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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What do cross-country road trips, wedding speeches, and social media marketing have in common? You could improvise all three, but it's better to have a plan for what direction you're heading -- especially when developing your social media content strategy. By now, most marketers recognize that social media plays an integral role in an effective inbound marketing strategy. And with so many social networks to manage and publish on, it's important to stay organized and have a plan for when and what you're going to share on these platforms. In this post, we've rounded up some of the most helpful tools and templates for building out an effective social media content plan. Check them out below. The Benefits of Using a Social Media Content CalendarWe're all busy. And when we're busy without a plan in place for the tasks we have to get done, things inevitably slip through the cracks. Social media content is no exception. Just like with blogging, a successful social media strategy requires regular publishing and engaging with followers to see positive results -- whether that be in terms of SEO, brand recognition, lead generation, or all three. So, if you're not already using a social media content calendar, hear me out:
Now that you understand the merits of having a social media content calendar in place, check out our list of top tools to stay organized and on top of your game. 4 Social Media Content Calendar Tools to Plan Your Messaging1. TrelloTrello is another organizational tool that's highly effective for team collaboration. More specifically, social media managers can use Trello's flexible assignment “cards” and customizable “boards” and “lists” to map out to-do lists, manage a content calendar, plan a campaign, and house ideas from a brainstorm. Here's an example of a Trello board a social media marketing team might use to plan posts for the upcoming week: But you're not limited to just one structure: Users can customize boards according to their needs. For example, a team could create a board to organize social media posts for a given week, on a specific platform, or post ideas around a topic, such as a campaign or awareness day. Trello cards allow for a ton of customization as well. Here's a fictitious social media editorial calendar card with Twitter copy options around a piece of blog content. Note that you can track progress toward completing a checklist, which could be useful for social media marketers looking to track campaign progress. Additionally, Trello cards can be assigned to different team members, marked with due dates, and commented on. Users can even customize the labels (as in the image below) with different publication statuses so the entire team can see the progress of their social media posts and when they're due on the calendar. The labels could also indicate different social networks that content is being published on. Source: BlueGlass Trello also offers a full calendar view (shown below) which makes it easy to visualize what content is going out, and when. Source: BlueGlass 2. Microsoft ExcelMarketers might already use Excel for different types of reports and data analysis in their roles, but it's a highly useful tool for social media content calendar organization, too. Excel can be customized according to whatever priorities or metrics a team is focused on, so it's a great tool for planning ahead. The good news? We've already done the heavy lifting for you by creating a free, downloadable social media content calendar template using Microsoft Excel. Marketers can use this template to easily plan out individual social media posts -- monthly or annually -- while keeping an eye on bigger picture events, holidays, publications, and partnerships. For more on how to use the templates, check out this in-depth guide from my colleague Lindsay Kolowich. Use the Monthly Planning Calendar Tab above to get a bird's-eye view of what's coming down their content pipeline in a given month. In the Content Repository tab, users can record the content they're publishing on this tab to keep track of which pieces have been promoted and to easily recall older content that can be re-promoted on social media. On the Social Network Update tabs, users can draft and plan out social media posts in advance. These tabs are for organizational purposes, and the content of the posts themselves must be uploaded into a social media publisher. This free resource can be used to draft social media posts, or it can be bulk-uploaded into a publishing app to maximize efficiency. (HubSpot customers: You can use this spreadsheet to organize content and upload it directly into Social Inbox. For instructions on how to do so, check out the template's cover sheet here.) 3. EvernoteEvernote is a note-taking app that marketers can use to keep track of all the moving parts that comprise a social media campaign. The tool also features yearly, monthly, weekly, and hourly logs, which make it easy to keep track of when you're publishing content on social media, when you're producing blog content, and other team-wide priorities. (Evernote offers customizable templates for each of these that can be downloaded into the app.) Another useful feature? Evernote's Web Clipper extension for Chrome. Marketers can use this tool to easily save links to their Evernote Notebook for sharing later on. The Evernote mobile app also boasts some interesting features to help marketers keep their social content ideas straight. For example, you can easily snap a photo and save it to your Evernote files for review later. Source: Evernote This feature is of particular valuable for social content creators looking to maintain a backlog of photos to publish on Instagram. 