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Back to Basics: Do outbound links matter for SEO? https://ift.tt/2GJCCDl In Google’s debut two-minute episode of #AskGoogleWebmasters on the Google Webmasters YouTube channel, Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller addressed whether linking out is good for SEO. “Does linking to other websites help or hurt SEO?” In the video, Mueller said that links help users find out more about a topic and be able to check your sources. He then cautioned about link schemes, links in advertisements and within user-generated content, recommending that they apply the rel=“nofollow” attribute in those cases. Why we should care. Links are a critical component of SEO, and you should regard outbound link quality similarly to inbound link quality. Are your links useful to your readers? Do they point to reputable sources? These should be your goals, and achieving them will improve your users’ experience and won’t hurt your optimization efforts. In short, be careful about where and how you link. Learn more about link building. This first #AskGoogleWebmasters episode stuck to the basics, but there’s a lot to cover when it comes to links. Here is some related reading to bolster your knowledge. About The AuthorGeorge Nguyen is an Associate Editor at Third Door Media. His background is in content marketing, journalism, and storytelling. SEO via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/1BDlNnc July 26, 2019 at 03:02PM
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Google ad revenue growth popped back in Q2 https://ift.tt/2LHJYer After several quarters of slowing growth, Google parent company Alphabet reported strong advertising revenue growth in the second quarter of 2019. Ad revenue trends. Google generated $32.6 billion in advertising revenue in the second quarter, a 22% increase year over year. Ad revenue from Google properties (Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Play Store, Shopping) was $27.3 billion, up 24% year over year. Google Network ad revenue was $5.3 billion, an increase of 13% from the previous year. Clicks and CPCs. Click volume on Google properties increased by 28% year over year, while CPCs (cost-per-click) on Google properties was off by 11% from the previous year. What do these numbers tell us? After huge year-over-year increases in click volume through most of 2018, click growth has slowed over the past two quarters by comparison. As you can see from the chart below, CPCs have been going down for years — Google had said this was largely due to mobile and YouTube. However, over the past two quarters, Google has noted YouTube’s click and CPC growth during its earnings calls. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said, ” YouTube was again the second largest contributor of revenue growth.” The company does not break out revenue numbers for YouTube. Lower ad prices, at an aggregated level, are not unique to Google. Facebook’s seeing lower prices from its newer Instagram and Stories ad prices, for example. Remember also that these are aggregated, global numbers and may not bear any resemblance to what you’re seeing in your accounts. Notable Search updates. Google CEO Sundar Pichai mentioned the slew of ads announcements that came out of Google Marketing Live last quarter in addition to several other updates to Search, including augmented reality and 3D product images in search, full coverage news results and the redesigned mobile search results page (with the black ad label). Pichai noted two YouTube content initiatives “that help advertisers reach new audiences”: Ad-supported YouTube Original series, movies and live events that will be available to users for free; and YouTube TV’s 70-plus channels will be available to advertisers in Google Preferred. Asked about the announcements from GML he’s most excited about as being “particularly material over the longer term,” Pichai mentioned discover ads and gallery ads. “I mean, they’re both pushing us towards mobile-first, visually-rich immersive ad formats,” he said, while couching expectations since “it’s early days.” About The AuthorGinny Marvin is Third Door Media's Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin. SEO via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/1BDlNnc July 26, 2019 at 02:30PM
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Low mobile page speed scores may be killing your traffic https://ift.tt/2GwLDiC You’ve been doing everything right: keeping your content fresh, reviewing your backlink profile, and increasing your online review count. Yet you’re still seeing a steady decline in organic traffic. If this sounds familiar, it’s time to check your mobile page speed. A year ago, Google rolled out its Speed Update. The company was clear in its statement that this update “will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience.” In a mobile-first index world, that means Google is ranking your site based on its mobile experience and slow speeds must be addressed. But how slow is too slow? We can’t answer that definitively without making some assumptions, but I’ll share how we determine if mobile page speed scores may be killing our clients’ traffic and tips you can use to take a closer look at your own site. Start with the PageSpeed Insights toolThere’s more than one tool for testing speed, but for simplicity’s sake, I’ll focus here on Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. This tool grades the toughest, so if you have a good score on PageSpeed