Atomic Media

Webinar: Transform your content operations with DAM

Written on May 19, 2022 at 11:16 am, by admin

When it comes to promoting and selling products, content is the beginning of everything. The demand for content management is greater than ever as customers receive information across an ever-increasing number of channels.

Disorganized content workflows can be a recipe for disaster. So it’s imperative that product assets are organized, controlled, and accessible to a range of internal and external stakeholders. Join experts from McCormick & Company and Acquia as they discuss the challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned through McCormick’s DAM journey.

Register today for “Content Comes First: Transform Your Operations With DAM,” presented by Acquia.

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

GA4 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. What would it look like to switch?

Written on May 18, 2022 at 8:11 am, by admin

Google Analytics is the top player when it comes to tracking website visitors. The platform’s value is reflected in its popularity, which is why it’s the market leader boasting an 86% share. But with great value comes great responsibility, and Google Analytics lacks in that department.

Designed to maximize data collection often at the expense of data privacy, Google Analytics and its mother company, Google LLC, have been on the radar of European privacy activists for some time now. Reports of questionable privacy practices by Google have led to legal action based on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that might result in a complete ban on Google Analytics in Europe.

On top of that, Google recently announced it will end support for Universal Analytics in July of 2023, forcing users to switch to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). So, if the switch must be made, why not seek a new analytics provider? There are great free and paid solutions that allow organizations to balance valuable data collection with privacy and compliance. With a GDPR-compliant analytics solution in place, your data collection becomes as it should be predictable and sustainable.  

The problem with GA4 from a user perspective

Universal Analytics’ successor is very different from what you’re familiar with. Apart from the new user interface, which many find challenging to navigate, there is a laundry list of issues with the feature set in GA4—from no bounce rate metrics to a lack of custom channel groups. Here are some of the limitations in GA4 from a user perspective that you might find frustrating.

Not-so-seamless migration

GA4 introduces a different reporting and measurement technology that is neither well understood nor widely accepted by the marketing community. There is no data or tag migration between the platforms, meaning you’d have to start from scratch. The challenge grows with the organization’s size—you can have hundreds of tags or properties to move.

Limits on custom dimensions

A custom dimension is an attribute you configure in your analytics tool to dive deeper into your data. You can then pivot or segment this data to isolate a specific audience or traffic for deeper analysis. While GA4 allows you to use custom dimensions to segment your reports, there’s a strict limit—you can only use up to 50.

Lack of custom channel grouping

Channel groupings are rule-based groupings of marketing channels and, when customized, allow marketers to check the performance of said channels efficiently. Unlike Universal Analytics, GA4 does not allow you to create custom channel groupings in the new interface, only default channel groupings.

Why Google is giving you a short deadline to make the switch to GA4

It’s startling to consider the deadline Google has left the analytics community when it comes to acting: Universal Analytics will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023. This could be a way to motivate users to migrate more quickly. Perhaps Google was disappointed with the speed of adoption for GA4 and decided to act decisively for this next version.

Another possibility for the short deadline is that Google wants to cut costs and rid itself of technical debt associated with thousands of websites with legacy solutions installed (many of those users are not active users of the product). Since GA4 is designed to support Google’s advertising network, it guarantees more revenue than the competition.

Whatever the case, users need to prepare to move to GA4—or switch to an alternative. 

The problem with GA4 from a privacy standpoint

Google claims the new platform is designed with privacy at its core, but the privacy concerns are far from over. A lack of clear guidelines on data processing has many questioning the legality of GA4 in Europe. Here are some of the reasons that leave us to believe GA4 won’t last long in Europe.

Recent laws and regulations

Google makes it difficult to collect data in line with data protection regulations such as GDPR. This means that organizations engaged in gathering, storing and processing data about EU citizens have to adjust their policies and introduce serious technological changes to be GDPR-compliant.

One of the ​​key compliance issues with Google Analytics is that it saves user data, including information about EU residents, on U.S.-based cloud servers. As a U.S.-based technology company, Google must comply with U.S. surveillance laws, such as the Cloud Act. This legislation states that Google must disclose certain data when requested, even when that data is located outside of the U.S.

