Scott Services: September 2019

Monday, 30 September 2019

IAB Tech Lab releases new specs for ad seller transparency: Sellers.json and SupplyChain object

Two new specs aimed at addressing ad fraud and increasing transparency from the buy-side of the digital advertising ecosystem are out for public comment from the IAB Tech Lab: Sellers.json and the OpenRTB SupplyChain object.

The 30-day public comment period ends May 10.

What is OpenRTB SupplyChain object? The SupplyChain object will show buyers all the parties involved in selling or reselling a given bid request. It consists of a set of nodes, with each node representing an entity participating in the bid request sale. The complete chain of entities involved in (and paid for part of) the sale are then discoverable to the buyer.

“This information can be important to buyers for any number of reasons including transparency of the supply chain, ensuring that all intermediaries are entities that the buyer wants to transact with and that inventory is purchased as directly as possible,” per the spec.

It can be used with OpenRTB 2.5 and OpenRTB 3.0.

What is Sellers.json? It’s a file that allows ad buyers (DSPs) to see and verify the final seller of a given bid request — as long as the seller is ads.txt authorized. It’s like an inverse companion to Ads.txt, which publishers post to their domain to list authorized sellers of their inventory.

It also makes visible the identities of all intermediaries that participated in the sale of a bid request. It allows publisher name and domain attributes to be looked up and cached offline rather than supplied with every bid request. Each seller has a seller_id, which is the same ID that appears in an ads.txt file, SupplyChain.nodes and typically in the Publisher.id property of an OpenRTB request.

Ad systems place the sellers.json file on their root domain and any relevant subdomains. For example, http://indexexchange.com/sellers.json. The IAB Tech Lab advises “Every advertising system listed in an ads.txt file and any advertising system that is referencedfrom a SupplyChain object node should also publish a Sellers.json file” on their domains.

Why we should care. These two technical specifications build on the ads.txt imitative that launched two years ago, and apps-ads.txt for app developers, to help combat invalid traffic, ad fraud and counterfeit inventory on open exchanges. With the trio of specs, there are now tools for the sell-side (SSPs), the buy-side (DSPs) and intermediaries.

“Growth in the global digital advertising ecosystem requires trust, and sellers.json and the SupplyChain object provide essential visibility into the supply chain, enabling buyers to curate media sources,” said Dennis Buchheim, senior vice president and general manager, IAB Tech Lab. “Used together, these technologies help enable a more transparent, more efficient advertising environment. I encourage everyone to provide feedback to the Tech Lab, and adopt as soon as the specs are finalized.”

This story first appeared on MarTech Today. For more on marketing technology, click here.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

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How to write SEO-friendly alt text for your images

One of the biggest problems digital marketers face is nuances to crafting high-quality SEO rich content.

A great area of opportunity for marketers is their SEO alt text for images. We’ve all been to websites and the image is replaced by a red “X”, or it’s just a blank box. Wouldn’t it be great if you could benefit from that image box for an increased search engine ranking?

That’s where alt text comes in.

Alt text is just a way to describe what is going on in the image while actively increasing your ranking through smart, thoughtful placement of SEO keywords. We are going to look at ways you can improve your image alt text while keeping your content search engine friendly.

Research keywords before you start

It’s important that you look carefully into which keywords you’re going to use before you start creating content including your alt text. Google’s Keyword Planner tool can help you make educated decisions about which words are best suited for your website, depending on your niche.

When you’re researching keywords, the best practice is to look for words that feature high search volume but low competition. The reason for this thought process is simple.

High volume, high competition keywords result in an uphill battle that you may not win. If there are plenty of people searching for the words you pick, but a bunch of reputable websites who have a high domain authority, you’re going to have a much harder time reaching the top of the search engine results.

At the same time, low competition, low search keywords mean your website probably will not get the traffic you need to thrive. The happy medium is words that are popular, but not dominated by highly authoritative sites. The success of your keywords is going to reflect not just in your content or title, but in your alt text, making this an important starting point.

Supplement your alt text with primary keywords

It’s worth pointing out that alt text is important, but it should never take priority over your researched and currently implemented SEO. You would never want to rearrange your pre-arranged keywords to make the alt text keywords fit.

Instead, try to find images that compliment the keywords you’ve already selected. When you work backward from your alt text images, you could end up with a page that is more focused on the images instead of the content throughout.

The only exception to this rule is if your content is image heavy. Companies that implement slideshows, photo galleries, and the likes may benefit more from working backward from their images instead of the other way around.

Connect the content to the image text

Another common mistake that SEO marketers make is they don’t directly link the alt text to the content they create. Alt text, as mentioned, is just text that describes what’s going on in the image. If you want to make a strong connection with your audience and the search engine results, make sure you make a connection between the text in your content, the image, and the alt text.

