gringom

Snap, the company behind Snapchat, reported a 48% year-over-year increase in revenue for the second quarter of 2019, reaching $388 million. That’s just shy of the $390 million it generated in the fourth quarter of last year, which enjoyed the benefis of the holiday season.

The upswing continued on the user front as well, with 13 million new daily active users (DAUs) added during the second quarter. Snap now stands at 203 million total DAUs.

DAUs passed the 200 million mark. Of the 203 million total DAUs on Snapchat, 83 million are in North America. Snap reported that 7 to 9 million of the 13 million new DAUs can be accounted to the higher user engagement with its new AR Lenses. The new AR Lenses “brought in new users and re-engaged lapsed users,” the company’s CFO Derek Andersen said. Snap reported it saw more engagement with Lenses created by users during the second quarter than all of 2018.

Snap’s ad business driving revenue. Snap showed more evidence it has found its footing after a difficult 2018. Not counting the holiday push during the fourth quarter of last year.

“Over the past few years, we have built a large and unique audience, created effective and engaging mobile ad units, and migrated to a self-serve monetization platform,” said CEO Evan Spiegel in prepared statements, “We’re now working on scaling demand on our platform by helping advertisers of all types and sizes generate returns on their ad spend.”

Spiegel said the enhancements Snap has made to its self-serve ad platform has helped increase ad engagement and revenue growth. Last quarter, the company launched Snap Select, giving advertisers access to premium video inventory with the ability to reserve inventory at a fixed CPM via its Ads Manager. It also introduced a proposal feature for media buyers to review and approve Snap Select plans.

Snap’s Android problem on the mend. A year and a half ago, Snapchat began rolling out a major redesign that resulted in a loss in revenue during the fourth quarter of 2017, according to Speigel, and impacted its Android users.

The company said Tuesday it is seeing early results from improvements made to its Android app, with the majority of Android users now sending 7% more Snaps compared to users on the previous version of its Android app. It also reported a 10% increase in the retention rate for first-time users on Android.

Why we should care. As part of the company’s prepared statements, Spiegel reported 75% of the 13- to 34-year-old population is currently active on Snapchat. “Making us larger than services like Facebook and Instagram among this audience, and demonstrating the broad-based appeal of our service,” said Spiegel, highlighting how Snap is positioning itself against the likes of Facebook and Instagram.

The data is a reiteration of statistics Snap shared at the beginning of second quarter, when it also reported it reached 90% of 13- to 24-year-olds. This is an impressive reach for advertisers that aim to connect with younger audiences. Now that Snapchat appears to have overcome the challenges caused by its redesign during 2017 and 2018, the company is moving swiftly on its ad initiatives.

It is also delivering more video content — specifically within its Discover platform. On Tuesday, Snap reported viewership on Discover grew 35% year-over-year, with the daily time spent watching Discover up over 60% year-over-year.

Google’s PageRank is one of the metrics that started it all. It was present in that very first research paper, that laid a foundation for Google’s entire ranking system.

PageRank figures out the importance, credibility and “weight” of a webpage, based on the type of backlinks that the webpage gets. It’s a system analogous to academic quotations. So the more robust your backlink profile is, the more appropriate and authoritative backlinks you receive, the higher your chances to rank.

We all know perfectly well what importance good backlinks have. The weight assigned to the page due to its backlink profile can make or break the ranking. And ever since PageRank was first adopted, the SEO community started trying to optimize for it. So it goes, they adopt, and we adapt.

During its long history as a vital ranking factor, PageRank was surrounded by a multitude of misconceptions. In this article, I will address some of the most prevalent ones.

1. PageRank as a metric is too old to matter

PageRank went out of public access in 2016. Before that, its last available update was in 2013. And the original algorithm was presented way back in 1999.

On the Internet, not just metrics, but entire tools can become outdated in a matter of weeks. So talking about an instrument from 1999 might seem like a bad idea to some.

And usually, I’d agree. But not in this case.

First of all, PageRank is, in many ways, one of the cornerstones of Google’s entire ranking system. PageRank (PR) was originally created with a specific goal in mind – to help users avoid junk results in their searches. And it’s been fulfilling that function beautifully for years.

Second, it’s not exactly the same metric. PageRank’s formula has been updated dramatically (you can read a more in-depth review of the algorithm changes here). And that’s done in order to reflect the changes in the Internet landscape.

And on top of all that, there is also the news that PageRank’s patent is being prolonged by Google. So it’s pretty obvious that PageRank is still alive and well as a metric of a page’s weight.

Closely connected to the first is the second misconception.

2. Google isn’t using the PageRank tool since they stopped publicly updating it

First off, PageRank was never officially discontinued. It stopped being publicly available, sure. And Google hasn’t updated the publicly available version in years, yes.

But always keep in mind that Google states outright that they are still using PageRank after all these years.

This misconception stems from the fact that Google is no longer showing the public PR scores.

In the beginning, PageRank was an easily and conveniently accessible metric. By using Google Toolbar, you could simply click and see the one to ten value of any page you’re visiting.

That led to the overwhelming use of link spam by the malevolent SEO agencies to get juice from authoritative blogs and websites.

That needed to be stopped, so Google (along with a couple of other search engines) introduced a “nofollow” tag. That’s an attribute that you can use to stop PR from taking certain links into account so that you don’t lose your authority due to link spam.

