“Advertisers, Agencies, Media & Audiences – Where did it all go wrong?”
AAI Nuts and Bolts of Advertising seminars form part of the AAI Advertisers’ Toolkit, an initiative to help advertisers and marketers keep up-to-date on important advertising topics and useful marketing questions.
Our next guest speaker is Peter McPartlin, one of Ireland’s best-known advertising and media professionals. Peter has some interesting and provocative observations to make on the state of Irish advertising and what must be done to restore its lustre – so join us from 8.15am on Friday 22 November at 1 Windmill Lane in Dublin.
Seminar Details
The Irish advertising, marketing and media business has undergone a torrid time over the last decade. Adspend fell off a cliff in 2009 and has barely recovered since then. This has had enormous consequences for our indigenous media and once harmonious relationships in the marketing and agency community.
The disruption caused by digital media and a focus on short-termism has further compounded the sector’s challenges and, alongside changing consumer expectations, there have been knock-on effects on the standards of creativity.
Promiscuous consumers, rapacious tech disruptors, tormented media owners and risk-averse practitioners – Peter believes the Irish ad business is at a cross-roads.
Has fear and loathing really taken hold in this key sector of Irish business? Come along and hear McPartlin’s ‘hot takes’ on November 22nd.
About the Speaker:
Peter has 40 years’ experience in the Irish media and marketing industry, working with some of the country’s largest agencies and on strategies and campaigns for many of the country’s best-known brands.
He was CEO of Today FM, Ireland’s largest independent radio station, for four years and led the station to become ‘National Station of the Year’ in 2014. He also established the short-lived but much-loved alternative rock station, TXFM, to promote new on-air talent.
Peter has won a range of different accolades within the industry including 3 Gold All-Ireland Marketing awards and two AdFX effectiveness awards.
Peter is passionate about media and music and writes and speaks regularly on various aspects of both industries.
As well as acting as a business advisor to a number of media companies, Peter is currently working in a pro bono capacity with IASCA (The Irish Association of Songwriters, Composers and Authors) to help gain better exposure for new Irish music through the PLAYIRISH digital station which he co-founded. He is also an investor in Ireland’s new vinyl record pressing plant, Dublin Vinyl.
In recent years, a lot has been made about whether or not the standard marketing funnel has changed for e-commerce retailers.
Traditionally, shoppers went through the following three stages:
• Awareness: “I have a problem.”
• Consideration: “What are my options for solving this problem?”
• Acquisition: “I’m ready to buy a product to solve this problem.”
The truth is that these three stages are still relevant to e-commerce retailers. To make the most of each stage, online retail marketers should consider taking advantage of the following three channels.
Pinterest: Absolutely Own The Awareness Stage
For years, Pinterest was a hit with users but wasn’t a go-to channel for pay-per-click (PPC) marketers. While there were some ways to take advantage of the visual-friendly website, those options weren’t as accessible as Google and Facebook.
Recently, that’s changed. Pinterest might actually represent one of the most exciting opportunities for retailers at the moment. Earlier this year, Pinterest launched a revamp of its marketing platform. Among other things, the new catalogs feature allows retailers to upload multiple images of the same product, organize their inventory by category and even turn their product images into dynamic product pins.
The reason this is such a big deal for retailers is that shoppers often visit Pinterest when they’re in the awareness stage. They may be looking for ideas for decorating their home this Christmas, planning a new outfit, picking the furniture for their living room, etc. Placing your products in front of them during this critical time can produce incredible outcomes.
Facebook: Introduce Yourself And Stay Top Of Mind
Today, if you’re an e-commerce marketer who isn’t taking advantage of Facebook, you likely have some grateful competitors. Facebook is another great platform for the top of your funnel because you can introduce yourself via Facebook ads, which can be targeted at users based on their interests.
This targeting is valuable since many users have problems related to their hobbies, activities and other interests. For example, if you’re currently in the market for new jogging shoes, it’s probably because you like jogging. You might have even mentioned this in your Facebook profile. This makes it easy for a retailer to send an ad your way, letting you know about their incredible shoes.
It’s worth noting that Instagram ads are similar in this regard. I find that they’re not as powerful at the moment, but given how popular Instagram is, it might be worth exploring how much potential Instagram ads have for targeting your prospects.
Of course, as every e-commerce retailer knows, most customers don’t purchase right from the awareness stage. They need time to consider their options — in the consideration stage — before finally reaching the acquisition stage. That’s why you have to stay top of mind, which can be done by leveraging Facebook’s dynamic product ads. When someone has signaled that they are interested in what your brand has to offer, use these ads to stay in front of them again and again until they’re finally ready to purchase.
Google: Level The Playing Field With Amazon
If you’re an e-commerce retailer and you’re not using Google Ads, you may be struggling to attain sales unless they’re coming through Amazon. In order to keep more of your revenue, you need to show up before Amazon in Google’s search results, and one of the best ways to do that is with Google Shopping.
On this platform, you can create image ads that show people your products, which appear right at the top of the Google Search page and bring users to your listing the moment they click.
