Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Monday, March 25th, 2024
When it comes to local SEO, it’s more important than ever that you optimize your on-site and off-site SEO strategies for clients and customers searching for your local business.
Local competition is hotter than ever, and if you’re not on top of your rankings, you can bet your competitors are.
Here are six local SEO tactics you can use to help your business rank higher for local search terms.
1. Title and description tags still matter
Title and description tags are HTML elements that you can customize to reflect the content of your webpages. The text of your title and description tags is displayed in search results.
Think of this text as a “mini-ad” that you need to craft carefully.
Your title and description are your one shot at grabbing a searcher’s attention and getting them to click on your link in the search results to go to your website – so put careful thought into what you put in these areas on your web pages.
If your title and description tags are missing or Google thinks they’re not good enough, Google often makes something up or “rewrites” them. (And often what Google creates can be less than compelling.)
Both should describe the content of the page and should include keywords so they stand out on the search engine result pages.
The generally acceptable length for title tags is approximately 50 to 60 characters, and description tags can be approximately 160 to 200 characters. Take advantage of this space and use it wisely.
Speak to your audience in these areas. What will stand out to them? What will make them want to click on your link versus all the other links on the page? These are important questions to ask yourself when writing title and description tags.
If you aren’t sure how your title and meta description tags will look or how many characters you can get away with, try using an emulator like Yoast’s SEO Plugin for WordPress, where you can see what your title and description will look like on both a mobile device and desktop:
Writing titles and descriptions is considered an art in the SEO world.
In a sea of competing search results, if this text isn’t unique, compelling and descriptive, your click-through rate will suffer (which can hurt your rankings).
Additionally, too many words or characters could cut off your text with ellipses (…).
Now, this may not be a true tragedy. Some SEOs even encourage you to go over the recommended max character count. But I think this looks unprofessional, especially when it appears in the middle of a sentence, cutting off your thoughts mid-sentence.
The lesson? This space is precious, and every character counts. Here are some tips:
- Never waste space on page names or words that don’t provide helpful information to the searcher about what your webpage – or business – is about.
- If you want to stand out to local customers, include the name of the city your business is in and/or the area your business serves (e.g., “Serving Iowa City and Cedar Rapids”).
- Focus on using one targeted keyword and carefully place that keyword as close to the beginning of the tag as possible.
Remember, if your business shows up in the search results, you have one shot at getting that person to click on your link. Your title and description are the determining factor.
Don’t blow it by wasting characters that won’t help convince a searcher your site is worth visiting.
2. Google Business Profile: Claim and optimize
Google Business Profile (GBP) is one of the best local SEO strategies for local businesses that meet with customers face to face.
If your business qualifies for a GBP listing, you need to claim and optimize your Google Business Profile. (It’s one of the best ways to get your company to rank high on Google!)
Google Business Profile is free, and your business can get incredible exposure if you’re optimized enough to show up in Google’s local three-pack:
To claim your Google Business Profile listing, visit google.com/business. There’s a claiming and verification process you’ll need to go through.
This verification process is necessary because Google wants to confirm that your business is a legitimate, real company. The business owner should claim the GBP listing.
If you’re working with a digital marketing agency on your SEO efforts, you can grant them permission to be a manager of your Business Profile later. This way, you – as the owner of the business – remain in control of your profile if you end your relationship with the agency.
The next step is to optimize – and continue to improve – your GBP listing by:
- Selecting categories.
- Adding business hours.
- Writing a solid description.
- Uploading photos and videos.
- Creating posts/updates.
- Answering questions potential customers ask.
- Include any products or services you sell.
- Replying to reviews you receive.
- And more!
Google Business Profiles/Knowledge Panels are full of information about your business, so make sure you fully populate every relevant section to complete your Google Business Profile.
3. Online reviews matter
Up to 84% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, according to BrightLocal’s 2023 Local Consumer Review Survey.
Online reviews are like gold to a business – especially when they are 5-star reviews. Generally, you want at least 10 5-star reviews on your Google Business Profile. But your goal is not to stop there.
You want to continually ask your happy customers to leave GBP reviews. Why? Online reviews are a known ranking factor – so getting great reviews should be one of your top priorities!
“High-quality, positive reviews from your customers can improve your business visibility and increase the likelihood that a shopper will visit your location,” Google states.
Two places where you should focus on getting reviews are your Google Business Profile and your Facebook page. These are big ones.
Many people turn to social media to see what their friends and family think about a business, so having good feedback on your business’ Facebook page can help draw prospective customers.
Third-party reviews can even show up on your Google Business Profile.
Whenever a review is left about your business, positive or negative, be sure to respond to it. That shows other people reading the reviews that you, the business owner, care what your customers think.
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4. Build out separate service pages
If you run a service-based business, one of the best things you can do is build out individual pages for each service you offer instead of just putting a list of your services on one page.
