The Google Search Console page experience report, at least how we know it today, is going away and being replaced by a content page that links to Google’s general guidance about page experience. Google also announced that good page experience is a requirement for creating, what Google defines as, helpful content. Page experience report changes. Google is removing the existing page experience report within Google Search Console and replacing it with content around what Google thinks is a good page experience. “In the coming months, the Page Experience report within Search Console will transform into a new page that links to our general guidance about page experience,” Google wrote. Google wrote, “The page experience report was intended as a general guidepost of some metrics that aligned with good page experience, not as a comprehensive assessment of all the different aspects. Those seeking to provide a good page experience should take an holistic approach, including following some of our self-assessment questions covered on our Understanding page experience in Google Search results page.” Core Web Vitals & HTTPS report remain. There will be a dashboard view of the individual Core Web Vitals and HTTPS reports that will remain in Search Console, Google added. Mobile-friendly test going away. With that, Google is also removing the Mobile-Friendly Test tool and Mobile-Friendly Test API. Google said that this “doesn’t mean that mobile usability isn’t important for success with Google Search,” it is important. “It remains critical for users, who are using mobile devices more than ever, and as such, it remains a part of our page experience guidance,” Google added. Changes to helpful content and page experience. Google now says that good page experience is a requirement for helpful content, you can see our story about that change over here. Why we care. Some of these reports you may have relied on for some of your SEO practice work. With these changes, you will need to adapt some of your reporting practices going forward. The post Google Search Console page experience report going away appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-page-experience-report-going-away-395788
0 Comments
Apple’s Safari browser, long known for its emphasis on user privacy, is further restricting data collection methods. The move has sparked frustration, particularly due to Apple’s lack of communication about the change, which will impact the architecture of numerous websites. What’s happening. Apple is closing a loophole that allowed websites to pass off third-party partners as first-party cookies. First-party cookies enable websites to recognize returning users, allowing them to avoid logging in each time they revisit a publisher’s site. Why integration is key. Many websites collaborate with third parties to improve functionality, using tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and content hosting services. They want these partners to track their audiences, but third-party cookies have not been available since Safari deprecated them in 2017. Consequently, websites have devised various methods to disguise third-party cookies as first-party cookies, with Safari attempting to counteract these techniques over the past few years. In October 2022, an Apple engineer posted on GitHub about the company’s intention to limit one such cloaking technique. The post explained that Apple would compare the IP address of the incoming response with the IP address of the main resource response. If the addresses are mostly different, the cookies can only last for seven days before being destroyed, thus limiting the data usage and inferences that can be made. Mums the word. Apple never published an official blog post about the change or specified when it would be implemented. Anton Lipkanou, president of analytics-focused agency Delve, stated that the change is already active and causing anomalies in website data. However, Jen Simmons, Apple Evangelist on the web developer team for Safari & Webkit, tweeted on April 11 that the change had not been implemented. Apple has not provided any comments. Ad-tech executives’ dissatisfaction with the change stems from Apple’s limited communication about it, given its impact on many websites’ architecture. Publishers and advertisers may be affected as sites working with multiple third parties using this technique might need to revise their website operations, according to Loch Rose, chief analytics officer at Publicis-owned data firm Epsilon. He added that many sites with a majority of their traffic from Apple users could lose significant functionality. Why we care. The changes in Apple’s Safari browser make it harder for websites to work with third-party services like Google Analytics, can directly impact advertisers’ and brands’ ability to gather and analyze user data. It can hinder their capacity to tailor marketing campaigns, target specific audiences, and measure the effectiveness of their advertising strategies. In turn, this may lead to a reduced ROI and diminished overall performance for their marketing efforts. The post Safari tightens grip on third-party interactions appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/safari-tightens-grip-on-third-party-interactions-395781 Google Search Console will now show publishers who are part of the Reader Revenue Manager information around their “subscribed