Shopify Makes it Easy to Market to Specific Countries

Shopify is making it easier to optimize ecommerce stores for international markets all from a single Shopify site.

Up until now, if a business wanted to reach a global market, they’d have to sell on a marketplace or through another retailer.

A new solution called Shopify Markets removes the need for a third party and allows businesses to sell directly to international consumers.

Features will vary according to your plan. These are the features included with all Shopify plans:

• Manage how you sell to each market from one place
• Sell in 133 currencies with Shopify Payments
• Provide local payment options with Shopify Payments
• Sell in up to 20 languages
• Set up custom domains to optimize for search
• Smart settings that optimize market operations

Source: Shopify Makes it Easy to Market to Specific Countries

LinkedIn Pages Can Now Publish Long-Form Content

LinkedIn’s new Articles For Pages gives companies the ability to publish long-form content for the first time, rather than being restricted by a character count.

In addition, company pages are getting a new way to produce live content, and new campaign options in LinkedIn Ads.

LinkedIn is rolling out three new features in total:

Articles For Pages

LinkedIn users have long been able to publish longer content from their personal accounts.

Company pages, on the other hand, have been restricted by an arbitrary character count.

That’s no longer the case with LinkedIn’s new Articles For Pages initiative, which allows companies to compose and publish blog-style content of any length.

Articles For Pages also provides detailed audience insights, including the firmographics of people reading and interacting with the content.

LinkedIn live events

An all-new product is being introduced called LinkedIn Live Events, which combines livestreaming with event planning.

Ways to optimize & measure brand building with LinkedIn Ads

Brand Lift Testing

Reach Optimization

Reach/Frequency Forecasting and Reporting

Source: LinkedIn Pages Can Now Publish Long-Form Content

Google Ads will combine Smart and standard Display campaigns

Beginning this month, Google Ads will combine standard Display campaigns and Smart Display campaigns into a single option, the company announced on Wednesday. In addition, Google Ads will also be introducing optimized targeting to Display campaigns.

The new Display campaign type. “In this new Display campaign experience, you’ll have all of the reach and performance you’re used to, with the ability to choose the level of automation you prefer in bidding, creatives and audiences,” Bonnie Pericolosi, director of product management, Google Display ads, wrote. 

Optimized targeting will be available for Display campaigns. Along with this change, Google Ads will also introduce optimized targeting, which treats audience settings as signals to find audience segments that may improve campaign performance, to Display campaigns. 

Why we care. Soon, there will be just one option to create Display campaigns. The new Display campaign type will have the same controls for bidding, ads and audiences that standard Display campaigns currently offer. 

Source: Google Ads will combine Smart and standard Display campaigns

YouTube extends its community posts to a larger creator base

From October 12, YouTube will work on lowering that threshold to 500 subscribers. As YouTube says, it will help them to gain quick access to millions of more creators.

Posts that live within a Community tab of a channel but they are discoverable to the homepage of the subscribers. There are chances that most of the audiences run them when they spend time browning the YouTube recommendation feed.

Community posts are highly effective as a tool. It helps to keep audiences engaged in the videos. With the fast-paced advancement of the internet, it is difficult for a Youtube channel to become undiscoverable to others if they do not publish content regularly.

But, for a large number of creators, it is not at all feasible to create that many videos. It is much easier for them to keep up publishing quick community posts regularly.

Source: YouTube extends its community posts to a larger creator base

WooCommerce Blocks 5.9.0 Release Notes

A new version of WooCommerce Blocks has been released! Version 5.9.0 is now available for download from GitHub and WordPress.org.

Most of the work we did during this release was behind-the-scenes work to get our second iteration of the Checkout block ready for developers to start working with.

Are you wondering what the second iteration of the Checkout block is? Read more over on our recent post giving you a peek into the WooCommerce Blocks roadmap.

We also introduced a new API that will allow extensions to modify the available payment methods during checkout. The documentation for this feature will be arriving shortly. It will be published in our GitHub repository when it is ready.

