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9 important features of enterprise SEO platforms

Monday, October 10th, 2022

Enterprise SEO platform vendors offer numerous capabilities. These range from keyword research
and rank-tracking to backlink analysis and acquisition, as well as competitive intelligence and content
optimization.

Most of the vendors profiled in Enterprise SEO Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide offer the following core capabilities:

• Keyword research and rank tracking;
• Page-level SEO analysis;
• Content optimization analysis;
• Link (also called backlink) analysis and acquisition/removal;
• Site error detection;
• Organic search traffic market share;
• Competitive analysis;
• International search results and rank tracking;
• Internal cross-linking; and
• APIs for third-party data integration and management, as well as for export to other analysis tools.

Enterprise-level platforms may also provide more extensive link and site audits or analytics that include predictive scoring systems to identify potential opportunities to improve page performance or link authority.

Vendors differentiate by offering more frequent or detailed data updates or content marketing features that sometimes require additional investment. These more advanced capabilities may include, but are not limited to:

• Daily or real-time site crawls.
• Features to manage adjacent fields like PPC or social media marketing.
• Search intent-based analysis, perhaps involving artificial intelligence or machine learning.
• Universal search rankings incorporating featured snippets, knowledge panels, reviews, local packs, images, top stories, video, related questions, carousels, tweets and other dynamic displays.
• Analysis and management of Google Shopping feeds.
• Content marketing analysis and performance tools.
• On-page content quality analysis.
• Competitive intelligence and benchmarking.
• Identification of technical issues that can impact rankings (e.g., broken pages, slow loading pages, content duplication, excessive redirects).
• Cross-device attribution.

Here are nine important features of enterprise SEO platforms.

1. Link analysis and acquisition

Links continue to be one of the most important external or “off-page” signals that can help a website rise in search engine rankings.

Most enterprise SEO platforms provide link analysis (i.e., what sites are linking to yours), link building or removal recommendations via competitive analysis and other reports that reveal opportunities for obtaining links (i.e., what sites should you solicit links from) as part of their base platforms.

2. Keyword research/rank analysis

Keyword research – knowing what terms people use to find your website, how your pages rank for various queries and how you should use those terms in your copy – is a pillar of effective SEO.

Virtually all enterprise SEO platforms provide keyword research tools that allow marketers to discover the ways that consumers search for content, and what keywords are driving traffic for competitors.

Vendors source this data differently, however.

Some vendors license data from point solutions or ISPs, due to Google’s restrictions on scraped data in its terms of use and the percentage of search results that are keyword “(not provided).” Other vendors develop and manage a proprietary database of keyword terms.

As a result, reliable keyword data has become less of a commodity and more expensive.

It’s also important to note that rank analysis has grown increasingly complex as Google has upped its use of more dynamic and visual SERPs.

Marketers are no longer satisfied with a simple numeric designation of how their page ranks for a particular query; they want to know if it’s displayed in a carousel, in a knowledge panel, with sitelinks – or any of the other ways in which crawled content is being displayed on the SERPs.

Brands want a sense of how they’re coming across in search generally, even if the brand-related activity is happening on third-party sites. That’s why providers are coming up with their own proprietary formulas for calculating “share of voice” in search

3. Search intent-based analysis

Google’s search algorithms, often powered by artificial intelligence, are focusing less on keyword
matches and more on search intent.

To counter the lack of keyword data, SEO platform vendors are developing more tools that analyze search intent and predict or recommend the most relevant content that would meet the searcher’s needs.

4. Custom site crawls/audits

With content quality becoming the lynchpin for many marketers’ SEO strategies, site crawls or audits are important tools offered by enterprise SEO platform vendors.

Some platforms offer optimization recommendations for keywords, page structures and crawlability. They often prioritize and assign scores for such factors as HTML title tags, body tags and meta tags.

Many enterprise SEO platforms provide daily site crawls; some feature real-time technical data, while others offer updates on a weekly basis.

Ideally, the tool should be able to crawl the entire site, not just random pages. However, some enterprise sites are so large it’s unrealistic to expect a tool to crawl it in its entirety.

5. Content marketing and analysis

SEO and content marketing have become closely aligned, as Google has raised the content quality bar through artificial intelligence as well as its regular algorithm updates. As a result, relevant, up-todate content has become integral to SEO success.

Many vendors have upgraded the content optimization and content marketing capabilities of their enterprise SEO platforms and expanded the tools’ content marketing features. These include:

• Page management tools or APIs to monitor on-page content and errors.
• Reports on content performance and traffic trends.
• Influencer identification and campaign management.
• Real-time content recommendations.

More advanced platforms perform analysis to help improve the depth and quality of content by performing topical analysis of content and comparing it against the competition to identify potentially important gaps and make recommendations for improvement.

One emerging area in which vendors are investing is the ability to automatically and proactively suggest topics that marketers should create content about – eliminating the need to spend lots of time on analysis. Some even aid in developing the type of content that will show up in queries for target keywords.

