Google is getting more aggressive in its fight against deceptive mobile-only redirects.
The post Google Warns Deceptive Mobile Redirects Result in Manual Actions by @mattsouthern appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Friday, 30 October 2015
3 Resources to Help You Build Outstanding Online Courses
“Choosy moms choose Jif” is one of my favorite taglines, for peanut butter or otherwise.
The product’s message stands for more than just peanut butter.
Jif paints a subtle picture of an elite group: choosy moms. Choosy moms only buy the best food for their children.
Any mom who aspires to be part of a group of selective moms would value what Jif represents and feel good about purchasing the brand of peanut butter.
When you turn your educational content into an online course or membership site, how can you communicate to your potential students or members that you have the knowledge that will help them become the people they want to be?
This week’s Copyblogger Collection is a series of three handpicked articles that will show you:
- How to structure and sell your natural expertise
- How to attract students who want to learn from you
- How to create a valuable lesson plan that sells your online course and motivates your students
How to Structure and Sell Your Natural Expertise
Chances are, you’re extremely knowledgeable about a certain topic.
Whether you know a ton about an industry you’ve worked in for years or a fun hobby you’ve mastered, at some point you might want to document your expertise and teach others.
But how do you organize your ideas and find the right technology solutions that help you distribute your lessons to students?
In How to Structure and Sell Your Natural Expertise, Pamela Wilson shares the first steps you need to take, so you realize that building an online course isn’t just a lofty dream — it can easily become a reality.
5 Reasons Why It’s Practical and Profitable to Share Your Expertise Online
If you’re still not convinced about the benefits of teaching an online course, Amy Harrison is here to guide you with 5 Reasons Why It’s Practical and Profitable to Share Your Expertise Online.
Amy tells a juicy story about her own experiences teaching in-person classes and teaching online.
I won’t spoil it for you, but here’s a snippet of her wisdom:
Until they master cloning, you can’t scale your live workshops and profit.
I’ve had the pleasure of running many workshops that I absolutely loved. Even so, I was capped at the number of training days I could physically do each month.
Anyone who trades time for money has this limit, and in addition to limiting your revenue, it can also make you susceptible to the small business ‘feast or famine’ cycle.
How to Create a Valuable Lesson Plan that Sells Your Online Course and Motivates Your Students
It’s time to get down to business.
Fortunately for you, Henneke has outlined How to Create a Valuable Lesson Plan that Sells Your Online Course and Motivates Your Students.
If your lesson plan describes unparalleled value for your students, it naturally sells your course for you.
Thought-provoking stuff here.
Check out Henneke’s article to find out exactly how to craft a remarkable lesson plan.
Smarter ways to create and sell profitable digital products and services
Ready to create your own online course or membership site, but you need more educational resources?
Our brand-new Digital Commerce Institute is designed to give you the in-depth education you need to build a profitable digital company.
Until November 6, 2015, we’re offering Charter Membership access to our online Academy and our live 2016 Digital Commerce Summit at an exceptional price.
Head over to Digital Commerce Institute to learn more about our special limited-time deal!
The post 3 Resources to Help You Build Outstanding Online Courses appeared first on Copyblogger.
SearchCap: Bing Shopping Campaigns Updates, SEO For Local Businesses & Google’s Halloween Doodle
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
The post SearchCap: Bing Shopping Campaigns Updates, SEO For Local Businesses & Google’s Halloween Doodle appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
LocalU Advanced Williamsburg March 5th 2016 Pre Agenda Special
Local U Advanced is my favorite local event of the year; its collegial, casual, intimate and leading edge educational. This year the event will be held in Williamsburg, Va the night of March 4th and all of March 5th, 2016. The agenda for the event will be coming out on November 8th but if you … Continue reading LocalU Advanced Williamsburg March 5th 2016 Pre Agenda Special
How to Write for the Web—a New Approach for Increased Engagement - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by Dan-Petrovic
We tend to put a lot of effort into writing great content these days. But what's the point of all that hard work if hardly anybody actually reads it through to the end?
