According to Google’s Retail Marketing Guide 48% of consumers in surveyed countries around the world say they get inspiration for purchases when they are online. Shoppers browse across Google and YouTube to discover new brands and products that are relevant to them. Their methods go as follows:

• Inspiration forms when watching YouTube Videos. 
  • 78% of people surveyed in the U.S. say they feel they get the highest-quality info about products when shopping or browsing on YouTube

• Browse Google Images

• Scroll through Google Discover to catch up on interesting topics

Engage Customers as They Research 

Before making a purchase, customers seek information from trusted sources to compare products and narrow down their options. Best in category, prices, and the latest reviews are important factors customers look for. 89% agree that YouTube creators give the best information about products and brands. YouTube reviewers hit all the important factors and more trusted due to the fact the person is visible vs a star review that is faceless and could be interpreted as a bot. Consider YouTube reviewers when coming up with a social media marketing plan. 

Consumers also look up information and articles on Google Search. 40% of shoppers go to Google when researching a purchase they plan to make in-store or online. It is important that your SEO strategy is up to date. Check your website’s ranking on Google SERPs. If it not where you want it to be you may need to work with a digital marketing agency on your on-page and off-page SEO techniques. And if your budget allows, invest in Google Ads. 

Convert Customers Looking to Purchase

Convincing potential clients is key. Shoppers buy from brands that can provide a seamless experience. 31% of consumers in surveyed countries say they are researching online more before purchasing to avoid out-of-stock situations, inventory blockage, and shipping challenges or delays. They want to be able to buy a product online as soon as they find it or see what a local store has in stock. 

Utilize Google Maps, especially for local business traffic. Google Maps searches for “shopping near me” have grown globally by over 100% year over year. Maps also use to be GoogleMyBusiness app. Currently you can set a profile using Maps. Create and maintain your profile so you can be found easily. 

The Shopping tab is an underrated tool business often forget about. Almost half (49%) of consumers in surveyed countries expect to be able to buy from any store online. You want your online store to show up in the Shopping tab. Make sure in your website’s CMS your product details like name, price, and description are accurate and visible. 

Update your marketing plan based on these tips today! Call 248.528.360 

The post Customers Use Google to Browse, Research, and Buy appeared first on Miller Media, Digital Marketing Agency, PPC, Industrial Web Design, WordPress.

Sitelinks:

Over 66% of SERPs in the U.S. are sitelinks. Sitelinks are links that will allow search users to find specific content beyond the homepage. Google displays a sitelink search box followed by four sitelinks to popular pages. 

People Also Ask:

This feature can appear anywhere on a SERP. It typically displays 5 of the top questions asked about a search query. When someone clicks on a question under the “People Also Ask” section, it will display the answer to the question, along with a link to the source for the answer. It will also automatically generate additional questions related to the one the user just clicked.

Reviews:

You see in the ratings in the local pack for local business reviews. The stars you see in shopping ads. Google may also display star ratings and review counts within organic search results.

Images:

When Google anticipates that a search query would best be answered visually, they use the images feature. This feature can appear anywhere throughout the SERP. When clicked upon, the link goes to Google image search results for the query with additional details about the image clicked.

Videos:

Like the image feature, the video feature of SERPs can appear anywhere throughout the page. Google displays a section of videos from YouTube after four ads, a featured snippet, People Also Ask, and five organic search results.

Knowledge Panels:

Knowledge panels are automatically generated boxes of useful information, compiled from various sources around the internet by the Knowledge Graph. They generally appear on the right side of search results.

Local Packs:

When there are local results that match your search query, you may see them appear in a local pack. Listings in a local pack typically appear with reviews, an address, and hours of operation. According to the Local Pack-O-Meter, 35.7% of approximately 60 million search queries in the U.S. contained a local pack in March of 2022. Over the past year, it has fluctuated from 33% to 33.9%. If you have a local business this feature is extremely important to you. 