In the judgment known as Schrems II, a European court ruled that sending personal data from the EU to the U.S. via transatlantic transfers is illegal if companies can’t guarantee this data will be safe from U.S. intelligence.

Companies with an international presence must now adapt to a wide range of regulations, often with different requirements and restrictions.

Transparency

A Google guide implies data is transferred to the closest Google Analytics server hub. However, the data may be stored in a geographic location that doesn’t have adequate privacy protection to the EU. This lack of transparency poses a problem for Google and organizations using Google Analytics in the EU.

Newly introduced features in GA4 partially address this concern by allowing the first part of data collection (and anonymization) on European servers. However, data can, and most likely will, be sent to the U.S. The best thing to do is be open when it comes to collecting data from people.

With proper transparency, individuals feel a sense of safety and assurance. In return, organizations get more data because individuals now feel taken care of and have the trust needed to provide data.

Time to re-think how you handle consumers’ data

The advantage of these regulations is users’ increased consciousness about their data. This is where alternatives come in handy. They provide you with privacy features you need to comply with laws and obtain the data you want. So, thinking about making the switch to a Google Analytics alternative? Here’s what you need to know.

Addressing concerns about switching to an alternative analytics solution

A lot of users may be hesitant to make the switch. It makes sense—Google has dominated the marketplace for so long that it might feel like too big of a hassle to switch. For a marketing director or CMO to suggest using a different analytics tool and then for that tool to have even more limitations than the last would not be a good look.

You need to make an informed decision and choose the platform whose feature sets fit the organization’s needs to process user-level data while building trust with visitors. Here are the facts and myths when switching:

I’ll lose historical data.

This is a fact, but not for long. Some alternatives have developed data importers in the wake of Universal Analytics (Google Analytics v3) being deprecated.

It’s expensive and hard to switch.

This is a myth. Alternatives are built with easier user interfaces, use similar measurement methodologies, and often have solutions to help with Google Tag’s migrations.

Alternatives don’t offer demographic data. 

This is true: Google’s first-party data add sex, age group, and interests to profile data, and none of the alternatives can offer such data enrichment.

I miss some reporting capabilities.

This is false. Each alternative has unique reporting capabilities, and some are very flexible, allowing for more transformations and data exports than Universal Analytics.

It is easier to run advertising campaigns with Universal Analytics.

This is true. There is deep integration with Google Analytics and Google Ads/Google Marketing Platform, which gives access to an extensive repertoire of data.

I’ll lose my rank in Google Search.

This is a myth. Alternatives’ customers don’t report a lower rank in Google Search. Make sure your site is fast, mobile-friendly, popular (links) and with complete metadata.

The mindset to take when switching.

Marketers considering switching to a new platform need to take a new analytics mindset. We are experiencing a rapidly rising awareness that data is of value and must be protected. Since the future of marketing requires users’ consent, the vendor you choose must allow you to perform analytics in a privacy-friendly way.

Our intention with Piwik PRO Analytics Suite has always been to give clients powerful analytics capabilities along with key privacy and security features. The user interface and feature sets are similar to Universal Analytics, so marketers feel at home when switching to our platform.

Piwik PRO is geared towards both delivering valuable insights and privacy and compliance. Notably, switching to Piwik PRO excludes the privacy and compliance issues associated with Google Analytics to collect data predictably and sustainably. There’s both a free and paid plan, which allows different organizations to get an analytics service tailored to their needs.  If you’d like to learn more about Google Analytics alternatives or get more information on the Piwik PRO Analytics Suite, visit piwik.pro.

This article was written by Maciej Zawadzinski, CEO, Piwik PRO.

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What to look for in a technical SEO audit

Written on May 18, 2022 at 8:11 am, by admin

According to Techradar, there are more than 547,200 new websites every day. Google has to crawl and store all these sites in their database, therefore occupying physical space on their servers.

The sheer volume of content available now allows Google to prioritize well-designed, fast sites and provide helpful, relevant information for their visitors.  

