18 expert quotes from ClickZ’s Digital Trends 2016 Report

Our sister site ClickZ has launched its first Intelligence report of 2016 and it’s a firecracker.

The Digital Trends 2016 report is a comprehensive guide to all the digital-related trends you need to know about in 2016.

Sure every digitally-focused publisher has its own trends report, but what makes ours stand out from the rest is the sheer weight of expert opinion throughout its 46 pages, with more than 40 specialist contributors giving their insight on the most pressing topics, including: ecommerce, content marketing, customer experience and, of course, search.

And if all that wasn’t enough, it’s completely free! You just need to fill in a quick registration form.

To whet your appetite further, I’ve compiled a few of the reports most insightful quotes covering all of the topics…

Advertising

Paul Rouke, Founder and Director of Optimisation, PRWD:

“Data scientist will become one of the hottest and in-demand roles – although the vast majority of people relabelling themselves as one will be years away from having the experience and knowledge to warrant such a title.”

Jonathan Beeston, Managing Director, Croud UK:

“It could be a transformative year for brand advertising as YouTube and Facebook go up a gear with video. If Snapchat can find the right model, it could be explosive.”

Content Marketing

Andy Betts, chief marketer and consultant:

“Producing content for content’s sake is a 2015 tactic that will become more redundant in 2016. Last year’s comfort metrics, such as shares and likes, will be re- placed in 2016 with more meaningful measures such as engagement, reach and audience.”

Kevin Lee, Executive Chariman, Didit:

“The rise of ad blockers combined with the ‘banner blindness’ caused by 20 years of mind-numbingly off-target banners are forcing a doubling down on true native advertising.”

Customer Experience

Helen Colclough, Ecommerce Development Manager, River Island:

“It doesn’t have to be an ‘either/or’ situation. The mobile website has its purpose, but apps can help retailers to provide a great experience for the most engaged customers.”

Paul Rouke, Founder and Director of Optimisation, PRWD:

“[A key trend will be] the slow, quite painful move of brands starting to ‘walk the walk’ when it comes to truly understanding their visitors and customers, and harnessing these in- sights to improve their customer experience through data-driven optimisation.”

Data and Analytics

Andrew Hood, Managing Director, Lynchpin:

“People will become increasingly philosophical about ‘big data’ as technologies mature, the hype starts to subside, and it becomes more a case of ‘cheaper and faster data’. Faster will quickly become the most important factor as demand for data feeds for (up-to-date) personalisation become the critical norm.”

Benjamin Spiegel, CEO, MMI Agency:

“The ingestion of streaming data will become a key requirement for digital leaders. With rising competition in the digital advertising space the ability to ingest, analyse and act on data within a minimal time window is a crucial requirement for digital leadership. I expect to see a lot of disruptive technology solutions emerge in the next months in both the open source as well as the VC space.”

Ecommerce

James Gurd, Owner, Digital Juggler:

“Speed and flexibility are both important. The time to consumer is constantly reducing with the introduction of services like Amazon Prime Now. Multichannel retailers like House of Fraser and Argos have ramped up their Buy & Collect offer with later cut off times for next day delivery, and local collection services like Collect+, Amazon Lockers and Doddle have given consumers more choice.”

Tessa Wegert, Media Strategist and Content Developer:

“2015 was the experimentation stage, and a time for gathering insight into consumer preferences and behaviour. Now, social sites will get to the business of tweaking their tools, and brands will be better equipped to know what social commerce strategy is most likely to pay off.”

Email marketing

Parry Malm, CEO, Phrasee:

“Email in 2016 is going to be much like email was in 2015, and 2014, and 2013 – insofar as it’s still going to be the highest performing online channel out there. 2015 was the year of ‘email automation’ and most brands either have programmes in place, or are planning them.”

Tim Watson, Founder, Zettasphere:

“The idea in some circles that triggered emails replace broadcast is wrong… The future is integrating broadcast and triggered emails. We can expect to see the best email marketing programmes in 2016 use the same type of intelligence for sending triggered email in broadcast email marketing.”

Mobile

Greg Stuart, CEO, Mobile Marketing Association:

“Brands will drastically shift to mobile video, realising that it is hugely underpriced by more than 50 per cent compared to its effectiveness. Mobile audio and ‘sound’ as a strategy is a huge opportunity and mobile brings this to life.”

Andy Favell, Digital and Mobile Consultant:

“The majority of mobile development today is still focused on consumer applications and services that are at best nice-to-have and at worst pointless. This is changing because such initiatives often don’t deliver return on investment for businesses – measured either in terms of financial rewards, customer loyalty or brand perception.”

Search

Jon Earnshaw, CTO, Pi Datametrics:

“The kids out there are leading the way – asking questions and refining further questions based on the answers they receive as they engage in something best described as a dialogue that in the not too distant future will see Google exhibiting behaviour capable of passing the Turing test.”

Mags Sikora, Co-Founder, PeriodBox:

“Can your customer service affect SEO? Absolutely! A large number of negative complaints may lead to negative reviews and non-flattering mentions across blogs! We really have to delight the customer across the entire brand experience and that doesn’t finish with the moment of purchase. That delight should be the driver behind all our actives.”

Social Media

Bob Cargill, Director Of Social Media, Overdrive Communications:

“Scheduling a series of messages, posts and updates on a regular basis may put you in the game, but the only way to win is to show that you’re alive and kicking, not some robot. Real time is big time on social media.”

Maggie Malek, Head Of Social And PR, MMI Agency:

“Brands will only matter if consumers’ needs and desires are central to everything they do. Listening to the consumer— with our data brains as well as our hearts — can help us discover the stories worth telling.”

Download the full 46-page Digital Trends 2016 report now. 

What you need to know about Yahoo Product Ads

Back in November 2015, Yahoo Product Ads officially launched, an umbrella name that encompassed a few different types of ad units within the Yahoo Gemini universe.

I’ve been working specifically with the Search Product Ads unit, which appears on Yahoo.com search results properties with feed driven product ad units.

You might be saying, “Wait, those were there before!” and you would be right. What’s changed is now those ads can now be served by Yahoo from Yahoo submitted feeds through a Yahoo Gemini Merchant Center.

Previously, that inventory had primarily come from the Bing partnership that was renegotiated earlier in 2015. As a result, the amount of traffic being served from Bing Ads started to shift, especially as it pertained to mobile, of which most of the product ads are to come from Yahoo Product Ads or their partners, which does include the deal they also signed with Google in October 2015.

Things to beware of

Yahoo has begun to take advantage of this Google deal, serving Google Product Listing Ads and Bing Ads Product Ads on some Yahoo.com desktop SERPs as a part of the search partner network, as well as testing text ads with extensions from Google in the sidebar results.

