While there were many amazing use cases (you can watch the full keynote here), we’re going to cover some of the top use cases that may impact consumer behavior.

First, the integration of Gemini will span across many Google apps such as Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Keep, and more.

Gemini is Multi-modal

Next, Gemini will be multi-modal, which means that it can leverage multiple input types, such as text, voice, and images. Here are a few examples:

1. Multi-modal use-case #1: Take a picture of a poster that promotes a musician’s (Sabrina Carpenter in this case) tour schedule and ask Gemini (using your voice) to “check my calendar and see if I’m free when she comes to San Francisco this year.”
   1. It outputs a response of “Sure, I found that Sabrina Carpenter is coming to San Francisco on November 9, 2024. I don’t see any events on your calendar during that time.”
   2. Then you can follow up with the voice command to “set a reminder to check ticket prices tonight at 7:00”
      1. Then it sets a reminder on your phone to check
2. Multi-modal use-case #2: You’re watching a YouTube video of a food blogger touring a famous “foodie” city and you ask Gemini to create a list of foods eaten in the video.
   1. Gemini then creates a list of foods based on the YouTube captions.
   2. Then, you can ask to have that list of foods be added to a new list in Google Keep so that you can shop for them at the Grocery store.

Have a Live Conversation with Gemini

You can also converse with Gemini in a free-flowing voice-based conversation with Gemini and change the topic as the conversation flows. You also have 10 different voices to chose from.

Gemini Can Send Information Over the Internet or Stay On-device

The use cases described above are all largely going to make internet requests to get you the latest information. However, for use cases with privacy and security implications, Google has developed Gemini Nano, an on-device model that doesn’t have to make requests over the internet. The requests remain on your device.

1. On-device Example #1 (Text based call summaries): Gemini can effectively transcribe your call and then generate a summary after the call is over.
   
2. On-device Example #1 (Screenshot Organization): Gemini can create a visual library of all screenshots you take. We all take screenshots of things we want to remember, but it can be a huge challenge to make use of those when we need to (or even remember what we have in our photos app). Gemini will use AI to detect information in the image so that everything is searchable. It also remembers where you got the screenshot from, so that you can click a link and be returned right back to the source of where you took the screenshot from. This one could have a big impact on traffic and attribution to websites, as the traffic source will likely be direct, even if a user had originally came from a marketing channel.
   

As AI models continue to be deployed more widely, across mobile devices, use cases will continue to expand. As use cases expand and user adoption increases, we’ll see more and more impacts on consumer behavior and search patterns. If you are looking for ways to keep your organization in sync with these changing consumer behaviors, reach out to info@morevisibility.com

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Cyber-attacks continue to increase at an alarming rate. For example, let’s look at some concerning statistics related to an industry we all care about, healthcare. According to Chief Healthcare Executive, as of November 2023:

• 77% of large breaches in 2023 came from cyberattacks
• Over the past four years, there has been a 239% increase in the number of large breaches involving hacking
• The average cost of healthcare data breach is $11 million

Now, that’s just the tip of the iceberg and healthcare is an industry that takes security and privacy extremely seriously. With all the evidence that cyberattacks continue to increase (in both their volume and impact), it stands to reason that there should be a solid plan for dealing with them. However, we’ve seen many organizations left flat-footed when it comes to their website being compromised due to a cyber-attack.

For anyone with responsibility over an organization’s website and/or digital marketing efforts, I strongly recommend that you ensure there is a contingency plan in place to address the website and your digital efforts in the event of a cyber attack that impacts your website.

Every continuity and contingency plan will need to be unique to each business, however, to get you started in the right direction, here are a few things you should consider as part of yours:

Ensure there are clear plans and assigned responsibilities for the following.

1. Create and maintain a mirrored website that could replace the affected website and/or a separate dedicated domain to be used for communication in the event the main domain is taken down. If you’re going to use a separate dedicated domain for communication, for example, (let’s assume you work for Acme and your main domain is acme.com) you could use acmeinfo.com.
   1. This domain should be live and either indexed with general information about the purpose of the website (if you’re ok with it showing up in search results currently) or it should be noindexed with a plan of how to get it indexed quickly if/when required.
   2. Create a template pre-built to contain copy / content related to an incident that would be easily updated with the latest information as required. This should include all important SEO elements that are optimized towards the brand name like title tag, description tag, and H1.
   3. If desired to have analytics on the information domain, ensure there is either already tracking in place (if live and in use before an event) or a documented process for quickly launching analytics, for example:
      1. New GTM (Google Tag Manager) container with all required tags, triggers, and variables
      2. New GA4 (Google Analytics 4) property
      3. New GSC (Google Search Console) property
   4. During the incident (if the main domain is compromised), if possible (though it likely won’t be), implement a 302 (temporary) redirect from the main domain to the information domain. Once the issue is resolved, this redirect should be removed.
2. If a new domain is used/launched, be sure to:
   1. Update links in all 3^rd party channels (such as social media and Google My Business) to point to the new temporary information domain.
   2. Send an email to all relevant audiences with a link to the new domain.
      1. Ensure you have a plan in place for email distribution in the event that the email infrastructure currently in-use is impacted by the attack.
   3. Ensure you have a plan in place and mapping of all of the websites that need to be updated.
3. Pause all digital advertising that sends traffic to any impacted domains.
4. Have a pre-built digital advertising media plan (with budget allocation) for brand advertising to route people looking for information to the temporary information website. For example, to quickly launch ads targeting “Acme” and send those users to the correct domain.
5. Have a plan in place (including tools) for monitoring and responding to a surge of social activity (comments, reviews, etc..).
6. Have a plan in place for reverting all of the changes back to their original state once the issue is resolved.

I hope this encourages you to review your organization’s contingency plan and ensure that the website and digital marketing efforts are accounted for. If they’re not, I recommend developing a robust plan that accounts for all the efforts you are currently involved in. As the saying goes “it’s better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.”

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Ecommerce brands have also adapted to how customers are using their mobile devices. Since it is easy to browse and purchase from their mobile device, the user journey has changed. Now, customers can enter the decision phase and make a purchase at any time.

Profit has transferred from brick-and-mortar locations to dot-coms

And this is unlikely to change any time soon. But it does present new challenges and some beneficial effects to the digital marketing world and the developers who are building Ecommerce websites.

For starters, development teams have shifted their focus to building websites with better responsive templates and faster load times. It wasn’t that long ago when having a fully responsive website with an optimized mobile and tablet version was an idea brands were still deciding the importance of. Now, it is a must if you are going to compete and build ROI. It’s not just a demand from users, but also a requirement from search engines if you want to rank well. Without a responsive website that is fast, you’re going to lose customer attention and organic rankings.

The design team that works with the developers also must adapt to a mobile-first website. This often means creating menus, buttons and page layouts that are simplified. Simple templates with fewer options and clear places to click are going to provide a better user experience on a mobile screen. Personally, I love this transition because I believe true design genius is turning a complex Ecommerce business into a simple layout – without giving up branding and product spotlight. Users are not fans of ‘busy’ and cluttered desktop designs; they are not likely to engage with a mobile site that is visually overwhelming.

Another development element that has been born from the mobile-first Ecommerce revolution is a secondary menu. It is now the norm to expect the traditional website menu that drops down with page options, and another menu (usually on the opposite side or corner of the site) that offers chat bots, cart updates and options for exclusive promotions. Developers are now building landing pages with menus that act more like toolbelts. The strategic vision is to have accessible places on the side of the screen available for the user to select at any time when they are on the site or logged into their account.  With added menu options on the page, especially something like a chat bot for customer inquiries, load time is a big priority. These additions are putting a lot of more elements on the page to load every time the user refreshes, making optimized responsive website templates the only ones to have.

The good news is, if you can build it effectively in mobile, you shouldn’t have trouble translating your website to desktop. Previously brands were doing the opposite and they would run into heavy scrutiny from their own team and loyal customers, because some elements they had grown to love on the desktop version were just not viable to keep or build on the mobile version. Responsive website templates have upgraded so much, it is possible to build anything you have on desktop in mobile. But now the question is not “can we build it?” The question is “should we build it?” Mobile sites give you limited real estate, forcing the design and templates to be simplistic – some pop-ups, banners and headers are best not transferring to your mobile version.

While developers have certainly shifted to a new way of building websites, you could argue the largest shift has come from content writers. Think about all the space on a desktop that is removed when viewing a site on a mobile device. Content writers used to have great introductory copy and headlines that worked on desktop sites for a long time. Now, just like the designers and the developers, they must shift to writing quick, catchy hooks that provide brand and product or service information. Just like the designs and developers, true genius in writing is taking a thousand words and saying the same thing, with the same emotional response, in one hundred words.

This entire landscape shift, thanks to the evolution of technology and the customer journey, has made digital marketing teams stronger. Don’t be confused – designing simpler templates, developing mobile-first websites, and writing shorter content – is not easier. In fact, it is harder – and that is why I believe it has made marketers stronger.

For more information on our Ecommerce mobile-first website development, email our team at  info@morevisibility.com.

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And I’m sure if you met with one of our SEO specialists, they could add a few more to the list – but the point is, there is more to oversee than ever before if you want your website to be shown high in search results. Combine your lengthy SEO checklist with the rise of AI in search, and the strategy to “win” could look very different.

Here are three tips to remember about AI within search engine results:

1. AI is changing the way search engines function to be a lot more like “answer engines.” As the competition grows, the amount of real estate in a search engine results page cannot keep up – therefor, websites that answer the users question accurately and quickly with organic content could be in a much better position.
2. As a result of the first tip, it is going to be very important that your images, reviews, product listings and other elements like your Google Business Profile, are fully optimized. All of these results provide quick answers to user queries.
3. Your website can use AI for images, videos, content and other elements. The only time this could be a negative to your organic presence would be the same way your non-AI content could be a negative – duplicate, stale content that doesn’t answer user questions. Do not look at AI as a “shortcut” but as a creative machine that must stick by the same guidelines as any other content produced.

If you are a large brand with many locations, another priority for organic rankings is going to be how you build local content into your website. We see examples of this if we search for something with the phrase “near me” and local information appears for that brand or company. However, users know that search engines can use location based settings from their devices and have started to decrease the amount of searches with “near me” included. Therefor, if your content is not location-based, you could be missing out on very precious user impressions from people close by.

For more information on SEO strategy and AI in search email info@morevisibility.com and check out our Resources Page.

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A great place to start is a comprehensive review of last year’s performance, homing in on the channels and tactics that were most profitable.  There’s no shame in discontinuing channels that are underperforming; even if they are ones that have worked well historically. Reallocate resources based on 2023 results.

Confirm that your analytics is both tracking & reporting properly. With the transition to GA4, many companies are still out of sorts data-wise, as The Wall Street Journal recently noted. A more advanced step would be to create custom reports that use Google’s new analytics technology to arrive at a sufficient degree of visibility to allow you to make informed decisions moving forward. Your old (Universal Analytics) reports will not automatically transfer over.

Since the earliest days of the Digital Marketing industry, there have always been new technologies and innovations that captured people’s attention and diverted resources from their core missions. Artificial Intelligence is that new shiny thing and like prior industry pivots, AI has a long way to go before it radically impacts what marketers are doing on a day-to-day basis.

This isn’t to diminish the significant, big picture impact that AI is going to have on all aspects of life, including Digital Marketing. Nor is it to minimize the amount of AI that is already baked into existing products (like GA-4 and Performance Max). Assuredly, the ability to create all sorts of content will be enhanced through tools that are powered by AI, but that’s in its very early stages.

Look backwards to gain a clear understanding of what transpired in 2023 to inform your best moves to begin the new year. As always, please reach out with any questions (Andrew.wetzler@morevisibility.com).

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What is a Robots.txt file?

Every search engine deploys crawlers that look over your website in order to feed the best search results at the correct time to their users. These crawlers have a full time job, as websites change frequently. From adding new content, rebranding, removing pages and linking social media accounts – crawlers from search engines will decide a cadence to review your site so they are also up-to-date with your changes. A robots.txt directs the search engine crawler when they are on your site, telling them which pages they can access and which pages are not important. Your robots.txt file acts like an instruction manual for search engine crawlers so your site is not overloaded with crawler requests. It also helps the crawler understand your site better and more efficiently – just like an instruction manual, if you bought furniture and it came without instructions, you would be left determining which pieces are important, where they go and how the furniture needs to be assembled. This can make a simple one hour furniture project last a whole day – the same concept applies if your site does not have an updated and properly placed robots.txt file. The robots.txt file does not act as a tool to tell search engines which pages they cannot crawl. This is a common mistake, your SEO team should be using a ‘no index’ tagging strategy for those pages you do not want search engines to consider or see at all.

What Can Happen if Your Robots.txt File is Not Used Properly?

While there is no way to know one hundred percent the factors and the weight they carry for search engine algorithm rankings, we can make educated conclusions based on our expertise and history of finding out the “why” for our SEO clients. Using the example of the client I mentioned to start this blog, and my knowledge from previous client work, here are some negative impacts that companies have seen when not deploying a proper robots.txt file – or in some cases, not having one at all!

• Videos on the site that used to rank well took a large hit in rankings.
• Site data, such as the reported number of indexed pages in Google Search Console were drastically different then in previous time periods. Google Search Console also reported more alerts or errors that the SEO team should review.
• Companies with an international presence saw a ranking difference within different countries, but it didn’t always align with where the heaviest competition was.
  Traffic data from Google Analytics also showed discrepancies when comparing time periods.
• These four factors are enough to make you question the validity of your data, a situation all digital marketers want to avoid. Properly using a robots.txt file is not a large undertaking for a digital team, but the consequences of not keeping it updated can be great.

How Often Should I Audit My Site?

As I mentioned in the opening, how frequent you audit your site is less about resources and more about how you think about SEO. Working with clients, you develop relationships with marketing teams that boast different levels of digital marketing knowledge. Because of this, you get good at explaining technical factors in ‘layman’s terms.’ I like to think about the pieces of my digital marketing strategy like real transportation. For example, paid advertising is my airplane. It can be a fighter jet or a commercial airliner – what matters is the speed at which it can get you from one place to the next. Not as fast as my airplane is SEO – or as I like think about it, my cruise ship. Elegant and just as stable as a ride on my plane, except the cruise ship move differently. Between the size of the ship and traveling in water, I need to have clear coordinates for where I am sailing to. Unlike my plane that can change direction any minute and reroute to a new destination, my SEO cruise ship is a force moving in one direction that will take time and patience to change. Before I even set sail, the cruise ship requires much more pre-planning and prep time from the staff and captain – the same goes for your SEO. However, what makes a successful cruise is all the crew members knowing their responsibilities and always thinking ahead so the ride is seamless for the passengers (aka your website visitors).

If you think of SEO in this way, then it becomes clear auditing your site is something that should never stop. Instead of taking one month out of the year to deep dive into your website, you can develop monthly health checks and attack a checklist or priorities with your team, as the ‘cruise ship’ keeps moving. I like to think about digital strategy in this manner when trying to figure out the “why” with my team – consistent best practices is still the best way to garner SEO wins.

The post Your Robots.txt File and Why Frequent SEO Audits Are Crucial appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Voice search results often draw from featured snippets—concise, information-rich snippets that directly answer a user’s query. Structuring your content to provide clear and succinct answers can increase the likelihood of your content being featured in voice search results. Think about the common questions your audience might ask and create content that addresses those queries directly.

Here are a few examples from a home flooring company that show the difference between a voice search query and text-based searches:

• Voice: “What are the pros and cons to installing a new wood floor throughout my entire home?”
• Text: Pros and cons of wood floors
• Voice: Are wooden floors harder to maintain over many years?
• Text: Tips for cleaning wooden floors

You can see the customer may have the same question in mind, but will use voice search very differently then they would typing in a search query on Google, or another search engine.

You also need to consider the technical set-up for voice search optimization. Make sure your SEO team takes into consideration these factors:

• Page Speed: Optimize your website’s loading speed, as slow-loading pages may lead to a poor user experience, especially in voice searches where users expect quick responses.
• Mobile Optimization: Given that a significant portion of voice searches occurs on mobile devices, ensure your website is mobile-friendly and provides a seamless experience.
• Local Optimization: Many voice searches are location-specific. Optimize your content for local searches by including location-based keywords. This is also a great time to ensure your Google My Business Profile is up-to-date and any other business listings your brand may have used in the past are also displaying accurate information.

Unlike more traditional content on your site, if you are developing voice-friendly content, you gave the freedom to be more natural and steer away from overly formal language that you may have written in the past. You want users to have a one-to-one connection with the way they searched and what they see on the page.

An example of this is a pawn shop that has six locations in Florida and used the tagline “Conveniently Located to Get You Money Now.” However, if you went to their landing page from a voice search query, the tagline slightly changed to read, “Always Nearby, Your Money is Waiting.” They probably made this slight change because they saw that when users came to the site from a voice search query they used the phrase “pawn shop near me” 70% of the time. Incorporating the familiarity of “near me” and “nearby” is a small change that could have a big impact.

Voice Search is no longer a niche type of query, but for many brands a large part of the data they need to stay up-to-speed on and adapt over time. I would recommend tracking voice search behavior and voice search content separately and be prepared to be flexible and change as the way people search changes over time.

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Personalize and Provide

Personalize your interactions with customers by using their preferred name in your chatbot or virtual greeting. Some chatbots keep logs of previous conversations so when the customer comes back for a new inquiry, the chat is ready to provide a more educated answer. Providing information is another way to be memorable to your customer. If you want to be efficient, fill in customer data every time they need to confirm it is correct for a transaction or account inquiry. I still see sites frequently ask for me to input information they already have and have asked for previously. The extra sixty seconds to a customer feels like an hour when they see a page with blank form fields waiting to be filled in.

Always Have the Opportunity for a Conversation

Conversational marketing and consumer engagement crosses multiple platforms today. Your customer can be active on your site, your social media page, with your chatbot or on the phone with a representative – and could be doing more than one of these actions simultaneously. It is key to ensure your conversational strategy is ready to engage with your customer on any platform, at any time. A common oversight by brands is to focus only on the website experience not considering that the costumer will be able to feel the disconnect on another platform or device. If your website chatbot performs well but it is difficult to find a contact call-to-action on your Facebook page, the consumer will see the inconsistency.

The Conversation is More Important than the Frequency

If your chatbot is not getting used as often as you thought it would, should you turn it off? Unless the chatbot is causing a negative user experience, the question you should ask is “What are my customers saying?” Using the actual conversation data (that is available and law-abiding) to pinpoint two issues to fix in a month is more valuable than shutting something off and potentially missing a key piece of information a customer will share that can change your business or sales positively if corrected. You can also go deeper when looking at the actual conversations to understand if customers repeat themselves. Asking the same or similar questions signals that your chat feature may not be providing specific enough answers, wrong answers may be getting served, or there is a gap in the descriptive brand language your consumers use versus your brand.

Balance Privacy and Service

Service within your conversational strategy should be thought about as ‘being present at the right times.’ However, you must still be conscious of privacy and maintaining the right distance from your customer so they can browse, shop and gather information they need first. It isn’t negative to have automations that reach out to the customer first, but allow your technology stack to do that at certain moments where the customer has a better chance of needing help or using the information you provide. A great example is a chatbox popup that lets me know the jeans I’m looking at are buy one, get one 50%off – but it only tells me on the jeans category page. Offering promotions, asking for information or just saying “Hi!” can become negative if done too much throughout a customer’s journey.

As new website apps and technology continue to be developed, you can expect conversational marketing to become more precise and more efficient, giving the customer exactly what they need with one answer. Continue to be creative and test new opportunities and resources for your customers. Conversational marketing strategy will be measured by and feel like a real human interaction when operating at its best.

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For those who might not know, the search functionality present on your website generates internal search result pages. For example, if you are planning a hiking trip and searched for “hiking backpacks” on rei.com, you will land on an internal site search result page https://www.rei.com/search?q=hiking+backpacks.

Technically speaking, each variation of this search result page is a unique URL and page to search engines. This is because searches for “backpacks” vs. “hiking backpacks” will each return unique URLs https://www.rei.com/search?q=backpacks vs. https://www.rei.com/search?q=hiking+backpacks. Therefore, both URLs are uniquely crawlable and indexable.

Why Might This be an Issue?

Given that these are just search results, they are typically not pages you want search engines like Google to spend their time crawling and/or indexing. These pages can also present potential issues including:

• Competing against core pages: For example REI has a hiking backpacks category https://www.rei.com/c/hiking-backpacks and you wouldn’t want the internal site search result page for “hiking backpacks” to compete with the category page.
• Infinite Number of Crawlable Pages: Since internal site search result pages aren’t manually created, technically speaking, there is no limit to the number of different results that can be generated. Any slightly unique search can generate a completely new internal site search page. This can become very problematic if you five, ten, fifteen times the number of internal site search results crawl as your main core pages. If you have a site that is 100,000 pages and search engines are crawling 1 million internal site search results, that can be problematic.

How Can Search Engines Find these Pages?

Typically, search engines will only crawl through links they find, and won’t try to input values into text boxes like a site search (although we have seen a small number of cases of search engines entering text in text boxes over the years).

So, if they don’t typically crawl through text boxes, how is this an issue? Well, that’s because we’ll often see links to internal site searches across the web, where users effectively open pathways to these pages themselves. For example, if you searched for hiking backpacks, and then wrote a blog post about your hiking adventures and linked to that search result page, now search engines have a crawlable link to get into internal site search pages.

But wait, that’s just one page, I thought you said they could find an infinite number of pages? That’s because once a search engine has reached an internal site search result page, websites often provide other pathways to reach additional variations. For example:

1. Pagination: Results will often be spread across a large number of pages and each of these is often a unique URL as well, such as https://www.rei.com/c/hiking-backpacks?page=2.
   
2. Other Sorting, Filtering, and Link Options: Though this isn’t the case with all of REI’s functionality, many sites will have all of these generate unique variations of the hiking backpacks page in our example:
   
3. Related Searches: Sites often will provide a related searches module that will generate links to other similar searches. Typically, these are auto generated from real user searches, so the list can be limitless.
   

What Should I Do?

Ok, so hopefully we’ve convinced you this is a possible issue. The great news is that there are several possible solutions. As always, the solution that’s best for you depends on your unique circumstance. As always, we recommend having someone who is knowledgeable about technical SEO to choose the right solution after thinking critically about your situation and analyzing the current and future impacts of the situation and resolution.

While there are many theoretical and possible solutions to unique situations, we’re going to cover the most recommended solution and common cited alternatives.

If possible, block access to internal site search results using your robots.txt file. This path is typically most ideal for several reasons:

1. It is a directive that major search engines follow, not a “hint”
2. It is very simple and quick to implement
3. It stops the crawling issues where search engines could be crawling a limitless number of possible pages
4. While it doesn’t guarantee that links to internal site search results won’t be indexed, that’s typically not a problem here. The likelihood of search engines indexing links to your site search results if they are blocked using the robots.txt file is quite low in our opinion. Additionally, if they do, what’s the harm? The pages won’t be crawled so they won’t compete with other pages on your site and won’t cause a duplicate content issue. It can add noise to your data if you track indexed vs. non-indexed pages, but we believe that that is typically worth it compared to having a limitless number of pages crawlable.
5. However, it’s important to note that if you already have many internal site search result pages crawled, indexed, ranking, and generating traffic, this may not be the best path for you and instead may require a more sophisticated approach.Implementing method is very simple, by adding one line to your robots.txt file as you can see REI has implemented it in their robots.txt file https://www.rei.com/robots.txt. Please note however that the specific format needs to match the URL structure of your internal site search result URLs.
   

Alternative solutions we often see cited, but typically aren’t advisable include using noindex meta tags and rel=”canonical” link elements.

• Noindex internal site search results: You could place a noindex meta tag on all internal site search results, but we typically don’t recommend this. While it stops search engines from indexing links to internal site search results, it can still lead to these issues:
  • You’re not stopping the pages from being crawled. So, you could still end up with an issue where five, ten, fifteen times the number of pages on your site are being crawled from internal site search results compared to your core pages.
  • Anytime noindex tags are placed on pages on the website, you run the risk of those tags being carried into other pages that are not intended to have them. While this is typically not a major issue with internal site search results, it’s possible someone without knowledge of this specific tag could re-purpose code for another section of the site and carry over a noindex tag mistakenly. While that’s more common with core page templates, it is still a possibility to watch out for and prevent.
• Using Rel=”canonical” link elements: We sometimes see people recommend or use rel=”canonical” link elements to canonicalize the search result pages back to the main search result “homepage” for example using one like this (not what REI uses):
  

This may be used to canonicalize any link value from the internal site search results back to the main search page. Additionally, using the robots.txt file will prevent this value from being transferred. However, this typically isn’t worth it. While people will link to your search results, it’s often not enough to provide any real link value. Additionally, you still have the crawling issue. So, is having the link value worth having the crawling issue? For most cases, we don’t believe so.

As stated, there are many other possible methods to use for this situation. In some cases they are warranted but most of the time they are not ideal or recommended. Blocking access via the robots.txt file is the most simple and effective solution most of the time.

If you have any other questions about the technical SEO health of your website, don’t hesitate to reach out to info@morevisibility.com.

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In fact, it matters much more for a business to impress its potential customers and clients right away than it does for an individual. Google Research found in a study that for users to fully engage and interact with your business online, their experience with your website needs to resonate within one second.

What does that mean for your brand and company website? In order to convert, it needs to be visually appealing and quickly provide solutions to your consumer’s problem. Your website design is a crucial marketing asset you should invest in. If you build your website with your brand’s story at heart and a concise, creative content strategy that stands out from competitors, you can greatly impact your customers and create a pool of potential customers.

In a previous post on storytelling, I covered five commonalities between web design and storytelling. In this post, we are going to explore several factors to consider when implementing your brand story into your website design.

Begin With an Introduction

Similar to how the best stories begin with an exceptional introduction, so should your website.

With the digital world cutting our attention spans short, it is now more important than ever to consider your website’s content and design. Your homepage is likely the first point of contact for any new visitor. It is important to make it clear what you do. The goal is to communicate to the prospect or visitor that they are in the right place, especially if they landed on your website via traditional search methods.

