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Maximize Facebook performance by leveraging the algorithm https://ift.tt/2NsROGS In this SMX session recap, Michelle Morgan of Clix Marketing covers Facebook ad tactics, along with tips for driving results with other Facebook ad formats. This session definitely packed a punch. Finding the right amount of volumes in the Facebook algorithm is similar to a space shuttle landing. You don’t want to overshoot it, but you don’t want to crash and burn by undershooting it either. You want to enter just right for landing success. Before getting started you should note that traditional search structures do not work inside of Facebook. They are either too broad or too restricted. For success, you should follow structure based on these three components. Three main components to Facebook campaign structure:
Campaign objectiveFirst and foremost, you’ll want to determine the campaign objective to optimize performance. The Algorithm’s focus: The conversion action Choosing the conversion action that best fits your needs
Thinking outside of the capsule (because in Michelle’s world it’s not a box it’s a space capsule): You can track and optimize for anything that Google Tag Manager can fire! B2B company example: Driving in larger accounts Use Google Tag Manager to get specific Customize the Facebook script Creating custom conversions The conversions were ultimately setup by employee counts. Balance volume and specificity: Ideal conversion volume Budgets: Find the happy mediumWhen it comes to budgets you want to consider not segmenting your budget too much. Here’s an example of an audience-segmented campaign that, from a high level looks great with a daily budget of $82.25 per day, unfortunately, it was segmented so much that each ad set only had $6.25 attributed per day. Which ultimately lead to a terrible CPA… $527 when the goal was $150. The Fix:
The Results:
Lifetime budgets vs. daily budgets Lifetime budget: This can be perfect if you know your total campaign budget. It also is best for fluctuating conversion performance. You will want to ensure you are using ad scheduling and your conversion tracking is in place and functioning. *Not ideal for campaigns with changing date ranges or budget fluctuations. Every time you make a change, the algorithm has to re-evaluate. Daily budget: Responds better to change than lifetime budget and there’s no need to use ad scheduling. While these will be the most consistent in regards to ad spend, budget may fluctuate during the run. This also can be used to share spend across sets without using the lifetime budget. *Great for evergreen campaigns or undetermined campaign end dates. Budget optimization for daily budget Take budget from the ad set to the campaign level. Facebook will optimize for the ad set that is performing best. Budget optimization: Change in budget can mess with algorithm Budget trend line: The top line is conversions, the bottom line is daily spend. As the budget scaled up, Facebook was also scaling up with conversions. Campaigns were then pulled back based on budget restrictions which resulted in a small dip. The campaign was left alone after the decrease and it still ultimately gained increased conversions. Then the campaigns were pulled back drastically due to budget restrictions and the results tanked. Facebook budget best practices
Target audience: Start with low hanging fruitThink of the Audience as Mission Supplies: The Longer Your Mission, the More You’ll Need For longer run campaigns, you’ll want to test to extend reach without oversaturating your market. Understanding scale in audience building What if reach becomes unavailable? Long term success in audience targeting Lookalike audiences: Lean in based on your root list
When using lookalike audiences it is important that you are starting with good root list data. If you put good data in, essentially you’ll get good data outIf you put in a good patterned list where people behave similarly, you’ll get a good lookalike audience back. If you put a list of just anyone who shows up, you have no idea what’s going to come out the other side. Finding meaningful segmentation Don’t just target anyone who comes to your website, unless you have relatively low traffic. Use some of these root examples:
These type of roots will provide a good audience model back. However, you’ll want to find the happy medium when building. You’ll want to ensure it’s not too narrow or broad when determining what these should be. So how many users in a root list? Facebook’s official answer is 10,000 to 50,000 users in a root audience list. However, 500 should be at the low end. If you are under that number you can still upload the list to see what happens. However, if you are in the high end of 50,000, you should see how you can segment the list better. Houston we have a problem: 3 most common issues with campaigns Low conversions: If your campaign experiences low conversions, you should revisit the conversion action you’ve chosen to optimize for. You may need to determine if there is something with higher volumes you can use. Small budgets: Look to condense small budget ad sets where possible. You also should revisit the budget modeling you are using. Does another model make more sense to use? Small target audience: Lower budget for this group so