Technology News and Industry Knowledge

Featuring merchandise, menu hacks and music performances, the 27-day effort offers another sign the chain views its app as a linchpin to winning Gen Z. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/mcdonalds-virtual-summer-camp/626391/

The brand’s first flavor co-created with an artist is the latest effort to come out of the Coca-Cola Creations platform that launched earlier this year. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/Coke-Marshmello-limited-flavor-Coca-Cola-Creations/626392/

Creator SypherPK hosts a series of livestreams where he explores the virtual world as the auto brand doubles down on its outreach to gamers. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/honda-hondaverse-gaming-fortnite-twitch/626328/

Google has updated its JavaScript SEO help document to add technical details on how to inject canonical link tags using JavaScript. Google added a new section titled “ properly inject rel=”canonical” link tag .” What is new. Here is the new section where Google recommends not to implement your canonical tags using JavaScript, but if you must, Google explains this is the proper way to do so. Google wrote: While we don’t recommend using JavaScript for this, it is possible to inject a rel=”canonical” link tag with JavaScript. Google Search will pick up the injected canonical URL when rendering the page. Here is an example to inject a rel=”canonical” link tag with JavaScript: Google added this warning stating “When using JavaScript to inject the rel=”canonical” link tag, make sure that this is the only rel=”canonical” link tag on the page. Incorrect implementations might create multiple rel=”canonical” link tag or change an existing rel=”canonical” link tag. Conflicting or multiple r...

Sometimes the best SEO tools are free. Look no further than Google Sheets. While it’s not great at plotting ranking data (inverting the y-axis is always ugly), there are numerous ways to use Google Sheets for SEO. Here are 11 of the formulas and tips I find myself using for SEO on an almost daily basis – for keyword management, internationalization, content/URL management and dashboards. Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on. Processing...Please wait. SUBSCRIBE See terms. Google Sheets formulas for keyword management  V LOOKUP CONCATENATE FLATTEN LOWER =VLOOKUP(text,[range to search],[column number to return],[true/false])  V LOOKUP ( documentation ) VLOOKUP, which stands for “vertical lookup”, is arguably one of the very first Google Sheet formulas for SEO anyone learns when getting into the game. VLOOKUP allows you to essentially combine two data sets on common values, an almost lowbrow JOIN in SQL if you will...

Ready to learn a quick-and-easy way to get traffic predictions for any amount of time in the future? Seriously. This article will show you how you can: Predict traffic changes, and maybe even let your boss know when periods of stagnation or negative growth are to be expected. What to expect during times of increased or decreased traffic, so you could tell if your declines are in line with predictions, or if something might be going wrong and traffic is declining more than it should. Include a graph with an update to your boss or client of what’s coming in advance, so they know you aren’t just making excuses after the fact. Want to skip the info and just click a few buttons?  While we’ll be going through running the code to forecast your web traffic and what each of the sections does, you can skip this and  jump right to the Colab here  if you aren’t interested in knowing what’s going on and how to make adjustments. For those who want to run the code locally and ...

While marketers have overcome many challenges in recent years, sadly, the second half of 2022 is poised to be very different from the first. Unprecedented macroeconomic factors such as high inflation, food and energy costs and the war in Ukraine are impacting our business. Hiring is starting to slow down, and the pressure is on. There is a good chance that you’ll probably be asked to do more with less, as budgets may be prioritized and cut in certain areas.  On the flip side, Google Search ad spend continues to rise. It’s the channel that is always on, the channel with the highest conversion rate and the channel that won’t go away. This part of the marketing mix is reliable and constant, but are the campaigns delivering success? Are they contributing to sales? Contributing to leads? Auction Insights is a powerful tool we’ve all come to use for understanding campaign performance against competitors. Search intelligence adds another layer of granularity to ensure you’re one st...

While Google’s newest campaign type, Performance Max (PMax), is devoid of keyword data,  some new information may help advertisers better steer their efforts with the product. PMax campaigns are unique to all other campaign types as no keywords are required and no keyword data is delivered to advertisers. The closest existing campaign type is the fully automated shopping-only product , “Smart Shopping” which will be shuttered in July. The big difference between the two is that Performance Max campaigns can run without a product feed and can also include local ad elements.  Those PMax campaigns without a feed or local inputs can gain inventory on Google search by simply inputting a website or pages into the campaign. Due to the fully automated nature of the campaign, Google will then choose keywords to show on Google Search as well as other placements on Gmail/YouTube/Display/Discover .  Performance Max matching in search Many advertisers rightfully want to know what ...

