Why Should You Be Using Bing’s Webmaster Tools?

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Bing Webmaster Tools

Big may not get all the praise and attention of Google, but they have been steadily growing their audience for years. They still have a ways to go in search traffic to be realistic competition for Google, but Bing has expanded their search abilities and community to the point where it is a mistake to completely neglect the search engine.

If you are a webmaster, chances are you already use Google’s Webmaster Tools, but it is shocking how many don’t bother to signup for a Bing’s Webmaster Tools at the same time. Just like Google’s tools, Bing’s Webmaster Tools make a huge variety of data available to you to help inform your SEO practices and identify any potential issues.

Most importantly, Bing’s Webmaster Tools are the primary line the search engine uses to communicate about issues with site owners.

If you’ve used Google Webmaster Tools, you probably already have a good idea of what you can accomplish with Bing’s and you can probably make your way around the tools on your own. But, if you’re new to webmaster tools or want to know all the cool things Bing’s Webmaster Tools can do, Simon Heseltine has shared a guide to the tools at Search Engine Watch. Get yourself familiar with the tool, then make sure you sign up. There is no reason you should be missing out on such a free, versatile and important set of tools for your website.

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The Only Local SEO Checklist You Will Need For 2014

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Search engines have been attempting to get local search right since the invention of the internet, but they have only managed to make local search a major player as smartphones have allowed us to take the internet everywhere we go. Now that we can search for locations nearby, or double-check the time of the next bus from a bench outside, local SEO has gained real importance in how we organize use the web.

That also means it is more important than ever for businesses to make the leap into establishing an online presence. With the high level of connectivity in the modern day, not having an online presence for your business is becoming more and more like not existing. Searchers may be standing right in front of your business and decide not to come in simply because they can’t find anything about you online.

To really get your business cemented online, you need to do more than put a site online and wait for visitors. But, many places will barrage you with a million optimization techniques you can use to raise your visibility all at once, so it can be hard to know exactly where to start. Sarvesh Bagla made a checklist specifically so you know what you need to have done right now to expect your local business to have any online success.

Each step is laid out and explained in Bagla’s article on Tech Magnate, but they also created a nice graphic that you can keep close by, which can be seen below or printed off and hung by your computer to keep you on track.

handy-local-seo-checklist-2014

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Google Plans To Target Italian and Spanish Link Spammers

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Matt Cutts SquareThink Google’s attack on unnatural links and link spammers is limited just to the US? Think again. Google has made it clear they are targeting spammy practices from around the world, by attacking Polish and German link spammers over the past month, and now Matt Cutts has announced Spanish and Italian webmasters breaking guidelines will be the next to get taken down. For more information, you can check out the report from Search Engine Land.

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Google Gives Up On Large Branded Banner Ad Test

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sports-authority-google-brand-banner-ad

You may remember the uproar from last October, when Google began experimenting with huge banner ads that ran across the top of branded search results. Many hailed them as the first sign of a completely branded search engine, while others weren’t as bothered by the large graphics appearing strictly on branded searches.

Either way, you shouldn’t expect to see the ads any longer. During a SMX West keynote discussion with Danny Sullivan, Google’s Armit Singhal declared the test to be over while saying that the test had failed.

Ginny Marvin suggests the test ads weren’t getting high enough click-through rates (CTR) to justify expanding or keeping around, but even Marvin admits CTR would be an odd metric to measure the success of the ads considering they acted more as a graphic introduction to brands you were searching for and didn’t include call-to-actions.

The test was very small in comparison to most Google tests, with only about 30 advertisers participating. Their banners were only shown on about 5 percent of search queries. Maybe Singhal or someone else from Google will explain how the tests were failures, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Most likely, the tests will just be forgotten like many other failed Google experiments.

However, if you missed the chance to catch some of these ads when they were appearing, or you are simply nostalgic for some nice branded banners, Marketing Land put together a slide show with many of the banners when they were still active, which you can view below.

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Veritasium Creator Derek Muller Says Facebook Advertising Is Broken

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Derek MullerDo any reading about online marketing, and you will almost certainly be told how important social media is to your brand’s online presence. A great social media presence has repeatedly been shown to increase organic traffic and brand perception, but as the platforms have become more populated and competitive, there has been a large shift towards a pay-to-play business model.

Facebook is most notable for this, as they have been the largest social media platform a significant time and they have made the largest changes towards monetizing their service. Sure a business can put up a page and do the slow grind to gain followers one or two at a time through great content and engagement with their audience, but brands looking for significant visibility on the site only have a few options and they all cost money.