6. International search tracking

International search coverage has become a critical capability, as the global economy leads more U.S.-based enterprises to conduct business online and offline in multiple countries and languages.

Virtually all enterprise SEO platforms profiled in this report offer some level of international search coverage that crosses borders, languages and alphabets.

The capabilities include international keyword research, integrating global market and search volume data into the platform, as well as integrating global CPC currency data.

7. Mobile/local analytics

Google’s search engine updates are increasingly focused on improving the mobile/local search user experience.

While mobile-friendly sites are now table stakes in the SEO game, appearance in local listings has become more important in the COVID-19 era, which elevated e-commerce and digital communication among local retailers and restaurants, in part to cope with the demand for BOPIS and curbside delivery.

8. Technical SEO crawling

Tools to identify technical issues that may be hindering ranking performance are very important, given that marketers rank technical SEO fixes as their number one priority. These include things like:

• Slow page load.
• Implementation of schema markup.
• Identification of crawling issues.
• The allocation of crawl budget.
• The flagging of duplicate URL and canonical issues.

9. Cross-device attribution

Recognizing that SEO is just one aspect of a brand’s marketing efforts, and also that search traffic (especially on brand keywords) is influenced by paid media, some vendors are developing capabilities that help marketers determine what marketing initiative is driving site visits or sales.

This is becoming increasingly difficult, however, as third-party cookies are no longer being supported by many companies.

Get the full report on Enterprise SEO Tools here

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

TikTok releases Photo Mode and 7 new editing tools

Friday, October 7th, 2022

TikTok has just announced Photo Mode, as well as seven new editing tools for creators. Let’s take a look.

What’s new. The seven new editing features are now available in the US and most regions globally. These tools allow creators to adjust their clips right in the TikTok platform.

• Edit clips: Stack, trim, and split video clips
• Edit sounds: Cut, trim, and set the duration for sounds
• Edit and position text: More easily edit, position, and set the duration for text
• Add overlays: Add photo and video overlays for picture-in-picture (or video-in-video) stacking
• Adjust video speed: Speed or slow the pace of video clips
• Frame content: Rotate or zoom in and out of frame of individual clips
• Add sound effects. Add musical soundtracks to videos and photo carousels

Photo Mode. If you prefer to post a photo instead of a video, the carousel format will display your still images one right after another. You can also add a musical soundtrack. Viewers to your carousel posts can swipe at their own pace.

Expanded character descriptions. Last month we announced that TikTok was now allowing longer descriptions of up to 2,000 characters. These are now available for both video and Photo Mode content. This allows for both SEO optimization as well as allowing creators to expand their captions to include more information about their content.

Dig deeper. You can read the announcement from TikTok here.

Why we care. Instagram’s plans to double down on Reels had some creators and influencers pretty upset that the Meta platform was trying to be too much like TikTok. So it’s no surprise that TikTok is clapping back in its fight to woo the competition with longer descriptions and a new Photo Mode that looks, well, familiar.

Creators and users may soon be choosing which platform to keep and which one to ditch as the two are starting to look almost identical. Marketers and brands should take advantage of the new tools and features, utilizing both platforms to reach their target markets.

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

2 new Google Display & Video 360 audience solutions

Friday, October 7th, 2022

Google just announced two new updates regarding first-party data and machine learning with Display and Video 360. The two new updates are optimized targeting and Exchange Provided Identifier, also known as EPID.

Optimized targeting

Optimized targeting helps advertisers expand their reach across relevant audiences and increase ROI by finding new and relevant customers likely to convert within their campaign goals. Campaign settings, such as manually-selected audiences including first-party data and Google audiences, influence the machine learning algorithm. Optimized targeting then uses machine learning to expand reach across other relevant groups without relying on third-party cookies.

Optimized targeting reaches the people who are most likely to drive impressions, clicks, or conversions as they are defined and customized by the advertiser.

Early testing. Early tests found that advertisers who used optimized targeting saw a 25% improvement in their campaign objectives when using Google audiences and typically see a 55% improvement when using first-party data.

Launch and availability. Optimized targeting is currently available for YouTube Video Action campaigns and will expand to all display and video campaigns in the coming months. When they are launched, new eligible display and video campaigns will be opted in and will have an option to opt-out.

EPIDs

EPIDs provide Display & Video 360 with new signals which will be used to automatically future-proof frequency management tools. In the future, EPIDs will be powering a variety of other marketing use cases in Display & Video 360 with no action required by advertisers.

Expanding on PPIDs. EPIDs expand on PPIDs, which are Publisher Provided Identifiers that became available to use last year. PPIDs allow publishers to send Google Ad Manager a first-party identifier for marketing use cases. The update makes EPIDs available to more exchanges, publishers, or vendors looking to share their first-party identifiers with Display & Video 360’s backend to improve the quality of programmatic ads served on their respective properties.

Launch and availability. EPIDs will be used to inform Display & Video 360 users’ frequency management solutions “in the coming months.”

