Yext announces conversational ‘Knowledge Assistant’ for local data management

Machine learning and AI have become buzzwords that are being overused. But they’re also real technologies that are having and will continue to have a meaningful impact on marketing over time.

Yext is now bringing some of these capabilities to business listings and local data management. The company is adding three new features to its “Knowledge Manager” portfolio of services for multilocation enterprises and SMBs:

• Structured markup for events and event data syndication.
• A “knowledge assistant” that allows listings updates via SMS and Facebook Messenger.
• WeChat integration for customers doing business in China.

Using schema for events, Yext will now manage and distribute events-related content for its customers in search results. Below is what it looks like in a screen shot provided by the company.

Marc Ferrentino, Yext’s chief strategy officer, told me over the phone that just as many multilocation brands have to outsource location data management, they also wanted a “single repository and source of truth for for events.” And beyond Google, Yext will syndicate events information to Facebook, Eventbrite, Eventful and other relevant sites.

More interesting to me is the company’s new “Knowledge Assistant,” which allows authorized personnel within organizations to use  text messaging or Facebook Messenger to update business listings and related data (e.g., hours of operation) without logging into the Yext site or app. Ferrentino explained that the system will also proactively reach out to stimulate updates. For example, if holidays are coming up and holiday hours are implicated, the Knowledge Assistant will prompt users to update hours.

This proactive capability can also be used to capture enhanced information and to do a range of other things, making location data management much more “conversational.” This capability could be especially useful for small business customers, which are primarily serviced by Yext’s third-party partners.

Finally, the company has added WeChat Mini-Programs integration. This is essentially store-finder information for WeChat Yext retail customers that do business in China or seek to attract Mandarin language speakers.

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Bing expands Shopping Campaigns to Canada & India

Bing Ads has announced the expansion of Shopping Campaigns to Canada and India starting today.

Advertisers may now begin targeting Canada and India with their Shopping Campaigns. Quebec will be the one exception in Canada, as Bing product ads are only supported in English in Canada, and Quebec’s language laws mandate that stores located in the province must also provide a French website experience.

Bing product ads are now available in Canada and India.

These latest countries join the US, the UK, France, Germany and Australia with support for Bing Shopping Campaigns. Bing product ads launched in the US in 2014, with its first international expansion into the UK in April 2016.

 

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The four pillars of an effective SEO strategy

SEO can be complicated — in many cases, overcomplicated. How many ranking factors are involved in generating strong organic search results? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? Two hundred?

A quick search for “SEO ranking factors” will give you all of these answers and myriad others. There is a lot of information out there. And the reality is, while there are likely hundreds of variables working together to determine final placement, much of what is suggested is guesswork. And certainly, not all ranking factors are relevant to every business.

Point being, it is easy to get lost down an algorithmic rabbit hole. It’s information overload out there, and you can spend all your time on a research hamster wheel and achieve very little.

In this article, I want to simplify things and outline the four main areas you should be focusing on with your SEO. Really, when it comes down to it, SEO is actually pretty simple at a strategic level.

The four pillars of SEO

The four key areas of SEO that site owners need to consider are:

1. technical SEO: How well your content can be crawled and indexed.
2. content: Having the most relevant and best answers to a prospect’s question.
3. on-site SEO: The optimization of your content and HTML.
4. off-site SEO: Building authority to ensure Google stacks the deck in your favor.

Of course, these four areas have some complexity and overlap, but understanding your strengths and weaknesses in relation to them is key to focusing your efforts.

1. Technical SEO

Technical SEO can seem a little daunting, but really, what we are talking about is ensuring that a search engine can read your content and explore your site. Much of this will be taken care of by the content management system you use, and tools like Screaming Frog and Deep Crawl can explore your website and highlight technical problems.

