Report: search drives 10X more traffic to shopping sites than social media

Search is single largest traffic driver to websites according to SimilarWeb’s Global Search Marketing Report 2016. The findings are based on billions of site visits to a global sample of websites and reflect both mobile and desktop traffic. The report is focused on a variety of metrics…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

How to enhance your Google Knowledge Graph result (case study)

So your company finally has a Knowledge Graph panel appearing on branded searches, but the information is incomplete or incorrect — what can you do? Tony Edward explains a few ways to edit this information and shows how one method worked for him.

The…

The rise of personal assistants and the death of the search box

Columnist Eric Enge recaps the SMX West 2016 keynote by Googler Behshad Behzadi, who envisions a not-too-distant future in which voice search becomes more ubiquitous — and may even replace the search box.

The post The rise of personal assistants and …

Search in Pics: Google firing squad, butterfly & Twitter jamming at Google

In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more. Google Butterfly: Source: Google+ Google’s firing squad: Source:…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Data Driven Content: Ideas that Work in Content Marketing

If you’re a content marketer then it’s important to put time into researching and understanding what content ideas propagate on the web. Over the past few months we’ve looked at a number of themes including: nostalgia, scale, challenging established conventions and change. Next, we’re going to cover an introduction to data driven content marketing. Using […]

The post Data Driven Content: Ideas that Work in Content Marketing appeared first on Builtvisible.

Is Pinterest using ‘how-to Pins’ to exploit third-party content for SEO benefit?

But Pinterest’s latest offering, how-to Pins, highlights the fact that social platforms are increasingly gaining more than they’re giving, particularly when it comes to SEO.

How-to Pins, which were announced on Tuesday, allow users to interact with instructional content in a more efficient way…

The next time you find an interesting project or idea on Pinterest, you’ll see a snapshot of the steps right below the Pin image. You can also click or tap on any of the steps to get the full instructions and a list of supplies – without ever leaving Pinterest.

Pinterest has teamed up with a number of content brands, including Cosmopolitan, Martha Stewart Living, Food.com and Marie Claire, as well as retailer The Home Depot, to launch how-to Pins.

The new Pin format is a no-brainer for Pinterest. 

As Pinterest’s Jason Costa notes, “One of the main reasons people come to Pinterest is to find ideas they’re excited to try for the first time,” so a Pin format that delivers how-to content in a delightful manner should benefit the overall Pinterest experience.

But what’s in it for brands?

For a retailer like The Home Depot, which isn’t in the content business, how-to Pins could potentially be a good way to promote its wares to the Pinterest audience.

But how-to Pins are a more complicated proposition for the content brands.

That’s because while it might be easy to use existing content to create how-to Pins, the new format represents yet another push on the part of a popular social platform to deliver valuable third-party content without giving up control or ownership of users and experience. 

Like Facebook’s Instant Articles, it’s not that there’s nothing in it for the brands behind the content. There is.

But there’s a strong argument to be made that the brands are getting the very short end of the stick, especially when it comes to SEO.

Case in point: Brit & Co., a digital publisher that is an early adopter of how-to Pins.

One of its how-to Pins, How to Make Easy, Cheesy Pizza Pull-Apart Bread, is based on an article it published on its own site under the same title in 2014.

The how-to Pin, which is of course hosted on pinterest.com, appears on the first page of a Google search for the title while the article on the Brit & Co. appears near the bottom of the second page of Google’s search results.

This demonstrates the potential of how-to Pins based on third-party content to provide a significant SEO benefit to Pinterest at the expense of the third-party which owns the content.

Obviously, how-to Pins have the potential to drive referral traffic to brands like Brit & Co., and it’s possible that Pinterest could one day provide a means for content owners to share in monetization of the content they post to Pinterest.

But it’s still questionable that brands will ultimately come out ahead by ceding control of user experience and ownership of audience to social channels that are increasingly asking for unfettered access to and use of their most valuable assets, and gaining a free SEO benefit in the process.

Is Pinterest using ‘how-to Pins’ to exploit third-party content for SEO benefit?

But Pinterest’s latest offering, how-to Pins, highlights the fact that social platforms are increasingly gaining more than they’re giving, particularly when it comes to SEO.

How-to Pins, which were announced on Tuesday, allow users to interact with instructional content in a more efficient way…

The next time you find an interesting project or idea on Pinterest, you’ll see a snapshot of the steps right below the Pin image. You can also click or tap on any of the steps to get the full instructions and a list of supplies – without ever leaving Pinterest.

Pinterest has teamed up with a number of content brands, including Cosmopolitan, Martha Stewart Living, Food.com and Marie Claire, as well as retailer The Home Depot, to launch how-to Pins.

The new Pin format is a no-brainer for Pinterest. 

As Pinterest’s Jason Costa notes, “One of the main reasons people come to Pinterest is to find ideas they’re excited to try for the first time,” so a Pin format that delivers how-to content in a delightful manner should benefit the overall Pinterest experience.

But what’s in it for brands?

For a retailer like The Home Depot, which isn’t in the content business, how-to Pins could potentially be a good way to promote its wares to the Pinterest audience.

But how-to Pins are a more complicated proposition for the content brands.

That’s because while it might be easy to use existing content to create how-to Pins, the new format represents yet another push on the part of a popular social platform to deliver valuable third-party content without giving up control or ownership of users and experience. 

Like Facebook’s Instant Articles, it’s not that there’s nothing in it for the brands behind the content. There is.

But there’s a strong argument to be made that the brands are getting the very short end of the stick, especially when it comes to SEO.

Case in point: Brit & Co., a digital publisher that is an early adopter of how-to Pins.

One of its how-to Pins, How to Make Easy, Cheesy Pizza Pull-Apart Bread, is based on an article it published on its own site under the same title in 2014.

The how-to Pin, which is of course hosted on pinterest.com, appears on the first page of a Google search for the title while the article on the Brit & Co. appears near the bottom of the second page of Google’s search results.

This demonstrates the potential of how-to Pins based on third-party content to provide a significant SEO benefit to Pinterest at the expense of the third-party which owns the content.

Obviously, how-to Pins have the potential to drive referral traffic to brands like Brit & Co., and it’s possible that Pinterest could one day provide a means for content owners to share in monetization of the content they post to Pinterest.

But it’s still questionable that brands will ultimately come out ahead by ceding control of user experience and ownership of audience to social channels that are increasingly asking for unfettered access to and use of their most valuable assets, and gaining a free SEO benefit in the process.

Google My Business Updates “Improve your local ranking on Google” Page

Google My Business updated their help file page: “Improve your local ranking on Google” Page.  And surprisingly, after a slow start, actually added some real ranking information (this does not appear to be a April 1 Joke): Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business from across the web (like links, articles, and … Continue reading Google My Business Updates “Improve your local ranking on Google” Page