Tuesday, January 31, 2023

This day in search marketing history: February 1

Google accuses Bing of copying its search results

In 2011, the headline Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results appeared first on Search Engine Land.

As Danny Sullivan reported: “Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google’s results, then uses that information to improve Bing’s own search listings.”

The story actually began in May 2010, when Google noticed that Bing was returning the same sites as Google when someone would enter unusual misspellings. By October 2010, the results for Google and Bing had a much greater overlap than in previous months. Ultimately, Google created a honeypot page to show up at the top of 100 “synthetic” searches (queries that few people, if anyone, would ever enter into Google).

This story got picked up by dozens of media outlets as both companies got into a public war of words and blog posts.

Google called Bing’s search results a “cheap imitation.”

Meanwhile, Bing called the sting operation a “spy-novelesque stunt” and defended their monitoring of consumer activity to influence Bing’s search results.

And all this happened on the same day as Bing’s Future of Search Event, where the Google-Bing dispute raged on in person.

Oh what a day.

Also on this day

Auto-tagging added to Google Merchant Center free listings

2022: Tagging added URL parameters to your tracking URLs for better analytics and measurements.

Microsoft rolls out portfolio bid strategies and automated integration with Google Tag Manager

2022: The portfolio feature automatically adjusted bidding across multiple campaigns to balance under- and over-performing campaigns that shared the same bidding strategy.

Google Search launches about this result feature

2021: The feature helped searchers learn more about the search result or search feature they were interested in clicking on.

Google adds Black-owned business label to product results

2021: The label read “identifies as Black-owned” and showed in the product listing results within Google Shopping.

Marketers say COVID vaccines create hope for quick return of in-person events

2021: Marketers were seeing an end to conditions that have made business travel to training seminars, conferences and trade shows unsafe.

Video: Dawn Beobide on Google confirmed vs unconfirmed algorithm updates

2021: In this installment of Barry Schwartz’s vlog series, he also chatted with Beobide about the page experience update.

Bing Ads rolls out multiuser access with single sign-on

2018: Multi-User Access allowed users to have one email and password to access all of the Bing Ads accounts they manage.

Restaurant owners can now edit menu listings in Google My Business

2018: This made it possible to create a structured restaurant menu for display in mobile search listings directly in Google My Business.

Google Assistant adds new media capabilities ahead of HomePod release

2018: You could now wake up to a favorite playlist and use voice to pick up where you left off with Netflix shows.

Google wins ‘right to be forgotten’ case in Japanese high court

2017: Japan’s high court ruled that search results are a form of speech entitled to protection.

Google’s Fake Locksmith Problem Once Again Hits The New York Times

2016: Companies, often not based in the local area, set up fake locations within Google Maps to trick the algorithm into thinking they were locally based.

Valentine’s Day Searches Start Now: When They’ll Peak Depends On The Category

2016: Data from Bing provided key trends on Valentine’s Day-related searches — including gifts, candy, flowers, restaurants and jewelry — and ad performance.

Google Search iOS App Adds “I’m Feeling Curious” To 3-D Touch

2016: Hard pressing on the app brought up a menu for the “I’m Feeling Curious” button.

Google Expanding Candidate Cards, Will Also Offer Primary Voting Reminders

2016: In search and Google Now, users were able to get a combination of candidate-generated content and third-party content about the primaries and the election.

Where Yahoo Might Again Compete In Search: Mobile

2014: With the right content and user experience, Yahoo could have generated new “search” usage and ad revenue from mobile.

Google Settles With France: No ‘Link Tax,’ But €60 Million Media Fund

2013: The settlement ended several months of debate over France’s plan to charge Google for linking to French news content.

Google Submits Formal European Antitrust Settlement Proposal

2013: The proposal was required to address four “areas of concern” – “search bias” and “diversion of traffic”; improper use of third-party content and reviews by Google; third-party publisher exclusivity agreements; and portability of ad campaigns to other search platforms.

Microsoft Sued By Company That Won Patent Lawsuit Against Google In 2012

2013: The two patents (originally issued in the early 1990s and owned by Lycos, which later sold them) pertained to the ranking and placement of ads in search results.

The Lead Up To the Super Bowl: How Are We Searching?

2013: Answer: On multiple devices. For information on the football teams, recipes and snacks.