For example, if your piece of content was about website design, your content should include text within the piece that explains the image. In this fictional piece, let’s say your keyword is “expert web design”, you’re going to need to include an image that emphasizes your point, explains the image in the content, and the alt text should include the keyword.

Keep it short

Since the main purpose of alt text is to inform the reader of what the image shows if they can’t view it, your alt-text should never drag on. Simply explain what the image shows using your keywords as the primary descriptor and additional text as needed.

The recommended alt-text length is about 125 characters. Some browsers only create one line of alt-text and allocate the size of the image to the length of the one line. The result of a long alt text line is not just “search engine confusion”, but also reader confusion when they cannot finish the line of text from within the image because it was cut off by the browser they are using.

If you find that your alt text is always longer than 125 characters, your point is probably better off posted in the actual content of the article instead of the alt image text.

Examples of SEO-friendly alt text

First, let’s take a look at the source code:

”alt-text-goes-here”

In this example, the “image.gif” is the image that is displayed to those who can properly see the image. Those who can’t see the image will instead see the text you include where it says “alt-text-goes-here”.

Here are some better examples to give you an idea of what a good SEO-friendly piece of alt text looks like.

Example one

You own a pet shop and your display picture is a kitten in a basket at your pet shop. Your source code should look something like this:

”Pet

The goal is to make your alt-text clean, concise, and friendly to the keywords you decided to target in your piece.

Example two

Now let’s say you have an online car accessory shop. You sell things like seat covers, floor liners, and air fresheners. On your air freshener page your alt text will look like this:

”Air

In the example above, you’re targeting air fresheners, new cars, cars in general, and car accessories.

Example three

Finally, you have a membership site that sells marketing tips to your audience. You have an infographic of marketing statistics everyone should know in 2019. How will your alt-text look in this situation? Since you obviously can’t fit every stat in your alt-text, you might say:

”New

Piecing it together

There’s no doubt that alt text plays a crucial role in an online world consumed by the importance of keywords. If you want to make the most of your alt text, keep these tips in mind and remember that the online world is constantly evolving.

As your website grows in size and authority you may have to make changes to your SEO keywords for future articles, and therefore for your alt text. The good news is, this allows you to pull off some interesting split tests to see which keywords are ranking well for you, and which ones are pulling in lackluster results.

One thing is clear, don’t underestimate the power of alt text as it relates to your readers and your search ranking. It may not be the most important factor, but correctly creating optimized images and alt text is an important piece of the puzzle.

Syed Balkhi is an entrepreneur, marketer, and CEO of Awesome Motive. He’s also the founder of WPBeginner, OptinMonster, WPForms, and MonsterInsights. Syed can be found on Twitter

In the battle for mobile engagement, branded apps hold untapped value

Consumers spend an overwhelming majority of their mobile internet time within apps. Recognizing this trend, the world’s biggest brands have developed apps as tools for providing services (like checking a bank balance) or making a purchase (through an e-commerce store). But many of these apps have untapped potential. Beyond basic transactions, branded apps can be used as powerful video delivery mechanisms that increase engagement and brand loyalty.

Especially as email open rates decline, apps can serve as a new way to connect with consumers with greater efficiency. Customers who have taken the time to download a brand’s app onto their device are some of the most loyal customers a brand has. This advocacy is ripe for brands to mine.

When a brand has an app and separately has video content, produced either for TV spots, social media or their website, there’s no reason these ingredients can’t be combined. The result is a powerful in-app content marketing hub that keeps the best customers engaged and keeps the brand top-of-mind. Some companies, like Nike and Red Bull, are already doing this well. To effectively market in a mobile world, brands need to think of their apps as mobile video mailboxes.

The fight for user attention

To better understand the underutilized value of branded apps, it helps first to recognize just how hard it is to reach consumers through more traditional TV and video channels. TV still comes first for so many marketers, and they invest their budget in a series of spots that will run for 30 or 60 seconds on the air. But with cord-cutting on the rise, it’s harder and harder to achieve the level of penetration TV advertisers achieved in the past. While audiences have switched to digital video, reaching them isn’t necessarily easier in that channel: 65% of consumers skip pre-roll video ads when given the option. With mobile viewership on the rise, brands must find new ways to keep their loyal customers truly engaged.

Maximizing efficiency

The efficiency imperative is front and center for most brands, and leveraging apps as another way to promote already-created video content delivers on that. By using their apps, marketers don’t have to buy media to retarget the consumers who love their brand. Instead, they can recycle content that they already have and hand it directly to the consumers who will be most receptive to its messaging.

