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Day: January 29, 2020

Social Platforms Join Civic Alliance to Help Push Voting in U.S.

Nonpartisan nonprofit Democracy Works and the CAA Foundation, the philanthropic arm of entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency, teamed up to form the Civic Alliance, which they described as a “nonpartisan coalition of businesses working together to build a future where everyone can vote, volunteer and take action to shape our country.” Social platforms…

How to Check if Google Manually Reviewed Your Site

Do you know how Google decides what website should be ranked number 1, 2, 3 and so on for any given keyword?

Well, they have an algorithm for that.

But as you know, algorithms aren’t perfect. That’s why Google continually tries to improve it.

One way that they try to improve their algorithm is through Search Quality Raters.

What’s a Search Quality Rater?

Google knows that they can always make their search results
better. And one way is to have humans review their listings for any given
keyword.

So, all around the world, Google has
people who manually review websites
. And they review each website based on these
guidelines
.

It’s kind of long and extensive, but it is important that the Quality Raters don’t directly impact rankings.

Instead, they give feedback to the engineers who code up the algorithm so they can make it more relevant to searchers.

Now, the real question is, how do you know your site is
being reviewed?

First, I want you to log into your Google Analytics account and go to the audience overview report.

Then click on “Add Segment.”

Your screen should look something like this:

Then click on “+ New Segment.”

Your screen should look like the image above.

I want you to click “Conditions,” which is under the “Advanced” navigation label. Once you do that, fill out everything to match the screenshot below and click “save”.

Just make sure that when you are filling out the table you are clicking the “or” button and not the “and” button. And make sure you select “Source” for the first column.

Now that you’ve created the new segment, it’s time to see if
any Quality Raters have viewed your site.

How to spot Quality Raters

When you are in Google Analytics, you’ll want to make sure
you select the segment you just created.

If you copied my screenshot, you would have labeled it “Search Engine Evaluators.” And when you select it, you’ll probably see a graph that looks something like the image below.

You’ll notice that no Quality Raters have been to my site
during the selected date period, which is common as they don’t visit your site
daily and, in many cases, they don’t come often at all.

The other thing you’ll notice is that next to the “Audience Overview” heading, there is a yellow shield symbol. If your symbol is green, then that’s good.

Yellow means your data is being sampled.

If you see the yellow symbol, reduce your date range and you’ll eventually see a green shield next to “Audience Overview” like the image below.

In general, it is rare that Quality Raters view your site each month. But as you expand your time window, you’ll be able to spot them.

And once you spot them, you can shorten the date range so the data isn’t sampled and then drill down to what they were looking at on your website.

The key to analyzing what Quality Raters are doing on your site is to look at the “Site Content” report in Google Analytics and that will help you produce results that look like the screenshot above.

To get to that report, click on “Behavior,” then “Site Content,” and then “All Pages.”

What do I do with this information?

The goal of a Quality Rater is to help improve Google’s
algorithm
. And whether they have visited your site or not, your goal should
be to make your site the best site in the industry.

You can do so by doing the following 3 things:

  1. Follow the quality guidelines that Google has released. It’s 168 pages long but, by skimming it, you can get a good understanding of what they are looking for.
  2. Always put the user first. Yes, you want higher rankings, but don’t focus on Google, focus on the user. In the long run, this should help you rank higher as Google’s goal is to make their algorithm optimized for user preferences over things like on-page SEO or link building.
  3. Check out Google’s advice for beating algorithm changes. In that article, you’ll find a breakdown of what Google is really looking for.

Conclusion

If you have Quality Raters browsing your site from time to time,
don’t freak out. It doesn’t mean your rankings are going to go down or up.

And if you can’t find any Quality Raters visiting your site,
don’t freak out either. Because that doesn’t mean that you won’t ever rank well
in Google.

As your site gets more popular, you’ll notice a higher chance of Quality Raters visiting your site over time. This just means that you need to focus more on delighting your website visitors. Create the best experience for them and you’ll win in the long run.

So, have you spotted any Quality Raters in your Google Analytics?

