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Why Connected TV Ads Are A Power Play For A Successful Ad Strategy

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Why Connected TV Ads Are A Power Play For A Successful Ad Strategy

Entertainment viewing habits have changed dramatically in recent years, leading search ad platforms to introduce connected TV (CTV) video ad opportunities alongside standard video and display ads.

Both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads provide advertisers with convenient access to a wide range of inventory and scale through their platforms.

What’s especially useful is that CTV ads can be managed within the same platform as search PPC ads, making it easy for advertisers to streamline their campaigns.

This means advertisers can get started with CTV ads with minimal hassle, reducing management complexity and costs.

First, What Are CTV Video Ads?

CTV ads are video ads that play on connected TV devices. These TVs can connect to the internet and stream content from apps like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube.

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Unlike traditional TV ads, which air during regular programming, CTV ads are shown while you’re watching your favorite streaming shows or movies.

CTV ads are basically the modern version of TV commercials, which are adapted for the streaming world.

Advertisers should pay attention to CTV ads because they offer a unique opportunity to engage audiences in a way that traditional TV advertising can’t match.

As streaming services continue to dominate the entertainment landscape, CTV ads allow advertisers to reach viewers who have cut the cord from cable and are consuming content on internet-connected devices.

The time people spend on streaming platforms is increasing, so CTV ads provide a direct and effective way to connect with engaged, attentive audiences in a variety of viewing environments.

In addition, the ad platforms help make CTV ads accessible to advertisers who found traditional TV out of reach.

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The flexibility and data-driven approach of ad placements have become a powerful tool for maximizing advertising efforts as part of a well-rounded digital marketing strategy.

CTV Ad Campaign Purpose And Goals

CTV ads are most often used for brand awareness and upper-funnel goals.

These ads enhance brand recognition and visibility, expanding ad touch points across viewing platforms.

While their primary objective is to raise brand awareness, CTV ads can also support other stages of the marketing funnel to connect with potential customers.

Audiences can be targeted during their consideration and decision-making stages with messages and content designed to nurture leads and drive conversions.

Key Features Of CTV Video Ads

To fully understand why CTV ads are such a powerful strategy for advertisers, it’s important to highlight the key features that set them apart from traditional TV ads.

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Targeted Advertising

Unlike traditional TV ads, CTV video ads can be targeted to specific audiences, similar to search ads and social media ads.

This means advertisers can customize their messages based on factors like age, interests, viewing behavior, and even location. This precision makes the ads more relevant and engaging for viewers.

Unskippable Formats

Many CTV ads are unskippable on TV screens, ensuring that the entire message reaches the viewer. This is a significant advantage over other video ad formats, where users can skip the ad after a few seconds.

Cross-Device Reach

Ads aren’t just limited to TV screens. They are also displayed on other devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and computers. This multi-device reach allows advertisers to connect with viewers wherever they watch TV.

Measurable Impact

One of the key benefits of CTV ads is the ability to measure their effectiveness.

Advertisers can track metrics like ad completion rates, viewer engagement, and even business outcomes (site visits, sales, leads), gaining insights into how well the campaigns perform. Recent data suggests business outcomes have now become the primary success metric.

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Even for seasoned PPC advertisers, diving into CTV ads can feel overwhelming at first.

The transition from search campaigns to video-based formats introduces new creative requirements and targeting options.

But don’t let the unfamiliarity hold you back. While the CTV setup process isn’t entirely intuitive, this article will guide you through the basics.

By leveraging the tools and strategies you already use in search ads, you’ll unlock new opportunities with CTV ads.

Google CTV Ads

Platforms

Google offers CTV ads in two ways. One is through the standard ad platform and the other is Display & Video 360 (DV360).

Google Ads (Standard Platform)

  • Google Ads primarily offers access to YouTube and a select group of CTV apps and publishers that partner with Google.
  • In the CTV space, Google Ads primarily focuses on delivering video ads through YouTube.
  • The YouTube app is available on devices such as smart TVs, game consoles, and streaming devices (Roku, Amazon Fire).
  • Ideal as a starting point for CTV campaigns, especially if you’re focused on YouTube and a few other platforms.