The bar has been raised, and if your site is slow or has a lot of jargon in the code, Google is unlikely to reward your site with strong rankings.

If you really want to jump ahead of your competitors, you have a huge opportunity to be better than them by optimizing your site’s code, speed and user experience. These are some of the most important ranking signals and will continue to be as the internet becomes more and more inundated with content.

Auditing your website’s technical SEO can be extremely dense and with many moving pieces. If you are not a developer, it may be difficult to comprehend some of these elements.  

Ideally, you should have a working knowledge of how to run an audit to oversee the implementation of technical SEO fixes. Some of these may require developers, designers, writers or editors.

Fortunately, various tools will run the audits for you and give you all the comprehensive data you need to improve your website’s technical performance.

Let’s review some of the data points that will come up, regardless of what technical SEO audit tool you use:

Structure

• Crawlability: Can Google easily crawl your website, and how often?
• Security: Is your website secure with an HTTPS certificate?
• On-page SEO elements: does every page have the keyword in the title tags, meta description, filenames, and paths? Does it have the same on-page elements as sites ranking in the top 10 for your target keywords?
• Internal links: Does your site have internal links from other site pages? Other elements you can consider are site structure, breadcrumbs, anchor text and link sculpting.
• Headings: Is the primary KW in the H1? Do you have H2s with supporting keywords?
• Compliance issues:  Does your site’s code include valid HTML? What is the accessibility score?
• Images: Do your images load quickly? Are they optimized with title, keywords and srcset attribute? Do you use some new image formats such as webP and SVG?
• Schema and semantic Web: Are your schema tags in place and set up properly? Some schema tags that you can use include WebPage, BreadcrumbList, Organization, Product, Review, Author/Article, Person, Event, Video/Image, Recipe, FAQ and How-To.
• Canonicals: Do you have canonical tags in place, and are they set up properly?
• SiteMap: Do you ONLY have valid pages in the site map, and are redirects and 404 pages removed from the sitemap?

These are simply a few of the elements you’d want to look into that most tools will report on.  

User experience

Google has been placing more focus on ranking factors revolving around user experience. As the web collectively becomes more organized, Google is raising the bar for user experience. Focusing on user experience will ultimately increase their advertising revenue.   

You’ll want to audit the user experience of your website.

• Is it fast?
• How quickly is the page interactive?
• Can it be navigated easily on mobile devices?
• Is the hierarchy of the site clear and intuitive?

Some of the ways of measuring this include:

• Site speed
• Web Core Vitals
• Mobile-friendliness
• Structured navigation
• Intrusive ads or interstitials
• Design

Make sure you are working with a developer that is well versed in the latest technical SEO elements and who can apply the changes required to raise your SEO performance score.

Technical SEO audit tools

Some of the most popular SEO audit tools include:

• Semrush Site Audit
• Screaming Frog
• SiteBulb
• Website Auditor
• ContentKing App
• GTMetrix
• Pingdom
• Google Lighthouse
• Google Page Speed Insights 

We’ll look at a couple of these tools and the data points you can gain from them.

Semrush site audit

Once you create a project in Semrush, you can run a site audit. Your overview will look like this:

Click on the “Issues” tab, and you’ll see a detailed list of the issues that were uncovered, divided by Errors, Warnings and Notices:

If you click on an item, you’ll see a list of the pages affected by each issue.

Review these as sometimes the data points are not valid.   

Ideally, you should export the CSV for each of these issues and save them in a folder.

Screaming Frog

This desktop tool will use your computer and IP to crawl your website. Once completed, you’ll get various reports that you can download.  

Here are a couple of example reports:

This is an overview report that you can use to track technical audit KPIs.

For example, this report gives you details of the meta titles for each of your pages.

You can use the Bulk Export feature to get all of the data points downloaded into spreadsheets, which you can then add to your Audit folder.

SiteBulb

Like the others, Site Bulb will do a comprehensive crawl of your website. The benefit of this tool is that it will give you more in-depth technical information than some of the other tools.