Search In Pics: The Google Business Card Collection, Silver Android Statue & Golden Gate Bridge Pin

2013: The latest images showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more.

French Court Fines Google $660,000 Because Google Maps Is Free

2012: Google remained “convinced that a free high-quality mapping tool is beneficial for both Internet users and websites.”

Google Pledges Crack Down on Unscrupulous AdWords Resellers

2011: Under the terms, agencies had to provide their clients with metrics on costs, clicks and impressions on AdWords at least monthly, if not more often.

Blekko Bans Content Farms From Its Index

2011: Blekko decided to ban the top 20 spam sites from its index entirely, including ehow.com.

Speculation, Intrigue Surround Google’s Delayed Cloud-Tunes Music Service

2011: Licensing issues had delayed the service, despite Google offering boatloads of cash to music labels.

Google Finally Adds Check-Ins To Latitude, With A Couple Twists

2011: Latitude could send reminders to check-in at locations when you arrive, supported automated check-ins at places and automatically checked you out when you left a location.

Google New Local Ad Category Invades The “7 Pack”

2010: The local business ad (“enhanced listings“) allowed a business to stand out with an “enhanced” presence on the map or in the map-related listings on the SERP.

The Latest On Google News Sitemaps

2010: News publishers had through April 2010 to modify their news sitemap to accommodate the new protocol.

Report: Google To Bring More “Transparency” To AdSense Revenue Sharing

2010: Google sales boss Nikesh Arora reportedly said that Google would consider giving more transparency about revenue splits in AdSense.

AP & Google Reach A Deal – Sort Of

2010: Google and the Associated Press reached an agreement allowing Google to continue using AP content. But whether this is a long-term agreement was unclear.

SEOmoz Leaves The Consulting Business To Focus On Software

2010: The SEO agency had recently launched Open Site Explorer and offered a variety of SEO tools.

Can Google Kill Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6?

2010: Google announced they would be discontinuing their support for “very old browsers.”

US Appeals Court Allows Google Street View Trespass Lawsuit To Continue

2010: The Boring couple had first sued Google in early 2008 for taking pictures of their suburban Pennsylvania home, which was on a clearly marked private road.

2000 In Review: AdWords Launches; Yahoo Partners With Google; GoTo Syndicates

2010: Major events from the year 2000 in consumer search.

Can Searchers Find The Superbowl?

2009: Search engines and websites still had lots of room to improve in order to connect with searchers.

Scoring The Superbowl Ads & Search: Do Broadcast Marketers Get Online Acquisition?

2009: It was the year of the microsite.

Microsoft Makes $45 Billion Bid To Buy Yahoo

2008: Microsoft was ready to bid $31 per share to Yahoo’s board of directors to purchase the company, a deal potentially worth $45 billion. (Yahoo ultimately rejected this bid – and it wouldn’t be the last time.) More coverage of the bid:

Mine The Web’s Socially-Tagged Links: Google Social Graph API Launched

2008: The API allowed developers to discover socially-labeled links on pages and generate connections between them.

“Open Network” A Reality, C Block Of 700MHz Spectrum Hits $4.6 Billion “Reserve Price”

2008: Effectively, the rules required that “any legal consumer device” must be allowed to access the C Block broadband network.

Up Close With Yahoo’s New Delete URL Feature

2007: Pages would continue to be crawled, they just wouldn’t get indexed.

Google News Engine Bugging Out

2007: It was returning 500 errors, graphics weren’t loading and searches weren’t working.

National Pork Board Goes After Breastfeeding Search Marketer

2007: The National Pork Board thought one of her project’s T-shirts violated their trademark on the phrase “The Other White Meat.”

Google Fensi: Google’s Asian Social Networking Site?

2007: Was it a social network? A game? Or service. We may never know.

Marchex Launches Review Aggregation Feature ‘Open View’

2007: Open View aggregated user and expert reviews and generates a dynamic summary in more or less a single paragraph.

Google To Kick Off X Prize’s Next Fundraising Campaign

2007: X Prize’s mission was to “create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.”

Aussies Turn Out For Battle Of Sydney; Google Gets Shot Down

2007: Google’s flyover to snap imagery of the Sydney landscape and residents didn’t go as planned.

