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  • 10 Successful Google PPC Tips All Digital Marketers Should Know

    Mishandling your digital marketing is a great way to waste money.

    Digital marketing is fast becoming the most important advertising stream. But many businesses still undervalue it or make mistakes in the execution.

    If you’re using Google PPC, you want every advantage over your competitors. That’s why we’ve put together 10 tips for the successful PPC marketer.

    Smart Keywords

    Keywords are still a major player in effective online advertising.

    To make the most of Google PPC, your keywords need to be tailored to your target audience. This ensures maximum traffic to your site while minimizing clicks from uninterested customers.

    Plan your keywords based on trends and previous ad campaigns. You might not be able to zero in your ideal keywords until after a few campaigns. But if you can learn something every time, you’ll be able to laser-focus on the important ones.

    Your keywords might have a lot of overlap with similar terms. Consider whether to use match types to filter out irrelevant clicks. This might result in fewer impressions, but it’s no loss if those impressions would’ve been wasted. Focus on the clicks that matter.

    Negative Keywords

    Negative keywords can be just as important as positives.

    Negative keywords are vital to disambiguate your service from similar options or even brands with similar names. One of the quickest ways to find your negative keywords is to search your keywords.

    You’ll probably receive a lot of results that aren’t relevant to your service. These should form the basis for your negative keywords. Use these to cut down on wasted clicks and maximize your ROI.

    Landing page

    Having a strong landing page is vital to making the most of Google PPC.

    If your ads are landing visitors but you aren’t receiving anything for it, you’re just wasting money. Your landing page needs to be eye-catching, simple, and easy to use.

    Your landing page should be 100% relevant to your keywords. It also needs to be tightly targeted at your audience. You don’t want your landing page to attract the general public. Focus your efforts!

    Think about your landing page layout. Your call to action should be prominent. Your headline should be immediately visible and relevant. Any images you use should be appropriate for your targeted customers.

    Also consider using testimonials and reviews on your landing page. This acts as a trust signifier to your visitors and gives you credibility.

    But don’t obscure your call to action. This is the aspect of your ad campaign that will give you ROI. Give it a prominent place on the page and be specific.

    Attractive CTAs

    If you know what kind of calls to action your competitors are using, you can beat them.

    Offer more attractive CTAs. This could be deeper discounts. Or perhaps a voucher code for subscribing. Use eye-catching figures, like “20% off”. These are easily parsed and trigger the discount-seeking part of the brain. Free trials are also a great way to hook customers.

    Make your call to action simple. If you’re asking for subscribers, only gather the bare minimum information you need. Generally, they should need to make as few clicks as possible to access your service.

    Timed Ads

    Time your ads for your market to catch the most visitors.

    In general, the English-speaking internet is busier in American waking hours. But you’ll want to narrow this down to your target audience where possible.

    If you trade B2B, then 9-5 hours in your country are likely to be the most appropriate. For regular consumers, you’ll need to think about their habits.

    Is your target audience unemployed? In that case, daytime hours could be best. But if they’re working professionals, you’ll want your ads to run on the evening or weekends.

    Use previous campaigns to work out when people are visiting your site. This will give you a good idea of when to schedule them.

    Targeted Locations

    Another way to seek our your primary audience is to target by location.

    If you’re a physical business that relies on foot traffic, you’re wasting money advertising worldwide. You’re more likely to get results targeting your city and other feeder areas.

    Likewise, if you’re a national business like a hauling company, you’ll want to limit your ads to inside the country. This prevents wasted ad revenue. It also makes you more relevant to visitors in your country and may prevent wasted inquiry time.

    Targeted Devices

    Google is now smart enough to know what devices visitors are using.

    Perhaps your service favors a particular device, such as a mobile app. You’re wasting revenue by advertising to desktop PC users. Targeting your ads for devices gives you precision.

    This also reduces traffic from frustrated users who won’t remain on your page. If your target devices aren’t clear, your page could slide down the rankings due to poor visitor retention.

    Ad Extensions

    Ad extensions are a way of tagging more information onto your ad.