You’ll get an Audit Score, SEO Score, and Security Score. As you implement fixes, you’ll want to see these scores increasing over time.

Google Search Console

The Index Coverage report contains a treasure trove of data that you can use to implement the fixes that Google has discovered about your site.

In the details section, you’ll see a list of the errors, and if you click through to each report, they will include the list of pages affected by each issue.

Implementing technical SEO fixes

Once you have all of your CSV exports, you can create a list of all of the issues and go through them to remove duplicate reports created by the different tools.

Next, you can assign what department each fix belongs to and the level of priority. Some may need to be tackled by your developer, others by your content team, such as rewriting duplicate titles or improving descriptions with pages with low CTR.

Here’s what your list might look like:

Each project should include notes, observations, or details about how to implement the fix. 

Most websites will have dozens of issues, so the key here is to prioritize the issues and make sure that you are continuously fixing and improving your site’s performance each month.

E-A-T Audit

It’s important that your website reflects topical authority and relevance. E-A-T means:

• Expertise: Are you an expert in your field? Are your authors authoritative?
• Authoritativeness: Are you considered authoritative in your field by industry organizations? Do your social profiles, citations, social shares and link profile reflect this authoritativeness?
• Trustworthiness: Can visitors trust that your website is secure and that their data is safe? Does your site have an SSL certificate, including privacy disclaimers, refund information, contact info and credentials?

Google has an entire team of Quality Raters that manually review websites to assess them based on these parameters. Google has even published the Quality Raters E-A-T guidelines for site owners to reference.

If your website is in a YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) niche, these factors are even more important as Google attempts to protect the public from misinformation.

Analytics audit

• Is your Google Analytics code working properly?
• Do you have the proper goals and funnels to fully understand how users navigate your site?
• Are you importing data from your Google Ads and Search Console accounts to visualize all of your data in Google Analytics? 

BrainLabsDigital has created a Google Analytics audit checklist that will help you review your Google Analytics account. The accompanying article will give you a straightforward and strategic approach to ensuring your Google Analytics is set up properly.

Prioritizing technical SEO fixes

Make sure you prioritize continuously improving your on-page SEO. Depending on your site, you may have a list of a dozen or a few hundred fixes. Try and determine which fixes will impact the most pages to see a greater improvement from your efforts.

It can be discouraging to see a list with 85 different technical SEO improvements. The benefit is that, as you go through these improvements, you will start seeing movement in your rankings.  Over time, you’ll want to have very few, if any, errors show up in all of your crawling tools.

If your content is relevant, targeted and well developed, and you’re receiving new, quality links every month, these technical = optimizations will become the key differentiating factors for ranking better than your competitors.

The post What to look for in a technical SEO audit appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

What are your secrets to overcoming marketing challenges? Take our survey

Written on May 18, 2022 at 8:11 am, by admin

Catching your prospect’s eye and moving them along the buyer’s journey has never been easy. Add the pandemic to the equation, and we know your job as a marketer has probably never been as challenging as it is today.

We invite you to take the marketing challenges survey so we can better understand what you’ve been challenged with the most and how you’ve overcome these obstacles. The survey results will help you see how your peers take on these challenges and prove ROI.

The first 100 people who fully complete the survey will be automatically entered in a drawing to win $250 to donate to a charity of your choice or a $250 Amazon gift card.

The post What are your secrets to overcoming marketing challenges? Take our survey appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

10 reasons to join us at SMX Advanced online this June

Written on May 18, 2022 at 8:11 am, by admin

The staggering amount of change in the last 24 months has presented search marketers with an unrivaled amount of challenges… and opportunities:

• The role of automation is expanding
• Major platforms are evolving
• Algorithm updates and ranking factor rollouts are endless

And that’s just the start. Your key to a more successful future is continued training with trusted experts. Attend SMX Advanced for free, online June 14-15, to learn elite, sophisticated, actionable search marketing tactics that can help you stay a cut above the competition.

