In an interview with contributor Matt Van Wagner, the SEM initiative Search Engine Land Award winners talked about their strategies for a donation campaign combatting news searches during the bushfires in Australia, improving CRO in the very competitive financial services space, and improving margins for seasonal retail campaigns on Amazon. Watch the video below to check out the tactics: Best Overall SEM Initiative – Small BusinessMatt Eden, Head of Performance Media at Reef Digital Agency Tell us about your campaign, Matt. Matt: The Vincent Paul Society approached us in late December about running a bushfire campaign. With bushfire campaigns, in particular, because Australia goes through this cycle of having bushfires, we usually have a build that’s ready to go. This one was a bit different because the crisis was much larger than we’ve ever had before. We tend to run our campaigns using broad-match modifiers initially. And then whittle down the list as quickly as we can with negative keywords and running those across just single keyword efforts. I logged into it the next day at 9 am. And within that period it had raised already about $10,000 to $15,000. We’ve had a $10,000 budget that was due to run until January 11, but given just the amount of traffic, the amount of volume that was coming in the client quickly increased that because there was just a huge overwhelming number of donations that were coming in. So then we used that skeleton build that we had and then iterated on that and make it adaptable to 2019. What were some of the challenges of that because it sounds like it moved very quickly? What surprised you on this campaign? Matt: The big surprise was the number of donations that came in. When we look back to the end of last year, there were so many charities, so many news outlets, so many people on social media that were trying to drive donations and drive awareness, particularly for rural Australia. So what surprised me was there was still an enormous volume of users coming through, in spite of all this competition that was out there. We call it competition because everyone’s kind of fighting for the same thing, which is really just to drive donations for those areas. But it was really just the number of people that were still there that worked that wanted to donate, and it just maintained momentum; it didn’t stop. One of the biggest challenges was trying to avoid news outlets. Because we were on broad match modifier, we wanted to avoid overlapping with any news outlets, anyone that might be searching for news, “bushfires near me” there was a huge amount of volume for keywords like that, looking at the live map to see where fires were, where they needed to be evacuated. Just avoiding all of that, or that sort of traffic, and actually wanting to stay away from it as much as possible. From what I understood that you noticed, and this was very clever, but you notice that the weather patterns or smoke patterns and influence on your campaigns and even react to that, you know, we have all these levers in front of us with you know all of the demographic and geographic and time of day. Tell me a little bit about what that was all about. Matt: In Sydney, where I am, quite often a lot of the days, it was covered in smoke. And that would get a bit of a media uptick, you get a bit of news coverage out of that. So we’d upweight our bid, we were just running enhanced CPC for this as opposed to the bidding strategies, we would upweight our bid on those days in particular. But we’d also upweight them on days when there was controversial news coverage. I don’t know how much you saw, but our Prime Minister kind of dropped the ball several times with a bushfire crisis. So really upweighting the bids there as well, because we knew people would be looking and knew people would be active. Best B2B Search Marketing Initiative – SEMChristian Nicolini, VP of Paid Media at Ignite Visibility Matt just talked about hammering home a couple of really powerful tactics and using them very effectively one-off, but you’ve had to do something different in a highly competitive marketplace. So if you can, tell us the story. And what the challenges were and what you had to do with paid search in order to make them successful. Christian: This particular client is in the financial services space, seven-figure budget, very explicit acquisition goals. We’ve been working with the client for the last three years. We were coming up on the measurement period, which was March 1 through December 31 year over year. And we had just come off of our best year after acquiring this client from a previous agency. We had a lot to improve on if we wanted to beat year over your numbers, which, in turn, was about 40% year over year. And simply put, the conditions have revolved around four key search marketing pillars. Internally, our team is made up of disciplines such as our data science program, our search program, our creative, and CRO program. And we try to create the synergy between all these programs to allow us to achieve a really ambitious goal without increasing much of a budget. That goal was personalizing the search results, maximizing exposure in a high-value auction using impression share strategies, curating a landing page experience using dynamic elements on the site, and then bridging that gap between online and offline conversion tracking. And what I’ve found is we have to push back information from an open opportunity, a lead, and then push back the scoring of those leads and closed opportunities back as low as they keyword level, and even the creative level, and then being able to