SAN JOSE, CA — Brands are spending more than 16% of their budgets on technology, and yet 50% don’t believe they have the tools they need, according to a Moore Stephens poll.

The real problem, said Subbu Iyer, CMO at Riverbed, in a talk at MarTech Conference Thursday, is the way brands are approaching technology. “The amount of money going into tech as a percentage of marketing budget is increasing. But if you’re looking at satisfaction it’s not there.”

Many of us constantly seek out the new hot thing — the shiny object — and yet, often our marketing outcomes aren’t improving with all this new technology the way we expect.

“Marketers need to ask what the purpose of the technology is – and it needs to be to serve the human experience,” said Iyer. “How can we do better evaluating technology? Think about it from a human context.”

Marketers also need human-centered digital strategies. Then they can deploy technology for their own customer-centered use cases that address the human experience.

The human experience Iyer refers to encompasses “the total set of interactions and encounters that you as a brand have with your employees, customers and partners.” That’s a true measure of affinity, said Iyer. “It’s not about MQLs and SQLs. It’s about affinity and engagement.”

Customers are savvy. They demand, value, transparency and authenticity and personalization. As customers become more self-sufficient and do research on their own, those are the things they’re looking for, said Iyer. “To be successful, the starting point is not the technology.”

The buyer journey is not linear or sequential. “That’s our challenge when thinking about it from a tech stack perspective,” said Iyer. “We think about it very linearly. It’s not linear. It’s never linear.”

Among the strategies of people-first approach that Iyer explained is to use the full power of digital technology to build cognitive empathy.

Iyer pointed to a number of studies that show emotions are the number one factor in determining loyalty. Understanding and responding to emotions as users come into contact with your brand can dramatically change outcomes.

Companies such as Humana and Asurion that are doing this now with AI. For example, Iyer explained, Humana has deployed AI software to monitor inflection and tone on customer calls. It can warn agents where the call is heading based on the modulations of the customer’s voice. The results: 28% improvement in customer satisfaction, 63% increase in agent engagement and 67% improvement in first-contact resolution.

“Customers aren’t buying products and services anymore, they’re buying experiences,” said Iyer, in closing. “That’s a fundamental belief I have.” Many companies understand this, he said. Coke sells happiness. Apple sells a lifestyle. Nike sells inspiration. And then there’s Peloton. Is it a media company or a fitness experience, asked Iyer? “It’s an integrated experience and they disrupted the fitness market.”

This story first appeared on MarTech Today. For more on marketing technology, click here.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

At the frontlines in the battle for SEO is Google Search Console (GSC), an amazing tool that makes you visible in search engine results pages (SERPs) and provides an in-depth analysis of web traffic being routing to your doorstep. And it does all this for free.

If your website marks your presence in cyberspace, GSC boosts viewership and increases traffic, conversions, and sales. In this guide, SEO strategists at Miromind explain how you benefit from GSC, how you integrate it with your website, and what you do with its reports to strategize the domain dominance of your brand.

What is Google Search Console (GSC)?

Created by Google, the Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) initially targeted webmasters. Offered by Google as a free of cost service, GWT metamorphosed into its present form, the Google Search Console (GSC). It’s the cutting edge tool widely used by an exponentially diversifying group of digital marketing professionals, web designers, app developers, SEO specialists, and business entrepreneurs.

For the uninitiated, GSC tells you everything that you wish to know about your website and the people who visit it daily. For example, how much web traffic you’re attracting, what are people searching for in your site, the kind of platform (mobile, app, desktop) people are using to find you, and more importantly, what makes your site popular.

Then GSC takes you on a subterranean dive to find and fix errors, design sitemaps, and check file integrity.

Precisely what does Google Search Console do for you? These are the benefits.

1. Search engine visibility improves

Ever experienced the sinking sensation of having done everything demanded of you for creating a great website, but people who matter can’t locate you in a simple search? Search Console makes Google aware that you’re online.

2. The virtual image remains current and updated

When you’ve fixed broken links and coding issues, Search Console helps you update the changes in such a manner that Google’s search carries an accurate snapshot of your site minus its flaws.

3. Keywords are better optimized to attract traffic

Wouldn’t you agree that knowing what draws people to your website can help you shape a better user experience? Search Console opens a window to the keywords and key phrases that people frequently use to access your site. Armed with this knowledge, you can optimize the site to respond better to specific keywords.

4. Safety from cyber threats

Can you expect to grow business without adequate protection against external threats? Search Console helps you build efficient defenses against malware and spam, securing your growing business against cyber threats.

5. Content figures prominently in rich results

It’s not enough to merely figure in a search result. How effectively are your pages making it into Google rich results? These are the cards and snippets that carry tons of information like ratings, reviews, and just about any information that results in better user experience for people searching for you. Search console gives you a status report on how your content is figuring in rich results so you can remedy a deficit if detected.

6. Site becomes better equipped for AMP compliance

You’re probably aware that mobile friendliness has become a search engine ranking parameter. This means that the faster your pages load, the more user-friendly you’re deemed to be. The solution is to adopt accelerated mobile pages (AMP), and Search Console helpfully flags you out in the areas where you’re not compliant.

7. Backlink analysis

The backlinks, the websites that are linking back to your website give Google an indication of the popularity of your site; how worthy you are of citation. With Search Console, you get an overview of all the websites linking to you, and you get a deeper insight into what motivates and sustains your popularity.

8. The site becomes faster and more responsive to mobile users

If searchers are abandoning your website because of slow loading speeds or any other glitch, Search Console alerts you so you can take remedial steps and become mobile-friendly.

9. Google indexing keeps pace with real-time website changes

Significant changes that you make on the website could take weeks or months to figure in the Google Search Index if you sit tight and do nothing. With search console, you can edit, change, and modify your website endlessly, and ensure the changes are indexed by Google instantaneously. By now you have a pretty good idea why Google Search Console has become the must-have tool for optimizing your website pages for improved search results. This also helps ensure that your business grows in tandem with the traffic that you’re attracting and converting.

