This week, as every week, our experts researched and analyzed trends, updates, new tools, and new features in the world of digital marketing. What are the key takeaways from last week’s news? Index deciphers them for you here.

SEO NEWS/TOOLS

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

You’ve created the Google My Business page for your company, the number of your reviews increases every week, and you’re beginning to feel pretty satisfied. But, after a little research, you realize that your competitors rank higher on Google than you do. You then decide to learn how it works. This article lays out, using a case study of the rankings of two Chinese restaurants, what you need to take into account during your comparative research. The conclusion is that optimized content (on-page SEO) seems to contribute to the organic success of the first restaurant, while the domain authority, page authority, and backlinks are favorable to the local success of the second.

https://moz.com/blog/basic-local-competitive-audit

How to Optimize for Google’s Featured Snippets to Build More Traffic

As we noted in previous newsletters, featured snippets are the new little aliens in the Google universe. Actually, they are the definitions or selected bits of information that you see in top position on Google results pages. They show up when your search is in the form of a question such as “what …? where …? when …? how to …?”

For this reason, Moz shares 7 tips to make featured snippets your new SEO best friends:

Adjust your blogging style to the featured snippets reality (here’s how: ask a question, answer it in 1 paragraph, then expand further in the article)
Add facts (lists, figures, steps) and organize them well. Google likes that, guys!
Structure and formulate articles to answer similar questions together
Organize your questions (a tool recommended by Moz: Serpstat)
Use attractive visuals (Moz suggests Bannersnack)
Update your images and re-upload them to avoid making your information appear dated
Stay in control and keep up to date on how you are doing with Ahrefs

https://moz.com/blog/optimize-featured-snippets

SEO Resources & Tools

Come on, get bookmarks! Here is a selection of 6 useful tools for SEO, offered by Aleyda Solis, a digital expert:

Simple Htaccess Redirects & Rewrite Generator generates personalized redirects (to be used with moderation)
Why My Web Traffic Dropped? is a checklist tool for identifying potential causes of site organic traffic loss coming from Google
The Marketer Toolbox gathers together over 200 digital marketing tools (SEO, social networks, email marketing, etc.) on the same page
The hreflang generator tool generates tags according to Google’s hreflang tag specifications (remember that hreflang tags use source code to tell search engines which language the page is currently being displayed in)
All Official SEO Guidelines brings together the all the different principles you need to know to perfectly handle the 3 most popular search engines, namely Google, Bing and Yandex
The International Search Results Validator shows how the difficulty level of ranking for a given keyword in Google search results

http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/seo-resources-tools/

SEM NEWS/TOOLS

7 Ad Copy Tests That Will Improve Your PPC Performance

You manage AdWords campaigns and tremble at the thought of becoming part of the statistic that proves 98% of ads are a waste of money? Following the advice in this article to the letter will calm your worries! Here are 7 tests you can perform to improve your performance in terms of CTR (clickthrough rate) and conversions:

Emphasize numbers in your ad campaigns (inventory, discount, product prices)
Add, change, remove prices on your campaigns to see what works best
Quantify your promotions: figures written in black and white speak louder than general terms
Test your campaigns by adding punctuation (exclamation points are a must!)
Emotions sell, so appeal to wonder, laughter, and fun
Test your call to action (CTA) by working on your wording
Play around with your landing pages

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ppc-ad-copy-tests/208054/

25 Google Analytics Tips to Cut Your Mistakes in Half

KlientBoost offers here a short guide of best practices, gathering together 25 tips for those just starting out with Google Analytics. Here are 5 standouts among the first few tips:

Start with business-oriented questions
Set up goals in your account
Revisit your definition of bounce rate
Implement a funnel strategy
Use custom segmentation

Eager to learn and put to use the rest of the tips in the guide? Right this way: https://klientboost.com/analytics/google-analytics-tips/

Digital Marketing Hot Topics – August 19 to 25, 2017