Portfolio bid strategies are now available globally, Microsoft Advertising announced on Tuesday. The platform’s automated integration with Google Tag Manager (GTM) is also now generally available.

Portfolio bid strategies. This feature automatically adjusts bidding across multiple campaigns to balance under- and over-performing campaigns that share the same bidding strategy (like maximize conversions, target CPA, target impression share, etc).

To get started with portfolio bid strategies in Microsoft Advertising, navigate to Tools > Portfolio bid strategy. Then, select a bid strategy and include complimentary budgets. You can also use shared budgets with portfolio bid strategies to let your campaigns draw from a single budget.

Automated integration with GTM. Microsoft Advertising’s integration with Google Tag Manager enables you to automatically copy the setup used by your existing Google tags.

To do so, sign into Google and select the Google Tag Manager account and container via Microsoft Advertising online. Next, enable the permissions to update your setup and Microsoft Advertising will set up the UET tag with additional parameters.

Why we care. Portfolio bid strategies can help save time that might otherwise be spent manually adjusting bids. The automated GTM integration also helps you save time by copying over the Google tag setup you’re already using.

The post Microsoft rolls out portfolio bid strategies and automated integration with Google Tag Manager appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google’s disavow links tool launched nearly a decade ago, on October 16, 2012.  As we approach the tenth anniversary, webmasters still have confusion and disagreement regarding how to approach a link analysis and properly use backlink data when considering a disavow.  A lot has changed since 2012!  

Whether you’re disavowing as a preventative measure or a means to recover your rankings, we’ll review current-day approaches to take based on our experience disavowing links over the past decade.  

Who may need a link disavow?

Let’s begin by answering who likely doesn’t need a disavow, and that’s most of you.  If you’ve stuck with natural link acquisition and SEO traffic is on the rise, a link disavow is unlikely to help.  This is especially true if your site already has a relatively small number of backlinks or is in a less competitive vertical.  Submitting a disavow can even hurt the rankings of otherwise healthy websites if the tool isn’t used wisely.

Consider analyzing your backlinks and submitting a disavow if:

1. You have an “unnatural links” notice in Google Search Console and corresponding manual action.
2. You know unnatural links were acquired to your website, either recently or at any time in the past. Even links from years ago can come back to bite you as Google continues mapping out artificial link networks.
3. You’ve experienced unexplainable traffic/ranking loss or traffic loss near the time of a known Google link-based update or core algorithm update. Similarly, traffic may be flat over long periods of otherwise strong on-page SEO and content creation initiatives, and you suspect off-page factors may be the reason why.
4. You see a lot of new spammy links pointing to your website regularly and may be the target of a negative SEO attack.
5. You don’t fully trust the algorithm and want to get a better understanding of your current link profile and level of risk.

Links from scrapers and other obvious spam are likely to get filtered out and ignored by Google, providing no value but also not counting against you. Nearly all websites have them, and you can usually ignore these yourself or include them in your disavow if you’re worried. But links from known link sellers and link networks can become a big problem. Frequent link-building tactics necessitating a link disavow include:

• Buying guest blog posts or “sponsored content” without the appropriate link attributes.
• Buying links with a guaranteed minimum level of “authority.” 
• Buying links from a list of sites that have varying pricing for placement.
• Obtaining keyword-rich anchor links pointing directly to SEO landing pages. 
• Buying links at all, for that matter, especially from anyone offering pre-selected placements.

Compiling your backlinks & properly analyzing them

For an advanced SEO looking for the most comprehensive look and their link data, merging multiple datasets (Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic, Semrush, and so on) will paint the most complete picture of your backlink profile.  For the rest of you, hiring a professional to help is the best path forward for the rest of you – a second reminder that disavowing can do more harm than good if not fully confident in your approach. Should you choose to do it alone, downloading the links provided in Google Search Console will likely suffice, even if they’re only showing a small “sampling” of your overall link profile.

Once your link data is obtained, you’ll have to make some decisions on how to analyze your backlinks. Most webmasters take shortcuts, relying on software to tell them how “authoritative” or “toxic” a link might be. This is a quick but dangerous way to compile links for your disavow.  

