Email lead capture is the process marketers use to collect information from their website visitors. Typically, this is done through a traditional web form, although you can also capture leads through popups, chatbots, live chat, quizzes, surveys, and more. Despite the process being fairly straightforward, our strategies often fluctuate in how we accomplish lead capture. Similarly, the results we achieve can vary quite a bit, too. Unfortunately, the diversity of lead capture strategies, tools, and results can make it difficult to know precisely which process you should follow with your own marketing team -- which is why we decided to conduct a survey. We wanted to see, in 2019, what tools marketers are using for lead capture, what strategies they are using to optimize their efforts, and what kind of results and conversion rates people are seeing. To ensure you're able to optimize your lead capture strategy in 2019, keep reading. Survey Methodology and Respondent DataAny survey you conduct is limited by the sample you can reach. In our case, we received 173 valid survey responses. We filtered for marketers working full-time on lead capture and lead generation. Here are some quick statistics about our sample. A large percentage of our respondents work at small businesses, with roughly 33% reporting less than 50 employees, although the distribution evens out among the other responses: Additionally, a good chunk of our respondents (24%) work in advertising and marketing, but the rest is fairly diverse and split evenly between other industries. Everyone in our sample works full-time and said they were “very” or at least “somewhat” involved in lead generation and lead capture efforts at their companies. As with any research you conduct, there are some limitations with our dataset, as well. We'll cover sample limitation and quirks later in this article. Key Lead Capture Statistics and FindingsHere's a quick overview of the most interesting statistics we learned about lead capture in 2019:
Now that we've covered that, let's explore a few of these statistics more in-depth. Takeaway #1: Forms aren't dead.Online forms are the most commonly used type of lead capture tool, with 74% of respondents reporting they use them. Half of our respondents reported forms gave them the highest conversion rates, making online forms the highest-converting lead capture tool for marketers. Takeaway #2: Chatbots still have comparatively low adoption.Many marketers report using more than one type of lead capture tool, but roughly 40% report only using one tool. And, while 37% of respondents use live chat, only 17% use a chatbot. Additionally, only 7% of respondents said chatbots were their highest converting tool. By comparison, around 13% reported live chat or quizzes/surveys being the most effective tool. It would appear from this data that, despite hype and trends, the old school web form is still alive and well for marketers. Takeaway #3: The average length of a web form in 2019 is about 5 form fields.Forms are popular and pretty well loved in 2019, but what does the average form look like? For starters, we found that marketers use, on average, 4.92 form fields on their forms (with five being the most popular answer). The number of form fields mostly resembles a normal distribution that centers around five, although there is a small spike of marketers who use more than 10 form fields. Takeaway #4: Conversion rates are highly variable and contextual.Average conversion rates are pretty varied, with a pretty stable distribution of reported conversion rates. Very few people report conversion rates in the 51-100% bucket. This is one piece of data we need to take with a grain of salt, as with any self-reported KPI or metric. We don't know exactly how our respondents define a conversion, how they measure conversion rates, or what their offers are, so we lack a lot of context. Still, when we couple our conversion rate data with our data on self-reported satisfaction rates, we start to see interesting patterns. First, take a look at our aggregated satisfaction rates: Very few people (8%) are dissatisfied with their lead generation efforts, but only 12% report being very satisfied. It also gets interesting when you examine these answers in conjunction with others. For instance, we found that those who are most satisfied with their lead generation efforts are those who use chatbots and report chatbots as their top converting lead capture tool. Takeaway #5: Data-driven marketers are outpacing everyone.Generally speaking, marketers who use methods to improve the customer experience, and specifically those who are using data to drive experiences, are outperforming those who don't. For instance, marketers who run A/B tests on their forms tend to be more satisfied than those who don't, and they also report roughly 10% higher conversion rates than those who don't run A/B tests. Following the trend, those who use form analytics report 15% higher satisfaction with their lead generation efforts and 19% higher conversion rates. But what about user testing? A user test is a type of usability test in which you have users run through your website and attempt a task, and analyze their ability to do so. Most people are running between one and five per year, but a full 36% never run user tests on their forms. Again, we found that people who run user tests are more satisfied with their lead generation programs than those who don't, and that the satisfaction rating increases as the number of user tests rises. This is a big area of opportunity. Combined with a form analytics tool like Formisimo, you can learn a lot about user behavior from occasionally running user tests. To learn more about form optimization in general, check out this CXL Institute course. Takeaway #6: Multi-step forms convert 86% higher.Only 39% of marketers report using multi-step forms. Those who do, however, report 17% higher satisfaction rates with their lead generation efforts, and their self reported conversion rates are 86% higher (16.05% for those who don't use multi-step, and 29.76% for those who do). A small majority of marketers report using lead magnets in their campaigns, but 40% report not using them at all. Takeaway #7: Only half of marketers use “lead magnets” to capture email addresses.A lead magnet is simply something of value you give in exchange for a visitor's contact information. We found that a small majority of marketers use lead magnets to capture emails, but a full 40% don't use them (and roughly 10% don't know if they are or aren't). Creating a relevant and valuable lead magnet is one of the most effective ways to increase conversion rates on lead capture forms. If you're not doing this, it might be time to consider trying it out. Takeaway #8: Ebooks are the most popular lead magnet.If you're wondering what type of lead magnets people generally use, Ebooks lead the way -- but webinars, checklists, and free tools are close behind. Other answers included “Qualifying email lists", “Rewards”, “Customized vehicle brochure", and “Property information", meaning it's largely made up of industry-specific offers that are related to the product or service in question. Takeaway #9: The average Ebook length is between 5k and 10k words.Very few marketers create Ebooks with greater than 10,000 words, and most fall within the area of 5,000-10,000 words long. Takeaway #10: Marketers overemphasize on total lead volume and not enough on lead quality.Collecting a lead is a small part of the overall process. It's important, of course, but you also need