Creating service pages allows you to optimize for the location you’re targeting and for keywords associated with the specific service you offer in a much more targeted way.
Instead of a line list or only having a short paragraph on a “Services” page, you have an entire page to talk about each service that you offer, which means you have much more room for content and ways to optimize the text to serve your readers and Google (for SEO purposes).
So spend some time creating individual pages for each service you offer – even if you only have time to create the pages one at a time. It will be worth it in the end. I promise!
5. Online directories and citations
You must get your business listed correctly and consistently on top online business directories (a.k.a. citations) like Yelp, Facebook, Merchant Circle, Citysearch, etc.
Why? Because online directories often show high organic search results.
If your business isn’t listed on these directories, when a potential customer clicks on those links in search results, they won’t find your company’s information.
You will also want to try and find high-quality local directories to get your business listed.
Check with your local newspaper’s website and your Chamber of Commerce to see if they have a local business directory you can get listed on.
You can also search for keywords like “[your city] directory” to find other local citation sites or directories.
It’s also essential to get your business’s name, address and phone number (NAP) on the major citation data aggregators like Foursquare, Data Axle and Neustar Localeze.
Data aggregators distribute your company’s information to hundreds of other online directories.
Always ensure your company’s NAP is consistent on as many of these directories and citation sites as possible.
6. Get social
If you’ve been avoiding social media until now, it’s time to get social! Google Business Profiles now allow you to add social media links to your Business Profile.
You can add one social media profile for each of the following platforms:
- Facebook
- X
- Instagram
- TikTok
- Pinterest
- LinkedIn
- YouTube
To make things even more interesting, Google recently started showing actual social media posts on Google Business Profiles! (Note: This is a brand-new feature that may not be available in your Business Profile yet.)
Having social media posts on your GBP listing helps build engagement on your Business Profile listing – and Google loves engagement!
These six local SEO strategies are just the tip of the iceberg regarding local SEO. Implementing the six local search tactics above will give you a head start on your competition. Get started today!
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, March 25th, 2024
Instagram updated how hashtags work for discovery. Now, when users tap on a hashtag, they’re directed to broader search results, including profiles, instead of just a “Top Posts” feed.
The platform announced this change was rolled out to encourage users to explore different parts of the platform, not just posts.
Why we care. This update represents as opportunity to get your brand’s account discovered by high-value consumers.
Action needed. Ensure you tag your target keywords in both your profile and posts to boost the visibility of your brand’s account in the Explore overview. While profiles in hashtag searches may not always include the hashtag in every post, they typically have the word in their profile name or description.
What Instagram is saying. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said on Threads:
- “We’re simplifying the hashtag and search experiences on Instagram to make it easier to see everything in one place.”
- “Now, when you tap on a hashtag, you’ll see the search results for that hashtag. You will still be able to follow/unfollow or report specific hashtags.”
- “Hope this makes it easier to find accounts and posts that are relevant to your search.”
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, March 25th, 2024
Prior to launching any PPC campaign, you must benchmark your competitors. This vital step will help you identify strategic best practices and set your account apart – which can improve performance dramatically.
On a more tactical level, benchmarking allows you to:
- Gather audience insights to better allocate budget.
- Assess ad quality and relevance to spark higher creativity levels.
- Identify ideal customer journeys that will improve conversion rates.
- Find common ground for comparison instead of using results from generic studies.
In this article, I will explore how to benchmark PPC competitors using accurate and reliable data sources.
1. Identify your PPC competitors
While in-house marketers know direct competitors and distributors by heart, online competitors may vary from real-life competitors. In practice, this means that you can identify other competitors as follows:
- Direct competitors: They offer nearly identical products or services. They are your most obvious competitors.
- Indirect competitors: They do not offer the same products or services but target the same audience. Think sleeping app vs. mattresses. Depending on the audience, they can be harmful or a mild nuisance.
- Distributors, affiliates and comparison sites: They promote your products and your competitors’. Half competitors, half partners: you should not ignore them.
Google Ads Auction Insights report
To identify indirect competitors, I recommend you start by using Google Ads Auction Insights report. It is reliable and free (as long as you run a Search/Shopping campaign).
Select a keyword (preferably exact or phrase match type) and note competitors with high Impression Shares.
In the below table, you’ll find an example for mattresses. Notice direct, indirect and distributor competitors:
Legend:
– Direct competitors
– Indirect competitors:
– Distributors, affiliates, comparison sites
As you can see, there is quite a lot of pressure from distributors, so you may want to review your strategy based on your unit economics.
Does it even make sense to advertise on such a keyword? Or is the share of revenue given to distributors so high you’d rather compete with them for that click?
On the other hand, there’s only one indirect competitor. While it’s not obvious if their audiences are qualified (they “only” sell bed linen), you could still experiment and potentially find untapped audiences.