Insights, you’ll likely do well with any of the other online testing tools. Below is an example of a client who experienced a significant traffic drop after the July 2018 mobile Speed Update and the corresponding PageSpeed Insights score. Since the client’s site was scoring in the single digits, it’s safe to say that this score qualifies as too low according to Google. In fairness, it must be noted that the Medic Update – which rolled out the very next month – may have also added to the decline. This is just one example, but after reviewing more than 100 websites and their PageSpeed Insights scores in relation to traffic, there’s no magic number. We’ve seen single-digit scores still do well, although those are the exception rather than the rule. If your own score is in the single digits (or even below 40), take that as a sign that you have work to do. I also recommend looking at your competitors’ scores to see if yours is notably lower in comparison. Tips for assessing if your page speed is a factorHere are some steps you can take in your own determination of whether mobile page speed is having an adverse effect on your traffic:
To keep track of metrics and screenshots, I’ve created a Google Sheet you can use. One important note: You’ll need to individually review all of your top-performing pages to determine whether your mobile page speed score is a factor in traffic decline. Grab the low-hanging fruitIf your analysis shows your mobile page speed score is low compared to your competitors, here are a few things you can do right away without having to redesign your website:
These are just a few of the simple things you can do to explore the effects of mobile page speed. If you’re seeing a steady traffic decline, it’s worth your time to take a closer look. Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here. About The AuthorChris Gregory is the founder and a managing partner of DAGMAR Marketing, a local SEO company based in Jacksonville, Florida. The agency’s work in both local SEO and SEM was recently recognized with awards in Search Engine Land’s international search marketing competition. SEO via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/1BDlNnc July 26, 2019 at 01:40PM
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Your Simple Guide to Twitter #Hashtags via @searchmastergen https://ift.tt/2SENIOw There’s no doubt Twitter has changed the world we live in. From its launch in July 2006 to its current state 13 years later, the microblogging website has become the ultimate news source, outreach platform, meme supplier, political soapbox, and so, so much more to so many people. One of the many results of Twitter and its growing popularity was the rise of the hashtag. Twitter infamously helped create the hashtag in 2007, first used by Chris Messina, which changed not just Twitter, but all of social media – and much of the world around it – in a big way. What Are Hashtags?A hashtag is a keyword index tool written with a #, or the pound symbol, at the beginning of a series of space-less keyword sets to refer to a specific topic, idea, or trend. Hashtags are metadata tags consisting of letters and numbers – excluding spaces and punctuation – that categorize keywords and ideas (typically on social media platforms, like Twitter) by turning them into clickable phrases that are indexed with other, related tweets. After debuting on Twitter thanks to Messina, hashtags flourished, first on Twitter, then on other social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and even business-oriented LinkedIn. Hashtags have become a staple on most social media platforms and are embedded in the everyday fabric of social media. And, thankfully, they’ve made categorization in a world of data overload easier than ever before. How to Use HashtagsHashtags help categorize content among a plethora of information, thus making it easier than ever before to find and sort specific bits of information as they are published across Twitter. It has become a legitimate source for breaking news, official statements, campaign launches, and even jarring photos and videos that have led to arrests and accusations, as well as other unexpected, unprecedented, and unbelievable interactions. When using hashtags – either ones that are already trending or trying to kickstart a new one for a specific reason, campaign or idea – there are basic guidelines to using the right one, at the right time, with the right content. This will limit the potential for unintentional blowback, and later, damage control. Creating a new hashtag and hopping on an existing one are drastically different moves and need to be handled as such. But they’re both helpful and are skills all quality social media marketers (and Twitter users) should understand. Creating HashtagsCreating a hashtag can be tricky. Like most “viral” content on the web, some of the strangest ones will find a way to break through the surface and become a multi-day Twitter trend. Others will fall to the wayside with very little effort. Even the best hashtags benefit from influencer piggybacking, overall timing, and general luck to becoming a common trend on Twitter. In addition to those aspects, you should follow a few other rules when creating a new hashtag if you want it catch on and become popular. The three most important rules for creating hashtags are: Keep It Simple Keeping it simple is the most important aspect when it comes to creating a hashtag. If it’s too complicated or elaborate, it will likely not catch on. It