#Amazon SEO 2023 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

optimizeforseo1 · 1 year ago

Text

The Importance of Amazon SEO for Your E-Commerce Business

Over the last few decades, Amazon has become a major player in the world of E-Commerce. The company provides a vast range of products, including books, clothing, electronics, furniture, makeup products and many more. Along with being the largest retailer in the United States, Amazon also owns many other businesses such as Twitch, Zappos, Audible, Whole Foods Market, etc.

Amazon can even offer excellent service and competitive prices with its vast customer base and inventory. Also, they dominate the retail market by offering customers many ways to shop, like through websites, mobile apps, and even social media platforms. So, with Amazon SEO, or a proper Amazon SEO strategy, you can increase your sales to a great extent. So, let us discuss what Amazon SEO is and what it is important for your E-Commerce business.

What is Amazon SEO?

Amazon SEO, or Amazon search engine optimization, aims to elevate the product listings of your brand in Amazon searches for relevant and targeted keywords. When you can optimize your product listing, Amazon finds it a lot simpler to understand listings and present shoppers with accurate and suitable products.

The key objectives of Amazon SEO are:

Product image enhancement.

Keyword improvement.

Auxiliary keyword.

Modification of the product title.

Levels of inventory.

What is the importance of Amazon SEO?

Actually, Amazon SEO or Amazon product SEO helps you with Amazon ranking sales, meaning it helps you to rank your products on Amazon. The competition on Amazon is incredibly fierce, and hence, having a high rank on the platform can generally make the difference between failure and success as an Amazon seller.

Very few users of Amazon look past the first page of results while they are searching for products to buy. This makes it very important that your product is ranked on the first page and even within the first few results, preferably if you wish to attract notable numbers of sales and become successful in your E- Commerce business.

You can properly rank your products and get more people to visit your listings if you know how to use Amazon’s SEO strategy. As the entire procedure also includes optimizing your listing for conversions, after you can attract visitors, you will be able to convert a lot of them into sales as well.

What are the key aspects of Amazon SEO?

Amazon SEO is not just associated with applicability but also with the products that Amazon thinks have the stylish compass of finishing the sale and hence, delivering commission for the platform. Due to this, Amazon SEO 2023 can be broken down into two significant parts, such as:

Showing that a product is relevant to the customer’s search

This part is a lot similar to regular SEO as it involves including the correct keywords in your listing, along with ensuring that they are also included in the listing’s right parts.

Making a sales record that is strong

Strong sales and also becoming an Amazon best seller shows that your product has high demand and hence, it is more rankable. Boosting the sales of any product involves several vital things, such as a specific listing that can encourage conversions through persuasive text and great pictures, good offline marketing, and excellent customer reviews.

Following both of these things may have a great impact on your business and also can make the difference between having trouble getting your Amazon store off the ground and also making a profitable business.

Important factors that may help you achieve better ranking

Optimized product pages: It is vital to write informative and impactful product descriptions that are rich in keywords.

Amazon style guide: The goal of this factor is to offer a better customer experience just by following some rules.

Customer reviews: Good customer reviews can increase your product’s ranking to a great extent.

Keywords: High converting keywords can offer high search frequency in your product-page descriptions.

A+ content: In the case of Amazon SEO, content is key.

External traffic: By promoting your goods on Amazon with the help of external links, you will be able to increase your ranking.

Conversion rate and CTR: By pushing products with strong CTR and conversion rates, you can maximize your product sales.

Inventory management: Keeping your product available all the time, you can increase your product sales.

PPC: PPC will also help you to increase your inorganic ranking.

Important benefits that you can enjoy by opting for SEO of Amazon

You can have higher conversion rate

A notable benefit of opting for Amazon SEO to your eCommerce business is a higher conversion rate. Individuals using Amazon frequently purchase goods online without even visiting a physical store. Thus, optimizing your listing will make it a lot easier for them to find and locate your business and also buy your product, eventually offering you a higher conversion rate.

You can have increased traffic

Another important benefit of opting for Amazon SEO is increased traffic. People looking for products on Amazon tend to click on the top results. So, if your product is at number 1 in the list, you will be able to get more clicks than if your product is listed elsewhere. So, you should make sure that your product is listed at the top portion of the page.

You can have more sales

Amazon SEO listing helps all kinds of businesses generate more sales. Clients will be more likely to buy your product if they are aware of exactly where they should look for it. Once they are able to find your product, they will be more willing or inclined to purchase it.

You can provide better customer service

Another great thing about using Amazon SEO is that you can offer better customer service. Your customers can easily contact you directly rather than going through third parties. So, you won’t lose any notable or potential revenue because of lost orders.

You can have improved reputation

If any customer searches for your brand name on Google, they will be able to see your website listed among the top results. This will allow you to develop trust with potential customers.

You can have brand awareness

When customers search for your product or brand name on Amazon, they will find out that your product shows up as soon as possible. This makes it much easier for them to remember your company. In addition to this, they can decide to check out several of your competitors to check out what their products are like.

You can have CPA or lower cost per acquisition

You don’t have to spend money on giving advertisement about your business on social media sites or even pay for ads on Google. Instead, you may focus on how to increase your Amazon SEO rankings. If your products are ranked high enough, you will begin to get more visitors and eventually sell more products.

How can you start with Amazon SEO?

Amazon SEO may look overwhelming and complex at first. However, with the right skills and knowledge, you can easily overhaul your product listings and greatly boost the numbers of visitors to your listings, and also the number of sales you make.

Of course, not every busy seller in Amazon and budding entrepreneur has the time to know about the whole new set of skills that are vital to successfully execute Amazon SEO, and hence, it is necessary to hire a reliable and professional Amazon SEO consultant, such as Optimize For SEO, and enjoy the perfect implementation of Amazon SEO listing and increased sales.

Source Blog:- https://optimizeforseo.com/amazon-seo-for-e-commerce-business/

#Amazon SEO listing #Amazon SEO #Amazon SEO Strategy #E-Commerce Business #Amazon Product SEO #Amazon Ranking Sales #Amazon SEO 2023

0 notes

idkluvutellme · 1 year ago

Text

This was so cute 🥰

kinktober — day four

kink: body worship with changbin

warnings: smut - MINORS DNI. implied thick!reader (but can be read with any body type). mentions of body insecurity. afab!reader.

when changbin get home from work, he finds you wrapped in a big sweatshirt and a blanket, hood pulled all the way up and your entire body a shapeless lump on the couch. it’s one of those days - not especially bad, but the kind of day that left you not wanting to be perceived. if you could have become one with the couch, you would have.

living together is new - being together in general is new. you’ve been friends for years and years, but only took the plunge into a relationship recently, falling into each other in fast forward until you were moving in with him after just a few months. him coming home to you every day just felt so natural though, and with the frequency of how often one of you stayed the night at the others it just made sense.

“hi, beautiful,” he greets you as he flops next to you, bone-deep tiredness clear in the way he melts against your side. he makes your heart squeeze as he nuzzles his head into your chest, and it threatens to beat right out of your skin.

“‘m not,” you mumble out, unable to keep it in. you’re usually so careful about separating your insecurities from him, scared to show them to him even though you know he would be nothing but sweet to you about it.

“excuse me?” he says, sitting up so quick you’re surprised he didn’t get whiplash from it. he left you no time to regret your words as he frames your face with both of his hands and turns your head to face him. “say that again.”

