Atomic Media

Apple Search Ads can now be edited in bulk

Written on August 17, 2022 at 5:57 pm, by admin

Apple has just launched a new bulk ads editor that allows advertisers to update multiple campaigns and ad groups all at once. 

What does it do. The bulk ads editor allows you to make edits to settings, daily budget, max bids, audiences, and more. You can access the bulk editor from the Actions menu of the campaigns dashboard. From there you download the settings you want to edit. Then upload the new spreadsheet and your new campaigns will go live. 

Apple’s official advice. Apple offers the following guidelines regarding the inputting of campaign and ad group settings.

• You can add a maximum of 500 rows to your spreadsheet. Each row will contain information for a specific campaign and ad group. All campaigns must be in the same campaign group. 
• When entering multiple values, use commas to separate each. For example, if you wanted to set a campaign to run in the U.S., Italy, and Greece, you would enter the values US, IT, GR in the Countries or Regions column for the campaign. 
• All monetary data, such as daily budget and bid amounts, will use the currency set for your Apple Search Ads account. Note that cost-per-tap (CPT) pricing appears as CPC, or cost-per-click, in the Pricing Model column. 
• Search tab campaigns previously created using cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) pricing will list CPM in the Pricing Model column. However, all active Search tab campaigns now use CPT pricing. 
• When formatting dates and times for campaign or ad group start or end dates and times, use year-month-day and hour-minute-second formatting: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. Dates and times will use the same time zone set for your Apple Search Ads account. 
• If you want your ads to run only on certain days of the week or at certain times, you can enter times in the Dayparting column. Numbers should range from 0 to 167, representing the hours of a week beginning at Sunday 12:00 a.m. So if, for example, you wanted your ads to appear on the App Store on Fridays starting at 6:00 a.m. and run until Saturdays at noon, you would enter 126 to 156. 
• Applying any audience refinements to your ad groups will automatically exclude customers with Personalized Ads turned Off. This will limit the number of customers who see your ads on the App Store. 
• You can use the Include Returning Users and Exclude Returning Users columns in the template to focus your ad group on specific audience types. Here’s how:
• All users: Leave cells in both the Include Returning Users and Exclude Returning Users columns blank in your spreadsheet.
• New users: In the Exclude Returning Users column, enter the app ID of the app featured in your campaign.
• Returning users: In the Include Returning Users column, enter the app ID of the app featured in your campaign.
• Users of my other apps: In the Include Returning Users column, enter the app IDs of any of your other apps. Ads in your campaign will be shown to users of those apps, allowing you to cross-promote your products.

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Access the template download. You can review the official Apple help document and download the templates here. 

Why we care. Bulk editors generally make advertisers’ lives much easier by allowing edits to more than one ad at a time. However, Apple’s version seems technical and time-consuming, requiring template uploads and downloads. But if you manage Apple Search Ads, try the bulk editor and see if it’s worth your time.

The post Apple Search Ads can now be edited in bulk appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

Driving SEM success: Lessons learned from $1 billion+ in ad spend

Written on August 17, 2022 at 5:57 pm, by admin

Luanne Marek has been working in the digital customer acquisition space for 12 years. Throughout her six years leading the media buying team at Centerfield, Marek and her team have managed about a billion in ad spend, half a dozen Fortune 100 companies, several dozen Fortune 500 companies, and many other brands in the B2B, ecommerce, wireless and insurance industries. 

At SMX Advanced, Marek shared ways they have been successful with some of the world’s leading brands by sharing six lessons her team has learned over the last several years. 

1. Test your campaigns

Because branded campaigns are lower funnel and high converting, many brands don’t think there is a reason to make changes. Marek didn’t go into detail on what tests should be conducted, but she explains that on tests they performed, they were able to increase sales by 122%, as well as increase the quality of the sales by another 313%.

2. Measure with third-party tools

Once you decide to take the step and test your campaigns, making sure your data measurement is laid out correctly is the next step.

Too often they see tests flop because the data was not well laid out.

There is also a lot of emotional attachment to the results from the people that have been managing or working with the search campaigns. When that happens, Marek explains, it makes it difficult to look at the data in an unbiased way.

Marek suggests bringing in a third-party that specializes in this type of data analysis is the ideal way to: 

• Correct baselines
• Create balance
• Use symmetrical data and measurement
• Ensure there are clear performance-based outcomes
• Allows the test to be run without emotional attachment to the readouts

3. Always be experimenting

Marek and her team perform thousands of tests a month on:

• Keywords.
• Campaign structure.
• Bidding strategies.
• Ad copy.
• Landing pages.

