Ignite Search Weekly Wrap – 21st March 2018

100% Curated SEO/Online Marketing Goodness

Key Industry Updates:

SEO: Google search results page displays answer without any search results

Who needs the ten blue links when you have the answer? Google is hiding the organic listings from some search results, showing answers without any additional search results for some queries.

SEO: Google Search Console Alerts For Switching To Mobile-First Index

Google’s John Mueller said on stage this morning at SMX Munich that Google Search Console will send FYIs to those sites that have been moved from the desktop-first index to the mobile-first index.

SEO: Google News Initiative kicks off with Subscribe With Google, other efforts

Google’s plans to help support publishers’ subscription businesses came into clearer focus on Tuesday at an event in New York City.

The company is launching a wider framework for working with publishers, called the Google News Initiative.

SEO: Report: EU to ask Google, others to publicly reveal ranking factors

The European Commission has proposed new rules that will require search engines, commerce sites and online platforms to explain how they rank results and to reveal why companies are penalized or removed from listings or results.

SEO: Google says it removed more than 3.2 billion bad ads in 2017

The number of ads Google took down last year for advertising policy violations nearly doubled from 2016, and cryptocurrency ads will soon join the list of forbidden ad types.

SEO: Google Search Console updates visual reporting features

Google announced some updates to the new Google Search Console on Monday. Specifically, Google said it has made visual upgrades to the reports and user interface within Search Console.

SEO: Google launches cost-per-sale Shopping Actions, unified shopping program across Search, Assistant & Express

In its answer to Amazon, Google’s new umbrella program will extend existing relationships with retailers and enable universal checkout across platforms and devices.

Local Search: New Google My Business dashboard for multiple listings rolling out

Google is now slowly rolling out the new Google My Business dashboard that it announced back in November 2017. More business owners are reporting that they are seeing the new Google My Business dashboard. Are you seeing it?

Local Search: Google adding business descriptions in Google My Business & local panel

Business owners will likely soon have the option to write and edit descriptions that show up in Google’s local knowledge panel.

Local Search: Google My Business updates the directions heatmap in Insights reporting

Google My Business has updated the Insights analytics tool within Google My Business to let business owners see a heatmap of locations from which searchers request directions to their businesses.

Social: Training Day: The Journey, Episode 21

The Journey, a Social Media Examiner production, is an episodic video documentary that shows you what really happens inside a growing business. Episode 21 of The Journey follows Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, as he continues to pursue what many will see as an impossible goal: to grow his company’s customer base by more than 62% year over year.

In this episode, Mike and his team get trained for Social Media Marketing World 2018 and prep the convention center for the thousands of attendees.

Social: Google expanding YouTube Director onsite video ad service to more than 170 cities

Originally offered in only six cities when it launched last year, YouTube’s video ad creation service will now be available to many more businesses.

Helpful Strategies, Tips & Tricks:

SEO: 4 concrete ways to use images to build links

Every picture tells a story, but a picture also may help you build links. In this article contributor Pratik Dholakiya shares four solid ways to use images to attract links.

SEO: Stop! Think twice before using nofollow on your website

Using page-level nofollow attributes? Just stop, says article contributor Patrick Stox. Instead, use nofollow on specific links if you have to use them at all.

SEO: How to Use Google Trends for Keyword Research: 7 Effective Ways

I’m sure that if you’ve ever done keyword research, you used Google Trends to check the interest in a given keyword. But many SEOs never utilize the full potential of this fantastic tool. In this post, we’ll cover a few cool ways to use Google Trends to help with your keyword research and сontent marketing strategy.

SEO: Pagination & SEO: Best Practices

Paginated archives have long been a topic of discussion in the SEO community. Over time, best practices for optimization have evolved, and we now have pretty clear definitions. This post explains what these best practices are.

SEO: User-Friendly Links Are The Future of SEO

This article will talk about why user-friendly links are the future of SEO and link building.