Your eight step guide on how to use Google Search Console

1. How to set up your unique Google Search Console account

Assuming that you’re entirely new to GSC, your immediate priority is to add the tool and get your site verified by Google. By doing this, you’ll be ensuring that Google classifies you unambiguously as the owner of the site, whether you’re a webmaster, or merely an authorized user.

This simple precaution is necessary because you’ll be privy to an incredibly rich source of information that Google wouldn’t like unauthorized users to have access to.

You can use your existing Google account (or create a new one) to access Google Search Console. It helps if you’re already using Google Analytics because the same details can be used to login to GSC. Your next step is to open the console and click on “Add property”.

By adding your website URL into the adjacent box, you get an umbilical connection to the console so you can start using its incredible array of features. Take care to add the prefix “https” or “www” so Google loads the right data.

2. How to enable Google to verify your site ownership

Option one

How to add an HTML tag to help Google verify ownership

Once you have established your presence, Google will want to verify your site. At this stage, it helps to have some experience of working in HTML. It’ll be easier to handle the files you’re uploading; you’ll have a better appreciation of how the website’s size influences the Google crawl rate, and gain a clearer understanding of the Google programs already running on your website.

If all this sounds like rocket science, don’t fret because we’ll be hand-holding you through the process.

Your next step is to open your homepage code and paste the search console provided HTML tag within the <Head> section of your site’s HTML code.

The newly pasted code can coexist with any other code in the <Head> section; it’s of no consequence.

An issue arises if you don’t see the <Head> section, in which case you’ll need to create the section to embed the Search Console generated code so that Google can verify your site.

Save your work and come back to the homepage to view the source code; the console verification code should be clearly visible in the <Head> section confirming that you have done the embedding correctly.

Your next step is to navigate back to the console dashboard and click “Verify”.

At this stage, you’ll see either of two messages – A screen confirming that Google has verified the site, or pop up listing onsite errors that need to be rectified before completing verification. By following these steps, Google will be confirming your ownership of the site. It’s important to remember that once the Google Search Console code has been embedded onsite and verified, any attempt to tamper or remove the code will have the effect of undoing all the good work, leaving your site in limbo.

Getting Google Search Console to verify a WordPress website using HTML tag

Even if you have a WordPress site, there’s no escape from the verification protocol if you want to link the site to reap the benefits of GSC.

Assuming that you’ve come through the stage of adding your site to GSC as a new property, this is what you do.

The WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast is widely acknowledged to be an awesome SEO solution tailor-made for WordPress websites. Installing and activating the plugin gives you a conduit to the Google Search Console.

Once Yoast is activated, open the Google Search Console verification page, and click the “Alternate methods” tab to get to the HTML tag.

You’ll see a central box highlighting a meta tag with certain instructions appearing above the box. Ignore these instructions, select and copy only the code located at the end of the thread (and not the whole thread).

Now revert back to the website homepage and click through SEO>Dashboard. In the new screen, on clicking “Webmaster tools” you open the “Webmaster tools verification” window. The window displays three boxes; ensure to paste the previously copied HTML code into the Google Search Console box, and save the changes.

Now, all you have to do is revert to the Google Search Console and click “Verify” upon which the console will confirm that verification is a success. You are now ready to use GSC on your WordPress site.

Option two

How to upload an HTML file to help Google verify ownership

This is your second verification option. Once you’re in Google Search Console, proceed from “Manage site” to “Verify this site” to locate the “HTML file upload” option. If you don’t find the option under the recommended method, try the “Other verification methods”.

Once you’re there, you’ll be prompted to download an HTML file which must be uploaded in its specified location. If you change the file in any manner, Search Console won’t be able to verify the site, so take care to maintain the integrity of the download.

Once the HTML file is loaded, revert back to the console panel to verify, and once that is accomplished you’ll get a message confirming that the site is verified. After the HTML file has been uploaded, go back to Search Console and click “Verify”.

If everything has been uploaded correctly, you will see a page letting you know that the site has been verified.

Once again, as in the first option we’ve listed, don’t change, modify, or delete the HTML file as that’ll bring the site back to the unverified status.

Option three

Using the Google Tag Manager route for site verification

Before you venture into the Google Search Console, you might find it useful to get the hang of Google Tag Manager (GTM). It’s a free tool that helps you manage and maneuver marketing and analytics tags on your website or app.

You’ll observe that GTM doubles up as a useful tool to simplify site verification for Google Search Console. If you intend to use GTM for site verification there are two precautions you need to take; open your GTM account and enable the “View, Edit, and Manage” mode.

Also, ensure that the GTM code figures adjacent to the <Body> tag in your HTML code.

Once you’re done with these simple steps, revert back to GSC and follow this route – Manage site > Verify this site > Google Tag Manager. By clicking the “Verify” option in Google Tag Manager, you should get a message indicating that the site has been verified.

Once again, as in the previous options, never attempt to change the character of the GTM code on your site as that may bring the site back to its unverified position.

Option four

Securing your status as the domain name provider

Once you’re done with the HTML file tagging or uploading, Google will prompt you to verify the domain that you’ve purchased or the server where your domain is hosted, if only to prove that you are the absolute owner of the domain, and all its subdomains or directories.

Open the Search Console dashboard and zero in on the “Verify this site” option under “Manage site”.

You should be able to locate the “Domain name provider” option either under the “Recommended method” or the “Alternate method” tab. When you are positioned in the “Domain name provider”, you’ll be shown a listing of domain hosting sites that Google provides for easy reference.

At this stage, you have two options.

If your host doesn’t show up in the list, click the “Other” tab to receive guidelines on creating a DNS TXT code aimed at your domain provider. In some instances, the DNS TXT code may not match your provider. If that mirrors your dilemma, create a DNS TXT record or CNAME code that will be customized for your provider.

3. Integrating the Google Analytics code on your site

If you’re new to Google Analytics (GA), this is a good time to get to know this free tool. It gives you amazing feedback which adds teeth to digital marketing campaigns.

At a glance, GA helps you gather and analyze key website parameters that affect your business. It tracks the number of visitors converging on your domain, the time they spend browsing your pages, and the specific keywords in your site that are most popular with incoming traffic.

