They’d give suggestions for account improvements and offer relevant research. In the unlikely event that a particular account ran afoul of Google’s policy, they would actively work to help get the account back into compliance. The more prominent clients did receive dedicated Google reps, but even the smaller agency clients could get assistance from the agency reps.

Unfortunately, Google moved away from this model. Agency reps are seemingly non-existent – only the most significant accounts get a dedicated Google representative, which is generally helpful. Still, suppose the client that needs help isn’t enterprise-level – what options do they have? Even a sizeable agency is forced to either call/email/chat with support or attempt to deal with the lower level “car-warranty” style account reps who only exist to meet their sales quotas and not help their assigned clients.

With that said, even the worst customer service experiences usually give some clear path to resolution. However, if the Customer Service Funnel is not only unclear but hallucinates (perhaps due to an imperfect AI), then not only is Google delivering a horrible customer experience that will cause advertisers to look elsewhere (as of now, good alternatives don’t exist, but they might at some point) but can materially harm new or existing business initiatives from companies that are entirely innocent of any misconduct.

I recently onboarded a new client who added their company credit card to the Google Ads account. The account was suspended immediately for suspicious payment activity, which was strange as this was a new advertiser.

I’ve seen old, abandoned accounts with outstanding balances cause problems for advertisers who want to get back into Google Ads and need to be made aware of the unpaid balance. I asked the client if this might have been happening. He didn’t think so, but his whole team was new, so something could have been set up before everyone joined the company.

If your account is suspended, you can’t call Google…you can only appeal. Both myself and the client filed appeals that were rejected – Google told us that this client owed them money in one of the rejected appeals.

Now, if the client were separate from our MCC, it’s likely that the story would end here, with the client not being able to advertise because we could never get past the appeal process. However, I called Google using our MCC account number and was able to talk to someone. The Google Rep said that the client did owe money, but all they could do was email the people who were listed as admins on the old account as a vehicle for restoring access to the old account. He told me those people had email addresses corresponding to my client’s web domain. He would not allow me to pay the bill, which I was perfectly willing to do (and I’ve never had another customer service incident in my life where I was not allowed to settle the total bill on demand).

Emails were sent to the admin email addresses listed on the file but everything stayed the same.

One day later, the suspension was lifted with no explanation, without getting access to the legacy account, and with no money paid to Google.

I am still trying to figure out how we got flagged or what caused the issue to be resolved. I have had customer service incidents where I appeared not to get anywhere with the rep, and after I hung up, the problem was magically solved. That might have happened here. However, in our suspension appeals, we clearly outlined the situation and offered to pay any outstanding balance…and got nowhere. If our client didn’t work with an agency that knew how to work through the system, they would have been excluded from being able to purchase ads on the largest, most necessary ad network on the planet with a 90+% search market share.

In 2024, Google will practically function as a utility, not unlike electricity/gas/garbage pickup. It’s perfectly OK to deny service if the customer doesn’t pay or abuses the system. However, if I were to move into a new residence (as an example), I would be able to access essential services from the outset.

Suppose Google wants to argue that their massive market share isn’t evidence of a monopoly. In that case, they need to promote fundamental fairness for all who wish to market their products, including fair access and a more transparent way of cleaning up these issues.

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The digital marketing ecosystem has experienced dramatic changes, particularly in the last few years. For example, Web 3’s metaverse provided brand marketers to think in new dimensions during the pandemic. More recently, ChatGPT made artificial intelligence approachable and exponentially more impactful on virtually every aspect of marketing. In this article, we explore digital marketing strategies and tactics that haven’t worn well in the past decade, to ensure your 2024 marketing plan is both timeless and forward-looking.

Building a digital marketing department
Marketing should be agnostic to media type, and so should the strategist be developing and implementing marketing campaigns. As such, companies need to conduct a skills assessment of existing marketing teams to determine who may need training or who may need to be replaced with talent that natively understands both digital and analog worlds. This obsolete strategy is still an issue for most marketing teams that have not focused on integration and will continue to haunt slow adopters.

Designing a website via internal stakeholder committee
The primary reason for the lack of user-centered design is that most websites are built by a host of departmental managers who have far too much say on colors, fonts, images, and copy. The problem with committee-based design is that these representatives make decisions based on their personal tastes and preferences versus those of the site’s intended user. While this approach is increasingly uncommon, it is still a very real issue due to the group thinking inherent in corporations.

Creating content for content’s sake
With rampant adoption of ChatGPT and similar generative AI platforms, content is easier to create than ever before. This trend has exacerbated the desire to focus on quantity of content over quality, which is only hurting brands in the long term. Successful brands will spend the time to research, develop, optimize, and syndicate content that matters to their constituents and works well across device types and screen sizes. At the very least, invest in high quality editors if you plan to cut copywriting staff due to increased ChatGPT reliance.

Doing black-hat SEO
Google has developed a detailed set of guidelines for search-friendly website design. If you follow their rules, you will be much more likely to rank for desired search terms. Even Bing operates on very similar terms: no IP-spoofing, redirects, hidden or duplicate text, etc. To boil it down, do good marketing and Google will reward you with higher rankings. Google’s E-E-A-T updates identified and penalized a significant number of websites for violating best practices, yet companies still feel the pull of the quick wins that black- and grey-hat SEO can supposedly provide. Big mistake. Play for the long game with compelling content, clean code, and the kind of site credibility and authority that can only be earned, not bought.

Avoiding landing page testing
Unfortunately, not much has changed over the past decade, in terms of landing page testing and optimization adoption across the marketing landscape. The companies that “get it” continue to invest and evolve their efforts, resulting in ever-increasing conversion rates. Far too many marketers, however, are too busy, skeptical, or unlearned regarding the benefits of landing page optimization (LPO). I believe a significant percentage of these remaining marketers will finally commit to testing, if not diving full-bore into LPO in 2024, especially with help from ChatGPT and similar AI-powered tools.

Focusing on engagement in social media
In the first wave of social media marketing (1995-2009), marketers focused on gaining followers and fans. The second wave of social media (2010-2014) focused on conversations and engagement efforts. The third wave (2015 and beyond) focused on three primary areas: collaboration, conversions and brand narrative. Smaller companies, business-to-business organizations, and profit-driven corporations should now focus more on conversion-based strategies and tactics that drive revenue. Bigger consumer brands will shift focus towards developing a brand narrative that helps consumers identify with the company and fit it into the picture a person has of themselves (i.e., shared values like environmental or social issues). Brands will focus from being “Liked” to being “Attached” to the consumer.

Paying third-party vendors to represent your brand in social media
The most common excuses for outsourcing social media management include a lack of internal resources and a lack of proficiency with social platforms. The bottom line is that nobody knows your brand better than your employees, partners, and other advocates. Let them oversee spreading the good word, not a low-paid college graduate working from home. I wish this were less common than it is, but many brands still feel the need to outsource their voice in social media, rather than building the resources in-house (with guidance from experts like us, of course).

Underestimating the power of video (and audio) marketing
I speak regularly about social media and search marketing and am a huge champion of multimedia content, especially video for marketing. I’m still amazed that the marketers to whom I present so often lack cohesive video (and audio) organic and paid content strategies. YouTube is still the world’s second largest search engine, so what are you doing to get into that conversation with consistently compelling content? Brands of all sizes and shapes also need a coherent TikTok and vertical video marketing strategy to be relevant in 2024.

Renting email lists
With the understanding that building an email database in-house is still a highly effective sales and marketing strategy, companies continue to test new strategies to grow their list. Some of the more effective methods of building a house email list include SEO, PPC, direct (mail) marketing, co-registration (email) with partners, contests (via social media platforms like X/Twitter and Facebook) and most importantly, search marketing. This has not changed, and thankfully, fewer organizations are renting low-quality email lists that typically generate a high percentage of spam complaints.

