Optimize Your Site for Google Answer Box

Have you ever Googled in search for an answer, and gotten the answer right away at the top of search results, without having to click through to a website? Then you have seen Google’s famous (or, depending where you rank in search results, infamous) Answer Box powered by the Knowledge Graph. For search users, it’s a blessing because it provides immediate answers to your questions without additional clicks through to a website.

To website owners, on the other hand, it can be a blessing or a curse. It can be a blessing in two scenarios: if your website is the one that provides the answer for the Answer Box and leads the searcher to click through for additional details, or if your website is the closest search result that provides either a more thorough answer or a next step.

On the flipside, it can be a curse if your website provides the same answer as the Answer Box or if your website is too far down the page so that searchers either get their answer from the Answer Box or the next relevant result instead.

In this post, I am going to dissect some popular Google Answer Box search results to help you learn how to optimize your site and, hopefully, get more clicks.

For the purposes of this experiment, we will be using the Chrome incognito window to prevent as much personalization as possible.

Google Answer Boxes with No Source

First, let’s look at the Google Answer Boxes you just can’t win, or ones where your website will likely never be able to supply the answer. Like today’s date and time. If someone searches for today’s date and time, Google will give them the answer them based on their current location.

While you can’t win in terms of being the source of information for the Google Answer Box information, you can win in terms of what the search user will see next. The key in this instance is the meta description the web page that comes up. What can your web page offer beyond just the date and the time?

Google Answer Boxes with Useless Answers

Sometimes, Google Answer Boxes don’t exactly provide the answer that the searcher is looking for. For example, if someone searches for “when is game of thrones on”. Granted, this one is a tough one to answer since there are so many cable networks, time zones, etc. So considering, you would think no answer is the best answer. But instead, a searcher might get this.

Since Wikipedia is a trusted source, it naturally becomes the source of many of Google’s Answer Boxes. And if you were to click through to this Wikipedia article, you would get the dates of as many episodes of Game of Thrones that are scheduled to premiere. But not exact times.

So in this instance, TV Guide wins the day by ranking below the useless Google Answer Box by providing just what the searcher needs – a guide to when Game of Thrones will be on next on their cable network in their location and time zone.

Google Answer Boxes that Provide All the Answers

Other times, Google provides just the answers a searcher is looking for. So well, in fact, that the searcher may not need any additional info. Like this search for the current MLB standings.

In this instance, if you want to get people to your website, you have a few options. Beneath the Google Answer Box, the searcher will see the latest news about the current MLB standings. This might be a good time to create articles similar to the ones you see above, along with predictions about the postseason like the MLB provides in their in-depth links below the news links.

Further down the search results, you’ll see more MLB standings from other leading publications.

Read More: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-optimize-your-site-for-googles-answer-box/166084

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4 Tips For Mastering Pay-Per-Click Marketing Right Now

When was the last time took a good hard look at your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing strategy?

I’ve talked with the best PPC guys and gals in the businesses to get an idea of what’s working and what’s not.

I want to give you solid, and actionable advice on how you can win in the PPC game.

From all the insights, one trend is clear: it’s going to be a huge year for mobile and social advertising. New social networks have released advertising features, helping brands connect with more customers and share their story.

But that’s not all. Take a look at the expert’s’ top tips for PPC:

1. Mobile PPC

In 2015, more people searched from mobile devices (phones and tablets) than from desktop computers.

In other words, growth in PPC advertising is happening is driven almost entirely by mobile device usage.

With the added impressions from mobile searches, it’s more important now than ever before to make sure your campaigns are optimized for mobile searchers:

Here’s how:

• First, set up “click-to-call” on all ads. This feature lets mobile searchers click your number and immediately connect with you over the phone.
• Second, optimize your PPC landing pages for smartphones and tablets. It goes without saying that all your landing pages should be responsive and load extremely fast. The attention span of Internet users is short (and getting shorter). Don’t lose out on conversions with landing pages that load slow or display poorly.

Anyone who willfully neglects mobile PPC will find themselves in the dust. Follow the steps above and you’ll be ready to capture the growing number of people searching from mobile devices.