Display & Video 360 (DV360)

  • DV360 provides access to a much broader range of inventory, including premium CTV networks, programmatic TV, and a wider array of third-party apps and platforms.
  • It is designed for more complex, cross-channel campaign management. It allows for integrated planning, buying, and optimization across different media types, including video, display, audio, and native ads.
  • DV360 is ideal for larger advertisers or agencies that are handling more advanced digital strategies.

Networks

YouTube Ecosystem

YouTube ads and YouTube TV ads are both part of YouTube’s ecosystem, and advertisers purchase both through the Google Ads platform.

However, while the buying process is the same, Google places the ads based on the type of content:

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  • YouTube Ads: Shown across YouTube’s main platform, including on YouTube Home, video watch pages, and in search results. These ads target users watching regular YouTube content (user-generated and professional videos) and can be skippable, non-skippable, or bumper ads.
  • YouTube TV Ads: These ads are shown specifically on YouTube TV’s live streaming service. Similar to traditional TV ads, they appear during live broadcasts and on-demand content from major networks and cable channels.

Google TV Ads

Google TV ads are purchased through the Google Ads platform, just like YouTube ads. This allows for managing and measuring campaigns all in one place.

However, they are shown on smart TVs through the Google TV platform. It acts as an operating system for smart TVs and streaming devices that consolidates content into one easy-to-use interface.

  • Access to content from various streaming services (like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+) across over 125 channels.
  • Ads appear as in-stream video ads.

Note that when selecting the networks, YouTube must also be selected to access placements on Google TV.

This means, there is currently no way to target only Google TV.

Screenshot by author, October 2024

Looking strictly at CTV, YouTube TV has a massive opportunity for audience reach.

Google reported YouTube TV has surpassed 8 million subscribers, solidifying its position as the largest live TV streaming service in the U.S.

On the other hand, Google TV does not have a direct subscriber count like YouTube TV because it functions primarily as a content aggregation platform, offering a dashboard to access movies and TV shows from various streaming services.

According to Google, in the U.S., 60% of households now watch free, ad-supported streaming services and channels. Google TV and other retail Android TV OS devices will have 20.1 million addressable monthly active devices in the U.S. in 2023.

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Various streaming services where Google TV ads are served:

  • YouTube.
  • Netflix.
  • Hulu.
  • Disney+.
  • Roku.
  • Paramount+.
  • Peacock.
  • Amazon Prime Video.
  • HBO Max.
  • Tubi.
  • Pluto TV.
  • Vudu.
  • Sling TV.
  • Apple TV.
  • Discovery+.

Audiences

A major power play here is Google’s CTV ad’s access to world-class audience targeting.

In contrast to traditional TV ads, which rely on broad, regional airings with limited customization, Google Ads allow for precise audience targeting.

Advertisers can tap into a variety of options to reach specific viewers:

  • Demographics: Gender, age, parental status, household income.
  • Interests/detailed demographics: In-market, affinity, life events.
  • Custom: Custom combinations, remarketing, customer match lists.
  • Content: Keywords, topics, placements.

Ad formats

Although Google provides a range of video ad formats for YouTube, only a select few are available for Google TV/CTV.

These formats are short, unskippable, and designed to fit seamlessly into the streaming experience.

To access CTV ad placements, the “non-skippable” or “efficient reach” campaign subtypes must be selected in the campaign set-up.

Ad formats that can serve on Google TV in-streamScreenshot by author, October 2024

Bid Strategy

With Google TV ads, the only available bidding strategy is cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM).

This means you’re paying based on how many times your ad is viewed, not on clicks, which helps focus on maximizing reach.

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Your Target CPM is the average amount you’re willing to spend for every thousand impressions. Google Ads then optimizes bids around this target to help you get the most unique views possible.

Google Summary

For most advertisers, Google Ads is a solid choice for CTV campaigns, especially if you’re focused on YouTube and a few select platforms.

