Friday 30 December 2016

Simple Tips That Can Significantly Improve Your Online Marketing

Tips for Great Search Advertising:
1. Know the Text Ad Format – All text ads aren’t created equal. Bing, Yahoo!, and Google all have slightly different text ad formats, so identify and follow the rules of each before running your search advertising campaign.
2. Optimize the URL in Your Search Ad – Text ads feature a URL along with the title of your ad, so make sure it’s relevant to the product or service you are promoting and that it doesn’t conflict with the publisher’s requirements.
3. Include Target Keywords in Your Ad – Use keywords in both your headline and text ad copy that match or are closely related to the keywords you bid in order to help your ad show up in search results for those terms.
4. Write a Strong Call to Action – Tell consumers who see your text ad what action you want them to take, like getting a free estimate or downloading a coupon, so they are more willing to click through to your site.
5. Use a Call Tracking Number – If you use a click-to-call extension in your ad, consider using a tracking number to identify the calls that come from your ads and to measure the results of your search advertising.
6. Don’t Include Your Business Name in the Ad’s Headline – Headlines have limited character space, so don’t waste it on your business name. You can include your business name in your optimized URL, and use your headline for more critical content.
7. Use Title Case – Capitalizing the first letter of major words is a text ad best practice. Just don’t go crazy with all caps. (NEVER go crazy with all caps.)
8. Include the Right Punctuation – Using correct punctuation in a text ad is mandatory at the end of your ad, but it can also be used within the rest of your ad to ask a question or make a point.
9. Don’t Use Trademarked Terms (Unless You Own Them) – This is just a no-no. You can bid on trademarked terms if they are relevant to your ad, but using terms you don’t own can go against the publisher’s requirements.
10. Don’t Use Unknown Abbreviations – Nobody will know that “WFWAM” means “We Fix Windows and More.” There are many ways to include your message in your text ad without using abbreviations that only you can decipher.
To see the full tips for search advertising, check out our search advertising 101 blog post.
Tips for a Better Business Website
11. Update Your Website – It’s 2014, so your business website shouldn’t look like it’s still stuck in the early 2000s. And it’s about more than just looks. Best practices and Web standards change often, so a refresh can help you make sure your website is at the top of its game.
12. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly – The 2014 Local Search Study from Neustar Localeze found that nearly 80% of local searches on a mobile phone ended in a purchase. If you’re website isn’t mobile-friendly, you are missing out on these local consumers.
13. Complete and Optimize Your Site’s Metadata – Metadata on your website (like title tags, descriptions, and alt text) is a critical component of your website’s SEO. Leaving it out can negatively impact how you show up in search results.
14. Create and Use a Business Blog – Blogging and your business should be best friends. Maintaining a business blog can help boost your site’s SEO; plus, it can set you apart from the competition and demonstrate your knowledge and expertise. It’s a win-win situation.
15. Optimize Your Website for Local Search – If your law practice only handles cases in Albuquerque, New Mexico, then it doesn’t do much good to get it seen by consumers searching for legal consultations in Crawford County, New Hampshire. Make sure your business website includes local information, like a phone number, address, and geo-targeted keywords so that local consumers call you.
Get the full scoop on website best practices in our blog post about the 5 most common website mistakes.
Tips for Effective Search Engine Optimization:
16. Regularly Post Quality Content – Creating and promoting fresh, original, and sharable content on a business blog can help increase your visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) because these social shares signal to search engines that your site is knowledgeable and relevant in a particular topic.
17. Be Present on Maps – This is especially applicable to consumers searching for your business on the go using apps like Google Maps and Apple Maps. Make sure they not only find you by claiming your local listings and making sure information like your phone number and address are correct.
18. Claim Your Google+ Local Page – Claiming and optimizing a Google+ Local page is key to showing up in Google Maps and Google’s local search results. Plus, this page provides users with important information like your phone number, operating hours, and ratings and reviews that they use when deciding whether to use your business.
19. Engage Your Social Media Fans – Social media is a great way to build your brand and interact with potential and current customers. Post engaging content frequently to generate shares and connect with consumers, which can positively impact the number of those who see your content.
20. Use Local Keywords – Include geo-specific keywords in your website, blog, and even social media copy to drive visits and interest from consumers in your area.
21. Generate Backlinks – High-quality links, such as those from influencers, are great for building your authority. Plus, they tell search engines that your business is credible, therefore ranking your website or other sites higher in search engines.
22. Get Positive Reviews – What people say in reviews matters to consumers. In fact, one study determined that 79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust a personal recommendation. And as these reviews are visible in search results, having positive reviews with high rankings can help persuade interested consumers to give your business a chance.
23. Set Up Google Authorship – In addition to building your business brand, building your personal brand can be a great way to get new consumers. Google Authorship can help you do this.
See more about what gets your business found in Google in our blog post about what Google loves.
24. Complete Your Business Information – Yelp is a great hub to host all kinds of information about your small business. From operating hours to business type to payment options to parking information, it’s a great way to help consumers find you and your business.
25. Post Realistic Images – Images speak volumes, and Yelp features them loud and clear. Post inviting and realistic photos of what consumers can expect when visiting your business.
26. Promote Positive Reviews – Since Yelp reviews are featured in local search results on all major search engines, generating great reviews is more important that ever. Plus, you can promote these reviews in other places, like your website and social media sites.
Read more about how your small business can get the most out of a Yelp Business Page in our blog post featuring these tips.
Tips for a Glowing Social Media Presence:
27. Think Before You Post – It’s becoming more impossible to take back what you say in social media (hello, screenshots). In order to keep yourself from putting your foot in your mouth, make sure to think before you speak, er, post.
28. Have a Social Media Policy – Social profiles for your business aren’t the end-all and be-all of your brand. Your employees also represent your brand, both in person and online. Having a social media policy today is important so employees know the rules and expectations for posting online as well.
29. Be Careful when Newsjacking – Staying in the know is a great idea for generating timely social content. However, if you jump in a conversation online without knowing the origin of the topic, you could risk looking like a social media newbie and potentially coming off as insensitive.
30. Stay Alert – Social media is the place where consumers voice their opinions about you, good and bad. Having alerts set up to notify you of mentions, comments, or messages can help you make sure you address situations before they get out of hand.
Find out more about how your small business can use social media to build and promote your brand and tips to prevent social media mistakes.
http://www.seohub.co.in

Top Online Marketing Strategies for Local Businesses


Improving your online sales and leads can seem like a labyrinth of possibilities. Below we discuss several ways to expose your business on the internet to increase your customer volume.

#1 - Identify and Target Your Buyer Personas

When it comes to generating sales, it’s all about focus. Rather than trying to please everyone, it helps if you target a select group of customers. We like like to refer to these targeted groups as buyer personas.

Buyer personas are fictitious profiles based on your ideal customers.

By focusing or your designated customer, you maximize your ability to attract quality leads. This also allows for you to spend your time concentrating on every possible concern that could be associated with just a few ideal customers, thus enabling you to become an expert in your field by deepening your skills and knowledge.

#2 - Optimize Your Product and Service Pages

We’ve all heard that less is more. Surprisingly, some SEO gurus recommend that the fewer goods or services you offer on your company’s web page, the better. This is especially for those customers who may suffer from indecisiveness when presented with a ton of product or service options.

These same visitors may even leave your website because you are offering too much at one time and they are simply overwhelmed.

Now, this mostly depends on your target audience; therefore providing the bare minimal as far as services go this might not work for your needs.

However, for those of you who offer a broad range of products, we suggest organizing your product pages by categories or emphasizing only your primary, most profitable products.

#3 - Be Accessible, Make Your Contact Information Visible

If people can’t get in touch with you, they can’t buy what you’re offering!

Most contact information is listed at the bottom of the page and can be anywhere from a mailing address to a phone number to an email address.

The important thing is to make it accessible and easy to find for users. The can be accomplished by (1) including a link that leads to your contact page in your top navigation; and (2) making sure your name, address, phone number and all links are up-to-date.

#4 - Utilize Data from Google Analytics

If you set up your Google Analytics correctly, you should be able to determine the source of your online traffic (Acquisition > All Traffic > Sources/Medium). By identifying your top traffic source(s), you can pinpoint the online channels which to focus all of your digital marketing, to better reach your audience.
Google Analytics also allows you to observe the behavior of your website visitors and learn about bounce rates and exit. If you notice that your bounce rates and exit are abnormally high for individual pages, we suggest can taking the necessary steps to improve these content on these pages, to increase your conversions.
#5 - Create Forms with Quantifying Questions

Creating a customized form that lists a series of quantifying questions helps engage your target audience, and gets you more involved with your base.

It can help you evaluate where you currently stand as a business and gives you ideas on what your customers are looking for and how you could improve.

Remember, to keep your forms simple, yet effective. You want to ask the right questions, but you don't want to ask too many questions.

#6 - Nurture Leads via Email

Lead nurturing is how a company establishes a relationship with an individual prospect that is still in the early stages of the buying process. This strategy focuses on creating a bond so that when the time comes to purchase, the lead turns to you instead of to another company.

An excellent way to build these types of client bonds is through email, which you can use to foster customer relationships continually and find the best-qualified leads from your generation efforts.

