Tuesday, 31 May 2016

Does Google look at anchor text in internal links?

Internal linking is a key SEO tactic, one which allows websites to send clear signals to Google on the relative importance of various pages.

It also works from a user experience perspective, helping visitors find pages that are relevant or potentially useful to them.

It’s something I place great importance on as an editor, as it’s one part of SEO that I can control, and I’ve seen the benefits for sites I’ve worked on.

Internal linking: examples

Let’s take an example from Search Engine Watch. I wrote this article on internal linking, with examples and tips, back in September 2015.

I’ve since linked to it using that exact anchor text (and variations on it) on at least 10 occasions. Essentially, I’m telling Google that this is the page I want Search Engine Watch to rank for that term.

As we can see, it’s worked well. Third on Google, and first for related terms (internal linking best practice for example).

Internal linking SE

Then there’s Mail Online. The most visited English language newspaper on the web had a relatively haphazard approach to internal linking until recently.

For common, high traffic terms (world leader’s names, celebrities etc) would be used regularly in articles.

The result was that each article would end up competing against previous articles for the same keyword or phrase.

The chart below shows its rankings for ‘David Cameron’ over a six month period. 80 different URLs were returned from the Mail for that search, but it didn’t rank consisitently for the term.

1.-Entire-Daily-Mail-view-for-the-search-term-David-Cameron-e1453731668448

The answer was a consistent internal linking and hub page strategy. Mail Online created hub pages for common terms and consistently linked to them.

The result is a more consistent ranking from November 2015 onwards, when the changes were implemented.

There have been some fluctuations, perhaps due to inconsistent implementation of the linking strategy, but the page is performing much more effectively. As a result, the site will pick up more traffic for that term. Applied across the whole site, this can make a big difference.

nov 2015

Does Google count anchor text in internal links?

This is the question Shaun Anderson from Hobo Web sought to answer recently.

In the examples above, the pages targeted with internal links all contain the keywords used in the anchor text. So, Google could be using the content of the page, and the fact that several pages link to it to decide on the ranking.

In other words, this doesn’t prove that Google is taking note of the anchor text when choosing to rank a particular page.

So, Shaun set up a test. He added an internal link to one page on his site using the target keyword as anchor text.

It’s important to note that the target page did not contain the keyword used, so the only signal that it was relevant to said keyword was the anchor text on the link.

As we can see from the chart, a number of days after the test was implemented, the page ranked for the target term. When it was removed, the page dropped again.

hobo web screenshot

As that page had no other relevance to the term other than the link, the anchor text appears to be the only reason for the page’s ranking.

It’s worth reading Shaun’s blog post for more detail, and for further variations on the test, but the indications are that the answer to the question in the headline here is yes.

It would be good to see other tests to back up this with more evidence. In fact, I’ll see if I can devise one on this site along similar lines.



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[Podcast] Episode 024: The most downloaded episode of all-time with Noah Kagan

On this episode of Ask Me About Email Marketing, we discuss starting, failing, monetization, driving traffic, staying accountable, growing businesses, connecting with people, and much more with Noah Kagan, the chief sumo at SumoMe.com. Whoa, that’s a lot to talk about.

In fact, Noah covers so much ground in our brief conversation, I’m convinced that this episode will be THE most downloaded episode to date. Let’s make it happen.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why quality of subscribers supersedes quantity
  • How to commit to an email strategy and stay accountable
  • The velocity to $1 principle, and value of selling early
  • Ways feedback from subscribers can shape your strategy
  • The importance of sticking with your business
  • Some tactics for getting traffic, what to do with it, and why you might not need it at all
  • … and much more!

Thanks to Noah for joining the show, dropping some knowledge, and providing marketers with a ton of valuable tools at SumoMe.

Here are a few links that were mentioned on the show:

Click here to download this episode directly. (MP3)

Have a question about email marketing? Leave us a message at aweber.com/podcast.

The post [Podcast] Episode 024: The most downloaded episode of all-time with Noah Kagan appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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The continuing rise of voice search and how you can adapt to it

Google’s I/O developer conference brought several huge announcements about Google’s future direction and projects, including two new technologies which demonstrate just how important voice search and natural language processing are to the company’s future development.

The first, Google Assistant, is a voice-activated digital assistant which builds on “all [Google’s] years of investment in deeply understanding users’ questions”, as Google’s blog declared. It takes Google’s voice search and natural language capabilities to the next level, while also allowing users to carry out everyday tasks like booking cinema tickets or restaurant reservations.

The second is Google Home, Google’s long-awaited smart home hub to rival the Amazon Echo, which comes with Assistant built in. Google Home – which will be “unmatched in far-field voice recognition”, according to VP of Product Management Mario Quieroz – will give users access to Google’s powerful search capabilities in answering their questions as well as linking together smart devices all over their home.

google assistant

It’s no surprise that Google is focusing heavily on voice search and natural language going forward when you consider that in 2015 alone, voice search rose from “statistical zero” to make up 10% of all searches globally, according to Timothy Tuttle of the voice interface specialist MindMeld. That’s an estimated 50 billion searches per month.

Indeed, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed in his keynote speech at I/O that 1 in every 5 searches made with the Google Android app in the US is a voice query. Bing produced a similar statistic earlier this month when it announced that a quarter of all searches on the Windows 10 taskbar using Bing are voice searches. And statistics like these are only like to increase further as search engines, apps and developers respond to this trend.

Digital assistants: The agents of voice search

Siri. Cortana. Google Now. Alexa. Google Assistant. These are only the names of the most well-known digital assistants from the major technology companies; a search for “digital assistant” on the iOS or Android app store shows just how many different varieties of these voice-controlled AIs there are.

