Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Friday, March 3rd, 2023
LinkedIn has introduced Collaborative Articles, what it is calling an all-new way to share knowledge. I’d highly dispute that, as this really feels like an elevated take on classic roundup articles designed to feature the “wisdom of the crowd.”
Why we care. LinkedIn is touting this as a way to grow your following, boost your reputation and help the community. All those are potentially true – but the big thing to also watch will be “collaboration spam.” I fully expect some people will try to boost their visibility by “collaborating” on as many of these articles as often as possible.
What is a LinkedIn Collaborative Article? Here’s how LinkedIn describes them:
- “Collaborative articles are a new type of article, published by LinkedIn with insights from the LinkedIn community. These articles begin as AI-powered conversation starters, developed with our editorial team, but they aren’t complete without perspectives from experts like you. We’re inviting you to share your own ideas, examples, and personal experiences directly into sections of the articles, so our members can learn from you.”
LinkedIn said you can either search or browse for articles. Collaborative articles will also show up in your feed or as pop-up notifications in the coming weeks. Here’s what the notification looks like:
How it works. Let’s walk through an example. You can start by going to any LinkedIn Skill Page, such as Social Media.
Right now, there is post to a Collaborative article on how to measure the ROI of influencer marketing campaigns. Clicking on that post opens up the actual article, How do you measure ROI of your influencer marketing campaigns?
You’ll see a note under the headline: “Help unlock community knowledge with us. Add your insights into this AI-powered collaborative article.” Along with LinkedIn’s explainer about Collaborative articles.
Scroll down in this article and you’ll see multiple prompts to “Share an example”.
When you click to share an example, a field will appear that gives you some prompts to get you started (“One thing I’ve found…”; “Actually I disagree with…”; “An example I’ve seen…”).
The minimum response is 125 characters. The maximum response is 750 characters.
LinkedIn seems to show only one contribution by default. You’ll have to hit Load more to see other contributions. Presumably, the contribution that gets the most “Insightful” reactions will get that featured slot.
New badge. As a reward for sharing their knowledge, perspectives and experience, LinkedIn members can earn a new Community Top Voice badge for their skill areas. The badge could appear on your LinkedIn profile and next to your article contributions.
Not available to everyone. LinkedIn said it plans to expand access in the coming months. I got an early access invite today, so check your email to see if you might have gotten early access.
Dig deeper. You can read LinkedIn’s announcement: Unlocking nearly 10 billion years worth of knowledge to help you tackle everyday work problems.
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Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Thursday, March 2nd, 2023
If you’ve used ChatGPT for any period of time for tasks like creating content for SEO, you’ve likely noticed a few things:
- It’s great and a major time-saver for some tasks.
- It’s much worse than what you already do for other tasks.
- To get the most out of it, you must understand how it works, be willing to refine your prompts (sometimes several times), and QA the platform’s output.
All of these things are true when using ChatGPT for keyword research. To help you navigate the process, let’s explore:
- Keyword research functions ChatGPT is good at (with specific prompts).
- Keyword research functions ChatGPT is not good at.
- How to QA your keyword research output from ChatGPT.
You’ll leave this article with specific keyword research applications for ChatGPT, plus a framework for incorporating the tool into your SEO processes.
How to use ChatGPT for keyword research
An important thing to understand off the top: ChatGPT does not have access to search volume and other metrics the way keyword tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs and Semrush do.
That said, ChatGPT can be highly useful for several keyword research functions.
Keyword brainstorming and topic ideation
One downside to traditional keyword research tools is that your competitors (and often more authoritative sites than yours) are using the same tools and targeting the same keywords.
As you build out a list of topics and keyword targets, the right ChatGPT prompts can help you find largely untapped pockets of keywords.
{Topic} for dummies
If I were starting a website about pickleball and wanted to get some broad ideas for what to write about, I could use some creative prompts to get ideas from ChatGPT on where to start:
Obviously, this isn’t a list of keywords, but it could function as a general site structure and gives me ideas for keyword clusters to build.
{Topic} conference agendas
Similarly, asking ChatGPT for conference topics targeting a specific persona in my niche provides some interesting ideas:
Quick and dirty competitive research
ChatGPT doesn’t have the most recent data and isn’t a comprehensive keyword research tool. But it can help me gain a quick sense of a niche’s competitive landscape and get started with high-level ideas:
Plus, more ideas for different topics and sub-niche:
Social media and influencer research
I can continue to get a lay of the land in this niche by looking at social media accounts on platforms like Twitter:
Though keep in mind this data is from the GPT-3 training set, which isn’t current. Twitter also paused access as of December 4, 2022:
Not surprising, as I just learned that OpenAI had access to Twitter database for training. I put that on pause for now.
