SEO basics: what are ranking signals?

Announcing the Analytics Tour

Our search for the next Analytics Idol is starting a little early this year! If you’ve attended Adobe Summit over the past few years, you might have witnessed this fun, fast-paced, and informative session where Adobe Analytics users help their peers become rockstars by sharing their top tips and tricks. Rather than wait until 2018 in Vegas, we want to get these stars on stage as a part of our inaugural Analytics Rockstar Tour! And don’t worry, if you’re not interested in presenting, you can still join as an attendee here (no tickets or ticket fees)!

Here’s how budding rockstars can grace the stage: submit two tips through our online form and select which city on the tour you wish to attend. The tour is making stops in New York City (October 17), Chicago (October 19), and San Francisco (November 1). We’ll then curate the best tips for each city and help you prep your presentation for the event. After everyone has presented, the audience will vote live on the winner! The winner will receive bragging rights and a free pass to Summit 2018 where they will present in Las Vegas and hopefully get crowned Analytics Idol!

To be considered for the Analytics Rockstar Tour panel, you must submit your two best tips using the following online form. To give some context for the kinds of tips we’re looking for, I’ll share what each panelist presented at last year’s Analytics Idol session:

Brad Millett (Blast A&M)

• Use data from your Activity Map to automatically fill in gaps in data.
• Define and visualize your customer’s journey.

Hila Dahan (33 Sticks)

• Though difficult, connecting the disparate dots along a customer’s journey is vital.
• Democratize analytics data through an integration with Slack.

Rob Adams (W.W. Grainger)

• Attribute product recommendations to actual 1:1 revenue.
• Break out month-over-month data more fairly.

Prolet Miteva (Autodesk)

• Motivate your team to be passionate about data.
• Know the potential audience size you can target for personalization and testing.

David Bressler (Net Conversion)

• When event data is missing, use stats, page views, and correlation analysis to fill in gaps.
• Create a calculated metric that truly shows average page-load time.

Hopefully, these tips spark some potential ideas that you could submit. We’re looking for tips that would help your analytics peers uncover new and deeper insights or perform their daily tasks more efficiently or effectively. Ultimately, your judges will be the attendees in the audience as they will be given the opportunity to vote for their favorite tips live! If you’re debating whether your ideas pass muster, please submit them as you may underestimate how valuable they would be to others (they don’t have to be overly complicated or technical to be well-received).

Initially, we’ll be screening your tips by how innovative, practical, and valuable they are as well as how broadly they could be used by analysts at other companies in different industries. Participating in this session will be a great opportunity to come to Adobe Summit, establish your personal brand within the industry, and share your expertise with grateful peers.

All submissions need to be received by Wednesday, September 20, and we’ll reach out to all the applicants the following week with next steps.

The post Announcing the Analytics Tour appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/announcing-analytics-tour/

5 questions: Remkus de Vries – Forsite Media

Ask Yoast: Breadcrumbs for products in multiple categories

You’ve Got Mail: Email Marketing Is Here To Stay

The post You’ve Got Mail: Email Marketing Is Here To Stay appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/youve-got-mail-email-marketing-stay/

Adobe Target server-side optimization—well beyond a testing solution

Are you curious why many companies are increasingly using server-side optimization? Or are you already investigating it for your own testing and personalization program? Maybe you need to scale well beyond the web to optimize and personalize for the cross-channel experience of today’s customer and require a solution that scales to meet this need. Perhaps you’re taking advantage of advancements that open the door to server-side optimization—for example, newer JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, Backbone, and the popular node.js JavaScript runtime that allows you to deploy and run JavaScript both client- and server-side. You might even need to optimize components like search and pricing algorithms, or other back-end services that typically aren’t performed client-side.

If so, then this post is for you. In it, you’ll learn how client-side differs from server-side optimization with Adobe Target, when to use each approach, and what important questions to ask before diving into the world of server-side optimization. A big thanks to my colleague Ram Parthasarathy, Product Manager for Adobe Target, for providing his technical expertise to assist in explaining the many technical aspects discussed in this post.

Client- and server-side optimization in Adobe Target
Looking at the workflow diagram below for optimization with Adobe Target, you quickly see that the key difference between the client- and server-side methodologies is simply the device that communicates with Adobe Target. In client-side optimization, the client device, such as a mobile phone, laptop, or desktop computer, originates the call. These devices typically use at.js, the JavaScript library of Adobe Target, on the browser or one of Adobe’s native mobile SDKs to tell Adobe Target, “Hey, we have a visitor,” and ask it, “What personalized experience should this visitor get?”