Organic results
While you want to focus on PPC competitors, you can always learn interesting bits and pieces from competitors who do not face you in terms of PPC results. So, I recommend you scan Google’s top organic results for the same keyword.
To do so, you can either Google that directly or use a dedicated tool such as Ahrefs or Semrush.
Ahrefs result for mattresses in the U.S., March 2024.
At this step, your goal is to:
- List competitors with the most prominent reach: do they have high traffic for that keyword?
- List themes (SERP copy) that don’t get much traffic.
With those two groups of competitors (and already a bunch of useful information), you can move on to the next phase: stealing their best ideas.
2. Competitors’ PPC ad analysis
While there are plenty of PPC spying tools out there (SpyFu being the most popular I believe), I recommend using 100% reliable data sources: the ad networks’ ads libraries.
Ad libraries
You could stop at Google Ads Transparency Center. But I strongly recommend using other libraries such as:
At this step, all you want is to populate a table with your competitors and all the different ad networks you can think of. This will give you a good idea of their reach, which strongly correlates with their ad budget.
Ultimately, you don’t want to compare yourself to a behemoth. That data can help show your CEO that, maybe, they should stop comparing your small company’s results to those of much bigger competitors.
Channels and audiences
Once you find a competitor on several ad networks, notice the overall audience they address on that network. Sometimes, there won’t be any difference, but if you’re lucky, you can learn best practices without spending any money.
In the below example, Welcome to the Jungle is a job search engine. Notice how LinkedIn ads are aimed at recruiting companies and YouTube ads are aimed at recruiting job candidates.
If you were to target one or the other audience, that would be quite a best practice to steal!
A Welcome to the Jungle LinkedIn Ads ad in France, March 2024. It reads: “75% of candidates value companies’ transparency culture. Improve your employer brand.”
Some of Welcome to the Jungle’s Google Ads in France, March 2024. Video ads read: “Choose the company that fits you.”
Ad formats
Next stop: ad formats. Those will provide two very interesting pieces of information: the ad channel and the ad format itself.
For example, in the screenshot below of Google Ads Transparency Center, you’ll notice Samsung advertises on Search, Display, and Shopping channels.
Some of Samsung’s Google Ads in the U.S., March 2024.
You can have a rough idea of their budget by looking at those two dimensions (ad channel and ad format). For example, producing video ads is often very costly. In the case of Welcome to the Jungle, there are tons of videos (see screenshot above).
Guess what their media budget looks like?
Comparatively speaking, Google Ads transparency center only shows text ads for Great Place to Work. While it’s not very scientific, it’s safe to say that such an ad format is cheaper to produce – which hints at a lower media budget.
Some of Great Place to Work’s Google Ads in the U.S., March 2024.
Ad copy and creative
Final ad library stop: You want to note ad copy and creative items that stand out. Those can vary a lot depending on your industry, but here’s a list to get you started:
- Unique selling propositions (USPs): Unique technology, superior service, features, etc.
- Pricing: Discounts, promo codes, sales, etc.
- Emotion: Fear of missing out (FOMO), security, etc.
- Risk-free: Money-back, free trials, warranties, etc.
- Credibility/authority: Testimonials, user reviews, expert endorsements, awards, certifications, etc.
- Urgency/scarcity: Limited-time offers, stock, countdown timers, etc.
- Brand voice: Tone, style, personality, etc.
Again, you can use ad libraries to identify top-recurring copy and creative, which likely indicate top-performing assets.
And if they test several themes, it’s a good idea to look at those ad libraries regularly. Themes that disappear are most probably low performers. You then have two options:
- If you feel you’re a better match for that claim, then experiment with it.
- If you feel you’re not better equipped to answer that need, then discard it altogether.
In the below examples, it’s interesting to note that Suunto makes a powerful claim by linking superior battery life to pioneering since 1936. This builds authority and makes Garmin’s ad copy look bland.
A Garmin Google Ads ad focusing on battery life in the U.S., March 2024.
A Suunto Google Ads ad focusing on battery life in the U.S., March 2024.
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3. Competitor customer journey analysis
Landing page types
Using Meta Ads library, you can click through to your competitors’ landing pages, using the ad’s call-to-action, as if you were on Facebook or Instagram.
For example, the below ad redirects to this landing page, which is most probably optimal: that’s the exact product page that matches the ad creative.
A Banana Republic Meta Ads and landing page in the U.S., March 2024.
Conversely, the below ad redirects to a collection page. Is that best practice? Does it depend on product families?
Categorizing competitor landing pages by type (home, collection, product, etc.), you can answer those questions easily.
A Salomon Meta Ads and landing page in the U.S., March 2024.
Landing page experience
Below are some items to note:
- Pop-ups: In the above Banana Republic example, we have not one but two pricing-related messages. Clearly, they’re discounting hard. Should you match that?
