Wednesday, January 31, 2018

SearchCap: Google EU rivals, Bing Ads tracking fix & Google speed index update

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

The post SearchCap: Google EU rivals, Bing Ads tracking fix & Google speed index update appeared first on Search Engine Land.



from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/2rQUkQ2
via IFTTT

Google’s Page Speed Update does not impact indexing

Google’s Page Speed Update won’t impact how Google indexes your mobile or desktop content; it will only affect how the mobile pages are ranked in the Google mobile search results. To be clear, indexing and ranking are two separate things, as Google explains clearly in the How Search Works portal.

We are covering this again because there appears to be some confusion around the Page Speed Update and whether it will impact indexing. Both John Mueller and Gary Illyes of Google chimed in to explain that this specific algorithm will have no impact on indexing.

Here are those tweets:

We have a large FAQs on the Page Speed update algorithm that Google will be releasing in July. So please make sure to read up on that.

The post Google’s Page Speed Update does not impact indexing appeared first on Search Engine Land.



from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/2GBb3Km
via IFTTT

Want to speak at SMX London? Here’s how

SMX London takes place May 22-23, 2018, at etc.venues, 155 Bishopsgate, Liverpool St., London EC2M 3YD. To increase the odds of being selected, be sure to read the agenda. Understand what the sessions are about. Ensure that your pitch is on target to the show’s audience and the session. Please also be very specific about what you intend to cover. Also, if you do not see a particular session listed, it is because there are no openings for that session. Use this form to submit your request.

PLEASE NOTE: Many sessions have already been filled and are not open for pitches. If a session does not appear on the pitch form, it is closed, even if no speakers are appearing on the agenda yet.

As you might guess, interest is high in speaking at Marketing Land conferences. We literally sift through hundreds of submissions to select speakers for the show. Here are some tips that will increase your chances of being selected.

Pitch early: Submitting your pitch early gives you a better chance of being selected. Coordinators accept speakers as soon as they identify a pitch that they think best fits the session, just like colleges that use a rolling admissions policy. So pitching early increases the likelihood you’ll be chosen.

Use the form: The speaker pitch form (http://marketinglandevents.com/speaker-form/) is the way to ask to speak. There’s helpful information there about how your pitch should be written and what it should contain.

Write it yourself and be specific: Lots of pitches come in that are not specific to the session. This is the most effective way to ensure that your pitch is ignored. And this year, we’re no longer accepting pitches written by anyone other than a proposed speaker. If you’re a thought leader, write the pitch yourself… and make certain that it is 100 percent focused on the session topic.

‘Throw your best pitch:’ We’re limiting the number of pitches to three per person, so please pitch for the session(s) where you really feel you’ll offer SMX attendees your best.

You’ll be notified: Everyone who pitches to speak will be notified by email if you are accepted or not.

And don’t delay — the pitch forms for each session will close as sessions are filled, with everything closing the week of February 16.

The post Want to speak at SMX London? Here’s how appeared first on Search Engine Land.



from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/2GxawJs
via IFTTT

What Startups Can Learn from ‘Tax Relief’ PPC Campaigns

Old-school industries don’t get the credit they deserve.

Every blog online focuses on the hot new startup.

People write case study after case study on the trendy new subscription box.

But no one ever talks about offline companies.

Even though, many times, there’s WAY more money at stake.

Take ‘tax relief,’ for example.

The latest IRS numbers show that people fail to pay $458 billion a year in taxes. That accounts for almost 69% of our annual deficit.

Obviously, people don’t get away with avoiding taxes for too long. Eventually, they’ll be caught.

And then they’ll need to pay back the IRS.

The problem, of course, is that they probably won’t have the money on hand.

So what will these desperate people do?

They’ll start looking for help from tax relief companies.

These companies specialize in helping people reduce or avoid certain debts.

What’s the problem?

This is a heavily commoditized market. Many of these providers are offering the same services, more or less.

If a ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ refers to uncontested markets, tax relief is a very, very, molten lava, red-hot, competitive market.

It’s among the most competitive in the world. You have massive companies all chasing the same few people who owe lots and lots of money.

You know what else that means?

There is no room for error.

These companies literally cannot afford to make a mistake.

They’re among the highest-priced PPC terms, for instance, reaching up to around $40-50 bucks a click.

And that’s just for a single visit!

They still have to try and convert those visitors. So the actual cost per lead is well into the hundreds of dollars, easy.

That’s why we should be studying these old school industries. They might not have the flashiest designs or most cutting-edge tech.

But they are slogging it out, day in and day out, with competitors who’re all spending a TON of money.

In this article, I’m going to show you strategies from the best in the tax relief business. At the very end, you’ll be able to take these tips and instantly increase your own PPC campaigns.

