Top Stocks 2014, Best Stock Market 2014, Hot Stocks Investing: 1/26/14

Who’s Tops? Bud Light Is Unseated As Number One Super Bowl Advertiser On Google And Bing

It looks like we have an upset. Bud Light appeared to be the clear front runner among Super Bowl advertisers running paid search ads on Google and Bing, It turns out the King of Beer’s less filling counterpart is merely the runner up on both search engines.

Volkswagen has garnered the top spot with the most ad impressions on Google. While Nestle has taken the lead on Bing to promote the new Butterfinger Cups. That’s according to the monitoring service BrandVerity, which began monitoring paid search ads across 27 super bowl-related keywords on January 21.

BrandVerity’s Sam Engel says they’ve been monitoring the Super Bowl keyword set throughout the day to get a proxy of overall ad impressions. While Bud Light ads have appeared to consistently claim the number one position, Volkswagen, which started out of the gate promoting its teaser ad before switching to its full game day spot, has often been the sole advertiser on the SERPs for certain Super Bowl queries. The example below that was spotted today.

On Bing, Toyota has, so far, bested Volkswagen to claim the third spot behind Butterfinger Cups and Bud Light.

Here are how the advertisers currently stack up in PPC:

New Advertisers Jump On SEM In These Final Days

As we head into the final stretch, several new advertisers have entered the PPC ring. T-Mobile is promoting its ad on Bing. The yogurt wars are being fought on Google with both Chobani and Oikos now running ads. Hyundai has joined Toyota, Volkswagen and Audi on both Google and Bing to promote its Super Bowl ads for the Elantra and its higher end sedan, the Genesis.

H&M is asking searchers to vote for David Beckham to appear “#covered or #uncovered” in its Super Bowl Ad. (Can’t imagine which way that vote will go.) The three site links go to David Beckham’s line for men and kids on the H&M site.

Newcastle, capitalizing on its Reddit win was spotted promoting its IfWeMadeIt.com campaign in Google.

Budgets for many of these newbies aren’t adequate enough to sustain campaigns through the day. By mid-afternoon, only a handful of ads continue to show. It’s no wonder. Using Google Keyword Planner as a guide, costs-per-click on these terms are likely well above $5.00.

(Image by Wisecontrarian and used via Creative Commons licensing.)

Facebook Will Launch Graph Search For Mobile “Pretty Soon”

According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg during Facebook’s recent earnings call, Facebook’s Graph Search will hit mobile devices ‘pretty soon.’ It’s now been a full year since Graph Search was launched�and mobile integration only makes sense.

According to cnet, Zuckerberg stated the following quote in regards to Graph Search on the call:

“Pretty soon, I think, you should expect us to roll out the mobile version of this. I think that that’s going to be an important step, because most of the usage of Facebook overall is on mobile, so we expect that that’s where engagement will really start to come from on Graph Search over time.”

This will be a welcomed feature for mobile as Graph Search seems like a product that was really made for mobile. Using quick search queries to see where friends are, and what destinations are nearby.

So what’s the reason that the rollout has been so slow? According to Zuckerberg there is great complexity in indexing more than 1 trillion connections and status updates. He further noted:

“As a number of people on the team…have told me, a trillion pieces of content is more than indexed in any Web search engine.”

So while you are waiting for Graph Search roll-out you can read more over at cnet, or learn about yesterday’s earnings report.

Facebook Will Launch Graph Search For Mobile “Pretty Soon”

According to cnet, Zuckerberg stated the following quote in regards to Graph Search on the call:

This will be a welcomed feature for mobile as Graph Search seems like a product that was really made for mobile. Using quick search queries to see where friends are, and what destinations are nearby.

So what’s the reason that the rollout has been so slow? According to Zuckerberg there is great complexity in indexing more than 1 trillion connections and status updates. He further noted:

“As a number of people on the team…have told me, a trillion pieces of content is more than indexed in any Web search engine.”

So while you are waiting for Graph Search roll-out you can read more over at cnet, or learn about yesterday’s earnings report.

Is Driving Traffic to Your Website Driving Customers Away?

Melanie Odden Cupcakes – Optimized for Delicious

The vast majority of digital marketing seems to be focused on creating content and experiences for customers with the ultimate measure of success being increased traffic to the company website, leading to leads and sales.

It’s a reasonable approach, since company websites typically provide the kinds of information that explain what a company does, the products or services they sell and some means for collecting inquiries or conducting transactions.

But here’s the problem with that in 2014 and beyond: �Consumer trends towards content discovery, engagement and interaction have evolved way beyond the common corporate website or online store.