Finally, this release contains a bug fix for a display issue with the Product Search block. The search input and submit button now display correctly alongside each other when using the WooCommerce Blocks plugin.

Source: WooCommerce Blocks 5.9.0 Release Notes

Gravity Forms Launches INPUT YouTube Channel and Podcast

Gravity Forms has launched a new YouTube channel and podcast called INPUT, which will focus on sharing the stories and experiences of people inside and outside the WordPress ecosystem. James Giroux, a Rocketgenius employee who joined the company in 2020, is the host of the show and will be interviewing guests from various industries and disciplines.

The first episode is a deep dive into the history of Gravity Forms, one of the most successful WordPress plugin companies that has been operating for 14 years. Its founders share a nostalgic look back at the early days of Rocketgenius, including the story of their first sale and first hire.

They also discussed how the Gutenberg era marks a major shift in WordPress that has impacted the future of the Gravity Forms. The average WordPress user is decidedly no longer a developer who knows how to tinker with PHP, but is now more often a content creator or power user. As the barrier to WordPress development is getting higher, the Gravity Forms team is focusing on making the product easier to use for non-developers but still powerful for those capable of extending it.

Source: Gravity Forms Launches INPUT YouTube Channel and Podcast

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Now you can speed up your site indexing in Bing

Bing’s content submission API is now available to everyone

Microsoft has opened up its Bing content submission API after over two and half years of it being in private beta. The content submission API is different from the Bing URL submission API, in that the content submission API lets you submit not just your URLs but also your content, images, HTML, and more directly to Bing’s index. “The API provides the ability for webmasters to notify Bing directly about the changes in their site content in real-time,” Microsoft said.

Last week in our newsletter we included Twitter conversations about pinning in RSAs to mimic ETAs after Google Ads sunsets the latter. On Friday, Brad Geddes continued the conversation by asking Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin, “Since Google recommends 2 ETAs & 1 RSA and has never recommended more than 1 RSA per ad group. Will the number of ads per ad group become restricted with this change? Will we be allowed to run 2-3 RSAs in an ad group?”

“It’s recommended to have at least one responsive search ad in every ad group in your Search campaigns by June 30, 2022. There’s a limit of 3 enabled responsive search ads per ad group,” Marvin replied. She added that there won’t be plans to restrict the number of RSAs to only one per ad group upon clarification by Geddes.

Later Geddes tweeted screenshots of reporting showing why advertisers want more control with RSAs (a callback to the pinning tweets last week). “This is an RSA with ‘excellent’ ad strength. When it was paused, this ad group’s conversions almost doubled due to G serving the highest CTR ad the most and not the one that converts the best. I have 1000s of these examples,” he wrote.

Bing Search tests a “Skip To Web Results” button. Microsoft Bing is testing a feature to let searchers skip down to the web results, past the ads, past the knowledge panels and direct answers and people also ask boxes and just see those web results

Read more: Now you can speed up your site indexing in Bing; Tuesday’s daily brief

Video and vertical-based product ads pilots arrive on Microsoft Audience Network

Disclaimers in ads, third-party integrations with Universal Event Tracking, flexible insertion orders, and inline appeals for rejected product offers were also among Microsoft Advertising’s September announcements.

Video ads and vertical-based product ads are now being piloted on the Microsoft Audience Network, Microsoft announced on Tuesday. In the announcement, the company also revealed disclaimers in ads, new third-party integrations with Universal Event Tracking, flexible insertion orders, and inline appeals for rejected offers in Microsoft Merchant Center.

Video ads pilot on Microsoft Audience Network. Video ads are now available on the Microsoft Audience Network as a pilot program in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, and the U.K.

Vertical-based product ads pilot on Microsoft Audience Network. The company is also piloting another Microsoft Audience Network feature — vertical-based product ads, which use an advertiser’s existing feed to generate ads for auto listings, entertainment events, hotels, tours and activities, and vacation rentals in native environments.

