LinkedIn has launched an Ads tab for company Pages on its platform. Similar to Facebook’s Info & Ads tab for Pages, the LinkedIn Ads tab will list all the native Sponsored Content ads a company has run during the last six months.
Why we should care
LinkedIn’s Ads tab will bring an added layer of transparency to the platform, a move that benefits advertisers and LinkedIn users alike. Offering more insight into advertising practices provides a measure of security for anyone who regularly uses the platform. This added level of security builds more trust in LinkedIn as a platform — attracting more users and more eyes on ads.
“Increased transparency to both our customers and members is critical to creating this trusted environment,” writes LinkedIn group manager for product management Mindaou Gu.
More on the news
LinkedIn said the Ads tab is the “first of many” planned updates aimed at giving users more information about the ads that run on the platform.
The Ads tab is rolling out globally over the next few weeks, so may not be immediately available on all Company Pages.
Ad clicks from the Ads tab won’t be charged to advertisers or calculated in campaign reports.
Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media’s General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.
Google Search Showing Orgies For Things To Do In Dallas
Joe Youngblood shared a screen shot of Google showing orgy parties as an option for a query on [what to do in dallas tonight?] This worked yesterday and I am not sure I blame Google for showing it, it was a data feed from EventBright, and someone placed the spam in EventBright, which made its way up to Google.
Google Hotel Results Now Displays Distance To Attractions
A lot of local SEOs are talking about how Google’s hotel search results now are showing searchers how far away a specific hotel is from an attraction you are looking to visit. Gus Pelogia posted a screen shot on Twitter of this and I think it is new.
Google Has New Movie & TV Search Experience & New Developer Docs For Movie Schema
Google yesterday announced two movie and TV related things yesterday and they were not directly related. First Google launched a new mobile experience for searching for movies or shows. Second Google has new developer documents for movie structured data.
Google Local Maps Search Results Drops Pagination – A Bug?
If you go to Google Maps, search for a service in a locale, Google will not let you go to page two of those results. Instead, Google will just stop showing you results and ask you to “see web results” for more. Previously, Google would let you click to page two.
Google Colors In The Shadows
Here is a room at the GooglePlex that has Google colored shadows on the floor. I guess the color of the windows and the sun shinning in make for this shadow effect. This is totally different from the
Exceptional modern marketing depends on blending talents and capabilities of many individuals and departments: tech, design, sales, customer support, management, and more. But senior-level marketers like you have told us that’s not always a given…
“We speak different languages.”
“We have different expectations.”
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Sound familiar?
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About The Author
Scott Brinker is the conference chair of the MarTech® Conference, a vendor-agnostic marketing technology conference and trade show series produced by MarTech Today’s parent company, Third Door Media. The MarTech event grew out of Brinker’s blog, chiefmartec.com, which has chronicled the rise of marketing technology and its changing marketing strategy, management and culture since 2008. In addition to his work on MarTech, Scott serves as the VP platform ecosystem at HubSpot. Previously, he was the co-founder and CTO of ion interactive.
Cloud-native communication platform Dialpad announced a number of new features to its UberConference solution. The latest enhancements could allow organizations to collaborate in a virtual environment with administrative tasks being driven by natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence.
Why we should care
We are all familiar with the struggles of working with siloed teams and the communication breakdowns that cause headaches and challenges for our marketing teams. When it comes to meeting, either with our own teams or cross-functionally, delegating action items, assigning follow up tasks and even keeping a uniform record of meeting notes are often neglected or sent too long after the meeting has ended.
UberConference uses its speech recognition solution — Voice Intelligence — to identify every individual caller involved in the meeting while its NLP technology analyzes the conversations to deliver meeting notes as soon as the meeting is ended. By leveraging the technology to handle administrative tasks like note-keeping, we can focus on the meeting at hand, spend less time filling in gaps and take action on important tasks in a more timely manner.
“Initial conference calls, multi-person demos and 1:1 discussions are all part of the relationship-building and sales process,” said Dialpad CEO Craig Walker. “Voice Intelligence is now part of that process, offering real-time insights, action items and summaries – all logged and accessible. We know that no one goes back and listens to recordings of calls, but they do need to know who said what and who is following up and how.”
More on the news
UberConference will now provide PIN-free business collaboration.
The announcement also included the introduction of HD video conferencing, automated transcripts, notes and action items.
Users will receive an automated summary of the meeting as soon as it ends which will help with managing key assignments and takeaways.
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.
