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How communication issues prevent you from getting buy-in for SEO

Friday, October 13th, 2023

As marketing professionals, we frequently feel like we are at war with the financial decision-makers of our organizations. 

The CEO, CFO, and CRO seem like the villains keeping us away from the funds needed to do our best work.

We ask for buy-in on exciting initiatives that, we think, will exponentially improve our work’s impact, only to hear a dismissive “no.” We describe the results of our campaigns, just to be questioned about the “actual ROI”.

Worse yet, we might feel like Natalie Marcotullio, head of growth and operations at Navattic.

• “Marketing is just often seen as a cost center since we’re not directly bringing in revenue like sales or customer success,” Marcotullio said.

To find out why this happens, and whether that gut feeling is actually true, I spoke to fellow marketing practitioners as well as people who have crossed over to the other side – marketers who turned into CROs and CEOs themselves.

Here are four things I learned from those conversations:

• Marketers feel trapped and suffocated by the controlling and overbearing behavior from executives and finance teams.
• Executives do indeed doubt whether marketing departments are actually doing useful work.
• Both sides have fallen into dysfunctional and toxic communication patterns, giving up on the hope of ever finding common ground.
• Despite this lack of understanding, both marketers and executives are actually pursuing the same goals.

Let’s examine how poor communication affects buy-in for our work as SEOs, content professionals, or other marketing specialists. And, who knows, maybe we’ll discover a way to finally break out of that self-perpetuating cycle.

Why we’re afraid of executives and decision-makers

Have you failed to get budget approval for an SEO campaign recently?

If you’re anything like most marketers I talk to, that question might have caused you to shiver with dread. If you’ve been asked to prove the impact of your SEO work, whether you work in-house or as an external consultant, you have probably struggled to do so. 

You put together a slide deck with all the new keywords your website recently ranked for, added graphs showing an upward trend of impressions and clicks, and maybe even threw in some competitor analysis for that extra oomph. Then, as you talked through those undeniable results of your hard work – a terrible feeling began to creep into the back of your mind. 

Your boss or client stared at you with a skeptical glint in their eyes. They impatiently asked for you to “get to the point.” They didn’t laugh at the clever joke that you placed on Slide 7.

And then, once you finished walking them through the entire slide deck, your boss crossed their arms, sighed, and asked the most terrifying question of all:

• “So, how does any of this impact our revenue?”

*Cue the sound of shattering glass and whimpers of broken self-esteem*

Proving impact of marketing work is freaking difficult

Unlike sales or product, marketing can feel like a much more nebulous function. Getting a better SERP ranking, or even improving a website’s CTR, only indirectly connects to revenue. 

SEO can be a more difficult channel for demonstrating a clear ROI: user journeys tend to involve search either at the initial exploratory phase or at the final comparison step. 

In most cases, the first time someone clicks on our link from a search is very distant from the moment they decide to make a purchase.

• “We know today that marketing takes a lot of touchpoints (LinkedIn, email, communities, WOM) to influence prospects. It can be hard to figure out the influenced ROI of channels that had an impact, especially if they were not the first or last place where a prospect found you,” Marcotullio said.

We often can’t point to our activities and correlate them to how much money came into our organization in a particular quarter. And because we aren’t able to clearly connect those dots for decision-makers, they might end up dismissing our work as not relevant to core business functions.

• “Marketing can often be an afterthought. In many instances, it’s still seen as a creative support function to sales, not as a function that has bottom-line impacts.” said Brooke Duffy, a fractional CRO for B2B SaaS. 

Dig deeper: How to convince leadership why they can’t ignore SEO

We’re incentivized to avoid risks

Without a clear ROI, we suffer the consequences of not being trusted.

Not all executives will even give marketers the benefit of the doubt, as Duffy learned the hard way in a previous role.

• “The CEO couldn’t get past his old-school mentality of a sales-led organization, which resulted in marketing getting cut. It’s one thing to work for someone who doesn’t understand marketing, but it’s another to work for someone who doesn’t believe in it. I’ll never do that again!” Duffy said.

Key decision-makers don’t see the value in marketing, so the lack of trust spills over into individual functions.

I’ve seen content and SEO programs gutted by an insistence on avoiding any risk, repeating past tactics, and minimizing any chance of creative input. 

Ever wonder why so many results on any given SERP sound the same?

Many organizations have turned their content operations into an assembly line, pumping out predictable, stable and utterly uninspired algorithm-pleasing content.

And we do that because we have to, for fear of getting punished. 

Dig deeper: SEO is marketing

We don’t get opportunities to be creative

The content we create is so bland because often we are actively discouraged and prevented from expressing any creativity. We can’t take creative risks when those creative risks might come with an order to pack our bags.

Just look at how Kiran Shahid, a freelance B2B content writer, gets assigned work:

• “Established brands often give writers minimal room for creativity. Very rarely do I get the chance to create outlines – most of the time I get the keyword and outline and it’s a ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ approach.”

The fill-in-the-blanks strategy is frequently excused away with SEO, as we fixate on what has already ranked for a given keyword.

We turn to AI-powered content planning tools, turning a writer’s unique perspective into “another re-hashed post made to tick off keyword lists and word count goals,” as Paul Woodland once wrote on my agency’s blog.

“This is above and beyond SEO indicators” shouldn’t be the sole standard by which we measure creativity, original thought, or value delivered to our prospective customers. Yet, that’s how we justify our short-sightedness:

How well do you think this cookie-cutter approach will actually serve you now that the helpful content update has fully rolled out?

Google is going to incentivize unique, high-quality, and expert pieces. Not garbage that was Frankenstein-ed from competitor articles already ranking on SERPs.

If we want our SEO work to deliver real business impact, we must take risks.

• “There is so much noise in every channel, creativity makes sure your brand and product actually get noticed,” Marcotullio said.

Remember: making your site rank well on search is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

We increase visibility with SEO to help our businesses with overall financial objectives. And acting like everyone else won’t help us stand out from the crowd.

Dig deeper: How to use SEO education for stakeholder management

Why executives don’t trust us

But why are executives making our lives so difficult?

Marketing is an essential business function, so don’t the people leading our organizations want us to do our best work? The actions of CEOs and CFOs who question our judgment and cut our budgets can seem counter-productive, if not downright absurd!

To try and truly understand what drives the other side to act this way, I turned to one of the world’s best experts on the topic.

Mark Stouse, chairman and CEO at ProofAnalytics.ai, has interviewed more than 300 CEOs and CFOs of Fortune 1000 companies about marketing impact. And he graciously agreed to share what they said:

• “They’ve been frustrated for decades on this issue of ‘I’m spending, and whatever I’m spending on marketing – how do I know that I’m getting anything of value? How long does it take for things to pay off?’” 

And that executive frustration, after brewing for years and decades, has turned into a much more destructive emotion.

• “Disgust. That’s probably the truly accurate phrase or word to use, with the way that a lot of marketing teams actually keep their books. That they are perennially over budget, that they don’t really know how much they’re over budget until it’s too late,” Stouse said.

It’s a hard reality to face. Your CEO or CFO might feel literally disgusted with the way that you and your team have been spending your money and time. That isn’t an emotion that can be countered with even 1,000 SERP snippets. 

How did executives get so upset with us?

Well, some tension boils down to how most CFOs think, according to Stouse. When faced with someone who doesn’t know how to manage spend, a CFO might take it personally:

• “If you’re the kind of person who goes into finance, you’ll find those attributes of anyone to be kind of almost like a personal affront. It’s almost like a character flaw.”

You can be the best SEO in the world. But if your CFO figures out that you can’t put together a P&L, they might not care to give you a chance to say anything else.

