Best of Austin

More than 500 engineers, designers, managers and other staff from across global Google offices have signed an open letter at Medium.com calling on the search engine to stop their Dragonfly project and for company leaders to “commit to transparency, clear communication, and real accountability.” As we reported last month … Google’s project Dragonfly first came to light in August via The Intercept and their reports surrounding leaked documents containing details about the project . In a nutshell, the project looked to be a fresh attempt by Google to re-enter the Chinese search market since having been blocked by the state back in 2010. Dragonfly was speculated to be taking the shape of a mobile search engine. This is unsurprising, as more than 97% of internet users in China go online via mobile devices (according to CNNIC) and it is in this vertical that the industry is seeing most disruption from companies such as Shenma, Sogou and Haosou. What was surprising were the subsequent ...

As SEO professionals, when we present our strategy and project ideas, we are often met with blank stares from business stakeholders. They are not able to connect the dots from SEO jargon to business goals. And my fellow SEO colleagues, we need to own this one. Every so often we forget to speak in simple language that is understood by all. We do tend to speak in acronyms and codes. In today’s digital world, we buy and sell online, we pay our bills and make our deposits online. When the first instinct of the users is to “Google” the products or services they want, the business needs to ensure they provide content that meets the user’s search intent. Search Engine Optimization plays a pivotal role in ensuring this content is optimized and available for search engines to display to the end users. Organic search contributes significantly to the website performance, as well as plays a critical role in the buyer journey, which could lead to a conversion or an engagement. Without proper SEO...

Sources from the ad industry have shone a light on how fast Amazon ad budgets are growing. Reports from various media agencies show that brands have been moving up to 50 percent of their previous Google search spend to Amazon ads . With shifting budget comes the need for more intentional Amazon SEO. A report by Jumpshot notes that what used to be Google’s share of product searches just three years ago is now Amazon’s and vice versa. The report says that by 2018, 54 percent of product searches began on Amazon compared to those that began on Google, at 46 percent. Granted, shoppers who found products through Amazon took relatively longer to make a purchase. Additionally, Google has a more diverse field for advertisers to play on — YouTube in particular. Nonetheless, Amazon is proving to be a serious contender in the Google-dominated space. To marketers, this means the work is only beginning when it comes to optimizing product copy for Amazon’s algorithm, Amazon A9. Amazon is being ...

The top listing in Google’s organic search results draws 33 percent of traffic while the second spot garners 18 percent, a study by online ad network Chitika confirms. After that, it’s a fight to see who secures enough traffic, and of course, in this sort of scenario you need all the help you can get. Being penalized by Google and experiencing a drop in SEO rankings is one of the worst things that can happen to a website. Now, fluctuations are par for the course, especially considering the rapidly evolving Google algorithms . When your search rankings take a huge tumble, you need to adopt a proactive approach before your site gets lost organic search obscurity. And this “approach” involves fixing the seven cardinal SEO mistakes listed below: Avoid keyword stuffing Use the same keywords repeatedly? You might want to stop! Of course, if it is necessary for your content to make sense, then you’ve got no other choice. But if you seek to optimize your copy in this manner, then y...

Content marketing is changing. Here’s how to make sure that your content marketing strategy is still relevant in 2019. Marketing is changing. Traditional promotional methods are not as successful as they used to be. How can you make sure that your content marketing strategy is not staying behind? It’s the perfect time to start thinking ahead to adjust your plans for the next 12 months. Here are seven tips to get you thinking of what you need to improve in 2019. 1. Get the basics right A good way to start the year is to review your existing strategy. Find the time to get together with your team to discuss all the things that worked well in 2018 and what needs to be improved in 2019. A closer look at your strategy can help you understand whether your plans are still relevant for the next 12 months. If you haven’t created a written content marketing strategy yet, then you can start drafting your plans to make it easier to communicate them across different teams. According to CMI’s ...

Every marketer or website owner knows what meta tags are, but not all of them realize the importance of these small pieces of code. Optimizing your meta title and description you improve such crucial things as click-through rate and the users’ first impression on your content quality. Although Google doesn’t use meta tags in its ranking algorithms, metadata has an indirect impact on your SERP. Read the article to find out: The correlation between your snippets and your search ranking; Common mistakes marketers make creating metadata; Tips to follow when elaborating meta tags; How to analyze your existing metadata. How meta tags influence your SERP Well, if search robots don’t pay much attention to your meta tags, why should you bother these pieces of code at all? You could quickly write some short title and description containing your main keywords to help search engines form your snippet, and that would be enough. Not at all. To make it clear, here is the chain of consequence...

