The latest jobs in search marketing

Looking to take the next step in your next search marketing career?

Below, you’ll find the newest jobs at brands and agencies in SEO, PPC and digital marketing – as well as positions we’ve shared in previous weeks that are still open.

Are you looking to hire? Submit your job listing here for free. Please include:

• Job title.
• Company.
• Job listing URL.
• Date when the job listing closes.
• Where the position is located (e.g., remote, city, country).
• Salary range (we will not include job listings in this article unless they include this).

Note: We update this post weekly, on Fridays. So make sure to bookmark this page and check back.

Newest jobs in SEO, PPC and digital marketing

Sr. SEO Manager, Dropbox (Remote)

• Salary: $139,000+
• Spearhead development and implementation of search strategies re: keyword selection, SEO content, site architecture, link-building and optimized SERP for video/social/review sites to increase brand search visibility, and drive high-volume organic search traffic and attributed revenue
• Collaborate with Paid Search and Content in aligning keyword targeting and content creation, and driving overall search efficiencies

Senior SEO Manager, Handshake (Remote)

• Salary: $124,000 to $185,000 (annual)
• Lead SEO strategy and key cross-functional initiatives inclusive of technical SEO, content SEO, PR, and product
• Contribute to Handshake’s overall content strategy, including blogs, user-generated content, editorial content, and content created in-product such as job postings and events

Senior SEO Strategist, The SEO Department (Remote)

• Salary: $90,000 to $110,000 (annual)
• Developing, articulating, and implementing a comprehensive SEO strategic plan for clients which is consistent with their broader client goals & objectives.
• Understanding the complete digital marketing and general marketing objectives of the clients, as well as ensuring all SEO initiatives are fully supportive of and consistent with these client goals.

SEO Manager, Ultra Mobile (Remote)

• Salary: $85,000 to $100,000 (annual)
• Developing and executing SEO strategies to drive organic growth, with a keen understanding of intent across the customer journey.
• Performing SEO audits, providing performance improvement recommendations and working with internal teams to implement (Ex. page speed, site architecture, metadata, tagging etc.).

SEO Manager, Green Line Digital (Remote, U.S.)

• Salary: $85,000
• Identify opportunities and develop strategies to improve organic performance by using strong analytical, technical, research, and content marketing skills
• Collaborate with digital media planners, web developers & creatives to apply SEO best practices to all elements of client sites & social platforms

Search Engine Optimization Senior Marketing Consultant, Wells Fargo (Various locations, U.S.)

• Salary: $73,000 to $130,000 (annual)
• Use SEO tools, data and analytics, customer research, perform competitive analysis, and leverage SEO best practices extensively to create insights and data driven recommendations.
• Conduct keyword research, search behavior analysis, technical audits and content gap analysis.

SEO Strategist, Insider Inc (Remote)

• Salary: $72,000 to $76,000 (annual)
• Work closely with a team of search-focused strategists to deliver on our search strategy and monitor metrics for success in organic search performance.
• Review and analyze SEO performance and make recommendations for improvements on both

SEO Senior Analyst, American Red Cross (Remote)

• Salary: $67,000 to $78,000 (annual)
• Work with internal and external counterparts, plan, develop and implement our SEO strategy
• Being able to manage content from an SEO perspective

Sr. Analyst, Technical SEO, The Home Depot (Remote)

• Salary: $65,000 to $100,000
• Perform continuous site auditing, and recommend scalable on-page optimization based on business objectives for both existing functionality and new opportunities
• Provide SEO best practices in alignment with current technical principles and homedepot.com systems

SEO Manager, The Stable (Remote)

• Salary: $60,000 to $70,000 (annual)
• Drive and execute projects such as site audits, migrations and other SEO specific initiatives
• Manage multiple client accounts seamlessly with tight timelines

Paid Search (SEM) Manager, dentsu International (Remote)

• Salary: $59,000 to $92,000 (annual)
• Perform daily campaign activities for enterprise level Paid Search (PPC) campaigns, including: bid management, budget allocation, forecasting, performance monitoring, strategic testing, and campaign expansion
• Be the main contact for your client, internal departments, and third-party providers

small-scale and wide-ranging efforts.

Senior Digital Strategist, Moore Digital, (Remote)

• Salary: $85,000 to $100,000 (annual)
• Develops and presents strategic plans covering digital fundraising efforts across multiple digital tactics.
• Provides strategic direction for email marketing campaigns, digital media including programmatic, paid social and paid search efforts, social media strategy, and other digital marketing tactics.

Outreach Specialist, Paradise Media (Remote, San Juan, Puerto Rico)

• Salary: $15-$20 (hourly)
• Develop innovative, creative, and unique approaches to journalists, bloggers, and influencers
• Create Outreach campaigns using software like Muck Rack, Respova, and Prowly.

SEO jobs

SEO Specialist, Disruptive Advertising (Remote [except S.C. or N.Y.] or Salt Lake City)

• Salary: $70,000 – $90,000 (annual)
• Perform comprehensive client SEO audits
• Identify KPIs to measure organic success with clients

Search Engine Optimization Manager, Adtaxi (Remote)

• Salary: $60,000 to $65,000 (annual)
• Develop strategic plan for clients looking to set up SEO and analytics on new sites
• Review and audit client sites for areas that can be optimized or improved

Senior SEO Strategy Lead, Airbnb (Remote)

• Salary: $185,000 to $230,000 (annual)
• SEO Strategy: Align with SEO experts across the company to establish the short and long term strategy for the channel that aligns with the broader marketing vision
• Global Content development: Build the content strategy by country to drive SEO channel expansion in all key geos and languages. Partner with editorial teams to curate highly differentiated content and refresh this content on ongoing basis

SEO Manager, NBC Sports (New York City)

• Salary: $90,000 to $110,000
• Website migration – end-to-end support from design to launch to reporting (URL architecture, redirect mapping, content optimization, QA, etc).
• Ensure articles and landing pages do not have structural errors and are properly crawled and indexed by search engines.

SEO Manager. MyAdvice (Remote)

• Salary: $75,000 to $85,000 (annual)
• Curate and lead an elite team of dynamic SEO professionals to plan, manage, and implement high-value SEO campaigns for our clients in the medical and legal industries
• Own the overall success and ensure the strategic efficacy of MyAdvice’s SEO service offerings

Search Engine Optimization Manager, Sosemo (New York City, Hybrid)

• Salary: $85,000 to $97,500
• Conduct keyword research and analysis
• Provides search engine accessibility consulting

Director of SEO, Workshop Digital (Remote, U.S.)

• Salary: $120,000+ (annual)
• Develop and implement a strategic vision for the SEO team
• Maintain standards of performance and ensure successful SOW execution across an evolving and expanding set of SEO services 

Sr SEO Manager, deeproots partners (Remote, U.S. hours)

• Salary: $75,000 to $96,000 (annual)
• Staying constantly up-to-date on new onsite strategies for local SEO (with an emphasis on Google My Business) and national campaigns and working with the COO to create SOPs to implement within the agency.
• Ensuring that we reach our partners’ KPIs in the desired timeline by managing existing and new strategies with the SEO team (Chief SEO Strategist and SEO Analyst).

