Back to school can often look different state by state and school district by school district, but one thing we know is this year’s back to school season will not be anything like what we have seen in the past. With COVID-19 cases increasing across the United States, states and local school districts are responding in various ways. Some are requiring masks and moving desks six feet apart, some are staggering days children come in person and...
There is still considerable gender inequality in SEO. In 2015, female SEOs represented about 30% of the industry, according to a survey[1] from Moz. That percentage hasn’t budged in five years, according to a new global survey[2] of 652 SEOs from Nicole DeLeon’s North Star Inbound[3]. Men represented 68.4% of survey respondents, while women were 29.3%. A small percentage declined to state or identified as non-binary. U.S. slightly worse than average. Broken down by geography, the U.S. numbers...
To our friends in the search community — we’ll keep this short and sweet: The Early Bird pricing deadline for the 2020 Search Engine Land Awards is THIS Friday, August 28 at 11:59pm PST![1] After our Early Bird period ends, the final deadline before the entry period closes will be Friday, September 4 at 11:59pm PST. (If you’re looking to save money though — and who isn’t?! — apply within the Early Bird period to save $100 off...
30-second summary: Twitter has unveiled a new Voice Tweet feature, an exciting new way for brands to connect with fans and followers by leveraging the power of the human voice. Voice Tweets can add context and nuance that strictly visual language can’t capture. Voices.com’s CEO David Ciccarelli shares five tips for building a strategy that caters to audiences’ ears, not just their eyes, and creating successful Voice Tweets. In a 2009 interview[1] with the Los Angeles Times, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey...
We analyzed 1,801 Google user behavior sessions to better understand how people interact with modern Google SERPs. Specifically, we investigated: How many people click on ads vs organic results Percentage of clicks that go to local, video and Google Shopping Average search session length Number of users that make it to the bottom of the first page Lots more And now it’s time to share what we discovered. Here Are Some of Our Key Findings: 1. Google searchers use one of Google’s autocomplete suggestions 23%...
Google has launched a new AdSense reporting page, the company announced[1] Tuesday. The new Reports page will be rolling out in phases and it could be up to two weeks before it reaches all publishers. The new AdSense Reports page (top) and the old one that will be phased out at the end of September (bottom). Source: Google[2]. New data constraints. Google has restricted reporting data to the last three years for all AdSense products. With the exception...
In our ongoing coverage of Bing’s search ranking factors[1], which the company listed out when it published its new webmaster guidelines[2], I sat down with Bing to talk to them about some of those factors. This is from our interview with Microsoft’s Christi Olson and Fabrice Canal, on Live with Search Engine Land[3] about What SEOs need to know about Bing Webmaster Guidelines[4]. We already dug into the fact that Bing uses user engagement metrics in its search ranking factors[5]....
It’s no secret to paid search marketers that COVID-19 has hugely impacted performance and advertisers’ ability to spend on paid search marketing in ways varied across industries and business situations. There have been plenty of articles written on some of these shifts. Here I’d like to talk about the 2020 trends affecting paid search marketers that have nothing to do with the pandemic, and how to think about them moving forward. The death of the tablet Looking across a...
30-second summary: Display and video advertising already have tactics that can be highly effective in a cookie-less world. Contextual advertising is going to rise, as users will be in the right state of mind to interact with the brands’ ads. Content sponsorship is going to build strong relationships between brands and consumers, as the values and purpose of each brand will be transmitted to the audience in a non-aggressive sales-y way. Channel integration can become the norm as channels can...
[embedded content] Since March, Live with Search Engine Land has provided marketers with an informal way to step outside their organizations and get a feel for the pulse of their industry as it navigates COVID, social justice movements, data regulation and algorithm updates. Some of the insights shared by our dozens of panelists helped to explain trends or disseminate practical advice, both of which will be crucial to marketers as we move past these first six months of...
There are countless articles about how to improve website rankings. In contrast, there are few about real life, large website SEO horror stories — the kind of presumed optimization steps taken that make actual experts grind their teeth and Google rankings drop to the bottom, which is unfortunate since learning from other people’s failures is much preferred over learning from one’s own mistakes. Obviously, few people are inclined, let alone feel comfortable, disclosing any disasters of their...
In this month’s collection of the freshest web designs from the last four weeks the dominant trend is attention to detail. You’ll find plenty of animation, in fact, almost every one of these sites uses animation to a greater or lesser degree. Let’s dive in: Globekit Globekit[1] is a tool that allows developers to quickly create animated and interactive globes and embed them on web pages. Its site features some exceptional 3D animation. Yolélé Yolélé[2] is food company built around fonio,...
