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How to find the balance between creativity and automation in PPC

Written on June 15, 2022 at 1:02 pm, by admin

Day 2 of SMX Advanced 2022 has kicked off and this morning’s keynote by Brad Geddes was all about leveraging automation in your ad campaigns.

Geddes is a PPC expert and co-founder of Adalysis, and the author of “Advanced Google AdWords,” the most advanced book ever written about Google’s advertising program. Geddes has worked with many of the world’s leading companies in managing and perfecting their PPC management and workflows.

Where is the balance?

In his keynote, Geddes went into great detail on the difference between humans and machines, what their strengths are, and how they can work together to create a winning ad campaign.

“Google and Microsoft aren’t taking away your control,” Geddes said. “They’re giving you more management options. You don’t have to fight the machine, but your job is to find the balance.”

So what is the difference?

Realizing what humans and machines do well and playing to those strengths is key. Humans are really good at:

• Creativity
• Strategy
• Storytelling
• Reacting quickly to market changes
• Auditing the machine
• Empathy

Machines, on the other hand, are really good at:

• Math
• Bidding
• Statistical significance
• Finding lookalike audiences
• Inputting repeatable data like reports
• Conversations from human-driven inputs like chatbots

Referencing recent PPC survey results, Geddes reminded us that ad managers are happy with the results when it comes to scripts and bidding. Managers have neutral feelings when it comes to RSAs, data-driven attribution, and local campaigns.

Not surprisingly, managers are generally unhappy with automation surrounding discovery campaigns, the insights tab and auto-applied recommendations.

All in all, machines are really good with numbers, but not with insights and intent. That’s where humans come in.

Is anyone surprised? I didn’t think so.

What do we want? Balance of data insights combined with a machine’s ability to crunch numbers and make predictable outcomes!

When do we want it? Now!

Using guardrails

Geddes described guardrails as boundaries advertisers put around automation.

Google doesn’t always get it right and adding guardrails helps advertisers “leverage automation within our own framework of tolerance and profitability.” Geddes goes into depth on how to use these to fine-tune your campaigns.

A few of the most common guardrails are:

• Negative keywords
• N-gram analysis
• Negative audiences

Let’s talk strategy

One of the most important takeaways in Geddes’ keynote is how to address key parts of your funnel with proper messaging and measurement.

How is the message changed based on previous user interaction? Is there cross-channel integration to consider?

But how do you create a plan around keywords, audiences and landing page experience?

The right campaign builds for almost any account size & type

Consider your campaign type, budget and strategic goals. Then think about your strategy.

Geddes explained the exact campaign builds he uses for his own accounts which include:

• Search or display
• Custom audiences
• Exact or phrase match – or broad match with a lot of data
• Lightly pinned RSAs

Complications with strategy or campaign type (such as smart shopping or video) require additional considerations. However, as Geddes explained, this campaign build can work for everyone and uses several types of automation at the same time. 

When should we override the automation

Geddes said that in reality, especially with RSAs, we have more control than we think. We aren’t forced to use machine learning. Account success is based upon KPIs, not on how much automation you’re using.

Don’t undervalue humans

Sometimes you want full automation, but Geddes laid out some considerations before diving in. 

But wait, there’s more

There’s so much more to Geddes’ excellent keynote. Check it out for yourself – it’s not too late to register for SMX Advanced. Simply register for free here to watch the full keynote on-demand.

And there’s still plenty of time to experience the rest of this year’s 100% free and virtual edition of SMX Advanced. Register today to watch all the other great SEO and PPC sessions on the agenda today – and ask your questions of the speakers in our live Overtime Q&A. 

The post How to find the balance between creativity and automation in PPC appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

5 tips to develop authoritative content for Google and searchers

Written on June 14, 2022 at 9:57 am, by admin

Day 1 of SMX Advanced 2022 opened today with a keynote by Jaimie Clark, VP of SEO at Centerfield. It was packed full of insights around creating authoritative content that Google ranks and searchers need. 

The Wirecutter migration: SEO + content + rebrand

Before Clark joined Centerfield, she worked at the New York Times. In 2016, New York Times Co. bought The Wirecutter, a product recommendation site.

She led the migration of thewirecutter.com to nytimes.com/wirecutter in 2020. This migration resulted in Wirecutter doubling its search traffic within a year.

But two years of SEO work preceded the migration. And it started with a new mission: to help people effortlessly choose and buy the stuff they need to live a better life.