    This can maximize Google PPC by giving you more opportunity to engage visitors. It provides them with additional information and makes your ad more helpful.

    Ads with extensions often receive higher priority as they’re seen to have more value. You need every advantage over your competition you can get, so extensions could be a difference maker.

    Using Feedback

    Making use of feedback is the most important part of any marketing campaign.

    You should take on feedback in two ways. Firstly, check what’s working while your campaign is running. You can often make small alterations on the fly to bring in more traffic. Traffic data could tell you which keywords to target, for instance.

    Secondly, there’s the after-action report. Once the campaign is over, take on all the feedback and use it to shape your next ad campaign.

    Google PPC Made Simple

    By following these simple tips, you can get the most out of your Google PPC. Be sure to bookmark this article and use it as a resource when running your campaign. It’s easy to forget a small detail, so treat this like a checklist.

    Be sure to follow our blog for more digital marketing hints and tips.

  • Search Engine Strategies: 8 Tips to Boost Search Rankings

    Every day, you check your page rankings on Google, and every day, you come up a little short of that first page.

    You’ve been optimizing keywords, so what gives?

    Well, guess what? You’re not the only one who knows the importance of keyword optimization. Your competition does too.

    And while keyword optimization can certainly help improve your site’s ranking, it’s only one small piece of the puzzle.

    Search engine algorithms also take into account other factors such as bounce rate, inbound links, outbound links, broken links, user experience, and pages viewed, just to name a few.

    In order to see a big boost in your ranking, you need to be employing other search engine strategies.

    In this article, we’ll take a look at the top 8 tips for boosting your search ranking.

    Tip #1: Create High Quality, Relevant Content

    When it comes to boosting your rankings, getting visitors to your site is only half the battle.

    You also need to get those visitors to stay on your site and browse. This is known as “dwell time.” The longer the dwell time, the higher the ranking.

    So how do you increase dwell time?

    While the right keywords may draw a visitor to your site, content is what makes them stay.

    Nobody cares about keywords unless those keywords are surrounded by actionable, useful content.

    Most of this content will take place in the form of blog posts. Typically, you’ll want your posts to be at least 1,000 words.

    Why so long?

    Longer posts give you the opportunity to include more keywords, more inbound and outbound links, and provide more valuable content. And of course, longer posts take more time to read, which can increase your site’s dwell time.

    Plus, every time someone bookmarks your content to Chrome, it improves your ranking on Google.

    Tip #2: Focus on Link Building

    Google’s let the cat out of the bag: content and links are the two most important factors when it comes to boosting your site’s ranking.

    Your link building strategy should focus on three areas:

    • Inbound links- links created on other sites that link back to you
    • Outbound links- links you create to other websites
    • Broken links- links that don’t work (get rid of them)

    However, you need to make sure you choose your links wisely. A link from a highly-trafficked, authoritative site goes a lot further than a bunch of links from small, unknown sites.

    In order to get these authoritative links, you can pitch to online magazines or news sources or partner with popular blogs. Usually, these partnerships have an “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” mentality. They’ll link to your site only if you’ll link to theirs.

    Tip #3: Increase Page Load Speed

    In the world of the internet, waiting a few extra seconds for a page to load is like waiting an eternity.

    If your site’s taking too long to load, users are going to peace out and move on to someone else’s site.

    Not only does this reduce your dwell time, it also increases your bounce rate.

    Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to your site, view the landing page, and then leave without viewing anything else. Average bounce rates are somewhere around 50 percent. But no matter where you fall, you should always be looking to lower that number.

    And increasing your page load speed is one of the best ways to do this.

    Here are a few ways you can increase your page load speed:

    • Optimize image sizes
    • Reduce the number of plug-ins
    • Minimize redirects
    • Enable compression
    • Enable browser caching

    Tip #4: Optimize Long-tail Keywords

    Okay, you probably already know the important role keywords play in search engine strategies.

    But, many people are going about their keyword strategy all wrong.