First, however, we need to start by getting a lay of the land.

How to research an industry you know nothing about

PPC is one of my favorite marketing tactics.

I love it because it produces results almost immediately. You can turn campaigns on and make adjustments on the fly.

Do it right and customers start flowing in within a few days.

I also love it because it’s consistent. You can predict what kind of results you’re going to get.

And you can predict them, because a simple competitive analysis will give you almost all the data you need.

For example, before this post, I knew nothing about tax relief. Thankfully!

My trick to uncovering the best marketing tips isn’t to watch what people say. It’s to watch what they do.

If you want to know more about ‘tax relief,’ let’s start by Googling the competition.

So far so good. The first four ad results show they know what they’re doing.

My search query was “tax relief Seattle.”

But all of them do a good job bringing up benefits of their service.

Why does that matter? Because just over a year ago, Google opened up the ‘expanded’ headline.

This way, you could hit the keyword in the first headline. And then add a secondary benefit to get people to click.

Here’s an awesome example:

“Take 60 seconds to cut taxes” helps the searcher hop over the first objection hurdle: It’s going to be too long or boring.

When this new expanded headline debuted, WordStream ran a study and found that adding an additional benefit like this can increase your click-through rate by 400%!

Just a few simple queries like this will help you quickly find a whole slew of companies.

Stick to big, popular queries at this point.

The reason? Keywords like “tax relief” will also be among the most expensive in the space.

Which means the companies you see advertising on them will have the big bucks.

They’ll be the most aggressive.

And you can use them as a benchmark.

For example, Precision Tax Relief had an excellent ad earlier. They used ad extensions like star ratings and reviews.

So you know they’re legit.

Now, I’m going to grab their URL and drop them into two tools.

First, let’s see what their site brings up in SpyFu:

Check that out.

Two seconds and you can see:

  1. The number of keywords they’re bidding on
  2. An estimate of clicks they’re receiving
  3. Their total monthly budget

And then, you can even drill down into the individual keywords in their account.

Each one will show a cost per click, the total ad budget on each, and where they’re showing up for them.

SEMrush will show you similar data:

In this case, you’re able to sort the keywords they’re bidding on by search position.

See something interesting already?

Precision Tax Relief is paying for the #1 position of a competitor, Optima Tax Relief.

Judging by this traffic estimate, they’re also stealing a TON of their clicks, too.

Look further down the list and you see more of the same.

Why should we spend time looking up competitors?

Because these tools will uncover the strategies the best companies in the industry are using.

So far, we can see that Precision Tax is using a branded search strategy.

Instead of just dominating their own name, they’re actively bidding against the competition’s.

But that’s not the most important thing buried in here.

For starters, they’re giving us the 800LB gorilla in the tax relief space: Optima.

Which means we can now go research them to see what’s making them so successful.

Let’s start with reverse-engineering their keyword strategy.

Analyze the best in the business to see what works

There’s a trick I use to shortcut keyword research for SEO.

Instead of wasting tons of time on inaccurate tools like the Google Keyword Planner, I do the same thing every time I get a new site:

Fire up an AdWords campaign.

The reason? It saves me a ton of time.

The hardest part about optimizing a brand new website is that you don’t know the ‘money’ keywords.

You have no idea which keywords will deliver the best bang for your buck. Or hours.

AdWords can help you solve that.

You can add a bunch of keywords from five minutes of research. Set up a decent daily budget.

Then, the AdWords Search Terms report will tell you exactly which keywords are worth focusing on.

That’s what we want to replicate in this case, too.

Right now, we still have no idea which keywords perform best.

Sure, we saw that some companies are going after the competition hard.

But you often can’t rely only on competitive brand queries.

Instead, let’s look up the top keywords for Optima Tax Relief. They were one of the biggest in the space.

So they probably have a pretty good keyword strategy already in place.

Here’s what that looks like in SEMrush:

Notice what they’re doing?

They’re employing a location-based keyword strategy.

A lot of the estimate monthly volume is really low, too. ~200-300 monthly queries is nothing.

“Tax relief,” by comparison, gets over ~8,000 monthly searches alone. It’s also expensive, with CPC’s that can range up to ~$40 a click:

Instead of going after just those big keywords, Optima is going after a ton of long-tail keywords.

That’s good and bad news.

It’s good news because long-tail keywords should offer better conversions and cost less per lead.

But it’s bad news because there’s often not enough of them to go around.

In other words, you have to piece them all together to get the end results you’re looking for.

You can’t grow a business off one or two conversions each month. Instead, you need to stack those like bricks.

You need thousands to really take off.

Clicking on those individual keywords they’re running will also show you the different ad creatives they’re using.