It’s user-friendly and set up for targeting and reach. The user experience is familiar if you are a regular advertiser.

However, there may be volume issues if the platform favors serving on YouTube over Google TV.

The key to utilizing Google Ads in the CTV realm is leveraging YouTube’s extensive reach across these devices and platforms to engage viewers with impactful video content.

How To Target CTV With Google – Step By Step

Google Ads Standard Platform

To access Google TV settings in campaign creation, the campaign must be a video reach, non-skippable format.

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Step-by-step selections:

  1. New campaign.
  2. Choose your objective: Awareness and consideration.
  3. Select a campaign type: Video > Select a campaign subtype: Video reach > Select campaign subtype: Non-skippable reach or efficient reach.
  4. Ad formats: Select from multi-ad formats.
  5. Bid strategy: Pre-selected depending on the campaign subtype.
  6. Enter budgets and dates.
  7. Select networks > Select locations > Select languages.
  8. Select any related videos with YouTube URL.
  9. Additional settings: Devices, operating systems, advanced targeting for mobile phones and tablets.
  10. Select frequency capping > Select ad schedule > Select audiences.
  11. Create video ads: Provide the URL of the YouTube-hosted video to use as the ad.
  12. Bid is pre-set at CPM.
  13. Create campaign!

Microsoft CTV Ads

Platforms

Both Microsoft Ads platforms below cater to video advertising but target different environments and user behaviors.

Microsoft Ads (Standard Platform)

  • Offers a streamlined approach to CTV advertising through the standard ad platform.
  • Advertisers gain exclusive access to Netflix and a large video marketplace with 860+ CTV publishers, including major names like Disney+, Roku, Hulu, and more.
  • Setting up campaigns is straightforward and quick, requiring few clicks and no setup fees.

Microsoft Invest

  • Enterprise-level Demand-Side Platform (DSP) with a broader approach to video advertising across all screens, including CTV buying.
  • Designed for larger advertisers and agencies with significant ad budgets, looking to manage extensive video advertising campaigns.
  • A good fit for those with complex strategies and the need for advanced targeting and performance analytics.
  • Here, advertisers can access Netflix placements through guaranteed programmatic buys.
  • Smaller businesses or those with limited budgets may find it less accessible due to its enterprise-level features and focus.

Networks

Microsoft Ads CTV ads appear on a wide range of content on popular streaming platforms and connected TV apps, including services like Hulu and Roku.

This broad network is not Microsoft-owned or branded. Some premium networks and streaming platforms where the ads are served:

  • Netflix.
  • Roku.
  • Hulu.
  • Max.
  • Fox.
  • Disney+.
  • Peacock.
  • Paramount+.
  • LG Channels.
  • Discovery+.
  • Samsung TV Plus.
  • Pluto TV.
  • Tubi.
  • Vudu.
  • Amazon Fire TV.
  • Apple TV.
  • Sling TV.
  • Showtime.
  • YouTube TV.
  • Crackle.
screenshot of Microsoft CTV ads networksScreenshot by author, October 2024

Audience

Microsoft CTV ads provide powerful audience-targeting capabilities that are far beyond what traditional TV ads can offer.

Microsoft CTV ads use millions of first-party data points and advanced tools to reach audiences.

This level of precise targeting supports campaigns that are more efficient and more impactful than traditional TV ads.

Advertisers can leverage the following targeting for their campaigns:

  • Demographics: Key demographic factors such as age, gender, etc.
  • Genre Targeting: Align ads with specific content genres like action, comedy, business, or sports.
  • In-Market Audiences: Users actively researching or planning to buy products or services similar to advertisers.
  • Similar Audiences: Expands reach by targeting people who exhibit behaviors and interests similar to those of the existing audience.
  • Customer Match: Advertisers use their own customer data (such as email lists) to match to known users on Microsoft and subsequently target ads to them.
  • Remarketing: Re-engage people who have interacted previously with the brand.