    If you’re a new site, you’re going to have a tough time competing for top keywords. That’s why it’s best to go for long-tail keywords- ones that are three words or more.

    Long-tail keywords have less competition, and therefore, are easier to rank for. Check out Google’s keyword planner to find the best ones for your industry.

    Tip #5: Use Different Multimedia

    Visual content is an excellent way to improve user experience and enrich your written content.

    Videos, slideshows, infographics, and audio files are all great ways to deliver information to users in a unique and engaging format.

    In fact, adding videos to landing pages can increase conversion rates by 80 percent.

    Plus, multimedia also signals to search engines that your site contains quality content. Which, as well all know, is key to boosting your rankings.

    Tip #6: Optimize for Mobile

    Google will penalize your site if it’s not mobile optimized.

    More and more people are conducting searches on their mobile devices these days. And if you’re site isn’t optimized, it will negatively affect user experience.

    Google is all about providing the best user experience, so make sure your site’s optimized so you don’t receive a penalty.

    Tip #7 Update on the Regular

    Boosting your search rankings is a marathon, not a sprint.

    You can’t expect the quality-content you created last year to help you in your rankings this year.

    Google prefers updated, new content over stale, old content. It lets them know that your site is relevant, fresh, and still in the game.

    Plus, popular keywords change over time. You want to make sure you’re always creating content that uses the hottest keywords.

    Tip #8: User-friendly Formatting

    Formatting that is user-friendly can help improve your rankings.

    If your site contains huge walls of text, you’re making a huge mistake.

    You need to break that stuff up so it’s easy for your readers to scan and digest.

    Here are a few other ways to make sure your formatting is user-friendly:

    • Use fonts that are easy-to-read
    • Use bold types and colors only sparingly to call out useful info
    • Use bulleted numbers and lists
    • Break up sections with headings and sub-headings
    • Use short paragraphs- 2-3 sentences is ideal

    Search Engine Strategies Wrap Up

    We hope these search engine strategies helped paint a clear picture for what you need to get done in the coming weeks.

    But, implementing these search engine strategies on your own can be a tough feat. If you’re looking for some help, contact us today.

  • Why Utilizing PPC Media is Key for Your Business

    If you want to grow your business, increase brand recognition, and get a great ROI from your marketing dollars, then PPC media is a great way to go.

    As agency people, we are in the business day to day and sometimes have to remind ourselves that our terminology is not always understood or known. Once in a while, we have to take a step back from our work in digital marketing and start at the beginning. So…

    What is PPC media? It’s a marketing tool called pay per click (PPC) that allows a business to advertise digitally and only pay for that ad when someone clicks on it.

    This simple tool allows you to reach your audience and specify your investment only into your customer leads, or people that are actually interested in your business enough to click on your ad.

    This advertising method is so popular, in fact, that more than 96% of Google’s total revenue comes from paid digital advertising. All that money spent means it works, but it also means there’s a lot of competition out there so you have to do it right.

    In this article, we’re breaking down the benefits of great PPC media and how you can use PPC media to increase your bottom line.

    Why PPC Media Is So Valuable and How to Make the Most of It

    PPC media is a great way to cast a wide net for free, (minus the cost of design), and only pay for the fish you catch.

    If you want your business to succeed, you can’t just rely on a quality product. You have to seek out customers and convince them that your product is better than the competitions. In some cases, you just have to get there before the competition. Here’s how.

    1. It’s Simple

    The world of digital marketing is complicated and can be intimidating.

    Many other content marketing strategies can require a lot of time and effort before the results of increased traffic and more sales are seen. Plus, these results can be very hard to track.

    Thankfully, this is not the case when it comes to PPC media. Especially when you find a great PPC agency to get you ten steps ahead with their years of experience.

    With PPC, you have the ability to target the exact customers you want, through the use of specific keywords.

    It’s a very simple system with easy to track results. This will provide you with valuable data that can help you get to know your target customers and market to them most successfully.

    Since you agree on a set price for each person that clicks, the goal is clear. To profit, you must bring in higher sales dollars per click than you are spending, even though not all of those customers will convert.

