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Email marketing is continually developing. Are you keeping up?

Tuesday, October 25th, 2022

Email may have been around since the dawn of the internet, but the space doesn’t stand still. Email marketing, and the technology that enables it, have evolved to deal with challenges like spam and deliverability and also to take advantage of opportunities, such as the ever-increasing sophistication of data usage for hyper-personalization.

Developments in the email marketing platform environment, especially consolidation and integrations between parts of the tech stack, mean that the practice of email marketing is constantly changing. Additionally, external factors like Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection and Hide My Email, mean that marketers and their vendor partners need to adapt.

Download MarTech’s “Email Marketing Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide” to stay up to date and learn about new and better features in the latest generation of email technology. This 51-page report is your source for the latest news, trends, opportunities and challenges facing this market as seen by industry leaders, vendors and their customers.

Complete the form below to get your copy.

This report is sponsored by Salesforce and Cordial.

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These comprehensive guides will help you evaluate, select, purchase, and implement key marketing technology solutions. The MarTech editors have done the research so you don’t have to.

The post Email marketing is continually developing. Are you keeping up? appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Google Ads turns 22: A look back at the biggest changes and advances in search

Tuesday, October 25th, 2022

Every five years Search Engine Land likes to put together a sort of birthday tribute to the search engine, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics giant that we know as Google. Take a look at their big 2-0.

But given all that’s happened in search the last two years, we think it’s about time to pop the champagne, cut the cake, and settle in for a new, yearly, honoring.

Let’s get to it!

2021-2022

Keyword match types

Keyword match types seem to be the gift that keeps on giving, or in Google’s case, taking away. This time Google’s simplified phrase match worried advertisers with some acknowledging how similarly BMM and phrase match have behaved, and others denouncing the change as a move to strip away more data and controls from advertisers so that Google can extract as much profit from auctions as possible.

Farewell, broad-match modified keywords. Google expanded phrase-match to be included in broad match, to the chagrin of advertisers everywhere. 

Audiences

Advertisers will be able to use connected TV campaigns to target viewers across YouTube and “most” other connected TV apps. The new development will bring affinity, in-market, and demographic audience segments to connected TVs.

Advertisers will be able to reuse audiences across campaigns. When you build an audience to use in a campaign, Google Ads will save it so you can use it again in a future campaign.

Google Ads is renaming some key terms in your audience report and throughout Google Ads. You may have seen this already in some accounts. Google revealed this via this help documentation in September 2021.

RSAs and the end of ETAs

Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) became the default ad type in 2021. RSAs allow advertisers to input multiple headlines and ad copy variations, and Google Ads uses machine learning to determine which variations to use based on what queries people are searching for. 

An open beta allowed advertisers to see Display ads alongside search and YouTube for the first time in the Google Ads attribution report. Advertisers can see the ads in Top Paths, Model Comparison, Assisted Conversions and Path Metrics reports.

Automated vehicle ads were launched. The new format uses vehicle data feeds in Google Merchant Center to match users’ searches with ads.

Nine new policies were added to the three-strike system to target clickbait, misleading ad design, and more.

Automation

Bundled bid strategies have replaced standalone options. The Target CPA (tCPA) and Target ROAS (tROAS) Smart Bidding strategies will be bundled with the Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value bid strategies, respectively, Google announced Tuesday. Moving forward, Maximize Conversions will have an optional tCPA field, and Maximize Conversion Value will have an optional tROAS field.

Everyone’s favorite campaign type, Performance Max, became available to all advertisers. PMax includes Smart Shopping and Local campaigns, though Google eventually sunsetted Smart Shopping campaigns for good starting in January 2022.

Changes to automated extensions include extensions being shown together, an “Automatically Created Extensions” report, and the ability to add them at ad group, campaign, or account level.

Privacy Concerns Deepen

The depreciation of third-party cookies was supposed to happen in 2022 but was ultimately pushed to 2023. With that, an alternative targeting technology known as Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) was opened for advertiser testing in Q2 2021, with adoption slated for Q4 2022.

The FLEDGE sandbox has been unveiled along with plans to roll out several Privacy Sandbox initiatives on Android, including the Topics API, the FLEDGE API for custom audiences and remarketing, and the Attribution Reporting API. It began testing in March 2022.

Honorable mentions

• Ads Editor version 2.0 is released
• Placement reports for Performance Max campaigns
• Testing favicons in text ads
• Goodbye to Gmail campaigns
• A revamped Search360
• AdWords API sunsetted
• Three new travel products

2015-2020

Audiences

Google’s 20th gave rise to an era of predictive marketing, using AI and machine learning to identify intent and predict customer needs, behavior and marketing outcomes.

YouTube gains access to Google data for audience targeting, effectively improving ad targeting and measurement across search and YouTube. 

GA4 was also introduced, giving users expanded predictive insights, deeper integration with Google Ads, cross-device measurement capabilities and more granular data controls. 

Keyword match-type decline

The way we manage search terms has changed. Close variants are no longer what they used to be and marketers are being forced to adapt to machine learning. “Google says its machine learning is now good enough to determine when a query has the same intent as a keyword with a high enough rate of success that advertisers will see an overall performance lift.” Awkward.

Google has loosened the reigns on close variant keywords. Broad match is super broad, exact match is more like phrase match, and phrase match is, well, gone?

Privacy concerns have forced Google to limit Search terms reporting. In a statement from Google, a spokesperson said, “In order to maintain our standards of privacy and strengthen our protections around user data, we have made changes to our Search Terms Report to only include terms that a significant number of users searched for. We’re continuing to invest in new and efficient ways to share insights that enable advertisers to make critical business decisions.”

Automation ramps up

RSAs and the start of the end for Expanded Text Ads began in 2020. The option for text ads was no longer the default option in the Ads dropdown. Advertisers are seeing only Responsive Search Ad (RSA) and Call ad. 

Local Campaigns were introduced and aimed to drive in-store visits. Google automatically optimizes ad delivery across Search, YouTube, Maps and websites and apps in its ad networks.

Smart Campaigns debuted and were designed for small and local businesses that don’t have dedicated marketing staff and may not even have websites.

Smart Campaigns became the default campaign type for new advertisers in Google Ads. The campaigns are almost entirely automated and goals include phone calls, website visits and requests for directions.

Honorable mentions

Other new advancements in Search included:

• Hotel ads
• Cross-device reporting
• Surfaces across Google

2000 launch to 2015

While this is by no means a complete list, here are a few product development highlights from when Google launched the AdWords platform in 2000, all the way up to their 15th birthday.

2000

Google launched its new self-service advertising program called AdWords. The program enabled “any advertiser to purchase individualized and affordable keyword advertising that appears instantly on the google.com search results page.”

The AdWords program replaced Google’s first ad program called Premium Sponsorships.

Check out this article we found from The Search Engine Report in 2000.

2006

In 2006 Google decided to push forward with testing newspaper ads. If you’re curious, you can read the results here.

In the same year, they also began testing in-stream video ads with Beet.tv.

2007

Google started promoting audio ads. The landing page it takes you to tells you to call one of Google’s sales offices if you wanted to advertise on the radio.

Pay-per-action ads were launched this year, allowing advertisers to only pay when their preferred action was completed, such as a sale or click.  

Google also began testing its Keyword Tool, showing the number of the previous month’s searches. The tool shows actual numbers in search volume for the previous month for keywords. 

Also happening this year, Google acquired DoubleClick from The New York Times for $3.1 billion.

In July Google announced that those personalized ads you see are influenced by previous searches. In response, Google said “What you’re seeing is that we look at the user’s previous query and see how well it intersects with the current query. If it’s significant, we’ll use it to help targeting on the current query. We simply look at what’s in the referring URL (every time you load a web page, the HTTP header includes your previous URL as the “referrer”).”

Google reaches 1 million advertisers! “An analyst from UBS estimated Google has between 1.3 million and 1.5 million advertisers. According to the analyst, it shows there is still room for a lot more growth in terms of the advertiser base.” 

2008

Google pitched its media buying dashboard to very skeptical agencies.

Google also announced third-party tracking for the content network. Thanks, Google!

This same year, Google also began testing showing product ads in search results.

The Inside AdWords Google Blog announced that all US-based advertisers should now have the TV ads option in their account. In fact, you should see the option after logging in to your AdWords account at the bottom, where it says “Other Campaign Types.”

2009

Google’s newspaper ads initiative shuts down. Google said they are discontinuing this service because “the current Print Ads product is not the right solution.”