- Format: In the above Banana Republic example, the landing page is clearly a mobile-first page. Which is not the case for Salomon. Who do you think gets higher conversion rates?
- Load time: Look into PageSpeed Insights, which will provide reliable comparison metrics with your own page:
Funnel analysis
If you can, go to the end of the purchase experience (this is tougher for B2B competitors, but more often than not, you can sign up for a demo, free trial, etc., which is already very interesting).
What you want to pay special attention to are:
- Callouts: In the example below, they use FOMO and free shipping items. Notice how that ties in with the ad theme and landing page pop-ups.
- Cross-sell/upsell: Are they showcasing specific products? And could you use that to your own advantage? For example, can you bundle your products in a way that outsmarts competitors?
Landing page content analysis
On top of the above, I strongly recommend analyzing the overall content. While you could theoretically use SEO tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush, I often found that real-life ad landing pages aren’t indexed by them. It’s likely because those pages change too often and have relatively low SEO impact.
This means you need to revert to manual analysis. To do so, you can simply scan the page and identify your competitor’s unique value proposition. You should identify their market positioning (and how you can optimize your own to be distinct and appealing).
While it’s all fine and dandy to do so for a few landing pages, if you need to do that at scale or at least a dozen competitors, it quickly becomes cumbersome. If that’s the case, then I’d suggest extracting the landing page words using some sort of scraping technique.
An easy way to do so is to use the relatively new Excel’s Power Query web connector. If you’re not familiar with this, I strongly recommend Leila Gharani’s video, which does an excellent job of outlining what it is and how to use it.
Once that’s done, you can use Excel to identify top recurring keywords. If you’re unfamiliar with such techniques, you can simply use ChatGPT to come up with the right VBA.
Dig deeper: 5 tips for creating a high-converting PPC landing page
Further analysis
Looking outside of PPC landing pages will help provide additional insights you could leverage in your own campaigns. Here are some pieces of advice to go the extra mile:
- Sign up for your competitors’ newsletters and other email/loyalty programs to identify recurring themes, their sequence and frequency, etc.
- Visit their social media accounts and note their latest content theme, posting frequency, engagement levels and how they integrate with their PPC ads.
- Use Ahrefs or Semrush to analyze overall backlinks and organic results and note how they correlate with the above ad and landing page content analysis.
- Visit customer review sites (Maps, Yelp, etc.) to understand their strengths and weaknesses and leverage them in your own content.
At this point, you should be able to pinpoint your competitors’ top vocabulary, which strongly indicates what audience (and keywords) they target.
4. About competitor budget and industry benchmarks
About competitor budget
Information about your competitors’ paid media budget is proprietary to Google Ads, Meta Ads, etc., so no tool can provide reliable details about it.
And sure, you can estimate competitor budgets with the above items (ad networks, Auction Insights report, channels, ad volumes, landing pages, etc.). Still, I recommend not going too crazy on this.
Why? Because, in the end, it doesn’t matter much.
I once worked with a client in the mattress sector who spent millions every month. Recently, my agency started working with a much smaller mattress company. Do their PPC campaigns relate? Sure, to an extent, they do.
But at their core, they cater to very different demographics. And their core PPC KPIs and goals are vastly different.
Don’t get me wrong, we benchmarked much bigger mattress competitors. But we mainly came out with recommendations/insights that fitted with a smaller company.
And their budget wasn’t part of those insights because it did not matter.
Comparing yourself to industry benchmarks
Similarly, I won’t even link to industry-level cost per click or conversion rate benchmarks. If you’re really interested in those, you can easily find them on Google. Personally, I believe they’re misleading at best.
Even broken down by industry, they don’t paint an accurate picture. Worse, they can stir you in a direction you don’t want to take.
Think about it for a second: a conversion rate benchmark doesn’t mean anything if you don’t know what the conversion actually is. Are we talking about a sale? A lead? A quality visit? We don’t know. So, do you want to obsess over conversion rate? Perhaps there’s more pressing items to tackle.
Same for cost per lead types of benchmarks: what lead are we talking about? A simple email form? An MQL? An opportunity? Again, PPC benchmarks never have such granularity, so they don’t make sense.
Same for CPCs, CTRs, etc. You can have great CTRs (and low CPCs) by offering crazy discounts. But does it make your ad relevant from a business perspective? Perhaps not.
Benchmarking PPC competitors
Benchmarking PPC competitors involves comparing macro observable trends (channels, ad themes, customer journeys, etc.) among multiple competitors.
Your goals should be to identify best practices and identify blue oceans, not spend time pulling hairs over CPCs.
If you do that exercise regularly, you will be on a great path to outsmart your competitors and save budget. Have fun!
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, March 25th, 2024
The EU announced it is investigating Google over potential violations of the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
If the tech giant is found to have violated the DMA, it could face fines of up to 10% of its annual turnover and may be required to divest certain business divisions.