“i just,” you try and look away but he nudges your head back towards his face again. “i don’t think i am. beautiful. i guess i’m not ugly but i’ve never felt like i was something special, you know?”

“no, i don’t.” he says with intense ferocity, finality on his tongue like he was begging you to try and argue with what he knew was truth. “i’ve always thought you were gorgeous, even before we were together.”

“i guess i just don’t see myself that way,” you sigh, wishing you simply hadn’t opened your mouth.

“every single part of you is beautiful, do you understand?” he rubs his thumbs against your cheekbones before sliding his hands down past your shoulders.

“these arms?” he squeezes your upper arms with both of his hands, using his thumb to caress the skin there. “i dream about them, the way you wrap them around me when you’re happy or excited, it’s my favorite place to be.”

“but yours are too-“

“this isn’t about me,” he cuts you off, sharply but not unkind. he moves to your breasts, caressing them more gently than he ever had before.

“these? do you even see how many people stare at you when we go out at night?” he asks, pinching a bit at your skin. “it makes me so jealous, makes me want to take you home and keep you all to myself always. no one should be able to appreciate you but me.”

his hands roam further down, slotting themselves over your hips and squeezing with his fingertips.

“see these? they’re what i use to hold you down when you’re on top of me. how else would i be able to get you in the exact position i want you, hmm?”

your breath picks up as his fingers ghost over the swell of your lower belly, and you have to resist the urge to curl up around yourself so that he doesn’t see you.

“this?” he leans down to pepper kisses against your burning skin, leaving invisible marks that you can feel as though they were tattoos. “this is perfection. i want to bury my face in your stomach and suffocate in it, this isn’t a flaw to be hidden. it’s not something that you need to get rid of, not something that you shouldn’t have. it’s part of you, and that means that it’s perfect.”

his words are washing over you like tidal waves, wiping out your thoughts and replacing them with his. it’s all complimented by the scorching touch of his hands on your skin, you can feel him everywhere, consuming your entire being.

“your thighs?” he continues, kneading at the skin around your quads. “they were made to be on a goddess, do you get it? i want to sink my teeth into them and never let go. i want to cover your thighs in bite marks until you can’t see your skin anymore, so they’re all mine.”

he grabs your ass with both hands, his long fingers covering a surprising amount of surface area as they dig into your muscle.

“and do not get me started on this ass. this belongs in museums, on display so everyone can see what perfection looks like and feel bad about themselves for not being this perfect.”

and it’s a bit silly that you start crying because of that, but you can’t contain your bubbling emotions anymore. salty tears leave your eyes and you move to cover your face, but he stops you before you can.

“i don’t love you despite these things,” he says, caressing your face with the gentlest touch, feather soft. “i love you because of them. i’m sorry that i’ve never told you like this how obsessed with you i am. i think you are the most exquisite person that has ever walked this earth. do you understand?”

“yes,” you breathe out, finally understanding. finally accepting what he was saying.

“good,” he lets a smile creep onto his face, cheeks filling out. “now, will you let me make my pretty girl feel good?”

you nod, taking in a gulping breath as he slowly undresses you, taking time to run his hands over your skin reverently. when he takes off your panties you’re surprised by how wet you are, the cold air hitting your pussy and making you shiver. he runs a finger through your folds, collecting the slick there and spreading it to your clit.

“this perfect pussy? how could i want anything else when this is all mine?” he circles around your clit one, two three times before sliding one finger into you, slow enough that it makes you shiver. he crooks his finger inside of you, massaging your walls languidly like he’s mapping out every single millimeter of you to memory. it’s almost more overwhelming than when he bends you over and takes you on the kitchen table, hurried and frantic, because at least then you didn’t have time to think. now, you have all the time in the world to focus on the way he feels inside you, the way his free hand is warm on your thigh where it’s squeezing, the way his own breath catches when you clench around him like he’s the one with a finger inside of him.

“i could keep my fingers inside of you all day, that’s how much i love it.” he slips another inside and you sigh at the stretch, your muscles tensing when he finds the spot inside of you that sends sparks running through your nervous system. he smiles at you, almost wickedly, before speeding up his movements, accentuating them by pressing his thumb to your clit. almost too fast, you feel your orgasm approaching, much slower than you’ve ever felt it. you can almost see it taking over your body, a golden light starting at your fingers and toes and spreading up your limbs to your core, slow inch by slow inch. you forget to breath, gulping in air when the light finally snaps into place, squeezing your legs around his hand as you ride it out for what feels like straight minutes.

you come back to yourself in his arms, his fingers stroking the wispy strands of hair across your forehead out of your eyes. he’s looking at you with the fondest smile you’ve ever seen, like he can’t believe that he gets to hold you in his arms like this.

“don’t hide these things from me anymore, okay? i can’t make you feel better if i don’t know that you’re feeling bad in the first place.”

kinktober masterlist

#I’m so lonely #gonna go a Amazon a boyfriend or gurlfriend #or just buy a life size cut out of seo mf changbin because I need someone #help me !!!!!#stray kids smut #skz smut #stray kids imagines #stray kids drabbles #changbin smut #seo changbin smut #changbin imagines #changbin x you #kinktober 2023 #changbin x y/n

2K notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months ago

Text

Even if you think AI search could be good, it won’t be good

TONIGHT (May 15), I'm in NORTH HOLLYWOOD for a screening of STEPHANIE KELTON'S FINDING THE MONEY; FRIDAY (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

The big news in search this week is that Google is continuing its transition to "AI search" – instead of typing in search terms and getting links to websites, you'll ask Google a question and an AI will compose an answer based on things it finds on the web:

https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-google-search-may-2024/

Google bills this as "let Google do the googling for you." Rather than searching the web yourself, you'll delegate this task to Google. Hidden in this pitch is a tacit admission that Google is no longer a convenient or reliable way to retrieve information, drowning as it is in AI-generated spam, poorly labeled ads, and SEO garbage:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Googling used to be easy: type in a query, get back a screen of highly relevant results. Today, clicking the top links will take you to sites that paid for placement at the top of the screen (rather than the sites that best match your query). Clicking further down will get you scams, AI slop, or bulk-produced SEO nonsense.

AI-powered search promises to fix this, not by making Google search results better, but by having a bot sort through the search results and discard the nonsense that Google will continue to serve up, and summarize the high quality results.

Now, there are plenty of obvious objections to this plan. For starters, why wouldn't Google just make its search results better? Rather than building a LLM for the sole purpose of sorting through the garbage Google is either paid or tricked into serving up, why not just stop serving up garbage? We know that's possible, because other search engines serve really good results by paying for access to Google's back-end and then filtering the results:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Another obvious objection: why would anyone write the web if the only purpose for doing so is to feed a bot that will summarize what you've written without sending anyone to your webpage? Whether you're a commercial publisher hoping to make money from advertising or subscriptions, or – like me – an open access publisher hoping to change people's minds, why would you invite Google to summarize your work without ever showing it to internet users? Nevermind how unfair that is, think about how implausible it is: if this is the way Google will work in the future, why wouldn't every publisher just block Google's crawler?