Note: Microsoft provides a real-time audience meter on the right side of the set-up page. This instant feedback indicates if the targeting becomes too narrow, warning the campaign cannot be saved.

screenshot of genre targeting in microsoft ctv adsScreenshot by author, October 2024

Ad Formats

Video ads are responsive, meaning their format adjusts automatically to fit the experience of the CTV streaming service or page where they appear. The placement of the CTV ads depends on both the video quality and bid.

Both online video ads and CTV ads can run on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. For outstream video campaigns, placements are available only on desktop and tablet.

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  • Online Video Ads: Play across devices within web content, including websites and apps, engaging users while they browse. They may appear in instream and outstream placements on the Microsoft Advertising Network. Instream placements include ads that appear while people stream media online.
  • Outstream-Only Video Ads: They appear outside of traditional video content, such as within articles or social feeds, and integrate naturally into page content.

Creating CTV ads is simple – just provide:

  1. A destination URL.
  2. The video to upload.

Also available are AI-generated “recommended videos” that pull text and images from your final URL to create a video ad using predefined templates.

screenshot showing CTV ad creation for Microsoft AdsScreenshot by author, October 2024

Bid Strategy

Microsoft Advertising uses cost-per-completed view (CPCV), optimizing bids based on the price the advertiser is willing to pay per completed video view.

With automated bidding, bids are adjusted automatically to meet performance goals. CPCV should typically range between $0.01 and $0.20. for CTV ads here.

screenshot of bidding on Microsoft CTV adsScreenshot by author, October 2024

Microsoft Results

According to Microsoft and Roku internal data, recent research shows that using CTV ads on the Microsoft Ads platform leads to some notable results.

Advertisers see an 18% increase in click-through rates for audience ads, along with a 9% lift in brand searches from users who were exposed to these ads.

Advertisers can access custom measurement solutions and brand lift studies at no extra cost while running these ads.

How To Target CTV With Microsoft – Step By Step

Microsoft Ads Standard Platform

Step-by-step selections:

  1. New campaign.
  2. Choose your goal: Brand awareness > Select a campaign type: Connected TV (CTV).
  3. Enter budget.
  4. Bid strategy: Cost per completed view (CPCV).
  5. Enter bid and frequency capping > Enter locations.
  6. Netflix terms and conditions: Includes video quality and other restrictions.
  7. Enter age, if applicable > Enter gender, if applicable.
  8. Select audiences.
  9. Genre, if applicable.
  10. Enter ad schedule.
  11. Ad: Add videos and the Final URL
  12. Save!

Top Takeaways

Integrating CTV ads into digital strategy is an effective way to grow reach and enhance overall performance, all with simpler ad management than ever before.

Today, we takeaway:

  • Simplified Management: CTV ads can be managed within the same platform as search PPC ads, streamlining campaigns and reducing costs.
  • Enhanced Audience Targeting: Ads provide precise targeting for reaching engaged viewers across streaming platforms, making ads more relevant and impactful.
  • Growing Opportunity: With the shift toward streaming services, CTV ads are a valuable way to reach cord-cutters and expand the campaign’s reach.

More resources: 


Featured Image: vectorfusionart/Shutterstock

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How to Revive an Old Blog Article for SEO

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Step-by-Step: How to Optimize Old Blog Posts for SEO

Quick question: What do you typically do with your old blog posts? Most likely, the answer is: Not much.

If that’s the case, you’re not alone. Many of us in SEO and content marketing tend to focus on continuously creating new content, rather than leveraging our existing blog posts.

However, here’s the reality—Google is becoming increasingly sophisticated in evaluating content quality, and we need to adapt accordingly. Just as it’s easier to encourage existing customers to make repeat purchases, updating old content on your website is a more efficient and sustainable strategy in the long run.

Ways to Optimize Older Content 

Some of your old content might not be optimized for SEO very well, rank for irrelevant keywords, or drive no traffic at all. If the quality is still decent, however, you should be able to optimize it properly with little effort. 

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Refresh Content 

If your blog post contains a specific year or mentions current events, it may become outdated over time. If the rest of the content is still relevant (like if it’s targeting an evergreen topic), simply updating the date might be all you need to do.