The main areas to consider here are:

• crawl. Can a search engine explore your site?
• index. Is it clear which pages the search engine should index and return?
• mobile. Does your site adapt for mobile users?
• speed. Fast page load times are a crucial factor in keeping your visitors happy.
• tech. Are you using search engine-friendly tech or CMS for your website?
• hierarchy. How is your content structured on your website?

If you are a small business using WordPress for your website, technical SEO should be something you can check off your list pretty quickly. If you have a large, bespoke website with millions of pages, then technical SEO becomes much more important.

Much of what is considered “technical SEO” here is actually part of your website design and development. The trick is to ensure your developer understands the interplay between website design, development and SEO and how to build a blisteringly fast and mobile-optimized site.

2. On-site SEO optimization

Your website should be optimized as a whole and at an individual page level. There is some crossover here from your technical SEO, and you want to start with a well-structured content hierarchy for your site.

Assuming you have a well-structured site, applying sensible optimization is again relatively straightforward. The main areas to focus on here are:

• keyword research. Understand the language of your target audience.
• descriptive URLs. Ensure each URL is simple and descriptive.
• page titles. Use keywords naturally within the page title.
• meta descriptions. Craft meta descriptions like they were ad copy to drive clicks.
• content optimization. Sensibly use keywords and variations in your page copy.
• good user experience (UX). Ensure your site is a joy to use and navigate.
• strong calls to action. Make it easy for your users to know what to do next.
• structured data markup. Tap into the latest SERP features to improve click-through rates.

When optimizing your site, take time to consider your customers. If you are a local business, then local SEO is more important, and your address and location become crucial optimization points.

With solid technical SEO in place, layering your on-page optimization is straightforward. Use tools like Screaming Frog to crawl and identify weaknesses and methodically work through your pages.

3. Content

Content is king. That’s the saying, right? It’s true in a way. Your website is really just a wrapper for your content. Your content tells prospects what you do, where you do it, who you have done it for, and why someone should use your business. And if you’re smart, your content should also go beyond these obvious brochure-type elements and help your prospective customers achieve their goals.

For service businesses, we can loosely break your content down into three categories:

• Service content. What you do and where you do it.
• Credibility content. Why a prospect should engage with your business.
• Marketing content. Content that helps position you as an expert and puts your business in front of prospects earlier in the buying cycle.

It’s really important to realize that SEO is important for all of these kinds of content, but it is often only really considered for service-type content. SEO is often forgotten when it comes to credibility content like reviews, testimonials and case studies.

As a simple example, I recently renovated a Victorian-era house in the UK, and throughout the process, I was looking for various professionals that could demonstrate relevant experience. In this case, having a well-optimized case study showing renovation work on a similar house in the local area would serve as great long-tail SEO content — it also perfectly demonstrates that the contractor can do the job, which perfectly illustrates their credibility. Win-win.

Ensure you optimize all of your marketing content, including case studies, portfolio entries and testimonials — not just the obvious service pages.

A solid content marketing and SEO strategy is also the most scalable way to promote your business to a wide audience. And this generally has the best ROI, as there is no cost per click — so you are scaling your marketing without directly scaling your costs. This kind of SEO strategy is not right for every business, but when it is a good fit, it’s almost unbeatable.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Optimize all content across the entire customer journey.
• Determine whether content marketing via organic search is a good fit.

We still see way too many paint-by-numbers approaches to SEO, where local businesses are paying agencies to pump out blog posts that are strategically not a good fit. Ensure that all of your content is optimized, and if you are doing content marketing, ensure it is a good fit for your marketing tactics.

4. Off-site authority building

Eventually, all SEO rivers run to this one spot: authority building. Building your authority, in large part, involves link building. Links are still a crucial component to developing strong organic rankings; however, links can be the hardest part of SEO to get right.

It really is important here to get your link philosophy dialed in before you start, as this can truly make or break your link-building efforts. While link building is a deep topic that we can’t cover in depth here, if you can at least develop a positive link-building philosophy, you are already ahead of the majority of your competition.

