Pinterest has recruited Walmart’s former CTO Jeremy King as its new head of engineering. King will lead the team responsible for building Pinterest’s visual search engine and report to CEO Ben Silbermann.

Why you should care

As Pinterest closes in on an IPO date, the social network is beefing up its e-commerce chops. Adding King to the executive mix — an e-commerce technology expert who has been focused on creating “seamless shopping experiences” for companies like Walmart and eBay — should better position Pinterest to compete for social e-commerce dollars and market share.

Pinterest’s focus on e-commerce could be good news for marketers who’d like to see the platform move more aggressively in this area. Recent features for retail marketers include Shopping ads and Shop the Look pins.

“Not only is Jeremy a respected engineering leader, but from the moment we met him, we knew his values around putting the customer first were aligned with our own focus on Pinners. As we build products to inspire people to create a life they love, Jeremy’s technical experience and leadership are a perfect combination to build a visual discovery engine for all,” said CEO Ben Silbermann.

More on the news

• As Walmart’s CTO, King oversaw the technology teams for the retailer’s U.S. retail stores and e-commerce for Walmart and Jet.
• In addition to his C-level role at Walmart, King also served as an EVP at LiveOps and VP of engineering for eBay.
• Pinterest has steadily built out its executive team over the last year, hiring Francis Brougher as its first COO and, more recently, naming Andréa Mallard as CMO.

About The Author

Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media’s General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.

The robots.txt file is an often overlooked and sometimes forgotten part of a website and SEO.

But nonetheless, a robots.txt file is an important part of any SEO’s toolset, whether or not you are just starting out in the industry or you are a chiseled SEO veteran.

What is a robots.txt file?

A robots.txt file can be used for for a variety of things, from letting search engines know where to go to locate your sites sitemap to telling them which pages to crawl and not crawl as well as being a great tool for managing your sites crawl budget.

You might be asking yourself “wait a minute, what is crawl budget?” Well crawl budget is what what Google uses to effectively crawl and index your sites pages. As big a Google is, they still only have a limited number of resources available to be able to crawl and index your sites content.

If your site only has a few hundred URLs then Google should be able to easily crawl and index your site’s pages.

However, if your site is big, like an ecommerce site for example and you have thousands of pages with lots of auto-generated URLs, then Google might not crawl all of those pages and you will be missing on lots of potential traffic and visibility.

This is where the importance of prioritizing what, when and how much to crawl becomes important.

Google have stated that “having many low-value-add URLs can negatively affect a site’s crawling and indexing.” This is where having a robots.txt file can help with the factors affecting your sites crawl budget.

You can use the file to help manage your sites crawl budget, by making sure that search engines are spending their time on your site as efficiently (especially if you have a large site) as possible and crawling only the important pages and not wasting time on pages such as login, signup or thank you pages.

Why do you need robots.txt?

Before a robot such as Googlebot, Bingbot, etc. crawls a webpage, it will first check to see if there is in fact a robots.txt file and, if one exists, they will usually follow and respect the directions found within that file.

A robots.txt file can be a powerful tool in any SEO’s arsenal as it’s a great way to control how search engine crawlers/bots access certain areas of your site. Keep in mind that you need to be sure you understand how the robots.txt file works or you will find yourself accidentally disallowing Googlebot or any other bot from crawling your entire site and not having it be found in the search results!

But when done properly you can control such things as:

1. Blocking access to entire sections of your site (dev and staging environment etc.)
2. Keeping your sites internal search results pages from being crawled, indexed or showing up in search results.
3. Specifying the location of your sitemap or sitemaps
4. Optimizing crawl budget by blocking access to low value pages (login, thank you, shopping carts etc..)
5. Preventing certain files on your website (images, PDFs, etc.) from being indexed

Robots.txt Examples

Below are a few examples of how you can use the robots.txt file on your own site.

Allowing all web crawlers/robots access to all your sites content:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Blocking all web crawlers/bots from all your sites content:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

You can see how easy it is to make a mistake when creating your sites robots.txt as the difference from blocking your entire site from being seen is a simple forward slash in the disallow directive (Disallow: /).

Blocking a specific web crawlers/bots from a specific folder:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

Blocking a web crawlers/bots from a specific page on your site:

User-agent: Disallow: /thankyou.html

Exclude all robots from part of the server:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /junk/

This is example of what the robots.txt file on the theverge.com’s website looks like:

The example file can be viewed here: www.theverge.com/robots.txt

You can see how The Verge use their robots.txt file to specifically call out Google’s news bot “Googlebot-News” to make sure that it doesn’t crawl those directories on the site.

It’s important to remember that if you want to make sure that a bot doesn’t crawl certain pages or directories on your site, that you call out those pages and or directories in the in “Disallow” declarations in your robots.txt file, like in the above examples.

You can review how Google handles the robots.txt file in their robots.txt specifications guide, Google has a current maximum file size limit for the robots.txt file, the maximum size for Google is set at 500KB, so it’s important to be mindful of the size of your sites robots.txt file.

How to create a robots.txt file

Creating a robots.txt file for your site is a fairly simple process, but it’s also easy to make a mistake. Don’t let that discourage you from creating or modifying a robots file for your site. This article from Google walks you through the robots.txt file creation process and should help you get comfortable creating your very own robots.txt file.