About 80% of the tests don’t pan out, and the winners typically win by only 5-10%. 

When a winning test is found, scale it across other campaigns. Test additional iterations, and make sure you can measure it through to your end goal. 

In the example they provide, Marek explains that while the submit button resulted in more form submissions, the see package button resulted in the most sales per page view and ultimately won by 33%. 

4. Optimize your real estate

One of the areas Marek and her team see many brands fall apart is not taking full advantage of the real estate provided in the paid search results.

She suggests testing multiple branded positions.

Because other brands can show up in your results, adding a second paid branded position into the SERP will push those conquesting to the bottom of the page and instead of a user looking for your brand and seeing a compelling message from one of your competitors in between your paid search ad and your organic ad, they’ll only see your brand’s message.

Testing this method resulted in a 121% increase in sales and only a 9% increase in CPA for Marek and her team.

5. Personalize the experience

Adding a bunch of keywords to your landing page just isn’t enough anymore. It’s the bare minimum.

Marek suggests personalizing the entire experience. She suggests using a technology that can personalize and speak to the user about what’s important to them. 

Her advice: Look for a technology platform that flows throughout the entire user experience, including the landing page. Choose one that offers contextualization and AI to personalize every step of the users’ journey to keep them engaged.

6. The buyer journey isn’t linear

The market is increasingly competitive. Users will often have three or more touch points before making a conversion.

Using automation and omnichannel optimization to meet the customer at every stage of the buying journey is the way forward, especially with the loss of cookies and other third-party data.

Marek gives us the example of using chat and SMS, which did not exist as a conversion channel a few years ago. Marek suggests getting ahead of the trends before your competition does and letting the consumer be reached where and how they want to.

3 key takeaways

• Set up tests.
• Validate results with a third-party vendor.
• Give consumers choice.

“There are many options out there, so test your current paid brand search strategy against others. And facilitating the testing is the next best option. And lastly, push the envelope on giving consumers choice. Just because one conversion path has worked well for you doesn’t mean it’s the only one you should focus on. It’s not about spreading the same conversions amongst alternatives,” Marek said.

The post Driving SEM success: Lessons learned from $1 billion+ in ad spend appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Google Search Console reported pages as being indexed when they were not indexed

Written on August 17, 2022 at 5:57 pm, by admin

Google said there was a bug with its coverage report in Search Console where Google reported pages as being indexed, when in fact, they were not indexed by Google Search. Google said this “affected many properties” and thus, you should probably double-check your coverage reports for the sites you manage over the next few days.

The announcement. Google wrote “Today we fixed a Search Console issue that affected many properties: we were reporting pages that are not indexed as being indexed. As a consequence, you might see a drop in your indexed pages in the Index Coverage report.”

Here is the tweet:

What to do. For now, you should probably add to your calendar to recheck the coverage report within Google Search Console to see if your indexed versus not indexed pages have changed in any significant manner.

Google has annotated the report, but you need to check back daily to see if you notice any major changes in the index saturation of your site’s pages in Google Search:

Why we care. If you provide reports to clients or stakeholders on the index versus not indexed pages on a site, then you will want to make sure to annotate your reports for clients. Hopefully, this does not add to any stress you already have with your SEO job.

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The WORST SEO advice I heard this year (and what you should do instead)

Written on August 17, 2022 at 5:57 pm, by admin

The most common complaint I receive from audit clients and bloggers is the inability to “know which SEO advice to follow.” 

Unlike search engines which can rank, re-rank, or penalize information or practices that are unethical or unscrupulous in nature, the same can’t be achieved by the average blogger weeding through multiple courses, gurus or podcasts.

Unfortunately, 2022 has taken things to a whole new level.

The amount of emails and instant messages I received from bloggers asking, “Is this true?” or “I was told to do this, what do you think?” cannot be quantified other than to say, “It was a lot.”

Executing a correct and competent SEO strategy has never been more challenging, especially in light of the explosion of new websites launched during the pandemic.

As such, understanding what advice is worthwhile and which is complete and utter garbage has never been more important.

To that end, I present some of the worst pieces of SEO advice I was asked about in 2022, with the hope that the answers will help you decide what not to do.

Worst SEO advice #1: “I should never remove content from my website.”

The benefits of removing old content from an existing site have been known and practiced for years.