In server-side optimization, your server originates the call to Target. Your developers deploy the Adobe Target delivery API in their code so that your server makes a request to Adobe Target when you have a visitor. Your developers can also take advantage of the Adobe Target node.js SDK to easily implement and run server-side tests on node.js applications.

Figure 1. Testing workflow comparison between client- and server-side optimization

Whether the call originates from the client device or your server, Adobe Target uses a single cross-channel visitor profile to determine and deliver your visitor the best personalized offer, content, or experience. This profile can come from Adobe Target, other solutions in the Adobe Experience Cloud, or your own data. If you have Adobe Analytics or Adobe Audience Manager, you can use pre-defined segments from Analytics or additional visitor profile data from Audience Manager to personalize more deeply—for example, by building personalization rules based on the visitor cookies and CRM data that you’ve imported into Adobe Audience Manager.

In addition, because Adobe Experience Cloud shares the visitor profile across all your channels, a visitor’s behavior in an A/B test can feed into and power your other personalized activities, such as Automated Personalization and Recommendations. And no matter what channel or device your visitors use to connect with your brand, that visitor profile also ensures they receive the best possible experience every time.

In each test or personalization activity, Adobe Target decides and delivers in a single server call back to the client or server, the resulting offer, content, or experience from the hundreds or thousands of possible variations. This architecture allows both client- and server-side optimization to personalize at scale and operate together seamlessly. No matter how many activities you run, the payload is always small and delivered in a single call. The Adobe Target architecture and infrastructure offer many advantages; to learn more about them, consider reading this article by Daniel Sheinberg, Senior Director of Product Management for Adobe Target.

So which is best for you — client- or server-side?
Which option you choose really depends on your specific business needs and priorities, depth of technical expertise, and available resources. Each option has benefits.

With client-side optimization, you can more quickly and easily set up tests. The three-step work flow and marketer-friendly user interface of Adobe Target makes it incredibly easy to create A/B tests and set up rules-based targeting. You can also easily tap into the many automation capabilities Target offers like the one-click personalization of Auto-Target that lets you personalize content, the user interface, the user experience, and more. Target lets you do this without relying on developers for coding or having to coordinate testing activities with release cycles.

In comparison, server-side optimization offers development teams greater flexibility as a result of its server-to-server communication, provides full control over the personalization process, and often supports compliance with corporate security policies. Server-side optimization can also be deployed on devices that lack a JavaScript-based browser, such as smart TVs, game consoles, set top boxes, kiosks, call centers, or any other IoT devices. In short, server-side optimization allows development teams to have full control over what, when, and where to optimize and personalize.

Fortunately, with Adobe Target, you don’t have to choose—you can use either where it makes the most sense. For example, you can run a client-side A/B test on the hero image, experience targeting for a promotional banner, and product or content recommendations based on what others also viewed. At the same time, you could run a server-side test to discover which of several different search algorithms is most effective. Adobe Target gives you the best of both worlds.

Adobe Target—a complete server-side optimization solution
By now, you can see that server-side optimization with Adobe Target is far more than a basic server-side testing option. Any activity types that you can run client-side, you can also run server-side—A/B testing, multivariate testing, experience targeting, automated personalization, recommendations, and all automation capabilities powered by Adobe Sensei. Finally, your visitor behavior, whether in a client- or server-side optimization, can be stored in a visitor profile in real time to power any further personalization or optimization activities, regardless of if they’re run client- or server-side.

Important questions to ask before diving into server side optimization
Ready to dive into server-side optimization? Before you do, consider these key questions:

1. Do you have engineers dedicated to optimization and personalization efforts? Server-side optimization usually requires developer involvement, while non-technical users, such as digital marketers can implement client-side tests.
2. Do you want to operate using both client- and server-side? You’ll probably need both, so make sure your solution can run both client- and server-side activities simultaneously.
3. Do you know how you will measure your activities? Most digital analytics solutions work entirely in a client-side mode—make sure that the way your solution integrates with your analytics solution doesn’t result in data discrepancies.
4. Can your solution support cross-channel personalization at scale? Your optimization solution should be able to tie visitor profile data across all your client-and server-side tests in real time, even if you are running hundreds of tests.
5. Does your solution make the decision on the client or the server? Making content and experience decisions on the server is extremely important—it reduces the payload transferred between the servers and end-user devices, improves performance, and protects all your test content and audience data from exposure.

If you feel good about your answers, then you’re ready to try out server-side optimization. So go ahead—dive right in. Need more details about how to implement Adobe Target server side? Head on over to our developers hub.

