Category: Internet Marketing

The Cryptocurrency Market Is Constantly Buzzing, and It Can Be Hard to Keep Up

Home Business Magazine Online

The cryptocurrency market is constantly buzzing, and it can be difficult to keep abreast with the changes. Gagarin.News is a great source of information and provides up-to-date news, reviews, and analytics on the latest events in the crypto space. Whether you’re a seasoned crypto investor or just looking to tap into the field, Gagarin.News may be able to assist in the journey towards gaining cryptocurrency knowledge.

In recent news, the Bitcoin halving event has been a major topic of discussion. This is a significant event for the cryptocurrency community and has a notable impact on the market. The Bitcoin halving is expected to result in a decrease in the supply of Bitcoin, which could lead to an increase in the price of the cryptocurrency.

A new upgrade to the Ethereum platform is intended to improve the security and scalability of the network. Furthermore, DeFi is a new type of financial system that is built on top of blockchain technology. Gagarin.News provides up-to-date reviews, analysis, and news on the latest events regarding the Ethereum platform and DeFi. For instance, they have a great video on understanding the basics of DeFi, which can help you get up to speed on this exciting new technology. You’ll be sure to stay informed on the latest developments.

Whether you’re looking for information on the Bitcoin halving, Ethereum 2.0, or DeFi, Gagarin.News has you covered. In addition to news and analysis, Gagarin.News also provides helpful videos and tutorials on a wide range of topics. Veteran crypto investors and complete beginners may find Gagarin.News to be a great source of information. Make sure to check in at Gagarin.News for the latest updates on the crypto world. In a market that is highly competitive and constantly fluctuating, having this source of knowledge may give you that extra advantage needed to attain success.

The post The Cryptocurrency Market Is Constantly Buzzing, and It Can Be Hard to Keep Up appeared first on Home Business Magazine.

Original source: https://homebusinessmag.com/money/cryptocurrency/cryptocurrency-market-constantly-buzzing-keep-up/

World-Renowned Headliners Will Soon Take The Stage At Hangout Music Festival 2023

Home Business Magazine Online

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Imagine a perfectly warm summer day on the beach with all your closest friends. You have an ice-cold canned beverage in your hand, you’re watching some of your favorite artists performing live while standing in the soft and warm sand, all while ocean waves crash on the shore next to you. Sounds like a dream? Hangout Music Festival makes this a reality. Located oceanside in Gulf Shores Alabama, Hangout is the perfect opportunity for enthusiastic festival goers to kick off their summer of festivals in a music lover’s paradise. The festival will take place from Friday, May 19th to Sunday, May 21st. It is a must-attend festival to start your summer off on the right sandy foot.

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2023’s Hangout Music Festival lineup is sure to please a diverse audience of festival goers. Rock lovers will unite as Red Hot Chili Peppers fires up the beach to keep the energy going into the night, supported with energizing performances by COIN, Noah Kahan, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, and The Vegabounds. Pop-punk lovers will also be enthralled to see Paramore headline the festival with support by Mayday Parade and The Maine. And what would a beach-side festival be without some smooth indie sounds provided by The Backseat Lovers and AJR.

EDM-lovers will be electrified when headliners Skrillex and Flume light up the stage, and kept dancing in the sand through Calvin Harris, John Summit, REZZ, Dr. Fresch, Aluna, and HoneyLuv. Crowds can then enjoy a more relaxed atmosphere as Big Wild, Gryffin, Two Feet, Thundercat, and Said The Sky work their magic to chill the crowd down and hypnotize them with dreamy bass and perfectly-layered rhythm.

Hip-hop/rap enthusiasts looking for stimulating live performances can look forward to seeing The Kid LAROI take the main stage along with Lil Nas X and his unique spin on country rap. Glorilla, Kevin Gates, Yung Gravy, Mike., and RUSS will also provide energizing sets that keep the crowds jumping in the sand to the heavy beats.

Festival goers can also look forward to a swoon-worthy performance when SZA will perform her mega-popular SOS album hits that may or not make the crowd lose their voice. Other  must-see female artists include the TikTok-popular Ashnikko, Disney Channel-veteran Sabrina Carpenter, and the ever-confident and empowering Tove Lo.

The festival also provides a platform for emerging artists to showcase their musical talents, contributing to its reputation as a destination for discovering artists on the come up. Hangout Music Festival continues to be an exciting mix of various genres and musical acts that will have something everyone of all ages and backgrounds can enjoy!

Hangout Music Festival started in 2009 as a unique idea to combine the euphoria of live musical events with the “hang-loose” vibe of being at the beach. Its first festival in 2010 was a strong start with 15,000 attendees per day. Since then, the festival has nearly tripled in size to a whopping 40,000 attendees last year in 2022. This year promises to be no different in size, with the festival currently on the verge of selling out!

Beyond the music, Hangout offers an array of activities that create an unforgettable experience for attendees. From beachside hammock lounges to beach volleyball, to roller-skating, to various art installations across the festival grounds, the festival provides an immersive and vibrant atmosphere unique to its beach-side location that sets it apart from other events. There won’t be a dull moment on the beach, as there are a wide variety of activities, photo opportunities, places to rest and recharge, as well as a plethora of food and beverage vendors.

Hangout offers a great way to connect sponsors and on-site vendors with a diverse market of potential consumers. Sponsors and vendors of the festival can market their brands and products using their unique booths, samples, games, and other unique onsite activations to allow the festivalgoers to try out their product. They have the opportunity to create a memorable experience for the consumer that will positively reflect the brand and generate repeat customers.