But even after that, an entire economy grew out of SEO agencies and companies optimizing solely and purely for PR. It got to a point where it started hurting the actual users, at which point Google put their foot down.

3. There’s no way to gauge the weight of a page

Since PR stopped being public, there’s no way to gauge the weight of a page.

This is a tough one because it’s based on a very real, indisputable fact. Since PageRank became closed to the public eye, we can no longer see that metric. That’s pretty much the end of the story.

No company, no developer team, can actually claim to know precisely what PageRank says about any page.

But there are actually alternatives to PageRank, which are definitely useful to look at. Those are the tools like SEO PowerSuite’s InLink Rank, Moz’s Page Authority, and Ahrefs’ URL Rank.

Those are all built with the goal of substituting PageRank in mind. They try to give their users an easy way to understand the relative weight of a page due to the number and quality of its backlinks.

Every one of those alternative metrics uses specific algorithms to get closer to whatever the actual PageRank of a page would’ve been like.

(Note, full disclosure: Me being a creator of SEO PowerSuite, I can only fully vouch for that particular software. I suggest any reader interested to go and check out the work done by other teams.)

4. PageRank lost its weight 

PageRank lost its weight compared to hundreds of other metrics that come in play for Google to determine rankings.

Now, the big question is, does it even matter that there are these alternative metrics available? Since there are hundreds, literally hundreds of metrics that Google uses, can we actually say that backlinks are as important as they once were?

To find this out, we did some research in-house. And we found a strong correlation between InLink Rank scores and Google SERP positions.

We found that the correlation between Domain InLink Rank and SERP ranking stands at a high enough number: 0.128482487. Which means that the backlink profile of a page plays a significant role in the placement of a page in the rankings.

So backlinks absolutely still play a huge role in the ranking of pages. For our part, we routinely perform this type of research, continually finding how important this metric is to the ranking. It’s now up to the webmasters and site admins to keep close tabs on their backlinks, using the available alternatives to PR.

5. You can’t influence your PageRank score

Obviously, even getting that PR score, the question is – To what extent can webmasters really influence it? How much can be done to improve your scoring?

Of course, we cannot really know how to increase PR. But we can definitely talk about some things that you need to avoid in order to not lose any of them.

Run a backlink analysis

We’ve already established that backlinks are still important for rankings. By using software to run backlink analysis you’ll see the type of backlinks you get. Then you can manage your profile that much easier.

Keep your content close to your homepage

It’s a truism that a user should never travel more than three clicks from your homepage. Make sure the important pages stay close to those of high PageRank and ensure that there are breadcrumbs for easier user navigation.

Use anchor text with relevant keywords

Create anchor text with the appropriate (but avoid stuffing at all costs) keywords. This achieves two things:

a) It lets your users orient themselves in your content a lot more.

b) It will help you with optimization.

Organically placed relevant keywords are a perfect way to tell the search engines about the actual content of your page.

Place your links carefully

Always know what kind of weight is carried by what kind of link. Links that you place in your content will be more valuable to PageRank than navigational ones. Keep the number of links out of your pages reasonable, don’t overdo it and damage your PR score inadvertently.

Shape your internal PageRank flow

Use “nofollow” tags and appropriately placed internal links to shape what pages get the highest ranking. For that, first, open an auditor tool to see what pages get the most rankings. In WebSite Auditor, you can see a convenient visualization with every one of your website’s subdomains laid out according to their InLink Rank score.

Based on that, you can easily create a little boost for the pages that don’t get enough ranking, by linking to them from your most important ones.

Perform a technical audit

By performing a technical audit, you can see the internal linking structure, and eliminate the dead links, 4xx pages, and much more, all of which influences your PR score.

Extra – Maximize your linkless mentions

Google is starting to look at your brand mentions, and using the info it found in order to evaluate domain authority. As we know, the algorithms used by Google rely more and more on users’ intentions nowadays than anything else. So the straightforward links will give way to linkless mentions, implied links. Growing linkless mentions is clearly much easier than running backlinks.

Use a social monitoring tool for this. Ideally, the one that has a web crawler of its own instead of relying on third-party databases (Awario comes heavily recommended). Looking through your brand mentions across the social media as well as millions of webpages, you’ll be able to manage your branding that much more successfully.

Conclusion

PageRank is still going strong as a metric used by Google for ranking. It’s been around since 1999, and it’s still one of the cornerstones of Google’s ranking of pages.

Since it’s been closed to the public eye, hundreds of new metrics sprung up, from the quality of images on your page to the existence of a privacy policy, and terms & conditions page that is easily available. But having a solid backlink profile is still as important as ever.

Luckily, due to a vast number of tools available on the market, you can see the state of your backlink profile, and influence it to help your pages and your domain grow. In 2019, it would be foolish to ignore any metric influencing growth. And it’s doubly true for a metric as important and fundamental as PageRank.

Aleh is the Founder and CMO at SEO PowerSuite and Awario. He can be found on Twitter at .

Related reading

Free or freemium keyword research tools (not including obvious ones like Google Ads Keyword Planner) to provide useful insight into organic ranking opportunities, persona building, competitive research, product development, and more.

A brief idea of how you can rank a page on Google’s featured snippet, without building any links to that page. Types, techniques, and screenshots included.