A third obvious objection: AI is bad. Not morally bad (though maybe morally bad, too!), but technically bad. It "hallucinates" nonsense answers, including dangerous nonsense. It's a supremely confident liar that can get you killed:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/01/mushroom-pickers-urged-to-avoid-foraging-books-on-amazon-that-appear-to-be-written-by-ai

The promises of AI are grossly oversold, including the promises Google makes, like its claim that its AI had discovered millions of useful new materials. In reality, the number of useful new materials Deepmind had discovered was zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

This is true of all of AI's most impressive demos. Often, "AI" turns out to be low-waged human workers in a distant call-center pretending to be robots:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins

Sometimes, the AI robot dancing on stage turns out to literally be just a person in a robot suit pretending to be a robot:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

The AI video demos that represent "an existential threat to Hollywood filmmaking" turn out to be so cumbersome as to be practically useless (and vastly inferior to existing production techniques):

https://www.wheresyoured.at/expectations-versus-reality/

But let's take Google at its word. Let's stipulate that:

a) It can't fix search, only add a slop-filtering AI layer on top of it; and

b) The rest of the world will continue to let Google index its pages even if they derive no benefit from doing so; and

c) Google will shortly fix its AI, and all the lies about AI capabilities will be revealed to be premature truths that are finally realized.

AI search is still a bad idea. Because beyond all the obvious reasons that AI search is a terrible idea, there's a subtle – and incurable – defect in this plan: AI search – even excellent AI search – makes it far too easy for Google to cheat us, and Google can't stop cheating us.

Remember: enshittification isn't the result of worse people running tech companies today than in the years when tech services were good and useful. Rather, enshittification is rooted in the collapse of constraints that used to prevent those same people from making their services worse in service to increasing their profit margins:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

These companies always had the capacity to siphon value away from business customers (like publishers) and end-users (like searchers). That comes with the territory: digital businesses can alter their "business logic" from instant to instant, and for each user, allowing them to change payouts, prices and ranking. I call this "twiddling": turning the knobs on the system's back-end to make sure the house always wins:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

What changed wasn't the character of the leaders of these businesses, nor their capacity to cheat us. What changed was the consequences for cheating. When the tech companies merged to monopoly, they ceased to fear losing your business to a competitor.

Google's 90% search market share was attained by bribing everyone who operates a service or platform where you might encounter a search box to connect that box to Google. Spending tens of billions of dollars every year to make sure no one ever encounters a non-Google search is a cheaper way to retain your business than making sure Google is the very best search engine:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Competition was once a threat to Google; for years, its mantra was "competition is a click away." Today, competition is all but nonexistent.

Then the surveillance business consolidated into a small number of firms. Two companies dominate the commercial surveillance industry: Google and Meta, and they collude to rig the market:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

That consolidation inevitably leads to regulatory capture: shorn of competitive pressure, the companies that dominate the sector can converge on a single message to policymakers and use their monopoly profits to turn that message into policy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

This is why Google doesn't have to worry about privacy laws. They've successfully prevented the passage of a US federal consumer privacy law. The last time the US passed a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988. It's a law that bans video store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you rented:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

In Europe, Google's vast profits lets it fly an Irish flag of convenience, thus taking advantage of Ireland's tolerance for tax evasion and violations of European privacy law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, and it also doesn't fear rival technologies. Google and its fellow Big Tech cartel members have expanded IP law to allow it to prevent third parties from reverse-engineer, hacking, or scraping its services. Google doesn't have to worry about ad-blocking, tracker blocking, or scrapers that filter out Google's lucrative, low-quality results:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, it doesn't fear rival technology and it doesn't fear its workers. Google's workforce once enjoyed enormous sway over the company's direction, thanks to their scarcity and market power. But Google has outgrown its dependence on its workers, and lays them off in vast numbers, even as it increases its profits and pisses away tens of billions on stock buybacks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

Google is fearless. It doesn't fear losing your business, or being punished by regulators, or being mired in guerrilla warfare with rival engineers. It certainly doesn't fear its workers.

Making search worse is good for Google. Reducing search quality increases the number of queries, and thus ads, that each user must make to find their answers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

If Google can make things worse for searchers without losing their business, it can make more money for itself. Without the discipline of markets, regulators, tech or workers, it has no impediment to transferring value from searchers and publishers to itself.

Which brings me back to AI search. When Google substitutes its own summaries for links to pages, it creates innumerable opportunities to charge publishers for preferential placement in those summaries.

This is true of any algorithmic feed: while such feeds are important – even vital – for making sense of huge amounts of information, they can also be used to play a high-speed shell-game that makes suckers out of the rest of us:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/11/for-you/#the-algorithm-tm

When you trust someone to summarize the truth for you, you become terribly vulnerable to their self-serving lies. In an ideal world, these intermediaries would be "fiduciaries," with a solemn (and legally binding) duty to put your interests ahead of their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

But Google is clear that its first duty is to its shareholders: not to publishers, not to searchers, not to "partners" or employees.

AI search makes cheating so easy, and Google cheats so much. Indeed, the defects in AI give Google a readymade excuse for any apparent self-dealing: "we didn't tell you a lie because someone paid us to (for example, to recommend a product, or a hotel room, or a political point of view). Sure, they did pay us, but that was just an AI 'hallucination.'"

The existence of well-known AI hallucinations creates a zone of plausible deniability for even more enshittification of Google search. As Madeleine Clare Elish writes, AI serves as a "moral crumple zone":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

That's why, even if you're willing to believe that Google could make a great AI-based search, we can nevertheless be certain that they won't.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/15/they-trust-me-dumb-fucks/#ai-search

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

djhughman https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Modular_synthesizer_-_%22Control_Voltage%22_electronic_music_shop_in_Portland_OR_-_School_Photos_PCC_%282015-05-23_12.43.01_by_djhughman%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #twiddling #ai #ai search #enshittification #discipline #google #search #monopolies #moral crumple zones #plausible deniability #algorithmic feeds

1K notes · View notes

adbros · 1 year ago

Text

30 ways to make real; money from home

Making money online from the comfort of your home has become increasingly accessible with the growth of the internet and digital technologies. In 2023, there are numerous realistic ways to earn money online. Here are 30 ideas to get you started:

1. Freelance Writing: Offer your writing skills on platforms like Upwork or Freelancer to create blog posts, articles, or website content.

2. Content Creation: Start a YouTube channel, podcast, or blog to share your expertise or passion and monetize through ads, sponsorships, and affiliate marketing.

3. Online Surveys and Market Research: Participate in online surveys and market research studies with platforms like Swagbucks or Survey Junkie.

4. Remote Customer Service: Work as a remote customer service representative for companies like Amazon or Apple.

5. Online Tutoring: Teach subjects you're knowledgeable in on platforms like VIPKid or Chegg Tutors.

6. E-commerce: Start an online store using platforms like Shopify, Etsy, or eBay to sell products.

7. Affiliate Marketing: Promote products or services on your blog or social media and earn commissions for sales made through your referral links.

8. Online Courses: Create and sell online courses on platforms like Udemy or Teachable.

9. Remote Data Entry: Find remote data entry jobs on websites like Clickworker or Remote.co.

10. Virtual Assistance: Offer administrative support services to businesses as a virtual assistant.

11. Graphic Design: Use your graphic design skills to create logos, graphics, or websites for clients on platforms like Fiverr.