Hangout Music Festival has also made significant contributions to the local economy by generating revenue for local businesses in the area and creating job opportunities for the surrounding communities. The festival provides over $700,000 from taxes to the city of Gulf Shores and tens of millions of dollars to the local economy. Beyond that, the festival provides approximately 600 jobs to local companies, product vendors, event staff, and support personal. Outside the festival grounds, the local Gulf Shores community significantly benefits from the influx of tourists, with hotel reservations and condo rentals booked up throughout the festival week, local restaurants and bars seeing increased patron activity, and transportation services receiving a major boost in clientele. The festival provides a positive economic impact both within and outside the festival boundary.

The Hangout Music Festival is the trifecta of music festivals with a diverse and exciting lineup, a beautiful beachside location, and a uniquely vibrant atmosphere to allow everyone to stay energized throughout the whole experience and have an unforgettable weekend. This is the perfect festival to kick off the exceptional 2023 music festival season. Their tickets are selling quick, so don’t “hang loose” waiting to snag one of the few tickets left. Home Business Magazine will be attending this year’s Hangout Music Festival and will provide an in-depth look at the top must-see performances, all of the brand sponsors, and more. Stay tuned!

 

The post World-Renowned Headliners Will Soon Take The Stage At Hangout Music Festival 2023 appeared first on Home Business Magazine.

Original source: https://homebusinessmag.com/lifestyles/success-lifestyles/world-renowned-headliners-will-soon-take-the-stage-at-hangout-music-festival-2023/

Top 10 SEO benefits of building a brand that people trust

A strong brand bolsters marketing efforts. From being just another provider, it transforms you into a business your audience wants to buy from.

You might not think about brand building’s relationship with organic search. After all, SEO‘s primary goal is getting brands into the top spots in Google for non-branded search terms.

Let’s dig into the relationship between SEO and brand building and how they benefit your business.

1. Rankings

The goal of SEO is audience generation. Generally, SEO builds audiences of people who may not know you already.

Through content, SEO aims to meet searchers where they’re at, solve their problems and nurture them to conversion.

Audience generation requires significant effort. You’ll likely need a well-built, well-optimized site and a solid content strategy to do it well.

Don’t be dismayed. SEO has compounding benefits that will serve your brand – as long as your site can hold its rank. In less-competitive industries, this could last years. 

Equally, the more well-written, strategic articles you publish, the easier to rank.

The more ranks you land in top positions, the more clicks you get. Therefore, more people will know who you are. 

To this extent, SEO builds brand awareness.

2. Brand recognition

If your brand isn’t ranking for a desirable keyword, someone else – a competitor – will be.

Even the most well-known brands should take SEO seriously and claim spots at the top of SERPs.

Granted, you’ll rank for your brand name anyway, but what about all other questions, queries, and problems surrounding your product or service?

A strong brand equals trust, likely improving your click-through rate (CTR). But you can only take your share of clicks and traffic if you’ve made the efforts required to rank.

When people see your brand in SERPs for a non-branded keyword, you want people to click on your website instead of a competitor. 

If you’re not there, you’re losing valuable traffic, giving it away to a competitor who showed up when the searcher needed them the most.

Don’t rest on your laurels when it comes to your brand. It only takes one brand to consistently show up when you’re not to capture the traffic that could’ve been yours.

3. Controlling the brand narrative

Without a proper SEO strategy, you could lose clicks for searches that include your brand name. 

If your brand is building new audiences (as it should be), it would be best to serve user queries throughout the decision-making process. 

It is SEO’s role to ensure that brand-related keywords are ranking well. And if they’re not, SEO needs to develop a plan to make this happen.

Generally, you will rank easily for your brand name, but search terms like “[brand name] reviews” or “is [brand name] trustworthy?” are anyone to take. 

You could lose clicks to review websites or social media. This matters, even if they’re your accounts. 

On your site, you can set up pages designed to meet search intent and funnel traffic accordingly based on what they’re searching for. You don’t have this same agility with social media, for example.

What’s worse than your owned reviews or social media platforms ranking for brand keywords is the potential of a complaint or published letter unfairly critiquing your brand. 

Or, a well-intentioned advocate who hasn’t done your brand justice when answering, “Can [brand name] be trusted?”

If you haven’t done the work to show up in SERPs, then it’s open for others to take that spot. 

4. Traffic

As mentioned, the better you rank, the more traffic you get.

For more brands, it’s not enough to snipe a lucky rank eight or even a rank four on page one. Your brand should be working toward those top spots.

Kevin Indig shares the importance of click curves and how to find your own. From the graph below, Indig shows how clicks reduce with ranks. 

It should be no surprise that rank 1, Page 1 has the highest clicks with close to 25% CTR on mobile. The CTR drops rapidly by rank.

When a page ranks number four, CTR is less than 10%. The graph below shows that position six or beyond can expect a less than 5% CTR.

Desktop vs Mobile CTR

In a study of 4 million Google search results, Backlinko found that, on average, moving up one spot in the search results will increase CTR by 2.8%. It pays to develop a strong presence in SERPs.

In this article, I have already linked to two sources, Indig and Backlinko.

To find the research, I had to perform a Google search and sift through the results until I found a source I would trust to feature in this article.

This is a perfect example of how trusted brands attract links. 

If your brand is known for being a credible source of information, it is more likely to gain backlinks naturally.

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6. Conversions

Often, when someone finds your site through search engines, it will be their first touchpoint with your brand.

If SEO and content have done their jobs well, the traffic finding your site is qualified, meaning they’re likely to convert.

