SEO News

First of all, can you provide a flavour of your presentation this year? 

My sub-title this year was “artificial intelligence, robots and hummingbirds”. I’m trying to join the dots between the cutting edge R&D that Google is doing, its advanced acquisitions and its core business that still makes the lion’s share of the money.

I hope that we’ll get to discuss some theory and some of the implications for us as marketers.

Last year, you looked at voice search. How important is this for Google? Are you seeing greater usage of this? 

Google has continued investing heavily in voice search and shipping updates for all its platforms. It has been bragging about the results but we don’t actually get to see any usage statistics.

I believe it’s still a small effect. I think that the natural language processing that underpins the capability is a much more important short-term factor than the input method.

The area where voice becomes more important in the medium-term is in devices without keyboards (or where the keyboard isn’t readily accessible).

Anecdotally, we are not yet seeing large numbers of people walking around using Glass or communicating with other wearables so I don’t think it’s having much of a real effect yet. 

You also mentioned that, with knowledge graph results, Google was training users to look to the right of the results page. It has since used this space for paid placements. Do you think Google will try to make ads less ‘ad-like’ in future? 

Yes. This article from Pete'”Dr. Pete’ Meyers on the ‘future SERP’ combined with this one showing the evolution highlight some of the changes we are already seeing.

The move to the mobile-friendly ad labelling that uses the small yellow boxes next to the ad rather than a coloured background is an interesting example of plausible deniability where they can look as though they are unifying web and desktop but actually are cherry-picking the version that gets the most clicks (= the one that looks least like an ad) and deploying that everywhere.

Google has an attitude (which is not entirely unjustified) that its ads are so relevant that they shouldn’t really be thought of as advertising in the traditional sense.

The regulators in the US and the EU disagree however ,and so I imagine we may see some ongoing battles over the transparency and labeling.

To what extent do you see social signals influencing Google’s search results in the next year or two? 

From first principles, I don’t really see the difference between a link and a social share in terms of the information it imparts about a person’s trust of the target website.

The fact, however, that strongly-weighted social signals haven’t rolled out as a major factor on a par with links implies to me that they aren’t yet turning out to be as useful.

I can’t imagine that there isn’t a Google engineer running a social-signals-driven algo over a private index.

Whether we see anything like this roll out more widely will depend entirely on whether the end results turn out to be better or not. 

With ‘not provided’, a clampdown on guest blogging for SEO and various algorithm changes, has SEO become more challenging? How should SEOs adapt? 

Change has been the only constant in the tactics and execution over the decade we’ve been involved in this stuff.

(not provided) is a step backwards in my opinion – while I understand the privacy concerns, I don’t believe they are truly the guiding factor in the decision and I think that Google risks devaluing one of the most powerful features of digital marketing if they can’t find a privacy-friendly way of continuing to attribute results to campaigns.

Strategically though, little has changed for us – we are continuing to focus on building great platforms, great content and valuable audiences, measuring the outcomes and driving conversions.

Search is just one of the channels that benefits from this balanced approach.

Do you see Google’s focusing more on mobile than desktop over the next few years? 

Oh yes. Google takes such a large share of the entire digital ad spend in the developed world that it literally doesn’t have the headroom it needs to grow as fast as the market requires the company to do.

Mobile generally is an area that can provide the growth it needs (and that risks cannibalising its existing market if Google isn’t careful).

But the bigger picture is when you realise that much of the growth isn’t just “mobile first” but “mobile only”. With the growth of Android as the rocket engine, the vast majority of new Gmail users must be signing up on their phones and a large chunk of those will never sign in on the desktop – especially in the developing world.

Posted by akmercog

Last August, we launched the
Lead Generation Card to all advertisers on Twitter. Since then, we’ve been impressed with the many small and medium businesses who have integrated the Lead Generation card into their marketing strategy, and seen powerful results.

We thought it would be valuable to share a page from our own playbook and offer a behind-the-scenes look at how the @TwitterSmallBiz team has been using Lead Generation Cards to accomplish our goals. Below, we’ll discuss what a Lead Generation Card is, and the three keys to success that we’ve uncovered through our experience using the product.

What is a Lead Generation Card?

A Lead Generation Card is simply a link that allows you to gather new customer email addresses directly within a Tweet. When you tweet out this link, it pre-populates a user’s full name, @username and email address (previously entered in their Twitter account settings) into the expanded area of your Tweet, replacing the need for a traditional, more cumbersome form.

In addition to a person’s contact information, the expanded Tweet includes other elements as well:

• Short description: A statement that provides context and explains the value people will get from sharing their information with you.
• Image: A visual cue that represents your business and generates interest in your offer.
• Call to action: The action you want people to take, along with the benefits of doing so.

Here is what a Lead Generation Card looks like when included in a Tweet:

For step by step instructions on how to set up a Lead Generation Card, you can visit our dedicated
support page. 

Our three keys to success with Lead Generation Cards

Our @TwitterSmallBiz team did a lot of testing and learning before we landed on our current strategy for Lead Generation Cards. Here are three tips for your own Lead Generation Card campaigns:

1. Streamline your campaigns

Twitter Ads enables you to set up multiple campaigns within your account and provides a view into performance at both the aggregate and individual campaign level. 

If you plan to include Lead Generation Cards in your Promoted Tweets, we recommend setting up a separate campaign that includes all of your Tweets aimed at Lead Generation. This allows you to adjust your bid independently from Promoted Tweets that have other goals, such as generating engagement, driving website traffic, etc.

Within each campaign, you can also view performance at the individual Tweet level, which allows you to understand which Tweets are the biggest contributors towards your goals. When you include multiple Promoted Tweets with Lead Generation Cards in the same campaign, you can more easily compare performance across various combinations of Tweet copy and Lead Generation Card creatives.

Once you determine which Lead Generation Cards and types of Tweet copy are driving the best results, you can allocate more of your budget towards those combinations and away from the ones that aren’t performing as well.

2. Less isn’t always more

The goal behind testing and learning is to then optimize your campaigns to be as effective as possible. The more you test, the more quickly you can learn which features and combinations are most effective at helping you reach your goals. The sooner you start the testing process, the better.

When you first start using Lead Generation Cards, try anywhere from five to seven different Cards across 20-30 variations of Tweet copy. A few days into your campaign, your Twitter Ads analytics will provide you with a clear view into which combinations are performing better than others so you can focus your efforts moving forward.

Here’s an example of how we used a similar testing framework for a recent campaign to collect email addresses around a new content offer:

Lead Generation Cards:

Copy for Promoted Tweets:

3. Follow up

When someone submits their email address through a Lead Generation Card, that person is expressing interest in your business. This creates an opportunity for you to follow up when potential customers are more likely to be receptive to your message. If you don’t follow up with people after they submit an email address, they may not remain as interested or be as receptive to hearing from you.

For this reason, it’s important to develop a plan for how you will follow up with new leads after they submit their email address. That follow-up plan will often vary depending on the offer used for your Lead Generation Card.

For example, if your offer included a new piece of content, you may want to include the email addresses you collect in an existing newsletter or email campaign list that shares similar types of content. Alternatively, if you offered event registration through your Lead Generation Card, you might want to add those email addresses to an event mailing list so that you can send additional event information or materials that were presented at the event. No matter what type of follow-up plan you choose, it should create opportunities for you to continue communicating with new leads and, ultimately, convert them into paying customers.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!