Those who have been following search trends in the past couple years have likely heard that being the first result on the search engine results pages (SERPs) is not nearly as important these days, mostly because the results we see are now customized based on location and user habits.
This is absolutely still the case for desktop searching, but a new click-through ranking study conducted by seoClarity suggests the difference between first and second in mobile search results may be the difference between success and failure. Their findings show such a large drop-off between the first and second rankings that there was no notable difference between the second listing and those that followed.
In the graph of mobile click through rates, you can see the first result receives nearly three times the number of clicks compared to the second ranking, while desktop rankings continue to show a more gradual slope following the first result.
To conduct the study, seoClarity examined over 2 billion impressions from Google Webmaster Tools data over a 90 day period between June and August. You can download and view the full report here.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-10-23 13:02:242014-10-23 13:02:24Ranking First Matters on Mobile According to seoClarity Study
Snapchat, the popular social image sharing app, recently ran the first ad on their platform since its inception. If Universal Pictures, the movie studio who bought the ad, is to be believed, the results are already showing the advertising exercise was a great success.
It is hard to tell how the format will work for smaller brands, but Universal vice president of digital marketing Doug Neil said “millions” of viewers have seen the 20-second trailer for the horror movie “Ouija”.
However there has been some fallout from the ad tests, especially on Twitter. Some users were surprised by the ads or confused by their disappearance after playing. For big marketing ventures like “Ouija” this isn’t much of a problem, especially as the platform perfectly attracts their demographic, but it could be an issue with more niche or localized brands if Snapchat ever expands the ad platform.
Snapchat’s ad medium does offer one unique benefit from the plethora of other monetizing social media platforms. While Facebook’s videos autoplay for anyone who happens to scroll by, Snapchat’s ads have an incredibly wide reach while only playing for those who actively engage the ads. While a huge range of people were shown the ad’s presence, only those who wanted to view it actually watched.
“It was a lean-in experience,” Neil said. “The people who watched the ad were ones that pressed to play so they were focused on actually viewing the content. As it turns out there were a number of people who screen captured it and it’s actually moved beyond the Snapchat window. But our goal was to get exposure in Snapchat and that was accomplished.”
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-10-21 14:41:552014-10-21 14:41:55Snapchat’s First Paid Ad Appears To Have Been a Success
If you thought Google might be slowing down on updating their most well-known search algorithms, the past month may have been a bit of a shocker for you. First, Google rolled out the latest update to their Panda algorithm in late September, and less than a month later they have released the first update to their Penguin algorithm in over a year.
If Penguin and Panda aren’t familiar terms to you, they are the names of two major algorithms which determine what Google’s search results will look like for a given search. They help evaluate websites and reward those who are following guidelines while punishing those who bend or break the rules.
While the Panda algorithm mostly relates to the content directly on webpages, Penguin aims to take down those who try to cheat Google by creating unnatural backlinks to try to gain higher rankings. Both often these algorithms penalize webmasters and the businesses who run these pages when there was no malicious intent.
Unfortunately, with the complex system that makes up Google’s search algorithms and their ever-changing guidelines and many business owners have been shocked to discover their site is no longer appearing in the search results after an algorithm update.
While site owners can frequently bounce back after these penalties, they can also destroy any momentum you had and lose you potential customers. That’s why it is always important to have someone who is consistently up-to-date on all of Google’s latest policy changes to make sure your site is staying within the rules.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-10-20 13:53:312014-10-20 13:53:31Google Rolls Out New Penguin Algorithm Update Shortly After Updating Panda
Every year, Moz details the local ranking factors they can identify in Google’s algorithm to help small businesses get a foot up in the listings. Earlier this week they announced the release of this year’s findings and everything seems… surprisingly the same.
Analysts have only found a few notable changes, but the findings are largely the same as last year’s. However, David Mihm did highlight a few important things to notice in the findings, including:
Behavioral signals such as click through rate, are more of a factor this year that others.
With Pigeon‘s release, experts are saying Domain authority is more of a signal today.
Google may have tuned up the proximity to searcher factor as well.