Need to understand more about governance structure & revenue plans going forward.
OpenAI was started as open-source & non-profit. Neither are still true.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 4, 2022
I can also look at Reddit:
This can be even more useful if you dive a little deeper:
The output is great as specific angles for articles or FAQs.
You can also get a quick view of influencers and thought leaders:
Then I can dive into more topic ideas and learn the topics they tweet and talk about:
Next, I can start to pull this all together by combining prompts and asking ChatGPT to give me a summary of its research:
I’ll be honest: I run a lot of ChatGPT prompts, and some of the output is infuriatingly bad.
However, if you hired a VA to spend a few hours researching a niche and asked them to give some high-level topic and category ideas for a new site, it would be acceptable if they came back with this.
Brainstorm actionable keywords
We now have interesting high-level category and “sub-niche” data. So how do we convert that into an actual list of target keywords?
ChatGPT can’t give you estimated search volume and keyword difficulty data. While they aren’t perfect metrics, you can waste time and resources if you’re “flying blind.”
We can use ChatGPT to prepare a list of “seed keywords” to run against our favorite keyword tool:
Depending on what you get back, you can then refine:
Next, I used a prompt to clean up the list (“Perfect, take these keywords and convert them into a list of just the keywords that I can easily copy and paste.”) and dropped them all into Ahrefs, looked at matching terms, and filtered for terms with a keyword difficulty of 5 or lower for my new site:
Now that I have some terms with difficulty and search volume, I can go back to ChatGPT to help add some information for these terms:
The output is pretty impressive:
Now, I can also get some other interesting keyword data on my new list of terms by asking, “Can you tell me how many posts are in each sub-topic and how many fit into each level of search intent?”
Many times you may balance your content output across categories, business lines and support for different tools or products. This is a handy way to sum up that information quickly.
Keyword list generation, expansion and cleanup
Finding specific keywords to target and appending different modifiers to your terms to grow your list are critical aspects of keyword research.
A common application is to generate a list of geo-modifiers and marry those with a target term:
You can also get a list of size modifiers and apply that to different terms:
The output has some interesting ideas:
If you have some seed lists of modifiers, the mash-up process can be even more straightforward here.
Page-level keyword research
Many tools will create content briefs and grades for your content based primarily on what’s currently ranking well in search engines. I use multiple of these tools in my day-to-day work, and they can be pretty expensive.
We can use ChatGPT to compare our article to whatever is ranking for specific terms. Again, it is not a native SEO tool, so data will differ from what those tools use.
Unfortunately, ChatGPT doesn’t crawl URLs (yet), so you have to copy and paste both your article and the article ranking first into the chat to have it analyze them. This can be a pain since the character limit is 2,000 words.
And here is the analysis:
And you can get more specific advice with a follow-up prompt:
Take advantage of ChatGPT’s ability to remember previous prompts within a specific chat.
Here, I could run through multiple articles ranking on the first page for this search term, ask ChatGPT to pull out themes and common terms used in the headers for each, and then surface the most popular phrases across the articles:
This is pretty clunky to do manually since some articles or pages will exceed the 2,000-character limit. ChatGPT will try answering you before the content is all posted.
As you can see above, it’s not exactly answering my question. The tools that are specifically designed for this are undoubtedly much slicker.
For a smoother and more scalable experience in prompt-heavy tasks, use the Open AI API. Have ChatGPT generate the code for you:
ChatGPT prompts for keyword research APIs
Reminder: Proceed cautiously when dealing with programmatic APIs that cost money or credits. QA everything the tool spits out.
Another keyword research function for ChatGPT is to help SEOs interface with different keyword tool APIs:
For my new pickleball site, I could grab an extensive list of low domain authority sites ranking for some pickleball terms and then run them through this script.
If you’re not very technical, you can get step-by-step instructions and ask the tool how to complete a generic task:
Not relevant for my new pickleball site, perhaps, but if I want to do some keyword research on my data, I can get ChatGPT’s help with the Google Search Console API to find search queries that may need their page or article:
The GSC API isn’t the only way to get keyword data using ChatGPT.