you don’t oversaturate. You can create lookalike audiences from converters to have a larger, constantly refreshed audience to target. Challenge: Cost per resultActual focus: Relevance score To impact your ad testing you have to understand how Facebook rates the relevance score. Relevance scores are based on how well your ad is performing as well as its positive feedback and negative feedback. However, it’s completely estimated based on only 500 impressions. Here’s an example of what it might look like (this is only to provide an idea: NOT SCIENTIFIC): How to avoid negative feedback: Don’t oversaturate people so they hide your ad. How to leverage positive feedback: You can use top-performing, existing posts in your ads by using the post ID or you can set up an engagement campaign, let it run for a few days and use those top performing post IDs. Getting your top post IDs: ‘They’re not just going to find a bunch of losers on Instagram’ – On placementsThe audience and quality set is the same across placements. Choosing placement prior to understanding performance can limit results. Before deciding, make sure you understand the placement options and that they differ by device. The best test for knowing if you should run the placements is asking yourself “would my ads look good here?” If the answer is no (looking at the preview), remove the placement from the list, or you also may decide to create new media for those placements. Concluding SMX insights:
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here. About The AuthorAmanda Farley is a partner at (SS Digital Media) in Metro Detroit, where she leads operations and strategic planning. With nearly 10 years in the search industry, she uses her experiences to lead digital strategy for enterprise-level brands and companies. Her integrated campaign strategies have earned her and her agency national and local recognition and awards. She's passionate about growing her teams, clients, and local communities. Outside of the office, Amanda enjoys regularly speaking at local and national conferences, including SMX, FoundConf, HeroConf as well as PRSA and Detroit Women in Digital events. SEO via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/1BDlNnc February 26, 2019 at 07:01AM
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Stop the silo madness! Effective site architecture for SEO and findability https://ift.tt/2NugqPJ The search engine optimization (SEO) industry is full of jargon. Take the word “sitemap” for example. To many SEO pros, a sitemap is an XML sitemap. However, to professionals in different industries the word “sitemap” (one word) and phrase “site map” (two words) have the same meaning: a wayfinder site map. Sometimes the single word “sitemap” is interpreted as an XML sitemap. And the phrase “site map” is interpreted as wayfinder site map. Sometimes, I observe an XML sitemap on a website being used as a wayfinder site map. The whole SEO jargon thing can become a usability and user experience (UX) nightmare. Another confusing word in SEO jargon is the word “silo.” Contrary to popular opinion in the web marketing industries, content silos do not make website content easy to find. In reality, content silos make website content more difficult to locate and discover. They often result in lost sales. Let me explain…. Information architecture pattern – hierarchical structureAccording to the Usability.gov:
If users have a difficult time completing their desired tasks, businesses can lose sales, leads and brand credibility. One common IA pattern is a hierarchical structure. A foundation of many effective information architectures is a well-planned hierarchy. Below is an diagram of a straightforward hierarchical structure. A hierarchical structure is a common type of taxonomy. To view four common types of taxonomy, read Website Taxonomy Guidelines And Tips: How Best To Organize Your Site. Most site visitors expect a website to be categorized. Categorization itself does not make content more difficult to find. Problems arise when categories are:
One way to limit content accessibility is a process called siloing. A silo is not a categoryContrary to what you might read in other articles about site architecture, the word “silo” and the word “category” are not synonyms. In the IA and information science industries, they have different meanings. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a category is a division within a classification system. Items within a category should have particular shared characteristics that are familiar to your target audience. On the other hand, on a website, a silo is a repository of content that is only accessible under one specific category. The siloed content is isolated, or mostly isolated, from other content within a website. Another way of stating this is “content is boxed instead of being integrated with other components.” A real-world analogy are kernels of corn located in a farm silo. The corn is isolated from outside elements and from other siloed items, as you can see in the featured photo at the top of this page. Maybe one farm silo contains corn. Maybe another farm silo contains wheat. And another farm silo contains oats. The grains are not accessible within the same silo. Website categories can become siloed, as shown in the diagram below: In this hierarchical website structure, content silos are created in three categories. Users cannot get to their desired content without navigating within a specific top-level category. In other words, a category is NOT a silo. However, content within a category can BECOME siloed. Silos make content more difficult to findContrary to popular opinion in the SEO industry, content silos do NOT make website content easy to find. The opposite is true. Content silos make content more difficult (or impossible) to locate and to discover within websites and intranets. In the article The Top Enduring Intranet-Design Mistakes: 7 Deadly Sins, Kara Pernice, senior vice president at Nielsen Norman Group wrote:
Silos are a waste of users’ time. On most websites, users typically engage in two types of behaviors: browsing and searching. With browsing, users who are interested in a product or service are forced to navigate to multiple sections of the site. They typically must drill down to desired content each time they navigate the site. Without clear and consistent information scent, users are unlikely to complete their desired tasks (Add to Cart, Sign Up, Download, Try for Free, etc.) What about searching? What about SEO? First, please realize that web search engines are not perfect. They might deliver you to the right place within a site, and they might not. Once users/searchers arrive at your site, they will normally navigate to desired content…following an information scent. When the words of the link match what people are looking for, the more likely it is that they will click on the link. Users/searchers do not navigate websites via web search engines:
If a site’s navigation system doesn’t work well for users, they often revert to using a site search engine. An effective IA and corresponding navigation system actually make web search results and site search results more accurate. I have been teaching this at Search Marketing Expo‘s Boot Camp and other search conferences for over 20 years. Year after year, client data and academic research supports this conclusion. Other industry experts independently arrive at the same conclusion. Customer experience specialist and author Gerry McGovern wrote in his article, Navigation and Search are Twins:
Usability guru Jakob Nielsen wrote in Top 10 Information Architecture (IA) Mistakes:
Therefore, content silos negatively affect BOTH browsing and searching experience. So if you want content in your site to have better search engine visibility, minimize or eliminate silos. Siloed content can negatively affect salesWhenever I encounter content silos, I look for ways to improve both accessibility and context. Two ways to minimize the silo effect is to include a wayfinder site map or a site index in global navigation. Make sure that one or both of these items contains links to important content. However, seasoned SEO pros know that wayfinder pages are not “magic bullets” to solving a websites poor information architecture. An XML sitemap is also not a “magic bullet.” They all can support an information architecture, but they are not substitutes for a poor information architecture. John Mueller, webmaster trends analyst at Google, stated on Twitter that [XML] sitemaps do not replace internal linking. The key to fixing silos within a site architecture is to have a good IA in the first place. However, if your content management system (CMS) does not support the most desirable, effective IA? Contextual navigation is critical. As James Kalbach wrote in his outstanding book, Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience:
On an e-commerce site, for example, some effective contextual links might be a set of “Complete this Outfit” or “Frequently Bought Together” upsell links, as shown on the Nordstrom site below: Upsell links are one way to eliminate siloing on product pages in an e-commerce site. On a different type of e-commerce site, not showing related accessories can be a direct cause of lost sales. Baymard Institute’s study (available at PDP UX: Provide an ‘Included Accessories’ Image and Clarify That Optional Accessories Are Extra), the researchers concluded:
(PDP = product details page; UX = user experience). In conclusion, silos:
I support silos in the farming industry. However, I do not support silos in the information architecture, usability, UX and SEO industries. Maybe you should, too. Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here. About The AuthorShari Thurow is the Founder and SEO Director at Omni Marketing Interactiveand the author of the books Search Engine Visibilityand When Search Meets Web Usability. Shari currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Information Architecture Institute (IAI) and the ASLIB Journal of Information Management. She also served on the board of the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA). SEO via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/1BDlNnc February 26, 2019 at 07:00AM
