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Showing posts from November, 2018

Getting Granular with YouTube Audience Targeting

Not many people know this, but the second-largest search engine behind Google is actually YouTube. With 1.5 billion people watching over one billion hours of video a day, YouTube is gathering a lot of data on its users. All of this data allows advertisers to target specific audiences with a high level of granularity.… The post Getting Granular with YouTube Audience Targeting appeared first on Seer Interactive . https://ift.tt/2TYx2lv

Reaching higher together: how we all benefit from open source

You may know this open source fanatic as WordPress Core Contributor or esteemed speaker on WordCamps and other conferences. Today, Software Engineer & WordPress Consultant Alain Schlesser shares the details of his first experiences with open source and how to learn from, as well as contribute to open source projects. And, he is clear on one thing: “A world without open source would see less frequent technological advances, and they would come at a higher cost.” Read the 4th interview in our shout-out to open source interview-series , and find out how we all benefit from open source! Q. Why is open source so important to you? My belief is that open source is the principle that allows ‘knowledge’ to scale in the software engineering field. Reinventing the wheel before being able to tackle the actual problem can only take you so far. If everyone can stand on the shoulders of others, we can all reach higher and higher with time. Q. In what way do you contribute to open source? I co...

WordPress 5.0 RCs, Gutenberg related news and food for thought!

Today’s roundup focuses on WordPress 5.0 and its upcoming release date, but we’ll also discuss some interesting and new Gutenberg related news. And, I did my best to introduce a couple of interesting bits throughout this roundup. Every single link is certainly worth checking out! Let’s dive in, shall we? When will WordPress 5.0 be released? The question I heard most in the last couple of weeks was this: When will WordPress 5.0 be released? And that is a great question! Unfortunately, not one we have a straight answer to at the moment. The first Release Candidate (RC) was released last week and we’re expecting RC 2 today. But, that still doesn’t point to a specific date. The best answer we currently have is that the date will be communicated. Basically, this means the Core team is working hard to fix the outstanding issues but is not quite ready to commit to a specific date. My take is that they don’t want to send out a message with a specific date again if they’re not 100% sure ...

Customers Want You to Understand Their World

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I want to tell you the tale of two companies both trying to reach part of the community they serve and how one failed and the other nailed it. Why this is important is because it ties closely to the way customers choose to spend their money these days. They want companies who understand their world, and they want to feel like they’re with a company that cares about what they like. This isn’t really a story about Fortnite, but it is If you have a kid between 8 years old and 50, you might have already heard about Fortnite. The video game which launched in 2017 has already raced to 200 million active users (75 million in just the last six months). They passed a billion dollars in revenue last July, and will quite likely make a big year end revenue goal announcement. The post Customers Want You to Understand Their World appeared first on chrisbrogan.com . https://ift.tt/2rc1ECy

Don’t miss these amazing speakers!

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With the holidays arriving, you might not notice that the third edition of YoastCon is right around the corner! On 7 and 8 February, we gather the very best of the SEO and digital marketing world in Nijmegen. I’m really proud of – and impressed by! – our selection of speakers. In this post, I’d like to highlight some of the best speakers YoastCon has to offer. Want to read everything about everyone at YoastCon? Check out our speaker-overview. The very top of the SEO industry I’m extremely proud of our line-up. We’ve invited the very best of the international SEO community to speak at YoastCon. You definitely want to see Rand Fishkin , co-founder of Moz and Sparktoro. And what about Aleyda Solis , the expert on multilingual SEO? You can even attend sessions with Kris Jones talking about link building and Fili Wiese about site speed. Lots of practical SEO knowledge for sure! Get your YoastCon ticket now Only €499 (ex VAT) - limited availability! Google Alberto Medina is fl...

