SEO and Marketing
Find the best ways to increase your traffic and earnings with solid SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) and marketing techniques.
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Last week Metro Bank became the first financial institution to offer a gender neutral option for both its staff and customers. The move was made in response to an interview with a Scottish teenager who couldn’t open a bank account because they didn’t identify as either male or female, which was a required question on the form. Image from Buzzfeed. Metro Bank now offer a title of ‘Mx’ and a gender option of ‘nonbinary’ in addition to the standard ‘male’ or ‘female’ options. While the response to the change has been polarised, these changes are something that will impact marketing data and how we use it going forward. We seem to have accepted that ethnicity,…
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Are you interested in a more efficient way to view your social media profiles? This article lists some tools allowing you to combine your social media feeds into one! Do you often feel overwhelmed? If you are pretty much anyone with modern social media habits, the answer is going to be yes. With so many people using social networking for both personal and professional purposes (and a fair amount of you reading this are probably marketers in charge of a brand), being more productive on social media is a necessity. Clutter is no reason to ignore social media though. These days, social media marketing is no longer for “fun” niches only. Most ecommerce sites use s…
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You can now check whether a shop, bar or restaurant is busy right at this very moment with Google’s new real-time view. There are few other tweaks and improvements to aid the search experience too, as outlined below. Most of them designed to keep you out of the cold and away from Black Friday frenzy for as long as possible. Crowd control Popular Times has been a feature in Google Search and Maps since last year. It’s a way of seeing what time and day during the week a business is typically busy. But now, Google is adding real-time data to this functionality so you can see whether it’s worth leaving the house or not right now. Perfect timing for this coming Bl…
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Google is adding more store visits data to AdWords distance reporting, available when measuring geographic performance of your ads. At the moment you’re able to view your ads’ performance based on different locations, revealing the places your customers are located and the locations they’re most interested in visiting. But now if you use the location extension you can see a distance report that will show store visits based on how far away people are from your store when they search. To use an example from Google, if your store visit rate is highest within one mile of a store, you could apply targeting around that specific radius. Store visits distance reportin…
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There’s been extensive discussion during the past weeks about Facebook’s fake stories and whether they have contributed to the results of the US elections. Mark Zuckerberg has decided to address this issue and announce Facebook’s future plans. There is a great controversy regarding fake stories on social media and how they may affect users’ opinions over a subject, and Facebook received a significant amount of criticism on its lack of measures to avoid turning misinformation viral. Mark Zuckerberg has decided to speak about this issue, in attempt to defend the popular social platform and most importantly, to announce the network’s future plans on handling similar c…
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Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from the world of search marketing and beyond. This week, we’ve got key trends in content marketing for 2017; why social media is the preferred channel for product launches; and how to use an Exact Match Domain (EMD) without being penalised for spam by Google. And in probably unsurprising news, John Lewis’ annual heartwarming Christmas ad is this year’s best performing yet. The eight most important content marketing trends in 2017 It’s December already, and you know what that means – every publication you follow will be winding down for the end of the year by reviewing the highlights of 2016, while …
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It is common knowledge that the amount of information available in the digital ecosystem is exploding. By 2020 it is expected to have grown from 130 exabytes to 40,000 exabytes. Digital (and in our case search and content) data holds the keys to marketing success. It contains the critical patterns on consumer intent and behavior, preferences, and content/topics that brands need to provide customers with that critically personal, one-to-one experience that people today want to see. The problem, however, is that the human brain is only capable of processing 1m gigabytes of memory. In other words, the amount of information available far exceeds the processing ability …
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Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? Planking? Tebowing? At one time, these memes crossed the line from obscurity to mainstream. Even though Facebook and Twitter play a huge role in amplifying a challenge or helping memes go viral, the origins of that meme can usually be traced to anonymous social networks, like Reddit and 4chan. Viral content tends to start in smaller, closed networks (that often don’t use real names or identities). Vine and Snapchat – even Facebook Groups – are other places that bring together smaller, more tightly-knit communities with shared and interests and identity that tends to help incite participation. The meme or challenge takes off …
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When it comes time to launch a new product, the majority of marketers in the US, the UK, and Australia are now turning to social media. Five by Five, a marketing communications firm that specializes in product launches, polled more than 700 marketers in these countries and found that nearly three-quarters (74%) of them consider social media to be the highest-priority medium to promote new products. Sales promotions and email were the second and third most popular launch marketing medium, respectively. According to Five by Five creative director Martin Flavin: “Social media has become the most important way to generate buzz for new products and services bef…
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With social media reach and engagement rates having dipped so precipitously over the last year or so, paying to play is the only option for most brands now. But what about businesses and brands that can’t afford to advertise on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like? Not everyone is willing, never mind able, to carve out the budget necessary to keep their content in front of a critical mass of relevant followers on a regular basis. Those organizations can be particularly creative or incredibly persistent, but the most effective strategy they can embrace may be to get all hands on deck in the form of an employee advocacy program. Of course, to go in this directi…
