Beginning on September 21, Google will enforce new requirements for podcasts to show in recommendations on the Google Podcasts platform, the company told podcast owners via email on Thursday. Podcasts that do not provide the required information can still appear in Google and Google Podcasts search results and users can still subscribe to them, they just won’t be eligible to be featured as a recommendation.
The new requirements. Starting on September 21, to be eligible to show as a recommendation, podcast RSS feeds must include:
A valid, crawlable image: This image must be accessible to Google (not blocked to Google’s crawler or require a login).
A show description: Include a user-friendly show description that accurately describes the show.
A valid owner email address: This email address is used to verify show ownership. You must have access to email sent to this address.
A link to a homepage for the show: Linking your podcast to a homepage will help the discovery and presentation of your podcast on Google surfaces.
The podcast author’s name: A name to show in Google Podcasts as the author of the podcast. This does not need to be the same as the owner.
More details can be found in the accompanying forum post.
Why we care. Recommendations in Google Podcasts provide greater visibility, which can help the podcasts that are able to appear there attract more listeners. Following the new requirements will help to ensure that your podcasts are eligible for those free, highly visible placements.
In addition, recommendations in Google Podcasts are personalized, so there’s a higher likelihood that, if your podcast appears as a recommendation, it’ll be more relevant to a listener’s interests, which may benefit your marketing goals.
Visitors to your website come from an investment in search marketing. Failing to convert them is a missed opportunity. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) plays a significant role in ecommerce. Improving your conversion rate from 2% to 2.1%, for example, represents a 5% increase in online sales.
How can you improve your Google Shopping conversion rates? In this guide from Bidnamic you’ll learn about:
Ecommerce conversion rate benchmarks, including average, poor and exceptional conversion rates in the major ecommerce sectors
Top tips to personally enhance your website for CRO
Technologies used by leading ecommerce companies to personalise the shopper experience and drive up conversion rates
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, Google Trends is 15 years old!
Well, it’s actually about 15 and 3 months, but the company decided to publish a few posts about it yesterday. That inspired me to look back on the top trending searches of the last few years. I hope you like nostalgia because here they are.
2020: “Election results”
2019: “Disney Plus”
2018: “World Cup”
2017: “Hurricane Irma”
2016: “Powerball”
2015: “Lamar Odom”
2014: “Robin Williams”
Every time I look at historical Google Trends data, I’m always surprised (yet still somehow not surprised) at what captured our interests and how those priorities have changed over the years. I’ve got my fingers crossed for trends worth fondly reminiscing about in 2021.
Nostalgia trip aside, Google Trends can be a very useful tool for marketers — if you’re unfamiliar, the company has posted an article with tips on how to get themost out of it. And, I’ve included a link to an interview with the person who led the team that launched Google Trends back in 2006, you can find that at the top of the Shorts section.
George Nguyen, Editor
Instagram is adding more e-commerce support with ads in the Shop tab
Instagram is now testing ads in the Shop tab, TechCrunch first reported on Monday. The ads, which are rolling out now to mobile users in the U.S., can include a single image or a carousel of images, and the test is currently only open to a handful of retailers.
Why we care. Ads in Instagram Shops may provide retailers with a new way to target audiences that are ready to shop. This is especially valuable as the industry moves away from cross-app tracking and third-party cookies, which may be less of an issue in this context since all of the user’s activity happens in the app.
Google Ads will soon block ad targeting based on age, gender or interests of people under 18
With virtual schooling (and the general digitization of life), kids are more online than ever. That’s one of the reasons Google provided for implementing its new ad targeting restrictions. In the coming months, the company will expand safeguards to block ad targeting based on the age, gender or interests of users under 18. Google will also prevent age-sensitive ad categories from being shown to teens.
In addition, the company is introducing a new policy that enables users under 18 years old (or their parent or guardian) to request removal of their images from Google Image results and is defaulting YouTube uploads to private for kids between 13-17. Instagram knocked over the first domino when it made similar policy changes late last month, so we might see other players do the same. While advertisers should not be drastically affected, you may see changes in your ad metrics as audiences are potentially taken away from your targeting.
Instagram introduces the ability to limit comments and DMs from accounts that don’t follow you
Image: Instagram.
Instagram is introducing Limits, a feature that will automatically hide comments and DM requests from users who don’t follow you (or your brand) or who only recently followed you, the Facebook-owned company announced yesterday.