Once you are comfortable with creating or modify your site’s robots file, Google has another great article that explains how to test your sites robots.txt file to see if it is setup correctly.

Checking if you have a robots.txt file

If you are new to the robots.txt file or are not sure if your site even has one, you can do a quick check to see. All you need to do to check is go to your sites root domain and then add /robots.txt to the end of the URL. Example: www.yoursite.com/robots.txt

If nothing shows up, then you do not have a robots.txt file for you site. Now would be the perfect time to jump in and test out creating one for your site.

Best Practices:

1. Make sure all important pages are crawlable, and content that won’t provide any real value if found in search are blocked.
2. Don’t block your sites JavaScript and CSS files
3. Always do a quick check of your file to make sure nothing has changed by accident
4. Proper capitalization of directory, subdirectory and file names
5. Place the robots.txt file in your websites root directory for it to be found
6. Robots.txt file is case sensitive,  the file must be named “robots.txt” (no other variations)
7. Don’t use the robots.txt file to hide private user information as it will still be visible
8. Add your sitemaps location to your robots.txt file.
9. Make sure that you are not blocking any content or sections of your website you want crawled.

Things to keep in mind:

If you have a subdomain or multiple subdomains on your site, then you you will need to have a robots.txt file on each subdomain as well as on the main root domain. This would look something like this store.yoursite.com/robots.txt and yoursite.com/robots.txt.

Like mentioned above in the “best practices section” it’s important to remember not to use the robots.txt file to prevent sensitive data, such as private user information from being crawled and appearing in the search results.

The reason for this, is that it’s possible that other pages might be linking to that information and if there’s a direct link back it will bypass the robots.txt rules and that content may still get indexed. If you need to block your pages from truly being indexed in the search results, use should use different method like adding password protection or by adding a noindex meta tag to those pages. Google can not login to a password protected site/page, so they will not be able to crawl or index those pages.

Conclusion

While you might be a little nervous if you have never worked on robots.txt file before, rest assured it is fairly simple to use and set up. Once you get comfortable with the ins and outs of the robots file, you’ll be able to enhance your site’s SEO as well as help your site’s visitors and search engine bots.

By setting up your robots.txt file the right way, you will be helping search engine bots spend their crawl budgets wisely and help ensure that they aren’t wasting their time and resources crawling pages that don’t need to be crawled. This will help them in organizing and displaying your sites content in the SERPs in the best way possible, which in turn means you’ll have more visibility.

Keep in mind that it doesn’t necessarily take a whole lot of time and effort to setup your robots.txt file. For the most part, it’s a one-time setup, that you can then make little tweaks and changes to help better sculpt your site.

I hope the practices, tips and suggestions described in this article will help give you the confidence to go out and create/tweak your sites robots.txt file and at the same time help guide you smoothly through the process.

Michael McManus is Earned Media (SEO) Practice Lead at iProspect.

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Spring is often associated with a fresh, new, clean start and a renewed sense of life. For many, this getting rid of the old and in with the new takes on the form of spring cleaning.  While you may be thinking about the house, why not think of refreshing and reviving your business’ website?  After all, your website is your business’ presence online and is the first interaction customers have with your company.

Does your website accurately display your company’s character, personality and culture? Is it current and up to date?

Like your home, you may acquire a different taste in décor and choose to go beyond cleaning to overhauling a room’s look. Spring is a great time to do the same for your business website.

There are some things to consider when spring cleaning your website:

Update Content and Information

Does the content of your website still embody your company’s personality and mission? Is your last blog post or “news” item from a year or two ago? Is the company contact information and personnel biographies current?

Nothing is more boring or unprofessional looking as a website that is full of outdated, incorrect information. Additionally, consider adding regular blog posts so your site. This can give your site a constant stream of fresh content that piques the interest of customers and catches the attention of search engines.

For e-commerce websites with online ordering and a catalogue of products, make sure the description for each product is correct and updated. Be sure to display current inventory, not discontinued items.

Test Out the Website’s Usability

Is your website easy to navigate and do all the internal links work? If not, site visitors will be quick to leave. It is also a good idea to check if your website is compatible on different devices such as phones and tablets. Also, look through all the content for grammar, spelling, punctuation errors and industry jargon. The tone and style of the content should be consistent on each webpage and should reflect the image and personality of the brand.

A website that looks nice and is easy to use increases the time visitors spend on the website, whereby increasing their chance of converting.

Give it a Fresh Look

Like your personal home décor preferences, your business will undergo a brand refresh to update and freshen its look to match its evolving personality. The frequency of this change can also be attributed to the preferences of a business’ targeted customers and the industry a business is in.

When undergoing a brand or website redesign, it’s a good idea to work with a professional website designer as they  know their way around the colors and font styles and sizes and their emotional and psychological effects. He or she will know which complimentary colors should be incorporated as well as the appropriate website design and layout for the look and feel of one’s brand and the personality it wants its website visitors to experience.

In addition to changing up the layout, typography and color scheme, also consider adding new photos (that are optimized) along with fresh content. Adding an events calendar and current news can also revive the appearance of a bland website.

Make Sure the Links Work

Outdated or broken links can can lower your business’ credible, trustworthy, professional appearance. If the internal and external links point to pages that are either outdated or no longer exist, your page’s SEO and online visibility can suffer. One should check out each link on their website frequently and regularly.