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3 Ways Social Proof Boosts Customer Acquisition & ROI by @rajnijjer https://ift.tt/2Td0mHl There is more for digital native marketers to like about social proof than just “likes.” For ecommerce brands seeking to draw clear lines and capture consumer touchpoints between social media engagement and sales, the science of “social proof” is often overlooked. By not incorporating social proof into their attribution metrics, ecommerce brands are committing several unforced errors. Generally speaking, ignoring social proof typically results in higher customer acquisition costs (CAC) and a higher rate of returns for online merchandise. What Is Social Proof? Substance, Not SmokeThe rise of mobile and social media apps have severely diminished the importance of measuring pageviews, unique website visitors, and clickthroughs. It’s the action a person takes on an interactive platform that matters most. That brings us to social proof: the validation of a site’s content, messaging, and branding through the demonstration of some action taken by a user. The basic examples of social proof can be found in users leaving reviews, comments, recommendations, or social sharing. This form of user-generated content (UGC) and its demonstrated ability to create social proof can lead to higher conversion rates (CVR) and thus, sales. Compared to the vague and passive act of viewing a web page, social proof is a committed act of engagement. It’s solid substance versus vaporous smoke. Prove It – SociallyAside from that obvious value of being able to point to direct user activity, the currency of social proof also speaks to the psychology of online consumers. Consider the reasons behind a consumer’s decision of what, when, and where to make an online purchase. The foundation of any decision to transact online begins and ends with whether the consumer trusts the online retailer to provide an experience that is secure, easy to navigate, and offers access to desired items. A brick-and-mortar store offers the immediate, tactile quality of examining a product. How busy the store is also tends to influence shopper choices. Naturally, an ecommerce outlet doesn’t have those in-store elements that have traditionally comforted and inspired consumers. Social proof is the virtual version of those brick-and-mortar features. And it has clear advantages over the traditional shopping model that digital brands can smartly exploit. The creative possibilities associated with social proof allow brands to breathe new life into existing ads and content. Lingerie retailer Yandy was able to repurpose its Facebook Dynamic Product Ad campaign by mixing customers’ images and reviews as part of the content it posted elsewhere. Before making the switch, their cost-per-click was skyrocketing, making their return on ad spend unsustainable. “The ads that featured customer content eclipsed our old ads both in value and efficiency, generating 70 percent more sales,” says Eric Polatty, Yandy’s digital marketing manager. 1. Social Proof Helps Boost Sales While Lowering CostsConsumers take their online shopping cues from social proof in the form of reviews and social sharing. Credible reviews and testimonials inspire trust in a shopper. That influence can come in the form the reviews on a company page or images and comments on a social media site. That validation gives the consumer comfort and encouragement to check out an otherwise unfamiliar online shop. That is how social proof drives discovery and customer acquisition – and at a much lower cost than other forms that involve moving consumers through the marketing funnel. Social proofs for an online business include its social media followers, product reviews, and blog posts or news articles that mention the company. These are all forms of validation that legitimize a business in the eyes of consumers. Beyond spurring greater brand affinity, from an expense and efficiency perspective, ads that feature customers’ Instagram photos have a 50 percent lower acquisition cost than ads with branded photos. On top of all that, social proof gives old school word-of-mouth marketing methods a crucial update by letting brands see the conversations and actions of consumers in real-time. This is one of the most powerful forces for growing a brand. A Yotpo survey (disclosure: I work for the company) found that 79 percent of shoppers refer friends to brands they love. Like with most things, people are also more likely to feel better about buying from a recommended brand. Making it easy for your customers to share their reviews and recommendations, and incentivizing them to do so, will allow you to reach new, relevant audiences that already believe in your brand. With CAC doubling for both B2B and B2C over the last few years, social proof not only tells brands whether their discovery mechanisms are producing desired results, but it also spurs more trust. 