If you’ve ever heard someone call themselves an “internet marketer,” you might have wondered what exactly that entailed. But no matter how our days look on the outside, there are a few things we all do each and every day that make us true internet marketers.
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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land:
Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:
Search News From Around The Web:Local & Maps
Link Building Searching
SEO
SEM / Paid Search
Search Marketing
The post SearchCap: Google expanded text ads, PPC tips & indexed URLs appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2kuSgp7 [Reminder] Live webcast: Integrated Marketing Analytics: Creating a single source of data truth1/27/2017 According to McKinsey and Forrester, an integrated marketing analytics approach can free up 15-20% of marketing spend while driving higher campaign conversions. But, with four out of five marketing organizations struggling to merge their data points, it’s clear that marketers still have many questions about how to get there. Join Cardinal Path’s David Booth and IBM’s Andrew Douglas to learn the right ingredients and best practices to get integrated marketing analytics right, so you can achieve your business goals in 2017. Attend this webcast and learn:
Register today for “Integrated Marketing Analytics: Creating a single source of data truth,” produced by Digital Marketing Depot and sponsored by Datorama. The post [Reminder] Live webcast: Integrated Marketing Analytics: Creating a single source of data truth appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2kaxnSi Commercial success: 3 last-minute PPC tips to pump up the effectiveness of Super Bowl LI TV ad buys1/27/2017 Ah, Super Bowl Sunday. There is no bigger day for football — or advertisers. And whether they’re on their couch or at a neighborhood watering hole, fans of both will be tuning in to Super Bowl LI in droves. Sure, Super Bowl Sunday is about football. But the commercials share the spotlight. In fact, many Super Bowl viewers say they watch the game specifically for the commercials. Some (like me) skip the game entirely and just watch the commercials. As we know, commercials can be the most memorable part of the big game, with water cooler talk continuing long after the last touchdown. It’s no wonder that brands spend an absolute fortune on them. If you’re a brand that invested in TV for this year’s Super Bowl, how can you make the most of your TV spend? And what if your brand didn’t spend big for TV? How can you still benefit? Read on for three tips to make the most out of this year’s Super Bowl commercials. 1. Top playbook tip: Get the timing rightSearch volumes increase — sometimes significantly — after the release of a TV commercial on Super Bowl Sunday. In fact, Microsoft’s (my employer) research found that branded search volume can increase up to 98 percent for an advertiser with a Super Bowl commercial. This rise doesn’t just impact game day and the after-party. It can last through the week following the game. You can up your game by syncing your search and TV ads. A key part of the Super Bowl advertising trends research Microsoft did looked at advertiser-related search volume for six Big Game commercials to study how TV advertising can impact PPC ads. They found that search volume followed a similar pattern across industries. Here’s an example: The study also revealed that not enough advertisers take advantage of this opportunity — surprising given just how much money these TV ads cost. Of the 2016 commercials studied, the results showed that as many as 31 percent of SERPs had no mainline ad showing and 21 to 56 percent of SERPs had no impressions from the commercial sponsor. Why miss out on all the extra traffic? Tip: Plan your PPC budgets to ensure that your ads will be there to receive the pass after game day! I recommend setting aside extra budget for game day and the next three days. 2. The key to a strong offense and defense: Adequate keyword coverageAdvertisers have only a few days to capture the buzz a new commercial brings, so it’s important to maximize clicks while keeping competitors at bay. What’s an advertiser to do? If you are one of the few big brands who purchased a Super Bowl commercial, strengthen your keyword coverage and enhance your bidding strategy to defend your position and capture more clicks. While your goal is to target keywords related to your commercial, it’s important to go beyond the basic brand, product and service ad commercial keyword combinations. Don’t forget, viewers also search for the memorable or quirky aspects of commercials, such as actors, celebrities, characters or other elements. Tip: Here are some ideas to expand your keywords: Start with keyword variations of this basic combination: brand ± product/service ± super bowl ± ad/commercial Add in references to: <product type>, <related products or services> <actor(s)>, <character(s)>, <commercial elements> <commercial’s name> <popular past commercial’s name> <questions raised by the ad>
Additionally, give yourself the best on-field advantage with mainline bidding. We found that 90 percent of clicks occur in the mainline and that mainline ads have a click-through rate that’s 13 times higher than sidebar ads. Tip: If you’re a competitor or a smaller business not advertising, this is a great opportunity to sneak in and steal clicks.
