Abizy: Internet Blog for Marketers

If you’ve been running Google Ads for any amount of time, you’re probably aware that there’s generally a competitive aspect to any campaign that makes you want to monitor your vanity metrics around where you rank. In one of my former jobs, a senior leader would walk by every day and ask who ranked number one that day, us or the competition. The question wasn’t are we lowering our cost per acquisition or improving the overall metrics of the account, it was pure vanity and the desire to “win.” While “winning” in this way isn’t actually meaningful, it is important to pick your head up out of the sand from time to time and understand how your campaigns are performing vs. the competition. This helps you know who your actual competition is and how aggressive they are. These data points can be used to understand fluctuations in your own data. If your click-through rate is down, but you really haven’t changed anything, that doesn’t mean your competition isn’t on the move. Google recognized

Twitter patents and other publications reveal likely aspects of how tweets become promoted in the timeline feeds of users. Some of Twitter’s timeline ranking factors are very surprising, and adjusting your approach to Tweeting may help you to gain greater visibility of your Tweets. Based upon a number of key patents and other sources, I have outlined a number of probable ranking factors for Twitter’s algorithm herein. The Twitter timeline Twitter first began using an algorithm-based timeline back in 2016 when it switched from what was purely a chronological feed of Tweets from all the accounts one followed. The change ranked users’ timelines to allow them to see “the best Tweets first.” Twitter has since experimented with variations of this up to the present. A feed-based algorithm for social media is not unusual. Facebook and other social media platforms have done the same.  The reasons for this change to an algorithmic mix of timeline Tweets are pretty clear. A purely personal

Marketers are increasingly turning to automation to unlock new growth opportunities. Automated ads are quick, easy and simple to use. However, in a world of smart and automated strategies, optimizing advertising campaigns that outperform the competition can be challenging. Can marketers influence a smart or automated strategy? The answer may surprise you. A “secret” or not well-known tactic when it comes to Google Ads is that audience bid modifiers that are manually set can be used to help prioritize which audience list is served if a user is on multiple lists. For example, a higher bid modifier means your preferred list will be prioritized but not be used in the bid modifier in the auction itself. This is important for prioritizing high-value targets. Learn more by joining Torkel Öhman, CTO at Amanda AI, who explains how to optimize automated Google campaigns in his informative SMX Advanced session . After watching his presentation , you’ll be able to optimize your automated

Google has updated its rich results content guidelines to align better with the overall Google merchant guidelines thus disallowing rich results for products that are widely prohibited or regulated, or that can facilitate serious harm to self or others. These include, but are not limited to, weapons, recreational drugs, tobacco & vaping products and gambling-related products. New rich results guidelines. Google has updated the rich results product content guidelines to add this section: Don’t mark up content that promotes widely prohibited or regulated goods, services, or information that may facilitate serious and/or immediate or long term harm to self or others. This includes content related to firearms & weapons, recreational drugs, tobacco & vaping products and gambling-related products. Application. Google said this policy applies to all forms of rich result markup, including star ratings, prices, or availability information and more. This can impact products

You’ve likely heard by now that Google is updating Google Analytics from Universal Analytics (also known as GA3 or UA) to a new, upgraded version, Google Analytics 4 (GA4).  The migration for many of us from GA2 (Classic Analytics) to GA3 (Universal Analytics) was relatively painless 10 years ago. This migration isn’t quite as simple.  There are many differences between the current Google Analytics you’re likely using (UA) and the new version of Google Analytics (GA4), and not all of the features of UA are present in GA4.  Additionally, Google is pressing us to update now. As of July 1, 2023 , the free version of Google UA will no longer collect data.  That means that you need to seriously address your analytics plan as soon as possible to ensure that as of that date that your new GA4 property is tracking correctly and can provide you with accurate year-over-year data. Here’s how to migrate to Google Analytics 4. Phase 1: Create your GA4 property and launch it Of utmost importa

Google has updated its JavaScript SEO help document to add technical details on how to inject canonical link tags using JavaScript. Google added a new section titled “ properly inject rel=”canonical” link tag .” What is new. Here is the new section where Google recommends not to implement your canonical tags using JavaScript, but if you must, Google explains this is the proper way to do so. Google wrote: While we don’t recommend using JavaScript for this, it is possible to inject a rel=”canonical” link tag with JavaScript. Google Search will pick up the injected canonical URL when rendering the page. Here is an example to inject a rel=”canonical” link tag with JavaScript: Google added this warning stating “When using JavaScript to inject the rel=”canonical” link tag, make sure that this is the only rel=”canonical” link tag on the page. Incorrect implementations might create multiple rel=”canonical” link tag or change an existing rel=”canonical” link tag. Conflicting or multiple r

Sometimes the best SEO tools are free. Look no further than Google Sheets. While it’s not great at plotting ranking data (inverting the y-axis is always ugly), there are numerous ways to use Google Sheets for SEO. Here are 11 of the formulas and tips I find myself using for SEO on an almost daily basis – for keyword management, internationalization, content/URL management and dashboards. Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on. Processing...Please wait. SUBSCRIBE See terms. Google Sheets formulas for keyword management  V LOOKUP CONCATENATE FLATTEN LOWER =VLOOKUP(text,[range to search],[column number to return],[true/false])  V LOOKUP ( documentation ) VLOOKUP, which stands for “vertical lookup”, is arguably one of the very first Google Sheet formulas for SEO anyone learns when getting into the game. VLOOKUP allows you to essentially combine two data sets on common values, an almost lowbrow JOIN in SQL if you will. I gene