Sophia Bernazzani says, “Has a celebrity ever convinced you to buy something? It’s okay if the answer is yes — we’ve all been there. In fact, just recently, a famous dog helped convince me to purchase a GoPro camera. For a creature who can’t speak, he’s a pretty effective marketer. Loki the Wolfdog’s Instagram post is a successful example of influencer marketing, which involves developing relationships with influential personalities to promote your brand to the influencer’s audience. Loki the Wolfdog has over 1 million Instagram followers GoPro may not have otherwise been... [...]

Todd Saunders says, “As advertisers, we can’t afford to ignore data in our decision-making. Since you probably just sighed a little bit or rolled your eyes at that sentence, here are four facts that reveal why ignoring data is like ignoring the fact that you are currently on fire: 1. Online advertising is getting more competitive Since AdWords and other PPC platforms are auction marketplaces, or “pay to play” channels, more players means more money needed to play. Each year, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC releases their “Internet Advertising Revenue Full-Year Report,”... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “The big news coming out of Google’s AMP Conf in New York is that the mobile framework is set to roll out to a billion more people in Asia. Chinese search engines Baidu and Sogou are adopting AMP; so is Yahoo Japan. Google’s VP of Search and AMP lead David Besbris gave the morning keynote address and made the announcement. The addition of these Asian search engines will mean a billion more people potentially using AMP. AMP launched in October 2015 and since that time has seen significant publisher and developer adoption. There are hundreds of millions of AMP-enabled... [...]

Jody Resnick says, “For owners and managers of SMBs, taking time to understand the intricacies of search engine optimization (SEO) can seem unnecessary.  However, leveraging the latest digital marketing tactics is important to your bottom line. Here are five relatively simple SEO tactics that can help you achieve your revenue goals. 1. Write original content You’ve probably heard this before, but it’s certainly worth reiterating:  make sure your website content is original and well written. Duplicating someone else’s content is not only unethical, it will hurt your Google rankings.... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Google began notifying Google Trusted Stores merchants last week that the program will soon wind down. In its place will be Google Customer Reviews. The change was first reported by Exclusive Concepts. Google Customer Reviews Like Google Trusted Stores, the new program is also free, but it is not a certification program. Google Customer Reviews collects reviews on behalf of advertisers from customers after they purchase and receive their orders. Google Customer Reviews will be managed through Google Merchant Center. When it becomes widely available, according to an update... [...]

Tony Edward says, “Google’s Knowledge Graph is a very prominent part of organic search results. By now, searchers are accustomed to seeing the panel that appears on the right side of the search result page that provides information about entities such as people, places and brands. Individuals and companies alike are striving to acquire, maintain and monitor a Knowledge Graph listing. At the moment, however, there is no easy way to report on Knowledge Graph performance and changes. In 2016, Google’s John Mueller did mention that links in Knowledge Graph panels would be counted in the... [...]

Danny Sullivan says, “Here we are again. Google’s in hot water because of what I call its “One True Answer” feature, where it especially highlights one search listing over all others as if that’s the very best answer. It’s a problem because sometimes these answers are terribly wrong. When Google gets facts wrong At the end of last month, Google was spotted listing several US presidents as being members of the Ku Klux Klan, even though there’s no conclusive evidence of any of this. What’s happening there is called a “featured snippet,” where Google has taken one of... [...]

Christi Olson says, “Google announced they now let you search using sequences of two or three special characters, something many coders do when looking for programming help in search. So now you can go to Google and search for technical queries such as [== vs ===] and [+=]. Google gave the example, if you’re searching for the meaning of [c++17], you will get results for the well-known programming language instead of c17, which brings up a Boeing airplane. Google also made it better for organization and product names that include punctuation. So for companies name She++ and Notepad++, Google... [...]

Danny Sullivan says, “If you are using the Google-backed Accelerated Mobile Pages, there appears to be an excellent chance that those AMP pages are not being tracked correctly, if you use Google Analytics. Christian Oliveira, a technical SEO consultant, posted a long, technical explanation of the issues AMP is giving with proper tracking in Google Analytics. Malte Ubi, Google’s technical lead for the AMP project, confirmed the problems and that they have no easy solution, in tweets today. In summary, Oliveira found that: – A unique visitor potentially can be reported as up to four... [...]

Andrew Waber says, “E-commerce-focused advertisers can be segmented into two categories based on their strategic goal — whether they’re focused on maximizing returns during specific periods (e.g., a chocolatier during Valentine’s Day, Easter or Mother’s Day) or looking to drive purchases at a more consistent rate throughout the year (e.g., an online furniture retailer). Of course, even when operating in one of these larger strategic buckets, all e-commerce advertisers practice some version of a hybrid model. Very event-focused advertisers still will spend modest amounts to attract... [...]