And if the site serves the traffic well, there’s every chance you can convert the user, perhaps within that session.

It may be that the initial search is non-branded. This puts the user on your site for the first time.

Later, pleased with your service through the website and inspired by your offering,  they search for your brand and return to the site. 

With your credibility already in their minds, the second search is more likely to result in a conversion.

People buy from brands they trust, so whether your audience is booking an appointment, requesting a demo or signing up for a newsletter, SEO is about attracting qualified traffic that may convert later down the line.

SEO helps traffic solve problems and introduces them to your brand so you can capture a conversion through search or other marketing channels.

7. Revenue and profit

Traffic and conversions are great, but businesses need revenue and profit the most.

A strong SEO strategy provides answers and support to users across the entire marketing funnel. Your content and website architecture should allow your brand to keep showing up in relevant search queries. 

You need a returning core audience/customers to have a brand that grows and thrives. Through SEO and content, you can prove your expertise, support your consumers and build an ongoing relationship with them.

Once a brand is trusted, sales will start to roll in.

The role of trust and brand is very obvious when looking at analytics for ecommerce sites. The pages with the most brand searches will have the highest conversion rates.

A search like “[brand name] + [product name]” is more likely to convert than a search like “How to solve [problem]?” You need a known brand before you can get that brand name, product name search.

You must answer those non-converting keywords like “how to solve [problem]?” before you can build enough trust to clinch the sale.

8. Loyalty/retention

Even better than a one-time customer or passive subscriber is a repeat customer or an audience who engages with your emails or other marketing efforts like social media.

Your qualified audiences who once found you through a search on Google can transform into your most loyal followers and advocates.

This loyalty and retention is another fine example of SEO’s compounding efforts. Here, you can start to review Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to truly understand the benefits of those top ranks. 

9. Advocacy

Advocates are perhaps your most valuable consumer. Your advocates are your loyal and retained customers first. 

As you continue to look after them, they will become your champions, advocates or brand ambassadors online. You want these. Advocates share your content and recommend you to others. 

Although advocacy is not the easiest thing to measure, it is indirectly impacted by SEO.

Advocates had to discover you and receive a level of service (even if it’s in your content) to build enough trust to covert, buy and become loyal and retained customers.

Where possible, advocacy should be considered in the CLV. If you can nurture customers to advocacy and each customer tells three friends who also convert, then it increases the CLV. This is one of the motivations for refer-a-friend schemes and similar.

10. More first-party data

Assuming you execute SEO and brand relations well, you will have more growth and valuable first-party data. 

With larger data sets comes better analysis which you can use to make decisions to continue growing and feeding your SEO. The data provided by SEO is transferable to many forms of marketing, too. 

If you know people are searching for content on Google, they’re probably searching for it on other search engines, too.

Likely, a well-placed social media post with your customers’ exact pain points (that you know from SEO) will stop a scroll and encourage engagement with your band on other forms of marketing.

SEO and branding go hand in hand

Your best chance of keeping your brand discoverable by audiences, new and old, is by building brand awareness and SEO at the same time.

Building a brand helps all your marketing channels, as does the data your SEO efforts provide. 

Without SEO, your brand is at risk of ranking only for its brand name, which is useless for audience generation.

Equally, without SEO, you will lose visibility for some brand-related searches, potentially giving your warm audience away to competitors.

If you want a robust business, you are best doubling down efforts on brand awareness and audience generation, and SEO is the key to that success.

Without SEO, building audiences and keeping you relevant in the biggest search engine, it will take only one competitor to show up where you didn’t and better serve your prospective customers.

Be loud with your brand and get it in front of as many people as you can, you deserve the traffic, and your audiences will be only too glad to meet you in the SERPs.

The post Top 10 SEO benefits of building a brand that people trust appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Original source: https://searchengineland.com/seo-benefits-building-brand-trust-408143

Instagram has rebranded content ads to partnership ads

Instagram just revealed that it would rebrand branded content ads as partnership ads, offering new methods for brands and creators to collaborate on advertising efforts.

How partnership ads work. Partnership ads enable advertisers to expand content originating from a creator or other partner’s account, facilitating broader collaboration.

The updated advertising format allows advertisers to promote a wider range of organic Instagram content as partnership ads. This includes branded content with the paid partnership label, Instagram Collab posts, @mentions, people tags, product tags, and other content not featuring the paid partnership label. Advertisers also have the ability to create new partnership ads in Ads Manager without needing an existing post. To accommodate these additional use-cases, the company is updating permissions to make partnership ads even more user-friendly.

Early testing. According to Instagram, partnership ads are the most efficient and transparent method for advertisers and partners to work together on advertising campaigns. Their data suggests that campaigns combining partnership ads with business-as-usual (BAU) ads result in 53% higher click-through rates, 19% lower cost per actions, and a 99% probability of outperforming BAU ads on their own.

Dig deeper. You can read about the new ads on the Meta blog.

Why we care. The new ads offer a highly efficient and transparent way for brands and creators to collaborate on advertising campaigns. By enabling the promotion of various types of organic Instagram content, these ads facilitate broader collaboration and increased user engagement.

In early tests, the new ads have proven to yield significantly higher click-through rates, lower cost per action, and a greater likelihood of outperforming traditional business-as-usual ads.

The post Instagram has rebranded content ads to partnership ads appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Original source: https://searchengineland.com/instagram-has-rebranded-content-ads-to-partnership-ads-409470

Digital Marketing Strategies for Different Business Needs

Home Business Magazine Online

In a nutshell, digital marketing is about using digital channels, platforms, and tools to promote and advertise products or services, engage with customers, and build brand awareness. It can be a powerful medium to expand your reach and grow your customer base, as it offers many opportunities you might not otherwise have access to due to a limited budget.