Digital assistants are overwhelmingly the medium through which we interact with voice search and carry out natural language queries, so it makes sense that they, too, are on the rise as companies compete for the biggest share of this rapidly expanding market.

The figures show just how recent much of this uptake of voice search is. Late last year, MindMeld published a study of smartphone users in the U.S. and their use of voice search and voice commands. It found that 60% of smartphone users who used voice search had begun using it within the past year, with 41% of survey respondents having only begun to use voice search in the past 6 months.

mindmeldImage: MindMeld

With that said, digital assistants are not just confined to smartphones any more, increasingly integrated into devices like smart home hubs and game consoles. And the more that we speak to and interact with assistants, pushing the limits of what they’re capable of, the more sophisticated they become.

The newest generation of digital assistants, including Google Assistant and Viv, a new AI from the creators of Siri, are capable of interpreting and responding to long, multi-part and highly specific queries. For example, during a public demonstration in New York, Viv showed off its ability to accurately respond to queries like, “Was it raining in Seattle three Thursdays ago?” and “Will it be warmer than 70 degrees near the Golden Gate Bridge after 5PM the day after tomorrow?”

At the demonstration of Google Assistant at Google’s I/O conference, Sundar Pichai made much of the fact that you can pose follow-up queries to Assistant without needing to restate context. That is, you can ask a question like, “Who directed the Revenant?” and then follow up by saying, “Show me his awards,” and Assistant will know that you are still referring to director Alejandro Iñárritu in the second query. (It’s worth noting, though, that Bing’s web search has been able to do this for a while).

follow-up
Continuing the conversation: Google’s Assistant can now handle follow-up questions to a previous query without needing to hear the subject again

How voice queries are changing search

So how is this upswing in voice queries and technology’s increasing ability to respond to them changing the way that users search?

We don’t search with voice the same way that we search with a keyboard. Computer users have evolved a specific set of habits and expectations for web search based on its limitations and capabilities. So we would start off by typing a quite generalised, keyword-based search query like “SEO tips”, see what comes back, and progressively narrow down through trial and error with longer search terms like “SEO tips for m-commerce” or “SEO tips for beginners”.

Or if we were looking to buy a pair of red shoes, we might search for “red shoes” and then navigate to a specific website, browse through their shoes and use the site interface to narrow down by style, size and designer.

Whereas now, with the advanced capabilities of search engines to understand longer, more specialised searches and the advent of voice search making natural language queries more common, we might start off by searching, “Quick SEO tips for complete beginners”, or, “Show me wide-fit ladies’ red shoes for under £50.”

voice vs keyword searchWe search differently with a keyboard to the way we search with voice

The increasing rise of voice search brings with it a wealth of new data on user intent, habits and preferences. From the first query about SEO, a site owner can see that the searcher is not just a novice but a complete novice, and is not looking to spend a lot of time researching in-depth SEO guides; they want a list that’s easy to digest and quick to implement.

From the second query, a shop owner can tell exactly what type of shoes the consumer is looking for, down to the fit and colour. The price range indicates a budget and an intent to buy.

When mobile users are conducting voice search with location enabled, site owners and business owners can also gain valuable location data. Often, the voice query will contain the important phrase “near me”, which shows that the searcher is looking for local businesses. Mobile voice searches are three times more likely to be local than text, so optimising for local search and mobile will also help you to rank for many voice searches.

A mobile screenshot of a Google search for "Marks and Spencer near me", showing the three-pack of local results below a small map of the area.

With the growth of voice search, we can expect to see more and more long-tail search keywords and natural language queries, which give increasing amounts of contextual information and useful data about searcher intent. The addition of voice assistants to smart home hubs like Amazon’s Echo and Google Home (Apple is also reported to be developing its own smart hub with Siri built in) will also give the companies behind them access to untold amounts of data on users’ daily life and habits, purchases, interests and more, opening up new avenues for marketing.

How can you capitalise on voice search?

With all of that in mind, what practical things can website owners do to take advantage of this new search frontier?

Look out for natural language queries in your site analytics

At the moment, there’s no way to tell outright which users are reaching your site through voice search, though Google is rumoured to be developing this feature for Google Analytics. But by looking out for natural language queries in your search traffic reports, you can start to get a feel for what users might be asking to find your site, learn from it and use it to inform your SEO strategy.

Think about how people are likely to phrase queries aloud

We need to start moving our approach from thinking of endless variations on different keywords to thinking about different types of questions and phrases that users might search. Ask yourself which questions might bring a user to your site, and how they will speak them aloud. What are the extra words, the ones that wouldn’t appear in a regular keyword search, and what information do they give you about the user’s intent on your site?

Make sure your site is set up to answer searchers’ questions

Once you’ve considered the types of questions a user might be asking, consider whether your site will satisfy those queries. Rob Kerry, in a presentation on the future of search at Ayima Insights, advised website owners to start integrating Q&A-style content into their sites in order to rank better for natural language searches and better satisfy the needs of users who are asking those questions.

Q&A-style content can also be excellent material for featured snippets, which is another great way to gain visibility on the search results page.

Develop content with a conversational tone

Because natural language queries reflect the way that people speak, they aren’t just longer but more colloquial. So consider if there are ways that you can create and incorporate content with a more conversational tone, to match this.

Use voice search!

One of the best ways to understand voice search, how it works and what kind of results it returns is to use it yourself. Search the questions you think might bring people to your site and see what currently ranks top, to get a sense of what works for others. Are there questions that aren’t being addressed, or answered very well? You can take this into account when creating content that is geared towards voice search.



