Google videos vs. YouTube: Which is the best video search engine?

Video is booming as a content marketing medium.

People love watching videos online, and producing great video content is quickly becoming one of the most surefire ways to command attention and grow a following. In fact, by 2019, video is expected to drive an astonishing 80% of all internet traffic.

Clearly, it’s important for businesses to start working on their video content sooner rather than later. And while producing great content is essential, that’s only half the battle. For your videos to benefit your business, people have to be able to find them, and that involves optimization.

So which video search engines should you focus on optimizing for? This article will explore the differences between YouTube and Google Videos, the two biggest video search engines on the web.

Keep reading to learn more about the types of traffic these search engines will bring you – and why your videos might rank well in one but not the other.

How do people find your videos?

There’s no shortage of video search engines and video hosting sites on the Internet. YouTube, of course, is the web’s video giant, with 300 hours of new video uploaded every minute. Other video hosting sites like Daily Motion and Vimeo also get a significant amount of traffic.

Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat incorporate short video into their platforms as well. Social videos are gaining steam, and they may become a threat to YouTube in the future. For now, though, YouTube still dominates the online video world the way that Google dominates other search engines.

And while plenty of video searches happen through Google, most of them return YouTube videos. If you produce video content, there’s a good chance your watchers are finding you either through YouTube’s built-in search function or through Google Videos searches.

Google Videos returns mostly (but not exclusively) results from YouTube. This search for “video content marketing” also returned a video from lynda.com.

Comparing YouTube and Google Videos searches

If you search for the same keyword on YouTube and Google Videos, how similar will your results be? Not that similar, as it turns out. Take a look at the following example. Here are the first few results from a Google Videos search for “how to improve video SEO”:

The top Google Videos results for the query “how to improve video SEO”

And here are the first few results for the same query on YouTube:

The top YouTube results for the query “how to improve video SEO”

In this case, there’s no overlap at all between the top four results. Clearly, these two search engines don’t use the same criteria for ranking videos.

“Wait a minute,” you might say. “Doesn’t Google own YouTube?” Yes it does. In fact, Google has owned YouTube for more than ten years. However, the two sites serve distinct purposes. Someone who visits YouTube probably isn’t looking for the same thing as someone who types a question into Google.

Thanks to this difference in user intent, Google Videos and YouTube don’t use the same algorithms to rank videos, so it makes sense to think about them as two different search engines.

Why YouTube and Google Videos display different results

Earlier this year, Stone Temple released a study that found that YouTube and Google Videos return different top results for the same query more than half of the time. In fact, the more YouTube results show up in a Google Videos query, the more dramatically Google’s results differ from YouTube’s.

Stone Temple found that the more YouTube videos appear in Google Videos results, the more results for that query vary between the two search engines. Source

The study goes on to explore the reasons behind these differences. In a nutshell, it comes down to both user intent and monetization.

Google as a video search engine

Specific searches

When someone goes to Google, they tend to be looking for something specific. They want to find out how to do something, track down a particular fact, or research the difference between several options. Google is most often used as a tool for finding other things, not as a medium in itself.

Immediate resources

The videos Google displays tend to be to-the-point and useful. Google’s video results tend to favor how-tos and other specific, immediate resources. Videos made for entertainment purposes are probably less likely to rank highly in Google, although of course this is dependent on the search query and the individual video.

Quality results

Google also places a great deal of importance on user satisfaction, since that’s what keeps people coming back. Thus, they’re likely to favor higher-quality videos over lower-quality ones, even if the creators of those lower-quality videos are bidding higher in AdWords than their competitors.

Of course, “quality” is a vague and somewhat subjective metric, and Google is famously tight-lipped about how their algorithm determines quality. The important thing to understand, though, is that Google won’t sacrifice good results for more ad money.

YouTube as a video search engine

Entertainment-focused

On the whole, people go to YouTube to find entertainment. Google wants to solve people’s problems and send them on their way as quickly as possible, but YouTube wants to keep users watching.

This is partly because view time is an indicator of a video’s quality. If people stick around and watch a whole video, it’s a good sign that that video is interesting, useful, or entertaining. View time also tends to be correlated with user satisfaction. People who find and watch lots of enjoyable, high-quality videos will probably keep coming back to YouTube.

Longer videos favored

For YouTube, view time is also linked to making money. The longer someone watches a video, the more ads YouTube gets to show them. This is also why YouTube tends to favor longer videos over shorter ones in its rankings.

These differences shed some light on why Google Videos and YouTube use different algorithms, but unfortunately, we still don’t know exactly what the differences between those algorithms are. Considering how closely Google guards its secrets, we’re not likely to find out anytime soon, either.

In the meantime, though, it’s important not to forget that the two search engines often have a lot of overlap in their results, even though they’re not exactly the same. Thus, it stands to reason that there are some general principles for ranking well in both places.

How to rank well on video search engines

First, and most obviously, create great content. Your bounce rate says a lot about the quality of your videos. If a lot of people hit the “back” button within the first ten seconds of a video, YouTube and Google will both assume it’s not very good. So do your best to start each video with a compelling opening, and then give people a reason to keep watching.

Include plenty of text-based information with your video. Search engines can’t watch a video and determine what it’s about, but they can read the accompanying text. Your title is important – it should be descriptive and use your main keyword, preferably at the beginning.

Take the time to write an in-depth description of your video as well. Captions and transcripts aren’t necessary to include, but they improve accessibility, and they could give you a keyword boost. Finally, tag your video with some useful and relevant tags.

Getting views and comments will help your rankings, but don’t be tempted to purchase these. YouTube has gotten smarter about figuring out when views and comments are fake. Promote your content through social media to get more engagement, and be patient – if you do great work, people will discover it in time.

So, which is better: YouTube or Google Videos?