So, if you want to be taken seriously, you might need to get involved more directly in the financial processes of your organization.

• “Marketing should be in forecasting, budgeting, reporting, and strategy meetings. If that occurs, then marketing needs to build trust by communicating value clearly, for the right audience, through use of data & analytics,” Duffy said.

You might already be resisting the idea. I suspect that some of you are currently thinking: “why should I bother to connect with those decision-makers if they feel disgusted by me?”

And that’s a fair question. Thankfully, one answer to it can be found in a 20-year-old business book.

How ‘crucial conversations’ can help us find a way out

Marketers and executives want the same thing. We are all working toward making our organizations more successful.

And when we can finally show how our marketing efforts contribute to business success, nobody is going to minimize that.

Once a financial model for establishing impact is put in place, everyone is happy:

• “When the analytics come back, everyone is sort of nonplussed in different ways. The finance teams are like, ‘dang, that’s better than we thought it was gonna be’. And the marketers are lightning cigars and saying, ‘yeah, we know, we just couldn’t prove it,’” Stouse said.

So how can we get to the point of setting up analytics and explaining impact, so executives are truly satisfied? 

By paying attention to “crucial conversations”.

As explained in the book “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High,” by Crucial Learning:

“A crucial conversation” is “a discussion between two or more people where (1) stakes are high, (2) opinions vary, and (3) emotions run strong.”

Unfortunately, when emotions are high, we are often on our worst behavior. We’re scared, so we try to protect ourselves from harm. But in becoming defensive, we put up walls and forget to listen to other perspectives.

The personal vs. shared pool of meaning in dialogue

Each person participating in a conversation has a “personal pool of meaning” made up of “opinions, feelings, theories, and experiences about the topic at hand.” The information available to any one person informs and influences what actions they’ll take. 

Every conversation also has what the book calls a “shared pool of meaning,” or information that is openly and explicitly shared with every participant in that conversation.

And when the reasons behind our desired behavior are allowed to develop from the shared pool of meaning, it’s a lot easier to get buy-in. As explained in the book:

“They understand why the shared solution is the best solution, and they’re committed to act.”

How dialogue breaks down

But why do conversations so frequently become unproductive? 

When we argue with executives over the importance of our SEO work, and they respond with disgust, that doesn’t feel like a great way to add to our shared pool of meaning.

Conversations break down into a dysfunctional mess with little notice. Most frequently, this happens because at least some participants no longer feel safe. And when we don’t feel safe, we would rather not be vulnerable or honest. 

“Crucial Conversations” states that when people don’t feel safe, they turn to one of two behaviors:

• Silence: When participants are withholding meaning from the shared pool.
• Violence: When participants decide to compel others, forcing their meaning into the shared pool. 

Neither of those options is particularly conducive to healthy dialogue or rebuilding trust.

You can’t discuss your budget or explain why a particular strategy was effective if the other person is already shutting down and feeling attacked!

Dig deeper: 7 proven methods to explain the value of SEO

How to establish safety before jumping into explanations of your work

Alright, so if you notice others turning to either silence or violence during an important conversation, what can you do?

Your priority should be to help re-establish safety with other conversation participants. Make them feel a little less overwhelmed, and start reflecting on what you truly want. And yes, this applies even to decision-makers and executives. No matter how much power they might hold, they are still humans.

To begin establishing trust, you should try what the book calls “starting with the heart”. Essentially, take a moment and reflect on your actions and what you truly want. Here are four questions that they suggest:

Question 1: What do I want to achieve for myself?

Is your goal to prove that your particular backlink strategy was superior, or to actually get the CEO to resonate with the principles that convinced you of that approach?

Or is your goal to prove yourself right and take out your frustration on that CEO for the times they didn’t make your life easy? 

When we get emotional, it’s easy to lose sight of what we are actually trying to accomplish and begin defending ourselves at all costs.

Question 2: What do I want others to achieve?

Are you trying to prove the CFO wrong, or are you actually aligned with their goal of spending the marketing budget in the most effective way?

Sometimes, you might think that you disagree with someone when, in reality, you share a common purpose.

Question 3: What kinds of relationships do I want with others?

Might it be worth giving up a portion of your content optimization spend to preserve trust and goodwill?

Long-term, showing that you’re capable of changing your mind and listening to the executives’ concerns might actually help you get buy-in faster.

Question 4: How would I act if I really wanted those results?

Now that you know what you want for yourself, for the executive on the other side, and for your relationship with them – what do you really want out of this particular situation?

It’s easy to bottle your concerns, fuming with coworkers, or even blame the other side directly. But will that help you achieve any of the goals that you set for yourself? 

Try to push past your anger and truly reflect on what actions you can take to achieve your desired outcomes. Perhaps you might realize that it’s worth trying to truly listen to your CEO or CFO and empathize with their frustration. As Stouse suggested:

• “Have you done anything to connect with your internal customers using their language? To help them understand your value? Or are you going to sit there with your arms crossed?” 

Yes, tensions run high. Perhaps you have been treated unfairly. But if you want that decision-maker to change their mind – perhaps try to speak their language first?

By showing that you’re willing to listen to them, you’ll make them more likely to listen to you. And speaking their language would likely include learning to read a P&L statement, as boring as they sound.

Dig deeper: How to win SEO allies and influence the brand guardians

Remember: Executives aren’t one-dimensional villains (usually)

It’s tempting to imagine the people who question our skills, interrogate us about ROI, and withhold budgets as villains.

We might picture our CEO sitting in their office, maniacally chuckling while their shadow expands behind them, just like Scar’s does in the original Lion King. But that’s not true, is it?

Deep down, you know that the executives in your organization aren’t simply one-dimensional. They aren’t out to get you because they have a personal vendetta against SEO. 

But when you come in and mention domain authority, featured snippets, or the latest core update – those executives might get lost in the sea of specialized concepts. As Duffy described it:

• “Throwing a bunch of acronyms and data points at everyone without good reason can actually seem like a smoke screen, decreasing trust.”

Remember, when people seem to get angry and act unreasonably, it’s because your communication has broken down. Stop, pause on talking about your marketing work, and focus on establishing safety.

When both you and your executives feel safe and confident that all perspectives will get heard, getting buy-in can become all that much easier.

The post How communication issues prevent you from getting buy-in for SEO appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

What is RGSP? Google’s Randomized Generalized Second-Price ad auctions explained

Friday, October 13th, 2023

The concept of randomized generalized second-price (RGSP) auctions sent shockwaves through the PPC community after the subject took center stage at the Google antitrust trial.

While some digital marketers agreed with Google that the practice provides a better user experience, others sided with the Department of Justice (DOJ), arguing that it makes ad auctions unfair and purely helps line Google’s extremely deep pockets.

But what is RGSP, why does the DOJ think it’s problematic for ad auctions and how exactly does it impact Google’s ad revenue? Here’s everything you need to know.

How does Google pick an ad auction winner?

Dr. Adam Juda, Google’s Vice President of Product Management in Search Ads Quality Systems, explained at the federal antitrust trial:

• The highest bidder doesn’t automatically win the ad auction.
• A campaign’s long-term value (LTV) is instead given more weight.
• This means Google sometimes loses out financially in the short term.

When advertisers bid on keywords, instead of determining an ad auction winner purely by bid amount, Google uses a metric called Ad Rank to decide how and if your campaign should rank. This collective score is calculated by examining:

• Bid amount
• Auction-time ad quality (including expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience)
• Ad Rank threshold
• Competitiveness of an auction
• Context of a search query
• Expected impact of assets and other ad formats

Your Ad Rank is recalculated every time time your campaign becomes eligible to compete in an auction, meaning your ad’s ranking may vary each time depending on competition, quality and search context.