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Facebook Fan Page vs. Profile: Know the Difference

Facebook, Twitter and other Silicon Valley giants agree to new hate speech rules


Some of the world’s largest technology companies have agreed to new EU regulations that mean they will have to take down hate speech within 24 hours of it being posted to their platforms. Of course, the comments will only be removed if they breach they are indeed actual hate speech, rather than a generally repugnant opinion. The move is also designed to curb the spread of terrorist propaganda online by ensuring that all comments are reviewed within a day of being flagged. The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech. Social…

This story continues at The Next Web

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Monday, 30 May 2016

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: ‘We know your dark secrets. We know everything.’


I had a chance to interview Reddit CEO Steve Huffman at our conference last week, which was interesting and a lot of fun. And when I asked Steve about monetization, or simply ‘making money’ he replied with what I thought was just a funny statement: We know all of your interests. Not only just your interests you are willing to declare publicly on Facebook – we know your dark secrets, we know everything… The community at Reddit was a bit more critical, and surprised, and the video of the interview quickly reached the #1 spot on the Reddit homepage and collected…

This story continues at The Next Web

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Friday, 27 May 2016

#SproutChat Recap: Navigating Social Advertising

Sure, many companies have massive followings, but that doesn’t mean their posts are guaranteed to secure a spot in a fan’s newsfeed. In order to reach a larger audience, social channels are giving brands the option to put ad dollars behind social posts. While these posts may be sponsored, in order to succeed, they still need to be as eye-catching and interesting as the cute cat photos that bombard your customer’s feeds.

There are many avenues to go down when considering which channels and types of social media advertising will resonate the most with the audience you’re trying to target. Deciding which options to purse can be overwhelming. This week, Sprout Social All StarAndrew Wasyluk, joined us for #Sproutchat to offer insights and best practices.

Remember That Content Matters

Getting your ad in front of your audience is one thing, but actually catching their attention in the newsfeed full of posts by friends and family is a different beast. Bright, colorful images paired with copy that’s concise and contains a clear call to action is a must.

If you have the resources, further engage your audience with a promoted video. Ensure the content is worth your viewer’s time and clearly defines or shows your product. You’d be remiss to get their focus, but not any engagement to lead to brand awareness, a click to your website or a sale.

Collect & Measure Data

Ads on social media are effective for driving traffic to your brand website. Be sure to build out each campaign so that you can measure the impact on brand awareness and sales. Google Analytics is a great place to start. Work with your colleagues to ensure the credit is attributed properly to social media advertising and to the appropriate campaign.

Apply Learnings to Future Campaigns

Pay attention to all of the factors in your social advertising campaign. Analyze the medium, audience, content and timing and then brainstorm to figure out which tweaks can help optimize your next campaign. This may take an investment of time and research, but it’s worth the impact. Utilizing A/B testing is a great route to see if any one singular component is adding or detracting from your goal.

Check out These Ads for Inspiration

These social media advertisements caught the attention of our #SproutChat community. See what you can emulate to engage and impact on your target audience.

We’ll see you next week on Wednesday, June 1 for #SproutChat with brand strategist and author Nick Westergaard to discuss how to get scrappy with digital marketing. Join our Facebook community to stay up to date on topics and discussion questions.

This post #SproutChat Recap: Navigating Social Advertising originally appeared on Sprout Social.



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LinkedIn’s chat stickers and GIFs are still (unsurprisingly) absolutely terrible


When you think social — and stickers — I bet LinkedIn is the last place you consider. There’s a good reason for that, too — they’re terrible. As a professional network, LinkedIn is either a handy tool or a necessary evil depending on your perception. Last Fall, LinkedIn tried hard to refresh its service to encourage more of us to use it without wanting to wretch. Part of that effort was a revamped messenger service for desktop and mobile, adding the ability to send GIFs and stickers like you can on Facebook Messenger. The problem is — they suck. A…

This story continues at The Next Web

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Five ways UX blends with SEO to improve a site’s performance

For many years there has been a debate on whether UX and SEO can really go hand in hand, but this is not the case anymore. Today we’re examining how UX and SEO can make the perfect match.

There’s no need to question nowadays the need to blend UX with SEO when building a website, as none of these two can stand on its own.

User Experience (UX) focuses on target groups of people and usually bases decisions on their design preferences, as well as the industry’s trends, while SEO tends to focus more on the actual site and its data, in order to increase the content’s visibility in search engines.

However, there is a spot that these two meet…

seo and ux

Google made it very clear in its Webmaster Guidelines that even in SEO optimisation, users should be the centre of attention:

Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.

And this is only a reminder on why SEO cannot work in isolation from other factors that affect a site’s performance, especially when the focus of the old days on keyword-stuffed topics is long gone.

Here are five points that remind us how UX can blend with SEO to improve a site’s performance:

1. Creating content for the user

Both UX and SEO should focus on the user and despite the older perception that SEO’s effectiveness depends on keyword and page optimisation, Google keeps reminding us to also think of the users when creating content.

It’s the human element that both users and search engines appreciate, as it indicates that the main goal is to satisfy the user, rather than the engine, although the latter will also favour the specific page in the ranking.

Whether it’s design or optimisation, the emphasis on the users’ needs help a page improve its performance and the audience will reward this effort with an increased time spent on the site.

2. Readability

Content should aim at relevance, quality and engagement, in order to become appealing and thus, convince the users to spend more time on it.

UX can enhance the appeal and the readability of a page and this may boost SEO, as the quality of the content is favouring a site’s crawlability from search engines.