SEO Specialist, Blennd (Denver, Colo., Hybrid / Remote)

• Salary: $55,000 to $65,000 (annual)
• Develop a strong understanding of branding requirements for clients as it relates to SEO initiatives.
• Perform technical site health audits to provide insights, itemize issues, and implement fixes.

SEO Strategist, Inflow (Remote)

• Salary: $67,000 to $86,000 (annual)
• Serve a small set of accounts as the lead SEO Strategist/Client Advocate
• Collaborate with Sr. SEO Strategists to assist with execution of SEO deliverables

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Analyst (Senior and Expert), Bruce Clay (Remote)

• Salary: $5,000 to $10,000 (monthly)
• Technical deep-dive deliverables with extraordinary mentoring and client communication skills required.
• Increase keyword rankings and search engine traffic and ultimately conversions for client websites within exceptionally competitive search engine results pages.

Senior SEO + Digital Strategy Analyst, Momentic (Remote or Milwaukee)

• Salary: $65,000 to $85,000 (annual)
• Developing, executing, and reporting on comprehensive SEO strategies.
• Identifying key SEO opportunities, tracking website traffic and KPIs, and analyzing competitor strategies. 

SEO Testing Consultant, Search Pilot (Seattle, hybrid)

• Salary: $65,000 to $90,000 (annual)
• Managing the customer relationship, including onboarding of new customers and keeping them updated on test planning and results
• Coming up with SEO and CRO test hypotheses and working with customers to prioritize them

Senior SEO Specialist ~ Pure Visibility (Remote or Ann Arbor, Mich.)

• Salary: $58,000 to $65,000 (annual)
• Work with the SEO director to perform in-depth visibility audits for new clients and compile the results along with prioritized recommendations.
• Work with the SEO director to analyze and create action plans around common technical SEO components (canonicalization, sitemaps, crawl budget, schema, hreflang)

PPC jobs

Director of Paid Search, Next Level SEM (Miami, Fla.)

• Salary: $80,000 to $115,000
• Implement and manage PPC/Google Ads (Search, Display, Shopping, Video) campaigns.
• Complete daily maintenance tasks for assigned clients.

Manager, Google Ads, Lionhurst (Remote)

• Salary: $65,000 – $70,000 (annual)
• Build, manage and optimize campaigns on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads for B2B SaaS companies.
• Assist with client communication and project management

Paid Search Senior Strategist, Socium Media (Remote, U.S.)

• Salary: $70,000 – $85,000
• Run day-to-day paid search operations for clients that could span across multiple verticals
• Will likely be fully managing and be the sole “owner” of at least one client within the first two months, depending on business needs

Paid Acquisition Account Manager, Jordan Digital Marketing (Remote)

• Salary: $75,000 to $95,000 (annual)
• Executing paid search and paid social strategy for clients
• Conducting strategic planning and optimization efforts

Senior Paid Search Strategist, Inflow (Remote, U.S. only)

• Salary: $74,000 to $97,000 (annual)
• Manage and serve as the primary point of contact for 5–10 paid advertising clients. Be responsible for the strategy, prioritization, planning, and execution for client PPC strategies in Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and other relevant platforms. 
• Build highly effective Shopping, Search, Display, and Remarketing campaigns for eCommerce clients.

Paid Ads Team Manager, Inflow (Remote, U.S. only)

• Salary: $80,000 to $118,000 (annual)
• Lead strategic planning sessions and team meetings
• Review deliverables and provide feedback to other team members

Other SEM and digital marketing jobs

Senior Content Strategist, Northstar (Remote)

• Salary: $55,000 to $65,000 (annual)
• Conduct keyword research to inform client strategy
• Ideate creative content ideas based on research of industry trends, keywords, competitor analysis, and trending topics.

Director of Digital Marketing, PCF Insurance Services (Lehi, Utah)

• Salary: $100,000 to $130,000 (annual)
• Develop digital marketing strategy, execute on cross-channel digital campaigns and oversee the digital ecosystem including
• Site management: PCF Insurance website, Agency Partners’ websites (100+) and intranet site

Content Marketing Manager, Auxis (Plantation, Fla. / Hybrid)

• Salary: $100,000 (annual)
• Become an expert on Auxis’ Finance Transformation & BPO Outsourcing Services and market trends in order to effectively position Auxis capabilities and thought leadership while proposing content topics (and formats) that increase our website traffic and lead generation among our targeted buyers
• Create, maintain and manage the content calendar for the assigned service lines

Content Writer – Senior Manager, CVS Health, (Remote)

• Salary: $75,400 to $158,300 (annual)
• Research, create, edit, and revise content to support strategic marketing needs
• Participate in the versioning of their work into other digital and multimedia formats in partnership with design and agency partners

Want a chance to include your job listing on Search Engine Land? Submit your details here.

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GA4 now has an enhanced measurement option for Form interactions

Google has added an enhanced measurement option for Form interactions. Now you can not only see when a form has been submitted, but you can also see when one has been started by a new user.

Lead gen marketers rejoice!

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Enable enhanced measurement. Enhanced measurement should be enabled automatically if you already have a web data stream created. If not, check your analytics account and turn this on.

Dig deeper. You can read the announcement from Google here.

Why we care. With so many new shopping products being released lately, it's nice to see one for lead gen. The new enhanced measurement feature will let you see visitors to your website who started filling out forms but did not complete them for some reason. With that information, advertisers can create remarketing campaigns with unique messages to entice visitors to come back and complete the form.

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5 massive SEO and content shifts you need to master right now

Google’s focus on optimizing for the user never goes away, which is why its continual updates are always targeted at both SEO and content best practices. 

These can range from core algorithmic changes and new features and products. For example, this can include SERP format changes and new ranking signals to avoid low-quality content to understand consumer behavior better. With Google’s focus on user experience, it is no surprise that they have been rolling out updates to improve search and site experiences.

Some of the most recent changes were aimed at improving page speed and Core Web Vitals, as well as product reviews which shows how much importance Google places upon providing quality content. The helpful content update (HCU) focuses on content for human users, rather than just for ranking (over-optimizing) and not really giving people anything useful when looking for information!

Some marketers have struggled to keep up with and adapt to these changes. Meanwhile, other brands are thriving.

Why?

Because they have learned to stay ahead of Google’s ever-evolving algorithms by focusing on quality content.

Savvy marketers know that they must have similar goals to Google. That means providing content that resonates, engages and converts – wherever, whenever and however consumers discover it.

It’s essential to not just look at where Google is today but where Google is heading over the next six months, next year and beyond. If you can keep pace with these momentous shifts, you can stay ahead of Google and your competition to dominate online in your industry.

