What are podcast knowledge panels? Google began showing a specific podcast knowledge panel on October 12, 2021. It displays the podcast name, image, and description on the right sidebar. As of October 25, there is no link within the knowledge panel to listen to the podcast.
Which podcasts got a knowledge panel? Over 50% of podcasts got a knowledge panel overnight. And they sprang from the Google Podcast Knowledge Graph vertical. RSS seems to be the key: Your feed into Google Podcasts is key. Google applied new, stricter rules for podcast feeds a couple of months ago, and Mordy Oberstein and Azeem Ahmad suggested that was the precursor to what happened on the 12th of October.
That’s interesting! I think this is probably related to the new guidelines they had for podcast RSS feeds (making them comfortable enough to show these panels)… maybe.
My guess is based on those pods who might have updated their RSS feeds in line with Google Podcasting requirements. I first thought it was purely Anchor distributed pods but I’ve seen some that are podbean, etc.https://t.co/aHIj2vLqgQ
It seems that podcasts that adhere to those rules have gotten a knowledge panel. That’s not firm data, it’s an observation, but it seems fair enough to assume. In sum, this is a promotion for Google Podcasts, putting it on a par with Google Books and Google Scholar for triggering knowledge panels.
Before this update, about 10% of podcasts had a knowledge panel. That’s according to data from Kalicube Pro (which tracks about 500 podcasts). Now they all trigger thanks to other sources, such as Wikipedia, or IMDB. And the podcast knowledge panels that existed before have largely stayed the same.
If my podcast didn’t get a knowledge panel, how can I get one? Make sure that your RSS feed adheres to Google’s rules. If you do that, you will probably trigger a knowledge panel at some point. Also, it won’t happen immediately: there will be a process of digestion from Google before it will give you that knowledge panel. So be patient. I also advise that you create an Entity Home.
You need to provide an Entity Home so that Google can reconcile all of this information about your entity (the podcast being the entity). If you want to know more, check out this article on Entity Home SEO to help you understand the concept of Entity Home and its role in knowledge panel management.
Do knowledge panels always appear for a search on the podcast name? No. Even if it doesn’t appear, that doesn’t mean to say your podcast doesn’t have a knowledge panel you might want to search for “SEO podcasts,” for example (or whatever category your podcast falls under). Then you can look at the carousel that might actually show you the knowledge panel.
Examples of podcasts where the knowledge panel does appear directly on the name of the podcast: Edge of the Web, Search Off The Record, With Jason Barnard, and more.
This seems to be linked to having a clear Entity Home that isn’t on Google Podcasts. But also based on ambiguity: for example, Everyone Hates Marketers doesn’t trigger the knowledge panel, even though they have one. I think because the name is ambiguous.
About 30% of podcasts currently trigger a knowledge panel on a search on the podcast name. That is according to Kalicube Pro data.
Can I claim my podcast knowledge panel? No, you can’t unless it was triggered by another source. So if yours has been triggered by something other than the Google Podcasts update from October 12, you can probably claim it. If you can’t, just wait – it will come.
Where does the description for a podcast knowledge panel come from? It is taken from the description you provide in your feed. This means you have total control over the description that appears in your knowledge panel for the moment. So make sure that description is great!
Can I enrich the contents of my podcast knowledge panel? Yes! Right now, the knowledge panels that have been triggered by this Google Podcasts update on October 12 have not been enriched, but it’s very early yet. If you create an Entity Home, you can provide additional information above and beyond what’s included in the RSS feed.
By providing that information on the Entity Home and getting corroborative information all around the web, you will be able to push additional information into your knowledge panel. I would suggest you start now because even if you can’t enrich it right away, you will be able to enrich it over time. So, now is the time to start!
This is really big news in the knowledge panel world that I live in, and I’m really excited. It’s the biggest news of 2021 so far for knowledge panels. Expect more in 2022 !
Have you been dissatisfied with the amount of traffic that your site has been receiving? Would you like to learn some proven strategies for boosting search engine traffic and generating more leads for your loan officers?
If so, then you have come to the right place! As a mortgage broker, organic traffic is one of the best ways for you to connect with prospective clients. It is far more efficient than paid search and it can produce high-quality prospects.
Below, the team at BNTouch has outlined 5 tips for drawing more traffic to your site.
1.Identify Popular Topics
If you want to make your site more visible on top search engines, then you need to regularly update it with quality content. It is important to have this content focused on topics that are popular with your target audience.
Consider crafting beginner’s guides, FAQ pages, and myth-busting blogs. These formats tend to be a big hit with consumers and can also help you to climb the search rankings.