Which means that if you are advertising on Google and Bing currently there’s a good chance, particularly in desktop results, that your ads are showing on Yahoo.com SERPs in a multitude of variations of product and text ads from all three engines.

Additionally:

• If you don’t have a Yahoo account representative, you may not be able to get started yet, otherwise, you’ll need to email the support team and wait for enablement


• You’ll want to make sure the category that you want to advertise in is ‘open' first


• To submit a feed, you need a Dropbox account set up by Yahoo or Fetch


• The feed specs for Yahoo mimics Google very closely, you should be able to utilize almost the exact same feed


• There is not an offline editor and you can create campaigns by hand through the bulk import process, or


• You could utilize your existing Google AdWords account structure and import as is into the account


• If you have a small to mid-size budget and pressed for time to manage, consider simplifying or collapsing a few of the product groups or campaigns (don’t send your entire Google account)


• Not all third party tools support this feature yet, so if you have a bid management tool, check to make sure that they’re up and running


• Billing is the same, if within an up and running Yahoo Gemini account

What we’ve seen so far

There’s definitely some ‘wait and see' going on right now in terms of adoption rates of the program in the industry and I would expect that in your day to day, you’re already running up against a time constraint to launch and possibly budget issues as well.

I’ve also run into a couple of industry friends that have had trouble launching, due to account enablement or open categories. I would recommend that if you can’t do your entire catalog, choosing a few test campaigns where you have solid volume on Google or Bing in which to capture that traffic that lives between the two search engines.

I’ve also observed that it also matters what category or categories your catalog is in. Apparel was one of the earliest launched categories during the beta and has a lot of strength in terms of volume of impressions and clicks, where as other categories, like Food & Beverage aren’t really built out yet.

Other strong categories that may make Yahoo Product Ads worth it for you now are Electronics, Sporting Goods, Health & Beauty and Home & Garden. If you’re in a smaller niche like Pet Supplies or Luggage, don’t expect volume and performance that competes with Google or Bing.

During an early beta test for a large retailer for one vertical that contained at least a hundred thousand SKUs and a healthy sized budget that was in the apparel category, we saw return for the campaigns at a promising six times, but with an overall volume (impressions and clicks) that was smaller than Bing Ads Product Ads during the test period.

In total from beta launch to when the feature was opened up publically, the CPC has averaged out to .25 with some further tweaking planned, now that more optimization options are available than there were during the beta.

Most of the estimates I’ve been seeing for specific categories have had high impressions, low CTR, but also a low CPC (under .50 cents), very reminiscent of early content network stats.

What we need

I understand the low adoption rate right now for Yahoo Product Ads – it’s new, there’s a lot of cloudiness around Google and Bing’s involvement and whenever that happens, the wait and see attitude comes out. But I do have a wish list of features needed to really convince clients and other paid search industry folks to give this new ad unit a try:

• Easily accessible estimates or ranges for categories, around impressions or clicks (anything to help determine what the potential opportunity might be)


• Case studies on return, CPC or even engagement metrics like new to file visitors, lift in organic or assisted conversions


• Easier account start up, no rep needed and feed submittal directly through the Merchant Center


• Offline editor


• Ad scheduling by hour of the day and day of the week capabilities

Clearly, Yahoo is just getting started in the product ads space and with their heavy investments in mobile and acquisitions like Polyvore and Brightroll, logically there is a lot of potential for advertisers needing to capture new eyeballs, especially with the depreciation of some of the comparison shopping channels for more niche discovery shopping markets.

However, the addition of both Google and Bing ad units to the Yahoo.com SERPs makes it harder to justify the management and cost of a third platform, which means that the wait and see is going to continue for now.

14 most important SEO tasks in order of priority

SEO can be overwhelming for any number of reasons.

Between local considerations, seeding the right content in the right places, and various other on-page and off-page factors, it’s tough to know where to begin even when it comes to basic SEO essentials.

What makes things even more difficult is that you can’t just start anywhere and chip away at your work. If you want to see the most success, it’s important to prioritize the SEO tasks correctly.

Although it’s not always publicized, prioritizing SEO tasks is actually one of the things we see companies’ mess up most often. If you do certain SEO tasks out of order, you’re going to spend a lot of time and use up most of your resources to finally meet your goals.

In some worst-case scenarios you actually won’t be able to meet those goals because you started with something advanced and skipped the basics (without even knowing it!)

Although there isn’t an exact order to follow, it does help to split up the most common SEO tasks into categories, starting with the highest priority first…

#1 SEO priorities

Identify and remove duplicate content.

Nothing kills a website faster than duplicate content issues. It’s confusing for Google bots so you won’t get any good visibility, and even if readers did somehow make it to your website, duplicate content is seen as spammy. Get rid of this immediately so you can start with a clean slate.

Check navigation and UX factors.

You have to make sure your website is easy to navigate and everything is cohesive. This has to do with the architecture and design. If you send people to a website that is confusing, it’s far too easy to click-away.

Make sure you have a responsive design.

In the past this may not have been such a priority, but mobile compatibility is crucial. According to Google, more searches now take place on mobile than on desktop, so you have to make sure your site looks good on the small screen. The biggest and most basic way to do this is through a responsive design.

As you may have noticed, all of your top priorities for SEO have to do with on-page tasks. Keep this is mind if more ideas pop-up in the future. You don’t want to be sending traffic to an unfinished or poorly optimized website because that traffic will immediately click away (and likely never return), so this is a crucial step to understand.

#2 SEO priorities

Setup Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.

Although you may not use it right away, getting setup with these tools is crucial to being indexed quickly and accurately. It can help solidify your website as real.

Make sure you’re being indexed.

You have to double check that Google is indexing your site, meaning they’re crawling your website and you’re therefore showing up in SERPs. To check this, visit your Google Webmaster Tools account and click the ‘Google Index’ tab to see the total number of pages Google has indexed. Make sure it seems right!

Complete preliminary keyword research.

Understanding which keywords you want to target can help you learn a lot about SEO if you’re unfamiliar, but it also sets the stage for many of the other items in the next three sections (content creation and back linking, most notably).

Create local search accounts.

The sooner you can setup local search accounts the better. This is definitely more of a priority if you have a local business looking to attract local customers, but it’s so easy to do, that every type of company should get involved as soon as possible.

Start creating quality content frequently.

You want to be consistently putting out great content. This not only gives you more options for Google to index your website, but it helps show credibility and gives readers a way to engage. Start getting a good rhythm going with high quality articles. That’s all you need to do at first.

#3 SEO priorities

Create audience personas and get creative with your content.

Once you have a good content team and schedule in place, you can start to really bring your content to the next level. This involves creating personas to better understand your audience, writing on keywords/ topics that are trending, and getting more advanced with infographics, interviews, video, and more.