In any job, taking a vacation can be hard, but with SEOs, the idea of leaving and something going wrong can be a bit scary. Decisions have to be made — Do you want to be in complete control of everything while you are gone? Do you want to just check in quickly once a day? Or are you going for a complete digital detox?
Nitin Manchanda
Global Head of SEO at Omio
“Unfortunately, I’m the first type and my wife hates that about me. That’s primarily because of responsibilities and expectations the company has of you once you’re in a leadership role; it essentially becomes your duty to ensure the smooth running while you’re away. So, I really don’t have an option here.”
Andy Crestodina
Co-founder of Orbit Media
“I set up out of office messages and leave secondary contacts, but these are just the usual things and not really specific to SEOs.”
Which times of the year are the best or the worst for taking a vacation? How to make sure nothing goes south while you are away? To gain insights, we asked experts for their thoughts and got recommendations and stories from SEOs. Based on their experiences, we have created a list of strategies that could be used as a checklist of actions you can use when you decide to take some time off. And remember, time off is healthy and can help remain productive and creative in the long run. We will also show the SEMrush tools, thanks to which you will feel confident about your site performance.
Buckle up, let’s go!
#1 Synchronize Updates, New Content, and Any Changes Which Can Affect Organic Positions
One of the questions we asked our experts, “Was there ever an SEO emergency that required your attention during vacation? How did you handle it?”
Nitin Manchanda
Global Head of SEO at Omio
“Yes, once, and it was because of really bad planning from the management. So, I was celebrating my first marriage anniversary with my wife in Dubai, back in 2016. I was really tired after an amazing but tiring day in one of those crazy water parks there. As soon as we entered the hotel room, I got a message from my manager asking for my green flag for a website release. Interesting part is, I had absolutely no idea about the release date as no one communicated that to me. The end result wasn’t what I wanted, but I reported some POs which they’d to fix before the release of a half-cooked product. And then I took care of the rest of the things after my vacation. Haven’t seen anything crazy apart from that.”
You need to synchronize not only with your SEO team but also with the development team and stakeholders. Before leaving, discuss the current status of projects your team manages and confirm scheduled dates for updates. It is better not to plan major releases just before you go on vacation; you want to be available in case any emergency situation occurs.
If you have a blog, it is best to arrange a schedule for new content with your team to maintain regular traffic on your site. With the Marketing Calendar, you can map out your actions in a calendar, configure tasks to be completed while you are gone and share the plan with your team.
Michelle Wilding-Baker
Senior Marketing Consultant at Oh Mishy ltd.
“By nature, I normally do not switch off from work, and I am very performance-based. I treat SEO as a performance marketing channel. Previously, at a bare minimum, I would always read my emails and respond while on annual leave. And that was until I got married last year in September. I had three weeks off for my wedding and honeymoon, and that was the first time I had ever disconnected from the network — it was a breath of fresh air. I didn’t check my work emails as I had a team of eight people to hold the fort, whereas previously I was the only SEO manager.
My secret to a smooth time away was creating a handover spreadsheet which was prioritised by high, medium, and low priority tasks and divided areas of responsibility because it was a big site.
My team would work on certain directories, so they would know what to do and what was expected each week in my absence. I would outline tasks by frequency (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly), instructing them to pull reports, prepare a deck for the marketing meeting, remind them to make sure they look at search console for test X uplift of test results, and set up reports for X, Y, and Z. So I had it all mapped out and covered.
And when you have a team, you need to trust them to do their jobs. If something goes wrong, that is how they are going to learn. I’m fine with my team to contact me on WhatsApp if something’s really, really bad. We both find comfort that they can contact me and let me know what is going on or ask for direction should the pressure get too much.”
#2 Create Dashboards Containing Only the Most Important Data
Nitin Manchanda
Global Head of SEO at Omio
“Even when I am vacationing, I am kind of addicted to checking my emails and Slack messages intermittently. I check the position reports as well, and if I see anything alarming then generally I see a slight trend already. I take my laptop with me. I know that about 50 percent of the world is now mostly mobile-only, but I am probably in the other 50 percent. I don’t use the Google Analytics Mobile app often, but the SEMrush app is very handy for me because it gives me a basic idea of visibility.
Generally, I train my team to take care of bits and pieces of my work, and allow them to catch me on Slack/email if they need me for something; I check that intermittently (I know it is a bad habit – I will improve one day). Also, I share my WhatsApp number in case of any emergency.”
You probably use different SEO dashboards in your daily routine, but you could create a separate dashboard that only included the vital information you must review to ensure all is well while you are gone. This way, you don’t start getting lost in tons of data and lose precious vacation time.