2.Target Minimally Competitive Keywords
In addition to choosing the right topics, target minimally competitive keywords in your copy. Using analytics tools, you can identify which keywords have high search volumes and relatively low keyword difficulty. Make sure that the keywords are relevant to your industry and goals.
For example, the keyword “loan officer” will likely have a high search volume, but it will also be extremely competitive. Using this keyword alone can make it challenging for smaller, local organizations to generate site traffic.
Instead, consider using a longer key phrase that incorporates your region or city in the name. For instance, you could use the phrase “mortgage broker in Houston,” which will be less competitive but still effectively draw in clients.
3.Promote Your Site on Other Channels
If you are relying on organic website traffic alone, then you may not receive as many visitors as you would like. Instead, take a multidimensional approach and implement other channels into your marketing strategy.
Getting active on social media platforms is a great way to promote your content. Every time you publish a new blog, whitepaper, or another piece of content, share a link to it on your organization’s social media pages.
4.Leverage Guest Posting
Google’s search algorithm places a huge emphasis on high-quality backlinks. A backlink occurs when a page of another site links back to your content. Creating backlinks organically takes time.
If you want to speed up the process, reach out to sites that are related to the mortgage brokerage industry but are not direct competitors of your company. Partners may include title companies, real estate firms, and other mortgage professionals that you interact with regularly.
Ask these partners if you can post guest content on their site and include a few links to your page within each article.
5.Incorporate Automated Marketing
We understand that you already have a ton of responsibilities as a mortgage broker. As such, it can be overwhelming to think about tackling additional marketing efforts to generate more traffic. Fortunately, many of these processes can be automated.
Thanks to BNTouch’s cutting-edge mortgage CRM software, you can continuously promote your organization and website with an automated marketing engine. This tool is included as part of our individual, team, and enterprise packages. To learn more, contact us today for pricing or toschedule a demo!
This past Friday a New York judge unsealed previously redacted documents in the lawsuit against Google led by the State of Texas. One of the main allegations of the antitrust lawsuit is that Google and Facebook colluded to rig ad prices and “kill header bidding” (the attempt by competitors to make the ad market less Google-centric).
“The lawsuit claims that when Facebook began to gain traction as a rival advertiser, Google made an agreement with Facebook to reduce competition in exchange for giving the social media company an advantage in Google-run ad auctions. The project was called ‘Jedi Blue,’” we wrote in April of this year.
The newly unredacted information shows just how deep the alleged agreement went between Facebook and the search engine giant.
Jedi Blue and Facebook/Google ad exchanges. Code-named “Jedi Blue,” the arrangement between Facebook and Google meant that Google would “charge Facebook lower fees and give Facebook information, speed and other advantages in header bidding auctions in exchange for Facebook’s support of Open Bidding, Google’s header bidding alternative,” wrote Allison Schiff for AdExchanger.
Some suspect that Facebook initially backed header bidding in order to force Google’s hand in the arrangement and force a mutually beneficial deal. “Partnerships like this are common in the industry, and we have similar agreements with several other companies. Facebook continues to invest in these partnerships, and create new ones, which help increase competition in ad auctions to create the best outcomes for advertisers and publishers. Any suggestion that these types of agreements harm competition is baseless,” Facebook said in a statement.
The internal documents at Facebook reveal that the company had “four options: to ‘invest hundreds more engineers’ and spend billions of dollars to lock up inventory to compete, exit the business, or do the deal with Google.”
Meanwhile, Google’s main goal was to figure out any way to stop header bidding from gaining steam in the industry.
What is header bidding? “Header bidding helped website publishers circumvent Google’s exchange for buying and selling ads across the web. The exchange auctions ad space to the highest bidder during the split second it takes a webpage to load. Header bidding allowed the publishers to directly solicit bids from multiple ad exchanges at once, leading to more favorable prices for publishers,” explained Ryan Tracy and Jeff Horwitz for the Wall Street Journal.
Google worried, according to court documents, that having a large ad rival (like Facebook) embracing header bidding would disrupt what was essentially their monopoly on the ad market. “Header bidding was bad because it allowed publishers to bypass fees which we now learn ranged between 19-22% of revenues,” said Jason Kint in a tweet thread analysis of the court docs.
How Project Jedi worked. In order to win in the exchange, Google created the Open Bidding program. This program, in theory, let publishers display their inventory to multiple ad exchanges at once. This was presented as a competitor to header bidding. However, the lawsuit alleges that Google manipulated Open Bidding to give Facebook’s Ad Network (FAN) an unfair advantage. “Jedi’s success was measured not by financial targets or output increases, but by how much it stopped publishers from using header bidding,” said Janice Tan with Marketing Interactive after an assessment of the documents.