Rewrite Old Blog Posts 

When the content quality is low (you might have greatly improved your writing skills since you’ve written the post) but the potential is still there, there’s not much you can do apart from rewriting an old blog post completely. 

This is not a waste—you’re saving time on brainstorming since the basic structure is already in place. Now, focus on improving the quality.

Delete Old Blog Posts 

You might find a blog post that just seems unusable. Should you delete your old content? It depends. If it’s completely outdated, of low quality, and irrelevant to any valuable keywords for your website, it’s better to remove it. 

Once you decide to delete the post, don’t forget to set up a 301 redirect to a related post or page, or to your homepage.

Promote Old Blog Posts 

Sometimes all your content needs is a bit of promotion to start ranking and getting traffic again. Share it on your social media, link to it from a new post – do something to get it discoverable again to your audience. This can give it the boost it needs to attract organic links too.

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Which Blog Posts Should You Update?

Deciding when to update or rewrite blog posts is a decision that relies on one important thing: a content audit. 

Use your Google Analytics to find out which blog posts used to drive tons of traffic, but no longer have the same reach. You can also use Google Search Console to find out which of your blog posts have lost visibility in comparison to previous months. I have a guide on website analysis using Google Analytics and Google Search Console you can follow.

If you use keyword tracking tools like SE Ranking, you can also use the data it provides to come up with a list of blog posts that have dropped in the rankings. 

Make data-driven decisions to identify which blog posts would benefit from these updates – i.e., which ones still have the chance to recover their keyword rankings and organic traffic. 

With Google’s helpful content update, which emphasizes better user experiences, it’s crucial to ensure your content remains relevant, valuable, and up-to-date.

How To Update Old Blog Posts for SEO

Updating articles can be an involved process. Here are some tips and tactics to help you get it right.

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Author’s Note: I have a Comprehensive On-Page SEO Checklist you might also be interested in following while you’re doing your content audit.

Conduct New Keyword Research

Updating your post without any guide won’t get you far. Always do your keyword research to understand how users are searching for your given topic. 

Proper research can also show you relevant questions and sections that can be added to the blog post you’re updating or rewriting. Make sure to take a look at the People Also Ask (PAA) section that shows up when you search for your target keyword. Check out other websites like Answer The Public, Reddit, and Quora to see what users are looking for too. 

Look for New Ranking Opportunities

When trying to revive an old blog post for SEO, keep an eye out for new SEO opportunities (e.g., AI Overview, featured snippets, and related search terms) that didn’t exist when you first wrote your blog post. Some of these features can be targeted by the new content you will add to your post, if you write with the aim to be eligible for it. 

Rewrite Headlines and Meta Tags

If you want to attract new readers, consider updating your headlines and meta tags. 

Your headlines and meta tags should fulfill these three things:

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  1. Reflect the rewritten and new content you’ve added to the blog post.
  2. Be optimized for the new keywords it’s targeting (if any).
  3. Appeal to your target audience – who may have changed tastes from when the blog post was originally made. 

Remember that your meta tags in particular act like a brief advertisement for your blog post, since this is what the user first sees when your blog post is shown in the search results page. 

Take a look at your blog post’s click-through rate on Google Search Console – if it falls below 2%, it’s definitely time for new meta tags. 

Replace Outdated Information and Statistics

Updating blog content with current studies and statistics enhances the relevance and credibility of your post. By providing up-to-date information, you help your audience make better, well-informed decisions, while also showing that your content is trustworthy.

Tighten or Expand Ideas

Your old content might be too short to provide real value to users – or you might have rambled on and on in your post. It’s important to evaluate whether you need to make your content more concise, or if you need to elaborate more. 

