“You can adjust conversion values based on characteristics like location, device, and audience. By applying a rule to these characteristics, you can adjust conversion values to align more closely with your business outcomes,” said Stephen Chang, Product Manager, Google Ads in an announcement.
This added feature means that businesses can use their inherent knowledge of what’s working in their industry to improve their conversion rates in Google Ads. For example, if advertisers know certain audiences or people in certain locations are most likely to convert, they can set a rule to multiply the conversion value for the chosen group by two.
“These rules will also be used by Maximize conversion value and Target ROAS to optimize your bids in real time. Conversion value rules will be available for Smart Bidding across Search, Shopping, and Display over the next few weeks,” wrote Chang.
Source: Google
Why we care. “This is a great feature addition. Love it because it allows businesses to get their intuitive/institutional knowledge into the machine learning to optimize more accurately,” tweeted Robert Brady, PPC expert at Righteous Marketing. Having this available in smart bidding also allows advertisers to tweak campaigns for their individual business goals and adjust as campaigns happen in real-time (like for sales, events, or the like).
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, aren’t you tired of hearing “it depends?”
After moderating so many Overtime Q&A sessions for SMX, I’ve noticed that many professionals formulate their questions something like this: relevant background information, goal, “What should I do?”
“It depends” is the preface I hear most often from our expert speakers. That’s because, while they do possess more strategic knowledge that could benefit you, they aren’t totally familiar with your situation (and that’s due to the short nature of Q&A sessions — Twitter conversations are pretty much the same, too).
Instead of having your peers spitball a few ideas (a fraction of which you’ll reject because you weren’t able to give a comprehensive overview of your predicament), I suggest that we rethink how we ask for help: Ask for what considerations you should take into account as you plan your strategy. This will help you think more critically about your business’ overall goals, how marketing fits into it and the role you, as a search professional, play when it comes to making it all work together.
George Nguyen, Editor
Top stories images not loading in Google Search
Numerous reports of images not loading in Google’s Top stories carousel began surfacing on Twitter yesterday morning. We were able to replicate the issue (shown above) and the carousel shows either blank or blurred featured images, but some of the reports we’ve seen include screenshots of the carousel in which one or two of the images did successfully load. Google has confirmed that it’s a bug and is working on a fix but has not provided a timeline.
Why we care. A blurred featured image may negatively affect your clickthrough rate, so make sure to annotate your reports to reflect this oddity. In search results where just one or two images loaded successfully, the story (or stories) that didn’t load properly may receive fewer clicks. And, since the Top stories carousel is an important source of visibility and traffic for some publishers, this could also impact advertising revenue and other marketing opportunities that depend on getting a user onto your site if the bug goes unresolved for an extended period. Fortunately, Google is already working on it — we’ll continue to provide updates as they come in.
YouTube this week made two big changes to how search works on the video platform:
Timestamps come to video previews: Previously on desktop only, if you hover your mouse over a video, it would play a short preview snippet of the video. This preview capability is now rolling out to mobile. Plus, videos with timestamps will now have chapters available in the search preview.
Auto-translating captions: Along with new preview options, YouTube will begin translating English subtitles to multiple languages (and eventually roll this out to captions in other languages, too).
Why we care. If you want your videos to stand out in YouTube search, adding timestamps will now be critical. The new translation option gives your videos the opportunity to show up for an even wider global audience than before.
Red alert. “What red flags should companies be aware of when choosing an SEO agency?” asked Kim Doughty, and SEO Twitter is responding. It’s worth checking out just to ensure your own agency isn’t accidentally turning off businesses with its messaging. Our own Director of Search Content Carolyn Lyden advises that businesses steer clear of agencies that make guarantees (“Your site will rank for these keywords in X days!”), those that don’t give you admin access to your own analytics and agencies that use fine print to take ownership over your online properties/listings.
“Paid for by” label on political ads. Google is now placing “Paid for by” labels on some political ads. This transparency feature enables users to learn more about who is paying for the ad and even lets them see details such as how much the advertiser has spent. Tip of the hat to Valentin Pletzer for sharing this.
What if the secret sauce wasn’t a secret? “If Google actually gave you a detailed breakdown of exactly how their algorithm works to rank websites, don’t you think the #SEO industry would become a boring industry to work in?” Mark Preston asked. The responses run the gamut from “SEO would become boring” to deeper insights about how companies might shift their emphasis from paid to organic.
