Wanted: Session ideas for SMX London

We want your input to help us plan our upcoming SMX London conference, which will be taking place May 23–24, 2017. Specifically, we’d love to hear from you if you have an great idea for a session that you think should be on the agenda. And if you’re interested in speaking at the show, the absolute best way to improve your chances of being chosen is to get involved at this point, by suggesting an awesome idea that really catches our attention.

We’re looking for two types of suggestions:

Session ideas for regular SMX sessions. Most sessions at SMX conferences are 60 to 90 minutes in length and feature two to three speakers. Here, we’re not looking for solo presentations; rather, your idea should be a topic where multiple speakers can each weigh in with their own point of view, opinion and suggested tactics. You can let us know if you’re interested in speaking or would just like to see the session idea considered without nominating yourself to speak.

Session ideas for solo presentations. Solo presentations are keynote-level, TED-style presentations from industry visionaries. We’re looking for the best of the best: seasoned professionals, acknowledged thought leaders, inspiring communicators. People who will wow attendees with their insights and motivate them to chart new territory in their own online marketing campaigns. If you pitch to speak on a solo session, you really need to wow us to be seriously considered. Solo sessions are typically 25 minutes long.

Key Milestones For SMX London — Mark Your Calendar!

• Session ideas accepted: through Dec. 31
• Agenda posted: Jan. 9
• Speaking pitches accepted: Jan. 9–Mar. 3

Have a suggestion? Please read our guidelines for speaking at SMX conferences, and use the session idea suggestion form to describe your idea.

Don’t delay! The session idea suggestion form closes Saturday, Dec. 31.

Chris Sherman
Chair, SMX London

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Is Google’s AMP carousel working? (Or, SEO insights from Kanye West)

Publishers are asking questions about the effectiveness of Google’s AMP carousel. Columnist Barb Palser analyzed 235 million AMP search impressions to find answers.

Google’s AMP rich cards look like they should work. The format is visually appealing, and AMP rich card carousels usually appear at the top of mobile search results, dominating the first viewport.

They also provide a brand showcase publishers should love.

But recently, publishers have been scratching their heads over analytics indicating AMP content has a lower click-through rate from rich cards than from general search results. They’re finding this data in Google Search Console (GSC), which now allows publishers to filter AMP performance in search based on appearance as rich cards in a carousel vs. non-rich text links.

Here’s the GSC dashboard for an aggregated group of news publishers, showing an average CTR of 3.14 percent for AMP rich results vs. 4.39 percent for AMP non-rich results, even though the rich results have a higher average position.

These numbers are perplexing at first  — but, if we dig in, they begin make sense.

Reason #1: Relevance and supply

In a nutshell, the rich card carousel favors broad searches. The carousel is invoked when a query returns at least three AMP results Google deems relevant enough to display together. The broader and more popular the search, the more likely the threshold will be met and the results displayed as a carousel of up to 10 rich cards. However, broad searches often result in lower click-through rates than precise searches.

For example, for the aggregated news publishers above (a mix of hyperlocal, local and national brands), “Kanye West” was one of the most successful search terms for the time span analyzed, by volume of resulting AMP impressions and clicks. Because there’s a vast supply of close-match AMP results for the general term “Kanye West,” the results were always displayed as a rich card carousel — with a very good click-through rate of 16 percent.  

Measured by engagement, however, the most successful Kanye-related search term was “What Did Kanye Say,” with a phenomenal click-through rate of 65 percent. The precise query was searched less often, producing a lower volume of impressions and clicks — but yielded highly relevant results. Without enough close matches to meet the AMP carousel threshold, Google displayed the results as text links.

There are many exceptions to this rule. The universe of AMP content is large and growing every day as more publishers become AMP-enabled, such that many granular searches are now invoking the AMP carousel — especially for news and entertainment topics of broad interest.  

But on balance, broad and popular search results seem to be concentrated in the AMP carousel, while the long tail of specific queries are more likely to be returned as text links only, tilting the average CTR toward non-rich results for many publishers.

To underscore this point, here are some of the top-performing rich and non-rich queries based on resulting clicks, for the news publishers analyzed:

This is a clear illustration of how mobile search exposure is shifting — and what many non-AMP-enabled publishers are missing by being excluded from the rich card carousel.

Naturally, these metrics will vary by publisher, depending on the publisher’s topical and geographical focus, the pool of competitive AMP content for that focus, overall search optimization and how often users find the publisher’s content from topical searches vs. branded searches.

