Microsoft and BigCommerce just announced a new partnership called “Microsoft Ads and Listings in the BigCommerce Marketplace.” The new collaboration enables BigCommerce merchants in the US, UK and ANZ to directly integrate their stores and reach Microsoft Advertising’s audience of more than a billion people. What BigCommerce says. Seamless partner app integrations like Microsoft Ads and Listings uplevel the value and opportunities that we can deliver to our merchants all over the world to reach millions of potential new customers searching across the Microsoft Advertising Network,” said Sharon Gee, vice president of revenue growth and general manager of omnichannel at […]

Mark Saltarelli used to work at Cypress North for a couple of years but wanted to go in-house and joined Order, a later-stage startup. We spoke a bit about his history in digital marketing, first working at Toast, then FullFunnel, then Cypress North…

If you’ve racked up awards or accolades for your business, you’re not wrong in wanting to show them off. Your achievements signify you’re doing a few things right, so why wouldn’t you display them on your website? The key is to ensure you don’t look too company-focused or braggy – after all, a cardinal sin of content is using too much “I” or “we” language and forgetting to talk to your audience with “you” language. To strike the right balance, you need to write an awards page that isn’t distracting or annoying, but rather adds credence to your brand and […]

Many great articles have exposed the seedy underbelly of Local Services Ads spam and fake reviews. There’s one on Search Engine Roundtable regarding fake reviews and another on Search Engine Land where Len Raleigh talked about location spam, reviews, names and ads.  I recently learned from a client that the dark hole goes a little deeper than just being misleading on locations and reviews.  This discovery will make those in the local SEO space recall what was seen in the personal injury and the garage door spaces.  Fighting spam in local search In the last two years, we have seen […]

2023 is going to be a wild year in search. Look back at the past year and prepare accordingly with this SEM guide. The post SEM Strategy In 2023: More Ahead With Your Year In Review appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Learn everything you need to know to create a compelling Contact Us page and browse through over 40 examples to spark inspiration. The post Contact Us Page Examples: 44 Designs For Inspiration appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Learn what FAQ schema is and how you can use it to improve your website’s presence in Google search results. The post FAQ Schema: A Guide For Beginners appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

AdWords Managed Accounts get shared negative lists across accounts In 2017, Google added the ability to create and share negative keyword lists across accounts for Managed Accounts. This was welcome news for advertisers who had been adding the same lists of negative keyword accounts manually or using a script to automate cross-account negative lists.  For accounts in a managed account, you could set up a single list of negative keyword in the top-level Shared Library that could then be associated at the account level. Read all about it in: AdWords Managed Accounts can finally share negative keyword lists across accounts Also on […]

Intent research vs. keyword research In 2020, Frédéric Dubut of Bing told us: “Keyword research are probably going to become slowly obsolete and you’ll need to switch to intent research as a practice.” Barry Schwartz asked Google’s John Mueller about Dubut’s statement. Here’s what Mueller said: “There’s probably always gonna be a little bit of room for keyword research because you’re kind of providing those words to users. And even if search engines are trying to understand more than just those words, showing specific words to users can make it a little bit easier for them to understand what your […]

The Spam Clock in 2011, startup search engine Blekko launched a spam clock that estimated 155 million spam pages had been created since Jan. 1 of that year. Blekko said 1 million spam pages were being created every hour. How bad was Google’s spam problem then? Big. But as Danny Sullivan pointed out at the time, it was hard to judge whether Google’s relevancy had actually decreased, because: We expect more from Google than we do in the past, searching for things we might not have in previous years We don’t remember all the successful searches, focusing on when things […]

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

Google said the two different Google search algorithm updates – the December 2022 helpful content system and the December 2022 link spam update – may take another week or two to complete their rollout. The helpful content update started Dec. 5, and the link spam update started on Dec. 14. The algorithm update rollouts were supposed to be completed within two weeks, but clearly that has not happened. Google’s new statement. Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, said on Twitter that these two updates will complete “likely within two weeks, maybe only one” week but he added that it is “not a guarantee” and “timings […]

2022 marked the first year since 2014 that Google and Meta’s advertising market share dropped below 50%, standing at 48.4%. By the end of 2023, that number is expected to drop to 44.9%. What’s going on. Amazon, ByteDance’s TikTok and streaming services like Netflix are continuing to increase their foothold. People are spending less time online on sites like Google and Meta, so it’s no surprise that they’re facing hurdles, despite still growing (albeit slower than other digital ad platforms). Meta and other platforms also suffered from Apple’s iOS14 update in 2021, which required apps on its devices to ask […]

Do you need outstanding core web vital scores to be included in Google Discover? The answer is no, at least John Mueller of Google said “we don’t have that connection documented anywhere.”

As you know, Google can now crawl from locations outside of the United States. We know this is rare, it is used in specific situations. But if you want to know if Google is crawling your site from outside of the US, then you need to check your log files.

Welcome to the first video recap of 2023, where I start with the January 2023 Google webmaster report. I then explain how the Google helpful content and link spam updates are still rolling out and, more so, still causing volatility…

We’ve all heard about search engine optimization (SEO), but what about search engine de-optimization? In one Search Off The Record episode, Martin Splitt, Gary Illyes, and Lizzi Sassman discussed de-optimization – the process of taking a page off SERPs. The goal of deoptimization is ranking the page that is most likely to attract qualified traffic and conversions.  If you’ve ever ranked the “wrong” page for a keyword, this article is for you. Get ready to learn the de-optimization process so you can earn clicks from qualified traffic and increase conversions. How can you tell if the wrong page is ranking? […]