Sydney court orders a scorned patient to pay $450,000 over unjust negative reviews and content that damaged a surgeon’s reputation
As those who run a local business may already know, negative reviews don’t even have to come from customers — they can come from people who simply attempted to engage with your business. That’s what happened to Dr. Warwick Nettle, a Sydney-based surgeon who declined a patient after consulting with her former surgeon, who cautioned him about operating on her.
“A federal court judge on Wednesday said the effect of the false posts caused ‘extreme’ damage to both the surgeon’s emotional and mental state and his prior ‘impeccable’ reputation,” The Guardianpublished. “His five-star Google rating dropped to 3.5 stars after the first two posts were published.”
The court fined Catherine Cruse, the scorned patient, $450,000. Unfortunately for Dr. Nettle, Cruse seems to have disappeared — she filed no defense and appeared at no hearings, despite her prolific online smear campaign that spanned eight months and various forms of content, including reviews and defamatory posts on online reputation sites.
The extent of the online abuse here is far-reaching: “A since-removed post on a third website included images falsely claiming to be results of botched surgeries by Nettle. The post also featured headshots of the surgeon with the phrases ‘the devil himself’, ‘inhumane medical care’, ‘abuse of power’ and ‘compulsive liar’ superimposed on them,” the story reads.
In the search industry, we typically discuss the cost of fake reviews (and other content that serves a similar purpose) as harming both businesses and consumers, which downplays the damage because it comes off as an abstraction. In this instance, a Sydney court has quantified the harm, and although Dr. Nettle may have a hard time getting what he’s owed, this can be seen as something of a precedent for similar cases. It also highlights the fundamental problem with online reputation sites that extort people and businesses to remove negative content about them.
As a loan officer, know that there’s real value in creating a personal brand. Consider this: if you decide to change to another brokerage or financial institution (or go out on your own), would rather do it building your reputation from square one again, or do it with a reputation you’ve spent years refining?
That’s the value of personal branding –it’s yours, and it follows you your entire career.
Your personal brand also widens opportunities. Every meeting, connection, and happy client that engages with your personal brand is another opportunity added to your career. Building up your personal brand also increases your value as a mortgage professional. A brand that is recognizable and is seen as trustworthy commands more money.
How can you build a personal brand that lasts? That’s what this post is going to show you. Read on and bookmark this page for future reference.
Personal Brand for Mortgage Professionals: It’s More Than Likes and Comments
If you’re on social media, you may think that you’re well on your way to building a personal brand. But if you haven’t taken the time to define your brand and create a foundation for it, all those likes and comments are in vain. Here’s what you need to do instead:
Phase One: Define Your Personal Brand Identity
Be very clear about who you are and who you are not. What are your values? What’s your purpose? Who are you trying to reach? It’s critical that you know precisely what image you want to portray lest the public defines it for you and possibly create one that you never intended.
Phase Two: Create Personal Brand Awareness
Creating brand awareness and associating it with mortgage services is the goal of this next phase. The more your brand becomes well-known, the easier it will be for the consumer to remember and trust it. Here are top ways to build awareness for your brand:
Partner with real estate agents or other industry professionals that have successfully built their personal brand.
Use referrals and build up your online reviews.
Create different forms of content (video, blogs, infographics, podcast)
When we say engage with your followers, we mean doing so purposefully and actively. When someone leaves a comment, don’t just reply with, “Thank you!”. If you’ve noticed a follower liking and commenting on your posts, send a direct message. Did a website visitor fill out your contact form on your mortgage website? Activate a drip email and text campaign. Give them additional opportunities to get familiar with your brand and know what you’re all about.
Phase Four: Create Brand Loyalty
Getting to this phase takes a while –we’re talking about six months to a year. Remember that we’re building a personal brand that will last the life of your career, and that takes time. But that’s okay! In this phase, you want to add more fuel to your authority and trustworthiness. Do this by offering high-quality, high-value products for free, such as ebooks, webinars, and digital mortgage tools like mortgage apps and calculators.
Mortgage Websites Built for Personal Branding
At LenderHomePage, we firmly believe in the power and profitability of your personal brand. That’s why we created websites templates and tools built specifically for showcasing your brand across the web. Check out our three new mortgage templates for personal branding and try it out free for 14 days. Click here to launch one in minutes!
Beginning early this morning, there have been numerous reports of images not loading in Google’s Top stories carousel (as seen below). The issue seems to affect search results globally and Google has confirmed that it’s a bug.
The Top stories carousel, where featured images are not currently loading. Some have also taken screenshots in which only one or two of the stories feature an image that loaded as usual.