Although convenient, we do not recommend relying on:

1. Third-party link metrics from SEO software listing the “authority,” “trust,” or “rating” of your links. These scores better represent a site’s ability to rank itself than its ability to pass link equity (or harm) to you. None of the companies who provide these metrics are Google, Google doesn’t use their data, their scoring is based on their unique & often limited crawl, their data and link values all vary from each other, and they generally don’t consider if a website which links to you has disavowed any of its own links or has been penalized by Google for selling links. Ironically, many penalized sites will receive a high “authority,” “trust score,” or “rating” due to the quantity of their (spammy) backlinks, and these are certainly not sites you’d want a link from!

2. Blindly pasting any software’s “toxic” or “spam” link list into your disavow. We’ve seen webmasters rely on this all too often, leading to further traffic loss. A third reminder: a disavow can do more harm than good if completed improperly.
3. Making decisions based on a linking site’s traffic levels. A link can be natural and relevant, even from a town library, local nonprofit, or hobbyist website. These sites likely have low traffic levels since they traditionally don’t rank for large amounts of commercial phrases. However, links from them are still natural & freely given to support your overall link profile. Don’t disavow these!

Instead, ask yourself:

1. Does the site linking to you appear to be a good resource, put online to provide value to its audience? Is it maintained by someone who has subject-matter expertise or a strong interest in the topic at hand? Are they linking to you in a natural way, as an extension of their own content and compiled resources?  If so, this is likely a great link to have and one you won’t have to worry about causing issues.
2. What does the linking site’s link neighborhood itself look like? Are the backlinks natural, or do they appear manipulated for SEO purposes?  Are the external links throughout the website there to provide more information about the topic being discussed and consistent with the site’s theme? If the site’s internal & external links pass the smell test, you’re likely safe to exclude this link from your disavow file.

3. Is the website linking to you filled with varying content and many unrelated external links? Is it a blog you’ve never heard of with articles about everything, always linking out to a commercial website within each article?  Links from sites fitting this pattern are likely in a link network or database, can potentially be harmful to your SEO performance, and were a primary target of Google’s link spam update last summer. You’ll want to consider links from websites fitting this mold for your disavow, especially if they’ve never sent you any direct traffic via someone actually clicking on your link.

Preventative or reactionary analysis & disavow frequency

Like most SEO efforts, staying on top of your link profile is rarely a one & done initiative and more often resembles a game of cat & mouse, depending on the scenario. If your website and its traffic levels are healthy and growing, revisiting your backlink profile can be done on a less frequent basis. Semi-annually or yearly may be appropriate depending on your level of concern.

A preventative disavow may make sense in this situation; if troubles arise, Google is months behind on reconsideration requests, and that’s not a situation you want to find yourself in.  Always remember that links are really hard to get and a primary part of Google’s ranking equation, so being conservative with a disavow here is usually the best approach.

On the other hand, webmasters may find it worthwhile to review their backlinks and update their disavow files more regularly if they’ve been affected by manual action or link-based updates in the past, or they suspect they are being targeted by a negative SEO campaign. More frequent revisions can help ensure you’re ahead of the algorithm when disassociating yourself with links that have the potential to cause issues in the near or long term.  

Final thoughts

From its early days a decade ago, Google’s disavow links tool has remained an often misunderstood part of its Search Console for webmasters. From initially being needed solely as a response to 2012’s “Penguin” algorithm rollout and as a way to resolve manual actions, its use cases have evolved for both preventative and reactionary scenarios. Likewise, the way webmasters review their links for a variety of purposes has changed over the past decade. 

Regardless of your need to visit the disavow tool, it’s important to keep in mind how earning natural, trusted links can be one of the biggest SEO growth drivers, directly contributing to traffic and ranking increases over time. Safe & effective link earning reduces risks in your backlink profile and helps avoid the need for disavowing at all. 

The post To disavow or not? Getting it right, 10 years later. appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Pinterest has launched an augmented reality (AR) feature that enables users to see what furniture looks like in their homes before they buy, the company announced Monday. Called “Try On for Home Decor,” the feature is already available for retailers such as Crate & Barrel, CB2, Walmart, West Elm and Wayfair.

Why we care. This is hardly the first time augmented reality has been used to bring more of the offline shopping experience online (see below), but it does increase Pinterest’s shoppable pins with “Try on” enabled from 14,000 beauty pins to 80,000 home decor pins, according to Engadget.