At the end of the day, it’s hard to say whether YouTube is “better” than Google Videos, or vice versa. The two search engines tend to be used differently, but both of them are very popular, and both of them are valuable sources of traffic if you optimize your videos correctly.

The type of content you create could have an impact on your rankings in each search engine. For instance, if you make short videos geared towards answering specific questions, you might have an easier time gaining traction in Google. If you make longer, more entertainment-focused videos, you might see better results from YouTube. This is far from a hard-and-fast rule, though.

The main thing to remember? High-quality videos have a good chance of doing well in both search engines, regardless of other factors. We don’t know exactly which metrics Google Videos and YouTube use to determine rankings, but we do know viewers prefer well-made, informative, and entertaining videos.

Focus on making the best video content you can, and you’ll probably find that your rankings take care of themselves.

Have you noticed a difference in your videos’ rankings between different video search engines? Share your observations in the comments!

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer for NoRiskSEO, a full service SEO agency, and a contributor to SEW. You can connect with Amanda on Twitter and LinkedIn, or check out her services at amandadisilvestro.com.

from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/10/31/google-videos-vs-youtube-which-is-the-best-video-search-engine/

source https://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/166980449064

What are the SEO benefits of social media?

How does using social media benefit your efforts with SEO?

Back in 2008, Search Engine Watch published the article ‘Social Media and SEO – Friends with Benefits‘, and I’d highly recommend reading it back now for a stark reminder of how far the digital world has progressed in the last nine years.

Some of the key statistics and points featured in the article (although contemporary at the time) may seem somewhat archaic in 2017:

• Facebook having 140 million active users (when they are now over 2 billion)
• LinkedIn having 30 million users (less than 10% of their current user base)
• Popularity of now defunct social platforms like Digg (which sold for just $500,000 back in 2012)
• MySpace being mentioned in the same breath as Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit and Twitter (ha!)
• Use of ‘SEO friendly’ anchor text when linking from social profiles (ahem… ‘money keywords’)

Nobody could have guessed what social media would become in such a short amount of time. Nearly a decade later and Facebook is nothing short of a social media superpower, Instagram has grown from zero to over 700 million users in the space of just seven years, MySpace has fallen out of popularity into the depths of dated pop-culture references, and using ‘SEO friendly’ anchor text is a very dangerous game to play in light of Google’s almighty Penguin updates.

It’s safe to say that everything is very different now, and as the social media landscape changes so too does its relationship with search engines and SEO practices. But what exactly is this relationship in 2017?

Social media and SEO: It’s complicated

In the past, Google have made contradictory statements regarding the role of social media in their ranking algorithm. On the one hand, they have stated that social media pages are indexed in the same manner as other web pages, and that social links therefore count as links.

But on the other, they have stated that social metrics do not constitute direct ranking factors. Over at Microsoft, the guys behind Bing have said that they too consider the authority of social media profiles (e.g. Twitter profile metrics) and mentions across numerous social platforms in their search engine.

As per usual, Google keeps their cards close to their chest. Research from the likes of Neil Patel show what Matt Cutts referred to in 2014 as a correlation but not necessarily a causation.

All very confusing indeed.

Can we 100% say that social metrics have a direct impact on search engine rankings? Probably not. However, if we look at the potential of social media’s influence on search engine rankings the story is different.

My personal opinion is that we should not be worried about whether links from social media platforms are valued in the same way as a link from a high quality and highly relevant website. Instead we should look at the benefits of utilizing social media to help boost ranking signals that we know search engines care about.

We should also bear in mind the impact of social media on the landscape of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Focusing on any one particular ‘SEO metric’ is as old school as MySpace. SEO has evolved into far more than just keywords and links. Great SEO acts as a core function to any holistic, integrated digital marketing campaign.

We should consign the days of marketing departments operating independently to the history books and focus on the often significant benefits of integrated campaigns. Having said that, there are a few SEO metric-specific boosters that social media can provide.

Link earning

The holy grail of any link-building campaign. Link earning has the power to gain multiple links from a single piece of content compared with the individual links gained from more one at a time traditional guest posting tactics.

It is link-building on steroids, but unless your website’s content has a large amount of visitors or subscribers your link earning potential is significantly reduced.

Enter stage left: social media.

The great thing about social media in 2017? Almost everyone you know will have a profile, most likely with hundreds of connections. This provides a platform through which promotion of content can not only be distributed instantly to hundreds of people, but the more people engage and interact with your content, the more people outside of your direct network see your content.

Viral. How I hate that word. It sets often unrealistic expectations. Viral to me means millions of views, akin to the hard to grasp concept of Gangnam Style’s frankly insane popularity and near 3 billion views on Youtube.

It’s great if your content does go viral, but you don’t need millions of views and tens of thousands of shares on social for social media to have an impact on search rankings. Quality over quantity, my dear.

If you have even tens or hundreds of people engage with your post and content via a platform such as LinkedIn you can bet that the quality of those engagements is pretty high. If done correctly, those views of your content on social media will result in other content creators citing your content in their articles. Your content has just earned links, which has a direct impact on search rankings.

Front of mind: Co-citation and co-occurrence

As a brief follow-on to link earning, your dissemination of content via social will provide touch points with your brand across multiple platforms. To use another word that falls into my dislike category, your brand remains ‘front of mind’.

In turn, this can lead to mentions across the web in what is likely to be highly relevant content, therefore increasing your co-citation and co-occurrence metrics.

Brand authority and CTR

Social can be utilised to build not only awareness but also brand authority. Sure people are more wary about fake information and news on social media compared with a few years ago but that does not mean that engaging in a well thought out, high quality social media campaign will not develop your brand in the eyes of the public.

Guess what? When they go to search for a product they may even search directly for your brand name or associated search terms which are directly related to your brand. Failing that, if your brand name is the one result that they know within the search results, it can increase your click-through rates from search.

Social media in search results

Social media profiles are delivered within the SERPs, along with tweets due to Twitter’s provision for Google to access their “firehose” of real-time tweets. As a result, your social media presence does have an impact on your SERP presence.

