17 inspirational examples of data visualization

We can all collect masses of data, but it only becomes genuinely useful when we use it to make a clear point.

This is where data visualization comes in. Showing data in context and using creativity to make that same data tell a story can truly bring the numbers to life.

There are a whole bunch of data visualization tools out there to help create your own, but here are some existing examples for inspiration.

A day in the life of Americans

This excellent visualization from Flowing data uses information from the American Time Use Survey to show what Americans are up to at any time of day.

What streaming services pay artists

This from the wonderful information is beautiful website, looks at how the major online streaming music services compare in terms of paying the musicians.

Two centuries of US immigration

This fantastic visualization from metrocosm shows the various waves of immigration into the United States from the 19th century to the present day.

US population trends over time

This gif from the Pew Research Center is a great example of how movement can be used to convey shifts and trends over time.

Why you should take the bus

The German town of Münster produced this series of images back in 1991 to encourage bus use. It's beautifully simple showing the relative impact of the same number of people (72) on bicycles, in cars, or on a bus.

What happens in an internet minute?

This infographic from excelacom presents what happens online in 60 seconds, including:

• 150 million emails are sent.


• 1,389 Uber rides.


• 527,760 photos shared on Snapchat.


• 51,000 app downloads on Apple's App Store.


• $203,596 in sales on Amazon.com.

US wind map

This moving visualization shows wind speed and direction in real time.

It looks great and is easy to understand, which is key to effect data visualization. This one comes from hint.fm.

Daily routines of creative people

I've always been pretty cynical about this 'X things successful people do before breakfast' stuff – as if by following this, people are suddenly going to become Steve Jobs or Albert Einstein.

However, this one from podio showing daily routines of creative people is very interesting. It won't turn you into a great composer, but it's a fascinating insight nonetheless.

The impact of vaccines

This is a series of visualizations from the Wall Street Journal, which shows the impact of vaccines on various infectious diseases.

It's striking stuff, which clearly demonstrates the incredible positive impact of vaccination programs in the US.

London food hygeine

This is a great use of freely available data to provide useful information for the public.

The one million tweet map

This uses tweet data to present a geographical representation of where people tweet about topics. The example below is for 'Brexit'.

The fallen of WW2

This, from Neil Halloran is a cross between data visualization and documentary.

There are two versions of this. The video version you can see embedded below, and an interactive version.

People living on earth

A simple but very effective visualization of the world's population, and the speed at which it increases.

The ultimate data dog

This, again from Information is Beautiful, uses data on the intelligence and other characteristics of dog breeds, plotting this against data on the popularity of various breeds from the American Kennel Club.

How much did band members contribute to each Beatles album? 

This from Mike Moore, shows the relative writing percentage for each Beatles album, as well as the contribution over time.

A day on the London Underground

From Will Gallia, who used data from a single day's use of the London underground to produce this timelapse visualization.

Fish Pharm

This is from way back in 2010, and illustrates the fact that antidepressants and other pharmaceuticals are now showing up in fish tissue.

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Facebook announces four new mobile ad formats

Facebook the most mobile engagement of any platform, seeing more than 1 billion daily mobile users.

With that in mind, Facebook made four announcements at Cannes this week:

1. Creative Hub

With a simple interface and a guide to Facebook and Instagram ad formats, Creative Hub is designed to make it easy for users to sample different tools and features, and work together and experiment.

For instance, there's a collaborative area for marketers to preview, evaluate and showcase their creative. There are also options to create and preview mocks on mobile, as well as create preview URLs to share with stakeholders.

Built with the guidance of several agencies such as Ogilvy & Mather, McCann and Droga5, Creative Hub is currently testing and should be available to Facebook advertisers in the next few months.

2. Upgrading Canvas

We're sensing a pattern with Facebook, which initially announced its Canvas ads, immersive mobile experiences that load 10 times faster than typical mobile sites, in Cannes last year.

The product was launched globally in February and since then, people in more than 180 countries have spent about 52.5 million minutes – otherwise known as a century – viewing Canvas.

New updates will make it easier for marketers to design, create, share and learn from these ads. Canvas will have a new feed unit designed to increase engagement, while marketers will have more detailed metrics, such as clicks-per-component and dwell time (the average is about 31 seconds).

The option to create Canvases for organic page posts has already rolled out.

3. Adding Audience Insights API

Audience Insights API will give advertisers better insights into the audience they're serving, using aggregated and anonymous demographics, psychographics, topic data and reports from Facebook IQ. Currently in beta, the feature is testing with brands like Mondelez and Anheuser-Busch InBev, and will be widely available early next year.

Mondelez used Audience Insights for Cadbury's “Taste Like Joy Feels” campaign, analyzing people's feelings toward chocolate at various times throughout the day. Brand recall was improved by 40 percent, according to Cadbury.

 4. Improving slideshow ads

Another popular Facebook ad format is the slideshow, which allows businesses to create videos from static images. However, they load significantly faster than traditional videos, on account of using five times less data.

New features include the ability to create slideshow ads from mobile devices, audio and text overlay, and integration with Facebook's Pages and Shutterstock photo libraries.

That focus on video isn't to say photos aren't doing well on Facebook. Instagram announced yesterday that its user base has doubled over the past two years.

The platform now has more than 500 million monthly active users around the world, 300 million of whom use the app on a daily basis.

This is an abbreviated post, as originally featured on our sister site ClickZ.

