Google started its holiday doodle series on December 18 when it first introduced the family of animated penguins. Since then it posted the second part of the series on Christmas, December 25, and now today’s third entry to mark New Year’s Eve. “Our feathery friends have enjoyed their delicious traditions and are now ringing in the new year with sparklers in hand,” writes Google on its Google Doodle Blog, “As they all admire the fireworks overhead, they think about how much fun it was to spend this time together.” While the first two doodles in the series led to searches for “December global festivities,” today’s doodle leads to a search for “New Year’s Eve 2017.” It has also added the following two slides to its collection of images, showing the penguins celebrating the New Year: According to the Google Doodle Blog, there will be one more doodle to complete the series that it plans to post tomorrow on New Year’s Day: “Tomorrow, follow along as our penguin friends start a new day in a new year.” About The AuthorAmy Gesenhues is Third Door Media's General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles. Reference source : Originally from Marketing Online Tip - Feed http://ift.tt/2EmRODk
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As we come to the end of 2017, we’ve decided to take a look back at some of our most-read articles throughout the year. For the rest of this week, we’ll be highlighting the top five most popular articles in various categories across the site. Yesterday, we kicked things off with a look at our top 5 articles about SEO, and if you missed that one, it’s definitely worth a read. Today, we’ll be turning our attention to the other great staple of Search Engine Watch content: PPC. We covered some fun ground with our PPC articles this year, from emoji in AdWords ad titles to the psychology of ad copy, to the impact of Google’s new ‘Ad’ label on marketers. Let’s not waste any more time – here are our top 5 articles from 2017 about PPC. #1: Emoji appear in Google AdWords ad titlesThis was an interesting one. Just a couple of weeks after we wrote about Google’s decision to bring emoji back to the SERPs, emoji were spotted in the wild in AdWords ad titles, suggesting that Google had decided to go the whole hog in embracing emoji in both organic search and paid search ads. Sadly, the test doesn’t seem to have lasted in the case of paid search, as Google’s official stance is still that emoji are “invalid characters” – but there have also been recent reports of people being able to bid on emoji in AdWords. Either way, the combination of fun emoji news with a potential big change for search marketers makes it no surprise that this was our most-read article about PPC in 2017.
#2: The psychology of language for paid searchWhen it comes to PPC best practice, there’s a vast amount of ground you can cover, from keyword bidding to demographic targeting, AdWords reports, landing page optimization and everything in between. But how often do we talk about the actual copy of the ads that are supposed to get consumers’ attention? According to Sophie Turton, Head of Content and PR at Bozboz, people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. In her presentation at Brighton SEO in April 2017, she explained how search marketers can use psychology to make their paid search ads more effective. Tereza Litsa sums up the key highlights in an informative piece for Search Engine Watch.
#3: 10 online marketing strategies to make you a unicorn [infographic]It’s hard to go wrong with a good infographic, and Larry Kim of Wordstream has a great one which brings together 10 online marketing strategies to make you a unicorn – one of those magical campaigns that’s so effective, it performs in the top 1-3% of all marketing campaigns. Sound like a dream come true? Check out Larry’s infographic, whose points he expands on in further detail in his post, and find out why you need to forget everything you know about Conversion Rate Optimization.
#4: How to target high-income consumers with AdWordsThere are many industries in which being able to target high net worth individuals with your paid search campaigns is extremely useful. If you think that AdWords doesn’t have this function, you might want to think again. Wesley Parker reveals the secret behind a “deeply hidden gem within AdWords”, currently available for U.S. locations only, which allows you to target people based on their household income. With step-by-step instructions and screenshots, he explains exactly how to set this up, as well as how you can use layered targeting to pull in multiple different demographics.
#5: How will Google’s new ‘Ad’ label impact marketers?In a major development for PPC, Google began testing a new look for its ad labels in January of this year, and in late February confirmed that this would be rolled out globally. The new white label with green text and a green outline replaced the green label that was launched in June 2016, and blends much more seamlessly with the rest of the ad placement, perhaps creating less of a contrast between organic and paid search results. Clark Boyd considered Google’s motivation for the change, and the possible impact on search marketers.
