Google’s Matt Cutts On Publishers With Duplicate Content: Use The Canonical Tag

In a video released by Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, Matt said publishers who publish similar or duplicative stories on different URLs may use the rel=canonical tag to help consolidate the PageRank of the stories and avoid any issues with Google.

Matt Cutts did say that duplicate content won’t hurt you unless you are doing it for spam-related reasons. Cutts also did say that 25% of the web is duplicative, so you really don’t have to worry about it. But I guess in this case, to help with rankings, you may, as a publisher, want to use the rel=canonical tag to help Google know which is your primary page.

Of course, a site like this has dozens of articles on the topic of duplicate content. So should we use the canonical tag to point to one story or a category? Likely not.

WordStream Updates Its Free Google AdWords Performance Grader: Now With Mobile And Automatic 30-Day Reporting

WordStream has released a revamp of its AdWords Performance Grader, the instant AdWords account auditing tool, now dubbed AdWords Grader Plus. WordStream says the free tool, launched in August 2011, has already been used to analyze accounts representing three billion dollars in total advertising spend. The company has refined the tool based on that wealth of past audit history to give advertisers performance benchmarks within their own industries.

The three main new features in AdWords Grader Plus include a new performance tracker, mobile readiness review and improved benchmarks.

The performance tracker automatically re-analyzes advertisers’ accounts every 30 days. The report tracks performance changes over time, including Quality Score, which Google does not provide automatically. Advertisers can opt-out of this service or choose to run updates more frequently.The new Mobile PPC Readiness Score assesses an advertiser’s mobile optimization efforts, including whether the account has mobile preferred ads, mobile sitelinks and mobile call extensions set up.

Larry Kim, WordStream’s founder and Chief Technology Officer says the tool’s industry benchmark data has also been refined — incorporating the data the tool has gleaned from the thousands of accounts it has already analyzed — to give advertisers a better sense of how their accounts stack up to others in their industries. The benchmarked KPIs include Quality Score, click-through rate, account activity and wasted spend.

“Now that we’ve graded over $3 billion in total AdWords spend, we have even more insight into the metrics and characteristics that define a healthy PPC account,” said Kim in a statement. “Our new benchmarks reflect that wealth of data, and the new features address the need for businesses to allocate spend to the growing mobile channel as well as to monitor their account performance over time.”

The AdWords Grader tool is certainly a brilliant customer acquisition tool for WordStream — once an advertiser sees how much work needs to be done on an account, he or she just might be inclined to sign up for WordStream’s paid search management software. Kim, though, says that the company has invested a million dollars into the tool, and that it’s used by a broad spectrum of advertisers as well as agencies. “We see agencies using it for clients because it gives them an immediate starting point of where to focus their efforts,” said Kim by phone.

The reporting tool continues to provide analysis in these areas:

• Wasted spend and the use of negative keywords to control spend
• Quality Score for text ads and the keywords targeted
• Click-through rates on ads
• Impression share for ads
• Long-tail keyword optimization
• Text ad optimization
• Landing page optimization
• PPC best practices synopsis

To run a report, an advertiser provides contact information and Google AdWords login credentials through OAuth secure authorization — WordStream does not share or save the login information. The report is generated near instantly.

Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone Launches New Social Search App Jelly

Building on the concept, “If you have a questions, there’s somebody out there that knows the answer,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and former Twitter colleague Ben Finkel have launched Jelly, a social search app that uses your social networks to deliver results.

According to  the announcement today on the company’s blog “Jelly is designed to search the group mind of your social networks — and what goes, around comes around. You may find yourself answering questions as well as asking.”

Claiming to be a “new way to search,” the app can be downloaded from iTunes orGoogle Play. Users submit questions within the app which can then be answered by anyone in their existing social networks. Questions can also be forwarded outside of the app, opening up queries to a much broader audience. Beyond simply submitting questions, the app lets users perform searches using images:

Images are in the foreground of the Jelly experience because they add depth and context to any question. You can crop, reframe, zoom and draw on your images to get more specific.

Biz Stone is listed as Jelly’s co-founder and CEO alongside co-founder and CTO Ben Finkel. Finkel was the co-founder of Fluther, a Q&A service that was acquired by Twitter in 2010. After being acquired by Twitter, Finkel worked for Twitter managing new user experience on the social network’s growth team.