A problem on Google’s end. “Yeah, it looks like an issue on our side,” Google’s John Mueller tweeted regarding the issue. The company is currently working to correct the bug, Danny Sullivan, the company’s public search liaison, has confirmed.
Why we care. A blurred featured image may negatively affect your clickthrough rate, so make sure to annotate your reports to reflect this oddity. Some professionals have taken screenshots showing the Top stories carousel with just one or two images that loaded successfully, which could mean fewer clicks for the stories that didn’t show a featured image. And, since the Top stories carousel is an important source of visibility and traffic for some publishers, this could also impact advertising revenue and other marketing opportunities that depend on getting a user onto your site if the bug goes unresolved for an extended period. Fortunately, Google is already aware of the issue — we’ll continue to provide updates as they come in.
Since inception in 2015, the Search Engine Land Awards has recognized exceptional marketers on an annual basis — showcasing their oustanding work, providing well-earned exposure in coverage and interviews, and bestowing upon them the highest honor in search.
But the road between deciding to begin an application and winning the award can be a long one. Although this year’s submission process has been significantly streamlined — it’s never been faster or easier to apply to the Search Engine Land Awards — there’s still a story that has to be told. And while the way in which you tell that story is entirely up to you, we thought we’d look back on some advice from past judges about what really wows them, what they would love to see more of, and what areas are best avoided...
Keep reading for 17 tips for creating an award-worthy submission:
What impresses the judges most:
“What impresses me is when people have clearly aligned the tools and features they’re using to the goals they want to achieve. It sounds simple, but the entries that are goal-oriented rather than focused on tactics are always strongest.” – Ginny Marvin
“When entries have a new take on a situation or feature and talk about into how their strategy is different from the norm, and demonstrate why is their strategy or tactics are award-worthy.” – Brad Geddes
“When submissions are succinct but concrete in their campaign summaries, show examples (i.e., ad creative where relevant) and use straight-forward English rather than marketing speak.” – Greg Sterling
“When applicants are able to go beyond percentages of increases and show tangible results of how the campaign directly impacted the bottom line of the business. Also, it helps to put results into perspective — so instead of simply saying: ‘Before the campaign, the client was only bringing in this # of leads, clicks, etc — but the campaign raised that number to XXX’ offer an example of how the campaign impacted the business overall and not just the analytics. – Amy Gesenhues
“When entrants share a lot of technical data around their case studies.” – Barry Schwartz
“When entries prove their point with stats, graphs, and especially screenshots of GA/PPC Engine/ other paid search tech providers. Too many just say, ‘we increased business [some huge number]’ with no way to back it up.” – Brad Geddes
“It really impresses me when entrants show how they retooled, revitalized [a campaign] or did something extraordinary to achieve extraordinary results. Or, how they outfoxed a competitor in a clever way – anything that shows how extraordinary results came from really extraordinary work.” – Matt Van Wagner
What judges want to see more of:
“I love to see orchestration — when teams use tools, tactics and features in interesting ways to solve problems and execute on a strategy.” – Ginny Marvin
“Images from the campaign and data illustrating concrete outcomes. Calling out what was innovative or especially significant or effective about the campaign.” – Greg Sterling
“Stories around how the campaign was unique from other campaigns the agency and/or client had implemented in the past and the tools used to implement the campaign. Also, did you learn anything from the campaign that you’ve been able to introduce to other campaigns/clients. Were there any unexpected benefits that played out during the course of the campaign?” – Amy Gesenhues
“I’d love to see more data from our entrants that pinpoint successes or failures in their case studies.” – Barry Schwartz
“Entries that show the challenges they had to overcome that are outside of the norm (the scrappy startup against goliath, goliath showing it can innovate still against the scrappy startups stealing market share, etc), which might be market conditions, a business change, etc.” – Brad Geddes
What entrants need to stop doing:
“It’s great to test new betas, but having access to betas doesn’t make you a great marketer. Be sure your entry doesn’t lean on implementing the newest beta features as evidence of running a successful campaign. That’s not enough.” – Ginny Marvin
“Padding their discussions, using marketing jargon or bloated writing. I’d also like to see less self-congratulation.” – Greg Sterling
“Using language like world-class, best-in-class, etc. to define your campaign. Talk specific numbers and results. Using flowery language to build-up the campaign takes away from actual/quantifiable results. (In other words, let the numbers speak for themselves.)” – Amy Gesenhues
“Not differentiating on strategy or tactics. While it’s important that we see ‘best or standard practices’ are in place in an account, we are also looking for a detailed explanation of strategy that truly differentiates the work from others… For example, an account testing new ad extensions / formats or a landing page that breaks convention but delivers impressive conversion data.” – Brad Geddes
“Claiming increases of 200% when you really mean 100%. A 100% increase means you doubled your number. Going from $100 to $137 is not a 137% increase. It is a 37% increase. I’d like it that when you say ROAS, you show the formula you used to calculate it. A 1000% increase is almost always ignored as a metric. It is the opposite of impressive – it is suspicious. It is most likely you were doing very little before and now you are doing a little more than nothing.” – Matt Van Wagner
The final deadline for the 2021 Search Engine Land Awards is September 3, 2021 at 11:59 pm PST. Review the categories for 2021 and begin your application here.