And you’ll get to see the other similar search terms their ads are appearing on.

For example, here’s what it looks like when you click on “tax attorney nyc”:

Now, you’re seeing all of those little long-tail variations that go together.

And you’re looking at the exact ad copy they’re using to drive clicks.

See how this works?

With about ten minutes of research, you can start piecing together a winning campaign.

Even in an industry where you have no prior experience.

Of course, this is just a start.

There’s actually a whole lot more involved in a successful ad campaign.

We’re only scratching the surface right now.

Keywords and ads get people to click. But they’re not why people convert.

Most of the time, that happens when people start interacting with your site.

Your site’s landing pages not only determine conversions, though. They also can end up determining how much you’re going to pay for each click.

Here’s how.

Mimic the customer’s process to understand their experience

Back in the day, when I first started out, AdWords didn’t have a Quality Score.

That meant anyone could advertise on any keywords and there was no penalty.

As long as you had the money to spend, it was fine.

That created a problem for users, though. The results were often irrelevant.

Google’s Quality Score changed all that.

It factors in a bunch of different variables, like ad relevance or expected click-through rate, to determine which ads are best.

Generally speaking, the better the score and your Ad Rank, the less you often end up paying.

So while AdWords is an auction, you can sometimes pay less than the people showing up below you. If your scores are better.

Years ago, Larry Kim analyzed millions in ad spend and found a 16% cost difference based on Quality Score. A point higher and you paid less. A point lower and you paid more.

Jacob Baadsgaard repeated this experiment a few years later and found a 13% correlation.

In other words, your Quality Score can often directly influence your costs.

Now, here’s the kicker:

A huge component of your Quality Score comes down to message match.

Here’s what that means:

  1. How well does your keyword selection represent someone’s search intent?
  2. How well does your ad text match the keyword you’re bidding on?
  3. And how well does your landing page match both the ad text and keyword?

Those three elements should be in perfect harmony.

The more they’re aligned, the better the message match, the higher the Quality Score, and the lower cost you pay.

Still with me so far?

Let’s go back to our original example from Precision Tax Relief.

Here’s what their ad looked like again:

Notice how the headline is: “Best Tax Relief Seattle”?

The ad copy below also uses “attorneys,” among other keywords.

Compare that ad to the landing page people see when they click:

Not bad, right?

Technically speaking, the headline on this page (“Best Seattle Tax Attorney”) is a little off. Ideally, you’d make them the exact same as the ad and keyword.

But think through what that means, now.

Earlier, we saw how Optima tax relief was using a bunch of different long-tail keywords, sorted by location.

That means you’d have to create unique landing pages for almost every one!

You’d probably want to keep the same overall design to make your life a little easier.

However, you’d want to at least customize the text to better reflect what sent people here in the first place.

That means you might have one example for attorneys, specifically:

And then you’d have another targeting physicians and dentists:

There are a few ways you can pull this off.

You could have designers and developers help create custom pages for you.

But not everyone has that luxury.

Instead, I also like using dynamic text replacement wherever possible.

I’m all about ROI. The best solution is often the one that scales the best.

Landing page tools like Unbounce have features that will automatically replace text on a page, depending on where they came from.

That means you can create just one single landing page template.

Then, you can simply switch up the words.

Here’s a location-based example, just like those keywords from earlier.

This landing page says “Caribbean” right now.

You can highlight the location-based text, then click the “Dynamic Text” button on the right-hand side of Unbounce.

Now, we can customize the text based on the location or “destination”:

Now, repeat this process for all of the different keywords you’re bidding on.

You’ll get a simple, customized URL to copy and place in your ad campaigns.

That way, when someone clicks on the ad for “California” beach getaways, they’re going to land on a page with “California” all over it.

And you never had to create more than a single landing page.

Let’s go back to tax relief.

Because I came across a landing page that uses another advanced feature. You have to see it.

Here’s how Optima tax relief uses qualifying questions to convert more users.

Qualify and lead new customers to your doorstep

Clicking on an Optima Tax ad will bring you to the following landing page:

Here’s what it looks like if you want to play along at home.

Notice what you don’t see here?

You don’t see a Name field. You also don’t see Email or Phone.

They’re not asking you any personal information just yet.

Instead, they’re starting with “How much tax debt do you have”?

Weird, right?!

Except, it’s not so weird when you dig below the surface.

Right off the bat, they’re qualifying new visitors.

They’re trying to see how much you owe, between 0 – $50,000+.

If you owe less than $10,000 for example, and there’s probably not enough they can help you with.

They won’t stand to gain a whole lot.

Owe over $50,000 and their hands might also be tied. They’re not miracle workers, after all.

