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You can change cookie expiration and update settings in GA4

Monday, August 1st, 2022

Instead of using the Google Tag Manager or global site tag code for cookie expiration or settings, you can now update them in GA4.

Google announced last week that if you want to make changes to the default cookie settings, you can do so right in the GA4 property column section of your account.

Read the announcement and help guide. You can read the announcement and learn how to change these settings here.

Why we care. Making these changes can now be done faster and easier through GA4 instead of contacting your developer or making updates to the global site tag.

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SEO webinar on getting quality backlinks

Friday, July 29th, 2022

Live Webinar!

Getting backlinks is one of the most challenging and time-consuming tasks in SEO. So how do you get started on creating a successful outreach program that brings in quality links?

Join Purelinq’s Kevin Rowe, who will walk you through creating a scalable outreach program to create a natural link profile, meet minimum quality requirements and drive maximum impact.

Register today for “Everything You Should Know About Building Quality Links at Scale,” presented by Purelinq.

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8 steps to a successful entity-first strategy for SEO and content

Thursday, July 28th, 2022

Entity search can be a massive competitive advantage. But you first need to build your entity-based strategy. 

This article will cover how to create a robust entity-first strategy to help our content and SEO efforts.

Most common challenges search and content marketers face

Relevant, topical content, discovery based on customer intent is still the biggest challenge we face as search marketers. 

Content relevancy, in my mind, means the content is personalized, must tell a story, should be scannable, readable, provides images, and the layout can be consumed on any device.

Here are five outcomes we aim to accomplish with content:

The most common struggle we all face is determining what type of content to create or add. 

Aligning strategies with search engines 

Search engines are evolving and content marketing strategies need to align across all verticals from popularity and quality to the intent behind the query and the overall page experience. 

Search engine priorities, results, algorithms and needs have evolved over time.

Evolution of search engines and impact

As users search on screenless devices and spoken queries increase, search engines use artificial intelligence and machine learning to try and replicate how humans think, act and react. 

Search engines must decode a sentence (or paragraph) long query and serve results that best match it. This is where entities come in.

Entities are things search engines can understand without any ambiguity independent of language. Even when a website has a wealth of content, search engines need to understand the context behind it, identify the entities within the content, draw connections between them and map them to the query of the searcher.

Deploying schemas and marking up the entities within your content gives search engines the context and helps them understand your content better.

A convergence of technology and content

Content, where entities are not marked with schemas, tends to underperform.

Similarly, deploying schemas on content that does not contain all the relevant entities or does not provide all the information will also not have maximum impact.

Entity optimization uses advanced nested schemas deployed on content that meets the searchers’ needs and contains all the relevant topics and entities.

Let’s use a live project as an example and show what we accomplished for one of our clients. 

8 steps to developing an entity-first strategy 

We deployed the eight steps given below as an entity-first-strategy for one of our client in the health care vertical to help them get the best topical coverage and visibility. We started by identifying the most relevant schema in their industry followed by determining the gaps within their content for both schema and entities.  

Eight steps for an entity-first strategy

1. Identified schema vocabulary 

 We created a list of all applicable schemas in the healthcare industry. 

2. Determined the schema gaps 

We identified the schema gaps by comparing the current site content against the applicable schemas. 

3. Mapping schema 

Once we identified the schema gaps, we identified the most relevant pages to deploy the unused schemas.

4. Market opportunity and potential sizing 

We used in-depth keyword research and analysis of current content performance.

Map content based on informational, navigational and transactional content.

It is critical to see how your current branded and non-branded content is performing and what your focus should be based on business goals.  

Market opportunity and potential sizing

We identified the pages that could see the most impact and potential from topic, entity, and schema optimization.

5. Map topic gaps 

Once we identified the best potential pages, we cross-referenced the gaps in the content by analyzing the topics and entities covered by other ranking websites. 

6. Identify Content Opportunities

We enhanced the page architecture by adding relevant content elements, such as images, headings and lists. 

 Page layout showing schema and content opportunities 

Topic/entity gaps covered:

Schema gaps covered:

7. Content enhancement 

Optimized the content by incorporating missing topics and entities

8. Create better than the best website page 

We then created the perfect in-depth page, rich with relevant topics the target audience is searching for.

Measuring entity strategy Impact

When we measured the impact of adding entities and schema into our strategy for this healthcare company, we saw a 66% lift in visibility and inclusions in rich results.

Overall impact of new page.