You can see the charts from the study below, or you can get more details from the results over at Moz.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-10-15 12:20:532014-10-15 12:20:53Local Ranking Factors In Search Have Largely Stayed The Same This Year
To those who have never been here, Tulsa might not seem like the most technologically innovative city, but anyone who has lived in Tulsa knows otherwise. Tulsa’s companies leverage the internet to grow their businesses in inventive and practical ways every day, and the city is finally getting some recognition for their efforts.
Google named Tulsa as Oklahoma’s eCity for 2014, recognizing the city for having the strongest online business community in the state and celebrates those who have embraced the internet and its multitude of ways to connect with new and existing customers alike.
“Our eCity Awards recognize the new ‘digital capitals’ of America,” said Dave Barr, Google’s hardware operations manager for the Oklahoma data center. “We’re proud to recognize this growing entrepreneurial spirit—and the role that it plays in both creating jobs and sustaining local economies. With 97 percent of Internet users looking for products and services online, it’s clear that success is about being connected.”
“Tulsa is honored to be named the Google eCity of Oklahoma, the digital capital of our state,” said Mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr. “This award speaks to the strength of Tulsa’s online business community, as organizations are embracing the power of the Internet to find new customers, connect with existing clients, and create twice as many jobs with their online presence.”
“Already recognized by Forbes as the nation’s top city for young entrepreneurs, Tulsa has quietly become a nationally-recognized hub of innovation — a place where fresh ideas thrive and businesses find success in embracing the future,” said Mike Neal, president and CEO, Tulsa Regional Chamber. “Tulsa’s new distinction as Oklahoma’s ‘digital capital’ is further proof that its enterprising small business community has set the standard for how to grow business in a new era.”
Not only have Tulsa’s startups and young entrepreneurs been using the internet to expand their businesses and reach out to where customers are, we are using the internet in new ways never previously imagined to connect with audiences in more meaningful ways than ever before.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-10-14 13:00:342014-10-14 13:00:34Tulsa Is Recognized By Google As Oklahoma’s eCity for 2014
SEO and social media marketing have been interconnected for several years, but they are also typically treated like separate efforts that influence and benefit from each other rather than being entirely coupled. That is why one of the most neglected features of Pinterest is Guided Search.
It is no secret that Pinterest is quickly becoming an upper tier player in social media and marketing because it touches on our aspirations and desires. To paraphrase Tailwind CEO Daniel Maloney during SMX East this week, Pinterest is about who you want to be.
“When you look at what people are pinning, it’s more about who they want to be in the future,” Maloney said, “which from a marketer’s perspective is a dream come true.”
That made the social media platform ripe for harvest then when they introduced Guided Search early this year, but surprisingly few marketers took advantage of the opportunity to optimize their presence on the site.
Was Guided Search forgotten because it wasn’t high enough on the list of marketing priorities or because it slipped through a crack directly on the line between SEO and social media marketing? It is hard to tell, but Anna Majkowska, a software manager on Pinterest’s search team, has been encouraging brands to optimize for the platform so that they are able to get their content in front of the more than 50 million users who frequent the site.
Majkowska shared tips for optimizing your site on Search Engine Land, but the important thing is to not be intimidated. Pinterest SEO isn’t near as complicated as trying to optimize for Google, so the learning curve is notably less steep.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-10-03 13:26:272014-10-03 13:26:27Are You Optimizing For Pinterest?
Much has been made out of the announcement that Google would include switching from HTTP to HTTPS in their ranking algorithm. Despite clearly stating that the factor would be lightweight in the initial announcement, the possibility of a relatively easy rankings boost drove lots of people to make the switch immediately.
In the aftermath studies from analytics groups such as SearchMetrics have suggested that any effect of switching URLs might have is largely unnoticeable. Now, Google’s John Mueller has basically admitted that the signal currently too lightweight to have any noticeable effect but that may change at some point in the future.
At 22 minutes and 21 seconds in a recent video hangout, Mueller explained that HTTPS is a ranking signal but it is only a “very lightweight signal” and there aren’t any plans to change that in the future.
I wouldn’t expect any visible change when you move from http to https, just from that change, just from SEO reasons. That kind of ranking effect is very small and very subtle. It’s not something where you will see a rise in rankings just from going to https
I think that in the long run, it is definitely a good idea, and we might make that factor stronger at some point, maybe years in the future, but at the moment you won’t see any magical SEO advantage from doing that.