This will ensure brands can continue avoiding ad repetition while maximizing reach efficiency even when third-party cookies go away. Advertisers won’t have to make any changes in their account since EPIDs will be organically embedded in Display & Video’s technology. Brands and agencies will automatically benefit from EPID when setting frequency goals.

In the near future, EPID will be used as a signal for building Google audience segments in Display & Video 360. This will give advertisers a chance to deliver more personalized ads on publishers’ sites for which EPIDs are received. Down the line, EPID will also help brands unlock other core advertising functionalities, like cross-device reach on a domain by domain basis, and invalid traffic prevention in a privacy-safe way.

Why we care. If you’re a publisher, these changes will allow you to reach more audiences, deliver relevant ads, and ensure that everyone’s information and privacy are kept intact. These programmatic options are steps in the direction of a cookieless future while still allowing you to serve successful programmatic ad campaigns.

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How to choose an enterprise SEO platform

Friday, October 7th, 2022

Understanding your current marketing processes, knowing how to measure success and being
able to identify where you are looking for improvements are all critical pieces of the SEO platform
decision-making process.

In this guide you will learn:

• 5 key benefits of enterprise SEO platforms
• How much enterprise SEO platforms cost
• How to make an informed purchase

5 key benefits of enterprise SEO platforms

With thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions of pages, sites, social conversations, images, and keywords to manage and optimize, enterprise SEO has become increasingly complicated and time-consuming.

Using an enterprise SEO platform can increase efficiency and productivity while reducing the time and errors involved in managing organic search campaigns.

More specifically, managing SEO through an enterprise toolset can provide the following benefits:

• Many tools, one interface. Enterprise SEO platforms perform many tasks in one system. A comprehensive dashboard can help your organization monitor SERP rankings and trends, how you measure up to competitors and your share of voice. The integration and prioritization of tasks, reporting and user permissions can offer substantial benefits to enterprise-level SEO operations.
• Intent insights. Because of the search engines’ increased focus on user intent, enterprise-level SEO tool vendors are developing machine learning models that analyze user behavior and site content to help marketers answer searchers’ questions. This information can inform content development strategy –- a critical element given the foundational importance of quality content.
• More efficient management of global operations. Enterprise SEO tools have built-in diagnostics that can be invaluable on a global scale to identify site-wide issues across languages, countries or regions. These tools uncover macro and micro issues with pages, templates and infrastructure.
• Keeping pace with the search engines. SEO software vendors have dedicated teams and engineers to follow frequent search engine algorithm changes and their impact on the SEO reporting required by enterprises. Through education as well as software tool development, a relationship with a quality vendor can give marketers a competitive advantage.
• Automated reporting to provide data in near real-time. Many brands end up trying to put a lot of data in spreadsheets and updating them manually. But that doesn’t provide a complete view of the data. Most enterprise SEO platforms offer highly customized reporting capabilities that are widget- and wizard-driven to make reporting faster and easier. Many also allow for the export of data to business intelligence tools or other analytics software

How much enterprise SEO platforms cost

Licensing an enterprise SEO platform can be a significant investment, particularly for ecommerce or retail brands with hundreds of thousands of SKUs or product pages.

Marketers typically spend tens of thousands of dollars each month in licensing fees. They may also pay for installation and staff training to maximize the value of the platform and its capabilities.

Virtually all enterprise SEO platforms are provided on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis (i.e. the vendor makes the software available online and is responsible for all maintenance and system administration).

Enterprise-level pricing models vary and are often customized based on the number of users, sites, keyword rankings, link volume, international coverage and other SEO activities.

How to make an informed SEO platform purchase

Ready to help your organization choose the SEO platform that is the right fit for your business needs and goals? Here are four steps to help.

Step 1: Do you need an enterprise SEO platform?

Deciding whether your company needs an enterprise-level SEO platform calls for the same evaluative steps involved in any software adoption, including a comprehensive self-assessment of your organization’s business needs and resources, staffing, management support and financial resources.

Use the following questions as a guideline to determine the answers.

