This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Manage Local Listings Directly from Search Results
In the past, for a business owner or SEO to update a local listing they had to log into Google My Business, but a recent update by Google will allow users to make updates directly in the knowledge panel. This feature works on both desktop and mobile if the user is logged into the Google account that is associated with the business. The update also supports Google Posts, making it easier to update posts on the fly. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Bing Now Offering Bid Adjustment Suggestions
Using historical ad performance data as a guideline, Bing will now help you set effective bid strategies through remarketing bid adjustments. These suggestions can be found in the Opportunities tab, and advertisers are free to look through them and choose any they would like to apply to their campaigns. Of course, a requirement to see these suggestions is having conversion tracking enabled. Source: Search Engine Journal
Best Practice: Kill the Old Site After a Site Move
Whether moving a site to a new domain or to go HTTPS, the established practice is to create redirects of all the old pages to the new site to help Google match pages and transfer ranking signals. During a Google Webmaster Office Hours, Google reiterated the importance of doing so to prevent Google ranking the incorrect page. After a migration, it is normal to see temporary ranking fluctuations for a few weeks, but if the old URLs are still active there can be a long-term loss in rankings. Source: TheSEMPost
AMP Links can now be Featured Snippets
Last week Google confirmed that AMP pages can now show up in the featured snippets section on mobile searches where in the past featured snippets couldn’t link back to AMP pages. Google still confirms that AMP is not a search ranking factor, but a user test for the same search query on mobile and desktop returned an AMP result for mobile and non-AMP on desktop. Source: Search Engine Land
Google Now Tracking When Your Shopping Ad Appears First
With a new report called “absolute top impression share,” AdWords will now report on how often your Shopping PLAs have appeared in the top position on the search results page. The “absolute top” refers to the left-most position in the mobile results, which Google claims receives up to three times more engagement. More specifically, the metric is calculated by the number of times your ad was in that left-most position compared to the number of times it could have been in that position. Source: Search Engine Journal
Analysis
Preparing for the New AdWords Ad Updates
With new ad rotation settings and automated ad suggestions on the horizon, William Larcom wants to help you prepare for the impact these new settings could have on your accounts. For the ad rotation change, if you prefer traditional ad testing practices, Larcom recommends sticking with the Do Not Optimize option. Also, now that ad rotation can be controlled on the ad group level, you can give yourself a more controlled schedule when rolling out ads. For the impending ad suggestions, the author recommends using this feature when you’ve hit an ad copy wall. The suggestions could be helpful, but it is difficult to tell at the moment from a technical standpoint as their as been no indication of what these suggestions will look like. Source: William Larcom, PPC Hero
Local SEO Tips for Dealer Locator Tools
When a brand has a nationwide network of dealers, they often use dealer locator tools to provide consumers with an easy way to find their product locally. Unfortunately, many of these tools are missing important SEO optimizations that could boost visibility and Cynthia Sener at Search Engine Watch provided insights to boost those tools. Create location specific landing pages for dealers with strong linking hierarchy based on city or state and provide relevant store information with a map on the page. Once complete, use Google’s Business Location Bulk Upload tool to update Google of the dealer locations which will help Google Maps associate each location to its unique landing page. Source: Cynthia Sener, Search Engine Watch
