beds” ranking in the top 10.
- Rank #8 for “Craftmatic adjustable beds.”
4. Leverage shopping deals and seasonal promotions
Merchandising also takes into account the way the product is promoted.
In brick-and-mortar retail, this would be the shelving, shelving signage, aisle signage, floor signage, packaging, price labels and promotional pricing labels.
In ecommerce, you can also take advantage of shopping deals and seasonal promotions.
Walmart has the yellow tag sales, which they use as a sub-brand.
Leading up to Thanksgiving, they promoted their Black Friday “Deals for Days,” which was included in the main navigation, a promo banner and main header elements above the fold.
Then further down the page, they had another content section to highlight more Black Friday offers.
All of these content sections must be planned out and coordinated, so you also need a flexible CMS to support these temporary content sections and dynamically pull in the right products with all the correct pricing.
You also need to have a Deals/Discounts section on the site to capture search demand for those types of search queries.
For price-sensitive shoppers, many different keywords signal that they may not need to spend full retail. These include:
- Discount.
- Sales.
- Deals.
- Clearance.
- Closeouts.
- Markdowns.
- Used.
- Coupons.
There are also sometimes seasonal variations of some of these:
I recommend setting these up with an evergreen URL since they are annual events that will consolidate page and link signals. Doing so also helps reduce internal linking errors.
Get more sales with better site organization and product merchandising
These are just a few of the items you need to consider when building an ecommerce site and figuring out how to merchandise or promote specific products.
Many of your decisions will depend on relationships with your vendors, seasonal promotions, and other factors.
An SEO team with ecommerce experience can help you navigate through these items – maximizing your organic exposure based on what customers are searching for and which information they need to help them buy from you.
The work that you put in here can contribute to:
- Many long-tail keyword rankings.
- Improved user experience.
- Higher conversion rates.
Additionally, a particular product category or a seasonal promotion can provide the type of content that could earn links.
Remember – the higher you rank in Google, the more likely someone searching for related content will find your website.
Happy merchandising!
The post Ecommerce SEO & UX: 4 simple tips to boost traffic and sales appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Tuesday, December 6th, 2022
Within the last few months, service area business (SAB) websites started to see rank fluctuations aligned with the rollout of Google’s helpful content and spam updates around late August through October.
Chatter around those fluctuations picked up in the local SEO community during this period in various forums, including the Google SEO Mastermind Facebook group.
The common theme with sites that were impacted the most seemed to be related to duplicate content, specifically location pages – in other words, doorway pages.
However, sites weren’t getting directly penalized by rank. Instead, pages were being automatically deindexed, which in turn caused ranks to drop for queries related to the corresponding location pages.
Deindexing of location pages
Schieler Mew, admin of the Google SEO Mastermind group on Facebook, posted this video explaining what he saw with over 200 SAB sites.
In the video, he explains that sites with relatively low authority or a lack of helpful content throughout the site saw a deindexing of their “duplicate content” location pages en masse.
Scheiler and I jumped on a Google Meet, where he shared some data and screenshots below of what had happened in Search Console to these sites.
The first thing that was noticed was a large shift in the middle of September regarding indexed pages. This seems to line right up with the completion of the helpful content rollout.
Digging into it, the next screenshot is all the pages that were deindexed seemingly overnight.
Finally, the report on the timeline of the affected pages.
The mass deindexing of pages that heavily contributed to geographic ranking vanished, taking the rankings with it.
This seemed to be the case for numerous other pages, although there were a few outliers.
Websites with seemingly higher authority or location pages that used unique content weren’t deindexed.
This leads me to believe that the helpful content and spam update algorithm seem somewhat unfinished. In this case, it tackled the easiest target – duplicate content location pages on sites with low authority.
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How the helpful content and spam updates contributed
Most SEOs were under the assumption that these updates were targeting AI-generated content. (Recall that in an office-hours hangout in April, John Mueller referred to it as “spam” and made it clear it was against Google’s policies.)
On November 7, Danny Sullivan squashed this in a tweet, stating:
- “We haven’t said AI content is bad. We’ve said, pretty clearly, content written primarily for search engines rather than humans is the issue.”
We haven't said AI content is bad. We've said, pretty clearly, content written primarily for search engines rather than humans is the issue. That's what we're focused on. If someone fires up 100 humans to write content just to rank, or fires up a spinner, or a AI, same issue…
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 7, 2022
This is when I started putting two and two together.