Disclaimers for regulated industries. Microsoft Advertising is introducing disclaimers in ads (as shown below). While this feature isn’t specific to regulated industries, it can be particularly useful for advertisers in verticals in which consumers may need to be informed about details related to your business.

New third-party integrations with Universal Event Tracking. As an attempt to streamline the Universal Event Tracking (UET) setup process, Microsoft is also launching third-party integrations with Google Tag Manager, Shopify, Squarespace, and WordPress.

Read more: Video and vertical-based product ads pilots arrive on Microsoft Audience Network

5 common pitfalls to avoid so you maximize your keyword strategy’s business impact

As an SEO agency, you already know the role that keyword research plays in understanding the business opportunities of your clients and how to gather hundreds and hundreds of keywords for your SEO campaign.

But how do you go from a large list of keywords to an articulated, coherent, data-driven set that ensures you’ve zeroed in on the objective and know where you’re heading? 

Jumping straight to execution, crunching tactics and tasks might work in the short-term, but without a well-defined strategy in place, the risk of wasting client resources and, ultimately, trust is high.  

Pitfall #1 You include branded keywords in the mix

Mixing the two will muddle your data and will make your client’s position in the search landscape seem better than it actually is — which, in turn, will alter the strategy and your desired objectives. 

The navigational keywords related to your client’s website or other websites (even competitors) won’t be valuable for your SEO campaign, as you can’t directly influence them. Plus, your client owns all the branded keywords, and they’re using other channels to amplify them (marketing campaigns, advertising, paid search, etc.). You don’t need rank tracking or SEO for that.

Pitfall #2  You don’t take into account relevance

One crucial pitfall you can encounter when curating your keyword list is not to account for the relevance of each keyword included. Relevance defines, in this case, the client’s website ability to satisfy the search intent.

Here’s one conclusive example. Let’s say “London” slipped into your keyword list when you have a client like “University of London.” What is the user searching for when typing “London?” It’s a very broad search, so Google will try to guess the intent and offer different answers on the first page, from travel articles to institutional websites or wiki entries.

Pitfall #3 You include keywords with high SEO difficulty 

You can think about this category as the impossible for now. 

These are relevant but resource-hoarder keywords: they’ll require too much energy and time. Looking at the interplay between the difficulty to rank in the top 10 positions and their potential, including the competition already there, it’s clear whether you should bother with them or not, at the moment.

For instance, a newly launched fashion retailer might want to target “black dresses,” but they need to fight giants like H&M or ASOS. Passing the keyword through a difficulty metric system would probably indicate it’s a hard endeavor, and it would be a waste of resources to compete there now.

Read more: 5 common pitfalls to avoid so you maximize your keyword strategy’s business impact

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WordPress 5.8.1 Released to Fix Multiple Vulnerabilities

WordPress Update 5.8.1 addresses three security issues in REST API, Gutenberg editor and Lodash JavaScript library. Recommends updating now.

WordPress announced a security and maintenance release, version 5.8.1. It is important to update WordPress, especially versions 5.4 to 5.8 in order fix three security issues.

WordPress 5.8.1 Security and Maintenance Release

It’s not uncommon for WordPress or any software for that matter to publish a bug fix update following a major version update in order to fix unforeseen issues as well as introduce improvements that didn’t make it in time for the major release.

In WordPress those updates are called a maintenance release.

This update also includes a security update, which is somewhat uncommon for the WordPress core. That makes this update more important than the typical maintenance release.

Source: WordPress 5.8.1 Released to Fix Multiple Vulnerabilities

YouTube Adds 5 Features for Creators

YouTube is adding new insights for video creators and and giving them more control over ads and chapters.

ouTube is adding five new features for video creators that offer more viewer insights, as well as greater control over ads and video chapters.

The new capabilities include:

Evergreen video insights

Trending hashtags

AdSense blocking controls

Bulk editing of video chapters

Appeal yellow monetization icons in Studio Mobile

Here’s more about each of the above features.