Most of all, GA gives you a fairly comprehensive idea of how efficiently your sales funnel is attracting leads and converting customers. The first thing you need to do is to verify whether the website has the GA tracker code inserted in the <Head> segment in the homepage HTML code. If the GA code is to carry out its tracking functions correctly, you have to ensure that the code is placed only in the <Head> segment and not elsewhere as in the <Body> segment.

Back in the Google Search Console, follow the given path – Manage site > Verify this site till you come to the “Google Analytics tracking code” and follow the guidelines that are displayed. Once you get an acknowledgment that the GA code is verified, refrain from making any changes to the code to prevent the site from reverting to unverified status.

Google Analytics vs. Google Search Console – Knowing the difference and appreciating the benefits

For a newbie, both Google Analytics and Google Search Console appear like they’re focused on the same tasks and selling the same pitch, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Read also: An SEO’s guide to Google Analytics

GA’s unrelenting focus is on the traffic that your site is attracting. GA tells you how many people visit your site, the kind of platform or app they’re using to reach you, the geographical source of the incoming traffic, how much time each visitor spends browsing what you offer, and which are the most searched keywords on your site.

If GA gives you an in-depth analysis of the efficiency (or otherwise) of your marketing campaigns and customer conversion pitch. Google Search Console then peeps under the hood of your website to show you how technically sound you are in meeting the challenges of the internet.

GSC is active in providing insider information.

• Are there issues blocking the Google search bot from crawling?
• Are website modifications being instantly indexed?
• Who links to you and which are your top-linked pages?
• Is there malware or some other cyber threat that needs to be quarantined and neutralized?
• Is your keyword strategy optimized to fulfill searcher intent?

GSC also opens a window to manual actions, if any, issued against your site by Google for perceived non-compliance of the Webmaster guidelines.

If you open the manual actions report in the Search Console message center and see a green check mark, consider yourself safe. But if there’s a listing of non-compliances, you’ll need to fix either the individual pages or sometimes the whole website and place the matter before Google for a review.

Manual actions must be looked into because failure to respond places your pages in danger of being omitted from Google’s search results. Sometimes, your site may attract manual action for no fault of yours, like a spammy backlink that violates Webmaster quality guidelines, and which you can’t remove.

In such instances, you can use the GSC “Disavow Tool” to upload a text file, listing the affected URLs, using the disavow links tool page in the console.

If approved, Google will recrawl the site and reprocess the search results pages to reflect the change. Basically, GA is more invested in the kind of traffic that you’re attracting and converting, while GSC shows you how technically accomplished your site is in responding to searches, and in defining the quality of user experience.

Packing power and performance by combining Google Analytics and Google Search Console

You could follow the option of treating GA and GSC as two distinct sources of information and analyze the reports you access, and the world would still go on turning.

But it may be pertinent to remember that both tools present information in vastly different formats even in areas where they overlap. It follows that integrating both tools presents you with additional analytical reports that you’d otherwise be missing; reports that trudge the extra mile in giving you the kind of design and marketing inputs that lay the perfect foundation for great marketing strategies.

Assuming you’re convinced of the need for combining GA and GSC, this is what you do.

Open the Google Search Console, navigate to the hub-wheel icon, and click the “Google Analytics Property” tab.

This shows you a listing of all the GA accounts that are operational in the Google account.

Hit the save button on all the accounts that you’ll be focusing on, and with that small step, you’re primed to extract maximum juice from the excellent analytical reporting of the GA-GSC combo.

Just remember to carry out this step only after the website has been verified by Google by following the steps we had outlined earlier.

What should you do with Google Search Console?

1. How to create and submit a sitemap to Google Search Console

Is it practical to hand over the keys to your home (website) to Google and expect Google to navigate the rooms (webpages) without assistance?

You can help Google bots do a better job of crawling the site by submitting the site’s navigational blueprint or sitemap.

The sitemap is your way of showing Google how information is organized throughout your webpages. You can also position valuable details in the metadata, information on textual content, images, videos, and podcasts, and even mention the frequency with which the page is updated.

We’re not implying that a sitemap is mandatory for Google Search Console, and you’re not going to be penalized if you don’t submit the sitemap.

But it is in your interests to ensure that Google has access to all the information it needs to do its job and improve your visibility in search engines, and the sitemap makes the job easier. Ultimately, it works in your favor when you’re submitting a sitemap for an extensive website with many pages and subcategories.

For starters, decide which web pages you want Google bots should crawl, and then specify the canonical version of each page.

What this means is that you’re telling Google to crawl the original version of any page to the exclusion of all other versions.

Then create a sitemap either manually or using a third-party tool.

At this stage, you have the option of adding the sitemap to the robots.txt file in your source code or link it directly to the search console.

Read also: Robots.txt best practice guide + examples

Assuming that you’ve taken the trouble to get the site verified by GSC, revert back to the search console, and then navigate to “Crawl” and its subcategory “Sitemaps.”

On clicking “Sitemaps” you will see a field “Add a new sitemap”. Enter the URL of your sitemap in a .xml format and then click “Submit”.

With these simple steps, you’ve effectively submitted your sitemap to Google Search Console.

2. How to modify your robots.txt file so search engine bots can crawl efficiently

There’s a file embedded in your website that doesn’t figure too frequently in SEO optimization circles. The minor tweaking of this file has major SEO boosting potential. It’s virtually a can of high-potency SEO juice that a lot of people ignore and very few open.

It’s called the robots exclusion protocol or standard. If that freaks you out, we’ll keep it simple and call it the robots.txt file.

Even without technical expertise, you can open your source code and you’ll find this file.

The robots.txt is your website’s point of contact with search engine bots.

Before tuning in on your webpages, the search bot will peep into this text file to see if there are any instructions about which pages should be crawled and which pages can be ignored (that’s why it helps to have your sitemap stored here).

The bot will follow the robots exclusion protocol that your file suggests regarding which pages are allowed for crawling and which are disallowed. This is your site’s way of guiding search engines to pages that you wish to highlight and also helps in exclusion of content that you do not want to share.