Create relationships with influencers.

You want to start getting your name out there in your niche community. This is how you will eventually earn natural links and hopefully get some great social shares out of the relationships.

Edit your title tags.

As you published content you likely wrote whatever headline you wanted, which is fine at first, but eventually you should go back and optimize your title tags. This will help you categorize your pages and make sure that you’re sending the right people to the right pages. Visit this article to learn more about title tags.

#4 SEO priority

Start working to build backlinks.

It usually surprises people that this would be so far down on the list, but remember that SEO is not about backlinks—it’s about readers. Focus on creating relationships, quality content, and understanding your audience first.

Utilize SEO tools.

There are many different SEO tools out there that can help you with different aspects of your SEO (usually best used for data). This is a priority #4 because which tools you want to use and for what reasons can get tricky, so it’s best to focus on this after you have the basics down.

#5 SEO priority

Follow SEO industry news and blogs.

This is incredibly important, but following the latest news and SEO blogs can be a little bit overwhelming if you’re a beginner. That’s why hearing about the latest and greatest new tactics is probably better handled after you’ve been in the trenches with all of the items in the last four categories.

The takeaway

Of course this is not an extensive list. There are hundreds of little things you can do to improve the SEO of your website, but above are some of the biggest and most important tasks. What needs to be done will also depend on your company – industry, size, goals, etc. – but this is a great place to start. In the meantime, let us know what you would change or what you would add to the list in the comment section below.

How To Get Leads Online

via Work with Marvin

The 17 things Twitter should do to transform its fortunes

Twitter has been having a hard time of it in the past year or so, with various product missteps, plodding user growth and underwhelming results all negatively affecting its share price.

Shares are now hovering just above the $17 mark, valuing Twitter at around $12bn. For a company that should post revenue of at least $2.3bn for 2015, its market price will be whetting the appetites of prospective acquirers.

Where has it all gone wrong? That’s been well documented here, there and everywhere, but in short, the product and strategic vision seem to be unfocused. I thought it might be more interesting to think about how it can put things right.

I’m not a shareholder, but I want Twitter to win, to preserve and evolve a platform that I’ve grown to love. I am hugely invested in it as a user.

Do share your own thoughts in the comments section below…

Do much more with data

In the past eight years I have posted and shared 33,500 tweets, and have liked (or ‘favourited’) another 1,000. That’s a data goldmine to explore.

Twitter can fathom all kinds of things from the things we write about, and share. It should be able to figure out what makes users tick.

It should certainly be able to do some basic extraction and natural language processing to reveal user interests. It can then group people and content into segments.

That’s going to be great for ad targeting and will make content and who to follow recommendations a lot more relevant. Grouping content together by theme would allow it to create ‘topics'. Yum.

Make the most of topics

Kudos to Fred Soneya who pointed me at a great post by Austen Allred, titled ‘If I Ran Product at Twitter‘. Austen has tons of smart ideas and we share the same idea: allow users to follow topics, rather than just people.

Yes, you can tune into a hashtag, and save searches, and Twitter does allow the clustering of users – into Lists – but not so much the clustering of topics.

This is a big miss, especially for power users… so much so that I’ve done something about it.

I recently wrote about how to create a content marketing radar station in Slack, using Twitter Search and IFTTT. My co-founder and CTO, Nick Opris, subsequently built an online tool to do this. It curates and collates tweets and links based on specific keywords, and it’s super useful.

This ‘radar station’ is currently a browser-based tool for internal use only, but if you’d like to use it then email me. If there’s enough interest I’ll see if we can open it up.

Figure out user intentions

This is a big turn on for companies and people who want to provide things.

Intent is way more interesting than interests and sentiment. It is a leading indicator of action, and it often leads to $$$.

In the past year I have publicly tweeted that I needed to:

• find a freelance designer


• get a new mobile phone provider


• open a business bank account

All of the above should have resulted in a string of replies from people and brands that want my money.

As well as explicit signals, there are lots of implicit signals that Twitter can look out for too. It's worth chasing down. The prize is massive.

Google has made a business from user intent, and if it chooses to buy Twitter it will be very interested in mining and make sense of these softer signals (as well as the explicit ones).

Embrace and empower referral marketing

Let’s imagine you answered my three questions above. In each case, somebody is going to get paid. But possibly not you.

I think there’s a pot of gold here. No social platform has yet cracked the referral marketing nut. Might Twitter be able to do it?

Buy Medium

There was a tweetstorm in a teacup a few weeks ago after a rumour went around about Twitter increasing the character limits on tweets, from 140 to a rather gamechanging 10,000.

If it wants to encourage long-form writing, as opposed to bite-sized status updates, then why not just buy Medium and have done with it? Actually, if things keep going the way they are, perhaps Medium will buy Twitter.

Note that both of these platforms suffer from the same thing: discovery problems. Two birds, one stone?

Smarter discovery

From a user perspective, the big problem with Twitter is that it is noisy, and rapid fire, and as such things get lost.

Yes, it rolled out a ‘Things you may have missed’ feature, as well as pinned tweets. But this doesn’t really go far enough.

What it needs is something like Moments, but which unearths the most interesting content relative to your interests.

I started using Twitter in earnest when I realised the quality of links being shared around among my network, but the vast majority of these links – for me – do not point at news stories.

And that, for me, is the main problem with Moments…

Make sure moonshots reach orbit

Moments was described as “the most important feature ever” for Twitter, yet from where I’m sitting, it has unceremoniously exploded on lift-off.

Given the fanfare, I expected Moments to be a killer discovery tool, based on my personal interests and usage patterns. But no, it is really just a me-too news aggregator, launched a decade after news aggregators were fashionable.

Then again, maybe I’m not the target audience for Moments. If Twitter is aiming this at the casual – or anonymous users, who can access it – then maybe it’s working. Maybe millions of people use Twitter to find news and there’s going to be a brilliant revenue model unveiled. Maybe.

It’s just not very useful. It’s not relevant to my interests, or why I use Twitter. It’s just noise, really…

What Moments should be is a super-personalised version of Reddit. It's that simple.

Deal with spam

Bots are clearly a problem for Twitter, as they are for many other platforms. It needs to tackle this problem head on.

What use are those 320m active users if a lot of them are actually spam accounts? Therein, I fear, lies the rub.

In 2014 Twitter estimated that 5% of its users were bots. A problem, for sure, but not a killer, if that number is accurate. A big if.

Last year a study looked at some of the biggest celebs on Twitter – Perry, Bieber, Swift, Gaga, Rihanna – and found that more than half of their followers were spam bots. In some cases bots accounted for two thirds of followers. Brutal.

Hashtag hijacking is a major issue nowadays (even niche hashtags get it). And frankly those bastards who repeatedly follow and unfollow you… they also need to be kicked into touch.