Make Sure Third Party Website Apps and Extensions Work

Are your company’s social media and RSS feeds properly linked and connected to your website? Are third party on-page analytics trackers up and running? Is the spam filter on your blog post comments turned on or should you disallow all commenting on old blog posts to avoid spam? If your business has an app, does it work properly? If the third party apps and extensions installed on your website  fail to work properly, you miss out on  taking the biggest online advantage you have, making your content shareable, and valuable analytics information about your website users and their behavior and interaction with your website. Without these analytics data, it is hard to assess the areas of improvement.

Evaluate and Clarify Your Site’s Call-to-Actions

Are the calls to action (CTA) of each page of your website obvious and clear? If it isn’t noticeable or clear, website visitors won’t know what action to take which can lead to missed conversions, purchases and e-newsletter subscriptions. When people come to your site, they not only want to quickly find the information they are looking for, but they also want to be told what to do with the information you provide.

Renew or Re-evaluate the Domain Name and Web Hosting Plan

It’s always a good idea to look at your website hosting plan each year as many plans require annual renewal. Did the hosting provider take care of any or all the glitches of your website? Did they provide adequate website protection? Were they responsive and easy to work with? Did prices go up or do you feel like you’re overpaying for service? Your website can’t function without a hosting provider. You need to be sure the one you choose is skilled, experienced, trustworthy, responsive and are comfortable to work with.

Similarly, yearly evaluation of your website’s domain is also a good idea. Does it clearly communicate the company’s name and targeted keywords? Is it catchy, concise and memorable? If you’re overhauling a company re-brand, will the current domain name fit the new brand identity and personality?

Spring is a great time to clean up your website and bring new life into your business. This entails ensuring that your website functions correctly, that it is easy to navigate and that the content is accurate and current. Besides being easy to use and fun to interact with, one’s website may be in need of redesign and a new look.

Whether you’re undergoing a major re-branding or simply want to make a few minor tweaks and improvements, the professionals at SEO.com can help. We are a full-service digital marketing company with professional developers, website designers, content and SEO specialists and PPC professionals. Contact us today to learn more about we can help you in your website spring cleaning.

The top sites and networks for mobile app installs are, in order, Facebook, Google, Apple (Search Ads), Snap and Twitter. This changes somewhat by app category and geography but this is the hierarchy in North America according to the latest AppsFlyer Performance Index (registration required).

Facebook #1 overall, Snap most improved. Facebook remains the top network for mobile app installs overall. It’s also the ROI leader, while Snap saw the best improvement in ROI in the non-gaming category. Google is a strong number two in the majority of categories. Apple generally follows in the third position or fourth, though not in all categories. Twitter, Snap (as mentioned) and others rank highly depending on the category: gaming vs. non-gaming, etc.

The analysis is based on more than 20 billion installs during the second half of 2018. It also examined more than 11,000 apps across more than 350 media networks.

Fraud is high, Facebook and Google share flat. One of the more important findings, AppsFlyer said that app-install fraud remains high. Indeed, the company reports that 30 percent of all installs are fraudulent. AppsFlyer added that the affiliate model for app marketing is losing ground because it is more vulnerable to fraud.

AppsFlyer further reports that that although the perception is that Facebook and Google’s dominance and share of the app-install market are growing, their combined market share is large but flat. Especially in gaming, a number of networks (AppLovin, ironSource, Unity Ads, Vungle, Tapjoy) are growing and showing strength.

Why should you care. The report is useful to app marketers to better understand the networks and platforms to use to market their apps. Facebook, Google and Apple Search Ads are must-dos. After that marketers can be more selective.

The other important thing in the report to be aware of is app-install fraud. According to estimates, app developers are spending an average of 31 percent of their budgets on app marketing. Billions of dollars globally are thus being wasted because of widespread fraud. Choose your networks wisely.

About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google+.

So you’ve created your website, following all the recommended SEO best practices.

That means you’ve included valuable, relevant keywords on your pages, made it mobile friendly and even started a blog that you’re updating frequently with original, relevant content.

But despite your best efforts, you’re not seeing as much traffic as you’d like, and your site is still ranking too low on Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP). It could be that your site is missing just one thing: backlinks.

Backlinks are links from another website that point to your website. Getting backlinks from websites with high domain authority that are relevant to your niche will help you rank higher on Google searches and grab your audience’s attention.

Why is there such an emphasis on backlinks? Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) uses them to discover new pages, confirm pages are legitimate and determine the popularity of these pages. After all, Google doesn’t want to risk its own reputation by ranking subpar sites high on the SERP. According to a study by Backlinko, the number of domains linking to a webpage “correlated with rankings more than any other factor”.

Backlink generation isn’t easy, especially for new businesses or businesses just starting to build their web presence. However, with time, effort and the right tools, you can make sure you’re ranking high and receiving the views you deserve.

If you’re a business owner and want to boost your backlinks, here are eight tools to get you started.

1. MozBar

MozBar is a free SEO toolbar you download onto your web browser. It shows you the domain authority (DA) of a certain website, which gives you an indication of whether or not you should reach out for a backlink. If you do earn a backlink from a website with a DA, this will positively affect your own site’s authority.

In terms of DA, it ranges from 1 to 100, and the higher, the better. There’s no ideal number to look for, but generally, try finding sites with excellent content that relate to your field. If the DA is, say, a 35, that won’t help you as much as a site with a 75, but it won’t hurt, either. Research sites thoroughly and makes sure they aren’t spammy before pursuing them.