In your listing, you can answer all of the relevant questions people have when they’re hoping to make a purchase. For example:
• Do they have this item in my size?
• Is my favorite color available?
• Can I just buy this product at a nearby store?
• Are they running any sales to save me money?
Two other options e-commerce retailers can take advantage of on Google include Google Merchant Promotions and Google’s local inventory ads.
Just like the name implies, with Google Merchant Promotions you can create “special offers” for any of your products listed in Google Shopping. So, whether you have a surplus of inventory or you just want to boost sales, it’s as easy as logging into your merchant account and dropping your prices.
Finally, with Google’s local inventory ads, you can show searchers that one of your nearby stores already has the item that they want. If they’re already at the acquisition stage and are ready to buy, you can show them there’s absolutely no reason to wait.
Google Shopping is a powerful tool no matter where your prospect is in your marketing funnel. Whether they’ve just become aware of their problem or they’ve decided to spend money, there’s a good chance they’re going to do some online research on this platform first. Meet them there.
Upgrade Your E-Commerce Marketing Funnel
Before you go turning your entire e-commerce marketing funnel upside down, introducing new stages or throwing it out altogether and starting anew, consider revamping your traditional strategies. Arm it with the three channels I’ve outlined above, and you’re on the right track to more visibility.
In today’s digital age, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information at your disposal as soon as you open your internet browser or sign into your social media accounts. All you have to do is type a term into Google or scroll through your timeline and you’ll be inundated with content.
In the media world, you can inundated with content. From releases to updates and everything in between, there is no shortage of content. But is that content any good? In a highly competitive market like media, you need to have the best content in order to be seen.
In recent years, the importance of inbound marketing has been widely recognised, leading to a surge in brands focusing on their content. While creating content is an important element of any successful marketing strategy, so too is curating content.
But how does content curation look forIrish businesses? The following article will cover just what content curation is, why it’s important for your SME, and how you can curate great content for your Irish brand.
What is content curation?
Before you become a world class Content Curator (and we know you’ll get there!), it’s important to understand just what content curation is. We think that this definition from Beth Kanter sums it up nicely:
Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a specific theme. The work involves sifting, sorting, arranging, and publishing information. A content curator cherry picks the best content that is important and relevant to share with their community.
Successful content curators help us cut through the noise and discover content that matters.
Like a museum curator chooses the finest art to display, a content curator selects content that will engage and delight their audiences. Instead of hanging artworks on the walls, you’ll be sharing your curated masterpieces with your followers.
The process of content curation can be simplified into three basic steps: discover, curate, and share. At the discovery stage, you’ll search online to find the most relevant content for your target audience.
The curation stage is when you read and weed through the content you’ve discovered in stage one to find the gems (we’ll get into this in more detail later on in the article). The sharing stage is exactly what it sounds like: taking the content you’ve so carefully curated and distributing it via your chosen channels.
There are plenty of reasons why curating content is beneficial for smaller Irish businesses. These include the following:
Curating content is simpler than creating your own:
From coming up with the right topics to writing 500+ words about those topics, content creation can be extremely time consuming. In fact, having a steady stream of blog posts or articles is difficult if you don’t have the resources for a designated content creator (which many small Irish businesses won’t). It can be weeks or even months before you’re able to publish something substantial. Content curation is much simpler and less time consuming, so you’re able to be more consistent with your sharing.
Content curation helps you build relationships with other sites:
Sharing content from sites across the web can help you forge relationships with those sites. This will broaden your network, and these connections may be able to be leveraged for your benefit in the future. When you help others, they’ll want to help you (and friends are especially important for small businesses).
Each time you share content, you’re increasing your exposure. Every piece of curated content is another opportunity for you to be seen, and another reason for people to pay attention to your brand. Content can be shared and reshared. It lives forever and so does the exposure it brings.
Content curation can help you become a thought leader in your industry:
A successful content curation strategy will help your brand distinguish itself as a go-to source for media information. Each piece of content you share will give your audience something of value, and this process will establish your authority within the field.
If you’re constantly on the lookout for great things to share, you’ll be reading plenty of relevant content. Obviously, the more you know, the better informed you’ll be. Knowledge is power, and content curation forces you to monitor the conversation and stay abreast of current happenings.
How to curate great content
Becoming a great content curator doesn’t just happen overnight—it takes effort. Below are some tips that will help you on your curatorial journey.
The foundations of a successful content curation strategy depends on sharing content that your audience will find useful and interesting. For example, if you’re a local Irish restaurant, your followers are likely to be interested in things like recipes, chef interviews, restaurant reviews, and Irish foodie news.
Most people find these types of content useful and interesting:
It’s important to give credit where credit’s due. Not citing your sources is not only a bad practice (that could end up landing your business in hot water, hello plagiarism how are you). When sharing your curated content, it’s essential that you let your followers know where it came from.
If you want to establish yourself as a master content curator, the content you share must be significant when you’re posting it. Posting old news or inappropriate content is a surefire way to damage your online reputation and lose the trust of your followers.
