Google Not Indexing New Content Again? Testing…

Google may not be indexing new content once again. This post will act as a test to see if Google is able to index this story in a timely fashion. It seems the last time Google has indexed a new piece of content on the NY Times or Wall Street Journal was over an hour ago, and these sites publish content all the time.

Here are screen shots of Google News sorted by most recent for these two publications (click to enlarge the images):

Earlier this month, Google was unable to index new content for 24 hours or so – it was resolved the next morning. This happened again in April and also a de-indexing issue prior to that. Google did issue an explanation on April 13th about these issues but it seems we might be having another issue with indexing again.

@dannysullivan Any reports of issues related to Google indexing new content again? Seeing the same. cc:@rustybrick

— Vlad Rappoport (@vladrpt) August 20, 2019

Are you noticing indexing issues? Hopefully this is nothing – we will find out shortly after I post this at 3:20pm EDT.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

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

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Social media insights in a time of social distancing: The relationship between paid and non-paid social

30-second summary:

• A brand awareness campaign that includes paid search can result in more organic search traffic with an increase in branded search terms.
• With a large number of the world’s population now confined at home, people have turned to social media as an outlet to remain connected with family, friends, and work. This online behaviour is the intersection of paid, earned, shared, and owned marketing, or the PESO model.
• So, what happens when a company decides to increase or decrease their paid social media campaigns at a time when so many people have turned to social networks for connection, resources, and to just pass the time?
• JUST Media produced the following analytical findings across their accounts to help other marketers ensure their brand’s message is reaching the right audiences, their brightest minds, Jennifer LoMonaco and John Smith take you through the finest insights.

Marketing does not work in silos, and neither does life. 

A brand awareness campaign that includes paid search can result in more organic search traffic with an increase in branded search terms. A newsworthy event can result in additional organic searches or views on social networks, such as what we’re currently seeing. 

With a large number of the world’s population now confined at home, people have turned to social media as an outlet to remain connected with family, friends, and work. This online behaviour is the intersection of Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned marketing, or the PESO model.

So, what happens when a company decides to increase or decrease their paid social media campaigns at a time when so many people have turned to social networks for connection, resources, and to just pass the time?

At JUST Media, we run media planning and buying for some of the world’s most powerful enterprise technologies. We produced the following analytical findings across our accounts in an effort to help other marketers ensure their brand’s message is reaching the right audiences. 

Company A, shown below, had a paid social campaign running in 2020 and saw a positive trend with social traffic and engagement with an improvement in Cost per Engagement (one of their KPIs).

And, an uptick in click-through rate.

As the global pandemic spread and events were cancelled, schools and businesses closed, and shelter-in-place orders enacted, paid social was paused the week of 3/17/2020. In the chart below showing organic social traffic (measured in 1000’s), the 2020 graph has outpaced the 2019 graph all year. It isn’t until after the paid social budget was paused that we see the 2020 organic social traffic line dip below the 2019 line. 

You might wonder, though, how much of that is due to cutting the social budget vs. the overall global uncertainty with COVID 19. Let’s compare it to Company B, which left its paid social budget unchanged. This chart shows organic social traffic during the same time period as Company A, but notice the strong 2020 trend line that is outpacing 2019. There is no indication that 2020 cannot continue to outpace 2019.

Finally, let’s look at another example where Company C decided to boost its paid social media presence in 2020. Cost per click and (CPC) and cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) both saw efficiency with the higher budget.

Not only are the pre-click metrics showing improvement, but organic social traffic also shows an uptick. 

Notice that 2020 and 2019 organic social traffic is pretty close together until the 2nd and 3rd week of March when we start to see some distance where 2020 rises and maintains above 2019. It raises the floor and gets a larger return for the investment.

To further show the effect of paid social with organic social, let’s look in more detail at the last six weeks. The week of March 8 when so many companies implemented a mandatory work-from-home policy, there was some pull-back in the social strategy. The following week when the focus returned, organic social traffic rebounded to similar levels.