The information presented on your homepage needs to be relevant, brief, and to the point. It should also engage and inform users so that they cannot miss the final act.

For instance, you can make things visible by placing an impactful headline. Then, provide support by adding in relevant graphics or images. Sometimes, a simple mixture of background video, creative writing, and imagery is all you need to get things going.

Include the Web Design Essentials

Your homepage should highlight your brand. Good navigation, visually appealing pages, effective call-to-actions, white space, unique keyword-rich text, high-quality images, font, colors—every element has its own importance. All these factors come together to tell your brand’s unique story.

A brief, but clear introduction is extremely engaging. This should be kept up further by brief overviews for each product or service.

Ensure that your color, typography, and iconography are consistent with your overall brand guidelines.

Provide navigational elements such as hyperlinked buttons that take the user to new pages or even external sources of information. This way, you can offer detailed information without overcrowding the homepage.

Tell Your Visitors Why You Are Unique

Be sure to highlight what makes your company different. In today’s competitive online environment, adding your company’s key differentiators can make all the difference. Make a list of all the differentiating factors, narrow down the list to the most significant ones, and discuss each of them. Keep it direct and to the point and consider adding supporting graphics, statistics, videos, or testimonials.

General Advice

There is no denying that each brand has its own story to narrate. After all, that’s the goal – to stand out and get noticed because your business is different. However, being different doesn’t mean you cannot apply a standard set of rules to your website design strategy. I have listed five universal tips to keep in mind when communicating your brand’s story.

1. Make Use of Effective Writing

Crafting a website is a lot like writing a novel. No one wants to read a story that is drawn out or difficult to read. When it comes to the design of your website, the same is true. You want your web copy to grab your visitors’ attention, keep them interested, and persuade them to take action. How do you achieve that without sounding boring, generic, or pushy?

You need to use storytelling elements such as emotional words and phrases that appeal to visitors’ feelings, personal pronouns and names, descriptive language and sensory details, contrast, tension, and urgency to create interest, and positive words and phrases that show the value of your solution. For example, instead of saying, “Our software saves you time and boosts productivity,” you can say, “We make every user feel empowered and part of something bigger than their own individual tasks, and as a result, boost collective productivity and transparency.”

It is important to know your audience, their needs, expectations, and preferences so that you tailor your content to them. However you should avoid beginning with too much detail, using clever names, company-specific names without an explanation, and unfamiliar technical terms. Instead, use short and concise phrases, implement different heading levels and bulleted lists to break up long text blocks, and use plain and objective language to make your website text clear and concise.

A good web design project always starts with a sitemap. This organizational tool allows you to structure your site and provides you with an overview of your navigation and subpages. Breaking up detailed content into subpages, rather than on one page, narrows the topic scope and makes the big picture of your brand story easier to follow.

2. Add Value

If you want to provide more information on your services, the history of your company, or some other subject, consider including a section for extra information on your site. This can be in the form of a “News” or “Resources” section. These additional sections can prove to be very useful if you want to add extra content. Also, keeping them updated will help with your search engine optimization.

In addition to the benefiting from SEO, updated information communicates to your site’s visitors that your company is staying current and involved in your industry.

3. Set Yourself Apart

As stated earlier, there is so much competition today within the business landscape, yet your story is your own. Therefore, it is necessary to highlight what is uniquely good about your brand. Make sure your website highlights your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, to communicate to your target audience why your product or service is superior to your competitors.

A strong USP answers these three questions:

1. How are you different from the competition, and why is this relevant to customers?
2. What is the specific and unique benefit to choosing you over the competition?
3. Why do customers care about this benefit?

4. Establish Trust

Your brand story should build trust by showing your authenticity, credibility, and expertise. Testimonials are another form of storytelling that use the voice of your satisfied customers to endorse your value and credibility.

Make sure to add elements that position your company as authentic and trustworthy. You may build a relationship of trust with visitors to your website by including company success statistics, videos, partner testimonials, vendor testimonials, customer testimonials, or case studies.

5. Turn Prospects Into Leads

End your story with a call-to-action that invites your visitors to take the next step. That next step might be for your prospects to reach out and request a demo or they may have additional questions about your business. Having a contact form throughout your website is important to turn your hard work into leads.

Where you place your forms, how they are designed, and the language in your call-to-action shape your visitor experience. After all, no prospect should have to do a web search on how to contact your company. Ensuring your contact form is easy to find and fill out can help you retain customers and improve your customer service.

Apart from offering contact forms, explore providing downloadable resources or a chat feature. These are additional good practices for turning prospects into leads.

Conclusion

There are many factors to be considered when crafting a brand story. Given the high visibility potential and the global nature of the internet, crafting your brand’s story is worth the effort.

If you are ready to reinvent your website and ensure that your visitors’ first impression isn’t the last, let’s talk.

The post Communicate Your Brand Story With Web Design appeared first on MoreVisibility.

All of this progress has led to a new race for search engines to beat one another and either capture more market share (Bing) or maintain market share dominance (Google).

What Paths are Search Engines Taking?

Bing is taking the most straightforward path. They have chosen to partner with OpenAI and integrate their technology (right now, specifically GPT-4) into Bing search. This is largely because Microsoft concluded that OpenAI’s generative AI technology was superior to their own internal technology. Bing has already integrated GPT-4 and its generative AI capabilities into live search results, but you can only access this when using the Microsoft Edge browser.

Google has taken a different path and chosen to leverage their own technology. They have release Bard, which is a ChatGPT competitor and in addition have also released Search Generative Experience (SGE) in a beta format that you have to sign up, receive access, and opt-into testing.

What are the Differences in the User Experience of Current Google & Bing Generative AI

Both SGE and Bing’s use of GPT-4 offer a very similar format and user experience at a high level. However, the quality of the results differ a lot. Both can embed a generative AI result directly into existing search results, and both offer a chatbot app-like experience as well.

Here is what the generative AI format looks like in Bing search results (red highlight added by me):

Here is what the generative AI format looks like in Google search results (red highlight added by me):

Are there Differences in the Quality of Information?

In our testing, so far, the GPT-4 technology produces more sophisticated and helpful answers. However, both leave a lot to be desired for this technology to truly replace existing search results.

Here is an example result produced in Google for the prompt: “Create a travel itinerary for a trip from Boca Raton to Islamorada. Include recommendations that are family friendly for a family of four with two children under the age of 2.”

You’ll notice that the answers are generic, and don’t provide many components and links that would be helpful. For example, it doesn’t state the best route to take for the drive or provide a link to a map. Another example is that it recommends to “have dinner at one of the many family-friendly restaurants in Islamorada” but doesn’t provide any restaurant recommendations or links to them.

Here is the result for the same search/prompt using Bing. As you can see, it at least provides recommendations for specific places and even provides sources for where to read more information about some of the locations. However, the information is limited, only some recommendations have citations, and as someone who lived in Boca for years and travels to Islamorada every year, I know there are a lot of places that are missing from the list that should be there.

Will Generative AI Replace Search Results?

It’s possible, but not anytime soon. The generative AI results are significantly worse than most well written content on a given topic. Although it will continue to improve, the more likely scenario is that generative AI will be used as another search feature to provide a variety of result types based on user intent and search query. Just like they have moved from 10 blue links to images, videos, news and much more, generative AI results can be a new result type.

I can certainly see generative AI results being prominent and helpful when there are niche searches that aren’t well served by existing content on the web. However, when someone takes the time to create a well-researched and written piece of content on a topic, I don’t see an “anonymous” generative AI result (that doesn’t have authority, expertise, or trustworthiness) replacing core search results anytime soon.

If you have any questions about how generative AI might impact your organic presence, don’t hesitate to reach out to info@morevisibility.com.

The post Search Engines Embedding Generative AI into Search Results appeared first on MoreVisibility.

The post Google’s Search Generated Experience (Their Answer to ChatGPT) appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Here’s how keywords might evolve at different stages of the buyer’s journey:

1. Awareness Stage: At the outset, the searcher is just becoming aware of a problem or a need or a curiosity that they have. They’re apt to use broad keywords to gather information and educate themselves. For example, a person who is considering a trip to a country they’ve never visited may search for “vacation Switzerland”.
2. Consideration Stage: Here, the searcher has identified their macro-objective and is actively researching about the country. They may be using more specific keywords that reflect what they’ve learned from the broader search. For example, a person who has decided that they plan to travel to Switzerland may begin searching for something narrower such as “hotels in the Ticino region”.
3. Decision Stage: At this point, the searcher has narrowed down their options and is evaluating specific cities and hotels in the Ticino region. They may be using keywords that reflect what they’ve learned to this point. So, a searcher could enter “hotels on Lake Lugano”, which indicates that they are (probably) ready to make a commitment (reserve a room).

It’s important to note that these stages are not always linear, and a searcher may move back and forth between them (along the buyer’s journey) before deciding. That’s okay. The goal is to stay in front of them, which can occur through remarketing or direct outreach (email, phone, etc.) to increase the likelihood that they become a customer. Want to learn more, please reach out to us.

The post Align Your Keywords to Your Buyer’s Journey appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Yet, here we are and the impact for Digital Marketers has barely begun to be realized. The sizzle (like most new things on the web) is significantly greater than the substance now in terms of the applications (use cases) projected to be on the horizon as the technology progresses.

While I believe that the bigger picture challenge and opportunities lie in understanding how Google, Bing, etc. are incorporating AI into their search engines, it’s valuable to begin experimenting now.

Many marketers have begun testing with Bard and ChatGPT over the past few weeks from a content creation standpoint. Most who have shared their opinion on how they stack up favor ChatGPT. In fact, even Google has hinted lately they are playing a bit of catch-up.

I thought it would be insightful to pose the same question to both and compare the answers.

Here goes:

Question: What’s a model to show how to calculate “return on ad spend”?

Bard response:

ChatGPT response:

As you can see, the answers from both Bard and ChatGPT were fairly similar.

Overall, my experience to this point aligns with the industry consensus that ChatGPT provides a better user result thus far, but as mentioned in the title, I believe that things are just getting started and the ways AI is integrated into Search results will be very interesting to observe and begin to optimize against.

To learn more about how AI is impacting Search, please reach out to us.

The post ChatGPT vs. Bard… Inning 1 appeared first on MoreVisibility.

GA4 Collection Model

As you can see in the illustration below, Google has moved from a collection model based on hits, to one based on events. This requires changing your approach to measuring performance in order to best align to this new collection model. Some see this as a challenge, however, we believe that you should see it as an opportunity.

The Opportunity

The change in the Google Analytics collection model opens up new opportunities to standardize how you measure content performance, primarily through the use of events and their associated parameters.

Parameters are detailed dimensions that you can collect associated with an event. For example, when a user views a page, it triggers a page_view event which is associated with many parameters like page_location (the URL of the page). We can create parameters for just about anything we want to measure, and “attach” them to events (i.e. metrics) that we want to measure.

Think about how much more effective this can be than Universal Analytics (UA). With UA, we didn’t have this structured relationship for all of the data points we wanted to measure. With UA, we had 3 slots to assign to a given event and they were not flexible (we only had “Category”, “Action”, and “Label” fields). Now, with GA4, we have up to 25 parameters (WOW!) that can be passed along with a single event.

Now, we can create a flexible and scalable structure to tie many very specific dimensions of our content with a wide variety of performance metrics. For example, if we wanted to measure the performance of our content, we might want to track signup events (newsletter, blog, webinar, etc…) from our content efforts. Here is an example of how this might have been setup in UA and how we could obtain way more insight with GA4:

      UA Example

      Category: Newsletter

      Action: Subscription Signup

      Label: {Text Clicked by User} / Sign-up for Our Newsletter

      GA4 Example

      Event Name: Newsletter

      Parameter (Action): Subscription Signup

      Parameter (Text Clicked by User): Sign-up for Our Newsletter

      Parameter (Company Name): Acme Company

      Parameter (Company Size): 1,000

      Parameter (page_location): /blog/may-2023-marketing-webinar

In the former example with UA, we can only measure performance of the total number of signups and what the user clicked on. In the GA4 example, we can segment out signups by much more valuable dimensions like company size. This can enable much more valuable and granular data analysis of performance.

How to Take Advantage

Additional new flexibility with software often comes with a “gotcha.” In this case, GA4 brings amazing new features and flexibility, but it requires expertise to create a standardized and scalable strategy for your unique needs, as well as technical talent to customize the platforms to ensure accurate measurement. Taking advantage of the new event + parameter model is best done by:

1. Establishing a comprehensive measurement strategy
2. Defining the ideal data architecture to capture the right data for your strategy
3. Defining the required technical changes to surface and capture the data effectively
4. Implementing technical changes in Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and/or your website
5. Testing all changes prior to pushing them live
6. Pushing the changes live and testing again
7. Configuring reporting (which may require a data analysis / dashboard platform like Looker Studio and possibly the use of a data warehouse like BigQuery).

If this is an area you would like to explore further for your organization, please reach out to us at info@morevisibility.com and our expert team of Google Analytics specialists can assist you with building out your measurement and analysis capabilities.

The post Improved Content Tracking in GA4 Using Event Parameters appeared first on MoreVisibility.

What Exactly Does Alt Text for Images Do?

Alt text—which is short for alternative text—is sometimes also called “alt tags,” “alt descriptions,” and “alt attributes.” It has three important functions:

1. Alt text contributes to SEO. It tells Google and other search engines what the image depicts, allowing them to index it and potentially return it in results for relevant image searches. In other words, it can be another way that users discover your site.
2. Alt text is key to website accessibility for the visually impaired. Assistive technology like screen readers will read the alt text, letting users know that there’s an image and what it shows.
3. Alt text covers for you when images don’t load. Sometimes, when people open an email that contains images, or when they arrive on your web page on a mobile device, or in other scenarios, images fail to load. If you filled out the alt text field, this text displays where the image should be, so that users at least know what’s supposed to be there.

How to Write Alt Text for Images

So, now that you understand the importance of alternative text, here are some tips for writing and using it effectively:

• Remember that the number 1 job of alt text is to accurately describe the image it’s attached to.
• So, be descriptive. Don’t say “Eating pizza.” Say “Young girl eating a slice of pepperoni pizza at a restaurant.”
• Include the primary keyword for the page if—and only if—you can do so in a way that makes sense and is relevant to the image description. Don’t force it.
• Shoot for about 100 characters. FYI, most of the screen readers in use today stop reading after 125 characters of alt text.
• There’s no need to start the alt text with anything like “Photo of…” or “Image showing…” or “A picture of…” People and search engines alike understand that the alt text is describing an image.
• Call-to-action buttons can and should have alt text! It just needs to be something simple and descriptive like “Sign up button,” “Buy now button,” “Learn more button,” “Submit button,” and so on.

Alt Null Tags for Images

There are times when you don’t want screen readers or other assistive technology to communicate about an image. Generally, it’s when the image is purely decorative or otherwise adds no value to the content.

Borders, lines, and flourishes are examples of decorative images. Or, if you’re writing about George Washington and have a picture of him next to his name, it doesn’t add anything and can even be confusing if a screen reader announces this image.

In these instances, create what’s known as an alt null tag. It’s added into the image code using HTML, denoted as alt=””.

Why not just leave the alt text field blank? Because that doesn’t indicate to screen readers that the image should be ignored; for all they know, you just forgot to fill it out. When the alt text is just left empty, assistive technology instead reads the image file name, which is often confusing. Adding an alt null tag is necessary for assistive technology to disregard an image.

The post Best Practices for Writing Alt Text for Images appeared first on MoreVisibility.

To help you make the most of the new year, below are five New Year’s resolutions you should make for your ecommerce website. By making and keeping these five resolutions, you can increase your chances of success before the end of the year.

Resolution #1: Keep It Simple and Seamless

One of the top rules you should keep in mind during the ecommerce design process is “KISS”—Keep It Simple and Seamless.

A simple and intuitive design is what positively impacts customer engagement and can contribute to better sales figures. On the contrary, adding too many components can crowd up your pages and even distract users from the entire point of your website: closing a sale. Adding white space, limiting the content to just a few key pages, and adding more images instead of paragraphs of text can go a long way in boosting the overall simplicity of your website.

There is no need for things that are not relevant to the overall objectives of the site. If you think something is a bit too much or unnecessary, it most likely will act a distraction. Simple designs that boost ease of use and offer a memorable experience are much better than designs that boast aesthetic value but end up being complex in terms of user experience. Avoid adding components that compromise on usability no matter how pleasing you think they might be.

For example, live chat pop-ups can be very useful if your business wants to engage with customers. However, if constant engagement isn’t a necessity or your audience does not want it, you should avoid using that functionality.

Resolution #2: Use the Story Approach

Another way to captivate a customer’s attention is to tell a compelling story about your company. Incorporating storytelling into your website can create a coherent experience for visitors to identify with. Customers engage with businesses that they can identify with, which is why it is necessary that you create that perception.

One of the first things businesses do when developing an ecommerce website is focus on the products that they are selling. After all, that is what customers want from you. However, you should do more than just sell your brand, you should also sell the idea behind your brand and how it makes your customer’s life better.

Consider what type of story you want to communicate and how your audience will react to it. You should select the type of story that suits your product theme such as: why potential customers should buy your product or service, why your company exists, your successes, and your value propositions.

Ask yourself: what do you want to be remembered for? Then select the medium best for your story. You can describe your story in many forms such as written, audio, or digital. Nowadays, video stories are most preferred as it is the most engaging content type online thanks to device functionality making it easier than ever before to stream video content.

Resolution #3: Optimize Your Site for Mobile

Square found that 98% of ecommerce patrons want to connect with businesses through their mobile phones. The rise of mobile commerce, which is a form of ecommerce and also known as mCommerce, goes beyond just shopping. Mobile commerce includes receiving appointment notifications, order notifications, text or email marketing messages, text or email loyalty messages, scanning QR codes, texting with a business, and receiving invoices.

Businesses that provide a fast and seamless experience on mobile devices have a better chance of customer conversion, and 29% of consumers said they’d leave a site or app if it doesn’t satisfy their needs.

If your site is not mobile-friendly, you could be missing out on a lot of business. It’s not enough that your site can be accessed on a mobile device; it’s essential to make sure that it works well in a mobile environment, too. Consider offering an app-like mobile shopping experience to customers such as receiving personalized product recommendations, offering the option to save their payment information, and track their past purchases.

Resolution #4: Use Original Images

Images are a core part of an ecommerce site’s appeal as 75% of shoppers say they rely on images when shopping online. After all, customers need to have high-quality images to determine if the product or service they are buying is worth the investment. Therefore, it is important to use high-quality images and try to avoid using stock images.

Stock images might work for certain industries. For ecommerce, you are better off leveraging original photos for authenticity and delivering your message the way you want to. Afterall, your brand is unique to you and is not something that can easily be found through a provider of stock photography.

You may outsource the task to professionals or hire one of your own. Either way, using the best images for your product pages and website will not only make your ecommerce website look outstanding, it will convince more customers to buy your products and turn your shop into a successful one.

Resolution #5: Use High-Quality Content

Lastly, content is king in an ecommerce world and 2023 is not going to be any different in regards to content. Content is how customers learn about your product and make purchasing decisions. So be sure to incorporate blogs, images, and social media posts into your ecommerce site.

If you want to get your point across while also driving sales, you need to make your content scannable for visitors. Be sure to break up your content—whether it is in the form of product descriptions, blog posts, or an “About Us” page—into an easy-to-scan format. Keep sentences and paragraphs short, use bolding to call attention to key information, and use bulleted lists to break up large blocks of texts.

The easier to scan your content, the more likely your audience will absorb your key messaging, and the more likely you will be able to make a sale.

In closing, research suggests 80% of New Year’s resolutions quickly fall by the wayside by February. However, if you make and keep these five resolutions for your ecommerce business, this year can be one to remember. Use the energy of the new year to begin making these updates to your website. There is no time like the present to achieve these resolutions and make this year one of your most successful ones yet.

The post 5 New Year’s Resolutions for Your Ecommerce Site appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Almost every week we hear about new advancements in AI capabilities and new applications for its uses. The most recent hot topic has been the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI, a highly advanced large language model chatbot that can engage in dialogue, answer questions and follow directions, like writing content for your website.

All of this advancement and the development of new tools leads to a natural question:

Should We Use AI to Generate Content for SEO?

The short answer (as of today) is that we don’t recommend using AI to write significant amounts of your website’s content for SEO.

Google advises against using “extensive automation to produce content on many topics.” This would include the use of AI tools like ChatGPT. In recent Google algorithm updates (August and December Helpful Content Updates), Google has doubled down on and further detailed the importance of creating high quality content that is valuable for users. Google reps have also stated Google is able to identify and demote AI plagiarized content that has been scraped from other sites.

While the capabilities of AI are impressive, there’s still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to using AI for content creation. In its current form today, AI generated content without considerable human review, editing and expansion may not meet Google’s guidelines for being high quality and “people-first.” If it doesn’t meet those requirements, it will be a challenge to rank well within search and to put you in front of your target audience.

How Can We Use AI for SEO?

Although we don’t recommend using AI alone to write significant amounts of content for you, that doesn’t mean you can’t use AI for SEO. In fact, AI tools can be highly valuable for SEO. They can help you:

• Conduct keyword research
• Generate outlines for your content, including identifying which topics you should cover
• Simplify complex topics
• Identify content optimization opportunities
• Create meta data for your content, including bulk creation for a large number of pages
• Translate content from one language to another
• Conduct research for your writing
• Understand sentiment of text
• Generate headlines
• Summarize longer-form content
• Create social media content, short videos and graphics
• And more…

The possibilities for using AI for SEO are limitless. As these technologies and programs continue to advance, we’re keeping a pulse on the newest developments and possibilities for using AI for SEO. And while we’re not yet at the point where AI should be used for generating significant amounts of content for SEO, there are certainly many ways AI can be incorporated into your writing and SEO processes to help improve your efficiencies and effectiveness. But it’s important to always vet and edit anything produced by AI before pushing it live on your site.

The post Should You Use AI to Generate Content for SEO? appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Yoast SEO website

Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines. It has several features that can help you manage your website’s SEO, including:

• Page analysis: Yoast SEO analyzes the content of your pages and posts and provides feedback on how to improve it.
• XML sitemaps: Yoast SEO generates an XML sitemap for your website, which helps search engines discover and index your web pages.
• Meta tags: Yoast SEO allows you to add meta tags to your pages and posts, including titles and descriptions, which can help improve their visibility in search results. Yoast SEO also provides a snippet preview, showing you an example of what your page may look like on a Google search result page.
• Social integration: Yoast SEO lets you add social media open graph data to your website, so that when your content is shared on social media, it looks good and is tagged properly.
• Schema Markup: Yoast SEO can add schema markup to your website automatically, based on the content of your pages. This can help the search engines understand the content of pages better which will provide more relevant results to users. Additionally certain types of mark up can show up as “rich results” in Google search results which provides a richer, more interactive experience for users.
• Breadcrumb Navigation: Yoast SEO allows you to enable breadcrumb navigation on your website and customize its appearance. This can help users navigate back to higher-level pages on your website as well as help search engines understand the structure of your website.

Yoast SEO is a useful tool for managing the SEO of your website, and it can help you improve your website’s visibility in search results and make it more attractive to both users and search engines.

Redirection website

The Redirection plugin for WordPress can help you manage your website by allowing you to create and manage redirects on your site. Redirects are used to send users and search engines to a different URL than the one they originally requested. This can be useful in various situations, including:

• Migrating a website to a new domain: If you’re moving your website to a new domain, you can use redirects to send users and search engines from the old domain to the new one.
• Updating the taxonomy of your website: If you’re making changes to the taxonomy of your website, such as changing the URL of a page or post, you can use redirects to ensure that users and search engines can still access the content they’re looking for. Even better, Redirection will monitor pages and posts for URL changes, and create the redirect automatically.
• Removing content from your website: If you need to remove content from your website, you can use redirects to send users and search engines to a different page on your site.

The Redirection plugin includes a monitoring feature that can be used to keep track of 404 errors on your site. 404 errors occur when a user or search engine tries to access a URL on your site that doesn’t exist.

When the monitoring feature is enabled, the Redirection plugin will keep track of 404 errors on your site and allow you to create redirects to fix them. This can be useful because 404 errors can be harmful to your website’s SEO and user experience. Additionally, if users encounter 404 errors when they’re trying to access content on your site, they may become frustrated and leave your site.

The Redirection plugin can be a useful tool for managing the URLs on your website and ensuring that users and search engines can easily access the content they’re looking for.

SiteGround Optimizer website

Page loading time is a significant factor in how websites rank in search results in Google and other search engines. SiteGround Optimizer is a plugin developed by SiteGround, a web hosting company, that is designed to optimize the performance of WordPress websites. It includes numerous features that can help improve the speed and efficiency of your website, including:

• Image optimization: This feature allows you to automatically optimize the images on your website by compressing them without losing their quality, which can help reduce their file sizes and improve their loading times. Additionally, SiteGround Optimizer includes support for WebP images and an included converter to help convert your images to the newest most efficient image format available.
• JavaScript and CSS minification and aggregation: SiteGround Optimizer can minify your website’s JavaScript and CSS files and combine CSS and JavaScript files from various themes and plugins into one. These optimizations can reduce file sizes and resource requests, improving your website’s performance.
• Site Caching: SiteGround Optimizer includes a caching feature that will generate a static HTML version of your website and store it in the browser’s memory. This can help reduce the number of server requests your website makes and improve the performance of your website.

SiteGround Optimizer can potentially reduce the loading times of your web pages and improve the overall user experience of your website. It’s worth noting that SiteGround Optimizer is only available to users who host their websites with SiteGround. If you’re using a different hosting provider, you may want to consider using a different performance optimization plugin.

By installing and setting up the 3 plugins above you should have an easier time managing your site’s SEO as well as seeing an improvement in page load times which can have great benefits for user experience, advertising, and conversion rate as well as other metrics. It is also important to realize that some of these implementations are quite technical and could have adverse effects to your website if not configured correctly, so it is always important to test new plugins and features on a staging or development environment and well as make sure all changes are performed by a knowledgeable developer.

