Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Thursday, June 30th, 2022
A lawsuit filed by 1-800 Contacts against online retailer Warby Parker has been dismissed by a federal judge.
At issue was Warby Parker’s use of 1-800 Contacts’ branded keywords to redirect searchers to the Warby Parker online store, thereby “confusing” potential customers.
The decision. Kevin Castel, senior judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled against 1-800 Contacts, saying that customers are unlikely to think that they’re buying from 1-800 Contacts when they click on a Warby Parker ad.
Castel also said the companies’ trademarks were too dissimilar to confuse contact-lens buyers, who are likely to pay close attention to what they are purchasing and noted that Warby Parker’s name is clearly displayed in the search results and on its website.
Castel added that prospective customers will take the time to figure out that the search results link to Warby Parker’s website, and will therefore discern that they are buying from contacts from Warby Parker’s website.
In my own Google search, I was unable to mimic the results that this suit was based on and didn’t find any Warby Parker ads initially.
1-800 Contacts response. A spokesperson for 1-800 Contacts said after the ruling that the decision by the judge was “inconsistent with several well-established legal principles,” and that the company is “evaluating appropriate next steps, including whether to appeal.”
You can read more about the ruling from Reuters here.
Sounds familiar. Competitive keyword advertising lawsuits rarely turn out well for the trademark owners in court. Earlier this year we reported on an attempt by Edible Arrangements to sue Google over theft, conversion and racketeering. Edible Arrangements lost.
Why we care. This is the latest reminder that, in general, using a competitor’s trademarks in PPC ads is not trademark infringement from a legal standpoint. You can visit the Google trademark help document if you find yourself facing a similar issue. Still, tread carefully if you use another brand’s keywords in your ad strategy if you want to steer clear of fighting lawsuits.
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Thursday, June 30th, 2022
Personalizing your marketing campaigns for one customer is easy, but how about one hundred or thousands of customers across multiple marketing channels?
Work smarter, not harder, by using artificial intelligence (AI) as part of your martech stack and giving your customers the unique experiences they crave.
Register today for “Use Data to Create Next-Level Customer Experiences at Scale,” presented by MoEngage.
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Thursday, June 30th, 2022
While marketers have overcome many challenges in recent years, sadly, the second half of 2022 is poised to be very different from the first. Unprecedented macroeconomic factors such as high inflation, food and energy costs and the war in Ukraine are impacting our business.
Hiring is starting to slow down, and the pressure is on. There is a good chance that you’ll probably be asked to do more with less, as budgets may be prioritized and cut in certain areas.
On the flip side, Google Search ad spend continues to rise. It’s the channel that is always on, the channel with the highest conversion rate and the channel that won’t go away.
This part of the marketing mix is reliable and constant, but are the campaigns delivering success? Are they contributing to sales? Contributing to leads?
Auction Insights is a powerful tool we’ve all come to use for understanding campaign performance against competitors. Search intelligence adds another layer of granularity to ensure you’re one step ahead of your competition.
Join Ashley Fletcher, VP of Marketing at Adthena, in his informative SMX Advanced session to explore three easy search intelligence tactics that will help you dominate your competitive landscape. He also shares use-cases from L’Oreal and Avanti West Coast trains.
After this session, you’ll be able to save time with competitive monitoring, track performance over time and see your competitor’s spend and ad copy. The presentation will help you use data to make better ad campaign decisions and dig into search intelligence to understand why certain ads are successful to ultimately dominate the competition.
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Thursday, June 30th, 2022
U.S. Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr wants Apple and Google to ban TikTok from their app stores.
Why? The request is due to the social media app’s “pattern of surreptitious data practices,” according to Carr.
TikTok is not just another video app.
That’s the sheep’s clothing.
It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.
I’ve called on @Apple & @Google to remove TikTok from their app stores for its pattern of surreptitious data practices. pic.twitter.com/Le01fBpNjn
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) June 28, 2022
The request also comes after BuzzFeed News reported that U.S. data had been accessed from China.
TikTok had been adamant that any U.S. user data was kept in the U.S. But employees of TikTok have been able to access nonpublic data about TikTok users, according to leaked audio.