4. Use tools to help you:
Who says you have to go at it alone? We say take all the help that you can get! There are plenty of tools that will streamline, or even automate, your content curation. Tools like Pocket, Curata and BuzzSumo will help you discover and share the most impactful, noteworthy content.
If you’re stumped as to where to start, or simply want some more ideas for content your followers will want to read— just ask! People in the media industry are not shy, no doubt they’ll share their opinion if asked. If there’s one thing we know, it’s that users & peers love to share their opinions. Your followers will only be too happy to let you know what they’d like to see more of.
6. Share regularly:
Consistency is key in both creating and curating content. We recommend sharing content at least once every other day in order to stay on the minds of your followers. If you want to establish your business as a leading source of information, you’ll need to keep content in regular supply.
Us Irish love to talk, communication is in our blood. Using content for visual communication is a method that needs to be undertaken by Irish business. Not only does it satisfy the need for a chat but also gives your audience a way of understanding more about your brand. Media can be hectic but using content can put you on the right side of busy!
Author Bio; Currently working as a Marketing Executive at Design Wizard, Claire is passionate about creating amazing content and bringing people together. Having recently graduated with her masters degree in Marketing she is keen to impact the digital world. Outside of work you can catch Claire taking photos of her rescue dog Storm and checking out social media.
A constant for many publishers is email. But challenges including lapsed subscribers and the challenges of including traditional advertising in an email strategy, publishers can have a hard time justifying investment in the platform. Here’s some candid thoughts from publishing executives at the Digiday Hot Topic: Email for Publishing event held yesterday.
Limiting sign-up friction gets you more emails “We stopped requiring first and last name at sign-up. It limits personalization, but there’s also less friction at sign-up. We missed having that information though.”
“You don’t want to ask for 15 things off the bat — just get their email. But on the second interaction, you can ask for more personalized information to get more data.”
“For now, my vision is to make the user journey a priority. User data will trickle in, and we can use that to make inferred relationships.”
Your most valuable subscriber is your brand evangelist “A brand lover is worth 100 times more to you than a casual reader.”
“We get more than 1,000 views a day based off our referral program, and the referrals are incredibly high quality.”
“Thirty-seven percent of [paid] members were free newsletter subscribers first, and 10% of members subscribed directly from a free newsletter.”
“Four percent of our audience is a habitual reader who has seven or more sessions per month, but the average revenue per user in that group is five times that of a reader with one to four sessions [94% of their readership.]”
30 to 90 days is the best time to attempt reengagement “Our retention program works best, we found, at 30 days, but we’re predominantly a daily newsletter company.”
“It’s always a struggle with reengagement. Is it worth the effort to reengage someone versus the value that you get from them after they are reengaged? Because we typically find that if they disengage, they don’t really want to come back.”
“Old subscribers for us, we find that since more often publishers are landing in the promotions folder, an email coming from a different email address than they normally receive the email from is really effective in reengaging people.”
“What we started doing is actually buying their, what we call singles, so we’re able to see and match up in real time against their database when a user is opening and clicking other emails from other brands and then being able to trigger reengagement emails then, and that gives us a much better open and click-through rate.”
“We tend to look at it more of how we on-board people better to prevent them from disengaging. I think a lot of people are scared to ask upfront why you’re starting to disengage, but it’s about flagging it early so you’re not waiting for 90 days.”
Finding a place for affiliate links can increase the value of your newsletters “The beautiful thing about affiliate data is that it can be used in many ways, but you can take it out to new advertisers to prove that there is an engaged audience getting to the point of sale in that email list.”
“We have 42 newsletters that we’re tapping into that have a highly engaged audience; 10 are relevant for commerce on average, but depends on the time of year.”
Include the editorial staff in your newsletter strategy “For editors, being in the weeds helps them learn more about the audience than they would normally on the site, and that’s where we’re getting the ideas to create new newsletters — in the weeds.”
“Voice emails that utilize editorial talent build personal relationships with readers.”
“It’s important on the product-side to make the tools as easy as possible for editorial use and learn.”
You may have used the Waze app to avoid traffic, but what if that data could be used to fight traffic data on a larger scale? That’s what the Waze for Cities Data program aims to do. Waze is making anonymized user data available to cities for free on Google Cloud and adding the tools to help urban planners analyze it.
Waze for Cities Data launched in 2014 as the Connected Citizens Program. It started with 10 city partners and has since grown to 1,000 partners globally, according to Waze, encompassing both cities and other entities that can make use of the app’s crowdsourced traffic data. Partners will now have access to Waze data collected since April 2019 via Google Cloud, as well as analysis tools BigQuery and Data Studio, which were designed to make sense even to lay audiences, according to Waze.
What can users do with this data? Genesis Pulse, an emergency services software provider, started using Waze data to give first responders real-time crash alerts from Waze users. In 40% of cases, crashes are reported by Waze users 4.5 minutes before they are called in via 911 or an equivalent method, according to Waze. According to the Federal Communications Commission, a one minute decrease in average ambulance response time saves more than 10,000 lives in the United States annually, Waze noted.