If you need help with your WordPress website, reach out to us at info@morevisibility.com.

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What’s Changed?

Google has historically used paginated pages to show search results to users, showing just ten blue links at a time and requiring users to click on the next page number at the bottom of the page to see additional results.

Now, Google shows 6 pages of results before requiring the user to click a “See More” button to view additional results. With the introduction of continuous scroll, users simply continue scrolling to generate more results, much like the infinite scroll we are used to on social media platforms.

What Does This Mean for SEO?

Although this is a major user experience update, it shouldn’t impact your SEO strategy or change your approach to creating content.

While it’s likely content that previously ranked on “page 2” or more within Google may see an uptick in organic impressions and clicks, we don’t expect it to be a dramatic increase for most types of queries.

For really broad, general, informational queries, it’s possible users want to see a lot of search results to generate new ideas or see all options available to them. In these cases, continuous scroll will likely be valuable for searchers and may lead to some additional organic traffic for lower-ranking content on those topics.

However, for most searches where a user has a specific question to be answered, piece of information to find or action to accomplish, it’s still likely users will choose the first result that looks like it will fulfill their need. There’s no need to continuously scroll if you found the answer you need in the first result.

Given that Google’s goal is still to deliver the best results that meet searchers’ needs, our goal and focus as content marketers should still be focused on meeting the needs of searchers. If that remains our focus, we should continue to see success from SEO.

Does This Change How We Measure SEO Success?

While this update shouldn’t impact your SEO strategy, it will have some impact on how we talk about SEO performance. We’ll move from referring to “page rankings” to focusing solely on “position rankings.”

But beyond that, we expect that the top 10 results (and more importantly the top 3 results) will still remain our target goals for organic rankings and will continue to be an important measure of SEO success.

The post Google Introduces Continuous Scroll for Desktop Searches appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Start with Basic Keyword Research

Doing some simple keyword research can help you find topics your target audience is interested in and searching for. The following tools are easy to use and can quickly build a list of new topic ideas.

Auto Suggest (Google.com / Bing.com): The auto suggest feature in Google and Bing provides suggested queries based on user data. Just start typing in the search bar to see suggestions.

Related Searches (Google.com / Bing.com / YouTube.com): After searching on a particular topic, review the “Related Searches” sections to discover other relevant topics. You can use the browser extension Keywords Everywhere to see significantly more “Related Searches.” Similarly, try watching a YouTube video relevant to your industry and see what other types of topics are suggested in the “Up Next” sidebar.

“People Also Ask” Boxes (Google.com / Bing.com): Search result features like People Also Ask Boxes can also provide insight into the types of questions searchers have related to a query. Click the dropdown arrow next to any question to be shown additional related questions.

Answer the Public (answerthepublic.com): Answer the Public is a free tool that provides new topics sorted by questions and prepositions related to the query you enter.

Ubersuggest (neilpatel.com/ubersuggest): Ubersuggest uses Google’s auto suggest data to expand upon a core topic, providing a very robust set of ideas. This tool can be used to quickly gather content and keyword ideas related to a base topic.

Get Input from Your Team

A great source for identifying potential topics that are highly relevant to your customers is to talk with your sales team. They are the ones talking directly with your customers every day and are in a great position to help you understand your audience’s concerns and interests. Ask them:

• What questions they most often receive from customers?
• What are customers common pain points?
• Are there areas that customers complain about the most?
• What industry topics do customers have the most interest in?
• What information has been most effective for converting a lead into a sale?

Review Your Industry’s Content

Review the pages, blogs, and social media of other industry sites (including your competitors) to identify gaps in your own content. Think about ways you can provide more thorough information or a unique spin on topics those other sites have covered that are relevant to your business and target audience.

Revisit Your Past Content

Use Google Analytics to find the blog posts and other supporting content on your site with a history of good performance. Take a close look at them and think about how you could use them as inspiration for writing a new piece of content covering the topic from a different angle.

Brainstorm ways you can expand on aspects of the original content by providing more in-depth coverage, exploring some concepts more broadly, or tailoring the information to a different audience. If the content focuses on outdated industry trends or research, you can write a new version that uses updated information.

The post How to Find Topic Ideas for Your Content Strategy appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Some changes are minor and not noticeable, while others leave a lasting impact felt across industries and verticals (think Panda or Penguin). Sometimes Google publicly announces or confirms it has made an update, and other times it leaves us in the dark trying to sift through ranking changes on our own.

However, if there are specific actions Google feels site owners should take, they will confirm an update and may even give advance notice, like they did for the page speed update in 2018.

One type of update that has become a regular occurrence and one they always announce is a broad core update.

What is a Core Update?

Beginning in January 2020, Google began announcing “broad core updates” (which now happen a few times every year). Google has defined a core update as “significant, broad changes to our search algorithms and systems.”

Google announces when these updates roll out because they typically produce widely noticeable effects across industries.

However, although specific sites or pages on a site may be impacted by a core update, Google specifically states that “there’s nothing in a core update that targets specific pages or sites. Instead, the changes are about improving how our systems assess content overall.”

This means (to the dismay of many) there’s usually nothing for a site owner to “fix” if their rankings have been impacted by a core update.

Google uses a great analogy to explain how this works: consider if you published a list of the top 100 movies for 2018 and then updated that list in 2022; that list would be considerably different, not because anything changed with the movies, but because there are new movies that didn’t exist before that now should be included on the list.

This, Google says is how a core update works: updates to its algorithms surface new content that deserves visibility on the list (or search engine results page). In some cases, content that was previously under-rewarded may now be appropriately rewarded with improved rankings or visibility on the list.

Focus On Quality Content

Although Google always announces when a core update is rolling out, their announcements leave much to be desired for many site owners because they do not specify what changed and they share the exact same information every time.

Without fail they always direct site owners and content creators back to this same blog post from 2019 and reiterate that just because a site was negatively impacted by a core update does not mean there’s anything wrong with it, and therefore, there’s nothing that can be “fixed.”

Instead, they recommend focusing on providing quality content, which they say is what their algorithms seek to reward. They even provide a variety of questions content creators can ask themselves to evaluate if their content is high quality or not.

This information is explained in significant detail in Google’s search quality rater guidelines, which are a highly valuable resource that should be bookmarked by every digital content creator.

To summarize, Google considers high quality content to be content that demonstrates high expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (commonly referred to as E-A-T). Content with strong E-A-T:

• Provides original information, reporting, research or analysis
• Provides a comprehensive overview of the topic
• Presents information in a way that makes the reader want to trust it (e.g. sources are cited, background information on the author is available, etc.)
• Is written by an expert or enthusiast on the topic
• Is on a website that is trustworthy and recognized as an authority on the topic
• Is factually and grammatically correct
• Provides substantial value to readers compared to other results
• Is written for users, not search engines

If you suspect your site may have been impacted by a Google algorithm update or simply want to improve your organic visibility through the creation of high-quality content, contact us to learn more about how we can help.

The post What is a Google Core Algorithm Update? appeared first on MoreVisibility.

People-First Content

Large impacts are likely to occur with sites that Google classifies as having significant amounts of “unhelpful content,” which it believes to be content that has “little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful to those doing searches.”

The objective is to recognize content that is high quality and meets the intent of searchers while reducing the amount of content displayed in search that is written for Search Engine Optimization. This isn’t to imply that SEO isn’t highly valuable (it still is), but content should primarily be written for humans first (ahead of search engines). Google suggests initially creating content that will resonate with your audience, while incorporating best practices for SEO.

Google has provided a set of questions that marketers developing content can ask themselves to figure out if their content is people-first or search-engine-first.

Content written for humans:

• Is written for the intended audience who would find the information insightful if coming directly from you
• Exhibits “first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge”
• Aligns with your website’s main application
• The reader gains enough valuable information about the topic to achieve their searching intent
• Delivers a favorable experience for the visitor

Search-engine-first content:

• Is developed with the primary goal of ranking in search, rather than to help your intended audience
• Includes “extensive automation to produce content on many topics”
• Regurgitates what others have written without providing additional value
• Fails to achieve the goals of searchers which results in them re-searching
• Addresses topics that are beyond your expertise or are outside the primary focal points of your site or are related subjects your target audience would not be interested in learning about

A New Sitewide Ranking Signal

Unique from Google Core Updates, this is a first-time ranking signal which can adversely affect your entire website if Google decides to classify it as having large amounts of unhelpful content.

For instance, if there are a few examples of content on the website that are impressive quality and rank effectively organically, but Google finds a material amount of content on the balance of the website that is thin or not helpful, companies could experience ranking drops for content on the site, including any high-quality content.

Additionally, Google mentioned that this is a weighted signal, meaning that sites with a lot of less than helpful content could experience a harsher impact.

Unhelpful Content from Your Site should be Removed

Google specifically explains that site owners ought to remove unhelpful content from their websites.

However, if you’ve been impacted by this update, you shouldn’t anticipate progress to occur immediately. Google has said that websites which have been classified as having significant degrees of unhelpful content can have this signal applied to them for several months until Google’s classifier (which runs all the time) has an opportunity to review the content again and believes that the unhelpful content is gone and will not be added back to the site.

Be Sure You Have an Effective Content Strategy in Place

As we begin to see the affects of this new ranking factor moving forward, having a strong content strategy along with a well-defined roadmap for building out the content for your audience that is search engine friendly will be more vital than ever.

MoreVisibility has been working with our clients to develop high quality content for more than 22 years. Reach out to us to discover how we can help you be well-positioned for a strong future into the organic rankings.

The post Google Launches Helpful Content Algorithm Update appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Every day, humans use stories or novels to inspire, entertain, and educate. Storytelling is an extremely powerful tool for any business because it creates an emotional, human connection and gives meaning to your brand.

A well-crafted story keeps people entertained and engaged, as does a well-designed website. The two concepts are linked in practice and theory in a way that will help you create a better website design if you think about the process in terms of story building. Below are five commonalities of website design and storytelling I have noticed over time while reading (and watching) some of my favorite stories.

Segment Your Design

A story is often divided into sections such as the introduction, rising action, peak moments, climax, and conclusion.

The same is true about your website. Your introduction is your homepage. It is probably the first thing that a visitor will see. Your homepage influences the visitor’s thought process in that it lets them decide whether or not they want to move ahead. The rising action is every element that leads the visitor to the climax and further on to the falling action and conclusion.

As you can see, the first few elements have to be extremely engaging to convince the visitor to move forward. The visitor must be persuaded to find out what the final act is. Their interest must be held.

So when creating those first few elements, try adding information that may be new to the visitor. These could be unique points about your brand, organization, and product or service. For instance, if you are selling a nutritional supplement, talk about how it came into existence. What was the driving factor? Did it happen by accident, or did your “founder” or organization have a specific goal?

When you segment your website content using this structure, it flows and your website visitors will be captivated, keeping in mind the moral of the story, which is your product or services.

Divide Content Into Chapters for Simpler Navigation

In a book or novel, chapters help break the story down into smaller and easy to digest parts. They also help indicate that the story is moving from one section to the next. A website’s navigation serves the same purpose. It allows visitors to understand content more easily instead of being overwhelmed by it all at once. The visitor can skip parts and move onto the content most relevant to them.

To deliver the best through navigation, make sure it is streamlined. Your navigation can include crucial elements such as a search bar, call-to-action (CTA), social media icons, and shopping cart. While each page should offer its own distinct path, they must also lead to your story’s “climax” or desired CTA. That action could be filling out a contact form, buying a product, downloading a document, or watching a video.

Connect Words and Visuals

When it comes to website design, a large part of the story is visual. In this day and age, you cannot survive with textual content only. One important thing to do is to connect imagery with words to create a fuller picture for users.

Visuals offer a whole lot more opportunities for creative expression than a novel. Types of visual components may include images, illustrations, infographics, video, color, and graphic elements.

No matter what type of visuals you use, make sure to use high-quality visuals to tell your story. Also, not just any image will do. It is important to choose images that are relevant to the part of the story you are telling.

For example, you can add images of your company’s leadership on the “About Us” page. Highlight each one of them against their description. Let the audience be aware of who they are and how they contribute to the organization.

Develop a Personality

Elizabeth Bennet, Don Quixote, and Gandalf are just a few examples of how good character development can make (or the lack thereof can break) a story.

Who are the characters in your brand’s story? They should be relatable to your brand persona and exhibit characteristics that mimic your customers. Your website visitors to see themselves in your story; they should relate to the action and want to see what will happen next.

An important part of website design are user personas. User personas are a semi-fictional character based on your current or ideal customer. They allow you to find the answer to one of the most important questions, “Who are we designing for?” By understanding the expectations, concerns and motivations of targeted users, it is possible to design a product that will satisfy users’ needs and, as a result, be successful It is important not to force a story that does not match the tone, voice or vibe of your brand or users.

Stick to the Plot

A good story should never be longer than needed. That is why it is important to know your audience, because when you know their needs, you can give them what they want. Do not clutter your website with what you want to say or with trivial or unnecessary details you think users might need. Your content should be direct and to the point.

Make sure to stick to your story and convey it directly. Then, end with something users can act on as the final resolution to the story. On a website, building towards a resolution gives you a strong, consistent theme. It also provides a very satisfying moment for your audience — like getting the answer to a really good riddle.

Conclusion

Perhaps it is not surprising that storytelling is such a powerful tool for marketing and website design. Past civilizations forged common bonds over campfire tales. In the modern world, the internet has very definitely replaced the campfire, but people are still circling around looking for a tale to listen to.

By weaving a compelling narrative into the many different design elements that go into a webpage, you can create a coherent experience for visitors to identify with. Whether you are creating a new website or redesigning your current one, start with the story you want to share with the world.

If you are looking for help with improving your brand’s voice and website’s storytelling, please reach out to info@morevisibility.com.

The post How Web Design Is Like Storytelling appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Over the last six months, Google has shown to begin favoring ‘best of’ content for users searching product categories, travel destinations and even brands themselves. ‘Best of’ content refers to lists or information that are easily digestible and give the user a ranking or feedback on the best products, services and brands for their search query. Here are some examples below. You can see my search query at the top:

Ranking this type of content is a reaction by Google and a reflection of what users want to see. Over time, enough people inquired about “the best of” lists for products, services and destinations, so Google listened and updated results.

Why Does This Matter?

Large brands do not always have ‘best of’ type of content on their site. The websites producing this information are mostly independent reviewers, capturing traffic at the top of a user’s research phase. In some cases, you could have previously ranked on page one of Google but these third party sites have pushed you down the page or even to page 2 and 3. Naturally, your brand would not produce content that rates, reviews or lists competition – this is where shifting and evaluating your content strategy is very important. If this search landscape change is affecting your rankings and traffic, the goal should be to figure out how you can take rankings back or shift focus to win in new areas of search.

How Can You Adapt?

I would recommend starting in two areas:

1. Reviewing your trending keyword rankings for priority pages of your site and;
2. Creating a plan to enhance the content contained on your priority pages.

In reviewing your keyword trends, identify if it makes sense to update and compete with the same target phrases, or whether it makes more sense to review other keywords you can win at and gain new traffic? For your website pages, it is ideal to have multiple areas and types of content easily accessible on your pages. Videos, images, infographics, copy sections, dropdowns, guides, etc are all part of a user’s research and journey to the final click (purchase) and something Google is ranking more heavily.

For any questions on how MoreVisibility can help your content strategy, please contact us.

The post ‘Best of’ Content Takes Over Google appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Defining Offsite SEO

Essentially off-page or off-site SEO includes things that occur outside of your website that affect your search engine rankings. Hopefully, you have spent time making sure that every aspect of your website has been optimized, but there are other actions you can take beyond your site that will help with SEO.

Why Does Off-Page SEO Matter?

Search engines look at a variety of factors when they are deciding rankings. On-page SEO is used to measure your site’s relevancy, which is why solid content is so important. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, is used to rank your site’s credibility. If other sites feel good about linking to your site then it must be a credible source of information. This will also help establish your authority.

Examples of Off-Site SEO

Link Earning

Link earning is the most valuable off-site SEO tactic. If you provide high-quality, relevant content, it will be easier to earn backlinks and improve your rankings. Natural links occur when someone from another authoritative site links to yours. They could be citing your blog or sharing your products with their own audience. You can also manually build links by asking customers to provide links or connecting with social media influencers.

Social Media

Most businesses have gone through the obligatory steps of creating social media profiles on different forums, but these accounts won’t do much for you if you don’t find ways to engage with your audience. Be sure to use social media to promote your blog posts and find creative ways to get people to follow and share. These social media strategies can create valuable backlinks.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is a great way to earn valuable backlinks. Businesses are constantly working to create more content for their site, which is why a lot of them are more than happy to post a guest blog as long as you are able to propose a relevant and informative topic. Cold contacting websites and offering a guest blog can be a labor-intensive process, but if you are able to land a link on a highly authoritative site, it will be well worth the effort and lead to additional guest blogs.

Mistakes to Avoid

Link earning requires work. So if you come across something that offers you a shortcut or makes link earning seem too easy, stay away. Never pay for links or spam other sites with links. These are black hat practices that will negatively affect your rankings and search engines will make sure that your site is basically never found.

Successfully executing SEO strategies requires a comprehensive approach. Remember that SEO is much more than utilizing keywords. You also have to take care to create helpful content and use off-site strategies to establish your site as a credible authority.

The post What is Offsite SEO and Why Does it Matter? appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Have you thought about adding a new video, a YouTube video, a TikTok clip, a case study or testimonial (everyone loves a good story or video!!)?? Are you promoting or selling new items?

Below are a few tasks to consider to give your website a tune up:

• Test different Call-to-Action buttons
• Update pictures, images
• Update any new partnerships/clients
• Update management team or recent company accolades
• Update social & partner buttons
• Make sure headers and footers are consistent
• Is your chat window in the right place? Is it working?
• Update careers page/job postings
• Update or eliminate COVID-19 information
• Add or update testimonials
• Add or update blog entries
• Add or update press releases
• Add or update videos

Making sure all call-to-action buttons are prominent, functioning, and properly redirected is key to gathering information and acquiring new business. Keeping your job postings current and listing all open positions on the careers page is vital today. Company event pictures also spark interest for recruitment of new candidates and job seekers.

Remember, your website should be very valuable for your company. It is basically the front door to your business. Little tweaks can go a long way!

The post Attention: Your Website May Need a Tune Up appeared first on MoreVisibility.

What is Content Segmentation?

In the simplest of terms, content segmentation involves taking a larger group and breaking it down into smaller, more specific groups. Understanding the needs and wants of smaller groups will help you create targeted content and more personalized messaging for different audiences. While this might seem like adding more work to your plate, the return on investment is well worth any extra effort. It is better to spend your time pursuing a strategy that will work rather than continuing to invest in a broad approach that yields minimal results.

Benefits of Content Segmentation

Creates easy to manage groups

Again, creating specific groups may seem like you are increasing your workload, but it will actually make it easier to organize and manage your content. You will be able to strategize and focus your efforts with a new level of clarity.

Allows for more personalization

When it comes to marketing in today’s digital world, the name of the game is personalization. In fact, personalization has become so pervasive that customers expect it. With content segmentation, you can deliver relatable content that the target audience will want to consume and share.

Helps the audience feel connected to the brand

Ultimately, you want to be able to build a recognizable brand that consumers feel good about patronizing. This means that they need to be connected to the overall message. Personalized and targeted messaging, which is made possible through content segmentation, plays an important role in molding and sharing your brand message.

Tips for Implementing Content Segmentation

1. Do your research. Creating audience groups first requires that you understand the different types of people who comprise your audience. Gather as much data as you can on who purchases your products or services
2. Run tests. After you have designated different groups and designed and implemented different content strategies, it is time to study the results. Even if your content performed better than expected, you may be able to make improvements, so don’t be afraid to test out different ideas and continue to tinker with the formula. After all, consumer behavior and the marketplace are both dynamic entities, so you will need to stay vigilant about content strategies to keep up with changes.

Diving into data in order to create better content segmentation may feel a bit overwhelming at first. The good news is that there is plenty of data available and you can take things a little at a time. Even small steps towards segmentation and personalization will yield results.

If you’d like to discuss further, please let us know.

The post What is Content Segmentation and How to Maximize It appeared first on MoreVisibility.

If your link building strategy is just beginning, you probably have a focus on outreach. Outreach includes a plan to approach other websites and proactively ask them to link back to yours. If you have a great piece of content, or a rare value offer – outreach may be easy, and could find yourself with an elevation in links pointing to your site over 6-9 months.

However, link building can also work in reverse. Think about this – when Apple releases a new product and builds a webpage or separate site, do you think they need to do heavy outreach to gain links? Probably not, because their brand is so well known – websites who share technology news do all the work for them. Of course, Apple is a global brand, but the concept remains true for any size company or market – SEO link building can be achieved more efficiently by building brand awareness.

When working with clients, I try to outline their digital ecosystem, not just one part of their business. Yes, you have heard that SEO and SEM work together before, but have you explored all avenues of that relationship? If you create a strong digital ecosystem, outreach for link building can become something of the past. So how should you measure brand awareness? Here are a few good tips I have worked on with clients:

• Use your SEM campaigns to measure engagement growth (impressions, clicks, time on site)
• Measure & increase social media shares of your posts
• Feature high profile guest interviews and testimonials in your content – specifically videos & blogs
• Refine your targeted keywords for your blogs and site content to rank higher for the right audience you are trying to capture

Remember, implementing brand awareness and measuring success is still a long-term goal. However, brand awareness can be instrumental is making other parts of your digital ecosystem more efficient and in some cases, like link building, work for itself at a certain point.

The post Use Brand Awareness for Better SEO Link Building appeared first on MoreVisibility.

QR codes have actually been around since 1994. Initially, they were designed to help track vehicles as they moved through the manufacturing and distribution process in Japan. Eventually, they were placed on all sorts of different products and had the potential to help with marketing and promotional efforts. However, there was a bit of a failure to launch.

Part of the problem was that in the early 2010s, smartphones didn’t have built-in QR readers. Users could download an app, but this just created another barrier, and not all the apps were reliable. For these reasons, they weren’t widely adopted and eventually fell out of favor as a marketing tool.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought QR codes back to the forefront and ensured their relevance for years to come. Today, they are used to create contactless menus, payment options, registration forms, and even help with contact tracing. It doesn’t hurt that today’s smartphones are equipped with a camera that can scan and read any QR code.

QR codes are also great because they are totally flexible and can be used to encode all sorts of different data. Businesses can create dynamic QR codes, which allow them to edit the information and track the number of scans. Now that QR codes have become part of the landscape, there are endless opportunities to find innovative ways to use them.

How QR Codes are Being Used in Modern Marketing

Fashion TV has used QR codes to direct viewers to their website. People can scan the QR code directly from their TV to enjoy additional content, including articles, videos, and even advertisements from fashion brands.

Perhaps the most impactful use of QR codes to happen so far was the Coinbase 2022 Super Bowl Commercial. Super Bowl ads are some of the most expensive and coveted spots in marketing. That is why they feature celebrities and showcase the best in creativity and special effects. However, Coinbase, the Bitcoin company, decided to take a different approach and it worked.

In case you missed it, the 60-second commercial featured a black screen and a bouncing QR code that changed colors. It was a take on the old bouncing DVD logo that would appear on screens back when people still watched DVDs at home. There was no other information, just a simple, visual call to action that sparked the viewer’s curiosity. So many people scanned the code that the Coinbase app temporarily crashed. This is especially significant considering how prominently featured cryptocurrencies were during the Super Bowl. Coinbase was able to truly stand out and drive traffic directly to their website.

Why we can only guess at other creative ways that QR codes will be used in the future, we can say with certainty that they aren’t going anywhere any time soon. It is up to businesses to decide how to incorporate them into a comprehensive marketing plan and capitalize on this newly popular technology.

The post The Resurrection of QR Codes appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Why is this relevant as I reflect on MoreVisibility’s 22nd anniversary?

It’s germane because the pace of change that existed in the earliest days of the internet is still a huge force today, albeit in a more mature, yet ever-changing way. As a result there remains considerable confusion from many marketers (not to mention senators) about how the different channels (Google, Facebook, etc.) operate.

Going back 22 years, the notion that a “Search Engine Marketing” company could exist (and thrive) was fueled by the overwhelming curiosity marketers expressed at the time about how search engines worked and how companies could show up impressively on the results page with their rudimentary websites. This was a foundational element of the explosive growth that the internet has achieved.

While today’s advancements are usually more subtle than in the early days, there continue to be significant disruptions (to the status quo) as well, like Google’s (required) transition from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4.

Unless you’re in the weeds today, there’s no way to grasp how different each marketing tactic and channel is, from just 6 or 12 months ago; and how unique the skillsets are to effectively manage these channels and tactics.

A corollary to this is the astonishing scarcity of individuals who truly understand what’s going on with the real-time ins-and-outs successfully utilizing SEO, Paid Advertising, Google Analytics, the social channels, etc. Each of these aspects of the industry remains challenging to attain and maintain proficiency.

This combination of factors made companies like MoreVisibility relevant early on, and we are fortunate to continue our growth while helping lead our amazing clients through today’s digital landscape.

Link to Saturday Night Live opening skit.

The post MoreVisibility… 22 Years Later and Last Week’s Saturday Night Live Summed It Up Perfectly appeared first on MoreVisibility.

For example, the HTML title element for a page may be “Content Marketing – MoreVisibility” but Google may choose to show a different title in the search results:

Many noticed H1 headings and other on-page content being used rather than the provided HTML title element.

Google Confirms Changes to How it Generates Title Tags

In August, Google confirmed they’ve made changes to how they generate webpage titles. They confirmed they go beyond the HTML title element and may use content from the page or other text to generate a title tag. They said they look to:

• The main visual headline or title on the page (H1 heading)
• Other large and prominent headlines and text on the page (H2 or H3 heading)
• Other text on the page
• Anchor text within links that point to the page

They noted they also may add site names, if relevant, and may pull out the most relevant portion of an extremely long title tag to make it more useful.