content.” Google launched a new rich results status report to show traffic from Google Search and errors they can fix with their structured data. The announcement. Google wrote on Twitter, “We’re happy to update that Search Console is launching a new rich results status report, “Subscribed content”, to help Reader Revenue Manager publishers measure their traffic from Search queries and fix their structured data.” What is Subscribe with Google. Subscribe with Google is a linchpin in that second objective to foster sustainable business models for publishers, as we previously reported. The aim is to make it as easy for users to subscribe — particularly on mobile. For Google account holders with payment information on file, subscriptions can be purchased with a few clicks. The user’s Google credentials are then used as their login information for their subscriptions. Subscriber information will be turned over to publishers. Reader Revenue Manager. Google launched a new platform named “Reader Revenue Manager” to help publishers increase engagement by highlighting their content to readers. This is part of the Google Publisher center where you can control how readers can subscribe to your content and pay for your content. See the tweet about for more details or check out the Reader Revenue Manager portal. Why we care. For publishers using the Subscribe with Google and Reader Revenue Manager, this new Search Console report can help you debug issues with your structured data. The report can also give you insight into how your content is performing in Google Search. The post Google Search Console adds new rich results report for “Subscribed content” appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-adds-new-rich-results-report-for-subscribed-content-395779 We know that schema helps harness the power of your content by making it more discoverable in search results. Our last article, How to deploy advanced schema at scale, covered the schema deployment and maintenance process. The next step is to track the performance of your schema. This article will discuss the KPIs for measuring the impact of schema deployment, ways to monitor schema errors, and how to analyze your content’s SERPs performance. Setting up the right measurement steps and metricsThese two steps are critical when it comes to measuring your schema performance:
Analyzing deployed schemaSchema analysis is essential for identifying the right assets for large websites. Ideally, schema should be deployed on critical assets like images, pages, videos, FAQs, menus, etc. Schema opportunities need to be checked constantly because of the dynamic nature of URLs. Keep in mind schema can only be deployed if your pages are accessible. I suggest running a ScreamingFrog crawl to find all the URLs returning 200 OK codes. As part of schema analysis, ensure it covers all essential available assets and URLs on your website. Constant completeness checksSchema deployment should never be a one-time activity. As a large site’s content gets updated, so should the schema being deployed. All redirects, broken URLs, and pages that are missing schema should be constantly reviewed to ensure your content is discoverable. Read Google Search Central’s help documentation on deploying and maintaining the right schema types. Below is a robust dashboard that helps understand the important schema analysis and tracking stages. Catching schema drifts and errorsIf your schema is flagged for errors, address them immediately to avoid manual action from Google. Schema drifts are errors due to schema vocabulary changes in schema.org or Google’s rich result guidelines, website content changes and other technical issues. If the schema drift is caused by website content or vocabulary changes, the schema deployed must be changed before search engines index those pages. Analyzing content changes and setting up triggers or notifications as a reminder to change schema can be helpful. Once you’ve analyzed your schema deployment strategy, it’s time to track your schema KPIs. Identifying the right KPIs to measure the impact of schema deploymentBelow are strategic KPIs you should use to gauge the performance of your schema and the effectiveness of its implementation: ImpressionsWith schema influencing rich results, content discovery becomes accessible. High-value content is discovered easier in the SERPs. As a result, you will see higher impressions for all your zero-click results and all other results relevant to the user query. Content targeting long-tail queries is also easily discovered, providing the most valuable results on the page. ClicksAre you driving traffic to your business profile or website? Clicks determine how many users decided to take action after discovering your content. A good KPI to gauge is the total clicks you earned post-schema deployment. It is necessary to assess to see if the schema is helping content discovery and driving relevant results for your content over time. Note that whenever your schema drives rich results, this will spike your impressions more than your clicks. If your clicks are not increasing as much as your impressions, you should not worry because your content is helpful and gives the right results based on the query type. In the image below, you'll see that after deploying schema, KPIs such as clicks, impressions, CTR and average position also went up. Click-through rate (CTR)CTR is