ChatGPT keyword research regular expressions
Like the GSC API, using regular expressions (regex) within Search Console can be a great way to unearth keyword targeting opportunities:
Build your own tools
ChatGPT can instruct you on how to build specific tools for keyword research. (Again, always QA and proceed with caution!)
ChatGPT keyword research QA tips
The examples above demonstrate how valuable ChatGPT can be for keyword research. The price is free to $20 a month, so it is worth trying out.
In my experience, the platform tends to fall flat in three core areas of keyword research:
- Not search-specific: ChatGPT is a native keyword research tool. It does not have direct access to keyword data and can’t perform key functions for keyword research.
- Confident but wrong: The platform occasionally provides answers emphatically that aren’t true, delivering data presented as a fact but is flat-out wrong.
- Broken code: ChatGPT’s code doesn’t always work. If you rely on it to interface with an API or build a tool to automate certain aspects of your process, assume there will be bugs and issues.
Here are a few specific suggestions to help:
- Ensure you use dev environments and sandboxes when working with ChatGPT code or instructions.
- Check any keyword suggestions against search and competition data to confirm you’re not spinning your wheels on subjects that don’t make sense for your site and your bandwidth.
- If you’re asking the tool to analyze something, take the output with a grain of salt. Remember that ChatGPT could be wrong, cannot crawl URLs and has an outdated data set.
Broader ChatGPT keyword research strategies
Caveats aside, SEOs will likely find useful keyword research applications with ChatGPT. Ask yourself these questions to determine how to use the platform best:
- How can you leverage the ChatGPT API?
- If the chat character limit keeps you down or you have a larger-scale keyword or topic ideation task, you can use the API for various functions.
- Are there other applications or APIs you want to use but can’t dedicate the time and energy to? What about a mash-up of multiple APIs (marrying data from e.g., GSC, Ahrefs or Semush)?
- What are your more tedious and time-intensive keyword research tasks? Can ChatGPT help with these?
Think of ChatGPT as a virtual assistant. Understand that you’re ultimately responsible for the implementation of any data or code it generates. Consider the tasks you need to complete, the things it’s likely capable of and try them out when it makes sense.
The post How to use ChatGPT for keyword research (with actual prompts) appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Thursday, March 2nd, 2023
In the coming months, Google Analytics 4 audience builder will be integrated into Google Ads, making it easier to create and apply audiences from Google Analytics 4 to Google Ads campaigns.
To enable this feature, Google Ads is introducing a new cross-product access management model. This model allows a Google Analytics 4 property Admin to grant explicit permissions to users in a linked Google Ads account. The Google Analytics admin can assign roles to the different permissions available in Google Ads, such as Administrator, Standard, or Read only. These roles will determine access to Analytics features embedded in Google Ads, including the ability to create Analytics audiences directly in Google Ads.
Levels of user access in Google Analytics. Google Analytics offers four levels of user access: Account Owner, Property User, View User, and Analyst. Each level has different permissions, ranging from full control to read-only access.
- Account Owner: The Account Owner has full control over the Google Analytics account, including the ability to manage users, create properties and views, and link AdWords and other accounts. There can only be one Account Owner per Google Analytics account.
- Property User: The Property User has access to a specific property, allowing them to view and manage data for that property. They can create views, manage filters, and link AdWords and other accounts to the property. Property Users can also manage users for the property, but they cannot add or remove other Property Users.
- View User: The View User has access to a specific view within a property. They can view and manage data for that view, including creating custom reports and setting up goals. View Users cannot create or delete views or modify filters.
- Analyst: The Analyst has read-only access to a specific view within a property. They can view data, but they cannot make any changes to the account or data.
Managing user access in Google Analytics. To manage user access in Google Analytics, follow these steps:
- Sign in to your Google Analytics account and navigate to the Admin section.
- Click on the Account, Property, or View that you want to manage.
- Click on User Management under the Account, Property, or View column.
- Enter the email address of the user you want to add or remove.
- Select the level of access you want to grant, ranging from Account Owner to Analyst.
- Click Add or Remove to add or remove a user.
- Click Notify this user by email to notify the user of the changes.
Best practices for user access management in Google Analytics. Here are some best practices for managing user access in Google Analytics:
- Limit access to sensitive data: Only grant access to users who need it. This includes limiting access to personal or sensitive data, such as user IP addresses or financial information.