How to Reorder the Legend in Power BI

How to modify the legend order in power bi Before you dive into anything too cool in Power BI, it’s necessary to have an ideal legend. When using Power BI to organize groups of data, the order of the legend is not always where you’d like it to be, especially when creating custom groups.… The post How to Reorder the Legend in Power BI appeared first on Seer Interactive . https://ift.tt/2Skdzdc

Clustering Users for Enhanced Audience Segmentation

Audience Research is an important piece of any successful marketing strategy. Whether its conducting interviews, surveys, or content analyses — Audience Research can help define who your users are & what they truly care about At Seer, we developed a unique technique (leveraging Analytics & behavioral data) to cluster users based on the actions they take on a given website.… The post Clustering Users for Enhanced Audience Segmentation appeared first on Seer Interactive . https://ift.tt/2AzKX8v

YouTube to Remove Credits and Annotations, Test Out Back-to-back Ads

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Last updated on November 29, 2018 at 05:53 pm Much like the rest of the internet, YouTube has established numerous steps to optimize the user experience on mobile. When it comes to mobile-friendliness, the YouTube mobile app is truly a handy and reliable app that allows you to watch videos on the go, while offering full functionality that allows you to record and stream live. With more users going mobile, this also means that some processes and details must also be updated to keep up with the times. This means removing some seldom-used features and elements to streamline the process, while also testing out possible changes that might impact revenue and user experience. For YouTube, the newest set of updates aim to remove credits and annotations in editing, while testing out back-to-back ads that play before a video starts. Here are our thoughts, how it works, and how these can affect the user experience. Removing Credits Video credits in YouTube allows users to be able to tag us...

[VIDEO] Taking Down a Titan: How Brands Can Fight & Win in the War Against Amazon

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Since starting my role as the eCommerce Strategist at Seer , I’ve been approached many times by both team members and clients alike — all about Amazon . In the twenty-minute video below, I’ll break down: Why Amazon is a Titan Where  Amazon’s inefficiencies are What we can learn from brands who’ve successfully taken them on WATCH VIDEO: Don’t stop there!… The post [VIDEO] Taking Down a Titan: How Brands Can Fight & Win in the War Against Amazon appeared first on Seer Interactive . https://ift.tt/2AwhUCV

Networking for bloggers: why, how and where

As a blogger, you are probably doing your best to grow your audience on a daily basis. You’re optimizing for Google, Pinterest, social media and you do your best to set up and maintain a social media strategy. But, if you want to take your blog to the next level, there’ll come a point you will need the help of your fellow bloggers. In this post, I will explain why you need a network, as well as how and where to build it. Why you need to network as a blogger We all know that writing is one of the most lonely professions in the world. Although blogging may not seem as lonely at first glance – you engage with your readers on a daily basis – there’s a high chance you work alone. As a writer, you often live inside your head . Your audience will only ever see your end result: a blog post or social media post. They won’t see the process of you thinking up your idea, killing your darlings or debating whether to write a certain article. You often take those decisions by yourself, or run them b...

Should You Rewrite Your Web Copy? Or Hit Delete?

Do you look at photos of yourself from high school and think, “My hair! What was I thinking?” Yup. Me too. In fact, a photo of 1980’s Heather — complete with BIG perm and beret — was on the screen during my AWAI Bootcamp presentation.  (The conference organizers asked for old photos, and that’s the best one I The post Should You Rewrite Your Web Copy? Or Hit Delete? appeared first on SuccessWorks . https://ift.tt/2QnfAYM

How User Comments in Google SERPS Affect the way we Search

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Last updated on November 27, 2018 at 02:50 pm Searching in Google has become more personalized in the past few years, with the search engine ensuring that the user’s preferences would help adjust their search to their specific needs. User input and experience has become an increasingly important element in search, and this allows it to grow, as search engines understand how people search more and more. Another step in this development is the introduction of user comments in Google SERPs . While the feature has only been introduced to sports events, this is a step that could lead to a new direction in how we do SEO. Here’s some key information about how user comments work, and how it affects the user search experience. Why sports? When it comes to topics that generate the highest amount of traffic on a regular basis, sports is one of them. From basketball, tennis, European and American football, and baseball, sports is one event that every country talks about. This also makes it th...