Google announced that they’re officially shutting down Google Audio Ads and Google Radio Automation.

The Google Base blog announced the launch of the new Google Merchant Center. The Merchant Center is replacing Google Base for those who submit products to Google. 

Google Blog announced you can now buy YouTube Promoted Video ads directly in the Google AdWords console. Previously, all YouTube Promoted Video ads were managed on YouTube at ads.youtube.com. 

Google has acquired AdMob (www.admob.com), a popular mobile display ad company, for $750 million. This acquisition gives Google access to AdMob’s more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications.

2010

Google has announced a new lab-type area called Google Ad Innovations, which is where it’ll “show you some of our latest ideas around advertising technologies and get your feedback.” Think of it as Google Labs for Ads.

Google has enabled access to the AdWords dashboard and other features for smartphone users. It’s configurable and provides on-the-go access to account data and stats. The new mobile interface is currently available for iPhone, Android and Palm/WebOS users. 

Google starts testing a feature with a small number of advertisers in which a phone number can be included within the ad to help them more effectively engage with customers who prefer to connect over the phone.

A new keyword type, broad match modifier, begins testing.

Google Product Listing Ads are offered to all advertisers

2011

Google is now letting AdWords advertisers automatically optimize what ads display most based on conversion rates.

Google will begin charging $1.00 for calls completed using the unique number it provisions, but solely when the call originates from someone using a computer who dials the number themselves from a phone. When the call is from a mobile device, or someone on a PC calls from the computer itself by clicking, the standard click charges apply. Previously, the calls dialed on a phone were free, as they didn’t involve a click, per se.

Google rolls out the ability to target ads to users by interest based on their previous browsing activity, or behavior, to all of its advertisers. 

Cost per lead tests start. Google is testing search and display versions of a cost-per-lead ad format that would allow users to request an advertiser contact them. 

Google is opening wider a beta test of Dynamic Search Ads. This ad type is designed for retailers or other advertisers with a large, often-changing inventory. Google automatically generates ad copy, based on the advertiser’s template. 

Google officially announced it would begin serving AdWords at the bottom of search engine results pages on Google.com. 

2012

Google Product Search is renamed to Google Shopping and only merchants that paid will be listed. 

Google is testing the effect of adding “Trusted Stores” badges to qualifying advertisers’ search ads, as it considers deploying the badges more widely.

Google introduced the ability to target more than 30,000 ZIP codes in AdWords, giving advertisers the ability to find potential customers in a familiar, granular way. Another new feature, Location Insertion, is aimed at letting advertisers with multiple locations create one ad, and have information dynamically inserted depending on the user’s query or location.

Google released a new report — Auction Insights — that helps marketers understand how their ads stand, compared to others in the same auctions.

Testing begins for a new ad format on its Hotel Finder product that lets marketers bid to appear at the top of search results. Promoted Hotels ads are ranked based on a combination of bid and quality score, and are sold on a CPC basis. 

The remarketing tag gets a makeover.

Google has begun notifying merchants that it won’t allow them to continue listing weapons-related items for sale in Google Shopping. 

2013

Google announced plans to add enhanced campaigns for AdWords to aid with campaign management catered to multiple-device users. The enhanced campaigns aimed to include advanced reports about users. This move was controversial among advertisers.

Ad group-level mobile bid adjustments started to roll out.

The AdWords Keyword Planner finally launches.

Google has announced the official beta for Image Extensions in AdWords. 

Google announced the beta release of Review Extensions which allows advertisers to append a quote of endorsement from a reputable publication in their AdWords ads. 

2014

CNBC reports that Google is now banning porn businesses from utilizing their ad network.

To help retailers maintain consistent visibility in PLAs, Google has launched “automatic item updates” in AdWords.

Google announced it is extending its popular product listing ads (PLAs) to retail and e-commerce sites across the Google Search Network. The ads are served via a new Google product called AdSense for Shopping.

Automated Extensions report starts rolling out.

AdWords 11 is launched. Google released a fully-redesigned version of AdWords Editor that supports several of the bulk editing features that have recently been added to the web interface and introduces new functionality to the desktop tool.

2015

By 2015 Google maintained nearly 64 percent of search share on desktop and almost 90 percent of mobile in the US.

The Google shared library is sunsetted.

Google launches dynamic structured snippets for AdWords. The automated extensions display industry-specific, structured information about products and services on advertisers’ sites.

Google has opened up access to its home services ad program in AdWords Express. The home services ad program launched in beta in the San Francisco area to connect service providers with local residents searching for help. 

Starting in October, Google changed the conversions columns to include only those conversions that are set for optimization: i.e., optimized conversion actions.

Google launched Smart Goals in early December. Smart Goals are designed for advertisers that don’t or can’t have conversion tracking on their sites. It aggregates conversion data from the thousands of sites that opt to share data with Google Analytics and, with machine learning, identifies visits deemed most likely to convert on the advertiser’s site.

The post Google Ads turns 22: A look back at the biggest changes and advances in search appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Psychological profiling for content creation: A deep dive

Monday, October 24th, 2022

Understanding your target audience is essential to creating effective content. And one key way to do this is to use psychological classifications. 

In Content creation: A psychological approach, I provided a sample of the psychological classifications that we have used, experimented with and tested. 

In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into psychological profiling for better content creation, including:

• Classifications of personas.
• Culture/country differentiators.
• And some tools on how to develop your own customer personality profiling.

Why a psychological approach matters to content creation 

By understanding the different psychological types of people, you can craft more effective messages to the right audience that either converts upper funnel or lower funnel.

Each type of person has different needs and desires, so digital content development that resonates with one type of person may not work for another. 

For example, someone who is simply classified as a “Type A” personality is likely to respond well to content that is highly competitive and results-oriented. 

On the other hand, a “Type B” personality is likely to be more responsive to content that is more relaxed and leisurely in tone. Your content can change vastly between groups.

Segmenting your personas

Segmenting your audience into different categories helps you craft messages that effectively resonate with each group.

To do this grouping, my preference is to either create or expand on your existing “personas.” When you understand the needs and wants of each persona, you can create ad campaigns that are more likely to result in vastly improved conversions. 

Using the classifications that I used in my prior article Red, Blue, Yellow and Green, these personas all want the same thing, but you would need to communicate with each of them differently. For example, this is Dominant Red Fred.

Fred, who is a facility operations manager and a target customer of client X, provides us with some interesting insight into his personality under “Goals and Challenges.” (This “insight” was researched using a series of surveys and behavior analysis of existing clients.) 

If we craft our content carefully based on Fred’s persona, it will result in more like-minded Freds coming through as new customers. This “psychographic” persona profile approach, which looks at people’s values, lifestyles, and personality traits, allows us to create ads or write content that appeals to people’s sense of self or their value system. 

Other classification systems

Outside of the system, I’ve been using, one of the most popular psychological classification systems is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI classifies people into 16 different personality types, based on four different dichotomies. These are:

•  Extroversion vs. Introversion
•  Sensing vs. Intuition
•  Thinking vs. Feeling
•  Judging vs. Perceiving

By understanding which of these dichotomies a person falls into, you can begin to understand their needs and desires. 

For example, someone who is classified as an “Extroverted Sensing” type is likely to be very active and outgoing, and they may enjoy being in the moment and experiencing life to the fullest. 

On the other hand, someone who is classified as an “Introverted Intuitive” type may be more introspective and focused on their own inner thoughts and feelings. 

Each personality type has different needs, so content that resonates with one type of person may not work for another.

Just for fun, watch the video, The Different Types of Moms You Meet, and think about the personality classification of each person.

Psychographic behaviors of countries and cultures

As you dig into all of this and start creating micro-characters of your personas, remember that if you do broader, multi-lingual or multi-cultural marketing, you can actually create assumptive characteristics of entire cultures.

Similar to how we ourselves are classified, our country-related behavior or personas can fall nicely into these buckets, too. 

In the following color chart presented in my last article, you can see countries falling into each characteristic.

Finding and extrapolating behavioral data

We map our clients’ own customers in two ways. First is by utilizing SurveyMonkey to survey all of our clients with a multitude of personality assessment questions. 

In exchange for filling out the survey, we may provide the respondents with a huge one-time discount code, a gift card or an upgrade to a more premium version of our client’s site. We also use questions as part of a more advanced loyalty program.

For example, if you would like to join the VIP section of our website, please fill in this form (which includes personality assessment questions).

Another fantastic resource, and one of my favorites, is using Crystal, a Chrome extension for LinkedIn. Here is an example of just a random (myself) person’s assessment from the plugin.