Think of your site as a garden. All the content generating traffic, links, and regular social signals are your flowers. Everything that is not? Those are your weeds. Just like in a real garden, you can kill your flowers if you don’t pull those weeds.

Leaving expired, low-quality or thin content on your site can result in a myriad of bad SEO outcomes, including:

• Diluting your overall crawl budget.
• Reducing overall site authority.
• Creating page and keyword cannibalization issues.
• Reducing on-page UX and time-on-site metrics.
• Lowering sitewide revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) for ad income.

It’s also been well-documented by Google’s John Mueller that low-quality content on one part of a site can negatively impact the search rankings of the entire site.

Bottom line

If you can update and improve existing content, do that! 

But if not, delete it, and move on. Think quality with your site content, not quantity.

Worst SEO advice #2: “All I need is to write longer content to rank higher.”

It has been stated repeatedly that word count is not a ranking factor with Google. And yet, daily, I run into clients who have been directed to write a longer resource as their main method to “recapture” a lost ranking or improve existing visibility.

When asked about word count, Mueller said, “just blindly adding content to a page will not make it (rank) better.”

What does help a resource is adding content that is useful to the audience.

For example, nobody wants to read a 2,000-plus-word treatise on artichoke hearts. As such, understanding what your audience is seeking and what is considered “useful” can still be confusing to the average site owner.

Bottom line

A content update or rewrite has to have a clear purpose and an understanding of why your page isn’t ranking in the first place. 

• Is there an intent mismatch with your query? 
• Does the page have technical deficiencies? 
• Are you competing against much bigger sites? 

These are just a few questions to answer before deciding “just to write a longer resource” for ranking consideration.

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Worst SEO advice #3: “I should include my focus keyword in every page heading.”

During the “good ol’ days” of SEO, it was very common to optimize a page around a focus keyword by including the focus keyword in the title, the meta description, the URL, and every heading on the page.

For example, just a few years ago, a typical recipe post trying to rank for “banana cream pie” may have looked like this:

<H1> Best Banana Cream Pie
<H2> Why this Banana Cream Pie is the Best
<H2> Banana Cream Ingredients
<H2> Step by Step to Make Banana Cream Pie
<H2> Banana Cream Pie Questions & Answers
<H2> Related Banana Cream Pie Recipes
<H2> Banana Cream Pie (recipe card)

Unfortunately, following Google updates from November 2019, and later announced Core Updates in January and May 2020, a clear pattern emerged whereby bloggers who had been over-optimizing their headings (among other issues) suffered decimated ranking and traffic drops.

The pattern was incredibly easy to see in audits and online Facebook groups and was soon backed up by a Food Blogger Study by SEO firm Top Hat Rank published in February of 2020. 

In the study, food blogs saw a 60% drop in direct Google search engine traffic to recipes and posts that had engaged in heading keyword over-optimization.

Fortunately, bloggers who went back through their site and started de-optimizing their headings ended up with recoveries by the May 2020 Core Update, or much later, when Google did their next announced update in December.

Bottom line

Any recommendation to stuff your headings with keywords is not only outdated advice but possibly dangerous for the average site in the current algorithmic climate. 

Referencing your keyword naturally in the H1 and one or two other H2s seems fine. More than that, it will look spammy and should be avoided!

Worst SEO advice #4: “Alt text should be used for SEO keywords.”

Alt text, or alternative text, is one of the most important and misunderstood topics in all of SEO and accessibility. Having good and correct alt text for images is not just a simple SEO best practice, but it’s essential for people with visual disabilities who visit the site.

Alt text exists first and foremost to describe the image to someone who cannot see it. The focus is on those accessing the site with screen readers who cannot see the image and, as such, must have the images read out to them for descriptive purposes.

Nothing annoys visually impaired users more than visiting a site and seeing every image read out as “keyword – keyword – keyword.” 

And yet, even today, with as much literature that exists on the correct use of alt text, this still happens more than it should!

Bottom line

Ditch the keywords and describe what is in the photo to someone who cannot see it.

Don’t say “image of” or “photo of” in your alt text. Be short but descriptive.

Finally, add a “period” at the end as a prompt for screen readers to know the alt text has completed.

Worst SEO advice #5: “Semrush says that I have toxic links and I must submit a disavow file.”

Oh, Semrush, you never disappoint! 

Although the Semrush suite of tools is, by and large, a quality investment for users and SEOs alike, this is by far its biggest drawback. In this specific example, the tool fails miserably!

I have yet to run a crawl for a client with Semrush and have the tool not spit out a huge “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!” warning when reviewing a link profile.