To get any exposure on the largest social media platform, brands have to acquire likes for their pages. There are two ways to do this. Despite being expressly against Facebook’s terms of conditions, there is still a market for people who are willing to outright pay for likes.

As Derek Muller explains, these paid likes come from “click farms” in developing countries, where people are paid to like pages by the thousands. But, they are fairly easily identifiable and can get profile owners in trouble.

Alternatively, Facebook offers advertising for your page specifically aimed at increasingly likes “organically”. The problem is, these likes don’t appear to be much different from the likes you would purchase from a click farm.

Derek Muller used his Veritasium YouTube channel to show that Facebook’s way of acquiring “legitimate” likes is actually almost identical to the click farm methods, and both are equally useless. But, paying Facebook for it might actually cost you more.

You see, Veritasium used a free Facebook advertising offer to see if it might expand their social media audience. Within hours, they had netted nearly three times the number of followers, but over time Muller noticed the engagement on Veritasium’s content hadn’t improved with the new likes. In fact, it seemed to go down.

After some research, Muller discovered the bulk of his new likes came from the same countries notorious for click farms. The “users” liking his page had also liked thousands of other pages with seemingly no logical pattern. But, there was no going back. There is no way to delete these empty likes in bulk.

If that was all the only issue, it would be a moderate annoyance and newsworthy hole in Facebook’s advertising method. But, it manages to get worse. These fake likers don’t just provide an inflated picture of how many people appreciate what you are putting out. They actually hold you back.

When you share something on Facebook, it is only shown to a small sample of your followers. Depending on how those viewers respond, Facebook might then distribute your content to even more people. But, if your content isn’t getting liked, shared, or commented on, it will usually sink out of visibility very quickly.

If you have a ton of empty likers, they make up a significant number of those seeing the initial distribution of your content. Since these profiles don’t actually engage in any meaningful way, they can actually prevent interested followers from seeing any of your content. You might as well be speaking to a comatose audience, while your actual fans wait just outside the door.

There is a solution, but of course that costs you even more. To get your content shown to the parts of your followers that are actually interested you have to pay to have your content targeted to them in ads. Facebook makes money twice off of you, and you gain very little in the long run.

Facebook has yet to comment on the issue, but these raise some big questions about the social media platform’s advertising methods as a whole. While social media can still be a great tool for those looking to grow their brands, you might look towards other sites such as Twitter. Until Facebook addresses these massive issues in their service, advertising on their platform may not be worth your resources.

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How Should Smaller Retailers Approach Social Media In 2014?

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If you’re a small retailer trying to expand your brand online, social media is an absolutely essential part of the plan. But, there are several different popular social media platforms and most smaller retailers don’t have the resources to invest fully in all of the big platforms. How do you choose which one to favor?

Of course, the best choice for your brand depends on what you are offering to consumers and how you are trying to reach out to them. But, you can also take some notes from what the big retailers are doing with their social media, with the help of social technology company 8th Bridge’s third-annual Social Commerce IQ report.

8th Bridge looks at nearly 900 of the top online retail brands, and evaluates their social adoption and subsequent results.

Their results show two things. Firstly, you should implement social website buttons for at least the three major social media platforms for retailers (Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook). Secondly, and more importantly, Facebook still dominates referral traffic and perceived value. However, the reasons for Facebook’s value to top retailers have changed.

In the past, Facebook has always been favored simply because it was the most popular social media platform by a large margin. However, Facebook has become very competitive, especially for smaller businesses. With so many businesses sharing content on the site, the top retailers have turned to Facebook Exchange to pay for visibility and higher traffic rates.

Facebook is valued by top retailers not because they are the top social platform, but because they have the most viable social advertising platform.

This has the potential for change in the near future however. Facebook has one of the most fully-realized social advertising platforms, and it has been around for significantly longer than the ad options most other platforms offer. For instance, both Pinterest and Instagram are still only in the testing phase for their advertising platforms.

Still, the traffic referral statistics from Twitter may suggest a deeper underlying problem in the social platform’s viability for retailers.

“Traffic from Twitter and Instagram is non-existent for most retailers,” 8th Bridge said in its report. “Only 85 retailers are getting traffic from Twitter and only 55 retailers are getting traffic from Instagram.”

In the end it should come as no surprise that Facebook is still the most reliable social platform for brands of most sizes, but it will only get more competitive. You can still benefit from a non-paid approach to your Facebook presence, but you should expect diminishing returns as time goes on.

