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Friday, 30 November 2018

Local Search Ranking Factors 2018: Local Today, Key Takeaways, and the Future

Thursday, 29 November 2018

Marketing Day: Amazon’s Cyber Monday, Facebook MRC viewability audit, YouTube Stories

Here’s our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.

From Marketing Land:

Recent Headlines From MarTech Today, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Marketing Technology:

Online Marketing News From Around The Web:

About The Author

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.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.

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

For more SEO, PPC, internet marketing news please check out https://news.scott.services

Why not check out our SEO, PPC marketing services at https://www.scott.services

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The post Marketing Day: Amazon’s Cyber Monday, Facebook MRC viewability audit, YouTube Stories appeared first on Scott.Services Online Marketing News.

source https://news.scott.services/marketing-day-amazons-cyber-monday-facebook-mrc-viewability-audit-youtube-stories/

Daily Search Forum Recap: November 29, 2018

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Branded Searches In Google My Business Insights
Last month, Google introduced a new group of analytics data in Google My Business Insights called “branded” searches. Google defined them as “Customers who find your listing searching for a brand related to your business.” Joy Hawkins met with Google and had a chance to clarify with examples what these types of searches are.
Google Beta Testers Wanted For The Search Console Performance Report
Google is once again looking for beta testers to help improve the Google Search Console Performance report. John Mueller of Google posted on Twitter saying “we’re looking to make some changes and would love to get your feedback, especially if you use the report regularly & have a kinda complex site.”
Google Tests Dropping The Knowledge Panel From Search Results
Google has confirmed in the Google Web Search Help forums that they are running a test where the search results page shows no knowledge panel. The knowledge panel on desktop typically shows up on the right of the page when there is a match for a name, brand, company, facts, etc. Andy from Google confirmed Google is testing not showing it to some searchers.
Google To Split Google News User & Publisher Forums
Forever, Google had a single Google forum for both Google News consumers (i.e. searchers) and publishers (news publications) to share and post their complaints in. So you would have people complaining about the quality of the Google News results and at the same time publishers complaining that their site is not showing up.
Google Releases Google My Business API v4.3
Google has released version 4.3 of the Google My Business API. Version 4.2 was released in August and this new release brings new functionality including the ability to read and respond to customer Q&A, read reviews in bulk, Identify unclaimed locations and more.
Meet The Captain Of SEO From Vietnam
Did you ever meet the captain of SEO? If not, you can, he is from Hội An in Vietnam – he has a boat named Captain SEO. Eli Schwartz, an SEO I’ve known for a long time shared the photo on Facebook.

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

Why you should care

Amazon remained king of a record breaking weekend, garnering 28 percent of all web sales over the holiday weekend, not counting its Prime Now and Fresh divisions. That is seven times its nearest online competitor, Best Buy.

Overall, online stores sold $7.9 billion worth of goods on Cyber Monday, almost 20 percent higher than last year, Adobe reported. That tops Black Friday’s $6.2 billion. Saturday and Sunday set their own records as the biggest online shopping weekend, with $6.4 billion.

Amazon itself said that it sold more products during the “Turkey 5” — the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday — than in any previous five days in its history. Amazon didn’t reveal a breakdown sales figures, but did say it shipped over 180 million items in those five days. It also saw a 20 percent boost in sales from small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) on Black Friday, compared to last year. This is an area the company has been particularly focused on with efforts such as “Storefronts” section featuring products from more than 20,000 SMBs.

Jeff Wilke, CEO for Amazon Worldwide Consumer, pointed to several factors for his company’s continued retail success including, “curated gift guides, convenient shopping experiences, incredible product selection, and free shipping with no minimum purchase amount.”

More on holiday commerce trends

Including both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Amazon said it sold about 18 million toys and 13 million fashion items.
The top sellers: the Echo Dot Alexa, followed by AncestryDNA’s ethnicity testing kit and the Bose QuietComfort 25 Acoustic Noise Canceling Headphones for Apple devices.
Amazon wasn’t alone in its success. Other major retailers also saw banner holiday weekend boosts for their online sales: Best Buy was up 36 percent, Target increased 47 percent and Walmart jumped 76 percent, Rakuten Intelligence said.