Reason #2: Carousels are not awesome

As a user interface, scrolling carousels don’t have a great reputation; mostly, they seem to be good at hiding content from users. It appears Google’s AMP carousel is no exception.

On mobile phones, the first two cards in an AMP carousel are visible — or three cards in landscape view. It seems users aren’t scrolling or clicking much beyond that.

Using the same news publishers and looking at the top 1,000 queries by clicks for both rich and non-rich results, here are the respective click-through rates based on average position in results:

While both formats show significant declines after the first positions, carousel activity falls off a cliff after positions one and two. Evidently, users are more likely to scroll down to engage with text links than to scroll horizontally to discover additional carousel results.

When publishers rank at the top of results, this isn’t a huge issue — but for publishers who tend to appear deeper in the carousel, it could be a contributing factor to lower rich result CTRs. While this sounds bad, keep in mind that Google often duplicates a publisher’s results in the AMP carousel and in text links.  If the publisher’s text link position isn’t affected by carousel appearance, then deep carousel slots are like “bonus” exposure. If deep carousel links displace or replace text links, then concerns would be justified.

Meanwhile, Google seems to be doubling down on AMP carousels — now displaying publisher-specific carousels when certain publishers have a number of results for a query. It would be interesting to know whether engagement for these single-publisher carousels differs from the multi-source Top Stories carousel. Scrolling notwithstanding, single-publisher carousels are a nice content and brand showcase for publishers who get them.

This search for “trump cabinet” produced four single-publisher AMP carousels in addition to the standard Top Stories carousel:

Conclusion: Blame the carousel, not the cards

All of this analysis suggests AMP carousel CTR is being throttled by (a) the minimum result threshold which prevents rich cards from being displayed for very granular queries; and (b) the shortfalls of carousels in general, which depress CTR for “hidden” content which must be scrolled to view. None of this says anything about the effectiveness of rich cards themselves.

Google could probably boost AMP rich card CTR immediately by reducing or eliminating the threshold for showing results as rich cards, and by displaying them as tiles instead of a scrollable carousel. (Although this might lead to trimming the maximum number of cards in a collection from 10 to something like three or four, in turn reducing rich card impression and click volume.)

The AMP format is a work in progress, as is Google’s careful approach to surfacing AMP in search.  Given Google’s focus on performance measurement and fundamental commitment to AMP, we should expect continued optimizations. We might see refinements to GSC reporting as well.

Meanwhile, publishers shouldn’t interpret the click-through rates in their GSC dashboards as an indictment of AMP, or of rich cards for that matter. For a publisher to opt out of AMP based on comparatively lower CTR in the AMP carousel makes no sense at all; that exposure won’t shift back to standard text links — it’ll just go to another AMP-enabled publisher.

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Amazon begins testing Product Listing Ads on AdWords

For the first time ever, Amazon Product Listing Ads have been popping up in what appears to be an AdWords test.

In 2012, Google’s Product Search was transformed from an organic product search tool into a pay-to-play shopping destination. Since the removal of Product Search, Amazon has not participated with Google’s Product Listing Ads. Until now. Merkle discovered Amazon testing PLAs in the wild — something completely new for the world’s largest online retailer.

According to Merkle’s Mark Ballard, Amazon appears to be testing (and increasing) its PLA presence. We were able to replicate these Amazon Product Listing Ads on both mobile and desktop environments. Mr. Ballard’s anecdotal research is showing that Amazon is currently more apt to appear for home goods retailers, and they are trending up to a 25 percent impression share.

If this does become more than just a test, it could be a huge hit to other (and smaller) retailers that can’t compete with the budget of this shopping behemoth. Advertisers can compare their efforts to what Amazon is doing by researching with the Auction Insights tool.

Head on over to Merkle to read the full story and see all of the PLA data

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3 ways in-house do-it-yourselfers can prepare for PPC management

Does this sound familiar to you? Your company has finally agreed to spend some resources on pay-per-click (PPC), but instead of hiring a PPC professional or agency, they want you or perhaps Sally down the hall to take on the role of managing PPC. Never mind that you and Sally already have full-time jobs and haven’t the slightest clue about PPC. What do you do?

This is not an uncommon scenario for many businesses, and it puts the burden on the person tasked with PPC to at least learn the fundamentals of the discipline and put the wheels in motion for a PPC “test.”