Admittedly, the majority of social links within the SERPs appear for branded search terms, but this should not be discounted. If we are in fact looking at marketing as a more holistic practice in the digital age, then we have to ensure that your branded search terms result in high click-through rates from search.

Ever been freaked out by a company or individual’s lack of social presence? This can be especially poignant for newer businesses or non-household names. In today’s society where follower numbers, likes and shares have a real impact on authority, the fact that social media results appear in branded searches should not be underestimated, not only in click-through rates from SERPs but also future conversions.

Will social metrics ever be a direct ranking factor?

From our research, it is clear that there are some pretty large problems associated with search engines using social metrics as a direct ranking factor. These include limited access for robots to crawl the platforms and therefore understand social authority, and the prevalence of fake profiles or ‘bought likes’ which are likely to be viewed in the same light as paid links.

In short, there is currently too much provision for manipulation of these metrics for search engines to bank on them. Will this change in the future?

Considering that Google and Facebook are two of the largest companies in the world, vying for the attention of us all, we don’t see them joining hands, opening their doors and singing Kumbaya around a campfire together any time soon.

Social media has its own benefits

Whether or not Google or Bing count social metrics as direct ranking factors is somewhat of a moot point. Social media and SEO should be working together, sharing content or utilizing engagement metrics as data for future content creation.

Lest we forget, businesses can benefit from revenue generated directly from social media regardless of its influence on search rankings. Social media campaigns should be focused primarily on generating their own success, with SEO considerations as a secondary (but still important) consideration.

from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/10/30/what-are-the-seo-benefits-of-social-media/

source https://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/166963887979

Everything You Need to Know About Generating Leads on Twitter

People don’t always associate Twitter with marketing.

If you’re not using Twitter to improve your business, you’re making a big mistake.

Every year, about 200 billion tweets are sent out.

This number is astonishing.

With so much competition in the social media space, people may assume that Twitter’s best days are in the past.

That’s incorrect.

Twitter has never been more popular than it is today.

Check out these numbers:

Twitter has about 328 million users across the world.

That may not seem like a lot compared to the 2 billion monthly active Facebook users.

Still, 328 million isn’t a number you can ignore.

There are plenty of opportunities for you to generate leads and improve conversions on Twitter.

If you’re not actively using Twitter for business, it’s not too late to change.

Fortunately for you, I’m an expert in this space.

I’ve helped companies increase their Twitter engagement by over 300%.

In this post, I’ll show you how to generate leads on this powerful social media platform.

Recognize why consumers are on Twitter

Before you can start marketing, you have to determine whom you need to target.

Are you trying to engage with every single user with a Twitter account?

That’s not an effective strategy.

Instead, focus on your current customers and target audience.

Find out who is:

• mentioning your brand by name
• following your profile
• engaging with your competition
• tweeting about relevant topics and products in your industry

Market to these people if you want higher conversions.

Roughly 80% of Twitter users have tweeted about a brand.

After seeing the name of a company mentioned on Twitter, 54% of people searched for the business, retweeted the content, or visited the company website.

Why do you think so many people talk about companies in their tweets?

Twitter is a great way for customers to communicate with their favorite brands.

That’s why a third of Twitter users voice their opinions about products and businesses.

As a marketer, you need to embrace this engagement.

Recognize that it’s an incredible opportunity for brand exposure and growth.

When someone tweets at your brand, you’ve got to respond—fast.

According to Sprout Social, it takes an average of 10 hours for brands to reply to users on social media.

You’ve got to do better than that because customers will wait only 4 hours for a response.

If you don’t have time to respond to tweets, delegate this task to someone on your marketing team.

This person can easily respond to people on Twitter within minutes, directly from their smartphone.

Knowing this information is especially important if your target market consists of millennials and baby boomers.

Nearly half of them follow brands on social media.

Based on all the information I’ve discussed so far, it’s obvious that Twitter users want to engage with businesses on this platform.

Now that we’ve established this, it’s time to use this information to generate leads for your company.

Learn how to use Twitter advanced search query

Earlier I mentioned there are over 328 million users on Twitter and 200 billion annual tweets.

Not all these users and tweets are relevant to your business.

The key is filtering out the useless ones to generate leads.

This is my favorite way to get the most useful and significant source of leads: Twitter’s advanced search queries.

Here’s how you do it.

Step #1: Navigate to the “Advanced search” menu

I’m sure you’re familiar with the regular search bar on Twitter.

From your search menu, look at the left side of the screen under “Search filters.”

Click on the “Advanced search” button to proceed.

Step #2: Add keywords relevant to your company

This search field will give you much more accurate results than the generic search bar you’ve been using.

Add words and phrases based on your marketing insights, industry, and target audience.

For example, let’s say you run a website specializing in outdoor sports equipment.

You could add words like hiking, biking, backpack, tent, mountain trails, or surfing to the search bar.

It all depends on the goal of your marketing campaign to generate leads.

If it’s winter, you may want to include terms such as snowboard boots, skis, snowboard goggles, etc.

Don’t go crazy. Stick to a few specific words and phrases to start.

Step #3: Look for relevant usernames (accounts)

Adding accounts to your query can give you even more specific results.

Not sure what to put in these fields?

Here are some suggestions:

• your profile
• profiles of local competitors
• large-scale competitors
• industry experts

Adding your profile to the search may be the only obvious suggestion on this list. But maybe not many people are mentioning your company by name on Twitter.

That’s why the other ones are just as important.

Are people tweeting about your competitors?

Those users are your prospective customers.

What about an industry expert?

Let’s continue with the example about an outdoor sports store.

You could add Sean White’s twitter account to this search query.

He’s a professional snowboarder, so it’s not unreasonable to think that users tweeting about him are interested in snowboarding equipment.

The possibilities are endless.

