If you’ve ever doubted the power of search engine optimization, just look at the events playing out surrounding the recently released movie Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).
After the film significantly under-performed on its opening weekend, Warner Bros. has decided to revise the name to the simpler Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey for better SEO.
As the company explained to The Verge this week, the new title places the popular character’s name at the front of the title instead of hiding it towards the end. The idea behind is a “search expansion for ticket sites” to make the title easier to find for movie-goers who may be less familiar with the Birds of Prey title.
Attentive watchers noticed the change occurring three days after the film’s release across numerous ticket sites.
Did SEO Tank Birds of Prey?
It is too early to really tell how big of an impact the change will really have to the movie’s success. There is some evidence that Google and other major search engines were already surfacing information about the movie and ticket availability when just searching “Harley Quinn” before the change took effect.
Image Source: George Nguyen/Search Engine Land
The revision could actually cause more confusion, as many details about the movie – such as its YouTube trailer – still show the original movie title.
However, the power of SEO and branding can’t be ignored. Studies have shown that more than half of consumers only click on brands they are familiar with within search results. It is also hard to gauge exactly how many potential film goers were turned away or frustrated by irrelevant search results before the change took place.
Either way, the events following the release of Birds of Prey provide a real-world example of how SEO and branding affect the viability of even the biggest products.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/HarleyQuinnandBirdsofPreySEO.jpg393640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2020-02-13 17:43:442020-02-13 17:43:44Warner Bros Renamed The Harley Quinn Movie For Better SEO
When creating content to help your SEO, many people believe they should aim for an “ideal” word count. The perfect number has ranged from 300 to 1,500 words per post depending on when and who you ask. There’s just one problem – Google’s leading experts say there is no perfect word count.
Why Do Word Counts Seem Important?
Since Google is relatively tight-lipped about the exact recipe they use to rank sites on its search engine, SEO experts have traditionally had to rely on their own data to understand the inner-workings of the search engine.
Sometimes, this information is later confirmed. Marketing experts had long believed that site speed was an important ranking signal for Google before the company confirmed its impact.
The problem is this approach relies strongly on correlation – which can be unreliable or lead to incorrect conclusions.
This is also why the “ideal” word counts recommended by “experts” tends to vary so wildly. When we have to rely on relatively limited data (at least, compared to Google’s data), it can skew the conclusions taken from the data.
This is where Google’s John Mueller comes in.
What Google Has To Say
The company’s leading experts have repeatedly denied that they consider word counts to be an important ranking signal. Some have suggested it is lightly considered, but the impact is negligible compared to other factors like keyword relevance or backlinks to the page.
The latest Googler to speak out about the issue is John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google.
In a recent tweet, Mueller used a simple analogy to explain why focusing on word counts is the wrong approach.
Having the same word-count as a top-ranking article isn't going to make your pages rank first, just like having a bunch of USB chargers isn't going to get you to the moon. But, I'm still tempted to buy some of those USB chargers…https://t.co/TIuJHwHufn
Simply put, focusing on how long each piece of content is puts the attention on the wrong area. If you write long posts, simply for the point of hitting a total number of words, there is a high risk of drifting off-topic or including irrelevant details.
The better approach is to create content with the goal of answering a specific question or responding to a specific need. Then, write until you’ve provided all the relevant information – whether it takes 300 or 1,500 words to do so.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/marketing-typography-close-up-view-letters-54257.jpg25593853Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2020-02-11 18:13:102020-02-11 18:13:10Google’s John Mueller Weighs In On SEO Word Counts
In the latest episode of Google’s “Search for Beginners” series, the company focused on 5 things everyone should consider for their website.
While it is relatively straight and to the point, the video shares insight into the process of ranking your site on Google and ensuring smooth performance for users across a wide range of devices and platforms.
Specifically, Google’s video recommends:
Check if your site is indexed: Perform a search on Google for “site:[yourwebsite.com]” to ensure your site is being properly indexed and included in search results. If your site isn’t showing up, it means there is an error keeping your site from being crawled or indexed.
Provide high quality content: Content is essential for informing users AND search engines about your site. Following the official webmaster guidelines and best practice documents will help your site rank better and improve overall traffic.
Maximize performance across all devices: Most searches are now occurring on mobile devices, so it is important that your site loads quickly on all devices. You can check to ensure your site is mobile friendly using Google’s online tool here.