How they did this: 

• Thorough reporting that got to the right answer. 
• A hard focus on solving reader problems (not heroing products). 
• Making actionable recommendations and communicating as a human would.
• Prioritizing long-term reader trust. 

Here are five tips Clark shared during her SMX Advanced keynote on how to develop authoritative content for Google and searchers.

1. Focus on depth, not breadth

Clark said Wirecutter had a “mile-wide, inch-deep approach” to product reviews.

But their content strategy shifted in 2018 to go a mile deep. They started creating:

• Top-level pages: These acted as a collection of summaries for specific guides and related use cases. These pages were linked to mid-level pages for more in-depth analysis.
• Mid-level pages: These went deep on specific use cases or types of products.
• Supporting content: These included blog posts, how-tos and news. Meant to add breadth and depth of topical coverage by answering frequently searched for questions and linking to other pages when it made sense. 

2. Build topical authority

One of Wirecutter’s goals was to own search results for the term “vacuums.” They had about five reviews on different types of vacuums (handheld, cordless, robot, steam, stick). 

Clark said they looked at search data to find additional use cases to identify and fill content gaps. They also researched comparisons and supporting content people were searching for. 

“And we always updated the topics page – the ‘best vacuum’ page, to link to and address each of those use cases as anything underneath was updated,” Clark said.

3. Have a purpose

There should be a clear, user-centric reason why a page or website was created.

That purpose can be singular or multifaceted.

By Google’s definition, each page should have a clear beneficial or helpful purpose for users, Clark said. 

Questions to ask yourself:

• What is the main purpose of any given page on your site?
• Who do you expect to be on the page?
• What are they looking for when they get there?
• How do they expect to see the content formatted?

“We don’t want to help one random person make one decision. Instead, we wanted people to really Wirecutter their homes,” Clark said. “Helping them discover what they needed day to day, bigger picture, longer-term, tied to the largest events in their lives.”

4. Present content in the most useful way

You should make clear what’s more important by the way you present your content. You should then lead people deeper for people to dive into specific use cases as needed.

There are two main categories of content: 

• Main content: Should directly help a page achieve its purpose. This can be text, images, tables, videos or any other page features that help someone understand what the purpose is and actually achieve the goal.
• Supplementary content. Should help users find and navigate the main content. Supplementary content should not distract the user from the main content.

5. Demonstrate your E-A-T 

Here’s how Wirecutter approached E-A-T:

Expertise

Structured data was added to author pages to reinforce that Wirecutter’s content was written by experts or enthusiasts who demonstrated expertise in a specific space. 

Author pages started with a paragraph up top, with details about the writer:

• How long they have been covering a subject.
• Their background.
• Why they are qualified to talk about the topic. 

The pages also included social media links (e.g, LinkedIn), an email contact and a feed of their latest articles.

Authoritativeness

These are the “tried-and-true” on-page elements for how Wirecutter generally structured its pages:

• Introduction: This provides an overview of the process and results in one paragraph. It’s meant to be a condensed form of the hours spent researching and testing. This paragraph always included a link to the product buy page to make it easy for people to make a decision.
• How we picked: This details the criteria and features evaluated. These types of elements are especially important in light of Google’s Product Review updates.

Wirecutter also preserved the original publishing date timestamps, using schema. Why?

They believed this way to demonstrate longevity and make sure Google understood that even though the page moved to a new location, it is the same authoritative piece of content that was first written by the same person years earlier.

Trustworthiness

This is a measure of two things:

• Accuracy: You can use an Update box to call out if something is out of stock or if some information has changed. This helps show that your page provides the most up-to-date information.
• Transparency: How do you recommend products? How do you test products? You want people to trust you. So you have to explain why they should.

Register now for SMX Advanced

Missed Clark’s keynote live? No worries! Simply register for free here to watch Clark’s full keynote on-demand.

And there’s still plenty of time to experience the rest of this year’s 100% free and virtual edition of SMX Advanced. You can watch all the other great SEO and PPC sessions on the agenda today and tomorrow – and ask your questions of the speakers in our live Overtime Q&A. 

The post 5 tips to develop authoritative content for Google and searchers appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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New shopping links for Google AdSense

Written on June 14, 2022 at 9:57 am, by admin

There’s a new Labs feature in town for Google AdSense called shopping links. 

What are shopping links. Shopping links are placed in your page’s main content by hyperlinking existing words. Whenever Google detects a shoppable product mention, users will be shown shopping ads for that product.

