Ever lost at least $1,000 in an SEM campaign? You probably have but you may not have realized it until today. Here you will learn how much money you’re leaving at the table – unrealized – and what you can do about it.

Add Negative Keywords

One of the things that will ultimately help make sure you are not spending your hard-earned money needlessly is using negative keywords in your SEM campaign. Negative keywords are a list of keywords that you do not want your ad to appear in.

For example, let’s say that you’re doing SEM for a mobile phone brand such as Samsung. However, you find out through the Search Terms that your ads are appearing in keywords related to your competitor’s brands such as “apple mobile phone price” or “huawei mobile phone price”.

The problem with this is that those people searching for your competitor’s brands likely won’t click on your ad at all. Or if they do, it’s probably by mistake because they are not interested in you but in the other brand – because they literally searched for the specific brand!

If that’s the case, you may want to set up the following negative keywords:

• [apple mobile phone price] – as an exact match
• [huawei mobile phone price] – as an exact match
• “Apple” – as a phrase match
• “Huawei” – as a phrase match

Besides excluding the keywords found above, you can also set the brand name as a phrase that matches the negative keyword. This will help ensure that your ads will never appear in any keywords that contain these terms.

Make Your Ad Copy Engaging

One of the first things searchers will see is your ad copy. It should be able to reflect on their pain points and provide them with a solution. The more that they feel that you understand what they’re going through, the higher the chances of them clicking on your ad versus your competitors.

In order to do just that, first, you have to understand who your target market is. Who are they? What do they look like? How much is their spending power? Are they the decision makers or simply the purchasing agent? Where are they from? How old are they? And what type of tone would they best react to?

Take a look at some of the headlines I created for a supplier of walk-in tubs. I chose to highlight their ADA certification, residential services, and their installation services. Based on my research, I found that these are terms that customers would use when searching for accessibility solutions.

Then, research your keyword’s intent. What are people there to look for? Do they want discounts or maybe free installation? Make sure you showcase these benefits in your headlines and descriptions. Take a look at the features I highlighted in the descriptions below.

Optimize Your SEM Landing Pages

Next, let’s discuss how to optimize your SEM Landing Pages. Similar to what was mentioned above, it’s crucial that your landing page contains content that can help solve your customer’s pain points. Ideally, it should be a separate page that includes a “noindex” tag so that its content does not compete with organic traffic.

The landing page should also contain a Call-To-Action mentioned multiple times throughout the page. This can be in the form of brochure downloads, contact forms, or even newsletter signups. Ensure that these Call-to-Actions lead to another page such as the brochure page or a Thank You page so you can set up Google Analytics to track those conversions as goals.

Set Ads To Appear Only To Relevant Locations

Besides your content matching your customer’s needs, it’s also important that you optimize your Google Ads campaign to target the right people. One of the first ways that you can do this is through the Locations feature.

Do you service certain provinces or areas? Ensure that these are featured in your Locations so that your ads appear to the right people in the right places. If you cater nationwide, it would help to save your spending budget if you specify which cities you’d want to focus on instead of targeting the entire country at the get-go.

Revisit Your Ad Schedule

You can also set your ads to appear on certain days of the week and on certain hours. For example, if you’re a B2B company, you may only want to show your ads during the country’s business hours. Or if your customers are seniors aged 60 and above, you can set your ads to appear from the morning until their estimated sleeping hours, such as the one set below.

Get to know WHEN your target market is most active online, and adjust your ad schedule accordingly.

Exclude Irrelevant Age Groups

If you’re a business that targets specific age groups, then ensure that you make use of the exclusion tool on Google Ads. Here are age groupings you can choose from:

Exclude age groups that are not relevant to your business. This is also done per ad group, so make sure to take note of it.

Key Takeaway

These are just a few tips and tricks on how to optimize your SEM campaign. By improving these factors, you will be able to more accurately target your customers, saving you loads of money, increasing your Click-Through-Rate, and increasing your leads and sales.

Do you have any other go-to ways to optimize your SEM campaign? Let me know in the comments below.

We can check your current SEM campaign and analyze how you can improve it. Simply click here.

The post Tactical Ways To Optimize Your SEM Campaign That You Might Have Missed appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Did you know that 97% of your website’s first-time visitors leave (without purchasing!) to never return? I know, that’s a huge number.

The reason for that is they want to get to know you first before purchasing. However, in the process of getting to know you, they could get distracted and end up just leaving to never come back.

Let’s say they were looking for Christmas lights and they end up on your website. Then as they are looking around, they get a phone call from work. They close your website.

There’s a good chance that is your last time to see them.

Did you know that there is a way to bring them back? In this blog post, you will learn all about retargeting marketing.

What is retargeting marketing?

Retargeting marketing—or simply, retargeting—is the practice of using personalized ads to remind your past visitors to return to your website and check out your products and services or to complete their purchase.

According to LinkedIn, only 2% of visitors convert on their first visit to a website. By retargeting those who visited your website then left without purchasing, you entice them into coming back to your website and convert.

For example, let’s say the person looking for Christmas lights earlier (let’s call them Alex) got a phone call from work and closed your website. If your company invests on retargeting marketing, they would be seeing ads of those Christmas lights even on other websites. That means they get to be more familiar with the brand and product of your company until they decide to check out your website again and eventually make a purchase.

Thing is, 49% of consumers need to visit your website 2-4 times before purchasing anything from you. So if they aren’t coming back after that initial visit, how will they make that purchase?

How effective is it? A 2018 statistic says that leads who see your retargeted ads are 70% more likely to convert. And not just that, but those who abandon their carts are also more likely to come back and complete their purchase, with conversion rates rising to 26% from a measly 8% from non-retargeted leads.

Retargeting also has been found to increase branded search results by at least 500% and deliver a 700% increase in website visitors “due to improved ad exposure.”

What is the difference between retargeting and remarketing?

Yes, retargeting and remarketing are two different strategies.

