It’s been nearly 3½ years since Google first announced their usage of RankBrain (October 26th 2015, but it had started being rolled out early 2015, in multiple languages). In that time, there’s been little in the way of details coming from G about what it is or how it works. The result is that numerous SEOs have stepped up to fill that void with their own speculations and opinions, and in doing that, have caused all sorts of confusion. This is my attempt to correct and clean up some of that mess. (There is a TL:DR at the bottom if you want to skip the verbiage :D) What does RankBrain do?Though there isn’t much publicly available, what we do have is fairly specific:
Or, if you want it more succinct than that;
Google receives a fair percentage of queries per day that it hasn’t seen before: 15% at last check. These may include misspellings and typos, elisions/omissions, unusual phrasing/syntactic structures, the wrong word(s) being used, negations (“not x”), things that have only just happened etc. etc. etc. RB receives these weird, wonderful, and new searches, and attempts to identify existing searches and results that are probably suitable for the searcher’s query. How does RankBrain work?Again, we aren’t exactly given a guided tour by G on this, but there are a few bits and pieces.
So, rather than looking at words and attempting to parse them and understand the semantics (traditional Natural Language Processing [NLP]), it converts them into numbers and plots them on a chart (with multiple dimensions, not just X and Y). Items near each other possess some form of relationship. The type of relationship will be reflected by each term’s position and distance from its neighbors. If that sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it sounds very similar to Word2Vector. So when G receives a query it doesn’t quite recognize, it can find semantically related pieces, and look at the results. But, what if it’s wrong? Well, that’s where Gary Illyes’s answer to a question on his recent Reddit AMA may come in:
I’ve added the bold to draw your eye to the key part. G may go back and look at what gets clicked for different searches, and check their performance. This can help the system learn what suggestions are suitable, and which ones are fails. If you want something with a bit more meat, you may be wanting some patents?If so, I was lucky enough to get some help from Bill Slawski, who pointed me to two potentially interesting patents:
The first patent (computing numeric…) was worked on by Greg Corrado, from the Bloomberg quote previously referenced. If you don’t fancy suffering the trauma of reading the patents, Bill has two far nicer bits that get you the insights without the need for painkillers:
Example of what RankBrain may be doingHow about we walk through a simple demo of the type of thing that RB does? Query: How Nemee 2020 Google receives that query, and has nothing that appears to be a match and little that seems above a weak relevance. So, it needs to do some work.
The query is vectorized, and the nearest neighbors for those vectors are found. Included in the results are vectors that represent:
So we have two probable query types:
But we have a 3rd factor, the “2020”. When we look at the result groups, there are barely any pre-existing queries or results that include time with pronunciation, where are there are a moderate number of “how to” queries and results that do. RB decides that the most likely results that match this query are those from the “how to make” queries, and so the results you would receive would match; “how to make a meme 2020”. Does RankBrain use user experience signals?No. And that’s what this post is about -- clearing up all the baloney some people have been pushing about “Dwell Time” and “Click Through Rate” and “Bounces” etc. RankBrain doesn’t use UX signals from your pages. For quick confirmation; “… Dwell time, CTR, … those are generally made up crap …” That’s from Gary’s AMA response I quoted above. But, you can use a little common sense yourself at this point. Ask yourself the following question: Why would a system that is built to try to encapsulate relationships between text-strings be looking at how long someone spent on a page, or how fast they left? When you stop and look at it that way, and consider the example above, you can see how site based UX signals have no relevance for RankBrain. The only such metric we know they may use are SERP-based clicks to identify what type of results appeared relevant to that type of query. Can you optimize for RankBrain?Yes. Google has even told us that we can
I know — it’s a bit lame. But, if you roll back a bit, G have actually spelled out how to optimize for RankBrain!
All you have to do is fly in the face of standard SEO practices, and aim for the exact opposite of what you would normally go for -- high search volume. Instead, look at all the queries, and then generate variants that aren’t in the lists. I know, that’s even lamer! (But, be honest, you did want to know :D) But there is more -- particularly for those that deal with time-relevant content; events and occurrences. As these are “new”, the queries likely will be too (at least partially). To gain an advantage here, you might be able to look at similar searches yourself, and look at the patterns they possess. Once you have some samples and associated search volume data, you can pick and choose the ones you feel are most advantageous and relevant, and then weave them into your content. If you want a little more insight into RB, and things like Association Rule Learning (delving deeper into the computing side of things), Dan Taylor has a previous article that may be of interest: Here’s how RankBrain does (and doesn’t) impact SEO Does RankBrain influence rankings?No — it’s a matter of inclusion. Though Google has stated that RB is one of the most influential Ranking Factors, it’s not a typical SEO factor. Unlike Titles or Link Text, it’s not a gradient or variable — it’s Boolean. Either you are perceived as relevant, and included in the SERPs for a query — or you aren’t. So you can optimize for RankBrain — but it isn’t a matter of ranking influence, it’s a matter of index inclusion. TL;DRWhat does RB do?It attempts to answer unknown queries by looking at previous search data and the relationship of the terms used in those searches. How does RB do that?By converting words into numbers and plotting them into vector-space. It can then break a query into parts and look for similar terms in the vector space to try to understand the relationship and potential intent of the search. Example: Query : “how nemee 2020” Convert query to vectors, find closest vectors, try to calculate probable matches. Two distinct query types are surfaced; “create” and “say”. “2020” associates more strongly with “create” than “say”. RB will return SERPs for “how to make a meme 2020”. Does RB use UX?No. It handles words and vectors. Things like Bounce Rate, Long Clicks etc. aren’t used. Can you optimize for RB?Yes. By writing naturally and ensuring your content contains variations. For some types of content (occurrences/events/news) you may be able to check similar searches and get ahead of the pack. Does RankBrain influence rankings?Not in the traditional SEO sense. It’s not about “position”, it’s about whether you show for that query or not. The post Google RankBrain: Clearing up the myths and misconceptions appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/05/google-rankbrain-clearing-up-the-myths-and-misconceptions/120782/