Aside from being cost-effective, digital marketing campaigns increase your chances of reaching the right customers and generating leads by targeting specific audiences based on demographics, interests, and behavior. It can also be easily measured, analyzed, and adjusted, which means that you can make data-driven decisions and optimize your campaign to achieve better results.

But there are many ways to do digital marketing and not all of them may be suitable to your company’s needs. “There are limitless paths potential customers can take to reach your website; you have to identify the best one for your business,” says Skyler Malley of FirestaterSEO.com.

This is why you must understand what each strategy does and what problems they are meant to solve so that you can pinpoint the ones that could deliver your desired results. Here is an overview of digital marketing strategies and their benefits to help you get started:

1. Investing in Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO or Search Engine Optimization helps you optimize your website to improve its visibility on search engine results pages. The primary goal of an SEO campaign is to increase organic web traffic as well as other purposes like branding and reputation management.

Implementing SEO is suitable when you want to improve brand awareness, have trouble ranking in search results, or notice your web traffic going down despite releasing content regularly. Keep in mind, however, that SEO is more of a long-term strategy and can take about three to six months before showing any results, so don’t get too disappointed or give up quickly if you don’t see positive outcomes in the first few weeks.

2. Developing a Social Media Presence

Social media platforms can not only help businesses tap new and highly segmented potential customers but also allow them to convey their brand message, mission, and values directly to their target market. Moreover, communication goes both ways, as customers are also given a platform to converse and interact directly with the brand.

If you find that your brand has a weak relationship with your customers or that your users have low loyalty to your brand, this strategy might be just what you need. As you continuously respond to comments and messages on social networks like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, you show your customers that their feedback and opinions matter, which then enables you to build more solid relationships with them.

3. Capitalizing on Paid Search

Paid search advertising can be a highly effective way for your business to reach your target audience and drive traffic to your website by displaying your ads at the top of search engine results pages. You can bid on specific keywords or phrases you want to target, and the search engine will display your ads based on various factors, including bid amount, relevance, and ad quality. As such, when users search for specific keywords or phrases, your ad will appear at the top of the results, above the organic site recommendations.

This strategy could work for you when you’re struggling to get enough traffic to your website, your business has a specific product or service you want to promote, or you want to compete with larger businesses. It can also help you maximize your resources when working on a limited budget because, unlike traditional advertising methods, you typically only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This way, you can control your expenses and maximize your available resources.

4. Creating an Email Newsletter

Email marketing has proven to be an incredibly cost-effective and powerful marketing channel for businesses, giving about $40 return on investment for every $1 spent. This high ROI can be attributed to several factors, such as the broad reach that email marketing provides, plus its ability to deliver personalized and targeted messages.

You can consider running an email marketing campaign when you want to increase customer retention, drive website traffic, or improve engagement. If you are launching a new product or service, email marketing can also be a great way to promote it because you would be able to generate buzz and drive sales by sending targeted emails to users who are specifically interested in similar offerings.

5. Adding an E-commerce Storefront

E-commerce is another digital marketing strategy that can help you reach a wider audience, increase sales, and grow your business. It would be particularly beneficial if your brand already has a solid online presence with a significant following, you cannot showcase your complete product range in your physical stores due to limited space, or you want to offer more convenience for your customers.

Aside from these, an E-commerce store helps build trust in your brand because it shows that you’re serious about providing quality products or services at competitive prices. It also enables your customers to browse and buy products directly from their mobile devices, increasing your brand visibility and making it easier for people to purchase from you.

The post Digital Marketing Strategies for Different Business Needs appeared first on Home Business Magazine.

Original source: https://homebusinessmag.com/marketing/internet-marketing/digital-marketing-strategies-different-business-needs/

Do You Need Small Business Insurance?

Home Business Magazine Online

If you’re running a small business, you may wonder if it’s worthwhile to buy business insurance, especially if you’re just starting out and don’t have any employees yet, or even a commercial premises to do business from.

The truth is that running a small business opens you up to a lot of risk. You could find yourself defending a lawsuit or covering employee medical expenses for injuries sustained on the job. Federally, you’re on the hook for unemployment, workers compensation, and disability insurance if you have employees. Your state may have its own laws about what business insurance you’re required to carry. In some circumstances, however, you may be able to put off or avoid getting business insurance altogether. Let’s take a closer look at who does and doesn’t need small business insurance.

State and Federal Laws Dictate Business Insurance Requirements

Under federal law, you’re required to carry workers compensation insurance, disability insurance, and unemployment insurance if you run a business that hires employees. Your state may provide some additional legal requirements for small business insurance. Make sure you know the law in your state so you can get the coverage you need to avoid fines and other penalties, in addition to protecting your business investment and your workers.

Business Insurance Can Protect You from Huge Financial Losses

Running a small business can mean investing a lot of money in equipment, facilities, inventory, and training. A natural disaster, flood, fire, data breach, or break-in could cause damages significant enough to put you out of business entirely. Carrying business insurance is a way to protect your investment from the financial losses that can occur due to unforeseeable misfortune.

Of course, destructive events aren’t the only threats to your business continuity. Small business insurance can also provide a layer of liability protection beyond what your LLC structure can provide. If an employee or customer gets hurt on your premises, you could be on the hook for their medical expenses. If one of your products turns out to be defective, you could find yourself embroiled in a lawsuit. You’ll need small business insurance to defray those costs. And, of course, if you’re practicing medicine or law, you’re going to need professional liability insurance to protect you from negligence and malpractice suits that may arise when customers aren’t completely satisfied with your services.

