Google Ads is rolling out a new user interface for custom columns as well as new metrics, a Google spokesperson has confirmed to Search Engine Land. “The update will be rolling out to all advertisers in the next few weeks,” a Google spokesperson said.

Tip of the hat to PPCGreg on Twitter for first bringing this to our attention.

Why we care. Custom columns add flexibility by enabling advertisers to compare the metrics that are most important for their particular needs. The new metrics make this feature even more useful by, for example, enabling advertisers to monitor their Search impression share alongside other campaign metrics.

The new metrics coming to custom columns. With this update, the following metrics will be available for custom columns:

• Spreadsheet functions.
• Calculate/compare metrics across date ranges (example).
• Non-metric columns (like Campaign name or Budget).
• Reference other custom columns.
• Search, Click and Display impression share.
• Three phone call metrics, and others.

What Google said. “We’ve updated custom columns to make it more flexible for advertisers to use,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land, “With the new UI, advertisers can more easily see their data and work with it to derive new insights by comparing different metrics. We’ve also added additional features based on advertiser feedback. We’re looking forward to bringing these new features to all advertisers in the next few weeks.”

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“We’re all in this together.” Last year, this statement became the universal motto of brands everywhere, as people learned to adapt to unfamiliar circumstances brought on by the global pandemic. 

As the world embraces more in-person interactions, things aren’t going to just go back to the way they were before. The great challenge for brands is how to reimagine their approach to customer experience by connecting every point of interaction, uniting all teams across the business and merging the trust gap between brands and consumers. 

To help marketers understand how to bring these pieces together, Acquia surveyed 8,000 consumers and 800 marketers across Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. Our research explored shifts in both marketer and consumer expectations around customer experience and privacy. Now we’re sharing key lessons we learned from this research in our global report: Deliver a Modern Digital CX: A Guide for Marketing Innovators.  

1. Create more content without sacrificing brand consistency  

With live events, trade shows and physical storefronts unavailable, business leaders needed to stay engaged with their audience by expanding their content efforts to new channels and formats. 

Our CX Trends Report found that 49% of global marketers have created more content for customer engagement in 2021 compared to previous years to fulfill new customer behaviors. But as businesses introduce dozens of new content channels into the mix, maintaining brand consistency and a clear, overarching brand message becomes more challenging. 

Without strong brand governance and oversight into all the content you’re publishing, the customer journey can become confusing and frustrating, sending your audience off to a competitor. 

2. Empower marketer and developer collaboration with low-code tools 

Meeting the rising demand for new, more personalized content requires organizations to eliminate barriers between internal teams and take a holistic approach to creating digital experiences. 

Our survey found that 83% of marketers still struggle to create content that can be rapidly released across all their digital platforms. If businesses want to reach maximum efficiency and get new experiences to market faster, they need to use their teams to their full potential. 

Today, 72% of marketers require help from technologists to create digital customer experiences. Rather than waiting for developers to fulfill requests, modern marketers need tools that will put them in control of shaping the customer experience from end to end. 

3. Bridge the gap between customer privacy and personalization with first-party data  

One of the greatest points of disconnect our CX Trends Report revealed was in marketers’ and consumers’ perceptions of how organizations use individuals’ personal data. 

Marketing teams need customer data to create personalized experiences, but customers want to have meaningful experiences with a brand before providing them with this information. This is the privacy and personalization paradox. 54% of global marketers found that increasing personalization efforts led to more engagement with consumers. 

So how can we bridge the customer trust gap? Our survey points to first-party data as the secret weapon that will keep companies successful in the long term.

While the future of digital transformation is often unpredictable, the customer experiences your brand offers should feel seamless and trustworthy. Learn more about how today’s marketers create more unified customer experiences in our new global report, Deliver a Modern Digital CX: A Guide for Marketing Innovators. 

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Advertisers have reported a new Asset Library within Google Ads. “Asset Library, as it exists in Ads Creative Studio, is coming into Google Ads,” a Google spokesperson confirmed to Search Engine Land.