“Our research shows that a lot of negativity towards public figures comes from people who don’t actually follow them, or who have only recently followed them, and who simply pile on in the moment,” the company said in the announcement, “We saw this after the recent Euro 2020 final, which resulted in a significant and unacceptable spike in racist abuse towards players. Creators also tell us they don’t want to switch off comments and messages completely; they still want to hear from their community and build those relationships.” Limits is now available to all users globally.
Why we care. Over the past few years, but especially since last year, brand safety has been a major concern for many businesses. Limits can help brands on Instagram stem the flurry of comments that may come in response to their stance on polarizing topics (like mask mandates, for example). It can also prevent them from alienating their longtime followers on the platform since those users will still be able to comment or send DMs.
Behind the scenes of Google Trends, standing out from the rest of the pack and your suggestions for custom columns in Google Ads
The Google Trends origin story. As I noted in the intro, Google Trends is now 15 years old, and in recognition of that milestone, the company has published an interview with Yossi Matias, VP of engineering and research, who led the team that launched Trends all those years ago. Matias shares where the idea for Trends came from, how the tool has changed and what working on Trends in 2020 was like.
Dare to be less same.This week’s Marketoon is all about standing out in a “sea of sameness.” Even slight — and sometimes, arbitrary — distinctions can make all the difference, just look at Fiji Water’s bottles.
What custom columns would you like to see in Google Ads? Google’s Ads Product Liaison Ginny Marvin is looking for your suggestions.
On behalf of third-party sellers, Amazon will pay up to $1,000 for property damage and personal injury claims
Amazon is expanding its A-to-z Guarantee to facilitate the resolution of personal injury and property damage claims between customers, merchants and their insurance providers. This program, which will begin on September 1, includes payments of up to $1,000 per claim (that covers about 80% of cases, according to the ecommerce platform).
The resolution program is offered at no cost to sellers and Amazon may step in to pay claims for higher amounts if the seller is unresponsive or rejects a claim that the platform believes to be valid. If the seller doesn’t respond to a claim, Amazon may decide to pursue the seller separately. If a seller rejects a claim that Amazon believes is valid, Amazon may still intervene to address the customer’s concern, but the seller will still have the opportunity to defend their product against the claim.
“Wow, so magnanimous of you, Amazon!” is what some may be thinking. But, in 2019, a panel of Pennsylvania judges decided that Amazon is liable for personal injury resulting from goods bought on its platform — even goods sold by third parties. This new program may help Amazon get out ahead of potential lawsuits by resolving claims before customers lawyer up.
Mortgage company branding is more than a logo. It’s part of the entire consumer experience, how your customer perceives you and is an indispensable factor in your ROI. Everything from the individual graphics to your website and mortgage app appearance to social media posts to online chats is part of your brand.
Because branding is a critical element of your business, it’s vital that you know the fundamentals of a strong one. By the way, this is true about personal branding as well. Whether you’re a team on 1 or 100, your mortgage brand is your DNA and promise to consumers. Here’s how to do it.
Purpose
A strong brand reflects your company’s purpose. It’s the reason why your business was established and answers the key question: why should a consumer choose your business over others?
This is the starting point for your entire branding plan. The more specific you are, the more defining the difference between you and your competitors. Answer these three questions, and you’ll have the foundation to your overarching purpose that is part of your brand strategy:
What is your business best at?
What is your business passionate about?
What difference can your business make?
Consistency
Consistent branding increases familiarity. The more a consumer is familiar with your brand, the more they begin to trust –and even prefer– your brand and business. And when it comes to online consumers who are comparison shopping, consistency and trust can tip the scales in your favor, turning a web visitor into a prospect.
Graphic elements and color schemes are visual ways to create consistency but don’t forget how your mortgage business tech stack works with your branding. A similar and predictable look, feel, and tone should be apparent in the entire Borrower Experience.
Captivate
One of the hallmarks of a great brand is that it grabs the attention of consumers. That’s not to say that it must be loud or aggressive, but optimally, it should contain some pivot –enough to make a consumer do a “double-take” when they come upon it while browsing for local mortgage brokers and lenders.
Keep in mind that the double-take is more than a cool logo. Captivating with your brand also involves offering the “remarkable” with your services, such as instant quotes or self-generated approval letters.
Personality
A strong mortgage brand also has a recognizable personality that makes it relatable to its target consumer. We can see this in action with well-known brands like Nike (motivational and inspirational) or Apple (innovative and fresh).