“As you know TikTok is an app that is available to millions of Americans through your app stores, and it collects vast troves of sensitive data about those US users. TikTok is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance — an organization that is beholden to the Communist Party of China and required by the Chinese law to comply with PRC’s surveillance demands,” Carr said in a letter addressed to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook. “It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data.”
TikTok’s response. TikTok said it was moving all U.S. user data to Oracle servers, and they would delete all U.S. user data from their centers.
TikTok caught in a national security loop? In 2020, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning TikTok from the US, citing an investigation in 2019 over national security concerns. TikTok’s response: the order was issued without any due process.
Last year, President Biden revoked the ban and replaced the order with requirements that the Commerce Department review apps that may pose national security risks.
TikTok, Apple, and Google have not yet responded to the request.
Hypocrisy? Apparently, only U.S. companies can access and harvest boatloads of U.S. user data. But in all seriousness, the calls for a ban seem to be hypocritical at best. While we understand the need to limit national security threats from foreign adversaries, where do we draw the line? Will all foreign apps be required to keep their U.S. data in the country?
Why we care. Brands have invested time and resources into creating a TikTok presence due to its explosive growth and enormous user base. However, TikTok as a discovery channel could go away should the government get its way. That makes this something that businesses, marketers and advertisers need to watch and strategize for possible changes.
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Wednesday, June 29th, 2022
Facebook is testing a new sidebar that helps users find groups quicker and easier. The sidebar lists your groups and their latest activity like posts or chats. You can also pin your favorite groups so you can access them quicker, and even create your own.
The case for groups. Facebook groups aren’t new. Groups are used to get users with similar interests, and hobbies together, in a place where they can collaborate, communicate, sell, or meet in person. This reorganization doesn’t change the functionality of groups or how they work, but reorganizes them within the Facebook platform and offers a few new features.
How groups are organized. In the new sidebar, you’ll be able to easily see a menu that takes you to links for events, shops, chats, or other channels within the group.
Within their groups, admins can create individual channels to allow smaller, more casual interactions. This is meant to drive deeper discussions and organize the group around sub-topics of interests and demographics.
New group features
Community chat. Message and collaborate with other group members in private, smaller channels based on a sub-topic or interest.
Community audio. This allows admins and members to hold audio conversations in real-time.
Community feed. Just like with a normal Facebook feed, the community feeds allow you to browse activity within your selected channel.
Launch date TBD. There isn’t any information on when these new features will be launched to the public fully. But you can read the announcement here.
Why we care. Businesses with a large Facebook presence can take advantage of these new features and create groups around their product or service. There’s no guarantee they’ll result in any measurable success, but creating a community around their brand may be a way to keep people engaged.
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Wednesday, June 29th, 2022
1 out of 4 people in the U.S. lives with some type of disability. Because consumers are online now more than in previous years, your clients’ websites must be accessible to everyone.
It’s not merely a matter of being compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). It’s also good business—because web accessibility can deliver better results and enhance search engine optimization.
Join a panel of agency, compliance and disability leaders to hear more about how web accessibility can work for your agency and your clients.
Register today for “Agencies: Grow Revenue Streams Through Web Accessibility & Compliance,” presented by accessiBe.
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Wednesday, June 29th, 2022
Web analytics company SimilarWeb acquired rank tracking and monitoring tool Rank Ranger last month. Terms of the deal, announced on May 16, were not revealed.
I recently had a chance to conduct a Q&A with SimilarWeb VP, GM Digital Marketing Solutions Baruch Toledano, as well as Rank Ranger CEO and founder Shay Harel.
Toledano and Harel discussed what the acquisition means for both companies and their customers. They also discuss some of the biggest challenges and opportunities in SEO right now. Here are the highlights.
SimilarWeb
The company, founded in 2007, has more than 1,000 employees. It also has more than 2,500 customers around the world, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, including Adidas, Adobe, Booking.com, DHL, Google, MGM and Pepsico.
According to Toledano, SimilarWeb’s mission is to:
- “Empower digital growth by providing decision-makers at all levels with 360° visibility into the digital world. We provide granular insights for any website, mobile app, industry and market globally.”