2. Audience Targeting and Remarketing

One of the biggest changes to PPC in 2015 was the announcement of Customer Match, allowing PPC marketers to target customers in AdWords using their emails.

Given the importance of list building and targeting in Facebook FB +0.25% PPC, this was a welcome feature. Now you can combine the Customer Match feature with remarketing, ensuring that your ads reach customers on your lists wherever they are online.

Combined with mobile advertising, remarketing is a powerful tool. Now, you’re able to remarket to searches specifically based on the device they’re using to search.

For example, someone who clicks your Adwords ad on the desktop could later see a remarketing ad on their iPhone. The benefit here is that the iPhone ad could be designed specifically for converting the user to take some action on mobile, such as download an app.

3. Pinterest Ads

Just recently Pinterest unrelieved a new feature that lets brands upload and schedule promoted pins in bulk. Not only does this open up Pinterest ads to a broader audience, but it allows advertisers to reach consumers based on keywords, a feature not included in Facebook ads.

This makes a shift in social media advertising, from more traditional native ads to a targeted keyword-word based ads. The result is that marketers can create better-targeted, higher quality ads that are relevant to the users they serve, and consumers can make more-informed buying decisions.

To get the most mileage with Pinterest ads, here are a few tips:

• Use calls to action (CTAs) in your descriptions. Without being too salesy, a subtle call to action can dramatically improve conversion rates on your promoted pins.
• Focus your keyword targeting. For each promoted pin, you’re allowed 150 keywords. This is way more than enough; I recommend starting with 5-10 core keywords then expanding from there.
• Go full throttle. At the moment, Pinterest traffic is relatively cheap (compared to Facebook and Adwords CPC). Start your campaigns with high ad bids (I recommend $0.80 to 0.85) and optimize downward from there.
• Continuously test and optimize your campaigns like a hawk. Though Pinterest ads has been around for a couple years, it’s still in its infancy. Keep a close eye on ad performance to figure out what’s working, and also to avoid overspending on any one particular ad group.

Read More: http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2016/06/30/4-tips-for-mastering-pay-per-click-marketing-right-now

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What’s The Changing SEO Landscape in 2016?

If you haven’t noticed, we dig SEO in a big way here at Search Engine Journal. And while we love spiders and all things that crawl (no, we’re not talking about prepping for our Halloween party), we get especially jazzed when sharing our insights with SEO beginners.

SEO is great. We love SEO. You might say we’re a little obsessed with improving the way people, brands, and strategists (whoever!) do SEO. And while there are many awesome ways to learn SEO as a beginner — keyword research, competitive analysis, and site audit — right now, we’re going to cover the changing landscape of SEO to catch you up to speed.

If you’re going to begin your path in SEO, knowing what you do and how you do it is important, but knowing what changes have been made and staying in-the-know will be ever more meaningful in your ongoing efforts.

For example, whenever you begin an SEO audit, there are prerequisites that need to be completed such as crawling the site’s HTML, checking robots.txt for blocked pages, and measuring PageRank of your competitors. But, if you don’t have a basic understanding of SEO history or changes being made over time, how would you know that Google turned off its Toolbar PageRank from its browser in March 2016? And, how does that affect your SEO audit process? AND, how will you know the authority of your website going forward?

For a long time, I viewed my SEO audit process as a task that needed to be done rather than a craft that gives my forthcoming strategies a fighting chance to win new clients or improve organic traffic for my current clients.

Because of the changing SEO landscape and with a little help from the SEJ news Slack channel 😊, the idea of “This is a boring audit that needs to get done” turned into an opportunity to be one of the first to try new SEO tactics or prepare for Panda algorithm update.

After years of working in SEO, I’ve accepted that it’s hard to keep up with every new algorithm change and the hottest trends conference goers chat about. So, in hopes to spare you, all SEO beginners can check out the latest SEO changes below. Huzzah!

Misconceptions Around SEO

As agencies, consultants, and freelancers we see common misconceptions with SEO, it’s likely because context, personal preference, experiences, and lack of knowledge often muddy the effects SEO have on our websites. So, to clients, the idea that SEO strategies such as building high-quality backlinks or updating your local listings with accurate information are able to evoke some sort of large increase of traffic to your website seems about as realistic as having a psychic predict your future.