Authentic brand personality permeates everything from running the company to campaign messages, helping to build rapport and loyalty from your target mortgage consumer.
Emotional Hook
Consumers are often persuaded more effectively by emotion than logic. A recent collaborative study analyzing 35 years of research into emotions’ impact on decision-making revealed that emotions are a pervasive and predictable driver in decision making.
Thus, a strong mortgage brand needs an emotional hook that emphasizes the benefits to the consumer. This emotional hook (the benefits) excites consumers and motivates them to convert into borrowers.
Community
Your current and past mortgage consumers can be your most effective evangelists and be a rich resource for new mortgage leads by sharing their experience and recommending it. A strong mortgage brand is one that your consumer advocates are thrilled to share. It’s professional, clean, and trustworthy -everything they can get behind to share and go viral.
Authority
When it comes to the lending industry, authority is a must. Anything less than unshakable authority will cost you business. Ways that you can build authority with your branding include:
Mortgage content like a blog, videos, and email marketing
Consistent and active presence across the web, including review sites and social media
LenderHomePage Builds Your Mortgage Brand
A strong mortgage brand sets you up for success. It defines fundamentals like your mission and company values, rallies employees around your vision, emotionally hooks prospective mortgage consumers, excites advocates for your business, and overall helps to facilitate a thriving ROI. So when it comes to a digital mortgage partner, choose one that’s built for branding as well as scaling.
Try us out for free for 14 days and discover why top producers and enterprise originators trust LenderHomePage for all their digital mortgage platform needs.
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, over the past week I’ve been monitoring some usual and unusual activity in the organic Google search results.
This past weekend, we had a typical unconfirmed Google search ranking update. It is unclear if this is still part of the link spam update rollout or if this is something new. One thing for sure is that there are multiple signals pointing to an update. We hope you did well with this one.
More on the unusual side, we’ve seen numerous reports both documented publicly and then some behind the scenes, of Google having new indexing issues. Authoritative sites are noticing both new and old pages dropping in and out of Google’s index over the last few days. It is weird, as the pages drop out, return, drop out again, return again, etc.
Google has not confirmed any of these reports but it is something you may want to be aware of.
Barry Schwartz, Speculative Google organic search reporter
Attribution models now support YouTube and Google Display ads
Google Ads has 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. With these upgrades, the data-driven attribution model now learns even more from how users interact with your ads and convert. 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.
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.
Google structured data testing tool landing page is now an informational page
Google has officially replaced its structured data testing tool with a new navigational landing page to direct you to either Google’s rich results test tool or the Schema.org schema markup validator tool.
Above is a screenshot of the revised page, as you can see, it aims to direct you to the right tool for the right purpose.
Why we care. You can now use Schema.org to test generic structured data or Google’s rich results tool to test Google supported structured data. Of course, Google Search Console has tons of reporting for your structured data as well.
Google updates article structured data author URL helps docs
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. Google said the company added a new recommended author.url property to the article structured data documentation. 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, or a biography page or some other page that helps identify this author.
Why we care. If your site publishes articles, it might benefit you to add these 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.
Google Ads Editor 1.7 live. As you know, we reported on Google released Ads Editor 1.7, but that announcement was premature, it is now officially live – so have at it.
We’ve curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.
Social media has become a valuable resource for consumers to interact with the brands they love and discover new ones. New users across the globe are flocking to social media platforms in record numbers and adding their voices to your brand’s narrative.
With social media tools, brands can capture a wealth of measurable insights from the consumer data that social networks provide. And social media monitoring is the key to staying on top of changes in the volume and tone of these online discussions that impact your brand – and you can be sure that potential impact is significant! Let’s dig into some “must-have” capabilities, followed by the advanced, and finally – some tools to help you stay ahead of it all.
Social media monitoring must-haves
The way consumers engage and evaluate brands online is constantly evolving. For this reason, it’s critical for brands, institutions, and agencies to listen and understand consumers as they share their opinions on social media. These opinions are a valuable resource to protect your brand health, detect emerging trends, and keep a watchful eye on competitors’ performance with consumers. Social media monitoring is how you do it – but not all tools are created equal.
Therefore, when you’re outfitting your social media monitoring toolbox, there are several critical use cases that you want to have in your arsenal at the end of the day. Let’s look at a few.
Fig #1: Critical metrics measured and capabilities made possible with social media monitoring.