Buyers can get the information they need to decide on a vendor or make a transaction from any combination of devices; smartphone, tablet, computer or web destination; social network, blog, microsite, industry publication, document hosting service.

While marketers are elevating their multi-channel marketing and integrating across owned, earned, paid and shared media channels, the focus is almost always to drive traffic back to the company website to transact.

Driving website traffic is an approach most marketers have taken for years. It’s what’s comfortable according to our processes and skills. It’s easiest to measure too, since we control what’s measured on our own websites.

Driving to or driving away?

It’s worth asking: Do customers really want to go to the corporate website to get more information after watching a cool video about a product? Do they really want to leave their favorite social network after getting a recommendation from friends in order to make an inquiry with a business? �Does it really matter whether a customer becomes aware, interested and inclined to transact because of experiences on or off the company website?

As a consumer or B2B buyer yourself, I’m sure you’ve experienced a situation where you’re watching a video, reading content or interacting on a social network and you had to go through a few hoops to get to a corporate website or online store to transact. Or more commonly, you see something interesting from a company posted to a social network and you have to visit the company website to see any detail.

Maybe you’ve experienced the alternative – you came to the conclusion to dig deeper into a service or company and were able to do it right there where it was discovered – not on the corporate site?

I think the demand by customers for off-site engagement is only going to increase. If digital marketers stick to the “drive website traffic” as the only means to move customers along the sales cycle, then those who do optimize for customer experience wherever the customers are, will win. An integrated marketing approach is necessary to optimize for customer experience.

That’s what optimization is all about: making it easy for customers to do what you want them to do. That means empathy with their journey and refining the experience across the customer journey – wherever it may take palce.

This doesn’t mean the end of the corporate website or blog. But I do think it means a few things worth considering:

Companies need to step up the content and engagement value created on company websites. If there is substantial social network and community engagement already, then integrate off-site content through social hubs and curationMarketers need to account for prospect and customer engagement off site just they do with on-site engagementInvestments in content, engagement and transactions in off-site environments need to be tested and ramped up where appropriateMarketers need to evaluate tools, services, widgets and platforms that support content publishing, promotion, transaction and measurement off-site

What do you think?

Do your marketing activities focus exclusively on driving traffic to the company website or online store? Are you testing or implementing off-site content, engagement and transaction functionality? �What embeddable ecommerce tools have you seen or used within social networks, content artifacts or videos?

Is Driving Traffic to Your Website Driving Customers Away?

Melanie Odden Cupcakes – Optimized for Delicious

But here’s the problem with that in 2014 and beyond: �Consumer trends towards content discovery, engagement and interaction have evolved way beyond the common corporate website or online store.

Driving to or driving away?

This doesn’t mean the end of the corporate website or blog. But I do think it means a few things worth considering:

What do you think?

Global Mobile Advertising Opportunities: Brazil. Russia, India & China

Global mobile advertising is projected to rise 37.4 percent in 2014 to reach spending of $18 billion.

Brazil and Russia will be among the front-runners of this growing industry, as technology advances and large emerging economies stabilize. Meanwhile, mobile advertising in China and India will increase heavily due to expansion of the middle class.

Here's an overview and some tips on mobile advertising opportunities in BRIC nations.

Brazil

The number of smartphone users continues to grow in Brazil. Almost 16 million smartphones were purchased in Brazil in 2012 and another 21 million bought in 2013. It was projected that 5 million tablets would be purchased in 2013 and that about 67 million Brazilians would utilize the mobile Internet.

This evidence clearly shows the importance of implementing mobile advertising campaigns in Brazil.

When delving into a mobile campaign in Brazil, take note that the leading operating system for smartphones is Android. Android dominates the industry by making up 56 percent of the market share with Nokia following with 31.5 percent of market share.

Brazilians are receptive to mobile advertisements, according to Nielsen's Mobile Consumer: A Global Snapshot study. Brazilians enjoy ads that: Contain geographically relevant information Don't send them to a website out of the app. Give them access to free content. Use simple text or multimedia.

Most Brazilians use smartphones for gaming apps, social media apps, and maps.

Russia

Although Russian mobile Internet has been a step behind Western markets, it is rapidly growing. Brands that have taken the lead in the Russian market for mobile devices include Apple, Nokia, and Samsung. Apple having 34.7 percent of the market share in 2012 demonstrates iOS as the dominant mobile operating system in Russia and the most common version is iOS 5.1.1.

Moscow accounts for 40 percent of all mobile Internet usage in Russia, according to Anna Oshkalo of Russian Search Tips. With nearly half of the total mobile Internet usage in Russia, Moscow proves to be the area to target.