• Do we have the right human resources in place? Employing people to implement and use SEO platforms is a prerequisite to success. If you have marketing staff, utilizing SEO toolsets can make them more efficient and effective. The vast majority of organic search marketers struggle to justify their SEO budgets. SEO platforms and tools are a key component of helping to keep overall costs down while getting the required work done. Their analytical capabilities can also help SEOs prove the impact of their work on the bottom line.
• Do we have C-level buy-in? Enterprise SEO software can be a five- or six-figure investment annually. It is critical to demonstrate the value of SEO to C-level executives by running pilot test projects and agreeing to a definition of “success” in advance.
• Do we have the right technical resources? Successful enterprise SEO needs dedicated technical resources deployed to it to act on the recommendations and opportunities surfaced by the analytics and reports. With many SEOs reporting a technical backlog as the primary thing hindering their SEO success, allocating resources to this task can be the factor that determines whether an implementation is successful or not.
• Who will own enterprise SEO? Enterprise SEO is commonly placed into marketing, editorial or IT, depending on the nature of the business. Unfortunately, in large companies, it usually ends up with either whoever has the budget or whoever can best articulate the business case. In a best-case scenario, it should be both.
• Can we invest in staff training? It is vital to provide training to technical, design, content and marketing teams, and reinforce it on a regular basis. A successful enterprise SEO implementation will find ways to inject SEO knowledge into existing training programs and identify internal evangelists to broadly distribute the messages. Training needs to be comprehensive, consistent and continuous. Some tool companies include or offer training for an additional fee, so be sure to ask about this.
• To what extent do we need to share reports with non-SEO staff? Some tool providers focus significant development resources on simple interfaces that can be utilized by people in other organizational roles – such as writers or C-suite executives. If this is important to you, make sure you specifically look for this when evaluating possible platforms.
• Have we established KPIs and put a system in place for tracking, measuring and reporting results? It’s important to know upfront what you want your SEO to achieve. Do you want to improve SERP rankings or the time visitors spend on your site? Is conversion – whether a product purchase or whitepaper download – your key objective? Having goals will help you decide if you’re ready to put an enterprise platform to good use, as well as help you decide which tool will best meet your organizational needs.
• How will we measure success? Depending on your site’s monetization strategy, make sure you know how you’ll determine if the rollout of the platform and the successful execution of the established KPIs actually increased sales, conversions, or page views.
• Do we have realistic expectations? It is not uncommon for enterprise SEO efforts to take at least six months to generate tangible results. If SEO is a new initiative within the organization, cultural shifts and workflow processes will need to be implemented and refined. Setting realistic timelines and goals will help build support at all levels of the enterprise.
• Do we have an SEO culture? Many organizations begin to invest in SEO but find that a lack of understanding of SEO across the organization cripples its progress. Broad educational programs are often required to provide consistent performance and results.

Step 2: Identify and contact appropriate vendors

Once you have determined that enterprise SEO software makes sense for your business, spend time
researching individual vendors and their capabilities by doing the following:

• Make a list of all the SEO capabilities you currently have, those that you would like to have, and those that you can’t live without. This last category is critical and will help you avoid making a costly mistake. If you find that one vendor doesn’t offer this “must-have” capability, it’s obviously not a fit. When it comes to international data, it can be cost-prohibitive to track all your markets, so you may want to use an enterprise-level tool to track your most important market, then use simpler tools for secondary markets.
• Take your list of capabilities and then do some research. Many of the vendors profiled in this report also provide whitepapers and interactive tools that can help.
• Narrow your list to those vendors that meet your criteria. Submit your list of the SEO capabilities you’ve identified and set a timeframe for them to reply.
• Decide whether you need to engage in a formal RFI/RFP process. This is an individual preference, however, be sure to give the same list of capabilities to each vendor to facilitate comparison.

The most effective RFPs only request relevant information and provide ample information about your business and its SEO needs. It should reflect high-level strategic goals and KPIs. For example, mention your company’s most important KPIs and how you will evaluate the success of your SEO efforts. Include details about timelines and the existing digital technology you have deployed.

When written properly, an RFP will facilitate the sales process and ensure that everyone involved on both sides comes to a shared understanding of the purpose, requirements, scope, and structure of the intended purchase. From the RFP responses, you should be able to narrow your list down to three or four platforms that you’ll want to demo.

Step 3: Scheduling the demo

Set up demos with your shortlist of vendors within a relatively short timeframe after receiving the RFP responses to help make relevant comparisons.

Make sure that all potential internal users are on the demo call, and pay attention to the following:

• How easy is the platform to use?
• Does the vendor seem to understand our business and our marketing needs?
• Are they showing us our “must-have” features?
• Is the reporting actionable?

Other questions to ask each vendor include:

• How do you calculate search volumes? Knowing how the system treats information types will impact how you ascribe value to certain keyword terms, make decisions about keyword and content choices and affect the ROI of your search marketing efforts. Find out from where raw data is extracted (i.e., analytics, log files, or a proprietary tracking pixel).
• Can this system track millions of searches, visits, site pages, etc.? Knowing whether the
  platform is a true enterprise solution or a simple tool that may not scale for your business
  needs is crucial. Limits on the numbers of keyword rankings, pages or traffic tracked could
  impact your use of the system or significantly increase the cost.
• Do you support international search? There are many nuances within international SEO that can mislead even the best SEOs. Find out if the numerator in the calculation of the platform’s average clicks per search or average search volume is normalized for global or local (in that market) search, and whether search ranks are calculated from within the country or remotely. Does their tool make hreflang coding recommendations? Will it manage the page relationship and directional recommendations? The misapplication of international data could impact the ROI of your search marketing efforts.
• How do you track and report universal search results? You will want to know if and where your site was listed on the results page. For example, did your listing appear in web results, the In the News segment, an in-depth article or the video results? That location and reporting feedback helps to quantify strategic and tactical efforts.
• Does your tool help customers understand what competitors do, and derive actionable insights from that? What are the most important features the tool has for providing competitive research? Competitive intelligence is a standard feature for virtually all enterprise SEO platforms – but the scope and cost differ between vendors. Find out what level of data is provided about your competitors and vertical industry, and make sure it fits your requirements.
• How robust and flexible are your reporting options? Different users have different reporting needs. Find out if reports can be customized and automatically delivered to different users and types of users, and whether data can be exported in CSV format.
• Where are the actionable reports? Enterprise tools have dashboards and generous amounts of data but it’s important to understand how (and which) reports can immediately benefit your business. A good sales team will understand your company’s objectives and KPIs and will have reports ready or be able to run them in real-time. This is data that can be handed over to the appropriate teams and promptly acted upon.
• What other meta-information does your system collect that may be made available via API? Being able to trace search traffic data from the front of the funnel all the way to sales data in a CRM or business intelligence (BI) system will help you to more accurately calculate ROI.
• Is there a workflow built in that allows me to coordinate the work of my marketing, content, web development and social media teams across the organization? SEO cannot operate in a silo. A true enterprise platform should provide built-in workflow management that includes task assignment, management and monitoring of completion rates across groups.
• What does the onboarding process entail and how long will it take? What are the training options (i.e., is it online only or will you send people to our location to train us on-site)? Be sure to find out what onboarding and support is included in pricing and what is an add-on.
• What kind of ongoing support and client engagement will your account team provide? How will you gauge our use or non-use of the platform’s features? One of the most common reasons a company transitions out of an enterprise platform is because they don’t use it enough. How do they propose you avoid tool fatigue and checkout for your organization? A vendor should be prepared to address this issue and specifically how the tool creatively engages users and gets them back into the environment.
• What new features are you considering? What are the long-term roadmap and launch dates? The SEO landscape is constantly changing with new features to further leverage digital assets rapidly coming out of Google and Bing. How quickly do they respond to the implementation of new SERP features and begin tracking them? It’s important to understand the level of innovation and the ability to add and track emerging technologies. Knowing a vendor’s new feature release date schedule and its ability to stick to committed timelines is also important. This helps establish long-term trust and an expectation with the vendor that it will always be on the cutting edge of SEO.

Step 4: Check references, negotiate a contract

Before deciding on a vendor, take the time to speak with one or two customer references, preferably someone in a business like yours. The SEO vendor should be able to supply you with several references if you cannot identify them yourself.

Use this opportunity to ask any additional questions and find out more about any topics that weren’t addressed during the demo. Make sure that the person you’ve been referred to is a primary user of the solution.

Consider also asking these basic questions:

• Why did you move to an enterprise SEO platform?
• Why did you select this platform over others?
• Has this platform lived up to your expectations?
• How long did the system take to implement?
• Are you also using additional tools for crawling, page evaluations, competitive analysis, domain and link data?
• Were there any surprises that you wish you’d known about beforehand?
• What was the quality of the training resources and the onboarding process?
• Where have you seen the most success? The biggest challenges?
• Do other teams in your company use the tool? How did you get their buy-in?
• How are you measuring your own success?
• How easy was the set-up process and how long? Did the vendor help?
• How responsive is customer service?
• Has there been any downtime?
• Do you use all the resources provided? If not, which ones and why?
• What is the most useful, actionable (favorite) report the tool generates?
• What do you wish they did differently?
• Why would you recommend this platform?

Although not all vendors require an annual contract, many do. Once you’ve selected a vendor, be sure to get in writing a list of what technology and support are covered in the contract. Ask about what kinds of additional fees might come up.

• Are there charges for custom integrations, if so, how much (and how long will the onboarding take)?
• What is the hourly charge for engineering services, and is there a minimum?
• What partner organizations are available to install and integrate the tool?
• If you need to train a new hire midyear, what will that cost?
• What is the “out” clause?
• Are they open to a trial period with options to exit the contract?

Obtaining the answers upfront – and having them in writing – will ensure fewer surprises and fewer
costs down the road.

Enterprise SEO Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Our MarTech Intelligence Report examines the market for SEO platforms and the considerations involved in implementation. The 65-page report reviews the growing market for SEO platforms, plus the latest trends, opportunities and challenges.

Download your free report here: Enterprise SEO Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide (12th edition).

This report was prepared by conducting in-depth interviews with leading vendors and industry experts. Research took place in the first quarter of 2022. These, in addition to third-party research, form the basis for this report.

You can compare 15 leading enterprise SEO software vendors in the full report:

• AgencyAnalytics
• Ahrefs
• Botify
• BrightEdge
• Conductor
• Moz
• Quattr
• Searchmetrics
• Semrush
• seoClarity
• SE Ranking
• Serpstat
• Siteimprove
• Visably
• WebCEO

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

Facebook Ad Policies have been renamed to Meta Ad Standards

Friday, October 7th, 2022

Meta has renamed their Facebook Advertising Policies to Meta Advertising Standards to make them “as useful, transparent and clear as possible.”