3. Layer on the bid mods: Mobile + DemoWhile the Super Bowl has traditionally been limited to a TV screen, that’s not the case anymore. Second screens are starting to play a big part in the game. Microsoft’s internal data revealed that over 80 percent of people plan on using at least two devices during the game. This means fewer TV viewers simply sit back, relax and enjoy the show. eMarketer estimates that nearly nine in 10 internet users in 2017 will use the internet while watching TV at least once a month, and 26 percent of those simultaneous users will consume digital content related to what they’re watching on TV. In 2016, 30 percent of Bing searches during the Super Bowl came from mobile devices. How do you capture passive or distracted consumers when they decide to take action? Through a well-planned bid modifier strategy that allows you to more effectively create tightly targeted ad messaging. Since the audience is distracted, your ads are going to have to work that much harder to be effective. Making them feel more personalized and relevant can make a huge difference. Tips: Don’t forget to add in demo-based bid mods. Why? Because women make up 46 percent of game day viewers. In 2016, there were 60 percent more searches for “Denver Broncos women’s apparel” than for “Broncos jersey” and “Denver broncos jersey” combined. If you’ve used the Bing Ads Intelligence Excel plug-in, you’ve seen how valuable the Age and Gender report can be for strategizing device and demo-based bid mods. You simply type in your core Game Day keywords and run the report, which can be turned into a graph such as this one: Based on the graph, you’ll get a better understanding of how to tailor your bids and ad copy to best speak to the target audience. For example, based on the above chart, I would know to create ad messaging that appealed to the 50+ age range tailored for tablet devices. Device-based bid mods: Make sure you’re most effectively speaking to the mobile and tablet users with Expanded Device Targeting. Note: One key difference between Google AdWords and Bing Ads is the lower ceiling for desktop bid modifiers: Should you have a negative bid modifier in Google AdWords, it will be adjusted to the lowest setting on Bing Ads, which is 0%. A game-winning strategyWhen you use these three tips to create a strong PPC campaign, you’re on your way to major commercial success this Super Bowl. I’ll leave you with some Super Bowl commercial inspiration: my all-time three favorites ads from FedEx, Tabasco and Pepsi. Enjoy! The post Commercial success: 3 last-minute PPC tips to pump up the effectiveness of Super Bowl LI TV ad buys appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2jFqdm9 Back in October 2016, I wrote about how you can use a Python script to determine whether a page has been indexed by Google in the SERPs. As it turns out, Google’s webmaster trends analyst Gary Illyes wasn’t too happy with the technique that was being utilized by the script, so I cannot endorse this method:
Shortly after, Sean Malseed and his team at Greenlane SEO built a similar tool based in Google Sheets (among other awesome tools like InfiniteSuggest), and Googler John Mueller expressed reservations:
How could I learn which pages weren’t indexed by Google, and do it in a way that didn’t break Google’s rules? Google doesn’t indicate whether a page has been indexed in Google Search Console, won’t let us scrape search results to get the answer and isn’t keen on indirectly getting the answer from an undocumented API. (That was Sean Malseed’s clever solution and scraping workaround.) Let’s explore some solutions. The analytics solutionMark Edmondson provided an R script solution that works by doing the following:
The methodology assumes that if a URL is not found in analytics for Google organic search results, then it likely hasn’t been indexed by Google. Interlude: How to do this without RWhile I personally like scripted solutions, I know many people do not. You don’t need to figure out R to do this analysis. You can easily head over to Google Analytics and do a similar analysis — or, even more easily, head over to Google Analytics Query Explorer and run it with these settings. Download the table as a TSV: You can then download your XML sitemap locally and open it into Excel. Next, drag it into the Excel window, and you will get the “Import XML” dialogue box. If it asks you to “Open the file without applying a stylesheet,” select OK: Then, choose to open the file “As an XML table”: You can remove the extraneous columns, keeping only the “ns1:loc” (or “loc”) column: Then, you simply need to do a VLOOKUP or other form of Excel matching and find the URLs in the sitemap that aren’t present in the analytics data. I thought this was a simple yet clever solution, and although a good starting place, I feared it wouldn’t accurately show which pages were indexed by Google. It is not that uncommon for pages to receive little or no traffic even if they are indexed. It may be an indication that the page isn’t indexed, but it also may just show that the page has a tagging issue, has become irrelevant, is in need of some optimization to improve