Keep reading for 10 undeniable reasons why you should join us online next month:

1. You’ll unlock unbiased, trustworthy content from the Search Engine Land experts.
2. 100% virtual means you can attend from anywhere: office, home, couch, etc.
3. For the first time in more than 15 years, registration for SMX Advanced is 100% FREE.
4. You’ll only learn safe, reputable, reliable training — no get-rich-quick schemes or dodgy tactics.
5. Live Q&A means you’ll get expert answers to your toughest questions.
6. Can’t attend live? On-demand access is included with your free pass, so you can train at your convenience.
7. Hear what the best of the best are up to… and validate your own initiatives and instincts.
8. Forge invaluable connections during topic-driven Coffee Talk discussions and engaging afternoon breakout discussions.
9. Unite your departments with a shared training experience – invaluable to on-site and remote teams alike.
10. Earn a personalized Certificate of Attendance to demonstrate your commitment to continued training and furthering your career.

Ready to register? Smart move. Secure your free pass now!

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How to ensure influencers help your SEO campaigns

Written on May 17, 2022 at 5:10 am, by admin

If you are looking to make an impact in your business with your SEO strategy, influencer marketing is one of the most efficient techniques to increase reach, engagement and influence traffic and conversions.

The State of Influencer Marketing in 2022 report by Hype Auditor shows that “Global Instagram influencer marketing market could reach $15.2 billion in 2022 and by 2025 this figure could reach $22.2 billion.”

While working with influencers is growing in popularity, this tactic comes with some challenges. With so many questions and myths around this activity, how can SEOs and businesses ensure that influencers have the desired impact on their SEO campaigns? 

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Before the term “influencer” was so popular, businesses and SEO agencies relied on working with influencers for various reasons. For SEOs, the most important is links. 

So, is it still a good tactic to work with influencers? Short answer: yes. Here’s why:

A Kantar study found that 58% of people born between 1995 and 2010 are influenced by reviews when making a purchasing decision. 

This generation is a digital native: having grown up with the internet, social media and mobile devices. This has resulted in a hypercognitive generation accustomed to gathering and consuming a wide range of information sources. They take into account virtual and offline experiences.

And reviews, in a way, are a source of experience.

What about SEO? Suppose there is a link within a piece of coverage or review that is relevant to your audience and supports the influencer’s work. In that case, the direct benefits will be on traffic and revenue, aside from others such as brand awareness.

However, as link building evolves, it also becomes how we work with influencers. While there is little question on whether influencers may have a beneficial impact on traffic and SEO, demonstrating the ROI of influencers is still proven to be a challenge.

3 challenges of working with influencers (and solutions)

Challenge 1: Using the wrong metrics to choose influencers

One of the most common issues for businesses when choosing an influencer is using metrics that don’t reveal anything about the influencer and their work.

One of those metrics is Domain Authority (DA) of a website (if you are looking for an influencer who, apart from their social media channels, also has a website). 

Domain Authority is an unhelpful metric for evaluating an influencer’s website. DA is a metric invented by an SEO tool provider, and Google does not use it for indexing, crawling or ranking. 

Choosing an influencer based on the number of followers is not a substantial metric as followers can be purchased. 

Solution: Clear KPI definition

The KPIs behind every campaign with an influencer should be unique. 

Many years ago, a popular KPI when working with influencers was to get a link on their blogs. In 2022, business objectives when working with an influencer can be one of the following (or all of them in some cases):

• Traffic.
• Exposure.
• Engagement.
• Quality content.
• Sales.

Working with influencers is exciting. However, there are also a few things to look at to make sure your collaboration reaches genuine people and not fake followers.

When reviewing influencers, it is worth looking at:

• Engagement rate: The ratio of people who see the influencer’s content and the people who interact with it. The tool Grin can help you to calculate that.
• Follower count.
• Monthly impressions

This is not a metric but it is always a good idea to ask the influencer for a collaboration portfolio. This is when an influencer pitches a collaboration to your business, you can request this to have an idea of how they work with other brands.

