In this month’s search marketing news round-up, we’re talking Bing Ad extensions, paid search on Amazon’s Alexa, new ranking signals for videos on Facebook and YouTube images appearing in image results. Read on to get all the latest news.
Bing recently announced that marketers can now choose when their extensions – such as sitelinks, callouts, app extensions, structured snippets and call extensions – can show. This is a great feature that gives marketers another level of control and can be used to promote a weekend sale or a monthly deal. Read more here
Action: Add schedules to your extensions and start testing their impact
With smart devices and voice assistants becoming more and more prevalent today, Amazon is looking to launch a paid search product that integrates voice search.
Although the details are limited, companies like Amazon, Google and Bing are already thinking about how voice search can be monetised and positioned within the paid search landscape. For example, could you have results sponsored by company x? Or when you are searching for restaurants locally, could companies pay to be read out first? We will have to wait and see. Read more here
Action: Think about the potential effects voice could have on paid search and start having conversations with clients about what is happening now in the digital environment with voice.
Facebook has said it will be looking at percentage completion rates of videos when determining rankings of organic videos in the News Feed. It is likely to be rolled out in the upcoming weeks and marketers could see an impact on their existing videos. Read more here
Action: If you’re creating video, make sure you’re capturing the user’s attention straight away and throughout the video to keep them watching as long as possible.
Website crawling and indexation can be a complex area of search engine optimisation. At a basic level, crawling and indexing refers to the ability for a website to be seen, accessed, and displayed within a search engine’s index of ranked content.
It is important for businesses to understand, and maximise the website’s ability to be crawled and indexed as a fundamental stage for any entity to be seen online. Google has helped dispel some myths in this area to help more companies remove this barrier towards search success. A few of the areas discussed include:
Top questions were also answered, and you can see the full coverage and practical implications of this at Google Webmaster Central blog.
Action: Read through the Google update above and take a look at your Google Search Console account ‘crawl’ section. Let us know if you need help completing this and progressing the next actions.
Some people have been, and there is a good reason for this. Google has been beta testing the inclusion of YouTube videos in this area of rich results – often seen at the top of the search engine results pages.
While this is not something that has been finalised, or officially discussed, it does provide a valuable insight into the mindset of the people at Google, and an opportunity to revisit the potential gains that videos can provide for search wins.
Practically, this means that there is added justification (not that most businesses should need more) to progress the value that business can derive from video content. Some of the most successful types of video content include:
Action: Type into Google some of your most important business search terms. See how frequently video content appears on competing websites. If you have already invested in video creation, consider how it can be optimised for search and user gains.
Search marketing news and what it means for marketers – Jan 17
Search marketing news and what it means for marketers – Dec 16
Lee has been working in the online arena, leading digital departments since the early 2000s, and oversees all our delivery services at Vertical Leap, having joined back in 2010. Lee joined our company Operations Team in May 2019. Before working at Vertical Leap, Lee completed a degree in Business Management & Communications at Winchester University, headed up the online development and direct marketing department for an international financial services company for ~7 years, and set up/run a limited company providing website design, development and digital marketing solutions. Lee had his first solely authored industry book (Tactical SEO) published in 2016, with 2 further industry books being published in 2019, and can be seen regularly expert contributing to industry websites including State of Digital, Search Engine Journal, The Drum, plus many others. Lee has a passion for management in the digital industry and loves to see the progression of others through personal learning, training and development. Outside the office he looks to help others while challenging himself, having skydived, bungie jumped and abseiled (despite a fear of heights) with many more fundraising and voluntary events completed and on the horizon. As a husband and dad, Lee loves to spend time with his family and friends. His hobbies include exercising, trying new experiences, eating out, playing countless team sports, as well as watching films (Gangster movies in particular – “forget about it”).
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