Email has become so important now that personal contact has been limited.  

The hardest thing for a business owner to know is how your email campaigns stack up with others, both within and outside of your industry.

Many of the answers are in a Study released this Spring by Campaign Monitor.  

Campaign Monitor analyzed 100 Billion emails sent during 2020 to come up with the following results.  

These results can vary by industry and region. But here are some of the “top-level” results of the study:

• Average Open Rate-18%
• Average Click Through Rate 2.6%
• Average Click To Open Rate 14.1%
• Average Unsubscribe Rate .1%

Best Day of the week to send email-Friday

Worst Day of the week to send email-Saturday

To view industry standards for your industry, or to fill out a questionnaire to get a ranking on your email program, please go to Campaign Monitor report.

I will admit that some of the changes outlined here do not affect most advertisers.  I will also admit that Google’s message of “Deliver relevant ad experiences to the right people at the right moments—all while being respectful of their privacy preferences” is not a terrible way to look at Google Ads, please use your own judgement as to whether or not these are “improvements” and if they work for your business.  Where applicable, I will mention the changes that are clearly designed to mirror what Facebook provides their advertisers, with the key difference of Google’s direct (and sometimes scary) access to search data.  Some of these changes are not new for online marketing experts, but they are new to most business owners.

Image Extensions (The New Gallery Ads)

Gallery Ads help advertisers to combine images and copy to serve prospects their offering on the search network.  Gallery ads were in a carousel format and allow consumers to swipe through your images. Google is now replacing the Gallery Ads and rolling out image extensions in Beta to chosen advertisers.  Images will show up in search results for that advertiser.  More details to follow.

Smart Bidding

Google is implementing machine learning across all of its platforms, and the most prominent is smart bidding.  Smart bidding uses machine learning to optimize your bids for conversions or conversion value. Automated bidding in Google Ads include Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions, and Enhanced CPC.

You Tube Bumper Ads

You Tube (along with Netflix) is the entertainment star of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Bumper ads are 6 second ads that pre roll a video on You Tube.  As valuable as these ads can be, many small to medium sized businesses do not have the resources to create professional bumper ads. In the somewhat rare case that a business does have video content, it’s typically in the form of a couple one- or two-minute pieces.

Google has introduced tools to make advertising on Google easier for all businesses. One of these tools, the bumper machine, can turn any video shorter than 90 seconds into a collection of YouTube-ready bumper ads. 

Custom Affinity + Custom intent = Custom Audiences 

Google is unwilling to allow Facebook to be the leading audience targeting advertising platform.  Google has merged custom affinity audiences and custom intent audiences to create custom audiences. Custom audiences merge those who have an interest in the subject at hand with those who have a commercial interest (meaning those who have searched for the service and related keywords).  Machine learning has allowed Google to provide the targeting available from the direct information on search data to allow advertisers to more closely target prospects.

Audience Expansion Tool

Facebook has had the lookalike audience tool for some time.  Google has now introduced the audience expansion tool that will enable advertisers to grow the number of relevant consumers who see your ads. 

Local Search Ads

Google Local Search Ads allow advertisers to put in location extensions to allow those in your local area to easily find or find and call your business.  These ads are designed to bring in more store visits and phone calls to your brick and mortar location.  The ads appear across search, display, maps, and You Tube and are relatively easy to set up requiring only ad copy, some images, and location data. Google Ads machine learning optimizes ad delivery across its properties.

Conclusion

Ok, these are just a few of the changes to Google Ads and related platforms in recent months.  I have purposely chosen those changes that apply to small and medium sized businesses.  For those of us lucky enough to be up and running, this type of information can be key to continuing in business.  For those of you who will be reopening, hopefully soon, this can be key information in rebuilding foot traffic and call volume for your business.

AI technology is becoming the “new norm” for SEO.  With AI in search engines and its place in SEO and digital marketing, the future is now.  With AI tools, the future of SEO is all about data use and personalization on levels that we have never seen before. Ranking in search engines will be about providing the most intuitive and valuable content for website visitors.

