The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published June 2, 2020 5:00 am on Social Media Examiner: Want to improve your marketing insight? Have you considered LinkedIn Polls? In this article, you’ll find nine ways to use LinkedIn Polls for your business. How to Set Up a LinkedIn Poll You can create LinkedIn polls just about anywhere on the LinkedIn platform, including your professional profile (individual account), company page, showcase page, group, […] The post How to Use LinkedIn Polls for Business: 9 Ideas appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner. Learn more about Social Media Examiner by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published June 2, 2020 4:17 am on Search Engine Journal: Bing updated their backlink tool. Now it reports competitor backlinks. The post Bing Updates Backlink Research Tool via @martinibuster appeared first on Search Engine Journal. Learn more about Search Engine Journal by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published June 1, 2020 9:00 am on Search Engine Journal: Our virtual conference features a stellar lineup of speakers, advanced content, and 1-on-1 video networking. Join 10,000+ of your peers – don’t miss this! The post SEJ eSummit: Join Us Tomorrow for 10 Hours of SEO, PPC, Social & Content Marketing via @MrDannyGoodwin appeared first on Search Engine Journal. Learn more about Search Engine Journal by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published June 1, 2020 8:00 am on Search Engine Journal: Have you ever been asked to add a random string of code to the end of your links? If so, it’s likely because you were working with an analytical nerd such as myself and they wanted to track traffic from whatever campaign or content you were publishing. That seems important, right? A Quick Background on the UTM Originally, UTM codes were created for the Urchin Software. Urchin was an online web statistics and analysis software created to track traffic information for websites. In 1997, they were able to pull log file stats for a few days’ traffic in under 30 minutes – this was was unheard of at the time. From there, their capabilities would increase as they got access to more and more data. In 2002, Urchin rolled out its Urchin Traffic Monitor which allowed them to give more detailed information. The UTM allowed Urchin to not only pull the traditional information from the Apache log files but to augment them with cookies as well. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW This moved Urchin lightyears ahead of the competition as they were able to provide more information, more quickly than their competitor. We are talking about information so sensitive that Google wouldn’t even touch it in 2004. Needless to say it would not have complied with GDPR. Eventually, Urchin was bought by Google and became Google Analytics. If you want to read more about the history of Urchin and how they were eventually acquired, I highly suggest reading up their company history – it’s a good story. What Is a UTM Code? A UTM code, or Urchin Traffic Monitor, allows you to accurately track user engagement from outside sources within your analytics platform of choice. All a UTM code is, is a string of code placed on the back end of a URL to define the source, medium, campaign, term, and/or content of the piece that sent the user your website. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW That string would look something like: ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=spring-release&utm_term=rugs&utm_content=help-guide In that specific instance, the user that was served and clicked on this link came from a Google Display “spring release” campaign that was triggered by the word “rug” and showed off “help guide” content. As you can already guess, this information can be extremely valuable in tracking the success of a specific campaign or piece of creative. Remember, this was created pre-Google Analytics days. At the time, getting this sort of information was unheard of. Today, Google does a halfway decent job of telling you where the majority of your traffic comes from. UTM codes, on the other hand, give you customizable and highly specific tracking capabilities. How They Work When you create a piece of content that contains a link, whether it’s a guest post, an ad, a social post, what have you, you add the UTM to the back of your URL. This creates a new, unique URL to be tracked. For instance, example.com and example.com/?utm_source=google are recognized as two different pages. When Google Analytics brings that information into their platform, they strip the UTM from the URL and put the information from that snippet into the proper dimensions (source, medium, campaign, term, content). Why We Use Them When Urchin first rolled out the UTM, their goal was specifically to track the return on investment (ROI) of campaigns. If you are creating unique pages for each piece of content you put out, tracking their effectiveness gets extremely easy. So instead of just seeing a source/medium as Facebook/referral for any traffic coming from Facebook, you could see Facebook/Paid-Spring. This allows you to see the difference in performance from your organic Facebook efforts and paid spring Facebook campaign efforts. Similarly, if you have a spring campaign running on multiple platforms, you can designate the platform using unique UTMs for each platform. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW What You Can Track As we’ve touched on a few times, you are able to define five parameters with UTM codes: source, medium, campaign, term, and content. The reality is that you are able to put whatever you want in each of these locations, but this is a general guide of what to put where. Source This is the digital location where the user came from. It could be a specific site name, the advertiser that placed the ad for you, or the name of a YouTube channel you run. You want to put something in this parameter to tell you where the person was before coming to your site. Medium This is the medium in which you captured the users’ attention. This could be video, email, CPC ad, graphic, organic tweet. This should tell you what kind of content got the click. Campaign If you are running a specific campaign for the content that is going out, you can specify that campaign in this parameter. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW Use a code name, the slogan, the campaign name, whatever you feel is easiest. Consider this the when of your UTM. Term When running Google Ads, your traffic will come through Google Analytics simply as google/cpc which isn’t necessarily helpful. It’s far more helpful to know which keyword, or “term” you bid on that led to the user visiting your site. This way you know exactly how a Google Ad was triggered to send people to your site. Content You can track which piece of content led to a click to your site. This is great for situations in which you are testing pieces of content running during a campaign and want to know which one is getting the best result. Where You Can Track Most major analytics platforms will allow you to sort traffic based on source/medium as it is a common view. For the sake of this piece, I’m going to focus on the views for Google Analytics as it is the most common and accessible. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium Here you will be able to see the overall metrics for each source/medium defined by Google and your UTMs. If you look at number 15, you can see that we defined our source/medium using a UTM code. The rest have all been generated by Google. Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns This view will allow you to compare all of the campaigns you have running. These are only the paid Google Campaigns your run and the campaigns you have listed using UTMs. You are able to see the same metrics here, but for a more defined audience. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW If you look at this image above, you will see that only 45% of our users came from either Google paid ads or campaigns that we specified using UTMs. Get Granular While those are the two main views used to monitor traffic coming into your site from links with UTMs, because they are defined dimensions, you can always segment your metrics by adding any of the parameters as a secondary dimension. In the image above, you can see that I am in the Behavior > Site Content > All Pages view, and I can add a secondary dimension by tapping the button “Secondary dimension.” Most views will allow you to do this. Make Your Own UTM Alright, have I convinced you UTMs are necessary?! If so, I suggest heading over to Google’s Campaign URL Builder to get started. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW This UTM generator is super easy to use, you just fill out your information and it creates your URL with the UTMs for you. UTM Best Practices UTMs can be really helpful for gathering data, but they can also make pulling data really hard if you don’t create them correctly. So, before you get started here are a few things to take into consideration. Naming Conventions Before you start making a ton of UTMs or asking your team members to use them, you will want to create a guide for naming conventions. You will want to be sure that everyone is using the same naming conventions for each parameter so that you can find things easily. Some things to think about are: How granular do you want your sources to be? What do you consider to be the “medium” of a source? Are there things that you run consistently that should always use the same name? ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW By having these things laid out beforehand, you are going to save yourself (and your analyst) a ton of time and heartache. Use Lowercase Letters When you create UTMs, they are case sensitive. If you put “forbes” as a source for one and “Forbes” as a source for another, those will count as two separate sources. That being said, it is recommended that you always use lowercase letters in your UTMs. Know When to Use Them While it may be tempting to start going UTM crazy, be sure that you aren’t making more work for yourself. UTMs should be helpful. Just like with any other piece of data, before moving forward ask yourself, “what will I do with this information.” Now, Go Analyze Data! Once you get the hang of creating your UTMs and using them in your campaigns, the amount of information you will be able to collect is going to be so insightful. So, go! Get started and let us know how it goes. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW More Resources: Learn more about Search Engine Journal by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published June 1, 2020 6:00 am on WP Beginner: Recently, one of our readers asked if it was possible to send SMS messages to their subscribers along with email newsletters. The answer is yes. You can easily send text messages to your website users by using one of the many SMS plugins for WordPress. In this article, we’ll show you how to send SMS messages to your WordPress users, step by step. Why Send SMS Messages to Your Users? Sending SMS messages can be highly effective in bringing back customers to your website. Particularly, when used with other marketing tools like an email newsletter, push notifications, and search traffic. Text messages have a fantastic open rate. Some studies suggest that SMS open rates are as high as 98%. Compare that with a typical open rate of just 20% for emails, and you can see why SMS messages are becoming a preferred marketing medium. People check text messages much more quickly than they check emails. It takes an average of 90 seconds for someone to respond to a text and 90 minutes to respond to an email. Of course, you don’t want to overdo it. Even when they’ve opted in, most users won’t want daily texts from you. Even weekly might be too much. Important: Make sure you obey the law. Different countries have different legal requirements for text messages, particularly marketing messages. You might also want to use SMS messages to send receipts or order updates. We’ll cover how to do that later in this tutorial. Sending SMS Marketing Messages Using Sendinblue Sendinblue is an email marketing service that also allows you to send SMS messages to your subscribers. To get started, you’ll need to set up an account with Sendinblue if you haven’t already got one. On the Sendinblue website, click the ‘Sign up free’ button to start creating your account. Once you’ve finished the account setup process, you’ll see your Sendinblue dashboard. If you didn’t complete your profile during the setup stage, you’ll be prompted to do so here. Before you can start sending messages, you’ll need to contact the support team. Go to the Sendinblue contact page and write a message that includes: A request to activate your account. Your site’s URL. A note that you’ll be sending marketing messages. Once your account has been approved, you’ll get an email from Sendinblue. Note that this can take up to 24 hours. Buying SMS Credits for Your Sendinblue Account While you’re waiting for your account to be approved, you can start creating an SMS campaign in Sendinblue. First, click the + button in the Sendinblue menu to go to the Apps and Integrations page. Then, scroll down the page to find the SMS Campaigns app and click the slider to activate it. Next, you’ll need to purchase SMS credits. In your Sendinblue dashboard, you’ll see ‘0 SMS Credits’ on the left-hand side. You need to click the ‘Get more credits’ link to purchase SMS credits. You’ll be taken to the ‘My Plan’ area of the dashboard. In the SMS Credits section, click the ‘Get More SMS Credits’ link. Sendinblue defaults to selling you 100 credits at a time. You can buy fewer, but the minimum charge is still $1.14 plus tax. Note: It costs 1 credit to send a text message in the US, but you’ll need to pay more than 1 credit per message in other countries. Once you have selected the number of credits, go ahead and complete your purchase. Once you’ve bought your credits, you may need to wait for up to 48 hours for them to appear in your account. You may also get an email from Sendinblue asking you for more details about what type of SMS marketing you plan to do. This is to help you stay in compliance with SMS laws. You’ll need to reply to them with answers to their questions before your credits can be added to your account. Creating Your SMS Marketing List In order to send out SMS messages, you’ll need to import your list. You can do this by going to the Contacts tab in your Sendinblue dashboard. Then, click the ‘Import contacts’ button. You can either upload a .csv file from your computer, or you can copy and paste contacts line by line. Whichever option you choose, Sendinblue offers examples to help you. Important: Your users need to have opted in for SMS marketing messages. You can collect website visitor’s phone numbers and consent using a WordPress form plugin like WPForms, or using a marketing popup plugin like OptinMonster. Sending Your First SMS Campaign Once your credits show up and your account is approved, you can start sending messages. First, you’ll want to add a test contact in Sendinblue, so you can test your SMS campaign. Simply, go to the Contacts section in your dashboard, then click the ‘Add a contact’ button. Next, fill in your details, including your mobile phone number. After that, you can either add your test contact to an existing list, or you can create a new one. Once you’ve done that, click ‘Save and close’. You should see a message telling you that the subscriber has been successfully added. When your SMS credits have been added to your account, you can test out sending a text message. First, go to the SMS tab in your Sendinblue dashboard. Next, click the ‘Create my first SMS campaign’ button. You can enter whatever you want for your Campaign Name. This isn’t seen by the recipients. You should also enter an SMS Sender. This will display for users in certain countries. Next, enter your SMS message. Beneath the message box, you can see how many characters you’ve used and how many SMS messages will be sent. At the bottom of the screen, click the ‘Send a test’ button. Next, a popup box will appear. Enter your mobile number, which you included when you added yourself as a contact earlier. You should see a message telling you that your test message has been sent successfully. Now, check your phone to see if the text has come through. Here’s ours: If your text hasn’t arrived, wait a minute or two and it should appear. If not, double-check that you’re using the right mobile number. Once you know everything’s working, you can continue setting up your campaign. Click the X to close the ‘Send a test’ window, then click the ‘Next Step’ button on the top right of the screen. Now, you’ll need to choose your contact list(s). Check all the lists you want to use, then click the ‘Next Step’ button. That’s all you need to do! Your SMS campaign is now ready to send. You can review the details and change them if you want to, using the ‘Return to this step’ links. Once you’re happy, click ‘Schedule’ on the top right. You can either schedule your campaign so that your texts are sent out at a specific time, or you can send it immediately. Important: Avoid sending your text messages early in the morning or late at night. Be mindful of timezones, too. Not everyone will remember to turn on Do Not Disturb mode overnight. Sending SMS Messages to Your WooCommerce Customers What if you want to send your customers notifications about their orders? If you’ve decided to start an online store, then you might want to send text updates as well as emails to your customers. The easiest way to do that is with a suitable plugin such as YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications. This plugin lets you use an SMS gateway, such as Twilio, to send SMS messages to your customers. They receive these when their order status changes, such as when it’s dispatched. You can set up YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications so that it’s enabled for all customers, or you can let customers opt-in at the checkout. Also, you can use it to get SMS notifications yourself about new orders. This makes it easy to stay on top of things if you’re away from your computer. We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to send SMS messages to your WordPress users. You may also want to see our list of best business phone services for small business, and our list of the best live chat software to grow your sales. If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook. The post How to Send SMS Messages to Your WordPress Users appeared first on WPBeginner. Learn more about WP Beginner by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published June 1, 2020 6:00 am on HubSpot: In 2020, advertising on Amazon is undoubtedly one of the most effective options for getting your products or services in front of a large audience. In