From there, the partnership with Facebook meant the social media giant also threw its weight behind Open Bidding over header bidding. In exchange for backing Google’s open bidding over header bidding, Facebook received “information, speed and other advantages in the auction it runs in the US,” added Tan.
“Both companies also had an illegal advertising deal that allowed the social media company to appear more in Google Ads. Google did this by fixing bids in ad auctions to Facebook’s favor,” alleges Nalin Rawat for FossBytes.
Why we care. Well, firstly, it’s a lot to digest. There is potential that publishers and advertisers have been overpaying and missing out on placements due to Google’s alleged collusion with Facebook to essentially rig the ad market. According to the unredacted documents, Jedi “generates suboptimal yields for publishers and serious risks of negative media coverage if exposed externally.” Also with Google promoting FLoC, FLEDGE, and the rest of their sandbox as a privacy solution for the open web, these revelations call into question their motives (especially if the company is sharing sensitive data with other firms that have agreed to terms with them for ads). Many advertisers complain about the lack of reach with other competitive ad networks and the revelations in the unredacted Google lawsuit show that the tech giant’s leadership worked diligently to ensure that competition was squashed.
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, and Google Ads (the artist formerly known as AdWords) turned 21 this weekend.
Did you know that Google Ads started as a service where marketers paid a monthly fee and Google would set up and manage the ad campaigns? Quite ironic considering many advertisers today are lamenting the loss of control and data as Google Ads invests in more automation and is managing many elements of ad campaigns itself. The company offered a self-service option for small businesses “who wanted to manage their own campaigns,” which is the foundation of our current Ads platform today.
What was AdWords like when it first ramped up? “The AdWords program provides low-cost exposure on one of the industry’s leading search engines with CPMs from $15 or 1.5 cents an impression, $12 or 1.2 cents an impression, and $10 or 1 cent an impression, for the top, middle, and bottom ad unit positions, respectively,” stated the announcement.
Not only that but, “Google’s quick-loading AdWords text ads appear to the right of the Google search results and are highlighted as sponsored links, clearly separate from the search results.” It seems a lot has changed with Google’s ads product since inception, and yet we’re almost coming full circle in many ways too.
Carolyn Lyden, Director of Search Content
How to solve the marketing reporting conundrum without being a magician
In a recent survey shared at SMX Report, C-Suite executives said sales and leads are top performance indicators for marketing teams. If sales and leads are what our leadership teams, whether internally or externally, care most about, what does this mean for PPC marketers?
Such preferences can lead to a level of expectation that marketers are going to create a magic sales faucet, a fountain of fortune, or that there’s a secret Google leads button hidden in our toolbox somewhere.
And hey, PPC marketers can help make some pretty magical things happen, but we’re definitely not magicians, at least not in the Gandalf the Grey or Albus Dumbledore kind of way. In this how-to, SMX speaker and Aimclear’s VP of Growth, Amanda Farley deep-dives into the steps to get reporting and measurement right for your audience.
Navigating Google’s title changes: The rollout, what’s happening now and what you can do about it
In August, Google introduced a new system for generating title links (the title of a search result in Google Search). “This is because we think our new system is producing titles that work better for documents overall, to describe what they are about, regardless of the particular query,” the company explained.
However, during the new system’s initial rollout, SEOs provided example after example after example of titles that not only failed to describe what the page was about, but may also confuse users and deter them from clicking through. Fortunately, the situation has since improved, but placing blind faith in Google’s new system can mean that you’re ceding control over a crucial aspect of your content, which could ultimately affect your business. Below, you’ll find a synopsis of how Google’s title changes have evolved, how you can verify whether your titles have been changed and what you can do to regain control over them.
In this in-depth analysis, editor George Nguyen covers what’s changed, what to do if you suspect Google is changing your titles, what to do if you dislike the changes Google is making, and what these changes mean for the future.
How to fix the SEO issues that keep you from achieving your goals
At this year’s SMX Report, JR Oakes, Senior Director of Technical SEO at Locomotive, provided an overview of SEO Issues that hold us back from achieving our goals. He took a holistic look at resources, communication and mental constructs around SEO that often hinder progress. Oftentimes we look for the quick fixes that drive major ranking improvements. These still exist, but the relationships involved with connecting us to clients, and the website to users are where the most sustained value can be found.
In this article, Oakes goes through the 8 ways that SEO teams can break through major issues and reach their KPIs and achieve their goals:
Companies need the team buy-in and resources to succeed with SEO.