also an important KPI to watch as this is a division of the clicks your content has earned from search by the total number of impressions. High or low CTR is based on your content strategy. If the content is written for awareness, then CTR will be low, and if the content is written for conversion, then CTR will be high. Average CPCYou’re probably wondering why cost per click, a measurement for paid campaigns, is required here. Knowing how much your business will need to spend to drive the visibility of keywords is essential. It will help you determine the amount your business saves organically just by deploying schema. Potential cost savingsCalculate the CPC of those keywords to see if you've saved money using schema implementation instead of opting for paid campaigns. This will help you gauge the value of implementing schema on your website. SERPs coverage / rich resultsSERP coverage refers to the types of universal search results you’ve appeared in. Once you’ve deployed schema for your various assets, the easiest way to gauge its impact is to measure SERP coverage in universal results. Measure different types of SERPs (based on the schema you've deployed), including images, FAQ, video, content, People Also Ask, etc. SERP coverage can inform your content strategy. If the content pieces you created and tagged do not show up in some of these results, the content might not be relevant or helpful. Suppose you've deployed FAQs or HowTo schema for the visibility of conversational content. In that case, you'll need to watch the performance of your FAQ, People Also Ask, and even Featured Snippets rich results after deployment to see if there is a visibility lift. Similarly, look at the rich results that don't appear in the SERPs. For example, your images aren't performing as well as you'd like. Formulate a schema strategy to drive the visibility of those entities or assets on your webpages. Performance of each schema type and combinationsSchema types are not equal. Some are used to give search engines context, while others drive rich results that can impact performance significantly. It is important to drill down and see which schema types are most effective based on your content strategy. Use Google Search Console to see which schemas are showing up and driving search visibility. Evaluating the impact of schema deployment on your websiteSchema maintenance and performance measurement go hand in hand. It’s a cyclic process. Once you know how your schemas fare, it's time to expand schema deployment across other parts of your website. Now that you know which schemas work to boost your search visibility, you can finetune your overall schema strategy. The post How to measure schema performance appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/measure-schema-performance-395762 Are you wondering how much you should spend on your Facebook and Instagram ads? Setting your ad budget can mean different things to different people. It’s impossible to answer in a one-size-fits-all way. This article tackles how to approach your Facebook and Instagram advertising budgets, where to set up your ad budget in the ads manager, and some key settings that will impact your results. Considerations when setting your Facebook and Instagram advertising budgetWhen we talk about ad budgets, several elements come into play. What is your overall budget for Facebook ads vs. other parts of your marketing?Sometimes business owners aren’t even sure what percentage of their marketing budget should be allocated to Facebook and Instagram. This will depend on how well you can track your results to ensure your campaign is profitable. If you are new to Facebook ads, I would suggest starting slow to get a baseline of results. How much money should you spend on particular initiatives or segments of your funnel?Again, this will come down to experience, tracking, and your business model. I typically suggest that:
This is just a guideline and will be different for different industries like ecommerce. How do you optimize the budget settings on Facebook?Facebook has a variety of settings that can be confusing, including Advantage campaign budget (formerly campaign budget optimization) and daily budget vs. lifetime budget. How to approach your Facebook and Instagram advertising budgetsIf you are new to Facebook and Instagram ads and don’t know how well your ads convert, calculate where your costs should land to be profitable. Start with the product cost and how you sell it, then make some assumptions based on general performance ranges. Ramp up your ad budgets slowly to test out these assumptions. For example, if you give a free webinar where you deliver some great content, and at the end of the webinar, you sell your product for $1,000. If you know that, in general, approximately 10% of the people convert into sales, and you have 100 people register with Facebook ads, you’ll convert 10 of those people into sales, earning you $10,000. Do some math to calculate how much it would cost to get 100 people on a webinar (generally $5-15/registration). You might start with the assumption that you have $1,000 to invest, which will cost $10/registration, giving you 100 leads. If 10% of those leads then purchased the product, you can calculate that your gross revenue would be $10,000 and your net revenue would be $9,000. In general, sales conversion rates can typically be anywhere from 