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It has become something of a personal mission of mine to take some time to explore global alternatives to Google here at Search Engine Watch. This all began with my piece No need for Google and has continued with more in-depth studies into Ecosia, DuckDuckGo, Baidu and Yandex. Today, I want to turn my attention to Mojeek. This UK-based search engine which is aiming itself at web users who want a non-creepy search engine in the vein of DuckDuckGo and Startpage, as well as a greener option akin to Ecosia. A couple weeks ago, Marc and Finn from Mojeek hosted a Reddit AMA about their project. The response was massive. The debate about technical choices and hurdles, the ethics of search, as well as the value of fledgling engines in the era of Google’s dominance raged on for another 48 hours after the initial livechat. Here are some of my takeaways from that and from my own deep dive into the world of Mojeek. How is Mojeek different?The elevator pitch for Mojeek is ‘Independent and unbiased search results with no user tracking.’ The engine has been building its own index from scratch since 2006 which currently stands at around 2.3 billion pages with the aim of passing 4 billion by the end of 2019. This unique index is the key differentiator between Mojeek and its competitors. While DuckDuckGo depends in part on ad results from the Bing-Yahoo network and Startpage delivers untracked results from Google, Mojeek is seeking to ensure true independence from the corporate names by doing everything itself. In doing so they are seeking to eliminate bias in the SERPs and to be wholly trustworthy in regards to user privacy. On top of that, Mojeek is also proud of its environmental credentials. As the service states on its homepage, its servers are hosted at ‘the UK’s greenest data center, Custodian.’ Crawler-based versus metasearchFrom the outset, we can see that Mojeek is promising a lot. To really be viewed as an alternative, its founders have set themselves the monumental task of crawling the web themselves, something Google has been doing since 1997. Its 2.3 billion page index can’t really compete with the feted ‘hundreds of billions of webpages’ Google crawls. But there’s something quite admirable about the dedication to crawler-based search while other competitors opt for the metasearch route, i.e. paying to use information from other, often more-established, crawlers to bolster results in the SERPs. Mojeek might have its work cut out in ever matching the size of an index that Google and the metasearch engines have access to. But for users, who do want a truly different lens through which to view the web, its own crawler-based service is the only real option to them. Unbiased results. Is this possible?The notion of unbiased results in search is an interesting one and was a big talking point in Mojeek’s recent AMA. Things would be quite simple if Mojeek were taking bias (and their own lack of it) as related to user-tracking and how our past activity affects the SERPs we see at Google et al. But for Marc and Finn, bias is a lot more than simply eliminating the echo chamber, as the AMA reflects, “It means we would never intentionally manipulate our results to show any particular point of view. We don‘t believe a search engine should have an agenda, whether political or otherwise and returning as relevant but opposing views should be a goal.” So, Mojeek is fundamentally opposed to censorship or filtering results in the SERPs on political grounds. We can also infer that they would not give preferential visibility to advertisers nor to their own products/affiliates (as we might assume from an engine with a more capitalist agenda). These are great values. But as some commenters point out, completely unbiased results in search is extremely difficult to achieve. Algorithms always have some bias, in practice. And as we have seen with criticism leveled at Google when CEO Sundar Pichai answered to Congress last December – the very make-up of the staff working at Mojeek (including their age, race, gender) can lead to some biases. To some users, these may be quite innocuous. To others, not so. How can we be sure of absolute privacy/unbiased results if we don’t know who is investing in Mojeek?There is also a slight disconnect between Mojeek’s purported dedication to privacy/unbiased results and the lack of transparency about who is investing in the search engine. While the company stresses that their backers are private, non-institutional and not known tech investors, it is clear from the AMA that a number of potential users do not trust a business who can’t disclose this. While some commenters ignored this point, others were skeptical that further investment in Mojeek down the line wouldn’t see some of its core values be eroded. Challenging Google’s monopoly, or finding another niche?One of Mojeek’s best virtues is that it is an alternative crawler to Google. This challenge to Google’s monopoly did seem to win over some visitors to the AMA who are excited about the prospect of there being another destination for search users which offers a different view of the web. There were salient suggestions that Mojeek might do well to make more of offering a niche search service, perhaps by only indexing sites which meet certain privacy standards themselves (although, of course, the question of bias rears its head again here). Of course, Mojeek will only really succeed at challenging Google’s monopoly if it can offer a comparable service or offer something Google doesn’t. Emotional searchMojeek does actually have a niche type of search that they are testing in beta alongside emotion computing business EMRAYS. The ‘search by emotion’ function gives users the option to input search terms to acquire results from pages which match that sentiment. It works well, especially for broad terms. A search for ‘panda’ via the love emotion sees results such as cute panda pics and the San Diego Zoo Panda Cam. Click for angry results, however, and you see top pages referring to news stories about panda meat and mistreatment. This functionality highlights something quite key about the usefulness of Mojeek. While it seeks to be an alternative, it doesn’t store our past searches, and boasts of unbiased results, a basic search via its homepage often returns results not dissimilar to what we would find with a Google search. This is especially true if I search, for instance, for my hometown ‘Plymouth’. The first result is a Google-style knowledge panel with information from Wikipedia. For certain searches, then, it is easy to see how difficult a task Mojeek has for providing a true alternative to Google while still offering relevant results. The ‘search by emotion’ function, however, does show that search results can be organized in a different way or to return to a phrase I used earlier, the web can be viewed through a different lens. I wonder about the potential of a search engine that sets itself apart as an emotional engine or, indeed, offers a more utopian view of the world wide web. I’m unsure how practical this would be. But I think there’s something to be said for wanting to view the web via an engine which values empathy, humanity, positivity, love, especially during an era of flamebait, trolling, online negativity, divisive content. A search engine with its own independent crawler and no-tracking ethos would be well placed for such an experiment. Even if it does mean admitting that a bit of bias in search can be useful. Luke Richards is a Search Engine Watch columnist. The post Alternatives to Google: Mojeek believes a truly independent and tracking-free search engine must be built from scratch appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/05/mojeek-alternative-to-google/ Everyone knows that mobile is red-hot right now. In fact, there is a pretty good chance you are reading this very article on a mobile device. And yet, like an old dog who just won’t learn a new trick, most people are still designing websites for desktop computers and then trying to make them work well on mobile devices. Square peg, meet round hole. Quite simply, it doesn’t make sense. Why would you create a website for a dying medium (cough, cough; desktop) and then try to force it to work for new technology? It doesn’t have to be this way. Why not, instead, create a website for the devices most people are using that will also work on a desktop? Google has made it clear that mobile-first