From URL mapping to testing, five ways in which the expertise of an SEO professional can propel your website towards successful migration.

Look around at a macro-level to see the trends vs. always focusing on detailed keyword level optimizations. Trends to help put your strategy in context.

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), The Justice Department (DOJ) is launching a new investigation into whether big tech companies are “unlawfully stifling competition.” It will take aim at Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. Notably absent is Microsoft, once the primary focus of the government’s antitrust ire. 

Taking investigations to another level. The WSJ says, “The review is designed to go above and beyond recent plans for scrutinizing the tech sector that were crafted by the department and the Federal Trade Commission.” Several months ago the FTC and DOJ each agreed to divide up investigation of the big tech firms, with the FTC taking a look at Facebook and Amazon and the DOJ taking Google/Alphabet and Apple. 

The FTC recently fined Facebook $5 billion for alleged violations of a 2011 consent decree that required the company to do a better job of protecting user privacy. This new DOJ investigation is apparently more sweeping and will review “how the most dominant tech firms have grown in size and might—and expanded their reach into additional businesses.” It will also explore how they benefit from “network effects” and their impact on competition.

There’s also yet another, though unconfirmed, antitrust investigation brewing against Alphabet according to the WSJ. And while today’s report suggests that the FTC and DOJ will coordinate their parallel investigations, the DOJ appears to now be taking the lead with a new more aggressive posture.

One door closes, another opens. In 2013, the FTC closed a multi-year investigation into alleged “search bias” at Google, as well as related issues. The settlement reached by Google and the agency required a number of minor changes to Google’s business practices, but nothing structural. Since that time Google critics have lamented that the agency merely delivered a slap on the wrist. But that was a very different time and political climate.

Today both the right and the left are angry at Google and Facebook for different reasons and so the stars have aligned to support these investigations, which are partly motivated by concern about competition and partly political vendetta. Separately, the House Judiciary Committee has also been examining issues of competition and market power in the technology sector, around questions of:

• Whether and where competition is lacking in digital markets
• Whether large companies are suppressing competition
• Whether Congress and regulators need to do more “to address Big Tech’s dominance”

Why we should care. The European Commission has been very aggressive in the past several years investigating and fining Google, and Facebook to a lesser degree. These broad, new investigations in the U.S. could result in fines, which have thus far not been very impactful, but also could bring recommendations for more fundamental change or even the breakup of these companies (though unlikely). Some analysts have cheered the prospect of breaking up Google and Facebook as a means to “unlock additional shareholder value.”

Any such demands from the government would also have to win in court, which is far from certain. In the interim it would likely be business as usual for marketers.

Sales funnels form the backbone of just about every company you’ll make a purchase from today, tomorrow, or all year round.

For many business owners, the term “sales funnel”, otherwise known as “conversion funnel”, can sound much like self-important corporate jargon – an affectation that makes the process of selling products seem like brain surgery.

The good news is that if you’re already selling goods or services online, then you already have a sales funnel in place. Easy! Right? Well, there’s a significant difference between having a funnel for customer conversions and utilizing your website in a way that actively drives sales.

Fundamentally, a sales funnel is a term that helps you to visualize and understand how a visitor flows from your landing page into the other side of your checkout page – converting themselves into a fully-fledged customer in the process. The reason the word “funnel” is used to describe the process is that you’re aiming to guide prospective customers from your landing page towards a conversion.

There are five key elements behind a strong sales funnel. Firstly, you need to focus on raising awareness of your business and brand. You then need to transform your target audience’s awareness into discernible interest. The third element involves building desire in your product or service from interested visitors. If your sales funnel is firing on all cylinders, the desire you’ve built will then turn into a conversion. Finally, re-engagement is the pivotal ending point – which helps to lure returning customers straight back up to the top of the funnel.

Source: BigCommerce

(An effective sales funnel will not only guide visitors into making a purchase but also re-position strategically so that they feel encouraged to return to buy from you in the near future.)

Learning from your funnels

While many businesses are guilty of leading customers up the garden path, be sure to create a funnel that leads them directly to a conversion. This can be done by carefully crafting your pages in order to encourage a sale, from call-to-actions to alluring offers – if your pages can spark audience interest then your sales funnel will be looking good.

One problem that a surprising number of marketers suffer from is their failure to understand that people are complex creatures and that it is fairly difficult to shepherd them into spending their money. This means there will never be a one-size-fits-all solution when creating effective sales funnels, and the best course of practice is for businesses to get into the minds of their target audience.

How old will our most dedicated customers be? What sort of language will they respond to? How persuasive can we be without running the risk of alienating them?

Audiences are difficult to predict. A punchy and slang-laden call-to-action may work with customers under 25, but this could represent just five percent of your prospective following. Be sure to connect with your target audience in a way that will inspire them to make a purchase.

Time is money, and it certainly pays to be proactive. But setting up a sales funnel that’s reactive enough to adapt to customer demands can certainly work wonders in maximizing your sales moving for the foreseeable future.

Sales funnels are great tools to conduct a little trial and error. Be sure to monitor the key pages that customers would visit during their path towards completing a purchase, and keep a watchful eye for weak links.

