RICK REA: Helping You Grow Through Online Marketing
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Social Media News
    • SEO Marketing News
    • Digital Trends News
    • Photography News
    • Mobile Marketing
    • Business News
    • Gadget News
    • Printing News
  • Contact
  • About
  • Subscribe

SEO Marketing News

Googles YouTube Rolling Out New Features and a New Look by @MattGSouthern

8/31/2017

0 Comments

 


Google’s YouTube Rolling Out New Features and a New Look by @MattGSouthern

http://ift.tt/2gnbewB

YouTube is undergoing a series of changes on mobile and desktop, the most noticeable of which is a new look complete with a new logo.

New Features

YouTube is working on bringing new gestures to its interface. It’s currently experimenting with a feature that will let you swipe to jump to the next video, or go back to the previous one.

A desktop feature is finally coming to mobile. Users can now speed up or slow down video playback.

While viewing a video in full screen mode, there is a new feature which displays a row of suggested videos to watch next.

New Design

Navigation tabs have been moved to the bottom of the screen on mobile so they’re closer to users’ thumbs.

YouTube’s video player will change shape and adapt to the aspect ratio of the video being watched. Yes, that means vertical videos with no pillarboxing!

Material design has been applied to the desktop version of YouTube, with the option to change from a light theme to a dark theme.

Last but not least, YouTube has a brand new logo and icon. The company says it has been designed to work better across a variety of devices.





SEO

via Search Engine Journal http://ift.tt/1QNKwvh

August 31, 2017 at 10:13PM
0 Comments

Instagram Now Supports Portrait and Landscape Photo & Video in Galleries by @MattGSouthern

8/31/2017

0 Comments

 
http://ift.tt/2iLFF4k

Instagram Now Supports Portrait and Landscape Photo & Video in Galleries by @MattGSouthern

http://ift.tt/2xByYFn

Instagram users are no longer limited to publishing galleries full of square photos and videos.

The company has announced photos and videos in portrait or landscape format can now be used within galleries.

Instagram has supported portrait and landscape formats for some time now, but not in galleries.

When the social network first introduced the ability to upload multiple photos and videos in one post, they had to be cropped into squares.

That was the case up until now. This change means portrait, landscape, and square formats can be included in the same gallery.

Or you can upload a gallery of just landscape videos, or a gallery of just portrait photos. The choice is yours.

You may not see this option available immediately, as it is being rolled out gradually. Eventually it will be available to everyone.





SEO

via Search Engine Journal http://ift.tt/1QNKwvh

August 31, 2017 at 10:13PM
0 Comments

Instagram Stories Are Coming to Mobile Web Browsers by @MattGSouthern

8/31/2017

0 Comments

 


Instagram Stories Are Coming to Mobile Web Browsers by @MattGSouthern

http://ift.tt/2vvEDPy

Instagram is bringing it’s Snapchat-like stories to the mobile web.

When logged into Instagram.com on a mobile web browser, you will now see stories at the top of your feed just like in the app.

While viewing a story, left and right arrows will appear for skipping forward or backward.

Bringing Instagram stories to mobile browsers will give people the opportunity to view stories on a larger screen, such as those using tablets.

This is rolling out gradually to all users over the coming weeks.

It will be some time before users can upload stories with a mobile web browser, as that functionality isn’t coming for a few months.

Instagram notes that over 250 million people use stories every day. That figure is especially notable because it’s more than Snapchat’s entire user base.

What is clearly a Snapchat clone has become one of the centerpieces of Instagram.





SEO

via Search Engine Journal http://ift.tt/1QNKwvh

August 31, 2017 at 05:33PM
0 Comments

What's Your AMP Traffic Really Doing? Set Up Reporting in 10 Minutes

8/31/2017

0 Comments

 
http://ift.tt/2xAgt3V

What's Your AMP Traffic Really Doing? Set Up Reporting in 10 Minutes

http://ift.tt/2vu0rva

Posted by Jeremy_Gottlieb

The other day, my colleague Tom Capper wrote a post about getting more traffic when you can’t rank any higher. I was really pleased that he wrote it, because it tackles a challenge I think about all the time. As SEOs, our hands are tied: we’re often not able to make product-level decisions that could create new markets, and we’re not Google’s algorithms — we can’t force a particular page to rank higher. What’s an SEO to do?