So they’re segmenting potential visitors to customize the kind of response you’ll get.

They can automate most of the disqualifying, gently letting people know they can’t help that much.

While they can also fast-track people who do fit right in their wheelhouse.

Only then do they ask for your personal information:

Virtu did two similar tactics to skyrocket conversions.

They asked qualifying questions to figure out how to treat individual leads:

And then they add Calendly to the Thank You page for good leads to remove any remaining friction.

Their rate of leads scheduling phone calls jumped from 20% to over 60% in just the first month.

There’s another reason this inverted process works, though.

Think about it from a customer’s perspective.

They probably don’t feel great. They’re embarrassed or hesitant about reaching out.

So landing on a page that immediately asks for a bunch of personal information is a little off-putting.

Counterintuitively, asking easy questions first can increase conversions later. It lowers the barrier to entry.

KlientBoost calls this the ‘Breadcrumb Technique.’

It’s based off research from Scott Fraser and Jonathan Freedman that showed how starting with a small ‘ask’ can make it easier to get a “yes” to the big ‘ask’ after.

By as much as 76% vs. 20%!

KlientBoost tested both approaches on a mortgage landing page:

And here were the incredible results:

  • The Cost Per Acquisition fell from $800+ to $35
  • Total conversions went from 6 to 135 a month
  • The conversion rate jumped from 1% to nearly 20%

Pretty remarkable, right?

But we’re not even done yet.

There’s still a big difference between people that apply for tax relief help, from those that go through with the service.

We still need to see how people get over that last sales hump, then.

Here’s how you can use automation to largely set-and-forget this process.

Lastly, automate and fine-tune your intake process

After submitting your personal information, Optima Tax follows up with an automate email.

That’s pretty typical, though.

You’d expect that.

What’s not so expected is the text message you’ll receive at the very same time.

It will read something like this:

  • “$NAME Thanks for your interest in OptimaTaxRelief.com, we’ll be calling you soon.”

I know, because I ran through this process and received one myself. ;)

Soon after, you will receive that call, too.

So far they’ve followed up in all three primary channels:

  1. Phone
  2. Email
  3. Text

If you don’t pick up that phone call, you’ll receive another text message with something like:

  • “We were unable to reach you. Click 800-481-3615 to call a tax relief”

Fail to respond, and they’ll continue calling you throughout the next few days.

What’s happening here?

Optima Tax knows that this space is tough.

You, the customer, could have lost interest. Or you could be on the phone with the competition, comparing rates.

So they’re persistently aggressive to get ahold of you.

If and when you do get on the phone, they’ll ask you the same basic questions:

  • Why are you calling us today?
  • How much do you owe?
  • What do you do for a living?
  • Have you filed a tax return?
  • Have you filed an extension?
  • How did you hear about them?

And on and on.

They will also use an interview to figure out if you own any other assets, have insurance, what your household income looks like, and if you have any dependents.

The entire thing is scripted. They’re sizing you up, determining if they can win your case and how much you can afford to pay them.

They want to close you right there on the initial phone call, with costs ranging from $995 – $2995 depending on how much you owe.

Decline their first invitation to sign up, and they’ll continue sending you messages:

All of this can be choreographed ahead of time.

Based on the answers people give you, they can receive different messages.

Based on the way they act or don’t act, they can receive more, different messages.

Best of all, you can create these sequences in a matter of days with options like Drip, Infusionsoft, or Autopilot.

There are text message apps like TextMagic that can help you customize messaging based on responses or behavior, too.

The best tax relief companies have a masterful conversion funnel.

It’s no different than signing up for a new SaaS app.

You go through the trial period. Receive a bunch of emails. Then, you’ll get upgrade notices before your information is cancelled.

The same can and should apply to all businesses. You need a well-oiled funnel like this to convert the most people.

Remember: These leads and clicks are expensive!

These companies can’t afford to spend $40,000+ on ads each month and not see a significant return.

So each step of this funnel is fine-tuned, scripted, and automated. That way, they can easily isolate and tweak the parts that aren’t working.

Conclusion

“Boring” industries don’t always get the credit they deserve.

They don’t get any major press. And they don’t land on the front page of TechCrunch.

Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll see that the best are well-oiled machines.

While they might not get a lot of attention, what they do get is a whole lot of money.

They’ve been around the block. They’re not distracted by trends or other shiny hacks.

They’re just really good at routinely turning strangers into customers.

I almost learn more from watching these old school examples than new apps.

Because they just quietly go about building a huge business.

What’s the best example of a ‘boring,’ yet highly profitable company you’ve seen?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

The Art and Science of Storytelling — And How to Use Both to Reach Your Audience

Marketers are a lot like those realtors on HGTV’s “House Hunters.” The same way they’re trying to find a bungalow with beach access that also has a downtown industrial-loft feel (and stays within a $50,000 budget …), we’re constantly striving to create content that accomplishes many things.