also can’t be so vague that it’s impossible to separate it from other, unrelated hashtags with similar keywords or ideas. Keep It Memorable Clever hashtags tend to get legs easier than ones that are not. If it’s witty and easy to remember, not only will the hashtag likely catch on and be used, but it will also likely have a longer shelf life than a hashtag that is not that memorable. Give It the ‘Common Sense Check’ This is just as critical as the first two rules for creating hashtags, if not more. Does the hashtag you’re trying to create make sense? Can it be confused with another topic or hashtag that has nothing to do with your goal? Most of all, does it offend, confuse, or lean toward the idea that this isn’t the best hashtag for your unique messaging? A simple common sense check should help direct you as to whether your newly developed hashtag is going to be a winner or if it’s danger looming. Using Existing HashtagsWhen using hashtags that are already being used by others on the platform, there are some important rules to consider as well, but they are a bit different than those for creating new hashtags. The three most important rules for using hashtags: Research the Hashtag Before Adopting It It may not mean what you think it means. Your first step to ensuring it is the hashtag you’re looking for is to research it; look at other tweets using the hashtag and make sure they are in line with your thinking. Too many times, users miss the mark with this one and adopt a hashtag that really means something completely different than what they intend. Just ask DiGiorno’s Pizza about #WhyIStayed. Make Sure It’s Relevant Once you know what it means, make sure it makes sense to use for your messaging. Miss the mark and suffer the consequences. Be Clever Be sure to use your wit and personality and put your brand/personal spin on it. Remember, the right hashtag has been used hundreds or thousands of times before you. This is the chance for you to stand out in a crowded room. Do it! The biggest aspect of this to realize and remember is that, if hashtags are used incorrectly, it could come back to hurt the brand. Being associated with a poor user experience is a quick and easy way to lose followers, fans, and even customers. Potential Hashtag NightmaresJust like anything else on the internet, there are people who will try to manipulate the system to gain an edge by doing less than others. When it comes to hashtags, lazy (and bad) marketers will piggyback on popular and trending hashtags to gain increased visibility, sometimes compromising the integrity of the hashtag if misleading tweets aren’t filtered out. These piggy-backers are rarely, if ever, rewarded. And brands that try it only suffer the backlash of the public, then the history books (i.e., American Apparel’s Hurricane Sandy Sale and other piggybacking disasters). Like most things in the digital marketing realm, make sure what you’re doing is ethical and sensible. It’s unlikely you’d be penalized for that. When to Use HashtagsHashtags have a time and place to be used, and it can be in every tweet a brand publishes. It also doesn’t need to be, either. Be genuine in your messaging and use hashtags to help categorize information, not to manipulate or deceive. Customers will remember it and they know what they want. Why Use HashtagsSimply put, hashtags improve your messages’ general visibility on Twitter (typically). In addition to the increased organic visibility, hashtag users also tend to see increased engagement on the platform, increased brand awareness, and increased customer feedback, among other things, when effectively (and properly) using hashtags – all of which result in increased visibility. More Resources: SEO via Search Engine Journal https://ift.tt/1QNKwvh July 26, 2019 at 09:59AM
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9 Tips to Integrate Organic, Paid, and Content - Whiteboard Friday https://ift.tt/2ZdWhlU Posted by HeatherPhysioc Search can't live in a silo. If you want to see success, cross-collaboration across your organic, content, and paid teams is absolutely key. But that takes a huge amount of effort, from untangling communication to cross-training to getting buy-in from everyone involved. What's a search marketer to do? If you missed her talk this year at MozCon 2019, here's your chance to make up for it! In today's edition of Whiteboard Friday, Heather Physioc shares her framework for successfully integrating your organic, paid, and content practices for a smoother search experience. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Video TranscriptionHey, everybody, and welcome back to Whiteboard Friday. My name is Heather Physioc, and I'm Group Director of Discoverability at VMLY&. Today we're going to talk about nine tips to help integrate your organic search, paid search, and content practices. 1. Announce change all at once, but roll out changes one at a timeSo your first tip is that you want to announce change all at once, but then you want to roll out the changes one at a time. It can be overwhelming to integrate practices and change processes. So you don't want to try to do everything all at the same time. It's like trying to boil the ocean, and it's too much to stick. So while you want to get everybody on board and aligned to the benefits and challenges they'll be facing as you integrate, then you just progressively roll out the changes iteratively over time. 2. Document new products &processesNext, as you develop new capabilities and processes and offerings together, you're going to document those processes in a shared, living wiki, because those processes are going to continue to change. So my team uses Confluence, where we document our shared workflows, but everybody on the team has access and total trust to continue refining those in the ways that they see are best for the team. 3. Make recommendations and report together