The biggest obstacle is that the app developers and media teams are very likely working toward separate goals, and in many organizations, they may not be communicating regularly if they communicate at all. But investing time into connecting these disparate departments can yield great results for the company as a whole.

Constructing a content hub

Apps are purpose built. Airline apps are for purchasing tickets and checking in. Consumers download the AmEx app to access their credit card accounts. If the app development team is focused solely on that goal, there’s no reason to include a video player within the app, and no reason to consider content. No one explicitly downloads a banking app because they want to watch a three-minute video on smart investing tactics. But that doesn’t mean that customers aren’t interested in such content. A recent study from Hubspot found that 68% of consumers say video is their favorite way to learn about new products and services. Brands with a narrow focus can easily miss opportunities to increase spend and grow brand loyalty.

Brand’s don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but they can add functionality to make their apps something better. Users already love the AmEx app – it has a 4.9-star rating in the Apple App Store, based on 910,000 ratings. What if the app included video to promote different rewards packages and destinations that are available to cardholders? Or videos about their card features, to inspire consumers to spend a bit more? Heck, it could even host a library of the brand’s famous Jerry Seinfeld TV ads from years past, which have tens of thousands of views online, thanks to user uploads.

Pushing these videos directly to a user’s device and sending them screen notifications to tell them there’s something new for them to watch in the app is an easy, effective and innovative way to engage users. They can now watch these short videos during downtime: on a commute, standing in line at the store, waiting at the doctor’s office and other moments when they’re looking for content to entertain them.

Brands that relied so heavily on TV advertising in the past are still learning how to market appropriately in a mobile world. The video they’re producing to recruit new customers can live in the branded apps, doing double duty to re-engage loyal customers. Rather than have app and ad teams live in silos, brands need to think about how they can best combine resources to efficiently and nimbly engage with consumers in the modern, mobile-first world.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Daniel Hurwitz boasts more than 20 years of experience in digital marketing/media, AdTech, EdTech and HealthTech and is well versed in technology solutions to support mobile and video. A start-up specialist, Hurwitz led Sales at Evergage, GoNoodle and MapMyFitness (acquired by Under Armour in 2013). His writing has been featured on publications including PhocusWire, Martech Advisor and SalesTechStar.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: Dan Hurwitz

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Daily Search Forum Recap: September 30, 2019

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 Notification Of Removal Of Snippets For European Press Publications
Google now has to comply with the new French law and remove snippets from their search results for European press publications. Google wrote about it in French over here. With that, some publishers are getting…
Google Ads Recommendations Get Upgraded
Google announced three new updates to the Google Ads recommendations feature. Google now provides improved keyword recommendations, now offers a recommendations table view, and enabled bulk …
Google Search Tests Side Bar Filters New Design
Google seems to be testing a new design interface for the Google desktop search results. Here Google is filling in the white space you normally see on the left and right side of the desktop search results with more options. On the left side…
Google Stops Using MapReduce: This Does Not Impact Google Search
Urs Holzle, the senior vice president of technical infrastructure and Google Fellow at Google and Google’s eighth employee, announced Google is not using MapReduce anymore. But don’t you worry, this has zero impact on Google Search and your rankings.
Google My Business To Remove SMS Messaging
In July 2017 Google launched a messaging feature within the Google My Business platform. One of the options was to respond to messages via SMS, a text message. That is going away on November 15th and you…
The 20th Google Intern Class
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, posted a photo on Instagram of the 20th intern class that worked at Google this past summer…
Programming Note: Rosh Hashanah 5780 – Happy & Healthy Jewish New Year
This is a programming note that Monday and Tuesday is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and I will be offline the next two days. I will be offline Monday and Tuesday, September 30th and October 1st…

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

Establish a process for working across teams

Setting the stage for partnership may be time-consuming, but the outcome will serve as the bedrock of your partnership. Collaborative procedures help manage new technology requests more effectively and create a forum to learn from each other. Martech teams become better security stewards and serve as advocates for IT teams when working with marketing stakeholders.

Processes will differ by company, but here’s an idea to get started:

Marketing identifies a business need and submits a request with the “what” and “why” to the martech team
Martech/IT teams review the request together to determine business priority, resource sizing and IT scope
Output is provided to marketing leadership for prioritization
Procurement teams work to provide vendors for a proof of concept
Work with security to assess risk associated with vendor; recommendation provided to IT
Upon IT and security approval, IT and martech teams coordinate a plan to implement the technology
Martech and IT teams work closely throughout development, testing, implementation, onboarding and ongoing maintenance.

