We all know how valuable audience personas can be for marketers. They outline demographic information and pain points for different types of customers, and can help us picture our customer. However, there is no way for a persona to account for context – what is a real person actually experiencing at the moment they encounter our content? If we’re to produce campaigns that truly connect to our audiences, we must go beyond personas and get specific. In...
30-second summary: To make Adobe findable via non-Adobe keywords, Thesis created over 100 helpful, entertaining, professionally informed, SEO-rich articles to draw people closer to the brand. Thesis’ writing director, Tyler Stenson describes a very interesting process of how they worked with Adobe to create valuable, engaging, and unique SEO content. This article serves as a great focal point on how to create helpful, entertaining, professionally informed articles that actually build relations and help people reach their goals. Adobe is the industry...
30-second summary: Choosing the right content management system (CMS) to support your content and marketing goals is a big undertaking. A good CMS should be here to support your SEO objectives. The selection includes looking at factors such as budget, the purpose of your website, and the technological capabilities of who will be using the CMS. The biggest challenges with CMS often relate to a lack of flexibility to deal with dynamic changes in markets and consumer demand. This is an area where AI needs to help. Your CMS...
About The Author Shedrack Akintayo is a software engineer from Lagos, Nigeria, who has a love for community building, open source and creating content and tech for the next … More about Shedrack …[1] Since React was introduced, it has transformed the way front-end developers build web applications, and its virtual DOM is famous for effectively rendering components. In this tutorial, we will discuss various methods of optimizing performance in React applications, and also the features of React...
We are gathered here today…. Today I write in memory of Adobe Flash (née Macromedia), something that a bunch of people are actually too young to remember. I write this with love, longing, and a palpable sense of relief that it’s all over. I have come to praise Flash, to curse it, and finally to bury it. Free First Month: Millions of Fonts, Freebies & Design Assets We’ve been hearing about the death of Flash for a long time....
Managing a company’s brand, even during “normal” times, can be challenging depending upon your niche, your competition and the current circumstances. And of course, most of us have heard of (but hopefully, never experienced) instances in which a misstep by a business created serious reputation issues for the brand. When circumstances are severe, however, such as the tremendous upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a host of new pitfalls can present themselves. Let’s discuss some of the special...
30-second summary: Link building is one of the most crucial yet most difficult aspects of SEO but testimonial link building can solve that problem for you. Testimonial link building is seen as a great way to harness this raw strength of positive experiences by customers. Giving a testimonial to a company you have availed service from or purchased from can be a great way to get a link back to your site. It’s such a simple and straightforward method, which may be one of the reasons why your business should implement testimonials...
About The Author Mike is a Ruby on Rails Developer based in the south of the UK, who is currently bootstrapping his own startup. He loves crafting blazing fast applications, … More about Mike …[1] In this article, Mike Rogers will introduce you to Stimulus, a modest JavaScript framework that compliments your existing HTML. By the end, you’ll have an understanding of the premise of Stimulus and why it’s a useful tool to have in your backpack. The web...
Despite billions of dollars spent over a period of years, virtual reality is still not mainstream – and may never be. Augmented reality (AR) is on a different path however. Snap filters and Pokemon Go introduced many consumers to AR. And over the past few years, AR features have appeared in numerous brand and retail apps, such as L’Oreal, Wayfair, Crate & Barrel, Gucci, Ikea, Lowes, H&M, Macy’s, Adidas, Amazon and many others. To date, these have...
Google announced several updates for Smart Shopping campaigns, which run across Search, Display, YouTube, and Gmail, on Wednesday. Here’s a look at what’s rolling out and what’s coming later this year. Shipping annotations Starting Wedesndsay in the U.S., Smart Shopping ads can include annotations such as free or fast shipping. Google has long showed annotations, or flags, on standard Shopping ads to highlight price drops and shipping offers[1]. With consumers shopping online more and higher demand continuing to...
In May, Google announced it would sunset gallery ads and move forward with image extensions . On Wednesday, the company officially launched an image beta. It has also added dynamic countdown functionality to responsive search ads. Image extensions in Search ads When enabled and activated on an ad impression, image extensions show a single right-justified image alongside your text ad. The beta is open for both responsive search ads (RSA) and expanded search ads (ETA), Image extension displays with...
There’s hardly another constant hot-button issue as intensely debated within the search industry as search engine penalties. Leading SEO outlets maintain their coverage of that touchy subject from a uniform angle, reinforcing the subjective view that seemingly all but a few websites are penalized. Yet despite this ongoing barrage of information, it seems that more misconceptions are being disseminated than certainties. Consequently the situation only amplifies unwarranted fears among website operators. This opinion piece, strongly influenced...
