Google Posts are removed after 7 days, with one exception

Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that you need to make sure to keep your Google Posts up to date in order to ensure you have fresh messages in your local panel. The post Google Posts are removed after 7 days, with one exception appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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3 B2B Case Studies That Prove the Power of CTAs

Posted by STMartin

You can’t afford to throw money away on inefficient tactics in the paid advertising space. Keeping your campaigns cost-effective is a must. To streamline your paid campaigns, there are many different landing page best practices you can employ. We've seen the most significant of these results often come from optimizing your call-to-action.

Now, optimizing your CTA can include a few different factors. Not only is there placement, copy, design, and the usual list of CRO check boxes — there's also the psychology of the interaction itself to consider.

To truly optimize your individual paid campaigns, you should get far more granular with your CRO. This will include taking your actual value proposition under investigation. Here are a few questions you may want to ask yourself regarding the psychology of your landing page and CTA:

• Where is my user in the buyer's journey?
• Are they in the right stage for this conversion?
• Is what we are offering convenient/valuable enough?
• Does our offer align with the information we're asking for?

You'd be surprised how often your CTA issue is offer-related as well as copy-related. Too many marketing managers are focusing on fixing their landing page copy, when they should be asking their CMOs to consider changing what they offer in the first place.

Results from our CTA psychoanalysis study [SaaS]

The best insights are built on hard-earned data — so we decided to get some for you before we started. The CTA Psychoanalysis Spreadsheet (which you can click the image to download for free) analyzed the CTAs of the top 100 SaaS landing pages:

What we found in the study is that most CTA issues fall under one of four categories:

1. Clarity

The main issue here is that the goal conversion of the page is unclear. This can be because you are using vague copy (like "click here") on your buttons. Or it could come from your landing page lacking the necessary information to educate your user on their need for your service.

As you can see in the screenshot below, the landing page may look clean but it lacks any helpful information to educate the user on why they should convert. Especially for early-stage searchers, this page might as well be a black-hole of mystery and friction.

Make sure that your landing page has any necessary information your user needs to be adequately informed on your product/service. Here are a few things to focus on:

• Time-saving value of your product
• Competitive pricing of your product/services
• The exact pain point your product/service solves

2. Timing

Here we saw that many landing pages were offering assets to the user that were not appropriate for where they were in the buyer's journey. For example, if a user hasn’t been given the right contextual information to understand their need for your service, offering a free trial in your CTA is a bit misplaced.

The same goes for offering digital assets with zero explanation of what they are:

Make sure that your offer properly aligns with where your user is in the buyer’s journey.

• Top-funnel offers just ask for contact information
• Mid-funnel offers can push branded experiences like email subscription
• Bottom-funnel offers get to focus on scheduling meetings and calls

Lastly, whatever you offer, make sure you explain what they heck the user is downloading so they aren’t blindly clicking spam.

3. Friction

Whenever you're asking for contact information from a user, you need to walk a fine line between value and friction. The more information you ask for (name, email, business, competitors, etc.) the more friction you're going to force on your landing page.

If your forms are asking for every bit of information your user could possibly supply, they're probably bouncing off en masse. Make sure what you ask for is equal to what you offer.

The majority of B2B search marketers report that the form field “sweet spot” for conversions is somewhere between 3–5. Any more than that and you start pushing users away.

4. Placement

This has been, and always will be, an issue for CTAs. Online readers aren't known for their attention spans — and you only have a few seconds to grab and hold their attention.

This means that your goal conversion (your CTA) should be highlighted and attention-grabbing. At the least, it should be visible immediately when you land on the page. You'd be surprised how many sites we still see with nearly invisible CTA buttons buried under a forest of irrelevant images:

Pro tip? Make sure your buttons are easily found... that is, only if you want your users to click them.

These are just the common issues we ran into while studying an entire industry. While these prove that there are many common CTA issues that can be easily fixed, it doesn't prove how impactful fixing them can be.

To see just how powerful optimizing your CTAs can be, keep reading.

3 B2B case studies to prove the power of CTAs

Now I did just lay out that there are four primary issues to handle when it comes to CTAs. But the last issue (placement) can be fixed fairly easily. As long as your button is clear and visible with plenty of empty space to isolate the goal conversion, you should be in the clear.

But when it comes to the other three CTA issues, fixing them can get a bit more complex. We've found that breaking down the psychology of the landing page interaction is a great way to reverse-engineer the buyer's journey to your site.

Through this, we've been able to test some aggressive CRO strategies with our clients' campaigns. What we've seen is that the most impactful changes come from addressing either:

• Convenience of the conversion
• Copy of your button and landing page
• Landing page offer or gated asset

B2B search marketing is all about understanding the nuances of your end customer and where to ideally place your brand in order to convert them. If you really want to streamline your buyer's journey, you'll dive deep into these CRO puzzles.