Meta and Apple are also currently under investigation by the EU Commission for alleged breaches of the DMA.
What is the Digital Markets Act (DMA)? The DMA is a piece of legislation introduced in 2022 designed to ensure that large online platforms, called “gatekeepers”, behave in a fair way online to create a fair and open environment for online businesses. Only six gatekeepers have obligations under the DMA:
- Alphabet (Google’s parent company).
- Apple.
- Meta.
- Amazon.
- Microsoft.
- ByteDance.
All six companies, none of which are based in the EU, were required to ensure they fully complied with DMA obligations and submit compliance reports by March 7.
DMA violation penalties. The consequences of non-compliance with the DMA includes:
- Fines: Up to 10% of the company’s total worldwide annual turnover, or up to 20% in the event of repeated infringements.
- Periodic penalty payments: Up to 5% of a company’s average daily turnover.
- Remedies: These can include behavioural and structural remedies, such as the divestiture of (parts of) a business.
Under investigation. EU antitrust boss Margrethe Vestager and industry head Thierry Breton confirmed that investigations Google is being investigated for”
- Allegedly not allowing apps to freely communicate with users and form contracts with them.
- Reportedly giving its own goods and services preference in its SERPs.
App store concerns. The Commission is investigating whether Google has broken the DMA rules regarding its app stores. According to Article 5(4) of the DMA, gatekeepers (the six companies the DMA applies to) must let app developers guide users to offers outside their app stores without any fees. The Commission is concerned that Google might not be following this rule entirely as its existing measures seem to limit developers’ freedom to advertise and promote offers. They also impose charges, which reportedly make it harder for developers to communicate and make deals directly.
Self-preferencing concerns. The Commission is also investigating Alphabet to see if Google’s search results give preference to Alphabet’s own services like Google Shopping, Google Flights, and Google Hotels over similar rival services. They’re worried that Alphabet’s actions to comply with the DMA might not ensure fair treatment for third-party services listed on Google’s search results page compared to Alphabet’s own services, as demanded by Article 6(5) of the DMA.
Why we care. Tougher data privacy policies might affect Google’s capacity to deliver personalized ads and content. This could potentially reduce the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, as they may not effectively reach the desired target audience as accurately.
Additional concerns. The EU Commission is also conducting three additional investigations into Meta and Apple for:
- Meta allegedly unfairly asking individuals to pay to stop their data from being utilized for ads.
- Apple reportedly not allowing apps to openly communicate with users and form contracts with them.
- Apple reportedly not offering users enough choice.
All five investigations are expected to be complete in approximately 12 months.
What the EU is saying. EU antitrust boss Margrethe Vestager said in a statement:
- “We suspect that the suggested solutions put forward by the three companies do not fully comply with the DMA.”
- “We will now investigate the companies’ compliance with the DMA, to ensure open and contestable digital markets in Europe.”
Industry head Thierry Breton added:
- “We have been in discussions with gatekeepers for months to help them adapt, and we can already see changes happening on the market. But we are not convinced that the solutions by Alphabet, Apple and Meta respect their obligations for a fairer and more open digital space for European citizens and businesses.”
- “Should our investigation conclude that there is lack of full compliance with the DMA, gatekeepers could face heavy fines.”
What Google is saying. Oliver Bethell, a competition executive at Google, said in a statement:
- “To comply with the Digital Markets Act, we have made significant changes to the way our services operate in Europe.”
- “We have engaged with the European Commission, stakeholders and third parties in dozens of events over the past year to receive and respond to feedback, and to balance conflicting needs within the ecosystem. We will continue to defend our approach in the coming months.”
What Meta is saying. Meta said in a statement:
- “Meta said: “Subscriptions as an alternative to advertising are a well-established business model across many industries . . . We will continue to engage constructively with the Commission.”
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Deep dive. Read the European Commission’s announcement in full for more information.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Saturday, March 23rd, 2024
You should expect to see “some erosion of current traffic levels” from brand-related terms as a result of Google’s Search Generative Experience, according to a new Authoritas analysis.
Why we care. Google just today announced it is rolling out SGE to users who aren’t opted into Search Labs, under the name of AI overviews. We’re still in the dark about how large of an impact the AI-generated answers will have on organic traffic. And, as Authoritas put it in their analysis:
- “These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”
Google SGE displayed for 91.4% of all search queries. Only 8.6% of keywords in this analysis did not have an AI-generated response.
Image source: Authoritas
Quora doing well in SGE. Question-and-answer site Quora finished “in the top 20 performing generative domains in 11 of 15 categories,” according to Authoritas.
Wikipedia was another winner, appearing in the top 20 for every category – including being the top or second-best performing domain in 11 of the categories examined.