30-second summary: If a site has never been promoted, there have been no SEO audits and there are a lot of errors in code, then link building will not help. If the company is set up to work in messengers, it can receive subscribers – even without the support. SMM is less about direct sales and more about building a link between user and brand, and content plays a primary role in this. The main task now is to build an approximate plan to get back to the world and maintain feedback with clients and the team. In this article, we discuss marketing strategies during COVID-19 on the lines of contextual advertising, SEO, email, social networks, and more. Not everyone was as lucky in the pandemic as mask manufacturers, food delivery companies, Zoom, and others. The offline business had to decide: either to quickly move all the work online or limit the business in all directions. In this article, we will discuss marketing strategies during COVID-19. Simply moving to the Internet is not enough: you need to understand what you are doing, and under the influence of coronavirus, marketing strategy is changing rapidly. I am going to explain what happens with contextual advertising, SEO, messengers, email, and social networks. You’ll find out: How the demand structure in these channels is changing, How to work with them now, Whether marketing can be paused without affecting the company, Which marketing strategies are best to choose, even if there’s a shortage of money. PPC marketing in COVID-19 times The trend in the PPC is as follows due to the decline in demand in...
by Brian Dean · Updated Jul. 14, 2020 We analyzed 7,051 job postings on Glassdoor and LinkedIn to better understand the current SEO job market. In this new report you’ll learn: Average SEO position salaries Skills that employers look for How COVID-19 impacted SEO job demand Industries that hire the most SEOs Lots more Let’s dive right into our findings. Highlights and Key Findings: 1. The mean salary for a US-based SEO professional is $60,548 per year. 2. Companies based in CA, CT, NY and NJ pay...
30-second summary: A customer journey map is a visual representation of every interaction between you and your customers. Proper customer journey mapping can make a huge difference in conversions and help you create a more customer-centric marketing strategy. Customer journey mapping starts with identifying your user personas. This way, you’ll know exactly which customer segment to market. Next, you identify and map out every touchpoint or experience along the customer journey. This will help you learn and later predict...
Like it or not, we’re slowly edging towards a two-tier web: those sites that are secure, and…everything else. There was a time on the web, when we didn’t have SSL certificates, and lots of people’s data got stolen. To address the problem, and regain users’ trust SSL certificates were introduced to secure sites handling sensitive data. And because they were initially a niche technology, you paid through the nose for them. Free First Month: Millions of Fonts, Freebies...
About The Author Rachel Andrew is not only Editor in Chief of Smashing Magazine, but also a web developer, writer and speaker. She is the author of a number of books, including … More about Rachel Andrew …[1] We’re moving all of the 2020 conferences online. We hope this means that more of you can join us for these great line-ups! 2020 has been quite the year, and it’s only July. None of us can be certain what the...
[embedded content] At SMX Next, I shared ways that brands can navigate content marketing in times of disruption[1] so that they can avoid missteps, maintain relevance and pave the way for their own recovery. However, a strategy is only as effective as the team executing it. During the Live with Search Engine Land session that took place later that day, I sat down with Mel Carson, CEO at Delightful Communications; Carol Tice, founder of the Make a Living...
About The Author Suzanne Scacca is a former WordPress implementer, trainer and agency manager who now works as a freelance copywriter. She specializes in crafting marketing, web … More about Suzanne Scacca …[1] The Scrabble GO, Instacart and YouTube mobile apps have recently undergone disruptive redesigns. Were they worth it in the end? Judging by their users’ reactions, the answer to that is “No”. But that doesn’t mean that redesigns or design tweaks are a bad idea after...
We’re talking about Gatsby. What is it and how does it fit into your web development stack? Drew McLellan talks to expert Marcy Sutton to find out. Today, we’re talking about Gatsby. What is it and how does it fit into your web development stack? Drew McLellan talks to expert Marcy Sutton to find out. Show Notes Weekly Update Transcript Drew McLellan: She is the lead engineer on the Developer Relations team at Gatsby. Previously, she worked on the open source...
On Friday, July 17, Search Engine Land Editor George Nguyen, will host a discussion on running an e-commerce site on Shopify and how to optimize your Shopify site for better search rankings. The coronavirus pandemic has shifted shopping behavior online and businesses have adapted by flocking to platforms like Shopify so that they can continue to serve customers. The surge in e-commerce retailers, however, also means increased competition for organic visibility and shoppers. In this episode of Live...
Based on a new European law that just went into effect, Google will begin notifying businesses, globally, of local listings suspensions. Historically, businesses found out their listings were suspended when they signed into their Google My Business (GMB) accounts or noticed a change in call volumes web traffic or conversions. “Every day a listing is down, opportunity and revenue are lost,” says Ben Fisher[1], Google Product Expert. Delay before discovery. According to Fisher, “The suspension [usually] happened days...
[embedded content] Google’s accelerated mobile pages (AMP)[1] framework has been the gatekeeper to its Top Stories carousel, a search result feature that provides increased visibility for publishers whose content appears in it. Now that the company has announced plans to lift the AMP restriction on Top Stories, the framework’s future is in question, with some SEOs pointing out that Google has a history of introducing new attributes and features only to abandon them a few years later. “If...
Predictive audiences in Google Analytics App + Web properties.Applications of machine learning have brought us into the era of predictive marketing[1] in which bids, ads and targeting are optimized based on predicted outcomes. The latest sign of this in Google Analytics is the addition of predictive metrics and audiences in App + Web properties[2]. When building audiences in an App + Web property in Google Analytics, you’ll see suggestions for predictive audiences using either of these metrics: Purchase...
About The Author Rachel Andrew is not only Editor in Chief of Smashing Magazine, but also a web developer, writer and speaker. She is the author of a number of books, including … More about Rachel Andrew …[1] Rachel Andrew takes a look at a new effort to crowdfund the costs of implementing browser features. In my last post[2], I described some interesting CSS features — some of which are only available in one browser. Most web developers have...