Wednesday, May 31, 2023
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We turned Search Engine Land into a chatbot
Introducing the first generative AI chatbot for search marketers – the Search Engine Land ChatBot. Launched today in beta, we’re excited for you to test it out.
About the chatbot. Our bot has been trained on the Search Engine Land content, allowing you to explore, experiment and learn more about search marketing.
The chatbot that powers our ChatBot sits on top of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It is based on more than 20,000 news articles, guides, tutorials and original and curated research pieces published on Search Engine Land – the publication of record for all things search and search marketing since 2006.
Our chatbot will be updated on a regular basis with newly published content.
How it works. Navigate to our ChatBot page and get ready to write prompts. We offer some best practices and sample prompts on that page.
For example, here’s what you’ll see on a prompt for “create a content marketing and SEO plan for a local bakery”.
You will probably come across some form of message about exceeding tokens. If this happens, try again. If it happens again, do your best to refine your prompt.
Again, we’re in BETA, so our chatbot is not perfect. But we’ll be working to continually make it better and more useful for you. We appreciate your patience (and helping us break this so we can improve it).
Why a chatbot? “Serving the marketing community is our reason for being, and the Search Engine Land ChatBot is an exciting way to provide that community with the information they need in a format that is complementary to our existing properties,” said Chris Elwell, CEO, Third Door Media.
Help us improve. We’re looking at ways to improve the bot and welcome your feedback. Give the Search Engine Land ChatBot a shot. We look forward to hearing from you!
MarTechBot. We also created the first generative AI experience for marketing professions with MarTechBot on our sibling publication, MarTech.org. You can dig deeper into the why and technology in these articles:
- We turned MarTech into a chatbot. This is what we’ve learned (so far)
- What’s behind the MarTechBot curtain?
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Diversifying your B2B paid media portfolio: When does it make sense?
Today’s economic headwinds make it more tempting to test new ad platforms, explore “shiny” new products and revise your original B2B marketing strategy.
For risk-averse or conservative marketers, trying something new can be intimidating. Here are key considerations before expanding your B2B portfolio.
Assessing your readiness for change
B2B marketers tend to be conservative when testing new marketing tactics, and rightfully so.
The vast majority of ad platforms are designed for B2C or DTC initiatives.
But with its unique target audience and complex sales cycles, B2B marketing requires different strategies and platforms explicitly tailored to its needs.
Most B2B companies also spend more on traditional marketing (magazines, radio, broadcast TV, and street furniture, to name a few) than digital ad spending.
If you are in a very traditional, risk-averse business, you will struggle to get the company outside “true and tested” methods.
Here are two questions to ask when determining if your company needs to think about change and diversification:
- Are you currently meeting our business goals?
- If the existing approach is not effectively contributing to the desired outcomes, it signals the need for change and diversification in marketing tactics.
- Is your sales team happy with the work of the marketing team?
- This question indicates a misalignment or gap between the marketing activities and the expectations or requirements of the sales team. This misalignment can hinder the generation of quality leads and impact overall sales performance.
The third “question” to ask is a statement.
Suppose sales says, “We need more leads,” and the only action indicated is, “Let’s increase the budget and keep doing the same.”
In that case, the company needs to evaluate the effectiveness of current strategies and explore diversification opportunities to support sales objectives better.
Always start with your audience
After recognizing the need for change, marketers must analyze their target audience. This involves understanding:
- Where they spend their time, both during and outside office hours.
- The type of content that resonates with them.
- Their position in the marketing funnel.
While tools and publications are available to provide insights into how specific users engage online, acknowledge that not everyone has access to such extensive resources.
In such cases, a simple and cost-effective method to determine the presence of your target audience on platforms like Reddit or LinkedIn (you can do it with all major platforms today) is to upload an email list to the ad platforms.
This allows for a comparison of match rates, indicating the overlap between your ideal persona and the users on those platforms.
Another approach is to install the advertising pixel of the ad platform you are considering (which is free) on your website and wait for the audiences to populate.
By monitoring the traffic and engagement, you can gain insights into the quality and relevance of the audience.
In cases where you notice a significant amount of low-quality traffic on your site, implementing two different triggers can help assess the total website visitors versus lead forms.
By placing one trigger across your entire site and another specifically on key confirmation pages, you can estimate the number of spammy or unqualified leads expected from each platform.
With these methods, you can gain valuable information about your target audience's online presence, engagement, and potential lead quality, even with limited resources.
This data can then inform the decision-making process and guide the allocation of marketing efforts toward the most effective platforms and channels.
Designing the right test and measurement plan
Designing the right test and measurement plan in B2B marketing involves a systematic approach to ensure accurate evaluation and actionable insights.
First, define clear objectives for the test, identifying the specific outcomes or insights you aim to achieve. This could include:
- Improving lead generation.
- Optimizing conversion rates.
- Assessing the effectiveness of a new marketing channel.
Next, identify key metrics that align with your objectives (i.e., click-through rates, conversion rates, cost per lead, or ROI) to serve as benchmarks for measuring the test's success and providing actionable insights.
During the implementation phase, continuous monitoring and measurement is essential. Track the performance of the test in real time and collect relevant data.
Tests are often stopped because they may not generate many leads. But not all platforms in ecommerce are designed to generate leads or sales.
If the user you acquired is correct but not ready to engage with sales, that doesn't mean it failed.
It just means that you must re-engage that user and move them to the next step of the B2B buyers’ journey.
Embracing a culture of innovation
This decade will be pivotal for B2B marketers, as success or failure will hinge on their ability to adapt to a rapidly changing environment.
Many will succeed by challenging themselves and embracing innovation, while others may falter, especially if they resist this ongoing change.
A significant shift is expected as B2B mobile traffic is projected to surpass desktop traffic.
This raises an important question: Is your website – and funnel – prepared to handle the influx of mobile traffic?