Semrush identifies random links as toxic and then recommends that the user submit a disavow file. The problem with this recommendation is it’s unnecessary and completely arbitrary.

Google is very clear that:

• The average site owner should never worry about toxic links.
• Arbitrary toxicity determinations by tools are not accurate.
• It’s all about selling the tools. 

In fact, Google doesn’t even have a concept of toxic domains, and blindly following a tool that says “otherwise” should always be avoided.

Bottom line

Unless you have a manual action, or you know you built in bad links yourself, a disavow file is a complete waste of time for the average site owner. 

Ignore the tools and move on to something else that will actually help move your site.

Final thoughts

You’ve heard that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. As with any marathon, it’s all about training and preparation. 

Don’t derail your SEO marathon by succumbing to poor advice baked into a course, a podcast or a guru trying to sell you their latest tool.

Instead, use a little common sense and push back against advice that “may” seem questionable when given. The site you save may be your own. Good luck out there!

The post The WORST SEO advice I heard this year (and what you should do instead) appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

6 fundamental truths about SEO

Written on August 16, 2022 at 2:51 pm, by admin

Brands and SEO professionals must take responsibility for the performance of the websites that they run and manage.

Applying these six SEO truths will help you achieve next-level website performance, according to Bruce Clay, the founder and president of digital marketing optimization firm Bruce Clay Inc., who spoke at SMX Advanced.

1. SEO needs to be a strategic initiative across the company

The entire organization participates in SEO. It starts at the leadership level – everyone must understand that SEO is important, commit to it and make it a priority. 

You can’t just do your SEO on Monday. One person can’t randomly do SEO. It isn’t going to work if you aren’t working on SEO every day.

The organization must think about SEO every time there’s a meeting to discuss changing the website. Somebody in that room has to ask, “How does this impact SEO?”

“How can we improve the overall quality and operation of our website so that it actually generates traffic or meets a KPI of the business? … If the commitment is to do SEO, and if you buy into it being long-term, then SEO is a winning operation within your business,” Clay said.

2. SEO should beat the competition, not the algorithm

We must understand how ranking algorithms work. But our job isn’t to beat the algorithm. Beating the algorithm is an insurmountable battle.

Google makes thousands of changes to search every year. And every keyword you’re trying to optimize for is essentially a new algorithm. 

Your job is to beat the competition. 

The best we can do is determine who ranks and determine what they’re doing. Are there any common characteristics? Are there any common words and can we use them better?

“The story I always tell is of two friends who go camping. They set up their tents. They start a fire. They’re cooking a meal and along comes a bear. They take off running down the path. The bear is chasing them. The guy in front doesn’t need to be an Olympic runner. He just needs to be faster than his friend,” Clay said.

Well, SEO is much the same thing. You have competitors. You have to be better than them.

3. SEO done right cares about content architecture

Websites must be built in a way so that search engines see you as a subject matter expert. Publishing authoritative and trustworthy information takes a concentrated effort.

Google prefers content that is presented in a clear hierarchical structure. In other words, a drill down (e.g., a website about electronics has cameras > digital cameras; a website about automobiles has Ford > Mustang). This is called siloing. 

“It actually performs better in search because you’ve concentrated, in one location, all of the information about that particular keyword, instead of spreading it all over the website,” Clay said. “In order to get SEO to perform correctly, you have to be the subject matter expert. You cannot randomly throw a bunch of things onto a website and expect it to work.”

4. It’s not the job of SEO to make a pig fly

Sometimes, no amount of SEO can save a poorly maintained website. That’s why website maintenance has to be built into your SEO program. 

You can’t just push an “easy” button and say you want to rank tomorrow if your website looks like it’s 20 years old, hasn’t been updated in years or isn’t mobile-friendly.

“It’s the job of SEO to take that pig and work with you to genetically engineer it into an eagle. Then you may have something that works. Way too many people come to us with old technology. They haven’t updated their site in five years. They haven’t updated content. And they’re expecting that the search engine is going to give them a reward in the face of people that have been maintaining their sites all along,” Clay said.

Organic search competition is intense. Your competition may have a whole team working on their SEO. Sometimes it can be like trying to compete against websites armed with machine guns while you only have bows and arrows.

5. Cheap SEO is a near-death experience

Cheap SEO has consequences. It can harm you. No business should expect cheap SEO to work well.

Do you want bad advice for half the price, or do you want good advice? How long is it going to take you to discover what went wrong after it goes wrong? And how much will it cost you to fix it later?