SEO teams should focus on clarity of communication and efficient prioritization.
The key areas to consider in SEO strategies are Links, Content (page satisfaction), Experience, and Relevance.
GIGO is a real thing. Taking time to go slow with accurate XML sitemaps, custom metrics, user feedback mechanisms, etc can make your life easier and give you data to inform growth.
Spend some time watching user sessions. You will thank me.
Work hard to ensure your pages solve a problem or provide the right answer.
Look at how your page’s content aligns with user searches provided by Google.
Write to support and build your site’s subject matter expertise. Credibility is key.
Support our existing and future Clients with Ecommerce consultancy services – concentrating (albeit not exclusively) on new product development, roadmap definition, experience management and support in the creation of business cases
Have in depth experience of eCommerce tactics and how to influence the physical and digital journeys.
Develop a master content plan that meets lead generation and strategic brand goals; translate this plan into an editorial calendar and manage the workflow to execute
Create short-form and mid-length direct response content for lead generation including native articles, landing page copy, and paid social advertisements
What We’re Reading: What does “shoppable” content mean for the upcoming holiday season?
We’ve mentioned it a thousand times, probably, but the pandemic has accelerated e-commerce and online retail. It’s a fact of life that the trends of COVID shopping have just become a way of life now. People expect to find what they need online (whether they plan to have it delivered or pick it up on location), and that reality coupled with advances in AI and VR technology means retailers are looking to “shoppable content” to boost their online sales this holiday season.
Pinterest. “Pinterest recently rolled out the ability for merchants to automatically create videos from the products they’ve already displayed on their accounts. This creates a slideshow that taps into the demand around videos and stories-based formats in social feeds. The videos also link directly to merchant check-out pages.” Along with this Pinterest Creators can tag brands in their pins which is a useful addition for affiliate and influencer marketers.
TikTok. TikTok is continuing to expand their shopping options, ads, and integrations. One example is TikTok Shopping, which “lets Shopify merchants that have a TikTok For Business account add a ‘Shopping’ tab to their TikTok profiles. That in turn lets them sync product catalogs and create mini storefronts on TikTok. So the integrations continue to expand in several directions,” said Boland.
YouTube. “YouTube just this week announced that it’s expanding its program for live shopping. This gives merchants a QVC-like format to stream product demonstrations. It’s rolling the whole thing out through a week-long event called ‘YouTube Holiday Stream and Shop’ starting November 15.” The move elevates YouTube to a shopping destination.
Shopping doesn’t just happen on e-commerce sites anymore. Social and streaming platforms are becoming retail destinations (especially as we near the holiday season) with shoppable content. Retailers will have to take advantage of the integrations to ensure they’re found across channels this shopping season.
Google has added new support, data and features to the Google Search Console Search Analytics API. The API now supports showing data for Google Discover, Google News and also supports Regex commands — all of which were already supported in the web interface.
Google announced this morning this support has been added to the Search Analytics API after many requests from the industry to add it.
API updates. “The searchType parameter, which previously enabled you to filter API calls by news, video, image, and web, will be renamed to type and will support two additional parameters: discover (for Google Discover) and googleNews (for Google News),” the company said. Google is still supporting the old name searchType for the time being, so it is backwards compatible.
Also, Google explained that “some metrics and dimensions are compatible only with some data types; for example, queries and positions are not supported by the Google Discover report.” This would also apply with the API and the API would thus return an error message.
Regex API support. Google has added Regex support to the API, specifically to the query and page dimensions. Two new operators have been added to the existing match operations, they are includingRegex and excludingRegex.
Already in web interface. Like we said above, these features have been in the web interface for a while. Google has now brought support to the API. Google News performance reports were added in January 2021, Google Discover performance reports gained full data in February 2021 and Regex support was added in April 2021.
Why we care. Many of you use APIs to help automate and streamline your day-to-day SEO practices and reporting. Having access to these additional data points and adding in Regex controls should make these reporting tasks easier and more automated.
This should save you time to do other SEO-related tasks, tasks you might have a harder time automating.
In August, Google introduced a new system for generating title links (the title of a search result in Google Search). “This is because we think our new system is producing titles that work better for documents overall, to describe what they are about, regardless of the particular query,” the company explained.
However, during the new system’s initial rollout, SEOs provided example after example after example of titles that not only failed to describe what the page was about, but may also confuse users and deter them from clicking through. Fortunately, the situation has since improved, but placing blind faith in Google’s new system can mean that you’re ceding control over a crucial aspect of your content, which could ultimately affect your business. Below, you’ll find a synopsis of how Google’s title changes have evolved, how you can verify whether your titles have been changed and what you can do to regain control over them.