The post Adobe Target server-side optimization—well beyond a testing solution appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/personalization/adobe-target-server-side-optimization-well-beyond-testing-solution/

Collaborate to Eliminate Organizational Silos

In my first of four articles about technology silos, inspired by work with my colleague Linda Reed, I brought up the three key building block activities you can do. Today, we’re going to talk about the first, Collaboration.

One of my favorite movies from 2016 was Hidden Figures, a beautiful film telling the story of the incredible women who were key to NASA successes in the 60s. These were African-American women working in this industry at the height of the anti-segregation tension during the Civil Rights Movement. Against all their external and internal pressures, these women nobly pushed through their challenges to achieve great success for their company, and in our country’s space race. And one of the key ways they accomplished this was by collaborating extremely well.

Collaboration is working in concert with one another to create a healthier, more efficient, more intelligent workplace that becomes vastly more successful and customer-centric.

In principle, collaborating sounds easy, but it can be quite difficult. There can, at times, be too many cooks in the kitchen that can cause all kinds of communication and time-wasting problems (leading to paralysis by analysis). The last thing you want do is collaborate for weeks and gain little-to-no momentum. This poisons the well against collaboration. But it’s not because of collaboration — it’s collaboration poorly done.

To collaborate well, you need to have agreed upon a plan with small, attainable expectations that imbues belief in your team, and encourages future collaboration.

For me and my team, we create this culture of collaboration in four key ways:
● Adopt a shared mission and goals.
● Motivate externally, and honor internal motivation.
● Coordinate regularly.
● Utilize team workout sessions.

Adopt a Shared Mission and Goals.
If you don’t clearly identify what your mission is, and what you’re shooting for, your team members will eventually be moving in slightly deviating directions. Over time, the distance between individuals increases, over and over, until you have people moving in independently subjective directions.

Having a shared mission helps you be on the same page, institutes accountability, and frees you to put the customer first as you work toward business success.

Motivate Externally, and Honor Internal Motivation.
Your people are motivated. That’s why they’re working with you. You can motivate them by helping them lean into the things they’re passionate about. Give them a voice. Allow them to help in ways appropriate to what they’ve earned. But also, hear their voice and consider their suggestions, regardless of their status. Also, when there are individual team wins, you should celebrate them together. Allow team members to share their successes and lessons they’ve learned, so your team can grow, and so you can corporately honor those people.

But besides tending to your team members’ internal motivations, you can motivate them externally. Challenge them. Stretch them. Give them goals they can obtain, and reward them for that work. Internal motivation is strong, but a mixture of internal and external motivation is unbelievably strong.

Coordinate Regularly.
It should be known that your team will regularly be updating one another with what’s going on. That includes emails/calls/texts/messages at all times, sure, but it also includes having planned meetings that your team can rely upon — weekly cross-team meetings to share results, marketing strategies, lessons learned, etc. This eliminates the need for them to worry about being out of the loop, and it works to reinforce your shared goals and mission. Your team will subconsciously trust that nothing is going to sneak up on them, and if something does, that you’ll be in their corner, and will be there for them.

In addition to holding those meetings, and encouraging increased dialogue, you can create other notable alignments, like a central calendar of campaign activities that tracks and measures results.

Coordinating also includes removing physical barriers between people — walls, geography, etc. It can even mean removing the barriers between teams — often email is run by the marketing team, mobile is run by an agency, social by another department, and so on. By physically bringing them together, you allow them to interact more frequently, and with increasing acumen.

Workout Sessions.
Your people are talented. Give them the reigns to solve problems together. If you can build their ability to help solve problems into your culture, they’ll be empowered. With our teams, we bring in people from different departments to solve complex issues.

For example, if I wanted to improve customer loyalty I would invite folks from sales, marketing, service, finance, program managers, etc. to participate in a workout session — in the style of Jack Welch, or design thinking. These sessions would last two days, and everyone would brainstorm. At the end of the two days, a consensus would be reached, decisions would be made, and then a plan would be created. The key is to focus on a critical business issue that needs to be resolved, identify stakeholders who can contribute, and find a senior executive who has sufficient clout to make real-time decisions. It is intense, but a great way to promote collaboration!

When we collaborate better, our teams operate more efficiently and we do better work, which drives productivity through the roof. What’s more, people will be happier — more empowered, and feeling safer and more cared for, which is the key component that has secretly fueled business successes all along.

In the end, your team may not send people to space, but it might feel as if you had.

This is the second of four blogs in a series about getting rid of silos the right way. Check out the next one on Goal Alignment. If you’d like a jumpstart to that, you can listen to Bruce Swann and Linda Reed’s talk from the Adobe Summit this past summer.

The post Collaborate to Eliminate Organizational Silos appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/campaign-management/collaborate-eliminate-organizational-silos/