There are plenty of analytical approaches towards monitoring the success of your sales funnels, but one of the most effective methods is also the most simple. Keep an eye out for the level of traffic your pages receive. It’s logical that as you peer deeper into your sales funnel, the traffic will drop. From your catalog page to your item description page, to your checkout page, all the way through to your completed purchase page; expect to see fewer visitors and lower click-through levels. However, if a link between one step and another represents something of a cliff-edge in terms of visitor figures, it’s worth rethinking your approach. If masses of visitors decide to leave at a specific stage in the conversion process, it’s logical that you’ve failed to appeal to them effectively enough.

Source: Google Analytics

The value of returning customers

Sales funnels can also tell you a lot about the type of customer you attract. Sometimes marketers are also guilty of failing to differentiate between new customers and returning customers. Your sales funnel could be brimful of exciting offers for fresh-faced new visitors, and mailing list incentives too – but these measures aren’t going to do too much for long-serving customers looking for a fresh reason to jump back down the rabbit hole of your funnel.

Again, the effectiveness of your appeals to new and existing customers alike can be analyzed at varying depths, depending on the tools you have at your disposal (said tools will be explored later).

The value of the returning customer certainly can’t be underestimated. They’ve already gone to the trouble of coughing up for your goods or services so it can be assumed that they’re better placed to shoot through your funnel and make a purchase again.

The industry-wide emphasis on attracting new blood into a sales funnel can risk leaving existing customers feeling alienated – and is a particularly common oversight when it comes to businesses offering services.

Returning customers have little reason to be exposed to your glowing company testimonial page (even if the five-star review you received two weeks ago feels worthy of hanging up on the office wall), they’ve already experienced your sales process and enjoyed it enough to revisit your site.

If you see that there are considerable numbers of returning customers on to your homepage but very few completing purchases in relation to new visitors, it could mean that your sales funnel isn’t structured to be appealing enough to them.

Should your sales funnel analytics point to a need for engaging better with existing customers, consider investing fresh content that gives them a reason to get excited about your products. Regular blog posts are a great way to help keep your audience interested and engaged – whether it’s their first time visiting your site or the 301st time.

If you’re keen to level the playing field between new and returning customers, a great way of covering all bases is to utilize smart call-to-actions for your website and mailing lists. Smart CTAs are capable of displaying different information in the same space on your website’s pages, depending on a range of variables – like a visitor’s location, preferred language, membership to a mailing list or whether they’re a new or existing customer.

Tools

Naturally, there’s a wide range of tools available to help you to tap into your sales funnel performance and analyze exactly who you’re appealing to and who appears to be disinterested in your product.

SEO guru, Neil Patel, believes that Google Analytics can enable marketers to take a more organic approach in monitoring their sales funnel. By listing a range of significant pages throughout your funnel to monitor, Google Analytics can tell users exactly where potential customers lose interest as well as quantifying the most effective pages of your site in a marketing perspective.

For a deeper, more exponential scrub of exactly how well your sales funnel is performing, using tools like Finteza can help. The tool allows you to register events like account registration, email subscription, and purchases, carry out behavioral analysis and see the final drop-off point.

Source: Finteza

(Image above shows Finteza’s “Exits” section that illustrates where sessions are completed and which external link has caused the exit.)

Such tools enable you to essentially visualize your funnel, whilst regular reports can keep you fully aware of its performance long into the future.

When it comes to analyzing exactly what makes returning customers tick, the insight provided by Kissmetrics takes some beating. With intuitive visualizations and customer retention analysis, Kissmetrics makes for a formidable tool in shaping a winning sales funnel.

Source: Kissmetrics

Remember, audience behavior can be tricky to predict. You might think that your sales funnel is entirely leak-free, but with the support of competent analytics, you’ll be capable of tending to any structural weaknesses in a flash before your custom starts to fall away. There’s nothing wrong with a little trial and error in marketing and with the right data behind you, it’s safe to assume that there’ll be a lot more instances of trial and success when it comes to your conversion rates.

Related reading

Free or freemium keyword research tools (not including obvious ones like Google Ads Keyword Planner) to provide useful insight into organic ranking opportunities, persona building, competitive research, product development, and more.

A brief idea of how you can rank a page on Google’s featured snippet, without building any links to that page. Types, techniques, and screenshots included.

From URL mapping to testing, five ways in which the expertise of an SEO professional can propel your website towards successful migration.

Look around at a macro-level to see the trends vs. always focusing on detailed keyword level optimizations. Trends to help put your strategy in context.

A new executive has joined the ranks of Twitter’s global business marketing team, the company announced Monday. Gap Kim will oversee global business marketing at Twitter, aiming to help businesses improve results from platform’s advertising capabilities.

Tech veteran with Facbook, Google history. Reporting to Twitter’s VP of Marketing Brad Ramsey, Kim boasts more than 20 years of experience in the tech and digital sectors, leading digital adoption and growth across mobile, video, search, messaging, and social at companies including WhatsApp, Facebook, and Google.

“There’s no platform more embedded in every day culture and what’s happening than Twitter,” Kim said in a statement on Monday. “In this day and age, that is a critical opportunity for marketers to make meaningful connections with influential audiences to grow their business and brand.”

Why we should care. In his new role, Kim is tasked with communicating Twitter’s advertising value to businesses. In his last role at WhatsApp, Kim was responsible for leading product marketing strategy for business, brand and growth.