Analyzing your customers and opportunities for success

Once we have developed personas and a system of targeting your audiences through their personalities, the next step is to analyze the makeup of your existing database. 

This is important so that you can see behavior areas where we are weak in promoting.

For example, from this sample, you could see that we are driving a good set of Influential and Compliant personality types. But the Dominant and Steady traits are falling out.

 After some deep research, we found something completely unexpected.

The client has appealed to a large audience that ironically has the same psychological profile classifications as the digital marketing team. Here is the content writing team.

This is further proof that what one group finds as engaging content, the other group may not. We have to be careful that our marketing department speaks to all categories of personality types, not just the ones that they are in.

So we asked our client’s content team to rewrite content based on each classification and test that content.

Surprisingly, with a focus on content campaigns targeted to each personality type, our new client development went through the roof.

Create marketing content that resonates

Using psychographic profiling may sound creepy. But in the end, humans are tribal by nature.

We communicate often to be liked and understood. Most of the time, we end up in our own pool or tribe of like-minded individuals. 

Understanding your existing clients and where they fall within the classification spectrum will help you:

• Write content for your customers.
• Understand whether your marketing content is only attracting a certain behavior group. 

That means by writing for all types of classifications, rather than a single type classification, you may find hidden gold in improved conversions, increased audiences, and more fans of your brand. 

I would encourage everyone to experiment, much as I have, to find what works and what doesn’t.

Begin to develop a relationship with your customers rather than leaving them out to feel like just another number in a database.

The post Psychological profiling for content creation: A deep dive appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

How to do a content audit as painlessly as possible

Monday, October 24th, 2022

A content audit is the act of taking inventory of your content to understand it on two levels: 

• How it’s working together as a whole (the bird’s eye view).
• How each piece is working individually (the view from the weeds).

It’s a task many dread, but one you shouldn’t sweat.

Content audits aren’t a necessary evil, but rather a smart and strategic way to review your past content efforts and get a clear view of how they help (or hinder) your goals.

In short, it’s a much-needed cog in the machinery of a working content strategy – and not difficult to do, once you know how.

There are seven basic steps to do a content audit:

• Set clear goals.
• Narrow your focus: choose a type of content to audit.
• Play content librarian (gather, organize, and categorize).
• Play content detective (audit and analyze).
• Assess your findings and make a plan.
• Take action.
• Tweak your content strategy based on your findings.

Let’s talk through each one.

How to do a content audit in seven steps

Consider this your content audit checklist.

The first thing you need to do before diving into your own content audit?

Figure out your goals – what are you hoping to get out of this whole thing?

1. Set clear goals

Ultimately, a content audit helps you understand how your content is performing and how you can improve it to meet your specific goals. Setting those goals before you get started is therefore very important.

Consider: What do you hope to accomplish with your content audit? Here are some common aims:

Goal 1: Improve your SEO to bring in more traffic and leads

Properly optimized content will rank better in Google, which will bring in more traffic and leads to your site.

That means, to hit this goal, you need to analyze your content to ensure certain benchmark optimization standards are in place for each piece, like:

• Meta title and description.
• Keyword placement.
• Structured content with keyword-optimized headers.
• Images with alt tags.
• Internal and external links.
• Whether your focus keywords are still winnable (keyword difficulty, search volume, competition).

You’ll also need to evaluate each piece, where it ranks in Google (if at all), and make a plan to update, rewrite, keep, or delete it based on its performance and how that fits into your strategy.

Goal 2: Improve engagement to ensure your content gets read

Engaging content is better at building trust and loyalty and converts better. With the goal of improving engagement across your content, your audit should focus on how readers interact with your pages and how you can improve their usability.

Look at metrics like:

• Traffic
• Social shares
• Comments
• Page speed
• Bounce rate (keeping in mind a high bounce rate can be misleading – to get a truer picture of what visitors are doing, compare this metric in context with related metrics, like time on page)
• Link health (are any links broken? Incorrect? Do you have enough internal links?)
• Conversions (are people taking action after engaging?)

Goal 3: Improve your conversion rates to bring in more sign-ups, opt-ins, and sales

Improving conversion rates from your content is a matter of figuring out which pieces are converting well and which are not, as well as looking at the function and usability of your content.

On top of that, you’ll need to make sure you have content for every stage of the buyer’s journey. A content audit will help you identify any gaps you need to fill.

Some of the data you might look at with this goal include:

• Pageviews.
• Average time on page.
• Bounce rate.
• Conversion rate.
• Calls to action (quality, relevance, and quantity).
• Whether forms and other interactive elements work correctly.

2. Narrow your focus: choose a type of content to audit

Next, think about narrowing down your audit to a specific type of site content. This will make the task more manageable. For example, focus only on blog content, just on core website content, or solely on product or service pages.

The type of content you audit (or whether you choose to do a full audit of every single type) depends on the size of your website, your individual needs as a business/organization, and if one person is doing the auditing versus a team of people.

If you choose to do it by type, once you complete an audit, you can audit the other types with the same steps down the road.

3. Play content librarian (gather, organize, and categorize)

It’s time to nudge your inner librarian into being. You’ll need her attention to detail and organizational prowess for this next part.

With goals and content type nailed down, it’s time to gather the URLs of the content you’ll audit and organize/categorize them so you can analyze how well they’re working.

While you can definitely gather and organize URLs manually in a spreadsheet (Google Sheets, Airtable and Excel are all good options), a content audit tool will come in handy at this point. A good one will gather the URLs for you along with associated data like backlinks, social shares, word count, and more. If you have a large site, this will save you a ton of time and headaches.

A few worthy content audit tools that do all this include Semrush’s Content Audit Tool and Screaming Frog SEO Spider. (Keep in mind: These tools rely heavily on your sitemap to do their job. If you don’t have one, you can generate one with a different free tool like XML-Sitemaps.)

Semrush Content Audit Tool example

If, however, you’re doing your audit manually, you’ll need to look in multiple places to find the data associated with each piece (for example, Google Analytics and PageSpeed Insights for metrics, WordPress or your content calendar for keywords, word count, and meta information, etc.). 

Finally, don’t forget to categorize your content to make it easier to analyze. Here’s some information you might include in your spreadsheet, based on your goals:

Basic info:

• URL
• Last updated
• Author
• Word count
• Content type

Metadata and keyword information:

• Focus keyword
• Keyword difficulty
• Search volume
• Meta description
• Meta title/H1

Metrics:

• Pageviews
• Social shares
• Backlinks
• Average Google position
• Time on page
• Bounce rate
• Page speed

Example spreadsheet set-up for a content audit

4. Play content detective (audit and analyze)

Here comes the fun part of this whole endeavor (yes, it exists!). 

Put on your detective hat à la Sherlock Holmes and whip out your magnifying glass.

Once you’ve gathered the data, it’s time to analyze what’s in front of you and piece together insights and opportunities for action and improvement. 

At this stage, it’s helpful to further categorize your content based on your goals. (If you’re working in a spreadsheet, color-coding is a great way to visualize each category, by the way.)

• Content underperformers – Which pieces aren’t performing as well as you’d like?
• Content winners – Which pieces are hitting it out of the park?
• Thin content – Which pieces are too short and unsatisfying for the topic they address?
• Outdated content – Which pieces are old or irrelevant? 
• Missing information – Which pieces are missing key information, like a meta description, keyword-optimized headers, CTAs, or correct links? 

5. Assess your findings and make a plan

After you’ve sifted through your content and further categorized it based on its performance, composition, or optimization, it’s time to decide what to do with each one and record that planned action in your audit. 

You have four options: update, rewrite, keep, or remove. 

Here are some examples of how to further categorize your content for future action:

Update/tweak if:

• The piece is getting recent traffic but has some outdated aspects or areas you could rewrite/improve.
• The piece is mostly relevant but has a few outdated statistics.
• The piece is good content but is missing some metas or SEO opportunities that could help it rank better.

Rewrite if:

• The piece is thin and poor quality but targets a great keyword opportunity for your business.
• The topic is evergreen but the piece isn’t climbing in performance after at least 6-8 months. (Most experts recommend waiting at least 3-6 months to see results from content, but that depends on what results you’re looking for. It may take up to a year depending on your goals!)

Keep if:

• The content piece performs well (it pulls in decent or steady traffic, it converts well, or if people stay to read it and engage with your site).
• The piece is relevant, high-quality, and correctly optimized, but underperforming – it might just need more time to climb the rankings in Google.