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Small businesses struggle to build visibility online due to tight budgets and limited work force. These five marketing platforms offer small businesses affordable lead generation and sales tools to provide them with some competitive advantage. Small businesses need lots of support these days. With huge budgets being shifted online by large corporations, competing for the web presence has been harder and harder. Luckily there are tools that offer great solutions for small businesses making their lives much easier and allowing them to be seen online. 1. Leadfeeder http://annsmarty.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/leadfeeder.png One of the most pleasant discove…
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It’s been said that there are no stupid questions. But are there stupid question headlines? People ask search engines questions all the time. People are seeking answers to all kinds of questions. They want to know the who, what, where, when, why, and how on a variety of topics. These types of pages also tend to rank well, get shared, and attract links. For example: Google kills Right Hand Side Ads: what does this mean for marketers and users? Search Engine Watch (3K shares, 226 links) Microsoft Wants Autistic Coders. Can It Find Them And Keep Them? – Fast Company (47K shares, 93 links) Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedl…
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In which we describe what an exact match domain (EMD) looks like, how they can manipulate search rankings and why it might be best to avoid them. What is an exact match domain (EMD)? An EMD is a domain name that precisely matches a search query that will likely drive traffic to your website. For instance, if you call your website BuyCheapJeansOnline.com. The search query ‘buy cheap jeans’ is a lucrative search term, and if you call your website this then you might assume this is a short cut to the top of a search engine results page (SERP). But as you’ll learn, even if this works in the short term, you may want to avoid doing it. What’s the problem with EMDs?…
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The regional press still carries great importance. Wrongly maligned in some quarters, the stats almost speak for themselves. The 1,000 local newspapers and 1,700 associated websites across the UK attract a whopping 97 million users every month. Studies show that regional news outlets are the most trusted and attract the most effective response to adverts too. Yet let’s not beat around the bush, the regional press is also facing up to huge challenges. The fall of classified advertising and the growth of online news – free and convenient to access – has resulted in a dangerous drop in revenues and a significant fall in the number of people reading print editions. …
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Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from the world of search marketing and beyond. This week, we’ve got a special on stories about advertising and mobile, with a look at mobile ad viewability from our regular mobile columnist Andy Favell, and the news that Snapchat video ads are generating less than three seconds’ viewing time on average. Over on our sister site ClickZ, Tereza Litsa took a look at how neuroscience can activate brains in a mobile world. And speaking of advertising, take our 10-minute survey to tell us how the events of 2016 affected your advertising spend, and you could win an iPad mini in time for Christmas! What is…
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Discount vouchers can be a great lever to grow top line revenues and engage new customers. However, they can also become a highly addictive and dangerous drug for retailers, increasingly relied upon (with diminishing effects) as a reaction to three major challenges: Customers becoming conditioned to buy only with a discount; cannibalisation of organic sales; and a ‘pull forward’ effect with sales spiking artificially in the short term and declining post-promotion. As their usage becomes increasingly widespread, there’s a rush by retailers to understand the full extent of their economic impact on the customer journey and get smarter with how they’re deployed. Her…
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Influencer marketing saw a huge bump in popularity in 2016, and it’s expected to grow even more in 2017. The social media marketing industry is evolving faster than ever, which is why it’s important to stay on top of the industry changes coming in the New Year. This is how your brand or agency will stay ahead of the curve to be better prepared for your influencer marketing strategy: Marketers are investing more in influencer marketing Recent “60 Minutes” reports show that influencer marketing is rapidly inserting itself into the mainstream conversation and is becoming more familiar to average consumers. As a result, marketers are investing more in influencer marke…
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Sponsored content in collaboration with Bijou Commerce. Click here to read our collaborative content guidelines. Artificial Intelligence might seem like a high-tech and lofty concept, but recent advances in technology have given rise to a number of more everyday applications for AI. And in ecommerce in particular, brands who want to stay relevant and ahead of the curve are embracing AI as a way to enhance the customer experience, making it more personalised, efficient and intuitive. Here are three ways that we are already seeing artificial intelligence in action across various sectors, which when applied to ecommerce, have the potential to take customer experienc…
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What does a 1961 experiment have to do with boosting website conversions? You’ll find out as you read this article. First, it is important to establish some facts: For every $92 spent on advertising, the average business spends just $1 on conversion — this explains the abysmal conversion rates most businesses have. 99 percent of people who visit your website will not make a purchase on their first visit. The average shopping cart abandonment rate is 68.81 percent — yet a whopping 73 percent of companies do not have an idea as to why people abandon their shopping carts. If conversion optimization has always been a mystery to you, it shouldn’t be anymore. Below, I’…
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Brand advertisers and their agencies only want to pay for mobile ads that are seen by a person. They do not want to pay for ads that are not ‘viewable’ i.e. they don’t render or are displayed where they are invisible; or for insufficient time to register the message. With brand advertising a mobile ad does not count as an impression and the advertiser thus should not be charged if: The ad is not seen by a real person; Because it fails to render or is displayed where it is unseen, e.g. below the fold, when the visitor doesn’t scroll; or If there is insufficient time for the visitor to digest its message. • The first factor is an invalid impression, often caused…
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