You can do this with the help of Google Data Studio, a free online tool that lets you make visual reports that combine data sources. You can bring data from Google-owned sources such as Search Console, Google Ads, YouTube, and Campaign Manager, and pull data from 150 other sources available in GDS.
Data Studio is only available in Desktop mode, but you can access your report with your phone’s browser.
In SEMrush, we also have an SEO Dashboard, which provides quick insights into what is currently going on with your or your competitor’s website. It contains all of the website’s key metrics on one page and has integrations with:
Google Analytics (it is also possible to switch to Traffic Analytics if you need insights about your competitors’ SEO performance)
The overall organization of your inbox is quite important in your regular activities, but especially so when it can help you to avoid being distracted every time you see the word “Google” in the subject line.
To not miss important emails and to avoid reacting to unimportant emails, configure the distribution of incoming letters into folders. In Gmail, they are called labels. To set up these labels, you simply create different folders and filters (for example, by the words the subject line contains) for emails to be sent to these particular folders. Make sure that all the important emails will go the folder labeled “important”.
Simon Heseltine
VP of Audience Growth at Cycle Trader
“Before you leave, sit down with all the stakeholders, with your developers, with product managers, and anyone else you are working with to make sure that they have enough information to get through the time that you are gone, and make sure they have a contact point for any issues.
I will check my email, even when I tag what I want. I keep checking just to see what is going on, and to see if there is anything that is flagged as important. And, of course, you know we have got all these messaging systems these days, whether it is Gchat or Slack, if people need to get hold of you, they can get hold of you, unless you really take yourself away to a desert island and leave the electronics behind, which is probably something that everyone should do at some point.”
#4 Make Advance Payments on Bills That Have Due Dates During Your Vacation
Perhaps the most important thin — check the admin panel of your hosting provider to make sure hosting service is not running out soon. Then, make sure your domain name doesn’t expire soon. This information can be checked at Whois (enter the domain there and check the item “Registrar Expiration Date”).
Also crucial, the site’s security certificate. There is a specific check in the SEMrush Site Audit tool which can show if the certificate is expiring within 3 months of the crawl.
Grant Simmons
VP of Homes.com
“There was actually a project a few weeks ago where the client made an update without telling me or their primary agency. The agency reached out to me and asked me what had happened.
It seems they changed hosting providers and foundational platforms without letting anyone outside the company know and now all internal links, canonicals, etc. were pointing to URLs with a trailing slash i.e., ‘site-url-here/’ and everything without a trailing slash was no-indexed. Google had previously indexed and ranked all the non-trailing slash URLs so they were basically sending traffic to pages with no-index directives (without any redirects). And so their rankings dropped significantly.
First, I needed to tell them what had happened and why, and then I needed to give them immediate action items to make sure redirects were put in place and/or trailing slashes were removed. So there are things that you CAN solve remotely that are technical in nature, where something has gone wrong and you have to tell folks to undo it or recommend something creative that resolves the issue quickly.
As far as penalties or algo updates go, there is not much you can do once they happen, but every SEO should be prepared and try to mitigate either of these scenarios before they actually happen.
[Note: Any SEO who is worried about penalties or algorithm updates should probably go on vacation and stay there.] Today, Google is getting really good at identifying spam and SEO ‘tricks’, so I steer clear of these to avoid any issues and recommend SEOs stick to ‘white hat’ techniques so they can actually enjoy their vacations!
There are some exceptions, of course. When a great site gets dinged on an algo update, but the issues are normally content related or technical in nature: think site speed and/or thin content as some of the elements Google is focusing on. The example above is a website-driven issue created by a webmaster’s actions. As I note below, try to mitigate issues by avoiding updates during an SEO’s vacation.
By the way, the best thing that can happen on vacation is to not to be disturbed because nothing is going wrong!”
#5 Keep An Eye on Significant Pages’ Health with the Help of Site Audit
Michelle Wilding-Baker
Senior Marketing Consultant at Oh Mishy ltd.
“I have never had problems with Google algorithm updates. There was one situation that really annoyed me. On a bank holiday weekend, I noticed a developer had turned off a lot of new content pages on a late Friday afternoon, and this included a paid landing page (why!?). We were paying money for native advertising, and I happened to look at the campaign. And I thought: Oh my gosh, this is 404’ing. What is going on? When I got home, I was ringing and emailing him. It took a day for me to fix it eventually via the Tech Desk, because I didn’t have my work laptop with me and could not remote login to fix it myself, and the developer was not answering his phone or emails.