SAB sites are dropping in rank right around the rollout of both the helpful content and spam updates, and we know it’s primarily targeting pages that have content written for search engines rather than humans.
What kind of pages would a local SAB have that almost every SEO in the industry creates?
Location pages.
Understanding doorway pages
A doorway page is essentially what Danny Sullivan was talking about in the above tweet. It’s a page written to rank for a specific keyword but provides little to no value to a user.
An example of doorway pages in the local SEO industry is location pages. In other words, a page that exists for the sole purpose of ranking [city #1] + [service A] multiplied by the number of cities and/or services the business is trying to rank for.
These can be created faster if the content is duplicated and only the keywords are swapped out. Additionally, you can write custom content for each page, but it’s still a doorway page.
SEOs in this sector hate to admit it, but location pages are doorway pages. Mueller confirmed this in February.
That's a common way to make doorway pages, but it's not the only way.
— John Mueller is mostly not here 
(@JohnMu) February 9, 2022
Doorway pages have always been against Google’s policies, but there had never seemed to be a way to suppress these algorithmically.
The only punishment seemed to be manual actions, and until this year, SABs seem to have been put on the Google backburner – so no one really ever saw any consequences for doing this.
Recent Google updates to local SEO
In the last few months, waves have been made within the local SEO community, not just with doorway pages, including:
For the most part, Google has addressed a few of these issues, such as the suspended business profiles and reviews hovering in purgatory – usually giving credit to “bugs.”
At some point, SEOs have to ask themselves why suddenly there are so many bugs in a specific sector.
Aside from the bugs with GBP profiles, Google has also made some obvious and strict changes to how profiles are now verified.
It started with the default verification method switching from postcard to video. Then, in some instances, video being the only way to verify.
This, mixed with business profiles suddenly being suspended over minor issues, started to raise flags that Google was finally tackling the SEO spam in the SAB community.
Fast forward to September this year, SEOs in communities and forums started to see declining rankings for location-dependant keywords and pages.
All of this being said, it looks like Google is seriously cracking down on local businesses that are violating their spam policies.
Can location pages still work?
The short answer is, “yes”, but it’s only a matter of time before location pages fade into archaic SEO practices like hidden text or meta keyword stuffing.
Google deindexing duplicate content location pages is just the first step in the conquest to punish sites for using doorway pages that don’t benefit humans.
It’s unclear whether or not Google will institute rank penalties for doorway pages in the future or continue to not index the pages.
My theory is that this is a temporary fix. Location pages are something local SEOs should be leaving in the past.
At the end of the day, Google wants content to exist to provide a positive user experience, not to influence rank.
As a consumer, I’ve never found a location page to benefit my user experience. This is how we should think when creating pages and content.
First, think about how it can help the user and then how it can be optimized to help your rank – in that order.
Alternative optimization options to rank in nearby cities
Suggesting that location pages may be coming to an end isn’t cause for local SEOs to throw their hands up on optimizing for neighboring cities and areas.
There are alternative things we can do that put the purpose of the content back in the direction of helping humans first.
Target your primary service area in your H1s and page titles
Chances are you or your client have a number one area they want to target.
Make sure this city is mentioned in your H1s and page titles. This will make it clear to Google from a content standpoint where your primary area of service is.
Make sure to have a general service area page
Make sure to have a general page that tells users where you or your client serves.
List out all counties, cities, or neighborhoods and include a map that visualizes that service area.
Create project pages
This is my favorite. If you or your client have project-oriented work like landscaping, roof repair, construction, etc; create pages for specific projects that were completed.
Treat it similarly to a blog or gallery. Add before and after pictures, explaining the job or project details.
Mention what city it was located in, how much it cost, some challenges, etc.
This method will not only show potential customers what your company is capable of and the type of work you do, but it’s also a great way to rank your service and the city where it was performed.
An example of a project page for a landscaper could be titled “Modern Highland Stone Retaining Wall in Minnetonka, MN.”
Local newspaper press releases
Reach out to local newspapers in the surrounding areas and issue a press release.
Brag about your company regarding a past or upcoming charitable contribution or discount you give. Newspaper and local publishing sites typically link back to your website.