PS: Special shoutout to Matthew Woodward who originally brought the Google Quality Raters segmentation to light.

The post How to Check if Google Manually Reviewed Your Site appeared first on Neil Patel.

How to Check if Google Manually Reviewed Your Site

Do you know how Google decides what website should be ranked number 1, 2, 3 and so on for any given keyword?

Well, they have an algorithm for that.

But as you know, algorithms aren’t perfect. That’s why Google continually tries to improve it.

One way that they try to improve their algorithm is through Search Quality Raters.

What’s a Search Quality Rater?

Google knows that they can always make their search results
better. And one way is to have humans review their listings for any given
keyword.

So, all around the world, Google has
people who manually review websites
. And they review each website based on these
guidelines
.

It’s kind of long and extensive, but it is important that the Quality Raters don’t directly impact rankings.

Instead, they give feedback to the engineers who code up the algorithm so they can make it more relevant to searchers.

Now, the real question is, how do you know your site is
being reviewed?

First, I want you to log into your Google Analytics account and go to the audience overview report.

Then click on “Add Segment.”

Your screen should look something like this:

Then click on “+ New Segment.”

Your screen should look like the image above.

I want you to click “Conditions,” which is under the “Advanced” navigation label. Once you do that, fill out everything to match the screenshot below and click “save”.

Just make sure that when you are filling out the table you are clicking the “or” button and not the “and” button. And make sure you select “Source” for the first column.

Now that you’ve created the new segment, it’s time to see if
any Quality Raters have viewed your site.

How to spot Quality Raters

When you are in Google Analytics, you’ll want to make sure
you select the segment you just created.

If you copied my screenshot, you would have labeled it “Search Engine Evaluators.” And when you select it, you’ll probably see a graph that looks something like the image below.

You’ll notice that no Quality Raters have been to my site
during the selected date period, which is common as they don’t visit your site
daily and, in many cases, they don’t come often at all.

The other thing you’ll notice is that next to the “Audience Overview” heading, there is a yellow shield symbol. If your symbol is green, then that’s good.

Yellow means your data is being sampled.

If you see the yellow symbol, reduce your date range and you’ll eventually see a green shield next to “Audience Overview” like the image below.

In general, it is rare that Quality Raters view your site each month. But as you expand your time window, you’ll be able to spot them.

And once you spot them, you can shorten the date range so the data isn’t sampled and then drill down to what they were looking at on your website.

The key to analyzing what Quality Raters are doing on your site is to look at the “Site Content” report in Google Analytics and that will help you produce results that look like the screenshot above.

To get to that report, click on “Behavior,” then “Site Content,” and then “All Pages.”

What do I do with this information?

The goal of a Quality Rater is to help improve Google’s
algorithm
. And whether they have visited your site or not, your goal should
be to make your site the best site in the industry.

You can do so by doing the following 3 things:

  1. Follow the quality guidelines that Google has released. It’s 168 pages long but, by skimming it, you can get a good understanding of what they are looking for.
  2. Always put the user first. Yes, you want higher rankings, but don’t focus on Google, focus on the user. In the long run, this should help you rank higher as Google’s goal is to make their algorithm optimized for user preferences over things like on-page SEO or link building.
  3. Check out Google’s advice for beating algorithm changes. In that article, you’ll find a breakdown of what Google is really looking for.

Conclusion

If you have Quality Raters browsing your site from time to time,
don’t freak out. It doesn’t mean your rankings are going to go down or up.

And if you can’t find any Quality Raters visiting your site,
don’t freak out either. Because that doesn’t mean that you won’t ever rank well
in Google.

As your site gets more popular, you’ll notice a higher chance of Quality Raters visiting your site over time. This just means that you need to focus more on delighting your website visitors. Create the best experience for them and you’ll win in the long run.

So, have you spotted any Quality Raters in your Google Analytics?

PS: Special shoutout to Matthew Woodward who originally brought the Google Quality Raters segmentation to light.

The post How to Check if Google Manually Reviewed Your Site appeared first on Neil Patel.

