In August, Google announced a new big search ranking algorithm update, named the helpful content update – probably its biggest update in a decade.
What We Know
The helpful content update will target websites with a relatively high amount of unsatisfying or unhelpful content, where the content has been written explicitly for search engines to leverage rankings.
Unlike many Google algorithms that get applied page-by-page, this new helpful content update will be sitewide. That means that if Google determines your site is producing a relatively high amount of unhelpful content, it will impact your whole site.
This reminds us of the early Panda and Penguin update days. Just as a quick reminder – or in case you weren’t working in SEO a decade ago – those updates did a lot of damage back then, and we made significant changes to our SEO strategies to recover and protect our client websites.
Which Sites Were Likely Impacted?
According to Google, this update impacted these types of content the most:
This is because content written in those areas has historically been written more for search engines than humans.
These are the folks that were hit the hardest:
Our Observations:
We were quick to run a deep ranking audit of more than 3.5K websites, and we are happy to inform you that so far, this update did not have any significant negative impact on our client’s websites. In fact, we have seen good improvement in positions for the sites we are working on. This implies that our content strategy, in conjunction with our other SEO efforts like on-page optimization and link building, is working well and protecting our client’s websites.
Are your GBP posts getting rejected? Well, that’s because GBP has added more restrictions to its list of guidelines. As stated in their support document under the “Avoid Spam” header, Google warns business owners to avoid uploading duplicate photos, posts, videos, or logos.
Here’s a screenshot of the other guidelines that you should know.
So, using original images & relevant content is the only way to get your posts accepted.
Need help? Get in touch with our technical support team for assistance.
Recently, it has been discovered that Google Maps is emailing customers who have posted a review for any business when their review is flagged as fake and, therefore, not posted.
It came to light after Lucio Laria – Consultant SEO International raised this issue on the Google Business Profile community. When a help forum titled Legitimate review started getting flagged as “Fake Engagement”, he wrote:
Hello,
I just settled my Google profile and asked my client for a review. Google is filing this review as a fake engagement when this person is a legitimate client of mine.
I’m waiting for this to be fixed before asking other of my clients for their reviews.
Why is this happening, and how can I fix it?
Thanks,
Among the many conjectured reasons and suggestions put forth by knowledgeable forum members are the following:
The reviewer received the email notification about 15 minutes after posting the review. As the forum community pointed out, the review was being “filtered by an algorithm that enforces Google’s content policies”.
Why You Should Pay Attention to This Issue:
As we all know, getting legitimate reviews is not an easy task. It takes a lot of effort to impress a client and even more to convince the client to post a good review. It is disappointing when our sometimes hard-to-get legitimate reviews get taken down for “algorithmic” reasons, as requesting the client to post it again can be a bit awkward.
So, it’s crucial to learn how to get our good reviews to stick the better we can prep our customers and clients to get it right the first time.
Google updates its algorithm frequently. At times, they announce the major updates beforehand, and at times they inform after initiating one. The last update was rolled out on May 25th, and to learn about such updates, we had to wait for tweets & official answers from the team.
Google thought of improving this process and has created a dedicated Google Search ranking updates page. With the help of this page, you can check all the latest and previous updates easily.
If you wish to learn how Google improves the search engine, there are several articles from Google to help you. Also, its blog page has more information related to the updates. This page is definitely important for all site owners and SEO experts.
Need more details? Reach out to our support team for assistance.
To help businesses grow their eCommerce site, Google developer advocate Alan Kent recently hosted a video that outlines “8 tips” for SEO-optimizing an eCommerce site.
Here are the 8 tips that Alan believes will help you:
Tip 1: Make sure you have the technical basics in place – You need to ensure your URLs and internal links are friendly to crawlers.
Check out Designing a URL structure for E-Commerce Websites on Google Search Central for advice on how to design URLs for your website.
Tip 2: Create content relevant to users at different stages in their shopping journey – To check the breadth and quality of your site, think about likely searches by shoppers at different stages in their shopping journey. Once you have a set of queries, try them out. Does your site come up well-positioned? What about your competitors?
Tip 3: Be sure to mark up your product variant pages correctly – Product variants are when you have multiple colors or sizes of the same product. Informing Google of the relationship between the product pages can help Google better understand your site content.