2% to 10%, but again that depends on the price point, the effectiveness of the sales page or the sales process, and other factors. Start slowly so you can test your assumptions. Even if you were to sell just one product in this example, you would break even. Setting your Facebook advertising budgetWhen starting your campaign, set your budget at the ad set level rather than using the Advantage campaign budget option. In the testing phase, it's better to have more individual control over the budgets for each target audience to ensure your results have significance. Advantage campaign budget means that Facebook spreads the budget across all the ad sets and ads under that campaign. Thus, the algorithm may not deliver any of the budgets to one of the audiences you want to test. You can set minimum spends on the budgets, but this is often better in the scaling rather than the testing phase. Make sure Advantage campaign budget is off, and then select Next. At the ad set level, you need to choose between Daily Budget or Lifetime Budget. I typically choose daily budget because it allows for a more open-ended campaign and is easier to scale. Choose lifetime budget if you have a definite end date and won't want to continue running the ads past that date. Lifetime budget also allows for ad scheduling which means you can control the hours in the day the ads are shown. This is a good option for someone who wants to respond to leads during work hours or is trying to get phone calls during office hours. The next section at the ad set level is Placements. If you want to control your budgets individually for Facebook and Instagram, you must create separate ad sets for each placement. Otherwise, Facebook will unevenly distribute the budget between the two platforms. To dedicate a specific budget to either Facebook or Instagram, select Manual placements and only check that platform. Then create a new ad set with the other platform checked. This can be good practice in the testing phase so that you can scale up the platform that is working better. Another budgeting optimization setting to watch for at the ad set level is the Optimization & delivery section. Cost per result goal sounds like a good option to control your costs. But if you set it too low, your ads will not get any delivery. This is also known as a cost cap, and Facebook will only show the ads to people that may come in at that “cap” you have set. For beginners, leave Cost per result goal blank, but for more advanced users, try testing this setting out once you know your campaign's average cost per result. Once you have these settings at the ad set level, create your ad as you would at the ad level and launch your campaign. Then duplicate your ad sets to create new tests with different audiences and possibly different placements. Monitor your results for the audiences at the ad set level to see which audience is giving you the best results. Facebook Advantage campaign budget optimizationOnce you see which audiences and ads are working well, you can either scale your ads up by adding to the daily budget at the ad set level or with the Advantage campaign budget option. The best practice is to use similar size audiences in this campaign and then increase the budget at the top level. Typically have 3-4 audiences under that campaign and 2-4 ads for best results. Get the most out of your Meta advertising effortsThere is no one-size-fits-all approach when budgeting Facebook and Instagram campaigns. It takes some math and experience to figure out what works best. But when you get that high-performing return on ad spend, it's all worth it. The post How to set your Facebook and Instagram advertising budgets for maximum results appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/set-facebook-instagram-advertising-budgets-maximum-results-395748 8 ways to maximize brand awareness through paid and organic search by Digital Marketing Depot4/18/2023 A full 87% of shoppers in the U.S. begin product searches online, with a majority turning to Google to find the answers they need. The path to purchase is non-linear, with multiple touches occurring across channels, devices, and locations. Providing potential customers with helpful content throughout this journey is the best way to build trust. The majority of consumers say they trust websites more that appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Ranking highly on Google is the best way to build brand awareness, generate leads, increase revenue, and provide genuine value to your customers. This guide from Conductor outlines eight strategies to maximize brand awareness and make your organic and paid spend go further. Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download 8 Ways to Maximize Brand Awareness Through Paid and Organic Search. The post 8 ways to maximize brand awareness through paid and organic search appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/maximize-brand-awareness-through-paid-and-organic-search-395747 Instagram has introducied a new feature that competes with Linktree, Beacons, and other “link in bio” solution providers, allowing users to add up to five links to their profile bios. How it works. This feature directs followers to various content, such as online businesses, promoted brands, supported causes, or even profiles on rival social platforms. Instagram revealed that this functionality has been highly sought after by creators. However, this also highlights the company’s inability to address the needs of its users, which has allowed alternative solutions to flourish. Competition with 3rd party tools. The emergence of Linktree and similar services can be attributed to platform restrictions on Instagram and other networks that have long prevented users from adding multiple links to external sites, fearing the potential loss of user engagement. Social media platforms have traditionally preferred to keep users within their apps rather than direct them elsewhere. Trailing behind TikTok, again. Instagram is not the only platform to make this choice; TikTok currently only allows clickable links in bios for business accounts, making it difficult for regular users and creators to direct followers to other websites. Instagram’s decision to finally address the demand for increased access to bio links may be a response to criticism of TikTok’s stricter limitations. By allowing expanded access to links, Instagram could potentially draw creators back to its platform. The company emphasizes that the ability to add multiple links to a profile is available to all accounts, including business and creator accounts. To utilize this feature, users must go through the “Edit profile,” “Links,” and “Add external link” options, and then arrange the links in their desired order. Early testing. In initial tests, there were no issues linking to competing platforms like TikTok or YouTube. Instagram also offers users the option to link their Facebook profiles using a dedicated linking option, which displays a professional-looking rounded Facebook icon and accompanying text. However, external links do not include any special customizations, such as small icons. The links do not open in a separate browser window but within the Instagram app itself. Users who want to switch to their built-in browser, like Safari or Chrome, must tap the three-dot menu at the top of the page and select “open in system browser.” This new feature was announced in a brief post on Mark Zuckerberg’s broadcast channel, a relatively new feature that allows creators to send messages to their entire community. Zuckerberg’s message simply noted that support for multiple links in the bio was “probably one of the most requested features we’ve had.” Why we care. The new feature provides advertisers and brands an opportunity to increase traffic to their websites, e-commerce stores, and other online platforms. With the ability to add multiple links, businesses can more effectively promote their brand, products, and services to potential customers, and can potentially increase engagement and conversions. The post Instagram now allows up to 5 “links in bio” appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/instagram-now-allows-up-to-5-links-in-bio-395742 A group of nine states, comprising Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, Illinois, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Washington, and West Virginia, have become part of a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google. The suit contends that the search and advertising giant violated antitrust regulations while operating its digital advertising business, according to the department’s statement on Monday. What’s happening. Initially filed in January by the government and eight states, the ad tech lawsuit has sought to compel Google to divest its ad manager suite, citing the company’s unlawful exploitation of its online advertising dominance. Google, however, has refuted these allegations and requested Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia to dismiss the case. This ad tech lawsuit comes on the heels of a separate 2020 lawsuit, filed during the Trump administration, which accused Google of breaching antitrust law in order to sustain its search supremacy. The trial for this case is scheduled for September. Google’s history of trouble. Lawsuits have plagued Google for years.
Why we care. Antitrust lawsuits against Google could reshape the digital advertising ecosystem, fostering a more competitive market with fairer pricing, increased transparency, and better control over campaigns. Additionally, the resulting changes could promote innovation, leading to new tools and strategies for reaching target audiences, and address data privacy concerns, ensuring consumer trust and legal compliance. The potential implications of these lawsuits may directly impact advertisers’ strategies, costs, and overall effectiveness of their digital campaigns. The post 9 more states join federal antitrust lawsuit against Google appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/9-more-states-join-federal-antitrust-lawsuit-against-google-395740 Results from a Google experiment showed that interest-based audience solutions performed reasonably well compared to third-party cookies. The results. The results were compared using interest-based audience (IBA) solutions with privacy-preserving signals on the display network, Google Display Ads advertiser spending on IBA, as a proxy for scale reached (meaning that a particular metric or value is being used to estimate or represent the extent or level of impact achieved in a specific context. In this case, it indicates that the given metric serves as an indirect measure to help understand the overall reach or success of a particular aspect being discussed).
