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Search Whizzes Talk Local SEO Strategy: Adam Dorfman, Greg Gifford, Casey Meraz & Chris Silver Smith LIVE at #SMX

Search Whizzes Talk Local SEO Strategy: Adam Dorfman, Greg Gifford, Casey Meraz & Chris Silver Smith LIVE at #SMX was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Got questions about local search optimization? The speakers on this SMX West 2016 panel titled “Local Search AMA: A Roundtable Q&A with Top Local Experts” have answers. Here’s the lineup of savvy speakers:

Greg Gifford, Director of Search & Social, DealerOn (@greggifford)
Casey Meraz, Founder, Ethical SEO Consulting (@caseymeraz)
Adam Dorfman, SVP – Product & Technology, SIM Partners (@phixed)
Chris Silver Smith, Founder & CEO, Argent Media (@si1very)

Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land Matt McGee moderates. Scroll down to get expert answer to questions including:

What is working in local search and what is not working today?
Last month, Google stopped showing ads on the right side of the desktop SERP. What is the impact of a change like that on your clients?
What’s the current balance between focus on local listing optimization vs. traditional organic SEO to boost local rankings?
What are the factors that get you in the three pack since it is such a narrow space now?
You want to rank in a certain town or city but you’re not quite in it. Are you completely out of luck?
What recommendations do you have for getting a business listed on a street that is new?
Is there any way to get rid of a Google listing for a closed business?

There have been a number of changes over the past year – what is working in local search and what is not working today?

Dorfman: When I think about the last year the biggest change that I see is the signal of where you are searching from and what you have searched for in the past seemed to be playing a larger and larger role. Citations and organic SEO reviews and links still matter very much, but so much of that is being trumped by where you’re searching from and businesses that happen to be in the right place and the right time can have big wins.

Gifford: Localization and personalization has drastically changed – we’ve really had to educate clients to stop tracking rankings. It’s more important to concentrate on metrics that show how successful you are: organic traffic, impressions, etc.

Concentrate on metrics such as organic traffic that show how successful you are. – @greggifford
Click To Tweet

Meraz: I put a lot more focus on link acquisition, building the domain authority, etc. to move the needle to increase exposure as much as possible.

Smith: Google’s movements toward identifying mobile as a ranking factor is a really big deal. I also enjoy greatly the reveal in December that a Googler gave us that accidentally validating that CTR can improve rankings – something I’ve long suspected. The impression you make in the search results is something you have to pay attention to. Pay attention to structured data and the photos that show up when people search for you. Something affecting search more now than ever like social activity. Drive your popularity in Google.

Last month, Google stopped showing ads on the right side of the desktop SERP. What is the impact of a change like that on your clients?

Gifford: Preliminary results are actually showing an increase in click-throughs to organic results because there are less distractions in the right rail.

Meraz: Put a lot more focus on local now more than ever. Even on my laptop, I see the ads and then maybe one or two local results – organic is so far down, you really need to stand out (in local).

“Put a lot more focus on local now more than ever.” – @caseymeraz
Click To Tweet

Smith: I don’t have really good empirical data yet, but for a great many local searches I think it reduced the prom of organic to some degree so I think it’s motivated more monetization of PPC. But for local PPC people, it’s going to increase the competition for those first positions on the page. Talk about attorneys – the places they compete for have winnowed down to four and it’s going to increase the cost per click.

What’s the current balance between focus on local listing optimization vs. traditional organic SEO to boost local rankings?

Dorfman: It’s on the in the same. The signals are so similar. Getting your citations correct, getting good links point to you, etc. are all incredibly important. So many searches now are local. If you’re not doing everything it’s very hard to show up.

Smith: You can’t do one without the other.

What are the factors that get you in the three pack since it is such a narrow space now?

Dorfman: All the factors matter. If you think about organic optimization there are hundreds of signals, and there are hundreds of signals under those hundreds of signals. If you focus just on three or four, it’s not going to be enough. You have to spread a very wide net and do lots of things right. Provide an experience that speaks the best to customers and potential customers.

“Provide an experience that speaks the best to customers.” – @phixed
Click To Tweet

Gifford: For a lot of us who do local exclusively we’ve had to pivot. Before pigeon it was easy to get people in to the map pack and then pigeon showed up and it became a lot harder.

You want to rank in a certain town or city but you’re not quite in it. Are you completely out of luck?

Dorfman: No. you have a massive uphill battle to fight, though. If you can associate your business with that city through content, there’s nothing stopping you from building something out. Most of the links you can get for that are citation oriented. And you’ll have to create content that is 100X better than businesses that are in the city.