Why did SimilarWeb acquire RankRanger? Toledano said:
- “Rank Ranger provides SEO managers with search term tracking and monitoring. The fidelity of their data and ability to identify ongoing SERP changes has been instrumental to many organic search marketers. We believe that by combining SimilarWeb traffic analysis features and our datasets with ongoing rank performance, SEO managers will have a complete set of insights to design, measure, report and improve their marketing campaigns. From planning to on-going monitoring to actionable insights to improving rank positioning.”
This acquisition provides many SimilarWeb customers with a comprehensive view into their business decisions, Toledano said.
- “For marketers, this means tying campaign strategy research activities with ongoing performance and improvements. It means expanded topic ideation and tracking of content visibility on search. For other roles leveraging our solution, it provides additional reporting granularity, allowing for close monitoring of companies, products, investments, compliance and competitive insights. For example, consideration for potential and ongoing investments and their digital competitors’ presence; Brand and their affiliates’ compliance and monitoring for marketing the brand’s products; close inspection of trends as they emerge in search or other channels and many other use cases.”
What is Toledano’s favorite thing about Rank Ranger?
- “By far, the ranking granularity and all associated reports. Also, I like the fidelity they have for some of the unique engines like Google For Jobs that allows marketers to optimize across specialty search sites.”
This was the second acquisition for SimilarWeb within six months. In November, SimilarWeb acquired Embee Mobile, a mobile insights provider. That acquisition was meant to strengthen its mobile app intelligence offering.
Rank Ranger
The company, founded in 2009, has “hundreds” of customers (the company declined to be more specific), including H&M, Reckitt and Motley Fool.
All of Rank Ranger’s employees (more than a dozen developers and SEO specialists) now work out of SimilarWeb’s Tel Aviv office. All that has really changed is that Rank Ranger is now a SimilarWeb-owned company.
Harel views SimilarWeb as a complementary software to Rank Ranger, which allows for new opportunities to develop new SEO tools and analytics (e.g., traffic analysis, competitor intelligence, advanced reporting).
Here’s how Harel summed up what Rank Ranger does:
- “Rank Ranger is an all-in-one SEO and digital marketing tool designed to give businesses a strategic advantage through advanced reporting and analytics.”
For many startups, the goal is to get acquired. But that was never the goal for Rank Ranger, Harel said:
- “We have worked closely with SimilarWeb over the past few years, and the synergies were a fit, and at some point, we saw a great opportunity.”
I asked Harel what he remembered most about the early days of the company. At the time, SEO was still in its early stages and there was a growing demand from marketers for tools that helped them perform daily and monthly tasks:
- “It was very exciting to work with digital marketing agencies, understand their needs and build tools for our early clients that could help them with automation of their daily workflows. The SEO space has been evolving so quickly every year and we had to adapt and constantly innovate with new metrics and insights to keep up with the rapid pace of change.”
Harel also shared a couple of highlights from his time at Rank Ranger:
- “On the technical side, our Insight Graph innovation has become a best-in-class reporting tool, having a blend of sources all-in-one marketing report. As for the business, the most exciting moment in the early days was when we closed Booking.com as a customer in a short timeframe. It was a challenging case of a custom solution where we excelled in our efforts to come up with a solution, which led to a new offering concept and many new businesses resulting from that use case.”
So what is Harel’s favorite thing about SimilarWeb?
- “Without a doubt, the keyword freshness and database is amazing and very different from “our” SEO world. Normal SEO tools are building keyword datasets based on Keyword Planner, Google Suggest/Related, Search Console, etc. These tools, by nature, have so much noise, it’s like an ocean that you need to invest so much time on research to get value. With SimilarWeb’s clickstream data, you get a clean dataset that is also up to date, that can be segmented from a very different angle. I believe that in the coming years, it will become the best common practice used by SEOs.”
The biggest SEO challenges and opportunities right now
According to Toldedano:
- “Aligning and telling this story in the design of every marketing campaign is their biggest challenge but also presents the biggest opportunity. In addition, bringing other corporate roles outside of marketing to benefit from SEO insights, can drive better business decisions and promote its prominence in the organization.”