In terms of click-through rates, the average for mobile ads in Russia falls between 0.2653 and 0.2808 percent. When it comes to the leading mobile devices, which includes the iPad and iPhone, Apple far surpasses average CTR. The CTR for mobile ads targeted to Apple devices is .46 percent.

A mobile advertiser must be ready to spend a good amount of money for a high CTR and the large demographic. The Apple iPad is the most expensive device to target and costs about 5.44 Russian Rubles, which is the equivalent of $17 U.S. It is no surprise that the second most expensive device to target is the Apple iPhone and has a cost-per-click of approximately 3.47 Russian Rubles the U.S. (equivalent of $11 U.S.).

India

India is another emerging market in mobile advertising. With more than 50 percent of mobile devices for employees being purchased by themselves, and with the projected 70 percent of professionals using smartphones by 2018, mobile advertising will continue to grow.

With the extensive mobile Internet usage throughout the country, mobile advertising is a great strategy for the massive amount of Indian startups. Startups can assist marketers to determine and pinpoint ways to segment users and messages. Specifics of segmenting users can become as refined as targeting passengers at the airport waiting for a delayed flight.

The key to India is that digital marketers and advertisers need to embrace the importance of social media via mobile. Social media is more personal and has become about conversations. Advertisers should find a way to be a part of these social media conversations due to the fact that social media has helped push social shopping online in the country.

Mobile advertising has reached a major turning point in India, not that it wasn't there ahead of Western countries. Retailers have begun marketing campaigns on mobile social media now along with their desktop based Facebook campaigns. The mobile advertising tactics are proving to accelerate the influence and fulfillment of consumer demand and their collaboration with offline strategies (billboards, for example) is much to be admired.

China

Online marketing will increase to 1,000 billion Yuan by 2015, according to China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015). The estimated online spending demonstrates the growth and importance of the industry in China.

Online marketing in China falls into two obvious but separate categories: mobile online marketing and desktop online marketing. Mobile online marketing is developing at a higher speed to keep up with the growing audience who'd rather use their device then head into Internet cafes. Mobile Internet users in China are accessing the mobile Internet far more times per day than desktop users, showing that marketers and advertisers have more opportunities to reach their target audiences.

Many types of ads, such as interactive ads, are being developed in the Chinese market. The most common active mobile ads are mobile search ads (Baidu, Qihoo360) and display ads.

Mobile SEO will grow due to 77 percent of smartphone users who utilize Google's Android to surf online (and you thought Google wasn't a player in the Chinese market).

One major driver in the use of Chinese mobile is text to speech. Because of the Chinese language's many dialects, typing in keywords is difficult for the average surfer (e.g., "weather forecast" has more than 200 different variations)

The "discount ad" is one of the most effective display ads amongst the Chinese population. This type of ad can be placed as a banner in apps, such as in gaming apps. Chinese customers tend to be highly price sensitive, so discount ads can prove to be helpful to the company that distributes them via in-app advertising.

Another advantage that Chinese mobile advertising offers in comparison to other types of advertising is the ability to distribute mobile ads based on the location of the user. If an advertiser wants to target a specific customer in a specific area, then the advertiser has a more refined way of doing that with mobile ads. Any company can utilize discount ads by placing them in areas that its preferred customer would be located.

Summary

There is no arguing that mobile advertising is on the rise. Russia, India, Brazil, and China all prove to be establishing a better base of mobile advertising due to the constant growth these countries are experiencing.

With the benefits that mobile advertising offers, such as targeting location and a large audience, advertisers and marketers throughout the world, especially in the elusive and emerging BRIC nations, should begin implementing mobile marketing campaigns and strategies.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

What’s the Difference Between Content Marketing and Content for Links? The Wrong Answer Could Cost You

This Spiderman aims to please, but he’s just not the real thing

As someone with roots in the search marketing community it’s been amazing to see how the the phrase “content marketing” has been adopted and redefined.

Whether it’s opportunism or simply being adaptable to the times, the difference in approach to what content marketing is between digital marketing communities like Content Marketing Institute and many in the SEO and social media marketing world is striking.

For brands investing in content marketing, the difference between content for links and SEO and content for customers can be costly in terms of risk, return on investment and performance.

What’s the difference?�

Content Marketing as More Content – Those who define content marketing as creating “more content”, especially search engine optimized content, tend to be focused on performance metrics like search visibility and keyword oriented traffic. As with all SEO, the logic is that increased search visibility will lead to more traffic which will lead to more leads and sales.

Content Marketing as Customer Experience – When you look at the long standing custom publishing industry and brand creation of content and media, the focus tends to be on understand the specific interests, goals and information expectations of a particular audience segment. Mapping out the customer journey from awareness to consideration to purchase for each customer segment surfaces the questions buyers have throughout the sales cycle.