While Jelly claims that the algorithms of today’s complex search engines are “no match” for the “experience, inventiveness, and creativity of the human mind,” it’s worth mentioning an entire catalog of social Q&A solutions  – Ask.com, Quora, Yahoo Answers, Google Answers and even Facebook – have all failed to succeed in this social search segment.

Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries Adds Mobile Stats & No Longer Rounds Data

John Mueller, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst,announced on the Google Webmaster Blog that they are no longer rounding the search query data within the Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries report.

John said, “data in the search queries feature will no longer be rounded / bucketed,” and you will start to notice these changes in Webmaster Tools in the next few days.

Here are before and after shots of the data, as you can see the new report shows 15,026,995 impressions and the old one showed 14,000,000 impressions:

Google also announced a way to better see your mobile site statistics and analytics within Google Webmaster Tools. There is a new mobile filter that gives you:

• Queries where your m. pages appeared in search results for mobile browsers
• Queries where Google applied Skip Redirect. This means that, while search results displayed the desktop URL, the user was automatically directed to the corresponding m. version of the URL (thus saving the user from latency of a server-side redirect).

Prior to this Search Queries improvement, Webmaster Tools reported Skip Redirect impressions with the desktop URL.

Email: What Should Marketers Expect in 2014?

Jeannette Kocsis, EVP of digital engagement at The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks, has witnessed her fair share of marketing trends. Here, three email marketing issues she believes marketers should brace for this year.

1. New mail programs. Technology evolves and email platforms are certainly no exception. Google's popular email program, Gmail, received an overhaul in May 2013. Google unveiled a new inbox for Gmail that uses tabs to separate incoming messages into categories including Primary, Social, Promotions, and Updates. As a result, Kocsis says, “We can expect continued changes to the user experience of webmail clients.” Marketers will need to rethink how they run and deliver their email promotions to take advantage of new features and functionalities.

2. Marketers will need to listen more than ever to audiences.

Errors in judgment regarding content, delivery channel, and frequency can alienate consumers and tarnish your brand. “We can expect that deliverability will continue to be a challenge, as [will be] maintaining mailer reputation,” she says, adding that “when a customer chooses channels, content, and frequencies, their preferences need to be respected.”

3. Mobile will continue to set the bar. By now, many marketers have tired of the mobile-first mantra, but Kocsis says they will continue to hear it this year. more than 1.2 billion mobile web users worldwide, marketers must “design for mobile first, meaning that if it works on mobile, it will be fine everywhere else,” she says. Tips for making email more mobile-friendly include developing an enticing subject line, including a compelling call to action, and making sure you don't inundate mobile users with unwanted messages.

How Gmail Improved Security & Email Analytics by Caching Images

Google officially announced that images in Gmail would be enabled for all webmail users on December 12th (with iOS and Android Gmail apps following suit sometime in January), regardless of whether or not the recipient clicked “display images below.” This change should prove to be a boon for email marketers, but not without some tradeoffs.

“Images Off” A Matter Of Security

HTML emails — specifically, scripts, images and links — have been disabled in email clients for so long that it can be hard to remember why this is the norm. In the early days of HTML emails, many hackers took advantage of vulnerabilities in email clients’ rendering engines to execute code, in addition to having victims click on a link or open an infected attachment. Viruses also leveraged curiosity and naivety of users with the most popular social app at the time (email) by spoofing the From: address to appear it was coming from someone in their address book or a well-known brand institution. While we don’t read headlines about viruses like Klez or Melissa crippling businesses and the Internet anymore, these threats are still real today and do happen. We can thank security precautions like disabling HTML for making this somewhat of a non-issue today.

Is Gmail Making The Internet Less Safe?

It may seem, then, that Google is actually taking a step backward. If images and links in email wreaked havoc before, won’t it happen again? This is where image caching comes into play. By caching each unique image link in the emails, checking for viruses, and then serving that one image to all users who received the email, Google’s Gmail eliminates the risk of users unwittingly downloading and spreading malware.