AI Search Engine Style

The most prominent use of AI by search engines is Google’s Rank Brain.  Rank Brain employs machine learning and word vector elements to better match billions of search results to the needs of the search engine user.  Machine learning and word vectors (Or Word2Vec to Google) are the key AI processes that Google utilizes to improve search results.

Machine Learning Increases Speed And Accuracy of Search Results

Machine learning is the kind of artificial intelligence enabled by technology like neural nets that adapt and respond to data, teaching themselves over time to better answer queries. Machine learning also can produce accuracy in search results beyond human capabilities.  This speed and accuracy of sorting search inquiries is the future of search engines.  To continue to have success in SEO, digital marketers must understand how AI is affecting search results.

Word Vectors Define Context of Search Queries

Word Vector platforms sort semantically linked words and phrases through data models that track the use of those words in context. This technology ensures that content is presented based on relevance in terms of the interpreted meaning of content as it frequently appears. This technology is has allowed SEO to move beyond keyword stuffing and more into content that provides a strong User Experience (UX) and relevance because search engines can determine relevance without the need for keyword density.  This becomes more and more important as voice search becomes prevalent in the way consumers find what they seek on search engines.

AI Is Your Friend

As search engines adapt with better and better AI technology, SEOs need to adapt their techniques to provide better UX and relevant content, including photos and videos.  The following are important factors to consider when designing  your SEO campaign:

Quality Is King

AI-powered search engines are better able to find and bypass weak content with high bounce rates and poor readability.  Successful SEO experts will have to put more effort into relevant and valuable website content and backlinks that a human being would actually use.  Websites that rank will require content with a high standard and commitment to authenticity in not only website content, but also social media, email targeting and digital marketing campaigns that are consistent and relevant to the established brand of the firm in question.   

Remember, Google has AI, but so do SEO professionals.  We can use a number of tools that help us comply with current SEO standards. We have AI tools for content optimizing programs to give us hints on readability, A/B split testing to help us understand what our clients want, and contextual comparisons to see how our competition is structuring their website content, just to name a few.

Voice Search-Have Your Site Speak Up

With the emergence of smartphones and assistants like Apple’s Siri, Ask Google or Amazon’s Alexa, the convenience of voice search is changing the way we think about SEO.  Comscore states that 50% of searches in 2020 will be voice search, and that 55% of household in America will have at least one voice search device by the end of 2020.  Voice searches tend to be more conversational and be a phrase or a sentence as opposed to the shorter desktop and mobile searches that must be typed in to the search engines. Voice searches also require more natural language and unique and valuable content. Successful SEO requires creating website content with lots of information that is easy to understand and easy to find.

Visual Content-Seeing Is Believing

AI has enabled search engines to better analyze, label and connect visual content based on historical data obtained and stored by AI platforms.  Optimizing Videos by carefully optimizing ranking factors like descriptions, video length, and keyword tagging are useful in gaining traffic on YouTube and other visual content sites, and even having videos rank in search. As  AI improves, the analysis of photos and videos will improve to the point that images will be compared for quality, relevance and value to website visitors. 

The Future of AI in SEO

AI is already a huge factor in search engine crawling and optimization. With machine learning and Word Vector programming improving all the concurrent with a changing environment of smart devices, voice searching, and consumer demands for valuable and relevant content that can be found quickly and efficiently, SEO needs to adapt with the machines that are teaching themselves through AI and big data.

Will AI be the end of SEO as we know it?  I don’t think so. Optimization strategies will remain valuable as long content is being created, but content will have to be efficiently optimized with a focus on voice and visual searches.

Google has made a lot of changes to search criteria, and these changes have made gaining rankings on Google more challenging each year. Starting with the Penguin Update, which mainly affected spam link building practices, through RankBrain and now BERT, Google continues to refine their search algorithms.  While there continue to be updates from Google (as judged by SEMRush Sensor), we do not expect 2020 to bring the sweeping changes that we have seen in the recent past. 