Where will shopping links show. Google will only place shopping links on pages where there are detectable product mentions. Since this is a new lab feature, Google will limit the amount of traffic enabled to view shopping links to 10%. 

Opt-out. You can opt-out of showing shopping links by going to your AdSense account > Optimization > Labs and turning off shopping links. 

Find out more. You can read the full help doc here. 

Why we care. Advertisers using AdSense will now have another way of monetizing their website. Since only 10% of content will be linked to shopping ads, the new feature shouldn’t be overly intrusive, but advertisers should still keep an eye out for irrelevant links and unrelated results. 

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Should your business ever take a break from doing SEO?

Written on June 14, 2022 at 9:57 am, by admin

For so many reasons it can be tempting to stop doing SEO for a period of time – maybe it’s budget, maybe you’ve had a bad experience with your SEO vendor or maybe you’re not seeing the results you thought you’d see.

When that happens, should you take a break from SEO? And if you do, what are the consequences?

The answer: SEO is a marathon, not a sprint

SEO is like running a marathon. If you stop because you tire easily, your competitors will pass you. The longer you take a break, the further ahead the competition – and it might be hard to catch up.

Of course, no one is forcing you to do SEO. But you must consider what you are up against before you make a decision to stop spending time and money on it.

What you are up against is 12 changes to Google Search on average each day, millions of competitors per keyword and website maintenance that if not done will result in a poor-quality site, making it even harder to rank.

That’s why the secret to SEO success is endurance. SEO can only stop if Google quits changing things and all your competition goes away.

Three reasons you shouldn’t stop doing SEO 

Here are three things to consider before you take a break from your SEO: 

1. There’s an average of 12 changes to search per day

It’s no secret that Google is always updating its search engine. In 2020 alone, Google ran over 600,000 experiments that “resulted in more than 4,500 improvements to Search.” That’s an average of 12 changes per day, folks.

Some changes are minor, some are major. Some are announced, many fly under the radar. (You can see how many Google updates SEOs are talking about, here.)

In all cases, tracking and understanding how these changes impact a website is not a core competency of most businesses. So, you need SEO expertise.

And that is why SEOs spend countless hours testing and analyzing Google changes so their clients or employers can benefit from that knowledge.

If you quit SEO suddenly, your website will not likely stay afloat in the Google storm for very long.

2. You have millions of competitors – yes, millions!

Try doing any search in Google and see how many results show up. Literally any query can have millions or billions of results. Those are your competitors online.

Out of those millions of results, your content somehow needs to show up on page one. And if you want even more clicks, your content needs to be among the first few results on the page.

We analyzed data from three recent studies on search results position and click-through rate, and across the board, position one always gets the most clicks:

Add to that the fact that you need to be an expert on the different search verticals (like Google Images, for example) and all the search features that show up on page one – not just the 10 blue links – to effectively compete.

Every day that you pause your SEO is a day your competition can spend money and resources to get ahead.

Given that it can take five to seven months to start seeing the results you want from SEO, that is time you can’t afford to waste. (Plus, some keywords take even longer to rank; it took us two years to help a client rank No. 1 for “games”).

Maintaining your website is a full-time job

While it’s true that quality websites can build value over time in the form of links and traffic, you cannot set it and forget it in SEO. 

You need to maintain both the technology that drives your website and the content on it regularly. And how often depends on what type of website you have and what type of content there is.

For example, if you have what Google calls “your money or your life” content, you will need to review it and refresh it regularly.

Consider also that every site will need technical SEO fixes on a regular basis to ensure it is operating at peak performance for search engines and end-users. Think: servers, content delivery networks, content management systems, pages crawling issues, etc. 

Remember that Google said in its Search Quality Rater Guidelines that “unmaintained/abandoned ‘old’ websites or unmaintained and inaccurate/misleading content is a reason for a low Page Quality rating.”

Because Google cares that websites are up-to-date and offer a good experience, if you stop SEO, you risk impacting your ability to rank.

Final thoughts

When businesses want to take a break from SEO, it’s often because they aren’t seeing the results they want. And that is usually due to other factors like budget constraints, hiring the wrong SEOs or even mismatched expectations.

If you budget 5% to 10% of your revenue, though, and you work with the right SEO vendor, you should be able to get the results you want. And those results typically end up in more revenue to the business.

When SEO is driving revenue, stopping SEO is rarely a question that any business ponders. If you treat SEO as an essential marketing activity for the life of your business, you will often win the marathon. If you give up, you lose.