Twitter should tackle this issue algorithmically. It should automatically purge bots, and should roll out features that allow users to manually report spam.

You can see how many of your own followers are likely to be fake by using TwitterAudit.

Be more user-centric

When enough people ask for a feature it’s generally a good idea to consider doing something about it. Even if that means you tell them that no such feature is going to be launched.

For example – and maybe there’s a really good reason for this – I can’t fathom why we still can’t edit tweets.

Based on the amount of noise with regards to this one feature request (hundreds of tweets per day), I should imagine tens of thousands of Twitter users have asked for an ‘edit’ button.

Users shouldn’t fully determine product vision, but they can play a major role in product development, and determining priorities. Countless other features are continuously requested. Somebody really should spend a lot more time listening to users. Which brings me onto…

Hire a CXO

While we’re on the subject of user experience, it needs to hire a Customer Experience Officer, if it hasn’t already got one. In the interests of brevity I shan't bang on about why it needs one…

Better follower suggestions

If you’ve ever tried signing up to Twitter recently you’ll have noticed how much focus there is on celebrities and brands.

As we have discovered, the blue tick could prove to be horribly overrated. The rich get richer, but what does the user get? The user that’s not interested in following celebs or big brands… gets very little.

There should be better onboarding for all kinds of new users, and I suspect that brings us back to data, and personalisation.

Twitter’s onboarding process seems to be rather too linear, with a few obvious pre-defined topic themes, and not much else going on. All roads lead to the blue tick brigade, and even these are not always well-matched suggestions (check out ‘Literature’ if you want some light amusement).

There needs to be more granularity here, at least for users like me.

Launch Twitter Pro

I can’t understand why Twitter hasn’t yet launched a pro service for brands, celebs and professional users. I’ve been waiting at least seven years for such a service.

I can only assume that it is so committed to being perceived as B2C company that it is happy to leave many millions of dollars of recurring subscription revenue on the table.

Who knows, but chasing its consumer dream hasn’t yet paid off. Why not take a little B2B revenue along the way? Diversifying its revenues is surely way healthier than relying on a fickle advertising market?

Pretty much everybody I follow works in the digital industry. I bet that a healthy chunk of them would pay $10 a month for a few pro features and no ads. I know I would.

Let’s do the maths. What would happen if just 1% of its active users upgraded to Twitter Pro at $10 a month?

• 320m monthly active users (according to the company’s own data)


• 3.2m Pro users X $10 per month


• $32m a month


• $380m a year

That would add another 14% or so to its revenues, and highly profitable revenue at that.

Let’s look at it another way…

Twitter will have generated around $2.3bn in revenue during 2015, predominantly from ads (and 80% of that comes from mobile). It has 320m monthly active users. On average, that works out at $7.18 in ad revenue per user over a year, or 60¢ per user per month.

I’m willing to pay $10 a month, considerably offsetting any loss in ad revenue, and would become even more engaged with the platform as a result. Potentially a hugely profitable revenue stream.

I read earlier that Twitter has already got a Pro account of sorts, with some power users not seeing any ads. Maybe something is in the works…

Avoid peak optimisation

The big worry for Twitter is that it has already turned up the dial, with regards to optimising ad revenue.

When I browse Twitter via my mobile, I see something like one ad every eight or nine tweets. This begs the question: how many more ads can it show me?

When you consider that about 80% of Twitter’s revenue comes from the mobile channel, it has a problem. I’m not sure how much more juice it can squeeze out of its mobile users.

Analysts seem to want Twitter to attract more users, and the share price is regularly punished when it report low user growth.

As I’ve mentioned, I think diversifying revenue streams and improving the platform will be a better bet over the long term.

Dedicated executive focus

I suspect that CEO timesharing is not right for two businesses that are worth many billions of dollars each.

Achieve management stability

It also needs to steady the ship. There has been a huge executive shakeout at Twitter in the past year or so. This was compounded a couple of days ago after the news leaked about another four execs leaving the building.

>60% gone now Only 5 of the 13 @Twitter execs that presented at their Nov 2014 analyst day are left $TWTR pic.twitter.com/FsClYPMFoH

— Rich Greenfield (@RichBTIG) January 24, 2016

Kiss and make out with developers

The rise and fall of Twitter’s once burgeoning ecosystem is a woeful tale, with the company changing many goalposts, making a lot of its data paid-for, and seemingly cutting off various developers and partners at the knees.

Adam Cranfield suggests, among other things, that Twitter creates an app platform to fix itself…

@lakey protect core, develop video, IM, curation/discovery, fight spam, improve ad targeting, host feature live events, create app platform.

— Adam Cranfield (@adamcranfield) January 26, 2016

A good idea. I reckon it should go the extra mile and have the equivalent of full on make-up sex with the developer network.

Enable private networks

Here's another great idea, from Philip Storey…

@lakey enable closed networking for greater privacy and improved relationship building

— Philip Storey (@philipstorey) January 26, 2016

What do you think? Is Twitter destined to be acquired, or to fade out, or can it grab the bull by the horns and take control of its destiny?

How hub pages and internal links are paying off for Mail Online

Combining hub pages for key topics and keywords with well-planned internal linking can be a very effective SEO strategy.

It helps to ensure that, when you are creating content around a topic regularly, that you can rank consistently for the relevant keywords.

I'm going to use examples from Mail Online which, by some accounts, is the most visited English-language newspaper site on the web. That doesn't mean it's the best – far from it – but it does provide a useful subject for this post.

Mail Online recently started using hub pages on a consistent basis for many of its most popular topics, though not for all.

This gives us an opportunity to see what effect this has had. So here I'll look at the strategy for two topics, and an example of what happens when you don't do this.

Hub pages: what are they and why do you need them?

In this context, a hub page is a page themed around a certain topic or keyword. It could be a tag page, like this for SEO, or perhaps a category page.

Sites which produce a lot of content around the same topic often end up competing with themselves for search positions.

This is especially true with news articles, as in the New York Times example here. News articles are generally brief and will come and go in the search rankings. However, linking them to a hub page helps signal to Google that this is the page that should rank for a particular keyword or term.

To demonstrate how this works, here are some examples from Mail Online.

Search term ‘Chelsea News'

Mail Online had no hub page strategy of any kind until recently. Dan Barker (@danbarker on Twitter) pointed this out recently, and estimates that Mail started this strategy around October 25 last year.

This means we can get a before and after picture looking at the effects of this tactic.

Here, we have the search results for the entire Daily Mail domain for the search term ‘Chelsea News'. This is news related to Chelsea football club, a relatively popular search in the UK.

We can see that it started returning results for this hub page from November 7. It has also implemented pages for other English football teams.

This page has existed before, though its search performance was inconsistent until November 7 last year.