There’s no guarantee that robots.txt instructions will be followed by bots, because bots designed for specific jobs may react differently to the same set of instructions. Also, the system doesn’t block other websites from linking to your content even if you wouldn’t want the content indexed.

Before proceeding further, please ensure that you’ve already verified the site; then open the GSC dashboard and click the “Crawl” tab to proceed to “robots.txt Tester.”

This tool enables you to do three things:

• Peep into the robots.txt file to see which actions are currently allowed or disallowed
• Check if there are any crawl errors in the past 90 days
• Make changes to suit your desired mode of interacting with search bots

Once you’ve made necessary changes, it’s vital that the robots.txt file in your source code reflects those changes immediately.

To do that, shortly after making changes, click the “Submit” tag below the editing box in the search console and proceed to upload the changed file to update the source code. Your root directory should then appear as www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt.

To confirm that you’ve completed the mission, go back to the search console’s robots.txt testing tool and click “Verify live version” following which you should get a message verifying the modification.

3. How to use the “Fetch as Google” option to update regular website changes

On-page content and title tags undergo regular changes in the website’s life cycle, and it’s a chore to manually get these changes recorded and updated in the Google search engine. Fortunately, GSC comes up with a solution.

Once you’ve located the page that needs a change or update, open the search console, go to the “Crawl” option and zero in on the “Fetch as Google” option. You’ll see a blank URL box in the center.

Enter the modified page in the box to look like this; http://yourwebsite.com/specificcategory, then click “Fetch and Render.”

After completing this step go to the “Request indexing” button and consider the options before you.

What you have just done is to authorize the Google bot to index all the changes that you’ve put through, and within a couple of days, the changes become visible in the Google search results.

4. How to use Google Search Console to identify and locate site errors

A site error is a technical malfunction which prevents Google search bots from indexing your site correctly.

Naturally, when your site is wrongly configured or slowing down, you are creating a barrier between the site and search engines. This blocks content from figuring in top search results.

Even if you suspect that something is wrong with your site, you can’t lose time waiting for the error to show up when it’s too late, because the error would have done the damage by then.

So, you turn to Google Search Console for instant troubleshooting. With GSC, you get a tool that keeps you notified on errors that creep into your website.

When you’ve opened the Google Search Console, you’ll see the “Crawl” tab appearing on the left side of the screen. Click the tab and open “Crawl errors”.

What you see now is a listing of all the page errors that Google bots encountered while they were busy indexing the site. The pop up will tell you when the page was last crawled and when the first error was detected, followed by a brief description of the error.

Once the error is identified, you can handover the problem for rectification to your in-house webmaster.

When you click the “Crawl” tab, you’ll find “Crawl stats.” This is your gateway to loads of statistically significant graphs that show you all the pages that were crawled in the previous 90 days, the kilobytes downloaded during this period, and precisely how much time it took for Google to access and download a page. These stats give a fair indication of your website’s speed and user-friendliness.

Conclusion

A virtual galaxy of webmasters, SEO specialists, and digital marketing honchos would give their right arm and left leg for tools that empower SEO and bring in more customers that’ll ring the cash registers. Tools with all the bells and whistles are within reach, but many of them will make you pay hefty fees to access benefits.

But here’s a tool that’s within easy reach, a tool that promises high and delivers true to expectations without costing you a dollar, and paradoxically, very few people use it.

GSC is every designer’s dream come true, every SEO expert’s plan B, every digital marketer’s Holy Grail when it comes to SEO and the art of website maintenance.

What you gain using GSC are invaluable insights useful in propelling effective organic SEO strategies, and a tool that packs a punch when used in conjunction with Google Analytics.

When you fire the double-barreled gun of Google Analytics and Google Search Console, you can aim for higher search engine rankings and boost traffic to your site, traffic that converts to paying customers.

Related reading

Why do “lower authority” sites beat out higher ones for featured snippets? Why are images sometimes from other sites? What kind of content ranks?

According to Google, 53 percent of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. Five ways to make them stay and convert.

The link building industry is flooded with many myths that’ll never get you results but can get you into a lot of trouble. Nine myths debunked.

It’s not the actual social activity that matters, but what happens as a result of that activity. Three ways to harness the power of social media for SEO.

Snapchat parent Snap Inc. on Thursday announced a slate of new features designed to help it keep pace in a digital environment that values efficiency, revenue opportunities, and cutting-edge creativity.

Why you should care

Many of the new features enhance the core Snapchatter experience, but with it comes key openings for marketers and advertisers.

Dynamic scanning and enhanced AR brings the Snapchat experience to life with improved movement tracking, new interactive templates via Lens Studio, landmark manipulation, and object scanning. From snapping math problems and movie posters to visualizing new perspectives on landmark locations, brands will be able to deliver targeted content in context for deeper engagement with audiences.

New third-party app integrations via Snap Kit allow users on apps like Tinder, Netflix, VSCO, and GoFundme to create custom partner stories directly from Snapchat. Partner apps will be able to display Snapchat stories on their own platforms with the added option of monetizing their content with full-screen mobile ads in the coming months.

Snap Originals is expanding its serialized mobile shows with a range of scripted dramas, comedies, and docuseries targeting a variety of audience interests. Available globally on Snapchat’s Discover page, each episode is approximately five minutes in length and includes six-second, non-skippable ads available for purchase.

The new Snap Games platform allows for multiplayer gaming in real-time with original and partner-developed games made for Snapchat. Snap Games will offer advertisers six-second ad spots in the platform, which is accessed directly from Chat for fast and intuitive gameplay.

About The Author

To help users find the answers to their questions faster, we included page speed as a ranking factor for mobile searches in 2018. Since then, we’ve observed improvements on many pages across the web. We want to recognize the performance improvements webmasters have made over the past year. A few highlights:

• For the slowest one-third of traffic, we saw user-centric performance metrics improve by 15% to 20% in 2018. As a comparison, no improvement was seen in 2017.
• We observed improvements across the whole web ecosystem. On a per country basis, more than 95% of countries had improved speeds.
• When a page is slow to load, users are more likely to abandon the navigation. Thanks to these speed improvements, we’ve observed a 20% reduction in abandonment rate for navigations initiated from Search, a metric that site owners can now also measure via the Network Error Logging API available in Chrome.
• In 2018, developers ran over a billion PageSpeed Insights audits to identify performance optimization opportunities for over 200 million unique urls.