Content Marketing in this context is the planning, creation and promotion of content for a target audience segment to answer their questions and guide them along the sales cycle from awareness to transaction. �Tactics like SEO, social media marketing, advertising, media relations and email are used to amplify that content for discovery.

Why does it matter?

If your company is buying content marketing purely for SEO reasons, then it’s likely that your editorial plan is driven by popular, relevant keywords and not the specific interests of your target customers. �Keywords first is a strategy that drives content quantity (not quality) to achieve as many “hooks in the water” within search results as possible. Essentially, it’s a model with a focus on optimizing for search engines, not customers.

I would argue that investing in a quantity of content for search and not a customer-focused experience, can be costly for companies. The content might “rank” in search, but how does it contribute to the buyer experience? How does it advance how you want your brand to be known? How defensible is SEO content with increasing quality guidelines from search engines?

Understand your customers and the buying cycle first. Plan content according to the customer journey, THEN apply keyword optimization and SEO tactics. Keywords are important – absolutely. But in the long run, the most return on content marketing investments will come from optimizing for the customer experience and using SEO as a tool for relevant amplification – not letting SEO alone drive content ideation and creation.

Where I’m coming from with this

With our agency’s combined practice areas in PR, Traditional Marketing and Search since 2001, content creation and messaging strategy have always been a part of what we do. �At the same time, exposure to the direct marketing and email marketing industry with customer segmentation and buying cycles have been great perquisites for how content marketing is practiced by many brands and advocated by organizations like the Content Marketing Institute.

As a result, we’ve been able to achieve a footprint on the web and in the business community that brings 100% of our new business in through inbound means – no advertising and no sales people. AND with only 1 person dedicated to the marketing function. Our boutique agency is known all over the world and competes with other agencies 10 or 20 x our size that spend massive budgets on business development and advertising. The cost of sale for our agency and our clients who subscribe to a customer first content marketing approach is mostly answering questions when people email or call to buy.

Making the Transition from Content Quantity to Creating Content Experience

TopRank’s Content Marketing Maturity Model

In order for companies to successfully adopt content creation and marketing, a clear understanding must be achieved in terms of how a content marketing program can help a company achieve its goals, how a content investment will help customers move along the sales cycle and what resources, processes and tactics will be necessary to make it all happen.

It’s a customer focused approach that eventually becomes a high performing channel for new, inbound customer acquisition. In fact, really good content marketing programs that mature are so good, they’re able to monetize beyond attracting leads and sales. Monetized content marketing is content that is so good, people are willing to pay for it.

Are SEO and social media still important? Of course! But focus on your customers with a content marketing program. Expect your consultant or internal marketers to use customer insights and the sales cycle to drive content creation, and then optimize that content for marketing performance.

Pinterest Interests: New Tool Delivers Personalized Pin Recommendations

Pinterest has introduced a new tool called Interests. It is designed to make it easier for pinners to explore topics they are most interested in and find new pins on topics that they most frequently pin on.

The Interest topics board is set up differently than normal Pinterest page. Some of the topics are in a much larger boxes than others, based on how popular that particular topic is for each user. So if there’s one particular topic that you pin regularly, it will likely be one of the largest boxes at the top, while smaller boxes are reserved for areas that you don’t pin as frequently on or are related to what you pin on.

Pinterest's pins are organized within a handful of broad categories, so Interests will group together pins in much more narrow categories to help recommend pins users are more likely to be interested in. For instance, Pinterest used the example that if you pin a lot of climbing plants and wall ferns, your Interests page might recommend vertical gardens.

When you click through to one of the topic boards to explore, there does seem to be room for improvement. When I explored one of the boards it suggested I’d be interested in, I went to pin one of the images, only to be then told I had already pinned it previously on my own board of the same topic. The same happened for several other pins that were all at the top of that particular explore board.

"Keep in mind that this is still just a preview," Pinterest said. "You may see a few interests here and there that aren’t quite your thing, but rest assured that improvements are already in the works."

The new Pinterest Interests section is available from the top menu on any Pinterest page. It is only available for desktop users at this time, but Pinterest said you can expect it to roll out to mobile users soon. It is one of many personalization changes that Pinterest has planned for 2014.

Report: Google Close (Again) To EU Antitrust Settlement

The third time may be the charm. According to Reuters�Google is (once again) “close to settling a three-year antitrust probe by European regulators after it offered ‘much better’ concessions” to the European Commission (EC). However Google has been here before.