While this recent change made headlines, this is not a drastic change from how Google has historically generated title tags.

Since 2012 they have gone beyond the HTML title element to use the text on a page in order to provide searchers with a title relevant to their search query. For nearly a decade, Google has changed title tags depending on a searcher’s query if their system determined that the HTML title element didn’t describe the page as well as it could.

This is an update to that system, which Google believes is now better than before at being able to generate title tags that describe a page regardless of the query.

Why Google Might Generate a Different Title

Google shared that this new system is intended to address even more situations than before where an autogenerated title tag is helpful for searchers.

Some of the situations where Google is more likely to generate a title tag include:

• Half-empty titles
• Obsolete or outdated titles
• Inaccurate titles
• Duplicate or boilerplate titles
• Very long titles
• Titles that are stuffed with keywords
• Missing or empty title tags

Why Should We Care?

In its announcement, Google noted “we are making use of text [to generate titles] that humans can visually see when they arrive at a web page.” They’ve reiterated that this update is intended to “produce more readable and accessible titles for pages.”

As site owners and content creators, it’s critical we keep these things in mind. Google’s goal is to provide the best experience for searchers. That too should be our goal. So long as we aim to provide an HTML title element that is relevant and descriptive of a page, we should hopefully continue to be able to maintain control of the title tags that show for our content within search.

In an update, Google shared that HTML title elements provided by site owners are shown 87% of the time. So, unless they are poorly written, HTML title elements still matter and still show within search more often than not.

The post Is Google Rewriting Your Title Tags? appeared first on MoreVisibility.

The Beach House
270 North Pompano Beach Blvd.
Pompano Beach, FL 33062

Our panel of Digital Marketing experts will be sharing everything you must know in Google Update: What’s Now and Next. Topics will include:

• All the latest information about new YouTube advertising opportunities
• Changes in Google Ads that have and will impact your campaigns
• Google’s newest SEO Page Experience Update, and
• How to prepare for the upcoming “cookie-pocalypse” – when Google will no longer be utilizing third-party cookies.

So much has happened in Digital Marketing in 2021 and there’s many new things on the horizon for 2022. Let’s get prepared together with Google. We hope to see you there in Pompano Beach: Register today.

The post Google Update: What’s Now and Next: Join Us Live appeared first on MoreVisibility.

As such, we’ve assembled 6 tips to explain how you can improve your rankings in search engines like Google.

1.   Publish Relevant, Quality Content

Creating relevant, quality content is crucial if you want to improve your rankings on search engines. Quality content that matches the search intent of your audience helps to improve your site’s relevance and authority, which in turn may lead to better rankings. Stay updated on the latest industry news, take note of topics your clients are bringing up, and weave these conversations into your content.

2. Create Metadata

As you work on your website, it’s important to create metadata for each of your pages. Search engines like Google use metadata from meta tags to understand information about your webpage. They then use this information for ranking purposes and displaying snippets in search results. The metadata you’ll need to create include:

• Title Tag – Your title tag will be responsible for the page title that pops up at the top of your browser window and as the headline in your search engine results. It is the most important metadata to include on your page. You should ensure your title tag is unique and relevant, includes your target key phrase, and is no more than 70 characters in length including spaces when possible.
• Description Tag – This is the textual description you’ll find underneath the page titles you see on the search engine results page. You will want to make sure your tag is a concise and appealing description of the information your page contains, is unique to your page, and is between 110 and 155 characters in length – including spaces.

3.  Optimize Page Speed

After Google’s recent Core Web Vitals upgrade, page speed became a key benchmark. It’s important to ensure your site is as fast as possible to help improve your user experience and in turn, increase your chances of ranking better.

4. Optimize Your Website For Local Search

Whenever people search for businesses “near me”, your website’s local search capabilities will be put to the test. To help improve the likelihood your business will show up in relevant local searches, be sure to claim your Google My Business listing, improve and monitor your online reputation, and ensure your business is listed in local directories.

5. Update Your Links

It is helpful to have quality inbound and outbound links on your website if you want to improve your search ranking. To ensure the quality of your links, you should regularly audit your site to check for issues like broken links and duplicate content. Check for 404 errors, pages from your site that are competing for the same keyword, and take steps to fix these issues.

6.  Use Alt Tags For Your Media

If you use images or videos within your content, be sure you always describe your assets with alternative text descriptions (alt tags). Why? Your alt tags will help search engines to find your page. Alt tags are also vital for people with disabilities who need to use assistive technology to describe your media content.

We hope these tips help. For more information on how you can improve your Search Engine Optimization efforts, be sure to reach out to the experts at MoreVisibility.

The post How To Improve Your Ranking In Search Engines appeared first on MoreVisibility.

In March 2021, YouTube started testing an updated version of their “Products in this Video” feature, which gave users linkouts to pages where they can purchase the products they saw in the video. This new layer seems to be more focused on engaging users with more information and relatable videos about the products in the videos they watched, versus taking them immediately offsite to potential complete a purchase.

Here is a statement from YouTube:

“We are experimenting with a new feature that displays a list of products detected in some videos, as well as related products. The feature will appear in between the recommended videos, to viewers scrolling below the video player.”

The idea is to show users the products in the video in a list format right below the YouTube players where the video description can be found. Users will then have the option to click out to another site if they are interested or continue watching more videos with these same products featured. Basically, YouTube is adding a layer of engagement to give users the option to stay within their platform and watch more content on products they appear to be interested in, or if they are sold, go right to the page to purchase. We already experience this in a very similar fashion when YouTube’s algorithm presents us with “more videos you might like,” taking into consideration your search history and engagement with the videos you watched.

YouTube hasn’t specified what platforms this will be available upon, only stating that it “will be visible to people watching videos in the US.” Digital marketers should be conscious of this update. If this becomes a new norm for the platform, products for e-commerce brands will be much more visible to users without them searching further – having clear and engaging videos for the YouTube algorithm to detect is very important. If you have not evaluated your YouTube channel strategy in some time, this new test may be a good reason to start. Future impacts on digital advertising within YouTube may also be a consideration – if the search engine is making products more accessible and efficient for users to purchase without running paid campaigns, YouTube strategy could significantly shift to boost organic engagement. Video ROI and YouTube will continue to grow and expand how users can identify and purchase desired products.

The post YouTube Will Test Auto-Detecting Products in Video appeared first on MoreVisibility.

“Page Experience” from Google’s perspective includes a range of technical SEO and design considerations that will impact brands’ visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). In order to position well numerous factors are weighed by Google’s algorithm, including how quickly a website’s content loads and how its content is presented in relation to what elements of the page load and when. Watch this video for a sneak peek at some of the topics that will be covered in the webinar.

With over 22 years of SEO expertise and experience working with many of the nation’s leading healthcare systems, MoreVisibility is excited to share these website considerations with SHSMD’s members (and nonmembers are also welcome to register for free):

What: Free Google Page Experience Webinar
Presented Live* by: SHSMD and MoreVisibility
When: Wednesday, August 18, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. ET

Register for Free Here

*Can’t attend live?  The webinar will be recorded and shared with all registrants after the conclusion of the live broadcast.

Need SEO or Digital Marketing help now? Email us at info@morevisibility.com or call to speak with a specialist at 800-787-0497.

The post Google Page Experience Update: Register for the Free Webinar appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Called “Call History” this new tool provides analytics data (phone numbers / caller information) for people who have “called through your Business Profile” in GMB. In other words, if someone clicks to call you from your claimed listing in Google Maps and this feature is enabled, you will have *free* call tracking on these “Organic” calls.

Not sure if you have access to the feature yet? Keep your eyes peeled for an email from Google prompting you to “Try Call History”. Once you get your email and login into GMB, you should see the following:

The feature works similarly to other Call Tracking methodologies, in that the inbound caller is forwarded via a unique number and a “whisper” functionality alerts whoever answers that this is an inbound call from Google.

The “See Call History” button leads to tallies and additional data:

The “History” list includes the call details include phone number, data, whether it was answered, and more. Everything your business needs to return missed calls from GMB or analyze the effectiveness of your Business Profile.

Need help optimizing your Google presence in Maps and beyond? Contact us to get started.

The post Call Tracking Available in GMB: Beta appeared first on MoreVisibility.

It’s important to note that while page experience is important, Google still seeks to rank pages with the best information overall, but all things being equal, a page with a better Page Experience will have better visibility in search. 

Setting up a benchmark report will help you see how you stack up to these new metrics and provide a starting point for future optimizations. The goal of the report is to visualize, at a glance, the current health of your site in terms of the CWV’s.

We can start putting together this benchmark report by referencing Google’s Core Web Vitals report in Search Console. (For more information, check out my previous post that provides an overview of the report.) It’s broken down into Mobile and Desktop data, so that’s how we’ll display the total URL breakdown on our benchmark report:

Next we’ll want to see the breakdown of mobile and desktop pages by the 3 metrics that make up the new CWV:

Lastly, we’ll analyze the Poor Mobile pages by URL groupings to see what section(s) of the site are experiencing the most issues:

Once those pages are outlined, we can move onto the Poor Desktop pages, then Need Improvement Mobile and subsequently Desktop URLs. After we’ve assessed the most likely culprit for each URL grouping, we recommend consulting with a developer to gain insight into the specific changes that need to be made in order to optimize the pages, then validate those changes in Google Search Console to see if the statuses of the flagged pages has improved.

As the Page Experience update rolls out, it will be important to monitor how your pages are performing by checking in on that Core Web Vitals report and comparing it to the Benchmark report.

If you need help putting together your own benchmark report or how to optimize underperforming pages on your site in terms of their Core Web Vitals, please reach out and a member of our team will help you get your website ready for Google’s new Page Experience update.

The post The Importance of a Benchmark Report for Google’s New Core Web Vitals appeared first on MoreVisibility.

That is the question many organizations are asking themselves. If your organization is considering adding a blog to their website, you may be asking yourself:

Is anyone interested in what we have to say? 

Is blogging worth it?

Is it time well spent?

The answer is, YES! – Why? Let us dig in…

Is Anyone Interested in What Your Organization Has To Say?

Absolutely! By sharing your expertise, it will help establish your business as an industry leader and set you apart from your competitors. It will also assist in building trust and clout by providing value to your customer base.

Is It Worth It? Is It Time Well Spent?

Blogging is an economical way for businesses to drive traffic to their site. It helps to:

• Build brand awareness and attract more prospective customers
• Cement you as an industry expert and improve client engagement
• Increase visibility on search engines and organic traffic
  

If you have determined that a blog is right for your organization, read the tips below before you begin.

Blogging Best Practices:

1. Set Goals/KPI’s for your Blog

Identify what you are trying to accomplish with your blog posts.

• Brand awareness
• Client engagement
• Increase traffic

2.  Connect with your Audience!

Normally you have just a few seconds to grab your user’s attention to convince them to “click” or “actively read” your post. It is important to connect with and address what your audience is looking for. We also recommend making

data-driven decisions by conducting industry research and performing a competitive analysis.

3. Use Headlines Strategically

The “TITLE” is the key to your article’s success. SEO-friendly headlines will bring in more traffic. This is an opportunity to take advantage of keywords that are relevant to your business/services that can promote internal linking.

4. Layout Is Important

Customers read blogs with an intent. Most want specific information with minimal work to get it. Highlight your value proposition and important takeaways in bullets to help your readers skim through it.

Here are some layout tips:

• Add subheadings and paragraphs to break up the page
• Avoid giant paragraphs
• Be authentic
• Add images, videos & infographics
  • Visual content is absorbed faster than text-based content
  • Videos, images & infographics will boost customer engagement

5. Don’t be Afraid to use SEO Tactics on Blogs

SEO is as important as user’s experience (UX). Ideally you want to find a balance between them. By applying Content Optimization strategies, it will help drive organic searches and maximize your SEO rankings:

• Adding proper meta titles
• Use meta descriptions
• Optimized for proper keywords
• Use related keywords variations
• Add alt-text to your images
• Imbed internal links to your content

6. Add a clear Call-to-Action (CTA)

Do not be shy! Make sure your audience understands next steps by introducing a call-to-action (CTA). CTAs must be easily distinguished and stand out. Here are a few examples:

Ensuring that your content is fresh, authentic, and relevant will help you to connect with existing customers and tap into new acquisition targets as engaged readers may be eager to share your blog with their peers.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more, please contact us at us at info@morevisibility.com.

The post Is Blogging Right for Your Organization appeared first on MoreVisibility.

What Is this Feature?

This is a new clickable element on each organic result.  Examples of this feature can be seen below. In its current form, three dots are visible in the top right-hand corner of each organic result. Once clicked on, a pop-up appears providing information that may include:

• A description of the website pulled from Wikipedia
• If a Wikipedia result for the website is not available, information on when the website was first indexed by Google
• A notice about the site being served over a secure (HTTPS) or unsecure (HTTP) connection
• The full URL for the page
• When applicable, information on the type of Google “Enhanced Search Result”

When Did it Launch?

Google launched this change on February 1^st, but you may not see it yourself yet, as it appears to still be rolling out to more and more users.

Our Analysis and Opinion of the Feature

Google’s stated goal of this new feature is so that “you can make a more informed decision about the sites you may want to visit and what results will be most useful for you.” While this may be true for people that take the time to click into this feature, I doubt that this will materially impact how people search (at least with the feature’s current form).

I find it unlikely that the average user will know what the three dots are (likely ignoring them), and if they do, I find it even less likely that they will slow down to research a website before clicking into it from Google. Instead, I believe that most people expect Google to return results that are safe and reputable. Organic results are in fact supposed to be the best solution to a user’s search query from the entire web. Therefore, I find it much more likely that Google is introducing this feature (with possible updates and modifications in the future) to help mitigate the risk of regulatory scrutiny that they are already facing (and that social platforms like Facebook are facing even more directly) from false and/or misleading information online.

In my opinion, this feature does provide more transparency for the user, although only a small amount, which is good. However, it also seems like an opportunity for Google to place a burden back on the user, helping to mitigate potential future issues with regulatory scrutiny about any bias in their results. If Google provides transparency information about a search result that contains untrue or malicious information before you click into it, how much responsibility do they have if you do not use the feature and click on the result anyway?

What Can you Do as an Organization?

Currently, Google is pulling information from Wikipedia for many results. If and where possible, make sure your Wikipedia page is up-to-date and accurate. Aside from that, it is not likely that there is any other action that you need to take. You are likely already serving your content over a secure (HTTPS) connection, you are not able to change the date your website was first indexed by Google, and you probably should not change your URLs just for this feature.

What Does This Feature Look Like?

The feature starts with three vertically aligned dots in the top right-hand corner of each organic search result. Once clicked, a pop-up appears with additional information. There are currently three different formats, based on whether the website has a Wikipedia result, does not have a Wikipedia result, or is a Rich Result (specially formatted result, often from structured data markup). Examples of each of these three types of formats can be seen below.

An Example Result from a Website that Does Have a Wikipedia Entry

An Example Result from a Website that Does Not Have a Wikipedia Entry

An Example Result for a Google “Enhanced Search Result”

If you have questions about Google’s user interface changes may impact your organization over time, and we can help, please reach out to us at info@morevisibility.com

The post Google Tries to Improve Transparency with “About This Result” Feature appeared first on MoreVisibility.

When categorizing blog posts, here are a few approaches that can be taken:

1. Do Not Update

• Blog posts on specific timely events that occurred in the past.
• Company announcements
• Press Releases

2. Consider Updating

• Evergreen topics
• Topics that are still highly relevant where the POV has changed.
• Topics where there is more content that could be provided.

If you are considering updating an existing blog post, it should have a strong foundation that can be updated without re-writing it completely (for example tweaking the copy, adding updated graphics, adding a new section). This can be valuable if the existing post is already ranking somewhat highly for the target keyword.

3. Leave as-is and Write a New Post

• A topic that has been covered on a past blog post, but the landscape / POV has changed so significantly that you would be completely re-writing the old post from scratch.

In this case, write a new post and link to it from the old post. For example, add a note to the top of the old post stating something like “We have created a new post on this subject that has more up-to-date findings and research. Read this post here.” When writing a new post – be sure to address these fundamentals for writing SEO-friendly blogs.

For any blog post that has changed in a meaningful way (which is subjective), update the timestamp for the post. “Meaningful” is driven primarily by the importance of the updates, not the amount of them.

For example:

• Meaningful with small updates: You change the priority of a checklist and add a new top recommendation.
  • This would be significant to a user, even though the number of updates is not that great.

• Not Meaningful with many updates: Changing many small and less important elements of the post like if you executed all of the following changes at once; underlining sub-headlines, changing the word-use of non-critical words, swapping a stock image with another similar stock image, changing the CTA, and fixing typos.
  • This would not be significant to a user, even though the number of updates is quite large.

Should I or should I not update that old blog post? The next time you are faced with this question, be sure to consider these important factors.

The post Knowing When to Optimize Your Historical Blog Posts appeared first on MoreVisibility.

When it comes to search, many people might consider the ranking of web pages to be subjective. How can anyone determine what the best web page is for a given search query? Can you rank the best web pages from 1 – 100 for every keyword, question, and query on the planet in the blink of an eye? Google can, and they have made it their business to consume the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. In fact, it’s their mission statement.

Over time, they have used signals related to links, keywords, content, and more to determine relevance, but they are now making big strides in measuring user experience (UX) and introducing signals into their algorithms that measure UX.

Measuring Things that are Subjective is in Google’s DNA

If anyone has proven that they are capable of measuring things that people think are subjective, it is Google. Just look at the opening paragraph of the paper on the original PageRank formula by Larry Page and Sergey Brin:

“The importance of a Web page is an inherently subjective matter, which depends on the readers interests, knowledge and attitudes. But there is still much that can be said objectively about the relative importance of Web pages. This paper describes PageRank, a method for rating Web pages objectively and mechanically, effectively measuring the human interest and attention devoted to them.”

So, if anyone has proven their ability to take something subjective and create scalable way to quantitatively measure it, Google is the one.

How Google Has Historically Approached Measuring UX for Organic Rankings

While Google has gotten extremely good at measuring relevancy, UX has always been a work in progress. You have probably encountered many pages in search results that have a poor user experience. You have likely encountered web pages that load slowly and are laden with ads, making the page almost impossible to use. You may have even closed pages with a bad UX in frustration, I know I have.

Google has tried to measure these things over the years, including:

• Google introduced a Page Layout Algorithm update in 2012 that had a (small) negative impact on pages that emphasized advertisements above the actual content of a page.
• Google introduced a page speed signal in 2018 that had a (small) negative impact on pages that were very slow to load.

However, these types of UX algorithm updates were often few and far between, and more importantly, the impact they had on actual rankings was very small. Therefore, organizations often did not prioritize these types of efforts when compared to those that would have a bigger impact on moving the needle, like content updates and keyword targeting.

How Google is Beginning to Make Strides in Measuring UX

This brings us to (the end of) 2020 and Google’s announcement about the Page Experience update that will be coming in May 2021. Google will be adding three new signals (called Core Web Vitals) and packaging these up with four existing signals to create one new combined umbrella called “Search signals for page experience.” These metrics will be one component to Google’s continued push to quantitatively measure UX.

Google is arriving at these conclusions about what to measure through machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (ML). They are using ML and AI to measure and predict the outcomes of positive and negative user experiences, and then take those signals and add them to algorithms that determine the organic rankings of web pages.

However, what makes this different than Google’s past efforts like the Page Layout algorithm and page speed updates we mentioned earlier? Well, there are two key differences that standout to me:

1. Google is now using ML and AI to predict positive and negative outcomes. The use of ML and AI (and the advancements that have come in the fields of ML and AI in recent years) are likely to have a significant impact on how effective these signals are at improving organic rankings. If they are more effective now, Google can trust and rely on them more, allowing them to have a bigger impact on the ranking of search results.
2. Google is creating umbrellas that they can add additional signals underneath in the future. Rather than creating an algorithm for page layouts, they have created “search signals for page experience.” There are seven signals (in the graphic above) under this umbrella now, but there are likely many more to come. Additionally, even Core Web Vitals is an umbrella where they are taking three metrics (those in green in the graphic above) out of a much larger initiative called Web Vitals. Again, Google is likely to pull additional web vitals metrics into the umbrella and call them “Core Web Vitals” in the future, to be used for their ranking algorithms.

What to Do

Expect this trend to continue into 2021 and beyond, with Google likely to introduce more signals (some they will announce publicly and others they probably will not) that will apply quantitative measurements to UX and use that for rankings. Additionally, expect these updates to grow in importance and their impact on your organic visibility.

Based on all of this, we must ask ourselves, what should we do? If we know that Google is going to continue in this direction, we should place an emphasis on UX. Although that is not groundbreaking, it is still an area that is not emphasized enough by most organizations.

Given the inherent subjective nature of UX (at least historically), many organizations do not improve it, because they do not measure it. Therefore, we recommend:

1. The first step is collaboration and education. Ensure you are bringing all the right team members, vendors, and stakeholders to the table. UX touches many disciplines from SEO, to Analytics, Design, Development, Copywriting, Testing, Advertising, Merchandising, and many Also, ensure you are keeping up with trends through continuing education across these disciplines related to UX.
2. The second step is measurement. Improve how you measure UX. There are many tools to do this, including Google Analytics.
3. Next, identify key areas of the site that can be quantitatively measured and improved (even if by a small amount to start). Over time, expand your measurement sophistication through dashboards and different segments / more granular elements of your website.
4. Then, begin the process of improving the more obvious areas, and testing the more questionable areas. Consider creating your own testing framework to decide what to test and when to test something.
5. Lastly, your workflows will evolve over time, but make sure that you continue the collaboration and education as there are sure to be many other announcements and changes coming.

If you have any questions on how we can help you better measure, test, or improve the UX of your website, please reach out to us at info@morevisibility.com.

The post Google Continues Taking Steps to Quantitatively Measure UX appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Tip #1: Provide Value

When you ask a question on search engines, like how to get your dog in the bathtub (and keep it there), you’re probably looking for an answer you don’t have. As such, this answer now holds value to you, and any video or blog you run across that can’t provide this value effectively, or, in some cases, doesn’t have it at all, will eventually drop in ranking. That’s why it’s so important to provide value in every blog post you write.

However, you can’t just go handing out information that your audience isn’t interested in. Instead, find out what kinds of questions your audience is asking, then go ahead and write posts that answer their questions. It sounds simple but failing to follow this process can lead to a blog that goes nowhere.

Tip #2: Create a Competitive Landscape Analysis

Once you’ve found your blog’s audience and started creating valuable posts, you’ll likely find that you’re not the only blogger out there. In any subject area, there will likely be many blogs competing for your audience, but this is no reason to get angry or panic. Instead, it is a great opportunity to identify your blog’s main competitors and analyze their content production style.

Find out what you like about their writing style, their design, and how they structure their content. If you can, find ways to incorporate their biggest strengths into your posts. Doing so can improve your content, especially as competitors enter and exit your space, leaving behind valuable techniques you can build upon. If you have a tool like SEMRush, you can take this process a step further by creating a keyword universe.

A keyword universe gives you an overview of how well each of your competitors are ranking for the keywords your audience is interested in. You can create a keyword universe by gathering all the keywords your competitors are ranking for and then seeing if your content is ranking for them. If you’re not doing as well, or not ranking at all, you can then search for those keywords. If you find that you can make better content associated with any keywords you’ve searched for, then you have an opportunity to introduce your competitor’s audience to you. Repeating this process with each editorial calendar will ensure you are competing effectively for your audience’s attention and give you many content ideas.

Tip #3: Create Content You Would Enjoy

When writing blog content, always keep in mind whether you personally would enjoy reading your blog. Yes, providing value is important, but if you’re not enthusiastic about your content, it’s going to show and not in a good way. Instead of creating one big blob of text, you can do fun things like creating infographics and videos. You can even inject your own personality into your writing by including jokes, interesting quotes, personal anecdotes, and other human elements that will make your content memorable.

Tip #4: Stay Tuned into Current News and Trends and Provide Your Expert Opinion

It’s important to create and stick to an editorial calendar when producing blog content but remember that you don’t have to follow it so rigidly. When interesting events in your industry happen, give yourself room to break the calendar for a moment and report on it. Give your audience the best and most concise version of events, then, if possible, provide your own opinion on the matter. Doing so shows that your brand is aware of the world around them, can respond to updates quickly, and is an expert in its field.

Now these are only a couple of tips and there is much more to creating a successful blog than what is outlined, but what is important here are the core fundamentals. By providing enjoyable and valuable content, keeping track of industry news, and analyzing your competitors, you can create an adaptable and SEO friendly blog that readers will not want to miss out on.

The post How To Improve The Organic Visibility Of Your Blog Content appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Alexa Rank was a commonly used tool for measuring website “popularity” in the late 1990’s. A website is assigned a rank based on Alexa’s estimate of traffic the website receives over a 90-day period. A newer iteration is still available today, with some interesting upgrades. Below is a snapshot of amazon.com’s popularity over the past 90 days shown at the bottom right:

Beyond website popularity, Alexa Rank has evolved into a more intricate tool set that provides data about search demand, popular topics, and social engagement with content. For example, in the overview above, you can see a list of websites similar to amazon.com, based on audience overlap. This is one way to get a quick snapshot of other companies / organizations you are competing with for the same audience.

When using Alexa and other subscription-based tools, keep in mind that they each have their own methodology of estimating traffic and collecting data so are not comparing apples to apples. Use these types of tools to identify trends, uncover new keyword opportunities, and analyze your competitors.

The post Getting to Know Alexa, the SEO Tool appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Featured Snippets, or Answer Boxes, are formatted “card style” results from Google that provide users with succinct answers to search queries. The goal of Featured Snippets is to direct users to useful information quickly – reducing the need to skim content to pinpoint what they need. To create this type of result, Google pulls a short excerpt (snippet) from the ranking webpage’s content that it determines is relevant to the user’s query – no structured markup required.