Retargeting is when you “target” a customer based on their activity (and cookies) by showing them your ads even after they leave your website. If you’ve ever felt like you’ve been “followed” by a certain brand or product that you’ve Googled once, that’s retargeting at work.

Remarketing is when you collect the information of your leads so you can send them sales and marketing emails. For example, check your “Promotions” tab in your email. You’ll see there are a couple of offers from various companies you’ve purchased from or signed up for before.

How does retargeting marketing work?

When your leads enter your website, they leave cookies. According to Google, “Cookies are files created by websites you visit. They make your online experience easier by saving browsing information.” Cookies basically give you the personalized experience you have on the internet.

There are two kinds of cookies: first-party and third-party cookies.

The difference is that first-party cookies are the ones created by the site you’ve visiting. For example, if you sign in to my podcast website, The Leadership Stack Podcast, you can keep yourself signed in there because the site has created cookies.

Third-party cookies are created by other sites. For example, here’s the homepage of CNN:

(I visited ReadyCloud to get statistics on retargeting, now I’m seeing their ad!)

To display their ads, third-party cookies are essential. What happens is that advertisers are using your first-party cookies with third-party cookies so they can retarget you even as you leave their website.

The interesting part is that support for third-party cookies were announced to be removed by Google by 2023. I won’t get into the alternatives here, but you can read this extremely useful blog post by Mateusz Rumiński on how retargeting will work without third party cookies.

When should you use a retargeting marketing campaign?

Simple—you use a retargeting campaign when you want your leads to come back to your website.

Whether it’s because they haven’t purchased anything yet, they abandoned their cart, or you have new products or bestsellers you think would catch their eye (and again, lead them back to your website), you should be retargeting your leads.

Platforms to use for retargeting

There are three major platforms that you can use to retarget your leads and bring them back to your website.

Google Display Network

Google Display Network has a massive reach, so using this platform would be essential in successfully retargeting your leads.

Image from WordStream

To use this platform for retargeting, what you need to do is to add a “pixel” or “tag” to your website for your visitors to get added to your retargeting audience through browser cookies.

Through the Google Display Network, you can show your past visitors ads as they visit the different Google partner sites. You can also create various lists for your leads so your retargeting campaigns will be more personalized and relevant.

Meta (Facebook)

We have all been followed by ads even on our social media accounts like Facebook and Instagram. That is because Facebook also allows retargeting campaigns on its platform.

Same with Google, you just need to install a Facebook pixel that will enable you to track your visitors and their actions as they engage with your brand. You can also create lists for your leads so your campaigns can get more personal.

LinkedIn

Last but not the least, you can use LinkedIn for your retargeting campaigns as well.

To use this platform, you need to install their LinkedIn Insight Tag to your website so you can retarget them using ads on LinkedIn. They also have demographic segments for more personalized retargeting marketing campaigns.

Effective retargeting strategies

Retargeting marketing, like any kind of marketing, also needs strategy to be effective. And as always, personalization is the name of the game.

Segment your audience

I cannot stress this enough. Audience segmentation is one of the main things you should be doing, whether it’s remarketing or retargeting. When you segment your audience, you are able to give them more relevant and personalized ads.

You can segment your audience by behavior, intent, or demographic. Then you can show them ads that are relevant to the lists you’re putting them in.

For example, you can show an ad to your past visitors who viewed your Christmas decorations but left before engaging anything. The ad you will be showing them will be different to those who added the decorations to their carts but left without purchasing, or those who are looking at non-Christmas-themed decorations instead.

Choose the right platform

The next question is, where is your target audience hanging out?

If your past visitors (whom you’ve segmented) prefer LinkedIn over Facebook, then it would not make much sense to invest on retargeting campaigns in Facebook. If they have no social media accounts, then Google Display Network would be the best platform for you to use.

This is why understanding your audience is a big deal. You don’t want to waste money creating retargeting campaigns that they won’t be seeing anyway.

Another reason is that although 30% of recipients of targeted ads react positively to being targeted, bombarding your audience with targeted ads can seem… creepy, that’s why there are calls to ban targeted ads. So make sure you don’t overstep your boundaries. Remember, you still want to give your customers a good experience with your brand, and the goal is to entice them to come back, not to scare them away.

Have easily recognizable and pleasing ads

Your retargeting marketing campaigns will be useless if your ads look generic. Make sure your leads know it’s you at first glance, and make sure they look good.

You can opt to A/B test your ads as well. A/B testing is when you change certain aspects of your ad or email such as copy, titles, or graphics to gauge what works well with your audience. By knowing what your audience prefers, you get to run better, more effective retargeting campaigns.

Use tools for retargeting marketing

You can also opt to use tools for your retargeting marketing campaigns. One such tool you can use is AnyTrack. As we’ve mentioned before, “AnyTrack is a conversion tracking platform that consolidates all of your conversion data from your website, whether it’s organic, paid, or direct, and sends it over to the marketing and analytics platform that you use. All of these using a single line of code only.”

This means that whatever your visitors do on your website, you get to know about it and you can make retargeting campaigns based on their behavior. You can sign up using my referral link here.

Key takeaway

Letting your past visitors leave without engaging your site and converting is a huge mistake. Running retargeting marketing campaigns is one of the most effective ways you can bring them back to your site, so it’s integral to do it and to do it right. There are strategies, platforms, and tools you can use to successfully convert your past visitors, so make sure you learn them and utilize them.

Did this guide help you? Let me know by commenting below!

The post What is Retargeting Marketing? appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Data, data, data. As digital marketers, we can’t have too much data right? We use data to solve problems, create new strategies, and optimize further. Have you ever felt a time where there is so much data lying around that you just can’t use them anymore?

I sure have. That’s why I’ve always been looking for tools that could help us organize data that we gather better and easier. And in my journey in looking for tools, I found AnyTrack.io. 

AnyTrack helped us collect all of our conversion data so that we could easily use it for our campaigns. This is a platform that any digital marketer can benefit from and I’ll show you why in my full review of AnyTrack.