The post Should your business ever take a break from doing SEO? appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Why 100% indexing isn’t possible, and why that’s OK

Written on June 14, 2022 at 9:57 am, by admin

When it comes to topics like crawl budget, the historic rhetoric has always been that it’s a problem reserved for large websites (classified by Google as 1-million-plus webpages) and medium-sized websites with high content change frequency.

In recent months, however, crawling and indexing have become more common topics on the SEO forums and in questions posed to Googlers on Twitter.

From my own anecdotal experience, websites of varying size and change frequency have since November seen greater fluctuations and report changes in Google Search Console (both crawl stats and coverage reports) than they have historically.

A number of the major coverage changes I’ve witnessed have also correlated with unconfirmed Google updates and high volatility from the SERP sensors/watchers. Given none of the websites have too much in common in terms of stack, niche or even technical issues – is this an indication that 100% indexed (for most websites) isn’t now possible, and that’s OK?

This makes sense.

Google, in their own docs, outlines that the web is expanding at a pace far outstretching its own capability and means to crawl (and index) every URL.

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In the same documentation, Google outlines a number of factors that impact their crawl capacity, as well as crawl demand, including:

• The popularity of your URLs (and content).
• It’s staleness.
• How quickly the site responds.
• Google’s knowledge (perceived inventory) of URLs on our website.

From conversations with Google’s John Mueller on Twitter, the popularity of your URL isn’t necessarily impacted by the popularity of your brand and/or domain.

Having had first-hand experience of a major publisher not having content indexed based on its uniqueness to similar content already published online – as if it is falling below both the quality threshold and doesn’t have a high enough SERP inclusion value.

This is why, when working with all websites of a certain size or type (e.g., e-commerce), I lay down from day one that 100% indexed is not always a success metric.

Indexing tiers and shards

Google has been quite open in explaining how their indexing works.

They use tiered indexing (some content on better servers for faster access) and that they have a serving index stored across a number of data centers that essentially stores the data served in a SERP.

Oversimplifying this further:

The contents of the webpage (the HTML document) document are then tokenized and stored across shards, and the shards themselves are indexed (like a glossary) so that they can be queried quicker and easier for specific keywords (when a user searches).

A lot of the time, indexing issues are blamed on technical SEO, and if you have a noindex or issues and inconsistencies preventing Google from indexing content, then it is technical, but more often than not – it’s a value proposition issue.

Beneficial purpose and SERP inclusion value

When I talk about value proposition, I’m referring to two concepts from Google’s quality rater guidelines (QRGs), these being:

• Beneficial purpose
• Page quality

And combined, these create something I reference as the SERP inclusion value. 

This is commonly the reason why webpages fall into the “Discovered – currently not indexed” category within Google Search Console’s coverage report.

In the QRGs, Google makes this statement:

Remember that if a page lacks a beneficial purpose, it should always be rated Lowest Page Quality ­regardless of the page’s Needs Met rating or how well­-designed the page may be.

What does this mean? That a page can target the right keywords and tick the right boxes. But if it’s generally repetitive to other content and lacks additional value, then Google may choose not to index it.

This is where we come across Google’s quality threshold, a concept for whether a page meets the necessary “quality” to be indexed. 

A key part of how this quality threshold works is that it’s almost real-time and fluid.

Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed this on Twitter, where a URL may become indexed when first found and then dropped when new (better) URLs are found or even given a temporary “freshness” boost from manual submission in GSC.

Working out whether you have an issue

The first thing to identify is if you’re seeing the number of pages in Google Search Console’s coverage report being moved from included to excluded.

This graph on its own and out of context is enough to cause concern amongst most marketing stakeholders.

But how many of these pages do you care about? How many of these pages drive value?

You’ll be able to identify this through your collective data. You’ll see if traffic and revenue/leads are decreasing in your analytics platform, and you’ll notice in third-party tools if you’re losing overall market visibility and rank.

Once you’ve identified if you are seeing valuable pages dropping out of Google’s index, the next steps are to understand the why and Search Console breaks down excluded into further categories. The main ones you need to be aware of and understand are:

Crawled – currently not indexed

This is something I’ve encountered more with e-commerce and real estate than any other vertical.

In 2021 the number of new business applications registrations in the U.S. broke previous records, and with more businesses competing for users, there is a lot of new content being published – but likely not a lot of new and unique information or perspectives.

Discovered – currently not indexed

When debugging indexing issues, I find this a lot on e-commerce websites or websites that have deployed a considerable programmatic approach to content creation and published a large number of pages at once.