Create a security culture driven by business requirements

Partnering with IT and security teams before purchasing new tech can help you secure your martech stack, ensure safe implementations and integrations, enable productivity and save your company from expensive privacy regulation violations. If you’re not sure whether or not your stack is safe, it’s time to find your friends in IT and security.

Pro Tip is a special feature for marketers in our community to share a specific tactic others can use to elevate their performance. You can submit your own here.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

A lifetime learner and an innate problem-solver, Jorge Garcia found his home in the marketing technology industry. His 10-plus years in sales, sales management, program management, marketing analytics, and marketing operations roles with large organizations have prepared him for the unique mix of problems a marketing technologist faces. He hopes his energy and zeal for technology will attract fellow martech enthusiasts looking to push the industry forward. Jorge is a senior manager of marketing technology at Akamai Technologies, a Cambridge-based company that secures and delivers digital experiences for the world’s largest companies. His natural curiosity for improvement opportunities and passion for discovering innovative solutions means that in a given week he might perform a preliminary security assessment, present tech strategy to leadership, facilitate an integration review, and build a sync architecture all before Wednesday!

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Launching a new product? New Instagram tests launch day ‘Buy on Instagram’ reminders

Instagram is testing product launch reminders in Stories and posts.

Instagram wants to be more than a place for product discovery. It wants to deliver an all-inclusive commerce experience that brands develop entire product plans around.

Its latest test, announced Monday, is aimed at giving brands tools to build excitement around upcoming products their fans will be able to buy on the platform. Users can opt in to get reminders to buy the products on Instagram when they’re released.

Product launch tag. A “Set Reminder” call to action is available in posts to allow users to set reminders for the launch date and time and preview product details in Instagram. Users will then get a reminder on their phones just ahead of the launch.

Product launch sticker. A new sticker is also available in Stories, as shown on the left in the example above.

Why we should care. This test is aimed at complementing Instagram’s in-app e-commerce checkout capability that launched in March. Checkout is available to a limited set of brands as well as a small group of influencers via Shopping for Creators. Adidas, Levi’s, Soul Cycle and Warby Parker are among the 20 or so brand participating in the closed checkout beta.

“We see adoption [of Checkout] improve month to month. With new features like product launch reminders, we expect to see engagement increase as we can create simple, immersive and user-obsessed experiences adidas creators love,” said adidas SVP Digital Scott Zalaznik in a statement.

About The Author

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Survey: Less than 10% of marketers to focus on Digital PR in 2019

Less than 10% of marketers to focus on Digital PR in 2019, wise or unwise

Zazzle Media has released their annual State of Content Marketing 2019 survey, which found that less than one in ten marketers (9%) will be focusing on Digital PR in 2019.

Despite this, over three quarters (76%) state that brand awareness is a key performance indicator for them.

Zazzle's content marketing survey

Not only this, but 25% of content marketers will be ceasing to participate in offline PR activity as it has been perceived as an ineffective channel for them over the recent years.

It seems there is an apparent disconnect between marketers’ desired goals and the tactics they need to carry out to achieve these.

So why are marketers seemingly less concerned about off-page distribution, and why should you make a case for Digital PR to hold a key position in your marketing activities?

Brand awareness

Whilst the creation of written blog content will appeal to people on the site, we need a mechanism that is going to drive these people towards the site first.

Digital PR can help users find your site in a more organic way rather than in a targeted advertorial manner.

Zazzle's survey responses about content marketing efforts

The survey found that a quarter of marketers want to target new audiences through content distribution, but without Digital PR this will prove to be a difficult task.

Brand protection

PR allows you to control narratives and get involved with industry conversations which you would otherwise be unable to participate in. The digital aspect also allows you to receive real-time coverage updates which mention your brand’s name and put out an immediate response in an attempt to stem or enhance any positive or negative feedback. Protecting your brand, especially in the SERPs, is a powerful tool for PRs.

Link building

A major perk of creating Digital PR campaigns is that they usually come with linkable assets that have a chance of being cited within media coverage.

Link building is an activity which has a reputation of relying on black-hat tactics for success, paying for links, directories, and the others. Digital PR allows you to avoid all these techniques and the risks associated with them and build some legitimate links from high authority publications.

Managing director of Zazzle Media, Simon Penson, commented on the statistics:

“Brand awareness has appeared as one of 2019’s core focuses when it comes to brands content marketing efforts. Whilst this can be achieved through a number of marketing techniques, Digital PR is one of the strongest means of getting your name out there to new audiences.

2019 is shaping up to be an exciting year for content marketing, and Digital PR could be the key to giving your brand new audiences and visibility.”

What do you think of these findings? Let us know your thoughts on the results in the comments.