2. SEMrush

SEMrush, which helps with all types of marketing strategies, shows users a few key tools for backlink generation. When logged into the paid version, you can navigate to the mentions section and find which websites are mentioning you but not linking to you. Once you discover these mentions, you can reach out and ask for a link to your site (as long as the site is relevant and has a high DA), which will boost your rankings.

Another tactic is to go into the backlink audit and see who’s currently linking to your website. Check to see if the link appears underneath the proper SEO-rich keyword and if the site is legitimate and relevant. (If the site is not legitimate, you may want to reach out and ask them to take it down, since that backlink can potentially hurt your ranking.)

While on SEMrush, try the backlink gap tool, which shows you which backlink opportunities your competitors are not taking advantage of. Then, you can reach out and ask for those valuable backlinks instead.

3. Pitchbox

Pitchbox is a platform to find websites that may want to spread the news about your business or backlink to your pages or content. You simply sign up for Pitchbox, log in, paste the link to the page/content you’re doing backlink generation for and add in some specific keywords you’re looking to target. Then, in a minute or two, Pitchbox will come up with (usually) hundreds of websites you can reach out to.

You can filter for or delete any websites with low domain authority, and go through the sites one by one to see which are valuable. You can reach out to these websites using a Pitchbox email template. Pitchbox will show you the contacts for that site (or allow you to manually input them), automatically place in the person’s name and their website name, and send as many follow-up emails as you’d like.

When using Pitchbox, double check the contacts to make sure they’re current. Another best practice is to email a maximum of two people at the website since you don’t want to spam numerous people within an organization. If you’re having trouble with backlink generation, consider offering a backlink exchange. Just make sure, again, that the site you’re promising to link to relevant to yours and not spammy.

4. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is similar to SEMrush and allows you to use the platform’s backlinks checker to view your current backlinks. Since they’ve already linked to your content before, you can ask these sites to link back to your other pages as well. Ahrefs also allows you to disavow toxic backlinks that might hurt your ranking.

Another helpful backlink generation tool is the Ahrefs Site Explorer. By entering the name of your competitor, you can see all of their referring backlinks. Using that information, you can reach out to the same sites that are linking to your competitors and see if they want to link to a valuable piece of content from your site.

5. Google Alerts

Let’s say you don’t have time to log onto SEMrush or Ahrefs every day and go through your mentions and backlinks. Instead, sign up for Google Alerts, which will email you when you’re mentioned somewhere. Visit the websites that mention you and try to find the contact information for someone you can reach out to there. If you can’t find them, log onto Hunter.io, which is a free tool for finding email addresses using only a domain name.

6. Broken Link Builder

Somebody’s broken link can be your backlinking opportunity with Broken Link Builder. With this tool, you can find dead websites and their respective backlinks, and then offer up similar content to the website that was linking to the dead link. It’s a white-hat SEO tactic that benefits both webmasters and backlink seekers. Broken Link Builder only takes 30 to 60 minutes to generate a report for you to find valuable backlinking opportunities.

7. Majestic

Majestic is a backlinking tool, like SEMrush and Ahrefs, that examines all the backlinks for your website, as well as your competitors, and allows you to perform very specific searches. You can search and filter backlinks however you choose, including by crawl or discovery dates, anchor text, link type, URL snippet or merchant ID. Majestic also claims to have the largest index out of any other service.

8. Linkody

Linkody is another platform for tracking and performing research on backlinks. It tells you when you lose or gain links, and you can disavow bad links. You’re able to see your competitors’ backlinks and analyze your own link profile. You can choose to receive daily notifications in your inbox, view which links point to your landing pages and connect your Linkody and Google Analytics accounts for more backlink information. If you don’t want to pay for the service, you can use Linkody’s Free Backlink Checker to check two unique domains per week.

Tracking backlinks

With backlink generation, you need to track your efforts. A good place to do this is within a Google Sheet. Create a spreadsheet and share it with your team working on backlinks. They should input information like the date the backlink was pursued, the DA of the website, the URL of the website, the target URL of your content or page, the date the backlink was added, the contact’s email address and any notes about the process. Then, when you’re doing another round of backlink generation, you can refer to your Google sheet and reach out to the same people to see if they’d like to link to something else of yours.

Backlinks will always be part of Google’s ranking requirements. Understanding their importance and learning how to use these tools empowers you to do effective backlink generation that can increase your rankings and bring in more visitors to your site.

Mario Medina is a content strategist. He can be found on Twitter .

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Facebook advertisers promoting housing, employment or credit offers will no longer be able to target ads by age, gender or ZIP code. The new ad policy applies to advertisers targeting U.S. users on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.

The company said Tuesday that it will also launch a tool for users to search and view all current housing ads running on its platforms in the U.S., regardless of who the ads are targeted to.

Why you should care

Any advertiser running campaigns promoting housing, employment or credit offers will now have limited ad targeting measures. The move is part of a settlement Facebook has reached with the ACLU, NFHA and CWA which accused the platform of allowing discriminatory practices within their ad targeting options.

“There is a long history of discrimination in the areas of housing, employment and credit, and this harmful behavior should not happen through Facebook ads,” wrote Facebook Sheryl Sandberg in the announcement.