While the above image is just one example of the impact entities and schema can have, you can see below how many different industries benefit by deploying schema and entity coverage. 

Impact of schemas across various industries.

Key takeaways

Creating content is more than writing. It is robust when you add in all the elements from design, development, topical entity coverage and schema. All these elements need to align to give optimum results. 

Keeping organization in mind, cluster pages of relevant content and connect them through pillar pages, ensuring to take advantage of the interlinking opportunities.

Treat each page as the main category page with several relevant pages linked. Adding interlinking helps in discovery and relevancy.

Once you have an entity-first strategy for content, you need to think about how to scale the process of:

Entity optimization frameworks for large enterprise sites 

In my next article, we will explore how you can deploy, measure and report performance, enhance where needed and scale your entity-first strategy.  

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Webinar: Unlock the power of TikTok for your social strategy

Thursday, July 28th, 2022

With 800 million active users worldwide, TikTok is influencing a whole new generation of social media users and consumers.

This webinar will break down how content and influencers drive engagement and influence consumer behavior. Learn how to measure your competitive share of voice, engage consumers and drive revenue growth for your business.

Register today for “Unlock the Power of TikTok for Your Social Strategy” presented by NetBase Quid.

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




Google Merchant Center no longer disapproves login required and restricted purchase free product listings

Thursday, July 28th, 2022

Google has updated its Merchant Center policy to no longer automatically disapproved free listings for products that have login required and/or restricted purchase access. Google said it now will list these products as active but with the caveat that they may “have limited visibility on Google.”

What changed. Google said previously, Google Merchant Center accounts with the “Login required” or the “Restricted purchase”  issue were automatically disapproved.

Now, free listings in Google Merchant Center accounts with this issue status are still active, but their products have limited visibility on Google. This only impacts free listings.

What is login required. Google explained “Login required” issue status means that customers visiting your store website need to provide account access information, such as entering a username and password or installing a program, before being able to view your products.

What is restricted purchase. Google explained “Restricted purchase” issue status means that the ability to buy products on your store website is limited to certain customers as defined by location, device type, information provided, or some other exclusive criteria. Fields like business information should be optional and content should be consistent and available to visitors in all locations.

Why we care. If you have been juggling these policies on your e-commerce site with these login required and/or restricted purchase listings in Google Merchant Center, you now should know that the status won’t be disapproved. Instead, Google will show them as active but these free listings may not show so highly and often in Google Search and Google Shopping.

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GA4 now shows Performance Max and Smart Shopping data

Thursday, July 28th, 2022

Everyones favorite new tool Google Analytics 4 is now showing performance data from Performance Max and Smart Shopping campaigns.

Where. To view PMax and SS campaigns, navigate to Acquisition > Traffic acquisition reportyou’ll see that the data is organized by the Session default channel grouping dimension. (Click + to choose a secondary dimension.) Performance Max and Smart Shopping campaigns are under Cross Network.

Google announcement. This is one that Google may or may not have forgotten to publicly announce, but Charles Farina discovered and posted about it on Linkedin this week. You can review the GA4 default channel groupings help doc here.

Why we care. The rollout of GA4 has a lot of us less than enthused. Mix that in with the elusiveness of Performance Max and you have yourself some pretty PO’d advertisers. While the addition of this data gets us one step closer to full visibility, let’s just see how the information is reported and attributed.

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GA4 brings new and familiar concepts to the future of analytics

Wednesday, July 27th, 2022

Many of the same concepts that you may be used to from Universal Analytics exist in Google Analytics 4. There are, however, several new concepts to GA4.

This article will detail some familiar and not-so-familiar concepts that GA4 brings to the table.

If you’re new to GA4, I’d encourage you to first check out this article to get up to speed on some of the differences between Universal Analytics and GA4, otherwise, read on. 

Similar concepts, slightly different application

Let’s start with the familiar by looking at concepts that exist in both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4.

But first, a small caveat: Universal Analytics has the ability to filter data in a robust manner at the view level. Google Analytics 4 only has a few filters currently available at the property level (there are no views in GA4), and so any differences you may see in your data should keep your current UA filters in mind. 

With that being said, let’s dive into some familiar metrics:

Users

In Universal Analytics, the Users metric looks at the total number of users during the selected time period. In Google Analytics 4, the Users metric is actually split into two: Total Users and Active Users.