The best way I have ever seen to describe the right link-building mindset was penned by the late, great Eric Ward: “Connect what should be connected.”

This philosophy is beautiful in its simplicity, and it serves to correct the “more, more, more” mentality of link building. We only want links from relevant sources. Often, this means that in order to scale our link-building efforts beyond the obvious tactics, we need to create something that deserves links. You have links where it makes sense for you to have links. Simple.

Wikipedia has millions of links, yet I am pretty sure they have never done any link building. This is because they have reams of useful content that gets linked. These are real, natural links that enrich the linking page, provide further context and serve as the real connective tissue of this hyperlinked world we live in.

This kind of natural link should be the backbone of your link-building efforts. This may mean you have to revisit the content on your site and create something of value first, but if you can nail that, then you are half way home.

Any safe, scalable link-building strategy should be built on this mindset.

Key takeaways here:

• Make sure you are building the kind of real links that make sense in the real world and won’t upset the qualitative and sometimes punitive parts of the algorithm.
• Ensure you have content that deserves to rank and deserves to be linked to.

Summary

SEO does not need to be overly complex. There are four key areas of SEO that you need to consider, and there is a structured, methodical process that can be followed to optimize your site.

I sincerely hope this post helps you cut through the noise, improve your rankings and generate more business from organic search!

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SearchCap: Ask Google, SEO cookbook & SMX recap

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• The SEO ‘do more with less’ cookbook
  Nov 1, 2017 by Bobby Lyons

  How do you get the most out of your SEO program with limited resources? Columnist Bobby Lyons outlines his strategy for using analytics data to find areas of the site that, if improved, could drive additional revenue for the business.

• Siri, Safari and Google Search: What does it mean for marketers?
  Nov 1, 2017 by Jim Yu

  Columnist Jim Yu explains how Apple’s recent announcements and updates to Siri and Safari have had a major impact on the search marketing industry.

• The Great #SMX East Recap: 2017 Edition
  Nov 1, 2017 by Lauren Donovan

  And another SMX East is in the books! Last week’s show was a success, and we want to thank everyone who helped make it happen — speakers, sponsors, vendors, staff, organizers, and of course, our invaluable attendees. Right off the bat, we want to invite everyone — whether you were or were not at the […]

• ‘Ask Me Anything’ with Google’s Gary Illyes at SMX East
  Oct 31, 2017 by Eric Enge

  Have questions about Google’s stance on organic rankings? On featured snippets? On the mobile-first algorithm? Get answers in contributor Eric Enge’s recap of this informative session at Search Engine Land’s recent conference.

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Snapchat rolls out conversion-tracking Snap Pixel for brands to tie site traffic to in-app ads
• ‘Ask Me Anything’ with Google’s Gary Illyes at SMX East
• 3 ABM themes to expect at Dreamforce 2017
• The ever-growing local search universe
• SmartCommerce brings the impulse-buying experience online for CPG brands this holiday season
• How to scale local events
• Amazon gets top net-promoter score among SMB vendors according to survey

Search News From Around The Web:

• Google: Your Multilingual Pages Don’t Need To Be Word For Word Translation, Search Engine Roundtable
• The New AdWords Report That Will Change Your PPC Plans, PPC Hero
• Unfiltered: How to Show Up in Local Search Results, Moz
• Digital Personal Assistants: The Next Big Thing, Stone Temple
• Google Isn’t Fixing Its Real Shopping Problem, Bloomberg
• Google: Improving Content & Pruning Content Are Both Valid Strategies, Search Engine Roundtable
• Initial Google Rankings of Brand New Pages Will Adjust Over Time, The SEM Post
• The Google Assistant on phones, now in Spanish and Italian, Google Blog

The post SearchCap: Ask Google, SEO cookbook & SMX recap appeared first on Search Engine Land.

The SEO ‘do more with less’ cookbook

“Do more with less.” How often in our careers have we heard that phrase? Ultimately, that statement always means there is a need to reduce budget while still maintaining growth (or, at a minimum, flat year-over-year performance).