You’ve just got to get creative to find the most accurate and relevant results to generate leads.

Step #4: Turn on your location

By default, your location services will be turned off for the advanced search query.

Turn it on to enable more relevant results.

For simplicity, I’ll continue using the sports store example.

Let’s say the shop is located in my city of Seattle, WA.

You have an ecommerce store, but you don’t deliver outside the northwest region.

Tweets about hiking equipment in Florida won’t be relevant to your lead-generation strategy.

It’s easier to narrow your search by adding a location now than having to filter through bad leads later.

However, if you have an ecommerce shop with global distribution, you may decide to disable the location feature in the search.

It’s up to you.

However, I’d still recommend focusing on a particular country or region.

That way you can segment these leads and market to them accordingly.

Step #5: Filter the dates

If someone tweeted about your company 3 years ago, it’s probably a little too late to consider that user as a lead.

You want to make sure your search results are recent as well as relevant.

Start with the last few months. If you want more results, you can always expand that to the last six months or to the previous year.

These 5 steps are super easy to follow.

Next time you’re trying to generate leads on Twitter, start with the advanced search query.

Use hashtags to promote your brand

Hashtags are a great way to get your company name out there.

If you can get enough users to use your hashtag, it could potentially go viral and start trending.

Here’s what’s trending in Seattle today:

Come up with a clever and creative hashtag for your company.

Look at the sponsored hashtag at the top of this image from Papa John’s.

#NationalPizzaMonth is much easier to read than #nationalpizzamonth.

Granted, if a user types this hashtag without any capital letters, it will still work.

But you should utilize this capitalization strategy in all of your tweets.

It’s easier to read, plus it can help you avoid potential embarrassment.

Back in 2012, a British singer named Susan Boyle used a hashtag to promote her new album.

She tweeted #susanalbumparty to promote it.

It’s harmless, but the combination of certain letters without any spaces or capitalization could appear inappropriate.

#SusanAlbumParty looks much better and prevents confusion.

But who knows, maybe you want to be sneaky with your hashtags, hoping one of them goes viral.

I just wouldn’t encourage or recommend that.

Tweets with hashtags also have a greater chance of being retweeted.

Retweets will obviously expose your brand to a wider audience.

The more people use the tag, the more likely it’ll go viral or trend on Twitter.

See who used your hashtag. Engage with these people.

It’s an effective lead-generation strategy.

Use Twitter as a customer service resource

If your customers have questions, complaints, or other inquiries, encourage them to contact you on Twitter.

Why?

Because other people will see how responsive your brand is.

It creates exposure and increases your chances of getting more leads.

Customer service interactions are trending upward on social media.

This means customers know they can contact their favorite brands via Twitter and expect brands to respond.

If other businesses are responding to their tweets, your customers will assume you’re going to do the same.

Ignoring your customers’ tweets could end up giving you a bad reputation for customer service.

However, responding to them in a timely fashion can have the opposite effect.

Customers are going to complain. These things happen.

Don’t let a negative tweet throw you off your game. Respond politely, and try to rectify the situation. Do not get defensive or make excuses.

Remember that everyone will see this interaction, so keep it professional at all times.

Look at what happens when a person experiences a positive customer service response:

The customer is likely to do two things:

1. share the experience
2. recommend the brand

If this interaction happens on Twitter, it’s even easier for the customer to do both of these things.

Providing amazing customer service can do much more than just generate leads.

It could potentially double your revenue.

Using Twitter for customer service can reduce the chances of the customer getting frustrated.

A recent study suggests that Twitter is the least frustrating customer service channel.

So you already have an advantage there.

Engage with your customers

Now that you know how to find leads on Twitter, it’s time to make sure you’re turning those leads into conversions.

If someone’s tweeting about your brand, products, or industry, reach out to them directly.

Let them know you can help.

Think back to our advanced search query.

You may find some users who don’t even know your brand exists.

How do you change that?

Here are a few tips:

• follow their profile
• like their posts
• retweet their content
• reply directly to their tweets

If they didn’t know about you before, they will definitely know about you now.

Make sure your profile is active.

Give your prospective leads a reason to follow your brand.

Getting a discount is the top reason why consumers follow a company on Twitter.

They also want to receive:

• freebies
• entertainment
• updates
• sales
• exclusive content

If your Twitter account isn’t doing these things, your lead-generation strategy won’t be nearly as effective.

Conclusion

Content consumption has grown by 25% on Twitter over the last 2 years.

Users want to interact and engage with their favorite brands on Twitter.

People all over the world are tweeting about things relevant to your business.

The trick is learning how to filter those results to generate leads.

Use the Twitter advanced search queries to do this.

It’s a great way to customize a search based on:

• words
• phrases
• languages
• profiles
• locations
• dates

This information will give you the most updated and accurate results.

Once you find a prospective lead, reach out to them directly. Follow their profile, and try to get them to follow you back.

Run promotions, and offer exclusive content on your feed. This will entice users to interact with your page.

Twitter is also an excellent platform to provide customer service. If a customer has a positive customer service experience with your company on Twitter, they are more likely to share their story and recommend your brand.

Use hashtags as a creative way to get exposure for your business.

All of these tips will help you improve your lead-generation strategy on Twitter.

What hashtag will you create to generate leads via Twitter?

from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/h3xWKMe_ZZ4/

source https://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/166955847099

Customer reviews: The not-so-secret SEO tactic

No matter what industry you’re in or what your business does, you want to be as close as possible to the top of a search engine results page (SERP).

And of course, SEO is what gets you there, taking into consideration more than 200 ranking signals, such as the quality of your content, backlinks, mobile optimization, and keywords.

While these traditional SEO tactics have dominated strategies since the formation of Google, customer reviews are another ranking signal hot on their heels, now making up 7% of Moz’s localized organic ranking factors. Reviews provide search marketers with a huge opportunity to go above and beyond. But how do they enhance SEO?