to worry about where you're storing the data, and how you're qualifying and nurturing leads. Most marketers use more than one tool to store their leads -- something that definitely jives with my personal experience. Because we're often using a myriad of tools for our marketing efforts, we need to store leads in many places and integrate many systems together to build a coherent system. Specifically, we found that the most common tool for lead storage is a CRM, with 57% of marketers reporting using one. 48.8% report using an email marketing tool for storage, and 43.6% report using spreadsheets. Of course, capturing leads is just one step of the process. What we do with them matters as well, as the end goal isn't just to store them in a CRM or an email tool, but to turn them into customers. Part of this approach is qualifying leads and reacting appropriately based on their quality. Do marketers normally have a strategy for lead qualification? It appears that, yes, this is the norm, with 56.4% of marketers saying they do have a documented lead qualification process. However, that leaves 34.9% with no documented process. This is important because, as you would logically suppose, those who have a documented lead qualification process report 21.4% higher satisfaction ratings with their lead generation efforts. While 39.5% of marketers are using predictive lead scoring in their marketing strategy, roughly half of marketers (48.8%) are not (and 11.6% don't know if they are or not). Limitations and Quirks With Our DataAs with any collection of data, you need to question its quality thoroughly. Especially with surveys and self-reported data, the nature of the questions can affect the output of answers. In our case, we can draw a lot of valid insights about lead generation and marketing in 2019, but we need to be careful about generalizing some of it. The big question we need to consider is the “average conversion rate” of lead capture forms. Naturally, this depends on how you calculate conversion rates, where your web form is, what your offer is, etc. For instance, the conversion rate of an offer for a free tool that is only seen by targeted paid traffic and only has an email address field is entirely different than a pop-up form that everyone on an ecommerce site sees. Ultimately, conversion rates are wildly contextual. How people calculate conversion rates is also different. Do you calculate by those who see your form, those who count as a page view (despite not scrolling to the form), or those who start filling out the form but never finish? None of this is straightforward, so it can be tough to generalize findings about this metric. As evidence for this quirkiness, look at this chart: Our respondents seem to get better and better conversion rates the more form fields they use. While this is possible, it's incredibly unlikely, at least when all other variables are controlled for. Almost all historical research has shown that increasing the number of form fields has an inverse effect on conversion rates (although not all studies have shown that). That's not to say the data is inherently untrustworthy. Just take any “average conversion rate” data with a grain of salt! Additionally, we believe our sample is quite representative, as it had been filtered to include only those who work full-time on lead generation and lead capture efforts. But a greater sample would have been desirable. There is a lot of nuance -- in industries, company size, etc. -- that we couldn't dive into because our sample size was only 173. Looking to the FutureThe process of capturing email leads is a huge part of inbound marketing. Parts of it change over time, such as the lead capture tools we use and the specific tactics around lead magnets, form optimization, and lead scoring and storage. However, much remains the same, such as the core ideas of crafting relevant offers and building a lead capture tool with as little friction as possible. It appears from this survey that less has changed than one would expect. Despite new “conversational” tools like live chat and chatbots, most people still use forms, and most people still entice visitors with Ebooks and webinars. To no one's surprise, those who run A/B tests, conduct user tests, and use form analytics, are more successful than those who don't. It will be interesting to see how things change in the next few years, as inbound marketing channels become more crowded and lead capture tools get “smarter” and more interactive. Will we still be writing 7,500 word Ebooks in exchange for five form fields' worth of information? That's where we stand today. Where will we be next year?
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Animated Business Animation Videos : Video Intros UK Showreel 2018 / 2019. Check out our website https://bluesquaremanagement.com/ to learn more about video for business marketing.
Blue Square Management is an animated video production company that creates product demonstration and services videos for business, large and small. In 2019, whether you are large corporate business or small business you need to have video on your website. Here are just a few reasons why your business should be using video: • Video marketing usage is continuing to rise among brands and marketers, increasing dramatically year-over-year. • 2018, as we expected, saw a huge number of 'new' marketers finally embrace video. • Marketers are using video to achieve a variety of different goals. Video seems to excel primarily as an educational tool to help increase user understanding, but is also being used at every step of the buyer journey - from increasing web traffic, keeping visitors on-site longer (great for SEO), converting them into leads and, ultimately, helping improve the customer experience by reducing support calls. • YouTube retains its position as the most widely used channel for video marketing, and is still among the most successful. However, video has seen a real surge in both usage and effectiveness across all major social media channels. Usage AND perceived effectiveness has increased across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. • Despite an increased focus, industry-wide, on 'vertical' video, the majority of us seem fairly ambivalent about how video displays on our mobile devices - as long as it's properly optimised for one or the other. Most consumers are happy to simply watch mobile video however it best 'fills the screen.' (Data : Wyzowl) Are you thinking about using video for business marketing? Are you looking for a business video prouction company? Look no further as Blue Square Management is a digital marketing and video production company that creates animated videos for business for you to use in your online marketing and add to your website. Contact us today. Blue Square Management 9 Grange Rd Orpington BR6 8ED Tel: 01689 602 248 https://bluesquaremanagement.com/ Opening Hours Mon : 0900 - 1700 Tues: 0900 - 1700 Wed: 0900 - 1700 Thurs: 0900 - 1700 Fri: 0900 - 1700 Sat: CLOSED Sun: CLOSED Blue Square Management - Animated Video Production Company Animated Business Animation Videos : Video Intros UK Showreel 2018 / 2019 Google Activity Cards: Inviting users to be better connected with their past search activity
1/15/2019