Readability in SEO is the optimisation of the content in order to be clear, relevant, and informative, covering a topic as much as possible, in order to increase the page’s authority for search engines.

What’s more, keywords and on-page optimisation (even with the simplest steps) favour a post’s readability, providing that they are properly applied to enhance the browsing (and crawling) experience.

There’s no need to focus on target keywords anymore to increase the page’s ranking on SERPs, especially if it affects the quality of the content and its readability, as neither search engines, nor users will appreciate it.

Readability for UX is all about pleasing the users that access a page, ensuring that their first impressions will be positive.

A clear structure and a functional page, which works for all devices and browsers, contribute to an improved user experience and increase the chances of creating an engaged audience.

It’s the concise, legible, functional and properly formatted content that defines readability both for SEO and UX, with the combination of the two making a great match that users will enjoy.

3. Visual appeal

Visual content may contribute to the appeal of a page and both UX and SEO focus on its optimisation.

As human beings process visual elements faster than written information, images, videos and any other types of visual content are becoming important to the user experience.

In terms of SEO, visual content can be optimised to help search engines discover it and provide another way of leading traffic to your page through the rise of visual search engines.

User experience understands the importance of including visual content to a page, in order to increase its effectiveness, although it is very important to maintain the right balance, as visual content should not replace the actual text.

Moreover, both SEO and UX advocates agree that large images may affect the browsing experience, as they may disrupt the layout of a page and increase its load time.

Thus, always optimise your visual content, while keeping in mind the different devices, favouring both the desktop and the mobile experience.

4. Usability

ux-788002_960_720

It’s not just the design, but also the functionality of a page that affects the user experience.

An easy navigation allows users to further explore a page and and a proper menu functionality, internal link structure and clear navigation labels contribute to the time the users spend on a page and most importantly, they affect whether they will find what they’re looking for, which was the reason they initially clicked on the page.

What’s more, sitemaps are useful both for users and search engines, as they help the indexing, the navigation and the crawling of a site, which both SEO and UX want.

SEO and UX also agree on the importance of maintaining the right page speed, ensuring that heavy images, ads and faulty functionality won’t affect the time it takes to load a page. As users are becoming impatient with the loading speed of a site, it is critical to measure and improve the page speed, in order to keep the bounce rate as low as possible.

It is also important to test a page’s performance in all the browsers and the devices, aiming for a seamless experience for each user, with an additional focus on mobile users that keep increasing.

Furthermore, accessibility is also significant, both for SEO and UX, and it can be enhanced by ensuring that all pages are useful for readers with visual impairments, for example,  who use screen readers to navigate a page.

Is your content descriptive? Is the navigation checked? Are your images captioned?

5. Retain users

UX aims to provide the site experience that helps users browse and find relevant and informative content and the right navigation pattern can guide them to the next steps in an easy and simple way that seems effortless to them.

Navigation and user paths may ensure that you retain users on your site, and by the time this is achieved, it’s time to think about conversion.

Both SEO and UX should have the idea of conversion in mind, either by turning visitors into loyal users, by encouraging them to subscribe to an email newsletter, or by turning them into clients.

Don’t be afraid to create calls to action that will help the users know what you expect from them. After all, users prefer to have clear guidance, rather than being exposed to multiple options that may paralyse them.

You don’t have to create content by simply having the idea of conversion in mind, but still, it’s the ultimate goal to understand what your audience wants and blend a great browsing experience with your business goals.

How UX and SEO optimisation may enhance a site’s performance

It’s not necessarily complicated to blend SEO and UX to improve a site’s performance, and it’s even more important to understand why these two cannot work independently anymore, at least not with the same effectiveness.

It’s SEO that may lead traffic to the site and help it reach a higher position on SERPs, but it’s UX that will determine whether the traffic can be maintained and converted into the set goals.

Thus, every site trying to improve its performance through UX and SEO should offer:

  • Quality, informative, and relevant content
  • Easy to use structure and simple and effective navigation
  • Optimisation of text and images to please both users and search engines
  • Appealing design that focuses on accessibility
  • Clear call-to-action, both around the users’ next clicks, but also around the desired conversion


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Thursday, 26 May 2016

Why ecommerce sites should use both SEM and SEO for acquisition

It is well-known that in order to get a good return on investment in terms of marketing, online retailers need to be constantly in front of their customers. However, with the rise of online users, it is important these retailers adopt a multichannel approach.

Despite being similar in that SEM and SEO both aim to improve visibility through rankings on search engines, they do have significant differences.

SEM is a pay-per-click (PPC) service, while SEO improves ranking organically and does not involve paying for search results.

However, with Adobe’s recent Q4 Digital Advertising Report explaining that not only are CPCs in decline in Europe, but click-through rates are on the rise, all signs are pointing to a Paid Search orientated strategy.

Are retailers better off investing their money in SEM or their time in SEO? Let’s explore the arguments for each technique.

Why should ecommerce retailers use SEM?

Quick results

With SEM, results can be achieved relatively quickly. Of course, you will be required to make changes in the AdWords interface, however once this has been done, you can see results almost instantly.

With SEO on the other hand, you will need to implement a longer-term strategy and it can take time to reap the rewards of your efforts.

Better conversion rates

According to New Media Campaigns, PPC holds a slight edge in conversion rates as paid search results are 1.5 times more likely to convert click-throughs from the search engine.

Direct control over your visibility

Even with a significant amount of time invested into SEO, there is no guarantee that you will ever appear in the top spots on search results pages. While the same can almost be said for PPC, bidding plays a huge role in paid search campaigns and increasing your budget can take you so far in improving your visibility on search engines.