About The Author

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.

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

For more SEO, PPC, internet marketing news please check out https://news.scott.services

Why not check out our SEO, PPC marketing services at https://www.scott.services

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The post Move over, Prime Day. Amazon’s Cyber Monday takes the crown. appeared first on Scott.Services Online Marketing News.

source https://news.scott.services/move-over-prime-day-amazons-cyber-monday-takes-the-crown/

YouTube launches Stories feature for creators with 10K subscribers

YouTube has launched its own version of Stories, giving creators with 10,000 or more subscribers access to the new content feature. First launched by Snapchat, Stories have become a popular form of content across Facebook, Instagram. YouTube’s version will keep Stories accessible in the mobile app for up a period of seven days — lengthening exposure for content from creators, influencers and brands that have sizable followers on the platform.

Why marketers should care

YouTube is the latest to rip off Snapchat’s innovative format. Instead of a one-time post that falls into the ether of timeline feeds, the packaging of multiple pieces into Stories resonate with users and offer more flexibility when it comes to content creation with the ability to add text or stickers across images and videos. YouTube is giving creators the ability to broadcast Stories on channels with 10,000 or more subscribers.

The feature is designed specifically for YouTube’s creator community, but it applies to brands and agencies managing a YouTube channel with sizeable follower numbers. Also, because YouTube creators often double as the platform’s more popular influencers, any brand that has a relationship with a creator would be benefit from a product promotion within a YouTube Stories video as the content has a longer shelf-life than a regular video.

YouTube says its Stories may appear for subscribers on the Subscriptions tab and to non-subscribers on the home page, as well as in the “Up Next” list displayed below a video being watched. It also reported that it has been testing Stories with a small group of creators over the past year and designed the format based on feedback from its beta group.

The Stories format continues to grow in popularity. Google debuted its own AMP Story format for search in February, now complete with ads support. In June, Instagram boasted more than 400 million users were taking advantage of Stories on the app. Facebook has placed its version of Stories atop its News Feed, to drive more engagement with users and began placing ads within Stories in September.

Marketing Land has asked YouTube whether or not it plans to insert ads into Stories, and will update this article when we receive a response.

More on YouTube Stories

To record a Story, select the “Create Story” option from the video camera icon in the YouTube mobile app. Creators can add text, music, filter-effects and stickers to their Stories.
Viewers will be able to comment on Stories same as videos, and rate them with the thumbs up or thumbs down icon.
YouTube says its Stories include the same comment moderation tools available for video uploads.

About The Author

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

For more SEO, PPC, internet marketing news please check out https://news.scott.services

Why not check out our SEO, PPC marketing services at https://www.scott.services

We’re also on:
https://www.facebook.com/scottdotservices/
https://twitter.com/scottdsmith
https://plus.google.com/112865305341039147737

The post YouTube launches Stories feature for creators with 10K subscribers appeared first on Scott.Services Online Marketing News.

source https://news.scott.services/youtube-launches-stories-feature-for-creators-with-10k-subscribers/

Decoding SEO for business leaders: 5 tips to get stakeholders on board

As SEO professionals, when we present our strategy and project ideas, we are often met with blank stares from business stakeholders. They are not able to connect the dots from SEO jargon to business goals.

And my fellow SEO colleagues, we need to own this one. Every so often we forget to speak in simple language that is understood by all. We do tend to speak in acronyms and codes.

In today’s digital world, we buy and sell online, we pay our bills and make our deposits online. When the first instinct of the users is to “Google” the products or services they want, the business needs to ensure they provide content that meets the user’s search intent. Search Engine Optimization plays a pivotal role in ensuring this content is optimized and available for search engines to display to the end users.

Organic search contributes significantly to the website performance, as well as plays a critical role in the buyer journey, which could lead to a conversion or an engagement. Without proper SEO strategies in place, users will face difficulty locating your content and instead find your competitors.