The problem in this scenario is that when PPC doesn’t show the return it’s supposed to, the channel is often blamed (“PPC just didn’t work for us”), but unfortunately, it’s likely that it just wasn’t set up and managed properly for ROI.

Nonetheless, those who are tasked with PPC and have no prior knowledge need to get up to speed on the ins and outs of the discipline, and here are some ways that anyone can start preparing for pay-per-click — at least enough to perform the basics.

1. Take Google AdWords certification, or at least study online

If you’re serious about learning the material, you might consider the AdWords certification course, sponsored by Google. You’ll first need to apply as a Google Partner to gain access to the free certification.

But you don’t have to take all those steps if you just want to get a quick education in AdWords and paid search. Check out the AdWords study guides that are freely available to the public here, and that cover:

• AdWords fundamentals
• Search advertising
• Display advertising
• Video advertising
• Shopping advertising
• Mobile advertising

It’s important to realize, however, that the recommendations you’ll find coming from Google aren’t always the best recommendations for every business, as search advertising is a highly customized thing. But they can give a good introduction.

To put this into perspective, when my agency hires new staff, we want them to be certified in AdWords, but then we essentially reteach them how to manage PPC our way.

To expand on and supplement your knowledge, I also recommend CertifiedKnowledge.org, a membership website (that also has some free content) founded by Brad Geddes that offers education on PPC.

2. Get organized and learn how to plan for PPC

Paid search is definitely not a “one and done” type of thing. If you’re a naturally organized person, managing PPC may come more easily to you, but you still have to know how to prepare for the multitude of tactics ahead of you — sometimes on a daily basis.

One of the first things you’ll want to do is get yourself a project management application to track PPC tasks and deadlines. You could use a spreadsheet, but the benefit of an app is that they often come with the ability to set reminders that are emailed to you, collaborate with others on the team, gain approvals and more.

I use Basecamp, but there are others out there you might like better. The main thing is that you want to stay on top of the daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly tasks of PPC.

Especially during a launch, it’s important to closely monitor and tweak the campaigns for performance. That means that in any given week, you may be making one change, or you may be making 20.

Let’s quickly look at some of the general PPC tasks you’ll need to stay on top of:

Daily

• Check the account each day to see what happened the day before, paying close attention to ad spend versus revenue for e-commerce-type businesses, and conversions for B2B companies. Analyze and take action.

Monthly

• Manage negative keywords, so you can avoid spending money on the keywords that are driving clicks but are not relevant to your business.
• Watch for poor-performing campaigns, ad groups and keywords, and consider cutting any out that aren’t showing a return.
• Manage site exclusions if you are advertising on the Google Display Network, so your ads don’t show up on irrelevant websites.
• Perform bid optimization to ensure your ads are claiming the position in the search results you’re after (first position, second position and so on).

There are, of course, many more things you can do. But this is just a sampling to get your head wrapped around the responsibility of managing PPC.

Know The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of default settings

This may be one of the more important things a PPC newbie can work to understand. Of course, this is kind of a chicken-and-egg conundrum: It’s only with experience that many discover that the default settings suggested by platforms like AdWords — heck, even some of the features — are not set up to deliver upon the best advertising strategies for many businesses.

Without sounding like a conspiracy theorist or unnecessarily bashing Google, let’s just say that sometimes, the default settings are good for the ad platform’s pockets and not necessarily the business’s.

Here’s an example. Below is a screen shot of the settings for ad rotation. Ad rotation is the way AdWords serves up the ads — if you have multiple ads within an ad group, the ads rotate because only one ad can be shown at a time.

Google tells us that “optimize for clicks” (the default setting) is the ideal setting for most advertisers. With that setting, the various creatives will rotate until Google determines a “winner,” based upon the click-through rate. But, because of our experience, we know that’s not always best.

In fact, the one we almost always use is “rotate indefinitely”— which Google happens to say is “not recommended” for most advertisers.

Bonus: create budget for a PPC audit

Even though budgetary constraints and an unstable level of commitment to PPC are likely the reasons you or Sally down the hall has been tasked with PPC, it can be a great boost to your ROI to have a professional review your paid search setup before it goes live, and then monitoring it yourself closely afterward.

In these cases, you’re not locked into a long-term PPC management contract, but you do have access to expert guidance where and when it matters most: the account setup and launch.