From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)

How marketers can adjust to redefined keyword matching

Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

< January 31 | Search Marketing History | February 2 >

The post This day in search marketing history: February 1 appeared first on Search Engine Land.

OpenAI launches new tool to detect AI-generated text

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, today released an AI Text Classifier that might be able to help you determine whether the text you’re reading was written by AI or a human.

But there’s a but.

OpenAI notes it’s “impossible to reliably detect all AI-written text” and it has “not thoroughly assessed the effectiveness of the classifier in detecting content written in collaboration with human authors.”

Why we care. There are already a variety of AI content detectors. If these tools are able to do a fairly effective job of identifying AI-generated text, it’s safe to assume search engines can. Think: Google’s helpful content system.

Also, if you are publishing content, it may be smart of you to run any content submitted by your agency or freelance writers through these tools. We’re entering a new era – and you don’t want to publish anything that could potentially get your site flagged as publishing automatically generated content, which is against Google’s guidelines. We have already started using tools like this for all contributed content here at Search Engine Land.

What is the AI Text Classifier? OpenAI calls its new tool a “fine-tuned GPT model that predicts how likely it is that a piece of text was generated by AI from a variety of sources, such as ChatGPT.”

It has some limitations – most notably the results may be inaccurate. OpenAI primarily trained the tool on English content written by adults so it’s entirely likely there will be false positives. Also, as OpenAI pointed out, it’s easy to edit AI-generated text to pass as human-generated. As noted in its FAQ section:

“The results may help, but should not be the sole piece of evidence, when deciding whether a document was generated with AI. The model is trained on human-written text from a variety of sources, which may not be representative of all kinds of human-written text.”

The results of the classifier. After you paste your text into tool (Open AI says you need a minimum of 1,000 characters, which is roughly 150-250 words) the AI Text Classifier will evaluate whether the text was generated using AI. You will see one of five labels:

Very unlikely.
Unlikely.
Unclear if it is.
Possibly.
Likely.

Here were the results after I pasted in the text of this article you’re reading (human written, I swear):

And thankfully, the classifier thought it was “very unlikely” that this article was AI-generated.

Try out the tool for yourself. OpenAI’s AI Text Classifier. It’s free.

More coverage. You can read OpenAI’s announcement here: New AI classifier for indicating AI-written text. You can see more coverage on Techmeme.

The post OpenAI launches new tool to detect AI-generated text appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Twitter announces the end of CoTweets

Twitter has just announced the end of CoTweets. They put out a statement in their Help Center that the new feature, which started in July, will be sunset by the end of the day on January 31, 2023.

A CoTweet is a tweet that has two authors’ profile pictures and user names. A CoTweet appears on both users’ profiles and is shown to all of their followers.

Twitter warned us about this. When the CoTweet experiment was announced, it was also made known that this may not be a permanent feature and that it could go away.

Why we care. This feature was a short-lived experiment with the potential for brands and individuals to reach wider audiences. Clearly, Twitter deemed the feature a loser under Elon Musk after not meeting expectations.

The post Twitter announces the end of CoTweets appeared first on Search Engine Land.

LinkedIn now lets you add an SEO title and description

You can now customize SEO titles and descriptions for any LinkedIn articles you will publish or have already published.

Why we care. Whether you’re using LinkedIn to grow an audience for yourself, your company or your clients, you want to take advantage of every opportunity you can to increase your search visibility and discoverability. This is super basic SEO – and it’s likely you were probably already creating your headlines with search in mind already. But it is a nice option to let you optimize your content specifically for search.

How it works. Click on Write article. Under the Publishing menu in the article navigation pulldown menu, click on Settings.

Here’s you’ll see two fields:

SEO title: You have 60 characters to work with. LinkedIn says: “We’ll use your added SEO title in place of your article title for search engine result pages, such as Google search.”
SEO description: You have 160 characters to work with here.LinkedIn says: “We’ll use the SEO description in place of the first few lines of your article on search engine result pages. We suggest utilizing keywords, summarizing your writing, and aiming to write between 140-160 characters.”

What it looks like. Here’s a screenshot:

Newsletters gain visibility in search. LinkedIn is also increasing the prominence of Newsletters in search results. Now if a LinkedIn creator offers a newsletter, it will appear under the author’s name, along with a Subscribe button. Here’s an example:

Scheduled articles coming soon. LinkedIn also announced the article and newsletter authors will be able to schedule articles. These will work in the same way as scheduled posts.

