Amazon has two Alexas in its family: the intelligent voice agent that is popping up everywhere, and Alexa.com, a subsidiary which provides competitive analysis about any web site.
Today, the latter Alexa is announcing new features that pushes it deeper into world of the search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM).
New keyword and audience analysis
The new Alexa Site Overview service now provides keyword opportunities and audience analysis about any site or its competing sites.
A screenshot from Alexa.com, showing some of the new features.
The new keyword opportunities include words that competitors are using to drive traffic, but the site in question is not. Easy-to-rank keywords indicates popular keywords the given site could probably rank for, based on Alexa’s assessment of its Competitive Power.
Buyer keywords are those used for search by the site’s targeted audience, and which indicate a high intent to purchase by the searcher. And optimization finds popular keywords that currently drive only a small amount of traffic to the site, but could drive more traffic if they were better utilized.
Competitive analysis now shows a percentage of overall traffic from search engines to a given site compared with competing sites, the number of referral sites driving traffic compared to competitors, and top search terms for a site and competitors.
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Audience Insights
In the new Audience Insights, a marketer can now see the categories of interest for a site’s audience, plus a listing of other sites in those categories that the audience visits. An audience overlap shows sites competing for that audience.
Previously, Alexa.com President Andrew Ramm told SEW via email, his site’s free Site Overview tool provided only traffic stats on an input site URL. In March of last year, the site added Competitor Keyword Matrix, to understand the keywords used by competitors.
Now, he pointed out, the free tool “automatically generates top competing sites that it uses as the basis for a more in-depth competitive analysis report.”
A comparison of search traffic, referral sources and top site keywords between a site and its competitors are free, while other features are included in the site’s subscription plan.
Griffith said that other free tools “don’t aggregate this information in a way that makes it easy to extract customized and actionable insights for a site,” based on competitors. Other tools, he added, “often focus on simply providing data about a site’s current performance [for such factors as keywords or traffic], but fall short of presenting untapped opportunities for the site.”
Related reading
FAQs improve SEO rankings as Google values your website for providing all the information needed to take an educated decision. Five ways to get it right.
When using nontechnical techniques, sound marketing principles ultimately lead to increased web rankings. Simple techniques to adopt for Google visibility.
It’s always best to have tools and processes in place. Obviously, you don’t need anything fancy. You could start by setting up Google Alerts.
Your search engine marketing success hinges upon your site’s UX. Two elements of UX that are particularly relevant to SEO.
Yext customers can now see local reviews and analytics in their Hootsuite dashboards.
Yext and Hootsuite have teamed up to enable businesses with physical locations to monitor and respond to their Yext reviews within Hootsuite’s social media management dashboard.
The Yext integration will pull in both online reviews and review data, including review metrics related to average ratings, response count, response time and keyword-based sentiment analysis.
Why we should care
Effective brand management is more than simply paying attention to what is being said about your company on social channels. Online reviews play a major role in a brand’s reputation and conversion outcomes. The Yext Reviews integration into Hootsuite is designed to help marketers track and respond to what is being said about their brands beyond social and connect the dots between reviews in search channels and social media engagement, all in one place.
“Most consumer reviews happen in a very social way, so it’s becoming essential for all businesses to monitor and respond to those reviews online in order to manage their brand reputation and control their online presence,” said Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes.
More on the news
Brands will be able to pull first- and third-party reviews within Yext’s Knowledge Network into Hootsuite.
Hootsuite’s dashboard makes it possible to filter the Yext data by location, site or time.
To pull Yext data into Hootsuite, businesses will have to have a Professional subscription to Yext and be a Hootsuite customer. Installation instructions can be found on Yext’s App Directory page.
About The Author
Amy Gesenhues is a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.
Hi. I’m Lauren. I work at a world-class PPC agency. Nice to meet you. You say you do PPC for your company? Amazing! So what brings you to PPC Hero? Are you drawn to the incredible insights you get from Mary Hartman’s blogs (have you seen her latest?) Or you can’t get enough of Briana’s tips and tricks to make your life easier? Seriously, we pack some good stuff in here.
As you are here, I’d like to talk to you about our relationship. Yes.Our.You and Me. Maybe you are managing a whole Digital Marketing team. Maybe your focus is on SEM and that’s it. Maybe you are in demand generation. You report to your boss and are responsible for generating results from your digital channels–that’s a given. So the fact that you are here tells me two things:
You know your stuff (Or at least you know enough to be dangerous)
You don’t know everything. I mean, how could you? In our ever-changing, moving-faster-than-a-tesseract business, it is impossible to have the depth of knowledge in all facets of your work AND get the timesheets into accounting on time (sorry finance team).