Useful influencer analysis. Two fantastic tools to help you to find out more insights into your influencers and their followers:

• Hype Auditor
• Sparktoro’s Fake Follower Audit

Remember that the metrics we are looking to influence by working with influencers are traffic, conversions and revenue.

Challenge 2: A result that does not bring any value to anyone 

A collaboration that ends with a mention and without a link won’t drive any SEO value for your business or brand.

You ultimately have a temporary story lost among all the other stories (on Instagram, Snapchat, or elsewhere) or posts that won’t bring you any traffic or engagement.

Solution: Clear goals and communication from the start

Determining your goals lets you choose what kind of influencers to work with, types of content, distribution platforms, etc.

However, your broad marketing and business objectives are not for your influencer campaign to meet. 

When working with influencers, make sure that your goals are campaign-specific so you aren’t accidentally under-estimating the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Challenge 3: Irrelevancy 

Irrelevant content happens when an influencer’s audience doesn’t find the topic of your collaboration interesting, relevant or useful. Most likely, their followers probably won’t even click on it.

Even if your team secures a collaboration with a high-end influencer, you might get a temporary traffic boost. However, any traffic the collaboration drives probably will quickly bounce and is unlikely to convert.

Solution: Choosing the appropriate influencer for your audience

Consumers’ views on influencer content are critical. The most appropriate influencers for your campaigns and audience are more valuable than the amount of followers they might have. 

Whether influencer work aligns with brand values, the effect of their work should be evaluated based on quality by analyzing the interaction of their community with the influencers’ content to determine whether their work contributes to shaping customer opinions on a product or company.

Tips to make the best of a collaboration with an influencer

Best practices

When working with influencers, it is important to stay within best practices. This means that your business’s content and collaborations with influencers must include labels such as:

• #AD (advertisement)
• #GIFT (gifted)
• #SPON (sponsored)

In the UK, for instance, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) states in its rules and regulations the importance of influencers fully disclosing the nature of their posts to their followers. 

If you are working with influencers, creating content on their websites or blogs, then these should be labeled too, especially if the influencer adds a link to your business in their content. Not doing this correctly could violate Google’s Quality Guidelines (link schemes).

Follower count doesn’t matter

Influence isn’t merely a numbers game. When it comes to influencer marketing, size isn’t everything.

Because of their familiarity with the audience and shared interests, influencers with smaller audiences are more likely to generate more engagement.

More brands are working with influencers than ever. The days of only chasing influencers based solely on their follower count and no other metric are long gone. 

Relevancy and engagement rate and the rise of the micro-influencer give businesses and brands a plethora of options.

The post How to ensure influencers help your SEO campaigns appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

Webinar: Dominate your competition with Google auction insights and search intelligence

Written on May 17, 2022 at 5:10 am, by admin

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 Sean O’Connor, Senior CSM and Sales Engineer at Adthena, to explore three easy search intelligence tactics that will help you dominate your competitors along with use-cases from L’Oreal and Avanti West Coast trains.

Register today for “Dominate Your Competition with Google Auction Insights and Search Intelligence” presented by Adthena.

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Vimeo adds structured data to all public videos to improve Google Search visibility

Written on May 17, 2022 at 5:10 am, by admin

Vimeo, a popular video hosting platform (obviously not as popular as YouTube), has added structured data to all of its publicly available videos on its platform. Vimeo said the SEO changes they made to the videos will give “your videos the best opportunity to appear for relevant searches.”

Google worked with Vimeo? Vimeo wrote that they worked with Google as an “early adopter of Google Search’s best practices for video players” to provide Google with “additional context about your videos.” This will help Vimeo surface those videos in Google search and take advantage of the video-rich results, like displaying key moments for videos in Google Search by adding chapters and timestamps to video structured data.

Google’s video best practices. The video best practices are not exclusive to Vimeo or “early adopters.” These best practices are published by Google over here for anyone who hosts videos to read and adopt on their websites or platforms.

