Technology News and Industry Knowledge

Google announced some updates to how it plans to inform users about the ads they see, including a new type of schema, as well as the latest on Privacy Sandbox proposals to manage ad serving, measurement and more without third-party cookies and cross-site tracking on Friday. Ad Disclosure schema. Google’s testing an Ads Transparency Spotlight tool that relies on what it calls Ad Disclosure schema to show users information about the ads served on web pages. The Ads Transparency Spotlight tool is available now as a Chrome extension in alpha stage. (You can also enable it in Microsoft’s Edge browser if you allow extensions from other stores.) At this point the tool only shows data on ads purchased through Google Ads that have implemented Data Disclosure schema. Google’s hoping the schema catches on with other ad sellers. See this Github page for the types of data it can support. The aim is to let users see “detailed information about all the ads they see on the web,” but it will nee...

The news came as part of blockbuster results that saw the company's "other" category, which mostly consists of advertising sales, grow 41% to $4.22 billion. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/amazon-cut-marketing-by-a-third-due-to-pandemic-driven-demand-but-the-pul/582704/

The payment service debuts its biggest U.S. effort with 15 new spots spliced from Swedish cinema, shoppable ads and a gaming integration. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/campaign-trail-klarna-ads-swedish-quirk-marketing/582671/

In order to retain the interest of new customers, Kraft Heinz will increase its working media dollars by 40% in H2, while Kellogg is pursuing a similar playbook. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/kraft-heinz-kellogg-to-rev-up-marketing-substantially-in-h2-as-pandemic-wi/582648/

YouTube eked out a 5.8% gain in ad revenue, while Alphabet's growing cloud computing business helped to offset bigger declines in ad sales. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/google-ad-revenue-falls-1st-decline-in-26-year-history/582661/

I’ll get right to it. As an SEO I think you should care about brand performance. This isn’t an “I know better than you” post. I don’t. This isn’t a “you’re obsolete” post. You’re not. What I’m going to do here is make a series of statements that I think you’ll agree with and I believe that, together, we’ll come to the conclusion that SEOs should be actively involved in brand decisions. I think we’ll agree on that because we don’t have the option of saying “I’m not getting involved”. Because, like it or not, our brand interest is already affecting the performance we are held accountable for, so our best bet is to get ahead of it and use the data we have access to as SEOs for the benefit of our whole company. To get credit for the successes we’re contributing to and avoid the losses. An SEO decision tree It all boils down to the decision tree image below. To use it, start at the blue box at the top and let yourself be guided by your answers to each question. After the decision tre...

We’re excited to have interviewed Minneapolis SEO expert Mike Frahm from Frahm Digital for the next installment of our Featured SEO Expert Series! Frahm Digital is one of SEOblog’s Top SEO companies in Minneapolis. Frahm Digital is an award-

Expanding marketing efforts beyond your home country can be an exciting step. However, branching into new regions with PPC entails much more than simply copying your campaigns and changing the geographic targeting.  Don’t rush into setting up international campaigns until you’ve thought out budgeting, channel allocation, account structure, localization, and unique regional concerns. In this article, I’ll expand on each of these points to help you establish a framework for beginning to target other countries. Budget for different costs by country CPCs and CPMs to compete in ad auctions vary widely by country. You can get a rough estimate for projected spend in Google search by adding your keywords to Google Keyword Planner and setting the region to the country you’re planning to target. However, these estimates can be off, and you’ll get the best idea of average CPCs/CPMs once you actually start running a campaign and see actual figures.  In addition, costs for customer ac...

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Posted by willcritchlow We're bringing back this slightly different-from-the-norm Whiteboard Friday, in which the fantastic Will Critchlow shares lessons from how kids search. Kids may search differently than adults, but there are some interesting insights from how they use Google that can help deepen our understanding of searchers in general. Comfort levels with particular search strategies, reading only the bold words, taking search suggestions and related searches as answers — there's a lot to dig into.  Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Hi, everyone. I'm Will Critchlow, founder and CEO of Distilled, and this week's Whiteboard Friday is a little bit different. I want to talk about some surprising and interesting and a few funny facts that I learnt when I was reading some research that Google did about how kids search for information. So this isn't super actionable. This is not about ta...

You may think the phrase “content is king” has become cliché but if you’re an online marketer then you understand the value of creating and publishing good content. As major search engines such as Google become even stricter on t

For many search marketers, title tags are one of the first-learned elements of the SEO’s toolkit. Unfortunately, that leads many to toss off title tag optimization as a beginner’s tactic. During his presentation on Advanced Title Tag Optimization at SMX Next last month, Moz SEO consultant Cyrus Shepard explained why title tags are a critical component of SEO – and how when done correctly, can provide massive value for searchers and businesses. In a crash course on title tag optimization, Shepard discusses why tags aren’t just for beginners and offers practical techniques – and what to avoid – in order to boost click-through rate (CTR) and earn more traffic. Why are title tags important? Title tags are the clickable headline that shows up on the SERP. Dictated by an HTML element that reflects the title of a web page, these tags are designed to help search engines understand the content of the page. There are key reasons why title tags are important, Shepard emphasized. It’s...