    2. It’s Worthwhile

    PPC’s outdated step-sister, CPM (cost per impression) would charge advertisers per view, rather than per click.

    That just means the ad loaded on the site they were viewing. They might not have even looked at it!

    With PPC, you know you’re getting your money’s worth because you only pay when customers engage with your ad by clicking on it.

    This means less money wasted and it puts you a step ahead in the sales funnel.

    Your goal is to draw in customers and then seal the deal by providing an excellent customer experience on the page they click through to.

    3. Pinpoint Your Customer Base

    The digital age has brought advertisers more information about their customers than ever before.

    Think, for a moment, about the pre-internet world.

    If you wanted to advertise your guitar lesson business, you would be wise to post a flyer in a coffee shop with a popular open mic night.

    Hopefully, the inspired audience members would notice your flyer while waiting for the bathroom, take a tab, and call you up to learn! This might reach a handful of customers a month and bring in healthy business for you.

    In this digitally dominated age, now those “flyers” can be posted on hundreds of places where your client base might gather.

    You can find these “coffee shops” through social media interest pages, keyword searches, and even more specific criteria such as time of day, proximity, and type of device they are using.

    4. Specific Targeting Options

    Expanding further on #3, let’s talk for a moment about keywords.

    With PPC media, you have a lot of control over how your keyword targeting works. With Google AdWords, specifically, you can optimize your PPC media for broad match, phrase match, and exact match keywords.

    • Broad match keywords will display your ad for any combination or order of the keywords you choose, plus misspellings, synonyms, and similar searches.

    For example, if your broad match keywords are “noise canceling headphones,” alternate search words such as “sound proof headphones” or “headphones with noise cancel” will still trigger your ad to show up.

    Phrase match keywords will display your ad for any searches that include that specific phrase, even if there are additional words before or after.

    This means the ad will show up so long as your chosen phrase or a similar variation of that phrase is included in the search. For example, if your keyword is “women’s running shoes” the ad will display for a “buy women’s running shoes.” It won’t show up, however, for a “women’s shoes” search since one word in the phrase is missing.

    Exact match keywords are just what they say: exact. The ad will only display for searches that match those keywords exactly or are a close variation with the same meaning.

    Exact keywords are perfect for your business name to ensure customers can find your site when they search it.

    5. Free Brand Recognition

    You may have heard that it takes 7 touches to reach a customer. This is called the Rule of 7, and it refers to the fact that it takes several exposures for a customer to recognize your brand as an authority.

    PPC media is beneficial not just when clicked, but also for building brand awareness and recognition within your specifically targeted customer base.

    For this reason, the displays that don’t generate a click are not wasteful in any way. They don’t cost you, and they are even benefitting you if you have excellently designed PPC campaigns.

    There You Have It!

    Fanatically Digital is here to help you with all of your digital marketing needs.

    Questions? Contact us and we’ll be happy to help.

  • Ad Spend Trends. How Can Smaller Advertisers Take Advantage?

    Calculating the amount spent on advertising marketing last year is a challenge; most surveys don’t line up. Given this, I don’t spend much time dwelling on the predictions of future ad spend. However, I do look for overall trends that different studies agree upon, and see how smaller advertisers can join in.

    The Overall Direction of Ad Spending

    Across the board, Zenith, MAGNA, and Dentsu Aegis Network have the U.S. Market softening while Eastern Europe and Asia will lead the ad spend increases (as a percentage). The U.S. growth range goes from 1.6% (MAGNA) up to 3.6% (Dentsu Aegis). This follows a pretty strong market in 2016 (election year). Growth for Eastern Europe and Central Asia range from 6.6% to 9.8% and Latin America coming in around 7%.

    Globally, ad growth is expected to range from 3.8% to 4.2%, reflecting the proportionally large influence of the U.S. ad market of about $335B.

    Mobile & Digital Ad Spending; The Trend Continues

    Dentsu Aegis expects digital advertising to overtake television by the end of 2018, and sees mobile advertising accounting for 56% of digital ad spend globally by the end of 2017. Zenith is expecting digital ad spend to outpace television by the end of this year. Either way, the trend of digital growth over the past decade has finally brought us to the point where it becomes the default channel for advertisers.