4. Google DriveGoogle Drive has several helpful features that make it easy for social media marketers to build out an effective content calendar. Here's an example of how a team might use Google Calendar to track both their editorial and social media calendars to make sure they're aligning posts with new blog content. These calendars can be easily shared with multiple teams to avoid scheduling conflicts and ensure that campaigns are aligned. Marketers can also use shared Google Sheets to schedule posts on social media, track the status of different pieces of content, and assign tasks to team members -- all on the same platform as their calendar. With the help of Google Docs, users can keep comments all in one place and can collaborate on different projects without emailing back-and-forth or having to schedule a meeting. This is a particularly useful feature when editing content for social media, which may need to be drafted and approved quickly. (HubSpot customers: You can link your Google Drive account to your HubSpot portal to easily upload files from Drive into your HubSpot software.) Now that we've reviewed a few helpful tools to kick your social media strategy into high gear, experiment with them. Every social media team is different, and it could be a combination of these tools that helps you execute your strategy efficiently to drive ROI. For getting all of your ideas down and developing a big-picture plan for your social assets, we recommend starting with our template and going from there. What tools do you use to build your social media content calendar? Share with us in the comments below. Universal Search Updated at Google
1/14/2019
~ 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 Scaling is all about making repetitive tasks more productive to be able to focus on more creative things and experiments. I know a lot of people will cringe at the idea of scaling social media marketing because it is supposed to be all about human connections. There are also many people who don't believe you can attract any substantial amount of clicks from social media. Well, both may be true but only if you do that wrong: That's not possible to build good traffic from social media without at least some sort of automating / scaling.
And while truly effective engagement cannot be efficiently scaled, you can scale all other parts of the puzzle, at least to some extent:
Let's see: Cross-post with calendar publishing toolsEven if you have a dedicated full time social media team at your disposal, constantly publishing on social media is difficult to achieve. Big corporations have rotating shifts that handle it but for most of us we have to operate on a smaller scale, especially budget wise. We can get around that by publishing scheduled posts, which includes cross-posting from one platform to another. That will cut the time spent on social media in half. That doesn't mean that all of your posts should be pre-made and scheduled, or that they should go to every single platform. It still takes intelligent planning. My personal method is to sit down every month and plan a month's worth of social media posts based around content that is going to be circulated and is already scheduled to post. Using ContentCal, I get all of those posts ready to go on all platforms. ContentCal is an affordable social media editorial calendar with some cool productivity features:
From there, my team will dedicate time every day to manage regular social media interactivity. They will respond to posts, find brand mentions using listening tools and searches and do the more thorough work involved in the process. Supported platforms: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram Put your content in front of influencers where they expect itThe power of influencer marketing cannot be overstated. Twitter has become a particular powerhouse for the tactics, but Instagram, YouTube and even Snapchat are gaining a lead. Cultivating a relationship with influential social media users is mutually beneficial and can have lasting effects on your brand. I have done the long term version of this, which takes a lot of time and effort for both you and the influencer. Viral Content Bee (Disclaimer: This is the project I co-founded) strives to make it easier by connecting you and the influencers straight away. You share their content, they share yours. Both get some much needed exposure and without shady pay deals. It is easy and effective. The main thing it eliminates any possible frustration of the “being used” feeling when influencers receive pitches to share something daily. Instead, they join that platform to find your content: All you need to do is to put it there. Supported platforms: Twitter, Linkedin, Mix, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Track your growth and learn from that growthGrowth for its own sake is important enough and that doesn't even get into the importance to a brand, organic traffic and profitability. But one thing we sometimes forget is what we can learn from exponential growth and how it applies to future campaigns. Some things work. Some things don't. We need to be able to clearly see which is which and change it up accordingly. This is where watching every one of your social channels is critical, so you can respond to every tick up or down you may see. Over time you will also begin to notice trends that can have a huge influence on your branding. Business can change their entire social direction based on the findings of these types of analytics. There are endless tools for this purpose. My personal favorite is Cyfe because it is an all in one business dashboard that is fully customizable. You create your own widgets, monitoring whatever you want to and all for $19 per month (they have a free version but if you are going with a higher number of channels you will want to pay the money for the full features). Cyfe can manage both social media monitoring and growth for you, from one single dashboard. Furthermore, the best widget I ever created was a Google Analytics dashboard that monitored the traffic that came from each one of my social media accounts. It really showed where my team and I needed to focus our energies. Supported platforms: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Google Analytics… What NOT to scaleSome things you just cannot scale or automate well, so it's better to stop trying.
