It seems like Google never takes a break from changes and updates! Last month, Google celebrated two anniversaries and released some big updates and great new features to mark the occasions!

There were also some penalties thrown around just to even things out, but at least your Google Ads were safe from any changes and updates this past month. 

So, what exactly has been going on, will your rankings be OK, and who exactly may have been penalized? Read on to find out!

Google is cracking down on link building campaigns, particularly guest posting.

So, if you’ve received a penalty, it probably means that you’re working with a shady roofing marketing agency that’s either using outdated and bad tactics, or that’s not actively keeping up with industry changes.

Guest posting is still a good link building tactic, but it has to be done by an agency that knows what it’s doing.

When it comes to links to your websites, there have also been some important updates. If you remember, a few months ago, Google announced that it will change the way it evaluates links, which we mentioned here.

Now, it’s released the second part of the update, which rolled out on March 1, 2020. It will affect all webs with backlinks.

It’s still not known to what extent, but it is important to keep track and react accordingly to any changes in rankings. 

And now for some great news! You’ll love your iPhone’s Siri even more now! 

Google has now made it possible to conduct searches via your assistant Siri. With a simple voice command, Siri will now google any information you need.

And this is great news for all roofers that have Local Services Ads. Why? Because if the users are looking for a local roofer, Siri will get all the information from your Local Services Ads and get you right in front of your customers. 

Google Maps are also very important for local searches, if not the most important when it comes to your roofing business. And just recently, they celebrated their 15th birthday!  

To mark this big anniversary, Google refreshed the app with a new icon and some cool new features, such as Contribute. This feature allows users to share local knowledge about roads, addresses, missing places, business reviews, and photos.

While this may be great, there’s another side to it, too. Users can now report fake listings and increase Google’s crackdown on fake Google Maps even more than before. Just this past month, a ton of listings was already suspended.  

The second big anniversary at Google last month was 9 years since the Panda algorithm rolled out – one of the biggest and most important changes for web rankings and SEO.

To mark this occasion, there was yet another Google Maps-related update. 

Maps are becoming one of Google’s most profitable services, which is probably why they’ve been in the center of things lately. There are even rumors that it will become a paid service.

All in all, it’s becoming increasingly hard to rank there or open a listing, and with this new update, there were additional fluctuations in the rankings of local business listings on Google Maps.

For more information, check full articles:

• Google Penalties on Guest Post Articles
• Google Crawl and Indexing Update March 1, 2020
• Google Lets iPhone Users Conduct Searches With Siri
• Happy 15th birthday to Google Maps, the company’s second most important product
• Google Maps Updated With New Icon & New Features
• Google Posts being rejected because of non-compliance with image guidelines
• Google unleashed the Panda algorithm 9 years ago today
• Google Local Algorithm Update: February 14th Through Today

Even though most of the focus has been on Google and SEO this past month, there were also a few changes with Facebook Ads that need to be addressed as they may affect your roofing ad campaigns.

Facebook rolled out a new tool called “Clear History”, which does exactly what it says – allows users to clear the search history data that Facebook has stored.

If users choose to delete this data, it may affect your retargeting campaigns. The ads won’t be able to target those users based on their search history anymore.

At this moment, it’s hard to predict to what extent this will affect your campaigns because it will primarily depend on the users’ decision to clear their search history or not.

 For more information, check the full article: 

• Facebook Rolls Out “Clear History” Tool to All Users Worldwide

Now that you’re all caught up, let’s keep up the good work and continue to dominate together!

Just when you think everything is going smoothly and the new business year has started off without a hitch, Google comes in and decides to throw a major update at us!

And not only that, but it introduces a bunch of new features and changes, just to keep us occupied and on our toes.

But, as always, our team is on top of everything that’s going on, making the best of every update, and making sure YOU come out even stronger. Here’s what’s been going on. 

So, this core update that Google rolled out is pretty big – impacting all search results on a worldwide scale.

It affected roofers’ rankings both ways – some experienced drops, and some significant increases. 

This is exactly why it’s crucial to know the marketing game, to update and even predict what works and what doesn’t when it comes to SEO.