its visibility or simply is not present in the XML sitemap. (Alternatively, you can use a crawl, rather than your XML sitemap, to make these comparisons.) The log file solutionServer log files are an excellent source of data about your website that is often inaccessible via other means. One of the many pieces of information that can be derived from these log files is whether or not a certain bot accessed your website. In our case, the bot we are concerned with is Googlebot. Analyzing our server log files allows us to ascertain whether Googlebot has ever visited a certain page on our website. If Googlebot has never visited a certain page, then it cannot have been indexed by Google. I personally tend to use KNIME for this purpose, with the built-in Web Log Reader node, but feel free to use your favorite solution. Make sure to verify Googlebot, and do not simply rely on the reported user-agent. Many bots will spoof the Googlebot user-agent, which may invalidate your findings. To avoid this, I use a simple Python snippet within KNIME: For a decent guide about log file analysis, please check out this guide by Builtvisible. If this is all a bit much, I recommend checking out The Screaming Frog SEO Log File Analyzer — or, for an enterprise solution, Botify. Like the Google Analytics solution, the log file analysis isn’t foolproof. It may be possible for Googlebot to visit a page but not actually include it in its index (<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow”>), but it will help us narrow down our list of possibly non-indexed web pages. Combining your dataTo narrow down our list of pages that may not be indexed by Google as much as possible, I recommend combining data captured using the Google Analytics technique with the log file analysis methods above. Once we have our list, we can do some spot-checking by manually searching Google for “info:”, which won’t upset Google. It’s much easier to manually check, because we’ve been able to narrow down our list significantly. ConclusionSince Google does not provide a tool or data on whether a web page has been indexed or not, and we aren’t allowed to use an automated solution like the one I previously wrote about, we must rely on narrowing down our list of URLs that may not be indexed. We can do this by examining our Analytics data for pages that are on our website but not receiving organic Google traffic, and by looking in server log files. From there, we can manually spot-check our shortened list of URLs. It’s not an ideal solution, but it gets the job done. I hope that in the future, Google will provide a better means of assessing which pages have been indexed and which ones have not. The post How to check which URLs have been indexed without upsetting Google: A follow-up appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2k0IFXm With Google’s expanded text ads deadline upon us — as of January 31, advertisers will no longer be able to upload or edit standard text ads in AdWords — it’s time to get very serious about making the most of the new text ad format. Maybe you have been putting off implementation, or maybe you have been experimenting with expanded text ads (ETAs) for months but haven’t been wowed by stellar click-through rates, yet. Don’t fret. We’ve got findings and advice that will hopefully provide some anxiety relief and motivation for paving your way with ETAs. Findings so farThe big takeaway I got from talking to other search marketers about ETAs is not to get discouraged if your new ads aren’t outperforming your standard text ads (STAs) — you’re not alone. Danny Ligh, search strategist for Adobe Document Cloud says, “Like a lot of advertisers, our ETAs are not performing better than normal text Ads.” But Ligh says, “Be patient and test different variations, specifically with messaging that worked in the past.” Remember, it’s been 15 years of 25-35-35. As Frederick Vallaeys, former AdWords Evangelist and founder of Optmyzr put it, “Stating the super obvious, but ETAs won’t magically outperform legacy ads, so you’ll need to dedicate some time to cycle through a few rounds of A/B testing.” In its analysis of 1.2 million ads, Optmyzr found the median CTR of an expanded text ad was 28 percent better than that for a legacy ad. In early testing, WordStream saw advertisers gain at least a 28 percent CTR bump. Merkle, which has a client base that skews large retailer, says it has seen less impressive results so far, with ETAs generating lower CTRs than standard text ads at the top of the page. In an earlier analysis of non-brand versus brand ETAs, Merkle did see an overall CTR lift among non-brand ads across devices. Brand ETAs had lower CTR than standard text ads, however. Maddie Carey, director of paid search at Point It, says she’s seen similar results for brand vs. non-brand ETAs on both Bing and Google. “Across a lot of different account spend levels and verticals, generally we are seeing that ETAs work best for non-brand where bidding environments more competitive, while performing the same or worse for brand. Most engine reps I’ve asked about it say they aren’t 100 percent sure as to why brand ETAs aren’t seeing