SGE links. On average:
- 10.75 links appeared in SGE answers.
- 4.3 unique domains were featured per answer.
- 62% of generative links came from sources outside the top 10 ranking organic domains.
- 20.1% of generative URLs directly matched a page 1 organic URL and 17.9% showed a different URL from the same organic ranking domain.
PPC ads. Just over 50% of keywords had paid search ads. Those ads appear above SGE 51% of the time and beneath 49% of the time, on average. Here’s a chart showing a more nuanced breakdown by industry:
Shopping Ads, meanwhile, appear below SGE 64% of the time, on average.
About the Analysis. It looked at 2,900 keywords for 251 prominent U.S. brands across 15 industry verticals. You can read it here: SGE Research Study – The Impact of Google Search Generative Experience on Brand and Product Terms
Dig deeper:
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Saturday, March 23rd, 2024
TikTok published a new guide offering best practices for lead generation on the platform.
The comprehensive 25-page document, which was released in partnership with Hubspot, provides actionable tips on:
- Lead generation forms.
- Hooks.
- Messaging.
- Calls to action.
Why we care. Even if feel confident in your lead generation abilities, this document could shed light on areas you may have overlooked. Additionally, receiving best practice guidance about TikTok directly from TikTok is clearly more reliable and trustworthy than other sources.
Lead gen forms. TikTok provides a variety of tips for boosting lead generation through forms on your website or app, such as:
- Visual help: TikTok suggests adding a logo, header image, and footer image to showcase your business and products and/or services more effectively.
- Be conscious of number of questions: If youʼre looking to generate more lead volume, set a maximum of 6 questions.
- Use logic settings and custom questions: With the advanced form, use logic settings to switch up questions based on how someone responded to the first question
- Link to your privacy policy: Link to your privacy policy in your form to guarantee users that any personal information collected is secure and in accordance with local laws.
- Include a review screen: This could potentially help with higher intent.
- Don’t forget to say thank you: Include a thank you message and specify what the next steps are and how/when you’ll get back to them.
Hooks. Educational videos covering finance, real estate, and career services are highly effective, according to TikTok. So the platform recommends starting by highlighting your product or service’s benefits to attract viewers. Showcase how it can enhance their lives and solve their problems, offering a glimpse into an aspirational lifestyle. By proactively addressing viewers’ challenges, TikTok claim you will engage them and increase their likelihood of purchasing your offering.
Messaging. After hooking your audience, TikTok suggests establishing trust by delivering your main message clearly and memorably. This section should encapsulate your product or service’s selling points, core narrative, and key highlights. Build credibility by emphasizing the value and benefits of your brand, compelling viewers to become interested in your offering.
Calls to action. TikTok advises concluding with a clear and compelling Call to Action, urging viewers to take the next step. Wrap up with memorable closing remarks delivered through text, voice-over, or graphics, leaving a lasting impression on your audience.
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Deep dive. Download TikTok’s lead generation playbook for more information. In order to access this document, you will be required to share some first-party data.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Saturday, March 23rd, 2024
Google released a dedicated guide for developers called the Performance Max developer guide.
The document is aimed at helping developers access the necessary information to build PMax integrations more easily.
Why we care. For developers working on PMax integration, this guide consolidates all necessary information into one convenient location.
Additional improvements. Google Ads also announced several other improvements, including:
- A new guide called “Structure Requests”, which provides detailed insights into the complexities of creating and updating PMax campaigns through requests.
- Updating the developer documentation so that it now more clearly identifies and renames business goals for easier navigation and understanding:
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Deep dive. Read Google’s announcement in full for more information.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Saturday, March 23rd, 2024
Bing Deep Search, an optional generative AI feature meant to help searchers with complex questions that don’t have simple answers, is now fully live for all users. Microsoft announced today that all users can now access Deep Search within Bing Search by clicking on the Deep Search button at the top of the search results page.
Bing Deep Search was originally announced in December 2023 as a search engine that goes deeper on your queries using Bing’s index and GPT-4 to give you more tailored and deeper search results. We then saw it go live briefly in early February, only to be taken down for more testing. It seemed to go live again early this month and now Microsoft is officially announcing its launch.
What is new. Jordi Ribas from Microsoft announced, “Deep search is now available. It uses our existing Bing index and leverages GPT-4 to expand and enhance your query, and determine possible intents. In this example, if your intent is the document camera, then you’d select the top option and get a full page of enhanced results.”
Here is his post:
Deep search is now available. It uses our existing Bing index and leverages GPT-4 to expand and enhance your query, and determine possible intents. In this example, if your intent is the document camera, then you’d select the top option and get a full page of enhanced results. pic.twitter.com/ZSdAVTcjoK
— Jordi Ribas (@JordiRib1) March 22, 2024
Michael Schechter from Microsoft said it is now live for “all users” compared to it going live last time we covered it.