If you’re excited to check out AnyTrack, you could register right away for a free account by going to this link.

What is AnyTrack?

AnyTrack is a conversion tracking platform that consolidates all of your conversion data from your website, whether it’s organic, paid, or direct, and sends it over to the marketing and analytics platform that you use. All of these using a single line of code only.

Yup that’s right, a single line of code. This makes the process a lot easy instead of having to install tracking codes manually all over your website. Upon starting your account, AnyTrack will give you a tracking code that you can place in the <head> section of your website. You could also add it via Google Tag Manager.

What this tracking code does is simple. Each time someone visits your website, AnyTrack automatically records the user’s engagement on your website. Every time they click a CTA button, submit a form, complete a purchase, etc., AnyTrack will take note of these actions and send the data across the various marketing platforms that you are using. 

Connect with Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and more

You can connect AnyTrack with various analytics and ad platforms such as Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Taboola, Outbrain, Google Ads, and Bing Ads. As soon as you add AnyTrack’s tracking code to your website, all of your conversion data will be sent immediately to these tools with little to no delays. You could leverage the conversion data that you get with your ad networks which work best for PPC marketers. For SEOs, you could use these data to study your audience and create more compelling content that will sell more.

Affiliate Network Tracking

If you are an affiliate marketer, you are going to love AnyTrack. AnyTrack automatically takes note of the affiliate links on your website. They call this AutoTag. All you have to do is to integrate your affiliate network to AnyTrack. Once a user clicks on an affiliate link and converts, AnyTrack will still be able to gather conversion data even they are off-site anymore and send it back to your analytics account.

Google Analytics Goals

All engagements that are recorded by AnyTrack is recorded under Events in Google Analytics. This means you don’t have to do any more setups if you want to track outbound link clicks, form submissions, registrations, purchases, and more. You can then easily set up Google Analytics Goals and do more with your conversion data.

Audience Building

With the data that you receive from all the conversion on your website, you can now use these data to build custom audiences for your ad campaigns. This makes retargeting campaigns much easier and efficient.

Webhooks

Webhooks is one of AnyTrack’s newest features. This allows you to send conversion data to other third-party tools like Zapier and Integromat. Some fun ideas would be hooking it up with Slack so your team gets a notification every time a conversion happens. 

What I Love About AnyTrack

What I’ve mentioned above is just the basics of what AnyTrack can do. There are more features to explore. Here are more reasons why I like using AnyTrack.

Easy Set-Up

As I’ve mentioned earlier, all it takes is a single line of code for you to set up AnyTrack.io on your website. If you’re a marketer, you’ll need little to no help from a developer setting this up.

Aside from the easy set-up, AnyTrack.io is lightweight as well. It won’t eat up anything from your website server so you don’t have to worry about it slowing down your website and negatively affecting your conversion rate.

Good UI/UX

When you have a huge amount of data in front of you, it can be quite hard to digest sometimes. I love the Dashboard of AnyTrack.io because it gives me a full view of the data that I need to see in one glance. 

Great Customer Support

The folks over at AnyTrack are friendly. Although they don’t have live chat support, contacting them via email is easy and you don’t have to wait for days for a reply. They are very helpful and they will assist you in everything to make sure that your account is set up perfectly.

Complete Documentation

If you’re finding a hard time finding your way around the tool, AnyTrack.io has full documentation on how to use the platform the right way so you won’t get lost. 

AnyTrack.io Pricing

AnyTrack.io has 3 paid plans but the good news is, you can actually use the tool for free. Of course, it has limitations but it is great for testing the tool without having any time limit. If you want to try it out, you can click here to sign up for a free account.

The three basic plans have their own perks. The Basic Plan is great for individual SEOs and Bloggers, the Personal Plan is great for PPC marketers and Affiliate marketers, and the Advanced plan is perfect for agencies. If you’re interested in their paid plans, you can try each three of them for 14-days free. Here’s the full list of prices and features.

Free:

• 1 Website
• 1 Affiliate network
• Up to 5,000 sessions per month
• Google Analytics Integration
• Facebook Pixel Integration

Basic Plan (50$ Monthly):

• 1 Website
• 3 Integrations
• 12 Months of Data Retention
• 50,000 Sessions Included
• Google Analytics Integration
• Facebook Pixel Integration

Personal Plan (150$ Monthly):

• 3 Websites
• Unlimited Integrations
• 12 Months of Data Retention
• 500,00 Sessions Included
• Google Analytics Integration
• Facebook Pixel Integration
• Google Ads Integration
• Facebook Conversion API
• Ad Networks Support
• Webhooks

Advanced (300$ Monthly)

• 10 Websites
• Unlimited Integrations
• 12 Months of Data Retention
• 3,000,000 Sessions Included
• Google Analytics Integration
• Google Ads Integration
• Facebook Pixel Integration
• Facebook Conversion API
• Ad Networks Support
• Webhooks
• Premium Affiliate Networks

The post AnyTrack as a Complete Conversion Tracking Platform: A Detailed Platform Analysis appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Running a Google Ads campaign can definitely help your business in improving its presence online. Whether it’s a simple Text Ad or a Display Ad, businesses can do well to promote themselves on Google. However, there are situations that are uncalled-for when running campaigns. Disapproved ads can hinder your plans for your promotions and ultimately take you off track if you don’t know how to handle it.

Google’s Ad policies are displayed for everyone to abide to. Like SEO, white-hat advertising will be your best bet in winning and achieving your goals with flying colors in Search Engine Marketing. Doing this requires more from you but let me tell you now, the results will be astounding. Here are some of the considerations you should think about when you get that dreaded ‘disapproved ads’ status.