Featured Snippets appear at the top of search engine results pages and stand out from other results – which can increase the visibility of the websites that rank for them. Ranking for Answer Box results requires you to structure your content in way that provides concise and straight-forward information, followed-up with additional details, all using a format that prioritizes clarity and easy readability.

How to Rank for Featured Snippets

To improve your chances of ranking for Featured Snippets, ensure your content does the following:

1. Provide a direct and concise answer to the query you want to rank for near the beginning of the content.
2. Include H2 and H3 sub-headings throughout the content to separate different aspects of information or shifts in subject-matter. When writing these headings, be descriptive instead of using utilitarian language that needs more context to make sense. For example, use “The Risks of Inaccurate Financial Reporting” instead of “Why take a risk?” Question-style phrasing may also increase the chance of ranking for a Featured Snippet: “What are the Risks of Inaccurate Financial Reporting?”
3. Convey information clearly by using brief paragraphs, ordered lists, and images
4. Make sure are applicable to the page’s subject-matter and are easily understood without the context of the content on the page. Don’t forget to include alt. attribute tags that are descriptive of the image, and if possible, includes the target keyphrase for the page.

Featured Snippets are a great example of Google’s goal of showing users the best, most useful information. So when it comes to writing for Featured Snippets, it’s really helpful to put yourself in your audience’s shoes and ask yourself: What typical questions do users about your chosen subject-matter? Does your content answer those questions clearly? Is there more information your content should provide? By keeping that perspective in mind and using the above tips, you’ll be ranking for Featured Snippets in no time!

The post Tips on Ranking for Featured Snippets appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Within it, there is a section called Core Web Vitals which is broken out into the Mobile report and the Desktop report. The reason that these are separated is that mobile and desktop devices have different considerations in how they load a web page, therefore, they might face different issues and have different results when it comes to passing or not passing these new core web vitals standards.

In the Desktop report Google breaks out core performing pages and which pages need improvement, including the type of issue. (The Mobile report is structured the same way.) Issues are broken into three new core web vital rankings LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), FID (First Input Delay) or CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift). For explanations of these new metrics, please check out this blog post from a few weeks ago.

Interestingly, if Google finds an issue, they won’t tell you all of the pages that are problematic. Google Search Console will give you up to 20 urls that follow that same pattern and have the same issue. From there, you need to analyze that group and try to identify the elements on the loading page or in the template that are causing the problem.

Next, it’s a matter of identifying solutions to remedy the issue and then assessing whether the benefits of making the changes to the page(s) are worth the time and resources. The number of pages that are impacted and the costs (time and resources) should help you determine the importance / viability of fixing the issue.

If you’d like our opinion on whether your website is “up to code” and what will be involved in “fixing,” please reach out.

The post Overview of Google Search Consoles Web Vitals Report appeared first on MoreVisibility.

This is where the concept of leading and lagging indicators plays a critical role. Leading and lagging indicators are a common tool used in many fields such as economics and are even espoused by OSHA to improve safety and health outcomes.

The ultimate goal of your SEO and content efforts should tie into KPIs that move your business forward (being focused on improving metrics as close to revenue as possible). However, using revenue as a measure of success too early on in the process is going to set you up for failure.

Let’s look at a quick example to demonstrate this. Let’s say you are well on your way to having your SEO efforts yield improvements in revenue. You’ve got a great strategy in place and you made technical and content changes last week to improve one section of your website. However, you haven’t seen any change in revenue yet… At this point, the work seems to have been made in vain, so you stop the SEO efforts on the next phase and section of your website. However, you notice two months later that organic traffic and revenue have increased to the pages where you made updates based on your SEO strategy and you decide to pick back up the SEO efforts on the rest of the site. You now have lost precious momentum and two months of time that could have been used to keep making progress. How did this happen? It was the result of focusing on the wrong KPIs (traffic and revenue) at the wrong stage.

Since SEO & content initiatives take time to generate returns, it’s critical that you focus on leading KPIs first and lagging indicators later. Like a map, you need to know if you are heading in the right direction before you can decide if you’ve reached your destination.

• Leading indicators are defined by Investopedia as “any measurable or observable variable of interest that predicts a change or movement in another data series, process, trend, or other phenomenon of interest before it occurs. Leading economic indicators are used to forecast changes before the rest of the economy begins to move in a particular direction and help market observers and policymakers predict significant changes in the economy.”When it comes to SEO & content, leading indicators should focus on process first (like keywords mapped to pages and content that has been optimized) and leading metrics second (like organic rankings and impressions).Organic rankings are a valuable metric at this stage, because they will show improvement (such as rankings improving from the fifth page in search engines to the second page) before you see the outcome in traffic and conversions.
• Lagging indicators are defined by Investopedia as “A lagging indicator is an observable or measurable factor that changes sometime after the economic, financial, or business variable it is correlated with changes. Lagging indicators confirm trends and changes in trends. They can be useful for gauging the trend of the general economy, as tools in business operations and strategy, or as signals to buy or sell assets in financial markets.”When it comes to SEO & content, lagging indicators should focus on reach and engagement metrics first (like organic traffic and scroll depth) and conversion metrics second (like goal completions, MQLs, and revenue).

Over the years, I’ve seen companies that consider pausing their efforts too soon, even though they have made strong progress towards their goals, simply because they were looking at the wrong KPIs at the wrong time.

For your next SEO or content initiative, take the time to define your organizational goals, and consider mapping out leading and lagging KPIs to ensure you’re on the right path first, before deciding if you’ve reached your ultimate goal and destination.

If you have additional questions about how you can leverage leading and lagging KPIs to ensure you are on the path to success with your SEO and content efforts, you can reach us at info@morevisibility.com.

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From there, grow those “seeds” into a keyword universe, which includes all of the thematically relevant keywords that relate to your business. The user who wants to find an SEO agency maybe doesn’t just search for “SEO,” they may use other keywords which are thematically similar, like “search engine optimization strategy,” SEO consulting,” “SEO copywriting services,” etc.

To help you grow your seed list, a good keyword suggestion tool that everyone has access to is the Keyword Planner in Google Ads. In addition to related keywords, the tool also shows search volumes for keywords and gain insights into their PPC competitiveness. Keywords that are competitive (and expensive for SEM) tend to convert at an impressive rate and they command a premium cost for paid advertising. This usually indicates that they are also going to be more challenging to rank for in SEO.

Once you’ve built out your keyword universe, it’s time to start choosing the keywords your website should target. To do this, you really need to consider the content on the pages of your website. For a page to target a keyword effectively, its content needs to reflect the topic of that keyword.  A page is going to have a really difficult time ranking for a keyword if it doesn’t actually talk about that keyword or that subject on the page.

Imagine your website is a textbook all about your business – and Google is the index filled with keywords and corresponding page numbers. When a user searches for a keyword you want to rank for, what page on your site should they land on to find what they’re looking for? If none of your current pages feel like a good match, you may need to create a new one.

If you’d like to discuss your keyword strategy and how it could be improved upon, please let us know.

The post Keyword Selection Tips For SEO appeared first on MoreVisibility.

First and foremost is using the keyword in areas that search engines consider very strong signals for understanding the page’s content, whether or not it’s relevant to user queries, and ultimately determining a ranking. This includes the title tag and header tags for the page. You also want to include the keyword throughout the copy, but you don’t want to just stuff it into the copy as many times as you can. The goal is to do it in a way that’s natural and makes sense to a user who’s reading the page.

Certain factors that were more important in the early days of Search, such as keyword density, are not as significant any longer. Search engines are more focused on providing quality content for users. Since having a certain level of keyword density is not necessarily indicative of quality content, search engines pay less attention to this metric.

What matters today is using natural and accessible language in a tone that’s appropriate for the audience absorbing the subject matter. Think of it more like you want the keyword to encompass the main idea of the page’s content, rather than trying to stuff the keyword in there so many times.

It’s also worth noting that you don’t need to use your target keyphrase verbatim throughout the content. Search engines’ semantic understanding capabilities have really evolved over time. They understand how synonyms, singular versus plural, and other phrasing variations all relate to one another. You can use acronyms or talk about the keyword in a bunch of different ways on the same page and still rank for all of those keywords because search engines understand you’re talking about the same subject matter.

Search engines have evolved tremendously over the years with respect to their understanding of language and the intent of a page. Quality content that intelligently incorporates the intended keyword will always trump an “old school” keyword stuffing approach.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss in greater detail, please let us know.

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When it comes to sites built with WordPress, it may only require a conversation with your developer, installing a few plugins or making sure your host supports specific features, to improve your site speed. To help get you started, I have outlined three tips and techniques below which often have a large impact on improving page speed.

Compress and aggregate your website’s plugin and theme resources

WordPress websites are built with the help of plugins and themes. Most of these add-ons consist of multiple files that are required for the site to work and display the proper information. However, loading a large amount of these files can also slow your site down.

To speed up your website, I recommend combining these separate files into one file, as well as applying a process known as ’minification’. This process removes unnecessary or redundant data from the code, without affecting the functionality of your website. It is important to note that not all files should be included in this process.

I also recommend to rigorously test your website after making these changes and to make sure all aspects of your site are working properly. If any issues do arise, make sure to have your developer on hand to fix the broken files. It is possible that your developer may need to exclude some files from being aggregated and minified.

By utilizing aggregation and minification you are removing bits of unused code, therefore optimizing the speed at which the browser can read the information. WordPress has a large selection of plugins that can help your developer implement the features above. Some website hosts even have WordPress features built in that help manage this automatically without any extra work or plugin installation needed. If you work with your developer to apply these recommendations, you may be able to cut down on the number of files that are required to load the website.

Compress images and apply proper sizing techniques

Images are used on almost all webpages and most of the time they are the largest assets on the entire website. Since they can be the largest assets on the site, it is critical that the images being loaded are well optimized to load quickly. There are two key factors to this.

The first key factor is the size of the image. It is important that the image you are uploading is not oversized for area that it will be used in. We want to ensure the image size is as small as possible, while still fitting the area that it will be used for and maintaining a high resolution. If the area for a given image is 600px wide, then we should only upload an image of that width. If were to upload an image that was, for example 1080px wide. It would no doubt be almost double the file size, yet the image would still only be shown at 600px wide. This would make the page load slower and would not bring any added benefits. Once you have the image sized properly, you now must make sure it is compressed properly for the web.

Image compression is the second key factor. Image compression minimizes the size of the graphic file without degrading the quality of an image to a noticeable degree. There are many tools made specifically to help with this process. Some can be installed as plugins on WordPress, while others can be executed via Adobe Photoshop or a Command Line Interface. These tools will help you compress images automatically and with minimal effort. The goal of this process is to get the image’s file size as small as possible without reducing the image quality. The smaller the image, the more quickly it will load.

As a bonus, most of the WordPress plugins that help with image compression also introduce other speed features such as ‘lazy loading’ and ‘next-gen image formats.’ Lazy loading is the process of delaying the loading of an image until the user scrolls to the area where the image appears. This means the image is not included in the initial loading the website, therefore reducing load times significantly. Next-gen image formats often provide better compression and smaller file sizes then PNG or JPGs. However, one issue is that many web browsers cannot properly load and display these next gen formats. To make sure your website is accessible as possible, it is important to support all browsers by serving standard image formats alongside next gen formats. The good news is that there are several WordPress plugins you can use to solve these issues.

Utilize proper browser caching techniques

When a frequent visitor returns to your site, you don’t want the site to have to load core elements from scratch each time. It can be redundant for the user’s browser to have to load the core elements from the site each time they visit. By leveraging browser caching, your website can automatically store specific elements for a set amount of time on the user’s computer. With this browser caching enabled, the next time the user visits your website, their browser can access those assets much quickly by loading them from the user’s computer rather than over the internet.

The easiest way to implement browser caching on a WordPress site is to use a caching plugin. Alternatively, some hosts have caching features set up by default that require no additional site resources, though most hosts will provide recommendations of plugins that work best within their platforms. Speak with your developer to find out which would be the best solution for you.

By implementing the 3 tips above you should see an improvement in page load times which can have great benefits for SEO, user experience, advertising, and conversion rate as well as other metrics. It is also important to realize that these implementations are quite technical and could have adverse effects to your website if not configured correctly, so it is always important to test new plugins and features on a staging or development environment and well as make sure all changes are performed by a knowledgeable developer. If you need help with your WordPress website, reach out to us at info@morevisibility.com.

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The first is called Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). It centers on how rapidly a page loads. Google is going to measure this by looking at the largest entity that’s on a website page. In many cases, it could be a large text block, or an image or a video, to get an idea of how fast it loads. Sites that take too long to load may be impacted.

The next factor is called Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). This zeros in on how long it takes for a web page to become stable as it loads. In most cases, this has to do with images being downloaded and resized. It’s frustrating when elements keep moving or the text shifts while you’re trying to read. Google wants the page to become stable as soon as possible.

Lastly, there is First Input Delay (FID) which focuses on how fast the page takes to become interactive (functional). Google doesn’t want the user to see a page that looks like it’s fully loaded but is not.

According to Google, they’ll start implementing this as part of their Page Experience ranking factor in 2021. They also indicated that they will give webmasters six months’ notice before they start implementing.

There is sufficient time to examine these issues (LCP, CLS & FID) and start making changes. Google’s created a new dashboard within Google Search Console (accounts) that can shed light on how your website stacks up.

If you need help with any of this, we’d welcome an opportunity to discuss.

The post Google’s Next Algorithm Update … What You Need To Know appeared first on MoreVisibility.

#1 Improve Page Load Time to Reduce Wait Time

First and foremost, website visitors are likely to care more about speed than all the bells and whistles you want to add to your website. Page load speed is very important to a user’s experience. If your website takes time to load, chances are users may leave instantly.

A study done by Google found that as page load time goes from one second to five seconds, the probability of a site visitor bouncing increases 90%. Therefore, it’s important to check your page speed. You can use Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to get a breakdown of what needs attention. To improve the speed, you will need to check the factors like how bulky the page is, embedded media on the website, and use a cache.

When it comes to user experience, getting your load times where you want them will have a positive impact on your overall site performance. Slow load speeds may result in a page freezing or crashing. Such critical errors can cause unfavorable effects on the user experience and customer satisfaction of your site. Faster load times can allow visitors to engage more with a page when they can move freely and focus on the content instead of on their wait time, delivering a better user experience.

#2 Use Icons to Compact Screen Real Estate

Icons or symbols are very useful when creating a better user experience. They simplify objects, ideas, and commands into graphic symbols that may be quickly identified by the human eye. Some examples to consider are icons for home, printing, or search.

If your mobile site has long paragraphs of text, then chances are rare that visitors will read it. Icons can be a great way to bring essential content to the point. They are a great attention grabber and they help your website visitors to find and scan content.

When using icons, make sure you base them on metaphors that people understand, or introduce them together with more descriptive text. When you place icons on your site, keep the proximity principle in mind and group them with content they relate to.

#3 Provide a Responsive Website to Ensure Consistency

Building a website is not enough if it’s not mobile-friendly. As a business, it is important to meet consumers where they are, and increasing number of users are regularly accessing the internet on a wide range of mobile devices. So it’s critical to make sure you have a responsive website to ensure your content will display correctly for all users.

It’s important to constantly ask, “How will consumers be interacting with my site?” Whether a user wants to buy your product on their smartwatch or sign up to your newsletter on their mobile device, your goal is to make the process as easy and fast as possible. Responsive web design aims to create a great user experience for all users, no matter the device they are using.

#4 Integrate Social Media to Develop Deeper Relationships

In 2020, an estimated 3.6 billion people are using social media worldwide. Social media is an excellent tool for connecting with new audiences and building deeper relationships with your current customers. Your website should be the hub of social interaction, not sitting on the sidelines. It has the potential to draw together conversation across multiple networks.

From homepage social feeds and displaying social buttons to utilizing hashtags and social logins, there are multiple ways you can integrate social media with your website. It’s important to figure out which channels are suitable for your brand and where your site may currently be lacking (whether it’s social video or sharing event news, for example) and start there. Not only does social media integration help increase awareness of your company, but when you provide your visitors the opportunity to share your content easily, you’re also improving user experience.

#5 Make Company Information Easily Accessible for Users to Get in Contact

44% of users answered in a survey that they would leave a company’s website if there is no contact information or phone number. It’s important to make sure your visitors don’t have to waste time searching for your contact information. Refrain from hiding your Contact Us page behind your About Us label in the navigation; instead prominently feature a Contact Us link and information in the header and even the footer of your website.

You should also never replace contact information in favor of automated methods such as online chat or contact forms. Be sure to include the company’s addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses on your Contact Us page, as users still expect to find traditional methods of getting in contact. By giving users quick and easy ways to directly reach your organization, you appear reliable, build trust, and provide a good user experience.

In conclusion, a good user experience boils down to leading your site visitors to the information they need, while trimming away anything that might disrupt their journey. The five techniques we reviewed above can help make interactions with your website more beneficial to its users and improve your site’s user experience. For more insights and strategies for creating an optimal website user experience, contact MoreVisibility today.

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Here is a list of the biggest themes we are witnessing in the digital space to help you adapt your marketing and customer service experience through the remainder of 2020.

#1 Online Activity

There has been a surge in website traffic ever since more people have been working from home (WFH). Contrary to popular belief that this would come to a halt, Statista, a global #1 business data platform, has reported that online traffic across 20 different industries increased by 10.2% compared to pre-COVID times. This makes sense because most people at first had a lot of questions that they were looking for answers to. For example there were a substantial amount of search queries for “how to manage a distributed workforce” or “how to stage your WFH setting”. As more people were being forced to be in front of a computer much more than the norm, and with constant zoom meetings now on their calendar, it is only natural that they start browsing the web. In addition to users searching for answers, they were also looking for more educational content to sharpen their skills with this new found time.

This is where we saw how effective Inbound Marketing could be. Users searching these queries show the demand online marketers needed to fill with their keyword targeting to continue to drive that website traffic through offering valuable and relevant content. Given that we are still enduring a global pandemic and this trend is expected to continue, this has become a crucial initiative to invest in. If you need help with your keyword targeting to capture more website traffic, contact us for a complimentary consultation.

#2 Chat Bots and Conversational Marketing

As online traffic increased, so did user engagement with chat bots and online customer service agents. This form of online interaction has become a key player in the user experience for consumers. Many of these have 24/7 assistance and are at the freedom of the user to reach out when they feel comfortable and ready. With being home, many people look to these after normal work hours as they finish putting their kids to bed, or in between meetings. Consumers wanted convenience before COVID, and chat messengers have allowed businesses to prosper in a time that really accelerated contactless interaction. To add some perspective to the adoption of online chat messengers, Markets and Markets released a report forecasting that chat bot market size is forecasted to grow to almost 9.4 billion by 2024.

As we progress through the pandemic, consider how one of these platforms might work best for your business. If you are currently using an online chat system, keep in mind the type of verbiage that needs to be used during this time to make the experience a bit more personalized. Read through transcripts to find opportunities to tweak your messaging.

#3 Database Marketing

Have you experienced a fuller email inbox since March? We recently hosted a webinar with Worldata where President and CEO Jay Schwedelson shared how many companies are sending numerous emails daily. Most people would find this spammy, but the open rates have shockingly increased as well. This proves that not only is email a direct channel to interact with your customer base, but also there is no such thing as a frequency cap right now. To learn more about what Schwedelson had to say, sign up to listen to the webinar here.

What does this mean? Businesses should be testing those email strategies now! Find what days work best, what times work best, and what promotions, content, and subject lines work best. Email has been proven historically to be a really powerful channel to connect and re-engage with your customers to keep them up to date with what you are doing. It has also been known to play an essential role in the consideration phase of the user journey for a consumer to make that final conversion. All of these factors combined is what makes this channel all the more valuable to focus on at this time.

Keep these strategies in mind as your business navigates the new normal through the remainder of 2020.  We know these are still trying times, but if there is anything we have learned over the past quarter, it’s that we need to continuously be adapting to the needs of our audiences. Listen, learn, and improve!

The post Trends Digital Marketers Are Witnessing with Online Behavior Since COVID-19 appeared first on MoreVisibility.

If you’re a business that relies on people coming into a physical location, such as a store, restaurant, hotel, hospital or doctor’s office, rebuilding trust means making people feel safe.

Despite being allowed to leave our homes again, many people have – and will continue to have – legitimate concerns about returning to the life they once had, the stores they visited and the restaurants they frequented pre-pandemic.

The key to successfully reopening your business is to make your customers feel safe again. Here are 5 tips for building that trust through your marketing:

#1 Detail What You’re Doing to Keep Customers Safe

Safety is top of mind for everyone right now. Because of this, it’s critical that safety is front and center in your marketing efforts and that you proactively tell customers what you’re doing to keep them safe.

Source: Google-commissioned Ipsos COVID-19 tracker, AU, BR, CA, CN, FR, DE, IN, IT, JP, MX, RU, ES, U.K., U.S. n=1000 online consumers 18+ per market, April 24, 2020–April 26, 2020.

Are you taking the temperature of all staff members before every shift? Have you installed plexiglass or other physical barriers? Are you limiting restaurant seating to reservations only? Tell your customers this.

It’s critical that you are transparent about everything you’re doing both internally and externally to keep customers safe. Ensure this information is shared across channels:

• Create a dedicated page on your website to detail this information
• Update priority, high-traffic pages of your site with specific details relevant to that services, product, etc.
• Update the home page of your website
• Include a banner across your website for easy access no matter how someone enters your site
• Incorporate safety messaging into your paid advertising
• Share regular updates on your social media channels
• Post signage in your physical locations.

#2 Show Don’t Tell

A picture is worth a thousand words. While having clear messaging is important, actually showing what you’re doing is even more powerful.

In a time when physical barriers (PPE, face masks, plexiglass) are what’s keeping us safe, nothing is more impactful than images and videos showing the changes you’ve made.

Let your customers know what they can expect when they come to your location. Share photos of:

• Safety measures in action
• Patrons practicing social distancing
• Staff wearing face masks and other protective equipment

#3 Provide Social Proof

Testimonials provide social proof direct from your customers to help reinforce your messaging.

If possible, gather testimonials from the customers coming into your locations. Ask them to talk about their experience and what they thought about the safety measures being taken.

Gather both text and video testimonials to share on your website and social media channels.

#4 Be Transparent

This pandemic has left the world in uncharted waters. Unfortunately, there is no guidebook on how to navigate reopening your business after a global pandemic.

You’re bound to make mistakes and run into challenges as we slowly figure out our new normal. And that’s ok – it’s even expected. So if your reopening doesn’t go as planned because you sell out of certain products too quickly or have longer wait times than expected, that’s ok.

But it’s critical that you are upfront and transparent about what you’re going through. Your customers are understanding people, but they need to hear directly from you about what’s happening.

Make sure you promptly and honestly address business changes and challenges as they occur.

An agile marketing strategy continues to be key during this time. For more insights and strategies for navigating your business reopening, contact MoreVisibility for more information.

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For any organizations that provide local services or have brick and mortar presence, this has likely required constant communication with customers through both online and offline channels. While most of the digital focus is often directed to an organization’s website, email, and social media channels, an often forgotten but equally important (if not more important) channel is Google My Business (GMB). As we move towards and into the re-opening and relaxing of restrictions, GMB is a critical channel to keep up-to-date. This begins with a plan for how you will proactively keep your audience and customers informed and up-to-date with your business operations.

If you have consumers who search for your products or services at a local level, GMB is likely to be one of the first (and possibly only) channels that your customer sees when searching for information about your products or services. For example, I recently ran out of printer paper, but needed to print a document to sign and mail in a timely manner. I could have ordered online, but didn’t want to risk the potential shipping delays. Therefore, I searched for “Printer Paper” to find local office supply stores. In this case, you can see that Office Depot has done a great job with reviews, updated hours, guidance on what’s in stock, and notifications that they offer in-store shopping, curbside pickup, and delivery.

Therefore it is critical to have a strong plan in place for leveraging GMB to communicate to your audience and keep them informed about the latest changes with your operations. Here are the primary ways that we recommend doing so:

• First, ensure that everything in GMB is up-to-date with your present situation. Take inventory of all information and attributes available to you, and ensure you are fully utilizing them for your unique situation. This includes basic updates like days and hours of operations, and newer features that have been released. Google has released many new features for industries such as healthcare, retail, automotive, restaurants, and more. For example, healthcare providers are able to include links to COVID-19 informational landing pages, and their telehealth offerings. Google has provided additional information on a few of these industries that you can access via the links below:
  1. Healthcare
  2. Auto Dealers
  3. Hotels
  4. Chains
  5. Food
  6. Retail

• Second, designate a responsible person(s) and create a plan for what information will need to be updated, and when. This plan should include as much of the final planned content as possible, even though you may not have all the answers. For areas that you may not know, clearly indicate those as TBD in your plan.
• Third, wherever possible don’t wait until the very last minute to update your information. For example, if you will be re-opening next Monday, don’t update your hours of operation that Monday morning once you are open. Instead, update the hours in advance so that Google will have time to capture and reflect the updates. Since the pandemic began, Google has had its staff working remotely, and therefore have been slower to respond to reviewing updated business information in some cases, particularly with regard to organizations that are not in the healthcare industry.
• Lastly, regularly and proactively communicate. Communicate with your audience via responses to reviews as well as questions and answers (Q&A) and proactively communicate with Posts. Review responses are fairly straightforward, but Q&A and Posts are two underutilized features in GMB that can be used to communicate with your audience. You can read more about these features in our past blog posts on Google My Business Q&A and Google Posts.

Ultimately, like most communication strategies, it’s important to have a well-defined plan in place and provide regular, consistent, and proactive communication. As we look forward to businesses re-opening in a safe manner, I hope this helps provide you with some actionable steps you can take to keep your customers informed about your operations.

The post Keeping Google My Business Up-To-Date for Re-Opening appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Here are a few ways to use Google Trends for market research:

#1 Measure Interest for Your Brand Category

Look at brand keywords for yourself as well as related category terms. Look at the competitor names that come up under the Related Search queries also. Use learnings form this data when selecting and bidding on keywords. Create a campaign that demonstrates your brand’s value proposition over those of your competition.