Source: YouTube Adds 5 Features for Creators

Google search terms report adds historical query data for impressions without clicks

Beginning today, Google Ads will show advertisers historical data for queries that received impressions but no clicks in the search terms report for Search and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns, the company announced Thursday. “Historically, the report only ever showed queries that resulted in a click,” Pallavi Naresh, senior product manager at Google, told Search Engine Land, “We knew that advertisers wanted more data and we had to make investments in our tech stack to show this magnitude of data in Google Ads.”

And, on February 1, 2022, the company will remove historical query data collected before September 1, 2020 (the day before the company initially limited search terms reporting) that doesn’t meet its privacy thresholds.

“Still only providing reporting for terms that a significant number of users have searched.” Last year, Google used the following message to notify advertisers that it would limit search terms reporting: “We are updating the search terms report to only include terms that were searched by a significant number of users. As a result you may see fewer terms in your report going forward.” The new query data still only includes “terms that were searched by a significant number of users.”

“It’s important to note there have been no changes to policy definitions or privacy thresholds that have contributed to making this change possible,” Naresh said, “We are still only providing reporting for terms that a significant number of users have searched for across all Google searches.”

Source: Google search terms report adds historical query data for impressions without clicks

Improve Core Web Vitals on WordPress with WP Speed of Light 3.0

If you have been following Google’s suggestions for SEO, you must have been keeping a keen eye on your WordPress blog’s core web vitals. Core web vitals encompass three aspects: how stable the layout is, how long pages take to load, and how long it takes for enough of the web page to load before it becomes interactive. WP Speed of Light is a WordPress plugin that makes it easier to keep tabs on these three aspects of SEO. 

WP Speed of Light has recently received a new update, pushing the WordPress add-on to version 3.0. Since it’s a new major version, the WordPress extension might need some reconfiguration. In this post, we take a quick tour of WP Speed of Light. In particular, we explain why its changes to grouping and minification make the reconfiguration a worthwhile mini-chore.

Source: Improve Core Web Vitals on WordPress with WP Speed of Light 3.0

New Twitter privacy tools to offer better user control

The Chief executive officer of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, previously stated that this platform had not moved much quicker when it comes to launching products. The brand is quite vocal about its product roadmaps. Also, it discusses tools that are still in concept and may never reach the point where they have rolled out. The platform is now focusing on using better Twitter privacy features to improve user experiences.

Twitter is now looking at new privacy features related to who can see a post of users and the posts they are liking. Also, it is offering users more power over the follower list.

The goal behind this test is to help people to feel at ease when it comes to using such social platforms. Executives of Twitter are referring to targeting these tests as the form of ‘social privacy.’

Source: New Twitter privacy tools to offer better user control

WordPress security: Information leak flaw addressed in Ninja Forms

An information disclosure vulnerability has been patched in Ninja Forms, the form-building plugin for WordPress with more than one million active installations.

An authenticated attacker who abuses the flaw could export personal data submitted to websites via forms built with the extension.

The plugin’s developer, Saturday Drive, addressed the flaw in version 3.5.8, which it released yesterday (September 7) after a delay to the rollout of an otherwise seemingly rapid fix.

The insecure code was introduced in version 3.5.5, according to a blog post published by WordPress security service Plugin Vulnerabilities.

As well as updating their systems, Plugin Vulnerabilities recommends that website administrators running vulnerable versions who grant ‘untrusted’ individuals access to WordPress accounts could review “log files for the website to make sure there haven’t been any requests for the relevant path” to exploitation.

Source: WordPress security: Information leak flaw addressed in Ninja Forms

Automattic buys Social Image Generator plugin for WordPress revamp

WordPress parent company Automattic has acquired the Social Image Generator plugin, with plans to integrate with WordPress toolkit Jetpack already underway.

Founded by Daniel Post, Social Image Generator automatically creates social share images for its customers’ social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, VK, WhatsApp, iMessage, and Reddit. 