Secure your website: Upgrading from HTTP to HTTPS helps protect your users information and limit the chance of bad actors manipulating your site.
Hire an SEO professional: With the increasingly competitive search results and fast-changing results pages, Google recommends hiring an outside professional to assist you.
The video actually implies that hiring an SEO professional is so important they will be devoting significantly more time to it in the future. Here’s what the presenter had to say:
“Are you looking for someone to work on [your website] on your behalf? Hiring a search engine optimizer, or “SEO,” might be an option. SEOs are professionals who can help improve the visibility and ranking of your website. We’ll talk more about hiring an SEO in future episodes.”
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/GoogleRankings.png360640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2020-01-30 16:02:312020-01-30 16:02:31Google Reveals The 5 Things Every Website Should Do
If there is anything that has remained true about online marketing over the past decade, it is that online marketing is always changing. Even the most conservative estimates suggest that Google makes around 9 changes to their search engine algorithm every day.
To stay ahead of the curve, businesses can’t just understand where online marketing and SEO is today. They have to be able to look forward to predict the next wave of updates they can expect in the coming months and years.
With that in mind, I wanted to spend some time today talking about some of the biggest trends you can expect to see in 2020 and beyond:
1) Snippets Become The New “Number 1 on Google”
For years, Google has been using Featured Snippets to highlight quick information that may answer your query without ever having to click on a search result. You can see these when you search for recipes, look for lyrics to your favorite songs, or ask questions with relatively simple answers like “How big is the sun?”
Brands have long avoided targeting these snippets which typically appear above all other search results, believing that they reduce the chance of a person clicking onto their website or otherwise converting. However, growing evidence suggests snippets actually drive higher click-through rates and engagement by quickly establishing a single site as the authority.
Over the next year, the competition for these snippets is likely to continue rising, making them the next big fight for search engine results dominance.
2) Mobile Really Comes First
We’ve been talking about this moment for years. We officially use our smartphones and tablets to access the internet more desktop devices.
As such, Google has announced that its ‘Mobile-First Index” would become its primary search index. That means Google is now looking at the mobile version of your site before it ever considers the desktop version when ranking search results.
With this in mind, having a stripped-down mobile version of your site or not having a mobile site is no longer a viable option if you want to succeed online.
Site speed will also continue to be a major ranking factor because of its importance when accessing sites on the go from mobile devices.
3) Visual Search Gets Serious
Visual search has existed as a novelty in online marketing for some time now, slowly improving with each iteration. Now, we are reaching the point where visual search is becoming a major player in search.
While we don’t have statistics from Google Lens or Bing’s Visual Search, Pinterest’s Lens has been a revealing foray into the viability of visual search.
Within a single year of launch, Pinterest Lens was receiving more than 600 million visual search queries every month. This September, the company announced the tool was able to identify over 2.5 billion unique objects within the fashion and home industries.
With this in mind, it is easy to imagine a day in the near future when people regularly find it easier to snap a quick picture than come up with a precise text query when trying to find a specific item online.
4) Voice Search
Speaking of convenience, people are quickly turning to their Alexas, Echos, Siris, and Dots for their casual search needs – whether it is checking the weather or quickly ordering a product.
Out of all the coming changes, this may have the largest effect on how brands optimize their websites and content. This is because voice queries tend to be almost completely different than the types of queries we make when typing into a browser form.
With some estimates suggesting voice search could account for nearly half of all searches by the end of 2020, brands will have to begin optimizing for more conversational “long-tail” search queries and the unique capabilities of voice assistants.
5) Video Rules The Content Landscape
This is another online marketing trend that has been growing for years, but shows absolutely no signs of slowing down in the coming years.
The simple truth is that videos are more engaging than almost any other form of media, providing both audio and visual information in a quickly consumable package. Thanks to faster internet speeds and improved search indexing, they have also been an increasingly effective tool for sharing your content and driving actual engagement.
To give you an idea, some statistics suggest that videos can increase engagement by more than 80% compared to sharing the same information in simple text or audio clips.
Despite this, many brands have still avoided investing in video marketing because they believe it is inherently expensive or ineffective in local markets. Ironically, most users say they often enjoy videos shot using “authentic” methods like shooting selfie-style using a smartphone as much or more than slickly produced commercial videos.