Great work and thank you! We encourage all webmasters to optimize their sites’ user experience. If you’re unsure how your pages are performing, the following tools and documents can be useful:

1. PageSpeed Insights provides page analysis and optimization recommendations.
2. Google Chrome User Experience Report provides the user experience metrics for how real-world Chrome users experience popular destinations on the web.
3. Documentation on performance on Web Fundamentals.

For any questions, feel free to drop by our help forums (like the webmaster community) to chat with other experts.

Posted by Genqing Wu and Doantam Phan

Last month Google invited a select number of users and journalists to try out its new augmented reality functionality in Google Maps.

It is an exciting development particularly for those who have ever experienced difficulty finding a location in the real world when Google Maps’ blue dot fails to be accurate enough. But with local and hyperlocal SEO becoming a bigger consideration for businesses seeking to be visible in mobile search, are there implications here too?

How Google is bringing AR to its maps navigation

Back in February, Google invited a small number of local guides and journalists to try out the new AR functionality in its Google Maps service.

As is detailed over on the Google AI blog, they are calling the technique “global localization”. It aims to make Google Maps even more useful and accurate by building on its GPS and compass powered blue dot with added visual positioning service (VPS), street view, and machine learning.

The result incorporates AR and map data. When planning a route from A to B, users can use the smartphone lens to see the world in front of them with Google Maps’ location arrows and labels overlaid.

Challenges

Accuracy and orientation have always been the biggest challenge for real-time mobile mapping. GPS can be distorted by buildings, trees, and heavy cloud cover. Orientation is possible because mobile devices are smart enough to measure the magnetic and gravity field of the earth relative to the motion of the device. But in practice, these measurements are very prone to errors.

With VPS, street view, and machine learning added to the Google Maps’ route-planning functionality, the early reports are very positive. VPS works in tandem with the street view to analyze key structures and landmarks in the field of view. It is pretty much the same way we as humans process what we are seeing in relation to what we expect to see. Once it calibrates, the AR functionality presents the relevant route markers (arrows and labels) to show the user where to go.

Of course, there are challenges with this added technology too. The real world changes. Structures come and go, which can make it difficult for VPS to marry up what it sees, with what street view has indexed. This is where machine learning comes in, with data from current imagery being used to update, build upon, and improve what Google Maps already knows.

An additional challenge also concerns user habits. But Google has been quick to build in prompts to stop users from walking too far while looking through the AR lens minimizing any potential risk from real-world hazards (vehicles, people, structures, and the others) outside of the camera’s view.

Implications for search

When its AR functionality is rolled out, it’s not hard to see that Google Maps will have added appeal for users.

This is building on an already massively popular tool. According to data from The Manifest, 70% of navigation app users use Google Maps. As a proportion of the 2.7 billion global smartphone user base, this is around 1.4 billion people.

We’ve written at length here at Search Engine Watch about the importance of local and hyperlocal search. If you have a real-world location for your business and you have not already done so, setting up a “Google My Business” profile is the first step to assisting Google Maps with knowing exactly where your business location is. In addition, it also improves how you are presented in local search elements such as three-pack listings, as well as giving the user clear opening time information, and the option to click-to-call.

This is obviously important as more people come to Google Maps to use the AR functionality. On a hyperlocal level, as Google Maps’ AR looks to make increasing use of non-transient structures and landmarks, it might be good practice for businesses to make it more of a point to rank for key terms related to these landmarks. It is also easy to see how important it is to consider how your business looks from a joined-up marketing/UX perspective, with questions such as:

• Is your real-world branding clear and visible in the real world? (It might be from across the street, but how about from 100 paces away?)
• Is your real-world branding consistent with what it is being presented as online?

A positive step for users and SEOs

As a Google Maps user, this AR functionality is very exciting and I believe that it could have positive implications for SEO too.

For businesses who have real-world locations, Google Maps is already a hugely important way for potential customers to discover you and pay a visit. AR is a fascinating arena of digital technology, and we have already seen its impact through games such as “Pokemon GO“ and other AR mapping tools that are popular with users. Ultimately, in as much as search and navigation apps are lenses through which it pays to be visible, it seems AR will prove to be just as important when this technology is rolled out publicly.

Luke Richards is a writer for Search Engine Watch and ClickZ. You can find him on Twitter at .

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Once you start documenting your martech stack, as we at Third Door Media did earlier this year, you realize how complex and wide-ranging the tendrils of your technologies can be. That’s why I’m so impressed by all of the companies that took on the challenge of entering this year’s Stackie Awards competition, which was sponsored by AirStack.

The Stackies seek to recognize the best visual representation of a company’s marketing technology infrastructure, and five outstanding winners got that well-deserved recognition this evening at our MarTech Conference in San Jose, where conference chair Scott Brinker announced the results of the judging. Many congratulations to the winners (in no particular order): Sargento Foods, ESRI, Juniper, Airstream and Paychex!

We’ll tell you a bit about the winners and their companies elsewhere, so here we’ll let you ooh and aah over the winning entries. Each of the images in the gallery below can be expanded with a click of the mouse or tap of the mobile screen, so you can look closely at all of the detail represented in these images. (Just hit the back button on your browser to return to the gallery.)

Paychex

Sargento Foods

Airstream

ESRI

Juniper

This article originally appeared on MarTech Today. Check it out for more martech goodness!

About The Author

Pamela Parker is Content Manager at Marketing Land, MarTech Today and Search Engine Land. She’s a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since 1998. She’s a former managing editor of ClickZ, and worked on the business side helping independent publishers monetize their sites at Federated Media Publishing.

In the first article of my luxury search marketing series, I discussed the consumer mindset in the luxury vertical. I provided insight into what motivates luxury shoppers and what drives them to purchase.