Rebecca Sentance is the Deputy Editor of Search Engine Watch. Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?Get top insights and news from our search experts. Related readingIf you're trying to master PPC, you need a firm understanding of your AdWords Quality Score. But what is it, and how can you improve yours? In the run-up to Black Friday and the holiday shopping season, retailers are competing like crazy to attract the eyeballs of as many paying consumers as possible through paid search advertising. But how well is it paying off? The average cost of pay-per-click advertising is steadily increasing – with the average cost-per-click in 2016 being nearly double that of 2013. When you consider the fact that Google processes over 2.3 million searches per minute, this is hardly surprising. But what can marketers do to ensure that they attract customers on this increasingly competitive channel, while avoiding these burgeoning costs? SEO and social media would at first appear to be very different practices, especially when taking into account paid social advertising. However, there are significant SEO benefits to be gained from utilizing social media advertising as both an outreach platform and also as an analytics platform. Origin soruce : Originally from Marketing Online Tip - Feed http://ift.tt/2CsylAA
Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on social media at @rustybrick, +BarrySchwartz and Facebook. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio and disclosures, click over here. Reference source : Originally from Marketing Online Tip - Feed http://ift.tt/2DAaJJI As we come to the end of 2017, we’ve decided to take a look back at some of our most-read articles throughout the year. For the rest of this week, we’ll be highlighting the top five most popular articles in various categories across the site. So far this week, we’ve rounded up our top five articles on SEO and top five articles on PPC. To wrap up the week, we’re taking a look at our top five most-read articles about the search industry. Our Industry category on Search Engine Watch covers any developments in the wider search industry, such as new search engines, the evolution of Web 3.0, or major changes to search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. It also covers articles about strategy and how marketers should approach SEO, PPC and SEM in their day-to-day jobs: such as how to get execs excited about SEO, or how much SEO should really cost. To the surprise of no-one, our most popular articles in this category tend to be things that Google is doing. So here is our very Google-centric list of the top 5 most popular Industry articles published in 2017. #1: The 10 best Google Doodles of all timeWho doesn’t love a good Google Doodle? The creative and inventive Google Doodle, which we’re now accustomed to seeing on the Google homepage with regularity, actually began life in 1998 as a quirky out-of-office message to notify users that Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of Google, had gone to Burning Man festival. Soon afterwards, Google began experimenting with Doodles to mark historical events, and the Doodle’s popularity was so great that it has become a regular fixture on Google’s homepage, with a dedicated team of around 10 staff members. In our most-read Industry article of 2017, Clark Boyd looks back over nearly 20 years of Google Doodles to pick the 10 best Doodles of all time.
#2: Google just released verified customer reviews: 3 ways to come out on topCustomer reviews are important for SEO and brand reputation, particularly in the new age of linkless link-building. But they aren’t always reliable. As such, Google’s introduction of Verified Customer Reviews, a method of leaving feedback in which you can guarantee that the reviewer is a genuine customer – was a big development. Amanda DiSilvestro looked at how business owners can sign up for verified customer reviews, as well as three ways to make sure you come out on top.
#3: A visual history of Google SERPS: 1996-2017Over the past 20 years, Google has revolutionized how we source information, how we buy products, and how advertisers sell those products to us. And yet, one fact remains stubbornly true: the shop-front for brands on Google is still the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Since Google began as a college project named Backrub in 1996, those “ten blue links” which make up the Google SERP have undergone all kinds of evolutions, from the advent of local results in 2004 to the introduction of Google Suggest in 2008, to the more recent removal of the right-hand rail of search ads in 2016. It can be easy to lose sight of just how much the SERPS have changed as a whole, over the years. This brilliant infographic by Clark Boyd, Safiya Lawrence and Chelsea Herbert looks back over how far Google has come, and considers the trends that predominantly define the SERPs today.
#4: What do we know so far about Google’s new homepage?And speaking of changes to Google… Without a doubt, the biggest change to come to the internet’s most popular search engine this year has been the launch of its new, feed-based mobile homepage in July. Perhaps the most drastic update of the Google.com homepage since Google’s creation in 1996, the new homepage allows users to customize a news feed that updates based on their interests, location, and past search behaviors. On the heels of the new homepage’s US launch, Clark Boyd looked at what we knew so far about the homepage, why Google chose to launch it when they did, and the potential new opportunities for marketers.
