This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Chrome’s New Look
With Chrome turning 10, changes are coming including the mobile toolbar moved to the bottom of the screen and having simplified URLs in the address bar. When it’s time to create a new password, Chrome will now generate one for you, save it and next time you sign in it’ll be on your laptop and phone. The top search box that combines the search bar and address bar now will show you instant answers. If you search for a website and have a dozen tabs open, chrome will tell you if it’s already open and let you jump straight to that tab. You will also able to see files from your Google Drive in the address bar. You can create and manage shortcuts to your favorite websites if you open a new tab and click “add shortcut” and you will also be able to customize the background of these new tabs. Source: Google Blog
Overview Tab and Report Downloads Updated in Bing Ads
Several updates have been rolled out in Bing Ads to help advertisers save time by getting a faster look at performance insights. New tiles have been added to the Overview tab including tiles for top changes, top keyword performance, devices, and a “what people searched” tile. Bing Ads also updated report downloads to allow advertisers to simultaneously save, schedule, and share them. This can also be scheduled and shared with other users via email. Source: Search Engine Journal
New Search Console out of Beta
The new Search Console offers: search analytics data going back 16 months in the Performance report and a live test of a URL that may not be in Google’s index yet. Active manual actions and security issues will be shown directly on the Overview page. Reports will now show the HTML code where it thinks a fix is necessary and you will be able to share that information with other users. Now only a sitemap that is submitted will be tested, and these will be tested automatically. The new search console does not yet include: crawl stats like pages crawled per day, robots.txt tester, managing URL parameters, international targeting, html improvements, reading and managing your messages, associating your search console property with an analytics property, property sets, blocked resources, security issues or structured data reports. Source: Google Blog
Third Party Tech Support Providers Restricted By Google Ads
Announced late last week, Google Ads stated that they will now be restricting ads from third-party technical support providers based on an increased volume of misleading ad experiences. Google will require that legit tech support providers go through the “verification program” to validate their service. On this topic, Google stated that “For many years, we’ve consulted and worked with law enforcement and government agencies to address abuse in this area. As fraudulent activity takes place off our platform, it’s increasingly difficult to separate the bad actors from the legitimate providers. That’s why in the coming months, we will roll out a verification program to ensure that only legitimate providers of third-party tech support can use our platform to reach customers.” Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Analysis
Building your Site’s Reputation
Off-page SEO includes bolstering your digital reputation and authority by earning backlinks. Successfully placing guest blog posts with influential sites is an effective method for boosting off-page SEO. Investigate sites that are authoritative in your industry with relevant topics and uncover where your competitors are active. If you are already receiving mentions of your brand and products, it may be worth reaching out and ask if they can add a link. Also check links to your site that are broken and reach out to the site owner to inform them that the link is broken and offer a substitute link. Source: Search Engine Watch
Google’s New Guide to Ad Copy
Googler Matt Lawson shares his suggestions on how to implement all of the new ad formats into your account, including Responsive Search Ads and the new, bigger Expanded Text Ads. Lawson first notes that the main goal is still to have at least three to five ads in each ad group and an optimized ad rotation. But, when it comes to utilizing Google’s Responsive Search Ads, Lawson recommends trying as many ad components as possible which can include 15 options for headlines and three options for description lines. He also notes that you will need distinct headline variations and recommends including a few headlines that feature your keywords and a few that don’t. Use the ad strength widget to see whether Google Ad’s system likes your combinations or not. With Google’s longer Expanded Text Ads, Lawson recommends ensuring any mandatory information is in the first two headlines or the first description line as the third headline and second description line may not show all the time. An additional note is that when you do have a second description line it will take priority over call outs and structured snippet extensions. Source: Matt Lawson, Search Engine Land