There’s still a lot to learn and consider if we look for practical ways to begin our SEO strategy. First, let’s start with the basics.

Ummm SEO, What Does That Mean?

It’s human nature to change. From I Am Jackie Robinson to A Christmas Carol, the characters in these narratives (whether truth or fable) help represent the lifeblood of how it’s human condition to change. With that, technology changes. From Pong to MacBooks, technology adapts just as humans do.

The same goes for search engines: at the end of the day, SEO evolves with humans and technology, but what you do with those changes rely on your ability to adapt.

Before we enter down the rabbit hole of the recent revolutions of SEO, it’s important to know how search engines work. Look at it like this: Last month I needed to find a pair of shoes for a wedding. So, I typed the Google search box “Where to find black shoes for a wedding?” and received over 80 million results.

Google, a search engine, is the middle man for searchers (like me!) and the content on the internet. As search engines become more sophisticated, these 80 million results become tailored to my search history and preferences to serve up more high-quality content that I’ll most likely be interested in clicking.

SEO, SEM, PPC, (and other triple-lettered iterations) serve as a driving force of getting your content to perform well in the search engines. If you’re curious about looking deeper into the secret inner workings of Google’s algorithm, the new Search Quality Ratings Guidelines Google announced at the end of March 2016 is about as close as you’re going to get. This document was originally released in November 2015. The guidelines emphasize local and mobile and reduce the supplementary content.

Article Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-guide-changing-seo-landscape/167188

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Boca Raton Dentist Marketing Tips For Fastest Growth Of Their Practices

You’re about to discover the secrets of fast dental practice success with Google AdWords. Google AdWords is an incredible opportunity for rapid growth and profits and is an advertising platform unlike anything ever created in the history of marketing. If you are ready to learn about generating leads online and growing the bottom line of your dental practice, let this be your guide.

I'm excited to have this opportunity to reach out to Cosmetic dentists and dental professionals like you that are looking to dominate the internet and grow your dental practice. It's an exciting time for you right now. There is a world of opportunity right in your own community that is just waiting for you to tap into it, and I'm going to show you how.

When it comes to marketing, everything you do needs to get real, measurable results. This is MUCH different than a big ad agency creating national campaigns for a big fast food chain. There are a lot of factors that go into getting solid results including business niche or marketplace, but what I will say is that the tips and strategies I will be detailing are a fantastic way for any dental practice to see solid, measurable growth in their business.

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Amazon Is Quietly Eliminating List Prices

SAN FRANCISCO — In a major shift for online commerce, Amazon is quietly changing how it entices people to buy.

The retailer built a reputation and hit $100 billion in annual revenue by offering deals. The first thing a potential customer saw was a bargain: how much an item was reduced from its list price.

Now, in many cases, Amazon has dropped any mention of a list price. There is just one price. Take it or leave it.

The new approach comes as discounts both online and offline have become the subject of dozens of consumer lawsuits for being much less than they seem. It is also occurring while Amazon is in the middle of an ambitious multiyear shift from a store selling one product at a time to a full-fledged ecosystem. Amazon wants to be so deeply embedded in a customer’s life that buying happens as naturally as breathing, and nearly as often.

“When Amazon began 21 years ago, the strategy was to lose on every sale but make it up on volume,” said Larry Compeau, a Clarkson University professor of consumer studies. “It was building for the future, and the future has arrived. Amazon doesn’t have to seduce customers with a deal because they’re going to buy anyway.”

Or so Amazon hopes. Digital stores live by Alec Baldwin’s maxim in “Glengarry Glen Ross”: “Always be closing.” The retailer has been experimenting with another method of closing a sale. It tells the potential buyer what the price used to be on Amazon.

For example, Amazon originally promoted the Rave Turbo Chute as being discounted by 36 percent. Then, all mention of a discount was dropped and the 60-foot water slide was simply listed at $1,573.58, with an explanation that it used to be $1,573.59 — one penny more. Then, it dropped the old/new price comparison. Then, it dropped the price to $1,532.01 and put the comparison back.

“They still need to showcase deals, but the question is, How?” said Michael Kovarik, who runs a comparison-pricing start-up called Rout.