Thus, understanding SEO is essential to overall business success — and we need to be able to decode that message for all business leaders to understand and value.

Know your audience

First off, you must know who you are talking to when you are explaining SEO. Set a foundation, that it’s about users, rather than search engine bots. Typically, the non-SEO professionals consider SEO to be a technique to outsmart search engine bots and algorithms to rank number one in Google search results. Well, we all know that is not how things work. As a matter of fact, there are dozens of articles on mistakes to avoid.

Leverage your competition

Show and tell always works. Walk your business stakeholder through an actual keyword search on Google and let them observe how the competition is dominating the search results. Then slowly clarify, like peeling an onion, why the competitor is performing better and where do gaps exist in the internal strategy. Essentially breaking it down in simpler terminology. Show how the competition has out-maneuvered you with optimized content, appropriate keywords targeting, and applied technical best practices to ensure the website is visible and creditable.

Get on hands on

User experience plays a major role in how search engines crawl and understand the website. When UX teams integrates SEO best practices, the websites are easily discoverable in search, not to mention it leads to effective user experience. In lieu of justifying the business holder that the site navigation is broken, demonstrate how difficult it is to search and navigate to the desired pages. Rather than stating that if a page is taking 3-5 seconds to load, it might be slow, let them experience the frustration of a slow page load. These are critical experiences that lets the story develop itself.

Work with web development

If you are trying to gather backing for a technical project, we need to be extra careful. Algorithm, tags or metadata are not widely understood terms. To an untrained ear all this sounds like gibberish. It will be beneficial if you explain the advantage each element delivers, instead of narrating a variety of technical terms.

For example, instead of saying we need to implement noindex tags, you might want to say, “we need to secure the confidential / private content that is currently getting displayed publicly.”

Instead of asking for implementation of Hreflang, you might want to state “this will allow the business to indicate to the search engines the different web pages in alternate languages that exist and their relationship.”

Get funded

Why should the business fund the project? How does SEO contribute to the bottom line? Advocating SEO successfully means selling to the business stakeholders on the benefits SEO brings. Demonstrate how SEO impacts each stage of the user journey and how the SEO project would bring in effectiveness.

First order of the day is to understand what are the business goals. Usually, it is how to increase revenue. Here make data your friend. Present the data on how much traffic is being attracted organically and how organic users are engaging with the site. What amount of revenue is generated by organic users, the return on investment and of course the repeat buy stats.

Once you show the funnel and profitability of the channel, the buy-in from stakeholders is easy. Then you can break into individual projects and how these projects impact the buyer’s journey. Consider your execution plan, define and specify details about the people and cost required.

The better you explain SEO, the more likely your stakeholder will buy in the project and provide funding for execution.

Conclusion

SEO can be easily understood by anyone as long as you put it in a language that they will be able to recognize. Simplify your message and make it into comprehensible concepts, which not only explain what it is, but why it works.

Tanu Javeri is Sr. Global SEO Strategist, Performance and Programmatic Marketing at IBM.

How We Train PPC Experts

I work with a team full of lifelong learners. It is a requirement to work at Hanapin. Gotta have that thirst for knowledge. Something happens, though, when you have a diverse team with varying depths of PPC knowledge: one-size-fits-all training doesn’t work. One-size-fits-most doesn’t work. This is a problem I ran into when I sat down with my colleague to construct our training program for 2019.

How do you deliver group training that engages every team member at every stage in their careers? How do you do it without outsourcing everything?

In this post, I’ll walk you through Hanapin’s newest approach to training our team through all stages of development. I’ll introduce you to three Hanapin Heroes and work through how we will approach training for each of them.

Training an Agency of Experts

As an agency, we want our people to have depth of knowledge, creative solutions, and industry-leading expertise. Unless someone is going to pay us to educate and train ourselves day in and day out, having the knowledge alone doesn’t pay the bills. We actually have to put it to good use. Which is why we ask our team to set aside about 6 hours a month for training.