Gmail is also going an extra step in the security and privacy of their users. Gmail is no longer sending the IP address or information about the device that opened the email. This change will affect email marketers tracking geolocation of open data, as well as knowing whether or not their Gmail users are reading their emails in webmail or mobile.

What’s The Impact Of Google Caching Gmail Images?

The loss of data caused by Google’s caching of images only affects emails being opened in Gmail’s webmail user interface, as well as their iOS and Android apps.

Here’s a summary of which email clients are affected:

Email Domain	Email Client	Affected
Gmail.com	Gmail (webmail, iOS app, Android app)	Yes
Gmail.com	Not Gmail	No
Not Gmail.com	Gmail (webmail, iOS app, Android app)	Yes
Not Gmail.com	Business Google Apps Gmail	No

That means if someone is using the native Mail app in iOS to read emails, marketers can still receive things like total opens, the IP address that opened the email, and device information. Businesses using Google’s hosted email solution, which uses the same Gmail technology, appear not to be affected by this change, either. Email accounts like Outlook.com or Yahoo! Mail that are forwarded to a Gmail account will be affected by this change.

The biggest impact of the change is in user agent tracking, such as whether or not the email was opened in webmail or on mobile. However, at this time, this impact appears to be more positive than negative. Email marketers will finally receive accurate unique open counts for their Gmail users. Since one could read an email without enabling images, open rates have always been a faulty measurement and nearly always undercounted. Now that email marketers can see who is actually engaged with and reading their emails, they can make better decisions when it comes to removing inactive subscribers. This is important because Gmail will filter email from a sender simply for sending to too many inactive users.

The negative impacts of this change are minor. IP geolocation will no longer be available, but few marketers outside of some niche email services companies are using geolocation in their emails. Additionally, all emails opened in Gmail webmail, or mobile apps will appear to be opened in Firefox in Mountain View, CA. The Firefox user agent data is fake information and is meant to give Gmail users more privacy. All IP geolocation information will now show Mountain View, CA since this is where Google’s image servers are located. Return Path data shows that less than 1% of Gmail users were opening emails in Gmail mobile apps before this change. Marketers can trust that user agent data being sent over is primarily webmail opens. In fact, our own data shows little impact. Emails opened on mobile devices surpassed the 50% mark for all industries for the first time in December 2013, with mobile opens surging to 60% of all email open share on Christmas day. Open counts also saw Gmail webmail opens going from 2% of all opens to nearly 1 in 5 of all opens, which is a more accurate reflection of real world market share.

What Else Changes?

These changes mean we will need to change our terminology in 2014 when it comes to discusses open rates and device usage.

Unique Open Rates: Since Gmail caches the first image, unique user tracking in emails will only show the first open in email clients affected by this change (see above table), meaning email marketers can only track unique opens at Gmail. In the age of user based engagement spam filtering, the unique open rate is a better metric to track.

Desktop, Smartphone, Tablet: Device tracking categories are currently based on Desktop (specifically email clients like Outlook or Thunderbird), webmail (viewed in a browser), or Mobile (including smartphones and tablets). As an industry, we should move to changing “desktop” to include both email clients and webmail since Gmail is returning the same user agent information for all opens. Smartphones and Tablets should also be separated now that smartphones are the dominant device to read emails on, and because both offer different user experiences.

34 Tips to Maximize Email Marketing Success

Permission-based email marketing has a higher return on investment than unsolicited email, direct mail, or traditional advertising and has revolutionized the way we do business. Backed by measurable results, studies show email marketing is the marketing tool of choice for businesses looking to attract, retain, and grow loyal customer bases. Businesses all around the world use email marketing to:

Boost sales Generate leads Strengthen relationships Increase website traffic Build brand loyalty

As the popularity of permission-based email marketing grows, so does the amount of email in every inbox. Are you doing everything you can to make sure your emails are opened, read, and responded to? You know your business best, but here are 34 tips to maximize permission-based email marketing success.

Know your Audience You could have the best message in the world, but without the right audience it means nothing.