Business Insurance Protects Your Customers and Employees, Too

Small business insurance provides your employees and customers with the protection they need to have a good experience with your company. Employees need protection against work-related disability and injury. They need to know that if they get laid off, they’ll be able to collect unemployment insurance. And customers need to know that if they’re hurt by a defective product or in an accident on your premises, that your company will be able to step up with the compensation they need to recover.

Get the Right Kind of Insurance for Your Small Business

When it comes to buying small business insurance, it’s important to get the right coverage. There are several kinds of insurance available to small business owners, including:

  • General liability insurance, which protects against financial losses due to slander and libel, property damage, bodily injury, lawsuits, and judgments or settlement bonds
  • Professional liability insurance, which protects against losses related to professional error, negligence, or malpractice
  • Home-based business coverage, which typically exists as a rider on your home insurance and will provide a limited amount of coverage for equipment used in a home-based business
  • Product liability insurance, which provides coverage against losses due to product defects that cause injury to customers
  • Commercial property insurance, which covers damage to your business premises from vandalism, storms, floods, fires, earthquakes, and civil unrest
  • Business owner’s policies, which provide general coverage for small business owners in need of liability, workers comp, disability, and unemployment insurance

Before you talk to an insurance representative, assess the liability risks your company faces. If you’re just getting started, are still working out of your home, and don’t have any employees yet, business insurance may not need to be a priority, as long as you don’t face any professional liability. If you’re offering services that don’t present much risk to your customers, like virtual services such as copywriting or tutoring, you probably don’t need business insurance.

On the other hand, you may need more than coverage for workers comp, unemployment, and disability. For example, if you live in an area prone to wildfires, hurricanes or other damaging stores, or earthquakes, you may need additional insurance on your equipment and premises to protect from losses due to natural disasters.

You have a lot of money invested in your small business, and you need to protect that investment. Business owners insurance can help you afford the benefits your employees need and protect you from liability. It’s the right thing to do.

The post Do You Need Small Business Insurance? appeared first on Home Business Magazine.

Original source: https://homebusinessmag.com/management/insurance/do-you-need-small-business-insurance/

AI in search: Insights from Bing’s Fabrice Canel

I recently connected with Fabrice Canel, a 26-year search veteran at Microsoft and principal product manager leading the team crawling, processing and indexing at Bing.

Canel offers insights into the state of artificial intelligence in search and the integration of chat experiences in the new Bing. 

Can you discuss your most recent announcements with Bing Chat?

Fabrice Canel (FC): In February 2023, we introduced the world to the all-new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge, your copilot for the web. Since then, more users have been using Bing than before, and we recently hit 100 million daily users and 100 million chats. 

We then enabled the new AI-powered Bing in Windows, Skype, Edge mobile and Bing mobile, including voice access.

In recent weeks, we’ve added various ways to interact with new AI-powered experiences that extend these capabilities to millions of additional people across devices and around the globe.

  • Bing Image Creator offers the ability to create images with your own words, enabling new AI-powered visual Stories allowing to explore topics that interest Bing customers with facts, image-based timelines, polls, actions, and related topics, 
  • AI-generated stories provide Bing customers with multiple ways to consume bite-sized information – through text, images, video, and audio,
  • AI-generated Bing Knowledge Cards help Bing customers explore topics that interest Bing customers with facts, image-based timelines, polls, actions, and related topics.
  • Another way to access and interact with the new Bing is by enabling it in the SwiftKey keyboard app, which puts the Bing AI experience one touch away from any iOS or Android mobile experience that supports a third-party keyboard. You can see the full announcement here. (Author’s note: Bing acquired SwiftKey in 2016.)

Can you discuss the thoughts behind integrating Chat experiences into Search (philosophy, expectations)?

FC: Let’s go behind the scenes. I want to share a little bit more about the new Bing and how it came to be. 

Next-generation model. The new Bing is running on a new, next-generation large language model customized specifically for search. It takes key learnings and advancements of past models and is even faster, more accurate and more capable. In short, it is much more capable of synthesizing, summarizing, chatting and creating.

Microsoft Prometheus model. We have developed a proprietary way of working with our next-generation model to best leverage its power.

We call this collection of capabilities and techniques the Prometheus model. This combination gives Bing customers more relevant, timely and targeted results, with improved safety.

When we had a breakthrough in large language models (LLMs), much like other LLMs, it was trained with data through a given point in time, so we thought that we could make the user experience richer, more relevant, and more accurate by combining it with the power of Bing’s back-end.

To be more concrete, we developed a proprietary technology called Prometheus, a first-of-its-kind AI model that combines the fresh and comprehensive Bing index, ranking, and answers results with the creative reasoning capabilities of most-advanced models. 

Prometheus leverages the power of Bing and language models to generate a set of internal queries iteratively through a component called Bing Orchestrator. It aims to provide an accurate and rich answer for the user query within the given conversation context. All within a matter of milliseconds. We refer to this Prometheus-generated answer as the Chat answer.

Selecting the relevant internal queries and leveraging the respective Bing search results is a critical component of Prometheus since it provides relevant and fresh information to the model, enabling it to answer recent questions and reduce inaccuracies – this method is called grounding.

Put another way, the model reasons over the data provided by Bing; hence, Bing data ground it via the Bing Orchestrator. 

The diagram below illustrates how Prometheus works at a high level.

Prometheus

The last step is when Prometheus attaches relevant Bing search answers, such as weather, stock, sports, news, and so on, to the Chat answer to provide a richer and more engaging user experience that further leverages the power of Bing. 