Back in the day, we could spend a whole day together, teaching each other, challenging ourselves to learn something new and share that information with our team, and creating a slew of best practices for our agency. But we were small and new and the industry was starting to grow up a bit and us with it. So it was easy to be inclusive with our material.

Fast forward to today. As you will see by my very generalized examples of a team’s breadth of capabilities, putting a team of 50 in a room together and throwing information around hoping different bits stick to different groups of people is chaotic and fruitless. We needed to allow our teammates to grow in ways that suited their goals. So let’s meet a few members of the team.

Katie Conversion: New To The Industry

Katie is a Production Associate. Katie was hired 4 months ago. Previously in B2B sales, she changed her career trajectory and headed into the world of PPC. She knows her way around a spreadsheet well enough. Bids, budgets, quality score, programmatic, conversion rate optimization? Katie is just now getting comfortable with PPC jargon.

Katie’s training should be:

Technical skill heavy
Process oriented
Broad views
Building a toolkit of Common Practices

Trent Traffic

Trent is an account manager. He has been with the agency for 2 years with 3+ years prior PPC experience. He really wants to start focusing on Amazon and improve his shopping campaign skills. He hates lectures and prefers collaboration.

Trent’s Training should be:

Advanced strategy tactics
Workshop-based/hands-on
Deep-dive into single topic

Daphne Display

Daphne is an Associate Director. She is new to the role, but has been in the PPC industry for 6 years. She oversees 2 XL Enterprise Accounts and advises on a slew of B2B, B2C, Ecomm, and Lead Gen clients. She has an organic growth goal she needs to hit. She wants to grow her accounts and her team. She craves innovation.

Daphne’s training should be:

Filled with the latest industry trends
Advanced marketing strategy
Ways to develop herself and her team

In the past, we have had a full day of training devoted to 1 topic. Here’s what an agenda looked like:

Happy training day, team! Today we are taking a deep dive into Facebook.

Getting started with campaign options
Lookalikes: how do you use them?
Brand safety
Creating a social strategy for B2B

Here’s how each member of the team might absorb that information:

Katie: I need to know all of this. This is all new information. This is great. But I don’t work on any accounts that use this yet. I guess I’ll just put this in my back pocket for later.

Trent: *Yawn* Old news. I’ve been running FB campaigns forever. Speaking of Facebook, I think I’ll take a look at my best friend’s honeymoon photos. (No one I work with would ever be this disengaged, right team?)

Daphne: Oh good. I’m glad we are covering this. My team needs to know this. Are they paying attention? I have to get that email out to that really important client asap. But I should be paying attention. Are they going to tell me something new? No? This is what I already know. No worries. I’ll put out some starter questions and boost discussion.

I took a course on training and something that stuck with me was this: if at least 1 person learned something and was engaged and got something from the class, then you have done your job. Yeah, true, I guess. But I think leading training for the whole team means the whole team should walk away with something.

Solution: Individualized Group Training

Paradoxes. We love them here at Hanapin. Individual Group Training? It makes no sense! And truthfully, it doesn’t. But it is the best way I can describe it. Lumping multi-experienced individuals into one training wasn’t working. So we thought long and hard about three things:

Agency Growth Goals
Career development
Engagement

And here is the new structure for our day of training. segmented approach to ppc training

Integrated marketing

We all come from different backgrounds. Just because you studied marketing 6 years ago at university doesn’t mean you know PPC. And just because you know PPC through working in the industry for 3 years doesn’t mean you have a foundational knowledge of marketing. Integrated marketing is taking a branch of marketing strategy and understanding how it works in tandem with a PPC strategy. No one PPCs in a black hole. Even though our clients come to us because they need an expert in PPC doesn’t mean that they are solely relying on PPC to drive revenue.

integrated marketing topics

We will spend a portion of our day hearing from field experts: marketing professors, our own marketing team, CRO experts, SEO teams.