What’s changing. Nothing. Meta has made it very clear that they aren’t changing the scope of the policies, nor are they announcing any new ones.

We’re not making any changes to the scope of these policies or how we enforce them, nor are we announcing any new policies. Instead, our goal with this update is to make it easier for people and businesses to access and understand our policies.

Language and consolidation updates. Meta said in some cases they are updating the language for the policies while in others they have streamlined or consolidated them. For example, the Prohibited Financial Products and Services policy now encompasses several previously separate but related policies. 

Dig deeper. Meta Advertising guidelines can be found in the Transparency Center. The Community Standards serve as a baseline for the ad policies. Advertisers must adhere to both to be eligible to run ads.

Why we care. Advertisers should adhere to all Meta advertising standards and guidelines. Failure to do so can result in your ad account or profile being banned. If you’re unsure if a certain ad, copy, or landing page meets the criteria, review the policies in full before launching your campaigns.

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Google review guidelines say discouraging negative or selectively soliciting positive reviews is not allowed

Thursday, October 6th, 2022

Google updated its policies around contributed local reviews with a new line that now says discouraging or somehow prohibiting negative reviews or selectively soliciting positive reviews is not allowed.

New policy. The new line that was added to the contributed guidelines is “discouraging or prohibiting negative reviews, or selectively soliciting positive reviews from customers.”

Is it new? Most local SEOs say this line is not actually so new, that they all knew that this was not allowed but now Google is making it crystal clear. Colan Nielsen said on Twitter that this is “not really new information but worth noting since Google is being more explicit about it.”

Why we care. Just be careful how you solicit or discourage customers around leaving or not leaving reviews for your local business(es). If you cross the line, it can lead to reviews being removed or even worse, a business ultimately being suspended from Google Search.

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Google Ad recommendations can now be applied as experiments

Thursday, October 6th, 2022

Curious about a Google ad recommendation but skeptical about its impact on your campaigns? Now, you can apply a recommendation as an experiment by using the Experiments page.

How it works. When you set up an experiment, you can test the recommendation without risking your main campaign’s performance. If the experiment is successful, you can apply the results by converting that experiment to a new campaign or transferring the experiment results to the original one.

Limited functionality. Right now the feature is only available on broad match and Target ROAS recommendations. In Googles Help doc, they said they’ll continue to roll out additional availability in the coming months.

Best practices. Google recommends following its best practices guide to set up, manage, and optimize your experiments. You can also read the help guide for additional resources.

Why we care. Recommendations were recently ranked as one of marketers’ least favorite parts of PPC. From pushy ad reps to recommendations that only served to increase an obscure optimization score, it’s no surprise that marketers are skeptical of the “all or nothing” approach.

This new feature is a great way to find out if some recommendations really could help improve campaign performance. Did Google finally listen to our complaints?

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Amazon advertising optimizations to crush Q4

Thursday, October 6th, 2022

When it comes to online shopping, there’s an undisputed leader. 

Boasting a 37.8% share of the ecommerce market, Amazon is far and away the biggest online retailer in the U.S. – and poised to surpass Walmart as the number one retailer overall by 2024. 

With so many people shopping for everyday goods on Amazon, setting aside a chunk of your advertising budget to take advantage of the site’s commercial traffic is a smart business strategy.

What you sell isn’t terribly important. People buy everything from Legos and binoculars to jewelry, clothing, and kitchen appliances on Amazon. 

Focus instead on how to sell your products and you’ll end the fourth quarter on a high note. 

Use sponsored campaigns to attract shoppers

You shouldn’t place all your eggs in one basket. But if you have to, sponsored product campaigns are the way to go. 

Sponsored products are cost-per-click ads that show up on Amazon’s results page when a customer searches for something. 

If you’re selling cheese graters and want your brand to appear at or near the top of the page whenever a consumer searches for generic “cheese graters,” sponsored ads can get you that prime real estate. They’re still the bread and butter of Amazon’s most successful ad campaigns. 

Sponsored product campaigns are easy to create and allow you to control your costs by setting a price on how much you’ll spend per click. They work well with:

• Sponsored brands that focus on your overall business rather than a single product.
• Sponsored display campaigns – interactive ads that can reach shoppers not just on Amazon, but on other sites as well.  

Data offers a bigger payoff than blind luck

When creating a sponsored product campaign, don’t just rely on luck. Sales and performance metrics tell the true story.

Getting cozy with data will help you understand your advertising cost of sale (ACoS) – an important tool in formulating a successful ad strategy. 

To calculate your Amazon ACoS, divide your advertising expenditure by the total revenue earned.

If you spend $20 on advertising and sell $100 worth of products, then your ACoS is 20%. Breaking it down further, this means you spend $0.20 for every $1.00 you make.

Obviously, the lower your ACoS, the higher your profit. 