Sending unsegmented or untargeted emails
Despite the evolution of email marketing platforms, a significant percentage of businesses (particularly smaller ones with limited budget and bandwidth) continue to send out unsegmented or targeted emails. Spending the time to understand your email list by digging deep into the analytics and contact profiles, even with help from AI, can reap huge rewards. From there, create and target content based on indicated preferences, as well as demographic and psychographic information. Leveraging the power of AI now available in many email/CRM/marketing automation platforms, watch the value of each subscriber increase exponentially, with incremental effort.

Gaming online reviews
Most brands understand the power of social proof in the form of customer reviews. Unfortunately, too many brands are quick to “buy” or influence positive reviews. The result is the risk of being penalized by search engines, directories, and other review sites. The greater danger is consumers seeing through the charade and taking their business elsewhere. The short answer: create compelling and memorable customer experiences that will make them want to create and share positive reviews. Many companies are focusing on customer delight in 2015 and will bubble to the top as a result.

For a business to succeed in this increasingly complicated and noisy digital world, marketers must let go of obsolete ideas and embrace the concept of continually testing evolving techniques and technologies. The outdated digital marketing techniques outlined above are best retired in 2023, to free up bandwidth and budget for greater success in the years to come.

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On January 11th, I was honored to participate in a panel of esteemed digital marketing colleagues, hosted by SEMpdx. The title and theme of our panel was “The Future of Digital Marketing” (2022 Edition). My fellow panelists included: Tricia Davis-Payne with Webfor, Anna Madill with Avenue, Mike Rosenberg with Veracity and Shuree Jones with Rain the Growth Agency. The conversation was lively and insightful to the degree I felt obligated to share highlights and supporting articles. I hope you find these resources helpful in planning your 2022 digital marketing initiatives.

2021: What did we see and learn as search engine marketers?
• Influencer marketing is here to stay. All panelists agreed. If you don’t have a program in place, check out this article: Influencer Marketing Strategy Best Practices, Tips and Trends
• Voice search has yet to gain the traction we all expected, but it still has tremendous potential for knowledge-based industries. Learn more here: Best Practices for Voice Search and Position Zero Optimization Strategies
• Virtual and hybrid events are the new normal. If you haven’t built these events into your marketing, or haven’t marketed them effectively yet, check out this article: Leveraging Virtual Events to Engage Customers & Prospects
• NFTs, blockchain and cryptocurrency generated significant buzz last year, but how can brands and digital marketers take advantage of the emerging technology? This article sheds light: How Brands Can Use NFTs to Engage Consumers and Generate Revenue
• One theme that has only increased in intensity is the needs for brands to be socially and ethically responsible, or they risk losing customers. If you haven’t invested the time to understand this powerful buying behavior, this article may offer insights: How to market to the ethical consumer: 6 effective marketing strategies
• One of the more contemporary trends that impacts marketers and employers is The Great Resignation. It’s not a question IF you’ll be personally impacted, but WHEN. To learn more about what The Great Resignation means and how to mitigate employee exodus, check out this article: How to manage during The Great Resignation
• Another trend we’ve seen and will continue to see in 2022 is a renewed focus on the creation and optimization of multimedia content, including images and video. To learn more about video marketing optimization fundamentals, this timeless article is a good starting point: The Ultimate Guide to Video Marketing on YouTube

2022: How can we help businesses be more successful in the year(s) to come?
• While SEMpdx is rooted in search engine optimization (SEO), a majority of the topics we covered in our session fell outside of that core discipline. The one exception, however, was the prediction that Google’s Multitask Unified Model (MUM) will be a major factor in search rankings in 2022 and beyond. To read more about Anvil’s thoughts on MUM and other digital marketing trends, check out this SEMpdx blog post: 2022 Digital Marketing Predictions
• The moderator asked me to kick off the conversation about 2022 predictions, so I opened with my favorite prediction about ‘metaverse’ being the buzzword of 2022. Virtual reality (VR) worlds may not be ready for prime time, but marketers need to have a POV and start planning today. For more insights, check out this post: Marketing in the Metaverse
• Another hot button of mine and that of the Anvil team in 2022 is a deeper integration between paid and organic keywords and supporting search marketing strategies. While I’ve extolled the virtues of SEO & PPC integration for over a decade in my PSU SEM Workshop, it was refreshing validation to hear it directly from an SEO guru in a recent Anvil Brown Bag with Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive. This article sheds additional light on the peanut butter and chocolate of organic and paid search – Search incrementality: How paid and organic work together for better performance
• Due to the loss of third-party cookies thanks to Apple’s new OS, brands and advertisers are scrambling to produce alternative targeting options. One trend that has blossomed in late 2021 and will continue to bloom in the years to come is the idea of leveraging first-party data and reselling access to third parties. Big box retailers outside of Amazon, Target and Walmart are adding retail ad networks to their revenue streams. Learn what brands like Lowe’s, Macy’s and Kroger’s are doing from this article before you take the leap yourself: We Can Have Retail Media Networks And Privacy: 4 Principles
• One hot topic with the panelists is the growth of short-form video as a marketing tool in 2022 and beyond. TikTok is now a more popular domain than Google. Instagram and other short form video options on platforms like Facebook and YouTube validate that the format is here to stay (or return, if you remember Vine). To learn more about emerging short form video trends, read this article: 6 Short-Form Video Trends Online Marketers Should Watch in 2022
• On the other side of short-form video is live-streaming and its sister, live shopping. What began as a buzzword in 2021, live shopping has evolved into a viable ecommerce platform play in 2022. One part influencer, one part unboxing and one part ecommerce, live shopping provides brands new ways to reach consumers in a post-pandemic remote-shopping world. Evaluate your options by reading this article: Live Shopping Is Making A Comeback: Here’s What Your Business Needs To Know Now
• Due to the relative short panel duration, we weren’t able to cover all digital marketing trends or get too deep in any one prediction. As a result, I felt it would be prudent to share additional concepts and supporting articles for more context. These are just a sampling of the most topical trends to consider in 2022 that we didn’t get a chance to cover during the panel session:
o Five marketing experts share their 2022 trends
o Explore the top trends of 2021 according to Google Search
o Looking ahead: nine trends that will steer marketing in 2022
o Google’s Guide to User-Generated Content
o Ecommerce Trends: Social, BNPL & BOPIS
o Five Proven Ways to Pandemic-Proof Your Business

While we as panelists had less than an hour to share our thoughts and answer questions, the event was packed with insights. I recommend attending future SEMpdx events and joining as a member, if you agree with me that the ROI of membership is outrageous. Feel free to share your thoughts on 2022 marketing trends or react to our predictions in the comments section below.

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The Metaverse will evolve from distraction to (virtual) reality for brands
While many believe Facebook’s rebrand as Meta and focus on the metaverse is a strategic distraction from bad press fueled by the Facebook Papers, we believe at Anvil that its horsepower, deep investment in the metaverse, along with additional investment by other major players like Microsoft, will inspire many brands to dabble in the virtual world in 2022. While consumers maybe a few years from caring about the metaverse, early adopters will embrace the novelty and utility. We’re hoping that the 2022 iteration of the metaverse is more than just a glorified Second Life.

Web 3.0 will become ubiquitous
Consumers’ concern over data security and creating a safer online environment to share personal data will be driving forces that fuel the growth of Web 3.0 technology in 2022. The evolution of blockchain technology in particular will provide a safer user experience (UX) for consumers, where they will feel safe sharing first-party data and know exactly how third-party platforms are using personal data. Combined with improved AI functionality, semantic metadata and 3D graphics – Web 3.0 will deliver an improved and better UX for all users. As full data transparency is on the horizon, this will accelerate the transition and put control of data back to where it belongs – the user.

Video marketing will become a vital part of any online marketing strategy
Consumers rely increasingly on the video to make decisions about the products they are buying. Video platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok feature live streams, unboxing, and testimonial product videos, which are going to gain popularity in 2022. As a result, video optimization and advertising on TikTok and YouTube will be increasingly necessary. Google has also rolled out structured markup features like clip markup which help users find important individual parts of videos, increasing the need and value of optimization for commerce. Using new and emerging markups on a brand’s most popular videos will help to improve user experience and Google’s ability to digest and index the video content.

