So you’ve won a new SEO client – hooray! Before you officially get the partnership kicked off, there’s a lot of ground to cover to help you set the stage for success and make a great first impression. As SEOs know, every website has two areas that need focused analysis before you kick off an SEO program: content and back-end setup. This article will tackle five initiatives my team undertakes right after the contract is signed to find and address those critical fixes and ensure we’re setting up our client for success. They are: Audit existing content for opportunities to […]

Performance Max (or PMax) campaigns are gaining traction among search advertisers. Google’s machine learning resources optimize ad placements across Google’s entire network of inventory. This lets advertisers maximize their efforts and reach their target audiences more efficiently.  However, there are always trade-offs when taking advantage of these proprietary capabilities, especially as we lose more visibility and levers to pull.  In general, we have limited visibility into the data for these campaigns, making it difficult to make informed decisions about how to best optimize campaigns and allocate budget.  Additionally, advertisers often need to analyze their aggregated data across all campaign types […]

Do you want to learn how to harness the power of AI and use it to reach your target audience, boost your engagement, and maximize your overall digital marketing ROI? Sign up now for a free online event hosted by Google and Ignite Visibility – AI-Powered Ads in 2023 with a Human Touch – on Thursday, May 18, 2023, at 2 p.m. EST/11 a.m. PST. “Our amazing Google Agency lead, our VP of paid media and I will be discussing their new AI system, Google Bard. We will also cover Google Analytics 4, Performance Max, and you’ll get a look […]

Google said starting in June 2023, the Google Merchant Center policy will stop disallowing the listing of COVID-19-related terms for Google Shopping Ads and free listings. This is an update to the Google Merchant Center Sensitive events policy.

Don’t confuse short-term tactics with an overall strategy. Create a successful digital marketing strategy for the long run with these five steps. The post What Is A Digital Marketing Strategy? 5 Steps To Create One appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

All SEOs should have a good grasp of what PageRank was, and what it still is. Read on to level up your understanding. The post Google PageRank Explained for SEO Beginners appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Google’s Bard chatbot receives an update, enhancing summarization and source visibility. The post Google Bard Update Enhances Source Content Visibility appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

HomeAdvisor punished by United States agency for allegedly using misleading tactics to sell leads to home improvement companies The post HomeAdvisor Penalized By FTC For Alleged False Claims About Leads appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

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

Google’s Search Advocate team shares SEO best practices for news sites, emphasizing content quality and effective use of structured data. The post Google’s SEO Best Practices For News Websites appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Paid search advertising conversion rates have decreased across nearly all industries year over year. Meanwhile, the cost of generating leads through search ads continues to increase, although not as drastically as in prior years. That’s according to a new 2023 search advertising benchmark report from LocalIQ’s WordStream. It features data on the average conversion rate, cost per lead (CPL), click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC), compared to 2022. Why we care. It’s good to understand whether you doing better or worse than your competitors in paid search so you can optimize for better results, at a lower cost. […]

Google Bard has added classic and more genuine citations to the answers it provides and also is able to provide better summarization. We do not yet see these improvements and enhancements live yet but Jack Krawczyk from Google shared some examples on Twitter. Citations improved. Google Bard now shows sources with numbers, like true citations, next to the responses. You can click on the numbers to see the source for that information. “Bard can now help you identify which parts of a response match a source. For the responses with sources, you’ll see numbers alongside the response. By clicking on […]

Bing unveils new chatbot features, including images in responses, optimized topic answers, and improved text formatting and copy-paste. The post Bing Chat Rolls Out 4 Upgrades appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Your website is the center of your digital marketing world. It’s where you have the most control and where all digital marketing rivers run toward. Generally, the largest of those traffic sources is organic search.  Yet, all too often, SEO is not deeply embedded when a new website is being designed (or redesigned), and SEO thinking is often only addressed after a site has launched.  This is a problem.  When building a new website as a marketing vehicle for your business, SEO considerations should be included in the planning stages before a line of code is written.  My team and […]