Should publishers and content marketers be playing the platform game?

The early 2000s saw the advent of platforms on the web: somewhere that bloggers and publishers could host their content without having to worry about the back end, while still maintaining control over their own outlets and what they posted.

More than a decade later, and many of the social media platforms of today are starting to suspiciously resemble blogging platforms, becoming a place for users to publish content instead of just share links and brief updates. At the same time, huge companies like Facebook and Google have developed native publishing platforms aimed at providing a superior user experience for an increasingly mobile audience.

We have a wider choice of platforms to publish to than ever before, and each is promising the fastest, shiniest interfaces that will put our content directly in front of huge audiences we can't reach through other means.

But how can we manage to spread ourselves between so many different outlets, and what are the drawbacks of these platforms? Veteran digital journalist and university lecturer Adam Tinworth gave a presentation at CMA's most recent Digital Breakfast on 'playing the platform game' which looked at what this plethora of new tools – and gatekeepers – means for online content.

Social publishers and walled gardens

In 2015, we reached a watershed moment: in June, Facebook surpassed Google as the top referring site to publishers, according to Parse.ly. Clearly, we are now living in a very different internet age, in which social publishers dominate over search engines as a means of distribution and referral.

Tinworth remarked in a panel discussion later in the Digital Breakfast that social networks have taken over from search engines in the role of “finding something to read” online, leaving search engines to fill more of an “answer engine” role. This has huge ramifications for both SEO and social publishing, some of which are already being felt, and others which will make themselves known further down the line.

The other huge trend affecting the way that traffic reaches sites online is of course mobile. An Ofcom report from August 2015 declared that the UK is “now a smartphone society”, with 2/3 of Britons owning a smartphone and 33% seeing it as the most important device for going online, above laptops at 30%.

The trend towards mobile has affected the types of platforms springing up that we can publish to. Take Snapchat, the ultimate mobile-native social app, whose Discover publishing platform was just revamped to become much more visual, allowing users to more easily browse content at a glance.

Although Discover is only available to a select few publishers, many more brands and businesses use Snapchat for content marketing, and the redesign shows that Snapchat is serious about pushing further into the publishing space.

The new, more eye-catching Snapchat Discover

Meanwhile, publishing platforms like Facebook Instant Articles and Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) have come about with the goal of providing users the best possible experience in mobile. They aim to load fast and look sleek, getting rid of the distracting artefacts which clutter the desktop web to deliver a streamlined product.

Instant Articles and AMP, while they are often mentioned in the same breath, take fundamentally different approaches to providing a better mobile experience. AMP is an open-source project aimed at reinventing the code on which the mobile web runs (from HTML to AMP-HTML), and can be used by anyone to build a faster mobile site. Instant Articles is more selective and restrictive, requiring publishers to have a Facebook page, and allowing them to begin publishing subject to having a sample of their content reviewed by Facebook.

But both companies ultimately have the same goal with their platforms, which is to keep users within the spaces they own, their walled gardens, for as long as possible. Readers who click on Sponsored links in Facebook Instant Articles find themselves redirected to other Instant Articles, still within Facebook; and Accelerated Mobile Pages allow you to swipe between news stories without leaving Google.

Other new publication platforms like Apple News have the same basic aim. Even Medium, which appears at first brush to just be another, more social-oriented take on the blogging platform, forces writers who publish with it to give up much of the editorial control they would normally enjoy over how they offer their work, in order to produce content (and revenue) for someone else's branded platform.

As Tinworth put it in his presentation, “There's a whole new set of gatekeepers between us and audiences.” But if you can connect with much bigger audiences than you would be able to reach without them, then it's worth it, right?

The danger of sites as gatekeepers

As we've established, publication platforms like Facebook Instant Articles and Medium can provide excellent user experiences, but at the cost of giving over control of your content to the brand whose platform you use.

There's another, more general, drawback to this proliferation of platforms, which is that suddenly publishers are having to publish to a whole range of different formats. Publishers who are serious about social media, said Tinworth, have known for some time that you need to insert certain metadata in order to do well on those sites, making sure that your social posts look clean and carry the right information.

Multi-platform publishing takes this to the next level, requiring publishers and content creators to cater to wildly different formats: the requirements for Facebook Instant Articles are different to AMP, which is different to Apple News, which is very different to Snapchat, and so on. But if you want to get engagement on these platforms, this is the game you have to play.

“It's complicating what was a fairly simple and opening publishing format,” said Adam Tinworth.

The danger of putting these different companies (Google, Facebook, Apple) in front of our content as gatekeepers is that they start to call the shots and tell us exactly how we ought to publish.

So, away with platforms, then? Should we all stick doggedly to hosting all of our content on domains and websites that we have complete ownership and control over? Well, not necessarily. There's still a lot to be gained from publishing to platforms, and ignoring them means missing out on a great deal of opportunities to connect with the audiences who use them.

What's good about publishing to platforms?

As Tinworth pointed out, we can't afford to ignore platforms: they're incredibly valuable for finding audiences and getting our content out there. And there are other good things about publishing to them.

Platforms are rich experiences where people hang out online, and deliver good traffic and interaction. Posting content there can provide a huge visibility boost, especially if the platform features it in some way; and it reduces the need to drag people, by hook or by crook, over to your own website when they'd rather not go.

Mike Burgess, another speaker at the Digital Breakfast, also advised that you can have success by being early onto platforms even when they're not that successful overall, like Apple News.