Few website optimisations

Although good website structure helps to improve your PPC ranking, it is not incremental to do so to achieve good paid search results. SEO on the other hand, requires that your website’s structure and content are optimised to achieve good results

Why use SEO as well as SEM?

While there are many arguments that may convince online retailers to rely on Paid Search, there are also many benefits to using SEO as well as SEM in their multi-channel strategies.

No direct additional costs

Besides your time and effort, SEO allows you to achieve results without any direct additional costs. SEM on the other hand, can obviously require a significant amount of investment, particularly for competitive keywords.

Organic results more likely to be clicked on

According to the same study by New Media Campaigns, organic results are 8.5 times more likely to be clicked on than paid search results!

Improve brand awareness

With organic results more likely to be clicked on, it is a no-brainer to invest in an SEO strategy. However, another added benefit is the possibility to improve brand awareness.

Presuming that you are able to successfully place your ads in paid search results, also appearing in organic results will help to reinforce your message and improve the visibility of your brand. Over time, the more your brand awareness increases, the more likely consumers are to trust your brand name.

A long-term strategy

It will take time and effort to properly optimise your website for search engines, but in the long term it will help bring you continuous website traffic for free.

Of course, you will need to be sure to keep up-to-date with the latest guidelines to ensure that you are not penalised and your efforts don’t end up going down the drain.

As you can see, there are many advantages to both SEO and SEM, however what is important to take away is that they are complementary techniques. Online retailers are generally encouraged to start by adopting both strategies.

For newly-launched businesses, SEM will accelerate brand awareness, as users start to recognise and trust your brand name. As a first step, it is wise to invest more into SEM while your SEO efforts get off the ground. You can then balance your investments once your organic visibility increases.

Mark Haupt is UK Sales Director at Twenga Solutions and a contributor to Search Engine Watch.



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How to write meta descriptions for SEO (with good and bad examples)

What is a meta description? How do you write one? Why are meta descriptions important? Do they actually help with search engine optimisation? What are some good and bad examples?

Following on from our incredibly popular guide 22 SEO essentials for optimising your site, I thought I’d follow up the advice on meta tags and answer all of the above questions.

If you just want a quick guide to optimising meta descriptions, click here to jump to the checklist section.

For the rest of you, first lets talk about meta tags in general:

What are meta tags

As Kristine Schachinger described in our previous guide to meta tags back in 2012, meta tags are HTML elements that provide information about a webpage for search engines and website visitors.

There are two elements that must be placed as tags in the <head> section of a HTML document. These elements are:

  • Title tag
  • Meta description

We’ve already discussed title tags in a separate post last week, and now you’ve mastered that skill, let’s move straight into meta descriptions.

What is a meta description?

The meta description is the short paragraph of text placed in the HTML of a webpage that describes its content. The meta description will then appear under your page’s URL in the search results. This is also known as a snippet.

guide to primavera sound 2016 Google Search

The meta description will also often appear when people share your articles across other websites and social channels.

Methods Unsound meta description on facebook

Where do I add the meta description?

You can add a meta description in the <head> section of your site’s HTML. It should look something like this:

<head>
<meta name=”description” content=”Here is a precise description of my awesome webpage.”>
</head>

You should have complete control of your meta description in your CMS, particularly if you’re using WordPress.

If you use an SEO plug-in, such as Yoast, you can add a meta description to the ‘meta description’ section, and you can preview an example of how it will look in search engine results pages (SERPs):

meta description example

 

Why is the meta description important?

A meta description can influence the decision of the searcher as to whether they want to click through on your content from search results or not. The more descriptive, attractive and relevant the description, the more likely someone will click through.

Are meta descriptions used as a ranking signal?

Google has stated that meta descriptions are NOT a ranking signal. But, again, the quality of the description will influence click-through rate, so it is very important to use this element wisely.

How to write a great meta description

Meta description checklist

  • Keywords: do make sure your most important keywords for the webpage show up in the meta description. Often search engines will highlight in bold where it finds the searchers query in your snippet.
  • Write legible, readable copy: this is essential. Keyword stuffing your meta description is bad and it doesn’t help the searcher as they’ll assume your result leads to a spammy website. Make sure your description reads like a normal, human-written sentence.
  • Treat the meta description as if it’s an advert for your web-page: make it as compelling and as relevant as possible. The description MUST match the content on the page, but you should also make it as appealing as possible.
  • Length: a meta description should be no longer than 135 – 160 characters long (although Google has recently been testing longer snippets). Any longer and search engines will chop the end off, so make sure any important keywords are nearer the front.
  • Do not duplicate meta descriptions: As with title tags, the meta descriptions must be written differently for every page. Google may penalise you for mass duplicating your meta descriptions.
  • Consider using rich snippets: by using schema markup you can add elements to the snippets to increase their appeal. For instance: star ratings, customer ratings, product information, calorie counts etc.

Good examples of meta descriptions

Here are a few examples of appealing meta descriptions that tick the above criteria.