The latest tweak to Google's search results which lets us browse, save, and delete results from similar searches we've made before is the next step in the company's journey toward making the SERPs even more intuitive, tailored, and useful. Access to our respective search histories is not a new Google feature. Each of us can – if we have a Google account – simply click Settings > History, and from there browse, search for, or delete any past searches we want to. The launch of Google's new activity cards on January 9th appears to be building on the principle of giving the user more control. So what functionality do they offer? And what are their implications for transparency, SEO and how we move around online? What are Google activity cards?For certain searches, we will begin seeing a small card marked “Your related activity” at the very top of the SERPs. We can expand this card to show results we have clicked on when making similar searches in the past. The spiel from Google is that this is particularly useful for long running tasks:
Bringing bookmarking/pinning functionality to searchThere is more to activity cards than merely offering another set of results to peruse. In a couple of clicks users can save searches to collections. This gives another layer of organization where users can view and scroll through a digital pinboard of relevant past searches they have made. It is also just as simple to delete any unwanted results from the card too. More transparency?We have known for a long time that certain search results appear because we have clicked through to that page in the past. Activity cards make things more transparent, even for the most casual Google user. It is now far more clear to visualize what in a set of SERPs is appearing there because of our own behavior rather than the strength/popularity of the content according to other users. Implications for SEO and user journeysIt's a little too early to see any definite implications these cards will have for search engine optimization and how much they will change our journeys as users. Bear in mind that at this stage the cards are only appearing for selected searches. Specifically, the cards appear on so-called long running tasks where Google deems them relevant. That said, for results that do include activity cards, those cards can be seen to occupy the most important part of the SERP. They appear right at the top of the page, even above sponsored listings. This might frustrate digital marketers if we see sponsored and organic listings in the main SERP receive less traffic. It also might make life a little more difficult for newer sites if Google's users – for certain searches, at least – already have a well-clicked plethora of personally trusted domains. Additionally, those who are skeptical about the risk of digital echo chambers may also view such personalized results as a problem rather than a solution. Broadly a positive moveWhile it remains to be seen whether activity cards make any drastic changes to search and our habits, I think they are a positive move in terms of transparency and control for the user. We found many key takeaways from the recent appearance of Google's CEO Sundar Pichai at Congress in December. One of the main ones, though, was realizing just how difficult a task Google has in assuring everyday search users that they can trust the search results. Google spend a lot of energy helping users believe that the results they receive appear due to metrics such as whether content is fresh, popular, or has been visited by the user before – rather than by favoritism or bias on the part of the company itself. These clearly-labelled activity cards might promote greater awareness of just why users receive the results that they do. Similarly, there is also something to be said for introducing casual users to be more hands-on with taking ownership of their search activity. Users still need to click through to Settings to view/delete searches from all their history. However, seeing how easy it is (just a couple of clicks) to browse and delete results in the activity card may promote other ways users can find things they've searched for in the past. It can also help users remove things they want to get rid of. The post Google Activity Cards: Inviting users to be better connected with their past search activity appeared first on Search Engine Watch. Posted by Polemic Today we're tackling a question that many of us have asked over the years: how do you increase your chances of getting your content into Google News? We're delighted to welcome renowned SEO specialist Barry Adams to share the framework you need to have in place in order to have a chance of appearing in that much-coveted Google News carousel.
Video TranscriptionHi, everyone. I'm Barry Adams. I'm a technical SEO consultant at Polemic Digital and a specialist in news SEO. Today we're going to be talking about how to get into Google News. I get a lot of questions from a lot of people about Google News and specifically how you get a website into Google News, because it's a really great source of traffic for websites. Once you're in the Google News Index, you can appear in the top stories carousel in Google search results, and that can send a lot of traffic your way. How do you get into Google News' manually curated index?So how do you get into Google News? How do you go about getting your website to be a part of Google News' manual index so that you can get that top stories traffic for yourself? Well, it's not always as easy as it makes it appear. You have to jump through quite a few hoops before you get into Google News. 1. Have a dedicated news websiteFirst of all, you have to have a dedicated news website. You have to keep in mind when you apply to be included in Google News, there's a team of Googlers who will manually review your website to decide whether or not you're worthy of being in the News index. That is a manual process, and your website has to be a dedicated news website. I get a lot of questions from people asking if they have a news section or a blog on their site and if that could be included in Google News. The answer tends to be no. Google doesn't want news websites in there that aren't entirely about news, that are commercial websites that have a news section. They don't really want that. They want dedicated news websites, websites whose sole purpose is to provide news and content on specific topics and specific niches. So that's the first hurdle and probably the most important one. If you can't clear that hurdle, you shouldn't even try getting into Google News. 2. Meet technical requirementsThere are also a lot of other aspects that go into Google News. You have to jump through, like I said, quite a few hoops. Some technical requirements are very important to know as well. Have static, unique URLs. Google wants your articles and your section pages to have static, unique URLs so that an article or a section is always on the same URL and Google can crawl it and recrawl it on that URL without having to work with any redirects or other things. If you have content with dynamically generated URLs, that does not tend to work with Google News very well. So you have to keep that in mind and make sure that your content, both your articles and your static section pages are on fixed URLs that tend not to change over time. Have your content in plain HTML.It also helps to have all your content in plain HTML. Google News, when it indexes your content, it's all about speed. It tries to index articles as fast as possible. So any content that requires like client-side JavaScript or other sort of scripting languages tends not to work for Google News. Google has a two-stage indexing process, where the first stage is based on the HTML source code and the second stage is based on a complete render of the page, including executing JavaScript.