Of course, there's also the bad, which I've given plenty of attention to in this article: publishing to multiple platforms means more APIs and feed formats to support, and that extra bit of distance between you and your readers. It's harder to get access to meaningful analytics, which can be issued at the discretion of the platform, and we're at the mercy of the platform in other ways – including if they decide to charge.

Where does that leave publishers who want to get the greatest returns out of the platform game, however that might mean playing it? Ultimately, said Adam Tinworth, the trick is to play it strategically. It's inevitable that publishers will have to play the platform game, and the key is finding the platforms that the audience you want to target are using.

Mike Burgess gave an excellent example of this in his own presentation when he talked about travel brands on Instagram. Instagram is home to an absolute wealth of travel-related content, with 353 million travel-related hashtags on the app.

People turn to Instagram in droves for inspiration on where to go for their travels, spending an average of 21 minutes per day perusing the app; and yet the travel industry has been the second-slowest (after financial services) at adopting and making use of Instagram.

Businesses can't afford to be too high-minded about platforms and social publishing, for fear of missing out on golden opportunities like these. At the same time, it's also worth being aware of the risks and drawbacks, and keeping an eye on them so that you know if they ever start to outweigh the benefits.

Why your audiences are so important

No, it's not a misspelling or a typo – I did say audiences, plural!

Why am I putting such an emphasis on that plural? Because most people fail too! People tell you to write for your audience; locate your audience; conduct keyword research for your target audience; create quality content to please your audience.

They don't tell you that you have more than one audience!

And it's true – almost every single one of you has more than one audience. I'm not talking about sub-groups or divisions of audience – but multiple audiences. These different audiences have completely different behaviours, intentions and reactions to your content.

Notice all those lovely informative posts that talk about your sales or conversion funnel? You realise that they are completely wrong – well, some of the time they are. That's because of different audiences.

So what are the different audiences?

Well, that's a secret. Oh, okay, I'll tell you :D

• Consumers


• Peers

That's it – that's your secret?

Well, yes. But there's far more to it than that (else I wouldn't be banging on about it). These two groups have completely different sets of wants and needs. They have different expectations of you, your company and your content. They should influence your decisions, your targeting and your content creation in different ways.

Consumers

This is the main audience people refer to. Typically, we define consumer audiences by several methods:

• Specific – an actual item/service, such as they read The Times, or use a Dyson vacuum.


• General – a class/type of product or service, such as they read broadsheets or use upright vacuums.


• Classes – earnings, gender, ages, location etc., such as >30K, white collar, B1, 25-30, males in Las Vegas.

But there are other methods, or more accurately, other labels and classes that may be more useful;

• Repeat consumer


• Previous consumer


• Current consumer


• Potential consumer

Now, if you've been paying any attention to those funnel pieces, those should look vaguely familiar. You should have also noted that many of the funnel pieces fail to cover repeat consumers, despite them being highly important to your business.

Each of those groups has different needs, and would require different content. Just as important, they will react differently to your content and your company.

In most industries, it's easier to sell to previous and current consumers. It's also easier to get recommendations (reviews, ratings, testimonials) from repeat, current and previous consumers (generally in that order). It's also easier to engage with those groups.

The content needs of each group are different. Those funnel pieces you've been reading generally cover this – each stage of the funnel covers different types of content, such as:

• Raising/increasing awareness (branded marketing/advertising)


• General information (types of products/services, benefits/features, USP/VP)


• Specific/comparative information (individual products, services, guides etc.)


• After-sales/user information (guides, complementary material etc.)

Consider offers. You can have introductory offers – those target potential consumers and help raise awareness and interest. Or you can run with rewards – those target current, previous, repeat consumers.

Yes, yes, most of this is common sense and well known, but how often are you actually using this information when looking at your objectives and content?

Think about it – one of the main reasons you produce content is to improve your SEO – to get links.

Which of those groups are going to give you links? How many links are you likely to get from them? What sort of value are those links going to be? Right – and that's where understanding that you have the other audience comes in!

Peers

I use the term 'peers' instead of 'industry' as it's broader, and gives us a little more wiggle room and flexibility. Peers include not only those in your industry, but in sibling and related industries. It also covers enthusiasts and hobbyists (I would have defined that as a separate group, but that would have made it much messier :D). Depending on your goals, you could also include groups like investors, shareholders or the media.

Categorising peers is every bit as important as defining consumers. Each group and type of peer has different goals and different reactions. That means you need different content and can use them for your own objectives.

One way to break peers down is by level:

• Layperson


• Amateur


• Professional


• Expert

Now, it's important to note that this type of grouping generates a pyramid. That pyramid not only shows the general difference in quantity of each group, but the flow of influence and the increase in difficulty to obtain a desired reaction.

DCF 1.0

Another way of looking at peers is by role. Far too often people focus on their niche, their industry, or what they provide. They often forget that they do different things, such as using software, run accounts or are themselves consumers (as people and as businesses). This opens up more content topics and more marketing potential. Look at some examples:

• Executive – those that in positions to make decisions and hold a large amount of influence.


• Technician – those that utilise hardware/software to perform tasks that require knowledge and/or skill.


• Sales – those that have direct contact with consumers, either inbound or outbound.


• Services – those that perform company functions, such as accounts.


• Care – those that run the contact points, after sales and complaints.