#7 - Adopt Engaging Social Media Strategies

There is no better way to capture customers and built a long-term relationship with them than by connecting on the diverse digital rainbow that is social media. From Twitter to Facebook to Instagram, these platforms offer a huge trough of opportunities just waiting to be mined.

Through social media marketing, you can directly speak to and engage with your customers to extend your leads far beyond your local area, and reach thousands of people within your local market.

#8 - Publish Customer Testimonials

Did you know, authentic customer testimonials create social proof?

They also build trust among your website visitors by showing you are credible. And best of all, testimonials and reviews aren’t "sales-sy" and remove any skepticism visitors may have upon discovering your business.
The easiest way to generate testimonials is to seek your customers for feedback. Once you receive their feedback ask if you can highlight a portionof  testimonial on your website, such as your homepage or landing pages. But remember, keep it real; you should never spin your clients' words.

 #9 - Encourage Your Current Customers to Leave Product/Service Reviews

From Yelp to Google My Business, online reviews not only increase your online sales, but they impact your local search ranking.

People trust reviews. They also play a significant role in the customer buying decision process. For this reason, we suggest you begin requesting reviews from your current clients or customers if you haven't already.

#10 - Improve Your Website Checkout Process

Are customers starting your checkout process, but exiting the process before completing a purchase? It could be due to friction in your checkout process. According to a recent survey, 84% of shoppers will abandon websites that have complicated online checkout processes.

Here are some tips for improving your checkout process:

If you are forcing visitors to log in before starting the checkout process, you should also include a guest checkout or social sign-up option.
Entice your website visitors by offering incentives (discounts, special offers or promotions) that will encourage them to complete a call-to-action.
Simplify your checkout process by eliminating unnecessary steps, pages or distractions and get straight to the point.
Offer a range of secure payment options.

#11 - Optimize Your Website for Mobile

Today, people are performing more online searches and making purchases via their mobile devices than desktops. Research has found that 67% of customers are more likely to buy a product or use a service from a company whose site is mobile-friendly; while 61% will abandon a site that is not mobile-optimized.

In addition to this, did you know Google penalizes websites that are not mobile-friendly?

Here are a few pointers to keep in mind when creating a unique mobile experience for your customers: make sure your mobile site is fast, keep your content clean and straight-to-the-point, include a search box and large buttons, and add relevant calls-to-action.

#12 - Highlight Products or Services with Video Marketing

Did you know: 4 out of 5 customers would rather watch a product video than read about a product?

Video marketing is one of the most engaging online methods you can use to increase your sales. By incorporating video marketing to sell your products and services you not only educate customers but you give your potential customers a closer look at what you have to offer and any value it may bring to them.

#13 - Be Honest, It is The Best Policy

Do not exaggerate your sales copy in hopes that it will entice website visitors to make a purchase. By being dishonest, you not only bring harm to your reputation, but you lose any trust in your brand.

If you’re a small business, act like it, express it and let the world know. Today, more consumers are choosing small businesses over major chains, so there's no need to craft your website copy in a way that makes you appear as if you're a multi-national company.

We hope these thirteen strategies take you far in the online world.

http://www.seohub.co.in

Does Digital marketing help businesses that operate on a person-to-person basis?


In a word, the answer is yes, but this is something that many local business owners overlook.

Today, virtually everything consumers do orbits around the web. When a customer wants information, reviews, directions, or details on products, the likelihood that they’ll turn to Google is huge. If you don’t have an online presence, they may well choose to do business with one of your competitors instead.

Because of this, small and medium-sized brick-and-mortar companies are beginning to use digital marketing to boost local traffic and improve in-store performance.


Why Digital Marketing Matters For Local Businesses
While many small business owners assume that having a storefront and some physical marketing material is enough, this is not longer true in today’s world. According to Search Engine Watch, four out of every five consumers use mobile devices to search for information on local companies.

This is massively important because 50 percent of people who conduct a local search visit a physical store within 24 hours. What’s more, 18 percent of local searches lead to a sale.

With this in mind, it’s clear that companies who aren’t optimizing their digital marketing for local search are missing out on a tremendous potential for traffic and revenue in their businesses.

5 Steps To Drive Traffic To Local Businesses Using Internet Marketing
If you’re interested in using digital marketing to boost your local traffic, follow these five steps:

1. Build Your Engagement On Social Media Platforms
Too many local brands only have a dull, seldom-updated Facebook page. If you want to make the most of digital marketing, now is the time to update this. Use your social platforms to drive engagement with your brand.

If your Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest profile is a bit out of date, refresh it with a new profile picture, an overhauled bio that includes relevant long-tail keywords, and current name, address, and phone number information for your company.

Once you’ve done this, it’s time to start posting. While the best way to drive engagement on social media is to post original content, responding to comments on your page, interacting with similar brands, and getting involved in conversations in social media groups are all powerful forces for engagement as well.

2. Optimize Your Content For Local SEO
To fully take advantage of the prevalence of local searches, you’ll want to optimize all of your content for local SEO. This means targeting geographically-specific long-tail keywords, claiming your local business listings, keeping your name, address, and phone number (NAP) information current at all times, and adding your location to a map for simple navigation.

3. Ensure Your Web Presence Is Mobile-Friendly
Last year was the first year that mobile search eclipsed desktop search. It’s never been more important than now to optimize your web presence for mobile devices. Responsive website design is the best way to do this. You can evaluate your site with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool to figure out what, if anything, you need to improve.

When your site functions well on mobile, it serves searchers better. This increases the likelihood that people who initiate local searches will convert fully and decide to make their way to your storefront.

4. Start A Blog & Publish To It Often
When it comes to building an online presence, content creation is the best and most reliable way to do it. Many small businesses assume they don’t need a blog to get noticed. However, publishing a company blog is a hugely effective method for providing your customers with information. This will make your business more relevant in the eyes of consumers.

In addition to the fact that companies that blog earn 67 percent more leads than their non-blogging counterparts, blogging is also a great way to develop your brand voice, showcase new products, goods, or services, and start a conversation with your customers. Plus, since every blog you publish is one more page that Google can index, blogging regularly helps you rank higher in the SERPs.

5. Start An Email Newsletter
One of the best things your local business can do for recognition and traffic is to start an email newsletter. By providing your customers with weekly updates, nicely laid-out content, and any relevant bits of information, you can boost your engagement and drive more people to your store.

For an example, look at this email newsletter from a small, brick-and-mortar home goods store:

Digital Marketing: The New Best Strategy For Your Business
While digital marketing is something many small businesses overlook, things like social media and email newsletters provide a massive boost when it comes to connecting with your customers and promoting quality interaction.

For assistance with any aspect of digital marketing, contact Thrive Internet Marketing.
http://www.seohub.co.in


Thursday 29 December 2016

Indian E-commerce is in full BOOM....

India is becoming a strong market with fast growing potential in the e-commerce space which has lured many western biggies like Amazon and eBay who want to cash in on the business that this promises. studies over the last few years by noted agencies show that online shopping is becoming the preferred mode of shopping.
According to an in depth study released by leading Indian venture capital firm Accel partners on the Indian e-commerce market Indian e-commerce will quadruple from a $ 2 billion industry in 2013 to nearly $ 8.5 billion by 2016 at a CAGR of 63% . There will also be an increase in the number of Indian shoppers online from 20 million to 40 million by year 2016. These numbers do not consider travel ticketing and online food ordering but only physical goods commerce. The associate Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) expects the size of the online retail industry to touch Rs. 7000 crore by 2015 up from Rs. 2000 crore now at an annual growth rate of 35 per cent. A study conducted by TNS Australia on behalf of Google India in November 2012 reported that online shopping in India saw 128% growth in interest for the consumers in the year 2011 to 2012 in comparison to only 40 % growth in 2010 to 2011. In terms of product categories consumer interest on Google search for apparel and accessories (30%) emerged as the second biggest product category after consumer electronics (34%). The figures continue to grow.
As mobile internet users grow in number mobile phones is also contributing to a boom in online shopping in India with Google witnessing two times growth in number of queries from mobile phone in the year 2011 to 2012. At present 30% of all shopping queries in India come from mobile phones. These trends were also validated with the help of an online research conducted by TNS Australia of the internet users in the age group 18 to 50 from Delhi. Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Ahmadabad Hyderabad and Pune. Rajan Anandan VP and Managing Director of Google India said "With approximately 8 million Indians shopping online in 2012 online shopping industry in India is growing rapidly and will continue to see exponential growth. By looking at the trends in 2012 we expect 2013 to be a strong growth year for players who're focused on fast growing categories like apparels and accessories and niche product categories like baby products, home furnishings and health - nutrition. We expect the growth to come from outside of 8 top metros as was evident in our recently concluded "Great Online Shopping festival" which saw over 51% of traffic from non-metros.
Talking to one India's leading magazines in an article on changing patterns in internet shopping a senior executive of Flip kart noted that customer behavior was changing dramatically. Online shopping is no longer just for booking air tickets and movie tickets, but also to buy mobiles, laptops and other consumer electronics and home appliances. To tap this growing potential not just large brands, but even general retail chains are upgrading their sites for e-commerce making it more convenient for customers to place online purchase orders some of the biggest motivators for online shoppers are daily deals and discount offers with good delivery services. Factors like cash back offer and cash on delivery (COD) to attract shoppers.
The online shopping industry in India is fast catching on not just in the larger metros but also in the smaller towns. At present the market is estimated at Rs. 46000 crore and is growing at 100 per cent per year.
http://www.seohub.co.in

Difference between Bing Advertising & AdWords Advertising in search advertising?