Remove if:

• The content is 2-3 years old, irrelevant, thin, gets no traffic, and is poorly written or poorly optimized.
• The content is all of the above and targets a keyword that’s out of your scope (e.g., the keyword difficulty score is too hard, the competition includes major brands with much more authority, etc.).

6. Take action

By now, you have a content audit completed that includes a wealth of information. It’s time to act on it.

Start by assigning a priority to each content piece. For example, perhaps one piece that’s earmarked for an update is earning a ton of traffic right now. That would be a good reason to place it higher on your priority list, so you can take advantage of the extra traffic coming in.

Or, perhaps you want to start with the easiest, quickest action items (like fixing a few broken links or adding meta titles to pieces without them) and build up to the bigger tasks (like the pieces that need a wholesale rewrite). Learn more about upgrading your content. 

7. Tweak your content strategy based on your findings

Doing a content audit is a learning experience, to say the least. To that end, don’t forget to analyze and reflect on it once you’re done. You can come up with some major takeaways you can use in your content strategy moving forward.

Ask yourself:

• How hard was it to gather your content assets and the related data? Would it be worthwhile to invest in tools to make it easier next time? 
• Could you be documenting your content creation process better, such as in your content calendar?
• Are you keeping up with tracking and measuring your content performance pretty well, or did you come across some major surprises during your audit? 
• How could you track and measure better in the future?
• Were there any gaping holes in your content? Could you tweak your strategy to fill these holes?
• Do you currently have a strategy and process for updating old content, or can you create one?

Note how deeply intertwined a content audit is with a content strategy. Don’t have a content strategy? You need one to ensure consistency in your content, meet your goals, track your performance, and stay organized. 

Strategy is often what determines the difference between winning and losing content endeavors. 62% of the most successful content marketers have one, and it helps them reach major brand goals that lead to success.

Bottom line: Don’t put the horse before the cart if you don’t have a content strategy (or don’t have one documented) yet. Only do a content audit if you have plans to build one, or you have one in place.

Repeat your content audits regularly for the best results

Once you do a content audit, you never have to do one again. Right?

…Right?

Wrong. Content audits should be repeated at least yearly, if not more often (quarterly is common).

Why? If you’re doing it right, your content ecosystem should be constantly expanding, much like the universe. 

Additionally, basic content standards – like the ones Google sets for ranking – are always changing, too. If you aren’t on top of auditing your content and consistently making changes, updates, and tweaks where needed, it will become irrelevant and useless to both consumers and your bottom line.

Best advice?

Create and implement a content strategy. Do regular content audits to ensure all of your pages are consistently working to help you meet your goals. Watch greater success come rolling in.

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Why you should fire clients more often (and how to do it the right way)

Saturday, October 22nd, 2022

All clients review agencies for “fit.”

They line up the RFP cattle call, or back-to-back meetings between a handful of agencies to contrast and compare.

However, almost zero agencies review clients in return.

Instead, they’re too eager, living hand to mouth, to take on all clients at all times as long as they have a pulse and a checkbook. 

It makes sense. You need to keep the lights on and employees fed. But it almost always backfires at least a few times each year.

Client A is actually costing you money in the long run. Client B keeps asking for caviar on a sardines budget. And Client C is simply just an a-hole.

Counterintuitively, that’s why the best thing an agency can do is to routinely fire clients on a regular basis. Not once a year, but once a month or quarter.

Here’s why.

When to fire a client: Recognize you have a problem (profitability, notoriety and fit)

Just like any good 12-step program, start by recognizing you have a problem.

You should have never touched that one client with a 10-foot pole. You were a terrible fit for that other client last summer.

Thankfully, you can relax. This is totally normal.

Profitability

The first issue that sabotages client engagement is usually profitability (not contract value). 

Either you:

• Undercharged from the get-go, too eager to land the client that you failed to properly scope or understand the full specifications. 
• Or the project costs that worked when you started a ~year ago don’t line up with your agency’s current headcount, overhead, and profitability targets.

Fortunately, this issue is also pretty easy to fix. You can (and should) regularly:

Simply raise rates at regular intervals for each client. Not every month or quarter necessarily, but definitely every year. 

Continue on a “discounted rate” only if they meet your payment terms, like paying for the quarter or annual contract upfront to help your cash flow. This is especially key on larger accounts with enterprise companies that seem to think you’re a bank that extends credit to fund their project resources for… infinity? While they pay slooooooooooowwwllyyy.

Institute a new “change order” policy to avoid scope creep. My dad always used to say “what you permit, you promote.” Drove me nuts at the time and still rings in my ears.

But 100% true when it comes to managing client relationships and expectations.

Next time a client requests something out of scope (and every time hereafter), you can accommodate it only for an extra fee. 

Move your higher-cost and better resources (read: people) off their account to newer, higher-paying clients (and substitute them with cheaper ones).

This sleight-of-hand trick instantly improves margins without the client being the wiser. (Obviously, don’t let quality drop during this transition!)

Routinely sticking to these four principles should clean up ~80% of your agency’s profitability issues.

Unfortunately, though, profitability isn’t the only reason a client engagement goes sour.

Mismatch with client expectations

The second most common, and harder to fix, is a mismatch with client expectations. 

They expect business class on an economy budget. 

They’re a tiny, no-name, commoditized brand that thinks it should be on the cover of TechCrunch or The New York Times. 

Or they expect results yesterday, despite not having the internal resources to support any of the initiatives you’re trying to get off the ground.

In these cases, education early and often is key. 

Also, be direct and transparent. Be nice and polite, but firm.

The minute you get backed into the “vendor” corner, simply fulfilling orders and being a pushover, you’re screwed. 

This mismatch issue also brings to light a tertiary issue: “fit.”

Fit

Maybe you sold a service or project you’re actually unequipped to deliver.

Or maybe there’s just a personality difference between your firm’s people and the client’s point of contact. 

Either way, healthy agency engagements are more marriage, less Tinder. “Fit” is as important as budget. 

There’s usually a variety of reasons why “fit” gets distorted and the relationship blows up in your face. And depressingly, there’s almost nothing you can do to improve fit.

Leaving you with only one obvious option.

5 simple steps to firing clients once and for all

Subscription businesses like SaaS measure things like “churn” to assess how well they’re doing in satisfying customers.

From a 30,000-foot level, it’s a measure of how many people sign up and then bounce (seemingly to find some other alternative).

Generally speaking, a SaaS business then wants its churn rate to be as low as humanly possible because that means its product is “stickier” and therefore its business is way more profitable.

Service businesses often try to measure similar “churn” metrics. However, they’re missing the obvious point. 

As a completely different business model, there is such a thing as churn being “too low” when it comes to clients.

In other words, you actually want clients to regularly churn out, assuming:

• They’re still happy with the service you delivered so they’ll provide a testimonial and referrals.
• That you have a steady stream of eager prospects willing to engage you at a higher rate (which is a topic for another day).

You obviously don’t want large, well-paying, nice clients to churn that often. 

But you absolutely want less profitable, obscure, mismatched, unfriendly clients to see the door on a regular basis.

Replacing one for the other almost instantly:

• Frees up your biggest bottleneck – people! – to take on new accounts without constantly needing to hire and fire under-performers as your deal flow ebbs and well, flows.
• Improves your profitability because it’s often easier to start new clients at a significantly higher rate than ask (read: force) old clients to pony up more dough for seemingly the same exact level of service.
• Both of those two moves, together, actually result in giving you less work to do while making the same (or more) – ‘cause you and your team deserve vacations sometimes, too.
• Last but not least, it allows you to ideally work with bigger brand names which provide an almost instant lift to the credibility of your agency and helps “pre-sell” other prospects who’ve been sitting on the fence for months (or years).

So it’s best to be blunt and polite. But also rip the bandaid off ASAP.

Here’s how to fire clients nicely.

1. Time client firings with natural project conclusions or times of year

For instance, if a major milestone is going to be complete by the end of this quarter, that would be a perfect target date to… 

2. Give plenty of notice

Tell them at least a month in advance (maybe more) that it’s coming to help set expectations. This also gives you some time to…

3. Plan ahead

You can:

• Provide them with some alternatives for you.
• Be able to forecast new work you have coming through the door so you can easily transition your team from one account to the next. 

If they want to try to continue working together, you can…

4. Significantly raise rates for future work

This kinda gives them a hint. Every client gets put out when you try to ask for more money. Especially a lot more money.