You can view the infographic 8th Bridge made from their results below or on their site.

Social Commerce Infographic

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What Can You Expect From Social Media In 2014? Even More Advertising

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social-media-graphicAt midnight tonight the world is stepping into the New Year and social media is already buzzing with excitement. As the hour approaches in every time zone, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram will all be filled with updates from parties and celebrations from around the world. It is an appropriate way to ring in a new year that will almost certainly continue the global domination of social media.

The past year has seen record numbers for the most popular social media platforms of the moment, and even Facebook continues to grow their audience at a regular pace by reaching new demographics who have been hesitant to adapt to the new social age. But, social media could be notable for something new. This year could very possibly be the year ads on social media become a complete part of social media.

Of course, social media ads are far from new. Barely anyone can imagine their Facebook dashboard without the standard ad bar on the right side of the screen. But, the ad platforms used by the biggest social media sites have hit a turning point where they are growing into their own service. Facebook has greatly improved the customization of their ad service this year, and Twitter’s ad platform transformed from a ramshackle affair to a fully realized service. But what they have in store for 2014 looks to be even bigger.

Facebook is already testing a feature which will likely receive a lot of attention next year. It is natural that Facebook would eventually find a way to implement video advertising similar to the TV or YouTube ads we are all accustomed to, and their new video sharing function allows them an easy way to do just that.

As you’ve likely already noticed, Facebook allowed users to more easily share and see videos this year by remodeling the way they display videos in the News Feed. By setting the videos to autoplay silently when they shown on screen, the videos are automatically eye catching, without being intrusive. It sounds like the video ads they are testing follow almost exactly the same format, which is likely to see quick growth should it be implemented.

Meanwhile, John Lee from Search Engine Land recently discussed how Twitter filing for their IPO this year is a solid indicator that you can expect a closer attention to ads in the very near future. Simply put, now that Twitter is beholden to shareholders, there is going to be an increased emphasis on ad revenue and increased outreach.

Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only social media platforms to be increasingly show ads within their site. The more niche platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest have also begun testing ad units within their platform which will bring a whole new style of advertising to social media. Both platforms have strict rules discerning what ads are allowed within their tests, and it seems they are aiming to implement ads while keeping their distinctive style.

To top it all off, 2014 could be the year Google+ finally sees some form of ads. While Google may keep delaying the decision to place advertising within Google+ until they finally find a larger audience, the recent announcement of +Post Ads being tested could be a sign that changes are on the way. +Post Ads are not advertisements themselves, strictly speaking. They are a way for brands to advertise notable Google+ posts across Google, but there is still the lingering question of when ads will actually appear in Google’s flavor of social media.

For brands looking to continue their online growth over the next year, the surge of social media advertising is good news and bad news. Improved advertising platforms offer a better variety of ways to market your brand or products in the most effective ways. But, as Facebook recently admitted, it also means the playing field is beginning to become a bit uneven. Increasing your outreach online may become costly in the future, which could be a deal breaker for many of the smaller businesses currently taking advantage of social media.

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Facebook To Start Testing Video Ads In Your News Feed This Week

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Film Camera

Source: Flickr

One of the most hated forms of internet advertising are videos that auto-play when you open a webpage. You might be surfing the internet, listening to some music, and suddenly the voice from an ad starts clashing with the song or blaring in the middle of a library. Yet these ads are all over the internet and Facebook has decide to make them a part of your News Feed. Are you cringing? Well, don’t worry. They made one important tweak which will make the experience much less annoying.

The social media giant announced today that they will begin testing News Feed video ads that auto-play when you scroll over them. The testing is going to be for a limited number of accounts during the test, but the ads will be very similar to the way user videos are shown in the feed. Search Engine Journal notes that Facebook began recrafting their video experience in September, making changes to make the experience more similar to Instagram. All you have to do is scroll past the video and it begins playing without a single click.

So what keeps these videos from being a huge annoyance? The videos don’t have sound unless you click to unmute it or expand the video you want to see. Facebook is keeping this functionality for their ads, so user experience won’t be disrupted by the tidal wave of ads playing over each other as you scroll down your feed. You can also bet advertisers will be crafting their ads around this functionality.