Speaking on the recently announced acquisition, Post said: “I’m incredibly excited to join Jetpack and Automattic so I can continue to grow Social Image Generator and help more people in the WordPress community improve their social media presence and get their message out to their fans.”

Check our list of the best website builders

Here are some of the best web hosting services

We’ve listed the best WordPress social media plugins out there 

Source: Automattic buys Social Image Generator plugin for WordPress revamp

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Jetpack Acquires WordPress Social Image Generator

WordPress toolkit company Jetpack announced it has acquired Social Image Generator, a plugin that generates social sharing images.

Jetpack, a company owned by WordPress.com parent company Automattic, acquired the popular WordPress plugin Social Image Generator. The plugin automatically generates attractive social media sharing images. It proved so popular that in seven months it was acquired and will be integrated as part of Jetpack.

The Jetpack Twitter announcement said:

“Jetpack is thrilled to announce the acquisition of Social Image Generator, a #WordPress plugin that automatically creates social share images for your content.”

Source: Jetpack Acquires WordPress Social Image Generator

Google Lighthouse 8.3.0 Update

Google Lighthouse is an open source tool created by Google that tests web pages for web performance bottlenecks, accessibility issues and identify SEO opportunities.

Because the tool is open source, the underlying code that powers Lighthouse can be found in numerous third party tools, some of which extend Lighthouse by adding different capabilities and more helpful data visualizations.

That means that any changes to Lighthouse will inevitably make it into third party tools as well.

Lighthouse can be used as part of the Chrome Dev Tools suite of tools that is native in every Chrome-based browser.

Lighthouse 8.3.0 is coming Chrome 94, which is due to be released on September 21, 2021.

Source: Google Lighthouse 8.3.0 Update

Google News app will display non-AMP content and send readers to publisher pages

As part of the page experience update, Google News will be displaying both AMP and non-AMP web content, the company announced in an email to publishers on Friday. The platform will also no longer render article text from RSS feeds in the Google News app; instead, it will send readers directly to publishers’ webpages.

AMP no longer required. “In the coming weeks the Google News app will improve its support for web content, displaying both AMP and non-AMP web content with more regularity from sites worldwide,” the company said in the announcement. 

The AMP framework was previously a requirement to be included in Google News. Now that Google has gotten rid of the requirement, the platform may be a more viable way to attract readers for publishers that didn’t adopt AMP.

“We’ll send readers directly to publishers’ web pages.” Google News will also no longer render article text provided via RSS feeds. As such, the platform is sending readers straight to the publisher’s content hosted on their own site.

The company is also removing functionality in Publisher Center related to feed-based article rendering, including custom Analytics tracking IDs, third-party tracking pixels, custom RSS styling and feed ads. These functionalities are scheduled to be removed in early November.

Source: Google News app will display non-AMP content and send readers to publisher pages

Microsoft Ads announces optimization score

Optimization Score is now available on the Recommendations tab in Microsoft Ads, according to the latest announcement from the company. The new scoring system is meant to help improve advertisers’ account optimization status and potential, help advertisers spend their time more efficiently and to prioritize the optimization actions with higher impact, and track their optimization efforts over time.

“Along with the overall Optimization Score, you’ll see a list of recommendations tailored specifically for your account, to help you optimize each campaign. Each recommendation displays a score uplift percentage, showing how much your optimization score will be impacted when you apply or dismiss that recommendation. Optimization Score is available at Account and Campaign level, and is shown for active Search, Shopping and Audience campaigns,” said Jessica Cui, Principal Program Manager and Cristiano Ventura Sr. Product Marketing Manager.

How to check Optimization Score in Microsoft Ads. Visit the Recommendations page in Microsoft Advertising. “You’ll see a percentage score in blue (see below). Each category of recommendations is shown with an aggregated score uplift from the recommendations belonging to it, and each recommendation is indicated with a score uplift in an ellipse on the top right of the card with a value from 0.1% to 100%, representing its estimated impact on your account or campaign performance,” wrote Cui and Ventura. If you apply or dismiss a recommendation, your score will adjust accordingly.