What if we shifted focus from transactional queries (for e-commerce, B2C, or B2B sites) and focused on the informational type of queries that are one, two, three, and possibly four or more interactions away from actually yielding a conversion? These types of queries are often quite conversational (i.e. "what are the best bodyweight workouts?") and very well could lead to conversions down the road if you’re try to sell something (like fitness-related products or supplements).

If we shift our focus to queries like the question I just posed, could we potentially enter more niches for search and open up more traffic? I’d hypothesize yes — and for some, driving this additional traffic is all one needs; whatever happens with that traffic is irrelevant. Personally, I’d rather drive qualified, relevant traffic to a client and then figure out how we can monetize that traffic down the road.

To accomplish this, over the past year I’ve been thinking a lot about Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).


What are Accelerated Mobile Pages?

According to Google,

"The AMP Project is an open-source initiative aiming to make the web better for all. The project enables the creation of websites and ads that are consistently fast, beautiful, and high-performing across devices and distribution platforms."

What this really means is that Google wants to make the web faster, and probably doesn’t trust the majority of sites to adequately speed up their pages or do so on a reasonable timeframe. Thus, AMP were created to allow for pages to load extremely fast (by cutting out the fat from your original source code) and provide an awesome user experience. Users can follow some basic instructions, use WordPress or other plugins, and in practically no time have mobile variants of their web content that loads super fast.

Why use AMP?

While AMP is not yet (or possibly ever going to be) a ranking factor, the fact that it loads fast certainly helps in the eyes of almighty Google and can contribute to higher rankings and clicks.

Let’s take a look at the query "Raekwon McMillan," the Miami Dolphins second-round pick in the 2017 NFL Draft out of Ohio State University:

Screenshot of mobile SERP for query "Raekwon McMillan"

Notice how of these cards on mobile, two contain a little lightning bolt and the word "AMP?" The prevalence of AMP results in the SERPs is becoming more and more common. It’s reasonable to think that while the majority of people who use Google are not currently familiar with AMP, over time and through experience, they will realize that AMP pages with that little icon load much faster than regular web pages and will gravitate towards AMP pages through a type of subconscious Pavlovian training.

Should I use AMP?

There are rarely any absolutes in this world, and this is no exception. Only you will know, based upon your particular needs at this time. AMP is typically used by news publishers like the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox News, and many others, but it’s important to note that it's not limited to this type of entity. While there is an AMP news carousel that frequently appears on mobile and is almost exclusively the domain of large publishing sites, AMP results are increasingly appearing in the regular results, like with the Raekwon McMillan example.

I'm a fan of leveraging blog content on AMP to generate as many eyeballs as possible on our pages, but I'm still a bit leery about putting product pages on AMP (though this is now possible). My end goal is to drive traffic and brand familiarity through the blog content and then ultimately drive more sales as people are either retargeted to via paid or come back from other sources, direct, organic or otherwise to actually complete the purchase. If your blog has strong, authoritative content, deploying AMP could potentially be a great way to generate more visibility and clicks for your site.

I must point out, however, that AMP doesn’t come without potential drawbacks. There are strict guidelines around what you can and can’t do with it, such as not having email popups, possible reduction in ad revenue, analytics complications, and requiring maintenance of a new set of pages. If you do decide that the potential gain in organic traffic is worth the tradeoffs, we can get into how to best measure the success of AMP for your site.


Now you have AMP traffic — so what?

If your goal is to drive more organic traffic, you need to be prepared for the questions that will come if that traffic does not yield revenue in Google Analytics. First, we need to keep in mind that GA's default attribution is via last direct click, but the model can be altered to report different numbers. This means that if you have a visitor who searches something organically, enters via the blog, and doesn't purchase anything, yet 3 days later comes back via direct and purchases a product, the default conversion reporting in GA would assign no credit to the organic visit, giving all of the conversion credit to the direct visit.

But this is misleading. Would that conversion have happened if not for the first visit from organic search? Probably not.

By going into the Conversions section of GA and clicking on Attribution > Model Comparison Tool, you’ll be able to see a side-by-side comparison of different conversion models, such as:

  • First touch (all credit goes to first point-of-entry to site)
  • Last touch (all credit goes to the point-of-entry of session where conversion took place)
  • Position-based (credit is primarily shared between the first and last points-of-entry, with less credit being shared amongst the intermediary steps)

There are also a few others, but I find them to be less interesting. For more information, read here. You can also click on Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions to see the number of conversions by channel which were used along the way to a conversion, but was not the channel of conversion.