MUM will strengthen Google’s ability to understand more complex searches
Google is always working to get users quicker, more seamless access to information. MUM, or Multitask Unified Model, uses AI to formulate an understanding of the context behind searches and will have a greater influence on search results in 2022 and beyond. Google recently demonstrated how MUM works, showing that search results would attempt to fully answer a search query with text, imagery, maps, and more. With MUM, content strategies will need to provide unprecedented depth, in order to provide searchers with all the information in a single result. The days of providing only topical information on a given webs page in order to gain organic visibility in target searches are numbered.

OTT will gain traction as ad targeting options decrease
Security and privacy demands are creating problematic limitations with third-party cookies and data tracking. Facebook, Apple, and Google Chrome are limiting data collection capabilities. Social media and search engine platforms will become much more generalized, with decreased targeting capabilities. Ad platforms will eliminate audience targeting, limiting advertisers to first-party data collection. These changes will encourage more brands to explore connected TV, podcasts, and platforms like Spotify that have their own internal marketing platform where the user controls what content they want to see. Products like Google’s smart TV and the new Roku TV are allowing viewers to stream content and enjoy gaming, utilizing click-to-buy on-screen ad placements. Smart TVs will be getting smarter with shopping from your own home with enhanced OTT streaming advertising options.

More businesses will move to DTC eCommerce
Due to the pandemic, businesses ranging from psychiatrists to car dealerships have begun marketing and selling products and services direct-to-consumers (DTC) on their websites. Companies are tired of losing profit by selling wholesale to distributors and evolving technologies have made eCommerce approachable to even the smallest business. Even larger retail chains are starting to focus more on DTC eCommerce, limiting physical store locations, retail footprints, and headcount. Brands like Nike are limiting distribution of its footwear and apparel so they can sell more direct and other brands will follow suit in 2022. The additional margins gained by DTC eCommerce sales can be reinvested in digital marketing to further increase profitable revenue. We predict brands will sell on select marketplaces (like Amazon, Walmart.com, and Target.com) to augment reach and revenues, but will still rely primarily on DTC.

More companies will offer retail media networks leveraging first-party data
With the impending loss of third-party tracking cookies in 2023, companies and marketers alike will be exploring new opportunities to reach prospective customers. Companies such as Target, Walmart. Recently, Lowe’s launched its own media network, allowing advertisers to utilize its company’s first-party data and reach customers as they shop online. As the pandemic accelerated the adoption of online shopping, we expect retailers will offer additional advertising opportunities on digital storefronts in the coming year.

Third-party cookie data will begin to sunset itself
With the anticipation of platforms eliminating third-party cookie data, marketers are forced to produce workarounds. Even though Google has pushed out its third-party data sunset date to the end of 2023, users and businesses have been preparing for the loss of critical targeting data with various workarounds, including the increasing use of first-party data. With Google failing to find a viable solution that meets everyone’s needs thus far, we predict there will be some sort of industry compromise by mid-2022, resulting in third-party data naturally sunsetting by year’s end on most popular platforms.

Influencer marketing will fuel sCommerce
Influencer marketing has gained notoriety within the digital marketing ecosystem as an essential strategy in the past few years. At Anvil, we believe the next evolution for influencers is to become the foundation for successful social media eCommerce (aka sCommerce) in 2022. In addition to important metrics such as engagement rates, influencers will be commonly compensated based on a commission structure related to conversion rates (leads or sales). With a greater focus on performance metrics, influencers will achieve a higher level of credibility with brands. Micro-influencers will rise significantly in popularity due to their accessibility to small businesses and the appeal of being able to target nuanced audiences. Retail eCommerce brands invest in direct shopping formats on popular social platforms, including TikTok.

Multicultural representation in marketing will continue to increase in importance
The digital age, accelerated by COVID-19, has created a world that is more interconnected than ever before. The term “global village” carries increased weight as even extremely remote areas see mobile device use continuing to reach saturation point. The success of international content breaking into the US mainstream has also led to an acceleration in engagement and demand for global representation. South Korea’s Squid Game on Netflix is the latest example, following the Spanish global hit Casa de Papel (Money Heist). With content publishers leading the way, brand advertisers will follow suit, developing new strategies to maximize the relevance of multicultural inclusion within marketing messaging, including messaging from the US’s own backyard.

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When Larry & Sergey launched Google in 1998, they had no idea their fledgling company would become a global sensation and even become a verb found in the dictionary. Today, it’s difficult to avoid the behemoth’s extensive reach in your daily life, from checking email or talking on the phone to getting driving directions or even searching for holiday gift ideas. Despite a long history and high public profile, there are still many unusual facts about Google that escape daily dialogue and can provide lessons for marketers.
1. Humble Beginnings (to build upon). The earliest iteration of Google’s search engine algorithm was stored on ten 4 gigabyte hard drives (basically about the same storage as a low-end smartphone today). Larry and Sergey were both cost-conscious and practical. As a result, they built the storage tower for the hard drives out of Legos to make expansion easier. You can see the original tower on display at Stanford University today. Since then, Google has built one of the largest computers in the world. Google reminds us marketers to think in terms of low-cost initial investment, yet provide a foundation that allows for scalability across marketing campaigns and strategies.
2. Search and Destroy (the competition). Understand Google’s history to inform your marketing. John Battelle’s The Search provided more insights into how and why Google works than any other technical book I read in the early years. A key insight from the book: the underlying concept behind Google’s BackRub algorithm was inspired by the graduate students’ need to secure citations for senior dissertations from noted professors. Larry and Sergey determined search results would be more relevant based on ‘citations’ or inbound links, which are equivalent to votes. From there, Google has evolved the algorithm significantly to better address the impact of social media, advertising, spam, mobile and user experience. That said, inbound links and citations remain a significant component of the algorithm.
3. Common Goals (for common good). When I first started my career in search engine optimization (SEO) in 1996, there was a good deal of contention between designers (who liked to control the user experience graphically (instead of using HTML text), developers (who either wanted to cut corners or over-build websites with bloated code) and copywriters (who preferred to write flowery prose (instead of keyword-infused copy). In those early years, my SEO initiatives always took a back seat in discussions about user experience (think frames and Flash) vs. ensuring the website was visible to search engines (via keyword-infused code and copy). My job was made more difficult by far too many SEO consultants choosing to cheat their way into top rankings. Much has changed since then. While Google is still trying to display the most relevant search results possible, its algorithm is much more sophisticated, and puts higher weighting on exceptional user experiences. As a result, Google now rewards websites that are well-designed with clean code and unique copy (where context carries more weight). SEO professionals are now an integral member of the website development team and are treated as peers instead of crazy cousins. As such, Marketers that understand SEO needs to be part of the discussion early and often, when it comes to website development, are ahead of the game.
4. Deal or No Deal (flow). Google is multi-billion-dollar business today, but in the early years, even the founders couldn’t have guessed Google’s trajectory. In fact, in the early years, Larry and Sergey were interested in selling the company. In 1997, Yahoo! turned down a $2 million offer to purchase Google’s search platform. Deeply ironic considering Yahoo! then offered $3 billion dollars a few years later, only to turn around and sell themselves at a bargain price this year. In 1999, Google approached Excite to sell for a mere $1 million, but the CEO rejected the offer. Excite cratered a few years after that. Google is now valued at over $400 billion. Marketers must remember that timing is everything. Buy low, sell high, whether it be your business or gutter repair services.
5. Build AND Buy (technology). Since 2010, Google has averaged one company acquisition per week. That is nearly six years of weekly acquisitions of technology to enhance and improve Google’s ability to deliver quality content and experiences. Some of the most notable acquisitions during that time period include: Picasa, Urchin Software Corporation (Google Analytics), Android (OS), YouTube, DoubleClick, Zagat, Quickoffice (Google Docs), Waze (real-time traffic for Maps). As marketers, we are smart to stay on top of deal flow to anticipate which technologies or features we can expect to see incorporated into the Google suite in the coming months.
6. Ups and Downs (service). Google is such a core component of the Internet experience that the Web is literally crippled without it. On August 16, 2013, Google’s website went down for five minutes. During that brief time period, global Internet usage decreased by 40 percent. This is a good reminder to protect your website from internal and external threats and broaden your marketing efforts beyond the Google suite to mitigate risk and maximize performance.
7. Not Feeling So Lucky (in search). For many years, the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button took Google searchers directly to the most relevant page, as determined by the algorithm. That feature was finally phased out with the advent of Google Instant Search. Perhaps a bigger incentive than evolving technology to remove the button was the fact that “I’m Feeling Lucky” cost Google $110 million each year, as it bypassed the ads entirely. Sometimes, business decisions are based on revenue and can take some of the fun and mystery away from a brand. The challenge we face as marketers is to balance the need for a brand to maintain its uniqueness without compromising financial health.
8. Don’t Worry, Be Happy (with your visibility). As mentioned previously, Google’s number one goal is to keep its users happy by providing the best possible search results. This applies to paid search results (aka AdWords) as much as organic search results. As a result, there are times when your text ads do not show up in targeted search results (regardless of how high your bid is set). This is because Google has determined your ad (or messaging) is not the best match and they are willing to forgo the incremental revenue in order to prioritize a more relevant ad. This is especially true for informational-based queries. Marketers need to practice both patience and persistence in optimizing ad campaigns, from keywords and ad copy to offer and landing page design. In the end, you may end up paying less for a click with a more relevant ad than your competitor.
9. Take Care of Business (school). Larry and Sergey developed the BackRub algorithm while attending Stanford, which made it property of the University. As a result, Google negotiated a long-term license for BackRub with Stanford in exchange for $1.8 million worth of shares in Google. That license has since generated more than $300 million in income for Stanford. As marketers, we benefit from taking care of those that take care of us, whether that be employees, partners, vendors, investors or in Google’s case, educational institutions. Whether it be cash, equity or a simple hand-written thank you card, don’t forget your people.
10. Cover All Your Bases (make lemonade). From the very beginning, Google adapted quickly. In fact, one of the early investors misspelled the original name of the company, Googol, but instead of correcting the name on the check, they adopted it. Nowadays, Google is such a commonly-typed word in search bars that the company has purchased common misspellings of the name, including www.gooogle.com, www.gogle.com and www.googlr.com. Similarly, Google has figured out a clever way to circumvent firewalls in unfriendly countries like China by creating a mirror site: http://elgoog.im/. The site is a mirrored/reversed version of the old Google website, and as a result, the text doesn’t register in most firewalls and can be used just like a regular search engine where the normal Google site is blocked. Google reminds marketers to ensure you’ve protected your brand by buying and redirecting common misspellings. This is also a reminder to think globally with your marketing efforts, including traditionally challenging countries and markets.