Title changes: Then and now
A tale of two title changes. Google has been adjusting titles links for a long time. In 2014, the company explained that it might change a title to match the query (to a certain extent). This is an important detail because Google would later cite these historical practices as precedent for its new system — a justification that some SEOs found misleading as the magnitude and impact of the changes contrast sharply.
“[More recently,] I’m rarely seeing examples in the wild of noticeably worse rewrites for large-scale sites that I’ve done in-depth audits for,” said Brodie Clark, Australian SEO consultant, “This was definitely not the case initially (for about a month post-update), but Google seems to have since turned down the dial and made the update work as intended.” The other SEOs that spoke to Search Engine Land for this article shared similar experiences.
The first weeks of the title change rollout. When the new title change system rolled out in August, SEOs took to Twitter to share examples of poorly rewritten titles in the search results. “While many of the title overwrites made sense and were unlikely to negatively affect performance, there were many (too many) examples of title overwrites gone awry,” said Lily Ray, senior director, SEO and head of organic research at Amsive Digital.
SEOs feared that rewritten titles might be inaccurate or simply worse than what was in the title tag. While the title changes do not affect rankings, the title itself can influence clickthrough rates (CTR), thus also potentially impacting business KPIs such as revenue. Consequently, Google’s botched rollout of title changes fueled a movement among some SEOs who demanded a way to opt-out of the changes.
Do you want to see an opt-out option to be usable with the robots meta tag (and x-robots-tag) which tells search engines to not rewrite the page title (e.g. notitlechange or usetitle) for their SERPs, like max-snippet?
At one point, Danny Sullivan, a cofounder of Third Door Media (Search Engine Land’s parent company) and now public liaison for Google Search, also advocated for a similar feature: “As a site owner, I hate this. I want Google to use whatever page title I give it. Google argues back that it has to be creative, especially in cases where people have failed to provide titles. I’ve argued in the past that as a solution, Google should provide site owners with some type of ‘yes, I’m really really sure’ meta tag to declare that they absolutely want their page titles to be used.”
The nature of Google’s title rewrites. “It appeared that Google was truncating some article headlines in strange ways that changed the meaning of the title,” said Ray, “In other cases, it seemed that punctuation, like quotation marks or dashes, caused the title to break early. In even rarer and stranger situations, Google would choose anchor text or other article text to display as the title, which was occasionally taken out of context and was a poor representation of the full page content.”
“[Google] seemed to latch on to any type of header tag and really didn’t like the pipe character and overt branding,” said Colt Silva, SEO engineer at iPullRank. During our own analysis of Search Engine Land titles that changed in the search results, we also noticed that Google had a proclivity for removing the pipe character.
Google has since improved its system for rewriting titles (more on that below). To illustrate some of the types of title rewrites that we’re still seeing in the search results, Clark assembled a collection of examples from Search Engine Land article titles.
Examples of Search Engine Land titles that were changed by Google. Image: Brodie Clark.
Here is Clark’s analysis of some of the changes:
There were many instances of adding the site name with a hyphen when the site name wasn’t included in the <title> tag. And additional examples where the vertical bar with the site name was changed to a hyphen (a commonality among sites that I’m seeing). Interestingly, most SEOs still prefer the vertical bar post-update.
Long title tags that result in truncation are simplified at key sections of the snippet. For example, #3 has the removal of a complete section of the title link, with the site name then added in with a hyphen.
Complete replacement was happening rarely for Search Engine Land, but there was the odd instance where Google was replacing the title link, such as for #4. In this example, the H1 was taken to replace what had been written in the <title> tag.
Google has since improved its title rewrites. After the initial blowback from the SEO community, Google’s Danny Sullivan published a post explaining why Google made the title changes. Several weeks after that, the company published more help documents on controlling titles and descriptions in Search. Just as important, Google’s explanations seem to be accompanied by improvements to its title change algorithm.
“Fortunately, many people submitted feedback and examples to Google, which caused them to acknowledge that they were still refining the title change,” Ray said, “Since then, it’s clear Google has made improvements to the title overwrites and even reverted many of the worst offenders back to their original <title> tag.”
“As soon as title-change-mania started, we saw one of our biggest e-commerce clients have 5% of their title tags changed without any real effect on their CTR,” Silva said, “Shortly before the Google announcement of rollbacks, we saw it drop to 2%. The client was concerned about a couple of high-traffic keywords, but those have since been rolled back and it’s no longer a point of discussion in any of our meetings.”
