This week: You can now edit local business info in search results, Instagram is testing canvas ads, and wait until you hear about how many of the top results don’t get clicks.
Here’s what happened this week in digital marketing.
DemandJump Cloud Tool Shows Where Your Traffic Came From
A new DemandJump tool, just out of beta, is an AI-powered platform that tracks where your traffic came from.
It’s called Traffic Cloud. So far, it’s been tested with companies spanning a wide variety of industries.
The tool shows you all referring sources going back three levels. Those traffic sources include social influencers as well as web pages.
Traffic Cloud also shows you where your competitors’ traffic is coming from.
Instagram Starts Testing Canvas Ads Within Stories Feed
If you’ve done a lot of Facebook advertising, you’re probably familiar with Canvas ads. Now, that same ad format is coming to Facebook-owned Instagram.
According to an Instagram spokesperson: “We are beginning to test an integration of Canvas with ads in Instagram Stories. Since the launch of ads in stories, we’ve been focused on delivering business value to advertisers and Canvas offers a seamless extension of the full-screen immersive experience, helping marketers tell compelling brand and product stories.”
Canvas campaigns look more like apps than ads. They can contain videos, panoramic photos, and carousels.
Study: Up to 30% of Google First and Second Page Results Don’t Get Clicks
According to a new study from Internet Marketing Ninjas, more than 30% of Page 1 and Page 2 search results don’t get any clicks.
The study also claims that the click-through-rate (CTR) for the first result is just over 21%.
Unsurprisingly, the numbers drop noticeably for lower results. The CTR for the second and third positions is 10% and 7.5%, respectively.
Internet Marketing Ninjas blames the low CTRs on “the Knowledge Box, the other Rich Card formats, all of the various carousels and blended universal result types, and of course the expanded 4 pack of Paid Ads.”
Google Rolls out Support for AMP Landing Pages in AdWords Search Campaigns
Now, you can point your Google AdWords mobile search ad to an accelerated mobile page (AMP) landing page.
Google launched the beta program for the new feature last May. The results have been promising:
Wego.com, a travel marketplace serving the Middle East and Asia Pacific markets, reports seeing a 95 percent jump in partner conversion rates and a 31 percent drop in bounce rates from AMP landing pages. French organic retailer Greenweez saw an 80 percent increase in mobile conversion rate and 66 percent lower CPA on mobile from AMP traffic between January and March 2017.
As of now, the feature only works for text ads.
Google Adds AMPlified Pages to Featured Snippets
Speaking of AMP, Google will now allow AMPlified pages to earn the much-coveted Position 0 in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Position 0, or the Featured Snippet spot, is the result that appears at the very top of the results list on Page 1. It displays a segment of the content in addition to a title and description.
Although this is great news if you’ve got high-quality content in AMP format, Google still says that AMP is not a ranking factor.
Google: The #1 Search Ranking Factor Is Awesomeness
What’s the most important ranking factor? According to Google, it’s awesomeness.
Awesomeness.
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) September 6, 2017
That might seem dismissive and nebulous, but it’s really valuable info.
As the GoogleBot gets more intelligent, it’s able to distinguish great content from mediocre content and mediocre content from bad content. It will give the better content a higher rank.
So if you want to land a Page 1 spot in the SERPs, start producing 10x content.
Google: We Don’t Give Big Sites a Better Rank
Think you can’t compete with BuzzFeed because you don’t have a huge website? Think again.
This past week on Twitter, somebody asked Google’s John Mueller the following question: “Is there any correlation between the total number of pages vs Rankings?”
Correlation… I don't have statistics on that (& what is "rankings" anyway). Definitely no designed connection.
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) September 6, 2017
He responded: “Correlation… I don’t have statistics on that (& what is ‘rankings’ anyway). Definitely no designed connection.”
You Can Now Edit Local Business Info in Search Results
Google just made it easier for you to edit your business details.
Now, you can do so directly from the search results. Just find your listing by Googling your business name and click on the edit button to make changes.
You can update details about your business, including hours of operation. You can also upload photos to promote your brand.
The new feature works on both desktop and mobile platforms.
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