This chart shows the rankings for that page, and we can see a consistent (and higher) search ranking from November onwards.

The difference is the internal linking strategy.

The article screenshot below (article is from May 2015) shows the opportunities to link to the hub page which were missed.

This next screenshot shows the new strategy. In this article from December 2015, links lead back to the Chelsea team page (the hub page).

This is the Daily Mail team page. As well as internally linking from each article the site is now using the different elements on the page.

For example, team logos and live tables are now linking back to the individual team landing pages.

Search term: ‘David Cameron'

This is the Daily Mail view for the search term David Cameron:

Like the previous example, the rankings are inconsistent and many different pages are returned by Google for the term in the six month period shown.

That is until early November, when the hub page takes over. Since then, the performance of this David Cameron landing page has improved significantly.

There have been a couple of blips since November, perhaps due to inconsistent implementation of the linking strategy, but the page is performing much more effectively.

Again, the difference is between using internal linking effectively, and missing the chance to link, as shown in this article from August 2015.

Now, the Mail Online's editors have learned to use internal links (perhaps there was some internal training back in October) and news articles and opinion pieces about Cameron all link back to the hub page.

The Telegraph: internal linking as it should be

Of course, Mail Online has been slow to realise the value of internal linking (I raised this back in 2014) compared to some other news sites.

For example, The Telegraph has used linking correctly for some time, and this is reflected in the performance for its David Cameron landing page.

Its hub page ranks consistently for the term because it has linked from all its Cameron articles for some time.

This means that the Telegraph and The Guardian (which also knows what to do with links), are the only news sites to rank on page one of Google for the term with their landing pages.

Mail Online: inconsistent internal linking

Although the Daily Mail are now internally linking and using hub pages, the site isn't doing it for every search term (or hasn't rolled out the strategy across all of its sections yet).

This underlines the impact that effective internal linking can have, used along with dedicated hub pages.

For example, celebrity news brings in lots of traffic for Mail Online, and it writes about any vague ‘news' linked to celebrities.

However, very few celebrities have landing pages as yet. For example, Jennifer Lopez.

As a result, the Mail's rankings for this search term are up and down and return 55 different URLs in the six month period shown below.

As the previous examples have demonstrated, with a J-Lo landing page and the right links, the site could rank consistently and bring in even more traffic.

In summary

Mail Online creates and publishes huge quantities of articles about celebrities and news. With each of these articles they gain thousands of  links and social shares from their readers.

While each new article performs relatively well in search, they do so for a limited time only. Ss the article becomes old, positions drop until the original article is usurped by a new article, and so on.

These examples show how effective the use of linking and hub pages can be, and demonstrate its value, especially for sites that produce a lot of content around the same themes.

They also demonstrate how quickly sites can achieve results with this strategy. In the Mail Online's case, it seem to have taken Google just over a week to view the links and return the intended page for the search terms.

This strategy, implemented across a range of keywords, enables sites to rank more consistently for a broad range of search terms, with obvious beneficial effects on traffic.

Announcing the winners of our Connect contest!

Last week we ran a contest on Twitter and Facebook in order to giveaway a bunch of free tickets to our new search event Connect, taking place in Miami next week on 4-5 February.

Connect will bring together all the best and brightest of the search marketing industry to discuss how to thrive in the new customer-centric landscape, as well as have a big party on the beach.

Will you be lucky enough to join 500+ SEO specialists, digital marketers, webmasters, developers, business leaders and industry professionals for two days of sun, sea and search in Miami?

Let’s find out…

Between Tuesday and Friday last week we asked you to fill in the blank for a number of search-related statements. Below are the winning recipents of one free ticket to Connect and their replies…

Jason Bauman:

the biggest SEO trend in 2016 will be the shift from broad keyword based landing pages to personalized content. @sewatch #connectSEW

— Jason Bauman (@JasonB_TI) January 19, 2016

Amanda Dodge:

@sewatch make their "Real Time" analytics more customizable to national/local companies.

— Amanda Dodge (@amandaedodge) January 20, 2016

Matt Certo:

.@sewatch Solving your customers' problems through innovative content creation represents the future of organic search.

— Matt Certo (@mcerto) January 21, 2016

Anna Nerezova:

@sewatch the future of search marketing success will be dependant on eliminating HIPPOs #connectsew

— Anna Nerezova (@blv) January 23, 2016

Megan Beatty:

@sewatch Allow bid adjustments in AdWords for Search Partners and tablets!

— Megan Beatty (@megbeatz) January 20, 2016

Stuart Lieberman:

@sewatch Content Strategy represents the future of organic search

— Stuart Lieberman (@thewebguyfl) January 21, 2016

And over on Facebook we had the following winning replies…

Biggest SEO trend of 2016 will be ______

David Josephson: “Conversational search from mobile devices.”

If Google could do one thing to make my life easier it would be ______

Scott Cramer: "PROVIDE the (not provided) data on all reports."

The key to a successful search optimised site is ______

Sarah Triplett: "UX! Google is continually focusing on delivering a better user experience through search via organic and paid, so it makes sense that this same experience should flow on to a website once a user clicks through."

The future of search marketing success will be dependent on ______

Carmen Norgaard: "Adaptability to change, since change is the most predictable constant in SEO."

Congratulations to all of our winners, we'll be in contact soon and will see you in Miami next week!

If you weren't chosen as one of our winners, then fear not. You can still attend! Just register for a ticket here.

How to use Facebook’s new Audience Optimization Targeting

This article was originally published on our sister site ClickZ, but it’s so helpful we thought we’d share it here too.

Another week, another Facebook feature. Over the past few years, declining organic reach has become a major issue for publishers using Facebook.

While this is partly a rod we’ve made for our own backs due to our ravenous search for ever-increasing ‘Likes’, it’s good to see the platform launching tools that are specifically designed to combat this.

I thought I’d check out the new Audience Optimization Tool and see how – and if – it can help get my superbly crafted* social media messages to a wider audience

*If you use the word ‘crafted’ to describe your marketing messages, you should probably go home and have a long hard think about your life. Your business will be better off without you.

First things first, let’s check out Facebook’s official ‘How To’ guide:

This all seems easy enough, although in practice the instructions are rather poorly written. If I currently head to settings then I won’t actually see ‘Audience Optimization for Posts’ if I have more than 5,000 ‘Likes’.

Facebook explains that the feature will automatically be turned on for larger pages, but it would be more useful/make more sense if all pages could at least see the option.

To be honest, Facebook has a long history of writing confusing guides though, so let’s chalk it up to experience and move on. Here’s how to turn the feature on if you have less than 5,000 ‘Likes’:

1. Head to your settings.


2. Under the ‘General’ heading, select ‘Audience Optimization for Posts’ and turn feature on.


3. You’re ready to roll.

Again, the confirmation language is slightly odd, implying that you may have actually restricted your audience, although this is not actually the case.