That is why stores love big discounts: they work. In studies by Mr. Compeau and others, the perception of a deal is often what makes the purchase happen.

“We’ve been conditioned to buy only when things are on sale,” said Bonnie Patten, executive director of TruthInAdvertising.org, a consumer information site. “As a result, what many retailers have done is make sure everything is always on sale. Which means nothing is ever on sale.”

Amazon has both benefited from that conditioning as well as encouraged it, which is most likely why it is changing cautiously. It began eliminating list prices about two months ago, pricing specialists say, both on products it sold itself and those sold by other merchants on its site. The retailer did not return multiple requests for comment.

“Our data suggests that list prices are going away,” said Guru Hariharan, chief executive of Boomerang Commerce, a retail analytics firm. Last spring, Boomerang compiled a list for The New York Times of 100 pet food products that Amazon said it was selling at a discount to a list price. Only about half of them still say that.

“Amazon is a data-driven company with very few sacred cows,” Mr. Hariharan said. “At the very least, it is conducting a storewide test about whether it should change its pricing strategy.”

With a majority of Amazon products, the presentation of a bargain used to be front and center. Take, for example, the Breville Infuser Espresso Machine. A few months ago, Amazon said this was an $800 machine that it was offering for $500, a discount of 38 percent.

Two articles in The Times earlier this year on the problems with online list prices drew on a randomly assembled list of 47 discounted housewares, leisure and other products on Amazon, including the Breville Infuser.

Over the Fourth of July weekend, the list price was gone for 39 of those products. The Infuser page, for instance, simply said what it would cost to buy at that moment, which was $483. Nineteen of the product pages tried to encourage a sale by pointing out that the price used to be higher on Amazon, although no time period was given.

“Amazon is showing it can fix the problem if it wants to,” Ms. Patten said.

The problem with list prices or, as they are sometimes called, manufacturers’ suggested retail prices, is that they are regularly more of a marketing concept than what anyone is actually charging. When Amazon was saying the list price of the Breville Infuser was $800, Breville itself was selling the machine for $500 — about the same as Amazon. Other retailers sell it for $500, too. Breville confirmed the price was $500.

Bargains online and offline that are not real bargains are breeding legal action, much of it using a tough California law against deceptive advertising. New cases have been filed in the last few months against Macy’s, J. Crew, Gymboree, Ann Taylor, Ralph Lauren and the website Wines ’Til Sold Out, according to TruthInAdvertising.org. Twenty-four cases were filed in the first six months of 2016, nearly as many as the 25 in all of 2015.

There have been at least 10 settlements. In April, a Los Angeles judge gave preliminary approval to a $6 million offer by Kohl’s Department Stores. That deal came on the heels of a $50 million preliminary settlement by J. C. Penney.

Amazon itself was the target of a fake-discounts suit — an unexpected development, because all Amazon customers agree to go to arbitration instead of court. A judge dismissed the complaint but the plaintiffs are now appealing, saying the arbitration clause is “unconscionable” and should be invalidated. Amazon declined to comment on the suit.

The shift away from list prices is taking some merchants on Amazon by surprise. A seller named Travis complained in an Amazon forum that the list price on his product — which he did not identify — had disappeared from the site. “I’m well aware that it is bogus but it is a common marketing tactic that works very well at boosting sales,” he wrote.

Amazon also appears to have stepped up its monitoring of a vendor system that allowed some sellers to insert data that listed their products as 99 percent or even 100 percent off. Another Amazon seller who complained that his list prices were not showing up said he was told by the retailer that it was routinely checking list prices on other sites.

Mr. Kovarik of Rout said his analysis indicated that Amazon was regularly eliminating more list prices. “In early May, about 29 percent of the products we saw were missing list prices, but now the number is up to about 70 percent,” he said.

Amazon has always focused on driving revenue while disregarding profits. That had many implications: It was driven to try new things; it could undercut any competitor who focused on price; it could literally buy customer loyalty.

In Amazon’s third decade, with its complete domination of the e-commerce landscape, there are signs it is beginning to emphasize the value each customer brings.

“They are trying to figure out what product categories have customers who are so tied into the Amazon ecosystem that list prices are no longer necessary,” Mr. Compeau, of Clarkson, said. In some categories, like groceries, Amazon seems to be using just one price, the buy-it-now price.

