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The post 20190926 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2llaMpo At its core, SEO is a solution sale. You’re not just promoting an existing product; instead, you’re actively trying to remedy those pain points with the product itself. Ensuring clients know the value of SEO is key to closing a sale. This guide from Boostability outlines three reasons why a client might be hesitant to commit to an SEO campaign and what you can do to assuage those worries. Using the strategies outlined in this guide can help you close the sale with clients of all sizes and from a wide variety of industries. Learn more. Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download “Why You Struggle to Sell SEO.” The post Stop struggling to sell SEO services appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2l8qJyZ With Microsoft Ads recently opening a responsive search ad (RSA) beta to their advertisers, it’s clear that the automated Text Ad format is here to stay. The push towards automation continues and with it comes the pressure from platform reps to adopt. While larger accounts have the luxury, in terms of additional budget, to take their time and test these additions, those running smaller budgets often have to make a decision outright: adopt or not? If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I have historically been a fan of the “not.” There are a lot of arguments against RSAs and few in their favor. For example, you can’t use ad customizers in the text, which limits its abilities. There’s also anecdotal evidence from across the PPC community that, while RSAs are getting better click-through-rates and driving more traffic, they’re less effective than extended text ads (ETAs) in driving conversions. However, the biggest complaint, and perhaps widest-reaching one, is that there is no insight into the data regarding which combinations are being shown and in what ways they outperform one another. You can see how many impressions each combination receives, but that’s it. In essence, you’re setting a variety of ad headlines and descriptions and crossing your fingers. For smaller accounts with less budget per day, ‘crossing your fingers’ is a terrifying proposition. That being said, RSAs can be beneficial. Although we don’t get insight into the data, Google can quickly test tens of thousands of headline and ad description combinations, which is something that I am unable to do with ETAs. With small, low volume accounts, part of the appeal of RSAs is being able to test thousands of ad copy combinations in one go. While it would be nice to have more insight into performance, after some experimenting myself, I think it’s a mistake to write off RSAs completely – especially with the signals we’re getting from the platforms saying that they’re here to stay. I’m a big fan of testing against my assumptions, especially since I know my bias lends itself to having me reject automated ad formats and other automations. I don’t like change as a person, let alone as a PPC professional, and as such I try to lean into it when the opportunity presents itself. My team adopted RSAs across the board in February 2019; here’s what we’ve learned from 4,200 ads running since then:
Looking at ads from the group that received more than one conversion:
Although this data has its limitations, it serves its purpose here as it gives an overall picture of the potential of RSAs. After crunching the numbers I was not surprised by the fact that RSAs are receiving more impressions or that expanded text ads are receiving higher click-through-rates, but I was surprised by the fact that of the ads that generated conversions, the RSAs were generating more. Digging deeper, the biggest thing I noticed was that RSAs typically performed better when matched with a conversion-based automated bidding strategy. In my accounts, RSAs that were in a campaign with either Target CPA or Maximize Conversions as their bidding strategy outperformed ETAs across the board on both cost-per-acquisition and amount of conversions. Does this mean you should switch all your ads to RSAs and all your bidding strategies over today? No, not at all. There are still pros and cons to RSAs, and the successes I’ve indicated above may not translate over to your accounts. But it does give an idea of some of the benefits, and hopefully, encourage you to consider testing. Adopting RSAs in smaller accounts doesn’t have to be all or nothing, and it doesn’t have to be terrifying. When creating your RSAs, I recommend the following:
Overall, I’ve seen enough positive results from RSAs that I am comfortable having one in each ad group. For newer accounts, I often run ad groups with only ETAs until I’m confident I can identify some high performing headlines and descriptions, and add RSAs at the end of month one or two, depending on volume. The bottom line is really that RSAs are here to stay, and that there can be a wide range of benefits to small accounts adopting them if done properly. So, in the case of whether or not small budget accounts should adopt RSAs, this skeptic encourages adopting and testing while we have both types of ads available to us. The post Small accounts and Responsive Search Ads – Adopt or not? appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2nb1hJL On October 1, keyword research browser add-on Keywords Everywhere will move from a free to a pay-as-you-go model, the developer announced on September 25. The new (low-cost) model. The payment plan will cost $1 for 10,000 credits of keyword data. “Basically, every time you see the volume for one keyword, one credit is used up,” Kevin, the mononymous operator of Keywords Everywhere, told Search Engine Land. “So, for a Google search where you see 20 related keywords and 50 people also ask for keywords, 1 (main query) + 20 + 50 = 71 credits will be used up.” This should end up costing most users less than $2 per month, according to the announcement. Why start charging now? The move to a paid model was necessitated by an increase in bot activity. Kevin said the deluge of bots forced him to disable the Import Keywords and Analyze Page features as well as “constantly upgrade hardware in order to keep the software functional for our real users.” Keywords Everywhere said it will use the funds to add support for other countries, build additional features and reintroduce features blocked due to bot-related activity. What about existing users? On October 1, the browser add-on will stop retrieving volume, CPC and competition data for all keywords; however, “related” keywords and “people also ask for” keywords will still be shown. Users will have to purchase account credit to gain access to volume, CPC and competition data. Why we should care. You or your team members may be using Keywords Everywhere to evaluate the competition, CPC, search volume and