“Find your people” pushes the platform’s community-centered message by meeting consumers where they are – on the couch. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/reddit-first-us-tv-campaign-find-your-people/626255/

Along with a new spot, the collaboration includes a limited-edition kit featuring a roast beef-patterned sweat suit and two cans of antiperspirant. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/old-spice-arbys-meat-sweats/626227/

After your technical , content and outreach strategies are in place, you should be well on your way to digital marketing success.  At this stage, you should have optimized your website for a strong page experience, created lots of entity-driven content, and gained inbound links providing you with rankings and traffic. Now, you’ll need to empower your team with the right data to help you continue to grow and shape your digital marketing strategy. Setting up your dashboards Fortunately, a myriad of tools can help organize the data you need to keep your traffic growing. Here are some data points you can look at: Overall KPIs: Are your site’s sessions, impressions, clicks and conversions trending up or down? Keywords ranking: How many keywords are ranking in the top 1-3, 4-10, 11-20, or in the top 100 of Google? What keywords are gaining or losing traction? What is the estimated traffic cost of these keywords? What keywords are seeing the most volume and conversions? Pag...

Causes of friction between SEO and PPC often occur because we tend to use different sources of truth for each channel and build silos of communication between teams. The main core areas of friction? Usually: Reporting  Landing pages Budget Here are five ways you can get your PPC and SEO campaigns working together. Tip 1: Collaborate on first-party data readiness All digital marketing campaigns need to account for first-party data. Understanding whether your brand is compliant requires input from both your SEO and PPC teams.  If you rely heavily on remarketing campaigns (either because you’re in an expensive industry or the customer journey naturally takes multiple steps), you may find yourself increasingly reliant on native audiences. While some of these audiences can be powerful, most of them underperform against audiences based on brand-tracked activity.  Analytics audience segments can be a powerful way around fluctuating quality. These audience segments ...

As digital marketers face a rapidly growing market and higher competition, the structure and effectiveness of paid advertising campaigns become more complex. Optimization, visibility and improving processes matter now more than ever. But, it can be easy to lose visibility over what needs to be done and how those campaigns perform. This can lead to subpar results and a lack of understanding of how to improve your next campaigns.  In this informative SMX Advanced session , Nadiia Sharipova from Wrike, now part of Citrix, addresses three keys to digital marketing transformation: Why optimization and visibility matter How to reduce your competition in key areas Critical processes that help improve CRO Join the session to learn better visibility and workflow for your search engine initiatives, how companies like Hootsuite optimized their workflows to reduce complexity and the essential tools and strategies you need to do your best work.  After watching the presentation...

Yoast SEO, one of the more popular SEO plugins for WordPress, has finally adopted IndexNow , the Microsoft backed protocol to submit content to search engines. This is available in the premium version of Yoast SEO version 19.2 , the company announced . What is IndexNow . IndexNow provides a method for websites owners to instantly inform search engines about latest content changes on their website. IndexNow is a simple ping protocol so that search engines know that a URL and its content has been added, updated, or deleted, allowing search engines to quickly reflect this change in their search results. The  co-sharing of IndexNow  went fully live in January 2022. Integrations. Why Microsoft built its own plugin for WordPress sites to use IndexNow, Yoast decided to build it in to its premium plugin. Why did Yoast add it now? “The latest change to the protocol is the second significant development that made us change our minds about IndexNow. The IndexNow team  changed th...

Leveraging smart bidding allows advertisers to take advantage of real-time or auction bids. Generally, there is a wide range of information helping the algorithms operate efficiently, such as time of day, past search history, location, ad budget, and more. Most advertisers are aware of the disadvantages of automated bidding, such as the loss of control and the ability to utilize bid adjustments. But in his MX Advanced 2022 presentation, Ani explains that the efficiency and performance gains are worth it.  Inputs and outputs Ani explains that it’s up to us as advertisers to provide the algorithms with the data points it needs to make the right decisions in that real-time auction process. “Ultimately automated bidding will take the heavy lifting out of your campaign management and will typically outperform manual bidding. But like most things in life, you get what you give and machine learning can only make smart choices if it knows what’s valuable to your business. So it’s really...