So this myth that agencies are only for companies without their own experts or team is just that….a myth. We can have a pretty powerful relationship. So if you are thinking that there isn’t enough time or manpower to reach your goals for your company, then boy-howdy do I have a proposal for you.
Hire us. Well, not us, Hanapin (okay, maybe us). But hire an agency. I have spent the last few years working with multiple in-house teams on various projects and initiatives. They have been some of the best, most insightful partnerships. I wear those partnerships like a badge of honor.
It seems everyone is always looking ahead to what is next in their business. It may be Q1 but we are thinking about Q3. So as you are thinking about the future and how you are going to be the hero for your company, consider partnering with an agency.
Here just a few ways to work in tandem with an agency.
Audits
Can’t see the forest for the trees? Yeah. It happens to all of us. When we nurture our accounts and work with them day in and day out it is so easy to miss something. Partnering with an agency to have another set of eyes on something is invaluable. An agency has the benefit of working with multiple clients in a single vertical. There indeed may be a different way of approaching brand awareness or leveraging audiences in search. An audit puts insights and discoveries in a nice little package complete with an outline of next steps.
Retainers
New product launch on the horizon? Company acquisition or merge? You may shout to your team “all hands on deck!” but even then it isn’t enough hands. A temporary, close-ended agreement with an agency allows you to focus on what you need to focus on, and the agency team can focus on the rest.
Large builds
I have worked with clients where our only purpose is to be a lean, mean, restructuring machine. Time is money and PPC waits for no one. Using an agency to churn out huge restructures is one of the best things money can buy. One, you can continue to work on your account and delivering performance. Two, agencies have processes, templates, and an army of people to deliver squeaky clean new structure backed by data analysis.
Specialized management
They call you Gandolf because you are a search wizard. But social? Programmatic? Display? Are you breaking out in a sweat yet? At Hanapin, we have a team of teams. We have experts across the whole gamut of PPC. We can dispatch a team to help manage any aspect of your digital marketing agenda. Lean on an agency to fill the gaps in your marketing plan.
Before you reach out to an agency, you want to make sure you have the following things:
Clear goals
A solid project management tool (this does not have to be anything more than a 2-way communication platform: Google Drive, Box, Clarizen, Basecamp, etc.)
Willingness to engage in new ideas (engage being the key here)
Working with the right agency can multiply your digital skills. If your PPC performance is stagnant, or if you are growing faster than you can manage, consider working with an agency. We are truly your partners in PPC.
Relationships go both ways. As much as we can help you, you help agencies. When we work with organizations both large and small we learn. We learn how internal teams work. We learn about general marketing strategies and how PPC plays into them. We learn to stay quiet and listen. We learn and we get stronger and better.
As I stated before, in-house partnerships are some of my favorite clients to work with. I get to be an extension of their team. And in turn, they get access to a full agency of experts. So next time you are cruising PPC Hero looking for some insight, think about working with an agency. And if you think about it enough, you might want to head on out to Hero Conf Philly. Make some connections. Network with agencies. Then you can go back to your boss, a Hero.
Episerver has launched its new digital marketplace to help its customers find new applications from Episerver-verified vendors. The marketplace aims to deliver martech solutions to marketers for digital commerce, marketing and operations.
“In the digital economy, organizations must take advantage of a wide range of applications and services to successfully engage with and delight their customers,” said Jordan Jewell, research manager for digital commerce and enterprise applications at IDC. “Applications such as the one Episerver has launched, providing value for all parties involved by acting as an infrastructure to connect Episerver’s partners and customers while also ensuring a higher standard for those apps.”
Every application made available through the marketplace is tested by Episerver for operational, security and user interface compatibility with Episerver products and versions. The Episerver App Marketplace currently offer over 50 apps, from analytics and content management use cases to compliance and translation capabilities.
Why we should care
As martech and other types of enterprise software applications move towards cloud and SaaS models, app marketplaces like Episerver’s will make new technologies easily accessible and help streamline the process for identifying apps that are the right fit — and will integrate easily into the rest of your martech stack.
Knowing that Episerver has verified the security and operational compatibility adds a layer of trust for marketers looking to consolidate their martech through integrations.
More on the news
There are currently around 50 apps available through the marketplace, including (but not limited to):
HubSpot
Salesforce
Salesforce Pardot
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Avalara
Oracle Eloqua
Marketo
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Connect for Watson Campaign Automation
Google Analytics
PayPal Express Checkout
SharePoint
About The Author
Jennifer Videtta Cannon serves as Third Door Media’s Senior Editor, covering topics from email marketing and analytics to CRM and project management. With over a decade of organizational digital marketing experience, she has overseen digital marketing operations for NHL franchises and held roles at tech companies including Salesforce, advising enterprise marketers on maximizing their martech capabilities. Jennifer formerly organized the Inbound Marketing Summit and holds a certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics from MIT Sloan School of Management.