What’s the difference between the two giants in search advertising? They both provide the same service yet there are several key differences between the two.
The Strengths of Google AdWords
When people think of search advertising, their mind automatically goes to Google AdWords. That’s a double-edge sword in many ways. While it means more revenue for Google, it means higher costs for advertisers. While the price is higher, you could argue there is more value to make up for the higher price.
Higher Search Volume
Search volume is higher on this platform than any other platform.
If your advertising campaign is limited to a small geographic area, Google AdWords may be the only platform where you’ll gain significant search volume, depending on your keywords and match types. Higher search volume means more potential customers for your business.

Ad Extensions & Additional Visibility
There are more advertising extensions on Google than Bing. Search advertisements are notoriously short. Trying to sell your business to potential customers in two 35-character lines is hard for copywriters. Using ad extensions, you can take up more space and sell your message more easily. There are a lot of neat features about ad extensions, like mobile-click-to-call and review extensions to show positive social proof.
Easier to Manage
Google AdWords is an easier platform to manage your search advertising on while at the same time offers much more for settings, targeting, and optimization. While search advertising isn’t the most intuitive activity, Google has done a decent job at incorporating a large number of features and making it relatively easy for users to understand.
sem-marketing-ad-extensions
The Strengths of Bing Ads
Bing Ads is often an overlooked platform and it shouldn’t be. There are a lot of positives that go with advertising on Bing.
Potentially Lower Cost
It’s at least half as expensive as Google AdWords. Bing Ads has fewer advertisers, which means there are fewer people driving up the price of keywords. That translates into saving businesses money on their advertising dollars. I’ve seen keywords on AdWords cost $17 a click, and those same keywords on Bing cost $5. That’s significant savings over the course of a year.
Bing/Yahoo Partners
Bing and Yahoo partner for their ad network. When you advertise on Bing, you are also advertising on Yahoo. While there is less search volume on the two platforms than Google, it’s still used enough to create significant search volume for many campaigns.
Great Customer Service
While we’re a Google Partner agency and their customer service is amazing, Bing does a good job as well.  Whenever we encounter a problem, the Bing representatives are extremely helpful in solving our issues. This is great for the average business that may not be familiar with the nuances of search advertising.

In The Battle of Google AdWords vs. Bing Ads, Who Wins?
Each platform has unique aspects, but usually it’s effective to use both.
If cost and high competition levels are major factors in your advertising budget, then Bing could be a better choice and result in lower cost-per-acquisitions. If you’re looking for a more user-friendly platform with high search volume, Google AdWords is often be a better choice.
Google AdWords is the favorite of many advertisers with a flexible platform and higher search volume.  Every business has its own specific needs, and depending on those, one platform may perform better or be a better choice than the other.

Difference between Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools

A. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the most widely used web analytics applications. It will give you the following information.

1. Visitor Reports

The total number of visitors your website has. It also specifies what are the number of new visitors and  returning visitors

The time that your visitors spend on your site.

The amount of pages your visitors view.

The amount of visitors who landed on your site and left immediately.

Geographical location of your website visitors

The websites which referred visitors to your site.

2. Web traffic Reports

Total number of of people visiting your site on a daily, monthly and yearly basis. It also provides your traffic stats to previous years.

3. Details of Keywords

The keywords which brings traffic to your website.

The keywords which produces most sales.

The keywords which keeps your visitors on your site for longer durations.

4. Content

The web pages your visitors visit often.

The web pages that brings you more traffic.

The pages your visitors most often leave your site.

5. Conversions: The conversion rates for the goals you set on your site.


B. Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools reveals how Google looks your site online. Webmasters use this tool to fix problems with the site if any. It offers lot of tools for webmasters with which one can improve the visibility of the site and fix problems if any. It will give you the following information

1. Crawl Errors

Google webmaster tools give you information about the pages which Google is unable to crawl. This is a very important aspect because if Google cannot crawl your pages, your search engine visibility may go down.  With the help of the tool, one can find out issues if any and resolve it.

2. Search Queries

This is information on your pages Google has returned to searchers for specific queries. The following information is available using webmaster tools.

Total number of search queries which returned pages from your site.

Your top search queries which returned pages in Google.

The number of times your pages were viewed in Google’s search results.

The number of times your listings were clicked on for a particular search query.

The percentage of times your listing was clicked for a particular search query.

The average position of your website for a particular search query.

3. Links

The links linking into your site from other websites.

4. Blocked URLS

If your site has content you don't want Google or other search engines to access, use a robots.txt file to specify how search engines should crawl your site's content. You can use Google Webmaster Tools to find out if your robots.txt is working as expected.

5. Malware

Google Webmaster Tools inform you If Google detects any malware on the site.

6. HTML errors

Google Webmaster Tools inform you If Google detects any HTML errors on the site.
7. Fetch as Google

You can use Google Webmaster Tools to submit a page to Google. However Google doesn't guarantee that they will  index every URL we crawl.

For more information, you can visit Google Webmaster Tools website.

Summary
Google analytics is basically a website statistics tool focusing the website traffic.

Google Webmaster tool shows you how Google sees your site as a search engine

http://www.seohub.co.in

Wednesday 28 December 2016

Automatic Bidding

I recently shared some tips for switching from automatic bidding to manual bidding. In this post, I’ll explain why you might want to do that. Some smaller advertisers with severely limited time might find comfort and see moderate results in the “set-it-and-forget-it” characteristics of Automatic Bidding. However, if you’re looking to optimize beyond the basics, there are five specific things to consider before choosing between Automatic vs. Manual Bidding:

#1: Impression Share

Just because you’re bidding on a particular keyword doesn’t mean you’re showing up every time it’s searched. In fact, it’s possible that your ads for keywords in your accounts could be shown less than 10% of the time!

The most common reason for lost Impression Share is low Ad Rank. While Quality Score plays a significant role in ad rank, the quickest way to improve your rank is often increasing your bid. With automatic bidding, you can’t selectively choose to increase the bids on terms that are core to your product or service. Thus you can’t influence or increase Impression Share on those terms, you will continue to lose impressions for your ads, and potential conversions will pass you by.

#2: Page Position

Search can grow your business from the ground up exponentially faster than many traditional channels, yet first people have to see your ad. If it’s buried in a low position on the SERP, searchers might be skimming over it in favor of other links on the page. Think about the last time you searched for a product. Did you even bother to glance beyond the top 3-4 positions?

To ensure you are truly receiving impressions for critical keywords in your account, you would want to bid higher on those specific keywords so that your ad places in the top of page or at least position 4-5, to reach those searchers who might be the most actionable to convert. With Automatic Bidding, you again can’t selectively choose to adjust the individual bids on those critical keywords, which leave your ads at the bottom of the page.

#3: Tiered / Stacked Bidding

Tiered or Stacked Bidding, a more advanced bidding strategy, pertains to the specific match types you’re using in PPC. More specific match types can drive higher CTR’s, increase Quality Score, and even prove cheaper than clicks on more general match types. Those same specific match types and terms can often drive conversions at a higher rate and lower cost than more general variations.

Since those keywords are more valuable and a higher priority, they are bid higher than Broad Matched variations. As you get more specific with your Match Type, you bid 10-15% higher for each: Broad < Modified Broad < Phrase < Exact. Your Exact Match keyword should have the highest bid since it is the most specific, while the other match types are tiered lower than the next more specific type.

While an advertiser would prefer to receive all clicks on the most specific match type to reap the benefit of higher CTR’s and lower cost, Google tends to be more concerned with your Max CPC (when bidding manually). If you had a higher Max CPC on a Broad Matched keyword, that term is likely to pull in Exact Matches as well, even if you have a specific Exact Match keyword in the account (Impression Share also plays a role in why this occurs). To prevent this from occurring, you would typically use this Bid Stacking strategy. However, with automatic bidding, since you can’t edit your bids, you can’t tier your match types, which leaves it up to Google to decide where to attribute your clicks.

#4: Exorbitant Bids

adwords automatic bidding

To be honest, this isn’t as much of an unavoidable concern as it is a great insight into how Google will manage your account when you hand over this control. Expensive bids can certainly be avoided with a realistic maximum CPC setting, however one keyword without one can serve as a great example as to why you should avoid giving away control over your bidding.

The keyword below is long-tail, a fairly selective Modified Broad match type, and uses Automatic Bidding. It’s from a competitive industry, but average CPC’s range from $10-$50. It received one click. That click cost $362.63. (Click the image to enlarge.)

never use automatic bidding

Again, this can be avoided by setting a lower maximum CPC bid limit, yet it seems to highlight the extremes that can occur with Automatic Bidding. Even in industries like Insurance or Law, clicks rarely go that high. While the Maximum CPC was set high to achieve a high Impression Share, most of the clicks remained around a $10 -$30 Average CPC as expected. More control over your individual bids would guarantee that such a circumstance wouldn’t occur. Google lacks your intuition and discretion for wasting spend, so don’t solely rely on their judgment to determine the value of your keywords.