You could say that customer reviews piggyback on one of the most important ranking factors: the ‘freshness’ of your website content.

By providing your business with a continuous supply of fresh, unique user-generated content (UGC), webcrawlers know your site is active, driving your website listing higher, achieving Google organic stars, and increasing website conversions.

Content produced in association with Feefo.

Obtaining organic stars

But just having reviews isn’t enough. Ideally, your business should show Google organic stars, the recognizable rich snippets that help your website stand out in search listings. These stars have been proven to increase click-through rate (CTR) by up to 30%, according to Search Engine Land.

In order to achieve that seal of Google approval, your website must be marked-up appropriately with the correct schema: code that helps algorithms return more informative results about websites. There are three key types, focused on homepages, specific products and a business’ individual locations.

Coupled with the right schema, your reviews could also appear in Google’s Knowledge Panel the box that appears on the right of search results with relevant business information.

So even if you have reviews, you still won’t show those stars without the correct schema markup on your website.

Fighting fake reviews

Reviews may add credibility, but what if they’re fake? It’s not uncommon to see fraudulent review-writing services advertised, despite crackdowns (and lawsuits) against prolific offenders.

Consumers are practical; they know that nothing is truly perfect and are skeptical of products and services with uniformly positive feedback. Often believing five-star reviews may be too good to be true, people are more likely to be influenced by ratings between 4.2 and 4.5 out of 5, according to GetApp.

Invitation-only platforms negate the threat of fake reviews by only soliciting them from genuine customers who have purchased products from their clients, rather than leaving it open for anyone to leave a review. When people know that your reviews have all been left by genuine customers, the power of that relationship will help you build confidence and sales.

Reviews and revenue

Most people factor online reviews into their buying process. According to Fan and Fuel research from December 2016, 92% of consumers hesitate to make a purchase if a product doesn’t have any reviews. Similarly, BrightLocal found that 88% of consumers trust online reviews just as much as recommendations from people they know.

Word of mouth certainly holds weight, but seeing online reviews generally comes across as more varied and impartial, granting them equal value. Any way you look at it, people trust people.

That trust increases confidence, which often comes with more traffic and more more sales. Since HomeFuels Direct, an oil and gas company based in Northern England, started displaying organic stars on their website, sales have increased by 69% year-over-year.

And it’s not just positive reviews that help. Reviews are obviously powerful for SEO, but something many marketers don’t realize is that negative reviews can be just as beneficial in contributing to consumer trust.

Volume and variety counts for a lot. Displaying positive and negative reviews shows you have nothing to hide. The positive reviews speak for themselves, while those that are negative provide a great opportunity to show off your customer service skills.

Giving consumers a transparent view of the way you handle negative feedback can certainly endear your business to them. In a world where everything is getting more automated by the day, that personal touch really adds to your overall value.

To sum up

Consumers today have literally all the choice in the world, which makes the need for transparency to help your business stand out against competitors that much more important.

Collected and displayed correctly, and coupled with the correct schema, your business can use reviews as a fundamental SEO tactic and a means to show Google organic stars. Most importantly, reviews can be influential in building trust with your customers, reassuring them that they can buy through you, with confidence.

To further understand how verified feedback will help you obtain organic stars, improve CTR and increase sales, read Feefo’s report: Improve search engine performance with ratings and reviews.

Content produced in collaboration with Feefo. Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Search Engine Watch.

from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/10/27/customer-reviews-the-not-so-secret-seo-tactic/

source https://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/166866744519

How to Start A/B Testing Your Email Marketing (A Beginner’s Guide)

It’s important for you to always try to improve your email marketing strategy.

The trends continue to change each year, and you need to adapt.

If you’re still sending out the same boring newsletter or promotional offer you used 5 years ago, it’s time for you to make some improvements and adjustments.

But where do you start?

You may want to try testing a couple of different templates or designs to see which one is the most effective.

A/B testing is not strictly for people who want to update their old email strategies.

It’s great for business owners and marketers who are actively trying to keep up with the new trends as well.

Making minor changes to your subject lines, color scheme, CTA buttons, and design could drastically improve your conversions.

If you’ve never attempted to A/B test your marketing emails, I’ll show you how to get started.

Test only one hypothesis at a time

First, decide what you want to test.

Once you decide what you’re testing, come up with a hypothesis.

Next, design the test to check that hypothesis.

For example, you may want to start by testing your call to action.

Let’s look at how Optimizely tested their CTA button.

These two messages are identical.

The only thing that changed was the wording of their call to action.

They didn’t change the color, design, heading, or text of the message.

Optimizely simply tested “Watch Webinar” against “View Presentations & Slides.”

The results were drastically different.

Subscribers clicked on the variation nearly 50% more than the control group.

You may want to run further tests on other components of the message.

So, now that Optimizely knows which variation produces the most clicks, they can proceed with testing different subject lines that can increase open rates.

Where do you start?

Before you can come up with a valid hypothesis, you may need to do some research.

Decide which component of your subject line you want to test.

Here’s some great data from Marketing Charts.

Based on this information, you could A/B test the number of characters in your subject line.

You already know that subjects with 1-20 characters produce the most opens.

Take that one step further.

Your hypothesis could be that 11-20 characters will produce more opens than 1-10 characters.

There’s your variation.

Let’s say the first thing you tested was a CTA button, like in the Optimizely example.

Now, you can move on to the subject line.

If you tested the CTA and subject line at the same time, you wouldn’t know which one was the biggest factor in your results.

You can’t effectively test a hypothesis with multiple variables.

Testing one thing at a time will ultimately help you create the most efficient message.

How to set up your A/B email tests

All right, now that you know what to test, it’s time to create your email.

How do you do this?

It depends on your email marketing service.

Not all platforms give you this option.

If your current provider doesn’t have this feature, you may want to consider finding an alternative service.