Beyond the traffic volume that social networks can provide is the engagement on these platforms by its users who are liking, sharing, and commenting on posts and ads. This engagement provides the opportunity for companies to interact with their customers at a time when face-to-face contact is not possible beyond a video conference call. Companies can also guide the conversation and initiate messaging with their customers. This is known as community management, and it can be powerful in an overall social strategy.

What we are seeing right now with clients who are active on social platforms is an increase in engagement. This means an increase in the opportunity for companies to interact with their clients at a time when businesses are closed, face time is diminished, and customers have an increased need in having their concerns and worries calmed.

Companies who have chosen to decrease their paid social presence or pause it together are likely not only seeing a drop in their paid social traffic, but also their organic social traffic, and if they are also not involved in a community management strategy, they are potentially missing a key opportunity to interact with their customers. Those companies that are maintaining their social presence through paid campaigns and community management will likely be better positioned for an upswing in the coming weeks and months when the world begins to emerge from the current situation.

Note: This is not a sponsored feature.

Jennifer LoMonaco is Director of Data and Analytics and John Smith is a Data Engineer at JUST Media.

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

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Six ways AI is revolutionizing ecommerce

30-second summary:

• The far-reaching AI applications in ecommerce allow businesses to increase their profits by optimizing and automating decision-making, right from web design to customer support.
• Right from identifying patterns from unstructured data sets to enabling businesses to offer a personalized experience.
• Here’s how AI is empowering the ecommerce industry.

The global revenue from artificial intelligence will reach $36 billion by 2025. A lot of that is because of the contribution of AI in empowering ecommerce including UX that directly impacts SEO. 

The far-reaching AI applications in ecommerce allow businesses to increase their profits by optimizing and automating decision-making, right from web design to customer support.

AI helps online businesses identify patterns from unstructured data sets and enables them to offer a personalized experience. Here’s how AI is empowering the ecommerce industry.

1. Rise of voice assistants and voice search

AI has the potential to increase ecommerce website accessibility and empower users through voice assistants. 

With bigger product directories and more information, AI-powered voice assistants allow customers to use natural language for reducing or eliminating manual effort, making it easier for them to accomplish tasks. 

Technological developments have made voice assistants and voice search highly capable of using AI. They now offer a robust speech recognition experience while the artificial intelligence aspect handles challenges like background noise and accents. 

Ecommerce bigwigs like Amazon already allow users to look for the best deals and purchase online with voice-controlled assistants. Unsurprisingly, voice commerce sales will hit the $40 billion mark by 2022.

2. Building estores from scratch

Web store design has grown exponentially in sophistication and scale in the last decade. In fact, it has become so advanced that AI is now doing the job for you. 

The combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning enables artificial design intelligence (ADI) tools to decipher creative rules and apply them independently. This allows the technology to automate web design work, going as far as to help users build estores from scratch. 

Powerful website builders like Wix offers AI-powered design assistance, which lets you create estores in as little as 30 minutes. The tool asks you a series of questions, including the type of website you want and your design preferences. Within 2 minutes, you get a customizable, fully-featured website that comes pre-populated with elements such as contact details and logos. Of course, you’re still able to tweak the design but this approach works great for users who want to get a website up and running fast. 

3. Chatbots: Enabling more sales and better customer service

AI-powered chatbots allow you to sell to the right person at the right time. No wonder 80% of businesses are estimated to start using chatbots in 2020. 

Customers, especially millennials, are tired of waiting long to speak to an actual representative when they call a company. They prefer chatbots that are faster and deal with inquiries more quickly, lowering the average wait time from 11 minutes to 45 seconds. 

Chatbots can be used to:

• Deliver 24 x 7 customer service to ensure global coverage
• Upsell based on the user’s past purchases
• Recover abandoned carts by sending well-planned reminders
• Answer customer questions on-the-go while they’re shopping
• Offer exclusive codes and coupons to customers
• Free up your manual customer service’s time to focus more on product/deal explanations and business development

The immediate response from a chatbot keeps your customers hooked and more likely to complete their purchases after receiving an immediate response. Also, personalized responses via a chatbot are a great enabler. In fact, if shoppers think they are getting a personalized deal, they may be tempted to follow-through.