Amazon announced on Thursday the launch of Counter, a new network of staffed pickup points at which customers can retrieve their Amazon packages.
A service of Amazon Hub, Counter is now available as a delivery option to more than a hundred Rite Aid stores across the U.S., with plans to expand to 1,500 Counter locations by the end of the year.
Similar to Amazon Locker’s self-service pickup kiosks, delivery to a Counter location is available to customers at no additional cost and works for same-day, one-day, two-day and standard shipping options.
Why we should care
Amazon Counter marks another initiative in the company’s continued efforts to provide customers with more access points at physical locations — by piggybacking on other retailers’ existing location networks.
Counter helps address the problem that many people aren’t able to receive packages securely at their homes or apartments. For Amazon sellers, the pickup options could result in more frequent and consistent purchases from customers who don’t have to worry as much about their packages being stolen. For Rite Aid, and other eventual retail partners, Counter customers are likely to make additional purchases when they pickup their packages.
“Creating a seamless, convenient customer experience is a key element of our strategy and digital transformation,” said Jocelyn Konrad, executive vice president of pharmacy and retail operations of Rite Aid.
“Being the first store partner for Counter in the U.S. is a differentiator for Rite Aid,” she said, adding that the Amazon partnership “creates a stronger in-store experience for existing customers and new customers that come in to pick up their packages.”
More on the news
After proceeding to Amazon’s shipping confirmation page, customers will have the option to ship to a Counter pickup location within their zip code. Customers have up to 14 days to collect their package.
Originally launched in the UK and Italy, Counter has been met with positive reception, according to Amazon, and has bolstered customer engagement and additional foot traffic for partners.
Amazon is actively seeking additional store partners for Counter, including small to midsize businesses and other large chains.
About The Author
Taylor Peterson is Third Door Media’s Deputy Editor, managing industry-leading coverage that informs and inspires marketers. Based in New York, Taylor brings marketing expertise grounded in creative production and agency advertising for global brands. Taylor’s editorial focus blends digital marketing and creative strategy with topics like campaign management, emerging formats, and display advertising.
Maybe you know this and maybe you don’t: The home office of Hanapin Marketing (the producers of PPC Hero and Hero Conf) is located in Bloomington, Indiana. Yes, we do have cornfields at every corner and no, Hawkins, Indiana (from Stranger Things) isn’t actually a real city in Indiana.
Our Midwest headquarters gives us plenty of scenic locations, good food, and close proximity to big cities like Indianapolis, Chicago, Louisville, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. But we don’t have the benefit of numerous digital agencies and like-minded professionals in our backyard, like fellow PPCers located in New York or San Francisco.
So as digital marketers in the Midwest looking for more options to network and share insights, we created a new online event happening on July 25th called Midwest Digital Marketing Day.
The online event includes exclusive webinars and discussions through Slack with industry experts covering audience targeting, chatbots, and social ads. You can join the event from the coffee shop, your office or your couch. Before and after the event, you’ll receive links to join, content, and networking/mentoring opportunities. The best part is you don’t have to ask for any budget to attend!
Connect. Learn. Building your Marketing Tribe.
If you’re wondering how you’re going to convince your boss to let you attend during work time, just remember these four bullets:
Free training with PPC experts
Online (so no budget needed for travel or hotel!)
Live discussions with experts and other digital marketers on topics
Networking opportunities (which we know is HUGE for a conference, so we’re bringing that to an online experience)
Midwest Digital Marketing Day is an opportunity to find your tribe in a land where cities are spread out and digital marketers forge ahead on their own. The online event will take place on Thursday, July 25th starting at 9:45am EST.
The biggest global gathering of advertising industry professionals wrapped up this past weekend as the major players that drive the half trillion dollar global advertising market came together for the annual Cannes Lions Festival. There, I spoke on the future of OTT and digital advertising and what the biggest brands, agencies and technology companies are planning for the year ahead.
This was the year big tech leaned in heavily to shape the advertising conversation. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Microsoft, Pandora and Amazon all had a significant presence at Cannes last week. This investment reinforces that the future of advertising — and consumer engagement overall — is migrating rapidly to digital channels as digital advertising spend is now projected to reach $520 billion by 2023.