Privacy regulations are also shaping the use of customer data. It's essential to have a contingency plan in case you need to cease using customer lists to comply with unexpected changes in compliance.
Another crucial consideration is whether you have a dedicated testing budget separate from your regular marketing campaigns.
Are you actively utilizing this budget to experiment with different tactics, or do you use it repeatedly for the same marketing approach?
As the landscape evolves, B2B marketers must stay ahead of the curve.
Adapting to mobile-first trends, addressing privacy concerns, and embracing a culture of testing and innovation are key factors that will determine success in this dynamic environment.
By proactively addressing these challenges, marketers can position themselves for growth and capitalize on the opportunities.
“Diversification is a component and, in some cases, a very good initiation of value creation,” Pearl Zhu once said.
The B2B space is changing more quickly than ever, and unless we diversify when it makes sense, we won’t be able to beat our competitors or reach our goals.
The post Diversifying your B2B paid media portfolio: When does it make sense? appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Tuesday, May 30, 2023
Gang Posing As Tax Officials Loot 1.7 Kg Gold From Hyderabad Jewellery Shop
In Major Milestone, Mumbai Coastal Road's 2nd Underground Tunnel Excavated
Webinar: How to build consumer trust in a cookieless world by Cynthia Ramsaran
Building consumer trust is crucial for marketers. But how is that trust built in a future without cookies?
This webinar will explore how brands can use choice, control, and transparency to create personalized, permission-based experiences that minimize compliance risk and drive marketing ROI without relying on third-party cookies.
Learn more by registering for and attending “Trust Matters: Building Consumer Confidence in a Cookieless World,” presented by OneTrust.
Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.
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How to use GA4 to optimize your digital marketing strategy
Knowing how to use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is necessary for marketers looking to optimize their digital campaigns. But first, you need to get some basic considerations nailed down.
When gathering information, journalists ask six classic questions:
- Who?
- What?
- When?
- Where?
- Why?
- How?
And you can also use this framework to figure out how to best use GA4 within your organization.
To make the most of the analytics platform, you must be able to answer at least six of the following seven questions:
- Who are our company or client’s target audiences?
- What events should we set up on our website?
- When should we measure micro conversions?
- Where do we need to customize our reports?
- Why is integrating Google Ads with GA4 the first step?
- How should B2B marketers use GA4?
- How should B2C marketers use GA4?
This article explores a framework for maximizing GA4 to improve your digital marketing strategy.
Who are our company or client’s target audiences?
Even within the same organization, “audiences” may mean different things.
The advertising team may refer to audiences for remarketing.
SEO, social, content or digital PR teams might say that audiences refer to a segment of users from their site who have generated similar behavioral data, share demographic data, or are important to the brand in other ways.
Since these teams typically report their acquisition traffic by channel (e.g., organic search, social, or referral), they rarely segment their audiences by behavior, demographics or conversions.
However, GA4 has several suggested audiences you might want to use for segmentation. This includes users who:
- Conducted item searches.
- Started watching a video.
- Finished watching a video.
- Did not complete a tutorial.
- Completed a tutorial.
- Provided an email address.
- Are potential business leads.
GA4 lets those with Editor or Marketer roles create audience triggers when users reach key milestones like initiating X sessions, reading Y articles, or crossing Z conversion thresholds.
With these features, you can:
- Discover what different audiences are searching for and engaging with.
- Learn how users are moving through the customer journey unexpectedly.
- Explore what this means for optimizing the company’s digital marketing strategy.
Plus, if most of the traffic to your site comes from default channels like organic search, organic social, organic video, organic shopping, referral, and audio (e.g., podcast platforms), then why let advertising get all the credit for remarketing to audiences that are not “paid”?
What events should we set up on our website?
Most events showing your contribution to the bottom line are collected automatically when you set up GA4. But they are not reported and cannot be used to create audiences until you enable enhanced measurement.
Here are seven of the automatically collected events that SEOs may want to enable for enhanced measurement:
- File_download: When a user clicks a link leading to a document, presentation, or audio file.
- Form_start: When a user interacts with a form in a session for the first time.
- Form_submit: When the user submits a form.
- Scroll: When a user reaches the bottom 90% of each page for the first time.
- Video_start: When the video starts playing.
- Video_progress: When the video progresses past 10%, 25%, 50%, and 75% duration time.
- Video_complete: When the video ends.
Once you have determined which events are worth measuring, go to Admin, click on Data Streams > Web and slide the switch On under Enhanced measurement to enable your choices.
You should also consider adding several recommended events, including:
- Generate_lead: A user submits a form to request information.
- Login: A user logs in.
- Purchase: A user completes a purchase.
- Search: A user searches for your content.
- Share: A user shares your content.
- Tutorial_begin: A user begins a tutorial.
- Tutorial_complete: A user completes a tutorial.
You can also set up custom events, but I will not even try to guess what you might want to create.
This is because GA4 uses event-based data instead of session-based data. So, now you need to measure specific interactions after users come to your site and which default channel they used to get there.
When should we measure micro conversions?
You probably know that micro conversions measure important steps to completing macro conversions.
But executives only seem interested in macro conversions. So, setting up micro conversions was not worth it – until GA4 came along.
In most cases, the process is as easy as going to Admin, clicking on Events, and selecting the toggle under Mark as a conversion.
For example, you might want to measure the following micro conversions:
- Scroll to 90% of a blog post or article.
- Play at least 50% of a product video.
- Complete a tutorial.
- Download a white paper.
- Complete a registration form.
- Register for a service.
- Add merchandise to the shopping cart.
If you can associate monetary values with your micro conversions, then more executives will think that they matter.
Let’s say 10% of the people who sign up for a newsletter go on to become customers, and your average transaction is $500. Then you might associate $50 (i.e., 10% of $500) as the monetary value of a newsletter sign-up.