If Amazon brings the milk and music into your house, not to mention videos and e-books and the devices to consume them on, as well as a hot dinner and just about any other object you could want, that presents a pricing challenge of a different sort. Untangling what those deals are worth — as opposed to what they cost — is probably impossible.

“Twenty years ago, we were hesitant to trust online companies with our credit card information,” Mr. Compeau observed. “Now we’re being asked to trust them completely.”

Article Source: http://goo.gl/A3x0Cl

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Help! I just launched a new website and my search rankings tanked!

Inadvertently ruining your newly redesigned website’s SEO can be a nightmare. Columnist Will Scott explains four mistakes you must avoid before you launch.

Imagine this nightmare scenario: you’re on the verge of launching your newly redesigned website, and you’re already anticipating new leads and returning customers. You’ve spent countless hours working through every last detail before even considering unveiling your new creation to the world. The big day arrives, and you give the green light to launch.

Suddenly, you realize you forgot to plan for one crucial element: the SEO best practices that you had so carefully incorporated into your old website.

Unfortunately, this is not just a nightmare that can be forgotten once you’ve had your morning coffee, but something I’ve seen happen to countless small businesses over my 10 years as the owner of an SEO and online marketing agency.

Your redesigned website was meant to give your business a new lease on life, but instead, you’ve destroyed your organic search rankings and traffic overnight. When you change your site without thoroughly thinking through the SEO implications, you might do something harmful like throw away substantive content or change every page’s URL without making sure to redirect the old ones.

Luckily, you can easily avoid this frightening scenario altogether by planning ahead and learning from the mistakes illustrated in the examples below.

Mistake #1: You added Flash-based or unoptimized images

So, you added a number of big and eye-catching images to your new landing pages in the hopes of making your site visually appealing. Or maybe you moved to a more visual, but less SEO-friendly Flash design.

Don’t make the mistake of forgetting to optimize the new images, or else the pages on your new site may load so slowly that potential customers exit before viewing any of the content. Relying on Flash elements also can cause huge problems for SEO and will actually prohibit many mobile users from viewing the site.

In the land of online commerce, patience is not a virtue — today’s savvy customers are more impatient waiting for pages to load. According to Radware, customers will abandon a page withinthree seconds if it hasn’t loaded.

Consider an example from the publishing world. The Financial Times, while working on a new version of its site, ran an experiment to understand how speed impacted user engagement — specifically, the number of articles read by visitors, which is one of the primary ways they measure their success. They then used this data to calculate the impact on their revenue.

What they found was that the speed of their site greatly affected their revenue streams, from many hundreds of thousands of dollars in the short-term to millions in the long-term.

Mistake #2: You neglected to migrate important content

Most of us understand that a successful website incorporates informative and unique content on every page, which is specifically targeted to your audience. This includes the behind-the-scenes content, too, such as descriptive alt text on images and meta data that adds clear details.

Although a new site provides a great opportunity to update weak content, it’s also critical to transfer over content that is already tied to your strong organic search traffic.

In this real-life disaster story of content migration gone wrong, an independent software vendor was desperately in need of a new site design and was hoping to update its technical content to create a better experience for the average user. Although they attempted to think through how to preserve their existing SEO practices, they proceeded with the update while making one major omission.

During the migration, a field in their CMS that automatically populates as a meta description was turned off and as a result, every single product page on their new site was missing a meta description.

Mistake #3: You blocked search engines from crawling your site

When a website launch goes bad, the main failure is typically due to mistakes that were made in the early planning stages. Not allowing search engines to crawl your new site is a common error that often happens when sites are moved from the staging area to the live server.

Perhaps you used robots.txt to block search engine crawlers while the site was in development, but forgot to update the file when the site went live. Or maybe you accidentally put firewalls in place that are blocking site crawlers.

In this case, a webmaster used a WordPress plugin called Wordfence to prevent bots from crawling the site, in an attempt to reduce server load and fake referrals. This plugin allows you to whitelist certain bots, allowing them to crawl the site. He whitelisted several known Googlebot IPs, but unfortunately Google switched the IPs it was crawling from, causing the new IPs to get blocked.