fact, 56% of consumers visit Amazon before any other site. I’m all too familiar with the power of Amazon. It’s now the first site I visit to shop for almost anything, ranging from vacuum cleaners to Mother’s Day gifts to workout gear. Best of all, it’s a great option for discovering new brands. Amazon offers multiple options for small businesses looking to advertise tangible products on the platform — plus, opportunities to advertise non-tangible services, as well. But oftentimes, the e-commerce giant can feel overwhelming or out-of-reach for small businesses. Fortunately, the folks at Business Financing Co. put together the following infographic, which explores four options for small businesses looking to advertise products on Amazon, plus alternative options for small businesses with non-tangible services. Keep reading, and then decide for yourself which option is best-suited for your own marketing strategy. Additionally, take a look at The Ultimate Guide to Amazon Advertising if you’re interested in creating a comprehensive Amazon advertising strategy. Learn more about HubSpot by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published May 31, 2020 1:45 pm on Search Engine Journal: Google has been spotted showing links to web pages when people search for topics on YouTube. The post Google Tests Showing Web Pages in YouTube Search Results via @MattGSouthern appeared first on Search Engine Journal. Learn more about Search Engine Journal by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published May 31, 2020 7:00 am on Search Engine Journal: Want to learn how to write content that brings you consistent organic traffic for months or even years? It all boils down to evergreen content. The post What Is Evergreen Content & Why Should You Care? via @JuliaEMcCoy appeared first on Search Engine Journal. Learn more about Search Engine Journal by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published May 29, 2020 3:02 pm on Search Engine Journal: Twitter now offers its own method of scheduling tweets in advance, a feature that was once only available with third-party tools. When using Twitter in a web browser, users will now see an option to schedule a tweet from the composer screen. Not quite ready to send that Tweet? Now on https://t.co/fuPJa36kt0 you can save it as a draft or schedule it to send at a specific time –– all from the Tweet composer! pic.twitter.com/d89ESgVZal — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 28, 2020 How to Schedule Tweets on Twitter.com Tweets can be scheduled in a few simple steps. First, compose your tweet. Then, instead of hitting send, click the calendar icon as shown below. Twitter will give users the option to schedule tweets at any time up to 18 months in advance. From the pop-up window you can specify the exact date and time down to the minute. From this window you can also view a list of all scheduled tweets and make and adjustments if needed. Again, this feature is only available on the browser-based version of Twitter. It’s not yet available on Twitter’s official mobile app. Twitter’s mobile app updates are often more spread out, with a number of features added all at the same time. That’s in contrast to the web based version of Twitter, which tends to have new features added more frequently. I suspect with the next app update we’ll get scheduled tweets and other features exclusive to the web version of Twitter, such as saved searches. In the meantime, you can visit Twitter on a mobile browser to use features that are missing from the mobile app. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW Save Drafts on Twitter.com Along with the scheduled tweets feature, the web based version of Twitter is also getting the ability to save drafts. Saving drafts is a feature so ingrained in Twitter’s mobile app it’s easy to forget you can’t do it on the web version. But it hasn’t been supported on the web version of Twitter, at least until today’s update. If you’re familiar with saving drafts on the mobile app – it works exactly the same way on the web version. Compose your tweet and then click the ‘X’ button to close out of it. Twitter will ask if you want to save what you’ve composed or permanently delete it. If you choose to save a tweet as a draft, you can come back to it at any time and finish it. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW As far as I can tell, tweet drafts can be accessed across platforms. So you can save a draft on the mobile app and revisit it on web based Twitter. One of the most positive things about the ability to save drafts is that it gives Twitter users time to put more thought into what they’re sending out to the world. Many people can relate to the feeling of tweeting something they later regret, which is something that drafts can mitigate to a certain extent. Users can compose a tweet and then back out of it without abandoning it altogether. Then they can revisit the tweet at a later time and assess whether it’s still a good idea to send it. I’d wager a lot of regrettable tweets have gone unsent since Twitter introduced drafts in the mobile app. Now users can re-think their tweets by saving drafts whether they’re using the app or the web version of Twitter. Learn more about Search Engine Journal by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published May 29, 2020 11:00 am on Search Engine Journal: The Marketing O’Clock team discusses Google’s announcement that user experience will be a ranking factor, the launch of Google Discovery ads, and more  / 13 seconds ago ADVERTISEMENT Jess Budde, Greg Finn, and Christine “Shep” Zirnheld talk about the digital marketing news of the week, plus, deadbeat bird dads, dangerous methods for opening beer bottles, and complimentary shortbread cookies. Here are this week’s top stories: Google Page Experience Update Google announced a future update that will consider the quality of the perceived user experience on a page in rankings. Discovery Campaigns Launch Globally Discovery ads can be in a responsive or carousel format and can run on YouTube, the discover feed in the Google app, and Gmail. Retail Category Reporting in Google Ads Ecommerce retailers who sell on Google search and shopping can now see retail category performance based on where their ads showed. IGTV Monetization  Instagram users may see ads before IGTV videos in the near future. Instagram also announced badges that allow users to donate to their favorite creators. Then, we take a look at what normal Google users really think of the search engine. It seems people just wanted a search engine and not a clairvoyant telling them what they actually meant to search for. Also, it’s in nteresting to see how prevalent search operators are throughout the thread. — Gisele Navarro (@ichbinGisele) May 23, 2020 We’ll answer these important digital marketing questions during our lightning round segment: Who issued a new executive order that could mean big changes for social media companies? What new attributes are available for Google My Business listings? When can we expect audio tweets to roll out? Where can you host your next virtual team meeting? Why are Google search results getting pulled into YouTube? How can you customize your columns in LinkedIn Campaign Manager? If you enjoyed the show, visit the Marketing O’Clock site to read the articles we reported today and subscribe. Thank you to our sponsors! Ahrefs – An all-in-one SEO toolset that gives you the tools you need to rank your website in Google and get tons of search traffic. Opteo – Helps Google Ads managers automate time-consuming manual tasks so they can spend more time on high-level strategy and creative work. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW Featured Image Credit: Cypress North Learn more about Search Engine Journal by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published May 29, 2020 8:00 am on Search Engine Journal: After listening to The Search Engine Journal Show podcast between Brent Csutoras and Bill Hunt where they talked about a number of challenges with hreflang implementation, I thought it might be time to explain how to minimize some of the key challenges and debunk some others. Hreflang is actually a fairly straightforward concept that enables you to take the ambiguity out of a set of pages, especially in a common language, and attribute them to a specific local. Very simply, you have a page for the U.S. and then you have the exact same page for multiple other markets. Hreflang is a method to indicate which specific language markets each of these pages was detonated to target. This only becomes complex when the specifications are misinterpreted and/or when the web infrastructure is not set up in a uniform manner to make the alternate mapping easy. In this article, I will review some of these common complexities and misinterpretations of the specification by answering seven simple, yet, repeatedly asked questions about hreflang. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW 1. I have an English site that is designed for the U.S., UK, and Ireland. Can I use ‘Hreflang=en-us-gb-ie?’ Answer: No, you cannot. I give you that you are being creative, and perhaps trying to be better organized. If you only have one set of EN pages, you could use below without specifying the countries. <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”https://www.example.com/en/page.html” /> If you have another set of EN site for other English speaking countries such as Australia and Singapore and need to set the specific target countries, you do need to create a separate line for each of the target countries, even when the page URL is the same for all three locations. <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=“en-ie” href=”https://www.example.com/en/page.html” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=“en-gb” href=”https://www.example.com/en/page.html” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=“en-us” href=”https://www.example.com/en/page.html” /> ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW 2. I have one site for all of EU countries and another for all of the Middle East. Can I use ‘EU’ and ‘ME’ as a country setting in hreflang? For instance: <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=“en-EU” href=”https://www.example.com/en/page.html” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=“en-ME” href=”https://www.example.com/en/page.html” /> Answer: Hreflang tag can only use actual ISO language and country codes, there are not regional codes such as EU, EMEA, APAC, and ME. Many sites have regional sites targeting Latin America (LatAm) or European Union (EU) or the Middle East (ME) which represent multiple countries and often languages in a region but try to co-opt one of the ISO country codes to represent the region. The most commonly incorrectly implemented regional set up is one trying to represent the Spanish Language Latin America site using es-LA. Unfortunately, this does not work as you are telling Google that this is a Spanish language targeting the country of Laos. 3. Can I combine the canonical tag and hreflang tag in the same line? <link rel=“canonical, alternate” hreflang=“en-gb” href=”https://example.com/en-uk/page.html” /> Answer: No, you need to separate the Canonical tag from Hreflang tags. <link rel=“canonical”” href=”https://example.com/en-uk/page.html” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=“en-gb” href=”https://www.example.com/en-uk/page.html” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=“en-us” href=”https://www.example.com/en-us/page.html” /> If your technical SEO or developer wants to get creative, encourage another creative outlet and point them directly to the hreflang specification as hreflang is challenging enough without deviating from the standard syntax. 4. We use CMS to auto-generate XML (hreflang) sitemap files. It includes URLs that don’t exist. Is it OK to keep them on the list? I see them show up on the GSC error reports. Is it bad? Answer: Yes, this is bad.  This is a major problem for a lot of companies. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW The problem is caused by the CMS setting allowing it to automatically create a placeholder URL for every language or country on the site when a page is created on one of the sites. Sometimes, the URL is automatically generated by the global navigation rules even if the page doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to manage or manage this problem. Bottom-line, non-existing page URLs should not be listed on the XML Hreflang sitemap files. The actual solution varies based on your CMS, but start with looking at the URL alias rules, your parent-child rules, or local page spillover rules. In many cases these have not been set up correctly. It could be that the rules are being overridden by JavaScript navigation rules or IP detection/redirect protocols. Most systems have a fallback option to a global page when the page has not been localized or explicitly published in the market. 5. Do I need to use hreflang to manage the same content that exists in different domains each targeting different countries? Answer: Many companies have a different language or country websites on separate domains and managing hreflang on multiple domains (and subdomains) is not an easy task. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW You should use hreflang XML site maps that list all of the URLs for each of the unique domains. Hopefully, the URL paths are the same or at least similar making it easy to map the alternates. To make your job even easier, I recommend that you take advantage of Google’s Cross Domain Site Map Verification process and use a dedicated site that manages your XML site maps for all of the domains in a central location rather than having to create tickets to upload them to dozens of hundreds of unique domains. 6. Should I use a specific page URL or a homepage as x-default? Answer: There is still a lot of confusion about the use of x-default. The x-default is nothing more than a directive to use a specific page for any language or market that does not have a dedicated hreflang set. Do you want to show up where you don’t have a local version? For many sites this is the global version of the site, or their English version. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW You can only designate one version as x-default. If you set a homepage as x-default for pages other than the homepage, you are asking Google to show homepage instead of any other pages in language-country that are not specified in your Hreflang tags. And you cannot dynamically swap it to the local language of the IP of the user. Yes, it has been tried. No, it does not work. 7. I have English and French content on the same page. Can I assign them to both languages in the hreflang tag? Answer: Each page should only have content in one language, but multiple languages on a single page happens frequently with user-generated content in a localized template. Google is pretty specific about this. You should set the language region to the dominant language and/or the language of the template. To Sum Up Hopefully, this article has demonstrated that hreflang itself is not complex, but interesting and sometimes challenging website infrastructures increase the complexity. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW Start small with a pair of languages or a subset of pages and test it. Once you show the value, it makes a brilliant business case for management to commit the resources for larger-scale implementation. More Resources: Learn more about Search Engine Journal by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published May 29, 2020 7:30 am on Search Engine Journal: Google is quickly expanding the number of ways site owners can measure Core Web Vitals, now offering 6 ways in total. Core Web Vitals were introduced just weeks ago, and at the time they could only be measured using the Chrome UX report. With the announcement that Core Web Vitals will be incorporated into Google’s ranking algorithm, the company is adding measurement capabilities to many of its existing tools. See: Google’s Core Web Vitals to Become Ranking Signals Core Web Vitals can now be measured using: Search Console PageSpeed Insights Lighthouse Chrome DevTools Chrome UX Report Web Vitals Extension Here’s more about using each of these tools to measure Core Web Vitals. Search Console There’s a new Core Web Vitals report in Search Console to help site owners to evaluate pages across an entire site. The report identifies groups of pages that require attention, based on real-world data from the Chrome UX report. With this report, be aware that URLs will be omitted if they do not have a minimum amount of reporting data. PageSpeed Insights PageSpeed Insights has been upgraded to use Lighthouse 6.0, which makes it capable of measuring Core Web Vitals in both the lab and field sections of the report. Core Web Vitals are annotated with a blue ribbon as shown below. Lighthouse Lighthouse was recently upgraded to version 6.0, which includes additional audits, new metrics, and a newly composed performance score. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW Two of these new metrics added are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). These metrics are lab implementations of Core Web Vitals and provide diagnostic information for optimizing user experience. The third new metric — Total Blocking Time (TBT) — is said to correlate well with First Input Delay (FID), which is another Core Web Vitals metric. All of the products that Lighthouse powers are updated to reflect the latest version. Chrome UX Report Also referred to as CrUX, this report is is a public dataset of real user experience data on millions of websites. The Chrome UX report measures field versions of all the Core Web Vitals, which means it reports on real-world data rather than lab data. Google has recently updated the report with a new Core Web Vitals landing page. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW The report can be accessed here. Chrome DevTools Chrome DevTools has been updated to help site owners find and fix visual instability issues on a page that can contribute to Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Select a Layout Shift to view its details in the Summary tab. To visualize where the shift itself occurred, hover over the Moved from and Moved to fields. Chrome DevTools also measures Total Blocking Time (TBT), which is useful when it ones to improving First Input Delay (FID). ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW TBT is now shown in the footer of the Chrome DevTools Performance panel when you measure page performance. Performance optimizations that improve TBT in the lab should also improve FID. Web Vitals Extension A new extension, now available to install from the Chrome Web Store, measures the three Core Web Vitals metrics in real-time. You can download and install the extension here. Source: Web.dev Learn more about Search Engine Journal by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published May 29, 2020 7:00 am on Search Engine Land: [embedded content] SEO teams are responsible for their organizations’ organic visibility, yet, as In-House SEO Advisor for Search Engine Land Jessica Bowman likes to phrase it, these teams directly move very few levers that will actually improve SEO, particularly at enterprise companies. In these larger organizations, product managers, writers, UX designers and developers are the ones whose work may consistently affect a site’s ability to rank highly. Oftentimes, this makes SEO teams only as efficient as their ability to communicate and cooperate with other teams. During our crawling and indexing session of Live with Search Engine Land, Google’s Martin Splitt shared his mission to shatter the divide between SEOs and developers, as well as ways the two teams can benefit from one another. Related: Bridging SEO and web development: How to get developers on your side “I am bridging two communities that intersect quite a bit, but don’t necessarily acknowledge this intersection,” said Splitt, pointing out that there can be an inertia that prevents both parties from working together to strategize content and improve user experience. “There is a lot of potential for collaboration and winning things together that is untapped, and I’m trying to bridge that by giving SEOs the vocabulary and the backing to actually talk to developers confidently,” he said. “I think good developers and SEOs want websites to be fast, so oftentimes developers don’t necessarily convey this properly to the business side of things, whereas SEOs already have a really good rapport with the business side of most operations and organizations,” Splitt said, adding that this shared goal could be the basis for cooperation, but for some reason, typically isn’t. On the other hand, SEOs that do not have a comprehensive knowledge of JavaScript, for example, may disparage certain techniques out of ignorance, hurting their own credibility with their developer counterparts. “I’m trying to give both sides enough information and insights into what the other side does so that they can work together,” Splitt said. Why we care. Mutual understanding and respect between SEO and other teams, particularly development, enables open dialogue, which can be the difference between collaborating on upcoming site changes together, or one team putting in extra hours to perform damage control. As Splitt said, there is also an opportunity to learn from other teams: SEOs can gain more insight into the technical side of the sites they work on, and developers can learn to view their work through a business lens. If you’re interested in bridging this connection, check out our SEO for Developers content. Want more Live with Search Engine Land? Get it here:   About The Author George Nguyen is an Associate Editor at Third Door Media. His background is in content marketing, journalism, and storytelling. Learn more about Search Engine Land by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published May 29, 2020 6:00 am on HubSpot: Email marketing is an undeniably powerful strategy for lead acquisition and customer retention — in fact, 59% of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI, and 93% use email as a major channel for content distribution. Of course, creating an email marketing campaign isn’t easy, and it might require you to build a template using HTML so you’re not designing and altering every new email from scratch. Thankfully, there are dozens of email template builders available, all of which can help you intuitively and quickly create new email templates for your upcoming campaigns. Then again, the fact that there are dozens of tools available can pose a challenge — how are you supposed to know which template builder will best suit your needs? Fortunately, you’re in luck. We’ve done the homework for you, compiling a list of our 13 favorite email template builders, complete with pricing, screenshots, and a general overview of each app’s unique features. Keep reading to choose the best email template builder for your company. But first — why do you need an email template builder, anyway? Why You Need an Email Template Builder Email marketing remains one of the highest-ROI marketing strategies, in part because of how easy and inexpensive it is to create a campaign, but if you’re designing and sending emails on a frequent basis, you’ll need additional support to work efficiently—and maximize your results. An email template builder grants you several advantages: Better design features. Without a template builder, you may struggle to arrange your content in blocks as you want, or add videos to your email. Initial time savings. Most email template builders rely on intuitive mechanics, like drag-and-drop editors, so you can design your emails faster. Long-term time savings. Creating a library of email templates can save you a ton of time long-term, allowing you to quickly choose and lightly edit past templates for new emails. Replicability. Did you see impressive results with your most recent campaign? With an email template builder, you can easily replicate it with some minor tweaks in the future. Analytics. Most email template builders also feature built-in analytics, which you can use to study your past email marketing efforts and make improvements to your approach. Additionally, depending on the email template builder you’re using, you may have access to even more features. Let’s dive into some of the best builders, next. The Best Email Template Builders 1. HubSpot HubSpot offers a comprehensive, start-to-finish solution for all your marketing needs. You can create a sleek, on-brand email campaign using HubSpot’s drag-and-drop editor, and customize the template to match your brand and align with your goals. Additionally, you can customize each email depending on your recipient’s lifecycle stage, list membership, or any information in their contact records to ensure each email is designed for optimal conversions. Best of all, the email tool provides top-notch analytics and A/B testing tools so you can continue to refine your marketing strategy over time. Unique Features Analytics to provide deep insights into your email success rates, including open-rate, most popular links clicked in an email, who engages with each email, when and on which device, and what emails perform best. Tailor each email to individual subscribers based on lifecycle stage, list membership, or any other contact information to serve the best calls-to-action to segmented groups. Ability to run A/B tests to improve open-rates and clickthroughs. More than 100 email templates available by default. Custom landing page creation tools. Advanced social sharing options. Integrations with other marketing tools (more than 300 third-party apps). 24/7 support from customer service reps. Pricing You can get started with HubSpot’s email tool for free. Alternatively, if you’re already a HubSpot customer (professional or enterprise), the email tool is already included. 2. MailChimp MailChimp is one of the top names in email marketing, in part because of its accessibility. It’s super easy to learn and build your first few email templates, and you can get started right now with a free plan. As you scale your business, you’ll find additional options, features, and tools for your needs. Image Source Unique Features More than 100 email templates available by default. Custom landing page creation tools. Advanced social sharing options. Integrations with other marketing tools (more than 300 third-party apps). 24/7 support from customer service reps. Pricing MailChimp offers a free plan that provides basic templates, marketing CRM, surveys, and even website creation. At $9.99 per month, you’ll get additional support, custom branding, A/B testing, and all email templates. To get access to custom templates, retargeting ads, and better audience insights, you’ll need the Standard plan at $14.99 per month. Advanced plans, including a Premium tier at $299.00 per month, are also available, and offer features like advanced segmentation, multivariate testing, and more. 3. BEE Free BEE Free is a free online email editor that has been used by more than a million people. In just a few clicks, you can get started designing your first email template — or use one of the 150 templates currently available by default. It also offers free design ideas on its own blog. Image Source Unique Features 150 predesigned templates (and additional paid templates). Full responsiveness for mobile friendly designs. Integration with many SaaS apps. Options to pick up where you left off. Pricing BEE Free, as you might have guessed, is free. You can drag-and-drop to create emails without even needing to sign up. However, you may eventually want to upgrade to one of three BEE Pro packages, which are targeted to freelancers, marketing teams, and agencies. Pro plans start at $15 per month. 4. Mosaico Mosaico.io is an open source email template builder, which is something of a rarity. You won’t find any predesigned templates, as you would with other email template builders, but you will be able to alter the tool however you see fit. Image Source Unique Features A unique click-based design tool, abandoning the traditional “drag-and-drop” model. Community support, due to its open source nature. Infinite flexibility, if you’re willing to put in the work to customize it. Pricing Mosaico is currently completely open source, so you can use it for free. In fact, the entire code base is available on GitHub. 