He added that challenges are opportunities where SEO can become a pivotal role within the marketing team:
- “SEOs can help align cross-channel marketing activities to deliver the most impact with other marketing roles combining paid and organic activities. SEOs can empower CMOs with relevant insights when crafting mixed marketing strategies, particularly for the mid and long-term traffic and brand awareness goals.
Because SEO sits at the junction between creative, analytical and technical disciplines of marketing, it provides the best representation of the voice of customers and what it means to each of these disciplines, Toldedano said.
- “To drive stronger alignment of marketing campaigns activities, the customer needs and expressions on organic search are the most genuine and long-lasting form of marketing that typically deliver the most impactful result.”
Keeping up with Google is the biggest challenge, according to Harel. More specifically, changes to SERP features and the display of organic results.
- “These changes are creating new opportunities and invite more competition on keywords and obviously demotes monopolies on certain keyword spaces. For example, in 2015 there were 10 organic results and one Featured Snippet = a total of 11 domains competing. Today you have 10 organic results, a block of related questions, a featured snippet and new boxes that can take the number of domains to 20 and more! That’s a lot of competition on a single keyword.”
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Wednesday, June 29th, 2022
Yoast SEO, one of the more popular SEO plugins for WordPress, has finally adopted IndexNow, the Microsoft backed protocol to submit content to search engines. This is available in the premium version of Yoast SEO version 19.2, the company announced.
What is IndexNow. IndexNow provides a method for websites owners to instantly inform search engines about latest content changes on their website. IndexNow is a simple ping protocol so that search engines know that a URL and its content has been added, updated, or deleted, allowing search engines to quickly reflect this change in their search results. The co-sharing of IndexNow went fully live in January 2022.
Integrations. Why Microsoft built its own plugin for WordPress sites to use IndexNow, Yoast decided to build it in to its premium plugin. Why did Yoast add it now? “The latest change to the protocol is the second significant development that made us change our minds about IndexNow. The IndexNow team changed the endpoint of the API from pinging each individual-supported search engine to a single API managed by the protocol. This means that sites only have to ping a single site, making the process much more efficient. All of this fits into our view of a sustainable crawling and indexing solution, so now is the time to implement IndexNow with a new integration in Yoast SEO,” the company explained.
What is IndexNow. IndexNow provides a method for websites owners to instantly inform search engines about latest content changes on their website. IndexNow is a simple ping protocol so that search engines know that a URL and its content has been added, updated, or deleted, allowing search engines to quickly reflect this change in their search results.
Google support? Nope, not yet. Google last year said it was testing IndexNow but since then has not said much about IndexNow. There have been some rumors that Google would not adopt this protocol but as we have seen in the search space, things change fast and often.
Why we care. Like we said before, instant indexing is an SEO’s dream when it comes to giving search engines the most updated content on a site. The protocol is very simple and it requires very little developer effort to add this to your site, so it makes sense to implement this if you care about speedy indexing.
Now, if you have WordPress and use Yoast SEO premium, you can easily active IndexNow for your site.
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Monday, June 27th, 2022
To provide more flexibility in advertisers’ goals, strategies, and conversion journeys, TikTok is introducing a flexible Attribution Manager. The new feature enables users to set custom attribution windows on the TikTok Ads Manager.
Why the change. TikTok realizes that every advertiser is different in regard to the actions their target market takes after clicking an ad. If the goal is brand awareness, a click or like is a sufficient objective. However, if the advertiser is selling a service or high-ticket item, the conversion journey looks different and can often take longer.
New options. The original and default attribution windows are set to 7-day click and 1-day view. This means that potential customers have 1 day to convert after an ad is viewed, or 7 days after the ad is clicked.
The new options available for advertisers are:
- Click-through (CTA): 1, 7, 14, 28 day
- View-through (VTA): off, 1 and 7 day
Best practices. To get the most out of the new attribution windows, you’ll need to consider who your customer is, what your conversion goal is, and how long they take to perform the primary action.