The URL Inspection tool can also be used to check the status of individual pages.
Tip 4: For sales events that occur regularly, use the same URL across all event occurrences – This can help Google understand and trust the purpose of such pages. To identify problems, check the URL for promotional event pages on your site.
Tip 5: The “performance” of your web pages matters – Performance is important to users as a page that takes too long to load may be abandoned by them. It is also an important Google ranking signal. It can be particularly important if you use the same supplier-provided product description as other sellers online. The PageSpeed Insights report is useful for checking the performance of the web page.
Tip 6: Wait for it – Be patient to see the results. SEO, unfortunately, is a long game. Some ranking signals may take months to change. Worse, there is no guarantee of success. While it may take months to reap the benefits of a content creation strategy, it does not mean there is nothing you can do until then.
Tip 7: Seek professional help for your website – If you have done your best to improve your site but are still not getting the results you want, we’re here to provide expert SEO advice.
Tip 8: It’s all about the user – The ultimate goal for Google Search is to put the best possible content in front of the users. Algorithms change over time, but the ultimate goal does not. It does not mean you should not measure your site’s performance. It is still recommended to use tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics to collect data on your site.
Here is just one of our success stories that shows the importance of SEO! Ready to be our next success story?
As known to most SEO experts out there, Google renamed Google My Business to Google Business Profile last year while also rolling out more support for managing a business profile.
Going a step further, the search engine giant has now launched another feature that is bound to give small businesses operating out of homes a reason to be happy.
Google Business Profile now features a toggle that will allow businesses to hide their business address from customers if they wish to do so.
The screenshot above shows the businesses can now toggle ‘Show business address to customers’ on and off.
Why Is This Important?
This recently launched support feature is perfect for entrepreneurs operating virtual businesses that aren’t tied to a physical location. It can also prove to be quite helpful for all those home-based service operators who wish to avoid customers visiting.
As we all know, Google launches core updates at least two to three times a year. These updates cause a hassle to all the web developers and SEO specialists because they have to monitor the rankings and make the required changes.
On May 25th, Google announced an update via a tweet.
This core update was further explained on Google Search Central. According to this article, Google makes changes to the ranking process to increase the accuracy of the search results. These improvements are called core updates. The core updates are not specific to certain sites but will certainly generate notable effects. Some sites’ ranking may drop, while others may rank better.
Also, Google said that if any site does experience a drop in its ranking, they don’t have to fix anything. These updates are meant to improve the system, helping under-ranked sites to get better traffic.
So, if your ranking suddenly drops, there’s nothing to worry about. You have not violated any webmaster guidelines. You just have to sit back and wait for the next core update. One last thing you can do is observe the sites that have ranked higher and try to figure out the factors that helped them.
Still have any issues? You can get in touch with our experienced team for assistance.
Last month Google laid out new, more specific guidelines to help the virtual food brands and delivery-only businesses with their Business Profiles on Google. These guidelines are meant for food businesses that don’t really have a physical location in an area, but they do re-package and deliver the local restaurants’ food.
The guidelines can be found in Google’s Guidelines for representing your business on Google, under the section Guidelines for chains, departments & individual practitioners.
Here’s a look at what these new guidelines have to say:
Final Takeaway
If you own a virtual food business, it is in your best interest to take a look at the new guidelines so that you can create a business profile on Google that isn’t suspended.
Recently Google’s Dikla Cohen gave a presentation on video indexing, which explains that video indexing does not rely on where and how you host your videos. You can host them yourself or choose from the most popular video hosting platforms and services.
With this, he announced Google is soon launching a new set of reports and tools in Search Console to make video indexing easier to track and diagnose.
With this new launch, the Video Page Indexing report will show a summary of all the pages that Google’s systems find with a video while crawling and indexing your website. At a glance, you can see how many video landing pages were indexed.
Issues will be grouped with a trend line and counts of the affected videos. For example, which videos are missing a thumbnail URL, with reasons – the largest impact ranked on top.
You can click on one of the rows to get more details, such as affected video page URLs. You can also download the list of examples and double-check them. So, you can narrow down the details and understand what is happening and how to resolve issues.