In the first quarter of 2019, Twitter reported an 18% increase in ad revenue year-over-year to $679 million. Additionally, total ad engagements increased 23% in the first quarter, while cost-per-engagement fell 4%.

Facebook is making changes to the aspect ratio for posts and ads in its mobile News Feed. Beginning August 19, posts and ads in the mobile News Feed will display at a 4:5 aspect ratio, which means they’ll be shorter than at the original 2:3 aspect ratio.

For advertisers, this means ads will show fewer lines of text and the maximum height for photos or videos in the ad will be reduced to fit new design: “The tallest supported aspect ration for images without links and for videos is now vertical (4:5). Media taller than 4:5 will be masked on Facebook’s mobile News Feed.”

Why we should care

According to Facebook, the new ad layout will only allow for three lines of text, after which users will see a prompt to display more of the text. That’s a change from displaying as many as seven lines of text before the “See More” prompt. Ad copy will need to be tighter than ever to get your messages across — or entice users to click to “See More.”

Videos will also need to be optimized for the new size, otherwise they will be automatically “masked” when the changes take effect next month.

Susan Wenograd, VP of marketing strategy at Aimclear, was the first to note the coming changes on Twitter. She says, while its part of Facebook’s efforts to do some “housekeeping” by creating a more consistent mobile experience, the move points to the larger needs of social media marketing: that less has to be more.

“Less text, so it’s skimmable. Imagery that gets to the focal point quicker. These two things force marketers to synthesize their message into something instantly understandable,” said Wenograd, “It makes sense given the insane amount of content we are now seeing on a day-to-day basis.”

Wenograd believes that if an advertiser is going to interrupt a user’s primary reason for being on a platform, the message needs to be focused, concise and adaptable. She also noted the timing of Facebook’s announcement, coming at a time when brands are currently lamenting their declining direct-ROI from the platform.

“The slimming down of creative real estate furthers the need for marketers to be thinking in terms of the long game on their branding. They have less space to try and sell, so they need shorter messages delivered more frequently to cut through the noise,” said Wenograd.

More on the news

Customer data platform mParticle has released details around new APIs, platform features and identity aliasing that aims to deliver improved data accuracy and control. Included in the updates is a user aliasing API for managing and merging customer profiles, updates to the security of mParticle’s SDK, and a Google Tag Manager integration. 

Why we should care

Many marketers have been stumped by how to treat unknown user data for years. This new API could enable marketers to see the entire customer journey, which would provide key performance insights from bringing the “anonymous user” data into a customer profile for visibility into every touchpoint, end-to-end. 

In order to understand a full customer lifecycle, we need to also know how to treat “anonymous users” – like when the customer is logged out of your website. In order to manage that data, mParticle’s new user aliasing API  will allow users to automate the process of merging “anonymous users” data into customer profiles. Tying in the new data set could help marketers develop a more complete customer profile, inching them closer towards the 360 view.

More on the news:

• New self hosting and bundler support was also launched for developers working in mParticle’s SDK.
• mParticle also announced the release of its integration with Google Tag Manager, which will allow marketers more freedom when it comes to updating web tags and pixels and how to securely map the web data collected.

Video content impacts organic performance more than any other asset that can be displayed on a web page. In today’s online marketing world, videos have become an integral step in the user journey.

Yet for the large enterprises, video optimization is still not an essential part of their website optimization plan. Video content is still battling for recognition among the B2B marketer. Other industries, on the other hand, have already harnessed this power of video.

In the recent Google Marketing Live, Google mentioned that 80% of all online searches are followed by a video search. Some other stats to take into consideration,  according to Smallbiztrends by 2019, global consumer Internet video traffic will account for 80% of all consumer Internet traffic. Furthermore, pages with videos are 53 times more likely to rank on Google’s first page.

I took a deeper look into video content and its impact on organic performance. My analysis started in the fall of 2018. Google had already started to display video thumbnails in the SERPs. According to research from BrightEdge, Google is now showing video thumbnails in 26% of search results.

Source: BrightEdge

Understanding the true influence of video SEO for your business will require some testing. I did four different sets of tests to arrive at the sweet spot for our pages.

The first test was to gauge if having video content on the page made any significant changes. I identified a page that ranked on page four of the SERP’s in spite of being well optimized. The team placed video content relevant to the textual content to the page. And the test result was loud and clear, having a video on the page increased relevance, resulting in increased rankings, and visibility in universal search. The Page started to rank on page one and the video thumbnail in the SERPs displayed the desired video and linked back to the page.

The next test was to understand the impact of the method of delivery. I measured what was the level of user engagement and organic performance when video contents are displayed/delivered on the page via different formats. The page was set up wherein users could get access to the video content either via a link that would take the user to YouTube or as a pop-up or as an embedded file that actually plays the video on the page itself. Results were very evident – every time the video was embedded on the page the user engagement increased, which decreased the bounce rate, and improved page ranking.

Taking a step further in our testing journey, I conducted a follow-up test to evaluate which category of video content performs better? Like any other SEO strategy, video optimization isn’t different. Skip the marketing fluff and go for product feature videos, “how-to” videos, or “what is” videos. We tested assorted video contents on the same page. Whenever the content of the video addressed a user need and was relevant to the page textual content the page rankings improved.