The fact remains that Google Search Quality Guidelines do regularly update – these guidelines reflect how Google wants you to work within a website and the process the algorithm will take to evaluate the relevance of the website page(s). 

These guidelines are centered around 3 main factors:

• E-A-T – The Expert, Authority, Trust of the website in relation to the target subject.  This is at the center of the standards for Page Quality and Needs Met.
• Page Quality – How the page is laid out, how it works and whether it has the user’s best interests at heart.  Factors considered include the placement of text, the wording and quality of the content. 
• Needs Met – Factors around whether the page ANSWERS the needs of the query.  Meeting needs is roughly defined as the content be “more specific than the query, but would still be helpful for many or most users because” the company is reputable in the area. 

Top On Page SEO Factors

On page SEO is still very relevant to ranking in search results in 2020.  Below are the most important factors based on analysis of recent search results.

SEO Professional Is A Relevant Term-Again

As previously stated, Google is not currently making sweeping algorithm changes, but they are making changes that can affect rankings on a weekly or daily basis.  Improving or even just maintaining rankings requires a team that includes website developers, content creators, SEO technicians and Marketing experts. The tools required are sweeping, from analysis tools like SEM Rush and Ahrefs to Google Search Console to Google Analytics and beyond.  All of these requirements make the term “SEO Professional” relevant again, although I do not believe that the term applies to an individual, but rather to a team of professionals from different disciplines.

First Page Sage is the largest pure SEO company out there.  Each year, they do a study of the top ranking factors in Google Search based on a large number of clients and what brings success or failure to their SEO campaigns on Google.

I have not published the entire list, but have listed the top 10 factors and the percentage of success that is attributed to them from the study below:

Consistent Publication of High-Quality Content 25%

Note:  Content must be high quality “thought leadership” content posted at least twice per week.  Thought Leadership Content focuses on using the expertise and experience of the people behind your brand to address or answer any questions or concerns your audience or customer base might have.

Keywords in Meta Title Tags 21%

You must include the keywords you wish to rank for in your title tags, you have very little chance of ranking

Backlinks 16%

Inbound links still weigh heavily in Google’s trust of a website, they should be less of a concern than publishing great content regularly

Internal Links from Related Articles 8%

The more pages your site contains that target a long-tail version of a keyword and link to the main page targeting that keyword, the more authoritative Google considers the main page.

Mobile-Friendly / Mobile-First Website 7%

Google has created a mobile first indexing world.  Performance, content and information on your mobile site is key to gaining SEO placement on Google.

Visitor Time on Site 7%

Visitor time on site is an excellent indicator of the quality and value of your content.  Google has adopted this metric as a ranking factor.

Site Speed 4%

Load speed of a site has always been a key factor in user experience.  User experience is part of the quality of content/time on site equation.

Site Security / SSL Certificate 4%

Google does not want to be a part of featuring websites in search results that are potentially harmful to site visitors. If your site lacks an SSL certificate (indicated by the “s” at the end of “https”)—it will lose ranking ability.  Secure certs are now the norm and are easily installed in most cases, by your site host.

Offsite Mentions 3%

Mentioning a site is the same as a link, without the hyperlink.  Therefore, it has become a ranking factor. 

Schema Markup / Structured Data 2%

Google prioritizes pages in search results that use schema markup because it makes search results more useful to users. They also cause search results to stand out from the rest of the others on the page which can help to boost conversion.

Conclusion

Google continues to strive to fulfill its mission of creating the best possible search experience for its users by serving those users fast, relevant, and high quality search results.  These 10 factors, especially the top 3-High Quality Content, Keywords in Meta Title Tags and high quality relevant Backlinks that a human would actually use, are the biggest factors in creating successful SEO campaigns.