Case study 1: Changing the CTA convenience

We were able to drastically increases this client’s conversions by optimizing their CTA. In this instance, "optimizing" refers to making the conversion more convenient for their users.

The goal of their landing page was to fill their pipeline with qualified leads interested in scheduling a demo. This is a great lead-gen tactic, and the landing page was a clean, streamlined experience.

But what we realized was that "scheduling" a demo can cause serious hesitation in users. Scheduling requires them to go into their own calendar and consult when they’re free and can match your company's schedule.

To make the conversion more convenient, we created a demo video that was available for download. Luckily, the client already had a great video asset that we could use.

This way, instead of trying to consolidate two calendars (user's and company's), the user could download the video and watch at their discretion. (On the left: “Schedule a Demo Today!” & on the right: “FREE 5 Min Demo Video”)

When it comes to convenience, it's important that you speak to users not only in terms of dollars, but time. While money is always a resource that we want to save, time is an invaluable and infinite resource that we are all constantly clamoring for more of. If you really want to impress users, start speaking to them in terms of time-saving value. You can see from the screenshot below that doing so will prove worthwhile.

That's right — we saw over 738% increase in conversions by making the process more convenient for users. That's some serious conversion rate optimization — which leads to some serious revenue.

Case study 2: Changing the CTA copy

By optimizing the exact phrasing of this software site’s CTA button, we were able to drastically increase their paid leads.

Now, if you are running any sort of serious landing page campaign, your CTAs will explicitly state the goal conversion of your page. For example, a "click here" button simply isn't going to cut it. If you are telling them to read a blog, download an e-book, or schedule a meeting, your CTAs should read accordingly: "Read now," "Download e-book," "Get in touch."

But copy-focused CRO goes beyond just focusing your CTAs. A/B testing your button copy to see which variants convert more of the traffic your ads generate is also key. In this case, we tested whether the industry-oriented copy or the value-oriented copy would convert higher.

Originally, the button read only "Watch the Demo Video" — a CTA that we knew worked from the previous test above. We tested the two screenshots in two different targeted markets.

The first (MES Software) was targeted towards industry experts who would hopefully react to the specific copy. The second (Free) was for everyone else. The results were quite interesting:

• "MES Software" Results: 8.18% increase in conversions
• "Free" Results: 9.49% increase in conversions

We can see from the results that targeting your CTA copy towards your target market's vocabulary does work quite well. But, as in most cases, emphasizing that the asset is free of charge eliminates nearly all friction from the experience, which resulted in a serious increase in conversions.

Thus far we've seen that changing the CTA to cater to your user's convenience results in serious increases in conversions. Emphasizing a great deal with "free" in your copy also work incredibly well.

The more value you convey through your button's copy (whether it's monetary with "free" or expertise with "MES") the more success you're likely to see. But what happens when you change your landing page's offer altogether?

Case study 3: Changing the CTA offer

What we saw in this third campaign is that oftentimes there are multiple search intents behind the traffic your paid ads are generating. This means that not everyone who clicks through your ad is seeing relevant material if you're running a blanket campaign.

But these clicks are still potential leads that you are leaving on the table. Don't let them bounce off. Create a custom experience for each of your distinct search intents. Don’t just stop at niche — go all the way to creating custom experiences for singular searchers!

Previously, this landing page CTA was focused on a singular goal (scheduling a demo), but there were multiple search intents behind who was clicking on their ad. Because of this we were seeing a lot of bounces.

After we looked at the data, we realized that we could create a custom landing page experience for each of these different search intents. One of these was focused on a certain industry report, the second with a new cybersecurity threat, and the third with the actual brand name in mind.

In the screenshots below, you can see how we created three unique experiences for different expected users:

This newly segmented landing page campaign saw a drastic increase in conversions by targeting each of these different buyer's journeys. The more customized an experience you can provide, the more conversion-prone your user will be.

Instead of hoping that a catch-all ad campaign would generate leads from each of these different intents, try the opposite. Creating a more customized user experience will rarely come back to bite you. After all, the conversion rates of each of these segmented pages speak for themselves:

• Gartner Report Conversion Rates: 36.9%
• NSS Report Conversion Rates: 18.63%
• Healthcare Cybersecurity Conversion Rates: 8.85%

As always, when it comes to digital marketing, segmentation should always yield more success.

Takeaways: Smooth slide to conversion

As far as golden rules go, your CTAs should be following one:

Make conversion easy for your users.

This goes for any interpretation of the word "easy" you can think of. The more convenient your offer and the more value-driven your landing page & button copy, the more enticed your users will be to convert. CRO takes more than just copy and design into consideration.