• Labour – those that perform manual labour or use tools and equipment that requires only moderate knowledge or skill

There are many other way labels or tiers you could use, but that should give you the gist of things.

Looking at the peer audience this way shows you that you could generate content of a completely different nature, such as cheat-sheets for software, macros for spreadsheets, templates for word processors, sources of alternative software, operating tips, safety advice etc.

What's important here is to understand the differences between consumers and peers. The chances of 'converting' a peer in the traditional sense are slim. Very few decorators are going to hire the decorator whose article they are reading. Few Advertisers will contract with another advertiser. Instead, peers serve an entirely different set of goals.

It's peers that will give you the greatest chance of links. Peers will provide authority. Depending on your industry, content and marketing, it's peers that will give you the most social shares.

Now, jumping back to the peer pyramid, let's look at the difficulty of obtaining a desired reaction. This is an important bit, and one that many never mention!

Getting links from thought leaders, influencers and experts is damned hard. But getting links from amateurs is easier. Getting links from laypeople is even easier. Chances are you won't get high value links, but you will get more links. These people are easier to please, easier to impress and are far more willing to promote your content and further your marketing efforts.

Peer consumers

For some of you, this group might not even exist. These are the people that are in your industry, or a related one – and may buy your products or pay for your services. That means this small and rare group may well serve most, if not all, of your objectives.

How nice would it be to not only make money off them, but also get them giving your reviews and sharing your content?

So, who has peer consumers? Well, those that sell products to do with their services (such as artists selling materials and mediums), and those with tools that pertain to the audiences services (such as templates for web designers or plugins for content management platforms).

As you can see, it's kind of a sweet spot, and I'm sure, without too much effort, you can think of several well-known examples in our own fields :D

How audience types can influence things

The above is a little general. The reason is that there is so much variance, based on your industry and objectives, or those of your clients. The idea of the piece is to help you realise the amount of influence that knowing your audiences should have on your content and marketing plans.

Remember, you should be defining goals and objectives, then creating content to achieve those goals and objectives.

The key part is what happens in-between those two things, your research, which should include researching and defining your audience and target terms. That would include understanding the types of queries they will make, and what the intention of those queries are.

Are remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) the future of PPC?

Paid search is a pretty awesome channel, but it's not without its challenges.

As the chart below illustrates, the cost per click (CPC) in certain highly competitive verticals can get super expensive – we're talking more than $100 per click in some cases, for industries like law and finance.

(This is Bing data, but it's a similar story in AdWords.)

Another challenge is that conversion rates really haven't changed much in 15 years, whether you're selling washing machines or alarm clocks. It's around 2.5%.

Finally, we know that desktop search query volume peaked in 2013 and that more searches are happening on the smaller, more competitive screens of mobile devices.

As marketers, we want to get more for less. We want more conversions and we want them to cost less so we can maximize our profits, right?

I frequently get emails like this:

Larry, how do you make money with PPC today?

If my cost per click goes from $1.50 to $4 with a Quality Score of 9 or 10, and it takes 75 to 100 clicks to make a sale, the cost of acquisition goes from $150 to $400. I can't believe I'm the only one in this boat!

Is there a way we can overcome these big challenges – knowing that in the near future search, inventory will remain flat, CPCs will keep being expensive, and conversion rates won't change? Can businesses in competitive industries stay the course? Is there a way we can turn this ship around and make sure we get more for less?

Will RLSA save the day?

With RLSA (remarketing lists for search ads) you tailor your paid search campaigns based on whether users have previously visited your website (or app) and which pages they viewed.

So is RLSA the superhero technology we've been waiting for? Let's look at some data.

In this account, we can see two campaigns that have the exact same keywords. It's just that one is targeted to existing site visitors (through remarketing) and the other is targeted to new visitors.

Notice how the RLSA campaign has a third the cost per conversion ($36 vs. $100)? That's because that audience is already familiar with your brand.

See how the click-through-rate (CTR) for RLSA is double (4.8 percent vs. 2.2 percent)? That's because they're familiar with your brand.

And notice how the average CPC for RLSA is about half as expensive ($1.45 instead of $2.80)? That's because of the higher Quality Score (in turn because of the higher CTR).

This is all very interesting. You have this technology that basically lets you find the conversions and clicks from people who are going to click through at twice the rate, half the costs, and triple the conversion rate.

Awesome, right?! Well…

RLSA may be super, but it's no hero

There's one problem: RLSA doesn't create new volume. It actually cuts volume substantially. You're only getting about a tenth of the volume.

And to make things worse, if you look at the previous month, RLSA added nothing in terms of total conversions (245 this month vs. 250 last month).

Looked at in these terms, RLSA is kind of a shell game. It's segmenting the cheap conversions out of a bucket of conversions that used to include both cheap conversions and expensive conversions.

You're just cherry-picking the 10% of cheap conversions out of the pile you would've gotten anyway, and looking at them in isolation. It's all well and good to get those conversions, but you're still basically stealing all the cheap conversions from your existing campaigns.

While this may be interesting if you're limited by budget (e.g., you only have $100 to spend), most marketers want to see more quantity at better costs. RLSA delivers on cost savings, but it actually cuts down on the amount of conversions. It's almost like all you're doing is applying a repeat visitor vs. new visitor segmentation on your conversion set.

So what's a marketer to do?

The ridiculously awesome new way forward

So we all know the issues with RLSA.

But what's the solution?