Our Take

Are you still using the phrase “Best Practice” to describe optimizations? If you are, that is fine. It may work for you. But in the past year or so, at an agency our size, it is a bit taboo to say “best practice”. We have clients of all shapes and sizes and “best practice” becomes increasingly problematic. Even if we have two clients who are in the same vertical, they may have different budgets and different goals. So even though we don’t really have a “best practice” for specific initiatives, we still need to have a plan.

Our Take is designed for small groups. Something is shifting in the industry. What is our stance? How do we measure success? The idea behind Our Take is to build an understanding of the topic, source solutions from the team, and create processes to implement in our accounts.

our take on researching ppc industry developments

For instance, with the increase of AI and the subsequent increase of available ad types, conventional ad testing is dead. But this all crept up on us. We didn’t wake up one day and have to redo everything we normally do with ads. It was slow and we adapted. But we forgot to develop tools and processes to help us manage the results and glean actionable insights.

An Our Take session might talk about the future of ads, explore AI, and challenge the team to develop a tool to assist in ad testing, build a report template for clients, and create case studies on multi-ad type testing.

Experience Tracks

Here is where the individualized training comes into play. For the afternoon session of training, the group will be split into 3. How do you know what group you belong in? It is a little bit based on tenure and a little bit more based on experiences (note the ‘s’ at the end). Where are you in your career? What can you learn that will make the most impact for you and your clients/department/agency?

ppc training tracks

The Strategy Track might feature “how-to’s” to assist with technical capability development. For example: how to build a custom bid template for multi-brand accounts.

The Growth Track is more focused on big picture. This track could include leadership development sessions but also include training on market expansion.

And finally, the Innovation Track is devoted to moving the agency forward in capabilities, efficiencies, and growth. These sessions would be small group SWOT breakouts, individual projects, or leadership-dictated hot-button issues.

Share the Wealth (of Knowledge)

The cool thing about working in an agency full of experts is that we are our own best resource. While there might be a need for us to bring in industry experts to lead us in training, for the most part we have the skills we need to train each other. We have the responsibility to each other to share what we know. Albert Einstein believed the only source of knowledge was experience. Guess what? We have buckets of experience.

Technically Speaking

Beyond the strategy and the innovation and the philosophy, teammates like Katie still need some technical skill training. With a lot of things PPC, it is trial by fire. You can listen to the philosophy of a strategy till the cows come home but it isn’t going to sink in until you actually get into a platform and build something from scratch.

We still want to equip our team with a baseline knowledge of platforms and tools. Which is why we will be devoting 1.5 hours a month to technical skill training. Each month will offer 4 topics. You get to choose which class to take to sharpen your skills.

PPC 4 Life

I don’t think we will ever reach a point in our industry where we will be like “Welp, that’s it! We know everything!” So I encourage you to keep your skills honed, your brains open, and ask for on-going training. And if all else fails, just keep coming back to PPC Hero for the latest.

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

For more SEO, PPC, internet marketing news please check out https://news.scott.services

Why not check out our SEO, PPC marketing services at https://www.scott.services

We’re also on:
https://www.facebook.com/scottdotservices/
https://twitter.com/scottdsmith
https://plus.google.com/112865305341039147737

The post How We Train PPC Experts appeared first on Scott.Services Online Marketing News.

source https://news.scott.services/how-we-train-ppc-experts/

Friday, 30 November 2018

Thursday, 29 November 2018

From Marketing Land:

Recent Headlines From MarTech Today, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Marketing Technology:

Online Marketing News From Around The Web:

About The Author

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Why you should care

More on holiday commerce trends

About The Author

Why marketers should care

More on YouTube Stories

About The Author

Know your audience

Leverage your competition

Get on hands on

Share this article

Related articles

Work with web development

Get funded

Conclusion

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

Related reading

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

Training an Agency of Experts

Katie Conversion: New To The Industry

Trent Traffic

Daphne Display

Solution: Individualized Group Training

Integrated marketing

Our Take

Experience Tracks

Share the Wealth (of Knowledge)

Technically Speaking

PPC 4 Life