Facebook explained they don’t intend this format to be used for every video ad, and it is entirely different from promoting a post with a video in it. From their announcement:

This premium feature is specifically designed for awareness campaigns that are meant to reach a large number of people to increase interest in a brand, product or content, in a short period of time. Page post video ads can then come into play to sustain the message of this initial campaign over longer time periods, in more targeted ways.

Currently, the video ad units will only be shown from a limited number of individuals and pages, such as sports organizations or entertainers. Facebook also heavily stressed that the ads are currently only a test and the brand will make long term decisions based on what is learned from the test.

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Bing Ads Lists The Most Searched For Ad Campaigns and Brands of 2013

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OldSpice BabyEvery brand wants their commercials to go viral, but how do you connect with viewers on the internet? It might seem like common knowledge, but the best way to get users searching for your commercial is comedy. At least, according to Bing Ads’ list of most searched for ad campaigns it is.

Just as with their recent list of 2013 search trends, Bing Ads has put together the most searched for ad campaigns of the last year, as well as the most popular brand searches on Bing in 2013. Perhaps unsurprisingly Old Spice took top billing with its “Baby” as starring Terry Crews, as well as their more surreal “Watermelon” ad, viewable below.

http://youtu.be/hfiiWGWhB9g

Despite mostly dominating the top 10, humor wasn’t the only thing internet viewers looked for in commercials. The third most popular commercial was from Skype’s “Stay Together” campaign, and GoPro’s “Fireman Saves Kitten” also closed out the list. Notably, two of the ads – Chrysler Ram Truck’s ad and GoDaddy’s “The Kiss” – originally appeared during this year’s Super Bowl.

Bing Ad’s Most Searched Advertising Campaigns of 2013

  1. ‘Baby’ and ‘Watermelon’ – OldSpice
  2. Baby & Me – Evian
  3. Stay Together – Skype
  4. Show Your Joe – Kmart
  5. Hump Day – Geico
  6. The Kiss: Bar Rafaeli’s Perfect Match! – GoDaddy
  7. ‘Grandma’ and ‘Werewolf’ – AT&T
  8. Test Drive – Pepsi MAX
  9. The Year of the Farmer – Chrysler Ram Truck
  10. Fireman Saves Kitten – GoPro

Bing didn’t stop with just the most popular ad campaigns though. They also collected the most searched for brands of the year, organized by their market. Ebay was the most popular shopping network, followed by Amazon, while Ford came out the winner for automobiles. You can see the rest below:

Most Searched For Brands 2013

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Google Launches Social Media Ads Called +Post Across Their Whole Network

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Paid ads on social media are becoming more and more prevalent, to the extent that Facebook finally admitted recently that businesses will be practically forced to pay for brand outreach on their platform. Which makes it so surprising that Google+ had, until recently, strayed away from paid advertising. But, the search engine giant may have had an ace up their sleeve this entire time as they have recently unveiled their form of promoted posts, called “+Post” and it is a doozy.

Most aspects of +Post are extactly what you have come to expect from paid advertising on social networks. A brand pays for priumium placement of a post, and more users are shown the ad. It is a simple model which has worked for numerous other social media platforms. What makes +Post different is where the ads will be shown.

The majority of social media networks are only able to show promoted posts on their social media platform. Facebook promoted posts show up in your Newsfeed, “Promoted Pins” will be appearing on Pinterest soon, and Instagram is rolling out their own curated form of promoted posting to ensure ads fit their market and the style of Instagram. But, Google+ is connected to something much larger: all of Google’s network and products. So, +Post will have a massively larger reach than other social networks’ forms of paid advertising.

As Google explains:

+Post ads amplify your brand’s content by easily turning Google+ posts into display ads that run across the web. The live, social ad format allows you to go beyond clicks to live conversations with your audience. People can join a Hangout On Air, add a comment, follow your brand or give a +1, right from an ad.

+Post Screenshot

This is an incredibly smart move for the search engine, as Google+ is still struggling to find a larger active user base, and the advertising model may drive more users to their social platform. The +Post ads act like regular posts in Google+ no matter where they are displayed, which effectively bleeds Google+ into all other aspects of Google (more so than before).

In Google’s own words:

Ads become more relevant with social context. Comments, +1s, and shares from friends can move people to engage with your ad. Social actions on ads and Google+ add up together, showing the full picture of engagement with your content. +Post ads expand in a lightbox to bring full screen social creatives across the web.

Jessica Lee from Search Engine Watch reports a few brands have gotten to try out +Post before the announcement, specifically Toyota who was used for Google’s promo video:

http://youtu.be/4yCUgx7H2zo

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