Active Users is the primary Users metric in GA4 and what you will see used in the default reports within the GA4 UI. Active Users are the users during the time period that have had an engaging session on your site in the past 28 days.

For most sites, these numbers will likely be close. But if you see differences between UA and GA4, this could be a reason why.

Sessions

In Universal Analytics, a session is a period of time that a user is actively engaged with your site. There are several things that may end a session, such as an inactive 30-minute time period, a change of UTMs or the session breaking at midnight.

In Google Analytics 4, a session is determined via the session_start event. GA4 does not restart a session with a change of UTMs and does not break the session at midnight, but it does look for an inactive time period of 30+ minutes to restart the session.

Due to the varying ways a session is started between the two property types, total session counts may look quite different between UA and GA4 depending on how often you may have been subject to the restart criteria in UA – definitely keep this in mind as you compare numbers between the two platforms. 

Pageviews

These should be pretty similar concepts between UA and GA4. The biggest difference here is that if you are using GA4 to track both app and web, GA4 combines the pageview and screenview metrics into Views. If you are only tracking web for both UA and GA4, the numbers should look pretty consistent between platforms.  

Less familiar concepts

Conversions

Conversions are the new Goals, but please note that they are not equal.

A Conversion in GA4 is simply an event that has been marked as a conversion. This is as simple as toggling a button on or off to note that the event is now a conversion. 

Two main things to be aware of here for the differences between Goals in UA and Conversions in GA4:

Engaged sessions

This is a new concept to GA4. An Engaged Session is defined as “the number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least two pageviews or screenviews.”

This new metric allows you to get a better understanding of the sessions that are higher quality and/or more engaged on your site content. Engagement Rate is the percentage of Engaged Sessions. The inverse of Engagement Rate is Bounce Rate (see below). 

A blending of the two

Bounce Rate

I need to start this one off by saying that I have never been a fan of bounce rate (or time on site metrics for similar reasons). I think that there are many places where the bounce rate calculation in Universal Analytics can lead you astray in your analysis. Simo Ahava even has a funny little website dedicated to showing you what a good bounce rate is.  

But I do recognize that some businesses (especially verticals like Publishers) rely heavily on Bounce Rate. And I know SEOs tend to like this metric.

Google recognizes the need for this metric too. That is why just this month, they’ve released Bounce Rate back into the wild of GA4 (it had previously been considered a deprecated metric for GA4/wasn’t built into GA4 initially). 

Here is where I need to stress that this is NOT the same bounce rate that you had in Universal Analytics.

Not.

At.

All. 

In Universal Analytics, Bounce Rate was “the percentage of single-page sessions in which there was no interaction with the page.” Every “bounced” session had a duration of 0 seconds for the total time on site calculation. This meant that even if a user came to your website, hung around for 5 minutes reading every word on your home page, but didn’t click on anything or cause any other event or pageview to trigger, they would be considered a bounce.

To say this metric was flawed is an understatement.

In GA4, Bounce Rate is a simple calculation that is the inverse of Engagement Rate. Earlier, I mentioned “Engaged Sessions” – 10 seconds or more than one event or pageview. These are the basis of Engagement Rate. This means that Bounce Rate is the percentage of sessions that are considered to be not engaged.  

Why does this matter?

Bounce Rate is now a much more useful metric to show you how many people did not engage with your website. The people who came, read everything on your homepage for 5 minutes and then left are now considered an engaged session, so they will not be counted as a bounce. 

While imperfect, it’s a much better definition of what a bounce actually is, helping you as the analyst to better understand who is and who is not engaging with your site content.

Hurray for improved metrics in GA4!

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Google just announced a Revenue Verification Report to confirm buyer and publisher ad spend

Wednesday, July 27th, 2022

Today Google announced that they have created Confirming Gross Revenue – a new solution to give ad buyers and publishers a way to verify that there were no hidden fees taken from their transactions within Ads Manager.

View the report. Advertisers can view the new Revenue Verification Report to see the total gross revenue received from a specific publisher. Google says that the ad buyer and media publisher can then come together to verify that the media cost from the buyers’ report matches the gross revenue the publisher received. The idea here is that if the numbers match, the buyer can assume that their full media spend reached the publisher and no hidden fees were taken.

Early testing. Google is testing the new reporting with Display and Video 360, but are collaborating with other demand-side platforms, sell-side platforms, publishers, and agencies to implement similar reporting with other partners.