In addition, this capability is rolling out to a new product category with support from well-known retailers, which could be significant for Pinterest’s 444 million monthly active users (worldwide) as well as the brands looking to sell to them. If this feature strengthens Pinterest as a shopping platform, it’ll also strengthen it as an advertising channel as well. 

AR-powered Try On expands product categories. Pinterest first introduced its Try On feature in January 2021 for beauty products, specifically eyeshadow and lipstick.

A month before that (December 2020), Google launched a similar feature in the mobile search results. Amazon also has a “View in your room” feature available on its mobile app for certain products as well.

How it works. Users browsing home decor products on Pinterest’s Android or iOS apps will see three dots in the top-right corner of “Try On enabled” Pins. Select the Pin and “Try in your space” to view the product using the camera lens.

Users can adjust and place the product to better help them visualize how it’ll look in-person. Users can also click the Pin to be taken to the checkout page of the retailer’s site.

The post Pinterest rolls out AR ‘Try on’ feature for furniture items appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google Ads has added recommendations to Discovery campaigns, the company announced Monday. In addition, the ability to automatically apply recommendations has rolled out to manager accounts and the platform is also adding more recommendations for Video campaigns.

Why we care. Recommendations may help you troubleshoot your campaigns or identify opportunities for greater efficiency. However, advertisers should exercise caution when opting into auto-applied recommendations — while they might save you some time, it might not be the most effective way to spend your budget.

Recommendations for Discovery campaigns. As mentioned above, recommendations are now available for Discovery campaigns.

And, Google Ads is also now showing optimization scores for Discovery campaigns as well.

Auto-apply recommendations in manager accounts. The ability to automatically apply recommendations has rolled out to manager accounts.

Advertisers should note that, when turned on, this feature automatically applies all recommendation types that have been selected as new recommendations become available.

More recommendations for Video campaigns. Google Ads is also bolstering its recommendations for Video campaigns. New examples of recommendations for this campaign type include:

• Set up product feeds to help you get more clicks and conversions at a lower CPA.
• Set up Google Analytics 4 to give you deeper, cross-platform customer insights.
• Upgrade your conversion tracking for more accurate conversion measurement.

The post Recommendations roll out to Discovery campaigns appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google search results have been showing an “Untitled” title tag for some sites over the past 3 days. People who click on those sites are being sent to spam sites, according to postings from users on Hacker News and Reddit.

‘Untitled’ Google results. Here’s what a Hacker News user posted:

“Over the last few days I’ve noticed several distinct Google results that are simply ‘Untitled’, that redirect to other sites that are definitely spam and possibly malware (I didn’t stay long enough to investigate). I’ve seen other examples of titles such as ‘Oh’ redirecting to the same spam sites. From the result preview below the title, the results otherwise seem somewhat relevant to the query, but most often end up loading a fake captcha page.“

nsilvestri on Hacker News

There is speculation in that thread that some of the reports of ‘Untitled’ results are due to compromised WordPress sites.

That thread reference another Hacker News thread, which included additional evidence of the issue in a discussion about Google rewriting page titles: 

“Something has to be fishy with this because I get tons of “Untitled” results now which directly lead to spam. This sucks big time because I usually got really good results since I search a lot coding related things and now I cannot use this account anymore for searching.”

5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV on Hacker News

On Reddit, there is additional discussion of this issue. One user shared what the “Untitled” titles look like:

Google’s response. When alerted about the issue and thread via Twitter, Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan tweeted: “We’re working on it.”

On Reddit, Sullivan added some additional context: “It’s not malware. It’s spam, something our systems normally would typically catch, so we’re checking on it to improve.”

He also added: “I can’t reproduce that myself, but it still helps understanding you’re seeing it happen on desktop and your phone. We’re looking into it.“

Why we care. Many have questioned the quality of Google’s search results in recent months (to be fair: some SEO professionals have been questioning the quality of Google’s search results for even longer than that!). But spam or malware sites in search results is bad for users, which is bad for Google. While this issue won’t cause most users to abandon Google (where are they going to go?), it’s stuff like this that gives SEO and search a bad name.

The post ‘Untitled’ search results sending users to spam sites, Google ‘working on it’ appeared first on Search Engine Land.

We’re continuing our conversation about scaling your mortgage business through referrals. If you missed last week’s post covering the three keys to blowing up your real estate referrals, go back and read that gem. To recap, you want to ditch the cheesy sales pitch, be genuine with social media engagement, and leverage the co-branding abilities of your digital mortgage tools.