Keep the following tips in mind as you refine your blog post’s ideas:

  • Evaluate Helpfulness: Measure how well your content addresses your readers’ pain points. Aim to follow the E-E-A-T model (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).
  • Identify Missing Context: Consider whether your content needs more detail or clarification. View it from your audience’s perspective and ask if the information is complete, or if more information is needed.
  • Interview Experts: Speak with industry experts or thought leaders to get fresh insights. This will help support your writing, and provide unique points that enhance the value of your content.
  • Use Better Examples: Examples help simplify complex concepts. Add new examples or improve existing ones to strengthen your points.
  • Add New Sections if Needed: If your content lacks depth or misses a key point, add new sections to cover these areas more thoroughly.
  • Remove Fluff: Every sentence should contribute to the overall narrative. Eliminate unnecessary content to make your post more concise.
  • Revise Listicles: Update listicle items based on SEO recommendations and content quality. Add or remove headings to stay competitive with higher-ranking posts.

Improve Visuals and Other Media

No doubt that there are tons of old graphics and photos in your blog posts that can be improved with the tools we have today. Make sure all of the visuals used in your content are appealing and high quality. 

Update Internal and External Links

Are your internal and external links up to date? They need to be for your SEO and user experience. Outdated links can lead to broken pages or irrelevant content, frustrating readers and hurting your site’s performance.

You need to check for any broken links on your old blog posts, and update them ASAP. Updating your old blog posts can also lead to new opportunities to link internally to other blog posts and pages, which may not have been available when the post was originally published.

Optimize for Conversions

When updating content, the ultimate goal is often to increase conversions. However, your conversion goals may have changed over the years. 

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So here’s what you need to check in your updated blog post. First, does the call-to-action (CTA) still link to the products or services you want to promote? If not, update it to direct readers to the current solution or offer.

Second, consider where you can use different conversion strategies. Don’t just add a CTA at the end of the post. 

Last, make sure that the blog post leverages product-led content. It’s going to help you mention your products and services in a way that feels natural, without being too pushy. Being subtle can be a high ROI tactic for updated posts.

Key Takeaway

Reviving old blog articles for SEO is a powerful strategy that can breathe new life into your content and boost your website’s visibility. Instead of solely focusing on creating new posts, taking the time to refresh existing content can yield impressive results, both in terms of traffic and conversions. 

By implementing these strategies, you can transform old blog posts into valuable resources that attract new readers and retain existing ones. So, roll up your sleeves, dive into your archives, and start updating your content today—your audience and search rankings will thank you!

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How Compression Can Be Used To Detect Low Quality Pages

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Compression can be used by search engines to detect low-quality pages. Although not widely known, it's useful foundational knowledge for SEO.

The concept of Compressibility as a quality signal is not widely known, but SEOs should be aware of it. Search engines can use web page compressibility to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords, making it useful knowledge for SEO.

Although the following research paper demonstrates a successful use of on-page features for detecting spam, the deliberate lack of transparency by search engines makes it difficult to say with certainty if search engines are applying this or similar techniques.

What Is Compressibility?

In computing, compressibility refers to how much a file (data) can be reduced in size while retaining essential information, typically to maximize storage space or to allow more data to be transmitted over the Internet.

TL/DR Of Compression

Compression replaces repeated words and phrases with shorter references, reducing the file size by significant margins. Search engines typically compress indexed web pages to maximize storage space, reduce bandwidth, and improve retrieval speed, among other reasons.

This is a simplified explanation of how compression works:

  • Identify Patterns:
    A compression algorithm scans the text to find repeated words, patterns and phrases
  • Shorter Codes Take Up Less Space:
    The codes and symbols use less storage space then the original words and phrases, which results in a smaller file size.
  • Shorter References Use Less Bits:
    The “code” that essentially symbolizes the replaced words and phrases uses less data than the originals.

A bonus effect of using compression is that it can also be used to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords.

Research Paper About Detecting Spam

This research paper is significant because it was authored by distinguished computer scientists known for breakthroughs in AI, distributed computing, information retrieval, and other fields.

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Marc Najork

One of the co-authors of the research paper is Marc Najork, a prominent research scientist who currently holds the title of Distinguished Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. He’s a co-author of the papers for TW-BERT, has contributed research for increasing the accuracy of using implicit user feedback like clicks, and worked on creating improved AI-based information retrieval (DSI++: Updating Transformer Memory with New Documents), among many other major breakthroughs in information retrieval.

