All Script And Tols For Free: 🔍 Will e-commerce ever be the same?

May 13, 2020

Good morning Search Marketer, we may not know what day it is, but here's to a good one.

Anecdotally, we know that business has been strong for many e-commerce companies during this crisis. Now, multiple reports confirm the past month has been like Black Friday every day for e-commerce retailers. The latest, from Adobe, found that e-commerce sales grew sequentially by 49% in April, with some categories such as electronics and online grocery increasing even more.

Buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS) transactions skyrocketed more than 200% year-over-year in April. No wonder Google is testing "curbside checkout" messaging for local inventory ads. The question on everyone's mind is how much these behaviors will stick.

Google Shopping shortcut. Also on the e-commerce front, retailers that use PayPal for checkout on their sites can now link their PayPal accounts to Google Merchant Center to get verified and onboard their products to show across Google. The integration, announced with the shift to showing free listings on Google Shopping, is now active. Google says more platform integrations are coming. This will make it easy for more retailers to get started with Google and help expand the universe of products Google can show users.

Marketers aren't feeling in-person. The results from our first pulse poll on how marketers are thinking about in-person events this fall are in. Some areas may be opening up for business, but most marketers do not expect to attend an in-person conference this year. Further, 66% of respondents said they would not attend an in-person event or conference until there is a proven vaccine available. We're going to keep surveying our audiences every few weeks to track whether sentiment changes and will continue to share the results on our sites.

In the meantime, online is where it's at. I'll be moderating day 2 of the PSA Conference today, and then mark your calendars for SMX Next, June 23 and 24.

Read on for a Pro Tip on using Amazon Posts and much more.

Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief

Pro Tip

How brands should approach Amazon Posts

"Amazon really wants advertisers to lean into its new branding experiences, so it is making it extremely easy for brands to get up and running," explains Danielle Waller of Merkle. "By using the same creative specifications as other channels, like Facebook, Amazon made it simple for brands already creating content to load it directly on Amazon to participate in Posts. To further encourage participation, Amazon is offering this placement to brands for free (at least for now)."

"Posts are eligible to show on related PDPs, meaning competitors could be showing Posts on a page for one of your products. To protect your own PDPs from competitor brands, all brands should consider launching a campaign if they have usable existing content. To take your posts to the next level, test some creative deviation from other brand collateral to see what resonates with customers. Even though Amazon Posts content looks like some paid social platforms, it doesn't offer social engagement and differs from channels like Facebook and Instagram in other key ways. One is that users are on a platform that is primarily used for shopping, not one that's primarily used for social engagement. Another is that these ads are likely to show alongside a competitor, rather than between photos or posts from friends and family. With those two differences in mind, it's worthwhile to test some ad variants with clearer calls to action or more concrete product/brand differentiators."

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Search Shorts

Disavow wasn't designed for negative SEO.

Disavow link tool. Google did not build the disavow tool for negative SEO purposes, says John Mueller of Google.

More explicit robots.txt. The more explicit rule in your robots.txt file wins out said Mueller, but he added: "I'd make the robots.txt file much simpler & clearer, to avoid having to interpret or explain your work next year."

Short and brief. Submitting feedback on Google's developer documentation? Keep it succinct and skip the War and Peace-length braindumps, asks Google's Gary Illyes.

COVID-19 Google Posts. If you have COVID-19 Google Posts, those will replace all your other Google Posts says Local SEO Tim Capper.

What's "next" in search marketing?

SMX Next! Log on June 23-24 for actionable SEO and SEM tactics that can drive more traffic, leads, and sales — and learn how emerging technology and advancements in search platforms are changing what it means to be a tactical and effective search marketer.

Register for free »