And more. You can see all this news and more in the latest Building LinkedIn newsletter: Creators’ Edition: newsletters enhancements, SEO, analytics & more + Inspiring conversations about building character, finding your next play, AR & AI

The post LinkedIn now lets you add an SEO title and description appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Internal linking for ecommerce: The ultimate guide

Internal linking is a crucial aspect of any website, but it is especially important for ecommerce websites.

Internal linking helps improve the navigation and user experience for your website visitors and can also help improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO).

This article will discuss the best practices for internally linking pages on ecommerce websites. To help illustrate these opportunities, I’ll use some of my favorite examples of ecommerce SEO done well – the portfolio of Williams Sonoma brands. (Disclaimer: I have no affiliation and have never worked on any of these sites.)

But first, let’s lay the groundwork for why these tactics are so important.

What is internal linking?

Internal linking refers to linking one webpage to another on the same website domain. When a user clicks on an internal link, they will be taken to a different page on your website. These links can be words, phrases, or images.

Internal linking is important because it helps people find the information they are looking for on your website and helps them move from one page to another.

It also helps search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your website, making it easier to find in search results.

What internal linking is not

Internal linking is not the same as external linking.

External linking is when you put links on your website that take users to other websites. This can help them find relevant information from other sources.

Using both types of linking is essential, but they have different purposes.

Why is internal linking important for ecommerce websites?

Internal linking is an important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) for all websites, especially ecommerce.

While there are probably many more reasons than I’ve listed below, these are the four primary reasons that are always top of mind when working on an ecommerce website with tens of thousands, if not millions, of pages.

Ecommerce websites often have a large number of pages, including product pages, category pages, and other informational pages. Internal linking helps users navigate these pages and find the information they want.
Ecommerce websites often have a lot of competition and potentially many vendors offering the same or highly similar products. Internal linking can help improve the SEO of the website, making it more visible in search results.
Internal linking can help improve the discoverability of ecommerce websites by helping search engines discover and crawl all of the pages on the website. This can lead to more traffic and potential customers for the website.
Internal linking can highlight promotions and sales, new products, and customer reviews on ecommerce websites. This can draw attention to these items and encourage users to take advantage of them.

It helps improve the visibility and ranking of a website on search engine results pages (SERPs) and improves the user experience by allowing visitors to navigate the website easily.

But, before we get into general best practices, as noted in the items above, it is essential to note the difference between navigational internal linking and in-content internal linking.

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See terms.

In-content internal linking includes links within the content of a page (typically a blog post), while navigation internal linking is when you have links in your website's navigation menu.

For example, if you are writing a blog post about men's shoes, you may want to link to a page about sneakers. This would help users find additional information related to the current page's content.

In contrast, navigation internal linking helps people find the main pages on your website and navigate your website more easily.

With that explanation out of the way, here are 9 best practices for internally linking pages on ecommerce websites, broken down by in-content or navigational.

Let’s start with some of the basics for a solid ecommerce website.

The organization and utilization of your primary navigation are table stakes for a robust internal linking strategy.

When a page is linked from the sitewide menu, it essentially means that it is linked from every page on the site, which can signal to Google that the page is essential. However, it's necessary to be mindful of not overcrowding your menu.

Across the Williams Sonoma portfolio of sites, the main navigation is a master class of effective internal linking strategy. I’ll use the below example from West Elm’s Kids section to illustrate.

1 and 2 – Category / Sub-Category Linking: West Elm links to crucial category pages from the sitewide menu, boosting these pages' internal authority. The sub-category links assist in providing Google with a better understanding of the organization of the website and the semantic relationships between them.

3 – Focusing on the user journey: Having dealt with this myself, I know design paralysis is a big blocker to purchasing furniture. With the Design Resources section, West Elm not only provides search engines an entry to all products in the category (All Kids & Baby Collections) but also answers common blockers to purchase (inspiration, in stock, etc.).

Ross Hudgens summarizes the additional benefits of including this content more eloquently than I could:

“Integrating content into navigation categories can help drive significantly more outcomes. Most people don’t care to visit “Resources” or “Blog.” This will lead them to ignore dropdowns like that.

They want to solve a specific problem and are more likely to be driven down the path of reading up on it if it’s naturally embedded within each category.