The best way to stay ahead is to focus your efforts on content and optimization for the user, not the algorithm.

It’s time to start thinking forward – and fast! Below are five SEO shifts you need to master as we head into the latter part of this year.

1. From SEO just to rank to ‘SEO for content convergence and performance’

Just as content alone isn’t enough to guarantee SEO success, SEO alone isn’t enough to ensure that people will find and engage with your content. 

As Danny Goodwin highlights in a recent article, content needs to:

• Be created for a specific audience.
• Feature expertise.
• Be trustworthy and credible.
• Meet the searcher’s want(s) or need(s).

The old days of irrelevant content and over-optimizing just for rank means that good SEO and content marketers have a unique opportunity. Those who use good SEO practices and align better with their content partners and writers stand to win in the long term.

Now, more than ever, data can help marketers understand consumer intent to create quality content that aligns with the customer journey and satisfy the human user.

Here’s how marketers can master this shift.

Ensure your content creation is based on intent-led data

Content marketing without data lacks purpose. Data is becoming a key source of business and content intelligence.

Utilize SEO data to understand user intent, define correct audiences, and provide relevant topics people want to read and engage with.

Track and measure these to gain the insights you need to create meaningful content that people want to consume and improve future content marketing efforts.

Foster search, social and content synergy

In combination, organic search, social and content help brands achieve their goals and objectives. Creating high-quality content with SEO in mind from the beginning boosts search visibility.

That great content can then be further amplified via social media, creating demand you can harvest later via search.

Maximize your search engine results page (SERP) footprint

Create and optimize high-ROI content like articles and videos to help people (by answering important or popular questions or providing practical information) or capitalize on trendy topics.

Then help your brand further stand out in the SERPs by winning real estate with featured snippets, site links, related questions, images, videos and tweets.

2. From mobile-first to ‘the need for mobile speed’

For years, Google told marketers about the coming shift to mobile-first – and it finally arrived. Today, optimizing for mobile search, devices, and usability is no longer optional. It’s mandatory.

This is especially true with Core Web Vitals, where the initial focus was on mobile rather than desktop. 

While many brands have become mobile-ready, many forget that mobile speed matters the most. Google has begun to factor mobile loading times into its ranking algorithm, which means increasing site speed can help your website gain in the SERPs.

Here’s how marketers can master this shift.

Make your mobile SEO fast and furious

In addition to being attractive and easy to navigate, mobile websites must be fast. About 53% of mobile users leave sites that take more than three seconds to load, according to Google research.

Therefore, following technical mobile SEO best practices (e.g., image optimization, redirects, JavaScript, and CSS) is a necessary barrier to entry in today’s digital world.

Consider contextual mobile content

Focus on creating content that mobile users want and will find valuable. Typically, mobile users are in research mode – searching for information they need or need some inspiration.

Make sure your brand is there and influences that decision when they’re ready to convert, which is more likely to be on a desktop or in-store than on a smartphone.

Design for mobile

CDNs can be a great way to make your media load faster.

One way of doing this is by consulting Google’s latest developer documentation on image optimization and adhering to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Working with front-end developers ensures that lightweight crafted HTML5/CSS will help you stay within industry standards while focusing primarily on “is the user getting what they came for.” Ensure your design works well enough so as not to hinder their experience.

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3. From local and hyperlocal to 'shopping online and in-store'

The hyperlocal opportunity has never been greater for marketers. Hyperlocal targeting lets you reach people based on their location. This is an excellent way for brands to capitalize on "near me" searches and "I-want-to-go" micro-moments and become hyper-relevant and valuable.

It's worth noting that the COVID-19 pandemic caused many shoppers to choose between online shopping vs. in-store. There's been a steady increase of people buying from websites on their phones with just one click, according to a Digital Commerce 360 ecommerce study. 

Here’s how marketers can master this shift.

Own local search

Make sure critical contact information that people search for is prominent or easy to find. This includes name, address, phone, hours and directions.

Hyperlocal optimization = hyper important

Google's personalized hyperlocal results give more visibility to smaller geographic locations.

Optimize your Google Business Profile, create localized content and landing pages, use local business Schema markup and monitor the performance of your local keyword rankings.

Build on the intersection of local and mobile

People who do local searches on smartphones have higher intent.

Optimizing for local also means optimizing for users who are on the go. These people have different needs and expectations than those doing local searches on other devices.

Understand and adapt

Some people still prefer visiting brick-and-mortar stores when they need something.

However, most consumers now search for products first through Google or other platforms before making purchases at physical locations as well. Monitor how these trends change over time by tracking ranking fluctuations across industries. 

4. From text to voice to 'multiple search entry points'

To be successful in today's competitive market, marketers need to build comprehensive strategies that drive interactions at every search entry point. This includes TV sets and smartphones and extends to IoT devices like smart plugs or lightbulbs. 

As marketers collect this data, we become a virtual user group, gathering information and understanding where what and why people search. 

Here’s how marketers can master this shift.

Understand the customer experience

From product development, customer acquisition, and sales through to service, post-sales support, and loyalty, consumers are searching at every stage to find just what they need at any particular moment.

Search is a window into the user experience every step of the way, so utilize it. 

Ensure consumers have an enjoyable experience from start to finish

You must provide them with what they desire: seamless experiences across all channels without any unnecessary hassle or hindrance. 

Get smart about intelligent agents

Many voice searches happen at home, in the car, or on the go, resulting in a more connected world. These intelligent agents use semantics, search history, and user interests and behaviors to provide the best results.

So, make sure content is aligned with the intent and interests of customers at the right moment of the decision journey. Be the best answer.

5. From data to machine learning to 'intelligent automation'

Google relies on machine learning, in the form of RankBrain, MUM, and its core technologies, to make sense of the massive amounts of data and deliver the best possible search results for users.

We know that the pandemic helped accelerate every organization's journey to digital transformation. The next step in that process is evolution and who can progress with ease, speed and efficiency. 

As marketers, we, too, must turn to data science and machine learning to understand our audience's intent, interests, and behavior so we can deliver and personalize the content they want.

Here’s how marketers can master this shift.

View data as a source of truth

Martech stacks are being built around data integrations and performance because we simply have too much data and not enough analysts or hours in the day to make sense of it all.

To capitalize on demand, spot patterns, and stay ahead of the competition, marketers need to go beyond the "what" of data to understand the "when" and "why" of analytics.

Utilize AI and machine learning

Machine learning helps marketers spend less time analyzing data and more time creating content that will engage and influence prospects and customers.

Let AI and machine learning deliver actionable insights about your audience and content performance. Do not let it write content for you. 

Define metrics and measurement

Data allows marketers to make better and more accurate decisions more quickly. Define the metrics that matter to your brand, and monitor your search and content data.

This will allow you to track your progress, iterate and improve your content production and organic search optimization for greater visibility and a greater share of voice.

Conclusion

SEO and data are essential for a successful integrated digital strategy with tangible ROI.