Facebook said multicultural affinity targeting will continue to be unavailable for housing, employment and credit ads, along with any detailed targeting options that describe or appear to relate to protected classes.

More on the news

• In 2016, ProPublica reported that Facebook advertisers were able to use the platform’s ad-targeting options to discriminate against protected groups.
• Facebook’s VP of ads Rob Goldman rebuked ProPublica’s later claims that Facebook’s ad targeting options for employment ads were discriminatory.
• Facebook said Tuesday that it will work with civil rights groups, experts and policy makers to prevent discrimination and promote fairness on its platforms.

About The Author

Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media’s General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.

The times when ranking high in search results as the final goal have passed.

As search algorithms are improving and there’s no place for keyword stuffing anymore, SEO experts should adopt for trends coming and replacing each other too fast.

Today SEO involves loads of practices including link building, technical optimization, proper keyword research, and more. Although the process of boosting websites’ rankings is challenging enough, it isn’t the only task SEO specialists should cope with. To help businesses engage their target audience and make them convert is the problem falling to SEO practitioners as well.

Here comes the need for UX optimization, which is impossible not knowing what matters most of all for the target audience coming to the specific website. In this article, I’ll tell you about the most important steps to focus on for your customers and how to improve the user experience.

The debate rages: How much does UX count?

UX = CTR in some way. The debate about CTR among SEOs is evergreen, really. Everyone tries to defend his or her point of view despite Google’s statements on this issue. And recently, a new wave of discussion sparked up after the tweet of Moz SEO, Britney Muller. She tweeted about a new Google document that implies CTR matters for ranking.

Different SEO specialists expressed their opinions and tried to confirm or deny this fact, as several weeks before that Google also said CTR for ranking is made up.

For example, Barry Schwartz said that this new doc is “Confusing. Google did write “when you click a link in Google Search, Google considers your click when ranking that search result in future queries.” They should clarify that it is used for personalized search.”

Also read: Google RankBrain: Clearing up the myths and misconceptions

Regardless of all these debates, CTR and UX itself is a great practice. Even if it doesn’t improve your rankings, it’ll make your site more understandable, comfortable, and informative for visitors.

Why should SEO pros bother with user experience?

It may seem that being number one on Google search results is key to an engaging audience and driving conversions. It’s not quite so. Every improvement of search algorithms Google brought in recent years is focused on providing user-friendly results. Of course, domain authority and quality links are still important, but if the website ranked top has poor user experience, it may lose its positions soon.

How does it happen? Well, let’s assume your website is technically optimized, has a perfect content-to-keywords balance, and has links even from .edu domains. All these factors are most likely to result in high rankings.

But if the site is not fulfilling users’ expectations, it may take a dip as quickly as it’s rocketed. Once people that clicked through your website aren’t satisfied with the result, they’ll leave it quickly. The next time Google updates search results, it’ll see that your page’s bounce rate is too high.

The numbers will point to the fact your site isn’t relevant to the query, and it shouldn’t rank that high.

Bounce rate isn’t the only factor search engines consider when analyzing user experience. There are also such signals as pages per session, dwell-time, and organic CTR. As you see, the tasks of an experienced SEO specialist are much broader than it used to be several years ago. But the results cost the effort.

Best practices for UX improvement

The good news is that you already know these practices. The only difference is that using them now, you should concentrate not on the search engines’ requirements but on meeting the needs of your visitors.

Let me take you through the user’s journey point by point and emphasize on crucial aspects influencing his or her decisions. Here we go.

Search query

Where does the search journey start? Right, everything starts from the query. Once users have questions, they go to search engines and ask them. That’s why knowing what your potential customers are likely to look for is half-way to success.

The knowledge of queries your target audience conducts helps you come up not only with content ideas but also with key phrases your page should rank for. There are several questions you should answer to make your keyword research user-focused:

1. Do you consider user intent?

The thing is that every user conducting a search query has a certain intent. In other words, there’s always the reason why a person searches for something. If I search for “iPhone price”, there’s a 90 percent probability that I want to buy the smartphone. In this case, Google will provide me with various online stores. Searching for “Apple or Samsung”, it’s most likely I want to read the articles where authors compare devices produced by these two companies. And again, the search engine will get it.

Therefore, it’s essential to denote the intent of the content you provide. If you own an online shop, you should mark transactional intent on your page. Add “buy”, “price”, “purchase”, “on sale”, and other related keywords. If you run a blog, use the phrases with “how to”, “what is”, “best tips”, and more. Denoting intent not only helps search engines rank your website for the relevant queries but also provides users with a better understanding of what they’ll see on your page.

Moreover, users quite often don’t mark their intent in their search queries. One can type “women jeans”, and the machine won’t be 100 percent sure whether a person wants to get some fashion tips or purchase jeans. In this case, the search results will contain both informational and transactional websites. To help your prospects understand if they should click through your site, you’d better denote what type of service you provide.

2. What queries do your prospects conduct?

Even if you think you understand what kind of information concerning your product your target audience may be interested in, don’t jump to conclusions. Working in a niche is pretty different from being a consumer. The words you use to describe what you do may be absolutely unknown for people searching for your product at first.

As we concluded it’s important to know what kind of search queries your potential customer’s conduct. I’ll show you the quickest ways to identify these queries.