While ACoS is an important metric, it isn’t the end all, be all.

You should look at other factors such as impressions, click-through rates (CTR) and conversions to determine your target ACoS.

Ideally, you’ll want to find your break-even point in order to know how much to allocate toward spending without losing money.  

Keep in mind that advertising impacts the organic ranking of your product. This is because, like you, Amazon wants to sell products!

If your product converts well and has a high sales velocity because you are selling a lot through advertising, Amazon will want to show your product beyond what you are paying for with advertising. 

Don’t miss out on opportunities

If you haven’t touched your ad campaigns in a while, you are due for optimization. This means taking steps to improve the performance of your campaigns.

We have found that many people only optimize if they think there is a problem, but that means you could be missing out on even better results and opportunities.

Ad campaign optimization ensures you are targeting the right audience and utilizing the right platforms and tools. It allows you to create personalized content and can go a long way toward reducing your customer acquisition costs.

There are several things you should look for when optimizing your ad campaigns. 

Underperforming SKUs

In most cases, underperforming SKUs should be paused. But the work doesn’t end there. Research the reasons why they were underperforming by asking yourself the following questions: 

• Which SKUs are performing better and why? Is it the budget? 
• Are the keywords in the campaign not as relevant? 
• Is that SKU simply not as good compared to the products it’s competing against? 
• Is the product detail page not optimized enough?

Bids

Since bidding on keywords is an auction-based format, you are never operating in a silo. 

Raising and lowering your keyword bids will make a big impact on your ACoS and overall results. The following tips can help: 

• Look for keywords that aren’t relevant or are not converting.
• Review the targeting. Are you using phrase/exact match for the high-converting gems? 
• Don’t forget about automatic targeting types. Loose match, close match and product targeting are all areas of opportunity. 
• Make sure your inventory levels are high and you are maintaining the buy box.
• Use negative keywords to your advantage. This is great for all campaigns but especially effective in automatic and broad acquisition campaigns. 

Use coupons and promotions

Everyone loves a deal – especially in this economy and during this time of year. 

Even if you aren’t participating in Cyber Monday, you can still offer coupons and promotions to help boost conversion rates and sales. 

When used with sponsored product ads, this is a great way to bring in more sales. 

Study the search query performance dashboard

If you are a brand registered seller, this report gives you valuable insights into:

• Your customer’s shopping journey in comparison to your competitors.
• Each search term’s volume and rank. 

You’ll also learn how potential buyers are discovering your products both organically and through paid ads. 

This will alert you to potential issues with your product detail page optimization. For example, a low click rate could mean the headline or image isn’t resonating with searchers. 

Manage your budgets properly

Web traffic will increase in the next few months and advertisers will be raising their budgets. The downside? 

You risk using up your budget allocation much faster than usual. This is true even on normal days, not just special events like Cyber Monday and Black Friday. 

If your budget won’t allow ads to run all day, make sure you are using dayparting. 

This strategy involves scheduling your ads for certain days of the week and certain times of the day when you get the most conversions. 

Now that you’ve learned how to optimize your ads for Amazon, it’s time to make some great impressions!

The post Amazon advertising optimizations to crush Q4 appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Google Analytics v3 Search Console report currently not showing query data

Thursday, October 6th, 2022

Google Analytics, specifically the Universal Analytics 3 version and not Google Analytics 4, is currently not showing any query data within the integrated Search Console reporting. If you try to access your query data within Acquisition > Search Console > Queries, you will see the data for the past several days is shown as “not set.”

What it looks like. Here is a screenshot I pulled from one of the profiles I have in my Google Analytics profiles:

Google is aware. Google’s John Mueller responded on Twitter about this saying “I don’t have any insight on this at the moment, but the team has been looking into it.”

Will Google fix it? A lot of SEOs and marketers are asking if this is something Google will fix. With Universal Analytics 3 sunsetting on July 1, 2023, some are wondering if Google will bother fixing this integration path between Google Search Console and Google Analytics 3.

The report does currently seem to work within Google Analytics 4 and you can also access the data directly in Google Search Console.

Why we care. If you depend on this report in Google Analytics 3, be aware that currently there is some sort of issue where the Search Console query data is not flowing to the report. It is unclear if or when this will be resolved, so you might want to plan an alternative approach to accessing this data. Either check Search Console directly or make the switch to GA4.

The post Google Analytics v3 Search Console report currently not showing query data appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

What should the title tag length be in 2023?

Wednesday, October 5th, 2022

The title tag is one of the most important SEO elements. It can have a great impact on your rankings. In my experience, optimizing title tags can give rankings a strong boost.

There are many different ways to approach optimizing a title tag. 

One is making sure they fit within the 55-60 character limit. Though other SEOs suggest it’s okay to have title tags that are up to 70 characters long.

There are also concerns that getting the title truncated in search results or having it rewritten by Google can negatively affect organic performance. 