Featured Snippets:

Featured snippets generally appear at the top of SERPs, offering a portion of content from one of the top organic search results for a particular query. For example, a search for [how to update my WordPress website] may generate a featured snippet with a video from YouTube that answers the query. Other formats of featured snippets include numbered or bulleted lists. Featured snippets sometimes fall below Google Ads for certain search queries and can also come in table format. 

Google Ads: 

Sponsored results from advertisers using Google Ads may appear at the top and bottom of SERPs. After organic listings, a People Also Ask section, and top stories, Google displays an additional three ads, followed by related searches.

Shopping Ads:

In addition to standard text ads, Google also offers retailers the ability to create shopping ads for their products. Shopping ads often display the name of the product, price, retailer, and product rating.

Carousels: 

Carousels generally appear at the top of SERPs, offering fast answers to the search query.

For example, a search for [computers] results in a carousel of images with the most popular computer brands that other Google users search for.

Instant Answers: 

Instant Answers is a search feature Google uses to display answers to a search user’s query at the top of the SERP. Google may also provide instant answers at the top of SERPs for the following types of queries:

• Weather.
• Movie locations.
• Calculator.
• Translating a word or phrase.
• Calculating the number of days until a specific date or upcoming holiday.
• Finding out the score of a recent sports game.
• Determining the age of someone based on their birthdate.
• Getting the dates to popular events, like conventions and festivals.
• Seeing the current share price and market summary for popular stocks.

Top Stories:

If a search query has related news stories, Google may display a section of top stories from media outlets. In this SERP for MacBook, Google displays the top stories after shopping ads, organic results, People Also Ask, and more shopping results.

Tweets:

A small percentage of SERPs will feature tweets relevant to the search query. After the first organic search result and a people also ask section, the latest tweets from your official Twitter account appear.

Apps;

Google search users on mobile devices may see features that are only available on mobile. Google displays apps from the Apple store after three ads and a list of apps from sources across the web.

Product Comparisons: 

Google can take product information and display it in search results for users looking to compare products. You can see a side-by-side list of the product images, reviews, price, and additional details. When search users click on the detailed comparison link, Google displays additional details about the products compared, along with the option to add additional products for comparison when relevant.

Top Products:

Unlike shopping ads, the top products feature showcases unadvertised products related to a search query. When you click on a product, additional details about the product appear. Google displays reviews from third-party sites, prices from multiple retailers, top insights from media outlets, and reviews from multiple retailers.

Jobs: 

Google helps job seekers by aggregating jobs from various sources across the web and displaying them within SERPs for queries like [jobs near me].

Wondering how these features can help your business? Call 248.528.360.

The post Google Search Results & Features You Need to Know appeared first on Miller Media, Digital Marketing Agency, PPC, Industrial Web Design, WordPress.

1. Who are you?
   • How did your company start?
   • What is your story?
   • How was your product or service created? 
   • Write a small synopsis about you company & link to the about page. 
2. What are you an expert in?
   • Include a FAQ
   • Include preview and a link to blog 
   • Talk about your market and how your product or service affects it
3. Who do you serve?
   • Research demographics and competitors 
   • What images and language create relatability? 
   • Include keywords from SEO plan into content 
4. How can I (the visitor) benefit from your services?
   • What problem is your product or service solving?
   • Use emotion and practically 
   • Example: lotion makes you feel good and gets rid of your dry skin
     • I can purchase online, or I am informed on how to find way to contact your business
5. What do I do next?
   • Strategically place calls-to-action at the top, middle, and bottom on home page
     • Examples of calls-to-action:
       • Call Now
       • Purchase 
       • Contact Us
       • Find Out More
       • Order Now

Update your home page. Call 248.528.3600.

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A variety of factors including whether they are logged into their Google account, their location settings, language preferences, and search history can affect what type of search results a user can see. At the beginning of the search results, Google displays the approximate number of search results for the query and the time it takes to deliver the SERP. For example, there are approximately 828,000,000 webpages indexed for the keyword SEO, and results were delivered in 0.59 seconds. Pay-per-click Google Ads that target the keyword SEO can be seen at the first four results starting with an Ad label. 