In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Dan Petrovic illustrates a new approach to writing for the web to increase reader engagement, and offers some tools and tips to help along the way.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
G'day, Moz fans, Dan Petrovic from DEJAN here. Today we're talking about how to write for the web.
How much of an article will people actually read?
This year we did an interesting study involving 500 people. We asked them how do they read online. We found that the amount of people who actually read everything word-for-word is 16%. Amazingly, this is exactly the same statistic, the same percentage that Nielsen came up with in 1997. It's been nearly two decades, and we still haven't learned how to write for the Web.
I don't know about you guys, but I find this to be a huge opportunity, something we can do with our blogs and with our content to change and improve how we write in order to provide better user experience and better performance for our content. Essentially, what happens is four out of five people that visit your page will not actually read everything you wrote. The question you have to ask yourself is: Why am I even writing if people are not reading?
I went a little bit further with my study, and I asked those same people: Why is it that you don't read? How is it that there are such low numbers for the people who actually read? The answer was, "Well, I just skip stuff." "I don't have time for reading." "I mainly scan," or, "I read everything." That was 80 out of 500 people. The rest said, "I just read the headline and move on," which was amazing to hear.
Further study showed that people are after quick answers. They don't want to be on a page too long. They sometimes lose interest halfway through reading the piece of content. They find the bad design to be a deterrent. They find the subject matter to be too complex or poorly written. Sometimes they feel that the writing lacks credibility and trust.
I thought, okay, there's a bunch of people who don't like to read a lot, and there's a bunch of people who do like to read a lot. How do I write for the web to satisfy both ends?
Here was my dilemma. If I write less, the effort for reading my content is very low. It satisfies a lot of people, but it doesn't provide the depth of content that some people expect and it doesn't allow me to go into storytelling. Storytelling is very powerful, often. If I write more, the effort will be very high. Some people will be very satisfied, but a lot of people will just bounce off. It'll provide the depth of content and enable storytelling.
Actually, I ended up finding out something I didn't know about, which was how journalists write. This is a very old practice called "inverted pyramid."
The rules are, you start off with a primary piece of information. You give answers straight up. Right after that you go into the secondary, supporting information that elaborates on any claims made in the first two paragraphs. Right after that we go into the deep content.
I thought about this, and I realized why this was written in such a way: because people used to read printed stuff, newspapers. They would go read the most important thing, and if they drop off at this point, it's not so bad because they know actually what happened in the first paragraph. The deep content is for those who have time.
But guess what? We write for the web now. So what happens is we have all this technology to change things and to embed things. We don't really have to wait for our users to go all the way to the bottom to read deep information. I thought, "How can I take this deep information and make it available right here and right there to give those interested extra elaboration on a concept while they're reading something?"
This is when I decided I'll dive deeper into the whole thing. Here's my list. This is what I promised myself to do. I will minimize interruption for my readers. I will give them quick answers straight in the first paragraph. I will support easy scanning of my content. I will support trust by providing citations and references. I will provide in-depth content to those who want to see it. I will enable interactivity, personalization, and contextual relevance to the piece of content people want to retrieve in that particular time.
I took one of my big articles and I did a scroll test on it. This was the cutoff point where people read everything. At this point it drops to 95, 80, 85. You keep losing audience as your article grows in size. Eventually you end up at about 20% of people who visit your page towards the bottom of your article.
My first step was to jump on the Hemingway app—a very good online app where you can put in your content and it tells you basically all the unnecessary things you've actually put in your words—to actually take them out because they don't really need to be there. I did that. I sized down my article, but it still wasn't going to do the trick.
Enter the hypotext!
This is where I came up with an idea of hypotext. What I did, I created a little plugin for WordPress that enables people to go through my article, click on a particular piece, kind of like a link.
Instead of going to a new website, which does interrupt their reading experience, a block of text opens within the paragraph of text they're reading and gives them that information. They can click if they like, or if they don't want to look up this information, they don't have to. It's kind of like links, but injected right in the context of what they're currently reading.
This was a nerve-wracking exercise for me. I did 500 revisions of this article until I got it right. What used to be a 5,000-word article turned into a 400-word article, which can then be expanded to its original 5,000-word form. People said, "That's great. You have a nice hypothesis, nice theory, but does this really work?"