Verified Google My Business profile owners in the U.S. can now add a Black-owned business attribute to their listings. Business attributes are highlighted as icons when customers view a business’ profile on mobile, as shown below. The new Black-owned business attribute. Source: Google. Why we care Google said it has seen “a surge in online searches for Black-owned businesses” in recent months — a period in which the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum. Distinguishing Black-owned businesses in local search may help those businesses attract visibility in Search and Maps and gain customers. “With this attribute, our goal is to make Search and Maps more inclusive and help support Black-owned businesses when they need it most,” Jewel Burks, head of Google for Startups U.S. said in Thursday’s announcement . Google is also adding the new attribute to its digital skills training program Grow with Digital Coaches , an initiative designed to help Black and Latinx small busines...

Procter & Gamble, Mondelēz and Clorox beta tested Performance Dashboards, which could better position the retailer against rivals like Amazon and Google. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/walmart-fortifies-fledgling-ad-platform-with-omnichannel-analytics-offering/582610/

Three paradigm-shifting events have fanned consumers' wants and needs in 2020, driving higher expectations for 98% of brands, writes Brand Keys' Robert Passikoff. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/current-events-fuel-higher-consumer-expectations-concerns-for-marketers/582547/

The increase comes after the company slashed marketing spend by 70% in Q2, giving it a "sizable marketing war chest" for the remainder of the year.  source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/mcdonalds-boosts-marketing-budget-by-200m-to-drive-recovery/582573/

The first CMO for Fresh Del Monte Produce explains how the role is evolving and details the brand's first campaign under her leadership. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/how-del-monte-elana-gold-cmo-pandemic/582516/

In my last post, I shared how UGC (User Generated Content) helped my nonprofit client create authoritative articles that 1.) saved both of us loads of time and 2.) crushed it in search and social. (Update: that same client’s organic blog traffic is now up +776% Y/Y). But the wins don’t stop there. I discovered that users’ comments on the posts themselves not only provide great supplemental content that may help the page rank, but also offer amazing insight into how to further optimize the content. I call this “Feedback Optimization” – the process of using readers’ comments to improve a piece of content for relevancy and user intent.  Doing this improved a top query’s click-through-rate (CTR) by +96% P/P with no change in ranking position. Intrigued? Here’s how it works: Feedback optimization process 1. At the end of your article, include a call-to-action (CTA) to comment. A clear next step can encourage more engagement on your site. Simply ask users to leave their thoughts ...

Google has added support for image license metadata for licensable image label to both Google Search Console reports and the Rich Results test tool. Google said on Twitter “we are happy to announce support for Image License structured data in Search Console in addition to the Rich Results Test tool.” Image license metadata. This is metadata and schema that you can use to display licensing information about content that appears in Google Images. Here is what the licensable image label looks like in search: Search Console enhancement report. A new section has been added to the Enhancements reports in Search Console if you use this markup. Google will only show this to you if you use this markup. Here is a screen shot of the new section, showing some errors: Rich results test tool. Google also said it is supported on the Rich Results test tool over here . Google’s updated documentation on this tool says it is one of the 17 markup options supported by the rich results test tool....

Did you know that the top five positions in Google search engine results pages (SERPs) get 67.6 percent of the traffic? With billions of websites worldwide, ranking for competitive keywords and landing in the top five feels like a far-fetched dream. But the

Bing fully launched its new Bing Webmaster Tools Thursday, and with that, a brand new URL Inspection tool. The Bing URL Inspection tool allows you to inspect Bing indexed version of your URLs allowing to detect potential indexing issues due to crawl or not following  Bing Webmaster guidelines . Google launched its URL Inspection tool over two years ago in June 2018 . How do the two compare? They are similar. Google and Bing’s URL Inspection tools are pretty similar. They essentially do the same thing: help webmasters, developers, SEOs and site owners see potential indexing issues with URLs in their respective search engines. Use both. Even though they are similar, it doesn’t mean you should just use one. Use both. Each will show you how your URLs are doing within those specific search engines. If you want to see how your URL is doing in Google, use the Google URL Inspection tool. If you want to see how your URL is doing in Bing, use the Bing URL Inspection tool. Overview ...

Google is testing a larger font size in ad headlines. The first headline displays in a considerably larger font on line one with a second headline appearing below it. The test was spotted by PPC hubbub. We have been able to replicate this on the Google mobile app. In the example we captured, only the ad in the absolute top position displays with the new test formatting. In the screenshot below, the Geico ad at the top exhibits the test formatting with the much larger font size for the first headline while the Progressive ad in position two renders with the normal headline font treatment. Google is testing larger fonts in ad headlines. In the search result captured by PPC hubbub , all of the ads in the top positions above the organic results showed the test headline treatment. Google testing new format for Headlines in top ad slots. Looks like Headline 1 is much larger than Headline 2. Doesn’t appear to be happening for lower ad slots outside of top 4 @rustybrick #ppccha...