Within the continuing move to digital, there are some specific trends that were top of mind for agency and marketing execs alike. From the expanding and ever more complicated regulatory landscape – such as GDPR, the CCPA and other regulations being discussed and implemented around the world – to OTT and streaming’s effect on broadcast advertising, and the desire for marketers to break the Google and FB stranglehold on ad spend, this year’s Cannes ushered in a renewed sense of urgency and purpose from every aspect of the marketplace. Here’s a quick debrief on the three key threads the advertising industry dug into deeply at Cannes this year:
#1 – Privacy regulation
Following a number of high profile privacy bruises, the advertising and technology sector has shifted its stance on regulation. For many years the mantra was focused on self regulation. This narrative has taken a significant turn in the face of GDPR and other regulatory frameworks that seem to be flowing forth at an increasing rate. Now the call is for a clearer, more unified set of regulations that can be applied uniformly in a way that does not hurt competition or stifle access to the free internet. During a panel session I attended with S4 Chairman Martin Sorell, he noted the unintended consequences of the current regulatory work stating “GDPR reinforced the positional strength of the big guys.”
Martin rightly cautioned that we must be “extremely careful” as we move forward to craft new regulations that don’t embolden the likes of Facebook and Google at the expense of market competition and innovation. It’s now accepted in the industry that the unintended consequences of Europe’s landmark GDPR regulation served to strengthen the dominance of the big players. With California’s new law coming online soon and many other state laws being considered, there is an understandable concern in the business community and a desire for one clear, consistent regulatory framework to be implemented. This is especially critical in the US where we are already seeing the emergence of a potential 50 state patchwork of laws that will not only be unmanageable, but may knee cap the US tech industry.
#2 – OTT
Hulu, Netflix, Disney and other streaming platforms were out in force at Cannes, making the argument that the future of television is streaming. The assumption was clear among attendees that Netflix will begin accepting advertising dollars sooner than later. What is also interesting to note is that Netflix is likely looking into this because consumers want it — in fact, our research with The Harris Poll found that half of all OTT viewers prefer an ad-supported streaming model over a more expensive subscription-only service.
The other OTT trend to watch is that competition for Netflix revenue is about to get a lot steeper with a bevy of other services coming online, including budget-friendly offerings from Disney and Apple and a new service just launched this week by Viacom in partnership with BET and Tyler Perry. Most US consumers now stream, and they stream a lot, yet only 5% of US television advertising reaches the OTT market. Everyone recognized we are on the precipice of a major sea change in consumer engagement that will see massive shifts in budgets away from legacy linear platforms to where consumers are now spending large portions of their time.
#3 – The Google-Facebook duopoly
The number one concern of marketers, according to a recent eMarketer study, is the continued dominance of Facebook and Google. These concerns played out across Cannes. “Everybody wants to pull dollars away from Google and Facebook,” said David Spector, co-CEO and co-founder of ThirdLove. Michael Roth, CEO of IPG added “Everyone talks about government regulation breaking [Google and Facebook] up. But what really will happen is our clients will start not spending with them. And that will be the biggest effect eventually if it doesn’t get corrected.”
The sticking point for everyone is the dramatic asymmetry that exists today where, according to Comscore, consumers only spend about a third of their online time within the walled gardens of Facebook and Google yet nearly two-thirds of all digital spend flows into those channels. The net result is that marketers are significantly over-indexing spend on too few platforms and the content creators across the open web are losing their fair share of revenue. Meanwhile, Amazon is vying to be the third ad tech leader of the oligopoly with the completion of its ad tech stack through its purchase of Sizmek. There is a deep desire to address this dominance in 2020 and to unlock greater spend on the open web by taking the best parts of the walled gardens and making it more accessible.
Overall this felt like a much different Cannes from last year. This year was definitely a “glass is half full” Cannes, whereas in 2018, the mood was so somber we couldn’t even find the glass. Tech companies are worried about regulation but they see an alignment forming to address it. Marketers are worried about the continued dominance of Google and Facebook, yet they are beginning to see new players emerge with solutions that mirror the effectiveness of the walled gardens for the broader open web.
Consumers are rapidly migrating away from traditional television platforms but they are showing a huge appetite for streaming video and a desire for streaming advertising models, which advertisers can look forward to. Overall, Cannes demonstrated that advertising, creative and technology players have huge opportunity to recast engagement for a privacy complaint, always connected consumer landscape.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author
Dallas Lawrence is currently the chief communications and brand officer at OpenX, the largest independent advertising exchange. Prior to joining OpenX, Dallas Lawrence served as the chief communications officer for Rubicon Project, led global communications and government affairs for Mattel and served as the chief global digital strategist for Burson-Marsteller. During more than a decade in Washington, DC, Dallas served as a press secretary on Capitol Hill prior to joining President Bush’s communications team, leading outreach efforts for the President’s signature domestic policy initiative No Child Left Behind. Dallas would later deploy to Baghdad, Iraq, on behalf of the White House to serve as a spokesperson for the Coalition. Upon returning from Baghdad, Dallas joined the communications team of Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld where he served as the Pentagon’s director of public liaison for both Rumsfeld and his predecessor Secretary Gates. He has been named both the “Crisis Manager of the Year” by PR News and “Social Media Professional of the Year.” In 2013, PR Week named him one of the 40 most influential leaders in PR. Dallas was previously a commissioned officer in the United States Navy and earned a BA in political science from the University of California at Berkeley and an MA in government from The Johns Hopkins University.