Truth be told, marketing is going to be more and more automated going forward. Technology is making authentic and effective personalization possible, so marketing automation (including social media automation) discussion should mature. If you want to see your social media marketing bring any kind of ROI, automate. And how do you scale social media for it to bring more traffic and leads? Share your tips! The post How to scale your social media marketing to build traffic and leads appeared first on Search Engine Watch. 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 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:
Video transcription by Speechpad.com Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! Scaling is all about making repetitive tasks more productive to be able to focus on more creative things and experiments. I know a lot of people will cringe at the idea of scaling social media marketing because it is supposed to be all about human connections. There are also many people who don't believe you can attract any substantial amount of clicks from social media. Well, both may be true but only if you do that wrong: That's not possible to build good traffic from social media without at least some sort of automating / scaling.
And while truly effective engagement cannot be efficiently scaled, you can scale all other parts of the puzzle, at least to some extent:
Let's see: Cross-post with calendar publishing toolsEven if you have a dedicated full time social media team at your disposal, constantly publishing on social media is difficult to achieve. Big corporations have rotating shifts that handle it but for most of us we have to operate on a smaller scale, especially budget wise. We can get around that by publishing scheduled posts, which includes cross-posting from one platform to another. That will cut the time spent on social media in half. That doesn't mean that all of your posts should be pre-made and scheduled, or that they should go to every single platform. It still takes intelligent planning. My personal method is to sit down every month and plan a month's worth of social media posts based around content that is going to be circulated and is already scheduled to post. Using ContentCal, I get all of those posts ready to go on all platforms. ContentCal is an affordable social media editorial calendar with some cool productivity features:
From there, my team will dedicate time every day to manage regular social media interactivity. They will respond to posts, find brand mentions using listening tools and searches and do the more thorough work involved in the process. Supported platforms: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram Put your content in front of influencers where they expect itThe power of influencer marketing cannot be overstated. Twitter has become a particular powerhouse for the tactics, but Instagram, YouTube and even Snapchat are gaining a lead. Cultivating a relationship with influential social media users is mutually beneficial and can have lasting effects on your brand. I have done the long term version of this, which takes a lot of time and effort for both you and the influencer. Viral Content Bee (Disclaimer: This is the project I co-founded) strives to make it easier by connecting you and the influencers straight away. You share their content, they share yours. Both get some much needed exposure and without shady pay deals. It is easy and effective. The main thing it eliminates any possible frustration of the “being used” feeling when influencers receive pitches to share something daily. Instead, they join that platform to find your content: All you need to do is to put it there. Supported platforms: Twitter, Linkedin, Mix, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Track your growth and learn from that growthGrowth for its own sake is important enough and that doesn't even get into the importance to a brand, organic traffic and profitability. But one thing we sometimes forget is what we can learn from exponential growth and how it applies to future campaigns. Some things work. Some things don't. We need to be able to clearly see which is which and change it up accordingly. This is where watching every one of your social channels is critical, so you can respond to every tick up or down you may see. Over time you will also begin to notice trends that can have a huge influence on your branding. Business can change their entire social direction based on the findings of these types of analytics. There are endless tools for this purpose. My personal favorite is Cyfe because it is an all in one business dashboard that is fully customizable. You create your own widgets, monitoring whatever you want to and all for $19 per month (they have a free version but if you are going with a higher number of channels you will want to pay the money for the full features). Cyfe can manage both social media monitoring and growth for you, from one single dashboard. Furthermore, the best widget I ever created was a Google Analytics dashboard that monitored the traffic that came from each one of my social media accounts. It really showed where my team and I needed to focus our energies. Supported platforms: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Google Analytics… What NOT to scaleSome things you just cannot scale or automate well, so it's better to stop trying.