‘best burgers in london’

Although the keywords are further down the description than perhaps they ought to be, the reason why this result is so appealing is the way the copy draws you in with emotive (and mouth-watering) language.

best burgers in london

‘captain america civil war review’

This contains markup to show the star rating, the meta description is short, snappy and best of all, contains a call to action.

captain america civil war review Google Search empire

‘meta descriptions’

Things really are getting too meta. Here Moz has managed to exactly describe what a meta description is, within its own meta description, which is terribly helpful. Although do note that the snippet is a lot longer than normally allowed by Google.

meta description Google Search moz

Bad examples of meta descriptions

‘best burgers in london’

I’m not really interested in the history of rubbish burgers in London, I want to know where to get a tasty burger now! This meta description also fails to include the ‘best’ keyword from its own title tag.

best burgers in london Google Search

‘captain america civil war review’

Although there is some rich snippet markup, the text is muddled and merely copies the title tag directly rather than offering a different enticement. It’s also far too long.

captain america civil war review Google Search

‘meta descriptions’

I’m not sure if there’s something blocking Google’s ability to crawl the webpage properly, but a website called ‘High Rankings’ should really know better than this…meta description bad Google Search



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Report: Twitter has stopped caring about ‘Buy’ buttons, just like the rest of us


Remember Twitter’s ‘Buy’ buttons? Turns out, they may be just a memory, according to a new report from BuzzFeed. Twitter is said to have moved most of the staff working on Buy to either its customer service or dynamic ads teams. Many others have left the company. A source on Twitter’s commerce team told BuzzFeed that our resistance to make purchases in apps is to blame: People are not buying on social media right now. They are still buying, for the most part, on mobile web. There’s still an active ‘Buy Now’ card at Twitter, but no one’s putting any…

This story continues at The Next Web

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Wednesday, 25 May 2016

How Jared Polin Uses a Long-Form Sales Page + Email Marketing to Sell His Paid Products

Have a growing audience and a solid content strategy? Congrats! You’re on your way to monetizing your business with paid products or services. So how exactly can you make that happen?

We talked to photographer Jared Polin, who makes a living from selling his photography guides to his 200K+ email subscribers and 500K+ YouTube followers.

In the first part of our case study with Jared, we covered his free content strategy, where he explained his process for creating content and driving traffic to it with email.

This time around, we wanted to know how he balances his free content with his paid content strategy. To do so, we’ll look at how he created valuable paid content for his ideal audience, the strategy behind his long-form sales page and how he uses email to drive traffic to his sales page and, well, make sales!

Sound good? Let’s get started.

Know your audience before you create paid content

When you’re asking your audience for their hard-earned cash in exchange for your content, you better make sure your content is worth their investment. The first step in developing valuable paid content is knowing your audience.

“98 percent of [my audience] is amateurs or hobbyists that love what they do and maybe want to make some money on the side,” he said. “I knew that was the largest area, so I may as well reach out to them because there are more of them. Professional photographers shouldn’t need that content. Continuing your education is important, but it’s a smaller market. It wouldn’t be smart to put out advanced guides because they’d have to be much more expensive.”

Since Jared’s audience is largely amateurs, it made sense to create a beginner’s video guide to photography that he could sell for a reasonable price. Like the rest of his video guides, Jared’s beginner’s guide is three hours long. And at $67 with a money-back guarantee, it provides a ton of value.

“It’s a three hour guide on getting out of auto-photography,” he said. “If you watch this guide, you’re going to get out of auto in three hours. It’s just going to happen. I learn from watching and seeing people doing. That’s how I like to teach, and those are the people who like watching my stuff.”

Takeaway: Want to create valuable content that your audience will actually pay for? Get to know your audience first, thoroughly address their challenges in your content and offer it at a reasonable price.

Create the best long-form sales page ever

Once you have your paid content created, you need an effective sales page that sings its benefits.

“The detailed sales pages are pretty important, Jared said. “You want to entice people.”

Jared’s long-form sales pages for his guides include a wealth of information including a teaser video, a comprehensive explanation of what you’ll get when you make a purchase, a bonus video, testimonials and a money-back guarantee. Phew!

Here’s a breakdown of Jared’s long-form sales page for his beginner’s guide.

He starts out with a video that details everything you’ll learn in his three-hour guide and includes call-to-action buttons at the top of the page.

Jared then takes the biggest benefits of his guide and explains more about why anyone should bother buying it. This includes a glimpse at his teaching style, which makes this guide unique: Jared is sharing his own secrets and techniques with his audience.

As if the three-hour video wasn’t enough, Jared includes a free plan for anyone looking to make money with their newfound photography skills.

Finally, Jared’s long-form sales page concludes with a testimonials section with details about his video guide has helped others.

“The detailed sales page is simple, Jared said. “I have info about what’s in the guide and testimonials, but first and foremost a video at the top of me telling you what’s in it. It’s a look inside the guide to give you taste. It’s like a movie trailer. You know enough and now you want to buy it. If not, return it if it doesn’t help you.”

How does Jared get people to land on his long-form sales page? His free content delivers the leads for him.

“I think a lot of people who do sales pages now buy traffic and try to make a sale off of cold traffic,” he said. “I try to cultivate the warm traffic. Even if I only put up a buy button, the warm traffic still may consider buying [my guide] because I’ve given so much value with the 2,100 free videos I have out there. They want to thank me by buying something.”

Takeaway: Creating a long-form sales page takes a lot of work, but if you’re selling a hefty informational product like Jared is, it could be the perfect solution for you. Learn more about creating effective long-form sales pages here.

Jared’s promotional emails in action

As we discussed in part one of our case study with Jared, email marketing plays a huge role in Jared’s product promotion strategy. He uses email to deliver free content to his subscribers well before he promotes a paid product. This strategy has helped him cultivate raving fans and sell more of his paid guides.

“I’ve had people purchase the video guides who don’t need them,” Jared said. “They say, ‘Because you’ve given us so much value over the years, the least I could do is thank you by buying your video guide.’”