At the end of the day, if your company simply won’t budge on hiring a PPC expert, you’re going to have to take matters into your own hands. Luckily, there are many resources online to help you learn PPC (including this publication you’re reading right now!), so take advantage of your DIY approach, and educate yourself on how to take those first steps with confidence.

For more on the common mistakes that do-it-yourselfers make in PPC, check out an earlier column of mine here.

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Improve search rankings and increase productivity with local marketing automation software

Managing online citations, claimed and unclaimed listings, reviews and ratings, landing pages and data feeds for hundreds or thousands of locations has become time-consuming and costly for enterprise brands. Automating these processes can improve search rankings, increase productivity and lower CPCs due to better SEO.

Marketing Land’s “Enterprise Local Marketing Automation Platforms” examines the market for local marketing automation platforms. The 50-page report reviews current trends and issues in enterprise local marketing automation, including omnichannel marketing, tag management and mobile measurement and optimization.

Also included in the report are profiles of 17 leading enterprise local marketing automation vendors, pricing charts, capabilities comparisons and recommended steps for evaluating and purchasing.

To know more latest update or tips about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Fill ContactUs Form or call at +44 2032892236 or Email us at - adviser.illusiongroups@gmail.com.

Search Engine Land’s Top 10 News Stories Of 2016: Goodbye right-rail ads, goodbye visible PageRank & more

If it feels like the search results changed a lot this year — especially Google’s — you’ve done a good job staying on top of search news. As we look back on the biggest stories of the year, several of them cover changes in SEO and ranking algorithms, and others are about new developments in AdWords and paid search.

In 2016, we said goodbye to those text ads on the right side of Google’s desktop search results and to the visible green PageRank bar. Paid search specialists said goodbye to an outdated AdWords interface. And we’re all in the process of bidding adieu to the idea of a single Google index. What a year it’s been!

Between now and the end of December, we’ll be looking back at the most-read articles and columns we published in 2016. Recaps from our SEO- and PPC-related columns will start to arrive next week, but we begin today with a look at the most popular news stories of the year.

Search Engine Land’s Most Popular News Stories Of 2016

This list is based on page views and includes news stories published between January 1 and December 12, 2016.

1. Confirmed: Google To Stop Showing Ads On Right Side Of Desktop Search Results Worldwide

Matt McGee, February 19: “Google is rolling out a dramatic change that removes ads from the right side of its desktop search results, and places ads only at the top and/or bottom of the page. At the same time, the company says it may show an additional ad — four, not three — above the search results for what it calls ‘highly commercial queries.'”

2. Powerball Numbers? You’ll Be Surprised Which Search Engines Knew Them

Matt McGee, January 10: “So who is showing the winning Powerball numbers in easy view for this popular search term tonight? Would you be surprised to know that both Yahoo and Ask.com are doing so? It’s true — have a look.”

3. Google Search iOS App Adds “I’m Feeling Curious” To 3-D Touch

Barry Schwartz, February 1: “Google has added a small but cute feature to the Google iOS search app that lets users hard press on the app and brings up a “3-D touch menu” for the ‘I’m Feeling Curious’ button. This is to make it faster for searchers to get ‘a fun fact’ from Google.”

4. Now we know: Here are Google’s top 3 search ranking factors

Barry Schwartz, March 24: “We knew last year that RankBrain was said by Google to be the third most important ranking factor, but Google refused to say what the first two were. Yesterday, in a Q&A with Google, Andrey Lipattsev, a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, said the other two factors were links and content.”

5. RIP Google PageRank score: A retrospective on how it ruined the web

Danny Sullivan, March 9: “Ever gotten a crappy email asking for links? Blame PageRank. Ever had garbage comments with link drops? Blame PageRank. Ever had to ferret out the how and why you should make use of the nofollow attribute on links? Blame PageRank. More appropriately, blame Google for ever making the PageRank score visible.”

6. Google updates Penguin, says it now runs in real time within the core search algorithm

Barry Schwartz, September 23: “Those long delays are now to be a thing of the past, according to Google. With this latest release, Penguin becomes real-time. As Google recrawls and reindexes pages — which happens constantly — those pages will be assessed by the Penguin filter. Pages will be caught and/or freed by Penguin as part of this regular process.”

7. Is a big Google search update happening? Chatter thinks so.

Barry Schwartz, September 2: “To be clear, it seems like there were two updates in the past twenty-four hours. The large update seems to be around core web search, which kicked off earlier this morning or late last night. The second update was likely around local rankings in Google.”