This will help drive users down the funnel, especially for products with a long sales cycle. In the nav, you can link directly to the hub category for the section that discusses that content.

If it doesn’t exist, that’s a hint your content hub could use better architecture around the actual problems people have.

You can see how this powerfully ties together from an internal linking and engagement benefit point of view.”

4 – Internally link to support business priorities: The critical thing to note about this example is the internal link doesn’t just say “Sale.” It is a specific sale (“Up To 40% Off Furniture”) aligned with the category.

As you navigate each sub-menu, you’ll find that the sale references align with the primary category. Great use of deep linking, even within the sale section.

5 – Internal link to support secondary KPIs: In an age where first-party data collection must be a priority, West Elm provides a clear CTA driving users into their design center to schedule an appointment.

While I cannot validate this, I would expect the data collected to be used to fuel additional marketing efforts.

Ultimately, if someone chose to utilize these services, I expect these average order sizes to be much larger (I know it was for me), which is also likely why they can offer these design services at no cost.

6 – Portfolio-wide internal linking strategy: I’ve worked on many ecommerce sites that were part of portfolio companies. The typical approach is to add a bunch of footer links to the portfolio domains and call it a day.

This is the first time I have seen such a focused effort on utilizing an internal linking structure to elevate all domains in a portfolio. The important element to note here is that even the cross-domain internal link is highly relevant (e.g., West Elm Kids Furniture → Pottery Barn Baby & Kids Furniture).

Kudos to whoever sold this enterprise SEO strategy!

The Williams Sonoma site portfolio uses a mix of global navigation menus. I’ll focus on the two in the screenshot below.

At the top, again, we see a list of external links to ecommerce sites in the portfolio. (Gap also does this well.)

Directly below the logo, Mark & Graham utilizes a row of “quick links” that are updated to support seasonal efforts, promotions and sales, new product categories, and other deep links to category pages that otherwise might not have a home in the fixed navigation menu (i.e., Occasions, Interests, etc.)

This is an excellent example of secondary navigation that adds value to the user (and search engines) beyond just Find a Store, Shopping Cart, etc.

HTML breadcrumbs are typically displayed at the top of the category and product pages. They include a series of links that show the path a user has taken to reach the current page.

There are a handful of benefits of implementing breadcrumbs:

They help users understand where they are on the website and make navigating to previous pages easy.

Improved crawlability: Breadcrumb internal linking helps search engines discover and crawl the pages on your website and can help minimize orphaned pages. This can improve the overall visibility of your website in search results.
Enhanced user experience: Breadcrumb internal linking can improve the user experience of your website by making it easier for users to navigate and find the information they are looking for. This can lead to increased engagement with your website and can also help improve your rankings in search results.
Increased relevancy: By using internal breadcrumb linking to show the relationship between different pages on your website, you can help search engines understand the site structure of your pages – especially when marked up with breadcrumb schema.

A perfect illustration of this is Williams Sonoma’s utilization of breadcrumbs to build natural internal links to essential category pages based on my navigational path to the same product:

Williams Sonoma's "OXO" brand breadcrumb

Williams Sonoma's mandoline slicers breadcrumb — Williams Sonoma's "mandoline slicers" breadcrumb

Williams Sonoma's all food prep tools breadcrumb — Williams Sonoma's "all food prep tools" breadcrumb

4. HTML sitemap

An HTML sitemap is a page that lists all pages on your website and provides links to these pages.

For example, you might include a sitemap on your website that lists all of the pages on your website and provides links to these pages, or you could use internal linking to highlight the most critical pages on your website.

Creating a well-structured HTML sitemap and linking to it from the footer, as Pottery Barn Kids has done, ensures that most site pages are only a few clicks away, which aids in both user accessibility and SEO.

Since search engines crawl sites in a sequential manner and follow contextual cues, it is beneficial to have a single page that links to the site’s primary and secondary pages.

This can be helpful for users looking for specific pages on your website and help search engines discover and crawl all of the pages on your website.

Once created, it is essential to maintain an updated HTML sitemap on the site to ensure users and search engines can reach any page via minimal navigation.

In-content internal linking best practices

Ecommerce sites are notorious for lacking content – especially across category and sub-category pages. As a result, it could be argued some of these examples are "navigational" in nature.