Kirsty Daniel is a Digital Marketing Executive at Zazzle Media. She can be found on Twitter .

Vista Equity Partners acquires Acquia for $1 billion

Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners has entered an agreement to purchase web management and digital experience company Acquia in a deal valued at $1 billion.

The news follows two strategic acquisitions this year by Acquia — Mautic and Cohesion — which are expected to help the company expand its digital experience offerings.

Why we should care

Acquia has been working to expand its portfolio through product development and acquisitions. We can anticipate Acquia will continue to strengthen its focus on portfolio development and expansion while Vista Equity Partners takes over the company’s operations.

The private equity firm is well known for acquiring undervalued technology companies and turning them around for a large profit. A recent example is Vista Equity Partners’ 2016 purchase of Marketo for $1.8 billion. It sold Marketo to Adobe for $4.75 billion in 2018.

According to Scott Liewehr, principal analyst at Digital Clarity Group, Vista buys companies and centralizes their operations to allow the companies to focus on growth. “Vista, as a PE firm, tends to make money on companies by standardizing their operations to cut costs. It runs the portfolio companies more like divisions of a larger company than independent entities,” Liewehr said.

More on the news

Once the deal is finalized, Acquia will continue to operate independently.
Acquia has raised $173.5 million in funding
Vista Equity Partners current portfolio consists of 60 companies with over 70,000 employees.
Another Vista Equity Partners, Ping Identity, was purchased by the equity firm 2016, went public just last week.

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.

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From SEO to CMO: Self driving technology and the path to C-Suite

There is an incredibly exciting trend happening in the SEO community where more and more marketers are taking on more responsibility across multiple facets of digital marketing.

As digital marketing develops more nuanced and targeted execution, marketers see ways to diversify their skillsets and impacts on their organizations.

For search marketers, there has never been a better time to take advantage. According to BrightEdge data from CEO Jim Yu, more SEOs are taking on broader roles and having a bigger impact – with 51 percent of customers expanding the role of SEO across all digital marketing and 23% become CMOs in recent years.

Last week at Share19, hundreds of digital marketers, SEOs, and content strategists gathered to collaborate towards a common goal – to driving growth and revenue to their businesses and progress their SEO and digital marketing careers. Attendees learned new and advanced techniques for keyword research, learned about the career journeys of chief marketing officers at Fortune 500 brands and were the first to hear the big news that BrightEdge is releasing technology that literally puts SEO on autopilot.

Self-driving SEO: Impossible or possible?

As marketers, we all get frustrated with lack of resources — not having enough time and people to have the impact we want. No doubt, right now you are competing for resources and fighting with barriers to communication with your web dev team, your IT team, and your paid search team. Doing the same thing day in and day out can get mundane – especially for those with a bias towards the creative.

Last year alone Google did 3,234 launches, 595,429 search quality tests, 44,155 side-by-side experiments, and 15,096 live traffic experiments. Simply, keeping up to date with change is a task unto itself. Add to that day-to-day content issues, broken links, algorithmic changes, and mobile issues, and you can see why sometimes progress is elusive.

What if it were possible for some parts of your SEO to run on autopilot? Just imagine if all those repetitive yet necessary tasks that are integral to SEO could be running in the background, freeing you up to focus on higher-impact initiatives?

With an average of 53.5% of website traffic coming from organic search, it is clear that there is a huge opportunity for marketers to automate and optimize their most important marketing channels with speed, precision, and scale.

Last week BrightEdge Autopilot was announced to tackle just that and automate SEO tasks so that they don’t require a human touch. Made possible through a series of technology investments and the recent acquisition of mobile technology developed by Trilibis, marketers can now auto-optimize mobile and fully automate the most critical and time-consuming of SEO tasks.

Within six months of deployment, over 1,000 brands are now using BrightEdge Autopilot to power Self-driving SEO.

Intelligent automation: Performance and scale

So, automation takes our jobs away right? This is a comment and objection we hear not just in this space but across the industry. Sure, if you are happy doing the same things day in and day out and have no desire to get the best results for you and your customer then fine, automation may not be for you.

For those who see the opportunity to spend more time on higher-level work, automation is here to help marketers do more with less and execute more quickly. Routine SEO and content tasks can be implemented with little effort, allowing you to focus on high-impact activities and accomplish more personal and professional objectives. In order to progress in a predominantly technically oriented space, you have to embrace technology.

Automated grammar and spelling checks may have eliminated a few proofreading jobs, but it improved the accuracy and quality of documents and allowed writers to invest more time in the research and articulation of their ideas. Assisted driving automation helps keep you safer on the roads and likewise, automated SEO keeps your site and content safer for Google and makes it more easily discoverable by your audience.