Once your website is updated; and you think you have resolved the issue you were facing, you can go back to the Video Indexing Report, go to that specific issue type, and then use the validate fix button to inform Google.
This way, you can initiate the recrawling of known URLs affected by the issue. And as the pages are being reprocessed, you will be notified if everything is resolved or if there are remaining issues.
But you will have to note that it can take some time to go through all the URLs.
If you wish to check the video indexing status, you can get there by entering the URL of the video landing page at the top of the search console. It will first show you the current status of that URL, as well as the video index status of the page. It will inform you whether Google detects a video on the page. And, if so, did they manage to index it. If a detected video is not indexed, it will list the reasons preventing it from being indexed.
Also, please note that Google indexes only one video per page, even when a page has multiple videos.
To summarize, with the new tools,
In a new move, Google has announced the use of the AI approach to update the operation hours for over 20 million businesses around the globe in the next six months. Also, Google’s AI algorithms are busy figuring out if your posted business hours are accurate.
Google said, “We developed a machine learning model that automatically identifies if business hours are likely wrong, then instantly updates them with AI-generated predictions.”
How Does It Work?
The AI considers multiple factors, such as:
Then, the algorithm analyzes the business hours of other similar shops that are nearby, information from the shop’s website, and Street View images of the shop’s storefront. Also, they will look specifically for business hour signs to determine the most accurate business hour prediction.
Google will take the help of the Google Maps community — including Local Guides and even the business owners themselves through their Google Business Profile — to verify the information they have predicted.
What Do You Need To Do?
All the business owners located in Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, or the United States, should prepare their staff to expect inquiry calls powered by Google’s conversational AI asking about their business hours.
Also, check Google Maps from time to time to ensure that Google has correctly listed the timings, in case they have been changed without your input.
Google performing random display testings are no longer surprising. This time around, it is Google Maps testing the position of local listing previews.
Recently, one of the users noticed that when a specific listing is clicked on from the Google Maps search results that appear on the left-hand side, the local listing pops up in a new position.
Instead of its original position on the left bar, the local listing preview now hovers in a new position, overlayed on top of the map. So far, this new position testing seems to be limited to the Google Maps interface for the desktop.
Here’s a look at the local listing overlay box:
Normally, there would be no overlay box hovering over the map, and the local listing details would appear in the left bar, pushing the search results to the bottom footer.
We have highlighted the main steps involved in setting up an e-commerce site & depending on the work required in each step you can determine the price of the project.
Step One –
Step Two –
Step Three –
Step Four –
After you have a good idea of the level of work required, you can give an estimated price range for the project. If the estimate is approved by the client, you can charge by the hour to ensure you are paid for your work.
Have any questions? Get in touch with our experts for assistance.
An epic headline is often described as the “gateway to your content.” This gate is freely open to your readers, but the quality of the title dictates whether they decide to step through or not. This is a huge opportunity that many people don’t give enough consideration to when constructing a post.
It doesn’t matter if you have the greatest post ever written. No one will read it if they aren’t sucked in by the headline. That’s why today we’re going to look at the characteristics of a great headline, so you can use them to capture attention from your visitors.
Your epic headline will make up 50% of your post’s total effectiveness. That’s right, over half of the power your post has lies in those first few words at the top. While there’s no single formula for the perfect headline, there are plenty of characteristics that appear in the best ones.
What is a blog, you ask? It’s a collection of headlines with posts attached to them, so you have to understand how to write these kinds of headlines. There are a common characteristics so you can begin building the idea of a perfect headline:
Headlines that have numbers or data within them are vastly more effective. In fact, studies have shown they generate 73% more shares and engagement. The reason behind this lies in the way our brains are hardwired. According to Debra Jason: “Our brains are attracted to numbers because they automatically organize information into a logical order. In marketing and advertising, your headline is an advertisement for your content. A single, small odd-numbered digit like 7 for example, is like candy for your organizational mind.”
Specifically, odd numbers tend to perform better than their even counterparts. In fact, headlines that were altered to include an odd number received a 20% increase in click-through rate.