What follows won't be a solution for everyone. This applies only to certain verticals that have very high CPCs where there's a lot of competition and where conversion rates are challenging. This strategy will be especially game-changing if you've got a small marketing budget and you want to make sure that budget goes as far as possible.

The crazy new idea is to only do RLSA and completely forget about doing unbranded vanilla search ads.

Then, use the power of social media ads to dramatically – I'm talking 10x to 100x – increase the size of your cookie pools.

If you can increase the size or your remarketing pool by 10x, then it stands to reason that you'll get 10x more conversions. That means instead of getting only 10 conversions, you'll get 1,000!

This is an abridged version of Larry Kim's post as published on WordStream, for more information visit Larry's blog.

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A handy guide to content marketing for mobile

A responsive website is not a mobile strategy.

There has been a lot of re­cent articles on mobile and more and more of us are getting on-board but how can you, from a people-centric content marketing perspective, optimise your website for mobile? Let's begin…

Technical change

Google has strengthened its mobile-friendly ranking signal to include site speed, so should you. This also helps with UX and general engagement. This is the first technical change you need to do and by far the last thing you need to do for mobile.

Micro-moments

“When consumers don't have a lot of time to make a decision, they tend to focus on a few key criteria or product attributes” – Think With Google

We need to start optimising content to reflect mobile behaviour.

Now I'm not talking about Responsive Content Marketing, but I am saying that we should now make content layout 3D based on devices.

To begin a mobile content marketing strategy, you should think about a time schedule and match this time to the days of the week based on traffic. So that you can say “at 8pm, 25% of my traffic comes from smartphone, I need to write a more mobile-focused blog post,” for example.

Once you know your peak mobile times you need to publish your mobile content during this time. This content needs to be written with the mobile, short time frame, in mind.

Here is a checklist:

Attention span

• Write with bullet points and use a lot of headings to make your content more scanable. This is also positive for UX as well as for optimising for Google Hummingbird (which is essentially a thesaurus so you need to include synonyms of your targeted keywords in your text and the headings are great places to start to do this, as well as, optimise for voice search - more below).


• Include a short sentence summary of your content at the top of your article to help to grab attention and encourage readership and engagement.

Real life thinking (I can't wait, I'm busy… waiting for the bus, or kettle to boil)

• Mobile content, especially, needs to be written as concisely as possible. Aid reading time by making content as short and with concise as possible.

Social media

• Integrate social media icons. Remember mobile is going to kill links, so make it easy to spread your authority and hard work by making it easily shareable.

Mobile keyword research

• Think about revenue and conversion. Where does most of your revenue come from, desktop? If so, it is clear that your mobile content marketing strategy should be more focused on the early stages of the buying cycle (more informational queries).


• Make sure you carry out mobile keyword research and do not just have a unified, one-size-fits-all keyword strategy for all devices. Mobile queries are more informational and often the only conversion is knowledge acquisition so do keyword research thinking just like this – education and inspire with keywords to build your brand's trust. Your brand's trust will then make you money.

Content formats

• Including multiple formats of content (e.g. compressed images, embedded videos that do not auto-play) allows you to optimise for more people. We have different learning styles and interact with content differently as a result, this is also true on mobile. It may be that your mobile searcher has their headphones in, so they may be more likely to interact with a nice, short video a lot quicker than they would in an open-floor office space.


• Engage your user by strategically selecting and placing the right formatted content on your website.

Optimise for voice search

• We speak in natural language. So carry out voice keyword research. See below…

A quick guide to optimising for voice search

20% of all Google searches on Android devices are now voice search queries. You need to get in on this increasingly popular market. How?

Log onto Google Search Console, then:

1. Go to 'Search Analytics' then 'Search Queries'


2. Apply a filter with a natural language targeted keyword (e.g. 'what', 'where', 'how')

You now have a list of long tail, voice search keywords. You can also use other tools and platforms to help you with your long tail, voice search, and keyword research.

Then, just as you would for 'normal' SEO, put these queries, naturally in your content and most importantly answer them, with well-researched and concise content. You are now optimising for voice search.

So there you have it, a mobile content strategy needs to be person-centric by thinking about the searcher at every touch point. Your content needs to be optimised for mobile but you also need to have a mobile and desktop content-based approach which is directed by data on when and what devices your audience is coming onto your website.

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Four of the most interesting search marketing news stories of the week

It's Friday, so welcome to our weekly round up of search marketing and related news. 

This week we have the 16 companies dominating Google, stats on retailers' search budgets, and a look at accusations around Google and searches for Hillary Clinton.

Is Google manipulating searches for Hillary Clinton? Er,no…

There's been talk of Google manipulating autocomplete suggestions for searches on Hillary Clinton. A video from SourceFed claims that searches around Clinton are being manipulated as they don't return the suggestions they would expect to find.

Specifically, searches such as “Hillary Clinton cri-” did not suggest “Hillary Clinton criminal charges” and “Hillary Clinton in-” did not return “Hillary Clinton indictment.”

SEO and reputation management expert Rhea Drysdale does an excellent job of debunking the theory in a post on Medium.

Essentially SoureFed failed to compare similar searches for Donald Trump, which fail to suggest phrases like “Donald Trump lawsuit”.

In a nutshell, if Google is manipulating searches for Clinton, it's doing the same for Trump. There's another theory too – the popularity of the SourceFed video has led to thousands trying out these searches for themselves, thus potentially manipulating these results.