The main reasons pages fall into this category can be down to crawl budget, in that you’ve just published a large amount of content and new URLs and grown the number of crawlable and indexable pages on the site exponentially, and the crawl budget that Google has determined for your site isn’t geared to this many pages.

There’s not a lot you can do to influence this. However, you can help Google through XML sitemaps, HTML sitemaps and good internal linking to pass page rank from important (indexed) pages to these new pages.

The second reason why content may fall into this category is down to quality – and this is common in programmatic content or e-commerce sites with a large number of products and PDPs that are similar or variable products.

Google can identify patterns in URLs, and if it visits a percentage of these pages and finds no value, it can (and sometimes will) make an assumption that the HTML documents with similar URLs will be of equal (low) quality, and it will choose not to crawl them.

A lot of these pages will have been created intentionally with a customer acquisition objective, such as programmatic location pages or comparison pages targeting niche users, but these queries are searched in low frequency, will likely not get many eyes, and the content may not be unique enough versus the other programmatic pages, so Google will not index the low-value proposition content when other alternatives are available.

If this is the case, you will need to assess and determine whether the objectives can be achieved within the project resource and parameters without the excessive pages that are clogging up crawl and not being seen as valuable.

Duplicate content

Duplicate content is one of the more straightforward and is common in e-commerce, publishing and programmatic.

If the main content of the page, which holds the value proposition, is duplicated across other websites or internal pages, then Google won’t invest the resource in indexing the content.

This also ties into the value proposition and the concept of beneficial purpose. I’ve encountered numerous examples where large, authoritative websites have had content not indexed because it is the same as other content available – not offering unique perspectives or unique value propositions.

Taking action

For most large websites and decent-sized medium websites, achieving 100% indexing is only going to get harder as Google has to process all existing and new content on the web.

If you find valuable content being deemed below the quality threshold, what actions should you take?

• Improve internal linking from pages that are “high value”: This doesn’t necessarily mean the pages with the most backlinks, but those pages that rank for a large number of keywords and have good visibility can pass positive signals through descriptive anchors to other pages.
• Prune low-quality, low-value content. If the pages being excluded from the index are low value and not driving any value (e.g., pageviews, conversions), they should be pruned. Having them live is just wasting Google’s crawl resource when it chooses to crawl them, and this can affect their assumptions of quality based on URL pattern matching and perceived inventory.

The post Why 100% indexing isn’t possible, and why that’s OK appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Top 7 SEO tips for WordPress sites

Written on June 13, 2022 at 6:50 am, by admin

If your WordPress site rank is not performing as expected, all hope is not lost.

There are a couple of things you can do to improve your SEO ranking. The seven methods outlined below are quick, simple, and proven to show results.

1. Make sure HTTPS is enabled

Using an SSL certificate to secure your website lets your viewers know your site is secure, which helps with ranking.

SSL certificates are available both free and paid. Once you have an SSL certificate installed for your site, use a plugin like Really Simple SSL to assure your content is served from the secure protocol.

2. Optimize your URLs

A good permalink structure is crucial to SEO-friendly URLs.

WordPress gives you this functionality from installation, but you can make changes to it with plugins for more modifications.

URL optimization is important when optimizing your pages on your site for certain search queries and keyword phrases.

Placing your primary keyword in the URL is considered a best practice for on-page SEO.

When a search engine crawls your site, it’s easy for them to understand what your content is about.

3. Use an SEO plugin

SEO plugins are a great way to diagnose and improve both technical and on-page SEO recommendations. Consider installing one of these recommended plugins.

• Yoast SEO – One of WordPress’s most popular plugins. The free version of Yoast boasts tools to help optimize your content for SEO and improve overall readability.

• Rank Math – Rank Math has an intuitive panel on your page or post that allows you to see changes that would positively affect your SEO.

4. Meta descriptions

Meta descriptions or tags is an element that summarizes the content of your post or page. It gives search engines a brief description of what they will read or find on your website.

A meta description should not be longer than 275 characters long as that is all Google will display.

A compelling meta description can bring more readers to your post, adding to your SEO rank. You will want to add your keyword to your meta description for easy lookups and add it to your content.

5. Craft good content

High-quality content is one of the best ways to improve your SEO. Good quality content goes deeper than the material you write or create on your website.

Assure you have a deep understanding of the subject you are writing about and do some keyword research to best capture your audience’s attention.