Campaigns that don’t meet Google’s minimum Ad Rank threshold are automatically eliminated from the auction.

How does Ad Rank work?

Imagine five advertisers competing against each other in an ad auction with the respective Ad Rank scores of 80, 50, 30, 10 and 5. For this particular auction, Google requires a minimum Ad Rank threshold of 40 to rank above organic search results. This means that only the first two campaigns (with scores of 80 and 50) are eligible to show above organic search results.

In this instance, for an ad to be shown below organic search results, Google requires a minimum Ad Rank of 8. This mean that the campaigns with Ad Rank scores of 30 and 10 would qualify.

However, the campaign with the Ad Rank score of 5 does not meet the minimum criteria to appear above or beneath the search results and so will be eliminated from the auction, as shown in the table below:

Why doesn’t the highest bidder win?

If the highest bidder automatically won every Google ad auction, there is a risk the search engine could be left serving poor-quality ads. Poor-quality ads may not be relevant to a searcher’s query, which would likely result in a poor:

• Click-through rate.
• Conversion rate.
• User experience.

This would decrease the overall value of Google’s product.

A Google spokesperson explained in a statement:

• “Overall, higher quality ads typically lead to lower costs and more advertising success.”
• “The Google Ads system works best for everybody when the ads we show are relevant and closely match what customers are searching for.”

It is also in Google’s best interest to serve high-quality ads that satisfy user intent because advertisers only pay Google when someone clicks on your ad, visits your site or calls your business.

Issues with Ad Rank

Without RGSP, ad auctions can get “messy,” as Frederick Vallaeys, CEO of Optmyzr, explained in How out-of-order ad promotion works on Google Search here on Search Engine Land.

An ad that meets all minimum criteria required by a Google auction can sometimes still rank below an ad that fails some criteria, he wrote. Vallaeys went further by using an example of an ad auction that had a 4% threshold for predicted CTR. The details of the competing bids are listed in the table below:

In the example listed above, Ad 2 meets the threshold because its predicted CTR is 5% – 1% higher than the 4% required by Google. However, because Ad 1 has a higher Ad Rank score (30), Ad 2 would rank further down the page to maintain auction fidelity, and only be displayed when Ad 1 is allowed.

• “This is not a great scenario for advertisers or Google, so they address this by allowing ads to be shown in a different order than what ad rank would normally dictate,” Vallaeys wrote.

This “different order” refers to the concept of RGSP.

What is RGSP and how does it affect auctions?

RGSP is a practice leveraged by Google that picks the winner of an ad auction at random from the top bidders as long as their long-term values (LTVs – a Google calculation that is essentially the same as Ad rank) are close enough.

The top bidder then “pays the price of the bid equal to the next-highest bid plus one cent,” according to Big Tech on Trial.

The Department of Justice argued at the federal antitrust trial that this practice creates an unfair competition for bidding advertisers as the winner of an auction should always be the highest bidder.

Why is RGSP unfair?

Advertisers have two options if they want to avoid their potential winning bid from being demoted at random to runner-up:

• Improve their campaign’s LTV.
• Increase their bid amount.

The issue here is that Google hasn’t specified exactly how advertisers can increase their campaign’s LTV, which leaves them with one option if they wish to avoid RGSP – increase their bid amount.

To avoid RGSP, the bid amount would have to be significantly higher than the runner-up (as mentioned before, winners and runners-up can only be swapped via the RGSP process if the LTV and bid amounts are close enough). This has resulted in advertisers having to raise their bid 3.7 times higher, reports This Week In Google Antitrust.

What are the issues with RGSP?

Jay Friedman, CEO of advertising agency Goodway Group, highlighted the reasons RGSP could prove problematic for advertisers:

• “Imagine you want to buy a ticket to a concert. Not everyone who wants a ticket can get a ticket, so there is an auction. You submit your bid and it’s not a first-price auction (highest bidder wins, pays what they bid,) and not even a second-price auction (highest bidder wins, pays a nominal amount [i.e. $1] over the second-highest biddger.) Instead, the concert venue holds an RGSP – a ‘randomized general second-price auction.’”
• “Let’s say the the top two bidders submit bids of $100 and $95. In RGSP, the concert venue takes the top two bidders and, ‘as long as the long-term value of each of the bidders to the concert venue is pretty close,’ there is a chance the concert venue randomly swaps the top two bidders and awards the seat to the second highest bidder instead. Sounds like a deal if you randomly get the ticket for $95, and I guess frustrating for the highest bidder.”
• “EXCEPT – the concert venue tells you there are two ways to make sure you don’t get randomly swapped out as the highest bidder. One, increase your long-term value to the venue. They don’t tell you how to do this and note it may include your behavior, referrals, your bid amounts, bid frequency, ‘and other bidder quality elements.’ You decide that’s pretty vague. The second is to increase your bid! And, as it turns out, you’d have to increase your $100 bid to $370 to get sufficient confidence you wouldn’t be outbid.”

What has the DOJ said about RGSP?

The DOJ has argued at the federal antitrust trial that rather than resulting in higher-quality ads, RGSP is being used by Google to boost ad revenue. In putting forward its case, the department shared an email Juda sent to his team at Google acknowledging the difficulty the search engine would have in selling this practice to advertisers. It read:

• “[I]f I have to say, ‘[W]e randomly disable you if you don’t bid high enough,’ then I’m going to have another bad year at [Google Marketing Next] ;).”

There was debate at the trial as to what was implied by the use of a winking emoji in Juda’s message.

Does RGSP increase Google’s revenue?

Google vice president and general manager of ads Jerry Dischler testified at the federal antitrust trual that while he was unsure if RGSP resulted in advertisers increasing their ad auction bids, he could confirm that the practice increases Google’s ad revenue.

Dischler went on to tell the court that the search engine “frequently” changes the auctions it uses to sell search ads, increasing the cost of ads and reserve pricing by as much as 5% for the average advertiser. For some queries, the tech giant may have even raised prices by as much as 10%. However, Google tends “not to tell advertisers about pricing changes.”

The Department of Justice shared an email sent by Dischler back in 2018 to highlight the pressure his team were under to meet revenue targets given to Wall Street by Ruth Porat, Google’s Chief Financial Officer. In the documents, he claimed his team were “shaking the cushions” to increase revenue. He wrote:

• “If we don’t meet quota for the second quarter in a row and we miss the street’s expectations again, which is not what Ruth signalled to the street, so we will get punished pretty bad in the market.”
• “I care more about revenue than the average person but think we can all agree that for our teams trying to live in high cost areas another $100,000 in stock price loss will not be great for morale, not to mention the huge impact on our sales team.”

Is RGSP new?

Practices like RGSP are not new. In fact, Yahoo! gave an interview to The Register back in 2010 explaining it had been using “squashing” and second price auctions since 2007 to increase revenue. Yahoo!’s then chief economist, Preston McAfee (who now works for Google as a Distinguished Scientist) told the publication at the time:

• “When someone has a really high ad click probability, they’re very hard to beat, so it’s not a really competitive auction. So that they don’t just win [every auction], we do squashing. This makes the auction more competitive.”
• “The bidders respond by bidding higher. The one who was destined to lose is now back in the race, so they bid higher trying to displace the number one, and the number one is trying to fend them off so they bid higher too.”
• “We can make the competition a bit more fierce using squashing, even on keywords where there’s not much bidding.”

McAfee did not confirm how much squashing Yahoo! does but did say it was constantly changing and “resetting the parameters”.

What has Google said about RGSP?

Google uses RGSP to prevent a bias where one winner takes all, Juda said at the federal antitrust trial. Commenting on the practice, he told the court “we flip [the winners of auctions with runners-up], otherwise Amazon always shows up on top,” Bloomberg reported.