#5: Manual Management of CPA

If you’re taking the initiative to read this post or educate yourself in PPC, it’s most likely you prefer to be in control of your account. For most in search, the goal of this control and education is to lower your CPA, or the cost incurred to get each conversion. Automatic Bidding can stand in stark opposition to that goal.

Consider keywords in your account that might convert at a higher rate than others. Ideally you would want to receive more impressions and invest more on the keywords that convert. That “attention” would be reflected in a higher bid price for converting keywords and a lower bid for lower converting (but still relevant) keywords. With Automatic Bidding, Google makes the decisions on how the budget and bids are prescribed for all keywords. This prevents you from making more specific preferences for your converting terms as well as lackluster keywords that just might be driving cost rather than value.

Flexible Bid Strategies in Adwords

Flexible bid strategies automatically set bids to optimize for certain goals across set campaigns, ad groups and keywords.

Once you have created a strategy, it will be shared in your Shared Library in Google AdWords, making it accessible from one spot and making performance tracking easier. You can apply the strategy on the campaign, ad group or keyword level from each respective tab.

flexible bid strategy guide

Measuring success will depend on which of the flexible bid strategies you employ, but ultimately, are you getting what you signed up for? Are you getting more conversions within your target CPA? Are your CPC’s within your goals and budget? Reviewing the data will tell you if something is working or not. Since these strategies can be applied at different levels and you will be adding them with different goals in mind, be sure to go over the data thoroughly and make sure the numbers reflect your goals. Also check whether the leads and sales you are receiving are of the same caliber you were receiving (or better) than before you started using flexible bid strategies. This will help you define success.

The chart above is a quick overview of what the various flexible bid strategies are and when to use them. Now we’re going to take a deeper dive into how each of them work, where to apply them, and what you still have control over.

Maximize Clicks

This strategy is something that many of you are probably familiar with, as it is essentially automatic bidding. This strategy will focus on increasing clicks while spending a target amount. The target spend amount is essentially the budget you are setting for any campaign/ad group/keyword that is utilizing this strategy. This is separate from the daily budget you will set on the campaign level for a campaign using manual bidding or another bid strategy.

This is different than automatic bidding as you can set this to specific ad groups or keywords instead of just at the campaign level, but you can still set this up at the campaign level as well. You can still control ad scheduling, but you can no longer set day or time of day bid adjustments. A note about the target spend: this is an amount that you set that is applied to any campaign, ad group or keyword using this strategy. This is separate from your campaigns’ daily budgets, as it is applied to those campaigns and ad groups that are using this flexible bidding strategy. With Maximize Clicks, you are giving Google control to change your bids in order for the areas using this strategy to work to gain you the most clicks. You can set a CPC bid limit to ensure that Google isn’t setting your bids higher than you would like to spend per click.

This strategy will allow for you to set up custom ad scheduling for day and time of day (not bid adjustments, but scheduling) where you can use the Maximize Clicks strategy. You can set a cap on bids for any keyword, ad group or campaign that is using this strategy, but if you do not set one AdWords will adjust your bids to an amount that will earn you the most clicks.

You should apply this strategy when you want to get the most clicks to your site for your target spend amount. A time you wouldn’t want to use this is when you have strict ROI or CPA goals.


Target Search Page Location

Want Google to change your bids so you will be on the first page of results, or even the top of the page? The Target Search Page Location option will automatically raise or lower your bids to show your ad at the top of the page or on the first page of the Google search results. This strategy only works for the Google Search Network. Once applied, it will only take a few minutes for your bids to start being changed by Google and can (and will) be updated several times a day. To set the initial bid amount you can do one of two things: you can opt for the automated approach and have Google set the bid and adjust for you, or set the bid yourself and then have Google adjust the bid for you.

Keep in mind – this doesn’t guarantee placement on the top of page or ad position on the first page of results. This strategy will attempt to achieve your target location, but final placement is going to be decided by the results of the ad auction.

This strategy gives you the option to show on the top of the first search results page or anywhere on the first search results page. If you are using the top of first page search results, Google will raise your bid to fit the top-of-page bid estimate. If you utilize the option to show anywhere on the first page, it will use the first page bid adjustment. To gain more insight into how Google will raise your bids, you can check to see what your first page and top-of-page bid estimates are in AdWords.

When using Target Search Page Location, you can set bid adjustments, in addition to mobile, location, day and time of day. You can also adjust your top-of-page or first page bids. This means you can actually bid a percentage of your first page or top-of-page bid estimate. You also have the ability to set a Max CPC bid limit and cap your bids. Setting these limits is important to ensure that you’re not spending more per click than you want to (from a cost or CPA goal standpoint). You’re also going to want to make sure that you are not going to exhaust your budget too quickly by the increasing bid adjustments.



Target CPA

Target CPA may sound familiar as it is similar to optimize for conversions. This option allows you to set bids to achieve an average CPA across all ad groups and campaigns using this strategy. With this approach, some conversions may cost more than the target and some may cost less, but overall AdWords will try to keep your cost-per-conversion equal to the target.

Keep in mind – this strategy sets bid adjustments to reach your target CPA, superseding other bid adjustments you’ve set (except where you’ve set a mobile bid adjustment of -100%).

While Google may recommend not setting a minimum or maximum CPC bid limit, it may be in your best interest to do so, as you do want to make sure that your CPC bids aren’t going to be too high. Yes, Google will set your bids within your target CPA, but if you set a bid limit you can also help ensure that you are not going to be having high CPC bids and that you are instead getting the most out of your budget. Setting a minimum bid limit will help make sure that your bids aren’t too low and that you will stay competitive.

Bid limits give you more control and restrict how AdWords automates your bids.

There are two requirements to apply this strategy:

You need at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days (the more data you have, the better Google can help to set bid adjustments)
Your ad group or campaign has received conversions at a similar rate for at least a few days
Flexible Bid Strategies Target CPA

Enhanced CPC

Enhanced CPC helps you bid more effectively to maximize conversions. You can set your own max CPC bids for each keyword, and from here, AdWords will adjust your bids depending on what it believes is the likelihood of the click leading to a conversion. ECPC will only raise your bid up to 30% and can lower it as much as 100%. Google looks at real-time data to make your bids more effective, such as device, browser, location, and time of day when adjusting your bids during each ad auction.

Target Return on Ad Spend

Target Return on Ad Spend uses the conversion value you set when you set up your conversion tracking. If you haven’t set up your conversion value, you can do so in the Tools tab under Conversions.

AdWords Conversion Value

Once this is done, AdWords will set the max CPC bid to maximize your conversion value. At the same time, AdWords will be trying to achieve an average return on Ad Spend that is equal to your target.

Target ROAS in AdWords

So, these are the AdWords flexible bid strategies that Google has to offer. If you’re a WordStream customer and you think that one might be right for you, contract your CS rep – we’ll be more than happy to give you more details and help you get up and running.

One thing I’ve learned from clients I’ve spoken to who are using different flexible bidding strategies is that you have be careful and really know what you’re doing. I’ve seen quite a few clients who have enabled a strategy and seen more spend in AdWords, yet the amount of conversions has stayed the same and the quality of the conversions had not changed.

Flexible bidding strategies will work differently than bidding rules, but with similar outcomes – Google will have more control over your PPC bid management (in some cases all control), so it pays to tread carefully.

Tuesday 27 December 2016

AdWords Bidding Strategies

While bidding strategies have evolved over time, there are several core bidding types available in Google AdWords. Now with Flexible Bidding Strategies it may be a bit confusing as to what type of bidding is available and how it works. Cost-per-click (CPC) bidding has never been so advanced – and so complicated.

Manual CPC

This is the classic setting for having total control over bids with a focus on driving click traffic. AdWords will take the ad group default bid first, unless a different bid is manually specified at the keyword level.

Select “I’ll manually set my bids for clicks”.

Manual CPC

Automatic CPC

In this setting, advertisers focus on driving click traffic but give AdWords control over individual CPC bids. Set a daily budget and AdWords automatically adjusts your bids with the goal of getting the most clicks for the budget. With automatic bidding, AdWords does all the work to get the most clicks.

There is also the option to set a CPC bid limit. Setting a limit can help control costs, but might also potentially limit clicks.

Select “AdWords will set my bids to help maximize clicks within my target budget”.

Auto CPC

Enhanced CPC

This bidding option is for the conversion-focused advertiser. Conversion tracking must be enabled, so that based on conversion tracking data, AdWords will automatically increase or decrease CPC bids to drive most conversions.

Bids can be raised up to 30 percent for clicks that are more likely to lead to conversions. Bids are lowered for clicks less likely to convert.

Enhanced CPC

The 10 Best & Biggest New PPC Features of the Year Three major developments that will shape multi-channel marketing in 2017 How search and email acquisition campaigns benefit both channels A 10-minute account audit to prevent SEM fires during the holidays
CPA Bidding

With a focus on conversions at a specific cost-per-acquisition, use CPA bidding. This is also known as Conversion Optimizer.