My hope is that the above facts about Google and the associated lessons for marketers are of value and inspire new digital marketing strategies and tactics for 2021. Feel free to add your fun Google facts or lessons in the comments section below.

The post Ten things every marketer should know about Google appeared first on SEMpdx.

With Apple’s latest iOS update blocking cookies by default, consumers are more empowered than ever to control access to their personal information. As if that wasn’t enough of a challenge for publishers, agencies and advertisers, ad blockers continue to gain momentum, particularly with mobile users. This article provides a comprehensive overview of ad blockers and how publishers and marketers are adapting marketing to address increasing challenges with ad targeting.

According to the 2021 PageFair Adblock Report, an estimated 40 percent of US adults block online ads on computers and phones. While the number of people using ad blockers has held steady at ~250 million for the past few years, adoption has doubled on mobile devices the past five years to nearly 600 million. The primary reasons for ad blockers, according to the survey, is to avoid interruption and annoyance. Other common motivations include protection against malware (62 percent) followed by privacy (58 percent). According to Statista, 27 percent of Internet users currently use some form of ad blocker.

Publisher Strategies to Address Ad Blockers
Publishers are increasingly threatened by the potential loss of revenue; while advertisers are concerned about reduced visibility and wasted spend. The problem has gotten so big that German publisher Axel Springer sued the creator of AdBlock Plus for lost revenues in 2016, a case that is still in court today. The courts have favored ad blocker Eyeo this far, but Axel Springer isn’t giving up easily. This trend may lead to a larger contingent of publishers, advertisers and brands forming a lobbyist group to eradicate the technology.

Some publishers are not outwardly worried about the impact of ad blockers and are conducting business as usual. Other publishers are uncertain of the future and are doubling-down on short-term revenue maximization by adding new inventory including auto-play videos, welcome ads, takeovers, pop-ups and page wraps. A few hold-outs are trying to take a stand against ad blockers and are finding that approach challenging. Below is a recap of the primary strategies’ publishers have taken to address ad blocker proliferation over the past decade.

Staying the course
While this is the most common approach currently, it is not a sustainable strategy. Some publishers are not outwardly worried about the impact of ad blockers and are conducting business as usual. A subset of those publishers is uncertain of the future and doubling-down on short-term revenue maximization by adding new inventory including auto-play videos, welcome ads, takeovers, pop-ups and page wraps. This is equivalent to fueling the ad blocking adoption fire. Long-term, publishers taking this approach will have to change course or risk going out-of-business.

Embracing adoption
A small minority currently, some publishers (typically with minimal advertising) see opportunity in the adoption of ad-blocking software. These publishers can offer unique native advertising or advertorial that is becoming a growing segment and appealing to brands stymied by ad blocking on larger ad-driven websites. Vendors have also sprung up to take advantage of the evolving ad blocker industry. PageFair measures how many people block ads on publisher sites and allows publishers to display discreet ads to ad block software users through the platform. Secret Media uses a “polymorphic encryption algorithm” to accomplish the same task. Companies like Sourcepoint provide a content compensation platform to address ad recovery for advertisers and publishers.

Buying into ad blockers
While taking a good deal of heat, big players like Microsoft and Google are taking a strategic approach by paying to get ads whitelisted by default within the Ad Block Plus software. Irony is abundant: advertising platforms are paying to avoid getting their ads blocked by third parties and the default blocking of ads also creates a moral dilemma. By definition, default ad blocking would violate the principle of network neutrality, which holds that internet providers should treat all types of traffic equally. The conversations are just getting started on this front and look for large publishers and advertisers to fuel the flames.

Developing reward or loyalty programs
When all else fails, some publishers are putting money where their mouths are. Conde Nast, Time and New York Magazine are now rewarding visitors to view ads by providing incentives like points redeemable at select retailers or game credits. The strategy is designed to drive more traffic, ad views and inventory. This is neither a new tactic (first used in the mid- to late-nineties) nor is it proven to be highly effective, as participants are typically only visiting to earn rewards rather than for the content or the ads. Regardless, look for more publishers to test this approach in the near future.

Improving the user experience
Since a majority of workarounds are not viable long-term, smart publishers are looking at alternatives. Undeniably, publishers will benefit from creating the best possible user experience by building in advertising options that are seamless and/or add value. Focusing on site speed, minimized but expandable ad formats and native advertising can create a win-win for all parties (publishers, advertisers and consumers). In the end, compelling content will drive readership and creative ad formats. Sponsorships or endorsements may be the best compromise to keep publishers in business, advertisers connected and consumers happy. This is the solution that will ultimately provide the greatest return for publishers.

Educating readers
An increasing number of publishers are taking a more direct, transparent and collaborative approach. These sites have chosen to educate ad blocker users regarding the impact of the lost revenue to the publishers and request they whitelist the website to enable the ads. Wired, Mixcloud and others have seen success with this approach. I predict this will become the de-facto starting point for a majority of publishers in 2016, as it has a relatively low cost and takes the high road. That being said, the efficacy of this approach is dubious at best, based on historical data (that readers prefer ad-free and cost-free news and information).