However, I might argue these implementations are less ‘standard’ for navigational purposes and typically buried at the bottom of the page (where content is generally added for category pages).

5. Supporting category page content

There are many ways to build in supporting content on category pages – that could be a separate article.

In the example below, West Elm adds a few supporting paragraphs at the bottom of their category pages with additional heading tags and content that adds value to the user experience.

Within that content, they naturally include links to other category and sub-category pages, individual product pages, and even educational/blog content where it makes sense.

6. Internal linking modules

Above the supporting page content, Pottery Barn, Mark & Graham, and West Elm utilize a row of Related Searches (read more about internal link modules here).

Pottery Barn Kids utilizes this same row directly above the footer.

In all cases, these text links take the form of long-tailed keyword-rich internal links to sub-categories and product detail pages (PDPs).

As you can see from the example above, this provides opportunities to build rich anchor text links to pages around color, texture, and even sizing – incredibly valuable for those long-tailed but highly-qualified searches.

Ecommerce SEO 101 requires a related products widget of some sort. This can help users discover additional products they may be interested in and is one of the foundational tactics for internal link building.

However, what was traditionally reserved for the product detail page, has expanded to category pages, and even the “types” of related products have grown exponentially.

For example, Williams Sonoma uses the standard “Related Products,” while Pottery Barn uses a “Top Picks for You” widget on their category pages.

On product detail pages, this implementation expands to a wide variety of implementations and names, typically with multiple rows per page in a carousel allowing for a more extensive list of internal links per page:

“People Also Viewed” (Pottery Barn Kids)
“People Also Bought” (Pottery Barn Kids)
“Also in This Collection” (Pottery Barn)
“Pairs Well With” (West Elm)
“People Also Browsed” (West Elm)
“Customers Also Viewed” (Williams Sonoma)
“Customers Also Bought” (Williams Sonoma)
“Related Products” (Williams Sonoma)
“You May Also Like” (Rejuvenation)
And more!

These links are invaluable for cross-selling, upselling, and flattening the overall website architecture.

8. Product attributes

Where breadcrumbs might not be possible, product attributes can fill the void.

When both can be used, they are an effective complement for each other and can reference any/all attributes a product might have:

Size
Style
Color
Brand
Flavor
Texture

While this type of internal link is perhaps better showcased on another site (check out REI.com), I was able to find an example of this on West Elm:

In this case, “Learn more” links to the collaboration page for Scout Regalia. I would argue that a better anchor text implementation could be done here.

There are broader opportunities across the collective sites to take advantage of interlinking among collaborations and brand pages on product detail pages themselves.

9. User-generated content (UGC)

UGC content can take on many forms:

Reviews.
Testimonials.
Question and Answers.

It’s hard to find fault in Williams Sonoma’s SEO strategy. This, however, is one area where there might be a significant opportunity.

In the example above, a Pottery Barn associate left a response to a comment with a naked URL. However, the link is not clickable.

Generally, the Q&A section across the domains offers many opportunities for internal linking automation.

What are general internal linking best practices?

Now that you have a roundup of the why and where to incorporate internal links, you might wonder “what to do” and “how to do it.”

A myriad of articles outlines these internal linking best practices very well, including Moz, Semrush, and, of course, Google.

I suggest you dive into the links above for a more detailed breakdown. In my opinion, the five most crucial internal linking best practices to follow, in no particular order, are below:

Link to deep pages.
Use descriptive anchor text.
Link to relevant/related pages.
Link to the canonical version of the URL.
Don’t use the same anchor text for multiple pages.

How do I implement internal linking on my ecommerce site?

Much of this may require some grunt work and a partnership with your development team to implement these strategies effectively.

The implementation with the most bang for your buck (and potentially the highest level of effort) is internal linking modules. I linked it above, but I highly recommend reading this article from Holly Miller Anderson for more details.

Alternatively, auditing your existing internal links to determine which pages could benefit from increased internal linking is always a great place to start.

Paul Shapiro defines this process as determining “internal PageRank,” which is an intelligent way of thinking about it.

No matter how you define it, the outcome of this exercise will no doubt provide valuable insights to get started.

Maximizing internal linking for ecommerce

Internal linking is an essential aspect of any ecommerce website.