According to Yu, BrightEdge Autopilot technology is already delivering on automation performance promises with:

60% increase in page views per visits
21% more keywords on page one rankings
2x increase in conversions
PPC channel impact – 28% improvement in the “Ad Quality Score”

Campbell’s Global SEO Manager, Amanda Ciktor was able to share the impact of automation with BrightEdge Autopilot showcasing a 204% traffic lift year-over-year.

With one day of implementation work Amanda and her team were able to compress 75,000 images and within a few weeks saw:

Move 4,000 keywords to page one
Improve faster mobile page load speed for 35% of pages
Improve overall load time by five seconds

In fact, brands across numerous industry verticals have seen dramatic performance improvement with up to 65%.

SEO and the CMO

According to Gartner’s CMO survey, SEO is one of the four digital workhorses that account for 25% of marketing investments. And, by 2023 autonomous marketing systems will issue 55% of multichannel marketing messages based on marketer criteria and real-time consumer behavior, resulting in a predicted 25% increase in response rates.

SEO, Automation, and the CMO were three themes that stood out at the launch of BrightEdge Autopilot at Share19 last week. The finale of the event was a roundtable discussion featuring marketing luminaries, including Kelly Hopping, Chief Marketing Officer for Gartner Digital Markets, Lauren Fyrefield, Chief Marketing Officer for WorldStrides and Armin Molavi, Vice President of Global Media Strategy of Hilton Brands.

As the CMO role becomes more results-focused and data-driven, we have seen a change in the skillset and perspective from one that is more brand and positioning-oriented to one that is more technical and technology stack-oriented. This draws on the natural skills SEOs use in generating profitable organic traffic. The problem for SEOs is that they can get buried in tactical execution. Automation allows them to free up time for planning, strategy, and relationship building that will help elevate their visibility and consideration for advancement.

From listening to everyone on the panel it was clear that was a linear progression path to the CMO position developing. A commitment to

1. Embracing technology innovation

2. Drives growth and revenue

3. Fuels digital career growth

As one CMO panelist put it “we are constantly looking at ways to get smarter, automate and scale. We manage everything in-house so if we are not automating, getting smarter then we can’t scale.”

Automation is definitely helping marketers, and especially those who want to unleash more creativity and, who knows, become the next CMO or CDO.

The underlying theme is to pursue opportunities and leverage technology to help you do that.

Andy Betts is a chief marketer, consultant, and digital hybrid with more than 20 years of experience in digital, technology and marketing working across London, Europe, New York, and San Francisco. He can be found on twitter @andybetts1.

Whitepapers

September Updates to Paid Advertising Platforms

In this monthly post, we bring you the latest from all of the major platforms.

Google Ads

What: Accelerated delivery to be removed in favor of Standard Delivery

Details: Originally planned for September 17th, Standard delivery will become the only ad delivery option for Search and Shopping campaigns on October 7th, 2019. Accelerated delivery, a popular option for accounts struggling to spend current budgets, will no longer be available.

Impact: Standard delivery is the preferred option for most accounts, therefore many advertisers will see little to no impact. For those utilizing accelerated budgets, slight bid and budget adjustments may be needed to maintain current spend levels.

What: Google adds the ability to optimize for conversion value with Enhanced CPC (eCPC)

Details: Google’s recently rolled out smart bidding strategy Maximize Conversion Value has now been expanded into eCPC.

Impact: eCPC works as a middle ground between manual bidding and automated bidding. Previously, the algorithm made dynamic bid changes to maximize conversions when certain behavioral or demographic indicators demonstrated a higher likelihood of such an action. The new option will benefit advertisers more focused on revenue as opposed to conversion volume.

What: Add store visit to Smart Bidding

Details: Advertisers who utilize store visit measurement within Google Ads can now incorporate into their smart bidding strategies.

Impact: Brick and mortar clients now have a direct method for optimizing towards foot traffic within their smart bidding strategies. This option is now available to all advertisers in Search and Shopping Campaigns.

What: Items missing Unique Product Identifiers in Google Shopping will no longer be disapproved

Details: Previously, correct unique product identifiers (UPIs) were vital for ensuring that Google recognizes your products. Common UPIs include Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs), Manufacturer Part Numbers (MPNs) and brand names. These are no longer needed for delivery within Google Ads.

Impact: Advertisers have grown accustomed to combatting disapprovals for ads with an incorrect or missing UPI. These items will now be eligible to serve in Shopping Ads. It should be noted that the performance of items without correct UPIs may be limited. Comparable items with correct UPIs will receive higher priority.