To truly master your buyer's journey and become an ROI-driven CRO mastermind, you need to analyze the psychology of your paid campaigns. You need to dive deeper into the implications of each market interaction. And — most importantly — you need to implement changes that will drive leads/revenue, not just empty clicks.

The smoother your CTAs, the smoother the slide straight to your sales team.

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SearchCap: SEO success, AdWords spreadsheets & July Fourth

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: SEO success, AdWords spreadsheets & July Fourth appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Make the Most of Your MozCon 2017 Adventure – A Seattle How-To

Posted by Danielle_Launders

There’s a little secret we keep here in Seattle: it doesn’t actually rain all the time (we just want people to think that so we can keep the beautiful summers all to ourselves). Those of you who have been to a MozCon before are in on that secret; those of you who are joining us for MozCon 2017 on July 17–19 will soon find out!

It can be hard coming to a new city and trying to find food and experiences off the beaten path, which is why Mozzers have come together to share some of their favorite places, both new and old, to help you make the most of your time in Seattle this summer. If you don’t have your ticket and don’t want to miss out on all the fun, grab yours now — they're selling out!

Buy my MozCon 2017 ticket

Unfamiliar with MozCon and not sure what you’ll learn? Scope out the full agenda with all the juicy details on who's speaking and what topics we're covering.

Official MozCon activities

We want you to enjoy yourself, make new industry friends, and get the most out of your MozCon experience — which is why we have an assortment of events and activities to keep you busy.

Monday night #MozCrawl

Monday night is all about exploring and making new friends. Join us from 7–10pm for our annual #MozCrawl. This year we're bringing it back to the Capitol Hill neighborhood! Get to know your fellow attendees and our six MozCon partners hosting the fun. You’ll be able to go at your own pace and in any order.

Bonus points: have your MozCon Passport stamped at all of the stops and enter our drawing to win a ticket to MozCon 2018.

Capitol Cider hosted by Klipfolio

Linda’s Tavern hosted by WordStream

The Runaway hosted by CallRail

Stout hosted by Jumpshot

Unicorn hosted by BuzzStream

Saint John’s Bar & Eatery hosted by Moz

Tuesday night MozCon Ignite

You’ll definitely laugh, you’ll likely cry, and most importantly you’ll enjoy yourself at MozCon Ignite. Listen to twelve of your fellow attendees share their journeys, life lessons, and unique hobbies in our five-minute Ignite-style passion talk series. MozCon Ignite will take place at Benaroya Hall from 7–10pm, where you’ll have time to relax, unwind, and mingle.

• My Life with Guinea Pigs with Britt Kemp at Bishop Fox
• A Disastrous Camping Trip with the Best Partner with JR Ridley at Go Fish Digital
• My Wife, Actually: A Story of Being Gay Enough with Joy Brandon at Nebo Agency
• Homebrewing 101: A 5-minute Primer on DIY Alcohol with Erin McCaul at Moz
• This Too Shall Pass: The Blessing of Perspective with Yosef Silver at Search Interactions
• The King of Swing: A Guide to Creative Fundraising with Cameron Rogowski at Double Dumplings
• How Finding my Sister’s Mother Changed my Life with Ed Reese at JEB Commerce
• Living My Life with an Identical Clone with Christopher Beck at Internet Marketing Inc.
• How to Change Sex the Easy Way with Maura Hubbell at Moz
• 5 Signs Your Friend or Loved One is a Birder with Jeremy Schwartz at MediaPro
• How to Save Humanity in Twenty Minutes a Day with Andrea Dunlop, author & independent book marketing consultant
• Traumatic Brain Injury & Why Self-Diagnosis Sucks with Blake Denman at RicketyRoo Inc.

Wednesday night MozCon Bash

Bowling: check! Karaoke: check! Photobooth: check! Join us for one last hurrah before we meet again at MozCon 2018. You won’t want to miss this closing night bash — we'll have plenty of games, food, and fun as we mix and mingle, say “see ya soon” to friends new and old, and reminisce over our favorite lessons from the past 3 days.

Birds-of-a-feather lunch tables

At lunch, you’ll have the opportunity to connect with your fellow community members around the professional topics that matter most to you. There will be seven tables each day with different topics and facilitators; find one with a sign noting the topic and join the conversation to share advice, learn tips and tricks, and make new friends.