Two previous antitrust settlements were strenuously opposed and thus defeated by Google critics and competitors. As part of that lobbying campaign several sponsored studies were issued, which uniformly found the core of Google’s settlement proposals — prominently showing links to rivals’ results — would have little or no impact on user behavior.

According to the Reuters report an EC decision “is expected in the next few days or in a couple of weeks at the latest.” A key factor, said the article, is that regulators will not give Google’s rivals the opportunity to provide feedback and thereby object to the settlement terms. Apparently there will be no “market test” this time.

This will likely cause an uproar among anti-Google lobbyists such as FairSearch.org and similar organizations. The EC can agree to a settlement over the objections of Google competitors and critics. However any settlement wouldn’t prevent or stop civil litigation to my knowledge.

If the report is accurate it would potentially save Google billions in fines that could have been unilaterally imposed by the EC.

Postscript: The FairSearch Europe organization issued the following statement in response to the Reuters report:

Reuters reported�on Wednesday�that Commissioner Joaquin Almunia is weighing a new proposal from Google to address anti-trust concerns he raised in�May 2012.��The report also�says that the Commission�may move forward without consulting anyone outside the Commission. FairSearch has no independent confirmation of the story.

Google’s first two proposals were rejected by Commissioner Joaquin Almunia as a result of the knowledge gained through market tests (including actual testing of the likely effects of the proposals), and it is vital that Google’s third try also be subject to broad consultation.

Without actual testing of the likely effects of Google’s latest proposal, any assessment of it would just be speculative. The concerns raised by the Commission’s investigation are too important to consumers for them to be addressed by a settlement that is not thoroughly vetted.

2014 AdWords Wishlist

Enhanced campaigns, image extensions, third party reviews... the list goes on. Fantastic features that have improved performance for search marketers.

But we always want more, don't we?

What do we hope that 2014 will bring from Google to make us really happy?

What We Want

The lists below aren't sorted by importance or even feasibility. This is speculative stuff.

TargetingMore and better demographic data. Demographic data in search is a tricky business, but if anybody can solve this it's Google. Their data quality has come a long way in the last couple of years but it still has the scope to get better.Third party data in search. If I have a cookied list of people who have made a phone call to my business, I want to be able to adjust my bids and targeting for those users. In fact, I'd like to be able to buy third party data and apply that to my search targeting. There's a lot of it out there I can use on my display campaigns, and think how great the performance could be on search!

- Better RLSA remarketing lists (minimum volume, longer duration, YouTube audiences, etc.). I can see why this product launched with restrictions on these lists, but boy do I wish we had more flexibility. I'd love to have a list containing people who bought insurance from me 11-12 months ago. As soon as they search for insurance terms again I want to make sure I'm appearing. But with a 180 day duration limit I can't do that at the moment. Any time Google want to open this up, I'll be ecstatic. Let me use my Google Analytics lists too!AdsRicher ad formats. Surprise me. I kind of don't mind what's included. Google have been pretty inventive about these in the past, and sitelink descriptions, image extensions etc have made massive impacts to my regular search ads. Combine what's been done with PLAs and we're in a good place now. All this improvement has just whetted my apetite. Give me more!

Relaxed character restrictions. I know these limits have been fixed since time immemorial, but think how good an ad you could write with a few more characters in your headline, now that you've got years of experience writing such concise, neat ads!Video content. Google have been experimenting with videos in ads for a while, but it's been quite limited. I have quite a nice video, so let me put it in my ad so people can watch it if they want to.Management/ReportingCampaign and ad group IDs, and ad parameters in AdWords Editor. This one really would make a difference. We use the API for a lot, but for ad hoc tools a spreadsheet is still the easiest way for a campaign manager to make bulk changes. Unfortunately I can't make bulk changes to things like ad group names, because then there is no way to upload that back into AdWords Editor with the tool totally aware which group has changed to which new name. Each campaign and ad group has an ID, let us export it and make changes around it, the way we can in the API.
The other API only tool that we like is the ability to change ad parameters. These sit at keyword level, and we want to be able to change these on the fly please, without having to build new API tools each time we need to do something different and inventive with them.MCC level AdWords scripts. AdWords scripts let you write a Javascript routine and set it to run on a schedule in your account. They are quite restricted at the moment, and exist mostly for getting data out, more than making changes. But they're great. But when you have created a script that works really well for you, you want to use it on every account you manage. That means creating it separately in every account. If you want to make a tweak, you make it in each account. Ugh. Let us have a single repository of these for an MCC and apply it to any and all accounts we choose.Better filters in the Dimensions tab. If I'm looking at the Dimensions tab, I can't filter by campaign or ad group. What? That seems like a ridiculous oversight. Sure I can look at just one of these at a time by using the left nav bar, but are my choices really to look at a single campaign or the entire account? Why can't I, for instance, include every campaign that doesn't contain the word "Brand" in the campaign name, thereby looking at all my non-brand activity together?