To add a value when someone has completed a registration form:
- On the left, click Admin > Events.
- Click Create event to see the table of custom events.
- Click the event to modify.
- In the Parameter configuration section, click Add modification.
- In the Parameter field, enter currency.
- In the Value field, enter a currency type (e.g., USD).
- Click Add modification.
- In the Parameter field, enter the value.
- In the New value field, enter a value (e.g., 50 for $50).
- Click Save.
Where do we need to customize our reports?
GA4 offers different report collections based on the information provided during setup.
The first default set of reports you might see is the Life cycle collection, which helps you understand each stage in the customer journey – from acquisition to engagement to monetization to retention.
It is replaced by the Business objectives collection if someone selected “Raise brand awareness,” “Examine user behavior,” “Generate leads.” or “Drive online sales” during setup.
There is also a User collection, which helps you understand the people who use your site, including their demographics (e.g., age, location) and the technology they use (e.g., browser version, app version).
You can also:
- Change the primary dimension in a report.
- Add a secondary dimension to a report.
- Apply a filter to show a subset of your report data.
- Adjust the date range in a report.
And check out Explorations, which is a set of audience discovery and comparison tools that help you uncover deeper insights about your customers’ behavior. This includes:
- Funnel exploration: See where users abandon the customer journeys that you have laid out on your site and identify how well they are succeeding or failing at each step.
- Path exploration: See the paths your users take as they interact with your site.
- Segment overlap: See if different segments of users overlap with each other. Use this technique to identify new user segments that meet complex criteria.
- User exploration: Analyze the users that make up the segments you create. You can also drill down into individual user activities.
- Cohort exploration: Discover insights about the behavior and performance of groups of users that are related by common attributes.
- User lifetime: Examine user behavior and value over their lifetime as a customer.
Why is integrating Google Ads with GA4 the first step?
GA4 also provides direct integrations with a variety of platforms.
One is Google Ads integration. This lets you see the full customer cycle, from clicking on ads to completing micro and macro conversions. This step also enables remarketing in Google Ads using lists based on the Analytics audiences that SEOs and marketers create in GA4.
But Google Ads integration is just the first step.
SEOs need their companies and clients to integrate Search Console with GA4 so they can analyze organic search traffic to the site.
This integration lets you see:
- Where your site ranks in search results.
- Which queries generate clicks.
- How those clicks translate into user behavior, like which landing pages engage more users and how many of these users go on to convert.
And B2B marketers may need to integrate Salesforce Marketing Cloud with GA4. This integration lets you track and analyze customer journey activity through your GA4 property.
But these sound like plumbing projects. How can you turn critical data from these integrations with GA4 into strategic insights to optimize your digital marketing strategy?
You might want to follow Avinash Kaushik’s advice:
“I’ve come to learn that this desire to overachieve also comes at a very heavy cost—it drives sub-optimal behavior. Instead, I recommend this as the #1 goal for your company: Suck less, every day. Whatever you do today, consciously suck less at it.”
– “Stop Exceeding Expectations, Suck Less First”
Although I gasped when I first read his article five years ago, I now realize this is precisely how to use GA4 to optimize your digital marketing strategy today.
How should B2B marketers use GA4?
B2B CMOs may not want to tell the rest of the C-suite that their digital marketing strategy is to “suck less every day,” and re-brand this approach by calling it the “flywheel marketing” or “digital transformation” strategy.
But whatever it’s called, this approach will enable marketing teams to harness the insights that Analytics Intelligence will soon start displaying on the home page of GA4 to nurture audiences, subscribers and leads.
Analytics Intelligence uses machine learning and conditions that you can configure to highlight unexpected opportunities and threats.
Analytics Intelligence uses a statistical technique called anomaly detection. To detect hourly anomalies, the training period is two weeks.
To detect daily anomalies, it is 90 days. And to detect weekly anomalies, the training period is 32 weeks.
But here is what B2B marketers will want to focus on: Analytics Intelligence uses a statistical technique called “contribution analysis” to identify the user segments (a.k.a., audiences) contributing to anomalies.
Then, it calculates the “anomalous metric value” for each user segment. Finally, it surfaces user segments on “anomaly insight cards.”
A non-profit organization in Pittsburgh named 412 Food Rescue needed to recruit more volunteers to deliver food from retailers to people experiencing food insecurity.
As you’ll learn by watching “Google Analytics: 412 Food Rescue Case Study,” automated insights showed them that weekends tended to be a little bit slower in terms of volunteers and engagement.
So, they adjusted the social media campaigns driving traffic to their website.
They also cut their reporting time by 50%, freeing up their limited staff to expand to new cities.
How should B2C marketers use GA4?
But how can the country’s top 100 advertisers, which are all B2C companies, use GA4 to optimize their digital marketing strategy?
Fortunately, GA4 offers a new way to measure online video advertising campaigns through engaged-view conversions (EVCs), which indicates that someone watched your YouTube ad for at least 10 seconds and then converted on your website within three days of viewing it.
This new KPI leverages consumer behavior. It turns out that people have a strong intent to watch the content that they have come to YouTube for. So, they tend to stay on the platform even when seeing an ad during their viewing session.
People often do not act immediately after viewing a YouTube video ad. Instead, they often wait to act until after they have finished their full viewing session.
This is also where EVCs come in and explains why 70% of YouTube viewers say they bought a brand after finding it on YouTube.
EVCs have been available since September 2020. But three announcements at Brandcast, YouTube’s 12th annual advertiser showcase, which was part of the Upfronts 2023, give the top 100 advertisers in the U.S. even more reasons – and more screens – to start using this nerdy KPI.
First, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said:
“We’re seeing a seismic shift in the way people consume content. More and more, viewers are tuning into YouTube on the biggest screen in their home. According to Nielsen, YouTube is the leader in streaming watch time on TV screens in the U.S.”
