This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Google Posts is Testing Videos
Google My Business is allowing for 30 second videos to be uploaded by customers and by owners into Google Posts. Once you upload your video, Google says it could take 24 hours to display in the knowledge panel. You will have to make sure your videos are taken at your business location, include the people that work there or are directly pertaining to your location. Google can remove a video if the primary subject is not related to your business. The new tabs “by owner” and “by customer” in the dashboard will show who uploaded these videos. You can flag inappropriate ones that your customers may have uploaded through your GMB dashboard. Source: Bright Local
Price Extensions Now Live in Bing Ads
Announced Wednesday and now live in all Bing Ads accounts in the US, Advertisers will now find the option to add price extensions to their ads. They can be used to show prices for products with a description line of up to 25 characters. The prices in the price extensions need to exist on your landing page and that landing page can even be on a third-party retail site like Amazon. Price extensions are available for both mobile and desktop devices. Source: Search Engine Land
Tables Hurting Content Ranking
Google may not be displaying your site for branded search terms if your site is primarily displaying tables. It is recommended that tables are avoided when optimizing for voice searches and featured snippets. This is especially true if those tables are not mobile friendly. Graphs are also incompatible for voice search because the information contained is not easy to scan across the different lines. Tables are still beneficial for user experience but creating on page paragraph summarizes of the information will help to get better rankings. Source: Search Engine Journal
Facebook Updates A/B Testing Feature for Ads
Facebook as implemented an update to their A/B-testing capabilities for ads with it’s addition to the Quick Creation flow where advertisers are able to create ads in bulk. In addition, it is now possible to A/B test based on engagement objective which Facebook states allows you to “easily run a split test on ads optimized for post engagement, page likes and event responses.” Facebook has also added a new reporting dashboard that allows advertisers to track standard KPIs for split tests like CPC and CTR. Source: Marketing Land
Google’s Disapproval of Symantec PKI
Google previously announced its disapproval of the Symantec certificate authority (including Symantec-owned brands like Equifax and RapidSSL). Failure to replace these certificates will result in site breakage in the upcoming version of Chrome 66. If your site is using a SSL/TLS certificate from Symantec that was issued before June 2016, it will stop functioning in Chrome 66, and Chrome Beta users will begin experiencing these failures if sites do not replace their certificates. You will see a message in DevTools if your certificate needs to be replaced. Source: Google Blog
Analysis
Automated Rules to Test in AdWords
Matt Umbro covers several helpful automation rules you can set in your AdWords accounts today to help fine tune your campaigns. One of the most obvious rules you can set it to increase your CPC bids when specific requirements are met like a converting keyword that is under your CPA goal. Rules can also be set to pause ineffective keywords, where Umbro creates rules to isolate and pause keywords that are doing very little to help his last click conversions. An additional rule that can be set is one to receive emails when an ad is ineffective. In his example Umbro sets conditions for conversions being less than one and click volume being greater than 45. If these conditions are met, he receives an e-mail that alerts him of this performance and then reviews the ad metrics himself. Source: Matt Umbro, PPC Hero
Ways to Increase Mobile Engagement
Contributor to Search Engine Land, Kristopher Jones, outlines ways to improve your mobile conversion rates. In July, mobile page speed will become a ranking factor for Google. Jones says that to reduce site speed you’ll need to minify JavaScript and CSS, enable caching, and optimize images to smaller pixels. Integrating payment services like PayPal will help increase conversions for mobile. He also says to include a call to action above the fold and provide a visual response for each completed action so that users know a button worked properly. The number of clicks it takes to reach the checkout should be limited as much as possible. Source: Search Engine Land