Avoid creating duplicate content on your site. Duplicate content refers to ideas or topics that have already been created or discussed on your website and will negatively affect your SEO score.

A good model to follow is the E-A-T model, which creates trust with your user and an overall better SEO ranking.

What is E-A-T content? Google uses search quality guidelines to ensure the content on a site is good for users. It is not a ranking factor for SEO, but it affects how your content is read.

E-A-T stands for the expertise of the writer, authoritativeness of the content or site itself and trustworthiness of the content provided.

Assuring your website has an about us page will show your authoritativeness and expertise to your readers. Because of this, collaborating with other experts contributes to your SEO.

6. Site optimization

Today, site speed is another important factor for SEO optimization, as serving content as fast as possible is what a lot of users need—every second matters.

Use a hosting provider that is optimized for your WordPress site with options such as NGINX or Redis for server-side caching.

An example of WordPress optimized hosting is InMotion Hosting’s Ultrastack, which uses NGINX to intelligently cache frequently-used resources to save memory.

Images should also be optimized. If they are too large or take too long to load, it will strain your website. Using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to serve your content helps reduce load times.

The Jetpack plugin provides a free image CDN, but there are other hosting resources that can be used such as Cloudflare.

If your current hosting provider does not provide server-side caching, you can use a caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket.

7. Keep an eye on your analytics

Google Search Console and Google Analytics go hand in hand to track how your website is performing. These metrics give you detailed information about how visitors interact with the content on your website.

Other resources are Bing’s Webmaster Tools and third-party options such as Semrush.

Utilizing these tools also allow you to review your keyword rate, as well as site speed.

Final words

SEO can be challenging, especially if you are a new website creator or small business owner; however, keeping the tips above in mind will help you along the way. Having the right foundation to start and creating good quality content will ensure your website and media rise to the top.

Get WordPress Hosting that’s optimized for performance and SEO.

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6 Amazon marketing strategies to implement in 2022

Written on June 13, 2022 at 6:50 am, by admin

Amazon’s reign as the king of ecommerce won’t end any time soon.

More than 2 billion people visit Amazon each month, according to Statista.

So, how do you stand out and generate more sales? 

The core belief behind Amazon’s algorithm is straightforward. They want customers to continue buying. They are interested in sales just as much (if not more) than you are as a seller.

The difference? Amazon doesn’t have any loyalty toward any brand other than their own.

More sales lead to higher rankings, which in turn, leads to more sales.

But how can you get past the chicken vs. egg scenario to start seeing improvements?

Here are the six marketing strategies you can use to grow your Amazon sales.

1. Cover the basics 

Tips and tricks don’t replace solid marketing fundamentals. In general, you should be thinking in terms of strategy, not just tactics. 

Do you have high-quality photos and strong copy? How are you positioning your brand/product? Are your prices competitive or is your product differentiated? 

These matter on every channel —  especially Amazon. You can’t start optimizing until your basics are covered.

2. Reanalyze your keywords and focus on keyword relevancy

Amazon’s algorithm may be focused on customers buying products, but that is similar to saying Google’s algorithm is focused on providing the best answer. While it may be true, a lot of variables and nuances go into rankings. This includes:

• Ratings.
• Sales fulfillment.
• Sales velocity.
• Inventory.
• Pricing.
• CTR.

With the A10 Algorithm update (which seems to be based on several updates throughout the years instead of one major update), matching the shopper’s interest/intent has taken center stage. Amazon is attempting to show products based more on searchers vs. their own profitability. 

While you may have done keyword research when you first set up your product detail page, shopping behaviors may have changed. You should regularly conduct keyword research and make sure you have the terms placed throughout the product detail page. This includes important areas like title, description, and bullet points.

This isn’t simply stuffing keywords in your copy. You still have to write for shoppers in a way that drives conversions. The algorithm may rank your product, but it doesn’t buy it. 

Shoppers are the ones reading and making the decision whether to purchase. Your copy must help convince them that your product is the right choice.

3. Invest more in advertising

As expected, Amazon Advertising continues to grow and be an essential part of the company’s revenue.

Amazon’s ad revenue was more than $31 billion in 2021. That’s more than triple its 2018 ad revenue of $10 billion.

If you want to be successful on Amazon, an ad campaign is a must.

Amazon rewards sales and running Amazon ads allows you to get those sales. Unlike Google Ads, where paid ads have no impact on organic placement, Amazon does. You can stimulate sales velocity and improve your rankings by investing more in Amazon Ads. 