Going rogue
Some publishers are utilizing technology workarounds to subvert ad blockers, including tweaking URLs and using URL shorteners. This is of course a cat and mouse game that will be difficult for publishers or ad blockers to win. The Washington Post has taken to blocking the blockers, detecting when visitors are using an ad blocker and asking them to turn it off before they can view content. Due to the never-ending escalation of costs associated with this approach, I predict this will be one of the least popular strategies to combat ad blocking. Some companies are taking advantage of the conflict and are developing alternative solutions for consumers and publishers. Optimal.com is a “smart subscription service for all the content on the web, minus the ads. Time will tell if these options are appealing to readers, as they are not likely favorable to publishers or advertisers in their current format.

Lobbying and pursuing legal action
While publishers are increasingly threatened by the potential loss of revenue, advertisers are concerned about reduced visibility and wasted spend. The problem has gotten so big that German publishers sued, Eyeo, the creator of AdBlock Plus earlier this year for lost revenues. French publishers are considering doing the same. The courts have favored Eyeo this far, however. This trend may lead to a larger contingent of publishers, advertisers and brands forming a lobbyist group to eradicate the technology. The challenge with the legal approach is extremely high costs with long odds. The strong-arm approach also does little to engender trust or respect from readership.

Building a paywall
Another approach to thwarting ad-blocking is to create a paywall (a system that prevents Internet users from accessing web page content without a paid subscription) so that paying users are able to skip advertising all together. Paywalls are the flip-side of ad-blocking software, in that you pay the publisher for the ability to avoid ads, instead of ad blocking software. For example, The Guardian is inviting users who choose to block ads to support the paper by becoming paid-up members. YouTube and The Next Web are planning to take a similar approach. Alternately, a “premium content” strategy can be positioned as more consumer-friendly. Instead of penalizing visitors using ad-blockers by creating a paywall, publishers can reward visitors by offering them additional benefits or access when disabling ad-blockers.

Playing hardball
A fringe group of publishers are taking a hardline approach to prevent ad blocker users from accessing content. Video streaming and media sites like Hulu and UK’s ITV and Channel 4 have taken this angle. Forbes has developed a hybrid approach by both hiding content from ad blocker users and promising an “ad light” experience (no autoplay videos or animation) to those that turn off their ad blockers. GQ is a firm but practical approach. Site visitors interested in reading articles instead receive a popup asking to turn off their ad blocker or pay .25 cents.

The smartest approach, in my humble opinion, is to improve the user experience with smarter and more user-friendly layouts, ad formats (i.e. native advertising, video and cinemagraphs) and generally reducing the number of ad options. The idea is that attention will be divided among fewer ads and improve performance. The publisher can also charge more for each ad and the brands and agencies can spend more time developing compelling creative. Advertisers may migrate to other (social) platforms and solutions, including Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Brand Advertiser Strategies to Address Ad Blockers
The best way for brands and creatives to effectively mitigate the impact of ad blockers, is to understand the motivations behind usage. Once brand advertisers (and publishers) address consumer concerns about digital ads, lost revenues can be mitigated. According to Juniper Research, total revenue lost due to ad blocking technologies reached nearly $28 billion in 2020.

With so much to lose, brands must get serious about addressing consumer concerns. Let’s take a deeper look at key motivators for using ad blockers and associated mitigation strategies.

1. The ads are annoying. Bad creative can be downright irritating. Recommended fix: invest more time on development of compelling creative that resonates with the target audience. Spend more time and effort on market research, strategic planning and testing, to hone the creative.
2. The ads get in the way of what I’m trying to do. While intrusive ads (think pop-ups and expandable ads) can generate a higher number of clicks, it is not usually because people find the creative or product compelling. Similar to mobile devices, people tend to click accidentally on intrusive ads. This only infuriates the user and can result in a negative brand perception. Recommended fix: buy ad placements that are less-intrusive or completely non-intrusive. Examples might include sponsorships vs. display ads. According to recent research, one in three users was positive toward an ad-light experience with fewer advertisements shown in exchange for turning off their ad blockers.
3. The ad is irrelevant to me. As web surfers, we tend to ignore irrelevant ads, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a negative impact and inspire blocker usage. Recommended fix: invest more time in audience segmentation and targeting. Understand your audience motivators and preferred media outlets and have the discipline to actively manage digital campaigns for optimal ROI. Run-of-site or run-of-network ad buys are a lazy approach and key driver of ad blocking.
4. I find the ads too intrusive. If you’ve surfed the web for work or play in the past year, you’ve probably experienced intrusive ads, including pre-roll on YouTube or interstitials on large publishers. Overlay ads are popular because they demand the user’s attention and advertisers can guarantee impressions. Unfortunately, users find these ads frustrating. Recommended fix: See #3. Stay away from intrusive ad buys. Look for alternatives, per #2.
5. The pages tend to load faster when adverts are blocked. Any web developer will agree that fewer ads = faster download speeds = better user experience. In fact, Google has indicated site speed impacts rankings in search results. Unfortunately, this insight conflicts with a publisher’s need to generate revenue. Recommended fix: consider ad buys on websites with limited inventory, elegant user experience or perceived faster download times. Also consider creating ads that are small in file size that minimize impact on the user experience.
6. It leads to a saving of my mobile data. This is perhaps the most difficult to combat but is thankfully the least important of the top motivators. Recommended fix: not much you can do here, unless you plan to buy those viewing your ads additional data on their mobile plans. Perhaps suggest they view the website on wi-fi or at work. Yeah, right.

Parting Thoughts
Advertisers and creatives are in a tough spot due to growth of ad blocking (and a cookieless future). I’ve mentioned a few mitigation strategies above, based on the top six motivators. Here are a few additional thoughts from other industry influencers.

During a panel at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Randall Rothenberg, president-CEO of the IAB suggested that brands should “serve people and not impressions through better creative.” The panelists also suggested less intrusive ad formats with better targeting. In another panel at the same event, PepsiCo’s president Brad Jakeman said “Ad-blocking is the best thing that has happened to this industry” arguing it will drive the industry to act more like entertainment brands.

My fellow teammates at Anvil came up with additional workaround strategies for ad-blocker users. The first strategy is to get “white-listed” by following ad blocker best practices in order to advertise through ad blocker networks or related technology platforms like PageFair and Ghostery. The second is my foundational recommendation from previous articles: native advertising. Create your own content that is so compelling that nobody cares that it is technically considered advertising.

Additional workarounds include in-app advertising (which can still be considered intrusive) but users may be more tolerant depending on the application and creative. Increasing engagement levels can also decrease user frustration. Consider unique ad formats that incorporate multimedia. This is a riskier approach, as it can increase download times and be considered even more intrusive than static ads.

Conclusion
At its core, ad blocking software is a powerful response by consumers tired of poorly executed and placed creative. Brands and agencies that heed the call will invest more time on developing data-driven creative, further audience segmentation, improved targeting and thoughtful media placement. Publishers must also do their part to provide more options for advertisers that address many of the consumers’ biggest complaints. Consumers have voiced their concerns and the advertising industry is now starting to listen. The result should be a better experience for all parties involved. At least we hope that is the case.

The post Ad Blockers: The Impact and Implications for Publishers and Advertisers appeared first on SEMpdx.

Advertising: Amazon Will Eat Google and Facebook’s Lunch
You may be aware that many product searches start on Amazon. Amazon, smart agencies and brands are already well-aware (that includes Anvil of course). What we see changing most in 2020 is Amazon’s ability to improve its advertising options for brands and sellers alike, especially in the voice search realm (we’ve been wrong about this in the past, but we really feel it this year!). Amazon Advertising is one of the few high growth areas of its business lines and will make greater strides in 2020, taking more market share from Google and even Facebook. Make sure you have an Amazon marketing strategy for your product business in 2020 or get left in the dust.

Display Ads: Animated GIFs, Video and Interactivity will Replace Image Ads
Static image ads on social platforms will start to fall away and videos, animated GIFs and interactive ads will supplant the 25-year-old ad format on popular platforms like Google and Facebook. This trend is already starting to occur, with video becoming increasingly prevalent. The reason is obvious: interactive and motion-oriented ad formats are more engaging, memorable and tend to convert better. While static imagery is still a majority of ad format inventory, that will change by the end of 2020. Brands and agencies designing ads in animated, interactive and video formats will take a leadership role and stand out in a crowded marketplace.