eCom in the Wild: Ritual Vitamins

As a marketer, I’m always impressed when a brand is able to target me and move me through their funnel to the point of conversion. Having an in-depth knowledge of marketing, I’ve often avoided marketing campaigns because I know the strategies and tactics they’re employing on me, and I’m often critical of their execution (or feel like I’m being manipulated into purchasing).… The post eCom in the Wild: Ritual Vitamins appeared first on Seer Interactive . https://ift.tt/2BAJdOh

Deliver Personalization with New Features in Google Optimize

Google Optimize new feature set, Personalization Experiences, introduces the ability to (yup, you guessed it) personalize your website based on user actions, attributes, and behaviors. What is the New “Personalization” Experience in Google Optimize? Google Optimize is Google’s free testing experiments tool.… The post Deliver Personalization with New Features in Google Optimize appeared first on Seer Interactive . https://ift.tt/2PVQhhb

Earn Your Place in the Inbox

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I just deleted an email without reading it (like you do). The subject line was “Not your typical Monday email.” I deleted it because I knew without a doubt that it would definitely be a typical email. (I just fished it out of the trash. It was a sales offer. Pretty typical. No?) I’m told by so many people that email marketing is dead or that they have low open rates or that no one cares about email any more. I’m also told that no one reads email any more. The post Earn Your Place in the Inbox appeared first on chrisbrogan.com . https://ift.tt/2FH2ql8

Guest Blogging for Links and Traffic: My Five-Step Process for Getting Published on Top Publications

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Last updated on November 26, 2018 at 03:44 pm It’s been over four years now since Matt Cutts famously declared , “So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done.” According to Matt Cutts, at the time, guest blogging has been overdone and is mostly abused as a spammy tactic for link building — and it is pretty much dead. A few things have happened since then, for those who have been paying careful attention: Matt Cutts no longer works at Google. Guest blogging is far from dead. In fact, for followers of this blog, it is no secret that guest blogging is Sean’s favorite link building tactic for the following reasons: It gives the opportunity to gain links. It gives you access to a larger audience. It improves your author rank. There are many more benefits of guest blogging . It is also my favorite link building and marketing tactic, and if you pay careful attention to Cutt’s post published four years ago, it is very clear that the kind of guest blogging he is denouncing is ...

How to rank high in Google

“Could you please write a post with a clear path on just what to do to rank high in Google?” “What should I do to make sure I’ll outrank my competition?” “Could you write a clear, step-by-step to-do list on how to rank high in Google?” Although I completely understand these questions, answering them is really, really, really hard. It’s almost as hard as ranking high in Google. However, in this post, I’ll do my very best to answer this million-dollar question: How do I rank high in Google? I’ll give an honest – and lengthy- answer, but I’ll also share some quick wins! Want to get one of our plugins , courses or both ? Now is the time! You’ll get a whopping 30% discount on ALL our plugins and courses and a $/€30 discount on a yearly subscription.  Go to the Yoast shop now! ▸ Be the best result! All SEO advice we give to the users of our plugin or the readers of our blog boils down to the same thing: just build a website that’s awesome. Google wants to give a user the best resul...

Yoast Black Friday sale: Save 30% on plugins and courses!

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Hold on to your hats folks, because it’s Black Friday! Shoppers from around the world can’t wait to get a hold of the best bargains of the year. Of course, Yoast likes to join the fun, and we do that by offering you a whopping 30% discount on ALL our plugins and courses ! What are you waiting for? Can’t decide what to get? Read on and find out what we’ve been doing this year. Here are the Black Friday sale details We won’t keep you too long, so here are the details of our 2018 Black Friday sale: Save 30% on all SEO plugins and training courses Save $/€30 on a yearly subscription to our plugins , courses or both Save €30 on a YoastCon 2019 ticket Prices will automatically be adjusted once you add your favorite products to your cart. Save $30 on our new Yoast subscriptions One of the coolest things we’ve released this year is Yoast subscriptions . With a Yoast subscription, you get access to all our plugins, courses or both at a low monthly price. Or, if you want to save even...