Meraz: I see virtual offices work sometimes for lawyers. Everything depends, unfortunately.

Dorman: It’s possible with virtual offices. I don’t know that I would go for any of the well-known brand name ones though. If you’re a super rich attorney maybe your approach is to have your suburb annexed by the city so you’re in a different area.

What recommendations do you have for getting a business listed on a street that is new?

Smith: Keep increasing references to that location online. Check in services are great for that. But the reality is it’s not going to show up on maps until maps are updated.

Is there any way to get rid of a Google listing for a closed business?

Gifford: I would say call Google phone support and get them to get rid of it.

Dorfman: Close it in all the places within Google My Business.

What are some methods for tagging local traffic in Google Analytics?

Dorfman: Google My Business is one thing – if you start putting different tracking appendages across all your URLs and appendages, I think that can muddy the ecosystem. Be very very careful in how you do it. That said, if you look at referral sources, it should be clear where traffic is coming from.

Gifford: Honestly, we don’t even worry about tracking it. For a car dealership, you already know that your traffic is local.

We do seminars in various cities. Is there anything on the local side of search that we can do to combat negative reviews in these cities we visit where we don’t have a physical presence?

Smith: I’d have to ask why there would be so many widespread negative reviews? Is there something that’s wrong with the business itself? If you haven’t addressed the core problem you’re just going to repeat cleanup. You could create webpages and entities targeting each of the locations where you commonly go for your seminars in each location to rank for the searches in each of those locations. That’s one way to create content proactively. Also, make sure to address the negative reviews.

Address the core problem to avoid repeat cleanup. – @si1very
Click To Tweet

Share some techniques to get reviews.

Gifford & Dorman: GetFiveStars.com.

Smith: Incentivize it. Offer a free dessert, for example, if you’re a restaurant and want a review. You can’t pay for a review, though.

How do you evaluate the efficacy of a review site?

Dorman: I look at industry first and foremost. For instance, if I think about travel, I want quality reviews on TripAdvisor as well as Google. Google is typically at the top of the list, and then industry-specific sites are right below Google.

Meraz: Also look at your referral traffic in Google Analytics and find out what review sites are driving traffic.

Should every business be on Yelp?

Gifford: The stars that populate on Apple maps come from Yelp, not Google. So you have to pay attention to Yelp no matter what.

Share a key takeaway on what is working in local search.

Dorfman: Market for the consumer not the location.

“Market for the consumer not the location.”  – @phixed
Click To Tweet

Gifford: Even though we’re talking local SEO, paid Facebook ads are killing it right now. It’s amazing the things you can do with ads and beacons right now.

Meraz: Links that aren’t just helping because of authority but because they get in front of your audience move the needle.

Smith: I’m continually amazed that solid SEO can frequently beat competitors. Pay attention the the basics.

Keynote: The Future Of Search #SMX

Keynote: The Future Of Search #SMX was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

You’re tuned in to the BCI blog where we’re liveblogging SMX West all week. This is the show’s opening keynote, a demo-heavy presentation by Behshad Behzadi (@BehshadBehzadi), principal engineer at Google Zurich.

Danny Sullivan with keynote speaker Behshad Behzadi (Photo credit: Search Engine Land)

Behzadi is the director of conversational search. Danny Sullivan says that Behzadi previously did this presentation at SMX London, and it was a mind-blowing presentation into what’s possible with conversational search. Behzadi has been at Google for 10 years, the first 7 years working on ranking, and the last 3 years working on future tech including Now on Tap.

This is where search is moving and where Google is strategically investing more.  A photo of Captain Kirk is on the screen and then a video of Kirk talking to the Star Trek computer. (The audience absolutely cracks up when a non-skippable 15-second YouTube ad is played before the Star Trek clip.)

Another video clip Behzadi plays is from the movie “Her,” where we see an artificial intelligence operating system. Both of these movies imagine a future where you talk to a machine for answers and help. We’re moving into this kind of AI experience, and it won’t be 20 years in the future or 200 years. It’s the direction we’re moving toward now and, as we’ll see in his demos, we’re already pretty close.

How Search Evolved to This Point

Search’s evolution over time

An early breakthrough of how search functions was understanding synonyms starting in 2002. He shows a list of queries that contain “cs” and how Google could interpret “cs” differently:

“phd cs admission in california” —> cs = computer science (Google’s interpretation)
“daily prices for cs equity funds” —> cs = credit suisse
“cs bank hayfield” —> cs = citizens state
“2007 cs world cup” —> cs = counter strike
“bus amsterdam cs to airport” —> Google interpreted cs = central station

Another big move forward was Universal Search in 2007. The whole problem of results becomes much harder because we’re comparing apples and oranges.