- Use Google groups: Create Google Groups to manage access to your Google Analytics account. This makes it easier to manage access and ensure that the right users have access to the right data.
- Use two-factor authentication: Enable two-factor authentication for all users to ensure that only authorized users can access your Google Analytics data.
- Audit user access regularly: Regularly review user access to ensure that users have the appropriate level of access and that no unauthorized users have access to your data.
Dig deeper. Read the announcement from Google here.
Why we care. Managing user access in Google Analytics critical to the security and accuracy of your analytics data. Proper user access management ensures that only authorized users have access to their data and limits access to sensitive information.
Additionally, with the upcoming integration of Google Analytics 4 audience builder in Google Ads, mastering user access management will be important for creating and applying audiences from Google Analytics to Google Ads campaigns.
The post New Analytics user access management changes in Google Ads appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Thursday, March 2nd, 2023
TikTok faces further setbacks as the US House Foreign Affairs Committee grants President Joe Biden authority to prohibit the Chinese-owned app, depending on his evaluation of the situation, amidst ongoing security concerns regarding its possible links to the CCP.
The US government has already declared a complete prohibition of TikTok on all government-owned gadgets, following comparable measures in more than 30 American states. Likewise, European and Canadian authorities have enforced a similar ban on official devices, as tensions between China and Western nations persist, partly due to the Ukraine conflict.
What TikTok says. TikTok responded with this comment on Twitter.
Not so fast. Although today’s declaration is not a complete endorsement for Biden to enforce a ban on the app, it signifies that the US Senate’s approval is still necessary before such a move can be executed. Nonetheless, it is another stride towards the impending phase, which seems more likely to result in a TikTok prohibition or at the very least, a substantial shift in direction for the app.
In 2020, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning TikTok from the US, citing an investigation in 2019 over national security concerns. TikTok’s response: the order was issued without any due process.
Why we care. A TikTok ban would eliminate a significant platform for brands and digital marketers alike. TikTok has emerged as a popular social media platform, particularly among younger demographics, with over one billion active users worldwide. It has become a go-to platform for influencer marketing and creative advertising campaigns, which have proven successful for brands.
If the app were to be banned, advertisers would lose access to this large and engaged audience, which could impact their reach, engagement, and overall return on investment. Advertisers would need to look for alternative platforms to promote their products and services, which may not have the same level of popularity or effectiveness as TikTok. A TikTok ban would require advertisers to rethink their digital marketing strategies and adjust their budgets accordingly.
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Thursday, March 2nd, 2023
Digital marketing talent—especially those specializing in SEO, content, email marketing, and PPC—remains in top demand. If you’re looking to advance your career, change jobs, or expand your digital marketing team, Conductor’s 2023 Digital Marketing Salary Guide has you covered.
Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download Conductor’s 2023 Digital Marketing Salary Guide & Hiring Trends Report for access to:
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Wednesday, March 1st, 2023
Google will start automatically configuring your Universal Analytics properties to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) for you. But you actually do not want to do this for many reasons.
Is your GA4 already set up? You might still be subject to “auto-migration.” Read on for more details about it and how to opt out.
Making the switch to GA4
On February 9, Google sent an email saying they will soon start configuring Google Analytics 4 for users starting in March (as early as this week).
This means that if you have a Universal Analytics (UA) property but haven’t migrated to GA4, Google will create a GA4 property for you based on many of the settings you have in UA, such as your goals, audiences, Ads links, users, and more.
But what is Google’s definition of “haven’t migrated”?
Scenario 1: You have a UA property and have not set up a GA4 property. The UA property is not opted out of the auto-migration setting.
This will be a common scenario for people who haven’t had the time or don’t want to set up GA4. This is essentially the “long tail” of customers Google wants to keep on GA.
If you just didn’t have the time or desire to do the migration, perhaps this isn’t a bad option for you. But be aware that your data may look quite different. (More details on how the migration works below.)
Scenario 2: You have created a GA4 property but haven’t linked it to a UA property. Google doesn’t know it’s the same as your UA property and doesn’t consider this migrated.
Have you seen this popup modal in GA4? Likely yes, because it pops up every time you log in or refresh.
What does linking do? It tells Google that you have created a GA4 property tied to a UA property.
Will that stop Google from automigrating you?
Not necessarily.