Using Log File Analysis to Optimize Your SEO Strategy

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Last updated on November 22, 2018 at 05:52 pm The challenge for webmasters everywhere is to accurately know what GoogleBot is doing on your website. GoogleBot’s primary job whenever they enter a website is to crawl a specific number of pages set by the website’s crawl budget. After crawling, they save the pages they crawled to Google’s database. Having the skills to thoroughly understand GoogleBot’s movements on your site is one of the most effective strategies to improve your technical and onsite SEO. Log file analysis helps you improve your SEO – leading to higher rankings, more traffic, and improved conversions & sales. But what exactly is Log File Analysis? What is Log File Analysis Log file analysis is the process of downloading your log files from your server and opening it through a log file analysis tool like Screaming Frog or Splunk. The log file analysis tool enables you to see all the information regarding the “hits” of your website – both bot and human – to assist ...

Objective Based Advertising: LinkedIn’s New Campaign Creation Tool

Ah yes, LinkedIn is finally taking the steps to align more with Facebook and is making our lives easier with their new objective-based campaign creation tool. This is something that all of us paid social lovers have been waiting for, so we’re excited to try it out!… The post Objective Based Advertising: LinkedIn’s New Campaign Creation Tool appeared first on Seer Interactive . https://ift.tt/2S4zhSj

Multi-Channel Marketing: Improving PPC Campaigns with Social

Hitting paid search budget goals can be surprisingly difficult for certain clients, and certain campaigns. When initial volume isn’t there, you try everything you can think of: search query analyses, keyword expansions, increasing bids, etc. No matter what you do, your campaigns won’t spend and generate the level of performance that your client needs to hit their goals.… The post Multi-Channel Marketing: Improving PPC Campaigns with Social appeared first on Seer Interactive . https://ift.tt/2POlVx6

What is a search term?

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You likely type dozens of queries into your favorite search engine every day. But have you ever realized the significance of all these searches? Figuring out what people are looking for on the internet is one of the key points of SEO. So, what should you know about the starting point of each online search, the search term? Let’s begin with the very basics! What is a search term? A search term, or search query, is the word or phrase someone enters into a search engine to search for on the internet. These can be single words or names, like [Yoast], or a combination of words, such as [buy robot vacuum cleaner], or even complete questions, like [how do I train my puppy?]. Note that each individual could phrase his or her query uniquely, so five people looking for the exact same thing may just use five completely different search terms. Moreover, search terms can contain spelling errors, numbers substituting words, or random word order, and still take someone where they need to be. Search...

Pressing questions about Gutenberg: the new editor in WordPress 5.0

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Next week, we’ll see the release of WordPress 5.0. With it comes one of the most talked about — and divisive — new features ever: a brand-new editor, the one we currently know as Gutenberg. Gutenberg is not just a simple refresh of the interface, no, it is an entirely re-imagined editor with a new concept. Blocks will be your best friends from now on. Here, we’ll answer a couple of burning questions about the new WordPress editor. A little refresher: What is Gutenberg? When will WordPress 5.0 arrive? Will my site break when I update to WordPress 5.0? I want to test Gutenberg and WordPress 5.0, but how do I do that? I’m a bit hesitant to update to WordPress 5.0, can I wait? I’ve heard people describe Gutenberg as a page builder, is that true? What are these blocks all about? What will happen to my existing content? What’s the best way to learn the new editor in WordPress 5.0? What will happen to my shortcodes? Will Gutenberg work with the plugins I use? Will Gutenberg work ...