In this week’s article, we’re going to uncover reasons that despite your efforts, you’re still not getting a steady stream of qualified leads from your real estate partners and clients. Before we start digging in, you must adopt the right mindset. 

Remember that getting leads –from any source –requires sustained, nurturing effort. 

Just like you can’t expect a prospective borrower to convert into a client after just one conversion or after sending one email, you can’t expect referrals to pour in when you’re applying sporadic, half-assed effort. Resolve that referrals are a critical part of your lead generation and that you’ll work at it with the same drive as other lead gen avenues every day.  

Worst Mistakes When It Comes to Getting More Mortgage Referrals

Not Asking For Referrals / Lack of Promotion

Many mortgage professionals struggle to ask for referrals, often due to doubt. It could stem from low confidence in their competence or uncertainty about their value to the client. Fear of rejection or looking desperate is another possible reason some mortgage pros fail to ask for referrals.

One way to combat doubt or fear is to essentially “get out of your head.” Move the focus from your needs and wants to your prospect’s needs and wants.  

Consider how much value you bring to others’ lives. Your professional financial advice, guidance filled with good intentions, and assistance in taking care of the most significant financial decision most will make in their lives are extraordinarily critical. 

And when you pair that expertise with empathy, your distinction truly becomes invaluable. So Focus less on you, and more on them

Not Communicating or Expressing Appreciation Enough

It’s essential to connect with your partners continuously. Not in a nagging way but in a “fanning the flame” way. Let your referral partners and former clients know how much you appreciate them. Send them valuable communication like:

• Thank you: Send them a card, email, or social media shout-out expressing your appreciation for them.
• Updates: Did you share an upcoming event in your last communication with them? Did they share something that they were anticipating? Send a quick update and ask for an update for some fresh, meaningful engagement.
• Follow-through: Did they ask you for additional information or recommendation? Be sure to follow up with that info on time.

Subpar Service / Not Creating Super Fans

Think about this: which businesses do you recommend more? The ones where you had a good experience or those where you had a great one?

As tough as this may be to hear, most people aren’t thinking about your business as often as you are. They don’t wake up in the morning with the intention of sending you more referrals. They don’t think about how they can work it into a conversation. 

When your clients refer your mortgage services, it’s because they had a positive experience. And if the experience was exceptionally delightful, clients will sing your praises over and over again.

That’s what we call a “superfan.”

Superfans are the gold standard of referral partners. They’re loyal, enthusiastic, and –while they don’t wake up every morning thinking about your business –they WILL make extra effort to reach more people on your behalf. 

Haven’t Perfected The User Experience (UX)

Along the same thread, the best way to create a delightful experience is to make sure the user experience is on point. End-to-end, every touchpoint must simultaneously remove as much friction as possible plus elevate the experience. 

If you are using any of our digital mortgage tools, you know that UX is foundational to our design. This isn’t just a marketing ploy. UX design influences behavior. Everything from where graphics are placed on the screen to how options are displayed to motivating users to complete tasks with prompts and maps has been scientifically studied and proven. 

So if your goal is to create superfans (of course it is), then make sure you’re using mortgage software designed to create superfans. See the UX design of Loanzify POS:

Asking For The Wrong Referrals

It’s happened before. Probably too many times. You ask your client for a referral, they give you one, but nothing happens. Perhaps that person never returned your call or cut you off soon after the first communication. Or maybe they just we’re the right fit. It could be that you asked for the wrong referrals.

This is often the case when you ask the wrong questions. Typically, a loan officer may ask, “do you know anyone who could benefit from my services?” It seems like the right question to ask but the reply often is not honest. Here’s why.

Asking for a referral when they may not be ready to provide one (they haven’t entirely decided) puts them in a spot to give you one anyway. Since they haven’t truly committed to the idea of referring you, they’ll name someone they feel safe with or hold in low regard. 

They do this to protect their reputation. If you happen to falter, the poor experience won’t reflect on them. Instead, be more specific with your request.

“Do you know anyone who is looking to relocate?”

“Are there any veterans in your family? Are they homeowners?”

“Are your parents of retirement age? I’d love to share information on how they can use their equity to supplement their retirement.”

Need more ideas for getting mortgage referrals and building a mortgage business in the digital age? Subscribe to our email list below and never miss an article.