• Serpstat Search Suggestions: Providing the opportunity to research keywords, analyze competitors’ websites, and conduct SEO audit, this tool also provides you with search suggestions related to the researched keyword. These are the queries usually popping up when you start typing your keyword in the search field. Instead of collecting all these variations of queries by yourself, you can go with this tool.

• Answer The Public: This tool specializes in content ideas and keyword research. Enter your main keyword in the search field, and you’ll see the list of questions users ask on the subject.

• People also ask: I mean the box in SERP appearing among the search results engines provides to your query. If you pay attention to it, you may find lots of relevant suggestions for you to use in the future. Tap on the arrow near the questions, and you’ll see even more variations.

Snippets

The next step users undertake after entering the search query is choosing which website from all the search results provides the most comprehensive information. And how do they make a decision? Right, they judge by what they see in the snippet.

The website may contain high-quality and relevant content, but failing to denote it in the snippet, decreases its chances to get high traffic dramatically. In fact, there are two pieces of metadata influencing how your snippet may look.

1. Title tag & meta description

Of course, creating a catchy and intriguing title and description is essential in case you want to attract the audience’s attention. But you should be careful. In the way, a boring title will bring you little profit, the too promising one will also do you no good.

You may say: “There are loads of posts on the subject, I should make my page stand out.” I agree. Partly. You should stand out. But with unique and quality content, not with false promises in your snippets.

Once you promised something that you don’t provide on your page, it’ll increase your bounce rate and hurt user experience.

So, when creating a title tag and meta description, make sure you:

• Provide the main idea of your content in the title
• Emphasize on your competitive advantage in your description
• Denote user intent
• Don’t spam with keyword stuffing
• Don’t make false promises

2. Page speed

After your audience clicked through your website, there’s one more thing they’ll face before seeing the page itself. Page speed is the factor considered not only by search robots but also by users.

If a person (especially a mobile user) should wait for more than several seconds for your server to answer, the chances he or she will return to search results are quite significant. Here’s an infographic by HubSpot.

There are services, such as PageSpeed Insights, Serpstat, and Moz, which analyze web pages’ loading speed and generate suggestions to make them faster.

Never forget that 48.2 percent of web page views worldwide account for mobile device users. So, if you don’t want to damage the user experience, it’s worth checking whether your website is mobile-friendly or not. Click on “mobile” to see the analysis of your mobile version. You may be surprised to see that these two versions differ a lot.

Design & content structure

When people have already chosen your website, clicked through it, and waited for it to get loaded, they see your page. What’s the first thing catching the visitor’s eye? The way it looks. Your content may be incredibly authoritative and trustworthy, but once users see it’s impossible to draw the essential data quickly, they might decide the content is too complicated.

I’ve circled out a few tips for you to follow when elaborating your content structure and design:

• The more minimalistic your website looks, the better. It’s pretty easy to overdo when it comes to design. Concentrate not on unusual fonts but on readability of your content.
• Provide a clear structure for your texts. Your visitors should see compelling questions or topics you cover in the headings. It’ll denote they’ll get the answers in the paragraphs below.

• If your article is long enough, add internal tags to your content in the beginning. It’ll help users navigate if they want to find something specific.

Navigation

Mind that lots of visitors don’t come to your website from your home page. Make sure your website is easy to navigate for users to visit different pages of your website. Remember that the more time people spend on your site, the better the user experience it causes.

First of all, your menu button (or hamburger button) should always be handy. It would be the most convenient to create a fixed header for your web pages. Due to such a header, visitors won’t have to scroll the page after they’ve read your content.

Moreover, when unrolled, the menu shouldn’t overlap the page content. Talking of overlapping, try to avoid pop-ups. All the advertisements overtaking the article every minute cause extremely poor user experience.

Don’t forget to provide clearly labeled categories on the menu. Everything should be organized logically. To make your website even more convenient in the usage, add a search box. If visitors aren’t sure which category contains the necessary information, this box will help a lot.

Never stop testing

Here were the basic tips which may help you improve UX for your website. Following them is the start, not the finish line. UX tendencies are changing almost as often as search algorithms do.

Always look for ways of improving your strategies. Track users’ reactions to your new posts. ask yourself, “Did the conversions improve when you applied a new design?” Analyze all the changes whether they’re good or not and discover how you can develop user experience.

Inna Yatsyna is a Brand and Community Development Specialist at Serpstat. She can be found on Twitter .

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Boston-based Teikametrics announced the addition of an hourly bidding solution for Amazon advertisers using Teikametrics Flywheel campaign optimization platform Monday.

Why you should care

The company says the bidding algorithm is powered by machine learning and analyzes ad data, transaction data, and importantly, cost of goods sold data. The algorithm analyzes bids hourly to make adjustments when needed.  “Amazon is continually providing more and more access to data and API opportunities, along with more ad units,” said Alasdair McLean-Foreman, CEO of Teikametrics, by phone Monday.

Teikametrics refers to Flywheel as a retail optimization platform (ROP). “We consider this a new category,” said McLean-Foreman. It’s a different use case, said McLean-Foreman, because the transactions from ad engagements happen right on Amazon, unlike ads on Google or Facebook. The platform using machine learning to optimize pricing, operation and inventory performance for Amazon advertisers.

“We can see the transactions and profitability. The brands don’t give Amazon cost of goods sold data, but they give it to us,” explained McLean-Foreman. With that combination of data — ad, transaction and cost of goods sold — the algorithm can optimize bids for profitability.