How many times have you thought or said to a colleague…
“I know what needs to be done. Where do I find the people to do it?”
“I need to prove ROI, but I’m afraid my data is no good.”
“There are too many technology options. I don’t know which to choose.”
You’re not alone. The challenges are universal.
Come to MarTech®, September 16-18 in Boston, to meet real-world marketers who have overcome these obstacles and are ready to share what it takes to succeed.
You’ll participate in 65+ sessions, explore hundreds of martech solutions in one place, and take home actionable tactics and proven strategies that can be implemented immediately.
Charged with building a successful team? The Marketing & Leadership track is loaded with first-hand advice from experts who have successfully built winning marketing operations and technology departments.
Is your data a mess? It doesn’t have to be. Attend sessions in the Data & Analytics track to understand the metrics worth measuring, how to keep your data clean, and ways to translate it into insights that lead to sound business outcomes.
Want more from your investments in technology? Visit the Technology & Operations track to hear how marketing leaders use software to deliver personalized experiences, put the customer first, and integrate technologies that enable both.
But wait, there’s more…
MarTech features the largest gathering of marketing solutions providers on the East Coast; evaluate their offerings efficiently in the Expo Hall or attend their presentations in the Solutions Track and Discover MarTech Theater.
Connect with like-minded marketers, grow your circle of professional contacts, trade ideas, talk shop, and learn from people who have been where you are during our formal and informal networking events.
Pre-conference workshops deliver maximum learning in a hands-on, intimate environment. Choose from: The Right Way to Buy Marketing Technology, Agile Marketing Advantage, Creating Connected Experiences, Using CDP to Make the Most of Your Customer Data, Building a Badass Marketing Team with Talent Optimization, Optimizing SEO Operations for Marketing Leaders, A Marketer’s Guide To Attribution Analysis, or Your Lifeboat For The Coming Data Privacy Storm.
Enjoy amenities that keep you productive on-the-go: Full breakfasts, hot lunches, refreshments, and WiFi throughout the entire venue.
Register NOW & save up to $900
Alpha rates expire Saturday, July 13 (less than 3 weeks away!)… now is your chance to save up to $900 off on-site rates. Prices will never be lower, so pick your ideal pass and register now!
All Access: Complete access to all conference sessions, keynotes, networking events, exhibitors, sponsor presentations, amenities, and more. Book today and save $450 off on-site rates!
All Access + Workshop Combo (best value!): Dive deeper and learn more with a half-day, pre-conference workshop. Book now and save $900 off on-site rates! (Workshop-only passes are also available.)
Expo+: Searching for marketing technology solutions? Focused on growing your network? Pick up a FREE Expo+ pass to enjoy unlimited Expo Hall access, select networking, full-length Solution Track sessions, sponsor presentations in the Discover MarTech Theater, downloadable speaker presentations, refreshments, free WiFi, and more.
If you’re planning to join us in Boston, remember to register by July 13. Once these Alpha rates are gone, they’re gone!
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author
Scott Brinker is the conference chair of the MarTech® Conference, a vendor-agnostic marketing technology conference and trade show series produced by MarTech Today’s parent company, Third Door Media. The MarTech event grew out of Brinker’s blog, chiefmartec.com, which has chronicled the rise of marketing technology and its changing marketing strategy, management and culture since 2008. In addition to his work on MarTech, Scott serves as the VP platform ecosystem at HubSpot. Previously, he was the co-founder and CTO of ion interactive.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
Google Can See Disavow Links Between Canonical URLs
Google’s John Mueller said it is best to disavow all the possible places the link may be pointing to, even if you redirect one URL to another and someone is linking to the original URL. But he said Google can follow and see “links between canonical URLs, so when there’s a redirect involved, you’d need to check which one is canonical.”
Searchers Upset That Easter Got Google Treatment While Passover, Ramadan & Others Did Not
Google on Sunday had a pretty unique and new home page feature for Easter. It was the first time they did something like this in general but not the first time they had an Easter Google Doodle. There was no Doodle, but if you clicked on the I’m Feeling Lucky button, Easter eggs would drop and fill up the page.