For Google News, that doesn't work. If your content relies on JavaScript execution, it will never be seen by Google News. Google News only uses the first stage of indexing, based purely on the HTML source code. So keep your JavaScript to a minimum and make sure that the content of your articles is present in the HTML source code and does not require any JavaScript to be seen to be present. Have clean code.It also helps to have clean code. By clean code, I mean that the article content in the HTML source code should be one continuous block of code from the headline all the way to the end. That tends to result in the best and most efficient indexing in Google News, because I've seen many examples where websites put things in the middle of the article code, like related articles or video carousels, photo galleries, and that can really mess up how Google News indexes the content. So having clean code and make sure the article code is in one continuous block of easily understood HTML code tends to work the best for Google News. 3. Optional (but more or less mandatory) technical considerationsThere's also quite a few other things that are technically optional, but I see them as pretty much mandatory because it really helps with getting your content picked up in Google News very fast and also makes sure you get that top stories carousel position as fast as possible, which is where you will get most of your news traffic from. Have a news-specific XML sitemap.Primarily the news XML sitemap, Google says this is optional but recommended, and I agree with them on that. Having a news-specific XML sitemap that lists articles that you've published in the last 48 hours, up to a maximum of 1,000 articles, is absolutely necessary. For me, I think this is Google News' primary discovery mechanism when they crawl your website and try to find new articles. So that news-specific XML sitemap is absolutely crucial, and you want to make sure you have that in place before you submit your site to Google News. Mark up articles with NewsArticle structured data.I also think it's very important to mark up your articles with news article structured data. It can be just article structured data or even more specific structured data segments that Google is introducing, like news article analysis and news article opinion for specific types of articles. But article or news article markup on your article pages is pretty much mandatory. I see your likelihood of getting into the top stories carousel much improved if you have that markup implemented on your article pages. Helpful-to-have extras:Also, like I said, this is a manually curated index. So there are a few extra hoops that you want to jump through to make sure that when a Googler looks at your website and reviews it, it ticks all the boxes and it appears like a trustworthy, genuine news website. A. Multiple authorsHaving multiple authors contribute to your website is hugely valuable, hugely important, and it does tend to elevate you above all the other blogs and small sites that are out there and makes it a bit more likely that the Googler reviewing your site will press that Approve button. B. Daily updatesHaving daily updates definitely is necessary. You don't want just one news post every couple of days. Ideally, multiple new articles every single day that also should be unique. You can have some sort of syndicated content on there, like from feeds, from AP or Reuters or whatever, but the majority of your content needs to be your own unique content. You don't want to rely too much on syndicated articles to fill your website with news content. C. Mostly unique contentTry to write as much unique content as you possibly can. There isn't really a clear ratio for that. Generally speaking, I recommend my clients to have at least 70% of the content as unique stuff that they write themselves and publish themselves and only 30% maximum syndicated content from external sources. D. Specialized niche/topicIt really helps to have a specialized niche or a specialized topic that you focus on as a news website. There are plenty of news sites out there that are general news and try to do everything, and Google News doesn't really need many more of those. What Google is interested in is niche websites on specific topics, specific areas that can provide in-depth reporting on those specific industries or topics. So if you have a very niche topic or a niche industry that you cover with your news, it does tend to improve your chances of getting into that News Index and getting that top stories carousel traffic. So that, in a nutshell, is how you get into Google News. It might appear to be quite simple, but, like I said, quite a few hoops for you to jump through, a few technical things you have to implement on your website as well. But if you tick all those boxes, you can get so much traffic from the top stories carousel, and the rest is profit. Thank you very much. This has been my Whiteboard Friday. Further resources:
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1/15/2019
~ Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky In a science fiction novel set far in the future, Vernor Vinge writes about how people might engage in software archaeology. I understand the desire to do that, looking at some patents that give us hints about how technology is changing, and processes behind search engines do as well. Google has just been granted a continuation patent for universal search. This post is looking at how the patents covering universal search at Google have changed. This post is not intended as a lesson on how patents work, but knowing something about how continuation patents work, can provide some insights into the processes that people at Google are trying to protect when they have updated the universal search patent. This post is also not intended as an analysis of patents, but rather a look at how search works, and has changed in the last dozen years or so A patent is pursued by a company to protect the process described within the patent. It isn't unusual that the process protected by a patent might change in some way as it is implemented, and put into use. What sometimes happens when that takes place is that the company that was originally assigned the initial patent might file another patent. One referred to as a continuation patent, which takes the original granted date of the first version of the patent as the start time for protection under the patent. The continuation patents are usually very similar to the earlier versions of the patents, with the description sections often being very close to identical. The parts of the patents that change are the claims sections, which are what prosecuting attorneys deciding whether to grant a patent look at and review to see if the patents are new, non-obvious and useful, and should be granted. So, in looking at updated patents covering a specific process, ideally it makes sense to look at how the claims have changed over time. The Original Universal Search Patent ApplicationBefore the patent was granted, I wrote about it in the post How Google Universal Search and Blended Results May Work which was about the Universal Search Patent application published in 2008. That patent was granted, and the claims from the original filing of the patent were updated from the original application, when it was granted in 2011 (Sometimes processes in original applications have to be amended for the patent to be granted, and the claims may change to match those). The First Universal Search PatentIn the 2011 granted version of Interleaving Search Results, the first six claims to the patent give us a flavor for what the patent covers:
The Second Universal Search PatentWe know that Google introduced Universal Search Results at a Searchology presentation in 2007 (a few months before the patent was filed originally), and the patent has been updated since then, with a continuation patent titled Interleaving Search Results granted in 2015, which has new claims, which insert the concept of historic click data into those. Here are the first five claims from that version of the patent:
The Updated Universal Search PatentThe newest version of Interleaving Search Results is still a pending patent application at this point, published on January 2, 2019 Publication Number: 3422216 Abstract: (EN) A method comprising receiving a plurality of first search results that satisfy a search query directed to a first search engine, each of the plurality of first search results having a respective first score, receiving a second search result from a second search engine, the second search result having a second score, wherein the search query is not directed to the second search engine, wherein at least one of the first and second scores is based on characteristics of queries or results of queries learned from user click data; and determining from the second score whether to present the second search result, and if so, presenting the first search results in an order according to their respective scores, and presenting the second search result at a position relative to the order, the position being determined using the first scores and the second score