What: Optimization score is now available in Google Ads Mobile App

Details: Starting September 13, optimization score became visible in the Google Ads Mobile App.

Impact: Google’s mobile optimization score is intended to help advertisers prioritize growth opportunities. Previously the score was only available on desktop. Now, an advertiser can review and implement recommendations anywhere their phone can go.

Microsoft Advertising

What: Microsoft rolled out a product negative keyword conflicts report

Details: The report quickly demonstrates which of your product ads are being blocked by negative keywords.

Impact: Negative keywords are a must for any account to drive high ROI. That said, there can be unintended consequences when rolling out certain negative keywords via non-exact match types. Previously, these issues would be more likely to go unnoticed and therefore exclude relevant traffic. The new report will provide an efficient and effective method for advertisers to audit the impact of negative keywords on their product ads.

What: Microsoft announces a new audience targeting solution

Details: New audiences targeting solutions are coming via an open beta that combines secure customer data with new Microsoft technology to pinpoint ideal customers when they’re ready to buy.

Impact: Options such as similar audiences are expected to help increase conversion rates and lower cost-per-acquisition.

Facebook

What: Facebook to remove the Discover Tab from Messenger App

Details: The Discover tab was designed to help extend Messenger’s purpose beyond a messaging app. Specific interest categories were presented to users to help them find nearby places or businesses to message.

Impact: Removal of the Discover tab simplifies the messenger app and eliminates a lower-performing ad product.

Instagram

What: Instagram testing Shopping Posts as Ads

Details: The update grants select businesses the ability to run their existing shopping posts as ads in Ads Manager.

Impact: These ads showcase products through the shopping format and move people through the path to purchase with a familiar experience.

Search Ads 360

What: Search Ads 360 introduces auction-time bidding for Google Search Campaigns

Details: Google Search Ads 360 has added auction-time bidding for bids on Google Search which effectively brings the Smart Bidding options present within Google Ads to your Google Search Campaigns.

Impact: Currently, a Search Ads 360 bid analyzes campaign performance approximately every 6 hours. Auction-time bidding analyzes account history and other important audience signals to predict when a conversion is likely to occur from an ad click. Essentially, the dynamic response of the automated strategy has been upgraded from often to immediate.

Quora

What: Quora Gets More Visual

Details: Quora has introduced full-width image ads.

Impact: The updated format gives more prominence and real estate to the ad creative. The expectation is for higher engagement thanks to more captivating creative.

Did we miss any major monthly updates? Not covering a certain platform close enough? Feel free to let me know on Twitter @Will_Larcom

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: William Larcom

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Competitor content analysis: Here’s what you can learn

It’s 10 pm – do you know where your competitors are?

Like the effect those PSAs had on parents in the 80’s and 90’s, this message likely brings up feelings of concern and uncertainty, especially if you’re a brand fighting for your spot in the marketplace.

Competitor analysis is an integral part of running a successful business and this holds true for online brands as well, particularly when it comes to search marketing and SEO. While it may take quarterly or even annual studies to discover when you’re losing market share to the competition in terms of positioning or share of mind, you can see your competition start to outrank you in the search results immediately.

Since search engines largely rely on algorithms to determine the results they show searchers, these results are constantly updating, and if you’re standing pat with SEO, you’re losing ground.

To mitigate these losses – as well as find growth opportunities – you need to monitor competitor strategies, and one of the best places to start is with their content.

Analyzing competitor content to identify content gaps

Keeping an eye on the competition is important because it can help you find gaps within your own content strategy and where your pages might be missing the mark.

Start by identifying your competitors’ top pages. One way to find these pages is to use a tool like Screaming Frog to see which pages have the most internal links pointing to them. Internal links signal importance to search engines, so these are the pages your competitor has flagged as their most important. Review these pages to see if there are any relevant pages you need to add to your site.

Another great way to find missed opportunities through competitor content is to identify which pages are driving organic traffic to competitor sites. Tools such as SEMrush or Ahrefs make it easy to identify top pages based on what percentage of organic traffic they earn.

If you see a page that is responsible for a substantial percentage of your competitor’s traffic – and you don’t cover that subject on your site – it may be worth exploring what it would take to create your own page on the topic. Furthermore, if your competitor’s content is thin, poorly structured, or you are otherwise confident you can create something equal or better, you’ve just found a prime opportunity to capture more search visitors.

Analyze your competitors’ top pages, and the keywords associated with those pages, then examine your own content to see if there are any gaps you could fill to create new sources of organic traffic.

Competitor content analysis for content improvement

Analyzing competitor content can also empower you to improve your existing pages.

As you analyze your competitors’ top pages, don’t just focus on keywords – scrutinize the structure and organization of the page to understand why it might be performing so well.