Dennis Fetterly

Another of the co-authors is Dennis Fetterly, currently a software engineer at Google. He is listed as a co-inventor in a patent for a ranking algorithm that uses links, and is known for his research in distributed computing and information retrieval.

Those are just two of the distinguished researchers listed as co-authors of the 2006 Microsoft research paper about identifying spam through on-page content features. Among the several on-page content features the research paper analyzes is compressibility, which they discovered can be used as a classifier for indicating that a web page is spammy.

Detecting Spam Web Pages Through Content Analysis

Although the research paper was authored in 2006, its findings remain relevant to today.

Then, as now, people attempted to rank hundreds or thousands of location-based web pages that were essentially duplicate content aside from city, region, or state names. Then, as now, SEOs often created web pages for search engines by excessively repeating keywords within titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal anchor text, and within the content to improve rankings.

Section 4.6 of the research paper explains:

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“Some search engines give higher weight to pages containing the query keywords several times. For example, for a given query term, a page that contains it ten times may be higher ranked than a page that contains it only once. To take advantage of such engines, some spam pages replicate their content several times in an attempt to rank higher.”

The research paper explains that search engines compress web pages and use the compressed version to reference the original web page. They note that excessive amounts of redundant words results in a higher level of compressibility. So they set about testing if there’s a correlation between a high level of compressibility and spam.

They write:

“Our approach in this section to locating redundant content within a page is to compress the page; to save space and disk time, search engines often compress web pages after indexing them, but before adding them to a page cache.

…We measure the redundancy of web pages by the compression ratio, the size of the uncompressed page divided by the size of the compressed page. We used GZIP …to compress pages, a fast and effective compression algorithm.”

High Compressibility Correlates To Spam

The results of the research showed that web pages with at least a compression ratio of 4.0 tended to be low quality web pages, spam. However, the highest rates of compressibility became less consistent because there were fewer data points, making it harder to interpret.

Figure 9: Prevalence of spam relative to compressibility of page.

The researchers concluded:

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“70% of all sampled pages with a compression ratio of at least 4.0 were judged to be spam.”

But they also discovered that using the compression ratio by itself still resulted in false positives, where non-spam pages were incorrectly identified as spam:

“The compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6 fared best, correctly identifying 660 (27.9%) of the spam pages in our collection, while misidentifying 2, 068 (12.0%) of all judged pages.

Using all of the aforementioned features, the classification accuracy after the ten-fold cross validation process is encouraging:

95.4% of our judged pages were classified correctly, while 4.6% were classified incorrectly.

More specifically, for the spam class 1, 940 out of the 2, 364 pages, were classified correctly. For the non-spam class, 14, 440 out of the 14,804 pages were classified correctly. Consequently, 788 pages were classified incorrectly.”

The next section describes an interesting discovery about how to increase the accuracy of using on-page signals for identifying spam.

Insight Into Quality Rankings

The research paper examined multiple on-page signals, including compressibility. They discovered that each individual signal (classifier) was able to find some spam but that relying on any one signal on its own resulted in flagging non-spam pages for spam, which are commonly referred to as false positive.

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The researchers made an important discovery that everyone interested in SEO should know, which is that using multiple classifiers increased the accuracy of detecting spam and decreased the likelihood of false positives. Just as important, the compressibility signal only identifies one kind of spam but not the full range of spam.

The takeaway is that compressibility is a good way to identify one kind of spam but there are other kinds of spam that aren’t caught with this one signal. Other kinds of spam were not caught with the compressibility signal.

This is the part that every SEO and publisher should be aware of:

“In the previous section, we presented a number of heuristics for assaying spam web pages. That is, we measured several characteristics of web pages, and found ranges of those characteristics which correlated with a page being spam. Nevertheless, when used individually, no technique uncovers most of the spam in our data set without flagging many non-spam pages as spam.

For example, considering the compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6, one of our most promising methods, the average probability of spam for ratios of 4.2 and higher is 72%. But only about 1.5% of all pages fall in this range. This number is far below the 13.8% of spam pages that we identified in our data set.”