Now let’s try posting something.

Oddly, this feature is not yet available inside Business Manager, or for posts that are created using the Power Editor. I’m going to assume that there are two reasons for this.

Firstly, posts created in Power Editor have CTAs built in, and are generally designed to drive traffic directly to a site.

By limiting this, Facebook is clearly encouraging you to create posts that work within Facebook’s walled garden. Essentially, use this if you want reach and engagement, but not if you’re looking for traffic. Secondly… Facebook may just be tired of no one knowing how to use Power Editor properly, and have decided not to swim against the tide.

Add a link as you normally would, and then select the small ‘Crosshairs’ icon underneath to add ‘Interest Tags’. Essentially these are just the old Interest categories, but according to Facebook they operate in exactly the opposite way.

In the past, interest targeting would restrict the audience that could view your post.

While this option is still available, here Facebook promises that interests will help surface relevant posts to a wider organic audience, although whether this presents your posts to users who have not yet ‘Liked’ your page, or simply adds yet more jiggery-pokery to the algorithms of existing fans is not revealed.

I’m testing this from Search Engine Watch’s Facebook page (what do you mean you aren’t a fan? Hop to it!), so I’ve rather obviously chosen ‘Search Engine Optimisation as a category.

Facebook tells me that the potential audience is a massive 19,870,820, although obviously there are differing levels of value and actual interest there.

Once you’ve chosen your first category Facebook will also serve up some suggestions. This may be me, but again, these seem strangely worded.

‘Web Banner’ seems like a weird thing to be interested in, but I would assume these are based on the stated interests of users. I play it safe and choose ‘Social Media Optimization’ and ‘Digital Marketing’ as secondary categories.

Hit ‘Publish’ and away you go.

So… did it work?

SEW has just over 37,000 fans on Facebook, and based on the time of posting (10am GMT on a Friday), I’d expect a low organic reach of about 300 users initially. I waited a few hours and checked back at 3pm to find… my post had reached 380 people.

So initially, no more or less than I’d have expected. There are of course any number of reasons this didn’t resonate with users.

I deliberately toned down the copy a little, although the content itself was very appealing (go read the post if you don’t believe me). It was early on a Friday – typically a slow day – and it’s possible this may increase once our US audience comes online later in the day.

I’m going to sit on the fence on this one, and guess that the low reach difference is down to how new the feature is. Facebook is obviously not going to show my post to every user on the first attempt, although I’m going to make the correlation that this feature does only reach existing fans.

It’s clearly designed as an engagement tool, which can only be a good thing, but I’d think carefully about your business goals before regularly using this.

I’d be fascinated to hear if you are seeing different results from this tool, and I’ll be sure to post an update in a month or two to see how results develop.

What Is My Top Tier Business

Before I get involved in the details of the real-time study allowed's take a closer look at just what MTTB actually is.

MTTB means My Top Tier Business and also that belongs to the MOBE compilation of products. It is a 21 action training system that instructs you how you can generate income online & permit high converting provided for you products & sales funnels.

You also obtain an individual trainer that you have to contact Skype every 2-3 steps to advance, they actually secure the steps out until you talk with your coach straight that will certainly respond to any concerns you have & assist produce your company plan.

At the end of the 21 steps you are after that offered 30 day traffic generation training which includes your personal traffic trainer to speak to on Skype as you relocate with the steps.

When you have finished your training all you have to do is send out targeted traffic to the different items and also that sales funnels.

Commissions range from $9 right approximately $15,000 depending upon just what you advertise. Nonetheless the system is configuration to upsell individuals through the array of items.

So if an individual buys the beginning $9.95 eBook you obtain a $9 commission yet then the MOBE group upsell the other items by means of e-mail, phone calls as well as general delivery.

Having the MOBE sales personnel comply with up for you by means of the phone as well as sending letters is actually a very great advantage that truly attracted attention to me.

In recap this is exactly what you obtain with MOBE MTTB-.

Provided for you sales funnels.

Product fulfilment, repayment handling & client solution is done for you.

Sales team that act on the phone, article & e-mails.

21 step web marketing training.

One Month website traffic generation training.

Personal trainers you could call on Skype at any time.

Daily webinars/calls/coaching sessions.

They look after every little thing for you-- all you have to do is send out web traffic.

http://cyan-pixel.tumblr.com/post/137908155478/mttb-review-is-matt-lloyds-my-online-business

What Is MOBE

Before I obtain into the information of the live study let's take a closer take a look at just what MTTB actually is.

MTTB stands for My Top Tier Business and also that becomes part of the MOBE compilation of items. It is a 21 step training system that educates you how to make cash online & certificate high converting provided for you items & sales funnels.

You additionally obtain a personal train that you have to contact Skype every 2-3 actions to progress, they literally lock the actions out until you talk to your instructor directly who will respond to any kind of questions you have & assist produce your company intend.

At the end of the 21 actions you are after that provided 30 day traffic generation training which features your personal website traffic trainer to talk with on Skype as you move via the steps.

When you have actually finished your training all you should do is send out targeted traffic to the various products as well as sales funnels.

Compensations vary from $9 right as much as $15,000 relying on exactly what you promote. However the system is setup to upsell individuals through the array of products.

So if someone gets the beginning $9.95 eBook you get a $9 payment but then the MOBE team upsell the other items through email, call and also general delivery.

Having the MOBE sales personnel comply with up for you by means of the phone and sending letters is actually a really cool benefit that actually attracted attention to me.

In recap this is what you get with MOBE MTTB-.

Provided for you sales funnels.

Product fulfilment, payment handling & consumer solution is done for you.

Sales team that act on the phone, blog post & emails.

21 action web marketing training.

30 day website traffic generation training.

Personal trainers you could contact Skype at any time.

Daily webinars/calls/coaching sessions.

They take treatment of every little thing for you-- all you need to do is send website traffic.

http://angelathomas83.tumblr.com/post/137908232817/mttb-review-is-matt-lloyds-my-online-business

What Is My Online Business Empire

Before I get involved in the details of the real-time study let's take a closer look at what MTTB actually is.

MTTB stands for My Top Tier Business and also is part of the MOBE compilation of items. It is a 21 step training system that educates you how to make money online & license high converting provided for you products & sales funnels.

You likewise get a personal train that you should call on Skype every 2-3 steps to proceed, they actually lock the actions out till you speak with your train straight who will address any inquiries you have & help develop your business plan.

At the end of the 21 steps you are then provided 30 day web traffic generation training which has your personal web traffic trainer to speak to on Skype as you relocate through the steps.