4. Hyper personalized product recommendations

AI-powered product recommendations can grow ecommerce revenues by up to 16%. When a shopper creates an account with an ecommerce portal, every browsing session and transaction results in data. 

An AI algorithm can then process this data, to predict the products that this shopper is likely to purchase.  These hyper-personalized recommendations are valuable for the ecommerce platform (by promoting more product visibility and driving sales). 

Moreover, they benefit the consumer as well by reducing the cognitive effort that shoppers otherwise have to invest in going through dozens of products. Seamless product browsing and selection experience make a shopper come back to an ecommerce platform for more. This will translate into increased loyalty for e-retailers. 

5. Better inventory management and sales forecasting

Use AI-powered tools to manage your inventory with the strictest possible control, minus any manual effort. Store precisely what you require and optimize your stock levels at all times. 

Adding AI capabilities to an ecommerce stores inventory campaign helps avoid overstocking, thereby decreasing the amount of money held in goods, and freeing up space. 

Amazon uses AI to automate its inventory management process, reducing the time spent in moving products across storage hubs. 

AI also helps eretailers create consignments with intelligent volumetric weight calculations, such that logistics costs are minimized. In a similar way, AI can also help fine-tune the sales forecasting activity for any ecommerce company. This helps the e-retailer promote products that are much likely to sell. 

Dynamic A/B testing allows AI-powered sales forecasting solutions to always keep on optimizing their model, driving better results for businesses. 

6. Superior security for customer data 

The biggest responsibility for ecommerce stores is keeping customer data secure. 

Estores are vulnerable to fraudulent activities like hacking and need to be extra careful. Thankfully, AI helps increase the security of your database. 

Because of the integration of deep learning and AI into security solutions, ecommerce platforms keep common network vulnerabilities and spam at bay and keep customer data secure. 

AI can process huge volumes of exhaustive, repetitive data quickly and can nip fraudulent activities in the bud by detecting anomalies.

AI holds the power to improve the performance of ecommerce sites and forward-thinking retailers are using the technology to great effect. Online retailers are harnessing AI’s predictive capabilities to develop stronger relationships with customers by personalizing user experiences, thereby generating repeat business. For many ecommerce websites, AI provides an undeniable competitive advantage. However, it will soon become a part of everyday business and those that integrate it within their operations will stay one step ahead of the pack.

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

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Fresh Features & Functionalities: A Six Month Look back at What’s New in Moz Pro

If you’re anything like me, you might be wondering how the heck it’s already August — where did the first half of the year go? 

As we move into the last months of 2019, it’s a great time to reflect on what we’ve accomplished so far this year. And here at Moz, we’ve been hard at work getting a bunch of cool features out the door.

We’ve made these improvements with you in mind, to help your day-to-day workflows and make your experience in our tools easier and more efficient. Ready for a quick look back at the new functionalities we’ve rolled out? Let’s do it!

Not a Moz Pro user yet?

Start a free trial today!

Domain Authority 2.0

Gauging the strength of a website can be a complicated task. Moz’s Domain Authority (DA) metric has served the SEO industry for years as one such method of measurement. In March, we updated the algorithm that powers DA — to keep pace with the search engines and predict ranking ability better than ever before. You can use DA to identify the growth of your own site over time, understand the strength of your website against competitors, determine the difficulty to rank on a particular SERP, and much more.

Pro tip: Always use DA as a relative metric in comparison to your competitors’ sites, rather than as an absolute metric in isolation.

Want to know how others are using Moz Pro to get the competitive edge? See how TopSpot increased their organic traffic by 29 percent within 90 days of switching domains by leveraging Link Explorer, Page Authority, and DA.  

Read the Case Study

Keyword Clustering

Keyword clusters are groups of closely-related keywords — and tracking keywords as clusters (rather than as individual terms) allows you to more accurately track your ranking, understand your search visibility, and stay ahead of your competitors. In June, we introduced fresh functionality in Campaign setup that supports clustering of semantically-related keywords. We’ll even help you get started by automatically suggesting potential clusters and keywords you might want to track as part of these groups!