We need to create content that’s thoughtful and well-crafted — content that speaks to our audiences, deeply engages them, thoroughly answers their questions, and helps them do their jobs better. And we also have to ensure our content is effective, that it ranks in search for the right terms and phrases, and that it drives results both within and beyond the marketing department. We need the quaint-modern-beachfront-cottage-mansion in the best school district. Achieving all of this can be quite difficult, which is why we’re holding a webinar on February 8th on how to get it done.

The list of things your content can accomplish could seriously go on and on. And on. I think Celine Dion sang a song about it.

via GIPHY

Creating content that meets your audiences’ needs as well as meets your monthly KPIs can be a #struggle — especially if you aren’t applying the right insights to your content creation process. Or if marketing is asking for a fenced-in backyard and sales wants a high-rise.

The best way to create that kind of content is to uncover the answers to a couple of key questions and use those insights to guide your content process.

Question 1: What do your audiences want?
Answer: An authentic story and original, valuable content they can connect with.

Question 2: What do search engines want?
Answer: Unique, long-form content that addresses searcher intent and substantiates claims with relevant data.

Enter: Qualitative and Quantitative Insights

Creating thought leadership content that shares expert insights through a compelling story and also delivers measurable results is all about looking at both sides of the coin: qualitative and quantitative insights.

In other words, it’s about bringing together art and science for the perfect content formula.

This means applying basic storytelling ideas to your content by putting your readers in the protagonist’s seat, speaking to their needs, and giving each piece an arc that they want to follow through to the end.

It also means applying hard numbers, facts, and data to each piece of content and to your strategy overall to make it more powerful.

The Results: Evergreen Content That Serves Various Departments

At Influence & Co., we’ve applied these qualitative and quantitative insights to our own content marketing, and we’ve seen great results. We create relevant content that helps us engage audiences, build our network, and generate and nurture leads. Outside these key marketing goals, we also put our content to use in our recruitment efforts and employee training, sales enablement, client service, and thought leader brand-building efforts. Basically, we’ve built the content marketing version of an open-concept kitchen that’s as functional as it is beautiful.

Want to dig deeper and learn how to use these insights, data, and storytelling to create content that fuels your business? Then join us for our webinar with Kissmetrics on Feb. 8 at 12 a.m. CST/10 a.m. PT.

Register today!

Author description: Brittni Kinney is a VP at Influence & Co. and loves discussing how content marketing can help any marketing strategy achieve its full potential. She likes her coffee black and her whiskey straight; she also enjoys traveling.

CallRail adds a keyword recommendation tool to its phone call listening platform

Most businesses keep track of customer phone calls. But is something getting lost in translation?

With the release today of its keyword recommendation tool, Call Highlights, CallRail offers businesses a chance to identify trends and uncover insights from their customer calls. The company says the tool is the first one in the market.

[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]

The post CallRail adds a keyword recommendation tool to its phone call listening platform appeared first on Search Engine Land.



from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/2E0m1ea
via IFTTT

Google EU shopping rivals complain antitrust remedies aren’t working

In the wake of the European Commission’s $2.7 billion antitrust fine against Google last year, the company opened up product listing ads (PLAs) to rival comparison shopping services. It also pledged to operate Google Shopping as though it were a stand-alone entity and to provide “equal treatment” for rivals.

Implementing that program resulted in a number of changes to the auction and shopping ads in search results. However, rivals such as Kelkoo, among others, have been complaining these measures haven’t worked and that their competitive positions have deteriorated.

Google’s shopping comparison rivals now formally seek additional concessions and have complained to the European Commission, which is reviewing their complaints and seeking information from Google to assess the efficacy of its remedies.

Data and analysis released earlier this week by Searchmetrics appear to support the rivals’ cause. Searchmetrics’ analysis found that Google still overwhelmingly dominates shopping ads in the UK and Germany in five key retail segments. More than 99 percent of PLAs across the examined categories in the UK were still “by Google.” The German market is reportedly somewhat more competitive.

Searchmetrics also found that organic visibility had declined for Google’s shopping competitors since the end of June 2017. This is mirrored in some of the complaints and allegations from Google competitors in Europe. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Some rivals also allege Google has continued to demote their websites in its general search results since the EU decision, which also alleged such demotions. Kelkoo CEO Richard Stables says the firm’s revenue from general search traffic dropped by 62 percent last year, to €2.3 million. In 2018, he projects a two-thirds drop to €800,000.