Your epic headline should give your readers a reason to click it. Why should they read your content? What are you offering them? A promise like this must be made in your headline if you want them to click.
This is extremely important, considering that 89% of blog posts don’t get more than 100 shares on social media. If you want them to spread your content, you need to give them a strong reason. To do this, try including these words into your headlines:
Grabbing attention is far easier said than done. If you want people to read your post, then you have to make them read the epic headline first.
This isn’t easy, given that the average attention span is 8.25 seconds.
Your headline should contain something called “The Four U’s” which was popularized by Michael Masterson.
Here they are:
If we break these down, you’ll find that it paints a picture we can use for our headlines. To accomplish the first “U”, trying searching for your headline on Google. Make sure you use quotation marks for an exact search.
If it doesn’t come up, then you’ve got a unique headline. To make your headlines specific, make sure you’re addressing or answering a question that your audience has and needs an answer for. To make it urgent, use words that convey a sense of time. Tell them they to know these things “now” or “today.”
Finally, the useful idea you’re conveying should be something of value to your readers, like how to use apps to grow your business. By using some of the tips above, you can create useful headlines by including motivation and data.
Knowing these things, the final step is to create a formula that you use for your post headline. While there are plenty of ways that other bloggers craft their headlines, ultimately yours should be unique to you and what works for your audience.
To help you construct your own headline formula, here are some examples of how others are doing it:
The headline is one of the most important elements of any blog post. Spend the proper amount of time and energy on crafting it, and you’ll reap the rewards. How do you construct your headlines? Let us know which formula works for you in the comments!
Social media is a great (and mostly free) way to gain new customers for your business. Using social media seems deceptively simple, but in order to use it to generate new clients for business you must do so effectively. You’ll need to become familiar with the various platforms and how they can be utilized for your company.
Facebook is one of the most media platforms. You can advertise your business and post information, photos and video. But content you share on Facebook is only visible to or shared with people who are your “friends” on the site.
It’s important to keep all of your platforms updated and current. It’s a good idea to update your social media platforms on a weekly or even a daily basis. You may need to hire a social media professional if you don’t have the time to do this yourself.
Twitter is another useful social platform. But on Twitter, you have “followers” instead of friends. And you can only share content, in the form of information photos and videos with other users who follow you. Information is shared in the form of tweets.
Each tweet can be no more than 140 characters in length.
LinkedIn is similar to Facebook but it is mostly used by businesses and working professionals. You can promote your business on LinkedIn using lead generation, join groups who share similar interests, and connect with people to expand your reach.
You can use social media to connect with current clients and recruit new ones. Encourage clients to “Like” “Follow” or “Connect With” your business depending upon which platform you choose. When used effectively, social media is a great way for customers to share their experiences with other users and therefore potentially generate new clients for your business. Happy customers are chatty.
Content is the standard by which the value and success of an organization can be gauged, but the competition for stunning content to be used in marketing is so intense, developing unique content to make your brand stand out is tough work.
Along with content and marketing techniques, the audience have evolved as well. This means adapting with changing circumstances is necessary to remain relevant in the market. But how do you do this?
The audience is no longer looking forward to reading lengthy paragraphs or purchasing product/services from unknown brands. Instead, they wish to be part of a brand and view content which captures their interest. This has led many brands to optimize their webpages with stunning content to fulfill the desires of their target audience with mixed success.
So, what makes content appealing? To attract new audiences, your content should contain relevant information causing the user to stop searching and instead spend some time viewing what you have to offer. Next comes the pitch and call to action in order to persuade the user into performing an action according to your target goals.
By sticking with these four techniques, you can be sure to develop interesting content to appeal to the tastes of your target audience.
We’ve all heard the phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, so create images that will convey your message to maximum extent.
Perfectly designed images spread like wildfire on social media platforms because they appeal to a vast majority of audience and at the same time advertises your content.
The viewers will want to click the image to learn more about the content once you have caught their interest.
Combining images with short text creates infographics and has become one of the most versatile and effective medium when it comes to spreading factual and stunning content. Plain content and fact based data are ineffective in delivering the desired effect alone, but combining them with images creates content which is both informative, precise, easy for the audience to view and understand and equally interesting.