What you end up with cheap SEO is inexperienced people experimenting at your expense. And they often can be wrong.

“Get it done right and get it done properly, the first time. You can’t afford to do it over,” Clay said.

6. SEO is done when Google stops changing things and all your competition dies

SEO is a perpetual project because search is constantly changing. So is what your competition is doing. (Oh, and also search behavior.)

Google’s goal is to please users, so they have leaned heavily into things like user experience and rewarding truly expert, accurate, trustworthy content. 

“When you are in an environment like that, where the search engine is going to be constantly changing and experimenting and trying to make itself better – those are changes that are going to seriously impact how you perform in search results,” Clay said. “You cannot ever be done with SEO. The search engines have seen to it.”

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Senator claims Google isn’t doing enough to block ad scams

Written on August 16, 2022 at 2:51 pm, by admin

Google isn’t doing enough to crack down on deceptive ads, demonstrating a “troubling record of inadequate due diligence against fraud and abuse.” That’s according to a letter Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Blumenthal’s case against Google. Blumenthal is citing an investigation from last year claiming that Google advertisers are impersonating government websites and purchasing ads in an effort to scam consumers. 

Google claims that it took down the deceptive websites, but a recent review from Blumenthal’s office found that a search for the articles’ keywords pulled up the same ads.

Blumenthal also claims that his office continued to find ads for misleading health supplements and treatments such as detox and weight loss teas, two supplements that are restricted from advertising on Google.

What the senator is saying. 

“I am deeply concerned that Google appears unwilling to protect consumers and small businesses on Google Ads, and has demonstrated inadequate due diligence against fraud and abuse.”

Blumenthal is giving Google until September 2 to announce changes to “prevent misleading or fraudulent ads from appearing to consumers.” He is also requesting Google answer questions pertaining to the research they do into how users interact with ads.

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Google’s response. Google has “strict policies in place to protect people and advertisers alike from abuse,” and “Search ads are also clearly labeled,” says Google spokesperson Davis Thompson in a statement. Thompson also said the company is reviewing the letter and intends to offer a “full response.”

Google’s history of trouble. Rumors about a lawsuit from the US Department of Justice have been swirling around for a while. In June, Google offered to split part of its ad business to avoid an antitrust lawsuit.

Last year the Federal Trade Commission released a report calling social media a “gold mine” for scammers, citing that 95,000 people had been scammed out of $770 million due to fraud on social media.

Although Google isn’t social media, the report demonstrates how easy it is for scammers to use the same online tools available to advertisers to target people.

Why we care. Deceptive ads affect everyone from the consumer to the advertiser. If Google isn’t able to crack down on ad scams and fake websites, then legitimate businesses could suffer as a result. Ad policies will become tougher, and the general public could lose trust, making it harder for brands to succeed online. 

The post Senator claims Google isn’t doing enough to block ad scams appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Google Merchant Center will no longer remove listings missing return or refund policy and insufficient contact information

Written on August 16, 2022 at 2:51 pm, by admin

Google has updated its Merchant Center policy to no longer automatically remove shopping listings that are missing the return and refund policy and also that have insufficient contact information, the company posted. This specific policy change is only for free listings, not for paid listings.

What is new. Previously, Google would automatically disapprove Google Merchant Center feed listings that either is missing a return policy and/or a refund policy. Google would also automatically disapprove Google Merchant Center feed listings that have insufficient contact information. That is no longer the case, Google said these free listings with these issues will remain active.

One note, the enforcement type has changed for the free listings policies but the policies have not changed. What has changed is just how Google will enforce these policies for free listings.

Limited visibility. Although Google will keep those listings with the issues active, they may have the products limited in visibility within Google Search. Google said, “free listings accounts with these issue statuses will remain active, but their products will have limited visibility on Google.”

Insufficient contact information. Google defines “Insufficient contact information” as “Websites that are missing required contact information, have unverified business information in Merchant Center, or both.” Examples include the Website is missing contact information (e.g. no social media link, contact email address, or phone number); Merchant Center account has missing contact information, such as a physical business address or a verified phone number; contact information is missing from both the store website and Merchant Center account.

Missing return and refund policy. Google defines “Missing return and refund policy” as “Websites that are missing return and refund information.” Examples include the Store return policy pages that are empty or don’t state all the requirements for return; refund policies that aren’t clear or easy to find; no return or refund policy is clearly stated.