Possible reasons why your ad is disapproved

You may think that you are all set to run a campaign in just a snap. For text ads, it’s not as simple as writing a copy or installing extensions, you must inspect it for probable causes for disapproval. Your ads must be clean to the bone and it must adhere to the advertising policies which Google has set for marketers like us. According to Google, here are the 4 broad areas that you should focus on:

• Prohibited Content
• Prohibited Practices
• Restricted Content and Features
• Editorial and Technical Requirements

Prohibited content

As I previously mentioned, you will benefit a lot if you get into Google’s good graces with the content that you advertise on their network. Playing by the rules can ensure that you get an amped-up online presence as well as a practical way to advertise, therefore saving you from incurring ridiculous marketing costs.

With that said, do not dare go beyond the lines of the content that you are allowed to advertise. Prohibited content includes fake goods, dangerous services, messages inciting hate, dishonest or false advertisements, graphic scenes, and more. Think of it this way, if your 9-year-old son will ask scandalous questions about a particular thing he read about in Google, it’s probably not something that you should consider advertising. To avoid getting a bad rap for your ads, just avoid prohibited content altogether. Represent your business in the best possible way as well as deliver content that will provide value to your audience. It’s as simple as that.

Prohibited practices

You may be asking yourself, “Why were my ads disapproved if I did everything right?” If your campaign is flagged by Google, chances are you didn’t do everything right. Prohibited practices are “abusing the network, data collection and use, and misrepresentation. These practices mostly deal with how your ad will treat users who interact with it. Be honest with your content and do not lead users into danger. Do not run ads if you are hesitant on its contribution to a user.

Take this as an example for misrepresentation: I once ran a campaign for someone who provided all the necessary collaterals for a display campaign (graphics, copies, landing page), I went on ahead to create an ad for them since everything is all set. Later on, I saw this on our dashboard:

Google flagged the campaign (GDN ads) as misleading. We investigated this and as per our findings, there have been outrageous claims made on their content on the collaterals as well as their pages. Claims that guarantee results without a clear process on refunds or money-back guarantee will be flagged as misleading.

What we did to address this is to remove all mentions of outrageous claims, develop new pages for the products they advertise to make the content more concise, and appealed to Google about the sanction which lead to an approved ad. Misleading content can also be detected by Google in websites that do not have a clear structure, where users may tend to be confused about how to navigate the site. Unless you are using a direct-to-the-point URL, consider creating one that further addresses your audience.

Restricted content and features

Google does not honor dangerous, explicit, and spam content, but they do have restrictions on some sensitive content for Ads. Basically, restricted content and features are mostly about the types of content that touch base on legal and cultural implications. These policies talk about the promotion of some controversial content but only on a limited basis. If you are an advertiser for products that cover some of these: alcohol, gambling, healthcare, financial services, political content, etcetera, you can be eligible to run a campaign but you would need to accomplish additional requirements.

Google makes sure that they allow ads that are appropriate for its target audience so the display of these types of ads is limited to the demographics that you can show them to. This is based on their location, age, and interests, all of which are taken care of by the Google algorithm already but you must comply with the limitations imposed by Google. If you get a message saying your ad is disapproved because of the restricted content, it’s best to tone it down a little. Create appropriate content that your users will find valuable.

Editorial and technical requirements

User experience and engagement are also great metrics for successful ads. Editorial requirements deal with your potential to bring brand recall to customers by way of catchy or appealing ads. Technical requirements help advertisers maximize the different ad formats available. Google honors professionalism and a positive appearance which users will find relevant and useful for them. The best way to fix disapproval status pertaining to editorial and technical requirements is to provide a safe and highly positive experience for your users. Review things that you need to fix in correlation with the policies and deem yourself worthy of advertising for your audience on a great platform like the Google Network.

Key takeaway

If you find yourself at the other end of a disapproved ad, don’t fret. Let this be a learning experience and fix the problems that you have encountered as mentioned above. As a digital marketer, it is your job to stay on top of things and prevent these issues from happening. Have you encountered a disapproved ad from your search engine marketing experience? Let’s talk about it on the comments below!

The post Disapproved Google Ads: What to Do appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

No one is innocent from using clickbait copy, even top digital marketers sometimes use sensational anecdotes in their content. This is a problem because if you built your strategy on this lazy technique, then it will bite you in the ass before you know it. That time has come now. Google made an announcement last week in which they introduced a new Clickbait Ads policy which aptly addresses the Misrepresentation sections of their Ad policies.

If you are planning on starting your ad with, “This client loved our business, what happened next will shock you,” or if you are planning on using this kind of copy in any of your Google Ads, content, don’t even think about it. It will be a waste of your money and worse, Google will not run your ads at all. Although this talks about Google Ads policies, I believe this should also be the same for Organic Search Optimization since creating too much clickbait content will only harm your rankings if an algorithm update explicitly tackles this area.

Now, we are going to talk about why you should care about this new Ad policy, what can you do about it if you are guilty of using it for your ads, and what to do to avoid this.

Implications of the New Policy

Together with the introduction of the new policy on clickbait ads, Google has also published a post on their Advertising Policies Help page on the Google Support website pertaining to account pausing action. They have notified advertisers about a new enforcement action for those who violate Google Ads policies. Before, if you violate a policy, the worst thing that can happen to you is your ads won’t run and that’s it. You’re still free to create a campaign for other Ad Groups, but Google noted this month that if you were investigated for a policy violation, your whole account will be temporarily paused and this also applies to advertisers who fail to verify their identity.

As the new clickbait policy rolls out in July, think about the missed opportunities that you can incur if you violate this policy. You would be disabled from running ads and who knows what will happen if your offense is a grave enough to land you in Google’s crosshairs.

Clickbait will not be an unbelievable copywriting strategy

There is no good way to use clickbait. It deserves the bad reputation that it gets. Let me just put this out there, this is not a “copywriting hack” that seasoned marketers should teach the young blood of the industry. This just encourages lazy writing and an attitude of your work being just “okay”. Yes, it dominates most of the ads and even some organic search results but that doesn’t mean that if you can’t beat them, you join them.