Infographics are your greatest asset when it comes to dry, uninteresting content because they can shape it in a manner to attract viewers. Use it when your information is lacking the spice to garner curiosity of the audience.
To create an effective infographic, pick relevant images along with the facts you have chosen. If statistics are concerned with the automobile industry, choosing relevant images of cars is the right way to go. Placement of images and text is critical. Do not overlap and watch for image shades to make sure you do not render both contents unreadable for the viewer.
Viewers are attracted to the latest trends, so be on the hunt for fresh content to better engage them. Choose a topic which has been the latest buzz over the past six months and create a trendy post on that issue. Surveys are an excellent method to convey to the masses a generalized view of what the people think on a subject. Create bar graphs or pie charts of your results and share your content with the viewers.
Viewers are not just searching for a brand that delivers quality products and services; they are also looking at immersing themselves in your story. Adding a few photos about activities that your brand is involved in other than those listed or a few casual images of work being conducted in office or time off is a friendly way to include audience in the backstory.
Photos are a great way to break the ice between the audience and your brand. You should involve them and promote a natural appearance of yourself. It promotes a humanistic reputation of the brand and allows the audience to engage on a more intimate level along with maintaining brand loyalty.
Share photos of your team members at work or at a client location, celebrating some milestone achievement or of a meeting in progress. You can also include these in various parts of your webpage such as About Us segment, posts or even in emails. They make great material to promote your brand on social media as news travels fastest on such platforms and the nature of such content creates a friendly and interactive image of your brand.
Videos are the most adaptive form of stunning content in which a huge quantity of information can be summarized interactively in just a few minutes. Videos can be used on any subject and not only increase the rankings of your webpage on search engines but are an excellent source of stunning content.
There are several ways to create engaging videos to attract visitors towards your webpage. You can choose to develop informative videos by using facts, figures, interviews from experts combined with images and music for maximum effect. At the same time, you can opt for more of a live tone by uploading live interviews or events to capture the thrill of the moment or to give the audience an uncut, unedited experience about what happened.
Proper placement of videos is crucial for their success in drawing out the desired effect from target audience. Videos can be placed on landing pages to supply the visitor what they have been searching for. A simple video explaining your brand’s objectives and motto on About Us page will be helpful in delivering your message in a concise manner. You can also upload video reviews to show the audience what others think about your brand.
Don’t just limit yourself to your site – share your video(s) on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. And remember, video viewers are always looking towards getting the maximum content out of their time. So keep your content short but precise and interesting to keep the viewer waiting for more.
Your online brand reputation plays a major role in your business success as well as customer satisfaction. As per the 2014 Edelman Trust Barometer, about 65% of online users depend on web search to get information related to firms as well as people.
One of the more significant tools which assist businesses in this purpose is social media. It is currently the best tool for businesses. About 92% of the marketers were surveyed for the 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report and they felt social media is a vital tool for business.
Furthermore, 90% stated that social media helps to increase their exposure while 69% praised it for being able to develop loyal fans. So, if you have not started social media marketing, you must start to brand yourself using social media.
The following are the major steps involved in branding your firm and its products through social media:
No doubt, there are various social media platforms available to pick from in order to start the branding journey. But you have to carefully select the correct one which helps in preventing yourself from spreading too thin. The following infographic can give a clear picture on how much significant social media is…
If you are going for multiple platforms in a single instance, it will then create a negative impact on your brand as reaching to the potential audience will be difficult. In order to assist you to decide on the platform, take a quick look at the top three effective platforms:
Branding is all about images. From your brand name to logo and to the profile picture, everything has to be instantly recognizable. A unique identity needs to be created through the design. For example, you can use style and color patterns of your logo so that you can establish your brand and even design the pages. Furthermore, you can get more inspiration by checking out what leaders of the industry are doing and taking a page from their books.
Often various businesses make the mistake of creating content which only they want to read. Oftentimes they will simply meet the deadlines which are marked on their publishing calendar without paying attention to what the viewer wants to read. Now what you need to be focusing on is on how to create best and useful content which attract the attention of readers and the want to have them share the content.