Tip of the hat to Brett Bodofsky for first bringing this to our attention.

Why we care

The Asset Library may enable advertisers to improve their workflows. For example, you could upload an image and then reuse that image in different campaigns. Additionally, it can be used to make any Standard Rich Media creative dynamic by switching out images or videos while the campaign is live. The Asset Library can also be used to host dynamic assets and reference them from within your dynamic feed.

More about the news

• The Asset Library is currently in closed beta; Google has not announced when it will roll out to more advertisers.
• The Asset Library will display any existing image assets the advertiser has in their account. From this view, advertisers can choose to search among existing assets or create new assets. 
• The Asset Library was first introduced with the launch of Ads Creative Studio, which unifies tools previously found across YouTube, Display & Video 360 and Campaign Manager 360, in June 2021.

The post Ads Creative Studio’s Asset Library is coming to Google Ads appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that the search company is rolling out a new local pack and map design in the Google Search results. The new design moves the map to the right side of the local search results, often called a “local pack,” for the desktop search results.

Google’s confirmation. A Google spokesperson said “We’re constantly exploring ways to connect people with the helpful information that they’re seeking. We’re currently rolling out an update to the Search interface on desktop so when people search for places or businesses nearby, like ‘parks near me’ or ‘restaurants near me,’ they’ll easily see local results on the left and a map on the right. We expect this to be broadly available over the coming weeks.”

The new design. Here is a screenshot showing the map to the right side of the local search results:

The old design. This is the old design with the map at the top and the local results below the map:

Testing. Google has been testing this new design for several months now and just this week, we saw a spike in the number of people seeing this new design. In fact, I’ve been seeing it myself over the past few days. So we asked Google to confirm the rollout and the search company has confirmed it.

Why we care. If you or your clients see a lot of traffic and business from the Google local results, you may see changes to that traffic. The local results are now higher up on the desktop search results page, with the map being move from the top to the right side of the page.

I also recently saw some local SEOs talk about recently seeing changes to their local search traffic, we suspect it was a local ranking update, but it also might be related to this design change.

In any event, check the queries that you rank well for in your Google Business Profile insights and see how they appear in desktop search. It might mean more or less traffic, depending on the design change and placement of your local listings.

The post Google rolling out new map and local interface in search appeared first on Search Engine Land.

If you’re a loan officer who is seeking to generate more leads in the coming year, social media is by far the most powerful tool at your disposal. However, many mortgage professionals do not know where to begin when it comes to social media marketing.

With this in mind, our experts have composed this helpful guide. Below, you will find 7 proven lead generation strategies that you can use to grow your mortgage business in 2022 and beyond.

1.   Leverage Gated Content

Posting gated content is one of the easiest ways to convince consumers to provide their contact information. Essentially, all you have to do is share a link to some compelling content on your social media pages. 

When they click on it, they will be directed to the “gate,” which will prompt them to enter their name and email address. They cannot view the content unless they provide the requested information. 

2.   Host a Contest

Hosting a contest is another great lead generation strategy that can also be used to acquire new followers. Simply develop a contest idea, develop some basic rules that will benefit your business, and kick back as the leads roll in.

For instance, the prize for your contest could be a $500 gift card to a big-box retailer of your choice. In order to enter, contestants must like your page, tag a friend, and share your post. Once the predetermined contest window has ended, select a winner and announce it on your page. 

3.   Use Paid Advertising

Paid social media advertising is a surefire way to attract quality leads. All of the major platforms give you the ability to create and manage custom paid marketing campaigns. If you want results fast, there are few options better than paid advertising. 

4.   Post a Poll

Social media platforms like Instagram allow you to post polls on your story. Most consumers love polls, which makes this a great way to increase user engagement. 

If your poll contains interesting facts or engaging questions, some users might even share your poll results on their stories. This will drastically increase your reach and help you acquire new followers.

5.   Take Advantage of Geo-Targeting

When you’re setting up a paid social advertising campaign, make sure that you take advantage of the geo-targeting feature. This feature allows you to target specific audiences based on several factors, including their location. 