    As part of this digital expansion, three key segments are expected to see the major growth:
    Video up 32%
    Social up 29%
    Programmatic up 25%

    No longer is television the presumptive channel for advertisers.

    How Can Small & Mid Sized Advertisers Be Part Of The Trends?

    For years agencies and media have been pushing brands to recognize the power of digital for brand building purposes. While larger companies with larger budgets have been able to leverage the brand building capabilities of digital, most smaller to mid-sized advertisers continue to see digital marketing for direct marketing purposes only; lead generation or e-commerce are the two areas they focus on.

    With efficiency improvements in video, social, and programmatic, upper funnel objectives (awareness & consideration) are within reach of most marketers. When leveraging technology and targeting capabilities, advertisers can be part of the expanded digital landscape while working within smaller budgets.

    Video Production Levels

    The combination of video and social creates a unique opportunity for advertisers. Between lower cost video production services and do-it-yourself tools, marketers can create videos that are valuable and even entertaining for the target customers. Online, consumers are not expecting exceptionally high production value; content value is far more important. This isn’t a license to produce junk, but it does mean advertisers won’t have to make the exponentially expensive jump in production quality that was expected a decade ago.

    Efficiency With Ad Targeting

    Targeting technology plays to the benefit of small and mid-sized advertisers. There was a time when you had to pay for exposure to people that will never be in the market for your products or services. While you can never completely eliminate wasted exposures, the technology today allows for fairly precise targeting. Depending on the media channel and partner, you can minimally target geography, demographics, and interest. With programmatic platforms, the technology will ‘learn who is responsive’ to your message, reducing wasted impressions as it gathers more data

    The most challenging part for most advertisers is patience. The idea of tying digital spend directly to revenue has been the cornerstone for online advertising for a long time. Over the past ten years, digital has become a key part of life for nearly everyone in the U.S. Becoming a consistent part of the experience lays the groundwork for your brand to be top of mind when the consumer is ready to enter the market. As a brand marketing channel, the benefits cannot always be tied, dollar for dollar, to the ad spend. However, by applying the latest technology, you can see your investment impact behavior in the short term and sales in the long term.

  • How Much Should I Pay For SEO Services?

    I’ve been in the digital market space for 20 years and this question, “how much should I pay for Search Engine Optimization?” is perhaps the hardest to answer. The elements that go into SEO are highly dependent on variables that agencies or SEO service providers need to identify before they can provide a valid estimate. SEO variables can be overt or hidden and defining them is key to establishing a fair price.

    Some of the common variables in SEO

    • Level of Competition
    • State of current website technical issues
    • Current content
    • State of Google’s assessment of site issues (ie, manual actions)
    • Dynamic nature of subject area
    • Internal support level at client
    • Goals and objectives

    There are cases of “unknown” variables. These are things that pop up during our scoping process that do not fall into the “normal” bucket and can have a big impact on the work effort for SEO.

    Ranking for some industries or products can be exceptionally difficult while others have very low barriers to good rankings. Even with all other aspects being equal, the difference in the subject matter can have a significant impact on the effort necessary to get and improve page rankings on the search engines. Until the SEO provider examines the competitive landscape, it is impossible to know what you are up against; are you competing against the little league or pro players? Is it a tough industry? If so, do you have a lot of niche opportunities? Developing a price is heavily dependent on your competitors’ strength in organic search.

    Is the industry dynamic? If the content is developed at a high velocity, then keeping pace in SEO requires more resources. New products, research, news stories, and other related topics can push their way to the top of the SERPS (and your site out). In industries where fresh content is the norm, staying competitive requires new, quality content is added to the website on a regular basis.

    We have seen some great websites come to us that required very little cleanup. But, we have also seen some that require extensive work. In some cases, the base condition of the site was so poor that we didn’t even quote the project, we directed the prospective owner to scope out a complete site rebuild (we don’t handle sites builds of that size, so it was not a self-serving suggestion.) The point is, the condition of the website has a big impact on the cost of SEO, particularly for “setup” fees.