5. Email Monster Email Monster is another free email template builder, with a simple, easy-to-grasp approach. You can choose any of its 100+ base kit templates and edit the template as you see fit. You can also install the free Chrome extension if you want to integrate directly into Gmail. Image Source Unique Features Template designs are immediately available, so you can start in mere minutes. A free Chrome plugin so you can use the tool directly in your browser. The ability to save and download templates for future use. Pricing Email Monster is free, with no upgrades or paid plan options available at this time. 6. AWeber AWeber is specifically designed for small businesses eager to get started with email marketing, but who might have trouble knowing where to begin. Predesigned templates, custom designs, and email automation are all available. Image Source Unique Features A drag and drop AMP carousel, which allows you to add AMP image carousels to your emails. AWeber’s Smart Designer, which uses AI to construct and recommend email templates. A campaign marketplace that allows you to design and launch full email campaigns. 24/7 customer service. Pricing Pricing scales based on the number of subscribers you’re emailing. Plans start at $19 per month, which covers you up to 500 subscribers. The top tier, for 10,000 to 25,000 subscribers, is $149 per month. Pricing options for businesses with more than 25,000 subscribers are available upon request. You can also choose to be billed quarterly or annually to reduce your per-month costs. 7. Unlayer Unlayer allows you to build email templates from scratch, but also utilize merge tags and embed customizable, dynamic content into the body of your messages. It’s designed for SaaS companies, but could feasibly be used by any industry. Image Source Unique Features Dynamic content that changes based on defined conditions. Large-scale template management. Developer friendliness, with full support documentation, for unique customizations. Options for landing pages and further marketing support. Pricing The basic plan option is free. Premium packages are available at $99 for startups, $199 for businesses, and $399 for growing businesses. 8. Campaign Monitor Campaign Monitor is primarily focused on email marketing, but has other features you can use for a variety of other marketing and ecommerce purposes. Because it’s designed to work for teams, it’s ideal if you have many people working together on your campaigns. Image Source Unique Features Template management and collaboration for teams. Built-in support for surveys with unlimited questions. 80 predesigned email templates. Pricing Pricing varies based on how many subscribers you have. You can get started for free, but if you want access for more features, or if you need more support, you’ll need the Basic plan for $9 per month, the Unlimited plan for $29 per month, or the Premier plan for $149. 9. Chamaileon.io Chamaileon.io is a cleverly-named email template builder that allows your team to design emails collaboratively, complete with drag-and-drop mechanics so you never have to worry about coding. You can also design and follow a set email campaign workflow, simplifying your efforts in the future. Image Source Unique Features Collaborative email design for teams working together on the same templates. Unique and flexible account roles for multiple levels of access. Replicable testing settings to allow for easy testing of new designs. Pricing The free plan gives you much of what you need as an individual, but as you start adding seats and getting access to more features, the cost goes up. Premium plans start at $20 per month, with the Pro plan at $40 per month, and the Pro Team plan at $200 per month. 10. Designmodo Designmodo‘s email builder is designed to bring teams together for the email template building process. You can use it to design emails however you like, then export as HTML, or to a full email service provider like Mailchimp. Image Source Unique Features Modular designs that help you stack, customize, and rearrange your options. Long-term content management to help you revisit previous successes. Unlimited exports, which is ideal if you’re exporting to other services frequently. Pricing For a single user and 10 modules, you can use Postcards for free. Business plans start at $15 per month, and an agency plan starts at $25 per month. 11. Stripo.email Stripo.email helps you create responsive email templates without any HTML coding skills necessary. It also features innate dynamic AMP support, and a robust testing tool to help you preview your email in more than 90 popular environments, including variants for devices and browsers. Image Source Unique Features Drag-and-drop AMP blocks for image carousel and/or accordion support. Thorough testing in nearly 100 different environments. A customizable module library, allowing you to reuse past successful elements. Integration with many ESPs and third-party tools. Pricing The free plan is all you’ll need to get started. Billed yearly, the Business plan is $125 (or $10.42 per month), and the Agency plan is $400 (or $33.33 per month). 12. Taxi for Email Taxi for Email provides scalable email template creation, as well as the ability to create email workflows. It also allows you to assign various tasks and permissions to your team, so each of your marketers can play a role in perfecting your email campaign. Image Source Unique Features Team dynamics, including collaborative tools, access assignment, and user permissions. Robust testing on-demand as you design. Support for multiple languages and email segmentation. Pricing Taxi for Email doesn’t publish their pricing, but you can submit a short contact form on their website to get a free quote. 13. SendGrid SendGrid is an email service that provides support for email template designs — additionally, it offers email functions like automatic shipping notifications and password resets. It also boasts an open API, which you can use to integrate with just about anything. Image Source Unique Features A wide variety of tools, including email design, automation, signup forms, and more. APIs, SMTP Relay, and Webhooks. Delivery optimization tools so you can increase delivery rates. Pricing The basic version of the tool is free, and paid plans start at $14.95 per month for the essentials, or $89.95 per month for the Pro plan. Rates increase as you send more emails per month. Choose the Best Email Template Builder for Your Needs While it’s arguable that some of these email template builders are superior to some of the others, all of them have strengths and weaknesses. The best email template builder will be the one that most closely aligns with your organization’s goals — giving you all the tools you need, at a price within your budget. When you narrow the list down to a few options, give each one a try (since most of these tools either offer a free trial, or a free version altogether), and get a hands-on feel for which tool might serve your organization best. Learn more about HubSpot by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published May 29, 2020 4:30 am on HubSpot: When I try to think of marketing campaigns that were emotional and memorable, one of the first ones that comes to mind is the Dove Real Beauty campaign. The reason? Dove uses grassroots marketing strategies to create targeted content that their audience wants to share with everyone they know. As a marketer, that might seem like a daunting task. However, grassroots marketing can actually be cost-effective and achievable for any brand. Below, let’s review grassroots marketing from the best strategies to examples that’ll inspire your own campaigns. Grassroots marketing is similar to viral marketing because the goal is to create content that your audience wants to share. However, this might be more cost-effective since you’re building a campaign that’s targeted at a smaller, specific audience. These campaigns will be different from your everyday marketing campaigns because your goal is to inspire a small audience to take action. With other marketing campaigns, you’re probably hoping to reach a large number of people. However, with grassroots marketing, you’re creating highly specific content with the hope that your audience will share your message for you. 1. Know your target audience. It’s true, it’s going to be important for you to know your audience for any marketing campaign. However, with grassroots marketing it’s a necessity. The entire concept of grassroots marketing is that your audience will share your content for you. Yet, they won’t do that if your content doesn’t inspire them to. Before you get started with grassroots marketing, you need to know what motivates and inspires your audience. Figure out what they care about and create content surrounding that. 2. Get creative and inspire action. Again, your grassroots marketing content should inspire your audience to take action. But you might be wondering, “How do I do that?” One way is be creative and start a movement. Your content doesn’t have to be political, but it has to be inspiring and relatable. 