In the second article, I’ll build upon that foundation and explore how to craft SEO strategies that enable luxury marketers to maximize results in this highly competitive space.

This article’s SEO recommendations address “on-page” ranking factors. Moz defines “on-page SEO” as optimizing both the content and HTML source code of the webpage. Prioritizing on-page SEO will help luxury marketers increase their organic search visibility by (1) Improving search engine rankings, and (2) By driving traffic to their website.

Read also: 10 on-page SEO essentials: Crafting the perfect piece of content

Unfortunately, the work doesn’t stop once you have great on-page SEO. As I explained in my first article, consumers often purchase luxury goods to satisfy an emotional need. So, to truly maximize conversions, luxury marketers should deliver an emotionally fulfilling shopping experience. I’ll share some ideas on how to do this with high-quality content.

1. Understand keyword intent and get your brand in front of the right buyers

It is critical to understand the intent behind customers’ search behavior. You need to understand what they want in order to effectively optimize your website and create a solid foundation for a content strategy. Keyword research, which involves strategically analyzing intent, will enable you to understand consumers’ specific needs and how you should be targeting those searchers.

There are three basic types of search intent:

• Navigational – These searchers are looking for a website or location. For example, “Gucci,” or “Gucci.com”. Search results lead to the brand’s domain, i.e. Gucci.com.
• Informational – These searchers are looking for specific information. For example, “Chanel leather types,” “what is caviar leather?” Search results lead to web pages that provide specific information, like guides and lists about the types of Chanel leather or more detailed information about what caviar leather is.
• Transactional – These searchers are looking to take a specific action such as buy a product or book a service. For example, “buy Jimmy Choo shoes,” “where to buy gold handbags?” Search results lead to retailer websites where you can buy Jimmy Choo shoes or gold handbags.

Putting it into practice

How do you know if your website is addressing your customer’s intent? Start by evaluating your keyword targeting. Look beyond search volume and ask yourself if your keyword targeting matches the search intent. For example, if your page is informational in nature, is the term you are targeting and optimizing for consistent with an informational-based keyword search? Manually check the search results to ensure that the keyword and page you are targeting is a right fit for what’s appearing in the search results.

Read also: How to move from keyword research to intent research

2. Invest in your meta description to win the click

Although meta descriptions have not been a direct ranking factor since 2009, click-through rate can impact your website’s pages’ ability to rank. Given this, marketers need to continue to invest in meta descriptions. Although custom meta descriptions are more work (especially when you’re dealing with ecommerce sites where content frequently changes), it’s worth the effort you put in to get the click.

How do you write a stellar meta-description? Here are a few tips.

1. Prioritize your evergreen pages

Evergreen pages are those pages where the page itself stays the same, even though the content may change slightly over time. These are your main landing pages, specifically your homepage and category level pages, such as “designer collections” or “jewelry & accessories”  where most of your traffic comes from. Even if the content changes slightly, these pages will have the chance to build up equity/credibility within the search engines so make sure you nail the meta description.

2. Paint a picture

In my first article, I explained how many consumers purchase luxury goods to fulfill emotional needs. Use the meta description as an opportunity to address those needs and create an experience. You can do this with visually appealing descriptions that make great use of action verbs. Action verbs deliver important information and add impact and purpose. The click-through rate improved by almost 2% on a page my team optimized using more descriptive copy. Some examples are:

1. Take a peek at the latest handbag designs.
2. See yourself in the tropics with this collection of flowy dresses.
3. Achieve the perfect business look.
4. Get sun-kissed denim jackets, shirts, and other apparel.

3. Create urgency with your calls-to-action

In my first article, I also discussed the importance of communicating exclusivity when promoting luxury products. Use the meta description as a way to create a “fear of missing out” with your call-to-action. Some examples are:

1. Shop this limited edition today!
2. Check out our exclusive collection today!
3. Don’t miss this once in a lifetime trip!

4. Make sure it fits

Be mindful of character limits. Make sure you stay within 150 to 160 characters, otherwise your description will likely be cut off in search results. It doesn’t provide the user with a good experience when a key part of your message is missing.

5. Hire a professional copywriter

If you are struggling with writing creative and compelling descriptions, I strongly recommend working with a professional copywriter, especially for your website’s key pages. Good copywriters can add the magic touch to your meta descriptions.

Read also:

Putting it into practice

Conduct an honest assessment of your meta descriptions. Is this something you would click on for more information? Winning the click can help improve your click-through rate, and as a result, your SEO ranking position. More importantly, it can help improve your conversion rate which translates into sales and more money earned.

And don’t forget to take stock of what your competitors are doing. Are they winning the click because they are using more creative descriptions, and more enticing, urgent calls to action?

3. Create emotionally fulfilling and relevant content that reiterates the urgency

We’ve talked a lot about the importance of emotionally fulfilling content in luxury marketing. So, what exactly qualifies as emotionally fulfilling content? What type of content or shopping experience is going to trigger that dopamine hit that makes us feel good and go back for more?

In its most basic sense, emotionally fulfilling content is content that makes you feel something. Think about a story that you love. Do you remember how it felt to be totally immersed in the story? If it were a book, you couldn’t put down. Or if it were a TV show that you had to binge-watch for the entire series, you had to keep watching because you couldn’t get enough.

That’s the type of content I’m talking about. It’s content that leaves you feeling satisfied, content, and engaged. This type of content fulfills our high-level needs as we discussed in the first article. Buying that Fendi handbag, or Rolex watch, can give us the confidence we need and appeal to our sense of belonging.

We connect with stories, especially stories we can relate to. Chanel does a great job with this type of website content. I’m a Chanel brand fan and a jewelry lover, so Chanel’s 1.5, 1 Camelia. 5 Allures resonates with me. Chanel creates an experience that you can truly immerse yourself in.

Consumers aren’t the only ones who love good content

For years Google has been stressing the importance of high-quality content.  This type of content is written for the user, not the search engine, but we know that the engines tend to reward strong content with an increase search engine ranking position.