Public agencies that apply for the program can analyze up to 1TB of data, and store up to 10GB of data, for free each month. The basic data analysis tools are free as well, but more advanced tools will require a paid account. Cities will also be able to store and analyze their own data, while maintaining complete control of it, according to Waze.
Waze’s data-sharing scheme is already proving popular. The top three contributors are the cities of Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Jose, according to Waze. The government of Miami-Dade County and the state transportation agencies of Massachusetts and Virginia are also major contributors, as are both New York City and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates large chunks of the Big Apple’s transportation infrastructure. So the next time you open up the Waze app, know that you may be helping to fight urban traffic.
OpenAP, an advertising group owned by Fox, NBCUniversal and Viacom, is officially launching a marketplace letting advertisers buy across digital and linear TV programming.
This is a way of making inventory easier to buy, like it is from digital companies.
It’s also bringing automation to the area of TV buying.
OpenAP, an advertising company founded by a group of some of the biggest TV companies, announced on Tuesday a new platform to let advertisers buy ad campaigns on linear TV and digital video across publishers. As TV ad spend has been bruised by the rise of digital and other factors, this kind of move could grow ad dollars flowing to big TV networks by making it easier to buy and reach more specific audiences.
OpenAP came together in 2017 as a consortium including Fox, Viacom and Turner (now AT&T’s WarnerMedia) as a way to make it easier and more valuable to buy more specific, data-driven audiences than standard TV demos across multiple publishers. WarnerMedia pulled out in April 2019 after becoming part of AT&T, which has its own advanced advertising functions. NBCUniversal joined OpenAP last year.
The coming together of the networks may be a way of making TV more competitive against digital, as digital ad spending in the U.S. is poised to exceed traditional ad spending this year, according to eMarketer. The platform will let advertisers buy inventory from Fox, NBCUniversal, Viacom and Univision using automation, which “really hasn’t been something that has been the case” in the past, OpenAP CEO David Levy said.
Here’s how it works.
Let’s say an advertiser wants to reach a certain audience, such as people interested in buying a car. That advertiser can pull together one buy across TV networks and both linear and digital viewing environments. Advertisers only pay when that ad reaches that intended audience. Levy said it’s possible because in recent years, TV networks have been investing in data science platforms to help forecast which shows specific audiences are likely to watch. But until now, it was harder to execute on a one-off basis, he said.
This move should make it easier to target a big group of consumers across publishers in one fell swoop. The members together hold more than 20 cable networks and three broadcast networks. The digital video included in the inventory for now is on 30-minute or longer shows, Levy said.
This could bring more of the ease that advertisers have on digital giants Facebook and Google, which have self-service tools for advertisers. Those tools are attractive to small businesses that typically don’t have the budget to make large ad buys. It also gives Google and Facebook a massive base of advertisers compared with the more limited pool of advertisers for TV.
“Linear has always had, content-wise, a significant edge versus digital,” Levy said. “But it’s difficult to buy,” especially for smaller brands.
He said that’s because advertisers have to either have a direct relationship with the sales rep of a big network or a relationship with a big national agency, along with minimum spends, among other factors.
“Part of this approach is really to start to create an easier way for more DTC brands to buy directly and for other smaller brands to make it a lot easier and a lot more manageable, in a way they’re used to buying it,” Levy said.
Who says you have to spend money to get more traffic?
For today’s blog post, I thought it would be fun to break down all of the free SEO tools. Sure you may know of some, like Ubersuggest, but there are many more options than just my own tool.
Now before I dive into the tools, I’ve broken them down into the following categories:
Keyword Research
Content Marketing
Rank Tracking
Link Building
Technical SEO
So, are you ready to dive in? Let’s get started!
Keyword Research
All of the tools in this category will help you find more keywords. Many of them have different ways of coming up with keyword suggestions, so you may want to check them all out.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest has many different keyword research options. First of all, it shows you how many searches a keyword has had over the last 12 months so you can see if there is any seasonality.
In addition to that, it pulls keywords from a few different sources such as Google Suggest and its own database, it shows you all of the keywords your competition ranks for, and it provides keyword suggestions based on questions, comparisons, and prepositions.
My favorite feature of Ubersuggest’s keyword research capabilities is that it not only can you see how competitive a term is, but it also tells you how many links the average ranking website contains.
That way you know how many links you need to build to rank well.
What’s also unique about Ubersuggest is that it provides local keyword suggestions. This is great if you are trying to do local SEO.
Answer The Public
Answer The Public leverages Google Suggest to find all of the questions people may have related to any industry or keyword.
Just type in a keyword and it will give you a laundry list of questions people are searching for related to that keyword.
Similar to Ubersuggest it also shows you comparison and preposition related keywords.
What I like about the tool is compared to any competing tool, it represents the data in nice visuals.
KeywordTool.io
SEO doesn’t just exist on Google. You can also rank higher on Amazon, YouTube, Bing, and tons of other sites.
KeywordTool.io uses the same concept of Google Suggest, but for a handful of sites like Amazon, Play Store, and YouTube.