Google becomes the world's most powerful brand

Apple's value has dropped 8% to $228 billion in the past year, while Google's has risen 32% to reach $229 billion. So Google takes top spot in Millward Brown Digital's annual report.

Amazon's search spending

Fractl has analyzed the marketing spend of some of the biggest retailers, and search gets the lion's share of Amazon's budget.

During the period studied, the ecommerce giant spent $8 million on TV and radio, $54 million on print and $1.35 billion on search.

For more stats, see Mike O'Brien's piece on the research.

In search, do the the rich just get richer? 

Earlier this week, Chris Lake covered an excellent Glen Allsop study into how 16 companies are dominating Google's results.

As Chris says in his post:

In this case, the rich are major publishing groups. The way they are getting richer is by cross-linking to existing and new websites, from footers and body copy, which are “constantly changing”

And these are the big 16:

Meeker report: what you should know about the rise of visual content

Mary Meeker published her Internet Trends of 2016 last week and among others, there were very interesting stats regarding the increase of visual content and most importantly, how this affects communication, marketing, broadcasting and ecommerce.

There is a new generation coming up after millennials, the so-called Generation Z, which seems to be even more digital aware, comparing to the previous ones, evolving the idea of communication and content consumption, preferring visual content over written text.

As millennials are growing older, trends also focus on the next generation and it's interesting to see how visual content will affect their digital habits over the next years.

Visual social networks are more engaging

It's not a coincidence that the most popular social networks rely on visual content, with the right type of content affecting users' engagement. Facebook is the clear winner both in popularity and engagement among millennials, with Snapchat and Instagram following it.

Snapchat seems to be the second most engaging social platform, while Instagram seems to appeal to a bigger target group.

Communication through visual content, whether it's an image or a video, has been very popular and it forms a new method of interaction among users, as it's quick, direct and more appealing.

However, visual content cannot guarantee the success of a social platform, as engagement can be challenging, and Vine's (decreasing) engagement is the proof of it.

The evolution of video viewing

Video viewing has changed over the years, starting with the traditional live content through television to on-demand video with DVR and streaming, heading then to semi-live content with Snapchat Stories and experiencing today real live content, as more social networks embrace the power of live broadcasting.

Timing, personalisation and relevance are more important than ever, while users appreciate the ability to broadcast their own content through their favourite social networks, feeling part of a community, contributing with their content to a relevant story.

Social media turns to video content

The rise of visual content has been affected by the growing popularity of social media and the latest stats from Facebook and Snapchat indicate the increase of video views on both social networks.

Native videos in social media seem to be preferred both by users and publishers and this led to an increase in video views during the past year.

Video advertising on Facebook is now offering many creative options for brands and this makes it very appealing, while users enjoy consuming short and engaging videos. Buzzfeed's Tasty and its successful video content proves how effective a short video may be.

Snapchat's success with visual content

Snapchat has been one of the most engaging platforms lately and visual content contributed to its success.

The idea of splitting the use of content to Stories, Live and Discover, with each one serving a different goal, allowed Snapchat to guide users on the way they can use visual content, always in a casual and visually appealing way, full of colours and filters.

This was very exciting for early influencers, skyrocketing the popularity of the platform, while brands recently realised how this new type of vertical content may be used for the promotion of their products and the highly desired conversion.

Snapchat's advertising plan relies on 3Vs, vertical, video, and viewing and it's the combination of these that creates effective ads, measuring both the number of views, but also the completion rate of each video.

What's more, the popularity of Snapchat's filters helped brands use their creativity and produce their own branded filters to promote their products and users seemed to love this idea.

Up to now, many brands have tried to create their own branded filters, with Taco Bell's being among the best uses that we've recently seen.

The case of live broadcasting

Live broadcasting has been in high demand lately and this can also be attributed to Periscope's success, turning all the big social networks to the trend of live videos.

It's not just about promoting live broadcasting, it's about turning users into broadcasters, creating their own live videos that lead to an impressive amount of available video content worldwide in real time.

Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat have significantly benefited from live broadcasting, with each one of them promoting it accordingly.

Facebook for example seems willing to fill our news feeds with live videos, which seems very useful for brands that wants to use live content for their marketing strategy.

Twitter on the other hand, decided to acquire Periscope, hoping to mix live broadcasting with real-time hashtags, in order to create a powerful suite of tools for live streaming and popular events all over the world.

What's more, Twitter has sealed a collaboration with NFL to live stream live video, in another attempt to change digital broadcasting.

As for Snapchat, the idea of Live Stories blends user-generated content with a professional curator, in order to showcase the best local and global stories. This helps users feel included, while the platform may showcase a great amount of content.

Image growth remains strong

Despite the rise of video content, image growth remains strong, with Facebook-owned platforms taking the lead. Snapchat seems to be the only big competitor for Facebook and they both encourage users to upload new photos with their own unique incentives.

As for the brands' point of view, images are still very effective and that's why the are an integral part of their social strategy, especially when there's no time, or budget, to create a video.

How visual content leads to purchase conversion

Pinterest is the best example for brands on how visual content can increase purchase intent, as it is both engaging and effective.

Pinterest users love browsing for their favourite content, but they are also prepared to buy what they like, which brings out a new type of social platform that is not just about raising awareness about a brand, but also about motivating consumers to proceed to a purchase.

In fact, 55% of Pinterest users seem to use the platform to find and shop products, leaving Facebook and Instagram way behind with just 12% of purchase intent.