Google has taken the position that its changes to shopping ads and the auction in Europe comply with the European Commission’s order and that rival shopping services are treated equally. Google’s competitors disagree.

Should the Commission find that Google’s measures are inadequate or don’t comply with its antitrust order, the company could receive additional fines equivalent to 5 percent of its global daily revenue until compliance. Indeed, the European Commission is likely sympathetic to Google’s competitors and will be inclined to demand further action with the threat of additional penalties.

It’s not entirely clear what should happen or what would indicate compliance. The simple answer might be a substantially higher percentage of rival ads in PLAs and rival sites in organic slots. But that implies a high degree of regulatory involvement and potential intervention in the SERP itself.

Google maintains it has leveled the playing field for PLAs in Europe. Its competitors see something quite the opposite. Are those competitors right, partly right or not entirely competent and blaming their failures on Google?

Google is in the process of appealing the EC antitrust ruling and fine, but that could take several years.

The post Google EU shopping rivals complain antitrust remedies aren’t working appeared first on Search Engine Land.



from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/2DPTfd1
via IFTTT

3 ways humans can do PPC better than machines alone

Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic in PPC, but until the machines fully take over day-to-day account management, there are a few key areas where human PPC pros can still add a lot of value.

Use business data for bid management

Bid management can be one of the most repetitive and boring tasks of managing PPC because after a model has been built, you are left with an ongoing task of executing on the plan, and this may involve downloading the data, putting it into the correct format, and then running it through your formulas to determine the new bid. For machines, this might sound like the perfect dinner on a Caribbean beach at sunset, but for us humans? Not so much. Repetition is dull, and since it’s a dull task, we tend to become a bit less thorough with our analysis as time goes on.

This is why both Google and Bing offer automated bid management solutions. There are also many third-party bid management solutions which aim to improve on shortcomings of the bid management solutions from an engine. Though it is a well-known fact that the engines can do amazing bid management work, their solutions are generic and can ignore aspects that the business owner knows will impact their online conversions.

There are four clear advantages to using the engine’s bid management systems:

  1. They are free to use.
  2. They are based on best-in-breed algorithms.
  3. They have access to a lot of auction-time signals that advertisers don’t get (e.g., who is the user, what did they search before).
  4. They can set bids in real time based on auction time signals.

But there are several things these automated bid systems cannot do:

  1. Know the context of the performance that is measured through conversion tracking (e.g., conversions were slow yesterday because there was an issue with servers in one of the data centers).
  2. Understand the factors that impact the industry (e.g., a plumber with 15 vans will be better able to service a distributed customer base than one with just three vans).

The ideal bid management system combines the algorithms from the engines with data from your business. To this end, advertisers should calculate their own CPCs based on in-house data and then submit these bids to the engine as an Enhanced CPC, so that Google or Bing can adjust the bid up or down based on what they know about each auction.

This is a reason why tools like Optmyzr are popular for managing bids. They can help automate bid strategies that use a combination of data from the search engine (like historical conversion rates for individual keywords) and business data (like phone sales data, e-commerce returns data, or even how the weather impacts sales).

Optmyzr’s Rules-Based Optimizations let advertisers mix business data with AdWords data to create the perfect bid management automation.

Optmyzr’s Rules-Based Optimizations for bids are also ideal for agencies that want to add value beyond what the engine’s own bidding system can do but don’t want to build complex technology in-house that they need to maintain as Google and Bing go through their frequent updates to the API. Prebuilt recipes can be installed in seconds to help advertisers reach goals like target CPA, target ROAS or target position. These recipes can be enhanced over time as more is learned about factors that impact performance, whether they’re based on Google’s data or internal business data.

Use keywords to target shopping ads

A second area where PPC pros should take back some control from the machines is with managing keywords for shopping ads. While shopping ads are automatically targeted to relevant queries that match the product in an advertiser’s feed, there is always the option of adding negative keywords.

In a rather extreme, yet interestingly practical way, you could actually target a specific keyword not by the inclusion of that term, but rather by the exclusion of all other terms.

This is the foundation of “Query Sculpting,” a PPC technique that deploys negative keywords to drive traffic to the desired target. And because negative keywords are much more explicit than positive keywords, they are the main tool.

Even in search campaigns, query sculpting is done with the addition of negative keywords. And while this makes a strange sort of sense, our logical side is still asking, “Why can’t it be done by simply adding exact match positive keywords?” Because ever since Google’s latest change to the algorithm, exact match no longer truly means “exact.”

Query sculpting for shopping campaigns was invented by Martin Roettgerding and later refined by various entities, including SmarterCommerce. Martin’s technique requires maintaining three parallel Shopping campaigns and proactively adding certain types of negative keywords.