    You should always write content with the intention of helping your target audience. Some sites have great content that needs some adjustment for SEO or needs better sharing activity. On the other hand, we may need to re-write entire pages or even sections of sites to improve their quality as well as their SEO visibility. Depending on the budgets, objectives, and timeframes, the content may be cleaned up all at once, or it may be spread out over months. Either way, the cost for the content clean up has to be covered.

    Sometimes clients have great support for their websites and we only need to pass on the direction. Other times, the clients need us to implement all our recommendations, manage the site, and deal with any technical issues. The more the client relies on us to do this, the more resources we need to commit. It makes no sense to pay an SEO provider for recommendations that are not implemented.

    We usually start the conversation with goals and objectives, as do most ad agencies. This gets us aligned with the client, and it also gives us an idea (along with all else) what resources are needed. Do we want to double the leads in 1 year or in 1 month? Huge difference. It may be the difference between reasonable, difficult, and impossible. If you are shopping for SEO services and you are quoted a firm price prior to a discussion of your goals, be sure to understand what the deliverables are.

    So, clearly, I can not tell you exactly what you should pay for SEO services. But here are some things to expect

    Setup fee

    As I alluded to above, there may be a lot of activities that take place at the beginning of the engagement. For websites that are already well tuned, with analytics properly setup, GSC connected and with little technical cleanup, the setup fee can be nominal, or non-existent. There is setup for keyword tracking and reporting depending on reporting requirements. The extent of effort will depend on the size of the program.

    What is tricky about the setup fee is that the on-going program cannot kick in until the setup is complete and this typically takes 4 – 6 weeks. Since most ongoing activity waits for this, the agency should not be adding setup resources on top of the monthly ongoing to determine the first-month fee. So, be sure that the fee for month one is truly the setup activity and not double dipping.

    Ongoing SEO Activity

    In today’s SEO, content for your site and for guest posting/sharing are some of the most resource intensive. Link building outreach is the second big consumption of resources. The more competitive your niche, the more content and content distribution will be required. This is not a 2 or 3 month activity. It is absolutely ongoing.

    I bring this up because I am often asked if we can reduce the cost after month 4,5, or 6, because the ‘heavy lifting’ is done in the first few months. I’ve heard this referred to as “maintenance mode.” In SEO, there is no such thing as “maintenance mode.” You are either fighting to maintain position, fighting to gain position, or you will lose position.

    SEO price range

    Setup – $0 – $5,000.

    Ongoing – $1,500 – $7,500.

    I’ve seen SEO for less. I’ve worked on programs for less. These are the exception. The client has 100% technical support, has content creation is taken care of in-house, is not in a competitive marketplace…. Every one of the “hard” things is not hard.

    That, or…

    They are paying so little that there will be no traction.

    For more competitive categories, or programs with a lot of rich, quality content development, the upside cost can be much higher. But, these are unusual and are part of larger efforts for big companies.

    Long term SEO

    Many people look at the monthly commitment. This is convenient for cash flow purposes. But, SEO is a long game. Commit to 12 months, things do not happen quickly in SEO. There may be the fluke “big hit”, but that is unusual. I know this is cliche but think in terms of investments, not expenses.

    Pricing estimates for SEO will vary a lot. When an agency or SEO provider is quoting the service, be skeptical if they did not first ask you a lot of questions. If they don’t, they will be surprised in a short time and so will you.

  • LinkedIn B2B Session

    LinkedIn TrackingHere are the links to the LinkeIn presentation and presentation notes for the sessions given in the Chicago area. The presentation is an overview of using LinkedIn to build b2b relationships, participate in the LinkedIn community and build a sales pipeline. This is NOT a quick hit program. LinkedIn, as all social platforms, requires time and patience.

    linkedin

    linkedin_notes

  • SEO vs. PPC, Which One Is For Me

    Clients ask about SEO vs. PPC, which is better. Like so many things, the answer depends. Before we look at the question, let’s be sure we are on the same page regarding what SEO and PPC are.