Geo-targeting is especially useful if you are an independent loan officer or are running a small, local firm. 

6.   Share Testimonials

The average consumer trusts the recommendations of other buyers. In light of this, we recommend sharing customer testimonials on your social media pages. These testimonials can provide you with “social proof,” which demonstrates how your services have benefitted past clients. 

7.   Create a Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is any type of content that entices people to offer up their contact information. A few examples include mortgage rate calculators, eBooks, and case studies. 

Much like with the gated content, a lead magnet requires users to provide their name and email address in order to access the materials.

Generate More Leads with BNTouch

As one of the most innovative CRM solutions in the world, the BNTouch platform includes a full array of advanced tools that are designed specifically for mortgage brokers. 

Our platform includes pre-built marketing content that is perfect for digital advertising. In addition, our solution allows you to post content to your social media accounts with just one click.

Want to learn more? Book your demo today!

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A lot of landing pages expire every day when outdated information becomes obsolete, products are sold out, services are discontinued and entire communities sunset. How that expiring content is being handled from an SEO perspective can greatly impact the organic search rankings of websites. If its handling is floundered, SEO landing pages with expired content have the potential to kill the organic rankings of the website overall.

PageRank vs. user signals

A frequently mentioned argument made by website owners for maintaining landing pages with expired content, especially sold-out products, is to preserve incoming external PageRank to the website. It is a false assumption that a landing page must be maintained as indexable and by returning a 200 OK status code, even when a product or service isn’t available to users any longer in order to keep whatever authority or PageRank that same landing page has accumulated over time. Doing so effectively means creating a soft 404 landing page. A soft 404 is an error page with no relevant content which continuously returns a 200 OK status code instead of a 404 or 410 status code.

For a number of reasons, that strategy is a recipe for disaster. Firstly, the conversion rate rather than presumed PageRank accumulation ought to be the primary goal of a commercial website. After all, no publisher cares for their PageRank value, high or low, as long as conversions meet or exceed expectations. Secondly, PageRank can not be gauged by any degree of accuracy. PageRank changes continuously as Googlebot crawls the web and Google does not disclose the actual value for individual landing pages or websites. No external third-party tool can substitute that value in any meaningful way. Finally, product landing pages rarely attract lasting, high-quality, merit-based backlinks to begin with. Effectively, the perceived PageRank loss is debatable, while actual PageRank loss is negligible. 

Soft 404s are bad for user experience and therefore a thorn in the side of search engines, Google in particular. This is why maintaining expired content landing pages, especially unavailable product pages, considerably magnifies the risk of poor user signals. Google has become more adept in identifying negative on-page language and can accurately detect strings like “unavailable,” “out of stock,” “0 results found” or “sold out.” Frequently, yet not always, it will highlight the problem as soft 404 pages in Google Search Console. However, a major issue is that CTR is likely to suffer from snippet representation, highlighting information that services or products are unavailable to the user. Worse yet, if users are still compelled to click on results that turn out to be discontinued landing pages (also known as soft 404s), they are almost inevitably going to return to search results, look for an alternative and/or refine their query. Doing so, the users indicate with their click behavior that the individual user experience was bad for them. With this “bounce rate” growing, which is often mistaken for, yet unrelated to, the Google Analytics or on-site bounce rate, the relevance of the website as a whole suffers in the organic search rankings.

Although PageRank remains an important ranking factor, it pales in comparison with the weight of user signals which search engines collect for rankings. While emphatically denying the use of specific user signals, such as Google Analytics data or dwelling time, Google continues to favor websites that are popular with users. When compared against each other, the PageRank argument does not stand a chance. On the one hand, PageRank remains elusive and at best a means to an end. User signals on the other hand, directly and imminently contribute to the success of a website, with and beyond SEO.