alternative keywords. If you’re a user, be prepared to dedicate a thin slice of your tools budget to the browser add-on starting next month. The post Keywords Everywhere tool goes paid on Oct 1 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2lKs8Mp Google wont pay French publishers copyright fees will limit content in search results instead9/25/2019 Last year, after an extended public debate, the European Parliament passed a controversial and sweeping new Copyright Directive. In part, it was intended to harmonize and modernize EU copyright law. However, it was also intended to generate licensing revenue for authors and publishers from big internet companies such as Google and Facebook. France was the first country in the EU to implement the new rules domestically. Google won’t pay. Google now says it will not pay French publishers the expected copyright licensing fees. Instead, the company will show links and “very short” extracts of news content, which don’t run afoul of the law (Article 15, formerly Article 11). The law seeks to capture licensing fees when more than links and a few words are shown by third party news aggregators. Google defended itself in a blog post and pointed out the benefits it provides to publishers and its support of journalism. Google News VP Richard Gingras said, “[W]e don’t accept payment from anyone to be included in search results. We sell ads, not search results, and every ad on Google is clearly marked. That’s also why we don’t pay publishers when people click on their links in a search result.” He added, “To operate in any other way would reduce the choice and relevance to our users—and would ultimately result in the loss of their trust in our services.” Publishers will need to opt-in. In a related French-language post (also by Gingras) the company said, “When the French law comes into force, we will no longer display an overview of the content in France for European press publishers unless the publisher has made the arrangements to indicate that it is his wish. This will be the case for search results from all Google services.” (Translated by Google.) In other words, Google will giving publishers the ability to explicitly opt-in to have more content presented on the SERP. It has created a set of webmaster guidelines that French and ultimately all European publishers can use to communicate how much of their news content to show in the SERP. This will effectively function as a waiver of their licensing rights under the Copyright Directive. History repeating itself. We’ve seen this drama before. It already played out in Germany and Spain roughly five years ago. Following the passage of a similarly restrictive German copyright law, publisher Axel Springer saw a massive decline in search traffic through the loss of snippets on its articles, which Google was no longer showing to avoid paying fees. Springer and other German publishers came back to Google humbled and said they wanted their snippets back. Earlier this year Google showed what EU news SERPs might look like under the new Copyright Directive. The stripped-down pages had links but no copy or images, incomplete story titles and site titles without any context. Why we should care. Despite the German and Spanish experiences, it’s amazing that French lawmakers and publishers might have expected Google to do anything different than in the past. The company will circumvent the law by requiring explicit permission to publish more content. And publishers that don’t give permission will likely cede their traffic to those that are giving Google the ability to publish more content. There will probably be an outcry and even legal action by some of the major publishers. But they’re faced with a relatively stark choice: demand licensing fees, see only skeletal content in search and watch their traffic dwindle. Or they can cooperate with Google and give up any hope of getting copyright revenue. A better approach might be to build or rebuild their brands to drive direct navigation and focus on mobile user acquisition. The post Google won’t pay French publishers copyright fees, will limit content in search results instead appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2l67eHr You hear it all the time, data is one of the most important things to make a successful campaign. That was the topic of my interview with Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive. We touched on his long career in the SEM space, starting over 20 years ago doing search marketing. Wil told me why he started his firm and how it has grown to over 100 employees. He explained the importance of treating employees with respect and like your family. And we talked about the importance of giving back to your community. We also dug into why data is something every agency or in-house marketer should be obsessed with. What might work for one website, might not work for the next website. So it is critical to look at your data to find what works best for your individual web site. It is also super important to find wasted spending in your Google Ads or other ad campaigns because Google isnât going to be looking for ways for your company to spend less money with them. Here is the video interview: I started this vlog series recently, and if you want to sign up to be interviewed, you can fill out this form on Search Engine Roundtable. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel by clicking here. The post Video: Wil Reynolds on the importance of data with search campaigns appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2n9RovW E-commerce marketing technology firm Sidecar has launched a new solution for managing Amazon Advertising campaigns. Through a mix of managed service and technology, Sidecar for Amazon aims to streamline management of sponsored products, sponsored brands and product display ads and provide optimization and reporting features currently lacking in the Amazon Advertising platform. Why we should careAmazonâs advertising products have advanced, but the platform is still relatively nascent. Technology solutions are popping up to help advertisers manage their campaigns with more sophisticated features. Sidecar for Amazon is one of the few to support all three of Amazon Advertisingâs e-commerce ad formats. The solution supports product eligibility rules with attributes such as margin and brand policy, and the team incorporates query performance data from other search channels into the Amazon campaigns. Mike Farrell, senior director of customer & market intelligence, said Sidecar for Amazon uses natural language processing to evaluate relevant search queries used on Google. VOLT Lighting, an outdoor lighting eâcommerce retailer and beta tester, reported a 22% drop in average cost of sale (ACoS) in the first 30 days of using Sidecar for Amazon. More on the news
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