This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Google Expands Featured Snippets
Users can now expand their discovery and uncover additional information right in the featured snippets. Google rolled out expanded featured snippets that include even more related images and search queries. The knowledge panels have seen an update as well to show related content directly inside the result. Lastly, users searching for people will now see related images of individuals similar to their query right at the top of the search result. Source: Official Google Blog
AdWords Updates Competitive Data Refresh Frequency
A recent post made by Google AdWords on Twitter noted that “Auction insights and impression share data now refreshes multiple times per day so you can act faster on new opportunities”. No details were given on how much faster the refresh rate will be, but this is still a welcome update for those wanting to stay on top of competitor data. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Google Expands Finance Search Navigation Tab
Users interested in finance and stocks can now experience and access finance information based on his or her interest. The new search tab includes performance information about followed stocks and in-depth insights about companies. The new finance feature is customizable and will populate results based on interests entered. Google will also send users notifications when there are noticeable changes in stock performance. Source: Google Blog
Google Moving Away from Current AJAX Crawling Scheme
Webmasters no longer need to provide rendered versions of webpages for AJAX-based sites, Googlebot will render the #! URL directly instead. To prepare for the change, Google recommends that website owners to verify ownership in Google Search Console in order to use the Fetch and Render tool that will ensure there are not issues or differences between the two URLs. Google also recommends using Chrome’s Inspect Element to confirm that HTML elements are correct. Source: Official Google Webmaster Blog
Google Increases Featured Snippet Length in Search Results
Search Engine Land confirms that Google has increased the character length of featured snippets in the search results. The change can be tied into the recent update in featured snippets to provide useful and descriptive features. Webmaster should be able to see this change already. According to RankRanger, the snippet length has grown to almost 230 characters on average. Content featured in the longer snippets can be pulled from both the meta description and content on the page but if Google goes with a longer snippet, the content will most likely be pulled from the actual page. Source: Search Engine Land
Analysis
How Various PPC Metrics Correlate With ROI
Jacob Baadsgaard investigates how specific PPC metrics have an impact on return on investment based on insights from a study on half a million keywords. He first found that high cost-per-clicks lead to low profitability, noting that as the average cost-per-click increased, ROI steadily decreased. The author also found that long-tail keywords are a waste of money, noting that the most profitable keywords had between 15 to 30 characters. Baadsgaard’s final note is that, unfortunately, there is no “silver bullet” that will simply make you more money since every market audience is unique, but if you focus more on creating profitable campaigns rather than improving surface metrics like bounce rate, you may see better results in the end. Source: Jacob Baadsgaard, PPC Hero
Maximizing SEO through Content Flow
Moz’s Rand Fishkin, shares insight on designing a page’s content flow to maximize SEO opportunity in last week’s Whiteboard Friday. The Wizard of Moz challenges webmasters to brainstorm all of the possible user intents behind the query that the content is answering. When drafting the content, take those multiple intents and answer them in order of demand. Fishkin encourages putting useful information and images near the top with lead-in text to claim any possible featured snippets. He also suggests that when optimizing for the business goal, avoid sacrificing information users will find useful as it may decrease chances of ranking. Source: Rand Fishkin, Moz