differentiate what segments of our marketing images are impacting the highest quality of leads coming through. And I know you were talking about challenges prior with Matt, and with us the competitiveness of this auction is a challenge within itself. CPC is extremely high–closing in on the three digits, typically between $50-80 CPCs depending on the type of service that we’re bidding on. The client really struggled to hit a specific CPA target while scaling the budget. Of course, you can scale the budget, but maintaining the CPA that we needed was a difficult challenge. On top of that, fending off competitors with brand search. Insulating against our competitors was a challenge within itself and making sure that we are always going after net-new opportunities and not expanding our budgets and brand search environments where the competition wasn’t necessarily as relevant. When it comes to maintaining on-site conversion rate, when you typically scale enterprise search like this, dealing with budgets in the seven figures, it’s really easy to buy traffic. What’s harder to do is buy a ton of traffic and convert that traffic and try to maintain that conversion rate. So we had to bring in some resources on the CRO front, which enabled us to overall increase our engagement rate at the ad level. We were able to leverage impression share bid strategies and analytics to maximize our exposure while keeping costs down. And we were able to maintain our on-site conversion rate while increasing our reach and traffic to our site by incorporating a really disciplined CRO strategy. Best Retail Search Marketing Initiative – SEMBrittany Oliverio, Director of Channel Solutions at Sidecar You were working in a retail space which is pretty competitive. Margins are always a challenge there. Can you tell us a bit about what the problem was, what the market looked like, and what you were able to do and how you’re able to do it? Brittany: Amazon charges fees just to advertise simply advertise as a couple of different fulfillment methods that they layer on extra fees. So generally when advertising on Amazon margins are slimmer, than when advertising on other channels. Due to this, a lot of our customers have some issues with advertising and their margins and need to make sure that they are obviously making money on their lower margin products. Summit Sports sells outdoor apparel and equipment ranging from boats to snow gear and ski equipment. THeir products were not only seasonal, but in different seasons. They were having a hard time figuring out how to set up their campaigns when some of their products were higher and lower margins as well as seasonal. We started off by looking at brands, product types, and actual individual use to see where the different margins lie, and how it made sense to break out the campaigns. We found that the their private label items, as you would suspect, had higher margins than the third party items. We took that data and were able to break the brands out into separate campaigns. We worked with the ebbs and flows of their peak seasons and low seasons as well as the margin differences to set up different cost of sale goals across the different campaigns that we had set up. You had to feed some sales and margin data into your bidding system. How was that? Was that easy? Was there a lot of manual connection? What did you do? Brittany: It definitely took a lot of work on our back end internal tools. This is a strategy that we had used previously, across some of our Google customers that we saw worked pretty well. It is newer in Amazon, just due to the newness of the platform and not having all of the capabilities that Google does. So we worked pretty hard to update our internal technology to be able to ingest the data, and therefore make data-driven decisions off of the margin. So we were able to set different cost of sale goals per campaign based off of the margin data, because they had different goals per campaign. Then our technology would look at the data and make it adjustments according to those cost of sale goals that we had set up. What what was the biggest surprise? Did it that it happened quickly? Did it did it take a lot of iteration? Brittany: I think the biggest surprise was that it worked pretty quickly. A lot of data needs to be ingested in order for our technology to make these decisions. But given that we’ve worked with some in sports, for a bit of time before we decided to implement this strategy, we had enough data to work off of. We were able to make some pretty impactful adjustments pretty quickly. We increased their revenue significantly within two of their marketplaces while remaining at their cost of sales, which was the main priority. Watch the video above for more tips from the Search Engine Land SEM Initiative Awards winners. The post PPC award winners talk strategies for competitive times, industries, and marketplaces appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/39rUOQu
