Google Figures Out What Users Want & Like Based On Comparing Your Content To Others?

One of the questions I hear a lot is how does Google know if a web site is something that a user/searcher will like if it doesn’t look directly at user behavior signals. So I asked John Mueller of Google if he was a search algorithm, what specific signals would he look at to figure out if a site would lead to a good user experience. His answer was pretty interesting.

In short, John said if a search engine has an overview of most of the web, it can hypothetically “see which type of content is reasonable for which types” of verticals. So if you are comparing a diabeties health site to another, maybe if Google has indexed 500 similar sites, it can understand what a user should expect from such a site? He then explains that maybe it is about specific sub topics on that site, maybe it is about showing more or fewer images, maybe it is about what content is on the site overall.

Here is the video embed but the conversation starts at 37:47 into the video:

Here is the question and answer transcribed:

Barry: If you were a search algorithm, what specific metrics would you use to figure out what is a good user experience on a web site?

John: I don’t know. I probably would have to think about that a bit to see what would work well for me. I mean it is something where if you have an overview of the whole web or kind of a large part of the web and you see which type of content is reasonable for which types of content then that is something where you could potentially infer from that. Like for this particular topic, we need to cover these sub topics, we need to add this information, we need to add these images or fewer images on a page. That is something that perhaps you can look at something like that. I am sure our algorithms are quite a bit more complicated than that.

Forum discussion at YouTube Community.

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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Rolling A Mural At The GooglePlex

Here is Heather Day, an artist, rolling out a mural at the GooglePlex, the main Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. We have seen numerous rumors at Google in the past, but here is a video of this one being made.

This video was posted on Instagram and she wrote “@heatherday in action as she puts the finishing touches on her recent mural at Google | @google We’re delighted to have Heather present a solo exhibit with the gallery this Fall – stay tuned!”

This post is part of our daily Search Photo of the Day column, where we find fun and interesting photos related to the search industry and share them with our readers.

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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Social shorts: Dark mode comes to TikTok, Facebook rolls out new tool to give users more privacy

This collection of social media marketing and new hire announcements is a compilation of the past week’s briefs from our daily Marketing Land newsletter. Click here to subscribe and get more news like this delivered to your inbox every morning.

Dark mode comes to TikTok, Twitter’s Flight School gets a new look, Facebook promotes misinformation about Australia fires 

TikTok gets dark mode. Dark mode is becoming something of a staple for most social apps these days. Now, TikTok is testing the new setting for low light situations. The option, which is available to select test users, can either attempt to match your device settings when you have dark mode activated or can be manually turned on at any time. Welcome to the dark side, TikTok.

Twitter revamps its training platform. This week, Twitter rolled out a new look for its ‘Flight School‘ education platform. The offering provides free courses in various aspects of Twitter literacy with a larger focus on Twitter ads’ best practices and tips. Among the new elements, Twitter has updated its courses on how to find relevant audiences, measure campaign performance and build out video campaigns on Twitter. 

Facebook slammed for misinformation on Australia fires. In the latest battle against fake news, BuzzFeed called out Facebook for an ad from conservative organization PragerU containing false information about the wildfires in Australia. The ad has since been removed, but only after a formal fact-checking review was completed. BuzzFeed reported that the Facebook ad linked to videos from PragerU’s YouTube channel, which claim that the record-setting wildfires in Australia were caused entirely by arson – not by climate change as experts have said. It also features debunked claims from an article published in The Australian newspaper that used misleading figures to overstate the role of arson in the bushfires. When asked by BuzzFeed, a Facebook company spokesperson would not answer questions about why the ad was allowed to run after the video it promoted was flagged for false information but confirmed that the ad would be rejected in the future if an attempt was made to reactivate it.

Facebook rolls out web tracking tool to help users, LinkedIn folds Elevate capabilities into LinkedIn Pages

Zuckerberg pulls back the curtain on privacy. In a new blog post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined the platform’s new (and upcoming) privacy-focused initiatives designed to give users more visibility into how they are tracked across the web. Chief among the new features is Facebook’s long-awaited “Off-Facebook Activity” tool, which has now rolled out globally to all users. The tool, first introduced in beta in 2018, gives users the ability to manage and delete data collected from third-party sites and apps. Additionally, Zuckerberg said that over the next few weeks, Facebook will “show nearly 2 billion people around the world a prompt encouraging them to review their privacy settings.”

LinkedIn Elevate and Pages become one. LinkedIn’s employee advocacy platform Elevate is officially merging its capabilities with the Page tools in an effort to provide more ways for businesses to engage employees to help amplify content, the company announced last week. LinkedIn said that in the last four years since Elevate’s launch, “hundreds of our customers have used Elevate to help their employees be brand advocates. At the same time, these customers – and over 50 million more organizations – have worked to build their LinkedIn Page so they can engage their most important audiences.” By bringing the capabilities together under Page tools, LinkedIn says the “combination will help companies better engage their employees, and build stronger communities in a safe and trusted environment.” For current Elevate customers, the new functionality will be free of cost.

Snapchat couples up with NBC for the Olympics, TikTok lands a major music deal – and is sniffing around for a new CEO

Snapchat inks an exclusive deal. Snapchat is partnering up with NBC to host a range of exclusive programming for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics from July 24 – August 9. It’s the third Olympics the two companies have collaborated on, following the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio and the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. The partnership includes four daily original Snapchat Shows produced by NBC exclusively for the platform, using its vertical video format. Overall, NBC said it plans to produce more than 70 episodes for Snapchat – more than three times that of the 2018 Winter Games. 

Licensed music coming to TikTok. The youth-centric, video-sharing app has been building a new music streaming platform to compete against the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. As part of those efforts, TikTok last week announced a deal with Merlin, a global independent music licensing agency, for music to be used on TikTok’s platform anywhere the app is available. The deal marks the first major licensing agreement announced by TikTok as part of its wider efforts to bring legal music to the app and stake a claim in the streaming industry. 

TikTok’s quest for a U.S. CEO. Rumor has it that TikTok is on the hunt for a CEO in the U.S., Bloomberg reported last week. It’s a move that could help distance the company from its Chinese parent, ByteDance, and allay mounting concerns over its ties to the Chinese government (which has played a role in censoring content and accessing user data). According to the report, TikTok has been reviewing candidates “in recent months” to fill the CEO position, which would work alongside TikTok’s China-based chief, Alex Zhu, and Vanessa Pappas, who currently oversees TikTok’s U.S. operations out of its Los Angeles office. It’s still unclear how the new leadership structure for TikTok would work, but Bloomberg says a U.S.-based CEO could potentially be in charge of the app’s “non-technical functions” such as advertising and operations.

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Creative shorts

Super Bowl ad previews, Unsplash archives photos from public institutions, and a photo of Louis Vuitton sneakers divides Twitter 

A glimpse of Super Bowl ad creative. The ad frenzy will commence this Sunday – and advertisers are standing by to see what the national TV event will bring. The best Super Bowl ads will combine stellar creative with a strategic approach to the brand’s story – sort of like Mountain Dew’s TikTok partnership. Check out the ads that have already been teased here. 

Unsplash makes photos available from public institutions. Crowdsourced stock image platform Unsplash has integrated an archive of free stock content with a number of institutions and organizations, including the New York Public Library, CDC, NOAA, and the Library of Congress. The news comes on the heels of the company’s December launch of ‘Unsplash for Brands,’ its advertising product, which has since been adopted by brands like Harley Davidson, Boxed Water, Curology, Square, Google, and others.

Optical illusions make for viral prowess. Every once in awhile a photo goes viral that divides the internet with opinions and brings into question the reality of optics. Most recently, a photo of Louis Vuitton sneakers surfaced on the internet – and people can’t decide if they’re black or white. It’s the gold-black-white dress debacle all over again. Intentional or not, the internet phenomenon of optical illusions is proof that retail brands have an opportunity to lean into the hype and start a unique conversation – just as long as they don’t overdo it.

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On the move

Former Johnson & Johnson CMO moves to Neustar, CSM entertainment agency gets a new president, FabFitFun hires its first CMO

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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.

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How evolving risks and consumer distrust will shape digital marketing in 2020

Against a backdrop where competition is as fierce as it’s ever been, digital marketing teams are increasingly seeking out new strategies to drive awareness and brand engagement. Brands are also prioritizing control of their brand experience and deploying defensive strategies to protect their organization from competitors and the inherent uncertainty that comes with being online.

With that in mind, here are five key factors that will impact the decisions that digital marketing leaders make in 2020.

1. As consumer skepticism grows, affiliates will play an even more vital role in the marketing mix.

While there are several factors fueling the recent growth we are witnessing in the affiliate industry, one is the erosion of brand loyalty. With the internet making it easy for consumers to gather information and purchases from any brand around the globe, the idea of consumer loyalty is but a memory.

Exacerbating things is the fact that the term “Fake News” has evolved beyond the media into the business world. In fact, 63% of consumers say they trust the information they receive from influencers more than from brands, making true and accurate disclosures particularly important. And while this may be dismaying for marketers who must increasingly look outside the typical marketing mix to get the job done, for affiliates, this only signals further growth.

Good affiliate partners are adept at cultivating tight customer relationships by offering valuable sources of information far beyond special offers and discounts. As “fake influencers,” widespread data breaches, and privacy concerns continue to erode trust and loyalty, we expect that savvy brands will increasingly look to forge strong relations with affiliates who work as true partners and consistently deliver incremental revenue.

2. Amazon product search dominance continues to climb, despite some setbacks.

Amazon is the go-to platform for consumers looking for a specific brand of product and this will likely continue in 2020 and beyond. While headline-grabbing occurrences such as Nike deciding to leave Amazon had some thinking other big brands would follow suit, the platform has all but handcuffed the brands who sell through it.

However, Amazon still faces plenty of near-term challenges that need to be addressed in 2020. It’s no secret that Amazon has a counterfeit problem — in 2018, Amazon spent $400 million fighting fraud. And while it’s one thing when counterfeit goods start diluting customer’s perceptions of the platform, it’s an entirely different situation when massive brands like Nike leave due in part to Amazon’s inability to fix the issue.

We can expect Amazon to double down on this spend and deploy more aggressive internal measures in 2020. However, so long as the company prioritizes a broad selection of products and cheaper prices over everything else, it’s a problem that will likely persist.

3. Google Shopping will earn a greater share of the digital marketer’s budget 

While advertisers may be shifting more of their budgets to Amazon, Google Shopping remains one of the most important aspects of paid search management for online brands today. Recent growth trends substantiate this view; in Q3 2019 Google Shopping investment rose significantly from the previous quarter, outpacing investment in ad spend. Further, according to Merkle Google Shopping generated 62% of retailers’ Google search ad clicks in the US.

In 2020, we can expect to see digital marketers investing greater time and resources into Google Shopping feed management and optimization to take advantage of the evolving platform and strike the right balance between the different search journeys consumers take on Google and Amazon. While Amazon seems to have created a moat around branded search, Google shows no sign of yielding its power for driving unbranded search queries.

4.  Marketers will seek out automated compliance at scale

When we think about automation in marketing today, we primarily think of executing marketing campaigns and how to get in front of customers in more meaningful ways at scale.

However, what is likely to happen in 2020 is the evolution of automation beyond campaign execution, into areas like compliance monitoring to ensure brands are protected online. As brands and their affiliate programs continue to grow, it becomes critical for them to adopt technologies that monitor not only compliance with partner agreements but also the consistency of the customer experience across multiple channels.

5. Online compliance and brand protection become a C-Suite matter

In today’s ultra-competitive business environment brands cannot afford to solely be reactive to potential infringements to their brand and customer experiences. Rather, they must proactively seek to protect these assets and that can only happen with increased visibility at the C-suite level. In 2019, we witnessed quite a few leading brands elevating the importance of what it means to protect your brand — whether it comes to trademarks or overall brand perception and value.

Patagonia and Anheuser-Busch battled it out over potential trademark infringements. Co-founder of shoe company Allbirds approached Amazon about selling identical-looking shoes, but perhaps more importantly, called out that the e-commerce giant should also “steal our approach to sustainability.” What we saw last year with these brands taking a stand to protect their missions, values, and customer experience, we will continue to see more of this in the coming year as brand protection gains greater mindshare in the boardroom and beyond.

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

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About The Author

David Naffziger is CEO of BrandVerity.

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Expand Your Advertising Efforts with Native

Are you looking to expand your advertising efforts, and aren’t sure where to turn? Native, in combination with your PPC efforts, may be the way to boost your funnel and supercharge your ROI. Native advertising is an excellent indicator of brand awareness because it cuts through the noise and plays a strong role of planting the seed with your audience. A wonderful segway into PPC efforts that push users down your funnel to conversion.

In this webinar, Taboola’s Mike Gifis and Hanapin’s Andrew Harder will show you how you can marry your native and search efforts, and help you understand how you can use campaigns tailored toward upper funnel goals and drive bottom funnel goals.

You’ll learn:

• How native can help grow your remarketing lists, prospecting, increase ROAS, etc
• How to navigate goal setting in different verticals
• What creative performs well for native advertising

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

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Four common Google Analytics myths busted

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that’s unprecedented in its ability to measure your website’s performance. The data it gathers is invaluable to you as a marketer. They can give you a clear view of what decisions you need to make to benefit your brand. Data, however, are just numbers and graphs. On their own, they cannot tell a story. It’s your job as a marketer to deduce that story through sound and unbiased analysis and not fall for Google Analytics myths.

If Google Analytics terms and data confuse you more than they enlighten you, this article will help you understand four Google Analytics and SEO-related myths you need to avoid.

How do I use Google Analytics?

Business owners use Google Analytics (GA) to see what they’re doing right, in terms of getting quality traffic to their sites. If you’re a business owner hoping to expand your presence in online spheres, you’ll need analytics to measure your success.

With the use of metrics, Google Analytics tracks who visits your site, how long they stay, what device they’re using, and what link brought them there. With these data, you can discover how to improve your online marketing and SEO strategies.

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Google Analytics basics

At first, it may seem like Google Analytics is serving you raw data that are too complicated to digest. Learning to speak the analytics language, though, it is easier than you think. Below are some basic terms to help you better understand the data reported by Google Analytics:

Pageviews

Pageviews are the total number of times a page on your site that users have viewed. This includes instances in which users refresh the page or when they jump to another page and promptly go back to the page they had just left. This underlines what pages are most popular.

Visits/Sessions

Sessions are measured by how much time users spend on your website, regardless if they spend it navigating only one or multiple pages. Sessions are limited to a 30-minute window. This means that if users stay on the site for 30 minutes but remain inactive and non-interactive with the page throughout, the session ends. If they leave the site and go back within 30 minutes, though, it gets counted as a session.

Average session duration refers to the average time users spent on your site. Pages per session, on the other hand, is the average number of pages that users view on your site within a single session.

Time on Page

This refers to the average time users spend on a page on your site. This can help you determine which pages users typically check out longer. This starts the second a pageview is counted until the subsequent pageview ends it.

Traffic

Traffic refers to the number of people accessing your website. This comes from a traffic source or any place where users come from before they are led to your pages.

Traffic is classified into direct and referral. Direct traffic comes from pageviews triggered by specifically typing the whole URL or when a user is given a URL directly without searching for it. Referral traffic is directed from links on other sites, like search results or social media.

Unique Pageviews

Unique pageviews are reported when your page is viewed once by users in a single session. These don’t count the times users navigated back to that page in the same session. For example, a user navigates the whole site in one session and navigates back to the original page three times; the Unique Pageview count is still at one, and not three.

Unique Visitors

When a user visits your site for the first time, a unique visitor and a new visit for the website is counted. Google Analytics uses cookies to determine this. If the same user comes back to the site on the same browser and device, it’s only counted as a new visit. But if that user deletes their cookies or accesses the site through a different browser or device, they may be falsely added as a unique visitor.

Hits

Hits are interactions or requests made to a site. This includes page views, events, and transactions. A group of hits is measured as a session, used to determine a user’s engagement with the website.

Clicks

Clicks are measured by the number of clicks you get from search engine results. Click-through rate (CTR) is the total amount of clicks divided by impressions or times you are part of the user’s search results. If CTR is dropping, consider writing titles and meta descriptions that capture your users’ attention better.

Events

Events are actions users take on a particular site. This includes clicking buttons to see other pages or download files. You are looking at what kind of content encourages users to interact with the page, thereby triggering an event.

Bounce rate

Bounce rate refers to users’ single-page sessions wherein they click on a page and exits quickly without interacting with a single element on the page. A high bounce rate can mean either that a user has swiftly found what they were looking for or that they did not think the content on the page was interesting enough to stay longer and engage.

Goals

You can input goals in your Google Analytics account to track user interactions on your site. These interactions include submitting a report, subscribing to your newsletter, or downloading files. If the user performs an event that you’ve identified as a goal, Analytics counts this as a conversion.

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Four common Google Analytics myths debunked

Now that you have an overview of Google Analytics terms, below are five common misconceptions surrounding those terms and how to avoid these as a marketer.

1. The more traffic that goes to your site, the better

The myth

Generally, you’d want more people to visit your site. These huge amounts of visits, though, won’t matter if they don’t turn into conversions. Even if thousands of people flock to your webpages each day, if they don’t take the desired actions your SEO campaign is aiming for, these visits won’t provide any benefit for your site.

The truth

A good SEO strategy is built upon making sure that once you’ve garnered a pageview, the quality of your content drives the user to the desired action such as subscribing to a newsletter, for example.

Keyword research can help make sure that you use the right terms to get you a higher ranking on SERPs. The material on your site, however, is also crucial in satisfying your users’ queries, enough to get a conversion.

2. Users need to spend more time on webpages

The myth

Users spending a few quick seconds on your page is not entirely bad. This may mean that these users are looking for quick, precise answers. Quality SEO delivers this to them through well-placed keywords and concise content. Hence, if they quickly get the answers they need, they tend to leave the site immediately.

The truth

Quality SEO content ensures that your material is written in such a way that it invites users to learn more about the subject, which can be seen when they are led to another page on your site. This leads them one step closer to taking the desired action on your site.

3. The amount of unique visitors is an accurate metric to measure audience traffic

The myth

The upsurge of unique visitors on your page doesn’t necessarily mean that the amount of your audience is blowing up. Unique visitors are measured by cookies used by Google to determine if it’s a user’s first time on a site. The same user accessing the same page through a different browser or a browser whose cookies have been cleared is counted as a unique visitor too.

The truth

If you’re looking to study your audience, it’s not enough to look at how many of them go to your page. You can refer to the Audience > Demographics tab and see who are navigating your site and from what marketing links they were directed from. With this information, you can determine what types of content gather the most traffic and from what avenues this traffic comes from such as SERPs or social media posts, for example.

4. Traffic reports are enough to tell if your campaign is successful

The myth

Looking at traffic reports alone is not enough to determine whether your SEO campaign is successful, or that your keyword research paid off. Although at first, it seems as though heavy traffic signals an effective online marketing strategy, it only counts the quantitative aspect of your campaign and dismisses the qualitative side.

The truth

Maximize all the reports on GA. All these are correlated with how your campaign is going. Reports are valuable in comprehensively addressing issues instead of nitpicking on a single aspect of a campaign because, for instance, a report suggests it’s not doing its job.

These points will help you clear the air when it comes to Google Analytics and help you correctly derive insights.

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Related reading

Useful insights from Chris Rodgers, Founder and CEO of Colorado SEO Pros about the conundrum of SEO and SMEs, trends, voice search, and lots more.

Along with keyword and backlink research, link building and website audits, competition research is a fundamental part of a successful SEO campaign.

SEO team collaborations can amplify the audience reach and surpass your goals when you start from the top and work SEO strategies into every facet.

Techniques for creating a diverse link profile through anchor text variations. Details on how Google perceives your site, how to use LSI keywords, and more. 

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

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Search Buzz Video Recap: Google Algorithm Update May Have Hit Forbes, Favicons Reverted, Featured Snippet Questions & More

This was a pretty busy week, we may have had a Google search algorithm update this week and maybe, just maybe, Forbes got hit hard by it. Google is probably going to revert the favicon and black ad label user interface, lots of tests are going on now. Bing hides the ad label as well, it isn’t just Google. I posted a summary of everything you need to know about the Google feature snippet deduplication change, including Google might be giving us performance data on them, images in featured snippets may change, Google will move the right side featured snippet to the top and until then it stopped deduplicating the right side feature snippets. Google Search Console launched a new removals tool with a few set of features. Google may have issues indexing international pages. Google says they treat links in PDFs as nofollowed links but that contradicts earlier statements. Google said schema markup will continue to get more complicated. Google said do not translate your image URLs. I shared a fun people also ask that looks like an ad, but is not an ad. Google Assistant Actions do not give you a ranking boost. Google is still using Chrome 41 as the user agent when requesting resources but not for rendering. Google Ads switched all campaign types to standard delivery. Google My Business suspensions are at an all time high. Google Chrome is testing hiding URLs for the search results page. Google is hiring an SEO. I posted two vlogs this week, one with Thom Craver and one with Lisa Barone. Oh and if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week 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:

For the original iTunes version, click here.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Please do subscribe on YouTube or subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don’t forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

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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The Ultimate Guide to SEO Meta Tags

Editor’s note: This post first appeared in April of 2017, but because SEO (and Google) changes so quickly, we figured it was time for a refresh!

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Meta tags represent the beginning of most SEO training, for better or for worse. I contemplated exactly how to introduce this topic because we always hear about the bad side of meta tags — namely, the keywords meta tag. One of the first things dissected in any site review is the misuse of meta tags, mainly because they’re at the top of every page in the header and are therefore the first thing seen. But we don’t want to get too negative; meta tags are some of the best tools in a search marketer’s repertoire.

There are meta tags beyond just description and keywords, though those two are picked on the most. I’ve broken down the most-used (in my experience) by the good, the bad, and the indifferent. You’ll notice that the list gets longer as we get to the bad ones. I didn’t get to cover all of the meta tags possible to add, but there’s a comprehensive meta tag resource you should check out if you’re interested in everything that’s out there.

It’s important to note that in 2019, you meta tags still matter, but not all of them can help you. It’s my experience, and I think anyone in SEO would agree, that if you want to rank high in search, your meta tags need to accompany high-quality content that focuses on user satisfaction.

My main piece of advice: stick to the core minimum. Don’t add meta tags you don’t need — they just take up code space. The less code you have, the better. Think of your page code as a set of step-by-step directions to get somewhere, but for a browser. Extraneous meta tags are the annoying “Go straight for 200 feet” line items in driving directions that simply tell you to stay on the same road you’re already on!

The good meta tags

These are the meta tags that should be on every page, no matter what. Notice that this is a small list; these are the only ones that are required, so if you can work with just these, please do.

• Meta content type – This tag is necessary to declare your character set for the page and should be present on every page. Leaving this out could impact how your page renders in the browser. A few options are listed below, but your web designer should know what’s best for your site.

• Title – While the title tag doesn’t start with “meta,” it is in the header and contains information that’s very important to SEO. You should always have a unique title tag on every page that describes the page. Check out this post for more information on title tags.
• Meta description – The infamous meta description tag is used for one major purpose: to describe the page to searchers as they read through the SERPs. This tag doesn’t influence ranking, but it’s very important regardless. It’s the ad copy that will determine if users click on your result. Keep it within 160 characters, and write it to catch the user’s attention. Sell the page — get them to click on the result. Here’s a great article on meta descriptions that goes into more detail.
• Viewport – In this mobile world, you should be specifying the viewport. If you don’t, you run the risk of having a poor mobile experience — the Google PageSpeed Insights Tool will tell you more about it. The standard tag is:

The indifferent meta tags

Different sites will need to use these in specific circumstances, but if you can go without, please do.

• Social meta tags – I’m leaving these out. OpenGraph and Twitter data are important to sharing but are not required per se.
• Robots – One huge misconception is that you have to have a robots meta tag. Let’s make this clear: In terms of indexing and link following, if you don’t specify a meta robots tag, they read that as index,follow. It’s only if you want to change one of those two commands that you need to add meta robots. Therefore, if you want to noindex but follow the links on the page, you would add the following tag with only the noindex, as the follow is implied. Only change what you want to be different from the norm.

• Specific bots (Googlebot) – These tags are used to give a specific bot instructions like noodp (forcing them not to use your DMOZ listing information, RIP) and noydir (same, but instead the Yahoo Directory listing information). Generally, the search engines are really good at this kind of thing on their own, but if you think you need it, feel free. There have been some cases I’ve seen where it’s necessary, but if you must, consider using the overall robots tag listed above.
• Language – The only reason to use this tag is if you’re moving internationally and need to declare the main language used on the page. Check out this meta languages resource for a full list of languages you can declare.
• Geo – The last I heard, these meta tags are supported by Bing but not Google (you can target to country inside Search Console). There are three kinds: placename, position (latitude and longitude), and region.

• Keywords – Yes, I put this on the “indifferent” list. While no good SEO is going to recommend spending any time on this tag, there’s some very small possibility it could help you somewhere. Please leave it out if you’re building a site, but if it’s automated, there’s no reason to remove it.
• Refresh – This is the poor man’s redirect and should not be used, if at all possible. You should always use a server-side 301 redirect. I know that sometimes things need to happen now, but Google is NOT a fan.
• Site verification – Your site is verified with Google and Bing, right? Who has the verification meta tags on their homepage? These are sometimes necessary because you can’t get the other forms of site verification loaded, but if at all possible try to verify another way. Google allows you to verify by DNS, external file, or by linking your Google Analytics account. Bing still only allows by XML file or meta tag, so go with the file if you can.

The bad meta tags

Nothing bad will happen to your site if you use these — let me just make that clear. They’re a waste of space though; even Google says so (and that was 12 years ago now!). If you’re ready and willing, it might be time for some spring cleaning of your

area.

• Author/web author – This tag is used to name the author of the page. It’s just not necessary on the page.
• Revisit after – This meta tag is a command to the robots to return to a page after a specific period of time. It’s not followed by any major search engine.
• Rating – This tag is used to denote the maturity rating of content. I wrote a post about how to tag a page with adult images using a very confusing system that has since been updated (see the post’s comments). It seems as if the best way to note bad images is to place them on a separate directory from other images on your site and alert Google.
• Expiration/date – “Expiration” is used to note when the page expires, and “date” is the date the page was made. Are any of your pages going to expire? Just remove them if they are (but please don’t keep updating content, even contests — make it an annual contest instead!). And for “date,” make an XML sitemap and keep it up to date. It’s much more useful.
• Copyright – That Google article debates this with me a bit, but look at the footer of your site. I would guess it says “Copyright 20xx” in some form. Why say it twice?
• Abstract – This tag is sometimes used to place an abstract of the content and used mainly by educational pursuits.
• Distribution – The “distribution” value is supposedly used to control who can access the document, typically set to “global.” It’s inherently implied that if the page is open (not password-protected, like on an intranet) that it’s meant for the world. Go with it, and leave the tag off the page.
• Generator – This is used to note what program created the page. Like “author,” it’s useless.
• Cache-control – This tag is set in hopes of controlling when and how often a page is cached in the browser. It’s best to do this in the HTTP header.
• Resource type – This is used to name the type of resource the page is, like “document.” Save yourself time, as the DTD declaration does it for you.

There are so many meta tags out there, I’d love to hear about any you think need to be added or even removed! Shout out in the comments with suggestions or questions.

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

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IPG Mediabrands starts using Nielsen’s podcast audience insights to inform media decisions

IPG Mediabrands is the first agency client to subscribe to Nielsen’s Podcast Listener Buying Power service, Nielsen announced on Wednesday. The license grants IPG Mediabrand companies Universal McCann, Initiative, ID Media, Cadreon, Brand Programming Network, Orion, MAGNA and Healix access to Nielsen’s podcast audience insights.

What Nielsen’s service does. The Podcast Listener Buying Power Service, launched in July, 2019, aims to provide podcasting networks with more audience data, such as genre preferences and purchasing habits. The data comes from Nielsen’s biannual podcast survey of 35,000 participants.

The service now has 10 podcast company subscribers, including iHeartMedia, Stitcher, Cadence13, Westwood One and Cabana.

What it does for IPG. IPG will be able to access data across 18 podcast genres and over 90 individual podcasts. That data can also be cross-referenced with the purchasing behavior and services usage data that Nielsen also surveys for.

“We are excited about the value that this data will provide in servicing all of the agencies with the insights and intelligence paramount for the success of monetization opportunities,” said Brian Hughes, EVP of audience intelligence and strategy at MAGNA. “This is beneficial to us, and the industry as a whole, as the rapidly growing podcast industry is requiring meaningful data to make sense of listenership.”

Why we care. The podcasting industry’s growth presents marketers with opportunities to reach unique audiences. However, the lack of detailed data for targeting and tracking ROI has advertisers proceeding with caution. Nielsen’s Podcast Listener Buying Power Service attracting prominent agency subscribers, such as IPG, shows a demand for more audience insights. That demand will help to drive innovation in the sector.

More on podcast advertising. Here are a few additional resources to inform your podcast advertising efforts.

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About The Author

George Nguyen is an Associate Editor at Third Door Media. His background is in content marketing, journalism, and storytelling.

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Will the Discover feed be Google’s next cash cow? What advertisers are saying about Discovery campaigns

If you wanted to see a Google ad exec’s eyes light up last spring, you just had to bring up the Discover feed, the personalized news feed perched right on the Google mobile home page. The company announced ads were coming to this whole new surface that reaches some 800,000 monthly mobile users.

It’s still too early to know if the company, which watched Facebook’s News Feed ads skyrocket as Google+ fizzled in the last decade, has a mobile feed winner this time around, but advertisers who have been testing ads in the feed with new Discovery campaigns tell us they’re impressed with the initial results. The level to which the feed is actually driving that satisfaction is not entirely clear, however.

You may not have even seen ads in your own Discover feed yet, much less run Discovery campaigns, which remain in closed beta. The ads are still elusive more than a year after initial testing (since at least October 2018) and the official introduction of Discovery campaigns at Google Marketing Live (GML) in May.

Discovery ads on YouTube home feed, Google Discover feed and Gmail promotions tab.

Discover is personalized to show topics, stories and news items based on a user’s search, browsing and app behaviors, as well as their location history and location settings and stated topic interests. The native Discovery ads are image-heavy and closely resemble social creatives.

Few qualms about lack of controls, visibility

The hitch is there is no way for advertisers to distinctly target ads to the feed alone. Discovery campaigns are among the slate of Google’s machine-powered campaign types that run ads across multiple properties automatically. In addition to the Discover feed, Discovery ads serve in Gmail and on YouTube’s homepage. With that combined slate, Google says Discovery ads can reach a universe of “hundreds of millions” of people.  

Advertisers said Discovery campaign results compensate for control and visibility limitations. “We are OK with the lack of channel reporting right now since the benefits outweigh the lack of transparency,” said Moses Chang, group media director at MMI Agency.

“Right now we look at performance at the campaign and ad group level and decide what we will and will not keep running,” said Duane Brown, founder and head of strategy at the digital agency Take Some Risk, who will be speaking on Discovery ads at SMX West next month.

Who should test Discovery campaigns?

Advertisers have tested Discovery campaigns for clients with a range of goals, from awareness to acquisition and sales. “We are heavily focused on our e-commerce clients for Discovery Ads,” said Brown, “but I think there is an opportunity for tech and SaaS brands to use the channel.”

At Seer Interactive, PPC Associate Molly Quinn, tested a Discovery campaign for a client looking to raise brand awareness and increase site traffic. “For this particular situation, we chose to leverage Discovery because our client was seeing a drop in sessions to their homepage year over year,” said Quinn. For this effort, the lack of visibility and targeting control were not a concern due to the clients’ goals and the performance of the campaign, she added.

“Discovery is a high volume, low CPC channel that has the added benefit of generating awareness for the brands,” said Chang, “and as long as the CPAs are in-line with client goals, we are OK running the campaigns knowing channel breakout/negation functions are not there.”

Audience targeting

Brown has run Discovery campaigns for remarketing as well as top of funnel initiatives but said his agency starts with remarketing. “Then we look at targeting affinity and in-market audiences for a top of funnel campaign,” said Brown. “We run pretty focused ad groups with one audience (or targeting) in each ad group. That way we can understand how that targeting does for each piece of creative. We will try different pieces of creative for each ad group.”

Quinn used in-market and similar audiences targeting in her client’s brand awareness and traffic campaign and says she saw the greatest success with in-market audiences related to the client’s vertical.

Chang, too, has seen strong volume and efficient cost-per-acquisition with in-market audiences, and has also tested affinity, Google Analytics tag-based audiences and customer match audiences. Not surprising, “Tag-based audiences tend to be more targeted and thus [have a] lower CPA — the volume is much lower than the general audiences, though,” said Chang.

Creative repurposing

Discovery campaigns support carousel and single image ads like the ones advertisers may already be running on Facebook. That makes it easy to repurpose existing ad creatives, as Quinn did with her client’s Discovery campaign.

“We typically re-purpose best-performing Facebook creatives and then create new ones based on learnings,” said Chang. Sometimes some slight sizing adjustments are needed. He suggests using multiple images in both landscape (1.91:1: Minimum size: 600×314. Recommended: 1200×628. 5MB max file size) and square (1:1: Minimum size: 300×300. Recommended: 1200×1200. 5MB maximum file size).

“We’ll make new creative when we can,” said Brown. “Otherwise, we reuse creative from other social channels. We adjust the creative format as the Discovery Ad format can be small image-wise. In either case, our goal is to maintain a consistent brand for the client across channels. Try to make your ad look native to the platform, especially for the Discovery Feed.”

Measuring success

Advertisers say they focus on the key performance indicators (KPIs) tied to their client’s goals and evaluate effectiveness at the campaign level while also looking at the impact of Discovery campaigns on the broader customer journey.

“If we’re doing remarketing then we look at CPA and ROAS. If we’re doing top of funnel, we look at impression vs. sales and customer path in Google Analytics,” said Brown. “We try to understand if we are adding new people to the journey to becoming a customer. This ad format can lead itself to high first touch and the first time someone is seeing your brand.”

Chang uses maximize for conversions bidding and waits to set a Target CPA that’s in line with the client’s goals until enough data has been collected.

What’s next?

For now, you still have to get into the beta, which can be tricky if you don’t have a Google account manager. But once in, Brown says you can start small — think $50 a day — and scale from there. There are still some kinks in the setup process (this is still in beta, after all) and “the fact that your assets don’t get saved somewhere for you to use in the future means you’re re-uploading some assets months later,” he warned.

The verdict is out on whether Discover will prove to be yet another vein in the Google goldmine. The company is treading slowly with this initial effort, as indicated by the rare ad sighting and little chatter in the industry since Discovery ads launched. (Google pulled the other splashy format announced at GML, Gallery Ads, back out of beta within months.)

How much weight the Discover feed is pulling in these campaigns overall isn’t known, and at the individual campaign level, it can vary widely. Advertisers can see channel data in Google Analytics source/medium reporting, and Chang, for example, has seen instances in which half of a campaign’s traffic shifted to YouTube — where there is both volume and proven success. “Google, I’m sure, is constantly testing on their end,” he said.

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About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

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January Updates to Paid Advertising Platforms

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

General

What: California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) goes live

Details: On January 1st, 2020 CCPA went into effect representing a major milestone in data privacy legislation within the United States.

Impact: For brands that properly prepped for GDPR, there were likely minimal alterations to make. That said, every single business and advertiser should review the small print within CCPA to ensure 100% compliance. Although the bill went into effect on January 1st, California AG will likely not begin formal CCPA enforcement actions until July 1st.

Google Ads

What: Google implements black  “Ad” label and brand icons on the desktop SERP

Details: Following a test on mobile, Google has brought the slightly retooled SERP of a small, unassuming black “Ad” label in addition to brand icons to the desktop SERP.

Impact: Ad labels in Google’s SERP have gone through numerous iterations. Advertisers should track any major changes in click related KPIs such as CTR. Overall, Google has been trending towards a more integrated SERP of paid and organic listings with this update being yet another step in that evolution.

What: Google testing custom dimensions that would match your business structure

Details: Custom dimensions in Google Ads would grant the ability to split reports by category and subcategory classifications that match your different business goals.

Impact: Most advertisers use a combination of VLOOKUP and custom labels in conjunction with an intentional naming convention. Custom dimensions would simplify this process and are designed to remain viable for the long term. Lastly, such dimensions would make drill-downs into sub-category KPI reporting more intuitive.

What: Bid simulator now enabled for Target ROAS, while budget simulator is now available for Maximize Clicks and Maximize Conversions

Details: Google has extended the use of bid and budget simulators for more smart bidding strategies. Previously, a bid simulator was available for only manual and Target CPA bidding.

Impact: Simulators are a helpful tool for finding a ballpark projection of a given campaign. Extension of these into additional smart bidding strategies helps avoid one of the Most Common Mistakes of Automated Bidding — too high of a budget to begin with.

Microsoft Advertising

What: Microsoft Advertising’s PromoteIQ is now in beta testing for brands and retailers

Details: Microsoft Advertising’s acquisition of PromoteIQ is taking form and entering beta testing for brands and retailers.

Impact: The announcement comes on the heels of the August acquisition of PromoteIQ.  Microsoft describes the platform as “delivering an end-to-end commerce marketing platform with enterprise-grade capabilities to manage and scale vendor-funded digital marketing — whether on-site or off-site”.  The platform includes an extensive analytics suite and helps brands understand incremental sales.

What: Response Search Ads(RSAs) are now available worldwide

Details: Back in September 2019, Bing announced RSAs were in open beta. These are now available to all advertisers worldwide.

Impact: RSAs are designed to work alongside Expanded Text Ads and should not be relied upon for all auctions. On average, Bing notes that advertisers have recorded an increase of 10% in volume, 6% in CVR, and a decrease of 7% in CPA.

What: Microsoft sunsetting average position metric

Details: Much like their “follow-the-leader” approach to sunsetting average position, Bing will remove reporting of average position in April 2020.

Impact: Advertisers will already be accustom to a post-Avg. position world due to Google’s update. New impression metrics will be introduced to aid in auction transparency:

• Top impression share
• Top impression share lost to rank
• Top impression share lost to budget
• Absolute top impression share
• Absolute top impression share lost to rank
• Absolute top impression share lost to budget

LinkedIn Advertising

What: LinkedIn provides In-Product Help

Details: Get convenient access to help without leaving the Campaign Manager. Click the question mark icon in the top right of Campaign Manager to open a window that lets you access help center content and get help.

Impact: For Google/Bing platforms, direct support can occasionally be challenging to come by. This update should help users navigate more quickly to simple support answers.

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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Google: Schema Markup Won’t Get Any Easier; Will Get Harder

Google’s John Mueller said in a Google webmaster hangout video at the 34:30 mark that he believes implementing schema markup for rich results won’t be getting any easier. In fact, he said over the next few years he feels it will continue to get harder and more complicated.

John said “I think in the future, at least in a near-term future, we will have more types of structured data markup and it will continue to to get more complicated probably.” Later on in the video he said “But purely from a markup point of view, I don’t see this getting any easier unfortunately.”

Why? He said Google will continue to add more types of structured data markup and schema support for new ways to make your site richer in Google search and Google Assistant.

Here is the video embed at the start time:

Here is the transcript:

I think in the future, at least in a near-term future, we will have more types of structured data markup and it will continue to to get more complicated probably. In the sense of they’re just lots of requirements for different search features. And in order to do something really fancy in the search results where we can kind of really highlight your your site really well. Or if there’s a way to kind of also include information we can show on Google Assistant or rather I guess speak on Google Assistant. Then all of these things they currently rely a lot on structured data markup.

So that’s something where as these areas expand I would expect to see some amount of additional markup coming in. And anytime you have more structured data markup, kind of like the interactions get trickier and the requirements get it a little bit harder in the sense that oh you have to have, I’m just
making something up, like a name with 17 characters, you can’t just have a name with 15 characters, sometimes these things change over time.

So I suspect it’ll get harder in the near future at least. Maybe in the really long term it’ll be like oh the machine intelligence can figure it out for you and you just write a text file and everything else will happen automatically. I don’t see that happening in the next couple of years. So if if you’re kind of
on I don’t know the hill with regards to like should I learn more json-ld to figure out how to do markup myself. I think that’s a good approach. I also think at the same time a lot of these things can be made easier by content management systems and plugins, extensions that you have for content management systems. So if you’re using something like WordPress then maybe there’s a plugin that does all of this structure data markup for you automatically.

But purely from a markup point of view, I don’t see this getting any easier unfortunately.

So it is probably worthwhile investing in yourself to learn more about schema markup, structured data, rich results and Google Assistant.

Forum discussion at YouTube Community.

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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