Twitter Topics: How to Use It & What Marketers Need to Know

According to a report from Mention, roughly half a billion tweets are published on Twitter every day.

The platform, which enables you to tweet out your thoughts or content in under 280 characters, is swirling with constant conversations about trends, news, and other insights. With all of these tweets, thoughts, discussion threads, and trending hashtags, it can be hard to cut through the noise and find content around topics you’re actually interested in.

To make it easier for the user to find and follow topics and trends they’re passionate about in a crowded feed of tweets, Twitter unveiled Twiter Topics in November.

With Twitter Topics, you can follow topics as well as people that often tweet about relevant topics.

According to Twitter, the Topics feature was created in an effort to shift the platform towards conversation and away from one-off comments by influencers and celebrities.

In a recent blog post, Twitter provided more insight into why they launched the new feature:

“Previously, all of the work was on you to figure out the best way to keep up with what’s happening by following certain accounts, searching for it, or looking in the Explore tab for the latest. Now, you have the option of seeing the most relevant and interesting Tweets about what you care about with a single tap, and the conversation will come to you.”

While this move might be helpful to an individual user’s Twitter experience, marketing publications are already suggesting that it could also help brands. If you run a Twitter account that focuses on great content but is still growing, Twitter Topics could ultimately help you boost brand awareness.

If you post about relevant topics related to your industry, people who follow those topics could have a greater chance of finding your content than if they were just following tweets of thought leaders or brands in your field.

Although Twitter has not mentioned how this could impact brands, Google has set a precedent by releasing a similar feature that boosted traffic on company sites.

Two years ago, Google launched Google Discover, a feature within its Android app that showed users recommendations based on topics they followed or topics they’d searched in the past. Since then, publishers like Conde Nast haven’t given specific data on how Topics impacts them, but do say they’ve been seeing significant jumps in mobile traffic from Google.

While we’re still learning about Twitter Topics, there are a few ways that you can begin to leverage it as an online marketer. But, first, to help you understand the consumer’s point of view, here’s a step-by-step guide of how to use the feature.

How to Use Twitter Topics

To access Twitter Topics, go to your feed and click “More” on the sidebar to the left of your feed. Once you do this, you’ll see options including, “Topics.”

Where to find Twitter Topics symbol

When you click on Topics, a welcome message explaining the feature will pop up where your feed is. From there you can start picking Twitter Topics to follow.

Twitter Topics dashboard

After clicking “Follow more Topics,” you’ll see a list of overarching Twitter Topics, like “Entertainment” with plus signs next to them. When clicking on a plus sign, you can see a drop-down menu with more specific topics within each industry.

Twitter Topic follow options

Once you follow a few Topics, your homepage’s Twitter feed will start to show posts algorithmically pulled in from your Topic preferences.

To follow more Topics, you can simply return to the Topics page and click “Follow more topics.”

Additionally, some tweets in your feed will now offer a “See more about this Topic” pop-up, which includes a call to action to follow a related topic.

How Twitter Topics show up in Twitter feed.

Source; Twitter

You can also search and follow a Topic using Twitter’s search bar, as seen in the photo below:

How to unfollow Twitter Topics directly from Twitter feeds

Source: Twitter

To unfollow Topics, return to the Topics page, click “Follow more Topics,” find the Topic you’ve followed, and click unfollow.

Unfollow a topic from Twitter Topics dashboard

For more details on how this feature works, check out Twitter’s introductory blog post.

Four Ways Marketers Can Leverage Twitter Topics

While we’re still learning about Twitter Topics, there are a few ways that you can begin to leverage it as an online marketer. Let’s look at these more closely below.

1. Follow topics related to your industry to stay informed.

When people research a product or service related to your brand, they’ll want to see that you’re well-informed of current trends in your industry. By following Twitter Topics related to your field, you can stay on top of trends that might be important to your customers and impact your business.

By keeping up with news and trends, watching conversations around certain Topics could inform you more about your prospective audience’s delights, habits, work-life, or pain points. This information could help you keep your buyer persona up to date while also allowing you to create a more accurate go-to-market strategy as you launch products or services.