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Facebook announced today that it will begin testing news feed topic exclusions for advertisers this year. Citing advertisers’ brand safety concerns, Facebook says the new feature would allow marketers to choose whether or not to show their ads alongside potentially sensitive content: “For example, a children’s toy company may want to avoid content related to a new crime show, so they could select the ‘Crime and Tragedy’ topic,” the blog announces. Topic exclusions. Along with Crime and Tragedy, other topic exclusions being tested include News & Politics and Social Issues, according to a Facebook spokesperson. The idea is to give advertisers more control over where their ads may appear in a user’s newsfeed and means brands will be able to ensure that their products and services don’t show up next to topics the brand doesn’t associate with or believe in. Facebook says they “will continue to listen and learn during the test,” so there could be more topic exclusions added or the currently planned exclusions could evolve. Brand safety. This announcement is even more relevant given the political turmoil that started 2021 and the quick action many brands had to take to ensure their advertising and organic messaging wasn’t insensitive or positioned poorly. Brand safety isn’t a new topic with 2021, but it’s taking on more importance as companies work to avoid any potential fallout from being seen parallel to extremist political movements that have fomented on social media platforms like Facebook. Brand safety experts explain that exclusions (especially around breaking news) may not always be the best options for advertisers. “Brands have gotten into a habit of blocking ads after negative news events or pausing them entirely because they believe these stories are an unsafe environment for their brands,” said Nandini Jammi told Search Engine Land Editor George Nguyen earlier this month. However, advertising adjacent to reliable news sources can often help build trust around brands. Privacy considerations. The announcement also mentions privacy considerations for users, but when asked for comment, Facebook’s response was vague: “Privacy is core to all of the tools we develop and this product is no different.” The social networking platform is working under the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) to help improve digital safety and this announcement falls under that initiative. In an October 2020 blog, Michel Protti, Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer, Product said that the social network’s updated Privacy Review Process “helps ensure every new product or feature is built with privacy in mind, meaning it has the appropriate tools and processes in place to help address potential risks and protect people’s information.” It’s still unclear how that process will come into play with the new ads topic exclusion. A Facebook communications spokesperson told Search Engine Land: “This is the first time a Feed environment will be managed through controls. Before release, we need to understand ad performance and efficacy while honoring our commitment to privacy. These factors mean this will be a complex and time-intensive process and we’re committed to doing the work to get this right.” Why we care. Facebook testing topic exclusions for advertisers could give marketers more control over their brand safety options. Previously advertisers created blocklists of keywords to exclude, but this option could give you more control over where ads are placed in the Facebook News Feed especially in regard to sensitive content. It’s critical that advertisers take their exclusions seriously and understand what the implications of broad-sweeping exclusions can mean for their brands and their metrics. While it makes sense for a children’s brand to exclude topics like crime and tragedy from their advertising, there may be more nuance for other types of brands around the news and social issues exclusions. The post Facebook testing brand safety topic exclusions for advertisers appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3alhdyi If your content is helpful to your customers’ success but is not earning page rank or traffic, now may be the right time to shift your SEO strategy. Leveraging data science, marketers today can predict the google rank of their content and take measures to improve it even before publishing. Join Patrick Snajder, iQuanti’s Head of Content, as he discusses how you can forecast and improve SERP ranking, gain deep insights on trends in competitive performance and identify opportunities to optimize and create content for performance against top competitors. Don’t miss this webinar! Register today for “The Secret Behind SEO Success: Estimate and optimize your content’s rank as you create it,” presented by iQuanti. The post The Secret Behind SEO Success: Estimate and optimize your content’s rank as you create it appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3qSGoPg RankSense CEO Hamlet Batista, a mentor to many in the SEO community and someone fellow marketer Mike King called “the best of us,” died on Tuesday night, leaving those who knew him, admired him, learned from him and loved him, reeling from the loss. Hamlet passed away after suffering from a case of COVID-19, Maura Loew, operations manager at RankSense, confirmed to Search Engine Land. Hamlet’s contributions to our industry spanned numerous publications and conferences, including our own. His drive to share his knowledge has been widely recognized, and applauded, by his peers. “I’m a trained engineer, and we’re native problem solvers . . . Our calling is to fix stuff that we see is inefficient,” he said in a vlog with Barry Schwartz, providing us with a glimpse of what motivated him throughout his career. In the video, he also shares an anecdote about his son, and how the engineer’s mindset has been passed down to him as well. From time to time, he would also share his personal achievements with the community. I distinctly recall when he earned his citizenship (which was exactly a year ago today), and his excitement about participating in our democratic process for the first time. As a child of immigrants, I was proud to witness these moments, and Hamlet’s service to