SEO: Structured Data Strategy will be More Important than Ever Before
In 2019, “0” or ‘no-click’ searches surpassed regular clicks on organic and paid links in search results. As a result, brands will need to become intimate with structured data, most commonly powered by schema markup. As more searches move to mobile devices, users are not scrolling down the page, as they expect the first result they see to answer their query. Similarly, with voice search, users expect the first search result to be the best answer to their query. Marking up content with multiple types of structured data to secure the featured snippet real estate will be more important than ever. Sites who do not take advantage of structured data will see their site slip down the results page and will ultimately lose traffic to competitors with strong structured markup strategies. Google wants to be able to provide an answer to a user query as fast as possible, and with structured data on a page Google can more easily understand and compartmentalize the information on you site. With that better understanding, Google will be able and more likely to serve your content as a result when it is applicable to a query. Routinely making sure the structured data implemented on your site is error-free and up-to-date should be a required part of every ongoing SEO strategy.

SEO: Google Will Mandate That All Websites Be Voice Search Compliant
Anticipating the continued proliferation of smart speakers and digital voice assistants through 2020, Google will proactively mandate that all websites be voice search compliant by the end of 2020. Currently, over 40 percent of searches are voice-activated and that will continue to increase, likely becoming most searches by 2021. Website copy and content will have to be voice search friendly to rank well in Google searches. Brands will need to utilize structured data (aka schema markup or rich snippets) to power the ‘best answer’ on smart speakers or position 0 on screens. Site structure and content will also need to be altered to better answer questions commonly asked via voice assistants and smart speakers. Websites that lack structured data will be penalized by Google. This prediction expands on the previous structured data trend.

SEO: Augmented Reality Will Play a Bigger Role
Imagine virtually trying out clothes from your favorite brands without leaving your home. Augmented Reality (AR) can make this a reality. AR provides brands an opportunity to overlay information in video, text, or image format onto everyday surroundings, objects and real-world locations. Nearly 80 percent of the information the brain takes in is visual. By providing information in a visual medium, that also has the spatial nature of augmented reality, brands are giving the brain a very intuitive way of accessing and understanding information. ECommerce will benefit the most from AR implementation, as will destinations, automotive and other complex sales. Brands like adidas and Converse have already implemented AR, earning higher conversion rates with fewer product returns.

Email Marketing: The Flywheel Will Displace the Traditional Sales Funnel
More companies will be moving away from the traditional sales/marketing ‘funnel’ to the Flywheel model in 2020 in order to focus on creating experiences that engage and empower customers. Originally created in 1898, the AIDA (Awareness/Interest/Desire/Action) funnel model is a linear approach that focuses on attracting new customers and engaging them in a business or service to turn them into a quantifiable lead. The flywheel approach takes an innovative view of the buyer journey and uses all client-facing roles such as customer service, marketing, and sales to interact with customers at every stage. Attracting, engaging, and delighting customers even past the point of purchase – so companies continue to interact with customers instead of treating them as one-time-only prospects. The customer is the lynchpin, with the flywheel itself divided into three equal segments, each representing stages along the customer journey: attract, engage, and delight. Each area creates energy and passes it along to the next, with the delight phase feeding back into attract. Note: Anvil was not paid by HubSpot to endorse its model, we just agree with the methodology and hope for greater awareness and adoption.

Email Marketing: Push Notifications Will Replace Email
Email is going the way of the dinosaur, maybe not next year, but in the coming years. Starting in 2020, however, there will be a notable shift to push notifications and chatbots as viable replacements, especially for brands targeting Gen Y/Z, consumers and retail environments. Push notifications are alert style messages that can be sent to a user via desktop or mobile web, depending on context. At least twice as many people today sign up for web push notifications, compared to newsletter registrations. Only the top 10 percent of the email marketers can achieve a newsletter sign-up rate that matches the performance of push notifications. The average time that passes before the recipient opens a newsletter is 6.4 hours. With push notifications, the recipient will see the message immediately. The updates to the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) and stricter filters have dented the potency of email marketing, which will be further compromised by the CCPA legislation. As alluded to earlier, younger, digital-native audiences favor fewer touchpoints and other methods of communication than email, when engaging brands.

Social Media: Performance Metrics Will Replace ‘Likes’
Those following social media closely are likely familiar with Instagram’s recent decision to hide “Likes” from followers. With the proposed change, only account owners and select third-party platforms will have access to that data. While influencers and marketers alike have voiced concerns about the change, it does provide an opportunity for everyone to be smarter about social media strategies, especially evaluating influencer marketing programs. For example, influencers will need to up their game to become more professional about how they represent their potential impact, focusing on reach and engagement rates over Likes. This trend will also push brands to adopt performance models based on transactional goals. The social platforms, especially Instagram and Pinterest, are making buying product easier than ever, so the timing is ripe for change.

Social Media: Consumers will Drive Alignment and Transparency in Influencer Marketing
Moving forward, look for brands and influencers to create better alignment and transparency. According to research, 84 percent of consumers believe authenticity is important when choosing influencers to follow. More compelling: only 11 percent of influencers are CMA and FTC-compliant when disclosing relationships with sponsoring brands. Millennials are increasingly skeptical of businesses’ motives and impact on society, according to Deloitte. As a result, brands looking to target Gens X, Y and Z will need to be more intentional about how they select and engage influencers based on core values and fit vs reach. Another trend that will go together with transparency and alignment is a shift to “always-on” instead of project-based influencer campaigns. The writing is on the wall for brands and agencies, especially for brands targeting younger consumers, to plan accordingly.

Social Media: TikTok Will Lose Momentum – Relegating It to a Snapchat Knockoff
While we’ve seen a good deal of hype and momentum built around TikTok this year, marketers are still trying to figure out how they can use it to their advantage. It is true that TikTok saw incredible growth this year (over 500 million active users in Fall 2019), which earned it the title “social platform of 2019.” But’s also true that signups are coming to a near grinding halt. As a result, parallels can be made with Snapchat’s adoption history – incredible growth, everyone joins, signups slow, users leave/become less engaged. We believe TikTok will figure out how to utilize ads more effectively in 2020, but we don’t think user engagement will sustain and the platform will end up in the same purgatory as Snapchat. It will become an afterthought as brands evaluate platforms on which to target and invest. The one exception to this prediction, is if you’re looking to reach a very, very broad audience within a certain *cough* young demographic (and China as a growth marketplace).

We hope to get good grades when we review our 2020 digital marketing predictions at the end of the year. Let us know what you think of our 2020 digital marketing trends in the comments section or add your own predictions. May your 2020 be full of fulfilled predictions!

The post 2020 Digital Marketing Predictions from Anvil Media appeared first on SEMpdx.

Whether it’s a site-wide or partial match, manual actions applied to a domain by Google can see organic search traffic appear to fling itself off a cliff.

Original source

While the previous example is a reported penalty, recovering from an algorithmic penalty can sometimes be hard to diagnose. It can also be harder to recover from, as when a manual action is applied to a site you have a direct connection with Google to let it be known you fixed issues that they identified.

The most frustrating part of receiving a Google penalty is not receiving much (or any!) information from Google on what exactly they are seeing that is causing the penalty.

This can lead any webmaster or SEO agency down rabbit holes of “What ifs…” which can often lead to dead ends and wasted time.

In this guide we will be covering how to help diagnose any penalties you may be receiving from Google – both manual action or algorithmic – and ways to help recover.

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First a quick word – sometimes a penalty can be extremely complicated. That’s when you likely need Google penalty removal experts like MKG Marketing Inc. to step in and be a guiding hand. If you’ve tried to follow this guide and haven’t had much success or if it seems too daunting, please get in touch with us today.
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How do you know if a site has a Google penalty?