The good news is that in SEO, we are the kings and queens of “do more with less.” SEO professionals today are constantly competing against significantly larger teams — unless, of course, you are working at the online gorilla Amazon or in a top affiliate organization.

Over the past 20 years working in SEO, I have worked in pureplay, omnichannel, startups and Fortune 500, and the cookbook for doing more with less contains the same recipe. Sure, the recipe may need to be modified at an ingredient level to increase servings, but the ingredients never change. What you should find in your cookbook for your “more with less” recipe is as follows:

• Pursue position gains for head terms.
• Maximize CTR (click-through rate).
• Expand long-tail keyword inventory.
• Maximize value from existing traffic.
• Amplify external content marketing efforts.
• Align SEO efforts more closely to the campaign calendars.

Myself, I like to add a bit of a kick to my recipe: I step back and think big picture. How can I adjust my ingredient amounts to maximize the effort to include value for all channels?

Demonstrating impact across all channels is critical in obtaining resources to support my objectives today, and it establishes credibility within the organization long-term. The nature of our profession requires that an SEO professional routinely take off their marketing hat and explore user experience, merchandising and broader technology issues. These areas of the business have a direct impact on the performance of all marketing channels as well as direct traffic.

While we are always looking for program improvements, clearly there are times where we must squeeze the most out of the program to achieve the goals assigned to us by the company. I like to use a divide-and-conquer approach to make sure I have dedicated attention to each core growth activity.

In the divide-and-conquer approach, I typically take on the global impact improvements and task my other team members to devise a strategy to tackle the SEO-specific activities. Depending on your team size, you may have to do all the activities, or you may be able to spread them out evenly across the team. Regardless of team size, every growth opportunity area must be worked. Don’t forget to include your key partners as well when assigning out the activities.

For my part, I am going to specifically look at areas of the website where the data indicates that an improvement in user experience, merchandising and/or performance can drive additional revenue. In this example data set, I pulled landing page data from Google Analytics. This can be entry page data from Omniture or Coremetrics as well. The key area of analysis in this data set is focusing on potential opportunities by evaluating engagement metrics and conversion rate.

Looking at this hypothetical sample data set, which represents one week of data, there are a few items I have highlighted in red and green. Both are opportunities, but the green cells represent values I would want to replicate, while the red cells represent values I am targeting to improve. The primary information we are hoping to glean from the report is as follows:

1. Identify positives that can be used to demonstrate potential for other pages. For items highlighted in green, we want to fully understand why the metrics are positive. In this case, the first row is the home page of the website. An analysis will still take place, but we need to keep in mind that home pages perform well because they are a high repeat visitor entry point. Visitors coming in via email and/or through a brand term are going to convert at a higher level than other traffic.
2. Find pages where one device type is outperforming the other in terms of bounce rate. If a user is bouncing primarily on mobile, we perform a deep dive on the mobile performance of the page. This allows us to rule out page load times and see how the experience differs compared to the tablet and desktop experience.
3. Look for areas where poor metrics align for both mobile and desktop. This indicates that there is either a shared technology or user experience issue, or (more commonly) a merchandising issue. In this case, the page sample name I used was “clearance.” Clearance and sale pages should have low bounce rates — visitors love to browse good deals, and the conversion rate should be close to what you see with your home page. Our first inclination here would be that we are not providing compelling deals on the page, which means we should analyze the demand for the products on the page, as well as perform some price comparisons to see if the deal stands up in the market. Certainly, I will place a monitor on this page to capture performance metrics to rule out a technology issue.
4. The last step in the process is to build out the “what if” model. The “what if” model is just saying that if clearance were at the same revenue per visit as the home page, the weekly revenue would have been roughly $3,700 instead of $561. On an annual basis, that is $163,228 more out of that single page.
5. Build the model out across all pages and come up with a total to justify investment from the rest of the business. Do not forget to bring in traffic from the other channel sources to represent the increased value for those channels if revenue per visit can be increased to the target level.

