Google has added a note to the product structured data help documentation to explain how to specify car markup and still have Product review snippet feature eligibility.
What is new. The note says “currently Car is not supported automatically as a subtype of Product.” You “will need to include both Car and Product types if you would like to attach ratings to it and be eligible for the Search feature,” Google said.
Code example. Google then provided this example in JSON-LD:
Image: Google.
Why we care. If you are just using car schema or just using product schema on your car and automobile landing pages, you will want to make sure to use both. If you do not, any review snippets may not show up in the Google search results for your site and web pages.
Semrush, the SEO toolset provider, has acquired SEO training website Backlinko, the company announced Wednesday, for an unannounced sum.
Why we care. Semrush’s acquisition will likely strengthen the company’s own SEO education hub, Semrush Academy. This could make Semrush a more robust source of SEO knowledge and may help it pull away from other toolset providers.
Additionally, Backlinko draws in 500,000 organic visits a month, according to the announcement. Semrush is likely to market to those users to drive them further down its sales funnel.
Why Semrush may have acquired Backlinko. “The desire to acquire Backlinko was fueled by Semrush’s commitment to inspiring both the current and next generation of digital marketers,” according to the announcement.
In an email sent to Backlinko subscribers, Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko, explained that he wanted to further scale his business, but had hit a plateau in terms of what he could do on his own. “Then, out of the blue, I got an email that changed everything,” Dean wrote, sharing that he was approached for this deal by Max Roslyakov, SVP of marketing at Semrush.
Some SEOs have speculated about other potential reasons for the acquisition: “How much was Backlinko worth to Semrush? Breaking down courses, traffic, and estimated MRR from converting that traffic. What if a competitor came in?” tweeted Victor Pan, head of technical SEO at HubSpot.
“That’s what makes the acquisition itself the joke about our industry — A leading, listed tool company, buying a site, purely for the links gained by publishing nonsense,” Peter Mindenhall tweeted, suggesting that one of the motivators behind the deal was the acquisition of Backlinko’s backlink profile. Mindenhall’s remark about “publishing nonsense” refers to the mixed reception that some of the guidance in Backlinko’s content has garnered from the SEO community.
The future for Semrush/Backlinko. “On joining Semrush, Backlinko founder Brian Dean and his colleagues will continue to grow the Semrush community by creating and curating original content for the Semrush Academy,” according to the announcement.
“As part of my agreement with Semrush, I’ll still be working on Backlinko for the foreseeable future on a part-time basis,” Dean tweeted.
Much like a physical marketplace, the online search environment has both its successful businesses and those that fail to gain traction. Matt Colebourne, CEO of Searchmetrics, used the analogy of a “high street” — the main area of commercial or shopping — to describe the current state of search marketing in his presentation at SMX Next.
“Just as you have the winners and the losers in the physical space, you have the same in the digital space; page two of Google or any search engine is fundamentally the ‘backstreet,’” he said. “That’s where a lot less audience is going to end up.”
Marketers have long used search data to optimize their content so it meets user needs. But many fail to apply those same insights to inform decisions that impact the long game.
“A lot of companies make the mistake of optimizing for growth way too soon,” Colebourne said. “They settled for their current product set and their question becomes, ‘How can we optimize sales of what we have?’ Whereas the questions they should be asking are, ‘What are the sales that we could have? How much of our target market do we have right now?’”
Each day Google processes over 3.5 billion searches, which provides marketers with a wealth of data. Here are three reasons why analyzing this search data improves marketers’ decision-making processes.
Search data shows where your growth is coming from
“Currently, about 15% of search terms that appear on Google every month are new,” said Colebourne, “So, that starts to give you an inkling of the pace of change that we have to deal with. We see trends come and go in months, and some cases even weeks. And as businesses, we have to respond.”
Many organizations focus too much energy on driving growth while neglecting to determine where that growth is coming from. And in this digital age, there’s a good chance much of it is coming from search. This data offers marketers valuable insights, especially those relating to their industry segment.
“You have to understand how your industry and category is structured and ask the right questions,” he said. “If, for example, you sell specialty sports shoes, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to compare yourselves with Nike or similar companies who have much much bigger coverage, but may not be leaders in certain segments.”
It helps address your most significant decision-making challenges
Data — specifically search data — should be part of any company’s core decision-making process. To show how often brands use it, Colebourne highlighted a survey from Alpha (now Feedback Loop) that asked 300 managers how they made decisions.
“The question they asked was, ‘How important or not important is it to you to use data to make decisions?’” said Colebourne. “And I think nobody is going to be surprised by the results — 91% think data-driven decision-making is important . . . But the corollary to this question was, ‘How frequently or infrequently do you use that?’”
Source: Matt Colebourne
The answer was just 58%.
Clearly, knowing search data is valuable isn’t enough to be successful — marketers need to use these insights from searchers to make better business decisions. Otherwise, they’re going to miss out on a good source of traffic insights.