2. Discover and follow accounts or thought leaders in your industry.

In addition to learning about trendy topics in your industry, Topics can also help you learn about thought leaders or brands that are known for discussing certain insights or ideas in your field.

If you consistently see certain accounts or people show up in tweets marked with a Topic related to your field, you might want to check out their profile and follow them to see what type of content they’re posting. Not only will this help youkeep up with the insights and trends in your industry, but reviewing their profile might also help you learn more about optimizing tweets to rank in the Topics tab.

Additionally, if you see tweets from a competitor under a topic related to your brand, you can keep track of what they’re doing and create Twitter content or campaigns that improve upon it.

3. Create content or tweets related to trendy Topics in your industry.

If there’s a Topic people are buzzing about that strongly relates to your product, start coming up with tweets that addresses that trend.

For example, if users are talking about a common pain point that your product or service can solve, post more about that pain point, inform your audience of the best ways to solve it, or create content that weaves a mention of your product into it, such as a video or infographic that you upload to Twitter.

While Twitter hasn’t explained how Twitter Topics algorithms work or how you can leverage them to move up in feeds, tweeting about a Topic is still a strategy that enables you to learn what your audience is widely discussing and respond to it promptly in an engaging, valuable way. Even if you aren’t pulled up in feeds immediately, you may still get reach or growth on your Twitter account simply by responding to what your audience wants to learn about.

4. Learn about trending hashtags and optimize your own tweets with them.

As you probably know by now, hashtags are one of the ways you can optimize your tweets with popular keywords or phrases. When someone clicks on a hashtag, they will see a feed of tweets that also used the hashtag.

While people might find your tweets under the Topics tab if you’re discussing a certain trend, they might also find your tweets if they click on a hashtag that you’ve used. If you see a lot of people in your industry tweeting out certain hashtags, find a way to create tweets that naturally leverage or include that hashtag to further optimize your content and profile.

Embracing Trendy Topics on Twitter

Twitter has always been a solid platform for topical or trend-based discussion. And, although Topics will help users and brands zone in more on what they really care about, it’s not the only strategy you can use to make sure that your content gets seen.

By using Twitter Topics to learn more about how to interact with a wider range of users and create valuable content related to trends in your industry, you can ultimately boost online brand awareness and your following.

To learn more about how to optimize and grow your Twitter profile, check out our Ultimate Guide to Twitter Marketing.

How to Check if Google Manually Reviewed Your Site

Do you know how Google decides what website should be ranked number 1, 2, 3 and so on for any given keyword?

Well, they have an algorithm for that.

But as you know, algorithms aren’t perfect. That’s why Google continually tries to improve it.

One way that they try to improve their algorithm is through Search Quality Raters.

What’s a Search Quality Rater?

Google knows that they can always make their search results
better. And one way is to have humans review their listings for any given
keyword.

So, all around the world, Google has
people who manually review websites
. And they review each website based on these
guidelines
.

It’s kind of long and extensive, but it is important that the Quality Raters don’t directly impact rankings.

Instead, they give feedback to the engineers who code up the algorithm so they can make it more relevant to searchers.

Now, the real question is, how do you know your site is
being reviewed?

First, I want you to log into your Google Analytics account and go to the audience overview report.

Then click on “Add Segment.”

Your screen should look something like this:

Then click on “+ New Segment.”

Your screen should look like the image above.

I want you to click “Conditions,” which is under the “Advanced” navigation label. Once you do that, fill out everything to match the screenshot below and click “save”.

Just make sure that when you are filling out the table you are clicking the “or” button and not the “and” button. And make sure you select “Source” for the first column.

Now that you’ve created the new segment, it’s time to see if
any Quality Raters have viewed your site.

How to spot Quality Raters

When you are in Google Analytics, you’ll want to make sure
you select the segment you just created.

If you copied my screenshot, you would have labeled it “Search Engine Evaluators.” And when you select it, you’ll probably see a graph that looks something like the image below.

You’ll notice that no Quality Raters have been to my site
during the selected date period, which is common as they don’t visit your site
daily and, in many cases, they don’t come often at all.