YouTube reached over 150 million people on connected TVs in the United States, according to Nielsen data. That’s a much bigger audience than advertisers can reach during the Super Bowl.
Second, YouTube Chief Business Officer Mary Ellen Coe said:
“No one does sports better than YouTube. We give you access to all the content fans love with live and on-demand and across league partnerships like the NFL, the NBA, and more. And we’re the number one sports destination for Gen Z fans.”
Gen Z (18-24) YouTube viewers rank YouTube as the #1 video platform they need to engage with things they are passionate about, according to Archrival.
Third, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said:
“The fact is, millions of football fans are on YouTube to catch all things NFL. This past year, NFL content on the platform gained a 27% increase in watch time year-over-year, with 1.9 billion views.”
All this gives you new reasons to use GA4 to optimize your digital marketing strategy before Sept. 10, 2023, when YouTube debuts as the new home of NFL Sunday Ticket.
The day after this “big game,” you don’t want to face tough questions about why you stayed on the sideline while other advertisers reached football fans across YouTube’s entire array of NFL content.
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Is your YouTube Channel a brand video graveyard? How to revive it
For as long as I’ve worked in SEO, I have been asked the same question by brands and businesses, big and small:
Why should I use YouTube? How can it help my business? Shouldn’t I be on TikTok instead?
Sadly, for many businesses, YouTube is just a place to host their videos. Nothing more, nothing less. And it’s a huge missed opportunity in terms of video ROI, brand awareness, traffic and audience growth.
A lack of effort in marketing and optimizing videos is one reason the C-suite is often reluctant to invest in future video projects. They just don’t see the value.
In short, for many businesses, YouTube is where their videos go to die. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Your YouTube channel doesn’t have to be a brand video graveyard.
Understanding the problem
Brands and businesses often disregard YouTube as a genuine and viable medium for growth. There are common false assumptions among business leaders and even marketers around YouTube:
- YouTube is for kids and Gen Z.
- YouTube is all about clickbait, pop culture and music videos.
- Being successful on YouTube requires a big budget and professional production equipment.
- No one will be interested in what my business has to offer.
Equally, business leaders often just don’t understand video, marketing or audiences well enough to produce anything other than dull corporate brand videos. Surprise, surprise, these do not work well on YouTube.
This brings us to the concept of a brand video graveyard. It comes about when brands fail to do the following:
- Create engaging content that resonates with their audience. Without engaging content, viewers quickly lose interest and move on to other channels.
- Optimize the channel and video uploads. Naming a video ‘Our company overview’ isn’t going to cut it.
- Cultivate a community for audience growth. Often, comments and questions are left unanswered for months or even years.
To avoid this fate, brands must invest time and effort into:
- Understanding their audience.
- Crafting compelling video ideas.
- Optimizing their videos for maximum reach and engagement.
Typical causes of YouTube desertion
The causes of a channel turning into a brand video graveyard can vary.
Sometimes it is due to a lack of resources.
Other times, it is because the brand is not putting in the effort to create content that will engage their audience.
Changes in the brand’s strategy or goals may also lead to a lack of content or a shift in focus away from YouTube.
Time is also a huge factor. You don’t necessarily need a huge budget or fancy tech, but you do need time to research, plan, upload, optimize and promote.
Pitfalls of allowing your YouTube channel to go stale
So, you have a YouTube channel that only you and your employees subscribe to. Surely it won’t hurt, will it?
Well, picture it from a prospective customer or client’s point of view and ask yourself these questions:
- Does it look like the brand cares about its public image?
- Do they appear professional and successful?
- Would you remember the company or brand if you saw them elsewhere?
- Do you feel like they care about educating, entertaining or understanding their customers?
The answer to all of these when looking at a deserted YouTube channel is, undoubtedly, no. Neglecting your channel is, in turn, neglecting your target market and will impact your other marketing efforts.
These days, marketing, acquisition and sales aren’t as simple as building a website, pushing it live and watching the money roll in.
The most successful companies utilize a multichannel approach, appearing wherever their audience is.
If your target market is on YouTube, you should be there – ready to answer their questions and educate them into remembering, buying and advocating for your product.
Marketers have understood this message, but often they deprioritize YouTube based on the assumptions we discussed previously.
There’s a clear prioritization gap between consumers and marketers, a 2022 study by SproutSocial found.
Marketers ranked Instagram and TikTok higher in usage anticipation, but YouTube is still a hugely popular platform for consumers.
Not every type of business is suitable for YouTube.
Maybe no one wants to see how septic tanks are emptied or a day in the life of a toilet roll holder.
But generally, most businesses can find a hook or a niche that is interesting and visual enough.
Why you should bring your YouTube channel back from the brink
So, why should brands bother with YouTube? Why not just leave a channel deserted and pretend it never happened?
Here are a few reasons why investing time and love into your long, lost channel could be an excellent move.
Have we met before?
For businesses, YouTube isn’t meant to stand alone. Integrating your YouTube videos into your broader online presence creates a cohesive brand experience for your audience.
This integration helps drive traffic to your channel, encourages cross-platform engagement, and strengthens your brand’s online presence.
YouTube enables businesses to position themselves as industry leaders by creating educational and informative videos.
Sharing valuable insights, tutorials, how-to guides, and industry updates can establish your brand’s authority and expertise in your niche.
Viewers who see your brand consistently delivering valuable content are more likely to trust and remember you.
Don’t forget to subscribe
YouTube is all about engagement. It enables businesses to directly engage with their audience through comments and other interactive features.
Asking viewers to subscribe and like your videos, having clear calls to action, and creating engaging video thumbnails can attract more followers and keep them on your channel longer.
Building a loyal, engaged customer base that actively advocates for your product or service could be one of the most valuable things you ever do.