Google Images, Featured Snippets & Videos More Often In Web Search Results
It looks like Google is showing more vertical search features in the core web search results – more often. Yesterday I covered at Search Engine Land that the image search box is showing up way more often in Google’s web results than previously. But also it looks like featured snippets and maybe even video boxes are showing up more often this past month.
Google Maps Business Reviews Vanishing After Suspension Removal
There are numerous reports of Google Maps listings, Google My Business listings that have had their suspension removed then seeing all of the reviews they had on their listings vanish. Joy Hawkins at the Local Search Forums wrote “listings that are suspended and then reinstated are missing all their reviews. This isn’t intended and Google is aware of the issue.”
Google Take Your Child To Work Day Fun
The other day at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California – the GooglePlex, Google hosted a Take Your Child To Work Day event. Here are some photos from that even that I found on Instagra
For years, “actionable insights” have been the Holy Grail for data analytics companies. Actionable insights, the thinking goes, are the end product of data collection, aggregation, analysis, and judgment. They enable a decision-maker to modify behavior and achieve desired outcomes.
The process begins with data collection, which can take many forms. There’s a big difference between collecting data and aggregating it in a meaningful way that can provide a picture of reality. That’s the “insights” part of the puzzle. First, you need high-quality data, then you need the technological prowess to clean and organize it.
With high-quality data that’s been cleaned and organized, the next step is to provide context. This is the realm of companies like Tableau, which provide tools that translate machine-friendly data points into human-friendly visualizations that strive to depict an objective picture of current conditions.
But whereas a snapshot of current conditions may, in fact, yield new and meaningful insights (for example, if I look ‘sales numbers’ across an organization I can see which channels are over- or under-performing), human judgment has always been paramount in choosing a particular action. A perfect picture of static conditions doesn’t by itself offer any suggestions as to how to achieve particular outcomes. We still rely on management to tweak sales incentives or redistribute resources.
Whitepaper
Or at least we did, up until recently. Machine learning is now shifting the balance of institutional decision-making. Advances in processing and algorithmic self-improvement mean that computers can now anticipate future outcomes and take steps to maximize particular ones. Intelligent systems can now see the world in shades of gray and evaluate likelihoods from multitudes of variables far beyond human comprehension.
That’s the world we currently live in, and the evidence is all around us. Machine learning algorithms have swayed elections by stoking targeted outrage. Our clothes, food, and consumer products are designed according to data-driven analytics. Every design feature in your favorite app is being constantly optimized according to how computers anticipate your future behavior. It’s why YouTube is actually pretty good at showing you videos that keep you engaged.
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The day is coming when we will no longer require “actionable insights,” because the action will have already been taken. Nobody at YouTube is looking at your viewing history to determine what to recommend next. Computers do that. The value of the stock market is now largely driven by automated trading algorithms, and as a consequence, there are fewer stock analysts than there used to be. Not only can computers process information far better than humans, but they’ve also demonstrated better financial judgment.
The day will soon arrive when “actionable insights” will seem like a quaint notion from a simpler time. Computers will be smart enough to act on insights by themselves. In doing so, they may, in fact, diminish the need for human oversight.
Until then, however, human enterprise is still structured around hierarchies of decision-making and judgment. The CEO of a company still needs to delegate day-to-day responsibilities to human actors whose knowledge and judgment have proven sound.
And so, for now, we still need actionable insights. Data analytics companies will continue to build better mousetraps, until the day when there are no longer mice.
Gil Rachlin, SVP of Products and Partnerships at Synup.
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On September 30th, Google turned off average position as a metric. Ways to help advertisers set up with new metrics – impression share and impression rate.
Email marketing is one marketing tool that remains powerful even after all these years. A roundup of effective tactics with examples.
Clients understood SEO and its value when the significance was explained in simple terms. Tips to educate clients about SEO, pitch services, and gain trust.
BrightEdge’s Jim Yu discusses the five levels of scaling SEO, from manual SEO all the way to real-time decision-making and automated optimizations.
This week we covered more rumors around the Google November update and how John Mueller of Google downplayed the links portion of it. Google’s recipe image bug remained an issue through the Thanksgiving cooking season. Google said your robots.txt file can be blank or allow all, it doesn’t matter. Most SEOs think understanding information retrieval is important for SEOs. Google said they thought about having engineers do SEO contests but decided against it. Google Ads had an over-reporting conversions bug for over a week, they fixed it. Google dropped the lingerie ads for the searches on Christmas holidays. Google released a bunch of new hotel search features. Google My Business adds job types for services. Google now offers tip and tricks for those searches that do not find results. Google is testing arrows and marks by the title of your snippets. Google is also testing a more spacious search results interface. And I posted the results of the best SEO at Google – congrats to all the players. That was this past week in search at the Search Engine Roundtable.
Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:
Google has added mobile-first indexing information including if you are on mobile-first indexing, if so, when you switched over and so on, to the toolsets and reporting within Google Search Console. This was announced on Twitter and aims at helping webmasters “understand how Google is crawling your website,” Google said.
First you can access to see what crawler is currently indexing your site by going to Google Search Console and clicking on settings. There you can see if you are on desktop or smartphone crawler and if you are on smartphone, Google will show the date you switched over.
Here is a screen shot of a site on desktop crawling/indexing:
Here is a screen shot of a site on smartphone crawling/indexing and note it says the date it switched over:
Then in some of the reporting and tools, it will show at the top right which crawler the report is using – annotation number one. And then also if within the chart period the crawler changed, it will show the annotation of when it changed, see annotation number two:
It is the Friday after Thanksgiving, so let’s have some fun. I ran a very scientific, statistically accurate, and unequivocally clear survey on Twitter (sarcasm) asking which Googler would win an SEO contest. The winner of the poll was John Mueller! Clap, clap, clap!
The poll got about 1,300 responses – yes, 1,300 people spent the time responding to this very important (sarcasm) poll on Twitter.
Here was the award ceremony, where the players took their positions on the winners podium:
Here are the final results:
Martin Splitt was a supportive person, even though he didn’t make it on the winners stand.
Congrats to everyone, because really – everyone is a winner!
Google launched yesterday, I believe, on Thanksgiving, a new feature in Google My Business for job types for services. This is where services businesses in the US can choose from suggested types of services. This includes things like “repair toilets” and/or “install faucets” for plumbers.
Google wrote “Services businesses in the US can choose from suggested types of services (for example, plumbers may see “Install faucet” or “Repair toilet” as services to add). If the type of service isn’t listed, they can add their own custom services. These standardized job types make it easier for customers to find the services they need, and help merchants generate more relevant leads for the services they offer.”
In Google My Business, you may see an option to add the services you offer, along with their descriptions and prices. To keep your services list organized, group services into sections. When customers find your business listing on Google, they’ll see your services listed under “Services.”
When entering a new market with a new website, you’re gonna want to find the absolute best keywords for your SEO strategy.
While building your list of the most relevant search terms, keep in mind: At this very moment, your competitors are doing the same! Moreover, your strongest online rivals have already ranked not only on the first page of a search engine results page, but in its top positions.
Do you have any chance of overrunning your competition? Definitely! But, you have to be smart – and start by targeting the keywords with the lowest competition.
Learning how to do keyword research is essential for businesses. Just be careful when choosing them. Before you begin placing search terms you believe your potential customers would use to find your services or products on your site, make sure you have chosen enough low-competition keywords.
Low-competition keywords are indispensable for boosting your website’s rank. How can you find them? Follow the instructions below.
1) Build Your Initial Keyword List
Go to Organic Research, then enter a competitor’s domain name and click Search. You will get a list of keywords your competitor’s website is ranking for in Google’s top 100 organic search results.
Use filters to find keywords that are most relevant to your business. For example, here’s how it looks with a filter for “vegan.”
Generate an Organic Search Positions report for multiple domains, and export the results into an XLS or a CSV file. Plan to consolidate all exported files into a single file in order to have all relevant keywords in one place.
You can also use the Keyword Gap tool to view unique keywords per domain and export your results. To collect as many keywords as possible, set the match type here to “All Keywords”
For example, we took the following five domains: fitmencook.com, sweetpeasandsaffron.com, projectmealplan.com, workweeklunch.com, and flavcity.com. In a few clicks, we built a list of nearly 200,000 keywords for the food blogging industry.
Tip: If you don’t know 5 domains that are in your website’s industry, use the Competitors report tab in Organic Research.
Export this report to another XLS or CSV and combine the list with your other exports so you can keep a master list going. The next step will help you find even more keyword ideas to add here.
2) Expand Your Keyword List
The goal of keyword expansion is to augment your initial keyword research with search terms and phrases you might have overlooked. After expanding the list as much as possible, we’ll go back and filter it down to find the most accessible targets for your site.
To find phrase match keywords, go to the Keyword Magic Tool, enter a term from your initial list of search terms and click Search. You will get a list of expanded keyword phrases that include your queried term.
To find related keywords, use the Related filter. This will list phrases that are semantically related to a particular queried search term and may not share the same phrasing but have similar search results. You’ll want to add some of these to your plan as well to cover your bases.