For retail brands running a seasonal campaign or flash sale, a 7-day click or 1-day view is sufficient. However, for a high-ticket item, or a product that takes more consideration such as purchasing insurance or comparing laptop models, a longer attribution model is suggested.
Who gets it. The TikTok Attribution Manager is available to advertisers who run campaigns using the TikTok Pixel or Events API.
What TikTok has to say. You can read the announcement on the TikTok blog here.
Why we care. This is a necessary update from TikTok, as most ad platforms have flexible attribution windows already. Advertisers are likely familiar with how they work, but if you use TikTok ads, be sure you have the pixel installed so you can track your conversions and take advantage of this new update.
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Monday, June 27th, 2022
“Not all Google updates are equal,” said Glenn Gabe, SEO consultant at G-Squared Interactive, in his presentation at SMX Advanced. “Google pushes thousands of changes per year, but some are small and some are large.”
Whenever a new Google algorithm update is announced, SEOs often spend a lot of money, time, and resources optimizing their sites. And while this can be a good thing, as it helps improve these properties, it can also distract marketers from higher priority tasks when the update is overhyped.
For example, many sites worked heavily on improving Core Web Vitals even though the page experience signal is lightweight (more of a tiebreaker). Gabe showed examples of sites that saw no movement at all when their CWV scores were “poor” and “good”.
Source: Glenn Gabe
Source: Glenn Gabe
To properly address these updates — and discern what impact they will have — Gabe offered SEOs a few tips that can help them get to the heart of the issue.
Don’t jump to conclusions
Any major drop in rankings/visibility following a Google update will undoubtedly spur many SEOs to action. But, to avoid wasting too much of your valuable time and resources, Gabe recommended getting all the facts in place before jumping to conclusions.
“Avoid the knee-jerk reaction when rankings drop,” he said. “You might need to [make changes], or you might not need to. A drop during a major algorithm update could be due to relevancy adjustments, intent shifts, or overall site quality problems.”
“All of these are very different, so don’t just charge ahead,” he added.
Gabe suggests marketers create a delta report to analyze these changes. This type of report will detail changes in your top landing pages and queries, allowing you to pinpoint those that have dropped during significant algorithm updates. It can also reveal the root cause of the drops and help teams determine the next steps.
Source: Glenn Gabe
“This is quick, easy, and packed with punch,” he said. “It can reveal a lot of information.”
Determine if there are site quality issues
Sometimes visibility changes following a Google update stem from a quality issue with your site, rather than a change in the algorithm or new competitors.
“If you determine this is the case, there’s good and bad news,” Gabe said. “You can address those problems and see recovery eventually, but it takes significant work over the long term. You will typically not recover quickly — it’s usually months of hard work.”
Gabe said that when addressing these quality issues, site owners should analyze their sites through the lens of broad core algorithm updates, then work to improve content quality and user experience. This means reviewing potential technical SEO problems that could be affecting site quality as well.
“As Google’s John Mueller explained, when you think about quality, it’s not just about content,” said Gabe. “It’s not just about the text on a page, so don’t just focus on what people are reading.”
Pay attention to E-A-T
“E-A-T, or expertise, authoritativeness, and trust, is super-important,” said Gabe. “You could think of Google’s algorithm like a human who’s asking if the [site] creator has expertise on a topic. You have to look at your content objectively.”
Because E-A-T isn’t a score or scale, it’s not always easy determining how well your site embodies its principles. Yet Google’s documentation has highlighted its importance — especially when future-proofing sites for algorithm updates. So, SEOs should ensure they’re adhering to its standard.
When it comes to improving E-A-T after a ranking drop, many SEOs focus on improving content quality and thoroughness, which are incredibly important. But, as Gabe noted, authoritativeness is also heavily influenced by links and mentions from authoritative sites.
“If you do the right things content-wise and build trust with your audience, links and mentions from well-known sites could help from an E-A-T standpoint,” he said. “It’s not easy to fix this problem if you don’t have a lot of authority, but you can work at it over time.”
“It’s really important to identify, plan and execute changes to improve the site overall,” he added.
Watch Glenn Gabe’s full SMX Advanced presentation
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