That will depend on how much of the GA4 setup assistant you have completed (more on that in a moment).
Scenario 3: You have created a GA4 property and linked it to a UA property but haven’t completed all GA4 Setup Assistant steps.
If you’re not opted out of migration in UA, then Google will start filling in the gaps for you in this scenario.
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<input type=”hidden” name=”utmCampaign” value=”“>
<input type=”hidden” name=”utmSource” value=”“>
<input type=”hidden” name=”utmContent” value=”“>
<input type=”hidden” name=”pageLink” value=”“>
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Using the GA4 Setup Assistant
The GA4 Setup Assistant is a 12-step tool that helps you track your GA4 migration progress.
It has some pretty useful tools included, such as help with audience migration and a more straightforward process for Google Ads linking.
Ads linking
Generally, you must have dual admin access, meaning you must be an admin on both the Analytics and Ads accounts to link. It can be frustrating and time-consuming to ensure you have the right access levels.
The setup assistant tool references the links you have in UA and does not require admin access to Ads to link. This is great if you are having someone not typically involved in Ads helping you migrate, such as a contractor or agency.
Once you click Import from Universal Analytics, a new screen shows you all of the Ads links you have set up in UA.
You can check or uncheck the boxes for what you want to import to GA4 and then hit Import selected Ads links. It’s as easy as that.
Conversions
The tool will reference your conversions in UA and check if they are eligible (i.e., event or destination goals) for migration to GA4.
Goals using other goal types or regex are not currently eligible for migration, but maybe in the future.
This migration screen is similar to the Ads linking screen. Check the eligible goals you want to migrate to GA4 conversions. Ineligible goals will be grayed out.
You have the option to change the name of the conversion. I recommend leaving it in the underscore format.
Users
This one isn’t as flashy, but if you have a lot of users with access to your UA property that you want to copy to GA4, it may be the most helpful tool.
When you select Import from Universal Analytics, it will send you to a help center article detailing the process.
You will need to use a Google Sheets Add-on tool for this. It sounds like work, but it’s quite quick and painless. The help center article gives great step-by-step instructions on how to use it.
Why some users might want to opt out
Back to the warnings I have in store for you…
Let’s say you fall into Scenario 3 (that is, you have created a GA4 property and linked it to a UA property but haven’t completed all GA4 Setup Assistant steps).
Whatever you have not marked as complete in the GA4 Setup Assistant tool will be done for you.
This is where, in my opinion, things can get pretty sketchy fast.
Yes, I just told you the Setup Assistant has some useful tools. But they are helpful because you can control the migration yourself.
For all 12 steps in the Setup Assistant, you must mark them Complete even if you have not done them – unless you want Google to do it.
This is especially important for these seven steps:
- Turning on Google Signals.
- Setting up Conversions.
- Defining Audiences.
- Managing Users.
- Linking to Google Ads.
- Bidding to GA4 conversions.
- Targeting ads to GA4 audiences.
Let’s break a few of these down:
Linking to Google Signals
Google Signals is required for remarketing/retargeting with Google products. But some countries may have legal implications or restrictions, so I’d suggest checking with your legal team to be sure.
Managing Users
I just said how much I like this feature. But with great power comes great responsibility. You should check the access being granted, as there may be users you do not want to migrate. If you let Google do it, they’ll migrate everyone from UA.
Bidding to GA4 conversions
This is where the real danger begins. If you let Google migrate your conversions for you, and you haven’t checked them, you’re taking their word that you are still considering the actions from UA that they could migrate to be important.
Then, if you let Google bid to those conversions in Ads, they are changing the goals from UA to GA4 conversions that you are spending real money against.
If you didn’t set up those conversions, you risk an automated process spending your money in a way you may not want or that is not optimized toward your current goals.
Targeting Ads to GA4 Conversions
Same concerns as above. You would have Google migrate audiences for you, hoping they are good enough, and then bid toward them with your money. Your oversight is taken out of the process.
So what will migration look like?
For some things, like conversions, they may append a UA_ to the name of the conversion in GA4 to indicate that it came from UA. Other things may not have any indication of where they came from.
Convinced? Here’s how to opt out
So are you convinced yet that you should opt out of automigration? Here’s how.
In your Universal Analytics account, go to Admin > Property column > GA4 Setup Assistant.
Scroll to the bottom and toggle off the switch for “Automatically set up a basic GA4 property.”