Advertisers who want to target a specific cost per acquisition/conversion must have at least 15 conversions in 30 days to use this. The conversions history allows AdWords to predict future conversions.

Because Conversion Optimizer automatically applies its own bid adjustments, it isn’t compatible with the new enhanced campaigns bid adjustments across days, times, locations, and devices (except for mobile opt-out at -100 percent.). Display bids also don’t work. If you turn on Conversion Optimizer with existing bid adjustments, they will simply be ignored.

There are two advanced options for this bid type: Max CPA and Target CPA. The Target CPA is the average CPA you are willing to pay, and Max is the maximum per conversion. The Maximum CPA is scheduled to be discontinued in 2014.

Google recommends a CPA, based on history, which can be used or advertisers can set their own.

CPA Bidding

Flexible Bid Strategies

Allows automated bidding strategies to be more customized and flexible. Automated bid optimizations can be applied to campaigns, ad groups, and keywords.

More options compared to enhanced CPC and Conversion Optimizer options that were previously available and also allow you to mix and match bid rules across campaign and ad groups.

There are five types of flexible bid strategies:

Maximize clicks: This is a flexible version of the Automatic CPC bidding strategy.
CPA bidding: This is a flexible version of Conversion Optimizer used in the target CPA (average CPA) capacity.
Enhanced CPC: Flexible version of the existing enhanced CPC capability.
Search page location: AdWords will increase or decrease bids to target a top-of-page or first page position with ads. This bid strategy works with keywords, ad groups, and campaigns targeting the Search Network only. This doesn’t specify a position on the page (e.g., an advertiser can’t choose to be in third position on the page).
Return on ad spend (ROAS): AdWords predicts future conversions and values based on conversion values advertisers set up. To target ROAS 30 conversions in 30 days is required. Used for Search Network only or the Search and Display Networks. AdWords will try to reach the ROAS targets across all keywords, ad groups, and campaigns.

Sunday 25 December 2016

Job Interviews in Digital Marketing - TOPThings you SHOULD be prepared with

1. Prepare yourself. And have some fun, while you doing so. Today you have Google, LinkedIn, social media, everything that brings information to you - please make use of it! Learn how to be in front of a Live camera. Live Broadcast like Facebook Live, Periscope are catching up. Be prepared!

2. Have an updated Linked-In profile. If you don't have a LinkedIn profile, you think you are fit for a digital marketing job ? Don’t think your interviewer will think so.

3. Make sure your Linked-In profile has a proper descriptive headline to make you searchable by HR looking for talent on Linked-In.

4. Be more social. Be active on various networking sites, where you can express your view on digital marketing, the latest trends, showcase the people you follow etc. Like example, your personal twitter account or Instagram account.

5. Post on blogs. Even if it’s on a personal blog. Don't have your own blog, then, at least volunteer to contribute to a blog related to your industry or hobby. Talk about this during your interview.

6. Don't like blogging, eh? Then post some longer updates in Facebook Notes, Medium, LinkedIn. This is also another way of blogging. It's all Free

7. Follow blogs of industry experts and leaders. Keep yourself abreast of their latest blog posts. Some useful resources and blogs you could follow are:

Search Engine Land
Hubspot
Social Media Examiner
Moz
Web Marketing Academy
8. Talk about how you have tried implementing what you learn through these industry experts and leaders in your current day to day job. Share how it worked for you, what did you benefit from it and how did you improvise. This will help you fetch bonus points with the interviewer, as they will understand your mindset and attitude.

9. Network. I cannot stress enough on this point. When did you last attend a conference, seminar, a meet-up related to your industry ? Do you know names of some of the conferences you were a part of? What did you learn while you were there? Here is a blog post on 37 Tips to Get Most out of the Conference. Also, listed a few resources you should be aware of:

SMX
Pub con
SES
Mozcon
OME Meetups
10. Be a vital and active part of various industry groups, communities on LinkedIn and Facebook.

11. Make the first move. Learn to initiate discussion topics on LinkedIn groups or on Quora

12. You should be able to name some of the well-known leaders in your industry. A few references can be checked at this link - http://goo.gl/Zv55Yc

13. Not only should you list the projects handled by you during internship or previous jobs, but you should be able to clearly articulate what you learnt from them

14. Nobody is perfect. List 2 biggest mistakes you have made in digital marketing and how did you rectify them? Like for example, I could tell you a very basic mistake we did – We ran a Facebook Ad campaign and due to the time zone and currency, we lost almost $ 500 in less than 30 minutes, all because we misread the currency and thought it was in Indian Rupees.! Yes! Expensive mistake for a small business. That was way early, when we had just about started. But, now the first thing we check every time we run a FB campaign is for the right time zone and currency and have we surely have started paying more attention to details

15. Apart from your Facebook, LinkedIn, be active on other channels and sites like Medium, Pinterest, MOOC

16. What are the latest Audio, video, visuals you have learnt digital marketing from? List down a couple of podcasts that you listen to.A quick resource you can check out is here - Podcast Resource

17. Make a list of tools that you use, apart from the regular HootSuite and Web master tools. Some tools you would like to be aware of and familiarize yourself with are: Canva, Picmonkey

18. Be ready to answer queries on budgeting and backup your choice of answer with logic and facts. Like for example, If I give you a budget of $ 1000 for a small business and want to see immediate results, which channels would you use to market the business? And why? Is it Ad words, Facebook ads, any other? Hint: SEO will take some time, Facebook, Google Adwords are instant.

19. List down five things that are out dated in SEO.
Hint: Page rank, Meta keyword tag, Guest blogging, Directory submission

20. If you are unaware of something in SEO, where would you go to find this information
Hint: Google Webmaster Central Blog, Official Google Blogs and here is how I keep update (Link)

21. Do you know when Google webmaster guidelines was updated recently?

22. Be honest. If you don't know something, admit it and let them know that you will add that to your learning list

23. Research about the company you are applying for, do they have a blog? Do follow it? What is the latest blog post on?

24. If you know the hiring person, do research on his/her profile. See if someone could refer you to them on LinkedIn?

25. How do you balance work and personal life? Very important these days :)

26. Have you uploaded any presentations in Slideshare, Prezi?

27. Do you have an interesting story to tell about your career. Let them know how and why you got interested in Digital Marketing. What you saw in it?

28. Your recruiter most likely forms their opinion on you by looking at your resume.
How interesting is that? Is it updated? How long is it? Quick tip – these days a one page resume is all that is in – check out some resources here:

http://www.manager-tools.com/2005/10/your-resume-stinks
Free ebook by Cory J Miller

29. Are you a thinker about #digitalmarketing? Pen your thoughts on what you think is the future of this industry, talk on social media and how it affects you, etc. Hint: AI, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Live Broadcasting

30. Give some examples of companies who are doing really well in #socialmedia and digital marketing

31. Have you seen any interesting text, display, video ad recently? What was those ads about, why you like them, which brand was it for?

32. Know your subject thoroughly. Like, What is negative match type in Google Ad words ? Resources: Google Ad words study guide

33. Content, content, #content. This is primary. How well versed are you in this? What are your thoughts on content marketing?

34. Follow important industry leaders on content – copyblogger , Content Marketing Institute.

35. Research and learn the digital presence of the company you are interviewing with. How would you position them, if you were the digital marketer for them?

36. Study the competition of the company you have applied for. Know their digital presence, and what they are doing differently. Chart out a plan on how you could beter the digital presence of the company you have applied for.

37. Know your strengths in digital marketing. Talk about them.

38. Ask for a choice. Know your answer clearly too – like if you had to choose between, SEO, PPC, Social Media, Content, Analytics which one would you choose and why?

39. You should always give your recruiter at least 5 strong reasons why you should be hired for the role. First, be clear about this yourself.

40. Don’t be short sighted. Explain how you will maintain the role in the long term as well.

41. Show your passion in digital marketing – read up on case studies, on how different companies are utilizing digital marketing differently and to their advantage.

42. Know more about the latest trends in the industry. Mobile Marketing. How will you implement this for your prospective employer?

43. Do you know to read the analytical reports that you will be expected to present? This is a must. Generating reports can be done by anybody, even a tool. But interpreting them, and deriving useful and applicable insights is the crux of Analytics.

44. Insecurity has never helped anyone. Share your knowledge openly and at the same time be open to new ideas and discussions.

And now for the Dont's: They are few in number, but very important.

45. Strictly no bad mouthing any of your previous employers

46. Being money minded has never shown great results. Refrain from talking about money right at the beginning of the interview.

47. Smiling has always helped. A pleasant personality will only add on to your credentials.

48. Don’t be stubborn, and unwilling to listen to the other person. Be open minded, and give an honest ear to what is being said. Talk too much

49. It’s absolutely annoying for the interviewer, if you have any interaction with your cell phone during an interview. Refrain from using it. Even to check the time.

50. Please apply for the right reasons. Do not apply just because you want a job!

51. Do not say your choices are limited !

52. Your prospective employer is looking at utilizing your time to the fullest. Refrain from asking questions on weekend workings, etc.