Truth be told, marketing is going to be more and more automated going forward. Technology is making authentic and effective personalization possible, so marketing automation (including social media automation) discussion should mature. If you want to see your social media marketing bring any kind of ROI, automate. And how do you scale social media for it to bring more traffic and leads? Share your tips! The post How to scale your social media marketing to build traffic and leads appeared first on Search Engine Watch. You might think most consumers start their online shopping sessions with a visit to Google, but according to a poll conducted by NPR and Marist, Amazon is actually the most common starting point for online shoppers. With 44% of shoppers starting on Amazon (which is 11% more than Google) and 40% of Americans buying products on the website at least once every month, Amazon has become the central hub for online shopping. If you're in the eCommerce industry, selling on Amazon is your best bet for maximizing your reach and, ultimately, your revenue. To help you set up shop on Amazon, we've created this ultimate guide that'll teach you how to list your products, set up your shipping options, promote your products, manage your reviews, and analyze your performance. Read on to learn how to sell on the eCommerce platform in 2019. The Ultimate Guide to Selling on Amazon in 20191. Figure out if the product you want to sell needs approval from Amazon.On Amazon, there are 20 categories open to all sellers, so if you want to sell products under any of these categories, you don't need approval from Amazon. However, there are 15 categories that do require approval from Amazon, so if you want to sell products under any of these categories, you need to apply for a Professional Selling Plan subscription. Amazon limits the number of sellers in each of these categories because they want to maintain the quality of their products. So if you believe your products are up to par and want to sell them under these categories, you need to request approval from Amazon by filling out their application. Amazon will let you know if they've approved you or if they need additional information from you in up to three business days. Here are two lists of Amazon's product categories that are open to all sellers or require approval. Product Categories Open to All Sellers1. Amazon Device Accessories 2. Amazon Kindle 3. Baby Products 4. Beauty 5. Books 6. Camera & Photo 7. Cell Phones 8. Clothing & Accessories 9. Electronics 10. Handmade 11. Health & Personal Care 12. Home & Garden 13. Musical Instruments 14. Office Products 15. Outdoors 16. Software & Computer Games 17. Sports 18. Tools & Home Improvement 19. Toys & Games 20. Video Games & Video Game Consoles Product Categories That Require Approval From Amazon1. Automotive & Powersports 2. B2B Business Products 3. Collectible Coins 4. Fashion Jewelry 5. Fine Jewelry 6. Fine Art 7. Grocery & Gourmet Food 8. Industrial & Scientific 9. Luggage & Travel Accessories 10. Personal Computers 11. Professional Services 12. Shoes, Handbags, & Sunglasses 13. Sports Collectibles 14. Video, DVD, & Blu-Ray 15. Watches 2. Pick a selling plan that suits your business model.Amazon offers two selling plans: the Individual Plan and Professional Plan. If you choose the Individual Plan, you'll pay Amazon $0.99 for every item you sell plus referral and variable closing fees. According to Amazon, the Individual Plan is best for sellers who sell less than 40 items per month. If you choose the Professional Plan, you can sell an unlimited number of products while only paying Amazon a subscription fee of $39.99 plus referral and variable closing fees. According to Amazon, the Professional Plan is best for sellers who sell more than 40 items per month. 3. Register for a seller account and list your products.To register for a seller account on Amazon, visit Amazon Seller Central and click the “Start selling” button. Amazon Seller Central is also where you'll manage your selling account. After you've created your account, you can start listing your products on Amazon. If you have the Individual Plan, you can add one product to the Amazon Marketplace catalog at a time. If you have the Professional Plan, you can add batches of products to the catalog. Additionally, if you're selling products that are already listed on Amazon, all you have to do is tell them the amount of product you plan to sell, the condition of your product, and its shipping options. If you're selling products that aren't listed on Amazon yet, the process is a little more complicated. You have to tell them what each of your product's universal product code (UPC) and stock keeping unit (SKU) is and then list each