Each new piece of content that you are going to release for your audience deserves a well-thought-out execution. If you are going to write for people, make sure that you give something of value to them and this naturally falls into the goals that businesses have for Google Ads. You cannot expect people to become leads if they feel duped by clicking on your ad. You can claim that you can help them with their problem right away, they only need to click on the link, but the chances that they would be unsatisfied with your service or product is still there so why should you risk tarnishing your reputation just to exhaust your ads budget?

Here are some key points you need to keep in mind to optimize your search ad for the clickbait policy:

• For YMYL sites, avoid imposing your business to your audience’s lifestyle in a threatening manner with copies like, “You need this today or your business is going to fail.” This just sets you up for more trouble of violating the misrepresentation policy because the ‘Clickbait Ads’ policy also flags “ads that use negative life events such as death, accidents, illness, arrests or bankruptcy to induce fear, guilt or other strong negative emotions to pressure the viewer to take immediate action” Stop being edgy, just write a comprehensive copy that does not mislead your potential client.
• This may sound extreme but I have seen some advertisers who write copies or launch display campaigns with “ads which use depictions of severe stress, pain, fear or shock to promote a product or service.” This is way before Google’s crackdown on these types of content but back then, it is an extreme way of pressuring someone to buy from a business – by inducing a negative personal connotation. Ease up on the aggressive approach, just be honest and highlight the strengths of your business in your advertisements.
• “You won’t believe what happened next…” has been a part of the internet ecosphere for as long as I can remember. Think about the content that you are putting out there, does it properly represent your business or the growth that you are aiming for? Is the click more valuable than quality content or a conversion leading to a possible sale? You have to make the clicks matter.

Optimizing Search Ads for Conversion Growth

To end, I would like to say that clickbait will always be there but if you are smart enough as a marketer, you would not contribute to the misrepresentation that it can perceive itself to be. Always write with the reader in mind. Is it going to contribute to the value of their business, lifestyle, or interests? Is it geared towards professional growth? Surround yourself with these ideas and you will not dare write another clickbait Ad again.

The post Google Ads Release Clickbait Policy appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

The thing with search engine marketing is that it is a high-risk but high-reward process by itself. If you ask me, organic is still the way to go in terms of marketing since it is perpetual. The foundation of search ads is also built on keyword research and it is vital that you choose money-making keywords for your investment to bear fruit. But what are you going to do if the keywords that you really want are low in volume? Or are you confused why your ads are not showing on the search results page? It’s probably because you haven’t optimized enough.

It’s important that you act and bid smart so you can get your ads in front of the search results where your clients can see it instantly. Here are some of the tips that you can keep in mind in order to win at Google Ads:

Make use of the custom intent audiences

Google Ads has updated and upgraded the Audience Keywords to what they call Custom Intent Audiences. This can help you see your reach using your Display or Video campaigns so you can optimize your ads accordingly. It can prove to be beneficial especially if you’re in the dark about your market reach. Using this feature of Google Ads, you can see custom audiences based on their demographics and relevance to your target.

Build a keyword list to target, this way you will see how your ad performs in terms of user query. You can see data based on “what people are actively researching or planning”. This way, you can segment your ads per intent so you can experiment around ads targeting those in custom markets or those that will be useful for them based on the demographic data that your ad has returned.

Optimize your budget

There will be instances when you are puzzled why your ads are not displaying on Google. If you’re still scratching your head, why not look at your current ads and see if they are stealing bids from each other. Having too many ads from your campaign without the proper budget for it can cause an imbalance, especially if some of the keywords you are using are high volume keywords. If you are using low volume but specific keywords, in order to make your them shine, focus your bids on this ad group. If you want this to be highlighted for your Google Ads, you might as well train the focus to this group of these low volume keywords.

Don’t be afraid to pause ads especially if it’s not serving you much purpose in terms of clicks and conversions. Also, it would help if you get the feel of your market to see which one of your products or services can be most beneficial especially during this time of the pandemic.

Adjust ad schedule

Partnering with Google for ads can be tricky since your bid or your copy cannot be the means to an end. There are a lot of factors in order to receive the clicks and impressions that you are gunning for. Check and see if your ad schedule is up to par for the audience that you are targeting. There are certain days and time slots when you have to give your ads a rest. Optimizing your ad schedule will also ensure that you only get quality leads because you are aligning your schedule with their buying habits.

Take advantage of search terms

Search terms can help you get to the pulse of users quickly so aside from building your keyword list, you should also take a look at the search terms that are relevant to your ads. This is a nifty tool in the Google Ads dashboard that can help you make the most out of your search ads. You can find this on the leftmost part of your Ad Group dashboard and here you can see relevant terms that you may use to help you improve your ads.

This is a simple tip and one that has been done before but it can help you go a long way with your ads.

Research on long-tail and semantic keywords

Make use of long-tail and semantic keywords for your ads if your current keyword list is not converting. Semantic keywords can help improve the reach of your keywords, especially if your specific keyword list is composed of low volume keywords. Long-tail has proven to cater to high conversion goals so this is also an area that you should look into. Take advantage of search queries that are relevant to your goal and always make sure that you have created a list for the negative keywords.

Key Takeaway

Being visible online can go a long way for your business. Setting up ads and waiting for it to achieve results will only waste your time. Make smart and informed choices when setting up your ads and you will be rewarded with high quality leads. Search Engine Marketing is a great tool for businesses especially those who would want to be further empowered to reach their goals. What are the other things that you keep in mind when running Ads on Google? Comment down below!

The post 5 Tips on Optimizing Search Ads for Business appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Click fraud is one of the most detrimental events that can affect your Google Ad performance. Pay per click marketing is a variety of online advertising that has well-cemented the many digital campaigns we have today. The capacity of online advertising a well-calculated option to help you get closer to your audience is something that businesses flock to in the hopes that it will help them win in their respective niches. Some people think that online ads are just for vanity and display, the numbers don’t lie when it comes to its benefit for the business. Check out the reasons why you should guard the traffic coming into your online ads.