If you are performing SEO on sites other than Google, you should check out KeywordTool.io.
FAQfox
FAQfox is a neat little tool that finds you questions people want to be answered based on any specific site you want information from.
For example, you can type in the word “cat” and quora.com as the URL and it will show you category based questions people are asking on Quora.
You can do this for Reddit or any other site you want keyword ideas from.
Google Keyword Planner
Of course, the search giant, Google, has its own keyword research tool.
You’ll also notice that a lot of other keyword tools have CPC data, but chances are they are pulling it from Google Keyword Planner.
When you are using Keyword Planner, look for terms with a high CPC as they tend to convert well when you rank for them organically.
Google Trends
Out of all the tools on the list, I probably use Google Trends 3 to 4 times a week. That’s how much I love it.
What I love about Trends is that it shows you what is hot right now. In addition to that, it tells you if an industry is getting less search volume or more over time.
You can also filter your data based on a specific country or you can look at the data from a global perspective.
Soovle
Soovle takes the concept of Google Suggest (autocomplete) but for a lot of the popular sites around the web.
Soovle pulls all of the popular keywords on Google, YouTube, Amazon, Wikipedia, Bing, Yahoo, and Answers.com.
You enter in a handful of terms you want to target and it will combine them to make different variations for you.
Not all of the keywords will be popular when it comes to search volume, but it will give you a sense of how you can go after long-tail variations within your site.
Keyworddit
Reddit has a ton of categories (subreddits) and Keyworddit helps you find all of the keywords within that subreddit.
What’s neat is it even breaks down the volume for each of those keywords. That way you can quickly see if any are worth going after.
Generally speaking, you’ll want to use tools like this as it will give you a new perspective on keyword research.
Pulling results from Google is something that all SEOs already do. Because of that, you need to use other sources if you want to get a leg up on your competition.
Bulk Keyword Generator
The Bulk Keyword Generator by Higher Visibility does keyword research a bit differently than most of the keyword tools out there.
First, you pick a business category. Then you select the type of business you have and enter in any locations you are targeting.
You’ll then be given a list of keywords that you can potentially target.
What I like about this tool is that it makes things super simple, especially if you are new to SEO.
WordTracker Scout
WordTracker Scout is a browser extension that gives you a list of keyword ideas from any web page.
Just browse any site or check out your competition, click a button and boom, you are given ideas on keywords that other people are using.
It breaks the keywords down by relevance and volume.
SearchVolume.io
When you are doing keyword research, how do you know a keyword is getting enough searches?
SearchVolume.io lets you bulk upload up to 800 keywords and it tells you how popular each keyword is.
The tool also works for a handful of other regions, such as Brazil, France, and Italy.
Google Location Changer
Serps has a neat tool that works well if you are doing international SEO.
Their Google Location Changer allows you to search Google in any country or city. Just type in a keyword and you’ll see who ranks.
Using this tool in combination with WordTracker Scout can give you unique keyword suggestions.
Content Marketing
Content is the one thing we all have to create if we want more search traffic.
Here are free content marketing tools that can help you get the most out of your search traffic.
Animalz Revive
Have you noticed that your rankings decrease over time?
It’s not just because of Google algorithm updates. In most cases, your old content won’t perform as well because it’s old.
Animalz Revive shows you which content pieces are dying over time.
That way you know what to focus on. Just look at the ones that have declined the most and then spruce them up so you can get more rankings.
What’s cool about this tool is it will save you a lot of time. For example, my team updates 90 pieces of content a month. The last thing you want to do is waste a ton of time on content that never had much traffic.
Google Search Console
Most people use Google Search Console to see which keywords are driving them traffic.
My favorite way of using Search Console is to see which one of my blog posts are getting a lot of search impressions but have less than a 4% click-through rate.
I then go in and modify each of those pages to include the right keywords in my meta tags. Then I look to see which keywords I am ranking for but not really targeting yet, and then either create new content around those terms or modify existing content to also target them.
Content Ideas
Ubersuggest has a feature similar to Buzzsumo but it is 100% free. It’s called Content Ideas.
All you have to do is enter in a keyword or phrase and it will show you all of the popular blog posts that contain that term.
The blog posts are then sorted by social shares, backlinks, and search traffic.
This helps you create content around topics people want to read, which means more traffic.
Hreflang Tag Generator
One of my biggest traffic gains has come from translating my content.
A lot of people ask me if they would be penalized from duplicating and translation their content.
This tool creates tags for you to place in your HTML code so Google knows you are targeting specific languages and countries with certain content pages.
Portent Title Generator
For every 10 people that see your headline, only 2 on average will continue to read your content.
In other words, content marketing is all about the headline.
It may not sound important to you, but if your titles look off, people may not click through from SERP results to read your content, which can decrease your rankings over time.
Which do you think Google prefers? Ranking a blog post that reads well or one that contains a lot of spelling and grammar errors?
Grammarly helps you avoid spelling mistakes. This is really important if you want to rank on Google.