As you set up a Campaign to begin tracking a site, you’ll have the opportunity to group keywords into different clusters. Once you’ve got your Campaign set up, the Search Visibility graph in the Rankings section will allow you to compare multiple clusters to each other. To see a keyword cluster’s performance, use the filter. Click the plus sign, and type in the names of the clusters you’d like to compare. This will give you a visual representation for how each keyword cluster is performing – including which are your strongest topics, and which are your weakest, to identify what areas need more attention.

Pro tip: Consider building separate clusters for each of the product types you offer, the types of services your business provides, or related query types that you hope to rank for.

Bulk upload keywords by CSV

Speaking of labels and keyword clusters, we’ve made one of your most-requested features a reality and added the option to bulk upload keywords to a Campaign. Rather than adding keywords manually, use a CSV to quickly and easily upload keywords, with labels and locations tied to them. In your Tracked Keywords Overview, simply click Add Keywords and toggle to the Upload CSV tab.

Filter by SERP Feature in Keyword Lists

Having trouble prioritizing keywords? Identify opportunities for featured snippets and other SERP features faster than ever. If you already have a keyword list in Keyword Explorer, simply hop into the list and refresh all keywords. Once the list is refreshed, you’ll be able to quickly view, filter, and export SERP Feature data for your keywords.

Don’t have a list yet? Just add keywords from Keyword Explorer into a list, and you’ll be off and running!

Pro tip: Want the inside scoop on which content is most likely to win you a particular feature snippet type on a SERP? Use this filter to get a glimpse into which terms already have featured snippets; then apply what you’ve learned to drive your own content creation.

Advanced filtering in Keyword Suggestions

Keyword research can take even the savviest SEO quite a bit of time to navigate. Advanced filtering in Keyword Explorer helps you to keep your keyword research laser-focused and saves you major time and effort. Filter your keyword suggestions to include a particular term that is important to you— or exclude a term that you don’t need mucking up your suggestions list. Stack up your “includes” and “excludes” to refine your suggestions list and ensure you’re seeing the types of keywords that meet your needs.

Pro tip: Try excluding branded terms (your own, or your competitors’ branded terms) to keep keyword suggestions brand-agnostic.

Format annotations in Custom Reports

Custom Reports allow you to share your hard work and SEO efforts with stakeholders, providing the opportunity to pull in areas of your Moz Pro Campaign. Drag and drop modules from your Campaign into your custom-ordered report, and add customizable notes to help your readers understand and interpret your SEO work.

All-new custom formatting of those notes allows you to add in your preferred formatting — from headers to font formatting, to bullets, links, images, and more, using Markdown. Ensure that the stakeholders reading your reports know exactly what your work means and see the value of the SEO efforts you’ve been working on.

Improved Moz Pro navigation

We’ve improved navigation within Moz Pro to help you quickly access all areas of the tool. In the left navigation, you’ll have the option of toggling between Campaigns, navigating around a Campaign easily, and hopping straight into the research tools.

“Make a Suggestion” button

If you’ve ever been in the Moz tools and thought, “I wish I could tell Moz how I feel about this feature!” this one is just for you. 

When you hop into a Campaign, you’ll notice a button on the top of your Dashboard that says “Make a Suggestion.” A click of this button will give you the power to tell us what you want to see. We love hearing from you and we’re always looking for ways to iterate and improve our product for you so that your job as an SEO is as easy as possible.

Outside of Moz Pro, other big things are happening

Moz Certification

We launched the Moz Certification in April — an instructor-led, six-part course covering the SEO Essentials. The Certification brings six hours of online content that you can take at your own pace and includes exams to test your knowledge as well as and a LinkedIn badge to share your credentials with your network.

Client Onboarding Course

Outside of the Certification, we also have standalone courses on additional topics, including our newest addition: The Client Onboarding Course — perfect for when you’ve just signed a new SEO client and want to know what the next steps are. This course delves deep into internal communication processes, how to best get to know your new client, setting expectations—and even provides a new client questionnaire that Moz’s SEO experts have developed.