Another reason for selecting winners at random is so that advertisers don’t need to worry that they may be bidding too much in ad auctions, which could result in them constantly feeling the need to adjust their bid amounts, according to Google.

With RGSP, the price advertisers pay is determined by the bid amount put forward by the next highest-ranked bid. Juda described this method as “advertiser-friendly.”

How has the PPC community reacted?

The concept of RGSP appears to have divided the paid search community, with many criticizing the lack of transparency around it.

PPC specialist Vincent Norris wrote on LinkedIn:

• “So much for giving advertisers transparency, right? What does this mean for advertisers? Does ad rank even matter? I personally hope that Google will get more than a fine and a ‘slap on the wrist’ for this.”

Mike Ryan, Head of Ecommerce Insights at Smarter Ecommerce, commented

• “Is this behavior ethical? No. Whatever the initial motivation, this is auction manipulation that appears to harm Google’s competitor set and yield undue revenues by increasing costs for everyone else.”

Tyler Jordan, digital marketing expert, added:

• “All digital marketers need to be aware that Google’s bid auction is no longer an auction. A real auction’s outcomes are dictated by supply and demand, but we just learned from the horse’s mouth there are other factors in play.
• “I’m sure Google is working on making its advertising product more effective – at least for retail advertisers, since that was certainly the focus of Dischler’s quotes. What I’m sure of is that continuing to game its own system at the expense of its customers is not a long-term strategy for success. I’ve got plenty of ideas for ways Google can get better for #b2b advertisers if they’re open to a more honest way forward.”

Google Ads expert Kirk Williams posted:

• “Google, we genuinely love the product you first introduced. We are the ones who had told clients for years why Search is one of the best marketing channels of all time (what incredible marketing intent there is in a search term!!). Stop the money grab and start rebuilding trust. For the sake of the industry. Please! #ppc #googleads #adwords #ecommerce #RGSP.”

However, others have argued that “out-of-order” ranking changes can help improve the user experience, as pointed out by Vallaeys:

• “While out-of-order promotion changes the typical auction dynamics, Google believes it ultimately improves the search experience, and I tend to agree with that. For advertisers, it highlights the need to focus both on bidding strategically and optimizing for relevance and Quality Score.”

Content marketer Goutham Veerabathini shared this notion, commenting on LinkedIn:

• “The introduction of randomness might help create a more dynamic and unpredictable auction environment to prevent strategic strict deterministic ranking of bids that gives top position always to only one player who bids the highest after mastering all the other factors.”

Why we care. Fair ad bidding is essential for advertisers to achieve their marketing objectives efficiently, maintain trust in the advertising ecosystem, and foster long-term relationships with advertising platforms and publishers. It contributes to a healthy and competitive marketplace where advertisers can optimize their strategies for better outcomes.

Deep dive. Read our Google antitrust trial updates for all the latest developments.

The post What is RGSP? Google’s Randomized Generalized Second-Price ad auctions explained appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

AI-powered marketing in 2024: A playbook for success by Cynthia Ramsaran

Friday, October 13th, 2023

It’s no secret that B2B marketers have a challenging task in front of them: a niche audience, an often technical offering and tighter budgets than their B2C counterparts. However, a recent survey has found that over 50% of B2B marketers have plans to increase their marketing budget over the next year – and they are looking to AI to help them succeed.

Join MNTN as they walk through how B2B marketers can utilize the rapidly evolving AI technology. 

Learn more by registering and attending “AI-Powered Marketing in 2024: A Playbook for Success,” presented by MNTN.

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Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.

The post AI-powered marketing in 2024: A playbook for success appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

5 reasons Amazon Ads is better than Google Ads for ecommerce

Friday, October 13th, 2023

Nine out of 10 ecommerce businesses I’ve come across have run Google Ads at some point, but few have considered Amazon Ads despite the significant opportunities it offers. 

I believe that Amazon Ads has the potential to be far more effective than Google Ads for ecommerce PPC as it offers higher quality traffic, higher conversion rates, easier tracking, more long-term value and more lenient policies. 

In this article, I unpack these advantages and explain why your ecommerce business should be running Amazon Ads over Google Ads. 

Why is Amazon Ads undervalued?

There are several reasons that Amazon Ads has not been as popular as Google Ads, even for ecommerce businesses. Let’s get these out of the way. 

While Google commands the majority of global search engine usage, boasting over 90% market share, a 2021 survey by Jumpshot revealed that Amazon’s search volume comprises 54% of all product-related searches in the United States. 

Google may have a broader reach, but Amazon provides a more relevant targeting opportunity, a nuance often missed by ecommerce advertisers.

Another blocking factor is that Amazon is a stand-alone ecommerce platform. To list a product on Amazon, advertisers are required to invest in the Amazon ecosystem and build a product listing. 

The startup cost and learning curve with Google Ads are lower as traffic can be run directly to your ecommerce website. It’s not widely known that Amazon has a program called Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM), where sellers can fulfill products themselves and not use Amazon’s fulfillment centers. 

While there might be hesitation to join the Amazon marketplace, the advantage in building another sales channel and gaining access to Amazon’s network of customers and their ad platform is huge. 

Lastly, the costs associated with Amazon Ads on face value appear higher than Google Ads. Amazon Ads, like Google Ads, is a CPC platform, which means advertisers are charged for each click on their ads. 

However, Amazon also charges a percentage sale commission for any product sold on their platform. This commission varies depending on the product parameters.

Despite this added commission, Amazon Ads is still likely to be more cost-effective than Google Ads, considering that the CPCs are far lower and the conversion rates far higher on Amazon.

1. Amazon has higher conversion rates

Most U.S. product searches happen on Amazon, resulting in significantly higher conversion rates than Google Ads. 

While Google Ads offers effective targeting capabilities, Amazon’s advantage lies in its product-focused intent. 

Additionally, Amazon provides advertisers with other tools, like advertising products on competitor product listings. 

It’s not uncommon for Amazon listings to have conversion rates of 10 to 15% and beyond. Prime members have even higher conversion rates. Compare this to Google Ads, which usually have conversion rates under 5%. 

Even considering the 15% commissions on products, the ROAS from Amazon Ads are usually more cost-effective than Google Ads.

2. Amazon makes attribution and tracking easier

Google Ads tracking has come a long way with Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager. But even with these advancements, it’s still difficult to master attribution and understand the true value of Google Ads all the way down to a keyword or product listing. 

This is not the case with Amazon Ads. Amazon’s approach is different because all of the product information is housed within the Amazon platform. 

Product information, buyer reviews, influencer videos, long-form content and similar products can all be found on the platform connected to the listing.

Add to that the buyer trust that Amazon provides with its reputation of fast fulfillment and free returns. Most of the research and sale is completed on the platform, and all of this information is retained. 

As an advertiser, it becomes very easy to understand the customer journey from keyword to sale and the revenue value behind each ad campaign and down to keyword and product target. 

Amazon’s Brand Analytics and Ad platform provide ecommerce businesses with a flywheel to constantly improve products and make great marketing decisions. It also means Amazon Ads become highly effective over time, while you may still be guessing at the true performance of Google Ads. 

Dig deeper: Amazon advertising attribution: Here’s how it works

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3. Amazon Ads drive rankings

When it comes to how ads affect organic rankings, Google and Amazon have distinct policies. The difference creates an interesting opportunity for Amazon advertisers.

Google says that: 

“Investment in paid search has no impact on your organic search ranking. Google maintains a strict separation between our search business and our advertising business.” 

Amazon has the exact opposite policy. While they don’t officially state this, it is common knowledge in the industry that Amazon Sponsored Ads drive organic rankings. 