In this post, we’ll explore the basis for such concerns, Google’s official statement about title length, and my findings after manually looking at 645 title tags on Page 1 of Google’s SERPs.

Example of title tag cut off in SERPs

Technically speaking, the number of characters for a title tag that Google can display in SERPs is measured in pixels. When your title tag is too long, Google can cut it off like this.

The title tag update and the aftermath

In August 2021, Google released an update aimed at title tags. This update enables Google to show a different title to users in SERPs than the one available in the HTML title tag. 

HTML title tags may get rewritten in SERPs when they are:

• Too long.
• Stuffed with keywords.
• Missing or containing repetitive “boilerplate” language (i.e., home pages might be called “Home”).

Once the update was released, it caused an uproar in the SEO community as many SEOs have reported incidents where the title rewrite went “horribly wrong.” This even led Google’s John Mueller to tweet about it:

Rob Woods reported an incident where the title tag was replaced with the URL slug:

Chatter in the SEO community showed many examples of Google replacing <title> tags in the search results with alternative page elements like H1 tags, image alt texts, image file names, and sometimes the selected text was not even within the source code of the page. The most noticeable insight from the title tag update is that “Google wants shorter titles displayed in SERPs.”

This has caused some panic in the SEO community. Many SEOs started to double down on the importance of avoiding title rewrites by making sure their titles are short and within the character limit.

The confusion

It is clear to everyone that Google wants shorter titles in SERPs.

But does that mean they will use the titles displayed in SERPs (which may be potentially cut off or rewritten) for rankings instead of the HTML title?

This has led many SEOs to assume that longer titles will either get cut off or rewritten, and Google will not consider them for rankings but will consider the new title displayed in SERPs for rankings instead.

What is Google’s official statement about title length?

In a Search Off the Record episode, Google’s John Mueller asked Gary Illyes about title tag length:

“I have a question that is, maybe, just a yes or no thing, Gary. Is there a value in having <i>title</i> tags that are longer than the displayable space and the sections of it?”

To which Illyes gave a very clear and precise answer, “Yes.”

He added, “The <i>title</i> length, that’s an externally made-up metrics… Technically, there’s a limit, like how long can it be anything in the page, but it’s not a small number. It’s not 160 characters or whatever– 100, 200, 20, or whatever.”

And recommended to “Try to keep it precise to the page, but I would not think too much about how long it is and whether it’s long enough or way too long. If it fills up your screen, then probably it’s too long, but if it just one sentence that fits on one line or two lines, you’re not going to get a manual action for it.”

If we refer to Google’s documentation on SERPs titles (a.k.a., title links), there’s no recommended length for the title tag.

Would having longer titles impact rankings?

If longer title tags can get cut off or rewritten in SERPs, wouldn’t that impact rankings? Luckily, Lily Ray popped this question on Twitter and got this reply from Glenn Gabe.

This is what Mueller said in Google’s SEO Office Hours from Dec. 11, 2020.

So whether your titles get cut off or rewritten in SERPs, Google still uses the HTML title tag for ranking considerations and not the titles shown in SERPs.

My analysis

I want to put this argument to rest. Hopefully, as an industry, we stop recommending to clients to “shorten” their title tags for the sake of it – just because there’s been a title length metric circulating in almost all online resources on the topic with no facts or evidence to support it.

I put together a random set of keywords and analyzed the titles on Page 1 of the SERPs for each of those keywords. 

Here are my findings after manually looking at 645 title tags:

• Google tends to display shorter titles. Out of the 645 titles displayed in SERPs that I analyzed, only 79 (12%) were above 60 characters, with 68 characters as the maximum length. 
• Out of the 645 URLs, 286 URLs (22%) had HTML title tags longer than 60 characters, with 139 characters as the maximum length. This means you can go above the 60-character title length limit, get cut off or rewritten, and still rank on the first page.
• If we filter out pages that didn’t have any title tags at all, there were instances where Google actually increased the title tag length. So even shorter titles can get rewritten. This is very common in LinkedIn profile page titles. Example:
  • For this URL [https://ca.linkedin.com/in/michael-kuch-387740207] the HTML title tag was “Michael Kuch | LinkedIn” but Google decided to display a longer more descriptive title as follows:

• The length of the titles displayed in SERPs increased in 103 URLs of the 645 sample URLs. This is 16% of the entire sample. 
• The most common length of titles displayed in SERPs in this sample is between 58-60 characters (see histogram below).

To view the complete sample, check this Google Sheet.

Title tag length in 2023

In summary, you do not need to stick to a 55-60 character limit for your title tags. Your titles can be – and should be – as long as needed within reason.

Title tags are among the few assets which highly impact rankings that we still have some control over. Let’s make the best out of them.

If you’re worried about getting cut off or having your title rewritten, know that these are secondary concerns. Ranking well gets the highest priority. 

Optimize your titles to rank first even if you go above the 60-70 character limit. Then, experiment to adjust how your titles look in SERPs.

But if you don’t rank, it doesn’t matter how long your titles are anyway.

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