That said, anytime you make significant changes in your site, change the site’s URLs, you are definitely going to see some fluctuations in the short term. So you’ll likely see some drop or some changes as we recrawl and reindex everything. In the long run, it will settle down to about the same place, it won’t settle down to some place that’s like a point higher or something like that.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-09-30 14:07:012014-09-30 14:07:01Google’s John Mueller Says HTTPS Is Only a “Very Lightweight Signal”
The phrase “content marketing” is thrown around all over the place, but marketers seem to be forget that content can mean more than blog posts. While blogs can play a big role in online marketing and catching the attention of your audience, there are several other tools at our disposal that are often more effective.
Audiences almost always respond better to visual marketing better than text, so long as your visual content reaches the same level of quality. Market Domination Media wanted marketers to know that visual content packs a heavy punch that makes the heightened investment more than worthwhile.
To do so, MDM published an infographic which highlights the reasons why visual content consistently performs so much better.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-09-29 13:19:392014-09-29 13:19:39Visual Marketing Is An Important Tool In Every Content Marketers Toolbox [Infographic]
Yesterday morning, Bill Slawski from SEO By The Sea discovered that Google has been granted a patent which suggests they are working on a method to use information about what is showing on television in your area as a ranking signal in search results.
The patents follow Google’s trend of trying to individualize search results based on personal tastes and location, and in some ways it has already been in use within Google Now. However if the method used in the patent is implemented TV schedules could have a much larger impact on your results.
The specific patent is named System and method for enhancing user search results by determining a television program currently being displayed in proximity to an electronic device. It was filed on June 30, 2011.
Here is the abstract for the patent:
A computer implemented method for using search queries related to television programs. A server receives a user’s search query from an electronic device. The server then determines, in accordance with the search query and television program related information for television programs available at a location associated with the electronic device during a specific time window, a television program currently being displayed in proximity to the electronic device, wherein the television program related information includes program descriptions for a plurality of television programs being broadcast for the associated location.
Basically, the patent would allow Google to make note of what you are watching and instantly include that information within their ranking algorith. Presumably, this would make it easier to search for products shown during commercials or for more information about the show. As explained in the patent:
Someone watching a TV program with a segment about a particular model of Porsche might execute a search query for “Porsche” or “sports cars” instead of the designation of the particular model that was the subject of the segment….
Given that the Porsche model in question is a “911 Turbo,” and that the user executed a search query for “Porsche,” the server can return information about one or more of :
1) the “911 Turbo” model (e.g., a link to information on the Porsche.com website about the “911 Turbo”),
2) information about the TV program that is currently airing with that segment, and
3) suggestions of similar programming that is currently airing or airing in the future and that is available to the user.
In this way, implementations provide enhanced search results to viewers of live TV that are relevant to the content of TV programs that they are watching or are likely to be interested in watching.
The patent also provides a diagram which explains how the patent wold work:
Ultimately, it is up to Google whether you can expect to see this idea included in future search algorithms. As Google has said before, just because they have patented something doesn’t mean they will definitely be using it. But, Search Engine Land also pointed out Google Now is able to do a very similar task.
If you opt in, Google Now is already capable of listening for information about what you’re watching and updates TV cards accordingly.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-09-17 13:27:332014-09-17 13:27:33Is Google Going To Listen To Your TV Before Giving Search Results?
Online marketing can be difficult for newcomers to get a grasp on thanks to the absolutely huge amount of jargon involved. It can be mind boggling to attempt to work through all the terms without any clear or simple explanation offered. Worst of all, context often doesn’t help because these terms often rely on an understanding of other specialized words and jargon.
If link bait or link spam are foreign words or a Google bomb sounds like a weapon of mass destruction, you could most likely benefit from a glossary that explains all the strange language surrounding SEO. Thankfully, Moz.com offers exactly that.
David LaFerney shared a complete glossary of SEO terms that are absolutely essential to working your way through the industry or taking charge of your business’ web presence. The glossary was published over 7 years ago, but for the most part the terminology of SEO hasn’t changed. For the most part, what has changed over the last half-decade is how these systems work together.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-09-15 13:32:482014-09-15 13:32:48An Essential Glossary for SEO
“When you look at what people are pinning, it’s more about who they want to be in the future,” Maloney said, “which from a marketer’s perspective is a dream come true.”