The other thing you’ll notice is that next to the “Audience Overview” heading, there is a yellow shield symbol. If your symbol is green, then that’s good.

Yellow means your data is being sampled.

If you see the yellow symbol, reduce your date range and you’ll eventually see a green shield next to “Audience Overview” like the image below.

In general, it is rare that Quality Raters view your site each month. But as you expand your time window, you’ll be able to spot them.

And once you spot them, you can shorten the date range so the data isn’t sampled and then drill down to what they were looking at on your website.

The key to analyzing what Quality Raters are doing on your site is to look at the “Site Content” report in Google Analytics and that will help you produce results that look like the screenshot above.

To get to that report, click on “Behavior,” then “Site Content,” and then “All Pages.”

What do I do with this information?

The goal of a Quality Rater is to help improve Google’s
algorithm
. And whether they have visited your site or not, your goal should
be to make your site the best site in the industry.

You can do so by doing the following 3 things:

  1. Follow the quality guidelines that Google has released. It’s 168 pages long but, by skimming it, you can get a good understanding of what they are looking for.
  2. Always put the user first. Yes, you want higher rankings, but don’t focus on Google, focus on the user. In the long run, this should help you rank higher as Google’s goal is to make their algorithm optimized for user preferences over things like on-page SEO or link building.
  3. Check out Google’s advice for beating algorithm changes. In that article, you’ll find a breakdown of what Google is really looking for.

Conclusion

If you have Quality Raters browsing your site from time to time,
don’t freak out. It doesn’t mean your rankings are going to go down or up.

And if you can’t find any Quality Raters visiting your site,
don’t freak out either. Because that doesn’t mean that you won’t ever rank well
in Google.

As your site gets more popular, you’ll notice a higher chance of Quality Raters visiting your site over time. This just means that you need to focus more on delighting your website visitors. Create the best experience for them and you’ll win in the long run.

So, have you spotted any Quality Raters in your Google Analytics?

PS: Special shoutout to Matthew Woodward who originally brought the Google Quality Raters segmentation to light.

The post How to Check if Google Manually Reviewed Your Site appeared first on Neil Patel.

How to Analyze Your LinkedIn Profile Using the LinkedIn Dashboard

Looking for analytics to assess your LinkedIn profile’s performance? Are you looking at the LinkedIn dashboard for profiles? In this article, you’ll discover how to use the dashboard on your personal LinkedIn profile to analyze and improve your profile visibility, prospecting, and content strategy. What Is “Your Dashboard” on LinkedIn? Every LinkedIn profile has a […]

The post How to Analyze Your LinkedIn Profile Using the LinkedIn Dashboard appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner.

#385: Why (and When) Not to Trust Your Gut with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

If you’re someone who relies more on your intuition than your reason, this episode is for you. I spoke with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, author of a new book called, Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters. We talked about one of my favorite topics, mental blindspots and cognitive biases, especially as they relate to creativity in business.

If you like what you hear, write a review, subscribe on Apple Podcasts and, one more thing, be sure to sign up for my Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

 

How Brands Can Leverage Pinterest To Make Sales

Did you know:

Pinterest is such a key part of the buying journey for its users that over 90 percent of weekly active Pinners use Pinterest to make purchasing decisions.

Talk about buying power!

Not only are Pinterest users making purchase decisions on the platform, 83 percent say they are making purchases specifically based on the content they’ve seen from brands on Pinterest. 

Pinterest is no longer simply a place to save ideas and build dream boards. Instead, Pinterest has turned into the world’s largest visual discovery platform.

And there are a lot of opportunities for brands.

We had a chance to chat with the team over at Pinterest about some of their best practices for brands looking to increase sales. We’re excited to share those lessons with you!

Here’s what we learned…


How people are using Pinterest

According to one survey, “47 percent of social media users saw Pinterest as the platform for discovering and shopping for products—more than three times higher than those who cited Facebook or Instagram.” 

Seventy-seven percent of weekly Pinners have also discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest, and according to Pinterest, “people actually want to see content from brands while they’re on the platform–78 percent say it’s useful.”