I’ll show you the step-by-step process of running an A/B test through HubSpot’s platform.

Step #1: Select “Email” from the “Content” tab of your Marketing Dashboard

Your marketing dashboard is pretty much the home page for the HubSpot account.

Just navigate to the content tab and select Email to proceed.

Step #2: Click “Create email”

Look for the “Create email” button in the top right corner of your page.

Step #3: Create your A/B test

Once you name your email campaign and select a template, next you’ll see the editing tab.

Click on the blue “Create A/B Test” button on the left side of your screen.

Step #4: Name the variation

By default, this popup will have the name of your campaign with “(Variation)” after it.

But you can name it something more specific based on what you’re testing.

For example, you can name it “September News CTA Button Placement” instead.

Step #5: Change the variation based on your hypothesis

Now you can edit the two messages.

Remember, the content should be identical.

Change only the one thing you’re testing.

Step #6: Choose the distribution size of the test groups

50/50 is the best distribution.

But if you want to modify it, drag the slide bar to change the distribution ratio.

Step #7: Analyze the results

After you send out the test, HubSpot’s software automatically generates a report.

Based on the test we ran, Version B had a higher open rate.

So, that must be the clear winner, right?

Not so fast.

It was higher by less than 1% compared to the control group.

The difference isn’t significant enough to declare a definitive winner.

It’s an inconclusive test.

That’s OK.

These things happen.

If the results are within 1% like in the example above, it’s pretty clear they are inconclusive.

But what about 5%? 10%? Or 15%?

Where do you draw the line?

You need to determine your natural variance.

Run an A/A test email to determine this.

Here’s an example of an A/A test on a website:

The pages are the same.

But the one on the right saw 15% higher conversions.

So that’s the natural variance.

Use this same concept for your email campaign.

Send identical emails to see what the open rates and click-through rates are.

Compare that number against your A/B test results to see if your variance results were meaningful.

Test the send time of each message

Sometimes you need to think outside the box when you’re running these tests.

Your subject line and CTA button may not be the problem.

What time of day are you sending your messages?

What day of the week do your emails go out?

You may think Monday morning is a great time because people are starting the week ready to go through emails.

But doing further research suggests otherwise.

It appears more people open emails in the middle of the week.

You can run a split test between Wednesday and Thursday or Tuesday and Thursday to see which days are the best.

Take your test one step further.

Hypothesize what time you think your subscribers will open and click in your message.

Studies show people are more likely to open an email in the afternoon.

Between 2:00 PM and 5:00 PM is the time when you’ll probably see the most activity.

Take this information into consideration when you’re running an A/B test.

Your opening lines are essential

Earlier we identified the importance of testing your subject line.

Let’s take that a step further.

Focus on the first few lines of your message.

Most email platforms give the recipient a preview of the message underneath the subject.

Here’s what it looks like on a user’s phone in their Gmail account:

Play around with the opening lines of your message.

It’s a great opportunity to run an A/B test.

Look at some of the examples above.

Banana Republic doesn’t mention the offer in the first few lines.

Why?

Because it’s written in the subject line.

It would be redundant if they included that information again in the first sentence.

But if you keep reading, there’s probably room for improvement.

The next part of the message tells you that you can see all the images on their mobile site.

That may not be the most efficient use of their preview space.

There’s one way we can find out for sure.

Run an A/B test.

Changing your opening lines can help improve open rates by up to 45%.

Manually running an A/B test

As I mentioned earlier, not every email marketing platform has an A/B test option built into their service.

Other sites besides HubSpot that have an A/B test feature include:

• ActiveCampaign
• Campaign Monitor
• MailChimp

But if you’re happy with your current provider and don’t want to switch for just one additional feature, you can still manually run an A/B test.

Split your list into two groups, and run the test that way.

It’s possible you already have your contacts segmented by other metrics.

This can help increase open rates and conversions.

But it’s also an effective method for analyzing your hypothesis.

You’ll have to create two separate campaigns and compare the results, which is completely fine.

You just won’t see the comparison side by side on the same page as we saw in the earlier example.

If you’re doing this manually, always run your tests simultaneously.

Running tests on separate occasions could impact the results based on time, which plays a major factor in the analysis.

Test a large sample size.

This will help ensure your results are more accurate before you jump to definitive conclusions.

Running a manual test does not mean you should test more than one variable at the same time.

Stick to what we outlined earlier, picking a single variation for each test.

Experiment with the design of your email campaigns

Once you have your subject line, opening sentences, and calls to action mastered, it’s time to think about your existing template.

You can keep all your content the same, but change the layout.

Here are some examples of different templates from MailChimp:

What do all of these templates have in common?

The word count.

None of these templates give you space to write long paragraphs because it’s not effective.

Keep your message short.

Research from Boomerang suggests that your email should be between 50 and 125 words.

The messages in their test sample got at least a 50% response rate.

While you’re experimenting with template designs, you can also try different images.

Try one large background image with text written over it.

Another option is to include a picture within the content.

Your A/B template test can help determine which method is more effective.

Swapping out one image for another is something else you can test.

For example, if you’re using a picture of a person, test the difference between a male and female.

Conclusion

A/B testing works.

If you used these tests to successfully optimize conversions on your website, the same concept could be applied to your email marketing strategy.

Before you get started, come up with a valid hypothesis.

Don’t start changing things without a plan.

Test only one variation at a time.

After you’ve come up with conclusive results for your first test, you can move on to something else.

Try testing your:

• Subject line
• Call-to-action wording
• First few sentences of the message
• Day and time of sending the email
• CTA button placement
• Templates
• Images

The email marketing service you’re currently using may have an option for you to run and analyze the results from an A/B test.

If not, it’s no problem.

You can manually run an A/B test by creating two separate groups and two different campaigns.

This is still an effective method.

A/B tests will help increase opens, clicks, and conversions.