is the way to go. It is time to leave the past behind because five billion mobile phone users have made it clear they aren’t going anywhere. Here is why designing for desktop first is a mistake, why responsive mobile design isn’t enough, and why mobile first is the only way to go in 2019. It is time to put a stop to responsive mobile designLet’s say you need a train. You want a fast one, one that can get you from Paris to London in two hours. (Ignore, if you will, that this train already exists.) Would you build a coal train, then convert it to a high-speed diesel-electric train? No, that would be a ridiculous waste of time and resources, particularly since the high-speed train can run on standard tracks. And yet, that is what most people are doing when it comes to designing sites for mobile. They create a site for desktop first, then try to make it work on mobile instead of building a better, faster site that will work just fine on both. Before we dig into how to design mobile first websites, we need to talk about responsive design. What is the difference between responsive mobile design and mobile first design? Aren’t they, essentially, the same thing? Not quite. Is ‘mobile responsive’ the same as ‘mobile first’?Mobile responsive and mobile first have some of the same ingredients, but their methods, approaches, and strategies are totally different. Here is how they differ:Mobile responsive is a technical web design approach where CSS is used to adjust the site to the device it is viewed on. The coding is more complex, and the design still often places desktop needs at the forefront. In other words, the website’s built for desktop users first and then made to work on mobile later. Mobile first, on the other hand, is a design strategy. While it may use a mobile responsive framework, it considers mobile users’ needs first and foremost. Instead of creating a desktop website and then forcing it to fit in a mobile box, you create a website that considers the majority of users (on mobile) first. Mobile websites have been an afterthought for years. Yet, 52.64% of all internet traffic happens on a mobile device. By implementing the seven strategies below, you’ll start designing websites for the devices users are actually using and not just for desktop. Seven easy strategies to create mobile-first websitesDesigning for mobile first doesn’t have to be complicated. And with the rise of the freelancer and gig economy, finding high-quality designers isn’t complicated either. So get started and start putting the needs of your mobile users first. Here’s how you can keep your mobile users at the forefront of your mind and get a few handy tools to make your life easier. 1. Less is more when it comes to content (yes, really)Wait, what? Isn’t longer content better? Well, (here comes everyone’s favorite internet answer) it depends. Longer, more in-depth blog posts are, in fact, proven to generate nine times more leads than short posts. But, mobile readers are looking at tiny little screens. To be mobile first, your content needs to be concise and clear, so keep the mobile-first design in mind when starting your blogging strategy. Solution: Keep your copy succinct and unique using a grammar tool to deliver in-depth information in as few words as possible. Break up text into single-sentence paragraphs when possible. 2. Keep your site simpleMinimization is having a pop-culture moment. The truth is people, love simplicity. It reduces anxiety, improves clarity, and makes us happier. This applies to web design as well. Less, really is more. Keep the website elements you truly need and ditch the rest. “But, what about X thing that my site really, really needs??” Ask yourself, “Does it spark joy?” If yes, then keep it. Ask yourself if each element is really necessary. For example, could you ask fewer questions on your 13 field contact us form? Can you reduce the number of links on your nav bar? Here are six more website simplification tips:
Solution: Keep it simple. Get rid of tiny buttons, ditch scrolling images, trash that 13 field form. 3. Bring your calls to action (CTA) into the 21stThere is nothing worse than clicking on a link from your mobile device that doesn’t load because, while the main site is mobile responsive, the landing page it links to is not. Or, our favorite, when you get taken to an off-center, impossible to fill out lead-gen form. Your calls to action are useless if they aren’t designed with mobile in mind. Which means you are missing out on leads and sales. Solution: Stop throwing money down the drain. Make sure your CTA is designed mobile-first, too. Test links and consider using mobile-friendly calls to action such as SMS text messaging and live chat. Additionally, your mobile conversion funnel needs to be brought into the 21st century with new features like mobile vibration on button clicks, full-screen mobile e-commerce experiences, and signature collection. 4. Let’s talk about it: Make mobile communication a breezeThere is no question that mobile devices have changed the way we communicate with each other and with brands. Did you know that 97% of Americans report they send at least one text message a day? Research even shows that the increase in text messaging has contributed to a rise in phone call-related anxiety. People want answers to their questions now, not at 9 a.m. when your phone support opens back up. And they don’t want to call you if they don’t have to. Have you adjusted your contact methods to meet the communication preferences of today’s consumers? If not, you may be leaving customers dissatisfied–without even know it. It is time to change. Luckily, there are plenty of tools to make this shift painless. Consider using a help desk software like Freshdesk to manage your customer communications across channels and devices. It can track previous conversations, prioritize incoming requests, and even help automate the process. Or, consider adding a live chat or a chatbot to your website to humanize your website for mobile users. If you are looking for an easy way to transition, this is it. Chatbots are a great way to give a fantastic mobile experience without a massive overhaul of your entire website. Solution: Use technology like chatbots and mobile-friendly help-desk software to make mobile communication frictionless. 5. Graphic design for mobile firstYou might be wondering, “Does graphic design really matter when it comes to mobile first?” The answer is a resounding yes! A study into the value of graphic design found companies who emphasized on graphic design outperformed non-design-focused companies by 200 percent. Well-designed websites are also considered more trustworthy, more memorable, and easier to use. So, what does mobile first graphic design look like? According to Venngage, the most significant graphic design trends of 2019 are:
What does this all mean in practice? Aim for bold shapes, clean lines, bright colors, and typographical elements. Make use of white space, which is both visually soothing and makes navigating on mobile easier. Solution: Use graphic design tools to make creating memorable, trustworthy, and easy to use websites simple. We love Canva and Snappa for their library of templates and stock photos. 6. A need for speedSite speed has always been important to user experience. But now, site speed is a Google ranking factor, too. If you are too cool to care about what Google thinks, consider that 40% of people will leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Even more damaging, 79% of shoppers are less likely to buy from a site again if they experience web performance issues. Clearly, your site needs to load fast if you want to survive on mobile. How to improve speed on your mobile first websiteLuckily, building your site with an eye on mobile first means you aren’t stuck trying to strip features away to make your site load faster on mobile. Instead, you can implement speed protocols from the beginning. Here is how to build a fast, mobile-first website.