The experiment. Google Ads and Display & Video 360 have been conducting experiments with interest-based audience solutions ahead of Chrome’s deprecation of third-party cookies. In the first quarter of 2023, Google Ads platforms ran an experiment to determine the effectiveness of IBA solutions when relying on a combination of privacy-preserving signals, including contextual information, first-party identifiers, and the Topics API from the Privacy Sandbox. Why it matters. Google believes that ad tech platforms can set a new standard for privacy that meets consumers’ expectations while giving businesses the tools they need to grow through innovation. Over the coming months, Google will continue to run more rounds of testing and provide regular feedback to Chrome and the broader industry. As an advertiser, it is important to adopt innovative ad solutions that protect people’s privacy and drive performance. Dig deeper. You can read the full results of Google’s study here. Why we care. The shift towards privacy-preserving interest-based audience solutions represents the future of digital advertising. As third-party cookies are being deprecated, embracing innovative ad solutions that protect user privacy is crucial to maintaining ad performance, meeting consumer expectations, and supporting business growth. By adopting these new solutions, advertisers can ensure continued effectiveness in targeting and conversion rates while upholding privacy standards and staying ahead in a rapidly changing industry landscape. The post Google’s interest-based ad experiments show ad spend, click-through rates down slightly appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/googles-interest-based-ad-experiments-show-ad-spend-click-through-rates-down-slightly-395734 SEO or PPC? Like everything in marketing, it would be great if there was a simple answer to the SEO vs. PPC question. Unfortunately, despite the human temptation to simplify this into a binary answer, the answer is complicated. SEO helps your webpages rank higher on the non-paid search results by improving the quality and relevance of the content on your website. This improved visibility comes without the expensive costs per click of PPC. PPC ads are paid online advertisements that are laser targeted by demographics and keywords to get in front of the right people at the right time. Typically, PPC ads show in highly prominent positions on the search results and hoover up the majority of clicks for highly commercial terms. What is right for you? This article will provide an overview of the search landscape and the two key search engine marketing (SEM) tactics, plus five simple questions you can ask yourself to determine where your efforts should be spent. Defining SEO and PPCIn a nutshell, SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility on Google, Bing and other search engines. PPC, or pay-per-click, are the ads that appear on a page of search results (typically in premium positions). The search landscapeThe key to making an educated SEO vs. PPC decision is understanding the makeup of the search engine result pages (SERPs) for the keywords that matter to you. While the search results were once just “10 blue links,” modern search engines provide a rich array of page features, all designed to provide comprehensive answers along with the means to dig further into a topic. Modern SERPs feature:
Search results are complex and diverse and each of these areas offers an opportunity for keen-eyed search marketers. Now we understand the search landscape, we can dig into the relative merits of SEO and PPC and how these apply to your situation. SEO: The prosHow can you benefit from SEO? How do the organic listings differ from the paid listings that sit above the organic listings? AwarenessVisibility in search engines for your targeted keywords drives awareness of your business. BrandingVisibility around commercial search terms and informational queries related to your business area can have a positive branding benefit. Your brand can become associated with and trusted by searchers asking questions as they conduct the research that will lead to a purchase. Credibility and trustHaving your site return in the organic results can influence your perceived credibility with an audience looking for your services. Many users skip ads and trust organic results more highly, particularly in the research stage of a purchase. Being visible gives your business that all-important stamp of approval. VersatilityAs we covered in our review of the search landscape, organic search results are highly varied and versatile. As such, there is a range of opportunities to present your business to your prospective clients as they research a purchase. Reputation and reviewsSearch results include reviews from several sources and having strong review and reputation signals in place further boosts trust signals. Website trafficIncreasing website traffic gives you more opportunities to engage and educate a prospect as to why they would buy from you. Cost per clickTraffic from organic search is free – sort of. Developing that visibility will take time and effort (money), but there is no direct charge for each impression or click. Return on investment (ROI)As paid clicks continue to get ever more expensive, smart SEO can provide an improved ROI over paid clicks. CostWhile SEO is neither cheap nor easy, it will generally be more cost-effective than other marketing tactics for delivering brand awareness and relevant traffic to your website. SustainabilityUnlike PPC, organic traffic does not dry up when you stop paying. As such, efforts to develop organic traffic can sustain a business when marketing budgets are tight. Not paying for every clickNot all keywords convert the same and SEO can help you target users earlier in the purchase cycle without paying for those low conversion rate clicks. ScopeThere are so many new queries every day that to maximize scope, you will need strong organic visibility. You will not want to pay for all kinds of clicks or advertise every piece of content on your website. Strategic advantageVisibility in organic search is not quick or easy – which is a good and a bad thing. Once you have established yourself in the organic results, your competitors can’t simply buy their way in (assuming you have done things the right way). This can provide a strategic advantage over the competition if they rely on paid search. 80/20 ruleWith modern CMS platforms, SEO is simplified, and you can often generate 80% of the possible SEO results with only 20% of the work. SEO: The consSEO has many benefits, but it is not without its challenges.