#5: Google Chrome SSL certificate proposal could affect millions of websitesIn another major piece of news this year, potential millions of websites that use SSL certificates issued by Symantec and affiliated resellers faced finding out that their certificates were effectively worthless as far as Google Chrome was concerned, after a member of the Chrome team published a proposal that would make them untrusted over the next 12 months. According to the Google Chrome team, Symantec had not properly validated thousands of certificates. In fact, the Chrome team claimed that “an initial set of reportedly 127 [misissued] certificates has expanded to include at least 30,000 [misissued] certificates, issued over a period spanning several years.” Al Roberts looked at the news for Search Engine Watch and its potential impact for website owners
And that’s it for us in 2017! We hope you enjoy revisiting the best of our published content over the past 12 months, and we’ll see you in the new year! Rebecca Sentance is the Deputy Editor of Search Engine Watch. Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?Get top insights and news from our search experts. Related readingOrganic search accounts for 51% of the traffic brands receive on average. To capitalize on this opportunity, brands often partner with an SEO agency to add firepower to their existing marketing efforts. However, with so many agencies all promising so much, how can brands ensure they select the right company? In the run-up to Black Friday and the holiday shopping season, retailers are competing like crazy to attract the eyeballs of as many paying consumers as possible through paid search advertising. But how well is it paying off? As an SEO expert at your company – maybe the only SEO expert – you may find yourself needing to persuade executives to invest more in your company's SEO practices. Here are four practices you should use to your advantage when trying to win executive support for your proposals. If you're a parent, teacher or child development professional looking for an age-appropriate and safe search engine, where should you turn? We round up 4 great options, along with some general pointers on how to enhance children's experience of browsing the internet. Reference source : Originally from Marketing Online Tip - Feed http://ift.tt/2BU5N1U
Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on social media at @rustybrick, +BarrySchwartz and Facebook. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio and disclosures, click over here. Read more source : Originally from Marketing Online Tip - Feed http://ift.tt/2BPnbF8 As we come to the end of 2017, we’ve decided to take a look back at some of our most-read articles throughout the year. For the rest of this week, we’ll be highlighting the top five most popular articles in various categories across the site. First up is, of course, the bread and butter of Search Engine Watch: SEO. Several of our most-read articles in SEO were list articles (hard to go wrong with a good list), and they often dealt with how to prepare for the year ahead: how to plan your strategy for 2017, tips to boost your SEO in 2017, trends to watch in 2018. If you missed any of these excellent articles when they were published, now’s your chance to check them out. And if you’ve already read them, well, it never hurts to refresh your knowledge. #1: Five quick tips to boost your SEO in 2017Everyone loves quick tips for SEO, and Tereza Litsa has some great ones to get your SEO off to a strong start in the new year. These might be tips for 2017, but they stand the test of time – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t apply these to your SEO going into 2018, if you haven’t already.
#2: Seven SEO trends to watch in 2018What does the year ahead hold for SEO? While it’s hard to say exactly what will unfold in 2018, based on the events of this year and the prevailing winds in the industry, we can make a pretty good guess as to what the major trends will be. Tereza Litsa outlines seven you need to watch and account for in your search strategy next year.
After you’ve clued up on the trends ahead, don’t miss our follow-up article on how to optimize for them: How to future-proof your SEO for 2018. #3: The 15 best Google Chrome extensions for SEOGoogle Chrome dominates as the world’s favorite desktop browser, and its thousands of extensions give it an almost daunting level of customization. You can do just about anything with Google Chrome extensions, including – no, especially – SEO. But which are the best extensions to use? Clark Boyd rounds up 15 Chrome extensions to aid you in your SEO efforts, from a quick site review to on-site content analysis, technical SEO and backlink analysis.
#4: Building your SEO strategy in 2017: What’s most important?In another enduring piece about SEO strategy for 2017, Marcela de Vivo looks at the areas you should be focusing on for SEO amid hundreds of possible ranking factors and points of optimization. Again, it’s still highly relevant as we come to the end of the year and well worth a revisit. How many of these areas did you nail in 2017?
#5: How to create SEO-friendly contentThe increasing merging of content and SEO, once thought of as separate disciplines, has been one of the enduring themes of the past couple of years. By now, if your content strategy and SEO aren’t at least on the same page, if not working hand-in-glove, then you’re definitely taking the wrong approach to both. If you need a primer or a refresher on creating the best content to rank well in search, Tereza Litsa has you covered with her guide on how to create SEO-friendly content.
