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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Multifaceted featured snippets begin rolling out in Google search results Feb 28, 2018 by Michelle Robbins Google updates the search results features with an expanded featured snippet targeting broad, nuanced queries Study: 11 voice search ranking factors analyzed Feb 28, 2018 by Greg Sterling Some of the findings confirm and some upend conventional wisdom. Unit economics: The foundation of a good SEM campaign Feb 28, 2018 by Kevin Lee Contributor Kevin Lee outlines how SEM campaigns can benefit from applying smarter business unit economics and asking rational questions. Rand Fishkin leaves Moz, announces a new start-up Feb 28, 2018 by Barry Schwartz After 17 years of working at the company he co-founded, Fishkin is starting a new company around influencer and audience intelligence. Recent Headlines From Marketing Land , Our Sister S

Backlinko has done an extensive analysis of “voice search ranking factors” and identified 11 variables tied to appearing in Google Home results. The company examined 10,000 results delivered over the smart speaker. What Backlinko found was consistent with what many others have been saying but there were also a few surprises. For example, the study discounts the impact of Schema to some degree and page authority. Here’s a partial, paraphrased list of the ranking factors: PageSpeed is a significant factor; voice search results typically come from faster-loading pages. Google relies heavily on very authoritative domains for results, but pages not as much. Content that ranks well on the desktop tends to rank in voice search. This might be a correlation rather than causal however. Shema may not be a factor: 36 percent of pages voice search results came from pages using Schema. Roughly 41 percent of voice search results came from Featured Snippets. Voice search results are generall

A strong understanding of the economics of any business unit is absolutely critical to any digital marketing campaign managed against non-brand key performance indicators (KPIs) in a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign. One would think any reasonably large and successful business would have a good handle on their unit economics, and that this knowledge will be shared down the chain of command to the mid and lower levels of the marketing team. But time and time again, I have found this critical foundation is missing, miscommunicated, insufficient or is so outdated as to make it worse than worthless.  “Worthless” in this case means that bad data does no actual harm. “Worse than worthless” means the utilization of the wrong KPI goals resulting in media waste and — more importantly — missed revenue and profit opportunity. In other words, the company’s health is at actual risk because the marketing team and the business team aren’t on the same page.  In some cases, members of the ma

Google has been rolling out many new search features over the past few months related to images, featured snippets , and the knowledge graph. Today the search giant released another feature called “multifaceted featured snippets.” Multifaceted featured snippets will be surfaced for queries that are sufficiently broad enough to allow for more than one interpretation of what was submitted. In these instances, the SERP returned will include more than one featured snippet, with the original query rewritten as the questions the algorithm assumes the user may have intended, and the results displayed in the multifaceted snippet will reflect those new questions. From the announcement: There are several types of nuanced queries where showing more comprehensive results could be helpful. We’re starting first with “multi-intent” queries, which are queries that have several potential intentions or purposes associated. The query “tooth pain after a filling,” for example, could be interpreted

Rand Fishkin, the co-founder of Moz, announced his new company after officially leaving his day-to-day operations at Moz yesterday. He is starting a company named SparkToro, a technology platform in the influencer and audience intelligence marketing space. Fishkin started the well-known SEO platform over a decade ago with his mother, Gillian. In fact, he dropped out of college to make the company now known as Moz about 17 years ago. Last July we learned he was leaving Moz after stepping down as CEO back in 2014 . Fishkin described his departure from Moz as a four out of 10 on a scale of zero to 10 where zero is “fired and escorted out of the building by security” and where 10 is “left entirely of his own accord on wonderful terms.” He wrote: That makes today a hard one, cognitively and emotionally. I have a lot of sadness, a heap of regrets, and a smattering of resentment too. But I am, deeply, deeply thankful to all the people who supported me and Moz over the last two decades.