A nice side effect of this is that eventually, all those subscribers, interactions and views will make your content more likely to be promoted by YouTube’s algorithm. Win, win!
Build it and they will buy
YouTube can influence the purchasing decisions of both B2B and B2C buyers. So, if your channel looks a little unloved, it could miss out on reaching key decision-makers.
YouTube is a crucial and valuable part of the marketing mix.
- Up to 89% of people said they purchased a product or service after viewing a video about it, a Wyzowl research found.
- YouTube users are three times more likely to watch online video tutorials than read instructions, according to Google.
- As of 2023, 91% of businesses report using video as part of their marketing strategy, according to Wyzowl.
YouTube can no longer be an afterthought. This is where your audiences are and they’re waiting for you.
How to revive your YouTube channel and attract views
Now that we've recognized the pitfalls of turning your YouTube channel into a brand video graveyard let's explore some effective strategies to breathe life back into it and attract views.
By implementing these tips, you can revitalize your YouTube presence and make it a thriving hub for your brand's content.
Conduct a channel audit
There may not be much to audit, but this exercise will help you take stock of what you have, what’s missing and what your next steps should be.
You’ll want to start a spreadsheet for your audit. Download a list of all your uploads by going to Analytics > Content > Advanced Mode and exporting from there.
Analytics
If you have a reasonable amount of data, then YouTube's analytics section will provide valuable insights into how viewers find and watch your content. It’s a great place to start.
There are two types of analytics:
- Channel analytics.
- Video analytics.
The latter is great if you have a video with a decent number of views.
You’ll be able to see how long viewers watch for and what percentage of the video they view, plus a nice retention graph showing where the audience drops off, skips forward or rewatches.
Tip
: Look out for steep drops in audience retention at the start of your videos.
This could indicate that the title or thumbnail is somewhat misleading. It could also tell you that the fancy, animated brand ident is putting people off.
Remove it and get straight to the content!
Content types and categorization
Ideally, you’ll already have more than a couple of videos on your channel.
Ensure your spreadsheet includes all the titles, descriptions and URLs of your videos and then try to put them into categories. Here are some to get you started:
- Blog video: Answers a question or explains a topic.
- Brand/company video: Your company overview, brand advert.
- Testimonial video: Client(s) saying how great you are.
- Demo or how-to video: Explaining how to do or use your product or service.
- Webinar, roundtable, discussion or interview: You discussing a topic relevant to your business with guests.
- Feature or inspiration video: Promoting features of a product, service or even destination – if you’re a travel company.
Ideally, you want to keep brand videos to a minimum. They’re best used in the channel’s featured video section to greet subscribers.
Your bread and butter will be blog, demo and feature videos. These are the types of content people will be looking for. These are the videos that will engage, educate and entertain.
Engage with your community
YouTube is not a one-way communication platform.
Foster a sense of community by actively engaging with your audience. Respond to comments, answer questions, and encourage discussions.
This interaction boosts engagement and strengthens the bond between your brand and your viewers. Show that you value their input and incorporate their feedback into future video ideas.
If you have comments that aren’t too old, reply to them! Post your own comment on each video and pin it to the top.
Ask viewers what their thoughts are and whether they have questions. Being able to have direct contact with consumers in this way is invaluable.
Respond to feedback
It can be easy to turn off comments and hide from potential detractors.
But, if you treat your YouTube community as an opportunity – to learn, improve and connect – it’ll help build trust, brand affinity and loyalty.
- Acknowledge the feedback: Whether the feedback is positive or negative, it's important to acknowledge it.
- Thank the person providing the feedback: Showing appreciation for feedback helps to build a positive relationship with your audience.
- Respond promptly: Responding promptly shows that you value the feedback and are committed to improving.
- Be open-minded: Approach feedback with an open mind and be willing to consider different perspectives.
- Take action: Use the feedback to make improvements and show that you are committed to meeting the needs of your audience.
Optimize your videos
This is probably the most obvious but difficult task when reviving a YouTube channel.
Optimizing your videos is essential for increasing their discoverability on YouTube.
Remember, the more effectively you optimize your videos, the higher the likelihood of attracting organic traffic and gaining subscribers.
But, I hear you ask, what exactly do I mean by optimizing?
Well, YouTube optimization is very similar to website SEO. The principles are largely the same.
- Keyword research: Find out what topics in your niche people are searching for. Take a look at what content competitors are creating. What are your clients asking you at both a sales and support level?
- Metadata: Is your title accurate, informative, keyword optimized, and clear? Does your description include a link to a relevant resource on your website? Your video descriptions can be pretty long, so feel free to be as detailed as you like. It all helps. Viewers may only read the first lines before the ‘show more’ link appears, so ensure the first paragraph summarizes well enough to make sense.
- CTR optimization: Does your thumbnail accurately reflect the content of the video? Is it eye-catching and engaging, yet still professional?
- Tip: Where possible, try to include a human face in your thumbnail. They tend to encourage more clicks than text or graphic-only thumbnails.
- Tip
- Tags: Think of them as “keywords” not to be spammed. Video tags should be specific to each video, whilst channel tags should be broad and relate to the overall niche and seed topic.
For more tips on YouTube optimization, check out this article on YouTube SEO 101.
Consistency is key
Building a loyal audience requires consistency in uploading new content.
Create a content calendar and establish a regular uploading schedule that aligns with your audience's expectations. Consistency builds trust and keeps your viewers engaged.
Whether you choose to release videos weekly, biweekly, or monthly, the key is to set realistic goals and stick to them.
Collaborate with others
Collaborating with other YouTubers in your niche can help expand your reach and attract new viewers. Seek opportunities for cross-promotion or guest appearances on other channels.
By tapping into their audience base, you can introduce your brand to a wider audience, increasing your channel's visibility and potential subscribers.