To this day, some developers and content creators don’t understand that if they delete something from the same website, it can cause a 404 error or affect your rankings — and they forget to inform you that they removed the HTML pages. No matter where you go, to avoid 404 errors caused accidentally by wider teams, I usually crawl the website at least once a week – even if it is crawling high priority conversion or product pages using regular expression rules.”
Simon Heseltine
VP of Audience Growth at Cycle Trader
“I spoke at a conference in December in New York and the plan was for me to speak and to attend the conference. I ended up spending the entire second day of the conference sitting in a corner pulling data from SEMrush to see what was going on with our competitors. We all know that dev teams, no matter how much training you give them, or why things are a certain way, the moment you are out, they’re going to make a change to robots.txt or apply ‘noindex’ to the entire site. It is just Sod’s law that moment you step out the door. Suddenly everything changes and you get that frantic call and you are going to have to fix that.”
Did you know how the Site Audit tool can help you before, during and after vacation?
Before You Leave:
Re-run the campaign to receive the latest data. Check that the most profitable site pages are in order. Go to the Crawled Pages tab → Sort by Unique Pageviews (you first need to connect your GA) → Check the issues detected on the most visited site pages.
During Your Vacation:
If you need, you can set up the notifications; choose how often you would like your website to be audited in the settings and then put a tick in the checkbox to receive an email with results every time an audit is completed.
After Your Vacation:
When you come back to work, the easiest way to discover whether any changes to the site’s technical health have occurred is to visit the Compare Crawls tab. It shows any of your past site audits in a side-by-side comparison. Therefore, re-run the campaign once again and find tasks that need to be tackled or celebrate that you can go back on vacation.
#6 Take a Few Seconds to Make Sure Everything Is in Order, and Relax
Kevin Indig
VP SEO & CONTENT at G2
“Whenever I am on vacation, my people know how to reach me in case of emergency. I have to be honest, though, I never completely shut off. That is because I love my job but can also relax better when I know what is going on. It is something that works well for me. One way for me to get the 5-minute report is the SEMrush mobile app, on which I check daily visibility and average positions. I also make sure that there is always one person available, and not everyone goes on vacation at the same time.
I would love to see email reports that you can receive on a daily or weekly basis with customized high-level reports. It would also be great to get a notification if traffic drops below a certain percentage or rankings for a keyword.”
With the first one, you can see every day whether any important changes have occurred. With the second, you can monitor your domain ranking using our mobile phone app, even without having to use your laptop.
Alerts in Position Tracking:
These are custom triggers that will send you notifications alerting you if there are any notable changes in a Position Tracking campaign. The Alerts are customized, you can choose any parameters, for example, “Leaves the top 3” or “Loses more than 5”.
Download the Position Tracking App:
In April 2019, SEMrush released an app in the Google Play Store (Android) and iTunes Store (iOS). The app lets you follow all of your Position Tracking campaigns on the go, so you never miss a beat in your website’s improvements.
Andy Crestodina
Co-founder of Orbit Media
“Yes, Google updates sometimes affect rankings. But the big changes in Google aren’t about rankings; they are about click-through rates. They are about SERP features and the pixel depth at which organic listings appear. That is why people should monitor CTR as well as position.
Aside from SERP features and CTR, I actually get happy and excited about algorithm changes. Algorithm changes usually help the rankings of the best content. So you need to ask yourself: Do you have the best page on the internet for this topic? If the answer is yes, you should be happy when Google rankings change. They will generally benefit you.”
Simon Heseltine
VP of Audience Growth at Cycle Trader
“If you try to plan your vacation around Google, you are not going to have a vacation.”
#7 Synchronize with Clients and Set Up Automated Custom Reports in My Reports
Before leaving, you will most likely set an email auto-response for the period you are away, but you can also write a pre-vacation letter to your clients with the latest report and status of work. A good strategy is to send it a few days before you leave and include one question, “Are there any important things we need to discuss before the vacation period?”. This way, your client’s expectations coincide with your actions.
Consider automating the reporting. With the help of the SEMrush My Reports section, you can schedule custom reports that will be sent with data from SEMrush tools to both your and your client’s emails.
You can either use one of the SEMrush templates or create a report from scratch by simply dragging and dropping the relevant elements from the left menu panel into the Report Builder. The settings allow you to set the day and frequency in which the report is being sent (daily, weekly, or monthly).