Building out this model across a large number of pages provides a solid list of where more SEO revenue can be obtained where position is not the primary factor. The traffic is arriving, and certainly the quality of the traffic may differ based on position, but revenue movement is possible — and that movement has value across all traffic sources. Arguably, the improvements could result in positive movement in position, which would bring added value to the project.

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Siri, Safari and Google Search: What does it mean for marketers?

Apple has recently made some significant changes to both Siri and Safari, with potentially far-reaching implications for digital marketers.

First, Apple has announced that results for its AI-powered digital assistant, Siri, will now be provided by Google rather than Bing. This interesting development encompasses two of the most important areas of modern search marketing: voice search and mobile. As such, SEOs will be paying close attention to how this might affect their strategies and their reporting.

The launch of the latest version of Apple’s Safari browser also brought with it controversial updates that could significantly impact the digital media industry. By introducing stringent new measures that will prevent third-party cookies from tracking Safari users for more than 24 hours, Apple has made a clear statement about the importance of consumer privacy.

Equally, it has forced some advertisers to rethink their approaches to tracking — and reporting on — digital marketing campaigns. Given the prominent positions of voice search, mobile SEO and data privacy in many industry discussions today, it would be fair to say that Apple has taken a stance.

Apple moves Siri searches to Google

Google has been selected as the default provider of search results via Apple’s voice-enabled digital assistant, Siri, although image search results will still be powered by Bing.

With voice search now accounting for over 20 percent of searches (a number that will likely increase dramatically in the near future), this move will undoubtedly bring a sizable number of queries to Google. Apple’s stated reason for switching is that it will provide a “consistent web search experience” for consumers alongside Safari results, which are already provided by Google by default. Bing and Google process queries and rank organic search results using different algorithms, so we should expect that the answers provided by Siri will change as a part of this development.

If Siri’s answer does not respond adequately to the query, Apple device users will now be sent through to a Google search results page to browse other links. Once a user clicks through to a Google results page, the data can be processed and shared as it would via any other Google SERP. While Google does not share its keyword-level organic search data with site owners, this will still provide welcome insight into other areas of the SEO traffic that brands receive via Google.

How does this affect search marketers?

There will, of course, be an inverse correlation between the number of Google searches and the number of Bing searches that marketers see in their reports, to a greater or lesser degree depending on how much of their audience uses Siri. For paid search, this may mean a re-evaluation of budgets for both Google and Bing. For organic search, the focus should be on providing the most relevant answer to a query, to increase the likelihood that Siri will select your content.

Although this could be seen to represent a seismic shift in how organic search marketers optimize for Siri, the reality is that the core principles of voice search and mobile SEO remain constant:

• Micro-moments — revealed in I-want-to-do or I-want-to-go queries, for example — are vitally important.
• Optimize for longer, natural language queries, as consumers are more likely to search in this manner via voice than via text.
• Speed is of the essence; mobile users expect content to load quickly, so marketers need to incorporate this as an essential strategic consideration.
• Hyperlocal searches, driven by implicit location-based intent, are on the rise as consumers come to grips with the capabilities of their mobile devices.
• Constantly refine the approach as more data becomes available. This is still a nascent area of search marketing, and we need to be prepared to adapt based on consumer feedback.

In fact, as SEOs and content marketers strive to answer the underlying intent of a query rather than simply responding to exact queries through keyword matching, we can safely say that the days of chasing the search algorithms are coming to an end. As a consequence, Apple’s move from Bing to Google for Siri results should not require much adjustment from a sophisticated SEO strategy.

Furthermore, while this is certainly not a positive move for Bing, Microsoft’s search engine does still retain an important share of the market that search professionals cannot afford to neglect.