as positive of results.” Getting StartedIf you haven’t started testing ETAs, and you’re managing updates for a lot of ads Brad Geddes , founder of Adalysis and Certified Knowledge, suggests upgrading ads that can share a ‘common’ description at a time. “For instance, if you have grouped products by campaigns, do a campaign by campaign upgrade so that you can share the description among the ads in that campaign.” To get started with new headlines, inherit your current headline as your new headline 1, says Geddes. And, finally, “don’t waste your time upgrading to ETAs on display campaigns. Skip ETAs and jump to responsive ads; they are the ones that matter for display campaigns.” And just because you can’t add new standard text ads to your account after the 31st, doesn’t mean you should remove the good ones you have, particularly if they continue to outperform your ETA tests. “Don’t discard existing text ads with high quality scores, conversion rates and CTR. They are still valuable to review, gather learnings, and utilize in the expanded ads,” said Uma Mange, search strategist for Adobe Document Cloud. Testing tipsIf you ask 10 people for ad testing tips, you won’t get the same answers across the board. And that’s a good thing. There’s no one recipe for success with ETAs, or any ad format for that matter. That said, at an aggregate level, Geddes seen millions of ads and has some testing tips to pay attention to. “Really test your new headline 2 as that’s where the largest gains in visibility are to be had. A good test to run is the put a call to action in your new headline 2 and end your ad in that same call to action. This reinforcement seems to work very well. You can also try benefit statements in your new headline 2; in which case your description generally should end with a call to action.” “Don’t stress about using every available character of text,” advises Vallaeys. “In headlines we found that there isn’t much difference in CTR between longer and shorter ones. For the new longer description though, we see that longer ones outperform shorter ones. This is in line with Google’s own guidance that sometimes short headlines are all you need, especially when you have a well known brand.” Think content over character count. Carey cautions that Google sometimes shows a display URL in place of one of the headlines. “We had some clients where instead of at the end of headline text, display URLs were being placed at the front in some cases. The headline messaging wasn’t as well highlighted when reading left to right. It had a notable impact on CTR. We found that writing a longer Headline 2 seemed to be what worked to continue to draw searchers eyes across the entire headline text, but we’re still seeing lower CTR before/after on some keyword sets, which we believe is because of display URL placement.” “Be patient and test different variations, specifically with messaging that worked in the past,” says Ligh. “Try testing larger words that had been too long to easily include in a STA headline. Numbers and research summaries tend to give the biggest boosts for our campaigns.” And don’t forget automation still works in ETAs. “If you miss the ability to have mobile preferred ads, take advantage of the new if-functions in Ad Customizers,” says Vallaeys. “For example, add this to an ad to create a different version for mobile users: {=IF(device=mobile,text to insert):optional default text for non mobile}.” When it comes to analyzing your tests, Geddes says, “Examine the differences in metrics by ad groups. You may have some where the description isn’t appropriate, in which case, you’ll want to customize those more. Ensure that you are using the character limits in your description as there’s a huge difference in metrics if you have more or less than 35 characters in the description. ResourcesA lot of great other great insights have been shared over the past months on implementing and testing ETAs on Search Engine Land. Be sure to check out: Expanded Text Ads: Are they living up to the hype? by Laura Collins of Merkle|Periscopix Expanded Text Ads: from quirks to testing methods & early results, what we know so far Getting to the bottom of Google expanded text ad CTR and CPC by Andy Taylor of Merkle 5 ingredients for writing the perfect expanded text ad by Frederick Vallaeys of Optmyzr Google shared its best practices when it announced the January 31 deadline The dust has settled on AdWords expanded text ads. What now? by Jason Puckett of AdBasis Thirteen things marketers want to know about expanded text ads, direct from Google by Google’s Matt Lawson Expanded text ads that kick butt by Mona Elesseily of Page Zero Media So we have 45 more characters in AdWords text ads… Now what? by Pauline Jakober of Group Twenty Seven The post Tick-tock: expert findings, testing tips & resources for Expanded Text Ads success after Jan. 31 deadline appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2k9PMir In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more. Google warrior helmet:
Google lockers:
New Google Philippines Office:
Google auto rickshaw:
Google plush smartphone holders:
The post Search in Pics: Warrior helmet, Google auto rickshaw & colorful lockers appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2jYStkC Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land:
Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:
Search News From Around The Web:Local & Maps
Link Building
Searching SEO
SEM / Paid Search
The post SearchCap: Google Maps parking, iProspect report & Google’s spinner appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2k8Ec7t Search Marketing Expo – SMX West returns for its 10th year completely retooled with with tactic-rich sessions for SEOs and SEMs. Programmed by the Search Engine Land team, the agenda features 60+ sessions, keynotes, clinics and special tracks by Google and Bing to fit your experience and skill level, whether you’re a veteran or just getting started. As past attendees can attest, you’ll leave the show with new tactics you’ll implement immediately. You’ll attend “ripped from the headlines” topics designed to keep you up-to-date on everything going on in search today, whether your specialty is SEO, SEM or both. From the emergence of AI, algorithm changes, new ad formats like ETAs, call extensions, voice search and beyond, you’ll leave SMX West with tactics, tips and techniques you’ll implement immediately to drive traffic, convert visitors and grow your business. Here’s a peek at a few of the sessions we’re looking forward to: AMP: The Next Generation Moderated by Danny Sullivan, this sessions explores the latest AMP developments and what you need to do to take advantage of them. Speakers include experts from BigCommerce, Walt Disney Company, Catalyst and Google. SEO For Google’s Mobile-First Index & Mobile-Friendly World Explore techniques for performing and audit in a mobile-first world to ensure that content, links, metadata and structured data are compliant, regardless of how your site is accessed by users. Moderated by Barry Schwartz, with speakers from 3Q Digital, Google and Stone Temple Consulting. Always Be Testing To Always Be Closing This session explores unique approaches for testing and managing B2B paid search accounts that go beyond traditional “click-then-buy” tactics. Moderated by industry veteran Brad Geddes, this session features speakers from Righteous, Invesp and NordicClick. Protecting Your Brand In The Era Of Fake News Timely and important, fake content and information is a growing problem for advertisers in 2017. This session will show you how to avoid getting stung by this unfortunate online phenomenon. Moderated by SMX Programming Chair Chris Sherman, Seth Meisel from Thriftbooks.com will lead this interesting and critical topic. View the complete agenda. The SMX West experience takes you beyond sessions SMX West goes beyond the 60+ sessions, keynotes, clinics and special Google and Bing tracks. You’ll have opportunities to connect with the search marketing community at multiple networking events including the recently announced Google Dance and Janes of Digital. You’ll also find solutions that make your life easier in the Expo hall. What makes SMX unique is that it is completely vendor-independent and programmed by the Search Engine Land team. SMX delivers deep, quality and diverse programming to ensure you’ll maximize your investment in time and money. We guarantee it. Don’t miss your chance to attend Register now for the lowest rates offered. All Access Passes are just $1,795, a $200 savings compared to on-site rates. You’ll get 3 days of sessions, networking and conveniences that make the experience productive and comfortable including all day snacks, hot lunches and free Wifi. Or you can choose to attend a specific day with a One Day Pass. P.S. If you want to supercharge your learning, SMX West offers several pre-conference workshops led by industry leaders and expert practitioners. SMX workshops include Certified Google Adwords training, Content Marketing Mastery, Paid Social Media, Advanced SEO training, Mobile-Friendly SEO & Mastering Google Analytics. Workshop Passes are also priced at their lowest. Register today! The post Be the first to see the updated SMX West agenda appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2jC5U93 Google announced that the new version of the Google Maps Android app will now tell you how difficult it is to find parking at your destination. This is based on predictive data, similar to how Google calculates popular times for venues. Google added this parking difficulty icon for 25 metro areas throughout the U.S. This is aimed at giving you a heads up on how much more time you need to plan to get to your destination, to include time for parking. Here is a picture that shows you the parking icon in red at the bottom, showing “limited” parking. This is available in the following metro areas; San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego, St. Louis, Tampa, Washington, DC, Cleveland, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Houston, Phoenix, Portland and Sacramento. The post Google Maps will tell you how hard it will be to find parking appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2jBSCt8 |
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