Pinterest is not always considered the first option for brands looking to increase their social impact and increase sales, but the stats above indicate its success in driving sales, having an aware audience of online consumers who browse the site for current or future purchases.

It's the power of visual content, the large size of the images, the popularity of infographics and the various types of pins that enhance the shopping experience that make Pinterest so appealing, reminding brands not to overlook it when trying to lead traffic to their site and increase sales.

Although Pinterest may serve as the right example on how to use a platform to increase sales, most of the popular social networks can be used by a brand to increase sales, provided that the content is optimised in order to convey the right message.

The future of visual content

There's no indication that visual content will be reduced any time soon. In fact, we are expecting an even greater increase, with Cisco predicting that by 2019, online video will be responsible for four-fifths of global internet traffic.

There's a psychological trigger on why users find visual content appealing and its impact is also present in communication, creating a new form of self-expression. From the first type-based emojis up to the latest Snapchat filters, visual content was always fascinating as an additional form of communication, although it might even replace written texts in many occasions.

Users love communicating with visual content through instant messaging, with emojis also being used by brands nowadays as an additional element of a casual tone.

Thus, it's time for brands to discover all the new forms of visual content, in order to use them as part of their content marketing strategy, combining authenticity with a modern appeal, enhancing their message in the most appropriate way.

Five of the most interesting search marketing news stories of the week

It's Friday, and time for our weekly round-up of the week's news in search marketing. 

Today we have the most expensive AdWords keywords, a new site testing tool from Google, and a look at whether Google factors in anchor text in internal links.

Google's next mobile update will factor in page speed

Mobile page speed isn't currently used as a ranking factor by Google, but that will change with the next mobile friendly update.

Google's Gary Illyes confirmed this at a recent Search Marketing Summit in Sydney. Though he wasn't giving dates away, it appears this update is a matter of months away.

What are the most expensive keywords in the US?

Our columnist Chris Lake has compiled a list of the most expensive AdWords keywords in the US. (We have the same list from the UK too).

What have we learnt? Well, the US keywords are much more expensive than those in the UK. The top US keyword is upwards of four times more expensive than the equivalent across the Atlantic.

Also, whereas gambling terms dominate in the UK, it's legal keywords in the States. 78% are legal terms, including nine of the top ten.

A new mobile-friendly testing tool

Google has just launched this tool, based upon the Page Speed Insights tool.

The tool tests and gives a score for these three things:

• Mobile friendliness


• Mobile speed


• Desktop speed

Google will also send you a report detailing the reasons for your scores and suggestions for improvement. Looks like Google needs to work on that desktop score ;)

Does Google count anchor text in internal links?

Shaun Anderson from Hobo Web carried out an interesting experiment looking at whether the anchor text used in internal links is used as a ranking factor by Google.

The answer seems to be yes. Please read Shaun's blog for the full details, but he essentially linked to a page on his site which didn't contain the keywords used in the anchor text linking to it.

The page then ranked for that keyword, and stopped ranking when the link was removed.

A useful recap of Google I/O

There was lots to digest from Google I/O and Google has helpfully listed and explained the various announcements on the Webmaster Central Blog.

They are:

• Rich cards


• New Search Console reports


• Real-time indexing


• More detail on Accelerated Mobile Pages


• A new and improved Structured Data Testing Tool


• App Indexing's migration to Firebase


• App streaming


• A revamp of developer documentation

And finally, the launch of ClickZ Intelligence…

Last week saw the launch of ClickZ Intelligence, a new service providing a range of reports aimed at digital marketing pros.

There'll be some dedicated SEO and PPC reports further down the line, but for now we have reports on social customer service, ecommerce checkout, customer journeys, mobile ads, AI, and mobile commerce (see Rebecca Sentance's look at this report from a search perspective).

Six lessons advertisers can learn from local SEO

Last month, ClickZ Intelligence published its report into 'The State of Mobile Advertising', in partnership with Search Optics.

Among the report's findings was the revelation that mobile advertisers are missing out on hyperlocal opportunities in a big way. As our Editor in Chief Graham Charlton observed in the article linked, “With the near ubiquity of smartphones, and their growing use to access digital content, the opportunity to target based on location has never been greater.”

And yet, advertisers aren't taking advantage of these opportunities to employ hyperlocal tactics in their advertising. When asked which of the hyperlocal tactics listed they used to target consumers with ads – including tactics like customer match, retargeting and basic radius based on GPS data – less than half of respondents said they were using any of the given strategies.

One survey respondent said, “Armed with their mobile devices, consumers are conducting 'near me' searches that require brands to be more responsive than ever. If your business is not present when near me moments of need occur, you might as well not exist.”

So how should businesses be stepping up their efforts to target consumers locally and be present at the top of search when it is most important? Here are six lessons that advertisers can learn from local SEO to make the most of these hyperlocal opportunities.

Be mobile-first

As the quote above neatly illustrates, mobile and hyperlocal go hand in hand like UX and SEO. As many as 94% of mobile searches are said to have local intent, and 50% of those are likely to visit a store within one day.

Mobile is an essential consideration for all digital businesses, as Google consistently ranks mobile-friendly sites above those which aren't, and has even confirmed it is developing a separate mobile index for searches carried out on mobile. (More reasons go here)

Designing for mobile increasingly means taking a mobile-first approach to user experience and content, rather than simply adapting to mobile.