McLean-Foreman compared the hourly bidding algorithm to a digital thermostat that can regularly check and react to climate changes to maintain a steady room temperature. “The bids don’t change every hour by default,” he said. Instead, it checks the bid status more regularly to deliver more consistent optimization.

“The longer you have an under-optimized bid, the more it’s going to cost you,” said McLean Foreman. The scale of data — it claims $6 billion in retail sales has gone through the platform — and optimization frequency means its hourly algorithm can deliver millions in increased profitability for sellers, said McLean Foreman.

More on the news

• Hourly bidding is available to all sellers using Teikametrics Flywheel.
• The company says it is particularly ideal for high volume auctions in verticals such as consumer electronics, household items, and apparel that “will benefit the most during the first few days of bidding, during which time wasted ad spend can be curtailed by up to 50 percent.”
  
• Lower volume sectors can also gain more auction and keyword performance insights faster with the added granularity of the hourly capability.

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.

For some businesses, there is only a small team, or even one individual, in charge of all the pay-per-click, or PPC advertising.

And that one person, or team, may have other responsibilities that cut into that PPC management time. As the business grows, keeping up with all the work that goes into a well-managed PPC account (or multiple accounts) can be difficult. So it may be necessary to outsource some, or all, of this workload.

The challenge now is to find the right PPC software or management company. The purpose of this article will be to help you identify the needs of your business and what to look for in companies or software that best fits those needs.

Identify your business needs

There are many options available to small businesses for PPC advertising management including tools and specialized software, all the way to full-service PPC management agencies. The decision to go with one over the other depends on three things:

• The amount of control you want to retain
• The time you have to invest
• What you can afford

If you want to keep full control of your accounts, devote some time to managing them. And if you’re working with a conservative budget, then a PPC management software may be perfect. However, if you don’t mind handing over the reign, or have little or no time to spare, and can afford the extra expense, then a full-service PPC management agency might be right for you.

Read also: 10 reasons to hire a PPC management expert.

Not all businesses are going to fall into the these options, and most will actually be somewhere in between. Other considerations to be taken into account when identifying your businesses’ needs include the number of PPC accounts you have, average monthly spend, ad type mix, and whether you currently manage PPC manually or with automation.

Types of PPC accounts and ads

PPC accounts could include one, all, or a mix of the following:

1. Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook, or other social media ads.
2. Types of ads: Search, search & display, video, shopping, not to mention remarketing ads.
3. Types of ad management: Manual, manual and some automation, or full automation.

Research software and management companies

I was recently tasked by my company to research and create a top three list of PPC management companies, or software tools, in order to free up my time to work on our websites.

So I began my search for companies that provide these services and software. After compiling a list of the ones I wanted to investigate further, I signed up for software demos, free trials, free PPC audits, or free phone consultations.

Below are some details of my research into these companies. This is clearly not an exhaustive list of what’s available out there, but it’s a helpful guide if you’re unsure of where to start.

PPC management agencies

1. CPC Strategy/CAPx software

Features: Free PPC audit with follow up consultation and demo of software designed for Google Ads and Google Shopping feed management. Management services include PPC lead gen, paid search, Amazon, and Facebook.

Pricing: Not listed on their site, but during the consult, they provided a price range based on current accounts and recommended services. The estimate I received for the company I work for, was a range of $2,500 to $3,500 for the one-time setup fee, plus 25 percent of our monthly ad spend.

My research experience: Sign up for the audit and demo was easy and they contacted me pretty quick about getting me set up. I had the consult call which lasted 45 minutes and was a detailed overview of our accounts including areas that were working or not working in our favor, how they could be improved, and how they would help solve these issues as well as improve our overall account performance. After the representative went over the audit results, it was recommended that we go with PPC management services rather than the CAPx software alone.

Final impression: I was really impressed with the detailed results and feedback I received about our account. Using the software without managed services was definitely not something that would be beneficial for us, nor could we use it to manage Bing Ads. The pricing was also quite high, more than what we can fit into our budget. Their PPC management services did sound robust and valuable, just not the right fit for us.

2. Black Propeller

Features: Full-service management with dedicated account management, research, analysis & strategy development, comprehensive optimization, and custom reporting are all included in their listed services.

Pricing: Pricing not listed on their website but was in the proposal. Fee schedule is based on the monthly ad spend as follows: 13 percent for more than $5,000 monthly spend, 15 percent for $3,000 to $5,000 monthly spend, or a flat fee of $399 for less than $3,000 monthly ad spend, per account.

My research experience: Sign up for the free consultation was easy, but no audit was performed first. Consult call was about 15 minutes and we reviewed what kind of accounts we currently have, what we’re looking for, and more. Received a proposal a few days later that included a high-level overview of services they provide along with their fee schedule.

Final impression: Although quick to set up a call after the sign-up, the call was too short to fully understand our needs and accounts. It took a few days to get the proposal and it was very generic, not designed around our businesses’ specific needs. Looking back at their website, there are no testimonials from clients, very basic high-level content, and very little company information. We did have a good call and their representative was great to talk with, so it’s possible that the customer service could be great. I would recommend further research.

3. JumpFly

Features: Integrated service offerings include digital strategy, ad copy, PPC analytics, display and paid search, dedicated PPC account manager, and an account specialist with weekly, monthly. Plus, ad hoc client calls with weekly and monthly reporting.