So I decided to put everything I did to a test. An old article, which takes about 29 minutes to read, was attracting people to the page, but they were spending 6 minutes on average—which is great, but not enough. I wanted people to spend way more time. If I put the effort into writing, I wanted them to digest that content properly. The bounce rate was quite high, meaning they were quite tired with my content, and they just wanted to move on and not explore anything else on my website.
Test Results
After implementing the compressed version of my original article, giving them a choice of what they will read and when, I expanded the average time on page to 12 minutes, which is extraordinary. My bounce rate was reduced to 60%, which meant that people kept browsing for more of my content.
We did a test with a content page, and the results were like this:
Basically, the engagement metrics on the new page were significantly higher than on the old when implemented in this way.
On a commercial landing page, we had a situation like this:
We only had a small increase in engagement. It was about 6%. Still very happy with the results. But what really, really surprised me was on my commercial landing page—where I want people to actually convert and submit an inquiry—the difference was huge.
It was about a 120% increase in the inquiries in comparison to the control group when I implemented this type of information. I removed the clutter and I enabled people to focus on making the inquiry.
I want you all to think about how you write for the web, what is a good web reading experience, and how content on the web should be, because I think it's time to align how we write and how we read on the web. Thank you.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
A few notes:
There are a few things to note here. First, for an example of an implementation of hypotext, take a look at this post on user behavior data.
Next, keep in mind that Google does devalue the hidden content, disagreeing with its usability. You can read more about this on the DEJAN blog—there are further tips on the dangers of hidden content and how you can combat them there.
One solution is to reverse how hypotext works in an article. Rather than defaulting to the shorter piece, you can start by showing the full text and offer a "5-minute-read" link (example here) for those inclined to skim or not interested in the deep content.
Share your thoughts in the comments below, and thanks for listening!
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Amazon Music adds Android Wear, Auto support
One of Amazon Music’s most requested features — the ability to download songs to an SD card to listen offline — has finally arrived. According to Android Central, the update brings support for Android Wear devices as well as the ability to add your saved songs or albums from Prime Music to your phone’s SD card without taking up valuable on-board storage. Those of you with Android Auto can now enjoy Prime Music while on the go, too. Finding new music got simpler as well. Now Prime Stations appear directly in your search results, which enables seamless discovery of new online radio stations and artists…
This story continues at The Next Web
Thursday, 29 October 2015
Jonny Rants His Sinuses Clear About Social Media Strategy
What happens when we become so focused on new social media tactics that we lose sight of our goals?
We all have a finite amount of time and energy. Every moment that we spend on social media is a moment that we aren’t spending producing our shows.
Should we be spending all of our time on our shows or are we better off using Pareto’s 80/20 Principle, which states that 20 percent of our efforts gives us 80 percent of our results? Of course, it depends.
Today on The Showrunner, hosts Jerod Morris and Jonny Nastor go further than that and help you define a strategy for social media, rather than tactics that could distract you from your larger mission.
In this episode of The Showrunner, Jerod and Jonny discuss:
- Jerod’s success with posting his Primility Primer videos to Facebook
- The difference between strategy and tactics
- Why Chris Ducker is going all-in on Periscope (and Michael Hyatt is stopping his daily scopes)
- Why you need a North Star to guide your work
The Showrunner on iTunes
About the authorRainmaker.FM
Rainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand digital business and marketing advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.
The post Jonny Rants His Sinuses Clear About Social Media Strategy appeared first on Copyblogger.
Click-Through Rate Isn't Everything: 8 Ways to Improve Your Online Display Ads
Posted by rMaynes1
You are exposed to an average of 362 online display ads a day. How close are you to buying anything when you see those ads?
Online display ads have been around for over 20 years. They’re nothing new. But over the past 2 decades, the content, format, and messaging of display ads have changed dramatically—because they have had to!
The click-through rate of that first banner ad in 1994 was 44%. CTRs have steadily declined, and were sitting at around 0.1% in 2012 for standard display ads (video and rich media excluded), according to DoubleClick. Advertisers had to do something to ensure that their ads were seen, and engaged with—ads had to be a useful resource, and not an annoying nuisance.