#2 Identify New Markets

Google Trends gives you a map for each search query, showing which geos it is most popular in. Use this map to identify any markets you may not yet be catering to or that are in need of additional focus. Target these geos via paid search campaigns or curate content specifically for these areas.

#3 Identify Needs From Consumers and Businesses

In Google Trends, are you noticing a gap in your offerings vs. popular search queries? Use this data to identify products or services customers need or are interested in that is within your scope of business.

Google Trends equips marketers with the data they need to understand their target audience and make strategic marketing decisions. Make Google Trends a tool you regularly use by subscribing to Alerts for automated emails providing updates on topics and searches in your area.

If you have any further questions or need assistance with your Digital Marketing strategy, please email us at info@morevisibility.com.

The post 3 Ways to Use Google Trends to Adjust Your Digital Marketing appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Here are a few ways to use Google Trends when conducting keyword research and planning content:

#1 Identify Seasonal Keywords & Trends

If your business is seasonally dependent, identify keywords that are relevant during the same seasonal peaks. Create and publish relevant content during these peaks.

#2 Identify Keywords with Decreasing Popularity

It is quite possible for a keyword relevant to your business to have high search volume yet falling popularity. If there are keywords that are declining, optimize existing pages and content with relevant, positively trending keywords.

#3 Find New Keyword Ideas

Google Trends offers a “Related Queries” sections that displays what users are also searching for. Use this section to build on your keyword list while getting some insight into your consumer’s journey.

Google Trends can be a powerful, unique tool for marketers in their storytelling. Trends provides insights into what users are curious about and what is the relevant content they wish to see.

If you have any questions about how to improve your organization’s Content Marketing strategy, please email us at info@morevisibility.com.

The post 3 Ways to Use Google Trends for Keyword Research appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Right now, many companies are experiencing volatility in these metrics due to changing consumer and business behavior day-to-day. Consequently, some have been left wondering if their SEO strategy is really working. To ease Marketers’ concerns, Matt Crowley, Vice President of Digital Services provides his thoughts on how to evaluate SEO KPIs during this time of volatility.

The post Evaluating SEO KPIs When It’s Not Business As Usual appeared first on MoreVisibility.

With information and available resources changing at a rapid pace, it can be challenging to keep your patients and content up-to-date. To help, we’ve compiled this checklist of the key changes you should make to help ensure your patients have the information they need and your site has organic visibility for key searches during this challenging time.

#1 Create a COVID-19 Landing Page or Hub

As a healthcare provider, your services are directly impacted by the current situation, so it’s important to ensure any changes are made clear and available on your website.

Create a specific landing page or even a hub of pages on your website to house all information and updates about changes to:

• Visitation Policies
• Patient Appointments
• Services Provided
• Office Hours or Closures
• Special Precautions

Ensure this information is readily accessible by updating your home page and adding a special banner to the top of your site to ensure easy access no matter how someone enters your site.

For pages with these special announcements, consider using structured data markup for COVID-19 announcements to make clear to search engines that you have a relevant and important announcement.

#2 Answer All of the Questions Patients Have

The unprecedented nature of the current situation has left everyone with many questions and concerns.

First and foremost, it’s important to address all questions current and potential patients have about how your services have been impacted or changed, such as:

• Are you accepting new patients?
• Is it safe for me to go to my previously scheduled upcoming appointment or procedure?
• Can I schedule a virtual appointment with a doctor?

Additionally, as industry experts, many healthcare providers have a unique opportunity to address some of the concerns patients have about the current situation. Ask those on the frontlines for your organization about the most common questions they receive from patients. Then create a resources page to answer those questions.

Don’t forget to mark up your FAQ content with structured data to ensure it’s easily understood by search engines. This may even allow your questions and answers to be shown in the search engine results page as an enhanced result.

#3 Update Service Content to Align with Changing Search Queries

The drastic impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on our lives has changed the way we search for healthcare. Although it’s still too early to know how lasting these changes will be, there are simple ways to update your content today to align with these changes in search behavior.

For example, for service lines that provide telemedicine services, consider the following content updates:

• Revise the title tag for the page to include the search queries patients are using to find online or virtual care. For example, if your psychiatry services can be provided online, consider including the term “telepsychiatry” in your title tag.
• Add a paragraph of content to the top of relevant service pages to make clear that the service is available virtually. Make sure to incorporate the search terms patients now use to find those services.

And don’t forget about content that lives offsite. Ensure your telemedicine services are also listed in your Google My Business listing.

#4 Develop Content Patients are Searching for

Although turbulent, the situation also presents an opportunity to adjust your content strategy to fit the current needs of individuals. Take time to monitor search trends and identify opportunities for creating content to meet the needs of potential patients today. Tools like Google Trends, can be highly valuable for identifying opportunities.

If you’d like specific recommendations and opportunities for updating your website content, email info@morevisibility.com.

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The two methods for indicating a special announcement include:

#1 Schema.org Structured Data Markup Implementation: This is the recommended method, as it:

• Works for both Google and Bing
• Allows you the most flexibility and a more proven framework for providing information to Google and Bing.
• You may be able to tie pre-existing updates that you push to your website (such as alerts that are visible on the front-end of your website) into this markup as well, making the process more automated.

#2 A Form Submission via Google Search Console: This is a secondary option as it:

• Only works for Google
• It is in Beta, so it may change over time
• Lacks clarity on the process for how the form completions will be pushed to Google, like how often they will be processed.

What Will This Look Like in Search Results

Google has stated that they may display this special announcement underneath a search result for the website to inform users of the announcement, as in the example below.

Bing has not provided any visual examples of how this will look in search results. However, Bing did state that “A label showing your special announcements related to the COVID-19 pandemic with a link to your site for more details may be used on web results for your official website and in local listings shown on the SERP or map experiences. This provides an easy link for your customers and community to find your latest information.”

Recommended Implementation Method – Schema.org Structured Data Markup

The first (and recommended) method is to use a new Special Announcement markup that was made just for COVID-19. Like other markup types, this requires site owners to add specific code onto any and all webpages that contain the same forward facing announcement for a user. So, if you have an alert that is displayed on all pages, the markup should be on all pages. If you have an announcement that is only on one page, the markup for that announcement should only be on that page.

Details and developer documentation on the Special Announcement markup with code examples can be found here:

• From Google: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/special-announcements
• Additional Developer Documentation from Schema.org: https://schema.org/SpecialAnnouncement

While there are many different attributes that can be used for this markup, the only required attributes for Google are:

• DatePosted: The date that the COVID-19 announcement was published.
• Name: The short title of the COVID-19 announcement. Example: “New COVID-19 Testing Facility” or “Closed Until Further Noticed”,
• Text: This is summary of the COVID-19 announcement. The text may contain HTML content such as links and lists. Valid HTML tags include: <h1> through <h6>, <br>, <ol>, <ul>, <li>, <a>, <p>, <div>, <b>, <strong>, <i>, and <em>

Note that you are allowed to replace the Text attribute with one of the attributes listed below. The value of these attributes must point to a page that has more information. You can also use more than one of the listed attributes and keep the Text attribute instead of replacing it:

• diseasePreventionInfo
• diseaseSpreadStatistics
• gettingTestedInfo
• newsUpdatesAndGuidelines
• publicTransportClosuresInfo
• quarantineGuidelines
• schoolClosuresInfo
• travelBans

More Information on Google’s required and recommended attributes can be found here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/special-announcements

Secondary Option – A Form via Google Search Console

If adding structured data markup to your site is not a possible option, Google has created a submission form in Google Search Console to allow you to send your announcement to Google’s search engine.

Example of Google Search Console COVID-19  Form

If your domain is verified in Google Search Console, you can use the following submission form: https://search.google.com/search-console/special-announcement

While there are multiple fields you can fill out, there are 3 fields that are required:

1. Announcement Type (there are six options to choose from, listed below):
   • COVID-19 Testing Facility
   • School Closure
   • Shelter-in-place
   • Disease spread Statics
   • Travel Ban
   • Other/General
2. Title of Announcement
3. Summary of Announcement

Ultimately, Google and Bing are adapting as quickly as they can to provide organizations with additional capabilities related to announcements for COVID-19. While the information above encompasses Google and Bing’s latest information on the subject as of the time this post is published, this is an ever-evolving landscape and more changes are sure to come. If you have any questions on how MoreVisibility can help, please reach out to info@morevisibility.com.

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As of March 2020, Google has announced that by September 2020 all sites will be crawled and indexed by Google using mobile-first indexing. Currently, Google notes 70% of sites shown in search have already been switched over.

What Does this Mean for the Remaining 30%. Google has begun notifying webmasters of the issues they need to address by September so their website(s) can start moving over to mobile-first indexing. We advise that you keep an eye out for these alerts to prevent a decline in your website rankings and traffic.

What to Expect in September 2020. When Google flips the switch to mobile-first indexing, websites will see an increase in Googlebot’s crawling, while Google updates its index to your website’s mobile version. Depending on the domain, this change can take some time. Afterwards, you can expect to still occasionally see crawls with the traditional desktop Googlebot, but most crawling for Search will be done with Google’s mobile smartphone user-agent.

If you have any questions, please contact our team for more information.

The post Google to Switch Over to Mobile-First Indexing by September 2020 appeared first on MoreVisibility.

To help support the speed and ease in which businesses provide the latest updates to event registrants, Google has introduced new schema.org properties. Website publishers can now implement the eventStatus property to inform users of cancellation, rescheduling, or change of format, like online-only events.

In lieu of an in-person event, some companies are moving to virtual events. This shift may seem overwhelming at first, however, there are many technical solutions for delivering an engaging, successful event. Hosting online also allows for a larger registrant capacity; adjusting your digital marketing strategy is necessary to generate additional leads. Be sure to refine your marketing message and advertising channels to properly communicate the goal of your event.

Reflecting this message and change of format on your website is important as well.  If an event is happening online, use the following properties:

• “Update the eventStatus field to indicate the change with EventMovedOnline.
• Set the location to the VirtualLocation type.
• Set the eventAttendanceMode property to OnlineEventAttendanceMode.”

Should you choose to cancel or reschedule an event entirely, here are the necessary changes required from Google:

• “If the event has been canceled: Set the eventStatus property to EventCancelled and keep the original date in the startDate of the event.

• If the event has been postponed (but the date isn’t known yet): Keep the original date in the startDate of the event until you know when the event will take place and update the eventStatus to EventPostponed. The startDate property is required to help identify the unique event, and we need the date original startDate until you know the new date. Once you know the new date information, change the eventStatus to EventRescheduled and update the startDate and endDate with the new date information.
• If the event has been rescheduled to a later date: Update the startDate and endDate with the relevant new dates. Optionally, you can also mark the eventStatus field as EventRescheduled and add the previousStartDate.”

In such a fast-paced media environment, users’ expectations for updates have amplified. Alerting Google after any changes have been made, via your sitemap, will allow the Search Engine to serve users new, accurate content as quickly as possible.

For more information on marketing for a virtual event or implementing Google’s new properties, email us at info@morevisibility.com

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A resource hub in this case would be defined as a content repository integrated into the core of your site, with organization by category, theme, or topic, rather than time. Conversely, a blog is typically organized in a chronological manner. Blogs can, and should have a strong category structure, but even those categories are then organized by time. This can have several pros and cons:

Pros

• Less organizational upkeep: You simply post the content into its most relevant category. There doesn’t have to be an in-depth categorical strategy if you don’t want one.
• Timely content doesn’t remain front-and-center: Older and outdated content is replaced by new and more relevant content over time.

Cons

• Valuable content is buried and hard to find: When you do post evergreen content that is really valuable on your blog, it will be very difficult to find for users who are on your website once new content has been written and posted.
• Less organizational hierarchy: Blogs generally lack a clever organizational structure, meaning that you can only group your content in a few different ways.

So, both blogs and resource hubs can be good options, but it depends on your strategy and the content you are creating. Let’s take a look at an example from REI. Being born in the Pacific Northwest means that I am forever a fan of REI. They have managed to stay a dominant force in e-commerce even in the age of Amazon. Part of this is due to the great job that they do with their content marketing and branding, making them more than just a store. You can see this on their website, where you’ll notice that they don’t have a blog in their main navigation:

Instead, they have options like Expert Advice and their Co-op Journal. Let’s take a look at their Expert Advice section.

Here, you can see that they are covering many “How to” related topics and evergreen concepts. Rather than burying these in a blog, they have chosen to take a specific content type (Expert Advice) and build it into its own resource hub. This will help them with both technical SEO (through improved internal linking) as well as content strategy and organic visibility (through improved content organization and topical hubs).

So, the next time you are thinking about placing another piece of content in your blog, consider if building out a resource hub would be a more effective long term strategy for your company and content.

If you would like advice on content strategy from our team, don’t hesitate to reach out. You can email us at info@morevisibility.com for more information.

The post Thinking Beyond Your Blog for Evergreen Content appeared first on MoreVisibility.

The markup, created through a partnership between Google and schema.org, lets content creators identify the text on a page that is best suited for audio playback using text-to-speech. On mobile and voice devices, this content can be read aloud by Google Assistant in response to users’ queries.

Although speakable is still in beta – and subject to change – it’s likely its use will continue to be expanded. This makes it an important consideration for those looking to stay ahead of the curve.

Why Use Speakable?

According to Google, the number of active users of the Google Assistant increased four times in 2019 compared to 2018, and 27% of the global population regularly uses voice search on mobile devices.

It’s clear the age of voice is well underway, and although its use hasn’t reached critical mass yet, we will start to see the impact of this shift in the coming years.

And for businesses that rely on search for building brand authority and recognition – which is just about every business – using speakable structured data markup will soon be a necessity.

That’s because the number of results spoken allowed for a voice search is generally limited to one result. While some queries may present up to three results or give users the option to hear alternative answers, the number of results users encounter through voice search is highly restrictive and considerably less than the traditional 10 listings in Google search.

This presents a critical need for businesses to invest in quality content that is suitable for voice.

While using speakable structured data doesn’t guarantee your content will be used by the Google Assistant, adding this markup to your content ensures it can be read aloud if Google determines it’s the best answer to a user’s query.

How to Write Content for Speakable

If you’re ready to add speakable markup to your content, it’s important to remember that writing for voice is different than writing for the web. Users typing a query into Google may want to read an in-depth article or navigate through a website, whereas those using voice search generally have a specific question for which they expect a quick and meaningful response.

Because of this, the best types of content to markup using speakable are news articles and other content that makes sense when read aloud. As the uses for this markup expands, consider adding it to content, such as:

• Blog posts
• Informational content
• How-to content
• Q&A content

And instead of marking up an entire piece of content as speakable, concentrate on the most important or relevant sections of a page that will address users’ queries. Aim for bite-size, snackable excerpts that make sense when taken out of context of the page.

The content you markup should:

• Make sense when read aloud
• Have concise headlines and/or summaries
• Directly answer the user’s query in a comprehensible and useful way
• Use short sentences with a simple structure
• Be delivered quickly and concisely (about 20-30 seconds total)

Additionally, content that can’t be read aloud, such as images, should not be marked using speakable.

To learn more about how to prepare your content marketing for the future of voice search, contact the team at MoreVisibility.

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If you have any questions about how to improve your organization’s Content Marketing, please contact MoreVisibility.

The post Tips to Lead Your Content Team Through a Digital Transformation appeared first on MoreVisibility.

For example, here are some of the most common questions we receive related to GSC:

• What should we use GSC for?
• Can we report to stakeholders using the data in GSC?
• Are clicks and impressions in GSC the same thing as Google Ads clicks and impressions?
• Can I use the ranking data from GSC as my source of truth for keyword rankings?
• Does the data in GSC cover 100% of what’s happening in Google search?

Ultimately, GSC is a valuable tool within your broader digital marketing toolbox, especially when it comes to technical SEO, keyword research, and content strategy. It can also be a good source of data to analyze for directional analysis or to use as one data point within a broader landscape of data sources. However, we do not recommend using GSC data, especially the “Performance” data, as a precise data source or as the end-all-be-all source of data for performance reporting. Likewise, we do not recommend using the Performance data as the only source to make high consequence decisions.

In this post, we cover what Google Search Console is, a brief history on issues that the tool has experienced, data integrity considerations, and recommended use cases.

What is Google Search Console?

GSC is a free tool provided by Google to help site owners, webmasters, and SEOs understand how their site is being seen by Googles crawlers and how it is being seen in search results by users. It provides a limited set of tools and data that can be used for SEO analysis and debugging and it is only available to verified site administrators (so you can’t view GSC data for a site you don’t control).

A Brief History of Google Search Console Issues

GSC has a long history of bugs, data discrepancies, delays, and issues. When these issues arise, they are often not corrected immediately, and can persist for days, weeks, or even longer. This is because GSC is a free tool that does not generate any revenue for Google directly or indirectly. Therefore, it makes sense that it is a lower priority to the company when it comes to dedicating engineering resources for improvements and fixes. However, it can be frustrating and problematic if you are relying on the data for consequential decisions or reporting to key stakeholders.

Here is one recent example of Google confirming issues with GSC data, where there was a 10 day delay in data being reported via the platform.

You can find a full list of data anomalies that impact GSC on their page for Data anomalies in Search Console.

GSC Data Integrity and Uses

By now, you may be asking yourself if GSC data should be used at all. The answer is an unequivocal YES! However, it’s critical that you use it in the right cases, for the right purposes, and with a full understanding of what the data means and how it is collected.

For example, Google has an entire help article dedicated to the explanation of impressions, position values, and click data from GSC. This page has 3,976 words at the time of this blog post publication. I bet you thought the definitions of impression, position, and click would be a lot simpler than that!

There is also the consideration that Google has changed how they measure some of these metrics over time, so their definitions of metrics may change in the future, as they note:

Without going through all of the detail for how Google makes these calculations, a few of the most important macro considerations here are that:

• Data is not calculated in the same way (and will not match 1:1) as other platforms such as Google Ads, Google Analytics, or your rank tracking tool. So, you shouldn’t mix or compare these data sets directly.
• Data can change over time and Google can change how they calculate metrics, so be sure that you know if Google made a change during your analysis window by reviewing their data anomalies page.
• There is more to the data than meets the eye, so be sure that you have a full understanding of how your data is calculated before reporting on it to someone else.

Below, we’ve outlined a few good and bad use cases for the data that you can find in GSC:

Examples of Good Use Cases for GSC Data

• Researching keywords actively being used by searchers to find your content
• Researching the types of keywords used to find existing content, to identify areas of opportunity for content expansion, refinement, and/or updates
• Identifying pages that are trending up or down in their performance (such as impressions, rankings, clicks, or click-through-rate (CTR), and conducting further analysis of those pages to identify if something is actionable
• Analyzing the different types of rich results your pages are generating and how they’re directionally performing in each type of result using the “Search Appearance” section within “Performance”
• Conducting technical SEO checkups on Google’s indexing of your site, identifying red flags that should be reviewed in further detail

Examples of Bad Use Cases for GSC Data

• Reporting to your board of directors on total impressions, clicks, CTR, or average position for the past quarter (Google could change how they measure this in the future!)
• Comparing clicks from GSC to sessions in Google Analytics (they are not calculated in the same way!)
• Comparing average position from GSC to rankings from a third-party rank tracking tool (They are not calculated in the same way!)
• Using impressions, clicks, CTR, or average position data as the only data source for high consequence decisions, like page consolidation or removal.

Conclusion

Google Search Console is a great tool, and it is 100% free. There are many great uses for the tool, but it’s critical that you avoid using it in a way that it is not meant for or is not capable of being used for. It’s also critical that you have a strong understanding of how GSC calculates the data you are seeing, before making any impactful decisions using the data. If you need any help analyzing the data in your Google Search Console account, and more importantly, learning when and what actionable changes you can make based on the data, please reach out to us at info@morevisibility.com.

The post How Much of Google Search Console Can You Trust? appeared first on MoreVisibility.

What was the Preferred Domain Setting Feature?

The preferred domain setting was a feature that Google provided in GSC to allow website owners/managers to select which version (www. or non-www.) of their domain they wanted Google to index and return to users in search results. This is what it used to look like:

What’s Does the Removal of the Feature Mean?

This means that Google will fall back on its traditional signals that tell it which version of your domain to use. These traditional features include signals sent from the website owner/manager (such as redirects or re-write rules) as well as signals from other areas (like which version is more linked to by other websites).

What Should You Do?

The first thing that we would recommend you do is validate which version you actually want indexed and returned to users. This may require some analysis of what Google has currently indexed, as you don’t want to switch versions unless you are fully aware of the potential issues and consequences that may arise (drastic changes could lead to changes in your organic rankings and traffic).

After you have decided which version you want indexed and returned to users, you should check with your SEO or development team to see if there is an existing rule that only allows search engines and users to access one version (and therefore tell search engines the correct version to index and rank). This is called a “re-write rule” and it should be setup to redirect URLs from one version to your preferred version via a 301 (permanent) redirect. If in place, it should work like this (if you have picked the www. version as your preferred version):

1. A user or search engines tries to access https://example.com or any internal pages such as https://example.com/example-page
2. Your server redirects the user or search engine to the www. version, such as https://www.example.com or the corresponding internal URL such as https://www.example.com/example-page
3. Search engines will index and return the www. version, such as https://www.example.com or the corresponding internal URL such as https://www.example.com/example-page

Ultimately, if you have used the Preferred Domain version in the past, it is highly recommended that you ensure your re-write rules are properly setup (as discussed in the “What Should You Do?” section above). If you have any questions about this change or how we can help with using Google Search Console or validating that your re-write rules are properly setup, please reach out to us at info@morevisibility.com.

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A Primer on How Search Engines Work

When a search engine finds a page, it crawls the page’s source code, renders the code very similarly to how a user would, and then indexes the page so that it can return it for a future search query. Although search engines are incredibly sophisticated these days, they still have some limitations that can hinder them from interacting with complex and new technologies and code. As web design and development technologies advance, the ways in which content can be displayed on a web page evolve as well. Some of those techniques, like dynamic and hidden content, can have negative effects on a pages organic performance if important content is not accessible to search engine crawlers.

Differences Between Dynamic & Hidden Content

To a user, it may sometimes be difficult to discern the difference between regular content, dynamic content, and hidden content, but to search engines, it can be a world of difference.

• Dynamic content: Dynamic content refers to content that changes based on a user’s preferences, behaviors or interests, and is generally powered by technologies like JavaScript. The easiest way to identify dynamic content is to copy a portion of the copy, view the source code of the page, and search for the copy there. If the copy is not contained in the source code, then it’s likely to be dynamic. However, the best method is to have a knowledgeable technical SEO expert provide guidance.
• Example: The product page for Belgian speculoos and cinnamon pretzel sticks below on https://uk.graze.com is pulling in content dynamically. When you select the ingredients accordion option, it opens up and shows copy. This copy is not accessible in the source code, but is “pulled” onto the page dynamically after you click the ingredients option.

Example before selecting the ingredients accordion menu

Example after selecting the ingredients accordion menu

• Hidden content: Textual content and links that are not directly visible to users without some sort of action (like a click), but can be found in a page’s source code are referred to as hidden content. This differs from dynamic content because the code is found in the page’s source code (meaning that it’s easier for a search engine to crawl, i.e. access). To view the content, a user typically has to take an action on the page
• Example 1: The following Sherpa Rider product page from Lee uses tabs for it’s description, fabric & care, and delivery & returns sections. The content within these tabs is “hidden” from users, but is contained in the source code of the page, making it accessible to search engines.

Example before clicking on the “Fabric & Care” tab

Example after clicking on the “Fabric & Care” tab

Potential Dangers of Dynamic & Hidden Content

The use of these techniques to display content is not always a bad thing. In fact, they can help create a more positive user experience. However, it’s critical to assess how you are using these techniques when it comes to the display of content that is important for that pages organic rankings and performance. If you are using one or both of these techniques, here are a few scenarios that could be cause for concern:

• Least Severe: Hiding content on a page that is not a core part of the page, or important for the pages organic performance. This is the least likely to negatively impact your SEO, because even though content is hidden from users when the page loads, search engines can still access the content in the source code of the page, and the content is not critical for the page’s organic performance.
• Moderately Severe: Dynamically displaying important content on a page, but loading the content as soon as the page loads (without a user needing to take an action, like a click, to see the content). Please note that this is very dependent on the type of technology you are using to display the content. This can lead to issues, as some search engines may not be able to “see” the content.” Other more advanced search engines like Google may also have trouble if the technology that you are using is not compatible with their crawler. However, this is not the most severe, because there is a chance that you won’t see any noticeable impacts to your SEO performance. Even though the content is not in the source code of the page, more advanced search engines like Google are likely to be able to access it as long as everything is configured correctly.
• Most Severe (Avoid using this method to display important content if at all possible): Dynamically displaying important content on a page that requires a user to take an action before it will load should be avoided. This type of display technique is the most detrimental to your SEO efforts because search engines, even Google, are highly unlikely to access or see the content at all. This is because search engines stop at the point of “user interaction.” They don’t click, scroll, or otherwise take actions beyond simply loading a page.

Did you ever think that making a decision about how to load content onto a page could be so complex? In general, wherever possible, we recommend that if you have important content, it is immediately visible to users without requiring them to take an action, and is delivered within the source code of the page. Using newer technologies to improve user experience and differentiate your company and brand are great, and we highly encourage their use when done in an SEO friendly manner.

Given the many nuances to this subject, and slight changes that can push the use case from positive to negative very quickly, we highly recommend that you receive feedback from a technical SEO specialist on your specific use case of dynamic or hidden content. Contact us today if you are interested in learning about our experience with technical SEO or Web Development technologies.

The post The Potential Dangers of Dynamic and Hidden Content appeared first on MoreVisibility.

1. Crawlability / Technical SEO

At the top of the list for a successful SEO strategy is crawlability and technical SEO. Because of its fundamental nature, crawlability should be the first thing on every marketer’s SEO task list. No matter how relevant your content may be, if a search engine cannot find your website, it will not be served to users.