Join multiple local Chambers of Commerce
These typically have an annual fee associated with each one you join, but each city you or your client is targeting has one.
If it’s in your budget, join them for the location-relevant links and geographic authority.
Where do we go from here?
Google’s enforcement of service area businesses is long overdue, but it seems like the action is now being taken.
Some location pages still work as long as the site has high authority and good overall content. It’s duplicate content location pages that are getting deindexed.
Overall, SABs are now under Google’s magnifying glass. If SEOs aren’t getting hit with penalties yet, I would put money on it being something that will be happening in the very near future.
It’s important to remember that Google is always evolving. Even though something like unique content may still work for location pages, I bet that Google will tackle this next.
Google’s SpamBrain AI is updated every now and then. This time, it may be evolving to target easily distinguishable doorway pages.
It’s only a matter of time before it understands a location page as a standalone doorway page with unique content.
As SEOs, we must review our local business sites, stick to the core principles of local search, and do some housekeeping per Google’s policies – before their algorithm team pays us a visit.
The post Location pages in Google’s crosshairs after October spam update appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, December 6th, 2022
There once was a time when marketing was more art than science. Understanding whether or not your creative asset, display ad or even a TV spot was driving customers to your business took a lot of work. And there was little to no data to tell you what was working and what wasn’t working. That has since changed. It’s now as much science as it is art.
When using analytics to deploy targeted campaigns for specific marketing groups, your organization can increase your awareness of your products and services among the right individuals. And by understanding your consumer pain points, purchase preferences and shopping habits, your specific marketing campaigns can speak much more effectively and directly to that intended audience.
It’s almost impossible to work in marketing and not be concerned about marketing performance – the metrics and the outcomes that marketing departments look at to determine how well their marketing activities are doing to achieve their goals within their marketing plans. This is where that mention of science comes into play once again.
Learn more by joining Wrike’s Olivia Gartz, senior sales engineer, and Shannon Riley, industry principal – marketing, in their informative SMX Next session. They will teach you how their tool, Marketing Insights, can empower you to supercharge your marketing ROI, monitor success in real-time and make critical decisions to attribute revenue back to your best-performing campaigns.
After this session, you’ll be able to:
- Understand how measuring your marketing performance can improve your execution strategy
- Know which metrics are the most important to drive your campaign budgets
- Maximize your budget to allocate dollars to your best-performing campaigns
You’ll also learn how to define marketing performance measurement and the critical measurement metrics you should always include as part of your campaign performance data.
Watch the session now and arm yourself with the knowledge to sift through the data to identify which contributed directly to your bottom line.
The post Supercharge your marketing ROI for success appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Tuesday, December 6th, 2022
Customers have grown to expect tailored, timely offerings and marketers are challenged with delivering these real-time, personalized experiences to respond to their needs.
As a result of this shift, enterprises are leveraging customer-centric strategies to drive smarter engagement across the full customer journey, capture revenue opportunities and foster long-term loyalty. Those that are truly succeeding are making access to data a movement across their organization, not just a marketing initiative.
Learn how The Washington Post is executing personalized customer experiences as a key engagement driver to power use cases from acquisition to win back.
Register today for “Drive Smarter Engagement with Hyper-Personalization Across the Customer Lifecycle,” presented by ActionIQ.
Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.
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Friday, December 2nd, 2022
Ever since Elon Musk took over as CEO of Twitter, there have been a lot of changes to the platform.
Some people love it. Others are not so sure. Many marketers have even said their goodbyes to Twitter.
As far as brands are concerned, many have left the platform or temporarily paused ads due to increased hate speech, safety concerns, and Musk’s overall lax approach to content moderation, account suspensions, and other issues.
Here’s a rundown of all the changes that have happened so far. Whether you’re a fan or not, it’s worth keeping up with what’s happening with Twitter 2.0.
The latest in the Twitstorm:
- Twitter Offers Advertisers Generous Incentives After Many Marketers Left Platform (Wall Street Journal). “Under the new Twitter plan, advertisers who book at least $500,000 in incremental spending will qualify to have their spending matched with a “100% value add,” up to a $1 million cap.”
- Twitter Says That its Moderation Policies Have Not Changed in Light of Musk Takeover (Social Media Today). Musk is quoted saying “None of our policies have changed. Our approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on de-amplification of violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.”