It’s important, however, that the focus is not firmly fixed on CTRs. Yes, online display ads have largely been considered a tool for direct response advertising, but more recently, advertisers are understanding the importance of reaching the right person, in the right mindset, with an ad that can be seen. This ad may not be clicked on, but does that mean it wasn’t noticed and remembered? Advertisers are increasingly opting to pay for performance as opposed to clicks and/or impressions. Advertisers want their ad to drive action that leads to purchase—and that isn’t always in the form of a click.
Mediative recently conducted and released a research study that looks at how display ads can drive purchase behaviour. If someone is browsing the web and sees an ad, can it influence a purchase decision? Are searchers more responsive to display ads at different stages in the buying cycle? What actions do people take after seeing an ad that captures their interest? Ultimately, Mediative wanted to know how indicative of purchase behaviour a click on an ad was, and if clicks on display ads even matter anymore when it comes to driving purchase behaviour and measuring campaign success. The results from an online survey are quite interesting.
1. The ability of online display ads to influence people increases as they come closer to a purchase decision.
In fact, display ads are 39% more likely to influence web users when they are researching a potential purchase versus when they have no intent to buy.
Advertiser action item #1:
Have different ad creatives with different messaging that will appeal to the researcher and the purchaser of your product or service separately. Combined with targeted impressions, advertisers are more likely to reach and engage their target audience when they are most receptive to the particular messaging in the ad.
Here are a few examples of Dell display ads and different creatives that have been used:
This creative is focusing on particular features of the product that might appeal more to researchers.
This ad injects the notion of “limited time” to get a deal, which might cause people who are on the fence to act faster—but it doesn’t mention pricing or discounts.
These creatives introduce price discounts and special offers which will appeal to those in the market to buy.
2. The relevancy of ads cannot be understated.
40% of people took an action (clicked the ad, contacted the advertiser, searched online for more information, etc.) from seeing an ad because it was relevant to a need or want, or relevant to something they were doing at the time.
Advertiser action item #2:
Use audience data or lookalike modeling in display campaigns to ensure ads will be targeted to searchers who have a higher likelihood of being interested in the product or service. Retargeting ads to people based on their past activity or searches is valuable at this stage, as potential customers can be reached all over the web while they comparison shop.
An established Canadian charitable organization ran an awareness campaign in Q2 2015 using retargeting, first and third party data lookalike modeling, and contextual targeting to help drive existing, and new users to their website. The goal was to drive donations, while reducing the effective cost per action of the campaign. This combination helped drive granularity in the targeting, enabling the most efficient spending possible. The result was a 689% decrease in eCPA—$76 versus the goal of $600.
3. Clicks on ads are not the only actions taken after seeing ads.
53% of people said they were likely to search online for the product featured in the ad (the same as those who said they would click on the ad). Searching for more information online is just as likely as clicking the ad after it captures attention, just not as quickly as a click (74% would click on the ad immediately or within an hour, 52% would search online immediately or within an hour).
Advertiser action item #3:
It is critical not to measure the success of a display campaign by clicks alone. Advertisers can get caught up in CTRs, but it’s important to remember that ads will drive other behaviours in people, not just a click. Website visits, search metrics, etc. must all be taken into consideration.
A leading manufacturer of PCs, laptops, tablets, and accessories wanted to increase sales in Q2 of 2014, with full transparency on the performance and delivery of the campaign. The campaign was run against specific custom audience data focusing on people of technological, educational, and business interest, and was optimized using various tactics. The result? The campaign achieved a post-view ROI revenue (revenue from target audiences who were presented with ad impressions, yet did not necessarily click through at that time) that was 30x the amount of post-click revenue.
4. Clicks on ads are not the only actions that lead to purchase.
33% of respondents reported making a purchase as a direct result of seeing an ad online. Of those, 61% clicked and 44% searched (multiple selections were allowed), which led to a purchase.