Thanks to the Bing grounding technique, Prometheus is also able to integrate citations into sentences in the Chat answer so that users can easily click to access those sources and verify the information. 

Sending traffic to these sources is important for a healthy web ecosystem and remains one of our top Bing goals. This matters to us because there won’t be a web ecosystem if we don’t send traffic to the people creating the content. People are investing in content for a reason, and if they don’t get rewarded, they’ll stop doing so.

Applying AI to the core search algorithm. We’ve also applied an AI model to our core Bing search ranking engine, leading to the largest relevance jump in two decades.

This AI model makes even basic search queries more accurate and relevant. The new models improved our understanding of documents on the internet and better understanding of how to match those documents up with user queries.

New user experience – Merging Search and Chat. We reimagined how Bing customers interact with search, browser and chat by pulling them into a unified experience. This will unlock a completely new way to interact with the web.

While Prometheus is a remarkable, pioneering AI-based innovation from a user experience perspective, it was unclear how we should integrate its capabilities into Bing. There were two main points of view:

  • Some in our team felt that search is such an ingrained habit that we needed to keep the UX like today’s web search and add the Prometheus-powered Chat answer on the main UX. Just like any other answer, the Chat answer would earn its place based on its relevance to the query.
  • Others in Bing felt that this was an opportunity to change the search paradigm from the classic web and answers results to a new interactive, chat-based way of searching.

Both schools of thought were partially correct, yet neither had the complete picture.

The team advocating for classic search generally used navigational queries to defend their point of view.

The team pushing for the conversational approach would present research-like search sessions such as shopping or travel. I plotted their queries in a graph below to illustrate this observation.

Bing Search vs Bing Chat - use cases

It then became clear that some queries would perform better in the classical or Search mode while others would do better in a conversational or Chat mode.

Also, some users may prefer one over the other, depending on the query. Therefore, the ideal Bing search product must smoothly transition between Search and Chat modes based on the user’s intent and preference. 

Our design team took on the challenge and, after multiple iterations, developed a new UX that unified Search and Chat in a single interface. Users could easily switch back and forth by clicking on UX elements on the page or simply scrolling or swiping up and down.

This product or UX innovation is arguably just as important as the Prometheus technology to ensure people can intuitively use the product to its full potential.

I feel that UX and SEO nearly always have the same goals these days. What are your thoughts on that?

FC: I agree. It’s important to understand what you want a user to do when they come to one of your webpages.

You should design your webpages to do that well. Destination UX also matters for search engines. Relevance is only a part of the equation.

If they come to your site and are really interested in converting, but they don’t because of a problem with your site, that’s a bad experience for the search engine, too. 

Google has its E-E-A-T standards, and the Bing equivalent of E-E-A-T is very similar. It’s not just about the content itself. Users want to get actions done, and we want to rank pages higher that help them do that.

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Given the potential for errors, how would Bing advise people to use the output from Bing Chat?

FC: It’s hard to believe It’s been just over two months since we released the new AI-powered Bing and Edge to the world. We have learned a lot and shipped several improvements in that time.

We are delighted by the virtuous feedback cycle and iteration driving strong Bing improvements of our models and the experience. 

For instance, we have introduced the ability to toggle the tone of chat between:

  • Precise, which focuses on shorter, more search-focused answers.
  • Creative, which gives responses that are longer and more descriptive.
  • The middle setting, Balance, is somewhere in between. 

Bing customers will notice a color change in the UX between purple, blue and green, depending on which is selected. Our goal is to let Bing customers decide on the type of chat behavior that best meets their needs. We’ll continue to tune this experience based on feedback.

At Bing, we’re committed to delivering the best possible result. If you ask Bing Chat if the Earth is flat it will tell you that Earth is not flat, even if there is a lot of misleading content online on this topic. 

We have made huge investments in AI because we’re optimistic about what it can do to help people, industry and society.

We’re committed to bringing technology and people together to realize the promises of AI responsibly. Feedback and data will help to improve the quality of the answers. Keep your feedback coming.

Should people use Bing Chat to create and publish content without editing it?

FC: We do our best to find the best content. 

Are we there yet? No, we are not perfect yet. No one is. 

Will we be someday? Maybe. Remember that it’s a tool, and this problem is harder than you might think. 

For example, sometimes there are multiple conflicting answers from highly reputable websites. It can be hard to figure out which one is wrong.

I went through this exercise recently trying to answer a question on a complex math geometry problem for my daughter, and I found two different answers from respected experts. One was right, but it took me 1 to 2 hours to figure it out. Even experts make mistakes.

How does Bing Search’s usage compare with Bing Chat’s usage for those that have access to it?

FC: It’s still incredibly early, we released only two months ago, and most Bing customers are experiencing this ability to chat with a search engine for the first time in their life. They are discovering and learning. They are finding value in having search, chat, answers, and creation capabilities all in one experience. 

There are now more than 100 million daily active users of Bing. New scenarios like chat drive engagement, including over 100 million chats.

Of the millions of users in Preview, one-third are new to Bing, creating net-new opportunities for publishers and webmasters. This is still early data, but the signs are encouraging.

For SEO, as it is still early, my recommendation is to stick with the same SEO playbooks as before.

But please keep track of our communication and monitor data to make necessary adjustments as the usage of the new Bing continues to increase, transforming how people search.

In the coming weeks, we will start reporting Bing Chat clicks and impressions on the Bing Webmaster Tools website and Bing Webmaster Tools API. 