3. Focus on storytelling. While I might be biased because I’m a writer, the best grassroots marketing campaigns are focused on storytelling. Ideally, your content will explore your audience’s emotions. For example, if your target audience is parents, you can create a video that’s focused on the parent/child relationship. This will tug at their heartstrings and make them want to share with their friends. In fact, think about grassroots marketing as a way to tell your audience’s stories. If they feel represented by your content, they’re going to share it wildly. 4. Start hyperlocal. It might seem like grassroots marketing is about creating viral content, however, no grassroots campaign started that way. With grassroots marketing, your content should be laser focused on your target audience. The goal is to attain national attention by sheer shareability and word of mouth. 5. Use reviews to your advantage. One strategy for your grassroots campaign should be to focus on getting reviews. You should spend time building your reputation on Yelp or Google reviews so you can gain organic attention online. For example, a year ago, I started to hear all about this thing called a Hydro Flask. I saw the reviews and heard people talking about it for months. I finally decided to buy one even though I had literally never used a water bottle in my day-to-day life before. That’s the result of a great grassroots marketing campaign. With reviews from happy customers amplifying your message, you can reach people you weren’t even targeting originally. 6. Create YouTube content. YouTube is one of the best channels to disseminate your grassroots marketing content. On this social media platform, you can share highly targeted content that’s educational, helpful, and emotional. If your video continues to get shared by your audience, you can begin to reach even more people organically because your video might rank better. Grassroots Marketing Ideas 1. Text your customer. With grassroots marketing, it’s important to get creative with how you reach your audience. One way to do this is to use text marketing. With SMS messages, you can have a real conversation with your customers. You can learn about them, send them one-touch surveys, or offer targeted marketing based on their feedback. The trick with text marketing is to only send messages to customers who have signed up to receive your texts. No one wants to get a random text from an unidentified number. 2. Include visuals. Almost every grassroots marketing campaign should be focused around the visuals. In fact, in a 2018 HubSpot survey, 54% of consumers wanted to see more video content from a brand or business they support. Visual content is what your audience wants to see. Plus, the main idea is that grassroots marketing is shareable and visual content is easier to share. 3. Don’t forget a call-to-action. Not to beat a dead horse, but your grassroots marketing campaign should inspire action. To do this, you have to include a call-to-action in your campaign. With successful grassroots marketing, your target audience has shared your content with their friends. Now that you have people’s attention, you need to decide what to do with it. For example, you can ask people to donate to a cause or purchase a product. 4. Support a cause. A quick and easy way to implement grassroots marketing in your strategy is to support a cause that your audience cares about. When people see that your company is charitable, they’re more likely to trust you and have positive associations with your brand. You can support a cause by donating, encouraging your audience to donate, amplifying and representing the message of a cause, or listing the causes you support on your website. When your content is focused around philanthropic efforts, your audience is more likely to share it. 5. Use influencers. Influencer marketing is a modern day version of grassroots marketing. The theory is that when influential people promote your brand, your audience is more likely to share that message and be inspired to take action. To get started, you could send influencers in your niche free products, or discounts. Hopefully, that will inspire them to talk about your brand and spread the word. Grassroots Marketing Examples 1. Extra Gum Commercial. I don’t typically cry when I see commercials on TV. However, Extra Gum has made me emotional with several of their grassroots marketing campaigns. This first commercial tells the story of a father and daughter who bonded over making origami birds from Extra gum wrappers. This hasn’t aired since 2015, but it was one of the first campaigns I thought of when I thought of grassroots marketing. In this second commercial, we get to watch the love story of a couple who meets in high school, falls in love, and captures their love story by drawing on Extra gum wrappers. Again, this last aired over a year ago, but I remembered it because of the emotional storytelling. Both these commercials are meant to tug at your heart strings and inspire you to share them with your family and friends. 2. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. In 2014, the ALS ice bucket challenge went viral. The concept was that you would take a video pouring a bucket of ice water on yourself and then challenge someone else to do the same. If you participated, you were supposed to donate money to the ALS Association. Before this campaign went viral, people weren’t exactly talking about ALS. In fact, many people might not have even heard of the disease. That’s how you know this was a successful grassroots marketing campaign. It started with a small idea, and grew to a national campaign. For this challenge to be shareable, everyone who participated had to nominate a friend to do it. This grassroots campaign started a movement, inspired action, and supported a cause. Plus, celebrities and influential people got involved. Below are a couple of images of the celebrities that participated in sharing the grassroots campaign. Image Source Image Source 3. Dove Real Beauty Campaign. This is one of my favorite grassroots marketing campaigns. That’s why it bears mentioning twice. In the Dove Real Beauty campaign, Dove had a forensic artist draw women as they saw themselves and then as strangers saw them. This is an excellent example of what grassroots content will look like when you know your audience intimately. By knowing its audience of real women, Dove was able to start a movement. In fact, this video has over 68 million views on YouTube. The powerful video barely mentioned the product, but inspired women around the world. Grassroots marketing is a great way to focus on reaching your audience, with the hope that they’ll share your campaign with people they know. Essentially, it’s word of mouth marketing at its best. Learn more about HubSpot by visiting their website.

The Digital Ninja Club News Aggregation service has sourced the following article originally published May 28, 2020 7:08 pm on MOZ: Posted by BritneyMuller Businesses all over the globe are struggling with new challenges as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. With consumers turning to the internet for the majority of their needs, it’s never been more vital to ensure your online presence is easily found and your business updates clearly communicated. In this special edition of Whiteboard Friday, Britney Muller outlines a checklist that businesses can use to meet the changing needs of consumers and improve visibility for local searches. Bonus — We’ve adapted these tips into a free checklist you can download and share: Get the checklist Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we’re going over crisis adaptation, and I first have to give a huge shout-out to Miriam Ellis, who really helped me package all of this up to deliver to you today. If you’re not already following Miriam on Twitter, I highly suggest you do. She is a local SEO genius. So let’s dive right in. Meet your customers where they are You often hear this phrase in marketing and in SEO about meeting your customers where they are. This might be important now more than ever because the current landscape, it’s changed so much. Listen to your customers & understand how their needs have shifted In order to better meet your customers where they are, you really first have to listen and understand how their needs have shifted, how have their concerns shifted. What are they searching for now? Just really paying attention and listening online to your current target market. One of the things I also like to suggest is listen to competitive reviews. Keep an eye on competitive reviews being posted on Google and other spaces to get a gauge of how things have perhaps moved. Know where your audience is This could have also shifted a bit. Whiteboard Friday’s OG, Rand Fishkin, launched SparkToro that does exactly that. So you can really deep dive into current data around what your audience is listening to, who they follow, all sorts of great stuff for you to leverage in today’s climate. Connect with potential customers in meaningful ways Now is a great time to reach out and engage with not only potential customers but current customer base and remind people that you are still here, you’re still serving them in various ways. So it’s really, really key. Partner with relevant businesses I’ve seen this do really well in some great examples of pivoting, where a fruit delivery company partnered with a bakery to include these free cakes within orders. What a great way to get some visibility for that bakery, and vice versa — they could do different things. I think it’s a great time to leverage those relationships and help one another out. I absolutely love that tip. Communicate all changes and updates Now the other big, big priority right now is all around communicating changes and updates to your website visitors. So what do you need to cover? Changes to hours is so important right now. It’s essential that you have that information readily visible to anyone visiting your website, if this applies to you. All forms of availability, video, curbside, no touch delivery, have that information available. Any expected delays and product availability challenges. This is a really great tip too. Sanitation and any adopted safety precautions.  