Saturday 24 December 2016

How to get a 60-character headline in AdWords text ad ?

Google is experimenting with new text ad formats. This means you have more options when testing and improving your PPC text ads.

One change to the AdWords text ad format: 60-character headlines (instead of the old 25-character limit).

The new headlines are a combination – your normal 25-character headline, with Description Line 1 added onto the end.

That big, whopping headline in blue text could make your ad really stand out.  Look at these examples – old format and new format:

An old-style adwords text adThe new AdWords text ad format, with extended headline

Which one will work best?  Don’t leave it to intuition – only testing will prove it.  Always test your ads.

How to get a 60-character headline in AdWords: Just two criteria…

Your ad must be in one of the main-column (not sidebar) top-3 positions,
Description Line 1 must end with a period, question mark or exclamation point.
Note: In some cases, the new format could be bad for your ads.  Sometimes your ad takes on a new meaning…

An example where the new 60-character AdWords ad does not work so well.

Check all of your ads to make sure there won’t be any nasty surprises.

Have fun writing your new ads! If you have a lot of ads to re-write, try this AdWords text ad writing tool – it can save a lot of time & help you write better ads.

6 ways to Increase Cost per Click (CPC) in Google AdSense

AdSense works by AdWords advertisers bidding for how much they're willing to pay per click on their ads. You as an AdSense publisher could get as little as $0.10 or more that $10 per click.

These are a few tips on how to get paid more per click in AdSense.

1) Target high paying keywords

Some keywords pay more than the other, and sometimes by a very huge margin. Make sure that your website targets the high paying keywords to enjoy the benefit.


2) Display relevant ads

There's no point in having a website targeting high paying keywords if Google AdSense couldn't figure out what your website/page is all about. It'll be displaying irrelevant ads which might not pay well or even PSA (Public Service Advertisements) which pays nothing. You could make use of section targeting feature in AdSense combined with some basic on-page SEO for your website.

3) Target high paying regions

As with keywords, ads targeted for certain regions could pay more than the others. Local ads for Denmark and Netherlands could pay more than local ads in Vietnam.

4) Display less ads

Google will display the highest paying ad on your first ad slot, with lesser paying ads displayed on the subsequent slots. It could be better in general to show less ads but each with high CPC rather than a lot of ads but the lower paying ones placed more strategically and gets the click.

5) Display both text and image ads

You have the option to only display text or image/media for your every ad unit, or you could also choose to display both types. Google will display the highest paying ad regardless of the type, so limiting the ad type will only limit the amount you will get per click.

6) Avoid smart pricing

Google will pay you significantly lower than the amount the advertisers bid for a particular ad if it thinks the click that come from your site does not give good conversion for the advertisers. This is called smart pricing and you should not let your website be affected by it.

http://www.seohub.co.in

Dynamic Search Ads

Dynamically create and show ads for pages on your website without using keywords. Dynamic Search Ads complement your existing keyword-based campaigns to deliver more clicks and conversions with less effort. During pilot testing, most advertisers saw 5-10% more clicks and conversions.

What it does?

Dynamic Search Ads target relevant searches with ads generated directly from your web site -- dynamically. With Dynamic Search Ads, we keep a fresh index of your inventory using Google's organic web crawling technology. When a relevant search occurs, we dynamically generate an ad with a headline based on the query, and the text based on your most relevant landing page. The ad enters the auction and competes normally -- but we'll hold it back for any search where you also have an eligible keyword-targeted ad. So you get better results from broader exposure for more of your in-stock inventory, without making any changes to your existing keyword campaigns.

Why you’d use it?

Dynamic Search Ads complement your existing keyword-based campaigns to deliver more clicks and conversions with less effort. During pilot testing, most advertisers saw 5-10% more clicks and conversions with satisfactory ROI. Even well-managed AdWords campaigns containing thousands of keywords can miss relevant searches, experience delays getting ads written for new products, or get out of sync with what's actually available on your website. And user search behavior can be a moving target. Every day, 16% of the searches that occur are ones that Google has never seen before. Dynamic Search Ads keep your AdWords campaigns in sync with what you’re selling and what users are searching for right now. You’re still in control and can optimize Dynamic Search Ads with transparent reporting, multiple targeting options including negatives and exclusions, and bid and budget settings.

SEO vs. PPC

SEO vs. PPC - Which Provides You the Better Value?

Organizations of all sizes are realizing the importance of online marketing, especially through search engines. Nowadays, people are more likely to end up on your website via a search engine than going directly to it. In fact, according to Jupiter Research, a Forrester Research company, 81% of users find their desired destination through a search engine.

This research makes it clear that it's very important for your brand to have a strong presence in the search engines, ensuring that you're in front of your target audience. However, there's still a big decision to make - whether to use SEO (Search Engine Optimization, or naturally ranking high in the organic results) or PPC (Pay-Per-Click ads, the Sponsored Links and purchased ads on a Google search) to get in front of your target?

Done correctly, both can get you on the front page of the search engines for targeted terms and in front of your desired audience. However, each has its respective benefits and costs. SEOmoz, a great SEO resource, recently published an article by the team at Enquisite quantifying the effectiveness of SEO vs. PPC.

The article details that organic results are 8.5x more likely to be clicked on than paid search results! That's a large disparity and is likely attributed to searchers gradually learning the difference between organic and sponsored results, and recognizing that organic results are typically the more respected resource. Also, researchers have used heat maps to show that searchers' eyes focus on the top organic results, with people barely noticing the ads to the right.

However, PPC holds a slight edge in conversion rates, as paid search results are 1.5x more likely to convert click thrus from the search engine. The SEOmoz article attributes, to the fact that the paid search result's "text and landing page is custom optimized by the advertiser."

So, looking at both of these numbers, it can be concluded that "the opportunity from organic search is 5.66x that of paid search."

So, given the flat out choice of ranking high organically or having great PPC ads - the overwhelmingly logical choice is organic. However, we all know it's not that easy or else those "Rank #1 in Google TOMORROW" robo calls would be much more effective. True SEO takes time, not get rich quick schemes.

PPC's true strengths are its speed and expansiveness. With a PPC campaign, you can be on the first page for a multitude of targeted terms within a day. However, the terms can cost anywhere from pennies to many dollars per click; also, for a PPC campaign to be done correctly, it's usually best to hire a firm that can manage it full time. This can mean that PPC campaigns can get very expensive, very quickly - especially when done correctly.

SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, estimates that 87% of search engine dollars are spent on PPC vs. 11% spent on SEO efforts. That's more than $10 billion spent on PPC vs. just $1 billion spent on SEO. That means the strategy that's over 5x more effective, SEO, is only receiving 1/8 the media spend in the market! It's hard to justify the expense of a PPC campaign, knowing that SEO is more successful and the overall better longterm value.

Don't get me wrong, there are certainly times to use PPC - when you're first launching your company, it's a great way to get your name out there and build brand awareness. For a limited time offer or special event, PPC is an effective way to get exposure that SEO wouldn't have time to contribute to.

Also, PPC is more effective for products than it is for service companies; for example, we focus SEO efforts on terms such as Raleigh web design and Content Management Software; however, we do not engage in PPC advertising for these terms, because they're usually a waste of money for a services firm like ours. Yet we have an electronic payments client that runs a PPC campaign focused around its specific product offerings, and this strategy makes sense for their market.

However, when it comes to the long term lifeline of your internet marketing, the result is clear - SEO offers the better value in search marketing. You won't rank #1 overnight, but SEO is more affordable and the longterm benefits have been proven. All of these facts demonstrate that your company should spend more of its time and resources focusing on SEO vs. PPC.

What are other people's experiences in this realm? Anyone think that PPC is the more value-driven choice than SEO? Let us know your thoughts!

SEO(Search Engine Optimization) vs SEM(Search Engine Marketing)


There are many ways to drive traffic to a site but basically the two most important are SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing). While there are some similarities between the two ‐ i.e. they both revolve around keywords, they are fundamentally different.

In order to learn how to use them successfully, here are some tips about when it is best to use free SEO and when SEM is the better choice. However, before we move to the tips themselves, it is more than necessary to clarify first what we include on the free SEO list and what goes in the SEM category.

What Is Free SEO and What Is Paid SEM?
There are multiple definitions of what SEO and SEM are. In some cases they are even used as synonyms, which is not precise because they are very different, or SEO is included as a subcategory of the broader SEM umbrella, which is also somehow confusing.

Therefore, to avoid confusion, here is how we define SEO. SEO involves all the link building and onpage optimization activities the purpose of which is to achieve good rankings in organic search, while SEM is everything else you pay for, such as PPC traffic. You might ask if this means that paid links belong to SEM. No, they don't ‐ they are simply black hat and they belong neither to SEO, nor to SEM.