When you have finished your training all you should do is send out targeted traffic to the numerous products and also sales funnels.

Payments range from $9 right approximately $15,000 depending upon what you advertise. Nevertheless the system is configuration to upsell people through the variety of products.

So if an individual acquires the entrance degree $9.95 eBook you get a $9 payment however after that the MOBE group upsell the other products through email, call and also that general delivery.

Having the MOBE sales staff adhere to up for you by means of the phone and also that corresponding is really a quite cool advantage that actually stuck out to me.

In recap this is just what you get with MOBE MTTB-.

Done for you sales funnels.

Item fulfilment, settlement handling & customer care is done for you.

Sales personnel that act on the phone, blog post & e-mails.

21 action web marketing training.

One Month web traffic generation training.

Individual trainers you can call on Skype any type of time.

Daily webinars/calls/coaching sessions.

They look after every little thing for you-- all you require to do is send traffic.

https://cuzone.wordpress.com/2016/01/23/mttb-review-is-matt-lloyds-my-online-business-empire-a-scam/

What Is My Top Tier Business

Prior to I obtain right into the information of the real-time situation research let's take a closer consider what MTTB really is.

MTTB stands for My Top Tier Business and is component of the MOBE collection of items. It is a 21 step training system that shows you the best ways to generate income online & license high converting provided for you items & sales funnels.

You additionally get an individual train that you should contact Skype every 2-3 actions to proceed, they literally secure the steps out till you speak with your coach straight that will certainly answer any sort of concerns you have & assist produce your company plan.

At the end of the 21 actions you are after that given 30 day web traffic generation training which includes your personal traffic coach to speak to on Skype as you move via the actions.

When you have finished your training all you should do is send out targeted web traffic to the numerous items as well as sales funnels.

Payments range from $9 all the way approximately $15,000 depending upon what you advertise. Nevertheless the system is arrangement to upsell people via the variety of products.

So if somebody purchases the entrance degree $9.95 eBook you obtain a $9 compensation yet after that the MOBE team upsell the various other products via e-mail, call and also that snail mail.

Having the MOBE sales team follow up for you through the phone and also sending out letters is actually a very cool benefit that actually stuck out to me.

In recap this is what you get with MOBE MTTB-.

Done for you sales funnels.

Item fulfilment, payment handling & customer support is done for you.

Sales staff that act on the phone, blog post & emails.

21 action online marketing training.

Thirty Days website traffic generation training.

Personal coaches you can contact Skype any time.

Daily webinars/calls/coaching sessions.

They take treatment of every little thing for you-- all you have to do is send out web traffic.

http://amandanderson571.tumblr.com/post/137908077662/mttb-review-is-matt-lloyds-mttb-a-scam

Facebook Ads Training On Video Views For 1 Penny

Facebook Ads Training On Video Views For 1 Penny

via https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtEc-WTq7uPoVuEFP1FEY-Q

What Is My Online Business Empire

Before I get involved in the details of the real-time study let's take a closer appearance at exactly what MTTB in fact is.

MTTB represents My Top Tier Business and also belongs to the MOBE collection of items. It is a 21 step training system that shows you ways to earn money online & permit high converting done for you items & sales funnels.

You likewise obtain a personal instructor that you must call on Skype every 2-3 steps to advance, they actually lock the march until you talk to your coach directly that will address any inquiries you have & help develop your business intend.

At the end of the 21 actions you are after that given 30 day traffic generation training which features your very own traffic coach to talk with on Skype as you move via the actions.

When you have actually completed your training all you should do is send out targeted traffic to the numerous products and sales funnels.

Commissions range from $9 all the way as much as $15,000 relying on exactly what you promote. Nonetheless the system is setup to upsell people through the array of products.

So if somebody buys the entry degree $9.95 eBook you obtain a $9 commission however then the MOBE team upsell the other items through email, telephone call as well as general delivery.

Having the MOBE sales personnel comply with up for you using the phone and sending letters is actually a very awesome benefit that really stood apart to me.

In recap this is exactly what you get with MOBE MTTB-.

Provided for you sales funnels.

Item fulfilment, settlement processing & customer support is provided for you.

Sales personnel that comply with up on the phone, blog post & emails.

21 action net marketing training.

One Month traffic generation training.

Personal trainers you can call on Skype at any time.

Daily webinars/calls/coaching sessions.

They deal with everything for you-- all you need to do is send traffic.

http://sinclairburgins.blogspot.com/2016/01/mttb-review-is-matt-lloyds-mobe-scam.html

What Is MOBE

Prior to I get involved in the details of the online situation study allowed's take a closer consider just what MTTB really is.

MTTB stands for My Top Tier Business and also becomes part of the MOBE collection of products. It is a 21 step training system that instructs you the best ways to earn money online & permit high converting provided for you items & sales funnels.

You likewise obtain an individual instructor that you must contact Skype every 2-3 actions to progress, they essentially lock the march till you talk to your coach directly who will certainly answer any kind of inquiries you have & help develop your business intend.

At the end of the 21 actions you are after that given 30 day web traffic generation training which includes your very own website traffic train to talk with on Skype as you relocate with the steps.

When you have actually finished your training all you have to do is send out targeted traffic to the numerous items as well as sales funnels.

Compensations vary from $9 all the means around $15,000 relying on exactly what you advertise. Nonetheless the system is arrangement to upsell individuals through the range of products.

So if somebody acquires the entry degree $9.95 eBook you get a $9 payment but after that the MOBE team upsell the various other products via email, call and also snail mail.

Having the MOBE sales personnel comply with up for you by means of the phone and also sending out letters is actually a very great advantage that really stood out to me.

In summary this is exactly what you obtain with MOBE MTTB-.

Done for you sales funnels.

Product fulfilment, payment processing & customer service is provided for you.

Sales staff that act on the phone, article & emails.

21 action internet advertising and marketing training.

1 Month web traffic generation training.

Individual instructors you could call on Skype whenever.

Daily webinars/calls/coaching sessions.

They deal with every little thing for you-- all you have to do is send out traffic.

http://natemiller.tumblr.com/post/137907890704/my-top-tier-business-reviews-is-matt-lloyds

What Is MTTB

Prior to I get involved in the information of the online instance study allowed's take a closer consider just what MTTB really is.

MTTB means My Top Tier Business as well as becomes part of the MOBE collection of products. It is a 21 step training system that teaches you how you can generate income online & certificate high converting done for you items & sales funnels.

You also get an individual trainer that you must call on Skype every 2-3 actions to progress, they essentially secure the march until you speak with your train straight that will certainly respond to any questions you have & aid create your business intend.

At the end of the 21 steps you are after that provided 30 day web traffic generation training which has your very own web traffic coach to speak to on Skype as you relocate via the actions.