Opting out will prevent the UA property from being migrated.
If you don’t opt out but are linked (that popup modal we keep getting), then you will need to Mark as complete all 12 steps (or whatever you don’t want automigrated) in the Setup Assistant in your GA4 property.
If you do not opt out or do not mark all as complete, Google might migrate some or all of your UA property to a GA4 property starting as early as this week.
The more complicated your UA property, the later it will be migrated since they’ll likely start with simpler properties.
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Wednesday, March 1st, 2023
Research has shown time and time again that existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products of yours and spend 31% more with you when compared to new customers. So how are you fostering these relationships and delivering repeatable and measurable revenue?
In this session, marketing experts will share how you can build customer relationships that not only scale but drive revenue for 2023 and beyond.
Register today for “3 Ways to Strengthen Customer Relationships and Drive Revenue,” presented by Sendoso.
Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.
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Wednesday, March 1st, 2023
In today’s digital age, video games have become a massive industry with millions of players worldwide. As the industry continues to grow, so does the competition among game developers and publishers to attract more players. As we have discussed, one way they achieve this is through advertising. However, measuring the success of video game ads can be a challenge.
This is the fifth article in our series on why video game advertising is a huge opportunity for brands in 2023. Here, we’ll discuss how to measure success with video game ads.
Different video game ad types
Before delving into the metrics used to measure the success of video game ads, it’s important to understand the different types of ads used in the industry. There are several types of video game ads, including:
Pre-roll Ads – These are ads that appear before a player begins playing a game. They can be skippable or non-skippable and are typically 15-30 seconds long.
In-Game Ads – These ads appear within the game itself and can take various forms, such as billboards, product placement, or branded items within the game.
Mobile Ads – These ads appear within mobile games and can be banner ads, interstitial ads, or rewarded video ads.
Measuring success
Now that we’ve discussed the types of video game ads let’s move on to measuring success.
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times an ad is displayed to potential viewers. Measuring impressions can give you an idea of the reach of your video game ad campaign. If you’re looking to maximize the exposure of your ad, then measuring impressions is essential. This metric is particularly useful for pre-roll and mobile ads.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate (CTR) measures the number of clicks an ad receives divided by the number of impressions. CTR is a good indication of how engaging your video game ad is. If your CTR is low, it might be time to rethink your ad creative. CTR is an important metric for all types of video game ads.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate measures the percentage of users who clicked on an ad and then went on to perform a desired action, such as downloading a game or making an in-game purchase. Conversion rate is an important metric for in-game ads and mobile ads. A high conversion rate means that your video game ad is effectively driving users to take the desired action.
Cost Per Click (CPC)
Cost per click (CPC) measures the cost of each click on an ad. This metric is particularly useful for mobile ads, as it can give you an idea of how much it costs to drive users to take a specific action, such as downloading a game. CPC is an important metric for video game ads because it allows you to track your ad spend and ensure that you’re getting a good return on investment.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
Return on ad spend (ROAS) measures the revenue generated from an ad campaign divided by the cost of the campaign. ROAS is a good indication of how profitable your video game ad campaign is. If your ROAS is low, it might be time to rethink your ad creative or targeting. ROAS is an important metric for all types of video game ads.
Engagement Rate
Engagement rate measures the number of interactions an ad receives divided by the number of impressions. Interactions can include actions such as likes, shares, and comments. Engagement rate is a good indication of how well your video game ad is resonating with viewers. A high engagement rate means that your ad is generating interest and sparking conversation.
View-through Rate (VTR)
View-through rate (VTR) measures the percentage of viewers who watched an ad in its entirety. VTR is particularly useful for pre-roll ads, as it can give you an idea of how engaging your video game ad is. A high VTR means that viewers are interested in your ad and are more likely to take action. VTR is an important metric for all types of video game ads.
Brand Lift
Brand lift measures the impact of an ad on brand awareness and perception. It’s important to measure brand lift for video game ads, as it can give you an idea of how well your ad is resonating with your target audience. Brand lift can be measured through surveys, focus groups, or other market research methods.
Play Rate
Play rate measures the percentage of viewers who interacted with an in-game ad by clicking on it or engaging with it in some way. Play rate is an important metric for in-game ads, as it can give you an idea of how effective your ad is at engaging players within the game. A high play rate means that your ad is generating interest and sparking interaction.