Check back tomorrow for our next set of highlights – the top 5 most popular articles in PPC. Rebecca Sentance is the Deputy Editor of Search Engine Watch. Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?Get top insights and news from our search experts. Related readingMobile optimization should be an integral part of your SEO strategy, and it goes beyond just checking whether your site passes Google’s Mobile Friendly test. In order to cover off all the factors involved in achieving the ultimate mobile-optimized website, it is necessary to carry out a mobile SEO audit on your site. The price associated with an SEO campaign can be determined by a significant amount of factors: what work has been conducted previously? What internal resources are available to support the campaign? How competitive is the industry? What are the goals of the campaign? As a result, pricing SEO can sometimes feel akin to a ‘how long is a piece of string’ scenario. With just a couple of weeks left in December, it’s time to start preparing for what SEO might look like in 2018. A little while ago, we highlighted our seven SEO trends for 2018 that you should be watching out for. But what practical steps should you be taking with your SEO to prepare for next year? Google Trends, first launched in 2006, provides marketers with invaluable insights into how people search on the world's most popular search engine. Over time, the power of this service has been tapped in new and enlightening ways. Here's how you can use it for SEO. Origin soruce : Originally from Marketing Online Tip - Feed http://ift.tt/2Ch59wx As SEOs working in the weeds with our clients each day, it can sometimes be hard to truly see how major Google algorithm updates affect our industry as a whole. Sure, we can perform test after test to see how our clients are affected, but what about the poor account manager or technical SEO director who has to put in the extra work and placate potentially panicked and frustrated clients? How are they personally affected? BrightLocal (my employer) anonymously polled 650 SEO professionals recently on this very subject, asking them a host of questions about how algorithm updates impact their workload, their client relationships and their job satisfaction. Below, I’ll go over some of the startling results from our survey, “The Human Impact of Google Algorithm Updates.” Google update? What Google update?First, and almost most alarmingly, 36 percent of respondents couldn’t say whether their business or their clients’ businesses have ever been impacted by a Google algorithm update. This should come as a shock — although this isn’t necessarily Day 1 SEO Stuff, it’s certainly Week 1 SEO Stuff. The high percentage shown here suggests that either Google needs to better communicate the potential effects of an algorithm change (we can dream, right?) and/or SEOs and in-house marketers need to do more to stay on top of updates and investigate whether their clients have been affected by them. ‘And how does that make you feel?’Of the significant 44 percent who said their business or their clients’ had been affected by algorithm changes, 26 percent say they struggle to know how to react, and 25 percent get stressed when updates happen. (Note: For this question, respondents were able to select multiple answers.) However, on the flip side, an encouraging 58 percent either don’t get worried about updates or are actually excited by the challenge. It’s perfectly natural for different types of people at different levels of experience to have differing reactions to potentially stressful situations, but 26 percent of respondents say they don’t even know how to react. This means that all the content you put out immediately after a Google update — whether to cash in on suddenly popular “what just happened to the Google algorithm” keywords or to genuinely help SEOs serve their clients better (we’re hoping it’s the latter) — isn’t reaching everyone. At this point in the Google updates timeline, we should all, as content creators and content readers, be better versed in learning how to react after a Google update. The penultimate strawFor many, it seems, the camel’s back can very nearly be broken by a surprise Google update. Just over a quarter of respondents said they’d considered leaving the SEO industry because of algorithm updates but ultimately decided to stick around. It’s worth taking a step back next time an update hits. Take a look around your agency — are your SEO staff or colleagues ready to break? It takes strong leadership and a solid bedrock of skills for an SEO agency to bounce back from a big update, so make sure your best SEOs are made of the right stuff to prepare them for the worst — and, as we’ll see now, it gets bad. How to lose clients and alienate GoogleNearly a third of respondents who said that Google updates had had an effect on business actually lost clients as a result. But it’s not all bad news. Twenty-six percent won clients, 23 percent saw the opportunity to grow their work with existing clients, and 29 percent of respondents noticed no change after the update. So there’s quite a lot of positivity to be found here, especially considering respondents were able to choose multiple answers (which could mean that respondents both won and lost clients because of Google updates). What this ultimately means is that what happens after a Google update is up to you. You can’t point at the above chart and say, “Well, everyone loses clients after a Google update,” because they don’t. The range of responses shows just how much is at stake when an