The first organic listings that appear in this SERP for Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. After this organic listing, Google includes a “People Also Ask” section. Search users click on a question and additional related questions appear. The answers typically link to a webpage for further information. 

To the right of the Google Ads, organic listing, and “People Also Ask section”, is Google’s knowledge panel for search engine optimization. Knowledge panels can vary based on the entity they describe. After these factors, the next portion of the SERP for SEO contains two more organic listings, followed by the local pack featuring SEO companies. 

Following the local pack, Google displays the top news stories about SEO from the past 24 hours. After another organic listing, Google places three videos from YouTube about SEO into the SERP, followed by another four organic listings. When the bottom of the SERP page is finally reached, Google has more organic results and related searches.

Note if you are on a mobile device, Google doesn’t make you click through to the second page of results. Instead, after a listing of related searches, the next page of search results will automatically appear as you scroll down. This makes it even more important for your business to be first on the results page. Users will only scroll for so long before they click on a competitor or search for something else. 

Get your business on Google’s first page of SERPS by calling 248.528.360. 

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1. Cite your sources & ensure accuracy of claims
2. Remove, redirect, or refresh short content
3. Remove duplicate content
4. Include author bylines, bios, & author pages (List specific credentials & awards)
5. Maintain off-page reputation by updating your GoogleMyBusiness page, Wikipedia page, & other informational sources
6. Include testimonials & reviews on-site
7. Ensure accuracy & sufficient information on social media pages
8. Improve & expand upon brand informational pages (About us, Contact us, Mission statement) 
9. Remove overly aggressive or invasive advertising
10. Offer clear & specific customer service information

Update your website today. Call 248.528.3600. 

The post How to Affect the Outcome of Google Core Algorithm Updates appeared first on Miller Media, Digital Marketing Agency, PPC, Industrial Web Design, WordPress.

1. Site Traffic

Look at Users or Sessions to help you measure site traffic. Users represent an individual who visited your website and Sessions represent “visits” or the different times a user visited your site. To view site traffic metrics, open the Life cycle > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report. The report should automatically report using default channel grouping. If user counts don’t match, it is because Google Analytics 4 shows “active users,” whereas Universal Analytics focuses on total users, and the default channel groupings are defined differently.

2. User Engagement 

View user engagement metrics for article pages so you can learn what types of content to produce more of and which topics require further analysis. Google Analytics’ engaged sessions provide more context to understanding users’ behavior on-site by including any user that has spent at least ten seconds on a page. You can adjust this length of time from the default 10 seconds up to 60 seconds within Data Stream > More Tagging settings. Engaged sessions are great for blogs and publishers or news websites because it accounts for when a user may have had a positive experience reading or watching a video without triggering a secondary hit. 

3. Events 

An event measures a user’s interaction with your website. Enable enhanced events by clicking he gear icon in the bottom left of your screen and select Data Streams located under the Property column. Then, select your data stream and click the gear icon under Enhanced measurement. Toggle all current and future relevant events for your site. To view user event metrics, open Life cycle > Engagement > Events report. The events report shows all automatically collected events and any enhanced measurement events you’ve added.

4. Conversions 

Use conversions (in UA this was named goals) to measure user activities that contribute to the success of your business. Examples of this would be if a user completes a form, interacts with a chatbot, or downloads a file. To mark an event as a conversion, click Configure > Events. Locate the desired conversion in the existing events table and click the toggle on the far right to mark the event as a conversion. Gray means the user interaction will record as a regular event and blue means that the event will also display as a conversion. Then, open the Life cycle > Engagement > Conversions report. You will see automatically collected events and any event that you manually marked as a conversion. Analyze conversion events in-depth, afterwards, click on the blue event name to view conversions by marketing channel or page. It shows which pages had the most conversions and which marketing channel the user came from.