Once a new subscriber opts into Jared’s email list, he serves them with about a week’s worth of free content. His subscribers get updates on Jared’s blog, podcast and new videos on his YouTube channel.

After that, he’ll occasionally promote his paid guides to his subscribers. Here’s how he promotes his beginner’s guide using email. Notice how he describes the benefits of buying his guide so that his subscribers know exactly what they’ll get if they buy it.

Here’s how Jared promotes his beginner’s guide along with one of his most recent videos.

Recently, Jared launched a new paid guide: FroKnows Photo Guide to Video Editing. To drum up excitement and get more sales, he ran a limited-time sale on the guide. Those who didn’t buy the guide right away received this email with a countdown clock and a detailed list of reasons why they should purchase the guide.

Jared has consistently seen results from this email strategy, time and time again.

“We know that it works,” he said. “We created a four-email sequence with a countdown timer and say what people have learned and here’s what you could learn. The last email that goes out four to six hours before the sale ends crushes it really hard because it has the countdown timer saying that it’s ending. We see sales happen because of that.”

Takeaway: Only promote your products or services after you deliver plenty of free content. Once you do promote your paid content, lead with the biggest benefits and explain in detail what your paid content has to offer.

Ready to promote your paid products?

There are few things that can elevate the sales of a paid product, like a long-form sales page and email marketing. If you’re selling a paid guide like Jared Polin, this strategy could be a winning solution for you.

Want to learn more about writing emails that sell? Check out the What to Write in Your Emails to learn how to write effective promotional emails, autoresponders, curated email newsletters and more.

The post How Jared Polin Uses a Long-Form Sales Page + Email Marketing to Sell His Paid Products appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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#SproutChat Recap: How to Analyze Your Competitors

Successful professionals often promote the importance of focusing on your own company’s marketing efforts rather than those of your competitors. Sure, this is true to an extent, but–in order to stay relevant and remain successful, you should be keeping tabs on what other brands in your industry are doing. This week at #SproutChat, we discussed how to analyze your competitors and shared our tactics on how to be the business your audience chooses.

Use Smart Research to Find Your Competitors

For established industries with large brands that hold most of the market share, determining who your competitors are might not be necessary. But, for many small to medium sized businesses, smart research is crucial. Use keyword search tools and quantitative measurements on social to see who your customers are considering alongside your product or service.

Make private lists on Twitter or Facebook to easily reference what type of product updates and content your competitors are posting. Since social content is constantly updating, establishing a system to check in frequently is key. Gain insights for your own brand by noting which competitor campaigns outperform others.

Don’t Invest in Every Network Your Competitor Is On

Just because your competition has embraced a specific social network, doesn’t necessarily mean you should invest in it too. Consider your team’s bandwidth and budget before pursuing an active presence on a new social channel. Look at your existing audience’s demographics and habits to determine if the network your competitor is on would be a good fit for your company.

Find the Value in the Data

Establish an internal workflow and pull as much data around your competitors as you can. Tools like BuzzSumo and Sprout Social can provide analytics and help provide benchmarks for your own social communities. When running any competitive analysis, go beyond vanity metrics to get a better grasp on how engaged your competitor’s customers and community really are.

Sprout’s ultimate guide on competitive analysis and Seer Interactive’s IFTTT recipes are great resources and can help your brand get started.

Join us every Wednesday for #SproutChat to discuss social media marketing and community building topics. Stay posted on weekly topics and discussion questions via our Facebook community. See you next time!

This post #SproutChat Recap: How to Analyze Your Competitors originally appeared on Sprout Social.



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The 11 Best Free Email Marketing Tools

Meet Team Sprout: Arnita, Senior Product Manager

10 creative ways to keep your social media images looking fresh


Consistently posting high-quality content is the lifeblood of a great social media strategy. But it’s easier said than done. Not only do you have to post consistently to gain traction, the content has be to timely, relevant to your audience, and engaging. Social media is for conversations after all, not megaphones. Whether it’s a plane in the Hudson River or a crying boy hugging a police officer, social images are unique in their ability to communicate so much information in just a snapshot of time. And social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest have built-in features to make it incredibly…

This story continues at The Next Web

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Tuesday, 24 May 2016

New in Your AWeber Account: Curate, Import Tagging and More!

Not too long ago, we announced more than a few exciting AWeber updates: The ability to edit a scheduled broadcast, draggable rows in Message Editor, and of course, tagging in sign up forms (among many others!).

We’re always working to update and improve the AWeber product. Today, we’re stoked to announce even more updates in your AWeber account. Check out the video above to see all of our recent updates in action!

Curate

The AWeber team is beyond excited to bring you our new app: Curate by AWeber. It’s the email newsletter app that lets you send beautiful, curated email newsletters.

Why send curated email newsletters? It’s a fast and easy way to deliver value to your subscribers as a stand-alone strategy or to supplement your current email campaigns. It solves the “What do I write in my emails?” problem and saves you a ton of time.

To use Curate, all you have to do is save the articles you want to share to the app and personalize your content. Curate will automatically format it into a curated email newsletter. Download Curate and give it a try!

Import tagging

Want to kick off a campaign to your imported subscribers? You can now apply tags to your imported subscribers, or import tags you have associated with your subscribers from your old email service to start a campaign just for them.

Cross-list copying

Have a message that you want to reuse with multiple lists? You can now copy that message to any list. Just go to the draft you want to copy and select a list from the drop-down menu under “Copy to List.”

What do you want to see next?

All of our updates are based on feedback from customers like you. Now tell us: what would you like to see next in your AWeber account? Tell us in the comments below!

Not an AWeber customer yet? Start your 30-day free trial today!