Solution: Start by testing your mobile page speed, then implementing the changes above. 7. Test, test, testThe more things change, the more things stay the same. Testing is more important than ever for websites. Even the most carefully designed mobile first website needs to be tested on multiple devices. Why? Currently, there are at least nine different operating systems in use on mobile devices. According to StatCounter, Android makes up 75% of the mobile operating system market share. iOS clocks in with just under 22 percent of the marketing share, but KaiOs, Windows, and Samsung all claim at least a small portion of the market. Dozens of new phones are released every year. In fact, Motorola released 11 new mobile devices in just 2017. In 2018, Apple released two new iPad models (Mini and Pro), two new iPhones (iPhone XS and XR), and three new computers (new models for the iMac Pro, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini). Trying to keep up is just plain exhausting. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, you need to test your site across platforms regularly. Solution: Use a cross browser and cross platform tool to see how your site performs across the multitude of different operating systems and devices. ConclusionThe desktop computer is dying. Mobile responsiveness is not enough to keep mobile users on your site. If you want to create an easy to use website that Google and users will love, mobile first design is simply the only way to go. But changing the way we’ve always done things can feel overwhelming. You’ve got enough on your plate, right? As you can see, the mobile first design doesn’t mean changing your entire process. Instead, it means reimagining how we create content, images, CTAs, and communications while keeping a firm focus on mobile users’ needs. Stop spending too much time creating sub-par mobile sites that users hate. Instead, use these tips to build websites that search engines and (more importantly) web users will love. Adam Enfroy is Affiliate Partnerships Manager at BigCommerce, and also does Content Marketing Consulting and Blogging at adamenfroy.com. He can be found on Twitter @AdamEnfroy. The post Why mobile first design is the only 2019 strategy that will work appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/01/why-mobile-first-design-is-the-only-2019-strategy-that-will-work/ It’s tempting to go after broad, high-volume keywords with huge audiences (and equally huge competition). But there’s an equally large — albeit more distributed audience — to be reached by targeting lower-competition, long tail keywords. Imagine comets flying through the SEO solar system, if the most popular keywords make up the head of the comets (‘running shoes’, for example), each comet is trailed by a tail of more specific keywords like ‘long distance trail running shoes 2018’ and ‘best running shoes for flat feet’, that are useful in niche marketing. Strategically pursuing the right long tail keywords as part of your SEO strategy can deliver several advantages. As they have lower search volumes, they are usually much less competitive, making it easier for your brand to rank highly in search engine results. Also, the specificity of long tail keywords generally indicates that those web searchers are nearer to the action part of their customers’ journeys. As a result, these keywords tend to have higher conversion rates. Therefore, long tail keywords offer the opportunity to be discovered by your target audience when they are near their crucial decision points. If you deeply understand and satisfy their specific search intent by providing compelling information or offers, even large competitors might not stand in your way. But knowing that you need a long tail SEO strategy is only half the battle won, you need to find those keywords which are not always obvious. Here are eight simple techniques that will help you target and find long tail keywords that align with your business’ goals:1. Let Google autofill suggest long tail keywords for youThis is as simple as it seems, type a broad search term into the Google search bar and you’ll see a list of long tail keywords tuned to fit popular searches by users. For further suggestions, you can then enter these phrases (or variations that they inspire) and view more long tail keywords to target with your SEO campaigns. For example, inputting ‘running shoes for women’ will generate a fresh list of Google auto-filled suggestions based around that (longer) keyword that get even longer tail still. 2. Leverage Google’s related searchesSimilar to autofill, another completely free technique that leverages Google’s search engine is to look at Google’s related searches. Simply type any keyword and scroll to the bottom of the search results page to view useful long tail keyword suggestions. 3. Take suggestions from UbersuggestUbersuggest is a tool you can use to find long tail keywords. Simply enter a term to receive a list of top suggestions. 4. Generate suggestions with the LSIGraph keyword generatorWhile the LSIGraph keyword generator helps you discover latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords for semantic SEO, most LSI keywords can double as long tail keywords once you know how to recognize them. 5. Find long tail keywords in question forms with Answer The PublicAnswer The Public aggregates results from Google and Bing to provide the most commonly searched questions related to a given term, and in a rather compelling visual format. Because valuable long tail keywords often happen to be in the form of a question, your SEO can benefit by utilizing these targets and providing content that directly answers questions pertaining to your brand. 6. Search for relevant users’ questions on QuoraAnother way to source long tail keywords in question formats is to take a look at what people are asking on Quora. For example, searching for the topic ‘running shoes’ will show questions that might be smart to target as long tail keywords (and answer with your content). 7. Check out user discussions in online forumsForums can also prove informative by offering yet another window into the questions and interests that potential customers are focused on. You can leverage these more specific topics as long tail keywords, and choose those that spark the most active conversations. To locate forums that cover a particular topic, search for ‘[your broad search term] + forum’. 8. Use a Keyword Difficulty ToolInputting a targeted generic term into a Keyword Difficulty tool can yield numerous related-keyword opportunities, many of which will be long tail options. Tools tracking keyword difficulty usually also provide useful metrics to help you decide which long tail keywords make the most sense to target. These include relevance to the original keyword, the popularity of the search term, the level of competition you’ll need to overcome in order to rank for your new long tail terms, and whether that keyword competition is within your site’s competitive power. How to turn long tail keywords into SEO success?Once you have a solid list of long tail keywords that are appropriate candidates to consider centering (or expanding) your SEO efforts around, you’ll need to vet them with research to ensure they possess the potential to deliver value. Ultimately, they must meet the two criteria that you need to keep top of mind:
Once you’re sure the long tail keywords you’ve selected are the right ones, follow SEO best practices to include the targeted terms in your content, and help maximize the likelihood for each page to rank in search engine results for the respective terms. SEO best practices include using the long tail keyword across the following page locations:
It’s also a best practice to use three or four LSI keywords related to the long tail keyword within your content and to create links on other pages within your site that point to each new content page. With generic search terms ever-more-competitive and less apt for driving targeted traffic, it’s wise to pursue a diversified strategy that also utilizes long tail keywords, offering focused content to reach an audience that knows more about what it wants and is ready to be converted into customers. Kim Kosaka is the Director of Marketing at Alexa.com. The post Eight shortcuts to find long tail keywords (and how to use them) appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/04/8-shortcuts-to-find-long-tail-keywords-and-how-to-use-them/ Influencer marketing has been one of the hottest marketing tactics for a while. It only seems logical that we had influencer marketing long before the invention of social media. The internet simply made influencer marketing much more targeted and available even for smaller brands. Blogging and vlogging on social media allow influencers to find a loyal audience even in the most niche categories. Even if the product you market is not very exciting — say, power drills — you will always find a blog, a YouTube channel, or even a Pinterest profile dedicated to it. Whether you work in a social media marketing agency or an inner marketing department of a specific brand, at some point you will need to find influencers for your campaign. You can turn to a talent agency, however, it would be much more cost-efficient to use an influencer marketing tool. The only challenge is to choose the right one. This list will help you to do exactly that. Also read: Top social media trends for 2019 1. AwarioAwario is primarily a social listening tool. It allows you to monitor brands, competitors, carry out social selling and, of course, discover influencers in a chosen niche. Also read: What is social media listening (and how it can help your SEO) You can find influencers with Awario by monitoring keywords across social media and websites (it monitors Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, blogs, and news articles). All you need to do is choose the keywords related to your industry (for example, “gadgets”, “fitness tracker”, “headphones” if you’re looking to promote a new tech) and put them in Awario. It gathers social mentions and articles with your keywords and analyzes their authors to find the most prominent voices in a chosen industry. It ranks influencers and platforms based on their reach and number of followers or daily visits, depending on the source. Using a social listening tool for influencer search gives you a lot of flexibility. You can discover influencers in your industry, see who works with your competitors or the influencers who already mentioned your brand. Besides, you can use it for multiple purposes to enrich your business strategy at every stage, from marketing to product development. PricingInfluencer search is included in all plans as well as in the free trial. Plans start at $29/month. 