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, and what’s the linchpin in CRO?
In his keynote at yesterday’s SMX Convert, Michael Aagaard gave us a closer look at disappointment from a neuroscientific and psychological perspective. He dug into what conversion research we can do to understand where/when our customers experience disappointment and how to mitigate that.
The key is really mapping out and managing the expectations of our customers so we can create better and more motivating conversion experiences. One example he shared was that a client was having trouble once customers got to the “enter your credit card” part of their journey. With some research, he discovered that the whole process before that stage had primed these potential customers to think that what they were getting was free. Record scratch!
Of course they weren’t converting. They were likely majorly disappointed when they learned they weren’t getting something for free after all. The whole process of delighting vs disappointing customers makes sense — people who have a great time every step of the way are obviously going to convert because you’ve made it so simple for them.
How do you improve your CRO then? One tip: go through your own funnel and figure out where the disconnects are. Remove those barriers and test, test, test!
Carolyn Lyden, Director of Search Content
Three PPC targeting tactics that power every stage of the funnel
In her hit session at yesterday’s SMX Convert, Amy Bishop, Owner and Marketing Consultant at Cultivative, schooled us on multi-channel targeting tactics to turn prospects into paying customers. Her three-step strategy includes ways to better understand your audience, how to determine their varying paths to purchase, and tips to ensure that you’re targeting them at every stage along that path.
Knowing your target audience. Just like on the SEO side, it’s critical to have your personas handy for this exercise. If you don’t have a set group of personas, Bishop included a few questions to ask yourself about your potential target audience.
Designing your campaigns to support the funnel. “A common question that I get,” said Bishop, “is which channels belong where [in the funnel]. I would really caution against this line of thinking because most channels have different ways that you can reach prospects. It doesn’t have to be ‘YouTube at the top, then display, and then search.’ You can make any channel work for you depending on who your prospects are and which channels they use and which targeting options are available across all channels.”
Considerations for improving your campaign performance. If you’ve taken all the steps above and in Amy Bishop’s SMX Convert presentation and are still having some hiccups, here are some common mistakes she’s noticed in campaigns before: lack of data, not optimizing to a higher funnel conversion, and not testing better qualifying audiences and look-alikes.
Don’t miss your chance at a Search Engine Land Award
The team here at Search Engine Land wanted to provide a meaningful way to “Celebrate the Power of Search” within the search marketing community. That’s why we created the Search Engine Land Awards program. Winning one of our 19 awards is a unique, and cost-effective way to put your organization a step ahead of its competitors and help to gain new business.
Additionally, the process of reflecting on a great year of work, its successes, and lessons learned can be a wonderful team-building exercise, and getting nominated (or better yet – winning!) has been a superb morale booster for many past recipients.
The Search Engine Land Awards are dedicated to honoring the best practices of search marketing by recognizing the consultants, agencies, in-house teams and individuals that worked to execute successful programs encompassing organic, paid, local search and more. Applications close on Sept. 3, so if you;’re thinking about applying or haven’t finished your application, get started now!
Social Shorts: TikTok, YikYak? (yes, really) and social media marketing IS content marketing
TikTok releases Creative Solutions guide for marketers. Some dos and don’ts: Do bet on uniqueness and creativity. Content with its own flair makes TikTok thrive, and is key to great results. Don’t expect that every piece of creative will contribute to a result. Don’t just replicate the same creative used on other platforms. Read the full guide here.
“I don’t really know what to make of this, but if you’re interested, for whatever reason, your favorite anonymous social media app YikYak is back in app stores in the US,” wrote Andrew Hutchinson for Social Media Examiner. “You now have another option to get a feel for what people in your local community are interested in, which could be worth taking a look at. Maybe.”