One of the most frequent challenges that digital marketers come across, as they try to maximize on Search Engine Optimization, is duplicate content. Duplicate content is content that is very similar or even identical, appearing in a number of locations on the internet. This results in search engines not identifying which web link to show … from Ysais SEO https://ift.tt/2KnZyZj via Ysais SEO from WordPress https://ift.tt/2KoT2l2

How is content marketing changing in 2019? What are the key trends you need to know for the next 12 months? Here are the most important stats to maintain a successful content marketing strategy. A content marketing strategy needs to be frequently evaluated to ensure that it’s still relevant. As we’re heading towards the end of 2018, it’s a good time to review your work from the past 11 months to find out what worked better and what needs to be improved. It’s easy to fall behind with all the emerging trends in technology. A good way to stay up-to-date is to follow CMI’s annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America report. It’s the ninth year that the Content Marketing Institute surveys content marketers across the world about the top trends that have to do with strategy, planning, tools, proficiency, and everything that can help you improve your content marketing ideas. These are the top content marketing stats you need to know to keep your content mar...

Austin Opera staged a victory worthy of the Lion of Venice from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2OU2vBe via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2Saza83

Even skeptics have to admit there are some great local options from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2TpkcMC via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2PHE3Zl

Voice search is growing, a statement appearing time and time again throughout the web. It has fundamentally changed the way people search and it’s here to stay. With a simple command, users can conduct searches for information, products, services and local businesses. It’s such a hot topic that our Head of Search and Strategy Stuart Shaw spoke at one of the UK’s largest SEO conferences a few weeks ago to talk about the details of voice search and why it’s important for brands. While voice isn’t likely to surpass traditional search any time soon, it has spurred us to explore how local businesses can optimize, adjust their marketing strategies and understand the potential voice search could have on their bottom lines. The opportunity for local businesses To get information about a local service near to us, we pull out our phones and we search for it: ‘Plumbing services near me’ ‘Local pizza delivery’ ‘What are the opening times for…’ ‘Is so and so open today?’ etc. In fact, ...

With greater diversity, this year’s fest set a new precedent from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2Bhig1R via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2S3Mwm7

Remembering those we’ve lost and celebrating the community from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2DvoWuE via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2DOjsfD

Queens, kings, and clowns from near and far wow at Drag Village from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2A62hSj via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2Q6bd45

Google has recently updated exact match close variants ; now implied words, paraphrase words and same-intent keywords are allowed to match to exact match keywords as close variants. This change gives advertisers less control over their exact match keywords and gives Google more control to appropriately match search query intent to similar keywords. For advertisers using (or planning to use) the Alpha-Beta structure for their accounts, there are a few considerations to be aware of with this update to exact match close variants. Background on Alpha-Beta The Alpha Beta structure breaks keywords into two different campaigns – Alpha and Beta. Alpha campaigns contain exact match keywords that are strong-performing search queries. Top-performing search queries can be determined by a few different metrics (conversions, impressions, clicks, etc.) depending on your business targets and goals. These Alpha keywords are placed into single keyword ad groups, which allows for keywords with hyper-...

The Austin film podcast conjures British ghosts for AFS from The Austin Chronicle – Daily https://ift.tt/2Kfep89 via Austin Statesman from WordPress https://ift.tt/2PCtdDL

We invited Michael Akkerman , Global Head of Partners Program at Pinterest, to our NY office yesterday evening to speak on visual search. He talked about discovery over search, audience engagement over audience size, less time more well-spent over more total time spent, and social communities over social networks. It was an insightful, instructive, and *obviously* visual-heavy session. Here were some of the key takeaways / highlights. Pinterest is a visual discovery engine — discovery over search When people come to our platform, they’re trying to discover new pieces of information. Our Pinners are not looking to connect with friends or post at parties. They’re doing home renovations. They’re in the market for something. They want to go and actually discover something. Google is great for when I know what I want, but it’s really crappy when I don’t know how to articulate it. How do I describe a style I’ve only seen, a city I don’t know, a specific color? Like this: Or this...