2. FollowerwonkFollowerwonk specifically focuses on Twitter and is essentially a Twitter analytics tool which can be used to discover influencers on the platform. It also uses your keywords to find influential Twitter profiles, but this time it doesn’t monitor social mentions i.e. tweets, and searches based on Twitter bios, names, URLs and locations. One of its most useful features for influencer marketing is the ability to compare Twitter accounts with each other. It can be used to find influencers who have the audience with similar interests and at the same time, doesn’t overlap with your own audience. Besides, it analyzes your Twitter followers and segments them by their bio, location, and who they follow. PricingThe pricing depends on the number of followers of the accounts you want to analyze. With the accounts which have 25,000 followers and less, you can get the tool for free. If you need to analyze bigger influencers, you can buy the cheapest plan for $29 or invest in a more expensive one. 3. Klear
Klear is a tool specifically dedicated to influencer marketing, which uses a wide range of social data to find influencers. It even has some social listening features which allow you to monitor competitors and analyze the success of their influencer marketing campaigns. Using sophisticated algorithms and machine learning, Klear divides influencers into over 60,000 topic categories and offers deep analytics about their audiences’ demographics and psychographics respectively. The great thing about Klear is that the search won’t take much time, it has a huge number of profiles already indexed and associated with millions of data points in its database. You can filter your findings by social channel, audience size, skills (chosen from the categories the AI organized them into), mentioned keywords, location, influencer gender, audience gender, and age. Overall, you can be sure that you’ll discover influencers in the chosen field and will get a ton of useful insights about them. PricingKlear offers a range of free tools to help you identify influencers on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs. Of course, free tools are quite limited in their functionality and do not include sophisticated analytics. The prices for the tool are not disclosed. However, according to customers, they start at about $250 per month. 4. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a tool that can be very useful if you want to double-down on influencer marketing and content creation since it can help you in both cases. BuzzSumo uses social data to identify content trends as well as to find influencers. Firstly, it can discover the most popular content to let you know who the top performing content creators in your niche are. BuzzSumo has a great range of features dedicated to content research, therefore you will be able to use it in your own content strategy or give the influencer guidelines on what type of content they could create during your collaboration. Secondly, BuzzSumo has a powerful influencer search for Twitter. It monitors tweets and profile bios based on the keywords you provide. They also differentiate Twitter accounts by their type, i.e. blogger, influencer, journalist. PricingThe cheapest plan costs $79 per month. 5. BuzzStream
Although the names are similar, BuzzSumo and BuzzStream are quite different. BuzzStream is primarily a link-building tool, but it still enables you to organize every stage of your influencer marketing journey, from discovering influencers to reaching out to them. You can discover influencers based on your keywords and see a comprehensive overview of this influencer’s website and social media presence on one page. After that, you can add discovered influencers to a prospect list. You can sort and filter the list to choose influencers for a specific campaign. For example, you can sort them by authority, or whether someone has promoted you in the past or not. Then you can start contacting influencers from your prospect list. BuzzStream will help you keep track of your outreach successes and failures, and will even send out automated follow-ups. PricingPrices for BuzzStream plans depend on the number of accounts you want to reach out to. In the cheapest plan ($24) you have 30 searches and can get 1000 contacts in total. 6. TraackrTraackr is one of the pioneers of the influencer marketing industry. It stepped into social media influencer marketing analytics back in 2008, just a couple of years after major social media platforms were created. Traackr has its own influencer database which you can search and filter by social channel, topic keyword, language, location, age, gender, and brand affinities. You can also use the same filters to analyze the followers of an influencer. The database is created by an algorithm and curated by humans. If there’s an influencer you want to work with who isn’t in the database, you can manually enter their username from one service, and Traackr goes out and finds all of their social channels, then indexes posts and statistics. Since the tool focuses on building relationships with influencers, it doesn’t stop at the search stage. After you’ve found relevant influencers, you can create highly customizable lists depending on their social platforms, your plans of collaboration, the audiences you want to reach, and so on. Another way to organize influencers is by relationships, have you interacted or worked together before? Traackr will take notice of that. This will simplify working in big teams and collaboration with other departments. An in-built social listening feature allows you to follow the performance of your influencer campaigns and analyze which influencers are bringing you the most value. PricingThe tool prices are revealed upon request, but according to the users, prices start at around $500 per month. 7. UpfluenceUpfluence is a self-proclaimed ‘Google of influence’. It uses its own massive database of nearly 1 million influencers which is constantly revised and updated. Every piece of content their algorithms find is analyzed for reach and engagement. You can look for influencers on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and blogs. While searching for influencers, you can put in several keywords and assign them different degrees of importance. Let’s say, you’re promoting organic and gluten-free products, and you’re especially interested in reaching people who are allergic to gluten. You can assign more weight to keywords related to gluten and thus the tool will look for influencers who cater to this audience the most. Another cool feature is that during your search, Upfluence groups influencers depending on the size of their respective audience. You can also filter influencers by location, social platform, and the number of followers. There is also an audience analytics feature, unfortunately, only available for Instagram. You can analyze influencers’ audiences by brand affinities, cultural interests, and more. You can add influencers to lists upon discovery and customize them according to your needs. Upfluence also has an outreach tool, which allows you to personalize your outreach emails. All email correspondence is archived for easy reference. It will also help you track what stage of influencer collaboration you’re on, who you’re negotiating with, who you’re waiting for to complete content, who are waiting on payment, and so on. PricingThe cheapest plan includes 500 contacts and costs $795 per month. Should you try influencer marketing?According to eMarketer, 81% of marketers that tried influencer marketing reported that it is an effective channel. There are two main reasons why influencer marketing is so popular:
The tools on this list vary from enterprise-level solutions best suited for social media agencies to more affordable options that cover a wide range of marketing needs. If you’re planning to carry out multiple influencer marketing campaigns on a regular basis working in huge, possibly international teams, I’d recommend going with big guns like Traackr. However, if you need a solution for influencer search, I’d go with a social listening tool, for instance, the above mentioned Awario. The tools can help you to discover influencers and organize your workflow with them, but how you will work with an influencer is on you. Personalize your influencer outreach, create engaging content together in the true spirit of collaboration, and maybe they will become a brand evangelist.
Aleh Barysevich is the Founder and CMO at SEO PowerSuite and Awario. He can be found on Twitter at @ab80.