Changes to Universal SearchIf you look at them, you will see David Bailey's name on those patents. He wrote a guest post at Search Engine land about Universal Search that provides a lot of insight into how it works and the title of the post refers to that: An Insider's View Of Google Universal Search It's worth reading though his analysis of Universal search carefully before trying to compare the claims from one version of the patent to another The second version of the claims refer to historic click data, and the newest version changes that to “user click data”, but doesn't provide any insights into why that change in the claims was made. We've heard spokespeople from Google tell us that they don't utilize user click data to rank content, so this gets a little confusing if they are taken at their word. Another difference in the latest claims is where it refers to multiple distinct scoring features, and how each type of search that is blended into results has some unique scoring feature that sets it apart from the results inserted on to the search results page from a search engine before it. We do know that different types of search are ranked based upon different signals, such as freshness being important for news results, and links often for Web results. So results shown in universal search may all be relevant for a query searched for, but have some element that considers some unique features that adds diversity to what we see in SERPs. Copyright © 2019 SEO by the Sea ⚓. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at may be guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact SEO by the Sea, so we can take appropriate action immediately. Plugin by Taragana The post Universal Search Updated at Google appeared first on SEO by the Sea ⚓. Universal Search Updated at Google
1/15/2019
~ Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky In a science fiction novel set far in the future, Vernor Vinge writes about how people might engage in software archaeology. I understand the desire to do that, looking at some patents that give us hints about how technology is changing, and processes behind search engines do as well. Google has just been granted a continuation patent for universal search. This post is looking at how the patents covering universal search at Google have changed. This post is not intended as a lesson on how patents work, but knowing something about how continuation patents work, can provide some insights into the processes that people at Google are trying to protect when they have updated the universal search patent. This post is also not intended as an analysis of patents, but rather a look at how search works, and has changed in the last dozen years or so A patent is pursued by a company to protect the process described within the patent. It isn't unusual that the process protected by a patent might change in some way as it is implemented, and put into use. What sometimes happens when that takes place is that the company that was originally assigned the initial patent might file another patent. One referred to as a continuation patent, which takes the original granted date of the first version of the patent as the start time for protection under the patent. The continuation patents are usually very similar to the earlier versions of the patents, with the description sections often being very close to identical. The parts of the patents that change are the claims sections, which are what prosecuting attorneys deciding whether to grant a patent look at and review to see if the patents are new, non-obvious and useful, and should be granted. So, in looking at updated patents covering a specific process, ideally it makes sense to look at how the claims have changed over time. The Original Universal Search Patent ApplicationBefore the patent was granted, I wrote about it in the post How Google Universal Search and Blended Results May Work which was about the Universal Search Patent application published in 2008. That patent was granted, and the claims from the original filing of the patent were updated from the original application, when it was granted in 2011 (Sometimes processes in original applications have to be amended for the patent to be granted, and the claims may change to match those). The First Universal Search PatentIn the 2011 granted version of Interleaving Search Results, the first six claims to the patent give us a flavor for what the patent covers:
The Second Universal Search PatentWe know that Google introduced Universal Search Results at a Searchology presentation in 2007 (a few months before the patent was filed originally), and the patent has been updated since then, with a continuation patent titled Interleaving Search Results granted in 2015, which has new claims, which insert the concept of historic click data into those. Here are the first five claims from that version of the patent:
The Updated Universal Search PatentThe newest version of Interleaving Search Results is still a pending patent application at this point, published on January 2, 2019 Publication Number: 3422216 Abstract: (EN) A method comprising receiving a plurality of first search results that satisfy a search query directed to a first search engine, each of the plurality of first search results having a respective first score, receiving a second search result from a second search engine, the second search result having a second score, wherein the search query is not directed to the second search engine, wherein at least one of the first and second scores is based on characteristics of queries or results of queries learned from user click data; and determining from the second score whether to present the second search result, and if so, presenting the first search results in an order according to their respective scores, and presenting the second search result at a position relative to the order, the position being determined using the first scores and the second score
Changes to Universal SearchIf you look at them, you will see David Bailey's name on those patents. He wrote a guest post at Search Engine land about Universal Search that provides a lot of insight into how it works and the title of the post refers to that: An Insider's View Of Google Universal Search It's worth reading though his analysis of Universal search carefully before trying to compare the claims from one version of the patent to another The second version of the claims refer to historic click data, and the newest version changes that to “user click data”, but doesn't provide any insights into why that change in the claims was made. We've heard spokespeople from Google tell us that they don't utilize user click data to rank content, so this gets a little confusing if they are taken at their word. Another difference in the latest claims is where it refers to multiple distinct scoring features, and how each type of search that is blended into results has some unique scoring feature that sets it apart from the results inserted on to the search results page from a search engine before it. We do know that different types of search are ranked based upon different signals, such as freshness being important for news results, and links often for Web results. So results shown in universal search may all be relevant for a query searched for, but have some element that considers some unique features that adds diversity to what we see in SERPs. Copyright © 2019 SEO by the Sea ⚓. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at may be guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact SEO by the Sea, so we can take appropriate action immediately. Plugin by Taragana The post Universal Search Updated at Google appeared first on SEO by the Sea ⚓. Animated Business Animation Videos : Video Intros UK Showreel 2018 / 2019. Check out our website https://bluesquaremanagement.com/ to learn more about video for business marketing.