Source: Microsoft Ads announces optimization score

FSE Program: Insights Into Switching Between Block Themes

Unlike routine testing rounds for the FSE Outreach Program, Anne McCarthy threw a bit of a twist on the Make WordPress Test blog earlier today. The announcement asks users to think about what they would like to see when switching between block themes. The test is open to anyone who wants to participate through September 29.

The steps are loose and not required. The goal is to get people thinking and discussing what the theme-switching flow will look like over time. McCarthy asked several questions, but they are merely a starting point for a more open-ended discussion.

While I sometimes need structure, I tend to break the rules anyway. The format of this test suited me well today.

Source: FSE Program: Insights Into Switching Between Block Themes

What Is Microcopy? How To Make a Big Impact in Fewer Words

You interact with hundreds of instances of microcopy every day.

Not convinced?

Open a new tab on your browser. You can see a search bar with a placeholder text, right. That’s a form of a microcopy.

These tiny bits of information can make the difference between an online user experience that facilitates a customer and a user experience that pushes a customer away.

Microcopy guides a user, provides context, conveys personality and builds trust. But, how do you choose your words in the limited space?

We are here to guide you.

Learn what makes a microcopy successful. Read through the tips and associated examples to craft your own small but mighty moments of interaction in no time.

Microcopy 101

Microcopy refers to the short snippets of text that improve the usability of your website, app or any other digital interface. Similar to longer-form copies like landing pages, the goal of microcopy is to inspire action and guide a user in his journey.

Source: What Is Microcopy? How To Make a Big Impact in Fewer Words

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Now you can push your content and HTML directly to Bing Search without the need for crawling.

Microsoft has opened up its Bing content submission API after over two and half years of it being in private beta. The content submission API is different from the Bing URL submission API, in that the content submission API lets you submit not just your URLs but also your content, images, HTML, and more directly to Bing’s index.

Microsoft said, “the API provides the ability for webmasters to notify Bing directly about the changes in their site content in real-time.”

Bing Content Submission API. The Content Submission API is a method that enables websites to directly send content to Microsoft Bing whenever website contents are updated or created without waiting for BingBot crawl. This is different from the URL submission API. With the URL submission API, you only can send URLs for Bing to crawl and index. With the Content Submission API, you not only send the URL but you send along your HTML, content, images, and so on directly to Bing to index, technically bypassing the crawling process completely.

Read more: Bing content submission API now available to all

Google page experience update is now rolled out

The Google News app changes have about a week more to go.

Google confirmed that it completed the page experience update rollout today. This includes the updates to the Top Stories carousel on mobile search but the Google News app changes won’t be done for a week, say Google reps.

Google began rolling out the page experience update on June 15th and told us it would be completed by the end of August. It technically was not finished before the end of August and has about a week more to go, but it is essentially done.

The announcement. “The page experience rollout is complete now, including updates to Top Stories mobile carousel. Changes to Google News app have started to roll out as well and will be complete in a week or so,” Google announced on Twitter.

Read more: Google page experience update is now rolled out

Why are in-house SEOs looking for new jobs?

Why are in-house SEOs looking for new jobs?

Eli Schwartz, the author of Product-Led SEO, tweeted about some contacts looking for new in-house SEO jobs. Mark Preston, Head of Digital at The Hakim Group, asked in response, “Why are so many great in-house SEOs looking for a new job?” Here are some of the top reasons Schwartz listed:

1. In WAY too many companies there are limited vertical opportunities for growth within SEO. For someone that loves SEO the only way to keep doing SEO is to move on.
2. There is not enough value placed on SEO so therefore salaries are arbitrarily capped. The SEO manager that knows they are contributing significantly to the bottom line will eventually get frustrated at not getting great raises and will move on to a company that is willing to pay $$$ precisely b/c they have to pay to hire.
3. Companies are making employees go back to the office after a year or more of remote work. Those companies are going to end up losing their highly skilled SEOs and won’t know how hard they will be to replace until it’s too late.