2. Social Proof Can Improve Email MarketingEmail marketing often doesn’t get the credit it deserves. It’s one of the oldest types of digital marketing and therefore, it tends to fall into that “set it and forget it” mindset from brand strategists. But as the original form of social media, email marketing is the key one-to-one communication extension of the image sharing, reviews, and testimonials that brands count on in a developing a lasting customer relationship. With all that in mind, social proof represents the connective tissue between other marketing tools, with email being the ultimate validation of continued trust between a brand and a consumer. In a word, it’s all about satisfying consumers’ demand for greater personalization and relevance. The social proof that consumers leave across an ecommerce site and social media extensions can better inform a content and email marketing program. For example, finding the highest rated products can serve as the basis for a range of messages. By curating the conversation that is being steered and driven by active customers, brands have a fuller sense of what is worth sharing more widely and consistently. The ability to listen more clearly to customers also helps brand messaging avoid being placed in the spam folder of consumers’ emails as well as their minds. In its push to lift its repurchase rates from customers who receive its email offers, Uniqlo highlighted top products with customer testimonials in its newsletter. Showcasing 5-star ratings linked to user photos let shoppers simply click through and purchase products that they might’ve not otherwise considered. With 15 percent of U.S. retail email subscribers making multiple purchases, emphasizing a social proof strategy is essential to promoting shopper engagement and refreshed content. In general, 27 percent of previous shoppers who click on promoted products in a review request email make another purchase. 3. Social Proof Offers a Better Customer ExperienceThere has been tremendous progress made in the amount of granular knowledge of customers’ buying habits and the instantaneous targeting of that behavior. But the significant level of depth that social proof presents to brands from consumers’ own thoughts and actions makes these so continuously valuable as opposed to more episodic campaign metrics. Social proof’s directional insights into the most minute customer trends and offers the chance to predict how and when to update and alter an ecommerce platform’s customer experience. Where there is mostly uncertainty about moving a transactional site to the next steps, the reviews, comments, and image sharing activity let brands set customer expectations and meet shoppers’ stated needs. To understand the connection between social proof, content marketing, and the resulting purchase process, companies like Glossier have nailed the experience considering that roughly 40 percent of customers share photos when they identify great product packaging. Consider how popular unboxing videos are. As such, packaging has become as much a part of the customer experience as the actual product. One way a brand can encourage customers to send in photos is to hold a contest and feature winners right on your packaging. It’s a perfect way of demonstrating the relationship between a brand and its customers. ConclusionAs the worlds of “professional” media and user-generated content meet, social proof shows how to deliver on-brand promises at a time when consumers’ attention for immediate satisfaction is constantly tested. In defining and refining the customer experience when they shop on a site, social proof is about ensuring a marketer’s voice and presence remain perfectly in sync with their most important customers. More Resources: Image Credits All screenshots taken by author, February 2019 Subscribe to SEJGet our daily newsletter from SEJ's Founder Loren Baker about the latest news in the industry! SEO via Search Engine Journal https://ift.tt/1QNKwvh February 26, 2019 at 06:50AM Google Image Search On Mobile Adds Swipe To Next https://ift.tt/2T6MD5K Google Image Search on mobile search has added a "swipe to next" notice when you look at specific images in the search results. So when you click on a specific image, it will overlay for a second or two a message that tells you that you can swipe to see the next image. SEO via Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/1sYxUD0 February 26, 2019 at 06:48AM End Of March: Property Sets No Longer Supported In Google Search Console https://ift.tt/2GKqkMj This should come as no surprise as we covered it here a couple times already but this morning, Google emailed those using property sets in Google Search Console that it is going away by the end of March. Google is shutting it down and may replace it with something else at some point in time. SEO via Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/1sYxUD0 February 26, 2019 at 06:37AM
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The technical SEO hierarchy of needs https://ift.tt/2Ny61m8 What makes a site become the best site it can be? Healthy, functional sites that have reached their full SEO potential have been optimized based on market and keyword research, E-A-T, content relevance to search intent, backlink profiles, and more. But they all have one thing in common: their technical SEO needs are met. Your site’s technical SEO needs form a hierarchy. If needs lower in the hierarchy aren’t met, needs on the next level are difficult to fulfill. Each level responds to a different requirement in the world of search engines: crawlability, indexability, accessibility, rankability, and clickability. Understanding what each level of the pyramid involves helps make technical SEO look less intimidating without oversimplifying its role in making a website great. The foundations of technical SEO: crawlabilityAt the foundation of the pyramid of technical SEO needs is a URL’s crawlability. Crawlability concerns a URL’s ability to be discovered by search engine bots. URLs that are not crawlable might still be accessible to users navigating your website, but because they are invisible to bots, they can’t appear in search results. Crawlable URLs, therefore, are:
The first step in a technical SEO audit, for example, is to uncover pages that can’t be indexed, and why. Sometimes this is intentional, and sometimes it’s an error and a quick win for SEO. Similarly, while crawl budget may seem esoteric and difficult to quantify, the basic principle is that when the cost of crawling is optimized and when priority pages are presented first, more traffic can be gained through search engines. Technical SEO uses how pages are discovered and prioritized to promote better crawling; it leverages historical data for crawl frequency and past situations that provoke increased crawling activity to improve current crawl rates. IndexabilityJust above crawlability in the hierarchy of technical SEO needs is indexability. Indexable URLs are URLs that a search engine can include in a catalog of pages that are available to be presented in search results pages. Even when a URL has been crawled, various properties can prevent it from being added to the index. In the most straightforward situations, pages can be prevented from being indexed by meta robots and robots.txt directives. But Google also chooses not to index pages when a more authoritative version exists for the same content. This is the case when a bot discovers the following elements:
To ensure that the right pages can be indexed, technical SEO verifies that these elements are correctly set up and that they apply to the correct pages. Accessibility and website performanceAn accessible URL is easy to display or render. A URL that is both crawlable and indexable might still be inaccessible at the moment when a search engine’s bot attempts to crawl it. Pages and sites that rank but that have persistent accessibility problems are often penalized in the search results. Accessibility for bots — and for users — covers a broad range of related topics:
The goal is to discover the threshold at which accessibility and performance metrics negatively impact SEO performance, and to ensure that all pages of a website meet at least that minimum level. Technical SEO, therefore, uses tools to measure anything from server downtime or HTTP status served to bots and users, to the size of resources (CSS, JS, images…) transferred when a page is requested or load time metrics such as TTFB, FCP, or TTLB. Technical SEO audits that conclude you need links to certain pages are often working to eliminate underperforming orphan pages and URLs with excessive page depth. Some will include accessibility for users; a page that does not work with a screen reader cannot be used by many users, no matter how great its content or keyword optimization. Once accessibility issues have been addressed, we can say that the basic technical SEO needs of a page are met. Without them, page and website SEO suffer. As we continue to move further up the hierarchy of needs, we pass from blocking factors to factors of improvement. Rankability: the role of technical SEO in improving positionsRankability is the first of the two top levels of the pyramid that deal with optimizations. Instead of forming the foundations of SEO, they are sometimes considered advanced technical SEO. Clearly, crawlable, indexable and accessible URLs can rank. Some can even rank well. However, the average URL will rank better with a little help. Using links to boost rankingsLinking, whether internal or external, transfers page importance (and traffic!) from popular pages to less popular pages. This second group profits. Technical SEO strategies will, therefore, examine backlinks to determine the most advantageous profile, or use internal linking structures to promote pages. Not only can internal links improve crawl rate (by reinforcing freshness when linking from new or updated content) and conversion (by funneling users towards high-converting and goal pages), but they also transfer page importance and help build content silos, two strategies for improving page rank. Improving positions with semantic optimizationContent silos, created by interlinking semantically related content, help groups of pages rank better than a single page could. They build both depth and expertise while expanding keyword reach with pages that focus on long-tail keywords and semantically related concepts. In some cases, it can also be worthwhile to look at the pertinence of a page with regard to the rest of the site, examine keyword density, number of words, text-to-code ratio, and other factors that can be either red flags or content quality indicators for a given keyword group. Clickability: the link between SEO and user behaviorThe final level of technical SEO optimization concerns technical elements that make it more likely for a user to click on your results. Because of how search engines present results, this can include earning coveted SERP locations outside of the normal organic results order and enriching your URL listings. Content structure, such as lists, tables, and headings, help search engines understand your content and facilitate dynamic creation of featured results, carousels and more. Similarly, formal structured data, including Schema.org markup, enhance search listings with rich elements:
Likewise, videos and images with appropriate markup have an advantage in image and video search. Relevance to search intent and content uniqueness draw users. While these remain abstract concepts, the technical tools to analyze and improve them are emerging. Techniques such as machine learning can be applied to search intent and user click behavior, while content creation aids such as AI are intended to facilitate the creation of new content. In the meantime, technical SEO aims to use technical means to spot and signal potential discrepancies in search intent or duplicate content through similarity analysis. Finally, technical SEO analyzes user behavior data combined with website characteristics in order to discover correlations. The objective is to create more of the situations in which your website draws users. This strategy can uncover surprising correlations between page or website structure and user-based metrics like bounce rate, time on site or CTR. Implementing technical improvementsYou don’t need a technical background to understand or to meet the critical needs at the bottom of the technical SEO hierarchy. If there are issues that keep your site from being crawled, indexed, ranked, or clicked, SEO efforts in other areas won’t be as effective. Spotting and resolving these issues is the role of technical SEO. Solutions like OnCrawl will help you understand where to start with actionable dashboards and reports combining your content, log files and search data at scale. Where does your site fall on the hierarchy of technical SEO needs? About The AuthorOnCrawl is an award-winning technical SEO platform that helps you make smarter SEO decisions. OnCrawl combines your content, log files and search data at scale so that you can open Google's blackbox and build a SEO strategy with confidence. Backed by a SEO crawler, a log analyzer and third-party integrations, OnCrawl currently works with over 800 clients in 66 countries including e-commerce websites, online publishers and agencies. OnCrawl produces actionable dashboards and reports to support your entire search engine optimization process and helps you improve your positions, traffic and revenues. Learn more about us at https://www.oncrawl.com. SEO via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/1BDlNnc February 26, 2019 at 06:30AM
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Weekly Wisdom with AJ Wilcox: Advanced Targeting on LinkedIn Ads https://ift.tt/2SrLnF4 Having a hard time with LinkedIn ads? Need a better return? Get step-by-step-advanced tips for setting up LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox in our Weekly Wisdom video. AJ is going to show you how to deeply segment the audience you need to reach. This video is your opportunity to see how the experts make the most of LinkedIn Ads. SEO via SEMrush https://ift.tt/1K8Zzbp February 26, 2019 at 02:16AM
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This Tool Helps Marketers & Advertisers to Track Traffic Quality by @mql5com https://ift.tt/2Eb6HJQ This is a sponsored post written by Finteza. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. When online advertising replaced traditional advertising channels, advertisers and marketers became armed with tools and resources to know how their advertising budget was spent; we became able to track impressions, reach, traffic source, site visit numbers, etc. Essentially, everything in advertising and marketing became measurable, except for one – the ability to track the quality of traffic advertisers are paying for. A quick search for [advertising platforms] on Google returns myriads of places and platforms to advertise, but few to no tools show up when you search [traffic quality tool] or [traffic quality monitor]. And monitoring traffic quality is as important as driving traffic, because what use are thousands or millions of visitors in traffic if they’re never going to convert? Finteza is a traffic quality tool that tells you the exact percentage of high-quality and inferior-quality traffic coming from different channels to your site. Plus, it’s a tool that is truly on the side of advertising buyers. A Tool That Provides Buyer-Side Traffic Quality AnalyticsTo be fair, many advertising platforms will hint to you about the traffic quality they’re sending you, but how unbiased is that data? It wasn’t long ago that Facebook faced a lawsuit because they allegedly spoofed reach numbers and misled advertisers into spending more money on Facebook advertising than they should – because they were promised more reach. Whether or not these accusations are true, and whether or not other advertising platforms show you real numbers in the dashboard they provide, it’s important you have an unbiased tool, controlled by you, showing you traffic quality at a glance. Plus, it’s also important that you’re able to easily track traffic quality from these platforms without having to spend hours analyzing metrics like time on page, bounce rates, and so on. This is the major problem Finteza solves – among other advertising/marketing analytics problems. “Finteza is a buyer-side analytics solution. We want to provide accessible and understandable data for those who pay for traffic. I think the desire to see and understand what you are paying for is natural,” says Arsen Mukuchyan, Head of Product Development at Finteza. In other words, while advertising platforms – Google, Facebook, etc. – provide you with a dashboard to track traffic quality and other metrics controlled by them, Finteza provides you with a dashboard that’s controlled by you so it’s truly objective and unbiased. It uses comprehensive botnet analysis, complex user-behavior analysis, accurate tracking technology, and unique accounting algorithms to enable Finteza to detect low-quality traffic. The tool digs deep into traffic-quality analytics, showing you three levels of the health of traffic coming to your site:
The software also shows you a thorough break down of the traffic quality details in terms of the networks your visitors are coming from, showing you numbers of page views, events, sessions, and visitors. Furthermore, and maybe more importantly, you can track the percentage of traffic quality from a specific channel. For example, here’s a screenshot of the tool showing the percentage of quality and inferior traffic from Facebook Ads: This way, advertisers get the real gist of how much quality traffic is coming from every channel they’re spending their advertising and marketing budget on. Is this tool easy to use for all types of marketers? Here’s Mukuchyan’s talk about the usability of the tool: “I evaluate each interface element from the point of view of a first-time user who has never seen such a system before and a user who has been performing thousands of regular operations over the years,” says Mukuchyan. “In other words, a business owner who logs in for 10 minutes once a week, can see transparent and understandable metrics of his company efficiency. The tool’s major objective is to provide an honest analytics platform for marketers, where they can easily, and at a glance, see the percentage of traffic quality from the platforms they’re paying for adverts,” Mukuchyan added. But while the software provides traffic quality insights, it also provides other important and even unique features. Other Unique Benefits for Advertisers & MarketersAdded features of the Finteza platform include: Configurable Attribution within a Website or ApplicationNo two companies or products are the same, even if they look alike, so you need an attribution model that is entirely configured to suit your organization’s and product’s conversion funnel. Finteza helps you create an attribution model that’s unique for your product and conversion funnel. In Mukuchyan’s words: “Finteza offers end-to-end tracking of how users interact with your product and build a multi-level conversion funnel. This feature is customizable: the user can change separate parameters as well as the entire attribution system. By the way, the next breakthrough release will be the conversion configuring interface, which will become available to everyone.” End-To-End Tracking of User InteractionThe tool combines data of all advertising platforms, from which you buy traffic and helps you attribute them to individual conversions. Lower Tracking LatencyIn Mukuchyan’s words: “We are already providing a lower tracking latency than our competitors. This reduces losses and increases accuracy.” He added that all of these features only comprise about 3 to 5 percent of the features that are planned out for Finteza. In essence, tracking traffic quality tells you where to keep spending your advertising budget and which channels to stop running campaigns to save costs. Every penny you spend is important so you can’t afford to waste money on advertising that won’t offer a return. Finteza is the first advertising analytics tool that tells you exactly what percentage of your traffic is relevant. Image Credits Featured Image: Image by Finteza. Used with permission. Subscribe to SEJGet our daily newsletter from SEJ's Founder Loren Baker about the latest news in the industry! SEO via Search Engine Journal https://ift.tt/1QNKwvh February 26, 2019 at 12:43AM
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Google: Lighthouse Measures How Fast a Site Loads for Actual Users by @MattGSouthern https://ift.tt/2Tmm7Eq Google’s John Mueller recently stated that Lighthouse metrics are an indication of how fast a site performs for actual users. They’re not necessarily an indication of how Google’s algorithms assess a site with regards to speed. This topic came up during a Google Webmaster Central hangout where the following question was asked:
In response, Mueller says Lighthouse metrics are presented from the user-facing side of things. From a search perspective, Google uses a variety of metrics to figure out how it should judge site speed. However, with regards to SEO, Mueller says it’s better to get feedback from users rather than trying to determine if Google thinks a site is too slow. It sounds like Lighthouse aims to measure how fast a site loads for real users, but nothing beats actually asking them. Mueller concludes his answer by saying if users think a site loads pretty fast, then that site is probably in a good state. Conversely, I would imagine the opposite is also true. So listen to users if they say your site is too slow. Hear the full question and answer below, starting at the 11:03 mark:
Subscribe to SEJGet our daily newsletter from SEJ's Founder Loren Baker about the latest news in the industry! SEO via Search Engine Journal https://ift.tt/1QNKwvh February 25, 2019 at 07:35PM |
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