Google To Shut Down Google Compare Products In Us And UK On March 23

The vertical lead generation programs for credit cards, auto insurance, mortgages and travel insurance will start winding down Tuesday, February 23.

The post Google To Shut Down Google Compare Products In Us And UK On March 23 appeared first on Search Engine Land.



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Google My Business Categories By Country

With the release of V2 of the Google My Business API, Google simultaneously released categories for each of the 135 countries currently supported by the GMB.I noted it at the time but it was lost in the article but I wanted to be sure that folks so these categories and downloaded them if they needed Continue reading Google My Business Categories By Country

Related posts:

1. Categories in the new Places for Business Dashboard


2. Canadian Categories from the New Dashboard Now Added to Google Category Tool


3. Google Category Tool Updated To Include new Places for Business Dashboard Categories

All About Google Removing Sidebar Ads: What You Need to Know

This post will try to clear up the confusion and questions people have following Google's removal of right sidebar ads.

The post All About Google Removing Sidebar Ads: What You Need to Know appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?

According to Google Trends, interest in content marketing has been on the rise since January 2011.

But this should not surprise anyone. We all seem to be awash in content marketing.

Whats surprising is that many content marketers dont have a documented strategy.

So, lets fix that. Today, content marketer, well help you get a plan in place.

But first we need to clear up a little confusion about content marketing strategy.

Content marketing strategy defined

Some people like to make a distinction between the terms content strategy and content marketing strategy. The distinction, they suggest, is best explained with a Russian doll: a smaller strategy is inside a larger one.

In this case, content marketing strategy is the smaller strategy inside the larger one, content strategy.

There is some truth to this.

Content strategy, according to Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach, involves the planning, creation, governance, and maintenance of content, whereas content marketing strategy focuses on the narrow discipline of marketing content.

Fair enough, but I think this distinction is confusing and needless because we can also talk about content marketing strategy as the planning, creation, governance, and maintenance of content and not lose any sleep.

Id like to proceed with a clear definition of a content marketing strategy.

So, if strategy means a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result, the specific goal or result for content marketing would be building an audience that builds a business.

For our purposes, then, lets define content marketing strategy like this:

A content marketing strategy is a plan for building an audience by publishing, maintaining, and spreading frequent and consistent content that educates, entertains, or inspires to turn strangers into fans and fans into customers.

Which brings us to the next important question.

Do you need a content marketing strategy?

If you are a small business with a few employees or a one-man or one-woman shop, you may be thinking that your content marketing is so simple that you dont need a plan.

Wont a list of things that need to happen written on the back of an envelope get the job done?

Yes, thats one way to begin, especially if you are typically a perfectionist and just need to start your content marketing rather than waiting until you have the perfect plan.

But at some point you will need to develop a more comprehensive plan and then document it.

• Content marketers with a documented strategy feel more confident in their work.


• Content marketing challenges dont seem as overwhelming when you have a strategy in place.


• A documented strategy makes it easier to get buy-in from stakeholders.


• Its easier to chart your success when you have a documented strategy.

The jury is in, folks: We all need a documented content marketing strategy. And the cool thing is it doesnt need to be complicated.

Crafting a simple content marketing strategy

Lets be honest: Unless you are a content marketer for a big company, you dont need much. Just a plan to help focus your time, money, and energy.

In fact, you can document your content marketing strategy in the time it takes you to answer the following 13 questions:

1. Who are your users?


2. Who are your competitors?


3. What do you bring to the table?


4. What do you hear?


5. What content do you already have?


6. What is the purpose of your content?


7. How often should you publish content?


8. How will you distribute your content?


9. Who is in charge of your content?


10. Who will produce your content?


11. Who is going to maintain the content?


12. Who is responsible for the results?


13. Whats your destination (core strategy)?

Want to learn more about these questions and the process behind this simple content marketing strategy?

Then check out the following article: 13 Simple Questions to Help You Draft a Winning Content Strategy.

And dont forget to download the accompanying free worksheet.

There is one thing to keep in mind, though. You will probably have to perform some serious research before you can answer those questions.

Your content marketing strategy begins with this person

The person Im talking about is your customer.

Your customer is the focal point of your content marketing strategy. You need a substantial, deep, and comprehensive understanding of who she is.

When you do, the strategy will write itself. You wont have to guess or wonder. But a weak, flimsy, or flat-out wrong understanding of who your customer is will sink your strategy every time.