Then, in 2012, the Knowledge Graph and Google understanding “things, not strings” was the next leap forward in understanding the real world. 2 billion entities, 54 billion facts, 38,000 types of entities — and growing. (Behzadi updates these numbers every time he gives a presentation.)

The World Is Changing

The world is becoming increasingly mobile. In 2015 people conducted more searches on phones and tablets than on desktop. So, when you want to build the future, you think of mobile. Besides smart phones, there are other devices that move with you and know about the context of where you are. This includes wearables like watches, and even smart cars.

In the mobile world people increasingly use speech. With new devices, speech is the easiest and sometimes the only way of input.

The ratio of voice search is growing faster than type speech.
The reason for the growth in voice search is that speech recognition today is actually working.
Today, speech recognition word error rate is 8 percent.

Another thing to note is that speech search is normal. No one thinks it’s weird when you speak searches into your phone today. Therefore, people use more natural sentences instead of query language.

“What’s the weather like in Paris?” vs. “weather Paris”

In this mobile world, people find the answers to their needs in both apps and the web.

What’s the Future of Search, Then?

To build the ultimate assistant.

The ultimate assistant should understand:

The world
You and your world
Your current context

Demos!

Answers about the world
Answers about you
Apps
Actions
Contexts and conversations
Now on Tap

Answers about the world

Such as, “Show me a list of cocktails made with vodka?”

Answers about you

Such as, “When is my next flight?” or “What is the address of my work?”

Along with searching your email, you can search your calendar for events, you can search your photos for dolphins, and the photo recognition is pretty strong.

Apps

He asks Google to play a song by title.

Actions

You can set an alarm for any time just by asking.

Contexts and conversations

From speech recognition to understanding — the first voice search he asks is, “How high is Rigi?” Google doesn’t understand the question. Then he says, “mountains in the Alps,” which Google then lists off. And then he asks, “How high is Rigi?” and now Google can answer with the height of the mountain Rigi.

Voice correction: You might ask, “Show me pictures of Wales” and you’ll get back pictures of whales. Then you say “w-a-l-e-s” and Google understands it’s a correction and shows pictures of Wales.

Now on Tap

From the moment he was in a chat and talked about a restaurant reservation, to the moment when the reservation is made, that’s two taps.

Is the ultimate assistant still science fiction? It’s becoming more and more believable. Something very similar to the experience of the Star Trek computer or “Her” operating system is almost here. Behzadi wouldn’t call those movies science fiction.

The future of search is the ultimate assistant that helps you with your daily life so you can focus on the things that matter.

Q&A

Question: In B2B, talking to your laptop is still not accepted. Can you speak to the place of this technology in B2B?

In terms of capabilities of answering and getting things done for B2B it’s the same, the technology is still the same, in the case of taking the next search based on what was searched for before.

Question: What’s the success rate of voice search on mobile vs. desktop? How do you measure that success?

That’s a hard question to answer because the types of queries are different.

Question: A lot of us and our customers have Apple products. How can you expand these Google technologies into Apple products?

Apple phones are good phones, and we would like to reach all users. Maybe 80 percent of what he showed today works on Apple phones. All the app integration is the harder part.

VIDEO: Googlers Take Us Behind the Scenes of the Google Dance #SMX

VIDEO: Googlers Take Us Behind the Scenes of the Google Dance #SMX was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West 2016 is happening next week, and we’re anticipating the return of the first Google Dance since 2008! SMX West is a digital marketing conference held each year in San Jose, and the dance is a party held on Google’s Mountain View campus for the conference’s attendees.

We invited Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes — one of the most-anticipated speakers slated to take the SMX stage — to join us for a special Hangout on Air. Illyes and Search Quality Analyst Nathan Johns were integral in bringing back the Google Dance, and both took a few minutes to tell us what to expect from the fete in a light-hearted Hangout.

Go behind the scenes of the Google Dance!

You might have guessed it, but the name of the event, “Google Dance,” is a play on the old shakeup of search result rankings that occurred whenever Google updated its algorithms. Virginia Nussey and I were hoping to talk to these Googlers about today’s algorithm updates and SEO hot topics like:

The upcoming Penguin algorithm update
The impact on organic result CTR when ads on the SERP move from the sidebar to four ads on the top of a results page for commercial queries
The Google Partner program suggesting SEO providers

But it seems we will have to wait for Illyes to take the SMX stage to get the info on these topics. He’ll be speaking on March 3 at 1 p.m. in “How Google Works: A Google Ranking Engineer’s Story,” along with Google Software Engineer Paul Haahr. We’ll be reporting live from SMX West to bring you coverage of this session and more than 30 others. Check out our liveblog schedule to know what sessions/speakers will be covered March 1-3. Subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss any SMX coverage!

Googler Speaks Out about Manual Actions #SMX

Googler Speaks Out about Manual Actions #SMX was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

There are two kind of actions that can come from Google – an automatic “action” where the algorithm makes a decision on how a page should rank. With a manual action, a human being at Google has come across a page and decided we need to address it. Juan Felipe Rincon from Google’s manual actions team answers the SMX West 2016 audience’s burning questions on manual actions in a live talk with Marketing Land and Search Engine Land Editor Danny Sullivan.

Google’s Juan Felipe Rincon (left) fields questions on manual actions from Search Engine Land Editor Danny Sullivan.

Danny Sullivan: What type of things do you do when someone is hit with a manual action? You can do many things from dropping ranking, taking down a page, etc.?

Juan Felipe Rincon: There are two things that can happen at either a page or site level. The page can be demoted – its ranking is adjusted. Or a page can stop being indexed, which can also happen at the site level. A site level action is a lot more significant and considered a lot more carefully because it can have a huge impact on a business.

DS: Are you able to impact them granularly? Like affect what keywords they rank for?

JR: I don’t know to what extent the actions taken will affect a site’s ranking for a particular keyword. That’s the ranking team’s job to look at, and that’s intentional. A manual action will affect your site, though.

DS: What and who generates a manual action?

JR: We have teams that look at the sources of things, or at things that appear anomalous. We have a team of Anti-abuse analyst – a significant large team, devoted to trust and safety, which monitors ad traffic, web spam, community guidelines on Google social platforms, etc. We cannot say how many are on that team.

DS: What college courses might lead to you becoming an anti-abuse analyst?

JR: Data mining, pattern recognition, intelligence, open source analysis.

DS: What are the biggest type of manual actions that happen?

JR: Content that wasn’t put there by the legitimate site owner and website hacks account for 45 percent of manual actions.

DS: I want to hear funny stories about something crazy you’ve encountered.

JR: The craziest stories come in the fact we encounter a very broad range of companies. Very, very large companies and small operations. And the impact this has on a business varies very drastically and you notice people with small sites vs. someone with a large corporation with multiple people focusing on SEO. How do we maintain an appropriate communication with all of them?

DS: Do sites affected with a manual action always just throw their SEO company under the bus?

JR: That’s between the site owner and the SEO. We’re thinking about what the user is seeing.

DS: Do you look at the spam reports?

JR: There are 35,000 user spam reports per month. We take action on 65 percent, and 85 percent of that 65 % are things we would consider spam. What we’ve learned from that is that our definition of spam and our users’ definition are spam differ, and that’s something that we look at.

DS: Do you ever get to a point where someone has submitted too many reconsideration requests?

JR: That’s not how we approach it. For some folks, when someone has gone through the cycle four or five times, they really don’t understand the reason for the action. Having discussions with those site owners can clarify the reason after someone has failed several times. We don’t often encounter people who are going through a reconsideration multiple times on purpose.

DS: Do manual actions stay attached to a domain forever?

JR: If you buy a domain, validate it in Search Console. If there are any manual actions that matter you will see them there.

DS: How qualified are the manual reviews to look at what’s happen? Do they know how to dig deeper?

JR: They are very qualified. They are hired for skills with deep analysis, pattern recognition and coding. And they go through rigorous training.

DS: Have you hired any reformed spammers?

JR: We’ve hired folks who have been in the SEO industry. I wouldn’t call them spammers, though.

DS: What should we do with partial match penalties?

JR: If you have a page out there that has an action of some sort, that usually means it’s doing something not particularly useful (if it’s not related to linking). Look at the set of pages and determine what utility they serve.

DS: If a page on a domain is penalized does that taint the entire site?

JR: They might look at a domain differently if it has several pages with manual actions – that’s the best I can say. The closer a page is to the root, the more you need to worry.

DS: How many spots can a page be dreanked?

JR: A lot.

How Google Removing Right-Side Ads from SERPs Affects Organic SEO

How Google Removing Right-Side Ads from SERPs Affects Organic SEO was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Late last week, Google announced that they were dramatically changing the layout of their SERPs by removing right-side ads from the page. At the same time, they added an extra ad to the top of the fold for “highly commercial queries” and three text ads to the bottom of the SERPs. This reduces the number of paid ads for certain types of SERPs from as many as 11 to a maximum of seven.

There has been much speculation on what impact this will have in the PPC world, but what do these changes mean for SEOs who are more concerned with organic rankings?

Should SEOs be changing their tactics in light of the SERP shakeup? Or is it business as usual? There certainly seems to be a general consensus that organic SEO is the loser with all of these changes, but I’m not so sure that that is the case. Let me explain why.

The SERP Is Still Made Up of 10 Blue Links

You might assume that since Google is adding as many as four paid ads to the body of organic SERPs that some organic positions are getting squeezed off the page. This isn’t the case. While organic results are getting pushed down the page slightly (more on this in a bit), the total number of organic results on all SERPs is remaining consistent.

SERP elements like “In The News” boxes, related questions, answer boxes, and blended image search results can cause SERPs to include less than the standard 10 results (usually down to nine), but the new ads above and below the SERPs have not lowered the organic SERP result count any further. The same goes for navigational branded searches, which usually only have six or seven organic results. These numbers have remained consistent despite the removal of the right-side ads and the addition (in some instances) of ads above and below the fold.

So speculation that organic results are being profoundly impacted and somehow severely decreased by this change are not accurate. In so much as the SERP was ever made up of “10 blue links” it still is.

One Fewer Organic Result Above the Fold

The top of fold in Google desktop search results has long been dominated by paid ads. The addition of non-paid SERP enhancements like answer boxes, featured snippets, and most recently, Twitter results, continue to push the top organic results down the page.

Google’s most recent change does stand to impact organic results that now contain the fourth paid ad above the fold. These queries, which according to Google are “highly commercial queries,” now have one organic result displaying above the fold instead of two.

Statistics from W3Schools indicate that the most common screen resolution among Internet users is currently 1366 x 768; 35 percent of Internet users have this specific resolution. Here is what the above the fold section of a SERP looked like with three ads for the search query “all inclusive Hawaii trips” for this specific screen resolution:

Click to enlarge

And the same query, with four ads above the fold:

Click to enlarge

Essentially, the second organic result is being lost in the second example. The result is partially visible above the fold, but it certainly isn’t legible or as clickable as it was before the change. It should be noted that much of this depends on the number of ad enhancements that are included in the four paid ads above the fold. Results with more enhancements take up a bit more space and in some instances the second result is totally lost because of them.

Here’s another example of a SERP that had a blended image search result included as the second result for “above ground pools”:

Click to enlarge

And the same query with four ads above the fold:

Click to enlarge

Here we again see that the second organic result is just about completely lost. There’s no doubt that above-the-fold organic real estate is at a premium following this change. In fact, it has been effectively cut in half with the removal of the second result.

Is SEO Dead (Again)?

Many will go screaming for the exits at this point, proclaiming that SEO is dead. While it is true that the above-the-fold organic real estate has been compromised, there’s an incorrect presumption that the average user doesn’t scroll down the SERP, choosing instead to click on whatever results are displayed when the SERP first loads. In fact, there’s reason to believe that the structure of the new desktop SERP may inspire a modified behavior.

The most glaring change in the new SERP is clearly the loss of the right-side ads. Many have remarked that the SERP results look a bit barren without the sidebar ads included, and I would tend to agree. To a certain degree, ad blindness caused those results to be largely ignored by searchers, which is a big reason why Google pulled the trigger on removing them. But their absence has a very clear effect: bringing focus to the body of the SERP.

This is clearly a very intentional move by Google. Drawing more eyes to the top-of-fold ads should result in them being clicked more.

However, the ancillary effect of this is that the organic space gets additional attention from searchers, as well. With no distractions on the right-side, the eyes have no choice but to focus on this space. I imagine this will actually result in higher CTR for organic first page results.

Mobile Is King, Even in the New SERP

One of Google’s goals in changing the SERP and removing the right-side ads is to create a unified search experience for both mobile and desktop searchers.

Indeed, the removal of the right-side ads makes the desktop experience more closely resemble what you get in mobile SERPs. If we assume that desktop searcher behavior will start to mimic mobile searcher behavior, we can anticipate that the below-the-fold results will get more attention from searchers.

Advanced Web Ranking tracks organic click-through rates on SERPs for a large set of queries for both mobile and desktop results:

Click to enlarge

While first-position results are clicked more often by desktop searchers, mobile searchers click on second to seventh position results more often. This tendency even extends to the second and third pages of results, which mobile users are much more likely to navigate to and tap than desktop searchers:

Click to enlarge

So will this behavior extend to desktop searchers now that the SERP more closely resembles its mobile counterpart? Only time will tell, but there is little doubt that Google’s intent with these recent SERP changes is to influence searcher behavior. Google is attempting to condition searchers to engage with paid ads and eliminate the ad blindness that has historically been a knock on the paid section of SERPs.

If there is one takeaway for organic SEOs, it is to clearly understand Google’s intention: if the query is transactional in nature, Google wants to make sure that users are clicking on ads to complete the process and make their purchase. It helps to justify PPC ad budgets by increasing ROI and protecting Google’s corporate objective of increasing revenue from paid search ads.

Ecommerce SEO Just Got a Little Bit Harder

If there is a “loser” in Google’s recent SERP shake-up, it has to be the SEO who works exclusively on ecommerce sites. All of the changes that Google has made affect the queries they spend their time optimizing for. Among those changes:

Click to enlarge

A fourth ad at the top of the SERP, which allows for
an increase in paid ad enhancements, which help to draw attention to paid ads while simultaneously
eliminating 50 percent of the organic results above the fold and
removing right-side text ads, which helps to feature Product Listing Ads (PLAs).

This is one crowded SERP, and there isn’t a real organic result until well below the fold. This is what the top of fold for this SERP looks like on a 1366 x 768 screen:

Click to enlarge

So what’s an organic SEO to do? Throw in the towel? Pack up and go home? While winning in the ecommerce space clearly got a little tougher organically, there is still very real opportunity to make a splash.

One could argue that good SEO and top-of-first-page organic placement is going to have even more value in light of these changes. This is especially the case if CPC for paid ads at the top of the page for ultra-competitive head terms skyrockets (as many are speculating it will) — making paid inclusion on the page an option reserved exclusively for businesses with the largest of paid ad budgets.

Organic SEO may be the small-to-medium-sized business’s best option for leveling the playing field and continuing to grab a piece of the pie for the high volume transactional queries that are seeing the most SERP layout flux. Larger brands will be aiming to rank organically to double-down on first page SERP real estate, owning both above-the-fold paid advertisements and top 10 organic rankings — a result that can exponentially increase conversion rates.

And that’s to say nothing of the opportunities to target longer tail queries …

Long-Tail Optimization For The Win!

While highly competitive head terms are becoming more competitive than ever, the longer-tail queries still offer excellent opportunities for optimization. Long-tail queries are the organic SEO’s best friend; they are less competitive than head terms, but offer a much higher conversion rate.

A small tweak to our ultra-competitive head term “running shoes” to “discount running shoes” reveals a much different SERP:

Click to enlarge

By tweaking our target keyword, we’ve retrieved two extra organic results above the fold. Another tweak, this time adding a specific brand to the query, results in a SERP with even more organic real estate to take advantage of — “Nike discount running shoes”:

Click to enlarge

Conclusion

While it is too early to gauge the true effect of Google’s recent SERP layout changes, it is important for organic SEOs to remain calm and base their recommendations on the data available to them. As I have illustrated in this blog post, the net effect of the recent changes is negligible, and there’s reason to believe that ultimately, the changes may benefit organic SEO click-through rates.

It is also extremely important that SEOs, especially those in the ecommerce space, continue to identify and optimize for less competitive longer-tail queries and not fall into the trap of chasing head-term rankings that may increase traffic, but have a negligible impact on conversion rates.

Whether it’s the search algorithm or the SERPs themselves, the dynamic nature of our industry is what makes it such a challenge and what makes achieving great results so rewarding. The one absolute in organic SEO is change.

Are you interested in hearing directly from Google reps how the change will affect organic click-through? Us too. It’s a topic sure to be discussed at SMX West, where Googlers will be taking the stage and answering questions posed by Danny Sullivan and SEOs. Subscribe to the blog below for email updates of our liveblog coverage of the event taking place all next week.

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A Week in the Life of an SEO Trainer

A Week in the Life of an SEO Trainer was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

It happened again the other day. An email came that just made my week:

“Your training has taken me so far in my career in a very short time. I feel like it is by far the best training I have ever had on SEO.”

– Tye Odom, an in-house SEO manager who also commented on LinkedIn

Bruce Clay and Mindy Weinstein, SEOToolSet trainers

Our SEOToolSet® training is not your typical SEO training course.

By the numbers, we cover a massive binder of material, or two, depending on which course you take. And more than 5,000 people so far have attended our classes worldwide.

What’s harder to quantify is how the classroom becomes a place where friendships and business collaborations are formed.

For three years, I’ve had the privilege of watching relationships grow from the front of the room, as a co-trainer with none other than Bruce Clay.

I love training people. You’re probably thinking, “You have to love training, you’re the trainer.” But it’s more than that.

In my role as SEO trainer, I get to help all sorts of people — whether it’s a business owner who’s tired of being taken advantage of, a spammer who’s ready to reform his black-hat ways, or even an occasional attendee who hasn’t a clue what search engine optimization is.

Training enables all of these people to transform their businesses and move ahead in their careers.

Let me give you a glimpse of what I’ve seen in our classes.

A Week in the Life: SEO Training Begins

Day 1 – A roomful of strangers

Standard training goes from Monday through Wednesday.

Mondays are my favorite day of our SEOToolSet Training course. I arrive excited, anticipating who will be sharing the classroom for the next few days.

Each attendee is greeted by Reyn (our amazingly organized receptionist) and by me. I confess I probably seem a little too enthusiastic at 8:30 a.m., especially as we pile a massive training binder and several large books into their arms.

Once the attendees are situated, the fresh coffee and breakfast spread seem to restore their smiles.

After some preliminaries and a couple of corny jokes to break the ice, I get to my favorite part: introductions.

As we go around the room introducing ourselves, I’m always glad to see a diverse group of people in terms of location, backgrounds and job titles — with a variety of reasons for coming to training.

Take the business owner I’ll call Pat. She was tired of being taken advantage of by people claiming to know SEO, so she signed up for our three-day Standard training. On the third morning, Pat came in early and found me by the buffet table, steeping a cup of tea.

“I’m blown away by all that goes into SEO,” she said, and asked if she could stay two more days to take the Advanced class, a Thursday and Friday morning extension.

Pat subsequently sent four of her staff to attend the SEOToolSet course. Training helped her understand the value of SEO for her business, and she embraced the knowledge.

Day 2 – SEO training and learning go deeper

On the second day of Standard, the foundation has been laid. Everyone now grasps the basic concepts of search engine optimization. Training from the ground up is crucial because, even if someone has experience in SEO, it could be self-taught knowledge, a different interpretation or just wrong.

VIDEO: SEO Experts Talk Search Hot Topics, Tips & Tricks #SMX

VIDEO: SEO Experts Talk Search Hot Topics, Tips & Tricks #SMX was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

In advance of Search Marketing Expo (SMX), speakers and SEO experts Marshall Simmonds, Casie Gillette and Sha Menz talked with Bruce Clay, Inc.’s Duane Forrester and me, Kristi Kellogg! These search engine optimization leaders dive into search hot topics including:

The future of links and linkless attribution
The difficulty with attribution and understanding referral traffic
Why Google Web Console Users want more than 90 days of search analytics data #NoBrainer #MoreDataSAN
Broad knowledge of digital marketing vs. niche expertise

Watch the full conversation below!

Tweet-Worthy Moments

Look at what your competitors are doing in EVERYTHING, not just search – @CasieG
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“I will PAY for my keyword data.” – @MDSimmonds
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Our clients will see a traffic INCREASE after the new Penguin update – @DuaneForrester
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Are you headed to SMX West? If so, we will see you there! And if not, don’t worry — our blog will be bursting with live coverage of key SMX sessions. Check out our liveblog schedule to know what sessions/speakers will be covered March 1-3.

VIDEO: Paid Search Leaders from Bing Talk PPC Hot Topics, Tips & Tricks #SMX

VIDEO: Paid Search Leaders from Bing Talk PPC Hot Topics, Tips & Tricks #SMX was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

In advance of Search Marketing Expo (SMX), speakers and PPC experts Christi Olson and Purna Virji talked with Bruce Clay, Inc.’s Kristi Kellogg and David Szetela! These paid search leaders dive into PPC hot topics including:

Product Listing Ads
How to keep Shopping Campaigns creative
How social ads fit into the overall paid search strategy
Optimizing a mobile site for a good quality score

Watch the full conversation below.

Tweet-Worthy Moments

“I’m almost to the point of thinking all campaigns could be remarketing campaigns.” – @ChristiJOlson
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“To take advantage of all the ad types on Facebook is a full-time job — @Szetela”
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“The image is the most important part of an ad, along with price.”- @PurnaVirji
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“Product on a white background has the best response” – @PurnaVirji
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Are you headed to SMX West? If so, we will see you there! And if not, don’t worry — our blog will be bursting with live coverage of key SMX sessions. Check out our liveblog schedule to know what sessions/speakers will be covered March 1-3.