AMP tracking complications

Somewhat surprisingly, tracking from AMP is not as easy or as logical as one might expect. To begin with, AMP uses a separate Analytics snippet than your standard GA tracking code, so if you already have GA installed on your site and you decide to roll out AMP, you will need to set up the specific AMP analytics. (For more information on AMP analytics, please read Accelerated Mobile Pages Via Google Tag Manager and Adding Analytics to Your AMP Pages).

In a nutshell, the client ID (which tracks a specific user’s engagement with a site over time in GA) is not shared by default between AMP analytics and the regular tracking code, though there are some hack-y ways to get around this (WARNING: this gets very technically in-depth). I think there are two very important questions when it comes to AMP measurement:

  1. How much revenue are these pages responsible for?
  2. How much engagement are we driving from AMP pages?

In the Google Analytics AMP analytics property, it's simple to see how many sessions there are and what the bounce and exit rates are. From my own experience, bounce and exit rates are usually pretty high (depending on UX), but the number of sessions increases overall. So, if we’re driving more and more users, how can we track and improve engagement beyond the standard bounce and exit rates? Where do we look?

How to measure real value from AMP in Google Analytics

Acquisition > Referrals

I propose looking into our standard GA property and navigating to our referring sources within Acquisition, where we’ll select the AMP source, highlighted below.

Once we click there, we’ll see the full referring URLs, the number of sessions each URL drove to the non-AMP version of the site, the number of transactions associated with each URL, the amount of revenue associated per URL, and more.

Important note here: These sessions are not the total number of sessions on each AMP page; rather, these are the number of sessions that originated on an AMP URL and were referred to the non-AMP property.

Why is this particular report interesting?

  1. It allows us to see which specific AMP URLs are referring the most traffic to the non-AMP version of the site
  2. It allows us to see how many transactions and how much revenue comes from a session initiated by a specific AMP URL
    1. From here, we can analyze why certain pages refer more traffic or end up with more conversions, then apply any findings to other AMP URLs

Why is this particular report incomplete?

  • It only shows us conversions and revenue that happened during one session (last-touch attribution)
    • It is very likely that most of your blog traffic will be higher-funnel and informational, not transactional, so conversions are more likely to happen at later touch points than the first one

Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions

If we really want to have the best understanding of how much revenue and conversions happen from visits to AMP URLs, we need to analyze the assisted conversions report. While you can certainly find value from analyzing the model comparison tool (also found within the conversions tab of GA), if we want to answer the question, "How many conversions and how much revenue are we driving from AMP URLs?", it’s best answered in the Assisted Conversions section.

One of the first things that we’ll need to do is create a custom channel grouping within the Assisted Conversions section of Conversions.

In here, we need to:

  1. Click "Channel Groupings," select "Create a custom channel grouping"
  2. Name the channel "AMP"
  3. Set a rule as a source containing your other AMP property (type in “amp” into the form and it will begin to auto-populate; just select the one you need)
  4. Click "Save"

Why is this particular report interesting?

  1. We’re able to see how many assisted as well as last click/direct conversions there were by channel
  2. We’re able to change the look-back window on a conversion to anywhere from 1–90 days to see how it affects the sales cycle

Why is this particular report incomplete?

  • We’re unable to see which particular pages are most responsible for driving traffic, revenue, and conversions

Conclusion

As both of these reports are incomplete on their own, I recommend any digital marketer who is measuring the effect of AMP URLs to use the two reports in conjunction for their own reporting. Doing so will provide the value of:

  1. Informing us which AMP URLs refer the most traffic to our non-AMP pages, providing us a jumping-off point for analysis of what type of content and CTAs are most effective for moving visitors from AMP deeper into the site
  2. Informing us how many conversions happen with different attribution models

It’s possible that a quick glance at your reports will show very low conversion numbers, especially when compared with other channels. That does not necessarily mean AMP should be abandoned; rather, those pages should receive further investment and optimization to drive deeper engagement in the same session and retargeting for future engagement. Google actually does allow you to set up your AMP pages to retarget with Google products so users can see products related to the content they visited.