But proactively adding extra campaigns and unnecessary negative keywords can really eat into an account’s allowance for number of keywords under management. Optmyzr, taking into account the pros and cons of both sides, has a solution that uses recent performance data to sculpt queries when it is clear they could perform better elsewhere in the account: The Shopping Negatives Tool.

The Shopping Negatives Tool analyzes the performance of the same search queries across different ad groups in a shopping campaign, finds the ad group in which the query is not performing well and recommends adding it as an exact match negative.

Optmyzr’s Negative Keyword tool for shopping ads identifies where negative keywords should be added to “query sculpt” the traffic so that more sales, and more profitable sales, will result from the budget spent with the search engine.

Using this technique, advertisers can run as many shopping campaigns in parallel as they want or keep everything in one campaign, and Optmyzr’s analysis will make suggestions for how to sculpt the traffic to drive more sales at a better ROAS.

Create better ad tests

Googler Matt Lawson has recently covered the new ways to think about A/B ad testing. Thanks to Google’s improvements in Machine Learning, there is less need to manually cull underperforming ads from an account. The premise is that the worst ad in an ad group could actually perform quite well with a subset of users hitting that ad group, which means that removing a slightly losing ad could actually be counterproductive.

But he also says, “Delete stuff whenever an ad stops seeing a large fraction of the impressions and therefore generates minimal to no clicks. Then add a new ad to the mix. It’s better to have options.”

To help with cleaning up ads that are seeing a minimal share of impressions in an ad group, you could use AdWords Scripts, like some that are part of Optmyzr’s suite of tools.

While Google is removing the need for manual testing of ads, and though they’re even doing some automatic generation of new ad text challengers, this remains an area where the human expert — someone who is close to the business being advertised — will have a leg up on automations.

You’ve heard the story that if you gave 1,000 monkeys typewriters and an infinite amount of time, they’d eventually write all the works of Shakespeare. But monkeys eat lots of bananas and tend to prioritize climbing trees before writing those famous soliloquies, so they’d most likely take forever. And though the concept of play-writing monkeys does seem very attractive, advertisers aren’t willing to wait for an infinite amount of time. That’s why we still need tools that help us write great ads in the least possible time.

Tools like Optmyzr can help with the ideation for new ads by highlighting ad text elements that have performed well historically.

Tools like Optmyzr help you create better tests in less time. Here the tool makes suggestions for ad text variations to try.

Frederick Vallaeys made the point that the PPC agencies of the future will be the ones with the best process for testing. Machine learning means computers can figure out the winners and losers, but conclusive test results will happen more quickly when using human insight to prioritize the most valid hypotheses for testing.

Conclusion

Exciting and perhaps scary times are ahead for all sorts of professions where AI will take over a plethora of tasks that used to require human intelligence. There’s a slight fog surrounding the future of human intelligence in the workplace, and though it isn’t thick enough to cover us just yet, it creates a bit of unease in many circles. What will happen when machines take over?

It’s an inevitable passage, but the more human input we give these machines throughout this transition period, the more effective they will be at helping achieve the shared goal of improving PPC performance. And in the meantime, human PPC pros have many opportunities to transform their day-to-day into something that will endure over time and set a solid foundation for working in an AI-first world.

The post 3 ways humans can do PPC better than machines alone appeared first on Search Engine Land.



from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/2rUfeOn
via IFTTT

Bing Ads has a conversion tracking fix for Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

In September, Google announced its solution to maintain campaign tracking from Safari, with a new Google Analytics cookie. Now Bing is introducing its method for addressing the challenge of tracking ad clicks from Safari posed by Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP).

Some advertisers may have noticed an alert in their Bing Ads accounts to enable auto-tagging of Click ID “for accurate conversion tracking”. You guessed it, this has to do with Bing Ads’ solution to ITP tracking issues. Checking the box will automatically tag destination URLs with the Microsoft Click ID. It can be set at the account level under URL options in the Shared Library as shown in the screenshot below.

Some advertisers will already have the Microsoft Click ID auto-tagging enabled. Its what underpins Bing Ads’ offline conversion imports, for example.

First, a quick overview of ITP, and then we’ll get into how Bing Ads’ solution actually works.

What is Intelligent Tracking Prevention?

With ITP, third-party cookies deemed able to track users across sites can only be used in a third-party context for 24 hours from the time a user visits a website via Safari. After 24 hours, those cookies can only be used for supporting user log-ins. After 30 days, the cookies are purged entirely.

For marketers, that means that unless a user converts within 24 hours of visiting an advertiser’s site after clicking an ad, for example, third-party cookies are purged and conversion tracking is lost. As a result, with Safari accounting for nearly 50 percent of mobile web traffic share in North America by some measures, ITP has the potential to make a mess of mobile ad conversion attribution.