12. Stock Photography: Sell your photos on stock photography websites like Shutterstock or Adobe Stock.

13. App Development: Develop and sell mobile apps or offer app development services.

14. Social Media Management: Manage social media accounts for businesses looking to enhance their online presence.

15. Dropshipping: Start an e-commerce business without holding inventory by dropshipping products.

16. Online Consultations: Offer consulting services in your area of expertise through video calls.

17. Online Surplus Sales: Sell unused items or collectibles on platforms like eBay or Facebook Marketplace.

18. Online Fitness Coaching: Become an online fitness coach and offer workout plans and guidance.

19. Virtual Events: Host webinars, workshops, or conferences on topics you're knowledgeable about.

20. Podcast Production: Offer podcast editing, production, or consulting services.

21. Remote Transcription: Transcribe audio and video files for clients.

22. Online Translation: Offer translation services if you're proficient in multiple languages.

23. Affiliate Blogging: Create a niche blog with affiliate marketing as the primary revenue source.

24. Online Art Sales: Sell your artwork, crafts, or digital art on platforms like Etsy or Redbubble.

25. Remote Bookkeeping: Offer bookkeeping services for small businesses from home.

26. Digital Marketing: Provide digital marketing services like SEO, PPC, or social media management.

27. Online Gaming: Stream your gaming sessions on platforms like Twitch and monetize through ads and donations.

28. Virtual Assistant Coaching: If you have experience as a VA, offer coaching services to aspiring virtual assistants.

29. Online Research: Conduct research for businesses or individuals in need of specific information.

30. Online Real Estate: Invest in virtual real estate, such as domain names or digital properties, and sell them for a profit.

Remember that success in making money online often requires dedication, patience, and the ability to adapt to changing trends. It's essential to research and choose the opportunities that align with your skills, interests, and long-term goals.

73 notes · View notes

cindylouwho-2 · 8 months ago

Text

RECENT SEO & MARKETING NEWS FOR ECOMMERCE, March 2024

Welcome to my roundup of SEO and marketing news and useful resources for ecommerce businesses, March edition. There is a lot going on with Google, and some really strong marketing pieces this time around, so let's get right to it.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Google launched both a core algorithm update and spam updates on March 5, with the spam update ending on the 20th. Core updates now include the Helpful Content algorithm. In early observations, Etsy and Reddit both picked up visibility in the UK.

The Helpful Content algorithm updates late last year destroyed a lot of sites’ Google traffic. Avoid the things they had in common. You can read the full study here.

Ecommerce sites were some of the biggest losers in Google visibility in 2023, with Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, Target and Best Buy in the top 10 of sites whose Google appearances slipped.

New to Google SEO? They’ve revamped their SEO starter guide for people like you. And if you are more advanced and want to learn how to optimize your website product pages, this is a good overview.

This lengthy article on backlinks for ecommerce websites covers pretty much all the angles, including the really difficult ones.

Reminder that if you want to rank on Google for a search term, you need to look at what is already ranking, and make decisions based on that content. [video and transcript] This works for most search engines, not just Google.

Yes, Google crawls “high quality” content more often. I used to refer to this as Google thinking the page is “interesting”, so I guess I will need to change my wording...

While Google sends the most traffic to websites, people spend a lot more of their online time elsewhere. Market where people are, not just where your stats say they came from.

Sadly, Google has stopped providing caches of website pages in its search results. While you can still see the caches of some pages by using the Google search Cache:[page link] as in cache:https://cindylouwho-2.tumblr.com that will eventually stop working as well. Bing still provides caches, but unfortunately both it and the Wayback Machine do not crawl often enough to give really recent results most of the time.

Missed Google news in February? Here’s your update. And just in case you are really behind, here is January.

Not Google

Unsure if your website has enough good backlinks? Bing Webmaster Tools will now tell you if you don’t.

Yandex - the top search engine in Russia - was sold by its Dutch ownership group to a consortium in Russia.

SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site

General

A US study of social media use found that the most popular site was YouTube, with 83% of adults using it. Two-thirds of American adults use Facebook, while TikTok is up to ⅓ of the US population.

Because they do change periodically, here are the latest image and video sizes recommended for the top social media platforms. [infographic]

Bluesky is now open to everyone - it was previously invite-only.

Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta)

Meta has introduced several changes to its Ad options, applying to Facebook and Instagram.

Meta had a great 4th quarter in 2023, with revenue, users, and earnings per share up. “Fast-growing upstarts Temu and Shein, which originated in China, have been pouring money into ads on Facebook and Instagram. Li said on Thursday that revenue from China-based advertisers accounted for 10% of sales for the year and 5 percentage points of growth.”

Instagram

An updated post on Instagram's algorithm and how it works.

Instagram is still beta testing longer Reels for some users.

If your account is a brand account, you can now run ads on Instagram with coupon codes right in them. (Some Facebook users can already do this.)

Among other recent changes on LinkedIn, the algorithm is now looking to boost important content longer than just the first day or two after publication.

Pinterest has its own stats package, called Pinterest Analytics, but only for “Business” accounts. They show how many people clicked on the outgoing links, how many people saw your pin on their screen, and much more. Here’s everything you need to know.

Reddit successfully launched on the stock market this past week, but questions remain about how this will change the site.

Google is paying Reddit to scrape its content through the API instead of from the web.

Snapchat

Snap was a little later than most tech companies doing layoffs recently, waiting until February 5 to let 10% off staff go.

Threads

Threads is so new that the algorithm is bound to change a lot in the next year, but for right now, here is how it works.

TikTok

There is an overwhelming amount of info out there on the US attempt to either ban TikTok or force its sale, and much of it is incomplete, so I will let you Google to your heart’s content if you want to learn more. If you are relying on TikTok to drive sales, this would be a good time to make sure you diversify your promotional strategy.

You can now track trending terms on TikTok through the Creator Search Insights section. “Creator Search Insights will highlight frequently searched topics, which creators can organize by category (for example, tourism, sports, science) or tailor to their content type with the “For You” option. Additionally, creators can filter for “content gap” topics, which are highly searched but have relatively few videos on TikTok covering them.“

TikTok may be testing a photo app, which would obviously compete with Instagram.

Twitter

What? Twitter may have lied about its Super Bowl ad performance? I’m so not shocked.

Tumblr

Tumblr will be selling data access to AI companies.

YouTube

This is a pretty decent article on YouTube SEO.

(CONTENT) MARKETING (includes blogging, emails, and strategies)

Small and micro-businesses need an email list. An email list is:

portable (unlike most social media followers or marketplace buyers)

is available to almost everyone, as we all need at least one email address if we are online

less susceptible to the whims of algorithms (unlike SEO, marketplaces, social etc.)

I keep seeing people argue that no one opens emails, but the chart in the article above is proof that is still wrong. (My blog email list averages close to a 70% open rate, depending on the topic and the time I send it. My jewellery email list - which I hardly ever send to - still has an over 30% open rate. My click rates are well above the industry averages, usually 30 to 40% of all recipients for the blog list. These are much better numbers than social, and astronomically better than my clickthrough rate on Google and other search engines.)

Gmail and Yahoo both changed how they handle bulk emails such as newsletters in February. Here’s what you need to know on the basics, including authenticating yourself so your email gets through.

Find out how to get people to read all the way to the end of your content.

Get ready for April marketing with 5 topical ideas. National Handmade Day is April 6.

We should all think twice before deciding to use AI to create content. “Circa 2024, generative AI does not produce new ideas or even develop its own conclusions. Rather, it regurgitates information that it has indexed.” Not convinced? Here’s another article. “AI-generated content represents the literal “average of everything online.”

ONLINE ADVERTISING (EXCEPT INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL MEDIA AND ECOMMERCE SITES)

Google Ads can now be tracked in Google Analytics 4.