30-second summary: Although Google’s updates have downplayed the importance of keywords, they are still important in your SEO strategy. It’s not enough to create content and stuff it with keywords to engage your target audience. Ignite Digital is reminding us of the importance of understanding how keywords work. It’s not enough to pick the most popular keyword and add it throughout your text. By not adding meta tags, you are reducing your chances of getting your content ranked and...
I’ve got to say, this was a weird video edit because it was recorded the last day I was in my office before the COVID-19 lockdown in New York — and now, I’m publishing it after almost six months of working from home. It is very surreal, but let’s get back to SEO because that is what Pam Auugst of Pam Ann Marketing[1] and I spoke about that day. We first talked about SEO automation and how often...
Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News[1] site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the...
30-second summary: Google search trends show that there have been big increases in Google searches for certain phrases over the last few months. Some were expected, such as “virtual meetings”, others less so – one of the more troubling Google search trends was “get away with murder”! A lot of people were looking for physical comfort – everything from “chocolate” to “hot tubs”. Others sought an emotional or spiritual connection, including “virtual dating”, “prayer” and “virtual churches”. Head of Digital Marketing...
As third-party cookies disappear, one of the candidates to replace them[1] is mobile-location data. It can be used to understand real-world customer behavior, purchase intent, brand affinity and as a versatile targeting tool for online and mobile campaigns. But the quality and accuracy[2] of location data has been a contentious issue in the industry for years. Most vendors and marketers using location data get it from one or more of several sources: First party mobile app-publisher data Third party...
30-second summary: Google’s technological edge has always come from its computational power. This edge is no longer special. AWS, Microsoft, and other cloud services now give us access to essentially unlimited computing power on demand. Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) technology is the largest most advanced text predictor ever. It will eventually be available as a commercial product. We may see big players like Apple enter the search engine market. Founder and CTO of LinkGraph gives you foresight into the sea...
In this article you will find the most appreciated web solutions of 2020. To create this list we took into account the following considerations: The popularity of the product or the service; How many users it has; How many times it was downloaded or installed; The level of efficiency; What you get for your money. You’ll find WordPress themes and plugins, an affordable logo design contest[1], logo creators, website builders, web development services, and even more. Let’s get...
30-second summary: Instagram uses an ever-changing, machine learning-powered algorithm to customize and arrange posts in user feeds. Ever since the platform left the chronological feed behind and moved to the algorithmic feed years ago, marketers, content creators, and users alike have been speculating on what exactly determines which posts make it to the top. There are six key factors that the Instagram algorithm relies on to determine which posts should appear first: interest, relationship, recency, frequency, following, and...
Google’s history with news publishers is, to say the least, complicated. The company historically has resisted paying licensing fees for news, arguing that it was delivering considerable value to publishers in the form of traffic. But some publishers (e.g., Rupert Murdoch[1]) have complained over the years that Google was actually “siphoning” their ad revenues, eroding their brands and hurting subscriptions. Legislative tug of war. European regulators and legislators tried for several years to force Google to pay...
The first session in our initial three-part series SEO for Developers: Live with Search Engine Land we began covering Technical SEO and communicating issues between practitioners and developers. For a well-rounded conversation we hosted speakers with perspectives from both the practitioner side of things, as well as practical effectiveness with SEO In-House as part of an enterprise team. Our guests were: The video is great if you’re looking to hear new ideas for effecting change with your...
Not too long ago, Bing documented its search ranking factors[1] at a very high level. One of those signals I found interesting was the user engagement metrics; including click throughs, pogosticking, clicking on different results, changing the query and more. So when I interviewed Microsoft’s Christi Olson and Fabrice Canal, on Live with Search Engine Land[2] about What SEOs need to know about Bing Webmaster Guidelines[3], I specifically asked about this set of ranking signals. I mean, we know Google...
This is a list of 17 advanced SEO strategies, techniques and tactics. In fact, these strategies have helped my site bring in 350,973 visitors per month from Google. So if you’re sick of reading the same old beginners stuff (“create great content!”), you’ll really enjoy this list. 1. Rank for “Journalist Keywords” Journalist Keywords are terms that journalists search for. And they’re a super powerful way to build backlinks at scale. For example, a while back we published this page speed study[1]. Take...
Years of economic growth have been wiped out by COVID-19. However, the story for e-commerce has been the opposite: an acceleration of growth that otherwise might have taken years. Approaching 20% of retail. The U.S. Commerce Department reported new retail sales data (.pdf[1]) earlier this week. It shows a huge spike in second-quarter e-commerce spending as a percentage of total retail, growing from 11.8% in Q1 to 16.1% in Q2. Some analysts and outlets exclude categories such as...