The fix: Microsoft Click ID and Universal Event Tracking

Bing Ads uses the Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag to power conversion tracking. The tag, when placed on advertiser sites, captures what users do once they click through from an ad, including conversion actions they take.

Like Google, Bing is responding to ITP with a method that is in line with Apple’s guidance around ad attribution, which states, “We recommend server-side storage for attribution of ad impressions on your website. Link decoration [ e.g., padding links with information] can be used to pass on attribution information in navigations.”

Note: only the JavaScript version of the UET tags supports the ability to set these cookies. If you’re using the non-JS version, you might consider switching.

When advertisers enable auto-tagging for the Microsoft Click ID, or MSCLIKID, the following process occurs:

  1. Bing Ads will automatically add a unique click ID to the landing page URL after a user clicks on an ad.
  2. The UET tag will set a first-party cookie called _uetmsclkid on the advertiser’s site to capture the Microsoft Click ID from the URL. (Without auto-tagging enabled, the Microsoft cookie is set on Bing.com as a third-party.)
  3. The UET tag also sets a first-party session ID cookie on the advertiser’s domain to help improve the accuracy of the conversion tracking. (This already happens by default and isn’t related to the auto-tagging.)
  4. Bing Ads can then tie any conversion event back to the search ad clicks that assisted in the conversion via the click ID, until the _uetmsclkid expires after 90 days.

This applies for conversions happening outside of the 24 hour window after a user visits the advertiser’s site. If a conversion happens within the 24 hours, the Microsoft cookie will still be present, and Bing Ads will use the IDs in that cookie for attribution as it does currently.

Without auto-tagging enabled, the _uetmsclkid first party cookie won’t be set and Safari/ITP will likely purge the third-party UET/Microsoft cookie after the 24 hour window.

The solution is already working for advertisers that enabled auto-tagging for other purposes. For everyone else, it will start working as soon as it’s enabled at the account level as shown above.It will also be selected by default when creating new conversion goals.

As with Google’s solution, this fix only addresses tracking for attribution, it does not address how retargeting works (or doesn’t after 24 hours) on Safari. Bing Ads says is working on a solution for that.

The post Bing Ads has a conversion tracking fix for Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention appeared first on Search Engine Land.



from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/2ns0CA4
via IFTTT

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

SearchCap: Google featured snippets, Bing Ads audience segmentation & link building

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

The post SearchCap: Google featured snippets, Bing Ads audience segmentation & link building appeared first on Search Engine Land.



from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/2nnfb8R
via IFTTT

Google publishes comprehensive guide to featured snippets

Google has published one of the most comprehensive explanations yet of their featured snippets in a post on the search blog. Featured snippets, in short, are the quick direct answers you see at the top of the Google search results page that appear in response to some search queries.

In this blog post, Google explains what featured snippets are, the various user interfaces and treatments you can get from these featured snippets and how they interact with desktop, mobile and voice search results. Google says featured snippets are important for mobile search and with voice-activated digital assistants. Google said “in these cases, the traditional ’10 blue links’ format doesn’t work as well, making featured snippets an especially useful format.”

Google added that they will “continue to show regular listings in response to searches along with featured snippets.” That is “because featured snippets aren’t meant as a sole source of information…. …they’re part of an overall set of results we provide, giving people information from a wide range of sources,” Google added.

Here are some of the screen shots of normal featured snippets that Google may show to searchers on desktop or mobile:

In addition, those suggested video clips, which jump directly into a video result, are also a form of featured snippets. Google said they “recently launched” this experience, but it has been live for at least the past several months:

Those who use Google Assistant or Google Home devices can access their full search results later, when they get to their mobile phone, within the Google Home app.

In the post, Google explains that their featured snippets are not perfect — acknowledging cases of inaccurate or insensitive information, people trying to vandalize the results and spam issues. Google admits they have more work to do and will continue to improve these results over time. As evidence, Google points to their voice quality raters guidelines and those efforts to improve the quality of those results.

Google shared how they may explore showing more featured snippet results to offer more diversity, in the form of adding a “more results” link under a featured snippet:

Or featured snippet tags, to refine the query:

Or showing more options to your question with multiple featured snippet boxes right away in the search results:

“There are often legitimate diverse perspectives offered by publishers, and we want to provide users visibility and access into those perspectives from multiple sources,” said Matthew Gray, a Google software engineer.

We’ve covered time and time again how featured snippets sometimes get it wrong.

Google asks that you submit feedback using the “Feedback” link found within the featured snippets so that the company can continue to make improvements over time.

The post Google publishes comprehensive guide to featured snippets appeared first on Search Engine Land.



from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/2nq7m1y
via IFTTT