Now imagine you 2X or 5X or even 10X their next project cost if they want to continue working together. They’ll almost always get the hint and go seek out cheaper alternatives. This also assumes the split will be amicable. 

Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. So here’s how to fire a client with a not-so-nice script… 

5. Some client firings aren’t always that nice

Look: life ain’t a fairy tale. Sorry to be a spoiler. 

As a service professional, you need to be kinda like a mercenary. You parachute in to get s#*t done. Then, you move on to wherever the next project takes you. 

Some clients routinely “take the piss” by:

• Paying you well after previously agreed upon dates.
• Demanding things that were never in scope.
• Blaming you for their own internal issues.
• Talking down to your staff.
• Just simply being a pain in the @$$ to deal with. 

So with these people, you can be blunter and skip the foreplay of the last four points:

• “Effective immediately, we’re canceling our agreement with you due to… (list the points in the preceding sentence). After [XYY] date you will no longer have access to [ABC] resources.” 

And… that’s it. 

No elaborate script or heartfelt breakup needed. Remember that you’re a Navy Seal, not an untrained boot who’s never seen combat.

You can and should explain your reasoning and thought process to nice clients that are sadly no longer a good fit for where your agency is trying to go. Help them find another good shepherd to lead their flock.

But…

You absolutely don’t need to apologize or explain anything to jerks. They’re on their own. Because they all most likely think you’re an idiot already, unable to possibly live and breathe the same airspace as their genius.

So stop putting up with their crap, sapping your team’s morale, and damaging your longer-term reputation.

Let them go hire and fire 10 other agencies before they realize that they, not you, were the problem all along. 

Firing a client is inevitable

You aren’t a therapist or a shrink. 

The best agencies are battle-hardened teams of trained, skilled specialists. You get hired to create deliverables, design websites, problem-solve, rank stuff, increase ROAS, and more.

But nowhere in your MSAs or SOWs does it say: fix every client’s problem, no matter what.

Because there are tons of client problems that you literally can’t do anything about, like:

• Bad internal support or champions.
• An undifferentiated service or product in a crowded space.
• Having the wrong people leading the wrong projects.
• Under-qualified employees or HIPPOS (highest paid person’s opinion) calling the shots.
• Poor/nonexistent processes and workflows to coordinate complex projects and scale results. 
• Under-resourced teams with inappropriately-aggressive timelines.
• And lots, lots more.

You can’t save everyone. 

Help the good, but no-longer-a-good-fit clients land on their feet when transitioning them out of your agency.

But don’t be afraid to cut the jerks loose today and let them be someone else’s problem to deal with tomorrow.

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Increase your page rankings and organic traffic with user-generated content (UGC) by Digital Marketing Depot

Saturday, October 22nd, 2022

In this in-depth report, Shopper Approved covers the many forms of USC and its benefits, the various tools to generate and distribute UGC, and how it works to improve online visibility in search results.

See why Google and shoppers prefer the authenticity and trustworthiness of UGC. And why it improves SEO and conversions rates, including:

1. How to increase your page rankings
2. How to increase your organic traffic up to 400%
3. How to convert up to 75% of your product page traffic 
4. How to increase your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) up to 200%
5. How to reduce return rates up to 20%
6. How to increase Average Order Value (AOV) up to 18%

Learn more. Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download “How to Increase Your eCommerce Revenue” from Shopper Approved.

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Google October 2022 spam update done rolling out in less than 48 hours

Saturday, October 22nd, 2022

The Google October 2022 spam update that started to roll out on October 19, 2022, at around 11 am ET, is now complete less than 48 hours after it began. The update finished rolling out on October 21, 2022, at around 5 am ET.

The announcement. Google quietly updated the search updates page adding “Released the October 2022 spam update. This update is global and affects all languages. The rollout was complete as of October 21, 2022.“

The part added was bolded above and reads “The rollout was complete as of October 21, 2022.”

What are spam updates. Google wrote:

“While Google’s automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, we occasionally make notable improvements to how they work. When we do, we refer to this as a spam update and share when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates. For example, SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. From time-to-time, we improve that system to make it better at spotting spam and to help ensure it catches new types of spam. Sites that see a change after a spam update should review our spam policies to ensure they are complying with those. Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Making changes may help a site improve if our automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with our spam policies.”

Previous updates. Before this, the most recent confirmed Google spam update was the November 2021 spam update. Google also released a two-part Spam Update – on June 23 and June 28 in 2021, as well as the July 2021 link spam update.

Note, the November 2021 spam update took 8 days to fully roll out.

Why we care. If you notice large ranking or traffic changes from your organic Google search results, you may have been hit by this spam update. Spam updates target specific guideline violations. This update may have been more focused on content spam efforts. Check your rankings and Google organic traffic over the past week to see if you noticed any big changes to your positions.

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Uber ads are coming, and they’re already raising privacy concerns

Friday, October 21st, 2022

Ubers’ new journey ads will be shown in the Uber app at least three times during the riders’ journey. The new feature will let brands place ads using data drawn from riders’ travel history and their precise geographic destinations, according to Uber. In an example from The Wall Street Journal, if a user books an Uber to a specific retailer, cinema or airport, for example, a company could buy ads centered on that location.

How the new ads will work. Though not available globally yet, Uber is testing the ads with a few brands at launch. The new product will also let brands sponsor an entire trip, starting with when a rider first calls a car. The ad spots will be sold on a per-trip basis instead of digital advertising’s common pricing by consumer impression, let brands show a user different ads at three points in the user’s trip: while waiting for a car, while riding in the car and upon reaching the destination.

The rider can also conduct transactions, such as clicking the ad to buy a product without leaving the Uber app, said Mark Grether, general manager of Uber Advertising. Separate pilot programs in the U.S. and India will also include ads on in-car tablets, he said.

Privacy concerns. It’s not news to anyone that the US has been facing abortion rights issues. With Uber’s new ad targeting products based on riders’ trip history, we have to wonder what this means for sensitive situations such as a rider who has taken a trip to an abortion provider.

Although this does raise concerns, platforms such as Google, Meta, and Simpli.fi have been tracking users’ locations for many years. The FTC even sued data broker Kachava Inc. this past August claiming that the broker was selling data that tracks people at sensitive locations such as reproductive clinics and places of worship.

According to The Wall Street Journal article, Uber’s advertising policy forbids targeting users by factors such as race, religion or sexual orientation, and it also prohibits basing ad targeting on certain types of destinations, including government buildings, hospitals and reproductive-health centers.

What Uber says. An Uber spokeswoman said the company doesn’t share individual users’ data with advertisers. The data it does share is aggregated information or data related to ad-campaign performance, she said. Users can opt-out of targeted ads on the Uber app at any time, said Grether.

Why we care. Additional ad platforms and placements are usually good news for advertisers and brands. Ad space is expensive and competitive, so when a new player enters the chat, brands typically win, at least for a little while.

If your brand or client can benefit from Uber ads, keep an eye out for announcements on when they’ll be rolled out globally. As always, act ethically, keep the rider in mind, and don’t promote anything insensitive or controversial.

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Webinar: 5 ways to improve content strategy in 2023 by Cynthia Ramsaran

Friday, October 21st, 2022

Digital content creation and management have never been more complicated. These workflows now need to accommodate remote workers and resources, worldwide offices, and security and privacy concerns, not to mention the growing need for content and creative teams to produce more content in less time.

So how are the most successful content and creative teams currently executing production and managing workflows? To answer these questions and more, Canto surveyed over 600 professionals involved in their organization’s production, management and/or strategy for content and creative assets.

Register today for “5 Ways to Improve your Content Workflows and Strategy in 2023,” presented by Canto, and get the survey results to learn content strategies, workflows and technology that have made these organizations successful. 

Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.

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Google penalties, manual actions and notifications: A complete guide

Friday, October 21st, 2022

Google reserves the right to apply manual actions, which are more often called penalties within SEO, to websites it finds in violation of its Search Essentials (previously known as Google’s Webmaster Guidelines).

The specific reasons and scope of manual actions can be manifold, and the actual impact may range from barely noticeable to utterly disastrous for a website’s presence in organic Google Search results.

This guide describes what types of penalties exist, demystifies Google’s messaging, and explains how to go about successfully getting a Google manual action removed.