Simon Heseltine
VP of Audience Growth at Cycle Trader
“One of the good things is that I have a team here, so I can actually push things at them when I leave, or when they leave I am here, and so we tend to now have somebody that is always covering everything. If I happen to be out on a Monday, the weekly reporting gets done no matter what and distributed to the executive team, so having that coverage makes things a lot easier.”
Grant Simmons
VP of Homes.com
“I am in-house, so it is generally different because there is a team here that will take up some of the slack. I still review traffic reports daily via email. Number two, like any SEO person, I do a little work on the side to keep current and informed as to what might be happening away from my in-house sector. From that standpoint, I think sending automated reports is the way to go, for both your client and yourself. So setting those up before you go is important because of the insights they can give you, and the potential issues they might highlight.”
#8 Keep an Eye On the Overall SERP Volatility
Luis Rodriguez
Web & SEO Lead LATAM at Uber
“I think that when you go on holidays, it is extremely important that you focus on resting.
I think that it is important to sync up on releases that you may have in those days, so there is at least an awareness. That would be my very first action. The second action would definitely be some conversion alerts when you lose more than a few rankings, or if you have fluctuation of rankings.
I think you need to be aware of whether your main money-making pages are indexed, are crawlable and are still converting as they were before.”
Google is constantly updating its ranking algorithm as Internet trends and search behavior evolve. SEMrush Sensor is a clever tool that provides insights into position fluctuations on a day-to-day basis. Sensor measures SERP volatility to indicate how much overall change is happening day-to-day. If there is a high score, it means that rankings are fluctuating and you could lose or gain positions.
Sign up for email notifications with the blue “Subscribe to notifications” button to receive a notification whenever Sensor notices significant fluctuations in rankings. And if you receive one, it is really important to immediately check your rankings in the Position Tracking app.
Some of Our Experts Gave Recommendations on the Right Times to Take a Vacation
Grant Simmons
VP of Homes.com
“E-commerce is definitely seasonal. I mean, you have got to be really careful around Amazon Prime Day or other seasonal events like Christmas, New Year, Cyber Monday or Black Friday (which have all morphed into multi-day sales events). For Homes.com seasonality, the worst time to be out is right after Christmas, between Christmas and New Year and the first few weeks of the year.
Generally, I would recommend understanding the seasonal trends of your business and knowing everyone’s vacation schedules. If you know key personnel are going on vacation, avoid major releases. It sounds simple, but for businesses that rely on organic traffic, your SEO folks HAVE TO review everything before releases roll out. If they are not available because of vacation schedules then postpone until they have had a chance to review and approve. The best risk-mitigation is to do nothing. :-)”
Kevin Indig
VP SEO & CONTENT at G2
“Google often rolls out updates in March, April, September, and October, so you want to be cautious with vacation around those times.”
Nitin Manchanda
Global Head of SEO at Omio
“You can’t miss the European summer because it is crucial for business. So, better planning is your friend here. Well, for Omio, (focusing on the European market mostly at the moment) probably summertime is very critical as we really need to put out 200% to please users and search engines for better organic performance. So, a close look at the numbers — regular analysis and continuous shipping for better UX is needed during this time of the year. Winter is a bit more relaxed, comparatively.”
But remember:
Andy Crestodina
Co-founder of Orbit Media
“SEO emergencies are unusual. We are not firefighters. We are not paramedics saving lives. If you are swimming in a pool and your client is calling, there would be no reason to drop your vacation and start working. It can wait until you are back in the office. If you wanted to answer emergency calls, you would have been a doctor.”
#9 Stay in the Loop
Luis Rodriguez
Web & SEO Lead LATAM at Uber
“A few years ago, in a different company, there was a launch of a page in Thailand. And at that time I was basically in charge of all acquisition products. One of those parts was the home page and the sign-up page.
During my holidays the King of Thailand died and the government sent a notification to all websites, basically to all businesses registered, that they needed to change the color code to black and white and that they needed to publish a page with a message saying that the king had died. And that page needed to be indexed, because one of the ways that they needed to check it was if they could find that page. And whenever somebody would search for our company name the message needed to be present.
So that was like total mourning of the country. We needed to start connecting and started speaking with a lot of people to launch the page and to get it indexed and to get it ranked basically. So that was a very interesting experience and that is why I was saying that the search console experience on mobile is just not good. It is very difficult to access different functionality beyond seeing the graphs. So that was pretty interesting at the end. We did launch the page and we were black and white for quite a few days.”
It is not necessary to read all the SEO news, but experience shows that SEO specialists live their work so much that you are somehow in the loop:
Michelle Wilding-Baker
Senior Marketing Consultant at Oh Mishy ltd.
