Written by Anthony Piwarun
The digital marketing world is ever-evolving and strategies, tactics, and ideas that may have been cutting edge a month ago but outdated today. In an effort to keep our customers up to date on best practices for all things digital, we’ve compiled a list of the most important articles written across the web over the last week. This list is by no means inclusive of everything that’s changed, but provides a high level overview so you can continue driving traffic and generating revenue for your brand.
11 Simple Tips for Having Great Meetings from the World’s Most Productive People posted on Fast Company
A recent study done in the UK showed that on average, workers spend 16 hours in meetings each week. This is likely very true (if not more) as digital marketers. Two tips that stood out include “bring something to the table or don’t come at all” and “be like a talk show host” (i.e. the meeting planner’s role should be to keep side-conversations to a minimum).
Using The New Adwords Keyword Planner for Local SEO Keyword Research posted on Moz.com
The title of the post reads “local SEO”, but the new keyword planner is aweSEM for both paid and organic. At a high level, the planner allows you to generate keywords (like the old External tool did), but it also allows you to drill down and get volume estimates by city or state! Prior to this, we generalized and divided the estimated search volume by 50 to get insight by state. This is an excellent solution to a painful problem that we had as search engine marketers, especially when providing insight / estimating budget needs for clients with a local presence.
Google’s Enhanced Campaigns: What We’ve Learned from Migration posted on eConsultancy.com
This post goes on to explain some of the learnings as a result of migrating from legacy to enhanced campaigns. Adobe & iProspect have reported across-the-board CPC increases between 5-8%, and it’s being speculated that it will increase even more as advertisers are forced to upgrade to EC. One of the most resonating points in the article was the comment that going through and migrating each account was a “mini-audit” of sorts. Take advantage of the manual process and audit your accounts while you do so!
8 New and Under Appreciated Marketing Resources from Google posted on Moz
Three resources that jumped out the most were Universal Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Think Insights. Universal Analytics opens up a new realm of possibility for tracking visitors with insight into multi-device usage. Insight into how visitors journey through each medium, be it on a desktop, mobile phone, or tablet, will enable us to make more informed recommendations on mobile or tablet strategies to further engage. Google Tag Manager is something that we will be leveraging more and more as it provides us with limitless opportunities for tagging and tracking. Finally, Think Insights is a treasure-trove of data and industry research. There’s a lot we can learn from industry research as we become more and more of subject matter expert for clients as search engine marketers.
Google Launches Dynamic Remarketing for Retailers posted on Inside Adwords
Earlier last week, Google launched Dynamic Remarketing capabilities for advertisers with a Merchant Center account. Remarketing is not a new offering for Google, but with the Dynamic offering, it allows you to create ads on the fly based on what pages visitors on the site have viewed in the past. One key selling point is the ability to not only show an image of the product that they viewed, but also related products and the price.
How to Solve Google Analytics Sampling: 8 Ways to Get More Data posted on Luna Metrics
A lot of us have seen the “sampling box” in some of our client’s Google Analytics accounts but didn’t know what it actually meant. This article does an excellent job breaking down the “what, how, and why” of Google’s sampling data (which caps off samples at 250k visits), and how to go about getting more through segmentation and filters.
Google+ Local One Year Later: What’s Changed? posted on Yodle’s Blog
Quite a few changes have occurred over the last year from a local SEO perspective, most importantly the migration from Google Places to Google Plus Local. Some of the most noticable changes include enhanced profile layouts, functionality, improved search results (via snippets) and an upgraded dashboard. One thing that it left out, however, is bulk upload. Learn more about what’s changed so you can increase visibility for your site from a local perspective.
10 Types of Messaging to Test in the New Expanded Sitelinks posted on Clix Marketing Blog
Earlier last month, Google announced expansions to paid sitelinks in paid ads. This is definitely something to look into if you manage paid accounts, especially in the ecommerce space. Features, Benefits, Testimonials, and Comparable/Supplementary/Related products are just a few examples on how we can increase visibility for secondary links and increase CTR.
Maps & Metros: Surviving and Thriving in Local Search posted on Bruce Clay Inc.
This excellent roundup of an SMX Advanced session on local search highlights the intricacies of local search, and ways to increase visibility. Included in this article are tips for ensuring correct NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) across local directories, top directories that impact citations, and data analysis on what triggers local search results.
Five Useful Google Authorship Cheatsheets and Infographics posted on Search Engine Journal
Google Authorship, along with Author Rank, is becoming more and more of a ranking signal in Google’s algorithm. It’s not only important to understand how to tag your site and content that you publish, but also the impact on author rank in how rich snippets are displayed.
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