Content Marketing 101: Reach your audience in many ways. This guide from Mara Calvello with G2 emphasizes that social media is still part of a comprehensive content strategy. “Whether it is Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, or Snapchat, there are many opportunities to share your content, switch up its messaging, and get it seen.” If you’re not including social in your content plan, make sure to go back to the drawing board.
What We’re Reading: A privacy-first approach to personalization: Gaining consumer trust with transparent data collection
We’ve mentioned it before on Search Engine Land, but advertisers are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to personalization and privacy.
“91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant recommendations to them, and the majority of consumers feel positive (58%) about personalized ads,” Sanam Saaber reports in StreetFight. But at the same time, we’re combatting a wave of distrust from the very same consumers as they don’t completely understand how and why advertisers use their data.
With Google pushing back the FLoC implementation to 2023, Saaber reinforces what we’ve been hearing from many experts in paid search: get your ducks in a row now. If you had a testing plan for first-party data, don’t postpone it! This just gives you even more time to test it out.
The four data types are often conflated, but they’re very different in the eyes of the consumer and the law, wrote Saaber.
Zero-party data is information provided intentionally and proactively by consumers (e.g., surveys, questionnaires, profile information)
First-party data is information collected directly from consumers’ actions (e.g., actions on site, social media engagement, mobile app usage)
Second-party data is data collected by another company, directly from consumers
Third-party data is information collected from a number of sources and bought from data aggregator firms (e.g., third-party cookies)
One of the keys to making customers feel ok with your data collection practices? Communicate what’s going on to them. Be transparent in what you’re collecting and what you’re doing with it, and give them a reason to share it:
“Too many brands provide long and unreadable privacy policies that aren’t educational. Impress customers at the start of their journey with creative and digestible content. Consumers are generally willing to share their information if they understand the benefits they’ll get in return, like personalized coupons or more relevant recommendations.”
In her hit session at today’s SMX Convert, Amy Bishop, Owner and Marketing Consultant and Cultivative, schooled us on multi-channel targeting tactics to turn prospects into paying customers. Her three-step strategy includes ways to better understand your audience, how to determine their varying paths to purchase, and tips to ensure that you’re targeting them at every stage along that path.
Knowing your target audience
Just like on the SEO side, it’s critical to have your personas handy for this exercise. If you don’t have a set group of personas, Bishop included a few questions to ask yourself about your potential target audience (plus some handy sheets for B2B and B2C):
She says the best way to dig into personas is to involve other client-facing teams, as well. This includes getting with customer support, sales, customer success, and more to answer these questions about your target audience.
Along with asking these key questions, Bishop also recommends using the data you already have at your fingertips. “If you have a Facebook account, even if you’re not running ads, you have a wealth of information in Facebook audience insights,” she said. It’ll take some sorting through initially, but Bishop recommends identifying top purchaser demographics and zeroing in from there. After that, you can further segment by layering interests and other demographics and then identify specific interests to target. From there, you can monitor performance to flesh out and validate your personas.
Other sources of persona data that Bishop uses include the following:
Google Ads audience insights,
Google Analytics demographics insights, and
Google Analytics conversion data.
Designing your campaigns to support the funnel
Catering to your prospects means supporting their journey toward that final conversion (whatever conversion is for your organization — it isn’t always a purchase!). “A common question that I get,” said Bishop “is which channels belong where [in the funnel]. I would really caution against this line of thinking because most channels have different ways that you can reach prospects. It doesn’t have to be ‘YouTube at the top, then display, and then search.’ You can make any channel work for you depending on who your prospects are and which channels they use and which targeting options are available across all channels.”
Instead, she recommends focusing on targeting options at each stage of the funnel:
In the first stage, work on targeting options that go for potential customers who don’t know all their options yet. After that, seek options that allow you to capture prospects seeking solutions and to re-engage those who have engaged in the past. Finally, at the bottom of the funnel, we want to target options to convert hot traffic to leads or sales.
Bishop maps this out in a spreadsheet asking these questions:
What stage of the journey is the prospect in?
What information do they need at that stage to feel comfortable moving to the next stage?
What action or resource do we have available that is going to meet that information need that they have?
How are we tracking it and creating an audience off of it?
In order to acquire this data to answer these questions, Bishop recommends looking into the data you DO have to complete this spreadsheet:
First party data can tell you paths and interactions
Client-facing resources can give you information on objections and questions
Publicly available data can serve as market research
Your market can give you info through customer surveys
Considerations for improving your campaign performance
If you’ve taken all the steps above and in Amy Bishop’s SMX Convert presentation and are still having some hiccups, here are some common mistakes she’s noticed in campaigns before.
