There’s been a lot of moving and shaking in the local search market recently! We’re going to take the opportunity to cover some of the bigger shakings from the last couple of weeks in social media and social strategy as it relates to local search.
Recently, BrightEdge, a content marketing firm, published a paper discussing how much various sources contribute to overall traffic. The report went on to break down how organic search drives over half of all visitors to B2B and B2C websites. For the business services industry, that proportion jumps from 51% to 73%, with display/email/referral traffic accounting for roughly 20% of visitors.
It’s pretty interesting seeing which type of traffic makes/breaks individual industries. For YCPs, knowing what kind of traffic you and your clients receive makes a huge difference in your impact for your client as well as the breadth of clientele you can and will service.
For more information, check out the full write-up at Search Engine Land. They’ve done a great job summarizing the report and providing more context for some of the numbers.
Facebook is introducing a new feedback mechanism for users who dismiss ads from inside their feed. Now, instead of dismissal being a simple i/o metric, dismissal will take into account the individual’s response as to why the ad was dismissed.
In a blog post on Facebook, Product Manager Max Eulenstein went into greater detail about this update. Eulenstein actually articulates two specific changes to how Facebook ads are dismissed:
So, today we’re announcing two updates to News Feed to help show people more relevant ads. For years, we have given people the choice to hide an ad so they no longer see it in their News Feed. We’ve also looked at these hides and used them as a signal that other people on Facebook might not want to see that ad. Now, we are going a step further by taking into account the specific reason they didn’t want to see that ad, and use that as a signal to inform whether or not we show the ad to other people. Second, we’re going to pay more attention to feedback from people who don’t often hide ads so that when they do give us feedback we take it as a stronger signal.
Per the blog post, the dialog boxes look like this:
Once the ad is dismissed, users will see this gray box:
Choosing the second option brings up this final dialog box:
Facebook says that feedback received from even a small number of users improves the ad quality for all users, which are signals that marketers and advertisers can leverage for future campaigns.
Martin Beck over at Marketing Land has a full writeup about these changes, as well as what these changes mean for marketers and paid search professionals specifically.
Over at Search Engine Land, Jon Ball makes a strong pitch for having a dedicated link builder working in tandem with any dedicated content marketers you have producing blog posts, infographics, etc.
Ball’s argument dovetails nicely with another Search Engine Land writer, Erin Everhart. Both argue that one affects the other, almost cyclically. Link building is about having more (and more authoritative) links that point to your content. Content marketing is about creating evergreen, high-quality information pieces that others can link to. Their two above-linked pieces speak at length about link-building strategies that buttress and elevate content marketing efforts, while also speaking to content marketing types and campaigns that organically foster link-building.
A number of SEOs and SEMs have a blog or infographic team on-staff. In a post-Penguin world, building links with real content at the other end may well be the best way to stand out relative to competitors. Just as you tell your clients: the more you can stand out, the better your business will be.