Bulk add/remove in Client Center level reporting. This one is personal, folks. On a regular basis I need to extract data from across all our accounts. That's 250+, of which some should be included and not others. My choices are to include all accounts, or to add them one at a time. Dammit! I want to be able to add all, but still have individual controls to add or remove.What Might we Actually Get?

Of the above list, only some.

Expect the demographic data to improve, but I'd be surprised to see much change to RLSA remarketing lists. I'll eat my hat if we get third party data in search in 2014.

RLSA remarketing lists are dominated by the implicit user terms people agree to every time they do a search on Google. They're already stricter for users who have signed in (they've explicitly told Google what can be done with their data, and it's hard to change that for new products). Third party data is a step too far, probably.

We'll definitely get some richer ad formats, probably including video. I suspect new formats on mobile will be prevalent too. That's just continuing an existing set of trends. Relaxed character limits seem unlikely. There is no pressure on Google to change this, and the amount of upheaval for a lot of AdWords accounts makes it tricky to implement.

Regarding the management/reporting changes: your guess is as good as mine. Speak to your AdWords reps until they consider these as problems that affect multiple people. As long as its just a few lone voices asking for these changes they'll be considered low priority.

What Changes Would be Actively Bad?

There are always still a few of these, generally regarding changes to defaults or removal of useful granularity of control. Each of these makes campaign management more complicated in order to recreate the level of control we used to have.

Example: since enhanced campaigns removed the ability to ability to have different mobile bids easily for different keywords, some PPC commentators discuss using one keyword per ad group to regain that control. It's the kind of change we shouldn't have to make, but in some cases we simply do.

I'd like to see Google avoid those kinds of changes this year. A small core of AdWords users spend the most time using the platform, and changes to benefit the rest that harm the sophisticated users are sure to reduce the good will towards Google.

What's Your Single Biggest Wish for AdWords in 2014?

Leave your suggestions in the comments below, describing the change you'd like to see and how likely you think it is to come true.

Google & Bing Agree: Past SEO Success Guarantees You Nothing Today

If you have an older site, one that has been around for 10+ years, you may have noticed newer websites taking positions you once owned on search engine results pages (SERPs). Why does this happen? Is it due to spamming? Or freshness?

The latest Google webmaster help video from Matt Cutts addresses the topic of what an older site can do to maintain its ranking over time.

Sometimes, Cutts said, owners of older sites become complacent about their website. They fail to keep it up to date and keep it fresh.

This isn't that unusual, because often times when a site ranks very well and for a long period of time, the webmaster is often worried about changing anything that could affect the rankings. As a consequence, that site can become outdated, with searchers gravitating towards fresher sites.

"Take a fresh look at your site," Cutts said. "A lot of the times if you land on your site from a search result, even if they've been in business for 15 years, 14 years, sometimes they haven't updated their template or their page layout or anything in years and years and years. And it looks like, frankly, a stale sort of older site, and that's the sort of thing where users might not be as happy about that."

It can be dangerous to coast.

"I wouldn't just say 'I'm number one for now and everything is great' because newer sites, more agile sites, more hungry sites, more sites that have a better user experience, they can grow and they can eclipse you if you don't continue to adapt and evolve and move with the times," Cutts said.

He has seen many newer sites come up and take the top spots from well-established sites that just simply got too complacent in their positioning and work ensuring their site was updated to be what searchers were expecting to see.

"Are you still providing the best user experience?" Cutts said. "If something is not as fresh as some of the experiences that you get from some of these newer websites, that can have fantastic design, then eventually people might prefer that experience and up migrating and leaving you behind."

So it seems that the issue isn't so much that there is a particular algorithmic reason why newer sites can eclipse older well-established sites in Google's search results. Rather, it seems that newer sites overtake sites by providing a better user experience (e.g., they are newer and perhaps designed with responsive design in mind), or offering other features that an older site that hasn't been updated regularly is lacking.

Google isn't the only search engine where this is the case. Bing's Duane Forrester offered an important reminder in a recent blog post: while a website may have had great success with SEO in the past, there's no guarantee that will continue indefinitely for any website:

Hinging your future on a single tactic, whether it's social, seo, paid search, email, etc. is a recipe for disaster. Over time, things change. And that change may just happen to you. Sure, I hear you saying, "we're diversified". Are you? If you're investing most of your time in SEO, you're not diversified.