Pinterest might not immediately come to mind as a platform to invest in for many brands, but it should.

Pinterest lives in a unique space on the internet where users are discovering content related to themselves and their aspirations rather than focusing on others, and this has turned it into a powerful platform for users to make purchasing decisions and discover new brands and products. 

Clearly, Pinterest is not one to be ignored when it comes to your marketing strategy. Here’s how you can use the platform to drive sales.

How to leverage Pinterest for sales: 5 tips from the Pinterest team

There are some really simple ways that you can start leveraging Pinterest to reach new audiences and optimize your pins and profile for sales. Some of these tips might be easy to implement immediately while others might play into later strategies, let’s dive in! 

1. Brand your pins 

A whopping 97 percent of top searches on Pinterest are unbranded, according to the Pinterest team. For brands, this presents an opportunity to stand out and gain brand recognition through the platform. 

Pinterest recommends adding a small logo in one of the four corners of your pin, this can be done really easily in a tool like Canva. You can play around with the design, of course, and add your logo wherever it feels best. In this example from Quip, they went with top centered to fit with the rest of the text on their image. 

2. Create mobile-first content 

As with most sites, mobile is extremely important on Pinterest. Eighty-five percent of Pinners are using the mobile app, so it’s important that your content appeals to them while they’re on their phones and appears properly in their feeds. If you’re linking back to your own content, it’s also important that the page that you’re sending users to is mobile friendly as well. 

A tip from Pinterest here is to tailor your font size to phone rendering to make sure your fonts are legible on small screens and to design for a vertical aspect ratio. The ideal dimensions are 600 pixels x 900 pixels. 

3. Create a similar look and feel 

Have you ever clicked on a beautiful image on Pinterest only to be taken to a website that looks nothing like the pin? I have, and it left me really confused.

According to Pinterest, the best practice is to make sure your pins and your website have a similar look and feel, and that doing this pays off. In an analysis from Pinterest, they found that “Pins that went to landing pages with similar imagery had a 13 percent higher online sales lift.”

This example from Ettitude is really great. The pin they are sharing fits seamlessly in a lot of home decor and design tags on Pinterest. 

And although their website uses different photos, it still has a similar feel to the pin.

4. Time your campaigns 

A big element to social media marketing and campaigns is timing. When are people online and when are people talking about the things you want to talk about? 

Luckily in the case of Pinterest, they release annual ‘Seasonal Insights,’ which helps take away some of the guesswork. A report that contains more than a dozen specific moments that take place throughout the year. 

For example, their 2019 report shared that users start sharing holiday content in June all the way through December and that content related to the Summer starts getting pinned at the beginning of February. 
They also have monthly trends reports. Here’s their latest for December 2019 trends on Pinterest, it shares specific trends like the search term ‘peach green tea’ is up 320 percent YoY! 

These are great free resources that you can leverage to start timing seasonal campaigns around when people are starting to make specific seasonal purchasing decisions. I would never have thought that people start looking at holiday content in June but that’s super-specific information that can go a long way to help with timely campaigns. 

5. Set up your shop 

One of the main ways for Pinterest to help generate sales is for the products you are selling to be easily available through Pinterest. Luckily, the platform makes this really easy for brands to set up and feature prominently on their profiles. 

Every Business profile on Pinterest has the ability for users to create a “shop” tab. 

The shop tab is just what it sounds like, a place where users can go to see all of the products your brand is selling. On the flip side, brands can leverage that tab to share pins that link directly to their sales pages for the specific product. 

Pinterest makes this whole process quite easy, they even have a method for importing new products through Pinterest Catalogs. All you have to do is have your data source approved and then as you add new products to your website, they get automagically added to Pinterest as well. 


We hope this guide helps you get started with or double down on your efforts with Pinterest. Let us know about your experience with Pinterest in the comments! 

If you want even more Pinterest resources, the Pinterest team has created a free Pinterest Academy with tons of lessons in there. 

How to Check if Google Manually Reviewed Your Site

Do you know how Google decides what website should be ranked number 1, 2, 3 and so on for any given keyword?