Monday, July 17

• B2B Email Marketing hosted by Steve Manjarrez at Moz
• E-commerce hosted by Everett Sizemore at Inflow
• In-house SEO hosted by Kristin Fraccia at Magoosh
• It’s Just Me — Digital Departments of One hosted by Liz Reuth at Le-vel
• Linkbuilding hosted by Rachael Brandt at Magoosh
• On-Page SEO hosted by Cyrus Shepard at Fazillion
• Travel Website SEO hosted by Michael Cottam at Visual Itineraries

Tuesday, July 18

• In-house SEO hosted by Jackson Lo at Tripadvisor
• Link Building hosted by Russ Jones at Moz
• Mobile Marketing hosted by Bridget Randolph at Hearst Magazines
• Perceiving Brand Through Digital PR hosted by Manish Dudharejia at E2M Solutions
• Product Marketing hosted by Brittani Dinsmore at Moz
• Search Trends hosted by Gianluca Fiorelli at IloveSEO.net
• Technical SEO hosted by Corey Eulas at Factorial Digital

Wednesday, July 19

• Full-Funnel Targeting hosted by Trenton Greener at Project Management Training Institute
• International SEO hosted by Kate Morris at Craftsy
• Local SEO hosted by Blake Denman at RicketyRoo Inc.
• Measuring SEO Impact hosted by Corey Eulas at Factorial Digital
• SEO for Bloggers hosted by Jeff Hawley at HashtagJeff.com
• SERP Features hosted by Jon White at Moz

Even more ideas for your Seattle adventure!

There are so many wonderful places to see, food to eat, and yes, coffee and craft beer to be consumed. Lots and lots of coffee and craft brews. That's why a few Mozzers have pulled together their favorite places to check out during your stay in the Emerald City.

No Anchor
“By far my favorite place in Belltown. Incredibly unique beer selection and fresh local food combinations that you can’t find anywhere else.”
– Abe Schmidt

Marination Ma Kai
“Marination is one of the top food trucks in the country and now they have several brick and mortar restaurants. Marination Ma Kai is located in West Seattle and has a big outdoor patio with gorgeous views of downtown Seattle, it's a summer hotspot for a cool beverage and noms. Why is it quintessential Seattle? Not only is the food life changing, the view amazing, but getting there is an adventure! Just walk down to the waterfront and hop on the wonderful Seattle Water Taxi. The trip from downtown drops riders off right at the restaurant.”

Rapha Seattle
“If you LOVE bicycles this place is a must-visit. One of only five US Rapha Clubhouses, Rapha Seattle is home to delicious coffee, fine food, and bicycle events.

The atmosphere is cool and inviting. Visitors are surrounded by the coolest bicycle gear and memorabilia. You can rent a Canyon bicycle to explore the city (Which is a big deal because you cannot buy Canyon bikes in America, yet). Rapha also does guided bike rides for the public and member only rides.”
– James Daugherty

Taylor Shellfish (Pioneer Square, Capitol Hill, or Queen Anne)
“The Puget Sound offers the best oysters in the world. What's great about Taylor Shellfish is that it's all about the oysters, the drinks and the people you're with in a simple, unpretentious, come-as-you-are atmosphere. There's nothing more quintessential to Seattle than that.”

The Point in Burien
“An all-around great bar to grab a bite and a drink if your flight is delayed or you need to kill some time near the airport. The Point is 10 minutes from SeaTac, has a fantastic menu (including lots of gluten free options), a great cocktail menu, tap list, and big-screen TVs.”
– Brittani Dinsmore

Hattie’s Hat
“Ballard was an old fishing village. Hattie's Hat bar has been in continuous operation for over 100 years and the bar that you sit at was installed in 1907 or something. Incredible. The bartenders are all in Seattle bands, some of them moderately famous from the 1990s. Go in the early afternoon. Ask for Lupe or Lara. Sit at the bar. You'll thank me for it.“
– Brian Childs

Holy Mountain Brewery
“Seattle is a beer city. Holy Mountain makes Seattle's best beer. Go there.”
– Evelyn Baek

The Whale Wins, Revel, Joule, and Fremont Brewing
“All are in the Fremont area and are each tasty in their own right. Besides if you don't like those options there are plenty of places to choose from in Fremont”
– Steve Manjarrez

Ada’s Technical Books and Cafe
"Coffee + super sleek bookstore that encourages women in tech and science. Need I say more?"
– Meredith Crandell

Still hungry? Check out:

• General Porpoise
• Serious Pie
• Thackeray
• The Sovereign

And don't miss our posts from years past, which are full of even more recommendations: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012.

If you're looking to connect with fellow attendees, please join our MozCon Facebook Group.

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This script automates adding any AdWords data to a Google spreadsheet

Feeling bogged down by all the reports you need to create for your AdWords campaigns? Columnist Frederick Vallaeys has put together a script that may help. The post This script automates adding any AdWords data to a Google spreadsheet appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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SEO case study: Zero to 100,000 visitors in 12 months

Columnist Andrew Dennis outlines the process he used to successfully build up traffic for a brand-new website -- without using any tricks or hacks. The post SEO case study: Zero to 100,000 visitors in 12 months appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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robot.txt for pages with google-translated content?

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