This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Google Going Beyond Page One for Featured Snippets
Throughout the existence of featured snippets, Google has always looked to the first few organic results for content. Now, SEOs like Jennifer Slegg have been spotting content from sites ranking as
low as 14th overall showing up at featured snippets at the top of the SERPs. While we don’t quite know how widespread this phenomenon will be, it could potentially be a huge change for the little guy struggling to rank anything on page one. Source: The SEM Post
Shoppable Photo Tags Tested by Instagram
Instagram has recently begun to test shoppable tags on product photos. With this test, retailers can tag products in their photos with users can then tap to view product details. There is also a “Shop Now” button included on the details page, which will take users to the web to purchase the product. Another eventual addition will be a “Save” feature where users can bookmark products and come back to later. Source: TechCrunch
AMP Users Are Having a Field Day with New ‘amp-form’ Extension
One of the biggest gripes for webmasters when it came to AMP was the fact that the absence of form functionality meant there really was no easy way to capture leads. Now, with the AMP Project’s announcement of the “amp-form” feature, webmasters have been given the ability to implement form fields into their AMP code. Source: The SEM Post
Bing Ads Now Has Shared Budget Feature
Bing Ads has recently announced that they have implemented shared budgets into their platform. Users will now be able to place a group of campaigns under a single daily budget just like they are able to do in AdWords. This feature can be accessed in the web interface, Bing Ads Editor, and the API. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Additional Commentary
When Going HTTPS, Don’t Forget About Local Citations!
Over the last few years there has been plenty of analysis on how to not ruin your SEO when switching over to HTTPS. Many aspects about the switch have been beat into the ground, but Search Engine Land guest author Andrew Shotland warns us that we’ve been forgetting about one overlooked component of the switch: citations. Shotland cites his research on the correlation between citations and local rankings to explain that even something as little as a GMB listing pointing to the old HTTP version of the URL can cripple that business in Maps and the SERPs in general. Source: Andrew Shotland, Search Engine Land
Preparing Mobile PPC for the Holiday Season
PPC Hero Kristin Vick wants to help us prepare our mobile PPC efforts for the upcoming Holiday season and offers a checklist of questions to ask yourself before the season hits. Questions to consider before the holidays hit are: do you have promotional copy ready to go for each upcoming Holiday? Are your Remarketing efforts prepared? Do you have Expanded Text Ads up and running with mobile tie-ins? These are all important factors to consider when preparing your PPC account for the Holidays. Source: Kristin Vick, PPC Hero