The post Seven best tools to find influencers on social media appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/01/seven-best-tools-to-find-influencers-on-social-media/ It is no secret that Google and other search engines like quality links and consider them as one of the top ranking factors. Search engines are getting smarter and better at identifying unnatural link building. Updated algorithms can assess the brand’s strength and content’s usefulness at a glance. This results in higher requirements for the quality of links and content you use for your SEO. Fortunately, there is a way to create engaging content and build quality links from authority sites simultaneously. The solution is to align SEO efforts with PR. Public Relations puts a business in the spotlight, creating brand awareness and reputation through press coverage. Mentions about the company boost the quality of SEO as well. I came up with this strategy based on a video Rand Fishkin had created on ‘The Marketing Flywheel.’ It’s an old Whiteboard Friday that still resonates today. Rand’s video explains strategies that can impact and scale your link building. I had to find a solution as many of us are in our assigned positions, we are a team of one. So I had to make friends, and fast! In this article, we will take a look at how scaling PR is one of the best link building strategies that can scale your efforts and brand your business fast. What is an online PR strategy?A highly cost-effective marketing technique, online PR is a way to spread a word about your brand on the web. A good PR strategy is really important in this modern age. It does not just help you start influencing people but also gains trust and reputation quickly. I started reading books from Ryan Holiday, a successful marketer and American Eagle executive that has pulled a lot of crazy stunts to scale earned media. He does not focus on SEO as he is more on branding and growth hacking, but his strategies are unconventional and allow you to think out of the box. Connecting with quality influencers and journalistsYou already do it with guest posting, why not do this by finding journalists and other influencers with blogs? The payoff for building these relationships is organic backlinks. Connecting with high authority journalists and influencers in the industry or general media can work wonders for your SEO. The key is to come up with something that can attract their attention, we used a scholarship mixed with a need and based on current priorities that the manufacturing industry had, this is how we recently landed a sweet article on IndustryWeek. It is important to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to using an online PR strategy for link building. You should develop a PR scaling plan that suits your company needs. Here are some useful tips to do link building with PR for your business1. Media relationsPublic relations is different from guest blogging and is about developing healthy relations resulting in high-quality opportunities for the placement of content. Building relations with journalists, bloggers, publishers, and influencers is important. Focus on quality rather than quantity and take time to build these relations. Begin by targeting a few people and nurture a relationship with them. Do some research and find writers, journalists, and influencers in your niche and start engaging with them. Know them and listen to what they say before asking them for links. Like and comment on what they post on social media. Send some useful information to them, even if it is not about you. This will create a positive impression about you in their minds. This way, they will be ready to work with you when the time comes. 2. Priority of online reputation management (ORM)Your online business reputation has to be on point. One suggestion to create fast, positive feedback is to email potential influencers in your industry with some free products and ask for feedback. Seven out of ten times, they will write about you on their blog or create a video endorsing your product. Bloggers love free stuff and this is a quick way to gain positive feedback and reviews on your brand and products. Don’t make your own products? That’s okay! Gift cards work as well with a focus on asking for feedback on your user experience or app. It works both ways. 3. Use of press releasesPress releases have evolved over the years and a good press release which catches the attention of journalists gives a great opportunity for social media coverage and organic links. Consider our example in introducing a scholarship program to bridge the skills gap in the manufacturing industry. This initiative helped us get some great PR and we built trust and reputation within the industry in a matter of a few months. 4. .EDU links helpIt also helped us fuel our acquisition of .EDU Links. We targeted media and industry sites first and then with the trust in place, we contacted schools and universities offering manufacturing courses. We pitched our scholarships and included these articles with links of the stories about the scholarship. The result we got from these efforts were awesome. In less than four months, we went from DA 17 to DA 30 and still growing with over 15 .EDUs and 1200 backlinks which we acquired in just a few weeks. Rather than distributing the press release through syndicated websites with no-follow links, consider distributing it on social media and use some keywords that help influencers and journalists find it easily. You can make it appealing by sending it to influencers before releasing it. 5. Timely contentTry to tie your content to a current event to make it appealing to high-quality sites. Most SEO pros write a story around something timely and pitch it before their competitors do. This is also referred to as newsjacking, it works with the right pitch and data but may backfire if you get too controversial. Doing this right requires that you stay updated on the local and national news and events, and always be ready to give the expert opinion. Such commentary comes with a mention and possibly a link. You can set up Google Alerts for topics and people in your niche to know whenever a big story is up. 6. Use of social mediaSocial media is one of the most powerful tools for public relations. Social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook make it easy for brands to get introduced to influencers and build relations. By using social media to boost your SEO, you get more people to read your content. Always ensure you are visible where you should be and you don’t miss out on anything. Don’t share your content on social media just to get clicks. Encourage the audience to share your content, comment on it, mention to their contacts and use other ways to spread it across the internet. This is how social media can help you generate new, organic links. 7. Buy your PR team some doughnutsPR has a valuable place in SEO and vice versa. When the two industries work together, the results are amazing. As you can see here, there are numerous benefits of scaling PR with link building. Links do matter but where you get them from is more important. Building relations and connections are imperative to success. With the bar of link quality going up at a constant rate, make sure you use PR strategies in your SEO campaigns to generate organic links from high-authority sites. How would you use PR to boost your link building? Let us know in the comments section below. Jonathan Alonso is Director of Digital Marketing at CNCMachines.Net. He can be found on Twitter at @jongeek. The post Link building with PR: Relevant links at scale appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/01/link-building-with-pr-relevant-links-at-scale/ We’ve been working together with our sister site, ClickZ, to honor the best and brightest marketing technology companies today (which includes some SEO-related tools). These Marketing Technology Awards are voted on 50/50 by the community and by a panel of judges. The ceremony will be hosted by Scott Brinker, and will take place on the night of March 21 in Tribeca, New York. We’ve been raising quite a bit more hubbub about it on ClickZ, which more directly covers all marketing technology. But since our SEW name is on there too, we wanted to make sure everyone here was in the loop as well. (You’ve probably seen it in the newsletters!) How do the Marketing Technology Awards work?You can read full detail about the Awards on the official website here, and can see answers to common questions here. Categories span across various types of marketing technology, including CDPs, ABMs, call analytics, conversational bots, and a dozen more. And of course, a handful of more SEO type things such as search tools, location-based marketing, mobile marketing, etc. Categories also include “Use of Technologies” (best campaigns, best tech stack), as well as “People” (martech CEO and CMO). The awards were free to enter, and anyone who has used any of the platforms (excluding employees) could vote on them, rating the tools on things like ease of use, integration, innovation, value for money, customer service, etc. Finalists were determined based 50% by community votes, and 50% by these judges. Announcing the finalistsSo for 2019, we want to thank everyone who has entered, nominated, voted, scored, and otherwise provided your valuable insights and experience. We’d like to announce the list of finalists for this year, and offer a huge congratulations to everyone on this list. We can’t wait to celebrate you and your great work at this event. Here’s the full list: TechnologiesBest Account Based Marketing Tool