As mentioned above, Apple’s principal reason for switching to Google was to bring results in line with its Safari browser, which has also been the recipient of some radical overhauls of late.

Safari updates

Apple has primarily updated its Safari web browser in ways that affect the capturing, processing and sharing of user data, with the ultimate aim of improving the user experience. The three most noteworthy changes for marketers are Intelligent Tracking Prevention, Autoplay Blocking and Reader Mode. You can read more about these specific changes here.

Safari accounts for a sizable portion of web traffic, with a 14.22 percent share of the global market and a 31.5 percent share of the US market. With Google planning its own measures to tackle invasive advertising practices in the upcoming Chrome browser update, it is becoming clear that both parties want to protect consumers from irrelevant content and intrusive advertising.

Consumers are increasingly in control of what they see online and how they see it. According to Google, a majority of search traffic worldwide now comes from mobile devices. Combined with the 40 percent of US consumers that have used an ad blocker, the picture becomes clearer still. Brands and publishers are all striving to provide the best possible experience, with a mobile-first slant on everything they do.

Apple’s focus on a fast, user-friendly experience certainly does not exist in a vacuum. Pervasive ads can contribute to longer page load speeds, which is to the detriment of Safari. Apple wants to attract as many users to its browser as possible; removing elements that only detract from the user experience seems a sensible way to achieve that.

Moreover, Apple is not the only company taking measures to this effect. For example, Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) initiative strips back HTML into leaner source code that can be displayed faster, with an increasing amount of SEO-driven content now created for this standard.

Where Safari will not block ads, Google may go one step further with its upcoming Chrome update. Due for launch early next year, the latest Chrome has included an ad blocker in some early tests. We are therefore beginning to see browsers act as intermediaries between websites and consumers, rather than conduits for information.

How should SEOs prepare for these changes?

Apple’s recent updates serve to further consolidate the position of mobile SEO as the cornerstone of organic search marketing today. All of the recent changes have been driven by a desire to improve the consumer experience by delivering the fast, seamless loading of content. Moreover, Apple is at pains to ensure that this is content its customers actually want to see and engage with.

This will not sound revolutionary to many SEOs, who will by now be very familiar with these concepts. However, we should be cognizant of the fact that SEO affects many other marketing disciplines and understand that our work is pivotal as brands adapt to this new landscape.

Those that embrace this new ecosystem — where consumers are increasingly in control and the onus is on brands and advertisers to create experiences that draw engagement — will reap the very significant rewards. We have been taught many lessons and had to adapt to many trends over the past few years in SEO, through the many transitions the industry has seen. The focus on creating genuine connections through data-driven content is one that may soon apply to many other areas of digital marketing.

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The Great #SMX East Recap: 2017 Edition

And another SMX East is in the books! Last week’s show was a success, and we want to thank everyone who helped make it happen — speakers, sponsors, vendors, staff, organizers, and of course, our invaluable attendees. Right off the bat, we want to invite everyone — whether you were or were not at the conference — to check out our full archive of SMX East 2017 speaker presentations on SlideShare.

Now, on to some of our favorite SMX East moments.

