You’ll Never Guess What Google Did: Google Livestream Recap

You’ll Never Guess What Google Did: Google Livestream Recap

Google did it again. Yesterday, Google announced their latest and greatest release in AdWords and Analytics 360 Suite for a mobile-first world.

If you were unable to sit in on Google’s Livestream announcement, here are the major PPC takeaways:


1. Longer Ad texts are coming! Get ready to revamp your ad copies in the next couple of months.       Although Google has not revealed a date for the expanded text ads, Google is already rolling out the beta. However, I have a hunch it will be publicly released this July.

With the Expanded Text Ads, the ad copies will include two 30 character headlines and one 80-character length description line.

Google’s product team predicts a 20% increase in CTR due to the shift to longer text ads. So get ready!

2. For get about bidding up or down on the devices campaign settings tab! Google is rolling out with device bidding, which will enable you to have bid modifiers for desktop, mobile, and tablet up to +900%. 

Keep your eyes peeled for this feature, as it will change the way you roll out a mobile-first strategy in the near future! Once Tandem Interactive’s PPC team gets their hands on these devices bid modifiers, our team will be following up with personal findings.Keep your eyes peeled for this feature, as it will change the way you roll out a mobile-first strategy in the near future! Once Tandem Interactive’s PPC team gets their hands on these devices bid modifiers, our team will be following up with personal findings.

3. The experience of AdWords is going to be revolutionized as a whole. Tandem Interactive got a live, sneak peek into the future AdWords layout and let’s just say…Google has yet to meet their match. 

Google is constantly keeping up with both the demands of online marketers and consumers. For those who are in the AdWords and Analytics interfaces daily, you will have more information accessible on user-friendly and visually appealing charts. I know that the entire PPC nerd squad at Tandem is just itching to get their hands on this new interface!

Not to mention, the teasing new rollout of Google Data Studio 360. If you are a PPC guru like the Tandem PPC team, you pull charts monthly, weekly, or even daily and can’t afford the manual labor or headaches from non-OCD formatted reports, you will just die for the new Data Studio 360. The Data Studio 360 enables you to create the most amazing dashboards that are easily shareable. You can pull from several compatible data sources and quickly collaborate with several members of your team. 

Yes, Google has been saying “mobile is the next big thing” for the past couple of years. And we get it Google, everyone has a phone that never leaves their side. Mobile phones are the first thing we reach for in the morning and mobile phones are the last thing you put down at night (unless you wear glasses then second to last). So, it is time for in-house PPC managers and PPC management agencies, to begin efforts to lead with a mobile-first strategy! Mobile is no longer “the next big thing”, mobile is here, mobile is now, and mobile is the most used device for all of the where, what, when, why, and how moments that people are searching for.

“There are trillions of searches on Google and over half of those searches happen on mobile” – Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President - Google

Google Explains How to Rank in Local Search

To further prove that local search is becoming more popular in the digital marketing realm, our digital marketing team at Tandem Interactive has recently learned that Google has expanded their help page on how to rank in local search.

To help you better understand what Google currently considers when providing local search results, we have put together the following overview of how to improve your local ranking according to the Google Support Team:

Ranking in the “Local 3-Pack"

• In order to rank in the local 3-pack, Google encourages local businesses to have as much listing information complete and correct as possible on their Google My Business page.

• Steps should be taken to assure your Google My Business page is verified and published.

• Be sure to complete your business’ listing description using relevant geographically-targeted keywords. Use keywords that will likely match what and where your potential customer is searching for on Google.

•  Distance will still be taken into account by Google. If a user doesn’t use a specific location in his or her search, Google will display local search results according to what it knows about the user’s current location.

• Google will likely display prominent locations in its local search results according to a place’s popularity and what is being said about that place across the internet.

• Online reviews will likely be taken into account when listing local search results by Google. Therefore, local businesses with more reviews and positive ratings will probably have a better position in local search results than businesses with fewer and/or negative ratings.