Google SERP Tool
Have you noticed that some listings on Google get cut off because the title is too long?
A big misconception is Google uses character counts for meta tags. In reality, they count pixels.
Google SERP Tool will tell you how many pixels your meta tags contain and if they will get cut off by Google.
It also shows you a preview of what your web pages will look like on Google.
Rank Tracking
Google Analytics is a great tool to show you your overall traffic, but it doesn’t tell you where you rank.
If you want to track your rankings, you’ll need to use some tools.
Google Search Console
I know I mentioned this tool above, but Google Search Console is the most unique rank tracking tool out there.
Because this tool is from Google, they can tell you your average ranking for any one of your pages per country.
And because the data comes from them, they average it out to give you accurate information.
You can also go back 16 months and see how your rankings have changed over time.
Ubersuggest
Again, I know I also mentioned Ubersuggest above, but it now has a free rank tracking feature.
It provides the same features as those paid rank trackers. You can track your rankings daily for any keyword or groups of keywords for any country, city, or county.
It also saves your data for you so you can go back as far as you want to see if your rankings have been increasing or decreasing.
Search Latte
If you want to track your rankings manually, you can do so with Search Latte.
Just put in a keyword and select the language and country so you can see all of the sites that rank in the top 100.
You can then manually find your site and keep track to see if you are improving or declining.
You may want to use Search Latte in combination with Excel as you can create a daily log of your rankings.
Link Building
You used to have to pay for tools if you wanted link data, but that’s not the case anymore. Here are the free link tools you can use.
MozBar
This is probably my favorite link tool that I use.
Even though Google doesn’t use domain authority, in general, the higher the authority of a site that is linking to you, the better off you are.
MozBar shows you the domain authority and page authority of every page on the web.
If you are going to build links, focus on the sites with the highest authority.
SEOgadget for Excel
If you are like me, you probably love using Excel when you are building links.
SEOgadget for Excel makes it really easy to pull in data from Majestic and Moz.
If you haven’t tried this yet, you should consider it. It will make it easier for you to find new insights and run your own calculations.
Backlinks
Backlinks is a free tool that shows you all of your backlinks. There are no limits in row count or anything like that… you can just see everyone who links to you.
You can see if any of your links are dofollow or nofollow as well as the anchor text.
You can filter the results to find backlink opportunities when researching competitors and you have the option to look up link data on a domain, subdomain, or a specific URL.
It will also show when a link was first found and last crawled and the authority of each link.
Bulk Metrics Checker
Tired of looking up the domain and page authority manually on each of your pages or sites?
Just upload a list of URLs and within seconds you’ll have a list of your page authority per URL. You can also do the same for domains and upload dozens of domains at once.
Technical SEO
SEO has changed. You no longer can do just a few things and expect your site to rank well. You have to do everything if you expect to beat your competition.
And when I mean everything, that includes technical SEO.
SEO Analyzer
If you haven’t already, try running your URL through my SEO Analyzer.
It will tell you what’s wrong with each of your web pages.
From duplicate meta tags and redirect errors to sitemaps and much more… it pretty much looks at every major factor when it comes to SEO.
It will even tell you your overall site speed and what you need to fix in which order to get the maximum results.
And if you register for a free account, it automatically checks for errors each week on your behalf.
Google Analytics Referrer Spam Killer
When you are doing SEO, there is a good chance that your Google Analytics gets messed up by referral spam.
Google Analytics Referrer Spam Killer solves that problem by connecting with your Google Analytics account and blocking off the most common referral spam.
Once you connect it, you’ll find that your data is much more accurate so you can make better SEO decisions.
Pagespeed Insights
Speed is everything. The faster your site loads the better you will rank, especially when it comes to Google’s mobile index.
Pagespeed Insights tells you what you need to fix for your site to load fast on any device.
It doesn’t matter if you are optimizing for tablet devices, desktop, or mobile… it will tell you what to fix.
Pingdom
Fixing your code is one thing, but you’ll also want to make sure your site loads fast overall.
Your overall load time is affected by things like your server and CDN.
In a nice graph, it shows your traffic over time and tells you if a Google update has caused your traffic to go up or down.
Structured Data Markup Helper
A simple way to increase your search traffic is to use schema markup.
But there is one big issue, schema markup is a bit complicated to implement. Because of that, Google created a Structured Data Markup Helper to guide you.
All you have to do is select what kind of markup you want to use, type in your URL, and go through the walkthrough wizard.
And at the end, you’ll be given code that you just paste within HTML.
Woorank
Looking for a simple SEO analysis? Woorank shows you a simple report of what’s wrong with your web page.
All you have to do is type in your domain and within a minute you’ll see a thorough report of what you need to fix.
What I love about Woorank is that it is a great tool for beginners because of their easy-to-use interface.
SEOptimer
Just like Woorank, SEOptimer is a simple tool that gives you a technical overview of your on-page SEO as well as your content.
It breaks down things like page speed as well in addition to showing you how your website loads for both desktop and mobile devices.
You can even see social sharing data.
Varvy
Varvy provides a detailed technical checklist of all things related to your SEO.