Lastly, I tested if Google prefers YouTube videos or domain hosted videos. On this subject, several of my business colleagues and I have budded heads. There is no universal truth. Google does display both YouTube and domain hosted videos in the thumbnails on the SERPs. Different sites will see different results. I tested the impacts of an embedded YouTube video on the page.  What I found was something I had not even considered in my hypothesis. When the video was already present on YouTube and then embedded on the page, the URL improved in rankings and at the same time the thumbnails on the SERPs showed the YouTube video but when the user clicked on the video it took them to the product page and not to the YouTube video.

Key takeaway

Many enterprise SEO strategists failed to leverage the video content because they feel their products are not that B2C in nature. Remember that search engines like videos because searchers like videos.

Videos take the static image or textual content to experience content, wherein the user can actually view how to use the information. This brings in a much higher and stronger level of engagement that in turn improving the brand reputation.

What video content should you consider?

I recommend starting at square one – what is the user intend/need you are trying to address. Define the goals you want to achieve from this video marketing. Are you looking to drive conversions or spread brand awareness? Put some thought into whether the video is informative and engaging and whether it is relevant to the page that it is displayed in.

Don’t overlook how that message is conveyed as well. Take into account personas as that establishes your intended target audience, the overall tone that the video should take. What stage of the user journey is being targeted? Understanding the areas where video results are high can help provide insight and guidance for additional content strategy ideas.

Things to remember when starting to incorporate video content

More and more people are searching and viewing content on their handheld devices. Therefore, you have to optimize this content with a mobile-first approach.

The basic SEO principle still applies. Optimize title, description, tags, transcript. Matching these to the user intent can encourage click-throughs

• Ensure its page placement. Always surround your video with relevant content to tie it all together.
• Videos up to two minutes long get the most engagement. Keep them short and let your brand shine through.

Don’t just link to it, embed it onto your site and make sure the video image is compelling.

This is the critical time to incorporate video content and optimization into your content strategy for 2019. When quality videos are added to web pages, it gets recognized as rich content, a step up from the regular text-filled pages. Video content will only help your optimization strategy in expanding your reach to driving engaged site visits.

Tanu Javeri is Senior Global SEO Strategist at IBM.

Related reading

From URL mapping to testing, five ways in which the expertise of an SEO professional can propel your website towards successful migration.

Look around at a macro-level to see the trends vs. always focusing on detailed keyword level optimizations. Trends to help put your strategy in context.

Producing a constant stream of content can be exhausting without running out of ideas. How do you keep up with all the content you need to produce?

Understand your site’s critical HTTP codes to recognize errors that demand attention and find opportunities to help improve your SEO.

In our 2019 Marketing Technology and Operations Salary Survey, we broke down salary insights across the marketing landscape with the aim of building a benchmark reference for industry professionals.

Previously, we looked at marketing compensation through a global lens, examining how salaries stack up around the world. This time around, we explored marketing wages in the U.S. to highlight majority trends, identify key disparities, and direct attention to the roles that are shifting with the digital industry.

The majority of survey participants identified with one of the following types of marketing-related roles:

• Digital Marketing / E-Commerce Marketing
• Marketing Operations
• Marketing Operations Technology (combined)
• Marketing Technology / Marketing IT / Marketing Technologist
• Service Provider / Consultant

Of the sample of 673 survey respondents across the U.S., 26% reported earning a base salary between $50,000 – $74,000, excluding bonuses and additional compensation. Nearly a quarter of respondents (24%) reported a salary range of $75,000 – $99,000. Just 6% of respondents reported making more than $200,000 annually.

More than half (53%) or respondents said they work in digital marketing or e-commerce marketing roles – a 14% increase from last year’s survey findings. We expect the number to continue climbing as digital technology matures and roles expand.

Surprisingly, the 22% of respondents who selected their label as “Marketing Operations and Technology (combined)” fell by 7% from 2018, while the percentage of respondents who identified with the separate roles remained flat.

Among the 33% of respondents reporting 10+ years of experience in a marketing role, the salary distribution was divided fairly evenly among those who make between $50,000 – $99,000 and $100,000 – $149,000. A striking 11% make more than $200,000 annually, eclipsing the national income percentile by nearly 6%.

On a country-wide scale, it’s not surprising that California and New York represent the top earnings regions for marketing professionals, with 48% and 51% of respondents having reported a salary that exceeds $100,000, respectively.

In Washington alone, 57% of marketers surveyed earned more than $100,000 annually – a clear indication of the region’s (particularly, Seattle’s) prolificacy in marketing roles.

In our next round of salary survey analysis, we’ll dive into the divisive wage gaps that persist among demographic and gender disparities across the digital marketing industry.

Download our full 2019 Marketing Technology and Operations Salary Survey findings to see how your marketing income might stack up.

With Google releasing more information of when updates take place, you should see it as a good practice to highlight this information in your Google Analytics account.

With the use of annotations, you will now have a visual guide in Google Analytic’s reports to help understand if you have been affected negatively or positively from the updates made to Google algorithm. But you can also use this to mark other important events for when changes have been applied to your website.

^{Source: Google Analytics} 

A four-step guide to creating an annotation

1. Click on the small down arrow pointing triangle of any graph type of report.

^{Source: Google Analytics}

2) Click on the “+Create new annotation”.

^{Source: Google Analytics}

3) Complete the small form, select the date of the Google update and a small note that makes it clear what update/change took place.