Well, they have an algorithm for that.

But as you know, algorithms aren’t perfect. That’s why Google continually tries to improve it.

One way that they try to improve their algorithm is through Search Quality Raters.

What’s a Search Quality Rater?

Google knows that they can always make their search results
better. And one way is to have humans review their listings for any given
keyword.

So, all around the world, Google has
people who manually review websites
. And they review each website based on these
guidelines
.

It’s kind of long and extensive, but it is important that the Quality Raters don’t directly impact rankings.

Instead, they give feedback to the engineers who code up the algorithm so they can make it more relevant to searchers.

Now, the real question is, how do you know your site is
being reviewed?

First, I want you to log into your Google Analytics account and go to the audience overview report.

Then click on “Add Segment.”

Your screen should look something like this:

Then click on “+ New Segment.”

Your screen should look like the image above.

I want you to click “Conditions,” which is under the “Advanced” navigation label. Once you do that, fill out everything to match the screenshot below and click “save”.

Just make sure that when you are filling out the table you are clicking the “or” button and not the “and” button. And make sure you select “Source” for the first column.

Now that you’ve created the new segment, it’s time to see if
any Quality Raters have viewed your site.

How to spot Quality Raters

When you are in Google Analytics, you’ll want to make sure
you select the segment you just created.

If you copied my screenshot, you would have labeled it “Search Engine Evaluators.” And when you select it, you’ll probably see a graph that looks something like the image below.

You’ll notice that no Quality Raters have been to my site
during the selected date period, which is common as they don’t visit your site
daily and, in many cases, they don’t come often at all.

The other thing you’ll notice is that next to the “Audience Overview” heading, there is a yellow shield symbol. If your symbol is green, then that’s good.

Yellow means your data is being sampled.

If you see the yellow symbol, reduce your date range and you’ll eventually see a green shield next to “Audience Overview” like the image below.

In general, it is rare that Quality Raters view your site each month. But as you expand your time window, you’ll be able to spot them.

And once you spot them, you can shorten the date range so the data isn’t sampled and then drill down to what they were looking at on your website.

The key to analyzing what Quality Raters are doing on your site is to look at the “Site Content” report in Google Analytics and that will help you produce results that look like the screenshot above.

To get to that report, click on “Behavior,” then “Site Content,” and then “All Pages.”

What do I do with this information?

The goal of a Quality Rater is to help improve Google’s
algorithm
. And whether they have visited your site or not, your goal should
be to make your site the best site in the industry.

You can do so by doing the following 3 things:

  1. Follow the quality guidelines that Google has released. It’s 168 pages long but, by skimming it, you can get a good understanding of what they are looking for.
  2. Always put the user first. Yes, you want higher rankings, but don’t focus on Google, focus on the user. In the long run, this should help you rank higher as Google’s goal is to make their algorithm optimized for user preferences over things like on-page SEO or link building.
  3. Check out Google’s advice for beating algorithm changes. In that article, you’ll find a breakdown of what Google is really looking for.

Conclusion

If you have Quality Raters browsing your site from time to time,
don’t freak out. It doesn’t mean your rankings are going to go down or up.

And if you can’t find any Quality Raters visiting your site,
don’t freak out either. Because that doesn’t mean that you won’t ever rank well
in Google.

As your site gets more popular, you’ll notice a higher chance of Quality Raters visiting your site over time. This just means that you need to focus more on delighting your website visitors. Create the best experience for them and you’ll win in the long run.

So, have you spotted any Quality Raters in your Google Analytics?

PS: Special shoutout to Matthew Woodward who originally brought the Google Quality Raters segmentation to light.

The post How to Check if Google Manually Reviewed Your Site appeared first on Neil Patel.

OpenX Names President John Gentry New CEO

OpenX announced current CEO Tim Cadogan will step down after 12 years and will be replaced by current president John Gentry. Cadogan will become CEO of GoFundMe, but remain as OpenX’s chairman and maintain his seat on the sell-side outfit’s board. Speaking with Adweek, Cadogan described his job move as “a completely fresh learning experience”…