Don’t set it and forget it
Success on YouTube doesn’t come after one optimization or publishing stint. A “set it and forget it” approach is probably the reason many brand channels are languishing in the first place.
A marketer or founder came along, set everything up, uploaded some videos and then… tumbleweed.
YouTube performance is all about iteration, consistency, engagement and topicality. Leave a long enough gap between uploads or SEO and you’ll find yourself lagging behind.
Set yourself a goal of regular uploads and checks. Assign someone to the task who has the time and the interest to keep things ticking along. Your audience deserves it.
Let your YouTube channel thrive
Reviving your YouTube channel requires dedication, strategic planning, and a commitment to producing high-quality, engaging content.
By implementing these tips and staying consistent, you can transform your channel from a lifeless graveyard into a thriving hub of activity, attracting views and driving your brand's growth.
Don't let your YouTube channel go to waste. Revitalize it and reap the rewards of a vibrant, engaged and lively audience.
The post Is your YouTube Channel a brand video graveyard? How to revive it appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Microsoft Ads to launch UET Insights dashboard with new traffic data
Microsoft Ads will start collecting more website data through its Universal Event Tracking Tag to power UET Insights, a new dashboard for advertisers to launch in June.
The dashboard. Data will be available in near real-time and won’t be sampled on the new dashboard. It will include these metrics:
- Session count.
- Popular pages.
- Device breakdown.
- Country breakdown.
- Quick backs (the number of sessions where a visitor navigated to a page, then quickly returned to the previous page during the selected time period).
- Average active time.
Here’s a preview of what the UET Insights dashboard looks like:
New data signals. Additional website performance signals captured by the UET Tag will include:
- Page latencies (speed and load times).
- Click and scroll interactions.
- Purchase cart details.
- Cart abandonment details.
- Browser-based signals.
- JavaScript browser errors.
Starting June 29. That’s the date when Microsoft will automatically enable UET Insights on all existing UET tags. UET Insights will be enabled by default on all newly created tags.
Opting out. Before UET Insights is enabled:
- Complete an opt-out form by June 26 to disable the automatic upgrade.
After UET Insights is enabled:
- Disable one tag: Navigate to Tools > UET tag, select your tag. Hover over UET Insights, select the pencil icon. You’ll get a pop-up, Edit your insights setting. Set the toggle to off.
- Disable multiple tags: Go to the All Tags page, select all the tags you want and choose Disable Insights.
Why we care. Microsoft says the goal here is to help advertisers better understand user engagement and improve ad targeting. Hopefully this new data can help advertisers improve ROI and drive more traffic and conversions.
About UET Tags. Launched (then on Bing Ads) in 2014, a sitewide UET tag powers conversion tracking, remarketing and automated bidding strategies on Microsoft Ads.
The post Microsoft Ads to launch UET Insights dashboard with new traffic data appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Google Search of today won’t exist in 10 years, says DeepMind co-founder
Google will look much different in 2033 – where conversation is the interface rather than the search box.
That’s according to Mustafa Suleyman, cofounder of DeepMind (which Google bought in 2014), in an interview on the No Priors Podcast.
Why we care. ChatGPT, the new Bing and Google’s new Search Generative Experience are all huge signals of a major shift in search. Clearly, nothing will change immediately. But in the coming years these changes could potentially upend the way Google – as the dominant search engine – has shaped the web and, as a byproduct, SEO and PPC.
The search dialogue. Google is “an appallingly painful” conversation right now, where the answer comes in the form of 10 blue links (though Suleyman didn’t mention all the search features and ads that also act as “answers” on today’s SERPs).
Google learns from the results people click on, how long they spend on websites and whether they come back to the search box to refine their search or click on other results. He added:
- “The problem is [Google’s] using 1980s Yellow Pages to have that conversation. And actually now we can do that conversation in fluent natural language.”
Google rewards engagement, not answers. Google has shaped content production in a way that favors optimizing for ads and rewards content creators for keeping people on pages longer, Suleyman said.
- “You go on a webpage and all the text has been broken out into sub bullets and subheaders separated by ads. You spend five to seven or 10 seconds just scrolling through the page to find the snippet of the answer that you actually wanted. But most of the time you’re just looking for a quick snippet. … that looks like high-quality content to Google and it’s ‘engaging’.”
From ‘speaking Google’ to ‘speaking to AI.’ Suleyman believes we’re nearing a point where searchers will no longer have to think “How do I change my query and write this?”
- “We’ve learned to speak Google. It’s a crazy environment. We’ve learned to Google, right? That’s just a weird lexicon that we’ve co-developed with Google over 20 years. No, now that has to stop. That’s over. That moment is done and we can now talk to computers in fluent natural language, and that is the new interface.”
Bottom line. Suleyman believes Google should be “pretty worried” that the Google search we know today won’t be the same in 10 years.
- “It’s not going to happen overnight. There’s going to be a transition. But these kind of succinct, dynamic, personalized, interactive moments are clearly the future in my opinion.”
Google CEO on Search in 10 years. In a recent interview, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was asked whether we are nearing the end of link-based search and 10 blue links. Pichai said search will be “more ambiently available to users in radically different ways” compared to today, adding:
- “I think the experience will evolve substantively over the next decade. We have to meet users in terms of what they are looking for.”
Watch the interview. The video is embedded below. Or, if you prefer, you can read the transcript.
The post Google Search of today won’t exist in 10 years, says DeepMind co-founder appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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How Google Business Profile pre-defined services can impact local SEO
Google Business Profile (GBP) services might have more to do with local rankings than previously thought, according to recent tests from Sterling Sky (Disclosure: I work at Sterling Sky) and Whitespark.
Specifically, adding pre-defined services in GBP seemingly impacts local search rankings.
Before this finding, you could do little with GBP to influence local search results beyond location, categories, reviews and keywords in the business name.