Still struggling to understand Google Analytics? Call 248.528.3600 to consult an expert. 

The post 4 Tips That Will Get You Up & Running with Google Analytics appeared first on Miller Media, Digital Marketing Agency, PPC, Industrial Web Design, WordPress.

Google’s Search Index:

URLs > Crawl Queue > Crawler > Processing >Render Queue > Renderer > Rendered HTML > Index 

Google collects from various sources such as pages, sitemaps, RSS feeds, and URLs submitted in Google Search Console or the Index API. It organizes what it wants to crawl, collects the pages, and stores copies. The pages are processed to find links to API requests, JavaScript, and CSS that allows Google to render it. Additional requests get crawled and cached. Google uses the rendering to view pages similar to how a user would. It does this process repeatedly looking for any changes or new links and stores the content. This is what makes a website searchable in Google’s index. 

 Get your website crawler-ready! Call 248.528.3600

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1. Adds Many Extensions 
   • Sitelink Extension
   • Callout Extension 
   • Structured Snipped Extension
   • Call Extension
   • Message Extension 
   • Location Extension 
   • Affiliate Location Extension 
   • Price Extension 
   • App Extension 
   • Promotion Extension 

2. Use Google Audiences 

Google lets you set a preference based on who the searcher is and what they are searching for. You can also re-market to people who have visited your website in the past. Upload a list of visitors and Google will show your ads to that specific audience based on the demographics when the users search for terms that you are targeting through your keywords. This is especially important if you have a long sales cycle, and it takes more interaction points before a lead becomes a customer.

3. Be Specific with Locations

Lookup zip codes for specific areas and make sure that your ads are being shown to that zip code specifically. Exclude certain areas you can’t sell or ship to. For example, you can only ship your product to the continental US, make sure you exclude Alaska and Hawaii for Google Ads. 

4.  Adjust Bidding Based on Goals 

If you start to notice a pattern where people are clicking on your ads more often when they search for a specific keyword and are converting at a higher rate, adjust your bidding up so that you win a higher share of impressions for that specific keyword. Make sure to also adjust your bid up so that your ads receive a higher position and are shown more often when someone searches from that location. Conversely, you may not want to compete as heavily in certain areas or for certain keywords. You can also adjust your bidding down so that Google doesn’t show your ads as often for terms that don’t convert at a high rate.

5. Watch Search Terms Carefully 

Identify negative keywords and find additional keywords to add to your campaigns. In addition, identify keywords that may need to be an exact match vs. phrase match vs. broad match. Check search terms to see what terms your ads are showing for on a monthly basis. Are you getting a lot of impressions for a search term, but not a lot of clicks? It might be time to optimize the ad and try to improve your CTR. 

Need help with your Google Ads? Call 248.528.3600

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1. SEO Chatter (WebmasterWorld thread)
2. Semrush
3. RankRanger
4. Accuranker 
5. Advanced Web Rankings 
6. SERPmetrics 
7. Cognitive SEO
8. Mozcast 

Need help preparing your website for next update? Call 248.528.3600 

The post Is Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Coming Soon? appeared first on Miller Media, Digital Marketing Agency, PPC, Industrial Web Design, WordPress.

Yes! It WAS confirmed, however, by John that expertise of content is used to understand how content fits with the rest of the web. It is more important than ever to ask what determines expertise, what are the author’s credentials, and what content do they want to publish? Include citations, make sure the topic is well researched, and be methodical with language, especially if you are in the medical field. With the rise of the spreading of misinformation, it is important for content creators and SEO experts to help push ethical, well-researched content to Google’s first page so it can reach the public and potential clients safely. The goal is to decrease the chances of the audience clicking on scams leading to painful customer experience and mistrust of industries that are supposed to be helping the public. 

Call 248.528.3600 and the team here at Miller Media can help your expertise be SEO-friendly. 

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