Some technical components to take into account are a valid robots.txt file, proper website redirects (if applicable), site speed, and indexing (sitemap).

2. Content Optimization

Once the technical portion of your SEO program is in place and optimized, the next component to look at is content optimization. By optimizing content that is already on your website, you’re able to leverage existing assets and better tailor content to tie into your keyword strategy.

It is important to assess the amount of relevant content on your website relative to the keywords you are targeting. In addition, make sure to include title tags, meta descriptions, and H1s in your assessment. All of your existing content should be useful to your target audience, because once a user lands on your website, the goal is for them to convert!

3. Link Building and Content Creation

Finally, an ongoing task for SEO success is link building and content creation. Link building does require time and research, so it is always a good starting point to visit Google’s Support Center for guidelines, tips, and best practices. Be sure to target high-quality sites with good traffic for best results.

Also, creating fresh, relevant content at appropriate frequencies (based on your business type/ goals) helps solidify all of the work that has already been done to help your website rank. Confirm that any content that is being created still aligns with keyword strategy and speaks to your target audience.

If you have any questions about SEO strategy, contact the experts at MoreVisibility.

The post The Fundamental Components That Contribute to a Strong SEO Strategy appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Be it a webinar, blog post or informative podcast, below are the top contenders from 2018.

Webinars

Creating a Successful Content Strategy

Advanced Technical Optimization

Optimizing for Mobile & Voice Search

Blogs

Preparing Your Website for Google’s July 2018 Speed Update

Google Confirms Core Algorithm Update to Search Engine

Google Maps Developer Platform Update Goes Lives June 11

The Science of Color and Design

Podcasts

The Crucial Connection Between SEO & User Experience

If you have any questions, please reach out to the experts at MoreVisibility for assistance.

The post The Top Search Engine Optimization Content of 2018 appeared first on MoreVisibility.

“Chuck, do more people have a Google Home or Amazon Alexa?” This has been a frequent question I have gotten throughout 2018. The truth is, more people had an Alexa device when voice technology started to become common – but in 2018, the gap between Amazon and Google seems to be getting smaller. Take a look at the chart below:

Source: https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/amazon-reclaims-top-spot-in-smart-speaker-market-in-q3-2018

The year over year growth for Google is much greater, suggesting a shift in consumer purchasing behavior. Google has spent a large chunk of advertising budget on pushing the Google Home and having strategic partnerships with large retailers – so let’s assume a good marketing campaign is one reason why Google Home has seen higher growth than Amazon Alexa.

Another reason why Google Home has become increasingly popular could be the integration it allows with the rest of your Google or Android technologies. Building tech products that allow consumers to link to other products they use every day is certainly a plus. With Google Home, integration with your mobile phone, home speakers, smart watch, laptop, smart TV and vehicle are all possible. Furthermore, things like notes, calendars, emails and reminders are also then all synced – so no matter where you are, your Google Assistant will always know what you are asking or searching for.

If you have an Amazon Echo, you are probably familiar with the Amazon ‘skills’ that developers can build and then have consumers download. Google has developed ‘actions’ that work in a similar capacity, but instead of having a developer build the action first – Google uses their technology to crawl the web and creates actions for your business that you can claim. For example if your company sells cooking products online, Google could have created actions that tell users about recipes. If you own a gym, Google could have created an action that gives users your daily workout routine. The actions cross many verticals and they are intended to give users access to popular inquiries they may have searched for anyway. In order to see your current Google actions, here is a link to how you can claim your page: https://developers.google.com/actions/claim/

The recent rise in Google Home sales and their more user-friendly approach for actions, does not mean Amazon Echo will eventually fade away. More importantly it means you should develop a marketing strategy around voice search technology for your brand. Reminding your audience that your brand offers Google actions and/or Amazon skills is a useful resource and will further indicate your brand is adapting with new technology.

The post The Rise of Google Home and Google ‘Actions’ appeared first on MoreVisibility.

While it may be too late to capture those big-budget keywords, there are still 3 techniques you can implement right now to gain some SEO traction this upcoming holiday season.

#1 Optimize Titles & Descriptions in the SERPs

In the new Search Console, look for the keywords that your webpages are ranking for, and focus your titles and descriptions on improving the click-through rate for those keywords.

It is important to remember that during the holiday season you’re not only optimizing your title tags and meta descriptions for your target audience(s), but also for the people who would purchase your products and/or services for them.

#2 Create an Evergreen URL & Refresh the Content Each Year

During the holidays, it is important think about the products and/or services you sell and what keywords your target audience(s) would use. However, it is also important to keep in mind who shops for that demographic, what questions they would have, and target that in your content.

Lists and gift guides about popular tech items, games, toys and books are typically searched heavily during this time of year. If your company does an annual list or guide, we recommend creating a URL like this: /guides/best-childrens-books/

So then, next year when it comes time to refresh that content for 2019, take the content from that location, if you want to archive it, and move it to a new URL like this: /guides/best-childrens-books/2018/

By placing your 2019 content at the old URL, you’re effectively creating an evergreen URL, but keeping your archive. This will keep any traffic coming from the primary URL heading to your most current content.

#3 Leverage Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are bits of code that make it easy for search engines to organize information. Type almost any product description into Google Search and at least one type of rich snippet will appear, if not multiple types.

Studies show that having a rich snippet can increase CTR by 677% and drive 20-40% more traffic than product links, which makes a rich snippet in search more valuable than the #1 position. Rich snippets give brands the opportunity to jump the queue, and launch themselves into the coveted position zero (above all paid ads) for a lot of the types of queries that holiday shoppers will use frequently.

If you have any questions about SEO strategies for the upcoming holiday season, please reach out to the Digital Marketing experts at MoreVisibility.

The post SEO Tips for a Successful Holiday Season appeared first on MoreVisibility.

While I was walking through a PowerPoint slide listing tips for content writing, a gentlemen stopped me on the bullet point below:

• Ensure Calls to Action are prominent and high up on the page

He asked “Why would you want to place the call to action high up on the page when that’s not how a user reads?” I asked him to clarify his question a little further and he continued with, “People read content from the top to the bottom. So I would think the more natural place for a Call to Action would be at the end of the content, when the user is finished reading. Aren’t they then ready to convert?”

You see, the question was really a cover for a theory that this gentleman had developed from following another marketing tip: Do not write content for search engines, write content for users. If I hold this tip as the ‘holy grail’ for all content I produce, I could see how this opinion of where the call to action should be placed can come to fruition. For that reason, I enjoyed answering this question more than the person who asked it, probably knows. The reason I believe this gentleman had not discarded this question from his mind yet, is because he was taking the ‘write content for users’ tip too literally. Much like economics, digital marketing questions are often best solved by taking a rational, expanded view of human behavior.

Here is where you should place your call to action…

People Do Not Read Everything. By placing your Call to Action at the bottom of your content, you are assuming that people will read every word on the page. Over the years our increased synergy with technology has made humans care more about time, or as some would say, they work efficiently. People do not always need to read the entire piece of content on the page to know quickly if the page relates to what they are looking for, identifies with their beliefs or entices them to purchase. Placing your call to action after the content is taking an unnecessary risk that everyone will read it. Instead, a better and less risky option to capture as many conversions as possible is to place the call to action prominently at the beginning of the page so the users who only need to consume a small amount of content to convert have their eyes on their next step from the start and the users who want to read your entire page know where to go afterwards to convert. If the users who read quickly and convert do not see a call to action quickly, you may lose them to another page or worse, another site.

But why are we debating two different opinions on where your call to action should go? Like a good economist, a good digital marketer would just say do both! If you step back a little further from the two opposing positions of where to best place a call to action, you will see the best solution is to combine instead of eliminating. If the call to action is high up on the page, it is trying to serve the purpose of making sure every user sees it upon landing. If the call to action is at the bottom of the page, it is trying to serve the purpose of not being to be too much of a hard sell, but flow with the user so they can decide their next move after they read everything. Drawing defenses for either side will do you no justice because the only thing we proved is that users are all different and will consume the content differently – so why not place the call to action in both places, hopefully leaving either group satisfied with a good experience?

From most of the conversations I have had with other digital marketers, call to actions are treated more as a best practice rather than a strategy. Where you actually place your calls to action depend on many variants that can change over time. Your call to action strategy should include research that answers deeper questions about your audience:

• How long to do they consume content for?
• How reluctant are they to give personal information?
• Are they likely to need to think about their decision further before converting?
• Do they engage at a greater rate when we include multimedia more frequently in our content?
• If they are doing research on other brands, what is that experience like?

Your call to action does not have to be the same when you place it in different places on your page. For example, my website could have a form fill at the bottom of the page, but a “Buy Now” call to action from the top of the page brought the user to the form. I could also have a shorter form fill in the upper left of my page on the desktop version of my site, along with a hyperlink in the middle of my page description that flows with the copy, but also sends the user to the same form at a different time in their journey, and the list goes on.

Remember in the opening I mentioned how I would rather have the participants in my discussion stop me from speaking to ask a question than hold it to the end? The reasoning behind that is not because I enjoy the suspense of never knowing when I could have to stop and start again in my presentation, it is because I am there for the people listening. If at any moment those people would like to enhance their experience by asking a question (that hopefully I can answer) then it should be easy to do so. Having them write it down until the end and then listen to another 30 minutes of more insights from the discussion, increases the chances that the person will not ask the question at all. Your call to action strategy should think in the same way. Based on your audience and your plan of what actions you want them to take, place your forms, buttons, hyperlinks, images, etc. where it makes sense – but do not limit yourself. A user will be less likely to convert on a site where they had a hard time finding the call to action than a user who may have seen it a few times, in different ways. The call to action you revise may not be the final point of conversion, but if it is a step to the final point – it is just as important.

A call to action strategy will give you the opportunity to ensure that your content flows and at any time your audience may easily convert.

The post Developing a Call to Action Strategy for Success appeared first on MoreVisibility.

During this workshop, experts from Google and MoreVisibility will cover:

• Google audience targeting and segmentation opportunities
• Tips and tactics to deepen advertising personalization
• Top ad formats to drive engagement
• Content strategies for websites, video and more

At the end of the Google workshop on October 10, members from MoreVisibility and Google will be available for one-on-one SEO and Google Ads consultations to help you optimize your website and discover how you could pay less for more conversions.

Since MoreVisibility first opened its doors in 1999, education has been a strong component of all our programs. Through our partnership with Google, both for this workshop and for workshops in the past, we are making that education and training available to marketers and business owners in the South Florida community.

Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to learn from industry experts. Register for the Reach. Engage. Convert: Rebooted! workshop today!

The post MoreVisibility’s Fall Google Workshop Returns to Deerfield Beach, FL appeared first on MoreVisibility.

The new Search Console aims to give users a more accurate view of their website content using the Index Coverage report and allow them to:

• Review Search Analytics data going back 16 months in the Performance report
• View information on links pointing to their website and within their website using the Links report
• Get automatic alerts and see a list of pages affected by Crawling, Indexing, AMP, Mobile Usability, Recipes, or Job posting issues
• Share information quickly with people in their organization
• And more!

In addition to new reports and features released in the new Search Console over the past few months, Google has added Manual Actions reports and a “Test Live” capability to the recently launched URL inspection tool to the platform.

Manual Actions Reports

By activating manual actions alerts in the new Google Search Console, users will never miss any critical alerts for their website because manual actions and security issues will be shown on the Overview page. From there, users are able to view the details for any pending Manual Action and, if needed, file a reconsideration request.

URL Inspection – “Test Live” Feature

The URL inspection tool launched a few months ago enables users to run the inspection on the live version of a page. This is useful for debugging and fixing issues in a page or confirming whether a reported issue still exists in a page. Once the issue is fixed on the live version of the page, you can ask Google to re-crawl and index the page again.

If you have any questions about the new Google Search Console, please reach out to the experts at MoreVisibility for assistance.

The post The New Google Search Console Finally Moves Out of Beta appeared first on MoreVisibility.

About 6 months ago, Google pre-emptively told webmasters that in July 2018 it would update its ranking factors to consider mobile page speed in the mobile search index. That change rolled out July 9, 2018, and, although it only reportedly impacts the most sluggish web pages, it’s definitely worth it to assess your own pages’ speeds and craft a plan for improvement (if you need one).

After all, if your users aren’t able to get your pages to load quickly (under 3 seconds / page), the poor user experience is likely to frustrate them, cause them to bounce, and reduce your conversion rates.

What can you do to see if mobile page speed is an issue for your webpages?

1. Leverage Google’s Page Speed Insights Tool
2. Explore Site Speed Reports in Google Analytics
3. Request a Complimentary SEO Consultation

The Mobile Page Speed update is continued validation that Google prefers optimal User Experience on websites and will continue to evaluate the potential for Organic search presence with users’ needs in mind.

The post Don’t Slow Down Just Because It’s Summer appeared first on MoreVisibility.

The series, entitled “SEO Summer Camp,” offers marketers the opportunity to dive deeply into some of SEO’s most important topics today, including Content Strategy, Advanced Technical Optimization and Mobile & Voice Search. The webinar series will also feature a live Q&A session and cover the following topics:

• Creating meaningful content that will be ranked by search engines and convert users
• Examining the technical and architectural elements “under the hood” of your website that impact its organic visibility
• How to optimize your website and prepare for the most important voice and mobile search considerations

As an added bonus, MoreVisibility is offering a complimentary consultation to those who register for the webinar series.

If you’re interested in attending or receiving the on demand recording for MoreVisibility’s 2018 SEO Summer Camp – Complimentary Webinar Series, register here.

The post MoreVisibility Continues its Focus on Education by Offering a Complimentary SEO Webinar Series appeared first on MoreVisibility.

If you are not familiar with the current Google Map API set-up, Google previously had 18 separate API’s that developers could access. One of the largest changes Google is making is now breaking these 18 individual API’s into three core pillars:

• Maps
• Routes
• Places

Do not worry developers, Google issued a separate statement letting everyone know that their existing code will continue to work without issues if perhaps it is not changed.

If you were familiar with Google API’s for Maps, then you know Google had two pricing tiers – Standard and Premium. The difference between the two is that Premium offered developers access to Google’s support team to answer questions, troubleshoot and get the latest news. With the new updates, Google will offer only one pricing plan that includes support for everyone. If you are enrolled in a bespoke pricing model that charges you per thousand API calls (similar to a CPM for paid advertising), your pricing will remain the same.

Google also has plans to ramp up their support for game developers. For those of you who spend hours on your phone playing your favorite game, the developers who built that entertaining digital world will now have easier access to integrate a real-world map into their platform. The same was done recently for the app Lyft – Google partnered with the ride sharing app to fully integrate Google Maps into the app. What does this mean? No longer does your driver need to close the Lyft app and then go into another app for navigation. This allows the driver to focus only on your safety and getting you to your destination without pausing to open items on their phone.

For other businesses in the transportation, service or hospitality industries – offering improved ways to see vehicles or items traveling in real-time, the route they took and how long their expected arrival time is based on traffic or delays is crucial to our fast-paced economy.

While developers have had complaints in the past with Google Maps API’s – these new updates and shift by Google to use real-world mapping technology to improve entertainment and industry-specific apps is certainly a step in the right direction.

The post Google Maps Developer Platform Update Goes Lives June 11 appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Obviously no marketer wants to be on the extreme end of that spectrum, but even just missing out on low hanging fruit when the website is in its most malleable state can cost you more later whether it’s in time, resources, money, etc.

Before you get too deep into your redesign, consider:

• A well-planned Content Strategy will not only establish the foundation for site organization (navigation) and keyword-targeting strategy, but it will also drive user experience and the potential for increased conversions. Adding, removing, consolidating, or otherwise adjusting Content and your website navigation are all far easier to plan for and more efficient to execute when other website elements are undergoing updates.
• A strategic SEO Transition Strategy (URL Mapping) for your pages is critical to success and often entails more than just “doing redirects”, in addition, implementing a smooth transition can mean the difference between maintaining, losing or increasing your Organic traffic. Need more proof on the positive impacts on your bottom line? Read this case study.
• Technical architecture and backend platform can make or break your website’s crawlability after launch – don’t rely only on those building your website to ensure its readability by search engines. A thorough assessment and audit should be made by SEO Technical Specialists to ensure you’re not inadvertently adding anything or doing anything “under the hood” that could impact Organic visibility.
• Understanding the success of your redesign – and demonstrating it to your leadership – requires an accurate Benchmark to measure against. So get your SEO tracking and web analytics in order before you get too deep so you have good data to compare against later and you can demonstrate your wins.

Want to learn more about SEO and considerations you should keep in mind for either a redesign or an existing website? Register for our SEO Summer Camp webinar series.

The post What’s Your Website’s Pre-Launch SEO Plan? appeared first on MoreVisibility.

With the new API, digital marketers will be able to manage additional categories of content, such as merchant descriptions and posts for multi-location brands and small businesses at scale.

In collaboration with a couple of its agency partners, Google developed a fast new agency dashboard. In addition, agencies are now able to sign up to become a registered agency for GMB. When evaluating potential agency partners for the new program, Google stated that multiple criteria were involved. While there isn’t a specific “number of locations under management” requirement as of right now, Google does want to focus on agencies that are growing. As a registered agency, businesses will get access to a brand new agency dashboard, as well as:

• A single organization account on GMB to manage all locations
• User groups to manage internal teams and control access to locations
• Improved search functionality that enable users to efficiently search for locations within an account and across location groups
• Easier workflows to send and receive invitations to manage listings
• And more!

Google is expected to be rolling out these updates over the next several weeks.

If you have any questions about how these Google My Business updates may affect your business, please reach out to the experts at MoreVisibility.

The post Google My Business’s API Receives an Update appeared first on MoreVisibility.

If you’re advertising on mobile devices or have an organic search presence of any kind, we recommend you pay close attention.

Since the update was announced, Google has been adamant on informing user that only pages that “deliver the slowest experience to visitors” will be impacted by the update. In addition, how Google indexes your mobile or desktop content will not be affected by the update. This speed update is expected to only impact how mobile pages are ranked in Google’s mobile search results.

Are you wondering if your website is going to take a hit? Well, MoreVisibility recommends that review your website’s mobile speed performance by utilizing tools, like Lighthouse and TestMySite. Tools like these measure your webpages’ current speed via a 3G and 4G connection and help identify areas where you can improve your mobile page load times.

Since these tools do not require you have administrative access to the website, you can run them on any site you’d like. Consider benchmarking your website against your competitors as a test. This will allow you to determine if your website could experience a rankings drop.

If you have any questions about how this update may affect your business, reach out to the experts at MoreVisibility for assistance.

The post Preparing Your Website for Google’s July 2018 Speed Update appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Red – Hunger, Urgency, Danger, Love

Image Credit

Red is typically assigned to food brands however the use of red on a website can be placed on calls-to-action or alerts to grab the users’ attention and inspire them to ‘act now’. Brands that contain red as their logo color should consider using white and/or blue in conjunction as those colors work to calm the overall sense of urgency.

Black – Power, Precision, Sophistication, Stability

Although you may not opt for a full black site, placing black in key areas may add to the overall appeal of your website. Because it’s used for power, precision and sophistication, higher-end tech brands may opt for the additional use of the color to convey the capabilities of their products.

Brown – Conservative, Historical, Ruggedness

Image Credit

Although not a go-to color for most, the use of browns have a very high appeal when promoting products that are more ‘rugged’ or those that have a more conservative appeal. A museum may opt for brown accents on a website or logo, as well as a shave-club appealing to men.

Violet – Royalty, Magical, Imaginative

Image Credit

More creative brands may opt for the use of purple to portray new product launches and ideas. Consider the use of purple when unveiling an imaginative product as the color immerses site visitors into an imaginative experience.

Green – Education, Health, Nature

It’s very straightforward to add green to an organic or educational site. However if your site is not an educational or nature site, you can use green to outline elements of the overall site that are more instructional. For example, your ‘white papers’ could be denoted with an icon that encompasses green.

Orange – Creativity, Expressive

Orange is known as the color that ‘pops’. Consider using for calls to action or to highlight components of a webpages you would like to bring attention to.

Blue – Credibility, Trust, Calmness

The color blue puts people at ease. It creates a level of trust and calms peoples. This color is good for websites that share information from an expert-level, as it works to engage the user without overwhelming them.

White – Cleanliness, Simple, Easy

Image Credit

The use of “whitespace” on websites is very popular term. Like the color itself, “whitespace” is used to provide an ease of display that assists in navigating the users’ focus throughout the site. To benefit the most from the use of the color, pair it with softer colors so that the overall appeal is clean. When pairing the color white with stronger colors such as oranges or purples, the users’ perception will adapt to that of the more dominant color.

When designing a new website or creating brand identity, it is important to consider the psychology behind colors.

The post The Science of Color and Design appeared first on MoreVisibility.

After speculation around the web as to why changes have been seen in the organic rankings of a number of sites, Google announced on Tuesday, March 12^th, that they had made a core algorithm update, one of a few performed each year. Via Twitter, Google share some broad details of the update.

“Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results,” Danny Sullivan, Google’s Public Liaison of Search, tweeted Tuesday. “Some (changes) are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update.”

Sullivan went on to say how these broad core algorithm updates are usually performed several times each year.

In the statement, Sullivan touched on the fact that while some sites will notice gains in their organic ranking results, other sites will notice drops. This has become customary with any change or update done by Google. Sometimes these shifts in organic rankings are more dramatic than others, and it still appears to be too early to determine how big of a change this update has caused.

Not surprisingly, Google has not revealed much information regarding this core algorithm update, or how to “fix” your site’s rankings if they dropped due to this.

“There’s no “fix” for pages that may perform less well (after the recent update) other than to remain focused on building great content,” Sullivan tweeted. “Over time, it may be that your content may rise relative to other pages.”

If you have questions related to your website’s organic rankings or search presence, request a complementary consultation from MoreVisibility and our experienced SEO team today!

The post Google Confirms Core Algorithm Update to Search Engine appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Data drives us. The more data, the better.

The broader your program is with our agency, the more likely your business will achieve your integrated digital marketing initiatives. Our cross-functional teams fuse perspectives and expertise that harmonize strategic marketing campaigns.

Many companies take the understandable approach of working with a digital marketing agency to achieve their most pressing marketing need. That approach is typically solution-driven in a targeted area. Although the initial engagement can be focused to a targeted area, it is important to not silo your engagement. The data and lessons-learned extracted from the initial engagement could lead to high levels of success in a more comprehensive digital engagement.

By taking advantage of our full-service capabilities, we’ve found clients achieve greater results.

View our Case Studies to track our success.

The post Boost Revenue with a 360 Agency Approach appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Google Site Search currently allows for users to search a website and only receive results based on the content that exists on that particular website. This allows users to get directly to the content they were searching for on the site, allowing them to navigate with ease.

If you fail to make the switch by April 1st to another third-party site search, your customers will see advertisements (likely from your competition) within the search results page of your website displayed by Google Site Search. By changing to another third-party site-search solution, you can bypass allowing your website to advertise for your competition. If your website currently utilizes an ad-free version of Google Site Search, there are other third-party search options that MoreVisibility can implement on your website to achieve a similar result.

The post Update to Google Site Search appeared first on MoreVisibility.

A custom optimized design project at MoreVisibility takes a holistic approach to your website, including navigation, keywords, content strategy, design and responsive coding. Our content strategies observe your competitive landscape and identify trends and opportunities for your business that are then supported by both design and technical SEO. This collaborative approach between our Content Strategists, Designers, and Technical SEO Specialists creates a team with various perspectives and expertise behind an initiative that some may consider a ‘simple website’. By using this approach, the team is creating an infrastructure behind a well-designed site that is focused not only on aesthetics but on your business and how your business ‘speaks’ to search engines and your customers.

Alternatively, by using a templated site, you lack a custom approach and a true SEO foundation, which is often revisited at a higher cost to your business to repair and restructure to capitalize on missed opportunities. Templated sites that market themselves as including ‘SEO’ typically only include a very basic level of SEO. There is a lack of correlation between your industry and audience trends and specific technical SEO components that can be factored into your site and will increase your overall presence in search engines. Additionally, the approach to audiences and conversion funnels is often overlooked.

It pays to be seen in search engines, and the associated cost of building a proper website is worth the investment.

The post A Custom Optimized Design vs. A Templated Site with SEO appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Throughout 2018, Google will continue to add functionalities to the updated GSC from the classic version. Until the new GSC is complete, both versions will live side-by-side and be interconnected through links in the navigation bar.

To simplify internal collaboration, Google added the ability to share reports within an organization to the new GCS. In addition, Search Performance, Index Coverage, AMP Status, and Job Posting reports are among some of the new functionalities available in the update GSC.

Search Performance Report

Are you a fan of Search Analytics? Well, you’ll love the new Search Performance report then. Due to users consistently asking for more data in Search Analytics, this new report gives users 16 months of data. This should make analyzing longer-term trends and YoY comparisons easier.

Index Coverage Report

With the updated Index Coverage report, users can gain insights into the indexing of URLs from their website. This report will show correctly indexed URLs, warnings about potential issues, and detail why Google isn’t indexing a URL. The new GCS’s Index Coverage report utilizes the same functionalities as Google’s new Issue Tracker, which alerts users when new issues arise and helps monitor the fixing process.

Search Enhancements – AMP Status & Job Posting Reports

One of the main driving factors for the creation of the new GSC is to help users implement search enhancements. These types of reports will provide details into the specific errors and warnings that Google identified for a specific topic, like AMP status or job posting. In addition to the Issue Tracker functionally described in the section above, Google enhanced the reports with these two extra features:

• Providing faster feedback in the process of fixing an issue by running several instantaneous tests once you click the validate fix
• Providing positive feedback during the fixing process through expanding the validation log with a list of URLs that were identified as fixed, failed the validation or might still be pending.

While you might be itching to explore the new GCS and its new functionalities, it may not be available to you just yet. When your website is ready for the new GCS, Google will send you a message. So keep an eye out for this message in the coming weeks.

If you have any questions about the new GSC, please reach out to the experts at MoreVisibility for assistance.