What to do if you suspect Google is changing your titles
If you’ve noticed fluctuations in your CTRs, it may be worthwhile to investigate whether Google has changed your title link. SEOs and tool providers have come up with numerous ways to do this — we’ll discuss a few of them below.
“Essentially, you’ll need a way to start tracking and trending titles. You’ll need to collect your site’s popular search terms, and then gather the Google SERPs title and compare it to the actual title,” Silva said, adding, “This Search Engine Land article is a solid highlight of options to track title changes. In addition to that, there’s Thruuu, Keywords in Sheets solution, and this creative bookmarklet to inject titles into a SERP.”
Ahrefs users also have a new tool that enables them to export title changes for deeper analysis. Brodie Clark has provided instructions on how to get started with it and how he analyzes the data.
Want to analyse your title rewrites post-update? Using @Ahrefs is the fastest & most effective way:
1. Select ‘top pages’ 2. Turn ‘SERP titles’ on 3. Change date comparison 4. Export
Note: make sure to remove new + lost rankings in Sheets/do spot checks for manual updates. pic.twitter.com/qVjNghjZZQ
The new tool is in the “Top pages” tab underneath the “Site Explorer 2.0” heading. Once you’re there, you’ll have to toggle the “SERP titles” button and change the date for comparison. Next, you can export the data for analysis.
“There are important aspects to keep in mind when interpreting the data to ensure you’re getting an accurate depiction,” Clark said, recommending that SEOs remove new URLs and URLs that are no longer ranking so that they’re only looking at titles that are eligible for comparison.
“Changing the grouping of the rows to the top pages based on est. traffic that has had a title link change, we can see trends for what has changed,” Clark said. At this point, you’ll have to perform a manual review. “When completing the manual review, you’ll also need to look out for titles that have manually changed for pages during the comparison period,” he added.
What you can do if you’re unhappy with how Google changed your titles
Some titles may still be unsatisfactory — it can be argued that the example in line #3 from the chart above is less informative than the original title, for example. Unfortunately, there is little you can do to directly change Google’s title links, but embracing a more holistic view of the issue can help you craft more informative titles and avoid bad rewrites from Google.
One thing you can do to bring a particularly inaccurate title change to Google’s attention is to submit feedback: “Google created a form where you can submit your feedback for incorrect or egregious titles,” Lily Ray pointed out, “Otherwise, pay attention to when the overwrites take place and what they look like; this could provide insight into potential issues Google may have with your titles and offer some inspiration about how to adjust them. Google also offers clear examples about the types of titles it intended to overwrite, so you can evaluate whether your titles fall into any of those categories.”
“If you’re seeing poor title links for your site, try to look at it from a non-biased point of view,” Clark recommended, “Are you keyword stuffing? Is the title accurate enough? Is the text using too much boilerplate content? All are important aspects to consider before making the judgment that Google has done something wrong. If you’re confident that they are at fault, try to make the on-page content more closely aligned with what you’re trying to achieve.”
“This is the perfect opportunity to start testing,” Silva said, recommending that SEOs “Follow the scientific method from hypothesis to conclusion and find why an algorithm has latched onto a specific block of text [to replace your title tag]” Since you’re likely in control of your title tags and on-page content, you can use these levers to see what works for your business, your audience and Google’s algorithms.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
For SEOs. We’re now accustomed to optimizing for rich results, featured snippets, knowledge panels and dozens of other non-traditional search features, but titles — as Google has now reminded us — are one of the oldest forms of on-SERP SEO. While its system for title links has improved, SEOs will have to double-check their titles moving forward to ensure that they follow Google’s guidance so users see what we intend for them to see, instead of an inferior title scraped from anchor text, for example. This will simply have to become part of your workflow and best practices will adapt to account for Google’s title changes.
For the industry. We rely on Google for traffic and Google relies on us for content to show users. When the title changes rolled out in August, Google said it wasn’t new, which was only half-true as the search engine has been known to replace titles, but had not done so to the extent that we’ve recently experienced. What’s more, it was showing title links that could have confused users and deterred them from visiting our pages. It cannot be said for certain that SEOs holding the company accountable for the flaws in its new system was what moved the needle and got Google to “revert many of the worst offenders back to their original <title> tag,” as Ray put it, but it is something that search marketers will likely have to continue to do in order to advocate for our businesses and the audiences they serve.
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, and Facebook by any other name … will still be Facebook.
The company is planning to rename itself according to a report from The Verge. The headlines say the social media giant turned tech company wants to rebrand to focus on “building the metaverse.” We’re not sure if it’ll be an Alphabet-Google sort of name change or something more extensive.