The video best practices cover:

• Help Google find your videos
• Ensure your videos can be indexed
• Allow Google to fetch your video content files
• Enable specific video features
• Remove, restrict, or update your videos as needed

Steps to take in Vimeo. Vimeo said there is really nothing specific you need to do to take advantage of these SEO changes, outside of making your videos public. Vimeo wrote, “all you need to do is make sure your videos are listed as public. Our technology will handlee the rest.” That means the video platform will ensure the videos are (1) indexable, (2) that your metadata is optimized, and (3) that your chapters are visible to Google Search for key moments.

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Vimeo’s SEO advice. Despite Vimeo handling this by default for you, Vimeo posted some tips for you when uploading your videos, naming them and adding descriptions and other data. That advice includes:

• Add chapters to your videos: Google doesn’t only review the title, but also the titles used for each chapter – which means adding chapters can help users discover the part of your video that is most relevant to their search.
• Choose your titles wisely: The title is displayed alongside your video thumbnail in search results. While it’s great to have a unique and catchy name for your video, it’s also important to keep your title descriptive using keywords most relevant to your audience’s searches.
• Research the best keywords: If you want new people to discover your video, it makes sense to describe it in the terms that people are searching for.

Note, that chapters are only available on the Pro plan or above or Vimeo.

Why we care. If you are using Vimeo for hosting, distributing and marketing your videos – rest assured that Vimeo is taking SEO and Google rich results seriously. If you have not used Vimeo and been using YouTube, you may want to try Vimeo out now that they have implemented video SEO tips from Google.

Of course, keep an eye on your video analytics to see if these changes impact any of your past videos. It is possible that Vimeo videos might gain more visibility and thus have a positive impact on Vimeo-hosted videos and potentially a negative impact on other video platforms going forward. Either way, we know YouTube and most SEOs implement video SEO best practices and now you can lump in Vimeo to that list.

The post Vimeo adds structured data to all public videos to improve Google Search visibility appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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How to manage and edit your Google Business Profile from Google search

Written on May 17, 2022 at 5:10 am, by admin

Claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile is one of the best things you can do to help your company rank higher in Google search results.

Several changes have been made to Google’s local listing program in the past year, including the enhanced functionality of managing your Google Business Profile directly from Google search.

People have been able to manage a Business Profile from Google search since 2017. But the features and functionality of managing and editing your Business Profile in search have blown up in the recent months.

Yet, many business owners are unaware this management feature is even an option. Or they’re confused about how to navigate this new way to manage their profile.

This is a problem. Especially because Google wants merchants to adopt Google search as the go-to way to manage most Google Business Profiles.

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Because the majority of businesses with Google Business Profiles have only one location, Google recommends they manage their location directly from Google search versus the Business Profile Manager.

If you’ve been in your Business Profile Manager lately, you’ve probably noticed the blue prompt encouraging you to try managing your Business Profile directly from search.

If you have more than 100 businesses in a single account, you will not be able to manage those Google Business Profiles through search. You’ll need to manage them the old-fashioned way – through the Business Profile Manager.

Once your Business Profile has been verified, you can manage your profile directly from Google search – but it could take up to 14 days before you get that option. (We are hoping that Google remedies this issue so that single-location businesses can start managing their profile immediately from Google search after verification.) However, as of right now, you can use the Business Profile Manager to manage your profile until you’re able to manage in Google search.

How to start managing your Google Business Profile in search

I love the ease of use of managing my business profiles in the Business Profile Manager.

But Google is making a push to get single-location merchants to use Google search to manage profiles instead of the Profile Manager. This is where confusion and more help and instructions are needed.

To get started, make sure you’re signed into the Google Account you use to manage your Business Profile.

Next, go to Google and search for your exact business name (you may need to add your city), or you can also search for “my business.”

If you do have more than one profile and you need to manage a specific Business Profile, click View Profile.

You should see your company’s Knowledge Panel on the right side and the Business Profile management section on the left.

In the management section in search, you will see two main items: the Menu and Chips.

The menu allows you to perform the main functionality of managing your Google Business Profile. This is where you can make most of the edits to your profile, add updates, include products and services, etc.