Click Fraud Prevention

Eliminating click fraud on your pay-per-click (PPC) ads is not easy. How else can you distinguish which clicks are really coming from your customers and which are from bots that your competitors deployed to drain your ads budget? This act is more detrimental than you think because apart from increasing the cost of your advertising, you will also experience low conversion rates because the clicks that should have been for your customers are exploited by these unqualified clicks.

Steering clear from this black-hat technique will cost you a lot of time and effort. You have to fulfill the necessity of going the extra mile just to detect click fraud on your ads. According to WordStream, tracking click fraud requires you to get data before you confirm that there is such activity in your ads. First, you will need to track the IP addresses of those who are clicking on your ads, you should also extract the click and action timestamp, and the user agent responsible for those clicks.

User Acquisition Increase

Sponsored results do the trick of raising brand awareness, increasing conversions going into the site, and to serve as a channel to increase user acquisition. Although, SEM is not as perpetual as SEO, availing Google Ads for your business still cuts outs the best for you. It is a simple process that can lead to new opportunities for you. Having online advertising is a sustainable acquisition strategy that will help you in the long-run

Online advertising now evolves with the times simply because technology knows no bounds when it comes to treating a person as an audience. Achieving the top spot on the search results is a fruitful investment of which you should protect. This is why you should look into more opportunities to guard your advertising and how you can maintain its benefits for your business.

Quality Audience Engagement

You do not know each and every person who engages with your ads. Heck, you don’t explicitly know the identity of your target audience. You can only have an idea of who they are. Having a tool that can help you monitor the clicks going into your ads would make a difference in the campaigns you run.

Quality audience engagement goes without saying when you optimize your ads accordingly. An investment in a sophisticated Ad fraud protection will help you create ads with confidence and less time interpreting reports since you know that you have sufficiently removed those people who are not part of your route to success. Fraud tactics are ever-present but that doesn’t mean that you should be at the other end of their dark agendas. It can mutate into different versions but you have to know how to use big data to evolve with these bad actions.

TrafficGuard: Keep an Eye Out For Your Ads

With all these efforts and requirements for your online ads, you must be thinking how the hell am I going to do all this? It sounds like a lot of work, right? Fortunately, our friends over at TrafficGuard can help you drive growth and sustain your user acquisition from your online ads. I have decided to write about them today because I was impressed by their three-level protection for ads. Their process covers these levels:

• Impression Level
• Click Level
• Event Level
• Smart Algorithm Update

The tool works even at impression level when it detects early signs of fraud mitigation. Next, it can also monitor invalid clicks in real-time which is a consequence of ad stacking and bot traffic. Events level is for post-click conversions such as installs, sales, leads, and event data. For updates, the tool continues to evolve in each case that it encounters.

Try the tool by clicking here to see how powerful your online advertising can be if you care enough to guard it against dangerous black hat tactics.

The post How to Protect Your Paid Ads with TrafficGuard appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

The digital sphere is now crowded with many marketers, all hoping to be the best in advertising their brand. Starting a pay-per-click campaign is one of the best ways to ensure brand awareness for your business especially if your target market is currently looking for you online. What you must know about successful PPC campaigns is that knowing how to measure its effectiveness

Ensure that you are targeting the right market

Wasted spend would be a killer on your ads budget and it would hurt even more when you realize that it’s because you are targeting the wrong market for your ad. Before running your ad, make sure that you have the right audience in mind so you would not risk irrelevant clicks to your ads.

One way to be on top of this is to set your goal right for Search, Display, and Video campaigns. Follow the steps below to make sure that you are targeting the right goal for your campaign:

1. To set this up, start by clicking on your campaign.
2. Next, go to settings.
3. Click Goal.

Here is a quick overview of what goal you should select depending on your needs:

Sales

As the name suggests, the goal of sales is to encourage people to buy your products online or in-store. This is recommended for businesses who would want to be at the receiving end of a sales conversion. If you are targeting buyers, then you should know that they are looking to convert since they are already researching your product. Create a transactional landing page for this purpose and visually striking ads that would entice people to buy.

Leads

Getting leads for your business through your PPC ads would mean that you should optimize your campaign performance with automated bidding and targeting. This would enable you to get contacts from prospective customers that you can lead to doing business with you. It would be great if you prepare a landing page that would enjoin them to fill in a form with their respective data. This way, you can reach out to them in the future or in real-time about being a customer for your business.

Website Traffic

The fact of the matter is, digital ads will drive sufficient or a surge of traffic to your site. But this would only work if you have the right audience in mind and if you are set on achieving this goal. The audience for this goal is usually at the sales funnel are usually exploring and maximizing their options for transactions which means that you should stand out with an informative landing page for new customers that can help them explore your product or service thoroughly. These visitors can then turn into leads that you can outreach to in the future.

Product and Brand Consideration

Visitors who are not familiar with your brand can be targeted with this campaign goal. This is to help your business climb the ranks up for consideration. For this, you can choose to pay only when people interact with your ads. A successful PPC campaign for this goal would be measured by how many people engaged with your ad which is a simple metric even for those who are starting out in creating Google Ads.

Brand Awareness and Reach

Image ads are the best assets you can have for this type of campaign. Although text ads can also do the trick thanks to a well-written copy, it would provide more recall if you have the banner and image ads to accompany it. Brand recognition will help you in the long run especially if you are aiming for more people to know your brand through search or the Google Display Network.

Personalize your campaign

Target users based on a strategy that is well-fit for the goals of your campaigns. Personalization has been a tactic that is used for dynamic campaigns. One way to take maximize personalization for PPC campaign success is to create an ad for the Google Display Network (GDN) because this is a great start in reaching particular audiences and the right websites that can show your ads. If you wish to personalize your campaign, make sure that you are keeping the right audience in mind and the best methods for targeting them.

Consider remarketing for visitors that have previously engaged with your site. Remarketing is great in maximizing website traffic since it can show your ads to people who have already visited your website. This ensures great brand recall and consideration. The campaigns will be specifically tailored for reaching previous visitors and users which can help you reach out to prospective customers or those who are looking to transact with you for long-term purposes.

