This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Moz Announces New Partnership with Yelp
This Tuesday, Moz announced on its blog that it will be partnering with Yelp to “enable marketers to capitalize on the convergence of local search and consumer reviews more easily than ever before.” Through Moz Local, users will have the ability to claim Yelp listings, update/manage those listings, and bolster their reputation management. Source: Moz blog
Google Display and Video to Start Showing Across Entire Display Network
Google recently announced that, starting in January, any video or display campaign that does not have targeting set will become eligible to show across the entire Display Network. Previously, Google would simply tell advertisers to pause their video or display campaigns if there was no targeting implemented. But, with this change, if you have at least one active ad group without targeting they will automatically be able to show across the GDN. Source: Marketing Land
Google Continues Making Push for Business Owners to Add More Photos
Throughout the latter half of the year, Google has made it clear that photos are an important part of building up a Google My Business listing. Now, it appears that Google is putting even more emphasis on photos as SEOs like Mike Blumenthal have spotted messages like “Businesses with recent photos typically receive more clicks to their websites” in the GMB dashboard. Source: Mike Blumenthal
Google Testing Additional Product Listings on Right Sidebar
Recently spotted on the Google Search Results page is an expansion of the product listing ads that appear on the right sidebar. Google is now testing three rows of product listings rather than the usual two while the product listings that appear above the organic results and AdWords ads remained unchanged. The test currently isn’t specific to one market as advertisers have seen it appear for several different searches. Source: The SEM Post
Product Schema Can Lead to Rich Snippets in Image Search Results
Previously, schema only affected what was shown in the main tab of the search results, but now, searchers have begun seeing the effects of schema in Google’s image results. This means that an already powerful tool for SEO just became even more essential. So, if you still haven’t hopped on the schema bandwagon, now might be the time to do so. Source: Search Engine Land
Additional Commentary
Signs a PPC Client is Going to Leave
PPC Hero Kristine Hyman helps us comes to terms with a harsh reality: Eventually, all clients leave. The four major signs of this include: they invite someone into their account, they stop responding to your communication efforts, they act like they don’t trust what you’re doing in their account, and they hire an internal PPC manager. While it’s difficult to avoid these as you cannot control the actions of your client, the author stresses the importance of communication to eliminate surprises in addition to simply remaining professional throughout the process. Source: Kristine Hyman, PPC Hero
6 SEO Experiments That Will Blow Your Mind
In an industry that, quite frankly, calls for a lot of guesswork, Larry Kim sees experiments as being one of the most powerful weapons in an SEO’s arsenal. In order to demonstrate the importance of experimentation, Kim lays out six different experiments that range from finding out if organic CTR matters to the effect website engagement has on rankings. After laying out the findings from the experiments, Kim concludes that your goal for SEO should be more and more about getting users to engage with your content. Source: Larry Kim, Search Engine Land