By understanding the five points above and consistently measuring your results, you will demonstrate that creating compelling, engaging, thoughtful content is the path to revenue and genuinely worth the investment.

SEO plays a vital role in providing insights, optimizing and measuring content – content has become the cornerstone of any good SEO campaign. 

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The 2023 Digital Marketing Salary Guide is here

Digital marketing talent—especially those specializing in SEO, content, email marketing, and PPC—remains in top demand.

With 92% of hiring managers reporting difficulties finding skilled talent, it’s never been a better time to be a qualified job seeker.  If you’re looking to advance your career, change jobs, or expand your digital marketing team, Conductor’s 2023 Digital Marketing Salary Guide has you covered.

Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download Conductor’s 2023 Digital Marketing Salary Guide & Hiring Trends Report for access to:

• Exclusive salary range benchmark data
• In-depth hiring trend research
• Additional recruiting trends and retention strategies

The post The 2023 Digital Marketing Salary Guide is here appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Twitter has created 2 new video features

Twitter has just launched two new video products to help users watch and discover new content in the app.

1. Immersive viewing and easy discovery

This new feature expands videos to full screen by simply clicking on the video in the Twitter app. When the video is in full-screen mode, users can scroll up to browse additional video content.

This feature will be available on iOS and Android in select countries in English.

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2. Showing more videos in Explore

A new video carousel makes it easier to find more videos you're interested in next to Tweets and Trends that might interest you. You can access these videos by opening the Explore tab.

This feature will be available on iOS and Android in select countries in English.

How Twitter uses Signals to show you more content. Twitter announced the usage of Signals to show users more content that's relevant. Twitter uses Signals and shows you that content based on your past likes, comments, and followers.

Dig deeper. Read the announcement from Twitter here.

Why we care. Twitter is following in Instagram's footsteps by adopting a TikTok-like aesthetic. Brands who use Twitter should optimize their video content for the new placements and full-screen feature. They should also ensure that their content is relevant, timely, and accurate.

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Webinar: How to avoid digital pollution and focus on your audience

Has content become a dirty word? Join Ed Breault, CMO of Aprimo, to talk about the ultimate necessity of content operations to deal with digital pollution both at the macro and the micro levels so your organizations can rethink how you plan, create, manage and deliver remarkable customer experiences that scale.

Register today for “Has ‘Content’ Become a Dirty Word?” presented by Aprimo.

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4 new useful LinkedIn Ads features

LinkedIn has rolled out 4 new features for marketers advertising through the B2B platform. It’s is great to see B2B getting some attention, given that Google’s Search On 22 inundated us with 9 new shopping updates.

Let’s dive in.

1. Offline Conversions

Offline Conversions allow you to connect the conversions you track in other tools directly to LinkedIn. Advertisers will be able to manually upload CSV files to the Campaign Manager. New supported CRM partners include Adverity, Hub Spot, LeadsBridge, LiveRamp, and Make.

Offline data will automatically be incorporated into your aggregate reporting on conversions and will provide a more holistic understanding of your marketing impact on lower-funnel outcomes.

2. Audience insights

Free audience insights are now in Campaign Manager. These can help advertisers pinpoint who their audiences are, what they’re interested in, and how they’re engaging with other content and topics.

Audience insights are available for both Matched and saved audiences. It generates aggregated insights based on topics and content they’ve engaged in, but also job titles, years of experience, seniority, location, company name, industry, and more. Insights can also be used to discover new audiences.

3. Document ads

Document Ads allow you to promote long-format content directly into members’ feeds where they can read and download whitepapers, case studies, and reports without leaving the platform. You can also use a Lead Gen Form to collect leads if you decide to gate your documents.

4. Media Library

The new LinkedIn Media Library allows you to create ads more easily by storing all of your images and videos in one central location. Advertisers can now create up to five ads at once by selecting the video or image from the media library, each then becoming its own ad. This feature seems to make ad creation easier, faster, and collaborative.

Dig deeper. You can read the announcement from LinkedIn here.

Why we care. With the holidays coming up, B2B gets forgotten as it seems all we’ve been hearing about lately is platforms launching new shopping features and updates. These new features, though nothing groundbreaking, could be worth testing out if you’re currently or considering advertising on LinkedIn

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30+ brands suspend their Twitter marketing campaigns after finding their ads next to child-pornography accounts

Some popular brands have paused their Twitter marketing campaigns after discovering that their ads had appeared alongside child pornography accounts.

Affected brands. There were reportedly more than 30 brands that appeared on the profile pages of Twitter accounts peddling links to the exploitative material. Among those brands are a children’s hospital and PBS Kids. Other verified brands include:

• Dyson
• Mazda
• Forbes
• Walt Disney
• NBC Universal
• Coca-Cola
• Cole Haan

What happened. Twitter hasn’t given any answers as to what may have happened to cause the issue. But a Reuters review found that some tweets include keywords related to “rape” and “teens,” which appeared alongside promoted tweets from corporate advertisers. In one example, a promoted tweet for shoe and accessories brand Cole Haan appeared next to a tweet in which a user said they were “trading teen/child” content.

In another example, a user tweeted searching for content of “Yung girls ONLY, NO Boys,” which was immediately followed by a promoted tweet for Texas-based Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital. 

How brands are reacting. “We’re horrified. Either Twitter is going to fix this, or we’ll fix it by any means we can, which includes not buying Twitter ads.” David Maddocks, brand president at Cole Haan, told Reuters.

“Twitter needs to fix this problem ASAP, and until they do, we are going to cease any further paid activity on Twitter,” said a spokesperson for Forbes.

“There is no place for this type of content online,” a spokesperson for carmaker Mazda USA said in a statement to Reuters, adding that in response, the company is now prohibiting its ads from appearing on Twitter profile pages.

A Disney spokesperson called the content “reprehensible” and said they are “doubling-down on our efforts to ensure that the digital platforms on which we advertise, and the media buyers we use, strengthen their efforts to prevent such errors from recurring.”

Twitter’s response. In a statement, Twitter spokesperson Celeste Carswell said the company “has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation” and is investing more resources dedicated to child safety, including hiring for new positions to write policy and implement solutions. She added that the matter is being investigated.

An ongoing issue. A cybersecurity group called Ghost Data identified more than 500 accounts that have openly shared or requested child sexual abuse material over a 20-day period. Twitter failed to remove 70% of them. After Reuters shared a sample of explicit accounts with Twitter. Twitter then removed 300 additional accounts but left more than 100 active.

Twitter’s transparency reports on its website show it suspended more than 1 million accounts last year for child sexual exploitation.

What Twitter is, and isn’t doing. A team of Twitter employees concluded in a report last year saying that the company needed more time to identify and remove child exploitation material at scale. The report noted that the company had a backlog of cases to review for possible reporting to law enforcement.