The post New Year, New You … New Google Search Console appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Be it a webinar, blog post or informative podcast, below are the top contenders from 2017.

Webinars

Who Really Has Time for SEO? Aligning Internal Teams for Success at a B2B Organization

Clicks, Conversions, & Clients: Leveraging Search Engine Optimization to Transform Your Audience

Blogs

Google My Business Q&A Feature Overview

New Update to Google Trends Adds YouTube, Shopping, News and Images

Learn Everything You Wanted to Know About Google Posts and More

Podcasts

Content Repurposing – How to Get the Most Bang for Your Content Buck

Tips to Create a User-Centric SEO Strategy for Greater Search Engine Success

The Struggle Is Real – How to Keep Your Company’s Online Content Creation Momentum Going

If you have any questions, please reach out to the experts at MoreVisibility for assistance.

The post The Top Search Engine Optimization Content of 2017 appeared first on MoreVisibility.

We recently discovered that Google has added some holiday fun to its search engine for December. When one enters a winter holiday keyword into Google’s search bar, the header of the results page will change to a header themed after that holiday. Google will have this “Easter Egg” available throughout the entire month of December, so check out this fun feature before it’s gone.

Here are Google’s holiday themed headers:

Happy Holidays from MoreVisibility!

The post Google Brings Holiday Fun to Its Search Engine appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Image Credit: Google

Google Trends has always been a helpful tool to use when researching what’s trending. From seeing trends in real time or dialing down to a specific date range, Google Trends has given a lot of helpful, sometimes actionable, insights into what users are searching for on the web. The downside, though, was that the data had always been limited to just web search.

That has changed, as of 11/27/17, when Google announced on their blog that they have added News, Shopping, Images and YouTube into their Google Trends tool. Now, with this new update, you are able to go deeper into what is trending in real time, not just on web search, but through Google’s other popular search services.

This can also show you different, more insightful results than previously seen in the tool. In an example Google gave, using a search for Taylor Swift, you see how the trends change depending on which search service you filter your results by.

“We search in different ways on different platforms,” Google’s Simon Rogers explained. “So, when you look at the search on YouTube, you can see the spike in searches for video of Taylor’s performance on The Tonight Show.”

Image Credit: Google

“But switch it to Google Images and you can see a 700 percent spike in searches for Saturday Night Live, after her performance on the show.”

Image Credit: Google

Though the example by Rogers may not have any relevance to trends in your industry, it gives a good example of how something trending on Google’s web search, or YouTube, could be different from what is trending on Images, News or Shopping.

Although not ground breaking, this update to Google Trends helps us understand more about what users are searching for, not just through the traditional web search, but through many different channels using Google’s search services.

Interested in seeing these features in action? Simply visit Google Trends and start searching!

The post New Update to Google Trends Adds YouTube, Shopping, News and Images appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Now Google has announced that they will add a feature to Google Maps on Android devices first, furthering the search experience for a potential customer. A Google Moderator released the below statement on the Local Guides Forum this past week:

“Today, Local Guides on Android have the chance to add the first-ever videos to millions of places. The possibilities are really exciting: Take viewers on a mini tour of a store you love, or show the bustling scene at your favorite neighborhood restaurant. You can even do a quick review where you showcase a place’s best item or offer tips for visitors”

Again, Google continues to put the user first – giving the customer a deeper look into the business – not just from a still photo – but now a video that captures the environment, staff, fresh food, other customers, etc. The Local Guides earn points when they use a video, so consumer video and data will build quickly. This can change the potential flow of business if a customer is not satisfied with what they view on video, find a location they deem as better, or perhaps feel like the video they saw does not live up to all the “hype” they heard via word-of-mouth.

As advances in search results have grown, so has the intelligence of the average user. We live in a digital era where it is widely known that reviews and photos can be somewhat staged or internally crafted to paint a slightly different picture. Have you ever gotten to a place and thought to yourself “It’s not what an envisioned, but I am already here so I’ll stay.” Imagine erasing that customer completely and having people funnel to exactly where they want to be based on previous research. Would your businesses revenue increase or decrease? For some, it will decrease – these evolutions by Google are tipping the power scale in favor of the customer while putting more pressure on the business to be as perfect as possible.

If you have an Android device, check out local videos the next time you are on Google Maps and see if your perception or buying choice changes at all. This video addition is important to monitor, especially if or when it is expanded to all devices.

The post Google Maps Now Has Video Feature for Android Devices appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Earned attention does not come out of nowhere – you have to work hard for it, and understand that it takes a lot more to achieve success than just showing up.

To achieve earned media you ought to do the following:

Create Shareable Content

Being a content creator, you should be aware of what causes a reader to share something. Typically, a piece of content that is relevant, interesting or useful can lead them to share. It is your job as a content creator to determine what this will be for your target audience.

To determine what your audience might appreciate:

• Take a peek at what your competitors are doing
• Simply ask them
• Question someone in your company who is regularly connected to your audience, if you’re not

Market the Content

After you’ve created this great shareable content, you may wonder what the next step is. You can’t just publish the content and hope the right someone stumbles upon it. To generate a buzz, ensure it is being marketed to the right audience. To do so, you should think about promoting your content through:

• Targeting influencers in your industry
• Paid placement, such as press releases
• Social media
• Offsite publishing
• Guest blogging

Build a Reputation

To build a reputation, your Social team (which may be you) can advocate on behalf of your brand, and encourage others to do the same. One way to do so is by creating ongoing social content that shares both branded content, and other content relevant to your followers, or potential followers.

The key to content creation is that it never stops. While content creation may seem overwhelming in the beginning, once you have established the processes, it will become a part of your operations in no time.

The post The Power of Content: How to “Earn” Your Way into People’s Lives appeared first on MoreVisibility.

Additionally, the feature appears to have been launched without many safeguards in place to protect an organization from spam and/or false questions and answers. In other words, anyone can ask a question or provide an answer without the information being reviewed by the organization itself.

Google My Business Q&A Example Without Any Questions:

Google My Business Q&A Example With a Question:

Unfortunately, Google has not integrated this feature into the GMB portal yet. This means that you cannot access this feature or any insights related to it from your GMB login. Instead, monitoring, responding, and reporting Q&A content on your GMB page must be done by manually searching for each individual location that you manage from a mobile device or emulator. This is unfortunate, as it requires a separate process for review and response than what you are likely to already have in place via your GMB dashboard.

Lastly, there does not currently appear to be an automated filter in place to help eliminate questions or answers that are clearly spam from being shown to all users. You can see an example of this by searching for “the white house” from your mobile device and reading the Q&A section. This puts organizations at a significant disadvantage, requiring them to proactively report “spammy” questions and / or answers without any automated help from Google at the moment.

Responding to Questions

Given the influence that reviews and comments can play on a consumer’s decision making process, it’s important to proactively monitor and respond to questions and answers about your locations. Without the integration of the new Q&A feature into the GMB dashboard, this requires each organization to manually respond to these questions and answers directly from search results.

Additionally, you are not able to provide a response to an existing answer. Instead, you can only provide a more ideal answer to each question that has been asked. This is unfortunate, as it leaves only one option for clarifying an incorrect response to a question, and that is to report the incorrect answer (which I’ll cover in the next section of this blog post).

In our tests, it appears that answers are currently ranked from most to least recent. So, the most recent answer is surfaced to the top, regardless of who it comes from. For example, my answer to one question was shown ahead of the answer from a “Local Guide” simply because it was more recent. However, as more data is gathered, I anticipate this ordering to be done in a more thoughtful manner (given Google’s ability to algorithmically determine search rankings in a more meaningful fashion than simply by sorting from most to least recent).

To answer questions on your GMB page(s), follow the steps below:

1. Search for your organization from a mobile device on google.com
2. Scroll down until map listing and business information are displayed
3. Look for a section titled “Questions & answers”
4. If there is more than one question, you will have to select “See all questions”
5. Find the question that you would like to respond to, and then select “Answer”
6. You will be presented with a box that says “Add an answer publicly”
7. Input your answer and then select the blue arrow icon to the right of the text box to submit the answer.
8. You will be presented with a thank you page that says “Thanks for answering”
9. Select “Done” and mark your answer as “Helpful”
10. If possible, alert others outside of your organization to classify your answer as helpful as well.

If you would like to edit or delete your answer, you can do so by finding your answer and then selecting the three bullet menu to the right of your answer and then selecting “Edit” or “Delete.”

Reporting Questions or Answers that Violate Google’s Terms of Service

Given that there does not appear to be an automated spam filter in place at the moment (or one that is working effectively), organizations should take a very proactive stance towards reporting questions and answers that violate Google’s terms of service. To report questions or answers, follow the steps below:

1. Search for your organization from a mobile device on google.com
2. Scroll down until the maps listing and business information are displayed
3. Look for a section titled “Questions & answers”
4. If there is more than one question, you will have to select “See all questions”
5. Find the question that you would like to report, and then select the three bullet menu to the right hand side of the question.
6. Select “Report”
7. Select the most appropriate reason for why you would like to report the Question or Answer
8. When presented with the thank you page that says “Thanks for the report.” Select “Done.”

Reporting Options for Step #7

This Q&A feature is sure to undergo changes in the coming weeks and months, hopefully with a deeper integration into the GMB dashboard and the inclusion of a more fair moderation of questions and answers. In the meantime, we recommend that you allocate time to monitor your locations throughout the week to identify any questions and / or answers that require your attention. If you have any questions about how this may impact your organization and how we can help, don’t hesitate to email us.

The post Google My Business Q&A Feature Overview appeared first on MoreVisibility.

In no specific order, these are 4 SEO strategies you should not let anyone, even your inner voice, talk you into.

#1 Buying Keyword-Rich Domain Names

At one point, having keywords in your domain could aid a company in ranking well within search engines. Although, it was never the sole factor, marketers saw this strategy as way to make SEO magic and bought as many domains as possible.

If these sites were built out with a great deal of informative content, then the company would have stand-alone sites that could do well on their own and give the company the ability to cross promote its parent brand. However, this was usually not the case. Most companies would have thin duplicate content on these sites to simply drive traffic back to the main site. Today, thin, duplicate content can hurt a company’s chances of ranking well in search engines. Buying a few additional domains for specific marketing and branding purposes can be beneficial, but a smart strategy must be developed first.

 #2 Having a Large Number of Links to Your Site

Back in the day, having a large number of non-relevant links to a company’s website was a desired SEO strategy. However, that day is long gone. This strategy now will likely produce negative impacts on a company’s search engine rankings. With that being said, if your company has ever utilized this strategy you should consider performing an inbound link audit to double check this tactic has been eliminated completely.

#3 Optimizing Content for Keyword Density

To optimize your content for keyword density, in the early days, all a company had to do was make sure the keyword being targeted were mentioned “x” number of times, as it helped the search engines to understand what the main topic of the page was. Since this strategy was easy to understand and fairly easy to follow, it was abused by people writing ridiculously long, repetitive copy simply to increase the number of times the keyword was mentioned.

Search engines today are remarkably good at making connections between content and searcher intent, and looking at more than keywords, such as keyword themes and the context in which keywords appear. Therefore, you will see pages rank for keywords that don’t have the exact key phrase anywhere on the page.

We still recommend you include your target keyword phrase on the page, but rather than worrying only about reaching a specific keyword density, you should worry about site structure, how “on topic” a page’s content is, and how well that page is linked to other related pages.

 #4 Obsessing Over Keyword Rankings

Obsessing over keyword rankings and centering your digital marketing plan around it as if where your company’s site ranks is the only thing that matters is a pitfall some companies have fallen into. However, you still want to monitor the organic traffic the website is getting to the pages that align with your valuable keywords.

The overall point is to look at your company’s site and keywords in terms of topics or themes and ensure you have visibility for those by looking at how you rank for a collection of related keywords and how much organic traffic is coming to pages that relate to those topics.

The post 4 SEO Strategies Every Business Must Avoid appeared first on MoreVisibility.

If you received one of these emails, they are intended to notify you that Google will show a “Not Secure” warning to any of your website’s visitors that browse the site using Google Chrome. These security warnings will trigger in Chrome if:

• Any page on your website contains a form field (any form field) and is served to a user over an HTTP connection. This will impact most websites, as your website likely has a form field for email capture, contacting your organization, or even performing an internal site search.
• Any page on your website, with or without a form, is served to a user over an HTTP connection while the user is browsing in Incognito mode.

The following two screenshots highlight the specific warning that will be shown within the Chrome browser:

Google has continued to make it clear that they want all websites to be served over an HTTPS connection, and have stated explicitly that “The new warning is part of a long term plan to mark all pages served over HTTP as ‘not secure.’”

In order to avoid these warnings, websites will need to move from HTTP to HTTPS. However, it is important to note that there are many considerations that should be accounted for when making this transition. Considerations include web development time and knowledge, costs that may be incurred, and SEO (making sure that you don’t lose organic rankings and traffic during the move).

If you will be making this transition, we highly recommend reaching out to MoreVisibility to begin discussing best practices for the transition and how we can help.

The post Google Search Console Alerts & Chrome Security Warnings for HTTP URLs appeared first on MoreVisibility.

More important than the design is the content. At MoreVisibility, our optimized website redesigns take a ‘Content-first’ approach to not only capture the user’s attention when they land on the site, but to provide the visitor exactly what they are looking for. Although the design will offer an initial positive impression, the content is what will keep users on the site, convert users, and have them return for more.

What is your overall content strategy?

With a well-developed content strategy, a web design project is approached from the perspective of your target audience and overall business goals. When you have someone visit your site, what are the initial actions that you want them to take? What resources can your site provide to have them revisit? And what are your specific conversion funnels?

Our optimized website redesign projects pair Designers with Content Strategists to create an experience for the users, not simply a design. Our Content Strategists also specialize in SEO for a well-rounded approach.

Web designs are more than pretty colors and responsive functionalities. When approached correctly, an optimized website redesign offers the opportunity to implement marketing, sales and public relation strategies that position your site as a resource for your target audience.

The post Why Content Rules Design appeared first on MoreVisibility.

What is a Google Post?

Google Posts are text (100 – 300 words), an image, a link, (possible event information) and a call-to-action combined together in a card format, served along your brand’s information in Google. They are displayed to users immediately after you post them, just like a status update on Facebook. However, they will only be shown to users in Google who search for your branding and if your brand meets specific criteria.

The latest release of these posts are designed to be used for small businesses and organizations within certain categories currently, but Google hasn’t explicitly stated those categories, and they may expand this in the future. Additionally, this is something that Google may roll out to other organizations given that they have also made a beta program available for the following types of organizations to use Google Posts:

• Museums
• Sports Teams
• Sports Leagues
• Movies in the US
• All of the above, plus Musicians in Brazil

To check if you are eligible, simply log-in to your Google My Business account and navigate to the “Posts” section within the left hand navigation. If that exists, you are good to go! You can learn more about the process of actually creating a Google Post further down this article.

To see a live example, Google “MoreVisibility” and you will see a Google Post we created, just below our local listing information:

Example Google Post on a Desktop Computer

Example Google Post on a Mobile Device

These new posts seem to currently serve multiple purposes as both a product and a feature, depending on the organization that is using them, which can be somewhat confusing.

• Google Posts as a Feature: The latest roll-out is for organizations that have a physical presence and a Google My Business account. In this case, the posts appear to be largely tied into the businesses’ local listing information and map, acting as a feature of the Google My Business product.
• Google Posts as a Product: If you are a beta tester outside of the latest release as mentioned above, the posts don’t appear to be tied to local maps based information and have a stand-alone purpose. For example, if you Google “Miami Marlins,” you will notice that they have many Google Posts with .gif media assets attached. These Google Posts are actually attached to the knowledge graph information of the brand rather than the local listing information for their stadium. In this case, they serve almost as a unique product (the Marlins “posting” on Google), separate from the location information of their stadium (as seen in the screen grab below).

How Google Posts are Different from Google+ Posts

Google has always seemed to have a difficult time with clearly differentiating their product names. You can take one look at their Wikipedia page to see this first hand, and this case is no different. These new Google Posts (not to be confused with Google+ posts) now occupy a space that was formerly used to show the latest Google+ post from a company, directly within search results. However, they are completely different.

The primary differences between these new Google Posts and Google+ posts that used to be shown in the same location are:

• The new Google Posts are managed through the “Posts” section of your Google My Business account, not your Google+ page.
• The new Google posts are designed to send users to a web page (for now). Google+ posts are designed to keep the user within the Google+ platform for social engagement (unless you chose to link off to a website).
• Google Posts offer five standard calls-to-action that allow you to link to any single landing page of your choice. Google+ posts actually provide a more expansive set of calls to action known as “interactive post labels.” The CTAs available for Google Posts include:
  • Learn More
  • Reserve
  • Sign-up
  • Buy
  • Get Offer

The Primary Benefit of Google Posts

Google Posts are one of the few options to quickly and directly control the branded search results of your organization. This is a huge benefit. After posting, they only take a few seconds to appear, and edits to your post appear just as quickly. They provide what is essentially a real-time feed into the search results for your brand.

Use Cases

Given that these posts only show for branded search queries, expect your audience to already be aware of who your organization is. This provides you with the opportunity to be very specific about your offer or announcement, rather than focusing on being overly educational about your brand.

If you meet the criteria for Google Posts, here are uses cases that you should consider:

• • Public Relations and Brand Control: These posts provide increased control over the search results for your brand. If you have ever had a PR crisis, you’ll know that one of the primary areas of focus for search is your branded results. Google Posts provides your organization with the ability to rapidly insert pertinent information into your branded search results. The “Learn More” CTA would be the most likely choice for this type of activity.
  • Announcements: If you have a newsworthy announcement to make, such as a new product or service, Google Posts are a great fit. The “Learn More” CTA is also the most likely fit here.
  • Special Deals: If you have a special deal of the day, happy hour, etc… make sure to share it and include a clear graphic alongside the text that provides all the major details. In this use-case “Learn More” or “Get Offer” would be the likely CTA’s of choice.
  • Sales: Whether your sales are in-store or online, you can promote them with Google Posts.
    • You can promote an upcoming in-store sale with the “Learn More” CTA with a link to a landing page for the sale.
    • If you sell products or services directly through your website, you can use the “Buy” CTA for a sale that is currently being held.
    • If you are offering a coupon code or discount code for a sale, you can leverage the “Get Offer” CTA and include a link to the landing page containing the code.
  • Email Marketing Sign-up: Use the “Sign-up” CTA to promote your email newsletter. Just make sure to clearly showcase the value proposition for why the audience should sign-up.
  • Marketing an Event: You can use the “Learn More,” “Sign-up,” “Reserve,” or “Buy” CTAs for an upcoming event that you will be holding or attending. The choice of CTA here will depend on whether the audience needs to sign-up for the event, reserve a spot, or buy a ticket.
  • Standard Reservations: Using the “Reserve” CTA is a clear choice for businesses like restaurants that offer reservations.
  • Limited Time Offers: If you have a limited time offer, the “Learn More,” “Reserve,” or “Get Offer” CTAs could be great options.
  • Standard Sign-up Promotion: If you require users to sign-up as part of the regular operation of your business, you can use the “Sign-up” CTA as a standard Google Post in between timely announcements.

How to Create a Google Post

Creating a Google Post is very simple, just follow the steps below:

• • 1. Log in to your organizations Google My Business Account
    2. Click on “Posts” within the left hand navigation of your Google My Business dashboard. It should be the second link just below “Home.”
    3. In the middle of your screen, click “Write your post”
    4. Complete your post by adding the following information (you will be able to preview the post before publishing, so don’t be too concerned with the layout at this point).
       1. Add a photo by selecting “Make your post stand out with a photo” and then dragging it to the box or choosing one through the file finder. The photo will need to be square i
          n shape with minimum dimensions of 344 x 344. Once you upload your photo, you are provided with an option to crop the photo before publishing, but the 1:1 aspect ratio can’t be changed here either. Once you have cropped your image, select “Upload a Post Photo” and you will be taken back to the editing fields for your Google Post. There were quite a few nuances with getting the image just right in our test, so please read the “Issues with Image Cropping” section below.
       2. Write your post by including 100 – 300 words about the subject of the post. Keep in mind that you will be choosing a call to action, so make sure that the copy aligns with the image you are providing and the call to action that will be chosen.
       3. Decide if your post is about an event, and if it is, use the “on-off” button toggle. If you are holding an event, you can provide the following additional information:
          1. Event title
          2. Start Date
          3. Start Time
          4. End Date
          5. End Time
       4. Decide if you want to include a call to action, and if you do (which you should), use the “on-off” button toggle titled “Add a button.” This really should be called “Add a call to action.” Here, you select:
          1. A call to action button: These come with predefined text and are not able to be customized. However, the five options will suit most situations. The field defaults to “Learn more” so make sure that you select a more specific option if possible.
          2. A URL: You can use any landing page URL, just provide the entire domain name and the full URL together, such as www.example.com/sign-up. Also, don’t forget to include tracking parameters for your analytics platform. The tracking parameters, such as UTM parameters, will help you gather data in your analytics platform about how people are interacting with your posts.
    5. Now it’s time to preview your post. In the top right hand corner of the light box, select “Preview.” You do have the option to publish the post without previewing by selecting the “Create post” button in the top left hand corner. However, I strongly recommend previewing the post before publishing it.
    6. You now have the ability to either return to the preview or Publish your post. Selecting “Publish” in the top right hand corner will immediately publish your post to Google, so make sure to validate that you have fully proofed your work up to this point.

Here is the final product on Desktop and Mobile:

Desktop:

Mobile:

Issues with Image Cropping

We ran into quite a few quirks with the first Google Post we published, so we thought it would be important to share these learnings with you. Here is only a sampling of some of what we encountered:

• • 1. Image cropping issues: The first image we uploaded looked fine in the preview window, but was rendered in a very different format once it was published to Google. Here is the image we originally used:You can see what the image originally looked like on a desktop device after being published to Google below. You’ll notice that it does not look properly formatted, and doesn’t appear to be very engaging.Oddly enough, that same image was cropped with more room when displayed on mobile devices, as seen below.

       

       After seeing this, we re-designed the image so that the text would fit within the display region on both desktop and mobile. The red line indicates the size of the visible area from Google’s search results.

       

       This resulted in an image with the text properly displayed within the visible region in Google, but we then ran into an image resolution issue. The text appeared very grainy when displayed in Google.

       

       After looking into the image resolution more, we found that Google was resizing our image down from 419 x 419 (uploaded) to 304 x 305 (hosted on Google’s servers) before expanding it back to original size in Google’s search results and then cropping it, resulting in the resolution issue.

       We began to work on improving the resolution of our image and had planned on re-uploading a new image to the post. However, Google then changed the format as it was displayed in search results. Google began showing the entire image for both desktop and mobile results, as seen below:

       

       This is a much closer match to what we saw in the preview window before publishing our post:

       

       The takeaways here are to:

       • Only use high-resolution images
       • Be prepared to update the design of your image asset immediately after posting if Google crops it in an undesirable way.
       • Quickly review the live post after publishing to identify if a new image needs to be created. Do not just select “Publish” and assume that it will be published correctly.

How to Edit or Delete Your Google Posts

Luckily, as you were able to experience with our image cropping issues, we were able to upload many versions of the same graphic. Google provides the ability to edit or delete your posts after you have created them. The changes appear in Google a few seconds after you have made your edits or deleted your post.

We still recommend using as much diligence as possible when creating and posting your content, but the option to edit or delete is available to you.

To edit or delete a post, simply navigate back to the “Posts” section of your Google My Business account. Then, follow the steps below:

• • 1. Select the post you want to edit or delete
    2. To edit the post select “Edit” in the top right hand corner.
    3. To delete the post, select “Delete” at the bottom of the screen.

Recap & Conclusion

To recap, if your organization is eligible for Google posts, it should use Google posts. If it’s not currently eligible, we still recommend learning about the options available, as Google may roll this out to more organizations in the future. Either way, consider these key factors before you start publishing:

• • 1. Define a formal strategy for the use of Google posts. Consider questions such as:
       • In what situations is it ok for your brand to publish a Google post?
       • How frequently should you publish them?
       • Who is responsible for publishing them? Is it your social media team, communications department, SEO department, or someone else altogether?
       • Can you tie in Google posts to your editorial / marketing / event calendars and use cohesive creative?
    2. Use multimedia (a graphic, image, etc…) as much as possible (it’s much better at grabbing attention than plain text), but be considerate of potential cropping and resolution issues. You may also need to include the required sizing guidelines in your creative development process alongside content that needs unique graphic assets for channels like Facebook, Twitter, Email, and others.
    3. Use a more specific call to action than just “Learn More” whenever possible.
    4. Inform your PR or communications team that this is a quick and efficient way to distribute information about your company.
    5. Keep your posts on-brand but don’t be overly promotional in every post. If every Google Post is just another ad for your company, don’t expect them to be very effective in the long run.

If you have any other questions about how to use Google Posts for your organization, don’t hesitate to reach out!

The post Learn Everything You Wanted to Know about Google Posts and More appeared first on MoreVisibility.

1. Relevance:

Search engines will crawl the content of your website and decide how relevant it is to a search query.  This is the most basic of the three signals and is used beyond just local search by search engines.

2. Distance:

Distance is how far the user is from the local business/location.  It can also matter the location a user searches for.  For example, if a user searched for pizza in New York City versus searching for pizza in Brooklyn; these queries would result in different overall results purely based on how specific each search is to the destination.

3. Prominence:

Prominence can be related to several Search Engine Optimization tactics.  It is how users “view” your brand.  Here are some examples of questions that this would answer:

• How many people are talking about your business?
• Have you been featured in any stories or newsworthy content?
• Do you have a good reputation?
• Do users talk about products/services that are relevant to your business and for terms you’d like to show up for?
• Do you have local listings enabled on other third party websites?

Most of these questions are based on content outside of your website and by potential customers you’ve dealt with.  This can be very important for local business because prominence is what allows you to stand out over others that offer very similar services (or perceived similar services). 

The post 3 Factors that play into Local SEO appeared first on MoreVisibility.