Both Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising were up in the 4th quarter of 2023.

STATS, DATA, TRACKING

Google Analytics 4 tracks organic traffic differently than the previous version. Here’s how to figure it out.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER TRENDS, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

I’ve probably posted this specific article before, but it is worth another read: how to communicate with customers. For example, “Mirroring your customer’s tone lets them know you’re on their side. If a customer is formal, for example, hold back on the LOLs. If they’re more casual, relax your tone.”

According to a US study, Generation Z is skewing the traditional marketing funnel. “Per Archrival’s data, 77 per cent of Gen Zs and 79 per cent of millennials in the US are actively seeking style inspiration at least monthly, with almost half of those looking for style inspiration on social media. When asked where they learn about new brands, products and experiences, video reigns supreme: YouTube is the most popular platform with Gen Zs, followed by TikTok, then Instagram.”

Trend alert: bag charms are back.

IMAGES, VIDEO, GRAPHIC DESIGN, & FREE ONLINE TOOLS

Almost all of these 12 video tools are free, and some can be used on your phone.

MISCELLANEOUS

This is an older piece, but it checks out: IKEA Hacks for Craft Show Displays. A few of these could be done with non-IKEA items.

Want to stay up-to-date on a nearly daily basis? Follow me on Bluesky or on LinkedIn, or become a member of my Patreon.

#ecommerce #seo #social media #search engine optimization #microbusiness #content marketing #cindylouwho2

15 notes · View notes

ashen-crest · 2 years ago

Text

a stats report on the rk ashwick books (as of April 2023)

some folks responded positively to the idea of seeing data on how my books have done (for indie author research and benchmark purposes), so here you go!

I'll put everything under the cut:

📚 What do I write?

Cozy fantasy romance under the pen name R.K. Ashwick.

📚 Why do I write?

Because I love it. I have a full-time job that isn't related to writing, so I write in my spare time. I should also note that I do not have dependents, am not a caregiver, and I do have anxiety and ADHD. I am not certain that I want to be a full-time writer, given the financial instability and the joy it could take away from writing. However, I want my books to be and perform the best they can, so I try to be professional about my product and methods.

(To me, this is all important context to be up-front about. Finances, family size, and health all have a huge impact on an author's goals and strategies.)

📚 How many books do I have out?

The Stray Spirit: released August 2022. First in a planned trilogy.

A Rival Most Vial: released March 2023. First in a planned trilogy.

📚 Online Visibility

Here's what I have going on:

Paid:

Website (requires $ for hosting)

BookFunnel for newsletter promos, sales promos, and ARC distribution (site requires $ to join)

Unpaid:

Newsletter (currently managing on free version of Mailerlite, since I'm under 1000 followers)

Facebook page (not consistently maintained, mostly for SEO)

Instagram, posting 5x/wk

TikTok, posting 5k/wk

Tumblr- hi!

using things like LibraryThing, GoodReads forums, Reddit, and FB pages to find more ARC readers

I was doing Amazon ads, but recently nixed them, as I didn't feel they were really getting me anything. I'll likely return to them once I have more books out.

A Note on Follower Count: I have, like 10 FB followers, 400-ish Insta followers, 1500 TikTok folders, and almost 1600 Tumblr followers. I've been on Tumblr the longest and TikTok second longest. TikTok had the fastest growth, Insta the slowest. However, general advice is that engagement rate is more important than follower count. I'll be real, I'm not doing that hot on that front. I'll consistently get around 20 likes on Insta posts and TikTok often caps my video views at around 200 or 300. The videos that do the best on TT often aren't the ones related to my books. Fun times.

A Note on Newsletter Stats: I have a pretty consistent open rate of 25-30%, which I think is okay. I'd like for it to be closer to 40%. (It's also hard to actually track open rates, so that number isn't entirely reliable.)

A Note on ARC Reader Stats: I got 100 readers for TSS and almost 200 for ARMV. This resulted in a ballpark count of 20 reviews for TSS and 30 reviews for ARMV around release time.

📚 Other Marketing Strategies

What you see above under Visibility is my ongoing work. I also do more limited-run strategies, like:

occasional free book giveaways on social media

pre-order gifts for my book

I sent out around 20 pre-order gift envelopes for TSS and 45 for ARMV. I operate the pre-order gifts at a loss, but I really enjoy doing it, so I'm okay with it. I also have lots of leftover stickers and bookmarks that I can bundle with giveaways.

📚 Distribution

I distribute wide through:

Amazon: both ebook and paperback

IngramSpark: paperback only

Draft2Digital: ebook only

📚 Orders & Royalties

So, what did all this work and shennanery get me?

From July 2022-April 2023 (10 months):

Books Sold: 575

Total Royalties, paid and unpaid: $1543.49 ($2.68 per book)

📚 Is that good or bad?

I have no idea!! And I think in the end, it all depends on your goals.

If my goal was to make a living: welp, it's def not enough.

If my goal was to break even: between website set up, DBA set up, cover cost, editing cost, illustrator cost: nah. I'd have to make about $4,000 more to safely say I've broken even.

If my goal was to get strangers, and not just family and friends, to read my books: oh hey, I did that!!

I hope this information helps you set a goal, so you're not mentally wandering around like I am.

📚 Other Notes

A big factor in having a financially successful indie book is fitting genre conventions in your chosen subgenre, or 'writing to market.' I will say that A Rival Most Vial is more written to market than The Stray Spirit is. The Stray Spirit sort of straddles cozy, historical, and academic fantasy without actually leaning in to any of those things, so it's a little harder to market.

I also spent a lot on cover, editing, and illustration. That makes it harder to be a financially viable business, but it's what I wanted to do to have a strong finished product. I am lucky in that my full-time job can cover these expenses.

I'm not very good at social media. I've never had anything go viral on any of the sites.

The most rewarding part of all this is seeing how people react to the book: reviews, videos where they're almost crying over the book, podcast invitations, and [something a bit bigger than I'll announce in the summer.] At the end of the day, if I have a small group of buyers who are vocal in engaging with my books, that's far more rewarding than a large group of buyers who don't engage.

📚 Parting Thoughts

I'm happy to talk about any and all aspects of my self-publishing experience. If you have more questions or want more details, feel free to reply, send an ask, or DM me!

#writeblr #writblr #indie authors #self publishing

50 notes · View notes

imfullysatisfied · 7 months ago

Text

Google Ad business faces breakup after being charged with EU antitrust violations

Google may be forced to sell part of its ad business after being charged with violating the European Union’s antitrust laws. Following a lengthy investigation, the European Commission suggested that “mandatory divestment” is the only way the search engine can resolve the issue.

Why we care: If Google does sell part of its ad business, it could mark the start of a new digital marketing era with a more competitive market and fairer pricing. This could potentially lead to more transparency, greater campaign control for advertisers and increased innovation, which could prompt the creation of new ad tools.

What’s happening: The European Commission conducted a report into the operation of Google Ads and found that the search engine typically tends to favor its own ads, causing difficulties for competing providers.

When discussing potential solutions, the commission said that behavioral improvements would not be enough to rectify the matter. Instead, it has recommended that the search giant sells off part of its business.

What has Google said? Google released a statement today criticizing the commission’s findings. Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, wrote:

“The Statement of Objections from the European Commission sets out claims that are not new and relate to a narrow part of our advertising business. It fails to recognize how advanced advertising technology helps merchants reach customers and grow their businesses — while lowering costs and expanding choices for consumers.