What if a business idea or vertical falls out of fashion? Or becomes so lucrative, the only way in is to pay? Is your business capable of weathering that change?

Too many businesses today stay laser focused on one idea or approach and when a change happens, they are stunned by their loss of traffic.

Times change. The web has changed. What users expect from the web has changed. Search must therefore keep up with the times.

Business models that made sense 5 years ago might not be viable moving forward. Tactics that worked 3 years ago might not work tomorrow.

With any marketing strategy for any website, regardless of whether the site has been around for more than a decade or just recently launched, you need to ensure that you give searchers what they want to see, as well as what makes sense for your website from an overall SEO perspective. This includes adding great quality content as well as and ensuring that an older website doesn't become too stale.

No one single thing will guarantee that a website ranks well in Google or Bing. There are multiple moving pieces in their respective algorithmic puzzles.

The web, searchers, and search engines are always evolving. Webmasters must evolve and adapt with these changes to continue enjoying success in the SERPs.

Mobile Cost Per Click Down for PPC in Retail, Business Services

The Search Agency released today its quarterly State of Paid Search Report for Q4 2013. The report looked at overall trends for paid search spend, click-through rate, cost per click and more.

The report also drilled down into performance across industry sectors, which is what we’ll look at in this report. Two sectors: business services and ecommerce show varying results in paid search at the close of 2013. Let’s have a look.

The fourth quarter in 2013 contains the retail events of the year, including Hanukkah, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year’s. It’s probably no surprise then, that click-through rate (CTR) increased around 17 percent in Q4 for companies in the retail sector. However, CTR decreased by about 15 percent year over year (YoY) in this category.

In terms of cost per click, the close of Q4 saw CPC increase by about 8 percent to $1.65 for retail. This was around a 29 percent lift YoY, and above the average CPC when compared to all other industries examined in this study.

When it came to cost differences on desktop versus mobile devices for ecommerce PPC, smartphone and tablet CPC decreased YoY when compared to desktop CPC.

Smartphone CPC in the ecommerce sector decreased to approximately 25 percent in Q4 from about 42 percent in Q3; tablet CPC also decreased from about 12 percent in Q3 to just under 10 percent in Q4 when compared to desktop CPC.

At the other side of the spectrum are business services, which also tend to offer holiday specials around Q4. But this sector painted a slightly different picture of performance when it came to CTR.

While ecommerce gained a lift by about 17 percent in Q4, business services saw a decline in CTR by about the same percentage rate. This was approximately a 46 percent decline in CTR YoY for the business sector.

CPC was down for this sector, too – to $0.68. That’s well under the average when compared to other industries showing $1.35 CPC on average.

So how did the CPC for smartphones and tablets fare against desktop in this sector? According to the report, smartphone CPCs fell to about a 58 percent discount from desktop in Q4. Tablet CPCs were also discounted to approximately 27 percent below desktop for business services PPC.

Mobile proved to be a promising area for the business services sector, with click share growth outpacing healthcare, retail, travel, real estate, and consumer services in Q4, with an increase of about 178 percent on smartphones and 31 percent on tablets quarter over quarter.

For more information, including the study's methodology, access the full report here.

2014 AdWords Wishlist

Enhanced campaigns, image extensions, third party reviews... the list goes on. Fantastic features that have improved performance for search marketers.

But we always want more, don't we?

What do we hope that 2014 will bring from Google to make us really happy?

What We Want

The lists below aren't sorted by importance or even feasibility. This is speculative stuff.

Of the above list, only some.

Expect the demographic data to improve, but I'd be surprised to see much change to RLSA remarketing lists. I'll eat my hat if we get third party data in search in 2014.

What Changes Would be Actively Bad?

What's Your Single Biggest Wish for AdWords in 2014?

Leave your suggestions in the comments below, describing the change you'd like to see and how likely you think it is to come true.

Google’s Latest Search Trick: “As The Crow Flies” Distance Calculation

Move over, pandas. Fly away, hummingbirds. Waddle away, penguins. Google has a new animal friend: crows.

But unlike its past associations with the animal world, this one isn’t about SEO or algorithms — it’s a new search trick that adds distance calculation to Google’s OneBox feature. (The OneBox is where Google often presents immediate answers to search queries rather than just presenting links relevant to the query.)

As Google explained late Friday, the OneBox can now answer how far it is between two remote locations. It does the measurement “as the crow flies.” Google’s examples were Hawaii and Siberia — a US state and a country. It also works when asked about two remote cities, like Honolulu and Oslo.

Google says the new OneBox works with “far-flung locales, beyond what you can drive or walk.” Indeed, if you ask how far it is between, say, Miami and Seattle, you don’t get the “as the crow flies” answers — you get a OneBox with the distance measured by driving mileage (and the directions from point A to point B).