The post New in Your AWeber Account: Curate, Import Tagging and More! appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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[Podcast] Episode 023: Getting scrappy with your digital marketing with Nick Westergaard

On this episode of Ask Me About Email Marketing, we chat with writer, podcaster, speaker and brand strategist Nick Westergaard to get his take on the current landscape of digital marketing. Nick shares with us actionable insights on how to build a strategy, connect your digital dots, and get the most out of your limited time and resources.

Nick’s latest book, Get Scrappy: Smarter Digital Marketing for Businesses Big and Small, offers a fresh perspective on how to develop a multi-channel marketing strategy, whether you are a solopreneur, or on a large team at a big business.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • The essence of scrappy digital marketing
  • How to do more with less
  • Why email marketing is very much still ‘alive’
  • How businesses of all sizes could benefit from asking the right questions
  • Tips for repurposing content for email
  • The value of curated content
  • … and much more!

Take a listen above and let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Here are a few links that were mentioned in the post:

Click here to download this episode directly. (MP3)

Have a question about email marketing? Leave us a message at aweber.com/podcast.

The post [Podcast] Episode 023: Getting scrappy with your digital marketing with Nick Westergaard appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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Google AdWords launches new features for mobile ads and maps

Google has introduced new tools and features to AdWords to specifically address the consumer shift towards mobile.

The changes and additions have been announced at today’s Google Performance Summit, and include expanded description lines, responsive display ads to fit different devices and formats, more customized bidding options, and pilot features for Google Maps which allow advertisers to introduce more information about their businesses.

Of the trillions of searches made on Google every year, more than half now happen on a mobile phone. Google has also found that more than half of all web traffic comes from smartphones and tablets.

What has been announced? Here’s a glimpse of some of the announcements made at today’s Google Performance Summit.

1. Expanded text ads for a mobile-first world

In February, Google removed right-hand side ads on desktop to improve consistency across devices. In line with that move, Google has optimized its offerings around the screen sizes of the most popular smartphones.

Later this year, prominent headlines in AdWords will increase from one 25-character header, to two 30-character headers, giving advertisers more room to explain their products and services before the consumer clicks on the link.

The description line will also increase from two 35-character description lines to one consolidated 80-character description line.

Currently, if a manually entered display URL does not match final and landing page URLs, they are disapproved. Under the change, domains will automatically be extracted from the final URL to ensure accuracy and the URL path can be customized.

Google Performance Summit_Table[3]_600

Google says these upgrades will be especially relevant for advertisers wanting to reach the “on-the-go mobile consumer” who wants to know exactly what products and services are available before tapping into a website.

Based on early testing, some advertisers have reported increases in click-through rates of up to 20% compared to current text ads, says Sridhar Ramaswamy, senior vice president, ads and commerce, Google.

2. Responsive display ads

Consumers on mobile are now engaging with content from mobile sites, from apps and from video. But for marketers, there is an ongoing challenge to create ads to fit across all these device sizes and formats.

Google’s new tool – responsive ads for display – are designed to help advertisers develop ads to counter the diverse content, shapes, and sizes across the more than two million publisher sites and apps on the Google Display Network (GDN).

It’s an important move because advertisers no longer have to resize display ads depending on the site or device they showed up on. Headlines, a description, an image, and a URL will be enough for Google to now automatically design the responsive ads.

Google_Display ads for a mobile-first world_600Google says the new tool allows advertisers to access new native inventory to engage consumers with ads that match the look and feel of the content they are already browsing.

It is also extending the reach of GDN remarketing campaigns by giving marketers access to cross-exchange inventory to reach more websites and apps around the world.

3. Bidding for a mobile-first world

AdWords will soon allow advertisers to set individual bid adjustments for each device type (mobile, desktop and tablet). Previously, the process was more manual with each device embedded into ad campaigns through Google’s Enhanced Campaigns tool.

Now, advertisers will be able to “anchor” a base keyword bid to the device most valuable to a business and then set bid adjustments for each of the other devices. Bids can be adjusted up to +900%.

4. Connecting online and offline with mobile

Particularly relevant for marketers is Google’s findings that location-related mobile searches are growing 50% faster than all other mobile searches. The platform says nearly one third of all mobile searches made on Google are today related to location.

“It’s clear that consumers are moving seamlessly between online and offline experiences. So it’s important to help marketers think this way too,” says Ramaswamy.

The search platform is introducing new local search ads across Google.com and Google Maps to reach consumers as they search for physical business locations.

For example, when using location extensions, advertisers will be able to prominently showcase their business locations when consumers search for things like “shoe store” or “car repair near me.” In this example, “Smog Check.”

Google_Adwords_Maps_Purple Icon feature_400

This is in a testing phase, and currently not a permanent change.

Google Maps

New features on Google Maps will also allow businesses to develop more branded, customized experiences in two ways.

1. Google is experimenting with a variety of ad formats on Maps to make it easier for users to find businesses around them. For example, a Map user could see promoted pins for nearby coffee shops or gas stations along their driving route. Here’s an example of the new promoted pins:

Google_Maps_Promoted Pins_400

2. Local businesses can now include more detail about their businesses such as special offers or product offerings. Here is what the new business page will look like:

Google_Maps_Business page_400

These latest offerings from Google AdWords reinforce the need for all businesses to understand the importance of mobile. Consumers have already made this shift, and businesses are now playing catch up.

“As consumers live their lives online and blur the lines between online and offline, it’s more important than ever to build business for mobile,” says Ramaswamy.

*Featured image courtesy of Google AdWords

*Featured image courtesy of Google AdWords



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