You can also add in email capture forms to your AMP URLs to re-engage with people at a later time, which is useful because AMP does not currently allow for interstitials or popups to capture a user’s information.

What do you do next with the information collected?

  1. Identify why certain pages refer more traffic than others to non-AMP URLs. Is there a common factor amongst pages that refer more traffic and others that don’t?
  2. Identify why certain pages are responsible for more revenue than other pages. Do all of your AMP pages contain buttons or designated CTAs?
  3. Can you possibly capture more emails? What would need to be done?

Ultimately, this reporting is just the first step in benchmarking your data. From here you can pull insights, make recommendations, and monitor how your KPIs progress. Many people have been concerned or confused as to whether AMP is valuable or the right thing for them. It may or may not be, but if you’re not measuring it effectively, there’s no way to really know. There's a strong likelihood that AMP will only increase in prominence over the coming months, so if you’re not sure how to attribute that traffic and revenue, perhaps this can help get you set up for continued success.

Did I miss anything? How do you measure the success (or failure) of your AMP URLs? Did I miss any KPIs that could be potentially more useful for your organization? Please let me know in the comments below.


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

August 31, 2017 at 04:51PM
0 Comments

Google AdWords Will Track How Often Your Shopping Ad is Displayed First by @MattGSouthern

8/31/2017

0 Comments

 
http://ift.tt/2wrdZF2

Google AdWords Will Track How Often Your Shopping Ad is Displayed First by @MattGSouthern

http://ift.tt/2vNl7JD

Google AdWords will now report on how often one of your shopping ads appears in the top position. The new report is called ‘absolute top impression share.’

In an effort to help advertisers identify product data gaps, AdWords is also introducing ‘product status reporting.’

Absolute Top Impression Share

According to Google’s data, the left-most ad in mobile shopping results receives up to three times more engagement. The left-most position is called “absolute top.”

To see how many times one of your ads was featured in the absolute top position, search for the ‘abs. top IS’ column.

Absolute top impression share is the number of times one of your ads was in the left-most position over the total number of times your ad could’ve been in that position.

So if your ad appears in the absolute top position 5 times out of 10 times it was eligible to be displayed, your absolute top impression share is 50%.

Product Status Reporting

By adding the new product status report to reporting charts in the ‘product’ and ‘product groups’ page, you can see how many of your product ads are eligible to be served.

From there you can identify which ads in your shopping campaign are not eligible to be served, if there are any.

In addition, there’s a new diagnostics report in the products page that will identify products that are ‘ready to serve’ or ‘disapproved.’

Clicking on a disapproved product ad will give you details on how you can fix the issues that are preventing it from being served.

These new additions are available now in the new AdWords experience only.





SEO

via Search Engine Journal http://ift.tt/1QNKwvh

August 31, 2017 at 04:46PM
0 Comments

SearchCap: Google local pack mentions Google Shopping reports & PPC evals

8/31/2017

0 Comments

 
http://ift.tt/1WuzysF

SearchCap: Google local pack mentions, Google Shopping reports & PPC evals

http://ift.tt/2gmdVyB

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Google local pack mentions, Google Shopping reports & PPC evals appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.




SEO

via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://ift.tt/fN1KYC

August 31, 2017 at 03:00PM
0 Comments

Google is Testing Infinite Scroll in Mobile Search by @MattGSouthern

8/31/2017

0 Comments

 
http://ift.tt/2vMMDqQ

Google is Testing Infinite Scroll in Mobile Search by @MattGSouthern

http://ift.tt/2wlsBHE

Google has been spotted testing infinite scroll search results pages in mobile search.

For some searches, rather than showing the usual “Next” button at the bottom of search results, there is a “See more results” button.

Clicking on “See more results” loads more results right on the page the user is currently viewing, instead of taking them to a new page.

Here is an A/B comparison using the search query “Uber contact number.” The screenshot below shows the usual ‘Next’ button.

Now here’s a comparison in the screenshot below where the “See more results” button is displayed.

Google says it regularly conducts numerous tests on a daily basis, so we can only assume infinite scroll mobile search results is nothing more than a test at this time.

We certainly cannot confirm this is something that will be rolled out permanently, but it is interesting nonetheless.