Paid Search: Google Ad Grants changes and your PPC strategy: Where to go from here

Is your nonprofit organization involved with the Google Ad Grants Program? Contributor Pauline Jakober shows how you can benefit from the recent ad changes with a few creative tips and workarounds.

Paid Search: Understanding campaign performance: Answers to common conversion tracking questions

In this article contributor Frederick Vallaeys suggests answering clients’ questions about AdWords quickly and authoritatively will make you shine like a PPC rockstar. In preparation to answer these questions, this article provides answers to these common conversion tracking questions.

Conversions: Words That Convert: Test, Learn, Repeat

If you had a magic lamp for your content marketing, what would you wish for? More e-book downloads? More subscribers? More customers? Whatever you wish for, chances are, it amounts to boosting the conversion rate at some stage of the marketing funnel, ultimately resulting in more profitable customer action. That’s why it’s so important to continuously test and tweak your words.

Content: Road Map to Success: Creating the Content of Your Audience’s Dreams

Ready to discover the secrets of producing well-conceived, well-written stories? Read on for a handy tutorial on the essentials, along with resources that can help take your content creation to greater levels of success.

Content: 5 Creative Ways to Find Things to Write About

Many content marketers rightfully dread the content ideation process, especially those of us who write for well-established blogs with frequent publication schedules in competitive verticals. Running out of ideas is Not An Option, so what do we do? In this article we’ll examine 5 ways to find things to write about.

Social: How to Build a Facebook Ad Funnel

Do you want more conversions from your Facebook ads? Wondering how funnels can help? To explore how you can build Facebook ad funnels that improve conversions, the Social Media Examiner interview Susan Wenograd, a Facebook ads expert who specializes in Facebook ad funnels.

Social: How to Create a Facebook Ad That Works With WhatsApp Business

Do your prospects and customers prefer WhatsApp to Messenger? Wondering how to create a Facebook ad that integrates with WhatsApp Business? In this article, you’ll discover how to set up a WhatsApp Business account and use Facebook ads to let WhatsApp users call or message your customer support team with a single click.

Read Our Blog Post on: How to Get Online Reviews and Manage Negative (or Fake!) Reviews

Ignite Search Weekly Wrap – 14th March 2018

100% Curated SEO/Online Marketing Goodness

Key Industry Updates: 

SEO: Google AMP team launches ‘Render on Idle’ to load ads faster when browsers sit idle

Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) team has launched a new feature called Render on Idle that is designed to increase ad impressions per page by speeding up ad load when a user isn’t taking any action in a browser.

SEO: Google working to integrate AMP benefits into future open web standards

Google continues to make major investments in improving the performance of and user experience on the web. This has been primarily through the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) framework, which was first launched in 2015 and has been aggressively developed, promoted, and integrated into publishing platforms ever since.

SEO: Google amplifies musicians in Google search through the Google Posts platform

Google has announced that Google will now show images, videos, GIFs and text posted directly by an artist or musician, in addition to the Knowledge Panel directly in the search results.

SEO: Google Lens comes to Android devices through the side door — Google Photos

Previously only available on the Pixel and Pixel XL, Google Lens has now become (indirectly) available on all Android phones through Google Photos. For now, Lens lives inside the Photos app. It’s reportedly coming but not yet available for iOS.

SEO: Google tests showing answers under ‘people also ask’ feature

Google is now testing a new feature within the “people also ask” search results box. Instead of just showing additional questions people might ask around a query you entered into the search results, Google is now testing showing a snippet of the answer directly below the question.

SEO: Google confirms core search ranking algorithm update

Google has confirmed that they ran a “broad core algorithm update” last week that has impacted the appearance and rankings of some websites in the search results.

SEO: Google Images update: Captions added to images, pulled from the page title tag

To add more context to image results, Google will now display a caption with images in mobile Images search results.

Paid Search: AdWords custom columns now available at keyword and ad levels

Now, advertisers can create and track custom metrics at the keyword and ad levels in addition to the campaign and ad group levels, which have been available since 2014.