Now, you can add GBP services to the list of key local SEO factors to prioritize.
Since when did GBP services matter?
GBP services didn’t majorly impact local rankings back in 2019 when we conducted the initial test.
At the time, Google was slowly and silently adding pre-defined services to plenty of GBP categories. But when we retested this in 2022, the results were substantially different.
Whitespark’s Darren Shaw conducted a similar test with positive results.
Both tests showed that adding pre-defined services to your GBP listing significantly improves local search rankings.
But excitement over this discovery is only felt within the local SEO community. Many small business owners don’t know how to add services to their listings or where to start.
That’s because Google doesn’t announce new features as much, keeping them hidden in a new and confusing search edit interface nobody likes.
Where to find services in the GBP dashboard (NMX)
To find services in the GBP new merchant experience (NMX), you must go to the services section of the menu.
From there, you’ll see a list of your categories and corresponding services under each category.
Click Add more services, and a new screen will pop up with the current services available to select under that category. Some categories have more services, while others have none.
If you have any pending service suggestions to accept or remove, you need to do that first before you can click for more services.
Do all categories have services to add?
No. Not all categories have pre-defined services you can add. However, we have noticed that Google is constantly adding new ones.
Check your GBP regularly to see whether there are any new services that are relevant to your business.
Interestingly, I have seen examples of businesses with multiple listings with different pre-defined services under their primary category.
So if you manage multi-location businesses, ensure you’re checking services for all your locations to avoid missing out on new services.
How do GBP services impact local rankings?
From tons of testing, it seems that adding services in GBP helps improve both implicit and explicit keyword rankings.
This is extremely exciting, considering how hard the Vicinity update made it to rank for implicit keywords far away from your physical location.
These services also help improve rankings for niche service-based keywords.
For example, under the electrician category, Google shows two services related to “alarm installation” and “electric car charging."
If those are services you want more leads for, then checking those off will help improve your local visibility for searches.
Sourcing unique content ideas from GBP
This is also great for getting content ideas, especially if you manage multiple businesses and accounts.
These predefined services can give you unique topics and keywords for your service pages that you probably wouldn't have thought of alone.
To my understanding, Google suggests these services based on searches users have done related to the category or the industry the business is in.
In a way, Google is telling you what people are searching for. Thus, it's worth mentioning these on your website as long as you provide that service.
Track your local search results
As with everything in local search, you should take many screenshots to track results.
Take before and after screenshots of the SERP and local finder when adding new services to your GBP listings.
Grab screenshots of top and related keywords and jot down a few notes of what you see.
Then, a few days later, after you've added these services, retake the same screenshots and compare the differences.
The ranking impact seems to take 24 to 72 hours to take effect. I highly recommend tools like Mobile Moxie’s automatic SERP tracker to do this automatically, or you can do it manually using a location-changing extension like GS Location Changer. (Tip: use incognito and the tool at the same time.)
I recommend tracking local rankings using a geogrid tracking tool like Places Scout or Local Falcon.
Both tools let you see how your listing ranks across a service area using pins to show rankings at specific markers within your city.
By tracking local rankings before and after adding services to your GBP, you will likely see a nice increase in local rankings for keywords related to the services you added.
Keep your GBP strategy updated
Local SEO is constantly evolving, largely thanks to Google's many changes to GBP. Monitor your GBP listing regularly and keep up with the latest product updates.
Google will often silently release features like pre-defined services, so stay updated with your local SEO news.
The post How Google Business Profile pre-defined services can impact local SEO appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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How to convince leadership why they can’t ignore SEO
Well, it’s 2023, and we’re still trying to convince businesses that SEO isn’t just a fancy acronym for “some extra options.”
It’s like trying to teach an old dog new tricks, except the dog is a business and the trick is “not being invisible in the search engine results.”
Some things never change.
It’s not the company leadership’s fault. In most cases, they are aware of SEO. Still, some don’t understand the value it can bring.
This is an issue when there’s competing budgets and the allure of other, more familiar marketing strategies.
You’ve probably heard it before, but educating leadership on SEO is one of the most important things you can do to convince them of SEO’s value.
And that means you must show how SEO is a strategic initiative for any business – and deserves a seat at the table.
Here are steps you can take to help leadership understand why they can’t ignore SEO and why they should get excited about it.
1. Define SEO
Depending on what type of company you’re dealing with, you may have to start with the very basics.
That means explaining what SEO actually does and how it can support basic marketing objectives.
An explanation can be something as simple as:
- What SEO is: SEO improves a website so that it performs better in the search engine results.
- The benefit of SEO: The benefit of SEO is generating more targeted traffic to the website.
- The goal of SEO: The goal of SEO is ultimately to make more revenue for the company by the website’s and business’s ability to convert leads coming from the search results.
2. Explain SEO’s worth
With basic concepts out of the way, you can delve deeper into why a business cannot ignore search engines as a marketing channel.
The following concepts can help:
Your target audience uses a search engine
Google processes 5.9 million searches per minute. It’s not a question of if people are on search engines.
It’s a matter of connecting the dots between the searches that people do and the benefits to the company.
Show leadership how people search for the things the company provides (a bit of keyword data here can help).
Then, explain how SEO supports the customer journey. For instance:
- 71% of people turned to search engines for discovery, and 74% used them for consideration/purchase, according to Forrester research.
- 43% of consumer goods shoppers have used search in their shopping journey to become inspired, browse or research, per Google data.
Your competition is benefitting from the search engines – and you aren’t
Have them look at the websites that appear when people search for what the company provides.
Explain to them the amount of traffic they are potentially getting from being visible in the search results.
Cite studies that demonstrate how much organic search traffic is possible from securing top spots, like this one, this one and this one.
Then explain how this traffic can amount to revenue.
For example, across five sectors, the organic search channel contributed the most revenue at an average of 44.6%, BrightEdge research found.