Waiting for the “next big thing” to blow up before you jump in is a surefire way to always be a step behind your competition online. You don’t have to invest in every whim or indulgence of the digital marketing landscape, but focusing on these five surefire trends is sure to have you starting 2020 at the head of the pack.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/5-Online-Marketing-Trends-To-Know-2020.png315560Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2019-12-10 17:15:152019-12-10 17:27:365 Online Marketing Trends You Need To Know Ahead of 2020
Are you an SEO beginner or a business owner trying to get a grasp on the basics of online optimization? Google is launching an animated YouTube video series called “Search for Beginners” aimed at you, with the goal of explaining the concepts and techniques behind beginner-level SEO.
Google described the series, saying it is:
“… a new fully animated series for anyone who is interested in learning the basics of creating an online presence and the right Google Search tools to help customers find their website.”
The “Search for Beginners” videos will be released every two weeks and cover a wide range of topics including:
How Google Search works
Frequently asked questions about search and discoverability
How to change what’s showing up in snippets in Google Search
How to correct inaccurate information about a business
How to set goals for a website
Tips for hiring a web developer
Tips for hiring an SEO specialist
Top 5 things to consider for a website
Best of all, the videos are designed to be able to stand on their own, meaning you can check in on particular topics of interest or watch every installment.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Untitled-design.png312820Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2019-10-24 17:59:542019-10-24 17:59:54Google Launches Animated “Search for Beginners” Video Series
Bing has announced that its search engine crawler, Bingbot, will be going evergreen over the next few months by adopting the Chromium-based Edge browser to render webpages.
Essentially, this means it will be able to crawl, render, and properly index more of your content more closely to how to actual users see it.
By adopting Microsoft Edge, Bingbot will now render all web pages using the same underlying web platform technology already used today by Googlebot, Google Chrome, and other Chromium-based browsers. This will make it easy for developers to ensure their web sites and their Content Management System work across all these solutions without having to spend time investigating each solution in depth.
The additional upside is that this mirrors steps recently taken by Google, which suggests it may become easier to optimize for both search engines without specific steps for each platform.
Google has announced they will be rolling out a broad update to their core search algorithm starting later today.
Later today, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the September 2019 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this blog for more about that: https://t.co/e5ZQUAlt0G
While the updates are a regular part of maintaining and improving the company’s search engine, Google has typically been reluctant to give advance notice before the update has rolled out. In some cases, they have even been unwilling to address algorithm updates in-depth after their implementation.
This is only the second time the search engine has announced a broad core algorithm update ahead of time, suggesting they are being more proactive in communicating with webmasters.
Google’s Danny Sullivan says the update should start very soon and will take up to a few days to complete.
I expect it to begin in a few hours; these typically take a few days to fully roll out. Yes, we'll post when the rollout begins. We don't post when it ends because there's typically other updates that are always happening, too. But after a few days, as said.
The company’s announcement didn’t add any new guidance or recommendations for managing your site during and after the rollout of this update, but Google did recommend reviewing the existing guidelines for core updates:
Widely notable effects are to be expected, which can include drops or gains in search rankings.
Core updates are “broad” in the sense that they don’t target anything specific. Rather, they’re designed to improve Google’s systems overall.
Pages that drop in rankings aren’t being penalized; they’re being reassessed against other web content that has been published since the last update.
Focusing on providing the best possible content is the top recommended way to deal with the impact of a core algorithm update.
Broad core updates happen every few months. Sites might not recover from one update until the next one rolls out.
Improvements do not guarantee recovery. However, choosing not to implement any improvements will virtually guarantee no recovery.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/google-1018443_640.png244640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2019-09-24 15:54:072019-09-24 15:54:07Google is Rolling Out a Large Update To Its Core Algorithm Today
New research from Yext and Forbes reinforces just how important it is to keep the information on search engine results relevant to your business accurate and up-to-date.
The findings from more than 500 US consumers indicates that people automatically assume only half of the information they see in search results is accurate. Additionally, those consumers then hold the brands responsible for any inaccurate information about them, even when it appears outside of your official channels.
The study also revealed a few more bits of interesting information:
57% of respondents say they bypass search and visit a brand’s official website first because they believe the information there will be more complete and accurate.
50% of consumers regularly turn to third-party sites and apps to find information about brands.
48% of those surveyed said a brand’s website is their most trusted source of information.