When you have actually completed your training all you should do is send out targeted website traffic to the numerous products and also that sales funnels.

Compensations vary from $9 completely around $15,000 depending upon just what you advertise. Nonetheless the system is arrangement to upsell people through the variety of items.

So if a person buys the beginning $9.95 eBook you obtain a $9 compensation however then the MOBE group upsell the various other items through email, telephone call as well as snail mail.

Having the MOBE sales personnel comply with up for you via the phone as well as corresponding is in fact a really amazing benefit that actually stood apart to me.

In recap this is exactly what you get with MOBE MTTB-.

Provided for you sales funnels.

Item fulfilment, payment processing & customer care is provided for you.

Sales staff that comply with up on the phone, article & emails.

21 action net advertising training.

One Month web traffic generation training.

Individual coaches you can contact Skype any kind of time.

Daily webinars/calls/coaching sessions.

They take treatment of everything for you-- all you have to do is send out website traffic.

http://carpenterjohnsonc.blogspot.com/2016/01/my-top-tier-business-review-is-matt.html

What Is My Online Business Empire

Prior to I get involved in the information of the real-time study let's take a closer check out what MTTB in fact is.

MTTB stands for My Top Tier Business as well as belongs to the MOBE compilation of products. It is a 21 step training system that instructs you ways to make money online & license high converting done for you products & sales funnels.

You also obtain an individual trainer that you have to contact Skype every 2-3 steps to advance, they literally lock the steps out till you speak with your trainer straight who will answer any kind of concerns you have & assist create your business intend.

At the end of the 21 actions you are then given 30 day web traffic generation training which features your own web traffic coach to talk with on Skype as you relocate with the steps.

When you have finished your training all you should do is send targeted traffic to the different items and sales funnels.

Compensations range from $9 right approximately $15,000 relying on what you advertise. Nevertheless the system is arrangement to upsell individuals via the range of products.

So if someone gets the beginning $9.95 eBook you get a $9 compensation yet then the MOBE team upsell the other items through email, phone calls and also general delivery.

Having the MOBE sales personnel comply with up for you by means of the phone and corresponding is really a quite amazing benefit that actually attracted attention to me.

In recap this is just what you obtain with MOBE MTTB-.

Provided for you sales funnels.

Item fulfilment, payment handling & client service is provided for you.

Sales staff that adhere to up on the phone, article & e-mails.

21 step web marketing training.

1 Month traffic generation training.

Individual coaches you can contact Skype at any time.

Daily webinars/calls/coaching sessions.

They care for every little thing for you-- all you have to do is send traffic.

http://murraymillerm.blogspot.com/2016/01/mttb-review-is-matt-lloyds-mttb-scam.html

Seven of the most interesting SEM news stories of the week

Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from around the world of search marketing and beyond.

This week: Google begins experimenting with its PLAs, there are some stats on ad spend, we answer “what is the most trusted media source?” (I’ll give you one guess) and there’s a very tenuous time-frame for when Penguin is arriving.

How Google fought bad ads in 2015

Google has released a report on how it helped to clean up the bandit-populated wasteland we call the internet. Google has more than 1,000 sheriffs dedicated to taking down bad ads. In fact 780m ads were shot down from the top of saloon bar roofs on to the hay bails below or drowned in a horse trough.

Here are some of the black-hatted baddies Google busted in 2015:

• Counterfeiters: Google suspended more than 10,000 sites and 18,000 accounts for attempting to sell counterfeit goods.


• Pharmaceuticals: blocked more than 12.5 million ads that violated healthcare and medicines policy.


• Weight loss scams: suspended more than 30,000 sites for misleading claims.


• Phishing: stepped up efforts to fight phishing sites, blocking nearly 7,000 sites as a result.


• Unwanted software: disabled more than 10,000 sites offering unwanted software, and reduced unwanted downloads via Google ads by more than 99 percent.


• Trick to click: toughened up on ads designed to look like system warnings from your computer. Google rejected more than 17 million.

Social ad spend increased 50% year-over-year

New research from Kenshoo (gesundheit) suggests that spend on social advertising increased by 50% in the final quarter of 2015 with most of that growth helped along by the introduction of Facebook Dynamic Product Ads and Instagram ads.

Spend on search advertising increased by 8% thanks to a growth in retailers’ use of product-focused seasonal Product Listing Ads (PLAs), while mobile continues to be the biggest driver of growth in both search and social.

While there were fewer impressions for social ads in the quarter, the Click-through-Rate (CTR) went up by 64% YoY resulting in 30% more clicks and CPC went up 10% compared with the previous year.

Google adds AMP error report preview in Search Console

As Accelerated Mobile Pages become an increasingly important facet of mobile optimisation, Google has announced that it will provide a preview of error reports in Search Console, ready for the official launch of AMP in February.

This is direct from the source:

“The AMP error report gives an overview of the overall situation on your site, and then lets you drill down to specific error types and URLs. This process helps you quickly find the most common issues, so that you can systematically address them in your site's AMP implementation (potentially just requiring tweaks in the templates or plugin used for these pages).”

Quora tops the list of UK sites gaining the highest increase in Google visibility

IndexWatch announced the sites that made the most ground in the battle of the Google SERPs in 2015, with the crowd-sourced question and answer site Quora.com coming first, with an improvement of +298.21% on the previous year. This was closely followed by Wilko.com, MentalFloss.com, Zomato.com and Wayfair.com.

There are more details and the full top 100 here.

Bye bye organic results! Hello MASSIVE PLAs!

As Chris Lake reported this week, Google has begun experimenting with an expandable mega layout for its product listing ads.

This new layout includes a clickable arrow icon that doubles the number of products and essentially takes over the entire SERP. Bad for organic results, good for retailers still struggling to rank highly for their products as it gives them a bigger playground to… uh… fill with ads.

Here’s a horrible vision of the future courtesy of Chris Lake…

Google is more trusted than actual news sources

The Edelman Trust Barometer has revealed that for the second year in a row, people trust search engines more than they trust the actual sources providing the news itself.

Search engines also beat social media, but that’s probably not as surprising.

Why do people trust search engines so much? Possibly because they see an appearance of an article ranking highly in the SERPs as a mark of trust, also it might be because Google News offers an array of different headlines from various sources, so it’s easy to make a comparison of them all.

Search Engine Watch’s own weekly SEM news round-up will patiently wait for next year’s results to see how it did. Sigh.

Google’s next Penguin roll-out to happen within weeks

This from Gary Illyes, Google’s Webmaster Trends analyst…

@mrjamiedodd I'll go with weeks. We're aiming for launching penguin this quarter, but we don't have a more precise timeframe.

— Gary Illyes (@methode) January 19, 2016

You can decide for yourself whether this counts as ‘news’ or whether Illyes just got tired of all the pestering.