Good morning, Marketers, told you so… 

Last week, in this very newsletter, I wrote about how it was a bad idea for Google to offer a digital marketing certification with SEO advice. Well, it didn’t take long to prove I was right. The SEO advice in that Google-led coursework was horrid and incorrect. Even Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, said to ignore it. 

So what SEO advice or courses can you trust, if you can’t trust one provided and presented by actual Google employees? Maybe try SMX Advanced, which is free this year?

Barry Schwartz,
SEO educator

SEO

Google’s digital marketing course offers bad SEO advice

No, having 2% keyword density and a minimum 300-word count is not an “industry standard.”

SEO

Google adds new valid page metadata help document

Google has also updated the title links help document with a new "no clear main headline" line.

How to get better leads and conversions with Google’s AI

Value-based bidding (VBB) can make successful advertisers better, and it can even be a solution for advertisers who’ve tried and failed at PPC because they were unhappy with the quality of the conversions when leads were low quality or buyers made too many returns.

In this article, you will learn how to deploy VBB for three different types of advertisers: pure-play e-commerce, hybrid retail and lead gen.

Read more

SEO

New Education Q&A structured data help document from Google

This document can help you technically implement Quiz structured data to your flashcard pages.

Webinar Tomorrow! Move beyond traditional A/B testing to exceed your goals

Traditional A/B testing only lets you test messaging, creative, and other marketing assets after they have gone live in the market – with no advance warning of how they will perform. This sometimes leads to falling short on your marketing goals. What if there was a way to test BEFORE launching, improve your return and understand WHY your consumers selected the asset they did? Join our experts and lear how to bring agile research into your decisions before launching your next campaign and become an innovator in your organization.

There’s still time to register!

PPC

How a self-audit PPC checklist can protect your work from external audits  

If you don’t audit your own work, eventually someone else will – and the impact on your work, you and your operation could be catastrophic.

SEO

Virtual environment optimization (VEO): The next evolution of SEO?

Are the worlds of virtual reality, augmented reality, the metaverse, commerce and SEO converging? Learn what the latest trends reveal.

RSAs. E-A-T. GA4. See the tactic-packed SMX Advanced agenda!

50+ experts-only sessions, keynotes, Overtimes (live Q&A!), and networking opportunities — 100% advanced, 100% actionable, 100% free..

See the agenda

SEO

How to analyze your SEO competitors and find opportunities

Learn how analyzing your competitors can help you discover potential keywords, find link building opportunities and build persona profiles.

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