To find question keywords (which make for great content topics) use the Questions filter. This will display only keyword phrases that include who, what, where, when, why, or how.
Again, export your results and continue collecting them into a consolidated file with all the other keywords you’d like to target.
3) Discover High-Volume Keywords with Less Competition
Average monthly search volume for each keyword shows you how much potential traffic you can receive. The higher your rankings for high-volume search terms are, the more traffic will be driven to your website. But unfortunately, competition for most high volume keywords is very high.
There’s no sense in trying to rank for keywords you have no chance of ranking for; that’s why you need to find the right balance between a keyword’s search volume and its competition level.
To help you with this step, SEMrush has two main ways of filtering out keywords that are too competitive:
Keyword Difficulty – an estimation of how difficult it would be to outrank the current websites and webpages ranking in the top spots on Google for a particular keyword.
Competition Level – the density of advertisers using a particular search phrase for their ads. Although this metric refers to competition in paid search, it can be somewhat representative of organic search competition as well.
In all of your exports (or in the interface), you should be able to locate a column for these two metrics. Both metrics will help you find the best keywords to start targeting to find success.
Estimating Keyword Difficulty
The keyword difficulty (from 1-100%) shows you an estimate of how difficult it would be to seize your competitors’ positions in the Google top 100 with a particular keyword . The higher the percentage, the more effort you’ll need to outrank your competition for targeted keywords:
Above 80%: The most difficult keywords. You’ll have to invest a lot of SEO and link-building efforts, as well as time before you’ll be able to enter the Google top 20. If you have a new site, you shouldn’t focus on highly competitive keywords.
From 60-80%: Keywords with average difficulty. Entering the Google top 20 with these keywords won’t be easy either. However, with high-quality content and relevant backlinks, you’ll be able to seize your competitors’ positions in time.
Below 60%: Keywords that are the easiest to rank for, but the most difficult to find. Discovering low-competition, high-volume keywords will require hard work and patience. But if you are lucky enough to find a strong list of these search terms and implement them throughout your site, you’ll have a very good chance of ranking high for these high-volume search terms.
Estimating Competition Level
For estimating Competition Level, we can assume the scale is roughly the same. The main difference here is that the metric is a decimal between 0 and 1 and that it measures the density of paid advertisers.
The closer the score is to 1, the higher amount of advertiser density and therefore the harder it would be to stand out in the search results.
Above 0.80: These keywords are highly competitive among advertisers and therefore likely send traffic to paid results. You could infer that if a keyword has a high density of advertisers, the search has some intent on making a transaction.
From 0.60 – 0.80: Keywords with an average density of advertisers. You could experiment with advertising on these keywords if your organic efforts don’t work out, but it won’t be a quick win on any of these keywords, either.
Below 0.60: Keywords with the lowest density of advertisers. This could either mean that they are under the radar of most competitors that advertise in your niche, or they are simply not profitable to advertise on. Keep this in mind when dedicating
4) Filter your master list to find low-competition keywords
Now, once you understand the range of difficulty you want to attack, it’s time to dive into your master list and filter based on these competitive metrics.
Start with a filter for KD to only look at keywords with a KD score less than 75. This should still allow you to find some high volume targets that won’t be extremely difficult to rank for.
Use the Keyword Difficulty Tool
A quick way to estimate the competitiveness for keywords in bulk is by using the SEMrush Keyword Difficulty tool.
Perhaps you have a previous list of keyword targets, or a list of keywords your site ranks for exported from Google Search Console. You can drop that list in here and quickly see how we rate the difficulty of each keyword.
In the Keyword Difficulty Tool, you can view the keyword difficulty of up to 100 keywords at once. Enter one search term per line, and click the Show Difficulty button.
The report will give you the KD scores of your unique batch of keywords.
Spot Featured Snippet Opportunities
While you’re in the Keyword Difficulty Tool, you should be able to see which keywords trigger SERP Features like Featured Snippets or Instant Answers. Featured Snippets are those pop-up answers at the top of the search results page that gives searchers an answer before having to even click on a result.
These are HUGE for SEO and you should take note of each keyword in your plan that has a Featured Snippet. If you compose your content in the right way, you just might be able to take over the Featured Snippet with your link.
Recap
Learning how to do keyword research is essential for businesses. To do it well, you just need to be careful when choosing your targets.
Believe in your SEO success, and follow these steps:
Analyze competitors and build an initial keyword list
Enrich it with related keywords, phrase match keywords and questions
Estimate your competition and your competitors’ keyword difficulty
Implement keywords through your website
Conduct research of low-competition keyword regularly