“65% of all e-commerce sessions start with a Google search,” Colebourne said. “I would argue that makes it a good source for decision-making. It’s a massive sample set, completely up to date, and it’s continually refreshed.”
Search data gives you more consumer context
“That [search] data — sensibly managed and processed — can show you the target market and provide you with the consumer demand,” said Colebourne. “It can show you if the market is growing or contracting.”
Source: Matt Colebourne
Analyzing search data can give marketers a clearer view of their consumers, especially for those groups they haven’t reached yet. Reviewing what people are searching for, how often they’re searching and how your competitors are addressing the challenge can make decision-making that much easier.
But more than that, marketers must look at the marketplace as a whole, using search data to inform decision-making.
“We’re all very focused on keywords and rankings and all these good things that we know how to manage,” Colebourne said. “But what we need to do is step beyond that and not just look at what we have or what competitors have, but look at the totality of the market.”
“Let’s look at the input search data to understand what the real demand is and how big this market is,” he added.
As a mortgage broker, one of the toughest challenges that you will face is acquiring new leads. That is why it is important to make the most out of every existing borrower relationship.
But how exactly do you encourage past clients to turn to your team the next time they need mortgage services?
While there are many ways to accomplish this goal, customer relationship management software is the best option. A quality CRM platform will include robust tools that are designed to help you draw in repeat clients. Here are some of the ways that the right tool can make this happen.
Protect Your Brand Reputation
A high-quality CRM software will help you give borrowers a positive experience from start to finish. This is essential to a great brand reputation.
If you provide clients with a seamless loan experience, they will be more likely to do business with you in the future. On the other hand, poor communication or excessive processing times may cause them to seek out other loan officers the next time they need services.
Facilitate Post-Funding Communication
The average borrower will go years without needing mortgage services. During that time, they may forget which loan officer they worked with. That is why it is important for you to maintain regular communication post-funding.
CRM software gives you the ability to create automated follow-up campaigns that will help you keep in touch with past clients. You can reach out to them via SMS or email to ensure that your team is top of mind when clients need new loan products.
Send Out Customized Alerts
Another great way to attract repeat business is through birthday or home anniversary alerts. By simply sending an email or text message to clients on important days, you can let them know that they are a valued customer.
Once you upload client data into your CRM software, you can enable automated birthday or anniversary alerts with the tap of a button. This means that you will never miss an opportunity to connect with your clients.
Notify Borrowers About Refinance Opportunities
CRM platforms can also help you to notify clients about opportunities to refinance their loans. Most homeowners will jump at the chance to save money.
A great CRM software will send you notifications anytime one of your past borrowers is eligible for refinancing. You can then craft a custom email or text message that discusses just how much money they could potentially save.
Access the Leading Mortgage CRM
While there are plenty of mortgage CRM options available on the market today, none can compare to the cutting-edge BNTouch platform. Our software features an array of tools that you can use to nurture client relationships and draw in repeat business.
BNTouch offers solutions designed for independent mortgage brokers, large teams, and multi-location enterprises. With our powerful tools for marketing and processing, you can drive repeat business like never before. Ready to learn more? Book your no-obligation demo today!
Google Ads is rolling out an updated Experiments page, the company announced Wednesday. In the new Experiments pages, advertisers no longer have to create a separate campaign draft and changes made to the original campaign are automatically synced to the experiment as well.
An example of an experiment summary within Google Ads. Image: Google.
Why we care. This streamlined experiments workflow saves advertisers time by eliminating campaign draft creation. Similarly, the experiment sync feature is also a timesaver because advertisers may no longer have to manually copy changes over from their original campaigns, which can be particularly time-consuming when running multiple experiments simultaneously.
And, the ability to apply the changes from an experiment to the base campaign with just one click also makes implementation easier.
The new Experiments workflow.First spotted by numerous PPC professionals in December 2021, one of the main features of the new workflow is the ability to set up an experiment in a single step, without having to create a campaign draft.
During experiment setup, advertisers can designate how much of their original campaign’s budget and traffic they’d like to use and how long they’d like the experiment to run for. Performance can be monitored from the Experiments page and changes can be applied to the original campaign with a single click.
Automatically sync experiments. The new experiment sync feature automatically updates the trial with any changes made to the base campaign.
The experiment sync option in Google Ads. Image: Google.
Sync is turned on by default whenever a new experiment is created. However, it can’t be turned on for trials that have been scheduled or are already running. All changes made by experiment sync are reported within the account’s change history.
This week, Google will improve enforcement of ad policies pertaining to underaged users, according to Reuters. Google’s renewed focus on these policies came after Reuters discovered ads for sex toys, liquor and high-risk investments in its search results that violate the company’s attempts to comply with UK regulations.
Why we care. Advertisers in age-sensitive categories are unlikely to specifically target children and having their ads shown to minors is a potentially bad look from a brand safety standpoint.
Better enforcement can and should help prevent this scenario, enabling advertisers to better trust Google’s systems. However, the case can also be made that these types of ads should never have made it through Google’s safeguards.