VIDEO: Leaders Talk Social Media Hot Topics, Tips and Tricks #SMX

VIDEO: Leaders Talk Social Media Hot Topics, Tips and Tricks #SMX was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

One sure-fire way to take your social media skills to the next level is listen in when industry leaders share their tried-and-true techniques and tips — and that’s just what Mark Traphagen and Dustin Stout did when they sat down with me for a no-holds barred social media deep dive in advance of their upcoming sessions at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West. We talked about digital marketing and social media hot topics including:

The emerging social platforms (including SnapChat) that are piquing their interest
Common design mistakes Dustin would like to rid the world of
Questions Mark is frequently asked
Highlights from a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes had to say in a recent chat with Mark and Eric Enge
How Mark and Dustin got into digital marketing

Tweet-Worthy Moments

Want more #Twitter followers? @MarkTraphagen says refocus on why you want them in the 1st place.
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#Design #ProTip: “CLEAR OUT THE CLUTTER.” – @DustinWStout
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“The point of #design is communication.” – @DustinWStout
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Are you headed to SMX West? If so, we will see you there! And if not, don’t worry — our blog will be bursting with live coverage of key SMX sessions. Check out our liveblog schedule to know what sessions/speakers will be covered March 1-3.

5 Core Ways to Integrate Paid Search and Social

5 Core Ways to Integrate Paid Search and Social was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

This guest post by Sana Ansari, GM at our friends 3Q Accelerate, outlines five strategies that are considered key best practices for smart search and social campaigns. These integrations bring your digital marketing to the big leagues. Be sure you’re hitting all these bases with your paid search and social campaigns, or check with your ad team to make sure they are. (And yes, both 3Q and BCI offer SEM and paid social services!) Don’t miss these opportunities for engaging customers throughout the funnel and driving them back to your site. Take it away, Sana!

SEM and paid social are both performance channels with particular strengths and weaknesses; SEM captures intent where Facebook doesn’t, but Facebook can open awareness to a huge new audience that AdWords can’t reach. Used intelligently together, however, these two channels combine for a powerhouse marketing campaign.

Here are five ways to integrate your paid search and paid social campaigns for immediate results.

1. Generate Demand and Brand Awareness

To attract users at the top of the funnel, use Facebook to increase share of voice, brand engagement, and awareness. This will help generate demand. As users begin to learn about your product and services, they’ll end up going back to Google later and performing a search. You can capture and convert those with SEM.

2. Leverage Facebook for Remarketing

Let’s say we’ve been successful in getting our ad to high-intent audiences via SEM and we’ve been able to bring them to our site. However, for one reason or another, we were unable to get them to convert. We can leverage Facebook for additional scale on high-intent customers by using remarketing and getting our brand back in the eye of those visitors. We can leverage Facebook’s creative options to take another stab at convincing them (with value props, product imagery, etc.) to convert as well as sending the user to a highly relevant page to finish the job.

3. Use Facebook for Re-engagement

If you are a business where users can come and convert multiple times (think ecomm – toy stores, apparel, etc. – or services – spas, food delivery, etc.), you’ll want to use SEM to capture those high-intent users initially. Once they have made a purchase or signup and you have gotten that first-party data (email really), Facebook is a perfect avenue to remind these customers later on about great deals, new products/offerings, etc., to lure them back in for new purchases. Facebook allows you to upload first-party data to narrow out your customer base within their members and allow you to show your ads directly to that audience.

4. Leverage Lookalike Audiences

In the same vein as above, there are a bunch of good options in Facebook to really leverage our first-party data to help us capture incremental unique users. Let’s say we have been able to build up a great customer base via SEM. However, often there’s a limited number of people searching for our product/service, and we want to venture out to get our offering to more audiences.

A great way to do this in an efficient manner is to take our customer list (ideally segmenting them out into smaller lists of audiences with a similarity – for example, high lifetime value/LTV, medium LTV, and low LTV) and upload that into Facebook, essentially creating website custom audiences. From those website custom audiences, we can then use Facebook’s lookalike technology to find additional audiences that show characteristics/traits very similar to our customer base.

5. Go after Your Competitors

Double up on your competition by going after audiences who like competitors in Facebook – target them specifically on Facebook and bid on competitor terms in SEM. If we continue to get our brand in front of these audiences, they’ll become familiar with our name, and with the right ads we should be able to capture enough interest to bring them onto our site via either Facebook or SEM.

Have you developed any other ways to use Facebook and SEM campaigns together, replicating successful messaging, for example? Leave a comment!