Does the page go in-depth and perhaps it’s ranking based on thoroughness? Or is the page answering a specific question quickly and succinctly? Or does it do both?

These are important questions to answer if you want to understand why their page is ranking, and more importantly, how you can improve the performance of your pages.

You should also pay attention to the formats and types of content used. Is the content broken up with images or screenshots? Do they use bullet points and sub-headers to make the page easy to scan? Is video or audio present on the page? Again, these are your competitor’s top pages, and that short video they’ve embedded on their page might be the difference between their content’s performance and yours.

However, don’t stop at your competitor’s page. Go examine the corresponding search results where they rank and analyze the other pages featured there. While these pages might be from brands you don’t consider traditional competitors, these are the pages you’re competing with for visibility in search. Also, these pages can provide further insight into how you can tweak and improve your existing content.

Other information you can glean from competitor and current ranking pages includes:

Primary intent that search engines associate with the given topic.
Relevant and related sub-topics or questions.
Associated SERP features (rich snippets, knowledge graph, local packs, etc.)
And credible external sources and relevant citations.

With this information, you will have all the tools necessary to update your page to best answer the query you’re targeting.

At this point, the only thing standing between your content and page one rankings might be backlinks. However, with backlink tools like Majestic and Moz you can identify the sites linking to those top pages – if you work to improve your page to the level of quality of the ranking pages, it’s likely these sites would be open to linking to your page as well.

Leveraging competitor content for linkable asset ideation

Speaking of backlinks, analyzing competitor content can help you generate ideas for link-worthy content too.

Before, you were scrutinizing competitor pages based on organic traffic, but many of the tools I’ve discussed here will also help you identify your competitors’ top pages based on backlinks. Just as you analyzed their top trafficked pages to understand why they rank so well; you can analyze these top linked pages to understand why they attract so many backlinks.

This analysis provides you with a host of topics that generate links and interest within your niche. You can also dig into the backlink profiles of these pages to learn how they are linked to gain insight into what types of pages and websites would want to link to this content.

For example, your competitor may have executed an original study that produced one interesting statistic that is being cited by numerous websites. It’s likely you won’t be able to replicate that study – and if you do, other sites are more likely to find your competitor’s site when searching for a citation – but you can analyze their study and identify what made it interesting to springboard ideas for tangential or supportive research.

Of course, improving on their idea, also known as the skyscraper technique, is an option as well, but this approach typically requires significant investment.

The key to this analysis is identifying linkable topics and pivoting them to be unique while maintaining the attributes that made your competitor’s pages link-worthy.

Benefits of competitor content analysis

Content marketing continues to be an integral part of successful digital marketing and SEO as search engines constantly provide the advice to “create good content.” However, consistently generating quality content ideas and executing them well is difficult, particularly if your goal is to rank your content in competitive SERPs.

Fortunately, your competitors are here to help! Through competitor content analysis you can learn:

Which pages and topics your competitors identify as important.
How your competitors earn organic traffic from search.
Where gaps exist within your current content marketing strategy.
Which low-investment content opportunities are available.
Ways to improve existing content for better search performance.
Which topics generate interest and backlinks within your niche.
And how and why websites link to content within your space.

Understanding your competitors’ content strategies will help you outperform them where it matters most, in the search results.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Andrew Dennis is a Content Marketing Specialist at Page One Power. Along with his column on Search Engine Land, Andrew also writes about SEO and link building for the Page One Power blog, Linkarati. When he’s not reading or writing about SEO, you’ll find him cheering on his favorite professional teams and supporting his alma mater the University of Idaho.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author:

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Google Notification Of Removal Of Snippets For European Press Publications

Google now has to comply with the new French law and remove snippets from their search results for European press publications. Google wrote about it in French over here. With that, some publishers are getting notified of this removal via Search Console.

The Search Console notifications are in English and read. Site name was designated a European press publication by Search Console. It goes on to read:

Dear website owner,

Google systems have designated domain.tld a European press publication, as designed by EU Directive 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the digital single market. In the wake of a new copyright law transposing this Directive in France, this designation removes the display of text snippets, video previews, and thumbnail images from your property or properties in France. This is an advance notification; changes in Google Search will not occur until late October 2019.

If you would like these previews to be displayed in search results for your property, you can use HTML tags to customize how Google Search displays your content to Search users. Alternatively, if you think this designation is incorrect, you can change it as described below.

Here is a screen shot of the email:

Maybe this bug we saw where Google was not showing anything but URLs, was a test to see how this may look in France?

Forum discussion at Twitter.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

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Monday, 30 September 2019

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Keep it short

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