Traffickers often use code words such as “cp” for child pornography and are “intentionally as vague as possible,” to avoid detection. The more that Twitter cracks down on certain keywords, the more that users are nudged to use obfuscated text, which “tend to be harder for Twitter to automate against,” the report said.

Ghost Data said that such tricks would complicate efforts to hunt down the materials, but noted that his small team of five researchers and no access to Twitter’s internal resources was able to find hundreds of accounts within 20 days.

Not just a Twitter problem. The problem isn’t isolated to just Twitter. Child safety advocates say predators are using Facebook and Instagram to groom victims and exchange explicit images. Predators instruct victims to reach out to them on Telegram and Discord to complete payment and receive materials. The files are then usually stored on cloud services like Dropbox.

Why we care. Child pornography and explicit accounts on social media are everyone’s problem. Since offenders are continually trying to deceive the algorithms using code words or slang, we can never be 100% sure that our ads aren’t appearing where they shouldn’t be. If you’re advertising on Twitter, be sure to review your placements as thoroughly as possible.

But Twitter’s response seems to be lacking. If a watchdog group like Ghost Data can find these accounts without accessing Twitter’s internal data, then it seems pretty reasonable to assume that a child can, as well. Why isn’t Twitter removing all of these accounts? What additional data are they looking for to justify a suspension?

Like a game of Whac-A-Mole, for every account that is removed, several more pop up, and suspended users will likely go on to create new accounts, masking their IP addresses. So is this an automation issue? Is there a problem with getting local law enforcement agencies to react? Twitter spokesperson Carswell said that the information in recent reports “… is not an accurate reflection of where we are today.” This is likely an accurate statement as the issue seems to have gotten worse.

The post 30+ brands suspend their Twitter marketing campaigns after finding their ads next to child-pornography accounts appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Enterprise ecommerce SEO: Why good technology can’t fix a bad process

Several SEO myths and misconceptions are killing enterprise ecommerce and enterprise retail businesses. This article will explore some of them to show how enterprise SEO is unique, and not quite the same as traditional search engine optimization.

To be effective, enterprise ecommerce SEO should be strategy-oriented. And yet, that’s rare to find. Why? 

What follows are business-critical problems and lost opportunities I’ve come across while consulting on SEO strategy with some of the biggest brands and corporations in the world.

• We’ll begin by looking at the current scenario, with its vast array of ineffective practices.
• Then we’ll define the biggest problems in enterprise ecommerce SEO today. 
• Finally, we’ll discuss diverse challenges, and ways to overcome them to thrive in a difficult, hyper-competitive business climate.

Enterprise ecommerce SEO: Let’s face facts

Reality is often harsh and sobering. Yet facing up to facts is essential to fix problems and boost SEO effectiveness.

The litany of woes is long – and painful.

• Business owners and shareholders alike suffer low financial gains, thanks to poor business performance, low productivity and frustrated economic growth.
• Corporate governance, risk management and controlling bodies (like boards and leadership) are unaware of problems until too late. Or else, they hesitate to intervene promptly to address problems. 
• Without risk monitoring processes or reports on external opportunities, they resort to benchmarking and reviews of past growth and financial efficiency.
• Goals, objectives and projects are often misaligned. Cross-functional teams are dysfunctional. They leave money on the table, and market share remains untapped.
• Without oversight and control over business-critical categories, as well as inefficient integration with business strategy, individuals and teams fall short of targets.
• Often even outside specialists called in to help fix the problem are thwarted. Their critical analysis is questioned, and they are labeled “difficult to work with.” No wonder the best, most brilliant minds quit – and companies lose valuable people.

But these are not the biggest hurdles. Those lie elsewhere – in strategy and process problems.

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Chaotic SEO strategy

SEO strategy for enterprise ecommerce is essentially a “business strategy.”

Enterprise SEO is not about Google. It doesn't operate in a silo. And it's not obsessed with tasks and deliverables. 

On the contrary, a good SEO strategy for ecommerce companies and omnichannel retailers focuses on:

• Business goals and requirements.
• Optimizing processes and workflows.
• Ways to get desired outcomes.
• Achieving a positive impact on KPIs.

Poor process and workflow

Enterprise processes are often in pretty bad shape.

Nobody quite expects the business strategy to work. Each department falls short in revenue generation and productivity. Sales and marketing plans are poorly implemented.

A Google-oriented SEO strategy misses business goals and financial KPIs while overlooking lucrative opportunities to dominate the ecosystem.

Whenever processes and workflows support analysis and decision-making, an SEO strategist can identify ways to rake in millions in added revenue. But due to bad processes, these opportunities largely go unseen. 

All the while, management behaves like a bus driver in an old American action comedy who speeds crazily along the highway, confidently announcing: "Trust, me! I know what I'm doing."

Sadly, this is not a movie. The threat is real. 

Addressing these problems should be a top priority for business leaders. Brushing things under the carpet with a cosmetic re-design or technology makeover only worsens economic damage.

Enterprise ecommerce SEO: The challenges are real

Next, let's look at the key challenges unique to enterprise organizations – and see how intelligent SEO can help with them.

Lack of quality data is deadly

To put it bluntly, at many ecommerce enterprises, data often cannot be trusted at all! Using weak data to determine future plans and strategies is doomed to fail. 

The train has derailed... even before it leaves the station! 

Whenever SEO consultants propose changes based on only limited data, their suggestions are viewed as an added “cost” – rather than as glorious opportunities to expand the business.

Today's business strategy requires access to granular data that can be mined extensively. 

Smart data analysis is rare

Superficial keyword research limited to collecting high search-volume phrases, thanks to a limited, non-flexible budget is a recipe for disaster.

A deep analysis of search data that's broken down by ecommerce category and sub-category can uncover hidden opportunities and untapped assets.

The future belongs to a company armed with:

• Long-tail keyword data.
• Valuable phrase constructions.
• Words in various combinations.
• Broken down by “buyer journey” steps.
• Supplemented by “People Also Ask” queries.

The data can intelligently guide content producers to include critical and unique information for each product category and sub-category.

Yet time and resource constraints mean that only a few enterprises get it right. Opportunities and strategic intelligence often go unseen. What you don't measure, you cannot manage.

Missing data is a vexing problem

Whenever data is incomplete, you can get only an inaccurate picture of reality. 

Either the data isn't rich in detail, or it:

• Lacks breadth to cover enough of the customer journey. 
• Hasn't been broken down into a granular category or local-level.
• Wasn't adjusted and rinsed to provide a reliable and trusted picture.
• Isn't tailored for unique internal targeting, by buyer intent or geographic location.
• Hasn't been benchmarked against potential markets and qualified customers.

All these problems make data less trustworthy. You cannot use bad data to make good decisions.

Growth stalls and slows down, both in the short and long term. This leads to economic damage to the enterprise, along with its external owners and shareholders.

And that isn't all. 

There are also three other major problems that plague ecommerce enterprise SEO:

• People.
• Processes.
• Workflows.

People, teams and collaboration

Cross-functional teams only rarely align in their goals, objectives and projects. 