Knowing if a site has a penalty can either be extremely easy or a little difficult to diagnose.

Manual Actions

If you have claimed your website at Google Search Console, you will receive a message in your Google Search Console account that tells you (at a high level):

• What the problem is
• Why it’s a problem (why it goes against Google’s guidelines)
• Steps on how to fix

You’d think Google would give you as much information about the problem, why it’s a problem and a clear path to how to fix… but they don’t.

For the above example, which is a partial match penalty due to unnatural inbound links, the best Google gave was two different URL ‘examples.’

To give you an idea of how insignificant this help was, the actual number of unnatural inbound links our Google Penalty Recovery Service SEO team found was five digits.

Algorithm Penalty

Diagnosing an algorithmic penalty from Google is a little trickier in that you won’t be receiving any messages from Google about it.

Instead, you’ll have to rely on your web analytics platform and viewing or potentially looking at the last 90 days worth of data in your Google Search Console profile… though we’d recommend the former over the latter.

What you’ll need to do is view your Google organic traffic by day. Using your web analytics platform that hopefully shows a nice line graph of performance or by exporting the daily data and using Excel for a chart will make it significantly easier.
Once you see any big drops, cross-reference the date to a trustworthy Google algorithm change resource such as the Moz or Search Engine Land resources.

Sometimes a drop will be a day earlier or later than the reported date… we’ve actually seen a latent effect up to two weeks after a date.

Sometimes, you’ll see a drastic drop of Google organic sessions… other times you might see a real gradual slope. It depends on the penalty based on the algorithmic update.

You you have a Google Penalty. Now what?

You’ve received either a message in your Google Search Console profile about a manual action or you’ve diagnosed an algorithmic penalty by looking at your web analytics and finding a drastic or gradual drop around a specific Google algorithm update.

First of all – take a deep breath. And breathe. Many websites receive Google penalties and recover. You’ve just made an important step that many do not: knowing that you have a Google penalty applied to a website.

Now begins the hard part.

There are two very different ways of going about trying to get in the good graces of Google. It depends on whether you had a manual action or if you’ve found an algorithmic penalty. We’ll go over ways to fix both.

How to fix a Google Penalty – Manual Action

The nice thing (?) about a manual action penalty is that Google is telling you what the issue is.

Now – you just need to be smart about finding the core cause and fixing any issues because of it.

Let’s pretend you received a penalty for unnatural inbound links to your site. Like we mentioned, Google will give you likely an example URL or two of these types of inbound links.

It’s now your job to go about finding these inbound links that exist on the World Wide Web and fixing them.

In order for Google to approve your reconsideration request, they need to see that you spent a significant amount of time trying to fix the issue.

Think back in high school in your algebra class. In order to receive credit for a correct answer, you didn’t just give the answer to a problem; you had to show your homework about how you arrived at your answer.

For an approved reconsideration request, this type of thinking also applies.

Google can apply a manual action for a whole slew of reasons. Really, you can classify the 12 different ways into three different buckets:

Unnatural links

You’ll need to track down all instances of unnatural inbound links and fix them by either:

• Contacting site owners
  Submitting a disavow file with URLs of the links you’d like to disavow

This can be time consuming. Rather, it will be time consuming. We like to use Open Site Explorer to find inbound links for us to then start looking to scrape for webmaster contact details or to include in a disavow file.

The thing is: each instance will be different. You’ll need to identify what the pattern is with the unnatural inbound links to find all of those types of inbound links.

An example: one of our Google Penalty Recovery Service clients had old widget links that pointed back to their website. We were able to find all instances because the widget links appended a parameter at the end of the URL back to the site. By using OSE, we were able to find all of those instances and start getting to work.

Thin content

If you receive a thin content penalty, you’ll need to figure out what pages on your website quality as being thin.

We like to use Screaming Frog SEO Spider to run a full site crawl and look through the output, specifically the HTML columns of word count and text ratio. These two items are our main identifiers for any URLs that have thin content.

We additionally like to look for pages that have a significant of outlinks, as it could be an indicator of a page set-up during a time many years ago for “SEO purposes” or even very old, deeply hidden link farms that some websites forgot even exist on their domain.

After finding all of the URLs, you’ll then need to decide:

Do we keep these URLs and add unique, beneficial content to them or do we delete these URLs?

We also look at page authority (e.g. ranking power) and inbound links to all URLs to make these decisions.

Web hosting / HTML issues

There’s a whole slew of reasons why you might receive a manual penalty due to spammy hosting or unnatural ways you try to use the code on your site in a malicious way to rank for terms. This includes things like cloaking, structured data that shouldn’t exist on a page (such as review JSON-LD schema code for pages of which do not have reviews listed on them) and hidden text (typically by deploying text that is the same color as the background color, allowing search engines to ‘read’ the text but users to not see it naturally).

For security issues, you’ll need to review your server logs or hosting account for any issues. This is very different based on what host you use and type of server it is on.

For items like cloaked images or other code considerations, you can use Screaming Frog SEO Spider to look at things like page size, to look for any pages with a bloated number. Also investigate any plugins that you might have installed, if you have a WordPress website, and ensure they are reviewed well.

After fixing: the reconsideration request

Perhaps the most important element of all of the work you’ll be doing is crafting your reconsideration request to overturn the applied penalty.

Writing a comprehensive, complete request that shows your homework is crucial in Google accepting it or. denying it and asking you to do more work to fix.

We’ve found that by including some specific items, you can have greater success at having an accepted reconsideration request:

• Show your work. You want to be keeping a running tally of all of the work you’ve done, even if it’s simply a checklist of items you’ve gone through. Examples we’ve included are lists of webmasters (yes, including email addresses) we’ve contacted to try to get them to remove a link, a timeline of changes deployed on a website for bolstering content or removing URLs and adding redirects, and even listing social media accounts we had our client’s site reach out and try to contact to remove links. To make this super easy, have your “homework” be GSheets or GDocs and supply links within your reconsideration request.
• Hired help. By including the name of a company or consultant you hired to help perform the fixing work, you are showing to Google that you’re using actual money resources and have taken this penalty seriously. Bonus points if they’re a certified partner.
• A written timeline of events. Even if your Google Sheet or Doc shows it, write out a timeline of events and steps you took to fix the issue in the actual request. Be thorough and show attention to detail.

You’ll typically wait 1-2 weeks to hear back after submitting your reconsideration request.

If you receive a notice saying that they have not approved the reconsideration request, don’t fret: you aren’t restricted to waiting for a certain amount of time to re-apply. But you will need to absolutely put in more work to show you took the disapproval seriously.

How to fix a Google Penalty – Algorithmic

You’ve identified the algorithmic update that prompted your organic search traffic to take a nosedive. Great! Now what?

You need to understand the type of algorithmic update, what it took into consideration, identify the problem content or link issues, and fix them up.

Types of Google algorithm updates include:

• Content. Typically known as Google Panda updates, these have been rolling out for several years now. Other content-focused updates include updates such labeled as Phantom and RankBrain.
• Inbound Links. Typically known as Google Penguin updates, these have also been rolling out for several years now.
• Other. A whole slew of typically smaller updates that have rolled out that target specific algorithmic updates, including Pigeon (focus on local listings), Payday (targeting websites that had spammy pages) and more.

Unfortunately, you’ll go about fixing your site differently based on the type of algorithm update you identified as being the issue.

For content, it’ll be about identified spammy or “thin content” that exists on your site and either deleting the page or bolstering the content with unique, worthwhile information.

For inbound links, it’ll be about identifying spammy inbound link practices that happened in the past and setting up a disavow file to make them “not count” as part of your inbound link profile.

Other algorithm updates can sometimes be a bit tricker: Pigeon is looking at your site from a local query perspective and identifying any issues. Payday is much like content where you’re looking for low quality content on your website.

So it goes.

The hard part about an algorithmic penalty is the time to recovery and tracking it. You typically want to make a change and wait a couple of weeks to measure impact. If you have identified, let’s say, five things you want to fix, you want to prioritize what may have the most impact and start there.