Completion Rate
Completion rate measures the percentage of viewers who watched an entire video ad. Completion rate is important for pre-roll ads, as it can give you an idea of how engaging your ad is. A high completion rate means that viewers are interested in your ad and are more likely to take action.
Why should brands try video game ads?
Brands should try video game ads for several reasons. Firstly, the video game industry is one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative industries in the world. According to a report by Newzoo, the global video game market is expected to generate over $200 billion in revenue by 2023. This means that video game ads have the potential to reach a massive and engaged audience.
Secondly, video games have a diverse and loyal fan base that is receptive to advertising. A study by Nielsen found that gamers are more likely to purchase products advertised within a game. In fact, 44% of gamers said that they have purchased a product as a result of an in-game advertisement.
Thirdly, video game ads provide brands with a unique and interactive way to engage with their audience. In-game ads, for example, can take many forms such as branded items, product placement, or billboards within the game environment. This means that brands can integrate their products or services into the game world and create a more immersive and memorable advertising experience for the player.
Lastly, video game ads offer brands the opportunity to target their audience with precision. Video game ads can be targeted based on a player’s demographic, behavior, and location data. This means that brands can reach the right audience at the right time, increasing the likelihood of conversion and engagement.
Score your success
Measuring the success of video game ads is essential for brands to understand the effectiveness of their ad campaigns. The different types of video game ads require different metrics to measure success, such as impressions, CTR, conversion rate, CPC, ROAS, engagement rate, VTR, brand lift, play rate, and completion rate. By tracking these metrics, brands can gain insights into how well their ad campaigns are resonating with their target audience and make necessary adjustments to improve their success.
Video game ads provide brands with a unique and interactive way to engage with their audience, and the video game industry’s growth and receptive nature of gamers towards advertising makes it a valuable addition to a brand’s marketing mix. With precise targeting options and the potential for high engagement rates, video game ads offer brands a promising opportunity to reach a large and engaged audience. By measuring the success of video game ads, brands can continue to improve and optimize their ad campaigns to achieve their desired outcomes and goals.
ICYMI, don’t forget to check out the other articles in our series on why brands should be creating video game ad campaigns in 2023.
The post Level up your video game ad strategy: A guide to measuring success appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Wednesday, March 1st, 2023
Google Analytics 4 offers a robust, event-based approach to tracking website activity.
However, the deprecation of Universal Analytics has forced many marketers to relearn their favorite analytics platform, using a dramatically different interface and walking through a new setup process.
Event and conversion setup also comes with a higher learning curve.
Thankfully, Google Tag Manager (GTM) can ease the process of setting up GA4 on your site and reduce the dependency on needing to customize code.
This article will show you how to deploy the basic GA4 tracking code through GTM, along with how to create custom events for more comprehensive data.
How to set up the main GA4 code
The gtag.js tag is the basic tracking code you need to place on your site. Once you fire this for all pages, you’ll start recording all the default data GA4 tracks for website visitors.
GTM makes setting up this tag as simple as a few clicks and pasting in an account ID.
Note: If you already have a Universal Analytics tag (analytics.js) firing on your site, you can keep it active alongside GA4. However, per Google, Universal Analytics will stop recording data on July 1, 2023 (GA360 properties will record through July 1, 2024). Data will be accessible for at least six months after this point.
Step 1
To start setting up your GA4 tag, navigate to your desired account and container within GTM and select “Add a new tag.”
Step 2
Now, click on “Tag Configuration” to see the options for various types of tags. Select Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration.
Step 3
You’ll see a field to enter your Measurement ID. Find your Measurement ID in your account, and paste it here.
Once you’ve saved this tag, you’ll be able to select it from a dropdown in the future when setting up GA4 events instead of having to manually hunt for the ID each time.
For most users, you’ll want to leave the box checked to “Send a page view event when this configuration loads.” This will ensure that each time a user visits a new page, a pageview is tracked on GA4’s end.
There may be some more advanced instances where you don’t want to fire a pageview. (For instance, if you’re using a tag to set properties for a logged-in user or a customer completing a transaction without the page URL changing.)
Step 4
Click within the “Triggering” box to choose where you want the tag to fire on your site. In most cases, you’ll likely want GA4 to fire on all pages.
However, depending on your setup, you may want to exclude certain pages, such as private login sections.
You can create rules based on URL paths, clicks on specific page elements, and more to customize exactly where the tag fires.