We’d like to thank Charity at Conductor for sending us this information.





SEO

via Search Engine Journal http://ift.tt/1QNKwvh

August 31, 2017 at 11:45AM
0 Comments

Google Shopping gets top spot impression share & product diagnostics reporting

8/31/2017

0 Comments

 
http://ift.tt/1nzs6lf

Google Shopping gets top spot impression share & product diagnostics reporting

http://ift.tt/2xPw0MA

Each year, Google rolls out several new features ahead of the holidays for retail advertisers. This year’s updates have started coming out.

The company introduced a new metric and new reporting for Shopping campaign advertisers — only in the new AdWords interface.

The new metric, called absolute top impression share, reports how often Shopping ads and Local Inventory ads appear in the first spot on mobile and desktop. Google says that during Q4 last year, the first Shopping ad on mobile saw up to three times more engagement than the other spots.

On the Products page, a new diagnostics report lets advertisers dig deeper into product status issues in AdWords.

 

These features can be added to the list of features exclusive to the new AdWords interface — what Google calls the new AdWords experience — that’s rolling out to advertisers through this year.


About The Author

As Third Door Media's paid media reporter, Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies and can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.





SEO

via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://ift.tt/fN1KYC

August 31, 2017 at 11:23AM
0 Comments

Evaluating PPC talent part 2: The test

8/31/2017

0 Comments

 
http://ift.tt/2fIFgMh

Evaluating PPC talent, part 2: The test

http://ift.tt/2iJaR42

Previously, we discussed how to find good PPC candidates for your particular company, but now it’s time to evaluate those candidates.

It comes down to this: You’ve held dozens of interviews with candidates almost impossible to tell apart. They all have similar credentials. They’ve worked in the right industry or environment, have used similar tools to what your paid media team uses and didn’t hesitate to answer your questions. But what’s next?

The technical assessment of your PPC hire may be the thing you’ve most overlooked, and it can often lead to a complete disaster.

How do we evaluate PPC talent?

You cannot properly assess how someone will fit into your team and impact your business simply by reviewing resumes and asking them a few questions to make sure they speak the language.

Unfortunately, there is also no one-size-fits-all assessment your team can find online and use. You have to start by taking an honest look at your work environment and understanding the person who will be required for the job. What tasks would this person be expected to complete daily, weekly or monthly?

If you’re a SaaS (software as a service) startup in need of speed and growth, you simply cannot afford to hire someone who hasn’t been through that; bringing on PPC manager from a local digital agency won’t get the job done. Your hire will need to understand how to deliver a plan of upcoming experiments at scale and execute on them quickly. There can’t be a learning curve.

If you’re an agency, your hire might need to be a better public speaker and salesperson in addition to having technical PPC knowledge, and they will need be able to create (and explain) reports.

By understanding the specifics of the position and crafting a test around them, you are off to the right start. And while there is no one-size-fits-all, I can share three tests I highly recommend.

Test #1: The fake report

The fake report test might be my favorite, wherein you deliver an interviewee a fake dataset for analysis. Present a sample report and ask for recommendations based on the data. Hopefully, they will dig into topics like the following:

  • Suggestions on how to re-allocate budget for efficiency.
    • For search, this might mean indicating search impression share.
    • For social, this might mean indicating audience size and daily budget.
  • What channels should be tested, given the business goals?
    • Also, did they ask you about the primary KPIs for your ad campaigns? If not, it’s likely not the right fit.
  • Is there an appropriate mix of prospecting and retargeting?
  • Are campaigns organized in a way that makes sense? Should structural changes be made?

The suggestions above are not exhaustive, but the perfect candidate has these types of questions and thoughts from looking at your data. Let them show you how they think and make decisions.

If you use this test, consider throwing in something really strange. Give your potential hires something to question, and see what they come up with. I recommend something subtle, like duplicating click numbers several times, or having the total spend not add up — small details that would be important to capture if they were incorrect. After all, a few lines of data could seriously throw off your day, or even your month.

Here’s an example of a fake dataset you might present to your candidates for analysis, with inconsistencies highlighted in red. (Obviously, don’t highlight your inconsistencies for the candidates!)

