Articles about search marketing

Tweet from @GregAbbott_TX, March 2, 2021 at 2:24 p.m.

No. This is the worst decision that could be made for where we’re located. Not one day before this, Houston, our home, announced it’s the first major U.S. city to record all known strains of COVID-19. These variants from the UK, South Africa, and Brazil spread more easily. Further, the research is still out regarding whether the available vaccines are as effective against these variants.

Chow-Bryant’s Continuing Virus Response

In light of these facts, our plans have not changed. At Chow-Bryant, we will continue to put our health and the health of our clients first by:

  • Following CDC and WHO guidelines
  • Limiting our exposure to the virus by operating remotely and avoiding in-person events and meetings
  • Using masks until 80% of the population (considered the threshold for herd immunity) has been vaccinated
  • Maintaining excellent notes on all client accounts and activities so that, should one of us fall ill, business continues as usual

We are as hopeful as everyone else that life can go back to normal soon. As a company that bases its decisions on facts and evidence, though, we are unwilling to potentially expose anyone to a deadly virus. One of our founders has already had several family members fall ill, and, further, lost someone last year to COVID-19. The speed at which a case can become severe or even deadly is extremely troubling. We urge everyone to exercise caution. As Dr. Fauci said at this time last year, “If you think you’re overreacting, you’re probably doing the right thing.”

negative keyword list of covid-19 terms

Every PPC Manager Must Filter Out Covid-19 Keywords

So you’re a PPC manager, you’re sheltered in place, you can work from home, and you want to help in the race to flatten the curve. FILTER YOUR GOOGLE ADS CAMPAIGNS FOR CORONAVIRUS-RELATED TERMS. This is a small thing on an individual level, but in aggregate this can make a huge change in the auctions for people who desperately need it. If you want to know why this will help, otherwise check out the list of suggested negative pandemic keywords.

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Equifax Logo

Over the past decade, digital marketing pushed brands towards increasingly aggressive tactics. One such tactic was automatic opt-in. I used to just see these opt-ins for newsletters, but, more recently, I’m seeing this used for sales and add-ons. I assume these marketers want to get more active users, a more engaged audience, and more sales. But in my experience the ends don’t justify the means–in fact, this method isn’t even that effective. In 2017, marketers need to ask, “Is an automatic opt-in the best tactic for my clients?”

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hurricane harvey

We just completed our hurricane prep checklist. Our equipment and data is secure. As we find ourselves in the path of an approaching hurricane, we want to take a moment to inform you about our proactive measures to ensure everyone’s safety. As a result, we will be temporarily closing our business to prepare for the impending storm.

Just so you know, over the next 6 days, it is very likely Houston will flood. Hopefully, it won’t be anything too serious, but we have to prepare for the worst. During this time, Chow-Bryant recommends reaching us by email or social media. We will respond as quickly as the situation allows.

The decision to close our business temporarily was not made lightly. We understand the inconveniences this may cause, but your safety is our top priority. By taking this step, we are ensuring that our team members can focus on securing their homes and families while also enabling our customers and partners to take necessary precautions. Once the storm has passed and it is safe to do so, we will assess the situation and make a decision about reopening based on local authorities’ guidance and the overall safety of our team and community.

We appreciate your understanding and cooperation during this temporary closure. Your safety is at the forefront of our minds as we navigate through this challenging situation. Our thoughts are with all those who may be affected by the hurricane, and we look forward to serving you again once it is safe to do so. Please stay safe, follow local authorities’ instructions, and take all necessary precautions to protect yourselves and your loved ones.

The Digital Estate

Internet security has been a hot news topic over the past few months. A cascade of software vulnerabilities, account breaches, and security flaws produced a steady stream disclosures, apologies, and a few PR disasters. As a result, most of us are more aware than ever of the need to keep every piece of our online presence secure.

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Schema Markup for Chow-Bryant

What is Schema Markup?

Schema markup is a form of structured data that helps search engines understand what’s on a webpage. This markup is a community effort to create a universal vocabulary of tags and categories for the internet. An example of Schema markup in action is the Google Knowledge Graph. These are the cards on the right-hand side of some Google searches. These cards provide more information about your search, and are a collection of structured data snippets from all over the internet.

Chow-Bryant Knowledge Graph - Schema Markup

Laser cat sees your Schema!

Here you can see a snippet of Chow-Bryant’s card in Google’s Knowledge Graph. Some of this information is fed into Google’s Knowledge Graph using Schema markup on our website. For instance, the footer on our site features Schema for a local business.

Other Forms of Structured Data

In a nutshell, Schema markup is very similar to the Open Graph Protocol and Twitter Card Data. The main difference is that Schema markup isn’t unique to a specific social media platform. Instead, Schema is primarily used by webmasters, app developers and search engines. In fact, Schema markup is supported by Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex.

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It’s 11:30 p.m. After several last-minute targeting changes, your Google Display Network campaign is almost ready. You’ve set the targeting, and you’ve segmented out everything that needs to be segmented (of which there was a lot). Now all that’s left is uploading the ads so that they will start running at midnight as planned. All that’s left is adding the creative into the AdWords interface.

OH GOD NO.

AdWords just rejected your ads.

Your HTML5 ad is missing a primary .HTML file. Primary .HTML files include an Ad Size tag such as <meta name=”ad.size” content=”width=300,height=250″>. Make sure there is an .HTML file with an ad size tag in your HTML5 ad, and try again.

Now what? You’ve got 30 minutes to fix this, and both your designer and your developer left town for Vegas about two hours ago.

Tick-tock, Clarice. Read more

Twitter Card Data

What is a Twitter Card?

When you share a link on Twitter, the link may automatically add an image, title, and description below your tweet. This information is called a Twitter Card, and it comes from some HTML tags on the webpage called a rich snippet. This markup lets site owners easily share additional information about their articles, images, videos, and even apps. Here’s an example of a Twitter Card for my article on The Cat Line. Read more

The internet is full of robots, and their ranks are growing exponentially. In 2015 roughly half of all internet traffic was bots, so it’s important to pay attention to how robots interact with your site. These robots are software that automatically browse the internet. The most common kind of robot crawls the internet and indexes content from search engines, but there are also bad bots, which harvest emails or search for sites that are weak against mass hacking attempts. Luckily, you can use a robots.txt file to communicate with all of these non-human netizens, and in some cases even give them instructions on how to use your site. Read more