Blue Square Management is an animated video production company that creates product demonstration and services videos for business, large and small. In 2019, whether you are large corporate business or small business you need to have video on your website. Here are just a few reasons why your business should be using video: • Video marketing usage is continuing to rise among brands and marketers, increasing dramatically year-over-year. • 2018, as we expected, saw a huge number of 'new' marketers finally embrace video. • Marketers are using video to achieve a variety of different goals. Video seems to excel primarily as an educational tool to help increase user understanding, but is also being used at every step of the buyer journey - from increasing web traffic, keeping visitors on-site longer (great for SEO), converting them into leads and, ultimately, helping improve the customer experience by reducing support calls. • YouTube retains its position as the most widely used channel for video marketing, and is still among the most successful. However, video has seen a real surge in both usage and effectiveness across all major social media channels. Usage AND perceived effectiveness has increased across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. • Despite an increased focus, industry-wide, on 'vertical' video, the majority of us seem fairly ambivalent about how video displays on our mobile devices - as long as it's properly optimised for one or the other. Most consumers are happy to simply watch mobile video however it best 'fills the screen.' (Data : Wyzowl) Are you thinking about using video for business marketing? Are you looking for a business video prouction company? Look no further as Blue Square Management is a digital marketing and video production company that creates animated videos for business for you to use in your online marketing and add to your website. Contact us today. Blue Square Management 9 Grange Rd Orpington BR6 8ED Tel: 01689 602 248 https://bluesquaremanagement.com/ Opening Hours Mon : 0900 - 1700 Tues: 0900 - 1700 Wed: 0900 - 1700 Thurs: 0900 - 1700 Fri: 0900 - 1700 Sat: CLOSED Sun: CLOSED Blue Square Management - Animated Video Production Company Animated Business Animation Videos : Video Intros UK Showreel 2018 / 2019 Email lead capture is the process marketers use to collect information from their website visitors. Typically, this is done through a traditional web form, although you can also capture leads through popups, chatbots, live chat, quizzes, surveys, and more. Despite the process being fairly straightforward, our strategies often fluctuate in how we accomplish lead capture. Similarly, the results we achieve can vary quite a bit, too. Unfortunately, the diversity of lead capture strategies, tools, and results can make it difficult to know precisely which process you should follow with your own marketing team -- which is why we decided to conduct a survey. We wanted to see, in 2019, what tools marketers are using for lead capture, what strategies they are using to optimize their efforts, and what kind of results and conversion rates people are seeing. To ensure you're able to optimize your lead capture strategy in 2019, keep reading. Survey Methodology and Respondent DataAny survey you conduct is limited by the sample you can reach. In our case, we received 173 valid survey responses. We filtered for marketers working full-time on lead capture and lead generation. Here are some quick statistics about our sample. A large percentage of our respondents work at small businesses, with roughly 33% reporting less than 50 employees, although the distribution evens out among the other responses: Additionally, a good chunk of our respondents (24%) work in advertising and marketing, but the rest is fairly diverse and split evenly between other industries. Everyone in our sample works full-time and said they were “very” or at least “somewhat” involved in lead generation and lead capture efforts at their companies. As with any research you conduct, there are some limitations with our dataset, as well. We'll cover sample limitation and quirks later in this article. Key Lead Capture Statistics and FindingsHere's a quick overview of the most interesting statistics we learned about lead capture in 2019:
Now that we've covered that, let's explore a few of these statistics more in-depth. Takeaway #1: Forms aren't dead.Online forms are the most commonly used type of lead capture tool, with 74% of respondents reporting they use them. Half of our respondents reported forms gave them the highest conversion rates, making online forms the highest-converting lead capture tool for marketers. Takeaway #2: Chatbots still have comparatively low adoption.Many marketers report using more than one type of lead capture tool, but roughly 40% report only using one tool. And, while 37% of respondents use live chat, only 17% use a chatbot. Additionally, only 7% of respondents said chatbots were their highest converting tool. By comparison, around 13% reported live chat or quizzes/surveys being the most effective tool. It would appear from this data that, despite hype and trends, the old school web form is still alive and well for marketers. Takeaway #3: The average length of a web form in 2019 is about 5 form fields.Forms are popular and pretty well loved in 2019, but what does the average form look like? For starters, we found that marketers use, on average, 4.92 form fields on their forms (with five being the most popular answer). The number of form fields mostly resembles a normal distribution that centers around five, although there is a small spike of marketers who use more than 10 form fields. Takeaway #4: Conversion rates are highly variable and contextual.Average conversion rates are pretty varied, with a pretty stable distribution of reported conversion rates. Very few people report conversion rates in the 51-100% bucket. This is one piece of data we need to take with a grain of salt, as with any self-reported KPI or metric. We don't know exactly how our respondents define a conversion, how they measure conversion rates, or what their offers are, so we lack a lot of context. Still, when we couple our conversion rate data with our data on self-reported satisfaction rates, we start to see interesting patterns. First, take a look at our aggregated satisfaction rates: Very few people (8%) are dissatisfied with their lead generation efforts, but only 12% report being very satisfied. It also gets interesting when you examine these answers in conjunction with others. For instance, we found that those who are most satisfied with their lead generation efforts are those who use chatbots and report chatbots as their top converting lead capture tool. Takeaway #5: Data-driven marketers are outpacing everyone.Generally speaking, marketers who use methods to improve the customer experience, and specifically those who are using data to drive experiences, are outperforming those who don't. For instance, marketers who run A/B tests on their forms tend to be more satisfied than those who don't, and they also report roughly 10% higher conversion rates than those who don't run A/B tests. Following the trend, those who use form analytics report 15% higher satisfaction with their lead generation efforts and 19% higher conversion rates. But what about user testing? A user test is a type of usability test in which you have users run through your website and attempt a task, and analyze their ability to do so. Most people are running between one and five per year, but a full 36% never run user tests on their forms. Again, we found that people who run user tests are more satisfied with their lead generation programs than those who don't, and that the satisfaction rating increases as the number of user tests rises. This is a big area of opportunity. Combined with a form analytics tool like Formisimo, you can learn a lot about user behavior from occasionally running user tests. To learn more about form optimization in general, check out this CXL Institute course. Takeaway #6: Multi-step forms convert 86% higher.Only 39% of marketers report using multi-step forms. Those who do, however, report 17% higher satisfaction rates with their lead generation efforts, and their self reported conversion rates are 86% higher (16.05% for those who don't use multi-step, and 29.76% for those who do). A small majority of marketers report using lead magnets in their campaigns, but 40% report not using them at all. Takeaway #7: Only half of marketers use “lead magnets” to capture email addresses.A lead magnet is simply something of value you give in exchange for a visitor's contact information. We found that a small majority of marketers use lead magnets to capture emails, but a full 40% don't use them (and roughly 10% don't know if they are or aren't). Creating a relevant and valuable lead magnet is one of the most effective ways to increase conversion rates on lead capture forms. If you're not doing this, it might be time to consider trying it out. Takeaway #8: Ebooks are the most popular lead magnet.If you're wondering what type of lead magnets people generally use, Ebooks lead the way -- but webinars, checklists, and free tools are close behind. Other answers included “Qualifying email lists", “Rewards”, “Customized vehicle brochure", and “Property information", meaning it's largely made up of industry-specific offers that are related to the product or service in question. Takeaway #9: The average Ebook length is between 5k and 10k words.Very few marketers create Ebooks with greater than 10,000 words, and most fall within the area of 5,000-10,000 words long. Takeaway #10: Marketers overemphasize on total lead volume and not enough on lead quality.Collecting a lead is a small part of the overall process. It's important, of course, but you also need to worry about where you're storing the data, and how you're qualifying and nurturing leads. Most marketers use more than one tool to store their leads -- something that definitely jives with my personal experience. Because we're often using a myriad of tools for our marketing efforts, we need to store leads in many places and integrate many systems together to build a