By following the best practices discussed in this article, you can ensure that your website is easy to navigate for users and is optimized for search engines.

The post Internal linking for ecommerce: The ultimate guide appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Meta advertising: 5 best practices for 2023

As Instagram and Facebook continue to lead the social platform arena, Meta remains a media channel where advertisers must stay visible and competitive in 2023. Much has changed over the past year, with Meta releasing many new tools and features. Advertisers now have more resources to scale their campaigns faster than ever.

Meta continues to dominate machine learning, launching new automated campaign types proven incredibly efficient. Advertisers have more options to control certain elements in campaigns.

The media giant also improved the experience of working with influencers, a value-add to advertisers who seek to focus on their brand awareness budgets over direct response.

With all the new updates in 2022, several best practices were uncovered through rigorous testing, many of which prove vital for any brand’s long-term Meta advertising strategy.

Here are five recommendations to consider when running Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns in 2023.

1. Leverage Advantage+ campaigns

Advantage+ campaigns is a new feature Meta released in 2022. I’ve always advocated for Meta’s machine learning because they have mastered it. Advantage+ campaigns are a great addition to app and shopping initiatives.

Meta does the work for advertisers by finding the right audience and the right creative. We have succeeded across app install and shopping (dynamic product ads).

To capitalize on Advantage+ campaigns, it’s essential to ensure you have a healthy amount of creative to get these running effectively. Meta recommends the creative assets they think will perform the best, but marketers can manually select the ones they desire.

Experiment with your options and try a combination of ads known to perform well while also letting Meta choose ads. By testing and optimizing what works, you’ll likely see an improvement in your cost-per-acquisition running with Advantage+ campaigns. Keep your eye on these for 2023.

2. Work with influencers

Not a new tactic, but Meta has recently put forth new playbooks and guides to help advertisers work with influencers.

Influencers are a large part of B2C advertising budgets, and Meta has recognized that marketers want to leverage user-generated content on brand channels with paid media.

The process isn’t perfect, but here are a few key best practices to make your strategy go as smoothly as possible.

Connect your influencers as partners under your company page’s “Paid Partnership.” This function allows you to promote their content on your brand channels.
When promoting on Instagram, ensure influencers include the paid partnership label with your brand – “Paid Partnership with [Brand Name].” This is very important as it ensures you can pull the partner’s content onto your own pages to advertise within the ads manager. Make sure each partner specifically includes your brand name in the partnership label because if they only include the generic label that says “Paid Partnership” you will likely run into trouble getting their content promoted and will have to have them edit the post.
For Instagram Reels and Stories, verify that there are no stickers or copyrighted music in videos created. Otherwise, Meta will not approve your ads. In addition, you’ll have to work with influencers to re-record their content, which can be a major inconvenience if your campaigns are timely. Typically, the quality of content decreases when we have to go back to influencers and ask for last-minute changes to content that was initially in final approval.

Also, keep in mind that if you’re promoting Reels, advertisers can only add links to these if you create a dark post. If it’s important that you have a link, but you don’t want a dark post, Facebook recommends going with the “Story” placement.

Advertisers working with influencers can additionally find success with the “Instagram Explore” placement, so it’s highly recommended to keep an eye on that one for 2023. We’ve seen our lowest CPMs and CPAs from Instagram’s new “Explore” placement and plan to increase spend here on future influencer initiatives.

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3. Set up Meta’s Conversions API

Yes, there are still many pain points and kinks to be worked out when setting up Meta’s Conversion API (CAPI). However, Meta has recently rolled out various setup methods to help more advertisers get up and running.

While CAPI isn’t mandatory, it’s worth keeping in mind since it’s a deeper level of optimization. With the new setup methods, it also appears Meta is (hopefully) working to offer more integrations for advertisers to get set up faster without needing a full dev team.

After successfully getting CAPI set up and launched, we delivered our lowest cost-per-acquisition of the year in Q4. Our CPA decreased by 34% in our first month and 70% in our second month while optimizing for conversions using CAPI. We were able to feed a deeper data point to Facebook’s algorithm.

Stay on the lookout for more Meta updates regarding CAPI setup. This is one feature you don’t want to miss out on.

4. Use ‘open’ and ‘broad’ targeting

Aligning even more with Meta’s machine learning algorithm, “Open” or “Broad” targeting will continue to be king when scaling your campaigns.

Meta’s algorithm can efficiently find the audience most likely interested in your ads and taking action when doing either of these two options:

Leaving your targeting open, meaning you don’t add any targeting beyond demographics.
Leaving your targeting very broad, using minimal interest targeting that keeps audience scale in the millions.

Open and broad targeting feeds Meta the most audience data to allow it to make the best optimizations, which is the best way to make machine learning work for your advertising efforts.

5. Make the best of lead gen forms

Long has been the theme of “less is more” regarding lead gen forms. This remains true in many cases. But if you’re struggling with the quality of leads, consider adding more questions to qualify the customer.

We’ve seen this successful when needing to drive quality over quantity. Yes, your front-end cost per lead will likely increase. Still, we’ve found that the quality on the backend significantly improves and decreases the efficiency of qualified leads while driving increased revenue for businesses.

It’s also recommended to test manual fill for first name, last name and/or email address if you’re struggling with the quality. There is a balance to be found when it comes to manual fill vs. autofill so you’ll likely want to test a few variations to find what works best for your business.

Don’t have too many manual fill questions to avoid accidentally increasing the volume of abandoned forms. Consider additionally giving the consumer a short and sweet introduction on the form that details what they will get from filling out the form. This can be a snippet of a whitepaper or a few bullets about the company – whatever makes the most sense for your ad.

Moreover, ensure your thank you page or the landing page you are driving the consumer to is engaging with helpful information and resources. This provides more education for the consumer to make decisions and can help build your retargeting audiences for nurture campaigns.

Lastly, keep the creative for your lead gen forms scroll-stopping. You have seconds to grab someone’s attention in their feed and make them stop to open your form, so be bold!

The takeaway

As Meta continues to evolve and unroll new features, one thing is certain – automation will become a core campaign tactic.

With automation at the forefront, advertisers have more ability to test and learn at a faster pace than ever with tools like CAPI and Advantage+ campaigns.

Furthermore, don’t hesitate to lean into open and broad targeting, where possible, to feed audience optimization.

2023 will be a big year for testing to see where advertisers can uncover additional efficiencies and remain competitive on Facebook and Instagram.

The post Meta advertising: 5 best practices for 2023 appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Monday, January 30, 2023

This day in search marketing history: January 31

Google releases URL Inspection Tool API

In 2022, Google released a new API under the Search Console APIs for the URL Inspection Tool. The new URL Inspection API let you programmatically access the data and reporting you’d get from the URL Inspection Tool but through software.

Google’s URL Inspection Tool API had a limit of 2,000 queries per day and 600 queries per minute.

Google provided some use cases for the API:

SEO tools and agencies can provide ongoing monitoring for important pages and single page debugging options. For example, checking if there are differences between user-declared and Google-selected canonicals, or debugging structured data issues from a group of pages.
CMS and plugin developers can add page or template-level insights and ongoing checks for existing pages. For example, monitoring changes over time for key pages to diagnose issues and help prioritize fixes.

Within a week, several SEO professionals developed free new tools and shared scripts, and established SEO crawlers integrated this data with their own insights, as Aleyda Solis rounded up in 8 SEO tools to get Google Search Console URL Inspection API insights.

From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)

SMX Overtime: Here’s how multi-location brands can manage their local listings

Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

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The post This day in search marketing history: January 31 appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Google accuses Bing of copying its search results

Also on this day

From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)

Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

What is internal linking?

What internal linking is not

Why is internal linking important for ecommerce websites?

In-content vs. navigation internal linking: What’s the difference?

Navigation internal linking best practices

1. Sitewide navigation menu

2. Sitewide secondary navigation menu

3. HTML breadcrumb navigation

4. HTML sitemap

In-content internal linking best practices

5. Supporting category page content

6. Internal linking modules

7. Related products/browsing

8. Product attributes

9. User-generated content (UGC)

What are general internal linking best practices?

How do I implement internal linking on my ecommerce site?

Maximizing internal linking for ecommerce

1. Leverage Advantage+ campaigns

2. Work with influencers

3. Set up Meta’s Conversions API

4. Use ‘open’ and ‘broad’ targeting

5. Make the best of lead gen forms

The takeaway

Monday, January 30, 2023

Google releases URL Inspection Tool API

Also on this day

From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)

Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)