Top 10 SMX East 2017 highlights

1. The Meet & Greet is always a fabulous way to kick off the conference. Attendees and speakers mingled at Stitch Bar & Lounge to ring in another SMX East over cocktails and snacks. Big thanks to Bruce Clay Inc. for sponsoring the official launch of the show!
2. Bright and early Tuesday morning, Google’s Kishore Kanakamedala took the stage to unveil a series of online-to-offline solutions and products just ahead of the holiday season. We livestreamed the entire event, which you can watch here. A full recap of the session can be found here.
3. Excel With Bing set up shop in the Classroom on Tuesday, hosting an array of sessions aimed at amping up paid search strategies. Attendees got to meet the team and get one-on-one support for different Bing Ads issues. Catch up with some tweet coverage here.
4. Janes of Digital returned to New York City with its usual stylish flare and spirited conversation. This year’s topic of discussion: the Power of Vulnerability. The dynamic panel featured Alice Han, performance marketing analyst at EveryMundo, Amelie Glon Werner, senior business manager at Microsoft, Cameron Klitz, senior strategist at Reprise Media and moderator Frances Donegan-Ryan, senior marketing manager at Bing. The four online marketers were joined by FDNY firefighter Jackie-Michelle Martinez, who lent a unique and passionate perspective beyond our professional community. Bing Ads, the event host, livestreamed the panel discussion, which you can watch here.
5. Scott Brinker’s keynote Wednesday morning charged the audience for a fresh day of learning. Scott has evangelized the emergence and growth of martech (marketing technology) for over a decade, and his keynote was a summons for the search marketing community to lead in the new “martech era.” Catch up with our full keynote coverage here.
6. Learn With Google brought attendees to the Classroom all day Wednesday for best practices and advice straight from the mouths of Googlers. As the Big G puts it, the “one constant in AdWords is change,” so sessions and speakers aimed to educate attendees on the ever-changing platform. Catch up with some tweet coverage here.
7. The third annual Search Engine Land Awards were hosted at the scenic 230 Fifth venue on Wednesday evening. Together, we celebrated individuals, agencies and internal marketing teams who have demonstrated excellence in executing organic and paid search marketing initiatives. The rooftop bar, complete with a stunning view of the illuminated Empire State Building, was straight-up glamorous. See the winners here: Search Engine Land Awards Gala spotlights top performers in the SEO & SEM industry.
8. For the first time ever at SMX, Amazon Marketing Services set up shop in our Expo Hall and led a well-attended session on Customer-First Advertising. Amazon team members demonstrated how Amazon Marketing Services helps connect brands with a wide and engaged audience through timely, targeted, high-impact ads. Attendees walked away with fresh insights, as well as a pretty sweet tote bag.
9. A beloved SMX staple, the Google AMA took place Thursday morning. Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes sat down with our own Barry Schwartz and Michelle Robbins to answer any and all questions moderators and audience members had for the search giant. Catch up with full coverage from the AMA here.
10. The Clinic track ran all day Thursday, offering attendees a unique opportunity to ask experts case-by-case questions for the entire duration of each session. There were 75 minutes (per clinic!) of 100 percent Q&A. Each clinic had a specific focus; between links, SEM, SEO, social and analytics, there was something for everyone.
    

    Photo credit: @qcait on Twitter

Coverage from around the web

Next up, we wanted to share a roundup of some coverage from around the web, including recaps contributed by some of our own speakers. We’ll update this list as more coverage rolls out!

• SEO Ranking Factors 2017: What Matters & What Doesn’t
• Global Marketing & E-commerce: Top Things to Consider
• SMX Day 2: Google’s New UI, Machine Learning & MarTech
• SMX East 2017: Best Tweets From Day 1
• SMX East 2017: Best Tweets From Day 2
• SMX East 2017 Day 1 – Online-to-Offline, Shopping, Display
• SMX East 2017 Day 2 – Paid search trends, Amazon and Automation
• SMX East 2017 Day 3 – Attribution, Video and Analytics
• PPC Advertising Strategies: The Paid Search Advertising Strategies of the Future at SMX East 2017
• Quotes from speakers of #SMX East
• Mobile-first updates from SMX East
• All Google Manual Penalties Explained from SMX East
• SEO Ranking Factors in 2017: What’s Important and What’s Not
• Google announces new online-to-offline features on the cusp of the holiday shopping season

Looking ahead: SMX East 2019

The next time SMX East is coming to town will be 2019. Moving forward, we will alternate shows between coasts each year; in 2018, we will host SMX West in San Jose, Calif., and in 2019, we will host SMX East in New York City. SMX Advanced will continue to be held every year in Seattle.

Thanks to all once more for a fantastic SMX East. See you guys in San Jose and Seattle in 2018!

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