Payment methods accepted. This can be really helpful in the transaction. Any philanthropic efforts that you’re doing to help support people in need. I’m seeing a lot of these show up in banners and readily available information for people visiting websites. I think it’s great to consider making sure that this information is easy for people to access. Immediately communicate this information: Set up online orders and catalog inventory/services In addition to these things, set up online orders. At the very least, catalog your online inventory or services for people to still have that awareness of what you’re currently offering. I would suggest if you’re a struggling business and you don’t want to go into a huge website build, you can absolutely check out and explore things like Squarespace or Shopify. I would have never thought I would be suggesting these platforms a year ago just because they’re not usually great for SEO reasons. But they can do a beautiful job of solving this problem so quickly, and then you can roll out V2 and V3 down the road when you’re ready to make those improvements. But I think just getting businesses off the ground is so important right now. Add products for free on Google Shopping This was such a neat thing that Google offered I believe several weeks ago, and it’s doing great. What it basically does is it allows you to list products for free on Google Shopping, giving you that extra visibility right now. So if you’re an e-commerce brand, definitely check that out. Create maps showing delivery radiuses Miriam had this great idea to create maps showing delivery radiuses, if that applies to you, so really giving someone visiting your site an easy to consume idea of the areas that you serve. Sometimes when you see the ZIP codes, it’s a little overwhelming. You have to do a little work. But that’s kind of a great idea. Routific Then this was mentioned in a recent GatherUp webinar by Darren Shaw — Routific. So if you are doing local deliveries and they’re getting a little out of hand, Routific is a company that creates delivery routes to make them most efficient for you, which I thought was so cool. I didn’t even know that existed. So it’s a good little tool tip. Double down on SEO and content marketing I absolutely loved Mike King’s post on this — I think it was a couple weeks ago — where he explains why economic downturns favor the bold. It’s brilliant. There are incredible use cases around this, and we’ll link to that down below. Someone who has impressed the heck out of me the last couple of weeks is Kristin Tynski — I hope I’m saying that right — over at Fractl. She is going above and beyond to create content pieces that are not only genius but are link building opportunities, apply to various clients, and use traditional journalism tactics to gather offline, unique data to present online. I highly suggest you pay attention to what Kristin is up to. She is a genius. Kristin, we have to meet sometime. I’m a huge fan of you. Keep up the great work. Local & Google My Business Now let’s dive into some GMB stuff. While this might not apply to you if you’re not a local business, I think there are still things to take away for larger companies that also either have a local listing or just to be aware of. So here’s an example of Uptown China Restaurant, a local Chinese restaurant. It’s awesome in Queen Anne, and it’s going to be our example. So what’s the first thing? Correct any GMB errors Just correct any GMB errors. Make sure that the current data shown and information is correct and up to date. Update hours to remove warning Then this is probably my favorite hack of all, from Joy Hawkins, about this warning that we see on all businesses currently, because of the pandemic, that says hours or services may differ. You can get this removed simply by updating your hours. How incredible is that? So I highly suggest you just update your hours. Joy also mentioned in this webinar I keep referring to, that was so good, she suggests using the hours that you are available to take phone calls. Google has never had an issue with that, and it tends to make the most sense. So something to think about. Respond to reviews Now is also a great time to invest and be engaged with these reviews. I think it’s one of the most overlooked PR and marketing tactics available, where customers exploring your brand, exploring your location want to know that (a) you care and that (b) you’re going to engage with a customer and that you have a timely response. So I think it’s important to respond to reviews, especially on behalf of the business side. Confirm or reject any new Google My Business prompts So we’re going to continue to see different things roll out. There were senior hours available to, I believe, grocery stores that popped up as an option. No-contact delivery. These things will always be changing. So I think it’s important to maybe put a reminder in your calendar just to keep an eye on are there any new options within Google My Business that I could activate or clarify. Google loves that, and it also helps fill out your listing better. Update menu and product listings What a great time to take some good, new photos. Update your menu items. I wish Uptown China Restaurant did this, and I might suggest it to them that they can add those offerings. They can add those things to really pop up on the listing and kind of make it shine. Use Posts Posts have always been really, really great for Google My Business listings because it gives you a big photo. It lasts for a while up here, I believe up to 14 days. It’s very prevalent when you see it. Now Google has also been offering COVID-19 posts. There isn’t an option to add an image with the COVID-19 posts. It’s text only, but it lasts longer and it’s more prominent than a regular post. So it will show up higher in your Google My Business listing, and we’ve also seen it pop up in actual SERPs in the organic area. So pretty cool. Good to know. I suggest you doing that. You have control over the messaging. You can say whatever you would like. You can provide updated info, all that good stuff. Use Product Posts So a shout-out to Darren Shaw, who noticed this. People are getting really savvy with product posts, which again it would show up in your Google My Business listing with a big photo and a description. What he’s seen people do is basically have a photo of a car with text on it that says “No-Touch Delivery” or different service options as the product. Google is currently letting that slide. I don’t know if that will last forever. But it’s an interesting thing to explore if you really want that visibility if someone is struggling with their business right now, and you can kind of get that to pop up on the SERPs. Enable text messaging So I’ve heard from so many SEOs that this has continued to go up into the right during the pandemic, and it makes sense. People want to just quickly get information from businesses. You can create a welcome message. So I highly suggest exploring that if that’s available to you. Update images Again, I think I’ve said this like three times, but update images. It’s a great time to do that, and it can really help make your stuff pop. Share these tips with businesses in need! Lastly, don’t forget to share these tips with businesses. Understand that there are a lot of people in need right now, and if there’s anything that we can do to help, by all means let’s make all of that stuff happen. The fact is that you’re not alone. So whether you’re doing this work on behalf of a client, or you yourself or family or friends are really struggling with a business right now, there are different support groups and options as far as financial support. We’ve created a free PDF checklist of all this information that you can download and share with any marketers, clients, or businesses in need: Download the free checklist I know we at Moz are going to be putting everything we have into helping you and others during this time, and so I created a form at the bottom of this post where you can fill in some information and let us know if there are specific problems that we could help with. We’re in this together. We want to help you all as much as we can. I will be taking that very seriously and spending lots of time on replying or creating material to help individuals struggling. So please fill that out. Also, feel free to leave comments and suggestions in the comments. I think some of the best, most valuable takeaways sometimes happen in the comments where you’re either clarifying something that I said or adding something really great. I would really appreciate that. Just want to get all the good information out there so that we can help everyone out. I really appreciate you taking the time to watch this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and I will see you all again soon. Thanks. Video transcription by Speechpad.com   Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read! Learn more about MOZ by visiting their website.