 Our roofers are living proof because not only did they come out without a scratch thanks to our SEO strategies, but their rankings skyrocketed! 😎 

 Check the photos below to see how strong the update was and the amazing results that our roofers experienced.

Google is now also bringing back Site Removal option to their Search Console, which is great news because now you’ll be able to remove any of your unwanted sites from the search results.

This will ultimately help you rank better.

Some helpful new features were also added to the Console. For example, you can request the removal of outdated content and track the status of the request.

And through SafeSearch Filtering, you can see which pages on your site have been reported as adult content and filtered out of safe search.

That’s it for the good news part, now let’s see some changes that didn’t really sit right with most of us. 

So, Google decided to update the look of paid and organic search results, adding favicons to the desktop version, basically causing a worldwide outrage.

It looked bad and too cluttered, everyone started complaining, so Google is now removing it and testing the old-new look.

A very important issue has come up here as well – and that’s how Google has been trying for a long time to make the paid ads less visible, pushing them front and center in order to make more money.

This is pretty obvious in the favicon example because with favicons,  paid results are basically indistinguishable from organic results.

This past month Google just kept hitting us with changes and updates, so to wrap things up, one final but equally significant change – web pages with featured snippets will no longer appear twice on page 1.

This basically means that if you win the featured snippet position, you hold the #1 position. 

So don’t be surprised if you can’t find your site in the search results – go back and check if you’re holding the featured snippet position.

And if that’s not the case, well, we’re very sorry…

For more information, check full articles: 

• Google January 2020 Core Update is Rolling Out Imminently
• Google Makes it Possible to Temporarily Remove Sites From Search Results
• Google Changes the Look of Paid and Organic Search Results on Desktop
• Google: Webpages with Featured Snippets Won’t Appear Twice on Page 1

From Google Ads, we bring only good news!

For the first time ever, bid simulator support will be available for smart bidding campaigns, too, and not just for manual bidding.

Now, you’ll be able to better understand and predict the performance and conversions of your campaign by comparing the targets and the key metrics.

The simulator can, for example, analyze data from the past 7 days and show you what would have happened with a higher target, for example.

With this data and predictions, you can then make adjustments and make your future campaigns even more cost-effective. 

For more information, check full articles: 

• Google Ads Introduces Bid Simulator Support for Smart Bidding

Facebook has, on the other hand, introduced some changes that will benefit the audience and the users more, as opposed to the advertisers (boo hoo).

Following this change, users will now be able to hide the ads that target them via Custom Audience, which, in turn, could potentially hurt your campaign performance.

For more information, check full articles: 

• Facebook will let users hide ads targeted via Custom Audience lists

Now that you’re all caught up, let’s keep up the good work and continue to dominate together!

The holiday madness is behind us and hopefully, you’ve had enough time to get some rest, relax, spend quality time with your family, and reboot.

Now it’s time to get busy again, so let’s take a look at what’s been going on in the industry lately.

Luckily, December was pretty calm, no big tremors to worry about. Google and Facebook were nice enough to let us enjoy the holidays in peace. 

They mostly released some improvements, with no bigger updates – they left the juicy stuff for January (which you can read about in our next Industry Update).

For now, let’s ease back into business with some light changes, good news, and a few presents from Facebook. Read on!

The holiday spirit made a stop at Facebook as well and left us some presents! Three new tools to help us analyze your campaign results more accurately so that you can eventually reach even more users!

With Cross-Account Reporting, you’ll now have all your data, from all the ad accounts in one place – no more time wasted on building the reports manually. 

You can now also create Custom Metrics and track any additional data or the data that interests you the most – and apply them to all of your reports.

And final present – Conversion Path Reporting, where you can track and analyze what your users did before making a purchase – i.e. which channels and devices they used. This is crucial in discovering the best ways to convert your users.

Now, after showering us with good news, Facebook also announced one that might be more on the bad side – just to even things out. 🙄

There is not much info yet, but Facebook is planning on limiting the number of ads that your page can run at the same time. We’ll keep an eye on this and see how it affects you once it’s fully rolled out.