47% say they are more likely to trust a third-party site over a brand’s website.
20% of current and new customers trust social media to deliver accurate brand information.
28% of consumers avoid buying a brand’s product after seeing inaccurate information.
Marc Ferrentino, Chief Strategy Officer of Yext elaborated on the findings, saying:
”Our research shows that regardless of where they search for information, people expect the answers they find to be consistent and accurate — and they hold brands responsible to ensure this is the case.
… there is a significant opportunity for businesses to differentiate themselves from their competition through verification on and off of their own websites.”
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/adult-boy-break-306534-1.jpg427640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2019-09-10 15:05:042019-09-10 15:05:04Only Half of Consumers Believe Search Engine Results are Accurate
Shelling out extra money on search engine optimization (SEO) can be a scary move for any company, but a new study suggests it pays off.
Findings from a survey of business owners found that those who pay above the average for SEO services were more likely to be satisfied compared to those who paid less.
According to the data from Backlinko, the average amount small businesses in America pay for SEO services is $497.16 per month.
However, those that spent more than $500 per month were 53.3% more likely to say they were “extremely satisfied” compared to those who spent less than that.
What Business Owners Say About SEO
The responses come from a larger study conducted by Backlinko, which included surveying 1,200 business owners across America about SEO-related issues.
It found that most small businesses see online optimization largely as a way to drive referrals and reviews, as well as improving Google search performance.
Through these goals, they also see SEO as a way to bring in new customers and increase sales.
Unfortunately, many of these businesses aren’t getting what they are expecting out of their SEO providers.
Just 30% of business owners said they would recommend their current service provider.
The biggest issues were simply that businesses were not satisfied with the results and some search engine optimization service providers delivered poor customer service or responsiveness.
Part of this may be that some businesses choose to work with freelancers. The results showed that those who worked with agencies were more likely to be satisfied than those who hired freelancers.
More likely, though, is that many SEO agencies and service providers are likely overselling what their low-level services can accomplish. While any search engine optimization is better than none, many promise that low-cost options will lead to major gains.
Based on the findings, they are more likely to be satisfied by diving in and truly investing in their online optimization, rather than only dipping a toe in the water.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/startup-3299033_640.jpg396640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2019-07-04 15:37:102019-07-04 15:37:56Business owners are more likely to be satisfied with their SEO if they paid more, says new study
Thanks to its high-level of adaptability, JavaScript (JS) has been in use in some shape or form for more than 20 years and remains one of the most popular programming languages used to build websites.
However, Google’s Martin Splitt, a webmaster trends analyst, recently suggested that webmasters should begin moving away from the coding language to rank most quickly on search engines.
In an SEO Mythbusting video exploring the topic of web performance and search engine optimization, Splitt and Ada Rose Cannon of Samsung found themselves talking about JavaScript.
Specifically, they discussed how using too much JS can drag down a site’s performance and potentially drag them down in Google’s search index.
How JavaScript Holds Content Back
One of the biggest issues that arise with overusing JS is when sites publish content on a daily basis.
Google uses a two-pass indexing process to help verify content before it is added to the search index. In the case of a JavaScript-heavy page, Google first renders the non-JS elements like HTML and CSS. Then, the page gets put into a queue for more advanced crawling to render the rest of the content as processing resources are available.
This means Java-heavy pages may not be completely crawled and indexed for up to a week after being published.
For time-sensitive information, this can be the difference between being on the cutting-edge and getting left behind.
What You Can Do Instead
Splitt offers a few different techniques developers can use to ensure their site is being efficiently crawled and indexed as new content is published.
One way to get around the issue would be to use dynamic rendering, which provides Google with a static rendered version of your page – saving them the time and effort of rendering and crawling the page themselves.
The best course of action, though, would be to simply rely primarily on HTML and CSS for time-sensitive content.
Splitt takes time to explain that JavaScript is not inherently bad for your SEO or search rankings. Once they are indexed, JS-heavy sites “rank just fine.” The issue is ensuring content is crawled and indexed as quickly and efficiently as possible, so you can always be on the cutting edge.
The discussion gets pretty technical, but you can view the entire discussion in the full video below:
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Untitled-design-1.png360640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2019-06-13 16:59:192019-06-13 16:59:19Google’s Martin Splitt Says JavaScript Can Slow Your SEO