What to do now that ETAs are going away

Data from our own contributors have found that pinning ad components can hurt performance: “In our analysis, we looked at ads with at least one pinned component and compared them to ads with no pinned components. Ads without pinning did better on CTR, conversion rate, CPC and CPA. But the opposite was true for ROAS were ads with a pinned component did better,” said Frederick Vallaeys, CEO at Optmyzr.

Read more: Why are in-house SEOs looking for new jobs?

SEO News You Can Use: The ‘Titlepocalypse’ Update Has Google Changing 20% of All Title Tags

Last week, we reported on the latest news sending the SEO community into a tailspin: Google is replacing title tags with other on-page text. H1s, H2s and even anchor text from internal links are showing up on search engine results pages (SERPs) instead. 

At the time, we assumed that Google was running A/B tests. But now, we have confirmation that the change is permanent. In a Google Search Central blog, Danny Sullivan announced that the search engine is changing the way it generates page titles in search results – which means site owners now have less control over the titles being displayed for their web pages.

So, the question on every SEO’s lips: Why? Why would Google not stick to HTML title tag text, which has been working just fine so far? Well, that’s precisely where Google disagrees. According to Sullivan, many site owners get this text remarkably wrong. Often, title tags do a lousy job of describing a page’s content for these reasons:

• They have too many keywords
• They are too long
• They contain either no text or boilerplate text

More SEO News You Can Use

The Google Link Spam Update Is (Finally) Complete: Google’s Link Spam update, which was originally expected to roll out within two weeks, is complete. Sullivan announced the news on Twitter almost a full month after tweeting about the update’s launch. As a reminder, this update will, in Google’s words, “nullify” link spam, not “penalize” it, which seems to imply Google’s algorithm will ignore spammy links. Also, bear in mind that Google’s original blog is deliberate in the way it presents the announcement of this update, first discussing link-building best practices and then reminding publishers using affiliate programs to qualify these types of links with the rel=“sponsored” tag. The message is clear: Follow these rules, and you’ll escape unscathed (or revert any link spam-related rankings drops when Google reassesses your site).

Google Has Redesigned Its “How Search Works” Website: Google has given its How Search Works website an impressive facelift – it’s unrecognizable from how it looked before, but the information is still pretty much identical. While the site’s content may be a bit rudimentary for SEO experts, it is still a fantastic resource to share with clients who may be unfamiliar with how Google Search operates. Plus, there’s a reason for SEOs to remain interested in the site: Every year, Google releases some fascinating data on Search changes throughout the past year. The newly-released stats for 2020 reveal that the company made 4,500 changes to Search compared to 3,200 in 2019. And with Google’s recent announcement that new technology is allowing it to make more algorithm updates faster, we can only begin to guess what this number will look like for 2021.

Read more: SEO News You Can Use: The ‘Titlepocalypse’ Update Has Google Changing 20% of All Title Tags

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New Academy Course: How to Master Local Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of the most important activities in SEO and should be at the top of any priority list when it comes to digital marketing. 

For any beginners, keyword research is the process of finding the words that potential customers use to find solutions to their problems. 

Essentially, every time somebody searches the internet, they are using keywords. 

This means that keyword research is a prerequisite for building an effective local SEO and content strategy. If you don’t know the types of terms people are searching for, how are you going to plan and write content that attracts and converts them?

There are also things specific to local SEO that will help take localized organic performance to new heights. 

How to Master Local Keyword Research

This is why we’re proud to announce the next free course to land in BrightLocal Academy: “How to Master Local Keyword Research”.

This highly practical course has been created in collaboration with local search expert Claire Carlile. Newcomers to the local keyword research game can use this course as a step-by-step guide, while industry veterans will find a wealth of new techniques and tools to take their skills to the next level.