Opt for high-conversion keywords

A successful PPC search campaign would be possible if you also do keyword research. The Google Keyword Planner will help you do the trick. Discover new keywords and take into consideration how it will convert customers or leads for your business. The forecast tab can also help you decide which keywords to retain for your campaign. This can also help you choose the keywords based on their maximum CPC or the projected impressions that you can get for this campaign.

When it comes to keywords, you should always choose high conversion keywords rather than sticking with the safe option of using high volume keywords. Instead of going with the most popular keywords, consider using a set that would definitely address the search intent of users. For businesses, having a strategic approach for your PPC campaign would help you maximize your ad budget to help you reach your goals.

Check relevant success metrics

Having a goal-centric PPC campaign should also encourage you to have a measurement of success based on your efforts in running the campaigns. Fortunately, Google Ads makes it possible for you to track your campaigns based on the metrics readily available on its dashboard. Here are the metrics that you should look at:

• Quality Score
• Conversions and Conversions Rate
• Clicks
• Impressions
• CTR

These metrics will help you measure the relevance of your ad as well as its performance based on the goals you set. Having an overview of your performance and tracking these metrics will be a recipe for success. Checking your performance is a click away so make sure to have a solid tracking sheet for this. That way, you would have something to look back on when you are going to start a new campaign. Perform a contrast between what worked and what didn’t for your ad which will help you attain PPC success in no time.

Key Takeaway

Paid advertising is one of the best ways to put your business on the radar. With google ads marketing, you would be well-pressed to work hard on achieving success for it seeing as the competition can be stiff around the digital market. What are your plans for PPC for 2020? Comment down below and let’s talk about it!

The post How to Set Up a Goal-Centric PPC Campaign appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Search Engine Optimization has been in existence for a number of years, and with it came other alternatives that practitioners can use. There is no doubt that SEO is at the top of the list when ranking a website is the topic at hand.

Using SEO as a marketing strategy, however, also has its setbacks and problems that numerous people have often encountered. One main problem that SEO gives to people that use it, is that when it is conducted by a newly-established business.

The alternative for such businesses is to do PPC or Pay-Per-Click, which could give them immediate traction in the world of search results. Similarly, the availability of PPC will definitely give the people with low rankings in SERPs a chance to move up the results page ladder.

Surely, these two marketing strategies help websites rank higher, but the question still remains: which of the two is better than the other? Let’s find out.

The Advantages of SEO

• Recognition

  • Your targeted keywords help with your website’s visibility in search engines, and it allows your business to be seen by potential customers as much as paid advertisements; which also helps develop brand awareness.

• Brand Identity

  • Being visible in commercial searches and queries regarding the field of your business can considerably benefit your brand. Eventually, if you are still visible in the search results, you will become associated with informational queries regarding the field, and you will become a trusted brand; which will definitely affect your brand’s overall exposure.

• Brand Credibility

  • Many people try to avoid ads as much as possible because of biases and general distrust. Conversely, there is a higher chance for people to click on organic results, so if your website shows up naturally in the SERPs, then you’ll be perceived as trustworthy; therefore establishing a sense of credibility with your audience.

• Traffic

  • Using SEO will definitely give a considerable amount of traffic to your website, which will give you a chance to imbue the people that visit your website a sense of awareness regarding your website. Also, having increased traffic in your website will help you drive up sales or conversion rates; just as long as you have the capabilities to convince the visitors to buy or avail of your products and services.

• Little to No Cost

  • Receiving traffic from organic searches, essentially, does not have any cost. But, if you are conducting SEO to develop your visibility in SERPS, you will have to spend a lot of time, effort, and money, to get to the first pages of the search results, but there is absolutely no cost for each click that you receive.

• Improved Return on Investment (ROI)

  • Being in organic search results can provide some improvements in your return on investments (ROI) when compared to the old and traditional forms of paid advertisements, even more so than PPC

• It is Sustainable

  • Unlike other marketing strategies, traffic through organic searches will not stop even if you stop spending money on it. That is the reason why SEO and organic searches are the preferred way to rank higher in the SERPs. Also, it will give you the chance to spend less while still being visible in organic results.

• Enhanced Click-Through Rate (CTR)

  • As mentioned earlier, organic results get clicked more often than paid advertisements. While there are still minor exceptions, it is still an undeniable fact that you will get a higher CTR when you have a high organic listing than having a highly placed paid advertisement.

• Scope

  • There are countless queries each and every day by people which will give you a higher CTR only if you have a strong organic visibility. By knowing facts like this one, you won’t have to pay for every click that you receive, and you also don’t need to advertise every content that your website has.

• A Strategic Advantage

  • Being visible in organic search results will never be quick and easy. But, when you do reach a high rank in your SERPs, your competitors would not be able to immediately ‘buy’ their way to a higher rank than yours. This will definitely give you a strategic advantage over your competitors that only rely on PPC, or paid advertisements.

The Disadvantages of SEO

• Traffic is Hard to Come By

  • It’s not always a sunny day when you’re conducting SEO. Oftentimes, organic traffic is hard to come by, and you will be encountering numerous competitors. Let’s say, for example, the nature of your business is a car manufacturing and sales, and your target keywords are led by car powerhouses like Honda, Toyota, and Ford; obviously, you will be having a hard time, and you might need to rethink your strategy.

• Content Development

  • By using SEO as a marketing strategy, you will have to develop content for your website to increase your rankings; and you will be needing the necessary resources to give your website numerous quality content that your audience will enjoy.This will definitely be a problem for the people that cannot gather the resources needed. Similarly, mastering tactics like proper and sustainable link building will take up a lot of your precious time.

The Advantages of PPC

• Positioning

  • Availing a paid advertisement will often place your advertised content on the first page of the search results. It does not matter what platform the user is on, the advertisement will always see the paid search ad (as long as their inputted keyword matches the one your advertisement has) even if they scroll past it.