We'll smash some slides together at the last minute before we throw it over the fence to the client. It ends up with a pretty shallow, almost meaningless set of data that doesn't tell a story. So we should be getting together, sharing our insights, observations, and findings in the room together to find the story that is the most meaningful and help prioritize for our clients the best marketing decisions they can make from that data. 4. Cross-train to build advocacy across teamsSo your next tip is to cross-train so you can build advocacy across the teams. We host a lot of workshops and hands-on training. We've even done job swaps where we had SEOs writing performance content for product detail pages. It creates this wonderful sense of empathy and understanding for what others need in order to do their jobs well. But it also creates these great mental checks where you ask yourself, "Am I including the right people at the right times? Is there anyone else who could add value here? Could my work be impacting someone else?" So the purpose here is not necessarily to know how to do each other's jobs so much as it is to empower people to be able to advocate for, speak about, and cross-sell your other teams. 5. Reintroduce the team or capability
Talk about what the new capability is and does and the value it brings to the organization. Tell people how to engage with that new offering and what it means for their project or initiative or client. 6. Market the joint winsUp next, we're going to market the joint wins. As you're continuously integrating, you should always be looking for wins or warnings that you can share with others so they can learn how to better engage with your offerings. So if you have a great case study, where you integrated paid and organic or organic and content, make sure you're marketing those stories out to your colleagues, your clients, your bosses, and of course your team. 7. Hold roundtables to deep-dive search opportunitiesUp next, we're going to do roundtables so we can deep dive search opportunities with other departments. So of course it makes sense to have roundtables between organic search and paid search or organic search and performance content, but also think beyond your immediate team. Think about other marketing teams, like social media and pairing search behavior insights with social listening data. Or think about geographic teams. What if you sat your organic search team down with your Europe group to figure out what opportunities make the most sense for that region? Or even sales and IT and finding those areas of intersection, where you can do great search work that supports more parts of the organization. 8. Host mutual lunch &learns to cross-pollinate
9. Give ownership of change to others
It helps make sure we've considered all the angles and greatly impacts our ability to get buy-in across the team. So those are nine quick tips to integrate organic search, paid search, and content practices. Let us know what you think in the comments below. I want to hear your tips too, and we'll see you next time on Whiteboard Friday. Video transcription by Speechpad.com Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! SEO via SEOmoz Blog https://moz.com/blog July 26, 2019 at 02:12AM
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Google Makes it Easier to Visit Web Pages from Image Search Results via @MattGSouthern https://ift.tt/2JTQmND An update to Google Images makes it easier for users to visit the original web page that an image is featured on. This will be helpful to searchers and has the potential to send more traffic to publishers. However, there’s a catch. In order for pages to benefit from this update, they need to be coded in AMP HTML. That’s because the feature relies on AMP to load an instant preview of a web page. The feature is called “Swipe to Visit” and was previewed at Google I/O earlier this year. When selecting an image in Google Images’ mobile search results, a preview of the web page header will appear at the bottom of the screen (provided it’s an AMP page). Users can swipe up on the web page header to instantly load the page in full. When users are done viewing the web page, they can simply swipe down to continue their image search. Here’s an example: In an announcement, Google explains how it works:
Google says the speed and convenience offered by Swipe to Visit makes it more likely for users to visit a publisher’s site. If your site already supports AMP, there’s nothing more you need to do to optimize your pages for Swipe to Visit. Traffic data from AMP in Google Images will be available in Search Console in the coming weeks. SEO via Search Engine Journal https://ift.tt/1QNKwvh July 25, 2019 at 07:02PM