For more information, check full articles:

• Facebook Introduces 3 New Ad Reporting Tools
• Facebook Will Implement Limits Ads Run in 2020

Those of you who managed to squeeze in some work during the holidays and went to check your Search Console may have been unpleasantly surprised. Was that a drop in clicks that you saw in December?! 

Don’t worry, we didn’t slack off, it was only a bug in the reporting!

And what better way for Google to apologize for this mishap than to make some additional improvements. 

So, in order to compensate for the inaccurate reporting data, Google updated its Search Console with the ability to report more accurately on indexed pages in the Index Coverage report.

And that’s not all! You will now also be getting fresher data for both the Search Performance and Discover data reports. They’ll be less than a day old.

For more information, check full articles: 

• Google Says Some Search Console Data For December Might Be Inaccurate
• Google Search Console Can More Accurately Report on Indexed Pages
• Google Search Console Reports Updated With Fresher Data

There were some good news with Google Ads as well!

We’ll now be able to spend less time trying to figure out why certain performance changes happened in your campaign because Google Ads will provide us with explanations. 

This means less time spent on diagnostics and more time spent on optimizing your ads, getting you more clicks and clients.

For more information, check full articles: 

• Google Ads to Explain Why Changes in Performance Occurred

Now that you’re all caught up, let’s keep up the good work and continue to dominate together!

If we can help you with something or you have any additional questions, feel free to contact us anytime!

What’s up roofers?

Did you know that Google has released a game-changing new option for targeting your potential clients with paid ads?

Read on to find out all about it and learn what other exciting changes happened lately.

Google Ads 

Google Ads has released an update that will allow you to target your potential clients more precisely than ever before! 

This new option is called Combined Audience Targeting and it is a real game-changer because, for the first time, it allows you to go into real detail when it comes to choosing who to show your ads to. 

But that’s not all!

Google Ads Editor has also been updated with some cool new features that will allow you to manage your campaigns more efficiently and maximize your budget.

New types of campaigns have also been added so it is now possible to run engagement and discovery campaigns.

For more information, check out full articles:

• Google Quietly Rolls Out Combined Audience Targeting for Search Campaigns
• Google Ads Editor Gets New Features & Support For New Campaign Types

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

It’s been a bit bumpy on Google Maps recently  due to the latest Google update. You, too, probably experienced some smaller or larger dips in terms of your Google Maps rankings. 

You can blame it all on neural matching! It’s a fancy word that essentially means Google can now better understand your potential customers’ queries and show you in search results more frequently.  

Anyway, if your website is properly optimized, your rankings should have recovered very quickly. If not, you know how they say…

In addition to that, Google also confirmed a few minor algorithm updates that have left some winners and some losers in terms of rankings and traffic.

There are also some good news from Google Maps! They’ve introduced a new option that will now allow businesses to add a custom list of their specific services.

This means that your customers will now find you and your roofing services more easily and you will get much more relevant Google Maps leads for the services you’re offering. 

Another good news is that Google has added a website speed report to their Search Console. 

This now makes it much easier to identify pages on your website that have speed performance issues so they can be addressed quickly.

Remember, speed is important! It is important for user experience and therefore affects your rankings.

For more information, check out full articles:

• Google confirms Nov. 2019 Local Search Update
• Google did several search algorithmic updates
• Google Search Console begins rolling out Speed report
• Google Lets Businesses Add a Custom List of Services to GMB Listings

Facebook Ads 

If you were wondering why you couldn’t access Facebook on November 28, it's not you!

Facebook has confirmed that there was a major outage on a global scale and it is looking into it.

Outage aside, there has also been some good news from Facebook! 

With the new dynamic ad features, you can now tailor your Facebook ads to your customers’ individual preferences.

This means that one ad can be shown in different formats to different users, based on their previous activity.  

For example, if a user prefers carousel ads, then that’s how you can choose to  serve them your ads! 

And it is not only the ad format that can be customized and tailored but also the headline, primary text, and description.

A great way to appeal to potential clients and get them to click on that ad!

For more information, check out full articles:

• Facebook and Instagram Go Down Across the World on Thanksgiving Day
• Facebook Can Now Deliver Ads That Are Dynamically Tailored to Each User

Now that you’re all caught up, let’s keep up the good work and continue to dominate together!