The trends game

Google rankings, to a large extent, depend on SEO signal trends. For a large website, with many millions of relevant landing pages, a few thousand expired content landing pages are unlikely to trigger a ranking loss. They are relatively too few to decidedly tip the trend of a website’s signals one way. For a smaller website comprising ten thousand landing pages in total, a few hundred expired indexable landing pages can already pose an SEO danger. 

Ultimately, the decisive factor is trends measured in percentages, rather than the actual total numbers of indexable expired content or soft 404 landing pages. Which website ranks well and which one does not depends on a number of critical factors. These include, among other factors, the total volume of crawlable landing pages, their content quality, the overall trends involved and, most importantly, the user experience signals trends indicating user satisfaction.

There are no fixed thresholds that must be observed. Instead, trends are front and center when SEO signals, and therefore organic search rankings, are to be improved. The question of how well a specific website fares in this regard can only be answered by analyzing the website’s specific data, especially its server logs. This is why commercial websites with a sizable and changing product database must regularly perform technical SEO audits. 

In-depth SEO audits are the only means of accurately gauging crawl budget management, or how long it may take for Google to re-crawl expired landing pages in order to register the changes applied. Only an SEO audit can help to identify whether expired content landing pages pose a problem and/or if it’s a serious one.

Doing it the right way

Larger sections of a website that have outlived their usefulness but can’t be deleted, like sunset communities, can be moved off domain, thereby boosting the main website’s trend signal. In that instance, 301 Moved Permanently redirects must be established and maintained without an end date or return 404 status code so search engines know to discount the content. 

Expired product landing pages, however, must not be 301 redirected to other landing pages, thereby meddling with user signals. Instead, when products or services are no longer available, respective landing pages must return either 404 Not Found or 410 Gone HTTP status codes. Doing so, these status codes will signify to Google and other search engines that the landing pages no longer provide what they used to and strengthen the user signals of the remaining, still available 200 OK landing pages that continue to offer products or services.

There is, however, a possibility to legitimately capitalize on 404 error pages without taking the unnecessary business risk of confusing search engines or diluting user signals. That is by enhancing 404 Not Found pages, which still return this correct status code and supplementing the content of the error page with relevant, in-context information for users. These so-called smart or custom 404 landing pages must continue to address the fact that their main purpose, product or service is unavailable. But, they can be augmented with relevant product alternatives and/or the results of an internal search based on keywords from the request URL, enabling users to continue on their journey within the website — and for the website operator to potentially still capitalize on the lead. Custom 404 pages are not an SEO growth method, but much rather a means for maintaining user satisfaction and improving conversions. When applied, they pose no SEO risk as long as the status code is still a 404.

Ultimately, whether expired content landing pages return 404, 410 or a custom 404 response, it is important not to block the URLs in the robots.txt. Doing so inhibits search engines from crawling and understanding the changes applied and can have an undesirable effect on user signals. 

At the same time, internal linking to expired content landing pages must be updated and consequently discontinued. Internal linking is among the foremost important on-page signals indicating to search engines both relevance and importance from a crawl priority point of view, hence there’s no point in boosting content landing pages that have expired. 

Lastly, it is important to always keep in mind that 404 Not Found landing pages, no matter how numerous, will not impact a website’s organic rankings. No website ranks poorer or better because of, or despite, its 404 Not Found pages. Soft 404 landing pages, however, can not only impact rankings but also have the potential to drag down the entire website in organic search.

The post How expired landing pages kill your Google rankings appeared first on Search Engine Land.

On December 1, 2021, Google began to roll out the second product reviews update of the year, the December 2021 product reviews update. This was at the tail-end of the November 2021 core update that finished rolling out the day before, on November 30, 2021 (note, this is an important point for this story). RankRanger and Semrush, two SEO toolsets, sent us data that showed that the December 2021 product reviews update was more volatile than the April 2021 product reviews update — but there may be some caveats to that.

Please note that Google told us that this product reviews update will take approximately three weeks to roll out and we are only now in the start of week two. So, the data may change but generally when Google rolls out these updates, the bulk of the impact you would see from an update would be in the first few days of that rollout.