1. Start by building a permission-based list. 2. In exchange for contact information, offer your customers something of value: a newsletter, a free seminar, or more information about your products & services. 3. When gathering contact information, only ask for the information you really need. Asking unnecessary questions annoys people and may keep them from signing up. 4. Be sure to include a way for people to unsubscribe in all your email campaigns. Unsolicited email or spam can be damaging to your reputation. 5. Manage your contact lists so you can respond quickly and efficiently to requests for more information or to unsubscribe. 6. Since email addresses can change frequently, keep your list current by carefully tracking the number of bounce-backs or undeliverable emails after every campaign. 7. Be sure you have a clear and concise privacy policy that details how you will treat your customers’ personal contact information. Include a link to it in every email you send. 8. Respect the terms of your privacy policy and never breach your customers’ trust. Craft your Message An interesting message that offers value is critical to the success of any email campaign. 9. See what others are doing. Take a few minutes and sign up for email newsletters from competitors. Choose a few on your favorite hobby or a topic you’re interested in too. 10. When you get online newsletters from other companies, pay attention to what makes you open some and delete others without reading. 11. Before you create the right message, develop a marketing strategy that addresses goals and objectives. 12. Use email marketing to accomplish what email does best: increase revenue, generate leads, strengthen customer relationships, increase website traffic, and build brand awareness. 13. Get the length right. A good rule of thumb is the more frequent your emails, the shorter they should be. People will open a short "Tip of the Day", but almost no one wants to get something longer on a daily basis. 14. Keep the message personal and casual. Think like a customer and write in a conversational tone. People want to see a little humanity behind the corporate mask. 15. People respond best to messages written by one particular person at a company who they can get to know over time. This is part of building relationships. 16. Personalize the ‘From’ part of your email and be clear who the email is from. 17. Avoid using ‘FREE’ in your subject line since it has been abused by spam marketers and arouses suspicion. 18. Be honest in your subject line and make sure it reflects what’s inside. State a clear benefit that makes the recipient open your message. Only messages that seem relevant and offer value will be opened. 19. Choose a subject line that grabs your reader’s attention. Avoid vague content like "Our September Newsletter." Instead, use an interesting topic or headline from the newsletter, such as "Best Practices for Email Marketing" or "Inside: Exclusive Interview with Tiger Woods!" 20. Encourage forwarding right in your subject line. The Association for Interactive Marketing (AIM) always adds "Pls. Forward" to the ends of their newsletter subject lines and they report it's more than doubled their circulation! 21. Personalize each message and watch response rates climb. At the very least, always include the recipient’s name. 22. Write your messages so they appeal to customer interests and hobbies. Ask your customers what they want to hear about: special offers, new services, etc. Choose the Right Format Once you have the right message, you need to present it in the right way. 23. HTML and Rich media messages that include audio, video, and animation generate high response rates, but it’s still important to always have a text version for people who prefer or can only receive text. 24. Always include a hyperlinked table of contents at the top of your message so people can click or scroll right to the section of their choice. Usability studies show most people won't look beyond the first screen if there's not something immediately interesting to them. Give them a reason to scroll down! 25. Use bullet points and lots of white space for plain text messages. 26. Minimize the use of ALL CAPS and italics as they are hard to read. 27. To make it easy for readers to scan your message, keep columns of copy narrow. 28. Test your messages through a number of email accounts to make sure they look good in all mainstream email clients. 29. Consider writing your message in the same format it will appear on your customers’ screens so you can see what they will see. For text-based emails set your font to 10 point Courier going 60 characters (five inches) across. 30. Unless your newsletter is unusually long, recipients will probably read it on their screen. Your job is to make this as easy as possible. For headlines, use a larger, bold font that can be scanned the quickly. Look for Measurable Results Being able to measure your email marketing efforts is key. Measuring allows you to understand what works and what doesn’t so you can improve each and every campaign. 31. Gathering results through trackable links and having access to real-time reports will help you understand what works and what doesn't. 32. Test using different subject lines, copy, offers, and creative designs, etc. Use real-time results to see which get the best response rates. Consider sending out an A/B test to two sub-segments of your email list to see which is more successful. Refine, and then send the more successful email to your larger email base for better results. 33. When running a series of email campaigns, tweak your message as soon as you understand the results of your first campaign. 34. Above all, take the time to understand email as a marketing medium. Always analyze results and think of new ways to provide value to your members and customers.