8.) Within months, Google to divide its index, giving mobile users better & fresher content

Barry Schwartz, October 13: “Google is going to create a separate mobile index within months, one that will be the main or ‘primary’ index that the search engine uses to respond to queries. A separate desktop index will be maintained, one that will not be as up-to-date as the mobile index.”

9. FAQ: All About The Changes To Google’s Ad Layout On Desktop Search Results

Ginny Marvin, February 22: “Google has stated that four ads instead of three may show more often on highly commercial queries, but what exactly does that mean? Well, examples from Google include ‘hotels in New York City’ or ‘car insurance.’ And yet, what you deem highly commercial may differ from Google’s definition. Generally speaking, the term is used for queries in which Google perceives an intent to purchase.”

10. Google is completely redesigning AdWords: Offers first peek

Ginny Marvin, March 28: “There are a few things that can be gleaned from the Google-supplied screenshot below (click to enlarge). In the image on the left, the Campaigns and ad groups are shown in the left-hand navigation, as they are now, but clicking on an individual campaign brings up a dashboard view that Google is calling an ‘Overview’ screen. Overviews will be available at the campaign, ad group and ad levels.”

Those are the most-read news stories of the year on Search Engine Land. In case you missed it earlier this week, we already published the top 10 news stories of 2016 on Marketing Land, and a similar list for MarTech Today is coming soon. Next week, we’ll begin posting a daily look back at the top columns that we published here on Search Engine Land throughout the year.

On behalf of the Search Engine Land editorial team, thanks for reading us during 2016. Happy holidays to you and best wishes for 2017!

To know more latest update or tips about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Fill ContactUs Form or call at +44 2032892236 or Email us at - adviser.illusiongroups@gmail.com.

Australian appeals court rules Google did not defame man

The Guardian reports that an appeals court in Australia has ruled that Google did not defame a man for showing images of the man when a search was done for [Melbourne underworld criminals].

An older case dates back to 2012, when Google lost a defamation case and was ordered to pay $208,000 in fines to the plaintiff, Milorad Trkulja.

The appeals court just ruled that Google in fact did not defame the man. The Australian judges held that Google could not be held to be publisher of the allegedly defamatory material. In addition, they also found the material on which Milorad Trkulja sued was not capable of conveying any defamatory meanings, according to the Guardian.

The court added that for a search engine to produce results that could defame someone was “acute.”

To know more latest update or tips about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Fill ContactUs Form or call at +44 2032892236 or Email us at - adviser.illusiongroups@gmail.com.

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Search Engine Land’s Top 10 News Stories Of 2016: Goodbye right-rail ads, goodbye visible PageRank & more

Our annual year-in-review coverage starts with a look at the most popular news stories we covered in 2016.

If it feels like the search results changed a lot this year — especially Google’s — you’ve done a good job staying on top of search news. As we look back on the biggest stories of the year, several of them cover changes in SEO and ranking algorithms, and others are about new developments in AdWords and paid search.

In 2016, we said goodbye to those text ads on the right side of Google’s desktop search results and to the visible green PageRank bar. Paid search specialists said goodbye to an outdated AdWords interface. And we’re all in the process of bidding adieu to the idea of a single Google index. What a year it’s been!

Between now and the end of December, we’ll be looking back at the most-read articles and columns we published in 2016. Recaps from our SEO- and PPC-related columns will start to arrive next week, but we begin today with a look at the most popular news stories of the year.

Search Engine Land’s Most Popular News Stories Of 2016

This list is based on page views and includes news stories published between January 1 and December 12, 2016.

1. Confirmed: Google To Stop Showing Ads On Right Side Of Desktop Search Results Worldwide

Matt McGee, February 19: “Google is rolling out a dramatic change that removes ads from the right side of its desktop search results, and places ads only at the top and/or bottom of the page. At the same time, the company says it may show an additional ad — four, not three — above the search results for what it calls ‘highly commercial queries.'”

2. Powerball Numbers? You’ll Be Surprised Which Search Engines Knew Them

Matt McGee, January 10: “So who is showing the winning Powerball numbers in easy view for this popular search term tonight? Would you be surprised to know that both Yahoo and Ask.com are doing so? It’s true — have a look.”