update hits, but it also shows the huge opportunities available to those agencies that communicate with their existing clients quickly and knowledgeably, carefully managing expectations along the way, while also keeping their eye out for businesses who have taken a beating in rankings/traffic and are looking for help. The client-agency relationshipOne final point the survey touched on was the client-agency relationship and how it can be affected by Google updates. A majority agreed that updates make clients more dependent on agencies. (Who knew it? It turns out that every time Google released an algorithm update, they were doing SEOs a favor all along!) However, with that extra dependency comes extra scrutiny, as seen by the 31 percent of respondents who feel that Google updates lead to clients distrusting agencies. The wisest SEOs in this particular situation are the ones going into client update meetings with clear, transparent overviews of what the client’s money or their time is being spent on, and simplified (but not necessarily simple) explanations of the ramifications of the Google update. And for the 28 percent who said that Google updates make clients consider changing agency? Well, I hope you do better next time! What is the first thing you do when an algorithm update happens?Before I leave you to stew on all that data and start pre-packing your next Google Update Emergency Go-Bag, here are some of the qualitative responses we received to one particular question in the survey, “What is the first thing you do when an algorithm update happens?” May these serve to remind you that whatever happens, no SEO is alone: The data-divers
The researchers
The vice users
The waiters
The communicators
The extremes
The one person who was actually positive about it
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here. About The AuthorJamie Pitman is Head of Content at local SEO tool provider BrightLocal. He's been working in Digital Marketing for nearly ten years and has specialized in SEO, content marketing and social media, managing successful marketing projects for clients and employers alike. Over this time he's blogged his heart out, writing over 300 posts on a wide variety of digital marketing topics for various businesses and publications. Read more source : Originally from Marketing Online Tip - Feed http://ift.tt/2BYL4Oy Your ad campaigns should bring you closer to new prospects and clients. But how well are you able to judge their success? Your conversion rate in AdWords is your success rate at persuading consumers to click on your ads and carry out a particular action, such as a product purchase. It is estimated that the average conversion rate for an Adwords account is just 2.35%. According to analysis carried out by WordStream on more than 2,000 client accounts, the top 25% of accounts had conversion rates of 5.31% or higher, while the bottom 25% of accounts had a conversion rate of 0-1%. Where on the performance scale do your ads sit? An alarmingly high proportion of PPC campaign managers and marketers don’t know how well their ads are performing. Or maybe you do know, but aren’t sure what to do to improve your conversion rate. In this article, we’ll outline three areas where you should focus your efforts to improve your AdWords conversion, and give practical tips on how you can nudge the scale in the right direction. First: Establish which conversions you’re trackingThe first step to improving your conversion rate is to know how your campaigns are performing. Thus, you will need to set up conversion tracking to keep track of your ads’ performance. According to a report by Disrupt Advertising, only 57.7% of Adwords accounts have set up conversion tracking. This means that 42.3% of the respondents are not able to tell if their campaigns are successful. Conversion tracking allows you to analyse the performance of your ads, your ad groups and your campaigns. This makes it easier to find the ROI for each investment, while it also makes it easier to measure the exact number of conversions. So far, so good; but in order to track conversions, you need to have established which outcomes you want to achieve with your PPC campaign. For example, for an ecommerce company, a conversion is usually interpreted as a product sale. However, you many be interested in tracking:
Not all of these actions directly produce revenue, but if your aim is to increase engagement and awareness, then these are viable conversion goals for your business. 3 tips to improve your Adwords conversion rateImprove Quality ScoreImproving your Adwords Quality Score can significantly impact your conversion rate in two ways: one, by lowering your campaign Cost Per Click (CPC), allowing you to get your ads in front of a wider audience for the same budget; and two, by serving as a metric for how good your ad experience is for the consumer. The best ways to improve it are to:
Improving the wider experience of your Adwords campaigns will improve your Quality Score, and by the same token, increase the chances of seeing a higher number of clicks and conversions. According to Google, the three main components that define how your Quality Score can affect a real-time auction are: Overall, the Quality Score is Google’s attempt to reward quality and relevant ads, and a focus on improving it can lead to more successful Adwords campaigns. Optimize your landing pagesThe design of your landing page plays a key role in your number of conversions. A good ad campaign may bring more people to your landing page, but if it’s not optimized to facilitate conversions, then you’re likely to lose those potential customers before they convert. A high-converting landing page is:
Every element should be tested, from the CTA to the colour of the buttons and their placement. Carrying out A/B testing allows you to minimize the risk of wasting your budget on a low-converting page. Optimization should start by ensuring that your landing page facilitates the customer journey. Think like a user to spot the problems that can affect your page’s performance. A good way to increase your chances of conversion is to align the ad copy with the landing page. You don’t want your ad copy to be misleading, as it risks losing the user’s trust. Similarly, you don’t want the copy to be vague, as this will affect the number of clicks. The copy of your ads should align with the content of your landing pages. You need to live up to the expectations to increase the conversion rate and this can also improve your quality score. Overall, the optimisation of your landing page should include: Appealing and targeted copyA good headline along with relevant content can make a landing page more interesting for your target audience. Eye-catching visual contentAs with the copy, images and videos can grab the audience’s attention and facilitate the conversion. The type of image, the size, the design can all affect the outcome of a visit. A well-tested CTAOne of the most important elements to test on your landing page is the CTA. Your call-to-action button will affect the conversion rate and that’s why you need to test the ideal colour, size, placement for it. Good user experienceUser experience can significantly affect the conversion rate of your landing page although it can still be overlooked during the A/B testing. Your visitors expect a good user experience when visiting a landing page with a fast loading speed, a fully functional page and a properly tested form. Every element of your landing page appeals to UX and accessibility can also be part of it. Conversion becomes easier when you ensure that your landing page is optimized for every single visitor. Responsiveness across all devicesAs with user experience, a responsive page that is equally well-presented across all devices maximizes the chances of conversion. The increased number of mobile users calls for a fully functional mobile page that takes into consideration a good user experience. Except for the page speed, the copy should be also short and engaging, while the form has to be limited to a set number of fields to avoid losing the visitors’ interest. For more tips on how to design a high-converting AdWords landing page, check out these guides: Adjust your keyword matching typeAdwords allows you to add keywords that are:
A broad match keyword shows your ads to anyone searching for your selected keyword. For example, if you add “black iPhone price”, your ad will show up to anyone searching for it, no matter what order the words show up. This increases the reach of your ad campaign, bringing more clicks to it. A phrase match keyword shows your ads to anyone searching for the specific phrase, either the way it is or as part of a sentence, such as “how to find black iPhone price”. This type of keywords allows you to filter your ads to a more specific audience, while still maintaining a significant reach. An exact match keyword is the most specific type, only displaying your ad to anyone searching for the exact keyword you input, and in the same way that you’ve structured it. If the search is not an exact match, then your ad will not show up. Ad campaigns that focus on exact match keywords can have a higher conversion rate as they attract a smaller, more highly-targeted audience. If your goal is to narrow down your audience then this can be a useful option. However, if you want to cast as wide a net as possible in the hopes of attracting different types of consumers who might convert, a phrase match or broad match keyword might be more suitable. It’s a good idea to test all the variations in order to determine which one works better for your campaign and your target audience. You can start by focusing on narrow results through exact matches and then scale up your efforts to expand your campaign reach if you don’t achieve your desired conversion rate. For more detail on the different types of PPC keyword matching and how to set them up, don’t miss Amanda DiSilvestro’s guide: Common PPC keyword mistakes (Understanding broad match vs. phrase match vs. exact match). OverviewConversion is a key metric for measuring the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. The higher the conversion rate, the better the chances of meeting your business goals and driving ROI. However, it’s useful to remember that there also needs to be an evaluation of the quality of the conversions and whether they match your target audience. It’s tempting to reach a wider audience and see the conversion rate improving, but do they really serve as leads and prospect clients? This depends on your goals and your expectations from every campaign and that’s why it’s useful to keep analyzing the performance of your ads. The most important tips for improving your conversion rates are to:
Tereza Litsa is a Writer at Search Engine Watch. Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?Get top insights and news from our search experts. Related readingIn the run-up to Black Friday and the holiday shopping season, retailers are competing like crazy to attract the eyeballs of as many paying consumers as possible through paid search advertising. But how well is it paying off? The average cost of pay-per-click advertising is steadily increasing – with the average cost-per-click in 2016 being nearly double that of 2013. When you consider the fact that Google processes over 2.3 million searches per minute, this is hardly surprising. But what can marketers do to ensure that they attract customers on this increasingly competitive channel, while avoiding these burgeoning costs? SEO and social media would at first appear to be very different practices, especially when taking into account paid social advertising. However, there are significant SEO benefits to be gained from utilizing social media advertising as both an outreach platform and also as an analytics platform. Both Google Display Network and Facebook have great audience targeting capabilities that allow marketers to get in front of target audiences. In Part 2 of our series on killer demand strategy, we dive into how to target your personas and audiences on the Google Display Network. Read more source : Originally from Marketing Online Tip - Feed http://ift.tt/2l2FhwV Today’s Christmas holiday marks day two of Google’s 2017 holiday doodle series. After posting the first of the series on December 18, Google has added two new images to the slide show for today’s doodle. “Our favorite penguins couldn’t be more excited to reunite with their loved ones. Happy to be together for the season of cheer, this colorfully feathered family can’t wait to sink their beaks into a delicious feast,” writes Google on the Google Doodle blog. While the December 18 doodle included an image of the penguins making plans over the phone with their bird friends, today’s doodle has replaced that image with the following artwork of the penguins and birds together: The doodle has also added the following image of all the friends sharing a dinner surrounded by lighted palm trees: Same as the first doodle, today’s image leads to a search for “December global festivities.” Going off the last image in the slide show that lists the holiday doodle series dates, there are two more holiday doodles to be posted, one for New Year’s Eve and one for New Year’s Day: About The AuthorAmy Gesenhues is Third Door Media's General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles. Read more source : Originally from Marketing Online Tip - Feed http://ift.tt/2C5bGu1 Since the early days of search, Google has used links as a means of judging the reputation and relevance of webpages. The more links pointing to a particular page, particularly from other reputable pages, the more importance Google would award it in search. And so link-building developed as an SEO strategy, with SEOs doing everything they could to win, buy or otherwise gain links pointing to their website in order to boost it up the rankings. Over the years, Google has made a lot of adjustments to the way it treats links, cracking down on paid-for or freebie links and implementing algorithm updates like Penguin or Fred which penalize sites with a lot of spammy links. This has made link-building a lot trickier for SEOs than it once was. At the same time, the web has evolved, and search engines have evolved along with it. With the rise of social media, digital assistants and voice interfaces, and the increasing merging of the online and offline worlds, the number of links pointing to a site seems like a slightly outdated way of judging its reputation – not to mention easy to game. And in fact, it’s not the only means that search engines have of judging reputation. Over the past few years, major search engines like Google and Bing have developed the ability to gauge a website’s reputation via any reference to a brand, anywhere online, together with the sentiment it is mentioned in. These references are known as “linkless mentions”, or “linkless backlinks”. We touched on the rise of linkless mentions in our recent piece ‘How to future-proof your SEO for 2018’. In this article, we’ll look more closely at how linkless mentions have changed the nature of link-building, and how you should adjust your strategy to account for them. How do linkless mentions work?Previously, Google used an algorithm known as PageRank to assess a page’s authority. In essence, PageRank considered links pointing to a page to be like “votes” for that page; the more votes a page received, particularly from other pages with a lot of votes, the more importance it was given. Of course, this has never been the sole factor that Google uses for determining ranking, and plenty of commentators warned against the dangers of thinking that a high PageRank instantly correlates to a high search ranking. But it was given a lot of emphasis in SEO nevertheless. An illustration of how PageRank works for a simple network, with percentages to represent page authority. Times have moved on since then, and in early 2016 Google officially retired PageRank from its toolbar in order to avoid misleading website owners about just how important PageRank was. While Google still uses PageRank internally, it’s clear that there is a lot more to how it judges a website’s authority. Meanwhile, evidence has been mounting that both Google and Bing are able to associate mentions of a brand or website without a link, and use that as a trust signal. At SMX West 2016, Duane Forrester, Bing’s former Senior Product Manager, stated that linkless mentions can be just as strong a signal as regular links, adding that Bing figured out how to associate mentions without a link, as well as determine sentiment and tone, “years ago”. As for Google, sharp-eyed industry commentators noticed a patent that Google filed in 2014 which defined non-linked mentions as “implied links”. Simon Penson, writing for Moz, explained exactly how this works in practice:
But the shift towards unlinked mentions as a trust signal was most clearly spelled out by Google’s Gary Illyes, in a keynote at Brighton SEO in September 2017. Talking about SEO best practices that webmasters should stick to, Illyes said:
It couldn’t be spelled out more plainly: Google considers all mentions of your brand on the internet, not just links, to be akin to a trust signal, and is taking them into account. What does this mean for link-building strategy?What does this development mean for the way you should approach link-building strategy? A lot of the same principles of a good link-building strategy still apply to building linkless mentions, and if you’ve got a link-building strategy going that’s working well for your brand, of course you should continue it. Links still matter – but they don’t always need to be the ultimate goal of link-building. Tactics like tracking down mentions of your site and badgering the website owners into adding a hyperlink aren’t necessary any more; just the mention by itself, assuming it’s not a negative one, is enough to provide Google with a trust signal. Here are some other steps you can take to make sure that your link-building strategy also targets linkless mentions: Aim to build overall brand awareness and reputationLink-building isn’t just about hyperlinks any more, and over time we may well see the term change to something more general like “reference-building” or “reputation-building”, to reflect what’s really involved. For the same reasons, it’s helpful to broaden your goals beyond gaining backlinks to include other, positive mentions of your brand. Some things that can contribute to this include:
Track all brand mentions – not just backlinksIf you’re pursuing a link-building strategy, it’s always a good move to invest in some backlink analysis tools that will allow you to track links back to your site and understand your link profile. With linkless mentions, the same principle applies – but you need to be tracking all kinds of mentions, not just backlinks, which requires some slightly different tools. Some tools which allow you to track mentions of your brand across the web include:
Comparing competitor data in Mention | Source: mention.com Optimize your off-page SEOSimilar to our first point about building overall brand awareness and reputation, if you haven’t set out to optimize your off-page SEO, you absolutely must. Off-page SEO encompasses all of the aspects of SEO that don’t take place on your website, such as your social media activity, customer service practices, online reviews, influencer marketing and more. As such, anything that’s great for off-page SEO is also great for building brand reputation and mentions. For more on how to nail off-page SEO, don’t miss Amanda DiSilvestro’s comprehensive guide: How to achieve off-the-charts off-page SEO that will boost traffic. Carry out reputation managementJust as backlinks pointing to your site are only beneficial if they’re reputable, non-spammy links, mentions of your brand are only beneficial if they’re positive mentions – so a reputation management strategy is a must. Be proactive in monitoring the sentiment of the conversation around your brand; many of the mention tracking tools listed above will allow you to do that. This will allow you to spot any potential problem situations brewing before they develop into a full-blown crisis. Make sure you take the time to engage with and respond to individuals reporting a negative experience with your brand, and do your best to resolve the issues they have. Actively promote your brand name online, so that the positive and authoritative mentions of your brand will inevitably drown out any negative mentions that do arise. Check out Marcela De Vivo’s guide to Online Reputation Management: Beyond Damage Control for more practical advice on managing your online reputation, and what to do in a reputation crisis. Rebecca Sentance is the Deputy Editor of Search Engine Watch. Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?Get top insights and news from our search experts. Related readingThe price associated with an SEO campaign can be determined by a significant amount of factors: what work has been conducted previously? What internal resources are available to support the campaign? How competitive is the industry? What are the goals of the campaign? As a result, pricing SEO can sometimes feel akin to a ‘how long is a piece of string’ scenario. With just a couple of weeks left in December, it’s time to start preparing for what SEO might look like in 2018. A little while ago, we highlighted our seven SEO trends for 2018 that you should be watching out for. But what practical steps should you be taking with your SEO to prepare for next year? Google Trends, first launched in 2006, provides marketers with invaluable insights into how people search on the world's most popular search engine. Over time, the power of this service has been tapped in new and enlightening ways. Here's how you can use it for SEO. As we come to the end of 2017 and embark on the inevitable dozens of review articles looking back over the past year of search, it’s as good a time as any to reflect on SEO strategy. What are the greatest challenges being faced by the industry as a whole? What have been the biggest successes? Reference source : Originally from Marketing Online Tip - Feed http://ift.tt/2kSFYJd |
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