But designing for mobile doesn't just mean designing a mobile 'friendly' or 'responsive' site any more. “Mobile First is mobile first,” asserts Salvador Carrillo, CEO of Mobile Dreams Factory, in the ClickZ Intelligence report 'The DNA of a Great Mobile Commerce Site'. “If you have or will have more traffic in mobile, start designing in mobile.

“Responsive web is not simply about designing a liquid or adaptive multi-device site. You have to create a totally different experience in mobile.”

Don't neglect your Google My Business listing

Paid ads aren't the only way to be present at the top of search. The 'map pack' of local search results which appears near or at the top when users make a local search is composed of Google My Business listings, which are completely free to register and an easy way to ensure your business appears across Google's services, including Maps and Google+.

These results are even more important on mobile, where it takes a significant amount of scrolling to move past the paid ads – where they appear – as well as the local map pack, making a presence in the local map pack almost equivalent to being on page one of organic search.

In our first #ClickZChat of May, ClickZ Chatters discussed local SEO, and specifically gave their thoughts on what the absolute basics are that marketers should be covering to achieve decent local SEO. Graham Charlton tweeted that marketers should be sure to claim their Google My Business listing:

Q2 – Google My Business listing. Easiest and cheaper way to increase your profile. #ClickZChat

- Graham Charlton (@gcharlton) May 4, 2016

Even if you've already claimed your listing on Google My Business, take a moment to check that the details are all updated, local and correctly categorised and that you're using the best and most recent business images that you have.

We've put together a guide on how to optimise your Google My Business listing, with input from four experts in local SEO.

Publish regular, fresh and local content

A well-known tenet of SEO is that publishing fresh content is a great way to stay on top. Search engines treat up-to-date content as an indicator that the information contained on a website is more likely to be current, relevant and accurate and thus provide a better experience for users, and so they're more likely to give it a higher ranking.

From a marketing perspective, content marketing done well can achieve excellent ROI, so there is a very solid marketing argument to be made for publishing relevant content as well. Publishing content fleshes out your business, giving it increased authority on the topics you publish about, and presents additional opportunities for consumers to engage with your business.

To boost your business's local presence and relevance, you should also strive to make your content, or your blog, a local destination. Greg Gifford gave this advice during his presentation on winning the local visibility race at Brighton SEO, pointing out that a blog with thoughtfully curated local content can become a go-to destination, providing valuable information to visitors that isn't just about the company (but is still relevant to its message), while also building strong links with other blogs and businesses in the process.

Twitter user JaroG4, during our local SEO #ClickZChat, also advised businesses to focus on relevant local events in their content in order to stand out and get noticed.

@sewatch Q2. From a content perspective, focusing on relevant events can also play a significant role in getting noticed #ClickZChat

- JaroG4 (@JaroG4) May 4, 2016

Go after local links

Building on from the previous point, publishing quality content can be very effective in building links with other local businesses and institutions – figurative links, as well as actual web links. As Jim Yu wrote in his piece for ClickZ about blogging and SEO, although backlinks have a bad reputation from the days of 'black hat' SEO, website owners shouldn't be afraid to go after them. And links with a lot of local relevance can be particularly valuable.

In his presentation at Brighton SEO, Greg Gifford gave a clever tip for getting ahead in local visibility that most businesses wouldn't think to do: go after 'crappy little church website' links, links with huge hyperlocal relevance that no-one else is pursuing.

Even if the websites themselves aren't the most professional and don't have a lot of domain authority, it doesn't do to underestimate their importance in a local context. And you can build those entities (whether they're churches, youth groups or local news blogs) as topics into your content, giving it local relevance at the same time as building relationships that benefit your business.

Small, hyperlocal websites can wield a lot of local clout if you manage to gain links from them

If you're worried about keeping on top of of the links you've gained or making sure you don't have any that will harm your presence in search, read up on how to track your backlinks and how to deal with harmful backlinks that might hurt your ranking.

Make search ads relevant to context and location

Where you do place localised ads in search, it isn't enough just to target them locally: consumers expect the advertising itself to be relevant to their context and location. A study by Google found that 4 in 5 consumers want ads that are “customised to their city, zip code or immediate surroundings”. As Google writes,

“By accounting for a consumer's constantly changing location, all businesses can benefit, whether they are an online-only company looking to attract consumers in certain cities, a brick-and-mortar store trying to reach local consumers or a multichannel organization hoping to drive consumers from online to store.”

Image via Going Local: How Advertisers Can Extend Their Relevance With Search

Don't take local visibility for granted

The overriding message from the 'State of Mobile Advertising' study as well as from all of these tips is simple: don't overlook the importance of local visibility or take it for granted. Too many advertisers are neglecting opportunities to target consumers locally – opportunities which are demonstrably worth their while.

The 'State of Mobile Advertising' survey also found that where advertisers do employ local targeting techniques, regardless of what they are, the results are overwhelmingly positive. When asked how effective the hyperlocal tactics they used were for driving successful ROI from mobile advertising, the vast majority of advertisers (anywhere between 73 and 96%) rated their tactics “good” or “excellent” at driving ROI.

So the biggest lesson that advertisers can take away from local SEO is to not underestimate the importance of a local presence for your business. Local SEOs understand this, and advertisers should, too.

For more great insights, trends and best practice guides on digital marketing, head to ClickZ Intelligence and check out our library of reports.