For the first time users are spending more time on TikTok than Facebook as per data from a new report on app usage. App Annie reports that time spent on TikTok is up 325% year-over-year, which means it’s now beating Facebook in terms of hours spent per user per month. Average time spent is up for nearly every app in every market, but few are up by as much as TikTok. TikTok ranks in the top 5 by time spent, and the rate at which it grew over the past year outpaces nearly every other app analyzed in the report. It ranks #1 in the list of top breakout apps in 2020, which ranks apps by growt ..read more

Category pages primarily serve a practical purpose, dividing an ecommerce store’s inventory into manageable subsections so online shoppers can quickly navigate to specific products. However, like most website pages, category pages also serve a higher function; they can attract users from search engine results pages to the website. Accomplishing this with a category page is easier said than done. The process might involve creating unique layouts and hybrid copy that marry the functions of commercial and informational pages. In this post, you’ll learn how you can optimize your category pag ..read more

I’m often asked how to grow organic traffic exponentially. While that’s a broad question, one point I always make is that organic traffic from the product beats content marketing every time. SEO works much better when you don’t have to create the content yourself. But for that to work, you need to build SEO into your product. Companies that understand this principle have much higher chances to grow SEO traffic at scale. What Does ‘Building SEO Into the Product’ Actually Mean? Instead of making SEO an afterthought and trying to glue it onto an existing product, “building SEO into the product ..read more

Our second eSummit kicks off today. Hopefully, you’re as excited as we are! Starting at 10 a.m. ET / 7 a.m. PT today (January 12), eSummit will feature 40+ industry professionals. In each of the sessions, our awesome speakers will be sharing actionable insights on SEO, enterprise SEO, PPC, paid social, and content marketing. If you haven’t already registered, do not miss out! Invest in your success today. “The presentations, sessions, and everything was a level of quality I wasn’t expecting at all. I can’t express enough how impressed I am.” – 2020 eSummit attendee Join the likes of Google ..read more

Facebook advertisers are bracing for impact, as the originally-intended roll-out of Apple’s iOS14 finally comes to fruition in the coming weeks. This update has sparked a very public war between Facebook and Apple, as the question of things like privacy versus ad targeting continue to swirl in the marketing space. While the anticipated data loss right now is tied to iOS 14 users, the bigger picture is this is likely the start of how privacy will be handled in the future. Why is iOS 14 a problem for Facebook? This latest iteration of Apple’s operating system includes a new prompt and informat ..read more

Today, many enterprise companies are continuing to grow their internal marketing teams by investing in hiring specialized experts. Digital marketers who specialize in search and have the unique skills to succeed as an enterprise SEO expert are increasingly in demand. In fact, there was a 10% increase in search demand for keywords related to SEO jobs in November 2020, as compared to a year earlier, according to Conductor platform data (disclosure:  I work for the company). In this post, you’ll learn why you should hire an in-house enterprise SEO, what type of specialist you may need, whe ..read more

On this week’s episode of Marketing O’Clock, hosts Greg Finn, Mark Saltarelli, and Jess Budde break down the biggest digital marketing news of the week. If you’re unable to listen on Spotify, check out the video version of this week’s episode on the Search Engine Journal YouTube channel. Do you think that Google always has the answer for everything? Sometimes that’s not entirely the case. Advertisement Continue Reading Below Google is aiming to fill in those knowledge gaps with Question Hub – where publishers can submit their website’s content for Google’s unanswered questions. Searchers ..read more

A member of the search community alleged in a tweet that her client was explicitly told by Google that spending more on pay per click (PPC) advertising would improve their organic search rankings. The accusation was shocking to many in the Twitter thread because Google has long insisted there is no direct impact on organic rankings from using their advertising. Google’s Policy on Advertising and Search Google has long maintained that there is a firewall between the paid side and the organic side and that both sides do not communicate. Startling Solicitation From Google Alleged Because Google ..read more

Websites exist to be visited, but visits can mean different things for different sites. For media sites, for example, traffic can be a source of income from advertisements. For ecommerce retailers, traffic translates to direct sales. Some sites might not be selling anything, or they might be selling a brand where just having eyeballs on your content is enough to count as a win. No matter what your site is about, traffic = customers. And in search engine terms, ranking = traffic = customers. So when your search ranking drops – or your traffic drops – that’s a problem. Whether you’re a digital ..read more

As SEO priorities have shifted over the years from a focus on keywords to a more content-centric approach, the popularity of the topic of user search intent has risen correspondingly — and rightfully so. Today, most SEO professionals agree that content constructed for particular user intents is not only more useful for visitors; it is more likely to rank in search engines when it counts the most. Search engines (Google, in particular) have invested a great deal in sniffing out user intent for any particular query, having realized that users are more satisfied when content not only matches a ..read more