    SEO Definition

    SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, refers to the activity focused on getting a web page to show up on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, or Ask.

    Actions such as changing the content on a page or creating new pages are typically referred to as “on page” optimization. These activities attempt to align the page content with the phrases people use when searching for the subject matter of your page.

    Then there is ‘technical optimization.’ There are several aspects to this, but the most frequently addressed is site speed. Site owners also have to be sure nothing is taking place that inhibits the search engines from getting to the site and indexing the pages. Each site is unique, and the focus of ‘technical optimization’ will adjust accordingly.

    Once the core of on page and technical optimization are addressed (they always need to be monitored and adjusted), SEO then focuses on off-page SEO.

    Off-Page SEO are the activities related to having other websites create links to your pages. Off-Page SEO involves outreach to webmasters of other sites for links within current content, writing guest posts for other sites, making topic recommendations to other sites, and developing web 2.0 / social links. The bulk of activity and the greatest impact (assuming no on-site issues), comes from the off-page activity.

    PPC Definition

    PPC, or Pay Per Click, as the name says, is paid advertising. In PPC, your ads are shown to people on a website, and you pay only if a person clicks on the ad and comes to your site. While there are many media channels or sites with a PPC ad model, when people talk about PPC, they are usually referring to advertising on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo!. This is the focus of our discussion.

    PPC on search engines involves creating groups of keywords that are related to a product or service and creating ads that appear when a user searches for one of those keywords. These are called ad groups. The keywords should be closely connected so that the ad simultaneously relates to all keywords in the group. Depending on the product or service, there can be dozens, hundreds or even thousands of ad groups.

    PPC advertising, when properly implemented, also extends to the page that users see when they click on an ad. The page should be closely tied to the keywords in the ad group. PPC marketers optimize the PPC program to an action or conversion event on the site. The form submits, document download, email signup, product purchase are all types of conversions.

    Now, which is the way to go, SEO or PPC

    Keep in mind that SEO and PPC are not mutually exclusive activities from a technical perspective, though budgets may force a decision.

    Each channel has benefits and drawbacks. When considering the priority of PPC vs SEO, some things to consider:

    Objectives, are they short term or long term
    SEO takes time. Results of activity may be 3+ months from the start of the effort, and maximum results will take longer to build.
    PPC can be up and running quickly. Well structure PPC campaigns can be launched within weeks. Down and dirty implementations can take place in days.

    Sustainability of budgets
    PPC programs can be adjusted quickly to budget fluctuations. The impact is short term.
    SEO requires ongoing effort. Pausing or reducing a program’s resources can set it back significantly.

    Degree of certainty
    PPC allows for a very close connection between activity or budget with your outcomes. When properly setup, the tracking ties spend to goals closely.

    SEO activity shows up in overall lift of site or page traffic as well as improvement in keyword ranking or position in search engines. However, there can be no guarantee (be wary of absolute “top of page” promises). SEO is susceptible to competitor activity as well as changes implemented by the search engines.

    If budgets force a choice between PPC and SEO

    When we discuss budget allocations with clients and the place that SEO or PPC take, we will look consumer activity related to the business as well as the above factors.

    For products or services that are sought nearly year round, and for which our client has long term plans, we typically recommend SEO to build up the organic search presence. For high volume or high-value seasonal items, SEO can also play a substantial role (remember the foundation for organic results is set months in advance). SEO remains the long game of digital marketing.

    For product or services that spike, or for which the organic landscape is so competitive as to make it too challenging to break into page one rankings, PPC may become the medium of choice.

    PPC and SEO, a 1-2 punch

    As mentioned at the start, SEO and PPC are not mutually exclusive. We run programs that target the same products and services with both. With most goods or services, there is a pattern of shopping behavior that influences where individuals click, organic results or paid ads.

    Based on the state of searc roundup from MOZ, organic search still generates the most clicks. However, each company needs to consider its customer, shopping cycle, and short vs. long term objectives.

    Today, people are doing more research. Even on a small purchase, the habit of using search engines for research is strong. This lends strength to and SEO implementation.

    The argument for a concurrent PPC program is the increase in mobile usage. With the smaller screen, the paid ads (PPC) consume a disproportionate amount of screen space. It is also telling that Google is pushing site owners to make their sites mobile-friendly, and changing the AdWords ad layout to be geared toward mobile.

    SEO or PPC: It depends

    I say this often, and I see on my clients’ faces a reluctant understanding. The answer to SEO vs. PPC is not always a simple calculation. There are opportunity costs with going one way versus the other. But, the first step is working with senior management to address the three elements of objectives, sustainable budgets, and required degree of certainty

  • Google Organic Update: Fred?

    They are calling it Fred. That’s the name being given to the Google update that hit on March 8th. It is getting a lot of attention in the SEO worlds, as you can imagine. No one really knows what the change is, but the speculation is that it relates to inbound linking.

    Every time Google makes a change, the speculation goes to “google is going after black hat seo.” I honestly don’t think so. Google doesn’t make subtle changes in order to “go after” anybody. When they want to do that, there is usually a shot across the bow… some kind of post in the blog or announcement. While this change is unlikely targeting anyone in particular, it does have an impact on many.

    Here is our observation based on what we are seeing among our clients. The change seems to be a shift from niche focused inbound links receiving greater weight to more weight being placed on total links to the domain in general. This is something of backtracking on what google did a few years ago where they emphasized the niche content sites relative to the broad content site.

    At that time, if two pages had similar content (all else being equal), but one site was entirely focused on the niche and the other was a broader category site, the niche site won out. At that time sites like answers.com lost out to niche sites.

    The linking profiles seemed to have been similarly weighted. But, that changed this month.

    Most of our clients came through the changes pretty clean. The type of category profiles that did well were:

    1. Niche products / services that did not have a ‘general’ site or broader category site playing in the arena. There was no one to supplant them and the rankings were stable (up a bit actually, but I can’t attribute that to this change)

    2. Large players with a well established, broad linking profile. They were actually beneficiaries.

    The site category that did not fare well was the third:

    3. Niche products playing in an arena where there are broad category sellers who also carry the niche product; they were hit hard. The larger sites (usually much larger companies), have a broad linking profile and a lot more inbound links. Up to this point, the high quality inbound links on the niche site outweighed the total quantity of links for the big players. That changed.

    We are working with our clients affected by this change to adjust our strategy, but wanted to share our observations more broadly.

    The Google Dance continues.

  • reprieve from the unskippable 30-second YouTube ad is on the way

    Looks like a reprieve from the unskippable 30-second video YouTube ad is on the way.

    According to the british site Campaign Live, Google is doing away with the ad format on YouTube.

    Considering Google emphasis on mobile, and their push for advertisers to adapt a mobile first mindset, the unskippable 30-second video is arcane. Though some legacy advertisers and those who really like to watch themselves are unhappy with the move, YouTube’s audiences will very much appreciate it.

    Google recognized the consumer-first approach required this change. While short term this may hurt a but on ad revenue, long term it will keep consumers more engaged.

  • Google Dropped Organic Site Links & Some impressions dropped

    Google Organic Search Metrics
    Google Search Console (GSC)/ webmaster tools provides insights into the way users see your organic Google SERPs. Unfortunately, the dashboard data only goes back 90 days, so when Google makes a change, it is difficult to normalize the data.

    So, here is what changed:

    For some websites, Google displayed site links under the primary listing. So, one search with one listing provided multiple Landing Page impressions in the GSC. Google removed this late last year. So, sites for December and January that had a lot of impressions due to site links, suddenly say their impressions drop. In some cases drastically.

    The good news is that Google dropped organic site links because they were getting minimal clicks. So the actual site traffic should not have been measurably impacted. But if you keep track of up stream metrics, this throws a wrench in your data.

    (google also delivers multiple listings for a site in one search, legitimately creating multiple landing page impressions for one query).