Over nine lessons, Claire shares her knowledge on what types of local keywords you can, and should, target, and also how to:

• Write a keyword seed list 
• Expand your keyword list using free tools
• Create a comprehensive keyword profile
• Bucket your keywords and prioritize them

Read more: New Academy Course: How to Master Local Keyword Research

Search marketing in the dark: Google, give us more data!; Wednesday’s daily brief

Anyone who has been in the search marketing industry for any period of time knows that one constant is change. Google is changing algorithms, user interfaces, and features all the time.  We are changing our sites, while competitors are launching new sites or modifying their own.  We embrace change and leverage change for our benefit.

But approaching it in the dark, in such a data-centric world, is not fun. As you will see below, we lost a significant amount of data in the performance report in Search Console last week.  Measuring the impact of our changes or Google’s changes (i.e., title changes) is hard enough, but harder when there is data loss.

If Google wants to make these changes, which some believe are massive and disruptive, at least give us the data to see how it impacts our click-through rates, positions, and our bottom lines. In 2021, there is no reason to keep us in the dark when the data is so available. Show us the before and after titles, show us the before and after CTR and let us be able to opt-out of those title changes.

Google ads to drop expanded text ads for responsive search ads

Starting June 30, 2022, responsive search ads will be the only Google Search ad type that can be created or edited in standard Google Search campaigns, the company announced.  That means you will no longer be able to create new ETAs or edit existing ETAs in Google Ads. “Your existing expanded text ads will continue to serve alongside responsive search ads, and you’ll still see reports on their performance going forward. Additionally, you’ll be able to pause and resume your expanded text ads or remove them if needed. You’ll also still be able to create and edit call ads and Dynamic Search Ads,” said the announcement.

Google lost some data in Search Console’s performance report

When you are looking at the performance report in Search Console, you will notice an annotation on August 23 and 24 stating that Google lost Search and Discover data between those dates. The data cannot be backfilled and is likely gone forever, Google said. Some sites are seeing huge impressions and click declines, while others are not.  

“An internal problem caused a data loss in Search and Discover performance during this period. Users might see a significant data drop in their performance reports during this period. This does not reflect any drop in clicks or impressions for your site, only missing data in Search Console,” wrote Google.

Google still uses your HTML titles for ranking

Just because Google made changes to some of the titles it shows in the search results does not mean Google is not using your HTML title tag for ranking purposes. Google’s John Mueller confirmed that HTML title tags are still a ranking factor and that the title change has nothing to do with ranking. It may impact your click-through rate from the search results, but it should not impact your rank position in Google Search.

“This just changes the displayed titles, it doesn’t change ranking or takes [sic] anything different into account,” John Mueller of Google elaborated.

Read more: Search marketing in the dark: Google, give us more data!; Wednesday’s daily brief

Google to sunset Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) in June 2022

This is the latest move that Google is making to push automation through their ad products. Beginning in July 2022, advertisers will no longer be able to create new ETAs or edit existing ETAs in Google Ads according to an announcement by Sylvanus Bent, Product Manager, Google Ads. “Your existing expanded text ads will continue to serve alongside responsive search ads, and you’ll still see reports on their performance going forward. Additionally, you’ll be able to pause and resume your expanded text ads or remove them if needed. You’ll also still be able to create and edit call ads and Dynamic Search Ads,” said Bent.

Use ETA info for RSAs in the transition. “To prepare for this change, we recommend that you have at least one responsive search ad in every ad group in your Search campaigns by June 30, 2022,” Bent suggested. Google’s announcement also includes ways advertisers can repurpose their ETA content for RSAs. Recommendations include the following:

• Repurpose high-performing content from your expanded text ads and focus on Ad strength
• Pin headlines or descriptions to specific positions in your responsive search ads
• Evaluate the success of your ads based on incremental impressions, clicks, and conversions your ad groups and campaigns receive

Read more: Google to sunset Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) in June 2022

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