3. Google Search iOS App Adds “I’m Feeling Curious” To 3-D Touch

Barry Schwartz, February 1: “Google has added a small but cute feature to the Google iOS search app that lets users hard press on the app and brings up a “3-D touch menu” for the ‘I’m Feeling Curious’ button. This is to make it faster for searchers to get ‘a fun fact’ from Google.”

4. Now we know: Here are Google’s top 3 search ranking factors

Barry Schwartz, March 24: “We knew last year that RankBrain was said by Google to be the third most important ranking factor, but Google refused to say what the first two were. Yesterday, in a Q&A with Google, Andrey Lipattsev, a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, said the other two factors were links and content.”

5. RIP Google PageRank score: A retrospective on how it ruined the web

Danny Sullivan, March 9: “Ever gotten a crappy email asking for links? Blame PageRank. Ever had garbage comments with link drops? Blame PageRank. Ever had to ferret out the how and why you should make use of the nofollow attribute on links? Blame PageRank. More appropriately, blame Google for ever making the PageRank score visible.”

6. Google updates Penguin, says it now runs in real time within the core search algorithm

Barry Schwartz, September 23: “Those long delays are now to be a thing of the past, according to Google. With this latest release, Penguin becomes real-time. As Google recrawls and reindexes pages — which happens constantly — those pages will be assessed by the Penguin filter. Pages will be caught and/or freed by Penguin as part of this regular process.”

7. Is a big Google search update happening? Chatter thinks so.

Barry Schwartz, September 2: “To be clear, it seems like there were two updates in the past twenty-four hours. The large update seems to be around core web search, which kicked off earlier this morning or late last night. The second update was likely around local rankings in Google.”

8.) Within months, Google to divide its index, giving mobile users better & fresher content

Barry Schwartz, October 13: “Google is going to create a separate mobile index within months, one that will be the main or ‘primary’ index that the search engine uses to respond to queries. A separate desktop index will be maintained, one that will not be as up-to-date as the mobile index.”

9. FAQ: All About The Changes To Google’s Ad Layout On Desktop Search Results

Ginny Marvin, February 22: “Google has stated that four ads instead of three may show more often on highly commercial queries, but what exactly does that mean? Well, examples from Google include ‘hotels in New York City’ or ‘car insurance.’ And yet, what you deem highly commercial may differ from Google’s definition. Generally speaking, the term is used for queries in which Google perceives an intent to purchase.”

10. Google is completely redesigning AdWords: Offers first peek

Ginny Marvin, March 28: “There are a few things that can be gleaned from the Google-supplied screenshot below (click to enlarge). In the image on the left, the Campaigns and ad groups are shown in the left-hand navigation, as they are now, but clicking on an individual campaign brings up a dashboard view that Google is calling an ‘Overview’ screen. Overviews will be available at the campaign, ad group and ad levels.”

Those are the most-read news stories of the year on Search Engine Land. In case you missed it earlier this week, we already published the top 10 news stories of 2016 on Marketing Land, and a similar list for MarTech Today is coming soon. Next week, we’ll begin posting a daily look back at the top columns that we published here on Search Engine Land throughout the year.

On behalf of the Search Engine Land editorial team, thanks for reading us during 2016. Happy holidays to you and best wishes for 2017!

To know more latest update or tips about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Fill ContactUs Form or call at +44 2032892236 or Email us at - adviser.illusiongroups@gmail.com.

‘Tis the season! Google spreads more cheer on Day 2 of its Holiday 2016 doodle series

For Christmas Eve, Google's Day 2 Holiday Doodle has the Google letters making hearts and smiley faces on fogged up windows.

Today’s Google Doodle is the second in its series of Holiday 2016 series. For Christmas Eve, the Google letters are making hearts, stars, smiling faces and hand-prints behind fogged up windows.

From the Google Doodle Blog:

Happy holidays! This is the perfect time of year to cozy up to the window with your favorite blanket or mug, and watch the snow fall. While you’re there, sketch a foggy doodle or two (or five) of your own.

Like yesterday’s doodle, the animated image was designed by Gerben Steenks and leads to a search for “‘Tis the season!”

Google also put together a Day 2 holiday doodle for the “warmer climates” that is appearing on its home pages in a handful of South American countries, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines.

Also, Google’s Santa tracker is now live. See our story: Where is Santa Claus? Your 2016 guide to Santa trackers from NORAD & Google.

To know more latest update or tips about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Fill ContactUs Form or call at +44 2032892236 or Email us at - adviser.illusiongroups@gmail.com.