So, even though compressibility was one of the better signals for identifying spam, it still was unable to uncover the full range of spam within the dataset the researchers used to test the signals.

Combining Multiple Signals

The above results indicated that individual signals of low quality are less accurate. So they tested using multiple signals. What they discovered was that combining multiple on-page signals for detecting spam resulted in a better accuracy rate with less pages misclassified as spam.

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The researchers explained that they tested the use of multiple signals:

“One way of combining our heuristic methods is to view the spam detection problem as a classification problem. In this case, we want to create a classification model (or classifier) which, given a web page, will use the page’s features jointly in order to (correctly, we hope) classify it in one of two classes: spam and non-spam.”

These are their conclusions about using multiple signals:

“We have studied various aspects of content-based spam on the web using a real-world data set from the MSNSearch crawler. We have presented a number of heuristic methods for detecting content based spam. Some of our spam detection methods are more effective than others, however when used in isolation our methods may not identify all of the spam pages. For this reason, we combined our spam-detection methods to create a highly accurate C4.5 classifier. Our classifier can correctly identify 86.2% of all spam pages, while flagging very few legitimate pages as spam.”

Key Insight:

Misidentifying “very few legitimate pages as spam” was a significant breakthrough. The important insight that everyone involved with SEO should take away from this is that one signal by itself can result in false positives. Using multiple signals increases the accuracy.

What this means is that SEO tests of isolated ranking or quality signals will not yield reliable results that can be trusted for making strategy or business decisions.

Takeaways

We don’t know for certain if compressibility is used at the search engines but it’s an easy to use signal that combined with others could be used to catch simple kinds of spam like thousands of city name doorway pages with similar content. Yet even if the search engines don’t use this signal, it does show how easy it is to catch that kind of search engine manipulation and that it’s something search engines are well able to handle today.

Here are the key points of this article to keep in mind:

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  • Doorway pages with duplicate content is easy to catch because they compress at a higher ratio than normal web pages.
  • Groups of web pages with a compression ratio above 4.0 were predominantly spam.
  • Negative quality signals used by themselves to catch spam can lead to false positives.
  • In this particular test, they discovered that on-page negative quality signals only catch specific types of spam.
  • When used alone, the compressibility signal only catches redundancy-type spam, fails to detect other forms of spam, and leads to false positives.
  • Combing quality signals improves spam detection accuracy and reduces false positives.
  • Search engines today have a higher accuracy of spam detection with the use of AI like Spam Brain.

Read the research paper, which is linked from the Google Scholar page of Marc Najork:

Detecting spam web pages through content analysis

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New Google Trends SEO Documentation

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Google publishes new documentation for how to use Google Trends for search marketing

Google Search Central published new documentation on Google Trends, explaining how to use it for search marketing. This guide serves as an easy to understand introduction for newcomers and a helpful refresher for experienced search marketers and publishers.

The new guide has six sections:

  1. About Google Trends
  2. Tutorial on monitoring trends
  3. How to do keyword research with the tool
  4. How to prioritize content with Trends data
  5. How to use Google Trends for competitor research
  6. How to use Google Trends for analyzing brand awareness and sentiment

The section about monitoring trends advises there are two kinds of rising trends, general and specific trends, which can be useful for developing content to publish on a site.

Using the Explore tool, you can leave the search box empty and view the current rising trends worldwide or use a drop down menu to focus on trends in a specific country. Users can further filter rising trends by time periods, categories and the type of search. The results show rising trends by topic and by keywords.

To search for specific trends users just need to enter the specific queries and then filter them by country, time, categories and type of search.

The section called Content Calendar describes how to use Google Trends to understand which content topics to prioritize.

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Google explains:

“Google Trends can be helpful not only to get ideas on what to write, but also to prioritize when to publish it. To help you better prioritize which topics to focus on, try to find seasonal trends in the data. With that information, you can plan ahead to have high quality content available on your site a little before people are searching for it, so that when they do, your content is ready for them.”

Read the new Google Trends documentation:

Get started with Google Trends

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