How it works. Deep Search is built on top of Bing’s web index and ranking system. It then uses GPT-4 to discern all the possible intents and variations behind the query and compute descriptions for each of them to create an “ideal set of results.”
After using a combination of querying techniques, Deep Search will surface results that typically wouldn’t appear in Search results.
Deep Search results ranking. The biggest factor is how well a page matches Bing’s expanded description. A few other relevance and quality factors mentioned were:
- How well the topic matches.
- Whether it has an “appropriate level of detail.”
- Whether the source is credible and trustworthy.
- Freshness.
- How popular the page is.
It is slow, very slow. Deep Search won’t load as quickly as regular search results. It may take Deep Search up to 30 seconds to complete, Microsoft said. This makes the feature sound dead on arrival – as most searchers likely won’t have that much patience.
It does seem faster to run and a lot less buggy than what I saw in early February.
Why we care. This is another variation of using AI for search results. These search results seem like they would drive more clicks than Bing Chat or Google Bard and even Google SGE. But time will tell.
Give it a try, see if you like it and if you find the results fast enough to be useful.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Thursday, March 21st, 2024
Marketers can’t call Google’s bluff anymore. The company finally removed cookies for 1% of Chrome users (or around 30 million people) back in January. And as the conversation around PAIR, Google’s new identity solution that allows publishers and advertisers to match first-party data to deliver personalized ads, gathers more and more momentum each day, there’s one thing we can be sure about — when it comes to the deprecation of cookies, this time, it’s for real.
With Google continually pushing back the cookie deprecation deadline, advertisers didn’t expect, or prepare, for the demise of cookies to actually happen. As a result, even with the cookiepocalypse bearing down on them, most programmatic buyers still haven’t embraced cookie alternatives.
Now, advertisers are scrambling to find the solution. And it might just be that alternative data, a type of big data that ironically went mainstream for the finance industry, might also be a gamechanger for digital advertising. Alternative data is a promising solution in the chaos of the cookie crumble.
No one is ready for cookie crunch time
Identity providers are having a heyday with creating solutions to fill in the gap that cookies will inevitably leave, spawning a number of ID solutions ranging from the Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0, LiveRamp’s RampID and Google’s PAIR and Privacy Sandbox. Many publishers don’t have the budget and investment capabilities to try them all out, so they’re relying on buyers to do the work for them. One alternative ID solution is expected to eventually rise to the top.
While we wait on alternative IDs to sort themselves out, a complete reliance on first-party data still isn’t ideal, especially for smaller partners who must rely on retail media networks to provide them with that first-party data. The other methods, like contextual targeting, are beginning to fall by the wayside as advertisers continually seek the same returns provided by cookies.
While first-party data, retail media networks, and even zero-party data still have their place, the market necessitates a number of tools to work together to support a post-cookie solution. In comes alternative data! Another soon-to-be-essential in the toolbox.
What is alternative data?
Initially used in the world of investing, alternative data went mainstream in that industry as hedge funds and investment managers began employing it to gain a leg up on competitors still heavily using its counterpart, traditional data.
In finance, traditional data consists of quarterly reports, company statements and other publicly available sources of data used to make investment decisions. Alternative data came to mean anything else, and now consists of data procured through the internet, satellite imagery, credit and debit transactions, mobile app data and more.
With time, alternative data moved beyond its initial world of hedge funds into the rest of the finance industry, and eventually, also into the hands of government bodies and policymakers, not to mention credit bureaus and commercial businesses. Now, it’s entering the world of marketing as a tentative additional solution to the cookie crisis. As traditional “cookie” data goes away, alternative data, the kind that can be acquired through geolocation information, public databases and the like, becomes part of the puzzle that replaces it.
When you layer AI tools on top of alternative data and the increasing digitization of information, the capabilities of using such large swaths of internet data and other sources becomes much easier to use. Alternative data may emerge as one of the pioneering cookie alternatives and advertisers are beginning to take note.
The boom of alternative data
The decades-long use of alternative data in the financial industry is proving to be a precursor for alternative data’s use in market research and consumer insights.
With solutions like nowcasting — a portmanteau of “now” and “forecasting,” which presents nearly real-time data to power things like dynamic pricing, alternative data may increasingly present the answer — or an answer — as the cookie continues to crumble.
The global revenue for alternative data is expected to reach $137 billion by 2030, according to Deloitte. That’s 29 times the global revenue for alternative data today. While investment management is expected to drive most of this growth, advertising may increasingly make up this revenue.
Reconciling alternative data with mainstream cookie solutions
So what does alternative data really have to do with the disappearance of cookies?
While cookies may soon be gone, newer technologies, like AI and big data analytics, are only growing. The ability of machine learning to parse through alternative data and deliver valuable insights could be a game changer in the advertising industry.