“According to posts on online advertising forums and two advertisers, Google’s enforcement has been spotty,” Paresh Dave wrote for Reuters, “The advertisers . . said they have been frustrated about significant lost sales due to Google’s search engine correctly blocking their ads from signed-out users while erroneously allowing their competitors’ ads.”
Google: ‘The ads in question were mislabeled.’ “We have policies in place that limit where we show certain age-sensitive ad categories,” Google told Reuters. “The ads in question were mislabeled and in this instance should have been restricted from serving. We are taking immediate steps to address this issue,” the company said.
Privacy and protection for minors. Heightened concern over user privacy has increased scrutiny over how platforms protect underaged users.
In August 2021, Google announced that it would block ad targeting based on age, gender or interests of users under 18. It also added the ability for users under 18 (or their parent or guardian) to request removal of their images from Google Image results and automatically enabled SafeSearch for users under 18. Beyond search, the company also made YouTube’s default upload mode private for children aged 13-17.
Google has updated the recipe schema markup help documents to remove all references to time ranges for food prep, cook time and total time as a supported field type. Now you need to specify a singular time, and no longer provide time ranges.
What changed. Google wrote that it “removed guidance about specifying a range for the cookTime, prepTime, and totalTime properties in the Recipe documentation. Currently, the only supported method is an exact time; time ranges aren’t supported. If you’re currently specifying a time range and you’d like Google to better understand your time values, we recommend updating that value in your structured data to a single value (for example, "cookTime": "PT30M").”
Old docs. the old documentation had references to using minimum and maximum time frames for the range of time it takes to prepare and cook the dish. Here is an old screenshot from the totalTime field about the mix and max ranges:
Now there are only references to using a singular and fixed time without any ranges.
Why we care. If you use recipe schema markup on your pages and have time ranges in that markup, you will want to adjust those ranges to use singular and fixed times. One would assume the Search Console reports will soon show errors for the use of ranges but you should jump on this and modify any uses of ranges in your markup.
Yoast SEO is now available for Shopify site owners, Yoast announced Tuesday.
An example of Yoast SEO within Shopify. Image: Yoast.
The company first unveiled plans for the Shopify version of its well-known WordPress app on January 4, 2022. Yoast SEO for Shopify costs $29 per 30 days, unlike the WordPress version of the app, which operates under a freemium model.
Why we care. Yoast SEO is one of the most commonly used SEO apps in the WordPress ecosystem and the launch of an app for Shopify speaks to the rise of e-commerce (particularly over the last two years).
This app is primarily aimed at SMBs, just like the available Google and Bing Shopify integrations (more on those below). The proliferation of SMB-oriented apps for merchants makes it easier for smaller retailers to establish an online presence, even if they’re not working with an agency partner. Together, these products could increase overall competition both in shopping and traditional search results.
Search visibility for retailers of all sizes is now a thing. Beginning in 2020, e-commerce took on a more crucial role for most people as pandemic-related safety precautions inhibited in-person shopping. That also drove many retailers to offer their goods, pushing them towards platforms like Shopify.
Yoast SEO for Shopify offers features that are complementary to those integrations. Instead of enabling merchants to show product listings, it may help them optimize their pages to show in organic, non-shopping results (like the WordPress version of the app).
The same Yoast SEO, but for Shopify. Yoast SEO for Shopify will offer much of the same functionality as its WordPress counterpart. This includes controls for your titles and descriptions in Google Search and social media, feedback on readability and Yoast’s schema graph.
While the functionality remains similar, the price points vary: At launch, Yoast SEO for Shopify will cost $29 per 30 days (after a free 14-day trial). The WordPress version operates under a freemium model, with the premium version costing $99 per year.
Why Yoast is launching a Shopify app. “An app on the Shopify platform is a huge business opportunity,” Thijs de Valk, CEO at Yoast, said, “Shopify is growing fast. It makes sense to build an app and profit from the growth of that specific platform.”
de Valk also cited risk-diversification as a motivator for Yoast’s Shopify app, explaining that the company’s growth up until now has been highly dependent on WordPress.
Today, Search Engine Land is happy to welcome well-known search marketing journalist Danny Goodwin to the team as Senior Editor. Goodwin will join the editorial team, which also includes editors Barry Schwartz and George Nguyen, to help us to deliver best-in-class journalism on search and performance marketing to you – our global audience of digital marketers.
In addition to writing daily about SEO, PPC, and more for Search Engine Land, Goodwin will also manage and grow Search Engine Land’s roster of subject-matter experts. He will also help program our conference series SMX – Search Marketing Expo, working with our Events Content Director Kathy Bushman.
Prior to joining us, Goodwin was Executive Editor at Search Engine Journal, where he led editorial initiatives for the brand.
Goodwin is a respected member of the search community going all the way back to 2007 when he began as an editor for Search Engine Watch. He has spoken at many major search conferences and has been sourced for his expertise by a wide range of publications and podcasts. He’s seen first-hand how this industry has evolved over the years and we are thrilled that he will bring his intelligence and perspective to Search Engine Land and SMX.