4) And last but not least hit “Save”.

You can set your annotations to be private or shared (only if you have collaboration-level access the Google Analytics account can you select shared annotations).

^{Source: Twitter.com}

When Google released the June core update in 2019, Google’s search liaison team pre-announced the update via Twitter, this is the first time they have ever done this. You can take advantage of this in the future by adding google annotations in advance so that you can see if there was a negative or positive effect on your organic traffic from google.

Having the ability to add annotations with a date set in the future can come in particularly handy if you know that there is an update about to go live from Google, or if your development team is about to upload their weekly change at 4.59 pm on a Friday.

How to add annotations for future Google updates

1. Go to the admin section of your Google Analytics account
2. Select the correct view in the far left-hand column
3. Under “Personal tools & Assets”, select “Annotations”
4. Click on “+ New Annotation” at the top of the table
5. Enter the date of the Google update/change you will see that you are now able to select a date in the future
6. Add some descriptive text about the change/update
7. Chose the type of visibility – private or shared
8. Click “Create Annotation”

^{Source: Google Analytics}

List of Google updates to add Google Analytics annotations

Site Diversity Update  —  June 6, 2019

June 2019 Core Update  —  June 3, 2019

Indexing Bugs  —  May 23, 2019

Deindexing Bug  —  April 5, 2019

March 2019 Core Update  —  March 12, 2019

19-result SERPs  —  March 1, 2019

March 1st Google Search Algorithm Ranking Update – Unconfirmed (SER)