Why we care. Google will no longer disapprove these free listings but that does not mean those listings will garner much traffic from Google Search. So you still probably want to address these issues as soon as you can so that the visibility is not hurt by not complying with these policies.

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How to plan and budget for enterprise SEO

Written on August 16, 2022 at 2:51 pm, by admin

In an ideal enterprise world, your CMO would plan a budget for SEO, leaving you to enjoy building your strategy without endlessly trying to prove ROI for each line item. 

Like I said, ideal. But not exactly realistic. 

Because CMOs are often hyperfocused on brand strategy or activation. Often, SEO is an entirely new marketing channel for enterprise companies. So, SEO professionals are left to their own devices. 

Anyone who’s ever had to plan an enterprise SEO budget knows that making this business use case can feel like you’re forced to eat grandma’s Jell-O salad. It’s a painful experience. 

So, how do you create an SEO budget for an enterprise company?

As an enterprise SEO Director for multiple companies, I’ve had the luxury of spending countless hours in spreadsheets and meetings to help the C-suite understand why SEO deserves a budget and how SEO will impact the bottom line. 

Below is my step-by-step process for building an SEO budget. 

1. Understand the business model

Why is this the first step to developing an SEO budget for an enterprise company?

The business model tells you what projects get money and don’t. Business models move your organization in a specific direction. 

By diving deep to grasp your company’s business model, you can strategically build your SEO budget to align with what the business wants to do. 

If you want to operate at an executive level in an enterprise company, you have to get below the surface. You can do this by finding the answers to these questions: 

• How do customers behave? How do they find us? What do they click on?
• What percentage of revenue comes from each business unit? 
• What revenue metrics are we reporting on (LTV, CAC, margin, etc.)?

The business model is the foundation you will build your SEO strategy on. Each different business model will dictate what your SEO tactics are. 

Let’s walk through some examples. 

Rover’s business model is built around lead generation. It’s got a beautiful map with dog walkers listed. Therefore, this page needs to be tailored to attract users to input their information.

Yelp’s business model is centered around sponsored listings and advertising dollars. The pages need to be structured to support the advertiser’s spend. 

2. Correlate SEO to revenue

When you get to an enterprise company as an SEO Director or above, you cannot speak to the C-suite executive team without mentioning revenue. 

​​Let’s pretend you’re presenting to a CEO. The CEO wants to see “I’d like to propose we do X, which will achieve $ZZZ and cost $Y.” How would you fill in the blank?

Here’s how Matt McKinley, SEO Manager for Revolt Media & TV, would fill in the blank. 

“X would represent one of the biggest projects from the SEO roadmap that’s needed to drive traffic/revenue. ZZZ is measured by the potential increase in traffic x average order value. Y would be the cost of resources needed for the project such as tools, other team’s time (developers, designers, editorial, etc.), additional SEO headcount, etc.” 

If you don’t mention revenue when pitching to the executive team, you’ll likely be more embarrassed than Adidas was for the Boston Marathon email debacle. 

Tough to recover from that, right? 

SEO professionals know how difficult it is to tie revenue to SEO, especially if your analytics is broken. 

I often get asked, “If we improve our page speed score by 10 points, how will that impact revenue?” Connecting a page speed to a revenue increase is a long-fetched idea. But we have to back into it somehow. 

Based on the below, you can say the number of good mobile URLs that are indexed impacts our organic traffic, therefore impacting new customers and revenue. 

Now, you can make a statement like:

“Each indexed Good Mobile URL is worth $10. If we improve the number of Good Mobile URLs by 50%, we can estimate a $5 million additional value.” 

Do you smell that? It smells like BS. That’s because it is. 

Yet, this is how executives at enterprise companies operate. With these back-of-the-envelope calculations, you can frame the potential value of a project more strategically. 

Remember, it doesn’t have to be 100% accurate. Executives want to see that you’re looking beyond just the traffic. 

For example, let’s say you want to create a series of buying guides, but you need to expand the resources.

To sell this to the executive team, you would want to lead with something like, “We estimate that our guides are worth $20,000 in incremental revenue.”

Now to get this information to work up to the $20,000, you’ll want to look at historical data. Show a before/after scenario of an uptick in revenue after publishing a guide. 

You can look at categories. Using the example above, you could pull data from the Xbox category sales after launching the buying guide. 

Let’s walk through another example. I was working on a budget request for additional writers for a real estate company. 

Here is how I turned hypotheticals into ROI: 

Here is a link to my example document to give you something to work with. 