Lack of data
“As marketers, we love to have control, so we end up making hyper-specific audience. But what happens is that we over-segment them and, even if [these small audiences have] brought conversions in the past, sometimes CPL and CPA can be pretty volatile,” said Bishop. With automation becoming more of a factor in PPC every day, platforms thrive on data. removing some of the segmentation (device, platform, etc.) can help create a larger audience. This can help give your bidding strategy a boost.
Not optimizing to a higher funnel conversion
“Even if you’re in the bottom of the funnel you can optimize to a higher in the funnel conversion,” she recommends. One of Bishop’s clients was struggling to get out of learning mode, so they tried optimizing to Add to Cart. They saw huge increases in ATC, a 91% increase in purchases, and a 155% increase in purchase value. These are all strategies worth testing for your campaigns if it makes sense.
Not testing better qualifying audiences and look-alikes
“Having any first-party data is good,” said Bishop. “That’ll only become more important as time goes on. Even better than that is putting some qualifications around it.” Analyze the behaviors of SQLs and work to find more of those by feeding those data values back into platforms.
The keys to improving your targeting are threefold, Bishop told us at SMX Convert. Really get to know your audience beyond surface persona data. Work to understand their path to purchase. And, finally, designs your campaigns around that path to purchase.
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, all the traffic and rankings aren’t worth a thing if they don’t help you reach those business goals.
That’s the bottom line and that’s what we’re focusing on today at SMX Convert, our single-day learning journey that dives into organic and paid search conversion optimization. Barry Schwartz and I will be moderating the organic side, where the day begins with learning how to identify top-converting queries at every stage of the customer journey, then finding out how your content marketing can be leveraged to drive the funnel as well as ways to boost visibility and conversions via your navigation and CTAs. And, we’ll cap it all off with testing your strategy for continued improvement.
On the PPC side, moderated by our own Director of Search Content Carolyn Lyden and Anu Adegbola of MindSwan, you’ll start with how to create copy that converts. Then you’ll hear about targeting tactics to help you make the most out of those new ad copy skills you just picked up. And lastly, we’ll focus on improving landing page conversions using both qualitative and quantitative data.
There’s even more value to be had if you plan on attending the community meetups, site clinics and keynotes — I’m particularly looking forward to Michael Aargard’s talk on “The psychology of disappointment: How it works, why it hurts, and why it’s so bad for conversion.” You can check out everything SMX Convert has to offer over at the agenda page. We hope to see you there!
George Nguyen Editor
Google’s tool to report indexing bugs is now available in the U.S.
That’s not an actual button in the image above — it’s what the button to access Google’s indexing bug reporting tool looks like, and you can locate the real deal at the bottom of the URL inspection help document and indexing coverage report document.
The tool, which was announced as a pilot program back in April, enables SEOs and site owners to report an indexing issue directly to Google. It is designed for those who need further support with indexing issues outside of the Google community forums and support documentation.
When it was first announced, the company said it would be “fully available to all in the U.S. within a week or less.” Nearly four months later (certainly better late than never), it’s now accessible to all signed-in Search Console users in the U.S. Don’t forget to bookmark it and use it when you need to escalate an issue.
Brett Bodofsky chats with Barry Schwartz about third-party PPC integrations
In the second part of his interview, Brett Bodofsky, senior paid media specialist at Elumynt, discussed some common themes among third-party PPC integrations and shared some guidance for when it comes time to pick one out.
In addition to evaluating the capabilities of the platform and the build vs. buy value, Bodofsky’s number-one piece of advice was to look for a company with a great support team: “When you’re starting with a brand new integration, you may have never used it before and you’re going to want a team to back you and help you get integrated with it,” he said, “Can you get a hold of somebody on the phone? If not, do you really want to consider them? What happens when you have a question?”
In the latter half of the conversation, Bodofsky continues to discuss third-party integrations but with respect to how they can be used to get back more control over your campaigns by layering automation onto an ECPC manual bidding strategy.
Consumer sentiment tumbles to 70.2, the lowest reading since 2011
Image: University of Michigan.
Inflation and surging COVID cases have taken a toll on consumer sentiment, as measured by the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index, which is informed by 500 monthly telephone interviews of people across the U.S. Since just last month, the metric has fallen by 11 points, bringing it to its lowest point since December 2011.
“Consumers have correctly reasoned that the economy’s performance will be diminished over the next several months, but the extraordinary surge in negative economic assessments also reflects an emotional response, mainly from dashed hopes that the pandemic would soon end,” Richard Curtin, director of the survey, said in the report.