Can you discuss the importance of data freshness? 

FC: The recent breakthrough in LLMs is great, but these models are trained with data through a given point in time. What’s special at Bing is that you benefit from the LLMs and the power of Bing Search’s back end.

This means that Bing Chat contains content published seconds ago online. You can Bing Chat what’s happening today – that’s happening right now.

Freshness matters a lot these days, especially for the younger generation. I found it fascinating to see my kids using Bing Chat to learn more about recent events. Bing can handle these types of queries well, even in Bing Chat, because it’s built on top of the Bing index.

One area where people spend a lot of time is on news-type events, including things like celebrity news. People spend a lot of time on things that are happening right now.

Can you provide an overview of what IndexNow is?

FC: IndexNow is an easy way for website owners to instantly inform all search engines about the latest content changes on their websites.

In its simplest form, IndexNow is a simple ping so that search engines know that a URL and its content have been added, updated, or deleted, allowing search engines to reflect this change in their search results quickly.

I find it interesting that you ask this question and speak about IndexNow in the context of Bing Chat which leverages the best-in-class AI models. 

While AI is great in helping retrieve the best content online and to see what’s changed on a website, we simply don’t know with 100% precision if you have added, modified or deleted content on your site. But you know that with 100% precision, or at least your CMS knows that. 

Instead of repeatedly crawling to discover if your content has changed, we provide webmasters the ability to ask search engines crawler to visit to collect the latest content changes.

Since we enabled the IndexNow protocol in the Fall of 2021, the adoption of IndexNow has continued to grow.

Today, more than 20 million websites publish over 2.5 billion URLs to the IndexNow API daily. This month, IndexNow attributed to 10% of all new URLs clicked in web search results.

It’s also great to see more search engines, content management systems (i.e., Wix), and top websites adopting IndexNow. We target that more the 50% of the web will adopt IndexNow within two years. 

Why is crawling so complex? Just how large is the web?

The true size of the internet is infinite. Every day we discover more than 70 billion distinct URLs. There is so much spam and duplicate content.

Spammers grab domains and generate hundreds of subdomains. No search engine communicates on index size anymore because it’s not a good measure of quality. 

The big issue is how you navigate through all the low-quality content to index what matters. To make this easier, we need webmasters to help guide search engines to the real stuff. The best way to do this is with a combination of IndexNow plus XML sitemaps. This is a good setup for all search engines.

How much traffic does Bing anticipate will go to websites in the new Bing Chat model?

FC: In the next few weeks, we will start reporting Bing Chat clicks and impressions in Bing Webmaster Tools so that each website owner can compare them to Bing Search pages.

Search engines have played a role in helping people find the content they want. The new Bing is helping to better address people’s search needs with new capabilities like chat, answers, and content creation. 

Our goal is to satisfy our Bing users and drive more traffic to publishers in this new world of search. It is a top goal for us, and we measure success partly by how much traffic we send from the new Bing/Edge. 

The early progress is encouraging. Based on our data from the preview, we are driving more traffic from all types of users. We have brought more people to Bing/Edge for new scenarios like chat and are seeing increased usage.

Then, we have uniquely implemented ways to drive traffic to publishers, including citations within the body of the chat answers linked to sources and citations below the chat results to “learn more” with links to additional sources. 

We enable an expanded hover experience where hovering over a link from a publisher will display more links from that publisher, giving the user more ways to engage and driving more traffic to the publisher’s website.

We are also listening, and we’re hearing positive feedback as we look for opportunities to maximize these new experiences for the entire ecosystem. 

How does one create content likely to be cited by Bing Chat? 

FC: With the release of the all-new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge, we have enhanced our Bing Webmaster Tools Guidelines to support the experience.

We listed that ranking within Bing Chat generally relies on the same parameters as the main web search results page.

So, since this is still early at this point, I recommend sticking with the same SEO playbooks as before, and most of the recommended playbooks are listed in our Bing Webmaster Tools Guidelines.

The post AI in search: Insights from Bing’s Fabrice Canel appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Original source: https://searchengineland.com/ai-search-bing-fabrice-canel-406520

Google no longer requires video descriptions as part of structured data

Google has removed the requirement to have the description property as part of your video structured data. Google says it is still recommended to provide a description to your videos in the structured data but it is not a requirement. With that, Google Search Console will not report errors for missing description property items.

Structured data change. Google moved the “description” property from “required” to “recommended” in the structured data documentation. You can see that over here.

The description of the video is used to help Google understand the video, but it is no longer a requirement for video structured data.

Search Console change. The description property is no longer required for Video structured data items, Google wrote here. Google added “it’s still strongly recommended to help Google better understand the content of your video.”

Missing description issues will no longer appear as “critical issues” in that rich results report. Now you may see an increase in the number of valid Video structured data items in your, that is if you did not use descriptions for your video structured data.

Why we care. This should make it easier for you to publish video structured data and have Google pick them up as rich results. Your video thumbnails may show up for more videos and you may see a higher click-through rate from those search result snippets in Google Search.

The post Google no longer requires video descriptions as part of structured data appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Original source: https://searchengineland.com/google-no-longer-requires-video-descriptions-as-part-of-structured-data-408201

Guide to Real Estate Virtual Tours: Answering All Popular Questions

Home Business Magazine Online

Since VR technology entered the real estate industry, professional agents are implementing it more and more into their practice to put them one step ahead of competitors. Virtual tours are a new-gen way to showcase, promote, and sell commercial and residential property. Whether you’re in the market for a new home or a realtor looking to improve your marketing efforts, you might have tons of questions about what a virtual tour real estate actually is. Let’s dive into this comprehensive guide to understanding this existing technology and learn how you can benefit from it!