Google presents this as a search feature you can use with voice search on Google’s search app (both iOS and Android). It also works on Google desktop search, which is where I did the screenshot(s) above.

Matt Cutts: Facebook, Twitter Social Signals Not Part of Google Search Ranking Algorithms

There has been much speculation and misinformation in recent years about whether social signals from Facebook and Twitter factor into Google search algorithm, and if so, how much. While some SEO professionals focus on social media for the rankings potential, others strictly look at social for the traffic, awareness, and other indirect benefits.

Matt Cutts, the head of Google's webspam team, tackled the subject in his latest webmaster help video, which asks whether Facebook and Twitter signals are part of the ranking algorithm, and how much they matter.

With all the speculation, this is definitely an interesting topic for Cutts to address. Here's what Cutts had to say:

Facebook and Twitter pages are treated like any other pages in our web index so if something occurs on Twitter or occurs on Facebook and we're able to crawl it, then we can return that in our search results. But as far as doing special specific work to sort of say “you have this many followers on Twitter or this many likes on Facebook”, to the best of my knowledge we don't currently have any signals like that in our web search ranking algorithms.

Cutts statement seems quite definitivie that no, those signals aren't taken into account. Does this mean there is some tiny bit of influence that could possibly be taking place? Is it something that could be changing later this year? Considering Cutts always chooses his words very carefully in these videos, it's an interesting (and perhaps telling) thing to say.

This is also a change from what Cutts said in 2010, where Cutts confirmed that Google was using social signals. However, Google has since launched Google+, and ended their firehose agreement with Twitter for their tweet data.

We have to crawl the web in order to find pages on those two web properties and we've had at least one experience where we were blocked from crawling for about a month and a half. And so the idea of doing a lot of special engineering work to try to extract some data from web pages when we might get blocked from being able to crawl those web pages in the future, is something where the engineers would to be a little bit leery about doing that.

Cutts also noted a big problem with crawling social profiles: they tend to change frequently, and Google only samples the web at specific points in time.

"So if we're fetching a particular webpage we know what it said at that one point in time but something on that page could change," Cutts said.

He also brings up the issue of perhaps where someone has blocked follower for specific reason, such as an abusive relationship.

Someone could change the relationship status or someone could block a follower and so it would be a little unfortunate if we try to extract some data from the pages that we crawl and we later on found out that for example a wife had blocked an abusive husband or something like that and just because we happened to crawl at that exact moment when those two profiles were linked, we started to return pages that we had crawled. So because we're sampling an imperfect web, we have to worry a lot about identity when identity is already hard.

Unless we were able to get some way to solve that impasse where we have better information, that's another reason why the engineers would be a little wary of where he or little bit leery of trying to extract data when that data might change and we wouldn't know it because we were only crawling the web.

Should you stop using Facebook or Twitter? Of course not. Cutts pointed out that there is a lot of value in both social networks.

So I'm not saying not to use Twitter or Facebook, I love to tweet, there's a ton of people who get a ton of value from both Facebook and Twitter. I think both of those services represent a fantastic avenue, it's a way to drive visitors and traffic to your site, it's a way to let people know about news related to you or your company or website, so I think they're great ways to build up your personal brand. But don't necessarily assume that just because there is a signal on Facebook or Twitter that Google is able to access that. A lot of pages might be blocked or there might be nofollow on links or something along those lines.

He also warned about people making the jump to conclusions about lots of Facebook likes automatically meaning that the page will rank well. In reality, Cutts says that if a page has lots of likes, it probably is pretty awesome, and that is the reason why it ranks. And in a study that Eric Enge did last month, he found the same thing, that Facebook likes and shares don't impact search rankings.

There was an SEO that said "OK, we see a lot of links on Facebook and those are the pages that rank well," but that's correlation, that's not causation. Instead it's probably that there's something really awesome and because there is something awesome then it gets a lot of likes on Facebook and a lot of people decide the link to it. That's the sort of thing where the better content you make, the more people are to like it not only in Google but in Twitter and Facebook as well.

Looking forward about 10 years, Cutts said how Google treats social signals might change.

...I think over 10 years, we're more likely to understand identity and to understand the social connections between people, but at least for the time being, we have to deal with the web as it is and what we are allowed to crawl and what we can easily extract from that and count on being able to access that in the future.

So as of now, Google doesn't seem to be using Facebook and Twitter social signals when it comes to ranking. However, there are obviously still plenty of benefits and marketers shouldn't cease those benefits simply because there doesn't seem to be direct relation between those two social media platforms and Google ranking.