Thanks, Google? Google claims that (on average) 15% of advertisers’ ad spend is unattributable, and they estimate about half of the revenue from display advertising is kept by the advertising technology providers themselves. They claim that while the Google Ads platform doesn’t take fees, they “can’t speak for other companies in the space.”

Even when ads flow through both our buy-side and sell-side services, publishers receive most of the revenue. In fact in 2019, when marketers used Google Ads or Display & Video 360 to buy display ads on Google Ad Manager, publishers kept over 69 percent of the revenue generated. And when publishers use our Ad Manager platform to sell ads directly to advertisers, they keep even more of the revenue.  

Google has also participated in industry transparency standards “across buyside and sellside businesses, like ads.txt / app-ads.txt, sellers.json and SupplyChain Object into Ads Data Hub to help marketers using Display & Video 360 see the steps their impressions took before arriving on a publisher’s site.” The objective of these transparency initiatives is to give advertisers better visibility into buying decisions and strengthen fraud detection. 

What Google says. “​​Confirming Gross Revenue is one part of our efforts to address concerns over the lack of transparency that we have heard from publishers, agencies, advertisers and regulators. Over the next few months, we’ll continue to work with the industry on shaping this new solution and, more broadly, initiatives to instill more confidence in online advertising. Bringing greater transparency to advertisers, agencies and publishers is core to our approach.  We welcome participation from others who want to work together to advance an ad-supported internet that works for everyone.” Allan Thygesen, President, Americas & Global Partners. 

Read the full blog post. You can learn more and read the full post here.

Why we care. Do we? Maybe I’m wrong but I’ve never been fortunate enough to question where my ad dollars are going, and I don’t know any other agencies or advertisers that have. While I don’t agree with some of the websites and platforms my ads end up on, I never considered that mysterious fees were the explanation for any mismatch in revenue reporting.

On the upside, this new report might call out shady behavior of platforms that have been taking fees or a cut of ad spend. It doesn’t hurt to check out the new reports if you use Display or Video 360 and see what information they provide about where your ad spend is going.

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Revolutionizing customer experiences at every touchpoint

Wednesday, July 27th, 2022

Providing a memorable and consistent customer experience is more crucial and challenging than ever.

Businesses must consistently adapt by adopting new technologies, reliably benchmarking performance, and listening to critical customer feedback to deliver unparalleled value and achieve positive growth.

Highly personalized, seamless experiences are at the forefront of customer expectations, which means businesses must evolve to provide connected journeys every step of the way. A comprehensive set of solutions that seamlessly mix local marketing and customer experience technology wasn’t available; until now. 

Local marketing and customer experience technology power unparalleled local experiences

Every customer’s experience begins the moment they discover your brand. A customer may conduct an online search to learn more about a business or read customer reviews. The experience doesn’t end once a purchase is made. Customers have the power to be a brand’s best advocate or its most vocal critic – either way those experiences are invaluable. Having the tools accessible to better understand your customers’ pain points allows your business to engage more effectively at every touchpoint and build a loyal following. 

Forsta, the global leader in customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX) and market research, is combining capabilities with Rio SEO, the industry-leading local marketing platform for enterprise brands. Together, the combined technologies power a seamless customer experience solution, enabling brands to engage customers throughout the entire buyer’s journey, from discovery to purchase and through to brand reputation and advocacy.

Rio SEO and Forsta are reshaping the local search landscape by bringing to market the industry’s only end-to-end local marketing and customer experience solution for global enterprise brands.

We call this unique combination Local Experience (LX), and it’s a game-changer for enterprise brands looking to optimize their business and deepen customer relationships.

Rio SEO’s Open Local Platform supplements Forsta’s Human Experience platform by enabling customers to seamlessly expand their customer experience programs into the discovery and consideration phases earlier in the purchase funnel and through to the post-purchase brand reputation and advocacy stage. Rio SEO’s local marketing solutions drive discovery and sales at the local level, at scale and complement Forsta’s technology to support customer engagement and loyalty post-sale.

Forsta’s market research and customer experience solutions, recognized as a Leader in the 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Voice of the Customer, take you from data, to insight, to action by helping you understand your customer, see who they really are, and better respond to their needs.

Enhance your discoverability, attract new customers, and build long-lasting relationships with Forsta and Rio SEO’s LX solutions. Visit rioseo.com/forsta to learn more.

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Your guide to the first 90 days as an enterprise SEO director

Wednesday, July 27th, 2022

If you’ve enjoyed every SEO job you’ve had in the first 90 days, kindly remove yourself from this article for being a liar. 