Data providers show December was bigger than April

RankRanger. The RankRanger team first sent us their data showing that overall, the December fluctuations and volatility “were substantially higher in the top three and top five positions,” the company said. This is across comparing the changes in the top-three, top-five and top-ten ranking positions in Google Search:

This is also when looking at average position changes overall between April (in blue) and December (in orange) product reviews updates:

The company also broke down just the December volatility by niche across sectors by top-three, top-five and top-ten results. The company showed the top-five positions both retail and travel stand out as having the most fluctuations and in the top ten results, health and finance showed the most fluctuations.

And you can see, the RankRanger index tracker tool is now starting to show this update slow down a bit:

Top winners and losers were also provided by RankRanger, showing Tripadvisor, Choice Hotels, Agoda and Hotwire were the losers and Expedia, Kayak, U.S. News & World Report were the top gainers.

Semrush. The Semrush team first sent us their data showing that overall the December fluctuations and volatility also peaked at much higher rates than the April product reviews update. The company said that the volatility highs seen during the December update are far greater than what was recorded in the April update.

But Semrush said that if you look at the overall volatility, it would appear that the April update was 44% more volatile than the December update. That is likely because this year overall was a lot more volatile than previous years, sending the numbers a bit off overall. If you look at level of volatility as compared to what Semrush normally would see, the April Product Review Update was significantly more volatile. Here is that chart showing this data:

But again, this is not a normal year and the chart showing the peak volatility is probably a better measurement of which update was more significant.

Semrush also broke down this update by vertical for the top-five and top-ten search results. The shopping vertical seemed to have seen the most drastic movement with 6% of the top ten coming from positions 20+ — that would make sense, being this is a product reviews update.

The Semrush sensor tool is now starting to show this update somewhat slow down a bit:

Core update impact, if any?

Like I said above, this year overall was a lot more volatile than previous years, which may be setting some of this tracking off a bit. We just finished rolling out the November 2021 core update about 24 hours before the December product reviews update started to roll out. It is possible the tracking tools data may have some overlap. Between it being a crazy year with volatility in general, both in terms of confirmed and unconfirmed updates, and the confirmed updates being very close together, it is hard to say with 100% confidence which update was bigger.

Semrush did tell us that the November 2021 core update was bigger than the December product reviews update, but they are two different types of updates and that makes sense. In fact, The December product reviews update is not showing huge amounts of movement compared to the November core update, Semrush said.

In fact, Sistrix, another tool provider, told us early on that they did not see huge changes with this update and didn’t have data to share with us overall. They simply didn’t see huge changes with the products reviews update in general.

More on the December 2021 products reviews update

The SEO community. The December 2021 product reviews update, like I said above, was likely felt more than the April version. I was able to cover the community reaction in one blog post on the Search Engine Roundtable. It includes some of the early chatter, ranking charts and social shares from some SEOs. In short, if your site was hit by this update, you probably felt it in a very big way.

What to do if you are hit. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by this product reviews update. We posted that advice in our original story over here. In addition, Google provided two new best practices around this update, one saying to provide more multimedia around your product reviews and the second is to provide links to multiple sellers, not just one. Google posted these two items:

• Provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with the product, to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review.
• Include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.

Google product reviews update. The Google product reviews update aims to promote review content that is above and beyond much of the templated information you see on the web. Google said it will promote these types of product reviews in its search results rankings.

Google is not directly punishing lower quality product reviews that have “thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.” However, if you provide such content and find your rankings demoted because other content is promoted above yours, it will definitely feel like a penalty. Technically, according to Google, this is not a penalty against your content, Google is just rewarding sites with more insightful review content with rankings above yours.

Technically, this update should only impact product review content and not other types of content.

Why we care. If your website offers product review content, you will want to check your rankings to see if you were impacted. Did your Google organic traffic improve, decline or stay the same? Long term, you are going to want to ensure that going forward, that you put a lot more detail and effort into your product review content so that it is unique and stands out from the competition on the web.

We hope you, your company and your clients did well with this update.