Best Analytics Platform
Best Attribution Platform
Best Call Analytics Platform
Best Chat/Conversationsal Bot/Tool
Best Content Marketing Tool
Best Conversion Rate Optimization Tool/Technology
Best Customer Data Platform (CDP)
Best Customer Relationship Management Platform (CRM)
Best Data Privacy/GDPR Tool/Technology
Best Data Visualization Tool
Best Demand Side Platform (DSP)
Best Digital Asset Management Platform (DAM)
Best Email Service Provider (ESP)
Best Influencer Marketing Platform
Best Location Based Marketing Platform
Best Marketing Automation Platform (MAP)
Best Mobile Marketing Platform
Best Paid Media/Bid Management Tool
Best Personalization Platform
Best Predictive Analytics Platform
Best Sales Enablement Technology
Best SEO Tool
Best Social Media Marketing & Monitoring Company
Overall – Marketing Technology Company of the Year
Use of technologiesBest Customer Experience Campaign
Best Marketing Technology Stack
Best Personalization Campaign
Best Technology Combination
Best Use of Marketing Technology
PeopleMarketing Technology CEO Award
Marketing Technology CMO Award
Again, a huge congratulations to all of these fantastic companies and people! For inquiries about the ceremony, please see more information and contact info here. The post Marketing Technology Awards 2019 appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/28/marketing-technology-awards-2019/ It has been a challenging month for YouTube. As we recently reported, fresh concerns over child safety on the service came to light back on 17th February. In a video published to the site, vlogger Matt Watson details how the service is being exploited by paedophiles who were using comment sections under innocuous videos of children to leave sexually provocative messages, to communicate with each other, and to link out to child pornography. Of course, journalists and news sites were quick to level criticism at YouTube. Many pointed out that this wasn’t the first time child safety on the service has been called into question. Others were critical that its methods for safeguarding children were too ‘whack-a-mole’ in their approach. And then came the actions of the advertisers – with Nestle, AT&T and Epic Games (creator of Fortnite) all pulling their ads from the service. So how has YouTube responded? Is it doing enough? Memo directly sent to advertisersOn 20th February YouTube sent out a memo to brands advertising on the service. It detailed the ‘immediate actions’ it was taking to ensure children are safe in light of the recent allegations from Watson. These included suspending comments and reporting accounts to the NCMEC. The memo reiterated that child safety is YouTube’s No. 1 priority, but also admitted there was more work to be done. It laid out a roadmap of tweaks and improvements, including better improving the service’s ability to find predatory comments (set to be implemented this month) and potentially changing how ads are placed on channels. Changes to Community Guidelines strikes system – are these related?In a potentially related move, YouTube also announced via a recent blog post that it was going to make changes to its Community Guidelines. The changes – which came into force on 25th February – include a warning for users the first time their content crosses the line. YouTube says: ‘Although the content will be removed, there will be no other penalty on the channel. There will be only one warning and unlike strikes, the warning will not reset after 90 days.’ The ‘three strike’ system still exists but is stricter and more straightforward. Now a first strike results in a one-week freeze on the ability to upload any new content to the service. Previously, first strikes just resulted in a freeze on live-streaming. A second strike in any 90-day period will result in a two-week freeze on the ability to upload any new content. Ultimately, a third strike in any 90-day period will result in channel termination. That YouTube has taken this opportunity to address its creator community directly is interesting. The Guardian has reported that the fallout from Watson’s video resulted in a number of prominent YouTube users criticizing him, rather than the service. Their reasoning was that it was overreactive and a deliberate attempt to drive advertisers away. Additionally, a report at ABC News shed light on stories from creators who have been the victims of false claims and extortion attempts by bad actors who promise to remove strikes only after they’ve received payment via PayPal or BitCoin. With this in mind, we can see that YouTube have been quite diplomatic in how they’ve rolled this Community Guideline change out. Imposing stricter penalties against a backdrop of better transparency and simpler rules is quite laudable. Further questions over safety sinceIn the wake of Watson’s video, further news stories have emerged which relate directly and indirectly to child safety on YouTube. On 24th February, pediatrician Free Hess exposed that some children’s videos available on YouTube Kids had hidden footage detailing how to commit suicide spliced into them (as reported at The Washington Post). Additionally, on 25th February the BBC reported that the service was stopping adverts being shown on channels which showed anti-vaccination content. And the past couple days, widespread internet concern has raged over “The Momo Challenge,” a supposed challenge encouraging minors to do dangerous / potentially self-harming acts. However, this morning The Atlantic reported that this has been a digital hoax. And that it has followed similar cycles as the so-called Blue Whale challenge, teens eating toxic Tide Pods, and the cinnamon challenge — all of which were found to have no reported deaths/injuries associated. And yesterday, YouTube tweeted this:
The company has also just updated their Creator Blog with a post titled, “More updates on our actions related to the safety of minors on YouTube.” In it, they summarize “the main steps we’ve taken to improve child safety on YouTube since our update last Friday.” These steps include:
It does seem that they are moving quickly to remedy the problems. But I think anyone would agree — they’ve had quite the month. So the challenge is certainly ongoing…All this does highlight the difficulty YouTube has in keeping all its millions of viewers, creators, and advertisers safe and happy. We know the service is constantly updating its algorithm across its search function and its recommendations in order to give users better – more trustworthy – content. We can also be quite sure that there has been a fair amount of activity in protecting minors on the service since 2017 when unsuitable content featuring Disney and Marvel characters was being found to be available on YouTube Kids. This timeframe is in line with the aforementioned memo which assures that the service has been working hard to improve in this regard for the past 18 months. I’m not sure it’s entirely fair, then, to call YouTube’s approach to safeguarding children a ‘whack-a-mole approach’ or one which only sees the site take action when the instances gain media attention. The sheer amount of content and users on the service is so massive, it depends on the community to produce the content and – at times – to monitor how it is used. In this instance, a user flagged an issue up and YouTube worked very quickly indeed. The service is always improving. But changes, tweaks, and improvements are not always newsworthy. The same can be said for Google. Yes, there is more to be done. As online video continues to boom and the creator community continues to grow, we can expect issues to arise. But I think it is unlikely that YouTube wouldn’t be proactive here. After all, its very existence depends on having great videos, trustworthy content, a safe community of users who are having a positive experience on the site, and an ecosystem where advertisers want to be. The post YouTube + child safety: Is the service doing enough? appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/28/youtube-child-safety-service-doing-enough/ A few weeks ago, Google published a blog post on its webmaster blog sharing some tips on how to get more success in Google News search in 2019. 2019 will be a hard fight against fake news as fake news outlets are increasing with time. Along with some social media platforms, Google is also responsible for the spreading of fake and misleading news. If you are running a clickbait rich site with a lot of crappy content, you may encounter Google’s punishment this year. Generally, Google looks at these five factors when ranking news articles:
To succeed in 2019 your news content should be original, authoritative, and should provide timely news information. Six important tips for news content
The five ‘w’sTo write your news content, you can use this popular news writing formula. Ask yourself the five ‘w’ questions and answer them all in your first paragraph of news content. The main aim is to provide a lot of information in the first paragraph. Internet readers have a small attention span and most people scan the content, instead of line by line reading. This is especially true for news. Write your first paragraph answering these questions.