“Ad tech is fiercely competitive and constantly evolving. We compete with hundreds of companies in this space, including household names like Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta as well as specialized advertising technology companies like Criteo, The Trade Desk, and many others. Even media companies and retailers now offer competing advertising technologies.

“The digital advertising market enjoys competitive pricing, lively innovation, and robust competition — helping advertisers, publishers, and consumers. We look forward to showing how our ad tech tools help make the internet open, and accessible — and how breaking them would diminish the availability of free, ad-supported content that benefits everyone.”

Has this happened before? Earlier this year, nine U.S. states (Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, Illinois, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Washington, and West Virginia), joined forces to bring a similar lawsuit against Google.

The states accused the search engine’s ad business of violating antitrust regulations. To rectify the matter, they urged Google to break up its Ad Manager suite, claiming it was exploiting its online advertising dominance. Google denied the claims and asked for the case to be dismissed.

In 2020, Google was also accused of breaching antitrust laws again in order to sustain its position as the leading search engine. This case is set for trial in September.

Deeper dive: You can read Google’s full response to the European Commission announcement about its advertising technology.

Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.

Related stories

New on Search Engine Land

<![CDATA[ @media screen and (min-width: 800px) #div-gpt-ad-3191538-7 display: flex !important; justify-content: center !important; align-items: center !important; min-width:770px; min-height:260px; @media screen and (min-width: 1279px) #div-gpt-ad-3191538-7 display: flex !important; justify-content: center !important; align-items: center !important; min-width:800px!important; min-height:440px!important; ]]>

About the author

Nicola Agius is Paid Media Editor of Search Engine Land after joining in 2023. She covers paid search, paid social, retail media and more. Prior to this, she was SEO Director at Jungle Creations (2020-2023), overseeing the company’s editorial strategy for multiple websites. She has over 15 years of experience in journalism and has previously worked at OK! Magazine (2010-2014), Mail Online (2014-2015), Mirror (2015-2017), Digital Spy (2017-2018) and The Sun (2018-2020). She also previously teamed up with SEO agency Blue Array to co-author Amazon bestselling book ‘Mastering In-House SEO’.

Read more here https://sites.google.com/view/jedi-digital-marketing/social-media-management

#search engine optimization #seo agency #seo

4 notes · View notes

leeanndicicco · 11 months ago

Text

Google Ad business faces breakup after being charged with EU antitrust violations

What has Google said? Google released a statement today criticizing the commission’s findings. Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, wrote:

In 2020, Google was also accused of breaching antitrust laws again in order to sustain its position as the leading search engine. This case is set for trial in September.

Deeper dive: You can read Google’s full response to the European Commission announcement about its advertising technology.

Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.

Related stories

New on Search Engine Land

About the author

Read more here https://sites.google.com/view/jedi-digital-marketing/social-media-management

#seo

2 notes · View notes

txshelby · 1 year ago

Text

Google Ad business faces breakup after being charged with EU antitrust violations

What has Google said? Google released a statement today criticizing the commission’s findings. Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, wrote:

In 2020, Google was also accused of breaching antitrust laws again in order to sustain its position as the leading search engine. This case is set for trial in September.

Deeper dive: You can read Google’s full response to the European Commission announcement about its advertising technology.

Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.

Related stories

New on Search Engine Land

About the author

Read more here https://sites.google.com/view/jedi-digital-marketing/social-media-management

#search engine optimization #seo agency

4 notes · View notes

gonukkadleecommerceprovider · 1 year ago

Text

Amazon SEO Mastery: How Rank Product on Amazon in 2023

In the competitive realm of e-commerce, mastering Amazon SEO is the key to propelling your product to the forefront. As we dive into Amazon SEO Mastery: How to Rank Product on Amazon in 2023, this article unveils the strategies and nuances that will elevate your product's visibility and drive success on the world's largest online marketplace.

Understanding Amazon's Algorithm

The Dynamics of Amazon SEO

Navigating the intricacies of Amazon's algorithm is the cornerstone of effective SEO mastery. Explore the factors that influence Amazon's search rankings and understand how to optimize your product listing for maximum visibility.

Leveraging LSI Keywords

Unravel the significance of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords in enhancing your product's discoverability. Learn how strategically incorporating LSI keywords can give your listing a competitive edge.

Crafting an Optimized Product Listing

Compelling Product Titles

Crafting a compelling product title is an art. Discover the science behind creating titles that capture attention, convey relevance, and integrate the crucial "Amazon SEO Mastery: How Rank Product on Amazon in 2023" keyword seamlessly.

Bullet Points that Sell

Delve into the power of concise and persuasive bullet points. Unearth the secrets to crafting bullet points that not only inform but also persuade potential buyers.

Engaging Product Descriptions

Your product description is your virtual sales pitch. Explore how to weave a narrative that not only informs but emotionally resonates with your audience, driving them to hit that "Add to Cart" button.

Image Optimization for Success

High-Quality Visuals Matter

In the visually-driven world of e-commerce, high-quality images are non-negotiable. Understand the impact of visually appealing images on your click-through and conversion rates.

Alt Texts: The Unsung Heroes

Unlock the potential of Alt texts in boosting your product's SEO. Learn how to optimize Alt texts effectively, making your product more accessible to both search engines and potential buyers.

Reviews and Ratings: The Trust Factor

Garnering Positive Reviews

Positive reviews build trust and credibility. Discover actionable strategies to encourage positive reviews and manage negative feedback effectively.

The Impact of Ratings on Rankings

Understand how your product's ratings influence its visibility on Amazon. Learn strategies to maintain high ratings and boost your product's search ranking.

Amazon SEO Mastery: How Rank Product on Amazon in 2023

Unveiling the comprehensive guide to mastering Amazon SEO in 2023. From algorithm dynamics to crafting compelling listings, discover the strategies that will set your product apart in the competitive Amazon marketplace.

#Amazon SEO #SEO #Amazon Listing SEO #Listing Product SEO #Search Engine Optimization

4 notes · View notes

yungmalta · 1 year ago

Text

Google Ad business faces breakup after being charged with EU antitrust violations

What has Google said? Google released a statement today criticizing the commission’s findings. Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, wrote:

In 2020, Google was also accused of breaching antitrust laws again in order to sustain its position as the leading search engine. This case is set for trial in September.

Deeper dive: You can read Google’s full response to the European Commission announcement about its advertising technology.

Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.

Related stories

New on Search Engine Land

About the author

Read more here https://sites.google.com/view/jedi-digital-marketing/social-media-management

#seo #digital marketing #search engine optimize

4 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months ago

Text

Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.

Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/phone-numbers-airlines-listed-google-directed-scammers-rcna94766

But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them:

https://searchengineland.com/is-google-search-getting-worse-389658

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it.

This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-27/google-paid-26-3-billion-to-be-default-search-engine-in-2021

Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works – just that it works for people stupider than them."

And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."

Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.

A viral post by Housefresh – who review air purifiers – describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference. For example, when Google instituted a policy that reviewers should "discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research," sites that had previously regurgitated the same lists of the same top ten Amazon bestsellers "peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look."

But these grandiose claims – like the 67 air purifiers supposedly tested in Better Homes and Gardens's Des Moines lab – result in zero in-depth reviews and no published data. Moreover, these claims to rigorous testing materialized within a few days of Google changing its search ranking and said that high rankings would be reserved for sites that did testing.