Are Virtual Tours and Video Tours the Same?

No, those two types of property tours use absolutely different technology. A video tour is a pre-recorded video of the house or apartment, often shot using a camera or a smartphone. Typically, such videos involve a real estate agent or a homeowner walking through the property and revealing key information. Making a video tour doesn’t require specific equipment or technological knowledge and expertise. Yet, they’re not nearly as effective as virtual tours.

What’s a Virtual Tour? 

Unlike a video tour, a virtual tour is an interactive experience that allows users to explore the property and all its features remotely. Buyers can access virtual tours from a desktop or mobile device to view a digital simulation of the real-world environment, get 360-degree angles of space, and fully immerse themselves in the virtual realm.

Virtual tours help real estate agents showcase an under-development property and connect with buyers who are not available for in-person visits. With the virtual tour, house hunters can clearly see the listing and explore all the features before committing to physical showings, saving time and effort for everyone involved.

How Does It Work: Process, Features, and Functionality

So, what kind of magic fuels virtual tours? Using specialized software, designers stitch together computer-generated images (CGI) and high-quality photos of the property captured with proper cameras to create a 360-degree view of the space. After, they add various interactive elements, including clickable hotspots, providing additional information, or highlighting unique features. You can enhance virtual tools with interactive floor plans to allow users to see the layout and space’s flow.

Virtual tours stand out with robust functionality:

  • It’s easy to use: Virtual tours have intuitive navigation and interactive elements that are simple to understand and follow.
  • Immersive experience: The cutting-edge simulation teleports viewers inside the property, providing a life-like walk-through.
  • Accessible: Buyers can access professionally-made virtual tours from any device and place with an internet connection for efficient and convenient house shopping.
  • Time-saving: With virtual tours, buyers can explore properties remotely, reducing the need for in-person visits and saving time for real estate agents, sellers, and buyers.
  • Engaging: Virtual tours capture clients’ attention, make the property stand out in the competitive market, and stimulate the desire to buy with many engaging and personalized elements.
Real Estate Agent
Depositphotos

What Should a High-end Virtual Tour Include?

Here is the list of all elements and items a high-end virtual tour should include:

  • Title of the listing and the address;
  • Exterior views from various angles;
  • Interior walk-through;
  • Property description and additional information;
  • Personalized visual staging to reach a targeted audience;
  • Pricing and availability details;
  • Contact information, including agent’s name, company, phone number, or email;
  • Direction on what should your lead to do next (call for action);
  • Music and narrative for enhanced user experience; and
  • Custom branding (logos, design elements, color schemes, etc.).

What Do You Need to Make Virtual Tours Engaging for the User?

There are some key elements to keep in mind to ensure successful results from virtual tour marketing:

  • To create a cohesive experience for viewers, use only high-quality images with consistent style, fonts, and colors.
  • Don’t overdo it. Keep things simple and avoid cramming too much into a single tour.
  • Incorporate interactive elements like clickable buttons that reveal additional information, jump directly to a different room, or zoom in and out on specific features.
  • Add captions to each photo, revealing crucial information about the property, dimensions, pricing, etc. That helps to avoid additional questions and build better communication with potential leads.

By following these tips, realtors can create engaging virtual tours that capture viewers’ attention and stimulate their desire to buy and cooperate with you in the future.

Person Looking at Real Estate Virtual Tour
Depositphotos

Benefits of Implementing Virtual Tours into a Marketing Strategy for Realtors

How can real estate agents benefit from adopting a virtual tour marketing strategy? The truth is using VR and 3D virtual tours is the best strategy to survive in the crowded real estate market in 2023.

Here are the top advantages of implementing virtual tours for agents:

  1. Increased exposure: With a virtual tour, brokers can market their listings to a larger audience without setting a physical limit. By eliminating the need for in-person visits, agencies can sell the property to international clients or buyers who can’t visit the property due to personal reasons.
  2. Enhanced buyer experience: Virtual tours ensure the house shoppers are fully informed about the property and can explore each little corner online.
  3. Improved lead generation: Immersive and engaging experience provided by virtual tours attracts and retains potential buyers’ attention for longer, increasing your conversion rates with the right lead nurturing techniques.
  4. Time and cost saving: It’s impossible to stress enough how much time you can gain by implementing virtual tours. It’s taking the load off the real estate agents who usually need to prepare the listing for a showing and attend several house openings around the area in one day. With virtual tours, real estate agencies can showcase multiple properties in a day hassle-free.
  5. Competitive advantage: Incorporating virtual tours into marketing strategies puts the real estate business ahead of the competitors, showing clients the forward-thinking and professional approach.

Final Thoughts: How Can One Make a Virtual Tour, or Where to Develop One?

Virtual tours are essential for real estate professionals who want to thrive in the forever competitive market. Creating a virtual tour on your own is not hard with the right equipment and software. However, if you lack technological expertise, consider hiring a digital design agency to deliver professional high-quality virtual tours with a layer of extra features and interactive elements. By partnering up with top experts in the industry, like VisEngine digital solutions, you can get a tailored product that reflects your brand identity, meets your business needs, and elevates your marketing efforts. After all, high-end virtual tours are bound to make your real estate agency thrive. So don’t waste your time. Empower your business now!

The post Guide to Real Estate Virtual Tours: Answering All Popular Questions appeared first on Home Business Magazine.

Original source: https://homebusinessmag.com/businesses/real-estate/guide-real-estate-virtual-tours-answering-popular-questions/