To learn more about how to rank in Local Search and Local Search Engine Optimization, contact our online marketing firm in Fort Lauderdale, Tandem Interactive, today.

How You Write Content Matters

It is no shocker that when I tell people I am a content writer, the first thing they say is, “Wow you must be a great writer.” While most people think this is true, I actually do not consider myself an amazing writer.  In college, I took many English writing classes and while I did enjoy them, I also got a lot of B’s and numerous side comments from professors on ways to word things better. It was a constant struggle until one of my teachers mentioned that my writing just needs to flow and not sound so formal.

I took these words into consideration. I have never been good at telling stories, which my two year old can attest to, but most of my content writing was informational and sadly robotic.  How you write content matters in the same way how you speak to people matters. Many business owners and individuals do not take the proper time to create great content because they just don’t think about it. And in the world of the internet, content is all we see.

We are building human connections with the words we type. Creative, human-like content writing is providing a big impact on how we as humans feel about certain things, people, and even products. There are many reason why startups, app developers, tech companies, and retailers hire content writers for their business. More importantly, content needs to come from writers who write more like a human than a robot. If this is a struggle for you, Tandem Interactive has some ways to help you write like the human that you are.

• Read your content out loud. Embrace your language and pay attention to what your consumers are saying. Ask yourself simple questions like:
                               
                                 -Does this sound like something a human would say?
                                 -Is this clear?
                                 -How would someone feel if I said this out loud?

• Throw out all the complicated MBA language you learned in college, along with all the unnecessary industry standard terminology that the average human needs a glossary to understand.

• Think about how your consumers speak, and how your family and friends talk to each other; do your best to write like how people speak to each other in real life.

So, does content writing really matter? It does to those who are searching for an answer; after all, you want to ensure that your answer is the one that attracts the consumers.

Increasing your Email Newsletter Subscriptions Like a Pro!

Have you ever gone to a website where they ask you to sign up for a newsletter or email promotion, but there’s no incentive? You probably just do like the rest of us and exit out of that website, and immediately find another that does not require your email to deliver what you want – right? So, how can you increase your newsletter subscriptions? OFFER INCENTIVE!

If someone commits to allowing you to basically spam their inbox and send them all of your promotions, they should be rewarded – and they want to be!

The number one way to increase newsletter subscriptions is to offer an incentive to sign up!

Top performing newsletter subscriptions are ones that offer vouchers like $10 off a $75 purchase, or percent discount like 20% off your first order.

For new brands and sites that sell apparel that is not well-known, or for energy drink or supplement companies, offer a free t-shirt.

Educational sites where consumers are coming in to acquire additional knowledge, offer a free eBook version of one of your high-demand pieces. You can also offer something relevant to your audience when asking them to sign their life away with your newsletter subscription.

Own a vacation website, travel site, or cruise line? Offer the chance to enter into a raffle to “Win a Trip!”

NEXT…

Tell them exactly what they will get when they sign up for your brand’s newsletter subscription. Let them know what they can expect to get out of it, and they will be more inclined to sign up. The more perks and benefits there are opposed to NOT signing up will entice them to do so.

As a business and a brand, you should 100% know your top performing products and show them as visuals when offering incentives for people to sign up for your newsletter.

Online marketingagencies in Fort Lauderdale, Florida recommend that you also position your newsletter signup form based on visitor behavior. Pop-up signups are typical for retail sites, but if your newsletter and brand are more informational, your consumer is going to test it out on your site first since they don’t know what to expect.

• Once they see that you are reputable and serve their purpose, position your newsletter signup prompt lower in the layout hierarchy.
• Place more important calls to action higher on the page, such as Recommended Articles.

Creating segments is another way to allow your readers to choose what they would like to receive information on.

• If they read an article, prompt them to sign up to receive more pieces on the subject.
• During the newsletter signup process, allow them to select certain categories they would like to receive email notifications on, etc.

