🔍 Another nifty Bing SEO tool | SEMRush pulls guest blogging service

Jun 05, 2020

Good morning Search Marketer, oops, maybe.

SEMRush, the popular SEO toolset, dropped its guest blogging service that highlighted natural links as a benefit. The saga played out quickly on Twitter after Google's John Mueller responded, calling it an "unnatural link." SEMRush says the program wasn't link selling. A reminder, though, if you have used paid guest blogging for links, consider getting nofollow link attributes added on those.

Bing is out with another nifty tool. Site Scan in Bing Webmaster Tools crawls your site and checks for common technical SEO issues. That joins the new competitive link analysis tool that rolled out in BWT earlier this week.

Google announced several significant executive changes yesterday. Prabhakar Raghavan, who took over Ads and Commerce from Sridhar Ramaswamy in 2018, has been promoted to head of Search and Assistant. Raghavan takes over the role from Ben Gomes, who is moving to lead Google's education and learning initiatives, including Google Classroom which has seen usage skyrocket with distance learning in the wake of COVID-19.

Jerry Dischler, whom I've interviewed on the SMX stage several times, will now lead Google Ads. And, Jen Fitzpatrick becomes one of the highest profile female leaders in tech, moving from Geo/Maps to head Google's 8,000+ member central engineering team.

As Greg Sterling reported, the changes won't be disruptive internally, but "the company is positioning itself for what feels like a new era — one that will see new growth, as well as ongoing social, political and regulatory challenges in the U.S. and abroad."

Keep reading for an offer to help Black-owned retail businesses, an update on Snapchat Dynamic Ads, Search Shorts and more.

Ginny Marvin,
Editor-in-Chief

Call to Action

Duane Brown is offering ads and email services to Black-owned retail brands:

"Hey Black-owned ecom/DTC brands.

Me (paid ads) and an email marketing friend want to help scale your business for free for the next few months. Interested? Slide in my DMs or email me."

You can find him at @duanebrown to take him on his offer or spread the word.

And if you're offering services or mentorship to support Black marketers and/or Black-owned businesses, let us help amplify: gmarvin@thirddoormedia.com.

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Social Shorts

Does Google report your webspam?

Google reporting you. Do Googlers, like John Mueller, report spam they find on social media? John Mueller said often he does not, but he added "it's more about hoping – and giving a chance – for sites to clean up the issues themselves. There's enough public pressure for sites to improve already, and my feeling is often they do improve. A lot of these sites/folks try to do their best, and are happy to learn over time."

Shared hosts. Shared hosts, CDNs, and same IPs are totally normal, John Mueller said. He wrote on Twitter: "Shared hosting & CDNs on a single IP is really common" and that "having some bad sites on an IP doesn't make everything on that IP bad."

Affiliate sites. Google's John Mueller said affiliate sites can rank well in Google. He said "there are plenty of sites that monetize completely or partially with affiliate links that I find great. There are also many that are built just to drive traffic to affiliate links. And there's a lot in between."

Social Spotlight

Dynamic selling on Snapchat goes global

Snapchat's Dynamic Ads are now rolling out globally. Introduced in the U.S. last fall, Dynamic Ads generate product ads from sellers' product feeds.

A range of templates make it easy for retail, e-commerce and DTC brands to launch shoppable ads based on their product catalogs. Ads are automatically updated in real-time to reflect pricing or availability updates in a feed.

4C, Smartly.io and Brainlabs are among the implementation partners for Dynamic Ads. Advertisers will need to have the Snap pixel implemented on their sites — and a product feed. Find spec info here.

Why we care. Google, Facebook and Pinterest already offer dynamic ads and dynamic retargeting capabilities. This is another indication of Snap trying to catch up with more investments in direct-response advertising capabilities. The company said last quarter that direct-response ads now account for more than half of the company's revenue. Snapchat's Dynamic Ads' global availability also comes at a time when e-commerce has grown rapidly in response to COVID-19 restrictions. The ads can be used for prospecting or retargeting.

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