As cookieless solutions evolve from a nice-to-have, to a need, alternative data is primed to not only serve as a useful tool for investors, but for advertisers.
Once cookies are gone, gone, really gone, alternative data will feel very mainstream.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Thursday, March 21st, 2024
Every year brings a ton of change in digital marketing. In each of my 10 years in the industry, I’ve noticed that the beginning of the year can mark a surge in calls for SEO and PPC to work together.
The difference in 2024? There’s an elephant in the room: AI.
Google’s organic and paid sides are both rushing to adopt AI. From Search Generative Experience (SGE) to Gemini (formerly Bard), the SERP results for both paid and organic are evolving almost daily.
This is sparking unrest for paid and organic marketers alike – and putting an even bigger emphasis on paid and organic teamwork, as I discussed in my recent presentation at the MarTech Spring Conference (registration required).
I’ve already covered the important reports SEO and PPC teams need to run (and share) to help each other succeed so I won’t go in-depth on those here. However, there are other key initiatives paid and organic teams need to incorporate into their joint 2024 strategies to help everyone navigate the early days of AI. They are:
Let’s take a look at each – and why it matters that we get them right.
1. Collaboration
Collaboration – which includes its close cousin, communication – has high stakes in 2024.
Along with the usual benefits of collaboration – shared learnings, strategic alignment, gap coverage and discovering anomalies or new patterns – SEO and PPC teams can mitigate the risks of getting siloed and tackling rapid change with different agendas.
One of the trends we’ve seen develop over the last year or so (and it’s a trend Google is pushing) is a focus on first-party perspectives.
With AI certain to crowd into the SERPs (both organic and paid) as time goes on, using E-E-A-T principles on the organic side and beefing up product reviews, testimonials and case studies to support landing pages will be important.
Trading insights between teams on what’s resonating can help keep messaging and branding fresh and cohesive.
Another component of collaboration as the SERP evolves is communication on algorithm changes.
- PPC can help cover for any organic dips when new algorithms roll out.
- SEO teams can continue to bolster PPC efforts when new competitors enter the auction – and/or when engagement costs climb past the point of viable ROI.
2. Funnel intent alignment
Now more than ever, thinking about a full-funnel strategy is crucial.
Your customers aren’t thinking about individual channels or tactics, but they will respond if they’re presented with the right messaging at the right time. Ensuring alignment at each stage of the funnel is crucial to building your marketing program in 2024.
Here’s a chart we use at my agency to make sure we’re mapping out – and covering – the full purchase journey:
Without a unified approach agreed upon by all relevant teams, you won’t have visibility into your funnel coverage.
Whatever your preferred format, you must create a touchstone that your teams can share and monitor to reduce funnel gaps or redundancies.
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3. Education and awareness of the changing SERPs
Let’s go into specifics. There are a lot of considerations in 2024:
On the paid side, we’re all intently watching the roll-out of ads in SGE because we can bet Google will figure out a way to monetize them. Since little is known about what this will look like, it’s important to:
- Stay in close touch with your SEO counterparts.
- Keep an eye on industry updates.
- Monitor click-through rates
Seeing how the ad algorithm and SGE algorithm collide and what campaign types will include it (are we all assuming it will be Performance Max?) and assessing impacts on ad inventory make SEO efforts and collaboration more critical.
As far as organic SGE, we could see an even bigger shift. No SEO can confidently say that they can optimize content for SGE because it’s even more of a black box than the traditional search algorithm.
As SGE rolls out, some brands will win and others will lose on the organic front. PPC teams need to be prepared to either pick up the slack or (in a best-case scenario) shift the budget to other initiatives where organic gains permit.
Continuing to optimize for the user and focusing on top-of-funnel content is a great place to start as we monitor SGE impacts.
4. Shared learnings off-Google
In 2024, paid and organic collaboration must expand to platforms beyond the search engines as search behavior becomes more fragmented.
Forums like Quora and Reddit are picking up steam (even in the SERPs) on the B2B side and organic social results from LinkedIn, X and beyond continue to be pulled into query results as well (and that’s not even mentioning TikTok, which a huge chunk of younger users now use as their primary search platform).
This opens collaboration opportunities beyond the search engines. Say your founder has a viral organic post on LinkedIn or your brand happens to be dominating a juicy topic on Quora.
Both present the paid team with testing options – maybe a thought leader ad on LinkedIn or a contextual campaign in Quora.
On the flip side, paid campaigns doing well targeting certain interests or placements on social platforms can inform SEO teams that they should lean in on “hidden gems” covering the same topics.
Future-proof your search marketing efforts
When change is fast and furious, it can be easy to put your head down and focus on what’s right in front of you (e.g., what you can control). But now’s the time to be a great teammate as well.
Whatever changes are ahead in 2024, your team will be stronger if the paid and organic sides of the house are on the same page about how to handle them.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