We’ll cover the following violations and notifications:

• On-page guideline violations and related notifications
  • Major and pure spam problems
  • Spam problems
  • Thin content
  • News and Discover
  • AMP content mismatch
  • Cloaking and redirects
  • User-generated spam
  • Hacked content spam
  • Incorrect structured data
  • Unnatural outbound links
  • Spammy free host
• Off-page guideline violations and related notifications
  • Unnatural inbound links
• Reconsideration requests and related notifications
  • Disavow file updated notification
  • Reconsideration request (submission confirmed)
  • Reconsideration request rejected
  • Reconsideration request processed
  • Reconsideration request approved

About manual penalties and this guide

Since 2012, Google has scaled up its communication efforts via Google Search Console (previously known as Google Webmaster Tools) about website issues that are likely to negatively impact how visible a site ends up being in organic Google search for relevant user queries.

This guide focuses on how you should interpret and respond to these notifications, which Google euphemistically calls “warnings,” many of which are related to Google Search Essentials violations – spammy techniques spotted by the Google Search Quality team deemed egregious enough to trigger sanctions.

But notifications aren’t solely about using techniques that are in opposition to Google’s guidelines.

We’ll also explore some warnings about issues that could be considered sins of omission, in that the site owner has failed to secure the site – allowed it to host spam or be hacked – or has failed to implement structured data markup correctly.

Google also brings attention to technical issues it identifies. While these may equally impact a site’s visibility in organic Google search, they are not related to any Google guideline violations and will be omitted here.

That said, any piece of information highlighted in Google Search Console should be considered important and be taken seriously.

All sample messages discussed in this guide have been spotted “in the wild” within the last 24 months as of this writing. Older messages, not issued in years, such as the warning highlighting hidden content are not included in the manual action overview.

All sample screenshots have been adapted to highlight the most relevant pieces of information that provide guidance on how to resolve the existing issue.

On-page guideline violations and related notifications

This set of violations and notifications apply to problems that have been identified on a site.

Major and pure spam problems

When site owners receive the manual action notification highlighting major spam problems, Google has identified the page content as entirely spammy, with no value to users.

This message tends to indicate that, at the time the recipient reads it, the most severe consequence has already come into effect and, in the majority of cases, the website is completely gone from organic Google Search. In some instances, however, the removal may affect only a subset of site pages.

Major spam problems Google notification, with its most crucial point highlighted.

A rare variation of the major spam problems action highlights the gravity of the violation in more stark wording, referring to the website as pure spam. That message seems to be on the verge of being deprecated as in recent months it has been sporadically registered (in comparison to the major spam penalty, which is very common).

When issued, the pure spam problems penalty seems to be most frequently related to user-agent (or similar) cloaking. Displaying vastly different content to search engine bots and users based on the user-agent has become rare. At the same time, Google has stepped up their detection methods. This is a likely explanation for why this specific penalty has become less frequent.

Pure spam problems Google notification, with its most crucial points highlighted.

Both major spam and pure spam problem notifications indicate that the site affected has, at a fundamental level, failed to live up to Google users’ expectations. The major spam penalty is most frequently applied to scraped content and/or gibberish sites.

Spam problems

The message highlighting just spam problems is a toned-down version of the major spam problems notification. The wording is similar, albeit less bleak.

While past variations of this message occasionally mentioned specifically “thin content” and/or “internal doorway pages,” recently a single message applied more generally to “spam problems” has become the standard.

This manual action suggests that, while the website isn’t entirely bad, bits and pieces are not good enough. That could refer to thin content (generally considered spammy), and it may very well refer to doorway pages – which, by definition, must be of low quality, as their primary purpose is to redirect users to another location rather than immediately providing an answer.

Typically, a penalty associated with the spam problems message does not result in complete removal from Google Search. Querying the site: search operator will often confirm that the site is still indexed, though it will likely be much less visible in organic Google Search results.

Google may try to go about the penalty surgically, penalizing only the offending pages and folders, but leaving the rest of the site intact. That tends to be the case if the violation is clearly isolatable, e.g., doorway pages are located exclusively within a directory like example.com/doorways/.

The exact scope of the penalty is usually not revealed to the site owner, and it can, therefore, be difficult to determine the impact the penalty has on site visibility.

How to go about removing the penalty

Removing this penalty will require a thorough site review, especially with regard to content quality. Large sites are better off conducting an all-out audit in order to identify which content is being indexed and which is not.

For the thin content, you will need to decide if (and how) it can be improved to meet standards, or if it is best to utilize noindex to avoid indexing low-quality content (which could possibly improve crawl budget distribution in the long run as well).

The evaluation process must include a landing page engagement assessment. It must not be driven by looking at word counts. It is not the length of content that may be an important factor, but rather how useful and engaging the content is to users.

Before a reconsideration request can be submitted to Google, doorway pages will need to be removed, and the content strategy will require revamping (often shifting toward less content that is more useful and robust).

All these steps are to be properly documented for the reconsideration request in order to put the best foot forward.

Spam problems Google notification, indicating thin content and/or possibly doorway pages.

Regardless of the penalty applied, under no circumstances should an empty or placeholder page with a bare “Hello world!” message be submitted for reconsideration.

Google clearly states in their notifications that such sites/pages do not qualify for reconsideration and will be rejected due to insufficient efforts made.

A blank or placeholder page instead of a thin content site is no substitute and will be deemed an insufficient effort for a reconsideration request to be successful.

Manual penalties in regard to thin content tend to affect large websites with tens of thousands or more crawlable and indexable pages.

A successful reconsideration with the very first attempt is an achievable goal, and a speedy recovery is possible.

Cases of sites actually doing better in organic Google Search after dropping their thin content and focusing on quality landing pages are not uncommon.

Unlike sites hit with major spam or pure spam penalties, sites affected by this manual action are not fundamentally on a collision course with Google Search Essentials. In most cases, improvements are needed and a fresh start from square one is required.

Thin content

The Google thin content warning is triggered in Google Search Console when a website is found to lack substantially in added value.

That is not to say that websites deemed by Google as thin content websites contain few landing pages or too little content. They may contain large amounts of content, that is however also readily available across many other websites.

This is why the thin content penalty is often applied to heavily monetized affiliate websites with prominently displayed commercial intent, so-called MfA (or “made for AdSense”) websites, and monetized scraped content websites.

Google and other search engines do not generally frown upon affiliation or monetization of websites as long as these add some unique value.

That said, websites that seem to be templated, do not represent a real brand nor provide tangible information about their authors tend to add little to the diversity of search results.

Search engines are interested in providing users diverse results, instead of ranking almost identical websites for a given query.   

As a consequence of the thin content penalty, a website can be expected to initially drop in organic search rankings significantly, then continue to slowly decline after the first nosedive.

Without a discernible unique selling proposition, Google may consider a website to be thin content.

Convincing Google to lift the thin content penalty imposed, while possible, may require both pruning poor landing pages and enriching existing landing pages with fresh, relevant content. 

In many cases, using data in order to provide relevant and unique information is a great way to make the website stand out. 

Next to compelling About us and contact information as well as consistent, high-quality brand representation, a Google Reconsideration Request rationale outlining the specific added value the website represents is likely to be required in order to get back to Google’s good graces.

News and Discover

In a drive to combat false information and maintain information quality standards, Google has sharpened their focus on news and media website content quality. In consequence, the public list of News and Discover policy violations has been substantially expanded. 

Online news platforms now face more scrutiny with regard to the factual accuracy of published content. At the same time, misleading, antisocial, offensive and explicit content has become less acceptable.

As these policies are being enforced, offending websites are confronted with a number of Google Search Console penalty messages.  

The consequence of an imposed News and Discover-related penalty is always a significant (if at times much delayed) drop in organic Google Search results.

If a penalty is left to linger for a prolonged period of time, the entire website’s visibility in SERPs is certain to continuously, slowly decline. 

Potential News and Discover violations which may trigger a Google penalty include, among others, explicit, unqualified medical or otherwise misleading content.

Explicit content violation

Misleading content violation

Medical content violation

The confirmed offense is typically accurately described in the Google Search Console message received. Google often chooses to pinpoint specific URL examples representative of the behavior that triggered the penalty.

While never exhaustive, these examples are tremendously helpful in the initial stages of the analysis and penalty recovery effort.

Regaining Google’s confidence with the prospect of improved future rankings depends largely on how thorough the clean-up effort, preceding a reconsideration request submission, really is. 

Because Google is unlikely to issue a penalty for relatively minor offenses, any website actually penalized is almost certainly violating Google policies in an excessive way.

For that reason affected websites face the prospect of editing or purging a substantial amount of the offending content.

Merely removing problematic landing pages, without supplementing the website with quality content is typically not considered a comprehensive effort though. 