You will also find any updates and changes Google might make to your profile based on information it finds online – or from user suggested edits.

Here are brief descriptions of each section of the menu:

Edit profile

What you can do:

• Edit business information – hours, contact information, website URL and other details.
• Add and delete products and services.
• Upload photos and videos.

Promote

This is where you can check your Google Business Profile insights, add photos, get a shortened URL to ask customers for reviews, create posts and more.

Customers

You can see and respond to reviews, see info about inbound calls, view and reply to messages/chat and answer questions people ask in Q&A.

Chips

You will also see various “chips” in the Business Profile management section. Chips let you do a variety of other things to help improve and optimize your profile.

Your chips might look different than another merchant’s chips. Look at the various chips available to you and see what they allow you to do.

For instance, if you click on the “Add exterior photo” chip, you’ll be able to easily upload a photo of the exterior of your storefront or office building.

Use these chips to maximize and optimize your Google Business Profile.

What if Google changes your Google Business Profile information?

Google gathers information from a variety of sources:

• Third-party sources they have contracted with.
• User-suggested edits.
• AI.
• Other online resources (e.g., government databases, online directories/citation sites, the business’s website, information it receives from people who answer “know this place” questions).

Google often cross-checks the information on your Business Profile and compares it to what they find online. If they find discrepancies, they may decide that your information is incorrect and will change the information on your Google Business Profile.

If Google changes information in your Business Profile, you’ll receive an email alerting you that information has been changed.

You’ll then need to go to Google search and look at the various areas in the menu section of your profile and look for a blue highlighted area. There you will see what changes Google made to your profile.

If the changed information is correct, you can simply click the Accept link.

Did Google mess up? If the changes are wrong, click on the section you want to edit (or correct), and you’ll see the pencil icon. You can then edit the information. Remember to click the Save button.

It’s important that you frequently check your Business Profile to make sure no incorrect changes were made to your Business Profile.

Managing your profile from search is the way to go

Yes, there is a bit of a learning curve. But once you get used to this new interface, you will likely enjoy the ease of use and functionality. And I expect that Google will only be adding more features in the coming months.

The post How to manage and edit your Google Business Profile from Google search appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Microsoft Bing drops anonymous sitemap submission due to spam issues

Written on May 13, 2022 at 8:08 pm, by admin

Microsoft Bing will no longer accept XML sitemaps that were submitted anonymously through HTTP requests, Fabrice Canel from Microsoft Bing announced today. The reason Bing will no longer allow anonymous sitemap submission is due to abuse by search spammers.

How anonymous sitemap submission worked. Microsoft explained that since the inception of XML sitemaps with Bing, Bing allowed for anonymous submission through using a HTTP request, such as http://www.bing.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com/sitemap.xml.

No longer supported. Microsoft is doing away with HTTP request anonymous submission of Sitemaps starting today, May 13, 2022. Fabrice Canel wrote that Microsoft Bing is “deprecating the ability for anonymous sitemap submissions starting today.”

Why is it going away. SEO and search spammers have been abusing the anonymous submission of Sitemaps and thus, Microsoft is no longer going to support it. Fabrice Canel wrote “recent evaluations have shown that it was often subject to misuse by spammers.”

How to submit a sitemap to Bing. You can still submit your sitemaps using robots.txt on your domain name and/or through Bing Webmaster tools.

• robots.txt: Add a reference to your sitemap in the robots.txt file located at the root of the host to inform all search engines. Example: Sitemap: http://www.example.org/sitemap.xml

• Bing webmaster tools: Alternatively, you can submit your sitemaps in Bing Webmaster tools https://www.bing.com/webmasters/sitemaps

Don’t forget IndexNow. Microsoft Bing of course would still love for you to push content to them using IndexNow, so you have that as an additional and supplemental option.

Why we care. If you have been using the anonymous XML sitemap option for your site through HTTP requests, you should be aware that will stop working sometime today. Switch over to using robots.txt or Bing Webmaster Tools for submitting your sitemap going forward.

The post Microsoft Bing drops anonymous sitemap submission due to spam issues appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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