Digital Marketing Trends
Google Ads Auto Applied Recommendations: Every setting, explained
Over the past few years, Google has expanded its suite of Auto-Applied Recommendations. These are AI-driven “improvements” to elements of the text and display ads you’re running in Google. What started with adding ad units to text Ad Groups has grown into a list of 35 editable options. Here, we’ll detail each of them and discuss the potential benefits and risks, with context to help you make more informed decisions.
Page Speed Optimization: Metrics, Tools, and How to Improve
Page speed has always been a crucial part of SEO work, and as more companies make the shift to online operations, optimization becomes more important than ever. However, it’s a complex subject that tends to be very technical. What are the most crucial things to understand about your site’s page speed, and how can you begin to improve? To help you answer these questions, we’re sharing this popular episode of Whiteboard Friday (originally published in February 2019) where Britney Muller goes over what you need to know to get started.
When A Recession Comes, Don't Stop Advertising
In recent weeks, there has been some talk about an economic recession. When it comes is still anybody’s guess, but another business slowdown is inevitable. It would be the first since the “great recession” ended more than ten years ago. Often times when a recession happens, businesses, fearful of declining revenue, begin to cut back in various areas, including their ad spending.
In the aftermath of the last recession in 2008, ad spending in the U.S. dropped by 13%. Broken out by medium, newspaper ad spending dropped the most at 27%, radio spending dropped by 22%, followed by magazines with a decline of 18%, out-of-home by 11%, television by 5% and online by 2%.
How COVID-19 Has Impacted Google Ads Results for 21 Industries [Data]
COVID-19 has evolved into a global event impacting public health as well as the economy. These are uncertain times, and we don’t have all the answers, but what we do know now is that small businesses have felt sudden changes in their campaign performance as a result of this worldwide pandemic.
We’ve seen that global events often impact PPC performance, and COVID-19 is no exception. As businesses change their operations, people stay in their homes more, and the world reacts to a pandemic unfolding in real time—they turn to online search and news for answers to their questions and solutions to their new needs. For some advertisers, these new searchers are driving new audiences to find their way to advertisers’ sites, and some are becoming new customers. For others, the results aren’t as great, and the strategies will need to shift.
In feature battle with Google, Yelp improves restaurant waitlist functionality
Over time, Google Maps and Google My Business have increasingly encroached on Yelp’s core value proposition: local business search and reviews. And Yelp has tried to fight back with new features and capabilities to stay one step ahead of Google.
Waitlist upgrades. This week is a case-in-point: the company added new capabilities to Yelp Waitlist, which allows diners to join a restaurant waitlist before physically arriving at the property. Yelp originally launched Waitlist in 2017. Google introduced similar functionality, albeit more limited, in 2019.
What happens if you stop doing SEO?
When you stop publishing content, the following things happen:
- You stop targeting new terms consistently. This results in fewer new keyword rankings and new traffic.
- You stop creating new pages that can be linked to, and the number of links you earn goes down.
- You stop capturing new visitors to add to your remarketing audiences, email list and push notification list.
- You stop generating content that can be used to create hub pages, which are master pages that link to all other pages on the topic. These often rank very well.
- You stop generating content that gets shared on social media, and thus, generates social media shares and traffic.
- You stop encouraging people to return to your website for new posts. This reduces your branded searches, which are an indicator of quality to Google.
7 Fundamental Facebook Advertising Tips for Small Business Marketers
It’s no secret that Facebook can be a fantastic place to reach new audiences and grow your business. We hear about crazy awesome success stories all the time: “I just put stuff on Facebook, and I don’t know what happened, but six months later I quit my job and my side hustle became my full-time gig!”
That’s all fine and dandy, but it’s definitely not the most common use case. I’ve heard more people, especially small businesses, have a completely different story: “We tried Facebook, but it just didn’t work for us.”
7 SEO Processes That Get Easier with Increased PageRank/Domain Authority
A rising tide lifts all ships — and it’s similar story with increased site authority. What factors are affected as you improve PageRank or Domain Authority, and how? In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus details seven SEO processes that are made easier by a strong investment in link building and growing your authority.
Here's Everything You Need in Your 2020 Tech Stack
There is no one-size-fits-all option for marketing technology, but a good tech stack generally includes tools for marketers’ most pressing needs, like analytics, automation, communication, content, customer relationship management, and SEO. Figuring out which marketing tools are most pressing ultimately depends on individual business needs.
“In order to pick the right tech stack, you need to, first of all, have your goal clear in your head and a very firm idea of what you need the stack to achieve and how it should help you to do this,” said Polly Kay, senior marketing manager at the retailer English Blinds. “From there, look to build a tech stack that will be scalable and only then get into the fine details of comparing the pros, cons, and extras of all of the various apps that could make up your eventual solution.”
Amazon’s booming ad business grew by 40% in 2019
Amazon had anticipated a good holiday season, and it got it. The company reported $87.4 billion in net sales for the fourth quarter of 2019, up 21% from the same period the prior year. On the advertising front, the company generated ad revenues of nearly $4.8 billion for the quarter, an increase of 41% year over year. That brings the company’s annual advertising revenues in 2019 to roughly $14.1 billion, up 39% from $10.1 billion in 2018.
Automated feeds. We’re finally here. Goodbye, product feeds — sort of. Starting in November, automated feeds will be available in all Shopping ads countries. Merchants can opt to let Merchant Center crawl their websites for schema structured product data and extract it into an initial feed.
Google Merchant Center updates rolling out ahead of holiday push
Google is out with its holiday updates for merchants. The company recently rolled out interface and navigation updates for Google Merchant Center. On Wednesday, Google announced a number of new and updated features aimed at simplifying the process of getting your product information on Google properties for the holidays.
Automated feeds. We’re finally here. Goodbye, product feeds — sort of. Starting in November, automated feeds will be available in all Shopping ads countries. Merchants can opt to let Merchant Center crawl their websites for schema structured product data and extract it into an initial feed.
Rural Local SEO: A Marketing Package Strong on Education
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