We good? Awesome. 

Did you know that 33% of employees quit their job within the first 90 days that they’re employed. 

That’s a sobering fact. 

The kind that makes you want to get not-sober as you kickstart for your first 90 days as an enterprise SEO Director. 

Enterprise SEO departments have a high turnover rate due to cultural challenges because other departments don’t understand SEO or how to work together. 

At the risk of stating the obvious, your first 90 days as an enterprise SEO Director sets the stage for the rest of your time at the company. 

Have you found yourself asking these questions before:

Over the next few articles, I’ll help you answer these (and more) questions, based on my experience as an enterprise SEO Director. Starting with

Become a strategic player

In due time, you can show up to Zoom meetings acting like “the champ is here,” but not in the first 90 days.  

You’ve got massive plans afoot for an SEO makeover for your enterprise company. 

It’s a lot to take in.

So I recommend starting with developing relationships. You want your enterprise SEO department to be seen as a strategic player on a bigger team. 

Allow me to paint you a picture. 

It’s your second week as the new SEO Director. SEO is a brand new department at the enterprise company. Everyone is excited to have you join the team. 

Until you start to notice other departments are already doing SEO, but do not realize they are doing SEO. 

In the second month as the new SEO Director, you present your observations of the challenges and offer new solutions to the executive team. Your presentation goes well. 

Later, you find out those other departments are not happy with you presenting the challenges you see in their department. 

This is not what you want to see in your first 90 days as a new enterprise SEO Director. This is a common problem SEO professionals face as SEO is still relatively new in enterprise companies. 

SEO Directors need to position themselves as a strategic partner that flows and moves with other departments. 

You will lose credibility and trust without empathy

Getting SEO done on a website with millions of webpages requires other teams’ resources. 

Enterprise SEO teams are never self-contained. Instead, SEO departments lean on the resources of other departments to get things done. 

The hardest part of my job as an enterprise SEO Director is selling SEO to other teams. I have to persuade other teams that my goals can help impact their goals. 

So how do we find common ground?

The key to finding common ground with empathy. 

You need to understand what your engineering, editorial, design and other teams care about. You need to look at their goals and priorities and build your goals and priorities to align with them. 

If you come to the table with audits, deliverables and recommendations, you start to lose social capital. You’re turning people off by getting too into the SEO terminology weeds. 

For example, instead of saying “I need to set the SEO strategy,” say “I need to align our SEO strategy with your work so my team can make better decisions.” 

Let’s say that the marketing team’s Q3 goal is to scale the international audience. 

As an SEO, you might see opportunities in site architecture, page layouts and technical improvements. 

Ask yourself: Are there SEO improvements we can make that support the scaling of international audiences? 

You need to overlap your SEO opportunities with the marketing team’s strategy. 

But your deliverable is documentation of the process into the strategy. You don’t want to skew the conversation by talking about deliverables as audits or keyword research. Your communication is the deliverable. 

Your SEO deliverables don’t exist for change. Your SEO deliverables exist to create documentation and standardize the process. 

This way of looking at SEO deliverables will help set the landscape to get the resources you need to execute in your first 90 days. You may need to negotiate for resources.

As the SEO lead, you want to communicate that you understand the strategic initiative and that your strategy supports it. 

My SEO Director 30-60-90-day plan

Days 1–30

Focus: Learning

Priorities: Get up to speed on needs and challenges for the Content and SEO team and [Company Name] as a company. Understand the expectations [Your Boss’s Name] has for me, learn how the internal processes and procedures currently work, and start to explore some of the challenges facing [Company Name] and Content and SEO.

Learning goals:

Performance goals:

Personal goals:

Days 31–60

Focus: Contributing

Priorities: Perform my role as Director of SEO at full capacity, with a decreased need for guidance. Start to explore how I can make a unique impact within the SEO channels and [Company Name].

Learning goals:

Performance goals:

Personal goals:

Days 61–90

Focus: Taking initiative

Priorities: Start assuming more autonomy and finding small ways to practice leadership skills. Start to explore SEO goals for the rest of the year.

Learning goals:

Performance goals:

Personal goals:

Your first 90 Days as an SEO Director is a fresh start for you and your company

Most enterprise companies don’t have an SEO strategy at an executive level.

During your first 90 days, you want to build a foundation for your SEO strategy that aligns with the bigger marketing and product strategy. 

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