Paid Search: Notes are coming to AdWords, plus Recommendations & an Account Performance Score

Google has announced several productivity updates for the new AdWords interface, including the ability to note important changes right in the UI.

Paid Search: Chat rate is the new CTR for AdWords message extensions

Google is rolling out message reporting metrics in the next few weeks for the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and other countries.

Local Search: Google My Business adds ‘women-led’ icon & attribute to business listings

Women-led businesses can now add a new icon and label to their Google Maps or local listing in Search by going to their Google My Business profile and adding the “women-led” attribute under their “info” section. After they add the attribute, a new “women-led” icon will appear in the business attributes section of their business listing.

Social: The Final Ascent: The Journey, Episode 20

The Journey, a Social Media Examiner production, is an episodic video documentary that shows you what really happens inside a growing business. Episode 20 of The Journey follows Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, as he continues to pursue what many will see as an impossible goal: to grow his company’s customer base by more than 62% year over year.

In this episode, Mike and his team get ready for the big event.

Helpful Strategies, Tips & Tricks:

SEO: How to master copywriting for SEO

In 2018, you need to understand copywriting and SEO– and a whole lot more – to write content that will rank well and return a great ROI. This article will discuss how to master copywriting.

SEO: Top 7 Ranking Signals: What REALLY Matters in 2018?

 While ranking signals are far from limited to just seven, the factors highlighted in this post are ones I consider to be the most important for this year. Here are the ranking factors that will really matter in 2018, and why.

 SEO: Optimize for voice search by keeping it short and to the point

 In this article contributor Dave Davies explains the many layers and aspects of Google Voice Search and how to optimize your content for it.

SEO: 5 Ways to Avoid Keyword Cannibalization

Are too many of your pages fighting to rank for the same keyword? This is called keyword cannibalization, and here are five ways to avoid it.

SEO: Is a 301 or 302 redirect best for SEO?

 Confused on which redirect to use? In this article contributor Bryson Meunier breaks down the differences between 301 and 302 redirects and explains how Google and Bing view each when moving webpages.

Paid Search: 5 conversion boosters to optimize your PPC campaigns

Optimizing conversion rate (CVR) is one of the fastest ways to improve AdWords efficiency. It allows you to test new approaches and boost ROI without having to expand target keywords, campaigns or budget. This article discusses five approaches to PPC that will help you generate more conversions and better results in 2018 and beyond.

Paid Search: Here are the key metrics and templates you need to create a PPC report

PPC data can be overwhelming. The more you dive into it, the more complicated it can get.

And when creating a PPC report to present your campaign results to others at your company, you need your data to be as easy to understand as possible. Here are four steps to follow that will guide you through the process of creating your PPC report, and some examples of templates that you can use as a basis for your report.

Conversions: Getting results from your website means asking the right questionsIn this article contributor Dianna Huff explains that blending website data, smart online and proven offline marketing tricks-of-the-trade will generate new leads and sales inquiries for small businesses.

Content: How to Make Your Content More Readable

You want visitors to find information, stay engaged, or complete a task. But once readers’ eyes hit the words on the page, if it takes too much effort, their interaction falls off and you have churn. Read more for how to make your content more readable; keeping those readers engaged.

Content: 7 marketing and promotion tactics to get your content discovered

In this article Contributor Kristopher Jones outlines seven tried-and-true content promotion strategies that will drive traffic to your content and website.

Social: How to Brand Your Mobile Facebook Live Streams

Do you stream Facebook Live video on your mobile device? Wondering how to add a branded image to your live stream? In this article, you’ll discover how to easily add a logo and call to action to your mobile Facebook Live broadcasts.

Social: How to Remarket to People Who Watch Your YouTube Videos

Want to increase your YouTube subscribers? Wondering how to retarget YouTube video viewers with YouTube ads? In this article, you’ll discover how to create a YouTube remarketing campaign with Google AdWords.

Read Our Blog Post on: A/B Testing: The Key To Website Optimization and Email Marketing Success