Google Calls for Greater Sensitivity in Search Quality Guidelines
The latest update to Google search quality guidelines reminds evaluators to keep in mind the diversity of users and the need for impartiality to avoid ratings based on personal viewpoints.
Will Tracking Packages Be Possible in Google Search Results?
Google continues to find ways to deliver what users need without ever leaving Google. The search giant is looking to add package tracking in search results to bypass visiting carrier sites.
Why Differentiate Your Site? Because Google Wants You To
Google’s John Mueller says if your website’s content is too similar to content on competitor sites, you need to do better. He says you’ve got to do better around “commodity content.”
Make 2020 the year you consistently hit CRO home runs, a good starting point is optimizing your landing pages! If you’re looking for ways to get more conversions, then you should know this week’s special guest is one of the foremost experts on conversion optimization: Talia Wolf, Founder and CEO of GetUplift. GetUplift is a CRO consultancy and training space top brands turn to when they want to optimize their funnels and websites and create experience customers love to convert to using customer-centric methods, emotional targeting strategies and in-depth data.
Talia was on the show back in Jan of 2017. It’s been a minute... more like close to 3 years! Since then, she has been invited to teach conversion optimization on hundreds of stages such as Google, MozCon, Call To Action Conference, SearchLove, and many more and was recently listed as one of the most influential experts in conversion optimization!
Learn from one of the best and get EDGEucated from this week's EDGE of the Web show episode 336!
Suggested Services Now Customizable in Google My Business
Service-based business owners can now customize a list of suggested services on their Google My Business listing. Google will automatically select and list services, but users can make additions.
Gigantic Database of Text Messages Exposed!
TrueDialog, a company that processes two-way text messaging for businesses and higher education providers, had millions of messages exposed, many of which contained highly sensitive data of customers and students.
15 Eye-Popping Online Shopping Stats for 2019
Online shopping continues to grow, with more people doing it, rising sales, and bigger orders. Growth is especially strong for companies with a seriously customer-centric approach.
In honor of Cyber Monday, we wanted to focus on the eCommerce market for this week's EDGE of the Web show! When you want to sell your products through Amazon and Walmart, you’ve got to get a handle on the right advertising techniques and tactics. In today’s highly competitive eCommerce markets, you can’t ignore Amazon as a channel for selling your products, and who better to talk to about strategies and tactics than someone from a company that knows more about the Amazon Marketplace platform than anyone else? We have Elizeabeth Marsten from Tinuiti, which was one of the first digital marketing agencies to roll out strategic and tactical programs to help the seller make the most of participating in the Amazon Marketplace.
If you’re involved in selling through Amazon, you’ll love hearing from this week's featured guest, Elizabeth Marsten, Senior Director of Strategic Marketplace Services at Tinuiti!
Listen in while the magic is happening during a live SEO audit. SEO experts Andy Drinkwater and Erin Sparks take on a listener submitted website and throw their collection of tools and audit methods at the site for a full SEO review. Learn as they go, what you might need to look for on your own site.
CCPA Compliance: Google Launches Restricted Data Processing Option
To comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), companies can now enable restricted data processing by turning off personalized advertising features in Google Ads and Firebase SDK.
Recent Volatility in Google Search Rankings
Google said it does updates all the time – at least several per week – but not every update warrants an announcement. Those are reserved for updates with broader impacts and where actionable guidance can be offered.
The Legal System’s Issues with Vanishing Messages
With several popular “ephemeral” messaging apps where messages self-delete after sending or being accessed, there could be vital missing evidence when such communications aren’t preserved, making judges suspicious.
Everyone is concerned about privacy and data use more than ever before. Tighter laws are being put in place around the world. If your company’s digital marketing efforts are global, your consent forms have to align with legal requirements that vary by country, and even by states and localities within those countries. It’s major paint point, which is why you must join us for this week’s show with featured special guest Niklas Stephenson, Founder and CEO of Legal Monster, because he’s developed a tool to automatically configure your consent to be legal in each market. A fun fact about Niklas… Legal Monster is not the first, or even the second company Niklas has founded. It is his FOURTH company! Because we believe you don’t want to break the law, you will not want to miss EDGE of the Web episode 334.
Is Google Over-Reaching Into People’s Lives?
One of Google’s recent patents appears to be geared towards sending people relevant purchase decision information while they’re in physical stores, including remote help and even sending a store associate to them.
YouTube Cleaning Up Its Act on Children’s Content
As part of its $170 FTC settlement for violating the privacy of children under COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), YouTube is now implementing big changes affecting advertisers.
Wall Street Journal Accuses Google of Changing Search Results
The WSJ’s far-ranging descriptions of how Google is manipulating search results to shape what users see had very little evidence to back it up, and showed a lack of understanding for how search works.
There aren’t very many people who got involved in SEO from the very beginning and then stuck with it all the way to now. When you have the opportunity to book a guest who basically invented SEO and popularized the term itself, you take it, right? We had the opportunity to have the one and only, Father of SEO, Bruce Clay on EDGE of the Web episode 333! If you don't know Bruce, he is the Founder and President of Bruce Clay Incorporate. He speaks at leading industry conferences (over 300) and conducts training courses for students worldwide. He's also been featured in various publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, PC Week, and many more.
We deep-dived into the recent Wall Street Journal's recent article on November 15th, "How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results: The internet giant uses blacklists, algorithm tweaks and an army of contractors to shape what you see". Learn about the truth and miscommunication between The Wall Street Journal and Google as we break down this lengthy article into sections to analyze the information!
Don’t miss another digital marketing news roundup on this week’s episode of the award-winning EDGE of the Web podcast where we discuss busting EAT myths in SEO, Google shopping ads in more markets, and key takeaways from the Google Webmaster’s conference!
Getting great SEO results means making sure your audits are strategic, understandable, and actionable! With more than a decade of international SEO consulting under her belt, Aleyda Solis, Founder of Orainti, has learned just how important it is to maximize the growth from SEO audits. Tune in to episode 322 to get EDGEucated from the best of the best, Aleyda!
Key discussion points from the show:
On this week’s EDGE of the Web show we discussed top trending digital marketing news ranging from new WordPress plugins and Facebook video metrics! Check out this week’s trending news:
When you’re going the extra mile for clients in your SEO work, it should feel like you’re being a detective. Your digital marketing clients need to feel confident about your SEO skills, abilities, and results, and that means sharing SEO reporting with them but it’s got to be the right kind of reporting to be effective. Providing your client with a high-quality and understandable SEO report has become very important when discussing SEO with someone who isn't in the SEO world.
This week's EDGE of the Web featured guest Bill Sebald, Managing Partner of Greenlane Marketing, has been creating SEO reports for a wide range of high-profile clients since 2005, and he’s got some incredible insights to share with you. Don't miss the EDGE episode that can help prevent you from digging yourself a hole by providing reports that cannot be understood by your digital marketing clients by getting great advice from Bill!
Love it or Hate it, Another Major Google Algorithm Change is Coming
BERT-optimized natural language processing (NLP) means Google will look at more of the words in a search query to better understand context and intent to return better results to users.
Facebook News is Coming
The Facebook News feature was created in partnership with the journalism industry. The “Today’s Stories” content will not be auto-selected by FB algorithms. Instead, a dedicated team of journalists will hand-select those stories.
Can High Link Velocity Result in a Google Penalty?
Are sites penalized if they acquire lots of backlinks quickly? John Mueller says it’s about the quality of the links, not the speed at which they’re acquired. Link velocity is only bad if the links are unnatural.
Too many digital marketing and SEO professionals leave something out of the strategies they present to clients: Robust backlinks are the missing pieces of the puzzle, but they have to be done right in a Google-friendly approach to see success. When Adam White, founder, and CEO of SEOJet, want to get SEO results, one of his main go-to strategies is building great backlinks. But unfortunately, far too many digital marketing professionals don’t actually know how to do it right. Luckily, Adam is this week's featured guest on EDGE of the Web episode 330. He is on a mission to help bring new levels of legitimacy to SEO practices, and he wants you to know that YES, you CAN (and must) build awesome, Google-friendly backlinks that will do wonders for your sites. Check out this episode to get EDGEucated and practice digital marketing tactics correctly
The H1 Debate Continues
Google has previously said the use of H1 is not important to SEO because semantic analysis is the key. Others, however, note how H1s do impact SEO in terms of what appears in SERPs.
Transparency Boosts Data Sharing by Consumers
When companies are more transparent about how consumer data is used, people are more willing to share their data, to the tune of 73% in 2019 as opposed to only 66% in 2018 according to Accenture Interactive.
New Lead Form Extensions Being Tested by Google Ads
Businesses can capture more customer information with a strong special offer that can only be accessed after filling out a lead form, which advertisers can customize.
When your ultimate goal is to improve your site’s search position, there’s no better way to get started than with a search engine optimization audit. Everyone wants to boost the search position for their website but fewer realize that you start chasing SERPs after you conduct an SEO audit. This week's featured guest is Andy Drinkwater, SEO Consultant and Owner of IQSEO. Andy got involved with SEO work in the early days of the industry. Over the years he has developed an incredibly comprehensive SEO audit process, which is the starting point for figuring out how to boost your site’s search position.
Check out episode 329 of EDGE of the Web to watch Erin geek out about SEO with Andy. They review all the SEO tools available and how each tool can help you with specific SEO factors!
Does your digital marketing strategy include long-term content marketing? It should! What do brands like Arrow Electronics, General Mills, and Kraft have in common? Their digital marketing efforts go beyond short-term results and focus on long-term content marketing that actively builds relationships with audiences over time. Don't let the pressure to deliver short-term results turn your focus away from developing a long-term content marketing strategy.
No one knows more about content marketing than our special guest, Joe Pulizzi, on episode 328 of EDGE of the Web show. Most people know him as the founder of the Content Marketing Institute and Content Marketing World. He’s written and co-written five content marketing books.
If you want to create an effective content market strategy for long-term goals tune in to learn from the best, Joe Pulizzi, here on episode 328 on EDGE of the Web!
NEWS SYNOPSES:
Google Gives Webmasters More Control Over Their Search Listing Displays
Three new meta tags allow for controlling the max length of a text preview, duration of a video preview, and size of an image preview. An HTML attribute is also available to help with this.
By Barry Schwartz
Broad Core Algorithm Update by Google on September 24th
Google announced ahead of time this broad update would start rolling out on September 24th, which is only the second time Google has much such an announcement ahead of a major update.
By Matt Southern
Who was Affected by Google’s September Update?
It looks like at least one aspect of the update might have been a crackdown on a popular link scheme exploiting a ranking loophole at Google related to 301 redirecting expired links to a website.
By: Rodger Montti
SaaS marketing hinges on building your brand, inbound content marketing, and identifying the right lead acquisition channels. What better way to learn about SaaS marketing than from the guy who built the marketing dept. at Ahrefs. Tim Soulo is the Chief Marketing Officer and Product advisor at Ahrefs (an industry-leading SEO tool, powered by Big Data). With almost 10 years of practical experience in SEO and digital marketing, Tim shares his knowledge by giving live talks at various digital marketing conferences around the world and publishing blog articles at Ahrefs Blog. He’s also the author of many data-driven SEO research studies and a number of detailed marketing guides.
If you want to effectively market a SaaS offering but don’t know where to begin, you can learn how to start with Tim Soulo here on episode 327 on EDGE of the Web!
Do you know all the ways to incorporate Quora into your PPC strategy? Maybe you’re not including Quora in your PPC plan because you don’t know where to start! Joe Martinez, Direct of Client Strategy at Clix Marketing joins us again for a special EDGE of the Web episode. We decided one show wasn’t enough time for Joe to provide all of his insight on successful PPC strategies using Quora. But this show is a little different. We asked our listeners and viewers to provide us the questions before and during the live show! An exclusive Q/A session with Joe Martinez picking his brain all things Quora and PPC. You will not want to miss this!
What’s one of the biggest Digital Marketing mistakes being made today? Spending all of your PPC dollars on Google and Facebook! You might be surprised how much of your audience are using Instagram, Quora, Waze, Reddit, Pinterest, Nextdoor, and others. And if you’re not including QUORA in your PPC plan, you’re missing out, especially with its 'Promoted Answers' feature! Our returning guest Joe Martinez, Director of Client Strategies at Clix Marketing, joins us in the studio to discuss all things PPC!
Our expert Joe has been a speaker and writer for many of the various sites we follow, including Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, WordStream, SMX, PPCHero, and Quora.
Joe also has recently started his own podcast to teach the world about Paid Media!
Host Erin Sparks and Guest Joe Martinez discuss this weeks trending topics:
Google Changes the Meta Robots Nofollow Tag from a Directive to a Hint
The Nofollow page tag was previously a directive to stop a web crawler from following links, but now it’s just a hint, which means a Google crawler may or may not obey the Nofollow tag.
Google Launches Two New Link Attribution Tags
rel=“sponsored” is for links created as part of advertising, sponsorships, etc. and rel=“ugc” is for links in user generated content. Both will be treated as hints for links to exclude as ranking signals.
Google Says Ranking Factors Don’t Include Content Accuracy
Google thinks machine learning isn’t quite good enough yet at assessing content accuracy to make it a ranking factor, which is why it relies instead on various signals for topic relevance and authority.
Was There a Google Search Algorithm Update Around September 4th or 5th? Inquiring minds want to know, but it can be hard to tell. Anyone with a site that suddenly drops tends to sound the alarm, which may or may not indicate a change.
The Latest Quality Raters Guidelines Update from Google The biggest changes were made in the YMYL (your money, your life) section, which was entirely re-written. If Google is talking about it, you should pay attention, but there is no need to panic.
If your business or client’s business gets all of its customers from a localized area- how do you go about optimizing your website to cater to just your city and neighborhoods? What does your local reputation have to do with your ability to drive traffic to your pages and close deals? Google’s monopolistic stranglehold on #LocalSearch can be frustrating, but there’s still lots businesses can do.Our guest today is Mike Blumenthal, a.k.a. "Professor Maps," is a leading expert on all things related to Local Search, including reputation. He is ready to share his insight about reputation and its impact on businesses in the post-Amazon economy.
Mike was the founding partner of GatherUp, which is a computer software that helps businesses provide better customer experience through customer reviews and feedback!
Mike also co-founded LocalU, where he works on weekly podcasts and newsletters to help plan conferences and moderate the forums! Mike is actively publishing content across his own personal blog, industry websites, at conferences and on social media.