the industry continues to set an example for all of us, but especially people of color such as myself. “The [SEO] community was incredibly important to him, and we’ve seen the outpouring from the community which tells me that the feeling was mutual,” Loew said, adding, “He always saw himself as part of that community and formed a lot of friends that way.” Hamlet advocated for automation and helped raise awareness for Python’s potential applications in SEO. “Even though he’s been working on that for seven or eight years, maybe more, it’s only been the past year or two that he has been able to focus time on threading that message, and so he told me two years ago that he was going to start a movement of automation in SEO and Python in SEO and he did,” Loew said, “I can’t give him all the credit, there’s been many people contributing but . . . RankSense as a company, our app is related to that, but that’s sort of part of his vision.” His reputation in the community runs parallel with what he is known for as a leader. “Hamlet brings to SEO a thoughtfulness, an analytical nature and even a scientific approach, and that is what he has taught all of us, every person on his team, to follow in his example,” said Loew, adding that he also cared about all of his employees, both as people and professionally. “He was a wonderful leader and he will be truly missed,” she said. Those who would like to help support Hamlet’s family during this difficult time can do so via the GoFundMe campaign organized by his close friend and fellow community member Lily Ray. All donations will go directly to Hamlet’s family. To date, the coronavirus pandemic has claimed nearly 430,000 lives in the U.S. alone. The post SEO community mourns Hamlet Batista, advocate for automation in SEO and beloved friend appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3pu9NPg Overcoming perfectionism while content editing is not an excuse to publish sloppy or uninspired writing. Content that works for your... The post Where to Begin When It’s Time to Edit Your Content appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger https://ift.tt/36hetki Google announced that it will try not to show “teaser” based Web Stories in Google Search and Google Discover. This is a new policy change and Google said the ecosystem has been experimenting with new ways of creating rich Web Stories but based on what it has seen, users want to see the full story without being asked to click through to read the full story. What are Web Stories. Web Stories came to life under the name of AMP Stories back in 2018. Google defines Web Stories as a way to “immerse your readers in fast-loading full-screen experiences.” You can “create visual narratives, with engaging animations and tappable interactions,” using Web Stories. “The Web Story format (formerly known as AMP Stories) is free and part of the open web and are available for everyone to try on their websites. They can be shared and embedded across the web without being confined to a closed ecosystem or platform,” Google added. What is changing. Paul Bakaus from Google said “one- or two-page teaser for your blog post doesn’t tell a satisfying story to a reader, so Google will do its very best to not show these to users.” That means that Google will soon stop showing “teaser” based Web Stories in Google Search and Google Discover. Why the change. Paul added “unfortunately, from what users are telling us, this isn’t what they want. Instead Web Stories are best when they tell a full story and aren’t used to “tease” other content.” “Readers don’t like to feel forced to click through to a connected blog post to finish reading,” he added. In short, Google does not want you to create a Web Story with the intent of taking advantage of its ranking placement in Google Search or Discover but with the aim of sending that user to your own web site, when the user wanted to see the content in the Web Stories format. What about monetization. Google does have Web Stories ads in the Google Display Network, this is new, Google added this last December. Paul did admit that it might not work as well as when you monetize your own site but advancements are being made in this area. Paul said “well-optimized blog posts might still make you more money today, but ad networks are working on building out and expanding their Web Story integrations, so you should see both CPMs and fill rates improve over time.” Paul posted this video explaining the change: Why we care. A lot of you have been experimenting with Web Stories and seeing a lot of positive user engagement. Keep in mind, if you are producing “teaser” or short Web Stories that require you to read the full story not in that Web Story format, then Google might soon not show your Web Stories in Google Search and Google Discover. The post Google may not display Web Stories that are teasers appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2LZjVkT From a traditional marketing standpoint, there’s a simple answer to the question, “What’s the difference between content marketing and copywriting?”