In practice, Amazon Sponsored Ads drive more buyers to listings and increase sales. Subsequently, sell-through-rates increase and Amazon uses this trust factor to rank products organically for those keywords. 

I’m not judging which policy is better; both make sense in their own way. However, the outcome is that Amazon’s policy enables newer entrants to rank products quickly and get a foothold in the Amazon Marketplace. With Google, investing in SEO can be a slow process.

Dig deeper: Maximizing brand impact with Amazon’s video advertising: A comprehensive guide

4. Amazon Ads builds reviews and long-term value

Similar to the above point, SEO on Google is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Building links and content and optimizing websites to rank on Google takes time and money. 

It’s also unclear exactly what works and what doesn’t. It can sometimes feel like trying to catch a falling knife, with the parameters around SEO constantly in flux. 

On the other hand, we know that investment in Amazon Ads has a value-added effect on Amazon SEO. As discussed above, more ads mean more sales, which means higher sell-through rates and better rankings. 

But also, more ads = more sales = more reviews. Reviews on Amazon are likened to Links to your website on Google. They are the lifeblood of rankings. 

Investing in Ads influences your rankings and is a direct investment in your Amazon presence. These reviews are tangible and real. You don’t get the same effect when you invest in Google Ads, which Google specifically states is a siloed platform.

5. The Amazon marketplace is easier to dominate 

Not only do Amazon ads make it easier to compete, but it is also far easier to dominate the entire marketplace with Amazon than it is with Google Ads.

Consider Google’s policy of “Unfair Advantage.” You cannot advertise two listings for the same keyword. There are only four ad spots, and Google does not want any advertiser to control all the real estate. 

With Amazon, one advertiser can easily dominate a vast amount of real estate on the search results page.

Check out this search for “Japanese BBQ sauce” on Amazon.com. One advertiser controls the whole page:

This kind of dominance of the SERP could never be achieved with Google Ads today.

While there are ways to game this with Google, such as opening multiple accounts, this violates Google’s policy, and if caught, an advertiser risks having all their accounts closed down.

Whereas with Amazon, this allowed and even encouraged. Your ecommerce brand can own the entire SERP if it wants to.

Amazon presents a better opportunity for ecommerce advertisers

While Google has more search volume and can be an effective platform, for a savvy ecommerce business Amazon Ads presents more opportunities. The key reasons in favor of Amazon Ads are: 

• More product searches than Google Ads.
• Better ROAS.
• Better conversion rates.
• Easier and better tracking.
• Easier to compete for new businesses.
• Easier to rank long-term.
• Ability to dominate the entire SERP.

Dig deeper: Amazon advertising optimizations to crush Q4

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Cracking the code on accurate attribution for connected TV by MNTN

Thursday, October 12th, 2023

In the old world of TV advertising, accurate attribution was all but mythological, so much so that many marketers seem to be under the impression that the same is true for newer solutions like connected TV. A survey from eMarketer found that of all the ways marketers want to see CTV improve, attribution is at the top of the list.

And we get it — attribution is important. Without dependable attribution, brands can’t accurately measure the success of their campaigns. But what these marketers may not realize is that we’re already long past the days of guesstimating success. Reliable attribution on CTV does exist — after all, connected TV is, first and foremost, a performance marketing channel. 

The key is finding the right CTV attribution model for your goals. Of course, not every attribution model is created equal. Some models give CTV credit for performance driven by other marketing channels; others don’t give CTV enough credit. Some attribution models estimate the credit CTV may have earned.

Nailing cross-device attribution is table stakes for CTV

In today’s interconnected world, where consumers can be found across a multitude of devices, marketers need an attribution model that follows viewers across each touchpoint through conversion. Of course, that level of cross-device attribution should be the bare minimum expected of a robust CTV attribution model.

To really ensure you’re measuring CTV-driven outcomes, successful CTV attribution will deduplicate other traffic sources. MNTN’s Verified Visits uses source validation to check the traffic for other media sources, ensuring the CTV campaign only takes credit when it’s due. To get a better sense of what an attribution model that gets it right might look like, let’s run through how Verified Visits works:

1. Ad is served to the viewer: First, a user views your CTV ad, served on premium streaming networks.

2. Cross-device tracking: The platform tracks user visits to a brand’s site on any household device within a customizable window after viewing the ad, whether the visit occurs organically or directly from the ad.

3. Source validation: A diagnostic check is run to confirm that the visit wasn’t driven by another marketing channel, such as paid search, social media, or emails.

By following this process, Verified Visits ensures that the CTV campaign only takes credit for the visits it actually drove, giving brands complete insight into a consumer’s path to conversion and deduplication with other channels in real-time. While this level of transparency is not a common practice in the industry just yet, marketers should be looking for a partner that aims to achieve it with their own attribution models.

Accurate attribution means better performance

The benefits of accurate attribution doesn’t stop at measuring the success of CTV campaigns. It’s a compass that can help guide marketers when optimizing their culture campaigns. Clean performance data helps marketers refine their overall strategies based on the outcomes of their CTV ads. In other words, accurate attribution on CTV translates to better performance across the board, allowing brands to reach their audiences at scale and generate measurable results. After all, attribution isn’t just important for peace of mind — research shows that it can improve efficiency by 15-30%. Ultimately, using an attribution model like Verified Visits and ensuring credit is given where it’s due paves the way to more effective, data-driven, and impactful advertising campaigns.

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Google Ads rolls out Demand Gen to all customers globally

Wednesday, October 11th, 2023

Google Ads has started rolling out Demand Gen globally so that all customers now have access.

Described as the “next generation of Discovery campaigns,” it comes with new features, inventory, and insights, as well as an enhanced ad creation flow.

In addition, Discovery ads upgrades are beginning this week and will continue to be implemented through early next year.

Why we care. Demand Gen is an effective tool when it comes to reaching new audiences and offers more creativity than its predecessor. Discovery campaigns only allowed images, carousels, or product data feed for creatives, however, Demand Gen lets you use videos, including both regular YouTube videos and Shorts, giving advertisers more choice when it comes to creating content that will appeal most to their audience.

What is Demand Gen? Demand Gen is an AI-powered tool that was built to specifically help social platform advertisers by streamlining the process of discovering and converting consumers through visually engaging content. The Google Ads feature was designed to help generate conversions, site visits and actions across entertainment-focused touchpoints such as YouTube (including Shorts), Discover, and Gmail.

Engaging new audiences. Demand Gen can help you to discover new potential customers who may not be acquainted with your brand through the new Lookalike segments features. Advertisers can then maximize performance further by choosing the bidding strategy that fits best with your goals, such as clicks, conversions or website actions.

Creating ads tailored for your audience. Demand Gen can achieve 3X higher click-through rates, at a 61% lower cost per action (CPA) when compared to paid social campaigns, according to Google. It’s able to achieve this by offering a range of different formats so that brands can tailor their content better to their audience, from short-form videos to carousels.

Product feeds for retailers. Demand Gen can combine videos with images and text from your catalogs to show products to potential customers that are most suited to their interests and match their search intent.

Demand Gen best practices. Search Engine Land contributor Menachem Ani,  Founder of JXT Group, took part in the Demand Gen beta test before its general rollout and has shared some best practice guidance, including:

• Campaign management suggestions.
• Working with client and leadership tips.
• Setting realistic expectations.

Read Ani’s new article – Google Demand Gen campaigns: Migration and best practices – offers more insights, including what to expect from Demand Gen and advice on budget management.