One of the key problems with SEO is that it is just so easy to spend a lot of time and effort on SEO tasks that do little or nothing to help. Blog posts that will never rank, meta descriptions that don’t matter, technical SEO – the list goes on. SEO tools, which are supposed to help with this problem, tend to make matters worse and generate endless lists of SEO tasks that are essentially just busy work. These tools have utility, but they require experience to know what should be done and what can be ignored. While highly valuable, SEO can be tricky to implement and highly competitive. It is important to develop realistic goals and measurements. PPC: The prosHow does paid search differ from organic search? If SEO provides free traffic, why would a business consider paid search? TargetingPPC provides a laser-targeted way to get in front of potential customers. Ads can be targeted by search keywords, time of day, day of the week, geography, language, device and audiences based on previous visits. Organic traffic, by comparison, is far more scattershot. SpeedWhile developing organic visibility can take time, a PPC campaign can be created in days and ramped up in weeks. There is no faster way to get in front of customers when they are primed to buy than paid search engine advertising. Position on the pagePaid search dominates above-the-fold content. With typically four ads on desktop and three on mobile, a user will always see the paid search ads, even if they choose to scroll past them. Improved adsPPC ads are just that: advertisements. You have far more granular control and more space for delivering your marketing messages. Calls, locations, site links, pricing and bullet points (callouts) are just some of the options for creating ads that dominate the page. Dynamic ad copyGoogle's responsive search ads have 15 titles and four descriptions providing over 30,000 variations with built-in split testing. This ensures your ads are customized to help generate clicks. Visual product adsWhere you sell a product, Google provides the option of visual shopping ads (product listing ads, or PLAs) that can help a user see what they will be clicking on. Brand visibilityRunning paid search advertisements gets you seen by the right people. Even if they back off and conduct a brand search before clicking on your site, that visibility will pay dividends to your marketing. BudgetWhile costly, PPC allows for budget control. Determine how much you are willing to spend per day (ideally with some initial and ideal ideas of returns), and set that fixed limit. AgileSpeed provides agility. Want to test a new product? A new marketing message? You can get rapid feedback on a new product launch (or minimum viable product) by running a short PPC ad campaign. Marketing intelligenceWhere organic largely hides keyword data in the name of privacy, there is no such restriction with paid search. With integration with analytics software (like Google Analytics), we can determine what keywords convert and at what percentage and cost. This intelligence can be fed directly into SEO and inform all other advertising to improve results across the board. A/B testingEasily split-test ads, landing pages, and even call-to-action buttons to determine where the very best results lie. Again, this information can be fed back into all other digital (and traditional) marketing endeavors. StabilityDespite the competition, paid search does not typically suffer the same turbulence as organic. There are changes, but they tend to have a far lower impact and are more easily managed. Careful use of match types and analysis of the search term reports allow for the removal of junk searches and an increase in ROI over time. CostDespite what many advertisers believe, a PPC account that's set up and managed well can be a low-cost way to generate leads for your business. If you are a local business targeting a small geographic area and a small set of keywords, you may find that you can generate more than enough leads without breaking the bank. Additionally, over time, accounts can be further optimized to reduce costs and increase returns. PPC: The consThere are clearly many benefits to PPC. However, there are also some pitfalls advertisers must be wary of.
PPC on search engines is a highly powerful, and quite possibly the most powerful marketing system that has ever existed. To succeed in a highly competitive environment, everything must be set up correctly: keywords, ads, landing pages and analytics. It is not unusual to get into bidding wars with other advertisers, which can drive costs up. As you start to run your ads, you are often taking a bite out of other advertisers' digital apple. Doing so can result in spiraling costs (or revising your strategy). Successful PPC needs skilled management and optimization – from monitoring bids, Quality Scores, positions and click-through rates. Some of this can be done with scripts, but if you are too busy to do this properly, ensure you have an expert on hand to take care of keeping your account in tip-top shape. PPC is incredibly powerful, but you must ensure all aspects are optimized to maximize results while keeping costs reasonable. Hopefully, you have an idea of the pros and cons of SEO and PPC now and are better positioned to review the landscape. The next step is to work through a series of questions to determine the correct approach based on your target keywords and current situation. SEO or PPC: 5 questions to askThe following are five simple questions you can ask to help determine where you should spend your time and resources. 1. What keywords are you targeting?This question is crucial as your target keywords will strongly influence your choice between SEO and PPC. A useful exercise here to aid keyword research is to create a persona and answer the who, why and how customer questions.