Bragging Rights. Show your users how popular your newsletter is and specify the number of people who have signed up so far. Something along the lines of “Join over 100,000 Marketing Professionals,” or share the amount that people have saved, like “Subscribers have saved $1,000,000 in discounts.”

It’s all about the DETAILS. Using bright details, graphics, and animations are attention-grabbing and they have a psychological effect on your consumers to sign up. By giving them an experience, they will be more likely to want to see more.

No Form Required. Top online marketing agencies in Fort Lauderdale say that by NOT making your consumer have to fill out a form or type in their email address, you can save them time and headache. Let’s face it – consumers are pretty lazy these days. Upworthy adopted a newsletter signup concept that used to be popular in the 90s, where a simple click on “one-click subscription” opens their email app and has an email already generated, and prompts consumers to simply hit “send” and be done! Bada-bing, bada-boom!

Now, you should never have to ask “how can I increase my newsletter subscriptions?” ever again :)

March Social Media Updates You Need Know About

This coming March is going to be filled with plenty of new developments in the social media world for internet marketers.

Some have been in the works for months, and some have seemingly come out of the blue; regardless, these are the March social media updates you need to know about. 

Facebook introduces WordPress plugin for Instant Articles.

Combine the powers of the leading social media network and the reach of a blog platform giant, and you have the WordPress plugin for Instant Articles on Facebook.

This upcoming April 12^th, Instant Articles will be available to all publishers via a WordPress plugin. The plugin has already been tested with “a small group of publishers” on WordPress, and will allow publishers using standard WordPress templates to activate the plugin off the shelf. Consequently, users who prefer further customization will be able to extend the plugin to support any other element they want.

Pinterest Ads Manager opens up businesses of all sizes.

Pinterest Ads Manager is now available to all small and medium sized businesses, allowing all to schedule Promoted Pins.

This announcement made such big waves due to the fact that Nipoon Malhotra, an ads product lead, shared that companies who have already used Pinterest Ads Manager have seen a 20 percent increase in clicks, all within a month of starting their campaigns. Pair Pinterest Ads Manager with interest, keyword, and customer database targeting, and you have a game-changing social media update on your hands.

Facebook’s Atlas adds video-ad serving and two new measurement tools.

Video-ad serving and two new measurement tools are being added to Facebook’s Atlas, their new ad serving and measurement platform.

According to Dave Jakubowski, Facebook’s head of advertising technology, video ad serving via the Atlas platform will be “broadly available” by the end of the month. With this, advertisers will be able to understand if their online ads are influencing offline purchases through two new measurement tools. The first measurement tool from Atlas, offline actions, will tie offline sales to online ad spend. Path to conversion, the second measurement tool, will provide insight into the multiple devices that users see ads on before pulling the trigger on a purchase. 

SEO Myths Busted

 

When it comes to SEO, it seems everyone in the digital marketing space has an opinion. And with hundreds of ranking factors affecting Google’s algorithm, it isn’t hard to see why. While we can all agree on the basics (i.e. quality content, good; spammy backlinks, bad), there are several ideas that can cause a good-natured SEO argument. 

For instance, was Mobilegeddon really much ado about nothing? Do search engines always listen to a site’s Robots.txt? What happens when backlinks are removed? Let’s take a dive into some hotly debated SEO tactics and myths.

Mobilegeddon

Ahhhhhh, Mobilegeddon: last year’s Y2K for SEOs. There was chatter, then panic, and then…no real consequence, right? Well, according to the latest research, Mobilegeddon was, in fact, pretty profound. 

 

Google released its mobile update last April, which was supposed to favor mobile-friendly sites in the search results. Initially, there wasn’t much movement in traffic, and webmasters let out a collective sigh of relief. But according to Stone Temple, non-mobile-friendly sites began to suffer lower rankings as time went on. Google likely rolled out the update slowly, so the full impact of the update wasn’t felt until later. 