When to Use Free SEO
Free SEO might not involve spending money but it isn't the cheaper alternative. When you consider how much time you spend for onpage optimization and for link building, you don't regard it as free anymore ‐ time is money and these free SEO activities have wasted you so much time that you already know how expensive 'free' can be. Nevertheless, there are cases when you just need SEO. These cases include:

Less competitive keywords, especially long-tail keywords. For less competitive words, your investment in SEO is more likely to pay off because you don't need that much time and effort to achieve good rankings. This is especially true for long-tail keywords because even if you bid on them, you will hardly get many clicks. For long-tail keywords it is possible to rank well even without any special SEO activities ‐ just include the long-tail keyword a couple of times on the page and it's not unlikely to get to the top of search results even without many (or even any) backlinks.

When you are on a tight budget. The second case when SEO is not only the better but the only option is when you are on a tight budget and ideally you have all the time in the world. When your budget is too limited, you might be able to buy some cheap PPC clicks but basically 100 or 200 clicks won't make a huge difference anyway. In this case, you just invest your time in SEO and when your budget allows it, move to PPC.

It might look like SEO isn't very useful, when the cases it's the better option are that few but this isn't so. SEO is useful and even if you can afford to spend tons of money on PPC, never ditch organic rankings completely.

When to Use Paid SEM
Sooner or later you see that free SEO alone doesn't deliver the results you want. This feeling is especially strong after another update to the search algorithm, such as the Panda update, when your sites that used to rank well for your keywords get buried down the search results. At times like these, almost everybody will turn to PPC and paid search. However, even when the times aren't drastic, SEM is a good alternative. For instance, it works best in the following cases:

For competitive keywords. Competitive keywords are too hard to conquer organically. If you have in mind how much time free SEO takes, for competitive keywords PPC is much cheaper than organic. Of course, if you start with Adwords and $3-4 dollar clicks, the costs will be huge but if you try competitive keywords on some of the Adwords alternatives first, most likely you will achieve better results for a fraction of the money you would spend on Adwords.

When you need lots of traffic in a short period of time. Free SEO takes lots time to see some effects. If you are under time constraints ‐ i.e. you need traffic on some occasion, you will hardly want to wait. For instance, if you sell Christmas stuff and your keywords are too competitive, you might end ranking well organically but it's no use to rank well for Christmas-related keywords in February, for example. Therefore, in November and December you might want to drive huge traffic with PPC. If you want to start SEO at that time, it's just in time for next year's Christmas, so basically in this case PPC is your only alternative.

For better exposure. Most experts think that it is Top 5, or even Top 3 for a particular keyword that matters. In other words, if you manage to make it to the 7th or 10th place, for example, this won't be as good as getting into the Top 5 and still you will have invested a lot in free SEO. If you want to get better exposure, you need to consider paid listings. Paid listings for a given keyword are displayed above organic ones, so you are getting more exposure, but you also must have in mind that generally users are more likely to click on organic results than on paid listings because they feel organic listings are more authentic.

To find keywords that convert well. Paid SEM is a great source of keyword ideas for free SEO. After you launch a campaign, you will see that some of the competitive keywords you thought would do great for you, if you ranked well for them in Google, actually don't convert. It's quite logical that if a keyword is competitive, this doesn't necessarily mean it will convert well for you and it's best not to learn it the hard way.
The wisest you can do is spend some dollars on a PPC campaign and see if this particular keyword converts well. If it does, then increase your free SEO efforts and your PPC budget for it.

Free SEO and paid SEM complement each other brilliantly. Each of them has its strengths and weaknesses and for best results, the winning approach is to use both. You just need to experiment a bit till you find the right combination for you and do ongoing monitoring of the effect but once you find the perfect formula, you won't believe how much traffic you'll be getting.

Friday 23 December 2016

WordPress Search Engine Optimization Server Side

WordPress is ready and willing to be your partner in search engine optimization. This new series will focus on the best ways to optimize your WordPress installations. It is going to be broken down into 2 parts:
Server Side WordPress Search Engine Optimization – these articles will deal with the backend, management dashboard, plugins and themes. We will be exploring the proper use of the robots.txt file with WordPress as well as other server-side technology to best optimize your blog and feeds. We will also look at the installation of analytics tracking, setting up specific blog oriented goals and getting your blog ready for submissions and planting.
Front End WordPress Search Engine Optimization – these articles will deal with how to optimize your content, obtain trackbacks, submit your blog, submit your feed and plant your articles. We will also be looking at the front end of Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Center, Yahoo Site Explorer, FeedBurner and powerful services such as Technorati, Del.iso.us and mag.nol.ia.
I know that there are more blogging platforms than WordPress, and that the backend articles are not going to help people running TypePad, but the front end posts will help anybody with a blog. I use WordPress and am an expert at customizing and marketing that platform. As every professional blogger will tell you: “write about what you know”!
Getting Started With WordPress and SEO
We are going to assume you have hosting that either offers WordPress with their packages, or that you have control over your servers and can install whatever you want. I host with Rackspace Managed Hosting and have 4 servers, 3 of which are Linux. If you are ready to get a blog going and either have hosting that doesn’t offer WordPress or want to upgrade, call me at (813) 907-7688 and I can hook you up with all kinds of different hosting. My Social Network Marketing packages all include hosting if you don’t have a blog and want one.
Once you have installed WordPress and chosen your theme, the fun stuff begins! It helps for you to have a theme that is optimized. A search for WordPress SEO themes will show you a ton of excellent themes that are ready for SEO. While it is true that you have hundreds of choices, you want to keep it simple. Themes that are 100% CSS driven are hard to modify if you aren’t a serious coder.
The theme is extremely important since it dictates how your blog is presented to the search engines. Things like meta descriptions and post headers are extremely important, and are usually within the index.php, single.php and page.php. The page is extremely critical if you use them as well as posts. Standard page code has the title of the blog appear as the primary meta title, I usually remove that line of code so that only the actual title that you input into the visual editor is the title of the page, not the complete title of the blog THEN the page title. Most search engines don’t read meta titles past 85 characters.
If you are unsure of anything I said in the last paragraph, please leave a comment with your question and I will answer it.
Once your blog is installed and you have chosen and installed a theme, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. For search engine optimized WordPress installs you will need several plugins to help the search engines help you. My next post in this series will list all of the plugins I use, where to download them and how to configure them.

Thursday 22 December 2016

The 7 Most Important Digital Marketing KPI's to Track

The 7 Most Important Digital Marketing KPI's to Track

1. Engagement on website
Your website is your face to your customers, what your customers recognize about your product, service, and values. Your goal is to get increasing numbers of prospects to embrace your brand/website. These KPIs provide valuable metrics on how your website is working:

Number of unique site visitors. How many first-time prospects are discovering your website? Modify your digital marketing plan to increase brand visibility.

Opt-in registrations. How many are signing up? Offer a compelling reason for site visitors to give you their contact information, such as a free e-book, white paper, or newsfeed subscription.

Return visits to website. How often do your prospects come back to your site? Increase return visits by providing valuable information and updating it regularly.

Time spent on website. How long do prospects stay on your site? Ensure your pages load quickly and make your site interesting so they’ll stay longer.

Popular pages and navigation paths.  Applications such as Google Analytics can track visitor traffic patterns and tell you which site pages are most popular.

2. Traffic Sources
Understand which traffic sources are driving visitors to your website.

The Traffic Sources metric measures which traffic sources are driving visitors to your website, and provides a comparison of each of those sources. The three main traffic sources are direct, referral, and search, although your website may also have traffic from campaigns such as banner ads or paid search. In addition to measuring the number of visitors from each traffic source, consider analyzing the number of goal completions from each source.

Terms to remember –

Direct traffic: Visitors that visit your site by typing your URL into their browser, or through an undefined channel.

Referral traffic: Visitors that visit your site by clicking on a URL on another website.

Organic traffic: Visitors that discover your website by entering searching a keyword in a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo) and that click on your listing.

Campaign traffic: Visitors that visit your website through a dedicated campaign or clicking on a link with certain tracking parameters.

Bounce Rate : The bounce rate shows you what percentage of visitors leaves your website before further exploring your website. For example, if a potential visitor finds your homepage after searching for you and leaves the page before clicking any other links, they will be considered to have “bounced.”

Total Conversions.: Total conversions are one of the most important metrics for measuring the profitability of your overall marketing efforts. While it’s possible to define a conversion in many ways (such as filling out a lead form, completing a checkout on an e-commerce site, etc.)

Success indicators-

An increase in volume from any traffic source, while maintaining consistent traffic from other channels.
A high or improving goal conversion rate related to any traffic source.
 3. Online Campaigns – CPM, CPC, CTR, CPA
Measuring the performance for your online Campaign
CPM (Cost Per Mille) Also called cost per thousand (CPT) (in Latin mille means thousand), is a common measurement used across all major forms of advertising including: Radio, television, newspaper, magazine, out-of-home advertising, and online advertising. Ad space is purchased on the basis of showing the ad to one thousand viewers. In online advertising, this view is called an impression.

 When buying ad space on specific popular high quality, high traffic websites CPM is the most common form of purchase. The number of impressions will be based on the advertisers’ needs, the campaign time frame and the websites traffic volume. This is a good option for brand awareness in key ad positions and although it does not guarantee clicks it can be comparably effective with other buy types.

CPC (Cost Per Click): Or Pay-per-click (PPC) is a buying model in which advertisers pay the publisher only when the ad is clicked.