When it rains, it pours: “Only 36% of respondents expect a decline in the jobless rate, down from 52% the prior month, despite record job openings,” Jordan Yadoo wrote for Bloomberg, “Consumers also became decidedly downbeat about their income prospects. The gauge of expected personal finances fell to a seven-year low.”
Why we care. The initial vaccine rollout, combined with various stimulus initiatives, gave consumers a reason to feel optimistic and behave accordingly (read: spend more freely). That optimism seems to have peaked in April (when consumer sentiment hit a 2021 high of 88.3) and now that vaccination rates have declined and initial worries about the Delta variant have largely become a reality, people and businesses are starting to hedge their bets. This may be a sign that consumers are tightening their spending to prepare for another economic downturn, and businesses may be doing the same with their budgets, which might also affect employment rates. However, I’d like to point out Curtin’s quote, which posits that these assessments reflect “an emotional response” and “dashed hopes” — maybe it’ll be better than we expect.
It looks like B2B influencer marketing on TikTok may become a thing
The domestic B2B digital ad market grew 32.5% in 2020 and is forecasted to grow 24.9% this year to nearly $11 billion in spending, according to a July 2021 report by eMarketer. Some of that growth may be going towards influencer marketing, and for good reason — that’s the takeaway from Erika Wheless’ article for Ad Age.
“The more we test platforms like TikTok, the more we are finding good fits,” Jenni Buchbinder, director of strategic communications at QuickBooks, is quoted as saying, “These influencers are small business owners themselves, so they can speak about our product from personal experience.”
Although QuickBooks also contracts influencers on other social media platforms, it’s found more value on YouTube and TikTok because those platforms are video-first. While the company has partnered with numerous small business micro-influencers, this isn’t a throwaway campaign — it even features baseball player Alex Rodriguez.
Naturally, there are key distinctions between B2B and B2C marketing to be aware if you’re mulling over whether TikTok is right for your brand:
There are usually longer buying cycles in B2B, and they tend to be more logical purchases (rather than emotional).
An influencer with a large following may not be necessary. Instead, businesses should look for an influencer that is more impactful and resonates with the intended audience.
B2B influencers usually work full-time at major businesses, which means they may not be able to accept traditional compensation.
If you’re considering dipping your toes into B2B marketing on TikTok, it’s also good to explore hashtags to see how your (or a competing) product is being used, kind of like a live focus group. And, if you’re looking for ideas, search around for user-generated content that’s already highlighting your product and build from there.
Google’s SERP is a very competitive environment. For this reason, getting competitive intelligence on its players is a crucial process that helps understand how the search giant assesses various website search campaign activities.
The problem is that when you look at a competitor’s current data, you don’t see the full picture. In other words, you have no way of knowing what they did in the past to get to where they are now. That is until you reverse engineer the process. This is where historical data comes to the rescue.
This article focuses on how to analyze competitors through the retrospective analysis of their keyword and domain data. Plus, we look into why historical data is important to analyze and why you should prioritize SEO tools that gather such information.
Note that all of the examples herein are based on analytical, historical data provided by SE Ranking.
1. What competitor insights can you get with historical data?
Whenever you start working with a new client or need to analyze a potential client to prepare a pitch, you need to have access to as much data as possible.
Besides closely studying their current data on traffic, backlinks, keywords, and rankings, you can uncover a vast pool of data for previous periods by digging into their historical data.
Historical data is exactly what can show you the logic behind a domain’s previous setup. As in, what the domain owners were doing before and what results this led to.
Say you’re analyzing your client’s niche. Once you put together a list of all of your client’s top and direct search competitors, you can perform a comprehensive retrospective analysis of each digital rival to see what makes them tick and find out how they got to where they are today.
What historical data points should you pay attention to?
Start by analyzing last year’s data on each shortlisted competitor with regard to traffic, backlinks, keywords, and their rankings, and then move up in time month-by-month to identify positive or negative trends.
Please note that whenever you look at a specific data point, you need to analyze it not only in comparison with your client’s site but also see how it correlates with other data points––as they are all interconnected.
Organic and paid traffic. When analyzing traffic, pay attention to how quickly or slowly a domain’s traffic volume increases each month leading up to real-time data.
Backlinks and referring domains. During the analysis of the growth dynamics of backlinks and referring domains, it helps to study the Domain Trust of referring domains, their dofollow/nofollow status, as well as the anchor text.
Keywords. In terms of keywords, pay close attention to their overall number and whether that number went up or down with each month.