Most damning of all is how the Better Homes and Gardens top air purifiers perform in comparison to the – extensively documented – tests performed by Housefresh: "plagued by high-priced and underperforming units, Amazon bestsellers with dubious origins (that also underperform), and even subpar devices from companies that market their products with phrases like ‘the Tesla of air purifiers.’"

One of the top ranked items on BH&G comes from Molekule, a company that filed for bankruptcy after being sued for false advertising. The model BH&G chose was ranked "the worst air purifier tested" by Wirecutter and "not living up to the hype" by Consumer Reports. Either BH&G's rigorous testing process is a fiction that they infused their site with in response to a Google policy change, or BH&G absolutely sucks at rigorous testing.

BH&G's competitors commit the same sins – literally, the exact same sins. Real Simple's reviews list the same photographer and the photos seem to have been taken in the same place. They also list the same person as their "expert." Real Simple has the same corporate parent as BH&G: Dotdash Meredith. As Housefresh shows, there's a lot of Dotdash Meredith review photos that seem to have been taken in the same place, by the same person.

But the competitors of these magazines are no better. Buzzfeed lists 22 air purifiers, including that crapgadget from Molekule. Their "methodology" is to include screenshots of Amazon reviews.

A lot of the top ranked sites for air purifiers are once-great magazines that have been bought and enshittified by private equity giants, like Popular Science, which began as a magazine in 1872 and became a shambling zombie in 2023, after its PE owners North Equity LLC decided its googlejuice was worth more than its integrity and turned it into a metastatic chumbox of shitty affiliate-link SEO-bait. As Housefresh points out, the marketing team that runs PopSci makes a lot of hay out of the 150 years of trust that went into the magazine, but the actual reviews are thin anaecdotes, unbacked by even the pretense of empiricism (oh, and they loooove Molekule).

Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNN, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.

Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"

They broke the deal.

Companies like CNET used to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an entire smart home and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right.

https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/welcome-to-the-cnet-smart-home/

Google downranks sites that spend money and time on reviews like Housefresh and GearLab, and crams botshittened content mills like BH&G into our eyeballs instead.

In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money.

An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that BH&G can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh – through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all – so they can put a lot more content up that Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, BH&G has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do real rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense.

Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested in…making more botshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Last year, Google did a $70b stock buyback. They also laid off 12,000 staffers (whose salaries could have been funded for 27 years by that stock buyback). They just laid off thousands more employees.

That wasn't the deal. The deal was that Google would get a monopoly, and they would spend their monopoly rents to be so good that you could just click "I'm feeling lucky" and be teleported to the very best response to your query. A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.

When Google admits that it's losing the war to these kack-handed spam-farmers, that's frustrating. When they light $26b/year on fire making sure you don't ever get to try anything else, that's very frustrating. When they vaporize seventy billion dollars on financial engineering and shoot one in ten engineers, that's outrageous.

Google's scale has transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground – and endless temptation – for scammers.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

#pluralistic #monopoly #seo #dark seo #google #search #enshittification #platform decay #product reviews #spam #antitrust #trustbusting

721 notes · View notes

n-orway · 1 year ago

Text

Google Ad business faces breakup after being charged with EU antitrust violations

What has Google said? Google released a statement today criticizing the commission’s findings. Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, wrote:

In 2020, Google was also accused of breaching antitrust laws again in order to sustain its position as the leading search engine. This case is set for trial in September.

Deeper dive: You can read Google’s full response to the European Commission announcement about its advertising technology.

Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.

Related stories

New on Search Engine Land

About the author

Read more here https://sites.google.com/view/jedi-digital-marketing/social-media-management

#seo agency #digital marketing #digital marketing agency

2 notes · View notes

meer-kat · 1 year ago

Text

Google Ad business faces breakup after being charged with EU antitrust violations

What has Google said? Google released a statement today criticizing the commission’s findings. Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, wrote:

In 2020, Google was also accused of breaching antitrust laws again in order to sustain its position as the leading search engine. This case is set for trial in September.

Deeper dive: You can read Google’s full response to the European Commission announcement about its advertising technology.

Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.

Related stories

New on Search Engine Land

About the author

Read more here https://sites.google.com/view/jedi-digital-marketing/social-media-management

#digital marketing #digital marketing agency #seo agency

2 notes · View notes

cindylouwho-2 · 1 year ago

Text

Recent SEO & Marketing News for Ecommerce, November 2023

As promised, here is the separate report on marketing and SEO news for ecommerce businesses, up to the end of November. This is now separate from the ecommerce report (which will be out in the next week or so).

I probably won't be posting SEO and marketing news again until the new year, so this is my chance to remind you that I plan on leaving Twitter soon. You can still keep caught up here on Tumblr, plus daily on Bluesky and on LinkedIn. My plan is to have a new way to follow my news posts in a more timely fashion early in 2024, so stay tuned!

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Google launched another core ranking update on August 22, which ended on Sept. 7. eBay, Amazon and Etsy lost a fair amount of page visibility in the UK, according to this analysis. The US version of the same study saw large drops for the same 3 sites, while sites with “user-generated content” did well. Then Google released a Helpful Content update, which finished on September 28. Sites with poor UX (user experience, for example too many pop-up ads) and too much focus on on-page SEO seem to be experiencing the worst effects. Google also gave out tips on what might be considered “unhelpful.” Then, Google rolled out the October Core update, which ended October 19. But wait, there’s more! They also did a November core update, which finished at the end of the month.

Google has long denied using click data to determine search ranking, but the current antitrust hearings have revealed a different story. We also learned that it cost $26.3 billion in 2021 alone to buy spots as the default search engine in many browsers and devices. Here are more revelations about search ranking from the trial.

Deleting old content will not necessarily help your Google rankings or traffic. However, if Google is penalizing your pages because it deems them “unhelpful”, removing those less-helpful pages will probably help the site overall.

Internal links on each important page of your website will generally result in better Google traffic. The study covers 23 million links, but the author notes it only demonstrates correlation, not causation. Different anchor text for the same link is an even better predictor of Google search traffic. Note that Google staff recently stated links aren’t a top-3 ranking factor any more, though.

Optimizing category/collection/section pages can provide a big SEO boost on an ecommerce website. Here are some tips.

Google recently started showing follower counts for social media links in search results, but says they are not a ranking factor.

Large media sites overwhelmingly rank at the top of Google search for common queries in many areas. It’s an interesting read.

My periodic reminder that “LSI keywords” don’t help your SEO. LSI is an outdated method of data analysis that tries to find connections between words, but it was invented before the internet as we know it existed, and simply isn’t relevant for Google. Yes, related words are good, but LSI is not the way to find them.

Semi-advanced content: how to figure out your potential buyers’ path to your product through Google data. This is a little more detailed than figuring out which problems people have and how you can solve them, but the basic idea is there.

In case you missed everything on Google in August, here is a roundup, then you can catch up on September, and finally, October’s changes.

Not Google

Bing Chat (basically, regular Bing search with Chat GPT involved) is now known as “Copilot”. The name change alone is unlikely to increase traffic, though, which is showing very little gain on Google despite the AI-driven search experience.

Yahoo’s search redesign is expected to start appearing in early 2024.

Yandex, the top Russian search engine, is for sale.

SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site

General

Branding is an important part of social media for businesses; here are some good tips on representing your business well and getting seen. As I always remind folks, you don’t need to be on every platform; that can actually be harmful. “It’s unlikely your audience will be active on every single social media platform, especially considering how many are out there in this day and age. Be thoughtful about which platforms you want to leverage for your social media presence. Once you know where your audience is most active, ask yourself whether the platform itself aligns with your brand values, story, identity, and tone of voice.”

Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta)

European users can soon pay a subscription to opt out of advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook uses member information to train its artificial intelligence models, but you can opt some of your data out of that process. Unfortunately, “[t]here’s no guarantee from the company that it’ll delete it, or that it’ll provide you with the information you’re asking for, even if it’s yours.” Also, this only includes the outside data and not your actual posts.

Meta has new AI-tools for its ads, but not all accounts have access yet, as they continue to test. Ad revenue was up 23% in the third quarter.

Instagram

Just like many other platforms, Instagram has issues with people advertising illegal things for sale. They are also blocking people posting research on the problem, instead of blocking the illegal ads.

The basics of Instagram SEO: “The platform says there isn’t one Instagram algorithm. Instead, there’s a personalized set of classifiers and processes for each user.”

Like most sites, LinkedIn is looking to upgrade some features with AI, but unlike most sites, it is planning on summarizing the feeds of its Premium subscribers so they don’t have to read everything.

Yes, SEO can help you get found on LinkedIn.

Pinterest is now a bigger shopping destination for Gen Z, who are now the site’s “fastest-growing audience”.

Reddit removed its awards earlier this year, and will be replacing them with gold awards only, and will also pay top creators who earn at least 10 gold a month.

Reddit may end up blocking Google and Bing from crawling the site, as a way to stop AI training.

Snapchat

Snapchat ad revenue led to an improved 3rd quarter for Snap, but the company is still losing money.

Threads

Threads - Meta’s Twitter competitor - continues to get upgrades, with polls and GIFs added recently. Apparently the site has almost 100 million users every month. They are now planning to launch in the EU by the end of the year.

TikTok

TikTok may be considering a ban on links to products for sale on other sites, although the company denied it. This may be to protect their own shopping platform: “Consumers in the U.S. are currently spending around $3 million to $4 million a day on TikTok Shop, up from around half a million to $1 million a day in June, the report says. TikTok staffers expect this number to exceed $10 million by the end of the year.”

That beta test is now live: TikTok Shop is officially in the United States. “As part of the rollout, the company is bringing features such as a dedicated shop tab on the home screen, live video shopping, shoppable ads and affiliate programs for creators…TikTok execs told The New York Times that more than 90% of sellers on TikTok Shop were based out of the U.S.”

Longer videos may be a TikTok goal, as they are easier to place ads with.

Twitter

Twitter continues to die, losing users since it was sold. Advertisers are leaving completely, and others are not posting content. (Etsy has not posted any promotions on Twitter since November 14.)

Musk keeps stating Twitter may start charging users, and the company is forcing new members in New Zealand and the Philippines to pay $1 a year if they join via the web and want to tweet or retweet, i.e., they can still read without paying. A phone number is also needed for verification of new accounts in these countries.

Twitter removed headlines from news link cards, but will be bringing them back soon.

Tumblr

Tumblr will be rolling back some changes and focussing on “the core functionality” of the site, after many new features failed to gain traction.

YouTube

Look for new AI video tools on YouTube in the near future; the new “Create” app is currently in beta for Android.

If you produce Shorts for YouTube, you will want to know how that algorithm works.

(CONTENT) MARKETING (includes blogging, emails, and strategies)

Gmail, Yahoo and AOL are all implementing new email rules in 2024 that may impact some types of email newsletters, although most major companies have already complied with the new requirements.

While Gmail hides your promotional emails, Yahoo is now offering new AI tools that will find those missing “gift cards, discount codes and store credits that people may have forgotten about.”

Newsletter option TinyLetter is being shut down by Malichimp.

Substack users: be aware that your subscribers may see your address and phone number unless you change the default setting.

The first step in writing content isn’t necessarily doing SEO keyword research [I’d argue that products are different than content, though, and that even forum or social driven content could benefit from a bit of SEO.]

Looking for content marketing topics for December? Here are 5 ideas to get working on, and if you have some free time, get a head start on January.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (EXCEPT INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL MEDIA AND ECOMMERCE SITES)

Did you know there are tools to track ads from different companies on many ad sites? Some are even free. [includes TikTok, Meta, Google and LinkedIn]

Ecommerce advertisers may find Amazon a better place to spend their budget compared to Google Ads. “Amazon’s search volume comprises 54% of all product-related searches in the United States.”

Google’s third quarter was decent, but Cloud revenue was below projections while ad money was up. Microsoft’s ad revenue also improved.

Chrome plans on ending all third-party cookies by the end of the third quarter 2024, and will start with 1% of users in early 2024. This will affect some types of ads, if you are wondering why platforms start changing.

Anyone using Google’s Performance Max campaigns may be interested in this overview of how to get the most out of them, with screenshots.

STATS, DATA, TRACKING

Since a lot of people still can’t figure out Google Analytics 4, here is yet another good overview.

This new YouTube video from Google shows you how to figure out traffic sources in Google Analytics 4.

Still working on moving to GA4? Here’s a bit more info, including how to save your old UA data.

For video learners, here is “5 reasons for using Google Search Console”. [YouTube, 3 mins.]

BUSINESS & CONSUMER TRENDS, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

A report out of the UK on small business use of online platforms calls for the UK government to better protect small businesses from the power differential often evident in these relationships.

Amazon’s Prime Day sales barely beat last year, while their competitors actually dropped. [Washington Post gift link] Some analysts think this bodes poorly for the holiday season, and that consumers are looking for discounts.

Around 50% of Generation Zers in the US plan to shop in malls this holiday season, and people in general plan on spending less this year. But another study said nearly half of Gen Z shoppers will make at least some purchases on social media, while the US average is just ⅓. Most online holiday shopping will take place on mobile instead of computers, and ecommerce shopping will be up less than 5% per some reports, and over 10% according to others. Black Friday stats also indicate that mobile outpaced desktop - smart phones delivered 54% of online sales. “Global data from Shopify also showed strong mobile performance for merchants on that platform. Mobile versus desktop 76% to 24%, respectively.”

Large companies report that various types of consumer fraud are on the increase, and cost $100 billion annually.

IMAGES, VIDEO, GRAPHIC DESIGN, & FREE ONLINE TOOLS

Thinking of using AI to create some products and images to sell? Be aware that AI art is not copyright-protected, at least in the US at the moment. A recent case led the court to rule that “human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.” [article includes a copy of the entire case]

Need some free web design tools? Practical Ecommerce has a recent list of 19, and an even more recent list of 17.

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)

A snarky article in the Verge had SEOs all worked up, and some were very defensive about it. I thought the whole thing was hilarious.

Reminder that there are usually consequences for (and laws against) improper use of a customer’s private information, which includes asking them on a date. “Almost one in three people aged 18-34 have received unwanted romantic contact after giving their personal information to a business, a UK poll has shown.”

Do you know what happens to your website and social media accounts when you die? Sometimes, even the platforms get confused about this, and there are few laws.

Jewellery finding company TierraCast is closing by the end of 2023.

UPDATED: December 4, 2023

#seo #social media #microbusiness #cindylouwho2 #search engine optimization #marketing #content marketing

3 notes · View notes