- Twitter stops policing Covid misinformation (Wall Street Journal) Twitter is loosening moderation guidelines and has stopped enforcing policies aimed at stopping Covid misinformation.
- Apple has “mostly” stopped Twitter ads (Mac Rumors) “Apple has cut back on its Twitter advertising, according to Twitter CEO Elon Musk. In a tweet, Musk said that Apple has “mostly stopped” its Twitter ads, asking if Apple hates “free speech.”
- Are we officially saying goodbye to Twitter? It depends on who you ask The evolution of suspended accounts, fired executives, and Musk’s terrible jokes.
- Twitter adds Official badge, then Musk immediately kills it Exactly what it says.
- How brands and agencies are reacting to Elon Musk’s radical changes at Twitter Many, including GM, General Mills, and Apple have suspended their accounts.
- Elon Musk taking over Twitter, but most marketers not worried Did we speak too soon?
What happened:
- In January, Elon Musk started investing in Twitter, securing a 9.2% stake, making him the largest shareholder in the company.
- Musk reached an acquisition deal with Twitter in April but raised concerns over spam accounts on the platform, claiming Twitter had not provided him with an accurate estimate of their number.
- Also, in April, Twitter announced that Musk would join the company’s board of directors. Shortly after, Musk said he would not be joining the board after all.
- By mid-April, Musk offers to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share, valuing the company at about $43 billion, according to a securities filing.
- Twitter adopts a poison pill provision to prevent the Musk acquisition but then accepts Musk’s offer to acquire the company and values the deal at $44 billion.
- In May, when Musk said the deal was on “temporary hold” over bot concerns. Musk posted a Reuters report about a public filing from Twitter earlier in May that said fake accounts made up less than 5% of users on the platform. Musk then says he wants “details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts represent less than 5% of users.” Two hours later, Musk says he’s “still committed” to the deal.
- Fast forward to July, Musk moves to terminate his acquisition of Twitter, pointing to the issue of fake accounts. Twitter sues Musk to force him to complete the deal.
- By October, after a months-long effort to terminate the deal, Musk proposes to complete the deal at the original offer price of $54.20 a share at a total cost of roughly $44 billion.
- At the end of October, Musk closed a deal to acquire Twitter on the final day before the trial would have moved forward. Additionally, many of Twitter’s top executives were fired, including CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde and general counsel Sam Edgett, according to a source.
- Musk said that he would forgo any significant content moderation or account reinstatement decisions until after forming a new committee devoted to the issues. “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints,” Musk tweeted. “No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”
- In November, Twitter began massive layoffs, cutting its staff of 7,500 to nearly half.
The post Twitstorm timeline: The latest on Elon Musk’s Twitter 2.0 appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Friday, December 2nd, 2022
If you’re still on the fence about whether or not video ads are a good idea for your brand, you shouldn’t be. Coming into 2023, it’s more important than ever to consider all platforms and ad types; and video advertising should be at the top of that list. Here are three reasons why you should be creating video ads for your brand.
- Video ads are more engaging than traditional ads
- Video ads reach a larger audience than traditional ads
- Video is an effective way to communicate your brand message
But creating a good video ad is easier said than done. If you’re looking for inspiration, check out the top 10 most-watched YouTube ads from 2022. From funny commercials to moving stories, these campaigns definitely left an impression.
Why we care. Video ads are more relevant than ever. Bottom line- if you’re not creating videos, you’re missing out on more than just views.
Amazon Super Bowl LVI Ad with Scarlett Johansson, Colin Jost (U.S.)
69 million views
Telecom Egypt Ramadan 2022 Announcement (Egypt)
65 million views
Clash of Clans: Clan Capital (U.S.)
52 million views
Apple: MacBook Air (U.S.)
41 million views
Hyundai Worldwide: Goal of the Century x BTS (U.S.)
40 million views
Imagine Your Korea (Korea)
102 million views
HBO Max: “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts” trailer (U.S.)
27 million views
Netflix: “All of Us Are Dead” trailer (U.S.)
22 million views
Chevrolet Brasil: Zé & Zê – Feita Pra Mim (Brazil)
21 million views
Squarespace: Sally’s Seashells Super Bowl ad (U.S.)
21 million views
The post YouTube year in review: The top 10 ads of 2022 appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