Of course, not catching these inconsistencies shouldn’t keep you from hiring someone who is otherwise an absolutely perfect fit. But when each candidate seems to be almost identical, small details like this can be great differentiators. You want the person who digs most deeply into the data and sees inconsistencies. Incorrect data leads to incorrect analyses — and possibly incorrect actions. Incorrect data can mean pixels and tracking codes are firing improperly.

Test #2: A competitive analysis

There are several things that advertisers like to do, and checking out the competition is one of them. If you’re hiring for a position where they will have to touch Facebook Ads, the candidate who knows to follow competitor brands, engage with posts, or even go to their site and get into retargeting pool is the one to pursue.

One of the best weapons advertisers have in Facebook is to see how ads are being targeted. If a candidate is seeing prospecting ads from your competitors and has the foresight to check if it’s lookalike targeting or something more complex, hire them.

In AdWords, a hire should be able to not only have an understanding of keywords competitors might be using, but start to develop a feel for how each brand positions themselves in search. Ask candidates to evaluate the search landscape and come to you with estimated CPCs, top keywords, ad extensions and copy competitors are using, to begin building a complete picture of what your competitors are doing. With this information gathered, what opportunities do they see, and what recommendations can they make?

This test has several benefits: Candidates will have a better understanding of what first steps to make if hired, and you are provided with some much-needed outside perspective that can further inform your decision. Again, the key here is to find tests that would be applicable to the daily work your new hire will be doing, and checking out the competition will surely fall into that category.

Test #3: Next month’s budget

This test requires a willingness to share your current spend and results, but it will likely be worth it. Have the final candidates sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), then grant read-only Google Analytics access and share your most recent budget. Budget planning, especially for channel owners who will not have a direct supervisor managing this for them, is a 100 percent essential skill and cannot be overlooked.

Now, you won’t be able to judge from this exercise how well these candidates can stick to a budget, but a candidate who can identify areas where you are overspending or underspending — as well as new opportunities for test spend and a plan to execute — is one worth being excited about.

If you’re a high-growth organization that isn’t asking for someone to just conduct daily maintenance, but needs someone to optimize and then scale quickly, you need to evaluate more than just a potential hire’s PPC knowledge. General business skills, like budget allocation, are crucial to the position.

Customize your test for your business

Feel free to tweak any of the above tests to best fit your hiring needs. Again, I can’t stress enough that the most important step in creating a test for potential candidates is doing a thorough evaluation of what your new hire will be doing on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Identify all the skills they will need, and start testing for relevant skills.

Hiring PPC talent isn’t easy. But when you’ve made sure your job listing accurately details your expectations and crafted tests to make sure candidates are the right fit, you’re going to make the process a lot simpler.


Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About The Author

With 3 years of experience in paid media, Brett Middleton is a freelance paid media expert and owner of

Brett Middleton Digital

. Hobbies include surviving Minnesota winters and beer sampling.





SEO

via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://ift.tt/fN1KYC

August 31, 2017 at 10:16AM
0 Comments

Why microsites arent always ideal for SEO

8/31/2017

0 Comments

 
http://ift.tt/1NRSheT

Why microsites aren’t always ideal for SEO

http://ift.tt/2eHoqMM

The question of whether or not to utilize microsites is an interesting topic of discussion for SEO.

On the one hand, microsites allow organizations to segment information and focus a site clearly on one topic. For instance, it’s not uncommon for an organization or association that hosts conferences to have a separate conference-focused website for registration and information aside from the main organization website (as Search Engine Land does with the SMX conference site). Or, if you own several car dealerships, you may want or need to have a separate website for each dealership location.

There are definitely times when having separate sites makes sense from a brand perspective. But there are also several reasons you may want to reconsider splitting your website into multiple microsites. Following are some potential SEO issues that can result from implementing microsites.

Inbound links

Since the original Google algorithm patent, inbound links have been an important ranking factor. So, how can they be affected by microsites?

Imagine you own a restaurant and have several locations. For example, we have a local restaurant in Charlottesville named Guadalajara with four locations. Each restaurant has the same menu. Do you need a separate website for each location, such as Guadalajara Pantops and Guadalajara Downtown?

In situations like these, I advise clients against using separate websites if possible because it can split and dilute the inbound link value. Just as the quantity and quality of links to an individual page is important, overall quantity and quality of links to the domain is also important.

If the sites are separated, they are working as two separate websites, essentially competing with one another in Google search results. If they are on one website, they are working together in Google search results.

