SEO Press Review #12
This week’s press review focuses on a mix of important topics from the daily news pertaining to Google and Facebook to more in-depth articles about various aspects of SEO. The highlight would be the two articles that, in tandem, work as a great introduction to managing and creating successful ad campaigns, so you should definitely give it a look.
1. Google May Be Testing Bringing Back Green Ad Label
Google puts a lot of thought into how they present their ads to the readers, because it forms the backbone of their profits, and they have to be really careful about it. Recently, however, they made a change to how they display ads, opting to show a black logo, almost invincible, next to the ad. This prevents the ad from being displaying more prominently and might not attract users eyes to it, which prompted the SEMs to complain to Google about it. That’s why there was an uproar in the community when one of the marketers saw ads with a green ad label on his computer screen. Although it still isn’t clear whether it was a bug or Google has decided to revert back their decision.
Read more: Google May Be Testing Bringing Back Green Ad Label [seroundtable.com]
2. Quality Raters Guidelines and Google Ranking Signals
Quality Raters Guidelines is an ebook for third-party contractors that Google employs to help their algorithms with a human touch and make sure they rank websites more accurately. It mostly consists of people viewing search results and deciding whether it is trustworthy or not. Many search engine marketers have looked at the guidelines ebook to see what Google finds most valuable in a website and have used the information to come up with more efficient strategies. This sounds inventive and might work, and in fact, some successful strategies and concepts have been devised by looking at these websites, but there’s more to this story.
Read more: Quality Raters Guidelines and Google Ranking Signals [searchenginejournal.com]
3. Nine Google Ads Hacks to Improve Your CTR and Conversion Rate
Crafting the perfect ad and using it in an effective campaign is a mix of science, creativity, and luck. This is why it takes a lot of time for marketers to perfect their skills and consistently run successful ad campaigns. During that time that you’re still perfecting your technique, it is important to keep the broader picture in mind and learn how to approach ad creation and marketing in a consistent way. This also includes learning about new tools, tips, and hacks that grants you more flexibility in creating campaigns that suit your skill set and experience. This article goes into just that, giving a comprehensive view of some tools and techniques you can use in your ad campaigns.
Read more: Nine Google Ads Hacks to Improve Your CTR and Conversion Rate [searchenginewatch.com]
4. How I Grew My Dying Facebook Traffic
It seems Facebook has done some fundamental changes to their platform that disincentivizes users from clicking on external links. This is terrible news for social media managers and business owners who depend on the platform to drive organic traffic to their website and business. This article goes in-depth into the root causes of the drop in traffic, ways you can mitigate the problem and keep the organic traffic high. This article is important to anyone who wants to use the platform for marketing and outreach.
Read more: How I Grew My Dying Facebook Traffic [neilpatel.com]
5. How to Build A Winning Creative: An Analysis of Over 10 Million Native Ads
This is another one related to ads, this time it goes into detail about the various artistic choices you make while designing ads. Although the process isn’t entirely scientific, there are certain approaches and techniques that you can use when designing your ads to increase the click-through and the convergence rate. This article is using a new approach, relying on hard data to determine the success of various strategies – you’ll see how small changes to the ad’s text and image can increase the appeal of the ad to various demographics you’re targeting.
Read more: How to Build A Winning Creative: An Analysis of Over 10 Million Native Ads [semrush.com]
6. How to Craft the Perfect Blog Post: a Step-By-Step Guide
The advantages of having a blog are numerous:
- It is an easy way of driving organic traffic to your business without spending a lot of money on marketing and outreach.
- It can make your readers trust you more by helping them learn about your experience and work process. This is a great way of building a long lasting relationship with a core number of customers.
- It can work as an additional source of revenue by displaying ads and sponsoring other products. In some instances, it can be so successful that it can split off into its own business.
That’s the reasons most businesses, hobbyists, and SEMs want to have a successful blog. However, choosing the title, the images, and tables, the tone of the writing, etc. can be really difficult to master, and you need to go through a long process of trial and error until you perfect the various aspects of writing blogs. This article helps you begin that journey by teaching you the basics and giving you insight into how a professional blog is run.
Read more: How to Craft the Perfect Blog Post: a Step-By-Step Guide [yoast.com]
7. Top 100 Most Visited Websites by Search Traffic (as of 2019)
This is a list of the one hundred most visited websites in the world. Looking through the list, you can gain a few insights into how the tech world is moving and recent trends:
- The list shows the websites that were most visited, and this allows you to see whether social media, news websites, search engines, etc. have been gaining traffic recently – this should show which medium is likely to be popular in the coming years and what you can do to adapt your marketing strategy to a changing internet.
- The newcomers to the list have broken through the top 100 list, and this is not an easy feat, and you should pay special attention to them. You can check out their content, read about the techniques they used to get on the Top 100 list and try to incorporate those techniques in your own SEO strategy.
Read more: Top 100 Most Visited Websites by Search Traffic (as of 2019)
8. Link Building in 2019: Get by With a Little Help From Your Friends
The SEO world is always changing, whether it is due to new tools and technologies, the search engines, or businesses’ demand and needs. This change also includes link building approaches and techniques, and it seems between 2015 and now, there has been a lot of change in the scalability and flexibility of link building. If you haven’t read the recent literature on link building, this is a great opportunity to brush up on it and learn about the new techniques and methods by reading this article. It presents the changes with data and information in an intuitive way that’s easy to understand.
Read more: Link Building in 2019: Get by With a Little Help From Your Friends (moz.com)
9. Google adding features for advertisers to promote deals, drive in-store purchases
Online shopping is one of the main reasons why the internet and SEO took off. The revenue and the opportunity there is hardly present in other sections of the internet. It’s no wonder then that Google is making retail stores and online shopping one of its key priorities, and it tries to make its search engine and life easier for them by introducing various QoL improvements. Recently, they’ve added support for signaling Google that you’re holding a sale or promotion. This is a powerful feature that might increase your organic traffic and purchases greatly if you learn how to properly take advantage of it.
Read more: Google adding features for advertisers to promote deals, drive in-store purchases [searchengineland.com]
10. Guide to Web Compliance and Web Accessibility
Web developers have stressed the importance of web accessibility for ages, and it seems it is more important than ever. Not only will you get severe penalties to your ranking in various search engines, but you might face legal action under various laws passed in the EU and the USA. Considering that people with disabilities are one of the most vulnerable sections of our society, it makes sense that these laws have been passed, and it falls on web developers and SEOs to make sure they make the websites they manage accessible. This article talks in length about the implications of those laws, the importance of compliance, and ways to follow them.
Read more: Guide to Web Compliance and Web Accessibility [stonetemple.com]
Conclusion
This was all the articles for this week – we hope you’ve liked the mix of topics and have found the articles informative and insightful. While it is important to keep up with the daily happenings of the SEO world, it is also equally important to take a step back once in a while and read long and detailed research on techniques and tools used in the sector.