product's features on Amazon, like its title, description, and price. If you don't know what a UPC is, it consists of a 12-digit numeric code and a barcode. The American branch of GS1, an organization that develops and maintains global business communication standards, assigns a permanent UPC to a product for its entire shelf life. So even if multiple retailers sell the product, it'll still have the same UPC at each store. For example, every box of a certain brand's blackberries will have the same UPC at every store they're sold at. A SKU is similar to a UPC, but it differs from it by being a distinct string of letters and numbers that helps retailers identify every product in their inventory and each product's specific traits, like its manufacturer, brand, price, style, color, and size. Retailers create their own internal SKU codes to quickly and accurately pinpoint and track every single piece of inventory in their retail stores, e-commerce stores, catalogs, warehouses, and product fulfillment centers. Image Credit: FitSmallBusiness 4. Set up your shipping options.Even if you sell on Amazon, you'll always have the option to ship products on your own. But Amazon offers a truly unique and advantageous shipping service for all their sellers that's incredibly hard to pass up -- Fulfillment by Amazon. With Fulfillment by Amazon, all you have to do is send your inventory to an Amazon fulfillment center and they'll store your products, package them, and ship them to your customers. Signing up for Fulfillment by Amazon also makes your products eligible for Amazon Prime free two-day shipping, free shipping, and customer service and returns. Shipping costs are already included in your seller plan, so all you have to pay for is storage space and and a fee for each order Amazon fulfills. 5. Sell and promote your products.After you've set up your shipping options, you're ready to start selling on Amazon. To attract as many potential customers as possible, make sure to craft compelling product listings that have clear and concise titles, benefits-rich descriptions, and vivid pictures. If you want to increase your products' visibility on Amazon, consider running sponsored product ads directly on the platform. These ads are pay per click and will be placed alongside people's search results. Amazon also offers an automatic ad targeting tool, which leverages their search algorithm to suggest a list of potentially lucrative keywords that you can bid on and promote your products through. Image Credit: Shopify Once people buy your products on Amazon, they'll deposit payments into your bank account on a regular basis and send you a notification when they pay you. 6. Encourage reviews.Reviews are crucial for driving sales on Amazon. The more reviews you have, the more credible and trustworthy customers will perceive your products to be. Fortunately, Amazon lets sellers send follow up emails to customers after they order one of their products and ask for product reviews. They even let you automate the process, but Amazon also requires you to follow a strict set of guidelines, which don't allow you to include marketing messages, link to other websites, or ask for, demand, or incentivize positive reviews in these emails. In 2016, Amazon banned incentivized reviews -- which were customer reviews given to brands in exchange for a free or discounted product as long as the reviewers revealed they received an incentive for their feedback. These incentives were artificially inflating brands' average ratings, so Amazon decided they needed to level the playing field. With this in mind, don't even think about trying to incentivize a positive review. Just send your customers emails that politely ask for a candid product review. 7. Analyze your performance.On your Amazon Seller Central account, you'll have access to a sales dashboard, which displays a snapshot of your orders for the day, quantity of units sold, the amount of sales you've generated for the day, and other metrics. Image Credit: Salesbacker You'll also have access to business reports that display metrics like sales by item, sales and orders by month, page views, brand performance, inventory in stock, and more. Image Credit: Salesbacker Additionally, you'll have access to a “Compare Sales” graph that can compare any day's sales to each other, which helps you discover seasonal trends and patterns. Image Credit: Salesbacker Finally, you'll have access to a sales reporting tool that can pull any of your account's metrics to produce a graphical representations of your sales data. This'll help you truly grasp how your Amazon account is performing. Universal Search Updated at Google
1/14/2019
~ 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 ⚓. |