coherent system. Specifically, we found that the most common tool for lead storage is a CRM, with 57% of marketers reporting using one. 48.8% report using an email marketing tool for storage, and 43.6% report using spreadsheets. Of course, capturing leads is just one step of the process. What we do with them matters as well, as the end goal isn't just to store them in a CRM or an email tool, but to turn them into customers. Part of this approach is qualifying leads and reacting appropriately based on their quality. Do marketers normally have a strategy for lead qualification? It appears that, yes, this is the norm, with 56.4% of marketers saying they do have a documented lead qualification process. However, that leaves 34.9% with no documented process. This is important because, as you would logically suppose, those who have a documented lead qualification process report 21.4% higher satisfaction ratings with their lead generation efforts. While 39.5% of marketers are using predictive lead scoring in their marketing strategy, roughly half of marketers (48.8%) are not (and 11.6% don't know if they are or not). Limitations and Quirks With Our DataAs with any collection of data, you need to question its quality thoroughly. Especially with surveys and self-reported data, the nature of the questions can affect the output of answers. In our case, we can draw a lot of valid insights about lead generation and marketing in 2019, but we need to be careful about generalizing some of it. The big question we need to consider is the “average conversion rate” of lead capture forms. Naturally, this depends on how you calculate conversion rates, where your web form is, what your offer is, etc. For instance, the conversion rate of an offer for a free tool that is only seen by targeted paid traffic and only has an email address field is entirely different than a pop-up form that everyone on an ecommerce site sees. Ultimately, conversion rates are wildly contextual. How people calculate conversion rates is also different. Do you calculate by those who see your form, those who count as a page view (despite not scrolling to the form), or those who start filling out the form but never finish? None of this is straightforward, so it can be tough to generalize findings about this metric. As evidence for this quirkiness, look at this chart: Our respondents seem to get better and better conversion rates the more form fields they use. While this is possible, it's incredibly unlikely, at least when all other variables are controlled for. Almost all historical research has shown that increasing the number of form fields has an inverse effect on conversion rates (although not all studies have shown that). That's not to say the data is inherently untrustworthy. Just take any “average conversion rate” data with a grain of salt! Additionally, we believe our sample is quite representative, as it had been filtered to include only those who work full-time on lead generation and lead capture efforts. But a greater sample would have been desirable. There is a lot of nuance -- in industries, company size, etc. -- that we couldn't dive into because our sample size was only 173. Looking to the FutureThe process of capturing email leads is a huge part of inbound marketing. Parts of it change over time, such as the lead capture tools we use and the specific tactics around lead magnets, form optimization, and lead scoring and storage. However, much remains the same, such as the core ideas of crafting relevant offers and building a lead capture tool with as little friction as possible. It appears from this survey that less has changed than one would expect. Despite new “conversational” tools like live chat and chatbots, most people still use forms, and most people still entice visitors with Ebooks and webinars. To no one's surprise, those who run A/B tests, conduct user tests, and use form analytics, are more successful than those who don't. It will be interesting to see how things change in the next few years, as inbound marketing channels become more crowded and lead capture tools get “smarter” and more interactive. Will we still be writing 7,500 word Ebooks in exchange for five form fields' worth of information? That's where we stand today. Where will we be next year? Google Activity Cards: Inviting users to be better connected with their past search activity
1/15/2019
The latest tweak to Google's search results which lets us browse, save, and delete results from similar searches we've made before is the next step in the company's journey toward making the SERPs even more intuitive, tailored, and useful. Access to our respective search histories is not a new Google feature. Each of us can – if we have a Google account – simply click Settings > History, and from there browse, search for, or delete any past searches we want to. The launch of Google's new activity cards on January 9th appears to be building on the principle of giving the user more control. So what functionality do they offer? And what are their implications for transparency, SEO and how we move around online? What are Google activity cards?For certain searches, we will begin seeing a small card marked “Your related activity” at the very top of the SERPs. We can expand this card to show results we have clicked on when making similar searches in the past. The spiel from Google is that this is particularly useful for long running tasks:
Bringing bookmarking/pinning functionality to searchThere is more to activity cards than merely offering another set of results to peruse. In a couple of clicks users can save searches to collections. This gives another layer of organization where users can view and scroll through a digital pinboard of relevant past searches they have made. It is also just as simple to delete any unwanted results from the card too. More transparency?We have known for a long time that certain search results appear because we have clicked through to that page in the past. Activity cards make things more transparent, even for the most casual Google user. It is now far more clear to visualize what in a set of SERPs is appearing there because of our own behavior rather than the strength/popularity of the content according to other users. Implications for SEO and user journeysIt's a little too early to see any definite implications these cards will have for search engine optimization and how much they will change our journeys as users. Bear in mind that at this stage the cards are only appearing for selected searches. Specifically, the cards appear on so-called long running tasks where Google deems them relevant. That said, for results that do include activity cards, those cards can be seen to occupy the most important part of the SERP. They appear right at the top of the page, even above sponsored listings. This might frustrate digital marketers if we see sponsored and organic listings in the main SERP receive less traffic. It also might make life a little more difficult for newer sites if Google's users – for certain searches, at least – already have a well-clicked plethora of personally trusted domains. Additionally, those who are skeptical about the risk of digital echo chambers may also view such personalized results as a problem rather than a solution. Broadly a positive moveWhile it remains to be seen whether activity cards make any drastic changes to search and our habits, I think they are a positive move in terms of transparency and control for the user. We found many key takeaways from the recent appearance of Google's CEO Sundar Pichai at Congress in December. One of the main ones, though, was realizing just how difficult a task Google has in assuring everyday search users that they can trust the search results. Google spend a lot of energy helping users believe that the results they receive appear due to metrics such as whether content is fresh, popular, or has been visited by the user before – rather than by favoritism or bias on the part of the company itself. These clearly-labelled activity cards might promote greater awareness of just why users receive the results that they do. Similarly, there is also something to be said for introducing casual users to be more hands-on with taking ownership of their search activity. Users still need to click through to Settings to view/delete searches from all their history. However, seeing how easy it is (just a couple of clicks) to browse and delete results in the activity card may promote other ways users can find things they've searched for in the past. It can also help users remove things they want to get rid of. The post Google Activity Cards: Inviting users to be better connected with their past search activity appeared first on Search Engine Watch. Posted by Polemic Today we're tackling a question that many of us have asked over the years: how do you increase your chances of getting your content into Google News? We're delighted to welcome renowned SEO specialist Barry Adams to share the framework you need to have in place in order to have a chance of appearing in that much-coveted Google News carousel.