Check out these five resources to help you understand who your customer is:

• Research checklist: Dont Create Your Content Strategy Until You Research These 6 Things


• Empathy map: A Complete Guide to Crawling Inside Your Customers Head


• Worldview: Tap into This Psychological Driver to Create the Ultimate Message


• Customer experience map: How to Use Customer Experience Maps to Develop a Winning Content Marketing Strategy


• Personas: How Creating an Imaginary Friend Can Make You a Better Writer

Understanding your content

Once you thoroughly understand who your customer is, evaluate the content you already have.

This exercise will not only help you spot the gaps in your content that you need to fill, but it will also help you see that old content can becoe outdated and cost you top positions in search engines, cause user-experience failure, and more.

So, here are four resources to help you review your current content:

• A Brief Guide to Fixing Your Old, Neglected, and Broken Content


• How to Conduct a Content Audit for Quality and Audience Experience


• How to Plug the Holes in Your Content Funnel that Are Costing You Money


• The Single Best Way to Create Hit Content in Record Time

Measuring your content marketing efforts (conversion)

Ultimately, it comes down to this: how do you know if your content marketing strategy is working?

Youll know if your content marketing strategy is working if you measure it.

This is why question 13 on the content marketing strategy worksheet (Whats your core strategy?) is so important.

That core strategy should:

• Give you room to stretch, fail, get back up, and grow


• Allow you to adjust as your environment changes around you, without having to make a drastic change


• Align with your values, so youll be able to sustain it and endure challenges over time

But how do you measure that? If you are like me and the words analytics and measuring make you uncomfortable, check out Mike Kings article:

• A Quick-Start Guide to Measuring Your Content Marketing Efforts

That should keep you busy for a while.

For our Authority members, I want to point out an additional resource: Site Analytics Made Simple(r).

In this hour-long session, our Chief Operations Officer, Tony Clark, and Chief Content Officer, Sonia Simone, talk about:

• Why content creators should have a basic understanding of web analytics


• What tools you must use (forget about the rest and focus on these)


• The essential metrics you should measure to get the best performance out of your content


• What to do with the information once you have it

This is a great introduction to understanding the tools you need to successfully measure your content marketing strategy. Authority members can access the webinar here.

Your turn

So, do you have a content marketing strategy? Is it documented or a plan you keep in your head?

How did you go about creating it? Have any other tips youd like to share with us to help other readers?

Leave us your thoughts and questions in the comments section below. We look forward to hearing from you.

The post What Is a Content Marketing Strategy? appeared first on Copyblogger.

VMWare and IBM partnership will help companies become cloud-based and virtual

IBM is trying to push businesses into a morevirtualrealm. A new partnership with VMWare will help businesses utilize the cloud while still using virtualization, which will help them offload workflow from on-premise data centers to the cloud. Nearly 100 percent of Fortune 500 companies use VMWare, says IBM, and moving to the cloud can help companies scale globally while avoiding the retooling expenses, development risks and security concerns associated with doing so. IBM currently operates over 45 data centers worldwide. VMWare and IBM jointly developed software that will let businesses use SDDC environments consisting of VMware vSphere, NSX and Virtual

This story continues at The Next Web

How to Choose the Best Website Domain Name by @thekylerp

There are many things to think about when it comes to picking the perfect domain name for yourself or your business.

The post How to Choose the Best Website Domain Name by @thekylerp appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Samsung's new S7 and S7 Edge look incredible, but I've been burned before

Samsung has unveiled its latest flagship devices and while a short hands-on leaves me excited to spend more time with the device, I can't help but worry about long-term durability. The new devices very much follow in the footsteps of their predecessors, keeping the larger screen size of the later '+' models but bringing a more rounded edge to the sides of the rear casing. The result, particularly on the Edge version, is a less sharp angle where the front and back meet. It's altogether more comfortable to hold. Samsung's also worked to reduce the overhang of the camera on...

This story continues at The Next Web

Rainmaker Rewind: New Mini-Series: Things I Love/Things I Hate

I've got a good one for you this week.

Sonia Simone, host of Confessions of a Pink-haired Marketer, launched her new mini-series: Things I Love / Things I Hate, and the first episode can't be missed.

The new mini-series explores things she thinks are awesome and ... all the other stuff BlogThis!

Google Has Slowest Loading Home Page on Mobile Compared to Competitors

As it turns out, Google actually has the slowest loading home page on mobile devices compares to its major competitors.