AMP content mismatch

In line with the objective to ensure a fast user experience, Google continues to push AMP as a desirable technical solution. This policy spills over into Google Search Essentials, where content parity for all users is specifically required.

Google strives to keep the user experience as consistent as possible. Therefore, displaying significantly different content or offering a substantially different user experience to mobile and desktop users constitutes a Google Search Essentials violation. 

AMP landing pages are not required to match the content on their original, canonical landing pages 100%. But the gist of the content, including the user experience, must be comparable for users regardless of the device used to access it.

This is why Google does not like users to have to navigate from an AMP landing page to another landing page in order to access the actual content. The latter solution in effect makes an AMP page a doorway page, which Google considers an egregious Google Search Essentials violation.  

Unlike most Google penalties, the AMP content mismatch warning does not trigger sitewide repercussions. Instead, Google takes a more nuanced approach dropping only the rankings of AMP landing pages of a website. All other contents of the website remain unaffected.

This may appear as a relatively light penalty. However, no Google penalty should be left to linger for a prolonged period of time. 

Google recommends utilizing the URL inspection tool to test the parity of both AMP and canonical landing pages and in doing so ensure a uniform experience for all users.

Once the landing pages can be considered similar enough, a reconsideration request including a compelling rationale briefly outlining the changes introduced should be submitted. 

Alternatively, a technological switch can be considered a viable option. With AMP limitations in mind, the Google penalty imposed due to parity issues can be considered a stepping stone toward embracing a more robust technical solution, such as progressive web apps.

Cloaking and redirects

Search engines, including Google, want to rank ultimate destination landing pages. When a landing page redirects users, it is likely that search engines prefer to rank the final destination page, instead of an intermediary landing page.

There are of course legitimate reasons for maintaining redirects, which do not trigger any search engine sanctions.

However, when Google deems the intention of redirects to be deceptive (e.g., to intentionally redirect unsuspecting users to strongly commercialized landing pages), a manual spam action is likely to be applied to the website.

At the same time, Google considers showing significantly different landing pages to search engine bots and to human users known as cloaking as equally deceptive.

Similar to using redirects, when cloaking is implemented, search engines can’t trust that users will be presented with the expected content. From a search engine’s perspective, their user’s experience is likely to suffer, which they cannot ignore.

Since both cloaking and sneaky redirects are considered egregious Google Search Essentials violations, websites penalized for these offenses are likely to experience an imminent, steep drop in Google Search rankings.

In rare, extremely egregious instances, websites have even been known to be temporarily removed from Google’s index entirely.   

When landing pages show different content to search engines and human users or when users are redirected, Google is likely to penalize the deceptive behavior.

Lifting a penalty applied for cloaking and/or sneaky redirects requires a thorough clean-up and documentation effort first. All deceptive behavior must be discontinued entirely.

Because of the egregiousness of the violation, haphazard changes to the website will only prolong the penalty.

Once all cloaking and/or deceptive redirects have been removed, it is best to conduct a crawling test, before a compelling Reconsideration Request can be submitted to Google. 

User-generated spam

User-generated spam tends to be an issue for large, user-driven sites. If this penalty is applied, that generally indicates that the affected site is being exploited by spammers.

Here, Google is essentially asking the site owner to get their own house in order – or else.

The message usually includes a sample URL where user-generated spam has been detected. Accordingly, the penalty’s impact (removal from Google Search results) is limited to the exact URL or directory mentioned.

While this may seem like a small price to pay, it is important to see the big picture. Sites affected by user-generated spam often receive a lot of user-generated spam messages, even on pages not identified by Google.

If the vulnerability isn’t swiftly taken care of, chances are there will be thousands of potentially malicious, user-generated pages which Google will remove from their index in order to protect their users.

On several occasions, Google has provided useful and actionable general guidance on how to protect sites from user-generated spam.

Ignoring a specific Google manual action message is never a good idea and a particularly dangerous strategy in the case of user-generated spam.

If you’ve received a message, that indicates Google deems the site useful but neglected. Thus, they raise the issue to help.

Hoping for the best, or for Google to fix the issue at their end, isn’t going to solve the problem.

Solving user-generated spam is mostly a technical challenge and rather simple when compared with the previously discussed penalties applied for spam content.

The following security measures should be considered and implemented as necessary:

• Make sure your forum or discussion software is up to date, especially with regard to any security patches that have been issued.
• Use moderation capabilities for the following:
  • Blacklist obviously spammy words or inappropriate words (like pharma-related) and continue to add to your blacklists based on spam that you’re seeing.
  • Identify and review content when a single account or IP address accounts for a large volume of posts in a short time.
  • Subject posts from new members or new posters to editorial review before they are published, lifting the restriction once they have established themselves as trustworthy.
• Limit users’ ability to link.
  • Consider disallowing links entirely or allowing only trusted contributors with spotless track records to link to other sites.
  • If you allow links, you may nofollow them to remove some of the incentives to link externally.
• Close comments or discussions on threads after a reasonable period of time, as they’ll often collect spam after real users have ceased to engage with them.

Beyond getting you back in Google’s good graces, all of these steps are in the best interests of your business anyway, as they’ll help protect your brand integrity and your relationship with your user base.

User-generated spam can trigger limited spam removal action. The problem, if neglected, will likely grow and can prompt more severe consequences.

Hacked content spam

The hacked content spam penalty resembles user-generated spam for one reason: It is a case of a compromised website that is being abused by spammers to inject malicious and/or irrelevant content without the site owner’s consent. 

Again, Google’s message includes a sample URL, which provides a clue to where to start the investigation and what type of content to look for while cleansing the site of spam.

There are, however, two important differences between hacked content spam and user-generated spam.

• First, the hacked content spam penalty is applied to sites that are not user-driven and where the vulnerability isn’t caused by poor quality enforcement, but rather insufficient security.
• Second, the consequence of a hacked content spam action is a prominent label in SERPs, warning users of the possible threat if they dare to open the website. This means imminent and potentially lasting loss of user traffic coming from organic Google Search.

In this instance, Google provides some assistance. But ultimately, you need to identify a permanent solution. 

A simple clean-up and malicious content removal alone are not likely to have the desired effect unless the underlying vulnerability is identified and patched.

As in all previous cases, submitting a compelling reconsideration request is the first step toward resolving the problem and removing the “hacked” SERP label.

Legitimate, yet compromised, websites run the risk of misrepresentation in search engine results. Fixing the issue is the only way to remove a SERP warning, as it is a necessity to protect users and brand integrity.

Hacked sites remain indexed and visible to Google Search users. However, they are labeled with a prominent warning and therefore are likely to be disregarded by users.

Incorrect structured data

Structured data is as much a means of making the content and context of a website better understood by search engines as it is a method to claim more SERP real estate. 

When properly implemented, structured data can enhance your SERP listing with an eye-catching display known as a “rich snippet.” 

The image below depicts the commonly seen Review rich snippet.

Sites with poorly implemented or deceptive structured data are likely to lose their additional SERP real estate.

The prospect of obtaining a rich snippet is enticing, especially in competitive verticals, which is why attempts to game the system using inflated or deceptive structured data are very much on Google’s radar.

If spotted, a notification highlighting incorrect structured data is the consequence, and your rich snippets will no longer appear in search results.

The recovery and reconsideration process is similar to what you would do for other types of manual penalties.

House cleaning, spotless implementation and documentation are key. In practical terms, once the confidence in the accuracy of structured data is lost, fully regaining it is rare.

Gaming structured data is, therefore, a risky business. It is not only not recommended, but it is also likely to indefinitely impact the look and feel of a site in Google SERPs.

Google does not seem to appreciate incorrect or deceiving information, which is why losing structured data once may mean doing without them for an extended period of time.

Unnatural outbound links

Selling links for the purpose of manipulating PageRank is yet another Google Search Essentials violation that triggers a corresponding manual action and a message highlighting the issue.

Unlike in the past, however, the associated penalty does not necessarily cause a dramatic loss of site visibility in organic Google Search nowadays.

That said, the penalty is not to be taken lightly. Given the site owner’s total control over their own website, narrowing down the problem and applying a suitable solution, such as no-following questionable links, is easy and requires comparatively few resources.

Initially, an unnatural outbound links penalty rarely correlates with a massive loss of visibility in organic Google Search results.

Spammy free host

When free hosting providers receive a Google Search Console penalty notification highlighting a spammy free host, Google has deemed an overwhelming majority of the user content hosted to be either spammy or otherwise of no value to internet users.