Keyword rankings. Lastly, analyze the keyword rankings dynamics. More specifically, look at how many keywords were ranking among the top 3, 10, 30, 50, 100, and beyond each month.
You can actually look at more data points than the ones outlined here, but we are going to limit the analysis to the most important ones.
Analyzing the data
Once we collect information on these data points and know what their value was each month, we’re able to reveal a lot of actionable insights. Focus on domains that are showing steady growth to uncover opportunities, and analyze less successful ones to avoid repeating their mistakes.
The big question here that you want to get an answer to is this: Which strategy yielded the best results with minimum investments?
With the power of this data, you can look at each domain and find out if, for example, the site was able to drive more traffic by getting links from referring domains with a high Domain Trust score, or if the total amount of target keywords helped the site increase the number of organic visitors.
By gradually moving back in time, you can discover the small steps that were taken by a domain along the way and use that data to improve your clients’ future strategies. Moreover, you can understand if a search engine update caused the SERP players to move around or whether the players’ strategies are, in fact, responsible for their success or failure.
Without access to such historical data, you can waste valuable time and resources doing the guesswork and experimentation yourself. But learning from other people’s mistakes can fast-track your clients’ success.
Now that we’ve covered the value you can get from analyzing historical data on domains, let’s take a look at the benefits of using historical data when working with client websites.
2. Boosting client visibility through historical domain data
Historical data on website traffic and rankings can help figure out what advantages and drawbacks to expect from investing in organic and paid search engine optimization efforts.
On top of that, by analyzing your clients’ previous achievements along with the work that’s been carried out on their sites and comparing it to their competitors, you will be able to make market predictions with greater accuracy.
In SE Ranking’s Competitive Research tool, you can get plenty of SEO insights on the past, going back to February 2020. Naturally, every month the tools get updated with a set of data for the previous month.
Let’s dive into the tool to see some of the ways SEOs and marketers can take advantage of historical data on domain traffic and rankings.
Have the data to make a great first impression with clients
A big part of working with clients has to do with getting pitches ready, which ideally must convince them to do business with you. But there is one problem that makes it difficult to obtain enough data to have a clear picture of the client’s market share: you can’t access any client accounts to dig into their data. To boot, you can’t access their competitors’ accounts either, but that’s always the case.
To solve this problem, SEO experts leverage paid solutions like SE Ranking’s Competitive Research to get market and SEO data that gives them the necessary historical insights. Through such tools, experts are able to paint a good picture of the journeys client websites went through, as well as their competitors. This ultimately allows agencies to put forward a strategic plan that is a lot more insightful and actionable.
Get more data when gathering competitive intelligence
Having an understanding of how quickly client competitors advance in SERPs and climb the rankings ladder can shed light on the search environment for digital experts. Once agencies have that historical rankings and traffic data on client competition, they are free to compare how their clients and their clients’ digital rivals move forward in search and understand the pace at which client websites need to go in order to reach the set goals.
So, besides using such tools to get historical data on client websites, you are encouraged to dig into the competition as well to gain a competitive edge on the market.
Access historical insights from day one
The vast majority of SEO solutions on the market don’t give you the opportunity to import relevant performance data from other SEO solutions seamlessly. This means that once you sign up for a new SEO tool, you don’t have any way of going back in time through search engine results pages. In most cases, such tools only provide data starting from the date you add the website to the tool as a project and specify which keywords you want to target.
Since SEO experts and digital marketers can’t afford to lose such valuable historical data at the risk of drawing the wrong SEO conclusions, they tend to strongly avoid switching their software solutions.
With SE Ranking’s Competitive Research tool, you can get your hands on practically the same historical data on traffic and rankings that you have in your current tool. Sure, it’s not the ideal solution, but it does allow us to see how current results compare to past achievements, regardless of whether or not you were keeping track of a website’s search performance.
Over to you
Historical organic and paid data from Google on domains is practically priceless to SEOs and digital marketers. It’s like going on a treasure hunt guided by a map, which in this case is represented by historical data. Obviously, X doesn’t mark the spot here, but it sure does help stay on the right track towards success.
Through the power of this data, experts working with clients can get an understanding of past progress, strategy evolution, competitor movement to ultimately put forward a very well-informed SEM and SEO strategy. The best part is that you won’t have to play catch-up if you do decide to switch to a new SEO software solution like SE Ranking—all the data is there as soon as you sign up.
Time travel has already been invented, but at the moment, it only allows us to travel through Google’s SERPs.