Step 5
Save your tag and publish your GTM container to push it live. You should now see GA4 firing on your site.
To double-check that you’re actually tracking sessions, check the Realtime section of Google Analytics. You should see your own visit reflected here soon after hitting the site.
With the basic gtag.js tag in place, you can set up additional customization, such as adding events.
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<input type=”hidden” name=”utmSource” value=”“>
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Setting up event tracking for GA4 in Google Tag Manager
Building off of its core focus on event-based measurement, GA4 comes with built-in event tracking for a few site interactions that previously required custom setup in Universal Analytics.
Directly within the GA4 interface, you can enable Enhanced Measurement to fire events for scroll activity, outbound clicks, file downloads, and video views.
However, note that there are still limitations to these events compared to more advanced tracking options you can set up through GTM.
For instance, the scroll tracking option simply triggers a “scroll” event once the user reaches the bottom of the page (measured at the 90% point). By default, you won’t be able to track when the user starts to scroll to earlier points of the page.
However, using GTM, you can fire events with specific parameters for different scroll thresholds on the page (such as 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%) for a more comprehensive analysis.
The beauty of GTM lies in the ability to easily fire events for a vast array of actions that users could take on the site.
We’ll use scroll tracking as an example event setup here, but note that you can use the GA4 Event tag to create events for any triggers available in GTM.
Step 1
To start, create a new tag with a Tag Type of “Google Analytics: GA4 Event.” Choose your GA4 ID under “Configuration Tag.”
Step 2
Next, enter the Event Name that you’d like to appear within the Google Analytics interface. In this case, we’re using “scroll” to align with the existing “scroll” event that GA4 tracks.
Step 3
Click on the Event Parameters section to expand it. Here, we can add a custom parameter to send further details about the event to Google Analytics.
In this case, we’ll send through percentage values for when people scroll to specific points on a page.
Step 4
We’ll use “scroll_depth” for the Parameter Name.
Next, the value will be {{Scroll Depth Threshold}}, a variable within GTM that will pull in the scroll percentages as people interact with the page and data is sent back in.
Step 5
We’ll need to create a trigger to determine the values we want to track. Click in the bottom Triggers section to start a new trigger, and select Scroll Depth Trigger.
You can then choose vertical or horizontal scroll depth and select between tracking based on percentages or pixel depth.
With the variety of screen sizes people may be browsing from, the percentage option is likely your best bet here. Add the numbers for the scroll points you want to track, separated by commas.
Step 6
Save the trigger, save your tag, and publish it live.
You should now see more detailed scroll data populate when you look at the Events section in Analytics.
You can use the same basic model presented above to fire additional events into Google Analytics.
Either pull from default GA4 events or create custom event names. Add parameters to include additional details and variable data points.
Setting up GA4 and GTM is easier than you think
Start setting up GA4 with GTM now. As GA4 has entered the mainstream, getting a properly configured property up and running is crucial for any business looking to track performance online.
GTM provides the simplest way to deploy a GA4 setup that’s also easily customizable. If you have GA4 active, think through the actions you’d like to track on your site and set up events for those.
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Tuesday, February 28th, 2023
Microsoft Bing will upgrade Bing Webmaster Tools to add reporting and tools around the new Bing Chat feature and a new index coverage report. This was announced by Fabrice Canel, Principal Product Manager at Microsoft Bing, this morning in a keynote given at PubCon Austin.
Bing Chat in Webmaster Tools. Bing Webmaster Tools should be adding Bing chat integration to allow publishers, content creators and site owners to see how much traffic the chat feature is sending their sites. It will be part of the Bing performance report and show impressions, clicks, click through rate and more.
Here is a photo of this report from Jennifer Slegg on Twitter:
Index coverage report. In addition, Fabrice also announced a new index coverage report coming to Bing Webmaster Tools. This report will show how your pages on your site are being indexed by Bing Search. If pages are being excluded or if pages are having issues being indexed.
Here is a photo of this report from Patrick Stox on Twitter:
Why we care. With all the concern, confusion and stress around these new chat AI features, having a report that shows how many people see our links, click on our links and visit our sites will be helpful to publishers, content creators and site owners. In addition, the new index coverage report can help site owners understand which pages are not being indexed, so they can work on improving indexing through IndexNow, sitemaps or other means.
The post Bing Webmaster Tools to gain Bing Chat and index coverage reporting appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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