First and foremost, you need the capacity for robust brand health benchmarks. The ability to capture and measure posts, comments, potential impressions, and net sentiment are the bare minimum. Additionally, you need the ability to perform a precision-based social media audit on your brand to establish key metrics and understand your “normal.” Tracking these measurements over time shows how your brand performs online and is a critical element for early crisis detection.
Monitoring your marketing endeavors lets you track how your campaigns are playing out in real-time. This is vital for seeing what works and what doesn’t. Therefore, your social media monitoring should bolster your campaign strategy at the end of the day.
Likewise, your tools should leave you with a holistic outlook on your product innovation and launch. Shedding light on the consumer’s voice is critical to understanding their needs and wants, so you know which direction you need to go.
Your social media monitoring tools should be capable of casting a wide net on any topic allowing you to detect anomalies and emerging trends over time. Trend analytics is a critical component of social listening success and should inform your brand’s decision-making.
With the speed of social your social media monitoring tools should have a robust alert functionality to notify your team when your social media mentions or sentiment is going off the rails. Crisis management is a crucial aspect of social listening and something you never want to compromise on.
For the ultimate in competitive intelligence, your social media tools should have the capacity to perform the functions mentioned above on your competitors. This is particularly the case for brand health benchmarks – and even setting alerts. That way, you can compare the competition’s social media performance against your own. The goal is an accurate understanding of your share of voice within your market through competitor monitoring.
For example, tracking three competitors’ social media mentions in chunks of time gives you a window into share of voice. Monitoring these metrics over time lets you know if your brand is gaining ground.
Fig #2: Tracking competitors’ social media mentions, sentiment and passion intensity.
To round out our social media must-haves, your tools should have the ability to identify and track conversations surrounding influencers and key opinion leaders that are shaping the narrative in your market. After all, they shape consumer opinion, so staying in tune with their conversations leaves you with a head start on detecting emerging trends. Not only that, it allows you to perfect your influencer marketing strategy ahead of the competition.
While these use cases don’t cover the entirety of what modern social media monitoring tools are capable of, these are a few of the high-priority abilities you want from your toolbox. Let’s explore the advanced side of social media monitoring tools in a little more detail.
Advanced social media monitoring capabilities
To excel in today’s business world, your social media analytics must happen in real-time. Artificial intelligence (AI) with machine learning capabilities does the heavy lifting providing you with immediate access to measurable insights – which means quick decisions.
AI is a game-changer with social media monitoring, but not all AI is created equal. When choosing your social media tools, actionability is based on breadth and depth of insight. If your actions are based on half-baked AI, you have a problem.
Keeping that in mind, your social media monitoring tools should be capable of:
Accurately analyzing billions of conversations across all social media platforms on any topic with the push of a button
Recognizing patterns in human emotions, behaviors, and sentiment drivers
Revealing trending conversations and issues through sentiment measurement and volume
Analyzing demographic and psychographic data such as interests, habits, and opinions
Predictive (what is likely to happen) and prescriptive insights (recommend or do it for me)
There’s no doubt about it; if you want to keep up in today’s market, brands are leaning on social media tools that give them a holistic outlook at a moment’s notice. AI is the way to go, and you want to test your social media tools to ensure you’re getting accurate results. Again, not all social media monitoring tools are created equal. The key is to get actionable intel within each sentence for emotions, behaviors, attributes, hashtags, people, and brands.
Fig #3: Using AI to parse text and imagery for emotions, behaviors, attributes, hashtags, people, and brands.
Top social media monitoring tools to consider
Staying on top of your social media monitoring is a continuous process with many tools vying for your attention. Here, we’ll briefly cover a few tools that will help you cover the lion’s share of social listening applications that your brand needs to attend to.
NetBase Quid
NetBase Quid is the leader in social media and consumer experience analytics, capable of delivering insights 5x faster than other solutions. NetBase Quid’s next-generation artificial intelligence uses best-in-class machine learning for intelligent processing and analysis of social media and any other consumer and market data at scale.
Fig #4: Snapshot of topic mentions, posts, net sentiment, engagements, impressions and more to inform next steps.
NetBase Quid offers two distinct ways to assess data for social media analytics and data visualization. Quid not only takes your competitive intelligence to the next level with patent, company, news and blog data, but it also incorporates your NetBase queries into Quid Social for advanced social media monitoring data visualizations. That way, you can see your topic’s conversation at a glance and dive into the themes that impact your brand, like the Olympics conversation below.