What has Google said? Vidhya Srinivasan, VP & GM in Google Ads (Search Ads & Ads on Google Experiences), said in a statement:

• “The way consumers discover products is shifting — decisions are made throughout the funnel. To keep up with this evolving media landscape, social advertisers need to adapt their strategies to deliver results.”
• “Demand Gen campaigns can help you capture the interest of billions of users as they spend time on YouTube and Google’s visually immersive touchpoints. The engaging creatives can spur action while our audience and bidding solutions help you nurture interest with more potential customers.”

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Google Demand Gen campaigns: Migration and best practices

Wednesday, October 11th, 2023

Demand Gen campaigns – the shiny new tool in the Google Ads toolbox – will become available to the PPC public starting this month.

Those lucky enough to be part of the beta test have seen and experienced firsthand what Demand Gen offers, though deeper insight is still some time away.

While we’re still testing Demand Gen and will be for the foreseeable future, I have had enough time with it to better explain:

• How Demand Gen works and its differences from Discovery, which it replaces.
• What to expect with the rollout and how to approach it.
• Advice on Demand Gen campaign and budget management.

I hope my experiences with Demand Gen can provide some context as you navigate this new territory.

Demand Gen explained

When Demand Gen becomes available in your accounts, you’ll give up your ability to create Discovery campaigns. This is because it directly replaces Discovery campaigns, which are much less algorithmic and have fewer inventory types.

Demand Gen leans into automation and machine learning to do most heavy lifting like Performance Max. Both campaigns use algorithmic targeting, whereas their previous iterations allowed you to select your targeting settings more freely.

But where Performance Max is a full-funnel campaign, Demand Gen (as the name implies) focuses largely on driving awareness and filling the top end of your funnel.

Using Performance Max without a data feed, and only creative assets with audience signals, is somewhat similar to what Demand Gen tries to do.

That setup pushes out Image, Display, and Video ads across all the different networks (except for Shopping). It’s still more focused on bottom-of-funnel conversions than Demand Gen, whose primary goal is to create new demand.

With Demand Gen, you can still add your audiences and create lookalikes, something new to Google that anyone familiar with Meta Ads will recognize. This works by seeding the system with a list – customers, email subscribers, people who take pixel-based actions on your website – and targeting people who closely match it.

It’s a good way of finding new audiences, exactly what Google has said Demand Gen seeks to do. If we compare Demand Gen with its predecessor, the biggest differentiator is creative. Discovery only allowed creatives built using images, carousels of images, or your product data feed. Demand Gen lets you add video; not only standard YouTube videos but also Shorts.

It doesn’t take a linguist to figure out that Demand Gen is Google’s attempt to help advertisers generate demand, since Google Ads has typically been seen as a channel to capture demand as people are looking for something.

It seems that’s a reputation they want to shake because even the interface is built like a paid social campaign, bearing several similarities to how Meta Ads structures their product.

But because this is new to Google, remember that Demand Gen will not do the best job of pushing someone from initial awareness straight to purchase.

You will see a lower reported ROAS than you would with a similar campaign on Meta; this is the nature of generating demand via different Google products (like YouTube or Gmail) instead of a social media platform.

Does that mean Demand Gen is actually driving less revenue? To be determined – you’ll have to look at third-party revenue and attribution tools to figure that out.

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Demand Gen migration guide

By looking back at how Performance Max rolled out, we can learn what we might expect from Demand Gen.

Google is in forward-thinking mode as they retire many of the manual controls we’ve become familiar with. The PPC paradigm continues to shift in favor of automation and machine learning, and advertisers who embrace this change will be at the forefront of progress.

We’ve seen that Google is willing to be very aggressive to push us in that direction, even with a new product like Performance Max (which I believe is still relatively raw). But they continue to implement improvements on a constant basis, with plenty of new updates on the roadmap.

The good news is that Google has been taking inputs and feedback from advanced practitioners quite seriously. We’ve seen proof of this in the form of changes to the Performance Max product over the last year or so that originated from conversations with the PPC community.

While I’m personally happy to see that engagement grow, trust in Google is in short supply these days for valid reasons. This isn’t helped by the fact that they’re moving us to a world where we tell them our objective and provide the right data inputs, and they make the magic happen.

But whatever your feelings, the facts are this shift is going to continue because that’s what Google wants. If we want to stay on board, we need to get on board.

What we can learn from the Performance Max rollout

Performance Max ended up cannibalizing Local and Smart Shopping campaigns, and it will now absorb a third campaign type: Read Google’s announcement on upgrading Dynamic Search to Performance Max, which I believe will eventually be retired.

Performance Max also allows you to create audience signals – including ones built off the people you target with Demand Gen campaigns – but will ultimately target whoever it feels is a good fit, whenever it feels is the right time.

And just as we’ve seen Gmail Sponsored Promotions absorbed by Discovery campaigns, we should expect a similar pattern of cannibalization, independence, and deprecation for Discovery with Demand Gen.

Dig deeper: How to harness DSA wins in Performance Max

Demand Gen best practices

Campaign management suggestions

Google has made recommendations for Demand Gen bidding and budget goals, which we’re still testing:

• Target CPA should be 2x your standard campaign performance.
• Daily budget should be:
  • Either 15x your Target CPA.
  • Or 20x your average conversion value divided by Target ROAS.

These are the suggested benchmarks to give the campaign space to operate and find interested new audiences. But they mean that Demand Gen is effectively off-limits (or a money suck) for accounts and brands with smaller budgets.

Google’s other advice is to give Demand Gen between four and six weeks to factor in conversion delays and allow for a data-gathering learning period. Combined with their budget suggestions, the math won’t often check out on smaller budgets.

Historically, Google has recommended setting your budget at 5x your Target CPA; that’s something we’ve found to work with Demand Gen. Since they want larger budgets to give it more space, similar to YouTube Ads, it may not work well for most smaller campaigns.

We’re seeing Demand Gen fit (so far) in an account that wants to layer something on top of its maxed-out Search, Shopping, and Performance Max. We’re still testing, but at this time, for smaller advertisers with smaller budgets, it may not drive enough conversions to merit a long-term spot in the media mix.

Working with clients and leadership

As with any new campaign from Google, getting clients and bosses on board with Demand Gen will be a challenge for many marketers.

Some clients like to be part of beta programs and try exciting new things. They know that if you find a win before the rest of the market even comes looking, your first movers’ advantage will set you up well.

We’ve seen that with Performance Max and many other Google beta programs, so we know which of our clients are like that and pitch them accordingly.

For other clients – especially with larger accounts – you always want to be testing new things anyway; at that level, you need to unlock new opportunities constantly.

We try to use about 10% of the overall budget (no more) to try different things continuously. It could be a new campaign of an existing campaign type, testing new keywords in a Search campaign, testing a new Performance Max setup, or any place we see or think there might be new opportunities.

It’s important to keep your testing budget to a reasonable figure, like 10% of overall spend, because experiments that go poorly can throw off your entire account’s performance.

Setting realistic expectations

Demand Gen is new, and its primary goal is to get in front of new audiences. So it’s fair to expect fewer conversions with a higher CPA or lower ROAS, and not necessarily measure this campaign the same way you would measure Search or Performance Max.

In larger accounts, it always helps to allocate a portion of the budget to address upper-funnel audiences – especially if you’ve got a good nurture program in place.

With a six-figure monthly budget covering Search, Shopping and Meta, you want to ensure you’re also driving net new awareness – video views, website visits, branded search.

That fresh demand is critical, but it has to come from somewhere and is never free.

Examples from managing Demand Gen during the beta

I’ve been fortunate enough to get my hands on Demand Gen earlier than most advertisers, and I’ve taken advantage of that early access to try it in a few accounts. Here are three examples of those early experiments and what we learned.