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Report: Product advertising is driving spend growth in search, social, marketplace https://ift.tt/2SFUVhb Overall, paid search spending increased 10% year over year in the second quarter of 2019 on the Kenshoo platform, the company reported this week. Search product ad spend grew by 30% year over year, far outpacing text ad growth. This lines up with what Merkle reported this week as well. Among its client base, Google Shopping spend grew by 38% in the second quarter, compared to overall Google search spend growth of 15% year over year. Paid social commerce ad growth. Product ads on social are also booming. Kenshoo said social product ad spend increased by 38% year over year in the second quarter. Amazon spend growth. On the Amazon advertising front, retailers running Amazon sponsored ads through Kenshoo spent nearly as much in the second quarter as they did in the holiday fourth quarter of 2018. “What makes it even more notable is that this channel is dominated by retailers who tend to double down in Q4 for the end-of-the-year holiday shopping season. As this channel continues to climb up and up in its digital advertising spend, this year’s Q4 is bound to be record-breaking,” said Kenshoo. Why we should care. Platforms are making significant investments to court commerce advertising. Google is revamping Google Shopping, the social platforms continue to innovate with new commerce ad formats and capabilities and Amazon is just getting started. For retailers, that adds up to a host of new marketing opportunities. The growth rates for search and social product ads “could be a signal that product advertising is starting to break out as its own discipline with bespoke budgets and managed somewhat like a single channel,” said Kenshoo. (The platform supports ads on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat.) Long tail product search. Product and mobile ads continued to put downward pressure on search click costs. CPCs were off 10% year over year overall, as click volume increased 23% on an impression jump of 41% in the second quarter. “This influx of product ads are inherently long-tail terms with less competition and bid price as head [general] terms,” said Kenshoo. “Although individual volume on these niche terms can be low, in aggregate, they are moving the CPC and CTR industry trend averages down.” Mobile passed 50% milestone. Mobile search click and impression share has hovered around 70% and while mobile spend share has been roughly 50% for several quarters on the Kenshoo platform. In the second quarter, mobile finally accounted for the majority of search spend, at 51%. About The AuthorGinny Marvin is Third Door Media's Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin. SEO via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/1BDlNnc July 25, 2019 at 02:43PM
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Want to speak at SMX East? Here’s how https://ift.tt/2Y7Af7O The agenda for our upcoming SMX East show is live, and we’ve opened up our “speaking pitch” form for select sessions for the show, November 13-14 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York. To increase the odds of being selected, be sure to read the agenda. Understand what the sessions are about. Ensure that your pitch is on target to the show’s audience and the session. Please also be very specific about what you intend to cover. Also, if you do not see a particular session listed, this is because there are no openings for that session. Use this form to submit your request. PLEASE NOTE: Many sessions have already been filled and are not open for pitches. If a session does not appear on the pitch form, it is closed, even if no speakers are appearing on the agenda yet. As you might guess, interest is high in speaking at SMX conferences. We literally sift through hundreds of submissions to select speakers for the show. Here are some tips that will increase your chances of being selected. Pitch early: Submitting your pitch early gives you a better chance of being selected. Coordinators accept speakers as soon as they identify a pitch that they think best fits the session, just like colleges that use a rolling admissions policy. So pitching early increases the likelihood you’ll be chosen. Use the form: The speaker pitch form (http://marketinglandevents.com/speaker-form/) is the way to ask to speak. There’s helpful information there about how your pitch should be written and what it should contain. Write it yourself and be specific: Lots of pitches come in that are not specific to the session. This is the most effective ways to ensure that your pitch is ignored. And this year, we’re no longer accepting pitches written by anyone other than a proposed speaker. If you’re a thought leader, write the pitch yourself… and make certain that it is 100% focused on the session topic. “Throw your best pitch:” We’re limiting the number of pitches to three per person, so please pitch for the session(s) where you really feel you’ll offer SMX attendees your best. NEW: SMX Insights Sessions. We’re premiering SMX Insights sessions at SMX East. What are they? 8-12 minute solo sessions that pack a punch and wow attendees with content they can’t and won’t see anywhere else. Tactical. Specific. Actionable. Speakers are challenged to deliver the goods in a limited amount of time: one must-try tactic, one nugget of sage advice, or one takeaway that makes you more productive. Have a gem to share with your colleagues? Pitch your idea and you may make it to the SMX stage! You’ll be notified: Everyone who pitches to speak will be notified by email whether you are accepted or not. And don’t delay—the pitch forms for each session will close as sessions are filled, with everything closing Friday, August 16. SEO via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/1BDlNnc July 25, 2019 at 02:23PM |
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