As the competition continues to grow, so does the cost.

The good news is that Amazon also continues to refine its ads platform to give you more options and data to improve your Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS). ACoS is calculated by dividing your ad spend by your ad revenue and multiplying it by 100.

4. Bring in more off-Amazon traffic

Amazon is dominant online and they want to remain that way. A good way to do that is to get traffic from other sites. That is why Amazon does take into account traffic that leads to sales from off-Amazon channels like Google and Facebook. 

Take advantage of the Brand Referral Bonus program and create an external traffic campaign for your product listings. Whether it is Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or any other type of campaign to drive traffic, you can set yourself up to receive a commission from Amazon and higher organic listings for your products when done properly.

5. Use a coupon with Amazon advertising

Everyone loves a discount and a good deal. You can play off both psychological triggers by running a coupon for your sponsored product ads. 

Sponsored product ads allow your product to be shown within the search results for specific terms.

When you run a coupon at the same time searchers can see your product with a discount. This not only helps the CTR from the search results but also leads to a higher conversion rate – both crucial metrics for successful Amazon marketing strategies.

In many cases, it isn’t even the amount of the coupon that makes the difference, but simply having one is enough.

Even if you can’t offer a coupon with advertising and turn a sustainable profit on your sales, you should still consider it for a period of time. The improvements in your rankings could lead to higher sales well past the full advertising blitz.

Keep your guard up, however, because you are never operating in a silo. Competitors will always be after your market share. 

6. Invest in high-quality videos

Photos still get most of the attention (rightfully so), but videos have earned their place among the must-haves when it comes to listing quality.

The more information you can give to potential buyers to make them understand and trust your product the higher your sales and the better your reviews will be. 

These four video tips may help you produce more sales from your Amazon listing:

• Shoot a video describing and using your products.
• Make sure you have a plan to address the pain points your product solves and highlight other important differentiating factors.
• Highlight how your product compares to others and show it being used with a lifestyle video to determine what resonates most with your buyers.
• Keep it focused on sales.

Remember, Amazon wants happy customers and more sales — just like you. 

Even though it may feel like it, it isn’t you vs. Amazon. It is you vs. the other products someone would buy instead of yours on Amazon.

Keep strategy focused on awareness and conversion. If you implement the right strategy, Amazon should reward you with higher rankings. 

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YouTube lifts some restrictions for mastheads ads

Written on June 11, 2022 at 12:46 am, by admin

Google has just announced that they are pulling back restrictions on some previously prohibited categories from showing on the YouTube masthead. 

Effective today. Google will now allow booking for masthead ads for the following categories:

• Sports betting (US only)
• Alcohol (where legal)
• Prescription drugs (US, CA, NZ)

What Google says. A spokesperson from Google stated “We’re constantly reviewing our ad requirements  to improve our products and services. Given the evolving regulatory landscape for sports betting and following our successful implementation of our new “per market” YouTube masthead format, we believe that this decision balances the needs of advertisers and consumers.”

Categories for election and political ads, as well as (non-sports) gambling remain restricted.

Additional YouTube masthead changes. In 2020 we reported on Google’s announcement that they would discontinue full-day masthead reservations and replace them with more targeted options. The new CPM option allowed mastheads to be more accessible to a broader market of advertisers. 

View the changelog. You can view the changelog and new policies here.

Why we care. Mastheads are just one of many YouTube and Google advertising formats, and only a fraction of overall ad impressions for YouTube on any single day. But advertisers in any one of the previously restricted categories above can now select that placement, giving them more options for their ad campaigns.  

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Twitter removes nofollow attribute from links in tweets

Written on June 11, 2022 at 12:46 am, by admin

Twitter has removed the nofollow link attribute from Twitter posts, tweets, in its source code. It is unclear if Twitter removed this attribute on purpose or not and if even search engines, like Google, would value links from Twitter or not.

Timing. According to Chris Silver Smith, Twitter removed the nofollow link attribute sometime in the past couple weeks or so. He said on Twitter “Twitter is apparently no longer using rel=”nofollow”. This includes links you find on “profiles, tweets, and other pages on Twitter may now contain followed links,” he said.

Back in 2008, former search quality lead and spam fighter, Matt Cutts, posted that Twitter added the nofollow link attribute to bio sections on Twitter. Within a year later, Twitter added the attribute to all tweets and other sections of their site.