Fig #5: Olympics conversation, visualized with semantically related clusters.
Looking to complement a one-stop-shop such as NetBase Quid, let’s look at a few other social media monitoring tools to keep your eye on.
Feedly
Trend analytics and monitoring are the name of the game with social media monitoring, and Feedly allows you to make sure your social listening dynamic is staying the course. Leo is their “research assistant” that organizes social media sources around your topic, filters out the noise, and helps you share insights with your team. It’s a great add-on to double-check your primary social listening’s AI accuracy.
Fig #6: Feedly dashboard.
StoryHeap
Many brands are all in on “stories” on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat – as well they should be. Stories give your brand another angle to social media and maximize impact. StoryHeap measures how your stories perform by following growth, open rate, completed views, and screenshots.
It’s a niche tool, but one that complements your marketing intel gleaned from your main social media monitoring tools, so you know the right direction to go.
Fig #7: Storyheap dashboard.
Sendible
When you’ve uncovered the data you need with your social media monitoring tools, Sendible helps you plan, post, and measure your content across a wide variety of platforms. When you’re putting your brand out there on social media, story is everything. Sendible allows you to take your social media insights, craft your marketing for direct hits and customize posts for each of your social media platforms – and track your progress.
Fig #8: Sendible dashboard.
Conclusion
Your consumers are talking about your brand and your competition on social media. Today’s top social media monitoring tools keep you apprised of relevant conversations, so you don’t miss a thing and can get ahead of narratives. Shaping the story is powerful, particularly when it so greatly impacts consumer perception. It’s essential to ensure your brand uses the latest world-class tools to stay a step of the competition – and keep pace with an increasingly demanding and fickle audience. Tomorrow’s opportunities are being shared online today!
Are you looking for a way to streamline the mortgage process? Want to give your loan officers the tools they need to boost productivity and improve customer satisfaction? If so, then you need to incorporate the latest tech tools into your business model.
While modernizing your mortgage processing capabilities sounds like a great idea, you might not be sure where to start. After all, the market is flooded with CRM software and various tech tools. It can be difficult to sort through all of the hype so that you can find high-quality solutions.
That is why our team of experts created this helpful guide. Below, we’ll outline the top tech tools for streamlining your mortgage process.
Our Picks
Mortgage processing is an ultra-competitive market. If you want to outpace the competition, then you need the latest tech tools that can offer great value to your company. As we created our list, we focused on practical solutions that deal with the issues you encounter every day and left out any tech that is too niche or overly specialized.
Our picks for the top mortgage tech tools include:
Digital Loan Platforms
If you want to offer a user-friendly buying experience, then you need to have a digital loan platform in place. This software allows consumers to complete essential documents online and submit them from anywhere in the world. You can receive automated notices anytime an action is taken on the account.
Digital loan platforms allow your loan officers to manage and review documents through a versatile mobile app. You can keep borrowers in the loop and speed up the mortgage process at the same time.
Client Retention Software
In the past, buying a home was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. That is no longer the case. Modern home buyers are more likely to relocate. They’re also always on the hunt for a lower interest rate. This gives you the opportunity to earn repeat business.
With the right customer relationship management (CRM) software, you can store client information and stay connected for years to come. You can program the software to send out automated birthday alerts and other messages. You can even send them alerts about refinance opportunities when rates drop. In short, CRM software can help you retain clients for life.
Mortgage Marketing Software
Think about all of the hours you spend creating your marketing materials and posting content to social media platforms. Imagine how much more productive you could be if you had a tool to manage marketing.
Modern marketing engines allow you to do just that. This advanced software makes it easier than ever to continuously promote your firm and generate new leads. You can even automate the lead distribution process!
Revolutionize Your Business Model with BNTouch
Are you ready to up your game and streamline the mortgage process? If so, then BNTouch can help.
Contrary to popular belief, accessing the latest mortgage processing tools can actually be extremely affordable. BNTouch has a variety of software packages designed to meet the needs of any loan officer. Whether you are an independent broker or are running a multi-location enterprise, we have the perfect solutions for your business.
If you are ready to experience the difference with BNTouch, then it is time to schedule a demo. Once you see our products in action, you will wonder how you ever did business without us! Contact us today to get started.
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, here’s a fun (and perhaps creepy) idea that my friends had over the weekend.