(It’s worth noting that just like with Performance Max, you’ve got to have pieces in place to block spam from coming through with lead generation – connecting your CRM, adding a reCAPTCHA to your form, etc.)

Example 1: Lead gen/ecommerce hybrid

For this account, we migrated a long-running Discovery campaign targeting warm audiences – like website visitors and subscribers – as well as more broad audiences – like custom intent, affinity, and interests.

Once we started to ramp up that campaign, it improved enough that we could actually measure conversions at a decent ROAS and leads at a healthy CPA. My guess is that’s because it had so much historical data when we made the switch.

This is one use case we’re really happy with and will continue ramping up.

Example 2: Lead gen with low spend

In a second lead gen account, we’re testing a brand-new Demand Gen campaign at $50-100 per day that has just started driving conversions, but at a very low conversion rate. From what I’m seeing, small budgets may struggle even with strong signals.

Google’s suggestion is to set your budget at 15x your expected CPA, so it could be that we have to test that.

Example 3: Lead gen with moderate spend

Our third test account – also lead gen – spends a modest $1,500 a day and definitely struggles more. It drives traffic and conversions, but the Target CPA is a bit higher than we expected.

It’s too soon to say definitively, but it seems that you need a slightly larger budget for Demand Gen. We’re still determining the reality of the situation. If you manage low-spending accounts, you should too once you get access.

Get your plans in order – you’ve got 6 months

It’s October, which means Google will have begun giving advertisers and accounts access to Demand Gen. That process will run for the next six months, giving you enough time to start making preparations for the switch.

For now, your focus should be on setting up creative testing frameworks.

There are no experts on Demand Gen campaigns other than the folks who built it. To the rest of us marketers and media buyers, it’s a new puzzle that we’re figuring out together.

And despite my findings, you should not assume that you’ll have to drop five figures a day to make Demand Gen work without testing it to see if that’s really the case.

If one thing remains true about Google Ads, it’s that they’re always capable of surprises.

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Generative AI, GA4, and more 2024 trends to watch… see the SMX agenda!

Wednesday, October 11th, 2023

This is it… your chance to attend the largest search marketing conference on the planet is just a click away: Secure your free spot at SMX Next now and join us online, November 14-15 to unlock actionable SEO and PPC tactics, helpful answers to your specific questions, and engaging discussions with passionate search marketers – all without leaving your desk.

The agenda is live and ready for you to explore!

This experts-led training experience features three exclusive keynotes from ESPN, Optmyzr, and Search Engine Land – plus 40+ tactic-rich sessions on next-level search marketing topics and trends, including…

• Google’s Search Generative Experience: Prepare for impact with Bart Goralewicz, Founder & Head of SEO, Onely LLC

• Driving lead generation with paid media: What’s new and what’s next with Nicole Waddington, Digital Marketing Manager, Cypress North

• Optimizing landing pages with AI: From design to conversion with Amy Hebdon, Founder & Managing Director, Paid Search Magic

• Balancing Performance Max and traditional campaigns for big ROI with Navah Hopkins, Brand Evangelist, Optmyzr

• Building a winning Facebook and Instagram strategy for 2024 with Menachem Ani, Founder, JXT Group

… and that’s just the start. You’ll also unlock Overtime live Q&A with speakers, engaging Coffee Talk networking discussions, AMA-style sessions with winners of the 2023 Search Engine Land Awards, instant on-demand access, a personalized certificate of attendance, and more.

For nearly 20 years, search marketers from around the world have attended SMX to learn game-changing tactics and make career-defining connections. Don’t miss your final opportunity in 2023 to join them online for the only training event programmed by Search Engine Land, the industry publication you trust to stay competitive. Secure your free pass now!

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The enterprise guide to elevating findability and ROI

Wednesday, October 11th, 2023

The concept of findability has evolved into a critical factor for businesses striving to connect with consumers.

It’s no longer just about being present, but being discoverable, chosen and seamlessly integrated into the intricate web of customer journeys.

This article explores findability and how a robust omnichannel findability strategy can help brands create meaningful and lasting customer relationships. 

What is findability?

The discipline of findability is centered around connecting the appropriate consumer with the suitable product or service, at the right moment and in the correct location – whether physical or digital.

At my company, Vodafone Spain, our findability approach signifies a shift from solely addressing specific digital requirements and platforms (a static concept) to engaging with a comprehensive journey to discover, locate and fulfill those requirements (a dynamic concept). 

Simply put, it emphasizes customer-centricity (the complete journey) and omnichannel focus (consumer behavior regardless of channels).

With the evolution of the web, consumers have transitioned from restricted searches within a solely digital platform to exploring various channels, contingent on their journey phase. 

There are now multiple search properties and formats (text, image, video, virtual reality, augmented reality, etc.) that have gradually contributed to addressing diverse needs:

• Search engines: “I want to know” searches.
• Digital video platforms (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo): “I want to know” and “I want to do” searches.
• Geolocation platforms (e.g., Google Maps, store locators): “I want to go” and “I want to buy ” searches.
• Ecommerce platforms (e.g., Amazon, AliExpress, eBay): “I want to buy” searches.
• Social platforms (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, Pinterest): “I want to know” searches (through acquaintances and friends).

As these different aspects of search strategies developed, the focus changed from optimizing for specific elements (like the environment, product or service, and keywords) to a more comprehensive approach that aligns with the various stages of the consumer’s journey.

The findability model: A 4-phase framework

Our findability approach is based on a 360-degree model, spanning analysis to operations.

It prioritizes continuous tactic review for potential corrections and strategy evaluation to adapt to market or competitive changes.

Moreover, findability has visibility in our digital direction, which serves a dual purpose: 

• Enhancing our brand and product visibility.
• Functioning as a source of business intelligence. 

Phase 1: Analysis

Economic environment

Understanding the economic environment is crucial for crafting an impactful findability strategy. It helps make informed decisions about resource allocation and ROI-focused marketing tactics.

Within this segment, our focus centers on these key areas:

• Demographic trends.
• Consumption trends.
• Allocation of consumer expenditures across product and service categories.
• Political landscape.
• GDP trajectory.

Company internal factors

While analyzing the economic landscape is crucial, don’t overlook internal factors like organization, innovation, logistics and other intrinsic dimensions in shaping a successful findability strategy.

We are particularly attentive to these pivotal elements:

• Products and services differentiation.
• Market share – splitting by digital and non-digital.
• Internal digital skills vs. outsourcing.
• Attribution model maturity implementation.
• Omnichannel maturity.

Industry sector

The industry sector includes all factors that simultaneously characterize the economic environment and the company internal factors. 

Exploring the industrial sector is essential, as economic trends can significantly impact performance. A thorough evaluation helps:

• Identify opportunities and threats.
• Refine the findability strategy to adapt to changing market dynamics.

This allows businesses to innovate and stay competitive.

Within this segment, our focus is directed toward these key aspects:

• Competitors.
• Elasticity of demand.
• Demand growth rate.
• Regulatory environment.
• Annual growth trends.
• Volume of revenue.

You can also use public information repositories to access some of this information. 

For instance, Google Trends can be a valuable resource. 

Let’s imagine exploring the demand growth rate in relation to the most popular mobile handsets brands from 2004 to the present day:

Consumer mental model

Products and services aren’t merely the results of supply and demand but are intricately tied to the consumer’s engagement within their environment. 

How consumers connect with their environment, mental constructs and worldviews shapes their perception and use of products and services. 

Exploring their mental models helps us understand how people reference and value concepts.

Analyzing consumers’ search queries and using matrices to identify critical product attributes (i.e., usage frequency and volume) can provide valuable insights.

Consider the scenario of Sarah, a tech-savvy individual considering upgrading her home internet connection.