The specific Google Search Console message notifies the recipient and free host operator of the impending impact on the entire service’s visibility in Google Search results. In most cases, the service remains indexed by Google and can be found when users apply an exact, navigational query, e.g., site:example.ai. 

However, the service is most likely to temporarily lose nearly all SERP visibility, even for what may be considered relevant queries. Because the entire website is affected, rather than only granular parts of the service, the spammy free host manual spam action is considered a harsh penalty. 

Historically, Google seems to have been reluctant to take these wide-reaching measures against free hosting platforms, unless in the most egregious cases.

Confirmed past cases indicate that only free hosting services with approximately 99% of the indexable user-generated content abused, have been penalized as spammy free hosts.

Spammy free host notification in the Google Search Console, highlighting the egregious nature of the ongoing platform abuse.

Despite the excessive scale of the spam problem highlighted, Google still refrains from applying the ultimate penalty, comparable to pure spam, to remove the entire free hosting service from the index.

It is worth noting that the Google Search Console notification is brought exclusively to the free hosting service operators’ attention. Its legitimate users remain unaware of the impact on their content’s visibility in organic Google Search results.

This reflects the fact that only the service operator is in a position to impose some level of quality control and spam abuse prevention, which is a necessary step to build a comprehensive case before submitting a Google reconsideration request.

Off-page guideline violations and related notifications

While a site owner may theoretically be unable to control what other places link to the site, risky practices like buying links or spamming other sites have led Google to be concerned with off-page issues as well.

Unnatural inbound links

The most frequently experienced Google manual action by far is the one applied as a consequence of unnatural inbound links to a website.

Affected sites are deemed to be engaging in link schemes (link building intended to manipulate Google rankings), which Google considers a major violation. The penalty’s impact can be partial or affect the entire domain.

The consequent loss in visibility in Google ranges anywhere from barely noticeable to a steady decline over time to a dramatic total loss of visibility overnight. The vertical and brand prominence seem to play no role – large, reputable sites have been affected by this penalty.

Very rarely, we’ve seen sample URLs (even as many as five) listed on the unnatural inbound links message, which gives the site owner a starting point for their investigation. These samples may be of great use if they can indicate the pattern that raised a red flag – for example, if they all show low-quality PR services that scrape and reproduce pieces that include commercial anchor text links.

Whether examples are provided or not, it is vital to conduct a full backlink audit. Based on that evaluation – which, depending on the backlink data volume, could take up to several weeks – all questionable backlinks are to be noted in a separate file.

It is important to bear in mind that, for large websites with millions of backlinks, samples provided in Google Search Console will likely be too fragmented and offer insufficient data for a successful reconsideration request. Therefore, you must identify all of the questionable links yourself before asking to be reconsidered.

To boost the prospects for a favorable result with the very first reconsideration request, it is crucial to consider not only backlink volumes and distribution, but also the linking site’s quality and its general approach to linking out.

A solid backlink risk assessment is inclusive of all historic linking liabilities, without neglecting any legacy link building remnants, like directory entries of a long-gone SEO era.

Once you’ve created a file containing all your questionable or spammy backlinks, it’s time to work on getting those links removed from the web. This may require reaching out and asking other websites to take down links to your site or have them marked as “nofollow.”

Any spammy backlinks that you are not able to get removed, despite your best efforts, should be isolated and included in a .txt file called a disavow file.

Once the review is finalized and a disavow file created, it is recommended to upload the disavow file first (and receive confirmation of the change) before submitting documentation outlining all relevant steps taken to resolve the issues Google has highlighted.

The first step upon receiving an unnatural inbound links message is to compare the backlink profile and current link building practice against Google Search Essentials.

Reconsideration requests and related notifications

Any Google penalty can be lifted and the website will not be held back because of past transgressions.

If you’ve received a manual action and have made a good faith effort to fix the issues that triggered it, you can request for Google to review your site so that you can have the penalty lifted.

This is what is known as filing a reconsideration request.

Any time you receive a manual action notification, it should outline all the steps you should take to rectify the problem. These steps will vary depending on the specific penalty that has been issued.

Once you’ve satisfied all of the requirements outlined by Google, the final step should contain a “Reconsideration Request” button that will initiate the process once clicked.

As part of the reconsideration request process, you may need to provide the Google team with documentation outlining the steps you have taken to bring the site into compliance with Google Search Essentials. This will help build a case for why the manual action should be lifted.

Once you’ve fixed all your website issues and submitted a reconsideration request, you may receive one of the following notifications in Google Search Console.

Disavow file updated notification

Any promising attempt to resolve a manual action related to unnatural backlinks will involve submitting a disavow file, which contains all the spammy backlinks to your site that you were unable to remove.

Submitting your disavow file will trigger a message confirming that a disavow file has been uploaded. It will specify the number of URLs and domains submitted.

Please note that while updating an existing disavow file, previously submitted URLs will be overwritten unless they are expressly included in a new file that is about to be submitted. Google’s Disavow Links Tool does not, as of this writing, support incremental updates.

Not a manual action message, but a confirmation that the first step toward resolving an unnatural inbound links penalty has been made.

Reconsideration request (submission confirmed)

If you’ve received a manual action and have made a good faith effort to fix the issues that triggered it, you can request for Google to review your site so that you can have the penalty lifted. This is what is known as a reconsideration request.

After you submit your site for reconsideration, Google will confirm receiving a reconsideration request in the same way they acknowledge receiving a disavow file. The specific text seems to vary, often to manage expectations regarding the expected processing time.

Currently, there’s no officially guaranteed turnaround time for reconsideration requests to be processed. Experience shows that this process can take anywhere from a few hours (rare) to a few days (more common) to several weeks (worst-case scenario).

Google does acknowledge receiving a reconsideration request and includes the rationale provided underneath their message. In this case, because of the haphazard rationale, prospects for succeeding are bleak.

Reconsideration request rejected

If the efforts made to get back into Google’s good graces are deemed insufficient, a reconsideration request rejected message is forthcoming. That message seems to be uniform and merely states the active status of the penalty.

There are occasionally variations of the message which go beyond notifying the site owner and offer a little guidance regarding the persistent violation.

Those messages, which seem to be most common in the case of unnatural inbound link penalties, are customized and include specific violation examples.  

Any spam backlink samples that are explicitly mentioned in such a message must inevitably be disavowed. Merely disavowing the links Google highlighted in its notification is insufficient, and a complete backlink audit is in order.

Regardless of the type of penalty applied, repeated reconsideration request attempts are possible. Currently, Google seems to have no cap on the total number of requests that are allowed.

However, every new request must reflect an increased effort to align the website with Google Search Essentials, or there’s little chance of eventual success.

A standard reconsideration request rejected message is most common for sites that have not been sufficiently aligned with Google Search Essentials. It includes no additional clues.

At times, a custom reconsideration request rejected notification does include some clues. Sites identified as backlink spammers may receive messages with up to five individual unnatural link URLs to aid their anticipated, increased efforts to apply for reconsideration.

Reconsideration request processed

The majority of all reconsideration requests submitted to Google are processed and either approved or rejected.

However, there are rare exceptions in a small number of edge cases where a clear-cut decision does not seem to be possible. These cases are met with a Reconsideration request processed notification.

Judging by the wording, this seems to indicate that while a worthwhile effort was recognized, there’s more than just one type of violation present.

This may explain why it implies that one penalty may have been lifted while another one was refined.

A rare Reconsideration request processed notification, which almost always seems to come with a friendly reviewer hint.

Without a doubt, this message does not mean good news for the site’s owner – or the site’s visibility. Consequently, more investigative work is required.

There’s a silver lining on the horizon, however.

Most reconsideration request processed notifications come with a specific “note from your reviewer.” This is a manually edited message from a sympathetic Googler trying to help – an encouraging signal for the site’s future prospects.

Reconsideration request approved

Google’s manual action removal triggers a short, uniform reconsideration request approved notification.

Aside from mentioning that the penalty has been lifted, this notification makes it clear that coming back into compliance with Google Search Essentials does not necessarily mean that your site will experience improved rankings in organic Google Search. The site may grow in visibility, stagnate or drop.

There’s no further action required once this message is received, other than focusing on users and the core of the website activity again. It is the best possible outcome to be expected.

The reconsideration request approved notification says the spam situation is resolved and there is no further action required.

Any questions about Google’s manual penalties not addressed sufficiently in this article are welcome and appreciated. All reader input received will be considered to keep this ultimate guide covering manual penalties up to date.

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