The rebrand comes at a time when more users and advertisers are not huge fans of Facebook’s social media platform (see the story below on how Facebook is trying to remedy that). And, of course, as the tech company continues to come across regulatory cases from countries all over the globe.
Is it a business case for separating entities? Is it marketing to expand the brand beyond the social media origins? Or is it an attempt at a rebrand to keep our minds off all the bad Facebook-related news headlines? I suppose we’ll find out when the official name is announced.
Carolyn Lyden, Director of Search Content
Microsoft partners with Shopify to help retailers expand their reach
Example of the Buy now offering on a product ad.
With the updated Microsoft Channel app “Shopify merchants can easily connect with shoppers on the Microsoft Search Network and Microsoft Audience Network with just a few clicks,” says the latest announcement from the company.
Currently available in the U.S. and Canada, the Microsoft Channel app within Shopify allows businesses to show up automatically in the Microsoft Bing Shopping tab and the Microsoft Start Shopping tab for free as product listings.
Why we care. This integration and updates to the Microsoft Channel app are just another way to help small businesses, retail, and e-commerce find visibility online. The Shopify integration means that these retailers (and even those who are more experienced in selling online) will be reaching online shoppers just in time for the holiday season crunch.
Semrush data says Google search results are more volatile this year
In fact, desktop results are 68% more volatile. The data says that on desktop Google search results from January 2021 through October 2021, there is a 68% increase in the number of days showing high volatility according to Semrush. High volatility is a score of 5 out of 10 through 8 out of 10 on the Semrush Sensor tool.
Mobile is even more volatile. The data says that on mobile Google search results from January 2021 through October 2021, there is an 84% increase in the number of days showing high volatility in the mobile Google search results
Why we care. While it is not helpful to obsess over all the confirmed and unconfirmed Google search ranking fluctuations, it is useful to know when these happen. It may help you to know it is not just you going through this, but hundreds or thousands of other websites are being impacted by these updates. Plus, knowing when an algorithm update impacted your site versus maybe something seasonal or a technical mistake you made can help your SEO strategy.
Facebook Ads announces new performance, reporting and measurement products in light of iOS privacy changes
Yesterday Facebook announced new products and features to help combat the lack of data for advertisers, including an easier way to connect to the Simplified Conversions API and new features for Aggregated Event Measurement.
The new products include several major updates:
View-through attribution is now the default. “This will provide an understanding of the types of users who may see an ad on Facebook and later make a conversion, without clicking on the ad,” said Graham Mudd, VP of Product Marketing at Facebook in the announcement.
All business URLs will be counted. Facebook will also be updating AEM to consider all advertiser-associated URLs that auto-redirect.
Facebook is rolling out AEM for apps. “This will strengthen your ability to measure actions that people take while using your apps, like making a purchase or achieving a new level in a game,” added Mudd.
Advertisers will have new SKAdNetwork campaign capabilities. This update means advertisers can get a more complete view of full conversion paths.
Conversions API setup is simplified. The new API makes setup even easier so more advertisers can take advantage of the benefits of a holistic data view.
Why we care. Many advertisers are feeling the crunch after Apple’s app-tracking privacy initiative began earlier this year. The missing data means campaigns aren’t optimized as well as they used to be and many advertisers are losing conversions. These new improvements on the Facebook Ad side are an attempt to fill that reporting and measurement gap while still maintaining user privacy.
Google extends its shopping integrations to include BigCommerce
Google has rolled out an integration with BigCommerce, the company announced Thursday. Similar to Google’s integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, GoDaddy and Square, which were announced earlier this year, this partnership will enable BigCommerce merchants to show their products for free on Google, create ad campaigns and review performance metrics from their BigCommerce store.
Why we care. The new integration provides BigCommerce retailers with an easy way to make their listings more discoverable across Google properties, which can help drive traffic to their products. This may be especially helpful for merchants that can’t or aren’t able to dedicate extra staff or enlist the help of an agency.
Google’s latest word of the day feature is another small encroachment on dictionary sites’ SERP real estate
Yesterday Google announced a “Word of the Day” feature that will send you the definition of a new word every day. If you sign up, you’ll get a daily notification on your phone to check out a term you may not have heard before and fun facts about the etymology of each.
If this looks familiar, it’s because definition sites like Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster have been doing this for a while now. When I mentioned this, Barry Schwartz pulled some screenshots from the Search Engine Roundtable archives:
Barry estimates that Google started showing definitions right in the search results around 2004. In 2010, Google redesigned the in-SERP definition box but linked to the different dictionary sites as sources for the terms’ meanings. But in 2013, they “upgraded” the definitions box in search results to include even more information (including origins, translations, and use over time) and to stop attributing to individual sources.