Here’s how you can approach this:

• Conduct a comprehensive analysis of searches across various platforms to build a detailed consumer profile. 
• Adopt models like the Kano model to pinpoint which product attributes resonate with the consumer’s mental framework. 
• Delve into the process of how consumers search for and categorize each type of attribute within the Kano model, examining these actions in every micro-moment:

SWOT analysis

Companies can capitalize on economic opportunities by having the right tools and processes that align with consumer thinking to create an effective findability strategy.

At my company, we assign a Visibility Index we developed internally to each attribute in correspondence with a specific micro-moment:

Dig deeper: SEO SWOT analysis: How to optimize where it counts

Phase 2: Strategy

Objectives definition

For our products or services to be discoverable by potential customers, we define specific objectives to implement the model seamlessly. 

Objectives can be categorized into:

• Revenues
• Savings 
• Orders
• Leads
• Etc.

The objectives must align with both the company and the digital unit’s goals to synchronize efforts on findability with the company’s overall objectives, actions and budget allocation.

Strategy definition starting from customer journey conceptualization and design

This marks the next phase in findability strategy planning, involving the analysis and synthesis of preceding aspects. Here, we aim to streamline potential strategic options and select the implementation strategy.

Customer journey empowers us to define a strategy to position ourselves where the customer is, in a manner and format that resonates with their expectations, precisely when they anticipate encountering them:

• Where
• How
• When

Prioritize enhancing user experiences for both digital and physical assets.

Dig deeper: How to create and execute a buyer journey-based content strategy

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Phase 3: Tactics

Budget allocation

Effectively allocating the budget to various marketing channels is crucial for brand visibility and consumer discovery.

Consider investing in:

• Pay per click (PPC). 
• Pay per acquisition (PPA), including affiliate marketing. 
• Pay per impressions. 
• Optimizing store locations.
• Enhancing signage.
• And more.

By assessing these channels and their strengths, you can customize our budget strategy to match your brand’s goals and audience. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach; each business has its unique combination. Regularly monitoring and adjusting budget allocation is vital for a successful findability strategy.

Channel selection, format choice and content selection

Every strategic decision and budget allocation must translate into tactics supported by:

• Channel selection: Utilizing search environments/search engines such as Google, YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, X (formerly Twitetr), physical stores, corners, malls, etc.
• Format choice: Considering options like video, voice, text, PDFs, images, photos, catalogs. It’s essential to assess the feasibility of generating new content or repurposing existing material.
• Content selection: Focusing on aspects like inspiration, education, entertainment, persuasion, etc.

All of this aims to achieve specific business goals defined at each stage of the purchase funnel.

Key performance indicators

Defining your key performance indicators (KPIs) will enable you to clarify objectives and track progress, ultimately leading to the initiative’s launch.

Below are some of the main KPIs we track:

• Zero results searches
  • This KPI measures the number of searches that don’t yield any results or satisfactory responses for the user, which is crucial for improving search result accuracy and relevance.
  • This can be improved by offering search suggestions, autocomplete and related links, or even making a suggestion to add a new product or service to the portfolio to cover the unmatched demand.
• Most common queries
  • This KPI tracks popular keywords or search terms used by searchers to find information or products on a website. 
  • Monitoring this KPI helps identify relevant and popular search terms, aiding in SEO.
• Trending search terms
  • Refers to search terms gaining or declining popularity among users.
  • Analyzing these trends is vital to adjust the findability strategy to changing user needs.
• Context
  • Refers to where users search from (i.e., webpages, Google, site search, social media).
  • This KPI examines different platforms or sources from which users initiate searches, helping tailor the findability strategy to those platforms.
• Date
  • Refers to when users searched. 
  • Relates to search trends based on the date or time when searches occur. Important for planning findability strategies in sync with seasonal trends.
• Geographic area
  • Analyzes the geographic location from which users perform searches, useful for adapting search strategies to different regions.
• Devices
  • Examines the devices used for searches, helping optimize the search experience for each type of device.
• Bounce rate
  • Measures how often users leave a website after searching without clicking on any results, indicating relevance issues.
• Popular content/products
  • Measures the popularity of products or content that users search for.
• Search refinements
  • Additional search terms users add after an initial query to refine their search, indicating the need for more precise results.
• Digital searches to store visits
  • Measures the effectiveness of Findability efforts in driving physical foot traffic to a retail store. 
• Online-to-offline conversion rate
  • The percentage of online visitors who make a purchase in a physical store.
• Offline-to-online conversion rate
  • The percentage of in-store visitors who make a purchase online.
• In-store traffic influenced by online
  • The number of store visits that can be attributed to online marketing efforts.
• Local SEO rankings
  • The positions of the physical stores in local search results in a context of unbranded product or service searches. 
• Customer lifetime value (CLV) by channel
  • The value a customer brings over their entire relationship with your brand, broken down by channel.
• Omnichannel customer effort score (CES)
  • Measures how easy it is for customers to interact with your brand across all channels.
• Mobile search traffic to physical store visits
  • Measuring how many users who found you through mobile search actually visited your physical store.

By consistently measuring and reviewing KPIs, we can enhance the performance of our tactics across all the channels at every stage of the purchase funnel. 

This iterative process aims to amplify each tactic’s impact on our business, ultimately driving greater overall success.

Dig deeper: 13 key SEO metrics to track

Phase 4: Operations

4.1: Time plan and go live

In this phase, we plan meticulously and set implementation dates for specified tactics. 

We prioritize swift and adaptable execution using agile methodologies, like Kanban for content changes and Scrum for programming code interventions.

Modernizing enterprise search for improved ROI

Mastering findability is vital for enterprise companies. 

By seamlessly optimizing for search, integrating online and offline channels and leveraging data-driven insights, enterprise brands can meet their customers where they are and provide a seamless, personalized experience. 

Remember, findability isn’t just about being discovered; it’s about being chosen.

As you embark on this journey, continuously monitor KPIs, adapt strategies and stay attuned to the evolving needs of your audience. 

With a robust omnichannel findability strategy, you’re not just connecting with customers but creating lasting, meaningful relationships.

The post The enterprise guide to elevating findability and ROI appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Google-Extended does not stop Google Search Generative Experience from using your site’s content

Monday, October 9th, 2023

Google-Extended, the new standalone product token, to tell Google through your robots.txt to not use your site content for Bard and Vertex AI and other AI projects does not work for the AI-answers and snapshots provided in the Search Generative Experience.

Google told us that Google-Extended does not work for SGE. “SGE is a Search experiment so website administrators should continue to use the Googlebot user agent through robots.txt and the NOINDEX meta tag to manage their content in search results, including experiments like Search Generative Experience,” a Google spokesperson told us.

Why not for SGE. Google explained that SGE is part of the Google Search experience; it is a search feature and thus it should work as how normal search directives work. “The context is that AI is built into Search, not bolted on, and integral to how Search functions, which is why robots.txt is the control to give web publishers the option to manage access to how their sites are crawled,” Google told us.

SGE AI-answers. There are examples of SGE showing AI-generated answers, with website cards, from sites that have specifically directed Google not to use their content for AI purposes.

Glenn Gabe posted a screenshot of VentureBeat.com that specifically has Google-Extended disallowed in its robot.txt file, being used in the AI-generated answer in SGE:

Why we care. If you thought using Google-Extended would prevent Google from using your content for SGE AI-powered answers, then you were wrong. Google-Extended it for Bard and Vertex AI and other non-search-specific products.

If you don’t want your answers in SGE, then you would need to block Googlebot completely, which most of you do not want to do.

The post Google-Extended does not stop Google Search Generative Experience from using your site’s content appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing