Grow your Business and Reach More Customers

Google My Business has added a new option that says “Connect in real-time, with video conferencing.” It says you can “grow your business and reach more customers when you use video conferencing providers.” Then a “set up” button to start to configure it.

I guess this is activated if you have updated your service availability option in Google My Business to specify you offer video appointments but it is not 100% confirmed.

Here is a screenshot of the box on the main home dashboard of Google My Business after you sign in and select a specific business:

After you click on “Set up” you are given these online video service providers including Google Meet, Webex, Skype, and Zoom. Here is a screenshot:

But after that, there does not seem to be a way to set it up more beyond that yet. When you click on Google Meet, it takes you to google.com/meet which I already use all the time. In fact, all the links take you to those service providers. Google does link to this help document with more details on how to configure it. There is a lot of Local SEOs that are chatting about this as well in the Local Search Forums.

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Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update 18 June 2020

Google Search Ranking Shuffles on Thursday, June 18th

Like we all know that Google always changing search results and update algorithm continuously. Right now I am seeing over the past couple of days that Search Engine Monitoring Tools showing usual changes in the Google search results and also SEO community is chattering at WebmasterWorld about the latest Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update on Thursday, 18 June 2020.

Search Engine Monitoring Tools Tracking Google Algorithm Update:

RankRanger:

CognitiveSEO:

As you can see, the above two show changes, bigger changes, around June 17th. But not all are seeing such big changes on the 17th or this week:

SEMRush:

Accuranker:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SERPMetrics:

Mozcast:

Are you noticing any changes since around yesterday, Thursday, June 18th?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update on 23rd Jan 2020

Important News For Google Ads Partners Program

New requirements for agencies to achieve and maintain Google Partner status take effect starting in June 2020. Many Google Advertisers has received an email on Thursday about substantial changes coming to Google Ads Partners Program – the badge and certification program for agencies that meet certain criteria.

As far as I have read the news and understood the most important news are:

• Performance criteria for maintaining Partner’s badge will be more transparent and will directly refer to the optimization score highlighted in the “Recommendations” tab of each account (excluding ignored suggestions).
• It will no longer be enough to have 1 certified administrator/standard user to be able to display the Google Partner badge (2 for Premier Partners), but at least half of the administrator/standard users connected to your company’s account manager will have to pass the Skillshop certifications (the accounts on this platform must be connected to the company’s one).
• Growth of invested budgets and new accounts managed will no longer be a requirement to obtain the badge, but you only need to spend more than 20,000$ (it was 10,000$) in your managed accounts in the last 3 months. These requirements will stay still for Premier Partners, who will be chosen among the 3% of the best partners in terms of expenditure, growth of invested budgets and customer retention.

Below is Google’s comparison chart look at what’s changing, which you can find on this help page.

The first consideration I have to make about these new Google Ads Partner Program is starting to get serious about the recommendations tab. All of us PPC Professionals had long noticed that the quality of suggestions has been definitely improving. Now ignoring that section may also have important consequences on the Partner badge (as well as on the performance of the campaigns). So, do it at your own risk.

For now, Google is still not so sure of all its automatic optimization suggestions to consider also the wrong / ignored ones among those used to evaluate the account, but I could bet that there is where we are going.

They have finally understood that more transparency was needed in the evaluation criteria of the managed accounts to obtain the Partner badge and that this has nothing to do with increasing budgets and new customers. This is one of the main reasons why I left the program in 2017, given that in my opinion the added value of a PPC Expert lies in the the fact that he/she has to be independent from the platforms used. The very reason for us being on the market is that we are free to suggest the best solution for each customer, without necessarily having to “push” one or the other for reasons different from expected performance.

Unfortunately, this underlying opacity remains for Premier Partners, but Google has already taken a step in the right direction by withdrawing this criterion for the bulk of Partners, I hope that sooner or later they will also drop it for top spenders.

Note:

Google Ads Partner Program will select based on a number of factors, including but not limited to: annual Ads spend across managed accounts, client growth, client retention, and other information. Evaluation is done on an annual basis and status may not be available in all markets.

There is no doubt about that Google is continuously updating and make a lots of changes in Search Ranking Algorithm. I saw in the SEO community and also search engine monitoring tools are lighting up. These are all signs that there was a Google search ranking algorithm update. But truth is, this algorithm update can be directly related to the featured snippet de-duplication change on January 22nd.

What I am saying is that the tools might not be ready to process the change and thus are showing changes to what is listed in the Google search results for the queries they track. Also, SEOs might be noticing those changes in those third-party tools and potentially also noticing changes in traffic because of the de-duplication efforts.

Some of the tool providers need to make updates:

So what you will see below is likely related to the Google featured snippets change and not necessarily a ranking algorithm update.

Search Engine Monitoring Tools Tracking Google Algorithm Update:

Mozcast:

SERPMetrics:

Advanced Web Rankings:

RankRanger:

Cognitive SEO:

SEMRush Sensor:

So I really doubt Google did an algorithm update, outside of the featured snippet de-duplication change. But if they did, it would be hard to know. I will suggest to all SEOs, Webmasters and Site Owners that keep monitor your daily traffic in Google Analytics and manually check your Keywords Ranking. If you see any changes, please share it here regarding this unconfirmed update. Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Also Read: 

Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update on 4 Dec 2019

SEO vs SEM: A Never Ending Wrestling Match

Search engines like Google have two types of search results including paid and organic. Paid results show up on top in the SERP when someone pay Google to get clicks. Organic results are the ones that Google deems most relevant for the query. Business owners can increase website traffic by appearing in organic and paid results using SEO and PPC. In this blog post, I will try to cover SEO vs SEM and how to use both for a more comprehensive search engine marketing (SEM) strategy. But see the example of Paid vs Organic Search Results.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimizing content to be discovered through a search engine’s organic results. Google and other search engines look at hundreds of factors to decide which pages to rank first for those queries. Nobody knows what all of these factors are, but the most important ones are roughly divided into three buckets:

On-page SEO:

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages. Here are the examples of on-page tactics include:

• Matching search intent
• Covering a topic in-depth
• Using short and descriptive URLs
• Writing enticing title tags and meta descriptions
• Using descriptive alt tags for images (where appropriate)
• Writing simple and easy to read content
• Including keywords in important places

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is anything done outside of a website to improve its rankings. Following are the off-page tactics include:

• Building citations
• Earning brand mentions
• Earning positive customer reviews
• Getting backlinks from relevant and authoritative websites

Technical SEO

Technical SEO involves making technical changes to help search engines crawl, index, and rank content more efficiently. I am sharing some of examples of technical optimizations include:

• Improving page speed
• Using canonical tags to prevent duplicate content
• Using hreflang tags for multilingual content
• Optimizing robots.txt for crawl efficiency
• “Noindexing” thin content

What is PPC?

PPC (Pay Per Click) is a form of advertising where businesses pay for website clicks from popular platforms like search engines. For example, clicking this ad in Google costs Apple money:

What is SEM?

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is a broad term that encompasses SEO and PPC. May be you are not agrees with this definition. But see some SEM as synonymous with PPC.

Should you use SEO, PPC, or both?

Knowing what we now know about search engine marketing, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that SEO is the way forward because organic traffic is free, consistent, and passive. But this isn’t always the same because sometimes SEO works best and for some time PPC is the better option. And sometimes, it makes the most sense to use both marketing strategies at the same time. Below are four ways to use SEO, PPC, or both for maximum search engine visibility and traffic.

• Run ads for keywords that are too competitive
• Use PPC and SEO for ad-heavy keywords
• Use SEO for informational keywords
• Use SEO and PPC to monopolize the search results

1. Run ads for keywords that are too competitive

It can take years to rank for some keywords. For example, if you have a new supplement store and want to rank for “buy protein powder,” your chances of ranking in the short-to-medium term are slim. This is because you’re going up against established brands like Amazon, Walmart, and GNC.

But this doesn’t mean you should abandon SEO and just run ads. Since ranking for competitive queries will likely be a long-play, there are a few benefits to using PPC while working to rank your pages.

a) You can generate revenue immediately

Paid traffic is instant. It can be turned on or off with the click of a button.

Send that traffic to a relevant page optimized for conversions, and you can make sales in minutes.

Just remember that revenue isn’t the same thing as profit.

If you sell a product for $10, pay $1 per click, and convert at 20%, you’re turning every ad dollar spent into two.

But if your product costs $6 to make, you’re losing money.

There are two ways to fix this without increasing the price of your product:

• Increase your conversion rate
• Decrease your cost per click (CPC)

Achieving both of these can take months, so be prepared to lose dollars while you tweak campaigns and pages to work for you.

b) You can test and optimize for conversions

Most ad platforms have conversion tracking features. They know that if publishers see a positive return on their ad spend, they’ll keep spending.

Use this as an opportunity to gain insights on the average cost per conversion and run controlled tests to improve your conversion rate. As you start producing profit from your ads, scale-out to other platforms (e.g., Bing ads).

c) You can get valuable keyword data

The “Search terms” report in Google Ads shows conversion data for the keywords you’re bidding on. Use this to find high-converting keywords to target with SEO.

Bidding on a popular keyword like “protein powder” might result in tons of clicks but low conversions. For a more specific query like “grass fed whey protein,” you might get fewer clicks but more conversions. Export the search terms report from Google Ads and filter for profitable ones.

2. Use PPC and SEO for ad-heavy keywords

Profitable keywords tend to attract lots of advertisers. Just look at the results for “car insurance”:

Google shows four paid ads at the top, and that leads to fewer clicks on organic results as they get pushed down the page.

How many fewer clicks?

For that keyword, almost 40% go to paid results.

PPC, then, is a great way to get traffic from this keyword, but what about SEO? If we look at estimated organic traffic to the current top-ranking page for this keyword, we see that it gets an estimated 64,000 monthly organic visits.

Bottom line: Invest in SEO and PPC to get maximum traffic from ad-heavy keywords.

3. Use SEO for informational keywords

Most Google searches are informational.

That means people are looking to learn, not buy.

For example, take a query “how to make a protein shake,” which gets 2,100 searches a month.

It’s unlikely that anyone searching for this is in the market for protein powder. Most are probably looking to learn how to make a tasty shake using powder they’ve already bought. That explains why no supplement companies bid on this keyword. It doesn’t make financial sense, even with a low average CPC.

Looking at the search results, however, we see one supplements company ranking organically at the bottom of the first page.

Now it’s clear from the title of the post that this was no accident; they’ve made an effort to rank for this keyword. The question is, why are they willing to put effort into ranking organically, but aren’t willing to pay for traffic to that page?

The answer comes down to cost vs. reward. The top-ranking page for that keyword gets around 9,000 monthly organic visits. The estimated PPC value of that traffic is $16,400.

Given the low Keyword Difficulty score for this query, the dollar-equivalent of the time and effort required to rank organically would almost certainly be less in comparison.

4. Use SEO and PPC to monopolize the search results

It’s not just ads that push down the organic search results. Google now shows SERP features like featured snippets, “People also Ask” boxes and video carousels for some queries.

These can be annoying when your goal is to rank higher, but remember that it’s possible to appear in many SERP features. This is true of many SEO-related keywords because we’re committed to providing the best resources for learning SEO. I also optimize my videos to rank in Google.

Some brands choose to monopolize the search results even further by running ads for keywords they already rank for. For example, one website is running ads for “how to start a blog” despite already ranking organically and owning the featured snippet.

Final Thoughts

SEO vs SEM: this is a never-ending wrestling match between Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. Knowing when and where to use each tactic to achieve the desired results is the game. Sometimes SEO is the answer, sometimes PPC, and sometimes both. Please give your feedback which will help me to improve.

Bing is going to rolling out user-agents for BingBot. According to the announcement, Bing is updating its user agents to be dynamic based on the version of the browser it is using to crawl your web site. The new Microsoft Edge as the engine to run JavaScript and render web pages. With this change, Bing will start the transition to a new user-agent for websites which require it for rendering and then gradually update for all sites.  

Today’s Bingbot User-Agents:

• Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)
• Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0
• Mozilla/5.0 (Windows Phone 8.1; ARM; Trident/7.0; Touch; rv:11.0; IEMobile/11.0; NOKIA; Lumia 530) like Gecko (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

Following are the New Evergreen Bingbot user-agents

Desktop:

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36 Edg/W.X.Y.Z

Mobile

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 Edg/W.X.Y.Z (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

According to Bing: We are committing to regularly update our web page rendering engine to the most recent stable version of Microsoft Edge thus making the above user agent strings to be evergreen. Thus, “W.X.Y.Z” will be substituted with the latest Microsoft Edge version we’re using, for example “80.0.345.0″.

How to test your web site?

Bing want you to install the new Microsoft Edge to test your website is working fine with it. If your site is working fine then you don’t need to worry about the change. Furthermore, you can register your site on Bing Webmaster Tools to get insights about your site. If there is an issue, Bing will investigate your site with new upcoming tools based on the new rendering engine. 

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Bing Make It Simple To Verify Site Using Domain Connect

There is no doubt about that Google is continuously updating and make a lots of changes in Search Ranking Algorithm. I saw some chatters at WebmasterWorld and discussion about Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update on 4 Dec, 2019. Here I like to share some screenshots that what SEOs and Webmaster are saying about:

There is no confirmation from Google or their officials about this algorithm update. Just like in the past Google confirmed “March 2019 Core Update” but not update about 1 August 2019. There are some Search Engine Monitoring Tools are showing spikes in the signals of a Google search ranking update over the past couple of days – maybe December 3rd or 4th. Glenn Gabe also tweeted and shared the screenshot with the SEO Community regarding this Search Ranking Algorithm Update: 

Search Engine Monitoring Tools Tracking Google Algorithm Update:

MOZ:

SERPMetrics:

Algoroo:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Accuranker:

RankRanger:

Cognitive SEO:

SEMRush:

I will suggest to all SEOs, Webmasters and Site Owners that keep monitor your daily traffic in Google Analytics and manually check your Keywords Ranking. If you see any changes please share it here regarding this unconfirmed update.

Also Read: 

Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update 1 August

A New Product Performance Report in the Google Search Console

People visits Google to find, search and select that which product or brand is reliable to purchase. So Google announced that they are adding a new data reporting structure for products rich results in the search console. This will help shopper to get product information like descriptions, price and availability within the search results.

For SEOs and Webmasters, they can see data in the Search Console performance report, where you can view the stats such as total clicks, impressions, average click-through rate, and average position. Furthermore, these metrics will be segmented by device, geography and queries.

Those websites that are qualified to appear in Google’s product search results will find a new Search Appearance type called “Product results.” It will be easy to segment your traffic to analyze your search performance.

The new ‘Product results’ search appearance will help website owners understand their search performance for product rich results. For example how shopping traffic changes over time and which search queries product results show up for. You can drill down the data even further to figure out how much traffic comes specifically from rich data like price, availability, etc. If you have any questions on this (or other) Search Console reports, let Google know through the forum or on Twitter.

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Google Roll Out Speed Report in Search Console

Find Out How To Get Faster Website with the New Speed Report in Search Console

At Google I/O 2019, you have seen a sneak preview of the ‘Speed Report Beta’ in the Search Console. After received valuable feedback from the beta testers Google has decided to roll out this report. Today, Google announced that they are publicly rolling Speed Report in the Search Console to make the web faster. The Speed report shows how fast your pages perform according to real world usage data.

The report is based on FCP and FID metrics that shows performance grouped by speed status, metric type, and similar URL type. The report automatically assigns groups of similar URLs into “Fast”, “Moderate”, and “Slow” buckets. The data is based on the Chrome User Experience Report, which provides user experience metrics for how real-world Chrome users experience popular destinations on the web.

What is Speed Report?

According to Google, the report will show you those URLs that are slow due to any issue. Webmasters or site owners can dig down to view the examples of slow URLs and identify the reason. For better understanding that what type of optimization need to done for that specific URL, the report is directly link with the Page Speed Insight Tool, which will provide all the information.

The new speed report is directly linked with the Page Speed Insight Tool, which will help  you to find that what type of optimization need to be done for a specific URL. You can use this report to monitor and track fixes that you made to your website. After resolve the issues, use the report to track users experienced when browsing the new version of your site.

If you want to know how your site is performing, you can also view those URLs which are doing better by checking the moderate and fast buckets. Google said that this new speed report is in experimental mode, but they are planning to continue to iterate and improve the metrics and recommendations for site owners. Google want you to give your feedback and submit directly through the forum to ensure that it is useful and helpful.

I tried to check my website SEOBizWorld.com in the search console, I did not find any data, but like I mention that it’s in the experimental mode, so it is possible that after few days I will get the data. In the page speed insight tool I found my site’s mobile speed is 72% and Desktop speed is 74%. In my next post I will share my experience that how to optimized website speed with the help of this report.

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Google Launched Site Kit Plugin for WordPress