Barry Schwartz says, “Google has confirmed to Search Engine Land that they are experimenting with a new feature in the search results. I happened to stumble upon a search results snippet in Google that showed “tags” within the snippet. The unusual part of this was that the “tags” didn’t offer any additional functionality. Google would list “tags” relevant to the page content in the actual search results listing snippets. You were not able to filter by those tags, click on them or anything. It just listed “tags” in the snippets without showing you anything more”. Google... [...]

Kevin Lee says, “One age-old question that often comes up when I chat with new prospects or new clients is, “Should I bid on my brand terms or generic terms where I rank in the top three organically?” This question is hardly trivial. It matters a great deal because PPC search budgets are generally constrained — and now, with other enticing options available from Facebook and other programmatic channels, we need to demonstrate that our search advertising budgets are being allocated optimally. Six key questions to ask before you begin The best way to answer this question is by using... [...]

Nate Dame says, “Last month, Google released a video detailing best practices for hiring an SEO company, and it is positioned to become the go-to guide for hiring an SEO. After all, who better to tell companies what they should look for in an SEO than the operators of the world’s most popular search engine? The advice in the video is useful, but it’s biased and incomplete — like so much of the information the company distributes. For example, Ohye states that valid recommendations from an SEO must be corroborated by official Google statements, but the search giant frequently declines... [...]

Hermas Ma says, “The breaking news came on March 7, 2017, that Baidu is now supporting Google’s mobile framework, AMP. The tech leader of Baidu MIP, Gao Lei, gave a speech at Google’s first AMP conference in New York. He confirmed that Baidu is working hand-in-hand with Google to accelerate the faster web globally. Baidu MIP, which stands for Mobile Instant Pages, is Baidu’s own version of Google’s AMP. The technologies of MIP are very similar to AMP. In fact, coding an MIP page is just like coding an AMP page, except MIP pages are more customized and optimized for the browsers... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Google has been ramping its efforts to tie clicks on ads to store traffic. On Wednesday, the search giant said it has now captured over four million store visits after users have clicked on an ad, up from one billion a little less than a year ago, and is set to rapidly expand that number. In September, Google extended the now two-year old store visits measurement program to ads on the Display Network and said it had statistically significant visibility into visits to 200 million stores globally. The company says it is now positioned to make store visits data available... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Sistrix, an SEO toolset data collection company, published their analysis of the Google Fred update after reviewing “nearly 300 domains.” Their analysis describes the sites and pages that were hit like this: “…advertisement, outdated, thin and scraped content, as well as incomprehensible articles made up of 300 word ‘SEO texts’ pumped to the brim with main keyword mentions and void of any useful information or a sense of readability.” They have confirmed our analysis of Fred, where we said low value content sites were hit by this update. Juan Gonzalez from... [...]

Brian Wood says, “Title tags are a meaningful on-page ranking factor and are among the most influential factors in determining click-through rate (CTR) from search engine results pages. Higher CTR not only drives more traffic immediately, it also improves organic rankings when combined with good on-site metrics. Title tag CTR is also difficult to test: it requires a large number of pages that drive a lot of organic visits, and a pretty big chunk of time — usually around two months to give Google time to index all the pages in the test and then collect enough data to have statistically... [...]

Megan Hannay says, “Just last October at the Street Fight Summit, many marketers ranked voice search as the most “over-hyped” marketing tactic of the year. I think this is because many of them aren’t seeing the full scope of the technology. We’re putting on our consumer brains and thinking about the current awkwardness of speaking to Siri in public, not of a future inside self-driving cars or those moments when we just don’t want to get up from the couch. Currently, most voice searches happen on mobile phones. But within the next few years, it seems likely that devices with... [...]

Julie Joyce says, “When it comes to being unlinkable, there’s a lot more to consider besides boring content, poor quality writing and low-end design. Of the many issues that could cause users not to want to link to your content, here are four major ones that I see all the time: intrusive intersitials, gated content, excessive pagination and avant-garde design. You can find someone to argue for and against all four of these barriers, and I’d probably see some of those points in the last three cases, but I’m not sure much can change my mind about interstitials. Intrusive interstitials It’s... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Google announced updates to AdWords Dynamic Search Ads on Tuesday, including support for expanded text ads. Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) will transition to expanded text ads through April, bringing them in line with search and display campaigns. Google is introducing a new solution for DSAs called page feeds. Page feeds consist of two columns: Page URL and Custom Label. The feeds enable advertisers to designate exactly which landing pages to include in a DSA campaign. There are several benefits and use cases for page feeds, such as these: If advertisers only want DSAs... [...]