From your Robots.txt file and your sitemap to security settings and even your links, it covers all the bases.
If you don’t have a technical background, Varvy might be a bit complex unless you take the time to read each of their articles that outline what each tip/recommendation means.
301 Redirect Code Generator
When you are doing SEO long enough, eventually you find yourself changing your older URLs.
But if you don’t add a 301 redirect, you’ll lose your rankings.
He is the co-founder of Neil Patel Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author and was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.
The new 2024 Olympics logo is supposed to evoke French history but has instead earned ridicule online for its apparent resemblance to a stereotypical Parisian woman.
Unveiled on Monday, the design incorporates the art deco style in vogue the last time Paris hosted the Games in 1924, depicting an Olympic flame within a gold medal.
It also incorporates the lips and outline of Marianne, the personification of liberty and the French Republic since the revolution of 1789 — an addition that some mocked for adding an unnecessarily seductive character to the motif.
“The French Olympic logo tumbles out of bed on a Parisian morning,” wrote Paris-based journalist Megan Clement on Twitter.
“She tousles her messy bob, dons breton stripes and ballet flats and whisks down the stairs from her fifth-floor apartment to grab a baguette before enigmatically texting two men who are pursuing her romantically.
“(She) has an expresso and a cigarette for lunch. She hops on a vintage bicycle and pedals past the Eiffel Tower on her way to a cafe where she will sit and read Baudelaire with her fluffy white dog at her feet.“
Others compared the flame motif to the logo of dating app Tinder and suggested the silhouette of Marianne brought to mind the retro hairstyle made popular by Jennifer Aniston in the American sitcom “Friends“.
“The artist’s muse, the poet’s dream, and the girl your mother warned you about. She’s fashionably late for everything. She’ll make out with your husband at a party and then wonder why you’re mad,” said one Twitter user.
“I want to follow the French Olympic logo on Instagram,” wrote another.
Parisians got their first glimpse of the new logo when it was unveiled at the French capital’s famous Grand Rex cinema on Monday.
Correctly implemented, attribution provides us with a window into how our marketing efforts have succeeded or failed. There are various tools to measure attribution along the customer journey, but the most common attribution tool may be the first line of attribution — Google Analytics.
While the promise of Google Analytics’ insights is great, attribution is only as accurate as your Google Analytics tagging. For Google properties, such as Google Ads, it’s not necessary to manually tag destination URLs because Google automatically tags them. For other platforms, however, tagging is necessary to pass important campaign information from the marketing platform into Google Analytics.
But if the data sent to Google Analytics isn’t accurate, then marketers run the risk of making flawed assumptions based on this data. My team relies on the data we glean from Google Analytics to demonstrate the value of various channels and initiatives. However, we’ve found that nearly every client, from startups to global enterprise companies, has errors with Google Analytics data input, thereby affecting their attribution. These are the four most common errors I encounter that can skew your Google Analytics attribution data.
1. Tag Capitalization Mistakes
Google Analytics tags are case sensitive, meaning that a UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) source of “Forbes” is different than “forbes.” While initially, this may not seem like a major issue, it can cause data segmentation and lead to incorrect assumptions about site traffic.
The fix? First, adopt a tagging nomenclature throughout your organization. Ensuring that everyone is using the same tags will reduce errors in reporting.
If you do find errors in your tagging, you can fix them going forward with search and replace filters. However, filters only work for data collected after they’re set.
2. Improper Tagging Within Your Website
Companies often inadvertently overwrite their valuable source and medium data by resetting the UTM source and medium tags when a visitor interacts with various elements on the website. For example, if a marketing team is measuring clicks on a banner graphic, they might reassign the UTM source and medium tags when a visitor clicks on the banner.
However, UTM source and medium tags weren’t designed for this use. A website is essentially a piece of content — it has no source or medium. The source and medium are the marketing channels that brought the visitor there. By reassigning source and medium tags once a visitor arrives at your website, you lose all the valuable information about how a visitor from a particular channel interacted with your website and possibly completed goals after that reassignment. Generally, I advise avoiding UTM tagging of URLs within the same domain.
3. Self-Referrals
Have you ever looked at your Google Analytics reports and seen your own domain as a referral to your site? In actuality, your domain really can’t be a referral source to itself, so how does this happen?
Google Analytics ends a session automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity. In the age of prolific browser tabs, this can be problematic because a user may leave a tab open to continue using the site later. For example, if I find an article via an organic Google search, the initial source/medium may be listed as “google/organic.” However, if I leave my browser tab open, stop interacting with the page for 30 minutes and then return later and continue to interact with the site, a new session begins, and my new source/medium might be assigned as a referral from the site itself. However, changing my source/medium isn’t an accurate representation of what occurred. An organic Google search is still the channel I used to find and interact with the site. Just because I took a break from browsing doesn’t change the fact that the organic Google search was the main contributor to my actions.