... The post What’s the Difference Between Content Marketing and Copywriting? appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger https://ift.tt/2MrUrfy In September 2020, Google launched local services ads to lawyers. Since my agency works with a lot of lawyers, we were very curious to see how these ads impacted where people click in the search results. At first, we assumed these ads were stealing clicks from the local pack results but were surprised to find that although it did lower the click-through-rate of the Google My Business listings, the average impact was only a loss of about 5 clicks a month. However, when we looked at several Google Ads accounts for several lawyers, it told a very different story. In this example, after Local Services Ads launched, this lawyer saw their cost per conversion double and their number of conversions drop in half. In this example, this lawyer saw his cost per conversion increase by 50% and his number of conversions dropped by 50%. Seth Price, founder of BluShark Digital and managing partner of Price Benowitz LLP, saw something similar at his agency. When looking at several Google Ads accounts for personal injury lawyers, they saw that when Local Services accounts had been introduced, it almost always resulted in a decline in the click-through-rate in the traditional Google Ads account. Accounts that didn’t have Local Service Ads competing saw little change or increased click-through-rates. When you observe the search results, it’s easy to see why these ads might “steal traffic” from traditional paid ads. They appear higher than traditional ads and they also have a lot of rich features (reviews, photos etc) that make them appear more attractive. However, it’s interesting to see that for lots of high-commercial-intent keywords, Google isn’t even showing traditional ads anymore. Why we care. If you’re in a market or industry where Local Services Ads have not launched yet, I would strongly recommend keeping a very close eye on your Google Ads account when the ads finally do launch. As Google continues to expand these, I wouldn’t be surprised to see these roll out to new industries in 2021. If you see rapid declines in the performance of your Google Ads account, it would be a good idea to shift budget away from that account and towards Local Services Ads to ensure you’re not wasting money. The post How are local service ads impacting Google Ads accounts? appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2YtbFMF Microsoft Advertising announced an addition to their ad extension offerings today: Filter Link Extensions. According to the announcement, filter link extensions mean “Advertisers can present many different features under categorized headers so that users can quickly navigate to their key products and offerings.” With Filter Link Extensions, your ads will include one header with between 3 and 10 clickable text values. Here’s what it looks like in the SERPs: Like structured snippets. Filter Link Extensions are similar to Structured Snippet Extensions and are set up almost the exact same way. The main difference is that you can now add URL destinations with Filter Link Extensions. Here’s how to set it up in the Microsoft Advertising UI: New addition to other extensions. “Ad extensions are a big part of enhancing the visibility and relevance of your text ads to increase performance and improve your ROI,” the announcement says. Other extensions available to advertisers include Promotion Extensions, Multi-Image Extensions, and Action Extensions. Filter link extension details. According to Microsoft Advertising, there are 36 pre-defined headers for Filter Link Extensions such as amenities like WiFi, pools, and fitness centers for hotels. They can also be shown with other ad extensions, like sitelinks, and the cost for clicking a filter link is the same cost-per-click (CPC) as clicks on the ad headline. Other details include the following:
Why we care. Filter Link Extensions are another way to distinguish your ads in SERPs. They give searchers a glimpse into your different offerings and allow customers to self-select the options that they’re most interested in. The extensions also give you an opportunity to tell customers more about your business and the depths of your products or services. Filter Link Extensions give advertisers the ability to understand what elements of their business offerings are driving the most conversions, too. The post Microsoft Advertising now offers Filter Link Extensions appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3piNPyI Next month, the Search Engine Land experts are teaming up with senior marketers from global brands — like Microsoft and Adobe — and cutting-edge agencies — including Page Zero Media and RankHammer — to guide you through search marketing analytics at SMX Report, online February 23. Secure your spot now — Early Bird rates expire Saturday, February 6! Your $99 All Access pass unlocks all-new SEO and PPC learning journeys that tackle critical analytics issues… everything from configuring measurement tools to identifying and fixing critical SEO problems, establishing organizational reporting needs, improving organic search results, making data-driven decisions that yield measurable results, and beyond. You’ll build a comprehensive understanding of search analytics, progressing through a structured training experience that will equip you with actionable tactics to earn more organic traffic, execute better PPC campaigns, and generate more profits. Meet some of the marketing experts who will guide you on your journey: You’ll also have the opportunity to connect with speakers live and ask them specific questions during Overtime and community meetups. What are you waiting for? Join the ranks of 100,000 marketers who have relied on Search Marketing Expo to help them achieve search marketing success for over a decade. Early Bird rates expire next Saturday, February 6. Register now to secure your All Access pass for just $99. The post Train with the experts from Adobe, Microsoft, and more at SMX appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3cnwq4z |
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