Pricing: One time new client fee $1,495 includes utilization of Google Ads and Bing Ads, plus a monthly management fee based on the monthly ad spend, broken down into tiers starting at $600 (up to $3,000 in ad spend) to 10 percent (at $30,000 to $150,000 in ad spend).

My research experience: Signed up for their free PPC audit, which they linked directly to our Google Ads account, and then sent a detailed report within a few days that included specifics of actionable items, and a description of the on-boarding process. The audit report features JumpFly agency intro, audit (initial thoughts), and specific areas they see that need work.

Final impression: It was a very simple process for the audit and the report had lots of details, specific to our account, of how to optimize, and grow, our account. The report was comprehensive, not simply focusing on their service. They even had simple, actionable items that I could immediately implement. The pricing seemed reasonable enough for what we’d get in return. The company also had a very thorough website and appears knowledgeable and trustworthy.

PPC management software tools (with and without additional managed services)

1. ProAdly

Features: As described on the website, “Automated Optimization Suggestions: ProAdly constantly analyses your AdWords account and calculates suitable suggestions and optimizations. Optimizations are calculated and weighted with the expected impact. Potentials for savings and growth are shown. Suggestions for optimizations are shown for: Google Shopping bid optimization, ad time planner, device planner, good & bad keywords, text ad creation, quality scores, and keywords.”

Pricing: A free 14-day trial offer plus a free live demo. Pricing is based on the number of AdWords accounts and Merchant Center accounts. Up to five accounts – $250 per month; up to 25 accounts – $459 per month. Discount available if paying annually.

My research experience: The trial was easy to get started and set up, bringing in your accounts. The recommendations it gave were decent, but there were times that my accounts gave me suggestions, and this software did not. It was very simple to use and straightforward on what it does (and doesn’t do).

Final impression: A big con was it’s designed for Google AdWords only, no Bing Ads management. I was also unable to find any training, but there’s a live chat box and an article finder to ask for help. That being said, the software is not very comprehensive. The only thing I can see that it does is offering recommendations to optimize your account, but you can’t create campaigns or do any re-structuring within the software. That being said, if you want something that can offer suggestions on dozens of Google Ads accounts in one place, then this may be helpful on a day-to-day basis for quick optimizations.

2. Optmyzr

Features: PPC management software suite includes account management for Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Google Shopping feeds. One-click optimizations, data insight tools, report designer, quality score tracker, Bing tools, Google Ads scripts, Google Shopping campaign tools, advanced reporting features, advanced shopping features, rule engine and custom optimizations, custom domain for reports, training sessions (two personal sessions with PRO accounts, email support, all accounts linked to software (no limit), and spend per month linked up to $500k. Plus, automation credits (250 free credits per month for a Pro account).

Pricing:  Regular $499 per month for a Pro account (discounts for six months or annual payments). Enterprise level available, have to contact for pricing.

My research experience: The free 14-day trial was easy to sign up for and I was able to quickly pull in all our AdWords accounts, analytics accounts, Bing Ads, and shopping feeds. It was nice to have everything in one place. The software gave decent recommendations. Training is offered with a free Udemy private training course.

Final impression: A very comprehensive software that was impressive. Plus, for us, we’d be able to manage all of our accounts in one place. Ability to create ads, create structure, and set up custom rules. The price is really great for what this tool can do. I think this is the perfect software for someone who has a really good working knowledge of PPC accounts, and knows what needs to be done (as far as structuring). After the initial work of getting everything set up and creating rules, it will definitely be a time-saver as well.

3. Spaceboost

Features: The description on their website, “Spaceboost combines creative automation, campaigns operations automation, powerful 24/7 bidding algorithms, and outstanding customer service to help 5,000+ brands scale their results – not headcount – on Google, Bing & Amazon.”

Pricing: On their website, they have a very cool sliding scale that includes different packages of software with or without mentoring, and with or without managed services, at different business levels. Based on my company’s monthly ad spend the approximate cost for us is as follows: Software alone $1,000, software without mentoring $1,500, or software with mentoring, and managed services $2,250.

My research experience: Very easy to sign up for a free 30-day trial. There is tons of training videos plus support via email, chat, and phone. Free academy training is also available. That being said, it was a bit overwhelming and I wasn’t sure how to use the software, so I requested a free demo. I had a consult call with them for about 30 minutes to explain how it all works, discussed our business needs, and received recommendations, based on our business and customers for which package would be right for us.

Final impression: The software is fantastic and pulls in all of your inventory in basically any format you want. Then all of your accounts and ads can be structured around that data, or you can continue with the structure you already have. Their managed services are also incredibly flexible, you can use them as little or as much as you want. Although the software was more advanced than what I would want to use if I was going for software alone. However, if you looking for a mix of software and managed services, want to save a ton of time, but want to still retain control and decision making, then this might be the perfect solution.

Conclusion

With hundreds of PPC software tools and management agencies, how do you know which to choose? Knowing what your business needs, what you currently have in place, and what you hope to achieve with PPC services will help you navigate these waters.

Knowing what to look for in software capabilities and features, or with agencies and their services, will help you make an educated decision. Also, check into the company, look for reviews, see how long the company has existed, and who are their clients. Take your time, know your business, and do your research.

Got any first-hand experiences with PPC management solutions, tools, and services? Share them in the comments.

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