“I can’t speak for all SEOs but for most of us it is a lifestyle choice. We love it. You are online anyway so you are always going to think about SEO as you experience the web and social media. It is my life whether I am on vacation, on the tube or not working on the weekends. I have got a lot of friends related to SEO, so in my WhatsApp groups and Twitter feed, I have got SEOs retweeting things, new articles, etc. SEO is so fast-paced and forever evolving, so it pays to always be exposed. You learn a lot from your networks.”
Simon Heseltine
VP of Audience Growth at Cycle Trader
“If something big happens, even if I try and turn off and not see what Barry Schwartz is tweeting every five minutes, I will hear the big news in those groups anyway.”
Nitin Manchanda
Global Head of SEO at Omio
“I am active everywhere. I know the right set of people/handles to follow for the right topics. I have also been going to conferences, attending webinars, reading articles on a regular basis to keep myself up-to-date with what is happening in the ever-changing SEO world.
Knowing what is happening around you in the SEO world is really important. You can learn a lot from others, you can share your learnings, you can discuss any topic where you are struggling to find the next steps, and a lot more. I would totally recommend this if you are an SEO and not yet doing all this.”
It is great to get a break, especially after busy months of working on SEO, but Google updates can happen at any time. It is difficult not to think of work on vacation, even if you strongly trust your team. But we hope that with this checklist you will be able to set up a system so that your efforts at work are not needed while you climb mountains, swim in the ocean, or do important personal things for yourself.
Thanks to all of our experts for their great tips.
We really appreciate all the insights and recommendations that will help us take a more relaxed vacation.
If you need to rest, set the automated reports, install the Position Tracking mobile app, and put a tick in front of all other items on this checklist. And then, have a wonderful vacation!
On October 25, 2019, Search Engine Watch will host the second annual Transformation of Search Summit, in partnership with ClickZ. The event will take place at Convene in Midtown, New York City.
Transformation of Search Summit 2019 speakers + agenda
We’ve gathered a great list of search marketing pros to share their knowledge and experience at this event.
Whitepaper
Carolyn Shelby from the Walt Disney Company will kick off the morning sharing insights from her work as SEO Manager of Audience Development. She’ll explore overarching trends in search and what we can expect to change in the next year. From the shift from search to discovery to the changing balance of paid versus organic, from data concerns to the changing consumer journey, this session will touch on key themes all marketers should keep top of mind.
Michael Akkerman of Pinterest will follow with Dave Fall of BrandNetworks in a session titled “You’ll Know it When You See it: The Future of Ecommerce is Visual.” Together, they’ll discuss how marketers can inspire consumers and bring magic back to sometimes impersonal online experiences. What options exist for brands looking to create more visual discovery of their products and services?
Courtney Messerli of Goop will give expertise on optimizing for YouTube. As the second largest search engine with more than 1.9 billion monthly users, YouTube offers a huge opportunity for brands to expand their reach. She’ll give insight on video optimization as well as expectations for the role of video in the future of search.
Other speakers include:
John Shehata, VP of Audience Development Strategy at Conde Nast
Noël Reilly, Strategic Account Director at Microsoft
Guillaume Conteville, SVP, Global Digital Marketing at Mastercard
John Denny, VP Ecommerce & Digital Marketing at CAVU Venture Partners
Allen Hammock, Global Strategist for Search at Kenshoo
Stephen Kraus, Head of Digital Insights at Jumpshot
Why should you attend this event?
What makes the Transformation of Search Summit special, you ask?
By attending this event, you’ll be able to:
Connect with 350+ senior search, digital, and ecommerce marketers from global brands
Hear from renowned experts from across the industry
Participate in an unparalleled, unique platform to dissect the current landscape
Be immersed into a strategic deep-dive into the future of search marketing
Share actionable search tactics on how you can capitalize on and protect your business from digital advances
Collaborate with your peers about where the industry predicts search is heading
Take away real insights designed to address your business needs
Last year, 59% of attendees were business leaders (C-level, partner, VP) and directors from across four continents.
To view a sample of this year’s delegate list, see here.
Who should attend?
We’ve designed this event to be equal parts strategic and tactical, designed for senior leaders as well as practitioners.
This might include:
C-suite leaders looking to understand the changing role that search plays within their organizations
Head/Director/SVP/VP of Marketing looking to understand the changing role of search in customers’ paths to purchase, impact of technologies on performance, spend, ROI, budgeting, etc.