The word of the day feature seems like another small step at chipping away at these dictionary sites’ small sliver of real estate in search results. Sure, no one “owns” the definition of a word and people don’t want to click through to find it, but it makes us wonder how else these sites can innovate to stay ahead of Google’s rising tide.
The goal of boosting your loan volume without increasing your payroll may seem like an impossible task, but you’re closer to achieving it than you realize. With a few strategic pivots –some in behavior and some involving adding mortgage software — you’ll be able to massively increase your loan volume without so much as adding an intern.
Seem too good to be true? Read on to find out how close you are…
How To Increase Loan Volume Without Increasing Your Staff
Revamp Your Business Model
In modern lending, the market moves fast and change is constant. Ensuring that your business is agile enough to keep up with the shifts is vital to scaling your volume. That said, has your business model changed since the beginning of 2020? Are you stuck in the mindset of making do until things go “back to normal?” Are you or is your remote team struggling to find harmony in workflow?
If you find that your loan volume growth is stagnant, the positive buzz about your business has grown silent, and your top producers are jumping ship, then it’s time to revamp your business model. Here are areas to focus on:
Evaluate your business processes –really drill down on the loan cycle every step it takes to acquire, nurture, and close a loan.
Revisit your key partnerships.
Consider your target prospect –have you lost touch with who they are and what their buying habits are?
Reassess the business values and goals. How can you better align your business to match those points?
Reevaluate your lead generation strategy – Digital marketing for mortgage businesses is an ever-evolving practice and requires regular updates to your mortgage marketing strategy.
Freshen up your branding to help boost interest from prospects and reignite enthusiasm from your employees.
Improve Operational Efficiency
One strategy that consistently leads to dramatic growth is improving operational efficiency. It’s estimated that most organizations bleed about 20% of their potential profits due to time mismanagement and an organization’s poor implementation of technology –both of which add up to operational deficiency.
Now, when we say time mismanagement, understand that we’re not talking about staff scrolling through Instagram when they should be following up on leads. Rather, we’re talking about bigger time-suckers like remedial manual tasks like data entry or changing a document from one format to another before submitting. There’s also the huge mistake of having loan officers do your mortgage marketing, pulling their time and attention away from processing loans. We talked in-depth about that folly in a previous article.
When it comes to poor implementation of technology, there are several areas that you can improve on to 10x your loan volume. Consider the following critical areas:
Refine the process -Assess whether you currently have the digital tools required to operate at a higher volume level. Examine how efficient your day-to-day operations are well as look for any gaps in the workflow.
Automate repeatable tasks – Like mentioned above, weeding out work-intensive processes by reducing unnecessary data entry means your mortgage team gets more done with less effort. In addition to increasing their intake, mortgage automation also speeds up the closing timeline.
Consolidate communication –Communication is essential to operate efficiently but often too much time is devoted to answering emails, making phone calls, and attending meetings when the same can be achieved with less active effort. Instead, make use of software like a mortgage POS with a client portal. With a mortgage POS acting as a hub of operations, the assigned mortgage team can access the information and documentation they need. Notifications alert you of any changes to the loan file and communications from email and instant messaging are automatically archived and organized for easy retrieval.
Elevate Your Borrower Experience
Increasing the number of leads is worth nothing if they don’t translate to more loans, and that’s where improving your borrower experience can make all the difference. McKinsey’s insights found that, on average, organizations that work on bettering their customer experience increase their revenue by 10-15% while simultaneously lowering their costs by 15-20%. These higher rates ring especially true in financial services.
Thanks to technology, a remarkable experience doesn’t require building a whole new customer service department. Do the following to elevate your borrower experience:
Be proactive –Have an omnichannel digital presence. That way wherever the consumer is on the web and whatever stage they are in the borrower journey, there’s a touchpoint that leads them back to you.
Have open communication –While consumers readily embrace a digital mortgage, the lack of a human element can leave them feeling unsettled. Remove this barrier by providing multiple channels of communication such as in-app or website instant messaging, group chats, video calls, SMS reminders, and the like.
User-friendly tech –Delicate processes like online loan applications can overwhelm and frustrate even the most tech-savvy consumer. Eliminate this stress by using mortgage tech that has a dynamic and modern interface. Bonus points if it’s branded too!
It’s entirely possible to 10x your loan volume and grow your business without hiring new staff. By looking for ways to maximize your current team, update your business structure, reallocate your time, and implement technology, you’ll find that taking your business to the next level without increasing your payroll is achievable.