With a single site, there are more inbound links pointed to the one domain, as opposed to splitting those links across multiple domains. In this scenario, ultimately the single site works better for SEO.

Site authority

It’s tough to really know what Google’s perceived authority for a site on a particular subject is. But what we do know is that Google values and looks for content along a similar vein as part of determining authority.

For example, if I have a blog and write almost exclusively about cats, but then one day have a random post about traveling to Paris, it can be assumed that Google would likely see my website as an authority on cats before it would consider my site an authority on Paris.

In this case, the Paris content and the cat content are very different — not even related to one another. The audiences may even be different. So, if I were planning to add more Paris content, it might make sense to have two different blogs: one that is a travel blog about Paris and a separate one about cats. Each can become its own authority on its own subject.

But what if the topic is closely related? For example, let’s say that I have a blog that features posts about cat nutrition and dog nutrition. The site could be considered by Google authoritative as a resource for overall pet nutrition because these are similar topics. In a case like this one, I wouldn’t recommend necessarily splitting the site into two separate sites because the categories/topics are related and can still likely be an authority in Google’s view.

Still, don’t think that just because one site has two very different topics, it can’t be an authority on each. A site doesn’t have to be an authority on only one topic. Before you decide to split your site into multiple sites, consider the ramifications of both site authority overall and what your future goals are. If you’re trying to show Google that your site should be an authority in a new space or new topic, you’ve got to build that authority over time.

Duplicate content

Let’s say your organization owns several dental offices, each with its own website. One of the office websites posts a blog post about tips for good dental health, and you’d like to share that post on the other offices’ website blogs. Great! Unfortunately, it’s easy to accidentally create duplicate content this way, especially if the webmasters for those office websites aren’t coordinating efforts well.

If you choose to use multiple sites, be diligent in using the canonical tag when sharing content between your websites to ensure that the content creator gets full SEO credit and that the other sites don’t inadvertently create duplicate content.

Analytics tracking

While technically, you can track traffic across multiple domains, it’s less than ideal and can be complicated to set up in Google Analytics. I have a client that has annual charity events, and each event is hosted on its own specific event domain rather than on the main charity website.

When a visitor navigated from the main charity website to the event microsite, source data for that visitor became “referral” rather than the source that brought the visitor to the charity site originally, such as Google.

This scenario leads to a great deal of lost information as a visitor moves from one site to another. In the view of Google Analytics, it’s as if this visitor moved from one whole company/website to another, and the background information for that visitor does not follow to the new site.

Maintenance

As Google Webmaster Trend Analyst John Mueller recently mentioned, and as SEO expert Jennifer Slegg reported, maintenance can be a major problem when you have many smaller websites. If you have two different sites, that means two different XML sitemaps to maintain. It means ensuring that two separate sites are mobile-friendly and optimized for page load speed. Having two separate sites can mean a lot of extra maintenance that is avoided with just one website.

Having multiple websites also introduces greater potential for errors. For example, let’s say you want to add Google Tag Manager (GTM) to each site. First, you may need to create separate GTM accounts and then create the specific containers for each site. Then, you’ll have to add the correct GTM code to each of the sites in the correct location. The more sites you have, the more likely you might accidentally introduce an error.

All in all, it’s likely best to avoid separate domain microsites for SEO. If the content is truly a separate entity, you may want to consider subdomains rather than microsites on separate domains, which keeps the content on the same domain but provides some level of separation.


Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About The Author

Janet Miller is the President and CEO of

Marketing Mojo

. She regularly blogs on a variety of search engine marketing topics, often focusing on technical solutions. You can find her on Twitter

@janetdmiller

.





SEO

via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://ift.tt/fN1KYC

August 31, 2017 at 09:35AM
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Categories

    All
    Conversions
    Landing Pages
    Lead Generation
    Link Building
    Search Ranking
    SEO

    Archives

    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017

    RSS Feed

All content copyrighted (C) 2010 ~ 2020
​All Photos & Content Used Under Creative Commons
​www.RickRea.com 701-200-7831
Privacy Policy
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Social Media News
    • SEO Marketing News
    • Digital Trends News
    • Photography News
    • Mobile Marketing
    • Business News
    • Gadget News
    • Printing News
  • Contact
  • About
  • Subscribe