Good morning, Marketers, I lost power today and it just killed my productivity. 

I am actually sitting here on my Macbook running down my battery, tethered to my iPhone’s internet connection, writing this newsletter introduction. It reminds me how dependent we all are on our tools, power being an essential tool but a tool nevertheless. Without our tools we are working inefficiently and not able to maximize our performance when it comes to serving our clients or our websites.

As my co-workers look for some power sources in this office building so that we can plug our servers in and get our office staff partially back up and running, I sit here a bit stressed that some of our clients won’t get the full attention they expect and deserve.

It makes me think about adding more redundancy, moving more of our internal operations to the cloud (our production environments are already in the cloud) and possibly buying a generator for the office building. Being without our tools can really handicap us, so it might make sense to have contingency plans for such tool outages — be it power or your essential marketing tools.

Barry Schwartz,
Electrical marketing engineer

PPC

Microsoft rolls out portfolio bid strategies and automated integration with Google Tag Manager

Advertisers on Microsoft’s platform have two more ways to save time that might otherwise be spent adjusting and configuring their campaigns.

PPC

Google Ads creates unified advertiser verification program

Google will combine its advertiser identity and business operations verification programs under a unified Advertiser verification program.

To disavow or not? Getting it right, 10 years later.

Google’s disavow links tool launched nearly a decade ago, on October 16, 2012. As we approach the tenth anniversary, webmasters still have confusion and disagreement regarding how to approach a link analysis and properly use backlink data when considering a disavow. A lot has changed since 2012.

Whether you’re disavowing as a preventative measure or a means to recover your rankings, here are some current-day approaches to take based on our experience disavowing links over the past decade.

Read more

Webinar Tomorrow! Top 5 Mistakes That Can Make or Break Your International Search Strategy

Consumers around the world turn to search engines to solve their problems and discover new brands. Marketers understand the importance of search in reaching, engaging, and converting their global audiences. But achieving success in international SEO and paid search takes more than translation, and getting it wrong means lost time, budget, and opportunity. Join our experts to uncover the five key mistakes brands make in international search and what you need to do to get it right.

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SEO

Deepcrawl launches technical SEO app for Wix

Wix’s SEO efforts continue with an app designed for small and mid-sized enterprises.

Ecommerce

Auto-tagging added to Google Merchant Center free listings

Tagging adds URL parameters to your tracking URLs for better analytics and measurements.

Make 2022 the year you level up your search marketing skills

Attend your choice of two-day, expert-led SMX Master Class to dive deep into SEO, PPC, analytics, and more — just $199 each. Book by Saturday, February 12 to lock in this exclusive Early Bird rate.

Choose your Master Class

SEO

3 tactics to improve CTAs for increased relevance and conversions

CTAs shouldn’t be an afterthought. Including them in your on-page optimizations can help strengthen your user journey and signal relevance to search engines.

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