The post Google Has Slowest Loading Home Page on Mobile Compared to Competitors appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Moto 360 Sport review: If you haven't bought it yet, you're better off waiting

When Motorola announced the second generation of its Moto 360 smartwatch, it made it clear that the Sport edition would arrive several months later than the classic. You'd think that it would use that extra time to truly fine-tune the runner-friendly version. After all, there's several features worth waiting patiently for: Moto 360 Sport has a better display for outdoor use, built-in GPS, and a rubber strap to withstand all the sweating you're theoretically doing while wearing it. In practice, the smartwatch still seems a bit rushed out of production. Here's what I mean. Look and feel Both the second-gen Moto 360 and...

This story continues at The Next Web

US Senate panel decides against criminal charges should Apple fail to comply with court order

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr today ruled against a proposal that would introduce criminal penalties for companies refusing to comply with encryption-related court orders. The ruling today comes as a bit of a surprise as Burr himself penned a strongly-worded op-ed in USA Today just yesterday criticizing Apple for seeking protection from the legal system while at the same time refusing to comply with it when it could impact its bottom line. Apple's position in the San Bernardino case affirms that it has wrongly chosen to prioritize its business model above compliance with a lawfully issued court order. While the company may...

This story continues at The Next Web

Confirmed: Google To Stop Showing Ads On Right Side Of Desktop Search Results Worldwide

A long-running test is now rolling out for desktop queries: Google will no longer show ads to the right of its search results, with one exception.

The post Confirmed: Google To Stop Showing Ads On Right Side Of Desktop Search Results Worldwide appeared first on Search Engine Land.



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Four Ads on Top: The Wait Is Over

Posted by Dr-Pete

For the past couple of months, Google has been testing SERPs with 4 ads at the top of the page (previously, the top ad block had 1-3 ads), leading to a ton of speculation in the PPC community. Across the MozCast data set, 4 ads accounted for only about 1% of SERPs with top ads (which matches testing protocol, historically). Then, as of yesterday, this happened:

Over the past 2 weeks, we've seen a gradual increase, but on the morning of February 18, the percentage of top ads blocks displaying 4 ads jumped to 18.9% (it's 19.3% as of this morning). Of the 5,986 page-1 SERPs in our tracking data that displayed top ads this morning, here's how the ad count currently breaks down:

As you can see, 4-ad blocks have overtaken 2-ad blocks and now account for almost one-fifth of all top ad blocks. Keep in mind that this situation is highly dynamic and will continue to change over time. At the 19% level, though, it's unlikely that this is still in testing.

Sample SERPs & Keywords

The 4-ad blocks look the same as other, recent top ad blocks, with the exception of the fourth listing. Here's one for "used cars," localized to the Chicago area:

Here's another example, from an equally competitive search, "laptops":

As you can see, the ads continue to carry rich features, including site-links and location enhancements. Other examples of high-volume searches that showed 4 top ads in this morning's data include:

• "royal caribbean"
• "car insurance"
• "smartphone"
• "netbook"
• "medicare"
• "job search"
• "crm"
• "global warming"
• "cruises"
• "bridesmaid dresses"

Please note that our data set tends toward commercial queries, so it's likely that our percentages of occurrence are higher than the total population of searches.

Shift in Right-column Ads

Along with this change, we've seen another shift - right-hand column ads seem to be moving to other positions. This is a 30-day graph for the occurrence of right-hand ads and bottom ads in our data set:

The same day that the 4-ad blocks jumped, there was a substantial drop in right-column ad blocks and corresponding increasing in bottom ad blocks. Rumors are flying that AdWords reps are confirming this change to some clients, but confirmation is still in progress as of this writing.

Where is Google Headed?

We can only speculate at this point, but there are a couple of changes that have been coming for a while. First, Google has made a public and measurable move toward mobile-first design. Since mobile doesn't support the right-hand column, Google may be trying to standardize the advertising ecosystem across devices.

Second, many new right-hand elements have popped up in the last couple of years, including Knowledge Panels and paid shopping blocks (PLAs). These entities push right-hand column ads down, sometimes even below the fold. At the same time, Knowledge Panels have begun to integrate with niche advertising in verticals including hotels, movies, music, and even some consumer electronics and other products.

This is a volatile situation and the numbers are likely to change over the coming days and weeks. I'll try to update this post with any major changes.

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