Video TranscriptionHi, everyone. I'm Barry Adams. I'm a technical SEO consultant at Polemic Digital and a specialist in news SEO. Today we're going to be talking about how to get into Google News. I get a lot of questions from a lot of people about Google News and specifically how you get a website into Google News, because it's a really great source of traffic for websites. Once you're in the Google News Index, you can appear in the top stories carousel in Google search results, and that can send a lot of traffic your way. How do you get into Google News' manually curated index?So how do you get into Google News? How do you go about getting your website to be a part of Google News' manual index so that you can get that top stories traffic for yourself? Well, it's not always as easy as it makes it appear. You have to jump through quite a few hoops before you get into Google News. 1. Have a dedicated news websiteFirst of all, you have to have a dedicated news website. You have to keep in mind when you apply to be included in Google News, there's a team of Googlers who will manually review your website to decide whether or not you're worthy of being in the News index. That is a manual process, and your website has to be a dedicated news website. I get a lot of questions from people asking if they have a news section or a blog on their site and if that could be included in Google News. The answer tends to be no. Google doesn't want news websites in there that aren't entirely about news, that are commercial websites that have a news section. They don't really want that. They want dedicated news websites, websites whose sole purpose is to provide news and content on specific topics and specific niches. So that's the first hurdle and probably the most important one. If you can't clear that hurdle, you shouldn't even try getting into Google News. 2. Meet technical requirementsThere are also a lot of other aspects that go into Google News. You have to jump through, like I said, quite a few hoops. Some technical requirements are very important to know as well. Have static, unique URLs. Google wants your articles and your section pages to have static, unique URLs so that an article or a section is always on the same URL and Google can crawl it and recrawl it on that URL without having to work with any redirects or other things. If you have content with dynamically generated URLs, that does not tend to work with Google News very well. So you have to keep that in mind and make sure that your content, both your articles and your static section pages are on fixed URLs that tend not to change over time. Have your content in plain HTML.It also helps to have all your content in plain HTML. Google News, when it indexes your content, it's all about speed. It tries to index articles as fast as possible. So any content that requires like client-side JavaScript or other sort of scripting languages tends not to work for Google News. Google has a two-stage indexing process, where the first stage is based on the HTML source code and the second stage is based on a complete render of the page, including executing JavaScript.
For Google News, that doesn't work. If your content relies on JavaScript execution, it will never be seen by Google News. Google News only uses the first stage of indexing, based purely on the HTML source code. So keep your JavaScript to a minimum and make sure that the content of your articles is present in the HTML source code and does not require any JavaScript to be seen to be present. Have clean code.It also helps to have clean code. By clean code, I mean that the article content in the HTML source code should be one continuous block of code from the headline all the way to the end. That tends to result in the best and most efficient indexing in Google News, because I've seen many examples where websites put things in the middle of the article code, like related articles or video carousels, photo galleries, and that can really mess up how Google News indexes the content. So having clean code and make sure the article code is in one continuous block of easily understood HTML code tends to work the best for Google News. 3. Optional (but more or less mandatory) technical considerationsThere's also quite a few other things that are technically optional, but I see them as pretty much mandatory because it really helps with getting your content picked up in Google News very fast and also makes sure you get that top stories carousel position as fast as possible, which is where you will get most of your news traffic from. Have a news-specific XML sitemap.Primarily the news XML sitemap, Google says this is optional but recommended, and I agree with them on that. Having a news-specific XML sitemap that lists articles that you've published in the last 48 hours, up to a maximum of 1,000 articles, is absolutely necessary. For me, I think this is Google News' primary discovery mechanism when they crawl your website and try to find new articles. So that news-specific XML sitemap is absolutely crucial, and you want to make sure you have that in place before you submit your site to Google News. Mark up articles with NewsArticle structured data.I also think it's very important to mark up your articles with news article structured data. It can be just article structured data or even more specific structured data segments that Google is introducing, like news article analysis and news article opinion for specific types of articles. But article or news article markup on your article pages is pretty much mandatory. I see your likelihood of getting into the top stories carousel much improved if you have that markup implemented on your article pages. Helpful-to-have extras:Also, like I said, this is a manually curated index. So there are a few extra hoops that you want to jump through to make sure that when a Googler looks at your website and reviews it, it ticks all the boxes and it appears like a trustworthy, genuine news website. A. Multiple authorsHaving multiple authors contribute to your website is hugely valuable, hugely important, and it does tend to elevate you above all the other blogs and small sites that are out there and makes it a bit more likely that the Googler reviewing your site will press that Approve button. B. Daily updatesHaving daily updates definitely is necessary. You don't want just one news post every couple of days. Ideally, multiple new articles every single day that also should be unique. You can have some sort of syndicated content on there, like from feeds, from AP or Reuters or whatever, but the majority of your content needs to be your own unique content. You don't want to rely too much on syndicated articles to fill your website with news content. C. Mostly unique contentTry to write as much unique content as you possibly can. There isn't really a clear ratio for that. Generally speaking, I recommend my clients to have at least 70% of the content as unique stuff that they write themselves and publish themselves and only 30% maximum syndicated content from external sources. D. Specialized niche/topicIt really helps to have a specialized niche or a specialized topic that you focus on as a news website. There are plenty of news sites out there that are general news and try to do everything, and Google News doesn't really need many more of those. What Google is interested in is niche websites on specific topics, specific areas that can provide in-depth reporting on those specific industries or topics. So if you have a very niche topic or a niche industry that you cover with your news, it does tend to improve your chances of getting into that News Index and getting that top stories carousel traffic. So that, in a nutshell, is how you get into Google News. It might appear to be quite simple, but, like I said, quite a few hoops for you to jump through, a few technical things you have to implement on your website as well. But if you tick all those boxes, you can get so much traffic from the top stories carousel, and the rest is profit. Thank you very much. This has been my Whiteboard Friday. Further resources:
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