Advertiser action item #4:
Revise the metrics you measure. Measuring "post-view conversions" will take into account the fact that people may see an ad, but act later—the ad triggers an action, whether it be a search, a visit, or a purchase—but not immediately, and it is not directly measurable.
5. The age of the target audience can impact when ads are most likely to influence them in the buying cycle.
- Overall, 18–25 year olds are most likely to be influenced by online advertising.
- At the beginning of the buying cycle, younger adults aged 18–34 are likely to notice and be influenced by ads much more than people aged over 35.
- At the later stages of the buying cycle, older adults aged 26–54 are 12% more likely that 18–25 year olds to have made a purchase as a result of seeing an ad.
Advertiser action item #5:
If your target audience is older, multiple exposures of an ad might be necessary in order to increase the likelihood of capturing their attention. Integrated campaigns could be more effective, where offline campaigns run in parallel with online campaigns to maximize message exposure.
6. Gender influences how much of an impact display ads have.
More women took an online action that led to a purchase in the last 30 days, whereas more men took an offline action that led to a purchase.
- 76% more women than men visited an advertiser’s website without clicking on the ad.
- 47% more women than men searched online for more information about the advertiser, product, or service.
- 43% more men than women visited the advertiser’s location.
- 33% more men than women contacted the advertiser.
Advertiser action item #6:
Ensure you know as much about your target audience as possible. What is their age, their average income? What sites do they like to visit? What are their interests? The more you know about who you are trying to reach, the more likely you will be to reach them at the right times when they will be most responsive to your advertising messages.
7. Income influences how much of an impact display ads have.
- Web users who earned over $100k a year were 35% more likely to be influenced by an ad when exposed to something they hadn’t even thought about than those making under $50k a year.
- When ready to buy, people who earned under $20K were 12.5% more likely to be influenced by ads than those making over $100K.
Advertiser action item #7:
Lower earners (students, part-time workers, etc.) are more influenced by ads when ready to buy, so will likely engage more with ads offering discounts. Consider income differences when you are trying to reach people at different stages in the buying cycle.
8. Discounts don't influence people if they are not relevant.
We were surprised that the results of the survey indicated that discounts or promotions in ads did not have more of an impact on people—but it’s likely that the ads with coupons were irrelevant to the searcher’s needs or wants, therefore would have no impact. We asked people what their reasons were behind taking action after seeing an online ad. 40% of respondents took an action from seeing an ad for a more purchase-related reason than simply being interested—they took the action because the ad was relevant to a need or want, or relevant to something they were doing at the time.
Advertiser action item #8:
Use discounts strategically. Utilizing data in campaigns can ensure ads reach people with a high intent to buy and a high likelihood of being interested in your product or service. Turn interest into desire with coupons and/or discounts—it will have more of an impact if directly tied to something the searcher is already considering.
In conclusion, to be successful, advertisers need to ensure their ads are providing value to online web users—to be noticed, remembered, and engaged with, relevancy of the ad is key. Serving relevant ads that are related to a searcher’s current need or want are far more likely to capture attention than a "one-size-fits-all" approach.
Advertisers will be rewarded for their attention to personalization with more interaction with ads and a higher likelihood of a purchase. Analyzing lower funnel metrics, such as post-view conversions, rather than simply concentrating on the CTR will allow advertisers to have a far better understanding of how their ads are performing, and the potential number of consumers that have been influenced.
Rebecca Maynes, Manager of Content Marketing and Research with Mediative, was the major contributor on this whitepaper. The full research study is available for free download at Mediative.com.
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Ignore the headlines, autonomous cars are still safer than humans
A preliminary study on the safety of self-driving vehicles conducted by The Univeristy of Michigan Transportation Research Institute revealed autonomous cars are responsible for more accidents than their human-driven coutnerparts. But, the numbers might not be telling the whole story. Lost in the whirlwind of big headlines about killer robot cars was this seemingly important bit of information found right in the beginning of the study: “Two important caveats should be considered when interpreting the findings. First, the distance accumulated by self-driving vehicles is still relatively low (about 1.2 million miles, compared with about 3 trillion annual miles in the U.S.…
This story continues at The Next Web
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