New Moz Local

As local search continues to evolve, we’ve been working to evolve our toolset in a number of ways. 

The launch of the new Moz Local in June brought features like real-time profile management and sync, data cleansing, automated duplicate detection and deletion, and deep integrations with Google and Facebook. The new platform also provides the chance to manage your reviews and post to social networks, straight from the Moz Local interface! Check out how PAPYRUS saw a 42 percent increase in direction requests and a 26 percent increase in click-to-call requests after Wpromote harnessed Moz Local to optimize their business listings. This drove 90,000 more potential in-store shoppers annually and was celebrated by the US Search Awards!  

Read the Case Study

And there’s more to come! 

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. We have oodles of exciting more launches on the docket before the end of the year is through. Stay tuned!

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

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3 Connections Between Paid Search and CRO

While being with Hanapin (now Brainlabs!) for five and a half years, I can honestly say that I love my career. Recently, I began a transition between roles within the company going from a Paid Search Account Manager to a CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) Manager. This was brought on by really gaining an understanding of the connection between Paid Search and CRO and wanting to focus more on the CRO side of things after the paid click happens. With that being said, it’s been such a great experience being able to dive into my new role with the knowledge I have gained over the last 5 and a half years. 

In this post, I want to walk through three valuable connections between the two roles. They truly go hand-and-hand and when utilizing both, you can have a solid strategy and really make the most of the user experience from the initial search to the time a user completes a purchase or fills out a lead form on your site. 

Let’s jump right into it! 

Congruency is Key

This has been the most apparent during my transition and something that may be apparent to those who have no experience in CRO or in Paid Search. From the time a user first interacts with your brand (first impression, if you will) to the moment they make the decision to purchase or submit a form, you should be speaking the same language throughout the path. If not, it can quickly lead to confusion, hesitation, and ultimately, users bouncing. Take the following two examples; 

Example 1: 

Example 2: 

In both examples, I’m sure you can decide which user experience makes more sense. The second. 

The goal is to ensure that what the user searches for is mimicked in the ad copy and also the landing page. This ensures that the user is met with exactly what they need, eliminating any additional steps. 

Audiences Matter

There is also a valuable connection between paid search audiences and CRO. Understanding the audience that’s being sent to a website gives insight into how a site would be best structured and how it should function to meet that audience’s needs. If you have an apartment complex that rents to those who are 65 or older, your site needs to align with that. If a paid search landing page for that apartment complex focuses on workout facilities, party rooms, and transportation to the nearest college, it’s not speaking to the audience. However, if the landing page lists amenities like elevators, a lounge, handicap accessibility, and so forth, you have a better chance of connecting with the audience. 

Google Analytics is Everyone’s Friend

When it comes to Google Analytics (GA), there are many insights that can be gained and utilized for both paid search and CRO. Such as; 

• Audiences: In GA, we can learn about our audiences. This will help us determine which audiences to optimize toward via paid search but also give us insights into how our landing pages should behave and look. Below you will see in-market segments that are sorted by users. Those who are in-market for “Hotel Accommodations” were the largest in-market audience visiting the site next to “Air Travel”. Therefore, it might make sense to target audiences who are in-market for hotels and air travel via paid search, as opposed to maybe those who are in-market for say, a cruise.

• Technology: GA also has some Technology reports that are useful for both paid search and CRO. Knowing what devices users predominantly use is super helpful for an Account Manager because it can give insights on how to bid based on the device. This is also useful for a CRO Manager because CRO tests can be designed to test a browser in a specific device. For example, if 80% of a brand’s site users utilize iOS, it would not make sense to create a CRO test and focus on the results from Android users.

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

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GitHub Private Repositories Are Now Free For Teams

Private repositories are now free for teams.

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Amazon Affiliate Commission Cut

Starting April 21, Amazon is cutting its commission to affiliates with new Standard Program Fee Rates.

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