Will these links count? It is hard to know if Google or Bing or other search engines will start to now follow and count links found on Twitter.com and within tweets. We know Google can sometimes treat links that do not have a nofollow attribute, as if it does have a nofollow attribute. I would assume Google would by default do that with most social networks, including Twitter, because user generated content and links, are hard to trust in general.

Will it last. Also, I suspect Twitter will soon add the nofollow link attribute back to external links as soon as they hear about this publicly. So this may be short-lived. We have reached out to Twitter for a statement.

Why we care. Twitter is one of the largest social networks and is used heavily by SEOs and marketers. If links remain unfollowed, it potentially might lead to more link spam on that network and both hurt the usefulness of Twitter and potentially the value of links in general on Twitter.

But again, I really don’t think Twitter intentionally removed the nofollow but we will see.

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10 quick and easy tips from LinkedIn for creators

Written on June 11, 2022 at 12:46 am, by admin

Want to publish great content on LinkedIn? 

Coming up with content ideas can be a challenge.

Sometimes the hardest part is coming up with the right idea.

It also can be easy to talk yourself out of your own ideas.

So if you’re in need of some ideas or inspiration, here are 10 quick and easy tips to come up with topics.

All of the following tips were provided by various LinkedIn for Creators team members during their live What Creators Need to Know: Episode 4. I’ve summarized those for brevity and also sprinkled in a few of my own thoughts to add some context.

1. Look up common hashtags

Focus on hashtags that are used by, and relevant to, your industry.

Click on the hashtag to find high-performing posts. Use this for some inspiration on topics.

However, don’t steal or slightly reword posts from other creators. You will more likely than not be called out.

2. Talk about timely topics

This can be current events or industry news. You can also use LinkedIn’s trending section to find popular news stories and conversations, which you can use as inspiration for your next post.

Do you have to weigh in on partisan or controversial issues? That’s your call. Just know that your post could get filtered out if it’s political or you could lose followers who disagree with you.

3. Experiment with formats and publishing times

Try out a variety of content formats – mix up photo, video and text posts. See what works with your audience.

If you do livestreams, for example, figure out what works best for your audience. Try out a couple of different days of the week and times of day to see which gets you the most views. 

Consider polling your followers to find out when they would be most likely to watch. Once you figure out your time, be consistent to make watching you a habit. 

4. Quality over quantity

Not every LinkedIn post has to go viral.

Focus on creating content that could directly help one person – or even just a few people. 

If that post also happens to go viral, that’s an awesome bonus.

But numbers shouldn’t be the only way you measure success.

Before hitting Post, think about your audience. Could your content help them:

• Become better at their job.
• Advance in their career.
• Solve a problem they’re experiencing.
• Learn something new. 
• Understand current events, an issue, or other types of changes.

5. Share your truth

The good, the bad, the ugly. Show your personality. 

People want to see your real life, voice and story.

LinkedIn is a professional network, but that doesn’t mean you always have to be super polished and super professional.

6. Spark conversations – and keep them going. 

Ask your audience a question that will elicit a response and also encourage them to share their insights and thoughts. Help keep the conversation going by responding to comments.

Aside from adding questions to your post, you can use polls or tag others who you think would be beneficial to the conversation or anyone your audience would like to hear from. 

That said, tag wisely. Don’t just make a post and tag dozens of your contact – those people may find it annoying and it may do more harm than good.

Also, avoid sales pitches.

You want to be approachable. Selling is the exact opposite of being approachable. It will turn off people and can hurt your engagement.

7. Be authentic

Be yourself. Tell your story. Just be you and stay true. 

Hair, makeup, lighting, audio – it doesn’t always have to be perfect. Show up as your best, most authentic self. Do what you love and show it on video.

I believe it was Dr. Seuss who said “There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

8. Share your experiences

Share your entire journey with your followers – your wins, challenges, losses, and everything else in between.

Be vulnerable. Be open with your audience. 

Great content doesn’t have to be perfect. Life is a little messy – so record it.

9. Stop overthinking content

Approach content with a mindset of documenting rather than creating all the time. 

Things you read or hear, conversations you have, questions you answer, problems you solve – all of this is content just waiting to be created every day.

10. Ask for a quarter off for metrics

This ties back to experimenting. 

Sometimes you need space to test, learn and set a baseline to measure performance. It typically takes time to see results on a new platform – so the last thing you want to do is think you have no traction when, in fact, you’re just starting to build the traction you will need for start seeing tangible results in three, six, or 12 months.

The best time to start creating great content on LinkedIn was years ago. But the second-best time is now.

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