HTTP is the standard protocol defining how information passes between your visitor’s browser and the server hosting your site and HTTP status codes are your handy way of knowing exactly what is happening within that process. For web marketers, it’s well worth the effort to get familiar with these status codes. By understanding your site’s backend activity you can recognize errors that demand attention and find opportunities to help improve (or at least not hinder) your SEO efforts. A quick HTTP status code overviewHTTP status codes are three-digit numbers. The first number indicates which of the five categories each belongs to. The categories refer to either a type of request or type of error, as follows: 1xx status codes: Information requestStatus codes beginning with a “1” communicate that a server is processing information, but has not yet completed the request. 2xx status codes: SuccessThese status codes indicate that a requested information transfer was successfully completed. For marketers seeking to improve SEO, these codes mean that no action is required, everything is working correctly. 3xx status codes: RedirectionThese redirect codes communicate that your visitor requested information that was not available at the targeted address. 4xx status codes: Client errorThese codes signal that the client (the browser accessing the site) has encountered an error when trying to receive server information. 5xx status codes: Server error5xx codes point to server-side errors, the client request was issue-free and yet the server could not finish the transfer. Six HTTP status codes that are arguably most critical to SEOWhile there are more than 60 HTTP status codes to be aware of, some are more relevant from an SEO perspective than others. The following six status codes are especially important to understand and watch out for. 1) 404 – Not foundA 404 page not found error is perhaps the most commonly known HTTP status code and can signal to marketers that a page is failing to deliver content to visitors. The server cannot return information because the resource or URL doesn’t exist. Landing at a 404 page is detrimental to SEO because unavailable content leads to a bad experience for both your audience and the search engine crawlers that are so critical to your SEO success. To address these errors, ensure that any 404 pages utilize a 301 redirect to reach an available and relevant page. 2) 301 – Moved permanentlyYou’ll recognize this code as the prescribed solution to the 404 errors just mentioned – a 301 status code means that the requested resource or URL has been permanently redirected somewhere else. This code is a valuable tool for sending visitors to relevant content that is available on the site. Marketers can and should set up 301 redirects for pages that are no longer available so that their audience lands on useful content instead of error pages. The 301 code gives search engines the message to update their index for the page. 3) 302 – FoundSimilar to code 301, code 302 is another type of useful redirect to know. However, this one is temporary rather than permanent. A 302 code directs browsers to a new URL, ensuring that visitors reach relevant content – but stops short of instructing search engines to update the page index. 4) 307 – Temporary redirectThis code offers a more specific redirect method than the 302 code and has the browser perform the redirect instead of the server. This is useful for sites served on HTTPS that are on an HTTP Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) preload list. Side note: If you are running an HTTP site, it’s definitely in your best interest to migrate to HTTPS. Thus, using codes 301, 302, and 307, marketers can optimize SEO by closely controlling search engine crawlers’ understanding of what content exists, and how they ought to crawl and index that content. 5) 503 – Service unavailableThis error indicates that the server cannot process a request due to a temporary technical issue. The 503 code informs search engines that processing was stopped on purpose and tells the search engine not to de-index the page (as it would when seeing other server errors). However, if the 503 error isn’t resolved over a long period of time, search engines can begin to view it as a permanent error that warrants deindexing. Therefore, marketers should address 503 errors as rapidly as possible to avoid deindexing of the unavailable page and the negative impact on SEO that would come hand-in-hand with that scenario. 6) 410 – GoneThis dramatic-sounding code means that a resource or URL is unavailable because it was deleted on purpose and was not redirected. When search engines see a 410, they will remove the page from the index instead of redirecting. Marketers should be sure to properly correct any page issues or implement effective redirects so that visitors arrive at content pertinent to their search needs. By at least understanding the most relevant HTTP status codes and properly addressing website fixes that can make or break SEO success – marketers can help ensure their sites function smoothly and offer the intended experiences for both search engines and potential customers. Kim Kosaka is Director of Marketing at Alexa.com. The post Six HTTP status codes most critical to your SEO success appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/07/08/six-http-status-codes-seo/
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June 19 saw Alphabet’s annual shareholder meeting take place in Sunnyvale, California. With protestors on the streets outside and a number of progressive policies being tabled and ultimately voted down by the board, the meeting was the latest moment in a storied 12+ months of internal issues and public criticism leveled at the search giant. While pressure on Google to change continues to be on an upward trajectory, it was also something of a disappointing day for advocates of transparency, fairness, and equality both inside and outside of the company. Let’s take a look at what happened and how this fits into the ongoing narrative of discord at Google and Alphabet. First, a bit of backgroundAs I reported for Search Engine Watch late last year, there has been growing discontent among Google employees about how the company is operating, with worker’s rights and leaked plans for the company to re-launch a search product (known as Dragonfly) in China both being key concerns. This came to a head in November when thousands of staff staged a mass walkout from their offices in cities around the globe. The movement sought “to protest sexual harassment, misconduct, lack of transparency, and a workplace that doesn’t work for everyone,” with five demands put in front of directors – only one of which has been implemented so far. Following the walkout, in late November, staff were moved to speak out publicly once more with an open letter to company leaders to stop the development of the Dragonfly project. More than 500 employees signed the letter which aligned itself with calls by Amnesty International. “We object to technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be,” it stated.
June 19 protestsThe gathering outside the meeting on June 19 included:
Reports from the shareholder meetingThe resulting protest covered a range of disparate issues. These, too, were reflected inside the shareholder meeting where a number of progressive motions were put forward for the board to consider. These included:
Ultimately, all of these (and others) were voted down by the board of executives. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin – who collectively have 51% of voting power – didn’t attend the meeting, leaving other board members to face a number of difficult questions in the ensuing Q&A. CEO Sundar Pichai was in attendance but did not respond to any questions directly. Any positive outcomes?While progressive outcomes from these protests and calls were seemingly not forthcoming on June 19, employees at Alphabet/Google, their contractors, and supporters are not being silenced by the board’s inaction. Google has recently announced it would invest one billion dollars toward affordable housing after years of community and employee activism on the issue. Questions may remain as to whether they could be doing more in this area and what exactly this housing will look like, but persistence on the part of those taking direct action does seem to work, if slowly. The issue of Dragonfly and whether it has been “dropped” has been handled by Google with just enough vagueness to keep some activists satisfied and others still pushing the issue. In the days following the meeting, Students For A Free Tibet announced that they were viewing Google’s public confirmation that there are “no plans to offer a search engine in China” as a win after 10 months of campaigning. However statements like these have been said before and, of course, do not assure critics that Google is not assisting a search player in China in some capacity. Not everyone will be convinced that their work is not supporting (or will not support) the surveillance state, even if only indirectly. Google employees have a loud voice, but minimal power at board levelConclusively, it seems to me that the biggest issue on seeing progressive change within Alphabet and Google depends on the make-up of the board. While a concentrated few people have a massive amount of supervoting power, and no employee representative is allowed to sit there, we can fully expect progress on employee rights within the business to improve at a frustratingly slow pace. As for how long Google continues to be vague about its work in the Chinese search market, I imagine there will be many people inside and outside of Alphabet expecting little movement in this area either – unless we do see some significant changes with the make-up of the board and voter powers there. Follow the Google Walkout Twitter feed for ongoing information about employee action and related issues. The post #GoogleDoBetter: The latest on internal issues at Google and Alphabet appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/07/03/google-do-better-latest-update/ June 13 saw the release of a new tool by London-based company Trint which can assist the crawlability and visibility of video content in search engines. The Trint Player has been unveiled at the Global Editors Network Summit in Athens where it will be used to publish video and transcripts of keynotes by Google News founder Krishna Bharat and Bloomberg Editor-In-Chief John Micklethwait. Video to dominate traffic and SERPsIn two years, video content is expected to make up 80% of online traffic. Google is increasingly returning video content in its SERPs and delivering it in a variety of ways, depending on device used and the type of content that is searched for. To date, search engines can only find a video based on words in the title, the description and in a small amount of accompanying metadata. The embeddable Trint Player works by automatically attaching a transcript to videos using AI. A search engine indexing a page with a video published in the player will be able to record all the words from the attached transcript and show the spoken words in search results. The transcript functionality is interactive. Users can click on a word and the tool will navigate to that part of the video. It auto-scrolls as the video plays and you can easily follow along or view the text without image and/or sound. I gave the searchability of the above Elon Musk video a quick test by Googling “we have an amazing product to show you tonight.” Indeed, the page on the Trint site which is hosting the video ranks very well – just below some news sites which have manually taken some quotes from Musk’s presentation. It is also worth noting that the embed in this instance is a fair way down the page. Benefits for news sites and marketersTo date, manual transcription has been a very laborious and timely job. Understandably, taking time on such a task for SEO benefit is not necessarily a big priority for journalists. The Trint Player can do this job for them with minimal legwork from the user – and with 99% accuracy according to the press materials. Trint already boasts enterprise clients in The Associated Press, NBCUniversal, The Washington Post, Vice News and Der Spiegel. It is also easy to see the potential for marketers and brands keen to get the most from their video content. According to Vidyard, 83% of marketers say video is becoming more important to them. Webinars and demos – precisely the types of videos which include a lot of unique content – are the most common types of video marketers are investing in. Looking beyond YouTubeThe player has been available to Trint customers in beta since February. It is currently compatible with videos published on YouTube and the company is awaiting feedback from users before exploring compatibility with other video hosting sites. It builds on existing work the company have been doing with their productivity platform which uses automated transcription to change the way professionals work with audio/video to produce content and insights. The company has been backed by Google Digital News Innovation Fund and the Knight Enterprise Fund. The launch of the Trint Player comes on the heels of the business closing $4.5 million in Series A funding, with follow-on investment from Horizons Lab, the Hong Kong-based seed fund operated by the managers of Horizons Ventures, as well as institutional investors including TechNexus and The Associated Press. The post Video SEO: New tool by Trint helps make spoken words in videos crawlable appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/video-seo-new-tool-trint-helps-make-spoken-words-in-videos-crawlable2019/06/14/130264/ When you have a smaller digital marketing budget, every dollar counts, and you often need to get creative to make sure your ads show where you want. In this post, I’ll walk through a few important tactics to utilize if you are launching a new program or if you have an established program with a smaller budget.
1. Retargeting site visitors and purchasersWe all know that it takes more money to acquire a brand-new customer than it does a customer who has already purchased or otherwise engaged with the brand. Paid search and paid social can be a very competitive space, so it’s crucial to use audience targeting to the best of your abilities. One easy way to get the biggest bang for your buck, with lower CPAs (Cost per acquisitions) and higher ROAS (return on advertising spend), is to retarget site visitors and purchasers. These users have already shown intent and interest in your brand, making it easier for them to engage. It is important within your search campaigns to either segment these users into their own campaign or bid-up on them within your current campaigns. For GDN (Google Display Network) and paid social, try to get in front of these users with a special message to bring them back to the site, and keep these campaigns separate from your acquisition campaigns. For both paid search and paid social, consider special messaging or discounts for these users to help them convert. 2. Mid-funnel remarketingMany B2B or lead gen businesses will focus their paid search and paid social campaigns on just getting that upper-funnel lead and will then let their sales team and email convert that lead down-funnel. Another way to ramp up the success of your paid social campaigns is to create mid-funnel remarketing campaigns to target upper-funnel leads who have not converted down the funnel. Paid social can also help push users to convert and helps complement the efforts of your sales team and email. One tactic is to stay in front of leads with a case study or white paper that talks about some of your brand’s biggest value propositions and how they help the current problems of your target audience. 3. Bid adjustments: Geo-targeting and ad schedulingWhen you have limited advertising funds, it is important to allocate those funds to the areas that are performing the most efficiently, just as you would for keywords. I recommend analyzing these segments and adjusting bids accordingly:
For example: If you are a B2B company, you might see that CPA rises during the weekend. To take advantage of this observation, pull back on Saturday and Sunday to save more money for more efficient days of the week. Our AdWords history has shown that clients lower CPA by up to 30% by smarter bidding according to performance in these segments. 4. Search query reports: Exact keywords and negative keywordsSearch query reports should be your best friend. Review the search query reports specifically for your broad terms to monitor poor matches and new top performers. Long tail keywords can add value to the account and provide reductions in CPA, so it is important to build them out if they are performing well in matching to your broad keywords. These broad keywords can also lead to poor matching, though, so it is important to review the search queries and add irrelevant or poor matching search queries as negative keywords. For example, let’s say you are a skincare company that sells facial oil and are bidding on the keyword “facial oil.” You begin seeing your click-through rate start to decrease. You look into search queries and start to see that you are matching to “olive oil,” which is not a relevant search. You would add that as a negative to the account to cut back on wasted spend for irrelevant queries. 5. InMarket and Similar Audiences for competitive termsBroad keywords can lead to high competition, high CPAs, and lower impression share, especially if bigger brands are part of the mix. That doesn’t mean you should ignore them; bid on potentially valuable broad terms, but restrict bidding to InMarket and Similar Audiences so your ads only serve to audiences you’re confident are interested in your product or service. Small budgets might seem to lead to initial challenges, especially if the market is highly competitive or efficiency targets are not currently being met. Make sure to incorporate these steps into your marketing to drive greater efficiency. If you have other tactics or strategies that have worked for your SMB, leave a comment.
Lauren Crain is a Client Services Lead in 3Q Digital’s SMB division, 3Q Incubate.
The post Five things to do on a small digital marketing budget appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/06/13/small-digital-marketing-budget-tips/ Whether you’re an SEO, PR or a website owner, it’s highly likely you’ve come across DA (Domain Authority). The metric, created by industry-leading platform Moz, was designed to help search marketers understand the value of a domain, at a glance and compare it with others in the same industry or niche. This was important for SEO, third party links have long been used to understand how “trustworthy” a website is and form part of Google’s “ranking criteria” (although their importance and how this works is a hot talking point in SEO). Moz uses their index (or understanding of the web), to map out these links between sites and, alongside other factors, try to assign a “competition” score to each website they encounter. This can then be used as a proxy to determine the value of a said site. Note: I have nothing against Moz. This piece isn’t in any way designed to be a slight on them or their work, but further insight and context into how to use the data they provide. The eye-opener to follower deceptionLast year, Social Chain opened marketers’ eyes to the murky world of follower deception. Many brands understand the importance of influencers to the digital ecosystem, but measuring the value that someone can bring prior to working with them is difficult and time-consuming. As such, often companies rely on metrics that symbolizes “reputation”, followers, engagement, and other similar indicators. However, as Social Chain asserted, the typical signposts do not always depict a true picture and if not completely understood or manipulated, can lead to large amounts of spend being wasted. This is a common theme with SEO. Although it’s less a question of manipulation and more a question of understanding. In 2012, Penguin, Google’s “webspam” filter was rolled-out and assigned a positive or negative value to third party links. Prior to this, “trust” was judged on an arguably simpler set of volume-based criteria, but as the flaws in the system were exploited. It soon became clear that a more complex solution was required, to ensure the integrity of search results was maintained. Trust continued to be an important factor in success, but SEO’s had to start thinking more carefully about how they generated these. Here the connection between SEO and PR became more important as links could not be artificially built they had to be earned, naturally. The two teams started to collaborate more closely, with SEOs providing PRs extra resource to contact a “lower”, but still valuable tier of influencer and PRs helping SEOs reach the higher, more widely trusted publications that they could not access before. Over time, the lines between SEO and other channels have started to blur – and as teams were pushed to operate across remits, PRs started to use SEO metrics, with DA taking precedence (as it was arguably the simplest to use), to understand more about the people they were contacting. With investment from brands increasing, more influencers started to appear, and from this grew an industry in its own right. Fast forward to the present dayAn influencer marketer will likely sit across content, Social, PR, and SEO, with the goal of engaging personalities to improve performance across all the channels they are connected to (based on the goals of the organization/campaign). For social and PR, engagement and reach can be more easily measured. But SEO has always been complicated. This is because “good SEO” has never been about links alone and the idea of a “link value” is entirely subjective, based on factors that change between industries, counties, and even search results. As such, the idea of using a single, links-based metric to determine the value a domain can provide for SEO is inherently floored – and yet, many marketers, influencers and PR teams still continue to use DA for this purpose. To make matters more complex, the whole link-building ecosystem has been flooded with misinformation. I discussed this in a recent webinar with SEMRush, but it’s often been the case that the wider industry’s understanding of the link building practice has come through commentators on the practice and not the experts conducting the work themselves. This means, the influencers and PR teams, and not the SEO community themselves. Why is this the case?There’s really no simple answer, although, for a long time before the collaboration was mainstream, it would be a frequent occurrence for SEOs and PRs to clash over remit cross-over. In the agency world, this could have led to reduced budgets – why pay two agencies to do the work of one, although (from my experience), clients were very much open to creating a joined-up approach between both teams. While conflict happened behind the scenes, uncertainty, and misinformation filtered out to the influencer market, with PRs and SEOs trying to show that they “knew enough” about the other to make a wider judgment on influencer selection for projects. This led to followers and domain authority becoming key metrics in this process which, although not unhelpful, rarely offered the truest picture of a website’s worth. In turn, this led to transactional relationships with websites, where links and shares were bought for a price that, once this became a commodity only ever increased. Instead of paying for the time and expertise of the people that were being engaged, their value became intrinsically tied to their reach or their link-equity (perceived through domain authority), two metrics that could be easily manipulated. Now, the growing rumble of discontent within the influencer landscape has finally hit the headlines with a theatrical flourish. Unfortunately for many, this has come too late, with brands realizing the cost of investing in reach over expertise, most famously with the Fyre festival scandal. But, this doesn’t mean that influencer marketing isn’t valuable, as I wrote at the time, but that how and most importantly – the reasons as to why marketers engage with content creators need to change. We’ve seen publicly how using followers to measure reach can be folly. But there’s still time to take these learnings and apply them to domain authority too before something as equally damaging to the industry happens. Latest developmentsRecent legislation in the UK has started to pave the way for change in this field. It’s certainly made working with influencers harder, in large part to the ambiguity around the specifics of how the changes should be interpreted, I personally apply the principle of “better safe than sorry”, even from a search perspective. Every brand interaction should now be declared as an advert, including event invites and even in cases where the only “payment” has been a reimbursing of travel costs. With Google’s hardline view on manipulative link building, the practice of engaging “high authority” SEO influencers is slowly ending or at least, becoming incredibly risky. Instead, we should look to engage influencers for their subject matter expertise and credibility they can lend to a story or campaign. In practice, this means killing the transactional “I give you X and you give me Y” type of relationships and seeing content creators as partners in getting your message out to the world. For SEO, this may mean using “no-follow” links (which, in basic terms, tell crawlers that they should not consider them for search benefit), but this shouldn’t be an issue. Sure, their direct value on search may be limited, but to think that the search algorithm considers the web in as simple terms as this would be myopic. There are some brilliant studies around the power of brand on search, which are worth noting in this context. Moreover, at its heart, a link is there to carry users from A to B. Adding a “no-follow” tag doesn’t stop this from happening and in this case, using domain authority as a metric often would lead to discounting a valuable traffic driving part of this ecosystem. With this shift in the industry and better collaboration than ever between search and the wider marketing mix, the opportunity for content, search and marketing communication teams to unite is stronger than ever. So too, is the need for it, as achieving cut-through in the wall of digital noise is harder than it’s ever been. Campaigns, to be successful on all fronts, must genuinely inspire, engage or provide value to users and older-school tactics, such as product reviews and content seeding, have all but lost their ability to drive results. On this point, we simply must move away from using domain authority and followers as a metric in isolation, as neither is an effective gauge of how useful a site might be to its users. Closing notesI’d like to speak directly to influencers because without a universal change in mindset, we’ll continue to see the same practices continue and the channel will continue to be under-utilized. I’d impress upon them the need to keep an open mind and focus on becoming the best subject matter experts that they can. I’d encourage the end of any agonizing over “vanity metrics”, which are often taken out of context, and in place look to whether their users are genuinely engaging with their content, and how this impacts their value as creators. Importantly, I’d implore everyone, PRs and SEOs included, to have a little more fun, harness the incredible creativity that brand communications teams, content creators, and influencer marketers can yield and build something great together. Ric Rodriguez is an SEO Director and winner of the 2018 Drum Search Award. He can be found on Twitter @RicRodriguez_UK. The post It’s time we rethink how we measure influencers for SEO appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/06/12/stop-measuring-influencers-using-da/ In May, Google announced the launch of a new website aimed at explaining how they serve and address news across Google properties and platforms. The site, How News Works, states Google’s mission as it relates to disseminating news in a non-biased manner. The site aggregates a variety of information about how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks news stories as well as how news can be personalized for the end user. How News Works provides links to various resources within the Google news ecosystem all in one place and is part of The Google News Initiative. What is The Google News Initiative?The Google News Initiative (GNI) is Google’s effort to work with news industry professionals to “help journalism thrive in the digital age.” The GNI is driven and summarized by the GNI website which provides information about a variety of initiatives and approaches within Google including:
Google attempts to work with the news industry in a variety of ways. For example, it provides funding opportunities to help journalists from around the world. Google is now accepting applications (through mid-July) from North American and Latin American applicants to help fund projects that “drive digital innovation and develop new business models.” Applicants who meet Google’s specified criteria (and are selected) will be awarded up to $300,000 in funding (for U.S. applicants) or $250,000 (for Latin American applicants) with an additional award of up to 70% of the total project cost. The GNI website also provides users with a variety of training resources and tools. Journalists can learn how to partner with Google to test and deploy new technologies such as the Washington Post’s participation in Google’s AMP Program (accelerated mobile pages). AMP is an open source initiative that Google launched in February 2016 with the goal of making mobile web pages faster. AMP mirrors content on traditional web pages, but uses AMP HTML, an open source format architected in an ultra-light way to reduce latency for readers. News transparency and accountabilityThe GNI’s How It Works website reinforces Google’s mission to “elevate trustworthy information.” The site explains how the news algorithm works and links to Google’s news content policies. The content policy covers Google’s approach to accountability and transparency, its requirements for paid or promotional material, copyright, restricted content, privacy/personalization and more. This new GNI resource, a subsection of the main GNI website, acts as a starting point for journalists and news organizations to delve into Google’s vast news infrastructure including video news on YouTube. Since it can be difficult to ascertain if news is trustworthy and accurate, this latest initiative by Google is one way that journalists (and the general public) can gain an understanding of how news is elevated and indexed on Google properties. The post Google’s How News Works, aimed at clarifying news transparency appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/06/11/googles-how-news-works-aimed-at-clarifying-news-transparency/ Online reviews and SEO have been closely tied together for a long time. That’s common knowledge at this point. According to Moz, online reviews are estimated to make up 10% of the criteria for how Google displays search results. That’s a hefty chunk! The importance of online reviews in today’s business world is undeniable. However, thanks to the famously secretive Google algorithms, knowing exactly how to leverage them to achieve stellar rankings is still somewhat of an ambiguous task. Over the years, there have been all kinds of studies and strategic advice given on how to work customer reviews into SEO plans. While the precise details will vary from company-to-company (and industry-to-industry), there are several commonalities that can be applied across the board. Let’s talk about a few of the big ones in making online reviews one of the strongest weapons in your SEO arsenal. Develop a strategy to collect in numbersFirst and foremost, online reviews aren’t doing your SEO strategy any good if you aren’t getting them! Google and other search engines like to see that people are choosing your business and taking the time to leave their opinion on it. Unfortunately, most people won’t take the time to write a review on their own, unless the experience was exceptionally bad. In fact, studies have found that more than 30% of consumers will leave a negative review following a subpar experience! That being said, you need to make a conscious effort to collect reviews from as many customers as you can. The good news is that 70% of consumers will leave a review if asked – per a BrightLocal study. Plain and simple, you need a plan to follow up with customers after their experience to gauge their thoughts. Now, this is a task you need to handle carefully. Step one deals with timelinessRegardless of whether your review follow-ups are done through email campaigns, SMS messages, review landing pages, or anything else of that nature, the timing needs to be impeccable. Give it a day or two before you send out your request for a review. Generally speaking, it’s typically ideal to send these requests in the mornings for the best response rates. Step two is the approachAsking people to leave reviews is a game of happy mediums. On one hand, you want to develop the form to get the most genuine and detailed responses as possible. However, you don’t want to ask questions that are so complex that you turn people away. Keep it simple. A short form asking for the pros, cons, and overview is nice and short, yet encourages in-depth responses. Always remember, a detailed, honest review is worth way more than a short review with a simple star rating and a quick sentence. Step three is persistenceIf people don’t respond to your review request, you definitely want to give them a nudge. But, you don’t want to overstep. Keep your follow-ups to no more than two, and space them a few days apart. Quantity of reviews plays a big role in how the search engines rank businesses on the web. That said, you can’t rely on people to review your company on their own. Do yourself a favor and nail down a rock-solid strategy early on! Know how to respond properly to both good and bad reviewsThese days, responding to reviews is just as important as gathering reviews. Many would argue it’s even more important! To reference the BrightLocal study again, most customers read review responses when looking at a new business. Earlier this year, Google actually confirmed that responding to reviews plays a role in SEO. Here is what Google had to say on the matter:
This action ideally works to build trust between a business and its customers. So, when you receive a review (whether it be good or bad), you need to have a plan in place to address it properly. Most importantly, when responding to a review, let it air out. You never, never, never want to respond to a review when you are emotionally charged. For example, let’s say you have a customer from hell who wrote a scathing review, even though they weren’t completely right. Chances are, you read this review and had a million things you’d like to say to them. However, you need to remember that your responses are public! Regardless of the context behind the review, you need to approach it with a level head. Give it at least a couple hours before you respond. But no more than a couple days. Here is a great example of how not to respond to a bad review. When you are responding to negative reviews, there are a few key components to remember. However, you may choose to use these according to what would suit your brand the best. Address the reviewer by name.
Here is a fantastic example of how to handle a negative review like a champion Not only does the responder do a great job at empathizing with the issue, but they also provide a great deal of actionable information, as well as an avenue to take the conversation offline. This one hits the nail on the head! In regards to responding to positive reviews, the rules to live by are quite a bit less volatile.
Always remember, the way you respond to reviews says WAY more about your business than the review itself. If you’re smart and collected about it, you can potentially turn negative sentiment into brand loyalty, and of course, excellent rankings on Google! Choose review platforms wiselyThere are all kinds of online review platforms out there these days. Some are more general, while others are niche-focused. When you choose which platforms you want to be gathering reviews on, there is a lot that should go into your decision. In addition to getting registered on the major ones like Google Reviews, Facebook Reviews, Yelp, and the others, you need to take your industry into account. For instance, if you are a SaaS company, gathering reviews on sites like Capterra and G2 Crowd is vastly important. If you are a restaurant, consider sites like Zomato and OpenTable. In terms of SEO value, it’s important to note that not all review platforms are equal in the eyes of Google. Even though a platform is a verified Google Review Partner, it doesn’t mean that it’s the best of the bunch. When you are looking at review platforms for SEO, there are a few key factors that should come into play.
To give you an idea, here is how SEMrush ranks several review platforms in regards to SEO value: Take your time in doing research here. You need every single review to maximize your potential of ranking on the SERPs. Let reviews guide your customer experienceWhen push comes to shove, the common denominator in using reviews to boost SEO value is getting people to leave good, honest feedback. The best way to do this is to provide an exceptional customer experience (obviously). But, customers and search engine robots also want to see that you are using the customer reviews you get to improve the user experience (UX) for the best. When people leave reviews, you need to look at the words as objectively as possible. In other words, reviews need to be seen as constructive criticism. Make it a point to take inventory of your new and existing reviews every month. Try to spot patterns that shed light on bigger issues. For instance, let’s say you are in the SaaS industry and provide an email marketing program. If you got a bunch of new reviews in the past month and a decent amount of them address a similar issue related to client support, this is a clear-cut sign you need to re-evaluate (and maybe step up) this area of the UX. Perhaps incorporating a live chat or chatbot feature to the website dashboard might be a solution. The bottom line is that reviews serve the monumental purpose of spotlighting weak areas within a business. If you are able to use them to improve the lives of your customers, you will be rewarded – both in terms of SEO and revenue. The wrapOnline reviews are an SEO weapon with a massive amount of firepower. The tricky part is truly understanding how to use them properly. Ultimately, it all comes down to your ability to gather them on the right platform, respond appropriately, and of course, use them to better your company in the big picture. This is all easier said than done. Hopefully, this article has given you a good idea of where to start.
Manish Dudharejia is the President and Founder of E2M Solutions Inc.
The post How to make online reviews one of your most powerful SEO weapons appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/06/10/online-reviews-powerful-seo-weapons/ Whether you’re an SEO, PR or a website owner, it’s highly likely you’ve come across DA (Domain Authority). The metric, created by industry-leading platform Moz, was designed to help search marketers understand the value of a domain, at a glance and compare it with others in the same industry or niche. This was important for SEO, third party links have long been used to understand how “trustworthy” a website is and form part of Google’s “ranking criteria” (although their importance and how this works is a hot talking point in SEO). Moz uses their index (or understanding of the web), to map out these links between sites and, alongside other factors, try to assign a “competition” score to each website they encounter. This can then be used as a proxy to determine the value of a said site. Note: I have nothing against Moz. This piece isn’t in any way designed to be a slight on them or their work, but further insight and context into how to use the data they provide. The eye-opener to follower deceptionLast year, Social Chain opened marketers’ eyes to the murky world of follower deception. Many brands understand the importance of influencers to the digital ecosystem, but measuring the value that someone can bring prior to working with them is difficult and time-consuming. As such, often companies rely on metrics that symbolizes “reputation”, followers, engagement, and other similar indicators. However, as Social Chain asserted, the typical signposts do not always depict a true picture and if not completely understood or manipulated, can lead to large amounts of spend being wasted. This is a common theme with SEO. Although it’s less a question of manipulation and more a question of understanding. In 2012, Penguin, Google’s “webspam” filter was rolled-out and assigned a positive or negative value to third party links. Prior to this, “trust” was judged on an arguably simpler set of volume-based criteria, but as the flaws in the system were exploited. It soon became clear that a more complex solution was required, to ensure the integrity of search results was maintained. Trust continued to be an important factor in success, but SEO’s had to start thinking more carefully about how they generated these. Here the connection between SEO and PR became more important as links could not be artificially built they had to be earned, naturally. The two teams started to collaborate more closely, with SEOs providing PRs extra resource to contact a “lower”, but still valuable tier of influencer and PRs helping SEOs reach the higher, more widely trusted publications that they could not access before. Over time, the lines between SEO and other channels have started to blur – and as teams were pushed to operate across remits, PRs started to use SEO metrics, with DA taking precedence (as it was arguably the simplest to use), to understand more about the people they were contacting. With investment from brands increasing, more influencers started to appear, and from this grew an industry in its own right. Fast forward to the present dayAn influencer marketer will likely sit across content, Social, PR, and SEO, with the goal of engaging personalities to improve performance across all the channels they are connected to (based on the goals of the organization/campaign). For social and PR, engagement and reach can be more easily measured. But SEO has always been complicated. This is because “good SEO” has never been about links alone and the idea of a “link value” is entirely subjective, based on factors that change between industries, counties, and even search results. As such, the idea of using a single, links-based metric to determine the value a domain can provide for SEO is inherently floored – and yet, many marketers, influencers and PR teams still continue to use DA for this purpose. To make matters more complex, the whole link-building ecosystem has been flooded with misinformation. I discussed this in a recent webinar with SEMRush, but it’s often been the case that the wider industry’s understanding of the link building practice has come through commentators on the practice and not the experts conducting the work themselves. This means, the influencers and PR teams, and not the SEO community themselves. Why is this the case?There’s really no simple answer, although, for a long time before the collaboration was mainstream, it would be a frequent occurrence for SEOs and PRs to clash over remit cross-over. In the agency world, this could have led to reduced budgets – why pay two agencies to do the work of one, although (from my experience), clients were very much open to creating a joined-up approach between both teams. While conflict happened behind the scenes, uncertainty, and misinformation filtered out to the influencer market, with PRs and SEOs trying to show that they “knew enough” about the other to make a wider judgment on influencer selection for projects. This led to followers and domain authority becoming key metrics in this process which, although not unhelpful, rarely offered the truest picture of a website’s worth. In turn, this led to transactional relationships with websites, where links and shares were bought for a price that, once this became a commodity only ever increased. Instead of paying for the time and expertise of the people that were being engaged, their value became intrinsically tied to their reach or their link-equity (perceived through domain authority), two metrics that could be easily manipulated. Now, the growing rumble of discontent within the influencer landscape has finally hit the headlines with a theatrical flourish. Unfortunately for many, this has come too late, with brands realizing the cost of investing in reach over expertise, most famously with the Fyre festival scandal. But, this doesn’t mean that influencer marketing isn’t valuable, as I wrote at the time, but that how and most importantly – the reasons as to why marketers engage with content creators need to change. We’ve seen publicly how using followers to measure reach can be folly. But there’s still time to take these learnings and apply them to domain authority too before something as equally damaging to the industry happens. Latest developmentsRecent legislation in the UK has started to pave the way for change in this field. It’s certainly made working with influencers harder, in large part to the ambiguity around the specifics of how the changes should be interpreted, I personally apply the principle of “better safe than sorry”, even from a search perspective. Every brand interaction should now be declared as an advert, including event invites and even in cases where the only “payment” has been a reimbursing of travel costs. With Google’s hardline view on manipulative link building, the practice of engaging “high authority” SEO influencers is slowly ending or at least, becoming incredibly risky. Instead, we should look to engage influencers for their subject matter expertise and credibility they can lend to a story or campaign. In practice, this means killing the transactional “I give you X and you give me Y” type of relationships and seeing content creators as partners in getting your message out to the world. For SEO, this may mean using “no-follow” links (which, in basic terms, tell crawlers that they should not consider them for search benefit), but this shouldn’t be an issue. Sure, their direct value on search may be limited, but to think that the search algorithm considers the web in as simple terms as this would be myopic. There are some brilliant studies around the power of brand on search, which are worth noting in this context. Moreover, at its heart, a link is there to carry users from A to B. Adding a “no-follow” tag doesn’t stop this from happening and in this case, using domain authority as a metric often would lead to discounting a valuable traffic driving part of this ecosystem. With this shift in the industry and better collaboration than ever between search and the wider marketing mix, the opportunity for content, search and marketing communication teams to unite is stronger than ever. So too, is the need for it, as achieving cut-through in the wall of digital noise is harder than it’s ever been. Campaigns, to be successful on all fronts, must genuinely inspire, engage or provide value to users and older-school tactics, such as product reviews and content seeding, have all but lost their ability to drive results. On this point, we simply must move away from using domain authority and followers as a metric in isolation, as neither is an effective gauge of how useful a site might be to its users. Closing notesI’d like to speak directly to influencers because without a universal change in mindset, we’ll continue to see the same practices continue and the channel will continue to be under-utilized. I’d impress upon them the need to keep an open mind and focus on becoming the best subject matter experts that they can. I’d encourage the end of any agonizing over “vanity metrics”, which are often taken out of context, and in place look to whether their users are genuinely engaging with their content, and how this impacts their value as creators. Importantly, I’d implore everyone, PRs and SEOs included, to have a little more fun, harness the incredible creativity that brand communications teams, content creators, and influencer marketers can yield and build something great together. Ric Rodriguez is an SEO Director and winner of the 2018 Drum Search Award. He can be found on Twitter @RicRodriguez_UK. The post It’s time we rethink how we measure influencers for SEO appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/06/12/stop-measuring-influencers-using-da/ In May, Google announced the launch of a new website aimed at explaining how they serve and address news across Google properties and platforms. The site, How News Works, states Google’s mission as it relates to disseminating news in a non-biased manner. The site aggregates a variety of information about how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks news stories as well as how news can be personalized for the end user. How News Works provides links to various resources within the Google news ecosystem all in one place and is part of The Google News Initiative. What is The Google News Initiative?The Google News Initiative (GNI) is Google’s effort to work with news industry professionals to “help journalism thrive in the digital age.” The GNI is driven and summarized by the GNI website which provides information about a variety of initiatives and approaches within Google including:
Google attempts to work with the news industry in a variety of ways. For example, it provides funding opportunities to help journalists from around the world. Google is now accepting applications (through mid-July) from North American and Latin American applicants to help fund projects that “drive digital innovation and develop new business models.” Applicants who meet Google’s specified criteria (and are selected) will be awarded up to $300,000 in funding (for U.S. applicants) or $250,000 (for Latin American applicants) with an additional award of up to 70% of the total project cost. The GNI website also provides users with a variety of training resources and tools. Journalists can learn how to partner with Google to test and deploy new technologies such as the Washington Post’s participation in Google’s AMP Program (accelerated mobile pages). AMP is an open source initiative that Google launched in February 2016 with the goal of making mobile web pages faster. AMP mirrors content on traditional web pages, but uses AMP HTML, an open source format architected in an ultra-light way to reduce latency for readers. News transparency and accountabilityThe GNI’s How It Works website reinforces Google’s mission to “elevate trustworthy information.” The site explains how the news algorithm works and links to Google’s news content policies. The content policy covers Google’s approach to accountability and transparency, its requirements for paid or promotional material, copyright, restricted content, privacy/personalization and more. This new GNI resource, a subsection of the main GNI website, acts as a starting point for journalists and news organizations to delve into Google’s vast news infrastructure including video news on YouTube. Since it can be difficult to ascertain if news is trustworthy and accurate, this latest initiative by Google is one way that journalists (and the general public) can gain an understanding of how news is elevated and indexed on Google properties. The post Google’s How News Works, aimed at clarifying news transparency appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/06/11/googles-how-news-works-aimed-at-clarifying-news-transparency/ Online reviews and SEO have been closely tied together for a long time. That’s common knowledge at this point. According to Moz, online reviews are estimated to make up 10% of the criteria for how Google displays search results. That’s a hefty chunk! The importance of online reviews in today’s business world is undeniable. However, thanks to the famously secretive Google algorithms, knowing exactly how to leverage them to achieve stellar rankings is still somewhat of an ambiguous task. Over the years, there have been all kinds of studies and strategic advice given on how to work customer reviews into SEO plans. While the precise details will vary from company-to-company (and industry-to-industry), there are several commonalities that can be applied across the board. Let’s talk about a few of the big ones in making online reviews one of the strongest weapons in your SEO arsenal. Develop a strategy to collect in numbersFirst and foremost, online reviews aren’t doing your SEO strategy any good if you aren’t getting them! Google and other search engines like to see that people are choosing your business and taking the time to leave their opinion on it. Unfortunately, most people won’t take the time to write a review on their own, unless the experience was exceptionally bad. In fact, studies have found that more than 30% of consumers will leave a negative review following a subpar experience! That being said, you need to make a conscious effort to collect reviews from as many customers as you can. The good news is that 70% of consumers will leave a review if asked – per a BrightLocal study. Plain and simple, you need a plan to follow up with customers after their experience to gauge their thoughts. Now, this is a task you need to handle carefully. Step one deals with timelinessRegardless of whether your review follow-ups are done through email campaigns, SMS messages, review landing pages, or anything else of that nature, the timing needs to be impeccable. Give it a day or two before you send out your request for a review. Generally speaking, it’s typically ideal to send these requests in the mornings for the best response rates. Step two is the approachAsking people to leave reviews is a game of happy mediums. On one hand, you want to develop the form to get the most genuine and detailed responses as possible. However, you don’t want to ask questions that are so complex that you turn people away. Keep it simple. A short form asking for the pros, cons, and overview is nice and short, yet encourages in-depth responses. Always remember, a detailed, honest review is worth way more than a short review with a simple star rating and a quick sentence. Step three is persistenceIf people don’t respond to your review request, you definitely want to give them a nudge. But, you don’t want to overstep. Keep your follow-ups to no more than two, and space them a few days apart. Quantity of reviews plays a big role in how the search engines rank businesses on the web. That said, you can’t rely on people to review your company on their own. Do yourself a favor and nail down a rock-solid strategy early on! Know how to respond properly to both good and bad reviewsThese days, responding to reviews is just as important as gathering reviews. Many would argue it’s even more important! To reference the BrightLocal study again, most customers read review responses when looking at a new business. Earlier this year, Google actually confirmed that responding to reviews plays a role in SEO. Here is what Google had to say on the matter:
This action ideally works to build trust between a business and its customers. So, when you receive a review (whether it be good or bad), you need to have a plan in place to address it properly. Most importantly, when responding to a review, let it air out. You never, never, never want to respond to a review when you are emotionally charged. For example, let’s say you have a customer from hell who wrote a scathing review, even though they weren’t completely right. Chances are, you read this review and had a million things you’d like to say to them. However, you need to remember that your responses are public! Regardless of the context behind the review, you need to approach it with a level head. Give it at least a couple hours before you respond. But no more than a couple days. Here is a great example of how not to respond to a bad review. When you are responding to negative reviews, there are a few key components to remember. However, you may choose to use these according to what would suit your brand the best. Address the reviewer by name.
Here is a fantastic example of how to handle a negative review like a champion Not only does the responder do a great job at empathizing with the issue, but they also provide a great deal of actionable information, as well as an avenue to take the conversation offline. This one hits the nail on the head! In regards to responding to positive reviews, the rules to live by are quite a bit less volatile.
Always remember, the way you respond to reviews says WAY more about your business than the review itself. If you’re smart and collected about it, you can potentially turn negative sentiment into brand loyalty, and of course, excellent rankings on Google! Choose review platforms wiselyThere are all kinds of online review platforms out there these days. Some are more general, while others are niche-focused. When you choose which platforms you want to be gathering reviews on, there is a lot that should go into your decision. In addition to getting registered on the major ones like Google Reviews, Facebook Reviews, Yelp, and the others, you need to take your industry into account. For instance, if you are a SaaS company, gathering reviews on sites like Capterra and G2 Crowd is vastly important. If you are a restaurant, consider sites like Zomato and OpenTable. In terms of SEO value, it’s important to note that not all review platforms are equal in the eyes of Google. Even though a platform is a verified Google Review Partner, it doesn’t mean that it’s the best of the bunch. When you are looking at review platforms for SEO, there are a few key factors that should come into play.
To give you an idea, here is how SEMrush ranks several review platforms in regards to SEO value: Take your time in doing research here. You need every single review to maximize your potential of ranking on the SERPs. Let reviews guide your customer experienceWhen push comes to shove, the common denominator in using reviews to boost SEO value is getting people to leave good, honest feedback. The best way to do this is to provide an exceptional customer experience (obviously). But, customers and search engine robots also want to see that you are using the customer reviews you get to improve the user experience (UX) for the best. When people leave reviews, you need to look at the words as objectively as possible. In other words, reviews need to be seen as constructive criticism. Make it a point to take inventory of your new and existing reviews every month. Try to spot patterns that shed light on bigger issues. For instance, let’s say you are in the SaaS industry and provide an email marketing program. If you got a bunch of new reviews in the past month and a decent amount of them address a similar issue related to client support, this is a clear-cut sign you need to re-evaluate (and maybe step up) this area of the UX. Perhaps incorporating a live chat or chatbot feature to the website dashboard might be a solution. The bottom line is that reviews serve the monumental purpose of spotlighting weak areas within a business. If you are able to use them to improve the lives of your customers, you will be rewarded – both in terms of SEO and revenue. The wrapOnline reviews are an SEO weapon with a massive amount of firepower. The tricky part is truly understanding how to use them properly. Ultimately, it all comes down to your ability to gather them on the right platform, respond appropriately, and of course, use them to better your company in the big picture. This is all easier said than done. Hopefully, this article has given you a good idea of where to start.
Manish Dudharejia is the President and Founder of E2M Solutions Inc.
The post How to make online reviews one of your most powerful SEO weapons appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/06/10/online-reviews-powerful-seo-weapons/ |
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