In addition to strong content, the use of urgency elements and descriptive calls-to-action are powerful ways to drive conversions. How often have you scrolled through a website to find your desired product with a “limited quantity – only three left!” label. That’s a powerful motivator that pushes consumers to drive in-the-moment purchases. Leveraging the “fear of missing out” is a powerful tactic that can be applied to products to help drive conversions. Lyst had a 17% conversion rate increase when they showed items on product pages that were selling quickly.

You can create urgency in a few different ways:

1. Quantity limitations (Only one left at this price!)
2. Time limitations (Discounted tickets until 1st April!)
3. Contextual limitations (Mother’s Day is coming, buy a gift now!)

Putting it into practice

Spend some time examining your content. Is it emotionally fulfilling and relevant enough for your customer? Is this something you would be interested in? If not, what can you do to improve it? Content that is emotionally fulfilling and relevant often tells a story and keeps your users coming back for more. Remember, Google tends to reward this type of content with increased search engine rankings.

Also, consider how you can incorporate urgency elements onto specific pages. Think in terms of quantity, time, and context.

Final thoughts

Content that’s relevant and creates an emotionally fulfilling experience for the user should be at the heart of any luxury brand’s marketing campaign. We crave this content because of the experience that it provides for us and how it makes us feel. Don’t forget about the dopamine connection!

The foundation of your SEO campaign should start with keyword intent research. It’s not just enough to target search volume alone, you must balance that with user intent. Finally, invest in your meta description by creating something that’s truly enticing that makes people want to click through, learn more about your brand, and get them to convert.

In the final article in the series, we’ll tie everything together and discuss integrating search marketing with other channels in the luxury goods industry. Stay tuned!

Jennifer Kenyon is a Director of Organic Search at Catalyst (part of GroupM). She can be found on Twitter @JennKCatalyst.

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EBay notified merchants and publishers Tuesday that it will be closing down its third-party ad network, the eBay Commerce Network (ECN), as of May 1.

Why you should care

After five years, ECN will shut down as eBay says it is turning attention to advertising solutions for the core marketplace. “As a result, we are focusing on business that complements our core marketplace and discontinuing eBay Commerce Network effective May 1st, 2019,” the company said in a statement.

“For the health of the core marketplace, eBay is making a concerted effort to shift its reliance from third-party advertising to first-party advertising,” it added

In lieu of ECN ads, merchants on eBay are encouraged to consider promoted listings, ads that appear at the top of search and product pages, and other premium ad formats on the eBay marketplace. An alternative for publishers is the the eBay Partner Network, an affiliate proposition in which content creators share links to eBay listings and get paid when they generate sales.

More on the news

• Ads will stop serving May 1. Publishers should remove ECN tags from their sites, and merchants should pay any outstanding invoices and turn off their feeds after May 1.
• Publisher and merchant accounts will be accessible until June 28. Be sure to download any reporting before that date.
•  The company reported nearly 150% revenue growth in promoted listings, with 600 thousand active sellers promoting 200 million listings in Q4 2018.
• ECN came out of eBay’s acquisition of comparison shopping site Shopping.com in 2005. The company rebranded and re-posititioned Shopping.com to ECN in 2013 as a commerce ad network. Shopping.com continued as a site within the network of publishers. Merchants could advertise across ECN with a product feed in the U.S. and international markets. ECN launched with several hundred publishers with a goal of scaling the network. It remained relatively small with some 1,000 merchants and advertisers each currently using it. It’s not clear what eBay will now do with the Shopping.com domain.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

Back in September 2018, Google launched its Dataset Search tool, an engine which focuses on delivering results of hard data sources (research, reports, graphs, tables, and others) in a more efficient manner than the one which is currently offered by Google Search.

The service promises to enable easy access to the internet’s treasure trove of data. As Google’s Natasha Noy says,

“Scientists, data journalists, data geeks, or anyone else can find the data required for their work and their stories, or simply to satisfy their intellectual curiosity.”

For SEOs, it certainly has potential as a new research tool for creating our own informative, trustworthy, and useful content. But what of its prospects as a place to be visible, or as a ranking signal itself?

Google Dataset Search: As a research tool

As a writer who has been using Google to search for data since about a decade, I’d agree that finding hard statistics on search engines is not always massively straightforward.

Often, data which isn’t the most recent ranks better than newer research. This makes sense in an SEO sense, that which was published months or years prior has had a long time to earn authority and traffic. But usually I need the freshest stats, and even search results pointing to data on a page that has been published recently doesn’t necessarily mean that the data contained in that page is from that date.

Additionally, big publications (think news sites like the BBC) frequently rank better than the domain where the data was originally published. Again, this is unsurprising in the context of search engines. The BBC et al. have far more traffic, authority, inbound links, and changing content than most research websites, even .gov sites. But that doesn’t mean to say that the user looking for hard data wants to see BBC’s representation of that data.

Another key issue we find when researching hard data on Google concerns access to content. All too regularly, after a bit of browsing in the SERPs I find myself clicking through only to find that the report with the data I need is behind a paywall. How annoying.

On the surface, Google Dataset Search sets out to solve these issues.

A quick search for “daily weather” (Google seems keen to use this kind of .gov data to exemplify the usefulness of the tool) shows how the service differs from a typical search at Google.com.

Results rank down the left-hand side of the page with the rest of the SERP real estate given over to more information about whichever result you have highlighted (position one is default). This description portion of the page includes:

• Key URL links to landing pages
• Key dates such as the time period the data covers, when the dataset was last updated and/or when it was first published
• Who provides the data
• The license for the data
• Its relevant geolocation
• A description of what the data is

By comparison, a search for the same keyphrase on Google in incognito mode prioritizes results for weather forecasts from Accuweather, the BBC, and the Met Office. So to have a search engine which focuses on pure, recorded data, is immediately useful.

Most results (though not all) make it clear to the user as to when the data is from and what the original source is. And by virtue of the source being included in the Dataset Search SERPs, we can be quite sure that a click through to the site will provide us access to the data we need.

Google Dataset Search: As a place to increase your visibility

As detailed on Google’s launch post for the service, Dataset Search is dependent on webmasters marking up their datasets with the Schema.org vocabulary.

