The Stack is a weekly podcast where we share and discuss the latest trends, news, and content from the world of marketing, sales, and tech. In each episode, Sean, Tim, and Ryan sit down to chat about the hard-hitting questions related to sales, marketing, and tech. You can subscribe on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, and Google Play Music.
In this episode, we talk about how ecommerce sites can benefit from image search and Google’s addition of podcasts to SERP. We would love to hear your thoughts so make sure to comment or tweet us at @Sylvestrer1, @SeanHenri, and @Tendrecroppes or @PepperlandMKTG.
The Hidden Opportunity for Ecommerce Websites in Google Images
Raj Nijjer for Search Engine Journal
Tons of people use Google Image Search to get a better idea of a product they want to buy. Having high-def images of your products can create a positive connection between product and customer. Optimizing these images to be found in search results would take your ecommerce site to the next level. Google has slowly been implementing ways for websites to get more referral traffic from image searches. You can use product markup to include things like price, ratings, and a link back to your site.
“Ecommerce marketing professionals have a tremendous opportunity to create a new or improved channel for customer acquisition through Google Image Search”
Key Takeaways:
- Using descriptive file names and alt tags is the easiest way to show up in related searches. Make sure each image has a file name tailored to common customer searches.
- Make sure your images are properly sized and compressed. Google favors images that load fast.
- Help your customers discover your products by using Google Search Console, Merchant Center, and Manufacture Center.
Press play: Find and listen to podcast episodes on Search
Zack Reneau-Wedeen for The Keyword
Google announced last week that they will start to surface playable podcasts in search results. This addition to the SERP will give you another way to consume information on a specific topic. They also said that:
“We’ll surface these episodes based on Google’s understanding of what’s being talked about on a podcast, so you can find even more relevant information about a topic in audio form. Soon, you won’t necessarily need the term “podcast” in your search to see episodes, making podcast discovery simpler across Search.”
They will also be rolling out this functionality to Google Assistant. For example, if you ask Google to play podcasts about ‘marketing’ it will give you options of which podcasts to play. This information will be synced across all of your devices so you can always pick up where you stopped.
Key Takeaways:
- This push to get more audio in the SERP may indicate it’s time to jump on the podcasting train. This also means that people with podcasts need to step up their game. The once vacant landscape of podcasting will soon be saturated with every other competitor trying to benefit from podcasting.
App Of The Week: Infogram
Infogram is an online application that allows you to easily make interactive infographics. Depending on the type of plan you get, you can create branded graphics, reports, slides, dashboards, maps and more! If you want to see an example you can check out this chart I made showing the smartest people in the Pepperland Office. It may be a little biased.
Use cases:
- There are endless possibilities with this application. Any data can be turned into a fun and shareable infographic.
- Show off your skills during a presentation with an interactive graph or chart.
- Use this to convey the importance of an initiative you feel strongly about.
The Lightning Round: What We’re Reading This Week
In this section, we quickly run through some other updates that we didn’t have enough time to deep-dive on, but we still felt were noteworthy.
- When indexing goes wrong: how Google Search recovered from indexing issues & lessons learned since.
- Google Warns About Instagram Embeds & Indexing
- Prepare to say goodbye to average position in Google Ads on September 30
- Reservations, AR navigation coming to Google Maps
- Verizon agrees to sell Tumblr to owner of WordPress
- YouTube Updated its Algorithm in July, Upsetting Many Creators
Listen or watch for new episodes each Friday, or check out the archives to watch past episodes on-demand. Like what you hear? Leave us a review or let us know in the comments!