• Control

  • PPC ads are still advertisements, no matter how different they look. This entails that you’ll have more control on what to put in the ad, and you’ll have more space to input your marketing messages.

• Visual Aid

  • If the essence of your business is selling goods, using PPC can definitely help you gain an increase in your website’s overall click-through rates. This is precisely because, in Google, you have the choice to include a picture of the product that you are selling in the advertisement.This is commonly known as product listing ads or PLAs. If you did not know, having a picture in your ad will considerably increase the rate of people that click on it. And this is a feature that is not available through organic search; which is a sure advantage.

• Targeting

  • PPC is the definite way to reach your desired audience. This is due to the fact that PPC works based on search keywords, time of day, day of the week, language, the devices used, geography, and audiences based on past visits.It is obvious that organic search and traffic has a wider and broader scope than PPC, but is not specific on the target audience.

• Speed

  • As mentioned, organic visibility takes a lot of time and hard work. But, a PPC ad can be done in a few days, and it only takes a few weeks to build up. This is one of the fastest ways to get noticed by users, and will also potentially help your business gain more sales.

The Disadvantages of PPC

• Costs

  • PPCs can use up a lot of your money. Of course, there are exceptions to this but if you are not aware on the costs of availing these ads, it will most definitely spiral out of control – especially when you are trying to spread your ad to a larger scale.

• Bidding Wars

  • It is a common occurrence for advertisers to get into a bidding competition to avail certain high-value ad space. Being a part of these bidding competitions can increase your spending rate, and will definitely cost you a lot of money.

• Imitation

  • Essentially, putting up ads is very easy to do. So if a competitor sees that you are running ads in search engines, they can just do the same and potentially ruin your chances of gaining more customers.

The Verdict

SEO and PPC both have their own good and bad sides. Honestly, using any of these marketing strategies depends on your situation. If you are running a local business and only need a few leads per week, then a smaller-scale SEO strategy can help you become more visible on your local SERPs.

If you are a newly-established online retail store that cannot avoid going up against Amazon or eBay, then the fast-paced, immediate-results marketing campaign of PPC is the one for you.

Bear in mind, however, that a clear digital marketing strategy, and a list of your short-term and long-term goals are the quintessential must-haves in deciding on using SEO or PPC..or both?

Combining SEO and PPC as a Strategy

Looking at both SEO and PPC, their cons can be removed when they are used together, and their synergy when supporting one another is top-notch. By using both SEO and PPC, you will achieve greater results when compared to using them individually.  Here are some of the benefits that you can have when you use them both:

• The data from keywords and conversion rates from PPC can be used in organic search.
• The amount of traffic that your website receives will increase because of the clicks through the paid advertisements and CTRs through organic results.
• High-cost keywords can be transferred to organic search, as to lessen your spending.
• You can test your keywords in PPC before using it in your long-term SEO strategies.
• Increases overall brand marketing and awareness in SERPs because of organic and paid visibility.

Key Takeaway

 For businesses, a unified strategy that uses both SEO and PPC is the optimal approach. The results that you might have garnered while only using one of these will definitely be doubled if you unify and use their strong advantages to your benefit. It is important, however, to keep in mind that this might not necessarily be true for every business or situation. This unified approach is best for those businesses that are looking for high-growth through aggressive marketing.

Can you now elevate your business and take the next big step with SEO or PPC?

Do you still need a little help?  Send us a message! We’d be happy to hear from you.

The post Combining SEO and PPC as a Strategy and their Pros and Cons appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

As an Internet Marketer, one question people frequently ask me is “what is the difference between organic and paid search results?” Trying to get a website ranked without opting for a paid listing is not that hard to do in theory but actually getting a website ranked is challenging – but it isn’t impossible.

Google’s Sponsored Search Results

At a first glance, Google offers a simple answer on organic vs sponsored search results. Listed at the very top of the search results are the paid ones. They are there simply because they availed of Google’s “Adwords” service. How this works is that while your link is at the very top (or in another prime location), Google will charge you based on where you are on the list and your keywords. It is worth noting that Google will charge you more the higher you want your link to be listed.

Availing of Google’s Adwords services is a fairly simple process. You simply have to create a Google account, register it in the Adwords domain and then you can set it up to get your desired spot in Google’s search engine.

It is extremely easy to get searched if you avail of Google’s Adwords service. However, in the long run it is still a risky move. While each click is not that expensive by itself, you still have to consider the fact that not everyone is going to avail of your service. Some of them might simply be curious and there are even some cases where people accidentally click on your link. Simply put, each and every click isn’t really worth it.

Another aspect that people consider is the fact that people have a predisposition to not trust ads. Some of them have heard of junk mail and phishing scams so these people tend to avoid clicking on ads. The best way to become visible is by creating quality content that’s good enough to be ranked higher on Google’s search engine results.

Organic Search Results

As I have repeatedly said before, it is considered good practice to naturally have your content and links rank higher on Google. One of the end goals of SEO is ranking higher with organic search results. One thing bloggers and internet marketers should put into practice is creating worthwhile content while optimizing their website in a way that satisfies Google’s standards for a reputable webpage. Simply put, the better content you put out, the better Google will treat your website and rank you higher on their search engine.

Organic Search Results are important precisely because they are relevant to the search keyword. Google determines what is relevant by using their unique algorithm. They naturally appear as search engine results depending on their relevance to the topic as well as their reputation.

Another thing worth considering is the fact that better content produces better results overall; not only with SEO but also with how people perceive and respect your brand. If you can successfully convert people into promoters for your brand then ranking higher even without relying on sponsored search results will come naturally.

In conclusion, while it is definitely easier to rank higher by availing of a Google’s adwords, it is better for your website in the long run if you put into practice the creation of quality content. You don’t need to pay money to advertise your link if people who are satisfied with your products and services can do that for you. Are you interested in practising SEO for your website? SEO Hacker is the best place to start.

The post Playing with the Search Engine: Organic vs Sponsored Results appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.