Unnamed Update  —  November 29, 2018

Unnamed Update  —  October 15, 2018

Unnamed Update  —  September 10, 2018

Medic Core Update  —  August 1, 2018

Chrome Security Warnings (Full Site)  —  July 24, 2018

Unnamed Update  —  July 21, 2018

Mobile Speed Update  —  July 9, 2018

Video Carousels  —  June 14, 2018

Unnamed Update  —  May 23, 2018

Snippet Length Drop  —  May 13, 2018

Unnamed Core Update  —  April 17, 2018

Mobile-First Index Roll-out  —  March 26, 2018

Zero-result SERP Test  —  March 14, 2018

Brackets Core Update  —  March 8, 2018

Unnamed Update  —  February 20, 2018

Maccabees Update  —  December 14, 2017

Snippet Length Increase  —  November 30, 2017

Unnamed Update  —  November 14, 2017

Featured Snippet Drop  —  October 27, 2017

Chrome Security Warnings (Forms)  —  October 17, 2017

Unnamed Update  —  September 27, 2017

Google Jobs  —  June 20, 2017

Unnamed Update  —  May 17, 2017

Google Tops 50% HTTPS  —  April 16, 2017

Fred (Unconfirmed)  —  March 8, 2017

Unnamed Update  —  February 6, 2017

Unnamed Update  —  February 1, 2017

Intrusive Interstitial Penalty  —  January 10, 2017

Unnamed Update  —  December 14, 2016

Unnamed Update  —  November 10, 2016

Penguin 4.0, Phase 2  —  October 6, 2016

Penguin 4.0, Phase 1  —  September 27, 2016

Penguin 4.0 Announcement  —  September 23, 2016

Image/Universal Drop  —  September 13, 2016

Possum  —  September 1, 2016

Mobile-friendly 2  —  May 12, 2016

Unnamed Update  —  May 10, 2016

AdWords Shake-up  —  February 23, 2016

Unnamed Update  —  January 8, 2016

RankBrain*  —  October 26, 2015

Panda 4.2 (#28)  —  July 17, 2015

The Quality Update  —  May 3, 2015

Mobile Update AKA “Mobilegeddon”  —  April 22, 2015

Unnamed Update  —  February 4, 2015

Pigeon Expands (UK, CA, AU)  —  December 22, 2014

Penguin Everflux  —  December 10, 2014

Pirate 2.0  —  October 21, 2014

Penguin 3.0  —  October 17, 2014

In The News Box  —  October 1, 2014

Panda 4.1 (#27)  —  September 23, 2014

Authorship Removed  —  August 28, 2014

HTTPS/SSL Update  —  August 6, 2014

Pigeon  —  July 24, 2014

Authorship Photo Drop  —  June 28, 2014

Payday Loan 3.0  —  June 12, 2014

Panda 4.0 (#26)  —  May 19, 2014

Payday Loan 2.0  —  May 16, 2014

Unnamed Update  —  March 24, 2014

Page Layout #3  —  February 6, 2014

Authorship Shake-up  —  December 19, 2013

Unnamed Update  —  December 17, 2013

Unnamed Update  —  November 14, 2013

Penguin 2.1 (#5)  —  October 4, 2013

Hummingbird  —  August 20, 2013

In-depth Articles  —  August 6, 2013

Unnamed Update  —  July 26, 2013

Knowledge Graph Expansion  —  July 19, 2013

Panda Recovery  —  July 18, 2013

Multi-Week Update  —  June 27, 2013

Panda Dance  —  June 11, 2013

Penguin 2.0 (#4)  —  May 22, 2013

Domain Crowding  —  May 21, 2013

Phantom  —  May 9, 2013

Panda #25  —  March 14, 2013

Panda #24  —  January 22, 2013

Panda #23  —  December 21, 2012

Knowledge Graph Expansion  —  December 4, 2012

Panda #22  —  November 21, 2012

Panda #21  —  November 5, 2012

Page Layout #2  —  October 9, 2012

Penguin #3  —  October 5, 2012

August/September 65-Pack  —  October 4, 2012

Panda #20  —  September 27, 2012

Exact-Match Domain (EMD) Update  —  September 27, 2012

Panda 3.9.2 (#19)  —  September 18, 2012

Panda 3.9.1 (#18)  —  August 20, 2012

7-Result SERPs  —  August 14, 2012

June/July 86-Pack  —  August 10, 2012

DMCA Penalty (“Pirate”)  —  August 10, 2012

Panda 3.9 (#17)  —  July 24, 2012

Link Warnings  —  July 19, 2012

Panda 3.8 (#16)  —  June 25, 2012

Panda 3.7 (#15)  —  June 8, 2012

May 39-Pack  —  June 7, 2012

Penguin 1.1 (#2)  —  May 25, 2012

Knowledge Graph  —  May 16, 2012

April 52-Pack  —  May 4, 2012

Panda 3.6 (#14)  —  April 27, 2012

Penguin  —  April 24, 2012

Panda 3.5 (#13)  —  April 19, 2012

Parked Domain Bug  —  April 16, 2012

March 50-Pack  —  April 3, 2012

Panda 3.4 (#12)  —  March 23, 2012

Search Quality Video  —  March 12, 2012

Venice  —  February 27, 2012

February 40-Pack (2)  —  February 27, 2012

Panda 3.3 (#11)  —  February 27, 2012

February 17-Pack  —  February 3, 2012

Ads Above The Fold  —  January 19, 2012

Panda 3.2 (#10)  —  January 18, 2012

Search + Your World  —  January 10, 2012

January 30-Pack  —  January 5, 2012

December 10-Pack  —  December 1, 2011

Panda 3.1 (#9)  —  November 18, 2011

10-Pack of Updates  —  November 14, 2011

Freshness Update  —  November 3, 2011

Query Encryption  —  October 18, 2011

Panda “Flux” (#8)  —  October 5, 2011

“Minor” Google Panda Update On November 18th (SEL)

Panda 2.5 (#7)  —  September 28, 2011

516 Algo Updates  —  September 21, 2011

Pagination Elements  —  September 15, 2011

Expanded Sitelinks  —  August 16, 2011

Panda 2.4 (#6)  —  August 12, 2011

Panda 2.3 (#5)  —  July 23, 2011

Google+  —  June 28, 2011

Panda 2.2 (#4)  —  June 21, 2011

Schema.org  —  June 2, 2011

Panda 2.1 (#3)  —  May 9, 2011

Panda 2.0 (#2)  —  April 11, 2011

The +1 Button  —  March 30, 2011

Panda/Farmer  —  February 23, 2011

Attribution Update  —  January 28, 2011

Overstock.com Penalty  —  January 1, 2011

Negative Reviews  —  December 1, 2010

Social Signals  —  December 1, 2010

Instant Previews  —  November 1, 2010

Google Instant  —  September 1, 2010

Brand Update  —  August 1, 2010

Caffeine (Rollout)  —  June 1, 2010

May Day  —  May 1, 2010

Google Places  —  April 1, 2010

Real-time Search  —  December 1, 2009

Caffeine (Preview)  —  August 1, 2009

Vince  —  February 1, 2009

Rel-canonical Tag  —  February 1, 2009

Google Suggest  —  August 1, 2008

Dewey  —  April 1, 2008

2007 Updates

Buffy  —  June 1, 2007

Universal Search  —  May 1, 2007

False Alarm  —  December 1, 2006

Supplemental Update  —  November 1, 2006

Big Daddy  —  December 1, 2005

Google Local/Maps  —  October 1, 2005

Jagger  —  October 1, 2005

Gilligan  —  September 1, 2005

XML Sitemaps  —  June 1, 2005

Personalized Search  —  June 1, 2005

Bourbon  —  May 1, 2005

Allegra  —  February 1, 2005

Nofollow  —  January 1, 2005

Google IPO  —  August 1, 2004

Brandy  —  February 1, 2004

Austin  —  January 1, 2004

Florida  —  November 1, 2003

Supplemental Index  —  September 1, 2003

Fritz  —  July 1, 2003

Esmeralda  —  June 1, 2003

Dominic  —  May 1, 2003

Cassandra  —  April 1, 2003

Boston  —  February 1, 2003

1st Documented Update  —  September 1, 2002

Google Toolbar  —  December 1, 2000

^{Source: moz.com}

And remember

Generally speaking by adding annotations to your Google Analytics account you will be able to see more clearly if you have been affected by any Google updates.

Related reading

Google never confirmed its existence, but many SEOs believe that Google Sandbox exists. So, does it exist in 2019? If yes, how to avoid getting affected?

While Google is an obvious “horse to bet on,” ubiquity, UX and utility will dominate the voice-search innovation race in 2020 and beyond.

Now, the free tool “automatically generates top competing sites that it uses as the basis for a more in-depth competitive analysis report,” Alexa.com President Andrew Ramm told SEW.

Walmart made headlines last week by announcing that it would fold Jet.com into its Walmart ecommerce operations. The story explained with two simple charts.