To fix this issue, add your domain to the referral exclusion list, found in the “Admin” area. Look for “Tracking Info” and then “Referral Exclusion List,” and then add your site’s domain as a referral exclusion. This will begin to attribute your traffic to the original source/medium instead of using your website as a referral source. Note that excluding your domain doesn’t reassign attribution for historical data.
4. Incorrect Channel Groupings
Channel groupings provide a quick way to aggregate all traffic with a certain source or medium together to see how visitors from that channel interacted with the website. For example, “Organic Search” is a default channel grouping. By selecting this channel grouping in a report, we can see how all organic search traffic interacted with the site, regardless of whether the traffic originated from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo or other search engines.
However, default channel groupings have problems. In addition to typical channels you might expect, such as “Organic Search” or “Referral,” you may see a channel grouping named “(other).” While Google recognizes many sources and mediums and categorizes them appropriately under a channel grouping, it may not recognize all of your sources and mediums.
For example, Google understands that traffic from an organic Bing search is a source and medium of “bing\organic” and places that traffic data under the “Organic Search” channel grouping. But what about sources and mediums your organization uses that don’t fit these standards? Check the sources and mediums listed under the “(other)” channel grouping to determine which of these may need to be recategorized.
Google Analytics allows website owners to create new channel groupings, edit the existing channel groupings and add additional sources and mediums to a channel grouping. By editing the default channel groupings via the “Admin” page in Google Analytics, you can clean up your channel groupings and ensure that your data is correctly reported under its corresponding channel. However, like most settings in Google Analytics, changes to the default channel groupings are not retroactive.
Correct attribution is key to our marketing decision making, and Google Analytics is often the first attribution tool most marketers rely on. Ensure that your Google Analytics is reporting accurately so that you can have confidence in your data and decisions.
Fortunately, there are several ways to minimize these tasks or eliminate them from your company.
There are thousands of books on time management, and thousands more on work/life balance, but almost all of them either nibble around the edge of the problems or pretend they don’t exist. So, here’s the straight skinny: The reason most people are stressed for time is that they are wasting more than half of each working day on time-wasting tasks.
Here are the culprits and some simple solutions to get recapture the time that you’re otherwise destined to waste.
1. Unnecessary Commuting (13 percent)
As of 2018 (the last year measured), the average one-way commute to work is 27 minutes, nearly six minutes more than in 1980, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And that’s just the average, which means that some of us are spending a lot more than that. (I’ve known people with three-hour commutes–one way.)
Let’s suppose that you have a commute that’s only of average length. By the time you retire, you’ll have spent approximately 5.6 years behind the wheel, which is roughly 13 percent of the time that you’ve committed to work.
While some jobs (like equipment maintenance) require an employee to be on site, almost all office jobs can be conducted from a home office. Therefore, in almost all cases, time spent commuting to an office job is wasted.
By the time the average worker retires, they’ll have spent at least 7 years in useless meetings, which comes out to about 16 percent of the time you’ll spend at work during your lifetime.
3. Unnecessary Emails (23 percent)
According to research cited in Forbes, the average office worker spends 2.5 hours a day reading and responding to an average of 200 emails, of which approximately 144 (mostly CCs and BCCs) aren’t relevant to their job.
Since the average office worker spends 2.5 hours a day doing email, that’s around 1.8 hours spent on those irrelevant emails, which comes out to a whopping 10 years spent on useless emails, which would be 23 percent of a 45-year career.
Add up those three huge time-wasters and it comes out to roughly 51 percent of your working life. Think about that for second. How much more could you accomplish if you were twice as productive? How much better your life would become if you always had plenty of time?
Fortunately, these three huge time-management challenges have some fairly straightforward solutions:
1. Implement company-wide work-from-home.
While some jobs (like equipment maintenance) must be performed on-site, most office jobs can be accomplished remotely. Indeed, several studies have shown that remote office workers are much more productive than on-site workers, without even counting the time they waste commuting.
Of course, implementing company-wide work-from home would mean that management would need to be nimbler. It also means top management must admit to themselves that their brand-new open plan office was a dumb idea. However, smart bosses don’t throw good money after bad, so it’s time to bite the proverbial bullet on this one.
2. Create an efficient-meeting culture.
Some of this gets solved simply by implementing work-from-home because remote workers have fewer meetings. Beyond this, there are specific policies that reduce or eliminate unproductive meetings:
No meeting without an agenda.
No “status updates” during which you “go around the room.”
No meeting longer than 30 minutes.
Leave a meeting the moment you realize you’re not adding value.
Replace PowerPoints with a group reading of a briefing document.
3. Throttle your email system.
Here’s are some approaches I’ve seen over the years:
Turn off email during peak working hours.
Limit the number of emails an employee can send each day.
Discourage CC, BCC, and Reply All emails.
Discourage Sisyphus-like behaviors like trying to achieve “zero Inbox.”
Here’s an idea: Customize the company-wide email client so that it’s impossible to close any internal email until you’ve rated its usefulness to you and your job.
Track those ratings and it will quickly become clear who’s wasting everyone else’s time with unnecessary email. Then adjust their compensation accordingly (all the way to $0 when appropriate).