You probably know that mobile use is on the rise. But do you know how big it really is? In 2016, there were nearly 150 billion mobile app downloads worldwide . And if we stay on the trajectory we’re on, then the statistic gurus predict that there will be over 350 billion mobile app downloads in 2021. And that number will only continue to rise. Though official numbers are lacking, BrightEdge  recently reported that 57% of their web traffic came from mobile . So over half of all website visits came from mobile devices rather than desktop computers. With a trend this big, you can expect some big impacts. And one of the most significant areas that we’ve already begun to see the effects on is SEO. Google announced they were underway with their long-foretold mobile-first search index changes. And web developers, publishers, and SEOs around the globe simultaneously wondered, “Why does this matter?” According to the Google Webmasters Blog : “Although our search index will continue t

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: German court: Google has no ‘duty to inspect’ websites for illegal content before displaying Feb 27, 2018 by Greg Sterling The court held that Google can’t be held liable before being notified of a ‘clearly recognizable violation’ of individual rights. Law and reputation firms generate 21% of Right to Be Forgotten delistings, says Google Feb 27, 2018 by Greg Sterling New report from Google digs into three years’ worth of data on removal requests and exposes the delisting criteria. Google Word Coach, a fun word game in the search results Feb 26, 2018 by Barry Schwartz Google added a new feature to help non-English speakers expand their English-language vocabulary. How Amazon dominates the competitive search landscape Feb 27, 2018 by Digital Marketing Depot This report from Adthena reveals the extent to which Amazon has been capturing tex

This report from Adthena reveals the extent to which Amazon has been capturing text ad click share in major retail categories. Analysis of consumer electronics, and department store retail categories in the US and UK, suggests that Amazon’s paid search ad spend is behind the e-commerce giant’s continued market growth, with the scale and impact of their paid search investments eclipsing their closest rivals. Featured in this report: What is Amazon’s share of ad spend in US/UK markets? How much click share does this win them? What are the three key factors which contribute to Amazon’s dominant search performance? What are the tactics and strategies retailers can use to get more click share? Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download “How Amazon Dominates the Competitive Search Landscape.” The post How Amazon dominates the competitive search landscape appeared first on Search Engine Land . from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2HOzbtI

Almost five years ago I wrote an article about predicting a site’s future  and using your expectation to decide whether you should pursue links on that site today. Much has changed in the search engine optimization (SEO) landscape since then so I decided to expand and update my original article. Sometimes, what’s old is old It’s interesting to run into sites we’ve worked with in the past and compare their previous and current metrics. Lots of things pop up like: Old links are still live but the host page is full of new links whereas it wasn’t before. Pages that once ranked well no longer do so. Articles with links that were not originally there have been added. And sometimes everything is the same, though, if not better! A look into the past It’s easy to determine what a site looked like in the past and compare it to the current site by using Archive.org. You may notice a lot of changes such as good and bad redesigns, deleted links and entire articles removed. Occasionally

We all want to rank well, but there are times when it seems nearly impossible to do so. There can be many causes for rankings shortfalls, and as I pointed out recently , sometimes it seems Google is just not interested in ranking businesses like yours for a target query. That can be frustrating for anyone which is why my previous article suggested a way to determine if your target keyword phrase was a good fit for the terms you want to rank for. Sometimes it’s better to pursue keyword phrases for which you know  have a better chance of ranking than those you want to rank for. In today’s post, I’m going to talk about factors Google may use to determine if a site is reasonably relevant for the keywords it targets. Creating a webpage is not enough Just because you create webpages targeting a certain keyword phrase or in a specific topic area does not mean you will rank for those terms.  In short, we don’t know if Google is “buying” it. Let’s set the context here: You want to r

Bond Baddie: “Do you lose as gracefully as you win?” James Bond: “I don’t know, I’ve never lost.” If you’ve been building your brand for years like I have, then you’ve had your fair share of wins and losses. Social media is so crowded that it takes a lot of care and attention to stand out from the crowd. What makes it even worse is that you’re competing. All of the mistakes and wins are public, and your competitors will notice you. But that’s a double-edged sword because you can see what they’re doing too. The catch is that it’s not always easy to know where to look. Simply browsing their social profiles can give you an idea of what they’re doing, but it doesn’t really provide much detailed insight. And when you’re trying to build a million-dollar brand, insight is everything. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways and places to spy on your competition in a format that gives you valuable, actionable information. That’s why I’m going to show you how to look deep into your comp