Improve your paid search & social through relationship marketing

Contributor Jeff Baum explains how you can nurture your prospect through the entire buying journey using search ads and paid social.

A major shift I’ve observed taking place in both the paid search and social advertising industry is a move toward relationship marketing. Brands can no longer be available to customers only when they’re ready to convert. Advertisers must now be ready and willing to provide value to their customer’s days, weeks, or even months prior to a conversion taking place.

The key to a successful relationship marketing program is to take customers on a buying journey. An effective paid search and social program must create brand awareness, generate demand, force a buying decision, and finally inspire brand loyalty and advocacy.

This article outlines strategies for effectively leveraging paid search and social in a way that builds sustainable relationships, which ultimately drives ever-increasing amounts of revenue and profit.

Strategy #1: Be there for your customers

The first step toward building sustainable relationships is being where customers are either searching for information or consuming content.

Learn where your specific audience is consuming content, and gain an understanding as to what phase of the buying cycle they’re in while on those platforms.

For instance, if a customer is on Facebook but in the awareness or consideration phase, prepare messaging that focuses on a product’s benefits, and lead them to a landing page that provides useful information that leads to a buying decision at a later date.

Asking for the conversion too soon can scare customers away, which ruins credibility and eliminates any chance of converting them at another time through alternate tactics such as remarketing.

Customers also consume content on multiple devices such as smartphones and tablets. Creating device-specific campaigns geared toward the behavior being exhibited by your user segment is a powerful way to leverage paid search and social to drive additional business.

For instance, if a retailer receives significant amounts of mobile traffic but conversion rate is low, this could imply that users on mobile devices are in “research mode.”

If those users are, indeed, in research mode, driving them to a product information page with the intent of remarketing to them later could be more effective than driving users directly to a purchase page and asking for a sale when the customer is not ready to complete a purchase.

Creating messages and content based on device-specific behavior is a powerful way to build a strong 1:1 customer relationship.

Strategy #2: Micro-targeting

Micro-targeting reaches people at a deeper level. Deeper customer connections result in stronger loyalty to your brand, which increases the chances of winning business through your paid advertising efforts.

A few ways to micro-target are:

• Demographic targeting: Many businesses have data that tells them which demographics make up their core customers. Creating campaigns with messaging based on demographics creates a hyper-targeted opportunity to reach your core audience and speak to them in a way they understand that leads them to take action.

• Location: Geotargeting has been around a long time. However, the key to effective geotargeting is to mine location reports for purposes of targeting smaller sub-locations. For instance, let’s suppose a restaurant is in the borough of Queens. Is it more effective for a campaign to have a geotarget containing all of NYC or one that targets just the borough of Queens, where there’s a higher probability of that traffic leading to becoming paying customers? Location reports can help you decide the best way to target.

• Interests: Are you trying to reach customers through their interests? For instance, if your business sells outdoor gear, are you targeting just general keywords like “outdoor gear,” or are you targeting people’s specific interests, like “fishing” or “water skiing?” Connecting advertising messages with people’s interests reaches them on an emotional level, which removes significant barriers to conversion.

• Ad scheduling: Another way to think about ad scheduling is creating campaigns based on time of day. Going back to our previous restaurant example, let’s say the restaurant in Queens offers both lunch and dinner. Creating a “lunch” campaign provides flexibility to just focus on lunch. On the flip side, another campaign can be created that just focuses on the dinner crowd. Ad scheduling can be used to as a micro-targeting tool to bring in the right customer at the right time, as opposed to just being a method of excluding traffic.

Strategy #3: Ad messaging

A recurring theme throughout this article is aligning ad messaging to where customers are in their buying cycle. A successful message moves people to respond on both an intellectual and emotional level.

This concept is known as the elephant and the driver. The elephant reacts purely on emotion, while the driver uses intellect to make decisions. Targeting ad copy to both the emotional and the rational helps remove obstacles and drives people to convert.

An example of an ad employing the elephant and driver concept is shown below. Consider this approach when creating ad copy. You’ll be rewarded through improved results!

Conclusion

Conversion paths are longer and more complex than ever before. Providing value throughout the buying process is critical to success. Being there for customers regardless of whether they’re in “buying mode” builds a loyal following based on trust.

Creating a loyal following of brand advocates will positively multiply the effects of your paid search, social and overall digital marketing initiatives.

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