With virtual school and other online childrens’ enrichment, more kids than ever are online. The sudden influx of online classes and meetups mean that children’s data is more at risk than before. In fact, 75% of children would share personal information online in exchange for goods and services, according to data from SafeAtLast.

As a result of these changes and new regulations from countries, Google is updating its policies around minors online:

Letting those under 18 remove images from search. “Children are at particular risk when it comes to controlling their imagery on the internet. In the coming weeks, we’ll introduce a new policy that enables anyone under the age of 18, or their parent or guardian, to request the removal of their images from Google Image results,” wrote Mindy Brooks, product and UX director for kids and families at Google. While this doesn’t remove the image from the internet completely, it can prevent it from showing in image search results.

Adjusting product experiences for youths. YouTube will change the default upload mode to private for kids aged 13-17. SafeSearch will be automatically turned on for those under 18 using Google Search. Those under 18 will not be able to turn on their location history.

Advertising changes. In the coming months, Google Ads will “be expanding safeguards to prevent age-sensitive ad categories from being shown to teens, and we will block ad targeting based on the age, gender, or interests of people under 18,” the company said.

Why we care. Any move to protect kids online is a step in the right direction. We’ve all been more online than ever over the past eighteen months as the pandemic forced lockdowns, homeschooling and working from home. With the Delta and Lambda variants, this trend may continue into 2022. This move is a step toward protecting those under 18 as they navigate the internet to attend classes, connect with family and friends and explore the world. While advertisers should not be drastically affected, you may see changes in your ad metrics as audiences are potentially taken away from your targeting.

More PPC advertising news

• Instagram is disabling interest and activity-based targeting of underage users
• Learning from the sales process to limit waste and accelerate ROI
• Google Ads attribution models now support YouTube and Display
• FLoC and the future of audiences: Understanding the limits and capabilities of FLoC, FLEDGE and TURTLEDOVE

The post Google Ads will soon block ad targeting based on age, gender or interests of people under 18 appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google updated the article structured data help document to add new author properties to the list of recommended properties you can use in Google Search. The company said it added a new recommended author.url property to the article structured data documentation.

What is author.url. The author.url property is a new recommended property you can add to your article structured markup that is essentially a link to a web page that uniquely identifies the author of the article. This link can be to the author’s social media page, an about me page, a biography page or some other page that helps identify this author.

Alternative. Google also said in the help documents that “you can use the sameAs property as an alternative.” Google can understand both sameAs and url when disambiguating authors, the company said.

Why it’s important. Some authors, like myself, write across two or more websites. Giving the search engine a way to identify that the same author wrote articles on site A and on site B can help Google better understand the author’s footprint. It might be used for the new article carousel in the author knowledge panels and for broader reasons at Google.

Why we care. If your site publishes articles, it might benefit you to add this new property to your article structured data. Who knows if Google will use it more broadly than just in the author knowledge panels, and use it to try to understand the expertise of a specific author across multiple sites. Maybe, just maybe, that can help your site rank better in the long term. That is assuming SEOs spammers do not manipulate it and post-fact author markup for their stories.

The post Google adds author URL property to uniquely identify authors of articles appeared first on Search Engine Land.

“As of this week, we’ve upgraded all Google Ads non-last click models, including data-driven attribution, to support YouTube and Display ads. In addition to clicks, the data-driven attribution model also measures engaged views from YouTube,” wrote Charles Huyi, Product Manager for Google Ads in an announcement on Monday.

Understand the buyer journey. Along with knowing which channels are contributing along the buyer journey toward a final conversion (whatever that looks like for your business), the new inclusions mean that “when used along with automated bidding strategies or updates to your manual bidding, data-driven attribution helps to drive additional conversions at the same CPA compared to last click.”

You can find the new models under the tools icon. From there select Attribution which is under the Measurement option. Changing your attribution model “helps you compare your cost per conversion and return on ad spend” for each, said Huyi. The idea is that having Display and YouTube under the different attribution models allows you to better understand the customer journey and these two channels’ impact on your CVR.

Changes to “Campaigns.” When you change your set attribution model, you may see changes in the “Campaigns” tab, according to the announcement:

• Credit shifts: With any changes to your attribution model, you could see conversion credit shifts across the various campaigns, networks, ad groups, and keywords associated with that conversion action. 
• Fractional credit: Credit for a given conversion is distributed between contributing ad interactions according to your selected attribution model. You’ll see decimals in your “Conversions” and “All Conversions” columns when using a non-last click model.
• Time lag: Since a non-last click attribution model shares conversion credit between multiple interactions, each of which happened at a different point in time, your “Campaigns” report (which counts conversions based on the time frame during which the relevant ad interactions took place) may temporarily show fewer conversions for very recent days following a change of attribution model.

Why we care. Attribution is a common issue for search marketers and continues to be muddied as more of the web focuses on privacy. The ability to model your attribution journeys through YouTube and Display will help marketers determine which channels to invest in and which channels could use a different strategy. Note the changes that will happen in your Campaigns if you make these changes, though.

The post Google Ads attribution models now support YouTube and Display appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Developing a new organizational structure when merging two or more businesses is a complicated affair, but if your new business is going to rely on its website to drive sales, leads or audience engagement, then defining a website structure that preserves and builds upon the performance of any existing websites that the merging parties own should be a top priority. With that in mind, creating a sitemap that draws on the strengths of the current websites will help to give the new business/brand the initial visibility it needs in order to be successful.

Over the years, I have managed many website migrations, but in the past year, I have had the opportunity to manage the successful migration of a merger of three different businesses/websites into one new website. In fact, I have been lucky enough to successfully manage this scenario twice in the past year and I’ve learned a lot in the process. By cherry-picking the most valuable pages to develop the sitemap, one project resulted in the website retaining nearly 100% of the traffic the previous domains were getting (there was some loss where previous services became irrelevant and therefore pages were removed), and the other project resulted in the website increasing traffic levels post-migration. For what was essentially two entirely new brands, this gave them a hell of a head start when entering their respective markets. 

While the migration strategy involves a lot more than just structuring a sitemap, when it comes to mergers this is a particular area of importance, and it needs the appropriate level of analysis to ensure the migration is a success. Get this part right and the new website will be well on its way to retaining and even improving upon the performance of the merging sites. 

What should you look for when structuring the new sitemap?

So, what exactly qualifies as a “valuable” existing page, and which pages are we looking to retain? This may look different from website to website, but as a general rule of thumb, I look at the following:

Traffic drivers. Pages that are already driving a lot of traffic to the existing websites are obviously going to be important, particularly pages that are driving traffic that is still relevant to the new business’s offering. Even if the high traffic-driving pages are slightly less relevant (but not completely irrelevant) to the new business’s offering, it might be worth keeping them to help build brand awareness in the early days. This won’t work for services/products that are no longer offered, but for loosely related blog topics etc. it can be a good brand builder to keep that traffic flowing through the site.

Convertors. Pages with a high number of conversions/conversion rate should be considered, as long as what users were converting for is still relevant to the new business. These pages can keep the sales/inquiries etc. rolling in whilst the site builds its rankings/visibility up in other areas. 

Ranking pages. The new site will likely have a target keyword list, but your current sites might already be ranking for some of those keywords. Finding pages that rank for valuable keywords, whether they have high search volumes or not (maybe they don’t drive a lot of traffic, but they attract the RIGHT traffic that converts) and whether they have high rankings or not (if a page ranks position 36 for a target keyword, it can be developed and improved to rank better, rather than trying to start completely from scratch) will be an important part of the strategy.

Pages with backlinks. Backlinks are a big part of what strengthens a domain over time, so if you don’t bring across pages that have backlinks, then the new site will be missing out on all of that potential authority-building goodness. This gives the new site a shortcut to quickly building a healthy backlink profile.

Priority page supporters. Some pages may appear to have no value as they get no traffic, conversions, rankings or backlinks, but they might be the supporting architecture helping to hold up the rankings of other pages. Relevant and high-quality content which links to priority pages that are already ranking should be retained where possible to ensure the priority page’s rankings don’t crumble because the architecture has been deconstructed.

New business offering/priorities. Of course, the sitemap needs to look to the future, and not just to the past, so any new offerings or priorities for the newly formed business will need to be considered within the sitemap, and pages will need to be built out within the proposed architecture to cater for these new offerings.

How do we find these pages in order to add them to the sitemap?

So, now that we know what we are looking for, how are we going to go about finding these pages? The following audit process pulls together data from multiple sources and analyses each page on the existing sites to discover whether any of them qualify as a “page of value” for the new site once the merger/migration is complete.

1. Keyword audit:
Pages of value discovered: Ranking pages and New business offering/priorities
Tools used: Semrush (or similar tool)

The first step is to conduct keyword research based on the offering of the new website. At this point, we are looking for relevant keywords for every product, service and user intention, as well as local variations of “[keyword] + [location]” if appropriate. If using Semrush, you can then add that keyword list to a new rank tracking project, and add all three (or more/less, depending on the merger) existing domains to that project. That way, you are able to see which pages on which domains currently rank best for each keyword, as you might find that more than one domain ranks for some of the target keywords. Pick the highest-ranking pages for each keyword (you might want to set a limit for what is an acceptable ranking to try and retain, e.g., position 40 or better) and add them to the sitemap if they seem like a good match for the new business and can be optimized/improved going forward. If the ranking for a keyword is too low, it might be better just to start from scratch when targeting that particular keyword.

2. Content performance audit:
Pages of value discovered: Traffic drivers and Convertors
Tools used: Google Analytics (or similar platform)

Next is the content performance audit, where we look to discover pages that are driving traffic and/or conversions deemed valuable to the business going forward. Most website owners will be keen to retain as much of their current traffic as possible, and as long as it is still relevant, then high traffic/conversion driving pages should be kept. 

Using Google Analytics, filter by organic traffic and look back at a specific timeframe (I usually look at the past year). Go to the Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages report and sort by “Sessions” (descending). At this point, you need to set a limit for how many organic landing sessions a page should have had in the past year to be deemed valuable. This might be a specific number of sessions or just a percentage of the traffic overall. The limit will vary from website to website. Pull together a list of all the pages that are over that threshold and sense check them to ensure they are still relevant to the new business offering.

Next, you’ll filter that same list by Goal Completions or Revenue, depending on whether it’s an ecommerce site or not. Again, you’ll need to set a limit as to how many conversions / how much revenue is deemed valuable, and keep those pages that are driving a high number of conversions. You can also look at pages with high conversion rates, but be sure that there is enough traffic going to the page to make an informed decision about whether the conversion rate is actually good or not (e.g., one session at a 100% conversion rate could be a fluke, but if you have thousands of pages like this, it does add up, so again, decisions are made on a case by case basis).

3. Content architecture audit:
Pages of value discovered: Priority page supporters
Tools used: Screaming Frog (or similar)

At this point, you should have an understanding of which pages are performing well on the website, whether it’s through rankings, traffic or conversions, and you should also know which pages/services/products are going to be a priority going forward for the business. 

Using Screaming Frog, crawl each website. You’ll then need to find the landing pages that are deemed a priority by searching for them in the “Search” box. In the bottom navigation menu, you can then click on “Inlinks.” This will show you all of the pages that are linking internally to the priority page and may be supporting its success. Keep in mind that if your priority page is in the footer or main navigation, every page on the site will likely link to it, so this gives you an idea of where that page should sit within your sitemap hierarchy. 

Of particular importance are any pages that are linking internally to the priority page using keyword-optimized anchor text, but other internal links may be helping too. At this point, you need to look through the list of internal linking pages, decide which ones are still relevant, and keep them in the sitemap if possible.

4. Backlink audit:
Pages of value discovered: Pages with backlinks
Tools used: Majestic SEO (or similar)

Next, we need to try and retain any pages that have strong, authoritative backlinks pointing to them. The best way to retain the value from the backlink is to replicate the page on the new site and redirect it appropriately. Later down the line you can then contact the owners of the site linking to that page and ask them to update it to the new domain.

Using Majestic SEO, search each of your domains, and filter by “Root Domain.” That way, you can see all of the backlinks across your site. Then, head to the “Backlinks” tab and export the data (ideally, you will look at “All backlinks per domain,” as this will show you if you have multiple pages being linked to from a single domain, but you may hit a limit on how many you can download, depending on your subscription). If there are less than 5,000 backlinks on your site, you can go ahead and export the data, but if you have more than this, you will need to create and download an Advanced Report. 

Once you have exported your data, you can sort by “TargetURL,” which will give you an understanding of which pages have the most backlinks and are a higher priority to keep. Majestic SEO has “TrustFlow” and “CitationFlow” scores which will give you an indication of the quality of those backlinks. Depending on the size/quality of the backlink profile, you may again need to set a limit on the quantity/quality of backlinks you want to retain and add those pages with high quantity/quality of backlinks to your sitemap.

5. Defining the information architecture:

Now that you know which historic pages hold SEO value, you need to define the information architecture in order to better enable crawling and indexing of priority pages. The safest way to migrate pages and retain their value is to keep URL structures as they are, but this most likely won’t be possible when bringing multiple sites together, so you’ll need to consider two things. One, is the priorities for the new business, i.e., which pages are going to represent the main offering, and two is the performance of any existing pages on the old domains that represent those offerings.

If one of the existing sites is performing much better in terms of rankings, traffic and conversions than the other sites, and you are bringing across multiple pages from that domain, it makes sense to try and maintain that URL structure, if possible, and then replicate that across any similar pages coming from the other domains. Migrations do present an opportunity to improve URL structure, but as previously mentioned, the safest bet is to maintain current structures and not deepen the crawl depth/folder level of priority pages if possible.

Simply put, your top performers/priority pages need to sit at the top of the information architecture, and maintain as much of their current URL structure as possible. You can visualize your new sitemap and information architecture, and also ensure you have a spreadsheet that details all of the information you have discovered during this audit process for each page so that you, your client or your boss can see the justification behind each page.

Defining the sitemap/information architecture using any existing data is only one step in the migration process, but it is without a doubt one of the most important steps as it can lead to retained traffic, rankings, conversions and brand presence in the SERPs. That doesn’t mean you can then ignore the technical setup, landing page design, content optimization or any of the other factors that go into a successful migration, but for business mergers, this is one of the best places to start.

The post How to maintain organic performance when merging multiple websites appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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 I dropped off my kid at a new daycare this week.

At the new place, you just drive up, and they come fetch your child from your car. I’m sure veteran parents are used to this, but I was not prepared and neither was my baby. She cried. I almost cried, and then I had to drive away to let the next parent do the same thing. It was a clean break, though. There was no mulling around with me potentially making it worse by being wishy washy and sappy. 

Where am I going with this? It’s almost like switching jobs (if you’re in-house) or getting a new client (if you’re agency-side). My friend Amalia once asked Twitter if they’d meet with a new client’s former agency — and the feedback was mixed (but most said they would!). Sometimes the extra info can be helpful, but other times it’s just a bunch of mulling around, making things worse. There’s a reason there’s a transition happening and a clean break can be a good thing for everyone involved.

Just like dropping off your kid for the first day of school, it may be uncomfortable at first. There may be frustration and confusion, but everyone’s probably better off taking what they have and starting fresh. Plus, new beginnings with new jobs or new clients can be fun. You might discover something awesome along the way.

Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content

Google rep says search term report glitch was a potential test

In a response to Barry’s tweet about the search term report glitch in Google Ads, ads product liaison Ginny Marvin tweeted: “The team is exploring ways to share more data in Search Terms Reports while remaining privacy safe. I’ll have more to share in the coming weeks.” If the changes stay permanent (or even some version of it does), it’ll help PPC advertisers improve their campaigns and strategies. 

In response, Paid Search Manager at MerkleB2B Melissa Mackey tweeted, “That is excellent news! I hope this comes true – we are really struggling with some of our B2B advertisers seeing 75%+ of search queries hidden.”

“Would definitely be great to get as many queries that could be made available to help better segment and funnel our campaign set up for optimal control and performance,” added Marc Weisinger.

Core Web Vitals is about providing the best user experience — but it’s also a ranking factor

“Anyone else not buying Core Web Vitals? I just find it hard to believe that this actually becomes a greater part of the ranking algo. Has anyone seen dramatic gains or decreases based on it so far?” asked one Redditor in the r/SEO sub.

There’s been quite a bit of confusion around the topic especially as Google has released multiple core algorithm updates this summer and other spam and product review updates. Many people believe they absolutely have to shore up their CWV while others think it’s more of a nice to have after everything else on your site is figured out.

John Mueller weighed in on Reddit offering some clarification, but also not a ton: “It is a ranking factor, and it’s more than a tie-breaker, but it also doesn’t replace relevance.” The key, he emphasizes, is that it’s less about meeting a certain number of recommendations in an SEO tool, but providing a positive user experience for searchers who land on your site. Your content can answer their queries, but if your site is a pain to deal with — it won’t be the best result.

FLoC and the future of audiences: Understanding the limits and capabilities of FLoC, FLEDGE and TURTLEDOVE

Apple, Firefox, and others without a stake in online advertising have already started to block 3rd party cookies. Google, with its interests in online advertising, is taking a more measured approach and proposing solutions like FLoC before they also turn off 3rd party cookie support in their browser.

What FLoC proposes is a way to anonymize users by adding them into cohorts using a federated learning methodology. This grouping of users into cohorts happens in the browser so no personal data leaves the device. Then the cohort is made available for publishers who wish to continue showing targeted ads to their users.

From the ads perspective, the best we can do is continue monitoring FLoC or its new replacement and experiment with it so that we are ready to make the most of it the day 3rd party cookies stop working.

Read more here.

On the hunt for something new in 2021? Here are the latest career opportunities in search

You may notice a new addition to our job postings. From today onward, we’re going to try to include jobs with listed salary ranges. We hope this helps with pay equity and ensuring search marketers are compensated for their experience.

Paid Search Manager @ Square (USA remote)

• Salary: $95k-125k/yr
• Manage a $XXM budget for SEM campaigns to bring in new sellers across all of Square’s products in international markets
• Own the strategy for Paid Search and Shopping campaigns and manage an agency to align on campaign build and optimization

Technical Content Marketing Manager @ Sonrai Security (USA remote)

• Salary: $90k-110k/yr
• Ideate, develop, execute, and distribute compelling B2B cloud security content on technical topics
• Own the development of content for all of Sonrai’s marketing channels, including website, blog, featured content, and social media

SEO Specialist @ JurisPage (Remote Canada or Minnesota)

• Salary: $50k-65k/yr
• Perform ongoing keyword discovery, expansion and optimization.
• Research and implement search engine optimization recommendations.
• Develop and implement link-building strategies.

Social Media Manager @ Parker and Lynch (USA Remote)

• Salary: $50k-70k/yr
• Help meet Company’s yearly goals and objectives by assisting in the execution of a Marketing plan that is strategic, forward-thinking, results-driven, optimized on an ongoing basis, and delivers sales, an increasing customer base, and deeper engagement with existing customers.
• Help to ensure customer communication strategies and Brand messaging and Brand imagery is consistent across all platforms.

Enter a job opening for an opportunity to be featured in this section.

Search Shorts: Stuff marketers say, getting buy-in from devs and how does SEO even work?

Give us marketing jargon in a crossword puzzle and we’re there. Want to test your knowledge of the latest marketing buzzwords? Check out this deliverable you can leverage for some content later. (wink wink)

“Take a gander if you’re trying to get buy-in from engineering and dev teams. At the end of the day, it’s all about framing and being open to collaboration,” tweeted Sam Torres, Managing Partner at The Gray Dot Company, about her AMA with Women in Tech SEO. Check out the details here.

How does SEO work? Onboarding an SEO newbie? Check out our comprehensive guide to search engine optimization. It covers topics like site architecture, content, and HTML.

What We’re Reading: In totally not sketchy news: Researchers looking into Facebook’s misinformation problem got banned

“Facebook has banned the personal accounts of academics who researched ad transparency and the spread of misinformation on the social network,” wrote James Vincent for The Verge last week. The social media platform claims the researchers violated its terms of service by not getting permission to use scrapers to gather user data. 

The NYU Ad Observatory researchers scraped the data to gather info on political ads, who pays for them, and how they spread. To do so, they created a plugin called Ad Observer: “Ad Observer is a tool you add to your Web browser. It copies the ads you see on Facebook and YouTube, so anyone can see them in our public database,” according to the plugin website. “We’ll never ask for information that could identify you… [The browser extension] doesn’t collect your personal information.”

Facebook discloses some ad information in its Ad Library, but not all the data the plugin collects for research purposes. The researchers believe that the bans on their personal accounts are Facebook’s way of silencing them on the project.

To me, this is another example of the convergence of all the things advertisers are dealing with right now: privacy, transparency, need for data, user confusion around it all, and tech company resistance.

The post It’s not a bug; it’s a feature! The Google search term report glitch actually may have been a test; Monday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.