More on Google updates

Other Google updates this year. This year we had a number of confirmed updates from Google and many that were not confirmed . In the most recent order, we had: The July 2021 core update, Google MUM rolled out in June for COVID names and was lightly expanded for some features in September (but MUM is unrelated to core updates). Then, the June 28 spam update, the June 23rd spam update, the Google page experience update, the Google predator algorithm update, the June 2021 core update, the July 2021 core update, the July link spam update, and the November spam update rounded out the confirmed updates.

Previous core updates. The most recent previous core update was the November 2021 core update which rolled out hard and fast and finished on November 30, 2021. Then the July 2021 core update which was quick to roll out (kind of like this one) followed by the June 2021 core update and that update was slow to roll out but a big one. Then we had the December 2020 core update and the December update was very big, bigger than the May 2020 core update, and that update was also big and broad and took a couple of weeks to fully roll out. Before that was the January 2020 core update, we had some analysis on that update over here. The one prior to that was the September 2019 core update. That update felt weaker to many SEOs and webmasters, as many said it didn’t have as big of an impact as previous core updates. Google also released an update in November, but that one was specific to local rankings. You can read more about past Google updates over here.

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Marketers and business leaders came together at Zeta Live ‘21 to discuss the evolution to a digital-first world and trending topics on the future of marketing. From NFTs to first-party data to the Metaverse and everything in between, here are some of the conference’s most engaging themes that marketers can’t afford to ignore.

1. E-commerce enters the experience era

The last 20 years of ecommerce and the technological progress made within the industry have offered solely static experiences for consumers. Enter the “experience era.”

The experience era enables marketers to give consumers the branded experience they crave. In the What Comes Next for Social Commerce session, industry experts from Verishop, Snap Inc., ThirdLove, and Yahoo! explain what’s next, with emphasis on one-to-one interactivity, sustainability, the Metaverse, and livestream selling being the holy grails. 

2. Web 3.0, NFTs, and blockchain technology go mainstream 

Web 3.0 represents the next iteration of the evolution of the internet as we know it. Built upon the core concepts of decentralization, openness, and great user utility, the real value coming out of web 3.0 will be blockchain. 

At the center of this blockchain technology now sits non-fungible tokens, better referred to as NFTs. In our session 2022: The Year NFTS Take the Mainstage, industry leaders from TIME and CNBC weighed in on the ability of crypto technology to create a new type of relationship with consumers through exclusivity. Michael Rubin, CEO of Fanatics, supported this positioning in his session on Sports Marketing in The Digital Era, sharing why he is launching NFT trading cards to strengthen the fan experience. While we’re still a few years out, NFTs and other Web 2.0 products platforms will inevitably disrupt the MarTech industry as we know it.

3. The next wave of customer engagement in the Metaverse 

Despite an uptick in big news surrounding the Metaverse lately, the reality is that this shift to virtual experiences won’t come overnight. Bob Sherwin, CMO of Wayfair, noted in the session on The Future of Commerce & Creativity that the home goods brand has offered these experiences to its shoppers for years. Yet, the question of ‘when do consumers want to engage with it?’ still remains.

4. Identity plays a pivotal role in the digital economy

Identity-based marketing – especially through the use of first-party data – has become increasingly important as consumers accelerate their transition to digital for everyday conveniences, transactions, and social interactions.

In the session Navigating the Golden Age of Identity, marketing experts from Zeta, LiveRamp, AWS Data Exchange, and T-Mobile unpacked the significance of identity being the only thing that unifies the customer experience. 

5. CDPs become the marketer’s North Star

Whether it’s added complexity that slows down processes, or siloed processes that lead to mono-channels, marketers are breaking through these roadblocks by implementing a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to power their martech stack. In the session Technology Bets for the Modern Marketer, industry experts from Carter’s, Email Connect, Healthgrades, and SIMON weigh in on the importance of having such a CDP platform at the core of their marketing infrastructure. 

Access all the Zeta Live ‘21 session recordings until December 17th by navigating to the “theater” area of our virtual experience here.

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