Head/Director/SVP/VP of Search/SEO/PPC looking to understand the impact of new technologies and consumer trends on how to best evolve their search marketing strategies
Industries represented span publishing, retail/ecommerce, SaaS, agencies, consultancies, financial services, and more.
Last year saw attendees from brands including Amazon, Sprint, Adobe, L’Oreal, Yext, KPMG, J.P. Morgan, Xerox, Bloomberg, and Wunderman, among many others:
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When / where?
This one-day event will take place at a lovely venue called Convene, located in Midtown Manhattan at 46th St and 6th Ave.
Sessions will run from 9am to 5pm, and will be followed by a drinks reception.
Lunch, snacks, coffee, etc. will be served throughout the day.
Thank you to our partners
This event wouldn’t be what it is without the support of our partners:
Catalyst
Fospha
Kenshoo
Jumpshot
SEOClarity
Synup
And we’d like to extend a big thank you to each of them.
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Are you putting enough thought into your meta description tags? If not, you’re missing out. Yes, your meta description tag should describe your post but many companies and websites will go well beyond that to carefully craft descriptions that can massively increase their click-through rate from search engines.
You can do the same. We’re going to take a look at nine types of meta descriptions that can help you get more clicks.
For each, I’ll walk you through an example, showing you what’s working well with that meta description tag and what it could potentially be doing better.
You don’t have to pick just one of these methods to use. You might want to focus on a particular angle, like writing a meta description tag that’s “call-to-action” focused but add in something else too like power words or a USP.
Here are nine different ways you can approach meta description tags:
1. Clarity focused
Meta description tags should be clear, letting the searcher know what they’re going to get. After all, if you confuse people, they’re not going to click through.
What works well
This description takes a “what it says on the tin” approach in describing the website. It’s very clear about who the target audience is – “nerds and average Joes” rather than, for instance, hardcore bodybuilders. It also clearly and succinctly explains the benefits the site can provide for the searcher with the description line, “lose weight, get stronger, live better”.
Room for improvement
The title tag and meta description are repetitive. The second part of the title tag (after the colon) is the same as the second sentence in the meta description. It would read better if these were both different, this would also provide room to give more information or benefits.
The title tag also appears to be targeting generic keywords like “lose weight”, so it might be better to focus on more specific keywords here.
2. USP focused
A “USP” is a company’s “unique selling point”. It’s something that distinguishes their product from all the other similar products out there. The USP could be based on added value, quality, service, speed, advanced features, or almost anything else that acts as a differentiator.
Leading with a USP can work particularly work well for site homepages, where the meta description might otherwise seem rather generic.
What works well
Zappos is well known for its outstanding customer support and in the United States, it’s often considered the gold standard for online businesses. Here, Zappos communicates this through several strong USPs like “free shipping and returns”, “1000s of styles”, “365-day return policy”, and “24/7 customer service”.
The word “legendary” helps emphasize how Zappos is famed for its customer service and makes them sound a bit more epic. (See point six for more on using power words in your meta description tag.)
Room for improvement
This is a little picky, but all caps plus an exclamation point for “GET FREE SHIPPING & RETURNS!” comes across as a little shouty. It makes it seem like Zappos is trying a bit too hard, and doesn’t really convey quite the right feel for a large, professional company.
3. Question focused
People tend to turn to search engines because they’ve got a question so why not ask them one to help show that you know what they’re looking for?
This is my go-to type of meta description when I’m struggling with ideas and it works in almost all contexts.
What works well
If someone’s searching for SEO tips, asking if they’re interested in learning more about SEO will almost certainly get a positive response – they’re hardly going to say “nope”! The inclusion of “in 2019” helps suggest that the advice provided will be up-to-date, and “key trends” also ties in with this, indicating that this article will focus on tips that follow the latest thinking in the SEO industry.
Room for improvement
This is very picky, but the URL and the date stamp that appear immediately before this meta description tag both include “2018”. It’s obvious if you think about why this is the case. This post was published at the end of 2018, looking toward trends in 2019 but it could create a brief moment of confusion for a searcher who’s scanning through results quickly.
4. Purpose-focused
In some cases, it might be appropriate to emphasize a greater purpose behind your website, whether that’s a particular corporate value or a very practical way in which you make a difference. This can provide searchers with an additional incentive to check out your site rather than the others.
What works well
TOMS’ purpose is very clear from this short, easy-to-read description. They’re not driven by profit, but instead by helping others. Even if the searcher hasn’t heard of them and their “One for One” policy, it’s clear what it means from the context and the ® icon helps indicate that it’s a recognized and registered policy.
Room for improvement
It isn’t actually clear what TOMS sells. They started as a company selling shoes and matching each pair sold with a new pair given to a child in need. They now sell shoes and sunglasses, but you wouldn’t know that from the meta description tag above.
Note: Since the initial research for this post, TOMS has indeed updated their title tag to include shoes and sunglasses, but their meta description tag still uses the rather generic word “product”.
5. Call-to-action focused
Providing a call-to-action in your meta description tag might sound unusual, but for many products, it makes great sense. A clear call-to-action can prompt searchers not only to click but to also do something once they arrive on your site.
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What works well
The call to action is both clear and repeated with statements like “Download the full version” and “Start your free trial today”. Having it at both the start and end of the meta description emphasizes it, especially with the word “free” being used in both places.
Room for improvement
The second sentence of the meta description tag is fairly generic, “photos, images, 3D artwork and more”. Given that Adobe is a huge brand, it might be worth it for them to try a little harder here to add more appeal to creative types, perhaps by using some stronger power words. (See point seven)
6. Offer focused
This type of description combines a question or a point of curiosity with specific offers to entice readers to click through.
What works well
Starting with a question, as we’ve seen already, can help get an easy “yes”. The offers here sound impressively good, a four-star London hotel for £21 definitely sounds attractive. Including details of “The Savoy” makes it clear that KAYAK isn’t just for bargain hunters, though, and includes prestigious hotels too.
Room for improvement
I’m a bit of a stickler for making sure meta descriptions are within the limits and not truncated with the “…” at the end, but some SEOs feel this approach entices the user to click through. You might want to try using an SEO tool that helps check the meta content preview for length and strength, and see how it works for you.
It’s a small detail, but it seems a little odd that KAYAK has “3 stars from £33” and “4 stars+ from £21” – which is significantly cheaper. Obviously, there are lots of reasons this could be the case (e.g. location, special details) but it might cause a brief moment of confusion or even skepticism for the reader.
7. Power words focused
Focusing on power words like “incredible”, “powerful”, “secret”, “little-known”, and so on can help make your meta description tag stand out. Smart Blogger has an enormous list of power words here if you need some more suggestions. Be careful to not overdo it, though. If you stuff your keyword description with power words, it’ll look over-hyped.
What works well
The words “free” and “expert” both work well to grab attention. “Free” is always a good promise and “expert” implies that this advice will be well worth following and ensures that it will go beyond the basics. In the final sentence, “complete” is also a good power word as it suggests the searcher won’t need to turn to any other resource if they use this one.
Room for improvement
The sentence “Get your complete online career advice service” reads rather oddly. It reads more like it’s been optimized for search engines rather than for the people reading it. I’d suggest something like “We’re your complete online career advice service” or “Use our complete online career advice service” (and even those might sound a little over-optimized).
8. Special characters focused
Including symbols and emojis in your meta description tag can help it visually stand out in a sea of words. Depending on your brand, it could tie in well with your values. For example, if you want to come across as playful, or if you’re a brand aimed at teens you could focus on conveying the “fun” element.
Keep in mind that some searchers may react negatively to symbols and emojis, considering them unprofessional or even spammy.
What works well
The green boxes with check marks catch the searcher’s eye, drawing them to the listing. They help to highlight key points in the listing with “the best deals”, “the lowest prices”, and “great savings”.
Room for improvement
This meta description tag is written in a rather generic way probably because eBay has automatically created it according to a set of rules. The exact same description could be used for many other pages with just the words “Temporary Tattoos” changed, so it lacks relevance.
9. Solution-focused
One final approach to meta description tags is to focus on the solution or win that you’re providing for searchers. This type of meta description will promise something that the searcher will achieve through buying from the website or in some cases, simply from reading the content on a site.
What works well
This meta description tag starts with a question that searchers are very likely to say “yes” to. The question “Want to learn how to snowboard in a day?” offers a clear outcome for the reader and also brings in a USP with “the quickest training method” implying that it’s quicker than other similar companies.
Room for improvement
“Recreational standard” lacks clarity, and sounds rather like in-house lingo. Total beginners may not know what this really means, so it would be better to use language that their target audience will understand.
Meta descriptions can make or break how much SEO traffic you get. A great meta description tag will allow any page (including your homepage) to punch above its weight on Google, getting you more clicks through an increased-click through rate, potentially even a higher ranking.
Joe Williams is founder of Tribe SEO. He can be found on Twitter at @joetheseo.
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