Use proper nouns in the headlineGeneric nouns will not get as much attention as proper nouns in Google search. Use proper names of brands, organizations or of people related to your news in the headlines. If you can creatively use proper names where other news outlets are not, you will get a huge advantage in the Google News search. Graphics, images and video contentUse graphics, images, and videos on your news content to explain your news or to provide more information. Google loves this. With engaging videos and graphics, you can attract more readers, and make your content more shareable. But before sharing your multimedia follow the guidelines of Google. Beware the sensational, exceptional, negative, and current (SENC)SENC is sensational, exceptional, negative, and current events, which is a general definition of current news. But, if you follow this definition to produce your news, they will not be authentic or convey real helpful information. Shocking, scandalous things can be viral, but these types of sensational news should not be your priority. If you prioritize only exceptional things, your content will become misleading. Current news is full of recency bias. The present most recent things, without much in-depth and background information. But every recent event has a root in something old and slow systematic change. In your news content, you should present the actual root cause as much as possible to make the content more authoritative. It will earn you good links and build your brand. Your news should be foundational not sensational. On publishing breaking news, you should not be in a hurry to publish it faster than your competitors. Instead, before publishing the content, ask yourself what new information your article will provide that is not found elsewhere. Pay less attention to CTR, dwell time, and other UX signals on the landing pageAccording to recent AMA of Gary Illyes, Google webmaster trends analyst:
This thread from a couple weeks ago caused quite a stir. Perhaps we distract ourselves too much from the “simplicity” of what is actually search? Ps — what are your thoughts on RankBrain and UX? Leave a comment below! Muradul Islam is a Business Analyst at WeDevs. He can be found on Twitter @muradt20. The post How to dominate Google News search in 2019 appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/28/dominate-google-news-search-in-2019/ Google Analytics is used by more than 28.8 billion websites since its inception in 2005. And many have attempted to find a ‘one size fits all’ approach as far as attribution models are concerned. While this is admirable in and of itself, it also goes against the very nature of Google Analytics. After all, the USP of the service is to customize reports according to your requirements. So why should attribution models be any different? What is attribution?Before we dive in any further, however, you must understand what we mean by attribution. In Google Analytics, the term attribution can mean lots of things, from giving credit for visiting the website to completing a particular activity, from a campaign to a kind of source. Attribution is mainly used for conversions and sessions. Data-driven attributionNow, attribution models can be of various kinds, but the one generating a lot of buzz lately is data-driven attribution. Rather than a traditional model, this algorithmically-generated model is exclusive to customers of Google Analytics 360 which offers an easy way to provide personalized experiences to your customers. Plus, you need to meet these two parameters across a period of 28 days:
The standout feature of data-driven attribution is how it considers the touch points of the users before the start of the conversion process. The Model Explorer Tool reports these touch points. The data is then reviewed. The data-driven attribution model serves as a baseline model in Google Analytics, enabling you to create new personalized attribution model. Create the new data-driven attribution model to share conversion credit with multiple touch points along the path of conversion before the implementation of personalized credit rules. Use the data-driven attribution model to analyze both, the non-conversion and conversion path information. The latter is data gathered from visitors who were not converted by your site while the former is collected from the ones who did convert. A unique aspect of the data-driven attribution model is how it changes weekly. Why does the data-driven attribution model work?Understand that this model offers credit to the conversions of various touch points or marketing channels according to what they contributed in the conversion process. The touch point or marketing channel that offers the most assistance receives the most amount of credit for conversions, irrespective of whether it’s the initial touch, the middle touch, or the last touch. The rest of the touches or channels receive credit as per what they contributed during the conversion process. As the task of assigning conversion credits depends on the latest conversion information rather than the touch point positions, the attribution becomes data-driven. This not only eliminates the need to assign random conversion credit to numerous touch points or channels but also explains why the entire model is called the data-driven attribution model. Make it a point to remember that the validity of data-driven attribution lasts for a certain period of time since the model changes along with the conversion information. What your business needs to implement the DDA (Data-Driven Attribution) model?Never think for a second that an algorithm-based attribution model such as this one can be implemented by every business. First, meet and maintain various strict requirements, and only then can your business handle the data-driven attribution model.
Unless you have a Google Premium or Google Analytics 360 account, you cannot use the data-driven attribution model.
Always remember that your DDA model’s strength rests on the information you submit. So a poor entry will beget poor results. Now, the problem is, most organizations might be able to download and install Google Analytics 360, but they stumble hard when it comes to figuring out how to benefit from the service. What’s more? Even though they have the resources to hire experienced analysts, they cannot always create and maintain large volumes of quality data gathered from different data sources. Thus, the insights received from the DDA model are likely misleading, flawed, and unusable.
The KPIs and goals you select for your business need to align across organizations and marketing channels. Otherwise, the data-driven attribution model does not work. So, if the primary Twitter campaign target is to improve site sales, then your Facebook campaign goal should also be the same.
Set goals in Google Analytics Premium to monitor conversions as well as ecommerce. Using this conversion information, Google Analytics generates the data-driven attribution for your business, irrespective of whether you are permitted to use it or not.
Be certain that the Google Analytics Premium view to be generated meets the minimum conversion threshold. Also, know that it doesn’t matter if your Google Analytics’ view meets the minimum conversion threshold once; it does not allow for continued DDA analysis in Google Analytics. Make sure the minimum conversion threshold is maintained.
The Google Analytics view you’ve selected must not only meet the minimum conversion threshold for every type of conversion; it needs to be maintained as well. Each kind of conversion generates its own DDA model, and it’s always possible that the generated DDA model works for certain conversions but not all. If you’ve implemented data-driven attribution and the generated model does not work for that conversion, then GA is going to flash a warning sign right above the attribution model reports. Valuate your organic search channel with the DDA modelOpen the ‘Model Comparison Tool’. Begin a comparison between the ‘last non-direct click’ and ‘data-driven’ model and the ‘last interaction model’. It is best to select the ‘last interaction’ model as it is the basic model for Google Analytics’ multi-channel funnel reports. The ‘Last non-direct click’ works since it is the basic model for non-multi-channel funnel reports. Finally, choose the ‘data-driven’ model rather than ‘time decay’ because:
Check the column labeled ‘% change in conversions (from ‘Last Interaction’) to find ‘organic search’Use this report to measure the percentage by which organic search conversion changed from the previous interaction model to the data-driven model. In this case, you can see that it is 22.66 percent. This means if the DDA model is used to offer organic search conversion credits, the process will yield 22.66 percent more credits. So, the last click model undervalues organic search by 22.66 percent. Once you’re done, download the DDA model into an excel sheet by simply clicking the button marked ‘Download the full model’ to the above right side of the ‘Model explorer tool’. Concluding remarksChoose the data-driven attribution model in Google Analytics to implement it for your business and experience the benefits. There are lots of other attribution models available but this model is in a league of its own. The post How to get started with data-driven attribution in Google Analytics appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/27/data-driven-attribution-google-analytics/ |
AuthorPleasure to introduce my self i am Sean Webb i am 27 years old from Manchester, UK.I am doing affiliate marketing and have spend lots of time learning how to rank easy to medium competition keywords. I have recently started PPL and Video Marketing and learning more about it. ArchivesNo Archives Categories |