The problem begins with bad data and poor decisions based upon it. The lack of analysis affects implementation. In turn, this impairs business goals and financial KPIs.

But when information is locked away inside silos: 

• Work has to be duplicated, losing productivity.
• Co-operative teamwork suffers.
• Roles and responsibilities are unclear.
• People start doing whatever they feel like.
• Focus shifts to deliverables, instead of business objectives.
• Priorities aren't set correctly.
• Emphasis is upon technology and platforms, rather than business KPIs.

To change this, you should improve business processes. But sadly, there are often problems there, too.

Business and sales process

Business processes are often based on technology, systems, features and IT... instead of business requirements.  

To do this effectively, you will need:

• Better data quality.
• Complete and comprehensive datasets.
• Broad and deep data for all categories.
• Internal contributions across departments.
• Teams and specialists working together.
• Effective leadership to guide it all.

You would readily uncover gaps that can be fixed quickly if your enterprise SEO strategy ensures that all necessary data is:

• In place.
• Tracked all the way through the buyer's journey.
• Constantly benchmarked against your full potential.

Enterprise SEO is not centered on Google, but on business performance and economic results. 

If you only track search volumes and rankings but ignore how it translates into sales and profits, you cannot quantify the cost of making any changes. But armed with the right data, you can build a strong business case for a higher budget to make profitable tweaks.

When presented with such information, a board or leadership that doesn't act on it would be liable for dereliction of duty. Leaders who fail to exercise their judgment, discretion, knowledge and expertise to leverage data will risk damage to their reputation. And maybe even incur penalties and punishments for behaving irresponsibly.

Sub-optimal workflows

When guided by incomplete data or inaccurate datasets, an SEO strategy will not be maximally productive. So the organization will underperform on its financial KPIs.

• Collaboration among teams is weak.
• Processes are not properly aligned.
• Goals get disconnected from overall business priorities.
• Lack of measurement leads to missed chances.
• Boards overlook opportunities (or fail to intervene promptly). 
• Leaders don't spot specific needs they must fill.
• Role-based specialists struggle to deliver value.

Enterprise ecommerce SEO: Solutions, tips and strategies

Now that we’ve discussed the flaws and problems with enterprise SEO, we'll address potential solutions.

Let me begin by stating an overriding principle. Many companies try to solve poor business processes with technology, digital transformation, or re-platforming. I can’t say this clear and loud enough: 

You can’t solve a bad process with technology!

When business leadership is weak, or when sales plummet because marketing is out of sync with customers and markets, a technology overhaul alone won't fix the problem.

Companies that hire SEO agencies and consultants to carry out SEO-oriented tasks no longer enjoy the results they had back in 2005. That version of Google no longer exists!

Enterprise SEO and traditional SEO services may be similar, but they are not identical. If you measure them by the same yardstick, without a focus on business strategy, process and workflows, then the impact might appear small.

This post is already rather long. So let's briefly highlight solutions and opportunities to get a good head start with enterprise ecommerce SEO.  

In a future article, we'll dive deep into specific elements and discuss case studies of client companies that engineered remarkable transformations after simple tweaks to a broken process.

Action steps for ecommerce SEO

• Enable people with a process, workflows and technology that allows for workflow optimization... and avoids reinventing the wheel.
• As a company owner and investor, you should understand the business-critical importance of enterprise ecommerce SEO and embrace all necessary changes that lead to improvement.
• As process-oriented SEO consultants, marketers, sales, and ecommerce professionals, we play a key role in the adoption of a process that delivers top-priority business goals.
• Shiny object syndrome is real. And it is bad for business. Cover the basics first. Business-critical KPIs demand our attention. Beware of the “tools mindset.”
• Re-platforming, site-redesign and digital transformation processes may aim to transform the business. But they will not be successful unless the fundamentals are firmly in place.

And always keep this in mind:

Technology and digital transformation alone cannot fix the root cause of the problem: a bad process.

The post Enterprise ecommerce SEO: Why good technology can’t fix a bad process appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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How to build a disruptive marketing campaign

As customers, we’re all bombarded with marketing messages everywhere we turn. And, if a company’s message is not relevant to us or our interests, we tune it out completely. That is why businesses need to adopt disruptive marketing strategies to stay competitive.

Disruptive marketing is about more than just creating a buzz. It’s about rethinking the way you do marketing and breaking the rules you’ve been playing by. It’s about taking risks and trusting your intuition.

In today’s distraction-filled, ever-changing landscape, a customer’s attention is harder to come by than ever before. How we consume media has shifted dramatically in just a few years, making us more resistant to traditional marketing techniques.

An overview of disruptive marketing

Disruptive marketing itself is changing as the way of thinking about marketing evolves. Concepts like the metaverse, AI and NFTs have made us rethink traditional web platforms. New perspectives challenge the old guard at every corner. Even in familiar environments, being bold and taking risks are about doing things differently to stand out from the competition.

A tough market and continually changing global demands mean that brands need to get more creative and think outside the box to stand out from the 1000s of marketing communications customers receive daily.

According to Wunderman’s Study, “88% of U.S. consumers want to engage with brands that are setting new standards in meeting their expectations.” And, “74% said brands can do so by providing a higher level of customer service.”

In this setting, businesses need to start thinking about how to be more disruptive and set themselves apart from the rest, even in SEO campaigns.

Some of the most successful companies in the world have used disruptive marketing strategies to great effect. Apple, Virgin and Red Bull are all companies that have disrupted their respective industries.

Why is disruptive marketing so important?

There are three main reasons why disruptive marketing has gained so much traction and why it’s so important for businesses today:

1. Rapid technology growth

Technology is growing at a rapid pace, and this is making a big impact on the way we consume media. We now have access to more information than ever before, and we can consume it whenever and wherever we want.

PWC carried out extensive research on the permanent change in consumers’ habits and values during COVID-19. 50% of them have become more digital.

Social media trends also play a big role in how customers consume information. For example, the rise of Instagram Stories has led to businesses creating more “snackable” content that is easy to consume on the go. Short-form vertical videos are another trend made popular by TikTok and is now being used by businesses across all social media platforms.

Now, brands have to compete with millions of content creators for attention. This is why it’s important to stand out from the crowd and be disruptive.

2. Gen Z customers

Generation Z is the most diverse, tech-savvy, and social media-connected generation ever. They were born in the digital era and grew up surrounded by rich media that occupied their senses 24 hours a day.

It has led to them having shorter attention spans and higher expectations. They’re also more likely to question traditional authorities and are more skeptical of standard marketing techniques.

To reach this generation, businesses need to be more creative and authentic in their marketing. They also need to focus on creating experiences rather than just selling products.

3. Oversaturated market

There are now more businesses than ever before. In the U.S. alone, there are over 30 million small businesses. This number will only go up as the barriers to entry continue to decrease.

Businesses are selling the same products and services in the same industries, using the same marketing techniques. With so many brands competing for attention, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out from the crowd.