Typically, you’ll see recovery within two months time if you fixed the issue. You will likely not see a drastic uptick in organic search sessions but more of a gradual normalization of traffic.

You’ve fixed the penalty, now: how do you recover?

Recovery happens once the reconsideration request is approved for manual actions; you typically see a fairly noticeable bump of organic traffic 2-4 weeks after approval.

For algorithm fixes, you have to wait 1-2 months to see if traffic is rebounding to a normal state.

For both, you can amplify the gains made short-term and long-term by having a trusted SEO partner on your side. When you start having pages rank competitively again is the perfect time to have refreshed on-page SEO practices in place. Or when you have abolished a certain amount of inbound links, replacing them with trusted quality links is a great way to start re-establishing your authority on a subject and improving your domain authority.

Any questions? Or have any tried-and-true ways you fixed any manual actions or algorithm Google penalties? Please share in the comments!

The post Google Penalties: A Guide for Manual Action Removal and Recovery – 2017 Edition appeared first on SEMpdx.

These folks can tell them what they want to hear, and deliver a product that seems fine to the client, without them knowing there may be harm headed their way down the road.

8 Out of 10 Clients Don’t Trust You

A couple of weeks ago, David Mihm, Mike Blumenthal and Mary Bowling had their 10 minute video hangout  and the first part talked about SEO snake oil.

In the beginning of the video, they talk about a study showing that only 20 percent of SMB’s trust their SEO & PPC firms.

All three of them agree (from the transcript) that Google bears some responsibility as an enabler…

But People Trust Google

In the video, David goes on to mention another trust survey by Alignable that shows Google “at the very top of their list”.  While I couldn’t find the survey he was referring to, I did find this one that has Google trusted at #4 among tech companies.

People do trust Google, so therefore, a company using a Google Partner logo is going to benefit. That’s obvious. This is why over the years, there have been thousands of variations of Google logos appearing on peoples websites.

Google Badges Used to be Clear and they said “Click to Verify”

As you can see from the images above,  there are a variety of legitimate and fake badges that have come along over the years, but the real ones were clear about exactly what that badge meant. A badge that says “Ad Words Certified” says what it means, and there wasn’t much wiggle room for the companies that owned or used them.

Now, in order for a partner to use the logo on their website they are supposed to link back, but in some cases they won’t (surprisingly often), and I’d bet that most consumers don’t even know that it’s supposed to.  The old “Adwords Certified Partner” logo not only was clear about what the certification meant, but it also said “Click to Verify” which I think is important.

The “New” Google Partner Logo is Misleading

When the Trusted Photographer and Google Trusted store came along, I sort of assumed we would have “Google Trusted SEO’s” one day.  I figured the Adwords program would expand and there would continue to be new knowledge and capability certifications in a lot of IM disciplines, from Webmaster Tools to Local SEO, and maybe even web developers, and this would all lead to different badges and certifications.

Instead, nearly two years ago, Google changed their logo to simply read “Partner”.  All the logo actually means is that the company or individual is Adwords Certified, but that’s not what Google says…

This is the topic that I brought up to Gary Ilyes of Google during the Pubcon speakers enclave in October.  Brett Tabke gave us a little dedicated time at the end for Google bashing, and I pointed out that this “new” logo was helping scammers get over on businesses by providing false credibility.  There are plenty of “Google Partner” companies out there right now that are actually doing harm, and nothing seems to happen to them.

What Are Googles Best Practices Anyway?

The Google partner qualifications ask for nothing beyond passing two Google Adwords tests and meeting some spending thresholds. That’s it. After that, this is all it takes to legitimately say you’re a Google Partner and use their logo.

Google has defined “Best practices” for Google Adwords, for security, for developers for video, for indexing, for Youtube, and for traffic generation.

Google even has defined “best practices” for domains and in the number one spot it says this:

“Work with a Partner. Partners make life easier. They have the experience and expertise in deploying Google Apps and can reduce the time to deploy by months! We strongly recommend working with our partners.

Google is recruiting new partners (i.e Adwords Certification) like this:

I Think Google is Misleading Consumers

Google is reaching out directly to consumers and telling them to hire certain companies who are Google Partners. In the case of someone wanting a web design for example, all it takes is for a partner check the box.

Although Google asks consumers make a choice, and differentiate between “help with your website”  and “advertising”,  there is no separate criteria, no certification, or anything in any way remotely associated with webmaster duties.   How does this not mislead the consumer?

What Can Google Partners Do That is Harmful?

Rebuilding a website and not 301 redirecting old URLs has always been at the top of my list. Whether it’s ignorance or out and out laziness, there’s no excuse for that.

How about building websites for industry professionals that are all filled with dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of pages of 100% duplicate content? Nope, Google has no problem with partners doing that.

How about claiming an unclaimed business at Google, then leasing the page back to the business? That’s an all too common practice, and there’s nothing in Google’s guidelines about it.

What about building a website on a development server. and forgetting to block it from the search engines in robots.txt, so the site gets indexed elsewhere first. Or worse, remembering to block it, but then forgetting to REMOVE the block from the robots file when it goes live, so the site never gets indexed at all?  Nope. No problem with incompetence as it relates to the Google partnership.

How about building hundreds or thousands of websites for clients, but with a back-end containing an intricate link rotation scheme? One that generates backlinks to each other to help them rank higher. Nope. Google doesn’t care, and I’ve reported that one more than once.

Although there have been cases of companies being penalized and even certain marketing firms being penalized, I’ve never heard of anything actually happening to someones Google Partner status, have you?

Why is there no mention of the words “best practices” in Googles Webmaster Guidelines?

There Should Be Consequences & Higher Standards

Google recently filed a lawsuit against someone posing as Google and they do make this partner complaint form available, but I don’t recall reading any news about anything bad happening to a partner for work they’ve done.

When a website gets caught doing something specifically against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines like developing unnatural links, Google penalizes them. So when a partner actually sells them that activity,  there should be repercussions of SOME sort against the partner, don’t you think? Perhaps they should lose their Google Partnership? Maybe go on some sort of probation?

Perhaps, Google should “out” the partners like Yelp has been doing for years. Yelp warns their users that businesses are using Yelp to mislead the consumer. I think that’s a good thing. Why Not?

I know I said “higher standards” but I guess I meant at least SOME standards – for demonstrating competence with WMT / search console, local SEO and Google Maps, etc.

I Think Google Should Change This Partner Logo

It’s my belief that the current Google Partner logo is causing a tremendous amount of confusion among consumers. To the general public, the logo implies that as a “Google Partner”, the organization has a broad knowledge about a variety of Google topics, and are held to a certain standard.

Either those standards should be raised and enforced, or the logo should say what it means… that it’s simply an ad agency.

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Even their “settings”, “more info”, and “account” sections from service to service are incomplete, like this dashboard, where you cant get to X and this supposed “products page” that’s missing Y and Z.

This was exactly what I wanted! Thank you for finally fixing this, Google!

Personalized Menus

After logging into Google this morning after a Windows update , I found that my Google navigation menus had changed and they seem to be exactly what I needed

These are the exact tools that I need to use every day! How cool is that?

The fact that they didn’t forget about the small  / local  My Business area either is awesome too.

You can get to exactly what you need!

If you log into your MyBusiness account and then go into any one of the multiple businesses you might manage, you’ll see that the menus give you what you want – immediate access to that businesses services.

What if you don’t see the change?

If you don’t see these menu items when you log in, then go to the Settings in the bottom left and customize what you need.

This is all about Google letting you personalize your menu experience, so you can pick what you want.

If your settings menu doesnt show the new options, then log into and out of Google. If that still doesn’t do it, then clear your cookies and empty your cache, or try a different browser.

If you STILL can’t see the options, them try a reboot, and if that doesn’t do it, then call your ISP and have them help you flush your DNS from a DOS prompt.

What if it still doesn’t work?

If you still can’t get it to show, then you might try waiting until the morning of April 2nd and see how it looks then.

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