The lesson learned here? Wake up, and make sure your site is mobile-friendly! 

The effect of outbound links

It’s a widely held belief in the SEO community that linking to other sites dilutes a website’s PageRank and authority. After you finally get a user to your site, why tempt them to leave, right? Not so fast.

Google’s main mission is to provide users with the information they’re seeking. So if your website helps Google achieve its goal, they’re pretty happy. Providing users with relevant, high-value links to other sites makes sense, and it can also help your rankings.

To prove this point, our friends across the pond at RebootOnline (←see what I did there) conducted an experiment. They created 10 websites with similar domain names, site architecture, and an article optimized for a word they made up that returned no results in Google’s SERPS. They placed three follow outbound links to other highly authoritative sites to half of their experiment sites. And what happened? You guessed it. Those sites ranked higher for their made up word than the sites without outbound links. 

The takeaway? Incorporate outbound links that are authoritative and useful to your readers!

Robots.txt and noindex meta tags

A well-configured robots.txt is on every SEO checklist. But just because you created one and submitted it to search engines doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to listen. It’s more of a suggestion.

That’s also true for the “noindex” meta tag. While a robots.txt is supposed to stop a page from being index and crawled, a noindex meta tag is only supposed to stop a page from being indexed. But this doesn’t always happen.

 

What’s the point? Don’t rely too heavily on spiders listening to your directions in a robots.txt or noindex meta tag.

Link echoes

Backlinks have a huge impact on SEO and organic rankings. That’s why SEOs spend so much time acquiring quality links, disavowing spammy ones, and developing top-notch link strategies. But have you ever wondered (or noticed) what happens to a site’s rankings after a particularly good or bad link is removed? Do all of its positive or negative effects get erased too? 

 

It’s been theorized that Google tracks links even after they’re removed. Sound crazy? Maybe. But a Moz team took this idea and ran with it. They pointed links to websites, watched their positions increase, and then removed the very links that increased the websites’ rankings. The sites’ positions didn’t change much at all, and they stayed static for several months after the links were removed. Moz ran several tests to eliminate any tricky variables, and the results remained the same.

So what does this mean? Links are incredibly influential and their impact is not easily removed. So take your time when link building, because your strategy will affect your site well into the future.

Organic search is always changing, and as SEOs, it’s our job to stay on top of developing trends, tactics and updates. While there is almost always room for debate, we hope Tandem Interactive answered a few questions and settled a few friendly SEO arguments.

Moz Local’s New My Business Console Tool

Behold, My Business Console, a new feature created by the engineers at Moz that will make importing locations from Google My Business to Moz Local even easier!

Why the Added Feature?

If you’re like our Local SEO experts here at digital marketing agency, Tandem Interactive, you’re familiar with uploading Google My Business locations to Moz Local via the CSV upload process. For bulk submissions, you would simply export the CSV file from your Google My Business dashboard and upload to your Moz Local account. However, this process was extremely hands-on and therefore prone to errors.

How it Works

Starting this week, users can import bulk listings from Google My Business by selecting “Import Listings” via the “Add Listings” button. This feature will link your Google My Business account and Moz Local account, making it easy to add or remove managers in bulk or by individual location.

Using My Business Console

Start your free user experience by heading to the My Business Console homepage and selecting “Connect with Google”. After you enter your Google My Business login credentials, you will be able to view each location you are owner or manager of. For every location you own, you’ll have the ability to manage who is able to edit location information and remove anyone you no longer want to have manger access.

Furthermore, you’ll also be able to add a manger to two or more Google My Business locations by simply selecting the desired locations and clicking the “Add” button.

To add or remove a manager on all of your business locations, head to your “Business Accounts” within My Business Console and add or remove a person there. This will keep you from having to go into each location and grant or take away manager access individually.

At our online marketing agency, Tandem Interactive, we agree this feature will come in handy especially when a person joins or leaves an organization.