Steps to build a disruptive marketing campaign

It’s time to start thinking outside the box and breaking some rules. If you want to build a disruptive marketing campaign, there are a few things you need to keep in mind:

1. Know your industry

You can’t disrupt an industry if you don’t understand it. Do your research and try to understand the landscape. What are the main players? What are their marketing strategies? What are the common pain points for customers?

Tools like Think With Google, Marketing Engine, Survey Monkey, BizStats and others can help you construct in-depth knowledge of the industry, products or services. The key to developing a better understanding of your industry is to think about its weaknesses and the unmet needs of potential customers.

Once you’ve understood the industry well, you can start thinking about how your brand can fill the gap and create something new or make substantial improvements.

2. Understand your customer

Today’s customers are more discerning and have higher expectations than ever before. They can spot a fake, inauthentic or salesy message from a mile away.

To create a disruptive marketing campaign, you must focus on creating an emotional connection with your audience. This starts with understanding who they are, what they care about, and their needs.

Data science can help marketing teams unearth customer insights at scale, which can help create more personalized and relevant content. Many businesses already use data from Google Analytics, Facebook, ActiveCampaign, Youtube, and many others to personalize their digital marketing campaigns and see great results from segmentation and retargeting.

3. Do the unexpected

People are used to seeing the same old marketing techniques. They are bombarded with ads, emails, and sales messages daily. You need to do the unexpected to stand out.

Surprise them with something unseen and remarkable. Challenge the status quo and push the boundaries. It will grab attention and make people sit up and take notice of your brand.

Applying the latest innovations like artificial intelligence and machine learning can be a great way to do something unexpected. These technologies can help you create interactive experiences, personalized content, and predictive analytics at scale.

4. Stay relevant

It’s one thing to be disruptive, but you must also ensure that your campaign is relevant to your target audience. Relevance is key to creating a connection with your audience and getting them to take notice.

Digital marketing platforms like Google and Facebook are constantly changing and evolving. They are regularly introducing new features and updates to make their platforms more user-friendly. Google’s latest helpful content update is one example.

As a marketer, you need to stay on top of these changes and find ways to add meaning and value to customers’ lives.

Remember, if you can emotionally make your brand resonate with your target audience, your customer will be more likely to find a way to resonate with your brand.

5. Use humor

Humor is a great way to break through the noise and connect with your audience on a deeper level. It allows you to show off your brand’s personality and humanize your message.

When used correctly, humor can be a powerful marketing tool. It can help you build trust, differentiate your brand, and make a lasting impression. It also shows that you’re not afraid to have a little fun and that you’re confident in your brand

Of course, this doesn’t work with every brand, but if you can find a way to make your customers laugh, it will help you to build a strong relationship with them.

6. Refresh your thinking

Don’t stick to the same old marketing methods everyone else uses. To be disruptive, you need to think outside the box.

Be creative and experiment with new ideas. Try something that’s never been done before. This could be anything from a new way to reach your target audience to a new product or service.

From SEO to social media, there are loads of different marketing channels that you can use to reach your target audience. Get creative with your content by changing content drivers, wording styles and themes. Try new tools and features as they become available in beta. Consider a multi-touchpoint approach to reach your audience.

The key is to be brave and take risks. It’s the only way to truly stand out from the crowd.

7. Break the stereotypes

The goal of a disruptive marketing campaign is to redefine the rules and conventions of the industry. Break the existing stereotypes in your industry.

Let’s say all other players in your industry are using social media for their influencer marketing to attract and engage customers. Leverage that by moving to a lead-nurture marketing model that builds through SMS/text, chatbots and email.  You can break the mold by using a different marketing technique that no one else is using.

There are no rules when it comes to disrupting the status quo. The world is your oyster, so go out there and make some waves.

8. Knowing when to push and pull back

A successful disruptive marketing campaign requires a delicate balance. You need to know when to push forward and when to pull back.

If you push too hard, you might come across as being too aggressive. On the other hand, if you pull back too much, your campaign might not be successful.

In addition, businesses have to work with a limited marketing budget. You need to make sure that you’re allocating your resources in the most efficient way possible.

Finding the right balance between being disruptive and being too pushy is important. If you’re not sure when to push or pull back, consider seeking out an innovative marketing agency.

The bottom line

We have to find ways to grow in a dynamic world where technology, products and services constantly change and evolve. This can be overwhelming for customers who are faced with an overload of information every day.

As a result, standing out from the crowd has become one of the main challenges for marketers. Disruptive marketing can help you to compete in the global market more effectively and get noticed by your customers.

The post How to build a disruptive marketing campaign appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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What is semantic search: A deep dive into entity-based search

Since 2013, Google has been gradually developing into a 100% semantic search engine.

What exactly is semantic search? You can find plenty of explanations when you search Google for an answer to that question – but most of those are imprecise and create misunderstandings.

This article will help you comprehensively understand what semantic search is.

Google’s road to becoming a semantic search engine

Google’s efforts to develop a semantic search engine can be traced back to 1999 (as seen in this post by the late Bill Slawski). This became more concrete with the introduction of the Knowledge Graph in 2012 and the fundamental change in its ranking algorithm in 2013 (popularly known as Hummingbird). 

All other major innovations such as RankBrain, E-A-T, BERT and MUM either directly or indirectly support the goal to become a fully semantic search engine.

By introducing natural language processing (NLP) to search, Google is moving at an exponential rate toward this goal.

Google’s journey to a semantic search engine

Hummingbird: ‘Not strings, but things’ = entities

Hummingbird is the starting signal of Google’s evolution into a semantic search engine.

It was the biggest search query processing and ranking change ever made by Google, affecting over 90% of all searches as early as 2013. Hummingbird fundamentally replaced much of the existing ranking algorithms.

Through Hummingbird, Google was immediately able to include entities recorded in the Knowledge Graph for query processing, ranking and the output of SERPs.

An entity describes the essence or identity of a concrete or abstract object of being. Entities are uniquely identifiable and therefore uniquely meaningful.

Basically, a distinction can be made between named entities and abstract concepts.

• Named entities are real-world objects, such as people, places, organizations, products, and events.
• Abstract concepts are physical, psychological, or social in nature, such as distance, quantity, emotions, human rights, peace, etc.

Before Hummingbird, Google primarily did keyword document matching for ranking and could not recognize the meaning of a search query or content.

What is a semantic search engine?

A semantic search engine considers the semantic context of search queries and content to better understand meaning. Semantic search engines also consider the relationships between entities for returning search results.

In contrast, purely keyword-based search systems only work on the basis of a keyword-text match. 

What is semantic search?

Many definitions of semantic search focus on interpreting search intent as its essence. But first and foremost, semantic search is about recognizing the meaning of search queries and content based on the entities that occur. 

Semantics = theory of meaning. 

But “meaning” is not the same as “intention.” The search intent describes what a user expects from the search results. Meaning is something else.