Broadly speaking, Schema.org is a standardized way for developers to make information on their websites easy to crawl and understandable by search engines. SEOs might be familiar with the vocabulary if they have marked up their video content or other non-text objects on their sites. For example, whether they have sought to optimize their business for local search.

There are ample guidelines and sources to assist you with dataset markup (Schema.org homepage, Schema.org dataset markup list, Google’s reference on dataset markup, and Google’s webmaster forum are all very useful). I would argue that if you are lucky enough to produce original data, it is absolutely worth considering making it crawlable and accessible for Google.

If you are thinking about it, I’d also argue that it is important to start ranking in Google Dataset Search now. Traffic to the service might not be massive currently, but the competition to start ranking well is only going to get more difficult. The more webmasters and developers see potential in the service, the more it will be used.

Additionally, dataset markup will not only benefit your ranking in Dataset Search it will also increase your visibility for relevant data-centric queries in Google too. An important point as we see tables and stats incorporated more frequently and more intuitively in elements of the SERPs such as the Knowledge Graph.

In short:

• Getting the most out of your data is straightforward to do.
• The sooner you do, the more likely you are to have a head-start on visibility in Dataset Search before your competitors.
• And it is good best-practice for visibility in increasingly data-intuitive everyday search.

Google Dataset Search: As a ranking signal

There is a good reason to believe that being indexed in Dataset Search will be a ranking signal in its own right.

Google Scholar, which indexes scholarly literature such as journals and books has been noted by Google to provide a valuable signal about the importance and prominence of a dataset.

With that in mind, it makes sense to think a dataset that is well-optimized with clear markup and is appearing in Dataset Search would send a strong signal to Google. This would signal that the respective site is a trusted authority as a source of that type of data.

Thoughts for the future

It is early days for Google Dataset Search. But for SEO, the service is already certainly showing its potential.

As a research tool, its usefulness really depends on the community of research houses who are marking up their data for the benefit of the ecosystem. I expect the number of contributors to the service will grow quickly making for a diverse and comprehensive data tool.

I also expect that the SERPs may change considerably. They certainly work better for these kinds of queries than Google’s normal search pages. But I had some bugbears. For example, which URL am I expected to click on if a search result has more than one? Can’t all results have publication dates and the time period the data covers? Could we see images of graphs/tables in the SERPs?

But when it comes to potential as a place for visibility and a ranking signal, if you are a business that collects data and research (or you are thinking about producing this type of content), now is the time to ensure your datasets are marked up with Schema.org to beat your competitors in ranking on Google Dataset Search. This dataset best practice will also stand you in good stead as Google’s main search engine gets increasingly savvy with how it presents the world’s data.

Luke Richards is a writer for Search Engine Watch and ClickZ. You can follow Luke on Twitter at .

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Slime. It’s the biggest crafting craze of 2018 and a rising video sensation. There were nearly 25 billion slime video views last year. Big box retailers are reporting glue shortages across the country.

Crafting brands are getting into the game, sponsoring content and making last minute products like sparkly glue to jump on the trend. That’s great. But, more brands need to look more deeply at trends like slime and its cousin ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response). Both offer an opportunity for brands to connect to consumers in entirely new ways, on video and in real life.

Are you taking ASMR seriously?

Visually stimulating slime videos are a part of a growing category of wildly popular videos that are being labeled ASMR. These videos offer little controversy and provide consumers with a calming time-out from real life. A small set of brands like IKEA and Dove created viral ASMR videos already. Michelob went so far as to create an ASMR Superbowl commercial.

These one-off commercials are not genuine attempts to be part of the trend but rather were created as tongue-in-cheek cultural references. Similar to slime, real ASMR videos are largely the domain of influencers, and they’re banking billions of video views with long engagement times from viewers that take the content seriously.

With such a trend that is mostly new content, with an unknown amount of staying power, most brands will see bigger rewards by advertising against the content rather than creating their own. Across billions of views, slime videos average 1.5x the engagement of YouTube’s average. To do that well, brands will need to reset their approach. Influencers are not impressed with advertisers to date. This ASMR influencer even created a video to try to teach brands to tone down the volume to better assimilate with ASMR content.

The glue that binds

The different slime video types appeal to different audience segments, which is good for a host of brand categories like beauty, retail and even fitness. The influencers creating content offer deeper audience insights that can help brands select the right type of content for their target audiences, and then create a retargeting strategy to further expand their scale. Broad targeting against the latest craze can be an ad spend black hole, but, for trends such as ASMR and slime videos, a little bit of data goes a long way towards creating a strategy that sticks.

Brands often see great success buying media against influencers in the beauty and fashion space with a growing category called “Get ready with me” videos. Brands are often able to specifically identify the demographics engaging with that influencer and get a read on the universe of other content by that creator who has similar watch times and engagement within those same demographics.

Staying on top of slime

Such new and varied trends like slime or ASMR need to be watched carefully. When content views skyrocket around particular events or themes, there can be serious brand safety risks if brands try to ride the wave without adequate monitoring. A recent focus on the role of comments on YouTube shows that even innocent content can contain elements that brands will need to review and refine regularly, especially when parts of the category appeal to kids.

Trending content like slime videos will attract new content creators nearly every day, who can take the genre in new directions. These new videos are nearly always brand safe, but may not be brand suitable, and so it’s still important to keep a watchful eye. For example, Some slime videos include makeup or branded toys like Play-Doh, which an advertiser might not want to advertise against for competitive reasons.

The magic of YouTube is that brands can connect with consumers on very new content topics and themes, well before most linear and traditional digital content creators catch on. Viewers and influencers both take the category seriously. It’s time for brands to do the same.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Tony Chen is CEO and Founder of Channel Factory, an award-winning ad platform which helps top global brands and agencies maximize YouTube advertising. Recognized in the Forbes 30 Under 30, Tony is also an avid angel investor in e-commerce companies Trendy Butler, FabFitFun, a lifestyle subscription service, and Outreach.io, a sales technology company named by Forbes in their Next Billion Dollar Startups list in 2018.