While these new IPs were only blocked for three or four days, it caused the site’s web traffic to halt. When the mistake was discovered, and traffic started picking up again, it remained sluggish.

Mistake #4: You didn’t prioritize mobile-friendliness

Last year, the infamous “Mobilegeddon” update took the SEO world by storm when Google kicked into gear its mobile-friendly algorithm.

Although the impact seemed minimal at first, a later report by Adobe found that the new algorithm had as big an impact as feared. Adobe monitored traffic to over 5,000 sites and then split up the results into mobile-friendly versus non-mobile-friendly. The report found that traffic to mobile unfriendly websites from Google mobile searches declined 12% in just the first two months after the update.

Additionally, according to a study from Moovweb, when a site is not mobile-friendly, there are obvious visibility, ranking, and usability consequences. If you focused primarily on how your new site would look on a laptop, you have inadvertently caused yourself more harm than good.

Today’s online shoppers are heavy mobile users who will be ready to bounce if your site can’t be properly read on a mobile device. The big algorithm changes caused multitudes of webmasters to change their sites so that they would still be visible in Google’s organic search results. Up to this point, smaller companies have taken the biggest hit from Mobilegeddon as they struggle to adapt to the mobile changes.

Do you have a disaster story from a client who failed to consider these critical SEO implications before launching their new website? Or a success story of someone who did things right? If so, I’d love to hear from you!

Article Source: http://searchengineland.com/launched-new-website-search-rankings-tanked-251440

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Fort Lauderdale SEO – Best Internet Marketing Agency

As you get better, you will begin to figure out what you can do to make changes that are positive to your site. This article has tips on SEO and how you can use it to optimize your website and increase traffic.

To help you to rank highly on search engines you'll need to take advantage of the meta tags for "Title", even those that are misspelled, and "Keywords". Search engines will be able to see these meta tags and you will increase your visibility. For example, if the website is about rabbits, you could use rabbit," "eyeglasses" and "eye glasses," etc.

Pay-per-click is an effective affiliate marketing tactic. This is the simplest affiliate program to implement, so the pay is correspondingly modest, but those small profits can compound rapidly.

You should correctly anchor text when internally linking on your site. Using generic anchor text like "click here" is not going to help your search engine rankings because it is too generic. Using keywords as anchor text will allow you to be noticed by those crawling spiders.

Visitors will only stay on your site if it has information they want and when you improve the content your page has, so getting your content up to par is a good way to keep traffic steady.

This tag should be thirty words or less. This page should be no more then 100 KB in size.

A site map which has your keywords. Site maps are great ways for both search engine optimization.

It is important to constantly release new content and publish fresh articles. Websites that produce fresh content generally appear more useful to search engines than those with older updates. Sites with more new content appear higher rank.

Don't use too thin by trying to include too many keywords. Keep your site's focus to a dozen or so main keywords or phrases that your site is about. Use online analytical tools to determine which words and phrases really bring in the most traffic.

Focus on mastering one SEO techniques at a time. There is not enough time to excel in all the various SEO techniques, so learn one and exploit it extensively.

Search engines put extra emphasis on your title tag than other areas.

If you simply provide the same information that visitors can find on many other websites, it is necessary to include material that stands apart from that offered by other websites.People who like what they read the first time they visit your site when you have something interesting and unique to offer.

A good thing to remember about marketing on the Internet is to always try to tie current events into your product.This is important because you get visitors that were searching for something seemingly unrelated topic. This is also a good way to keep your site provide more information to regular visitors.

If you have a shared server, make sure you're not using a proxy that shares with a site that's been banned. If your IP is the same or similar to one on a spam blacklist, your site may be penalized, thereby decreasing the traffic to your site.

Use the companies to help market your site. These companies will help you design your site so that it is at the top of the results page in a search engine. Many different companies offer great deals on these services.

Focus on phrases rather than single words.Do you search with only one word often? You should use phrases that will bring customers to your website who are searching for the exact thing you offer. " instead of just saying "We are hosting a sale This will take away from the quality of your keyword phrases properly.

Being on Yahoo or Google's front page for your respective niche is the ultimate goal of every site. It can be hard to increase the ranking of your website, but these tips will help.

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