Again, it doesn’t have to be accurate. These are simply assumptions based on the data. 

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3. Forecast SEO traffic

“Hey, we need a forecast for SEO in 2023.” This is a common ask I get from CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, etc. 

Before you can forecast traffic, you need to understand the business model. 

If you have a solid understanding of the business model, you can segment your forecasting based on the business structure instead of page type. 

For example, I worked on a project from Brother USA. Originally, I started to prioritize by page type.

But once I understood the business model and the different business units, I was able to deliver a better forecast. 

Once you know what areas of the website you are forecasting for, you can begin to build your SEO budget spreadsheet. 

I connected with Jori Ford, CMO at FoodBoss, to better understand how to forecast SEO. Ford shared:

“I outline existing traffic. Then, determine a projected lift based on SEO activities. After, I align that lift to the existing conversion metrics to show projected conversions. Next, I apply the overall value of those conversions as it relates to the business to do a rough range of potential financial gain whether that be revenue or just “value” vs. “cost.””

So you can see it’s all based on hypothetical scenarios. 

That’s why I recommend thinking about four different scenarios to give your executive a decision based on impact. 

• Scenario 1: Baseline (if we do nothing) 
• Scenario 2: Conservative
• Scenario 3: Average
• Scenario 4: Optimistic 

For example, if Best Buy wants to expand its buying guides, you can break down the investment into something like this. 

If you’re interested in learning more about financial models, I recommend Tom Critchlow’s SEO MBA course. Also, Tom Capper’s article on SEO Forecasting in Google Sheets is amazing. 

On the flip side, you can go a different route if you’re an agency. I connected with Will Critchlow, CEO at Searchpilot, and he shared insight into how his agency goes about this for enterprise companies. 

“We start with the trend from Google of on-site SEO being more unpredictable and less rules-driven than ever before, and the growth of their use of AI/ML continuing that trend. That, combined with the biggest problems large organizations face with SEO is in getting it done and proving the results lets us make the case that their on-site strategy should be built around SEO testing. From there, we build a budget case based on an ROI model that assumes a certain testing cadence, percentage of positive tests, and typical uplifts.”

SEO testing is underrated in enterprise companies. If you have the flexibility to A/B test your SEO tactics, you can make a better case for SEO ROI.

Before you present your enterprise SEO budget to your executives

Get eyes on the overall marketing budget

The golden rule of company budgets has always been that 10% of your company revenue goes toward your marketing budget. 

Then, that 10% is split between online and offline channels. 

In 2022, CMOs spend 56% of total marketing budget on online channels, according to Gartner’s 2022 Marketing Budget report. 

That means you’re fighting for a teeny tiny slice of the pie. 

Here’s a hypothetical range of enterprise SEO companies and how much they should spend on online channels. 

Before pitching your budget, you need to have eyes on the marketing budget before you ask for something above the overall marketing budget. 

Compare your SEO budget to your PPC budget

Again, hypothetically, you have 56% of the overall marketing budget going to online channels. Now you’re competing against other online channels for budget. 

In the same Gartner report, CMOs shared how the online channel marketing budget gets allocated: 

• 10.1% to social advertising
• 9.8% to search advertising
• 9.3% to digital display advertising 
• 8.8% to digital video advertising
• 8.1% to partners
• 8.1% to digital audio advertising
• 8.5% to SEO 
• 7.8% to content and messaging

It’s shocking. Out of the 56% of the overall marketing budget for online channels, CMOs are allocating 8.5% to SEO. 

Here is what that could look like for you: 

Then, with your SEO budget, you need to determine what percentage goes to technical, content and link building. 

Having this deep understanding of the marketing budget gives you a rough idea of the budget you could aim for. 

Embrace the suck of enterprise SEO budgets

Proving ROI in SEO may seem like a pointless, unuseful, tedious task made up of lies. 

But as SEO professionals, we must embrace the suck. 

Sure, it might seem like B.S. to you. But to your CMO or CEO, it might sound the alarm that you’ve been screaming. By speaking the business language, you’re speaking the language of your executives. 

The truth is, SEO professionals need to stop talking about traffic and pageviews and start talking about revenue.

Budget spreadsheets aren’t sexy. But assumptions are free.

Remember, it’s not about an accurate scientific method. It’s about giving you something to connect with the C-suite. 

I outline existing traffic, projected lift based on activities, and align that lift to the existing conversion metrics to show projected conversions. I then apply the overall value of those conversions as it relates to the business to do a rough range of potential financial gain, whether that be revenue or just “value” vs. “cost.”