I was explaining Google’s FLoC proposal, as one traditionally does over board games with friends. Then, one friend said, “I’d be interested in meeting the other people in my cohort.” “What about a FLoC-based dating service?” another friend chimed in.
Since FLoC groups users with similar browsing behavior into cohorts, it stands to reason that you might share a lot of interests with others in your cohort. That could be a nice way to make friends, meet people in your industry or even establish a support network for those who are looking for support. On the other hand, it might be another echo chamber that insulates us from interacting with people of different lifestyles, viewpoints and backgrounds (although fresh cohorts are assigned on a weekly basis).
It’s highly unlikely Google would ever pivot its ad tech to play some sort of social matchmaker, but it’s fun to think of new ways existing technology can be expanded. I’d want to try it out for two reasons: 1) to see whether the cohorts are actually an accurate way to group audiences, and 2) I want to see where the commonalities end (i.e., do we also share personality traits or does it end with browsing behavior?).
George Nguyen, Editor
How to maintain organic performance when merging multiple websites
When performing a site migration or merger, creating a sitemap that draws on the strengths of the existing websites can help give your new brand the initial visibility it needs to succeed. To help marketers make the most out of this opportunity, Tom Crewe, head of SEO at UK-based digital marketing agency Adido, advised that SEOs prioritize the following:
Traffic drivers. Pages that drive relevant traffic are going to continue to be important, but even if the high traffic 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.
Convertors. These pages can keep the sales, inquiries, etc., rolling in while the site builds its rankings/visibility up in other areas.
Ranking pages. 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. 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.
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.
New business offering/priorities. The sitemap needs to look to the future, 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.
Jobs in advertising, PR and related services slowed down in July after a big jump in June
U.S. advertising, PR and related services employment. Image: Ad Age.
Employment in advertising, PR and related services increased by 1,200 jobs last month (bringing the total figure to 446,400 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics), a relatively small gain after a big jump (4,800 jobs) in June. This follows six months of growth since ad jobs hit a pandemic-period low of 432,100 jobs in January.
Zooming in on just ad agency jobs, which account for about 43% of the figures stated above, domestic agencies added 2,500 jobs in June, up from just 900 in May. Stats for July aren’t available yet because the BLS reports ad agency employment with a one-month lag, but the overall July increase of 1,200 jobs suggests a small gain in ad agency employment last month.
Why we care. “U.S. ad agency employment tends to peak earlier than the overall U.S. job market in the waning days of a business cycle’s economic expansion before a recession,” Bradley Johnson wrote for Ad Age, “On the flip side, agencies generally are cautious about adding employees as the economy recovers, resulting in a lag in staffing growth.” The slowdown in ad job growth could indicate the “waning days” of the current economic expansion, or it could just be that agencies are opting to play it safe. Unfortunately, with so much uncertainty about the Delta variant, we’ll have to wait and see which one it is, if it’s even either of those.
Tag it, cook it, climb it
How to tag all the things in GMB.Clair Carlile has published her process for tagging links, posts and more in GMB. She even included a link to her Google Sheet auto generator.
Concise recipe content that ranks. Dan Shure tweeted some data for a recipe that has only two sentences of content, but boasts an avg. position of 4.9 and over 700,000 lifetime visits. Checkout the replies for some fascinating discussions as well.
Some Amazon sellers are pressuring customers to revise or delete negative reviews
“Product doesn’t work and company will bother you till you change review.” “Seller offers $20-$30 to delete negative reviews.” These are two of the Amazon reviews Nicole Nguyen came across during her investigation for the Wall Street Journal. In the course of her research, Nguyen discovered a number of sellers that have broken with Amazon’s policies to reach out to customers, sometimes offering them more than they paid for the product to revise or erase their negative reviews.
The idea here is to appease disgruntled customers and boost the overall star rating, which can bolster sales velocity. The thing is, sellers whose fulfilment is handled by Amazon aren’t supposed to contact customers outside of Amazon’s official channel — it’s actually a violation of the terms of service.
So, how are they obtaining customers’ contact information? One way is via third-party email extraction services available for Amazon sellers (which are also in violation of Amazon’s policies).
“No matter the method a seller or brand might use to obtain customers’ information, the result is the same,” Nguyen wrote, “It’s hard to trust the authenticity of reviews, and you might be less inclined to leave your own negative review of a product, out of fear of seller retaliation.” Not only does this impact consumer trust, it also hurts merchants that are playing by the rules.
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.
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.