Ultimately, this can generate more revenue for your business.

How will you modify the call to action in the first variation of your A/B test?

from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/_hM3hxwDhjQ/

source https://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/166859927389

An in-depth guide to Google ranking factors

In SEO, Google’s ranking factors are the stuff of legend.

There are rumored to be more than 200 signals which inform Google’s rankings (although this statistic originated in 2006, so it’s probably safe to say things have changed a bit since then), and the exact factors which make up this list, as well as their order of importance, is the subject of perennial debate.

While we at Search Engine Watch can by no means lay claim to a complete list of Google ranking factors (and anyone who says they can is lying to you – yes, even if they’re from Google, probably), we’ve delved into the subject a fair bit.

Last year our intrepid editor Christopher Ratcliff wrote a ten-part series examining a number of important Google ranking factors in detail. This guide will summarize the key insights from that series for your referencing convenience, with links to the full explanations of each ranking factor.

From content freshness to content quality, internal links to backlinks, we’ve covered off the major points that you need to hit for a solid Google ranking, and how to hit them.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

Jump to:

• Part 1: On-page factors
• Part 2: Keywords
• Part 3: Quality content
• Part 4: Content freshness
• Part 5: Duplicate content and syndication
• Part 6: Trust, authority and expertise
• Part 7: Site-level signals
• Part 8: Internal links
• Part 9: Outbound links
• Part 10: Backlinks
• BONUS: RankBrain

Part 1: On-page factors

The first part of our guide to Google ranking factors looks at the simple, technical elements that Google uses to rank your page: title tags, H1 tags and meta descriptions.

These are all elements that you have total control over, and have a significant effect both on how Google ranks your site and how your site appears in the SERP. Therefore, it’s incredibly important to learn how to optimize them properly.

Some key points on how to optimize your title tags, H1 tags and meta descriptions for search:

• Include any keywords you want to rank for in the title tag. The closer to the start of the tag the keyword is, the more likely that your page will rank for that keyword
• With that said, make sure your title tags are written for humans – that means they still need to make logical sense and not just be stuffed full of keywords
• Don’t duplicate title tags across your website, as this can negatively impact your visibility
• Your target keywords should also be in the H1 tag, but your H1 can differ from your title tag
• You can generally only use one H1 tag per page, but H2 and H3 tags can be used to break up your content further
• While meta descriptions are not strictly a ranking signal, a good meta description can vastly improve click-through rate, so make sure you use it wisely!

For even more depth on how to write title tags and meta descriptions for SEO, check out our two separate guides:

• How to write meta title tags for SEO
• How to write meta descriptions for SEO

Part 2: Keywords

Part 2 of our ranking factors guide looks at that eternal subject of SEO discussion: keywords.

Although the role of keywords in SEO has changed greatly since the early days of search, with the evolution of long-tail keywords and natural language search, the humble keyword is still one of the fundamental building blocks of search optimization, and an important Google ranking signal.

But as we covered in the last section, just because keywords are important doesn’t mean you should stuff them in like crazy. Here are some highlights from our guide to Google ranking factors about how to use keywords wisely:

• Keyword relevancy and placement is far more important than frequency. Your keyword or key phrase should appear in the first 100 words of your page, if not the first sentence
• Google prioritizes meta information and headers first, then body copy, and finally sidebars and footers
• Try to ensure the key phrase is an exact match to what the searcher will type into a search engine. This means phrasing your keywords in a conversational fashion if you want to optimize for natural language search queries
• Excessive repetition of keywords, and using keywords that are irrelevant to the rest of your content, are likely to earn you a penalty
• Having keywords in your domain URL can also give you a small SEO boost.

Part 3: Quality content

You’ve no doubt heard the phrase “quality content” thrown around as a way to get your blog or site ranked highly by Google: “Produce quality content”.

Well, that’s all very well and good, but what does it mean in practical terms? How can you know if the content you’re producing is high-quality enough for Google?

In Part 3 of our guide to Google ranking factors, we give 14 tips for gauging the quality of your content, covering everything from spelling and grammar to readability, formatting and length. Here are a few of our pointers:

• As we’ve covered previously, make sure your content is written to appeal to humans, not just algorithms, and don’t saturate it with keywords
• Check the readability score of your content with the Flesch reading ease test, and aim to get above 60%
• Keep your sentences and paragraphs short, and break them up with line breaks (white space makes much for a much nicer reading experience on mobile) and subheadings
• While you want your sentences and paragraphs to be short, your overall content can be as long as you fancy – in-depth content is a big indicator of quality.

Part 4: Content freshness

Continuing with on-page content signals, how recently your webpage was published is also a ranking signal – but different types of searches have different freshness needs, such as searches for recent events, hot topics, and regularly recurring events.

Google’s algorithms attempt to take this all into account when matching a search with the most relevant and up-to-date results.

Last year, Moz published a comprehensive look at how freshness of content may influence Google rankings, which forms the basis of our insights in Part 4 of the guide to Google ranking factors. Some key takeaways include:

• A web page can be given an immediate “freshness score” based on its date of publication, when then decays over time as the content gets older. Regular updates to the content can help to preserve that score
• An increase in the number of external sites linking to a piece of content can be seen as an indicator of relevance and freshness
• Links from “fresh” sites can help pass that freshness on to your content
• The newest result isn’t always best – for less newsworthy topics, an in-depth and authoritative result that’s been around longer may outrank newer, thinner content.

Part 5: Duplicate content and syndication

When is it acceptable to republish someone else’s content on your website, or to re-use your own content internally? The SEO community has a shared horror of accidentally running afoul of a “duplicate content penalty”, and advice abounds on how to avoid one.

To be sure, stealing and republishing someone else’s content without their permission is a terrible practice, and doing this frequently is an obvious sign of a spammy, low-quality website. However, as Ann Smarty explains in her FAQ on duplicate content, there is no such thing as a “duplicate content penalty”. No-one from Google has ever confirmed the existence of such a penalty, and nor have there been any “duplicate content” algorithm updates.