This can be a useful framework to help with the keyword research process (in addition to any tools you may want to use). 2. What do the results look like for each keyword?Google each keyword and summarize the search results for each. This does not need to be complicated; some simple bullets will do the job. Keyword: "Plumber"
Here we see that the three-pack has good organic visibility right at the top of the page so SEO is likely useful if targeting a small geographic area. However, if you are targeting a larger area and can't likely rank in the pack then the first non-directory or portal listing is the position 6 organic listing. This is around the 22nd link on the page (so unlikely to generate significant organic traffic). By conducting this relatively simple analysis for your keywords and reviewing the landscape you can make some estimates regarding whether ad coverage or SEO will generate the required results. 3. How do the results vary by location?There is a common mistake that a lot of local businesses make, which is to assume that what they see when they Google their target keywords at their location is what everyone sees. It is important to track your results from different locations as the ads, local pack and organic results (typically localized) will vary. What we recommend here is that you either conduct manual rank reports from different locations or ideally, use a rank tracking tool that will show you your rankings at various points across the geography you cover. Note: You may see that your results are strong within a given distance of your location but drop off further away from your location. Sometimes, a combined SEO and PPC approach can be useful. 4. How much business do you need?This is an important question and where we start to see some intersectionality from these questions. If you are a small business servicing a local area and need maybe one or two good leads a week, then SEO may give you more than you need. We have helped hundreds of small businesses that fall into this category, and once SEO is dialed in, they never spend a penny on PPC. If you are a larger business, have multiple teams and service a large city or geographic area, you may also need some coverage with PPC on top of SEO to ensure you generate enough work. 5. What do you have more of – time or money?An important difference between SEO and PPC is that you can do SEO yourself or within your business without any real costs. All the information you need is out there to improve your visibility. Time is money. So, if you have a larger team costing you money, then spending money to generate leads quickly makes sense. This is where we have to consider the pros and cons we discussed earlier, as improving SEO can take a while, whereas PPC can be almost instant. It is important to determine what is right for your completely unique situation and objectives and lean in that direction. SEO vs. PPC: Your unique roadmapHopefully, you can see it is impossible to answer this question in a generic way. You really have to consider all the variables. A hyper-local business with little competition and a requirement for just a few leads per week could likely develop good visibility in the local and organic search results with a little spend or some DIY SEO. A new ecommerce store that is competing with a page of results from Amazon, eBay and other major department stores and online retailers is likely going to struggle in organic search (in the short term, at least). Do you need leads now? Are you looking at the long game? Do you have much in the way of website authority? What is the competition like in organic search? What is the cost per click in paid search? A clear digital marketing strategy and short- and long-term goals are essential in making an SEO or PPC decision. The third option: SEO and PPCIn most cases, the right approach will not be either SEO or PPC. It will be a holistic SEM strategy that combines both. SEO and PPC work best when they are strategically aligned to work together. A blended approach will typically drive overall results greater than their parts. The benefits of running SEO and PPC together include:
In our experience with thousands of businesses, an integrated search strategy that looks at both SEO and PPC is the optimal approach. We may often start with heavy PPC while organic is built up and then dial that back a little. Alternatively, PPC may be the icing on the cake to bag sales that were set up with SEO traffic. What is right will always depend on your situation and goals, but the smart mindset is to look at how to get these two titans of modern marketing working together. The post SEO vs. PPC: Differences, pros, cons & an integrated approach appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/seo-vs-ppc-pros-cons-integrated-approach-274643 |
AuthorLet us market on the internet and earn some money. Archives
April 2023
|