And B2B companies, in particular, generated twice as much revenue from organic search as from any other channel.
So the next question to leadership is: Would you like a piece of the pie or not?
Your digital ads are important, but what happens if you turn them off?
Digital ads are the darling of many marketing programs. More than 60% of digital spend is allocated to paid channels, a 2022 Gartner research.
In search engine marketing, paid ads – if done well – can secure a top spot in the search results – and offer near-instant gratification.
And while pay-per-click (PPC) ads have their place, you’ll need to show leadership how putting all your eggs in one basket is not a smart strategy.
Explain what would happen if they had to turn off their ads (i.e., they’d disappear from the search results entirely).
Now contrast that with the results they may see from SEO.
Yes, there is usually a bigger upfront investment to get things going, and yes, it can take months (six months on average) to see the results.
But once you start to realize those results, you own that traffic, meaning no one can take it away from you for nonpayment.
Some webpages that have built value over time from SEO continue to bring in growing amounts of traffic to a website for years to come.
3. Dispel common SEO myths
Even if leadership initially sees the value, they may be skeptical. There are plenty of commonly held SEO beliefs that are false.
Now is your chance to address all the perceived pain points they have noodling around in their heads.
Here are a few:
Myth: ‘SEO is unreliable’
Maybe members of the leadership team are jaded by headlines of website traffic vanishing overnight because of an algorithm update.
They may be wary of investing time and resources into something perceived as unstable. That’s why reframing how leadership thinks about algorithm updates is important.
So here are some talking points:
- SEO’s job is not to beat the algorithm. We will never know exactly how the algorithm works, and we don’t have to. We just have to create a great website using SEO best practices and be “least imperfect” compared to our competitors. This will help us better weather any algorithmic storm. See my article on how to survive a Google core update and come out on top for more.
- Google typically gives a heads-up for major updates. If something really big is on the horizon, Google will usually give ample time to prepare. A good SEO strategy stays on top of all potential changes and responds accordingly.
A final note to drive home: Like investing in the stock market, SEO is a long-term strategy with inevitable ups and downs. But staying in it for the long haul allows websites to reap the rewards.
Myth: ‘SEO is a one-time thing’
Decision-makers may sometimes mistakenly believe that SEO is simply a matter of checking off a few items on a checklist and calling it a day.
Nothing is further from the truth.
Make sure leadership knows that they are investing in a long-term strategy… as in for the entire lifecycle of a website.
As a business strategy in a complex and ever-changing environment (search results change, competition changes, economics change and so on), SEO is always on – proactively handling the things we can anticipate and expertly reacting to the things out of our control.
As ex-Googler Kaspar Szymanski says:
“At industry conferences, attendees hear people say that it is important to “get it right” to rank. This is true, yet not entirely accurate. Like any other company investment in assets, over time that very same investment will inevitably wear off.
Best practices of the past become outdated or downright obsolete. To keep up with the competition, especially in the more lucrative niches, SEO needs to be considered an ongoing effort with planned, periodic spurts of increased activity scheduled ahead of time.
Some factors such as snippet representation, directly impacting user experience and signals must be continuously monitored and improved. The same applies to page performance, which again is directly responsible for how users experience the website.
Other factors, such as managing backlink liabilities, may only require spot checks and be part of an annual on- and off-page SEO audit.”
In other words, a casual approach to SEO will not produce results.
Check out my article on how to implement SEO – even in the face of common challenges – for more.
Myth: ‘You can’t measure SEO’
Digital ads have ruined SEO in terms of where executives want to spend their budgets.
The instant gratification of paying for an ad and seeing a direct result is intoxicating.
Earlier, I talked about explaining how traffic can turn into revenue. This is an important concept.
However, you also want to make sure that leadership understands the job of SEO and how it relates to other important concepts like turning traffic into revenue.
The best way to measure SEO’s success is by traffic to a website.
Let me repeat that: The best way to measure SEO’s success is by traffic to a website.
To measure, the company will need to track the website’s total number of visitors from organic search traffic and ensure it has seen positive growth over time.
But what about conversions? This is where it gets tricky.
Here’s the thing: SEO’s job is to drive traffic. It’s a website’s/business’s job to convert those visitors.
A good SEO program will:
- Drive targeted traffic.
- Create a good user experience so that visitors are more likely to convert.
- Track conversion coming from organic traffic.
But leadership needs to know going into an SEO program that in order to reap the most rewards, they will need to invest in making it easy for a lead to convert.
Consider all the factors that go into converting a lead – a conversion-optimized website, the company’s sales process, the price point of products or services, the product or service features, etc.
All of these things are out of the hands of an SEO team. And so leadership needs to clearly understand that qualified traffic is the most important metric to show SEO success.
Yes, tey will always want to know what results they can ultimately see.
You can come armed with case studies of similar websites or businesses to show what they might expect.
And you can explain how to use platforms like Google Analytics to see how the organic search channel contributes to leads and sales for the business.
There are always calculations you can use to estimate SEO results.
4. Pilot a project
Sometimes, the proof is in the pudding.
Suggest piloting an SEO project if you’ve gotten far enough with the leadership team to pique their interest.
Consider starting with an in-depth, technical SEO audit. This will show them all the website’s issues hindering search engine success.
Then, have them commit to implementing the highest priority items.
While the results of those efforts are coming to fruition, you can think about an SEO initiative that might support a key group or business goal for the company.
Maybe it’s a website redesign, a new product or service or something else. Map out an SEO strategy to help that team or initiative be more successful.
Sometimes small wins lead to a bigger commitment to SEO in the long run.
Guide decision-makers to the right decision
In a world where marketing channels always compete for budget, you must help make the decision easier for the leadership team to invest in SEO.
The post How to convince leadership why they can’t ignore SEO appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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