So what are the dangers with publishing duplicate content? In short, they concern search visibility: if there are multiple versions of the same post online, Google will make a call about which one to rank, and it will likely have nothing to do with which was published first, but rather with which site has the highest authority.

In the same vein, if you have multiple versions of the same internal content competing for rankings (this includes separate desktop and mobile versions of the same site), you can wind up shooting yourself in the foot.

How can you avoid all of this? Part 5 of our Google ranking factors article covers how to manage duplicate and syndicated content to make sure that Google only indexes your preferred URL. Some points include:

• Setting up a 301 redirect if you have duplicate content on your own site, to make sure Google indexes your preferred page
• Using a responsive website instead of a separate mobile site
• Using a rel=canonical tag or a meta noindex tag on syndicated content to tell Google which article is the original.

Part 6: Trust, authority and expertise

We know that websites with a high level of authority carry greater weight, particularly when it comes to link-building campaigns. But exactly how does Google evaluate your website’s levels of trust, authority and expertise?

In Part 6 of our Guide to Google Ranking Factors, we examine the factors that make up your site’s Page Quality Rating, as well as how Google calculates authority, trust and expertise. Some key points include:

• Content quality, content amount, and website information are all factors in your Page Quality Rating
• A logical site architecture can help with a higher level of authority
• Starting a blog can help showcase that your business is relevant and trustworthy – as well as helping with content freshness
• Negative customer reviews won’t necessarily impact your Page Quality Rating, particularly if you have a high number of total reviews. Google tends to check reviews for content, rather than the actual rating.

Part 7: Site-level signals

Moving away from on-page content, Part 7 of our Guide to Google Ranking Factors looks at site-level signals.

What factors does Google take into account at a site level that can affect your ranking? Here are a few…

• HTTPS: Google announced in 2014 that it was starting to use HTTPS as a “very lightweight signal”. While it’s unknown whether it has strengthened since then, using HTTPS is also just good practice generally, particularly if your website handles financial transactions
• Mobile-friendliness: Mobile-friendliness has been a significant factor in Google search results ever since the initial “mobilegeddon” update of 2015, and the signal has only strengthened since then
• Site speed: Take the time to assess and optimize your site speed, particularly on mobile, and you are likely to find that your search ranking improves.

Part 8: Internal links

Parts 8, 9 and 10 of our ranking factors guide all deal with the nervous system of the internet: links. How do different types of links help your site rank well in search?

First: internal links. According to Jason McGovern of Starcom, internal linking is one of the few methods we can use to tell Google (and visitors) that a particular page of content is important. So how should you go about linking internally to other pages of your website?

Part 8 covers off how internal links can help your site improve its metrics and user experience, including “hub pages” and how to build them.

Once you’ve digested the important points, be sure to check out our full guide to Internal Linking for SEO: Examples and Best Practices.

Part 9: Outbound links

Outbound, or external, links are links pointing outwards from your site to another website. They pass along some of your own site’s ranking power (without any detriment to you, unless the links go to a super spammy website) to the site you’re linking to.

But how does this benefit you? Why should you be giving out what are essentially link juice freebies to other sites?

In actual fact, as we reveal in Part 9 of our Guide to Google Ranking Factors, outgoing links to relevant, authoritative sites benefit your ranking. Other key points about outbound links and SEO include:

• Pagerank retention is a myth – it’s not possible for your site to ‘leak’ link juice by having more external than internal links
• In fact, outbound links count as a trust signal – if you’re linking to references to back up your data and research, you’ve clearly done your work properly and can be trusted
• Affiliate links are also fine, but make sure you use a nofollowmeta tag in accordance with Google best practice.

Part 10: Backlinks

Why are backlinks (links from a third party back to your site) important to SEO? Well, as we just covered, external links from your own site to another website pass along some of your ranking power – so the reverse must also be true.

Links back to your site from elsewhere online are an important way to improve your search ranking; in fact, as revealed by Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google Ireland, last year, links pointing to your website are one of the top three ranking factors.

Small wonder, then, that there is a booming trade around link-building in SEO – both in advice on how to build links, and in buying and selling links themselves. However, paid link-building is considered black hat SEO and is likely to incur a penalty.

Google has clamped down on different types of paid links, such as links on blogs exchanged for free gifts, at various times. This has made many SEOs wary of the practice of link-building altogether. But Google has nothing against link-building in principle – on the contrary, Google relies on links to know what websites are all about, and how much preference to give them in certain searches.

So how can you go about earning backlinks the right way? Here are some pointers from Part 10 of our Guide to Google Ranking Factors:

• Needless to say, the number of individual domains referring to your website is an important factor in Google’s algorithm – but so is their authority. Having fewer, authoritative backlinks is worth more in terms of SEO value than having lots of low-quality links (except in local SEO, as Greg Gifford will tell you).
• Backlinks from relevant sites in your niche are also worth significantly more than irrelevant sites or pages
• Links from a diverse range of websites are good, as too many links from the same domain can be seen as spammy
• Links within long-form, evergreen content are also more valuable than links in short, news-based posts.

BONUS: RankBrain and SEO

While not an official part of our Guide to Google Ranking Factors, I thought I’d include Dan Taylor’s excellent guide to RankBrain and SEO as part of this round-up, as Google has officially named RankBrain as one of the three most important signals that contribute to a website’s ranking.

In his guide, Dan Taylor breaks down and untangles how RankBrain works, as well as what machine learning is, and the concepts that underpin Association Rule Learning (ARL).

He then explains “optimizing” for RankBrain (hint: it’s not as complicated as you might believe) and how RankBrain differs from “classic algorithms” like Panda and Penguin.

from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/10/27/an-in-depth-guide-to-google-ranking-factors/

source https://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/166849159749