 This method is most popular with search engine advertising (Google, Yahoo & Bing) for keyword bidding however is also available across other display networks. The cost paid is either an agreed flat rate or bid based, meaning advertisers compete against other advertisers for the ad space.

CTR (Click Through Rate) CTR is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign by analyzing the number of clicks that an ad received versus the number of impressions that were delivered.

The higher the click through rate, likely indicates the more engaging and relevant the ad has been. The CTR is calculated as follows:

Clicks/Impressions x100

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): Also known as Cost Per Action, Pay Per Action (PPA), or Cost Per Conversion is an online buying method, where the advertiser pays only for a specified action. This may be an online purchase or a form submission.

 This buy type is less risky for the advertiser however the environments available to run this activity are generally less targeted can be of lower quality and costs can be high.

 Cost per Lead: The number of leads alone does not designate a successful digital campaign. You want to keep lead acquisition costs low so that you can maintain healthy margins and see meaningful growth. By measuring cost per lead for different web sources, you can focus on digital activities that will be the most profitable for your business and reinvest your marketing dollars accordingly.

How to Measure Cost Per Lead:(Total Spent on Campaign)/(Total number of Leads)

4. Social Interactions
Measure the engagement levels of your social media campaigns

You might be wondering what your social media reach and engagement have to do with your marketing KPI's. Well, social media is a huge component of your inbound marketing strategy, allowing you to engage and share content with users. The Social Interaction KPI measures the effectiveness of your social media campaigns at fostering positive engagement. Key interactions can play a pivotal role in a post or story going viral, so it is very important to ensure that you are nourishing the right types of interactions. As well, a strong social media measurement strategy will map these interactions to other marketing goals, such as website conversions or new wins.

Terms to remember-

Interaction: A communication between an audience member and your brand's social profile. This may take the form of platform specific interactions such as Mentions on Twitter, Likes on Facebook, or +1's on Google+.

Success indicators-

A high level of engagement that corresponds to the completion of key marketing objectives.
Viral posts that require little or no nurturing on your behalf.
Sustained engagement over a long period of time.
 5. Landing Page Conversion Rates
Is your content generating conversions? A great well to tell if your landing pages are converting visitors is to see how many people are visiting each landing page and identifying how many of those visitors are actually completing your lead capture forms. One reason people might not be converting is your content. Are you creating remarkable content that will make your visitors convert into leads? If your conversion rates are hovering around 10% or under, you'll want to revisit the page and learn how to write more persuasive landing page content as it relates to your audience.

Another great way to increase conversions would be to optimize your landing pages and call to actions by performing A/B tests.

6 . Organic Searches
What percentage of your traffic is from organic searches?

The traffic to your site generated by organic searches can be directly correlated with your search engine optimization strategy. Some great metrics to help you identify where you organic search traffic is coming from include:

Number of lead conversions assisted by organic search
Number of customer conversions assisted by organic search
Percentage of traffic associated with branded keywords
Percentage of traffic associated with unbranded keywords
Those are four really great metrics to help your company gain a better understanding of your brand awareness, content marketing effectiveness, as well as the impact of your SEO strategy.
7. Mobile Traffic
You cannot forget the increasing amount of traffic, leads and customers being produced through mobile devices like Smartphones and tablets. Is your website effectively optimized for mobile? One way you can tell if your company is generating traffic and leads through mobile is to calculate the following metrics:

Number of lead conversions from mobile devices
Bounce rates from mobile devices
Conversion rates from mobile optimized landing pages
You don't only want to see how many visitors are converting through mobile but you also want some indication of how effective your mobile presence is.

The Effect of Outbound Links

The Effect of Outbound Links

Since PageRank is based on the linking structure of the whole web, it is inescapable that if the inbound links of a page influence its PageRank, its outbound links do also have some impact. To illustrate the effects of outbound links, we take a look at a simple example.

We regard a web consisting of to websites, each having two web pages. One site consists of pages A and B, the other constists of pages C and D. Initially, both pages of each site solely link to each other. It is obvious that each page then has a PageRank of one. Now we add a link which points from page A to page C. At a damping factor of 0.75, we therefore get the following equations for the single pages' PageRank values:



PR(A) = 0.25 + 0.75 PR(B)
PR(B) = 0.25 + 0.375 PR(A)
PR(C) = 0.25 + 0.75 PR(D) + 0.375 PR(A)
PR(D) = 0.25 + 0.75 PR(C)
Solving the equations gives us the following PageRank values for the first site:
PR(A) = 14/23
PR(B) = 11/23
We therefore get an accumulated PageRank of 25/23 for the first site. The PageRank values of the second site are given by
PR(C) = 35/23
PR(D) = 32/23
So, the accumulated PageRank of the second site is 67/23. The total PageRank for both sites is 92/23 = 4. Hence, adding a link has no effect on the total PageRank of the web. Additionally, the PageRank benefit for one site equals the PageRank loss of the other.
The Actual Effect of Outbound Links
As it has already been shown, the PageRank benefit for a closed system of web pages by an additional inbound link is given by
(d / (1-d)) � (PR(X) / C(X)),
where X is the linking page, PR(X) is its PageRank and C(X) is the number of its outbound links. Hence, this value also represents the PageRank loss of a formerly closed system of web pages, when a page X within this system of pages now points by a link to an external page.
The validity of the above formula requires that the page which receives the link from the formerly closed system of pages does not link back to that system, since it otherwise gains back some of the lost PageRank. Of course, this effect may also occur when not the page that receives the link from the formerly closed system of pages links back directly, but another page which has an inbound link from that page. Indeed, this effect may be disregarded because of the damping factor, if there are enough other web pages in-between the link-recursion. The validity of the formula also requires that the linking site has no other external outbound links. If it has other external outbound links, the loss of PageRank of the regarded site diminishes and the pages already receiving a link from that page lose PageRank accordingly.
Even if the actual PageRank values for the pages of an existing web site were known, it would not be possible to calculate to which extend an added outbound link diminishes the PageRank loss of the site, since the above presented formula regards the status after adding the link.
Intuitive Justification of the Effect of Outbound Links
The intuitive justification for the loss of PageRank by an additional external outbound link according to the Random Surfer Modell is that by adding an external outbound link to one page the surfer will less likely follow an internal link on that page. So, the probability for the surfer reaching other pages within a site diminishes. If those other pages of the site have links back to the page to which the external outbound link has been added, also this page's PageRank will deplete.
We can conclude that external outbound links diminish the totalized PageRank of a site and probably also the PageRank of each single page of a site. But, since links between web sites are the fundament of PageRank and indespensable for its functioning, there is the possibility that outbound links have positive effects within other parts of Google's ranking criteria. Lastly, relevant outbound links do constitute the quality of a web page and a webmaster who points to other pages integrates their content in some way into his own site.
Dangling Links
An important aspect of outbound links is the lack of them on web pages. When a web page has no outbound links, its PageRank cannot be distributed to other pages. Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin characterise links to those pages as dangling links.

The effect of dangling links shall be illustrated by a small example website. We take a look at a site consisting of three pages A, B and C. In our example, the pages A and B link to each other. Additionally, page A links to page C. Page C itself has no outbound links to other pages. At a damping factor of 0.75, we get the following equations for the single pages' PageRank values:




PR(A) = 0.25 + 0.75 PR(B)
PR(B) = 0.25 + 0.375 PR(A)
PR(C) = 0.25 + 0.375 PR(A)
Solving the equations gives us the following PageRank values:
PR(A) = 14/23
PR(B) = 11/23
PR(C) = 11/23
So, the accumulated PageRank of all three pages is 36/23 which is just over half the value that we could have expected if page A had links to one of the other pages. According to Page and Brin, the number of dangling links in Google's index is fairly high. A reason therefore is that many linked pages are not indexed by Google, for example because indexing is disallowed by a robots.txt file. Additionally, Google meanwhile indexes several file types and not HTML only. PDF or Word files do not really have outbound links and, hence, dangling links could have major impacts on PageRank.

In order to prevent PageRank from the negative effects of dangling links, pages wihout outbound links have to be removed from the database until the PageRank values are computed. According to Page and Brin, the number of outbound links on pages with dangling links is thereby normalised. As shown in our illustration, removing one page can cause new dangling links and, hence, removing pages has to be an iterative process. After the PageRank calculation is finished, PageRank can be assigned to the formerly removed pages based on the PageRank algorithm. Therefore, as many iterations are needed as for removing the pages. Regarding our illustration, page C could be processed before page B. At that point, page B has no PageRank yet and, so, page C will not receive any either. Then, page B receives PageRank from page A and during the second iteration, also page C gets its PageRank.
Regarding our example website for dangling links, removing page C from the database results in page A and B each having a PageRank of 1. After the calculations, page C is assigned a PageRank of 0.25 + 0.375 PR(A) = 0.625. So, the accumulated PageRank does not equal the number of pages, but at least all pages which have outbound links are not harmed from the danging links problem.
By removing dangling links from the database, they do not have any negative effects on the PageRank of the rest of the web. Since PDF files are dangling links, links to PDF files do not diminish the PageRank of the linking page or site. So, PDF files can be a good means of search engine optimisation for Google.