Identifying meaning can help recognize search intent, but is more of an additional benefit of semantic search.

The role of the Knowledge Graph in Google’s semantic search

Entity-based ranking also requires entity-based indexing. The Knowledge Graph is Google’s entity index that takes into account relationships between entities.

Classic indices are organized in tabular form and, therefore, do not allow for mapping relationships between datasets.

The Knowledge Graph is a semantic database in which information is structured in such a way that knowledge is created from the information. Here, entities (nodes) are related to each other via edges, provided with attributes and other information and placed in thematic context or ontologies.

Entities are the central organizational element in semantic databases, such as Google’s Knowledge Graph.

In addition to the relationships between the entities, Google uses data mining to collect attributes and other information about the entities and organizes them around the entities.

Sample entities and their attributes: “Joe Alwyn” and “Taylor Swift”

You get an impression of which sources and information Google considers for an entity when you search for it.

“Taylor Swift” as an entity on Google Search

The preferred sources, attributes and information vary depending on the entity type. A person entity’s sources are different from an event entity or organizational entity. This impacts the information displayed in a knowledge panel.

The structure of an entity-based index allows for answers to questions that search for a topic or entity that is not mentioned in the question.

“Canberra” is an entity related to “Australia”

In this example, “Australia” and “Canberra” are the entities and the value “capital” describes the nature of the relationship. A keyword-based search engine could not have returned this answer.

Three levels serve as the basis for a Knowledge Graph: 

• Entity catalog: All entities that have been identified over time are stored here.
• Knowledge repository: Entities are brought together in a knowledge depot with information or attributes from various sources. This is primarily about merging and storing descriptions and creating semantic classes or groups in the form of entity types. Google generates the data via the Knowledge Vault, where it operates data mining from unstructured sources.
• Knowledge Graph: Entities are linked to attributes and relationships are established between entities.

Google can use various sources to identify entities and their associated information.

Not all entities captured in the knowledge repository are included in the Knowledge Graph. The following criteria could influence inclusion in the Knowledge Graph:

• Sustainable social relevance.
• Sufficient search hits for the entity in the Google index.
• Persistent public perception.
• Entries in a recognized dictionary or encyclopedia or in a specialist reference work.

It can be assumed that Google has recorded significantly more long-tail entities in a knowledge repository such as the Knowledge Vault than in the Knowledge Graph and uses it for semantic search.

By crawling the open internet and through natural language processing, Google is able to carry out scalable entity and data mining independently of structured and semi-structured databases. This provides the Knowledge Vault with more and more information, including on long-tail entities. You can find more about this here.

How does Google work as a semantic search engine?

Google uses semantic search in the following areas:

• Understanding search queries or entities in search query processing.
• Understanding content about entities for ranking.
• Understanding content and entities for data mining.
• Contextual classification of entities for later E-A-T evaluation.

Google search is now based on a search query processor for the interpretation of search queries and the compilation of corpuses from documents relevant to the search query. This is where BERT, MUM and RankBrain may come into play.

In search query processing, the search terms are compared with the entities recorded in the semantic databases and refined or rewritten if necessary. 

In the next step, the search intent is determined and a suitable corpus of X content is determined.

Google uses the classic search index as well as its own semantic database in the form of the Knowledge Graph. It is probable that an exchange takes place between these two databases via an interface.

There is a scoring engine consisting of different algorithms based on Hummingbird’s core algorithm. It is responsible for evaluating content and then putting it in an order based on the scoring. Scoring is about the relevance of content in relation to the search query or search intent.

Since Google also wants to evaluate the quality of content in addition to relevance, an evaluation according to E-A-T criteria must also be carried out. You can find out which criteria these could be in 14 ways Google may evaluate E-A-T.

For this E-A-T evaluation, Google must assess the expertise, authority and trustworthiness of the domain, the publisher, and/or author. The semantic entity databases can be the basis for this. 

Search results are then freed of duplicates via a cleaning engine and any penalties are taken into account.

What does this mean for semantic SEO?

I read a lot about structured data, the semantic optimization of content and the structure of semantic topical worlds when it comes to semantic SEO. 

Yes, it makes sense to show Google that you completely cover certain topics with your content and, therefore, show expertise. 

Some patents deal with the comparison of documents’ internal knowledge graphs with the Google Knowledge Graph. The theory here is that a high level of correspondence between the entities used in a text and the relationship structures of the main entity in Google’s semantic database leads to better rankings.

That sounds logical. But let’s be honest, in the end, keyword-based optimization does not differ significantly from entity-based content optimization.

The structure of topical worlds also makes sense, although it has to be said that in times of passage ranking, the following should be considered:

• Up to what extent is a theme broken down into various sub-themes?
• Is separate content produced for each sub-theme?
• Is there only a holistic content asset created?

And structured data… 

Yes, structured data can help Google understand semantic relationships, but only until they no longer need it. And that will be soon.

In my opinion, Google is so good at machine learning that they are using structured data to train the algorithms faster.

Let’s take markups for social media profiles as an example. It took only about a year from the time Google recommended its use until they announced they can automatically see social profiles without structured data.

It’s just a matter of time before Google no longer needs structured data.

Structured data is also not a good basis for an evaluation. You either have them or you don’t.

You can count all of this to semantic SEO. However, what I often miss is the global view of entities as publishers and authors. More off-page than on-page signals play a role here. Based on the relationships between authoritative and credible entities, Google wants to determine which domains and authors are the best quality sources for a topic according to E-A-T.

• Who is related to whom?
• Who recommends whom?
• Who hangs out with whom?

Links and co-occurrences from Google can be used as factors for this proximity between authority entities. And by semantic SEO, I also mean optimizing them.

While we’re on the subject of co-occurrence, you should also consider how NLP works when optimizing content. Google uses NLP to identify entities and their context. This works via grammatical sentence structures, triples and tuples made up of nouns and verbs.

That is why we should also pay attention to a grammatical simple sentence structure in semantic SEO. Use short sentences without personal pronouns and nesting. This is how we serve users in terms of readability and search engines.

The future of semantic search: When can a 100% entity-based Google search be achieved?

I think that in the future there will be an increasing exchange between the classic Google search index and the Knowledge Graph via an interface.

The more entities are recorded in the Knowledge Graph, the greater their influence on the SERPs. However, Google still faces the major challenges of reconciling completeness and accuracy.

For Hummingbird’s actual scoring, the document-level entities do not play a major role. Rather, they are an important organizational element for building unweighted document corpuses on the search index side.

The actual scoring of the documents is done by Hummingbird according to classical information retrieval rules. However, on the domain level, I see the influence of entities on ranking much higher. Enter E-A-T. 

In the next years, we’ll most likely see the increasing impact of entities in Google search. The new appearance of entity-based searches clearly shows how Google is gradually organizing the indexing of information and content around an entity. This indicates how strongly innovations like MUM follow the idea of ​​a semantic search.

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