I’d like to propose we increase monthly active users by 20%, which will achieve $ZZZ based on the LTV or first-time purchase value of a user and will cost us $Y to get there over the next ABC time frame.

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Apple is expanding ads on iPhone and iPad

Written on August 15, 2022 at 11:51 am, by admin

Apple will be expanding ads to new areas of the iPhone and iPad, in an effort to drive revenue. 

App Tracking Transparency (ATT). Last year Apple launched ATT which allowed consumers to decide whether they would allow third-party apps to track their activity across apps. The feature was said to cause billions of dollars in losses for Meta, Snap, and other, smaller developers. In response, Meta was rumored to be developing Basic Ads that only tracked the most simple metrics such as engagement or video views. 

The current state of Apple ads. Apple’s current advertising efforts include display ads inside the News and Stocks apps, in the App Store (advertising apps) across all Apple devices, and inside TV+. A portion of ads in the News app go to publishers, and will appear even if you subscribe for $10 a month. You can choose to turn off the ad personalization feature in your device, but the system will still use information from your device, carrier, and types of articles you’re reading to show ads. Apple says they can do this because the system “does not follow you across apps and websites owned by other companies.” ATT is designed to prevent tracking across outside apps and websites. Apple says that since this isn’t happening, they don’t need to show a pop-up.

Where Apple ads are heading. According to a report from Bloomberg, display ads are shown in the search tab. But soon Apple will expand the ads to the main Today tab as well as in third-party app download pages. For search ads in the app store, developers can pay to have their apps featured in the results when users search terms related to the app.

Apple ads group vice president in charge Todd Teresi discusses increasing the ads business to “double digits” from the $4 billion in annual revenue it is generating now. According to Blomberg, that could mean expanding search ads to Maps, adding ads to digital storefronts like Books and Podcasts, and multiple tiers of TV+. 

Read the full article. You can read the full Bloomberg article here. 

Why we care. An expansion could open up a lot more, potentially cheaper, advertising opportunities. Brands who are interested in paying to have their business listings sponsored may be able to do so just as they could on Yelp or other local search platforms. Although tracking would be limited, brands focused on vanity metrics such as engagement and video views could still leverage data from your Apple activity to make the ads worthwhile. Given that there is less user data for targeting, the cost per tap would likely be lower, and brands would need to test placement options to ensure that they’re getting the most out of it.

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Google reenables the validate fix feature in Search Console and adds new classifications

Written on August 15, 2022 at 11:51 am, by admin

Google has reenabled the validate fix feature in Google Search Console while launching the new “more simplified” classifications for the coverage reports. This was expected, earlier this month Google temporarily disabled the validate fix feature in order to launch these new classification labels.

Validate fix is back. Now when you go into Google Search Console and click on some of the coverage reports, the “validate fix” button should be back. Google disabled it while upgrading the classification system. There was a notice that read “Limited functionality: We are making some minor updates in the next few days. During this period you will not be able to issue new validation requests.” That notice has been removed and you now have the validate fix feature back.

Here is a screenshot I took:

New classifications. As mentioned above, Google launched more simplified classifications for these reports. Instead of the coverage report showing errors, valid with warnings and valid; now the report just shows invalid or valid information.

Google said the URLs or items in the Search Console report are no longer grouped at the top level by three or more status categories, i.e. Valid, Warning, and Error. Now they are grouped or classified into two more broad statuses that reflect whether those URLs or items are invalid or not. Google said invalid means that there is a report-specific critical issue in the page or item, and not invalid means that the item might still contain warnings, but has no critical issues. The implications and exact terms for the valid and invalid states varies by report type, Google added.

Google explained “grouping the top-level item (a rich result for the rich result reports, a page or URL for the other reports) into two groups: pages or items with critical issues are labeled something like invalid; pages or items without critical issues are labeled something like valid. We think this new grouping will make it easier to see quickly which issues affect your site’s appearance on Google, in order to help you prioritize your fixes.”

New Tour. When you login and go to the coverage overview section, you can now click on “full report” and Google will ask you if you want to see a tour of the changes, here is what the tour looks like:

We have a lot more detail on these changes in our earlier story over here.

Why we care. This should make it easier for you to understand errors in Search Console reports and thus which items to prioritize over others. This change is just a reporting change and does not change how Google crawls, indexes or ranks your content. But it is a change and you need to understand what changed and why.

Postscript. Google has now confirmed this is live with this tweet:

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