As an added benefit you can research what factors engages the audiences. This can be achieved by asking the members directly or by checking out what competitors are doing. But avoid plagiarizing and sharing blindly, as such moves will certainly affect your branding efforts.
Instead you can read these expert tips:
One of the best ways to generate a fan base and create audience is by socializing your content. The first step is to get in touch with social influencers present in your field since they have already established their brand.
Once that is done, you can put their names in the post. This can inspire them to connect and contact you. Ultimately they might share the content you have posted with their followers. You can take part in the discussions in order to show off your expert knowledge even as you are creating a bridge among the audience and you
Go ahead and follow these tips. And if you just ignore the social media marketing strategies, then your brand value will disappear in no time. Get busy and try to popularize your brand name.
This year’s ‘golden” Super Bowl featuring the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos is set to break quite a few records. And, no, there will be no mention of Peyton Manning’s possible broken records in this article.
One of the most heralded and talked about aspects of the Big Game are the Super Bowl commercials. For the most part, advertisers come out swinging and try to bring out their best, freshest ads with the most impact. This year’s Super Bowl 50 will be no exception to that rule (see greatest Super Bowl commercials).
The price of a 30-second Super Bowl spot has been steadily rising since Super Bowl XLIII, which had a minimum price of $2.4 million. By Super Bowl XLIX, that number had almost doubled, costing a staggering $4.5 million.
This year, the coveted spots have the hefty price tag of $5 million a pop, up 11% from the previous years. While one could potentially calculate that the NFL made $300 million on the spots, there are usually repeats and some mainstay brands, such as Budweiser, that have contracts with the NFL that allow them to get into the Super Bowl commercial lineup.
Either way, there are quite a few companies that will be showing their wares during the game. Looking over the list, many would never expect that these commercials would be in the same event. Ads will range from mobile games (Mobile Strike) to toothpaste (Colgate) to avocados (Avocados from Mexico).
The fans are even more invested, and companies have quite a bit riding on that fact as well.
The Marriott has played their hand since before the big game, racking up nearly 54 million impressions on social media for fans to win a suite at the Super Bowl.
For the game itself, Twitter and Facebook have been a part of the hype, with 70% of news seekers on Twitter seeing Super Bowl news and Facebook’s at 55%, and will continue to be driving the game forward. Twitter is offering special emojis and Facebook will be introducing the Sports Stadium, which will give Facebook users a place to find game news and events in real time.
Denny Keens, the Head of North American Sports Partnerships, has predicted big things for the Super Bowl, saying that it will likely be the most popular event of 2016 for Twitter users.
Companies large and small are capitalizing on the nation’s Super Bowl fever. After all, it’s a great way to spread a brand and invigorate a business during one of the biggest events in American life.
The greatest fact about marketing life: your readers hate SPAM. They hate irrelevant, pushy email marketing campaigns that murder their inboxes and try to force them to care about things they don’t care about. An email marketing statistic from Epsilon reports, “The average click-through rate for B2B marketing emails in Q2 2013 was 1.7%.”
However, not all emails are unwelcome. According to a November 2015 study by MailChimp, the average open rate across businesses of all sizes is between 20% and 24%. In a classic case of “it could be worse,” it is important to remember that many of your customers may be engaging with your content on other mediums, including social media or directly from your website.
Improve your email marketing campaigns and craft compelling emails that your readers will want to open by getting more “in touch” with your audience.
Are you a B2B business that sends monthly e-newsletters to a list of engineers and construction professionals? Or are you a retail chain that reaches out weekly to the millennial consumer? Your emails must be tailored to catch the attention of your audience and regularly give them valuable information. If even one of your emails fails to provide relevant information to your reader, the likelihood that they will open a future email plummets.
What is the purpose of your email marketing campaign? Are you offering a promotional discount to increase sales? Are you introducing your readers to a new service? Are you highlighting a new product with an incentive to buy? Or are you simply reaching out to keep in touch with your email list? Develop a clear strategy and goal before crafting content otherwise you’re wasting your time.
Once you have an audience and strategy, it’s your responsibility to create email content that is valuable and engaging. Your email subject should catch the reader’s attention without being gimmicky, and the content should offer information that they did not know before. Use graphics tastefully and tactfully, since many email providers display text-only emails.